If you could do anything you want tomorrow, what would it be?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.
Breakfast late
Tigers' day game
chow, drinks, and pals from 5-7
dessert
fireworks
big fucking fire
Mrs. Chicken and I leave on plane for Monte Carlo at midnight
.
Probably gained a good 12 pounds in one night last Saturday when the call for dinner was carny food at the Livonia Spree, an annual festival/fair event in Kerry's and Matt's hometown. We hauled ass out there at about 6 or so, before hitting the booze-fest that would turn out to be Rian's party that night.
Started dinner with what Matt called the carnival's answer to the amuse bouche, the corndog. This was my first corndog experience. Greasy motherfuckers, but damn well worth it.
The Spree offered so much way in the way of chow and beverage, including these beauties:
We avoided most of that stuff and headed straight for the heavy hitters. Kerry and Matt threw down these bad boys,
while I opted for some steak and cheese action:
It's carnival food, man. You have to choke some down at least a couple of times in your adult life.
And speaking of carnival activity, it's been about 20 years for all three of us since we stepped foot in one. We looked forward to finding a Jack Daniels mirror or maybe those roach clips with the long feathers attached. We had no such luck. As the times change, so does the shit that one would consider tacky. It looks like air-brushed ghetto bullshit is the new stoner mirror:
At least Matt managed to get in a serving of vegetables, even if it was slathered in butter. Tell me that shit doesn't make you hungry.
Bye-bye carny dinner. See you in 20 years.
Wrecking crews sunk their first set of iron teeth into the old, empty Tiger Stadium in Detroit yesterday. I've mentioned here several times that I am one of the many in favor of this. The club stopped playing baseball there in 1999. They should've began dismantling it the very next day. But lo, it has sat unoccupied for nine years, while vandals and the curious helped themselves to what was inside and nature overran the rest of the place. It's an eyesore. Yes, it is a historical sporting venue. I get it. But it's a paint-peeling piece of shit that had its time and now its time has come.
The thing I look forward to the least is already starting to happen, and that is the dreamy, wistful bullshit rhetoric that's going to come down like a weepy little hammer in the months during demolition. Every little shithead who stands in opposition of Tiger Stadium meeting its date with a wrecking crew is going to run off at the mouth about the injustice of reducing this building to rubble. Everyone has an idea. Everyone has a plan that THEY think is the best solution. Turn it into lofts and condos; turn it into retail shopping while keeping the lower bowl of the park; donate it to a university to play their games there; do this; do that. I have suggestion too, you know. How about you all shut off and let the grown-ups handle all of this? I understand historic preservation. It's about breathing new life into something while letting its past continue to shine. I get it. It is happening with the Book-Cadillac building, a regal, domineering structure of the city's skyline that sat vacant for decades before undergoing this massive transformation to turn it into a hotel with penthouses, condos and retail. People will stay there and spend money. It's owners might see a profit. Those owners might invest elsewhere in the city and create a very nice ripple effect. See? That works. Taking a huge baseball stadium, one that doesn't host baseball and never will, and rendering it into a 15,000-square-foot monument, some sort of oversized plaque to the city's baseball past is, well, it's just goddamn stupid.
And so the first leg of my decathalon of being irritated to the point of enragement has begun. Yesterday, in a report appearing at the Detroit Free Press' Web site, was this little nugget: A wrecking crew already poked a hole on the north side of the stadium. And near it, behind the fence, sat Rich, a man identified by the paper as a freelance radio journalist from Bloomfield Hills. That's code for "My ass is unemployed." And this is what Rich had to say about the initial piece of demolition work: "This is my friend," the article read, identifying him as making a sweeping hand gesture toward the stadium. "My friend is leaving me. A punch in the wall is like a punch in the heart."
My friend is leaving me? See, this is what I'm talking about. There are going to be hundreds of people very much like this tool, personifying a decaying object as if it possesses human qualities. This is my friend? How is an empty ballpark your "friend"? Has it loaned you money? Did it help you move that one time? Did it set you up with its sister, which, in this case, would make it a date between Rich and a five-story parking garage. Your friend? Did you two -- and by you two I mean, you AND A BUILDING -- get trashed one night and innocently hook up?
