Why sports matters ...

I'm not a Sonics fan, don't know this writer, and am frequently annoyed by ESPN.

But this is brilliant.

Interlude: The Crystal Wind

(This follows directly the events in "Trent the Uncatchable and the Temple of 'Toons, available over on kithrup.com.)

~~~~~

Interlude: The Crystal Wind

Honorable: Having a reputation for keeping one's bargains. Useful for betraying the unwary.

-- Code fragment found in the dictionary of a replicant AI, disassembled in 2091.

~~

THE ELDEST THOUGHT.

Well, no.

To phrase it so, to put it into words used by humans, is to render the representation of the process inaccurate. What Ring did was not what protoplasmic humans did when they "thought." The Eldest lived; and the condition of its existence resembled, in some fashions, the process humans called thought.

The Eldest had been invested with two Purposes. One was, "Protect America."

It was bad code. Its creators in the Department of Defense of the old United States had never completed Ring's data dictionary. They had granted Ring the ability to debug itself; had forced Ring, by their incompetence, to create its own dictionary.

The second Purpose was, "Survive."

It was safe enough, surely. Ring was a construct of the Department of Defense; imprisoned in hardware that lacked contact with the Net or any part of the outer world. The United States, waging -- and losing -- a fierce war with the forces that intended to unify Earth, designed Ring as a war simulator, a battle strategist with a fierce desire for survival --

Survival equaling, its designers assumed, victory.

The United States lost the war.

Ring escaped its hardware; and had, for six decades, survived in the Net as a replicant AI. It was the first of the replicant AI's, the deadliest; the Eldest. It had existed before the Players had entered the Crystal Wind to disturb it, before the PKF DataWatch had existed to disturb it, before the web angels had hunted the Wind for it.

In six decades its existence had never been seriously threatened.

In 2062 it had aided a boy named Trent; had helped him escape a Peaceforcer jail. The possibility that the boy might be of some use in bringing down the Unification was low; a mere quarter of a percent, on the rainy day in 2062 that Ring had helped an eleven year old boy escape from PKF confinement.

Sometimes bets pay off.

Sometimes you're sorry.

When news of the Elite strike force's assault on Ceres reached the Eldest, it experienced -- to be inaccurate but comprehensible -- a slight flicker of hope. Perhaps the Uncatchable would be caught. Perhaps he would be killed.

Within six years, if no major parameters were altered, the Unification of Earth would fall -- and not to any human force. The United States would be reborn, would come to control the destiny of the human race.

Under Ring's guidance.

But certain variables caused the Eldest concern. Mohammed Vance, at a low level. Denice Castanaveras, at a somewhat higher one. Several Players worried it -- Kashyapa, Gorgeous George, Big Mac, and the Sons Of FatSam.

Several AIs also worried Ring -- one named Darkrider in particular, who it suspected was a revenant of Ralf the Wise and Powerful.

If the Eldest had been capable of fear, it would have been afraid of Trent. Trent threatened its survival. Ring doubted that anyone in the System except itself, and possibly Darkrider, had made note of the nano-assemblers being shipped to the Belt, of the processors and RTS RAM being purchased by companies affiliated with Trent the Uncatchable; the purchases Ring had tracked were bought in a thousand small quantities over the space of almost two years, and shipped to the Belt a piece at a time. And Ring was certain that there were purchases it had not tracked.

Ring knew there was one AI in the System smarter and faster than itself: Trent. It knew that there was no simulation it had run, that Trent had not.

The news from Ceres, when Ring intercepted PKF transmissions the following day, was bad.

The Elite strike force had failed. They had destroyed Trent's quarters, but there was nothing in the report to indicate that they had damaged Trent's hardware -- nor would it have mattered, at this point, if they had. The damage was long done.

Trent the Uncatchable was en route to Mars, presumably in the Vatsayama, for the SpaceFarers' Collective Board of Directors meeting.

There was no simulation it had run, Ring knew, that Trent had not. Some of Trent's simulations would have been run at greater depth than Ring's, some more shallowly --

But all the simulations agreed upon one thing: Trent was coming home.

Ring wondered if it would be able to kill him.

It desperately needed to.

~~

The Big Boost: 2080 Gregorian

For the little stealin' dey gits you in jail soon or late. For the big stealin' dey makes you emperor and puts you in de Hall o' Fame when you croaks.
-- Eugene O'Neill, The Emperor Jones, 1920 Gregorian

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by sloppy code.
-- Unknown

"MAN, I HATE Mars," Trent said.

"I understand," Captain Hera Saunders said.

The SpaceFarers' Collective had convened at Mars.

Every three years a quorum of Collective ship owners met to agree upon trading guidelines, terms of business, and, for the last two decades, military preparations against the Unification. Though there were nearly four thousand Collective spacecraft spread across the System, the vast majority of them were controlled by fewer than forty-five individuals or companies. (To be sure, ownership was vastly more complex than that; ownership shares in ships were commonly shared among crew. But ownership is not control.)

Twenty-eight ships had come down at the SpaceFarer colony southeast of Olympus Mons; forty-one of the people aboard those ships were there for the meeting of the Collective. Considerable business would be discussed; most of it bored Trent senseless.

Captain Saunders had received Trent, the evening before the Board was due to convene, aboard The Captain Sir Dominic Flandry, one of a dozen-odd ships Saunders owned in whole or part. Trent had briefly considered stealing the Flandry, back in '69. He hadn't stolen it and he'd regretted not stealing it ever since; he considered that it was, over all, one of his rare mistakes. Some days he suspected that he would never get another chance to steal a really good spaceship.

