On the road...to 'Zona
As I mentioned in this space last Friday, me and the boys (Bob, Rob, Gaffey & the Mick) roadtripped to ‘Zona this weekend for the Pats-Cards tilt in Tempe. Not surprisingly, I have a few ramblings regarding the trip, most of which should be rather incomprehensible on account of my forty-two hour sojourn from sleep. Enjoy:
-First off, let me applaud the fine suburbs of the city of Phoenix (Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale specifically) for their fine hospitality. To a man, the folks of greater Phoenix were courteous, helpful and generous to what could have been viewed as a hostile conquering army of New Englanders. There were of course, a few exceptions, and on account of my nature, I find myself compelled to dwell on them:
1. The guy at the Dunkins in Mesa (that’s DD#2 on your itinerary) looked like he was gunning for an Emmy nod for his performance as “Disgruntled Donut Boy” in the HBO Film “To Hell and Back: Five Men’s Journey to the Desert of Salvation”. Granted, this was at six o’clock on Sunday morning and we had been waiting in the parking lot when he pulled up at quarter of six (Rob: “Time to make the donuts, bitch!”), but if anyone had a right to be appalled by the conditions, it was us. This was the second Dunkins we’d visited since our arrival, after a late nite/early morning six hour drive that itself followed Bob’s two hour improv comedy show in a black box theatre that could have doubled for a greenhouse on Tatooine it was so hot. The first was in Tempe, where a much more well mannered Mexi-lady informed us that our quest for the world’s greatest breakfast sandwich would be curtailed by “no egg”. Which led to this exchange between the Dunkin Donuts Mexi-lady and Bob:
Dunkins Mexi-Lady: No egg.
Bob: No eggs?
DDML: No egg.
Bob: Are you getting more eggs?
DDML: Not ‘til more egg come.
Bob: WHEN ARE YOU GETTING MORE EGGS!?! IS THERE A SHIPMENT COMING IN TODAY OR WHAT? AAARRRGGH!
DDML: No egg.
My friends, ladies and gentlemen.
2. The guy in line behind us at the ticket booth was prolly in his 40s, worn Cards hat on top and all in all about as white bread as they come (apparently they breed ‘em bland in ‘Zona). I turned to the guy and say, in my best I’m-not-from-here-but-I’m-consciously-trying-to-sound-respectful-despite-no-sleep-and-six-cups-of-coffee voice: “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know where the $15 ticket seats are, would you?” His response was to glance over at me and smirk and say “I do.” He seemed so proud of himself for pointing out the obvious flaw in my grammar that I figured he must be a college professor or, possibly, a eunuch (turns out I was right on both accounts, but I’ll leave it to Mick to tell that story). So the fucker just stands there grinnin’, waiting for me to ask the requisite follow up question. Instead of going with my instinctual reply (“So…you wanna just tell me or should I bitch-slap it outta ya?”), I take the high road and get the info I need. But goddamn, man, I hate smug pricks like that. That right should be reserved only for Mensa members, senior elected officials and of course yours truly. But I digress…
-The Drive: Since we were all staying in town late thanks to Bob’s show, he was nice enuff to volunteer his car and driving services for the trip. It also helped that his Highrover or Rangeloader or Craplander or whatever the fuck its called was the only thing that would fit us all (Five Guys in the Draggin’ Wagon is not a pretty sight). We hit the road at about 11 after the aforementioned improv show, and from the get go, it was a treat. First off, I was sitting shotgun, with Rob, Gaff and Mick cuddling up in the back. This meant it was my job to keep Bob from driving us off the road and try to navigate his iPod for something resembling driving music. Needless to say, two hours and seven choruses of “I am the Pirate King ” later, I wisely opted for radio static and indistinguishable humming. That’s about the time that we crossed into the 909 and the apocalypse began. I wish I could describe to you the sight of puttering along a desolate highway in the middle of the night while the sky in front of the car illuminates and fractures from horizon to horizon. Mebbe LA weather has made me soft, but it was breathtaking. Lightning bolts sizzling from sky to land and back again, nonstop for hours. It was enough to keep Bob and I awake and aware and for me to give the iPod another shot. Surely some AC/DC was in order. No dice.
