Last Sunday, I turned on the BC-North Carolina game. I figured watching the Eagles get pummeled by the nation’s #1 team would be the perfect antidote to all the joy I had built up from the holiday season. Everyone has a skill. Mine’s self-induced depression.
The game was being shown in the Boston area on NESN - New England Sports Network. “New England Sports” is Bostoneese for “hockey”. If you’re looking for a Bruins game or that all-important Quinnipiac vs. Providence College hockey match-up, NESN is the place. Basketball, however, is not their forte.
About 3 minutes in, NESN displayed its ineptness and lost the audio. Infuriating. But then I realized that I’m capable of comprehending the action without the sound. Much like the folks attending the game. Might be different if I was watching CNBC’s Squawk Box or the Oprah Winfrey Show. Come to think of it, Oprah’s show might be better named the Squawk Box. (Wait a minute. How would I know? I don’t watch Oprah. Oh hell, who am I kidding? You go girl.)
NESN did something else truly unbelievable. It showed a score with BC leading. Even more amazingly, that wasn’t erroneous. In fact, BC led at half. And with 15 minutes to go. And with 10 minutes to go. I remember thinking, “Oh my God. I might have to find another way to become miserable.”
And then it happened.
Tyler Hansbrough stepped to the foul line with 1:26 left and BC up by 4. As he released his first of two - a commercial was played.
My initial reaction was to scream. No, this wasn’t one of those girly high-pitched screams. I save those for the Alien movie series. This was more like the sound you make when you see Grandma naked. A quick “Ahh!” You close your eyes knowing that when you open, the horror will be over. But another commercial came on. And another. My screaming then became much more like that of a roller coaster rider. Except my hands were not up in the air. They were clutching my chest.
Yet another commercial appeared. This one was for Hooters and I seemed to calm down a bit. Hooters commercials always have a soothing effect on me. Not quite sure why. I’m guessing it’s the hooters.
If only a Hooters commercial could have been played during other stressful moments of my life. Like at my wedding. In fact I really think my wife should have a Hooters commercial cued up just in case she ever has to tell me she is pregnant again. I do feel compelled to admit that there was a part of me that hoped the game would not come back on until after the Hooters girls finished their pitch. Don’t worry it was just a very small part of me, I assure you.
The Hooters commercial was followed by - another commercial, then another and another. And that calm I experienced had been completely replaced with total frustration. For some reason, I thought maybe there was just something wrong with the TV. So I decided to fix it the same way I fix my furnace or my dishwasher – I kicked it.
The difference between the TV and those other appliances is that the TV is up pretty high. That was no barrier for my uncontrollable rage. I decided to do a karate spin style kick up at my 36-inch tank of a set for which I overpaid back in 1997. I swear to God, that thing some how blocked my kick. There can be no other logical explanation for how I ended up flat on my back.
As I laid there with yet another commercial playing, a somewhat irrelevant thought ran through my head: Men like their TVs much different than their women. One should be big and flat and the other, well, not so big and not so flat.
My groin then seemed to be displaying a bulge – and not the good kind. I wasn’t bleeding which comforted me until I recalled Eddie Murphy’s wise words in Trading Places – “Karate men bleed on the inside.”
I was tempted to go upstairs to my office to follow along on the Internet. But I didn’t want to give up hope that the game would come back on my TV. Unfortunately I don’t have Internet access in my family room. I instead have Barbie dolls, American Girl dolls and High School Musical dolls. I should probably mention that I also have two daughters –you know, so you don’t think I’m a freak. Oh and there’s the Hanna Montana Guitar TV game – sort of like Guitar Hero, but only with songs that make you want to shove screwdrivers in your ears.
