(no subject)

the "woooo! woohooo!" in the background totallly makes this

(no subject)

Your work is so strange.

I was that orange bird, a big fat orange bird. +1

I remember having to dress up at the Salt Lake City Convention Center for a fast food convention as a prototype figure head for a possible fast food franchise. I was told to hug, bug, and be super friendly and make everyone love me, even those who wouldn't. When the day was done, I couldn't face what i had done or the people who would see me for who I was under the orange pecker-- and did not collect my check. At least you are a an orange bird with pride. I tell this story with tears and shame.

(no subject)

Swoops got patted down today.

It was the primary one, not me. I wasn't even there; I heard about it afterwards. Swoops, two of my fellow interns, and one of the players were on their way back from an appearance and stopped at a crowded Mexican bar during the Mexico-France game to pass out some of the Spanish flyers we have about our next home game. On their way in, the bouncer insisted on patting everybody down.

Which seems reasonable, until you really stop and think about this. First of all, what are you checking for? Weapons, presumably. It's not like the people there representing a local professional sports team are about to start something. Plus, who would they start it with? French fans? You don't have any of those in there. And you know this group's backing Mexico too, since Swoops has on a Mexican national team scarf and a sombrero.

Still, I guess patting the three people down makes sense. I mean, they have pockets. Swoops does too, on the gym shorts he's wearing underneath that outfit... but to get there he'd pretty much have to spend two minutes taking off most of the costume. Not much of a threat. Besides, with all the padding it's not like you'd find a weapon if he had one. Actually even without any padding you didn't notice that one of my coworkers carries a Swiss Army knife. So the frisking of Swoops was probably similarly inept, as well as just plain absurd.

Really though I think they should've carded everyone. Although I'm glad they didn't, since then they couldn't let Swoops in. After all, he's only three years old.

(no subject)

As we are a soccer team, it is of course worth discussing the vuvuzela.

Opinions in my office our mixed. My boss, the main Swoops, is clearly in favor. We sell them at our merchandise stand, and he recently decided to celebrate getting a new shipment of them in by taking three of the interns who were in at the time and not busy and going to downtown Raleigh to march around and play them. For this they got hassled by Raleigh PD, and one of my coworkers was threatened with a ticket for being a public nuisance. (Which, to be fair, he totally was. I mean, the man had a vuvuzela.) Swoops also marched around with one during last night's game encouraging people to play theirs.

Our director of communications, is anti-vuvuzela. Whenever my boss plays the video from the Raleigh vuvuzela parade, as has been known to happen for no particular reason, he complains about the noise. Turning the volume way down does not satisfy him, as well it shouldn't, because, well, vuvuzelas are pretty annoying.

Most people's opinions fall somewhere in between. I know the merchandise stand folks like them, because after all the buzz from the World Cup they've started selling like hotcakes. We sold out last night. And I know that for similar reasons our Chief Operations Officer (the boss's boss) is in favor, and I believe he's responsible for the fact that the PA guy regularly made announcements during last night's game encouraging people to head over to one of the two stands and pick up a vuvuzela if they didn't already have one - but I also know he's against them being played too close to him.

As for me? I've mastered the technique of playing two of the damn things at the same time. Figured out how yesterday. And I'm quite glad this ability is not more widespread; after all, the list of things more annoying than a vuvuzela may be short, but two vuvuzelas definitely makes it on.

At no point this morning did I entertain the notion that what I was experiencing was in fact reality. +2

Swoops' tweet this morning: "I'm going to be at Hope Community Church today for both services!"

See, our team runs soccer camps for kids of various ages, taught by some of our players and coaching staff. There's a couple normal ones we do, with the option of special things for groups like team camps (where we'll have our people train your whole youth team) or off-site camps or other customized versions. So the kids' ministry at the local megachurch decided to team up with our head coach (who I believe is a member there) to put together a special one for the church. I believe it's basically our normal introductory camp with a little bit of added Jesus.

Makes sense to me. Lecture to an eight-year-old about teamwork and dedication and fair play, and they'll ignore you. Teach them to enjoy a sport, and they'll figure those things out anyhow; good coaching drives the lessons home. So if your religion inspires you to pass those values on to your kids, soccer camp isn't a bad way to do it.

But as much as I'm in support of what the church is doing with this, I should also note that I am not myself a religious person. I have my spiritual side, but organized religion just doesn't click for me. Never has, and while I was still attending services with my family on occasion through high school I haven't really been back since. I'm a lapsed Unitarian. So while I am familiar with many flavors of Christianity in theory, and having lived in the south for much of my life I am of course used to encountering Christians of many stripes, my knowledge of what churches are like is basically confined to Episcopalianism. Which this was not.

Now, I grew up in a large congregation. The expansive parking lot, the open modern architecture of the church building, and the sheer size of the place were beyond my own prior experience, but not shockingly so. In a lot of ways, it felt familiar - until I walked in the door. See, I'd never been to a church that had a coffee shop inside it.

I don't just mean there was coffee. I mean there was a chalkboard menu that looked just like something out of Starbucks except that the logo was replaced by a parody featuring Jesus offering you a mug of coffee.

