Author: Doug LeMoine

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How Nick Van Exel got his 20 assists

Excel­lent Dead­spin post about the undis­ci­plined and occa­sion­al­ly crooked world of NBA score­keep­ing. It's based on the sto­ry of a guy named Alex who once kept score for the Griz­zlies, and it includes this gem about how Nick Van Exel (who wasn't known for his pass­ing, let's say) racked up 23 assists one night:

A lit­tle more than a year lat­er, with Nick Van Exel and the Lak­ers in town, Alex decid­ed to act out. "I was sort of dis­grun­tled," he says. "I loved the game. I don't want the num­bers to be mean­ing­less, and I felt they were becom­ing mean­ing­less because of how stats were kept. So I decid­ed, I'm gonna do this total­ly imma­ture thing and see what hap­pens. It was child­ish. The Lak­ers are in town. We're gonna lose. Fuck it. He's get­ting a shit­load of assists." If you were to watch the game today, you'd see some "com­i­cal­ly bad assists." Alex's fin­ger­prints are all over the box score. He gave Van Exel every­thing. "Van Exel would pass from the top of the three-point line to some­one on the wing who'd hold the ball for five sec­onds, drib­ble, then make a move to the bas­ket. Assist, Van Exel."

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lit outdoors

No amount of modification can substitute the man-made piano for the real thing

Thomas McGuane takes a shot at describ­ing what it's like to land a tar­pon:

The clos­est thing to a tar­pon in the mate­r­i­al world is the Stein­way piano. The tar­pon, of course, is a game fish that runs to extreme sizes, while the Stein­way piano is mere­ly an enor­mous musi­cal instru­ment, large­ly wood­en and manip­u­lat­ed by a series of keys. How­ev­er, the tar­pon when hooked and run­ning reminds the angler of a piano slid­ing down a pre­cip­i­tous incline and while jump­ing makes cav­i­ties and explo­sions in the water not unlike a series of pianos falling from a great height. If the read­er, then, can spec­u­late in terms of pianos that herd and pur­sue mul­let and are them­selves shaped like exag­ger­at­ed her­rings, he will be a very long way toward see­ing what kind of thing a tar­pon is. Those who appre­ci­ate nature as we find her may rest in the knowl­edge that no amount of mod­i­fi­ca­tion can sub­sti­tute the man-made piano for the real thing — the tar­pon. Where was I?

I came across this in The Best Amer­i­can Sports Writ­ing of the Cen­tu­ry, an absolute­ly killer col­lec­tion edit­ed by David Hal­ber­stam, but you can check it out in the SI Vault: "The Longest Silence," by Thomas McGuane.

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lit the ancient past

Learning how not to think

If you haven't read David Fos­ter Wallace's 2005 com­mence­ment address at Keny­on, you should. It's hum­ble and real and warm, and tru­ly great. It's also very dif­fi­cult to read. After his sui­cide, it's impos­si­ble not to hear the echoes of Wallace's inter­nal con­ver­sa­tion, the dark­ness and doubt and obses­sive thoughts that he clear­ly strug­gled to get a han­dle on.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to stay alert and atten­tive, instead of get­ting hyp­no­tized by the con­stant mono­logue inside your own head (may be hap­pen­ing right now). Twen­ty years after my own grad­u­a­tion, I have come grad­u­al­ly to under­stand that the lib­er­al arts cliché about teach­ing you how to think is actu­al­ly short­hand for a much deep­er, more seri­ous idea: Learn­ing how to think real­ly means learn­ing how to exer­cise some con­trol over how and what you think. It means being con­scious and aware enough to choose what you pay atten­tion to and to choose how you con­struct mean­ing from expe­ri­ence. Because if you can­not exer­cise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be total­ly hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excel­lent ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble master.

It's not tech­ni­cal­ly avail­able online, but you might be able to stum­ble across it in the depths of the Inter­net archives. Thanks, Dave.

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The acid days of Lorne Michaels

Before he cre­at­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live, Lorne Michaels used to send jokes to Woody Allen … A sam­ple: He was obsessed with the notion that, some­where in the world, there is a per­son hav­ing exact­ly the same thought he was at exact­ly the same moment. He decid­ed to call that per­son, but the line was busy. Just the right amount of exis­ten­tial angst for Allen, right? Allen told Michaels that this joke was "bril­liant," and accord­ing to Michaels, the com­pli­ment "kept him going for the next sev­er­al years." Excel­lent anec­dotes in Sat­ur­day Night: A Back­stage His­to­ry of Sat­ur­day Night Live.

