Living Large with the Seattle Storm

Ernie's last set of grandparents came to town with Uncle Sam in tow. Adding in the fact that Aunt Zozo was already staying with us: there were a lot of new faces for Ernie to learn.

So I recently took my friend Michael along with me for some fun times with Tom Hanks. Being a real one, Michael turned around and gave me an awesome invite to sit in Symetra's Tunnel Club seating at today's Seattle Storm WNBA game. What a guy.

It was a tough situation because on one hand I wanted to make use of the fancy parking pass to park in the same lot that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy uses. On the other hand I wanted to drink my face off with complimentary wine, beer, and spirits. I chose face removal.

The Storm do a unique thing where they have children line the hall and high five the players when they come out of the locker room. Fun for them, hard to see for me. Oh well, I'll get over it. I especially love visiting the Tunnel Clubs as I used to work in them, groveling for rich people.

Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were in attendance.

The Storm quickly showed that they were here to be just obliterated by the Los Angeles Sparks. This was unfortunate but on the bright side it made our trips back to the club for refreshments feel like less of a betrayal. Like I imagine the team would prefer we not see all of what is happening to them on the court today.

Michael and I were minding our own business, drinking everything that wasn't nailed down back in the lounge and soaking it up with free food, when one of the staff came in, closed the door behind them, and told us we weren't allowed to leave. This lasted the whole damn 4th quarter and was very lame. Apparently some nut job tried to get onto the court or something. I don't know what that had to do with us, and I don't know why it took an entire quarter to arrest said person. It must not have been too big of a threat because they continued the game as if nothing was happening. More likely it was the Climate Pledge Arena staff being the clowns I am certain that they are. On the plus side, the Storm somehow turned it around and ended up winning the game. Hurray!

An even bigger win was coming home to see my boy and give him a bottle.

Kid Cudi Tunnel Club Seats

We had some Kid Cudi tickets for tonight but first needed to play a little Quest 2 to get ourselves in the correct futuristic headspace to enjoy his music.

I bought some fancy tunnel club suite tickets, where I used to work when I was a lowly usher at Climate Pledge Arena.

It was fun to show Lydia the dark corridors where I used to stare at the wall, guarding things nobody cared about.

She got to see the very exciting door to the Storm locker room.

We visited the Verizon Lounge.

She also got to see the very exciting door to the Kraken locker room. I gave myself a little tour back here during the grand opening of the arena.

Every tour needs plenty of rocks in order for the music to work correctly.

I've listened to "TGIF" so many times. I was happy that he played it but was unsure it would happen as I'm not sure it's one of his big famous songs.

I remember very early on that Lydia listened to Kid Cudi in her car and I thought that was cool. It may have even been a CD. This was the before-times.

One of the reasons I like rap is that much of it is so aspirational. It features a lot of stories about starting in disadvantaged situations and rising up and becoming successful. I remember listening to "Pursuit of Happiness" a ton when we live in Neosho, MO and I was driving around flipping textbooks for a job. I feel like it has a lot of meaning for me. Especially funny is the line: "If I fall, if I die, know I lived and missed some bullets." This gives me fond memories of a gunfight breaking out in downtown St. Louis, and a bullet coming through the window next to me while I was watching tv, and blowing glass all over me and my apartment.

The Kid blew through some of his hits in a techo medley thing with I didn't really appreciate. I did think that the visuals were pretty cool. All in all it was a decent show but I don't think I'll be clamoring to see him again anytime soon.

The interior of the tunnel club suite.

Inaugural Seattle Kraken Game

The big day had arrived: the Seattle Kraken NHL team's first home game at Climate Pledge Arena.

I was even more excited when I learned how much these tickets would cost if I was buyin' instead of getting paid to stand around and watch the game!

The monorail station was looking fly.

Seattle's other pro teams got in on the excitement.

They pass out these handouts with lots of important information before each game.

I thought it was cool that they had a big deal photographer come to the Coldplay and Foo Fighters shows, take a bunch of cool shots, then frame them inside all of the tunnel clubs. They're different shots in each room which I thought was a fun attention to detail. Today I was assigned a group of tunnel clubs on the west side of the arena. That is much less stressful for me because the players' locker rooms are on the east side, and that involves a lot of lockdowns and off limits areas due to the players regularly moving to and from their locker rooms and the ice.

I heard a rumor that it cost a million dollars to reserve one of these fancy suites for the year. Not sure if that's true or not, but I know that Amazon has two. The rooms were presented with these framed jerseys. Most just put it up in their room so I thought it was kind of a weird gesture.

Each tunnel club is assigned an attendant that deals with serving the food and drinks, including this awesome giant macaron. My job as a hospitality ambassador was sort of a coordinator between all of the different workers such as maintenance and security and I could call the different departments as needed on the walkie. I also did general "here's your seat" usher type work as well. There was a whole lot of standing around as well.

There were some spare goals over by the zamboni parking area which I thought were kind of cool.

A sort of odd thing with the tunnel clubs is that that is where all of the food and booze is, but the seats to actually see the game are down the hall, so the best you can do while eating is watch the game on tvs in your suite. I definitely had a few rich people gripe to me about that, which I sort of agree with honestly.

When you have a new team you have a lot of firsts. First goal, first loss at home. That sort of thing.

As I said I was on the opposite side of the building as the hockey locker rooms. Which meant I was on the side of the Seattle Storm WNBA team locker rooms. They aren't currently playing, so the space was being used as a place for workers to iron names and numbers onto the backs of hockey jerseys that customers wanted customized. I did see an important looking lady standing in front getting her picture taken. It was Sue Bird, big deal Storm point guard and girlfriend of Megan Rapinoe. There were lots of famous athletes creeping around, in fact. My workmates kept chattering excitedly about the people they saw but it was mostly wasted on me as I'm not that sporty and even then I would only know players from the St. Louis area generally. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and wife Ciara were in attendance. Him in particular really bothered one of my coworkers when I had to admit I had no idea who that was.

The people sitting right up against the glass are not as fancy as the people who have the tunnel clubs, but they are still pretty fancy. Rather than having their own private bartenders they can have concessions delivered to their seats while they watch the game. Which, if you care about the game, is arguably a better situation.

People have to beep their ticket in to get into their suite. This one was not working correctly, so the ominous red light.

I thought it was kind of a funny juxtaposition that the richest people in the arena come in through the loading docks, which are the ugliest part of the arena. It's sort of fancy and crappy at the same time.

Well I had a pretty good experience watching the game and the $24/hr isn't bad for a silly part time job either. I was laughing a lot about that amount because it's more than my first tech job paid right out of college.

Oh course when I got home I carefully watched the game looking for shots of myself. I could definitely identify your hero but I had a mask on and also knew exactly where to look... I probably won't be signing autographs due to this tv coverage any time soon. Not a way to pad my IMDB page unfortunately.