Load, dammit! Load!
I don't want to do my laundry.
I can't take the stairs.
I can't take my hair.
There's too much oil over
and under everything.
I want a cherry bomb
in my vagus nerve.
I want to stop listening to Wilco.
Not because of the words,
But because what they mean.
I said, "I guess Contradictions
are not always good."
But that was just me being
Contrarian. King Mary,
The Bloody Faerie.
The Golden Compass
And Wilco do not have
That much in opposition.
Only, I feel.
And pop music is the
decomposition.
I can't and won't listen to the Black Keys or this:
(Have I failed at being pretentious, worldly, satirical? Or am I, in my sincerity, awesome at it? Need some sleep. Failed parenthetical.)
non-Edit.
Is there a true counter culture still in America? we asked. It's too easy to, too prescribed to be weird. Fuck a safe space. Freaks are supposed to have to find their way, not have it fed to them just like every other toilet swirl of a group.
(okay, so I actually watched a small portion of that Amanda Palmer. I don't hate it. Luckily, I don't love it, either. It occurred to me, it's something I'd have thought was cool and worth doing a few years ago. I don't know. What am I left with? Depressives and Kanye West? Redheads? Yeah, redheads...)
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
From Outside the Boxscore (Sporadic Era-tic: The Death of the Superfriends)
Blowing in the Wind, originally uploaded by awonderfulsplash.
Worry not, dear friends! The Superfriends meme is not dead. It just falls to this lonely spore to wind the clock of change and paradigm. Someone has to declare something dead after all this talk of viral this video and viral that, hashtag trending moments in the blistering web-spun online sun. Our eyes can only be hosts to these ghosts of existence for so long.
So, existence versus non-existence tonight. I declare death to the Superfriends not because they do not exist and/or will not soon come to proliferate. I only offer that such a means to overcoming the mean streets of mediocrity must at some point come to be judged as either viable or f(l)ailing. I recognize it's early in the NBA season, but a verdict must be passed such that all other verdicts may be measured, consciously or collective-subconsciously, upon its wavily inconsistent metaphorical shores.
Sorry, a little rusty here. I offer, in return for your patience and persistence and co-pre-cognizance with me, an alternative.
LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh: These are the new figureheads of the Superfriends mold. Amar'e, CP3, 'Melo: These are the leaders of the new, if new be someday told. Right now, the verdict is out on the ledge like hot pie charts waiting for sticky fingered nerds to reach out and grasp at the pretense of truth. And who's the early boy playing Worms: Battle Islands? I'll give you a hint: it's not the eight-and-six Heat. Rather, I suggest you take a look at the twelve-and-eleven Spurs.
That's right, the wily vets, the geriatric section, divorcee's row, the leaders of the old, the Spurs currently hold the best win percentage in the league. How are they doing it? Not with an injection of new legs, because Tiago Splitter ain't doing diddly past six points and three pulls, and DaJuan Blair is the opposite of new legs. They're doing it with the same old system based around Tim Duncan and trickling down to the aforementioned soon-to-be divorcee Tony Parker, the finally healthy Manu Ginobli, and the revitalized Richard Jefferson.
So the Spurs are twelve-and-one. What's new, Nagamatsu? Why write about the difference in paradigms now? Because LeBron James affords us a unique perspective on the efficacy of Superfriends vs. San Antonio as models for building successful basketball teams. In Cleveland, King James was privy to a build similar to that of the Spurs, as was much bruited about when the two teams faced in the finals of '07. Under the careful build of Popovich acolytes Danny Ferry and Mike Brown, LeBron James saw a solid string of successful seasons. Now, having left the patronage of such system, he enters into something more akin to the 80's Laker Showtime teams under Pat Riley's baleful, pomaded watch.
Obviously, the Showtime teams weren't quite a Superfriends model. Perhaps I'm just saying that because they were successful and such a model would ruin my paradigm study. Still, those squads lacked the mercenary feel of such teams as the post-championship Rockets featuring Olajuwon, Drexler, and Barkley and/or Pippen, as I mentioned in my last epocrypha. What other unsuccessful Superfriends squads can we point to? Barkley's 76ers with Dr. J and Moses Malone, as well as Pippen's stint with the Jail Blazers both fit the bill. Dallas' multiple attempts at paving their way to super teams with the Mark Cuban's Benjamins failed, as did the '04 Lakers. (And I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole host of 'em)
Batmanuel, Captain Liberty, The Tick and Arthur, originally uploaded by Walkabout Wolf.
Which brings us to the anomalies, the outliers as Malcolm Gladwell would put it. Sure, the '04 Lakers failed with Gary Payton and Karl Malone in tow, but realistically they should have won. Statistically, they should have won. Only Malone's injury kept them from dominating that series. And then Shaq left, and who knows. But what about the current, contemporary version of the Lakers? Isn't that a four-headed beast with Kobe, Pau, Lamar, and Artest? In short, yes. This current iteration is what one might term a "Superfriends" squad. However, what separates them is the system. Phil Jackson's "trust your players to fall or fly when they most need your trust" system is one of a kind. As a Lakers fan, I am petrified at the thought of trying to get that seventh in my watching career without the Zen Master. Here's the other thing: Until recently, this system was not one that played nice with the Superfriends mold. In the first three-peat, the team swallowed stars whole and left them barely shells of role players. Glen Rice, Mitch Richmond, Isaiah Rider. All three were eaten up and spit out by the '00-'02 Lakers.
The other outlier? The '08 Boston Celtics. There's a team that fit the Superfriends mold to a T. What sets them apart is Ubuntu. They had an identity from the start. Furthermore, the team's looking more and more like a Spurs team built around Rondo. But that's a side note. San Antonio is not the only team prospering under the Popovich Spurs paradigm. The 10-2 New Orleans Hornets (3rd highest win percentage in the league right now) are newly adapting themselves to the model under Popovich pupil Monty Williams. Similarly, the 10-4 Oklahoma City Thunder have followed Sam Presti in making Durant their Duncan and building down from there.
Pencil Vs Camera - 19, originally uploaded by Ben Heine.
What tic should you take away from all this? What should you allow to syphon blood from your Superfriend-like excessive thoughts? Let's just say the Lakers have Zen, the Celts have Ubuntu, what do the Heat have?
Monday, September 20, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
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