Man On Fire

Even in 2012, white men still can't jump.

The Milwaukee Bucks have an impressive, yet diminutive backcourt combo, that is long on quickness, media attention and scoring, but short on defense and career wins.  They went into the season with a pile of unproven power forwards, Mike Dunleavy, Marquis Daniels, and perhaps the richest Haitian Athlete on the planet.  Scott Skiles leads them into battle

They will win the NBA's  Central Division.

Not because of the players listed above, but Larry Sanders is suddenly really good.

He is shooting .542 this season, in the past he shot .433 his rookie year, and .457 his second year in the league.  He has averaged 4 points per game for his career, this season he's averaging double that.  Same for his rebounds. Same for his assists, steals, and blocked shots.  The man is making a run at the All Star team, but should be the Defensive Player of the Year.

Ask Lebron, Dwayne and Chris.

They lost to him last night.  The 16 points, on 8 of 11 shooting, 11 boards  and 4 blocks jump out from the box score. But not like his +26 rating for the game.  So does Bosh's 5 of 14 from the field, and -23 plus/minus.

This isn't the first time this happened and surely will not be the last.  But other than a man who may enjoy Facebook and sexting, who is this man?  

I for one can't wait to find out.

For now, I will let his Wikipedia speak for itself (this is their analysis of his professional career, as of 12/30/2012):

Larry Sanders was chosen by the Milwaukee Bucks as the 15th pick in the 2010 NBA Draft.^[6] On February 21, 2011, he was assigned to theFort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA D-League.^[7] He was recalled on February 28. On November 30, 2012, he recorded his first career triple double with 10 points, 12 rebounds and 10 blocks in a loss to Minnesota.

Due largely to this expert analysis and writing, I will also believe that after games, he terrorizes criminals, and health nuts, in the Greater Lakes Region by slinging  wheels of cheese with deadly implications, as the masked marauder: The Cheese State Champion.

I will also believe that he and he alone can solve the Fiscal Cliff, and find the killers of Biggie and Tupac.

Again just ask, Chris Bosh.

Let's Get Together and Feel Alright

James White likes to cuddle.

In other news, he played about five seconds last night.  I like how everybody has something to contribute to the return of the New York Knicks to greatness.

It's more than three decades overdue.

Here's a pack of Coca Cola Polar Bears, they cuddled last night too:

 

BALL DON'T LIE!

In case you forget, Rasheed reminds you during today's game.

http://www.postingandtoasting.com/2012/12/2/3718462/heres-why-rasheed-wallace-only-played-1-25-today

On Barry Sanders and John Boehner

About twenty years ago, on a long forgotten Sunday, the Detroit Lions played a non-significant football game.  Honestly, I can't remember who won the game.  I remember the first four plays of the game, though.  There was a touch back, a Barry Sanders run up the gut, then another.  Then on Third and Ten, with the announcers mocking Bobby Ross' offense, the Lions pitched the ball to Barry, and how anyone with half a brain would stop running the ball, and throw it to Herman Moore.  Before the third snap, Barry looked over at the Detroit sideline, with an exasperated expression.  But, Scottie Mitchell took the ball, turned left, pitched the ball to Barry Sanders.

And he broke it for 80 yards.

Right now, John Boehner is Barry Sanders.  He's particularly adept at his job.  He can legislate successfully an agenda that does very little for his constituency.  He appears articulate and confident on the 24 hour news circuit.  He is a living breathing embodiment of the the Baby Boomer's ideal family patriarch.  He probably played linebacker, first base, and was also school president while growing up.  He'd look great as the leader of the local Elk's club.  So, the American Voter will disagree with Conrgressman Boehner's policies, but still vote for him, and his party.

During times of low growth and fears on inflation, John's party signed on to a Pledge that would prevent taxes from being raised and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stymied.  The man with the plan, Grover Norquist,  doesn't care the down and distance, nor is he swayed by what the pundits and voters decide.  He has a play called, and he's going to run it.  War on terrorism? No new taxes.  Dangerously increasing gap between lower and upper classes? No new taxes.  Ballooning National Debt? No new taxes.

And if even John Boehner looks for a policy change, the play is no new taxes.

