Oakland Beats Tampa Bay

n the battle of post-game celebrations, the fans in Tampa Bay have nothing on the spirited Oakland fans. Sunday night, following the Raiders' loss to the Bucs, East Oakland sizzled and burned with young rowdies demonstrating their loyalty to the hometown team by trashing and looting stores, burning cars and spinning doughnuts in intersections all up and down International Blvd. More than 80 people were arrested in the melee, most for vandalism, destroying public property, or public drunkenness.

Meanwhile, in Tampa Bay, Florida's "Bay Area," exactly one person was arrested: a dyed-blonde Miss Thang who was baring her implants to the crowd gathered to celebrate the Buccaneers' first-ever Super Bowl championship.

Asked to comment, Oakland riot-participant Hector Barbazino said, "They only had one arrest down there? Day-um, bro! And it was for what? Some bitch flashin' her titties? Oh, that ain't right, yo."

"That ain't cool at all, man," added Barbazino's cousin, Ricky Ledora. "Shee-it, they ought to come to Oaktown and see how we get down here, yo. Look at Carlos over there in the chopped Toyota, yo, his bitch LaShanté be hangin' out the sunroof all damn night, and she butt-naked, man! Butt-naked!"

"Oh, yeah, bro. Bitches be throwin' they titties on my windshield for hours, yo. Pressed titties on glass, what I'm talkin' about." Barbazino commented, as he poured lighter fluid all over a parked Subaru station wagon and set a match to it. "Word, homes. If Ray-Ray didn't had to take my ride to go pick up his baby-mama before ten, we'd still be gettin' it, them titties on glass."

The word from Tampa Bay was that, other than the breast-baring incident, not a lot of carrying-on occurred. City residents marched a few times around the three blocks of the downtown area, some of them carrying American flags and singing "God Bless America," and a few people were observed drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade from bottles hidden in brown paper bags. After an hour of this, most of the crowd dispersed and went home to watch Alias.

In Oakland, however, it was a different story. The large crowd merrily jumped on moving cars, broke windows and set fires for hours. When the mob energy began to wane, police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and wooden dowels in an attempt to further incite the crowd and egg them on to new heights of destruction throughout the night.

"Come on, you miserable bastards!" shouted Sergeant Arnie Cocklip at the crowd, as he fired his service revolver in the air. "Let's show the world how we kick heiney in Oakland. We're number friggin' one, goddamnit! Break something! Burn something down!"

Reluctantly, the worn out crowd complied with police orders and thoroughly trashed a nearby McDonald's, a Kelly-Moore paint store and the Gomes Tire and Service Center. Said one young reveler, Jose Chingamadre, "After we burned the three Chevys over on 151st, and threw bricks through the window of the day-care center there, I was ready to go home and watch Alias. But then the cops made us stay out here and keep going. Man, those dudes are like hard-asses, you know?"

Damage in Oakland was estimated at over $100,000, with the police that were present throughout the night gathering the day after to vote on which of the rioters would receive a full share, and which only half shares. "Them little slacking sonsabitches that only broke a couple windows or just missed a pedestrian while they were spinning doughnuts think they're getting a full share, they better think again. Punk-ass bitches gotta show me something special to get that," Sergeant Cocklip explained.

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"As Jerry Springer said when announcing he was about to have dinner with a loyal viewer, 'It's time to take out the trash.'"

Is there a real Tony Soprano? I'm just asking because my neighbor says he knows him. And I've seen the TV show before and I don't want to get on the bad side of this guy if my neighbor goes mouthing off to him like he threatened to. Either way I guess it's in my best interest to stop throwing the garbage into the hall.

Garbage men are like Winston Churchill: They get no respect. A bunch of guys whose job it is to ride around on the back of a truck. That's the only highlight of their day. Then they have to haul your messy garbage to the truck and dump it in the back. In some cases. In other cases, the truck can do all the work. They hire Transformers or something, I don't know, but sometimes I watch through the blinds and see the truck pull up and the garbage can is lifted up by robot arms and dumped in the back. I always wonder what happened to the garbage men. I guess the real question is, is it a friendly Transformer or one of the evil ones? Like the Tony Soprano thing, I don't care to find out.

Being a garbage man is the worst job in the world. That's what I told myself when I was working at Trojan as a condom taster, and I stand by it. Sure, I went home feeling weird at the end of a long shift and you can't really get the taste of banana-flavored rubber out of your mouth, but at least only my tongue was worn out. With being a garbage man, that's probably a worse smell, and you have to move a lot. At least at the condom tasting job the other guy was the one doing all the moving.

