 | Sunshine and Shit
Current mood:  rejuvenated Left last Friday morning to take 5 of the cross country girls down to Los Angeles for the Foot Locker Western Regionals held at Mt. SAC by Ontario. This is an annual event, occuring after the State Championships that can be entered by anyone. We took down our three graduating seniors and our two fastest sophomores to compete.
Started with me waking up, hung over (thanks Derek/Charles), unpacked and needing to get to BART in 30 minutes. I'm so hung over (and high) by the time I leave my aparment that it takes me a good five minutes to remember whether or not I managed to take a shower (I did)...I get to BART and take it to Oakland.
I get to the airport, dying of thirst and hunger, and before meeting the team by the gate, my 20 dollar bottle of hair gel gets taken from me by security. A little word here on the TSA.....what a joke! Ok, so we have this threat of explosive liquids or gels being taken onto planes. So, they ban all things over a certain oz. size and make you carry it in a small plastic bag. I gotta wonder...when they look into the bag and see a bunch of random ass containers, that look just like any other container, how do they know what's actually in there? And why do you take the toothpaste container of a 60 year old woman? And what's to stop a terrorist from using multiple, legally sized containers? The whole thing is ridiculous and really, doesn't make me feel any safer whatsoever.
I get through security and they ask if my bag is mine and if they can check it. Keep in mind right now that in my lap top case I have a pot brownie with at least 2gs in it. The screener pulls out my hair gel and scrutinizes it. Looks at the front, looks at the back, and then he holds it up to me, very suspiciously and says, "What's this?"
HELLLOOO! You just got down spending 2 minutes reading it. "Um, my hair gel." I offer him my head so he can smell that what's in the bottle is what's in my hair. He doesn't sniff. "I'm gonna have to take that from you, it's too large." So they jack my hair gel. That was a great expenditure of tax payer dollars AND TSA time. I'm sure that while they were taking my green tea hair gel, there was at least one terrorist, somewhere in the world, getting on a plane with a knife or something else.
The plane flight is uneventful, and when we touch down, we rent the team car that shall be known for the rest of the trip as Fredo. At some point, the car ceases to be Fredo and I become Fredo, leaving our reservations everywhere under that name, to the laughing delight of the girls and very strange looks from hostesses. I get asked three times, "how do you spell that?" The spelling varies from restaurant to restaurant.
We take them to register for the race and then have them do a little mini practice and run the course. After that, we get to the hotel, check in and head out to dinner at the Macaroni Grill. While there, I almost give myself an instant heart attack by ordering a Pesto pasta with bacon, tomatoes and mozzarella. I can feel grease congeal in my throat and my heart struggles through the rest of the evening. We tell them it's my birthday and one of the waitresses sings happy birthday to me in Italian. As she does so, I look deeply into her eyes throughout the entire song. She blushes, her voice cracks and she barely finishes. As we leave the restaurant, the girls tell me that she was talking about me with another hostess. "Go back and get her number Coach." "Why, so I can fly to LA for a date? No thanks."
We go to see Happy Feet. Friggin' hilarious. I mean, if it's not enough to watch penguins tap dance for an hour and a half, hearing four of them talk in Spanish accents is even better. Our group was not only the oldest in the theatre, but the one group that didn't stop laughing the entire time. Best line of the movie, "They are calling for something.......ME!"...most repeated line of the movie for the rest of the weekend..."Raaaamooon!"
After the movie, it's bedtime for the girls, and Andy picks me up to cruise West Covina. For the first time in three years I get to see Chica!!! For those of you that don't know, Chica was my dog in LA. We got her sophomore year as a puppy and raised her. When we graduated, she stayed with Andy. She is the sweetest dog you could ever hope for, a beautiful tan pitbull. When Andy opens the door, she comes running, and for about five seconds I'm afraid. Here comes this beast. You see, when I left SC, Chica was a slightly heavy lap dog, probably about a foot or so off the ground and about 30 lbs. Now, she's a fully developed pit bull, about two and a half feet tall (if not more), and weighing closer to 70lbs. She's so happy to see me she almost knocks me over. I told Andy she should no longer go by Chica, instead she should be called Senorita.
