Trip down basketball's memory lane

Had to post this now that I've found it.

Looking up random stuff on YouTube, I found this gem of Wake Forest Demon Deacon great Randolph Childress, who set the ACC Tournament scoring record in 1995. He did whatever he wanted during the tournament, knocking down everything out to NBA range.

He's a college basketball legend to my cousin and I, who still look back and marvel at what he was able to do in 1995. He's now playing professionally in Italy. Never had a great NBA career, but he didn't have to for us to remember him. (Remember, Tim Duncan was a sophomore on that WF team.)

Carlin ain't got squat on Diddley

The Sunday passing of George Carlin resulted in the mass broadcast/transmission/publication of various tributes honoring the comedian.

Let me get something out of the way: I never thought George Carlin was funny.

At all.

Everyone considers Carlin the thinker's comedian, as if he's some sort of Mark Twain figure. In fact, he's won an award name after Mark Twain for his humor.

He's well known for his Seven Words You Can't Say on TV, or whatever it's called. Obviously it took a real genius to come up with that.

Carlin's passing made me think about another recent death in the ranks of fame: Ellas Otha Bates. You may know him better as Bo Diddley.

Bo Diddley died at age 79 on June 2, only three weeks ago. One of the most accomplished musicians in American history was celebrated with by-the-way-Bo-Diddley-died briefs from television networks and news outlets.

I'm a CNN guy, but for the network to have Larry King dedicate an entire show to the life of George Carlin, while doing nothing of the sort for someone such as Diddley, is an oversight of the most egregious breed. Bill Maher sat on King's set and waxed poetic about the greatness of Carlin and his method of analyzing American materialism.

I doubt Carlin criticized materialism too much each time he drove to the bank.

Diddley influenced music in ways achieved by few others in the second half of the 20th century. Artists from Elvis to Bruce Springsteen to The Animals to The Doors to The Who to Bob Seger to George Thorogood benefited from the magic of Diddley's trademark rectangular guitar.

No matter where you turn in popular music during the past 60 years, Bo Diddley is there. Look at the past 60 years of comedy; I doubt you'll find George Carlin's fingerprints all over them.

Bo Diddley deserved far more respect than he received when he passed three weeks ago. Don't make the mistake the national media has and let the legacy of Ellas Otha Bates fade into history unmentioned.

The Hair is Gone

Nine months of glory came to an end earlier today.

Nine months of not caring.

Nine months of shag.

Nine months of careless bliss ... gone in a matter of 40 minutes. (Yes, it took 40 minutes to get my hair cut, but that's a whole other story.)

I now have one of the dumbest-looking haircuts I've ever had. Unfortunately, the guy who usually cuts my hair, the guy who has cut my hair since I was in elementary school, was out of town, so I was thrown into the pit of despair known as a mall salon.

It was bad.

It was humiliating.

It was $22.

Yep, $22 for some cheap haircut that makes me look like I live in a psych ward. It almost looks like Jim Carrey's character in "Dumb and Dumber." That's right, the "pumpkin-pie-haircutted freak."

This heinous act was done in preparation for a job interview. I'm hoping my long, strawberry-blonde locks that now likely reside in a Longview Mall dumpster wouldn't have given me a better chance than my new Dennis The Menace 'do.

It's very humbling to have nine months of luster taken away by a total stranger in public. I kinda felt like Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta." To make it worse, my mom was there. She had to be there; there was no way I was gonna be able to tell some weird guy in a mall salon how I wanted my hair cut, especially considering how long it was and how short I wanted it.

So after two ill-fated attempts at getting it as short as I wanted it, he got the shears back out and went over it again, my mother standing there watching along with every other person in the place.

It was emasculating.

It was shameful.

It was free.

After all, my mom was there, and she knew how mad I was about it. So she paid for it.

Guess it wasn't so bad after all.

Livers and gizzards

Thanks to a coworker of mine, I have rediscovered the glory of fried chicken livers and gizzards.

Those of you out there who have never eaten either, I don't want to hear it. You have no clue of the gloriousness of the deep-fried, acquired-taste morsels.

Gizzards are a chewy surprise that makes you wonder if you're eating some kind of shellfish. Livers are dark and rich, kind of the on-land oyster.

I hadn't had any of either since my beloved Granny B's burned. The hometown eatery was legendary: fried catfish special Monday, chicken nugget special Tuesday, three-piece mix special Wednesday, fried shrimp special Thursday, and the 10-piece family delight special Friday through Sunday.

