[More events and thoughts from Sept 21 (into the 22nd)]
So I took the #3 back to Canal St., which stopped a couple of blocks from where the #6 stops on Canal. (Actually, I think the #3 doesn't actually stop on Canal, I had to get off and take the #1 back to Canal. Or maybe that's backwards; the subway is nothing if not confusing for a while.) On the way back to Chinatown, I stopped at a street fair and picked up a sausage with onions and peppers. (Yes, another one.) Munching on that, I continued to Chinatown... and ran into about 30 thousand people, all of whom were apparently trying to take the bus back to Boston.
I finally got to the bus ticket counter and asked when the earliest bus with open seats was running. "No more tickets today!" I got a little chill. But nothing too serious, I still had some food and I knew there was at least one more bus company around there. So I just kept munching and walking around Chinatown.
I got to another place that seemed to be selling tickets, until some random guy started telling people they couldn't stand where the ticket office was. It was a little confusing, but it was okay, we just needed to wait on the other side of the street. While the bunch of us were crossing, the bus driver was just going to apparently turn the empty bus around, maybe going around the block. When he didn't come back in 30 minutes, I started to worry a little. Asking around the crowd of people, it seemed some people had tickets, and others didn't and wanted to try to buy their way on with the bus driver. It didn't quite sound like something I wanted to get into...
So I was basically stuck in Manhattan (or, indeed, any part of NYC since I still had some rides on my subway pass). No need to panic, though; worst case scenario, I could take the subway to an airport, get a rental car, and drive back to Boston. Not ideal, but a good fallback. I called Steve and had him and his roommates brainstorm a little. They came up with the idea that I could take a Greyhound bus if I could get to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It would be a little more expensive than the Chinatown, but a little more reliable too.
Meanwhile, I had called my wife and explained the situation. She was more than a little worried for me, but I told her that everything would be fine. It was actually kind of fun wandering around and learning the subway by trial-and-error. "Well, I'm sure glad this wasn't a family vacation," came her reponse. I don't know why she wouldn't want to try to keep track of a 9- and 5-year-old in that situation... ;-)
Anyhoo, the big challenge lay ahead. The Port Authority didn't lie on any subway line that went through Grand Central *or* Times Square (the two main stations I knew how to get to). I had to figure out how to... (wait for it)... change trains! With subway maps posted prominently in every station, it was a piece of cake. I took the #6 (by that time, my favorite train) to 51st St., took an underground tunnel, and boarded some blue line (I think it was like the N). Without a single wrong step, I ended up at the Port Authority in about 20 minutes. Score!
According to the Greyhound schedule posted on the wall, I had just missed the second-to-last (7p) bus by 20 minutes, and would have to wait for the 10p bus. Unfortunately, that would put me into Boston well after 2a. The gal at the counter cleared all that up. "I don't know what's up with the schedule on the wall, I just know what's in my computer." $30 later and I had a ticket on the 8p bus.
Again, more people mass. All of the people who couldn't get on the Chinatown bus apparently had the same great idea to go Greyhound. They filled the first 8p bus with me left standing second in line to board "the next bus" which should be there "in five minutes". Uh huh. Well, I actually won this time as the next bus was right behind them. We filed on board, I tried to ignore the frat boy puke in front of me flirting with a really cute Asian girl, the bus driver turned on Hunt for Red October, and we were on our way.
I called Steve when we pulled into Boston (just before 1a) and he came to the bus station. We decided we were hungry and headed to an all-night diner, the name of which escapes me, but was REALLY good. We barely missed their 1a cutoff time for beer, which was probably a good thing, so we just kinda caught up over sandwiches.
We were talking about my baseball trip, which the fry cook was semi-listening to. At a break, he asked if we were going to Fenway, to which I said, "Of course!" I told him about how I'm kind of eating the same thing at every park and comparing. I asked him about the beer situation at Fenway. His response: a discouraging thumbs down. "Bud, Bud Light, maybe something like Amstel Light [which is certainly drinkable], but nothing spectacular." I thanked him and Steve and I headed out.
