I was doing a read of @nullster‘s Tweet that he made and one of them was a Tweet that had me in it which is why it got bonus points and I bought the digital reprint rights.
Here it is and that’s so you can see it so much.
I’ve decided what I’m going to do in life … I’m going to write the cliff note guides to all of @brianspaeth’s books 14 minutes ago via web
Well buddy come on down because now there’s something to beat with your career and it’s this video from @needsrebooting and she has the trophy right now because of how maybe you remember this Calvin Stadiums art that became real art that she did.
Taking the rest of the week off sounds like a good thing because of how my week is made from that one. Here comes a smile and it’s for me.
So I was falling down at my Sidewalk Tweetup and my phone went to this blogsite web post about things this booty would tell her 17 year-old self and I started rolling around on the sidewalk thinking about my list.
So here are the things I would say to the me that is 17 and these are in an order that is not particular for you.
Oh also I grouped them in a way that is how I think the conversation might go.
- Keep working and your muscles will happen to you.
- I guess one day you will have a time machine and do this too.
- Don’t make any paradoxes happen, like come to see you tomorrow and not that the same time I’m here right now.
- Sell PCBM at 1.90 cause the next day it’s going to have one of those bad days and go to .00019 and stay there forever.
- Just stay away from penny stocks in general maybe?
- Hey can I cut you on your arm and then like we will see if a scar appears on my arm in real-time.
- Look what I did to our shoulder with a tattoo. lol
- You should invent Twitter and get money dollars for doing it.
- Also you need to make up Lost and Gossiping Girls because people love those shows.
- That time you break your face – don’t do that one. Also that’s a spoiler so I can’t tell you when that happens.
- One day Bill Walton will play your daddy in a movie.
- Oops spoiler space – sorry about that one, Lil’ Bri.
- Can I call you Lil’ Bri.
- Hey Lil’ Bri we should go see Mom and Dad right now and give them heart attacks. lol
- Where is our girlfriend and is it weird if I go on an excitement date with her tonight.
Those are all the ones I can think of right now but maybe I will do another part to the list later.
Would you say anything to a 17 year-old me and if you did would it be exactly what I did except maybe a little different because he’d be all like “who are you lady”. lol
Yes, I’m giving away the Simmons basketball book. It was fine, but my time with it is now complete.
Also, this picture happened with a pseudo-Polaroid Android app.)
So I was at the gym yesterday getting ready to make my muscles happen some more, and as I opened my gym bag, I realized I hadn’t put anything in it.
There was just one stray weightlifting glove – I never use these cause I’m a tough man – and a pair of old ePod headphones.
There were no workout pants and/or shorts.
I had a t-shirt on, so no problem there. But I also had on jeans.
I sat in there contemplating what to do for about 15 minutes. I took off my shirt while I did this so anyone who walked in would think I was in the middle of changing, and also so I could do my narcissism I like to have sometimes.
Ultimately I decided to drive away in my car to someplace to buy some pants, and then came back to the gym.
I crawled in so the staff wouldn’t have deja-vu and get scared about how their minds worked.
Here are some cool pictures I was either sent, informed about, or coaxed out of some friends.
The first one is what Who Shot Mamba? looks like when it’s happening inside an iPad when my personal Batgirl is holding the iPad.
I don’t know how Batgirl put the movie inside the iPad but it looks neat how it’s inside of there and it has a nice living room to be in that’s made of computer chips and silicons.
Batgirl can make it bigger if you click on the picture with your iPad mouse.
This next one is another one.
It has some special in it, so maybe soak it up and go for the gold. It’s when me and Robby got our Tweetdeck apartment inside Robby’s computer.
Despite the relative success of Who Shot Mamba?, I’ve not been approached by the “web series community” all that often, nor have I gone out of my way to integrate myself.
I don’t mean to disparage the many talented people who are hardcore into it, it’s just that things like the “International Academy of Web Television” is a little too pretentiously self-important at this point for my taste.
If you’ve read this post of mine, you know that I don’t think what’s known today as a web series is long for this world, anyway.
That said, I do follow the goings-on, and last month they had an awards show that by all accounts was a complete disaster, and even a month later it’s getting worse.
Short version is they tried to play it like a traditional awards show and it just didn’t work.
Here – free of charge – is what should be done for next year, should it happen:
1) Let series nominate themselves for “Best Web Series of 2010″.
2) Fan voting chooses a top 20. (Logically, the most genuinely popular shows will win these slots. Make sure voting is transparent and open at all times.)
3) Each of the top 20 gets $3K apiece to produce a 2-3 minute short based in or around their show. (Might be in-continuity, might be a “pick us to win” vid, might be something else altogether.)
4) These 20 shorts are shown at the awards show, which is a casual affair held someplace that doesn’t make it seem like you’re trying to imitate the Oscars, et al. Let each series producer (or star or whoever) introduce their own piece, and everyone gets a moment in the limelight, too.
5) The audience (both irl and online) votes for the best vid, and the winner is declared Best Web Series of 2010.
What this gets you is a fast-paced, unique, entertaining +/-1.5 hour show that’s an actual celebration of the things the people can do.
It’s also a chance to give 20 series a little actual money to make something, which is always a struggle for non-branded series. (This assumes you can get sponsorship money.)
Ultimately – and let’s be serious here – the winner doesn’t really matter for any of these awards. It should be a fun night that lets people show off their talent and support each other. This gets you that.
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.
Despite the relative success of 
So I am very close to getting my Nexus One SuperPhone, and in preparation for that – as well as recuperation from 
