Thunder!

First Oklahoma City Thunder game tonight, as Dad and I wrap up the holiday bachelor weekend -- state football seminfinals Friday and Saturday night, plenty o' college and pro griddin' on the tube, and now a trip to the Ford Center. Random observations:

1) The Thunder do a pretty good show in the downtime, off-the-floor type stuff. Lots of little contests, a T-shirt "Gatling gun" kind of device that I would love to wheel into the sanctuary some Sunday, stuff like that. Fun atmosphere.

2) It was announced that we were at "family night." Could be that's why we had so many contests with little kids, but I expect that happens all the time. Maybe the "family night" part was that the Thunder Girls did their main dance routine in long pants instead of the hot-pants or hot-pants-and-chaps outfits they had on the rest of the time.

3) The visiting Houston Rockets won, 100-91. The key to winning a game in which your team plays like slop is to play another team that's playing even sloppier. Oh, and have them not rebound worth two cents, especially on the offensive end. Whether or not this was the Rockets' game plan, it's the game they wound up with, pulling ahead in the second half and staying there.

4) The Rockets' road uniforms are kind of ugly. Their warm-ups, an interesting combination of a small red stripe on a dried-snot color jacket and pants, were ugly and not at all kind about it.

5) Most of the game features more modern urban-styled & hip-hop music, plus a lot of handclappy stuff. But when the time came to rile the crowd into its most supportive frenzy, out trotted the Four Warhorses of the Classic Rockalypse: AC/DC's "Thunderstruck," Metallica's "Enter Sandman," Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" and the hoariest old stallion of them all, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger." Maybe it's because of where we live?

6) Ford Center's a great place to watch a basketball game -- even from the high seats. You get a pretty much unobstructed view of the court and you can catch anything you miss on the big screen.

7) The Thunder helped serve a meal last week at the Oklahoma City Rescue Mission. Kudos squared to team members for pitching in a little bit in their community.