Musical Chairs at "The Garden"

Day 2 with Anne

Time for some more culture! Hopped on a bus on Madison Avenue to take us up to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can never spend too much time somewhere like this, they have something like 3,000,000 exhibits of which only 10% are on display at any one time [ possibly a bijou rantette about that in a following blog ] and it's sooooooo huge it's simply impossible to do anything other than scratch the surface at each visit. This time we did a brief bit of Egypt (although we didn't really see the best of it) and then a guided highlights tour which led us to the American art section which looked interesting and different. Naturally a small but friendly coffee was compulsory and the cafe was most pleasant indeed.

Suitably revived, time to explore the American art by ourselves. The Frank Lloyd Wright room was v.interesting as were examples of his glass. Can't help but feeling that there was a degree of plaigarism w.r.t the master, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but it is just the sort of thing I really like. The paintings were refreshing as well, you get a bit used to what you see round Europe and so it was nice to explore some alternative artists for a change. Explored work by Tiffany too ... which was appropriate :)

All arted out, time for a late lunch, and the menu at a different cafe in the Met looked rather inviting - as did the view out the floor to ceiling glass adjoining central park. The food was really rather excellent and a few cuts above the rather poor selection at the british museum for example - although the cafe at Tate Modern could maybe compete on a good day.

The original plan had been to walk back through central park to FAO schwartz for some nephewly toy shopping for Anne and to stop of at Tiff's to collect the pendant ... and yet somehow the day had vanished so just time to hop on a bus back to the apartment and a quick change before walking to the garden for the evenings musical chairs, sorry, basketball!

Can't think of the last time I went to a live sports event rather than watching it on telly - and it seemed like a good idea at the time to book some tickets to see the New York Knicks playing basketball at their home ground - Madison Square Garden. It was the last pre-season game before the season starts proper and they were up against the New Jersey Nets ... who judging by the pre-match warm up (well, I say warm up, more a gentle lollop around the court chatting to friends) had one major advantage compared to the Knicks ... they had learnt that the point of the game was to get the ball THROUGH the hoop, rather than just somewhere in the general vicinity thereof.

I confess to perhaps being more interested in the prospect of scantily clad dancing girls who are of course "the best dance team in the NBA" and was severely disappointed when the match seemed to start without them. The singer who belted out the national anthem to start with was quite nice though ... and she had a rather good voice as well.

Match underway ... a bizarre experience followed.

Firstly it appeared that a large proportion of the crowd had turned up to basically have a full meal in their seats and chat to their friends, treating the basketball game rather like a loud TV in the background. To aid the noshing, there were menus in the seats and you could get in seat service ... most odd. Secondly it appeared there was more half-time entertainment than actual sport. Now this is aided by basketball being comprised of 4x12 minute periods - so one might perhaps have imagined it being tough to string out 48 minutes of sport into 2 hours ... but that would be failing to fully appreciate how little sport actually takes place!

No sooner had (ie about 2 mins after) the players loped around for a bit and gently jogged too and fro than one of the teams called for a time out. Clearly this was a strategically vital part of the game and there must be a lot to discuss with the coach ... but before we knew it the players on court had been replaced by 2 fans and (phew!) a couple of the aforementioned dancing girls who then went on to conduct ... a dance competition.

Yup. You read that right. A dance competition.

We all had to cheer for the fan who danced the best and the loudest cheering would win them a prize.

By the time that excitement was over, I think we had had more dancing (sadly not quite as scantily clad as might be desirable) than basketball so the teams were ushered back on court for some more sport ... at which point everyone returned to their meals and chatting with friends.

No sooner had they managed to choke on their chicken nuggets than the other team needed a time out as well and this time the dancers returned to the stage and started throwing T-shirts into the crowd.

Sadly not their own.

It looked like being a long evening.

Things looked up a bit when during the interval between period 1 and 2, we had some proper dancing girl type activity ... but soon it was back to the routine of a bit of loping around the court with the emphasis on time outs and fan based activity. Highlights included cheering for our favourite Stevie Wonder song, watching some kids dressing up in over-sized kit and trying to score a basket (they were about as good as the Knicks in that respect) plus of course the dancing girls firing T-shirts into the crowd at every opportunity. Oh and then we had the celebrity look-a-like on the big screen TV etc.

The highlight of the evening however came during the 15 minute break in the middle of the game when we had the joy of watching 5 fans playing musical chairs in giant inflatable .. err .. chairs. Being intellectually challenged, they had difficulty with the concept of stopping when the music stopped rather than when the announcer used the word "stop" and so this dragged out for a while ... at which point I should probably tell you how much the tickets for the game cost. But it's almost too awful to contemplate. Lets just say that a meal at New Yorks top restaurant plus 2 tickets to the Carnegie Hall is close enough ... PER PERSON.

You had to laugh really.

By this time of course it became clear that the game wouldn't be lasting a mere 2 hours ... more like 3 ... if not a tad longer! Now we knew why all those menus were in the seats, our plans to nosh after the game were looking like being rather optimistic!

Oh yes, the game, sorry, I almost forgot. True to form, the Knicks were almost completely incapable of getting the round rubbery thing through the circular wirey thing and how they only managed to lose by 10 points or so is beyond me. There were moments of great excitement when in the final quarter they came within 3 points and had some great chances to move ahead ... but yup, you've guessed it - their ball skills let them down. The cheers from the crowd nearly took the roof off and even through there were maybe only 8,000 or so of a capacity 19,000 crowd in that night, the noise was pretty deafening.

Despite my sarcasm, it was an enjoyable evening ... in a surreal way. I've neglected to tell you about all the organ playing (designed to put the opposition off I think) plus the crowd chanting "de fence de fence ..." when the Knicks were, yup, defending ... but I could probably write a treatise on the game rather than a quick blog entry and you're probably well bored with all this by now in any case!!

Walked home via my local deli for a pannini and some ice cream before bed.