About an hour or two outside of Phoenix the skies opened and the rain began, and Gaff and I switched spots, since he was the man with the plan to get us where we needed to go most desperately. I speak, of course, of the Dunkin Donuts in Tempe (DD#1 on your itinerary), home of the No Egg Mexi-Lady. A man with distinct priorities and rock solid resolve is a necessity on a trip like this, and Gaffey’s single-minded devotion to finishing a Big One before sunrise really made this trip work. Here’s to you, Gaff. (Note: before leaving town, we stopped at the Dunkins in Scottsdale (DD#4 on your itinerary) and Gaffey spent somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty bucks stocking up on coffee, munchkins, sandwiches…seriously, everything. He came out of the store with three bags in his hands, a shit eating grin on his face, and says: “Now I know how girls feel when the come out of a jewelry store”. Priceless.)
-The Tailgate: If you’ve never tailgated at a pro football game before, you have to imagine the biggest block party/barbeque that you’ve ever seen: grills flaming, footballs flying, music and pre-game shows blaring. Then you have to stop and realize that its 10 o’clock in the morning, you’re drinking beer in a parking lot, and hot damn, 500 of your closest friends are here too. The parking lot before a football game is prolly the most electric atmosphere I’ve ever experienced. Granted, the lots in Foxboro are about ten times in number and full to gills, even when the Pats totally suck (those were the days that I went to the games, baby. 1-15. The Hugh Millen-Rod Rust Era. Ah, the memories), but that feeling was condensed nicely into the North side lot in Tempe. I would gauge that the Pats fans outnumbered the Cards fans by about twenty to one. Truly a beautiful sight.
We pull out the grill, finally get the damn thing lit (not an easy task, given our state of hysteria) and this is where things start getting hazy. I distinctly remember grilling burgers and dogs, and I’m pretty sure that I even ate them. We threw the football around. We traded shots of Cuervo for cigs (since we neglected to stock up before parking—D’oh!). Some mom-type from Methuen gave us potato salad. We snuck looks at the Sox game playing on TV in the back of some dude’s pickup (This weekend in the Bronx never happened. Got that?) One of H’s friends happened upon us, said hi, turned down a beer and then bolted, apparently reporting back that we were mighty hammered. The nerve!
-The Game: Sun Devil Stadium looks to hold about 60,000, and despite the home team’s cover-your-eyes awful play over past, oh, twenty years, the place was pretty well packed. Well, except in the cheap seats. With a little negotiation and a lot of stair climbing, we managed to carve ourselves out a little niche behind the north end zone and about 250 rows up. Awesome seats. We could see everything, we were high enough (in the stands…well, ok that way too) that we got a full panorama view of the play no matter when it was, and we were distant enough from the rest of the crowd that our taunts and chants weren’t enough to get us thrown out. We even had a banner. Does it get better than this?
The game started and right away things are looking rosy for the Pats. The Cards’ kick returner (Scobey!) fumbles, and the redbirds are lucky to get it back. The Pats defense is just relentless, and from this view you can see it all come together: the way their front three occupy blockers like Nazis in Vichy France; the way their outside linebackers (especially McGinnest and Vrabel) line up flush with the D-Line, giving the appearance of a five-man front on almost every play, then drop back to cover, engage a tight end or blitz (I think they ended up with four or five sacks in the first half); Rodney Harrison moving around before the snap, pointing out blockers, sprinting up to the line and then dropping, waving his hands for the crowd to get pumped up (did I mention that this was an away game for the Pats?). You just don’t catch this stuff on TV.
