The Painful Depression of the Concession Stand

The trudge to the concession stand is always my moment in the grand tradition of Murphy's law. With temperatures climbing to a point they should be measured in Kelvin, I have to go for the water run for the entire damn row. Now I try to approach the area, which is wedged into the back of the stadium and the edge of existence, with the eye for the fastest line. I never succeed.

There are those who stand in lines so close you could survive the winter on body heat, and I try to respect a little distance from the next person, and this leads to a problem. Since the stand is along a major stadium pathway I end up the gatekeeper to a steady flow of traffic. By the time the line moves I've seen the entire north stands pass in front of my face. It's moving slower than Christmas because there is a man with a vicious stutter in front of me ordering Thanksgiving dinner for him and his mixed Catholic-Mormon family and the high school volunteer behind the counter is having a hard time with the complexities of the drink menu. I finally get to the front feeling like I've given blood and she charges me less than the sign indicates. Some sort of weird karmic irony.

The next time I ventured to the stand I chose a line on the opposite side of the first slow moving line and the tide had turned, in the wrong direction. The lady three subjects up wanted to lolly gag around about the choice between the pretzel and the hot dog. I wanted to strangle her with her stylish sash. But as I got to the front of this line what seemed like two months later, they were out of what I wanted. Damn you concession stand. I hate you.

Tragedy Bowl I

The inaugural Battle for the Golden Mask takes place this weekend between the LSU Tigers and the Virginia Tech Hokies. It promises to be a helluva tearjerker game. However, if one doesn't happen to be a fan of one of the two schools how can one decide which community is more deserving of his sympathy and, by extension, which team he should support.

First, you have to determine which was more affected by the tragedy. On it's face LSU seems to win here. The hurricane affected many thousands of people, killing hundreds in New Orleans alone. They were out of touch with family members going through the storm, giving them the edge in the all important direct association with victims or DAWV statistic. The Virginia Tech shooting involved only 32 people directly, almost all of whom were anonymous faces to the football team. However, upon closer examination, the scars left by the hurricane were more minor. I don't think any football player had a family member die in the storm, and there's little fear of another hurricane coming soon after. Even if one did they would have plenty of time to move out of the way, assuming buses were apportioned accordingly. The Hokies had to wonder if a copycat with an itchy trigger finger was going to shoot for the big time. That's a creepy feeling I would think. So the immediate impact goes to LSU. The lasting impact goes to Virginia Tech. I call that a wash. No help there.

But are there any individual tragedies that we can examine to determine the sympathy factor of each team? Good question, me. Yes there are. I will let each reader judge for himself from the lists below, as all of us do not feel equal sympathy for the same hardships.

LSU:

- DT Glenn Dorsey was forced to eat two people during Katrina, four less than his usual daily intake.
- WR Early Doucet was teased about his name throughout elementary school, mainly by the use of "Girly" in place of his first name.
- K Colt David was never truly accepted by the "real" football players at Grapevine High in Texas.
- TE Richard Dickson, nuff said.
- LB Derrick Odom had to attend high school in Mississippi.
- 5'5" WR Trindon Holliday was forced to spend the first eighteen years of his life as a suitcase midget.
- DB Stefoin Francois was forced to endure the humiliation of his nation's greatest delicacy being renamed "freedom fries."

Virginia Tech:

- OG Jaymes Brooks narrowly escaped execution following a poor effort in a training match at Bad Newz Kennelz in 2002.
- QB Sean Glennon has been forced to play QB for his entire life despite having none of the skills necessary to do so. He longs to dance.
- TE Sam Wheeler, growing up in Wyoming, didn't find out other black people existed until 1999.
- HB Brandon Ore thinks he "might have seen one of those dudes who got shot out of the corner of his eye while he was pissing on some bitch at a party."
- LB Cody Grimm, son of All-Pro guard Russ Grimm, has been the recipient of life-long psychological abuse from his father, mostly regarding his vast inferiority to his father on the football field. He has also been seen cutting his arms with razor blades while listening to shitty low-fi music by his roomate, who often refers to him as a "huge pussy", only worsening his severe self-loathing.

So, there you have it. Make your choice accordingly about which tragedy(ies) is/are the most tragic. I think the real tragedy is that one of these teams will have to lose this game. It will be just like a hurricane washed out a city or 32 people were shot by a crazy dude all over again.

(Belated HT to sportsgirl365 for "Tragedy Bowl", despite the fact that I was unaware I was stealing it.)