VOX

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Bitchey Brew

LA Remembered: Bullock's Wilshire

The LA of today is a strange animal; it hasn't forgotten its past, it's erased it. For locals, it's a source of nostalgia and bitterness.

My friend -- a native Angeleno now in DC -- was in town this week and we got caught up. Reveling in the LA weather and bitching about the DC food -- "the Chinese food, forget it. Worse than Panda express" -- we were standing near Sawtelle and Olympic at 2:30 on a Tuesday. I looked west down Olympic, then east; the traffic was backed up a good 3 blocks. I pointed it out to him and he just shook his head.

2:30. On a Tuesday. Seriously?

It's funny; EVERYONE trashes LA, and yet EVERYONE comes here. The locals have been overrun, and yet recently I've met a few and always raise the issue; "Not many of us left. Seems everyone's from New York or Chicago... anywhere but here."

Playa Vista conserves water: Yes they're plastic.

Drive down Lincoln these days by the marina and it's insane. HUGE, Blade Runner condos. Then there's the Playa Vista Stepford community reified in all of its banal horror, down to its plastic plants. What befits plastic people and their plastic lives more than plastic living?

And they've stacked these plastic Stepfords high, everywhere. Hank -- a local -- told me that they stack these nuvo Italo  monstrosities on top of a garage, that way they don't have to dig underground parking. When I got back a couple months ago, I went deep into the bowls of this horror show looking for a Coffee Bean to get caffeine and a work spot. Instead, I got coffee and walked around; it felt more fake than a studio lot, hyper fake, and with a cynical sneer. Another plastic duo with a kid comes into the cross hairs and it's time to cue This Circle Jerks' classic.

The LA of my childhood was so cool. Westwood Village used to cordon off the entire Village when it was a unique place, full of entrepreneurs. Huge crowds would just walk around everywhere. That some locals point to the shooting of that Japanese American gal as the beginning of the end, but I think it was something else; big commercial gentrification. Like ivy, the big corporations -- Music Plus, McDonald's 7 Eleven, The Wherehouse... -- all set up shop and stomped out the personality that was The Village. It became just like any other place with the same stores. It was boring.

Hollywood's always been seedy, but if you knew where to go it was living history. Larry Edmunds, of course, and Hollywood Book and Poster were must go destinations. I still have all my stills and one sheets. Musso & Franks, always over-rated food-wise in my book, but just dripping with history. And of course the Strip and its clubs and the off Strip clubs like the Starwood, the Palladium....

Then there was Mecca: Tower Records, where a limo would pull up and out would pop Nicolas Cage to shop. The locals were all, "eh," but you could always tell the noobs and tourists, falling out gawking.

It's the same thing with movie shoots. You come up here and it's all, "ho hum." Outsiders think movie making is SO glamorous. It's not. It's really boring watching peeps just standing around getting time and a half at scale.

The worst is what our politicians have let happen in terms of influx. There are, simply, too many mofos here. The locals are all old farts like me, dying out or simply sick of all the jerkoffs and have left. But what do the politicians do to alleviate the density? Why, they kiss the developers' big collective ass and let them overdevelop what used to be one cool city. In other words, their answer to over density is to bring in more mofos.

At least New York is compact and they have trains running everywhere. Not LA, as dystopian a city as any, with a unique breed of crazy. I still love it, there's simply no place like this weird experiment, the most diverse place in the world and yet wildly segregated. Gang central. Hollywood. Skid Row. The beaches. America's homeless capitol. The great architecture, the weather, the big toe shootin' up in your boot grub... The LA girls - yes, that much is true.

Still, it ain't like the old days.

The greatest theater in the world, in the old LA.

What you are Extorted, er, Pay For

Poker players call dumb players donkeys.

In the EM08 big picture, the welfare bailout of GM is a mere divot on the course. While I was vehemently opposed to giving GM anything -- then CEO Rick Wagoner was about as bad a manager as this country's ever known -- what was astounding to me at the time was the amount of people who were in favor of welfaring this cesspool of bad management. Most of them liberals and Obama supporters.

One of them was a friend, Luigi, who insisted saving GM was the right thing. When I pressed him, he could offer no more than "Well, it saves all those jobs."

Me: "So lemme get this straight; GM jobs are more important than, say, jobs at [local grocer] Andronico's [which was going belly up]?

