Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Who knew the weekend from hell would be so cool?
There was a moment this weekend, after Princess Layout defeated Soppy Flange in the final, when all the players and spectators migrated back towards the locker rooms and bar, and were all milling around on the grass, drinking beer, lying in the sun, and I found myself throwing the disc with Cian, Donal and Warrior, throws slicing neatly through the wind, and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" was playing on the speakers they'd set up by the t-shirt table, when, for just a moment, everything seemed to glow a little brighter. Maybe it was that the sun had finally, after staying inside on a Saturday of blasting wind and rope-like rain, decided to take a Sunday consitutional. Maybe it was the pleasure of calmly throwing for the first time all weekend, low releases and inside-outs flying well, even in spite of the wind. Might have had something to do with Warrior, who we picked up for our last match because our girls were all beginners (in a mixed tournament, where the split on the field is four men to three women, the women make all the difference), who plays for Bliss, the GB women's squad who won Paganello this year, and who is an absolute joy to throw with. Could also have been the early onset of delirium after having slept seven hours over the previous two nights, then run all day (and all night at work). I don't know. Paul Simon definitely had something to do with it. It wasn't one of those epiphanic, transporting moments. It was just lovely, a brief delight. A little luster crept back into Dublin's tarnished crest.
<<>><<>><<>><<>>
General whooping announced the deposit of my final essay into the English office at 4pm on Friday. Granted, it's an absolute travesty of an essay, one of the worst (a willfully stupid thing) I've ever written, but frankly, there was never any hope. Furthermore my GPA, to the extent that I have one, was so buoyed by the last two grades that I felt untouchable.
From there, I adjourned to Herbert Park, where Trinity had one last practice before the Dublin Tournament. By this point it had become clear that the weekend was to be marked by brutal winds. After a two-hour four-on-four, satisfactory enough, we headed back into college, to the Pavilion Bar. They just renovated the Pav, installing a new back bar whose only failing, aside from being stupid and ugly, is that it does not have anywhere to put bottles. They also put in a pointless lowered ceiling above the bar itself, which serves to shrink the space dramatically and, at the same time, fuck up the acoustics. The last thing they did was install new doors to the bathroom--in front of the old doors. Which they left. As they did the bathrooms, which, being about four feet narrow, were the most in need of renovation. The façade with the doors that don't open was also left untouched. Another triumph, I must say, of the vaunted Irish engineering.
In any case, we were at the Pav because this is where the teams from all across Europe were gathering to inaugurate the Dublin Tournament. The Friday night before DUB is always a carnival, as players who haven't seen one another in months reunite. I haven't played an outdoor since Stirling in October, and it was great to see all the people I played with back then. Bizarrely, I even ran into a guy I had played with last summer in New York, in Summer league. He had just flown over from London to play with Nobody Loves Us, the pickup team. That was just frightening. It was also cold as Cocytus, and another thing they neglected to install in the Pav (which is mostly outdoors) was a single space heater. We went indoors as soon as there was room. When they closed down, we adjourned to Doyle's, which we didn't leave until 3am. I was hosting the Belfast contingent in my apartment.
We went to sleep at four and woke up at eight. Drove to the pitch. I, for one, was rather a bit damaged from the night before. Trinity's first game at 10am, against Throwing Shapes, the major Dublin club team. Warrior was playing for them, as was our own captain, Sparky. Naturally, being composed of mostly beginners and about three experienced players, we got trounced. I threw one of the most magnificent hucks of my life, only to have the score voided because of a pick called on the play. Bah. They were, at least, fun to play against. Next game was against an even better team, the Belgian club called JetSet. We scored first, and then pretty much never again. After that, Warwick Bears. A hard-fought scrap of a game in which the Force Kings finally got their shit together and rocked their socks. After this, at 5pm I had to leave, as I had work at 9, and after three hours of play and four of sleep, if I didn't get some shuteye before work I wouldn't make it through the next day of play. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that the game I missed was against the pickup squad, which my buddy from New York was on, and which we lost by a hair. Furthermore, the big party's on Saturday night--Reggae Ceili.
