Commze

Once of Frank’s life long obsession oriented dreams finally occurred, after an almost eternity of waiting, after all he was a whole nine years old, last year when his uncle took him to a live Philadelphia 76ers basketball game. It was really the greatest evening of Frank’s young life, up to that point. He had been a 76ers fan for as long as he could remember. His mother claims that it was not always his choice because his grandfather was always coming over and propping him up as a baby in front of the television and watching the games with him. However, she didn’t complain too loudly because every time Frank was upset and crying she could prop him up in front of a game and he would be okay. Naturally, his parents collected tapes of 76ers games and had them on hand.

Inadvertently this also contributed to Frank’s obsession. He started memorizing game details, team and player statistics before he was even aware of it. There was simply no way for Frank to grow up and not love basketball and be a loyal lifelong 76er fan. Well, his father was afraid it would all backfire one day and he would actually despise basketball, but his fears were unfounded.

On the evening Frank and his uncle went to the game his uncle thought about surprising him and just showing up there but his mother wouldn’t let him. She explained that Frank would be extremely upset to learn he was going to a game and didn’t have on his Willie Green jersey. So, to make the evening complete, his uncle told him what they would be doing and with both of them in jerseys they enjoyed a cheese steak sandwich before heading to the Wachovia Center. They passed a few of the hotels in Philadelphia and Frank wondered if any of them contained fans for the other team. It was truly a magical evening, one that Frank would never forget.

Today, Dallas is a wonderful place to be. The locals as well as the visitors can find something to love here, any time of day or night. It’s one of the largest cities in the country, and boasts a multicultural population, making for ongoing cultural dialogues that are always heady and always in process. There are plenty of attractions for visitors of all ages, and there is also a splendid alternative scene, making for daylight enjoyments and a multitude of pleasures after dark. Visiting is very easy, as hotels can be quite lovely, and enormously accommodating.

One of the more interesting intersections here is certainly culture, and one of them is history. Most people remember the Kennedy assassination, or at least are aware that it happened in Dallas. It’s one of those black holes in history, where an event that happens in a place is so stunning, and affects so many lives, that it starts to behave as if it were its own place in time. We always go back to the event when we hear about it, and this creates a strange sense of vertigo, but it always means that we are participants in history. We are able to continue to feel the force long after the event has passed, and this gives our own present an uncanny power.

It becomes even more complex and fascinating when the iconic moment reveals itself as mutable. We remember the Zapruder film, although it’s common knowledge that there are many films of the terrible moment. When new video is released, we may not exactly re-remember the event, but a perspective is added to the weight that we carry in our minds. This suggests that the past has a kind of elasticity, and that the present is something we can participate in, and Dallas today, in its best moments, demonstrates community participation in a way the Kennedy would have liked to imagine.

My friends and I were standing in line to get Event Tickets for a haunted house attraction, when our highschool teacher came walking past us laughing so hard he could hardly walk. We stopped him and asked him if the Haunted House wasn’t that scary, and all he could do at the moment was shake his head ‘no’, then he finally stopped laughing and told us that there was a student he knew going through the new Maze addition of the Haunted House and all the student could do is scream like a young female going through a horrible fraternity hazing. Then he started laughing again and stumbled away from us.

We got our tickets and went inside hoping that who ever the student was, was still inside. While we kept our eyes open a guy wearing a white sheet had been keeping it pretty lively and scaring not only me, cause he snuck up on me, but many other people as well. The ghost then balled himself up on the floor, like in a fetal position and began to moan and horrendous sound. My other friends were laughing, but I thought this guy wasn’t acting. He wasn’t, I saw a man running away from the ghost fast and heard someone yell to stop him, he had just slugged the ghost in the stomach.
I figured being punched in the stomach or any other part of the body would be par for the course sneaking up on someone and screaming in their ear. When he did that to me, I almost turned around and punched him, luckily, I did not. I would’ve felt really bad. When my friends found out the real reason the ghost was on the ground, they really began to laugh hard. Finally, two men with headsets came by and picked up the ghost and helped carry him out of the event. I didn’t know why my friends found that even more funny that someone got hurt. I will have to revisit that thought later.

We made it to the Maze and heard many screams coming from deep inside. It was dark, so we had to grope our way around in the dark, I’m a little claustrophobic, so being dark, groping and in a small enclosed area really got my nerves going. We’d bump into disoriented people who were desperate to find the exit. Spookers hiding around every corner scared me each time even though I knew they would. I was familiar with how Maze’s work, so my strategy was to follow the right-side walls, but that wasn’t working at all. I heard one of my friends say ‘Over hear’, so I groped in that general direction and that’s when…I heard that student scream like a young girl during a frat hazing. I was laughing so hard, I almost peed my pants.