Bucks: tired from all the holidays?
What, too much partying over the holidays, Bucks? Brian and I had a dry spell of going to games while the Bucks were on a hot home game winning streak, and we come back, and its looking like it's going to be another barnburn of a great game. Both teams come out strong, and the Bucks even go into halftime with an (albeit small) lead but what happened after the third quarter. They were almost leading by 10, but in the fourth, they went some 8 minutes while scoring only four points. They were those awful kinds of shots where they swirl around the hoop but don't go in, or else they were flat bricks. Worse yet, Cleveland comes back from the aforementioned 8 point deficit and beats us by about as many. Especially humiliating is that again the damage was partially done by Ilgauskas, again, looking particularly terrible in those horrid black socks, like some attorney on his lunch hour who couldn't change into white tube socks. (I haven't been ranting about the terrible NBA fad of wearing don't-I-look-like-an-old-mann-cutting-the-grass black socks this year a whole lot, because my seats are closer to the floor than they were last year and I really don't see them all that much. But they look particularly atrocious on Ilgauskas, so I had to comment.) And LeBron only scored 8 agains the Bucks and the Cavaliers still beat 'em. Ugh. I'm starting to really think Charlie Villenueva's injury absence is really hurting the Bucks. He's got an energy/intensity that they needed the fourth quarter when they otherwise petered out.
Fortunately there was plenty of other entertaining stuff going on tonight. Lots of gymnastics about: some dance team girls before the game, who were very athletic, and at one of the officials' timeouts, these break dancing boys that were beyond break dancing: these guys were downright gymnasts who happened to have a busload of rhythm to boot.
Anthem tonight: the Hartford University School choir. If any of these kids were over third grade, I'd be shocked. As such, they were delightfully out of tune and nervous as hell, but their pluckieness more than made up for it. They were a little timid on "rocket red glare", but I mumbled under my breath as they were approaching land of the free, "don't be afraid of it kids" and they used full diaphragms to hit it, to of course approvingly thunderous applause from the crowd. We'll take earnest effort over showboating accuracy any day.
But what took my mind off the terrible fourth quarter was the teenage cadre of two girls and their dates that sat by us: They were simultaneously delightful and annoying. We had to yell at the boys a bit, because they were rattling on the bar in front of us, banging our knees just a little too much. At the same time, though, it was clear they were basketball fans -- these weren't girls who were dragged out by their dates and knew nothing. They were fully decked out in sparkly, breast-cancer-awareness-pink Bucks jerseys, caps in last year's team colors (I'm holding on to my purple Bucks wear, too!). You'd think they were Fred Willard, asking everybody around them to take pictures of them (with their cameras). They boys treated them respectfully, and it was overall fun to watch teenage girls having a good ol' girly time, screaming and yelling, but still aware of what was going on the court. Because they were young and nubile, you can see they certainly made it to the jumbotron for a perfect-teeth-smiling, cute girls on a date with their boys, "we're back at the beginning of the fourth quarter" TV shot. But the funniest part for me was, earlier in the night, they tried to buy some Miller from the beer vendor. Of course, he asks for ID, when everybody in the section (including him) knows they're clearly underage, but these girls still think they're going to get away with it. They pretend to search in vain for the ID they they "just can't find, can't you take our word for it?" Beer vendor smiles knowingly and sells me and Brian a $6 Genuine Draft. Later in the game, he comes back, and, brushing past the girls, goes, "Hey, did you ever find your ID?" No, they shake their heads. "Too bad," he says knowingly. "I would have bought you one if you did." I couldn't stop laughing until I realized the Bucks had blown their lead.
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