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Caveat: I can’t do footnotes here so I have substituted parentheses. Sue me.

I just finished reading Bill The Sports Guy Simmons’ “The Book of Basketball” and I have two things to say:

1) I absolutley devoured it, loved it, and will probably read it again so I can pick up the parts that I missed when I was a bit sloshed.

2) I am wicked pissed.

I grew up in the Boston area but I was never really a basketball fan, so I never became a Celtics fan. I was a one sport dude – the NFL.

In 1984, at the tender age of 25, I moved to LA (LA in the mid-80′s, 25, and single. Let’s just say that fun was had and brain cells were killed). A good buddy of mine from college had also moved there and he was a basketball junkie. So I started paying attention to the NBA while we were out for after-work beers, and I just simply got hooked on the Lakers (Showtime), and by association (no pun intended) the NBA in general.

Those were the days. For a sporting event, you just could not beat the Lakers vs. the Celtics (or, really, the Lakers vs. anyone and the Celtics vs. anyone). And here’s the thing. At the time, the true Lakers fans did not hate the Celtics (except for Danny Ainge). We wanted to beat the crap out of them, but only because we respected them. Beating the Celtics was validation that you truly had a good team.

But the Pistons? We H-A-T-E-D them. Everyone did. Including people who did not even follow the NBA. I think there were extraterrestrials that hated them.

So anyway, Bill The Sports Guy Simmons writes this seven thousand page book and never once gives credit to the ’89 Lakers and the Magic/Byron backcourt. By 1989, Magic and Byron were in the ESP zone (get it?). They could pretty much do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. That does not make Byron Scott a Pyramid guy, but it does make him the perfect complementary guard for the Magic/Lakers backcourt.

To irritate Bill The Sports Guy Simmons, I will now give statistics to prove my point.

Regular season? Whoops, not so good here. But you gotta give Magic and Byron credit for dragging Kareem around for his final year. And the Lakers were cruising off of two championships, so they knew what it takes to get the championship. Cruise in the regular season, go full out for the playoffs. (They did just this, but I have to mention that one of the few things that irritate me about Magic is his “Winnin’ Time” slogan attempt. I mean, he tried, but it just didn’t work.)

Playoffs? Since 1984, there are only two teams that have gone undefeated in the Conference First Round, the Conference Semis, and the Conference Finals. The 2001 Lakers and the 1989 Lakers. The 2001 Lakers got props in Bill The Sports Guy’s book. The 1989 Lakers? No mention. Here are the pre-Finals records for Bill The Sports Guy Simmon’s Elite Ten (post-1983):

The ’91 Bulls: 11-1

The ’97 Bulls: 11-2

The ’01 Lakers: see above

The ’89 Pistons: 11-2 (Lost two games to the Bulls before MJ knew how to win. Two games. Yeah, what a juggernaut.)

The ’87 Lakers: 11-1

The ’96 Bulls: 11-1

The ’86 Celtics: 11-1 (Oh, the vaunted ’86 Celtics lost a game? To the Hawks? In the Conference Semis? Gimme a break.)

It just goes to show how hard it is to win 11 games in a row during the NBA playoffs. But the 1989 Lakers did it. And then, just before the ’89 Finals, Magic and Byron got hamstring injuries and could not play. Guess what happened after that. No Three-Peat. (By the way, I threw in the Three-Peat reference just to irritate Bill The Sports Guy Simmons.)

Outside of the stats, you just had to be there. We knew the Lakers were going to win. It was a given. A lock. Like knowing that the latest episode of “24″ is going to end in a cliffhanger.

And then our backcourt got a hammy. Fuck the ’89 Pistons. Fuck Isiah and Rodman. And and extra-double-Fuck Bill Laimbeer.

Bill Simmons, you are the Bill Walton of NBA writing. Truly gifted (style, substance) but fatally flawed (Laker hatred). And stop sucking up to Isiah. With Magic and Byron healthy, the ’89 Pistons would have gone down in 4.

This weekly installment of our Guest Mock series is being handled by our pal DTO.  Who continues to crack my shit up.  You can catch him over here for more. I highly suggest you check it out.

And now for the cruel, cruel mockery….

About a year or so ago, I was passed on some words of wisdom. I guess it was wisdom because words of wisdom can sometimes make no sense whatsoever. The words have been stuck in my head and eating away at my every sense of rationale, looking for the true meaning of the seemingly sage advice. I have played it over and over in my mind, taking it apart word for word and even going so far as to write it down and change the words around to perhaps chance upon the true cryptic message begging to be heard by all of mankind. At times it would lead me into the deep funk of depression, feeling alone and abandoned. Could I be the only one who just doesn’t get it.? Are people laughing at me, knowing all the time the meaning is obvious?

I have always taken pride in myself of being able to grasp words of wisdom and find the meaning in philosophical quips. Things like…”It is the calm soul who hears the breaking wind”. And, “To go there, you must start here”. And, “He who travels to learn, learns to travel”. And…”Face away from the wind when you seek relief”.

