Baron Davis < Steve Nash < Jessica Alba < Me

You may or may not have heard of the website IBeatYou.com. Perhaps not. I hadn't heard of it until the day I heard about it, either. Nonetheless, there it is, and the premise seems rather simple yet rather awesome - people challenge people to do things. Pointless yet fun things.

One such challenge is The Stare-out challenge, in which competitors are challenged to see how long they can go without blinking. I think we have all played this game at some point in our lives.

Years of playing the Command And Conquer computer game series during my slightly angst-ridden teenage years have accidentally yet beautifully made me into a legend at this rather pointless game. My school years saw random students - who had heard of my reputation in this field - challenge me in the corridor to a spontaneous game, with no preparation on my part, and I won every time. It kind of had that Houdini "I dare you to punch me at any time and I'll be able to take it" feel to it, except that I didn't at any time die from these stare-outs. Not yet, anyway.

This ability was forgotten about as I finally encountered the world of maturity. But while it was forgotten about, it wasn't gone. Roughly a year ago, I found myself one evening with nothing to do [readers note: it's something of a life theme], and decided to time myself to see how long I could go for.

I managed 8 minutes and 46 seconds, without so much as a warm-up. I only stopped for two reasons:

1: I was starting to lose sight in both eyes.
2: Youtube cap their videos at ten minutes. [Readers note: the video is no longer on Youtube, so don't even look.]



I felt proud. I felt like I had achieved something. I hadn't, but I felt like it anyway.

Then, two days ago, I learn of the ibeatyou challenge. It now feels as though I have found my destiny. My life has a purpose, one that it never had before.

Celebrities have partaken in this game, too. The lovely Jessica Alba set out her stall early, and then Steve Nash had his own slightly scary-looking attempt to beat her.






Baron Davis also had a go, but his effort was frankly shite. (His technique is all wrong. Don't hold your eyes shut like that. All it does is making the gradual dying of the pupil even more obvious, and thus even less tolerable. Rookie mistake. This is a champion talking, by the way.)




For reasons I have never figured out (it probably has something to do with the centuries-old technology on which it relies), Youtube videos have never worked on my computer. To watch them, I have always had to steal them and watch them at a later date. (Keepvid.com = a godsend.) This obstacle means that it is damn hard for me to find who the current leader is. As far as I can tell, only one entry so far tops 10 minutes.

If I can do almost 9 minutes without a warm-up, a practice, or with any sense of competition, do you really think I can't go for 15 when I've got the sweet smell of success within my grasp, and the potential adoration of literally dozens of people?

"The hell I can't."




So this is it. An imaginary gauntlet has been thrown down, and imaginary lines in make-believe sand have been made. I will win Jessica Alba's heart, earn Steve Nash's respect, and help Boom Dizzle correct the major flaws in his amateurish stare-out approach. I might even get my own Wikipedia entry, who knows.

Balls to the impending blindness. This is why we have eyes.

Expect updates on this.

Draft Zach Feinstein

http://www.draftfeinstein.com/index.php

If you haven't see this before, you ought.

Don't have anything to add to it, really.

Spurs sign DerMarr Johnson

Why's that interesting?

Well, after Wikipedia'ing DerMarr Johnson's name in a bid to find out when he suffered his car crash, I noticed that apparently DerMarr Johnson does a bit of rapping under a soubriquet.

This was news to me, so I took this nugget of information to Youtube to see if it was true.

And it bloody was.

Here is DerMarr, aka "Boss Slim", in the music video for a seminal smash named "Zoom", a concept with which the camera man is struggling.



If you're overwhelmed by the stagnant unoriginality of the beat, the severly played-out instrumentation of the genre, the truly inspirational soul-searching depth of the lyrics, or the rank amateurishness of the music video shot on someone's phone, you've missed the point. The point is that the Spurs just got more bling. This is a rare and special thing, given that the team's current quota of bling is more or less solely in the form of Tony Parker. And if you have ever seen Tony Parker rap, then you'll know why this was a bad thing.

There'll be a follow up post on this as and when I can be arsed.

The Paper Bag Protest

In protest at the constant mismanagement of their team, Milwaukee Bucks fans are planning a paper bag protest, to air their previously unaired (or rather, unheard) grievances about owner Herb Kohl's consistent mismanagement of the franchise. For those unaware of why the protest in place, Senator Kohl is the team's owner, but believes himself to be the team's general manager, having his way in basically all personel moves and even some of the coaching decisions.

The problem is that he's really bad at it.

The details of the protest can be found here.

This post comes too late to be able to help enlist any support for the night of the protest itself, but I've made it anyway, in a bid to show my support for their cause.

Rock it, sisters.

"wats up wit all da brothas wit beckys??"

The following post, and everything linked to within it, is very NSFWP (not safe for white people).


Back when I had my list of NBA wives and girlfriend pictures - which got waaaaaaay out of hand - I used to get abused daily by very angry people who typed only in capitals. These people were what society might deem as being "whores", and for some reason they either:

a) E-hit on me. (Which was funny for about a week, and then just annoying.)

b) Thought I was the authority on who was seeing who. (Not an entirely illogical assumption, but the "CAN U TELL ME IF _____IZ SEEING ANY1?" got annoying fast.)

c) Told amusing stories about deviant sexual encounters with NBA players. (This is the one facet that I miss, and sorry to whichever girl it was whom I had to truly convince that a Mr D.W. was married and that he WASN'T going to call you in the morning.)


