What was the question?

Allen Iverson aka the Answer. Former NBA rookie of the year, former MVP, multi year scoring champion, allstar MVP. There have been rumors swirling around that he might return to philadelphia and let me tell you why I see this as a good thing, there has been a lot of trash talked over the years about allen iverson but a few things cannot be disputed: the man can score the basketball his career scoring average 27.0 a game(lowered because he only averaged 17 due to sparse minutes in detroit and12  this season in 3 games with memphis it jumps up to 27.8 if you remove the last two seasons). In a league where some teams don't have players averaging over 20 points for the entire season his career average is 27 points. There is also some dispute about where or not the man will pass the ball he averages a respectable 6.2 assists per game, this is a guard 6 assists a game is considered a good game, he averages that for his career. He averages 3.7 rebounds a game for his career this man is 6 feet tall and he fights amongst the trees, Allen Iverson has always been the captain of the NBA all heart team. Oh and did I mention the steals

2.2 for his career and to put it in even more perspective the men got triple digit steals every year except for this year and his year in detroit, yup he had more then 100 steals every year which means these claims of not playing defense, not going all out for the team are bull.

Let's also put another lie to rest why Iverson wanted out of philly, it was the same reason Charles Barkley left. You ask a man to lead you team to the playoffs and win and you give him sub par talent with which to do it. For Barkley I will never forget the quote " I asked for Shaq and they got me Shakleford" he needed a dominate center in the middle to help him out and they got him a body who could give the team 6 fouls. A man puts it all on the line for you and you give him no support of course he will be bitter. For Iverson I know who it was Kevin Ollie, Kevin Ollie never worked out for the philadelphia 76ers but he was cheap. And 6 times ollie got a contract from the Sixers his numbers never improved, he never added more to the team yet they kept bringing him back. Why he wasn't helping, he wasn't a piece for the future he was just a cheap guy you could throw out on the court. And for a guy who would go out there and play hurt, who would challenge the giants and get hit every game, who would lay it all on the line, I can't blame him.

Allen Iverson was a Philadelphia kind of player: all heart, no quit, it wasn't about the personal accolades it was about the winning. You wonder why he didn't work in detroit simple Iverson needs a big dominant center for his game to work, suprisingly the year they went to the finals First they had ratliff who got hurt then they got mutumbo. The main difference between ratliff and mutumbo Ratliff scored more points. Way more points, so when they got to the Finals yes the lakers had to worry about mutumbo blocking shots but they had no worries about him on the offensive end.

As for the memphis grizzlies man please, let me read you the list of players memphis has traded away in the last 8 years: Jayson williams, Bonzi wells, Stromile swift(but he game back and left again), Shane Battier(dumbest trade ever all dude does is whatever you ask score a little, rebound, block some shots, the consumate 6th man), Kyle Lowry, Pau Gasol. Now while Pau's heart may have been questioned a time or two all of those guys did one thing the current roster members don't they play their hearts out all game and sometimes will the team to win. The memphis grizzlies starting point guard shouldn't even be a back up in the league. He is not a leader, for as long as he has been a grizzlie he has been the safe guy, the quiet guy the guy who will just go in there and basically disappear. Which may be great in a movie but if you want to win the game you need players on your team who can not only score but who can inspire their team mates and help them kick it into another gear. On Sunday Memphis lost a game 98-88. With like 3 minutes left in that game I believe memphis was up 88-78, thats right for 3 minutes memphis DID NOT SCORE, you have a 10 point lead, with 3 minutes left and you can't score a single basket? Nobody drove the basket trying to force a foul.

This is where you need heart players at, this is where you need guys who are gonna refuse to lose a game that you are winning wire to wire and the other team just decides at the end we just want it more. and no they weren't caught with a bunch of 3 pointers the other team basically drove to the basket on them and scored 20 points, the last 20 points of the game. Yet some people wanna lie and say the current starter is their point guard of the future, really thats the kind of leadership you want out on the floor for your team you wanna go scoreless in crunch time? I know memphis if they went scoreless it was because they shot a bunch of jumpers at the end. Yet they didn't wanna start iverson, He would have drove no way in hell you lose that game if iverson is on the team because he wants to win, he is a competitor.

