Parting Shots

Geez Steve, let the rest of us in the frame, why dontcha?

So we're home now, shivering on a 68-degree day, forced to wear long pants and long sleeves. The trip was good, fun was had by all, I assume, and next year we need to get a bigger, drug-dealer house so Jason & Michelle can join the fun.

Some wrapping-it-up tidbits:

*Next year we've got to remember to schedule an A's game for the day we arrive. Much quicker drive than Scottsdale.

*The freeway photo speedtraps are at the Shea Ave. and Cactus Ave. offramps.

*Service at Hooters in Tempe has sucked two years in a row. We need to go to The Library next time.

Worst ballpark traffic? Hohokam in Mesa.

Best ballpark traffic? Phoenix Muni.

Best ballpark food? A's left field grill, outdoor vendors at Surprise.

Worst ballpark beer? Hohokam. Bud, Bud Light, and Corona and Dos Equis, if you can find it. And a one-beer minimum? Weak.

Toughest tickets? Scottsdale. We got 'em before they went on sale to the public and they were still 400 feet from the plate. At least they weren't bleachers.

Easiest tickets? Surprise. Possible the best seats I've ever been in -- two rows behind the dugout. Jason, I don't know when you got those, but remember to do it again next year.

Best ballpark engineering? Surprise. The section between first and third is shady the entire game. Sheer genius.

Worst fans? Surprise, this year. We were the youngest by about 30 years, and you could literally hear the infield being raked between innings. Peoria was better this year. Maybe all the blue-hairs were in bed by the 7:05 start.

Most annoying fans? Hohokam. I think each of us wanted to punch someone. As a side note, no other stadium else shows off the contrast of hot college hardbodies and morbid obesity to the extent that there is there.

Worst drivers in America? Phoenix metro area. Holy crap. Between going 50 on the freeway, cutting across four lanes to the offramp, waiting forever for left turns, and not turning right on reds. . . . wow. I believe "Go! Fucking go!" is the most-uttered phrase in the city. Other than, "I'd like a chicken burrito, please."

Here are few final thoughts and indellible images. (I love that term for photo spreads!)

Ahhh, giant TV, you will be missed the most...

Ahhh, the pool table. I really fooled all those saps, making them think I suck at pool.

Somebody likes margaritas. Actually, two somebodies.

Word to the wise: Don't leave your power box unlocked when a certain somebody is around.

Our fake, broken cactus in the front yard.

Final day -- A's-Brewers at Phoenix Municipal. It's 101 degrees, but thank god we're in the shade beneath the overhang.

Where's Bobby? Oh 510, where art thou?

Joe Kennedy sucked. Nine runs, 10 hits in two-plus innings. Jason, if you can throw with your left arm, give the A's a call. You couldn't have done much worse.

Thanks for giving me the ticket with the view.

Prince Fielder likes his doughnuts. But man, he can hit, and he can move like a cat.

Ron wants a mixtape of the music played at Phoenix.

"I wear my sunglasses at night...."

Oooooh, Hot Photographer is looking my way. She wants me, but I'm gonna play it cool.

The cover boy for Modern Amish magazine.

Is that the Hilton sisters? They're so glamorous!

The final swing of spring.

"Hooters!"

"Woooooo! Wine!"

Well, actually, it was the Kaz Bar in Scottsdale. Lots o' fancy wine and crap. Steve, Dawn & Brandy went there after lunch, and Ron and I met them after watching "Zodiac" (great movie, by the way). So we all got good and liquored up and headed to a night game at Phoenix Muni.

A lovely evening for a ballgame.

And thank god it was a night game. It hit 102 today. Though thanks to the movie and the bar, I didn't have to use sunscreen once.


I've never hit a woman. But tonight I came close. The fucking woman behind me, who better have been Mike Piazza's grandma, almost blew my ear out with her incessant, shrill cheers for Mike "I'm Still Not Gay" Piazza. My boos for him grew in proportion to her cheers. And when I got up for a hot dog & beer, I got back to find her with her nasty-ass feet on my seat, and her peanut/Papago-dirt covered feet on my seat. I sat down after a nice nasty glance and a long, obvious, brush-off of the seat. Yeah, I'm not passive-aggressive or anything.

Meanwhile, the seats Steve sold to the meth-head were used by some overly friendley, three-generational family. The youngest, a kid who was maybe 10, randomly stood up and shouted "Hooters!" at one point.

They also had the lamest between-inning entertainment ever: Dudes dressed in gold star outfits doing "Dancing With the Stars" routines on the dugouts with a mix of hot chicks in purple dresses and random fans.

