99.9 FM

Today's date is 09/09/09. I worked at 99.9 KISW for the first half of my 20's. A guy named Foley made this "George Bush Loves Reed" sign the morning I found out I was about to get canned. I like that he did it on official KISW stationary.

Shoulda voted for him

I found this on MLK and Union.

Twenty thousand Texans' fans can't be wrong

Football season is here again. I have been thinking about the Houston Texans since last year when I saw the red shirts in the stands. The image has haunted for some time. Five minutes ago, I finally found evidence, on Ebay, for what I saw. Ebay won't let me paste the image into this post.

It was almost impossible to find anything on the "paint the town red" t-shirts by Halliburton. I noticed them, while watching Monday Night Football, the shirts were given to thousands of Texans fans, for the franchises battle red promotion, before the game in Houston on December 1st, 2008. The Texans were all red like devils. The crowd in red, a camera panned by a guy in a red shirt with white letters that said, “paint the town red” with “Halliburton” under it. Halliburton is the biggest contractor in Iraq. They really “painted the town red”--with blood. Its possible the irony was lost on thousands who wore them, maybe to who conceived them. But more likely, it was drummed up with precision by a marketing staff snickering all the way to the blood bank.

I wish I had a freeze frame picture of a fan in a shirt, because l wanted to reaffirm what I had seen. I found these comments on the message board of Uniwatch, a sports uniform blog. #148 Chance wrote,

The problem with the red Texans uniforms - aside from the fact that they look like ketchup bottles - is that the whole thing is a corporate sponsorship boondoggle (and the corporation in question also happens to be a war profiteer):

#187 Justin H wrote,

Just thought I would share that the 'paint the town red shirts' the Texans fans were wearing have 'Halliburton' in HUGE letters on the bottom of the shirt. That's not logo creep, that is logo curb-stomp.

Obviously those two saw the problem with the shirts. But not this guy, a blogger at the game:

The "battle red" uniforms looked really nice, and were complimented well with "paint the town red" t-shirts given to the crowd (courtesy of Halliburton) so that we could "red out" the stadium and intimidate the road team. Judging from how poorly Jacksonville played, I don't think we needed it but at least I got a souvenir.

The irony was lost on that guy, who was at the game, rocking the shirt. The point is that those three guys in the comments section of an obscure sports uniform blog was confirmation that I was not hallucinating and actually saw the amazingly ignorant and mean spirited shirts.

I thought that a newspaper, webzine, or sports blog would have popped up with an article about the red shirts. It seemed like a no-brainer, but I have yet to find any traditional reporting on this story. The message board on a niche blog was basically the only way I could prove what I had seen and have some kind of human connection or confirmation that, yes those shirts were fucked up and I was not the only one to notice how insensitive and stupid it was to make them. And who knows what it means that so many Texans fans wore them.

Things that get lost between the lines of news reporting sometimes are picked up by blogs, which is good because without that, important cultural landmarks would be passed by as if they had not happened. But the real point is the organic nature of message boards. I find myself paying closer attention to the comments section than the article it self.

What the future of free will be

I just read Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Free by Chris Anderson, “Priced to sell: Is free the future?” for The New Yorker. Gladwell is best known for his books, The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker. In the 80’s he was a reporter for the Washington Post, his website Gladwell.com says he “covered business and science.” According to Wikipedia his articles, “often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences.” Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired. He has two books about the future of free online content, The Long Tail and Free. His Wikipedia page ironically notes that he “generated controversy for plagiarizing content from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, among other sources, in Free.”

I have not read Free, but the premise is digital content will continue to be free. Recently Steve Ballmer said something similar. Gladwell starts his critique with an example of the state of old content providers. In this case, the negotiations between the Dallas Morning News and Amazon to license the newspaper’s content to Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader. Amazon wanted seventy percent of the subscription revenue and the right to republish the newspaper’s content on any other portable reader. Old content creators are barely hanging on, going online only, or just simply going away. Newspapers are dying. Anyone invested in holding onto hardcopy newspapers, are trying to figure out a way to save the institutions.

Recently Rupert Murdoch said every Newscorp website will start charging within the year. Gladwell uses Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal as an example. He writes, “a million WSJ subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online.” Gladwell goes on to argue that free network television is struggling while a pay for content cable television is doing well. Gladwell does not like Anderson’s argument. Probably because it hits close to home for a famous writer like himself. Gladwell does not like that Anderson overlooks the cost of “plants and powerlines.” Of course Gladwell is right about that. The delivery system for our electronic world is the expensive component. But I think neither Gladwell, nor Anderson, nor Ballmer know what the future of free will be.

Tech Dirt writer, Mike Masnick, on the Gladwell/Anderson controversy.

The answer to Gladwell’s question is simply one of economic efficiency. You can pay people to write -- just as Encyclopedia Britannica does. Or you can get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- as Wikipedia does. The latter is a lot more efficient a solution, and the difference in productivity and output is quite evident.” Masnick goes on, “. . . competition happens, and when it does, price gets driven to marginal cost. You might not like it. You might wish it didn’t happen, but arguing against the fact thats how markets work is like arguing that the sun won’t rise tomorrow.

Gladwell ends with a great insight.

The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold there are no iron laws.

I think the latest example of that, is Rupert Murdoch’s forecast of charging for online content across the board. Murdoch would not be the first. There are a few examples. Harper’s is not free, you must have a subscription to the hardcopy magazine to gain a username and password to their web presence, same for Cook’s magazine and Consumer Reports.

So, what is the argument between Gladwell and Anderson? Co-founder of Type Pad and Moveable Type blogging tools, Anil Dash, hits on what this is really about.

I am sure that both of these authors’ books absolutely do lean more towards anecdotal evidence than statistical proof. And honestly, it’s okay that these books don’t necessarily follow the tenets of hard science. In many cases, they’re arguing that a cultural trend is becoming true, or is about to become true, and the reality is that asserting these trends actually helps them come true. In short, these are books designed to create culture, presented in the the guise of reporting on culture.

I think Dash is right.

We should keep in mind that the best of this new world order is that many people are contributing to the dialogue of ideas because they have a passion for it and are not driven by financial gain. Which is probably one of the reasons for the quality of so much free content to be quite high. It is going against the culture to start worrying about not only compensation for your content or copyright infringement at this point. Most blogs go to great lengths to give credit. Not only by naming the source, but also by posting a link to the original document that was quoted. That is about as transparent at it gets.

One thing I am certain about, is that I disagree with trying to predict where all this will go.

Single payer straw man

Thursday June 25th my friend Robby Stern invited me to sign and deliver two letters to the Federal Building in Seattle. There were twelve of us who signed, urging Senator Maria Cantwell to declare her support for a public health care option. Robby was polite and forceful. He urged the Cantwell staff to come out with a clear statement of support. Recently, Robby said Cantwell is on board. The other letter thanked Senator Patty Murray for her support. There is some speculation for what health care reform might look like. A “strong public health insurance option” seems to be the consensus wording.

Robby chairs a large health care reform group called the Healthy Washington Coalition. In a planning meeting for the May 30th “Health Care For All” march, an older Latino man stood up and asked Robby, "What should I tell folks that ask about documented or undocumented status?" Robby said, "The theme is health care for all." President Obama said something similar after his health care speech on Wednesday July 22nd. Chuck Todd of NBC asked Obama how many people would be covered. Obama said he wants to cover as many people as possible, but clarified it would not be single payer.

