VACATION DESTINATIONS II

VACATION DESTINATIONS II

We finally went to Disney World, and I started to write about it, and wasted my whole blog on ONE stupid ride. After “Mission: Hurl” we literally took a slow boat to China. Across a really tiny Pacific Ocean lies an entire world out there. If you’ve always wanted to see the continents, but don’t have the money to travel to Vegas, this is the place for you.

Japan and China are dangerously close to one another. I heard stories of Japan toilet-papering the pagoda, and China short-sheeting the kimonos. We saw three Japanese girls performing a very entertaining taiko drum routine. Then two Chinese girls came over and said, “ 汉字 / 漢字,” which means “shut up with that racket,” to which the Japanese replied “F you and the sampan you rode in on.”

Canada has a neat movie starring Martin Short. It’s very funny, and the basic theme is that Canada is not just a bunch of snow. It is also a country brimming with cold temperatures and some freezing rain. Also it has half of Niagra Falls. We then cruised by the German pavilion, where you can get a Nazi officer’s hat with mouse ears on it. At the Moroccan village, we bought a very young girl whom we plan to use as a slave, if we can teach her how to mow the lawn. At the French ville they made fun of us for not being able to speak English very well.

They have an American pavilion; someone must have seen all the weird buildings around and forgot that we already ARE in America. They have a movie that celebrates the history of our country in grand panoramic film, mixed with surround sound and of course the animatronics. There is an animatronic for everything, and after a while you start to question your own sanity. “That is an animatronic squirrel!” “No it’s not, but it has animatronic nuts!” I went to the bathroom to escape the insanity briefly, and it seemed to me that even some of my body parts had a life of their own.

While we were waiting for the show to start, this spooky glee-club looking octet of men & women in full period dress starts singing songs in perfect harmony. Not only is there not one stray note in the bunch, but they are smiling fatuously in unison. This is typical Disney at its finest- everything is happy there, but not normal-happy: Stepford Wives-happy. At the end of the trip I was so smiled-out I just wanted to run over a cat or something.

Anyway “The American Adventure” movie was grandly stirring, and I managed not to cry until they showed a picture of George W. Bush, who always makes me weep for the future of humanity for some reason.

Back across the pond, as we say, was Ellen’s Energy Adventure (everything in Disney is either an Adventure or a Journey). You sit in a seat in the theater, and the rows of seats start to move around, going back into time. Animatronic dinosaurs try to spit on you, and there is even an animatronic Ellen DeGeneres, who, if I had control over the robotics, I would make a much better dancer.

The Seas with Nemo & Friends was very cute- you ride around in a clamshell through a series of real fish tanks, with holograms of Nemo and his pals superimposed into the tanks. It is a lot like a snorkeling trip in the Caribbean, only not as well-behaved.

We tried out “Test Track,” which simulates the experience of a test car driver doing a series of quality control exercises, such as heat and cold response, traveling over hazardous road surfaces, blind curves and speed. It’s similar to taking a cab ride in Manhattan. They don’t call them crash test dummies for nothing.

We went to dinner at the Coral Reef Restaurant, a huge, beautiful faux-reef tank surrounded by tables. We were sitting right next to the tank itself, and all of a sudden a group of SCUBA divers swam by right in front of us. At first I thought they might be lost, and there was a large shark in the tank, which I pointed out to them. But one of them pointed at my dinner and made the international symbol for “I ordered that once and it wasn’t that great.” I asked the waiter if they could grab something fresh out of there.

Back at the hotel, we noticed these two Japanese girls. Since Japanese tourists dress so weird, it’s really hard to tell them from the Disney characters that over-populate the parks. They usually have either pink hair or a really long visor, and wear a lot of colorful clothes. A dull-witted-looking American guy was trying to make some time with them. Although women love a guy who can make them laugh, if they laugh while pointing at you it’s generally not a good sign. I’m pretty sure I now know the Japanese word for “beer belly.”


