2/24/05 4:42 AM: Today's title is inspired by a quote from Bill Simmons' column ... " During one answer, [David Stern] actually used the phrase 'collective bargaining bouillabaisse.' If you don't think that's the name of my next roto team, you're kidding yourself." That made me very happy for some reason. Now, a quote, and then on we blog ...

"A kiss is the Christmas Eve of sex." -- Alan Shore, Boston Legal

SPORTSMANSHIP PART ONE: SWISH: So let's talk sports for a few paragraphs. First up, a big NBA trade: The Kings and 76ers pulled the trigger on the eve of the trade deadline (which could seal my roto season ... which would suck, since a guy wants to give me some stuff but wants to take stuff I need ... argh ...). The trade is Chris Webber and reserve forwards Matt Barnes and Michael Bradley going to Philly, with Sac-town getting Brian Skinner, Kenny Thomas, Corliss Williamson and a used wet-nap. it's so lopsided that Sac-town must be as tired of C-Webb as a failed leader as ... well, every one of their fans. I've always said: a solid Western Conference forward on a decently shooting Eastern Conference team can do ridiculous things. Ask Detroit. I'm watching this with great interest.

UPDATED: 7:43 AM, 050225: Holy crap. I just saw all the trades that went down, and the teams I'm most shocked didn't do anything were Memphis (as Jerry West could talk Laura Bush into making out with 50 Cent on pay-per-view) and Los Angeles, stuck in the cloud of Kobe's hubris. Houston clearly lost their freaking mind, purposely trading for Vin Baker, a man who makes Darryl Strawberry look like the picture of self-control and sobriety. The Baron Davis-to-GSW trade doesn't do much for me since Baron proved he was stupid several years ago on NBA Weakest Link during a Super Bowl halftime, when he couldn't figure out who MLK was as Bill Walton gaped slack-jawed at him and Lisa Leslie turned away in shame. However, with C-Webb and now Monster Mash, with reliable playoff vet Rodney Rogers as a reserve, all of a sudden Philly is a team and not just AI playing with the Fairfax High JV squad. Big Dog in New Orleans is about right -- has-been with never-was. Keith Van Horn going to Dallas seems right because without Steve Nash, Nowitzki is carrying all of the "goofy white guy" good karma on that team, and with their frat-boy/visionary owner, they need to diversify that kind of karmic portfolio. Most puzzling of all is the Celtics trading for Antoine Walker after the trigger-happy forward's painful exodus from Beantown, what, two years ago? And sending the Glove to Atlanta in the process, after he was just getting his groove back? Space madness. I do think Najera will be a good fit in Denver, a hard working team for a hard working player, Steve Smith should be happy in Miami, and I kind of think Malik Rose will be a good fit for the Knicks. But wow, stuff got all brands of crunk in a short amount of time. Wow.

SPORTSMANSHIP PART TWO: CLEAN HIT: Speaking of trades, a man many consider part prodigy and part jackass, Randy Moss is gonna be a Raider. Your boy Culpepper would get linebacker Napoleon Harris, along with the seventh overall pick and a late-round pick in the upcoming draft. Minnesota is either walking away from a partially closed window (as Tennessee did when they traded Jevon Kearse and Eddie George, leaving Steve McNair as the only real "star" level player) or they're just sick of getting punchlines instead of headlines. I dunno. I can't see how the Vikes are helped here -- they couldn't score against the Eagles, that's what took 'em out of the playoffs (they couldn't do it in the regular season either). I wonder, somehow, if Jerry West Mind Control pistols aren't somehow circulating, allowing these crazy trades to happen.

SPORTSMANSHIP PART THREE: THE BIG CHILL: There's no hockey. I don't care. Well, okay, I feel bad for Anson Carter, who I just started researching, but otherwise I don't care.

Hang on ... I don't feel that bad. I'm okay.

THE DOCTOR IS OUT: One of my favorite voices in sports over the last couple of years was Hunter S. Thompson. As well, he served as the inspiration for both Doonesbury's mad Uncle Duke (last seen as a warlord in Iraq) and Spider Jerusalem from one of my all-time favorite stories, Transmetropolitan. His name in journalism is legend, his influence even reached me and my work before I ever read his words or knew his name.

Hunter Thompson took his life with a .45 caliber handgun last weekend. He'd apparently spent a quiet weekend with his family, waited for them to leave to do something, and blew his brains out. On one hand, I can relate -- I'm a real "better to burn out than fade away" kind of guy, and if you know me well you know what I have planned. Apparently his body had been giving out on him for years -- gastric failure, hip replacement, broken leg ... and he had been going pretty wild for more than five decades, which starts to wear on you (Warren Ellis said "at 67, you don't grow back the bits you killed"). It's been called a considered choice by the Good Doctor.

