Bill Walton's wife

God, the NBA is still locked out and I can hardly remember the euphoria of last year's post season. I seem to remember it being full of close games, incredible upsets and moments of glory. Sometimes I wonder if I would have ever taken up cycling if the NBA season started on time. Quite possibly, instead of sweating up and down Daang Hari, I would be where I am now - sitting in front of my computer, figuring out my fantasy league draft strategy.

Anyway, I miss you NBA. I hope you gaziillionaires figure it out and let us fans in on the fun. In the meantime, and even when the lockout ends, I will be enjoying my time on the bike.

This morning, I woke up to a bleak, rainy morning. But by noon, the weather settled down to being cloudy witha light drizzle here and there. I suited up and went on my JP Rizal to Heritage Park route. That takes me through Kalayaan, the Fort, Lawton, and McKinley Hills on the way back. The road was wet, but not so tricky, and the weather was cool. It was a nice workout, right up until that Lawton - McKinley Hills intersection where traffic is usually backed up.

Bill Walton has said that when he comes home from his frequent bike rides, his wife has to remind him that she wasn't part of that six-hour conversation he had with himself. This traffic jam, along with jeepneys abruptly stopping in front of me, were interrupting my conversation with myself.

I like that Mrs. Walton likened bike rides to conversations with oneself. I've had a bit of trouble explaining to friends the appeal of waking up at ungodly hours to make it to a stretch of pavement so that I can pedal far before pedaling back, getting badly tanned and sweating like a pig on a spit in the process. But there it is, elegantly said by an NBA player's sharp wife - it's my way of conversing with myself, figuring out what I'm made of, and figuring out what I really want in life.

It's also my way of lowering my cholesterol level. But, yes, a conversation.

I made it past that traffic jam and on to Heritage Park. I turned around, went through the same jam and jeepneys, to pedal home.

+++

1. Those photos are from my route along JP Rizal, but were taken last weekend on the way to a Livestrong event that prompted my retirement from charity rides. I'll pay the money, get the jersey, raise awareness for the cause in my own way, but I'll try to avoid these rides. They're too crowded, and too slow which is a recipe for annoying accidents.

2. See what I did there? Basketball AND cycling. Read the Bill Walton on Bicycling.com HERE.

Lately, I've had nothing to say, other than post stuff about movies, music and photography. No new epiphanies or realizations. No poignant experiences or life defining acts. It's because Twitter has taken over my life.

Or maybe it's because things have been all right. Meaning, I've been very happy to live my life the past couple of weeks, and I really can't be bothered to write about it. But I will try.

I know it sounds pathetic to say this, but maybe Star Trek started it off by just being awesome.

Then work got going, checks started coming in, and, professionally, I'm satisfied. At least approaching the first half of this year. I'm also happy to be finally on a very promising book, after many false starts. All those books I mentioned here, I swear to you, I haven't been able to finish more than half of them. But this one now, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, is dense and fascinating. I like the challenge of reading it, and I like it when staying on it pays off.

I've been catching some good music live too. I saw Sleepwalk Circus and Encounters With A Yeti just this past week alone.

Also the NBA Playoffs have been the most fun and exciting in recent years. I like it more than last year, even with Boston and Lakers were in the Finals. This year, and at this point it's the conference finals leading up to the Finals, it's full of exciting match ups and awesome games. Even as everyone assumed that it would be a Cleveland-LA showdown at the end, peaking teams like Orlando and Denver (Chauncey!) are giving them a serious run for their money. I just saw a well-made documentary about the opposite yet same demigods that are Kobe and LeBron, and their stories are truly inspiring. Or at least Nike tells me so.

But it really is a good series, and when people ask me who I'm rooting for, I say, without an ounce of bullshit, that I just enjoy watching these guys compete. Basketball, with the glory of winning and the obliteration by defeat, is a purifying experience. The drama is true. If I had to live my life, earning a (lucrative) living, just being one of those talking heads on ESPN, who cover game after game, I'd be very content. It doesn't get any better than that.

Also, I will be taking a three-week vacation in a couple of weeks. I don't deserve it. In fact the whole expense of it, compounded by the fact that I'd be missing out on work for such a long time, was making me sick. Then Star Trek came along and made me love life a little.