Incidentally, Walt Disney had planned for EPCOT to be the model for an integrated community. Laid out in a circle, the small city would consist of businesses in the center, schools and parks in the middle, surrounded by residences for 20,000 people and connected by monorails and people movers. Unfortunately, Walt Disney died before the EPCOT property started development, and the Disney Corporation wanted no part of it.

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VACATION DESTINATIONS I

VACATION DESTINATIONS I

We finally went to Disney World- we had been scared off all these years because of the crowds and the possible bombardment of Americana. The crowds have been managed a little better over the years with the adoption of “Fast Pass,” which allows you to in essence book a time to return for the ride, so you don’t feel foolish waiting in line two hours for an 8-minute ride. It’s a great thing, and I started thinking that they could “Fast Pass” every facet of your life and things would go smoother. I asked my wife- why not “Fast Pass” the restaurants? She said it’s called “reservations,” and we have one for 5 minutes before the park closes, so shut up and get in this line. We started at EPCOT Center, which Walt Disney named himself and means: Experimental Private Coordinated Outhouse Transmutation. I actually forget exactly what it stands for but trust me it’s something like that.

Even on a low-attendance day the crowds are large. If you are not careful you can get caught in a crowd riptide that propels you onto the nearest ride, possibly against your wishes. We were ushered onto one ride that looked like it seated three people, so we climbed aboard with another girl, who had an gi-normous ass. Each of us stood up twice and sat down once, like a game of whack-a-mole, hoping that we could find the right combination of asses to fit into the seat, but it was not to be, so we waited for the next car. The ride was a strict two-seater, and the girl and her ass counted as two.

Next we went to “Mission: Space,” which I hereby refer to as “Mission:Hurl.” It offered a “wuss-friendly” option- you could join the “Green Team” on a very important simulated space mission where you might possibly save the world. Imagine if you will, a pilot, navigator, commander and engineer, all as afraid of heights and motion as you are. We took our places inside the capsule along with two members of another family. Our pilot was a three year-old baby, so we figured we were on the right flight.

The rocket takes off at a zillion G-forces or whatever and I am just trying to keep it together, vomit-wise. I had to look away to avoid barfing on the $20 million controls developed by Hewlett Packard. The pilot-baby was laughing idiotically all through this serious situation. So I figure I'll do what I usually do when I’m driving and open the window, but in space for some reason that's a big no-no. So I try to count license plates, and that of course is another big zero.

Although I heard in the news over the fall that scientists sent a thing the size of an SUV crashing into the moon to see if water would come out of it. By it I assume they meant the moon, since there probably already IS water in the SUV's radiator. It would be just my luck driving along on 684, following the SUV, not paying any attention, and all of a sudden the SUV starts taking off for the moon, and there I am in the middle of a sneezing fit, or trying to get the Yankee score or something, and I end up right behind it crashing into the moon to see if there's any water.

Meanwhile the baby fires the retro-rockets at the wrong time and sends us hurtling into a meteor storm, which sends the simulator into a sickness-inducing frenzy and narrowly misses an asteroid. I yell, "You stupid Baby- what the hell did you do that for! Are you trying to get us all killed?" And the father goes, "Don't call my baby stupid, you greenish-tinted lummox!" I later apologized to the dad, but said in all fairness the baby might be slightly retarded and that he should keep an eye on things.

So we go back out into the sub-freezing temperature of Florida. Seriously, whoever had the dumb idea of moving south for the warm weather is living in a magic kingdom. My sister in Virginia got 2 feet of snow this weekend, while we got ZERO inches. If I have to go to Virginia next weekend to find snow on our ski trip I will be pissed. All the oranges in Florida froze a month ago so orange juice supplies are down, although all the frozen concentrate weathered the chill just fine. I thought I could see a slow-moving glacier coming our way from over near Splash Mountain. I thought we should get the hell out of there, because I didn't want to be captured inside a glacier and discovered thousands of years from now with a sickly look on my face from being on the GREEN team.