Lobo, predictably, was jammed. Higher volume than we've seen in ages. Just what I needed. At 3am, roused Belfast from their car, which the DD had driven into town following the end of the party and parked outside the Morrison, took them home, let them in, and turned right around and sprinted back to work. Got home at 6:15am and crawled into bed. So wired from work--eyes burning by this point--I didn't fall asleep until 7am.
Up at ten. Oy. Sore as hell, my hamstring refusing to straighten. Played Leeds first, losing by a hair, then Slug (Sligo and Belfast Ultimate Giants (BUG)--get it? Sligo and Bug? Slug! Ha ha.), for which we picked up Warrior and got it together to pound them. So won two, lost four. Not terrible, for a rock-bottom seed.
Worth noting that between Saturday and Sunday, I had slept eight hours, but played Ultimate for five and bartended for eight. That's leaving aside all the downtime--casual throwing time--between games.
After the closing ceremony, Belfast left, but I took Leeds. 10 of them, team name Jedi. Really way cooler than Belfast, who just bored me to tears. They wanted to stay on another night, and Sara Jane couldn't take them, so I brought them home, parked their stuff in my room, they bought me fish and chips for dinner, and we went out to Messrs Maguire, where all the players still in town were convening. By this time I was feeling a little peaky. One of the Jedi bought me a drink. They were showing the Masters on TV, Tiger Woods' narrow win over Chris DeMarco, but soon we were presented with a far more arresting spectacle when the large bald gentleman at the bar, without warning, dropped to the floor.
It was this sudden Whump!--maybe he slipped, maybe he just crumpled--but he lay there like a limp, 225-pound gastropod, unmoving. He had lost all motor function, which is probably what precipitated the collapse, which was total and uninhibited. His gray t-shirt had rolled up to his armpits, exposing a white, fleshy gut. His friends had no luck lifting him, because if you've ever tried shifting an unconscious body of that size (and I have)--well, I imagine that it's what lifting a slippery porpoise must be like. Slides right out of your hands. All the muscles go limp; the person trying to lift him has to hold everything up at once. Finally they thought to roll him over and prop him up in a sitting position, whereupon he released the contents of that great white gut in a flood onto the floor. His friends and the security tried then to raise him to his feet, but he was having none of it, being resolutely devoted to the floor, onto which he was hanging. This went on for a rather long period of time, the bartender, white shirted with a red tie, more or less grinning all the while, offering no help at all, until it came time to close, at which point it was generally realized that they needed to get him out. Not get him an ambulance, not get the garda, get him out. So they did the only thing they could do: each seized a limb, and with a great collective grunt, hoisted him clear off the ground, and, laboring under the weight, for his unsupported midsection sagged like a heavy load, they staggered out the door. When we left, they were still struggling with him, attempting in the most wildly futile way to hold him up, as though that would do anyone any good. He seemed to want nothing more than to be returned to the ground where at least he could hold on. We went into the club next door, Q, because we wanted to see how the Masters turned out (yes, I went into a club to watch golf. I make no apology; the club deserved little better). We had a brief drink as Tiger Woods shot down DeMarco in the one-hole playoff, and then, before we started playing frisbee with the coasters, decided to adjourn homeward. When we left (and this was a good half-hour after we had left Messrs), they were still grappling with him. Nothing had changed. We had been concerned for quite a while, as this is what death by alcohol poisoning looks like, so I went to the bouncer at Q and asked what the situation was. Obviously, it wasn't his business, and he couldn't leave the door to go check up on them, but he said that both the garda and an ambulance had been waved away.
What?! Waved away? Sent off? How can you tell the cops AND the EMTs to fuck off when a guy is both publicly intoxicated and clearly in need of medical attention? What bonehead made that call? I understand how an ambulance can be refused, but you can't argue with the cops. Jesus Christ, this fucking country. That guy's probably dead, but if he was not only so irresponsible to get that drunk (which galls me on a level I can scarcely describe; I hate, and I mean hate irresponsible drinking), but also so stupid as to reject an ambulance or even have friends that stupid, I'm sorry, but the dude was asking for it. I've never, in my life, seen anyone so annihilated by drink. I have had to wake up dead-drunk sleepers at residents' bar (preferred method, when shoving him around, slapping him in the face and shouting his name doesn't work: take a tea towel, saturate it in freezing water, and clap it on his face. Bang, he's up and flailing. Also pissed off. Not recommended when without backup), but nothing like this. I was absolutely appalled.
