Dear MSG And Time Warner Cable: Eat A Bag Of Salted Dicks

Linsanity reached a fever pitch last night, and judging from Twitter, all of North America saw it happen. Not me. I can't watch the most exciting thing to happen to the NBA in years, and I can't watch any Knicks games because I live in New York.

Maybe the dickwaving contest between MSG and Time Warner Cable seems merely theoretical to you: something that's only happening in a far-off land. Nope. Shit is real. Mine is one of more than a million households where the MSG Network, home to the Knicks, Rangers, Devils, Islanders, and Sabres, is completely and totally blacked out. Unless a game is on national TV, the only way to see this Jeremy Lin kid I hear everyone talking about is to find a shitty illegal stream online, or go to a bar and pray that bar doesn't also have Time Warner.

It is fucking infuriating. You know how I found out Lin hit a game-winning three last night? I saw it on Deadspin. That the Rangers, the best team in hockey, kicked the crap out of the 2nd place Bruins might as well be a rumor I saw in a newspaper. Why couldn't this have happened in 2003? Why couldn't I be deprived of Howard Eisley and Bobby Holik instead? I don't know enough profanities to properly express how awful it is to not be able to watch my damn teams play their damn games. It's like living in a third world country, or like being a Chargers fan.

We can't live without sports. You see this as a truism and a sign of loyalty. They see this as dollar signs. You already pay nearly $5 a month —four times as much as any other national network—because ESPN knows they can charge whatever and your cable provider will happily pass the cost along. What are you going to do, not get ESPN? Psh. The reason MSG is off the air is because they weren't happy with the $4.65 per month they were getting from Time Warner for each subscriber. They want more than more than seven dollars a month for their channel, and they're probably going to get close to that number. And that's the worst part of all this: soon MSG and Time Warner will end this stupid feud and I'll get fucked in the ass anyway. Because I'm a consumer, and consumers always get fucked in the ass. Like every negotiation, the sides will eventually meet in the middle and happily jack up my cable bill, and I'll have nothing but a couple of months of cold, miserable, sports-free life to show for it. Christ. It's like, if you're going to shit on me anyway, just get the shitting-on over with as quickly as possible. I want my Linsanity, assholes.