The Dance of Idiots (Part II)

I looked at Billy and his face had contorted into an expression of obvious disgust. He waved her away like he were shooing away a fly and warned her, "You better get out of my space!" The woman seemed taken aback, but kept on dancing for thirty more seconds. Then she whirled around to head back to her seat, but not before issuing a sharp retort; she bent down towards Billy with her hands clenched at her sides and said something that, because the music was blaring, I was fortunate enough not to hear. He turned his head towards her as she walked away, and angrily said, "Shut up, you fat f***!" I don't know if she heard him or not. I just prayed there wouldn’t be trouble. Later, she would return to dance in the aisle once again. And again. We ignored her rotund form.

This bewildering night wasn’t over yet. As my full attention started to focus on Robert Cray, Dancing Guy stood up again and blocked my view. And to spice things up, with his standing three feet from his seat, Idiot Number 2, Salt-and-Pepper-Hair (remember when the ushers asked to see his ticket?) came by and stole his seat again!

The ushers returned to address Dancing Guy once more, and at the sight of them approaching, Salt-and-Pepper-Hair immediately stood up to leave. But Dancing Guy didn’t sit down. He had completely blocked my view of Robert Cray doing licks on his guitar. Five minutes later, Dancing Guy had inched his way left and was now blocking Billy's view, too. As Billy muttered something about knocking the guy's teeth out, I slid forward and gently tugged on the offender’s shirt sleeve from behind. To my surprise, he sat down immediately and didn't even look at me. I said to him, "Sorry, I couldn't see," about six inches behind his ear, which he ignored. Whatever dude, just keep your butt in that seat.

Overweight-Dancing-Woman stopped by a few more times, and I tried not to stare at her belly as she raised her arms and lazily swayed her hips. Mr. Salt-and-Pepper-Hair, finally, was nowhere to be seen. And Dancing Guy stayed in his seat the rest of the night. (Gentlemen, see what a lady's touch can do? And no teeth were knocked out or anything.)

The concert ended to roaring applause and a standing ovation. As we stood up to exit with the crowd, the gentleman seated behind Billy leaned towards him and asked, "Why didn't you get up and dance?" Billy laughed.

Idiot Dancing Woman. In retrospect, Billy could've just smiled and not done anything rude. On the other hand, she shouldn't have invaded his personal space. I also surmise that Mr. Salt-and-Pepper-Hair was either an unabashed opportunist, thick-skinned to a preposterous degree, or just a fan who didn’t care about the random thoughts of strangers. Lastly, Dancing Guy turned out to be a rebel, tough and dissenting with male authority figures (ushers) but acquiescing to polite females in the audience.

Are there these many idiots in the celebrated state of California? In this country? In the civilized world? Why can't people just kick back and enjoy a paid event while being considerate of every one else around them? Why do people act like they have rights but no responsibilities? I raise this question to the cosmos.

It was very cool seeing Robert Cray in concert. I’m looking forward to the next one, minus the dancing idiots.

The Dance of Idiots

Nov. 10, 2006. It was a lovely Friday night in Santa Barbara, California, and the autumn air was nippy. Billy and I flew in from Phoenix that morning to see the Robert Cray Band in concert. It’s a once-every-album ritual for Billy, where he avidly purchases the best tickets he can get to see his favorite artist, Robert Cray ("The Master", as he calls him) in concert.

The event was being held at The Lobero Theater, a small, intimate venue built in 1873. The halls of California's first theater were narrow and dimly lit, the intricately paneled ceilings illuminated with huge chandeliers. Its 680 seats were upholstered in an aged red fabric, and the faint smell of old dust hung in the air.

At about twenty minutes to eight, we made our way to the second row and settled in as I took in the darkly lit stage that suffused my field of vision. To the right, a set of drums with four huge accompanying Matchless amps; center stage in the back was a bass guitar with its own set of amps; left of that were two keyboards forming an L, and even more amps that looked like antique travel trunks; and front center was the microphone at which the Master would play and croon.

We were seated in the center section, second row, at the two seats to the very left, which meant that Billy was right next to the aisle. Little did I know that our proximity to the stage, and Billy's to the open lane, would later come into play on this bizarre evening.

The theater filled up with enthusiastic fans. The band came on stage to loud cheers and applause, and the concert ensued with an electrifying air. The two ladies to my right were really into it, dancing in their seats and occasionally letting out an enthusiastic yelp, yet remaining pleasant. Which is more than what I can say for a couple of idiots that came out of the woodwork as the night wore on.

