The Cities, New York

While I spent a good deal of time in New York City, and went to Ground Zero, was the first to not make the cut to see the Colbert Report taped, went to an Irish Pub with real live Irishmen, saw a large handful of friends and family (Joe, Luis, Caroline, Katie, Danyelle, Krista, Tricia, Mr. Bill, and others), visited Central Park, and generally meandered the streets of New York, they were all overshadowed by on defining event.

Be Afraid. Be Entertained. Welcome to New York City.

Mets vs. A's June 23rd

My experience with the New York Mets got off to a great start, as the most thorough inspection into a baseball game got me the most action I've had in a long, long time. Too bad it was from a large, old, overweight security guard. I entered the Sunday Interleague Day game with full intention of silently spiting the Mets throughout the contest, with their Faux Jeff Francoeur David Wright, and their Paper Mache Big Apple,and their tacky blue and orange colors. But like so many games for the Mets this year, Jose Reyes came to save the day with the greatest chant in all of Baseball. Greater than Trevor Hoffman's Hells Bells, greater than the Barry Bonds booes, than Gary Sheffield being called the Iron Sheff and even greater than the Tomahawk Chop. Leading off the game with an inside the park homerun, Jose Reyes' fans responded with the Spanish Futbol chant changed to his name of "Jose, jose jose jose, Jooooose, Joseeeeee!" I was smitten. I am also a Patriot, and it is hard to not have a bit of love for the Scoreboard with a ribbon still covering the Twin Towers. As for the fan of the game, I was hoping to get a great picture of one of the outrageous Italians in attendance, as it was Italian-American Day at Shea, but the decision was kind of made for me when Pinman made an appearance, adorned in a shimmering cloak of the very same pins I was collecting myself.

Enough of the accolades for the most evil team in the National League. Time to tell you the real dirt. While the hot dogs are actually cheaper here than most parks--if you're competing with the vendors that most of the fans see on a daily commute, you can't hike up the price too much--the most hysterical thing is occured when I purchased my bottled Coke. Like the plastic bottled beers that are sold in stadiums now, they open the drink for you when you buy it. In the civil confines of New York, however, they keep the bottle caps so that you can't throw them at people both in the stands and on the fields. Not surprisingly, all the souviniers that you can purchase at the game come with batteries sold seperately, and not on site. Fortunately for ballplayers, the increasingly popular Litium batteries don't leave the same mark as a good old fashioned D cell brick.

Of course, you could always just resort to throwing your pizza at another fan for no good reason.

(you really only need to watch the first 35 seconds of this)

F.S. Player: Joe

Right before we took the pic, Nicole turned her to Joe, making me look like the creepy guy sidling in on the picture.

After making it to the train station somehow after my night in New Jersey, I entered the Big Apple. The city was awash in activity, and as such Joe decided that I needed the real New York experience, and took me out of the city to the Belmont Race track. There I made one and two dollar bets on horses I had no idea about, generally betting on the heavily favored horse, and on the last bet of the day did a one two combo or something (I don't know the track Jargon) and pulled a 54 dollar win out of a 3 dollar bet. This would have paid for two beers and a hot dog in New York City, but luckily I was with Joe, who knows a deal when he sees one. The particular deal this time was one located at the bar across from the train station in Belmont. Since we had 20 minutes before our train arrived, we decided to get a beer before going to the city. 5 hours and 4 trains later we were frantically finishing our umpteenth pitcher trying to make the last train of the night back into the city. Try as we might, we simply couldn't pull ourselves out of the AARP bar and our geriatric friends we made there.





My first night with Joe marked the beginning of a new trip within my quest. Previously I had been driving hours on end almost every day, eating food in the car, sleeping in the car or camping about half the time, and entertaining myself by doing battle with the budget. New York and Joe ended that. Between the price hike of the city, the abundance of friends I didn't want to turn down meeting simply because of money reasons, the relatively minimal amount of driving left, and multiple other et ceteras forced me to wave goodbye to the budget, and hello to debauchery. And Debauchery welcomed me with open arms.

F.S. Players: Jeff and Tricia

After living down the street from Jeff and Tricia while I was growing up, they decided that the wide open spaces of Texas were no match for the unrivaled beauty of New Jersey, and left Austin for their old home. Fast forward 13 years, and I am once again spending the night at Jeff's place, staying up too late, and making a general ass of myself. Replace our home frozen Dr. Pepper popsicles with Adult Beverages, a Garth Brooks Cassette Tape with my rockin' MP3 collection, and the Sega Genesis with Jeff's large collection of children's books (for teaching children--I'm told) and it was like nothing had changed. Unfortunately, earlier that day, a veritable perfect party storm had been concocted earlier that day consisting of

A) Jeff finishing his first year of working in a school
B) Me not really having any company to get redonkulous with in three weeks.
C) Jeff thinking he had lost his summer school tuition due to a registration mess up
D) A well stocked liquor cabinet
E) Having seen each other only once in the past 3 or 4 years.

So what all did this result in? The answer is that I threw all of the sound education I learned in college out the window, and mixed beer and liquor, liquor and me, and didn't stick to one specific drink the whole night.

"But Colin, that is really stupid!" You're saying.

Hey, if mixing dark beers with Scotch with Bourbon with Vodka with Saki with Probably Something Else is stupid, then I'm an idiot.



I'm an idiot.