Starring Cloe from 24, it's like an indie Romy & Michele's...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlEGZmduSdE&search=grant%20lee%20phillips

Last Saturday I got a massage from a deaf and blind woman. To communicate with her, if you want her to massage deeper, you grab her hand and gently twist her wrist, and if you want her to go softer, you stroke the back of her hand. She was very good (I hear massage therapy is an intuitive art), and the whole time, I was thinking about how she experiences the world, since without your senses of hearing and sight, your universe is created almost entirely internally. And for someone born without these senses, this is the only universe from which to understand reality. I bet it's rich, with shapes, dimensions and forms we could never imagine that would blow open entire potentials for science and perception of reality.

So something's wrong with my knee again and I don't know what. I didn't suffer an acute injury, but in the last few weeks, I've been having these little explosions under the knee cap where it feels like a rubber band just snapped. I realized while bowling last week, that my left knee can't support a full weight shift. Sometimes it just clicks really loudly and I'm limping around. I went to an orthopedic doctor and his nurse was asking me for my medical history. I realized I couldn't remember how many times I've torn it up. 5 surgeries, 2 ACL tears, 4 meniscus tears and 1 removal. I'm pretty sure that's what the medical records will say when they get here from my doctor up north. I know every time I hurt my knee, it's awful, and I'm fully aware of how painful and grueling knee surgery and the subsequent recover is. But I just can't stay off the court. I would do anything for a bionic knee.

This morning this guy in a Porsche rolled down his and nonchalantly threw out a handful of wrappers or some other form of crumpled paper matter. We were stuck in traffic and he did it like it was no big deal, or no one would notice. Knowing I had a few more minutes at the light, a part of me wanted to get out of the car, pick up his shit and throw it back into his car. But I'm kind of a coward. He did try to cut into my lane when the light turned green but I didn't let him. The girl in the Honda behind me wouldn't either, which makes me suspect that she saw his little litterbug act. People really don't think enough outside of themselves sometimes.

Is it bad that I think this picture looks like Shawn Marion?

I love Shawn Marion. Go Suns.

If you like basketball and want to see players' family pictures, check this out. It's pretty...what's the word...horrifying.

A picture for byt because he asked nicely...

I thought I would just share with you all that this is one of my favorite pictures.

Today it took 4 hours for me to make lemonade because I fell into a k-hole.

In case anyone doesn't want to be surprised before hand, Reggie's cake on Thursday will be carrot. And it will be adorned with a frosting princess.

I've joined a women's basketball league, which turned out to be a JEWISH women's basketball league. It's fine though, they've got some girls who have really good game, though some of them play in those really long black skirts so they can't dribble between their legs. I'm not sure they all have the ability to dribble between their legs per se, but in any case, it's a good excuse if you can't.

Our first game two weeks ago, I led our team with 10 points, 14 rebounds, 2 steals and a block. I think I had an extra block in their but Reggie was keeping the tally and I guess he didn't see it. It wasn't a big one, just one of those subtle ones where I brushed it on the way up with my finger tips so it fell just short of the basket. Blocked shots make me happy. Unless I'm the shooter. Then I feel like an asshole.

Last week's game was frustrating. I felt the burning desire to punch one of the girls on my team, who's a selfish and non-team oriented player, who was hiding out in the post because she didn't want to play perimeter defense which was where she was supposed to be, and then she kept bitching that I was out of position. I was out of position because she was hiding in mine. I blocked 4 shots and knocked people to the ground because I outweigh most of the girls by 20 to 30 lbs., can block out and play physical, and can grab backboard when I jump. That's what qualifies me to be in the post. She didn't want to chase their speedy point guard around. That's what she appeared to think qualified her to play in the post and to yell at me to tighten up the middle. She also mistook a 2-2 zone defense, which I proposed and she agreed to before the game, for an offense. I mean, I don't know what part of "2-2 zone DEFENSE" made her so vehemently argue that it was an OFFENSE...but I started to feel like Sean Young in Ace Ventura screaming, "LACES OUT!" as I was screaming, "THE 2-2 ZONE IS A DEFENSE" and I finally gave up. But the level with which I wanted to hit her and with which I still do has prompted me to call the hypnotherapist for a "chillout/anger management" session. But if I find her hiding in the post again next week, I'm going to knock her down.

I'll tell you what I got for Reggie for his birthday. I got him the special edition DVD of King Kong, and tickets to an upcoming Angels/Red Sox game. And a nice case of syphilis. I'm just kidding. About the King Kong DVD.

I'm very tired today. I don't know why it took 4 hours to make lemonade.

I Am a Drug Addict Klepto

So I went down to Irvine today to have lunch with Miranda, her husband, Gilbert, and their two kids.

We went to a little sushi restaurant and as Miranda is giving me a harsh 3rd degree about when I'm going to get married and how I need to take my biological clock more seriously, her 7 year-old son Austin is going through my wallet. He keeps pulling out my money and my cards and I keep pulling it away and telling him to stop it. So Miranda and I are in a heated conversation and Austin keeps going through my wallet and I keep taking it away, until suddenly, he holds up a little baggie, waves it around high above his head and goes, "WHAT'S THIS????? WHAT IS THIS????"

