Yankees 3, Red Sox 0

Can't remember the last time I walked into a Yanks-Sox game with this much swagger. Stagger, maybe, but not so much swagger. It's good to be the fucking king.

Had a particularly tiring morning at home, and then headed up to the Stadium super-early with Chuck S. My old buddy from LI was working the scoreboard for the evening and invited us up for a quick tour. Pretty insane control room-- or as they say in the biz, totally fused up.

So we got a 10-minute crash course in digital sports production, which left us a bit dazed. I was only able to muster up one lame joke about VHS porn tapes, which wasn't even acknowledged. We were spit out into the 200-level hallway at 2:30 with 90 minutes to kill before game time.

Seemed like a perfect chance to check out Tommy Bahama's, the Stadium's full cocktail bar. I can't recommend this move highly enough for all you fans out there. An $11 T & T is a splendid way to kick off a ballgame. We felt classy, refreshed, and even a little tipsy. I advise getting out before further rounds of drinks.

Justice Sotomayor threw a marginal but acceptable first pitch, and we were underway. Chuck and I beefed up our usual "dollar game" by picking two Yanks apiece and two Sox for each other. I got stuck with Ellsbury and Baldelli, along with my own picks of Teixeira & Matsui. Not a great money day for Lee, but I did benefit from a bizarre A-Rod double-play.

CC dominated to the point of numbness. We spent most of the game discussing absurd music lists like "bands that had two different eras of success with two completely different lead singers" and "drummers that subsequently fronted new bands and played an instrument that wasn't the drums." This was obviously a complete blast.

At one point my buddy in the booth had me and Chuck on the giant scoreboard camera for something like 10 seconds, which we were completely oblivious to. The non-existent audio track was "OK, I can see Genesis but Gabriel and Phil were actually in the band at the same time, so it really doesn't compare to AC/DC or Van Halen. There has to be some criteria separating the different eras, or else we're looking at a lot of gray area..."

Not much else to report, although I did find the "HUUUUUUUUUUUGHES!!!" chants absolutely ridiculous. I get "MOOOOOOOSE!!!" and even "YOOOOOOOOOK!!!" but this just sounds stupid.

The humiliation of Billy Wagner was quite enjoyable. I suffered through a terrible game at Shea a few years ago where "Sandman II" out-closed "Sandman" in brutal fashion. Wouldn't it be fun if like six different closers in the majors came out to "Enter Sandman"? I'd still like to see Mariano experiment with Slayer's "Angel of Death" a few times, just to shake things up a bit.

Almost tempted to throw back a few at the Dugout afterwards, but we thought better and headed right home for more music lists ("bands that are named after a member who isn't the lead singer") and other silly stuff. I was barely conscious for today's 1:00 sports bonanza, which the City of New York swept in majestic fashion. It's good to be the fucking king.

The Alaska Diaries, week 2 (part II)

Pukers Die!!! The Alaska Diaries
[names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent]


WEEK TWO (part II)

Friday (day 12)
Shower! We eat at J.J.'s. We're playing tonight again.

Things are still really weird here. They make us learn tunes from cassette by Trooper and the Kentucky Headhunters, like "Girl Don't Know," "Working Like a Dog" and "Dumas Walker." Dumas has hilarious lines like "We'll get a slawburger, fries, and a bottle of 'ski," and "he takes his orders down one at a time; he don't need a pen, he's got a photogenic mind." I sang "Girl Don't Know."

SET LIST:
Jam
Hey Joe
Sneakin' Sally (country style)
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Gimme Three Steps
"Lonesome" Blues
Honky Tonk Women
Brown Sugar
Dead Flowers
L.A. Woman
Roadhouse Blues
Break On Through
Little Wing
Higher Ground (remix)
Further On Up the Road
Dumas Walker
Girl Don't Know
Proud Mary
Bad Moon Rising
Heard It Thru the Grapevine
Suzie Q
Fortunate Son
Lay Down Sally
Cocaine
Sunshine of Your Love
Bad Case of Loving You
There She Goes Again
Firefly
American Woman
Ohio

_________ almost gets in a fight with a guy who claimed to be a Cree Indian. Some other crazy guy named "The Chief." We scored hash and smoked it out of a beer can. __________ got nickname "Death Row." [I have no idea what that was about]

The club refuses to pay us our $200 because of our huge bar tab. We settle for $100 and take off.