Look, City Chicken embraces nostalgia as good as anyone else. And man, I did have my fair share of wonderful times at Tiger Stadium. I really did. From my first visit to my last, and all of the times in between (which, interestingly enough, as I look back on them, involved me at the park by myself), I have a plentitude of magnificent memories of my time at Michigan and Trumbull. But I let it go, and Rich and those who think like them might not feel as frowny-faced and heavy-hearted as they do know if they would just grow a fucking set and get over it.
A punch in the wall is like a punch in the heart? That may be true for the sad sacks who, nine years later, still can't let go, but a punch in the wall is a tickle compared to the kick in the taint I'm going to administer if I have to endure this melancholy bullshit all summer long.
What have you been putting off all weekend?
Sobriety
Bored and unable to sleep in on a Saturday morning, I continued my a.m. driving series through Detroit's Southwest neighborhoods. When I hear that Journey song about the boy "born and raised in south Detroit," this is the part of town I imagine. See, there really is no "south Detroit." You have the East Side, the West Side and Southwest. The rest of the city has its own designations like Woodbridge, New Center, Corktown, Warrendale, Midtown, Brightmoor, Palmer Woods, Hubbard Farms, Delray, Indian Village, the Cultural Center, and so on. But really, the Big Three are East, West and Southwest.
I don't spend as much time in this part of the city as I would like, should, but I have a feeling that will be changing this summer. I've discovered more to this area then I previously thought existed. Color me lazy or sheltered, but I really ventured only as far as Mexicantown and parts of Vernor West, the former being a slew of restaurants with a strong suburban clientele. And while there is nothing wrong with that, but when I venture out into some of the fringe neighborhoods or go into some bizarre-o, out of the way bar in an area no one else I know would go (save for, of course, my homeboy who spearheads many of these ventures), the last thing I want to see is a room full of people who, well, look like me. Give me the obscure, the true local flavor, not some perfumed pig to comfort the young couple from Clawson. And I found a lot of that flavor while getting somewhat lost around southwest this morning, tooling aimlessly up and down Vernor far west than I ever knew existed, down Springwells, Mullane, Lawndale, Junction, etc. Fuck a bunch of farmers market or waiting in line at Toast. I want to see some real shit.
Looks like I missed the taco truck ...
And in a social climate where seemingly everywhere I turn with a camera people are constantly suspicious and nearly always aggressive with remarks and questions like "Why are you taking pictures?!!?" and "Who are you working for?!?!" (for which answers are, in this order: "fuck you and fuck you"), it made my day when I saw this guy.
Nice guy. Totally restores my faith in humanity for at least the next 12 hours, until some some dolt fucks it all up. We need more Carloses in the world -- even-tempered polite individuals just grilling up about 20 pounds of finely seasoned chicken at 10 a.m. on a Saturday.
Swung by the old Tiger Stadium, where recent news reports have been agog with the erection of a 10-foot high fence, the definite precursor to the structure's demolition. That bitch, finally, is coming down.
Just tear it down, please. It's an eyesore and a waste of space in a Corktown neighborhood that is choking on its own potential to be a dominant part of the city. We've all had our fun at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. Great. Great fucking times. But those times expired, so rip the goddamn thing down already.
If we go too long between grooming for Lamont, he ends up looking like this:
A couple of weeks ago, I had the misfortune of having a pair of $5 flip-flops disintegrate on me. Unfortunate not only because the pieces of shit were not even a week old, but the undoing came as I was exiting Comerica Park after a Tigers game with my car about, oh, seven blocks away. So, I hoofed it, half-buzzed and somewhat embarrassed, down Montcalm, across Woodward and down Elizabeth, nearly to Grand River.
My foot looked like this when I got home.
How have you changed in the past year?
Submitted by littleduckling.
I was offered a job at a different company last year and gleefully accepted. In that time, I have completely modified the way I not only behave in the workplace but my vision of what a competent, successful employee does while he's on the clock.
