Jan 2K6

The Miami Heat and Bill Simmons' adopted Cali squad entered tonight's game with identical records, but within a few minutes I knew what was what.

Dwyane Wade is keeping step with the mighty hops of good friend LeBron (who I will watch live on 27feb against my Pistons from row3 of the Gund, er, Quicken Loans, Center, er, Arena.)

Shaq is like everyone's favorite slacker-jock friend from high school, you know, the one who had an excellent weed connection and a dry sense of humor. Our favorite slacker-jock at Davison Sr. High knew that his natural talents would insure that he never had to work, you know, or think too hard. In Bill's case that last part was important. Thinking about simple things was as far as he could reach, and maybe that's why he had a batch of kids and prior arrests before dropping out of college

Shaq is one of the 3 best centers in NBA history. He's also one of my all-time favorite pro athletes, largely because O'Neal combines his immense talents with great wit and humility. He's my favorite five of all time because he has never taken himself too seriously. If Bill Thomas was 7'1'' and light-footed instead of 6'5'' and prone to angel-dust binges, my life might have turned out different. Instead of jabbering away across a blog space that reaches 16 people daily, I'd be part of an entorage...free coke and chips. Like Vegas every day. Anyway.

Sometimes I balance well and sometimes I invite train wrecks. It depends where my head it at. Always has.

I need to get more animated silliness onto the site....

Blah blah got nothing to say. Who cares about world affairs, records reviews, or tanning bays. Who gives two shits for manniquens in tin cans, drunkdialing floozies...wanting be 19 again.

Big Ben Lets Broncos Know What Time It Is

My Detroit Lions played terrible football during my childhood, much like they play terrible football now. Me and my elementary schoolmates were thus divided into Steelers and Cowboys fans. I was a Steelers fan. I grew up on Bradshaw, Swan, Stallworth, Harris, The Steel Curtain, Lambert, and the rest. I hated everyone on Dallas, and everyone in Dallas. Sure, my friends and I said we'd root for the Lions over anyone in the playoffs, but that was like saying I'd root for my Dad in the ring against Ali. Reality and fantasy. As kids in Flint, we knew to keep them separate.

The coolest subplot along the Pittsburgh Steelers' amazing 2k6 playoff run has been the ascension of Ben Roethlisberger into the top echelon of NFL quarterbacks. He was money against the Broncos, cutting up their defense with precision darts that looked weird coming from such a big and goofy-looking quarterback. As everyone is saying these days, Roethlisberger has outplayed Phillip Rivers and Eli Manning, the first two quarterbacks taken in the 2k4 draft. Looks like Steelers coach Bill Cowher finally has the conduit for his long-suppressed creative streak. My only Super Bowl prediction is that the Pittsburgh Steelers will put on an offensive display that'll shut up the Cowher-bashers once and for all.

Cowher has been constantly knocked for being too conservative, but I understood where all that came from. It was never about philosophy as much as it was about talent. Try coaching Kordell Stewart for a half-dozen years and see what THAT does for your nerves. Cowher has been the Steelers head coach for 14 years and in that time has been blessed with QB standouts like Neil O'Donnel, Stewart, Tommy Maddox, and other implosion artists...a veritable talent pothole. Stewart, the prototype of a skilled headcase, had the habit of throwing a crippling interception at the exact moment the Steelers could least afford it. Cowher no doubt remembers a playoff game against the Broncos in '98 when Kordell kneecapped his team twice, with Denver on the ropes no less, by twice tossing wild balls into the end zone to Bronco defenders. That kind of stuff can put a coach onto regimen of prozac, or Wild Turkey.

No matter, now, Pittsburgh finally has their QB, their bookend to Terry Bradshaw. Only great quarterbacking can march a team through the playoffs, one road game at a time, against the 3 top seeded teams (Cincinnati, Indy, and Denver). Maybe Big Ben will pull a Kordell in Detroit, but it would shock me. Coming through in three consecutive pressure-cooker games betrays a tack towards greatness. These next 10 years or so will feature some excellent duels between Roethlisburger and Tom Brady, ala Bradshaw and Stabler from back in the day. Payton Manning will get to watch the excitement from the comforts of his living room after his annual 1st-round exit from the playoffs. Bully for him.

