COLUMN: Courtside seats for the end of the world
Michael Jordan is returning to the NBA after a three-year absence from hoop and plays his first game for the Washington Wizards (a mélange of has-beens, nutjobs and overpaid tall guys with tattoo fetishes) on America’s foremost basketball stage, New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
Tickets for New York Knicks basketball are some of the priciest of all the 28 teams in the NBA, and it doesn’t take much guesswork to deduce that Oct. 30, will be a big night for ticket scalpers in New York. Normally, fans shell out hundreds of dollars to sit close enough to smell Jeff Van Gundy’s sweat, hear Spike Lee berate the referees, see Ben Stiller shovel popcorn into his oral cavity and possibly hobnob with Woody Allen and his wife/adopted daughter, Soon-Yi.
According to an Internet ticket outlet, the price tag for sitting in the nosebleeds to see His Airness return will run you more than $1,000 per seat. That is worth repeating: More than $1,000 a seat. In comparison, sitting under the basket to watch Utah’s pride and joy – Karl Malone and John Stockton – will cost you a paltry $250 per ticket.
With Jordan’s forthcoming return to the NBA, I’m positive there is not one red-blooded male who wouldn’t sell the birthright to his firstborn son or daughter for tickets to MJ’s gala performance in New York City. But let’s be honest, folks. With wars and rumors of wars fueling the majority of headlines on CNN, NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS, when the poop hits the fan, will NBA tickets be your best investment? Probably not, unless God really, really likes basketball. I’ve heard he’s more partial to Amish Rake Fighting and Shirts and Skins Speed Typing, but when it comes down to it, there are more pressing matters.
Like the end of the world.
Tickets are currently for sale in England.
Sure, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn isn’t slapping you in the face and there aren’t half-naked women dancing at center court, but for the affordable price of $44,260, you can purchase a seat in Mike Parrish’s underground bunker.
Costing slightly less than a low-end Mercedes, Parrish’s Cold War bunker will protect you against nuclear, chemical and biological warfare, virtually assuring your continued existence on Earth. Currently, Parrish, a British farmer, is looking for the right psychological mix of people – he has 100 seats left – and is hoping to get a comedian and an engineer. Parrish insists he’s not sounding any alarms or doomsday bells, but if you’re interested, you better act fast (visit www.japar.demon.co.uk to learn more details), because if the Unarius Society (www.unarius.org) is right, then sometime in 2001, a Pleiadean starship will land on Atlantis – which will soon rise from its watery grave in the Bermuda Triangle – and these Martian travelers will make Earth join 32 other planets, forming what the Unarius Society calls the “Interplanetary Confederation for the Spiritual Renaissance of Humankind on Earth.” The Unarius Society knows this because they have been receiving interstellar thought messages from the aforementioned Pleiadean starship.
Whoa. Hold the fort.
Folks who claim ideas like that usually have the word castration in their mission statement, so thanks, but no thanks. You can have my seat at the bunker and tell the Pleiadeans I’m busy.
I’ll be watching Michael Jordan prove fans and sportswriters wrong. Again.