Even though Obama's old doctor supports a Medicare type program, single payer has become the Ralph Nader of health care reform. Single payer supporters, much like fans of Nader, have good reason to be mad. In my opinion single payer makes sense and so does Nader. But for whatever reason they are both on the outside looking in. Advocates are pissed that it (single payer) is not an option. Opponents are scared that health care reform secretly means single payer.

On Salon.com bbjohn 83 commented on a David Sirota article about why single payer is not in the debate.

Everybody so far is commenting that it is not possible to pass single payer legislation. Of course it won't be possible if it is completely out of the debate and receives zero media coverage. The point isn't what is likely or "possible", the point is that the Democrats seem to be scared of even letting single payer be mentioned at all. What are they scared of? Maybe if single payer was mentioned in an all-inclusive debate, then some of its features may be adopted into the final product, which emerges from congress. It would only do good.

As Senator Murray spoke at the May 30th march, a portion of the crowd pumped their fists and chanted, “single payer, single payer.” The next day, the single payer straw man was wheeled out in the comments section of Seattlepi.com. It represented a microcosm of the erroneous public perception about health care reform. One side feared the rally was for socializing health care and implementing a single payer system. The other side was mad that the P-I didn’t mention single payer as a viable part of the health care debate.

Senator Nancy Pelosi said single payer is, “off the table.” But a strong public option could be closer to single payer than I first thought. In my opinion Obama knows single payer is kryptonite terminology. The vetted words and talking points consistently exclude single payer, and thus Obama may have a chance to push for more coverage. I hope he is going for something similar to a single payer system, but with a more palatable classification.

In front of the Federal Building on Tuesday July 28th Robby led a good-sized crowd of us in singing happy birthday to Medicare, which turned forty-four, three days later on Friday July 31st. Ironically one argument eroding public support is health care reform’s false threat to Medicare (public health care insurance for Americans over sixty-five). Medicare is popular for good reason – it covers a lot of people. So, this is the catch, people are saying, “don’t touch my Medicare,” and simultaneously fearing more coverage. People love a good public health care option. We should expand it.

Robby has a running debate going with his barber. They have different political views. But as Robby says, "my barber understands about this." On this issue they agree and their differences melt away. Robby brought in two posters for the May 30th “Health Care For All” march -- one in Spanish, one in English and his barber was happy to display them both on the shop mirror. Robby closed the planning meeting (mentioned earlier) with this, "75 years ago first legislation for universal health care was introduced by President Roosevelt, but there was too much on his plate. History could be made this year." This reform would be a first step toward a more humane approach to medical care.

I hope we don't stumble.

First picture is from the May 30 March, "Health Care For All."
Second picture is Robby Stern in front of the Federal Building.

The boy is a fish

In the 1960’s how many women were on acid while pregnant? Who knows and who cares. I know of at least one story where a woman was on acid when she went into labor. Her friends, also tripping on acid, helped her give birth. The embilical cord was tied off with dental floss. The acid baby was a boy. His two year old brother came out and declared the boy was a fish at birth. The kid turned out “OK.” He grew up to become a College Republican and get his MBA at Stanford.

Two winter's ago I painted a house in Ballard and this guy who helped me, told that story. He was one of the dude's that helped the mother giver birth. I was laughing because of the way he told it. I guess he moonlights as a midwife on acid. That would be a great band name: Midwives on Acid. The midwife on acid told me it looked like I shit paint after I accidentally sat in some.

The picture is of the old abandoned Tubs bath house in the U. District.

Who I voted for

Just put my ballot in the mailbox. Voted for Mike McGinn for mayor. Hopefully he will make it through the primary. I like his stickers. He is against the waterfront tunnel. The Stranger said he was silk screening shirts featuring a hybrid Guinness McGinn for Mayor logo. One more black pint for the road. Wait. Make it two more black pints for the road. Another blank ballot was in my mailbox today. Maybe I should send it in and vote for him twice.

The "Mike Bikes" sticker is on the back of a no parking sign in old Ballard.

Just another Wednesday night at the Comet

Seattle, Capitol Hill, 1981: Ed is a regular at the Comet. It's Wednesday night. He plays the jukebox, drinks beer and talks to whoever sits next to him. A couple of film buffs, a white guy and a petite Asian girl, sit next to Ed. The film buffs are going back and forth about the movie they just saw at the Egyptian. Two girls and a guy walk in.  They are wasted.  The guy can barely stand.  One of the girls bops around and the other puts quarters in the jukebox. “Start Me Up” from the Stones comes on. The girl that bops around, jumps up on a table and starts dancing.  She rip's her shirt off and the bar is alive.  Regulars hoot and holler. The girl that bops around, whips out two matches and places the cardboard tips in her mouth. She nibbles on the tips, num, num, num. They are soggy. They are similar to the consistency of wheat paste. She sticks them on her pencil eraser nipples and lights them on fire.  The petite Asian girl looks at Ed and says, just another Wednesday night at the Comet. 

I worked with Ed at a glass artist's studio. He told me that story one day while we grouted hundreds of glass mosaic pods and listened to 91.3 KBCS. He said it was just another night at the Comet.

I took the picture of the Comet, not too long ago from my car window, as I drove by during the Seattle heat wave of 2009. The RZA concert poster caught my eye.

Crawford and Calabro

4:07 pm I-90 Westbound - I am waiting for Jamaal Crawford to come on the Kevin Calabro Show. I can’t hear the open they play for him because I am in a tunnel. It is a snippet of some kind of game broadcast. I am out of the tunnel. Calabro thanks the New York Knicks, so it must have been from a game when Crawford was in NYC. It was the game Crawford scored 52 points. Jim Moore is in studio too. Moore asks Crawford, what was it like to score 52 points in one game? Crawford says, it was the best game I ever played. I scored 42 straight points.

4:13 pm Rainier Avenue – I can tell they are having a great time. Crawford says to Calabro, you are the best in the business. Calabro says, thanks. You always come up and say hi when I am doing a game you’re in, but Stuckey doesn’t come up to me and say hi. Crawford says, Stuckey isn’t really a Seattle guy. He’s from Kent. Calabro says, yeah Kent is more of an outlying suburb. They talk about Seattle ball players. Moore says to Crawford, I remember picking you up at Rainier Beach and driving over to the P-I Sports Star of the Year dinner. I can’t remember what year that was, but it was between you and Doug Wrenn. Crawford says, yep.

4:17 pm East Madison Street – I am thinking about who played ball with Crawford back in the day. No one mentions where Doug Wrenn is now. Not that they should. Crawford played with my good friend Jacob in middle school and they played with Ronald Preston. Wrenn was like Preston’s sidekick. Yesterday Jacob and I talked about what happened to Preston.

Yesterday – We sat on Jacob’s parent’s front porch. I say, what happened to Ronald? He died 6 years ago, Jacob says. There used to be a sign that was a memorial for Preston that hung at the corner of Union and Martin Luther King. Something happened to Preston between middle school and high school. Something happened to Wrenn between college and prison. What I am trying to say is that Preston was the best at his craft when he was at Meany Middle School, but somehow Crawford became the ten-year NBA veteran.

