Another mess of a blog.

from July 23, 2007

I just came back from Atlantic City and I know that you are all eager to here what I have to say. Heck, if I were you, I’d be just dying to know what I had to say. But I guess if I were you I might also be able to find something better to do, so maybe I’ll just get to it before you realize that you could be, I don’t know, doing something outdoors. I’m just saying…..

Anyway, I’ll get to my wacky (ha!) adventures in Atlantic City in due course. I’ve got a few things to hit this time around.

1- MY NEW HAT. When I was a kid I had a great hat. It was a Caterpillar Truck (CAT) mesh baseball cap. It was white mesh, a dark blue front, a white band over the brim, and a yellow CAT patch. It was the classic redneck truck driver hat and I wore it everywhere. (I sound like a dorky little kid, I know, but I bet you were no better either.) The hat got worn into the ground and eventually thrown away. This was the late 70s into the early 80s, and since then mesh hats have pretty much gone the way of shirts with your name decaled onto the front, which I also wore. They became sort of the Napoleon Dynamite of headgear. Well, much like long, girly hair on guys, the mesh hat is back. My new hat is a Mets cap. It has white mesh in the back, classic blue with the orange logo on the front, orange trim on the brim, and a small Mets logo on the back. Officially, it is the “Mets Truckstop Cap” and I love it. Deep inside of me the little dorky twelve-year old grinning.

2- HARRY POTTER MANIA. The seventh and final, I hope, Harry Potter book went on sale this weekend. A couple of people got copies early in the mail. From the way Scholastic, J.K. Rowling, the media, and everybody is carrying on, you’d think that the plans for our government’s secret time travel machine had leaked out. Lawsuits are threatened, web-sites shut down, thugs beating up little old ladies- enough already! Repeat after me- IT IS A CHILDREN’S BOOK! And not a particularly good one, either. If I hear one more dickwad compare it to Lord of The Rings I’ll go ballistic. Anyone who ever read Tolkien would realize that Harry Potter is not even a fraction as literary. OK, it is good kiddie fare, but WTF is up with the guys in business suits on the subway reading this?

3- STEAM PIPE EXPLOSION IN NYC. It wasn’t me, I swear.

4- THE HAMAS MICKEY MOUSE. I hope you all saw this. God I hope so. It was the funniest story I’ve seen in a long time. First of all, I am not making this up. Second of all, this is absolutely disgusting and I am not making light of the horrible hate and anti-Semitism behind this. I am simply laughing at the crap they televised. Do not accuse me of insensitivity, because you all now how deeply caring and compassionate I am. (Hear that ladies? I am a sensitive modern man.)  It was a guy in a second-rate Mickey Mouse suit singing about how he wants to kill Jews and how Muslim kids should be martyrs. The funny part was in the last episode. Farur, The Hamas Mickey Mouse, was offered a ton of money for his land from “a Jew.” Farfur refused. The Jew yelled. Farfur refused. The Jew beat up Farfur. Farfur refused while they cut to the young host of the show looking afraid. I’m not too sure “The Jew” was really Jewish. He looked black. Plus the actor worked for the Palastinians, so that may have been the tip-off. He wore a suit that was straight out of Saturday Night Fever. Remember the white suit with the huge lapels Tony wore? Reverse it so the suit was black and the shirt was white and there it is. The black 1970s disco Jew yelled some more and killed Farfur for his land. The young host came back and explained that Farfur had become a martyr.

Now that I reread that it doesn’t seem so funny. I guess you had to see it.

5- SUNBURN. I’ve got it, which segues into:

ATLANTIC CITY!

I was there for three days. Had a blast!

Among the highlights were:

– Sitting by the rooftop pool on my first night when some women decided to make it a topless pool. Security didn’t try too hard to stop them, and they were booed when the girls put their tops back on.

– T-shirt confusion. On Friday I walked down the boardwalk in my FDNY shirt. For the third time in my life, I was stopped by a man to tell me how great a job we did. The first two times happened in Cleveland in 2002. I was wearing a FDNY hat and heard over and over how great we were during 9/11. I let them know that I wasn’t really a fireman then, but this time and I thanked them and wondered how low they must think the standards are if I cold be a fireman. I also, for the first time, showed my LHS pride by wearing my LHS shirt out in public. Sure it was in another state, but who would want to wear it and answer all the Lafayette questions you get back home? I’m not stupid, despite what you think. So I wore the shirt on the boardwalk, the one that simply says “Lafayette H.S. Staff.” A woman came up to me and thought she had found a fellow citizen of Louisiana. Someone else saw only the “staff” part of the shirt and thought I was with the crew setting up for a boardwalk concert.

– Paying only $2.83 for gas. I filled up my tank, two tin cans, and my pockets for that price.

– Seeing a great show. I snagged tickets to a Beatles tribute band, called Yesterday. Great show! They did all the early Beatles stuff perfectly. They looked like the Beatles, sounded like them, acted like them, and the music was great. We sang, danced, screamed, all that good stuff. Then I got to meet them and they were pretty cool. “John” and “Ringo” came from Las Vegas, “George” came from Oklahoma, but “Paul” came from good old Brooklyn USA. He lived in both Bay Ridge and Coney Island so I had a neighbor. (Wisely, I didn’t say I work at LHS.) If you get a chance to see them, do it.

– Just relaxing. Swimming, gambling, walking the boardwalk, hanging at the beach (where I got the sunburn), it was a good time away. Shame I didn’t win much. Or at all.

It may not sound like an exciting weekend, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. My whole plan was to relax, and that’s just what I did.

So I covered my hat, Harry Potter, the steam pipe, Hamas Mickey, and Atlantic City. The usual sort of sloppy stew I usually write. Sheesh.