It's been almost a full three weeks since I de-activated my Facebook account. The fallout has been interesting. Family members and those closest to me quickly noticed my absence. What I didn't anticipate was where I'm falling with my Facebook friends.
We all have these people in our friend lists. To me, they're the people that fuel Facebook. I know what's going on with my family members and my closest friends. I no longer have a method to keep tabs on people that I know and like, but aren't that close with. And really, that's what Facebook is about. Last week I ran into someone I worked with over the last year. Happy to see him, I kind of slapped him on the back when I sat down with him and asked how things were going with him.
"Good, good," he said to me. "I thought about you the other day and I went to send you a message on Facebook..."
The word said it all. The way he said it and kind of left it hanging out there, like the jig was up. You've deleted me and I'm not going to pretend you didn't. Let's talk about this. Let's get awkward.
I admire him for it, really. Good on him for having the stones to step up and say it, you know?
"Oh man! I deleted my account," I told him.
"You deleted it!" he said back excitedly, killing any tension or awkwardness that may have been brewing. "Good for you."
I've gotten the good-for-you a fair bit in the last few weeks. I remember giving the good-for-you to people who quit FB while I was using it. It's crazy to me the hold that a site can get on you. Think back 10 years ago when the Internet was in its infancy and try to tell yourself that there will be sites that you can check 24/7 that are continuously updated to see what your friends are doing. What would your 1999 self say to the time-traveling you of now?
"Save yourself! Y2K will kill us all!"
Besides that.
"You're a motherf***ing time-traveler, man!"
Of course. But besides that?
I wouldn't be able to wrap my mind around it. I liked my basketball and news sites, I loved my e-mail and that was it. Real-time was spent, for the most part, doing real things.
Next post, the introduction of a solution for my favourite movie scenario.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday work and annoying tech junkies
Work for Wednesday consisted of a piece from the Oil Kings training camp.
You know what chaps my ass? Technology-obsessed people. It was bad enough a few years ago when people were on rapid-fire text mode everywhere you went. You'd be out at a club and a look around the room would show you dozens of people texting away to people who weren't there with them.
Facebook and Twitter have made things worse. Now it's not even communicating directly with people. It's about getting live shots of Mr. Random or Some Creeper lurking around you and your friends at the club, and getting them on Facebook or Twitter ASAP. Then it's back to rapid-fire text mode, as you and your friends trade OMG's and LOL's over the situation. What's happened to going out and you know, interacting with people? Paying attention to what's happening in front of you, that sort of stuff.
I'd love to see how many times the following sentence has been written:
I hate to imagine what it would be like to be Chad Ochocinco's teammate right now.
The Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver recently said that he planned on tweeting from the endzone after one of his touchdowns. The NFL stepped in and kiboshed the idea. Ochocinco announced on his UStream feed that he's found an elaborate way around the new no-tweeting rule. Via Mashable:
Ochocinco says he’ll soon launch a contest, in which he’ll select one of his followers each week, fly them to the Bengals game, and work out hand signals so he can have them update his Twitter (
) account while he’s on the field. The result will be Ochocinco tweets during the game that don’t technically violate the NFL’s policy of no cell phones during competition.
In any job, you need your co-workers' attention and assistance along the way. If the guy next to you wasn't responding to your emails all morning, and you looked over to see he's been blessing the world with his 140 characters of wisdom every 10 minutes sine 9 a.m., you'd be annoyed. Imagine huddling up at the line of scrimmage, watching your quarterback call the play and wondering if your wide receiver was listening or thinking about which hand signals he was going to throw to someone in the crowd if he gets the ball.
Some people might say this is a groundbreaking way for an athlete to interact with their fans. But at some point: with a club full of people in front of you, or with tens of thousands of people with their their eyes fixed on your team's next play, there should be enough stimulus in front of you to keep you focused on what's in front of you. Is this how ADD we've become? This is how important our inner dialogues have become to us, that we have to berate strangers with them? For the benefits that social media bring, the negatives seem to pound me overtop of the head like I'm a giant wackamole of reason in a sea of Twitter insanity.
You know what chaps my ass? Technology-obsessed people. It was bad enough a few years ago when people were on rapid-fire text mode everywhere you went. You'd be out at a club and a look around the room would show you dozens of people texting away to people who weren't there with them.
Facebook and Twitter have made things worse. Now it's not even communicating directly with people. It's about getting live shots of Mr. Random or Some Creeper lurking around you and your friends at the club, and getting them on Facebook or Twitter ASAP. Then it's back to rapid-fire text mode, as you and your friends trade OMG's and LOL's over the situation. What's happened to going out and you know, interacting with people? Paying attention to what's happening in front of you, that sort of stuff.
