Olympians Want More Water

Part One: My Catering Life

My weekend was eventful. On Friday, I worked for my stepbrother’s father who caters major events in the Phoenix Metro area. I worked at America West Arena on the same night that his company was catering the Pixies at Dodge Theater. America West had the darlings of U.S. Olympic gymnastics. Could have been worse. I was supposed to work the smooth jazz fest the next day. More on that later.
Gymnasts. The stereotypes, as usual, are basically true. The men seem mostly gay (the ones who weren’t had Amazon girlfriends) the girls were cute and stunted. The gold medalist (Carly Patterson?) was only slightly snotty and for the most part they were very friendly and excited to talk to anyone not in the little world they live in and have always lived in. there was a weird dance team though, which I can only imagine was the opening act, that had very snotty “street” girls and some of the more flamboyant boys I’ve ever seen. One of them, a young African-American with red, white and blue tassels tied to his forearms and calves and the look of a guy who could do a back flip over your mutha-fuckin’ head, insisted on throwing the word “holla” in the beginning, end and middle of most sentences. I couldn’t decide if he wanted me to make some noise or if he wanted Jewish bread. I gave him neither. Holla.
My job was just to make sure that the food area stayed full so whenever people came in it looked like we just set it out for them.
Almost more interesting than the gymnasts themselves, were the gymnast roadies. Every show has roadies. The first to come and the last to leave. I usually associate them solely with bands, but every show that travels has to have them. I kept thinking about what the ice capades roadies must be like. Probably a lot like gymnast roadies. Silent, unless discussing very manly things to assert their manhood in this less-than-manly place, tired-looking and tattooed. Is this where roadies get their start? A roadie minor league? Where they begin, where they come to die.
The day ended with a bowl in the bowels of the arena. I should have known that working with caterers would be a pretty likely place to find someone with something. It turns out, the guy I was working with was one of only two in the whole company who actually smokes. He called it chronic. I secretly like it a lot when people call it chronic. Chronic! It made the drive home interesting.
I took the catering van home and it’s a good thing that ten miles under the speed limit was okay by me, because it was just about all that van could do. It was a piece of shit to begin with, plus to was loaded to the gills with coolers, hotboxes, dirty dishes and leftovers. Four things that made for a positively charming aroma the next morning. I chose to drive the van home because a.) nobody would be able to let me into the shop to unload it, and b.) I had no other way home save having my Dad pick me up and I hate to inconvenience the man. The morning’s smell was the first thing that went wrong. About ten minutes in to my forty minute drive, the tread of one of the back tires ripped off while I was doing about fifty. I was to supposed to unload the truck, pick up more food and deliver it to a different venue. Instead, I sat by the side of a freeway and sat in a tire store. By the time I got back to the shop my time was basically over, Swede picked me up and we went to Flagstaff to see a Dan Bern show. Much love for AZ highways. This is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen.

Part Two: Flagstaff -> http://catfishvegas.blogspot.com/2004/10/dan-bern-and-89a.html#comments

why can't i figure out how to make links work? anybody?

Beat Down

Some people are calling it one of the greatest comebacks in sports history and that is probably true. I, of course, am referring to the Red Sox return from the dead that was a 3-0 deficit to the most winningest team in baseball, the New York Yankees. And while that's all well and good, I prefer to think of it as the biggest crap-out collapse in sports history. I mean, seriously, how could a team blow a 3-0 lead? Embarassing. Humiliating even. I mean all they had to do was win one more, and they were flat out incapable of doing it. I don't know how they're going to sleep at night. I like to remember how confident and cocky they looked and must have felt after that game 3 win and then I like to remember how battered and bruised they looked after getting decisively BEATEN in the game 7 that was never supposed to happen. HA! HA! I SAY, HA! Long live the underdog! HA!

The Vote Is In

The only Presidential poll I trust, recently presented its results. This is a poll that has accurately picked the President in the last four elections and it’s brought to us by people who aren’t even allowed to vote. Nearly 400,000 kids cast their votes on Nickelodeon TV’s web site and 57% of them like Senator Kerry. Apparently Nick has been airing a variety of debate-like shows and even some animated features that deal with issues surrounding the election and the election itself and kids are really responding to it. Proof positive that you can’t start them too young. They even had some youngsters say that their parents were voting for one candidate, but they were voting for the other and why. I don’t know how to add a link to the article or I would, but I think that I’ve given you the gist. Pretty cool.
And on a related unrelated note, Boston is up 8-1 going into the 5th inning! Woo-ha!

Let's Put a Rod in His A

Alex Rodriguez is a BIG FAT CHEATER!!!!!!!!!!!!

BoSox!

The Red Sox force game 6 after being down 3 games to none. History in the making folks. Reverse the curse! And the Astros and Cards go to game 6 too. Scoreless until the bottom of the ninth, the Cards intentionally walk one to get to the next and that guy blasts a dinger on the first pitch. Jeff Kent with a walk-off homer. Sweet. It doesn't get much better. Well I guess it could be the Cubs instead of the Astros, but I'll take what I can get.

Sexy/Lifetime

I just found out that Empire, a magazine, which touts itself as “The World’s Best Movie Magazine”, recently awarded Keira Knightly as the sexiest movie star of all time. That’s all of time. Ever. The sexiest. Then they gave Lindsay Lohan a lifetime achievement award. I’m not even sure I can legally bed her and she’s getting a lifetime achievement award? The only explanation clear to me is the editor’s trying to get Knightly in the sack and the whole staff is trying to tell Lohan that her career is or should be over. The work of a lifetime. But Empire is a British magazine (ironic considering the current state of Britain’s empire) and is therefore clearly inbred, delusional and backwards. JK GB. BFF. Zeppelin rules!

Psycho Kitty Torture

My childhood cat was put to rest on my birthday this year. She was a crazy, crazy cat and I hold myself partly responsible for that fact, if not completely responsible. I was but a boy when Scooter arrived in our lives and the caterwauling of a cat was like music to my ears. Now don't get me wrong, I never brought any harm to her, no physical harm anyway. I was more prone to psychological tortures: loud and sudden noises, dangling her over our swimming pool, chasing her with a vacuum cleaner. One time I used a spray-canister of temporary orange hair dye to add a little punk to her life. When my mother found out, she was something less than pleased and ordered me to clean poor Scooter off. I threw her in the shower. She was not a happy cat. I, however, was quite pleased with the acoustics the shower provided.

These actions of mine lead her to what some might call anti-social tendencies. It got to the point where, unless you were my Mother who had that sacred bond shared with matriarchs, cats and the moon, you could hardly get near her much less pick her up without her freaking and clawing and generally being impossible to control.

It was so bad that when we took her to be groomed, she was so unruly that the only way they could get the job done was to put her to sleep. She was never the same after that. She seemed to experience bouts of disorientation and hallucinations and even flipped on Mom sometimes. I still wonder what she thought she was seeing when she was walking down the hall, stopped suddenly in terror, swatted at the thin air in front of her then tore ass in the opposite direction. The mind of a cat is a delicate thing.

She lived to be seventeen years old though, arthritis had set in and a seizure rendered her mostly paralyzed which left my sister, who was cat-sitting for the weekend, no choice but to put her down. On my birthday. It must mean something, this subtle reminder of the sins of my youth as I take another step away from them, I just don’t know what.

On a related, unrelated note, the day I left Chicago, probably for good, was the first day since 1999 that someone was not shot and killed. This can only mean two things, either there was a cease fire in my honor or somewhere in Chicago there’s a bullet with my name on it. I’ve already ruled out coincidence.