Where's Paul McPherson?

Pro Idiots

2012-01-30T10:55:00.008-05:00

Last Friday Sarah and I went to see a clown show, performed by Stefano Iamboloni who also bills himself as "Idiota Profesional.¹" We had no idea what to expect other than the fact that an alt-monthly said the show "promises to sketch a soul into the darkness, do hula hoop dancing, and put things in tu boca," so I braced myself for hula hoops and the possibility that the hoops might end up in my mouth.

We walked the couple blocks to the venue El Colmado, which resembled a Williamsburg event space that's purposely only been 20% renovated from its original state of shambles because A) it looks more vintage chic that way, and more importantly B) their budget does not allow for more than a shitty bar and shittier table and chairs. In an effort to one up Billyburg (and prevent death) the ceiling was suspended by brightly painted metal tension rods, which provided that special "this could all fall in on us" mystique — the same quality that makes Chilean mining so sexy².

After taking in the scene for 15 minutes, Sarah, myself and the other 10 people in the crowd were introduced to Sr. Idiota Profesional, a guy in a fancy cheap suit. He began with a monologue about how the company that was supposed to perform the night's Shakespearean play was in a plane accident³ so he would be performing the entire play himself, by trumpet. He said this in a serious tone three times over, for a comedic effect, which also helped Sarah and I understand what he was saying.

His entire performance was divided into acts, one was about "funky" music, which involved him dancing/lip-syncing to several different genres of music. There was a bit on childhood, where he dramatically reminisced about the joys of playing with friends as a kid, before breaking into "If You're Happy and You Know it" with all 12 of us singing along. After this, he got to the topic of love and called a girl from the audience to engage in an intense pillow fight with him, a battle so intense that for a moment I thought the girl might have been planted in the crowd. But she was not, she was a just a damn good pillow fighter.

One of his other moments involved him singing "We Are the World" and walking out into the street to sing at random people walking by. Each bit was broken up by him acting like he was going to play his trumpet, before promptly putting the trumpet down before he'd blow a note. Then he triumphantly raised an all-important "caja de misterio (mystery box)" that's contents he could not reveal until the end.

For his final act, he ripped off his suit to reveal a superhero costume of neon green tights with gold accents⁴. He called himself "Super Bello Man" or something like that. I can't remember, but it was all vastly entertaining.

Afterward we hung out, complimented his act, and learned that the Pro Idiot spoke fluent English, as well as Italian, so I guess I'm the barely bilingual idiot now. He talked about the art of contemporary clowning and how it's much different in Spain than it is in the United States. He also told me he doesn't do stand-up comedy because he thinks stand-up comics feel superior to the crowd, if only I better understood Catalan socialism, I'm sure I could easily string the two together. He also told us his goals were to make the show "much stupider" and use less words. Interesting goals.

Despite the fact that I've made this sound like a shitty show that would be performed on a cruise ship⁵, for kids, or for kids on a cruise ship⁶, Sarah and I actually really, really enjoyed the whole thing. I was happy watching the entire thing. I was happy afterward. I was happy with my 5€ investment in the performance. The only thing that pissed me off was that the big reveal at the end of the "caja de misterio" opened up to a sign that said "The End," and I was mainly pissed that it did not say "El Fin."

However, looking back on it, I wonder if I really only enjoyed it because it was all in Spanish and I took pride in understanding it. This is a phenomena that I'm starting to pay attention to more and more as I think I get way too much fun out of translating things. I wonder if the tens of millions of English-as-a-second-language Americans get that much pleasure from every single thing they do in the States. Then again, perhaps in a month's time I've became such a progressive European that I don't care about missing the NFL conference finals, as I can only find amusement in the haute-comedy of clowning.

---

1. Until this show the dumbest-named act I had ever seen was "My Robot Friend," who actually was far worse than Idiota Professional, in that MRF wore a really shitty robot costume that was loaded with strobe lights. At one point in the show he pantomimed masturbating while ejaculating ping pong balls at the crowd. Later in his performance, his nose started bleeding uncontrollably — a result of either rocking out too hard or being blown out of his mind, most likely a combination of both.

2. Probably waayyyy too late to make a Chilean miners joke. I'm sorry.

3. Thankfully this has nothing to do with a plane crash, but I find the whole Spanair abrupt shutdown very interesting.

4. I was really glad it was not an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia "Green Man" suit, because I fucking hate anyone outside of Charlie Kelly who wears that suit.

5. If anybody else heard NPR's initial story about the Italian coast guard commander Gregorio De Falco becoming a hero for telling the captain of the capsized Costa Concordia to "Get back onboard dammit." Then read that "De Falco's Italian expletive is actually much harsher than "damn it" — but the line has become a national catchphrase and is Italy's top trending hashtag, or keyword on Twitter."

Then wondered what really was that profanity and poorly Googled and could not find it because you're an idiot. Well, after two weeks I finally figured it out: "The Italian word De Falco used, "cazzo" in Italian, literally is slang for penis but it is also commonly used to emphasize something." Now I can sleep.

6. I imagine all of those things would pay better than whatever Idiota Profesional made for the gig I saw.

7. I've been reading Grantland too much and I read about 80% of Eating the Dinosaur. This damn footnoting just kinda grew on me. I apologize. I also realize this footnote does not tie into anything above. Again, I apologize.

It Ain't Half Islamabad

2012-01-18T04:11:00.000-05:00

For the month of January I've been living in an apartment in lower El Raval, which is an Arab pocket in Barcelona. Before I got to Spain, I figured I would not blend in with the people as I'm not a tortured painter who wears cool linen button-ups, but by my neighborhood's standards my linen shirt expectations were short by about 24 inches.

I haven't engaged in a conversation with a fellow neighbor that went any deeper than "How much for this zucchini, roll of paper towels, and jug of water?" (note: that's just a small sampling of things I've bought from the local bodega, you can only imagine the other mind-blowing items I've picked up. Also try to imagine how sexy it sounds in a shitty American-faux-Catalan accent). But these encounters have inspired me to chase after even loftier dialogues, and because I have an endless amount of time on my hands, here is my dream scenario:

Me: (Walking by the prayer center on my block) Hey, nice mosque.

Muslim: Thanks a lot.

Me: Did you say thank salat?

Muslim: No, I said, "Thanks a lot."

Me: Oh. Well, aren't you glad I took Middle Eastern Religions as a gen-ed during my freshman year of college and know what salat is?

Muslim: (Looks puzzled, for many reasons: primarily this conversation's subject matter (or lack there of) and secondly because it's at this point he realizes he's been speaking English, which he's never done before. He ends up saying nothing in an effort to abruptly end this terrible talk.)

Me: (Contemplates swinging the subject to what I remember from my Introduction to Meteorology and Climatology course. Decides to save the altostatus chatter for another day. Walks away.)

So there it is, only a couple weeks in, and I'm creating fictional conversations with Spanish Muslims. Perhaps I should get a job soon, but how am I supposed to work when there are still four more pillars of Islam to make terribly lame word puns off.

###

The picture above is taken in a vacant lot between my apartment and the Muslim prayer center. The chrome handle that's located one story off the ground represents my ever-so-slight grasp on Islam. It also represents that when somebody demolished the building that once stood there, they forgot to scrape the wall of the ceramic tile and handle. I'm not sure what the graffiti of "7AZ+" signifies, but I'm looking into it.

In Sickness

2012-01-13T09:22:00.000-05:00

When I get sick I normally believe it’s just a mental thing that I can overcome by using "mind-over-matter" tricks I learned from watching a TV special on Tibetan monks. But in this case my cable-TV-learned voodoo could not defeat the Spanish bacteria tearing apart my stomach.

After ignoring all symptoms for days, I decided I was just a soldier among the ranks of Kellen Winslow and Percy Miller and the best way to remedy this mentally-insane driven illness was to go out to dinner. As I sat there sipping my vino tinto molecule-by-molecule and ghostly staring at my food with full knowledge that whatever I managed to put down would be coming back up momentarily, I realized I was neither a "fucking soldier" or a "soulja," but just a fucking idiot for going out in the first place.

We left dinner early and took a cab back toward our apartment, I got out and promptly began to throw up all over La Rambla de Raval, an oval-shaped plaza near our apartment that's not quite as ideal as a toilet in terms of places I should be throwing up.

I spent the next four days vomiting, diarrhea-ing, and staying couch ridden, which allowed me to re-familiarize myself with the entire blogosphere — essentially doing the same thing I’d be doing if I was working, except for the whole expelling all substances in my body part. And I sat on a purple couch instead of an office chair, that part was nice.

The kind soul that she is, Sarah went to the farmacia to pick me up some medicine, pantomiming all my illnesses to compensate for lack of Spanish-speaking skills. I took the prescribed potion and proceeded to spend a lot more time in the bathroom. Right after I gulped my fourth dose of the mystery Spanish medication, I decided it might be a good idea to Google exactly what I was taking and figure out perhaps if I lost something (other than control of bowels) in translation. I then learned that Primperan stops vomiting, but induces diarrhea. Dammit. I couldn’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book: get engaged, move to Barcelona, get really sick, and have your prometida give you medicine that gives you diarrhea.

Then because I’m a complete idiot I took a bunch of medication that Sarah brought home despite the fact that every word on it was in Russian (why the meds were Russian is a post for another day). Like anyone who takes pharmaceutical advice from Yakov Smirnoff, I assumed that in Soviet Russia the drug warning labels read you!... or something to that effect. The Rusky meds didn’t do anything for me either, but they didn't make me sicker.

To combat getting fooled thrice times over, I mustered the energy to go to the farmacia myself, there were two old Spanish men working behind the counter, and if there’s any demographic of people I trust, it’s grey-haired Spanish men that appear to be over 55, them and any Native American who still lives in a tepee.

These wise men gave me some Fortasec, for the low cost €2.70, which allowed me to start eating – and properly digesting – real food again. Now I feel like a million euros (that’s a 1.2818 million dollars to all my American friends). Thanks Fortasec!

Until I find a job, I'm going to make relentless plug pharmaceutical drugs until one of them throws me some money.

Gettin' Catalan Wit It

2012-01-12T11:51:00.009-05:00

I’m living in Spain now. I like to call it an early, albeit temporary retirement. Every year professional athletes retire at a young age to pursue other interests and/or go bankrupt, further develop pain-pill addictions, and sink into deep post-playing-days depressions. Why shouldn't a copywriter who earned in the low-mid-range five figures be afforded that same opportunity?

Actually moving to Spain has been the life plan for some time, I always claimed that moving to New York City was just a multi-year layover before moving to Barcelona. It’s also the fulfillment of a lot of office-job-induced day dreams — dreams in which I had become so delusional that quitting my job, one that I actually very much enjoyed, to move to a foreign country with no plan made sense.

My other dream was to spend a December working in a Christmas tree lot on the Southside and Northside of Chicago, where I'd discuss Christmas and Derrick Rose with as many Chicagoans as possible, before eventually writing a book on how segregation and socioeconomics play affect Christmas and Bulls fandom. But that idea still needs to be fleshed out a bit more, and Rose is still a few years away from hitting the apex of his career, so I decided moving to Spain would be wiser.

And this plan — the Spain one, not vending Christmas trees in Chicago — made perfect sense to every single person from all walks of life I talked to. My favorite piece of advice came during one of the six times in 2011 that I practiced journalism and talked to real writer Jeff Pearlman, who said, “Do you have a plan for when you get over there? Because it would probably be better if you didn’t.” Brilliant. And just the kind of advice I needed to feel good about putting off any thought of forging a plan until I got to Barcelona, except for the obvious goals of seeing as much of Europe as possible and potentially getting a job at a pastry shop. But since arriving I’m yet to find a pastry shop that meets my criteria (pastry shop criteria to come in a future post).

Now that I’m here I’ve got all the time in the world to enjoy not having a job and attempt to suppress freak-outs about not having a job. I spent the first week fretting over how Barcelona is not New York City. Because it's perfectly rational expect (within 48 hours no less) to have the same love for a city in which you've lived for three years and developed countless friendships, when you show up in a country to which you've never been, where you only kinda speak the language, and know absolutely nobody.

My grandest fear is that I had it all in NYC, and by all I mean access to cheap-and-delicious lamb pizza plus almost-infinite chances to listen to Young Jeezy albums with people who enjoyed TM103 just as much, and for the very same reasons I do. What a world I had. Maybe if I have time between making croissants and confections, I will start an ex-pat club for people who simultaneously ironically and genuinely love Jeezy as much as I do.

I’ve since made peace with my decision to live in a city where I see a cloud once every 14 days, it's 60° in Janurary, I don’t work, and I share in a luxurious apartment with my prometida (my word of preference because fiancé still sounds weird to me. I also probably should have mentioned that I moved here with my prometida higher in this post. I'll work on not burying important details as this era of WheresPMac progresses). Having minimal responsibility and unlimited freedom can be rather enjoyable.

Especially when I consider the alternate is not seeing the Sun during a frigid NYC winter with my weekly highlight coming from "Bagel Monday," a phenomen I’ve learned about from my former co-workers who Facebooked about the greatness of free bagels at the office. But dammit, I do really miss NYC bagels.

Hopefully I’ll stumble into Paul McPherson again and during my what-the-hell-am-I-doing freak-outs I remember some of the first words he said to me in Monte Hermosa: “Man, Argentina's alright,” he sighed before taking a long pause and schemingly rubbing his hands together, actually I can’t remember if he made that motion, but lets just pretend he did because it makes the story 10% better. “As soon as I find some bitches and weed things will be better.”

So in the infinite wisdom of my all-time favorite NBA burn-out-turned Euro-league burn-out-turned-Argentine-league-burnout, I should be good on the former and just need to work on the latter of his formula for adjusting to a foreign location.

###

Something I pathetically don’t know: The name of Spain's president, or really anything about their government

Something I pathetically do know: Sebastian Telfair is averaging 3.8 points per game in the six games of the Suns' dismal 2012 season

Why I like the picture at the top of this post: It's taken from the top of Parc Guell, which is cool. More importantly, it's got basketball hoops and someone graffiti'd "Anarkia y Birra Fria" (Anarchy and Cold Beer), an ingenious phrase that I will definitely steal, should I decide to join any Occupy movements abroad.

Canadian Adventures Part II

2011-05-08T12:47:00.001-04:00

I got off the bus in Vancouver and took their above-ground rail system toward my temporary digs. On my way, I stumbled upon a Costco and I grabbed a hot dog because having been out of the States for almost 45 minutes had caused me to grow rather homesick.

Then I got to my Airbnb apartment and it was just as amazing as it looked in the pictures. I departed to hit Gas Town, which is a touristy part of town and was disappointed with how lame it was, but I was able to buy my friend a Vancouver White Caps tee, so there was some success.

And aside from terribly kitschy Canada tourist junk, I stumbled upon a rack of this:

and a rack of this:

Both of which made me very happy.

Then after walking around in the pouring rain for a few hours I went back to my apartment and talked to Jennifer, who was my Airbnb hostess. She was insanely nice and answered my many questions on her Airbnb career and about Canada. She told me she'd hosted about 40 travelers and they were all great except for one Middle Eastern guy who tried to treat her like a slave because she was a woman. One of her favorite guests was a single 50-year-old woman who stayed with her for two weeks during the Olympics.

Jennifer said she could tell why the woman was single because she had five cats. Which is only two more cats than Jennifer kept in her apartment, but apparently the difference between three and five is a lot to cat people.

As you'd expect from anyone who continuously lets random strangers stay in their home, Jennifer was slightly off. She told me she was dating a 35-year-old Aussie who she would move in with, except that he lives with his mom in Victoria. To which I responded, "Isn't that were Steve Nash is from?" because I was unsure of what else I might have to say about her relationship. She loved her three cats to death. Their names were Bean, Bertha and Buddy, who as she told me, despite his name, he won't be your buddy. I was OK with this as I was mainly looking for a nice place to stay and I did not need too much cat companionship.

Jennifer was kind enough to let me use her netbook. "Just log in under Bean Industries, it's Bean's fictional company," she told me. Of course it was.

She recalled the time Bertha was Facebook, but she had to delete Bertha's account because it maxed at the capacity of 5,000 friends and was constantly receiving "lewd messages" from other cats on Facebook. I never knew Facebook had a cat cybering underbelly, but it sounded about right.

Jennifer also told me that she had a brother who was 11 years younger than her and did not hesitate to let me know he was the accident child. He worked at McDonald's and she was now studying public health at the local community college after she quit her job at the train station. All of which did not explain how she was living in the nicest apartment of the 25th floor of a brand new apartment building in downtown Vancouver. Maybe she ran a paysite for Bertha.

When I wasn't eating delicious teriyaki udon noodles and watching hockey with Jennifer, I was exploring the city and being continually underwhelmed. I visited a thrift shop with hopes of finding any piece of Vancouver Grizzlies gear, but I came up with nothing, which made me feel like the whole trip was for not. The coolest thing I did was visit the campus of the University of British Columbia, where I walked around listening to weird Moby songs on a dark cloud-covered day as I reflected upon my own college experience and let shit get real. There is heavy sarcasm in that last sentence, I just needed to clarify that.

I went in as many buildings as I could. Their rec center is shit compared to Arizona's, but then again Arizona's is rather insane, and the UBC rec did have an actual dojo, so maybe they win.

Their campus was directly next to Wreck Beach, which apparently is a popular nude beach in the summer, but during the winter it was just a spooky, log covered beach that was entirely empty except for a bum and a skim boarder.

The proudest point of the trip was when Jennifer taught me the names of all the provinces and I felt like a better American for actually knowing something about our neighbors up north. Then the next day I realized there were northern territories that I was completely oblivious to, and I again felt retarded.

Overall Canada was nice and Jennifer left me the following feedback on my Airbnb account, which I am now considering adding to my resume:

"Justin was a terrific guest - I can't really say enough great things about him! It was more like having family over for a visit and he's welcome back anytime.

Canadian Adventures Part I

2011-04-25T06:00:00.001-04:00

This blog has been many things. From the ultimate go-to site for dramatically exaggerated/partially-fictional Nic Wise game recaps to a place where I could dump throw-away posts to make myself kinda feel like a writer and perhaps convince potential employers I was a legitimate writer (which that run-on sentence disproves), but I think in its prime WPM was a travel blog. So now I am gonna temporarily throw the blog back into a travel blog to recount my memories from a trip I took to the great Pacific Northwest, because the end of April seems as good a time as any to publish stories from my late January travels.

I spent the majority of the time in Seattle, and maybe just one day I'll write about that, but let's get to Vancouver.

I had never been to Canada, but its awesomely harmless reputation as a country that puts out hockey players, dope basketball podcasts and Steve Nash has intrigued me my whole life and by whole life I mean the portion of my life that occurred after I was exposed to Nash and The Basketball Jones.

And this life goal was achieved because I had a week off between transitioning jobs, I got a cheap ticket from NYC to Seattle and decided Monday, January 24 would be the day I got on a shitty Greyhound bus and left a dreary Seattle for an even more dreary Vancouver. The day before I booked a ridiculously-nice-looking apartment at on airbnb.com, I had used this site often at my former job, where I would waste countless hours of my life planning trips I did not have the time or money for.

But now it was finally go time, I actually needed a place and a kind woman on airbnb was offering her apartment in downtown Vancouver for only $50 a night, which was a bit more than I was looking to spend, but the apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows in every room that overlooked the entire city, my bedroom had a balcony from which you could see the BC Place Stadium, which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics, the apartment building also featured a jacuzzi, gym, sauna and steam room, so I figured I'd get my $50 worth.

Airbnb itself is an awesome, but weird site that works on the premise that human beings are good people. Creating a profile was as simples as providing a name and valid e-mail address. Then I wrote a short message to the woman hosting the lavish apartment with some vague generalities about myself and my travel plans. She accepted and just like that I had a place to stay and a host in Vancouver, even though all she knew about me was that my name was Justin, I lived in NYC, and this would be my first time in Canada. She said she would be in class when I was scheduled to arrive so she would leave a key to her place with the doorman of her building.

I was very impressed with her faith in humanity as I could have been a killer, thief, sexual predator or the kind of sick fuck who would delete unwatched episodes of House Hunters off her DVR.

Backing up to international voyage, I had an interesting encounter at the Canadian customs. Having lived most my life in a state where border issues involve an all-out drug war on top of a million other issues, I figured the Canadian border would much more relaxed, and as a result I got in a very weird mood and decided to lie with every word I said to the Canadian border patrol agent. I really don't know what provoked this as I don't lie much and I tend not to enjoy people who lie, but the following conversation was had:

Border Patrol Agent Woman: Where do you live now?

Me: Arizona.

Her: What do you do there?

Me: I work for a magazine.

Her: Who are you visting in Canada?

Me: A friend from college.

Her: What does she do in Vancouver.

Me: She works for a bank.

