Effluvia

Remember Boss Kenny? He had a column on this very page this summer. Well the real Boss Kenny - the man who inspired the man, if you will - was a coworker of mine at the last job. For a little while he was actually my direct supervisor, but he proved so inept at management that that ended very quickly. Anyway, I've heard through my sources that the real Boss Kenny has been kicked out of the office he was sharing with someone and is now working out of a cube, just like all the other peons.

This is very funny to me.

Changing the subject: have you noticed that adults never call each other butthole? It's such an unpleasant and specific slur; I think we should use it more often.

Journal Roulette

Almost A Jester's Journal - Oh. My. God. This site existed for twenty minutes or so and got nominated for an award. Incredible.

Siobhanorama!

Last seen at the helm of the Edmund Fitzgerald, on the lake that they call Gitcheegoomee.

One Year Ago
A useless and uninteresting entry. Of note only to anthropologists.

Huh. Well. 2001. What a science-fiction-y sounding year, you know?

The Wife and I did nothing to celebrate the New Year, I'll have you know. My stomach kept threatening to make me imitate a potato gun and, by the night of New Year's Eve, we were both unbathed and unmotivated. Sonya watched the ball drop (which was strange; it dropped at midnight, our time, but shouldn't it have dropped an hour earlier, since it's in New York and all? Perhaps it was a rerun.) and I downloaded a bunch of music off Napster. Old. Boring. Pathetic. Very sad.

I didn't even leave the house much this weekend, what with my uncooperative tummy and all. I made a couple of trips to the grocery store, though, and yesterday I made black eyed peas, Mexican cornbread and a no-bake cheesecake. A feast, I tell you! I alternated cooking with getting yet more music off Napster and slogging my way though 100 Years of Solitude.

The only really interesting thing I did this weekend was go to the Saints playoff game, which I'll now yammer on about in some detail. If you don't like football you should skip to the bottom for my latest summary of 100 Years of Solitude. If you don't like football or literature then you should go read Nerve, which usually has some good stroke material. If you don't like football, books or sex then you are banned. I don't want no freaks hangin' 'round here.

Okay? On to the football game!

First, I was worried about attending. My stomach had been quite upset on Friday night, and I was afraid too much jumping up and down and screaming would make me go off like a fire hydrant. And as for going to the bathroom...are you kidding? Have you ever been in the men's room (any of them) at the Superdome? It's either so crowded that you're in line for ten minutes or so filthy you wouldn't dare sit down.

But I'm not going to miss the playoffs because of an upset stomach, right? Right! Off we went, but not before putting a tape in the VCR. Denny and the rest of the Monday Night Football crew were calling the game, and if things went well I wanted to see what they had to say.

So we park at the New Orleans Centre and we're in the Superdome, in our seats, about ninety minutes before kickoff. Lots of other people were already inside, too, watching the Colts-Dolphins game on the big Mitsubishi screens.

Good seats, though not as good as the ones we had for the Falcons game. Those were, like, three rows from the field, whereas these were at the top of the plaza level. Still really good, though. We were in the corner of the endzone and had an excellent field of vision. A few Rams fans were scattered around us, but it was majority Saints people. Good.

The first half was an exhausting, grueling spectator event. At halftime the score was 10-7, New Orleans. Sonya and I shared a pretzel to keep the hungries away. It was dinner time. Very strange, going to a Saints game late in the afternoon on a Sunday.

Things got quite a bit more exciting in the second half. First, there was a....gunshot? Explosion? I don't know what it was, but it went off in the concourse behind us. It seemed like everyone in the 'Dome was startled, and cops and other personnel went running towards the sound. I never found out what it was.

Then, this massive thing came falling out of the sky and crashed into the row of seats directly in front of us. Miraculously, no one was hit - or even touched - by what turned out to be a large ice chest lid. It landed perfectly on the backs of the seats a row in front of us, at the exact moment the people in the seats in front of us had leaned back and the people in the seats in front of them leaned forward. We all looked up to see the pale, near vomiting face of a a worker at the Domino's stand on the walkway above and behind our section. Had it hit somebody in the head they would have got some of that sweet Superdome first aid, 'cause it was large and heavy and moving very fast.

I thought the ceiling was falling in.

And while all this excitement was going on Aaron Brooks was going nuts, throwing three touchdowns to Robert Wilson (who? I'm a Saints fan and I don't know who this guy is). Then, when the lead seemed too big and the time left too little, Kurt Warner lead the Rams back from the brink of elimination, scoring three touchdowns in a hell of hurry as the crowd got more and more concerned. Finally, with less than two minutes left to play the Saints had to punt to the Rams. Hakim was back to receive. Brian Milne, a fifth-string tight end, hustled down the field. Hakim dropped the punt. Milne recovered. Saints win!

To put this in perspective for my non-football fans: the Saints franchise has existed for thirty-four years. They did not go to the playoffs until 1987. Before Saturday they had been to the playoffs (and lost) only four times. Neddless to say, the Superdome went nuts.

And the nuttiness spread quickly. Outside chants and screams filled the air. Rams fans were heckled mercilessly. The crowd gave off a constant roar inside the New Orleans Centre. I went home and watched it all over again on TV. It was sweet, sweet night.

Harold Reads 100 Years of Solitude

One of the adopted daughters of the family this book is all about eats dirt. Did I mention that last time? People are born, have sex, get married and die with incredible regularity. It doesn't change anyhting, though, because all the male characters are named either Aureliano, Arcadio or Jose. Sometimes a combination of the three: Jose Arcadio. There's a war. One of the Aurelianos goes off and becomes a great revolutionary leader in the war. Then he comes back and makes little gold fishes. The old gypsy dies and come back and dies and comes back several times. Somebody should take a shovel to him. Grandpa is tied to a tree. The Italian guy is probably gay, but we'll never know because he killed himself.