Monthly Archives: February 2011

Basketball

Jim Dolan, Master Negotiator

jamesdolan.jpgHow did I get this Carmelo Anthony deal done? Cuz I’m a god damn champion. I mean, not in the sense that I’ve ever won anything. But I am a champ at getting things done. Sure, they may not be the right things, or I may not do them correctly, and I may abandon them midstream to leave a mess for someone else to clean up. But the point is, I do them.

When you go into negotiations like this, you have to show no mercy. Show the eye of the tiger. Be hungry like the wolf. Make sure the look of love is in your eyes. You march into that room, and you say to the man on the other side of the table, in no uncertain terms, “I need to make this deal desperately and no price is too high.” If they walk away from you with a mix of pity and disgust, lunge at their ankles so they can’t leave the room. Crawl if you have to. That’s how you show ’em who’s boss.

I learned to negotiate the same way I learned to play the blues: By watching the greats. With the blues, I observed the greatest artists ever, those masterful interpreters of song, Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. When you listen to those guys, you understand just how much soul and suffering goes into the music, and also sunglasses. To learn the art of the deal, I watched Aykroyd and Belushi, too. Those guys can sure negotiate their way around a mean mouth harp solo.

For those naysayers out there, nay all you want. We had to make this deal now. The Knicks are two whole games over .500. Cash in all those chips now, baby! The team as it was constructed before had a ceiling of maybe 50 wins. Carmelo Anthony easily makes us a 52-win team.

I’m confident we can get Carmelo to sign an extension. The Knicks play in the greatest arena in the world, Madison Square Garden. Not only is it in the middle of Manhattan, it is in the worst, most expensive, and most unlivable part of Manhattan! Our arena is packed to the gills every day, with commuters dashing desperately for the next train to Piscataway or Levittown. You can’t put a price on that kind of exposure! Plus, there is a Pretzel Time in our sub-basement. ‘Nuff said.

If things get dicey with signing Carmelo, I’ll just bring in my good buddy Isiah Thomas to seal the deal. He’s got a real window into the way these young stars think, since he used to be one, too. I mean, that’s what I hear. I didn’t pay too much attention to basketball back then in the early 90s or whatever.

Plus, we’ve got way too much cap room right now, and I could use Isiah’s help figuring out how to waste it as quickly as possible. I’d like his take on this Latvian point guard I’ve got my eye on. He’s 5’9″ and 335 pounds, but I think he’s got spunk. (“Spunk” is the name of a rare lung ailment indigenous to his region, though I hear it’s treatable.)

Some people don’t like this deal because they think it means the end for Donnie Walsh in the Knicks organization. Nothing could be further from the truth. Donnie has done great things for this team and I want him with us going forward. As long as he’s cool with me making crazy trades all the time and running the draft and undermining his authority in public on occasion. I’m sure he’d have no problem with that. Oh, and we’re probably moving his office next to the Pretzel Time in the sub-basement. But other than that, no changes.

I know not everybody’s not gonna like this deal, and to those people I say, “suck it.” No, seriously, I say “eat it.” No, on second thought, I like “suck it” better. If you don’t like it, why don’t you go run your own basketball team? I put in the work, people. I made sure I was born with several billion dollars to a dad who owns a major cable monopoly. If you whiners had just pulled yourself up from your bootstraps, you could’ve done that, too.

The Knicks are gonna do great things this year. As for next year? Life’s too short to be worrying about tomorrow, man! Live every day like it’s your last. That’s what I do: commit insane deeds with no thought for the future. Can’t argue with the results! I mean, you can, but don’t, okay?

The Funny

Two Years of the Best of the Best Show

bestshowgems.pngI would be remiss if I let this day go by without mentioning that it is the second anniversary of the Best Show Gems podcast. You’ve no doubt seen me prattle on about The Best Show on WFMU on this site (like last week, for instance). Best Show Gems is a “bite-sized” version of the show that appears biweekly, and contains some of the program’s most hilarious segments. If you’ve never listened to show, Best Show Gems is a great entry point into its hilarity and the mythology of the fictional town of Newbridge, New Jersey.

The podcast is curated by Martin Degrell, who does a great job and is also an awesome guy. And he hails from Sweden, thus proving that the greatness of The Best Show transcends oceans, continents, and language barriers (well, as long as you speak English).

Check out this week’s installment, a segment from 2003, when a man calls up offering to be host Tom Scharpling’s personal magician. You shan’t regret it.

Cinematics, Pointless Nostalgia

A Thousand Clowns and Shep-Colored Glasses

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thousandclowns.jpgIn a recent edition of The Sound of Young America, Jesse Thorn interviewed Barry Gordon, who starred in A Thousand Clowns in its Broadway and Hollywood incarnations (1962 and 1965, respectively) as a young man. The play ran for years in New York, and the film was a big hit that won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Martin Balsam. (It was also nominated for Best Picture, among other categories.)

Nowadays, it’s a fairly obscure film, not in print in any home video format. Its general availability has hovered between “not” and “barely” for the last 30 years or so. Every now and then, you can catch  A Thousand Clowns on Turner Classic Movies, although if you blink you might miss it.

Listening to the interview with Gordon reminded me not only of how much I love this movie, but of how I first heard of this film: My longtime obsession with Jean Shepherd, who himself was obsessed with A Thousand Clowns, though in a not-quite-healthy way.

Some quick background for those in need of it (those who don’t, feel free to skip ahead a paragraph or two) Jean Shepherd is best known for writing and narrating A Christmas Story, but my love of him has more to with his radio show, which aired on WOR in New York from 1955 to 1977. It’s hard to encapsulate exactly what he did on the radio; something in the Venn intersection of improvised monologue, storytelling, and sardonic commentary on the day’s events. It was done completely off the top of his head, with no notes, outlines, or anything. It is better experienced than described, so I’d encourage the curious to check out some of my Shep-related posts, or The Brass Figlagee, a podcast that makes available hundreds of his old shows.

When he came to New York in the mid-1950s, Shepherd had an overnight show that garnered a huge following among jazz artists, writers, and other Night People (a phrase he claimed to have coined, and just may have). By his definition, a Night Person was someone who probably had a day job to get up for in the morning but preferred to stay up into the wee hours, just brooding, because they were “bugged” about some inexplicable something. His monologues were a stab at trying to get at that something.

At that time, among his many pals in the nocturnal, creative set was the future author of A Thousand Clowns, Herb Gardner. They appeared together in a neo-vadevillian revue, Look, Charlie: A Short History of the Pratfall (which also featured another erstwhile Shepherd BFF and fellow Chicagoan, Shel Silverstein). The exact content of the show has been lost to the mists of time, but peep this page from its program, in which both Shepherd and Gardner are listed with their respective credits. (Also, note the illustrations by Silverstein.)

Shepherd used to promote Gardner’s “Nebbishes” cartoons on his WOR show, embellishing the spots (as he often did to those who dared advertise on the program) with his trademark rambling. Shepherd did not have many guests on his show–he preferred to work solo–but Gardner was one of the few, and he came on the program to promote Nebbishes in person. Gardner in turn wrote the liner notes to Shep’s second LP, Will Failure Spoil Jean Shepherd?

Shortly thereafter, the two men had a falling out, and the reason was almost certainly A Thousand Clowns.

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