Saturday, May 23, 2009

News to Me

Paulette-Reaves-99

Am I the only person on the planet who didn't know that Paulette Reaves is the mother of Josh Smith? Her current site has some candids of her with Amare, Nash, and others.

Like you need FD to tell you that LeBron is almighty. Read The Baseline tomorrow for my thoughts on the game. Some other random shit will probably show up here around the same time.

UPDATE: Excuse whatever chippiness follows, because my internet connection is once again totally unreliable and it makes my increasingly professional life a total mess. Fuck writing serious emails on a phone. Anyway, I know I've been scarce around these parts. It's got a lot to do with the new gig; I'm trying to both 1) figure out the hang of it 2) divert traffic from here to there (sorry if that's a huge sinister surprise). So if anyone has advice or feedback on either of these counts, let me know. I can pretty much write whatever I want, and it's really only the recaps/previews I've gotten bogged down with, but every writer is these days (power of repetition = power + repetition. Which means no need for "experts" after a point.)

That said, from last night's Bron/Magic post, here's the FD money shot that would've fit very nicely into this site's special place:

The Magic have been better in this series than they've been at any time during the season (or playoffs, of course). That Turkoglu shot, a mirror image of Lewis's heroics from Game 1, looked like it had capped off, or kicked off, a new glory era for the Magic. No matter how unlikely it all seemed, it would be damn hard to argue with after this. I know that athletes can taste victory, but for once, I understood why that language exists.

But the Magic don't have LeBron James. And while we know stars can lose, upsets can happen, and our preconceptions can be wrong, James is the ultimate superstar. In that, he's both breathtaking and boring. We're watching a career unfold that's already HOF-bound, maybe even the best ever, and yet it all feels so inevitable. And so it was with that shot. Of course James would make it and put everything in its right place. The second -- and yeah, it was literally a second -- the ball went his way, you thought "this is how it's supposed to happen, isn't it?" You realize that "scripted" and "storybook" differ only in connotation.

It had to happen, and as shocking as it was, you could only be so surprised. But isn't that what makes LeBron so ridiculous? He's conditioned us to not only expect the impossible, but take it for granted.

See, it lives! And yes, I took out two really weird sentences that are what happens when I write too late, under some deadline of some sort. Those always make me anxious, as opposed to the sense of urgency, or competitiveness, that used to spur me on when it was totally self-imposed. Welcome to America, I guess.

-While we're on the subject of me saying shit that could potentially hurt my future interest, I find it weird that in that fat dude swimming adidas ad, KG is cast as both less (cardboard shoes) and more (world champs!) fortunate in the grand socio-economic scheme of things than Jim, or whatever his name is. It's like NBA players' former poverty has been mythologized, turned into a necessary part of how high they'll one day rise. It's teleology, and Horatio Alger, and frankly kind of gross. At best, there's a disconnect between "kid plays on dirt and goes on to dominate American sports" and "ordinary schmo loses job during recession." The former is both fantastic and in our society, totally familiar; the latter is cast as the salt-of-the-earth feat of bravery. We're all ordinary people, unless we're too poor, then we might as well be rich because we'll end up cagers or rappers.

Fuck a photo, I have to go watch a movie about Chechnya. Will be live tonight.

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