So I had already been tainted about Fenway. I immediately began fretting over the fact that I would have to give it a poor beer mark on my blog. I was imagining how I would phrase it as I went to sleep that night.
[Events and thoughts from Sept 21]
The night before the Mets day game, we were still trying to figure out the best way for me to get to the game. Being from LA, I naturally assumed I would just drive there. I mean, you drive everywhere in New England, just like you drive everywhere (e.g., 200 feet to the mailbox) in LA, right?
The more I thought about it (and the more the guys coaxed me), the more I realized that driving to NY was a bad idea if there were public transportation-like alternatives. I couldn't imagine trying to PARK in New York, much less actually drive around.
Enter the Chinatown bus. Well, it's actually a number of different busses, all of which operate between Boston's Chinatown and New York's Chinatown. It's just $10 each way and busses run every hour. Steve dropped me off in Boston's Chinatown that morning at about 6:55a to catch the 7a bus (which subsequently left at 7:15a because the guy taking tickets screwed up; a very apologetic Chinese woman came around and explained to everyone that it was his first day). The next 4.5 hours was a white-knuckled ride with a 15-minute McDonalds break somewhere in there. It's not so much that the bus was driving fast (I routinely pegged the cruise control at 85mph on my trip), but that it was a BUS driving fast. And weaving in and out of traffic. But the driver did a great job and we arrived on Canal St. in Chinatown, right in the heart (?) of Manhattan.
After getting my bearings, I remembered that I had to walk east a few blocks to get to the Canal St. subway stop for the #6 train. Took that up to Grand Central Station (yes, THAT Grand Central Station! wacky...) where I was supposed to meet Jason Weed, who had driven down from Albany. We had a couple of false starts while talking on the cell phone (Grand Central really IS big), but finally met up. We hopped on the #7 train which goes right by Shea in Flushing and we were on our way.
A side note that might be worth remembering for later: Jason drove from Albany to Poughkeepsie, and took an official NY transit train from there to NY City. An honest-to-goodness official NY train, unlike my experience on the Chinatown bus. This comes into play in a bit.
We arrived at Shea basically by stepping off the train and stepping through the turnstalls; it was very convenient, and I began to understand why the NY public transportation system is so vital. Shea was quite nice, and we were ready for an exciting day game (which are always my favorites). Our seats were in the second level, just in the shade from the overhang, so we didn't overheat. We both made a beeline for the concession stand, having skipped breakfast in anticipation for the yummy NY food. We weren't disappointed, as the sausage-smothered-in-onions-and-peppers made another appearance, but with a flourish. This was about the best tasting sausage I had ever had and left me wanting more, even though the one was enough to tide me over until much later that evening.
The game was AMAZING. We sat among a group of people that apparently sit together for various games throughout the year, so they were very cool. And very funny, especially given the quantities of beer being consumed. (Traditional chants of "Let's go Mets!" quickly turned into chants of "Let's go home!" when the Mets crapped out. :-) But the game itself... another well-pitched matchup in which the bullpen completely blew it for the Mets starting pitching. I think it was 1-1 going into the top of the 9th when the Mets relievers forgot how to get people out, and gave up 3 quick runs. The Mets batting being as anemic as it is, they tried to rally, but (surprise!) came up short. Still, it was a well-fought game.
For Ron: the Shea fans would have given the Wrigley fans a run for their money in terms of, uh, aesthetic beauty, but for one fact. The gal sitting in front of us was a little heavy, she was wearing "hip huggers", she was leaning forward a lot... and she had a fairly hairy plumber's crack. Other than that one, uh, blemish, the daytime crowd was quite attractive. But that was enough; I have to concede that Wrigley fans are the best looking I've seen.
game: expos at mets (9/21/03)
park: shea stadium, new york
game quality: 8
park mystique: 7
park beauty: 6
crowd ambience: 9
neighborhood: 5
food: 8
beer: 6 (I don't remember what it was, but it was reasonable)
The game ended at about 4:30p, and Jason and I just decided that with the long ride home, we'd just split from Grand Central. We took the #7 train back, said goodbye... and I ended up getting home (back to Boston) just before 1a. And no, the trip from Shea to Grand Central to Boston doesn't take all of 8.5 hours. I had... difficulties.
