🏀 We weren’t on the court during a breaktoday and the Nuggets lost by more than 20 points to lackluster GSW. Coincidence? I think not!

Flying for the first time since July, to Chicago.

To vote. In the Serbian parliamentary elections. Lily Lynch has a good writeup of why these are really really really really important.

There are no absentee ballots in Serbia: if you are away from home you either have to haul your behind back, or register to vote abroad. The number of Serbs in Denver being too small to open a polling place there — not that there would be one even if there were more of us, as the soon-to-be former Serbian kakistocracy has been doing its best to suppress the diaspora vote — we did a nick-of-time registration to the one place they had to open up. ⊕ [Note: But no, it was in fact more complicated than that. We first naively registered to vote in Denver, well ahead of the registration deadline, thinking that the powers that be would, in case there wasn’t a polling place there, re-route us to the closes city automatically like we heard they did in years past. Then we learned that there was no law requiring them to do so. Fearing shenanigans, my wife and I sent a second registration, for Chicago, skipping Denver altogether. And a good thing we did, because my father-in-law, visiting from Serbia, never submitted the re-registration my wife dutifully prepared for him, and learned that his request to vote in Denver was denied, end of story. This all happened a few weeks ago. For those whose jobs, finances and/or child care responsibilities don’t allow for last-minute plane tickets: tough luck. Draw your own conclusions about what the implications are for Serbian democracy. ]

Another cute way to take away people’s right to vote was to have the polling places open at the same time as they are in Serbia. Which is to say, they opened at midnight central, and will close at 1pm. Or maybe 2pm, since today was the end of daylight savings torture in most of the world. I am guessing here, because the official certificate of registration to the Chicago consulate my wife and I received never specified the time. In prior elections, this was 8am to 8pm local time, so those used to voting that way are in for a surprise if they show up in the late afternoon.

Only, this obvious ploy to rig the vote was publicized so heavily that it made people who otherwise may not have voted so pissed off that they registered and started queuing well before midnight. I keep getting videos of long lines in DC, Chicago, etc.

Anyway, it was a 6am flight in — the one I am on now — and a 9pm flight back, with a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago in between. First class for both of us, thanks to the free upgrade from status I earned at my previous job and hope never to have again. The night before, we were privileged to a) witness a Nuggets nail-biter (against the Pelicans, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season but oh well), and b) participate in the 4th quarter timeout show, wherein the Nuggets mascot Rocky threw a half-court shot behind his back and right into the net, earning us $200 (!?) most of which we will donate. ⊕ [Note: I would like to think that this was the turning point in the match. The Nuggets were 19 points behind at the start of the quarter. Some of the home crowd was booing. Then Rocky made the shot, the energy changed, and they came back to win in overtime. If you have access to the video via the NBA app you can see for yourself and check if my intuition is correct. ] Which is a long-winded way to say: helluva weekend.

🏀 That was… intense. Go, Nuggets! 🛠

Today I learned of Subsoccer and it is both preposterous and something I would in fact like to have. American spirit of invention chugs along even at 250.

The last Wizards home game our family attended back in April was a disaster. We forgot to bring noise canceling earmuffs for the baby and spent most of the night in the dreary concession stand hallway. Guest Services were only able to provide foam plugs; not good for a five-month-old. This would not have been devastating if what was to be the highlight of the night — and at a Wizards game the highlight is not the game of basketball you can see on the court but rather the overpriced chicken tenders they sell to people who should know better, as the Capital One Arena is the only venue where our kids are permitted to eat junk — if that highlight was any good on our last night at the Arena. Alas, they came out 15 minutes late and still half-frozen, a breaded chicken sashimi. Oh, and after an embarrassing loss to the Miami Heat the Wizards sealed their status as the worst team of the worst conference of a league that has seen better days.

I am not saying that the Washington Wizards were the main reason we are leaving D.C. [Note: A fellow Serbian expat immigrant in DC told me that people back home thought that saying ‘DC’ is taken as being too high-falutin’ since everyone over there calls it Washington. Of course, over here Washington means the Hill and the Swamp and whatever you would call that thing on Pennsylvania Ave and 16th St, so I’ll stick to D.C. ] for Denver, but you know, it is also not not one of the reasons.

So I am happy to report that my last contact with the team was not that ill-fated last home game, but rather their draft party — free popcorn, cash bar — to celebrate the number one pick and choose the next season’s roster of Wizards Dancers.

Watching and voting for the dancers was delightful, particularly a few days after throwing out my back and not being able to even dream of doing one hundredth of the things they did on stage. The Wizards’ audience engagement is so much better than the actual game of basketball that it’s really not fair to these professionals that they earn a few orders of magnitude less money per year than the likes of Alex Sarr, the 2024 number 2 pick who gets north of $12M to get bullied under his own basket.

And then there was the pick. It was fine, I think, not being particularly invested in the outcome any more. I thought the front office made a very good move by trading for two injured low A-tier players (Trae Young, Anthony Davis) for next to nothing and expected the said office to trade them away once they recovered. Alas, no, they in fact intend to keep Trae Young and in that light the number 1 pick does not seem like the right choice as another suffering Wizards fan noted earlier today.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. There will always be a built-in audience for NBA games in DC, fair weather or no, making the Arena stands green when Celtics are in town and purple-gold when the Lakers are in. The dancers will be consistently good as the city seems to attract an unlimited supply of talent. Heck, the senior dancers — delightfully named Wizdom — go above and beyond and are wonderful to watch. Them I will miss. Those overpaid court clowns, not so much.

Infinite Regress is not a professional outlet yet even this here half-brained bozo knows better than to mix fonts in a single word. They should have shaved off the “ć” to a “c” if their house headline typeface didn’t have the right diacritic, but then why doesn’t it?

And hey, congrats to Denver!

🏀 Scenes from the last Wizards home game. Appropriate ending to an ignominious season.

🏀 This will not last.

🏒 After being 3 goals behind, the Capitals win with an overtime tie-breaker from Sourdiff. The last time we were there he had a hat trick. Glad do witness both of his big days.

🏀 A rare Wizards home W, against the Portland Trail Blazers. Even a horrible organization can give its fans something to be happy about once every few months.

But we’re not renewing.