Month: October 2011

SportsAngle presents: Download our 2011 Halloween Mix CD

Esoteric 3 Comments

photoI haven’t had a ton of time to write lately because of the World Series, and some stuff I’ve done for Dime Magazine with Kyrie Irving and Penny Hardaway.  Expect some more next week, I have a couple of ideas I’ve wanted to put out there.

But for now, I’m enjoying the Halloween weekend. If you’ve been a longtime reader of this site, you know I like everything about the holiday – the movies, the decorations, all of it. It’s basically the only holiday I truly like, though New Year’s isn’t that bad and I’m very slowly warming up to Christmas.

My belief is that you’re never too old for Halloween; I’d better believe that, since I’m now 32. But for a few days a year, I think it’s cool to embrace your weirdness and just enjoy the creepiness of this time of year. I don’t get into the whole party thing – I think about 98 percent of the people I see with their drunken nonsense in New York City are pathetic. I enjoy the holiday in other ways; snowed in today, I indulged in a double-feature of Death Proof and Drag Me To Hell.

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The Afternoon Before: Tying up the loose ends

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Some random thoughts, starting with a series finale I just watched five months after it happened.

Coach and Vince

Working nights, I pretty much only watch television with DVR, and there are two types of shows for me: the ones I can watch any old time just to keep up with and get out of the way, and the ones I save for when I can truly enjoy them.

Law & Order SVU minus Christopher Merloni has become a show I can shoehorn in while I’m eating my cereal in the morning, or getting ready for work. Boardwalk Empire, on the other hand, requires my full concentration.

This dynamic was the reason that despite airing back in May, I only watched the final episode of Friday Night Lights last night, tempering my curiosity with the desire to watch it at exactly the right time.

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Word is bond: The gospel of the Oak Man

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I might be in here somewhere

Charles Oakley said a lot of provocative things in his one-hour media session at K1X on Saturday, most of which have already been printed elsewhere. (I’m sure you’ve already heard his take on the current-day Knicks, Amar’e Stoudemire and Isiah Thomas.) Transcribing an hour of Oak was a bear, but I enjoyed every minute of it, and I wanted to share some more of his comments after the jump, along with my take, after the jump.

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Tough love: The enduring relevance of Oak

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Smiles all around

The narrative after Charles Oakley’s tour de force at the K1X store in Soho on Saturday was that he’s a loose cannon, not afraid to speak his mind because, well, who messes with Oak? I was there for Dime Magazine, and that was the angle we took. It pretty much had to be.

If you paid close attention, though, there was one topic Oak wouldn’t talk about even when prodded: the NBA lockout. Logically, that’s because it’s the one thing he thought he might actually get fined for speaking his mind about.

But there was also a hint of underlying sadness – perhaps Oakley couldn’t talk about the lockout, but it also seemed as if he simply didn’t want to, since it didn’t come close to representing the ideals he always applied to his chosen profession.

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The Afternoon Before: Joining the chorus

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A couple of basketball lockout notes this week. So yeah, I’m just like everyone else.

Love this adI make a living in baseball, and though I’m not crazy about everything the sport does, the power brokers behind the game have been able to learn from their mistakes for the sake of the big picture. The labor situation in baseball is about as good as it’s ever been, resulting in business as usual, even during a recession. They have a good thing going – no need to trip over their own feet.

The NFL gets it, too. Both sides were looking pretty bad for a while during the spring and summer, but when it came down to it, they knew they couldn’t miss any regular-season games. You barely even hear their lockout referenced now. They realized they had a good thing going, and worked things out during the window they had to not mess everything up.

Conversely, everyone involved with the NBA lockout can only be described as clueless for letting things get to this point.

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The Afternoon Before: Time traveling with Pack Wars

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Calm before the Wars

Remember that feeling you had as a kid when you’d rip open a fresh pack of cards, convinced there was some sort of cardboard gold inside? Every once in a while, you’d hit the jackpot: Ken Griffey Jr. grinning at you, or Shaq trying to demolish a backboard. It was the teenage boy version of pulling the handle on a slot machine.

That’s where Pack Wars comes in.

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The Afternoon Before: The frustration of Maravilla

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This week’s random thoughts. A little boxing, a little baseball, a little Kobe Bryant as a rapper.

Tape delay

Last November, I thought after watching Sergio Martinez detonate Paul Williams in Boardwalk Hall that I had seen The Next Big Thing.

Almost a year later, the growing suspicion that we’re never going to see that actually happen has become a bigger personal disappointment to me than anything else in a sport that tends to consistently disappoint, far surpassing the interminable wait for Pacquiao-Mayweather.

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