I walked in partway through the first service, big blue bag in hand, and walked past the coffee shop to the bathroom where I was changing. Then, while I waited for the end of the service (which ran a little long), I got to chill for a few minutes with the volunteer who would running the counter with the camp information. Given that I avoid breaking character in costume unnecessarily even when I'm not exactly among the public, and hawks can't speak, I'm a less than stimulating conversationalist. Mostly, I listened to the tail end of the sermon on CCTV, then watched one of our players get up to say a few words about soccer at the end of the service. Then the doors opened and the crowd poured out and I was on.

I did my usual thing of high-fiving everybody, signing autographs, and horsing around with kids. You know, usual mascot stuff. Perhaps slightly strange for the audience, but not at all out of the ordinary for me - except for the bit where I was inside a church. That made it kind of odd. I'd be doing what I'm used to, and then I'd pause as a more vigilant part of my mind took over to ask, "Is this really OK? I mean, I'm in church." Then I'd remind myself that if they didn't want anybody sliding down their banister they didn't have to have a mascot come to their service. And if kicking a soccer ball in church is disrespectful, why did the pastor give me one?

Then the second service started up. I stayed in character as the latecomers trickled in and the last of the first-service stragglers trickled out, which meant dancing to the sound of the high school students who kicked the whole thing off by playing Christian rock. Then I went on back to the bathroom to down some bottles of water that I'd brought along before putting my head back on and returning to where I could see the CCTV to keep an eye on when the service would be drawing to a close. Both bored, and with me not exactly being very talkative, we decided we'd go harass the youth pastor who had set this whole thing up and the couple adults he was chatting with. She announced that she'd been training me like she trains her puppy at home, and I had learned a lot of great tricks. I nodded and played along as she had me sit, shake hands, and play dead. (I did a rather good job of that last one, at least if the reactions are anything to go on.)

We all hung around and chatted for a bit, and I did my best to join in, sharing my opinions on the World Cup (it being the Fourth of July, I had on my Team USA jersey) and answering the pastor's questions about which of the other teams in our leagues had decent mascots as he looked at the list of teams on his copy of our schedule. ("What's a Rowdy, anyway?" Shrug. "Oh, Rhinos. That sounds fun." Nodnodnod. I hear Rex is pretty awesome.) At one point, somebody asked me my age. I held up three fingers. "You're thirty?" I shook my head, and repeated the gesture. "Oh, you're three?" Nod. This was accepted without question.

After a bit of that, it was back into position for the end of the second service. As the crowd dwindled and the last few kids left, I changed back into a human and left, past the coffee shop. Seriously, why the hell is there a coffee shop in the middle of the church?

(no subject)

There are times when I am insanely jealous of the other Swoops. Yesterday, for example:

(no subject)

Of the mechanics of my recent prank, dear readers, there is little to say, save that they went off exactly as planned and the plan was, I believe, impeccable.

After an utterly boring appearance at the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce Business Showcase last night, I discovered that I could not find my cell phone. Realizing I had left it in Swoops' bag, I went in this morning to retrieve it. While I was there anyway, my boss asked if I could don the suit to visit kids leaving their last day of morning summer camp. Every kid gets sent off with a t-shirt and a bright orange soccer ball, and there are players on hand (and Swoops, when he's age-appropriate) to autograph them.

I made my grand entrance riding shotgun in the gator (the vehicle, not the animal - though that would've been cool too) they used to bring the balls up for the kiddies, hopped off, high-fived a bunch of people, grabbed a sharpie, and got to work on the autographs. Many of the kids also posed for photos, and at one point I stood up to strike a dramatic pose with one of the taller children.

And it was at that moment that the plastic spider I had installed inside the head made his appearance, dangling an inch in front of my eyeballs.

He was carefully rigged up to fall from his out-of-sight hiding place once the head had been jostled around enough for him to work loose, and he did so. This I had installed last night, presuming that the next appearance would be this evening when Swoops will be attending Muddy the Mudcat's birthday party while I go to class. And somehow I did not put two and two together and realize that having put Swoops on right after arranging for a nice-sized plastic spider to suddenly fall into place in front of the face of whoever did the next appearance meant this surprise was waiting for me.

After giving a small start of surprise that, absent clues from facial expressions, probably looked like Swoops being his normal energetic self, I posed for the camera while working hard to keep from laughing out loud.

(no subject)

Our game today was delayed ninety minutes due to lightning strikes in the area. We cleared the stands and the field and put the countdown to kickoff on hold until half an hour after the last strike within three miles.

At about 7:55, with the clock frozen at twenty minutes to kickoff and currently scheduled to resume in ten minutes, it's already about what should have been halftime had the original timeline held. (Advertised kickoff times for all our home games are 7:00, but it's a flat-out lie - the schedule we try to stick to, which usually slips 2-3 minutes, begins at 5:37 with the countdown at 90 minutes to go time.) Everybody is in place for their various duties for the night, which in my case tonight happens to mean I'm chilling out by our bench (when it's dry; when there is rain falling it's more comfortable in the tunnel from which the players take the field) being the gofer for one of my various bosses. That's a role that keeps me intermittently busy during the game itself, but while we're waiting for the lightning to clear, there's nothing to do.