There were a lot of exhibits called Imagineerovations, or Engimagineerances, or Edumatioventions, stuff like that. We went into one, and spent about half an hour working a robotic ball-peen hammer trying to break a TV set, which never broke. A stupid premise had I thought about it in advance- why not just release a cat into the area, who will push it off the table the old fashioned way?

Anyway, I have wasted my whole blog on ONE ride, so I will have to finish the Disney trip later…


Incidentally, and this is not apropos of the whole Disney trip, but I thought I should mention my favorite lyric today on Jonathan Schwartz' Sinatra Saturday. Sinatra does this swinging version of My Fair Lady's "Get Me to the Church on Time." At the end he sings, "Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong.... Goddamn bells."

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ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

My friend Chris is an angler. He has acute angle for just about everything, since he used to be in sales. He and his girlfriend Caryn angle sometimes from a rowboat on a lake in upstate New York. Recently instead of a fish they angled a snail. This in itself is interesting, because snails are not very fast, and they are usually attached to a rock. A snail cannot go and chase your line with its bait on it. You pretty much have to catch a snail on its own terms, as he sits there on the rock. Which leads me to believe that Chris catches mostly rocks when he goes fishing.

I teased him and asked if he used a special line to catch the snail and he said, yes: “Do you come here often??”

So they get the snail home and foolishly put it in a tank with water. If it was me I would have done what I always did when I was a kid: put it in a shoebox with some grass and lettuce, and poke a couple holes in the top. Three hours later you have a shoebox with some grass, lettuce and a dead snail. But NO. It turns out snails are asexual, which means they dress well, get manicures and pedicures, spend a lot of time grooming fine lines into their facial hair, and vehemently refuse to discuss their sexual orientation. Unless I’m thinking of metrosexuals?

A snail doesn’t need a partner to have sex. It needs only a warm, comfortable environment and internet access. It saunters along the ground by the wall of the tank, in which it can see its own reflection, and goes, “Damn! I gotta hit dat.”

With my luck I would walk in on the snail having sex with itself, and we’d both be embarrassed, and I would have to explain that it’s perfectly normal, perfectly natural, all snails do it, blah, blah, blah. I dread having that talk.

So six days later there were 17 snails in the tank. They are smart enough to keep a quorum with an odd number so they can break any voting ties, unlike the New York legislature.

Two days after that, Chris asked me what he was going to do with 21 snails? Well, you could make a deal with a French restaurant. French people have a way of selling you for 37 dollars a plate of something you would normally pay $150 to have an exterminator get rid of. Come to think of it I wish he would go fishing in our pantry because I think we have a mouse.

Or he could sell them to a pet store. Someone told me that they sell snails there, but I don’t know if the snail is the pet or something you feed to another pet. I’m afraid to ask, because they know me at the pet store as someone who says weird things. I once burst into the pet store and yelled, “I want a TURTLE- and make it SNAPPY!”

Or he can use them to clean his car windshield. After 10 or 12 snails play touch football on your window, you can bet there will be not one speck of algae on it, although you might not be able to see through the dried slime.

Snails come with problems. Yes, they own their own homes, but like so many these days, they are underwater. And trying to run away from home presents a logistical nightmare.

Snails leave a trail. So you can ask, who took the last Dove Bar? And the snail will turn red and go, Not me, brother. But of course the oozy evidence leads right to the freezer….

Plus they move incredibly slowly. If you get into a checkout line at Home Depot that is not moving no way, no how, there is a snail working the register, guaranteed. And then it becomes tempting to finally learn how to use that Self-Checkout island where two people who could have been running registers tell you how to use it.

On the plus side they multiply really fast- I started taking one with me to the restaurant to calculate the tip. I look like a friggin’ genius now.


Incidentally, the snail’s antennae are not used for bringing in ESPN, as previously thought. The two large antennae are it’s eye stalks (it doesn’t see very well, even though its eyes get there a few minutes earlier than the rest of it), and the smaller ones are for feeling and smell. So if you punch a snail in the big antenna it will only be able to see half of you leave, but if you punch it in the small antenna, you will hurt its feelings.

