My blog

Label... Category... Standard Entry Video Information Press Release Event News

• pip in ninety fo' trunk was raw

  Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009 12:40AM / Standard Entry

  
  
  my 2010 resolution is to  go into pip-in-ninety-fo' mode.
  
  
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsGkIxgewrM
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Add a comment

• more than a feeling

  Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 7:39PM / Standard Entry

  Brandon Jennings made history last year by choosing to play overseas in Europe over going to college.
  
  Then right now, as a 20 year old rook, he is dropping 21, 5, 5 a night. Not just putting up numbers on a bad team now, mind you. But he's leading the Bucks to a surprising start at 9-7. This team looked like one of the worst in the league coming in. Jennings has changed that. Made basketball matter again in Milwaukee, a city with, well, nothing.
  
  (Gilbert Arenas said it best a couple of years ago "I couldn't stop laughing when I heard Richard [Jefferson] got traded to the Bucks. I mean moving from New York to Milwaukee, dog? That's rough.")
  
  I've babbled some 130 words already and I haven't even got to the reason the word Jennings is on everyone's lips: his double nickel performance in his what, 7th NBA game?
  
  55 points for a rook?
  
  I didn't want to buy into the hype. I didn't want to jump on his wagon. But now damns, I must. damns indeed.
  
  Let's see, we've got the Diesel, Duncan, Kobe, three of the ten greatest players, OF ALL TIME, still playing. Two still in they primes.
  
  We got Lebron and Wade almost set in stone to reach the Kobe/Duncan level of greatness one day currently playing in their prime.
  
  We got another batch of superstars who are not quite on the Lebron level but still pretty nice: Melo, Bosh, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Amare.
  
  We got young pups starting to sniff greatness: Kevin Durant, Danny BATMAN Granger
  
  Then we got even younger pups, babies if you will, in D Rose and Brandon Jennings making their name.
  
  All this and I'm leaving out old wily vets finishing their hall of fame careers like Jason Kidd, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and KG.
  
  The league right now... talent level is at an all time high.
  
  I say this often, but ONCE MORE WITH FEELING:
  
  damn it's a good time to be a basketball fan right now.
  
  
  this video aint got nothing to do with basketball, im posting it cause its great.
  
  
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcsVPis1iNs
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  Add a comment

• the truth hurts

  Saturday, Nov 28, 2009 8:03PM / Standard Entry

  paul pierce has long been one of my favorite players (i've always felt he was like, 85-90% as good as kobe/bron/wade/iverson at certain times but has always gotten 50-65% of their hype)
  
  Laker fans hated that I loved him so much (dates back to 2000), only thing is PP is from Inglewod born and raised, on the playground was where he spent most of his days. He's more LA than anyone on the Laker teams as well as the fake fans sitting courtside.
  
  And his nickname is the best nickname of this generation. You see, in the older generation, NBA players had amazing nicknames: Human Highlight Film, The Iceman, The Microwave, The Reign Man, Round Mound Of Rebound, these nicknames were creative and made sense.
  
  But over the past decade, we started getting stupid lazy nicknames where it's not even a nickname; it's just a shortened version of someone's name. Think Tmac, CWebb, AI, Kmart, Melo, etc.
  
  Paul Pierce, though, has an old school throwback nickname.
  
  The Truth.
  
  Such a good nickname for trash talking. If someone can't guard him, you can say "so and so couldn't handle the truth". On this dunk, you can say "the truth hurts".
  
  The possibilities are endless.
  
  To quote Jack Nicholson, you can't handle the truth
  
  
  
  
  

  1 comment–  Add a comment

• happiness is a warm gun

  Monday, Nov 23, 2009 10:37PM / Standard Entry

  i found out today from a colleague that there will be a  beatles exhibition in yuen long next month. apparently this japanese hardcore fan has a bunch of memorabilia and he'll bring it to HK to put on display.
  
  man, with the remastered album and the rock band game, theres been a mini resurgence in beatlemania lately, especially in the US.
  
  i know some old school purists, like oh, HKHONESTLY, hates the beatles rock band game and everything it stands for...but i think its great that the game are introducing beatles tune to a new generation of fans and letting people make believe and fantasize about playing in a band.
  
  its not like the game is milking and abusing the legacy of the two dead members...after all, ono okayed it, and according to lennon's creepy "we are one" spiritual crap he was spewing from the late 60s on, ono basically spoke on his behalf anyways.
  
  btw, that over the backboard shot by kobe was pretty nice, eh?
  