[Events and thoughts from Sept. 20]
For various reasons (not the least of which was that I was exhausted), I decided to skip the Philly game. Instead, I drove straight from Baltimore to Steve Schultze's place in Boston. That would give me an extra day of not having to pay for a hotel, not having to drive (since I skip the middle step of Philly), and not having a fast internet connection. :-)
So Baltimore to Boston, not a bad drive, right? Should just a few miles, right? Well, thank you Yahoo! Maps for choosing to send me directly through the center of NY City. Maybe it wouldn't be bad... oops, it was apparently rush hour and there was a LOT of construction going on. Fifty minutes on the George Washington Bridge, an hour-and-a-half to go about 10 miles on I-90, and I finally got out of there. I swore that I would never do New York again. Aside from the time, it was dirty, hot, concrete everywhere, etc. Ugh.
Got to Steve's okay though. After figuring out the parking situation, I went upstairs to crash for a bit and meet his roommates. Only Nathan and Rob were in, but they seemed to be pretty much par for the course, given where we were (i.e., in Cambridge, mere minutes from the legendary MIT). Rob is a grad student working in the MIT Media Lab playing with music "stuff". Nathan programs embedded OSes based on NetBSD. I was among friends (though, admittedly outclassed).
The four of us went out to a Spanish Tapas restaurant that evening and had a wonderful dinner, which was just what I needed. Sitting, talking about relevant issues of the day, eating great food (I had a chile /relleno/ with shrimp and goat cheese and drizzled with a red pepper sauce that was divine), drinking authentic sangria (cinnamon and all!), having great coffee... basically, NOT DRIVING. The evening at the restaurant culminated in two fun events. The first was me talking to the waiter in Spanish for five minutes after he asked, "?Hablas espa~ol?" I explained the whole Costa Rica and Chile experiences, and he remarked that I speak very well. Yay for my crusty /Castellano/!
The other fun thing that night was Steve attempting to draw Cambridge and surrounding areas on the paper tablecloth. He hasn't been in Boston for too long, but long enough that I would imagine he could get a general map down from memory. Not so. Admittedly, Cambridge is an extremely demented city when it comes to driving; no two streets seem to intersect at a 90 degree angle (or if they do, there are two more streets coming in at all sorts of oblong angles just to make things interesting). Nathan or Rob (can't remember who) mentioned that the layout of the streets was probably a result of the streets having roots in horse trails, which I found incredibly interesting.
Upon returning to the house, I met Sean (Shawn?). He seemed a little more reserved than the other guys, but only until Steve decided to start vacuuming at 1a one night. Then, he certainly had plenty to say, none of it repeatable. :-)
Boston is a beautiful city. Well, we spent more time in Cambridge, which is the really beautiful part. All of the history, all of the intellectuals, all of the cuisine... it's like it was made for me! Seriously, it's the kind of place I'd like to revisit and take Nase, who I also think would love it. Steve was a wonderful host, except for the part where he got deathly ill, but that comes later.
As I mentioned, I had to hustle to actually make Baltimore. 1100 miles in two days may not seem like much, but after the "fun" I had I was pretty wiped out. Driving a whole bunch was not high on my list of things to do. Also, I wasn't even sure the game would be played, what with Hurricane Isabel doing her thing. As it turned out, it was a beautiful, cool night for baseball.
I managed to pull into Oriole Park at Camden Yards just before the game started. The neighborhood is quite bad, but moreso in the drive to Camden Yards. The path Yahoo! Maps picked out for me took me through an area I wasn't entirely comfortable in during the daylight, much less trying to get back during the night. Lots of people hanging out on street corners, lots of yelling (mostly people yelling at unseen adversaries), rundown and decrepit buildings... just not a fun place.
The Camden Yards area was a little nicer, and Oriole Park is beautiful. I saw the area where fans were maintaining a countdown to Cal Ripken's record-breaking 2131st consecutive game played, which was cool. I had fairly good seats up the third base line, field level, up a bit. While the fans around me knew what was going on and could cheer intelligently for their Orioles, the people directly next to me were kind of pricks.