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NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Every year at around this time the inevitable happens: a New Year. Everyone gets excited, their expectations high, their mood buoyant. Then as the hour nears and reality sets in, they realize that there is no way they can face the New Year without more alcohol. Luckily there is plenty of champagne-related beverage available. It flows as fast as the staff can pour it into a plastic two-piece champagne-related-beverage-holding devices. And as with breasts, the saying also holds true for champagne: more than a champagne glass-ful is wasted.

Every one is dressed to the nines, the judges rarely awarding a perfect ten. They have had their nails done, even their toenails, although with a single-digit wind chill factor, no one is likely to see them. A brave few are willing to show that the toenail color matches the fingernail color, and even braver if they show that it matches the color of their panties. They have had their hair done. Someone with a one-word fake French name where you’re not sure if it’s their fake first name or fake last name charged $150 to color it, highlight it, curl it then straighten it. They use lots of product, but will not say which product they used. And that is just for the guys.

The girls look resplendent in an 800 dollar dress, with a .04 cent paper hat. Even less if it is the wrong year.

There is a lot of glitter. There will be glitter for weeks on end coming out of places that really could use a little sprucing up anyway.

But first there will be dinner. Shall we go Chinese? NO! Not upscale enough. What about Italian? NO! Too family-oriented. Mexican? Please. French! Ooh-la-la that’s perfect! We will finally go to that place that sounds like a poodle. We will take out another mortgage on our home, even though it is underwater. Soon we will be elbowing hermit crabs out of the way to live in a seashell. But it is New Years! Live a little for god’s sake. “Tonight we have Prixe fixie menu monsieur! Everything is included, even the mortgage application!” That sounds deLIGHTful, even though we will never finish it. A leaking doggie bag is the perfect accessory to an 800 dollar dress.

“Honey,” she muses, “what is your New Year’s Resolution?” Usually I try to have something ready for my New Year’s Resolution that will be meaningful and point me toward the future. Like getting involved with an illegal substance that will require me to resolve to get into rehab NEXT New Years. This year I said to myself (since everyone else has stopped listening to me), “Why should the New Year’s Resolution always be about me? Why shouldn’t it be about others?” And so this year My New Year’s Resolution is for others to be nicer to me.

And then we have to watch the Australians crow about how they are the very first to celebrate the New Year. Did they happen to go, “Check us out Down Under! The Real Estate bubble burst HERE FIRST!” They did not.

This year they let Dick Clark do the countdown, and I won’t make any jokes about the stroke of midnight, or anything like that, no matter how clever it would be. Suffice it to say that the last time I did a countdown like that, immediately afterward a doctor stuck a camera up my ass. And the time before that when I did a countdown like that, immediately afterward I was arrested for DWI. So obviously no good can come of it.

New Year’s Day, I am busy ringing in the New Year. Then I realize that the ringing is in my ear, and goes with a ballbuster of a hangover. When I go to the gym, there are about 40 fat people that I have never seen before. They wander around in an officious manner, with clipboards and pens, wearing brand new jogging outfits. After two or three weeks, the clipboards are gone, the jogging outfits are gone, and even the people are gone. I assume the fat is the one thing that remains. This could be due to hastily conceived New Year’s Resolutions that are lacking fine print. Peoples’ expectations are once again too high. Start low like this: “My New Year’s Resolution is to cut 50% of the fat out of my husband’s diet.” Stuff like that….


Incidentally, every New Year’s Eve a ball drops in Times Square signifying the passage of another year. The same thing also happens to me. The first ball dropped in 1907, but that was probably by accident. This year the ball is made of Waterford Crystal, and thanks to Dick Clark’s countdown, almost broke into a zillion pieces.

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MODERN MEDICINE

MODERN MEDICINE

I had my annual physical last week, which has over the years been reduced to a yearly platform for cheap comedy. Less cheap than it used to be, since my co-payment keeps going up.