This banter continued for a little bit as I kept fabricating a simple story as I assumed the issue of me living in a different place than my passport indicated would blow her mind and cause more confusion then if I made up a simple story. Although every other person on our bus was able to quickly get back on the bus, the agent must have seen my eyes darting in many directions, so she put me aside. Then she went in a back room with my passport to analyze my information further or maybe update her Twitter on what a dumbass I was. I really don't know what she did back there, but the whole time I was sitting there thinking that this is going to be awkward as I have to fess up to why I lied about everything.

Finally she returned, handed me my passport and told me I was good to go. Little did she know I was leading a double life as a job-transitioning New Yorker. Got her.

Part II will come tomorrow...maybe.

My Room & CO

2011-03-07T07:03:00.002-05:00

The other night (by other night I mean about two months ago and I'm just now posting this underwhelming story) my radiator was making enough noise to keep me up for the majority of the night. As I laid in my bed hoping the incessant clanking noises would miraculously end, my sleep-deprived rage turned into sleep-deprived paranoia that my room was slowly filling with carbon monoxide and I would die in the 20 minutes of sleep I might get that night.

Fortunately I did not die as God must have had a higher calling for me, a higher calling that I tried to fulfill by wasting away the following day at work reading Gothamist. As I sifted through an unhealthy amount of local aggregated news, I read the account of a carbon monoxide detector saving a Brooklyn resident's life. That was the final sign that I needed a carbon monoxide detector more than I needed to save my money to buy another pair of Arizona Wildcats mesh shorts.

During my lunch break that day, I walked over to K-Mart to purchase the life-saving device. I saw one for $54, which I figured my life was not worth, but settled on a nice one that only set me back $24. I then recanted my terribly boring lunch break to my friends via e-mail to let them now about my new air-monitoring toy.

My friend Gould brought up the great point on how it's not often in life we can determine a monetary value for our lives, but agreed that $24, "Feels about right."

Sep chastised me for wasting $24 on what could have bought me three whole 2 Bros pizzas.

I was just that I could potentially sleep without the fear of dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, which was a good way to live life until my radiator leaked for a week while I was gone causing severe water damage to my wood floor. Now I sleep with the healthy paranoia that I'm inhaling mold spores which will eventually cause me a slow and painful death.

Chicken Teriyaki

2011-02-16T06:18:00.003-05:00

A while back my friend Sep forwarded me a link to Midtown Lunch, a blog promoting a new Midtown Manhattan teriyaki chicken restaurant with a contest that would award three winners a year supply of 'yaki. As a massive chicken teriyaki fan who lives in a city that lacks an affordable 'yaki bowl, this was my pretty much my only chance at happiness in life.

I entered the contest and patiently waited for the editors to contact me and tell me I won. Then the editors never contacted me, which was bullshit in my mind, so I wrote them to express my grievances. Midtown Lunch's editor agreed that my entry was the best, but said they selected winners randomly and as a consolation prize of sorts he offered me the chance to be a profiled Midtown Lunch'er.

I obliged and filled out his questionnaire in a voice that was equal parts: cockiness from just landing a new, cool job, euphoria from just landing a new job outside of Midtown, and hatred for Midtown Lunch for denying me a year's supply of 'yaki bowls.

This was the result.

I was extremely happy with it when I submitted it. Then when I read it online, I was slightly concerned at how I came off, but I think that had more to do with me lonely in British Columbia and slightly depressed from Vancouver's excessive rain. But that is a story for another post.

The comments are all pure genius as well, especially because it allowed for one of the few times in my life where I could've worn a "Hi Hater" t-shirt.

Ultimately it's a silly food blog profile, but it's more than that. Those motherfuckers wronged me and I got my retribution (I think) while showing the whole world how much I love teriyaki chicken and in the end isn't that what life is all about.

Pretending

2011-02-15T05:15:00.001-05:00

Aside from strap-hangers who rap about McDonald's for change*, teachers are my favorite subway riders. I have an immense respect for anybody who edits a stack of papers on the subway and for some reason the sight of a teacher working on his commute brings me great joy.

A few weeks ago my friends at Gelf asked me to edit another writer's article. I printed it out, grabbed a red pen and went to work on the subway. I made sure I held the red pen in my mouth so everyone would think I was a teacher and respect me. I also exaggerated all my edits and smiled a lot hoping people would draw the connection that I was grading the paper of an inner-city kid who I had helped to overcome his unfathomably terrible background and learning disabilities to finally understand our class's lesson.

When in reality I was editing an interview of Matt Timms, who was promoting his World's Biggest Jerk Off (SFW) event, by a writer who is a Yale graduate.

Still I feverishly scribbled down all my edits and shook my head a lot so other strap-hangers could see what a hard-working teacher I am. As I approached my final stop, I scribbled an A+ atop the first page, which made about as much sense as writing a blog post full of grammar errors about editing.

*I never give money or attention to singing bums unless I'm high and there is an group harmonizing Lion King songs a Capella or The McDonald's rapper is in my presence. I have only seen the McDonald's rapper once, but he killed it. He boarded the train, politely told everyone he was gonna rap and then began the most passionate and sincere rap about McDonald's.

The hook was something along the lines of "Yeah I love Mickey D's!" which was good enough for a single and a single dollar in my book. But once he dropped a line about McFlurries (a line I was waiting for the entire song) I realized I needed to give him a few more, mainly because you can't buy a McFlurry for $1. His flow was amazing, he managed to hit every item on the menu and he rapped with a passion for McDonald's that was truly inspirational. After he finished I handed him a few singles and he gave me the most heart-felt smile I have ever received from a human not named Seth Janiga.

Forging Happiness

2011-02-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

On the same day I posted a desperate attempt to help the St. Labre Indian School and make it look like I still write regularly on this blog, I received another letter at my work. This one was not quite as depressing as the parched Native Americans, as it was just an 8-year-old from Staten Island asking Dustin Pedroia for his autograph and some other trivial questions.

My immediate thoughts were to write him back an extremely bizarre letter. The kid asked Pedroia if he uses steroids, and I had already wrote the first two paragraphs of a letter from Pedroida graphically describing his steroid use in my head. Then I thought to myself, do I really want to write a letter to this kid that will surely baffle him and leave him hating his childhood hero? No, because I'd prefer waste the five minutes it would take to write the letter doing stuff even less productive. And also because it seemed like a mighty fucked up thing to do for a kid who already lives in Staten Island.

So I followed my protocol of handling letters from misguided fans and let it collect dust on my desk. Then I got a new job and I was feeling very good about life. As I cleaned up the clutter on my desk, I decided I should return the kid's letter. So I wrote him a quick letter thanking him and encouraging him to enjoy life and not play video games so much, which accompanied a freshly-forged autograph of Dustin Pedroia on the card he sent with his letter.

I felt really good about myself especially because I am 100 percent certain this will spark the butterfly affect which will make this Staten-Island-Dustin-Pedroia fan help every underprivileged Native American in Montana and all will be right in the world.

For the People

2011-01-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

In June of 2009 a letter was sent to my office addressed to Scottie Pippen. My company had never worked with Pippen and had zero affiliation with him, so naturally I figured I was the best-suited person to open the letter.

The letter ended up being extremely depressing as it was written in hopes that Scottie Pippen could fix a failing water well for a Native American school on an Indian reservation. Nobody at my work could do anything about it, mainly because I threw it in the corner of my desk before anybody else could see it. I then decided that instead of researching a method to get the letter to Mr. Pippen himself, my time would be better spent bullshitting with my friends on Gmail and reading Brandon Jennings' Twitter. And for that I am going to hell.

The letter sat in the corner of my desk collecting dusk. I would look at it often and be saddened by the poor Indians and their quickly depleting source of fresh water. More troubling was Sue Mueller's complete lack of direction in that she sent a hand-written letter to the completely wrong person.

Now in early January 2010 I have decided the best way to help Ms. Mueller and her gang of thirsty Indians is to post the letter on my blog.

Would a younger version of myself mocked Ms. Mueller for her terrible grammar and shot-in-the-dark attempt to get an African-American basketball player who lives in Chicago to help a bunch of Native Americans in Montana? Maybe.

But the older, wiser version of myself recalls the lessons I learned in college in my Native Americans in Film class (Wait didn't I drink before that class just to make it easier to fall asleep? Maybe.) I am well aware that my own writing is riddled with errors and its sole purpose is to entertain a friend or two who still reads this blog. I've also sent more than my fair share of shot-in-the-dark letters to random people in NYC hoping they might be able to get me a cooler job.

The last thing I should is hate on a woman who desperately cares about these Indians' well-being. I'll allow you to pause for a second to appreciate that gem of a "well" pun I just laid down.

So Scottie Pippen if you're out there enjoying your retirement reading blogs barely related to Paul McPherson, please help the students of St. Labre Indian School. Ms. Mueller if you stumble across this, explain yourself for having a return address in southern Illinois and trying to help a school in Montana. St. Labre Indian School, please explain how you don't have a running well but your website is better than my high school's.

Here is the letter in its entirety (click to enlarge).

Not Tucson Velo

2011-01-11T07:03:00.000-05:00

I read TucsonVelo.com 10 times a day despite the fact that the site normally updates only 6 times a week. It remedies my homesickness for all things biking and Tucson.

It also makes me feel like an ass because it's creator, Mike McKisson has a few full time jobs, a wife, a little kid and more responsibilities than I can fathom and his website is still infinitely better and consistent than my joke of a site. Sidenote: Mike's weight loss via bike is a great, great story.

I really respect his blog because it is written with real journalism skills such as proper sourcing, submissions for information, actual analysis and other legit components my site never attempted. Even his "Rider of the week" feature is done very well.

Here is my bike of the week, which I can guarantee you will not be a recurring feature on WPM.

I was walking down the street when I saw a bike standing by itself playing Jadakiss loudly. I really enjoy biking and I really enjoy Jadakiss, so I took a picture of the bike.

Then the owner of the bike walked out of the neighboring bodega. I complimented his bike. He stopped for a second, walked over to his bike, pulled out a half-smoked cigarette from a pouch on his bike, lit it and told me it was his brother's, but he's in jail so the bike is his now.

"Good deal," I said.

"Well it's not a good deal that he's in jail, but it's a great bike," he replied.

I agreed and made some other small talk before he got distracted by a fat-assed woman who passed us by.

My people

2011-01-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

One Friday night I thought I was going to an off-Broadway play rehearsal starring Brad Garrett. I’ve never had the desire to see a Broadway show and I hate Everybody Loves Raymond. But all three of my friends were going and I was told the tickets were free. So I went along with it.

The Robert Barone-led play reading ended up being a very elaborate hoax put on by my friends to trick me into attending a Kate Nash concert.

This was extremely awkward for several reasons:

1. I had no idea I would be attending a Kate Nash concert until I entered the concert venue.

2. I prefer to enjoy Kate Nash within the privacy of my Zune’s headphones.

3. In spite of No. 2 I constantly brag about listening to Kate Nash to show how “cool and different” I am in that I enjoy Raekwon, Gucci Mane and the Brit-pop sounds of Kate Nash.

4. None of my friends enjoy Kate Nash. Best illustrated by the quote of the night: “When you said you liked this shit I figured it had good production or something, but it’s just really fucking gay.”

5. Her audience was primarily lesbians, feminists and really fucking weird teenage girls

6. In between sets Kate Nash gave estrogen-charged diatribes. Many of which will be mocked back to me for the rest of my life. I really don’t believe I will live another week on earth without one of my friends texting me, “You’re not afraid of a woman with opinions, are you?”

Throughout the show as the weirdo fans yelled weirdo shit, Sep would try to yell over them, “These are J’s people!”

I just stood there uncomfortably. Happy to hear Kate Nash’s music. Wildly perplexed by her fan base. And still baffled that my nightly entertainment switched from Raymond’s brother to a Brit-pop feminist without me any the wiser.

A week after the Kate Nash concert/fiasco with the shouts of “These are J’s people!” still echoing in my ears I was I was actually surrounded by people I’d consider “my people.”

The feminist teenagers screaming “You rock Kate!” were replaced by hardcore hoops junkies all in attendance for a FreeDarko discussion based around their new book, The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, moderated by Will Leitch.

After devouring a slice of Artichoke pizza and running to the event, I claimed a seat for myself and my Gmail acquaintance Andrew, who I see every few months yet talk to almost daily via g-chat to discuss the NBA.

I grabbed a book and went up the table of FreeDarko writers where I was pleasantly surprised with Lang Whitaker also being on the discussion panel. Lang contributed a chapter to the book breaking down the Dream Team II, the ‘94 World Championship squad that featured a very young Shaq, Kemp and LJ. The team is infamous for defining American sports douchery as they went out of their way to win every game by at least 60 points while grabbing their crotches after every dunk.

Lang is also my personal hero as I read his “Links” column every day from 7th grade to sophomore year of college until he more or less quit the column. He stills writes for Slam and a bunch of other stuff and he’s the reason I was a journalism major, yada, yada, yada, continued dick sucking, etc, etc.

Since living in the city, I’ve met him a few times and he gave me a “What’s up?” before I said, "What’s up?” to him, so in the eyes of high school Justin Adler I have made it in life.

Maybe I should jump to why I love FreeDarko. I rarely read their blog because their long, intelligent essays are not as digestible as dumbass Ball Don’t Lie or Gothamist posts and also because I am barely literate. However their first book is fucking awesome and unlike anything I have ever seen.

It’s a collection of insane stats, wild philosophies and more insane illustrations that compare NBA fourth quarters before the shot clock in 1952 to the English Countryside and its enclosure-induced agricultural revolution.

To quote people far smarter than myself: “Baseball has its numbers and football has its hard hits, but basketball, more than those sports, has style. And no one has done more to try to capture that than the collection of bloggers known as FreeDarko.”

Something I shamefully never knew was how legit the FreeDarko writers were. The illustrator has worked for the New Yorker, one writer, whose pen name is Dr. Lawyer Indianchief has a Ph.D. In psychology from the University of Chicago, another works for Harper’s, Silverbird 5000, their stat guy is getting his doctorate from Yale and is the “founder, editor, and sole proprietor of the only blog devoted exclusively to the English Revolution of 1640.”

The other dudes live in Seattle and San Francisco, an accomplishment in itself.

The discussion itself was cool. They spent a lot of time discussing the fight chart in their book, which shows every NBA player who has ever been in an on-court fight and who they fought.

They all articulated why they love the game and what makes the Timberwolves awesome.

Throughout the discussion I was flipping through the new book for the first time. I love it because even though I spend way too much time reading wildly unimportant shit about obscure NBA players, the book offers many more retarded facts that I did not know.

Example: Famed draft bust Leon Smith once beat the shit out his then-girlfriend Cappie Pondexter. Or that Kwame Brown did not know how to use a laundry machine or dry cleaning during his rookie season so he bought new clothes and suits.

There is also a list of the top 15 Bill Walton broadcasting quotes that had me laughing out loud. “Yesterday we celebrated Sir Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity. Today Francisco Oberto is defying it... If Eric Piatkowski continues playing at this level, he's going to replace Jerry West on the NBA logo."

Afterward I went up got my book signed and told writer Brown Recluse, Esq. that he does God’s work, normally a line I reserve for the dude who makes me a milkshake when I am high and I don’t know what else to say to express my gratitude.

I talked with Lang for a while about AI and Turkey. Then I did my token small talk with Leitch, Craggs and Rafe, all former Gelf speakers who kinda know me.

Then I kicked with Andrew and watched 15 minutes of League Pass before heading to the official FreeDarko after party at a nearby bar.

Andrew works for Viacom and that day their CEO gave his massive workforce a speech. Then the guys from The Burried Life (which I then learned is a douchey show on MTV about young, rich d-bags completing their bucket list) came to the presentation and starting granting employees’ bucket list wishes. Andrew told me the Viacom intranet required everyone to submit one bucket list wish a few weeks earlier.

The Buried Life cast awarded one employee with the chance to meet and sing with Barbara Streisand. Somebody else got an iPad. Another got a roundtrip flight anywhere in the world. The final person was Andrew.

The Viacom CEO then said, “Andrew you said you wanted 1,000 followers on Twitter, we’ll guess what, we are going to link your Twitter on The Buried Life’s Twitter and we are going to get you 1,000 followers!”

After Andrew told me this, I paused and then said, “You do realize that fucking sucks, right?”

“Of course it fucking sucks. I hate it. I feel like a moron and I’m embarrassed,” Andrew said. I then realized why he sat through the whole FreeDarko talk on his BlackBerry deleting e-mails alerting him of new followers.

I asked him if he Tweets a lot or is a big Twitter fan.

“I tweet my fucking lunch and that’s it,” he said. “Everyone else got crazy gifts worth hundreds of dollars and I got 1,000 fucking Twitter followers.”

Then I left Andrew and his Twitter army and went to the bar. I got my overpriced Bud Light bottle and shot the shit with Lang for a bit. Then at one point I spoke to Lang and Leitch (my internet heroes of high school and college, respectively) at one time which caused my head to slightly explode.

Then I went home ate cookies with milk, watched the Knicks post game show in complete and wondered how I would one day be tricked into see an Adele concert.

Gelf Articles Part 2

2010-12-09T09:03:00.000-05:00

Here’s a small collection of Gelf Magazine articles I wrote during the most wherespmac recent hiatus. In an effort to stretch out these posts, and because I myself don’t read anything over 300 words, I’ve broke this collection into two posts. I owe my Gelf editors a huge thank you for forcing me to keep writing and allowing me to interview some awesome people.

Interview with Tommy Craggs
Deadspin.com senior editor

There was a period in my life when Deadspin was my favorite thing in life. I believe this followed my most delusional stage, when I proclaimed HBO’s Entourage to be my favorite thing in life.

Currently “Freaking out about life/my job” is my favorite thing in life* and in this bold, new era, I’m no longer that into Deadspin. I credit this to the site being a shell of its former self and my maturity level raising. While both are partially true, the Gawker network being blocked at my work is probably the biggest factor. Especially when the I consider the garbage blogs I read at work and my involvement in wildly immature e-mail chains on a daily basis.

The Gawker office was of course stupid cool. They have a cool location, cool building, cool roof deck, cool computers, cool shit on their desks and I presume most their employees are cool people. Craggs at least was cool and it fulfilled the 21-year-old version of me’s dream to be in the Deadspin office and watch Craggs post the DUAN.

I think the corresponding article came out pretty well too.

*That’s actually a lie. Planetariums are my current favorite thing in life.

Interview with Seth Wickersham
ESPN The Magazine senior writer

I wrote this article in late February and as I was rereading it I thought it was one of those interviews where I asked the subject a bunch of questions about helping my own career and completely fail to ask questions that could lead to decent article. When I wrote for the long-deceased goazcatsblog.com I once posted a Q&A with Channing Frye that solely consisted of questions on how he grew his blog.

Then I remembered that this article was more than a self-help article as most of the questions came from Wickersham’s friend and coworker, Grant Wahl, a crazy legit writer who would never use “crazy legit” to describe anything. Wahl is known for his long-form features which each involve more research and work than I have ever done in my whole life.

If you are into sports writing and the some of the behind-the-scenes elements, then read the interview. Or read it if you just want a “Where are they now?” with people who once guarded Trajan Langdon.

Gelf Articles Part 1

2010-12-08T09:03:00.001-05:00

Here’s a small collection of Gelf Magazine articles I wrote during the most wherespmac recent hiatus. In an effort to stretch out these posts, and because I myself don’t read anything over 300 words, I’ve broke this collection into two posts. I owe my Gelf editors a huge thank you for forcing me to keep writing and allowing me to interview some awesome people.

Interview with Roger Bennett
Author of Everything You Know is Pong, and a bunch of books on Judaism, ESPN writer and guy who speaks about soccer on TV a lot

Roger and I planned on meeting at a bar in an Upper West Side restaurant for the interview. I got to the packed spot a few minutes before him and when he arrived I let me him know that it was full.

“Well, fuck it then,” he said before we paced to his back up back bar. Roger wore the same jacket that Carmelo Anthony wore the night before in his postgame interview (see photo above). This is only relevant because rarely does someone meet all my standards of cool within 20 seconds. Yes, my standards of cool consist solely of profanity and any allusion to Melo.

Aside from those important elements, Roger is a great guy. After the interview we discussed Iverson playing in Turkey and he urged me to get on the next flight over there and he said a lot of other shit to inspire/motivate me in life. We’ll see if I act on any of it.

After I wrote the article, I thanked him for the time and awkwardly linked him to the video of Melo wearing his jacket. He was very appreciative and when I saw him a week later he told me his basketball-obsessed 6-year-old son now calls his balding, Jewish father is Melo when he wears the jacket. Never before did I think my unnecessary knowledge of Melo’s wardrobe would strengthen a father-son relationship, but I’m glad I could help.

