A Quick Return Part 1

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. )