L: [bit sheepish] "Well.... no...."

Me: "Do you think it's the government's job to pick and choose favorites in a so-called free market and determine which businesses, which markets, are important, which ones aren't, which ones should get welfare tax money, and which ones shouldn't?"

L: ...

Flashback, 1960's. My pops bought a Toyota and it had all of the stigma that other Japanese products had then; "Made in Japan = cheap."

Did Toyota or the other Japanese manufacturers like Nikon or Sony cry cry cry "Waaaa FOUL! That's racist! That's unfair!"

No. They put on their big boy pants and said, we're gonna get better, because in business and life, that's what you're supposed to do, not sit around and whine or blame others.

Flashforward from the 60's a bit to the 80's: Remember here in heartland USA, where "REAL Americans" turned out and had Toyota bashing parties where they'd take turns with a sledge hammer and wack a Toyota?

Did Toyota or the other Japanese carmakers cry? Did they try and run pr end-arounds? Did they whine about anything???

Another 80's flashback: Chrysler CEO Lee Iacoca -- who I believe went on to become Time's Man of the Year -- goes to congress and gets welfare for his company.

Did Toyota or the other Japanese carmakers cry "FOUL! That's favoritism! That's protectionist!"?

No. They innovated, they reflected, worked hard, and ascended. They evolved. Toyota, of course, became -- surprise surprise -- #1. Honda's and Nissan's (nee, Datsun) ascendancy was also superstar status, as was the Japanese manufacturing sector in general.

Then there's South Korea's new kids on the block, Kia and Hyundai, who seem to get better and better every year. When it became known that Rodney King had been driving a Hyundai, the Orientalist jokes flowed. Gotta admit, they were funny.

But now, in today's time, Obama and his cronies have taken our money and welfared GM and Chrysler. Again.

So, scoreboard: When Japanese automakers are faced with pressure, they innovate, evolve, work hard.

When Waaaamerican car companies face pressure, they hold out their hands and whine, "GIMME MONEY!"

Is it ANY wonder why our country's marketplace is so distorted?

Btw, when ex GM CEO Rick Wagoner was forced to resign by the Obama administration (a calculated pr move), he nabbed about $20 mil for driving (yes, driving) one of the largest corporations in the world into the ground.

About 4 years ago I asked a group of poker players around the table how many drove a Japanese car; 7 out of 8. I was the one who was driving American because at the time I wanted to "do the right thing."

In a tip of the hat to P.T. Barnum, I admit it; I was a donk.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/08/15/general-motors-is-headed-for-bankruptcy-again

Louis Woodhill, Contributor

I apply unconventional logic to economic issues.

General Motors Is Headed For Bankruptcy -- Again

President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors.  That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again.  The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.

Right now, the federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26% of the company.  It would need to get about $53.00/share for these to break even on the bailout, but the stock closed at only $20.21/share on Tuesday.  This left the government holding $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sitting on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.

Right now, the government’s GM stock is worth about 39% less than it was on November 17, 2010, when the company went public at $33.00/share.  However, during the intervening time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by almost 20%, so GM shares have lost 49% of their value relative to the Dow.

It’s doubtful that the Obama administration would attempt to sell off the government’s massive position in GM while the stock price is falling.  It would be too embarrassing politically.  Accordingly, if GM shares continue to decline, it is likely that Obama would ride the stock down to zero.

GM is unlikely to hit the wall before the election, but, given current trends, the company could easily do so again before the end of a second Obama term.

In the 1960s, GM averaged a 48.3% share of the U.S. car and truck market.  For the first 7 months of 2012, their market share was 18.0%, down from 20.0% for the same period in 2011.  With a loss of market share comes a loss of relative cost-competitiveness.  There is only so much market share that GM can lose before it would no longer have the resources to attempt to recover.

To help understand why GM keeps losing market share, let’s look at the saga of the Chevy Malibu.

The Malibu is GM’s entry in the automobile market’s “D-Segment”.  The D-Segment comprises mid-size, popularly priced, family sedans, like the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord.  The D-Segment accounted for 14.7% of the total U.S. vehicle market in 2011, and 21.3% during the first 7 months of 2012.

