I was recently laid off from a job in Astoria, but I had previously bought tickets to the April 13 Trailblazer game against theMavericks, so I drove from Astoria into Portland to pick up my son and take him to the game. He flew up from his home in San Francisco to visit family and see the game.

With gas prices so high, driving to and from Portland cost me $41 on top of the $118 I spent for tickets in section 316. The seats were passable but too high to really feel connected to the action. Yes, the large screen at center court shows the game well, but if I wanted to watch on TV, I would have stayed home.

During nearly every break in the action, ridiculously loud music is played, and on nearly every possession, drum beats pound out of the many speakers in the arena, creating the singularly most annoying “sports” environment I’ve ever had the misfortune to inhabit. It’s nearly impossible to watch and concentrate on the game with the infernal noise blasting out. Now, I like loud music; I’ve been a rock musician and enjoy the beat, but if I wanted a concert, I’d go to a concert. A basketball game has its own music, if one were able to hear it: the sound of shoes squeaking, the ball bouncing, players talking, the ball going through the net, and the crowd reacting to plays. Unfortunately, those true sounds, sounds created when real people are interested in a real game, are wiped out by the asinine racket in the Rose Garden. I’m surprised, really, that the players put up with it. What used to be a game has become a cheap and stupid sideshow filled with infantile games played at every timeout, Hulk Hogan screaming at the crowd from the big screen to get loud, a floating car crapping freebies onto the heads of a chosen few, and non-related explosive noise vomited into the crowd almost every minute.

The next time I go to a basketball game at the Rose Garden will be when someone with an ounce of intelligence left decides to tell the hucksters, admen, and general boobs to just shut up and let the crowd watch the game. The game can be a wondrous, exciting, inspiring thing when morons aren’t shouting in one’s face for an hour and a half.

Now I’m out $160, I have a headache, and I don’t remember anything about the basketball game except the unending smash of unnecessary, annoying, and idiotic noise. What a colossal waste of time and money.