In the middle of the first song, a twenty-something-year-old guy with shoulder- length hair stood up and started to dance, without any consistency as to when he would flail an arm, throw a fist in the air or just stand there with his hands in his pockets. And yes, he was in the first row, albeit four seats to my right, blocking peoples' view of The Master. In between songs when the lights were dimmed, two male ushers would approach and tell him to sit down. This scene would play out repeatedly through the night: ushers would tell him to sit down and point to his chair in a manner that bordered on aggressive; he would give them a hard time and pretend he couldn't hear them; he would perhaps utter a profanity or two; he would sit down for 90 seconds, then stand up again as the current song overtook him. Voila: the night’s First Idiot. Next thing I know, the ushers walked him over to the right side of the theater. An ordinary-looking couple came in late, and one of them sat in his seat.

Now the seat in front of me was taken, not at first but eventually, by a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair. As if on cue from a bad script, the ushers came to the front once again, but this time with a different purpose. They asked the people in the first row, "Is this your seat? Can I see your ticket?" Mr. Salt-and-pepper-hair nodded yes to the first question, then five seconds later got up to leave. Hmmm… nice to meet you, Idiot Number 2. How many more before the night was over, I wondered.

After just two songs with a wide open view of the stage, Dancing Guy came back and sat in the seat that Salt-and-pepper-hair had vacated. I guess this was the seat he had actually paid for. But it meant he was right between me and Robert Cray.

In the middle of all this, The Third Idiot made its appearance. It came in the form of a woman in her late thirties, who stood about 5’2”, was 30 pounds overweight and wearing a tight shirt and jeans. She came walking down the aisle, stopped in front of the stage and started dancing by her self. I tried not to stare at her. And everything went perfectly fine, until that one climactic moment during a fast song when she gestured at people around her to get up, and, noticing everyone’s polite non-compliance, she bent down towards Billy and told him loudly, "Get up off your ass!"

[To be continued]

Hiked the Canadian Rockies

I spent eight days in the glory of the mountains of the Continental Divide. Words aren't enough to describe the experience. I was in heaven amidst the snow-capped, glacier-laden ranges of the Rockies.

It was beautiful, beautiful country. Rivers coursing powerfully by the highway. Thick, evergreen forests as far as the eye can see, like lush carpeting from mountain to mountain to mountain. And the Rockies themselves -- gray, jagged peaks long ago forced from beneath the earth by something violent and primeval; thousands of feet of rock partially draped in green and capped with a layer of white, sometimes a hesitant dusting of snow, sometimes meters-thick with hundred-year-old ice. Range after range of them, for more than a hundred miles.

I don't know what it is about the mountains that fill me with both a sense of excitement and peace.

I love the wilderness and the life it nurtures. I saw a female deer on the shores of Moraine Lake, just inside the trees as we paddled a canoe close to land. It was lean, gentle and statuesque, the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. I saw a female elk outside our cabin, eating grass amongst the pines. I saw a group of bighorn sheep grazing by the side of the road, their horns curved and majestic. Nothing has ever made me feel so alive as unexpectedly crossing paths with these wild, innocent creatures.

I was captivated once again by mountain rivers. Born from snowmelt up high, a thousand individual streams come together to become a mighty force that carves the landscape and feeds life. It's nothing but water, gravity, and obstacles in between. And yet the sight of it is breathtaking, and its power undeniable.

I saw glaciers up close and was stunned, for I was face to face with a wonder from another time. I saw the unusual color of tranquil, glacier-fed lakes and will never forget that shade of blue. I paddled a canoe in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, and photographed scenes from high places, dangerous places, that not many people have been.

I hiked thousands of feet up a mountain just to see where it would take me. I made it through a hailstorm in the frigid cold. I scrambled up ledges and down scree slopes with a thousand foot drop beside me to carefully ignore.

I challenged myself and won, and my reward was pure bliss.

[Canadian Rockies trip slideshow]

My First Class

I taught my first post-academy class this week. It wasn't so bad -- actually it was pretty good, because
1. there were only six people in the class as opposed to the usual 20,
2. my co-worker/"mentor" Jenn was there to help out with questions,
3. I got pretty high grades in my evaluation.