In 2005 I walked around NYC for a few days. As I walked, I saw these Crawford life-size posters plastered all over.

KryptoNate and Gary Washburn on a plane

Today Gary Washburn posted a story @ seattlepi.com about Nate Robinson. The game certainly seems to be going international. The best players from Europe come here, but now the best players from the U.S. are starting to jump across the pond too. Apparently KryptoNate is thinking seriously about going to Greece.

Is Washburn working for the P-I again? Did he ever leave? Did he get paid for the story? Is the P-I paying their reader bloggers? Their reader bloggers are being featured a lot lately. It seems like they are often placed front and center much like a regular columnist.

Note: Gary Washburn is @ The Boston Globe now. Last June, I sat near him on a Southwestern flight from Seattle to Oakland. Before we took off, he was talking really in-depthly on his cell phone to someone about Michael Jackson. When I got off the plane, Don Wakamatsu was buying a ticket in front of me at he BART station across from the big grey concrete block where the Raiders and Athletics play.

One year later

NBA Draft 2009

I am painting the back deck of a good friend's house at the moment. Coincidentally this friend grew up with Jamaal Crawford. And Crawford may have even lived at this house for a time in his grade school days. Jamal Crawford texted his high school coach: Coach we are in Atlanta now. I think he will be perfect in ATL with Joe Johnson. Crawford was on KJR with Gas for the Andrew Moritz benefit, which was an amazing hour of radio with all the Seattle basketball royalty and overall community support. My girlfriend's best friend does the site for her brother Andrew. It is: year of the comeback dot blogspot dot com. Moritz won a state championship with Jason The Jet Terry and then came back and won another one without Terry. And actually I am painting another good friends' house who coached Moritz when he was playing Green Lake hoops. The circle continues.

Anyhow, back to Crawford. He mentioned on the radio how excited he was to go to Atlanta. He hasn't felt this good about a team since he got to the lig. Jamal is well spoken, I don't have a clue why he got on Nelly's (Don Nelson) bad side. Nelly is a weird dude. He has been doing that run up the score type of offense for 800 years and it has never born fruit. Some call him an offensive genius. I don't know about that. If it ain't working. Try something else. But you know he may just be a bit wacked like George Karl. Karl decided he didn't like Kendel Gil back in the day. Karl has a history of playing mind games with players for no reason. That is what he did to Gil. Gary and Kendel with Nate was a great group of guards. That was a Supe's team to root for. Ricky Pierce, Eddie Johnson, Derrick McKey, a young Shawn Kemp and don't forget Dana Barros and Benoit Benjamin.

Back to Crawford. He mentioned that he grew up playing with Doug Wrenn and Grant Leep before this became the breeding ground/hotbed of NBA talent. I played against/with Wrenn in my middle school days. He was a nice guy and a hell of a player. My friend Chad was real good friends with Wrenn and they had a killer AAU team. Wrenn was just in some kind of altercation -- a road rage thing in Bellingham where he supposedly flashed a gun at a car. I don't know the details, but it made me a little sad. Wrenn was one of the great talents from the Central District here in Seattle and he played with an even better talent back in the day. A player by the name of Ronald and I remember Doug was kinda like Ronald's sidekick. Its weird Ronald was way better than Doug back in the day, but got into trouble and didn't even play much High School ball. And then the same sorta thing happened with Doug. You would probably bet on Wrenn going to the lig over Brandon Roy back in the day, but Roy is the one that made it to the lig and then some.

The seventh pick. Stephen Curry will be perfect for Oakland/Sanfran.

The third pick. I am pissed that Harden went to the Thunder because he was my favorite player in the draft, but went to my arch nemesis. Now I am worried that things will start to really come together for this young team. Kevin Durant is about to be in the Kobe/Lebron conversation, Westbrook is half Chris Paul half Drunken Master (John Krolik coined that) and then Kyle Weaver is from Washington State and that sucks. So what I am trying to say is that they could be a nice little high flying team next year. James Harden is the guy I have been asking people about leading up to the draft. Some people seem to be uneasy about him, but can never articulate why. They say there is just something about him that won't fit into the NBA game. I completely disagree. He gamed the Huskies twice this year. He is the type of guy who can take over a game. He is tough and long. Not soft and short. Which is I think important to be a guard in the lig. Elise Woodward said he tried, but never really took over any games against the Huskies. Francis Williams said he may actually be way better in the lig because he will be supported by 3 or 4 peers instead being the only guy with maybe help from 1 and a half dudes. I seem to remember the second game toward the end of the season before the PAC 10 tourney where Harden balled the Dawgs -- playing a sort of one on one a la LeBron/Nail Offense from the last two games against the Magic this year's Eastern Conference Finals. The Cavs called it the Nail: LeBron at the top of the key and everyone else spread around the perimeter. Shaq went to Cleveland today. Like a modern day Magic and Kareem or Stockton and Malone. I wonder if LeBron will wear Stockton shorts.

The fifth and the sixth. Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn should be a dynamic duo in the Twin Cities.

I see everything through Sonics colored glasses. Obviously I am going to hate that my favorite player besides John Brockman (Harden) went to the team that used to be my team.

Best SuperSonics of all time

Pearl Jam made a crowd wait as they watched the end of a Sonics game in the 1996 Finals backstage before a show. And as I look back at the Sonics I think about the history of and people around the Sonics. Once I sat next to Eddie Vedder at a Howard Zinn talk, Zinn said he is not one of those historians that gets lost in the library. He meant that history is not all academic and statistics and that is what this piece is about: a people's history of the Sonics embeded in a top ten list. The first year they were gone, the 08'-09' season, I named my fantasy team Sonicsless in Seattle. Obviously what's done is done, but for die hard Sonics fans, we are grappling with being out of the mix. If you are like me and grew up dribbling a basketball everywhere you went -- well I am talking to you. Even if you are not a Sonics fan, you hate to see the tradition cut off. We support classic uniforms and logo preservation. We are sucker's for nostalgia and fans of tradition. We got the love. The love is shooting hoops until the sun goes down. The love is playing after dark by the light of a street lamp. The love is for the game. That is how a franchise can become something more than corporate. More than a product. More than pro. Here are some quick graphs about the team I remember as if they are still here. This is not a list of Sonics in an academic or statistical sense, just my memories and a few I ripped off from other crazed Sonics fanatics. Here are my top ten Sonics.

SHAWN KEMP
Last winter, I was at The Duchess (a Seattle institution) with a couple friends, I looked up from my beer and there he was -- "The Reign Man." It was a quiet night, he was with a few friends. He looked good, like he could still get up and throw it down. As I sat there, a voice flashed through my head. Nobody can do the voodoo like you do. It was former voice of the Sonics, Kevin Calabro's, trademark description of Kemp acrobatics. Kemp was the most powerful game-time dunker I have ever seen. The fact that he couldn't replicate his greatness in the dunk competition added to his legend. He had to be in the he heat of battle to communicate with the basketball Gods. The last time I saw Kemp in a Sonics uni, I was at a Beastie Boys concert in 2004 at Key Arena. Mike D, MCA and Ad-rock wore green and gold Adidas track suits. A gigantic flat screen repeated Kemp dunks in slow motion. Shawn was known for playing pick up ball at the Belltown and Greenlake outdoor court's. Last summer, Kemp talked about the Sonics move on KJR-AM and said, "back in the day no one expected a new arena if they were losing."

