Quiet... Almost Too Quiet

You know how in the middle of the summer people leave New York and it gets really quiet?

You also know how in the middle of the summer, the streets of New York smell like a vile combination of puke, excrement and fecal matter combined into one vicious nostril-assaulting toxin?

You also know how sometimes, you put a photo on your blog, and it ends up showing up vertical instead of horizontal, but you don't feel like changing it?

I bring this up (the first thing, not the second or third) because you may see the occasional tumbleweed blowing through these streets during the next month or so. This, as they say, is my busy time of year. That's not to say that I won't have any new thrilling posts, so please keep checking back so that you can have the joy of stumbling across one such post, or so that you can curse my name for not having added anything new in [insert number of days here].

Thank you for your time, understanding and continued support.

Sincerely,

Mark Lemke

Where Perplexing Happens

Taking a break from my unintentional blogging exile (forgive me readers, it has been rather busy around these parts) to wonder why on God's green earth a first-place team would sign a 50-year-old woman, as the Detroit Shock have just done with Nancy Lieberman.

More importantly, though, why the hell am I writing about it?

Perhaps it's partially because of Shock coach Bill Laimbeer's quote: "Can she still compete at this level? I don't know. But I'm going to throw her in the fire." Something about a 51-year-old man saying that about a 50-year-old woman conjures the image of him quite literally picking her up and flinging her headlong onto the hardwood floor, at which point she breaks a hip.

Okay, I think I'm done. We can all go back to throwing darts at Hawks GM Rick Sund's face.

Dallas: A Place Where Ankles Stay Maddeningly Swollen, and They Don't Give Away Kia's for Free (at Least Not to My Friends)

Well, the smoke has cleared, and as you can gather from that rather economical headline, our man in the NBA Kia Motors Performance Challenge gave it a go on his gimped ankle, and while no one came within two seconds of Mike W.'s 17.8 seconds time from the qualifying round a couple months back, his ankle just couldn't withstand the rigors of the obstacle course. Fact is, when he took to the court Sunday, the thing was still swollen up worse than a guadeloupe (the guadeloupe, for those not in the know, is a distant cousin of the canteloupe. Check that -- I'm being told that Guadeloupe is a French territory in the Caribbean).

In any case, as much as I would have enjoyed doing e-brake turns in that new Kia, looks like we'll just have to wait until next year (and most likely attempt to qualify for the finals ourselves).

Before we go, let's take a second to pour out a small dollop of St. Ides for The Atlanta Representative, who made a hell of a run just getting on the plane with that mangled ankle of his.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Dallas, Baby. Dallas.

We interrupt whatever the hell else you were doing with this important news bulletin:

Friend of the blog Mike Walbert (a.k.a. "Mike E. Dubs," a.k.a. "Mickael Pietrus," a.k.a. "Pro Form," a.k.a. "Ice Pack" a.k.a. "300") is in Dallas this weekend as the Atlanta representative in the NBA Kia Motors Performance Challenge (follow this link and see Mike on the left).

For those not in the know, the Kia Motors Performance Challenge is just like the skills competition at NBA All-Star Weekend, and it doesn't take a goddamn professor of religion to realize that only one competitor in the nation (some dude named Steve Clark from D.C.) has posted a higher regional score (16.8 seconds) than Monsieur Walbert, who clocked in a 17.8 seconds in ATL a few months back in front of a confused crowd who had absolutely no idea who this guy was.

Given that he had the second-best score out of nine competitors, if you were a gambling man you'd probably be wise to throw down a little coin on the kid from ATL. But here's where it gets interesting: This past week, while playing hoops, the Atlanta Representative suffered a rather vicious sprained ankle. As just told to The OCC via secure telephone connection, the bruise from the sprain spread down his foot and partway up his calf with the reckless abandon of the Bubonic Plague. Mike was told by more than one person in the medical profession that he most likely tore some ligaments (they couldn't confirm with x-rays because the ankle was too damn sickeningly swollen to look at). But thanks to a steady regimen of rest, ice, compression, elevation, pilates and peyote, he's on the ground in Dallas and is actually walking (or perhaps more accurately, limping).

"If I win, which is a long shot now, it's gonna be a hell of a story," says the young Walbert.

He's got until Sunday at 5 p.m. to consume enough booze to get that swelling to go down, then get out there and win the damn thing.

I'll be the first to say that I'm not putting it past him to get it done.

We'll be back with updates throughout the weekend.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the winner of this bitch gets a brand new Kia?

As a great wiseman once said: Stay tuned.

Hey, Isn't That...

I found the answer to that question you were wondering about. The answer is, six years.

The question, in case you have forgotten, is "How long does it take for you [you being a former Knicks guard who goes by the name of John Starks] to sufficiently fade from the limelight after your playing career concludes so that you can blend in on a commuter train from Connecticut to New York without being harassed or accosted by anyone?"

This is all a very roundabout way of saying I saw John Starks on the train yesterday. He was wearing a suit. No one else seemed to notice him. However, I think he noticed that I noticed him, and he was probably terrified that I was going to make a scene. I didn't.

That is the end of my story.

What Tasty Bullets That Gun Has

On Monday, as I am occasionally wont to do, I boarded an airplane. The flight was rather long, and about 4.5 hours into it, I exhausted most existing means of entertainment (I stopped short of eating the pre-packaged, microwaved cheeseburger that could undoubtedly survive a nuclear holocaust).

So I turned to the Sky Mall magazine. I killed about two minutes flipping through the first 39 pages, until, on page 40 -- I spotted something.

THE MARSHMALLOW SHOOTER, said the font below the silly-looking purple gun.

The description read: "This clever pump-action device shoots sweet, edible miniature marshmallows over 30 feet, and it even has an LED sight that projects a safe beam of red light to help locate a target for pinpoint accuracy. The easy-to-refill magazine holds 20 marshmallows for fast, nonstop action."

I immediately went down to the lab (not located on board the plane) to check my blood for traces of peyote.

This clever pump-action device shoots sweet, edible miniature marshmallows over 30 feet?

Are we so lazy as a society that we have to blast our marshmallows across the house to one another instead of getting up to retrieve them from the bag?

Are we so obsessed with guns that we need a gun that shoots candy? (and a candy gun with a laser site, at that.)

Not wanting to miss out on this offer, I immediately ordered six Marshmallow Shooters, at $24.95 a pop.

The Dirty Bird

Today I was walking on the street when a ruddy-faced drunken man zig-zagging his way down 9th Avenue suddenly had a moment of semi-lucid thought upon spotting my red Falcons t-shirt.

"The Falcons!?!" he said. "You don't know anything about... Atlanta."

So I punched him in the face and stole his booze.

My Deepest Sympathies for Your Junk

To Chris Snyder's unborn children:

Daddy suffered a pretty horrific injury recently. A fractured left testicle. Didn't know testicles could fracture? Me neither. Maybe you'll learn about that someday in science class.

Now if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go make myself vomit and then weep uncontrollably for about 5 minutes. After that I think I'll feel better about all this.