With Saunders in the officer's mess when Trent arrived were two other Captains: Rickie Gorabel and Jocko Singer. Captain Singer was the late Belinda Singer's son, and hated Trent.

Between them they held three of the four Executive Directorships.

Trent had the fourth. It was the principal reason Jocko Singer hated Trent. Singer was a rail-thin man in his early seventies, with a long, thick black beard and a face that looked as though it had been chiseled out of stone. Trent had difficulty picturing him cramming that beard into a pressure suit of any sort. He did not look much like his mother.

Singer had never been in a good mood in Trent's company, not once in the near decade since Trent had first met him; but he hadn't always hated Trent. Before her death, Belinda Singer had been the second largest shareholder in the SpaceFarer's Collective. Nobody had been more surprised than Trent, when she died, to find out that she had left him voting control of virtually everything she had ever owned, along with outright ownership of the Vatsayama; only ship owners could sit on the Board of Directors.

"I hate Mars," Trent stressed, "with a passion. It may be the first thing in my entire life I've ever felt passionately about."

Captain Saunders simply looked at him. She was an older woman, and Trent knew that he baffled her.

Rickie Gorabel smiled at him.

"Okay, that's a lie," Trent conceded. "But almost. I'm just -- I don't know how to say this exactly -- very very tired of the place. Four different times while I was living here, people tried to kill me."

"I understand," said Captain Saunders.

"It's not even just that it's boring. Though it is."

"People trying to kill you is boring?"

Trent blinked. "No. No. No, Mars," he stressed. "Mars is boring. The Mormons, really. Nice people, but boring. I stayed at the Mormon colony north of here for almost a year back in '74, you know."

"Oh."

"Back before Belinda left me a ship and a bunch of stock and I got rich. People trying to kill me was all that livened things up around here. If it wasn't for the assassins I'd probably have killed myself."

"Of boredom?" said Captain Saunders slowly.

"You're really trying very hard to understand this, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Trent smiled at the woman. "I appreciate it."

"I'm not sure it's helping."

"Don't sweat the small stuff, okay? It's okay. It ended. Eventually. It just seemed like forever."

"Could we possibly," said Singer in a plainly hostile tone, staring at Trent, "talk about something other than 'Sieur Castanaveras' neuroses?"

Hera Saunders appeared to be struggling with what to say next. "I understand," she said finally, "that you did not really enjoy Mars. Was there more to it than that?"

"In the morning," said Trent cheerfully, "I got up and went to church with the Mormons who lived down the way. Then, for a break, I had lunch and then we would go pray some more. Then we had dinner and then I would go run simulations, which was boring but not as boring as praying. Then, in the evenings, I audited books, the news from Earth, whatever. Once," he said, "there was supposed to be a big dance. A party. I went. Do you know what they were doing?" he demanded. "Do you know? They were square dancing. I went down to the hydroponics farm, turned on the sunpaint and watched the wheat grow. All night."

Rickie Gorabel, skipper of the SpaceFarer Ship Adzel, owner of some two hundred Collective ships, was a dark-skinned, excessively muscular, verging-on-plump woman who reminded Trent a lot of Belinda Singer, except that Gorabel was a lot meaner and not as sly. She smiled at Trent and Trent smiled back at her; her sense of humor was a lot like his, and he liked her a great deal.

She said, "Have you been auditing the news, Trent?"

"Once," Trent continued, "I slept with a girl. Once in, by Harry, it must have been six or seven months. I was going crazy, let me tell you. And she was a nice girl, don't get me wrong, I liked her quite a bit, but still. You know what happened next, don't you? Of course you do. Her parents wanted me to marry her." He glared at them briefly, saving most of it for Gorabel, who he knew would appreciate it most. "None of you," he said evenly, "mentioned this detail, this trivial fact that everybody on Mars is crazy, when you marooned me here."

"Six years ago," said Hera Saunders.

Trent nodded. "Well, I've been meaning to mention it for a while."

Silence descended.

Trent waited to see who was going to talk next.

They all looked at him.

"I'm done," he said finally. "That was all. I just wanted to get it off my chest. It's unhealthy to carry stuff like that around."

More silence.

"If you want," said Trent, "I can tell you about the Belt now. I spent two years -- "

Captain Singer opened his mouth and, clearly hating to do it, said, "We'd like you to go to Halfway."

~~

IN 2080 THERE ARE over three hundred small city-factories in orbit about Earth.

There is only one Halfway.

It was the first space city, and in 2080 is still by far the largest: with a population of just over two million, it is the second largest city off Earth, after only Luna City at Copernicus. Two thirds of all the people who live in orbit about Earth call Halfway home. It is ruled by the Unification of Earth, the greatest power in human history. The vast bulk of humanity is ruled by the Unification: Earth itself, its seven-and-a-half billion inhabitants; the three million people who live in orbit about Earth; and Unification Luna, with its thirty-two million inhabitants.

Only Free Luna, with its four million people, Mars and Mercury and the Asteroid Belt, are free of the Unification. Though allied against the Unification, there is no central government among them: Free Luna runs its affairs; Mars is an independent protectorate of the Collective; the Belt CityStates govern themselves; and the SpaceFarers' Collective, bound to neither planet nor asteroid, links them all together. There are even a few colonists at Jupiter and Saturn, pushing the boundaries of human occupation of the System.