I have asked a number of people whether or not there exists in Ireland a statute similar to New York's, which states that a customer must be cut off if he or she becomes "visibly intoxicated." (Incidentally, for all out there to whom this applies, the law preventing minors' consuming states that you must ask for ID if the person looks under 27. Just so you know) As it turns out, no one really knows. I keep getting different answers. The problem is that in this country, when someone is clearly so drunk they can hardly speak, his friends--and her friends; women here are really no better--are all like, Nah, mate, he's fine, he's fine, here, I'll get this round. I cut off people quite regularly, almost invariably over the protests of the person's mates. Furthermore, there is not, to my knowledge, anything to resemble New York's draconian dram shop laws, which, in short, place the onus on the bar to ensure that the customer gets home safe. We call taxis for people every so often, but we would never think to give them money for the fare, as bars do in New York. Once they're off the premises, they're not our problem. That's good for us, of course, but not good for the customer. Bars take few precautions to ensure anyone's safety but their own. When we had a wedding party a few months ago--and granted, private parties are a different affair--we had a few partygoers who were entirely incapacitated. One middle-aged man in particular stood at the bar all night and ordered vodka and red bulls. Tons of them. They're about the worst thing for you that isn't a margarita made with bootleg triple-sec and diabetes-inducing sour mix. Other people ordered them for him too. He'd not be halfway finished with one, when someone would order him another. He couldn't order them himself because he could not--swear to God--actually form the words. When I pointed out one of the enablers that the gentleman has scarcely begun the one in front of him, Joe slipped in behind me and said, "So?" It had been established earlier in the night that, when it comes to private parties, it is better to let them trash themselves than trash the place--which, when you are dealing with the Irish, and especially country Irish, which the bride's family were (it was definitely a money marriage, by the way), is a very real possibility. We were all aware of this guy, and were gobsmacked by the volume he consumed, but made the call to keep serving him. We did underpour dramatically, but at a certain point I couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. I just told Joe, No, I can't. You take care of him; I'm not going to have this on my conscience. He wasn't headed for alcohol poisoning yet, and his body weight was significant, but he was still well on the way to some level of selfdestruction. I don't like seeing that, and I don't like causing it. I loathe alcohol abuse.
If their alcohol and tobacco taxes were ever decreased, the Irish, as I've said before, would probably kill themselves. They cannot handle responsibility. Hence the "nanny government" here. That luster that stole over the green fields? The Irish stole it back.
<<>><<>><<>><<>>
General whooping announced the deposit of my final essay into the English office at 4pm on Friday. Granted, it's an absolute travesty of an essay, one of the worst (a willfully stupid thing) I've ever written, but frankly, there was never any hope. Furthermore my GPA, to the extent that I have one, was so buoyed by the last two grades that I felt untouchable.
From there, I adjourned to Herbert Park, where Trinity had one last practice before the Dublin Tournament. By this point it had become clear that the weekend was to be marked by brutal winds. After a two-hour four-on-four, satisfactory enough, we headed back into college, to the Pavilion Bar. They just renovated the Pav, installing a new back bar whose only failing, aside from being stupid and ugly, is that it does not have anywhere to put bottles. They also put in a pointless lowered ceiling above the bar itself, which serves to shrink the space dramatically and, at the same time, fuck up the acoustics. The last thing they did was install new doors to the bathroom--in front of the old doors. Which they left. As they did the bathrooms, which, being about four feet narrow, were the most in need of renovation. The façade with the doors that don't open was also left untouched. Another triumph, I must say, of the vaunted Irish engineering.
In any case, we were at the Pav because this is where the teams from all across Europe were gathering to inaugurate the Dublin Tournament. The Friday night before DUB is always a carnival, as players who haven't seen one another in months reunite. I haven't played an outdoor since Stirling in October, and it was great to see all the people I played with back then. Bizarrely, I even ran into a guy I had played with last summer in New York, in Summer league. He had just flown over from London to play with Nobody Loves Us, the pickup team. That was just frightening. It was also cold as Cocytus, and another thing they neglected to install in the Pav (which is mostly outdoors) was a single space heater. We went indoors as soon as there was room. When they closed down, we adjourned to Doyle's, which we didn't leave until 3am. I was hosting the Belfast contingent in my apartment.
