I double-dog dare you

Never one to back down from a dare, I've taken up the Thom G. double-dog Three Word Wednesday gauntlet. This week's words are gamble, omitted and temporary.

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Jesse sat back in the chair thinking about the past 24 hours and nervously dreading what the next 24 would bring.
He fucked up and knew it. But that's how he lived, on the edge. He'd done it all his life, ever since that first rush of jumping off the trestle bridge as an 8-year-old. He didn't do it for pride, because his friends would bestow some horrible trestle-linked-chicken nickname on him. No Jesse had the fever -- not for more cowbell -- but for greenbacks. Cold, hard cash. As an 8-year-old the 20 bucks his friends cobbled together would have made Jesse run naked through Wal Mart.
It was his Quixotic mission, chasing the almighty dollar.
He knew it was a gamble to take the Pick 6 long shot at Del Mar. He knew it was even more dangerous to do it with the mob's money.
But that was water under the bridge. Now he'd have to find the six-grand he pissed away at the track. And fast.
There would be no time for excuse, Vinnie wouldn't hear it.
He wouldn't care that the Racing Forum omitted the fact that Friedegg had a stress fracture in its leg and had been in one of those goddamned inflatable temporary casts leading up the final viewing.
The only thing Vinnie cared about was the return on the 4-g's he'd "loaned" Jesse earlier in the week.
There were no "broken legs" promises. It was understood.
Now Jesse, not wanting to end up like Friedegg, in a cast, began scheming.
"Hey, Jack," the phone call began, "Meet me at the Blue Room in an hour. I've got a proposition for you."

God didn't make little green apples

and it may not rain in Indianapolis in the summertime -- but it sure as hell has rained in Kansas City this past week.

Not that it's a bad thing, but it's simply so foreign for this California kid. My hope is to bring back the thunderstorm -- sans lightning -- when we head home on Monday.

That being said, we had an interesting night Saturday at the Royals game vs. Tampa Bay.
In all the baseball games I've ever been to, and that odometer's passed 1,000 a long time ago, I've never had to sit through a rain delay. I've seen a rainout by the wimpy-ass Giants in a "storm" that would make Midwesterners laugh. But I've never actually seen the ground crew roll out the tarp, unfurl the diamond-sized plastic and anchor it down in a matter of minutes.
The closest I get to rain delays is seeing them flash on the AP wire -- "The St. Louis-Chicago game is being delayed by rain." "The St. Louis-Chicago game has resumed after a rain delay of 1 hour, 13 minutes."
But from out COVERED seats last night, we watched, not only the monsoon roll in, but the grounds crew do their rain dance with fascinating precision. (PIX TO COME ONCE WE GET HOME).
And we waited. And waited. And waited. For 1 hour, 13 minutes.
And then the grounds crew undid their magic. And we played on. And somewhere in Redding, Calif., and around the country, the AP flashed that our game had resumed.

Be careful what you ask for

That's the feeling I had Monday morning about 0-dawn-30.

I had come to the Midwest on vacation with the usual wants -- fun, frivolity and a Royals baseball game. Oh, add a honest-to-goodness Midwest thunderstorm. Not the kind in Cali that sparks endless forest fires, but the kind where you get to stand in warm rain and see the cool bolt lightning.

Well, our first night in Muscatine, Iowa, we swam, had dinner and relaxed on the deck until the mosquitoes had dinner on us (there is still a ton of standing water from their recent floods).

An hour or so after heading in, the skies lit up with lightning, boomed with thunder and weeped with rain. Cool. Check that one off the list.

But, oh no. Mother Nature wasn't done. I've always laughed at people in California who actually watch the Weather Channel. It's pointless.

But not in the Midwest. It's essential. The weather changes more than No. 1's moods.

And it has to be tiring to hear daily that a thunderstorm might be on its way -- the same way I'd get tired if the USGS told me an earthquake might be happening tonight.