After the Steelers punched their ticket to Detroit, I fired up the NBA League Pass and watched the Pistons squeak by a very determined Houston Rockets squad. Tracy McGrady, his gimp back, and his shorthanded crew, all played their asses off. Even though the final score was 99-97 Pistons, I never really thought the outcome was in doubt. Detroit is like that. To quote Chauncey Billups:

I like games like that much better than like the games when we win by 10, 15 or 20 points. I don't like playing games like that.

The Pistons are 33 and 5, a gawdy record in any professional team sport. Pistons players themselves couldn't care less one way or another. They just want to play ball better, more precise, and demoralize their foes. That's the sign of great team, well, that and an immense level of talent spread evenly across the best starting five in my living memory--yeah Celtic fans, I'm looking at you. Dennis Johnson wasn't as good as Rip or Chauncey, and I'd put our front court out there against Bird, McHale, and Parrish in 1986 and be comfortable with my chances.

At the level Detroit is playing right now, they are with the '86 Celtics and a hair below the '96 Bulls.

Hitherto a few weeks ago, Detroit's only weakness appeared when their starting five went collectively cold with their shooting hands. With Flip Saunder's new flowing offense complimenting Detroit's traditional stout defense, cold streaks and lapses in general have been rare this season. During a debacle loss in Cleveland last month, Detroit's starters all shot the ball like they were wearing boxing gloves, yet played tight defense to keep the game close. However, the cold shooting stayed with the starting five, and with no offensive support from the bench, frustration set in a bit. Rasheed and Tayshaun in particular made some defensive mistakes, undoubtedly because they were thinking about their wayward shooting, and these lapses turned a tight game into a near-blowout. It only happens when all the starters are cold and they bench doesn't step up. It's happened thus far 4 times out of 38 games (against Dallas, Cleveland, and Utah twice), all loses.

Funny thing is happening though, an insurance policy is emerging to hedge against cold shooting by the starters: Carlos Delfino.

Larry Brown thought Delfino was a bit of a slacker and a whiner, and left him off last summer's playoff roster in favor of Darko, mighty Darvn Ham, and Ronald Dupree. Back then it kinda made sense. Delfino was still mending a surgically repaired knee and played with hesitation on the court. He moved his feet like he was dragging cement blocks, drawing too many fouls for too little production, offensive and defensive. Fast forward to now and I think if Flip Saunders leaves Defino off the playoff roster this spring, someone will need to install hidden cameras in his office to make sure Flip's not smoking crack. The change in Defino's game has been huge.

Instead playing shy, Delfino now shoots without hesitation, and can drive by just about every swingman who tries to guard him. Better still, he has ramped up his defense. I'm not sure if Ben Wallace is tutoring Defino or what, but he gets better at moving and setting his feet to cut off driving lanes with every game. He's also improved his help defense, knowing when he needs to switch assignments as the play develops. A large part of this is happening because Delfino trusts his knees again and thus is willing to be aggressive in all phases of the game. However, a larger part of it is that Delfino has bought into the Pistons toughguy mentality, something you're seeing more of from foriegn players....Delfino and Manu Ginobli are light years from Tony Kukoc. I'm still coming to grips with the nice suprise that Defino is, which makes the Darko fiasco easier to laugh at...we don't need no stinkin' legit no.2 draft pick, we're the Deeeetroit Pistons. I imagine a future where Carlos Delfino plays ball like a bigger stronger version of Ginobli.

I know, I know, maybe I'm jumping the gun. Maybe Delfino is a decent player going through a hot streak, but still, when I see a 23-year-old pro player abuse the competition, as Delfino has on many times over the past few weeks, then like with the emerging young quarterback I was writing about 30-something lines ago, we have something to watch. The NBA playoffs need to happen to determine what exactly Delfino, and the Pistons in general, can do, but I have a good idea how it's going to play out.