When the Pats got the ball, it was all Corey Dillon, which all of us had been waiting for since they traded a second round pick to the Bungles for him. Granted, this Cardinal’s D aren’t the Purple People Eaters of the ‘70’s, but Corey looked damn good hitting the hole and running behind blockers. As the Pats approached the goal line, we reiterated our predictions for who would score the first TD for the Pats: I picked Dillon for obvious fantasy implications. Bob picked Tom Brady on account of his unabashed man-crush. Mick picked Daniel Graham, the stone-handed back up tight end. Mick is a Seahawks fan, and spent more time cheering for the Jumbo-tron to play the out of town scoreboard than for anyone on either team on the field. Of course he was right. Graham caught both of the Pats’ TDs on the day. And the ‘Hawks won. Fuckin’ Micky.
Halftime came, and I’m told that there was a touching tribute to Pat Tillman , the former Arizona State (ASU shares its stadium with the Cards) and Cardinal defensive back who enrolled in the army in the aftermath of 9/11 and died in combat in Afghanistan in April. Tillman’s widow was present and gave a heart-wrenching speech about Tillman’s love for the game of football, which was surpassed only by his love of his country, about sacrifice and loyalty and about how wonderful the Cardinals’ organization and the city of Phoenix had been to her and her family since the tragedy. It was a beautiful reminder of all that our country gives to us and all that we, no matter our age or our tax bracket, can give to our country. At least I hear it was. I spent the entirety of halftime wandering around the concourse bumming cigarettes off of Pats fans. I met Patriot Dave, winner of the 2000 Fan of the Year award. Yes, he had a patch commemorating said award on his vintage Steve Grogan #14 jersey. And he was wearing beads. No, I don’t know how he got them. Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth. I also met these two guys from Providence, Ron and something else (sorry Ron’s bud), who travel to every Pats game, home and away, in their pimped out RV, which they’ve dubbed the Brady Bus. They’ve been to summer scrimmages and Super Bowls, have traveled over 20,000 miles since their first journey (training camp of ’99—BEFORE the Super Bowl, they are hasty to remind you), and may finally have perfected the fine art of tailgating: it’s not quality, they say, but quantity that matters. Copious amounts of food and drink, when bartered correctly with the locals, can yield you a gourmet meal, a flute of champagne, or a handful of the finest hallucinogens that Mother Nature can name as her own. This was truly a learning experience.
Oh, did I mention that the upper deck seats at a Cardinal game are located about 10 feet from the surface of the Sun? And that the wind actually lifted small children into the air and carried them onto the playing field? No? Well never mind then.
The second half was much of the same, with the Cardinals making it interesting on a 1-yard TD run by the ageless (read: old) Emmitt Smith after a 43-yard screen pass to Scobey-Dooby-Doo and a bullshit pass interference call on Ty Law in the end zone. I say this unequivocally because from our perch in the nosebleeds, we had a perfect vantage point on this end zone. And I can say, without a shadow of doubt in my mind…wait, I think this is when Rob passed out. Sitting up. At a football game. Doing the head bob, blinking a mile a minute, arching his eyebrows in a futile attempt to lift the eyelids with them. Priceless stuff. If I’d had a sharpie (where’s T.O. when you need him?) or a bucket of warm water, this would have been the stuff of legend. A few Adam Vinitieri field goals later, and the game was done: Pats 23 Cards 12. At least I think that was the score. My B.A.C. was prolly up to 23.12 by this point, so I could be mistaken.
The next few hours were a blur. I remember hopping down the stairs to the concourse. I think I tried to buy some beer off of a security guard. I took my first piss of the afternoon (strategic dehydration at its finest was on display this weekend). I think there were some “Yankees Suck” chants involved. The skies opened up and we got soaked. Then it stopped and the sun dried us in approximately 2.6 seconds. On the way to the parking lot, there was a guy selling bottled water out of a cooler. The guy prolly bought these things for five bucks a case and was selling them for a buck a piece. Great idea. But his sales pitch was positively maddening. Imagine if Ben Stein and the chick from The Weakest Link had a child, and that child was dropped on its head. As we trudged to our cars after a hard fought victory, ceremonial pom-poms courtesy of the Patriots’ Fan Club of Arizona gripped firmly in hand and visions of the Waffle House dancing in out heads, the cadence of our march was laid out by the steady, unrelenting monotone of the water guy:
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water…
I still get chills.
