slumpin' into the new year

How does this blogging shit go again?

It's been a hard year, a year to forget, a year of cold Brooklyn winds and 40 hour work shifts and tired morning eyes and the looming presence of the thing I've dreaded since I was a little kid.

It's a year of death, man. Normally my attitude is, damn life sure is tough but tomorrow's bound to improve. We'll get this thing figured out. Pointless thinking. You'll never figure it out in time. You'll never have the last laugh. Your family dies, then you die. Each time it's grim and unmanageable and you try to find a way to look at it that doesn't remind you that life is cruel but in the end you can't. Life is cruel, and you know this to be true. One day you are at the bar playing pool and making eyes at the cute girls, and in what seems like an instant 60 years pass and you are lying in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of you, trying to figure a way out of it.

I'll tell you what -- don't even waste time thinking about it or bracing yourself for it. Not now, not tomorrow. Because when it comes you won't be prepared for its spectacular ugliness. No matter how bad you think it's gonna be, it'll be worse. Sudden and shocking or drawn-out and depressing, it's the worst fucking thing I can imagine either way.

My pop is still kicking it but I've seen him go through an unimaginable series of indignities and discomforts, more life-threatening ailments than any one person could reasonably be expected to tolerate. He's been in and out of hospitals and cancer centers and rehabs and he just takes it and never complains for a minute. And as his body shuts down he doesn't get bitter, he just keeps fighting. He's the fucking best.

Work has also been up my ass like sand in a bathing suit for the last four months. I have the next ten days off and I couldn't be more excited about it -- our department works harder and under more pressure than the other departments and that's just the facts. We're like umpires or lifeguards or garbagemen -- completely unnoticed except when we fuck up, and then we're the talk of the damn town.

To reward our troops for all their hard work, I decided that we should all go out for manly steaks at The Palm for lunch on the last day of work before Christmas break. I even suspended my vegetarianism for the occasion. We busted our asses to get all our work done ahead of time, then we we ate, drank, and I sent most of the dudes home. A couple of young upstarts decided that it would be a good idea to get some more beer and head back to the office, which would presumably be empty by now (4pm on Friday pre-holiday). There is an air hockey table in the Web Department upstairs (I like how web departments are still living the high life like it's 1998) and we decided to give it a shot. The two young guys went up and I was going to meet them there after tending to a few loose ends. However it turns out that the rest of the office was still working soberly at their desks. The guys had gotten through like four points of boisterous air hockey before they noticed this. So they came back downstairs toting sixpacks and open bottles of Rolling Rock, carrying on like fools. I shuffled them into an edit room and closed the door. Then we all had one more drink while watching two excellent youtube videos (below). That sent us into the new year all nice and good.

On a side note, one of the young dudes is at that stage of life where buying jagermeister shots seems like a good idea, and referring to them as "jager" is not in the least bit shameful. God Bless him. And, honestly, I had forgotten how delicious that shit is.

Remember that poster they had with the old man grimacing after doing a shot, and the words "so smooth"? They need to bring that back.

Here's the youtubes:
1. winnebago man -- an oldie I'm sure, but I had never seen it somehow.
2. she's gone -- best song/video combo of all time?

I've been walking around Brooklyn Heights/Cobble Hill for the last few days as I visit my pop. What a neighborhood. I lived near there -- on Sackett and Court -- for a year in the early 90's, that shit was pretty nice. But the place has gotten nicer. It may prove to be a good alternative for the family as we get priced out of Manhattan and resist the urge to hit Jersey. Of course, we can't afford to buy in Cobble Hill, either. But maybe near there. It's so awesome, lots of little restaurants and shops and streets with only like three people walking on them.

Lastly and this should probably be a separate post, but who knows when I'm posting again so may as well get it out now -- I find it quite easy to watch an NBA game and see who is good and who is not. You probably can, too. For my money, Dan Dickau is one of the worst players in the NBA. He simply cannot compete with the opposing point guard on either end of the floor. You look at the stats and see that he once averaged 13.2 ppg for a season. Pretty good, you say. But no -- what 13.2 ppg tells me is that the 2004-2005 Hornets must have been one of the worst teams in recent memory. If Dickau is getting enough run to average 13 a game, your team sucks.

It is the Blumpy Postulate -- it suggests that anyone good enough to get into the NBA could probably average double figures if given the playing time. The postulate is named for former NBA player Tony Campbell, a lifetime bench player who got plucked in the expansion draft and all of a sudden turned into a 20 point scorer with a horrid Minnesota team. Nothing against Campbell, he could definitely score, but he was not a good all-around player and would never crack the lineup on a good team.

I bring this up because after watching bits and pieces of Zach Randolph for the first two months of his Knicks career, I think we may have another Blumpy on our hands. Sure, he puts up numbers. Sure, he has an uncanny knack for scoring from weird angles and he cleans the glass well. But you watch him with the ball, backing down his man, clogging up the flow of the game, shooting almost every time he gets the ball and usually missing, then paying only causal attention to his man on defense, and you can see: Zach Randolph is not helping your team. He has no real value as a player. You could say the same thing about Marbury, I guess. If it is announced that Marbury is going to miss a particular game, does that even affect the point spread? I doubt it.

Is it possible to root for the Knicks right now? I know as fans we are supposed to be loyal, but this is such a disgraceful franchise and the product itself is so shitty, I think we can be forgiven for taking a year or two off.

2008: the year I finally get my shit together. If not, there's always 2009.