I'd love to see how many times the following sentence has been written:
I hate to imagine what it would be like to be Chad Ochocinco's teammate right now.
The Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver recently said that he planned on tweeting from the endzone after one of his touchdowns. The NFL stepped in and kiboshed the idea. Ochocinco announced on his UStream feed that he's found an elaborate way around the new no-tweeting rule. Via Mashable:
Ochocinco says he’ll soon launch a contest, in which he’ll select one of his followers each week, fly them to the Bengals game, and work out hand signals so he can have them update his Twitter (
) account while he’s on the field. The result will be Ochocinco tweets during the game that don’t technically violate the NFL’s policy of no cell phones during competition. In any job, you need your co-workers' attention and assistance along the way. If the guy next to you wasn't responding to your emails all morning, and you looked over to see he's been blessing the world with his 140 characters of wisdom every 10 minutes sine 9 a.m., you'd be annoyed. Imagine huddling up at the line of scrimmage, watching your quarterback call the play and wondering if your wide receiver was listening or thinking about which hand signals he was going to throw to someone in the crowd if he gets the ball.
Some people might say this is a groundbreaking way for an athlete to interact with their fans. But at some point: with a club full of people in front of you, or with tens of thousands of people with their their eyes fixed on your team's next play, there should be enough stimulus in front of you to keep you focused on what's in front of you. Is this how ADD we've become? This is how important our inner dialogues have become to us, that we have to berate strangers with them? For the benefits that social media bring, the negatives seem to pound me overtop of the head like I'm a giant wackamole of reason in a sea of Twitter insanity.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Which Sopranos character are you? Tim Donaghy edition
Is anyone else starting to feel bad for Tim Donaghy yet?
The disgraced former NBA ref was out of prison but is now back behind bars, after missing a day of work. The absence was a violation of his parole, which landed him back in the pen. The reason for the absence? He wasn't at the track, wasn't checking odds on the upcoming NBA season. Donaghy was getting his busted up knee examined. From ESPN:
"He has been working and obeying all the rules, but he has a very, very bad knee problem that needs surgery," Lauro said. "He was beaten up in jail by a guy that claimed he was angry at Tim for cooperating. The guy beat him up pretty bad with a pipe, busted up his knee. He needs surgery.
"So he wanted to go to a health club to work out with a trainer or physical therapist. The health club is right near the halfway house. And he told the folks at the halfway house what he was doing, that he was going to this place. He thought he had permission. He gave them advance warning. And one of the employees at the halfway house saw him at the health club and said 'You don't have permission.' The halfway house decided that he was in violation of the rules, so they picked him up."
Donaghy reminds me of one of those saps that the mob ran over in The Sopranos. Remember when Tony and his crew took over the sporting goods store and ran the owner into bankruptcy? David Scantino. That's Tim Donaghy. A guy with a problem who was exploited by the mob and is left picking up the pieces of his life (if he's lucky to get away with that much) that the vultures didn't care enough to take or destroy.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Allen Iverson's crossroad
Some lacrosse coverage for Monday's Journal leads into what's been on my mind today. The wheels started turning shortly before Mike Beasley gave himself the world's worst tattoo, then subsequently checked himself into rehab. Meaning that the following has nothing to do with him.
Someone commented over at SLAMonline this morning that it was sad that AI is looking more and more like he'll be a Charlotte Bobcat come opening night. At this point, he's lucky to be playing in the league at all.
Having worked in media for the last few years, I've noticed that it's easy for people in the spotlight to tend to think that they're bigger or more important than they are. From a media standpoint, you can get a bit of swagger to your step if you think about the potential audience that you have. Webhits, circulation, Nielsen ratings, they all can turn into a confidence booster. And to an extent, I suppose they should. There's nothing wrong with feeling good about your job and its importance.
For an athlete, the boosters turn into towering stilts. I might be writing at a game with 30,000 people watching, but I'm not the reason those people are there. No one in the stands wears my jersey or recites my stats to me after the game when they're asking for my autograph. The only thing more absent from my life than the endorsements and media attention that a pro athlete receives is the groupie love.