Saturday (day 13)
We all woke up late. Another shower. _________ drives and gets a ticket for going 102 in an 80. We stay at Iron Creek & smoke lots of hash.

Sunday (day 14)
SHIT HAPPENS! Van breaks down on road while listening to Marquee Moon. The transmission and engine are completely blown. Sounded like death.

We hitch a little bit down the highway, and get van towed to Watson Lake. ______ & _________ take off for Skagway in a mobile home for Skagway, leaving the four of us stranded in Yukon. We smoke hash, have rock-throwing contests and play pitch (card game).

We live in a fucking junkyard.

We make a pasta dinner.

week three: surviving on porn & beans in a tent

The Alaska Diaries, week 2 (part I)

Pukers Die!!! The Alaska Diaries
[names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent]

WEEK TWO (part I)

Monday (day 8)
We left the Tetons today. It smells awful in the van.

Made our stop for the night in Polson, Montana. The place is called the Rocking C Ranch.

_______ is elected to talk the campsite into letting us play music at their bar for the night. He tells the guy the name of our band is "The Tommyknockers" or maybe "Tommy Knockers." We're warned "none of that acid rock shit" by the bartender.

SET LIST:
Sneakin' Sally / Opening Jam
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Little Wing
Hey Joe
Suzie Q
Lay Down Sally (sung as "Lay Down ______")
Firefly
Can't Help Falling in Love
Firefly (acoustic)
Gimme Three Steps
Red House
Drivin' South

We ate a whole giant jar of beef jerky at the bar. _______ gags and almost throws up outside. My earring rips out of my ear while wrestling out in the grass. We took real showers.

Tuesday (day 9)
We enter Canada. It sucks! We're hassled big time at Customs. _____'s pipe gets taken by officers, and ______ is questioned for half hour about a DWI on his record.

We stay at the WASA Provinical Park in British Columbia, which sucks. It rains the whole time. Me and ______ walk over to bar and buy fries and onion rings. We buy a "case" of beer, which is only 12 beers in Canada and still costs $20. We're bummin'.

Wednesday (day 10)
Woke up soaking fucking wet. Exchange money, and check out Banff Park.

"2 for 1" pizza deal in Prince George totally sucks. Prince George is weird-- we met a guy who's headed up to Alaska too, who tells us we'll never make it across Alaska Highway in our van with our tires.

We camp at Hart Highway park and sleep in the van.

Thursday (day 11)
Shower. Shitty gravel road. I saw a black bear. We find out the Al-Can is flooded out and closed.

We pull into Dawson Creek to get more info on the Highway. There's a huge parade in Dawson Creek-- it's "Mile '0' Day." We finally get in touch with ______, who we're picking up in Skagway. He has $10.

We're stuck in town for the night, so we look for a gig. The first place we ask lets us play! This time ________ does the talking.

The place is called the Trucker's Saloon. Rocky is running the place. Here's our deal: we're booked for two nights, we get three hotel rooms with showers, and free Molson on tap for both nights. We're also paid $200. INCREDIBLE!

We just fucking set up and play. It's a cowboy-type place.

