No Subject

So after a month-long moratorium, I’m back—with just as little to say as I had in late November, when the 2-1 Knick bandwagon that had crashed into the telephone pole was burning like a mid-November SoCal forest fire. As rage and bitterness subsides to apathy, I’ve found myself coming out of my Knicks media shell, becoming increasingly able to read the beat. Watching Sportscenter recaps, however, is still a ways away. For the last two months or so, reading and writing about the Knicks is like sitting through an awful movie and then rushing home to read all the reviews ripping it apart, telling you to save your money, and expressing sympathy for viewers who spent their money on a ticket and had to suffer through it. Well, I’m fully cognizant of how disastrous Team Titanic II is (quick stat--we’re on pace to win less games this season than we did under Larry Brown), and don’t really need to be relayed the message through a secondary source, or in the case of Sportscenter and goddam Bill Simmons, a tertiary source. Trust me, I get it. But recently, I’ve undergone a transition that has allowed me to unbury my head from the sand. I don’t really care anymore. The water in the well is poisoned, and I’ve been drinking and becoming so ill from it over the past four years, that I’ve built an immunity. I think many Knick fans have. It’s not to say we don’t care anymore, because we obviously do, way more than we should and way more than most could possibly understand. And this is exactly what Jimmy D and Zeke the Workplace Freak should be concerned about. After early and mid December boo fests at the Garden that witnessed so much hate and poison pumping through the veins and wafting through the air of the Garden that it should have been quarantined, a feeling of stoicism has struck the World’s Most. And this is what is so terrifying. Apathy, not hate, is the opposite of love. When you have 14,000 out of 19,000 fans showing up every night, who sit complacent, rather than choosing to either support and attempt to pick up their fallen heroes, or vociferously deride their embattled villains, that’s when you know you’ve really lost the crowd. And we’ve all seen Gladiator enough to know what happens when you lose the crowd—Empires fall. And in this case, the Empire happens to be the Empire State. Do you remember early December when it didn’t matter who it was, anyone put on the Jumbotron would automatically be booed? Even the most innocuous of celebrities- Chloe Sevigny, Josh Groban, David Ducovny, it didn’t matter. If you were on screen at the Garden, there was no way to escape it-you were getting booed. And they were no elementary boos—they were the catcalls of years of tortured fans really bellowing it out. But no more.

And now, with a dearth of anything substantial, or even, at this point, theraputic to blog about, let’s play a little game that was hatched this past Sunday while watching There Will Be Blood. There is a scene towards the middle (this won’t be a spoiler by the way, I promise) where one of the oil rigs blow and a geyser of oil shoots into the air. Then it catches on fire, so shooting up from the ground is a 100 foot stream of fire, scorching the earth and ravaging the oil workers. The incendiary finale comes to an end when the ablaze iron-cast oil tower crashes down, destroying everything the fire hadn’t. During the conflagration, there are several great shots of Paul Dano and Daniel Day-Lewis as they watch in horror as their town and drilling rig is reduced to ashes before their eyes. And throughout this harrowing experience, they maintain a look of abject horror and disgust in their eyes, one so familiar that deep down in my loins I knew what it was, but couldn’t come to terms with it until watching an Arnold movie later that night. It was the look of a Knick fan. And not just when watching us give up 25 point 3rd quarter leads every other game at home. It’s a feeling that is ubiquitous, ‘omnipotent’, as Clyde would no doubt say. So, I’m going to open up the floor to a forum on things that happen every day, or not every day, that remind us of Knick season/feel like watching a Knick game. Another good one was when I arrived in Chicago this past weekend, I left my gate and headed towards ground transportation when I realized that I had left my wallet on the plane. Right there, it felt like Knicks season. Finishing up a deuce and realizing you are out of toilet paper- Knicks season. I leave this open to my faithful comrades, who I’ve laid in the trenches with for years and plan to fight with for decades to come . . .