From his time at Georgetown and straight through to the present in his pro career, Allen Iverson has been lauded for being the antithesis of every other player that came before him. This is where things have gotten hazy for him. Iverson the person has received infinite praise for not bending to the NBA's fan-friendly image. The cornrows (1996–2009), the ink that spread across his body year-by-year, the sweats and throwbacks in the pre-game stayed constant for Iverson. He made the world warm up to him, rather than clean himself up so the league could market him better.
On the court, he did the same thing. Intro'd to the league as a point guard, Ivy shot first, looked for teammates later. He's under six-feet-tall, but he knew from Day 1 that no one could check him. I have no doubt that if he wanted to, that if he chose to listen to his coaches, that he could have been an Isiah Thomas, scoring around 20 a game and dishing anywhere from 10–15 assists a night.
Instead, he put his head down and went to the hole. Larry Hughes, Tim Thomas, Jerry Stackhouse, Andre Iguodala and a slew of other talented players wilted around him in Philly. The only success (read: winning) Ivy found in his career came in 2000, when, surrounded by a pack of defensive-minded scrubs and Dikembe Mutombo, the Sixers went to the Finals and lost to Shaq, Kobe and Lakers. Iverson won the regular-season MVP, Shaq won the Finals MVP. That in itself tells the story of AI's career.
The problem for Iverson now, at 34, is that the teams that he wants to play on don't want him to shoot the ball 20 times a night. He ran into this in his Detroit stay. Refusing to come off of the bench and play a role down the stretch of the season and subsequently sitting out the rest of the year, Ivy has potentially laid the foundation for how his career will transpire. Labeled as poison to any contender, the offers have come in this summer from Memphis, Sacramento, Miami and Charlotte. Not exactly the cream of the NBA's crop, is it?
No one can perform at the same level athletically for their entire career, but it seems that Iverson has his wires crossed. After years of being praised for going against the mainstream both on and off the court in his pro career, Iverson can't seem to wrap his head around the concept of playing a role. It's as if by changing his game up, he's selling himself out. Coming off the bench is akin to burning the throwbacks, lasering over the tatts. He shed the cornrows at All-Star this past year, but that appears to be the only change that AI is open to.
Some people say that it'd be tragic if he went out this way, that it'd be a forced retirement. Just like it has been the last 13-plus years, the only person forcing anything in this situation is Iverson.
Someone commented over at SLAMonline this morning that it was sad that AI is looking more and more like he'll be a Charlotte Bobcat come opening night. At this point, he's lucky to be playing in the league at all.
Having worked in media for the last few years, I've noticed that it's easy for people in the spotlight to tend to think that they're bigger or more important than they are. From a media standpoint, you can get a bit of swagger to your step if you think about the potential audience that you have. Webhits, circulation, Nielsen ratings, they all can turn into a confidence booster. And to an extent, I suppose they should. There's nothing wrong with feeling good about your job and its importance.
For an athlete, the boosters turn into towering stilts. I might be writing at a game with 30,000 people watching, but I'm not the reason those people are there. No one in the stands wears my jersey or recites my stats to me after the game when they're asking for my autograph. The only thing more absent from my life than the endorsements and media attention that a pro athlete receives is the groupie love.
From his time at Georgetown and straight through to the present in his pro career, Allen Iverson has been lauded for being the antithesis of every other player that came before him. This is where things have gotten hazy for him. Iverson the person has received infinite praise for not bending to the NBA's fan-friendly image. The cornrows (1996–2009), the ink that spread across his body year-by-year, the sweats and throwbacks in the pre-game stayed constant for Iverson. He made the world warm up to him, rather than clean himself up so the league could market him better.
On the court, he did the same thing. Intro'd to the league as a point guard, Ivy shot first, looked for teammates later. He's under six-feet-tall, but he knew from Day 1 that no one could check him. I have no doubt that if he wanted to, that if he chose to listen to his coaches, that he could have been an Isiah Thomas, scoring around 20 a game and dishing anywhere from 10–15 assists a night.
Instead, he put his head down and went to the hole. Larry Hughes, Tim Thomas, Jerry Stackhouse, Andre Iguodala and a slew of other talented players wilted around him in Philly. The only success (read: winning) Ivy found in his career came in 2000, when, surrounded by a pack of defensive-minded scrubs and Dikembe Mutombo, the Sixers went to the Finals and lost to Shaq, Kobe and Lakers. Iverson won the regular-season MVP, Shaq won the Finals MVP. That in itself tells the story of AI's career.
