11/23/04: A Million Felons Can't Be Wrong

I am totally ready to put this Artest shit behind us all. It has definitely touched something in a lot of us, and it's made me realize that the blog comments section is the 21st century answer to the barstool (I know, I know, the barstool itself is still going strong).  It's one guy passionately stating his semi-informed opinion, only to be shouted down by the next guy with a different opinion, and then it goes back the other way again.  Nobody changes their mind; in fact, everybody leaves the bar clinging even more tightly to their original point of view. The difference, which is nice, is that instead of drunkenly punching each other in the face and going home to an angry wife holding a frying pan, we can all retreat to our own dark corners of the internet, and come back the next day at peace with humanity.  In fact, I want to take this opportunity to say this to all those who disagree with me on Artestgate: I still love you. 

And I forgive you for being wrong.

I kid. You know I kid.  We all feel differently about this, and that's just fine.  It's a tough call, this one.  Making a proper judgement* requires some patience, some understanding, some thought, and perhaps some more time as well. Too bad Davey Stern had his mind made up in 24 hours. We'll see how the appeal process goes.

I had a couple of two-hour meetings today, and as usual, I found it impossible to focus on the matters being discussed. In fact, I accidentally stumbled upon a really exciting game to play in these situations.  I was spacing out, thinking about Ron-Ron and Bernard and the internet and Spring Training and the future of mankind and what's for lunch and what time is it and maybe even some unspecific bad things that cross everybody's mind once in a while.  There were about 9 of us in this one meeting, and there was really some good discourse going on. We were brainstorming future show ideas and it was going well. Everybody was being enthusiastic and supportive and ideas were whizzing around the room at a nice clip.  But dammit, I just couldn't find it in myself to care for more than a few minutes at a time.

Here's how it would get interesting.  They'd be batting something about, disagreeing here or there, trying to shape some of these raw ideas into something that resembled a show. And all of a sudden, I would hear one sentence, maybe the first I had heard in the last ten, and I would decide to offer my two cents. I don't know what I was thinking.  I really had no idea what they were talking about. We had handouts for the meeting and I didn't even know what page they were on.  But somehow I saw fit to jump right into the middle of a discussion with a point that very well could have been about a completely different topic. As I looked around the room, gauging the responses by the looks on everybody's faces as I spoke, I was terrified and thrilled.  I fully expected someone to say, "Hans, what the hell are you talking about?" And I would have had to say, "I have no idea."  But somehow, nobody laughed at me or shook their heads or looked completely confused.  It was nice. There was one time where I started talking and I had nothing to say, but I kind of steered myself back to something that was in the realm of reason.

The point is, as soon as I opened my mouth, it felt like a huge wave was approaching, and I wasn't sure whether I was going to be able to bob over the top of the wave or dive through the base, or if the thing was just going to tumble down on top of me.  It made things lively, and I suggest you try it. The next time you drift away in a meeting (you could even drift away on purpose, it's not hard), just snap back into reality and make a very emphatic point vaguely related to what you think they might be talking about. It's like a horror movie.

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Last Artest item (promise!). I found this amusing, even if verbungle.com does not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed herein. It comes from Bill Simmons' column about the melee:

"Adam Carolla had an interesting take on this incident: Imagine being the guy at the game who was first attacked by Artest? You've been watching these guys for two hours, you're pretty buzzed, you're loving the seats ... and then this fight breaks out, and it's riveting as hell, and then suddenly Artest gets nailed by the cup and he's coming right at you. As Carolla said, it would be like watching "Captain Hook" in the movies for two hours, then Captain Hook comes right out of the movie screen and attacks you. Would you have blamed that first guy for soiling himself?"

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Drunk rats.  I should have a joke here.

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The GISG is tighter than the women's underwear I'm wearing right now.  HERE IS YOUR NEXT IMAGE (#16).  Dig in, and answers at noon as always.

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* I refuse to spell judgement without the "e", even though I suspect that is the correct way to spell it.  I just ain't buying the soft g before the m without a nice little e in there to smooth things out.