Because the D-Segment is the highest volume single vehicle class in the U.S., and the U.S. is GM’s home market, it is difficult to imagine how GM could survive long term unless it can profitably develop, manufacture, and market a vehicle that can hold its own in the D-Segment.  This is true not only because of the revenue potential of the D-Segment, but also because of what an also-ran Malibu would say about GM’s ability to execute at this time in its history.

GM is in the process of introducing a totally redesigned 2013 Chevy Malibu.  It will compete in the D-Segment with, among others, the following: the Ford Fusion (totally redesigned for 2013); the Honda Accord (totally redesigned for 2013); the Hyundai Sonata (totally redesigned for 2011); the Nissan Altima (totally redesigned for 2013); the Toyota Camry (refreshed for 2013); and the Volkswagen Passat (totally redesigned for 2012).

Automobile technology is progressing so fast that the best vehicle in a given segment is usually just the newest design in that segment.  Accordingly, if a car company comes out with a new, completely redesigned vehicle, it had better be superior to the older models being offered by its competitors.  If it is not, the company will spend the next five years (the usual time between major redesigns in this segment) losing market share and/or offering costly “incentives” to “move the metal”.

Uh-oh.  At this point, it appears that the 2013 Malibu is not only inferior to the 2012 Volkswagen Passat, it’s not even as good as the car it replaces, the 2012 Chevy Malibu.

If you follow the automobile enthusiast press, you know that, under the leadership of then product czar Bob Lutz, GM went all out to develop a competitive D-Segment car for the 2008 model year.  The result was the 2008 Chevy Malibu, which managed to get itself named by Car and Driver magazine as one of the “10 Best Cars” for 2008.

However, when tested head to head against six other D-Segment sedans in the March 2008 issue of Car and Driver, the 2008 Malibu came in third, behind the Honda Accord and the Nissan Altima.  Adjusted to the points scale that Car and Driver uses today, the 2008 Malibu scored 187 points, 6% lower than the winning 2008 Honda Accord’s 198 points.

Still, third was a respectable showing.  The previous generation of the Malibu, a darling of rental car fleets, would have come in dead last in any D-Segment comparison test.

Acknowledging the importance of the D-Segment to the company’s future, GM’s CEO, Dan Akerson, ordered that the introduction of the redesigned 2013 Chevy Malibu be advanced by six months, from the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2012.

In their March 2012 issue, Car and Driver published another D-Segment comparison test, pitting the 2013 Chevy Malibu Eco against five competing vehicles.  This time, the Malibu came in dead last.

Not only was the 2013 Malibu (183 points) crushed by the winning 2012 Volkswagen Passat (211 points), it was soundly beaten by the 2012 Honda Accord (198 points), a 5-model-year-old design due for replacement this fall. Worst of all, the 2013 Malibu scored (and placed) lower than the 2008 Malibu would have in the same test.

Uh-oh.

Digging deeper, the picture just gets worse.  Despite its mild hybrid powertrain, which is intended to provide superior fuel economy (at the cost of a higher purchase price and reduced trunk space), the 2013 Malibu Eco delivered the same 26 MPG in Car and Driver’s comparison test as the Passat, the Accord, and the Toyota Camry.

In a recent speech, Dan Akerson admitted that GM’s powertrain technology had fallen behind that of competitors in some cases.  This is illustrated by the Malibu Eco’s EPA gas mileage ratings.  At 25 MPG City/37 MPG Highway, the Malibu Eco is not as fuel-efficient as the conventionally-powered 2013 Nissan Altima (27 MPG City/38 MPG Highway).

It might be possible for GM to give the Malibu a better powertrain during its five-year-product life cycle.  Unfortunately, there is no way that they will be able to correct its biggest design flaw, which is its short wheelbase.

For years, automobile companies have been trying to design cars with the longest possible wheelbase (distance between the front and rear axles) for a given overall vehicle length.  A longer wheelbase provides advantages in the areas of styling, ride, and legroom.

In developing the 2013 Malibu, GM decided to shorten the wheelbase by 4.5 inches from that of the previous-generation Malibu, from 112.3 inches to 107.5 inches.  This gave the 2013 Malibu the shortest wheelbase in the entire D-Segment.