GARY PAYTON
In 1999, Charles Barkley called him, "the best player on the planet." In 1996, Payton and the Sonics lost the Finals to Jordan and the Bulls. The Supe's never had a chance due to the goofy new logo and awful brick colored uniforms they wore. Ten years later, in 2006, "The Glove" got his ring -- with the Heat. Although, geographically Miami is about as far from Seattle as one can get within the mainland borders of the country, a picture of Gary Payton hugging the trophy was above the fold in Seattle's oldest newspaper. The biggest GP fan I know, Pistol Peach Cobbler, framed the front page of the Seattle Post - Intelligencer the morning after. Even though, Gary didn't win a championship with us, he will always be a Sonic. At last year's Save Our Sonics rally in front of the Federal Court House, Payton said he would retire his number in Seattle -- no matter what.

DETLEF SCHREMPF
I grew up with a kid whose family rented a mother in law apartment to Schrempf when he was at the University of Washington. He led the Husky team that won a co - Pac-10 title in 1985. "Det" played at the Montlake community center courts. Once in 7th grade, after school I walked out with a basketball ready to play on my home court to find a bunch of my class mates crowding around Detlef. He was there to do an Adidas commercial. I remember how impressively maintained his mullet was. It was shorter than most mullets. It was sort of an elegant mullet. I never really paid attention to him when he was an Indiana Pacer, but once he came to the Sonics, it was obvious how valuable he was. Many times he carried the bulk of the load on an off night for Kemp or Payton. He was consistent. It was painful to cut Nate McMillan officially off this list, so I must give him a piece of Det's real estate. I am sure Det won't mind. McMillan never scored a lot and didn't play a ton of minutes. But Magic Johnson said Nate McMillan was the toughest one-on-one defender he ever faced. Nate was Mr. Sonic and in a weird way -- still is. I don't know how that is possible since he coaches the Portland Trailblazers, but that is the feeling. The Sonics started to disintegrate when "Mac-10" left.

XAVIER MCDANIEL
My friend Cod grew up going to the Pro Club on the Eastside. He saw "X-Man" there a few times. Once someone threw X a can of soda and when he caught it -- the can looked the size of a golf ball. It's ironic, I had the brew she had the chronic. The Lakers beat the Supersonics. -- lyrics from Ice Cube's song "Good Day." The Lakers beat the Sonics a lot in the 80's. But we had good teams too, just not as good. My dad and I went to game three of the Western Conference Finals in 1987 (May 23: Sat, Lakers 122 @ Seattle 121). We had good seats that night, a few rows back at half court. I clearly saw McDaniel shoot and make a three in the last moments of the game, but the refs did not count it -- it was ruled after the buzzer. Instead of losing by one, we would have won by two. My dad and I walked out of the Coliseum and talked about the last shot, we were certain X-Man got it off in time. Even though we lost, there was a confident certainty we settled into -- that X had prevailed no matter what the official outcome was. I had a six foot X-Man poster in my bedroom when I was a kid.

TOM CHAMBERS
He won the All - Star game MVP in 1987, was in the dunk competition that year, and a dunk comp. judge this year. Chambers always looked like he had two black eyes. Maybe he was a vampire. All those late nights, big black circles around his eyes. I don't know, he coulda just always had a bit of a broken nose. Banging around catching elbows from Mark Eaton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Chambers was a great scorer with no defense. A big part of me wanted to give this part of the list to Dale Ellis, but Ellis wasn't here long enough to be considered a classic Sonic. Ellis scored a ton from behind the the arc. We called him "D3." He averaged 27.5 points a game in the 88'-89' season. Ellis got a DUI getting off the 520 Lake Washington Blvd. exit and I guess due to that -- ended up leaving the team on bad terms.

FRED BROWN
Growing up, I heard many stories about "Downtown" Freddie Brown and how many deep bombs he made. Nobody knows the number he drained. He played without the benefit of the three-point line. He led The League in three-point shooting percentage in the 79'-80' season -- the first season the line was adopted. Brown retired in 1984, so he only had a few years at the end of his career to be counted in the books. Of course guys didn't loft them up at the same rate as today. Brown was on the forefront to save the Sonics. His group was trying to build an arena in Renton. Renton is a little south of Seattle and the community would have supported the team there. That is my belief. The geography between Tacoma and Seattle is where the bulk of NBA talent has come from in the area. Doug Christie, Jamal Crawford and Nate Robinson all went to Rainier Beach High School which is at the southern tip of Seattle. Jason Terry went to Franklin, Brandon Roy is a Garfield High guy and those are central to south end schools. It is important to know where the community support lies. Our best talent grew up watching the Sonics -- no doubt.

GUS WILLIAMS & DENNIS JOHNSON
A poster of Gus Williams and DJ still hangs in a friend's basement 30 years after the championship they quarterbacked. Supersonicsoul.com said that most late-seventies Sonics games came down to, seven seconds left, Gus Williams with the ball -- he would sink the winning shot in traffic or at the free-throw line. Willams' nickname was "The Wizard" and Johnson's was "DJ." DJ was the Finals MVP in 79'. My knowledge wanes with the players from the championship team. I was born in 1980, so I can't rely on my own memories for this stuff, so I consulted with some tribal elders for further info. DJ was only here a few years and became a prima donna after the 79' season. When DJ hit a game winning shot, one local newspaper writer said, "Its too bad and A-Hole had to take it." I know in later years DJ was a beloved Celtic and Larry Bird said, "he was the best he ever played with." DJ was from the same place as N.W.A., Compton, CA.

JACK SIKMA
Sikma was the guy with a tight white guy jerry curl. He had great numbers and a turn around fadeaway soft touch in the paint jumper a la Patrick Ewing (who later became a Sonic, which is kinda weird to think about -- he was a shell of his former self). On a side note I wanted to name myself Patrick after Patrick Ewing, but my dad said that would be too many ck's and years later I was grateful for his advice because I don't think Paddy Wacker would have worked out too well. Sikma was that second tier center that is so crucial for a team like the 79' Supe's that had the great guard play of Downtown, DJ and The Wizard. I think of Sikma as a Zyrdrunas Ilgauskus type for Cleveland -- and he is quite valuable to the Cavs. I think Lebron would confirm that if asked.

SPENCER HAYWOOD
In 1971, Haywood v. N.B.A. broke down the barrier that said, you have to have four years of college to join The League. Early entry is not even given a second thought these days. When Kevin Garnett won the MVP in 2004 he said, "I would like to thank Spencer Haywood." In an interview with The Starting Five blog, Haywood said he almost fell out of his chair when KG gave him props. If you google Haywood, most articles are about his problems and persecution. He is one of those guys that became more known for controversy surrounding him off the court that what he did on it. What he did on it was nothing short of remarkable. He probably had the best statistical individual season in the history of the SuperSonics. Haywood averaged 29 points and 13 rebounds a game in the 72' - 73' season.

