Under There

NP: Bulls vs. Hornets (TV)

I can't help thinking that, from the post-reconstruction Bulls rosters, you could put together a pretty good starting five of Ron Artest, Elton Brand, Tyson Chandler, Brad Miller, and maybe Kirk Heinrich. If you could have gotten Jalen Rose without giving up Artest and Miller, bring Chandler off the bench, even better. But you can't unmake history, and the Bulls continue to struggle in an attempt to undo the mess former GM Jerry Krause got them in. To be fair, Brand and Artest probably would have left the minute their rookie contracts expired, so dealing them was a fact of life, but I can't help thinking it didn't have to be that way. Like so many other things, if only I were in charge...

Except that I'm not here to talk about basketball. I'm here to talk about karaoke. Two important life lessons were learned last night, or something like that, only maybe not quite so important. First, the karaoke gods have a strange sense of humor, otherwise how could you explain naked backing tracks for "Schism" from Tool? Much like I have to play Primus whenever I see them in a jukebox, I think it stands to reason that I must deliver karaoke renditions of Maynard James Keenan whenever the opportunity presents itself. That being said, wow, there are some tricky lyrics and rhythms in the middle, before the really, really long instrumental break that is every karaoke singer's nightmare. I mean, if it's a solo, you can at least air guitar.

Second, I can occasionally be stylin' in spite of myself. Apparently UnderArmour is hip, and here I was thinking the mock turtleneck was just good functional cold-weather wear. I got more comments on just that base layer than I think I've gotten for any other piece of clothing in a while. Go figure.

Got a neoprene brace for my ankle today, a holiday suggestion from my older brother, and the Achilles tendon is feeling a bit better with the support. I honestly have no idea if there's anything drastically wrong with it, but compression is always your friend on this sort of thing. We'll see what happens. No such luck with my wrist, which I've been wrapping on and off since I think I banged it up helping a friend pack up her company and send it to New Jersey. If you're prone to the gutter, no, it can't be that, it's the other wrist.

Speaking of jerkoffs, did Dubya really give a speech touting the strength of the economy on the heels of job growth reports that were only 140,000 jobs shy of the 150,000 predicted? The 150,000 necessitated by any hopes of net job growth by the election? Did I read that right? To paraphrase Lovitz-as-Dukakis, we're losing to this guy?