The place was epic. The baked beans are unmatched, and the livers and gizzards were guilty pleasures you couldn't find anywhere else.

Thanks to my coworker, I found those gizzards and livers again ... at the Exxon station at the intersection of Eastman Road and I-20 in Longview. Yes, to those of you who know what I'm about to say ...

Grandy's.

That place we all dreaded on family trips as children. Oh how unaware we were of its splendor.

I ordered a dozen livers this afternoon and was hooked up with about 20 of them along with two rolls. Needless to say, I could barely get half of them down, especially since we made a stop at Popeye's for red beans and rice to accompany our livers and gizzards.

You just can't eat that many livers. It's not possible. It's like Paul Newman eating 50 boiled eggs in that movie.

So now I have leftovers: Heavy, fried, coma-inducing leftovers.

Thank to you that coworker, and the childhood I enjoyed growing up on livers and gizzards.

Football season: Already preparing myself

I love basketball.

Nothing gets my competitive juices boiling like a fullcourt game of basketball. I was raised playing basketball in the driveway, throwing the baseball in the back yard, and tossing the pigskin outside. But nothing has ever been able to match basketball from the standpoint of actually participating in battle.

However, there's one thing basketball can't top.

There is nothing quite like football season.

Basketball has always been my favorite sport to play, and its intrinsically surreal display of human physiological art in motion is the single-greatest accomplishment of mankind in organized athletic competition.

But the violence, provincialism, and pride of football is unmatched.

We Texas sports writers received Dave Campbell's Texas Football magazine Tuesday, three days before its release to the general public. Since we participate in the Writers' Poll featured in the publication, we get the perk of seeing it early, as long as we hold any stories until its actual release date.

For me, growing up in the ArkLaTex, particularly East Texas, the release of DCTFM each June was like having an extra Christmas. I went into football depression when the college football national championship was played in early January, trying to get my gridiron fix from the NFL playoffs but always looking forward to the next season's high school and college story lines.

I knew the magazine would be coming in June, and always anticipated buying it. My dad and I would search for it once the calendar hit the second week of June, scouring Wal-Mart stores and bookstores everywhere we went.

For me, having my own opinions on football in the state of Texas published in DCTFM is a small dream come true. As insignificant as it may seem to outsiders - or even me now that I'm a bit desensitized to it - I still have to sit and think for a minute that at 23 years old last year I first had my opinions published in DCTFM. And for the second straight year, I had my preseason picks and other prognostications included in the Writers' Poll.

But what the release of DCTFM really represents is the early, unofficial start to football season. The next two months will be spent studying DCTFM and various national publications such as Athlon, Street and Smith, and others to give ourselves an idea on what to expect - and what to argue - concerning the 2008 football season.

I'm already ready for this season. The 2007 college football season was insanity. LSU's unlikely, two-loss championship year was the perfect ending to an over-the-top season. The SEC looks to be even stronger in '08, if you can imagine that, and nothing is better than getting a group of friends together on a Saturday night in October to watch Southern titans such as LSU and Auburn or Tennessee and Alabama bludgeon each other for three hours for the sake of their hometowns, cities, campuses, counties, states, and regions. Bragging rights are on the line. Southern ladies are dressed like princesses. Livelihoods and happiness hang in the balance. Calling the atmosphere electric simply doesn't fully grasp the intensity of the near-supernatural spectacle.

I'm ready for football season. I hope you are, too.

A tip of the hat to The Kid

Coming in Wednesday's Longview News-Journal will be a tribute column to George Kenneth Griffey, Jr.

Junior hit his 600th career home run earlier tonight against Florida. The shot makes him the sixth player in Major League Baseball history to reach the 600-homer plateau.

For the longest time, I despised Griffey. My column chronicles why I disliked him so much for so long, and why I no longer harbor feelings of ill will toward him.

Be sure to check it out at www.new-journal.com.

Rodeo aftermath

Just got home from church. I must admit, I didn't jive with the messenger, but I did the message, so he did his job. The normal pastor, who I really like to hear preach, is gone to the SBC gathering in Indianapolis. The substitute was from Prestonwood, the megachurch in Dallas.

As I sit here and watch the Braves (finally) on TBS HD, I reflect on last night's events at the Gladewater Round-Up Rodeo. My family and I got there about 45 minutes early, so we secured seats in the west bleachers so the sun was to our backs.

