Milwaukee Bucks Come On
I'm late filing my first regular Bucks game report. We all know what happened. They weren't shooting for anything, and they seemed tired. They must've had a few double espressos in the locker room at halftime, because they came back and with two minutes to go in the 4th, actually made it a game. I stayed to the bitter end. I'd mentioned to two other fans sitting near us that after that time last year when we blew off the end of a game (well they were down by 20 with five minutes to go and we wanted to beat exit traffic) and they came back to a thrilling buzzer beating win, that we'd never make that mistake again. The other guy said to me knowingly, "I know that Indiana game and I left too and I'll never do it again." And especially with this inconsistent bag of surprises we call the Bucks. But today's blog entry will focus on all the goings about, as you faithful readers know is part of my schtick.
I am not liking the cheesy opening montage at all. Last year's -- a dynamically edited movie preview to the tune of some Igor Stavinsky Russian revolution classical number that increased in both volume and choppieness of editing to a thundering classical creschendo at the end (punctuated by the timer buzzer going off at the end) -- was truly inspiring. This year's? Well it starts out OK. Some lame electronic emo music (the kind you hear in trendy restaurants at around 7 pm before the late night crowd is in) is playing over video clips of them arriving, suiting up, getting stretched out, going over strategy on a whiteboard in the locker room. But then, as "game time" approaches there's a motif of a badly synched simulator timer going off, accompanied by photos of the team that make them ALL appear to have caught Andrew Bogut's "Just TRY to take a picture that doesn't make me look like I should be in a Cheech and Chong movie" disease. And I couldn't get past the fact that the simulated game timer was off the REAL game clock by one and a half seconds. By the end it kind of synchs up, but to no avail. I already hate it, and I hate these new colors, and I'm hoping that the only reason they don't have the magificent Russian Revolution music thing going is that its too early in the season to have enough glorious footage -- especially of the new guys -- to fill 60 seconds of Bombastic Buzzer Beating Bucks Action. Then again, the old glorious montage was in black and white, and half the shots were of Redd, Bogut, and a few Gadzuric and Williams. Its not like anybody would notice the new colors in black and white, and all the aforementioned guys are still with us, with no significant hairstyle changes.
But its not like, two games in, they've provided us with inspiring footage to cut and paste into a montage. Maybe they were all hypnotized by the Rockets' Yao Ming on Wednesday night. You don't realize unless you see him in person just how Andre-The-Giant-tall that guy really is, and he does have a larger-than-life aura about him that goes beyond his physical size. Kudos to the Bucks for keeping him relatively in check, especially in the face of justifiable ethnic pride that brought a lot of local Yao fans to the Bradley Center.
Anthem tonight was by a crop of students who were introduced as the Brown Deer High School Choir, but unless I misheard "Choir" for "Castrati", these were decidedly not high school students. As elementary kids, they weren't perfect, and their sometimes off-key biffs and voice cracks were all-American charming. A few of the sopranos (there were girls) attempted -- and succeeded -- that octave jump for "Land of the Free -----eeeeeeeeee" and sealed their thumbs-up review from me, but they already had me smiling at "Oh say can you see." Cute-as-a-button Cub Scouts presenting the colors completed the picture.
They've replaced the "Kiss Cam" with the "Flex Cam" -- and Stella got in on it! "Wow, she sure knows how to vogue," a friend who recognized her up on the jumbotron told me later. Yeah, this year instead of playing Prince's "Kiss" and zooming in on various fans who were then expected to buss their date in front of the entire crowd, now they focus in on kids who then pretend they're the Incredible Hulk, to the tune of the Village People's "Macho Man." Some kids get it, some don't, and my Stella took the opportunity to pose it up. And finally, when the floating blimp came around at halftime dropping coupons of some sort, Stella actually got one that turned out to be good for one of those stretchy plastic bracelets that should last about a week.
I'll spend the rest of the season dissecting the various other promotions, many of which are back and updated from last year, but why take up space talking about that when you can just wax poetic on this evening's halftime entertainment, NBA halftime mainstays The Jesse White Tumblers? Here's a bit of trivia about them I didn't know, from their Wikipedia entry: "They have performed at the half time of every NBA team except the Los Angeles Lakers who only use the Laker Girls at half time." Only in Los Angeles would the jiggly cheerleading squad be worried about being upstaged by the appearance of well-scrubbed, talented inner city youth. Fine, just come to Milwaukee an extra few time or two, kids -- you're great, and you kept me and everybody around me dumbstruck with your amazing feats. Our cheerleaders will be glad to have a little extra time to freshen up the mascara, and when our guys are down by 15 at halftime, we appreciate having something to cheer about.
I am not liking the cheesy opening montage at all. Last year's -- a dynamically edited movie preview to the tune of some Igor Stavinsky Russian revolution classical number that increased in both volume and choppieness of editing to a thundering classical creschendo at the end (punctuated by the timer buzzer going off at the end) -- was truly inspiring. This year's? Well it starts out OK. Some lame electronic emo music (the kind you hear in trendy restaurants at around 7 pm before the late night crowd is in) is playing over video clips of them arriving, suiting up, getting stretched out, going over strategy on a whiteboard in the locker room. But then, as "game time" approaches there's a motif of a badly synched simulator timer going off, accompanied by photos of the team that make them ALL appear to have caught Andrew Bogut's "Just TRY to take a picture that doesn't make me look like I should be in a Cheech and Chong movie" disease. And I couldn't get past the fact that the simulated game timer was off the REAL game clock by one and a half seconds. By the end it kind of synchs up, but to no avail. I already hate it, and I hate these new colors, and I'm hoping that the only reason they don't have the magificent Russian Revolution music thing going is that its too early in the season to have enough glorious footage -- especially of the new guys -- to fill 60 seconds of Bombastic Buzzer Beating Bucks Action. Then again, the old glorious montage was in black and white, and half the shots were of Redd, Bogut, and a few Gadzuric and Williams. Its not like anybody would notice the new colors in black and white, and all the aforementioned guys are still with us, with no significant hairstyle changes.
But its not like, two games in, they've provided us with inspiring footage to cut and paste into a montage. Maybe they were all hypnotized by the Rockets' Yao Ming on Wednesday night. You don't realize unless you see him in person just how Andre-The-Giant-tall that guy really is, and he does have a larger-than-life aura about him that goes beyond his physical size. Kudos to the Bucks for keeping him relatively in check, especially in the face of justifiable ethnic pride that brought a lot of local Yao fans to the Bradley Center.
Anthem tonight was by a crop of students who were introduced as the Brown Deer High School Choir, but unless I misheard "Choir" for "Castrati", these were decidedly not high school students. As elementary kids, they weren't perfect, and their sometimes off-key biffs and voice cracks were all-American charming. A few of the sopranos (there were girls) attempted -- and succeeded -- that octave jump for "Land of the Free -----eeeeeeeeee" and sealed their thumbs-up review from me, but they already had me smiling at "Oh say can you see." Cute-as-a-button Cub Scouts presenting the colors completed the picture.
They've replaced the "Kiss Cam" with the "Flex Cam" -- and Stella got in on it! "Wow, she sure knows how to vogue," a friend who recognized her up on the jumbotron told me later. Yeah, this year instead of playing Prince's "Kiss" and zooming in on various fans who were then expected to buss their date in front of the entire crowd, now they focus in on kids who then pretend they're the Incredible Hulk, to the tune of the Village People's "Macho Man." Some kids get it, some don't, and my Stella took the opportunity to pose it up. And finally, when the floating blimp came around at halftime dropping coupons of some sort, Stella actually got one that turned out to be good for one of those stretchy plastic bracelets that should last about a week.
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