Monday Monday 8.11.2008

Good Morning,

I hope everyone had a good weekend. With an impending work related milestone, we could almost guarantee that Maggie would have to work the weekend, so we planned to spend our time in Michigan. Despite Detroit’s reputation as America’s most prominent violent crime haven, we had a relatively productive and peaceful weekend. Maggie’s apartment is about 90 minutes away from the Detroit Metro Airport, so with a 3:00PM arrival time on Thursday and a 7:30PM departure time on Sunday, we had three full days to cram full of activities. Since we did so much ( and I could go into great detail about each and every meal, activity, and meaningless activity), I will only hit on three high points (each topic is bolded below).

The Dark Knight
The first major activity on our agenda was a trip to the IMAX theatre for my highly anticipated viewing of The Dark Knight. Since the movie’s debut a few weeks ago, countless sources have described its magnificence to me without giving away a single fragment of plot line. The Dark Knight did not disappoint me as the two and a half hour epic delivered in the areas of action, intrigue, and characterization.

Of course, the movie has the lingering shadow of Heath Ledger’s controversial death last winter looming in the foreground of every viewer’s mind, so I anxiously view this movie wondering if Heath would give us a farewell performance of any significance. By movies end, I determined that Ledger’s career would have been shaped and defined by this role if his life didn’t end so abruptly. In this role, Ledger files 10 Things I Hate About You in the previous lifetime folder, while placing Brokeback Mountain in the former preconceived notions folder, while delivering a performance that can now be placed in the modern day Christopher Lee folder. Bravo!

All in all though, the movie might rank among the best films I’ve seen in the past few years. I didn’t await its debut with the same eagerness as The Return of the King, the latest Harry Potter Movies, or even the latest Rocky movie, but the movie did parallel all in its delivery. Without giving away too much in the way of plot, I would say that the movie is definitely a “must see” for everyone.

Detroit Tigers Baseball
The next night featured baseball stadium number six this year as we went to Comerica Park to see the Detroit Tigers lose to the Oakland Athletics. For the record, this means that our curse has taken hold again, so as we round out the season with a few more games on the upcoming schedule – it will be nice to see if any more home teams can manage a victory with Maggie and I in the stands.

As far as baseball stadiums go, Comerica Park is probably the most well adorned facility in baseball that I have seen. Let’s say for example that you aren’t a fan of baseball at all, but your significant other is dragging you to a ballgame in Detroit (of all places). You would approach the stadium looking around with no question as to the Team’s mascot. Tigers surround the park covering every square inch, and I’m not talking about the cartoon-esque versions like Tony the Tiger either. When approaching the main entrance of the park, you get the feeling that the statues of Tigers peering down at you are guarding the entrance against fans wearing a different team’s colors or logos. Surrounding the stadium are pillars and atop each you can see the face of a tiger with a baseball in its mouth.
Inside the park, I have never seen such a variety or quantity of food vendors. Lining both sides of the entire Tier 1 corridor are vendors selling Hot Dogs, Italian Sausages, Pretzels, popcorn, beer, soda and all the normal baseball day fair. The item unique to Detroit, which I didn’t have because of the instantaneous loss of man points that would have occurred, is the daiquiri. They had every flavor you could think of and sold it by the yard in a commemorative beverage container. The hot dogs were ranked 24th in the big leagues, which doesn’t leave much room for anything worse, but then again Petco Park was supposed to be at the absolute bottom in the rankings, and I consumed three hot dogs while attending that park. My assumption in regards to the Hot Dog rating at Comerica Park is that the good people of Detroit changed there food vendor sometime after the publication of my Baseball Stadium Bible because the dogs that Maggie and I had were quite tasty.

As for our seats, I’ll say that they provided a great view of the game and a decent view of the downtown skyline. Since the ball field is actually below ground level, some fans have the privilege of watching the game free of charge from the outside perimeter of the stadium. I can’t imagine the view is all that spectacular, but the price is right.

Frankenmuth
About 30 miles away from Maggie’s apartment is a little German village filled with shops, restaurants, and German activities. Unfortunately it started to rain when we were about 15 miles away, so the visit wasn’t as nice as it would have been on a beautiful August day. We did sample the local fudge shop, Inn, and cheese store. I was quite disappointed that I couldn’t find a pretzel, but perhaps if it wasn’t raining, I might have looked a little harder.

One of the town’s major attractions is the huge Christmas store that looms on the outskirts of town. We spent a quick 90 minutes or so in this store before exiting with about $50 in ornaments, decorations, etc. Yep it’s not even Fall, and we’re already prepping for the holiday. I think Maggie and I have already determined that Frankenmuth is indeed worth a return trip sometime this winter when we can wear appropriate attire and give the town the attention it deserves.

Well, as promised I won’t fill your inbox with any of the other less important details of the weekend, but I hope everyone else had a great weekend.

Have a Good Week,

Ryan