LENNY WILKINS
He has been here for the highest high's and the lowest low's. From championship to jumping ship, it has been a long strange trip for Wilkins. He was a player, then a player-coach and then went on to coach the team that won Seattle's only professional championship. It must have been weird when he became Vice President of the franchise under new owner Clayton Bennett. It just dawned on me, as I am flushing out the the Sonic memory banks, I wonder if Bennett named the new team in Oklahoma City after "Thunder" Dan Majerle? In the 90's Majerle was a Sonic killer, with his ridiculously frequent half-court bombs. He was a long range weapon in the Sonics' Suns' wars of the 90's. If "Thunder" Dan is who the Thunder are named after, I have to give Bennett credit. That would take some sinister smarts and conniving creativity to come up with that. A rumor has been surging that Clay Bennett will get our championship banners rehung in OKC. I heard a group of fans are ready to go in, to Key Arena, pose as painters and take them down, so they don't go to OKC. They couldn't bear giving our history away. Those banners are all we have left.

Here is some cultural heritage for you. The morning the Sonics left, I ran into Sonic historian, Rod Guevara, at the Sonics team shop. We were both milling around licking our wounds. I was looking at some Supe's socks, but was not going to buy them because the line was too long. Rod balked at getting anything, said he was thinking about it. He ended up bringing home armloads of stuff. Rod sent me six pairs of socks. Men in Rod's family have called each other every year on the anniversary of the 79' championship. They play pieces of the broadcast to each other over the phone. That was their tradition. I was recently at Rod's birthday party and he was wearing Sonics shirt that had big black letters over the logo that said, M.I.A. I drove by Key Arena after the party. The comedy club closed across the street, it was boarded up and covered in amateur graffiti art. It looked like a ghost town. Of course the economy is bad, but the businesses around the Key depended on the Sonics. A lot of fans that have sworn off the NBA are just a little more hurt than me. I still watch because I like the dynamics of different teams, their players' style, coaching philosophy, and geographical attitude. I watch from the outside looking in.

The Bad Captain America

During the George W. Bush years, we leaned heavily on the Captain America brand. In the late 1980's there were two Captain America's: one good, one bad. The newer bad Cap was supposed to be righteous like the old good Cap, a similar botched comparison took place when the War on Terror was sold as a World War II like struggle. The confusion concealed reality and contributed to accepting otherwise unacceptable policies.

In 1941, before the US entered WW II, comic book writer Joe Simon, and illustrator Jack Kirby created Captain America. His alter ego was, Steve Rogers, a skinny sickly GI. Rogers was rejected by the Army, but because of his big heart was chosen to be a guinea pig and was injected with a super soldier serum. Simon and Kirby, faced with an evil nemesis, depicted a hero whose violence always proved reassuringly right. Cap was good not bogged down by the truth. There was no nod to the Japanese American internment or US equivocation toward the Holocaust, that would have complicated the image of the American freedom fighter. Rogers was devoid of the messy facts, he simply fought the fascists.

In 1988, Rogers quit the job of Cap and became a vigilante. His growing disenchantment with US governmental corruption, mirroring the mood of the country, was a decisive factor in his resignation. A new blood thirsty cavalier character named John Walker was his replacement, the bad Cap. Mark Gruenwald, the psycho Cap saga writer, made a hero that was patriotic, but not admirable. Walker was part of a wave of psychologically troubled antiheroes introduced in the late 80's. He was the type for teens that grew up watching Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. They knew about the Iran-Contra affair and watched Oliver North testify on TV. Generation X had come of age, they were cynical and proud of it.

The Good Comics blog described a Walker scene as, a crazy blood frenzy, and freakish. “Walker used a bad guy’s body as a human shield to protect him from gunfire."  At nine years old, that image irked me. I became unnerved by the convergence of zeal and homicide. At stake was this great state gone wrong and its one time fascist nemesis. The black and white comic world turned grey and the classic patriotic symbol suffered an identity crisis. Rogers used his shield to deflect gunfire and threw it like a boomerang, whacking the gun out of a Nazi soldier's grasp, and Walker used his shield as a guillotine; slicing and stabbing his way through the world. This neophyte transformed the shield from protector to slayer.

For the first six years of the Bush era, it seemed as if the original icon was hovering above. Almost everyone was going along with the War on Terror and anti-Arab crusade. Engaging a standing army with slate wool uniforms was no longer in the cards. Skipped was the fact that our military would fight a guerrilla, and civilian insurgency.

Let's look at this scenario as if it was a comic. Once an Iraq War veteran was asked to appear as the good Cap. On paper, he was to operate on the moral high ground, but was put in a position of duality. He didn’t want to, as he put it, “hand out candy to kids when he had just blown up the house across the street.” The soldier arrived in Falluja soon after Blackwater contractors were burned and hung from a bridge.  During the day he gave candy to kids and talked with locals, but at night he called in bombs. He stopped talking with locals. He was the enemy, not the candy man. The fairy tale of walking through the desert helping the Iraqi's didn't square with the reality of blowing them to bits.

By the early 90's Steve Rogers was back as Captain America and Walker exited the series. Rogers was killed in 2007, and his WWII sidekick, Bucky, took up the mantle of Captain America. Ed Brubaker, the death of Cap series writer, said that the left-wing fans wanted Cap to stand up and be out front against the Bush administration and right wing fans wanted Cap fighting in Baghdad, punching out Saddam. Our actions pinball back and forth between, freeing the oppressed and working as the world's bully.

The good Cap and bad Cap compete in the popular mind. The weird dualism in this icon reveals something, generalizations don't get at, a trippy unrealized attempt to integrate right and might -- the great democracy morphed into a hyperpower, leaving the relationship between might and right unsettled and glossed over by pieties about flag and country.

The "human shield" image is from issue number 335 of Captain America.

Willingham and W.

The Willingham regime is arguably the worst in Husky football history. The Bush regime is arguably the worst in American history. They are both coming to a close, but only one was fired.

I am not defending Willingham’s exit. But wasn’t Bush in a similar position?

Bush’s administration has been just as diabolically bad as many Tyee and Husky fans believe Willingham’s has been. Neither have many victories just dead-enders.

Most in the sports media bring up firing coach's all the time. And there have been impeachment movements towards Bush. But those don’t get the same results as the get-rid-of-the-coach chorus.

Jerry Brewer of The Seattle Times wrote "put him out of his misery", Mitch Levi of KJR-AM said "he should have been fired last year.” Husky Honk’s host Dave Softy Maller called for Willingham to quit or for the new athletic director Scott Woodward to fire him. 

Many commentators have called to impeach Bush for different reasons. Lying us into Iraq, the tragedy of Katrina, illegal wiretapping and even the tomato salmonella outbreak are a few of them.

The fire Ty voices got what they wanted. Still Bush will fulfill his second term and leave without punishment. Maybe something will happen after he leaves, but it lacks the symbolism of an on-the-job exit.

Sports media is a sharper more effective critical tool. It is not uncommon for results to come from the pressure of prominent sports writers and sports media figures.

Just recently the Cleveland Browns benched a good QB in Derek Anderson in favor of backup Brady Quinn mostly due to the pressure from fans and sports talk radio.

The public sets the tone for what reporters cover. We show what we want by what we consume. And we can’t get enough football.