The show started about 8:15. It ended two and a half hours later. In other words, it was way too long. The announcer wasn't any good at all, and the lead clown was terrible. The bull fighters - Cory Wall and Mike Matt - were really good. I've interviewed them before, and they're nice guys. It's unbelievable the punishment they've taken in years as bull fighters. The cowboys trust those guys with their lives.

If a bovine the size of a Ford Explorer's charging at me after throwing me 10 feet through the air, I'd rather trust my life with a 12-gauge, pump-action shotty, but that's just me.

The saddle-bronc riding started the show, followed by the steer wrestling, tie-down roping, team roping, barrel racing, and bull riding, which always concludes the evening's events. Here's a rundown of each competition:

- Saddle-bronc riding
Don't get me wrong, this is tough, but I tend to think that the bareback riding is a good bit more challenging. The coolest thing about last night's saddle-bronc round was a horse named Chickadee. When it jumped out of the gates, it was like seeing a smoke-colored moose bound out with a colobus monkey strapped to its back. Chickadee may be the biggest non-Clydesdale I've ever seen, and is certainly the largest rodeo horse I've ever witnessed.

- Steer wrestling
Steer wrestlers are the rodeo guys you'd least want to fight. Known as the "big man's event," steer wrestlers are often the biggest guys in rodeo. You're not gonna see a lot of medium-to-large men in the rough-stock stuff. Big guys are just too big to ride bulls and horses.

If you've never seen steer wrestling, the steer sprints out of the chute and the cowboy, on horseback, runs it down, jumps off the horse and onto the steer, and wrestles it to the ground. This might paint a better picture: It's like watching a guy jump off a moving car onto a golf cart with horns. Total insanity.

- Tie-down roping
Fred Whitfield makes this event. He's a multiple world champion - he's won the championship multiple times that is, not on other planets - and nobody I've ever seen is quicker tying up the roped calf. He's so good, he bolted out of the chute on foot when one of his colleagues couldn't corral one of the calves. Luckily for the calf, the other cowboy took care of him before Whitfield could get to him. Simply put: Fred Whitfield is a beast.

- Team roping
I can see how somebody can rope a moving calf around the neck. I can't comprehend how the "heeler" gets the rope around the two hind legs of the calf. Unbelievable.

*** Before I go any further, I'd like to address the fact that rodeo has grown increasingly commercial. There have always been the advertisements around the arenas for smokeless tobacco, farm equipment, and various other blue-coller products and services. But now they're sending someone on horseback around the arena between events with a flag donning the Pizza Hut logo, or some bank, etc. It's getting pretty ridiculous. Next thing you know, they'll be naming the bulls tractorsupply.com.

Another thing I'd like to point out is the horridness of the clown acts and fan-friendly promotions. The only one that was amusing was the kids' Mutton Bustin'. Any time you put five-year-olds and mangy sheep together, comedy ensues.

Twice during the rodeo Dodge trucks circled the arena while people in the beds threw out what seemed like hundreds of frisbees. The crowd yearned for these discs like they were manna from heaven. I could see how kids ages 13 and younger might get a rush from catching a plastic football thrown by a comely cheerleader, or even a Dodge frisbee thrown from the bed of a one-ton diesel. But I can't explain why the two elderly people sitting beside me rose to their feet only one time the entire rodeo: When the frisbees were being thrown.

From what I could see, one young lady fell victim to these frisbees on the other side of the arena. Since it was so far away, I couldn't tell exactly what happened, but it appeared a runaway frisbee hit her in the head. I felt sorry for her. It was obvious she was there trying to make the evening as fun as possible, then a dang frisbee had to come flying pell-mell into her skull. I thought I saw a friend wrap her arms around her in consolation. I was glad somebody was looking out for her. I felt bad. I knew she had to be embarrassed.

- Barrel racing
Barrel racing is tough. I'm not a horse person. I think horses are among the dumbest animals on God's green Earth. Their moody, high-strung, and unpredictable. They're like women. (I keed, I keed.) Coincidentally, barrel racing is the woman's sport of rodeo. They've got guts to do this, because barrel racing is basically driving a car that has its own mind around three barrels as fast as you can in a contained area.

Not for me.

- Bull riding
This is why people come to the rodeo, to watch a 5-foot-6, 145-pound man tie himself to an ill-tempered, 1,800-pound tractor with hooves and horns.

I think there were eight different riders last night, and none of them covered a beast for more than four seconds, much less eight seconds. Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on how sadistic you are - nobody got hurt, but there were some close calls.