All bullshit irrelevance aside, Roger worked on books with Nick Kroll, Will Shortz, Nick Hornby and Steve Nash. He’s a brilliant dude and his newest book is great if you like ping pong, good writing or books with cool pictures.

Interview with Rafe Bartholomew
Author of Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin' in Flip-Flops and the Philippines' Unlikely Love Affair with Basketball, former Harper’s Magazine editor

I like to think Rafe is like me if I were smarter, more motivated and stuck with journalism. After college, he got a Fulbright Scholarship to study the basketball culture in the Philippines. He ended up living there for 3 years. Aside from becoming the leading American scholar on Filipino hoops, he made an appearance on the country’s biggest game show and soap opera. All me to excerpt my own article:

Bartholomew also stumbled into small-time television fame after his role on the show Bakekang: He played a racist who sleeps with the show's main character before kicking her out of his bed and calling her an "ugly Jungle Book bitch."
"When people noticed me, they were pretty excited—high-fives, hugs, smiles. I posed for a lot of cellphone pictures with people's families and children," says Bartholomew, who also appeared on the game show Wowowee. "When it was in response to Bakekang, I felt a little awkward to be holding babies and putting my arm around people's kids, since my character was such a repulsive guy."

Rafe’s dad is also the longest-tenured employee of McSorley’s which is all sorts of awesome. He's connected to Cambridge Steve through Steve's Filipino girlfriend, which is all sorts of odd. Rafe is also the first and only person I have met who grew up in Manhattan and does not suck as a human being.

He recently quit his job at Harper’s and is going back to the Philippines without a real plan. He’s a fucking hero.

One More Inconvenience

2010-12-07T09:03:00.002-05:00

This is another tale of inconveniences. After this I'll resume normal WPM posts or just stop blogging. One of the two. Or are they the same thing?

At work I used to risk my freedom and commit credit fraud. Except I would not think of it like that, I thought of it more as an opportunity to leave behind the fluorescent lights and retina-scarring computer monitor and get out of the office.

Perhaps it would be wise to explain the credit fraud part now. My company often buys AmEx gift cards for our clients and I would use my coworker's credit card and ID to buy these cards. This saved him time and was an excuse for me to get out of the office, even if my journey took me to a Duane Reade and essentially was work-sanctioned credit fraud.

I had done this many times before as proof that I really am getting dumber every day with my current nine to five.

However on my most recent attempt the Duane Reade manager asked me for my ID upon my attempt to purchase over $1,000 in AmEx gift cards. I handed her my coworker, Willy's driver license, which has worked before since Willy and kinda look alike and since most Duane Reade employees don't give a fuck. About anything. At all.

"This does not look like you. I'm pretty sure this is not you," she said with her heavy Jamaican accent.

I gave her the classic "Come onnnnn" that always worked for getting my college dorm mates to smoke with me instead of doing their homework. Somehow it did not translate for buying $1,000 worth of gift cards with someone else's credit card.

Before I knew it I had another manager staring me down at the register and their ghetto security guard by my side.

"This does not look good for you she said," she said.

No it did not, I thought to myself before realizing I left my wallet and cell phone at work and this was going to be a tough one to get out of.

They gave me one phone call to try to get Willy on the phone. This would have been a good moment to have my cell on me, but instead I froze up and gave them my work extension since it was the only one I had memorized.

That moment of brilliance earned me a ticket to the Duane Reade holding cell/security cubicle where I would wait until the police showed up. The whole time I was not afraid I'd actually get in trouble, but I kept thinking how motherfucking inconvenient this all was.

The judgmental asshole in me was positive the Duane Reade security guard had committed more crimes over the weekend than I had in my entire life. He snapped my photo and told me, "Don't worry, I ain't gonna cuff you." I thanked him and sat in his box patiently waiting for the cops.

I sat there for a few minutes thinking about how I would beg the cops to escort me across the street, most likely in handcuffs, to my office. Then I would enter my office in cuffs and hope Willy could restore my freedom.

Then I began to pester the security guard, Jamal, to give me a second phone call. He finally caved in and by a miracle of God I remembered Willy's work line. Jamal somehow asked Willy a string of questions without conveying the essential fact that I was in a holding cell awaiting the police to come arrest me. In the background I kept yelling at Jamal to tell Willy to come down to Duane Reade.

After the longest 10 minutes of my life I saw Willy at the end of the store. I held my wrist up and clashed them, the universal hand gesture that I was locked up or a member of Jadakiss' record label.

Willy walked over, explained what happened and that I was not really committing credit fraud, it just looked exactly like I was.

Then three plain-clothes cops came in and began the 2:00 comedy hour. They kept telling dry joke after dry joke about taking us in and putting me in jail until I could show ID. Each time I would nervously ask if they were serious. Each time they'd deadpan me and say yes, wait 10 seconds and then admit to messing with me.

On an unrelated side note, I'd like to shadow the undercover cops for an hour in my work's precinct as every day I walk more than two blocks for lunch I see at least one drug transaction. And this is with highly untrained eyes that are more concerned with the line at 2 Bros than neighborhood drug trafficking.

Finally Willy and I were released. We tried to complete our initial order for the gift cards. Then we got back the office and realized after all that the manager who almost had me arrested fucked up the transaction and did not activate half the gift cards.

I now try to shop at Walgreens whenever possible.

Two Inconveniences

2010-12-06T09:03:00.001-05:00

The nut and bolt that holds the handlebars on my Razor scooter secure to the rest of the frame has been missing since I found it near my neighbor's trashcan three months ago.

There is a very real possibility that the scooter was not trash in the first place, but belonged to a poor kid named Damion, who in my sick fantasy uses the scooter to explore the neighborhood and furthermore as an excuse to get out of his apartment when he could no longer stand to see his single mother physically abused by her boyfriend.

I prefer to believe the scooter was actually trash because it makes me feel less guilty about potentially stealing a poor, little kid's scooter, a scooter I barely use myself.

In fact, I am almost positive it was meant to be trash because it's a pain in the ass to ride a scooter with the handlebars not secured to the frame. Still it's tough to ignore the "Damion Cruz" Sharpied on to the bottom of the scooter.

Every weekend I scooter to the local mom-and-pop hardware store on the corner hoping to get the missing piece for my scooter. It's not so much a mom-and-pop store, but more a Italian-guy-with-a-neat-mustache store, and that fancily groomed Italian hates having his shop open.

Yesterday I rode there at 11 am, thinking that provided ample time for his spaghetti and wine hangover to have passed and for his shop to be open. It was closed, but the pet shop next door told me the friendly Italian would be in his store at 1:00. I returned at 1:30, but the shop was still closed. My Razor scooter would be incomplete for another week. I found this very inconvenient.

Then a few hours later while I was out with my friend my roommate called and told me the family room ceiling was pouring what appeared to be sewage water all over our family room. This was much more inconvenient especially since I had to deal with a gang of comically incompetent characters.

Our Hasidic Jewish manager and building owners celebrate every Jewish holiday, including some holidays that I am fairly certain they make up for their own convenience. After neither of them got back to me within the first three hours of my family room's flood I was worried I would not hear from them until Hannukah concluded.

Option B was our building's maintenance man, who is a decent handy man and a mediocre thief, as he stole my roommate's guitar the first time he worked on our house. He picked up the phone but said he was busy with his mariachi band until 1 am.

The building's super picked up the phone and told me in broken English that he was in Manhattan but two hours away from Brooklyn. This would make sense if it were 1882, but the advent of bridges and subways made his argument incomprehensible.

Eventually my building's owner got back to me. Instead of telling me how he'd resolve the situation he provided me with lectures on how accidents happen and humans are imperfect and how our ceiling raining shit was not his fault. After a lengthy discussion on when Shabbot officially ends, he told me he'd take care of everything, to which I understand to mean he'll take care of it within two weeks.

Damion Cruz's karma is a bitch.

A Quick Return Part 1

2010-09-18T15:03:00.002-04:00

note: This post was written on February 24, 2010. I am not sure why I did not post it sooner.

I never meant to take this much time off from the blog. When I wrote my the "Declared Hiatus" post I already planned on writing a recap of the February 5 Bucks/Knicks game.

For a bunch of silly reasons (chiefly I was lazy, too busy, not in the mood, doing cooler things, doing lamer things) that post never happened. For the 800th time on this blog I apologize for the delay.

I'll begin with the February 5 Milwaukee Bucks/ New York Knickerbockers epic showdown of two teams who have been largely irrelevant over the past decade. Brandon Jennings shot 8-23 for 22 points as the Bucks beat the Knicks and that's all that really needs to be said. My favorite part was a Knicks fan telling me to go back to Milwaukee, a place I have spent 24 hours of my life in, after I stood up to cheer one of Brandon's rare buckets.

I went to the other Bucks second visit to the Garden with some coworkers who scored free tickets to the Monday night match-up. This time Brandon shot 1-9 and finished with 4 points, falling 97 points short of my pregame prediction that he'd break Wilt's record.

We got to the game very early and were able to watch warm-ups from the courtside seats. I sent the following pictures with the captions below to my Argentine friend Marquitos.

Tome este foto para tu. Es el orgullo de su pais.

I took this photo for myself. It's the pride of my country.

I probably could have forced a few hundred words on watching Brandon in the Garden. I've now talked to him at Rucker Park and at the Garden. He's three years younger than me, makes about 20 millions times the money I do, other contrast, another ridiculous contrast, etc...

But if I ever get too ahead of myself and start to think Brandon and I have something in common other than the fact that we both need water and oxygen to live, I saved this tweet from his now-defunct old Twitter handle @MosTWanteTEDlilb, which read:

And that reaffirms that we don't live in the same world, we never have and we never will.

Here are other things that have happened in my life since I stopped blogging.

I am still working the same job, which I like a lot (the part about liking it has changed since Feb 24), all thing considered. I can talk about sports, use excessive profanity, bike to work and show up to work looking completely unfit for office work (I still do all of this). Those are all things I really enjoy. However I still deal with the existential problems that face every 23-year-old who works in an office and wonders how the hell am I supposed to do this for the rest of my life?

I have also came to the realization that nothing in my life will ever surpass finding Paul McPherson in Monte Hermosa, Argentina. Nothing. It was my coup de grâce. And I'm not even sure what that phrase means, but it my mind it means that everything in the world came together perfectly so I could meet a beyond-washed-up basketball player that I turned into a small idol for the 40 or so people who read my blog.

Being Justin Adler, which means many things on many different days, nothing will ever beat finding Paul McPherson while on a backpacking odyssey through Argentina shortly after I accidentally graduated college that occurred just after I dropped out of college.

One day I might get married. One day I might have kids. I might do some other shit that people routinely say is the happiest or proudest moment of their lives. But I just don't see how it will ever be a more Justin Adler moment than meeting P-Mac. I guess marriage or children would be more long-term fulfilling than meeting a shitty basketball player who does not give a fuck about you, but it probably would not get my name in the Argentine newspapers, and in the end that's what I live for.

I really feel as if I have peaked 23 years into my life and I am unsure with what I should do with the rest of it.

One way I tried to fill that void that occurs between finding Paul McPherson and death was by attending a Freeway concert.

I could go on and on about why I love Freeway, but I'm not sure anyone besides Tarny cares. In short he has a cool beard, mispronounces every single word, fell off the face of the earth for seven years between his albums, he's a Sunni Muslim, he made hajj, and in my mind he released two classic albums. He's my favorite.

What else have I been doing? Well, some days I just stare into space and wish Brandon Jennings would offer his reasoning as to why he put a comma after "hitting" in his tweet highlighted above.

At work I was in charge of hiring the interns, which was silly for many reasons. I was told to hire a bunch, so I hired a bunch. One of the interns...

(and this is where I stopped writing on Feb 24, it's probably for the better as I should not be discussing the interns in this forum, but it's also for the worse as I have a million silly intern stories that I am slowly forgetting. I hope to have more post that don't take me 7 months to publish coming soon. )

Declared Hiatus

2010-01-17T18:16:00.005-05:00

This blog has gone on many unofficial hiatuses in the past, but I am now declaring wherespmac indefinitely suspended, but not the fun kind that involves guns, felonies and over $90 million dollars being lost.

This is just the hiatus that comes from working and going out too much and being too lazy to write about. Maybe one day I'll reach an age where I'll re-read this blog and regret not writing about what happened when I was 23-years-old, but I have never been bored enough now in life where I've wanted to re-read old Justin Adler silliness, so hopefully I won't get that bored in the future.

I promise that if I ever do anything as exciting as move out of the United States again, you'll read all about it here, but in the mean time just assume I am doing awesome things and living a life much cooler than yourself, except for you Jay Rochlin, I've always thought that your day-to-day life is much cooler than my own.

Here are a few anecdotes that you may enjoy reading and I potentially might enjoy remembering in the future.

• I went to Monkey Town on Friday for a Last Chance Dance Party. Monkey Town is/was one of my favorite spots in New York. It's a nice bar/restaurant/theater that has a room with four nice couches where you can watch movies projected on all four walls. Here is a picture of it. I went there once before for a short films movie night. It was amazing. I went there on Friday for a final dance party before it close its doors for good (landlord issues).

The DJ was good. The dancing was good. My close group of friends were good. But my favorite part was watching a girl in the corner who at one point was unconscious with her friends gathered around her trying to revive her. Then seeing her awake and blowing cocaine off her friends hand two minutes after she regained consciousness. She was great.

If Monkey Town ever reopens at another location I hope that girl is still alive because she really made the party for me.

• I slightly alluded to Gilbert earlier, but as a blog that was once loosely dedicated to Agent Zero, I should probably write a few words about him and his recent controversy.

I think if anything the whole gun thing makes me like him exponentially more.

After Gilbert was officially suspended I wrote this e-mail to my friend, who was unaware of Gilbert's greatness.

He went to Arizona.
His rookie year, he was not doing well in the first half so he showered at half time in his full uniform and entered the game in the second half soaking wet.
He sponsored a professional Halo team.
He won sports blogger of the year and was the first athlete to have a hugely popular blog.
He started referring to himself as the Hibachi and only talked in the third person.
He would shoot game winning three pointers and turn around, not even watching them go in.
He once said 'I am an assassin and assassins don't have a conscious."
After a game winner he told the press "My swag was phenomenal."
He ripped off jersey and threw it in the crowd after every game
He altered his house in DC so the air was thinner, like in high altitude air, which helped him train.
He let rookies sleep at his house for their first season in the league.
He turned half his mansion into a paintball arena.
He fired his agent, became his own agent and negotiated a 110 million dollar deal.
After signing the contract he almost immediately tore his ACL and has been out for the past two years.
Because of his recent gun charge, if convicted of a felony, his contract will be void and he'll lose $90 million dollars.
The whole gun thing was over a 25k gambling debt to a shitty teammate, keep in mind that 25k to Gilbert, who was set to make just over $16 million this season, is the equivalent of $77 to someone who makes $50k a year.
He acted like he did not give a fuck and he Twittered a million jokes about the incident.
Before his last game he he fake shot all his teammates in pregame warm ups, further mocking the situation.
He was indefinitely suspended today, now I am sad.

That was all just off the top of my head, except for the numbers part, which Lang Whitaker broke down. Lang also had a good, serious piece on Gil's current situation.

The main point of the story is that when I reach Gilbert's age if I haven't voided a $110 million dollar deal over a gun charge then I have failed. Gilbert is currently 28, I'm 23 and make less then one-sixth of what Gilbert made per game with the Wizards. I have some work to do.

• I printed the picture of Gilbert shooting his teammates in pregame warm-ups and it now sits proudly on my desk wall at work as a reminder not to take anything too seriously. I also have a Knicks season schedule on my wall at work to remind me the same thing.

• Story remitted, may one day reappear.

• I went to NYC's SantaCon this year as well. There is not really much to say about it, but it was amazing. If there is ever a SantaCon in your neck of the woods, you should definitely go.

The same day as SantaCon I went to see JB Smoove (Leon from Curb Your Enthusiasm) perform at Comix. I was tired from drinking all day at SantaCon and from my birthday the night before so I accidentally fell asleep in the theater. Then I woke up and I'm pretty sure JB was making fun of me.

• The other day at work I spoke to about 20 kids from some sports-business organization from Indiana University. It was one of the silliest experiences of my life as I talked to 20 kids who were a year or three younger than myself about my job. They all took crazy notes about everything I said. It was truly bizarre. After the meeting they all came up and shook my hand and begged me for an internship, an internship that I was supposed to have three months ago.

They all acted quite gay. Two of them complimented my sneakers. The best part was that after the meeting my boss gave away his books to kids who could answer the following questions.

Who is the worst Knicks general manager ever? Answer: Isiah Thomas, an Indiana grad.

Who is the worst current New York Knick? Answer: Jarred Jeffries, also went to Indiana.

It was brilliant diss to the proud Indiana kids. One of the kids made a snide comment Jordan Hill after we dissed Jeffries. I immediately responded that Jordan Hill will one day be a first-ballot Hall of Famer because I was in a position of power and I could say anything I wanted and that was just about the dumbest thing I could think of.

• If you like basketball, you should read Chris Ballard's new book. I wrote an article about it here. If you're a hoops junkie, it's a must-read.

• For future reference the commenting on this site is now slightly moderated, just because I was getting a ton of spam comments on older posts. Please don't worry, I'll make sure to allow all witty, hateful posts from the few of you who have constantly amused me with your silly quips in the comment section.

• WPM will be back one day, in the mean time I would like to recommend the following blogs:

Gould's Cardinals Blog - Basically only for die-hard fans of the Cardinals or Gould.

Leia Ting's "Not Margie Mead" - My friend Leia's blog she started while she lives in Costa Rica for a year. Well written. It's a nicely-named blog. It's pretty interesting and Leia's a good person. Check it out.

• Finally, Paul McPherson. I really have no idea where you are. Your coach of two weeks in Argentina, gave me your agents name. After reviewing his shitty website (now updated) I called the number on the front page, which oddly was his cell phone number. He told me he wasn't really your agent, just a friend who helped you out. He was pretty boring as well, too boring to run the interview on this blog. He was representing an up and coming rapper named Boo from Chicago. I liked that part of the interview. He said he had not talked to you in a while and had no idea what you were up to.

Anyways P-Mac if you're out there. My contact information is to the right. I would still love to hear from you.

Another throw away post

2009-12-16T14:52:00.005-05:00

SLAM: Before you quit blogging about the League, you were one of the more successful and well-read writers in the hoops blogosphere. What are some of the things that led to your decision to quit the game, so to speak?

Brian Spaeth: Boredom as much as anything. I’d always considered YAYsports! NBA a comedy blog, not necessarily a basketball blog. After about a year I kinda felt I’d done everything I could with that combo of format and content.

I’d have to find it, but I wrote a post at some point when I started to get a lot of traffic that stated in no uncertain terms that one day I would get bored and quit out of nowhere. That’s exactly what happened, and then I stayed a lot longer than I should have, and it showed in the work.

Like February to maybe November 2006 is when I think the site was really killing it in terms of quality. Before that it was finding its voice. After that it was getting stale and/or I was distracted with the movie. Either way, I guess I had said all I wanted to say.

From SLAMonline

The following post like many of the recent posts is me continuing to overstay my welcome and run down this blog. Enjoy.

- I really, really need this Aaron Brooks bobblehead.

- Having been the biggest Chase Budinger fan throughout his entire collegiate experience, I could not be happier that he's now starting and routinely putting up 15 and 8 while connecting on alley-oops from Aaron Brooks.

- I also could not be happier that the Knicks #8 pick, Arizona's own Jordan Hill might be heading to the D League.

- The recent passing of Chris Henry reminded me how badly I wish Gilbert Arenas was still alive.

- Josh Pastner is one of my favorite people on earth. I was reading this NY Times article the other day at work, until I got to this line:

“You know what it is?” Pastner said, explaining his motivation. “It’s wanting not to look back and say we should have done this, we should have done that. You want to maximize your time, which doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to win a lot of games; it just means you can look back and have a peace of mind knowing you gave it your best shot.”

Then I went back to work.

- Great move by the improv comedy team, the New York Knicks, who brought back Jonathon Bender, a man who had not played professional basketball in the last decade.

- They backed up the Jonathon Bender hilarity, by announcing they'd rather play Satan over Nate Robinson, who is the default face of the team because nobody outside New York can name another current Knick.

- Finally this video of the Glove being the Glove while discussing Brandon Jennings. The end is quite poignant.

Four Minutes of Fake Thought

2009-12-10T20:25:00.004-05:00

For better or worse my life has taken a turn for the unbloggable. I have a real job. I do other shit. I don't really find much of it appropriate to blog about. Don't worry everything is still incredibly silly, but I don't think my boss would like it if had the ridiculousness was published on the internet.

Those in my inner circle get a quality g-mail every so often and the rest are left in the dark. One recent long e-mail spawned the following conversation:

Sep: This isn't wherespmac

Tar: Of course it isn't wherespmac Sep. It was entertaining, contained 5 minutes of real thought and was read by 7 people.