We want more sport and we want more sports talk. We want influence and we want blood. We want a winner and we want it to happen quicker than ever before.

Day of the BYU game I noticed big white letters in the University Village parking lot on the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee it said "Fire Ty Save Washington Football."

Obviously sports is not as important as the presidency, but that is why I think it is peculiar that sports media has sharper criticism.  It should be more urgent to get rid of a leader with power like the president, not the coach.

Tyrone Willingham does not have the same power over our lives as George Bush.  Ty can sign off on bump and run--not shock and awe. 

The president makes life and death decisions. A troubling reality that takes the fun out of being an armchair general. 

Sports allow us to live within a structure and have what seems like reasonable expectations.  When things don't go as planned we have a clear path of blame.

I almost crashed into coach Willingham a few weeks ago. I was turning left too fast and I swerved to the right of his oncoming Benz. He smiled at me and raised an eyebrow.

It was about 11 a.m. on a Monday morning and I knew he was probably driving to his weekly press conference. I turned on the radio and the news came down. He would be leaving, but not before coaching the last five games of the season.

I immediately texted the most passionate Husky fan I know. “Willingham just got fired.” He wrote back, “Finally Losingham is gone.”

As I watched the ASU game, I told this same Husky fan about the premise I am grappling with in this article. How Bush should have gone the way of the losing college football coach.

He nodded in agreement and said something ominous. “People are more passionate about their sports teams than who runs the country.”

Death of the Seattle SuperSonics

“When your pushed, killing is as easy as breathing.” -John Rambo

Uber capitalist Clay Bennett sure knows about that. In under two years he organized the Death of the Seattle SuperSonics. Sure, with the support of the NBA (which is key), but mostly it was his muscular vision to bring pro ball to Oklahoma City come Hell or high water. He was undaunted by the Save Our Sonics movement or Seattle’s so called Scorched Earth Policy and in the end he intimidated Seattle. Swiftly defeating an inexperienced group of guerrilla fighters much like Shock and Awe during the invasion of Iraq. There are many similarities between Bennett and Dick Cheney. Sheer power. The will to go through with each man’s personal obsession no matter how unpopular it was and how many people it winds up hurting.

July 2, 2008: This is a dark day for Seattle. The Sonics are gone. No more history. No more basketball. No more fun. Sure you can put a price on food and farmers markets but what about fun? Fun needs a lobbyist. Who cares about basketball? We have bigger things to worry about like schools and gas prices and recycling. That may be true but I prefer to think of it this way: I was made for dreams and looking up to god-like figures. Price tags and monetary value cannot be put on sports heroes and little kids dreams and all the good that pro ball brings to youth culture and the community in general.

Front page of the P-I: “Starbucks plan to close 600 stores” and that is fitting because the CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz sold the team to some goddamn outsider group that had a whatever-gets-you-through-the-night policy to bring an NBA team to OKC. History will be rewritten. Does anyone remember where the Utah Jazz were originally from? Probably not. Bennett said he will have our banners redone and rehung in OKC. This is a sort of ethnic cleansing American style. Bennett's press conference in OKC looked premeditated with the NBA logo hugged up against the letters OKC as if it had been planned two years ago and Bennett's’ tie was matching the color scheme...and I couldn’t help but thinking the boys of Seattle will grow up to watch the Storm and have sex changes and play below the rim.

July 3, 2008: Thunder rumbling and rain has been pounding the city since the terrible news came down last night. P-I’s front page headline “Hoopless in Seattle.” There is no joy in mudville today. Where is the Glove this morning and how does he feel? And what is the Reign Man Shawn Kemp thinking? On the radio earlier this week Kemp said “back in the day no one expected a new arena if they were losing.” That is logical and now things are turned around and weird. Why the fuck does Stern want the NBA in the 60 biggest city in the country and not in the 13th? Is this his 50 state strategy? It is a bad one. Makes no sense. That would be like if Barack Obama decided to abandon Seattle and Washington (his biggest financial support from all 50 states) and move all his resources and attention to West Virginia. Why go where no one cares about you or at least understands you?

I found this piece published by Reuters citing OKC as the 5th worst hell on earth. It brought me a kind of morbid happiness if only for a few seconds.

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Had a bad vacation? It probably could have been a lot worse, with men's portal AskMen.com coming up with a list of the top 10 hells on earth to prove how much more dire it could have been.

This list was compiled by AskMen and is not endorsed by Reuters:

5.Oklahoma City, United States

Type of hell: Natural disasters

Located in the direct path of "Tornado Alley," the worst time to visit would be from March to August. Tather is pretty much expected. The severe weather season makes Dorothy's Kansas look positively calm, with Oklahoma City being the city worst affected by tornadoes in the United States.

July 8, 2008: I have slept straight through the last two days minus a few meals here and there and tonight finally Val and I went down the street to the Attic for some Coors Light. I am guessing that I am depressed. My head has been pounding for the last three days and I am feeling sorry for myself. Woe is me. I was mad at myself for feeling a bit aimless and down, but then I thought “old sport don’t beat yourself up during the grieving process.” A lot has happened since the team moved to OKC. A day is not enough. I mean “it” happened two days before Independence Day so I could only really soak it in for one day and then had to gear up for a day of drinking and blowing stuff up.

On the 4th my good friend Seamus took out the windshield of a car across the street with some illegal fireworks but that was the good news: a couple inches higher and he could have blown up the family’s house across the street. An errant bomb shooting into your living room is something families in Baghdad have come to be prepared for but not Seattle. The next morning Seamus said “that could have been a horrible thing that would have scarred the whole party” Yep I said, like one time at a house party when the back deck full of people collapsed. We were in the kitchen and all of a sudden it was like the titanic was going down and people were clawing at the side of the house, hand rails and anything they could get their hands around trying to hang on. Blaine and I started throwing pots and pans out the window. We figured if the ship was going down we should probably lighten the load.

You never know how your going to feel until the horrible thing happens. Some said,”you knew it was going to happen” referring to the loss of the Sonics but that did not mean much to me. I saw a picture of Russell Westbrook our... oops that was a slip they are no longer our team...Westbrook was wearing a blue tank top with white letters that said Oklahoma City. Jesus that will be tough for the rest of my life every time I see an Oklahoma City jersey it will be like the tightening of the screws in my back every single time a reminder of the loss. It will represent failure for a city and a community. I grew up playing basketball and the Sonics were a big reason I bounced a ball everywhere I went as a youth. And no more Kevin Calabro the best voice for the game I have ever heard. These are scars that will not fade any time soon. We will see what it is like to live with them. The voice of the Sonics Kevin Calabro is staying put in Bellevue and he will become the new voice of our MLS team Sounders FC, but he said something on Softy’s radio show that stuck with me “We are staying here in Seattle because of the attitude of the people and the laid back lifestyle, a live and let live mentality.” So we will see where that leads us.

I took the picture at the SOS rally in front of the Federal Courthouse in downtown Seattle.

Sherwin Williams Paint vs. The Obey Giant

This is how Shepard Fairey was brought to my attention: a guy noticed the Andre the Giant Obey shirt I had on. The guy said: "I haven't seen those out here much. They are all over the east. The Andre the Giant posters started popping up in South Carolina."  I asked: "Who is the artist?"  The guy thought it was a homeless man who died and never got credit. I googled Obey later that day. Fairey.