The Car and Driver comparison-test-winning Passat has a wheelbase of 110.4 inches, which gives it a “unique selling proposition”, the roomiest back seat in the D-Segment.  The Passat has combined front and rear legroom totaling 81.5 inches, 3.5 inches more than the Malibu.

This may not sound like a lot, but, like baseball, automobile design is “a game of inches”.

For a 6’1” tall man, sitting in the back seat of the 2012 Passat behind a similar-sized driver is like sitting in a limo.  His knees will be nowhere near the back of the front seat.  In contrast, the same sized man would have to struggle to get into the back seat of the 2013 Malibu, and would have to sit with his legs splayed once he did.

Rear seat legroom is important in the family sedan market, not only for the comfort of adult passengers, but also for the ease of using children’s car seats.  The 2013 Nissan Altima also has longer wheelbase and more rear seat legroom than does the Malibu.

Chevrolet is not a premium brand, like Mercedes or BMW.  Since the 1920s, Chevy’s essential market positioning has been “more car for your money”.  Unfortunately, the 2012 Volkswagen Passat is more car for the money than is the 2013 Malibu.  There will not be anything that GM will be able to do about this for the next five years other than to reduce the price of the Malibu by offering “incentives”.  This will eat into the company’s profitability, which is already weak.

As a company, General Motors peaked in 1965, when it commanded 50.7% of the U.S. market, and made a stunning-for-the-time $2.1 billion dollars in after-tax profits.  Adjusted by the GDP deflator to 2011 dollars, GM made $12.1 billion in after-tax profits on $117.9 billion in revenue.

In 1965, Volkswagen was tiny compared to GM.  It produced only 1.6 million vehicles, about 22% of GM’s 7.3 million.  VW’s total revenues were only 11% of GM’s.  The most powerful engine you could get in VW’s volume family car, the Beetle, had 40 horsepower.  The biggest engine you could get in GM’s equivalent, the 1965 Chevy Impala, had 425 horsepower.

In the first half of 2012, Volkswagen sold almost as many vehicles as GM did, 4.6 million vs. 4.7 million.  And, its total revenues were much higher, $119.2 billion vs. $75.4 billion for GM.  Part of this is the result of currency exchange rates, but VW had a significantly higher operating profit margin than GM, 6.8% vs. 5.7%.

Under the leadership of Ferdinand Piech, who is kind of like a German-speaking, automobile industry version ofSteve Jobs, Volkswagen is determined to become the biggest and most profitable car company in the world.  And, right now, they are eating GM’s lunch.

Not only has Volkswagen taken an important share of the U.S. D-Segment with their new Passat, but they are pulling away from everyone in the troubled European market, where GM is losing money on its Opel subsidiary.  The headline in the current edition of Automotive New Europe’s “Global Monthly” is, “Buried: VW Uses Europe’s Crisis to Crush Rivals”.  In this case, GM is one of the “crushees”.

Will GM be able to turn itself around, and save American taxpayers from losing $26.5 billion on Obama’s bailout?

One way to answer that question is to compare the 2013 Chevy Malibu against the 2012 Volkswagen Passat, as Car and Driver did.  Results: VW, first out of six; GM, dead last.  However, additional insight can be obtained by looking at how GM’s CEO, Dan Akerson (63), stacks up against Professor Doctor Martin Winterkorn (65), the man handpicked by Ferdinand Piech in 2007 to be his replacement as CEO of Volkswagen AG.

Akerson has an engineering degree, but he also has a Master’s Degree in Economics, and his first big job was as CFO of MCI.  Akerson was CEO of General Instrument, and then of Nextel, and then of XO Communications, which went bankrupt in June 2002.  He joined the private equity firm, the Carlyle Group, in 2003.

Akerson got his first job in the automobile industry when he was named CEO of GM in late 2010.  Recently, he has been hiring and firing top GM executives at an alarming pace, and he is understood to be working on a major reorganization of the company.  Akerson recently gave a televised speech to GM employees on the need for “integrity”.

Martin Winterkorn has a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering, and he has spent his entire career in the automotive industry.  At the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show, Winterkorn was caught on amateur video sitting in, and studying Hyundai’s newly introduced i30, a competitor to VW’s best-selling family car, the Golf.  Here is an excerpt from a story about this incident published along with the video by The Truth About Cars, an auto industry blog:

“(Martin Winterkorn) pulled on the adjuster of the steering column, and heard – nothing. At Volkswagen, there is an audible (“klonk!) feedback whenever the steering column is adjusted.