I hear talk about Iverson being a ball hog, um how many assists a year did he average again? I don't care what "Team Ball" lie you tell yourself if you want to be a champion there has to be one guy who dominates the ball on your team and other players who can be counted on to just fill there role.For Chicago it was jordan, for detroit it was Isaih Thomas then chauncey billups and rip hamilton, for philly it was doctor j, for san antonio it was Tim Duncan, for Houston Hakeem olajuwan, LA it was first magic then shaq then kobe, For miami it was dwayne wade. One guy who you know was gonna get the ball when the game was on the line, yes you could have other good players on the team but they had to compliment the star. People may not like to admit it but on those first 3 laker title runs shaq was the man, he was the center of the triangle for the last one Kobe finally found some players who could compliment his style. And if we go back to Jordan the current mark of Excellence for this era of basketball we are in do you remember how many game winning shot's he hit on their way to finals glory?  think it was one the last one versus Utah I believe jordan hit the final game leading or winning shot. Before that the guys who closed the door Bj armstong, john paxson, craig hodges, steve kerr hell I think even pippen closed one out.

Why because game on the line one man is expected to get the ball, you expect one man to beat you and you want to stop him. The man you knew you had to stop was jordan which meant as long as those other guys fulfilled their role and hit that open shot when jordan drew all the attention they would win. You can lie to yourself all day, if you don't have a guy who not only wants the ball when the game is on the line but that has proven he can make the defense react and respect his presence on the court you are rarely going to win. Plenty of teams in the NBA with a bunch of "nice guys" on the team, no overly forceful willing to just collect their checks and be local celebrities maybe do a little flossing. But who's the guy who when you step on the court you know damn, I gotta tough night cause I gotta guard him, he ain gonna go down til the final whistle is blown.

I said when Iverson first got to memphis that hopefully he gave the team a heart transplant because they needed it, unfortunately it seems the team just wanted the free ticket sales. Allen iverson is a philly style of player, if it ain just about making money, if it is actually about basketball you bring him back. The real AI never left the court unless it was drenched in his blood sweat and tears. He's the type of guy that when he comes back we cheer because we know he gave us his all. If your gripe is that the players we have in philly now may suffer because iverson comes back, um they weren't winning. They are so lackluster that they couldn't even save the coach that was a former beloved player(and won a title for us) yet you wanna tell me AI shouldn't come back cause he ain the answer? No truth be told he should have never been allowed to leave, you stock a team full of decent starters and then folks on the bench who add nothing to the team but some possible flash to show on a commercial. Maybe they go on a streak and get some press so you can sell a jersey or two.

Nobody can deny that Allen Iverson is a Hall of Fame player, some say best to play the game at 6 feet or under. There are some players who should NEVER wear a different jersey. In philly we have allowed quite a few of those players to leave, in football this year we had Brian Dawkins leave, the captain of our defense the guy who kept our D going and we just let him go, in basketball that trade 3 years ago by the Hack Billy king was a mistake. I could see if what Iverson was saying was untrue, but please if a guy never makes your team better he is just sitting there collecting a pay check(and you have given him multiple tours with the team) I prefer you tell me the truth and basically fight to get your team made better then to just be a company man and throw slop on the floor every night and claim it is beautiful.

As touchy as this subject is for me I'm surprised I made it this far without a curse or hitch, cool. You disagree be my guest, but if AI was wearing his jersey again on the team that drafted him, I wouldn't have a single problem with that.

Space the final frontier

I meant to do this the last week but I will today. I bought the star trek(2009) dvd when it first dropped because I was a fan of the original show, TNG, watched DS9 and Voyager from time to time, I never really had time to get into Enterprise though. For those who don't know the original show is of course Star Trek, TNG stands for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and DS9 stands for Deep Space 9 there have of course been at least 8 movies, 20+ years of conventions(I have never been to one) lunchroom and internet wars about which ships are better trek or wars(wars usually wins unfortunately applying the laws of astrophysics as you knew them at the time versus saying to hell with it I'll make my own kinda put you at a slight disadvantage) and so much merch that you could bury yourself 20 times over in it.

