In honor of Andrea Grover’s upcoming screening of Astrodome movies at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, I’ve composed a brief ode to the Eighth Wonder’s scoreboard.
The Astrodome scoreboard was awesome. The end.
Really, what more can I say? No matter how late a game went, never mind that it was a school night, forget that the vendors had quit selling beer, I would always beg my dad to let us stay till the end, just so we could see that dancing, shooting cowboy and that steam-blowing bull on the world’s biggest Lite-Brite. Of course that’s assuming the Astros didn’t blow the lead and Glenn Davis didn’t strike out swinging in the bottom of the ninth. Then there would only be darkness, no bouncing bullets, no fake fireworks, nothing. Just like there is now. Nothing.
The end began when Bud Adams threatened to move the Oilers unless he got more seats, so more seats and less multicolored light bulbs he got, and then the a-hole moved the team anyway. And now the entire building isn’t fit to hold real drunken cowboys, much less awesomely gigantic, animated dancing ones.
Dallas can have its mondo HDTV. I just want my giant Lite-Brite back.