Me: "Do you mind if I leave my stuff here while I go get some food?"
Man: ...
Woman: "Uh, why should I care what you do?"
Well excuse me for being polite. I guess that's when I realized I had arrived on the east coast. (Never mind that the people in NY and Boston were wicked awesome compared to these jerks... :-P )
My luck with beer didn't change from the previous couple of parks, as Camden Yards had nothing of note on tap (not even Old Style!). At least they did have Heineken in a can, which I ate with a reasonably good sausage. The cool bit about the sausage there (which I discovered appears to be an east coast thing) is that they slather it with grilled onions and bell peppers and wrap the whole thing in a crusty bun. Mmmmm...
The game itself was quite good. Again, lots of good pitching (unlike the STL game, more like the two CHI games), but the Baltimore bullpen fell apart late in the game. The Orioles ended up losing 5-2 to the Blue Jays in a well-played game (which probably would have been even better if either team was still in their prospective division races).
All in all, I might like to see Camden Yards again, but if I don't I probably won't miss it (or, at least, I wouldn't miss Baltimore).
game: blue jays at orioles (9/19/03)
park: oriole park at camden yards, baltimore
game quality: 7
park mystique: 7
park beauty: 7
crowd ambience: 6
neighborhood: 3
food: 7
beer: 4
I've created a mailing list, blog@clownsofdeath.com, to accept the comments from my blog.
Background: with Movable Type, you can receive comments posted to your own blog, but no one else receives them. Thus, if you come up with a witty retort to a comment on your site, you generally have to hope that person goes back to read it, or manually forward that comment to that person, looking like a complete moron trolling for hits.
Solution: send an email to [blog-subscribe@clownsofdeath.com] to receive *all* comments posted to my blog. Incidentally, if you want to point your blog to the same list, that would be fine. Each blog is identified with its name in each email, so there wouldn't be any confusion. Just change your email address in your MT profile (or whatever you have) to [blog@clownsofdeath.com] and that's it!
I forgot the most rant-inspiring part of my little diversion. After all of the work I had done and sleep I had lost, I was driving from KC to Columbus. While driving through Collinsville (yes, the same Collinsville in which I stayed earlier), I got behind a cop, who started slowing down. I changed lanes to pass him, being careful not to go over the speed limit.
When I wanted to pull back in front of him, I was coming up quickly on the tail of the person in front of me. I signaled to change lanes, waited and waited, but the cop didn't afford me any space. When I finally changed lanes, the lights immediately went on.
We pulled off, and the cop (we'll call him Bubba) asked for my stuff. I gave him the license, but had trouble figuring out the registration, since my car was a rental. He asked for the rental papers, which seemed incredibly interesting to him, as he pored over them for about five minutes. He told me that he had pulled me over because I didn't give the guy in front of me enough space, nor did I give clear indication that I was changing lanes. (I didn't argue, since at this point I just wanted to get back on the road. I tend to have a good record with cops, as I've only gotten two tickets in the 15 or so times I've been pulled over since starting to drive.)
He went back to his car to run my information. About ten minutes later (while I was sitting in a hot car, since they always want you to turn off your car), he came back and said that the computers were slow. More waiting. Another five minutes or so and another patrol car pulls up. Uh oh. The first cop comes back to my car and asks me to stop out and come to the rear of the car. Double uh oh. He explains why he pulled me over (for making a dangerous lane change), and that he would let me go. Oh, well maybe that's okay then.
He asks if I have any prior arrests, warrants, etc. Oh boy. THEN he mentions that I looked nervous when he pulled me over. ("Officer makes a stupid observation" part 1. Whenever I'm pulled over by the guys that look like the cops from Pulp Fiction, I get a little nervous. You never know where their mental stability is.)
"I smelled cannibis when I walked up to your car." What do you say to that? I thought of some interesting responses after he let me go, but most of them boiled down to some form of, "Yeah, well I smelled BACON when you walked up to my car, PIGGIE!!!" But seriously, at that point, he was just POSITIVE that I was up to no good... rental car, out-of-state license, nervous as heck, travelling without my family... so I think anything I said would not have helped.