Immediately, Klaus Bischoff, head of Volkswagen Brand Design was summoned. He pulled on the adjuster: No sound. “Da scheppert nix,” exclaimed Winterkorn in his heavy Bavarian accent. “There is no rattle!”

Winterkorn was livid: “How did he pull that off?” He, the blasted Korean. “BMW doesn’t know how. We don’t know how.” He, the blasted Korean, must have found out how to battle the dreaded Scheppern.

Tension is high. This could affect careers. Someone quickly explains that there had been a solution, “but it was too expensive.” That gets Winterkorn even more enraged. “Then, why does he know how?” For less money. He, the Korean. There is no answer. Hyundai has beaten Volkswagen at the Scheppern front.

Winterkorn measures the A-pillar, runs his hands over the plastic. He walks away, his entourage trots after him. Deeply in thought and very worried.”

Uh-oh.  While Dan Akerson is busy rearranging the deck chairs on GM’s Titanic, Martin Winterkorn is leading VW to world domination via technical excellence.

“The game isn’t over until it’s over”, but if President Obama wins reelection, he should probably start giving some serious thought to how he is going to justify bailing out GM, and its unionized UAW workforce, yet again.  And, during the current campaign, Obama might want to be a little more modest about what he actually achieved by bailing out GM the first time.

Some of Them

The recent broohaha over Chick fil A's (about as lame a name as ever for just as lame chicken) president (in poetic irony, dude's name is "Cathy") coming out against gay marriage has kicked off a bit of a dust up with even some mayors coming out punitively, others -- most notably Bloomberg -- saying that it would set a bad precedent for NYC to boycott.

As much as I support gay marriage I think Bloomberg's right. Let the friggin market decide. It's like the tbtf banks; they jack over the entire world, but if peeps are too stupid to divest from them, well, then they deserve what they get.

In fairness, our school system and mass media ain't helping the masses one bit and if I had to say whose side they aid and abet -- regardless of whether or not they have consciously decided to -- it'd be the evil empire's side. Let's face it; young couples are walking around with a kid in the stroller and one in the oven amid the most historic economic crisis in history. I know who they are, the Cal post-grad students thinking they're invulnerable, still armed with pieces of plastic handed out by the very drug dealing cartel that was in action when I was in school. Only now, they're far larger, more highly conglomerated, and their fangs drip with bloodlust out in the open.

And the argument -- "some of them" -- comes into play in both the tbtf banks and the Chick fil A weirdo. "Not all white people...." "Not all cops...." "Not all men...." "Not all priests...." so therefore, some of them....

All groups do it. When the Latasha Harlins case went down, I said -- immediately -- that the Korean community should denounce Soon Ja Du. I also had no problem at all with saying to anyone that would listen that if we're going to go kill anyone, it shouldn't have been Saddam but that asshat in North Korea who terrorized and murdered millions.

Why is that so hard? It's what truly mystifies me about Jews who, despite a bounty of information on what's going on, continue to support Israel's systematic visciousness. And too, despite the work and protestations of Jews like Anna Balthzar and of course, Chomsky.

Malcolm famously said that a white girl once asked him what she could do to combat racism, and he said "Nothing." He later said that he regretted that and went on to say that what white people should do is help other white people see the way that they are the beneficiaries of racism.

I think that's right.

No group is as guilty as us Americans. All it takes is one look at the murderers row of reprobates we have in Congress who've managed -- mis-managed -- this country down the tubes and safeguarded all the resources for their masters. I think it was the no bs talkin' Gerald Celente who said, "Ever notice that despite Democrats or Republicans in office, things continue on the same way?"

Oh, hold on. Some of the Democrats and Republicans.

Cuts for Cooky: Ask the Lonely

No matter what, wherever you are, I'm there with you, rooting you on. 

No MSG

I don't care what anyone says, I dig Mike Francesa; I think his commentary on sports are right on and he brings that New York directness I love.


