gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Bascitbol

I'm off to see the Raptors take on the Atlanta Hawks tonight. And, like any hoops fan, I'm presented with a serious pre-game question: what to wear?

See, I do own a Raptors jersey. Two, actually. The problem is with the names on the back: Charlie Villanueva (traded to Milwaukee for T.J. Ford) and Vince Carter (traded to New Jersey for a bag of gym socks).

And of course, the Raps have switched their colour scheme from purple to red, accentuating my out-of-fashionness. Team uniforms are a model of planned obsolesence, like iPods (except you can't hide them in your pocket.)

But I've found a solution for tonight's wardrobe malfunction.

Last year, my daughter (then four) decided to design a T-shirt for me with a basketball theme. And, though I've yet to wear it out of the house, I love it.

The "BASCITBOL" shirt features a game between four teams she dreamt up: the Tigers (TiGRS), the Polar Bears (POLRBARS), the Butterflies (BUtRFLiS) and the Polkadots (POCAbotS).

[Anyone who doesn't like the name Raptors should be glad my daughter didn't win the naming contest. Though the Toronto Polkadots has a certain ring to it....]

Below this scoreboard is a scene of half a dozen basketball players leaping for the ball. Some of the details really made my day:

- There are six little guys flailing around, plus one guy who is an absolute giant, coloured black. She's never heard of Shaq, so I think it's an attempt at drawing Chris Bosh. He's clearly dominating, which is cool. I wish I could show it to him.

- The players actually have jerseys with basketball players shooting the rock on them.

- On two of the guys, including the giant, she attempted to draw bums between their legs. But the end result looks like very generous... um... well, what Chuck Swirsky calls "onions."

I'm currently wearing this T-shirt at work, underneath a golf shirt. But I think I'll have a couple of beers then and flaunt it proudly at the game. Onions, baby!

Underage Smacktalkers

I'm in a pretty competitive Yahoo! fantasy basketball league (which I won last year), and we just drafted our teams on Sunday night.

I lucked out, getting first pick overall (LeBron James, of course), but I'm quite happy with the rest of my roster too.

The same cannot be said for my brother-in-law Rob, who didn't prerank enough players and ended up with "Dallas' equivalent of Darrick Martin" on his bench.

His team is called the Overpaid Smacktalkers. To cheer him up, I had my daughters (ages 3 & 5) record the arena announcement of his starting roster. Have a listen:

MP3 (1.5 Mb)

Here's his roster:

• Baron Davis (GS - PG)
• Kobe Bryant (LAL - SG)
• Vince Carter (NJ - SG,SF)
• Antawn Jamison (was - SF,PF)
• Al Harrington (Ind - SF,PF)
• Troy Murphy (GS - PF)
• Shaquille O'Neal (Mia - C)
• P.J. Brown (Chi - PF,C)
• Sam Cassell (LAC - PG)
• Ben Gordon (Chi - PG, SG)
• Derek Fisher (Uta - PG)
• Jumaine Jones (Pho - SF)
• Michael Finley (SA - SG,SF)
• Anthony Johnson (Dal - PG)

Cute, huh? Well, I think so. I got the idea when the three-year-old was looking at my fantasy basketball magazine, asking the names of the people in the pictures. I told her, and she repeated them with what I thought was remarkable clarity.

So I got out my minidisc recorder and had her repeat the names. The five-year-old wanted in, of course, and repeated the names too. The remarkable thing is that she's never been to a sporting event, and has never heard an arena announcer (e.g. Herbie Kuhn, above, introducing "Your Torontooooooooooooo RAP-Tors!"). Yet my little girl hammed up each name just like they do - it must come with the microphone.

I cleaned it up a little in Sound Forge, and there you have it. Uncle Robbie and I are probably the only ones who find this amusing. Unless Jumaine Jones checks my blog...

Golden State Worriers

Last night as I was putting my four year old to bed, she asked if I was going to watch television after she fell asleep. I told her I was planning on watching the Blue Jays play baseball against the Mariners. I then had to explain what a mariner is (easy enough) and why baseball players wanted to be called that (less easy.)

She then wanted to know what other teams were called. Lying on her floor in the dark, I rattled off all the professional sports franchises I could remember, while she passed judgment on whether or not their names were any good.

Some of it was interesting (she immediately noted the preponderance of bird and animal names), some of it was tricky (“Daddy, what’s a Redskin?”) and some of it was downright hilarious (she nearly wet the bed laughing at “Mighty Ducks”.)

Here, for your amusement, are a few of her actual observations:

Dad: Golden State Warriors.
Daughter: What’s a warrior?
Dad: Someone who is brave and fights a lot.
Daughter: Warriors aren’t brave. They worry all the time. Like Wemberly.
Dad: Warriors, not “worriers”.
Daughter: Oh.

Dad: Pittsburgh Steelers.
Daughter: Do they take stuff?
Dad: Huh?
Daughter: Like Swiper on Dora. Steal things.
Dad: Different kind of steel, with an “e”. It means someone who works with metal.
Daughter: Do they work with metal?
Dad: No.

Dad: Denver Nuggets.
Daughter: What’s a nugget?
Dad: A small bit of rock, or gold.
Daughter: Or chicken!
Dad: True! But I don’t think they’d want to be called the Denver McNuggets.
Daughter: Me neither.

Dad: New England Patriots.
Daughter: I’m not interested in that.

Dad: L.A. Clippers.
Daughter: That makes me think of hair clips.
Dad: A clipper is also a sailboat.
Daughter: Or toenail clippers.

Dad: Cleveland Browns.
Daughter: Brown isn’t pretty. Red is pretty.
Dad: Well, there are the Cincinnati Reds…
Daughter: Are they pretty?
Dad: Not really.

Dad: Chicago Bears.
Daughter: You already said Grizzlies and Cubs. There are Bears too?
Dad: Yep.
Daughter: They could be a family.
Dad: Yep.
Daughter: But they don’t really look like bears, just like grown-ups. Right?
Dad: Yep.

Dad: Buffalo Bills.
Daughter: Buffalo don’t have bills. Ducks have bills! That’s silly!

Dad: Atlanta Hawks.
Daughter: Zzzzzzzz.
Dad: I agree entirely.

Tags: sports, team names, kids, golden state warriors, denver nuggets, buffalo bills, clippers, gorbould