Previous installments: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Also check out the official Livin' Large FAQ, Cast List, Flow Chart 1.0, and Flow Chart 2.0.

It's amazing how a traumatic episode can completely reshape your perspective on people and events both past and present. After finding out Mat's childhood friends had died in a car accident, I suddenly started caring about the guy. His ordeal made me realize that despite his immense size and all the ridiculous benefits he reaped by playing basketball for a major American university, Mat was just a kid like me: slightly confused, a little overwhelmed and really learning about life for the first time. Sure he was more worldly than I was and certainly more sexually experienced, but that didn't make him immune to the pain and vulnerabilities of youth. At least, that's what I was now telling myself.

If you think about it, professional athletes (and semi-notable amateur athletes) don't get cut a lot of slack for making human mistakes. When Charles Barkley is arrested for DUI and admits he was about to get a little road head, he has to disappear for a while to get his act together. I'm not saying that pro athletes (and other celebrities) don't often use fame and fortune to buy their way out of messy legal problems -- it happens all the frickin' time -- but it's also true that they aren't typically afforded the same sensitivity that other non-famous mistake-makers expect to receive.

Let me tell you a little story. A couple years ago, I went to a Wig Party with my buddies BadDave, Statbuster and Mister P. Basically, this was a party where if you showed up wearing a wig and paid $30, you got unlimited drinks all night. I was the designated driver, so I "only" had a couple beers (when I should have had zero beers) while my friends got trashed. On the way home that night, BadDave and Statbuster had me pull over on I-290 so they could pee on the side of the highway. Shortly after that, BadDave threw up out the window, covering the side of my car (and some of the inside) with his involuntary personal protein spill. (Said Statbuster: "Is it raining? Wait, what...that's Dave's puke?! OH GOD.") Naturally, we stopped for burritos while BadDave passed out in the car with his head hanging out the window. After dropping Statbuster and Mister P off, I headed to my house. (BadDave was visiting from out of town and staying at my place.) Unfortunately, BadDave kept opening the car door so he could spit the awful taste of retch out of his mouth. I'm sure you know where this is going.

Less than five minutes from home, I got pulled over, which is typically what happens when half of your car is coated in vomit and the passenger door keeps opening. The officer asked why BadDave was opening his door. Honesty being the best policy and all that, I told her he was drunk and spitting. She asked if I'd been drinking, and I admitted to having the two beers a few hours ago (mostly because I was sure the beer was well out of my system). She made me perform a series of sobriety tests -- touch the nose, say the alphabet backwards, etc. -- that I passed with flying colors. Then she had me take a breathalyzer. It showed I was at .081, otherwise known as .001 over the legal limit. I'm pretty sure I peed myself on the spot.

Fortunately, the officer cut me a break and agreed to take so long writing the ticket (for BadDave's door-opening shenanigans, which constituted a moving violation) that my blood alcohol content would fall under the legal limit before I drove away. She said, and I quote, "Remember to tell this story next time someone tells you cops are all assholes." It goes without saying that I was very grateful.

Our behavior that night was stupid and irresponsible, and it wasn't the first time we'd done something like that (although it was the last). It was simply the first time we'd gotten caught. Luckily for us, no one was arrested and we aren't famous enough to end up on Deadspin or TMZ. Otherwise our idiocy and embarrassment would have become a public spectacle, and seemingly reasonable people would have hated and resented us almost without thinking about it.

I'm not saying that we should give pro athletes a free pass every time they do something stupid. After all, I'd have to shut down this blog. I'm just saying that every once in a while, we might do well to remember that they're human beings like us, and in similar circumstances we might be making similar mistakes.

Aaaaaaanyway, I couldn't share this epiphany with my roommate because he was MIA. But to show my newfound appreciation for who and what he was, I did my best to cover for him with his various girlfriends. I also took meticulous messages any time he received a phone call. I even bought him a big bag of animal crackers. It was time, I had decided, to make an effort toward building a real, honest-to-goodness roommate relationship.

In the meantime, I was experiencing and enjoying love for the first time. And honestly, it was making me a little disgusting. I wrote and snail-mailed love letters to Aimee every day. Short of transcribing them -- which I will never, ever do by the way -- I cannot adequately describe how incredibly sappy they were. Earlier this year, I was sorting through some of my old college books and came across one of these letters that I had never finished. Re-reading it made me want to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to kill my mom before I could be born. I mean, I'm glad that I was at one time able to experience the delirious joy of first love, but my brain was like a giant marshmallow soaked in honey and chocolate sauce.