What's even worse about being a garbage man, people always use you in negative examples. Some shithead kid doesn't do his homework and all of a sudden his mom is threatening to give your job to him. That mom better watch out. 'Cause if she's right and the kid becomes her garbage man one day, I bet she'll never get any furniture or boxes taken away. And the kid will be lapping it up. "I'm sorry, ma'am, that refrigerator box isn't officially in the dumpster, so we're not allowed to take it. Fuck you, mom. You should have shelled out the money for a tutor if you wanted your boxes picked up."

I wonder if you can even pick up garbage on your own home route, or if they assign you to some other route on purpose. Like it's a conflict of interest or something. Like a doctor can't operate on her own son. The garbage manager stops the guy as he's on the way out the door, all like, "I'm assigning you another route, Bill. You're too close to this case." That would be pretty cool, I guess. The other highlight of the job. Then you're right up in the ranks with doctors and lawyers. Because if your mom comes into the Burger King and wants a Whopper, you still have to wait on her. No matter how much she's making fun of you.

There's got to be some mobility in being a garbage man. Better routes or something. Like if you get in good with the boss or get a lot of letters of recommendation from people on your route, you can get reassigned to the rich people's routes or something. The kind of routes where people just throw out hundred dollar bills because they got dirty and shit. But then you probably couldn't even take them. Some kind of garbage collectors' code I don't know about. You see perfectly good sea food lying right on top, not even dirty, but you're bound by honor not to eat it. That's gotta suck.

There's so much I don't know.

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A wise man once said, "Greatness is not measured in words, but in actions." That was me! I said that.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm great. I'm always saying wise stuff like what I just said. It's not a one-time thing or anything. Some people, I'm not naming names, but you're lucky to get two, three wise sayings out of them in their whole lifetime. I pop off stuff like that in my sleep, at least once a day. No kidding, ask people who know me.

A lot of people attribute my intelligence to a good upbringing, but it probably has more to do with my natural insight into virtually all things. I'm what you could call street educated, since I've never been to college and dropped out of high school. My philosophy is you don't need some stodgy professor in some building to teach you about the world. I've made the world my classroom, and I have perfect attendance. I know things instinctively, like how many Senates we have in Congress and how planes work. Here's a hint: It's the jets and the wings. I didn't need anybody to tell me that.

The trouble with people not me, they lack the confidence to realize they know everything they really need to. If you're going to be a doctor or something like that, yeah, you probably want to take a few years of school or whatever—not that I couldn't do it, but I'd hate to be put on the spot if I needed to know something. But for the rest of us, if you're insightful like me, we already know most of the stuff we need to know. I've laid carpet in my own apartment. I can do practically anything.

To be truly great, though, you've got to get along well with other people, and I get along with everybody. There's not a day goes by I don't talk to someone who I consider a friend. Whether they're coming to me with their problems, seeking my help, or just chatting me up, I've always got a minute to spare for anybody. Sometimes they've got something bugging them and I give them advice. They're like, "Awoll, someone got my sister pregnant." And they ask if it was me, and I tell them it wasn't, but I know what they really want is reassurance—and some help! I tell them stay the course, man, everything is cool. Or that they need to learn to live with changes. Either one of those is usually all anybody needs.

But I'm a fun guy, too. I've got friends who, all we do is go out drinking together. We'll see each other once a week or once a night and go out and get hammered, just for kicks, because life is short and you've got to know how to live. A few times some of my buddies have come up to me at my telemarketing job and they've been really depressed, so we go out for a beer together during lunch. I'm always there for the friends who need me.

Not that I'm all Mr. Nice Guy. If you cross me, you may regret it. Anybody who wants to make me or my friends and family feel bad is public enemy number one—don't try to tell me I can't chase my dreams or I can't park there. Cynics like you are just sore because you wasted your talents not following your dreams. Another thing I hate is people who tell you you're wrong. They'll tell you how you mispronounced words, they'll say you don't know what you're talking about, or tell you the directions you gave to the Safeway were way off. I say, shut-up! Does it make you feel big to make other people look small? You're just a show-off.

I suppose I got a teensy weensy temper. Even the most perfect people have the occasional vice. It doesn't mean I'm not still great.

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