Todd Terwilliger

“The best laid plans of mice and men…” I think Shakespeare said that, maybe somebody else, the ellipsis hiding the fact that I don’t remember the rest of it and am too lazy to look it up. Well, whoever said it, they must have known that, a thousand years beyond them, I would be sitting in Madison Square Garden watching the Houston Rockets choke away a game to the New York Knickerbockers.

This was not what I had signed up for, back when I had signed up for the game under the auspices of the Brooklyn Kickball group-ticket buy-in. I wanted to see a nice, comfortable victory, through which I could radiate a smug sense of superiority and eat a corn dog, maybe some Cracker Jacks. Instead, I got no Yao Ming and a team that folded on the doorstep of victory like a cheap deck chair.

The Rockets Could Have Used Ming’s Interior Presence.

The Houston Chronicle summed things up nicely: “…the Rockets treated the [3-point] arc as if it were a moat, patrolled by creatures far more threatening than the normally porous defenders of the New York Knicks.” At least one such fearsome creature was seated behind me. I couldn’t see him but he was a geyser of profanity, a sports-themed Tourettes victim from a Rob Schneider film, a realization of a Ralph Steadman gonzo portrait- distended mouth agape, projectile vomiting, eating, and drinking all at the same time, in the same space- beer, spew, hot dog meat, and words all hopelessly commingled into an evil stew. This last image was particularly vivid as I had brought Fear & Loathing with me, in my jacket pocket, and was reading it in the lobby and then in my seat, waiting for the game to begin.

This Was Not Yao Ming

I sat next to two girls. On my left, Stephanie, who, in the fourth quarter, took pictures of a KISS figurine superimposed over the court, a trick of perspective giving him the mien of a fey giant, primping and posing thirty feet tall on the hardwood. On my right, a girl whose name I did not catch was, in the same breath, espousing a love for Chris Duhon and a not-quite-unhealthy but slightly paranoid nonetheless distrust of Italian rookie Danilo Gallinari. Slight paranoia is something I can get behind. She told me, “I can’t root for someone who hasn’t done anything yet.” I nodded sagely, saying nothing, with nothing to say.

It was just about this time the Rockets dribbled away their final lead like soup off of an old man’s chin. I had nothing left, no smugness and no Cracker Jacks (I had finished those off at the end of the third quarter). A few minutes later, as the final seconds trickled down, I slinked away.

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