*Rewind two months*

Reggie and I had just had a massive blowout screen-door-bangin'-in-a-storm fight and I came home from work to find his car parked outside my building. I went over and didn't see anyone in the car, so I went upstairs and there was no one home. Then I got into my usual paranoid frame of mind that maybe he was hiding somewhere ready to jump out and kill me a la Fatal Attraction and shit (yeah I know...I really need more faith in mankind). So then I search the house, scared out of my mind but there's no one there so I look out the balcony and see that his car is now gone. I'm thoroughly creeped out so I call him and ask why he had been parked outside my house. He says that he'd run up to grab his coat which he'd left at my place before the fight and I was relieved to know he wasn't stalking me. Then he asked me who I was taking to the game (meaning the Clippers game) which was starting in half an hour, and which I had completely forgotten about in my very angry state of mind. So I'm pretty blatant with my spite when I say that I was going to call around and see who was available to go, but then I realize that the game is in half an hour. Reggie says he'll go with me and I'm angry at him but I still say fine. So he picks me up and we ride halfway to the Staple Center in angry silence and then have a loud he said/she said fight that takes us to the parking lot and then some. Finally, we wear ourselves out and apologize, but as with all post-fight periods, it's ridiculously frosty and awkward.

So we're walking towards the Staples Center, not really knowing what to say to each other, tension still on level high, when Reggie stoops down and picks up a little baggie of weed. Now, I'm someone who gets excited finding a heads-up penny on the ground, and a found quarter can make my day. But a dime bag of weed had to be the best random thing to pick up on the street, second only to the unlabeled video tapes that my roommates at that summer of USC picked up which turned out to be porn. So the little baggie breaks the ice between us because 1. We think it's hilarious that we found drugs on the ground (albeit in downtown LA) and 2. It leads to a lighthearted discussion about who should carry it, with the obvious choice being me, since Reggie is a young black male and thus, would get 20 years or something ridiculous for carrying weed while I , being a non-young black male, would get off with a slap on the wrist. So for shits and giggles, I put the baggie in my wallet and completely forgot about it.

Actually, that's not true. I remember it's there from time to time and I keep thinking that I should really take it out because I have a nagging feeling that leaving it in there will lead to one of those situations that I'll later regret and wonder why I didn't take it out in the first place, but which doesn't deter me from wanting to tempt fate and let some hilarious, awful wackiness-ensues-and-you're-really-up-shit-creek situation happen. Like knowing I shouldn't carry a fake ID in my wallet day-to-day while I was in college, but being too lazy to take it out, then having my wallet stolen, then recovered by a campus cop who called me and had me come into the station to reclaim it, then told me that he noticed I had two IDs in there and thought it would be a nice warning for me if he just destroyed it since it was probably just a "bizarre mistake" this time, but next time I would get to spend some more time at the station...

Anyway, so I know it's in there and I always think I should take it out. But I never did. Maybe it was part lazy, maybe it was part masochism. Maybe it was a challenge to the universe to see what kind of hilarious but shitty situation it could put me in.

So fast forward to this afternoon, as Austin waves this baggie of weed around in a crowded restaurant as my conservative cousin and her husband gape at it, and I have to tackle him to get it back...then I have to go through the story of how it ended up in my wallet which of course, no one believes.

But you all believe me.....

And of course, the moral of this story is, don't pick up weed that you find on the street. Unless it's yours, in which case you gotta pick that shit up quick cuz you know that weed ain't cheap.

Suns Win!!!!

You can read the recap of the game at NBA.com.

The big story of the night was Kobe's disappearance in this game.

The bigger story of the night, is the writer's choice of words in the following excerpt:

"When Bryant decided to stop shooting, the Suns decided to run the Lakers off the court. A pair of free throws by Marion with 4:31 remaining in the third quarter gave Phoenix an 80-56 bulge. Phoenix held a 90-65 bulge entering the final period. "

By bulge, we're talking about penises, right? Because a 90-65 bulge definitely sounds impressive.

Andres Nocioni: the best YMCA player in the NBA

(excerpt from SI article by Chris Ballard)

The frenetic Argentinean has been the key for the Bulls thus far in making the Heat sweat. In Tuesday's Game 6 Bulls loss, Nocioni had 23 points and 10 rebounds, and in the series he's averaging 20.8 and 9.6. I don't have a tally of the times he's hit the floor, flown out-of-bounds or shoved his elbow into someone's back, but no doubt his numbers are impressive in these categories as well.

Nocioni reminds me of that guy at the Y, the one in his late 30s who's still playing with the younger guys and takes every game very, very seriously. He's the dude setting hard picks (and yelling "Use it! Use it!") while playing with a bunch of teenagers who are goofing off. He's the guy who lifts weights after he plays, the guy who never wants to play 21 or H-O-R-S-E, because what's the point of that? Nocioni is that guy if he were 26 years old, 6-foot-7 and had the athleticism to dunk on James Posey. The other day, Scott Skiles described him repeatedly as "a man" while trying to explain Nocioni's effectiveness, and it was easy to see the coach's admiration for his forward. In fact, Nocioni might be a decent approximation of Skiles had Skiles been 6-7 (remember, Skiles once tried to fight Shaquille O'Neal). In the wake of Tyson Chandler's injury, Skiles hinted that he might put Nocioni on Shaq for short periods of time. Here's hoping he does.

FREE RAJA!!!!