So I am very close to getting my Nexus One SuperPhone, and in preparation for that – as well as recuperation from WSM? – I am going away for a couple weeks.
I also have a script to finish that requires some underwater research – eliminating all distractions and not getting electrocuted is essential.
No blog posts.
No instant messaging.
No Facebook.
No Twitter.
I even deleted UberTwitter from my phone – frankly I need to rethink the manner in which I personally use Twitter altogether.
Anyway, I’ll see you on or around Monday February 22nd – of course I’ll have email, but like I might be deleting every third message just as a kind of sport or game of chance with myself.
You’re aware that I can go pretty much anywhere and find things to amuse myself with.
At times, this includes actual amusing things, and that’s like an exciting thing to have happen.
It’s usually at Borders, where I pretend to write and instead mess around on various hot and exclusive instant messaging platforms of some note.
Brian: This dude in Borders is laughing at something on his laptop and this woman reading “Civil War Times” is looking at him dismissively lolol
Girl: Omg lol
Brian: It’s not like there’s hot new civil war news lolol
Brian: The South – Fighting Mad! (And what it means for you!) pg 25
Girl: Unsure which side you are on? Take our quiz on page 46!
Brian: General Lee – He’s Just Like Us!
Girl: Is she wearing arm warmers
Girl: Like leg warmers but for your arms
Brian: Nah it’s a pink sweater with some kind of sweater vest
Brian: I want to start a magazine about people who read that magazine
Brian: Like we could profile her
Girl: Dude you should just start a magazine about people in borders
Girl: And sell is exclusively at borders and like people who read it and find that they are featured in it can bring it up to the counter and prove it’s them and they get like a prize or something
Brian: Lol
Brian: You know I am putting this on my blog thx
Girl: I hate when you do this trick ttyl
Once the lady left I went and picked up the magazine – there was only one copy on the shelves.
Perhaps the most interesting thing was a sizable “Note From the Editor” right at the front that warned readers there was a scam going around wherein people would call them and warn that their subscriptions were up, and that they needed their credit card numbers right away.
Says something about their target demo, which is primarily premature and naive historical enthusiasts. Not sure how you measure that.
In the back of the mag was a political cartoon that I’d guess 14 people on Earth would understand – luckily I was one, and I laughed so hard, and then I had something to bond with the laptop guy about.
FULL CIRCLE MONDAY IS WHERE I’M COMING FROM.
While you wait for Lost to start tonight, here’s the conclusion to WSM? – my Rocky Balboa moment to be sure.
(I blatantly re-purposed this Photoshop job from my old website, sorry.)
I know it’s like the “blog thing to do” to bash ESPN’s Bill Simmons, and I don’t come here to do that today expressly.
Say what you will about him, but I’ve come to quite like his podcast – he has interesting guests and there’s an enthusiasm and casualness to it I like.
He’s also fairly aware he maybe needs to step back from the NBA trade machine a bit – he freely admits his craziest trade suggestions are indeed crazy at times.
However, on his show with JA Adande the other day, he was totally serious (it seemed) in his opinion that the best basketball situations for LeBron to go to are Chicago and the LA Clippers.
Not only that, but he completely discounted the Cavs as anything more than a remote possibility.
Now, while I’m a Cleveland fan to the end, I’m freely willing to admit LeBron may leave, and that he’ll certainly visit every single team in the NBA on his free agent tour this summer.
Looking purely at it from a basketball standpoint though…let’s look at the Cavs.
- Best record in the NBA
- Built-in chemistry/continuity
- Defensive-minded coach
- Brand-new practice facility
- Big expiring contracts
- One of the few teams that are profitable
- Owner willing to spend whatever it takes
You could go down the list with both Chicago and LAC, and they’re the opposite of what the Cavs have in many cases.
LeBron’s gonna go play for Mike Dunleavey on the most cursed, cheap, and poorly run organization in sports? I can’t even see how that’s a rational argument at all, basing it purely on basketball.
And Chicago? Does LeBron really want his legacy to be having every single thing ever written about him forever be even more of a comparison to Michael Jordan?
Even adding in marketing, he’s fine in Cleveland.
With the new McDonald’s deal, he’s got all the big sponsor segments except a car company.
Look, he’s conquered America, and this doesn’t even take into account that Cleveland is close to home, the Cavs can pay him the most money, and also have a minority owner from China, which is actually a bigger market than LA and NYC. (!!!)
In conclusion, I’m sure this has been written 50 times elsewhere already, but I didn’t even know Stephon Marbury was playing in China, so there you go.
(WSM? ends tonight – if you missed the first half of the big Sherman-Stadiums showdown…here. Aw, lookit Petey Skippen getting his chance to shine!)
I haven’t written anything for 11 days on here – this is where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing:
- Went to NYC
- Working on script
- Explaining to Mom that I haven’t actually taken the moon supplement
That’s really about it – and I’ll start recapping a little of my NYC trip soon – some funny stuff happened.
Anyway, here’s the penultimate segment of Who Shot Mamba? – this (and the next one) is probably my favorite segment of all – I love all the Sportscentury type stuff and the characters that came really to life for it.
This Chapter is actually cut in half – it runs differently in the feature-length version. Strangely, I like this version better – it works as a super dramatic cliffhanger, which you really don’t get watching it as a full movie.
Official WSM? DVDs are available for $9.99 – this is the stripped down one. Just the movie and the trailers, including the trailer that was out for one day like a year a half ago.
It’ll be on Amazon and available for download also at some point, but there are a few things we need to wait and hear about first – I’m making this available now simply because people have been asking for it and I want those who want it to have it.
Looking forward to getting back to like some regular irreverent blogging – LOL! What.