-First off, let me applaud the fine suburbs of the city of Phoenix (Tempe, Mesa and Scottsdale specifically) for their fine hospitality. To a man, the folks of greater Phoenix were courteous, helpful and generous to what could have been viewed as a hostile conquering army of New Englanders. There were of course, a few exceptions, and on account of my nature, I find myself compelled to dwell on them:
1. The guy at the Dunkins in Mesa (that’s DD#2 on your itinerary) looked like he was gunning for an Emmy nod for his performance as “Disgruntled Donut Boy” in the HBO Film “To Hell and Back: Five Men’s Journey to the Desert of Salvation”. Granted, this was at six o’clock on Sunday morning and we had been waiting in the parking lot when he pulled up at quarter of six (Rob: “Time to make the donuts, bitch!”), but if anyone had a right to be appalled by the conditions, it was us. This was the second Dunkins we’d visited since our arrival, after a late nite/early morning six hour drive that itself followed Bob’s two hour improv comedy show in a black box theatre that could have doubled for a greenhouse on Tatooine it was so hot. The first was in Tempe, where a much more well mannered Mexi-lady informed us that our quest for the world’s greatest breakfast sandwich would be curtailed by “no egg”. Which led to this exchange between the Dunkin Donuts Mexi-lady and Bob:
Dunkins Mexi-Lady: No egg.
Bob: No eggs?
DDML: No egg.
Bob: Are you getting more eggs?
DDML: Not ‘til more egg come.
Bob: WHEN ARE YOU GETTING MORE EGGS!?! IS THERE A SHIPMENT COMING IN TODAY OR WHAT? AAARRRGGH!
DDML: No egg.
My friends, ladies and gentlemen.
2. The guy in line behind us at the ticket booth was prolly in his 40s, worn Cards hat on top and all in all about as white bread as they come (apparently they breed ‘em bland in ‘Zona). I turned to the guy and say, in my best I’m-not-from-here-but-I’m-consciously-trying-to-sound-respectful-despite-no-sleep-and-six-cups-of-coffee voice: “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know where the $15 ticket seats are, would you?” His response was to glance over at me and smirk and say “I do.” He seemed so proud of himself for pointing out the obvious flaw in my grammar that I figured he must be a college professor or, possibly, a eunuch (turns out I was right on both accounts, but I’ll leave it to Mick to tell that story). So the fucker just stands there grinnin’, waiting for me to ask the requisite follow up question. Instead of going with my instinctual reply (“So…you wanna just tell me or should I bitch-slap it outta ya?”), I take the high road and get the info I need. But goddamn, man, I hate smug pricks like that. That right should be reserved only for Mensa members, senior elected officials and of course yours truly. But I digress…
-The Drive: Since we were all staying in town late thanks to Bob’s show, he was nice enuff to volunteer his car and driving services for the trip. It also helped that his Highrover or Rangeloader or Craplander or whatever the fuck its called was the only thing that would fit us all (Five Guys in the Draggin’ Wagon is not a pretty sight). We hit the road at about 11 after the aforementioned improv show, and from the get go, it was a treat. First off, I was sitting shotgun, with Rob, Gaff and Mick cuddling up in the back. This meant it was my job to keep Bob from driving us off the road and try to navigate his iPod for something resembling driving music. Needless to say, two hours and seven choruses of “I am the Pirate King ” later, I wisely opted for radio static and indistinguishable humming. That’s about the time that we crossed into the 909 and the apocalypse began. I wish I could describe to you the sight of puttering along a desolate highway in the middle of the night while the sky in front of the car illuminates and fractures from horizon to horizon. Mebbe LA weather has made me soft, but it was breathtaking. Lightning bolts sizzling from sky to land and back again, nonstop for hours. It was enough to keep Bob and I awake and aware and for me to give the iPod another shot. Surely some AC/DC was in order. No dice.
