My head was on a swivel Tuesday night, I had three screens going, and I couldn’t keep a coherent thought in my head.
It must be late spring, and playoff time, a glorious time of the year. It was an insane day here in New York Tuesday, with Columbia University students storming an administration building, barricading themselves inside, breaking all kinds of shit and then having the sheer gall to demand the university bring them food (the chutzpah!).
I could write thousands of words about that today, or about Herr Trump giving yet another terrifying interview to the press about what his second term would be like, but nope, I wanna write about sports and the incredible action Tuesday night, and what’s happened in the past week in the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs (hey, the Stanley Cup, I just saw him in person!)
So much to get to, but let’s start with the Knicks. Oh, the Knicks. New York has been in a frenzy about them the past week or so, because of a great regular season and some thrilling first-round series wins over the Philadelphia 76ers.
Tuesday night the Knicks, behind a roaring home crowd, played another outstanding game and had the 76ers down and out. New York led by 6 with 30 seconds left, and somehow lost. As amazing as Jalen Brunson was, Philly’s Tyrese Maxey was better, converting a 4-point play (hey, didn’t Larry Johnson once do that FOR the Knicks in the playoffs?) and then hitting a Caitlin Clark-esque 35-footer to tie the game and send it to OT.
In the extra period Philly outlasted the Knicks, and now the series is 3-2 going back to Pennsylvania, and the games have been great and as a person who doesn’t care about either team, I hope it goes seven.
But I have many Knicks fans friends, and I worry for their personal sanity if it does.
— The other major tenant of Madison Square Garden? My beloved New York Rangers, who swept and swatted away the anemic Washington Capitals in four games. My Blueshirts looked terrific, though not as good as they can be, and made Alex Ovechkin look like a third-line plugger. Now they get the mighty Carolina Hurricanes, a huge step up in class, and I expect a six or seven-game epic clash. I was never nervous during the Caps series; I shall be nervous every minute of this next one.
— Another thrilling game Tuesday night was the Maple Leafs-Bruins Game 5, and yes I’ll admit I’m more invested in this series than I otherwise might have been after spending eight days in Toronto. But wow the Leafs played a terrific game, got a zillion scoring chances they didn’t convert, got some remarkable play in net from backup Joseph Woll (yeah I had never heard of him either) and then won it three minutes into overtime.
So the perpetually-disappointing Leafs, who have been so bad in most of this series, are still alive for a Game 6. I met a ton of nice Toronto fans last week; I hope they finally get some hockey joy.
— Fabulous hockey series going on between Dallas and Vegas, two teams way too good to be meeting in the first round. It’s 2-2, road team has won every game, and I wish it didn’t start so late at night because the games are fabulous. Winner of that series comes out of the West, I predict.
— Finally, speaking of great series, this weekend we get the beginning of what should be an incredible basketball matchup, the Timberwolves vs. the defending champion Nuggets. So much star power in that one, with Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert, KAT, a fan base starving for winner in Minneapolis… get your popcorn ready. Should be sensational stuff.
Man I love this time of year!
**Next up, these storm videos always fascinate and terrify me. Check out this incredible footage above of a lightning strike of a light pole during a storm in Kansas last week.
Just wow. Can you imagine standing a few feet away when that happens?
**And finally today, been meaning to write about this wonderful HBO special for a few weeks now but haven’t gotten a chance to.
Alex Edelman is a very funny stand-up comedian who had the germ of a funny idea, and turned it into a hit off-Broadway and then Broadway show: A Jewish guy from New York City wanders into a meeting of neo-Nazis and tries to blend in.
Edelman was on social media one day and found an “ad” asking for people of like minds (other neo-Nazis) to come to a meeting at an address in Queens, and mostly out of curiosity, but also likely out of the knowledge that it may provide some comic material, decides to go.
“Nothing speaks of white privilege more than a Jew walking into a meeting of racists and thinking ‘This will probably be fine,” Edelman says in the special.
The 90 minute show on HBO deals mostly with what happens when Edelman goes to the meeting, but he also goes off on hilarious tangents about having Christmas at his house one year as a kid, his brother the Olympic athlete, and many other topics.
I laughed hard, and it made me think: the two things I expect most out of a comedian. Check out “Just For Us” streaming on HBO and Max.
Wide World of Stuff 