Last Call

The lights never really come up when you expect them too.

An entire bar will let out a sigh and a goran that the owner was now kick them out; it't time to go. You have families, wives, girlfriends and children o attend too.

Get the hell out. Don't you have anything better to do.

For the past 9 months we have been sitting at teh bar and drinking in every last drop of tallent that my brother has left on the court. We have awed at three point fade-away jumpers and roared at the eight-foot tall swats that can demolish even the most confident player.

We have been absorbed.

I have always enjoyed basketball - the only real american sport - but i have never been so invovled in wanting to understand plays, techniques, methods and stratgies. I have never emmersed mysefl so much in the sport - or any sport for that matter - until I saw my own brother play his heart out for 20 minuets at a time for more than an hour and a half.

This summer, was like a drug.

Games every weekend, updates coming from cellphones and e-mails from across teh country.

But now we are coming to an end, and in that end we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Its alsmost over and while this tournament really means nothing in hte larger sense, it means the world simply becasue it is the last note that will be played in the grand concerto of a Basketball Summer.

And it is not even my instrument - i am merely sitting in the balcony watching and hoping that all goes well both for the players and myself.

We have been obsessed.

But in our obsession and fanatic lust for blood, we knew where the edge was...or we thought we did. I have never wanted to cross the line - not even to let my laces dangle over the paint - into being That Fan.

That fan who knows by shere voice decibles more about the game than the 10 guys o nthe court and half dozen more on the bench.

That fan who will berate kids half his age for things that might only matter on the infetesimal scale of nothing.

That fan who would force beleigured to endure a coaching session entitled "what you did wrong 101"

I broke my one rule today and with a simple two sentence I became every other paent and jackass former coach that think they could somehow manage this team or this player better.

"Keep your god-damed feet on the gorund! Everytime you jump up they will call a foul on you."

"Bullshit, you don't know."

He was exactly right. I didn't. but it somehow helped me get over the near miss at another win for him

I had crossed the line and he had not even dried teh sweat from his face.

I had berated him on a win that i had no part in. I was no better than teh former AAU coach who continues to coach from the stands and even coach teh coaches when no one is looking.

In that brief second, I had become that parent who truly, honestly does not get it, but will insist they do simply to play some roll to drag on the coatails of what they have worked to do.

The preasure I feel at work cannot even equate to what he has jsut gone thought. I do not sit on deadline with 300 screaming, beligerent people aiming for my forehead.

I had crossed the line and I was so close to getting out without a blemish. But i fired the first shot and never have I wanted to appologize to quickly. despite the final victoris conclusion, I was the one who hit the wrong note and ended everything.

We learned the hard way that when you are downtown, you never close out the bars. You might end up with a bullet in your back.

But here we are safe - so long as we stay within the confines of the fieldhouse.

so long as we can stay within our bounds and not blow up at this game.

It's last call and tomorrow the lights will go up and the bar keep will insist we go home.

None of us want to, really, but it will be good for us. It will be good for our sanity and hopefully, give a chance to redraw those lines and make surewe know exaclty where we stand.

Oklahoma sucks

There really is no other way to put it.

The great state of Oklahoma has officially landed on my shit list.

I had heard other people talk about the unholy crap-tastic journey through the state as something that is comparable only to having teeth pulled.

But I was going to give it a chance. I was not going to prejudge a state that had given way to a musical that everyone seems to know. There is still a little cowboy lore left in this place right?

Nope.

Driving down I-44, I found myself being arrested for not having correct change for the toll road - which no body told me about. You really have no choice when driving down this stretch of highway. There are no warning signs until it is too late.

And unlike our more "progressive" states such as Kansas and Illinois, they do not accept credit cards at the toll booths.

"You're going to have to pull over right now while I call highway patrol," the tool booth bitch told me. "We are going to have to treat this as a drive off. If you're lucky maybe they will let you get money before arresting you."

I was driving a minivan and looked about as middle-aged-father as possible. I was not some punk looking for a free ride on this shit hole highway. But this did not seem to phase the woman one bit.

Fuck no.

The highway patrolman pulled up behind me and it almost seemed like he expected me to jumping out of the car with guns blazing.

"So you tried to pull out without paying, huh?"

"No, why would I be here waiting for you if I was pulling out without paying?"

"Get out of the car," he said, my humor was lost on this local yokel.

After the conversation finally wound down from the usual 20 questions from this man of the law, he conceded that he might have been a little boorish and that I was being a bit of an ass.

He finally asked if I had a checkbook on me. Well, yes, I do.

So, I wrote a check for $3.50 to the state of Oklahoma. I was tempted to to write Sexual Favors in the memo section, but I was already on thin ice with this pig and I did not need to get my head busted open here on the Oklahoma/Missouri border.

"Wait here, I'll get you a receipt," he said with all the authority of a bell hop at a shit hole Best Western. As he loped across the interstate to the toll booth woman to get my "Thanks for Visiting sticker"

Ass.

The rest of the trip really was not any better. The city of Tulsa is an absolute shit tank with no redeeming qualities. It was kind of neat to see Oral Roberts, but the varnish on this god-fearing school has long been lost and the entire campus just looks out of place.

Imagine, I said all week to my co-workers, if Walt Disney had build a university and modeled it off Space Mountain or his "World of Tomorrow" exhibit in Florida. The kitschy 50s designs that were supposed to look futuristic.

Somehow, though, the buildings already looked dated and old - not to mention faded to a piss yellow from the unforgiving sun of Oklahoma.

I was glad to get out of there. Not only because my brother's team lost in the final round of the tourney, but because the entire time I was in this town there was an uneasiness.

Usually I can go to a town and feel uncomfortable at first, but then can ease into a rhythm, a flow. some kind of swagger that makes you feel like you have been there forever.

But you never got that. This town, it seems, is merely a horribly cobbled together conglomeration of suburbs that happen to all be in the same area.

It was not a city, it a mashing of everything that is wrong with suburan sprawl only back dated by about a decade.

Not even the "authentic" Mexican restaurant we were steered to by our front desk clerk — "oh yeah, its real authentic, they barely speak English there" — could redeem this city.

I'm never going back.

Fuck you, Oklahoma.