I'll be visiting New York again, after, wow, five years. And I think I will take immense pleasure revisiting old bookshops and favorite museums. I will check if my favorite deli is still on the corner of Park Ave and 17thE, get a sandwich and flavored water, and eat it at Union Square like I used to. I will go back to Central Park and finally find "IMAGINE" on the ground. This time around, I will be hanging with great friends, and it should be funner. Then I'm off to San Francisco to attend an uncle's wedding.

I just saw Bottle Shock, and while it's an okay movie, it made me want to go to Napa Valley again. But this time, I want to go off the wine tasting route and just head off to the real vineyards and take more pictures. Then back home to Manila for my brother's birthday.

The next six weeks of my life have been planned. And while that somewhat terrifies me, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably be all right.

obligatory Pacquiao post

As a Filipino, I suppose I should say something about how magnificently Pacquiao floored Hatton yesterday. But instead I'll say two things:

1. Slo-mo has got to be the best thing next to the Internet. It was instrumental in helping me appreciate the beauty that is Manny's punch as it rendered the lower half of Ricky Hatton's face as a highly malleable piece of flesh. Like Play-Doh even. The slow moving image of sweat flying off Hatton's impacted head was glorious.

2. Twitter was awesome in helping me schedule my Sunday morning (local time) since there was a Boston-Chicago Game 7 finishing up right before the Pacquiao-Hatton match. Brian Viloria was constantly tweeting from the fight venue, and I was able to estimate the time I had to leave the basketball game to catch the fight at a resto.

Anyway, Fire Quinito has a better round up of the Pacquiao-Hatton fight post mortems.

Found it!

The James Worthy play that I described down below is for real! It's the number one James Worthy play in this video compilation, even. It's not a made up memory! Phew.

I remember watching the epic LA-Boston matchups of the 80's. I forget which series exactly, but I remember James Worthy diving for a loose ball, crashing into the sidelines, and finding a way to toss the ball to either Kareem or Magic for lay up to win the game. It might be a made-up memory, for all it's worth, but it's what I use to justify my rooting for the Lakers (against Boston) among friends.

Somewhere along the way, after injuring myself in summer basketball camp, I decided I was non-athletic and stopped being a sports fan. There was, after all, comics, music and such.

Then I got older, and started following the NBA more seriously again. It helped that friends put up a fantasy league that got me interested again. This was around 2004, the year Detroit gunned for and got a championship. Not by carrying a superstar on their roster, but by exemplifying a team game of grounding opponents to a pulp and efficient play making. The Pistons made a believer out of me.

I like the Filipino expression, "bilog ang bola." An existential outlook has never been so succinctly and subtly expressed. Five years later, after a record number of consecutive playoff appearances, the Pistons are a shadow of their former selves.

They've traded away integral members of their 2004 championship team. Ben Wallace, though the heart and will of the famous Detriot defense, was really fading, and sending him away was a good move. But Chauncey Billups, the guy who carried the all important swagger and winning attitude, was moved this season. The Pistons still made the playoffs this year, but are down 0-3, and hopeless against the freak-of-nature that is LeBron James. James deserves his present and future greatness, but it's so sad to see it manifest and shine in the laying to waste of my Pistons.

One man dismantling my whole team.

[edit]. I'm still worked up about this. The irony is killing me. Also it's karma. Karma for trading Chauncey for the life-sucking, former-superstar that is Allen Iverson. And Darko? Who scouted that? Bosh would have been purrfect. Now they have Kwame. Good luck.

Today was supposed to be an easy day: NBA game, gym, 4pm meeting with my agent (insurance, not talent), dinner with high school buddies after.

At 12:45, as the Utah Jazz and LA Lakers started the 4th Quarter in Game 3 of their playoff series, I got a text from an ad agency to come to a bid meeting at 2pm. I showered quickly, threw some clothes on, and checked the TV. The game was tied at 86 with around 3 seconds to go. Someone was going to have the make the game-winning shot. I left.

The day isn't over, but hopefully, to keep it easy, that was the hardest decision I'll have to make. I better win that bid too.