This is a bit of a non-sequiter, but fucking Phoenix drivers are the fucking worst in the fucking country. Holy shit, what a bunch of fucking morons. But I digress. . .

So now we're home, I'm a little buzzed, the gals are playing pool, and the guys are eating burgers and watching the romantic comedy "For the Love of the Game." Go figure.

Making Friends With the Neighbors

Yeah, this is rough.

So we woke up this glorious morning to find our WiFi connection had crapped out again. Thinking were were piggybacking it from the rental house next door, a certain member of our crew went over and knocked on the door, thinking we could just ask them to reboot it. No one home. So he just went around back and turned off the house's main power. Twice. Sort of a forced reboot. Didn't work though. Then a little while later, Brandye mentioned there seemed to be a cable modem in her room. There was. And a WiFi port. Oops. Sorry neighbors. Hope you know how to reset your clocks. We still couldn't get this one to work though. Luckily, the neighbors around here must feel really safe, because it was easy to hack in and piggyback on someone else's WiFi connection. Shhhhhhhhh!

We're off for an afternoon bumming around Scottsdale and an A's game tonight.

Oh, and so far, we haven't needed long pants or a sweatshirt. Today's high: 95.

More Stuff From Yesterday

"Hello? Jerk Store? I'd like an order of Me, to go."

This is Annoying Fat Guy, who was taking up our seats at the Cubs game. He was under the impression that seat 11 was the fourth one into the row. Steve politely asked him to use his "big-boy feet" to move. He finally moved once we convinced him we had tickets for the first seven seats in a row. He spent the rest of the game leaning against the outfield wall, being an asshat and talking about getting wasted. Examples of his asshattery: His plane got in late, but that was OK, because while still in Atlanta, he managed to drink the airport bar our of Johnny Walker Black, but managed not to be "shitfaced." He also dropped his beer and totally sprayed his buddy, and took a beer from a vendor and handed it down the row, but held it sideways so half the beer fell out. Asshat.

Jared Weaver thinks, "Thank god they test for steroids, but not meth."

The fellas went to a night game in Peoria. Getting there was fun. After spending an hour in stop-and-go traffic, we finally came across the culprit: A Chevelle was broken down on the side of the road and every fucking person in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area was slowing down to watch as the tow truck picked it up. Traffic was smooth after that. Steve sold his extra seats to Friday's A's game to some meth dealer from Bakersfield, who called 20 minutes later upset that Steve didn't sell him the Giants-Rockies tickets he had promised. After a big runaround, Steve managed to convince him that (a) he didn't rip him off (b) the ad clearly said A's-D'backs, and (c) the tickets were that guy's problem now. Hmm, should be interesting to see who we're sitting next to tonight.

Chocolate-covered fruit on a stick. Hard to shoot, much like Sasquatch.

This was the best pic I could get of the chocolate-covered strawberries on a stick. That was the exotic food of the night. Some fat little kid in front of us was going apeshit for them, and ran to the next section to buy one.

This doesn't even count the beer.

The gals, meanwhile, drank us out of house and home and watched "Grey's Anatomy."

Dawn Will Cut That Bitch

Lovely Hohokam Stadium, home of the Cubs. Too bad Jason couldn't get us seats closer to the field.

The dumb bitches behind us who Dawn wanted to cut.

These are two of the three dumb bitches sitting behind us, yapping incessantly and making Giants fans ashamed. Bitches even tried recapping Game 6 of the 2002 Series. They did not believe Barry did steroids ("don't even mention steroids, I'm not gonna go there"). Mom and Brunette Sis said Blonde Sis was a drama queen, as they talked shit about her while she was up talking to guys at the top of the section, saying she just liked attention. Brunette Sis was the stupid Giants fan, who said that one more beer would make her wasted. Brunette Sis had a horrible two-ruffle, brown, rainbow, good-god-it-was-bad-in-the-'80s skirt with purple underwear that no one really wanted to see. And a muffin top. She also tried to feel up Dawn's ass. Dawn asked me if I had any razor blades on me. Sadly, I didn't.

The pregnant dumb bitch whose mom and sister were talking smack about behind her back.

Alfonso Soriano is still good.

Will is fascinated by the game.

Look! Up in the sky! Nolan sees Superman!

Mmmmmm, pie...

Woo Woo Guy in his natibe habitat. The honeys like Woo Woo Guy.

Form and Function

Frank Lloyd Wright's winter pad. He sounded like a really grumpy old man, by the way.

Today was spend ballgame-free. We slept in, hiked to Safeway in 92-degree heat and managed not to get hit by any asshole Arizona drivers, watched "Casino Royale," sipped margaritas, had Chipotle burritos, sipped beer, went on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West home, sipped daquiris, had Ron's special mole chicken burritos, sipper beer, played pool, drank more beer, and listened to '70s rock on the giant TV.