SET LIST (not in order):
Jam (x2)
Hey Joe
Sneakin' Sally
Shotgun Blues
Highway Chile
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Suzie Q (x2)
Lay Down Sally
The Ocean
Gimme Three Steps
Fortunate Son (x2)
Honky Tonk Women
Brown Sugar
L.A. Woman
Roadhouse Blues
Break on Through
Little Wing
Stone Free
Higher Ground (remix)
Funk You
Tush / Further On Up the Road
Sunshine of Your Love
"A" Jam w/guy on harmonica
Red House
Ohio
Long Train Runnin'

Lots of characters at bar: Lonnie from Detroit, "Judy" dancing drunk with ______, and ________ is completely shitfaced. Judy keeps yelling "Go for broke, you brats!" Some guy is selling ice (the drug)-- we try to avoid. The drums are completely falling apart. Rocky's girlfriend is HOT. Everybody is drunk.

Things are really weird- Dawson Creek is a fucked-up place.

week two, part II: the gig continues!

A-Rod "Man of the Year" Caption Contest!

Imagine my delight when I re-stumbled upon this fantastic photo of A-Rod taken by the Mz!

In honor of A-Rod's nomination for the Marvin Miller "Man of the Year" contest, let's have a little contest of our own! Comment your funniest caption for the photo below, and I'll choose a winner to be proudly displayed at the top of my blog for the rest of the season. Hell, maybe for the rest of eternity!

Captions are due by Sunday, September 20th. I reserve the right to choose my own idea if I deem it funnier than anyone else's.

The Alaska Diaries, week 1

Six of my friends and I got in a van one morning and drove 4500 miles from Poughkeepsie to Kasilof, Alaska. Most of our friends are sick to fucking death of hearing about it, and most of us that went on the trip don't even talk about it much. In one of my brighter moves, I kept a detailed journal of our epic adventure.

Last week I decided to dig out the diary and pimp it out as a series of entries for Lee's Steez. I read about three pages and threw the idea out the window. Something about today made me think about it again, so here goes nothing...

Pukers Die!!! The Alaska Diaries
[names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent]

WEEK ONE

Monday (day 1)
(Harrison Lake campgrounds)

Tuesday (day 2)
Second day of trip.
This book was stolen today. It's getting very hot and _____'s feet smell awful. Last night we played hacky-sack. We went through Chicago today. Visited Field of Dreams.
Stayed at Beed's Lake camping grounds, complete with man-made waterfall.

TRIP SHAKESPEARE!

Wednesday (day 3)
Bought fireworks.
BADLANDS- S. Dakota... INCREDIBLE! Me & _____ got pretty fucking lost; scared. ______ finds his fossil teeth. We play guitar and sing. Good rock climbing. Stayed in Custer State Park (?).
I miss ________ & _______.
Great shower. I SMELL!

Thursday (day 4)
Found more rocks. Climbed in Keyhole State Park.

Friday (day 5)
Continental Divide. SNOW! Mostly just driving.
1st day in Tetons. Got shitfaced on Jim Beam.

Saturday (day 6)
Climbed mountain in Tetons- probably not allowed to just walk up there. Jumped in freezing cold fucking lake in park.
Drove in to town-- listened to Tonight's the Night. Drank lots of Schmidt beer. _________ pierced my ear with a stud and a potato. Drank tons of Rainier beer. _________ walked across campfire in bare feet.

Sunday (day 7)
11-mile hike. Drank more Rainier and Busch beer.


next week: our first gig!

Meal Music

After a summer that can only be described as inconsistent, Jr.'s eating habits seem to be returning back to normal. Choosing the right breakfast/lunch/dinner soundtrack is important-- the music must be calming for both child and parent. Here's our top five:
1. Stone Flower - Antonio Carlos Jobim
2. Bright Size Life - Pat Metheny Group
3. Wave - Antonio Carlos Jobim
4. Greatest Hits, Etc. - Paul Simon
5. The Mollusk (tracks 1, 2, 7, 10, 13) - Ween

Careful when branching out, even within genres... Weather Report's Black Market was working splendidly until I jumped out of my seat during "Gibraltar," sending a bowl of mac'n cheese flying across the room. Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman was even worse-- the boy chewed a one-inch square off the corner of his bib.