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music

Friday milkshake: Panda Bear meets Atlas Sound

Fri­day for me usu­al­ly means James Brown and Stere­o­lab, but today it's Pan­da Bear and Atlas Sound, a guy from Deer­hunter. I have been play­ing the 1s and 0s out of their new thing. Warn­ing: It's going to give you a crav­ing to drink a milk­shake with equal parts Beach Boys, organs of the Motown vari­ety, and Ani­mal Col­lec­tive raspy echoes.Atlas Sound guy describes the begin­ning of the col­lab­o­ra­tion, from Brook­lyn Veg­an:

I toured for a peri­od in Europe with Ani­mal Col­lec­tive, whose band dynam­ic was very inspi­ra­tional to be around. On the bus, we often played impro­vised iPod games. We would take turns for­mu­lat­ing a theme or uni­fy­ing con­cept and then play three songs. The goal would be for every­one to try and fig­ure out the theme. Dur­ing one of these games, some­one played "What Am I Going to Do" by the Dovers. I was amazed at the hook — a weird organ thing with drums and elec­tric bass. I men­tioned to Noah that some­one should real­ly sam­ple that riff. He agreed and he taught me a lit­tle about sam­pling and match­ing up beats. This end­ed up as the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort "Walk­a­bout."

Via Tom Haver­ford, aka Randy, aka Aziz Ansari.

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baseball

The man of steal

Base­ball great Rick­ey Hen­der­son recent­ly gave the Hall of Fame induc­tion speech to end all induc­tion speech­es. He was a larg­er-than-life fig­ure in my child­hood, and he had a per­son­al­i­ty to match, often refer­ring to him­self in the third per­son. For exam­ple, "There are pieces of this puz­zle that Rick­ey is still work­ing out," in a dis­cus­sion of age and base­ball in an excel­lent New York­er pro­file. There was no third-per­son in the speech, but there was plen­ty of Rick­ey being Rickey:

As a kid grow­ing up in Oak­land, my heroes were Jack­ie Robin­son, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Reg­gie Jack­son. What about that Reg­gie Jack­son? I stand out­side the ball­park in the park­ing lot, wait­ing for Reg­gie Jack­son to give me an auto­graph … I said, 'Reg­gie, can I have an auto­graph.' He would pass me a pen, with his name on it.

The best part is that Jack­son is sit­ting behind him, crack­ing up, along with Robin Yount and var­i­ous oth­er liv­ing leg­ends. You can watch the whole thing, in three parts, on YouTube: Part 1 has some awe­some com­men­tary by Tony Gwynn and Torii Hunter; Part 2 is the begin­ning of Rickey's speech; Part 3 is the conclusion.

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aside

If tall heels hadn't been popular

Date­line: A Mex­i­can dis­cotheque in the ear­ly 1970s. "Rick­ey [Hen­der­son] had a pair of heels on that were about four inch­es high. Every­thing was fine until these peo­ple came in yelling that they had guns. Then they start­ed shoot­ing" … Hen­der­son ducked under a table as gun­fire strafed the room. When the shoot­ing end­ed, Hen­der­son looked down and saw a bul­let hole had gone all the way through the heel of his shoe. "If tall heels hadn't been pop­u­lar, Rick­ey Hen­der­son might have had his career ruined." The nar­ra­tor was for­mer Japan­ese base­ball leg­end, Randy Bass (aka Ba-su), from a 1987 SI pro­file: The Hottest Amer­i­can Import in Japan.

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music visual

Memphis dirty go-go

Stop what­ev­er you're doing and watch this. It's called "Win­dowdip­per," and it's by Jib Kid­der, aka Sean Schus­ter-Craig. I remem­ber Sean describ­ing his music as some­thing like min­i­mal­ist crunk, or Dirty South boo­gie, or Mem­phis dirty go-go, or some­thing, but you real­ly have to see this to get it. Sean, if you read this, remind me of the offi­cial sub-sub-genre. In the mean­time, holy crap. Enjoy.

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flickr photo

Unconsciously satisfying

David Mellor - Pride - flatware

Great design hits you on many lev­els. Design­ers love to talk about clos­ing the door of a BMW. It feels dif­fer­ent. And this feel­ing may not even reg­is­ter in the con­scious mind, but it mat­ters. The feel­ing of solid­i­ty and integri­ty dur­ing that action is unique and last­ing, even though it occu­pies a tiny sliv­er around the expe­ri­ence of dri­ving. You may not con­scious­ly notice it, but your mind reg­is­ters it and you body remem­bers it.I hes­i­tate to admit this in a pub­lic forum, but I don't think I've ever pur­chased a new piece of sil­ver­ware. Our sil­ver­ware draw­er is a hodge­podge of air­line spoons, thrift store forks, garage sale knives, odds and ends of var­i­ous shapes and sizes. But you've got to won­der whether the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing wouldn't be great­ly enhanced — even uncon­scious­ly — by great sil­ver­ware, like the set above by crafts­man David Mel­lor. I saw it yes­ter­day at Heath Ceram­ics in Sausal­i­to, and even a philis­tine like me could tell that it's got some­thing going on. For $160, you can find out for your­self.If you do, lis­ten to your sub­con­scious, and let me know what it says.

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Dylan on becoming Dylan

"The name just popped into my head one day … I just don't feel like I had a past, and I couldn't relate to any­thing oth­er than what I was doing at the present time. And, it didn't real­ly mat­ter to me what I said. Still doesn't, really."