I then did what every married guy does when feeling the immense furor of not being able to solve a problem – I blamed my wife. While she was putting the girls to bed, I thought it made sense to yell, “It’s these damn cheap batteries you put in the remote. I can’t see the game because you wanted to save 50 cents and got the crappy generic batteries instead of Duracell. Now the remote doesn’t work right and I can’t see the end of the game!” A silent pause preceded my wife’s reply: “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” She had simultaneously added to my boiling anger and made me a bit proud. See this was the 5th day in a row that I had managed to top the dumbest thing my wife had ever heard. Hey, everyone defines success differently.
Now 5 minutes had passed and the commercials were still going strong. I had one last unappealing option – call my dad in New York who was watching on a non-NESN channel and get his color commentary over the phone. The reason for my hesitancy wasn’t because I knew the conversation would be a fiasco. It’s because I had already predicted such a fiasco and wrote about in Rant#2. (Feel free to scroll down and see.)
I opted to suck it up and subject myself to a mind numbing conversation with an old man without any possibility of the subsequent fun of joking about it in this blog. The next day when talking to my friends about my dad’s play by play they all said, “That’s hilarious. You should really put that in one of your blog posts.” That revealed something very important – my friends aren’t reading my blog posts.
So here is the actual conversation with my Dad that nearly mimics that found in Rant #2 that, apparently, no one read:
Answering machine picks up –
“Dad, I know you’re there. Will you please get the phone, I . . .”
“What the hell are you calling me for? I’m watching the game.”
“Dad, my channel lost its feed. What’s happening?”
“They’ve got the ball. Oh they turned it over.”
“Dad, who’s they?!”
“It’s, uh, hey have you heard from your sister?”
“Dad! What’s the score?”
“It’s 82 to 78. BC. I think.”
“You think?”
“BC’s winning. I just can’t tell the score. BC’s in the 80s and Carolina is in the 70s.”
“That is almost completely unhelpful.”
“Now he has the ball and there’s 26 seconds left.”
“Dad, stop with the pronouns. Which team is “he” on?”
“He who?
“Oh my God, this is just like the blog.”
“What blog?”
“Unbelievable.”
“He’s shooting.”
“What team Dad!?”
“Carolina. Oh the game’s over.”
“It’s over? Who won? What happened? Wait, holy crap! The game’s back on. It’s on! It’s on! 4 seconds to go and BC’s at the line up by 6!”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. It’s over. Now let me go. I’ve got a date with, uh, oh hell, I’ll ask her when I see her. Don’t put this in your damn blog.”
Post-Game Commentary:
Yes, BC ended up winning. Though I was quite happy, I’ve got to say I felt gypped. I watched the whole game but I didn’t get to see the best part. Kind of like a kid who eats his whole dinner only to find there’s no dessert. Or better yet, kind of like a guy whose wife forces him to watch Steel Magnolias for the 30th time but then she decides to shut it off before he gets to watch Julia Roberts finally croak.
I figured, I could get my needed finality when I picked up the morning Boston Globe which was sure to have a big BC headline. I was right. Well sort of. Lead story was dedicated to BC’s firing of its football coach for interviewing with the Jets.
There was a 1-inch paragraph on page 6 noting that NESN’s producer apologized for the problem. Just wondering if Tar Heel fans would have let the station in North Carolina get away with just an apology. My guess is he would have been tarred. I probably should just be happy that NESN didn’t brag about getting better ratings for the commercials than for the game.
Still in need of closure, I turned to Wednesday night’s telecast of BC vs. Harvard against assuming that they’d replay those last exciting moments of the Carolina game. Only problem with that assumption was that there was no telecast. NESN decided to show hockey, of course. No, not a Bruins game. But the Hockey East Finals – that took place last year. Yup. A repeat college hockey game was playing instead of a game with the hometown team that had just beaten the #1 ranked squad in the country.
Stunningly, BC lost to Harvard. And I never really got that moment of happiness I felt I deserved. But I did finally manage to rid myself of that holiday joy. Yet another success.
Take it easy,
Dave
If you would like to submit a choice for the most overrated/underrated team of the week email me at davebarend@yahoo.com by Wednesday night and I'll have it up with Thursday's new set of Rankings, Irrelevant Comments & More.
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