Do What You Feel Friday!: Lights Out

March 28, 2008 at 10:49 pm | Posted in DWYFF!, Sports, Video | 4 Comments
Tags: Chris Webber, Earth Hour, Egg McMuffin, Fab Five, stool softener

This will be a stretch.  But on a snowy Do What You Feel Friday, Lucy the Dog would like to draw your attention to three not-quite-related-but-we’ll-try items: Chris Webber, Herb Patterson, and your light switch.

Firstly, we wish a Happy Retirement to Chris Webber, who turned the lights out on his basketball career this week.

Like any good suburban whiteboy, Lucy the Dog idolized Michael Jordan as a young pup.  It was MJ that inspired me to beg Mom and Dad for an adjustable hoop. 

Little did I know that you can’t recreate The Lean or a foul line dunk without Jordan’s hangtime – even on an 8 1/2-foot rim in $120 sneakers.  However, you can hang on that rim and throw your legs around in a violent rage like Chris Webber.  And I did.  During Webber’s two years at Michigan, I rode the Fab Five bandwagon hard.  The shorts, the sneakers, the attidude, the joy, the failures.  I ate that shit up. 

Though I was more of a Jalen Rose guy, this shot of C-Webb hanging above a bewildered Lawrence Funderburke is one of my favorite photos of all time.  It hung on my bedroom wall for years, inspiring me to think that if I could experience just one pure, top-of-the-world, badass moment like that in my life, I would die happy.  (It violates the Lucy the Blog style specs to run a picture this large, but I can’t bring myself to shrink it down.)

 

He will never be mentioned with the all-time greats, but as J.D. Adande wrote beautifully on ESPN.com, “To watch Webber’s failures was endlessly more fascinating than to see most people’s successes.”  Another piece tangentially related to Webber recently appeared in Sports Illustrated, exploring our fascination with slam dunks.  Writer Chris Ballard notes that just as some of us will never stop gawking at boobs, we’ll never outgrow our obsession with dunks.  “It’s part instinct, part the lure of the unattainable and part the hope that we’ll see something spectacular.” 

So while Webber’s retirement saddened me as yet another sign that I’m getting old, it made me feel like a kid again to waste 20 minutes YouTubing through his dunks and finding that picture in the SI Vault.  Thanks, Chris.

Which brings us, naturally, to the Egg McMuffin.  Because also this week, it was lights out for McMuffin creator Herb Peterson, who on Tuesday set out for those golden arches in the sky.  As we say in the newspaper business: He was 89.

I was surprised to learn that McDonalds started serving the McMuffin way back in 1976.  I remember the first one I ate in eighth grade, on a church youth group missions trip to West Virginia.  That thing was delicious.  And there was this girl on the trip from Miami named Michelle Stroacey.  I totally wanted to make out with her face, a desire that she did not share.

Which brings us, naturally, to the international Earth Hour.  Tomorrow night between 8 and 9 p.m., millions of hundreds of thousands of hippie, socialist, no-good, do-gooders will turn out their lights to raise awareness of carbon footprints and what-not.  It’s a small act that goes a long way.  Won’t you join them?

I can’t claim to have any true scientific understanding of this global warming thing, but I do buy into the green reduce, recycle, re-…errrr…I know there’s a third one…ugh, am I going to have to Google it…reduce, recycle, reuse?  Is it reuse?  It must be.  Anyway, if the hippie, socialist, no-good, do-gooders are for it then I am too.  They usually get good weed after all, and I could totally use a new connection.  (Anyone?  Anyone?) 

In a related item, here’s a recent post from Left in Lowell on other things you can do to help the Earth.  I have some of those handy grocery bags she refers to, and let me tell you.  On the days when I actually remember to bring them with me to Hannaford’s, I enjoy an unparalleled feeling of superiority over the plastic bag users.  It makes it all worthwhile, though the bags are not nearly as handy for picking up my feces.

The point is, we should all take a moment this weekend to help save the planet.  Technically, the Saturday event doesn’t quite make sense for a Do What You Feel Friday post.  So perhaps you should not do what you feel on this Friday. 

Instead, do what you feel on Saturday.  And do it in the dark, between 8 and 9 p.m. 

Because if we don’t take care of the Earth, think of all the future Chris Webbers and Herb Pattersons who will never get the chance to make slam dunks and breakfast sandwiches.  Seriously.  Think about it.

RELATED:
Bet You Wish You Could Dunk by Chris Ballard, SI.com
Webber’s career path full of promise and pain by J.D. Adande, ESPN.com
Earth Hour