everything she wanted

I've something else to bitcherate: is it truly necessary for the 2004-2005 NBA season to begin on Election Day?! With a Rockets-Pistons game?! If my paranoia were more acute, I'd formulate a The Last Thing He Wanted-style conspiracy theory on this particular clusterfx of poor planning, beginning with Florida voting booths, hanky-panky in the fiber-optics room, and a murdered city councilperson's missing electric typewriter, whose ribbons contain coordinates--latitudes and longitudes--which lead to the discovery of a shadowy partnership between David Stern, Bear Stearns, and Chingy; their common interest in the outcome of Rip Hamilton's retired headgear (/disguise?); and their tenuously related plan to launder money through both the Missouri State Lottery and Harrah's Riverboat Casinos (a plan eventually diverted by a CIA agent -- working swiftly and undercover as a four-alarm chili chef at the St. Louis BBQ fest -- and the missing sax player from the Zydeco Crawdaddys). You wouldn't have heard about it, though, because it would've been covered up in the newsmedia by a series of strategically reported scandals, like, say the one about the president and the cigar, or for the right-wingers, maybe the putrid major network pundit indicted for sexual harrassment.

If the Pistons and Kerry triumph over Texas in one evening, I will eat the rubber strap off Rip's sweaty old goggles, clean out Dave Navarro's nosehair clippers and wear the same white Nike I-D Zoom Rival S Pluses every day for a year. (BTW. MEMO to Nike I-D. Do cross-country runners really care about custom mauve swooshes and yellow soles and goldenrod stitching? Really? Those colors will run by the second muddy park-sprint. What I'm saying is, where art thou "lifestyle" jams? What I'm saying is, CAN I GET A DUNK ONE TIME? What I'm saying is, Wieden + Kennedy homies, can you put in a word for your loyal bloggist-chica on the custom shoe request? That we may custom-design an attractive shoe, one that does not resemble a Volvo, Q-Bert's sproing, or the night-slipper of a Storm Trooper?)