Champagne's Pre-Pretty-Big Game Stress Reduction Regime
Games 3 and 4 in the Nets' Eastern Conference Final versus Boston, in Boston, aren't precisely "do-or-die," but they are about as close to "do-or-die" as you can get. One or the other is certainly a "must-have," which is enough to freak-out anybody. And Champagne is high-strung. By observing himself like a Gombi Chimp, Joe's sidekick Jane Goodall's a pattern in his own activities leading up to games like these, and thought he'd share. You may wish he had not: it could turn you into a tool like Champy. In loose, nonhierarchical, occasionally overlapping order:
Descend into a heavy REM sleep from which I can only escape with a cry - ...Startling myself to consciousness. While my eyes behind closed lids are loop-de-looping in their sockets, old girlfriends meld into one bedroom-eyed Super Girlfriend, who peels down her fringed, all-white, ass-clinging cheerleader's outfit and offers herself to me before morphing into a scissor-handed succubus. Silver werewolves in riot police gear chase me through fields of phallic cattails, my feet sucking through swamp mud in slo-mo, like an instant replay. An eight-foot Harry M. Sevens hot-dog reveals himself to be be my father. I'm Brian Scalabrine, and the "Veal!" chants are for me.
Think Mostly about Death - I decide that time cannot be real, that there is only matter, which decays, and that time is only an abstract measurement of that decay. And that decaying matter is the root condition for life, and that if matter did not decay there would be only stasis, so death is inevitable and the inevitable must always come. Hopefully, when I am reduced to subatomic foam, flashbacks to my most horrific woo-pitching debacles will cease to jackknife me with shame; neither will I be capable of perusing Anna Kournakova upskirt shots in glossy "Guy Rags." And surely, heaven=I can't remember Yinka Dare. From death, the imagination branches...if it was possible, would I read my personal freshness date? When did the the last three initials fall off Martha Stewart's O.L.I.L.F. tag? Or was it ever on...or has it really gone? Doesn't my ambivalence about Kelly Ripa really mask a rage to see her naked? Do celebrities, sports and otherwise, represent The Life Force now? Why do we wish to smear and shame them, like we smeared and shamed Our God? W.W.P.M.D.? (What Would Phil Mushnick Do?) Is Star Wars fandom really a yearning for something deeper?
All day long this is how it goes, my mind churning like a thumbsucker in a Sunday Magazine.
Treat Myself - Crack can of uncooked cinnamon buns. Arrange dough disks on baking sheet. Place in oven set at 375 degrees. Stare at kitchen table cloth for 14 minutes while listening to NPR on kitchen clock radio, as penance. Remove cooked buns to tray. While still hot, spread buns with the icing that came in the little canister inside the cinnamon bun tube and eat all buns. Wash free the clog in my esophagus with a large glass of orange juice and two mugs of coffee.
Go Online and Stay There - Shoot ecstatic emails out into the ether, complimenting the recipients on their existence. Receive their alarmed replies.
Methodically download every daily article written about the Nets. Skim. Remove pants, if on, and lay towel down on pleather "iChair." Methodically download every pornographic photo of Aria Giovanni I can find.
Immerse Myself in a Thick Old British Social Novel - A collapsing empire causing "mustn't grumble" stoicism, painfully missed chances at earthly happiness due to adherence to tedious outmoded traditions and loyalties...the Brits have been through it all, and have developed a character and outlook on life that's relevant and instructive if wildly misinterpreted by a psychotic Nets fan with a bad sense of proportion. You know you're lost when you can make analogies between World War 1 and the Eastern Conference Final, mustard gas and Paul Pierce's pronouncements, and stick to them for 800 pages.
Shut Out the Outside World - Do not answer phone. "Did I wake you?" is the first thing anyone asks before I panic that subject #1 on their calling agenda going to be "bust Champagne's clockweights." The panicked dead air forces them into out-loud mental furniture-arranging about the Nets' shaky chances in whatever upcoming pretty-big-game I'm dreading. The only way I'm equipped to respond is with groggy, abnegating agreement with whatever negative assessment they ultimately land on. I'm too in-a-lather to argue, and most likely the "iTowel" is still under my ass on the "iChair" and there's an "iTissue' in my "iPalm." So I've developed a simple rule: do not answer the phone.
Watch Crap Television - Brooke Burke of E! Channel's "Wild On" has an uncanny ability to calm and control my death/defeat fears for 1/2 an hour. "Rank" does not. I think it's because of the countdown format, a guaranteed anxiety stimulator when one is on edge, even if what they're counting-down is "Hollywood's Hottest Couples." If the Pretty-Big-Game is going to be on a Turner Channel, I'll switch over far too early, and get repulsed back to E! by a Chuck Norris movie. Chop-socky action crapola doesn't play with Champagne. Neither does Yancy Butler in "Witchblade." Give me a "Savannah" True Hollywood Story, something to get the synapses sizzling! If MTV2 is doing a block of Dance Music I'll always watch that. A totally alien world always fascinates and distracts, as will Jennifer Lopez' notorious ass – if I'm lucky they'll play a Dance Music "classic" like JLo's "Waiting for Tonight," or a Bjork video.
Fat, jacked, and with my brainwaves gone flat-line, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Bring on the Pretty-Big-Game!
- Champagne
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