If you haven’t yet watched Chapter 7 of Who Shot Mamba? you might want to do so – what follows will be filled with spoilers, because this segment is LOADED with revelations.
So Calvin Stadiums is the instigator of the shooting of Mamba, and continues to threaten people with guns.
If you haven’t quite put the pieces together, Calvin Stadiums is 90% based on Wizards star and gun enthusiast Gilbert Arenas…and this was written well over two years ago – long before he was suspended by the NBA for his firearm incident.
Calvin is so much a Gilbert avatar that a couple years back we were in discussions with Arenas’s people about him playing the character. We were told “yes” at one point and put the entire production on hold to wait…and wait…and wait.
Dylan Mooney came in and owned the role in a way that made for a better movie anyway, but we hold that Gil has The Curse of the Mamba hovering over him.
You laugh, but guess who was very close to playing Sherpa (from Chapter 1) and then decided against it?
Yep…Greg Oden.
In any case, while writing WSM?, just how much Gilbert was there inserted into Calvin? Here’s the breakdown of the basketball-based aspects of the character:
GILBERT ARENAS
- Obvious play on the name
- Uniform number
- Agent Zero/Henchmen Zero
- Aloof and Quirky
- Obsessed with Orange Roundie
- Unique father-son relationship
- Big Tiger as symbol of sorts
- Washington, DC
- Gunplay (unintentional)
MICHAEL JORDAN
- Greatest ever
- Gambling problem
- Competitive arrogance
- Petey Skippen sidekick
KOBE BRYANT
- the complete lack of self-awareness the younger Kobe had
The biggest Calvin-Gilbert-gun similarity of all is something I can’t talk about until the movie is over, but it was what struck me most heavily when the Arenas/gun stuff started, because it was something I had decided on years ago.
Keep watching – and there’s much more about the transition from Arenas-to-Stadiums right here.
That’s like an actoring tip. Sorry if this is hard to read.
@InflatableBen is in jail, too. The fact that these two are clearly not really Ben Wallace and Jerry Rice – and never, ever claimed to be – has eluded el Twitter.
Crippling to Team Mamba where Ben is concerned. Very disappointing – hope they clear this up.
The details on the free Who Shot Mamba? iPhone app are below – thanks again to Renegade Apps for putting this together, and also to @_dannyb_ for really being the impetus – he is justly credited inside the app itself. Click anywhere on ther to get it – it’ll open your iTunes thing.
Do me a favor – download, rate, review if you get it OR if you don’t get it. If you half-way get it, I guess don’t worry about it.
I’ll get back to writing like regular stuff one day soon – I have updated thoughts on Twitter, which is actually somewhat of a 180 from how I’ve been…!
I also miss writing completely irreverent stuff unrelated to this WSM? movie thing. I get back from NYC on the 2-something and hopefully I have some more time to make this blog have more blog on it.
I will get to the important issue of the Who Shot Mamba? iPhone app being available tomorrow. (Click here to go get it in the iTunes Store – it’s 100% FREE.)
In the meantime, old friend Bjorn of Half Broke Hotel shared an article with me about one of my most anticipated films of this year, The Expendables.
It features some of the biggest names of the genre – including Arnold Schwarzenegger, 62, Bruce Willis, 54, Dolph Lundgren, 52, Mickey Rourke, 57, Jet Li, 46, and Jason Statham, 37.
It also stars Brittany Murphy, who died in December of a heart attack.
Of course her death isn’t funny, but the article is all about how horrific the stunts were, the “tough legends” that have banded together, and how Stallone fractured his neck during the shoot.
If you read it all the way through, the placement of that sentence and the context makes it seem like she died of a heart attack during the shoot because she couldn’t handle how intense the shoot was.
I was gonna make a big deal about like doing a big redesign on the site for 2010, but realized I like the thing how it is. All I did was move the links for my books up a notch and add a page about the Radby book.
Brad says he’s been getting all this email asking “wtf” about whether he’s a real person or a fake person or a cartoon person, so I felt a need to clarify things.
The big news for 2010 is that I’ve found myself kinda into the NBA again. The Cavaliers are quietly playing quite well after a bumpy start, and there just seems to be lots of interesting things going on.
I get intrigued by things like Tracy McGrady having his sadness again and Gilbert Arenas being unable to shake the Curse of the Mamba.
In any case…some IM action, in lieu of actual content.
Brian: Why are you awake
Girl: Lol…sorry.
Brian: : /
Girl: : /
Brian: Have you ever had the cereal Blue Crunchos
Girl: I have noto. Is it tasty
Brian: Yeah and even crunchier than it sounds
Girl: Oh wow
Brian: Yeah
Girl: Cool well I’m glad we talked about that brian
Brian: Me too
Girl: Bye
Brian: Can I put this on my blog it is making me laugh
Also I’ve eaten two full boxes of Cold-Eeze in the past 48 hours.
Hey I will not be posting anything this week other than this – everything I’m doing this week is like super private and personal, and writing about any of it will make me have conflicts with how shy I am.
Here’s a little vid we threw together of Shadii doing the voice of Inflatable Ben in Who Shot Mamba? – this type of content is only available on the Facebook Page, so like go there or whatever.
If you’re going to be in the Atlantic Ocean for New Year’s Eve, please call my Google Voicemail number, and we can meet up and have a Spring Break Christmas.
Oh wow – that’s a great title for something. This is why I continue to blog – things like that just come out. Happy Holidays!
So I am very close to getting my Nexus One SuperPhone, and in preparation for that – as well as recuperation from WSM? – I am going away for a couple weeks.
I will get to the important issue of the Who Shot Mamba? iPhone app being available tomorrow. (Click here 
