Galveston Thursday- These Bleachers Suck

Just to get everyone up to speed I am a vampire. Not the suave blood sucking prince of darkness bad ass kind. Just the kind that has managed to create a schedule where any exposure to sunlight makes me curl up in the fetal position and scream. Said schedule, while good for Wal Mart shopping and getting things done on your own, does not mesh well with pool tournament match scheduling.

I would give you a time breakdown on yesterday but I am so mixed up I am not sure it would make sense. But I will try it anyway.

2:00 AM Thursday: Leave tournament room and go to hotel. Work on blog entry and photos.

6:00 AM Thursday: Post blog and pictures. Surf net, read AZ and Facebook while attempting to fall asleep

9:48 Am Thursday: Enter into Galveston Challenge Match thread on AZ. Instantly know I will regret it. Continue trying to fall asleep.

10:30ish AM Thursday: Realize I am a complete failure at one of natures most basic tasks. That is falling asleep. Decide to go to the tournament room and see if the players have burned said room down upon finding out the first place money for the team event was cut by $41,000.

10:45 AM Thursday: Arrive on site to find that all is in good order at said tournament room. I see no signs of spent torches or bent and bloody pitch forks anywhere. Seems the villagers are at peace in the land. I am strangely disappointed. But hey...whats 41 dimes here or there. Besides I didnt have a dog in the fight but I find it telling that all the noise made by certain cheerleaders and self appointed representatives of the organizers has grown suddenly quiet. The silence about the dirty business of actually carrying through on bigger than life pay out promises is deafening. More on this later.

11:20 AM Thursday: I engage in the mandatory tribe sanctioned practice of sampling the host venues concession stand fair. Being a very health conscious man and always treating my body like the temple it is I only order from three of the basic food groups: The Hot Dog group, The Coke group and The Hershey Chocolate Bar group. It's not easy keeping this physique. It takes true discipline.Total cost for this feast: $8.00.

11:23 AM Thursday: Consume said hot dog and attempt to rate it on the pool tournament hot dog continuum. It falls somewhere between Derby City 2006 and Valley Forge 2008. Not a bad dog.

Noonish Thursday: I check out the charts to see who is playing in the next round. See there are some good matches in the 8 ball division. Corey vs Archer and Alex "The Greatest Karaoke Singer Who Has Ever Won The US Open" Pagulayan vs Lee Van Corteza. I am a happy camper and proceed into the mountain range of bleachers to find a spot to sweat and shoot photos.

12:15 PM Thursday: I run into my buddy Bill "All Games But 14.1 Blow Dog" Maropolis in the bleachers. Bill is one of my favorite dudes because no matter what he always finds a way to crack me up and today would be no different.

12:30 PM Thursday: Match play begins. I notice that while looking very impressive in both size and quantity these bleachers suck for actually watching matches. There is a railing to keep people from going over the front edge and falling 120 feet to their death.(You will notice that I use a little artistic license from time to time. This is one of those times.) That rail is at the perfect height so that when you sit in the front row with your buddy Maropolis it cuts across the view of the tables perfectly so you have to hunch down to see under it. After the first 90 seconds this begins to suck.

My options were to move up and farther away from the tables or keep working on my new spine curvature. Instead I just shot the shit with Bill about all things pool. While we engaged in laughing our ass off at various things and people in the pool world we heard what sounded like some one doing body work on a 1978 Ford LTD. Metal on metal banging. Loud. We were not the only ones to notice this because Gabe Owen looked up after a shot with that "WTF?!??" look on his face and I don't blame him. He came to a pool tournament and an auto body class broke out. I would be a bit miffed as well.

Being the intrepid and fearless soul that I am I decided to investigate this hellish noise by walking fifteen feet up to the top of the bleachers and looking into the feature table pit from where it was emanating from. It was only then that it all made sense, for there 1500 feet below me (there's that artistic license thing again), were four men working on long heavy aluminum trussing. I am assuming they were working on putting up some lighting for the feature table in an attempt to fix the FUBAR situation that had been in place previously.

Bill came up to see what was going on as well and we began chatting about the course of events that were ongoing at this tournament. It was quite a good conversation and we laughed and talked while watch the men below beat and bang on the trussing without a care in the world. I know there is not much they could do about the noise. Their job was to get the job done. It was whoever scheduled a construction project in the middle of a $600 entry fee tournament who fucked up.

So Bill and I continue having a great conversation until I think of something and start cracking up. I say to Bill" Do you realize that we are each about a 1000 miles from home for the sole purpose of coming to a pool tournament as spectators, we have the best players in the world playing down there and we are standing here at the top of the bleachers watching four guys put together a giant erector set?" Bill LOL'ed.

After our revelation we went back down and took our seats to watch the matches. Sure enough after the first 90 seconds of hunching to see under that fucking rail the bleachers started to suck again. By this time I had gotten a little sleepy and figured I would head back to the room and catch a nap then come back for the one pocket finals.

3PM Thursday: Get back to the hotel and as I inevitably always do, decide to check on AZ for all the latest scoop. Low and behold I find that one lady on line is convinced that TAR is the expletive spewing demon spawn of the pool streaming world. Well when someone is wrong on the internet you can't just let that shit slide.

4:21 PM Thursday: Finally decide that sometimes when someone is wrong on the internet it is best to just let them live on in their happy little universe where horse racing is the moral benchmark by which all other endeavors are measured.

4:22 PM: Thursday: Pass the fuck out.

6:00 PM: Sleep through Efren vs Cliff

9:00 PM: Sleep through Efren vs Shannon

11:00 PM: Sleep through Efren bitching to his close friends about having $10,000 taken out of his fucking first place money to spread among the players because no one figured out that if you promise $25,000 for first and dont add any more money to the entry fees then there is going to be a large disparity between first and the rest of the field. (Maybe I was dreaming this part. Efren is such a gentleman I doubt he would say a word. But I sure as hell would if I was him.)

2:30 AM Friday: Awaken to realize that I had slept through most of one day at the very tournament I had traveled to see. Kick self repeatedly in ass. Resume online scanning to see what I missed.

3:30 AM: Begin Facebook chatting with Sarah Rousey and Derek Disco. Begin laughing.

4:30 AM: Sarah and Disco log off. Stop laughing.

6:00 AM Friday: Begin working on this blog.

10:00 AM Friday: Finish this long ass blog entry and realize telling the world how much of a dumb fuck you are may not be the best thing. Oh well. Good news is I am refreshed and ready to roll all day and night tonight. I will be heading to the tournament venue shortly to catch a full schedule of matches if I can find a way to outsmart those ass breaking, spine curling bleachers from hell.

Tune in next time kids for some exciting news about the new Team CSI as well as updates from my daily jackassery. I also want to send a shout out to my favorite WPBA players in Colorado: Sarah "The Grumpy Munchkin" Rousey, Caroline "Dont call me Capao" Pao, Ga Young "I only wish Justin would move to Korea so we could be together" Kim and Angel "Insert witty nickname here" Paglia. Good luck to one and all.