Your 2011 NBA All-Star Game Starters

In a little over three week’s time, in the penultimate weekend of February, the city of Los Angeles will once more be the focal point of the basketball world. Not because the Lakers have a big game that weekend, and don’t even get me started on the Clippers’ Blake Griffin.

It’s because that weekend, the NBA’s most popular players will take on each other in the annual All-Star Game.

These players get voted into the starting line-up or onto the bench of either the east-coast or the west-coast team, depending on where they play. (For example: a New York Knicks player will play for the East, while an LA Laker suits up for the West.)

Let’s see who gets the privilege of starting for the West in the most spectacular game this side of an NBA Finals Game Seven:

WEST

Center: Yao Ming (Rockets)
Power forward: Kevin Durant (Thunder)
Small forward: Carmelo Anthony (Nuggets)
Shooting guard: Kobe Bryant (Lakers)
Point guard: Chris Paul (Hornets)

Yao Ming?? Seriously?? This is what you get when you let the Chinese people vote – to them it doesn’t matter that Ming hardly played this season (hell, I don’t think the Rockets even need him anymore); they just want to see their man in the game.

I’d take Marcus Camby over the Giant Chinese Bean-Pole any day. Granted, Camby’s in the twilight of a career that wasn’t even that spectacular to begin with, but I still cherish the memories of him energizing the amazing ’99 Knicks during his injury- and foul-prone tenure at the City of Bright Lights’ basketball team. Camby put every ounce of his personality and flair into his often spectacular game back then. Consider me a fan for life.

You won’t hear me complaining about Durant, Anthony, Bryant (13th selection with 2.380.016 votes; Bryants the leading vote-getter) and Paul though: that’s a nasty-lookin’ team right there.

Let’s take a look at the Eastern high-flyers:

EAST

Center: Dwight Howard (Magic)
Power forward: Amar’e Stoudemire (Knicks)
Small forward: LeBron James (Heat)
Shooting guard: Dwyane Wade (Heat)
Point guard: Derrick Rose (Bulls)

As a Knicks guy, I’m proud to see Amar’e in the starting line-up. But even if I hadn’t been a New York fan, I’d still have appreciated his name on this list of elite players: Stoudemire’s rescuscitated a franchise that had been sleepwalking for the past decade. He's reinstalled some much-needed confidence in the NBA’s most valuable team. And I’m sure he’ll kill on the Staples Center court too, come February.

Don’t get me started on the Heat guys though – I respect their ability to put the ball in the hole, but there’s this nagging too-much, too-soon feeling that creeps up to me when I think about the hyped-to-a-crisp Miami team. I think the ‘Heatles’, plain and square, suck.

Don’t get me wrong: I think both James and Wade are great players; it’s just that I don’t like their jock-style swagger. I’d haven taken the rock-solid Paul Pierce over James and – of course – the Knicks’ point guard Raymond Felton over Wade.

It’s good to see Rose out there though, along with Howard.

In the end, it doesn’t matter one bit what anyone thinks about aforementioned ten players – what does count is the certainty that they’ll put up one hell of a show on February 20th.

BE SURE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

SLAM writer Tzvi Twersky lived the dream yesterday, having been invited by Jordan Brand to try out their brand-new Jordan 2011 sneaker. On the Madison Square Garden hardwood. As LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the rest of the Miami Heat sat courtside. (Now that’s what I call 'pressure'! 'Pressure'!)

Come Oscar Time

It ain’t always easy being a movie geek in Belgium. Come Oscar time, there’s this sense of frustration that takes a hold of us when we see the list of nominations: half of them are still weeks away from their Belgian release date and some of them don’t even make it to our cinema circuit.

Take this year’s list for Best Motion Picture: only five out of the ten got screening time around these parts – with ‘The Kids Are All Right’ only playing in a limited number of cinemas. ‘Black Swan’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘The Fighter’ (March 9th), ‘The King’s Speech’ (Feb. 23rd), ‘127 Hours’ (Feb. 16th) and ‘True Grit’ (Feb. 16th) are all slated for a future release.