Yankees 10, White Sox 0

For at least the third time this season, I wasn't all that jazzed about hiking up for today's game. My original plan was to bring the boy for Calculator Day, but he's been kinda croupy (croupie?) lately. Plus, I just bought him a flip-style calculator at Staples the other day.

I was still home twiddling my thumbs at around 12:30, occasionally clicking weather forecasts and nursing a Diet Mountain Dew. Finally I said "Fuck it," and headed up to the Stadium (as opposed to saying "Fuck it," and staying home).

My only ideas for dealing with the boredom/agony of a Sergio Mitre start and potential rain delay were (1) taking two Ambiens and working on the Saturday puzzle, or (2) keeping a running account of things and working on the Saturday puzzle. [I'm only now realizing that choice (3), namely both (1) and (2) at the same time, would have been by far the best idea.]

Here's option (2), at least for a few innings:

1:20 - The usual lady at my beer booth greeted me this time with, "Another Guinness?" even though I just walked into the Stadium.

1:23 - I'm nurturing a tiny little "Hey, who knows what might happen up here today?!" feeling in my gut, even though I ended up taking two Advils instead of sleeping pills. Teixeira and A-Rod strike out to end the inning.

1:32 - I love this kind of weather for baseball: cool and misty, like Niagara Falls. Reminds me of so many blissfully drunk baseball games with my wife, even though I don't think we had such a great time when we went to Niagara Falls.

1:35 - Just noticed that the team pennants (in order of standings) are completely different than they used to be at the old Stadium. Now they're arranged semi-cirularly around the top along the home plate side (I think they used to be along the very top of the bleacher wall). They may have also added some new flags-- The first four I see are (1) the United States flag, (2) a black P.O.W. flag, (3) a purple flag of some kind, perhaps an Excelsior state flag, and (4) the Italian national flag. I'm not sure about (4); I'll look into it at some point.

1:37 - Again, the rainy weather's totally reminding me of the Mz... I hope that's not weird.

1:40 - I'm sitting next to a guy (Yankee hat) with his girlfriend (Red Sox hat)-- he's got that embarassed-but-hey-we're-both-just-really-big-baseball-fans look on his face. Not to be confused with the why-the-hell-did-I-ever-agree-to-any-of-this look.

1:41 - Cano gets a well-deserved round of applause before his first at bat of the game.

1:44 - I've always been fascinated by White Sox fans, mainly because I'd never in my life met an actual White Sox fan until a few years ago (a little before their championship). Kinda like being fascinated by Pygmies or hammerhead sharks, I guess.

1:46 - I may have been wrong about the Red Sox girlfriend-- she's been fiddling around with what appear to be brand new (and uncomfortable) sandals for the entire game. Now she's eating an ice cream sundae out of a little plastic Yankee hat. Bandwagon fan!!! Assholes!!!

1:47 - Jose Contreras is getting whacked around a bit here in the 2nd inning. Having this guy pitch for your team is like having a light fixture in your house that only works 15% of the time (which we happen to have in the back of our apartment).

1:50 - Here comes the second Red Sox hat of the afternoon, this time on the head of a small child. Children under the age of six, the elderly, and the severly disabled are the only Boston fans I excuse from harassment. I once spit on the back of a female college student wearing a Sox hat on Broadway. Gimme a break, it was the morning after game 7 of the 2004 ALCS...

1:55 - Hilarious... Alex Rios hails from "Coffee, AL" according to the Yankee scoreboard, as in
"Coffee, Al?"
"Sure, Flo."

1:58 - A guy sitting next to me (not the Sox girl's boyfriend) just asked me who I'm reporting for-- I guess I've been scribbling on scraps of paper. What I should have said was, "I write for bomberbitches.com. I'm cataloguing the underage titties in the Stadium today." What I actually said was, "I write for a sports blog."

2:03 - Robinson Cano... he's so hot right now.

2:05 - The guys next to me asked if I'm "writing in shorthand." Nobody can read my note-taking handwriting, occasionally including myself.

