Walking Over Memphis
Well, that was easy. And it proved wrong every single negative thing that's been said about the Suns this year. They can play defense. They can rebound. They can score under pressure. They have enough of a bench to get them through. Better take a look at the new face of basketball, people, before it whizzes by you on the highway. And now, a week to kick back, smoke some weed (I have no objective proof of this, of course, but in my dreams, my favorite basketball team is comprised of stoners), and watch Houston and Dallas pound the shit out of each other for three more games, at least one of which will go to overtime.
I found it quite gratifying to beat Memphis, which is as close as the NBA has to a villainous team these days. Gasol and Battier are fine. But the rest of those guys are stupid punks. If wraparound passes that go out of bounds were the only qualification, Jason Williams would be an automatic Hall Of Famer. Tatooed knuckles were cool when Robert Mitchum did them in Night Of The Hunter, but I doubt that's what "J-Will" was going for. Also, it's a great sign when players are wearing armbands out of solidarity with a guy named Bonzi who got booted out of the playoffs because he can't get along with the coach. This is what was supposed to have given the Suns trouble? A team that gets a hanging-on-the-rim technical in the fourth quarter of an ostensibly close game? Also, nice temper tantrum by James Posey there in the third. Who gets castigated by Mike Dunleavy for not being cool? And on the Charles Barkley watch, the Chuckster had no comments on the game at halftime because he said he'd been watching Desperate Housewives instead. And he meant it. Now that's the kind of job I want. Come to think of it, that's the kind of job I have. Only I don't get paid as well as Barkley. Or as Barkley's driver. Or pretty much anyone who works for TNT.
I have one more sports comment to make. Does anyone really care who Phil Jackson coaches next season? It's a distracting plotline, like the police procedural scenes on a daytime soap when all you really want is for the hot tan couple to get naked. And the way the sportswriters talk about it! "Is P-Jax headed back to La-la land?" It's like children's writing that can't get published. My favorite was the hot item last week that "P-Jax" and "Kobe" had lunch together! Oooh! Stop the presses! Did they have salads or go straight to the entree? Was the tuna sashimi grade?
Now let me switch gears as only I can and say that I finished book number 17 over the weekend. I tried desperately to get it done by Saturday at midnight, so I could have 17 through the first third of the year, thereby putting me on pace for 51, but I got tired around 11:30. Fortunately, or not, depending on your perspective, I had bad insomnia that night, so by the time I got done watching a weird Eddie "Rochester" Anderson movie on TCM, I still had miles to go before I slept, so I read.
That book is Happy Baby, by my literary friend Stephen Elliott, which I meant to get to last year. And when I say "literary friend," it means someone who I've met and liked during my fascinating voyage through the world of the literary elite and over the cliff of obscurity again. It gives me great pleasure, then, to say that Happy Baby is a extremely impressive display of both literary substance and style. The narrative conceit, which moves backward in time, works extremely well and doesn't seem gimmicky at all. In fact, it feels to me like a true formal innovation. Also, the sentences are clear and crisp and everything adds up to perfect effect.
Even more impressive is the book's howl at the center for a more just treatment system for troubled teens. In that way, it's like Dickens, but it's gritty as Hubert Selby, but also shot through with feeling. Can you call something an emo version of Last Exit To Brooklyn? Highly recommended.