My brother called me with a free pair of Chiefs tickets. I live and die with the Chiefs, which means this year I've been embalmed, cremated and mummified in no particular order. But not being a fair weather fan, of course I took the tickets.
I love football, the Chiefs in particular, but not so much I'd pay to go. For one thing, on TV you get instant replays and the only way I'd have to pay anything like $7.50 for a beer in my living room is if I cracked open a champagne bottle of Boulevard's Sixth Glass or something like that. Which is, on top of being an outstanding Belgian ale, has roughly the alcohol content of a pitcher of the insipid stuff they sell at the stadium.
I really enjoy the atmosphere of a live game, especially when the team is good, unlike this year. When it's packed to the rafters, all 77,000 people screaming at the top of their lungs on defense, it's a minor religious experience. Like the Obama rally at the Liberty Memorial but with a more substantive and plausible message.
And even when we suck, and this year we suck harder than almost every other team in the NFL, it's fun to go. It's even uglier than last year, when me and aforementioned Bro froze our nuts off watching the Bolts beat us a mere 24-10.
I was going to take Em and was inquiring of my Mom about the possibility of watching Mo while we went. My Mom was a bit iffy on this because Mo has been so challenging lately. She was better this weekend, but still. We got home from our adventures yesterday around 4:30, and by the time Mo went to bed at 9:00, she had been in time out eight times.
But Em said she couldn't bear to watch the Chiefs lose again, so I decided to take Mo. In a lot of ways a football game is the perfected nightmare of an autistic person, all the sensory inputs and people. But the same is true of the circus, and Mo has a ball at the circus.
Mo did get up at 4:00 a.m. and throw away everything on the kitchen counters and most of what was in the pantry. I heard her get up, and I meant to get up, too, since I know she can really get into shit if she's unsupervised. But I must have fallen back asleep. I heard the sound of her trying to lift the overstuffed trash bag from the kitchen trash can. I had taken the trash out before going to bed and put a fresh bag in, so there was no way it could legitimately be full.
In it were, among other things, the salt shaker and pepper mill, the Smart Balance tub, some cutlery, bags of dried beans, a can of French onions, a roll of wax paper, and I don't know whatall. Some of her stuffed animals, too.
Fortunately, since the trash bag was fresh before I went to bed, I could fish all this stuff out without being grossed out at the prospect of cooking beans that had been in the trash. Her OCD tendencies would make this kid a hell of a maid if it weren't for her failure to discriminate between trash and treasure.
So anyway, I was going to take the bus to the stadium, the ticket holder had the bus passes, too. It's a pretty good deal, cheaper than parking and more convenient. Convenient, anyway, if you stay for the whole game. But with Mo, no guarantees of that. The bus runs during the game, but only as a bus fills up.
My Mom was so worried about us being stranded out there (despite the ticket holder's willingness to come pick us up if necessary), she gave me $20 to park so I could have my car there at the stadium.
Which turned out to be less than they charge for parking these days. Can you believe they skin you for $22 to get in to that lot? Only $2 of it was my money, but the idea of it is what's galling. This is why I only go to the games when it's free: the face value of these tickets was $59 apiece. And since we were in the top row over the end zone, up by where the blimp is, I doubt there are cheaper seats. So for the two of us, that's $118, $22 to park, now you're out $140 before kickoff and that's if you don't buy any concessions.
Anyway, we go there and walked about three years to get to our seats. The construction of an expanded concourse required us to go up the spiral ramps, back down, around and up again to get to our seats.
I'd bundled us up, excessively I feared. A t-shirt, two sweatshirts and a coat for each of us. Hats, gloves, etc.
It was warmer than I'd expected, but windy. I wasn't a bit sorry for the preparations, though Mo stripped off the hat and gloves during the game and didn't seem interested in my coat, which I'd draped over our legs for a bit of shelter from the wind that way.
The game started out well. We actually looked like we had an NFL football team a few times. But then reality set in and stupid mistakes compounded the fact that we were up against a vastly superior team.
Mo clapped but only for the cheerleaders as far as I could tell. And, really, they did a lot better job than the football team.
I think Mo was asking to leave back in the first quarter, but she was only using hand gestures and grunts. By halftime, she was forming words. "Get up." When I asked get up for what, she said, "Get up, go to car."
At which point we were down by 13 points and it was obvious thing were not improving. We set a record today, 54 is the most points the Griefs have ever allowed in a game. Ever.
I guess we're playing for draft picks at this point. Pity it looks like Karl Peterson won't be fired. He's a good football man in a lot of ways, but he seems to think he's good at judging talent in the draft, a notion that is contradicted by almost every single drafting decision he's ever made. The best years for KC in the draft in Peterson's reign were the Vermeil years, when Vermeil had more say because he wouldn't take the job without it.
Karl Peterson dominating the Chief's draft picks instead of delegating it to someone competent is like Paul Prodhomme selling a weight loss program.
The tailgaters as we went in was a cool thing. There was a guy who parked near me, right after me, who was lighting his grill at 11:15, 45 minutes before kickoff. When I said, 'light the grill now, you'll miss kickoff,' he just grunted. I guess the game isn't the point for some.
I do love the vehicles people decorate up. The little school busses are the best. Dy-Hard, the pirate ship version, especially.
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