First come the delicate negotiations with the nurse. She tells me to put on one of those ridiculous gowns where everything but your fat ass is covered. Those seem silly and degrading, and even if I am undergoing surgery I try to wake up in the middle and remove it. So I of course refuse, and opt for my underwear instead. She measures my height, and she starts to write down 6-foot-two, but I keep her there as I lean in every direction until it comes out 6-foot-two and a quarter. I almost fell over, which caused her to write a few things that she would not show me. My weight isn’t bad, especially when I tell her that my watch weighs 5 lbs. She again made a couple notations that did not look like subtraction. She takes my blood pressure, which is exemplary, and I keep her there, threatening to walk out in my underwear unless she agrees with me. In the interest of decorum, she does, but I can see HER blood pressure might be rising dangerously. Then, inexplicably, even though I have been technically alive for the past 10 minutes, she takes my pulse. I figure I must be exhibiting dangerous vital signs, but even so I can’t resist shouting out indiscriminate numbers to try and throw her off. She looks at her watch for an entire minute, but I am still alive.

Then the doctor finally shows up, we shake hands, and he gives me a cold as usual. He says, “Time to check your ear,” and I bend over the table, misunderstanding him. He sticks in that cold ear-checking device which is shaped like a Pez dispenser. Sticks it in my ear I mean. He tells me something that I can’t hear because there is a Pez dispenser in my ear, but I bend over again just in case. He puts the ear thing away and tells me to open wide. My mouth he means. I say “Ah,” and not in a good way, as he puts that popsicle stick in my mouth, which my tongue finds depressing. I picture him eating a big fat popsicle before he sees each patient. Then he puts the freezing stethoscope on various parts of my body as if I am a lumpy checkerboard. He tells me to cough, which I have already been doing since he gave me the cold. He doesn’t ask me to sneeze but I do anyway just in case.

He tells me to sit down, and whacks my knee cap with a little hammer as if I didn’t pay back a teensy weensy loan, and so I kick him in the nuts with my other foot and he stops. Then he says it’s time to check my prostate. I bend over again, and this time he reads me my rights ands slaps a set of handcuffs on me.

Then he sends me down to the lab where they tell me they are going to do a couple tests, draw my blood, and that I have to pee into a cup. First they hook my nipples up to a machine. I assumed that there was a similar machine hooked up to a chimpanzee’s nipples, and that after they treated me with this machine, my nipples would then take on the characteristics of the chimpanzee’s nipples, and vice versa, since I saw a similar thing on Gilligan’s Island once. But it turned out to be just an EKG. By the way, wouldn’t EKG stand for Electro- Kardiogram? Seems sort of Krispy Kreme-y kutesy to me. Anyway, it measures your heart function. I asked the tech a question: What if I have a heart transplant- wouldn’t I then be likely to fall in love with the former owner’s widow? The lab tech said not to move, especially my lips.

Then she hands me a little plastic cup and tells me to pee into it. I tell her I misunderstood what she said earlier, and that she better wash her coffee cup. The one they give me is like a little plastic shot glass- it takes me forever, since I suffer from anxiety that it is going to overflow. Then it’s time to draw blood. I tell her I’m afraid of needles- I don’t even like pine trees, and can’t she get the blood another way? She says she has to do it this way so I tell her that her rubber gloves make her look fat. She punches me in the nose and we don’t need the needle after all.

She sends me back up to the doctor’s office. He asks me if I smoke, and I reply only if I’m close to bursting into flames. He asks me if I do drugs, and I say why do you have anything? He asks me if I drink and I say I do get shit-faced but only in moderation. Then we discuss my medical history, which means didn’t I use some of these same jokes last year?



Incidentally, It is also recommended that you give your pet a thorough going over at least once a year, or every seven years, depending on your point of view. For instance, if you notice an unsightly discharge coming from the mouth area, that’s pretty much normal. Also, if you detect a foul odor coming from the coat, that means your dog probably sat on it.