PS. Deron Williams drilled a fadeaway jumper with 2.2 seconds left to give Utah a win.

PPS. I'm on Twitter. Hehe.

I like watching How I Met Your Mother, not only because of the funny gags, smart narrative, the interesting pop culture referencing. I also like it because they're bunch of friends in their twenty-thirties. Like me and my friends. They deal with stuff those weird, transition years throw at you: fulfilling work, significant others or the lack of both. Like me and my friends.

Anyway, in the last episode, Murtaugh, Ted has a list of things to be done now that he's thirty: the "I'm too old for this sh... stuff" list. One item that had me especially chuckling was, "I'm too old to put off going to the doctor." Because I'm like that now. I didn't use to be that way. I didn't even medicate beyond Vitamin C. But I can't afford that now.

Which is why when I got sick some weeks back, all I wanted were those awfully powerful antibiotics. And ever since I got a bad stiff neck some months ago, I've been meaning to see a chiropractor (which got pushed back because of that weeks-long infection). I finally got to see the chiropractor twice since and every visit is like a near-death experience. Every time my spine or my neck was being re-adjusted, I kept thinking how easy it would be for the doctor (?) to slip and break something. Thus ending my, so far, fun life. I've survived, obviously, and I've been recommended to take some maintenance treatment. But I don't think I'm going back unless I've got another injury or something.

+++

Someone who knew I was a fan of Dumas and The Count of Monte Cristo recommended that I check out Stephen Fry's The Stars' Tennis Balls, a sort of modern retelling of the tale. I found the book at Fully Booked Rockwell last night, and I can't wait to get going.

EDIT: I also woke up today, to a nice, rainy Saturday morning. Had a great tapsilog breakfast, and a potential Easter Finals matchup on TV, Cleveland versus Orlando. Except that the Cavs tanked and got soundly beaten by the Magic. By around 30 points. A day after they lost to the NBA's worst-performing team, the Wizards. WTF indeed. Anyway, another potential playoff mathup, in the West this time, is showing now. I'm hoping this LA-Houston game turns out to be more interesting.

all day TV

I don't think I've spent this much time in front of the TV since... forever. Here's a list of what I stayed on to watch today:

1. The Pacers-Hawks game. Hawks are a good enough East team to make the playoffs again and easily handled the Pacers. But I have to say, TJ Ford is fearless.

2. The Pistons-Raptors game. Ever since Rip Hamilton was moved back to the starting spot he's always deserved, my Pistons have been winning again. That Antonio McDyess is playing like a 24-year old again is another huge factor. Good game, went into OT, with Detroit finally closing out the slumping Raptors.

3. The Benchwarmers. Rob Schneider movie, ugh, but about Little League, so cute.

4. Ghostbusters. Bill Murray, the 80s, Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man thrashing New York! Yeah!

5. Over Her Dead Body. I was bored and so was Paul Rudd making this movie, I bet.

6. Glory. Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Denzel are in this Civil War movie. For some weird reason, my brother and I love this movie, even if it feels a bit melodramatic now. But you gotta love the speeches about equality and freedom, and the operatic soundtrack. I think we even have it on video library, in VHS format. We've seen it so many times, we can recite the lines, and I still tear up in the same scenes. Watching it now as I type this. Hold on, they're about to attack Fort Wagner.

HT: swissmiss

I needed that.

Finally got to see a doctor, and I'm finally on antibiotics. I'm hoping I can get up and going soon. I feel I've missed out on a lot. First off, there were those shoots I had to back out of. Then a couple of gigs here, some movies there. Then I stay in bed for some days and Marbury is suddenly a Celtic. Which is great because I'm not a fan of the Celtics. I hope Marbury will be a cancer that will eat them up from the inside.

I was most afraid of missing the Geothe/IFA-organized exhibit German photographers at the Yuchengco Museum. Good to know that that will be up until April.

Thanks to Tammy's FB note for that.

the big cactus

No one can really hate on Shaq. How can you? That shit is borderline performance art!

book ends

So, the last time I checked in on about books, I was re-reading Dumas. Yeah, that's not happening anymore. In my re-reading of The Three Musketeers, I now remember that I love Dumas because of The Count of Monte Cristo, and that love was reaffirmed by Georges. Musketeers was fun, but over the holidays I've added more books to my already towering pile of pending books. I had to move on quickly.

