Monday, May 12, 2008

Meet the Mets

Post #58 Topic: That’ll be $12 and All Your Dignity

The Mets have sunk to an all new low. Tomorrow night, the Mets will be losing to the Nationals, and some poor schmuck will be sitting in the ratty 23rd street theatres watching the game, in a canola oil saturated seat, with his feet sticking to the floor, with his view obstructed by Mr. Met. To help you fully understand how angry this makes me, let me take you back.

First of all, when the Rangers were playing the Penguins (more recent than it seems), the lovely folks at Madison Square Garden presented fans with the opportunity to watch the away games in the Ziegfield theatre, which apparently is a “New York Institution”, for the decent price of $40. The only thing sadder??? The stupid event sold out the night before the game. Anyway…

Around 5:30 I got a message on my Gmail account from another Cardozo-attending Mets fan. There’s something about the jews that makes them love the mets – maybe its that like the Jews, the Mets have always been the underdogs or maybe its just because Jews are scared of the people that inhabit the streets surrounding Yankee Stadium. Either way, the conversation unfolded as follows (names have been changed to protect me)

Jim: http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/nym/ticketing/metsatmovies.jsp?partnerId=enymnl05072008

some of us are gonna go if you're interested

me: Jim, i would rather choke on a gigantic… (words edited out for the sake of decency) but thank you for considering me.

Jim was mad. Jim thought that it was the idea of accompanying him to the event that caused me to suggest inhaling a dark falic object. I quickly informed Jim that it was instead the prospects of attending such an absurd event that caused my oral diarrhea.

So you don’t have to click on that bullshit above, allow me to elaborate. For $12, Mets fans can watch an upcoming game at a neighborhood movie theatre. During the game, fans will be able to purchase stadium-like concessions (uhhh… you mean soda and popcorn douchebag?), compete in between-inning trivia (sweet, you mean 200 drunk people yelling out “Mike Piazza” which for nostalgia’s sake is bound to be the answer to at least ½ of the questions), and get this… the kicker, all fans in attendance get to meet Mr. Met. That’s right, the Mets have paid some high school kid to get so baked that he actually thinks he is Mr. Met, and walk around greeting unsuspecting fans who - due to Mr. Met’s costume having only 4 fingers - don’t realize that where it counts Mr. Met is gladly flipping the bird. Yup, Mets at the Movies, the end of the fucking world – I’m pissed.

me: watch a Mets game in a grimy movie theatre for more than it costs to go to a game... how about you pick a game, any saturday or sunday day game or friday night game, and ill get tickets and we can go and ill even rip your stub like we're in the movies.

Any Mets fan can attend Mets at the Movies for $12. Any non-severely retarded Mets fan can get tickets to ANY HOME GAME, on Stubhub for $2. Yeah that’s right, 2 measly bucks gets you entrance into the actual event, whereas $12 forces you to hear how awesome Speedracer was when you get stuck in the exit crowd while trying to escape the whining babies in the 4th inning. What does misery sound like in Dolby Surround?

me: and that west 23rd street theatre BLOWS

Seriously, this is one of the worst theatres in the world, and I’ve actually been EVERYWHERE. The seats are on a nearly-flat plane, there are no head supports, the armrests are too thin, there is nowhere to rest your feet and it smells like ass. Plus, you have to crank something to get sound to come out and the projector isn’t sufficiently technologically advanced to play motion pictures. This theatre sucks, got lost in time, left behind by the 42nd street behemoths that so conveniently forced the hookers and trannies to seek refuge in my otherwise quaint little neighborhood – the best village.

me: yes ive seen those ads for this on the mets broadcast, and not to impose my feelings but it makes me sick. Sucking money out of people by charging them $12 to watch a game in a Dungeness theatre,

crooks!

No such thing as half-way crooks, only the real full-blown crooks, the same ones who sign Roberto Alomar and Mo Vaughn for ridiculous deals and then pass the cost on to customers through elevated parking prices and absurd handling fees when ordering tickets.

me: and just getting people used to the fact that once Citi field opens they wont be able to afford a day at the stadium very sad.