Just like Star Wars, Star Trek gave it's fans a glimpse at interactions with worlds and species that amazed us all and had us wishing we were born just a little bit later. It made being a geek kinda cool, looking up at the stars day dreaming not so much a waste of time but a ponderance of things to come. It backed us off from the narcissistic view that in this vast universe of ours this is the only place that life could be done right.

So the 2009 movie what did it do right, pretty much everything because most of us have seen the majority of the back story for star trek most of the original show, probably all of the movies to try to recreate all of that would have been a failure. A twist, one that was introduced in a star trek movie(as well as used various times in the shows, the time paradox) allowed J. J. Abrams to say okay I admit it all happened before but I want to make slight and subtle changes. Changes that were pretty much all for the better.

Things we had all heard about but never seen the Kobayashi Me rue the infamous test that only James Tyberius Kirk had ever won(and if you watched the special features you see exactly how he got the cheat to work), we all know he cheated, we all know Spock knew he cheated but just never saw the actual test. We also got to see how Bones got his nickname, Uhura's xenolinguistic skills, Chekov's brilliance. Oh wait I do have to make a minor complaint I did not here "Captain I'm giving her all she's got" everything else about Simon Pegg's Scottie revival was fine but just like Bone's "Spock are you out of your Vulcan mind" before he miraculously figures out a way to put the ship back together better then it was before they were in trouble Scotttie always sounds like Captain Pessimism and then makes the old girl fly faster then she was ever meant to. Even if I didn't do a movie review previously the movie was great if you were a fan go buy it if you weren't originally a fan go rent it then go buy it(yes you will like it).

As for the DVD (I got the special collectors edition) I loved the extra's seeing not only how the writers, producers and director thought about trying to tackle this Beloved piece of movie and TV history(if you think star wars fans are cultish check out trekkies, I mean trekkers, I mean star trek fans). Galaxy quest which was a movie basically making fun of the phenomenon that was star trek was a hit mainly because well it said what we all did about star trek in a way that was comical not insulting.  Granted it would have been nice to hear how the Red shirt felt about you know being a red shirt.

For those who do not know until The next Generation when they switched the command tunics from gold to red(security is now gold, and medical is blue) Command (captain, first officer, usually most of the bridge crew) wore gold tunics, Science officers/medical(just what it says) wore blue, and cannon fodder, engineering, and communications staff wore red.  I must be playing right, there was no such thing as cannon fodder in star trek, yes there was go watch any episode of the original show if you left the ship wearing a red shirt you were not coming back. That was it, you were dead okay wait if you were Uhura or Scottie you would make it back but anybody else nope sorry the lesson to be learned by everyone else by your death was greatly appreciated but you weren't gonna make it. Hell if there was a space battle on the ship you weren't gonna make it. If you were an extra on a star trek episode after season one and they handed you your costume and the tunic was red you knew it was a one time deal, just forget it find the exact time in the show when you were gonna get you 2 minutes of fame tell ya fam and prepare to head into the ether.

And (you have to hurry up and watch for Captain Gung ho cause seriously if you didn't know dude was about to die well your clueless) the scale of the ship and the ships in the universe were there this time. I think that was another small failing with the original show, it always made the ship look so small. Star Wars everything was on a grand scale, and star trek was more demure. Now while it may have been the bad guys ship at least it looked like a monster, it appeared menacing like you were going to have to claw tooth and nail to beat it. And while like everyone else I slightly disagree with it seeming to be built on planet(really JJ we couldn't have it built in space?) the fact that along with the technology of today it seems that they have pushed it forward again. I mean if you look back most of the gadgets they had in the original star trek series we now make use of. I guess that is of course the difference between science fiction and science fantasy can you actually go on to create the devices they are using. For most of star trek yes, for star wars not so much(yet I ain giving up on getting my lightsaber).

