passed a saturday like a stone 2.13.05

i crashed with pawsox raycroft after our night on the upper west side. important note for the future-- it took us a few minutes over the qboro bridge to get to his pad in sunnyside, yet another reason i am in love with the neighborhood.

we woke up with a mission in mind. rose hill gymnasium, in the bronx. the men's basketball team of umass¹ facing the rams of fordham. the umass team is the minutemen and while i appreciate the historical significance, in our sexually charged time that nickname really could hurt a fella's reputation.

drinking coffee on the subway. watching queens speed by. the skies were spotted with clouds and cats our age were just rumbling from their drunken stupors.

and at grand central, we met green.

green is 41 years old, almond eyes and dark complexion, balding a touch on top, blue-lipped and heavy lidded like a man with one too many joints in the past. he walked up to us and asked us if his valentine's present to his moms was proper. what were we going to tell him-- the gold painted horse with silver painted mane and tail and the ruby glass eyes is an overdone garish chinatown piece of crap?

no. ps and i stood on the platform waiting for the 4 train (which went local) and i kept making sure 4 n***as in ski masks (an ice cube line) weren't trying to gank out wallets.

no. ps and i stood on the train-- and another fellow joined our conversation until he got off at 86th street. we talked about paternity tests, ba-dang, about the first woman green slept with and how he caught her with another man, ba-dang, how we're all the same inside, ba-dang, and why she would have the shrimp when she could have the lobster. ba-dang. also, the devil is waiting for you to mess up.

green gave us his number and wants to hang out.

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we took the bus to fordham and saw a pretty solid game. if u mass played like they had ten cents in their collective head they would have won. if they set their feet before they shot, they would have won. if they had stopped #10 (the third anderson on the court) they would have won. if they gave the ball to savloski -- aka Big Deli-- they would have won.

the teams played hard and it was fordham's first sellout of the year. the fans interacted with us, the drops of umass in the fordham sea; we weren't there in time to get seats in the visitors section. rose hill gym is the oldest division I facility in continuous use; it's close and loud and has stone walls and charm. great place to see a basketball game. even with the jackass behind us messing up the family friendly atmosphere.

in this recap², the yelling exchange between fordham coach dereck whittenburg and umass coach steve lappas is better explained-- over a couple of mis-posted points. what is not included is that whittenburg comes out after the game, after the handshakes, as the fans are leaving, and runs onto the court; motions to the student section, and starts dancing, jumping up and down, motioning his hands.

and the fans come out and join him for a group... mosh? it's very cute. should have had a camera.

Footnotes.

¹Did you know the UMass women are called the minutewomen?

² for umass, viggiaano hurt his ankle again, and big deli has hit a wall. i wonder if the wall was hurt.