I read the other day that Michael Vick signed a contract extension for $100 Million. Of course, not all of that money is guaranteed, but it is a substantial raise from the 13 cents an hour he got washing pots, or whatever he did while he was in the joint less than 3 years ago.
I also enjoy this because I know it makes a lot of people furious. As we know, Michael Vick pled guilty to running an interstate dog fighting operation, served 21 months in Federal Prison, filed bankruptcy, got released from prison, got another job in the NFL, and did well enough to merit a $100 million contract extension, and some people refuse to forgive him, and wish a painful death on him, and other really mature things.
I do not in any way condone what Vick did, fighting dogs is an awful thing to do, regardless of how much credence you give the socio-economic argument that dog fighting is more prevalent in lower income areas of the South, and Vick was just engaging in something he had grown up around. He should have known better.
I wonder though, if people would have still been as upset if Vick had been fighting rats. Or tarantulas. Rats and Tarantulas are pets too. Do you think people would have been so furious if we had learned than Mike Vick went out back and electrocuted a tarantula? What if he was really into snake fighting, and a snake did poorly, so he went out back (Side note: All the really repugnant things I read about that happened to the dogs there happened "out back") and drowned a snake. Snakes are pets.
What if he was fighting gerbils, and his gerbil lost, so he shoved the gerbil up his butt? Would PETA have even gotten involved?? A gerbil is a pet. What if he just took two ant farms and smashed them together? BLAM!! Ant fighting. Dead ants everywhere. What would the ASPCA's response have been? Ants are sort of pets.
We apparently draw a line somewhere between dog fighting (felony) and throwing your digital pet in the river because he purrs too loud in the middle of the night and wakes you up (stupid). I just don't know where that line is.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
The Disturbing Encounter with Pedro Homelessman.
I've had the opportunity to play a large portion of baseball games at Parade Stadium for the last 15 years. Parade Stadium is located right outside of downtown Minneapolis, directly next to a large consortium of highway underpasses. Minneapolis contains a lot of strange people. Highway underpasses, as we know, seem to be a place where the homeless, destitute, insane people congregate. Being that Parade stadium is a stones throw away from both of these places, the parking lot around 9:00 pm tends to become fertile ground for these sorts of interesting people to mill about, which means that throughout the years we've encountered some strange things like
-A legless man screaming incoherently about something. I don't know what it was he was screaming about because he was incoherent.
-A man who carried his own chair around. I believe the chair was smeared in poop, because it smelled awful. Maybe it was the man...
-A methed out guy who got really excited when we gave him a baseball, so he snuck into the outfield after the game and played catch with himself. Like, he would throw the ball 100 feet in one direction, then sprint over to it, and then throw it 100 feet in the other direction. He did this even after the lights were shut off. Dark, solitary catch on meth is difficult.
The strangest thing I've ever encountered however, is what will forever be remembered as "The Pedro Homelessman Incident." This began innocently enough. We had just sat down after a game and were enjoying a few beverages as we tend to do after most games, when we noticed a couple of motley looking people shuffling around the lot. One of them had a giant plastic sack filled with pop and beer cans. He looked a little bit like Homeless Santa Claus.
This didn't raise any concerns, because, like I've said, there are a lot of dudes like this in the vicinity and if they are finding cans to recycle to buy a little food or booze or whatever, more power to them. Far be it for me to say that if was in their position, I wouldn't be doing the exact same thing.
Everything changed though when they decided to come over and bother us. Both of them were obviously homeless, and not recently homeless either, as their clothes were tattered and dirty and fit poorly. Both of them were of Hispanic descent and spoke little English, and both of them reeked horribly of B.O. and beer
Pedro: blblblblblblblblbblblbqkdwqhddhwubn cans?
Us: Um, you can't have these cans yet, we need to drink the beer inside them first.
Pedro's Buddy: bqkbqofnweofinweifwefwiownmfwifn cans????
Us: You can definitely have the cans fellas, but they need to be empty. We need to drink the beer in them first. Then you can have them.
Pedro (emphatically): asoffnwofnwenowefnfnowifnownweonn CANS!!!!
Us: Dudes, get out of here, you guys smell like a giant taint.
Instead of retreating back, or going to look for other cans in the interim, they just started hovering closer to us, wanting to hang out or something. Considering that:
a.) They spoke no English
b.) They smelled awful
c.) They were remarkably, heroically intoxicated
d.) They were homeless and we probably didn't have a lot in common
It became very uncomfortable very fast. Some teammates starting openly mocking them, one teammate stole their large sack of cans and ran off, and others completely ignored them. When Pedro's buddy came over and practically sat in my lap to try to give me explicit directions (in Drunken Spanish) how to correctly do the scorebook, I got up and took a walk. I went over to a nearby pine tree and pretended to take a pee, but really I was just preparing my immune system for battle since a homeless man had layed on me.
After I had collected my wits, and prepared my immune system, I turned around to head back to the circle of teammates + homeless people. What I saw did not please me. Pedro Homelessman.... was sitting.... in my chair! My initial thought was "I'm gonna have to burn that fucking chair." I walked over to him. He was busy excitedly spewing gibberish at no one in particular. He paid no attention to me.
Me: Dude?
Me: Uh vato?
Me: Compadre?
Me: Esse?
He still paid no attention to me. I heard from the peanut gallery, "Jensen, you're gonna get fined a dollar if you don't get that fuckin' dude out of your chair!" So I shook him a little bit by the shoulder. It was like touching a really dirty dog. He looked at me. I said "Up!" He looked pissed, but eventually got out of my chair.
