synergistically interlocking

This is a big game, and not for reasons of who’s won how many or who’s lost their minds and or dignity in games involving hunger or strife or agony or mental anguish.  Whoever wins, the Clippers are facing an irrevocable side of their history and their destiny in one fell swoop.  I have real heartfelt emotions and nostalgia for the old cassell brand maggs Kaman teams and half of that equation will be in staples tonite under mark cuban’s banner.  Brand is first (1^st)! in rebounds all-time for the clips. (stat courtesy of yahoo’s game preview) as well as 6^th in games played for the franchise (and Kaman is 5^th!).  Of course this is as much a reflection of the former transitory nation of the clips as much as the staying power and legacy of the two players involved.  Irregardless (yes, Webster, I still feel it’s a word, I can’t be dissuaded, and whoever wants to argue with me I welcome them to a field of battle of their own choosing, name the weapons, the audience, the what-have-you) of whether I may or may not have made comments in re: EB getting treated like MC Ren and the other NWA fellas feeling like they should have treated Ice Cube after his defection, Elton does, has, and will continue to occupy a special place in my heart as the centerpiece of the best Clipper team of all time prior to the current Chris Paul Blake Griffin incarnation.  I could say about 800 other things but that’s enough for now and be happy I provided this much because I really don’t have time for things like this with a newborn (born 11/12, my 3^rd daughter, gratzi, little person in my throat who’s the only one who reads this).  Be lucky I’m posting at all, but the event warrants it, he said to Randy Rhoads ghost still on the roof plucking cords in Kaneohe although the subject of his deathly musings having long since moved to town and then the far east corner of the not-so-lonely island.

1st and last annual that's a wrap type dillio

Chris Paul earned first team defensive honors, which is, erm, good news I guess.  Not sure how much meaning is stacked on such an honor when the (cough) defensive player of the year, Tyson Chandler, was voted to the second team.  NBA minds at work.

I don’t know if I currently possess the intestinal fortitude to produce my annual wrapup that I don’t do every year.  Probably not.  Whatever this turns into (or doesn’t) shall have to suffice.

Speaking of Paul, I’m sure you’ve seen (or maybe you haven’t) this LA Times bit on CP3 calling up GM Olshey at midnight after the sweep saying it wouldn’t happen again.  The part that stuck with me:

Olshey  said that when Paul called him, the guard “already wanted to start talking about what we need, what we need to add,” which led the general manager to tell reporters that the star he signed is indeed “all in.”

Which is all good and everything, but he’s already signed for the coming year, but can we glean from this he plans on staying in clipper red white & blue (hey, how bout bringing those occasional road blues back every so often, although I did like the LA Stars joints, or, OR what about the baby blue buffalo, er, no the SD clippers? I ramble SORRY) for ever and ever a la Dorothy in the wizard of oz with toto and the tin straw lion.  One can sleep, perchance to dream.

Oh, and Vinny.  My take?  He earned another year winning that game 7 with Paul and Griffin at half-mast.  The bench mob clinching an emotional battle in Memphis and the faith it took VDN to leave them in that long.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s no Knute Rockne, but these bubbles I hear about Jerry Sloan (terrible idea) or other nom de plumes in the ether, I don’t know, it’s a good thing going right now.  Did he get outcoached by Pop in the SA series, of course.  But you know what, everyone got outcoached by pop this year.  No shame in that, and pop had all his horses plus some steeds and studs that only the oracle at Delphi could have predicted would be playing the meaningful minutes at this stage in their careers (both young and old) that they are.  SA is a MACHINE and Pop is Ahab, only this time the white whale’s running scared and doesn’t in fact represent death but victory.  Or something like that.

If you’d asked me a month ago I don’t know how I’d feel, but for now I say keep Vinny on board and see what happens next year.  I keep harkening back to how horrible Doc Rivers was the first few years and now they’re craning him up next to Jackson and Auerbach in the pantheon (I kid, I kid, but tongues need to be swept up off the ground, although Rivers is doing good stuff) the old school doesn’t always know what time class lets out, is all I mean.  That and a million other things I don’t even know I’m saying.

blocked about the block on the block

I have to write something about the Clippers, but I can’t.  Well, it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t.  Let me clarify, I will, but I won’t like it.  I’ll enjoy myself with the loathing of a parakeet in an atom bomb facility, keeping an eye on the horizon for double agents.

Are the Spurs too much?  Yea, verily, some potential truth doth rear its ugly head in yon environs.  But I think of a world in which Chris Paul carves, Blake Griffin dunks, DJ grabs boards, Eric Bledsoe does Eric Bledsoe things, and a man typing on a keyboard tires of rattling of player names and giving them “roles” a la TNT and their silly cookie cutter loyalties, and instead finds a deeper truth in a pool that only grows more and more shallow.

Which is an elongated way of saying don’t lose hope, Luke, there’s always another tomorrow, like Annie said, homelessness is next to doglessness, and the sun, it can only hide for so long, like a rat in a sausage factory, wait long enough staring down the scope and it’ll come slinking out, and like a Caron Butler trey will drop like feather into the soup of the net of life and the juice will be tough and will squirt forth for all the nation to devour.

Go clips.

Get my Miner's Helmet Down from off the Refrigerator

I like to think, I enjoy telling myself, the casual lie, that I never lost hope, that I knew they had it "in them" but the mind was in that moment a black abyss, Mike Conley’s rain of 3rd quarter three’s providing constant dense cloud cover over any flowers my subconscious was hoping to plant. I watch them fall, one shot after another, raindrops on an hourglass, tears on my pillow, unnamed clipper penance. All is (not) for naught.