His partner (we'll call him Jedediah, or just Jed (or Sheephumper) for short) asked me to place my hands behind my back and he searched me. They then asked for consent to search the car. "Is everything in the car yours?" As if I had done a thorough search of the rental before driving it off of the Budget lot... "Do you have any large quantities of heroin in the car?" Umm, I don't even have *small* quantities. "Do you have any large quantities of marijuana in the car? Or maybe just a small personal amount?" Again, everything inside of me wanted to scream as this country bumpkin, but I tried to keep my cool, and I said "No."
Bubba systematically (and SLOWLY) proceeded to remove nearly everything in the car, including a number of the interior panels and all of my belongings in the trunk. As he fumbled to put stuff back together (e.g., all of my clothes), I told him he could just leave it, as I was READY to get going. Meanwhile, Sheephumper continued the barrage of questions, apparently to throw me off my obviously-practiced cover story. Things like, "So you just started your business and you're on vacation. Does that make sense to you?" "Well, Sheephumper... excuse me, OFFICER Sheephumper, it obviously makes sense to me or I wouldn't be here, now would I?" Nevermind trying to explain to this mental giant that I can work from just about anywhere...
After a total of about an hour sitting on the curb in the abandoned gas station while the Keystone Kops tried to figure out what to do with me, Bubba summoned me over. "Okay, you're all set."
That's it.
No, "Sorry, upstanding citizen, for the mistake we made in fingering you as a hardened criminal"? No, "Please drive safe"? Nope, just "Okay, you're all set." Thank you, BF Collinsville cops. Aside from the time you stole from me and my life, you ruined just about the rest of the day as I stewed unhappily all the way to Columbus.
Still, it seemed appropriate to the rest of my vacation. Ah well...
So with a Bud Light and a hot dog in my belly, I returned to my dumpy Collinsville, IL hotel. I hopped online (at a whopping 21.6K over a toll-free dialup!!!) to check out what was going on that evening. One thing was the replacement of a hard drive that was part of a RAID array that had degraded. As "our man in Denver" installed the new drive, I drifted between fitful sleep and groggy assistance in getting the new drive configured. By 1a, it became clear that things were not right. As I attempted everything I could think of to get the stupid Adaptec 2100S controller to rebuild the array, it also became clear that I needed to get to Denver.
By 4a, I was driving to Kansas City to fly to Denver (which was cheaper than flying from St. Louis and got me there earlier). There were multiple times (as you can imagine) that I nearly drove off the road, almost asleep at 85mph, but I did manage to get to KC okay. I dropped off my car, basically walked right onto my departing flight, and got more "sleep" on the 1h40m flight.
Alan had squared away my car in Denver, which I picked up and drove straight to the colocation facility. Although I didn't have my badge (since I wasn't *planning* on going to the colo facility), they recognized me and gave me a visitor's badge without requiring an escort. Lots of work ensued, including attempting to recover the data off the "bad" drives (which I *ALMOST* had, until the stupid Adaptec 2100S RAID controller corrupted the partition tables on the recovery disks... grr...) and yanking an Agathon Group server in an attempt to help salvage the customer's data. See, it turns out that the backups we thought were running weren't exactly working correctly. So if we couldn't salvage the data, this client was basically dead in the water.
Working furiously, I stopped only to drink copious amounts of Sam Adams Octoberfest at Bennigan's and crash on the colocation facility's nice leather couch. A day and a half from when I began, the "bad" drives were heading to a data recovery facility (where they have since been recovered), the server had new drives in it, and everything was rebuilt with a stock RedHat Linux image. And I was completely dead to the world.
A quick plane trip back to KC, lots of Boulevard wheat (2-for-1 night at the Ruby Tuesday's!), and an actual full night of sleep (in KC), and I was back on the road. All said, I missed Cleveland (Jacobs Field, one I really wanted to see) and Pittsburgh (PNC Park, another one I really wanted to see), but was able to haul butt to Camden Yards. 650 miles to Columbus, OH, then 420 miles to Baltimore, and I only missed the first inning of the game.