About an hour or two outside of Phoenix the skies opened and the rain began, and Gaff and I switched spots, since he was the man with the plan to get us where we needed to go most desperately. I speak, of course, of the Dunkin Donuts in Tempe (DD#1 on your itinerary), home of the No Egg Mexi-Lady. A man with distinct priorities and rock solid resolve is a necessity on a trip like this, and Gaffey’s single-minded devotion to finishing a Big One before sunrise really made this trip work. Here’s to you, Gaff. (Note: before leaving town, we stopped at the Dunkins in Scottsdale (DD#4 on your itinerary) and Gaffey spent somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty bucks stocking up on coffee, munchkins, sandwiches…seriously, everything. He came out of the store with three bags in his hands, a shit eating grin on his face, and says: “Now I know how girls feel when the come out of a jewelry store”. Priceless.)
-The Tailgate: If you’ve never tailgated at a pro football game before, you have to imagine the biggest block party/barbeque that you’ve ever seen: grills flaming, footballs flying, music and pre-game shows blaring. Then you have to stop and realize that its 10 o’clock in the morning, you’re drinking beer in a parking lot, and hot damn, 500 of your closest friends are here too. The parking lot before a football game is prolly the most electric atmosphere I’ve ever experienced. Granted, the lots in Foxboro are about ten times in number and full to gills, even when the Pats totally suck (those were the days that I went to the games, baby. 1-15. The Hugh Millen-Rod Rust Era. Ah, the memories), but that feeling was condensed nicely into the North side lot in Tempe. I would gauge that the Pats fans outnumbered the Cards fans by about twenty to one. Truly a beautiful sight.
We pull out the grill, finally get the damn thing lit (not an easy task, given our state of hysteria) and this is where things start getting hazy. I distinctly remember grilling burgers and dogs, and I’m pretty sure that I even ate them. We threw the football around. We traded shots of Cuervo for cigs (since we neglected to stock up before parking—D’oh!). Some mom-type from Methuen gave us potato salad. We snuck looks at the Sox game playing on TV in the back of some dude’s pickup (This weekend in the Bronx never happened. Got that?) One of H’s friends happened upon us, said hi, turned down a beer and then bolted, apparently reporting back that we were mighty hammered. The nerve!
-The Game: Sun Devil Stadium looks to hold about 60,000, and despite the home team’s cover-your-eyes awful play over past, oh, twenty years, the place was pretty well packed. Well, except in the cheap seats. With a little negotiation and a lot of stair climbing, we managed to carve ourselves out a little niche behind the north end zone and about 250 rows up. Awesome seats. We could see everything, we were high enough (in the stands…well, ok that way too) that we got a full panorama view of the play no matter when it was, and we were distant enough from the rest of the crowd that our taunts and chants weren’t enough to get us thrown out. We even had a banner. Does it get better than this?
The game started and right away things are looking rosy for the Pats. The Cards’ kick returner (Scobey!) fumbles, and the redbirds are lucky to get it back. The Pats defense is just relentless, and from this view you can see it all come together: the way their front three occupy blockers like Nazis in Vichy France; the way their outside linebackers (especially McGinnest and Vrabel) line up flush with the D-Line, giving the appearance of a five-man front on almost every play, then drop back to cover, engage a tight end or blitz (I think they ended up with four or five sacks in the first half); Rodney Harrison moving around before the snap, pointing out blockers, sprinting up to the line and then dropping, waving his hands for the crowd to get pumped up (did I mention that this was an away game for the Pats?). You just don’t catch this stuff on TV.
When the Pats got the ball, it was all Corey Dillon, which all of us had been waiting for since they traded a second round pick to the Bungles for him. Granted, this Cardinal’s D aren’t the Purple People Eaters of the ‘70’s, but Corey looked damn good hitting the hole and running behind blockers. As the Pats approached the goal line, we reiterated our predictions for who would score the first TD for the Pats: I picked Dillon for obvious fantasy implications. Bob picked Tom Brady on account of his unabashed man-crush. Mick picked Daniel Graham, the stone-handed back up tight end. Mick is a Seahawks fan, and spent more time cheering for the Jumbo-tron to play the out of town scoreboard than for anyone on either team on the field. Of course he was right. Graham caught both of the Pats’ TDs on the day. And the ‘Hawks won. Fuckin’ Micky.
