Kobe Bryant’s Angry Face

My Nana is nearing the age of eighty five. Her idea of good fun is a five minute jaunt through her elaborate garden filled with roses, azaleas, and any other bloom-of-the-earth she can get her arthritic finger tips on.

She is simple: bran cereal, TV, nap, sandwich, nap, garden gallivant, piss off grandpa, sleep.

Her life reminds me of a famous ecclesiastical quote, “Vanity!Vanity! Everything is chasing after the wind.” You see, my Nana’s cotton candy face froze like ice with an eternal half-cracked smirk, is the emblem of what it means to live a long and happy life. In 2001, my aunt took her then peppy seventy-four year old body on a three week excursion into the motherland–France.

Seeing the land of her heritage completed my Nana’s short bucket list. À bientôt. Her life is now one gossip mag after another, a bag of low-fat Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and a fizzy off-brand diet coke.

Last she joked of sexual intimacy, it was followed with such a far and away sense of self, that she spoke of it in third person and in the past-tense.  Life is a game of remembering–finding the story within the story–laughing at the detail she missed oh so long ago.

Like a story about my grandfather, her first husband. We sat at the Madonna Inn in 2005, re-establishing a familiar tradition of hot cocoa.  It was there my Nana’s world turned to momentary magic, as then alive owner, Alex Madonna, greeted us with his icy cool lingua. Before you knew it, a quick hello turned into a fifteen minute conversation. Upon arrival, my Nana asked Mr. Madonna whether he remembered talking business with Walter Lerette. His face lit like birthday candles. “Why yes, of course I remember Walt.” Seeing her partly foggy eyes turn crystal clear for a half-hour or so could turn any pessimistic thinker into a Jesus believing optimist.

The story line? Find the details. Pay attention to the best supporting, supporting actresses. Step back a bit. Take life less serious. View all things like a layered Picasso painting: disjointed till proven otherwise. When stepping back, find the hidden brushstroke between the larger ones. Pause. Document. Revel wildly.

My new game is called name-that-animal. It came to fruition on my twenty-fifth birthday, when I decided it was best to have personal, moral, and worldly responsibilities. Perhaps more focus on starvation in Africa, or the poor educational institutions in the under-funded inner city should take precedence over ultimately, meaningless sporting events.

Which is why comedy is the way in which I watch sports now.

For instance, Michael Jordan is no longer the king of the world–but a prostitute and money is his pimp. Bret Favre is no longer an award winning good-ol’-boy, but an artistic genital exhibitionist.

I think David Stern and Kobe Bryant have been having a gay affair since the split from Michael in 2001. On the other hand, Dennis Rodman is not a crazed lunatic, but a traveling art convention, and a man who Lady GaGa robbed.

Through this abnormal lens,  a new normal is founded: folly. Yes, folly. The grandfather to stupidity. Everything is dumb.  The sporting apocalypse has come through an NBA of montage- twas. Excitement, done. Donzo. Buh Bye.

The game is simple, and makes your world far more fun. Watch any sporting event with me, myself and I, and one up each other comparing each athlete to their animal relative. I thought of selling this game to Mattel, but since I am full of folly, free became the new price tag.

Kurt Rambis is….(give it your best shot)

If a fraggle rock made passionate love to the literary character Waldo, a new breed would be born: a fragaldo. Kurt Rambis is the genetic mutation of such a beast as this.

Most of us ogle over former Laker great, Magic Johnson. But what about the mid-90’s Laker point guard Sedale Threatt?

Threatt had that sloping back neck with a beautifully round and bald scalp. He is clearly a Desert Sand Boa.

A teammate of Threatt’s, and part of a dangerous duo with Shaq in the nineties, Elden Campbell was better known for this animal.

A giraffe. Yep, the long and thin Campbell with those drooping eyes, and a slothful looking face, ambles like a giraffe.

Kobe Bryant may be better known as the black mamba, but homie resembles something way different than that, with his thin face, and extended lower jaw when he gets angry and pouty…

If he baptized D-How, it was with the claws on his wings. Kobe looks just like a carniverous Pterodactyl.

It seems the older I get, the more disappointed I become with humanity. I assumed that every person had a revelation as I did on their twenty-fifth birthdays about life and the importance of worldly things. Boy was I wrong. Does my revelation regarding the ultimate meaningless nature of sports make me a fair weather fan? Maybe, if it means I don’t cry or breakdown when my beloved Angels fall. I oblige all of you to take it easy. Chill on the n0-care pill when it comes to sports, and play a round of name-that-animal. Laugh a little more about things. Brush your shoulders off. Purposely sit in-between a crowd of immature Laker fans and root for the opposite team all night. Promise, by night-end, you will be chuckling with a real kind of story to go to the grave with.