And I moved on to Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire, which starts off with a story of a prehistoric man. It's the prehistoric man's narration so it's written with a limited vocabulary and syntax. It's a bit daunting but it's genius when you realize that the evolution of language affects the evolution of a consciousness that affects the evolution of language that affects... Anyway, this chapter is hard to read, and it's a hard way to start the book (whose chapters you can read out of sequence, I think), but I'll make my way.

But that's become increasingly difficult to because a friend came home from the US and got me this:

With a mouthful of a title, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac is a Freedarko.com-produced book. Borne out of a blog, you'd think that it's just an example of new media trying to sell more via old media. But maybe the blog was already brilliant to begin with because it's actually a funny, articulate, well-designed book on the significance of particular NBA players in... everything. I think. I'm still trying to figure out if it's about the myth of players, their impact on culture, and others things, significant or otherwise. But if for nothing else, it really looks great. Check out some of the pages I ripped from Amazon:

The book I really asked for, and got (score!), was Annie Leibovitz at Work. I'll be honest, based on that cover, I was hoping for lighting diagrams and some technical how-tos. How amateur fanboy of me, I know. But it's all behind-the-scenes narratives, and anecdotes about some of her famous pictures. A lot of which I already know about from her older monographs. But it's a nice, gorgeous book to add to the collection. I haven't gone in beyond the first chapter so I'll have to wait to see if I there are newer stuff in it.

One of my favorite books from last year was Michael Chabon's Gentlemen Of The Road. Not only because it's written in serial format ala Dumas, or that Chabon lists Dumas as a major influence, but because it's a fun, swashbuckling adventure with a lot of heart (ala Dumas). Anyway, I liked it so much that I got a copy for my eldest godson. He's turning 9, and let's see how his mother explains war, swindling, gender-bending, and the other exploits of a giant African Jew and his bosom buddy, a Frankish Jew, in the Middle-Ages.

The Frankish Jew, I hear, is an homage to a character named Elric of Melnibone, created by Michael Moorcock (to whom Gentlemen is dedicated). I obsessed about Elric and was about to give up finding the books here. I even downloaded the ebooks already. But I dropped by National to spend the GCs I got for Christmas and look what I found:

They had two covers available. One was a minimalist white cover with a nice Tolkien-esque illustration. And there was this gaudy one. I picked the gaudy one because the Foreword was written by no other than Alan Moore.

hoop dreams

I was never the athletic type. Although, in grade 5 or 6, I represented the class in the intramurals, competing in what might have been the 100m dash. Despite not being the leanest guy in the class, I had strong legs that gave me an incredible burst of speed. I was like a cheetah flying through the blades of tall grass of the savanna. Of course, I came in dead last.

Also, whenever I'd join basketball camp (MILO Best, if I remember right), I'd always sprain an ankle or a wrist and sit the rest of the workshop out. One time, I fractured my left forearm because I tripped and landed on it while were playing tag during recess.

I was, and am, lampa.

So I've lived out my sports dreams vicariously. Specifically through my NBA Fantasy League. Which, by the way, now merits a geek tag. But why? It's just like a virtual role-play, wherein you are General Manager of your own professional basketball team, complete with stats and live drafts. That's why.

But still, I don't doubt that (real) sports can bring out the best in you. Basketball in particular; just watch Samuel Jackson scream at and mold those kids in Coach Carter.

As of late, the most famous fan and player of the sport is Obama. In this Politico article:

"We hear all the chatter about Obama’s creating a team of rivals, much like Abraham Lincoln did. But basketball provides a better context for his choice of strong characters and former competitors. He’s simply not threatened by talent or old rivalries, and as a team leader, he wants the best and smartest players on his side. Accustomed to playing on teams, Obama is confident he can mold them into a unit...

Michelle Obama famously asked her brother, a college basketball star, to play Barack after they first met to see if he hogged the ball and called too many fouls. Basketball isn’t just a game — it’s a test of character."

In the end, basketball might even change the world.