I was also journaling about the experience, and those journal entries were similarly sickening. When I was working at the food service, I would take a picture of Aimee with me and look at it whenever I had a few free seconds. One day, I received a love poem in the mail from Aimee. She had sprayed some of her perfume on it, and the combination of her words and scent seriously made me lightheaded. I probably read that poem a hundred times...in the first hour.

Vomit-worthy as this behavior was, the feelings were open and from the heart. In my mind, I had waited forever to experience these emotions, and I was determined to feel and express them to the fullest. The only hiccup in this new feel-good era was the unresolved issue of Cindy. I hadn't yet told her that I had decided to date Aimee instead of her. Naturally, I felt horrible about this. The last thing I wanted to do was string Cindy along. However, I also didn't want to break her heart over the phone. It seemed like whatever I was going to say to her should be said in person. And while that meant leaving her hanging a little longer than was technically necessary, I believed at the time that the personal touch was necessary. Besides, I was going to be home for Thanksgiving Break in just a couple weeks. I would do it then. Like Mat had pointed out, Cindy and Aimee didn't talk, so it was highly unlikely that Cindy would find out anything before I had a chance to tell her. Or so I thought.

Days passed. Mat's chair sat empty. The Heineken light remained off. None of his things moved. At first, I thought maybe he had taken a plane back to Holland to attend the funerals. However, Mat's mom called several times while he was gone, so he obviously hadn't returned to his home country. I wondered whether he was going to class or attending basketball practice. The practices were sometimes open, so I strolled by the stadium after classes one afternoon. The doors were locked. I started to worry.

As much as I despised Mat's late-night returns and how he would watch MTV into the wee hours of the morning without regard to my need for sleep, I actually began hoping he would reappear at some bizarre hour and resume his usual habits. Yet another example of what a sucker I was back then.

I was playing a lot of basketball during that time period. My buddy Joe and I were always meeting for pickup games or one-on-one. Joe was quite a bit shorter than I was, but he had quick hands and great anticipation. To negate that, I began to play in the post almost exclusively, against him anyway. I worked on my little jump hook all the time, because it allowed me to score against him almost at will. For his part, Joe utilized the three-point shot to even the odds (when we played one-on-one, we used the standard twos-and-threes scoring system). We had some epic clashes and talked a lot of good-natured trash to each other.

I was acing all my classes, which will happen when you study as much as I did. I was taking 18 credit hours and I was also in the Honors Program, so my course load was a little more challenging than that of the average freshman. But I totally got off on that. I compared it in my mind to Larry Bird's "first guy to practice, last guy to leave" mentality, and that inspired me to do the extra work required by the Honors Program. Well, it did until I started rooming with BadDave anyway. It got awfully hard to watch him sleep through our 8 a.m. classes (after which he'd just copy my notes) and play Street Fighter II all day (after which he would ask, "Now don't you wish you'd skipped class?") while I was busting my ass doing extra work in every class to meet the Honors requirements. So hard, in fact, that I quit the Honors Program midway through the second semester of my sophomore year. Thanks for that, BadDave.

In addition to classes and work and APO and Campus Security Escorts and the time I spent wallowing around in Aimee's affection, I had also started working for the college newspaper. My fourth story made the front page, and the newspaper advisor, Carl A., started talking to me about becoming an editor as early as the first semester of the next year. It seemed like everything was clicking. I felt like a superstar. If I could have stood at the front of a ship, spread my arms and screamed "I'm the king of the world!" I probably would have. (After which I can only hope that someone would have shot me, and shot to kill.)

Then Mat came back.

It was 3 a.m. when he returned. And he arrived with two giant monsters whom I could only assume were on the football team. They were all drunk and laughing their asses off. Apparently, Mat's mourning period had come and gone.

I sat up and put on my glasses.

"Hey, dude," I said. "What's up? You okay?"

"Hey," he said, barely sparing me a glance. His two huge friends were looking at me though.

"I took down all your messages," I said. "Your mom called a few times. It's all there on that notepad on your desk."

