What's That Smell?: Part Five: Pizza and Smelly Grandmothers

And now for the next thrilling installment in What's That Smell?


This past July I took my semiannual trip back home to visit my family, that end was all that and a bag of potato chips, but as usual in these installments the focus is on my trip to the airport along with the flights and these ones were no exception.
I have decided that I like to just take the hassle out of my day and just take a shuttle to the airport, no fuss no muss. The only thing with that is that I am never the only one in the shuttle of course. In this trip it was fine until we picked up some old lady and her grand daughter, no big deal right? Well it wouldn't have been for 3 things: 1. this lady smelled like 4 days old B.O. (tie in to the title!) 2. she sat next to me (fuck my balls) and 3. her grand daughter fell into the stupid kid age (from when they can talk up to 18). Recipe for disaster. It would have been fine except that this lady couldn't handle the silence of the van ride. No, she had to make weird sounds and also when a fairly common pop song from the 70s' came on she hummed the melody...according to her that was. She made one up that had NOTHING to do with that song at all. Then it got quiet again and she tried to wake her grand daughter up who was sleepy and she said this to her "...you know when I was a kid to stay awake we played a game called Spot the Red Car..." Next thing you know "..one...two...three...four..." FUDGE.
So we get there and I pay $9,000 to check my bags and get fondled as I go through security; just like any other flight right? Everything was all good until we get on the plane, as I discover that I had the bitch seat. To go along with that, the two dicks to the left and right of me decide that the leg room they had wasn't enough and decided to annex mine for their own. Also why is it that when flight attendants come through and offer their cart o'crap they can't comprehend when I don't want anything? I mean, it's a 4 hour flight. Why can't some people just not stuff their faces? Anyways, we land and it's all good. Then I go to look for my connecting flight and run into an interesting gentleman, and that man's name was Bono.
His name was Greg Bonomanson and he was a fat ass who lived in Wisconsin and here is the conversation and chain of events that unfolded.
I'm taking my mac out to eject a DVD while sitting on a bench and Bono comes along and says "Hey, could you scoot down so I could sit down?" I said yes while thinking to myself: I'm on the edge. There are 3 other seats you fat bastard. Then he decided to make some small talk with me since I have something about me where people do that, which I normally don't mind. He asks what I do and I tell him I'm an art student/artist (you can be both right?). Then he proceeds to tell me that he sucks at art so bad that when he sees stuff around that he can do, he thinks it isn't art. How the hell do you respond to that inside of like 5 minutes? Well I didn't. I just indulged him so he would stop talking about it. Then when I left he asked for my name for the following reason: "...that way when you make it big, I can say "I met that guy in an airport before he made it big and he was a cool guy"". Thanks Bono.
The connecting flight was uneventful. Moving on to my return.
The first flight wasn't too bad. I had a row to myself and got complemented by the flight attendant for my Joe Mauer jersey. Once I found my terminal, I had some pizza and called my family so they knew I was there okay, since I'm a good person. My flight was supposed to leave at like 2:30 but board at 1:50 I think. Well it was 2:00 and I saw that my plane wasn't even there. I frantically look around to find out that they had moved my gate! Those assholes.
So I barely made it onto the plane and once again, I was in the bitch seat in row 653 of the plane, but again I got complimented by the flight attendant for my Joe Mauer jersey. On this flight I was seated between a guy who made no noise or movements, and a dude who I can only describe as being an odd combination of Michael Cuddyer and David Putty from Seinfeld. He was a trip. First he stared at the back of the chair in front of him for 45 minutes. Then fell asleep for 45 minutes. Then he went to take a shit. How do I know? He brought the smell back with him (another tie in to the title!). Then he bought 2 bottles of tequila along with a Coke and had them both. In 20 minutes. Yet he strangely just sat still and said nothing.
To fast forward and wrap this up, we landed and I lived.  Tune in Januaryish for the next thrilling chapter of this epic god damn story!

That Is One Tiny Dugout

Two things: a) I love the Minnesota Twins, even when they suck and 4th) As I have mentioned in pervious posts, I rediscovered my love of reading since I moved to San Francisco. I guess it's the culture and the sophistication...yeah that's stupid; but it sounds like something someone here would say. I mostly got back into it because it is cheap and most of my stuff hadn't arrived yet. That being said anytime two things I love merge, that's awesome. For me at least. Only in this particular case it's a bit underwhelming.
The inspiration for this post was from the season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm when they did the Seinfeld reunion. In the episode Larry David pisses Jason Alexander of by commenting on how his book is so thin it looks more like a pamphlet. That got me thinking, have I ever read a book so thin, that it was really nothing more than a glorified pamphlet? The answer was yes. Yes I have.
There are actually two books that fit this category. One is The Great Gatsby, but that book is so fucking killer you kinda let that slide. The second was Tales From the Minnesota Twins Dugout by Twins legend and resident round belly Kent Hrbek. Now I love reading, the Minnesota Twins, and also Kent Hrbek; but for as good of a book as it was, I was shocked at how thin it is.
How thin is this literary masterpiece? Great question. 300 pages? No. 400 pages? No. Surely it can't possibly be 500 pages? Nope. It's a whopping 186 pages. Yep. that much. Incredible huh? He manages to cram in all of his pre baseball life, baseball life, and post baseball life up until it's release which was just before Target Field opened. Think about that for a minute. He crammed his father dying, making the Twins, becoming an All Star, the nucleus of the Twins championship teams coming together, said teams struggles, finally winning a World Series, his relationship with Kirby Puckett, his relationship with the fans, winning a second World Series, retiring, and doing his T.V. shows. All of this covered in a blistering 186 pages, and that's counting the appendix!
So yeah, there are those types of books out there, and I'm not knocking this one for quality. It might be even more amazing how much he got in here quality wise, but it's just shocking that a well known player who accomplished so much had so little to say. Still though, it's not a bad way to spend like an hour or so.