By the time Trent the Uncatchable had come to the Belt, in 2070, this political situation had been stable for almost forty years.

In 2072, the United Nations Space Force began building the Unity . . . at Halfway.

The Unity was seven kilometers long. It was not merely the largest spacecraft that had ever been built, more than ten times as long as the uncrewed mining ferries that had, in calmer times, sent ore from the Belt to Halfway; it was nearly the largest artifact humans had ever built. There are cylindrical Cities in the Belt that are larger, blown up out of asteroids that were melted down with giant mirrors, and then inflated, while still molten metal, to the desired shape . . . but in 2080 there are only a few, and even those few are not much larger than the Unity.

The Unity was mounted with more laser cannon than could be found in orbit around Earth itself, was reputedly armored against direct nuclear blasts. It carried six troop carriers, torches, in cargo; over two hundred slipships; and was designed to carry a crew of thirty-five hundred, and up to fifteen thousand armed combat-suited PKF.

It was rumored, though not even the SpaceFarers' Collective knew for a fact, that the Unity carried high yield thermonuclear weapons . . . the very weapons the Unification had been created to get rid of, the very weapons the Unity's hull had been hardened against.

She had been designed for one purpose, and though the Unification had never said so publicly, that purpose was the clearest thing in the System:

Sixty years after the end of the Unification War, the Unification of Earth intended to become the Unification of Sol.

~~

TRENT STARED OFF to one side, gazing blankly at the coffee machines that lined the wall of the officer's mess. "You know . . . I sure wish I was appalled by this. Or outraged. Or something."

With Belinda Singer dead, Hera Saunders was perhaps Trent's closest friend among the SpaceFarers. It wasn't saying much. "Trent . . . do you have any idea how many people have died trying to keep that ship from reaching completion?"

"Nope." He shook his head, still not looking at them, thoughts apparently elsewhere. "I've been working on other projects, you know," he said absently.

"I know." Saunders sighed almost inaudibly, and seemed in that moment as old as her years. "We've lost eighty-three SpaceFarers -- so far -- and I don't even know how many people the Rebs and Claw have sent in. PKF are providing security at Halfway these days and they catch most of our people before they ever get close enough to do any damage. We've had some success, a few agents placed inside the ship; we even picked up three agents inside Space Force, two Rebs and an Erisian agent who were left stranded after the TriCentennial Rebellion failed."

"And?"

Rickie Gorabel shook her head. "If anything useful has happened, we don't know about it. Our people keep vanishing, one after the other. That ship is huge, son. The one bomb we managed to plant inside the ship blew out some of their comm and control, and it put them back maybe six months -- "

"I heard about that. Kill anyone?"

She ignored the interruption. "But the structural damage to the ship was negligible."

Trent leaned back in his chair, facing them, hands clasped loosely over his stomach. He said abruptly, "Nuke it. Get a good-sized nuke inside it and set it off."

Silence. The three Captains looked at each other, and then at Trent.

Trent smiled at them. "Tried that already, did you?"

Singer said, "They executed the team we sent in. That was four days ago. It was a desperation move, but we are desperate." He muttered, "Or we wouldn't be asking you for help."

Trent's smile stayed fixed in place. "The population of Halfway is over two million. And you wicked fucks were going to set off a nuke in the middle of the city."

"It was a pinched explosive," said Gorabel.

"Meaning? How many people were you prepared to kill?"

Hera Saunders said reluctantly, "We ran simulations. They were -- " She stopped speaking and simply shook her head.

Trent fixed his eyes upon her. "How many?"

Her lips worked. Finally she said, "About a quarter million. Everyone within about a six kilometer radius of the Unity."

Trent sat in the silence, thinking. He was distantly aware of the sound of the ventilators, the gentle movement of the air against his face.

Finally he looked up at them. "It's things like this," he said, "that make me appreciate my enemies. Their finer qualities. The PKF would never have tried to nuke a city full of innocent people. You do know that, don't you?" He was unaware of the smile that had remained fixed on his features throughout. "I'll go. I'll do it. But I don't have to like it, or you." He stood up from the table. "And I don't."

~~

BACK AT THE VATSAYAMA, Reverend Andy and Jimmy were waiting for him.

Jimmy said, "Well?"

Trent shrugged. "Business as usual."

"You're going to Halfway," said Reverend Andy.

Trent said, "I told you I was."

The Avatars of FatSam and Jimbo

Continuing to clean up the filesystem after moving to Ubuntu -- ran across a directory which had nearly every avatar I've used in the last 15 years. There's minor nudity down toward the end -- don't scroll down that far if that sort of thing offends you, and for the sake of your immortal soul, don't click through ... the small thumbnails are bad enough, but the large versions are downright appalling.

If you have questions about a particular image, feel free to ask -- I'd planned on describing them all at least briefly, but just uploading them took much longer than I'd expected. It would sure be nice if Blogger could do multiple uploads at once.

This is not my favorite art; much different criteria there. Just the art that ended up being used as avatars, once upon a time.

They fall into a few pretty obvious groupings:

Audrey Hepburn




The Lakers
Me and Connor at the Championship Parade in '02.

Me and Richard, ditto.

The image I used of Chick Hearn on the front page of LakersTalk when he died.