The problem for Iverson now, at 34, is that the teams that he wants to play on don't want him to shoot the ball 20 times a night. He ran into this in his Detroit stay. Refusing to come off of the bench and play a role down the stretch of the season and subsequently sitting out the rest of the year, Ivy has potentially laid the foundation for how his career will transpire. Labeled as poison to any contender, the offers have come in this summer from Memphis, Sacramento, Miami and Charlotte. Not exactly the cream of the NBA's crop, is it?
No one can perform at the same level athletically for their entire career, but it seems that Iverson has his wires crossed. After years of being praised for going against the mainstream both on and off the court in his pro career, Iverson can't seem to wrap his head around the concept of playing a role. It's as if by changing his game up, he's selling himself out. Coming off the bench is akin to burning the throwbacks, lasering over the tatts. He shed the cornrows at All-Star this past year, but that appears to be the only change that AI is open to.
Some people say that it'd be tragic if he went out this way, that it'd be a forced retirement. Just like it has been the last 13-plus years, the only person forcing anything in this situation is Iverson.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
What I do, and some love for J-Live
A busy weekend of work just wrapped up. Briefly, here's what I've been up to:
- The Canadian Derby, recapping the race and a profile on HOF jockey Julie Krone.
- Lacrosse, Junior A and B tournaments through the weekend.
- Teams owned by the Oilers (Oil Kings and Capitals).
As I write this, I'm downloading the last few tracks of The Early Works of J-Live. I often feel like the president of the guy's fanclub, or like a door-to-door theology salseperson when I talk about J-Live. Truth is, he's hands down my favourite musician, so you get a lot of bias from me on him.
The older I get/the longer I've listened to him/as mainstream hip-hop continues its transition from irrelevant to ridiculously trife, my respect for J and what he stands for continues to swell. Intelligent, poetic, college-educated, grounded and self-deprecating while still fully aware of his skills on the mic, he is in my mind the single most underrated musician I've ever encountered. The fact that he embraces his stance in the mainstream world—he admits on his most recent album that he's sold approximately 100,000 cd's in his career; he has 3,052 followers on Twitter (Souljaboy, comparatively, has 1.3 million) only raises his stature in my eyes.
Since leaving his job as a junior-high school teacher in NY in 2002 to pursue his music full-time, he's made a modest living crafting songs that have you piecing together what he's getting at years after your first listen to it. Club anthems they're not. This is music that matters.
I've digressed, as I often do when I talk about J-Live. You should download his stuff, he's a genius. After I interviewed him for SLAM in 2006, I was happy to tell him I checked him off of my People I Have To Interview Before I Die list. He was in the second spot, right behind Michael Jordan.
- The Canadian Derby, recapping the race and a profile on HOF jockey Julie Krone.
- Lacrosse, Junior A and B tournaments through the weekend.
- Teams owned by the Oilers (Oil Kings and Capitals).
As I write this, I'm downloading the last few tracks of The Early Works of J-Live. I often feel like the president of the guy's fanclub, or like a door-to-door theology salseperson when I talk about J-Live. Truth is, he's hands down my favourite musician, so you get a lot of bias from me on him.
The older I get/the longer I've listened to him/as mainstream hip-hop continues its transition from irrelevant to ridiculously trife, my respect for J and what he stands for continues to swell. Intelligent, poetic, college-educated, grounded and self-deprecating while still fully aware of his skills on the mic, he is in my mind the single most underrated musician I've ever encountered. The fact that he embraces his stance in the mainstream world—he admits on his most recent album that he's sold approximately 100,000 cd's in his career; he has 3,052 followers on Twitter (Souljaboy, comparatively, has 1.3 million) only raises his stature in my eyes.
Since leaving his job as a junior-high school teacher in NY in 2002 to pursue his music full-time, he's made a modest living crafting songs that have you piecing together what he's getting at years after your first listen to it. Club anthems they're not. This is music that matters.
I've digressed, as I often do when I talk about J-Live. You should download his stuff, he's a genius. After I interviewed him for SLAM in 2006, I was happy to tell him I checked him off of my People I Have To Interview Before I Die list. He was in the second spot, right behind Michael Jordan.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Yes, I'm sure
This isn't the first time I've left Facebook. A few years ago I looked at my friend count and it hit me: I don't have 188 friends. The account was gone shortly after.
The absurdity of my friend count (251) wasn't a factor in my decision this time around until after I had hit the deactivate button—which is hidden waaaaaay at the bottom of your privacy settings, if I remember correctly.
Two or three years after my first quit, the people at Facebook have ramped up their methods of talking you off of their virtual ledge.
Tactic A is what I'm calling the "Think about what you're giving up" method.
A guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not in a pervy flasher kind of way) hedges out onto the ledge with you, trying not to look down. He looks a lot like Mark Zuckerberg, in my mind.
"Hey pal, everything OK?" he asks me.
"Yeah, don't worry about me," I tell him.
"I don't know if it is," he says quickly. "You probably clicked on the wrong button, because you're about to deactivate your Facebook account."
"Yeah," I tell him. "I know what I clicked on."
"Well, why would you want to do that?" he asks. "Can you imagine what your life will be like without Facebook?"
"I imagine I'll sleep better," I say. "Less annoyances overall."
The trenchcoated saviour's jaw juts out a little and he looks away from me. He sees my determination.
"What about your—his voice changes to a blank, robotic one: 251—friends? Have you thought about them at all? Chris will miss you. Margaret will miss you. Greg will miss you. Melissa will miss you. Leah will miss you."
Unfazed, I loosen my grip on the ledge. I'm ready to take the plunge.
"Well wait a minute," he says to me. Tactic B: "Tell me why you're deactivating."
A last-ditch roadblock. I throw the first thing I can think of at him and he has an answer for it. He has an answer for everything.
With my focus on deactivation only growing, the man is getting worried.
"Well tell me in your own words what you're feeling. How do you feel?"
"I'm tired of it," I say to him. "Too much frivolous, stupid, annoying garbage to sift through every day, just so I can see how one of the handful of people I actually care about on this thing are doing. And in most instances, I already know how those people are doing because you know, I'm actually friends with them. We call each other, we e-mail. How has it gotten to the point that e-mailing is the more personal option?"
"Facebook has emai----"
"I know. I don't care. It was a rhetorical question."
I close my eyes and take the e-plunge. There's no water to hit, no light to go towards (though Evan Williams might tell you otherwise). There's nothing. Except...wait...dammit.
Tactic C: Purgatory, in the form of needlessly long and almost undecipherable words.
Now, finally, nothing. White room. Greener pastures. Enough.
You're probably thinking that it's a matter of time before I'm back. I won't entirely disagree with you. I think I would have stayed away the last time had my sister not had her first child shortly after I quit. She's pregnant again (same father, she's classy—and married—like that) and due in September. If I do come back though, I'll have learned an important lesson. An anonymous name, unsearchable and no more than 20 or 25 friends, who were the reason I was excited about Facebook when I first signed up for it in 2005.
The absurdity of my friend count (251) wasn't a factor in my decision this time around until after I had hit the deactivate button—which is hidden waaaaaay at the bottom of your privacy settings, if I remember correctly.
Two or three years after my first quit, the people at Facebook have ramped up their methods of talking you off of their virtual ledge.
Tactic A is what I'm calling the "Think about what you're giving up" method.
A guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not in a pervy flasher kind of way) hedges out onto the ledge with you, trying not to look down. He looks a lot like Mark Zuckerberg, in my mind.
"Hey pal, everything OK?" he asks me.
"Yeah, don't worry about me," I tell him.
"I don't know if it is," he says quickly. "You probably clicked on the wrong button, because you're about to deactivate your Facebook account."
"Yeah," I tell him. "I know what I clicked on."
"Well, why would you want to do that?" he asks. "Can you imagine what your life will be like without Facebook?"
"I imagine I'll sleep better," I say. "Less annoyances overall."
The trenchcoated saviour's jaw juts out a little and he looks away from me. He sees my determination.
"What about your—his voice changes to a blank, robotic one: 251—friends? Have you thought about them at all? Chris will miss you. Margaret will miss you. Greg will miss you. Melissa will miss you. Leah will miss you."
Unfazed, I loosen my grip on the ledge. I'm ready to take the plunge.
"Well wait a minute," he says to me. Tactic B: "Tell me why you're deactivating."
A last-ditch roadblock. I throw the first thing I can think of at him and he has an answer for it. He has an answer for everything.
With my focus on deactivation only growing, the man is getting worried.
"Well tell me in your own words what you're feeling. How do you feel?"
"I'm tired of it," I say to him. "Too much frivolous, stupid, annoying garbage to sift through every day, just so I can see how one of the handful of people I actually care about on this thing are doing. And in most instances, I already know how those people are doing because you know, I'm actually friends with them. We call each other, we e-mail. How has it gotten to the point that e-mailing is the more personal option?"
"Facebook has emai----"
"I know. I don't care. It was a rhetorical question."
I close my eyes and take the e-plunge. There's no water to hit, no light to go towards (though Evan Williams might tell you otherwise). There's nothing. Except...wait...dammit.
