The Sasquatch Journal

-There's not much to recommend about being a pedestrian in Albany. This realization came to me too late as I strode nonchalantly along the shoulder of busy Washington Avenue Saturday afternoon towards Big Box Retailer Paradise. The various cars that honked at me as they zoomed was a constant reminder that I was not welcome on this road. But I was on a mission. A mission for a laptop.

See, just an hour earlier I'd thought I'd been totally locked out from the SUNY (State University of New York) library computer lab. (I later found out there are a group of 8 computers elsewhere in the library that are public.) Friendless, internetless, and carless, my occassional impulsiveness kicked in and I decided to walk to Best Buy at Crossgates, New York's largest mall, and buy a laptop, despite the fact that it was a few miles away and there was no straightforward pedestrian route.

I arrived at Best Buy about an hour later, and was approached almost immediately by a Best Buy employee - luckily a cute, endearingly dorky college aged girl who was a tad short of clueless about computers. When I asked about the processor speed of a sleek HP in the display, she muttered something under her breath and pointed out how there was a DVD button that would "instantly play DVD's". When asked what the video card was like she responded "Good. Very Good." Now, if this would of been anyone else, I would of shrugged and went my own way, but this girl (I think her name was Christina) was cute, and was laughing at all my jokes, so I decided to play along.

But alas, the laptop I finally decided on was out of stock, and so Christina wisked me away to another HP she thought was "even better" than the unavailable one. After promising me that I could burn an image of Justin Timberlake on my writable CD's, I decided to go with her suggestion....but that one was also out of stock, also. (Here's why: it's Back to School time, and in 2006 laptops are apparently as essential to all college students as pens and notebooks.)

Christina apologized, and we chatted about her major, about Albany, about her accent, and other topics for 15 minutes or so. I have to admit, at this point I was prepared to ask to hang out after work...and I think she would have accepted...but... she felt compelled to take a picture of me with her Best Buy camera so that she could show me their snazzy new digital photo printer.

After she handed me the terrible print of myself holding my hands up, eyes half-closed, looking like an idiot, I suddenly lost my nerve. "Man, I look like an idiot," I thought as I quickly shoved the photo in my pocket. I tried to summon again my charm and clever wit, but all I could do was stare at my shoes and think about that stupid photo.

"Ummm, I have to help other customers," she said to break the awkward silence. In my mind, I was going to breathlessly interject something about hanging out, but instead I just muttered "Well....OK." She turned away and said "Have fun in Albany" and I strolled on towards the rest of the mall, trying to pick up the pieces of my dignity along the way.

-The Crossgates Mall is a ferocious beast of a building where the blood of commerce pumps hard and fast. Many experts may site the indoor shopping mall as growing passe among many, there was no evidence of this in Albany, where there were streams of people flowing in and out of the place. Two things I thought interesting about the place:

1. There was a Bally's Fitness somewhat near the food court, making it convienant for people to gorge themselves on fast food and frozen custard and then make the short walk down the hall to Bally's to use repetitive motions through machines to attempt to work the calories off. Maybe ideally for malls, someday people will pay to eat there, then pay to work the food off, then purchase smaller sized clothes to go with the working out, all under one roof.

2. There were hundreds of clothing shops, boutiques, speciality stores, restaurants, kiosks selling everything imaginable, but there were NO book stores. None. Unbelievable. What's a man going to do while walking on a highway?

-Checking out the New York Giants training camp (right across the street at the SUNY practice fields) was OK, but I don't really see why thousands of people drive hours with their families to see NFL teams practice. I watched the sea of grown men and women in Tiki Barber and Jeremy Shockey jerseys as much as the players themselves, trying to figure out what made them tick.
I stayed about 30 minutes, mostly because I thought maybe watching Eli Manning practice would give me an indication about whether I should keep him in my Fantasy Football league... The biggest impression I got was that coach Tom Coughlin may be the loudest man in America.