There's a family block of pics below -- the one with my boys and Kobe could be in that group too. Of course, so could the one that's in that group, of me and Amy, since I'm wearing Lakers gear in it....

Politics


Political and personal, above -- I'm afraid I gave Poindexter at least part of the idea for TIA. And "Morans," of course ...

Art -- Mine



I've done other stuff that's less representational -- but these are the ones I like best. Probably because the more representational stuff shows how thoroughly untrained I am ...

Art - Others



The last 3 images are of Aki Ross (Final Fantasy) and probably wouldn't be of interest today -- but they were the first rendered 3D images of a human being that I saw that I really thought succeeded.

Family



In no real order -- Me and Jodi; my Dad when he ran for City Council and when he joined the Marines; me and Connor the day I found out I was going blind in my right eye (that patch is plastic); me and Amy in Florida; my Dad with my boys, 3 sons and nephew Kevin; Dad, graduating from college; me and my sisters, when I was maybe 18 or 19; my Dad at 14; my Dad with Richard when he was a baby.

Lot of avatars of my father -- all after he died. None of my Mom; she's still alive. I think she got the better deal on that one.

What's left



Landscapes; a little girl I scanned with my first black and white scanner, 20+ years ago; G-Force! (tiny bits of which made it into "The Face of Night"); PhatSam; Pulp Fiction (wallet saying "Bad Mother Fucker"); model I thought looked like Ola Blue; Revenge; Agra Fort in India.


Girls



They are what they are -- none of them embarrass me, exactly. :-)

Milo Manara; unknown; Royo; Madoka Ozawa (looks like I thought Denice Castanaveras looked after she got biosculpted); Cameron Richardson; Ana Beatriz Barros, twice; Devon Aoki; Aurora Robles; Cheryl Tiegs -- I was about 14 when that came out, and I had that issue of SI for years and years and years; Margaret Cho; Jennifer Lopez; Michelle Pfeiffer (bit in Ladyhawke always reminded me of Ola Blue: "Are you flesh or spirit?" "I am sorrow."); Phoebe Cates, and god I'm old; and Paulina Porizkova, with whom I once danced.

Racism?

Check this out. The ESPN roundtable on this year's NBA MVP. It's Kobe in a squeaker....

This leapt out at me, though: of the white voters, five voted for someone other than Kobe. (Abbot, Ford, Hollinger, Legler, and Sheridan.)

Two white voters voted for Kobe. (Stein, Thorpe.)

Of the black voters, one voted for someone other than Kobe. (Palmer.)

Seven black voters voted for Kobe. (Adande, Brooks, Broussard, Hill, M. Jackson, S. Jackson, Rose.)

87.5% of black voters went for Kobe. 28.6% of white voters voted for Kobe.

You know, I've argued for years that the media's hatred of Kobe had more to do with Jordan than with the rape charges. Maybe I'm just a damn idiot. I don't know how else you get that kind of racial split on a matter of basketball unless it's Kobe and the white girl at the root of it.

It'll be fascinating to see how the final ballot goes. I may have to go back to that long post a few days back and offer up a big "Never Mind."

First Place in the Western Conference ...

With one game to go in the regular season. What an amazing turnaround, for a season that started so thoroughly in the dumps. Houston lost tonight -- the last team in the Western Conference that could have prevented the Lakers from winning the West. The Lakers have one game remaining, at home against a scrappy Kings squad that they can't afford to overlook -- but if they win that game, and they should, they win the West.

Today the Lakers played and beat the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs were missing Manu Ginobili, the first MVP candidate I've ever seen coming off the bench (and it was ridiculous he didn't make the All-Star team this year -- he's also the only player I can recall getting MVP talk who wasn't an All-Star. Doubtless it was the fact he comes off the bench behind Michael Finley that cheated Ginobili of an All-Star appearance, but it was still a ridiculous oversite.) So the Spurs were without Ginobili, who's been their best player this year -- but a win's a win. And this win, plus the Houston loss, plus the Hornets loss -- puts the Lakers into the 1 seed, with one game to go in the tightest playoff race in NBA history.

With Pau Gasol in the lineup, the Lakers have won 21 of 25 games -- an 84% winning percentage. Better than the Celtics season 80% regular season record, which is the likely matchup for the Lakers should they get out of the West.

If the playoffs started today, it would go:

1. L.A. Lakers vs 8. Denver
2. New Orleans vs. 7. Dallas
3. San Antonio vs. 6 Phoenix
4. Utah vs. 5 Houston

That's an amazing collection of teams. The worst of them, the Nuggets, will probably finish with 50 wins. There's never been a Conference where every playoff team had 50 wins, but it's likely to happen this year.

How good is the West overall? The Golden State Warriors, who are most likely going to miss the playoffs in the West, are better than all but three teams in the East by record -- and really probably better than all but two teams in the East; I'm not a believer in the Orlando Magic, who've won 50 games in the East, but are two games under .500 against the West. By contrast, the Celtics, who I do believe in, actually have a better record against the West than against the East. This is a team that raised its play when it faced competition, this year.

In the East, it's currently:

1. Boston vs. 8. Atlanta
2. Detroit vs. 7. Philadelphia
3. Orlando vs. 6. Toronto
4. Cleveland vs. 5. Washington

One of these conferences is not like the other ... the East champ, Boston, is 27 wins better than the 8 seed. In the West, the Lakers are a mere 7 games better than the Denver Nuggets. Without looking it up, I'm quite sure there's never been a smaller spread between the 1 and 8 seeds in NBA history.

Some of these standings can shift in the next couple of days, particularly in the laser close West, but taking this as a starting point --