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NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

We went to a Thanksgiving party which was cleverly disguised as a 50th birthday party, but at which you can still give plenty of thanks that you are still vertical.

It came out that back in the day, one of our friends was a Miss Teenage New York. It’s no wonder since she is so beautiful, but apparently she hated every minute of it, and only did it to fulfill some unmet fantasy of her mother. Which gave me a great idea for a reality show, where they stage a beauty pageant for young girls, but the actual competition is really for the mothers backstage, without them knowing about it. The audience votes and prizes are awarded for things like, “Biggest Pain in the Ass.” “Stagemom Who Looks Most Like Olympia Dukakis.” “Stagemom Who Looks Most Like Michael Dukakis.” “Stagemom Who Seems Most Bipolar.” “Stagemom Who Cries Most For No Reason.” Stagemom Who Smiles Most at Inappropriate Times.” “Stagemom Who Brags Most About Never Spanking Her Kid, But Yet Her Kid is By Far the Brattiest.”

I could go on and on. I even have a title for this: “The Biggest Loser.” What do you think??

By the way, they are starting these pageants way too early. They even have a pageant for babies. The backstage area is rife with hectic banter, the babies frantically involved with hair and makeup. And when I say hair, I mean just the one:

“What should I do with my one hair? Should I go with the ribbon, the headband, or that little ‘flapper’ hat? Should I put it in a bun? And if so, a hot dog bun or a hamburger bun?”

“I should have gotten botox.”

“Does this diaper make me look fat???”

“What should I do for the talent portion? I am thinking of taking a crap standing up.”

The swimsuit competition is a bummer, but they have them anyway because they are popular with creeps, some of whom are major sponsors.

I think eventually they will start the competition even earlier, at the zygote stage of development. Call it the “Miss Conception” pageant. The whole thing will be done through ultrasound photos. The “Miss Photogenic” award shines in this pageant. “Hey- I don’t think that’s even a girl- that is either a penis or an elbow right there.” “Hey what about this for a talent- two heartbeats!”

Even the current Miss America pageant is more of a tribute to winner’s coach and plastic surgeon than to the girl herself. They put her together like a Mr. Potatohead. One surgeon attaches the nose, another the boobs, one pins her ears like a Doberman pinscher, and another sucks the fat out of her ass and puts it into her calves. Sometimes they take out a rib or two so food can’t stick to it, and then somebody attaches a boatload of hair. Someday there will be the first ribless, assless, thighless contestant, which will resemble a sea cucumber, only hot and with unusually white teeth.

They also have a coach that tells her how to answer the questions so that she just looks dumb rather than just stupid. Remember this question and answer?:

Q: A fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?

A: I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and that I believe our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq, and everywhere, such as, and I believe that they should our education over here in the US, should help the US, or should help South Africa and help the Iraq and the Asian countries so that we will be able to build out our future for us.

That kind of complicated answer has to be coached by a qualified professional; you can’t leave it up to her to make it up by herself. Obviously before the pageant they meticulously went over the countries in the world by using a big puzzle, which she then took into her bedroom to study, the night before showtime. On her way, she tripped over the cat, spilling countries everywhere and asunder. When she put it back together, it resembled the above answer.

And don’t get me started on the Miss Universe Contest which should NOT be so named unless they are going to open up the competition to other planets. If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, let’s see some of them. Let’s see some exposed antennae in a wardrobe malfunction. Let’s see a disqualification of an eight-armed juggling contestant during the talent portion. Let’s find out once and for all if they are just here for their green card.


Incidentally, the Miss America representatives dislike the phrase “beauty pageant,” since the Evening Wear and Swimsuit competitions comprise only 35 percent of the scoring, and also since some of the girls are ugly. The other 65 percent of the scoring is based on the size of their cans. By the way, if you are scoring at home, congratulations.

