eel down, repeat, we have an eel down : a eulogy.

[i was asked to write a eulogy to honor the office eel, found this morning on the floor, dead. i did, and co-worker alana pulled together a nice design. snowflake bin laden, i can only hope i've honored the call as your eugoogolizer.]

EXAAAAAAACTLY.

the money quote from the wiki entry for the new sincerity -

"My position is irony is dead (...) but at the same time, just to return to old-fashioned sincerity, and particularly the kind of sentimentality that that draws in with it...we don't need it. So that's why we've created the New Sincerity. A perfect example of the New Sincerity is Evel Knievel. There's no way to take Evel Knievel literally. It's impossible. The man has a leather jumpsuit and he drives a rocket car. The leather jumpsuit has red, white, and blue stars and stripes on it. It's absolutely preposterous. On the other hand, there's no way to appreciate Evel Knievel ironically. He's too awesome. He has--I don't know if we've mentioned this--a leather jumpsuit with the Stars and Stripes on it and a rocket-powered car. That's why we appreciate Evel Knievel with the new sincerity."

marion images

i drink beers and write a letter to espn's bill simmons.

I'm not an emotional man, Bill.

But I’m in Seattle and love the Supersonics, and have spent the last year and a half feeling some unhealthy mixture of anarchistic and resigned. I’m actually looking forward to the lawsuits. I want the city of Seattle and Fay Bennett to really square off. I want Howard Shultz's Flux Capacitor of a lawsuit to really have balls, in the litigational sense.


We've had some of the most shit-talkingly awesome ball ever played up here.

But of late there’s been very little to keep us afloat. Kevin Durant, in spite of PJ Carlesimo's jaw-dropping, poopy-pantsing badness, has been a real lift, man. In his rookie year he gave us the things that make family: humility, shyness; promise, struggle; grace, and, most recently, clutchness. In the home stretch of the season he was a feline force, an utter joy to watch. You like KD, so I bring the quandary to your feet.

I read on Wages of Wins today the breakdown of why Kevin Durant didn't deserve RoY over Al Horford. Okay, I think: Horford was freaking awesome in the Boston series. Let's hear the argument.

The argument is two charts, one for the Hawks and one for the Sonics, listing the WP48 (wins produced per 48 minutes) for each player on the rosters. And there it is: Horford has an '07-'08 WP48 of 0.176; Durant's rookie WP48 comes in at -0.017. Whaaaa-at? Al Horford was just a hair over ELEVEN TIMES BETTER than Durant? In terms of wins, that’s what they’re saying. And they’re saying that wins produced is what matters. Then I look at the charts again, and it registers that Horford was next-to-first on the Hawks this year in terms of WP48, while Durant was next-to-last on the Sonics.

Luke Ridnour was almost two times more valuable to the Sonics than Kevin Durant this year. Wally Szczerbiak. Donyell Marshall, Mouhamed Sene … Kurt Thomas, in his sacrificial time with the Sonics, was more than 16 times as valuable as Kevin Durant.

The sunshine is gone up here. We’re in the candlelight-vigil stages of this thing, and my main-man candle is Kevin Durant.


Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine.

I know this letter is insanely long; it’s Friday and I’ve had a few beers and I have to study after this. So … anything you might have to say about WP48, how it is that Nick Collison is amost exactly as good as Horford, which makes him more than 10x as valuable as Durant, that’d be great. But were you to give a RoY shoutout to Durant, that’s what I think dudes need to read about. After one season, it’s impossible to remove KD from your thinking about the future of this team. He’s become the center point of pride for anyone here who’s paid any attention.