Circuses
Wild beasts, acrobats, strongmen, dancing girls, music troupes, comedy, tragedy. No, not the circus, but a modern day pro NBA game.
Well, to be accurate the basketball game was more of an obtrusion to the two and a half hour variety show laid on for our entertainment. The Atlanta Hawks appeared embarrassed to be there, even before the match had started: a humiliating video of the team singing along to The Black Eyes Peas "Let's Get Things Started" was just one part of the opening festivities, which also included Spirit The Hawk, a REAL BLOODY EAGLE flying around inside the Phillips Arena, a massive firework shooting drumming band and turns from not one but two mascots: Harry the breakdancing hawk and Skyhawk the trampoline-bouncing acrobat (acro-hawk?). Gunnersaurus Rex should hang his useless fuzzy head in shame. And then there's the Atlanta Hawks Dance Team... awesome. I lost count of the amount of costume changes they went through. Almost as good as the Junior Hammerettes.
Anyway... back to the sport. There was no hooter to announce play had started, and the crowd expressed little interest that their team was playing. The action mainly consisted of the teams taking turns shooting and defending, the flow of play rhythmically switching from end to end approximately every 30 seconds or so. Occasionally there would be a lazy whoop or holler if someone pulled off a slam dunk, but the constant drip feed of points seemed to lend itself to settling comfortably into your padded chair, munching on your tray of nachos, supping on your 24 ounce beaker of Bud Light and belching "Go Hawks!" at inappropriate moments. The loudest outpouring of emotion from the crowd comes from the loss or gain of the lead, but at a volume only fractionally louder than that of an elaborate score. The "aww" of disappointment is only expressed at the loss of a well established lead. When comparing it to football there is the complete absence of the explosive orgasmic joy of a great goal or the head grasping near misses that automatically bring you and the rest of the crowd to your feet. But I suspect that in basketball there aren't the dire 0-0 games between mid-table malingerers that supply the dark troughs that accompany the giddy peaks of football. Perhaps that's the trade-off a sport makes for providing the equivalent of a high calorie diet: lots of points mean an easily consumed, comfortably predictable unsurprising event, as opposed to the unpredictable opportunist diet of the hunter gatherer footie fan. Hmm. Quite a laboured food/sport analogy there. Sorry.
There is a man, however, who does his best to engage the crowd with the action. He has a keyboard and pounds out ominous sounding discordant notes when the opposition are on the offence, and uplifting sing-a-longa-riffs from everyone's favourite pop songs when the Hawks are on the attack. He is accompanied by a VJ who displays fitting images, video clips and slogans in an attempt to get the crowd to chant along. It works when the opposition are taking penalty shots- he'll shout "Scream!" and clips of Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore getting chased by that ghost will play, or he shout "Thundersticks!" and clips of Godzilla will encourage the crowd to beat their inflatable tubes together.
But all this is coincidental: there are three breaks between the quarters and each team has up to six timeouts to use, so there are potentially 15 intervals that need to be filled with entertainment, gawddammit! There are quiz shows, blind date games, more acrobats, mascots running around with t-shirt firing bazookas, dancing competitions and much more. During one timeout, Harry the breakdancing hawk repeatedly challenged one of the linesmen (or whatever the basketballing homologue is) to a dance-off. Mr. Linesman appeared to be having none of it, but cheekily stirred the pudding pot when Harry wasn't looking. After much pantomimic prompting from the crowd, Harry eventually caught Mr. Linesman at it. He shrugged his shoulders and bizarrely started an MC Hammer freak out, cumulating in him ripping his shirt off and caterpillar-flopping off the court! I was sure he was a stooge, but there he was officiating when play resumed. Crazy... you'd never see Paul Durkin topless and spinning on his tits. Nor would you want to.
These sketches often ran on for far too long, with all kinds of shenanigans going on after the hooter had gone and the players were back on the court, reinforcing the idea the game is merely coincidental to the show.
The best piece of filler were the sporting gaffes- these were You've Been Framed style home video clips of people hurting themselves while participating in some form of activity. The universal human desire to laugh at someone falling over was accentuated by the universal expression of stupidity: Homer Simpson's "Doh!" was played every time someone was smacked in the face. It worked so well: the entire area was in stitches laughing, myself included.
In fact, this experience of mainstream America presented so much of a common bond between my fellow human beings that I felt compelled to return. Twice. I think that speaks for itself.
