General Admission
It was nothing but show time
By Al S. Mendoza
NOT the song but the singer.
Thus, I like “Yesterday” with Paul McCartney on the vocals than anyone else.
Or “Imagine” being done by John Lennon than anyone else.
Or “Love Me Tender” being soloed by Elvis Presley than anyone else.
Or “Something” being crooned by George Harrison than anyone else; not even Frank Sinatra, who called “Something” the best song ever written by Lennon-McCartney.
Of course, Frank Sinatra was wrong. George Harrison, the “Quiet Beatle,” wrote “Something” and he sang it himself.
Told about it after he had rendered a masterful interpretation of “Something” in one of his concerts, the Ole Blue Eyes (may God bless his soul) immediately apologized.
Ever the gentleman that he was, George Harrison (may God bless his soul, too) had promptly accepted the apology.
The singer, not the song.
As in the show, not the game.
For, that was all there is in the Rockets-Pacers encounter on Thursday at the MOA Arena in Pasay City.
In short, that was not a game at all.
That was a show so that show time was its theme.
The scores, numbers, meant nothing that evening.
For the cage-crazed crowd, only the show mattered; it meant everything. The Rockets winning it 116-96 meant nothing. Nada.
When some of the planet’s best basketball players do their thing, and you get to watch them do it live, would you even look at the scores?
You would, of course, but only by reflex, for gravy.
You look at the forest and not just the trees, the garden and not just the flowers, the mountain and not just the hills and valleys.
It was a preseason game of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the world’s premiere basketball league.
For cage fanatics, the show was heaven-sent as, more than any place in the planet, the Philippines is the maddest when it comes to basketball.
Never mind that our built and height are not really for world-class basketball.
We want to be in Olympic basketball but even the bronze medal is literally an unreachable star; it will remain that way for us till the end of time.
We have always been a country of ironies, anyways.
We can laugh amid an abyss of tragedy.
We can party amid a sea of want.
We can suppress anger amid a scam of “billionic” proportions.
A nephew of mine, whose income is but a waiter’s tip by the likes of Janet Lim-Napoles, bought a ticket for P35,000 for that NBA show.
On ordinary days of a PBA game, that ticket of his would cost only P800 for a Patron/ringside seat.
Oh, well, maybe my nephew did it if only to escape from all the stink of those billion-peso scams and wanton disbursement of people’s money by the Palace to the all-too-willing scumbags–even if only momentarily.
It was one show time worth savoring than the shit time Napoles et al. had been bombarding us with impunity for quite some time now.
Everybody deserves a break.
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