Rolling 24 Hour Mugabe Media Blackouts

   Largely due to the encouragements of Mark Call me Marco ‘Fever’ L’Estrange and a conversation with another basketball enthusiast, The Walking Indie Music Library Dylan Lee, there’s been a lot of NBA watched in the last week or so. Seven games since Saturday, in fact, which led Mrs. Supercoach to utter, with just a hint of understandable exasperation in her voice, “I didn’t know you watched basketball too?”

   Well, now we do. But it has caused some problems. Rather than stump up the cash to the NBA we’ve been downloading games, which generally means we have to watch them around 18 hours after their completion. This results in us going into full sports media lockdown, only catching up on other news about a day later than usual. Even then, our vigilance can be defeated. A seemingly innocuous sports quiz we took this morning inadvertently revealed to us the result of Game 5 of the Boston-Miami series, which was a blow. We’re about 30 minutes away from downloading Game 5 in the Memphis-Oklahoma matchup, and then we have about a five hour window until Game 6 in the Chicago-Atlanta series is completed, which is then available to download about nine hours later. So for all of you who think this sports watching stuff is just a walk in the park- or maybe a lie on the couch- think again. Complex mathematical formulas based on time zones, torrent sites, download rates and media reactions are needed, and change on a daily basis.

   So we’ve turned to our US Affairs Reporter Toejam Odelay to take care of things for us. Toejam has been AWOL of late, having discovered a legitimate reason to move to the US, despite the crumbling economy, underlying racial tensions, hideously corrupt and horribly divisive political system, and Donald Trump. And that reason is the Chump Car World Series. However we’ve managed to entice him away for long enough to post on the bball, followed by a televisual recommendation from Cultural Affairs Reporter Rand Abbot.

Strangest Post-Season Ever?

   Howdy y’all. Well folks it has certainly been a humdinger of a post-season, aint it. For the first time in Western Conference Playoff history, the eighth seeded team beat the top seeded side, with the Memphis Grizzlies downing the San Antonio Spurs in Round 1. Then in Round 2, the two-time defending champion LA Lakers were swept 4-0 by the Dallas Mavericks, bringing the curtain down on legendary coach Phil Jackson’s career (6 titles with the Chicago Bulls, 5 with the Lakers) in a most undignified manner. In what turned out to be the final game of the series the Mavs rained down twenty 3-pointers, equaling the playoff record, and smashed the Lakers by 40 points.

   Things in the Eastern Conference have gone a little more according to form, with the Bulls, the Atlanta Hawks, the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat all making the second round. Due to our Mugabe Media Lockdown springing a leak, I now know that the Heat have defeated the Celtics- last year’s beaten finalists- by a comfortable four games to one, though I aint yet seen that last encounter. Like most honest citizens out there, I was rooting for the Celtics, the same way I’ll holler for any side that comes up against the Heat.

Y’see them Miamians have stacked their team full of superstars in the last year or so, and now boast possibly the three most renowned players in the league in Dwayne Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh. These recruitments don’t really tell the story of why folks are so strongly anti the Heat. It was the way they, and LeBron James in particular, went about the transfer process that was so distasteful. An hour long live special on ESPN was used to announce his decision to move from Cleveland to Miami, and it was an awful spectacle that just showed how out of touch the majority of professional athletes are from those that pay money to see them play. You can read more about it here.

Anyways, with the Bulls leading their series 3-2 over the Hawks, many are hoping the Chicago side that finished with the best regular season record in the entirety of the NBA and have this season’s MVP Derrick Rose leading the way for them will defeat Atlanta and then somehow find a way past Miami. Though I oughta confess that for most of the season I’ve been tinkering under the hood of my Chump Car entry rather than watching hoops, my money’s on a Miami-Dallas Championship Series. They’re the two teams with the most experience post-season and for that reason alone I reckon they’ll make it to the end. Chicago can beat Miami for sure, but it’ll take a huge performance by Rose as his team-mates don’t provide a whole lot in the way of scoring backup, with the side more known for its defensive prowess. Miami on the contrary have so many guys who can score buckets that they should prove too classy over seven games.