And the extras on the DVD are really on point it gives you a look into exactly what the project meant to all involved. And seeing some of the original characters was great, I am still griping about my lack of Klingons(they are in a few deleted scenes but you never see their faces) I am sure they will be in the second movie though.

Thanksgiving

Let's see what do I have to be thankful for?  A day off, as usual these are few and far between. A vacation next month with my wife you really can't have too healthy a relationship with distance because sooner or later you will want to feel the arms of the one you love. That me and my siblings haven't killed each other for another year, we are all opinionated people and lets just say if you knew us you'd be just as surprised as I am.

I'm thankful for some of the interesting people I have met here online for good or ill. It's kinda funny folks would think I am of the monolithic variety because of my skin tone and my political affiliation. Thing is just because I think one thing does not mean I am unwilling to listen or even consider another approach, just don't expect me to join your movement if it's half cocked and only directed at in some way shape or for dumping on me as the constant bad guy. How stupid do you think I am, if there is a problem that I am working towards fixing and you have no solution you just want to complain at how I am addressing the problem, yeah thats not an idea thats backseat driving and guess what if you are unwilling or can't take the wheel then I reserve the right to decide the destination.

I'm thankful for being black in america, there are somethings that one obviously cannot understand unless you view it through the right lens. I see how easily people ignore the truth around them because for the most part it does not effect them, their ignorance costs them nothing and their denial causes them to be popular. Problem is you can't get anything done if all you ever do is deny that something needs to be done, if you constantly say where you are is the best that you can ever be. I may not know the whole story but I do know there are many more chapters to write and that I want to be a part of that writing and that editorial process.

I'm thankful for being a man, not that there is anything wrong with being a woman. Hell so many things right with being a woman, but I kind of like the fact that I can help define something that many feel is lacking or invisible in our world today. Oh we have plenty of folks out there acting like tall children but not many willing to stand up and do the hard part, and it ain always glamorous or gonna get face time with a camera. But how often do you look at the dirt and realize without it you wouldn't have any food? I mean in all honestly without the base one cannot have a building. The bottom of the food chain is actually more important then the top. Because without the little stuff to feed the food of the big stuff guess what disappears?

In a puzzle there is no unimportant piece, because if you do not have all the pieces the puzzle cannot be completed. Oh there will always be folks who don't like the puzzle you picked, or the picture once it's completed or even will say they could do it faster, but regardless if you don't have all the pieces the puzzle cannot be finished. So I enjoy being the unique piece that I am and I'm thankful for a chance to help complete the puzzle

A day of thanks and introspection

By the desktop it is officially thanksgiving, and I had a weird thought in my head on thanksgiving I'm gonna sit and think about where I am, what I've been up to and how things have either changed for the better, stagnated or gotten worse. I've added some widgets to my page so things are about to get interesting, because the blog is the only place I'm gonna cut down on the cursing, so if you're used to (and while I have had some read ain nobody subscribed as of yet so it's some but who knows how many) the rather laid back and pg-13 stylings of  my Blogspot blog understand twitter is about to take you through a whole new door.

I've seen a few movies lately, I bought star trek, I just watched notorious for the first time, so I have plenty of stuff to talk about, and tomorrow I will officially have time to do it., and I plan to make use of such time to blog, tweet, and release a few pent up items in my mind. I use blogging as my own personal therapy whether angry, concerned, sad or exhausted hitting these keys allows me to free up some space in my head and as of late I really haven't had much time to do that, so on a day that I do look out. I plan to blog bomb these spots just random postings out of no where.

Who knows maybe I'll get blog spot above 35 or 40.  As for mile stones hmm I'm not really that big on celebrating them, though I do plan to make a big deal out of my 10th wedding anniversary, I found a woman to put up with me for 10 years whew she has to be a saint because I damn sure ain no angel.

As goes my daily process life happens

What can I say some weeks I never stop working so that by the time I get back to the house I'm too tired to doo much but veg, and I haven't even gotten a good veg session in for quite some time. I think as best I can tell I either have the worlds worst cavity under the filling in my right rear molar or it just needs to come out right now.  few weeks ago I bit down on something no clue what it was, but since that day my right rear molar has been the enemy. I drink something sweet, it hurts like hell I wake up in the morning it hurts like hell. I make the mistake of biting down on something with it again it feels like it's trying to throb it's way out of my skull.