Barry Sanders never won a Super Bowl, or even played in one.  He retired shortly after this game.  Bobby Ross was let go at the end of that season.  It was neither's fault.  One was a great player, one was a great coach, but the way they played the game was woefully out-of-date.

John Boehner's career is in the hands of Grover Norquist's out-of-date game plan.  Will he suffer Barry's fate, and be nothing more than a tremendously talented player, that never wins the big games?

I Bought This Jacket For Just $29.95!

And 112 lives.

The cost of doing business with H&M, Walmart, and Ikea went way the fuck up in the last 24 hours.

Please realize this is more than any one day of American casualties in the last 10 years of the War on Terror.

Where's the outrage? Where's the shift away from buying from Retail Superpowers?

Is it just because the cause just isn't sexy enough for the quasi-communist 21st Century Activist?

Well, that's stupid.  STUPID AS FUCK.  People are literally dying because of the work conditions where they manufacture your discount fashions.

Support your local economies, and vote with your dollars already.

And that H&M jacket ain't that hot anyway!

A Joycean Life in the National Basketball Association: Earl James Smith III

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”

-James Joyce, Ulysses

"Don't get me wrong kobe bryant is great but not when he play me."

-Earl James Smith III, Twitter February, 2010




J.R. Smith of the New York Knicks has yet to not only not realize his potential on the basketball court, he has yet to realize that he should want to pursue said potential on the basketball court.  Leaving many to wonder, how often does he think about it?

Is it every time he pulls up 6 feet behind the three point arc?

Or does he ponder it when he takes an opponent's air ball out of bounds, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk_IkUYP3wU, or does things of that nature on the basketball court? 

Or is it only when he drops incendiary quotes about Kobe Bryant, the Chinese Government's condemnation of Freedom of Speech via restricting their citizenry's use of the Worldwide Web, or just because somebody is listening and willing to record his words?

Earl James Smith III's life has a simple narrative for most people.  He's a stoner.  A tweeter who shut his twitter account down because he was accused of being a gang banger through his use of the letter "k," by the Denver media.  A man who in the early evening of June 9, 2007, while driving drunk, collided with another car and killed his good friend.  A player who once "disrespected the game itself" right in front of the tenured Denver Nuggets Head Coach George Karl.  The brother of the woman who showed such blatant disregard for the tenuous nature of Sino-US relations, that she went Ron Artest on a crowd during a game in Tianjin. Etc.

The "etc." is the key.  The story of Earl James Smith III is one, that if not easy, is at least familiar, and that narrative is what most likely J.R. neglects to break away from when he does these things that harm the blessed dignity of professional basketball.  For the average fan, he is just another in the chain of tattooed thugs that have entered the pantheon of misbegotten talent that will never reach for the highest highs of Larry Legend, Magic Johnson, M.J., as well as many others, and reap the spoils of celebrity endorsements.  That narrative would be the perplexing "it" which J.R. should most likely think about, and the why behind Earl James' squandering of his basketball talents has captivated and frustrated fans since his jump from St. Benedicts.

But, in the words of Gladys Knight (and sampled by the Tang of Wu), "can it all be so simple then?"

No. No, it cannot.  For this viewpoint ignores the life that Earl James Smith II laid out for his son, with a long career as a brick layer himself (hell, the senior EJS owns a brick laying company).  A career that has provided the younger Earl James with motivation to avoid a legacy of brick laying (YES, all puns intended and truthful).  The elder Earl James Smith's profession provided for a proud large family that has stayed involved in EJ3's  life, while encouraging him to stay close to home.

Further, as a basketball player, we see a man so committed and close to his team that his teammate (with both the Nuggets and the Knicks, but, sadly, not with the Zhejiang Golden Bulls) Carmelo Anthony that he named him godfather of his two children, that was such a willing participant in Zhejiang that he gladly played off the bench in 28 of 34 games despite averaging over 34 points per game, and this summer took less than market value to continue under the tutelage of Knicks' coach Mike Woodson in the 2012-13 season.

In short, these people have conspired to give a life that directly conflicts with the stereotypes that surround J.R. Smith.  One full of so much balance and familial harmony, that perhaps when Hoosiers is remade, to include positive views of Black people, Earl James Smith III's life story can form the basis for the shooter going around the Picket Fence (Jimmy Chitwood in the original).