Well, to be accurate the basketball game was more of an obtrusion to the two and a half hour variety show laid on for our entertainment. The Atlanta Hawks appeared embarrassed to be there, even before the match had started: a humiliating video of the team singing along to The Black Eyes Peas "Let's Get Things Started" was just one part of the opening festivities, which also included Spirit The Hawk, a REAL BLOODY EAGLE flying around inside the Phillips Arena, a massive firework shooting drumming band and turns from not one but two mascots: Harry the breakdancing hawk and Skyhawk the trampoline-bouncing acrobat (acro-hawk?). Gunnersaurus Rex should hang his useless fuzzy head in shame. And then there's the Atlanta Hawks Dance Team... awesome. I lost count of the amount of costume changes they went through. Almost as good as the Junior Hammerettes.
Anyway... back to the sport. There was no hooter to announce play had started, and the crowd expressed little interest that their team was playing. The action mainly consisted of the teams taking turns shooting and defending, the flow of play rhythmically switching from end to end approximately every 30 seconds or so. Occasionally there would be a lazy whoop or holler if someone pulled off a slam dunk, but the constant drip feed of points seemed to lend itself to settling comfortably into your padded chair, munching on your tray of nachos, supping on your 24 ounce beaker of Bud Light and belching "Go Hawks!" at inappropriate moments. The loudest outpouring of emotion from the crowd comes from the loss or gain of the lead, but at a volume only fractionally louder than that of an elaborate score. The "aww" of disappointment is only expressed at the loss of a well established lead. When comparing it to football there is the complete absence of the explosive orgasmic joy of a great goal or the head grasping near misses that automatically bring you and the rest of the crowd to your feet. But I suspect that in basketball there aren't the dire 0-0 games between mid-table malingerers that supply the dark troughs that accompany the giddy peaks of football. Perhaps that's the trade-off a sport makes for providing the equivalent of a high calorie diet: lots of points mean an easily consumed, comfortably predictable unsurprising event, as opposed to the unpredictable opportunist diet of the hunter gatherer footie fan. Hmm. Quite a laboured food/sport analogy there. Sorry.
There is a man, however, who does his best to engage the crowd with the action. He has a keyboard and pounds out ominous sounding discordant notes when the opposition are on the offence, and uplifting sing-a-longa-riffs from everyone's favourite pop songs when the Hawks are on the attack. He is accompanied by a VJ who displays fitting images, video clips and slogans in an attempt to get the crowd to chant along. It works when the opposition are taking penalty shots- he'll shout "Scream!" and clips of Neve Campbell and Drew Barrymore getting chased by that ghost will play, or he shout "Thundersticks!" and clips of Godzilla will encourage the crowd to beat their inflatable tubes together.
But all this is coincidental: there are three breaks between the quarters and each team has up to six timeouts to use, so there are potentially 15 intervals that need to be filled with entertainment, gawddammit! There are quiz shows, blind date games, more acrobats, mascots running around with t-shirt firing bazookas, dancing competitions and much more. During one timeout, Harry the breakdancing hawk repeatedly challenged one of the linesmen (or whatever the basketballing homologue is) to a dance-off. Mr. Linesman appeared to be having none of it, but cheekily stirred the pudding pot when Harry wasn't looking. After much pantomimic prompting from the crowd, Harry eventually caught Mr. Linesman at it. He shrugged his shoulders and bizarrely started an MC Hammer freak out, cumulating in him ripping his shirt off and caterpillar-flopping off the court! I was sure he was a stooge, but there he was officiating when play resumed. Crazy... you'd never see Paul Durkin topless and spinning on his tits. Nor would you want to.
These sketches often ran on for far too long, with all kinds of shenanigans going on after the hooter had gone and the players were back on the court, reinforcing the idea the game is merely coincidental to the show.
The best piece of filler were the sporting gaffes- these were You've Been Framed style home video clips of people hurting themselves while participating in some form of activity. The universal human desire to laugh at someone falling over was accentuated by the universal expression of stupidity: Homer Simpson's "Doh!" was played every time someone was smacked in the face. It worked so well: the entire area was in stitches laughing, myself included.
In fact, this experience of mainstream America presented so much of a common bond between my fellow human beings that I felt compelled to return. Twice. I think that speaks for itself.
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