- k

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18jan06

Iran's leadership loves attention

Immediately following 9/11, I figured that the last gasps of Iran's hard-line factions, especially the ruling and unelected Revolutionary Guard, were upon us. Fifty percent of Iranians are under 25. Most like the West and our ideals, if not our practices, and are increasingly well-educated in western thought. They, the majority of Iranians, are tired of the isolation and privations their theocracy provides. Fifty-plus years after the CIA engineered a coup that tossed aside a democratically elected government and inserted the Shah and his secret police, yet another revolution, this time of the Georgian or Ukrainian shade, would come to pass. I was sure of it.

Then the Iraq war happened. Our three years in Iraq has shown Iran's theocratic leadership that the United States can be tied down militarily, even though the U.S. military is tied down on Iran's doorstep. Iran's leadership calculated that they had a few more years to talk smack and develop nuclear weapons. Manpower-wise, the only way we can take over Iran while Iraq is in the balance is to bring back the draft. You never know.

Then this certified loon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was brought to power under the pretense of fair elections. Ahmadinejad, a civil engineer by trade (like Osama), and radical enough to be a desert Wahhabist if not for his Shia kink of his Islamic faith, apparently wishes to hasten the apocalypse. The Iranian president is backed by the ruling clerics and he advocates that Israel should be 'wiped off the map.' Look, I understand that some of these cats are edgy because their neighbors have been sacked by U.S. forces, and, come to think of it, that's just the kind of thing that can make a madman go completely around the bend.

Because young and educated Iranians wish to be more western, and because Iran is currently surrounded by the most highly trained and deadly, and overstretched, military on the planet, Iran's ruling clerical claque sees no way out but a showdown, either with us, Israel, or its own people. They know that time is not on their side, that they must have a deterrent against invasion to match their terror deterrents against revolution. Nukes are a good deterrent against invasion.

Here's how it's going to be:

Either Iran's freedom-seeking majority rise together and sack their radical theocracy, or we will go to war with Iran. Israel has already stated that they absolutely will not allow Iran to develop nukes, since doing so would allow an existential threat to flourish. Remember, the President of Iran has already advocated the elimination of Israel. The United States, especially with President Bush at the helm, will not make Israel do all the dirty work herself, ergo, we will do the dirty work. Make no mistake, it will be a nightmare.

I hate thinking about that. No justice no peace.

- k

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Know What You're Knocking For

"I'll chop ya up and stick you in the mattress like drug money."

Jay-Z was an excellent MC. Reasonable Doubt and The Black Album are aging well.

I was screwing together some code yesterday, listening to Richard D. James's Come To Daddy -- the title track like 1988 Ministry and Motorhead together on angel dust and transmitting from within an active blender. Intelligent Dance Music? Shit, that's old-time industrial metal, man.

Tapping away on the keyboard, screaming out 'Eye willllll eat your soul' (my new neighbors are prolly on to me by now) and compiling a little animated diddy that will prove interesting even if it ends up useless, Come To Daddy ends and the opening chords of It Never Seems To Rain In California pours a gallon of honey and cheese-whiz onto the blackened mood ring. iTunes shuffle feature strikes again. It's like some artificial intelligence or something. I could never hear a transition like that on the radio, not even satellite. Drill-n-bass aficionados rarely mix with the 70s easy listening crowd, save for maybe at the Power Exchange.

You can set the level of randomness in the i-Tunes shuffle. You can also create specialized playlists and sort them by artist, genre, release date, or contributions to teenage suicides. No matter how I shuffle the music, patterns emerge within a few songs. Satellite. radio stations will jump on this some day. Stick a thousand albums worth of music onto a hard drive, hook it up to iTunes or WinAmp hit the shuffle button and go outside and let the groupies smoke you out next to the dumpsters, you know, the one your station shares with the Rally's next door.

But then again I'm human, most of the time, and we humans are wired and keyed to pick patterns out of anything and everything. Ask Oliver Stone or your friendly neighborhood NYT columnist...the first rule of random is that there is no random.

Then I hear the opening bassline of Under Pressure and think 'damn that Vanilla Ice' and then realize for the 1,000th time that it's still one of the 20 or so greatest songs of the past 50 years, exposure be damned. Freddy Mercury's voice was a force of nature, the best pipes in the rock kingdom by a mile, then and still. Having Bowie as a sidekick merely added ballast to the bombast.