For the six or so of you out there, here is some quick fake thought I am jotting down in no particular order.

1. The new Clipse album. Ughh!

2. I was devastated when the Nets one their first game I really wanted them to lose a full 82. I started reading CDR's Twitter, which was hilarious because he was tweeting in suicidal manner. Everyone was writing to him as if someone died in his family.

3. Terrance Williams Twitter appears to be quite comical as well.

4. I still fucking hate Twitter and one day I will have enough time to remove the Twitter link from this blog.

5. In the mean time enjoy the Lisa Loeb video that was my last tweet.

6. I did not watch any Arizona football games this year, not even the UA/Oregon match. I have decided the only aspect of sports I care about is Brandon Jennings.

7. I loved Nate Robinson returning from injury, shooting on the wrong hoop, landing in D'Antoni's dog house and not playing any more.

8. The funnest part about living in New York is being around die-hard Knicks fans.

9. This list would be better with links.

10. This morning I received stupid change after breaking an extra dollar on a large cinnamon bun from a street vendor that should have only been $1.00 instead of the outrageous $1.25. As the street vendor handed me my change back I wished death upon him. Then I looked at my reflection in the cart window and thought abut how silly I was being for wishing death upon a man over a quarter. Then I realized he was still the asshole for over charging for a cinnamon bun, so I proceeded to wish death upon his whole family.

Then I walked by a Salvation Army bell ringer who was singing on a stereo he had hooked up. It was nice. Then I walked by another Salvation Army bell ringer who was doing the same except murdering "Feliz Navidad." That's murdering in a bad way to clarify. It was nicer. It was 8:30 in the morning and this guy was just missing every note to a classic. So I atoned for my previous mental death wishes by giving some change to the Salvation Army dude. As I poured two dimes and a nickel (I kept the quarters for myself for future laundry purposes) in the red bucket I saw the dude was rocking a first generation Zune.

Then I walked away.

11. I have completely forgotten how to tell stories.

12. There are WPM sneaks coming in the future.

13. New banner is up.

14. My main excuse for not blogging is that I have spent the past month in the park with a hippie-blanket trying to recreate Young Jeezy and Kobe Bryant poses.

Not a real post

2009-11-29T22:53:00.002-05:00

This is not so much a real post as it is me bringing attention to a great wiki page of a silly rap DJ.

And five minutes after it Sep and I noticed it, it was gone.

Props to Aziz's blog for Khaled McDonalds spot.

Sundays with Luther

2009-11-26T12:24:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday I had nothing going on and nothing to blog about so I decided to go on an adventure to church because I felt it might provide an interesting story.

I also felt church might be a good place to try out newish pair of dress shoes my roommate had given me because they no longer fit him. Aside from the need for a good story and my desire to wear some fresh hand-me-down shoes, I wanted to go to church to try out a new handshake I have been working on where I put my left hand on top of closed handshake. It's pretty powerful.

My mother is Catholic. My father is Jewish. But I chose a Lutheran church on Sunday. I lived most my life treating Lutheranism like the OKC Thunder, I don't really accept it or acknowledge its presence, but I understand it exists.

Every time I do laundry I sit on the Lutheran church's steps and read a book. Within five minute of being in the church I realized I liked better from the outside reading a book rather than sitting on the inside listening to a dull sermon. My shoes were comfortable though.

I took a pamphlet from the table in the church's entry way. I noticed the pastor's last name was "Priest," which caused the the following thoughts:

1. Why is a pastor named Priest?

2. I really hope he marries Priest Lauderdale and Lauderdale takes the pastor Priest's surname.

3. Does the Lutheran church allow their pastors to engage in gay marriages to 7'4'' NBA busts?

I spent the rest of the mass thinking about those deep thoughts and wondering when the pastor was going to acknowledge Brandon's 26 points in the previous nights win over the Grizzlies. The game was a back-to-back after Brandon dropped 29 in a Friday night win over the Bobcats.

Somehow pastor Priest ignored all that even though Brandon has a rosary tattooed around his neck.

As the mass ended I gave a lot of really good handshakes to a lot of Puerto Rican people and then promptly dipped out.

I don't bust this out often, but Lutheranism only gets 1/5 Paul McPhersons on the WPM how-cool-is-you-religion scale.

Wallpapers & links

2009-11-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

I like pretty wallpapers. I like (liked, well still kinda do, but it gets tougher every day) Allen Iverson. I stole pictures from interfacelift and SlamOnline to create the pic above (1280x800).

Then I was shown up by the Bucks official website which offered my current wallpaper.

Links:

- Miley Cyrus trying to ether Jay-Z.

- A new Lil' Wayne documentary.

- It's no FRR, but nothing ever will be.

People who work harder than me

2009-11-10T07:03:00.000-05:00

I was too busy last week and did not get around to posting this, but here is a Q&A with Jeff Leen, for Gelf Magazine that I wrote about his new book, "The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend."

Women's wrestling is not quite my cup of tea, but the book was well written and I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around the amount of research Leen did in writing the book. The book is about Mildred Burke, who as Leen describes is the "Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth of women's wrestling." She also aligned herself with her husband/manager Billy Wolfe, who beat the shit out of her, cheated on her with tens of women and in the end stole all her money. It's a pretty entertaining story if you're into that sort of thing.

Leen, a managing editor at The Washington Post, spent five years researching Burke, who reigned as the women's wrestling professional champion from the 1930s through the 1950s. Almost every hour that Leen was not working for the Post, he was dedicating to the book. He even spent his vacation driving with his wife through the route that Burke's wrestling circuit followed.

His notes on sources for the book stretch 57 pages. As a lazy blogger, this is all incredibly mind-blowing to me. I hope one day to have half the work ethic Leen has.

Here's my article with an excerpt as usual:

Jeff Leen describes the subject of his book The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend as the "Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth of women's wrestling." Yet few self-described sports fanatics could tell you whoMildred Burke is. Through extensive research into the history of women's wrestling, Leen aims to rectify that oversight, shedding light on a woman who rose from a small, Depression-stricken Midwestern town to become one of the most important wrestlers of all time—only to sink into obscurity upon her death.
Over a five-year span, Leen, a managing editor at the Washington Post, spent almost every spare minute of his time examining any form of literature that related to Burke and retracing the path of her career. The resulting biography recounts not only Burke's tale, but life during the golden age of American wrestling. It also describes the incredible amounts of physical and psychological drama that Burke brought upon herself to get the top.
Gelf spoke with Leen by phone to learn what it's like researching an obscure sports figure who passed away decades ago, and how his own Midwestern roots and 30 years as an investigative reporter helped him write The Queen of the Ring.
Continue reading...

LeBron at the Garden

2009-11-09T06:10:00.000-05:00

Since NBA schedules were released months ago, February 5th has been an important day on my calendar. It's the first time the Brandon Jennings Experience a.k.a. the Milwaukee Bucks will play in the Garden this season. Somehow the Knickerbockers' November 6th game was not on my radar, even though many would argue that a LeBron James only regular season Garden visit is more important than an unproven 20-year-old's.

Throughout all of last week I was excited for the Cavs to play the Knicks, mainly do the extremely silly hype surrounding Bron's impending free agency. Then at about 4 pm on last Thursday I had a revelation, I should really go to the game. Plus what's the point of a first paycheck if you have not already blown half of it before receiving it. I immediately texted the only one of my friends who would be able and willing to shell out the necessary funds to get decent tickets to the Knicks game. Within 12 hours I had a solid pair of tickets in my hands.

A worthless bet I made pregame: Over/under on seeing customized LeBron Knicks Jerseys at the game: 5. I bet the over. That bet really had nothing riding on it. I would end up being wrong. I only saw 3.

A loser-buys-Monday's-lunch pregame bet: If LeBron scores 55 or over, I owed my co-worker lunch. If Jordan Hill scored 10 or more points, I was owed a lunch.

This was really a stupid fucking bet on my part, seeing as how Jordan Hill was riding a 4-game DNP-CD streak after playing all of 1:45 in the Knicks' season opener. I should also note that Bron has scored over 50 in two out of three of his last trips to the Garden, against Knicks squads that were arguably better than this year's joke of a team.

Bron started the first quarter murdering everyone in site, hitting fade-away 18-footers like they were open lay-ups. He hit his first four shots, including a fading-out of bounds-as the shot clock expired-with Larry Hughes on top of him-holy fuck-three pointer. Even though the entire Cavs squad outside of Bron is terrible, the Knicks are just that much worse and were down 19 at the end of the first quarter.

After the first quarter, half the Yankees World Champion roster walked out to half-court to receive more praise. A-Rod was there, as were many other big names I don't really care about. Jeter was not. Which, as my friend asked, makes you wonder what the hell Jeter had going on that he was too cool to sit courtside at a LeBron James/Knicks game.

Bron could have easily sat the rest of the game, but somebody gave him the memo that I paid $75 to watch him and not Jamario fucking Moon, so he came back in and toyed with the Knicks for a while.

In the second quarter Mike D'Antoni lost his mind and accidentally played his #8 draft pick, Jordan Hill.

Going back to my sophomore year of college I remember sitting on my couch, in a hazy mind state where I was deciding between Frosted Flakes or a milkshake, or Frosted Flakes and a milkshake. I was also freaking out about Hassan Adams playing for the Nets after I had watched him play in the McKale Center a dozen times. It just seemed so weird to see Hassan in a uniform that did not read "Arizona" on the chest. Note: Somewhere Hassan is on his couch, stoned out of his mind probably reminiscing about the same thing.

Seeing Jordan Hill's goofy ass play for a "real NBA team" was even more bizarre than watching Hassan. It just did not look right. It barely made sense that Hill played college ball, the fact that he somehow made his way into the NBA is just too much for me. Another note: both the Nets and the Knicks do terribly poor jobs of trying to imitate a "real NBA team."

By some miracle of God, Jordan Hill was taking 15-footers and knocking them down. He hit one. Then another. Then another. Six fucking points! It was like he knew how bad I wanted that free Cosi's pesto chicken melt on Monday.

Then there was a time-out. Jordan Hill was hot, but I figured somehow Mikey D would come to his senses and realize Jordan Hill is not a real human being. But another miracle happened and Jordan Hill was able to sneak back on the floor. He missed his fourth attempt, was soon after pulled from the action and never returned to the hardwood, which sucks for him, but more importantly means I'll be eating a dry turkey sandwich from home on Monday. Fuck the Knicks.

Bron never returned to his first-quarter like-Jesus-Christ-only-better state, not that there was a need, he could have played with both hands tied behind his back and still scored on which ever Knick tried to guard him. He finished with a modest 33 in a 100-91 Cavs win.

Since this is WPM, I have to mention that Brandon Jennings and the Bucks also beat the Knicks the following night by 15. The Knicks at one point were down 36 to the Bucks, who despite everything I claim, are a terrible, terrible team. The Knicks are now 1-6 including losses to the Pacers, Bobcats, Hornets and Bucks.

Sad Gil & More

2009-11-02T20:07:00.004-05:00

Harping back to this blog's old days when I would just post anything Gilbert Arenas, mainly because it was easier to blog rather than CC-ing the same article to all of my friends. Here is this silly video of Gil.

Other things that I perhaps should've blogged about:

1. I went to a Maury Show live taping. It was incredible. One of the most incredible experiences of my life actually. I got to see two paternity test, three lie detector test and one lie detector/paternity test-double whammy.

The best part was watching Maury play to his audience. He came out and asked the crowd, "Where my boos at?" Then later on he made small talk with the crowd, "It's Friday, I can't wait to go home and drink a 40 (waits the perfect amount of time for crowd applause). I just switched from Olde English." Then he seamlessly transitioned to talking to a pregnant woman who was crying and believed her husband was banging other women on their kids' bed.

Good times all around.

2. I got a cool job.

3. I went on some fun bike rides.

4. I learned some valuable origami skills.

5. I made the pretty Fall-themed J.R. Smith banner you see above.

6. This picture:

Which is a remix of this picture:

Lines I enjoy

2009-10-31T10:38:00.005-04:00

B. Jennings G 34:16 7-16 2-5 1-2 -9 1 9 9 5 0 0 1 5 17

from MIL @ PHI 10.30.09

J. Hill 1:45 0-1 0-0 0-0 +2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

from NYK @ MIA 10.28.09

J. Hill DNP - COACH'S DECISION

from NYK @ CHA 10.30.09

"For a year or so"

from Andre Agassi

So Jennings is the proud new owner of a . . . Ford Edge. Starting MSRP: $26,900.

from JS Online... Does this mean that one day I will probably buy a Ford Edge to go along with my Under Armor sneakers and Bucks jerseys? Yes it does.

Boston and Cool Jobs

2009-10-28T12:49:00.001-04:00

Note: I wrote this post two weeks ago and just got around to publishing it. Some of the information is now dated, some is not.

Most mornings Sep and I wake up early, eat breakfast and talk about how cool it would be if we had cool jobs (for full effect drag out the o's in 'cool' and say it with a cool face). Then Sep will normally lock himself in his room and study for the LSATs, while I polish off my Frosted Flakes and spend an inordinate amount of time thumbing through a Cabela's hunting magazine that inexplicably arrives in our mailbox monthly.

Sep seems certain that a high LSAT score and subsequent fancy law degree will land him a cool job. I'm much less pro-active about my pursuit of a cool job. After breakfast I will return to my bedroom, skim through a couple of cool blogs and talk out loud to myself, "Whoa. That person has a cool job."

Recently I decided to journey to Maine to see some of my favorite people in the world not named Brandon Jennings. I decided to break up the trip to Maine with a stop in Boston, even though I had no idea where I would spend the night in Boston.

Long story short by where-am-I-going-to-rest-my-head troubles were saved by some friends I met at Vibes and because I met them at Vibes we were automatically best friends because everyone at Vibes was my best friend except the scary nitrous people, they were not my best friends.

My friend Mal met me, showed me some pretty things, took me to a cool bar where I had a hamburger with peanut butter. Then she took me to her office.

Mal has a cool job. She works at a visual effects studio in the coolest office. Even with the lights on, the office was very dimly lit and every corner was full of chotchkies; either odd chotchkies or a massive plasma TV. Most importantly her office has a milkshake making device in addition to a bar full of snacks and beer.

As I sat there destroying a Rice Krispie Treat, she put on her work's demo reel. Her company made the NBA "Where will amazing happen?" commercials. At that point I lost my mind.

After the tour and video reel, she offered me a shot of Jack Daniels from her boss's office. Normally I never drink hard liquor, but I am not retarded so I took that shot of Jack and tried to act like it was no big deal. At the end of the day Mal is just a receptionist, who has to do silly receptionist work, but it's possibly the dopest work atmosphere I have ever seen.

I asked her how she got her job. "Well I was working across the street at the Starbucks. I became friends with everyone on the block." Mal said. "The girl who was the receptionist before me asked me what I do and what I want to do in life. I told her I ballroom dance. Then she offered me an interview and I got the job."

Mal's "desk:"

This is a picture of the light's reflection in a picture of the light hanging. I liked it.

This is Jesus Christ and the United Nations building. It hangs in the bathroom.

I continued to bounce around Boston with Mal and my other Vibes friend Amber. Eventually we got back to their place and tried to watch Pineapple Express without smoking, which is like playing golf with no clubs. Either way I passed out on their couch at 10:30 at night, because that is how I roll.

Buzz Bissinger Interview

2009-10-14T08:07:00.000-04:00

This is an interview I did with Buzz Bissinger for Gelf Magazine regarding his (and Bron's) new book "Shooting Stars."

In the real world Buzz is famous for his book "Friday Night Lights," which sold over 2 million copies and spawned a movie and TV show. In the sports blogosphere Buzz is famous for screaming at Will Leitch.

Personally I did not love "Shooting Stars" and I agreed with many of the points Henry Abbott raised on TrueHoop. When I was speaking to Buzz I slightly alluded to Abbott's article and then Buzz kinda went off.

"If Henry Abbott wants to go do it, let him go do it. Instead of suggesting all sorts of rhetorical questions for which he has no answer, he can go investigate it. All he does is raise rhetorical questions, which to me is not reporting or writing, but the very antithesis of both," Buzz said. Then he proceeded to talk to compare LeBron's biography to Ted Kennedy's. He falsely assumed I had some worldly knowledge outside of basketball and began talking about Chappaquiddick. I pretended like I knew what he was talking about, then after the interview I wiki-ed the shit out of Teddy Kennedy.

In all I was very happy with the interview and the way the article came out.

Enjoy...

Like many basketball fans, I've followed LeBron James since he was a sophomore in high school. I remember the Sports Illustrated cover. I remember the SLAM cover. I remember watching his St. Vincent-St. Mary squad take on Oak Hill on ESPN. I remember listening to Dick Vitale broadcast the game and bash everyone who was profiting off LeBron and knowing damn well that Vitale was not offering his services pro bono.

As a basketball junkie, I can tell you exactly where I was when LeBron was chosen with the first pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. Having never looked at LeBron's Wikipedia entry, I could probably recite 95 percent of its content off the top of my head. So I was curious what new information I would learn from reading LeBron and Buzz Bissinger's new book, Shooting Stars. Because the book tells LeBron's life story up to the point he graduated from high school, I expected to read about him being offered shady deals worth millions and cavorting around college campuses like Jesus Shuttlesworth. But there wasn't much in the way of new or revelatory information. As Bissinger—who knows how to write a story about high school sports—explains, Shooting Stars is not meant to be an all-inclusive LeBron James autobiography. At its core, it is a simple book about five kids, with the odds stacked against them, overcoming their fair share of adversity to win a state championship or three.

I spoke with Bissinger over the phone to talk about writing a book with King James, why it's not a work of investigative journalism, and how the sports culture in Akron compares to the one in Odessa, Texas. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Continue reading...

There was one bit of idiotic Justin Adler writing that my editor wisely cut from the article to make me look more mature and respectable than I am. But since this is my blog, I'll run the goofy paragraph:

I cannot say I disliked the book; it was entertaining. It was a literary version of methadone for my heroine-like addiction to the game. And what the fuck else am I going to do in the offseason. But I am a sucker for dirty, corrupt basketball scandals and one good World-Wide Wes story would have made the book exponentially better for me.

*Stupid photo of Bron at the top of the page is courtesy of BOP VI.

Movie Ideas

2009-10-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

This morning I found myself alone standing outside the Boston sports pro shop in the TD Garden. It was 7:45 in the morning so the shop was closed and dark inside, but I stood there staring intensely through the glass at a green Eddie House jersey while Third Eye Blind's "How's it going to be" played over the radio.

I don't have any idea what that particular 3EB song is about. I could not tell you any of the lyrics aside from the chorus. But if my life is ever turned into a movie, I don't have any idea why the fuck it ever would be, me thinking about Eddie House while listening to 3EB needs to be climatic scene of the film. I think it would earn me an Oscar or at least an NAACP Image Award.

On the subject of silly films... A lot of people in New York claim they are writing screenplays or creating something along the lines of dreams that will never be fulfilled. The following is my rendition of that.

A while ago my friend Tom and I wondered if there is any medical condition which would only allow you to hear sounds in the tone of rapper/convicted sex offender Mystikal's voice. This is the inspiration for a screenplay I have been writing entirely in my head while riding the subway over the past week. It's about a slightly less retarded version of Helen Keller who grows up in a wealthy, white suburb but is unable to communicate in any form with anyone. All of the world's top researchers of "people who are slightly less retarded than Helen Keller" have zero success in helping the knock-off Helen Keller.

Then one day she hears a Keak da Sneak song, and the girl realizes Keak's voice is the only audible level she is able to understand. Everything clicks for the girl. Note: I made the executive decision to replace Mystikal with Keak da Sneak for many reasons. First Keak is not a rapist, therefore it will be more family friendly. Secondly Keak's Wikipedia entry states. "He is also notable for popularizing the style of wearing clothing from 2nd hand clothing stores with a mix of expensive 59Fifty hats and Bling." That is pretty fucking cool.

Eventually Keak and the girl who is slightly less retarded than Helen Keller formulate a strategy to solve the global energy crisis and ease all tensions in the Mideast. Additionally the duo create a time warping device that allows Justin Adler to sit courtside at the 2001 NBA Finals when Allen Iverson crosses Tyronn Lue, buries the 3, then steps over Lue.

The movie ends with Jewelz becoming the greatest rapper ever.

* If anyone wants to steal any of these ideas for anything please feel free. Just please put WPM somewhere in the credits and perhaps weave the restaurant where Tom works into the plot somehow. I'm sure there is a hole somewhere in the story it can be squeezed into.

** Half this post is what happens when I get on the subway sans music or a book to read.

Maine Rocks

2009-10-13T00:15:00.005-04:00

Today I arrived in Maine. Within an hour of being here I sent the boss from my restaurant an e-mail of resignation.