We went to sleep at four and woke up at eight. Drove to the pitch. I, for one, was rather a bit damaged from the night before. Trinity's first game at 10am, against Throwing Shapes, the major Dublin club team. Warrior was playing for them, as was our own captain, Sparky. Naturally, being composed of mostly beginners and about three experienced players, we got trounced. I threw one of the most magnificent hucks of my life, only to have the score voided because of a pick called on the play. Bah. They were, at least, fun to play against. Next game was against an even better team, the Belgian club called JetSet. We scored first, and then pretty much never again. After that, Warwick Bears. A hard-fought scrap of a game in which the Force Kings finally got their shit together and rocked their socks. After this, at 5pm I had to leave, as I had work at 9, and after three hours of play and four of sleep, if I didn't get some shuteye before work I wouldn't make it through the next day of play. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that the game I missed was against the pickup squad, which my buddy from New York was on, and which we lost by a hair. Furthermore, the big party's on Saturday night--Reggae Ceili.
Lobo, predictably, was jammed. Higher volume than we've seen in ages. Just what I needed. At 3am, roused Belfast from their car, which the DD had driven into town following the end of the party and parked outside the Morrison, took them home, let them in, and turned right around and sprinted back to work. Got home at 6:15am and crawled into bed. So wired from work--eyes burning by this point--I didn't fall asleep until 7am.
Up at ten. Oy. Sore as hell, my hamstring refusing to straighten. Played Leeds first, losing by a hair, then Slug (Sligo and Belfast Ultimate Giants (BUG)--get it? Sligo and Bug? Slug! Ha ha.), for which we picked up Warrior and got it together to pound them. So won two, lost four. Not terrible, for a rock-bottom seed.
Worth noting that between Saturday and Sunday, I had slept eight hours, but played Ultimate for five and bartended for eight. That's leaving aside all the downtime--casual throwing time--between games.
After the closing ceremony, Belfast left, but I took Leeds. 10 of them, team name Jedi. Really way cooler than Belfast, who just bored me to tears. They wanted to stay on another night, and Sara Jane couldn't take them, so I brought them home, parked their stuff in my room, they bought me fish and chips for dinner, and we went out to Messrs Maguire, where all the players still in town were convening. By this time I was feeling a little peaky. One of the Jedi bought me a drink. They were showing the Masters on TV, Tiger Woods' narrow win over Chris DeMarco, but soon we were presented with a far more arresting spectacle when the large bald gentleman at the bar, without warning, dropped to the floor.
It was this sudden Whump!--maybe he slipped, maybe he just crumpled--but he lay there like a limp, 225-pound gastropod, unmoving. He had lost all motor function, which is probably what precipitated the collapse, which was total and uninhibited. His gray t-shirt had rolled up to his armpits, exposing a white, fleshy gut. His friends had no luck lifting him, because if you've ever tried shifting an unconscious body of that size (and I have)--well, I imagine that it's what lifting a slippery porpoise must be like. Slides right out of your hands. All the muscles go limp; the person trying to lift him has to hold everything up at once. Finally they thought to roll him over and prop him up in a sitting position, whereupon he released the contents of that great white gut in a flood onto the floor. His friends and the security tried then to raise him to his feet, but he was having none of it, being resolutely devoted to the floor, onto which he was hanging. This went on for a rather long period of time, the bartender, white shirted with a red tie, more or less grinning all the while, offering no help at all, until it came time to close, at which point it was generally realized that they needed to get him out. Not get him an ambulance, not get the garda, get him out. So they did the only thing they could do: each seized a limb, and with a great collective grunt, hoisted him clear off the ground, and, laboring under the weight, for his unsupported midsection sagged like a heavy load, they staggered out the door. When we left, they were still struggling with him, attempting in the most wildly futile way to hold him up, as though that would do anyone any good. He seemed to want nothing more than to be returned to the ground where at least he could hold on. We went into the club next door, Q, because we wanted to see how the Masters turned out (yes, I went into a club to watch golf. I make no apology; the club deserved little better). We had a brief drink as Tiger Woods shot down DeMarco in the one-hole playoff, and then, before we started playing frisbee with the coasters, decided to adjourn homeward. When we left (and this was a good half-hour after we had left Messrs), they were still grappling with him. Nothing had changed. We had been concerned for quite a while, as this is what death by alcohol poisoning looks like, so I went to the bouncer at Q and asked what the situation was. Obviously, it wasn't his business, and he couldn't leave the door to go check up on them, but he said that both the garda and an ambulance had been waved away.