2:10 - I came to the rather embarassing realization yesterday morning that EVERY pair of white socks I own contains at least one major hole. This is like finding out that your entire CD collection is scratched; first sorrow, then suspicion. How could this possibly happen?

2:12 - Can we now safely say that Mitre is pitching brilliantly? Maybe I'll loudly exclaim, "Mitre is pitching brilliantly," to no one in particular.

2:13 - No reaction at all from anyone.

2:16 - Absolutely no doubt in my mind that Jeter's astounding season is a direct result of the anti-Jeter sentiments expressed by Bill Simmons near the beginning of this season.

2:20 - Man, that was funny-- might be tough to explain. The guy sitting right behind me (not from NY) just responded to a vendor's cry of "Peanuts!!!?" with a query of his own, "Are the peanuts salted?!" The vendor let out a sideways "Nah," and winged a sack of nuts at the guys from about 10 rows down. The bag was way short and splashed into a puddle of water/beer/soda two rows in front of the customer. The transaction came to an awkward halt, until the guy crawled down and retrieved the nuts. He then paid for his unsalted snack.

2:30 - I just saw a "Different House, Same Result" t-shirt... isn't it a bit too soon for that one?

2:32 - Well, there goes Mitre's no-hitter. I'm going to take a piss.

I left pretty much right after this. Yes, I'll forever be known as the guy that left early during the Mitre-Gaudin one-hitter. I think I can live with that.

"In play, run(s)"

As many of you already know, the Mz & I have been without cable for (almost exactly!) a year now. Our decision to "snip the wire" sprang from several events last summer:

1) It became apparent that the Noggin channel provided Jr. with pacification and stimulation far superior to anything we could possibly provide. I was also showing signs of addiction to the program Oswald.

2) We had brunch with some friends who cancelled their cable years ago. They seemed perfectly happy and normal.

3) There was no way the Yankees were making the playoffs.

So we did the unthinkable. TV was officially and irrevocably out of our lives. It took me about 7 minutes to completely catalog the channels we still got from Time Warner (not bad, actually: the basics plus TNT (long gone), TBS (lost it about two weeks ago), CSPAN2 (?!), and other odds & ends).

So how does one get by when one roots for the best team in Major League Baseball and can't watch the fucking games? Of course I see the games I actually attend, plus the channel 9 games and the dreaded Fox games, but that don't add up to much. How exactly does one get by?

Like a castaway developing a taste for raw starfish, I actually enjoy the MLB Gameday service. Pretty much all the major sports have something like this going on, but this one really might be the best. It certainly beats the hell out of ESPN's awful MLB Gamecast, which is about as exciting as watching a ballgame out the window of an airplane.

Here's an example of how Gameday expertly builds suspense for the viewer: note the "In play, run(s)" in Jeter's result column. We don't really know what happened now, do we?! I mean, we know Jeter knocked in at least one run, obviously (I sure hope so-- bases loaded, no outs), but was it a single? Grand slam? Double play? Those 5 or 6 seconds of anticipation are indescribable-- you know something good has happened, and the only question is just how good is it? Quite different from the 5 or 6 seconds of anticipation you get when you're tuned in to WCBS 880 and Sterling's not sure if the ball's out of the park, foul, or caught.

Here's another one. "In play, no out" is good, but no run(s) were scored or else it would've said "In play, run(s)"... get it? If symbolic logic wasn't your strong suit in college, you should probably just stick with Michael Kay.

Gameday also allows you to control the perspective of the "camera" on the "batter." The first shot here gives you the best possible view of Derek Jeter's ass available to the general public.

I prefer this next one, which I developed one stoney night at the computer. Here, our sight line originates about fifty feet underground somewhere out past second base. The brown disc-outline is actually the pitcher's mound, as seen from beneath. In this particular case, I saw the mound as a giant spaceship visiting Yankee Stadium with the sole purpose of abducting Nick Swisher before he could strike out or hit into a double play.