Liberated, I headed out on a bike ride to see some Fall leaves and pretty coves. On my journey I saw this kid, Robert, throwing rocks at a buoy. I decided to join the fun, but I also kept my helmet on because throwing rocks can be dangerous.

Robert and I each hit the buoy (which was a good 25 feet away) once out of hundreds of throws. It was more rewarding than I could have ever imagined.

The top two photos were shot by Robert's mother. The bottom photo was all me.

Hooligans and sneakers

2009-10-12T04:42:00.000-04:00

Again sorry for the lack of recent blogging. I have not had that many interesting stories and the ones I do are really not appropriate to publish on the internet. For better or worse, I am not in Argentina where I can run around writing recklessly about everyone I meet knowing that I will most likely never see them again in my life.

And unfortunately I have became numb to many of the interesting weirdos of NYC, that or I am just too lazy to blog about them. Most likely the latter.

There is a crazy-ass school outside my window that produces gangs of hooligans which loiter around the campus five days a week. The school is a high school, but it is not called a high school. It's called Grand Street Campus, or GSC, which I really enjoy because it reminds me of T.I.'s rap posse, P$C (Pimp $quad Click), and I enjoy anything in life I can remotely relate to hip-hop.

One day while standing on the subway platform on my way to work some of the GSC hooligans were doing hooligan-like activities on the other side of the platform. One knocked the others fitted hat into the tracks. Without hesitation the hatless hooligan jumped into the tracks. A feat I had never seen before. Everyone started freaking out. The hooligans on his side were wildin'. The hooligans on my side began screaming, "You gon' die! You gon' die!" the kid grabbed his hat, put it back on his head, then jumped out of the tracks and calmly brushed his shoulder off.

I hopped on my train and then went to work. I should also note that I am far too infatuated with GSC's logo and school colors and I am 22-year-old male hopelessly chasing after a jersey. It's kinda gay.

I thought that was a good story, but my roommate beat me in the game of "Best story of seeing someone jump in the subway tracks." His tale involved a guy wearing a Patriots jersey, who realized he was on the wrong side of the tracks (literally, not figuratively). He then hopped over both third rails made it to the other side and yelled "That's how much I fucking love the Patriots!"

Going back to GSC... Every day I walk by the school I fantasize about going in the school and volunteering to help their basketball team. I figure I might be able to help a hooligan or two, or at the very least set up an elaborate point-shaving scheme.

My roommate Sep had the same vision, sans sports betting operation, except he has actually done something and is now tutoring some under-privileged middle school kids or something of that sort. Me, I'm still in the fantasizing stage.

Going back to people in Argentina I once wrote recklessly about. My Swiss friend who I know from Buenos Aires Yakub was in NYC recently. After missing the chance to meet up with Yakub for the first few days he was in the city, we finally arranged to meet at NikeTown, per his request. Yakub is a 5'5'' Vin Diesel look-a-like, who always tells me stories about appreciating life. The kind of stories that if my friends told me, I would call them gay, but because they are coming from a Swiss Vin Diesel look-a-like, I value his stories.

He also only spoke to me in Spanish in Argentina and then while he was in the States revealed that he spoke fluent English, in addition to about 20 other languages.

I journeyed to the 5-story NikeTown, met Yakub and his friend Beth, who introduced herself like this: "Hey, I'm Beth. I work for Converse. I can get you 40% off any thing you want in here."

"Wow." I thought to myself. "That's the best introduction I have ever heard in my life."

Even though I live along or actually under the poverty line I knew I had to buy a pair of Lunaracers (see above picture). Plus in NYC it's completely acceptable to live in public housing, be on welfare and still own expensive Nikes. The fact that I was not going to buy the Nikes with government-assisted money probably does hurt my street cred a bit.

Later on in life (a whole three days later to be exact) Beth gave me a tour of Converse's design studios. It was nice. I shook the hand of the NY Times frugal traveler's wife, who works for Converse. It was memorable.

I'll have better, more coherent, possibly more cohesive stories to come...

Things I no longer do

2009-09-30T14:32:00.000-04:00

This is a very inconclusive list of things I once did in life, but I now no longer enjoy doing.

1. Watching football on Sundays - Throughout the entire NFL offseason I was extremely excited for the NFL season to start. Then it started and I have not watched one full game yet. Growing up on the west coast, I still can't figure out what time games start out here and I don't have a TV in my room, which makes spending a whole Sunday in my room watching football much harder.

After Brandon Jennings dominates the NBA and decides to take over the NFL, I will probably begin to watch the sport again.

2. Watching the show "Entourage" - Yes, I once declared that this show was my favorite thing in life. Yes, that's the gayest, most pathetic line any person can say. I apologize to my friends, family and humanity. I am happy to announce that I have missed the past three episodes and I don't plan on ever watching this show again.

3. Voting - I had to think for a second if I had voted in my life in order for it to qualify for this list of "Things I once did, but no longer do." I remember fake voting for the presidential election in second grade in a "Kids can vote" school-wide campaign. I remember writing in Abraham Lincoln because we were studying Honest Abe in class and because I somehow knew DeShawn Stevenson would become my favorite player in the NBA and that one day he would get a portrait of Abe tatted on his neck.

I also voted for real in the 2008 Democratic Primaries. I don't really regret voting in that instance, but it just was not for me.

As a goofy child, who grew up far too infatuated with rap music and black culture, I always said I would not vote for a president until I could vote for a black president. Then when the opportunity presented itself, I was in a tiny town in Argentina getting high with some local kids, trying to skateboard, eating pasta and listening to James Brown, all of which were much more important than voting.

At this point I don't see myself ever feeling compelled to vote again, especially now that I have experienced the sublime rush that comes from not voting.

4. Celebrating Thanksgiving - Like so many of us, I once had grand visions of celebrating Thanksgiving with a thugged-out basketball star in Buenos Aires. Last year I envisioned spending Thanksgiving with P-Mac at a rave, bringing home wildly under-aged girls, then giving him a high-five during the middle of some kind of insane Argentine orgy. I have never been to a rave in my life, but P-Mac, Buenos Aires, Thanksgiving and MDMA all seemed like they were meant to be together.

Then P-Mac ended up being terrible at his craft and I knew we would not be hanging out in Buenos Aires. Having to change my plans, I ended up spending the majority of last Thanksgiving on a 16-hour bus ride from Puerto Madryn to El Chaltén. On the day I ate two apples, a bag of cookies and a strawberry yogurt.

This year I plan on again skipping Thanksgiving to remember the mildly somber experience. My roommate Sep and I plan on drinking and hitting Two Bros Pizza for dollar slices. Maybe if I feel up to it I will watch an episode or six of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Paul McPherson, if you are by chance reading this, please keep in mind that you are also invited to these festivities. And if you want to make it up to me I am sure we can find a Thanksgiving day rave in NYC.

Interview with Sam'ron

2009-09-23T10:24:00.000-04:00

Here is a Sam Rubenstein article I wrote for GelfMagazine.com. I grew up reading and loving Sam's work for SLAMonline mainly because I was/still am SLAM's target demographic of young, white male who is a junkie for hoops and hip-hop. And also because Sam is a good writer. For the record wherespmac.com's target demographic is my friends who are bored in class and now my friends who have moved on to being bored at a desk job or simply unemployed and bored.

Rubenstein started at SLAM as "Sam the Intern," before evolving into "SAMonline," "Killa Sam," "Sam'ron," and eventually SLAMonline's online editor.

Then one day he found some divine light in the midst of listening to Dipset and writing Ron Artest album reviews. He decided public school teaching was for him. Long story short, he got his Master's degree, thought he was going to be a full-time teacher, got fucked by the economy and is now quasi-unemployed/ substitute teaching.

To Cliff-note the last few three paragraphs (if you are three paragraphs is too much for you, then God bless you): I think Sam is way cooler than he might actually be. He wrote for SLAM. Knows his rap music damn well. And is now trying to be a teacher.

Sam also wrote these (1, 2, 3) quality pieces if which combine basketball and trying to trick people into believing teaching can be fun.

If you live in the NYC area and also enjoy basketball, hip-hop, teaching, chess or privileged, bitter girls, come to Gelf Magazine's Non-Motivational Speaker Series this Thursday night. Sam Rubenstein, Eliot Weiss, coach of HS chess powerhouse Edward R. Murrow High School, and Hannah Friedman, author of prep school memoir "Everything Sucks" will all be speaking at the event. Here are some important event details.

Here's part of my interview with Sam Rubenstein:

Five days a week Sam Rubenstein dissected the previous night's NBA action in a Manhattan office. He immersed himself in the basketball blogosphere as he ran the website for SLAM Magazine, one of the biggest sports rags in the country. After four years at SLAM, Rubenstein decided that partying (uh…reporting) in Las Vegas for the All-Star game, attending each game of the NBA finals, and hanging out with superstars was no longer for him. He went back to school, studying towards a Master's in education at Fordham University in hopes of teaching at a New York City public school.

Then our nation's economy collapsed on itself, taking out with it, at least temporarily, Rubenstein's dream of dropping some knowledge full-time. The New York City Department of Education is currently in a hiring freeze, and Rubenstein now finds himself working as a substitute, honing his skills and waiting until the city starts employing again. (Basically, it's just like that time Ron Artest worked out while he was suspended from the NBA, except that Rubenstein can't work in his field because of a dismal economy, not because he tried to fight half of Detroit.)

Gelf caught up with Rubenstein, who is 31 and lives in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens neighborhood, 20 blocks away from his childhood home in Brooklyn Heights. In the following interview, which has been edited for clarity, Rubenstein discusses why the hell he left SLAM to teach in the NYC public school system, how his student-teaching gig compares with basketball, and his unrelenting love for all things Dipset.

continue reading article...

8 million stories minus 7,999,995

2009-09-19T10:18:00.004-04:00

I have not blogged in a while. My apologies.

Catching up...

Silly anecdotes from work:

Big Ra is still Big Ra, but recently the other half of the dish washing duo has been more entertaining. His name is Greg. After knowing Greg for a few weeks I asked him what his previous occupation was, since I am always curious why 53-year-old man is wash dishes.

His response: "I used to sell pussy in Philadelphia."

"That sounds about right," I thought to myself. Then Greg continued to talk about his days in the pussy-trading market in Philly. He attempted to justify his former job for a while, then he told me about his moment of clarity, which came while he was in the car while one of his employees was fellating a client.

Then he started talking about spirituality and I lost all interest.

Greg is a kind man though. Every Friday night he offers to take me out with the assurance that one of his lady friends will fellate me. I always politely decline because I like to spend my post-work Friday nights laying in bed watching "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." But I am sure that getting your dick sucked in Far Rockaway is just as fun.

Greg also provided my favorite quote in recent memory. While talking about taking his girlfriend, who "looks 50, but is really 60," he told me he wanted to take her to the zoo, although she wanted to go to Dave and Busters.

"You know Justin, with the right girl the zoo can be a very sexual place," Greg said with his I-used-to-be-a-pimp-so-I-still-try-to-talk-like-one voice. "I like to go to the zoo and put my mack game down."

***

Best e-mail I have received in a while:

From Facebook. Subject: Jordan Hill suggested you become a fan of Jordan Hill.

Since he insisted, I electronically confirmed my fandom.

***

Thoughts on Jeff Pearlman's blog:

On DJ Drama & Pharrell "In My Mind (The prequel) Mixtape" Pharrell says he was "hurt, stunned, astounded, amazed, dazed and confused" in reference to listening to Slick Rick as a child.

That is pretty much how I feel every time I read Pearlman's blog. I enjoy the material. It's updated frequently. And yet that all upsets me because Pearlman has a job, a wife, kids and a lot of other grown-up responsibilities and he still manages to churn out a post or two a day.

And that makes me feel like shit. Especially because Pearlman wrote the kindest words anyone has ever wrote about wherespmac. In short, every time I read Pearlman's blog I get mad at myself for not writing more and then usually I'll do something else instead of write and this cycle will repeat itself with every new post on his blog.

***

The coolest woman alive:

My friend Seppy sent me this article about the coolest woman alive. It's worth a read.

***

Your token Dipset post:

Last night in between parties my friends and I stopped at the corner bodega to purchase more beer. It was 12-something and for whatever reason the store had gone from open doors to make-you-purchase-through-bullet-proof-box mode. It was myself, my friends, and some other people.

This one guy was playing Juelz Santana on his phone. After 30 seconds he began to sing along, not one to pass up a cypher I joined in. Then he yelled, "He knows the words!" and sprinted away in amazement. He ran a full block away and then returned. We exchanged pleasantries and daps.

For some reason he had to have my phone number. At this point it made sense for me to get his. It just seemed like the courteous thing to do. So now we exchanged numbers, but now I barely remember his name... Jacqwon or something along those lines.

I asked my friend where I go from here and he quipped back, "I guess you buy weed from him."

I have no real reason to call this guy (by the way many "no homo"s were uttered during our conversation), but maybe next weekend I will and I'll party with Jacqwon. Who knows, maybe I'll end up in Far Rockaway running into Greg and his lady friends.

Things I enjoy

2009-09-09T14:28:00.000-04:00

"Things I enjoy" may or may not become a series on WPM. If it does become a series, expect each post to be about a rap lyric. However for it to become a series I would have to update this blog regularly, and we all know that probably won't happen.

This is something I enjoy:

The opening to Cam'ron's "We Make Change" off his album Killa Season.

Cam begins the track singing "People lie/ I don't know why/ and then they die/ and mothers cry/ and I can't find my alibi/ it's so so fly/ it's Dipset! Dipset!"

I enjoy that part, yes, but not nearly as much as the conversatoin between Cam and Lil' Ja that follows.

Cam'ron: What up Ja?

Lil Ja: Whattup

Cam: What's the deal?

Ja: Nuttin. Cam you can't be feedin' n*ggas

An iquisitive Cam: Why not?

Ja: 'Cause they don't appreciate shit... Guess they gonna learn when the get in the car (Cam'ron adlibs a "Killa!") start it up and boom (the "boom" echoes out until Cam starts rapping)

I enjoy this for the following reasons:

Outside of having Phillip Garrido for a father, I can't imagine weirder childhood than being raised in the Dipset family.

Lil Ja cannot be much older than six and he is featured on Cam's Killa Season discussing murder. The fact that Cam felt the need to adlib on top of the conversation and then add an echo effect a six year old talking about plotting a murder is... well it's a lot to take in.

I could over analyze this for days, but the jokes would only get progressively less funny than they already are.

After some quick Googling I learned Lil Ja is short for Ja'Quaye, who is Juelz Santana's little nephew. He's also featured in Juelz's "There it go" video. If you want to lose all hope for society and at the same time feel extremely creepy for looking at a six year old's MySpace, go to myspace.com/datniggaliljah.

A knowledgeable Haitian

2009-09-06T09:37:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I was playing tour guide to my friend who was visiting New York City. It was his first time in the city and whenever I am showing somebody the city I like to stretch the truth a little bit.

When we walked to ground zero I told him that he just missed out. "If you would have came here last week, you could have seen the Twin Towers, but they just took them down for an episode of 'Entourage.' It was something about their shadow messing up a shot of Vince."

Then we sat on some steps of a building just east of the WTC site for some heavy thinking. And so my friend could call a stripper he is kinda in love with. I personally do not like strippers, although I am sure some are good people, but my friend loves strippers. Not in the silly, ironic way I love Cameron Giles, but he genuinely loves strippers. To each their own.

Then as I sat on the steps pondering how I could tie Turtle into my poor Twin Towers joke and still be respectful of the thousands who lost their lives, my train of thought was broken by a security guard.

"Hey is that a River Plate jersey?" he asked in reference to the Boca Juniors jersey I wore.

"No, it's a Boca jersey," I responded.

"(laughs) I know I was just giving you a hard time," he said, before offering an unsolicited history lesson on soccer in Buenos Aires.

"Are you from Argentina?" I asked, knowing damn well he was not from Argentina and that he was probably from Haiti.

"No, I'm from Haiti, but I'm just a big soccer fan," he said.

"Cool," I said before shaking his hand and wishing him a good day.

Then he continued to yell at people who were trying to take pictures of the WTC site over the fence that surrounds the construction zone. I'm not sure what good that does, since there hundreds of other ways to get pictures of the construction site. But I am glad to know that a cool Haitian guy who is so knowledgeable on Argentine soccer is doing his part to prevent future terrorism.

And that was my day two weeks ago. Maybe I will catch up on other silly, worthless anecdotes I have not blogged about another day.

note: the photo above is not the nice security guard, but someone who came up on a Google image search of 'Haiti'

Christmas Ape Interview

2009-09-03T13:04:00.003-04:00

At one point in my life I thought Christmas Ape a.k.a. Michael Tunison was cool. He blogged for Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber, both sites I enjoy. His story about getting fired from the Washington Post for his KSK work was fairly entertaining. I also tend to enjoy all things Christmas.

Then my editor from Gelf Magazine asked me if I wanted to read Tunison's new book and interview him for the site.

I jumped at the opportunity and was eager to read the book and talk the man behind the ape (no bestiality).

On the subway nobody can appreciate my downloading skills as I bump an album two weeks before it comes out. Plus this is no big deal as every other car in Brooklyn is already blasting The Blueprint 3, which comes out Sept. 11. But I felt pretty cool reading my advance copy of The Football Fan's Manifesto, a full month before it was released.

However, by about page 30 I realized it was easily the worst book I had read in my life.

I began folding the book over on itself to prevent fellow staphangers from seeing the scum I was reading on my daily commute.

I struggled through the whole book, which only got worse page after page. After I finished I was upset with myself for having wasted so much time. But then I realized that I probably would have wasted my on Deadspin or KSK, so my time is essentially worthless.

I suppose the silver lining to the book is that it granted me the epiphany to use my time better, unfortunately I don't think I have practiced that concept much in the two weeks that have passed since I finished the book.

I was also in full major "Fuck Christmas Ape" mode after I finished the book. I had no desire to talk to the guy. So I waited seven days, cooled down, then shot him some questions via e-mail.

To my dismay his responses were enjoyable and rather comical. To my further dismay my introduction and questions are littered with profanity I told myself I would not use after reading his book which was 312 pages of mindless, profane banter that most seventh-graders would find immature.

All that being said, come to Gelf Magazine's Varsity Letters Speaker Series tonight in DUMBO Brooklyn. It's free, there's beer, you can listen to some interesting people talk. Maybe Christmas Ape will fall on his face.

Finally, here is my interview with Christmas Ape.

Atop the cover of Michael Tunison's The Football Fan's Manifesto is a blurb from Will Leitch reading, "If you think football is the only thing that matters on earth, this is your book."

Leitch might be understating it. "If you live and die for football and don't give a fuck about anything else in life" would give potential readers a better idea of the type of book they are getting into.

Michael Tunison, aka Christmas Ape of Kissing Suzy Kolber, has penned a manifesto providing readers with a metric system for the football IQ of your girlfriend, an in-depth analysis of which drugs can enhance game day, and countless points of etiquette for playing fantasy football and Madden NFL. Tunison also breaks down every other aspect of life that can be remotely linked to gridiron fandom.

If you enjoy the high-minded vulgarity of KSK and would trade your soul for a Lombardi trophy, you'll love The Football Fan's Manifesto. If you don't own at least 10 pieces of your team's paraphernalia and you aren't comfortable telling greedy team owners to "choke on our dicks," then you probably should find another book, and stay far away from the KSK comment section while you're at it.

In the following email interview, edited for clarity, Gelf Magazine's resident Arizona Cardinals fan attempts to psychoanalyze everyone's favorite holiday-themed, sports-blogging primate via, and to once again tell him to "fuck off" for being a Steelers fan.

Read the rest of the article at Gelf Magazine

09-10 Hoops Preview

2009-08-28T00:14:00.009-04:00

I know college basketball does not start for a couple of months, but consider this my 2009-2010 college basketball preview. Also I hope you realized that my last post was the 2009-2010 women's college basketball preview.

I hope Arizona does well.

I hope Oregon does well.

I hope Lance Stephenson makes Brooklyn and Cincy proud and picks up at least 3 felonies by the time conference play starts.

The only other person I really care about is Louisville's Peyton Siva. I first saw Peyton play in an AAU tournament after his sophomore year of high school. He was a flashy, score-first point guard who wore the number 3. I was sold. I talked to him a couple times for meaningless interviews, but unfortunately he was too young to be a hilarious asshole yet (not everyone is blessed with the Marbury gene).

I saw him play again after his junior year and by this time he had several tats including "GOD'S GIFT" on his inner biceps. He also reps Seattle hard.

I rarely use Twitter, but because I can't fall asleep before 1 I found myself killing time on my Twitter homepage. I forgot I followed peytonsiva3, but I am glad I do because of his brilliants tweets like this:

I want to meet Obama. He like the coolest person. No homo
6:04 PM Aug 24th from TwitterFon

Another reason to root for Peyton is that he looks just like the dude from V for Vendetta.

