Friday, June 01, 2007

MG IN ENEMY TERRITORY.

Last night, I was waiting for TBF in front of Town Hall, where we were going to see Bright Eyes perform night six of a seven-night stand. As I was waiting for him to arrive, I noticed Steve Earle walking down the street toward the theater. There’s been a special guest every night of the stand, and my first thought was, “Well, now I know who tonight’s special guest is. Cool.”

My second thought was, “Do I taunt him because his favorite baseball team is in the toilet?” This is the guy who wore a Yankees jersey when he was featured in a Johnny Cash documentary.  I decided not to, only because I couldn’t come up with anything intelligent enough to taunt Steve Earle with. Aside from his (imho, unfathomable) baseball allegiance, he’s a smart guy who writes good songs and I think he’s pretty cool.

Luckily, TBF arrived a few minutes later. We had an hour before the openers, and two hours before the headliner. What should we do?
“Let’s find somewhere we can watch the game,” was the response I of course expected.

“Alex, I’ll take ‘Places I never thought I’d go in my life’ for $300.”
“What Times Square establishment, featuring multiple television screens in varying sizes, broadcasting every single baseball game on at that given moment, sits at the corner of 7th Avenue and 42nd St?”
“That would be ESPN SportsZone.”
“Correct!”

It would have had to have been TBF who first educated me as to what this place was, exactly, because otherwise, how on earth would I have ever known? Not that I’m in a habit of going anywhere in that area, especially in the Disney-fied Deuce, but I would have probably been more likely to walk into a dive bar on 8th Avenue and feel comfortable before voluntarily entering anything that started with the letters ESPN. This should have been enemy territory.

My my, how things have changed. Not only did we go, but it was my idea.

I guess I should have, or could have, felt vaguely uncomfortable, and it’s not like anyone was going to talk to me about the game, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable - solely because BASEBALL was on. And BASEBALL is a friend. In fact, to my sheer delight and wonder, there was baseball on at least 6 screens, not including the Mets game on one of the big screens.  I am sure if we had stayed past the beginning of the basketball game (we left around 8:30), it might have gotten a little drunker and a little more testosterone-filled, and a lot more uncomfortable. But the beer was cold and the food was good and the Mets were winning, so everything was great.

“They had televisions in the bathrooms,” I said, as we walked back towards Town Hall.
“Well, of course.”
“No,” I insist. “The televisions were angled.”
TBF nodded. “You haven’t been to very many sports bars. The really good places have televisions so you can watch while you’re waiting in line.”
What will they think of next?? (Wait, don’t tell me. I honestly don’t want to know.)

It *was* fun, and I’m glad we went, instead of sitting around inside the theater (we got back in time to see just enough of Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings) for an hour or so, playing with my newly web-enabled phone to keep up with the game. But if I want to watch the game somewhere over a beer sometime, I think I still prefer the two regular-sized tv’s hanging in the Turkey’s Nest.