"Thanks," he said, and this time he didn't even look my way.

"Uh, so, welcome back," I said.

He didn't respond at all this time and instead began carrying on with his football buddies. Which went on for the next two hours while I tried in vain to sleep.

I was hoping that Mat and I would have a chance to talk about things the next day, but he was asleep when I left for class and gone when I got back. He didn't return again until late that night, again drunk and again with the footballers in tow. They kept me up until almost 6 a.m. this time...during which they devoured the bag of animal crackers I'd bought for Mat. I don't think he ever even realized that I'd gotten them for him.

And just like that, my newfound appreciation for my roommate was gone. The concern and affection I'd started to develop for Mat in his absence was now turning into a black hatred. And it was all the blacker because of the sense of betrayal I felt. There I had been, ready to extend the olive branch, ready to become a true-blue friend, and here he was showing even less regard for me than he had before. Hell, he was barely even speaking to me or acknowledging my existence.

Perspective is a funny thing isn't it? It's kind of like how in the days following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans -- sporting a renewed appreciation for the sanctity and preciousness of human life -- started caring about each other, giving to charity, loving their neighbors. But a week or so later, or less in some cases, people started to transform back into the selfish, self-interested douche bags they'd been before the Twin Towers had gone down in flames. It's just human nature I guess.

At any rate, it became crystal clear to me then that me and Mat would never be friends.

In retrospect, it could be that Mat did what he did to get through a very difficult time in his life. Drinking, partying, ignoring the people closest to you (even if "closeness" only refers to physical proximity), that's what people do when they're hurting. So maybe my assessment of Mat and his actions was needlessly harsh and fatalistic. But I was 18 years old, and as high-minded as I tried to be, I sometimes had trouble seeing past my own nose.

Whatever the case, Mat's method of coping was soon interrupted by a complication that put his future at our school in serious danger...

Part 20

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62 Comments:
Anonymous Wormboy said...
Well, I guess the lesson is that unless they are psychopaths, assholes have feelings that can be hurt, but that doesn't mean that they aren't assholes.

And I'm not faulting you for not telling Cindy promptly, Mat. But I think I speak for many of us when I say that I can see where this is going. :)

Blogger Alexis Blue said...
ahh its good to have mat and matt back :D

Blogger Victor said...
For a second towards the end there I thought you were a girl who was dating Mat. The more unaffectionate he was, the more you craved it.

Blogger mrm3x1can said...
I thought we were gonna get some future NBA allstar in this installment

Anonymous Anonymous said...
The cliffhanger on this one sounds a bit like from "Behind the Music"

.. "The song was a hit. But the hit, they would soon find out, would turn out to be a deadly haymaker making them grasp for breath as their very existance would stand on the brink of time. Next, on behind the music"

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
I think this is the first time the cliffhanger from the previous Part wasn't resolved in the following Part.

Also, I can totally relate to the sappy honey-covered-marshmellow-with-chocolate brain thing, as I'm sure many of us can, and I believe this is the scientific reason why time-machines don't exist, because everyone would go back in time and kick themselves in the balls for being so retarded, then no one would be left able to create sperm.

Blogger Wild Yams said...
Weird how the cliffhangers from Part 18 and Part 19 are exactly the same...

Man, BadDave really got thrown under the bus in this installment. First the DUI stop story and then he gets the blame for Mr. Bawful dropping out of the Honors program. What else are you gonna reveal about him? That's he's not really married to Eva Longoria?

Anonymous Boudicca's daughter said...
Agree with Wormboy: even girls "who never speak to each other", usually have friends in commmon who do. Plus, news of a new boyf gets arond very quickly in small towns. You really were so high minded but painfully naive; sweet but daft.

Blogger BJ said...
(starts singing) Well ol' Mr. Bawful had troubles of his own, he had a great big Mat that wouldn't leave his home . . .
-BJ

Blogger Sos said...
Bawful you use the Cliffhanger like Iverson uses the crossover or Hakeem uses the Dream Shake, you know it's coming but you just can't stop it ala Kevin Bacon in Air Up There.

Anonymous The Vegas Kid said...
Now if you were super smooth (or Big Mat) you would have just resolved your issues with the laydays by finagling some sort of three or four way. Get Aimee, Cindy, and Susan all liquored up and ready to rock.