I know, I know, the studios can’t give every movie the same worldwide release date as some marketing budgets are more limited than others, plus they have to see whether an American movie will ring bells with the European audience and so on. But still: just once, I’d like to know what I’m talking about when I put my Oscar predictions on the table.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it.

BEST MOTION PICTURE

This year’s Best Picture draft is a pretty strong one. Don’t think there’s one film lover out there that’s not dying to see movies like ‘The Fighter’, ‘Black Swan’ and ‘True Grit’, all of which have been proclaimed as ‘masterpieces’ in the specialized (and privileged) press.

‘Inception’ and ‘Toy Story 3’ aren’t too bad, and I’ve yet to see ‘Winter’s Bone’ (probably on Sunday), but I think it’ll be one of the others that wins out. Probably either ‘The Social Network’ or ‘The King’s Speech’.

ACTOR / ACTRESS PERFORMANCES

You must watch this Vanity Fair gallery of ‘True Contenders’ – aptly described as ‘an exclusive gallery of nominees set to fight (Bale), flit (Portman), stammer (Firth), and saw (Franco) their way to Oscar glory.’ Good stuff.

Judging from the hype surrounding Colin Firth’s performance in ‘The King’s Speech’ (he’s got a Golden Globe for Best Performance to back up that hype), I think it’s safe to say Firth’s got a fair chance of winning the ultimate award in Movieland.

On the actress side of things, I’d put my money on Natalie Portman (‘The Swan’) for the Leading Role award.

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE / DOCUMENTARY

There’s not much left for me to say anything about the other categories, except for the Best Animated Picture and Best Documentary. I found ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ very entertaining in the former, while I also thoroughly enjoyed ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ (‘the Banksy documentary’) in the latter.

Roight, I’m leaving you to it.

For now.

One Is None

If you've followed this blog for the past two weeks (and I'm very pleased to say there are more and more of 'you' each day), you probably know by now that I like to indulge myself with a beer from time to time.

Yesterday evening was one of those times. Along with me mates Da Boy Tommy, Bens Tiller and Ece, I went to this bar in Ghent called De Dulle Griet - 'The Angry Lady', for those of you who don't understand Dutch.

Before I go on, I must give you some background on the pubcrawl habits myself and me mates foster (pun not intended). About each week, we get together to have a brew, and we choose the locations to do so very carefully.

Very rarely you'll find us in some trendy lounge bar, sipping away at a Mojito as Kruder & Dorfmeister or Yonderboi tunes play in the background - NO: we're those guys you'll find singing along to 'Ein Knallrotes Gummiboot' in a dingy bar, run by an old lady with fewer teeth in her mouth than she has customers. More often than not, you'll see us initiating a 'farandoleke' and maybe even an 'avalanche'.

I dunno, there's something disarmingly honest about those run-down places where you'll find only the 'lowest' (at least by popular standards) denominator of the population: people who've had their share of life's struggles and frequent the bar to escape the drag of daily life.

The most interesting people you'll ever meet are not to be found at da club where everyone is mostly staring at each other instead of talking and 'looking cool' is the main occupation. No: they're right there, at that pub around the corner where you see the same people sitting behind the counter as you pass by, day in, day out.

Take the 'Monopole' near the station in Ghent. Now that's a réal old people's bar, with an interior that probably hasn't changed since the 60's: glass-in-lead windows, brownish mirrors against the wall, old, wooden tables with plastic covers, all lit by the brightest and coldest TL-light.

We've been going there for a couple of months now, and during that time we got to know it's most colorful punter: Fons Sijmons, ex-bassplayer in one of the best Flemish poprock bands ever (The Scabs). Fons is by far the most legendary figure the Belgian rock'n'roll scene has ever seen. And he's got a bevy of nicknames to prove it: 'Rampenfons' (it's funnier in Dutch), 'Disaster-Inducing Fons' and so on.

