Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Park Place
Saturday
May 24, 2003
As I type this, I'm trying to plan out my Saturday night a bit. Scott Massey may be swinging by tonight to catch the Pistons/Nets game, and from there I've been invited to meet up with some people out at Channelside. Plus there's the matter of getting my car fixed (more on that in a minute), as well as shorning up for the night and getting cleaned up and what not.
Yesterday I was driving home from 98 Rock, feeling happy with the holiday weekend here. I even stayed late to get some extra work done (or at least later than the 3 PM early weekend that most people there had). After exiting the Crosstown Expressway, I made the dangerous left turn onto 22nd Avenue. I hate that turn. There's no red light or anything to help, there's a set of train tracks close by, and in general it's a congested nightmare. Plus there are a high number of fuel trucks that pass through the area (sometimes that's good, as they have to stop at the tracks, but in general it just adds to the edgy atmosphere). Oh, and what's more, they're doing construction through there right now. Ugh.
Anyway, I made it up to the first red light... and I heard a loud POP. Cue up the Whammy sound effect from Press Your Luck. Luckily by that point I wasn't far from home, so I made it back to the apartment.
I got out of the car, hoping that maybe it was something else I had heard. I looked at the front left tire, which I thought had been the one to go... and it looked A-okay. But my happiness from that quickly subsided from a look at the back left tire. It was halfway deflated. A quick examination revealed that the tire had a large chunk of metal embedded in it. Bad news.
So I decided to change the tire. I've done that plenty of times before (including on the side of the road in the dark). But the people who last worked on my tires decided I guess to tighten them as much as humanly possible. They're stuck on there big time. And the little jack wrench that comes with the spare tire isn't exactly enough to undo the power screw on. I tried and tried and finally got too frustrated with it and gave up. I'm going to see if Riley can give me a ride over to Wal-Mart; I'm going to buy one of those four-pronged twisty wrench things. What if this had happened on my way in to work? I'd be screwed, with my car having a deflated tire and me unable to get the lug nuts off. Bad times.
The Mostly Robot promo CDs have arrived from the company I contracted them from in Indiana. They look pretty good. The inside cover print looks a bit different than I had anticipated, so that will be something to modify for next time. But that's why I'm doing these test runs. I had intended to swing by Wal-Mart last night to pick up some shipping material, but that was deep-sixed by the tire incident. As was my plan to meet up with Fiona over at the Green Iguana.
But I made the most of last night. After watching the hockey game (and those damn New Jersey Devils winning), I met up with Riley over at Market on 7th. We ended up over at the James Joyce, where Riley beat me in darts (fair and square; my aim was off and he was nailing his shots). It had been raining off and on, so eventually Todd decided to forego his bike taxi service and meet up with us.
In an interesting sequence, the three of us ended up going down to this one tattoo parlor to try and find some sort of spike piercing for Beth, this gorgeous girl who works at Market on 7th. She's one of those girls who's hot, but her having a bunch of tattoos and piercings gives her that edgy look. Anyway, she has two lip rings (I'm serious; maybe she was a fan of Tonga Toonga from the PWF, what do you think Matt?), and the stud deal on one of them fell off. I was just along for the ride. It was interesting seeing people get tatted up at 1:30 in the morning on a Friday night.
The guy and girl behind the counter there were all tatted and pierced up, as you might expect in an establishment like that. You know the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega goes to the drug dealer's house to buy some heroin and he sees the girl with all the piercings? It kind of reminded me of that (without the heroin).
With tattoos, it's interesting, because many people who have them seem to get addicted and want more and more. I don't get it, personally. If I want art, I'll buy a portrait. I was tempted once to get my eyebrow pierced, though I'm not entirely sure why. Ended up deciding that would be detrimental to trying to look professional, so I decided against it. But at least with piercings, you can take them out. With tattoos, you're stuck with them for life. My Granddaddy Blaylock was afraid when he was in the Navy that he'd get drunk and then get tattoo (there were no rules against getting tatted up while inebriated back in the day). Luckily, one of his Navy buddies was of a like mind, so they had a deal where one of them would always stay sober (or at least sober enough) so they could stop the other from getting a alcohol-inspired tat.
NCAA Football 2003 continues to be taking up too much of my free time. My 37 game winning streak nearly came to a screeching halt in a home game against Auburn. It was almost like in Tecmo Super Bowl when the computer would have "cheat week" and have an amazing ability to pick your plays and run like crazy and in general be extremely tough to beat. In this case, Auburn stuffed my running game and held my Heisman-winning RB to three yards a carry. Meanwhile, their pass defense played out of its mind at times, making improbable deflections and even scouting out my QB run out of the 5 WR set. Luckily special teams saved me (with some long kick returns). Auburn scored on a total bullshit 80 yard TD pass (against Cover 2 Dime), then went for two to go up 24-21. My kicker then hit a 45 yarder to tie it, and with :01 to go hit a 35 yarder to get the 27-24 win. In all I had six field goals, including a pair of 50 yarders. But, hey, a win is a win.
The Devil Rays are on the Fox Saturday baseball game, taking on Anaheim. The D-Rays on Fox?!? That doesn't exist. It must be some sort of a regional game. Either that or Rupert Murdoch lost a bet to Vince Naimoli.
I finally found out that this one song in Boogie Nights that I'd been wondering about is "Spill The Wine" by War. Cool tune. Have a great Saturday night...
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