Everyone knows about the magical correlation between alcohol and female bisexuality, and if you had been ruthless and twisted enough at the time you could have used that innocent and naive rep to set it up. Maybe even just hijack Mat's story: a bunch of my friends died in a car crash, boohoo, the only thing that will cheer me up is lots of vagina. Oh hey, you ladies have vaginas...

That lost little lamb crap works every time. Hooray for nurturing instincts.

Blogger Lord Kerrance said...
$5 says Li'l Matt played Ryu in Street Fighter II. Principled and doomed to wander the earth alone.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Matt,

I must say that this installment casts a whole different dimension on your "relationship" with Mat.
You come off as veering dangerously close to someone who wanted to be somebody's toady (such as Grover Dill, who filled that function for Scott Farkas in "A Christmas Story")and was hurt that it didn't happen for you.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Wormboy -- "Well, I guess the lesson is that unless they are psychopaths, assholes have feelings that can be hurt, but that doesn't mean that they aren't assholes." Yeah...pretty much.

Alexis Blue -- And it's good to be back.

Victor -- Ouch.

mrm3x1can -- Two installments away.

Anonymous #1 -- Yeah, I guess it is a little VH-1-y.

AnacondaHL -- Yeah, that wasn't the original plan. Sometimes the installments go someplace I didn't expect, which is what happened this time.

Wild Yams -- I know, I know! Sorry for the duel cliffhanger.

As for BadDave, let it be known first of all that I'm GLAD his influence got me to drop the Honors Program. It was a lot of work for what would have turned out to be one little extra notation on my diploma. The thing with me and BadDave in college, he got me to loosen up a little and I got him to straighten up a little. We definitely made each other better.

As for the other story, it's part of the Legend of our Friendship. And I've had plenty of bad moments in that Legend. So, in the interest of fairness, I will now tell BadDave's favorite "I really want to embarrass Matt now" story.

A few years ago we were at Mardi Gras. It was our second time there, so we were wiley vets. Or something. On our second day, I hammered down three giant Long Islands in a row. Only they weren't Long Islands anyone has ever seen before. The bartender at this place, The Cat's Meow, had his own "special" Long Island which was just a mix of all the highest proof liquors he had. Seriously, there were fumes wafting off that drink.

So BadDave told me: Slow down, dude. This is a warning that BadDave has made many, many times to me, and I have yet to heed it. The results are always disastrous.

At some point, we left the Cat's Meow and were walking down the French Quarter when a group of women started on a balcony started yelling at me to drop my pants for some beads. Thinking I was the complete and total shit, I dropped trou. BadDave grabbed me roughly by the arm and said, "Dude, pull up your fucking pants right now." I figured he had seen a cop or something. Nope. He just saw that those ladies were, in fact, men. We were on the gay block of the French Quarter.

That's when I realized I could hardly even see. It was like I was looking at the world through a dirty ashtray. After I pulled up my pants but before I could skulk away, some guy comes up and asks to take my picture. I grunted and he said, "Oh, but not of your face." At that point, BadDave and my other friends carried me off.

But I wasn't done. A little while later we were walking down what I thought was a deserted alley. I had to pee, so I turned the alley wall into my personal urinal. Only...that "wall" was the front window of a Subway sandwich shop and the "deserted alley" was a 10,000-person parade route. These two girls were so disturbed by my behavior they tried to burn me with their cigarettes, which necessitated yet another rescue by my friends.

Then came what may be the greatest dispute in my long friendship with BadDave. I believe I found a little place that was selling these amazingly delicious turkey legs. BadDave claims HE discovered it and uses my near-blindness as proof...but I still think I found it.

THEN -- almost done -- we decided to go back to the room the wipe the day's grime off of ourselves before resuming the celebration. Since I couldn't see but insisted on walking ahead of the group, I got totally lost and ended up faceplanting in a huge pile of trash, losing my $120 Oakleys in the process. I laid in that trash pile for like five minutes. I tried texting Statbuster for help, but his return message read, and I quote (because I wrote this down later), "Wrt bur pplc whu." I eventually made it back to the place...how I'll never know.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Oh, and I almost forot, somewhere during all that, Statbuster and I picked up some green feather boas and started air guitaring down the French Quarter, Hollywood Hogan-style.