Apparently, Fons once achieved the remarkable feat of preparing a bath for one of his fellow bandmates or one of the roadies of the Scabs crew, which resulted in a flooding of the hotel lobby where he stayed.

Nowadays, The Scabs still play, but Fons isn't there anymore. Drug issues and legal problems got the better of him and he spends most of his days at the Monopole. (His daughter 'Reena Riot' incidentally, does a real good job as a singer-songwriter. If only her dad would follow her lead and crawl back onto the stage.)

Long story short: those kind of slouchy bars are our favourites, as the elevators of the people, who frequent them, don't go all the way to the top anymore; the conversations to be had there are honest and real; there's lots of space to hang out or sit; plus most of the time they've got those old jukeboxes which warrant great background music.

I must say, however, that De Dulle Griet in Ghent, though very old (it's got its name from a big-a$$ cannon which was built in the 15th century; the inn came shortly after), is not a slouchy establishment. It's beautifully decorated with old artefacts (flags, tin cups, standards, gramophones, paintings) and the service is splendid.

The main reason to go to De Dulle Griet - if you really need one - is because they've got a very special kind of beer: the Max. The Max ain't special because of its taste (it's a typical Belgian brew), but because of the way it's presented.

A Max comes in a 1,2 liter glass of about 30 cm in height. While the beer goes out for a mere €9,40, the glass itself costs around 90 euro. Because De Dulle Griet has had problems with tourists running off with their Max glasses, they now oblige people to relinquish one shoe when they order the beer. The shoe then gets hoisted to the ceiling in a metal basket.

What can I say, it's a special experience, drinking this Max beer. The fun begins even before you put the glass to your lips, because your shoe gets taken away from you.

So yesterday, that was a good start to our evening. We continued our pubcrawl - after first having made fun of some tap dancers, who were practicing in a showroom next to a bar - at café Jos. Next up was the Porter's House, where Bens and me kicked Da Boy Tommy's and Ece's a$$ in table soccer, and after that DBT (who's also known as 'MLP' - 'Monsieur Le Président') and yours truly had a final beer at the Cuba Libre before we hit the road.

And if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to the Charlie Rockets, out here in Bruges, to teach me ole mate (and birthday pal) Laurens a thing or two about pool.

Happy Trails!

DM

Tron: Legacy **

"Baby be a simple, kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son
If you can?"

I'd like to believe I'm a simple man. I'm polite, well-mannered and most of the time, aside from the odd night out, I keep to myself.

After a hectic day at work, it's also very simple for me to relax. I go to the cinema, grab a couple of beers and lean back in one of those cosy multiplex seats to watch a dumb movie. The train of my thoughts then comes to a screeching halt - I love it.

And let there be no doubt about it: 'Tron: Legacy' is one of those dumb-a$$ Hollywood movies which cost a mint and suck a lot - though you shouldn't let that fact get into the way of enjoying every damn second of it.

It's flashy, fast and well-produced. In other words: it's everything the original 'Tron' (1982) is not. I watched that movie a couple of years ago and I can't recall anything from that experience apart from the fact that we rrrreally enjoyed the old-school special effects used in the film.

In short, 'Tron' was born after animator Steven Lisberger saw the arcade game 'Pong' for the first time (that was 1976), and the visual effects don't really encompass that play of lines against a black background, with people acting in front of that background. In fact, most of the 'effects' in 'Tron' were achieved through 'backlit animation', a common technique back in the seventies, with disco and neon and that being all the rage back then.

(Weird fun facts: 1. There's only fifteen minutes of computer-generated action in 'Tron', which was made with a computer housing a 2 MB working memory and a 330 MB storage space; 2. 'Tron' cost 17 million dollars to make and 'grossed' 33 million dollars worldwide as the game accompanying the film outgrossed the movie; 3. Most of the live action was filmed in black and white and was later colored in by a team of 500 animators. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

'Tron' was a revolutionary in more than one way - along with the original 'Star Wars' movies it paved the way for the 3D-extravaganzas we get in our multiplexes today.

