Return of the gangsta(?)

Time for one of my semi-unintelligible posts (you know, as much as I enjoy writing multi-tiered freak-outs, I'm not above cutting them out altogether if they're only of us to me). I was planning to write something about music and basketball, with some totally oblique references to watching the 2000 post-season on mute with Ornette Coleman on, and then get in my personal gripe about how during games visitors get the cheesy orgran (not a double entendre!), while today's top hip-hop and r&b hits are reserved for the home team's possessions. Is defense hokey? Does the new 50 joint really inspire anyone to break down the defender? Doesn't that strategy work against you if the Spurs are in town?

Then Inside Hoops graced me with the best news I've heard all year.

Guess Who Might Be Bizzack

Stern is open to the possibility of TW returning. The Pacers appear to be confident enough that they aren't forcing the issue. But best of all, Artest and Stern are meeting just because. To talk things over. I would sell my soul for a lo-fi video copy of that meeting. It will be the 'Grand Inquisitor' of today's NBA, but instead of both sides losing, victory shall abound upon both poles!!

Back to the music thing, I'd wanted desperately to post a link to this unbelievable MP3 I found on the oh-so imaginatively named Funk and Soul audio blog. Unfortunately, it seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the sound and feel of the greatest game yet coined by human hands. This news, though, brought it all together—tell me that this grimy, inspiring, tormented, and toughly melancholic bit of crate diggin' dorkdom doesn't represent all that Ron Artest, the man and the myth, is to us "on and off this court."

I would like to thank Big Baby Brock(wurst) for the inadvertant inspiration on this one. He has been saying for far too long that there was something bluesman-esque about Artest, and it never really clicked until this morning, when I discovered Artest's blues once and for all.

Artest from the inside out (aka "Hard Times," Guitar Red)