I don't know if anyone even likes these posts, but they're useful to helping me remember details later, so here we go.
Last Friday, I met Bubba in Atlanta. Now that the Seahawks are world-beaters, he didn't feel the need to put on a different jersey in every town. His whole "love the one you're with" philosophy has been supplanted by true love. He and the Seahawks are now a "we," at least until Russell Wilson is broken in two. Then, I suspect, Bubba will want to see other people.
Friday night kicked off with a blowout high school game, as Catholic high school Marist crushed Carver. Surprises: I finally found a seat I hate worse than aluminum bleachers (concrete); this teensy Atlanta high school's fight song is Ohio State's alma mater; Carver, whose punter seldom kicked the ball more than 10 yards, was somehow 7-2; a uniformed football player singing the national anthem; and zero students in the stands. I swear every student at Marist is in the band or on the team. Not a surprise: the Marist crowd was almost all white, and the Carver crowd was entirely black. Welcome back to the South. I wanted to move to the visitors' stands, where they were having more fun losing than the home crowd was having winning, but native son Bubba would have none of it. I deferred to his judgement.
Of the Highland Inn, I will only remember this step out of the bathroom. Those are six-inch tiles. My fall was spectacular.
Saturday, we drove to Tuscaloosa for this week's Game of the Century, LSU at Alabama. Another blowout. Alabama has the best program, players and coach in college football, and their fans are loud indeed. That said, what a crushing disappointment the environment was. There were only pockets of tailgating. There were literally miles of roadside booths selling nearly identical merchandise. We looked for hours for something to do and found nothing. At the four hour mark, we actually discussed which patch of grass we would like to sit upon to kill more time. Once in the stadium, I was only slightly less disappointed. For a program of such rich history, Alabama has no apparent traditions. They have little but the team. Instead of chants or rituals or the band playing, they blare music over the PA during gaps in action. In other words, it's as generic and corporate and, yes, deathly dull as an NFL game. But oh, those fans. What a bunch of spoiled douchebags. Their sneering disdain extends even to their own players, especially quarterback AJ McCarron. The kid has won back to back championships and is cruising easily to an unprecedented third. He was a nearly perfect 14/20 with three TDs and no picks. And when he threw each of his six incompletions, the crowd around us erupted with rage, cursing his insolent imperfection. Bubba and I just stared at one another in complete disbelief. The highlight for me was while (what else?) looking at merchandise, when I came upon the below t-shirt. Note that perpetually overrated #2 Oregon had been upset a mere 30 hours before.
Oh yeah. The miniskirt/do-me-boots combination prevalent in Tuscaloosa among women of all ages was a highlight, too. As was the local radio program which conceded that Nick Saban "might find Austin a more desirable place to live than Tuscaloosa." Yeah, and I might prefer the taste of peanut butter to that of taxi carpeting.
On Sunday, we zipped to Atlanta for the Seahawks/Falcons game. Boy, do I love the Georgia Dome. What a great facility. Ample footroom, short rows, great sightlines, restaurants with great views of the field, close action. The Falcons employ every gimmick imaginable to attract fans, too, from door prizes to parachuting t-shirts to kiss cams. It doesn't help. For this playoff rematch, the stadium was a third empty, and those fans were stunningly quiet. I can't recall ever seeing such utterly listless fans. No one even gave Bubba crap about his Seahawks jersey. I don't think anyone noticed or cared. The Seahawks mercifully crushed the Falcons, so we left early to catch our plane to New Orleans for the game that night.
Oh, Delta airlines, my arch-nemesis, fuck you also. I would be more understanding about your needing to switch out my malfunctioning plane if the adjacent gate's plane wasn't being switched out too. Have you ever considered, like, maintenance?
We folded our legs into the two inches of legroom beneath our ass-decimating seats just before halftime, right when the Saints blew out the game. Dallas was so unremarkable as to be barely present in my memory. They were cannon fodder. So yes, four games, four massive blowouts. That was unfortunate. As for the Superdome, this was my second and hopefully last visit. The fans are boisterous and fun and incredibly loud, but oh, that building. When I first saw post-hurricane reports about mass-defecation and disease in the Superdome, my reaction was "You can't really blame them. I don't know what else the place is good for." What a horrible stadium. Physically painful seats, most of them very far from the sideline. A single entrance. No mass-transit solutions. Cabs won't even go near the place, despite the bullshit PA announcements that they're waiting on Poydras Street. When? Wednesday?
We spent Monday in Last Month's Maxipad, or "Nawlins" to some. The cuisine and live music were typically sublime, the people perfectly segregated by race, and the smell is only now dissipating from my lung cells. For all the flying and driving and walking and money, the highlight of the entire trip was simply listening to the tight jazz of The Yisrael Trio at Mojitos Monday night. Oh, and the Miami @ Tampa game I refused to go to because the teams both stink? A 22-19 squeaker.
I leave you with the state of my big toe Monday night. It was a joy to walk 18 miles on.