Now that I've suitably embarrassed myself...

Boudicca's daughter -- Sigh. Yes, yes you're right.

BJ -- That's gotta be accompanied by a banjo, right?

Joe -- It's my special move. Kinda like Hogan's leg drop or Jake the Snake's DDT.

The Vegas Kid -- I'm fairly certain that not only would that not have worked with these girls, it could have gotten me clawed to shreds in relatively short order.

Lord Kerrance -- You would win that bet.

Anonymous #2 -- You misunderstand. I didn't want to be his servant. I thought by showing him kindness I could develop a friendship where the kindness would be returned in kind. That's why I got pissed...not because I wanted to be his toady, but because I wanted him to treat me with the same kindness I was trying to show him.

Blogger Will said...
Do you have any idea what you texted to Statbuster and could you decipher his reply?

Blogger Basketbawful said...
I believe I texted him something like "Where are you guys" (likely mangled and misspelled) and he was trying to text me "We're back at the place where are you?" He later told me that was what he thought he texted anway.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Cmon man - why you gotta end it like that?

Blogger Japes said...
LOL. That Mardi Gras story deserves its own post. I'm really surprised you remember anything at all at that state. When I blackout, I forget EVERYTHING that happened the night before. Like how you figured out where you lost your Oakleys, that's awesome. To this day, I still can't figure out how I lost my Armani glasses during a drunken binge. Even though I specifically remember leaving them inside my glove compartment before I even started drinking.

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
The comment about comments dropping ~60% in the last Part got me intrigued.

So I datamined all 1455 published BasketBawful posts, and parsed out the number of comments/date/post. Days with more than one post had the numbers added together (for example, 5 posts made Jan 31, 2006 for a total of 8 comments). I've got really pretty graphs with moving averages and stuff (yay Excel), which I can post when I get home (or e-mail to blog authors) if interested. Here's a recap:

By far, the post/day generating the highest number of comments was March 10, 2006, with 347 comments. The Gatorade Conspiracy. The followup Part II, on April 5, 2006, generated 173 comments and was the second highest commented day...

...until Livin' Large. More specifically, July 8th, 2009 generated 174 comments, but this includes the Nike Tapes discussion.

Overall, I setup a 10-day moving average to simulate "readership", and there are quite a few peaks and valleys, but it's a steady climb. (Especially after Spring 2008, when either Bill Simmons or someone at ESPN or something linked to this blog, creating a bump in the traffic, including yours truly). Two noticable modern peaks occur at the aforementioned July 8th, as well as around the 22nd (Part 13-Part17). I believe the second one correlates to when the story spread through the UK sites.

More on the Livin' Large era, starting June 29th, 2009: Comments average at 83/day, max for a single post at 137 (Part 17) and min at 44 (Part 1), not including today.

Of course if I actually had better data, like page views or unique visitors, it would be way more meaningful. Comments to readership is a pretty weak correlation to begin with. And of course, I was desensitized to Bawful blueballing the entire audience, having also been going through the historic "Summer of Endless Eight" in terms of dicking around with your viewers' emotions.

But really, I strongly recommend a strategy, such as a fixed schedule. Start weening people off the Livin' Large, because you know people are babies and will bitch about not getting breastmilk. And who knows, maybe some of the readers that joined for Livin' Large will actually like Regular Season BasketBawful. (I know you've got that Worsties December Draft waiting to publish, test the waters?) It doesn't hurt to try, but it does help to communicate beforehand (unless the goal was to maximize nerdrage, such as the aforementioned Endless Eight, in that case I have all sorts of tips on how to do that as well.)


tl:dr version: Screw everyone else and appease me and my scary numbers. Also, I think I made some sort of analogy between this blog and breastmilk.

Blogger Will said...
AnacondaHL: I think it's funny when the anonymous horde are bitching about missing LL. I thought of it more as a drug addiction and the addicts are fiending.

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Anonymous #3 -- Don't blame me...these posts are writing themselves. ;)

Japes -- Okay, I have to say, I'm not entirely certain that's how/when I lost my Oakleys. When they were missing the next day, I had to try and retrace my steps and that seemed like the most likely time they would have been lost.