Neither portrait is wholly accurate or wholly false.

But from both viewpoints, we see a man with conflicting personal and professional histories, that may simply not have time to engage with the stereotypes and standards of society, as he skirmishes with the ghosts of his past and his future, through a sometimes jarring lack of solemnity both on and off the court, because frankly he perhaps sees the public eye as one full of cataracts, while he pursues his true self.

It's All Our Turf (All Great Ideas Are Stolen)

Now look what we have here before us. We’ve got the Saracens sitting next
to the Jones Street Boys. We’ve got The Moonrunners, right by The Van Cortlandt
Rangers. Nobody is wasting nobody. That … is a miracle … and miracles, is the way
things ought to be.

You’re standing right now with a hundred delegates, from a hundred gangs
and there’s over a hundred more. That’s 20,000 hardcore members, 40,000 counting
affiliates and 20,000 more not organised but ready to fight. 60,000 soldiers! Now
there ain’t but 20,000 police in the whole town. Can you dig it?

Can you dig it?

Can you dig it?

Now here’s the sum total. One gang could run this city. One gang! Nothing
would move, without us allowing it to happen! We could tax the crime syndicates, the
police, because we got the streets suckers! Can you dig it?

The problem in the past has been the man turning us against one another.
We have been unable to see the truth, because we’ve been fighting for ten square
feet of ground. Our turf, our little piece of turf. That’s crap brothers. The turf is ours by
right, because it’s our turn. All we have to do is keep up the general truce. We take
over one borough at a time. Secure our territory, secure our turf, because it’s all our
turf!

-Cyrus, from the movie script for "The Warriors"




Besides the unbelievable work of Bobby Mannix and Mary Ellen Winston, The Warriors film stands out because of an unbelievable opening ideal contained in Cyrus' last words, (spoiler alert: he gets shot after expressing his singular hope).  Of course, his myopic desire gets lost in a two-hour, costumed fistfight that would make Adam West jealous.  But, I digress...

However, there are no costumed crusaders in this corner of the interwebs,  and this is no time to let our petty differences divide us.  Not when we have the opportunity to truly embrace the future designed by Andres Duaney.  Fellow humans, Nas and Jay-Z have come to the realization that their legacy is embellished through life, not through whatever the fuck Christopher Wallace is doing these days.  My friends, if Shaquille O'Neal can reconcile with Kobe Bean, who are we to stand in violent opposition because that man over there is wearing a Raiders jersey?  

Nobody. For as we learned in Rise of Planet of the Apes, "Ape alone... weak," Cesar snaps a twig,  then takes about two dozen twigs, and states, "Apes together strong." And the twig bundle doesn't fucking break.

My friends we can be apes again!  

We can stand in opposition to the forces that suppress our very humanity with the quiet consent of our consumerism.  Together our strength can topple the Trumps, the Hiltons, the Honey Boo Boos, the Palins-we can strike at the heart of all that strangles our innate humanity.  Indeed, the battlefield can entomb the very spirits of Roger Goodell, Sam Walton, Herman Cain and Christian Laettner.     

Now, let's watch the sunset of their divisive dogma, through the eyes of the visionary Ari Katz:


Wouldn't you try to help me if you thought you could?Can you see the sunset from the southside very good?Yeah real good.(end Outsiders movie sample)
We are all alone tonight.Nothing is easier.We are alone, just by ourselves.We are not normal.And screwed up and mixed up.All of us don't know where to begin doing for... doing for ourselves.Can you see the sunset from the southside?You can see it from the eastside too.I still don't know a single purpose for the breath I draw.Not alone... you're not alone, but with me you are.All screwed up and mixed up.All of us don't know where to begin doing for... doing for ourselves.Can you see the sunset from the southside?You can see it from the eastside too.Can you see the sunset from the southside?You can see it from the eastside too.We are alone.All of us don't know where to begin... We are alone.All of us don't know where to begin... We are alone (alone).All of us don't know (just don't know)where to begin (begin) doing for ourselves.We are alone (alone).All of us don't know (just don't know)
where to begin (begin) doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for ourselves.Doing for...Doing for ourselves
-"Ostrichsized," Lifetime