Once again it's on

2009-08-26T22:00:00.007-04:00

I used to claim that I started this blog to hone my writing, practice journalism and some other bullshit that I have since forgotten. Having unofficially given up on transitions, cohesive paragraphs and anything else that would moderately resemble legitimate writing, I present a post of trill stuff I did in Philadelphia.

- I have lived in New York for a couple months and I have never seen a celebrity on the streets. The first time I was in Philly within 24 hours I saw Jim Cramer. On my most recent trip, within 2 hours I ran into Danny Bonaduce. If you want to bump shoulders with A-listers and mega-celebrities, Philly is for you.

- My friend/Philly ambassador Tarny and I went to the Philadelphia Mint to see blue-collar Philadelphians do the US government minimum wage's worth of work just to make a dime. It was mildly exciting. I learned that the Philly Mint alone makes 6 billion pennies a year, which seems like a giant waste in every way imaginable.

- Every time I go to Philly I get a cheesesteak, enjoy a Rita's water ice, listen to a lot of State Property, see famous celebrities, and convert a lot of money to weird state quarters in the dope coin-converting machines Philly is famous for. Last time I was there I got some Guam jumpoffs, this time I got some American Samoas.

- I toured Tarny's dad's frozen-food warehouse, which has a dope roof that overlooks the city. I recommended Tar build a basketball court atop the roof to which Tar responded, "I would never do that because I would be too afraid my best friend would fall off trying to touch the top of the backboard. Then I would not be able to sleep at night and I'd spend the rest of my life working as a security guard at a local high school."

- The warehouse currently has a 60'x100' American flag painted on the side, which is cool, but not half as trill as the massive Iverson Reebok advertisements that once covered the wall. If I could go back to any time in history it would be living in Philly for AI's glory years.

-It goes without saying that Tar and I listened to Freeway's Flipside about 2o times.

- I rehearsed meeting Tarny's D1-hooping sister Rosie with her cardboard cut-out.

- Then I met the real deal, ate some cheesesteaks, and asked her a million questions about playing in Mac Court.

- We then bounced to the mall, found some Mike Vick tees and copped 3 purr. Didn't have to think twice. Done deal.

- The mall also had a jewelry shop selling a huge I-95 medallion. A Mike Vick tee and a I-95 pendant, this mall had everything I could ever ask for. Unfortunately these cz's were a monochromatic grey bling, unlike Joey Crack's multicolored pendant. The sales representative noticed my interest and asked if I wanted it. I told him that I needed the I-10 jumpoff. Which I did not know was a real thing until I saw K-Town wearing his.

- I'm overlooking the whole point behind wearing huge interstate inspired pendants is to make it known to anyone with 50 feet of you that you have moved cocaine along the I-95. A feat I have yet to accomplish and probably won't accomplish any time soon.

Linkstigating

2009-08-18T13:40:00.000-04:00

As many of you know I am a huge Lang Whitaker fan. I have read his writing at SLAM since I was a freshman in high school and he's pretty much the reason (for better or worse) I studied journalism and wanted to be a writer.

I met with Lang two weeks ago to get some advice the writing industry and life. As an added bonus he bought me a great lobster melt from Cosi's that I will forever be grateful for. In short, Lang was a really good guy and he was quite helpful.

Lang was kind enough to run my notes from last Wednesday's Entertainers Basketball Classic in last Friday's "Links."

Below are some additional notes from last Wednesday that I did not e-mail to Lang.

************

-- After watching the first 15 minutes of the USA/Mexico game at work I ran across town to catch the second half at Nevada Smiths. Luckily I was one of the first 10 in a line at least 30 deep that got access to the bar for the second half. Sure I could have gone down the block, paid less for a beer and had a seat to watch the game, but the atmosphere would have not even been close.

-- I proudly ordered a Bud Light, blissfully ignoring the fact that the European company InBev owns Anheuser Busch. It was still a statement drink against all the Mexicans in the bar with their bottles of Corona.

-- The United States lost 2-1 and every USA-backer was forced to walk out of the bar to Mexico supporters chanting "¡Olé, Olé, Olé!"

-- Normally I'm a big Mexico fan, having grown up in the Southwest and picked up all my Spanish from Mexicans, but I left the bar furious and ready to join the Minute Men.

-- I bumped Shyne's first album on my Zune to fuel my rage, but it actually relieved my tension to be reminded that Shyne will be a free man on October 6th. I pray every day he post a "housing-wanted" ad on Craigslist and moves into my apartment.

-- I then hopped on the train uptown to catch the Entertainer's Basketball Classic semi-finals at Rucker Park.

......

Read the rest of my notes midway through this Links column.

**I'd also like to publicly hate on Gould for failing to edit my notes before I sent them to Lang. As a result there is a line that reads: "Even though it was a great guy that went down to the wire, Brandon Jennings did not look up once from his Sidekick."

It should read: "Even though it was a great game that went down to the wire, Brandon Jennings did not look up once from his Sidekick." Thank you Gould for making my man-crush on Brandon Jennings look even gayer than it already is.

Brandon Jennings and such

2009-08-18T12:27:00.004-04:00

Because I feel some odd moral obligation to reblog everything Brandon Jennings. Here is his new Under Armor commercial, which even I will admit is incredibly retarded. I don't get the odd, fake-dunk sequences nor do I like the cheesy rap music that randomly begins playing.

I got this picture e-mailed to me from wherespmac-reader Brian. It's now my favorite picture of all time. Brandon to photographer: "Make it look as if I am talking to God, but at the same time make it understood that I am more important than God."

Props to Nathanial Butler/Getty/NBAE for the pic.

----------
In college I never really understood the role of teacher's assistants. I still really have no clue what they did. But I do know that my friend Tyler and I would have never had "Summer Heights High" years before it aired in America if it weren't for one of Tyler's pseudo-teachers telling him about the show during my junior year.

Furthermore I would have never known about Diggable Planets collaborating with Tide laundry detergent to make this commercial if it were not for my former TA linking to the advertisement on Facebook.

And just to prove that I will buy anything rappers sell, I bought the coldwater detergent. And because it was on sale at Target.

Jersey talk

2009-08-18T11:57:00.005-04:00

This is a couple years old in internet time, but this is my favorite promotion in the history of sports. The Nets' "10 gets you 10!" promo pack gives 8 games (10 if you count match-ups against the Knicks and Clippers) and 5 of the greatest reversible jerseys of all time.

I'm a pretty big NBA fan, which means I watched almost every playoff game and waited in line for 6 hours to get tickets to the NBA Draft. But I still had no idea who #22 on the Nets was. According to their roster (oddly sponsored by Haier) it's Jarvis Hayes, who averaged 8.7 points for the Nets last year. He's also now my favorite Net since his jersey is one half of the Lebron James jersey included in the package.

There are also these new Portland jerseys which are amazing and hideous at the same time. They are right behind Brandon Jennings' 3 Milwaukee jerseys on my list of "Authentic jerseys I talk about buying every day but will never actually buy."

Conversations with Big Ra

2009-08-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

Since I know most people now read this blog solely for a Big Ra anecdote, here it is. Big Ra told me Stack Bundles was his nephew. Big Ra is 36, Stack died when he was 24. I'm not quite sure how Big Ra is Stack's uncle, but there are a lot of things I don't understand in life.

While researching Mr. Bundles, I learned he only has a wiki entry in Deutch. And that is very reason many argue the European Union is ahead of us.

According his wiki (which I cheated and translated with Google), Juelz Santana, Jim Jones, Maino, Lupe Fiasco, Joe Budden and DJ Clue all attended his funeral. If each and everyone of those people are not at my funeral, then my whole life was a failure.

Gelfness

2009-08-12T06:00:00.001-04:00

I kinda work/write for Gelf Magazine now. It's a dope online magazine that covers everything.

I interviewed Shawn Boburg for the magazine. Boburg writes for The Record in New Jersey and co-wrote "Becoming Manny" a biography on Manny Ramirez. The book was good, nothing great, but it was solid and I know know a lot about Manny's life pre-asterisk.

I interviewed Boburg in Washington Heights, Manny's residence between the Dominican Republic and Cleveland. It's where Manny grew up sharing a two bedroom apartment with his mom and two sisters and later where he shattered every record at George Washington High School. To my understanding GW is the Lincoln High School of baseball.

Boburg is a good guy and nice writer. Manny seems like a crazy dude and is a pretty good baseball player. But the real star of the book was Macaco, Manny's mentor, and arguably the trillest dude on earth.

Macaco is a good 30 years older than Manny, he was raised in the DR, then moved to Washington Heights where he helped found a baseball league and at one point coached six teams at once. He became Manny's mentor from early on and still is close with Manny. Since he has lived in the States, Macaco worked the graveyard shift in the local hospital. He still lives with his mother and niece in subsidized housing in Washington Heights. He's never asked Manny, who has roughly 94 zillion dollars, for a dime.

He sleeps a couple hours a day and spends the rest of his time hanging out at Peligro Sports, a baseball shop two blocks away from Manny's childhood home. Macaco is not an actual employee but he is always in the shop advising kids on what cleats and mitts to buy. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that if your glove breaks, Macaco will fix it for free.

With his royalties from the book, Macaco bought baseball gear to give out to the kids back in the DR.

I met Macaco in Peligro Sports when I was with Boburg and he was the coolest dude ever. A short old Latino guy, leathered skin, wearing some baggy jeans, a white tee with a blue Dodgers fitted resting atop his head.

Read my interview with Boburg here.

Also Gelf hosts a speaker series every Thursday night in DUMBO Brooklyn. If you live in the area come check it out. If you don't live here you can watch videos from the event online. My favorites of the events I have been to: New York Times writer Bruce Weber and Brooklyn Brewmaster Garrett Oliver.

Nice places

2009-08-11T22:32:00.000-04:00

The person who buys this condo wins the game of life. That simple. Thanks to the New York Times for the article and pictures. Thanks to Sep for the link as he reads the Times much more thoroughly than I.

The condo is in my favorite part of the city, DUMBO, where my favorite eatery, Front Street Pizza, and my favorite park, Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, are located. If anyone buys this for me I'll give you control of wherespmac.com, the rest of my Google account and I'll throw in a few pairs of sneakers.

Art: Part II

2009-08-11T13:41:00.006-04:00

I needed some art to accompany the Willy Northpole promo poster on my walls. Unfortunately I did not have a uterus I could wrecklessly abuse, so my artistic options were severely limited.

Somehow I was able to expand my mind out of the hackneyed fetus-killing spectrum, and I decided to roll with an project I started a year ago. Back in the good ol' days I lived in Buenos Aires as a blissful 21-year-old without a care or responsibility in the world. Each day I would wake up, and look out my window to the gorgeous urban backdrop de mi barrio de Palermo. All was right in the world.

I should note that my life now is not that much different. I'm a year older. My neighborhood's dominant language is Puerto Rican Spanish instead of Argentine Castellano. I have very few responsibilities. I have a nice room with a nice window. However, now I spend most days freaking out about what the hell I am doing in life and why I have the same shitty job I had when I was a senior in high school. I am going to defer all blame for my unhappiness not on my own mind, which I could change easily, but on the American rat-race lifestyle. ¡Qué quilombo!

Back to the art talk. So I had a grip of photos from my Palermo window, all like the one above, except time-lapsed over three months. I was going to put them all together and blow minds in the process.

I printed all the pictures using Winkflash, which cost me 99 cents because Winkflash is dope. I built a base for the pictures out of wooden bed slats my roommate found on the street. I put it all together over a week because I was lazy. 42 pictures (queer art symbolism: Jackie Robinson) affixed by 84 small nails (queer art symbolism: Tip Drill 84).

Done deal. Final product.

Only problem. It looked better sans pictures.

So I kept the pictures on for a week, until I could not stand the artistic disaster any more. Then it hit me. Fuck all that remembering-the-greatest-time-of-your-life-in-Buenos-Aires stuff, why not just put a funny picture of Greg Oden on the boards? And since I happened to have my Greg Oden 8x10 I bought at the NBA store for 99 cents, I threw it on there and everyone lived happily ever after.

*****
While I am on the subject of home improvements (Jeezy ad-lib: Tim Taylor). I am going to post the work I did on my floor. My bedroom floor was messed up because the previous tenants were wastes of life who should have been part of Ms. Shvartz's art project (Jeezy ad-lib: aborted).

I wanted to support the local ma-and-pa store, but they did not have what I was looking for (Jeezy ad-lib: like that U2 song). So I decided to go Home Depot, which I actually prefer to a ma-and-pa store because I like thinking that my purchase puts money directly into Mike Vick's pockets (Jeezy ad-lib: Arthur Blank). And I really like Mike Vick. Plus my dad worked on Arthur Blank's house, so by shopping at Home Depot I am indirectly putting money in my own pa's pockets.

Before:

After:

I ended up only using an ounce of the $30-gallon of finish the schmuck at Home Depot said I would need (Jeezy ad-lib: I'm gonna return that shit). Sorry Mr. Blank, my dad and Mike Vick.

A buck twenty

2009-08-10T00:46:00.007-04:00

Art: Part II will come, and surely disappoint, in due time. In the mean time I felt compelled to show some love to my boy Patrick Kane. In that sense "my boy" means "favorite player on a team I barely support of a league I barely follow" and "love" means "exploit the hilarity of his recent arrest."

Now I have a new reason to be a Patrick Kane fan. This incredible off-season police blotter.

The 20-year-old Chicago Blackhawks star and his cousin, James Kane, were arrested early Sunday morning after an alleged incident involving a cab driver in Patrick's home town of Buffalo.

A report in the Buffalo News said the Kanes paid for a $13.80 cab ride with $15 around 5 a.m. The cab driver claimed he didn't have the coins to give them the full $1.20 in change. The driver alleges that the Kanes then took the $15 back, punched the cab driver in the face, grabbed his throat and broke his glasses, according to police.

I really respect Kane for going above and beyond the trite star-athlete-gets-a-DUI story, which would have been too easy for Kane since he's under 21. Let's just all pray this was premeditated. For the record Kane makes $875,000 a year before bonuses and sponsorships.

Thanks for Seppy for sending me the original link.

Art: Part I

2009-08-06T00:21:00.007-04:00

It's not ideal, but I have a silly restaurant job again. I hate working in the restaurant industry and I would prefer a job where I use my brain and possibly my college degree. But it pays the bills and it was the location for the following story.

I was forcing small talk with my coworker today who is 23 years old and has a lame mustache. He asked me what I do. This is an appropriate question because if you have white skin and work in a restaurant in New York City there is a 99 percent chance you are an "actor" or "musician," using both of those terms loosely. If your skin is not white and you work in a restaurant in NYC there is a 90 percent chance you are an "actor" or "musician" and an 8 percent chance you are working in this country illegally while being paid under the table.

I told him I am not sure what the hell I am doing in life and I guess that's why I am back in this silly industry. He told me he is musician, came to NYC in a band, they broke up, he still plays guitar, etc. He lives with his girlfriend, who is an performance artist. He told me his girlfriend was getting paid to get her performance artist graduate degree from New York University.

"Is she having any luck finding gigs?" I asked.

"No, she's a performance artist, not an actress, she does not do theater," he responded.

"What does she do?"

"For example a performance artist will sit in a museum and starve herself for seven days. That's not what my girlfriend does though. My girlfriend is actually kinda famous."

"Cool. What is something she has actually done?"

"Don't tell anybody in the restaurant this. I don't want people to know. Her last project was having nine abortions." (note: What I wrote above was the extent of our small talk, excluding the standard 'Where are you from?' 'Did you go to school?' I do not have a clue why he felt he could confide his secrets with me.)

"Wow," I said with the same deadpan expression I use whenever anybody says anything that ridiculous. "So you got her pregnant nine times?"

"No this was before we were dating," he calmly replied, acting as if nine abortions were the equivalent of twisting your ankle. "Her senior thesis was that she would get pregnant and then purposely take medicine that would make her miscarry."

"Oh, cool man," I said. Then I decided that was enough for today and I found an excuse to walk away.

I thought about his ridiculous story for a while. I'm not wildly pro-life or pro-choice, but I am pretty sure nine abortions is crossing some line.

I didn't tell anybody at work except for my friend Big Ra, the dishwasher, who happens to be the only person I really talk to at work.

In Arizona all the dishwashers were Mexican and spoke little, if any, English. I understood this as most of them were living in the country illegally and with a heavy communication barrier, washing dishes was the best job many of them could get.

I have no idea why able-bodied, English-speaking African-Americans wash all the dishes in my current restaurant. I keep waiting and hoping for them to make an ass out of me and tell me the entire history of BMW a la Jamal Wallace.

"Nine abortions! I ain't never heard of anything like that. Man that pussy must be tow' tha fuck up," Big Ra said.

"It's gotta be," I responded, withholding my it's-not-your-fault-but-society's-fault-for-raising-you-in-centralized-poverty-with-an-terrible-education-system-that-never-gave-you-a-fair-chance diatribe for yet another day.

I walked out of work thinking that perhaps my abortion-freak-dating co-worker was just an incredible bullshitter with a sense of humor far more deranged than even my own. Maybe the kid was just as bored as me, fabricated the grossest story of all time and laughed at me the whole night for actually believing it.

I got home. Googled "nine abortion performance art." The motherfucker was telling the truth.

Classic, shoulda went triple

2009-08-01T23:47:00.001-04:00

My little brother Cameron aka "Ninny" was in the city last week and while we were walking around Allah blessed us with the gift that keeps on giving, Willy Northpole promo posters. The above picture is Cameron in front of a building hyping Arizona's greatest rapper while mean-mugging the camera. Not that Willy needs much hyping as his first album almost went platinum in its first week, and by "almost" I mean it sold 2,496 copies.

Below is a picture of me mean-mugging and repping Phoenix in front of the shrine to a lesser known artist.

Then we took the posters to their target audience, the guests of the Waldorf Astoria. As you can see in the pic I had to cover Willy's face because 50th Street and Park Avenue is the type of place where people will seriously fuck you up for a Willy Northpole promo poster that you ripped off a wall in Harlem.

Ninny also took these dope pictures.

Me mid-Diddy-bop.

This guy painting.

A green car (I took this one).

A helicopter (This is a Ninny masterpiece).

Vibes

2009-07-29T19:02:00.000-04:00

I went to my first jam band festival, Gathering of the Vibes, over the weekend. Here are some notes I was able to mentally recover.

- I woke up at 7:00 a.m. Friday morning to catch an early train to Bridgeport, Connecticut, the site of the festival. I was upset to be up so early, but then I realized I was heading to hippie festival for a day of drinking, live music and other sorts of good vibes and not like my roommates who were up at 7 to go to work.

- Even though I had never heard of any of the bands playing in Friday's line-up except for George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic and the fact that I am not really into jamband music; I was dying to go to Vibes for the following reasons:

1. I am a fake hippie.

2. My friend Aaron is a seasoned veteran in the music festival game. There is nothing in the world Aaron loves more than Phish. I hope to one day find something I love half as much as Aaron loves Phish. I was hoping that by going to Vibes I would find some divine light.

3. Aaron's girlfriend once told me, "Music festivals are the last place on earth where people act as they should." I needed to understand this for myself.

4. One of my favorite professors attended the Summer of Love back in '67. In my mind Vibes is as close as I would get to any Summer of Love/Woodstock atmosphere, minus the urge for social/political change and plus the addition of chemically-evolved drugs.

- I made it to the venue, bought my ticket and left society. After walking around for 10 minutes I realized this is the closest I ever wanted to becoming homeless. I joined my friends (who were much, much, much harder than I and were camping there for all four days, for their fourth straight year) in their campsite and began to enjoy myself.

- I walked around trying to take in a population that was 60 percent donning Deadhead tees and tie-dyed shirts/40 percent not wearing a shirt.

- I think it was just the atmosphere that brought it of me, but my frisbee game has never been so on point as it was at Vibes.

- There are a lot of zombies at Vibes who just walk around as close to legally dead as you can be. My friend assured me that the night would be much more intense.

- I sat inside a tent deeply contemplating life for quite a while. I was then trying to justify shattering my budget to attend this ludicrous jamband festival I really had no place being at. I then said to myself, "Well, you're only in college once."

- Some five minutes later I realized I graduated college over a year ago and I was sad.

- Some time later I fell asleep on a chair, walked inside a tent and resumed my nap on a cot. I woke up drenched in sweat, wildly dehydrated, pretty sure I was going to pass out and die. The most frustrating part of this whole experience was realizing it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

**I found this picture on Facebook four days later**

- I drank bottle after bottle of water and tried to reassure myself that everything was going to be alright. There was also a Bob Marley song playing in the background that confirmed this message.

