Go Green!

I was on the phone with my Sister, Christina, last night when Kristian got home. He’d barely uttered the phrase, “Do we want free tickets to see the Celtics?” when I was telling my sister that I loved her dearly, but I needed to hang up. Now.

Kristian’s company does IT support for the Celtics and they get some seriously sweet tickets as a result. (Presumably, they’re also paid for their efforts). Nobody really wanted tickets last night, so Kristian was offered them at the last minute (less than an hour until game time). And I’m so glad we decided to go! We go to a decent number of Red Sox games and I went to a Pats game a couple of years ago. But I haven’t been to an NBA or an NHL game in years. I forgot just how much fun it is to see a fast paced sports game live.

The energy in the Garden was incredible. Especially in the fourth quarter when the score was close and then again in overtime. And getting a chance to see Paul Pierce score his 20,000th NBA point was not bad either. The entire crowd completely lost it at that point. Glen “Big Baby” Davis was waving his arms, telling people to quiet down as Pierce was taking another free throw, but everyone just kept yelling “MVP! MVP! MVP!”

I have to say, though, that I am not such a fan of the current trend of constantly bombarding the crowd with sound and pictures like we’re all in some psych experiment on sensory overload. Sure, they’ve always used the jumbotron to rev people up, but there are now ads and videos everywhere. In high definition. The ads that run around the edge of the Garden are so bright, when they change color they actually change the light quality of the entire venue. I know this is going to make me sound like an old woman, but it’s totally distracting. And they never give you a moment to yell “Bullshit!” at the refs in peace. Everything is scripted. If there aren’t cheerleaders shaking their booties at you, they have some guy shooting t-shirts or they’re putting people up on the jumbotron if they dance. I know some people say that baseball is boring, but at least you’re not likely to have a seizure induced on you at Fenway Park.

Someday, some historian is going to write a paper about our era. And they’re going to come to the conclusion that we willingly danced like trained monkeys if you put a video camera on us and that we would do anything for a t-shirt.

Now get off of my damn lawn.

As a thank you for making it this far through a post about sports, here’s a picture of Gracie in a fort made out of potato chip boxes.