It’s true people, Citi Field will be a luxury experience that only the luxurious will be able to afford. The stadium has 10,000 less seats and if you think they’re eliminating 10,000 bleacher seats well then you belong at Mets at the Movies. As recently as three years ago you could get into Shea for $2 if you brought a Coke can and a student I.D.. Now, the cheapest you can get is a $5 upper deck seat for 1 game against the Expos, sorry Nationals. Shea is getting really expensive.

So what do they do? Simple! Find another way to extort people’s money. If people all of the sudden can’t afford to go to the stadium (they’ll probably segregate the sushi bar), they will cease being Mets fans – going to Shea is what a lot of lower and middle class families used to do for family activities because it was affordable – hardly anymore and before long not at all. So how do we keep these people around? By essentially expanding Citi Field. Bringing Mr. Met? Selling hot dogs? Mets trivia? Sounds an awful lot like the Mets are trying to fool people into thinking that the theatre is just an extension of the stadium.

Jim: yeah that is heartbreaking the whole aura the mets have going for them is they're the team the underdogs can support its gonna be $300 for a family of 4 to go to a ballgame now

As do most people who read my blog, Jim was starting to come around.

me: yeah its absurd this movie thing is creating a bad precedent by equating watching elsewhere to being at the games - watch next year when you buy tickets, and enter your date, you have to select stadium or stadium satelite. Pretty ingenious but downright fucking awful. They’re going to fool all these poor fans into thinking that the theatre is the stadium. (In a stoned, Matthew McConaughey from Dazed and Confused voice) It’s the movies… MAN!!! See with Citi field shrinking, there will always be demand for seats. The more lower income bracketers they can dump into the movie theatre, the more the stadium becomes an elitist colony, and the higher prices they can charge.

Jim: hahaha. I sense a blog coming on

Jim had caught on afterall.

Jim: no you're right. I hadn't taken the time to really think it out. I could watch it on my own television with a dog and a beer for $3

me: yes exactly

Jim: I guess they got me because a movie is $12 so it seemed fair and I've never been to that movie theatre because I'm allergic to the west side.

Mets at the movies huh? Is there any semblance of honor left in the world? Ironically the real winner here is the crappy movie theatre – here’s my logic. People start going to watch the Mets games at the movies. Eventually they start forgetting the difference and the Mets have created a way to essentially fit twice the capacity into Citi Field. Pretty soon people start walking by the movies and associating their passing by with Baseball – so they go in and catch a shitty flick. Strangely, the movie suddenly feels like a baseball game. Then, the person realizes they can get their baseball fix by going to the movies, and suddenly a former baseball fan is a Marvel comics fan. THEN (and this is the ultimate kicker) the next time they’re watching a game on tv, or debating going to the stadium, they consider the 4 hr baseball commitment and decide instead that they’d easily be better off just catching a movie – take that Wilpon jackass bush league sucka.

Other Notes

The Cavs-Celts game tonight (9/12) had the best single moment of announcing ever. As Lebron dunked over KG (by the way the Celtics are surprisingly soft and the Hawks suck), we hear… Lebron James WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE – awesome!

Mmmm I’m telling you now, the greatest thing you ever can do now, is trade a smile with someone who’s blue now, its very easy just-a.

Scientology is retarded. I get it, its not news. But, the other day I went to a scientology consultation and now I feel really bad for myself. L. Ron Hubbard is a creepy, creepy dude. Don’t believe me? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard. Not to mention that they didn’t even let me go to the celebrity center – I had to go to the normal people one, next to the Subway and, well a subway.

Why is Charles Barkley not running for president. He’s amazing! And Sir Charles make Magic look like he takes the short bus. And he’s slightly better looking than Hillary.

What came first the pillow or the mattress? Was a guy sleeping on hard ground with a pillow when he realized “man my head is so comfortable but my body is achy”. Or was that man sleeping on a mattress, spending sleepless nights trying to figure out where to put his head?

Today I realized it was time to leave school when I dozed off face first into a plate of wasabi and soy sauce and was woken by the librarian, with crap all over my face, telling me not to eat in the library.

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