So it's turning out that this isn't much of a vacation, but the Denver trip had to be done. At least Fenway (aka, "Mecca") is still on the horizon...
Still have pictures to upload while I have a fast net.connection (thanks Steve!), but I'm so tired. To catch up with blogging, though, I'll talk about Saint Louis and the Cardinals-Brewers game I caught there.
The drive from Joliet (Chicago) to St. Louis ("STL", because I'm lazy) was pretty, especially north of about Bloomington, IL. Autumn was just beginning to touch the trees and corn fields and bring color to the expansive greens. There isn't a whole lot between Chicago and STL so the drive itself was pretty uneventful.
My hotel in Collinsville, IL, was disappointing. Not that I was expecting a whole lot for $45... I guess it served its purpose.
The drive over to Busch Stadium from the hotel was cool. The approach to Busch is marked by the STL Arch seemingly rising from the ground to tower over everything, stadium and all. Getting downtown and parked was fairly easy and the short walk to Busch from the lot was unremarkable.
Let me take a moment to explain why I use such boring, uninspired language to describe Busch and STL. I think, in general, it's a pretty boring, uninspired ballpark and town compared to Wrigley and Chicago. A large majority of that sentiment is probably because I was with friends in Chicago and we had a good tour guide amongst us. By myself in an unfamiliar city, I probably wasn't able to enjoy STL as much. This will be a recurring theme in future posts; that said, I still don't think STL has much going for it.
The main thing I noticed about Busch Stadium was how LARGE it is. It's not the "friendly confines" of Wrigley; it's like really old stadiums and really new stadiums are generally more personal, but there were a rash of parks built in the 60s (cf. Astrodome) that were just monstrous.
The other thing I noticed is the severe lack of beer options. The selections were about as bad as it could get, far worse than the lack of a reasonable draft option at Wrigley. (No, Old Style doesn't count as a "reasonable draft option" Jonathan.) At least Wrigley had good canned beers; Busch had nothing but (surprise!) Annheiser-Busch beers. (I'm not even going to dignify that by looking up how it's spelled.) So one $8.75 Budweiser later, I called it an early evening. The Cards were up by about ten runs in the eighth, and I figured the Applebee's near my hotel would be more interesting (and less stressful on my wallet and palate).
I promptly got lost downtown trying to get back to the freeway. The signs sucked and I made two circles around the city before I finally figured it out. Got back to Collinsville, skipped Applebee's, and crashed at the crappy hotel.
Little did I know, however, that things were about to take a turn for the MUCH worse. More next time about how I missed three games, took a surprise trip to Denver, and ended up driving nearly 1500 miles in three days (around one game) to get back on schedule.
The first leg of my baseball trip is done. I have a few pictures (all of Wrigley and downtown Chicago), but will need to upload some other night I'm not about to pass out from exhaustion. As for the details, continue on oh faithful reader.
The first game was the Twins versus the White Sox at US Cellular Field. The game was fairly good, though the visiting Twins won 4-1. (There was some discussion about which of the following predictions was less accurate: "The Twins will score 3 runs." or "The Sox will win 4-1." Feel free to vote (not with someone else's name, you know who you are) in the comments.) As for the stadium, it was largely uninteresting. The scoreboard operators NEVER showed replays of important plays, the crowd seemed only marginally into the game (despite the fact that it was an important game between the teams vying for the AL Central), and the surrounding area was pretty boring. The brats and kraut were excellent, and the draft beer selections were adequate (McSorley's Ale was the choice of the evening).
The game from today was between the Cubs and the Toledo Mudhens, er, Cincinnati Reds. The day began with lots of sporadic rain, wacky schedules, and getting (only a little) lost downtown. We parked in Scott Stegenga's Lincoln Square neighborhood and took "the L" above-ground train to the stadium (the red line to the brown line to Addison), which was a wonderful experience. I had only ever ridden below-ground trains (i.e., "subways") before, and the L had a grittier feel. Fun note on the L: it's apparently a good place to find the remains of half-eaten food, as we found a corn cob on the way there and an apple core on the way back.
