During the COVID-19 lockdown, I have developed a new sense of aesthetics. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also bring some comfort. Things that used to seem banal have taken on a casual importance.
I’m not a big sports fan, I don’t even know where to find ESPN on our television, but I do look forward to NCAA basketball tournament. I understand why it was canceled, it had to be done, and I’m comfortable with the decision, but I miss the games.
I always filled out a bracket, but I never won. A long time ago a bartender (it’s funny how much of my education, the real nuts and bolts lessons of surviving came from dealers of one type or another) told me to bet with my head not with my heart. It was advice I ignored almost immediately and absolutely.
I can’t bet on a team that I don’t want to win. I just can’t. Sports, to me, is a joyous collaboration, all of us, me and the guys on the court, the coaches, cheerleaders, boosters, athletic department lackeys and board of regents working together. We either advance in the tournament, and eventually bring home the trophy, or lose and go home with nothing but regret and a few happy memories to tide us over until next season. Oh, just wait until next year, my NCAA mantra.
We suffer together, and we celebrate together. Sometimes we’re thousands of miles apart but we are one. Of course, all of the other fans don’t know how I’ve sweat, and struggled, swore, celebrated, and hoisted all of them to glorious victory or dragged them into the painful blackness of defeat. When we lose, the team, all the other fans, and me it’s probably best they don’t know about my participation.
I can’t invest that kind of effort into a team I don’t like, and definitely not a team I despise.
When you choose your teams based solely on how much you like them your bracket usually falls apart quickly. Since we are a team I can live with that.
This year it is me, and them, all alone, my teams are sitting at home, without me.
Though, I have found the joy of Judge shows. They seem to last all day. This is easy since you don’t really know any of the participants. Defendant, plaintiff, it doesn’t matter. You can just pick the team you feel has the most reasonable chance of winning.
After a few days, some cases are obvious.
“That guy doesn’t have a chance. He was ill-prepared for trial, his evidence is scant and his case is built on conjecture.” I will say, with all the authority a week of televised verdicts can provide.
Sometimes my wife and I will choose different “teams.” It will get heated.
I remember when I was young. Sometimes, when things went dead, we would pitch pennies. A game where you stood behind a line and pitched pennies at a wall. Whoever’s penny landed closest to the wall won all the pennies. It made for some vigorous exchanges. Trash talking at it its cheapest. You could spend a couple of hours saying awful things about your friends and never get too far ahead or behind, it was pennies, after all. But, man would we say some awful things about each other, and our supposed ability to throw pennies at a wall. Kids can be so cruel.
It is kind of like that when we pick different participants in the short dramas that play out between commercials. Dog bites, infidelity, trespassing, water damage, disputes about rent, car payments, all sorts of litigation, all day long. Things I would never think to sue somebody about.
One woman was driving her friend home from the bar. It was a night of heavy celebration, serious drinking, and recklessly abandoning inhibition. So much so that the passenger had to answer nature’s call in the car. On the seat. It had to be professionally cleaned and it cost a lot of money. The judge ruled that the passenger had to pay the driver for the cleaning.
It only made sense, but not all of them are so easy to pick.
A man who fell for a radio show prank and had the stations call letters tattooed on his forehead thinking it would earn him $250,000 only to find out it was only a joke. He won and the radio station had to pay, a lot.
All day, people come and bare their souls and their troubles for the television judge, the people packed in seats around the studio/courtroom and the television audience. They all have problems they need the judge to solve. Their troubles, big and small, become fodder for our entertainment.
We joke and laugh about the cases, but in the end, these are real people, with real problems. Friendships are ruined, marriages are dissolved, and I can’t help but think this isn’t at all what Andy Warhol thought was predicting, but he had it right. When you have that many hours in a day and all those cable channels to fill, they have to find somebody willing to stand in front of the camera.
I really miss the basketball tournament.
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