Category Archives: gallagheria

Baltimore, Family, Friends, gallagheria

Weekend Idolatry

And now for something a little lighter.

Saturday was Soccer Day, with my Under 12 Boy’s CYO team on the road with a 2 pm game. J. had been skating the night before at a Katrina relief ice-skateathon or something with his friend C., and then had a sleepover at C.’s, so perhaps he was a bit more sluggish than usual. But in any case, we all managed to get out the door to the game together this week (the whole crew in one place…the logistics are mind-boggling).

K., now hard-core as he’s playing JV soccer at Poly, wanted to run the kids into the ground as a warm-up. I eased him up and reminded him that it was going to be a long, hot game. And it did get hot–90’s again. I don’t remember September this late being this hot recently.

In the end, it was a tie again (making Brood X’s record for this year 0-2-0, at least 50% better than our record at this point last year). Then we grabbed lunch and headed for HampdenFest.

After grabbing beers and snow-cones, we wandered down toward the Hampden Idol contest in time to catch:

  • An adequate execution of “Gloria”
  • A woman who made “Whole Lotta Love” sound like a cat in a dryer
  • Ali’s inspiring rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin'” (to which K. and I waved our cell phones)
  • Chris, the “Thin White Guy”, performing “Let’s Go Crazy”, and stealing the show

My ex A. and her husband D. arrived in the midst of this. As we stood there on the Avenue after the wrapup of Hampden Idol, Benn came by. He pointed out that the spot where P. and my ex were sitting on the curb was in fact the scene of a murder:a street person, known for being a loan shark to addicts, had grabbed a little girl walking to the community center after school, and she ran in to the center crying; her grandfather emerged with a cane and beat the guy to death in broad daylight.

On that note…we headed out shortly thereafter. The boys left with my ex for the night, and P., Z. and I headed to New No Da Ji for dinner before calling it a night.

Sunday, we met up with the boys and A&D at the Irish Festival at the Armory. Nothin’ is as Irish as passing through an armed checkpoint to get a beer, I suppose; the Guard was conducting ID checks on every person who entered the Armory. Aside from the asses from Noraid (or, perhaps, the “reformed asses” would be more appropriate now that they’re allegedly behind the peace process–but from the stickers they were giving people, you’d think they were still shipping the Provos Armalites), it was a pleasant enough event, with Z. enthralled by the Irish dancing and K. intrigued by the Irish dancers. I got a free Smithwick’s as the beer concession tried to empty the kegs. J. shook us down for money for a shamrock ballcap and a faux-celtic dragon pendant. It was a Gallagher family heritage event.

Then, it was home and back to homework and other work and the grind of the week ahead.

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Baltimore, gallagheria

Lemmings


Gas scare
Originally uploaded by packetrat.

We were in Sam’s Club today, when one of the staff came by to our cashier and said, “They’re closing all the gas stations until Tuesday. If you don’t get gas by 4, you won’t be able to get any all weekend.”

The woman in front of us in line turned to us and said, “That’s not true. My sister just called me and it’s only a rumor.”

Indeed, it was only a rumor. But that didn’t stop people from being lemmings.

On our way home, we ran into heavy traffic right after we got off the JFX. “I bet it’s the gas stations up at the corner that are causing this,” I said to P. A police car blasted its siren a few times as it tried to go up the median to the scene of the congestion.

I turned down a side street and took a detour home. When we got there, the same thing was happening in front of our house–a line of traffic had formed trying to get to the Royal Farms a block away. I had to drive through alleys to get home. After unloading the groceries, I turned on the TV and caught a report of how widespread the madness was.

So I took a little walk up the street to document how much humans are like lemmings. It seems everyone is so ready right now to believe the worst case scenario, to be frightened into irrational behavior. People didn’t seem to care that the Governor was denying the truth of what they had heard, or that the gasoline stations were telling them it wasn’t true. They were creating the crisis all on their own.

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