Which means it's also responsible for 'Tron: Legacy'. Should we really be happy about that? Depends on what you're expecting when you buy a ticket to see the film. If you're out for two hours of unparrallelled 3D-action, the breathtaking Olivia Wilde and some brooding, futuristic Daft Punk tunes; you'll have a ball.

On the other hand: if you expect to be entertained by ways of such things as 'a plot' and 'dialogue', it's safe to say you'll probably start wincing in your seat after half an hour.

I'm a simple man who got out of it what he wanted, so I'll give it two stars.

ANOTHER SUBJECT I'D LIKE TO TOUCH ON TODAY

The second 'low-tech broadcast' by the Ageing Alternative Icon who goes by the name of Henry Rollins: it's good, though listening to tunes by The Buzzcocks, Misfits, Black Flag and the Damned got me more riled up than I should've been after a looooong day at work.

Nonetheless: I enjoyed songs such as 'Casper The Homosexual-Friendly Ghost' by The Wesley Willis Fiasco and 'Loner With A Boner' by Black Randy & The Metrosquad (incidentally, that title would be a good name for this blog).

Anyway, as Rollins aka the Chief Fanatic points out, it's a show "in which we explore and indeed peel back the layers". If you don't like what you hear, you'll find that the music will stop once you press that button which says 'STOP'. The Low-Tech Broadcasts are there to take you on a journey through Underground Alternative Music.

I find the recurring Bill Hicks fragments quite amusing as well (on the Americans providing Iran with WMD's, then fighting them because they accuse them of possessing WMD's: (imitating George Bush's voice:) "We know they've got those weapons... We just looked at the receipt! Just waiting for that check to clear and we're ready to go in there!"), and the fact Rollins played 'Break 'Em Off Some' by Cypress Hill was a nice coincidence as I had just downloaded the entire CH back catalogue.

BEFORE I GO

I'd like to welcome another blog to my Links section: Storm. Storm and me go way back to the 'ancient' Molbardinho Chatblogs - so here's to a good ole cybertastic reunion.

Happy trails,
DM

The Day The Earth Stood Still

There are those moments that'll stay with you forever. Of all the seconds that came before that instant when you heard the news or experienced something, and all of the seconds that came after it, you'll remember that one, single split-second when the earth stood still, as if it had just happened - what the weather was like, who was there with you and what you were doing.

Nothing would ever be the same again. There's the time before what had happened, and the time afterwards. Pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Pre-birth of my sister and post-birth of my sister. That kind of thing. Pre-formation of the Belgian gov - eeeeer, no.

All of this to say: everybody's got those moments, and they're different to each one of us. I'm sure most of you don't remember where you were or what you were doing when you heard that the legendary F1 driver Ayrton Senna had gone.

I remember it like it was yesterday: on May 1st, 1994, on a beautiful spring afternoon, eleven days before my 11th birthday, I was standing on the bridge over the pond in the garden of my parent's house when my dad came out and told me the news.

We had been watching a couple of hours earlier when Senna, leading the pack in the seventh lap of the Italian Grand Prix, shunted straight into the wall at the Tamburello corner - that same infamous corner where the likes of Nelson Piquet and Gerhard Berger had crashed and walked away.

It was immediately clear that something had gone wrong. There was no fire, the monocoque of Senna's Williams seemed intact and no other cars were involved... it was just that the man with the yellow helmet didn't move.

Back in those days, with helmets not being resistant to 800°C heat and with cars not being quite as strong as the carbon-fibre fortresses they are now, drivers not moving after a heavy impact was an ominous sign. My dad, who was (and still is) a diehard Senna devotee, now says he immediately knew that things would never be the same again. His passion for F1, which had started some twenty-odd years earlier, died that very instant.

