Declared Hiatus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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