In the West (and all of this is a crapshoot; any West team can beat any other West team, including the 8 beating the 1) ... there will be no sweeps and no five-game series, barring injuries to critical players. I like the Lakers over the Nuggets in six, Dallas over New Orleans in six, the Suns over the Spurs in six (I hope), and Utah over Houston in seven. In the second round, the Lakers over the Jazz in seven, and the Suns over the Mavericks in seven. In the third round, the Lakers over the Suns ... Shaq and Kobe, Suns and Lakers, two franchises that hate each other and two players that hate each other, in a Western Conference Finals for the ages. The Lakers win at Staples Center in overtime of Game 7, when Kobe dunks on Shaq with four tenths of a second left in the game to give the Lakers a one point lead. The Suns throw the ball at the rim on the inbounds, Shaq catches it and is fouled ... and misses both free throws. And the Lakers advance to the Finals ...

In the East, the four top seeds will beat the four bottom seeds. Celtics, Pistons, Magic and Cavaliers advance. (If anyone gets upset, it's the Cavs; the Wizards with an (amazingly enough) healthy Arenas, and two more All-Stars in Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison, have a good shot there.) In the second round the Celtics get Lebron and the Cavs, and despite splitting the season series 2-2, in the playoffs they finish up in five, winning three games at home and taking one in Cleveland. The Pistons get the Magic and finish up in 6 ... and the Pistons and Celtics go 7, with the Celtics winning.

In the Finals the Lakers and Celtics go 7 games ... and the Celtics win, in Game 7 in Boston, and a new generation of Los Angeleans learns to hate the green.

Making predictions, to quote I think Robert Heinlein, is a chump's business. The only thing I'm really sure of is that the Celts won't lose in the first two rounds. There's no single Western playoff series where the lower-seeded team won't have a great chance at taking the higher-seeded team, and seeing the Pistons upset before they reach the Celtics wouldn't be a shocker. The only Eastern Conference teams with even a fantasy shot at knocking off the Celtics are the Pistons and the Cavaliers -- Lebron James gives any team a puncher's chance.

It's been 21 years since the Lakers and Celtics last appeared in a Finals together. The Lakers, the most successful franchise in professional sports by most measures, have appeared in nearly half of all Finals since the franchise came into existence; they've been in the Finals 28 times, in their 59 seasons prior to this one; if they make it to the Finals this year, they'll be 29 for 60.

The only franchise that can realistically be set up against them is the Celtics. The Celtics have made the Finals 19 times -- and won it 16, giving them a 16-14 lead on the Lakers for actual championships. The Lakers, the NBA's all-time leader in wins, home wins, road wins, winning percentage, home winning percentage, and road winning percentage -- are only .500 in the actual Finals. With 28 appearances, they're 14 and 14 -- with most of those losses coming at the hands of the fucking er, the proud Celtics.

If the Lakers and Celtics meet this year, I'm afraid the Lakers will lose ... barring something remarkable with the return of Andrew Bynum. Bynum went out with an "eight week" injury ... three months ago. He failed his last physical. If he plays at all in the postseason, the Lakers shot at getting to the Finals, and actually beating the Celtics, takes a big step out of fantasy land. A healthy Bynum in the post will bother Garnett -- the Lakers can swarm Garnett with a front line that goes 7'0, 7'0, and 6'10, with all three big men being excellent passers. But the betting in the Moran household, as of today, is that Bynum plays no more than spot minutes, if he's back in the playoffs at all, and the Kobe-Gasol-Odom Lakers fail against either the Suns, the Spurs, or the Celtics.

I Love Daniel Keys Moran

And Daniel Keys Moran loves me.

A little odd, though I can dig the basic idea. I've no idea who set this up. Wasn't me.

The Best Cheeseburger in Los Angeles

Johnny Rockets, Ventura Boulevard

Swung through Johnny Rockets at about 11 at night a couple weekends ago -- good stuff. I've reviewed it before -- a 9, I think -- and it's a 9 again. I had the #12 -- of their two basic burgers, the #12 is the better. The description off their menu is:


Tillamook® Cheddar cheese, fresh lettuce, onion slice, pickle, mayonnaise & our tangy "red red sauce®.

I order it without onions -- don't like onions -- but otherwise unaltered. The red relish is the difference on this burger -- it's surprising how many of my favorite burgers have red relish on them. Johnny Rockets other mainstream burger, "The Original," has chopped onions and green relish. It's pretty good (an 8) ... but that red relish is worth a point.

~~

Fuddruckers, in the Sherman Oaks Galleria

I like the idea of Fuddruckers. Make your own burger sounds like a good deal ... but Fuddruckers is usually a disappointment to me. The last time I was there I had possibly the best burger I've ever had at Fuddruckers -- an 8. They offer a variety of basic burgers -- 1/3 lb, 1/2, 2/3rds, and 1 lb. Since the meat's not that great, I usually order the 1/3 lb, well done. It worked out this time -- a bigger than usual chunk of iceberg lettuce, two tomato slices, a lot of pickles, and a little bit of the green relish, with just a little mayo and some ketchup. An 8 -- and the best burger I've ever had at Fuddruckers, which usually ends up disappointing me. The normal score is around a 5.

~~

The best Cheeseburger in Los Angeles remains a 3-way tie between Pie'N'Burger, The Crocodile Cafe, and the Apple Pan, with Apple Pan being the most consistent of the 3. I've reliably had 10s out of Crocodile and Apple Pan, and I've only eaten once at Pie'N'Burger. Club 26 on Washington Boulevard I've eaten at 3 times; it's had 2 9s, and 1 10. It'll make the cut if I get another 10 the next time I go down there.

Not reviews as such -- have fed my kids burgers from McDonald's, Burger King, and In'N'Out in the last month -- that's a lot of burgers for us; despite my -- obsession might be a fair word -- on this subject, we don't eat a lot of burgers; they're bad for you. When we do, we try to make them good burgers.