4th quarter, ears perk up, pupils dilate, skin chickens, every sound accentuated, images flash back, forth, Reggie Evans' bandage takes on unforeseen quantitative elaborations, a snake wrapped around a tree embracing life.

Nick Young breaks through the periphery, darts to a corner, is found by a genius on a mad spree, throws a ball at a bucket and a swishing ensues, then another, then another, I am erupting like a roman gladiator throwing spears in a cave, until the hieroglyphics explode in an effigy of antithesis of hypocrisy, all that’s wrong made right, everything once known as correct tossed in a salad of hypothetical yarn spinning.

 I am at one with the universe. Blake Griffin is hugging Eric Bledsoe. Moisture blankets my eyes and sockets, engulfing my face in a surrealistic hallucination. Lawler’s law never reared its beautiful (hideous) head and Graceland sits in silence, wondering what the hell just happened.

I always fill my ballroom the event is never small

Big win, obviously, last night against OKC at home. Was a beautiful way to pop the cherry on our new TV service (gratzi Hawaiian Tel) and the included year of free DVR (mahalo nui loa makakilo Hawaii kai) so I got to watch uninterrupted most of the third and all of the 4th quarters and it was a loverly thing, it got a bit dusty at the alf-penthouse, the players club had a moment of remembrance for the last clips playoff squad, those gigantic ball swinging cassell EB Maggs ewing playing D on the shooter Dunleavy nightmare elm street shenanigan inducing coma stopping blessings not to be squadders.

Somewhere in there was a sentence. Or not. Anyway, congrats clips, it’s a new regime. CP3, all I could say to wifey over and over “wow he was worth every cent every player and more” I’ve never seen a new guy bring such a sea change culture swap total revamp the way Paul has done in clipperland. CP3 is the opposite of Argentina and I’m the antithesis of crying for him, although there are tears of joy in mine eyes, and I ain’t talkin Madonna, this is more a Patti LuPone type dealio. Long Beach All Stars rocking fat soap bars. End Scene.

clips beat the sonics, kid sensation's a pimp, etc.

caught most of the win vs. sacto on Saturday. Didn’t pay much mind beyond the perfunctory to the demarcus cousins shenanigans. Let the waiters wait, er, the cousins cuss. Whutta little bitch. Big props to Bee Grizzy for ignorin an ignoramus and makin his own self mo famous. So yup, 2 out of three since the lakeshow tragederium is not the worse shakes. Days were (plenty of em) when winnin 2 in a row against the Kings would have been cause for a parade. Yeah, it woulda just been me marching, well, my avatar, but you know, a lot of people would’ve been there in spirit if only they cared.

Watched smidgens of the 2nd quarter and touches of the 3rd of the Memphis debacle but something (not a little bird) told me that one was not for the winning. OJ Mayo looks like he finally might be a third of the player everyone thought he was gonna be when he looked at us all menacingly sitting on that maybach with his baggy pants and SC shirt on and reminded us all why Tim Floyd is someone’s idol.

Kind of a cool Keith Closs story in last month’s Slam Magazine (the one with Blake & CP3 on the cover) in case you missed it.

Would be nice to win in OKC today. Down 8 third quarter (I’m still at work, 3:30 here in the 808). Wuddup, loud city, I see you. Mix-A-Lot cries, but I’m mostly (Cube’s “good day” still gets me misty) over it. things change, you either go with the flow or eventually people are staring at your mummified ass in a glass case while you uselessly try to move your dead lips that have long since calcified, fallen off & been eaten up by ants. go clips.

Fuck the Lakers

Don’t know how I did, but I knew, even when they jumped up by two toward the end (was it first lead since 4-2) that the clips just wouldn’t close this one out. Nothing bad on em for it, er, well, not a ton, really hoping we see these asshats in the playoffs, er, maybe not. When did Bynum turn into such a goddamm load? Holy crikey he’s a beast now. Suddenly Jim Buss is Nostradamus with a neck beard. (don’t know if he has a neck beard, it just sounded good, emphasis on past tense)

Anyway, best clipper season ever? Chime in in the comments, friends of officer bird, boy in my throat, and the other person (professor squirrel) who reads this glob. Much as I loved the EB Maggs Sam “big balls” Cassell year (and oooh, I loved it, I MADE love to it, wait, sorry) I think I like this one better. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. Yup, you may have heard of them. I don’t know, I vacillate, and it doesn’t really matter. I do know though that when it comes to butlers, I’ll take Caron and hold the Rasual. I need my juice tough. I mean, how spoiled are we, Gomes can’t even get off the pine anymore, and he was the guy we used to pray could stay healthy so Rasual’s decrepit soul-sucking vanderwall wouldn’t send us into a pity-spiral. It’s a beautiful thing. I did like when Rasual would make 3’s though. That one time. (cries/laughs)

Yeah, but fuck the Lakers. Who the hell could have predicted 1) they’d get a real point guard on the cheap, 2) they’d dump Odom’s lifeless corpse just in time before he starts fossilizing, 3) Kobe would have so effing much left in the tank, 3) Bynum would turn into probably the best lowpost scoring big in the league (I mean who else is in the neighborhood? The Gasol brothers & Z-bo, and somehow these 4 players are on 2 teams, yeesh) Again, let me know how you feel in the comments, that means you, imaginary friend that hides behind the shelves where I keep my booze and elven maiden who cleans the lint from the back of my dryer. I pantilly (clantilly?) scantily, erm, shantilly, vapidly, fuck it, I await your insight.com bowl attitudes about it.

Anyway, that’s all I got for now. I'mma pour some more salt in my soup. See you in 20 years. Peace.