Now in a little under 2 weeks I am heading on a 3 holiday vacation to see my wife in atlanta, I say 3 holiday because I am heading there on the 9th, I will be there for our anniversary(personal holiday), my birthday(and thus christmas being a christmas eve baby), and then new years. I may do a review of the star trek DVD I bought it last week and have been watching the hell out of it, probably will go watch ninja assasin too(because that movie looks like the bomb, I'm a kung fu fan and that movie just screams you have to see this) tomorrow is thanks giving, while my wife isn't hear I guess it will be nice to have a day off with lots of food(even if the tooth traitor will probably not let me enjoy most of it).

Not a big shopaholic so black friday means nothing to me, at all still have to sell a few stocks so that I have some vacation money when I leave.  I sold a large chunk of ford already trying to decide between etrade, sirius and wamu right now, or fannie and freddie. GM is too low to make it worth while.

You need to be the world's optometrist

What? I know right that looks crazy as hell, so let me explain it to you. Many people have dreams, dreams to them that are crystal clear and amazing yet when you explain it to someone else they tell you it's all fuzzy and doesn't make sense, they can't see how it would work out. Here's the thing they aren't supposed to, if they could why would they need you to show it to them? Think about it, if ANYBODY could have come up with the collected works that are the Walt Disney films and cartoons, why would it be called Disney?

I mean there have been a bunch of rabbits out there as cartoon characters but if I say "Myaaaaah Whats up Doc?" I'm sure only a certain carrot eating cottontail comes to mind, hell I bet you only imagine him with one voice(even though like a lot of cartoon characters he has had a few variations that just like his looks were refined over time until they found the one we all loved). How about long distance communication, there is a pepsi commercial out that details a few of them, but not all we went from going ourselves, to sending other people, to sending birds, to sending people on horses, to sending people on boats, to people on trains, to people on trucks, planes, to morse code and telegraphs, then telephones, then e-mails, text messages, and instant messages. I can guarantee you each time the person who thought of this new way to communicate explained it to somebody they got that old scooby do look "Ruuh? ". It wasn't because it was a lousy idea or because it wasn't feasible it was because it was your dream, your thought, your addition to make our world better.

It isn't the person you are explaining it to's job to understand why your idea is great(and if they do be weary of them because yes people will send you off a cliff quickly), why your story needs to be told, why this will revolutionize ____. I mean with every passing year new people spring up to take the place of people who came before, who have new ideas that hopefully can help us reach new heights and we need those people. Because we each have things we are good at, they may not be the same things, they may not intersect in a way that will produce anything useful. Which is why progress is so hard, which is why some things take not only time, opportunity, and luck but also perseverance. You have to be willing to not only go to the drawing board a few times but to be told your a fool, to be told this will never work.

Because again if anybody could do it, then why would the world be waiting for you? How many stories did edward allen poe have to write before people realized that while creepy his stories were memorable? How about Mary Shelly do you think frankenstein was an easy sell? Da vinci do you think his flying machines weren't seen as the crazy dreams of an otherwise brilliant man? Part of bringing your dream to life is just that, doing that hard work, finding where the puzzle pieces fit, figuring out while this way may work alright, if I do it like this it is even better. Now when you get to a certain point then maybe more people will start to join in and realize hey this is kinda cool. I mean come on, you think nobody every stood around with a green sock on their hand, and yet Jim Henson put some googly eyes on his and the Muppets were born, it may not be easy being green, but I'll be damned if most of us don't have a favorite whether it be kermit, yoda, wembly, gonzo, animal, fozzy(or is it fozzie I never remember), the gelfflings, elmo, Ms. piggy man the list is so long it's really hilarious ain it. If anybody could have created Spiderman would anybody know who Stanley Lieber (bite me, so what if only Stanley Martin Lieber is linked, you have the internet google the rest) was.

