Laser Floyd hits Phoenix

Laser Floyd came to Phoenix this weekend. The tickets were pretty reasonable, getting around and parking in Phoenix is much easier than the typical big city, and it was quite a display.

All Star Jam Session Crazy Dunk

The NBA All Star Game was in Phoenix this weekend. I went to NBA Jam on Monday and saw this dude pull one crazy stunt -- a backflip slam dunk

Lil Hammerhead outed as Roberta Guerrero

Saipan is too small an island for things to remain a secret for too long. Today Roberta Guerrero was seen editing her "Must Be the Humidity" blog at Java Joes. That's Lil Hammerhead on the left with Killili Sablan and Tina Sablan, the two people her blog is dedicating to venerating -- and who happen to be by far the two best CNMI leaders out there. I'm sure about Roberta. I have two sources. This isn't guesswork or speculation. There is an eyewitness. Beyond that, when you're married to a Filipina who has been on the island for fifteen years, you join a network that gets you a lot of eyes and ears in a lot of places. I knew this would happen eventually.

Comments were made about this on Monkey Picture's blog, and the comments were deleted. I followed up with the same comments, and she deleted mine as well. It's a designed conversation after all. What a phony! She never deleted it or went so bananas when people said Lil Hammerhead was Ed Propst, but she's going ballistic now. Ed has always stood by his own comments anyway. I'm going to write a very short letter to the editor about this to the Marianas Variety because the squirming will be delicious. Heck, maybe she'll get a Stanley Torres resolution, or maybe he'll buy her a drink. So, the secret is out there. "Must Be the Humidity" is written by Roberta Guerrero, who was described to me as one of the "Godfather's Hags." I don't know anything about her, but the fight is now fair. This cockroach has a big flashlight on her and she's scurrying. Feel free to vent about Roberta -- especially if you are anonymous --- the more salacious the better. She certainly had no problem doing that anonymously to many others. Get ready to take the heat Roberta. I can just imagine you dropping that coffee cup at Java Joes -- kind of like a reverse Dave Kujan at the end of The Usual Suspects when he realizes who Keyser Soze is.

Update: Roberta is not taking her newfound fame very well. Roberta is also getting googled up a storm. She is screeching like a banshee about me in two posts on her blog. My prediction is that she fades away or starts anew under a different name now that she's been outed and the other side can fire back at her. Such is the way of the gutless. Some are trying to muddle the simple truth about Roberta, but it's out there now and you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube no matter how hard you try.

Update Number Two: Here have been the tactics Roberta has used to sweep this under the rug. First, let's just delete all the comments and references to Roberta Guerrero. That didn't work, so she moved on to number two: Bruce Bateman said something mean. Let's call MVA and make this about Bruce. When the absurdity of that was dismissed, she went to number three: I will sue this blogger because this post hurt my feelings. After that silliness is dismissed, I can't wait to see number four. Roberta is up to like five posts about me. She can't get enough. This has made her more unhinged than I ever dreamed. The last leg of her rocker has been shattered like a bat after a Mariano Rivera cutter. Someone commented about doing a full background check on Roberta and having it published. While I'm not going there on this blog, I wonder how she'll react if and when those people follow through. My guess, not well at all.

If you build it, they might not come

Part of the reason I left Saipan is that I wanted my boys to have better access to sports both as players and fans. For me, major league baseball and professional football rank very high on the interest scale -- with the NBA a very distant third. This wasn't always the case. I remember very distinctly my father taking me to see Julius Erving play in the Spectrum circa 1980 and that ignited a strong interest in the NBA. I went to the 1982 NBA All Star Game in New Jersey, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was horrible that day, and many other games with my dad or my Uncle Freddy. I watched the famous 1980 Lakers Sixers tape delayed NBA finals on a Friday night late at my grandmother's house with my uncle and was not happy with the result.

That interest in the NBA faded drastically while my interest in major league baseball increased dramatically. I've probably been to at least 100 major league games and have seen many different stadiums. My boys are very much into basketball, which is an interest they developed on their own. With some encouragement they really got into the NFL and football in general this year. Despite some mild prodding by me, they don't seem to give a hoot about baseball.

I was talking to one of my colleagues, who is also the athletic director at my school and a baseball coach, and he was relating that he barely has enough players to get a baseball team together. This is out in sunny, nearly rainless Arizona where a kid could play baseball year round. The ones who do come out for baseball, he said, tend to be the chubbiest, least athletic sort -- who are mostly afraid of the ball. Many teens find baseball "boring" -- they find most everything boring, but that's another rant for another day. My colleague thinks baseball is about twenty years from being dead in this country, and I think he might be right. Major league baseball, for the moment, continues to post record revenues, but I've been to enough games to know that it is a very gray haired and white demographic at those games. I've spent enough time in Asia to know that basketball is rising there, and baseball barely exists, though it certainly holds sway in Japan and to a small extent in Korea, but I'm a bit worried that our "National Pastime" is falling victim to today's prolific ADHD culture.

I'm not going to fight the trend too much. Right now I'm coaching my son Carl, who is on the sixth grade boys basketball team at school. He is by far the smallest kid in his class, but he is really an amazing ball handler. We did get smoked in our first game, and while this didn't came as a surprise to me, I found out real quick I'm not exactly John Wooden. I'm hoping to get him in a basketball camp this summer so he can develop his skills. We have three games coming up this week, and I think our team will improve. I'm going to make him at least try little league this spring. I think he might change his mind about the game.

Action shots

She has two big brothers and a protective dad helping her enjoy her first ever slide.