Drink Rum

Happy Monday peeps.

This weekend was rather entertaining. Saturday I was reminded just why I used to own a convertible car. The weather was beautiful and I had the opportunity to drive a Mini Cooper sans top in the evening. It was a lot of fun. I miss driving for fun. I used to do it all the time. Driving at night with the top down is about the best driving there is. Also, driving a Mini is like driving a go-gart. The steering wheel is on the small side, but not quite gimmick small. The handling is extremely tight, so going around corners is a lot of fun. I think I caught myself in at least two, "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"s.

Two years ago I was faced with a decision as to what new vehicle to purchase. It'd be my first new car. I'd just driven my Jeep Grand Cherokee into the ground and I wanted something new. I'd narrowed my choices to the Toyota 4Runner or the Honda S2000. The 4Runner is your standard mid-sized SUV with better than average performance for its type. The S2000 is a two door high performance roadster. It also only had two seats. Which reminds me of:

Sammy Davis Jr.: That's ok... because God is our co-pilot.
Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder: Good, you'll need him!
Dean Martin: God is our co-pilot?
Sammy Davis Jr: Uh-huh.
Dean Martin: Remember our car?
Sammy Davis Jr: Yeah.
Dean Martin: Two seats.
Sammy Davis Jr.: So?
Dean Martin: Where's he gonna sit? Huh? Where's he gonna sit?

Wow. A little flashback there to one of my favorite movies ever (Cannonball Run).

So anyway... I did the mature responsible thing and bought the SUV. It being the more practical choice. (Also for the SUV haters, the S2000 was just about as bad as far as environmental impact.) Plus, the SUV continued my middle class destiny. House in the suburbs. Miserable job in the city. An SUV. I was only missing 2.5 kids and a dog. I got three dogs instead. Saturday I began to regret my decision. The credit union has an Audi TT roadster for sale that I might borrow one night... just to see if I'm still interested in the concept.

That went longer than it should have.

Sunday, I went with Phil to the Washington Redskins game. For those not in the Washington DC area... going to see the Redskins at home is pretty much an all day event. The parking and traffic at these things is so frigging nuts. We left my house at 1:30PM to see a 4:00PM game that ended at 7:00PM and we got back to my house at 10:30PM.

So... I've become a bit of a snob. The last two times I saw the Redskins I was in a corporate box or in a swanky lodge. They don't let the riff-raff in. Now... keep in mind... the cheapest seat in Fedex Field is $79 so even the riff-raff have to have some cash. But anyway... in the swanky sections... you deal with a different crowd than you do in the nose bleeds.

We were in the upper deck with the unwashed masses.

I got my first taste of what was coming when we got on the shuttle bus to take us from the parking lot to the stadium. We'd payed $30 for the honor of parking at a strip mall business and getting a bus ride to the stadium. Oh, we did get paper wristbands too.

On the bus, Phil and I grabbed a couple of seats and were very excited to be going to the stadium. Also excited were the drunkards in the back of the bus that I quickly dubbed the "Passed Out by Halftime Gang". They were clearly housed. And I'm not talking crippled with Vicodin House... I mean torn up drunk. In the sea of burgundy and gold jerseys (I was wearing mine... I'm such a joiner.) there was the occassional blue and white one. The Redskins were playing the Giants of New York and there were a few folks who'd obviously made the trip south to support their team. There was a such a guy and his lady friend who were two of those folks. The drunks in the back began heckling them. It wasn't terrible, but it was annoying. At one point a drunk in the front of the bus told the Giants fans that they had to expect it. Probably at that level, yeah. Except it eventually got ugly. Not on the bus though.

So Phil and I found our seats and with our $8 beers sat down to watch the Redskins look like morons and lose the game to the Giants.

Behind us was a guy who I wanted to refer to as "Ham Sammich" or "Dr. Roundboy" I could decide. Throughout the entire game, the guy did not shut up. He was clearly an authority on well... everything... and kept babbling at volume about everything to anyone who would listen. Sadly he was continually indulged by his row mate who was a wonderful mental midget of a woman. I'm sure she was nice... but I felt dumber for sitting in front of her.

Two seats over from us was a guy in a Giants jersey. Hammy the Roundboy immediately began taunting him. The Giants guy was fairly good natured and ignored him... which made the Pilsbury Dough Ass just get louder. Eventually, the Giants guy made a reference to the "big fat guys" on the field. That seemed to have hurt Big Man's feelings. He was quiet for a glorius 30 seconds before he went on a rant about how everyone can't be skinny like him.

At half time I went into the mensroom. It was jammed pack with drunk people. In there was one poor Giants fan who was being screamed at by basically everyone. Just lots and lots of screaming. At one point I yelled, "More peeing, less b-s-ing!" I had to pee and didn't want to miss the game. Anyway... when I got back to my seat, there was some random Redskin fan that was trying to start a fist fight with the Giants fan. He didn't take the bait, but I was beginning to feel bad for the Giants fans. They were taking more crap than I thought justified. But of course there were a group of Giants fans several rows back that were just as bad. They were trying to pick fights with our whole section.

No offense New Jersey, but please... please keep your population within your borders. I have tended to dislike people from New York city... for some reason they seem to think that entitles them to something. People from New Jersey are worse because the want to be from New York and are just bitter. And their state smells horrible. Anyway...

So the Giants won the game. As we were heading for the door, I told the Giants fan, "Well... it looks like your bravery was rewarded." He said thanks and extended his hand, which I accepted.

The rest of the two hours it took to get to the car was basically people in red yelling at people in blue. At one point, there were two Redskins fans yelling at each other. That confused me.

I don't remember what the point was. Oh... it's a shame that people can be such jerks at football games. Either hassling the visiting team fans or just being as stupid as possible. (You know it was bad if I'm complaining about someone acting stupid.) Taunting the visiting team is really fine... but when it basically comes down to looking for someone in a different shirt to punch them in the eye... that's insane.

All things considered, it was still a great time.

This was a long post without much of a point it seems.