It's about at this point, into the first chorus of Under Pressure, 2 in the afternoon, deadline on my toes and gaining weight by the second, that someone rings the doorbell downstairs. I think nothing of it and keep working, mindful of my own shoddy personal appearance, and dark mood, after spending all my time since 6am staring into...this...goddamned...screen..<*yank* *crash*>.

One thing about working from a home office is that I am less presentable than my counterpart inside a cube. Unless I have outside appointments, I'm rocking the sweat pants and slippers...looking like a slimmer but no less disturbing version of Aqua Teen's Carl. A few moments later, another ring, followed by a flurry of frenzied knocking. 'Something bad has happened in the village,' I think, getting up and jogging down the stairs to see what emergency has crossed our bucolic exurban paradise.

Like any front door worth it's salt, ours has 2 locks, one inside the doorknob, and a bolt lock about two feet up from the doorknob. LadyK locks the bolt, I rarely do. If marauding teenage gangbangers are going to sweep through our little cul-de sac and take everything not bling nor nailed down, then I'm going to need a stronger deterrent than locks. Nothing says 'get off my property' like the chambering of a shotgun shell.

Whoever's waiting for me on the other side of the door hears me unlock the doorknob and jiggle the door vigorously as I understand, dimly at first, then keenly, that the bolt was locked, and that I would need to find it's key, which I had, to that point, never bothered slipping onto my keychain. I grab a set of keys hanging from a hook in the mud room and amble back to the front door and try everything on the ring...no go.

Now on the verge of launching into a spasm of frustrated violence against all objects within grasp, I run back upstairs and start digging across desktops and recently populated drawers until I come across the key I need. I slip it onto my keychain, make a mental note about the procrastination and unlock the front door. It's a hair past two in the afternoon, and here's what the knocker's see:

I am wearing a green flannel shirt I bought at Britches Great Outdoors in DC between 10 and 12 years ago, and no undershirt. My slippers are new, but my green sweats have a hole in the knee and some thining elsewhere. I'm wearing a ballcap, and since LadyK was curious to see me with facial hair, no razor had touched me in 10 days, so I looked stricken with the mange. I am working on three hours of sleep because sometimes when I juggle projects I leave things hanging until the last moment. I WILL eat your soul if you didn't have a damn good reason for beating down my front door.

There are two well-dressed ladies in the doorway, and I about to ask who died or what was violated, when the lady nearest the door-- mousy long hair, ~40, and a gleam in the eyes I know well, reaches into her large purse and pulls out a bible the size of a bathroom scale.

"We wanted to speak to you about--"

"No. <*slam*>"

I have nothing against Christianity, or Christians, or Hindi, Pegans, Moonies, or whatever. People gotta find their way in this crazy world and if that means you must find mystic attribution for all life's quirks and sheer random happenings, that's cool. But don't beat down my door to push your issues on me...unless we're close (family and/or friend). Even then I'm going to question why you think a certain way. No malice, just looking for cause. The holy rollers at my front door did this thing as a service to their church and religion, and of course they do it during the daytime, in nice residential neighborhoods, because that's where you find the black sheep both lost and well-heeled. The new evangelicals aren't spending much time in the projects...does nothing for the tip jar.

Next time I'll just chamber a shotgun shell on the other side of the locked door. Won't have to say a word.

- k

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02jan06

When I was a kid, it was difficult to find good music in Flint. You had either mall stores like Sam Goody and RecordLand, or mom-n-pop places like Jellybeans-- where the stock was always a crap shoot. I couldn't get three feet into RecordLand during the middle 80s without tripping over a stack of REO Speedwagon cassettes and stumbling into a sever-foot cardboard bust of Huey Lewis, and if I wanted a copy of Reign In Blood or No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith I was faced with either driving my 3 tons of '72 Gran Fury to Detroit, or finding the right college radio signal at the right time with my recording devices at the ready. In 2k6, a critical mass of the wired world have said goodbye to all that nonsense.