Nice little triangular cooling pool on the edge of the house.

Indian petroglyph on a rock that inspired Wright's Taliesin West logo.

A cool Chinese water dragon given to Frank Lloyd Wright as a gift from a guy in San Francisco. His wife decided to desecrate it and make it spew flames. Still, it's pretty cool. I decided to get a tattoo of it on my ass. Did I mention the margaritas earlier?



Cool little pond in the interior of the house. Turns out, this Wright guy was a pretty decent architect.

That's it. Nothing particularly snarky or scandalous today. Oh, there was some hot Christian teenage girl who rang our doorbell asking for a donation to help smite the sinful people in San Francisco or something like that. Steve made me give her $5, just because she was blond and cute. Oh, she was also about 14.


We have a doubleheader scheduled for tomorrow. More snark and potential scandal then.

We're No. 4!

Ahhh, a lovely day in Surprise. And surprise! We're sitting in the shade all day!

Our seat neighbors weren't particularly interested in the game. The crowd was actually quieter, older and closer to meeting Death than Peoria, if you can believe that.

Sammy was slammin'. He actually looked pretty good. Had some nice swings and he's really trimmed down. Even his head is smaller.

Pretty good game too. Ended up 12-8 or something, White Sox. Not exactly a pitchers' duel. Hint: Don't bother picking any Rangers bullpen guys for your fantasy team.

We saw some familiar faces -- Art Howe! Also on hand were Ron Washington, who seemed very encouraging to his crappier young players, and the eternal Kenny Lofton. Oh, and first-base coach Harold Baines looked like he could still play.

And to maintain our run of seeing horrific injuries, Michael Young got beaned on the back of the head, and had to come out, bleeding. He didn't even fall down. Now THAT'S a man. Or else a very dumb man.

In other news, Surprise is still on the edge of freaking nowhere. But at least the parking is free. Surprise doesn't have deep-fried crap anymore either. The heart police must've paid a visit, because instead of deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos, they now have chicken wraps and fruit salad. Arizona drivers still suck -- at one light, a pickup on our right came thiiiiiis close to blowing through a red light and T-boning a car making a left turn. Then when the left turn arrow went green, the guy on our left, blew straight through the red light. Asshats. Dawn & Brandye have a good story about a bitch at the store too.


Oh, and the boys ended the evening at a pub quiz in Scottsdale. We were in first place through three rounds, but choked and finished in fourth place, out of 12 or 15 or so. Dammit. Should've known it was the Duke of Wellington! And Jennifer Love Hewitt! Grrrrrr.

Why Drunk Girls Aren't Allowed to Touch the Beer

Now THAT's a cold one.

Brandye just realized she left this in the freezer last night. We're letting it thaw out, and it's starting to make funny noises. Like it might explode....

Barry Bonds Doesn't Like Flying Objects

Barry Bonds, in one of the few moments he wasn't botching pop flies.

5 Things We Learned Today:


1. Barry Bonds is afraid of fly balls.


2. Matt Morris still sucks.


3. Ron is still terrible at trying to lead a caravan.


4. Old ladies shouldn't get tattoos on their upper thigh.


5. They don't make spring training T-shirts like the used to.

Alfonso Soriano is still good.

The outfield ads at Scottsdale Stadium are really classy. And not at all suggestive.

Nope, not suggestive at all.

This kid needed an ass-kicking.

5 People We Learned to Hate Today:

1. The preppy 12-year-old next to us, with the pink shirt with popped collar, pleated shorts, sideways cap and $500 cell phone. He really needed to get his ass kicked, just for general principle.

2. The mom and teenage daughter behind us who bickered about stupid things all game long. Especially the daughter's incessant "text-paging."

3. The old lady with the thigh tat. Eww.

4. The woman who touched Dawn instead of simply saying, "Excuse me" before coming down the row.

5. Woman at the beer cart who was annoyed that they were out of Michelob and gave odd glances at Brandye while she ordered an Anchorsteam.

Alfonso Soriano? He's fast too. But he got thrown out stealing here.

Third row, baby! Too bad we were 350 feet down the line.

Woo! Woo! Woo!

3 Lasting Memories of the Day

1. Finally meeting Woo Woo Guy. He was older than I thought.

2. The horrible crunching sound as the Giants 4th-string second baseman and 5th-string outfielder collided at full speed about 20 feet in front of us. Ouch. Really. Ouch.

3. Cold beer is goooooood after you've been baking in 92-degree heat.