Seriously?

A couple of weeks ago ESPN declared that Isiah Thomas would be added to the Knicks front office as a consultant of some sort. Clearly, James Dolan is now operating on the principle that Knicks fans are total masochists. Only when you start with the idea that the entire fanbase is a glutton for punishment could you possibly come to the conclusion that this team needs to relive the glory days of the Isiah era. Either that or he must have Alzheimer's and think that Thomas is fresh off his championship seasons as a point guard for the Pistons.

I mean, it's not like his inaugural season as coach for NCAA powerhouse FIU (7-25, second to last in Sun Belt Conference) has boosted his resume in any way. To be fair, however, it is hard to compete in a division that pits them against juggernauts the likes of Arkansas State, South Alabama and Middle Tennessee.

Why anyone would want advice from the man who brought us Eddie Curry, Zach Randolph and Jared Jeffries (played for about 12 minutes total) is a total mystery. He can't coach, he can't broker beneficial deals, and he is a terrible judge of talent (Anucha Browne Sanders? come on man you can do better than that). Not only did his tenures as President of Basketball operations, advisor and coach yield miserable seasons at the time, the effectively crippled the team with salary cap obligations which forced us to spend two seasons shedding contracts just to enter the LeBron sweepstakes.

A few days later, the deal was mercifully nullified and Thomas was relegated back to Florida where he will continue to pretend he wants to coach. If Donnie Walsh has his way though, you can rest assured Thomas will slink his way back into the Knicks organization within a few years. I can't wait.

Summer Chronicles

It is hot as balls. With air temperatures reaching a moist 50 Celsius (look it up, it's hot), water failing to come out of the faucet at any given time, and people generally refusing to leave the house between noon and 5pm it is safe to say the dog days of summer are in full stride. It's pretty telling that one of the most common comments I've been getting these days is commendation for buying a fridge last January. Around here, the benefits of keeping food fresh are entirely and definitively secondary to cooling down tap water to a drinkable temperature.

While I spent much of the last month and a half working at camps at the beach or up in the mountains, the last weeks of in site living have given me enough heat to last a lifetime. Too bad there's still two months left of this crap.

With the only reasonably cool hours being shrouded in darkness a particular pattern of semi-nocturnal man-chilling has developed. Since women are not really allowed outside after dark, my summer scene is a complete and unadulterated sausagefest (up from the normal, year round semi-sausagefest). Highlights from this all-male, all the time atmosphere include a two-part hour long discussion on why poop floats, being treated to coffee by someone who paid with hash, and (my personal favorite) watching that same someone steal a porcupine while high and bring it back to his house.

Also, as I may have mentioned some months back, a friend of mine has a particular penchant for acquiring random, worthless, electronic gadgets and bringing them to me for a class on their use. So far I've dealt with various alarm clocks, an illegal cable box, two beepers, a heart-rate monitor and, most recently, a portable digital picture printer. Those last two, which might stick out as not only pricey but also potentially useful were gifts from my friend's brother who works in Spain.

Nice gifts, you may think. Now that family can not only monitor its cardiac health but also print out all of their pictures and make sweet ass collages n shit. Well sure, except the former is broken and the latter will only be useful once they get a digital camera, a computer, a USB key, photo paper, ink and an adapter to plug it into to the wall. Awesome.