It was all high brow stuff that really grated after a while. I still get some of it to this day, and could easily live without it.

However, the archive is no more, and now the women in question (who were about 99% black, which was something that I was always quick to point out whenever someone wrote me an angry email asking why so many black players dated white women) seem to have found somewhere else to go.

The following website has a page for all NBA players, where you can "discuss" whether they have a girlfriend. Conversation, as you may expect, doesn't seem to get much more high-brow than conversations about which one of the shouty women behind the comments had the most epic (or disappointing) sexual encounter. And lots of swearing and graphic talk is involved.

http://www.talk-sports.net/nba/girlfriend.aspx/

It's all pretty hilariously bad stuff. Or, if you're a whore, it's a useful resource contain everything you need to have a nice night in. Bonus points on offer to anyone who can find a more amusing conversation than the Kenyon Martin one.


ShamSports.com - where copout linkage to the most bizarre and frankly deplorable aspects of the NBA world in lieu of actually writing stuff worth reading happens.

(The alternative would be a snapshot of Andres Nocioni's dunk over Stewie Griffin. Available upon request.)

Send Antoine Walker to the All-Star Game pt 2

The ballot is now up.

http://www.nba.com/allstar2008/asb/eng/ballot.html

Let's do this.

Where were you when........

Jay Williams, the artist formerly known as "The Next Big Thing" and currently known as "That Fella Who Fell Off His Bike", is continuing his comeback attempts by signing in Italy in the coming days.

He's still trying, bless him.

This uber-exciting news gives us an excuse to do a free online web page translation, which is always fun.

Courtesy of Babelfish translation:

The Legea Scafati never does not stop to make to speak about if, above all on the argument market. In the last hours, in fact, the news has been diffused in the city bell second which patron the Longobardi would be on the point to close the negotiation that would carry Jason Jay Williams to the court of Alibegovic. The definition of the transaction would have to happen nel.giro.di due-tre days, but to this point it appears sure that we will be able to see to the work a player from the enormous one upgrades them, expressed up to now only in minimal part.

After it are asserted to Duke, has become famous for to have been the second one chosen (from part of the Chicago Bulls) to the Draft that has consecrated Yao Ming. Williams has had to make the accounts also with a tremendous incident of motion, that its career pregiudicato for various years. Now the call of Scafati has arrived, but also the last one chance in order to make to see finally of what is able.

It's that timeless question: Where were you when Jay Williams had his tremendous incident of motion?



(EDIT - Jay didn't sign in Italy, after all. It was an erroneous report: the actual signing was of a different ex-Bull point guard called Williams - Frank. Damn. That's less fun.

Justin Williams's rape accusation

As you probably heard about, Sacramento Kings big man Justin Williams has been accused of drugging and raping a woman that he met at a party at his house last week. If you didn't know that, you heard it here first!, which is not really a good thing.

It seems a particularly noteworthy rape accusation towards and NBA player to chronicle, though, for it has a certain facet to it that no previos accusation has had. This new wrinkle is the fact that Williams, apparently, has "proof" that there no rape going on, as told to us by Williams's lawyer:

The truth is nothing happened that night that was not consensual, and we have proof of it," William J. Portanova, Williams' lawyer, told the Sacramento Bee. "While some people may find it distasteful to think about it, it's a reality of 21st-century life."

Hmmm, OK.

So let's assume the obvious for a moment here, and assume that Williams's "proof" is a video tape of some sort, of this encounter of some sort. That seems to be pretty certainly what it's going to be, unless somebody can think of another 21st Century way of proving consensual sexual encounters. (In the 18th century, they had paintings. True story.)

This poses a few posers.

1) If the woman knew she was being filmed, how can a girl cry rape when she's having consensual sex, consensually, on camera?

2) If she DIDN'T know she was being filmed, is Williams not commiting a serious crime by covertly filming her like this? Just because she has consented to taking it in the ass, it doesn't necessarily mean that she is totally cool with the idea of being filmed doing it. And even though it's his house, is there not a human rights issue going on there?

3) Is it normal for an NBA player to be picking up floozies for fun and frolics at a house party attended by numerous employees of the team he is playing for? Even for a team owned by the Maloof brothers?

Also, when are we going to see the first NBA sex tape, and how have we come this far (so to speak) without one to date (so to speak)? And, when the inevitable does come out (so to speak), who will be the one to do it (so to speak)?


My money is on Robert Swift. That bastard is crazy enough to do it. I originally thought it might be Ron Artest, but he'd just film himself posing nude or something. Swift, though, might do it. He seems sufficiently confident. Also, there's no doubt that he's ploughing his way through some serious tofu, so you know the opportunity is there. Have you seen the guy lately?




Sexayyyyy.

(Dennis Rodman doesn't count, by the way. First, he's not in the NBA any more, and second, it's tooooooo obvious.)