Check out the graphic display of tension here for Hairston's epic 12-pitch at bat and eventual walk. I'll take this over the idiotic "pitch-by-pitch" garbage they peddle on TV any day of the week (except Saturdays, when I usually get to watch the game on TV).

Plus you get the awesome spattering of red strikes & green balls. My main complaint here is that you don't get a special graphic when the batter is drilled by a pitch... some kind of splotch or throbbing circle would be great. Might be enough to make me want to watch Joba Chamberlain pitch on MLB Gameday!

Gameday isn't without its quirks and annoyances. Circled in blue down below is a shiny, juicy button that no human could possibly resist pushing, especially when it promises to deliver digital footage of Mark Teixeira driving home two runs. All you get is a prompt asking you to sign up (and pay) for Gameday Premium service.

Under that, circled in red, is an "Injury Delay" update message. Who got injured? What happened?! Usually we never know.

Underlined in green is a perfectly clear, unambigous and unsurprising piece of news.

Sometimes Gameday does weird shit, like this message "Pitcher Change: Jason Jennings replaces Jason Jennings." If I had a dime for every time I wanted to replace a pitcher with a better version of himself!!

Win Some, Lose Some

Another one of those fun-filled blog diaries of Fox's Saturday afternoon coverage. I don't think I'll last too long here, as Jr. should be waking up somewhere around the 4th inning.

4:10 - Well, Junichi "Lunchmeat" Tazawa is off to a somewhat shaky start. Fox's Sprint Pitcher Profile didn't have much info except "must have pinpoint accuracy" or something like that.
4:17 - Tim McCarver just made the first of what will surely be many dumb Japan jokes.
4:22 - They're talking about Burnett's rocky relationship with Jorge... have any of our good pitchers actually gotten along with Jorge?
4:24 - Well, A. J. Burnett's off to a somewhat shaky start. I'm guessing 15+ total runs today.
4:27 - PLEEEEEAAAAASSSSE nail Ortiz in the fucking neck... or at least the ribs. Don't ask questions, just do it!
4:29 - Ortiz slaps a double into left. See?? Just do it!
4:31 - I was really hoping Jeter would show up in a Manny-style wig for his first at-bat today. Jim Rice is such a fucking idiot.
4:36 - I read somebody talking about Pedroia and Youkilis being real "throwback" players. Evolutionary throwbacks, perhaps? A small tidepool was struck by lightning, filling the prehistoric cave with ion-charged ozone...
4:40 - Figures-- the one time Jorge actually goes 1st to 3rd, Cano lollygags his way on and off the basepaths.
4:42 - Eric Hinske's kind of a neanderthal version of the King of Queens guy, if that's possible.
4:48 - I'm reading The Bad Guys Won! by Jeff Pearlman (great material, lousy writing)... the PE consumption of the '04 Sox was probably a miniscule fraction of the booze, coke, speed and nicotine swallowed up by the '86 Mets.
4:55 - Carl Crawford better steal a few tonight.
4:56 - McCarver just shared some dumb anecdote about Pedroia having the "look of a winner." How about the look of a scumbag?
4:57 - Man, Burnett's tough to watch when he stinks like this. Can we please win one of these stupid fucking Fox games?
5:00 - Jorge's "conference" with Burnett really seemed to work... Youkilis just ripped one ovah the Monstah.
5:01 - Wow, that makes eighteen runs allowed by Burnett at Fenway this season.
5:10 - Shit, Jr.'s up.

The boy made it pretty darn clear that he didn't want to watch this crappy game, and I agreed. We watched Peppa Pig and did some word processing instead. This was one of Jr.'s more inspired works; reverent yet open to sudden bursts of inspiration:

"The wheels on the bus go... BLEECCCCHHH!!!"

Our trip down South in July pretty much obliterated any talk of further vacations this summer. Not that it wasn't fun (it was!), but it was just, um... exhausting.

One would think that a jaunt out to Long Island to see the folks would be peanuts compared to our Memphis trip, right? Hardly a "vacation" and barely even a "trip."

