·:[ Jason On A Shtick ]:·
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Make no mistake – you are either a Kentucky fan or a Louisville fan – you can’t be both.  But just because you choose one side, it doesn’t mean that you can’t go see how the others live!  Such was the case when I had the opportunity to go to a Louisville game with my friend Heath recently.  Purely to satisfy your curiosity, here is my report.

Freedom Hall appears pretty run down in comparison to Rupp Arena.  Of course, they are working on building a new stadium for the Cardinals, so that is to be expected.  I will say that even in the upper sections, the seats are decent and don’t seem quite so high up.

The thing I noticed most about the whole affair was that stuff is much more laid back in L’ville.  When you go to a UK game, every single little happening is scripted and polished – right down to each cheer and any halftime activities.  You’d never have some random, unorganized deal such as a radio guy walking around on the court with a mic whooping up the crowd and presiding over a free throw contest, which is exactly how it went at this game.

The crowd is pretty much the same way.  At any given UK game, there are twenty five thousand or so coaches in attendance yelling at every player for every little mistake and getting mighty perturbed when the Wildcats aren’t leading by twenty points.  The L’ville crowd seemed much more at ease with the flow of things and only got bent out of shape at terribly obvious bad calls.

Don’t get me wrong, folks.  I bleed blue and I’ve done my share of armchair coaching over the years.  But I have to admit, a game is pretty enjoyable when you are just there to cheer on your team and not take it too seriously.

Oh, yeah… did I mention that I wore a red shirt?  It was just to blend in, of course…

Lately, Lindsay has been all about Star Wars.  Some of the boys at her school talk about it and pretend to be the characters, so that has piqued her interest.  We’ve even let her watch the original movies, though we’ve skipped the “scary” scenes, of course.  I’ve had to do a lot of explaining about who are the bad guys and who are the good guys and what their deals are, but she has caught on pretty well.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the bright idea to bust out some of my old Star Wars figures to show her.  She always wants to look at the Star Wars toys whenever we are out at a store, so I thought those old things would entertain her.  Little did I know that I’d be playing Star Wars in the living room floor on a regular basis, helping poor Princess Leia get captured and rescued over and over!

Then one weekend, she spent the night with my parents and took the figures with her.  When I went to pick her up the next day, she was sporting my totally old school Darth Vader light saber which I had completely forgotten about!  My parents never throw anything away, so my dad dug it out and presented it to her much as Obi-Wan did to Luke: “This was your father’s light saber and he wanted you to have it.”  Too funny!