Five of the officers gave me a grade of 5 (5 is best, 1 is worst), and the other one gave me a 4. Comments included suggesting that I speak louder because the laptops and their radios make lots of noise, and to slow down during practical examples/demos as they follow along on their own laptops. On a positive note, they also thought I was very knowledgeable about the subject. Well, I've only been working on the CAD/MDT (Computer-Aided Dispatch/Mobile Data Terminal) system for seven months, but I agree that I know more than they do fresh out of Police Academy!

I'm quite lucky that this was a pretty small class and that Jenn was there to help out. I'm also very pleased that, bottomline, they liked me as an instructor!

To be honest I put a lot of pressure on myself by not preparing enough. I mean, I was comfortable with most of the stuff I was going to teach, but I hadn't used 100% of everything I was going to talk about. Not that I had much choice, because I couldn't exactly enter such things as a False Burglary Alarm report, or an Officer Activity Log entry on the laptop and send it to the Police Department's live system.

Another reason I was stressing out was because I wasn't sure of how officers made use of all this out in the field. For example, if they ran a license plate on the MDT (laptop) and got a hit on it, meaning the vehicle was stolen or the registered owner was a wanted person, what would be their next step? What if they had more questions on procedure and I didn't know the answer? Was I supposed to know stuff like that? I haven't worked with this system for very long!

But while I was stressing out, I also realized that they'd be spending their first several weeks on the job with a Field Training Officer anyway, and those questions would be for them. I didn't have to know everything. Regardless, the answer to the stolen vehicle hit is: they would need to contact the originating agency, meaning the governemnt agency that entered the stolen plate/wanted person information to verify before they made an arrest. This I found out from watching Jenn teach the class for months.

And so goes my job, and I still enjoy it. Right now I've been tasked with "cloning" our existing MDT laptops and enabling a wireless area network configuration in them. This is our Wireless Pilot Project, and we have been at it tirelessly since the spring. We are gradually replacing every single laptop in all the vehicles in one particular precinct, and if it turns out to be a success, we will be doing it for the entire fleet, in all the precincts, city-wide.

Marv The Beagle

One Friday evening last May, Billy and I were driving home from a local restaurant when I spotted this Beagle following a man as he crossed the street. "Oh, a doggie!" I said. It wasn't on a leash. "Let's get him," Billy decided.

We followed the dog as it ambled along after the stranger to a McDonald's nearby. Could it actually belong to this man? The stranger walked into the restaurant and the glass door shut behind him. The dog, as if on auto-pilot, walked right up to the door, stopped, then just stood there looking in. It broke my heart.

Billy gently picked him up and placed him in the back seat of our car. His tongue hung out as he panted -- a sign of stress. As we drove home, I petted him and talked to him as soothingly as I could. He had placed his front paws on the center console between Billy and me, and we could see how dirty and matted his fur was.

Once home, Chloe came over and wagged her tail as she sniffed him. Sally, our extremely jumpy cat who runs at the sight of the vacuum cleaner, just sat there eyeing us lazily. This new canine was apparently of little concern. Excellent! When bringing home a new pet, you always wonder if it and the old ones will all get along.

We immediately gave the new dog a bath, and took him to the vet soon after. The verdict: he's about six years old; no tracking microchip in him; been neutered; had an eye infection and an ear infection. They gave him his shots for bordetella, rabies and rattlesnake venom, plus some pet meds to make him all better. Don't ask how much the bill was.

But what to name the little fella? I searched online and came across one that had Billy laughing. "He does looks like a Marvin!" he said. And so it came to be. He has been christened Starvin Marvin Villegas/Spink.

He's been with us for two months now, and is doing great. I haven't seen any lost Beagle posters in the pet store near where we found him, for which I'm glad. Although he's starting to act more and more like Chloe the food junkie. Meaning he would sell us down the street for a nice piece of steak.

Marv's been labeled a cutie, and has a really sweet disposition. He doesn't walk very fast, and I actually think he looks bow-legged. But what's lovably amusing is that when we come home at the end of the day, he jumps up and down and runs all around, big brown ears flopping against his face. He bounds across the living room and does a shake-and-bake Steve Nash move, then jumps up to greet us with his paws in the air.

We're taking good care of him, and are getting him in shape. In a few months, we'll be hiking in Sedona with this little fatso.

