When There's No There There
By Mariko Gordon
April 20, 2010
April 20, 2010
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
My 13-year-old son Lucas is not only a rabid sports fan, he's also a shrewd negotiator. So when I dragged him to Los Angeles for the opening of Kip Fulbeck's show, MIXED: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, at the Japanese American National Museum, Lucas made sure he got a good deal.Now mind you, he was IN the exhibit and got to see his picture projected onto a screen the size of South Dakota. He even got a shout-out from Kip himself during the presentation to a packed house. And yet I STILL had to bribe him. Yep, that kid's got a promising future in big time politics.
In this case, "Pay to Play" meant two things ...
First, we attended a Lakers game, in which we sat directly behind Uncle Jack (Nicholson that is). Unfortunately, we were about a thousand feet up in the air - albeit directly behind Uncle Jack - sitting in (I'm not kidding) the very last row of seats at the Staples Center. (Final score: Lakers 106, Timberwolves 94, Nosebleeds 2)
Second, we bought tickets to attend the Lakers Fan Jam, an event held the following day at the LA Convention Center. These tickets were even harder to score, but luckily, we were given the heads up by a West Coast friend and had purchased them weeks before.
Lucas couldn't wait to get to the Fan Jam and that morning I had to assert a full-court mom press just to make sure we got breakfast. We arrived at the convention center soon after and joined in with the yellow and purple throngs. True to its name, the Fan Jam was jammed with fans.
We queued to enter and then queued dutifully to sign waivers. There were ropes and stanchions everywhere for crowd control - at the dunking station, the free throw station, the bungee running station. Everywhere we looked we saw nothing but people standing in line.
The line to take your picture with the trophies was longer than the TSA line at Newark Airport on a Friday afternoon, as was the line to take your photo with a cardboard cut-out of a Lakers player. There was an even longer line for an autograph from a couple of cheerleaders (ask me someday to deconstruct NBA cheerleading squads - I have many interesting theories).
Display article as PDF for printing.
Would you like to send this article to a friend?
Remember, if you have a question or comment, send it to .