Until our equipment manager comes up to me and asks, "Are you busy right now?"

"No, why?"

"Good. The team wants gummi bears."

(no subject)

Things I never expected to say on the job, part n+1:

"I'm disappointed by the absence of lion weenus."

(no subject) +1

As a brand new mascot, one of the first things you learn, before any of how to be good at the job, is how to not make a complete cock-up of it. Step one: there are very few non-emergency excuses for taking off any part of your costume in public. When you've been doing it for a while, this becomes second nature.

So when your driver/boss pulls over on the side of the road because of a flat tire, your first thought is this: "I should stay in the car, since I have my head off." At least that was mine. But it was followed rather promptly by this: "Wait, no I shouldn't. When am I ever going to get another chance to take this photo ever again?"

(no subject) +2

And tonight we come to the end of the Swoops stories. I just came back from having a great deal of fun at a high-school stadium, where I performed at the final home game of a local high school's soccer season. Senior night. One of the seniors, their goalkeeper, happens to be the most dedicated and valued game-night volunteer my team has, and his departure to wherever he's going to college will be a loss not only for his school but for us as well. But there's a bigger loss for me than just that - the final game of his high-school career was also quite possibly my last mascot appearance, at least as this particular character.

There's one final game Saturday to decide whether we or Puerto Rico claim the league championship. If I were told I could perform for it, that might well be enough to make me cancel my current plan to be out of town, but there's no way in hell the other Swoops would miss the biggest game in team history. Besides, if most of the games since the operations interns who used to handle it left are anything to go by, I'd probably be stuck in the merchandise tent, unable to see even one minute of the action. So, DC it is.

Halloween's a pretty big day for us too, since the team has to be out of everywhere but our main office and our storage space by the end of the month. Whatever the results the night before, then, that's the day we pack up the carnival; we'll be tearing down the field advertisements, lowering the orange-and-blue flags that greet everyone as they drive in, and cleaning out the box office. Things still happen in the off-season, of course - hell, my first appearance as Swoops was in December, at a birthday party for the head coach's daughter - but the team will be hiring its next cohort of interns.

I can't claim I wanted to do this forever. Life as an unpaid intern means plenty of whatever you specialize in, and for me that's Swoops, but it also means hauling heavy signs around, bushwhacking through brambles, icing down the crap beer Harris Wholesale gives us for whatever VIP is in the skyboxes this time, playing chauffeur to players who don't drive, spending hours sorting player cards into packs of ten chosen more or less at random, getting blue paint on your shoes, being dressed down by the town of Cary for walking across the field, wiping down tables, and setting up signs for a team you don't even work for because your organization is helping with one of their events, all for no better reason than "It seemed like a good idea when I signed up."

But in my case it also means having your bosses show more appreciation than you thought possible, hearing them encourage you to go a little crazy, making kids smile, making grown-ups smile, telling the fans you drink with after games about your wilder adventures but being careful to use the third person, dropping people in dunk tanks, putting a filthy traffic cone over somebody's head and having him love you for it, meeting other performers from teenagers who are just getting into this sort of thing and lionize you because you've landed a spot with a pro team to veteran Chik-Fil-A cows to people who have done this for a living since you were knee-high to Guilford the Grasshopper, and finding yourself deciding that if you could go on in this professionally, you'd gladly put your other career aspirations on hold. It's been an amazing year (well, most of a year), and if this was my last night in the Swoops costume then there is no question that I went out with a bang.

In the immortal words of Agent K, "I will miss the chasing." Even if I luck into another mascot gig, nothing can top representing the hometown team in the only professional sport you really appreciate, and whichever field I go on in I'll miss the other. All that remains is a day of cleanup, a day to celebrate the good times and be glad when the hard work is over, but a day to remember the intense joy of it all and know that's all behind us, at least until next season. A day like a fine dark chocolate, just sweet enough to make the delicious bitterness bearable.

And after that day, I'm done. For me, there is no "next season" as anything but a fan. I love being one of those, but nothing quite compares to being the most exuberant, wild, and utterly silent fan there is.

(no subject)

Well, it's been a rocky off-season. The latest? Swoops is dead.

As my old boss happened to have a baby shower to attend that day, I went out one cold and rainy morning in December to march in the Cary Christmas parade. January being a slow month for mascots, especially those in summer sports, I suspect that was actually Swoops' last appearance ever. Fictional though he may be, part of me feels like I've lost a friend.

EDIT: Actually, reports of Swoops' demise may be premature. The team's new owners bought its old trademarks for fifteen grand. Nothing is certain until that hawk flaps his wings again, but we'll see how it goes.

Further EDIT: Everything is A-OK; Swoops lives, and the team will continue with only positive signs for the future after a real mess of an acquisition.

(no subject)

So, after all these months... I'm not an intern anymore, and that means most of what goes with being an intern hasn't been part of my life since the end of the season.

But I'm Swoops and I are still friends, and I still get called when he needs or wants a backup performer. I'm doing a bit less than I was this time last year, but I still do a gig now and then. And so today, I got to do this: