ChillSpot Online: Our Art is Life

He don’t hate fa$%*ts!

“Grey’s Anatomy” star Isaiah Washington said racism was a factor in his firing from the hit ABC series after he twice used an anti-gay slur. Washington, who initially used the epithet during an onset clash with a co-star, told Newsweek magazine that “someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me.”

Since he’s been fired, my man has been crying about all kinds of conspiracies about why he was fired. It was T.R. Knight plotting against him, and now the black voice has done him in. Now, I know some cats whose voices make you wanna pee your pants (one of my old bosses voice hit the walls so hard, the picture frames would rattle), but I don’t think that Washington’s baritone had anything to do with it, and if it did, the myriad excuses he’s coming off with are diminishing his cred. Maybe, just maybe, it was all the TV coverage his weak denial got, where he managed to slip another slur into the mix. Brother, we’ll see you soon, on whatever reality TV show needs the ratings boost.

Can’t wait to go Wii? Too damn bad!
I was thinking that this whole “wait for the Wii” philosophy I held onto (until I couldn’t stand it no mo!) would pay off, if not for me, then for other folks. But NO! Check this bit out.

At some point, of course, supply will catch up with demand. But some analysts don’t see this happening until next year. “I don’t think by the holidays,” Sebastian said. “But maybe by the middle of next year, perhaps they can add another production line.”

Damn! Next year! Ah well, I got mine!

Random thought
Chris Benoit, WTF!?!

Random thought 2
Paris, from insignificant to irrelevant in one jail term. Welcome back! We barely knew you were here.

NBA Draft News
I’ve been waiting for this moment. Below, I’m going to talk about all the exciting draft news coming out of Cleveland, where the Cavs are pushing to get that much closer to winning the title they never even sniffed in the loss to San Antonio. Ready for it? Okay, feast your eyes on this!
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…

Boy, was that exciting! I can barely contain myself! I may … aw hell, whatever! No picks, no nothing! Maybe Ira Newble will develop into that outside scorer they lack… RIGHT!!!

If you held the rope that bound us
and kept me from falling into the shadows below,
would you let go if I told you I didn’t love you?
Would you release me to the void,
or just get annoyed,
if I told you I just slept with your best friend?
What end would I meet if
at the moment your strength neared failing
I told you I hated your unborn children?
It’s been said the hardest thing to do is to let go, but no,
the hardest thing is to keep doing so,
while love erases memory of all the pity and pain,
and thoughts of being together a-gain
make it better to hold on, but dawn reveals what the nighttime conceals —
letting go is merely the start of the end,
and not even then is the freedom achieved,
the reality believed,
the healing received,
cause in the end no one ever really lets go.
I’ve been holding on to my life,
as if it were mine to hold, when in reality,
everything I know has changed forever.
Even if nothing happens,
I’ve come too far to turn back to that boy I was yesterday,
or heck, even five minutes ago, you know?
I wish I could go back, when in fact,
there’s nothing there for me to go back to.
When you live in a vacuum, there is never a trail,
when you play in a black hole there is never a light of hope to follow home.
I’ve danced on the sun, singed my feet on the white-hot surface,
burned my self beyond recognition, and I can never go home.
I fell asleep under a tree, and woke up as a different me,
and my children were dead
and my great-grandchildren were old and gray,
and in a way it soothed me to know
there was nothing I could do to change that fact.
I have feet for eyes but I cain’t kick what I see,
the fear in me won’t cease under pressure,
too much strain to measure —
Where do you go when there ain’t no doors?
Where do you stand when there ain’t no floors?
Who do you fight when there ain’t no wors?
Who do you F when there ain’t no hores?
My thoughts linger on the fly paper of my past,
last year was a strange adventure, did it happen?
I cain’t remember half the things I said last week!
And even now, I yearn to speak about the times I never had,
about my mom, about my dad, about the life I wished I’d known,
about the life that could have shown me
how to deal with the adversity that I now face.
Can I simply study hard or wish it gone?

Six Flags without a leg to stand on

A girl’s feet were cut off Thursday when a free-fall thrill ride malfunctioned at the Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom Amusement Park in Louisville, Kentucky, police said. An unidentified witness told CNN affiliate WLKY she saw a cable on the ride snap.”The people on the ride just came and hit the ground,” she said. “When I got up there, the lady she was just sitting there, and she didn’t have no legs. … And she was just there, calm, probably in shock from everything.”

The first thing that popped into my head was how much the park will lose in the lawsuit for a 16-year-old who has to live with jacked up legs, whether or not they can reattach them.

No Man Huntin?

Players of the video game “Manhunt 2” would have assumed the role of a scientist with amnesia who escapes from an asylum and then goes on a bloody killing spree as he tries to remember his past. But consumers may never see it on store shelves.
Following bans by Britain and Ireland, as well as a ratings predicament that would have made it nearly impossible to buy in the United States, publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. decided that it might already be game over for “Manhunt 2.”

Now, just the fact that they’re banning the game makes me want to play it. In fact, I believe game makers should go even further, if they’re going to start banning violent games, or slapping “Adult” labels on games: Make games for adults the same way they use parental controls (and damn that’s annoying!) on cable boxes. Then I can have all the gore and gratuitious nudity and violence I can stomach without a silly ban. There are too many grown gamers who want more than Mario Sunshine or Pokemon, and the industry seems stuck in the days of Donkey Kong, where nothing was scary and we were all kids. That time has passed. Let it go, and move on …. To boobies and decapitations! YEAH!

Birthday facts
Meridith Baxter and Michael Gross – aka the mother and father (Elyse and Steven Keaton) from Family Ties – share a birthday (June 21). I nearly forgot the show was supposed to take place in Columbus…
The Bold and the Beautful’s John McCook (Eric Forrester) turned 62 on June 20, making him only 7 years older than the man who portrays his son Ridge (Ron Moss) on the show. Being nearly 60, the producer may have finally let Ridge grow some gray hair, as his age is never really revealed on the show.

Random Thought
I had lobster ravioli at an italian restaurant, and was rather enjoying the dish, until I bit into something not quite crunchy and not quite slimy. I’m not a regular lobster kind of guy, but the thought of someone putting something of this texture and taste into a ravioli made me a little uneasy. Now ravioli goes into the same category as jelly donuts: Eat at your own risk.

Random Thought 2
Take away ESPN and the high likelihood of catching porn on any given Cinemax, HBO or Showtime channel on any given night, and what’s the real use of cable? How many episodes of “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” can one person watch before flippin’ out and digging up and wearing the silliest Cross Colors outfit the 90’s dared to offer? Ah … but I guess it’s better than trying to watch “House” episodes through a screen so static-filled that you get aroused thinking you’re looking at Dr. Cameron, and be really getting up about Dr. Wilson.

Dead After Arrival?

Newly released tapes of 911 calls reveal that a woman who lay bleeding on the floor of the emergency room (at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Los Angeles) died last month after dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility.

Ice Cube made reference to this facility on his Death Certificate album in the ’90s. Nice to see things don’t change much.

Woke up in the back of a tray
On my way, to MLK
That the county hospital jack
Where niggaz die over a little scratch

Read on …

Edith Isabel Rodriguez’s boyfriend, Jose Prado, used a pay phone outside the hospital to call 911 and told a dispatcher, through a Spanish interpreter: “My wife is dying and the nurses don’t want to help her out.”
A second 911 call was placed eight minutes later by a bystander who requested that an ambulance be sent to take Rodriguez to another hospital for care. The dispatcher argued with the woman over whether there really was an emergency, refused to call paramedics and eventually cut off the call.

This isn’t even the second or third time someone has died INSIDE the emergency room after an extended wait. That epitomizes the meaning of irony: making it to the emergency room, then dying on a gurney waiting for help, while they pretty much ignore you.

RIP
I’ve already mourned the death of the championship hopes I had for my hometown team. It was a valiant attempt, but like James Taggart and all of his corporate cronies in Atlas Shrugged, the team was in WAY over their heads against a business-like and saavy team like the Spurs, who yawned through the first two games, blinked at the third and celebrated, casually, through the clincher. My only hope is that the key players in the Cavs organization (Danny Ferry, Dan Gilbert, and to a lesser extent, Mike Brown) realize that LeBron is too proud and respectful to openly call out his teammates for being incapable of getting to the next level. But someone will have to hear his calls for better support.

The Cleveland Cavaliers lost, and I’m okay with that. I even watched the entire Spurs team celebrate on the Cavs floor, without changing the channel or breaking anything. This wasn’t Elway or Jordan or the 1997 Florida Marlins. This was a mismatch from jump. I won’t call it that “Varsity/JV” crap Stephen A. Smith was screaming on ESPN, but the Cavs were a clearly overmatched team facing another team running at peak capacity with glaring advantages that couldn’t be matched. As a spectator, this series - even before it started - had a sadness about it, like watching Simon Birch for the first time, knowing that it won’t end well for the little protagonist. Or watching Transformers: The Movie for the however-manieth time, seeing Daniel crying as Optimus Prime dies. And yeah, the Cavs accomplished much these playoffs, much more than I expected, but that sadness was there in the finals. Watching them play as hard as they could, but knowing that the Spurs were just toying with them, never really threatened. Then, the feeling became that numb feeling that comes after you cry too much. It just didn’t matter. It was a blast, well, as much a blast as a four-game sweep could be. But it really ain’t so bad, either.

Always wondered what it would be like,
Never really wanted to know,
Although, it’s kinda peaceful,
More than serene,
I mean, like fields of lavender,
Coated with sunshine,
Sublime, and yet so sad
it makes melancholy look like memories of family picnics at the park,
it’s not dark, but dusky, and dimming slightly at the edges;
the sounds slightly faded, it’s all what I made it,
no reason to regret, ain’t had my best come yet,
flashes of things that mattered most
flit across my mind,
a kind hug, a grateful gift –
minute moments that helped uplift
are flying past my field of view,
now I’m thinking of me and you,
a time back when we matter most,
the love we shared became a ghost;
a shell of something so devine;
what once was ours is simply mine,
and dusk has turned to silent night,
and try with all my will and might,
there is no overcoming this,
I wonder no more,
I’m pretty sure
the light is gone for good.

This piece is part my thoughts about the eventuality of death, mixed with a bit of lamenting the fading of an old love. Both share the dimming feeling that comes with the passing of time, and sometimes, both carry with them the finality which only a certain end can embody.

They let her out?
Yeah, I’m days late and millions short, but I’m still irritated that the authorities let Paris out on some medical condition. Medical condition? Yeah, if you mean constipation! If she can’t handle three days in the joint, she could NEVER handle growin’ up in the ghetto? She’d be asking for a release from the hood, but the way out ain’t so easy. And constipation means you had to at least have had a damn MEAL! Ain’t no guarantees of that in the ‘hood. Check out this link for a conspiracy theory on the subject.

The After
I didn’t start this off with sports news for the simple reason that there ain’t much good sports news out there. The Indians are doing well, but I’m not ready to move onto them yet. Not when the Cavs are technically still battling for the NBA title. I say technically because it’s not really a battle yet. It’s not even a competition either. Cleveland got invited to the grown-folks table, and immediately choked on the tabasco sauce the San Antonio Spurs sprinkled on their greens. I ain’t even mad about it. I came to terms with the possibility that the Cavs could be spanked BEFORE they beat the Pistons. So I wrote about partying hard. Well, that seems like a long time ago (guess it was, huh? Sorry about the hiatus!), and the end is near. At least the Cavs season will end exactly when the Spurs’ season does. That it ends precisely BECAUSE of the Spurs is irrelevant. They were there at the end. Even if they were propped up in a corner as the Spurs fired jabs at ‘em Ali-style, they were still there.

I guess he’s gone
I think I’m going to miss Bob Barker. He’s probably going for good, and whoever they find at CBS to replace him will feel the same way any coach who follows Bear Bryant or Don Shula had to have felt. He bridged several generations, consistently giving away a “Brand New CAR!” as the late Rod Roddy would have put it, and of course, touting the virtues of the spaying and neutering your pets.

Random Thought
Hmmm … Cable TV is like an IV hooked directly into the pleasure center of your brain. After a well-known (to my friends, at least) boycott of cable (well, in truth, it’s easy to boycott a company who won’t accept your checks anymore!) which lasted nearly five years, the era of the Spice channel, the Spice 2 channel, Adult on Demand channel, and, oh, about 6 Cinemax channels (which always supply a little bit of ’spice’) has returned. Oh, and Sportscenter too. And the History channel. And TLC, and TNT and Sci-Fi and NBA TV, and ESPN Classic and the Toon network and … Bzzzz, Bzzz, brain overload!
……………….. reloading ………… ……
Welcome ….. You’ve got Mail!
Hello all! Welcome to my blog. This is From the Edge, and I am your host, Wink Martindale telling you to come on down, and avoid the Whammy! at all costs, unless circle takes the square, then you can phone a friend, or accept the physical challenge! Thanks for coming out! God bless you, good night!