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LIVE SPORTING EVENTS

LIVE SPORTING EVENTS

I feel I have let down an entire franchise, their fans and their players. My friend Phil squanders at least one set of tickets every Giants football season on me and my wife. At first I thought he enjoyed my company. But when I was extremely annoying game after game, season after season, and he still invited me, I grew suspicious. Then I realized it was my record. I am lucky like a rabbit’s foot (a rabbit’s foot is luckier for humans than for rabbits). Dating back to the 1986 championship season, I estimated that the Giants’ won/loss record for games I attended was 26 and one. Every once in awhile I am called upon to save the Giants’ season at a critical time, and this was one of those moments.

Things were going well, and the Giants had engineered a seemingly safe comeback in the late stages of the game. But a last minute scoring drive by the opposition left me with my jaw hanging lifelessly like an empty windsock. My wife looked at me like I had just tracked in dog-do. I glanced over at Phil and he had a look of disgust on his face like I just dropped a cigar butt into his Cheerios. Even his 8-year-old kid looked at me like I had just stolen his Halloween candy. I looked around the stadium and everyone was looking at me like I had just run over their cats, and the ones who hated cats looked at me like I had failed to run over their cats.

I myself was stunned, and I immediately looked to blame others. For instance, how come the Giants have no cheerleaders? How do we know when to cheer? There are specific rules about it. You are supposed to cheer very loudly when the home team is on defense, so the opposing quarterback can’t hear his cellphone ringing. While the Giants are on offense, you are supposed to cheer in a kind of whisper, and clap so that your hands stop when they are an inch or so apart. Even that is too loud and Eli Manning flaps his arms, telling the crowd to “Hey- hold it down over there.” He flapped his arms so fast that he actually lifted four feet off the ground, and flew around the backfield. The crowd that witnessed this was amazed, because they figured the Giants would just go for the field goal. Then Eli landed flawlessly behind center in just enough time to get a delay-of-game penalty.

I wanted to watch it on instant replay, but they don’t replay things instantly in live football. Luckily, since the Giants have so many penalties, they replay each down at least twice, so I am MORE than satisfied. They do have a huge Jumbotron on each side of the stadium. If the Giants make a spectacular play, you can look up afterward on the big screen and see a replay of a Geico commercial. At the stadium in Dallas they have a Jumbotron so big that runs the length of a football field. I happen to know this because there is a football field right underneath it.

In Seattle, the crowd does a thing called “The Wave.” It is a cheerleading phenomenon whereby everyone in the stadium, in succession, rises from their seat and waves their arms. From far away it looks like a big tidal wave. I was at the beach and thought I saw the same thing, but it was just an actual wave. At Giants Stadium they do not have the wave- any spontaneous acts of cheering that don’t involve the words, “You DICK!” are frowned upon. But New York fans have their own version of the wave where somebody finally has to get up to pee, and everyone gets up in succession to let them out, throwing up their arms at the same time because their foot has been stepped on.

Once you get to the Men’s Room you run the risk of standing behind a slow pee-er. I always look for a guy who looks like either a Mormon, a recovering alcoholic, or somebody who has been out all day in the sun and is dehydrated. But I always end up behind a human fire hose directly connected to the water table. The worst is getting behind a guy who has a kid, because then he stands there and teaches him how to pee. And god forbid the kid is hard of hearing, and has to turn around to hear what his dad is saying.

And all this is if you even get into the stadium. It takes so long to park because if you are a TRUE BLUE Giants Fan you must arrive two or three meals before the game and “tailgate.” This is a ritual that involves a barbecue, a cooler of beer, an underinflated football, and the parking space that I WAS GOING TO TAKE. Ironically cars don’t have tailgates anymore, so most people “hatchback.” Tailgating has become so high-tech and overblown, it’s hard to believe anyone would ever leave ribs and a barcolounger to go watch the game in those uncomfortable seats…. People even had these giant blue Giant blow-up dolls. The people who blew them up were also blue in color.


Incidentally, legend has it that Wellington Mara purchased the team in 1925 for $500. It came in a big box with a lot of instructions, and he had to put it together himself with some help from his big brother. It was either buy the NFL franchise or buy France, and I think he made the right decision.

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