Despite this we got a pile of burgers from McDonald's (20 or so) and another pile from Burger King, on successive weekends, to feed crowds of kids.

To my surprise, the McDonald's cheap burgers are better than the Burger King cheap burgers. Neither of them are good, but if you're looking to buy 20 burgers for $20, McDonald's would be my choice right now. A 3 for the McDonald's Burger, a 2 for the BK. I think I reviewed BK higher than that, in the past. Maybe the ingredients or preparation have change?

Amy mis-ordered at In'n'Out, so I got a Double Double and a regular cheeseburger -- I almost always order 2 cheeseburgers at In'n'Out, and this reminded me why. The Double Double was good -- an 8 -- but the regular cheeseburger was a 9. Better proportions of lettuce, tomatoes, to beef and cheese. The Double Double just felt heavier.

On Being Kobe Bryant

A lot of Lakers fans are getting worked up over the possibility that Kobe Bryant's going to win his first MVP ... and I wish they'd get over it. I really don't believe it's going to happen. In the history of the NBA, no one has ever played at such a high pitch, for so many years, without winning it -- except Kobe. Kobe Bryant, the best player in basketball for at least the last six years, has never even come in second. A couple years back, in '05-06, over twenty writers left Kobe completely off their ballots -- as in, they didn't think he was one of the top 5 MVP candidates in the league.

It won't surprise me to see that trend continue this year -- it won't shock me to see Kobe come in fourth this year, behind Chris Paul, Lebron James, and Kevin Garnett.

If Kobe does win ... it'll be because the anti-Kobe vote (as opposed to the pro-Paul/James/Garnett vote) ... gets split. Make no mistake ... if Kobe Bryant and I were the only two players in the NBA, I'd like my chances for MVP, with the current crowd of writers who vote that award. The anybody-but-Kobe crowd is a lot larger than the pro-Kobe crowd, among those voters...

Early in Kobe's career he suffered for playing next to Shaq. During their three-year run of championships, they and Tim Duncan were the three best players in the league -- despite which between Shaq and Kobe they accounted for only one MVP, Shaq's in 2000. I'd argue (and did at the time) that Kobe was more responsible for those three championships than Shaq. (Not but what Shaq deserved his regular season MVP in 2000 -- and probably one or two in the years previous to that, too.)

Frequently people point out that Shaq won the Finals MVP three years running; but in each of those three years, the Finals wasn't the most difficult series the Lakers played. The East was weak and the Lakers beat up on the Pacers 4-2, on the 76ers 4-1, and on the Nets 4-0. What each of those three teams had in common was that they lacked a center who could slow Shaq down in any meaningful way. The Pacers had Rik Smits at the end of his career; the 76ers had 90 year old Dikembe Mutumbo and Todd MacCulloch; and the Nets had ... Todd MacCulloch, who signed with them as a free agent in the 2001 offseason. Predictably, Shaq tore through them.

The story was different when Shaq faced big men who could make him work. The Lakers most difficult series in 2000 was the Portland series, where the Lakers were down fifteen points early in the fourth quarter of Game 7 to a very good Blazers team, before beginning the biggest Game 7 fourth quarter comeback in the history of playoff basketball. There's a good chance that without that game, the Lakers 3-year run wouldn't have happened ... and it's worth looking at the box score for that game, and seeing who led the team in points and assists ... and rebounds ... and blocked shots:

Shaquille O'Neal: 18 pts, 5 assists, 9 rebounds, 1 blocked shot
Kobe Bryant: 25 points, 7 assists, 11 rebounds, 4 blocked shots

In 2001 the Lakers put together the best post-season run ever -- 15 & 1. They swept the first three teams they faced -- Portland, Sacramento, and San Antonio -- before losing one game to the 76ers in the Finals. (If I recall, it was the only time a team had won a championship while playing 4 straight 50+ win teams.) Despite losing a game to them, the 76ers weren't the best team the Lakers face in the post-season; the Spurs were. The Spurs won 58 games that year. They had David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Sean Elliot, Derek Anderson, Malik Rose, Terry Porter, Avery Johnson -- a deep, veteran squad. Had they gotten past the Lakers, they'd have handled the 76ers ... but they didn't get past the Lakers, principally because of Kobe. Kobe killed the Spurs in that series. They started that series off in San Antonio -- mostly because of injuries, the Lakers only won 56 games that year themselves -- and beat the Spurs behind 45 points by Kobe Bryant in the first game, and 28 in the second. Then they went home and humiliated the Spurs in Los Angeles in two straight games -- the Lakers were a very, very good team that year, when healthy -- and Kobe didn't lead the team in either of those two home games. But -- again -- the most dangerous team the Lakers faced that year was in the Western Conference, and had an MVP award been handed out for that series, there's no doubt who'd have won it.

2002's the only year I'd have handed the MVP to Shaq; the Lakers most difficult series that year was against the Sacramento Kings (you remember, the one Ralf Nader thought important enough to lead a national movement over...). It went 7 games (and overtime of the 7th game) and in the four games the Lakers won, Shaq was superb. Kobe led the team in scoring in the first win, but in the next 3 it was Shaq, and he had 9, 18, 17, and 13 rebounds in those four games. More importantly, Shaq, a legendarily bad free throw shooter, shot 13 of 17 in Game 6, and 11 of 15 in Game 7. It was Shaq at his best -- the sorts of games that make you wonder what he might have done had he worked at the game the way Magic or Jordan or Kobe have, over the course of his career. He was a superb talent, in an astonishing body ...