I either own or have instant access to 99.5% of all sonic content I could ever want. If it's not listed in my own digital library, my RealRhapsody music service has it on demand. If I hear something on Real (and they have a mind-boggling selection-- from Mehldau, Mendelssohn, Meshuggah, and Morrison to Tool, Tom Waits, Traffic, and Tchaikovsky) and I want to buy it, Aquarius, Amazon or the Apple Music Store is but a click away. Choices all up in you.

LadyK, who hitherto couldn't care less about streaming digital entertainment, or technology in general, was nevertheless keen to acquire a Sirius satellite receiver for her vehicle. She is a Howard Stern fan, has been since the late 80s. Without the FCC on his ass all the time Howard is supposed to inaugurate his new broadcasting life on Sirius with a torrent of f-bombs and in-studio granny-porn next Monday morning. I'll be listening. I can't stop watching the wheels of human wreckage turn, neither can you. Howard knows this. Enter coked out porno stars, Jeff the Drunk, Corey Feldman, and heaps of Howard's own smug self-loathing. What a creeper. What a dork. What a genius.

Satellite radio will be bigger than cable because they are a global broadcasting solution, meaning, they can pool niche markets and individual quirks into profitable and sustaining global markets. Combine the 500 to 1,000 Goth true believers in every medium and large town on the planet, you have a collective of like tastes profitable source of revenue for both signal providers and advertisers. Companies like that. One reason cool shit was hard to find in Flint was that the Flint area was basically an AOR, Classic Rock, and Pop R&B sort of space. All the cover bands played Motown and Bob Seger. There were not enough people to create viable niche radio markets. Stinking dinosaurs like ClearChannel and Viacom loved the bland landscape, and now they are chewing extra nitro pills because their days of relevance are gone and their days of existence are numbered. When Sirius or XM sell enough units that they can offer a three kinds of Classical Baroque stations, or a 90s White Backpacker Hip-Hop station, watch for ClearChannel's Chapter 11 announcement.

Mass communication works both ways. Time Warner Cable knows what I watch, when I watch, where I live, and what I do. The information gathering and organizing power between Time AOL and Google (merrily going about the process of buying <ongoing and verifiable> AOL and then <speculation> Time Warner proper) will make the NSA look like a bunch of stick-rubbing mouthbreathers. I wouldn't worry too much about government spying. Despite hype to the contrary, we can still regulate our government at the voting booth. Corporations are a bit different.

If Big Brother, and at this point there are a few of them, wants to watch you, there is nothing you can do. Our society made a choice to push forth advances in choice and convenience without pushing forth smart regulative stipulations. It often comes back to the reaping and sowing thing.

On a more micro level, I don't expect much change outside the white walls of our new condo along the next several months. It is Winter in the Rust Belt, after all, a stasis that life-long Californians cannot comphrehend, and something that transplants are gleeful to be free from. Inside the house, however, things will be humming...and hammering.

This place has nearly 600 square feet of undeveloped space downstairs, in what the county assessor currently refers to as the 'basement.' Because it has both two large windows and a sliding door into our future hot-tub space (the backyard patio), the terrace level of this dwelling is destined for much more than merely basement status. The previous owners tacked drywall along the walls, but not across the ceiling. They also slathered globs of mud across the seams and nail-marks of the drywall. It's a start since hanging drywall is rarely fun and almost always frustrating, given the weight, brittleness, and awkward dimensions of the product you're nailing against the wall.

Smoothing the walls and applying some primer won't be so bad, but the floor and ceiling at this time are concrete and bare rows of two by eights, respectively. Design ideas are bouncing around my head. Originally, I wanted to finish the space in a tribute to Clinton Portis, currently my favorite NFL player, but LadyK shot that idea down and then went to Wal-Mart to buy a snub-nosed .38-- she's not telling me where she stashed it. While I seek to find LadyK's gun and swap the wadcutters for blanks (just in case I find a nice stripper's pole for 12 bucks on eBay and can't help but set it up downstairs...just for decoration, though, that's it and that's all), I'll soon post some photogs of the basement as it is and then regular updates as I get to making it into my dream den. I may even stick a web cam down there. It'll be like a TLC show, but weirder.

Inside Outside. Fire and Ice. Micro Macro. No Justice No Peace. Screws not Nails.

That how we're rolling this year.

- k

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