Tactic C: Purgatory, in the form of needlessly long and almost undecipherable words.Now, finally, nothing. White room. Greener pastures. Enough.
You're probably thinking that it's a matter of time before I'm back. I won't entirely disagree with you. I think I would have stayed away the last time had my sister not had her first child shortly after I quit. She's pregnant again (same father, she's classy—and married—like that) and due in September. If I do come back though, I'll have learned an important lesson. An anonymous name, unsearchable and no more than 20 or 25 friends, who were the reason I was excited about Facebook when I first signed up for it in 2005.
Friday, May 8, 2009
I want to punch you in the face
Get to know me and you'll know that I hold serious and hostile grudges against people and inanimate objects alike. After watching the Bowflex ad on TV for the 785th time, I need to share my dislike of this guy:
Sure, I'm sorry that he was in a terrible car accident and broke "just about everything there is to break." But watch this guy talk about how he gave his fat clothes to his fat friends, or how he loves his body and that his wife gives him "that wink" every now and then. Watch it 785 times. Now try to like him.
Welcome to my world.
Sure, I'm sorry that he was in a terrible car accident and broke "just about everything there is to break." But watch this guy talk about how he gave his fat clothes to his fat friends, or how he loves his body and that his wife gives him "that wink" every now and then. Watch it 785 times. Now try to like him.
Welcome to my world.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
great debuts
A lot of thought went into what my debut post should be about.
In hindsight, the moment I started thinking about it was likely my downfall.
Great debuts are rarely well-thought out; they just happen.
Magic Johnson didn't think, "I'm going to average 18, seven and seven this year," at the start of his rookie season, he just did it. The Wu-Tang Clan didn't plan on making a genre-shaping album with 36 Chambers. They put the pen to paper, the rhymes to the beats...or just let ODB go nuts a little and followed his lead and the rest took care of itself. Do you think Orson Welles over-thought every minute detail of Citizen Kane? OK, bad example.
As much as I like to talk basketball, sneakers and sports in general, that's not what this blog is about. Every once in a while, I have a thought or two that doesn't involve any of that stuff. Check my Twitter feed. Sometimes I wonder things:
"If I eat a multitude of oatmeal cookies, does my body accept that as a bowl of oatmeal?"*
Sometimes I notice things:
"just heard a guy with a jheri curl mullet say Edmonton was too small town for him. A guy. With a mullet. Ripping E-town. Seriously."
I need a place to expand on these and other thoughts. A caveat: from time to time I may bring basketball into the conversation, with parable-like purpose. ie, five-foot-five Earl Boykins scoring 32 points in a NBA game twice. Translation: anything is possible. Or, the fact that Michael Jordan scored 16 points on five-of-16 shooting from the field in his NBA debut on Oct. 26, 1984. Proof that a modest debut isn't the worst thing in the world either.
*A Starbucks employee warned me that if I ate four oatmeal cookies I would just get constipated. I drew the line at two.
In hindsight, the moment I started thinking about it was likely my downfall.
Great debuts are rarely well-thought out; they just happen.
Magic Johnson didn't think, "I'm going to average 18, seven and seven this year," at the start of his rookie season, he just did it. The Wu-Tang Clan didn't plan on making a genre-shaping album with 36 Chambers. They put the pen to paper, the rhymes to the beats...or just let ODB go nuts a little and followed his lead and the rest took care of itself. Do you think Orson Welles over-thought every minute detail of Citizen Kane? OK, bad example.
As much as I like to talk basketball, sneakers and sports in general, that's not what this blog is about. Every once in a while, I have a thought or two that doesn't involve any of that stuff. Check my Twitter feed. Sometimes I wonder things:
"If I eat a multitude of oatmeal cookies, does my body accept that as a bowl of oatmeal?"*
Sometimes I notice things:
"just heard a guy with a jheri curl mullet say Edmonton was too small town for him. A guy. With a mullet. Ripping E-town. Seriously."
I need a place to expand on these and other thoughts. A caveat: from time to time I may bring basketball into the conversation, with parable-like purpose. ie, five-foot-five Earl Boykins scoring 32 points in a NBA game twice. Translation: anything is possible. Or, the fact that Michael Jordan scored 16 points on five-of-16 shooting from the field in his NBA debut on Oct. 26, 1984. Proof that a modest debut isn't the worst thing in the world either.
*A Starbucks employee warned me that if I ate four oatmeal cookies I would just get constipated. I drew the line at two.
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