How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Years and years of carefully posed TV shots have imbued the place with intimations of mystery and romance, dollops of state and national pride, hints of pharaonic afterlife such as always inhere in large-scale public architecture, all of which render the stadium of Billy's mind as the conduit or portal, a direct tap-in, to a ready-made species of mass transcendence, and so the real-life shabbiness is a nasty comedown. Give bigness all its due, sure, but the place looks like a half-assed backyard job. The roof is a homely quilting of mismatched tiles. There's a slumpiness, a middle-aged sag to the thing that suggests soft paunches and mushy prostates, gravity-slugged masses of beached whaleness. (Thing Begins.56)
Geez, tell us how you really feel about it, Billy. Is this all just a reflection of the fact that for Billy, reality is simply disappointing? Or are we being fooled by the "carefully posed TV shots" as well?
Quote #2
Billy thinks about this as he eyes the fast food outlets that line the stadium concourse, your Taco Bells, your Subways, your Pizza Huts and Papa John's, clouds of hot meaty gases waft from these place and surely it speaks to the genius of American cooking that they all smell pretty much the same. It dawns on him that Texas Stadium is basically a shithole. It's cold, gritty, drafty, dirty, in general possessed of all the charm of an industrial warehouse where people pee in the corners. Urine, the faint reek of it, pervades the place. (Cures.51)
We understand where Billy's coming from on this one. Have you been to a stadium recently? Or a ballpark? The food does all smell—and taste—roughly the same, which is disturbing when you think about it. And frankly, for all the money these teams are making, you'd think they could hose down those urine-soaked hallways every once in a while.
Quote #3
You pay ten bucks just to pass the door, then $40 plus tax and service for the meal—gratis for heroes, Josh says, to which Bravo answers troof—though the "club" isn't much to look at, a rambling, low-ceilinged space with a bar at one end and at the other full-length windows overlooking the field. The light is a nerve-jangling palette of hards and softs, the rancid-butter mizzle of the overhead fixtures cut by the harsh silver glare from all those giant windows, a constant wrenching of visual tone and depth such that the patrons' eyes never properly adjust. The carpet is a coal-slurry gray, the furnishings a scuffed, faux-baronial mélange of burgundy vinyls and oxblood veneers reminiscent of a 1970s Holiday Inn. Clearly, all expense has been spared save for the bare minimum to keep a captive market from outright rebellion. (Virtue.2)
As a self-described poor kid from Nowhere, Texas, it's interesting that Billy picks up on all the shabbiness around him. You'd think he'd be amazed by the splendor and richness of the stuff in the stadium, as shoddy as it is. Perhaps this is due to his experiences on the victory tour, or maybe it's just a result of his disillusionment in general. Either way, we agree that those patrons are getting shafted.