Thursday, October 21, 2004
Happy Anniversary to the newest members of the 5 year club - and faithful founders of the Texas Longhorns delivery service - Congratulations Jen and Mark.
Last night was pretty interesting. It was the second Kataja basketball game here in J-town and the locals were putting up a poor showing, lifeless, they needed a boost from the crowd, which is where I come in. So I was back to my normal routine of being the loudest person (and the only one anyone could hear) in an arena filled with 1,000 people. As the opposing team took their free-throws I began to tell them that they were no good and so on. Well, I was particularly hard on one guy from Lithuania who was playing as dirty a game as I have witnessed in this league and I let him hear it while he was shooting, and I had the right effect. He missed his shots. But soon after that, he fouled out of the game and spent the rest of the game on the bench, where he could easily spot me out of the crowd.
As the game was winding down I increased my efforts and the home team wound up winning. But after the game I was greeted by the, much larger than he looked, Lithuanian who proceeded to lecture me on how good he was and that if I wanted to say something bad about him to say it to his face. This was plain ridiculous and I told him so. I showed him my ticket and he said that that didn't matter and how would I like it if he came to my job and yelled at me. So I told him about home-court advantage and what not, but he didn't seem to understand what I was talking about, even though his English was fluent, and man this dude was big. So I said if he had made his shots and they had won the game we wouldn't be having this conversation and then he was called back to his team. Sure I should have just said sorry and whatever, but there is no way he should have approached me after the game. I wasn't worried or anything, but I wasn't prepared to be confronted by this guy who was easily 7 inches taller than me and definitely 40 pounds heavier. Oh well, home team won and the crowd - after hearing me yell so loud and so often - finally got into the game. All in all, it was an interesting night and in a town like J-town, that is all a guy like me can ask for.
Lots of love to Jen and Mark.
hb getting a lot colder - the first small snow happened today.
Last night was pretty interesting. It was the second Kataja basketball game here in J-town and the locals were putting up a poor showing, lifeless, they needed a boost from the crowd, which is where I come in. So I was back to my normal routine of being the loudest person (and the only one anyone could hear) in an arena filled with 1,000 people. As the opposing team took their free-throws I began to tell them that they were no good and so on. Well, I was particularly hard on one guy from Lithuania who was playing as dirty a game as I have witnessed in this league and I let him hear it while he was shooting, and I had the right effect. He missed his shots. But soon after that, he fouled out of the game and spent the rest of the game on the bench, where he could easily spot me out of the crowd.
As the game was winding down I increased my efforts and the home team wound up winning. But after the game I was greeted by the, much larger than he looked, Lithuanian who proceeded to lecture me on how good he was and that if I wanted to say something bad about him to say it to his face. This was plain ridiculous and I told him so. I showed him my ticket and he said that that didn't matter and how would I like it if he came to my job and yelled at me. So I told him about home-court advantage and what not, but he didn't seem to understand what I was talking about, even though his English was fluent, and man this dude was big. So I said if he had made his shots and they had won the game we wouldn't be having this conversation and then he was called back to his team. Sure I should have just said sorry and whatever, but there is no way he should have approached me after the game. I wasn't worried or anything, but I wasn't prepared to be confronted by this guy who was easily 7 inches taller than me and definitely 40 pounds heavier. Oh well, home team won and the crowd - after hearing me yell so loud and so often - finally got into the game. All in all, it was an interesting night and in a town like J-town, that is all a guy like me can ask for.
Lots of love to Jen and Mark.
hb getting a lot colder - the first small snow happened today.
// posted by Howard @ 3:26 PM 