AnacondaHL -- First off, regarding the Gatorade Conspiracy. There were easily over 2,000 comments made on that post. The only problem is that, at the time, Blogger was imposing a size limit on individual posts. Once the post hit the size limit, the comments simply disappeared after I approved them.

And as for the rest, by all means, send that data along to me.

I am planning to start doing twice or thrice a week Livin' Larges until they're over, which will be soon. Then I'm going to start experimenting with some new format-type stuff.

Anonymous Arlen said...
if you could monitor search terms, today "the gatorade conspiracy" would be on top of the list, I assumes

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
Arlen: That's already sorta available as a free service from Google Trends.

Here's basketbawful and gatorade conspiracy search histories.

Blogger Victor said...
"until they're over, which will be soon."

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

So, Bawful, do you have the data for how many more hits or unique visitors you've been getting due to Living Large?

Blogger BJ said...
Nah, man. You've never seen The Cat Came Back?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM
-BJ

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yay! New Livin' Large and a Mardi Gras anecdote! But so sad to hear that Livin' Large will end soon. :(

It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster this post and comments.

Anyway, hope your well deserved vacation was nice and thanks for the new installments of Livin' Large.

Blogger Nick Flynt said...
Yeah. It's good to be a known member of the squad of commenters during this recent surge in readership. I vaguely recall when Chris and AHL and Wild Yams got here. Thoooose were the daaaaays.

Blogger chris said...
Buck Nasty: I remember reading this blog for about 3-4 months before I ever started commenting, but then I fell in love with keeping a close track to lacktion, in a city where lacktion is all that can be celebrated for the next few seasons.

And don't forget the arguments over Kobe's "class" that used to be the reason for multi-comment action!

Anonymous crazy joe davola said...
when you say you "only" had a couple of beers...does that mean you had more? if the quotes were around "couple" it would make more sense that way; around "only" its more like you're implying 2 beers is actually a lot.

the only reason i ask, is that a couple of beers shouldn't put you anywhere near 0.08, specially if it was a few hours previously (and especially for some who's not a midget).

Anonymous Pok Flied Lice said...
Well I'm the dude that made the comment about commentship dropping... and I said that based solely on the fact that part 17 had like 120 something comments and part 18 had 49... so I meant it for the series and not the site overall (who follow the site before Livin Large would know that this series is not the most heavily commented posts anyway).... which lead to the sick study by AnacondaHL

Anonymous Boudicca's daughter said...
Bawful@:I'm totally thrilled at having a personal response to my post. Thanks x loads. This is a measure of what a sad addict of this blog I have become...!

I've read the basketball stuff too whist you were away just to get a fix, and I expect I'll follow the new stuff too. Please give very serious consideration to slipping in, (oo-er, missus!), the occasional Livin' Large type thing for those of us who really rate you as a memoirist. Ta

Blogger Basketbawful said...
Victor -- Yeah, I got some data. Looks like my unique visitors doubled from about 5-6K a day to around 10-12K a day.

BJ -- Oh god, yes, I should have recognized that...

bluefromhere -- I know. I wish it could go on longer too. But I will try to provide more fun stuff afterwards.

Buck -- You're now a grizzled vet of Basketbawful. Who knew?

chris -- You certainly changed the face of lacktion on this site. Thank you!

crazy joe devola -- I used quotes because only is a dumb word to use for a designated driver. I was very dubious that two beers could have done that to my blook alcohol and told the officer so. I have suspected that she either lied to me to scare me or the breathylizer was malfunctioning.

Boudicca's daughter -- That was the first response I gave you? So sorry then. And never fear, I do indeed have plans for memoir-style posts after Livin' Large ends. I mean, I already sort of had them, but I have a couple new ideas brewing.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
As an aside to Livin' Large Q just got traded again. His agent must love him. The Q should get on Jetblue's All-You-Can-Fly plan.

WV: Mancest. Think of Bawful's Mardi Gras adventure. Be creative -- because I'm not. :-\

Blogger Will said...
Don't be so sure that 2 beers couldn't put you over the legal limit. Rover's Morning Glory (a radio show in Cleveland) did a test a while back were they had their audio guy get wasted on air and they breathalyzed him at various times. After 2 or 3 beers he blew a .1, albeit he hadn't eaten that morning yet.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Oh, and credit goes to Truehoop for linking this: Randolph lays down a Zach Attack.

Blogger Wild Yams said...
Just FYI, breathalyzer tests have been proven to vary as much as 15% from actual blood alcohol levels when measured from blood drawn, and statistically 23% of all people who are given breathalyzer tests will test at a higher blood alcohol level than they actually have. So if you ever get pulled over for a DUI and you don't think you're drunk, have them do a blood test instead, it might get you off the hook. (Source)

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
Lets talk science!

Yes, according to these charts and biological mechanisms, about 3-4 beers would raise Bawful's actual blood alcohol content over the 0.08 legal limit. Maybe he was dehydrated that night, thus reducing his body volume. And of course, the BAC decreases over time.

Now where the test can go wrong, since breathalyzers only estimate your BAC, a common way to vary the results is to change your breathing rate. Considering young Bawful was probably crapping his pants at this point, I could imagine him with erratic breathing, or holding his breath, thus being part of the ~23% of readings higher than your actual BAC.

In other words, the officer was only half being nice to you, the reading was within the tolerance range of the test.

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
ugh, beaten by like 30 seconds by Yams =(

Anonymous Anonymous said...
wow anacondahl has no life

so sad

Anonymous crazy joe davola said...
i'm pretty sure here in australia (g'day mate!), if you blow over the limit on the breathalyser thats not enough to charge you. they make you sit down for about 20 minutes, blow again, and then if you're still over, they take a blood test back at the cop shop before finally charging you.

the anti drink-driving ads here push the idea of 2 (standard) drinks in the first hour, and then 1 per hour after that, keeps you below the limit.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
AnacondaHL - It's your facepalming avatar. It dooms you to getting beat to the punch and then having to facepalm yourself.

But seriously, I look forward to your data. Perhaps we can then correlate it with random numbers. For example, I am fairly certain basketbawful's readership has a strong negative correlation with Eddy Curry's weight of late. Imagine all the fascinating links we'd discover existing in the universe!

Anonymous Wormboy said...
A"nonymous #2 -- You misunderstand. I didn't want to be his servant. I thought by showing him kindness I could develop a friendship where the kindness would be returned in kind. That's why I got pissed...not because I wanted to be his toady, but because I wanted him to treat me with the same kindness I was trying to show him."

You were being a good guy, and just hoping for a shred of that in return. Not unreasonable if Mat weren't an asshole. No toadying required.

Additionally, I'll guess that Mat was too wrapped up in being cool in front of his football buddies to acknowledge a dork like you. You know how it goes at that age, all the way down the food chain of popularity.

Blogger chris said...
Wow, I think we need to have a breathalyzer contest between Matholomew here and the turrrible Round Mound. Now.

Bawful: Yeah, I think LL is the appropriate dramatized version of the life of lacktion, for sure. (Come on, I want my Future NBA All Star cameo!) BTW, if LL is coming to a close...I am eagerly awaiting "Fifth Year."

Anonymous Anonymous said...
yo bawful....u still gonna finish the worst of the season?

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
NarSARSsist: Discussing the layers of meaning behind the Kyon Facepalm isn't really proper for this forum, but I'll just say that it applies to everything and is always correct. Especially on the Internet.

Seg-Way: I've added another tool to my Internet arsenal: making animated GIFs. I think I'll have to give my avatar the proper animation it deserves.

Blogger AnacondaHL said...
double post: I've drilled you on this before, but honestly you chose like the worst time, no, worst era in history to shut down FootBawful.

Michael Vick as signed with the Philadelphia Eagles.

This is like, equivalent to if you shut down Basketbawful April 2010 and didn't come back until 2011, after the NBA lockout began.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Bawful,
how did you manage to get pulled over at 18, blow a .081 and not get a minor consumption? that cop must have thought you were more than just lil matt!

Blogger lordhenry said...
"This is like, equivalent to if you shut down Basketbawful April 2010 and didn't come back until 2011, after the NBA lockout began."

Noooooo! Quiet Simmons! Wait, that's not Bill, just an amazing simulation. Sorry, but Bill has been saying lockout for years, it grates on me.
I'm back.