Since nobody covered a bull last night, the end of the show was rather anticlimactic. It was about 10:45 when we reached my parents' truck. It was midnight when we got to my apartment, approximately 14 miles from the rodeo arena.

That's it for the 71st Annual Gladewater Round-Up Rodeo. The four-night extravaganza ended with a whimper in Saturday night's lackluster bull-riding round, but that won't stop thousands of people from coming back next year for Version 72.

Except for maybe that poor girl who took a frisbee to the cranium.

Sunday's schedule

It's just past 4 a.m., and I'm forcing myself to go to sleep.

My job allows me to sleep from about 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. each day, but that messes up my schedule on Sundays when I'm heading to the church house. I'll wake up at 10:20 a.m. for 11 a.m. services having only received about five hours of sleep.

After tomorrow morning's 11 o'clock service at Mobberly Baptist, I'll either eat lunch with a friend or rush home to watch my beloved Atlanta Braves on TBS HD. Since The SuperStation quit carrying about half of Hotlanta's games starting with this season, I've been seriously deprived of watching the baseball team I was bred to adore. I believe Hank Aaron is the greatest baseball player ever, and stand by my conviction that I'd rather have Greg Maddux starting for me than any other pitcher in baseball history.

However, if Kelly Johnson continues to boot would-be-game-ending ground balls to second base with two outs in the ninth inning, I don't know how bad I'll want to see Los Bravos. Friday night's fiasco was absurd. Tim Hudson pitched 7 2/3 innings, allowing only one earned run, to get a no decision because some two-bit second baseman with a penchant for catastrophic errors decided to take a dump on the infield dirt between first and second bases with the game on the line.

After eating/watching the Braves, I'll sit around for a while before my dad and brother drive over to watch the Lakers and Celtics in Game 2. I know what you're wondering: Does your family not believe in TV? My family couldn't be farther from that concept. Everything in my parents' house is arranged so it is pointing toward one of the four TVs that inhabit it.

My folks have Dish Network, which recently dropped KTBS 3 out of Shreveport, the ABC affiliate. Since Carthage is much closer to the Port City than Tyler, Carthaginians only get Shreveport stations. I always like that growing up because Tyler looks down on everybody anyway. Dish and KTBS have some disagreement over a contract, so Dish just dropped them. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous.

So we'll watch my TV - a 34-inch HDTV, mind you - as LA steals Game 2 in Boston.

After that, I'll probably just sit around for several hours until I get tired enough to limp (played two and a half hours of fullcourt basketball Thursday) to my bed and pass out.

Holler at y'all tomorrow. Or today. However you look at it.

What to do on this sweltering Saturday

I thought I would be going to AlleyFest tonight in downtown Longview, but I've found a lack of interest from my cohorts. I kinda wanted to see the Fabulous Thunderbirds, although I'm no big fan. If Jimmy Vaughan - yes, that Jimmy Vaughan, the brother of the late, great Stevie Ray - was still part of the FT, I'd certainly be trekking to the intersection of Tyler and Center Streets tonight for the show.

I had an offer from one of my best friends to go home to Carthage and play cards, but I don't feel like driving that far. I know that sounds thrilling; I'm not a card player, mostly just the guy who sits there and watches and makes fun of the people losing their money/chips/biscuits, whatever currency is being used.

Then of course, there's the bar scene, of which I've become too frequent a visitor. That doesn't mean I partake all that much, it's just somewhere to meet a couple of friends that isn't somebody's house. Therefore it has that feeling of doing something even though you're not really doing anything.

I've decided to attend the Gladewater Round-Up Rodeo with my parents and 16-year-old brother, a choice he made, which is amusing considering a quick glance at him would make you think he'd be the last person to want to go to the rodeo: 6-foot-3, T-shirt, shorts, long hair ... kind of a new-age basketball-playing guitar hippie.

I'm looking forward to tonight. I've covered the Gladewater rodeo for three straight years as part of my job, but I've never attended as an observer. Of course, like every other red-blooded Southern man, the bull riding is my favorite part. However, I do have an appreciation for the ropers. They're usually the older guys who have been on the PRCA circuit for a long time and are the real veterans of the business. The rough stock guys - cowboys in the bull riding, saddle-bronc, and bareback events - are always younger, sometimes just out of high school or off a college rodeo team. They're younger because their bodies can take the toll the older ropers' bodies can't.

It should be a grand evening for the Brooks clan. If you're at the rodeo, we'll be the family that looks like it has no business being at a rodeo. Yeah, that's us.