But we went to bed Sunday with the thunderstorm warning, although my Uncle Mark and I had plans for an 8 a.m. golf outing.

Not so fast.

About 3:30 a.m. the heavens opened. Lightning. Thunder. Rain -- wideways rain. And winds -- gale-force winds.

It woke me up long enough to realize I wasn't going to play golf and turn the cell phone alarm off. Then, about 5:15 a.m. my cousin's son, Jake, came in and said his mom and dad wanted to see me.

Serious faces for so early. Steve said I should be prepared to shepherd everyone to the basement, that the tornado sirens should be wailing shortly. You know shit it serious when people who live there look a little panicked.

We watched the Weather Channel, saw a super cell moving over us in a color I didn't know existed (usually it's red for monsoon rains) and right as the loop showed the cell passing over Muscatine the power shut off.

What the hell?

Well, the worst of it had passed, the storm shuffled east into Illinois. But the damage had been done (pictures coming when I can download them off the camera). We went to Davenport in the morning and saw destruction and misery. It really was a storm they'll be talking about for the next decade (Do you remember that day ...).

The puzzling thing to me, however, was where in the hell were the tornado sirens? With sustained winds of 95 mph, I wanted sirens. According to the news, they were straight-line winds and not a vortex. I assume there wasn't any hot air to mix with cold and form a tornado. Still, it was more than I asked for.

We're not in Kansas anymore

And we're not in heaven, we're in Iowa.
That's right. The Williams boys' roadshow took off Saturday from Lawrence, Kansas, headed up I-35, took a right on I-80 in Des Moines and wound its way across Iowa to Muscatine, home of the Hamptons, Meyers and Snyders (cousins, aunt and uncle).
While Kansas is always fun for the boys and myself (it's become a vacation home base), Iowa was a new experience for all. A vast expanse of flat amazed and bored on the six-hour drive to Muscatine (the only place on the Mississippi River were it travels east-west).
We're hanging with my cuz Stacey and her family, lounging by a pool, going to Quad Cities to a baseball game and doing just what you're supposed to on vacation -- NOTHING.

But the highlight of the trip so far for me is the awesome thunder and lightning storm on Saturday night. I a place that got tattooed by flooding and more flooding in the past two months, many Iowans are sick of rain. But for a California kid, the fury of a storm moving across the plains is a site to behold. Sunny all day Saturday, the clouds kicked up in the south about sunset, followed by flash lightning off in the distance. And then, as Midwest storms do, it rolled through with the subtlety of a right cross. Buckets of rain, booming thunder and lightning so bright I could count my freckles.
Of course, No. 1 got a little freaked about the tornado warnings flashing on the TV, but we assured him he'd have plenty of time to duck into the basement should the tornado siren actually go off.

We've got a day and a half left in Iowa before heading back to the Land of Ahs. A golf outing, a birthday party and perhaps some fireworks are probably in store.
And hopefully more severe weather.

Overwhelmed

I'm on sensory overload after seeing "The Dark Knight."
Too much to digest in one setting, for sure.
Suffice to say everything written about Heath Ledger's Joker character are dead on (no pun intended). He's funny, insane, disturbing and genius. The only negative about his portrayal was that it left you wanting more, in some instances making you stray from what was a genuinely original script and plotline.
You knew you were in for a ride when the Joker's magic trick makes a pencil dissapear in a gangster's eye.

However, there are so many twists, turns and plot subtleties that "Dark Knight" is one of the movies you have to see twice (kinda like "Superbad," where it was necessary to see it again just to get all the penis jokes).
And that's not a bad thing.

Small town, big name?

Ok, so we're on our way to Kansas City for a glorious two-week vacation. The boys and I are sitting in Java City waiting for board the plane.





We're minding our own business when who in the name of the Wide World of Sports plops down next to us but the voice of the Kings, Grant Napier.



Proof positive that Scaramento is still a small town? No one bombarded him for an autograph or told him he's a New York Yankees honk or told him his radio show sucks.

wordless wednesday