This was an all-weekend booze fest. Various neighborhoods in the Asakusa area of Tokyo had portable shrines that they paraded around the streets and, parks and alley ways. Each shrine was carried by people of that shrine's nieghborhood - pridefully. When they weren't lugging around these large, lavish things, they were boozing. All up and down the streets of the Sensoji Temple Park were street vendors, bars and food. I went down on Saturday afternoon - abruptly after the Suns lost game 6 to the Spurs. I had some things to work out of my system and this festival turned out to be the perfect prescription. I didn't speak english once - avoided all foreigners and thus avoided any potential conversations about the Suns. I wore black. Spent the day stomping around with the locals - drinking my sorrows away - eating unknown foods - jumping from one broken Japanese conversation to the next. An hour or so into the excursion, I'd buried the morning's tragedy deep enough I was able to have a great time. I was no where close to being "over it" yet, but happily dancing along the road of denial.
It was nice then. Now - in my current stage of vengeful anger and tormented depression - I will briefly chronicle the intense pain that the ending of this season has caused me, and most likely the majority of my loved ones. I was with this team all year. Sat through every god awful Tom Leander play-by-play broadcast on My45 (side note: I am currently seeking an underwriter for a website aimed at getting Tom off the air. This will be a multi-faceted process no doubt, with this public forum and sparking point of a website to be the first of many links and levers. This man has no place behind any microphone, much less communicating the on-court happenings of the most exciting team in basketball. He no doubt sucked his way to the top from his earlier days as a Suns ball boy - yeah, he was that kid under the hoop every home game that all the other kids in the stands looked at and wanted to kill. Some preliminary ideas for domain names are www.godtomsterrible.com, www.shuttomup.com, www.ididntknowguysstillcombedtheirhairdownthemiddlebuttcut.com, www.fireleander.org, www.mutebuttonfortom.com. Any other suggestions or brainstorms on how to streamline this process are greatly appreciated. I'm sure Thunder Dan and EJ would be two of the first to sign any petition - so we'll add them to the mailing list.) Punched the cushions with every "Trixy" baseline 3 attempt - roared as Stoudamire powered back from his surgery - Was stuck in the snow with them in Colorado - outraged every time anybody argued that Nash wasn't the MVP this year - As I've said before - I haven't loved a team this much, ever. And to get the shaft the way we did towards the end leaves quite the bitter residue in this fan's mouth. Are we the next Sacramento Kings? Are we cursed? We have two - maybe three seasons left with this core. We don't need to change much - some better post d - and a few breaks to go our way. I watched us beat the Lakers on my cell phone from a park bench and celebrated at the nearby, partially occupied, court:
Sad to see our guys go the way they did - makes you wonder what if - the busted nose, Horry, Boris & Amare, David and Stu, Bowen...list goes on. These aren't excuses - just influential variables that could have easily gone the other way. Sad it's over - mildly thinking about next year - begrudgingly turning to baseball - Cubs are 5 games under .500 - D-Backs are wearing the Astros' colors. Transitions are tough.
Festival Pictures:
There was drumming too.
There was more drumming.
Japan.http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/685/feature.asp
Posts