So, sports heads talkin’ all about how Cleveland partying too hard for what should amount to a booby prize (not a Boobie, he’s nowhere near the worst player on the team).
Lemme say this as nice as I can: Life is short. ENJOY THE WIN!
Seriously, there are cats who ain’t ever been to the title game (Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Carlos Boozer … ha, ha, ha!) and may be running out of time. Why would you tell them NOT to savor a win, any win, as long as the hunger for the big ring remained? If I ran a marathon, and my goal was just to complete it, then, completion, no matter the time, is worth celebrating. If my goal, however, was to run it in 3 hours, then a 4 hour time, even if it’s my first attempt, would be wonderful, but nowhere near enough to satisfy my thirst. I may never actually get to that 3 hour goal, which is why I’m goin’ 1999 when I’m done. You never know if you’ll ever get back there. Look at Dan Marino. He made it to the Super Bowl as a young player, and never got back.
But the Cavs, or more specifically, LeBron, isn’t going to settle when an NBA title sits just four wins away. They should feel wonderful about everything they’ve achieved, no matter how people say they’re supposed to act. That’s why I give my man Adam Morrison a little slack for crying at the end of his tourney loss to UCLA last year. But not much (the game was still going on, man!). All I’m saying is: Be you. If you wanna act a bit of a fool, then do so, if you’ve earned it. And the Cavs earned it. The city earned it. Just don’t be burning shit up like Detroit! We gotta be better than that, since we’re better than them. Ain’t that right, Chauncey?

“Doc, tell me, is it really that bad?” I asked.
“Sir, your entire left eye is swollen and currently hanging from its socket, your heart rate is 189, BP is 199/155, you’ve been pacing and paranoid during this entire consultation, and you’ve been hallucinating about David Blaine, defeated princes and the Alamo. So, In short, no. It’s not that bad.”
Really, I didn’t think it was that bad either, but my coworkers were a little freaked out about the eye thing, sunglasses couldn’t hide it (I think the image of an eye dangling from the bottom of a sunglass lens was discomforting, to say the least). The profuse sweating on deadline was also a little worrisome for my supervisor. Don’t know why … Ewing sweats like I imagine a wild boar must after being chased by a leopard on the dusty plains. And I felt so good the other day …
I think this must be how Yankees fans felt, when they were good, back in say, 2000? This is how Chicago fans probably still feel, buoyed up by the amphetamine boost from watching Payton and MJ for all those years, despite the fact that it’s been ten years since J hit that shot.
So the Cavaliers, boosted by the singular talent of LeBron James, are one game away from facing the Spurs (no predictions here, just taking it one series at a time). This young cat dropped a smoove, not smooth, but smoove 48, including 25 in a row on the Pistons cracked domes. I think I saw Tayshaun Prince in line at the Salvation Army begging for a shirt and pants after that undressing he took. See how he fled the posterizer LB was about to lay on him? Okay, so no poster for you, but the video might be worse. Heard Sheed nearly brought the ceiling down in the Palace locker room, slamming the door like he couldn’t slam it on a win the Pistons nearly had.
James took these cats souls, put em in a jar at his mansion and every few days, the cleaning lady will come around with a Swiffer Sweeper to keep the memory of this destruction fresh for years.
Of course, it could be over in two games, if the Pistons can recover whatever dignity they got left from this and put two in the Cavs hearts, but … don’t think so this time. The way Bron was droppin eye-poppin moves all over Chauncey and Webber and Maxiell and Hunter and whoever else was on the floor with him. Later on, video footage will show that there actually were no other Cavs players on the floor during either of the OT periods, just mental projections of their digital selves, like the Matrix. I ain’t sayin Bron is Neo, cause for all Neo’s powers, he DIES in the end. I’m just saying I didn’t hallucinate the game. But about David Blaine, he was there right?