But enough about getting there. When we exited from the L station, it was still raining pretty hard. We entered Wrigley through gate 4 on the right-field side, ascending to the upper deck, all the while walking past wafting smells of food. The brats were prepackaged and didn't offer kraut, and the beer choices were abysmal, with only Bud, Bud Light, and something called Old Style on tap. (More on Old Style later.) We found our seats... and glory was revealed. Even with the large blue Cubs tarp covering the infield during the rain, the view was magnificent.
Right on cue (that is, about 15 minutes before the game was to start), God calmed the storm and rebuked the waves (well, rain). The quickly-growing crowd (it was nearly a full house, even though they were playing the lowly Reds) cheered loudly when the crew came onto the field to pull off the tarp, and shortly, the game was on. The game itself was my favorite kind of game: a pitcher's dual. The 9th inning began with zero total runs and about nine total hits with both starting pitchers pitching quite well. The Cubs' Sambrano gave up a run on a walk, sacrifice bunt, wild pitch, and bloop single. The Cubs went quietly in the bottom of the 9th and lost, 1-0.
We took a different route back to Lincoln Square (the purple line on the L), so we got to walk around the area ("Wrigleyland" to those of up in the know) to get to a different station. Lots of really interesting restaurants, bars, boutiques, and other shops in the area, and I think I'd love to spend more time down there after a Cubs game next year. :-)
To wrap up, I want to do something to succinctly grade each experience on a number of important (to me) levels. So I will be writing a "pcg's scorecard" section for each game. These ratings (from 1 (worst) to 10 (best)) will be largely dependent on my whims and beer quality/consumption, so don't expect some objective scale. Also, the numbers are not intended to add up for a "total experience". For instance, the Sox and Cubs games might each add up to total close to each other, since Sox food and beer were quite a bit better and Wrigley was far superior to US Cellular. Even so, the Wrigley experience overall was just spiritual, while I don't feel like I ever need to revisit US Cellular to watch the White Sox.
So anyway, here are the scorecards for the first two games:
game: twins at white sox (9/10/03)
park: us cellular field, chicago
game quality: 7
park mystique: 1
park beauty: 5
crowd ambience: 4
neighborhood: 3
food: 8
beer: 8
game: reds at cubs (9/14/03)
park: wrigley field, chicago
game quality: 9
park mystique: 10
park beauty: 7
crowd ambience: 8
neighborhood: 9
food: 6
beer: 4
Let me know if you think I should add any categories to the scorecards!
(11:16:16) adam: can I do vaddusers < vaddusers.toadd , or do I have to do a cat vaddusers.toadd | vaddusers? (and isn't that the same thing? I think it is)
(11:16:57) pcg: http://www.iki.fi/era/unix/award.html
(11:17:09) adam: Thanks, Joel Boonstra.
I need some cheap books for my son, who will be nine later this month. He reads at about a seventh-grade level and absolutely devours books. I've looked on half.com and amazon.com, where the books are $0.50, but shipping is $2.49 each. I could go into LA and troll around the used book stores, but I was wondering if there's anyplace online with used books and reasonable shipping. Any ideas?
I tried, I failed, I'm sorry. It was about as bad as I thought it might be. I really did try to watch it and enjoy it; who doesn't like drugs, guns, lots of blood, and a real-world lesson in ebonics? It worked for Boyz in the Hood...
That's the thing: it worked for Boyz in the Hood. Clockers feels like a rated-R after-school special. It didn't help that every poignant moment had some swelling music to indicate how one should feel; I was just waiting for the Hallmark commercials.
It's been a while since I've seen any other Spike Lee movies (and suffice to say, it will probably be another long while before I waste another two hours of my life), but I noticed what seem to be issues with/in every one of his movies I've seen:
- Evil (white|Hispanic|non-black) guys who do everything in their power to oppress blacks in the neighborhood
- Poor endings (this one completely absolving the "hero" from dealing drugs, conspiring to kill a man, and setting a 12-year-old boy down a road of crime)
- Unspectacular acting
But basically, the movie was just pretty uninteresting. I'm not smart enough to put it in terms more concrete than that, sorry. I think there are definitely some important things to be said about what happens in the inner city, I'm just thinking Spike might not be the best person to say them.