Halftime came, and I’m told that there was a touching tribute to Pat Tillman , the former Arizona State (ASU shares its stadium with the Cards) and Cardinal defensive back who enrolled in the army in the aftermath of 9/11 and died in combat in Afghanistan in April. Tillman’s widow was present and gave a heart-wrenching speech about Tillman’s love for the game of football, which was surpassed only by his love of his country, about sacrifice and loyalty and about how wonderful the Cardinals’ organization and the city of Phoenix had been to her and her family since the tragedy. It was a beautiful reminder of all that our country gives to us and all that we, no matter our age or our tax bracket, can give to our country. At least I hear it was. I spent the entirety of halftime wandering around the concourse bumming cigarettes off of Pats fans. I met Patriot Dave, winner of the 2000 Fan of the Year award. Yes, he had a patch commemorating said award on his vintage Steve Grogan #14 jersey. And he was wearing beads. No, I don’t know how he got them. Excuse me while I vomit in my mouth. I also met these two guys from Providence, Ron and something else (sorry Ron’s bud), who travel to every Pats game, home and away, in their pimped out RV, which they’ve dubbed the Brady Bus. They’ve been to summer scrimmages and Super Bowls, have traveled over 20,000 miles since their first journey (training camp of ’99—BEFORE the Super Bowl, they are hasty to remind you), and may finally have perfected the fine art of tailgating: it’s not quality, they say, but quantity that matters. Copious amounts of food and drink, when bartered correctly with the locals, can yield you a gourmet meal, a flute of champagne, or a handful of the finest hallucinogens that Mother Nature can name as her own. This was truly a learning experience.
Oh, did I mention that the upper deck seats at a Cardinal game are located about 10 feet from the surface of the Sun? And that the wind actually lifted small children into the air and carried them onto the playing field? No? Well never mind then.
The second half was much of the same, with the Cardinals making it interesting on a 1-yard TD run by the ageless (read: old) Emmitt Smith after a 43-yard screen pass to Scobey-Dooby-Doo and a bullshit pass interference call on Ty Law in the end zone. I say this unequivocally because from our perch in the nosebleeds, we had a perfect vantage point on this end zone. And I can say, without a shadow of doubt in my mind…wait, I think this is when Rob passed out. Sitting up. At a football game. Doing the head bob, blinking a mile a minute, arching his eyebrows in a futile attempt to lift the eyelids with them. Priceless stuff. If I’d had a sharpie (where’s T.O. when you need him?) or a bucket of warm water, this would have been the stuff of legend. A few Adam Vinitieri field goals later, and the game was done: Pats 23 Cards 12. At least I think that was the score. My B.A.C. was prolly up to 23.12 by this point, so I could be mistaken.
The next few hours were a blur. I remember hopping down the stairs to the concourse. I think I tried to buy some beer off of a security guard. I took my first piss of the afternoon (strategic dehydration at its finest was on display this weekend). I think there were some “Yankees Suck” chants involved. The skies opened up and we got soaked. Then it stopped and the sun dried us in approximately 2.6 seconds. On the way to the parking lot, there was a guy selling bottled water out of a cooler. The guy prolly bought these things for five bucks a case and was selling them for a buck a piece. Great idea. But his sales pitch was positively maddening. Imagine if Ben Stein and the chick from The Weakest Link had a child, and that child was dropped on its head. As we trudged to our cars after a hard fought victory, ceremonial pom-poms courtesy of the Patriots’ Fan Club of Arizona gripped firmly in hand and visions of the Waffle House dancing in out heads, the cadence of our march was laid out by the steady, unrelenting monotone of the water guy:
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water, only a dollar.
Bottled water…
I still get chills.
posted by bd @ 9/21/2004 07:04:00 PM
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