But on another hand, how selfish is it to leave that mess for your family, in the home where they live and shared their life with you? It doesn't diminish my fandom, but it makes me think about the day it'll be my time ...

Oh, and plus, he was a writer ... no note? No final middle finger for the world? I think that's a hugely missed opportunity for him, but oh well.

LIMBO: I wasn't home this Wednesday night (for reasons I'll address in a bit) and wasn't able to go to the comic book store today. So I missed Kevin Hill and I'm not able to do my comic book reviews. Which is kind of weird. I have a mostly free Thursday ahead of me, so it's not a big deal, but it's weird. I adore ritual and a nice orderly regular routine to my life (which I can change, but I hate if anybody else does), so that's ... well, that's just that, I suppose. I don't have to be super literary in my own blog.

SWEET THING: Every time I fall in love, it seems to go badly for me. I found what I believed to be the finest dessert food known to man, the Krispy Kreme cinnamon roll. I'd order dozens of these things at a time. They were so good, with an almost feminine texture on my tongue. Then they stopped making them. This drove me mad, so much that I wrote a poem about it. Then, they started making 'em again, and I just enjoyed them quietly, hoping they'd just stay with me. No such luck. It's been more than a year since they stopped making them again, and even with emails to the company, there's no apparent chance they'll come back. Martha Stewart's getting out of jail, and I have no Krispy Kreme cinnamon rolls. There is no justice, and I may never love again.

SPEAK NOW: The orders are in for the first two comics from Speakeasy's Hawke Studios, Beowulf: Gods & Monsters and The Grimoire. They're conservative. Now, it's not a really big secret that I'm supposed to have the fourth comic book out from this imprint, sometime in September (which is why I'm planning on making Wizard World Chicago). The better these sell, the better my chances are. If you pre-order comics, or if you like me and have been looking for a way to support me, don't wait for my sci-fi novel in April (more on that in a bit), nor the September comic. Go to a comic book store and pre-order these books. Every pre-order inspires retailers to order extra copies for the shelves. That's the biz. I don't pre-order for my own personal reasons, and I'm gonna go do it tomorrow. Plus, they're really interesting books -- I'd recommend Grimoire to anybody who likes young minded stories or has kids, and I'm actually a fan of what's happening in Beowulf (and only partially because I know a lot more about what's happening than you). Just a note.

TALKING POINTS: An ex-girlfriend asked me to give a lecture on rites of passage at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Well, that's not true -- at first, she asked me to put people through a rites of passage in a two hour window, which I said was impossible. So we came to an agreement, and I came up with some stuff, and I did it, and it went okay. It'll be a nice chunk of change for a relatively small amount of work (my own experience provided the foundation, I just had to organize my thoughts), and people seemed impressed by it, not believing it was my first real lecture. I wonder if I could do this more often ...

WRITE NOW: All edits are back. I'm going through them. I'm gonna get this done. For real. Argh.

VIBRATOR: Sunday night, I got into my car 'Bane, turned it on, and felt like a Jamba Juice. The car was shaking heavily. I popped the hood and saw the entire engine assembly shaking like a belly dancer in an earthquake. I don't know why. I took it to my mechanic, who's great at fixing but not great at finding, who tuned me up and did some maintenance, but didn't find the problem. I'm hoping it doesn't go awry soon, because I need to buy a firewire bridge to transfer video for my audition to be the new lead singer of INXS, plus pay my rent next week. Argh.

WEATHER OR NOT: The one day I had to ride the bus (to and from the mechanic) it stopped raining. I'm super grateful. I moved here to get away from weather. I'd like it to stop.

A JURY OF YOUR PEERS: Michael Jackson is on trial, and none of the members of his jury are Black. There's very few of them out in wherever the hell he lives.

In a possibly unrelated note, I've found myself listening to less music by Black artists and more by white artists recently. My two "theme songs" -- "Pieces" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" -- are sung by two white guys you could mistake for each other if you looked quickly. A lot of the Black songs I'm hearing have what I feel are wholly uninteresting musical arrangements and ideas, and have this annoying thing where a bunch of backups sing the chorus while the singer does "runs" over them. The lyrics are also less than inspiring -- they don't have to be brilliant, or even make sense sometimes (I swear half of Coldplay's songs make no sense), but if they're riddled with cliches, that's gonna make me tune out mentally. Yes, I do wanna write music, but I'm not finding the time. Argh.

Enough blogging. Time to get back to work -- I have a CBR column due.

"That's what happens when you keep people from doing what they do best. It makes them insane." -- Detective Robert Goren, Law & Order: Criminal Intent