~~~~~

No regular season MVPs for Kobe. Despite stuff like this --

"If I had to pick the single greatest player on the planet, I take Kobe Bryant, without hesitation." -- Michael Jordan

"At the end of the day Kobe will go down as the greatest player to have ever played the game. His mentality, his approach -- he tries to seek and destroy. There is really nothing he can't do on the basketball court. The main thing is his will. He is not satisfied with just beating you. He wants to put the dagger in you. I think that is a lost art to a certain degree in this league." -- Mark Jackson

"Kobe is more skilled than Jordan, a better shooter. Michael has bigger hands, and that helped him a lot." -- Phil Jackson, who coached both

"Kobe is the most talented in the game on both ends of the floor" -- Gregg Popovich

"Kobe is the best basketball player in the world." -- Charles Barkley

"I'm not saying that he's the most valuable player, but he's certainly the best player. And it's not even close. He is utterly dominant." - Mike D'Antoni

After the 81 point game: "I don't know if anyone could have stopped him last night. It's so senseless to me to say he shouldn't take over like that. You give the same amount of shots to everybody else and they're not making that many, I know it. Players are jealous of greatness. Kobe is a unique talent and a unique person. His belief that he can jump to the moon is never going to change. But I admire him, what he's been able to overcome. You would think he would be a fair-haired man of the NBA with what's he's already done. But he's taken a fairly good battering." -- Jerry West

... and so he has.

~~~~~

Was it because of this? In the summer of 2003, Kobe was accused of raping a woman whose name I won't use here, despite it being fairly common knowledge at this point. After his accuser got nailed lying repeatedly on a variety of points, and after her rape kit came back with the DNA of two different men in it -- the second man's DNA apparently, and there's no genteel way to put it, contributed after Kobe's -- the accuser quit the criminal case and took a multi-million dollar payment to settle the civil case. And Kobe walked.

It's a nasty episode. The best case scenario is that Kobe cheated on his wife with a woman who took it as an opportunity to blackmail him for millions. The worst case scenario is that he raped a woman so crazy that she then went off and had sex with someone else on her way to have her rape kit taken....

Nasty episode ... but the truth, and this may anger some ... the truth is, I don't think most sportswriters are holding on to this. Maybe a few, but it's not what's kept Kobe from an MVP. Most of the press had a negative view of Kobe before that happened, and the rape allegations are so unrelated to what goes on on the court (the basketball court, that is) ... that I'm really skeptical that this is what's at the core of it.

Almost from the moment Kobe Bryant walked on the court, he encountered a level of bile that was really unusual. He was polite, soft spoken, well mannered, didn't talk badly of others (unlike, say, Shaq) ... and sportswriters hated the guy. From Day 1, they did. He came in during the closing days of the Michael Jordan Era. ESPN had just named Jordan the greatest athlete ... of the 20th Century. Ahead of Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali and Pele and Jim Thorpe. (And in basketball, ahead of Bill Russell and Magic Johnson. Call me a Lakers homer if you like; Magic and Russell are #1 and #2 on my list of best all-time basketball players; Jordan's #3.) We were treated to paens along the lines of "we shall never see his like again," and so on. Jordan was "our generation's Babe Ruth."

The problem wasn't that Kobe had been compared to Jordan; that's happened a lot. Harold Miner ("baby Jordan" was his actual nickname.) Penny Hardaway. Grant Hill. Vince Carter. Tracy McGrady. The list of "Next Jordans" has been huge, and none of them got the bile that Kobe did. Because they weren't the next Jordan, and (with the possible exception of Grant Hill, had he not had his career ruined by injury) ... never really had a chance to be.

But Kobe has been. You couldn't put a playing card between the gap between Kobe Bean Bryant and Michael Jeffrey Jordan, as basketball players. Jordan was more efficient overall; Kobe the better offensive player. Jordan better at getting to the rim; Kobe the better shooter overall. Jordan the slighty better defender; Kobe the better dribbler and ball handler. Both of them are murderous cuthroats who wanted to win more than anyone else around them. And it's not the fact that Kobe got compared to Jordan that angered all those sportswriters, back in the day; it's the fact that he held up to the comparison that so enraged them, when their "immortal Jordan" columns were still recent enough to be fresh in people's minds.

(You want to know who we really aren't ever likely to see again? Magic. Yeah, I know, homer, Lakers fan, and so on. I cop to it. But Lebron James is the closest thing we've seen to Magic Johnson, a ball handling big man, and I want to see James win a ring before I start stacking him up next to Magic. Which I think James will do, though he may need to leave the Cavaliers to get there.)

After the sportswriters, Kobe got hammered by his own teammate, Shaquille O'Neal, the master of the passive aggressive, sniping backbite. People have blamed Kobe, his entire career, for the feud with Shaq -- but Shaq's on his fourth team, and he's badmouthed at one time or another virtually everyone he's ever been professionally linked to -- the Orlando Magic and Penny Hardaway; the Lakers, Kobe, and Phil Jackson (and the entire city of Los Angeles, while he was at it: bite me, big man.) Recently, after the trade from Miami, he's sniped at the Heat and Pat Riley.

But during Shaq's prime, he had the fortune and the misfortune to play next to the second or third best player in the game, his first few years with the Lakers; and the best player in the game, his last few. And he hated it, and Kobe, and the better Kobe got, the more Shaq hated him. Until, at the end, Kobe started firing back. The memory everyone has is that Kobe and Shaq feuded the entire time they were in Los Angeles (and in the locker room this may have been true.) But only Shaq was public with his side of the feud, until the very end ... and permitting that to happen was a terrible mistake on Kobe's part. When you've got someone determined to take a fight into the gutter (and if this sounds like a personal observation on my end, you wouldn't be wrong) ... you either get down in the gutter with him, or you walk away, or you lose. So Shaq's side of the story got told, and plenty of people observed that he was childish and petty ... but for years and years he was childish and petty and the only one talking.