Teaching Cops Technology

I have recently started dipping my toes in the "teaching" biz. As part of my job, which is supporting the computer laptops that police officers use in their vehicles, I have started teaching an hour-long session in what is known as Post-Academy, two weeks of additional classes for officers who just graduated from the Phoenix Police Academy.

Much as the nerve-wracking anticipation is something I have to quickly get over, I think I will eventually have fun doing this on a regular basis. Today we had 15 new officers, a smaller class than the usual 22 or so. What's nice about these young folks is that they grew up around computers and techie gizmos, and so are relatively savvy with graphical interfaces, as opposed to some of our older officers who haven't touched a Mobile Data Terminal in 15 or 20 years.

Besides Post-Academy, I've also been giving hour-long trainings to some officers who have been on the force for anywhere from a few to several years. Learning stuff like new applications and wireless network technology can be frustrating, I know, especially when all they want is to go out on the streets and do their job. So yes, I deal with both the eager ones who by default become their squad's tech support guy or gal, as well the as frustrated ones who call on the phone and suggest to "rinse the hard drive out in the pond next to the precinct". (Well, hey, at least they call!)

My next post-academy will be on Aug. 15th. There is one scheduled for Aug. 2nd, but I will be on vacation in San Francisco -- it's my good friend Meony's wedding, and I haven't seen him in 12 years. I'm so excited!

While in Northern California, Billy and I will be doing the touristy San Francisco stuff, then heading south to Carmel and Monterey for *more* touristy stuff. This will be a rare non-hiking vacation. We've both been to San Francisco before, but it will be his first time in Carmel/Monterey.

Until next post, I'm working on my photos so that I can upload them to Flickr and start a new photoblog.

And The Season Ends

The Phoenix Suns' journey to the NBA championship ended June 3rd with a defeat to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals. The Mavs will now face Miami Heat in a best-of-seven series.

But who cares about that? The Suns' fire has been extinguished, and so has mine.



In hindsight, what a great season it was for this team, and what a ride they've taken us on! Saddled with injuries, they played with a big heart and continued their run-and-gun style that many said would not take them to the post-season. Yet there they were, 102 games later, more than any other team had played this year, almost making it to the NBA Finals. In the playoffs, they defeated the L.A. Lakers in 7 games, then the L.A. Clippers in 7 games. But alas, they could not overcome the Dallas Mavericks to take it one step further.

I was lucky enough to see them play live at the US Airways Center in Phoenix three times in the regular season. That in itself was awesome, but what was even more awesome was how, in the final hours before Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals, Billy surprised me with two tickets to the game as we were having dinner right in downtown Phoenix! Our seats? Row 1, midcourt! I was stunned and so excited.


Once the game started, it was only this close to the players that I could see for the first time how hard two-time MVP (and my favorite player) Steve Nash really works; how hard he pounds the ball as he adeptly sidesteps an opponent to get into the paint; how fast 23-year-old Brazilian Leandro Barbosa really is; and how in tune with each other a team should be to wordlessly orchestrate their offense.


That evening, though, my next-favorite player Raja Bell was on the bench with a partial tear in his right calf. Sadly, after surviving so many injuries this season, this was the one that the team couldn't overcome. Raja played but was hampered by this injury when they lost Game 6, and with it, the Western Conference series to Dallas.


And so, what now? I can't believe that the Suns' season is actually over.

The team is heart-broken after having come so close to a trophy only to have it slip away. They were short-handed due to injuries and a not-so-deep bench, and exhausted after playing 102 fast-paced games for so long.

In the end, they have next year to look forward to. As TNT analyst and former player Charles Barkley said, if Amare Stoudemire comes back healthy next year, the Suns are going to be a force to be reckoned with.


Thanks, Phoenix Suns, for working your butts off and playing your hearts out, for giving all you had and even more. We'll see you in November, when your fans will be back to rock the house.

Top photo: Desktop wallpaper from Suns.com.
Game photos, row 1, L-R: Showing off my rally towel in my first row seat; two-time MVP Steve Nash warms up before the game; Dallas Mavericks warming up on the court.
Row 2, L-R: The TNT guys Magic Johnson, EJ, Kenny and Charles Barkley in their pre-game show; the Suns warming up; Billy and me.
Row 3, L-R: playoff ticket (row 1, baby!); Billy waiting for tip-off.
Bottom: Half-page ad in the local paper, the Arizona Republic.