El Puerco de Lardass en el Metrodome

Sunday, May 4, 2008

I always manage to find at least one interesting specimen each time I visit the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. That's the giant bubble where the Twins and Vikings play, for you non-Minnesotans, and today I observed something so utterly gross, so delectably disgusting, that I just had to share it with you, my blog friends.

Allow me to introduce El Puerco de Lardass:

Oh, yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen. Is he not just a vision? Just look at the way he gazes gluttonously upon a handful of roast beast as he prepares to attack it. No utensils for El Puerco! As gross as it is to fondle your food before you eat it, this is not what earned El Puerco de Lardass his title. I sometimes blur the faces of people I blog about, to protect them from embarrassment should they, or someone they know, find their way here. In El Puerco's case, though, I decided not to do that, because this man earned the right to be embarrassed. He should be embarrassed, and you'll see why as you read on.

I should mention that The First Baseman and I sat in the Terrace Suite today. A ticket to the Terrace Suite includes a comfy leather seat, a great view of the field from halfway between 1st base and right field, and a delicious buffet of fruit, salad, veggies, dip, nachos, hamburgers, Dome Dogs, cookies, and roast beast. It also has a bar, and pop, wine, and beer are included in the ticket price, as well. El Puerco's grease-caked aorta must have nearly exploded when he realized that he could go back as often as he wanted. He could have as much food as he could stuff into his bulbous gut. Oh, the thrill he must have felt!

Here is how El Puerco positions himself in his comfy leather seat, next to his probably long-suffering and grossed-out missus:

Precious, isn't he? So thoughtful, so considerate, so gentlemanly. But no. Sitting with your knees at 10 and 2 is not reason enough to warrant the nickname El Puerco de Lardass.

Although we didn't keep track of the exact number of trips our handsome hero made to the buffet, trust me when I say that it was a lot. Constant, actually. He managed to slurp most of the food into his gullet with great windy, snorking, smacking noises, but some of the juices and spit and looser solids, like strings of beef fat, ended up on the outside of his robust gut, rather than the inside:

Oh, yeah. I forgot about the potato chips. He crunched down about eight pounds of those with a vat of dip.

So, you're probably wondering why I'm being so mean, why I'm making fun of a fat guy, huh? Please note that I am not making fun of him because he is fat. I am making fun of him because he is a gross, disgusting, boorish oaf who happens to be really fat and slovenly, and I have no problem drawing attention to that because of how utterly rude he is. You'll see.

Now, study the following photo carefully. This is what the area in front of El Puerco looked like in about the 5th inning:

Couple of things here. Firstively, see that smaller white plate that has a huge puddle of barbecue sauce on it? El Puerco came back from one of his missions to the buffet, loaded with a plate of roast beast that the chef had lovingly piled a foot high, but oh, darn! El Puerco forgot the barbecue sauce! He called over the waitress, who really isn't there to serve food, because, uh…buffet! She serves drinks and takes people's plates when they're finished, and like most people in this industry, she works for tips. So El Puerco rudely motions her over and asks her to go to the buffet and get him some barbecue sauce. Yes! Really!

And here, ladies and gentlemen of the slob-judging jury, is where he earned the right to be called out in this mean blog post. When the waitress brought the plate of barbecue sauce, after she'd been bringing him drinks and clearing his dozens of plates for the last 90 minutes, he said to her,

"Hey, you guys share tips, right? Cuz I already tipped that guy (points to bartender), so we're good.

What. A. Pig. The First Baseman's jaw involuntarily dropped to his chest, his eye's widened, and without even realizing he was speaking out loud, he said, "Are you serious?!" By then, though, El Puerco was snout-deep in saucy meat, snorting more grease into his bulldog jowls. The poor waitress just looked at us and shook her head. And guess what? She didn't come back to our section again. Everybody knew why, and none of us minded getting our own drinks and clearing our own plates, obviously. The plates piled up in front of El Puerco de Lardass, because even though he lumbered to the buffet seven or eight hundred more times, he never once took his own trash to the garbage can.

Secondively, see those cubes of cheese? That's where El Puerco kept track of strikeouts. With cheese. Directly on the ledge that somebody will have to clean. The buffet gets put away in about the bottom of the 7th inning, so on El Puerco's 800th foraging trip, he was disappointed to find nothing there. Now, an inning and a half without food was just too much for him to handle, so he started nibbling his strikeout cheeses that had been sitting out, getting all warm and soft and oily all through the game. He'd eat half, and then put the other half back on the hopefully staph-infected ledge. Sure enough, at the end of the game, he waddled out of there, leaving his greasy cheese mess for somebody else to clean up. I can only hope he contracted a nasty case of Renteria.

If you ever want to really get to know somebody, pay attention to how they treat waiters and other service people. You'll learn everything you need to know.