You have a dream, your vision of that dream should be the clearest and you should happily bring that vision to the rest of the world so they can see it just like you do whether it's a tale of "long, long ago in a galaxy far far away" or "To boldly go where no man has gone before" until you put it out there none of us will ever know anything about it.

Definition: A lazy so and so

I'm gonna try to do this rant sans cursing will see how far I get before I have to cut and paste it into notepad and transfer it to multiply. I had a bad day yesterday, on my way to the bank I got into an accident I rear ended somebody, to make matters worse there was already backed up traffic on the highway so we really couldn't pull over I think we went like 3 miles before we were able to get to the shoulder talked to the state trooper, I got my ticket(I did rear end dude, it may have been a situational thing but I was the hitter not the hittee). Very little damage to his vehicle(I left a little paint), right front headlight bracket busted on the vehicle I was driving.

So like I said bad day, well today is a new day I had to go pick up a package from UPS and I noticed the house was out of trash bags, so I figured hey lets be a responsible adult there is a walmart right down the street from UPS I'll pick some up on my way back. Okay I get the package I mean was easy, The "it's a beautiful morning" song was starting to cue up in my head cause it looked like today was gonna be alright. So I stop at wally world find the trash bags, simple, get up to the self scan register no line, at a walmart no line, dude I should have known something was up but I swear that song was just playing away. Scan my item, click pay now slide in the one, kicked it back? Hmm okay let me try it again, kicked it back again okay let me try the 5 maybe it's full it full takes the five. Da hell? What did somebody slide me some counterfeit ones.

Side note, I have often said if one wanted to be an intelligent counterfeiter

That they would make fake 1's and 5's because by the time the feds figured

out that somebody how counterfeited them, that first bill would go from

Poughkipsie to Compton, because folks trade ones and fives back and forth

so often until someone actually thought to pen one of the bills it would have been

used as change 10 times over from store to gas station, to convenience store, restaurant

man think of how often you hand someone money and get a 5 and bunch of ones back

and then how quick you start passing those singles back out, how quick you hand somebody

5 for gas, or for a meal? I'd give the bill a week to make it to LA. And to make matters worse by the time you caught up will all the bills hopefully the intelligent person who did it would LEAVE THE DAMN COUNTRY. Look you gonna pull a job get non extradition money. Whats that enough money

to move to a country with no extradition treaty and live damn good. I'm talking live and not have to work

just lounge around laid back with a umbrellaed drink talking about some

"Lookin good Billy Ray" "Feeling good louis".

Okay back to the story now, so when I finally get it paid for(the girl behind the control desk for the you scan had to do it) the cashier explains to me yeah none of these machines take ones. I asked her why she said the repair guy had come in to work on it and said, and I quote "as long as it takes 5's,10's and 20's I don't care". For real your job is to fix things, you have an obvious problem. Your machine is not takin a denomination of money, so your basically gonna gum up the works because you hope everybody has large bills. I asked why they ain put a sign on the registers she said we ain allowed to put signs on them. I asked if they could put a "our service consultant is on crack thats why your self scan register will not take 1's" sign she laughed and I walked out the door. Fa real doh(yes I said it like that), how is your job gonna be to fix something and just because either it will take to long, or you just lazy you ain gonna do it. Aren't you paid to do it, Walmart gets a lot of customers I'm pretty sure these folks like the you scan feature because that way you ain gotta wait for a person to hand you out change and once you feed the machine all of the money OR swipe your card your golden.

But oh no, captain spanky feels that if you ain got plastic or you ain ballin with big bills in your pocket you don't need to be shopping at walmart. Man if Sam was alive he'd probably kick him in the tailbone and fire him on the spot(yes that was a close one was trying to figure out how to get that out with saying it). And I know walmart is paying good money for that sub par repairman right there because stuff like that is always a call out, and you know when you call for folks they are gonna bill you.  Lazy, I need his job I would have just fixed them all and called it a day. I don't care how long it takes my job is to keep things running smoothly I'm gonna do my job.

Okay rant over, lazy so and so see what I mean