My sister and brother-in-law recently relocated their family to Granada, Spain. When my brother-in-law left he was “el hombre sin barba,” and now he is “el hombre con barba.” (see pic 2 above) Besides being mas macho, the beard is a nice cultural accessory for his new life. With what seems like half the Spanish National Basketball Team sporting beards (see Garbajosa and Los Irmanos Gasol), I suppose getting barbado is muy de moda in Spain, even for the tranplants. After all, when you’re spending your days taking siestas, drinking wine and eating tapas, who has time to shave?
Speaking of Spanish Tapas, one of the last times I saw Baron Davis in person was over a year ago. He and Matt Barnes were leaving this tapas restaurant in Silverlake in LA where my girlfriend used to work. As I was driving by, I gave a “Go Warriors” out the window. Later, I come to find out that BD and Barnes didn’t even get seated, and were waiting for a table for over an hour. Turns out that nobody working there that night recognized them. What kind of s#@t is that? That’s an issue I have with LA - it’s too fragmented and filled with too many transplants (not immigrants, but transplants - there’s a difference). I have to believe that a native Angelino would recognize Baron “frickin” Davis and Matt Barnes. Or maybe it’s just Silverlake? I don’t think Beck is waiting for a table at that joint, and his little ass probably can’t even eat one small plate. Oh well, I’m sure Baron’s probably cool with some anonymity in his home town, but probably not cool with waiting an hour to eat some Jamon Serrano.
M. Meschery
PS - I encourage any comments from our readers to the south.
Jeff Wong over at The Score offers us a novel alternative to Earth Day: NBA Blah Day. The idea is simple enough. If you were going to take a “personal day” away from work for the specific purpose of having time alone with your NBA angst, what would you do? How would you spend your day?
Well, for me the answer was easy. Instead of spending what felt like half of my Sunday “bearding down,” I would have simply pushed that activity to the appropriate moment, namely April 22nd. However, fearing the negative workplace publicity that might result, I and my conspicuously pale and considerably smaller chin will be at work quietly suffering (see above).
I should totally stay home though. Doing the shaving thing and blogging the pain away would be way better. And I could leave the TV off instead of watching the hurtful spectacle of the Leastern Conference Playoffs, where, balance of schedule issues left unconsidered, the Warriors would have still qualified for the fourth slot. No, no. I should totally sleep in. Then write for a while. Then go down to the Y and hoop up some poor, unsuspecting high schooler like a good aging, vindictive hoops blogger should, talking the whole time like Gary Payton loose off of five Red Bulls.
Thanks to all who came out for the season-ending fun at Looney’s Smokehouse on Wednesday night. The core FTB’ers and guests lamented our forthcoming “bearding down,” debated the relative merits of certain draft prospects and endured my well-intentioned fictionalization of game action based on Yahoo Sports updates. We also celebrated a birthday, ate a mountain of smoked meats and poured some beer out on the curb for the playoff-less Dubs. We’ll be here all summer with rumor, hearsay and quasi-analysis, so stick around, comment with abandon and keep it bearded (at least metaphorically).
There was the “weird science” from Nellie. There was the mysterious absence of bearditude down the stretch. There was Phoenix coach Mike D’Antoni’s steadfast refusal to show any quarter, riding Nasty Nash and the starters for extended minutes. And in the end, there was the eighth defeat in nine tries for the Dubs in the Valley of the Sun. The crucial difference being that this one ended their quest for the eighth seed and a playoff birth.
Time to start the therapy. Comment away and we FTB’ers will host a little end-of-season beer and barbecue fest at Looney’s Smokehouse for the season finale on Wednesday. Come through, meet the crew, drink some brew and eat some ‘cue. Hootie hoo.
But seriously. What to make of all of this? Well, a halftime conference call showed that the FTB’ers were a divided crew at the end of two. Fortunately, the second-half run, powered by fresh legs and a halftime “come to Jesus meeting” of unknown dimensions, showed that there was some science behind a strategy that several of us just found plain weird at the break. Oh, there’s room in the comments for everyone to weigh in, but personally I thought Nellie did something innovative in the face of a fairly bleak circumstance. Ultimately, it failed, but not without pushing the aforementioned D’Antoni to a third-quarter conniption or two.
There is one other thing. And it’s kinda big. The mystery of Baron. The beardless second half. While, the sight of BD selflessly coaching his teammates down the stretch instead of pulling off the warmups to come in for dagger time was inspiring in a sense, one had to assume that something was wrong. ESPN and Yahoo Sports and a hyperventilating Tim Kawakami are calling it a “benching,” but I suspect that if Shaq didn’t dislocate Baron’s shoulder in the action above, that perhaps there was another injury that was part of the unspoken subtext. Perhaps we’ll never know. Either way, BD did go on record earlier in the day to state his intended allegiance to the Dubs in spite of the opt-out clause in his contract that would void the final year of his deal (and $17.2 million) in favor of unrestricted free agency. But we’ll have all summer to talk about that and what Mully needs to do to make it right. For now, here’s the sound bite from BD prior to the game, as reported on SFGate.
“I want to win a championship here,” Davis said Monday. “We’ve been to the playoffs, we’re in a playoff run right now, so my whole thing is to bring a championship to the city, to the Bay Area. That would be great.”
That’s good enough for me, but let’s open up the great, grand expanse of real estate called “summer” to talk about all things Warriors. We all need some thereapy after this bipolar-disorder-inducing season, so let’s hug it out it in the comments and on Wednesday.
Turman
PS. This also spells the end of my beard. Time to “beard down” as it were. I’ve grown quite attached to it, or it to me, but either way it’s back to civilian life soon. Come to the end-of-season bash to see it in it’s final moments. Easily BART-able, even. Map to the fun after the jump. Read More »
The game of the season. The chance for greatness. The playoffs. This, my friends, is where bearding up has to happen. Do it for the hardcore fans like the GSoM crew. Do it for the ladies. Do it for the kids. Do it for Obama. Do it for yourself. Or even do it for JE Skeets who threw us some crazy, big-time Yahoo Sports-type juice from over at his bully pulpit on high. But mostly, beard up because now is the moment of truth. If you lack the whiskerpower, click the link and download the innovative PaperBeard™. Follow the simple instructions and commence with the intimidation. We are all Warriors.
I knew something wasn’t right this morning when I turned on my TV to see Def Leppard singing a song with Tim McGraw as a part of the ABC pre-game show. Who’s f-ing idea was this? The NBA? ABC? Someone’s on notice for that s#@t! Such musical cow plop wasn’t even close to being appropriate, other than the fact that the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard could have beaten the Warriors today. So, to wash the rancid taste out of my mouth, I needed a few extra-spicy Bloody Marys at T-Rex where the FTB crew watched the game and subsequently drowned its sorrows (besides the anesthetizing beverages a rare Beardedbarman appearance was the highlight).
If I were to pick a more apropos pre-game joint, I might choose this cut off of DEL Tha Funkee Homosapien’s new album Eleventh Hour, called “Workin’ it.” Sure, it wouldn’t have appealed to the “Nascar Dad-meets-40 year old chick in acid wash demographic,” but do we really want that crowd at NBA games anyway? I guess if we want fans to start chanting “Show Us Your Tits!” instead of “De-Fense!”
Nope. I want Del on mushrooms for my half-game entertainment. This is Del’s first release in hella-long and it’s nice. At first I thought the chorus was a little lackluster, but then I found myself singing it at the grocery store later on. I didn’t know the lyrics so I was just freestylin’ “Workin’ it, Merckin’ it. If I had a pickle I’d be gherkin it.” And you know what, my grocery store freestyle would have been better than Def Leppard and Tim McGraw. Now, if they teamed up Def Leppard and Mos Def and came out with a project called “Mos Def Leppard” I could get down with that. That’s something Del would appreciate too.
Okay Dubs fans, let’s forget today ever happened - the music, the game, all of it. Now, it really is the eleventh hour, so beard up already. Time’s runnin’ out.
Yep. Player intros in the background. My beard in the foreground. Gave out some paperbeards too. It’s not that hard. Bearding up is easy. And results are almost guaranteed.
Granted, Monta’s 30 helped. But I’d prefer to chalk it up the “playoff intensity” at the arena. And by “playoff intensity” I mean beards. But holy crap. Now there’s a three-way “fustercluck” at the bottom of the playoff race now. And by “fustercluck” I mean tie. As in, three teams, two slots. Get your beard ready. It will be needed.