SOrry I haven't posted on here in a bit, I've been reading the entire summer, just haven't commented. Lord Bawful's coming of age story was just a little too intimate for me to comment on. Great writing, and it definitely makes you curious to see what happens next (that and Bawful's heinous cliffhangers). The whole "who is future NBA all-star?" debate also seemed like an inside joke that I had neither the time nor desire to research and get in on. I figured someone smart like Yams or Cortez, or HL would figure it out and I would just cash in then. So I held off on commenting until it was revealed, and by the time it was I had forgotten why I hadn't commented in a bit to begin with.
So I just let the offseason pass by, content to read the ongoing story and the ongoing complaining that accompanied a storyless day.

Personally, it seems as if "Livin Large" is just Lord Bawful's way of avoiding certain realities in the current NBA, which kinda stinks, cuz this offseason has been interesting.

No, it hasn't been insane, but Shaq to cleveland? Does Marion help Dallas or not? Jefferson to S.A.? The hilarious and annoying back and forth between L.A. and odom (Ok, there was a lil something about that) And finally, That Bastard Rasheed Wallace joins Those Bastard Celtics, to hopefully piggyback to a championship level. Along the way, they Celts said no to Starbury and let Leon Powe go to the Cavs.

I'm a little bit curious as to what Bawful thinks about all these shenanigans, and the fact that everyone is already talking Boston/L.A. numero deuce in the finals. And am I the only guy that sees Crazy Pills as the Rodman/enforcer guy for L.A.?

Sorry that was long, maybe THAT's why I used to post everyday......

Anonymous Anonymous said...
by worst of the season i meant worsties btw...

Anonymous tony.bluntana said...
I have three words in response to your first section about athletes and the benefit of the doubt: Dante Stallworth, bullshit.

Now, I wish I had one word that means, "posting comments too late for anyone to actually read them..."

Anonymous Anonymous said...
okay this is starting to get boring now. i just want to find out if Mat was trying to get back at you for always being the room while he was getting down with his ladies. You ended living large #17 with "
That was the first time it occurred to me: if Mat was the villain in my story, maybe I was the villain in his." I thought that was some kind of foreshadowing. If it wasn't, I ask kindly, go back to NBA stuff please.

Blogger CassavaLeaf.com said...
were the footballers anyone worth remembering or just practice squad players?

Blogger plonden said...
If any of you are into fantasy basketball (I know Bawful has mentioned it before) I made a schedule analysis tool in Excel for my basketball blog. It pretty much covers everything you need to know about the fantasy schedule for next season. Check it out:

http://www.basketballfreeforall.com/schedule

Blogger ramon12 said...
Dude where is the update?!!!

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Nice chart, plonden. While I don't do fantasy basketball myself (can't stand the thought of pouring my heart into a draft and then watching someone go down to an injury), it's still helpful for seeing how the season flows.

I only took a brief look, so sorry if it's in an obvious place, but does your blog have projections for players next season? I am mostly curious to see how people think the Rockets will stack up next season, given their injury situations. David Berri thinks they'll be fine, but I find his notion that players that were benefiting from other members of the team would continue their per minute productivity while taking on greater minutes rather silly. I wanted to see what others think of Houston.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Looks like you really lost steam on this.

Maybe if you had actually told the story, instead of jacking off, you would have finished by now, but I guess the ego knows no bounds.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Anon - You certainly aren't far off on the ego knowing no bounds.

Blogger plonden said...
@ NarSARSsist: Thanks for checking out the chart. And I do not currently have any projections on the site.

Regarding the Rockets, it is funny I was just thinking about this team situation. It is hard to imagine that when their usage goes up, they will not have negative effects on their efficiency. In nominal terms, players like Brooks, Scola and Ariza could maintain or improve upon their averages. But it is hard to imagine them not suffering a very real decline in efficiency terms.

That is one thing that statistics (at this point) cannot account for: defensive pressure. It is hard to predict how role players will react to increased defensive pressure when these players are untested playing without a superstar or three.

HOU is now a team of role players without a legitimate superstar. I predict a train wreck...

To make a long story short, I think you are right to find Mr. Berri's claim silly.

Anonymous Steve F said...
$5 says Li'l Matt played Ryu in Street Fighter II. Principled and doomed to wander the earth alone.


Best internet comment I've ever read.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Best. Read. Ever. I loved every second of it, can you just do you whole freshamn year? I feel like I'm missing something not being able to read this about everyday.

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Totally sweet George Carlin reference, I almost missed it.