What?! Waved away? Sent off? How can you tell the cops AND the EMTs to fuck off when a guy is both publicly intoxicated and clearly in need of medical attention? What bonehead made that call? I understand how an ambulance can be refused, but you can't argue with the cops. Jesus Christ, this fucking country. That guy's probably dead, but if he was not only so irresponsible to get that drunk (which galls me on a level I can scarcely describe; I hate, and I mean hate irresponsible drinking), but also so stupid as to reject an ambulance or even have friends that stupid, I'm sorry, but the dude was asking for it. I've never, in my life, seen anyone so annihilated by drink. I have had to wake up dead-drunk sleepers at residents' bar (preferred method, when shoving him around, slapping him in the face and shouting his name doesn't work: take a tea towel, saturate it in freezing water, and clap it on his face. Bang, he's up and flailing. Also pissed off. Not recommended when without backup), but nothing like this. I was absolutely appalled.
I have asked a number of people whether or not there exists in Ireland a statute similar to New York's, which states that a customer must be cut off if he or she becomes "visibly intoxicated." (Incidentally, for all out there to whom this applies, the law preventing minors' consuming states that you must ask for ID if the person looks under 27. Just so you know) As it turns out, no one really knows. I keep getting different answers. The problem is that in this country, when someone is clearly so drunk they can hardly speak, his friends--and her friends; women here are really no better--are all like, Nah, mate, he's fine, he's fine, here, I'll get this round. I cut off people quite regularly, almost invariably over the protests of the person's mates. Furthermore, there is not, to my knowledge, anything to resemble New York's draconian dram shop laws, which, in short, place the onus on the bar to ensure that the customer gets home safe. We call taxis for people every so often, but we would never think to give them money for the fare, as bars do in New York. Once they're off the premises, they're not our problem. That's good for us, of course, but not good for the customer. Bars take few precautions to ensure anyone's safety but their own. When we had a wedding party a few months ago--and granted, private parties are a different affair--we had a few partygoers who were entirely incapacitated. One middle-aged man in particular stood at the bar all night and ordered vodka and red bulls. Tons of them. They're about the worst thing for you that isn't a margarita made with bootleg triple-sec and diabetes-inducing sour mix. Other people ordered them for him too. He'd not be halfway finished with one, when someone would order him another. He couldn't order them himself because he could not--swear to God--actually form the words. When I pointed out one of the enablers that the gentleman has scarcely begun the one in front of him, Joe slipped in behind me and said, "So?" It had been established earlier in the night that, when it comes to private parties, it is better to let them trash themselves than trash the place--which, when you are dealing with the Irish, and especially country Irish, which the bride's family were (it was definitely a money marriage, by the way), is a very real possibility. We were all aware of this guy, and were gobsmacked by the volume he consumed, but made the call to keep serving him. We did underpour dramatically, but at a certain point I couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. I just told Joe, No, I can't. You take care of him; I'm not going to have this on my conscience. He wasn't headed for alcohol poisoning yet, and his body weight was significant, but he was still well on the way to some level of selfdestruction. I don't like seeing that, and I don't like causing it. I loathe alcohol abuse.
If their alcohol and tobacco taxes were ever decreased, the Irish, as I've said before, would probably kill themselves. They cannot handle responsibility. Hence the "nanny government" here. That luster that stole over the green fields? The Irish stole it back.
 |  |
 | |
 | |
 | |
| Graphic Design Job |
