A Guide To NBA Player's Music
May 20th, 2011
For a variety of reasons, basketball and music seem to have always had crossover appeal. [Pun acknowledged, but not condoned.] Be it due to the intrinsically linked cultures of the music of the streets and the game on the playgrounds – a partnership which, if I was 10 years older, I would probably find it funny to call “hip hoops” – basketball players moving into musical side projects has become so prevalent that it’s now a cliché. Just as Common thinks he can pull off a decent replication of an extremely ball-dominant undersized scoring guard during each NBA All-Star Weekend, many ballers out there think they have rhythm. There have been dozens of these instances throughout history. The following list attempts to exhaustively cover them all, ranging from those who are actually quite good, to those that would have trouble rhyming “Mercedes” with “ladies”, even if they were run down by a Mercedes full of ladies, all of whom were waving rhyming dictionaries only containing the words “Mercedes” and “ladies.” The most recent addition to this list is also its first. Fresh from an underwhelming three month turf-toe laden stretch of play featuring lashings of the first half of his surname, Carlos Boozer made the news yesterday on account of his foray into the rap game, pairing up with Twista, Mario Winans and a truly terrible beat on the following song, “Winning Streak.” Why Boozer has chosen to rap about things such as “going hard,” “crossing over” and “going baseline,” things he doesn’t actually do on the basketball court, is not clear. Maybe he should have rapped about things he actually does, such as pushing players in the back as they drive unhindered to the basket, rotating the wrong way defensively, asking the ref for a touch of the ball […]
LeBron Using The Word "Retarded" Was A Subnormally Birdbrained Thing To Do
May 9th, 2011
At a training seminar that I once attended, a portion of the afternoon was devoted to a discussion of bad words. In one of the hottest days on record, a dozen of us gathered in a cramped five foot tall training room, sat around an overhead projector and a laptop whose audio output was speculative at best, and then, via the medium of Powerpoint, ran through a list of words that were unacceptable to use in our workplace. None of which was patronising in any way. Of course, the reason for such a discussion was because of the line of work in question. We were attending said seminar as a mandatory part of our training to become support workers for the learning disabled. Inevitably, in that line of work, training for sensitivity towards the learning disabled is essential. We had to go. (You know, just so that we knew not to call them names. Just in case one of us was going to take the hitherto untested insult-comic approach to the job. Seemingly, companies must plan for that ridiculous eventuality.) It doesn’t take much guesswork to know that on that day, we learnt – or rather, were reminded – that use of the word “retarded” was not permitted. It wasn’t just not permitted in its more popular, irrelevant use as a generic word for “dumb” – it was also not permitted as a means to term, address or endear those that we would encounter in our work who were actually mentally retarded. The same was true of “demented,” which was not to be used to describe those with dementia, despite its obvious origins from doing so. Even when done with the best of intentions, these words was not to be used under any circumstances. And the reasons they were not […]