Dallas rely heavily on huge seven-foot German rainbow-style precision shooter and Neanderthal-a-like Dirk Nowitzki for their points, but he has some able backup in the Jason’s Terry and Kidd. The Oklamhoma-Memphis series is yet to conclude, but whoever makes it through, regardless of their side’s relative strengths, may just be too flat-out tired to put up much resistance against the Mavs. Game 4 after all, went to a triple overtime, while the Mavs have been resting since the weekend.

So there you have it ladies and germs. Just to end on what you might call a talking point, or as we say down here in the South, a shit stirring, I thought I’d make the observation that bball, as with Gridiron, seems to reflect life in these here United States: young black people fighting frantically amongst each other while over-weight rich white folks sit on their heavily padded behinds stuffing their pie-holes. Simplistic, sure, but next time you see a game check out the proportions of light-skinned folk in the expensive court-side seats as compared to the proportions of darker-toned people chasing a ball in front of them. I’s just saying is all.

-Toejam Odelay

   As ever, we endorse very little of what dueling-banjos enthusiast Toejam has to say about society, but we do appreciate his attempts to form coherent sentences while drooling chewing tobacco on our keyboards.

   And now, due to our Rolling Media Lockdown, we turn away from sports and bring you some musings from Rand Abbot.

A Show That Makes You Go ‘Hmmm’

   Greetings and salutations. With all the execrable tosh that is produced by the self-proclaimed geniuses of Hollywood and television companies, it is my considerable pleasure to be able to bring you news, albeit belated, of something that is actually worth your no doubt precious time. It was actually released in the United Kingdom late last year, so if you missed it or the cretins who make programming decisions in your homeland failed to screen it, it is most likely by now available as a DVD release.

   The name of the show is simply Sherlock, and it is a re-imagining of the legendary character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the closing stages of the Nineteenth Century. Now I fully realise that for many of you the word re-imagining’ bears horrible connotations. For the most part it is a term used by lazy unimaginative Hollywood executives when they wish to remake something featuring a much younger cast than the original, generally full of bronzed Adonis’ and over-chested nymphettes. But in this instance, it is a much nobler pursuit.

   In the three 90 minute stories, Sherlock Holmes has been moved from the London of the 1890’s into the modern day metropolis. I had reservations about this at first, but the city, such an integral part of the original stories, still plays a big role, and one still sees many different aspects of London’s personality. The stories themselves are excellent too, and whilst bits and pieces are borrowed from Doyle’s writings, they also contain many fresh and interesting twists and turns that will have aficionados of the character puffing appreciatively on their Holmesian pipes.

   The crucial parts of Holmes and his assistant Doctor Watson have been well cast and are very well acted. But most crucially, they are very well written. The Sherlock Holmes of the original stories was, for all his brilliance, very aloof, condescending, and when one gets right to the heart of the matter, fairly unlikeable. This very vital aspect of the tales has been retained in this reworking. Holmes remains a most exasperating man, and the writers have done very well in creating a back-story for Watson that allows the viewer to understand why he puts up with him, rather than just addressing him with a variety of expletives and storming out, as most people would almost inevitably do. The viewer is both fascinated and repelled by Holmes, just as the reader is in the stories, and this is no mean feat by the writers.

   So, dear readers, I implore you to take the time to watch these three initial installments, and having done so, to be calm in the knowledge that the BBC has commissioned another three episodes which are currently in production. You will find them far far superior to any of the reality rubbish or blockbluster bollocks otherwise available to you.

Until next time, I remain your faithful servant.

-Rand Abbot

   So there you have it people, and we’ll be back next week with previews of the upcoming French Open, a look back at the penultimate round of the Premier League and possibly an ode to what the FA Cup used to be, and a round-up of anything else that catches our eyes. Take it easy, and enjoy your weekends.