- Eventually I decided I was capable of moving and leaving the only people I knew at the festival (some would argue that everyone knows everybody there). I tried to go to my own happy place so I sat on the rocks near the disgusting beach of the Long Island Sound and I listened to Rick Ross on my Zune and thought about Natalie Sitto.

- I ran into one guy running around frantically asking everyone who was Ponch's sidekick on "CHiPs" as if his life depended on the answer. I was born three years after "CHiPs" went off the air, but I thought long and hard about it and answered "Erik Estrada," a name I only know because Hov has been doing this since CHiPs was out, baggin' up at the Ramada watching Erik Estrada, with a table full of powder. It turns out Estrada was Ponch and I did not have the right answer. His search continued.

- Later on I was ready for round 2. I danced my ass off to a bunch of goofy jam bands and had a great time. George Clinton and P-Funk were dope (no pun intended). At one point George brought out his 'granddaughter' who rapped for about 15 minutes on how much she loved weed.

- Then the mayor of Bridgeport introduced Bridgeport's own Deep Banana Blackout. Everyone loved them, but I don't think I got their message.

- Then Moe. came on. My friend Aaron was adamant about me seeing Moe. so I expected a lot, but unfortunately I did not find them any different than Deep Banana Blackout.

- If you stand out at Vibes it means you are messed up to a point of no return. One guy who was that messed up almost got in a fight with another man. The two were face to face about to start throwing blows, but then after a bunch of screaming and death threats the two, hugged eachother and each said, "I love you." Only at Vibes.

- There were people there from all ages from 1-80. I made a mental note to thank my mother for never bringing me to a jamband festival when I was a child. Still, God bless parents who let their six year olds run along with the crazies.

- The whole time I was wearing a goofy hat slanted to the left a la R. Kelly in the "Fiesta Remix" video. I'm not sure how many people at Vibes picked that up.

- Eventually I re-passed out in the front seat of my friends Ford Ranger. There is really nothing like falling asleep to the sweet sound of hissing nitrous tanks, the occasional pop of a balloon and the good ol' nitrous-induced fight.

- I woke up the next morning at 7:15. Promptly gathered by belongings and hopped out of the car to find the exit and get the fuck back home. The morning scene at vibes looked like Omaha Beach on D-Day, except instead of lifeless bodies laying among blown-off limbs, they laid among thousands of deflated balloons. Those who were still moving looked like they had been through war and a good amount of them probably had been.

- When my friend made it back after his four-day exodus, he told me somebody died there. I was not surprised. I was surprised to learn that the person was murdered, having all four limbs broke and their face burned off.

-This is my new favorite picture ever.

Qs and Z-Bos and lists

2009-07-20T17:08:00.000-04:00

A few nights ago I remember spending that period of semi-consciousness between masturbation and sleep researching the Z-Bo/Q-Rich trade that sent Q-Rich back to the Clippers. I'm not sure why this crossed my mind at that particular time, but I remember falling asleep very worried that Alex Acker would not come off the #3 (I don't even know who the fuck Alex Acker is but he is listed on the Clips roster wearing the #3).

I never thought about Q returning to LA again until today when Q-Rich was traded for the third time! this summer for my boy Bassy and some white dudes (I'm not sure who Craig Smith is, but he sounds white).

This is why I like Q-Rich so much:

0. The retard-alien head-bop celebration

1. He played at DePaul with Paul McPherson

2. He is a local Chicago dude

3. His dad drove the L Train even after Q-Rich made the NBA

4. Both his brothers were shot and killed within a two-year span (I'm not sure why this is a reason I like Q, but I find it interesting)

5. He was engaged to Brandy

6. At some point he stopped being engaged to Brandy

7. I once witnessed this exchange:

Q-Rich to his son: "Show Uncle D. Miles what you do after you score"

Q-Rich's son: does retard-alien head-bop

D-Miles and Brandy: faces light up with sincere pride

8. He is a Jordan Brand athlete

This is why I like Sebastian Telfair:

1. He's Steph's cousin

2. He's from Coney Island

3. The movie "Through the Fire"

4. He got caught trying to carry a gun on an airplane in a pillow

5. He was bringing his own pillow with him

6. It was later rumored that he was carrying the gun because he was afraid of his own teammate Zach Randolph

7. This SLAM cover

I'm really happy that somehow this summer Q-Rich, Bassy and Z-Bo were all involved in trades for each other. And I really hope Q-Rich is traded three more times before the season starts and I hope at least one of the teams involved is an Arena Football League team.

By the way next time you see Tarny congratulate him on obtaining his WA license plate (below) that just so happens to be blessed with ZBO and the amount of strippers Z-Bo tried to rape while in Portland. Congrats Tar, we're all so proud of you.

Other things I am interested in:

- For no reason at all I am way too happy about Demar Derozan playing for the Raptors. Maybe it's because it was my dream to grow up in the CPT, get paid a lot of money and bang a lot of girls while playing for USC and then play in a really trill market.

- This Melo wallpaper is too sick. Click to enlarge below.

- I love that whatever Griffin not named Blake the Suns drafted in the second round is now wearing #32.

- I was really, really, really, really hoping Ron Artest would have chose #8 when he signed to the Lakers.

- Still not sure why my boy Channing Frye is gonna rock #8 for the Suns. 44 is retired for Westphal, but 45 is open and I coulda swore 8 was retired for DJ Strawberry.

PR Engineering

2009-07-20T00:10:00.000-04:00

Monday and Tuesday

2009-07-14T10:23:00.000-04:00

For the life of an unemployed recent college grad who decided it would be smart to move to the world's eighth most expensive city during our nation's worst economic crisis to date, Monday was about as good as it gets.

Like any other day I woke up before nine, just to give myself a feeling that something might get done before 11. Even though I really had nothing to do besides apply for jobs, it makes me feel slightly better about myself to not sleep in past 10 a.m.

At around noon I decided I'd had enough or perusing Craigslist and waiting for Deadspin to update so I decided to hit the streets.

I explored the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Shop, which was quite fascinating. Then made it Premium Goods, which is a just silly streetwear store, but I finally got an answer as to who designed the "Brooklyn" logo that's on 9 million tees and hats in the city. The answer, or so I was told: Vinnie's Styles.

Then I journeyed through Red Hook to Ikea carrying a 24-inch steel rod from Lowes in my backpack Zelda style in case anyone wanted war. The steel rod was for a ceiling fan that my roommates and I bought a month ago, which we may or may not ever get around to actually installing.

I also stumbled upon this store selling this nasty jersey:

After a long trek I finally made it to the promised land and bought two $0.50 hot dogs. While consuming the dogs I listened to an amazing Fresh Air show with Charles Siebert, where he discussed his book The Wauchula Woods Accord. The book is about a chimpanzee retirement center where famous chimps who are trained for movies and television hang out after their carreers end. Listening to Siebert and Terry Gross discuss "humanzees" while eating two hot dogs was probably the highlight of my week and arguably month.

After touring Ikea I bought two more hot dogs and an icecream cone, then caught the free Ikea water taxi out of my way to Manhattan. But the ride was rather enjoyable.

Yesterday I did absolutely nothing besides draft half this blog and play two hours of basketball in the park. But my team did win twice and I threw one of the sickest passes in my life, so I felt like I kinda accomplished something.

------------------------

Basketball things:

In case you actually have a job and/or life and have not been following NBA summer league way too closely here is what you need to know:

Brandon Jennings second game stats: 23 points, 8 assists, 5 steals.

Brandon Jennings third game stats: 13 points, 14 assists, 7 steals.

The Bucks are 3-0.

There is also this new Jennings highlight real of old footage.

Not that you should give a fuck but Chase Budinger dropped 25 in his second game. Fuck him.

Former Duck Maarty "Six a's short of Raaaaaaaandy" Leunen is on the Rockets roster even if his last name is spelt wrong on his jersey.

Even though T-Mac is now helping Darfur can we still hate him? Of course because T-Mac is still a bitch who never made the second round of the playoffs. /hate

Too much

2009-07-11T22:07:00.000-04:00

This new banner weirds me out and makes me feel uncomfortable. I hope it does not stay up for very long.

Blog marked up

2009-07-10T18:12:00.000-04:00

Normally when I post a bunch of pictures the general reaction of my friends is "that was pretty gay," except in a more hateful tone. The only person who has ever said anything nice about my photos was the man who helped me find P-Mac, Marquitos, who told me they were "Buenas fotos." But for all I know that could have been Argentine sarcasm that I did not pick up.

Below are some photos, some are mine, some are not.

This is a photo from Hewes stop at the JM line. It was pouring rain and I was soaking wet, which made a 5-hour bus ride to Boston that much worse, but I liked this picture.

This photo was stolen from the open casting call for Phoenix-MC Willy Northpole's "Body Marked Up" music video. I thought for a minute on how I could describe such an incredible tattoo, but the comment below the picture on MySpace said it best, "Damb dat shit is fukn tite..." Indeed.

I've said this about others before, but Willy Northpole is the greatest human ever. Aside from DMX on rollerskates, Willy is the only person who can make me homesick. Even though my current city may have had a little to do with hip-hop and the local guys ain't too bad either, but they don't strike that same chord that Willy does. When Willy says "Arizona stand the fuck up" and rhymes about putting a du-rag on a cactus, it just means so much.

Since Fake Rick Reilly and Brandon Jennings are Twitter casualties, Willy Northpole is currently my favorite tweeter, with 140-character gems like:

YO NIGGAS HAVE YOU EVER HAD SEX WITH A GIRL AND SHE START CRYING THINKING ABOUT SOMETHN AINT THAT THE WORSE SHIT i just keep going lol

I LET ALOT CHICKS GO THAT a fuck nigga would probably marry.. with me shit just gotta be right fuck looks i mean she has to be cute but ...

SO IF YOU HAD THE NUMBER CHICK IN THE ASS WAIST, FINE BREADED UP OPRAH STATUS BUT SHE HAD ONE TITTY LOL ill hold that titty with pride!lol

No I have not listened to all of Willy's new cd and I probably never will, it's just that good.

This is a photo I took off my roof of some weird clouds.

This is an old photo from SLAM that makes me hate LeBron James.

This is where I spent the 4th of July. Rhode Island is the truth.

Some nice views.

I don't really drink hard liquor, but it was essential to the picture.

Flipside views

This photo makes me love Melo, but hate myself for having all this time on my hands and still not watching every episode of The Wire.

Pray IV Rain

2009-07-10T17:50:00.000-04:00

So yeah, maybe my most recent post wasn't my best work. It's tough put out decent posts when I sit around far too much wanting the world to end in a cool 2012 kind of way*. I figure a good Apocalypse would solve a lot of my problems, which really aren't even that big of problems by any means.

I don't have any terminal illness, the weather has been nice and I don't live in the nearby housing projects. I suppose I really can't complain. But it's still tough not having any conceivable cause to wake up in the morning.

At least I have Phoenix's finest, Willy Northpole's Twitter to enlighten me with tweets such as:

FOR SOME REASON WEN I BUST i want to chick to leave even if im in her house....lol
31 minutes ago from web

ILL CHAT WIT A STRIPPER that has normal convo but the ones that flirt too hard can kill themselves..
about 23 hours ago from web

Also this video of Pacman Jones, Jermaine Dupri and Nelly in da club from the Las Vegas NBA All-Star weekend might be the greatest thing ever. Props to the dude doing the no-look-over-the-shoulder-make-it-rain-move. Very impressive.

Today while on my never-ending quest to find any sort of employment I stumbled upon the store selling the Steve McNair probowl jersey. This time I felt the motivation to walk in and I learned they had seven! authentic McNair probowl jerseys. Do I think that the inappropriate WPM commenter/McNair-killer Sahel Kazemi's father owns the Brooklyn sporting goods shop and wanted to increase the value of his McNair probowl jersey caché so he had his daughter kill McNair and then kill herself as to not make his NFL jersey business boom look cheesy which could have potentially hurt his sales? Absolutely.

Was that the longest run-on sentence ever? Absolutely.

Finally since no WPM post is complete with out a token Brandon Jennings note. I think we should all get behind the Milwaukee Bucks' marketing department's plan to put Jennings on the 10-dollar bill instead of Alexander Hamilton, who was never even friends with Joe Budden.

Some questions: Also why was Jennings not given proper credit for claiming he's better than Rubio and every American is better than Rubio, who was too scared to play in the NBA (OK he just really hates Minnesota)? Is Brandon Jennings the most patriotic person ever? Is it too early to rename the fourth of July "Brandon Jennings Day?" Should we cut the 50 stars on the flag down to 3 (this was Tarny's idea)?

*I would also be cool with aliens taking over the world if it means I don't have to worry about getting a job and working for the rest of my life.

What up dun?!

2009-07-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

For the 520th time I apologize for the inconsistency in my updating of this blog. There has not been too much excitement since the draft day/sad day 2009. I now just hang out a lot more and some times I'll take long walks to Queensbridge to sit on a bench that Ron Artest or Nasir Jones may have sat on. Then I'll spend an hour or so wondering what number Ron Ron will wear for the Lakers.

That was yesterday.

Then today goofy pictures of Tru Warier rocking #37 came out. I can't find an official source, but Wikipedia claims Ron is wearing #37 in honor of Michael Jackson, whose album "Thriller" was No. 1 on the charts for 37 straight weeks.

That might confirm that it really is Ron Artest who sings this amazing Michael Jackson tribute song. The only reason I personally think Ron made this song is because no other human on earth would be capable of producing something like this.

And just to educate those who do not know:

Ron wore #15 at St. Johns and with the Chicago Bulls. After being traded to Indiana, Ron switched from #15 to #23 to honor Michael Jordan, then to #91 to honor Dennis Rodman. Before he left Indiana Ron's plan was to switch his number every year to honor a Bull from their championship run this included rocking #25 for Steve Kerr and #9 for Ron Harper. Ron's plan was to honor a rival team within the Pacers' conference.

Then he wore #93 in Sacramento only because it correlated with his then shoe-endorser K1X's campaign "93 to infinity." Ron was the only player signed to the German-based sportswear company and their campaign was based off the classic Souls of Mischief one-hit wonder.

Then Ron switched to #96 in Houston only because the #96 kinda looks like "qb."

Other important shit I've not written about:

- Not having much to do I have been checking the Milwaukee Bucks official site every to find out when I can think about spending money I don't have on a Brandon Jennings jersey I would never wear. It's still not for sale, but today they started showing ads confirming he will wear #3. And that was the highlight of today.

- No there is not a filthier backcourt than Brandon and Salim Stoudamire.

- I love that Brian Cook's agent is sending out his wedding photo to Jeff Pearlman.

- I meant to only keep that silly J.R. Smith WPM banner while Denver was in the playoffs, but I got lazy and I can't think of any other banner I like more than that one. Sadly WPM's current banner is in jail, probably working on his 45-foot three-pointer in the prison yard.

- Speaking of people going to jail... Here is a picture of Cambridge Steve's final days a free man in Harlem.

- Cambridge Steve is not actually in jail, nor has he even been in jail, despite the fact that he probably wants to go to jail just to hang out with his favorite rapper (hold you head up Prodigy). He actually moved back to Cambridge, something Jesse Jackson forgot to mention when he was giving his sad speech about Michael Jackson in front of the Apollo Theater.

Ain't nothing but a college person

2009-06-29T15:24:00.000-04:00

This is too good not to post. Credit to The Baseline for posting this and for my friend Andy for having it in my inbox before I woke up.

Jumpoff!

Partially transcribed below:

---------------------------

On next season in Milwaukee ...

Budden: You better worry about Ramon Sessions, diggin' in your a**, pause. Jennings: He's not going to be here. [inaudible] That money is going to Charlie. Budden: N****, Ramon Sessions is gonna be there. Jennings: I doubt it. Budden: They ain't go no other guards. Jennings: Ridnour. Budden: N****, get that bum-a** n**** outta here. Jennings: He's going to be a backup. Budden: To who? Jennings: To who? Who else n****?

On what happened on draft night ...

Budden: Who was hatin' on you? Jennings: Jay Bilas. Budden: What happened? You ran in the draft late or some dumb s*** like a loser? Jennings: No, I was at the hotel. This is what happened right. My agent is like "Well, we ain't hear nothing .We ain't have no guarantee." So we makin' phone calls and s*** and n***** is saying like "The workouts is great and everything and he's the best point guard but we don't know yet, we just don't know." Budden: They didn't say that about Rick Rubio, number one, and number two they didn't say you the best point guard. They said your jump shot is shaky, you got some potential, but your work ethic is bull****. You averaged 3 points. Jennings: You're a liar. I know you're lying now. Budden: I'm just telling you what they said. Jennings: That ain't nothing but a college person. Budden: Just tell me what happened. You end up running in the draft? I tunred it off after that. Jennings: No, n****, I came out there and made my appearance n**** and I had the best appearance out of all them n******. And I was the best dressed, they said, by the way. I was the best dressed.

On whether he'll start next season ...

Budden: You think you gonna start for real though? Jennings: I don't know, actually, I really don't know. Budden: I heard that n**** Scott Skiles is an a**h***. Jennings: That n**** tough, that n**** tough though. There must be a reason he liked me. There must be a reason.

On Ricky Rubio and the Knicks ...

Budden: Let me know when Minnesota get there. So I can watch Rubio light your f****** a** up. I never seen a n**** hate on Rubio so much. Jennings: [inaudible] Budden: You know what's funny? You're the only guard in the draft talking s*** about Rubio. Jennings: The other n***** are scared. Budden: What are you going to do when Rubio comes to the Knicks? Jennings: Rubio is not coming, they are not giving up Rubio. You got Jordan Hill, you happy with that? Budden: I don't really know enough about Jordan Hill to be happy ... I'm happy with Toney Douglas. Jennings: I know they were booing this n****. Budden: What does that mean? They boo everybody n****. Jennings: If it was Stpehen Curry, them n***** would've went crazy in there. Budden: Shut the f*** up, you don't even know nothing about New York basketball. Jennings: F*** the Knicks, them n***** skipped out on me. Budden: Oh man, you feel to the Knicks like I do about Jay-Z? [Laughs] Yo, the Knicks is your Jay-Z? Jennings: F*** the Knicks, them n***** is always going to be weak. Budden: This is where I f****** hang up on your f****** ass for talking stupid. Jennings: Duhon ain't gonna get it done.

Draft Day/Sad Day 2009

2009-06-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

Here is the 2009 WPM NBA Draft review:

• After a ridiculously long middle-of-the-night commute, I arrived at the Garden just before 6 a.m. I was unsure how early I should arrive before the tickets went on sale at 11 a.m., so I figured showing up a good five hours early would be playing it safe. I had been looking forward to attending the draft ever since I thought about moving to NYC, so I was set on doing whatever it took to attend the draft.

• There were already a good 40 people in front of me, including one kid rocking an authentic DKV Joventut Ricky jersey.

• I have never once had a nightmare where I walked naked into a public setting, but showing up to the NBA draft without a jersey was like living that nightmare for five hours. I have never felt so naked and I will never forgive myself for not bringing my D. Miles Cleveland Jersey to NYC. It would have killed.

• It was rather serene to be on the streets at such an early hour. Except there was a homeless guy 10 feet away from the line who was either rehearsing his soliloquy of Billy Madison speaking gibberish or he was just stung the fuck out. He went on for a good 30 minutes incoherently yelling at a light pole. I respected his dedication to his craft.

• There was a white guy rocking an Iguodala Sixers jersey backwards, which I believe means he's a Sixers fan in distress. Where as if you are a black guy wearing a jersey backwards it means you are Nelly in the "Tip Drill" video.

• Other dope jerseys I saw in the line: A Warriors Spree jersey, An NYC Spree jersey (I can't tell you how much I hate Gallinari fake Spree jerseys), a NYC Jamal Crawford jersey, about 500 Patrick Ewing jerseys, a dirty Bobcats warm-up jersey, and a dirtier Spanish national team Ricky jersey.

• There is a banner that hangs inside the Garden's entrance that commemorate The Liberty's (NYC's WNBA team) first home game, in which they defeated the Mercury (Phoenix's WNBA team). That one still hurts.

• I still don't understand what color the Mercury wore in their inaugural season.

• The five-hour wait was saved by a nice camping chair, a good book and a bag of pretzels. I was also entertained by the kids in front of me who spent two hours passing a notepad back and forth writing their own mock draft. It was pretty solid as every pick ended with the phrase "via trade."

• I was also allowed ample time to contemplate the absurdity of the situation. Fans will pay thousands of dollars to watch a guy throw a ball into a metal rim, hit a ball with stick of wood or any other sport you want to break down to the simplest level. But I am calling in sick to work and waiting in line for over five hours to watch kids the age of my younger brother walk across a stage and shake an old Jewish dude's hand.

• Guys from the Knicks PR street team began passing out Knicks towels and postcards encouraging fans to buy season tickets. Since there currently is no real face of the Knicks, the card had a picture from inside the Garden of the Knicks playing the Nets with the scoreboard showing the Knicks down 65-52.