In victory,
Turman
PS. And by using “air quotes” repeatedly, I’m signifying my repeated visitation to the Corona Cantina.
The next member of the honor roll is our main man Diego. He makes the grade for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that he’s doing more than helping beard up the Bay Area. He hails from New Mexico and thus becomes our first operative in that great state. But better still, Diego ain’t letting the fact that there isn’t a pro team within a thousand miles keep him from his beloved Dubs. That’s right. For those of you who think not shaving for two days and driving to the Oracle in rush hour traffic makes you a martyr to the franchise, peep Diego. He’s on a mission.
Sometime in the next few hours Diego is leaving New Mexico for Denver. For Saturday’s game. Did I mention that he grew a beard for the occasion?
We don’t know if he’s flying or driving, or have the exact coordinates for his residence, but the minimum number of miles he could log on his journey is 400. If he’s living hard on the southeastern border of the state near Midland, Texas, he could be putting in 1,000 miles each way. Albuquerque? It’s either a Southwest fun fare and a couple of hours in transit, or a cool 10 hours at the wheel.
Now, lookit. Bearding up the Bay is easy by comparison. Diego’s ready to build a spaceship to see the Dubs play on Mars. Now quit saying that your boss won’t like a beard, or your girlfriend says it’s scratchy. Put some man moss on that chin, son. And get some tickets. It’s clutch right now. And if you can’t beard up, or perhaps you represent the less-hirsute gender, then Paperbeard it up already.
Recently, I was walking down the street in West Oakland and an Oldsmobile filled with high school kids pulls up to the stop sign next to me. This girl riding shotgun looks over, then stares down at my pants and shakes her head before the car drives off. At first, I thought maybe I had spilled something on my pants because her expression was a combination of pity and disgust, as if I was a bum who pissed himself in public. Then I realized it was merely my skinny Sta-Prest slacks that were so offensive to her. See, skinny pants still haven’t caught on in West Oakland.
For those of you who thought the retro-soul thing was going to disappear as quickly as a hubba rock in Amy Winehouse’s crackpipe, you’re not paying attention. This will be the summer where the soul revival really hits. With both the arrival of the new Gnarls Barkley album, “The Odd Couple” and the US release of Duffy (think 21st century female Tom Jones), I haven’t heard this much B3 Organ since Bob Dylan’s kid started that band whose name I can’t remember. The British offerings, Winehouse, Duffy, Lucky Soul are less original and more ersatz 60’s than what Gnarls Barkley and Mark Ronson are doing on this side of the pond, but shit, I’ll take a well-performed Motown-Stax knockoff any day over a Jack Johnson beach ditty.
Our man Baron Davis got the soulful beard thing going, we’ve got something of a civil rights-era atmosphere brewing with Barack’s presidential bid, and now we got the musical soundtrack to back up what should be a long hot summer. The times are a changin’ and it might not be long before me and the cat that owns The Funky Soul Stop record shop on Jefferson aren’t the only ones rockin’ some Sta-Prest pants and Beatle Boots around these parts.
Anyone who goes by the e-mail handle “spre43″ is pretty much cool with me. But if they write us asking for a shirt with a bigger logo and want to help beard the Bay Area up? Well then, hell yeah. You’re definitely good with FTB. But Brent, above at left, took it even further. Impatient with the glacial pace of FTB merch development, he took matters into his own (capable) hands. And here’s the proof. With his dad. At the Oracle. Bearded up. The photo is from a couple of weeks back, and arrived with the following missive.
At last week’s game I sported my own tee shirt with beard. On the back of my shirt I have the website address and promoted it whenever asked. My next game is Portland.
You can’t pay enough for placement like this. Brent, we salute you. We also credit you for the resilience shown by that other bearded guy, the Boom Diz, in playing through the flu. It’s inspiring efforts like yours that push us all to peak performance. Bearding up makes us all better people. Brent, if you’re reading, push the button to the right and join the contest over at IBY. You’ve got my vote.
I was looking for Brent and his dad at the game tonight on TNT, but I didn’t see them. Personally, I think Charles Barkley has threatened to punish anyone caught openly praising the Warriors on the air, cameramen included. But don’t let that stop you people. When we are a million-beard army, they will not be able to ignore us.
