The Olympics are over. The Paralympics are bye-bye. All the hype and hoopla is now for junior high school Utah history books. All of the visitors are going home. The roads are back open.
We spent so much time, money, effort, sleepless nights and traffic jams on the Olympics, and it was all worth it. It was great! I loved seeing all the excitement.
But that’s over. What am I supposed to do now?
Think about this as you drive: We’ll get back to watching construction crew after construction crew slowly cut our lanes down and cause lines that would make K-Mart jealous.
“But I thought that all the construction would be finished when the Olympics were finished,” you might say. But you’d be wrong. You forget the state colors of Utah are red and orange; red for the stop lights and orange for the construction.
And, of course, the events and concerts are all over. What do we do to entertain ourselves? Well, here’s a list of things you can do:
Jazz games?If you like watching guys play slow-it down, by-the-book basketball, you will enjoy the time you spend at the Delta Center. Of course, that is assuming you can justify spending $80 per ticket to get close enough to tell the players apart form each other.
But it just might be worth the money to see Jerry Sloan yell at Greg Ostertag and Ostertag yell back, saying: “It’s always my fault!”
It might even be worth it to spend the hundreds of dollars per ticket to be able to sit up front and listen to Karl Malone yell at the refs and Bryon Russell swear at other players.
But if basketball doesn’t float your boat, how about all the night clubs?
Considering the fact I’m not a big drinker and don’t have a clue as to the difference between a margarita and Virgin Mary, that’s probably not my best bet. (Although it is fun sometimes to go watch people change from normal to jackass in less than 15 minutes.)
There are some of those night clubs that are intended for the goody-goody, never screw-up-or-your-bishop-will beat-you Latter-day Saints, like myself. But then again, those are only fun if you like doing the “Electric Slide” and slow dancing to U2’s “With or Without You.”
It’s basically a whole bunch of returned missionary males trying to hit on recent high school graduate females. It’s an advanced stake dance.
The dialogue is almost scripted?the “Twenty Question, getting to know you interview”:
“So, what’s your name?”
“Where did you go to high school?”
“What year did you graduate?”
“Where do you work?”
“What year are you in school?”
“What’s your major?”? and the list goes on for about three-and-a-half minutes, or until the song ends.
How do I know this so precisely? Well?I’ll just invoke the Fifth Amendment.
But you don’t have to go to dances or Jazz games to have fun. What about going skiing?
Ahhh, yeah! “The Greatest Snow on Earth.” But that incredible powder doesn’t come without a price. Spend all day on a mountain (which I don’t know how anyone can own), and it sets you back $50. Sure that’s fun, but every day?! Or even once a week?! Too much money for me.
OK, you can play church basketball for fun. That’s free, right? It’s a sport too violent for Evil Knievel, and it’s even inside a church.
“Church basketball started the war in heaven!” some say. If you have no idea what that means, contact the Book of Revelations or a returned missionary, or just play along and pretend you care.
Carpet burns (from playing on the carpeted floors), hurt ankles, faces and egos are commonplace there.
This is all coming from a guy who grew up on Jazz Basketball, going to stake dances and playing church basketball. Who am I to criticize?
I’m just a sports writer. I’m just giving options to people who are looking for something to do now that our moment in the sun faded with the sunset.
It’s something to help give you an alternative response the next time someone asks you, “What is there to do in this state?” besides the standard answer of “NOTHING!”
Lance welcomes feedback at: [email protected].