So you can see and imagine my surprise and frustration in not being able to decipher and bring into my daily life, another piece of the puzzle in life’s mystery. It is only now for the first time ever I will admit to all who read my words, I am at a loss and ask for advice. I can no longer torture myself and those around me who take me for a fool. I must surrender to the wiser and calm my soul so that I too can once again hear the breaking wind.

Please help me in my goal to learn the meaning of… “It takes a village to write a good dick joke”.

If you’d like to contribute a Friday Guest Mock please send it to mockable[at]gmail.com  If it’s funny and won’t get us sued, we’ll most likely feature it at the site.  And don’t forget to include the address to your blog or website, so we can link back at ya.  Thanks!

The plant life was dead. We punched in at three and out at twelve and for eight hours performed as thoughtless robots operating on static habit alone. The only deviations we knew were our own personal, transient pains and discomforts. We would have welcomed real sickness but received the company newsletter instead. I still don’t feel guilty for what happened.

The raw idea of listening to other people’s thoughts is instantly intriguing and, when actually realized, downright exciting. However, the undeniable innocence of our first “study” only managed to remind us of just how immoral our actions actually were. But, perhaps because of our dulled state of mind, our fuckit glands took over.

We gained access to Sammy’s world through a back door that had been left unlocked for us.  A sympathetic night foreman, named Sahley, recognized our sorry situation and allowed us, without involvement, to use the new equipment for our own selfish entertainment. Immediately life at The Piedmont Surveillance Company switched gears.

Piedmont was testing a very expensive and controversial anti-robbery device that allowed businesses and institutions the privilege of learning a person’s intentions by reading his thoughts, and pumping them into a headset.

As a customer entered an establishment he passed through an invisible beam that instantly read and translated his thoughts into a hum. If a customer hummed like a refrigerator, he was OK. If he hummed like a barber, he was suspect. Piedmont hoped to keep barbers out of all convenience stores by the end of the decade.

Sahley and the Piedmont employees knew that the hum was only a gimmick to prevent an outcry of protest, that minds were being read plain and simple. Sahley also saw a morale problem and production decreasing during his shift. He was a desperate man.

So, Sahley allowed the master beam to be turned on an unsuspecting fifteen year old newspaper carrier in the suburbs on November lst. He allowed the boy’s secret thoughts to be broadcast over the public address system at Piedmont during the night. And it had the desired effect.

Workers rushed to the plant to find out hew Sammy had fared in his latest battle with his parents. They cheered his drunken optimism. They howled at his fear of females. And they grew silent when he was having “alone time.” Production increased and Sahley  received a way-to-go raise.

At night, after work, I would invariably think of Sammy. Not about the lustful fantasies he cooked up or the comical predicaments he always found himself in, but the fact that his privacy was being invaded to a degree that I had never dreamt possible. He was a young man who, sitting across from his buddies at McDonald’s, would think, “Jeez, what an asshole,” just like any normal person does from time to time.  Only Sammy’s passing thoughts were booming out of speakers in a cavernous warehouse across town, and eliciting cheers.

Sammy’s every daydream between the hours of three and twelve became subject to our voyeuristic considerations. But I cannot deny that the sound of the time-clock punching me in became more satisfying than the sound of it punching me out. I felt ashamed, almost un-American.

But a funny thing happened on the way to nirvana — we grew bored. After stamping around in Sammy’s world for three months the repetitiveness of his thoughts began to get tiring. The novelty had worn itself out and a predictable rhythm took its place. We tried turning the beam on others but it just wasn’t fun anymore. A retarded girl offered us temporary solace but after awhile it just became more of the same. I think it was Brenda who first danced.

The beam was on a college professor and the rhythm of her predictable thoughts became intoxicating. Brenda dropped what she was doing and began to dance. She twirled and dipped, and kicked and stepped. She pulled Roy from behind his machine and together they danced to the steady syncopation of human thought. Eventually we all danced, together, within the corrugated walls of The Piedmont Surveillance Company.

Sahley confined the dancing to the break area, but allowed us to continue to listen in the shop. Our lunch hours became visits to the set of some bizarre Un-American Bandstand, with Roy as the host. Workers gyrated to the wild thoughts brought on by anger, and slow danced to self-pity.  Strobes and spot lights were eventually installed and platforms were built for multilevel dancing.

Production rose dramatically, despite the fact that the employees were getting little rest. Morale was at an all-time high. Sahley’s status as a genius rose with Piedmont’s profits. And Roy became a full blown celebrity.

But once again we eventually grew bored. Gimmicks did little to stave off the inevitable fall from grace. Rate-a-thought became popular (“it’s got a good beat and I kind of agree with it”) a but it was too little too late. Again the retarded girl was tapped but there were few jazz fusion fans at The Piedmont Surveillance Company during that time. Roy then started mixing real music in with the more traditional fare, in a last ditch effort to save his show.

Workers began using their breaks in a more conventional manner. They still listened, but few danced. And Roy noticed that they responded better to the records than to the “borrowed” thoughts, so he began playing more records.

Eventually we just bought a radio.