The pictures were an excuse to delve into the problem with Fairey. The "cover the earth" knock off has not been reported anywhere even with the recent scrutiny surrounding the AP suing Fairey over his Obama Poster. The Obama Poster was as commercial as it gets, it was the freaking official symbol of the candidate who became president.  How much more corporate, how much more established can it get?   He has been a corporate for so long now and what does that mean maybe corporate means successful. I had a feeling about the Obama Poster, it reminded me of an Warhol-like iconic image, and coincidentally -- an AP writer called the print Warhol-ish. Andy Warhol said, "art is whatever you can get away with." I wondered is Fairey got away with stealing the Obey logo from the homeless man.

I don't quite know what Fairey does, or what I think of it. There is this sense that he doesn't know what he is trying to say.  I would dare to say that most of us -- truthfully -- don't really know what we are trying to say and by the time we have said "it" -- our minds have changed anyways and so we must work on communicating the current thought.  But that may not be the main issue.  Ken Johnson did a great piece in the NYT about Fairey's work and what it meant. 

In the interest of full exposure -- I like the Andre the Giant Obey insignia. It has a mysterious haunting feeling -- that may have more to do with Andre the Giant -- the man than the image. The Obama Poster is the same way -- we have latched onto it because of what we see in Obama himself. We took part ownership. Back when people wanted Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" lyrics translated -- Eddie Vedder did not explain what they meant. He said fans interpreted the lyrics for themselves -- lending more meaning than he could have given. He said they were part owners of the song. Part ownership makes something become iconic. Gives the creator the ability to go further and see the next step or level of the work: how it was received and in turn grows larger and larger with each re-interpretation or re-telling of the the work.

I am not really in the mood to trash a whole body of work. I think its important to point out that the Obama Poster has become -- something more, than Fairey could have planned for and a lot of that had to do with the mood of the country the rise of Obama, that he has come to stand for many different things to many different people. The AP picture and the way Fairey manipulated it into a sort of patriotic portrait. All these ingredients made way for part ownership by the masses to be the inevitable outcome. What do you feel when you look at it? It represents the colors in our country. The poster has been in many of the houses I have painted for. The so called street artist entered into the suburban stay at home white women's living room. For whatever reason -- the print conjures up the mix of hope, pride and belief we have in Obama. That is a lot. Think of all the art and pictures and comics the President has been the subject of, but for some reason this "one" print represents that feeling we have been walking around with for the last two years. Just because you draw a pic of Obama does not mean whey we look at it a hopeful full feeling will come over us. 

Fairey has a history of no transparency. Fairey slaps his Obey Giant logo on the watcher from Citizen Kane or the MC5's logo and calls it a new print. Unless you happen to know the original -- you think its an original by Fairey.

Wow, I had no idea I was writing this, I went into it, thinking Fairey was wrong to steal, but now -- I just think he is tacky and not creative. I don't get the feeling that he is wrestling with how to say something in order to adequately make a piece that challenges common perceptions. He never gave credit to the original piece.  Put a a foot note at the bottom of each print.  Something like: the original logo is Sherwin Williams paint supply.  I tweaked it by inserting the Obey logo where a map of the world originally was.  It wouldn't take much, like when a writer quotes someone else's words, but credits the author.

He fell into the same lazy old guy looking back and believing the legend drinking the cool aid of his brilliant First Work.  Hunter S.Thompson did that too.  How many times can one use Fear and Loathing for a title, how many times can a guy stamp Andre the Giant on a print and feel edgy and cool?  You jumped the shark once you had a logo you couldn't let go of and you became a product a brand -- for some reason in our culture the brand has become the most important thing -- Once Hunter said it sucks when the author becomes bigger than the writing.  

North By Northwest

Dave and I were discussing the Sonics move last night and we wondered,when the Sonics do eventually move to OK City, will they take all the retired jersey's and Championship banners with them and raise them to the rafters in the Ford Center? We also wondered if Clay Bennett would be nice enough to offer true Sonic "diehards" a weekend discounted package to be able to fly to Oklahoma City and get some great seats for the night they retire Gary Payton's jersey and celebrate his great career as a Sonic...

American professional sports are a complete joke. I could care less about the NBA or the Sonics and I consider the NBA, as a whole, to be comparable to that of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. The people of this city should focus their energy on boycotting Starbucks and running Howard Schultz out of town than wasting their time and resources on Clay Bennett and a situation that is hopeless. It's not as depressing if you've already accepted the fact that it's over, like I have, but how about the Storm signing Sheryl Swoopes? I smell another WNBA Championship on the horizon!!! Go STORM Baby!!!

PS- Shouldn't Seattle's greatest fan (that guy who holds up the Sea-Fence" sign at Seahawk games), shouldn't he be doing something like handcuffing himself to the bumper of the team bus or to the landing gear of the team plane? I mean, you are Seattle's biggest fan so go out there and do something about this. The city is relying on you and your passion...I haven't heard a peep from that guy. What a joke...
- Cod the Fish on the fate of the Seattle SuperSonics.

My phone keeps ringing but I will not answer anytime soon. I have bigger fish to fry. I sit here in Seattle with a keyboard in my lap perched on a pearl white yoga ball. Here in the Northwest we are under a dark cloud. This may not be much of a big deal for the rest of the country. Sadly Seattle is relegated to weird looks from much of America. We are thought of as almost Alaska to so many. It is a deeply disturbing and hurtful thing for us natives. We are a proud people and know we are right and true. We have supported Obama like no other territory in the Empire and done the same for Ron Paul. Recently 40% of registered Republicans in these parts have been projected to support Paul in November even though his name will not be on the ballot. But never mind that. This is not a political story.

This is about basketball and 41 years of support for the Seattle Supersonics and now they are on the way to Oklahoma City. A foreigner bought the team from the king of a coffee empire named Howard Schulz who sold the team because the city would not give him a new arena. It was a childish and spiteful move by Schulz and he has paid for his stupid decision. These days his beloved coffee brand Starbucks is slipping down the Dow Jones and I know many people who routinely slap Starbucks cups from a person’s hand if seen on the street with it. It is no longer fashionable to drink the stuff.

Schulz is suing Bennet to get the rights to the team back. He is trying to save face because he knows his image is suffering and will forever be blamed for the reason we lost the team. In Seattle we have a shoddy history with sports. The Mariners have always sucked. And now in 2008 the Year of the Rat, the Mariners have the worst record in Major League Baseball. As a kid growing up the Seahawks were awful and now they are finally good, but for me it has been a hard thing to get used to. They are not a proud franchise in my mind and most people I know are more excited for the first year of Major League Soccer with the Sounders FC. Owner Drew Carey has done everything right following in the tradition of European teams with a board of members that can vote in or vote out the manager of the team and voting on the name for the team. All very classy and elegant decisions.

It was a sad day when Commissioner David Stern decided it was a better to make Seattle the premier WNBA city with the Storm Juggernaut and get rid of the Sonics the most hallowed franchise in Seattle sports history. The Sonics have always been good except for a few recent years where they have been treated like the Cleveland Indians in the movie Major League where they purposely built the worst possible team they could so it was easier to move them. And in real life the Cleveland Browns situation may be the closest resemblance to what we face. Same thing in Seattle. So now our fate is the WNBA hall of fame which will be built here soon. We can all look forward to that as the WNBA hall of fame takes over Paul Allen’s Experience Music Project.