My passion for Formula One was only burgeoning, though I felt tears well up when I realised Senna was gone as I had grown fond of him the couple of years that came before - especially as I watch my father jump for joy each time the Brazilian took home his McLaren in first position.

(I still, to this day, envy Dad as he had been able to obtain a paddock pass back in 1990 for the Belgian Grand Prix. He pretended to be a camera man, carrying with him  the Sony HI8 he normally used to make family clips - which was enough for the FIA officials to let him wander around in the Francorchamps pit straight from garage to garage, even talking to Jean Alesi and Thierry Boutsen. (Again: things were different in F1 back then.) He can still recall the moment when he was on the inside of the La Source hairpin when Senna came thundering down the main straight. Dad says he stared straight into the Brazilian's eyes when he slowed down and curled around La Source. Damn.)

So anyway, the reason I felt like digging all of this up is because of a beautiful article I read today in F1 Racing (the world's second best magazine next to SLAM). It's written by Matt James and it tells the story of how erstwhile Williams team manager Ian Harrison experienced the 1994 season, including that fatal 1st of May when one of the most charismatic sports icons ever passed away.

It's a special story because never before has the modal F1 fan gotten such a close insight into the day that changed his favorite sport forever. Numerous documentaries have been made, countless words have been written and too many people have vented their take on things - but up till now (at least until this much-anticipated documentary sees the light of day), no-one has taken me this close to that first day of May '94 as Ian Harrison did.

An excerpt from this journalistic masterpiece reads as follows: "I remember looking at it (Senna's crash; DM) and after probably about ten seconds I just started saying: 'Move, move.' We'd seen Ayrton twitch inside the car and that represented movement. So there was hope. Initially. (...) Then there was nothing. It just stopped. It became obvious that there was a bit of an issue but nobody knew how serious it was."

Not only do you get a testament of the aftermath of the crash unfolding through the eyes of a Williams insider by reading this story; it also tells you how much Formula One has developed since then. In 1994, pitstops were just being re-introduced, as was the use of the Safety Car. Pre-race meetings were a lot more simple than they are today and strategy was much more of a Fingerspitzengefühl affair than it is today.

In the end, Harrison is adamant: "It happened because it was one of the first times a Safety Car was used; the tyre pressures were low, the car was running low anyway and it was full of fuel. If you looked at the in-car footage from Schumacher's Benetton you could see the car was bottoming out really bad from the restart. It was probably a combination of all those things that caused the shunt. I'm not an engineer but I think the thing bottomed out and Ayrton lost the front end."

He goes on to proclaim that Senna probably would've won the 1994 World Championship. Sadly, we'll never know. And I'm pretty sure that aye lot of F1 fans don't know who was World Champion that year, having stopped entirely watching Formula One post-Senna's death...

A Slow Burner

Yesterday, mere hours after having watched quite a weighty film (see below), I picked up my friend Reinhilde and drove all the way to Brussels to attend a housewarming party, thrown by Piman da Himp and Katrien.

(Nevermind that they settled into the house several months ago; any reason to party is a good reason. Who needs reasons to party anyway? I, for one, don't. I just do.)

The party could be described as, if you're familiar with festive vernacular, a 'slow burner' - starting off calm but culminating in chaos, anarchy and boobies. This was in no small part the merit of the music on my iPod (ranging from Milk Inc. over Tiga to Zangeres Zonder Naam), but the party also featured a great mix of pretty people and tasty beverages.

Have you ever, by any chance, seen the 'Party In Your Stomach' clip on YouTube? If you haven't, please click this link.

"Who always shows up at the end of the party", Jim Breuer asks, and he continues to answer his own question: "Tequila. And tequila doesn't show up alone - there's always eight or nine of 'em lined up. Like an idiot, your stomach lets in one shot of tequila, and then he sneaks in all of his friends when nobody's watching."

That's exactly how things went yesterday, and the situation derailed shortly afterwards - to the extent that Piman and Katrien must've thought they ended up somewhere in 80's Beirut when they entered their living room this morning...

When overseeing the ravages, the memories must've come back quickly: the dirty dancing, the wrapping with kitchen paper, the French kissing (though I had sadly already left the building at that point) and the tequila grimacing.

It was that kind of party which you talk about weeks on afterwards, and certain elements of the evening seem to come back out of thin air to those who were lucky enough to attend the event. That's the kind of party you want, 'slow burner' or otherwise.

BY THE WAY

A week after my main man Bakerman travelled off to Thailand, my favourite lighthouse girl, who goes by the name of Annelie, leaves for Sweden. You can follow the incredible adventures she'll undoubtedly experience via this link. (Though I have no idea why she chose the obscure 'Weebly' as her blogging interface.)

Anyway: godspeed, Annelie!

Have a good week, everyone.

Waltz With Bashir ***

Yesterday, after coming home from swimming at the Jan Guilini pool in Bruges and reading the newspaper and drinking coffee at the local Pain Quotidien, I found out, to my great dismay, that my Telenet Digicorder apparatus hadn't recorded the Denver Nuggets / LA Lakers game on Prime Sport - the sole Belgian channel that broadcasts NBA games.

Our (my housemate Jerre and me) two-week tryout subscription to the digital channel had expired, so that was kind of a bummer.

I had to look for an alternative, and scanning through the recordings on the Digicorder, I stumbled upon 'Waltz With Bashir' - a film that I had meant to watch for a long time; I just didn't get to it.

Probably because it looked like a risky film: an animation pic about mass slaughter in Lebanese refugee camps at the beginning of the 80's? That kind of movie can make or break your evening.

Well yesterday, although I was deeply moved by it's shocking ways, 'Waltz With Bashir' made my afternoon. It's not a movie you must watch to feel happy: it's themes are loss of innocence, losing your loved ones and the fact that you can't escape your past - you can try to forget but the memories will haunt you in your dreams.

That's exactly how the film kicks off: Israeli director Ari Folman keeps having this dream about 26 dogs chasing him. There are always 26 of them, and he doesn't understand why this nightmare deprives him of his sleep night in, night out.

The recurring dream may stem from his experiences as a soldier in the First Lebanon War in 1982, when Israeli forces invaded Lebanon to eradicate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasser Arafat (remember him?). Apparently, Folman had pushed away the memories to the awful things he saw to that extent that they had been practically erased.

In 'Waltz With Bashir', he attempts to reconstruct what happened to him by interviewing his fellow privates, who had been at his side during battle.

Not only is the film beautifully made (each frame is hand-crafted and not rotoscoped like they did with 'A Scanner Darkly'), scored with catchy contemporary music (such as 'Enola Gay' performed by OMD); it also touches on deep-human subjects which will leave even the most arduent cynist catching his breath.

The images are very atmospheric, bathed in deep-brown and fresh-green, and they radiate a constant feeling of threat.

The film touches on the very sensitive topic which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but still manages to strike a thoughtful tone, without picking sides too much (which is a feat in itself). In the end, 'Waltz With Bashir' shows the agony of war and how people, who have no quarry with anybody, end up in terrible situations. It shows how they try to stay human in a world filled with death and destruction.

Especially the final act, which focuses on the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, left a deep impression on me. The atrocities, committed by the Christian Phalangist death squadrons, are shown in a veiled way - though the last images; real news images which were made days after the bloodbath took place, leave no doubts that this was one of mankind's darkest hours.

(Normally I'd be at the demonstration in Brussels today, to protest against the fact that Belgium still - 224 days and counting; we're headed to an world record - has no government, but after seeing the images of the mangled-up bodies at Sabra and Shatila I just thought to myself 'Why even bother. I'm not gonna spend my time giving a signal to those no-good politicians that they just have to do their jobs and get on with it'.)

After seeing 'Waltz With Bashir', everything seems trivial. The movie makes you think, and that's probably one of it's most important merits. We should never forget what happened out there, back in 1982.