8.09.2006

Under the intermittent sun



1) I'm on vacation and trying for once to slough off my internet appratus. Has been going pretty well thus far, so hence the relative drought from my end.

2) I also discovered, courtesy of Silverbird, that FreeDarko is nothing if not the latest inadvertant Woody Allen appropriation in a life guilty of many. So all seeking some of my regularly-scheduled writings, peep out the limited sample of Allen's essay on Earl the Pearl, then return to realize how little you now have to miss me.

"I immediately saw myself cast in the role of the bespectcled, white, pseudo-intellectual trying to form a 'heavy' thesis about a gift of grace and magical flair the black athlete possesses that can never be reduced to anything but poetry. I have always envited this gift and have often said that if I could live life over as someone else it would wonderful to be Sugar Ray Robinson or Willie Mays. With my luck, however, I would undoubtedly wind up John Maynard Keynes."

And that's just the dust jacket material. It's a little too romantic for my supposedly-adept basketball tastes, but the thinking fan's stuff is pretty fucking spot on.

4 Comments:

At 8/09/2006 7:53 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

so does this mean that Annie Hall is the most FreeDarko movie ever?

(It actually does read as if Woody_Allen was a regular blogger on FreeDarko)

 
At 8/09/2006 7:59 PM, Blogger Gentlewhoadie Apt One said...

Well, he did kind of invent our type of nerdery. Bols like us are second generation. We didn't grow up under a roller coaster on Coney Island, but we inhereted mutated versions of all the neuroses.

P.S. Shoals, me and noixe made a pilgrammage to the Flatbush Charlie homestead last weekend. Now I recognize why you guys act so Puerto Rican.

 
At 8/09/2006 8:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

did yall jjust see kevin garnett compare himself to a woman trying to get pregnant? "my clock is ticking, man"

 
At 8/10/2006 9:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

After the last Garnett video on here I searched youtube for his name.

First of all you have his commercials, the last one (KG as gladiator, soldier, comedian etc) standing out for the terrible concept and also failing to capitalize on Garnett's great persona while trying to do a personalized spot. There's the one where KG walks around and people keep piling onto him and he's carrying them on his shoulders. The last one worth mentioning is the one where more and more people try to deny KG the basket on an outdoor court (with Duncan joining them in the last scene). I think that the older spots that focus on the simple and pretty obvious facets of KG against the world on the one hand and carrying everyone on his back on the other are still the more impressive ones. To me it seems that the more clever the advertisers wanted to be with him, the less they impressed me. Thoughts on KG and his spots?

On Youtube you can also find the videos of KG's Asia trip. Some are very short and Adidas-centric, but in a few moments when Garnett interacts with people he really comes across as an "Ambassador of giddy realness". Scratch that paragraph if Adidas has already force-fed you those videos on TV, but I hadn't seen them so far.

There's one more thought about KG I wanted to throw out, and it involves Iverson and maybe even Kidd and the likes as well. With the league seemingly being handed over smoothly from the Spurs/Lakers years to the upcoming LeBron or Wade years, isn't there a good chance that we end up with another very depressing former-star-turned-ringchaser class of players? The class suffering from the Jordan years was already very depressing, Malone and Payton being the frontrunners. But so many fans (and not only from the respective cities) are so emotionally connected to KG and Iverson and what they stand for, far more than with the aforementioned two. So what will happen in two years when McHale is finally fired and the Wolves start to rebuild? Or when AI finally has had enough when his contract runs out? Have they endured enough in the prime of their careers to not be criticized for joining a contender?

I know this is pure speculation, but I just can't see Iverson taking that kind of secondary role on any team regardless of who the alpha dog would be. KG has always had to fight that label of second banana, so maybe he could pull it off. I always thought he might really fit well with Kobe, the way they played together in some memorable All Star Game sequences. After those two you might have Kidd on his last legs in two years, guys like Billups, Allen... I just don't see those guys gracefully settle into a role like Stackhouse did this past season. (Maybe Billups, because he never was THE MAN to the same degree that the others were.)

 

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