  
  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X-Y7wFRoEU
  

  
  
  
  you know, ive hated on kobe long enough, its time to back off and just appreciate the man. he's about as close to jordan as we gonna get (i think current kobe is about a 85-90%-as-good version of 96 Jordan. the footwork, the pick-my-spot-and-attack mentality, the ultra efficient moves with no wasted movements... all there)
  
  there's been many, many a cats we labeled as the next jordan before. penny, grant hill, harold miner, stackhouse (lol), vince, tmac, etc.. only kobe has lived up to it. the others have failed due to bad luck (grant hill, penny), bad work ethic (stackhouse, miner) or their pussy-ness (vince, tmac). oh and not one of them werethat good, period.
  
  but kobe's hes almost there. he's still not as good as jordan and he never will be, but he's ...somewhat close.
  
  kobe has anywhere from 2-4 years left in his prime. we dunno how long. It could be 2 it could 4. But there isn't many more years left of prime Kobe we can watch. so as basketball fans we must take advantage of this. i must see kobe play live a few more times before he hangs it up.
  
  i never got to see the beatles play live.
  
  i never got to see michael jordan play live.
  
  but i have seen kobe play live.
  
  i think one day, saying that will almost be on the level with the above two.
  
  but damn, kobe and shaq's love/hate alpha-dog-battle damn sure mirrors McCartney/Lennon. those two fought till the bitter end. reconciled years later but only to a degree--always kept their distance. never close again.
  
  kobe/shaq is one of the all time greatest duo in sports history. i should count myself lucky to be in Los Angeles for their entire lifetime. i witnessed the birth (kobe's four airballs plus holding back tears in 96) the apex (kobe's oop to shaq, game 7, portland), and the end (detroit game 5, shaq and kobe walk off the courts after having their ass handed to them. even then you could tell on their faces they knew its was over)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Add a comment

• live long enough and you'll see yourself become the villain

  Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009 5:53PM / Standard Entry

  About a week ago I watched Michael Jackson's This Is It. The MJ phenomenon is still going strong, five months after his death. In perhaps the best example of revisionist history I've seen in a while, everyone--from media to nonfans--are pretending like they've been admiring him always and weren't cracking jokes about his nose/behavior as recently as June 24th. let's face it--outside of the diehard fans, most were freaked out by his actions of the past decade (and half).I mean, the man has been widely accepted as a punchline for the past several years. But he passes away and suddenly--BAM. It's like everything from 1990 on had been erased from our memory. As if Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones came to our houses with the deneuralizer and flashed us with the red light.
  
  Today, I read that Allen Iverson has been waived by the Grizzlies after a failed two game stint in which he threw another hissy fit about not getting enough playtime. For a player who has overcome so much (racism/prejudice/hate that put him behind bars during college, lack of size in a game dominated by bigs, the NBA's initial reluctance to market him because he was too street/hip hop) and has accomplished so much on the court (his 2001 finals run remain my single favorite non-Jordan non-Chuck basketball memory) he has now become a walking punchline. No team wants him. Labels such as "cancer" and "selfish" are being thrown at him. And probably rightfully so.
  
  You know what these two seemingly unrelated stories remind me of?
  
  Harvey Dent's line in The Dark Knight (the defining film of this freaking decade)
  
  "Live long enough and you'll see yourself become the villain"
  
  It's happened to Iverson. His epic career, one that has been full of Herculean feats (not strictly on-the-court achievements--after all he never did win it all--but rather all the things he has overcome), is going out with a whimper. He's not wanted by any team. His haters--whom he has fed Shut Up Juice on a daily basis for most of this decade--are now getting louder and louder. Even his diehard supporters, those who love him for his underdog traits, his heart, his keeping-it-real attitude, are shaking their heads.
  
  "Why, AI, why?"
  
  Bill Simmons wrote in his book that had Kurt Cobain lived, his legacy probably wouldn't be as strong as it is toady. Cobain would have had a public messy divorce, he probably would have made an ass of himself publicly (getting arrested on drug charges or whatever), and Nirvana would have eventually released some mediocre albums.
  
  I agree with Simmons. Very few bands continue to release great album after great album (Radiohead and White Stripes are exceptions), it's not unfathomable that Nirvana would have released some crappy album in 99 when rock was at its lowest point in the late 90s (when New Found Glory, Creed, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Blink 182 ruled and before The Strokes/White Stripes/The Vines/The Hives revived garage rock)
  
  This goes back to Harvey Dent's line--live long enough and you will see yourself become the villain.
  
  Let's use living and dying as a metaphor.
  
  Iverson's career "lived" too long. We're now seeing the ugliness of his ego and the same "can't nobody tell me different" attitude that allowed him to overcome so much (seriously, the dude is 5'11 and 150 pounds and he's lasted 13 season in a sport ruled by giants, where 6'4 is considered short) is now ruining his reputation and making him a joke.
  
  Had Iverson's career "died" a few years ago, say he suffers an abrupt career ending injury, we would have remembered him fondly and probably overrate him, like we always do to tragic figure who dies young.
  
  Heath Ledger is being compared to the pantheon of actors (De Niro/Pacino/Brando), huh? Beacuse he gave a great performance (not greater than Jarvier Bardem as Anton Chigurh and died). Simmons already mentioned Cobain, so no need to rehash again.
  
  The point is we tend to overrate and immortalize those who die young.
  
  Imagine if De Niro died right after Raging Bull, we'd hail him as the undisputed greatest actor alive, no doubt. But instead, he lasted and we see him appear in trash like Righteous Kill (a movie so bad that I want to disown it from both De Niro/Pacino's filmography), Rocky and Bullwrinkle, and Hide and Seek.
  
  "Sometimes dying is the best career move," writes Simmons.
  
  It sounds like a joke, only it's not.
  
  All them times that Iverson's been knocked down only to get up; all them injuries he played through. Ironically, if he had been wiped out by one of those injuries a few years back, we'd remember in better light than we do now.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  1 comment–  Add a comment

243

1/49

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

>

>|