Monday, March 06, 2006

The Big Weekend

So for those of you who missed it, Crash was the “upset” Oscar winner over favorite Brokeback Mountain. For those of you wondering, I personally had picked Capote to trump them all but I was left empty-handed. Surprisingly (or maybe not depending on whether you actually watched the movie with its thirty or so minutes of sheep) Brokeback Mountain walked away with very little. It took Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and Best Director went to Ang Lee. The absolutely most beautiful and poignant parts of the night came from George Clooney, who while on the red carpet admitted to E! that “I hate Ang Lee.” and then upon winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana, told the audience that “Well I guess this means I don’t win for Director.” Go George!!!

Reese Witherspoon snuffed out Keira’s chances at bringing home Mr. Oscar… but compared to my English Muffin she was in rags… so here’s some well deserved drool time on Ms. Knightley… who I might add can bring home Mr. Watchdog any damn night she chooses:
So now that my oh so extensive Oscar coverage has concluded (sorry for all those who thought I was giving picks... maybe next year), let’s move on to what is really important. Me. Well… okay…so I really don't rank... but on to other things at least regardless of their importance.

I rolled through the Hills with Mailman KC and Little Destruction Friday night. We did some pretty decent work, a legit congestive heart failure in an 80 year old and a cancer stricken 93 year old who was still weak and dehydrated after their round of chemo were the cookie ends of the evening. The 31 year old, well he was the cream. We found him at 4:00am outside a strip club with a head injury. KC and I looked at each other while listening to his “cousin” (I think she might have been one of the strippers because she was smokin’) explain how she had called 911 four times, he was beat up by bouncers, he didn’t drink at all tonight, blah blah blah.

Finally KC interrupted her by saying, “So basically…” and that was the cue. The three of us concluded in unison “He got knocked the fuck out!” She seemed a little startled by our answer, and sure I can see from the outside how that was messed up or sick or ill or crass, but at some point in this job you lose some morality with the obvious liars and opt for the outrageous. So how bad was he? Well going into the trauma center he was a classic unresponsive. He was a GCS of 6… and to put that into perspective a normal person is a 15 and a dead person is a 3.

Once the trauma team got their hands on him, his GCS miraculously recovered to a 12. Why? Two words: Foley Catheter. That’s right, one of the things they do is swab up the penis with some betadine, then take a rubber catheter roughly 6-10 inches long and half an inch in diameter, and shove it up the hole into the bladder. Now someone who is seriously injured will not feel a thing. Someone who is drunk however… well no matter how drunk you are your going to feel it… and you WILL react. Just like he did. Drunken fool.

I got to see Billy Joel Saturday night… sort of. I worked the show but got to see a good forty minutes or so of his 135 minute performance. An entire third of the show without anyone becoming “ill”, which is pretty darn good for a show serving up beer and champagne like peanuts at a ballgame. Of course at the end we got all the intox patrons… probably all friends of his from AA… but who am I to criticize how much is too much. When in doubt… I’ll just go with the Foley.
How was he? Well, he was Billy Joel of course. His performance was in my opinion very good even though he brought some guy named Chainsaw for Highway to Hell and he spent probably half the time on the rotating piano and the other half on guitar. One really nice thing about it was his show was “in the round”. Usually around 3,000 or so seats are shut off because of the stage set-up. His set-up reminded me of Metallica’s Load tour back in 1996 or 1997 where the stage was actually in the middle of the arena. Very fan friendly.

After Billy Joel, I shot down to the Roseland Ballroom with The Nick to cover a rave. It was someone named VanDycke’s The Politics of Dancing 2. When we first got there, it really was not bad at all. The music wasn’t as loud as past raves, the crowd seemed older and less likely to become zooted and polluted, and most importantly security seemed maxed out.

Something happened at 1:00am. I think someone slipped at the controller and sent the volume through the roof. This jump in volume, aside from sending a pounding wave through my skull, must have knocked around two dozen X pills into the beer. By 3:00am we were swamped with dehydrations. By 3:15 I had tackled my first zooted freakazoid who was trying to smack some girl into the next decade. It was somewhat downhill from there. Luckily it came to a quick conclusion at 6:00am… and only one person was transported. A very successful event in my opinion considering some of the others I have done.

So that was the big weekend which kept me busy and offline so I didn’t get to do Sunday what I had wanted to do Sunday… so instead I’ll do it today… a little later on… so stay tuned.
Posted by New York City's Watchdog :: 3/06/2006 04:40:00 PM :: Permalink :: 1 Bones Added to the Pile

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