In my previous job, I acted foolish and drew way, way too much negative attention to myself. This was a direct result of having no respect for my boss. This guy had zilch in the way of leadership capabilities, enigma or even a rudimentary understanding of the demands of my position. He is a rich, overprivileged airhead who, on Election Day, called me into his office and asked "Why wouldn't anyone vote for Bush?" He comes from a family who did not understand the motives behind 9/11. I learned this when his brother pulled me aside that day and asked "Why would anyone want to do that do us?" Also, on his watch, countless lunatics and malcontents ran roughshod, while the harder-working staff members were granted heaping doses of scrutiny and unfair treatment, the likes of which were so brazen and misguided, you would've thought this guy had his formal training at Gitmo. Another of his relatives in this family-owned company circulated a "send all" e-mail to the rest of the building, encouraging employees to support a grass-roots prayer in public school initiative. When I pointed it out to my boss that this is not only in poor taste, but could be offensive to some and could, quite possibly, lead to a litigious action if someone really wanted to be a pain in the ass, he just grinned that rich guy grin and kept fantasizing about his tee time or sucking off sheriff deputies or whatever it was that went on in that empty head of his.
My co-workers were equally as dangerous. Most of the lot were bitter, resentful, backstabbing, untrustworthy and otherwise useless fucks. I've gotten more results from a broken screwdriver than I did from 90 percent of the people there. You had the obsessive hoarder whose desk looked like a junkyard; the morbidly obese editor who, on more than one occasion, spelled her own name wrong in her byline; the Stepford mom/wife who was afforded leniency and perks that were not at all an option for anyone else; and, lest I forget, the sheltered graphic designer with an apparent gender complex (he was technically a man, but acted like a little bitch) who gleaned more satisfaction from narcing out colleagues on trivial shit than actually performing at a level other than standard. Believe me, there is more.
But, I got out. And that has been the biggest change in the last year. With all of that shitstorm swirling around me, I did what came naturally, and that was to resist and act out. I made fun of everyone around me. I was combative and disinterested. My behavior was textbook passive-aggressive. I hated going to work every day and made sure anyone within earshot was equally as miserable, or at least I tried. My work suffered and in this business, when my work suffers, it makes others suffer. My lack of focus and total disjointedness created work for other people, other people who are still friends of mine (if that job yielded anything good, it was the four or five friends I made and managed to keep), and for that I still feel like a shit. That wasn't the plan at all, but that's how it started to fall into place. I would zone out for hours and quibble with my boss over stupid shit that had no relevance. I had stopped growing and learning at work, and began embracing my own learned helplessness.
But now, what a difference a job makes. I come to work mildly enthused and embrace new ideas. The people around me and on my staff are total pros and people rarely take shortcuts. Meetings are productive and helpful. My boss and the boss above that person are motivated to see that I succeed. I now strive for professionalism, where ennui and despair once reigned with fury. I rarely swear at work, unless in a private conversation with someone I trust. I come in early. It's not so much that I am "into my job," I'm just really into a healthier work climate. I can't fail here, it just doesn't seem possible. Is it my dream scenario? Not exactly, but it beats the hell out of the nightmare I lived for more than 9 years working for a clueless ball-breaker and his collection of two-faced sycophants.
If you had to go on a two-week vacation with any celebrity, who would you pick as your traveling companion and where would you go?
Bill Murray; Tokyo
It looked like a lot of fun in the movie.
Marlee Matlin working on memoir
Recent Comments
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havybeaks said:
Not bad... My foot is far dirtier just walking barefoot in my driveway! One day at work a group of... read more
on Clean Streets -
City Chicken said:
I thought so. And that was my first instinct for that answer. I hesitated at first because, I thought, well,... read more
on QotD: Celebrity Vacation -
Auds said:
I really liked the feeling in that movie - if that makes any sense. He definitely seemed like a good... read more
on QotD: Celebrity Vacation
Even though what you say makes sense, I've been against total demolition of Tiger Stadium. The team definitely needed a... read more
on More on Tiger Stadium--I mean, moron Tiger Stadium