The following two interviews show the game behind the game, in this case, illuminating all of the hoopla around Jeremy Lin. Because what most fans aren't aware of is that for many fans in the Tri-State area, they haven't been able to catch Knicks games because Time Warner and Madison Square Garden Media are in a contract war. And they have been evidently for quite some time. Credit Francesa here for being a bulldog, for instance at about 14:30 in the interview with Eric Mangan of Time Warner. Here again is an instance where sports are a vehicle for talking about other things, in this case, big money, big media and big capital interests.

Stick around for Aasif Mandvi's funny Daily Show skit. I don't have the time or energy to do the conversion, so these files are embedded. I suppose when WFAN's (Francesa's radio station) and The Daily Show's links goes dead you can find them on Youtube.

Eric Mangan, TW New York

Mike Bair, President of MSG Media

The Daily Show did a great skit on this. Olivia Munn would have been the babe to handle this, IF she were still at TDS, but Aasif is a funny dude. However, they never mention MSG and instead make out Time Warner as the bad guy.

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Lindecision 2012
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Super Lazarus

The Warriors' uni is nice but the Apple is sweet.

It's common knowledge now that only a couple weeks ago, the Knicks were a patient on the gurney with a weak pulse if not dead in the water. Not saying anything original here, but watching one of the NBA's classic franchises destroyed by Isaiah over the course of a few years was really sad.

Now it's top of the world. This is the power of sports at its best, and thank god for the Internet, because I have the Knicks scheduled on my calendar and it's appointment TV.

The longer statement about JLin is coming because I had to wait for my angle and it's still baking, so this is about the Knicks, because everyone is so concerned about Melo, how he's going to come in and ruin the chemistry because Melo's a ball hog. Here's what I think.

1. Having one of the league's premier offensive weapons about to return to pair up with an offense firing on all cylinders is a problem worth having. [UPDATE, 2015: Boy, was I wrong!]

2. When Lin came out of today's game against the Mavs, the Knicks literally turned into another team. Lin's impact can't be over-stated. This is why Baron Davis coming back is key, because it spells Lin, who's playing a shit load of minutes, but more, Baron's got skills. Every basketball team knows that bench play is a crucial element to a winning formula. Think about Coop with the 80's Lakes and McHale with the 80's Celts before he became a starter, or even as recently as Barrera with the Mavs in last year's playoffs. That little dude KILLED the Lakes and kept the pedal to the metal. If Baron can come in and contribute, watch out, because this will make the Knicks a very dangerous team.

3. Jeffries is a key player because sometimes -- and I'm being kind when I say sometimes -- A'mare doesn't play like a 4 should in terms of boards. Rebounding is an art, defense is essential. Jeffries played well today and they'll need that to continue.

4. When you look at that intangible, chemistry, this team is playing as well as any in recent memory. As a long time hoops fan, it's fun to watch the game being played this way, pick and roll, team passing, basic fundamental basketball.

5. Much has been made, some of it rightly so, about JLin's turnovers. But here's the rub; he is constantly aggressive, and that puts tremendous pressure on a defense because you're forcing them to react. That's power basketball in its rawest form, and it's what I wish the Lakes had; a player to break the defense down and create openings. Related, JLin's showing signs of developing a killer instinct which is what all of the great players have. His 3 point dagger over Nowitsky was just that. Now let's see if he develops this element.

6. Credit Mike D'Antoni who had a system in search of a player to run it and gave Jlin the chance. The truth is the Knicks were so bad that Lin got the chance because the Knicks stank so much, but D'Antoni's system, where everything flows from the pick and roll, is a case of now having found its lead actor. Timing is everything they say, and this is a case for the annals.

In the final look, the Knicks are loaded with talent; all they needed was a catalyst and it was delivered on a silver platter. Novak, the newly acquired JR Smith, Tyson Chandler, Landry Fields, even Shumpert with his tough defense... all are playing as if a fire's been lit beneath their asses, and I think the Knicks can be a very dangerous team if they sustain this level of play. And if A'mare starts busting out like he's capable of this will be a scary team. Hey, if a notorious head case like JR Smith can come in and play with enthusiasm, watch out.

It also goes to show that if one bad apple spoils a bunch, it works the other way around too.

It's one of the best stories I've ever seen in sports, and has much larger lessons. He's a good kid, and I've been rooting for the Knicks, hanging on every play as the Garden erupts with every good play he makes. It really is tons of fun to watch and is sports at its best.