• Eventually after more than five hours of waiting, which involved a fair amount of anxiety that I would not even be able to buy tickets, I got the golden ticket (15 bucks and in 6 rows deep in he highest section of the theater) and I went home to take a victory nap.

• I was awoken once from my slumber by a call from work, which I promptly ignored. Ten minutes later work called again. This time I picked up thinking they would have some trivial question to ask me. I was wrong. They called to tell me I was fired. After ending the call I began to lose my mind quite a bit. How could they do this to me on my special day and less importantly how could they do this to me on Brandon Jennings' special day.

Actually Brandon Jennings was completely removed from my mind as I began pacing back and forth in the hallway trying to calm myself down and not dwell on the shittiness of unemployment of the past and present.

Granted it was a lame office job that I hated and the pay was comically low, but it was still an income none the less. And it was a blatant attempt to try to destroy a day I had been looking forward to for years.

• I carried on with my day and returned to the Garden an hour before the draft. I sold my extra ticket for $30, which paid for my ticket and netted me an extra 15 bones, almost making up for the lost job. I tried to get a lot more for the ticket, but the market just was not there and another scalper eloquently put it, "This draft is dead, n***** don't wanna see this shit."

• Then my friend told me Michael Jackson died. More sadness.

• Finally I got in the WaMu Theater and 30 minutes later Mr. Stern took the mic and the draft began.

• 1 - The only thing worth noting from the No. 1 pick was that I did not know Tricky Ricky was on the Clippers. The same Ricky Davis who once tried to cheat his way to a triple double.

• 2 - There was a guy wearing a black Griz Darko jersey which was trill enough as it is. But he went the extra mile and safety-pinned a paper reading "Thabeet" on the back over Milicic.

• 3 - I'm actually a big James Harden fan even though I refuse to accept the Thunder (who get nastier by the minute) as a real team. His was also killing it with his suit.

• 4 - I'd guess that we are only 30 days away from learning that Tyreke never even took his SATs to get into Memphis.

• 5 - The Wolves had no choice but to pick Rubio here, even if he refuses to play for Minny.

• 6 - I was really hoping the Wolves would pick Brandon just so they could have the two in same backcourt, but they did something just as silly and picked Jonny Flynn.

• 7- When the Warriors stole Stephen Curry off the board I would describe the atmosphere inside the theater as somewhere between 9/11 and Michael Jackson's death. Word to Ochocinco.

• 8 - I think Stern just finished enunciating the J in Jordan Hill's name when Knicks fans began to boo. I booed with them because why the fuck not? When asked what I thought about Hill by a Knicks fan, I told him that Hill was a dumber A'm'ar'e Stoudemire, if that is possible. Side note: I sat in the Suns war room for the 2006 NBA Draft. I still have the official media guide which lists the top 300 players eligible for the 2006 Draft. That media guide does not include Renaldo Balkman, who the Knicks chose with their 20th pick in the '06 Draft. Few can fuck up drafts like the Knicks.

• 9 - Including Demar Derozan, I have seen 6 of the first 13 picks play in person, in case you were curious.

• 10 - Brandon Jennings. Finally the moment I have been waiting my entire life for. And he is not in the fucking building. Can this day get any fucking worse. I waited five hours in line just to say I was there when Brandon was drafted and see some ridiculous Italian suit and the motherfucker does not even show up. I am seriously depressed at this point.

• 11 through 13 - Don't matter. I sit alone in the Theater and want to cry. I plan on waiting for the Suns to fuck up the 14th pick and then bounce.

• 14 - "With the 14th pick in the 2009 NBA Draft the Phoenix Suns select Earl Clark from the University of Louisville, Clark is not in attendance tonight. (Pause) But... The Milwaukee Bucks' pick Brandon Jennings is now here," Stern declares. And like a little kid on Christmas my eyes light up and a big smile returns to my face. Brandon awkwardly comes out from behind the stage and blows kisses to the crowd and then gives a belated handshake to the Commish.

• Then the No. 13 pick Tyler Hansbrough exits through aisle next to the lunatic fans I am sitting with. Most other players receive warm cheers and high fives as they exit, but not Hansbrough. Everyone boos Psycho T as he walks by. The kid next to me, who was no bigger than me (5'9," 145) gets within 8 inches of Hansbrough's face and screams "Faggot!" at Hansbrough (6'9," 250). Many others join in and begin to loudly question his sexuality. Then one kid, appropriately enough wearing a Knicks Starbury jersey, knocks Hansbrough's draft cap off his head. He is quickly apprehended by security and escorted out of the building to chants of "MVP!" and we all offer him high fives in support of his bold act of bravery.

Brandon Jennings quickly follows and I give him a high five. Sure I don't have a job, paying rent is going to be a struggle soon and Brandon Jennings, 3 years my younger, just secured himself a contract for a couple more million on top of the $2 million he earned in Italy; but for that second all seemed right in the world.

• For the record I don't know shit about Earl Clark and I don't really care. Also when Hansbrough was drafted one fan behind me began chanting "Austin Croshere!" unfortunately nobody picked up on it.

• I was excited for the Suns to bomb the upcoming season with hopes of getting John Wall next year... Until Gould reminded me that the Suns gave away their 2010 first-round unprotected pick along with Kurt Thomas for a conditional second round pick. Enjoy that top five pick next year OKC.

• I later bumped into Bruce Pascoe, gotta respect your local Tucson beat writers.

• I bounced around the theater some more and ran into the Jennings clan. I saw a skinny kid in a nice suit with the Bucks draft cap. I yelled Brandon at him twice until I realized it was a his little brother Terrence, who if you don't know is the coolest kid in the universe and you would expect far too cool to remember meeting me multiple times before.

• A group of fans waved an Israeli flag and celebrated when Israel-born Omri Casspi was selected. Later I saw a guy wearing a shirt reading "Palestine Spyders," I would have like to see his reaction to Casspi's selection.

• The remaining fans began chanting "Jeff Van Gundy" until the former Knicks coach and current ESPN announcer acknowledged them, to which they responded with cheers. They repeated the process with Mark Jackson. And they began chanting "Bilas sucks!" God bless draft fans.

• I finally saw one of my journalism heroes Lang Whitaker in the flesh. I shouted "Hey Lang!" at him and he turned around from the media section. I told him I was a long-time Linkstigator and he gave me solid finger point of respect. If you guys understood how long and how much I have read of Lang's work you would understand how amazing that is.

• I was really, really upset that I did not run into the Stephen A. Smith Heckling Society of Gentlemen. That guy is one of my personal heroes, but on a lesser scale than Lang Whitaker.

• I stayed for the first few picks of the second round just to see the NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver, who was greeted to chants of "We want Russ," in reference to Russ Granik, the former Deputy Commissioner, who announced the second round until 2006. I hope you all can appreciate how insanely hardcore these fans were.

• I left the draft in a decent mood, still a little messed up over losing my job. But if I learned anything on the day, it's that going to the draft is not about having a good time. For New Yorkers its about having your GM pick a brain-dead, raw power-forward in hopes that he will compliment a superstar you probably won't be able to sign in 2010; and leaving the theater furious as a result. And for the rest of us, it's seeing one young kid after another make more money in a night than most of us will ever see in a lifetime.

• Here are some pics I took on the day:

Young Money now a Buck.

Hansbrough before he was de-capped.

This lady was quite bizarre.

Uhhhhhhh.

Ordinary people

2009-06-22T23:25:00.000-04:00

This is a story I have been meaning to run for a while and it has a lot of footnotes.

While I was moving my suitcases from my previous stripper/coke apartment to my current stoner/disgusting (that is in the past now) apartment I noticed a treadmill on the street that had a sign reading "Take me, I work."

Jackpot. I have no idea what a real winter is like, but I have been told you cannot go outside, so a treadmill seemed like a nice device to have. I tried to move it 300 feet to my previous apartment by myself, but I could not because the wheels were broke and it was too heavy.

Because I am delusional and I thought someone would take my precious find within 60 seconds, I ran back into my apartment to try to get my neighbor Kenny¹ to help me out. I burst into their apartment² and Kenny was nowhere to be found. His roommate Kayvene³ sat in one of the rooms with Rhonda⁴.

"Kenny's not here?!" I asked.

"No," Kayvene replied.

"Fuck."

"What do you need?"

"Nothing. Don't worry about it, enjoy yourself," I said sacrificing my treadmill so Kayvene could finish his date or whatever the fuck was going on.

Then Rhonda asked if I remembered Lauren⁵ from the other night and told me Lauren wanted my number. She asked me a million questions that I did not have time for. I was very short with her and I told her to have the girl call me if she wants.

I then ran downstairs because my roommates would be of no help⁶ and returned to the sight of my treadmill, which was still there because it was unmovable and because only three minutes had elapsed.

I was determined so I dragged the beast along the sidewalk, carving small half-circles into the cement with every two feet of progress. After I struggled for a bit, Moses⁷ came out of nowhere and helped me carry the treadmill inside my building.

The next day, my current roommate Grant⁸ came by to help me lug the treadmill to our current place. We decided it would be smart to make sure it worked first before we carried it five blocks. Fortunately Gretchen⁹ was outside with an extension cord hanging to the ground from her third floor window.

We plugged it in and it worked. I can now say that it feels really cool to run on a treadmill outside on a busy street.

After a long back-breaking walk, we made it back to our place with the treadmill.

Three weeks later: Lauren never called me and nobody has used the treadmill.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Kenny, 21, moved to NYC with much less than I did. He had never been here before he moved here two months ago. He now walks dogs to pay his rent.

2. Their apartment was big, but except they had next to no furniture. In one common room they had a corner table which held a laptop. The other common area they had three mismatched chairs and a small table. One bedroom had a bed and the other had a sleeping bag and a Guatemalan flag. Nobody in their apartment was Guatemalan.

3. I have no idea how to spell this guy's name. He is a 29-year-old Irish architect whose name is pronounced KAY-veen. He's a very nice guy.

4. I met Rhonda at a party at their place. I referenced her in an earlier blog as a female I was going after until I learned she had a 10-year-old son. She took me to a crazy art jamfest/rave once. It was very bizarre.

5. I met Lauren at the crazy art jamfest/rave. She appeared to be on an incredible amount of drugs. When I first met her, she laughed uncontrollably and asked if I was from Pennsylvania.

6. My old roommates were rarely awake between the hours of 11 am and 9 pm.

7. Moses is a Latino dude with a weird mullet, who always wears a bright orange Nascar t-shirt. He claimed to be the super of a nearby building, but I think he might be homeless. A very, very nice guy though.

8. Grant is a good dude.

9. Gretchen was my neighbor who was always sitting outside, drinking a beer and working on her screenplay. She attended the University of Oregon. She had hairy legs and lived with her partner, who I never met.

Weeks in Review

2009-06-22T21:30:00.000-04:00

Here is a bunch of shit that happened in the last few weeks:

• I moved out of my second one-month sublet in as many months in Brooklyn. That sublet was a much nicer set-up than my first, but it still had its quirks. My roommates stayed up every night until 10 a.m., to which I figured they must be using some kind of performance-enhancing drugs if they are going to play that game.

However they kept their habits well hidden until one Monday morning when I woke up to use the bathroom and I saw my roommate cutting up lines at 8:30 in the morning. I judged them for a second and then realized that I was in a shitty mood waking up for a shitty job and they were much happier and therefore winning the game of life... Until I came home that evening and they were still passed out on the couch sleeping in a room that was littered with beer cans and cigarette butts.

The other minor issue with the place was that I was renting a room from a stripper. I did not know this when I signed up, but there were a few subtle hints that gave me a this-broad-might-be-a-stripper premonition. For starters she had the thin-from-cocaine build that is the quintessential stripper body until the stretchmarks and heroine tracks come into play. Also there was a stripper pole in the hallway. Eventually in a roundabout way I received confirmation that she was a stripper, which did not bother me too much but changed my perception of the furnished room.

The cheap Ikea couch I sat on. Paid for by picking up singles off the floor. The fish tank and fish I fed every day. Paid for by a couple gross lap dances. The desk and computer chair I worked on. Bought with money pulled out of her g-string. The bed I slept on. A nice gift from her loving parents completely clean of any STDs or AIDS, or at least that's what I told myself.

• I then moved into fixer-upper apartment, which took a lot of fixing-upping. It was uninhabitable by humans when we first moved in on Monday, June 1st. Then on Wednesday June 3rd, a group of Mexican painters lead by a man named Mendez began to start painting the entire place. This is roughly how the following time went down:

6/4 - Hail Mendez as the second coming of LeBron James for his hard work ethic and dramatic improvements to our basement. I declare that Mendez gave me more hope than Obama.
6/5 - Still down with Mendez and his boys. We learn they are in a mariachi band and we plan on hiring them for our first party.
6/7 - Grow tired of coming home every day and seeing his crew smoking and drinking in our house. We also stop calling Mendez "Sam" because we learn his name is Aquiles not "Sam." We realize we were confusing him with the director of American Beauty.
6/8 - Still plan on hiring their band, but only if they give us the two stereos they stole from us back.
6/10 - We become sick of the non-stop Spanish music, their presence and they fucking stole from us. And I hadn't got a good night's sleep in a week now.
6/11 - They eventually finish and our house looks 100 times better than it did. We never got the stereos back, but we negotiated a lot of free work in exchange.

On the last day I stopped giving a fuck and starting drinking and talking them. I learned that one of the workers was recently in Phoenix, except in a different capacity than my time there. He lived in a drop-house bedroom with no food or lights for 5 days before getting a ride to LA, then a ride to Chicago and eventually ending up in Brooklyn where his cousin lived. It was one of those moments that shut me the fuck up, as I was his worries involved staying in the States, providing enough money for his wife back in Mexico and eventually getting her across the border without her getting raped 20 times.

• However within 48 hours I was bitching about my easy-ass job. I sit at a nice desk all day doing next to nothing. My coworkers are nice, albeit mad boring, and I can sit there all day checking my e-mail and sneaking Deadspin. I don't have to worry about being deported or providing for my wife, but it still drives me crazy and half the time I sit there thinking about how I can move and support myself in a Latin country.

• I went to Philadelphia. It was fun. My friend Dustin took this picture of me which I like because I am wearing a football jersey of a country that I have never been to and I am putting A-town down although I have never been to Atlanta.

Dustin and I also saw Jim Cramer while in line for Geno's. We said hello to him and then he got in the back seat of an RX330 and left. As he sat in the back seat, I blankly stared at him thinking, "Wow. I have watched your show countless times on mute as I used the elliptical machine at the gym." Then he waved at me and I awkwardly waved back. Boo-ya.

• This does not have shit to do with anything and I normally hate collegehumor, but this is too good: Every week on Entourage.

• Also does not have shit to do with anything, but it's very important: Willy Northpole honored by Phoenix.

Maybe tomorrow

2009-06-21T22:50:00.000-04:00

So making the transition from full-time blogger to part-time blogger has been rougher than I expected. I swear to Allah that tomorrow I'll turn a million G-Mailed notes to myself into real blogs. In the mean time try to appreciate the greatness of Brandon Jennings' Twitter.

@Korchagin write in English.1:40 PM Jun 20th from Sidekick
Eating, Chili's. Bommmmmmmmb!4:19 PM Jun 20th from Sidekick
@yackogallagher my bad some of that stufff wasn't meant too you.2:16 PM Jun 19th from Sidekick

@univerzee I don't listen too things like that.6:40 AM Jun 19th from Sidekick
@mousebudden can you beat me in 1on1 in basketball. And you sit Indiana style and smoke a cig when you hooping, you weak yo.11:17 PM Jun 18th from Sidekick
That last tweet is at Joe Budden, which is all sorts of amazing.

Excuses

2009-06-14T23:20:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posting. I have been busy with the following:

- Working 45+ hours a week.

- Cleaning/Fixing up my new apartment which was a complete mess.

- Entertaining visting family that I had not seen in three months.

- Pretending to be Puerto Rican and celebrating Puerto Rican Day.

- Pretending to be African-American and going to the opening day of the E.B.C.

Once I get closer to finishing my apartment, which includes getting a bed (something I've been without for the past 2 weeks), and I find some free time, I'll throw down a grip of blogs I have been saving up.

Until then read some WPM praise from a guy who has two kids, a wife, a mortage and still finds time to update his blog almost every day. And thank you again to Jeff Pearlman for the kind words, I promise that soon enough I'll turn this back into a regularly updated blog worth reading.

Champ sings

2009-05-29T19:25:00.000-04:00

• Last Tuesday night I was walking home and I received a text from the manager who fired me from my lame restaurant job. The text was about some trivial part of work, to which I responded with, "Do you even remember firing me?"

He did not answer my question so I shot him another text asking why I could not get a response from him. The next morning I had an e-mail in my inbox from him.

The e-mail was addressed to me and my general manager (a shitty manager as well, but a good person), the subject of the e-mail read, "I obviously need to address a serious problem, so sorry." The body of the e-mail was left blank.

I immediately gold-starred the e-mail and then thought for a minute as to what the appropriate return e-mail should be. Is his serious problem his drinking, which caused him to start firing employees in the middle of the restaurant and ultimately lost him his job? Or was the serious problem his inability to compose an e-mail with text in the body of the e-mail.

• Dealing with the worst realtors in New York City has been rather interesting. I think it has something to do with the fact that my friends and I have been looking for housing that falls just above the public housing price range.

The first time my friends and I saw our new apartment, the exchange with the realtor went as follows:

Schedule to meet Steve the Realtor at 2:00 on a Thursday.

Steve shows up at 2:20, walks us to the door of the apartment. He then knocks 20 times to see if anyone is home before declaring, "Don't worry these guys are cool, I buy weed off them all the time."

Steve finally finds the keys to the place and begins showing off the dirtiest stoner pad I have ever seen. There was at least a 5-1 ratio of bongs to tenants and because of this 3 of the 5 bedrooms were still occupied by passed out tenants. Again this was 2:30 in the afternoon on a Thursday.

We would eventually come back to the place at a later time when the present tenants mustered the energy to wake up to move from their beds to smoke on the couch. When we returned we realized the place and price were right and after a good 48 hours of cleaning it would be inhabitable by humans who don't consider watching the audio commentary of the "40 Year Old Virgin" a full day.

• I tagged along with my friend Eric as he began his apartment hunting excursion. We walked up to the first place his realtor planned on showing us. He unlocked the door and was greeted with a "Hey! What the hell man?!" Apparently the apartment has been already been rented out a week ago. Strike 1. Then we rolled to the next option as the realtor's friend (who was with us for no reason) bragged about the various sexual acts he claimed to have achieved the night before. We arrived at the next apartment and the realtor fumbled around with his set of keys for 3 minutes before realizing he did not have the keys for the apartment. Strike 2.

The third place was available and viewable, in the family room sat a massive black leather and cheetah print L-shaped couch with a spinning, mirror covered nook in the middle meant to hold a bottle of Courvoisier or a mound of blow. The couch's glory days were at least 30 years past and I would guess it contained STDs that most doctors would not be able to diagnose. I refused to sit on or get within 3 feet of a piece of furniture Leon Phelps would call disgusting. However, the realtor plopped down on the couch and exclaimed, "Man, you gotta make me one promise. If you get this place and you don't want this couch, you have to call me so I can have this." Strike 3.

Then he displayed a shithole apartment with a backyard. "The place is kinda small, but you guys could easily grow weed back here," the realtor said even though we never brought up marijuana once. Strike 4.

• My friend Andy gave me this gem and it's really the greatest video ever (if you're into obscure former Oregon basketball players). Champ Oguchi singing Happy Birthday. There is really too much hilarity in that video to describe. After watching it 15 times I realized I could click 'next video' and watch Champ get beat in Around the World by a girl.

• Last weekend the Domino's on my block had an MC narrating every move on the block as he promoted Domino's pizza. They also had the loudest Spanish music I have ever heard, which literally could be heard three blocks away. But you can't be mad at 5-buck large pizzas.

• A picture from my roof with some pleasant graffiti.

• This JR Smith article raises two questions, "Is JR a better golfer than basketball player?" and "Is JR Smith God?"

So many different things make JR trill...

1. Winning the McDonalds All-American game co-MVP while rocking shorts three sizes too big.

2. Deciding to skip UNC based solely on a breakout H.S. All-American circuit.

3. Beating a vehicular manslaughter charge.

4. Jacking up 3s out of sync of any offense.

5. Every time the Nuggets get a fresh 24-second clock and JR Smith jacks up another 3 with 23 seconds on the clock.

6. When he finally hits a 3 and proceeds to mock the mentally challenged. Phil Jackson's reaction says it all.

Now I'm homesick

2009-05-25T22:13:00.000-04:00

Rollerskating with DMX is definitely what I miss most about Arizona. Sorry family and friends, you are all a distant second.