By this time, everybody had grown tired of the antics of these two guys, and were beginning to yell at them to go away. Pedro's buddy came over to me again. He had apparently learned better English in 5 minutes because he pointed over to Pedro and said, "He gotta gun. He keeeeel white people talkin' sheeeeeet!" I told him to go stink somewhere else.
As I said that I looked up because Pedro Homelessman was causing a big ruckus. Then the awful thing happened. Pedro yelled something like "ABLAHBABABABABA" and then lifted up his shirt. On his stomach was an abomination so unnatural that it must have been stuck on by Satan himself. It was red and big and festering and pulsating. It looked like an angry cow udder except bigger and more evil. The image of it is forever seared into my brain. I honestly do not know what it was. Maybe I don't want to know. Apparently this living wound thing had a similar effect on everybody else because you heard things like:
"Oh Dear Jesus, what is THAT??!!"
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
" Holy shit, put your shirt down!!"
After that, gently persuading them to be on their way was replaced by full blown screaming for them to "get the fuck out of here and never come back." This message apparently did not need subtitles as Pedro and his buddy took off for under the bridge in a big hurry. The rest of us were left pondering what in the name of Sweet Baby Jesus we had just seen. They never got our cans either.
-A legless man screaming incoherently about something. I don't know what it was he was screaming about because he was incoherent.
-A man who carried his own chair around. I believe the chair was smeared in poop, because it smelled awful. Maybe it was the man...
-A methed out guy who got really excited when we gave him a baseball, so he snuck into the outfield after the game and played catch with himself. Like, he would throw the ball 100 feet in one direction, then sprint over to it, and then throw it 100 feet in the other direction. He did this even after the lights were shut off. Dark, solitary catch on meth is difficult.
The strangest thing I've ever encountered however, is what will forever be remembered as "The Pedro Homelessman Incident." This began innocently enough. We had just sat down after a game and were enjoying a few beverages as we tend to do after most games, when we noticed a couple of motley looking people shuffling around the lot. One of them had a giant plastic sack filled with pop and beer cans. He looked a little bit like Homeless Santa Claus.
This didn't raise any concerns, because, like I've said, there are a lot of dudes like this in the vicinity and if they are finding cans to recycle to buy a little food or booze or whatever, more power to them. Far be it for me to say that if was in their position, I wouldn't be doing the exact same thing.
Everything changed though when they decided to come over and bother us. Both of them were obviously homeless, and not recently homeless either, as their clothes were tattered and dirty and fit poorly. Both of them were of Hispanic descent and spoke little English, and both of them reeked horribly of B.O. and beer
Pedro: blblblblblblblblbblblbqkdwqhddhwubn cans?
Us: Um, you can't have these cans yet, we need to drink the beer inside them first.
Pedro's Buddy: bqkbqofnweofinweifwefwiownmfwifn cans????
Us: You can definitely have the cans fellas, but they need to be empty. We need to drink the beer in them first. Then you can have them.
Pedro (emphatically): asoffnwofnwenowefnfnowifnownweonn CANS!!!!
Us: Dudes, get out of here, you guys smell like a giant taint.
Instead of retreating back, or going to look for other cans in the interim, they just started hovering closer to us, wanting to hang out or something. Considering that:
a.) They spoke no English
b.) They smelled awful
c.) They were remarkably, heroically intoxicated
d.) They were homeless and we probably didn't have a lot in common
It became very uncomfortable very fast. Some teammates starting openly mocking them, one teammate stole their large sack of cans and ran off, and others completely ignored them. When Pedro's buddy came over and practically sat in my lap to try to give me explicit directions (in Drunken Spanish) how to correctly do the scorebook, I got up and took a walk. I went over to a nearby pine tree and pretended to take a pee, but really I was just preparing my immune system for battle since a homeless man had layed on me.
After I had collected my wits, and prepared my immune system, I turned around to head back to the circle of teammates + homeless people. What I saw did not please me. Pedro Homelessman.... was sitting.... in my chair! My initial thought was "I'm gonna have to burn that fucking chair." I walked over to him. He was busy excitedly spewing gibberish at no one in particular. He paid no attention to me.
Me: Dude?
Me: Uh vato?
Me: Compadre?
Me: Esse?
He still paid no attention to me. I heard from the peanut gallery, "Jensen, you're gonna get fined a dollar if you don't get that fuckin' dude out of your chair!" So I shook him a little bit by the shoulder. It was like touching a really dirty dog. He looked at me. I said "Up!" He looked pissed, but eventually got out of my chair.
By this time, everybody had grown tired of the antics of these two guys, and were beginning to yell at them to go away. Pedro's buddy came over to me again. He had apparently learned better English in 5 minutes because he pointed over to Pedro and said, "He gotta gun. He keeeeel white people talkin' sheeeeeet!" I told him to go stink somewhere else.
As I said that I looked up because Pedro Homelessman was causing a big ruckus. Then the awful thing happened. Pedro yelled something like "ABLAHBABABABABA" and then lifted up his shirt. On his stomach was an abomination so unnatural that it must have been stuck on by Satan himself. It was red and big and festering and pulsating. It looked like an angry cow udder except bigger and more evil. The image of it is forever seared into my brain. I honestly do not know what it was. Maybe I don't want to know. Apparently this living wound thing had a similar effect on everybody else because you heard things like:
"Oh Dear Jesus, what is THAT??!!"
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
" Holy shit, put your shirt down!!"
After that, gently persuading them to be on their way was replaced by full blown screaming for them to "get the fuck out of here and never come back." This message apparently did not need subtitles as Pedro and his buddy took off for under the bridge in a big hurry. The rest of us were left pondering what in the name of Sweet Baby Jesus we had just seen. They never got our cans either.
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