So then we have two options (after smoking of course)....we can go meet his friends at a bar, or we can go get a bite to eat and a beer. I'm all for the going out thing, but then when he finds out that all his friends are at this dive called the Rendezvous, he tells me there's no way we're going there. I ask for BJs and a pizookie, but he goes, no, we're going to Hooters.
Now, I've never been to Hooters before. For those of you that know my politics, that kind of (in my mind) female degradation isn't something I want to financially support. On the other hand, as Andy likes to point out so often, as with stripping, they get paid well and do have the choice to do it. Now, these arguments don't make me feel any better personally, but he does have a point. So he finds out I've never been and takes me out there. Yea, it's LA, so of course the girls are gorgeous, but I find out why when I order buffalo strips and get five very hard and almost tasteless pieces of what could actually be cat meat. We have a pitcher, catch up and he drops me back at the hotel.
Next morning, we have to get up at 6 am to be at the race on time for warm ups. Of all the times to easily deal with high school girls, anytime before 8 am usually works best. They're all tired and groggy. After the race, and they've showered, it's a different story. We deal with 5 delirious and energetic high schoolers by taking them to the mall. First, we all eat at Red Robin, and then the girls go out exploring.
And here's where the weekend turns to shit. I have to sit in utter disbelief as USC loses to UCLA, and also loses a chance at the National Championship game. I have a lot to say on this one...
1) UCLA played one heck of a football game. They played with very few mistakes, lots of intensity, and an incredible game plan on the part of their defensive coordinator. No one can take that away from them, and my points below do not seek to minimalize the type of football game they played.
2) USC did not adapt well to (1) above. They failed to come out aggressively and didn't really look at all like the USC I've been watching most of the season until the final drive of the game. They looked slow, responded poorly (especially to the rushing of the Bruins quarterback), and never really looked like they had a strong desire to win the game until it was too late.
3) Despite 1 and 2 above, USC made some incredibly horrendous unforced errors throughout the game that continued to give UCLA opportunites, momentum and faith that they could win. No matter how good of a football team you are, if you spend a good portion of the game creating penalties, long yardage 3rd downs and turnovers, you're not going to win.
4) In the end, even though I think if you have these two teams play 10 games in a row, USC will win at least 8 of them (one UCLA grad I talked to today disagreed with me and said that if they played 10 times, USC would win ten times and that the Bruins were extremely lucky to do as well as they did, but as we can tell from Saturday, that's not true), it doesn't matter that they would win 8/10. They didn't win this one. This is the one that mattered.
5) USC finished the season 10-2, Pac-10 Champions, going to the Rose Bowl to play Michigan, an 11-1 team. UCLA finishes the season 7-5, champions of nothing, playing the Emerald Bowl against Florida State, a 6-6 team. I think I'll take the USC side of that any day.
6) When USC lost, it boosted morale in Westwood. This is understandable. However, the entire Pac-10 lost out, the Bruins included. Had USC gotten to the national championship game, not only would it have given the Pac-10 more national recognition (aren't you tired of the Big 10 getting all the credit?) but each school in the Pac-10 would have received 1.5 million dollars to go to scholarship programs. USC needs it, Cal needs it, Stanford needs it, UCLA needs it, they all need it, and now none of them have it. But I know UCLA students would gladly forfeit 1.5 million to watch a 7-5 team beat USC, so that's neither here nor there, but overall, disappointing for the conference.
So those are my thoughts on the game. I think UCLA played a very solid game in conjunction with a poor game by SC, but you put those two teams together again and USC will win the vast majority. But hey, that doesn't matter right? I'm the first to admit that what mattered was the game on Saturday, and they didn't win that one. Better luck next year.
So after that, we fly back to Oakland, I cruise up to the city and spend some time with what is quickly becoming my new favorite group of people...Christina, Aliza, Tamara, two awesome aussies named Gordon and Andrew and a new introduction to Molly. She's pretty cool. We hit up Delirium in the Mission (I can't say exactly how much I enjoy the feeling of the Mission as opposed to the Marina, but it's pretty substantial)...I gotta say I'm thankful to Christina...it took a lot of courage to introduce me to her friends, but I'm so glad she did because I think I found a new group of people that are great to be around and fun to party with.
Big week this week with a black tie event friday, two parties over the weekend, and my birthday soon approaching.
But I gotta run....I think I hear the masses....they're waiting anxiously, cheering for something..........me! |
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