Let's analyze this one the way they do with other disasters, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl:

1) I didn't pack flip-flops or sunscreen. In fact, I didn't even pack socks or an extra t-shirt. You could say that I didn't bother to pack at all.
2) I forgot it was Wednesday, which means there are no alternate side parking restrictions on our block. This is bad, because I timed the trip to take advantage of late morning spots right before street cleaning.
3) The Mz. took the boy up to Starbucks right before we left, causing him to become sweaty and irritable, or "hot and bothered."

4) The ZipCar we rented was littered with old snacks.
5) Totally unconfirmed, but it's possible that I fed Jr. expired yogurt that morning. I don't think so, but it's possible.
6) Since I was double parked, the Mz. & boy had to watch the car (they really fucking ticket on our block) while I sherpa'ed our gear out.
7) I hadn't even touched the new car seat since Memphis, so it still fit the boy as poorly as it did then; probably worse.
8) It was about 145 degrees outside.
9) I put the seat in behind the passenger side, instead of the driver side. This meant that Jr. caught the sun right in the face the entire trip.

OK, not exactly a perfect storm, but I'm just trying to understand what exactly happened here. Nothing out of the ordinary to start with... we wrestled and stuffed Jr. into the car seat and drove away. He didn't seem real happy, but who could blame the kid? He basically bitched and moaned from Harlem to the Northern State.

Musta been around exit 38 when Jr. started puking his fucking guts out. This kid hasn't really puked since his onesie days, so it was a bit startling. As we all know, babies "spit up," which is absolutely no big deal at all and not much different than dabbing up spilled salad dressing at the steak house. I am in no way averse to cleaning up my son's spit-up.

This was a completely different thing-- "big boy throw-up" you might call it. I call it "your asshole friend from college blew chunks all over my fucking back seat." I almost thought I could smell buffalo wings and Bacardi, but that's obviously impossible. The shit was everywhere, and it smelled like death itself.

Of course the kid's bawling his eyes out, and Mz. is scrambling for anything absorbent. I was busy making mistake #10:
10) I got off the Parkway and made a beeline for a stretch of road with unspeakable traffic and nowhere to turn off whatsoever (Jericho Tpk next to the Oyster Bay Golf Course).

After sitting in dead-stop traffic for the temporal equivalent of seventeen panic attacks, we balied out and turned off into a very rich and very private little cul-de-sac. We set up a mini-camp on somebody's exquisite side-lawn and stripped the boy down. I was on "brain detail," sopping up puke particles off the car seat and elsewhere. When the dust settled we had a reasonably clean kid, a backseat that stunk to Gehenna itself, and a huge pile of baby wipes on somebody's perfect lawn. I snuck around the side and dumped it in what was seriously the cleanest, nicest garbage can I've ever seen.

The car seat was unusable at this point, so Mz. held the kid in her lap as I slalomed down Jericho and tried to remember all (or any) of the good shortcuts we used to take when we drove drunk in high school. I stuck with the one easy one and got us home in reasonable time. We pulled in to my folks' place late for lunch and smelling like puke (also like high school). Our Pulp Fiction tribute continued as we hosed off and made wisecracks for a while.

The rest of our visit (which was really the visit, since all the sicko shit happened before we even got there) was pretty uneventful, highlighted by tasty porkchops and a late-night snoozer of a Yankee game. The boy walked right into the side of our car door (perpendicularly), putting a dent right down the middle of his face. He also pitched a fairly violent fit when we tried to drive him over to Sunken Meadow park this morning, which I completely understood. Continuing with the "drunk college friend" analogy, putting that kid back in his pukey car seat would be like making the fictional puker a Tabasco & 151 omelet for breakfast the next morning. We were lucky to get him home at all today, especially when you throw in a mandatory Ikea stop mid-voyage.

I'm supposed to take Jr. to next weekend's game for Calculator Day, although I'm having second thoughts. Maybe September's Soup Bowl Night will be a better fit.