I took the picture of the GP poster inside the Key @ the last Sonics game I ever went to.

Fox in MSNBC's clothing

"The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

-From former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

After Jesse “The Body” Ventura finished as Gov. of Minnesota in 2003 he signed on to be an MSNBC analyst. It was not widely known probably because he was not on the air much. Sunday April 13, 2008 I watched him talk about it on Fox News with Geraldo Rivera. He spilled the beans about MSNBC’s censorship.

Ventura said MSNBC almost never used him and finally let him go, “Why?” Rivera asked. “I was against the War” Ventura replied. The network was confused because, as Ventura put it, “I am a former Navy Seal, so they thought I would be for the War.” Let this be a lesson to all of us.

Many articles were written about MSNBC “coming out” as the left leaning version of Fox News in 2007, but I am not sure that ever happened. MSNBC has tried to brand themselves as the antidote to Fox News. Mostly on the back of Countdown With Keith Olbermann and his “special comment” segments bashing the Bush Administration. Friday May 16, 2008 Air America radio host Thom Hartman referred to Olbermann as “the voice in the wilderness.” He meant that Olbermann is the only liberal voice with his own show on all of cable news.

Can MSNBC claim to be the liberal station in 2007 when they were beating the drums of war in 2003? Hell no. Here are a couple reasons why: their over use of Pat Buchanan. He has been more conservative and racist than anyone on Fox News for so long that maybe it is no longer shocking and just a comfortable routine. I remember watching Hardball host Chris Matthews gushing after the 2004 vice presidential debate, “Cheney is such a heavyweight” he said.

Once a friend said, “Fox is conservative, MSNBC is liberal and CNN is right down the middle, right?” Although that opinion may be from a “low information voter” or someone who is not a news junkie, I think generally that is how the public views the three big cable news channels.

The three cable news stations want and need the War for ratings. I watched a lot CNN’s Gulf War coverage in 1991 because it was the only English language channel I could get while living in Presov, Slovakia. CNN was not a player until that war. After thinking about the last sentence it makes sense that none of the networks would allow many dissenting voices towards the War if any.

That is why I started out with what Ventura said. His words were straight up, easy to understand and further proof that much of the main stream media was in cahoots with the Bush Administration to make sure the War happened. The media may be as big a player as any in keeping up with our aggressively violent culture.

I am not sure if it has been subliminal support of these violent foreign policies by broadcasters and reporters or something more sinister and blatant. I tend to lean towards the latter because my experience in the broadcast media is that lifers are not ideologically driven to their jobs but instead “do formats.” Tony Snow used to work for Fox News and is now with CNN. Bill Hemmer used to be with CNN and now is with Fox News. The list goes on. It is just a job to many of these guys and that is why they can jump to stations geared towards different demographic audiences.

What I am trying to say is that the media cheer led us into war and we should know that and be aware of that. It may be just as bad an act as pushing the button to drop the bombs. Rationalizing the killing of mass amounts of civilians on the airwaves is a terrible thing to do and if you shrug it off five years later and say you “changed your mind on the War,” well that is even worse because you did not take other lives seriously.

No D in Denver

“Allen Iverson is the modern day Cassius Clay.” - Id the Squid

In 2008 the Year of the Rat, the wild west saw the Denver Nuggets swept in the first round by the Los Angeles Lakers. Everyone knew it would be a dicey proposition. Denver plays no defense and Carmello Anthony has a history of tuning out. He has a low threshold for failure and when things aren’t easy things become painful. That is something that creeps up on talented people sometimes; if the win is tough giving up is an easy thing to fall into. This is called defeatism.

To my dismay my beloved Iverson, a very hard worker, walked off the court a few times this year to leave the team with minutes left in the game. I hate that because it means my quote from the top of the page must be defended instead of just accepted as the gospel. If you saw the first episode of Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith then you know why I compared Iverson with Ali; he is strong and true like a sports version of Reverend Wright, proud and unapologetic for telling it like it is. It sucks that Iverson quits sometimes, but I would say he only does to make a statement when the win is truly out of reach, like leaving the battlefield to fight the war another day. Plus I blame all the Nuggets and Sonics woes on George Karl and it serves him right for defecting to Denver after suffering the Sonics worst moment in franchise history when Robert Pack looked like Tony Parker and Dikembe Mutumbo cried clutching the ball at center court.

Watching the second game of the first round between the New Orleans Hornets and Dallas Mavericks “Ron Paul is sick” I said. Cod chuckled to himself and looked at me, “Ron Paul?” Yeah Ron Paul had like 33 points and 15 assists last game and he is even better tonight. He is a Libertarian from Texas, I said. I know the difference between Ron Paul and Chris Paul, but I purposely like to root for Ron Paul when I watch the Hornets. Maybe it is because there are “Ron Paul for President” signs with a blue background and whites letters and a red underline with one white star posted at every freeway on ramp in western Washington. A few months back I would routinely drive by Microsoft employees holding up a Ron Paul Revolution banner on the Montlake Bridge, University Bridge and on the 45th street I-5 overpass. For some reason a lot of Redmond tech yahoos supported Ron Paul. For good reason he is the only Republican candidate that talked like a normal human being about the Iraq War and American foreign policy in general and he is logical when it comes to the economy.

Back to my main point about rooting for Ron Paul in a Hornets uniform, actually it is Chris Paul whom I root for now. He is fun to watch and there is something comforting about an NBA team having success in New Orleans. It has been 20 years since the Jazz moved to Utah. I have never understood why Utah did not change the name to something that has to do with Utah or the Mormons or white people. Is Jazz even allowed in Salt Lake City? It seems like a mean joke that these freaks kept the name. The team is as white as a KKK hood. But anyway, some are predicting a meeting of the New New Orleans team and the Old New Orleans team in the playoffs, and as good as Ron Paul, oops I mean Chris Paul looks against Jason Kidd and Dallas, historically if you look at the numbers and the game tape, he struggles and gets dominated by Derron Williams, the Utah Jazz point guard.

I don’t know what this means, but I root for the New Orleans Hornets, the city , the coach Byron Scott and the Brothers Chris and Ron Paul.

Today, as I turned on sports talk radio 950 AM, Sir Mix A Lot was on the radio with Groz and Gas talking about the NBA playoffs. Mix A Lot said things are so different culturally now, not race matters but just in general, now everyone one is the same and there is no difference and exciting rivalries. He said the old Celtics were ugly physically like welders or laborers or blue collar heroes, with a flashy tinsletown rival. Now, there is nothing like that in the NBA. Everyone has braids and tattoos and it is all about celebrities and...stuff. I agree to a certain degree, but honestly it was just nice to hear an unexpected visit to Groz with Gas by a Seattle legend. Unplanned radio is always best. What Mix A Lot was articulating was profound. He put it all in perspective; Multiculturalism is not about being black or brown, but it is about difference and that is something we are suffering from. Too many people in the U.S. are scared to be themselves.

Ok for now.