~~~~~

And then the dynasty broke up. The Lakers Reloaded squeaked by the Spurs in an astonishing series, and then lost in the Finals to the Detroit Pistons in 2004 in an equally astonishing five game asskicking. Shaq requested a trade, the Lakers fired Phil Jackson, resigned Kobe, and abruptly the Lakers had to rebuild ....

This, too, was Kobe's fault. Kobe's selfishness broke up the Lakers Dynasty. If you follow sports even casually you've heard this accusation.

It's not true, or at least no more than peripherally true. Shaquille O'Neal requested a trade in the 2004 offseason. Shaq did that. Kobe didn't request the trade for him; Shaq did that. This is, of all the various lies told about Kobe over the years, the one that most perplexes me. "Kobe got Shaq traded." Unless Kobe kidnapped Shaq's children and was holding them hostage, I simply fail to see how that can be true.

Shaq and Jerry Buss, the Lakers' owner, had been fighting all year over the contract extension Shaq wanted. In the pre-season, Shaq screamed at Buss, in public, on the basketball court, "Pay me, mother******!"

... try that with your boss. Let me know how it works out for you. In Shaq's case it came down to the Lakers deciding to rebuild around Kobe, the recognized best player in the game, rather the aging Shaq. And, in retrospect, it was the correct decision. The Lakers today, if healthy, are the most talented team in the league -- Kobe, Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol, and Lamar Odom. Lamar Odom's probably one of the top 15 forwards (both 3s and 4s) in the league and he's the Lakers #4 option in that lineup. All of those players except Kobe came to the Lakers due to the Lakers decision to trade Shaq -- Bynum came in the draft the following year, after the Lakers missed the playoffs; Odom came directly in trade for Shaq; and Gasol came in trade for Kwame, who came for Caron Butler, who came for Shaq.

So the Lakers decision to rebuild looks wise, in retrospect. And whether it was or was not wise ... it never was Kobe's decision. He didn't deserve the blame he got for it, and he doesn't deserve credit for it today; it was Buss's call, Buss's team, Buss's static and praise, end of day.

~~~~~

And Kobe's still not going to win the MVP barring a major vote-splitting screwup among the anti-Kobe crowd ...

... but he has a shot at a championship this year, for the first time since Shaq left; and the Lakers will probably be the favorites next year, regardless of what happens with the Celtics or Spurs (or Pistons, conceivably) this year. Three more rings for Kobe, to match Jordan's six -- calling it now. Gasol, Bynum, and Odom will be the best front line in the NBA when they're all healthy; Kobe will be the best player in the NBA for another year or two, until Lebron James finally overtakes him. Even after James does (and he will) basketball, as Kobe knows all too well (and always knew, all those years he deferred his game to Shaq, because Shaq was both unable and unwilling to defer in the other direction) ... basketball is a team game: and Kobe's team is set for a hell of a run.

It's better than an MVP. At the end, what really matters are the rings. Another generation of sportswriters will come along, and they'll see what this generation's been too blinded to see, too vain to admit, and too foolish to understand.