LeBron: The Indecision... or the Redemption?

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Feeding Bay's Turtles, the LeBron James way... (Courtesy SBNation.com)

Guest-writer Tony Garcia returns today with an opinion on LeBron James' controversial return to Cleveland. Here's Tony...

Does anyone NOT know absolutely everything they need to know about LeBron James at this point? If you turned on a TV in the last couple of weeks, you will have certainly seen something related to LeBron James and his decision to re-join the Cleveland Cavaliers after four successful years with the Miami Heat. Yes, I did say successful. Maybe it wasn’t as successful as the Heat originally thought it would be, but it was still successful nonetheless. I guess it just goes to show that you can’t have championship celebrations and a parade before you actually play a game of basketball. Games are never played on paper and the Heat certainly learned that the hard way, going up against and losing to teams that play a team game first. But two championships is better than zero by my math and for that reason, I believe the Heat were an overall success.

But that Heat team will be a shadow of their former selves without the unquestioned best player in basketball right now. The “Big 3” all opted out of their contracts and seemed to seek greener pastures via NBA free agency. The big domino to fall was LeBron. When he opted out of his contract, it was believed that Pat Riley possibly would be using his magic hair gel to woo Carmelo Anthony, the other big name in this years free agent class, to join the Big 3 down in Miami and just crush anyone that dared to walk on the court against the Heat. 

Luckily for the sake of the NBA, things always boil down to money. And in order for Anthony to join LeBron, Wade and Bosh down south ALL of those guys would’ve had to take drastic pay cuts just to be on the same team. Finally, personal greed and the want of millions of dollars prevailed over the thought of winning multiple championships. Phew.

So the big 3 are broken up. And let’s face it, the only reason they were considered a big 3 was because of the biggest fish of them all, LeBron James. The last time James was a free agent was back in 2010, right before he decided to take his talents to South Beach. You remember the ratings monster live interview with Jim Gray that pissed so many people off? Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen this time. In fact, it was actually the opposite. James took his dear sweet time, allowing ESPN to truly cash in and milk every single minute out of this decision that will impact so many lives. People couldn’t live another day without their daily dose of LeBron Watch. 

Days passed and small time free agents were signing deals but all teams were waiting for the big domino to fall and that was LeBron James. Clevelanders lined the streets of Akron, OH outside of LeBron’s palatial estate waiting for white smoke to arise from one of his six chimneys. Nights passed and only black smoke arose. The twitter-verse was going bananas with speculation. Pictures of moving trucks lining the street of LeBron’s South Beach home surfaced on the internet. One insider spotted LeBron eating the letters F & L out of his Alphabet Soup. It was an uncanny event with speculation running rampant. Even Brian Fantana was spotted outside of Cleveland Cavaliers headquarters!

Then, like something out of the bible or some work of strange fiction, a most un-likely hero emerged to break the news of where LeBron was going to play basketball for the foreseeable future. Print Media! Well, not really. It was posted on the internet still but Sports Illustrated was first to report the evidence of LeBron signing back with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. Some were still skeptical that a magazine could still break some big news these days. Seriously Sports Illustrated, who are you sources? The masses demand you show your proof!

SI: Our source is... LeBron James!

People: No way! He’s not a reliable source... wait... what? You know him?

SI: Yeah, he wrote us this letter yesterday. Check it out.

Some would say, myself included, that THIS free agency period would’ve made a great TV show. The drama of everything just seemed like a made for TV, can’t-miss hit. Toss out that snoozefest of 2010 with Jim Gray where LeBron announced his decision on live TV on some washed up old gym floor. This was a week-long tease for the masses that concluded with an organic and heartfelt essay written by the man himself. 

All joking aside, If you take a look at the actual essay that James wrote, you’ll find a lot of substance in there. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a confession, written or otherwise, from as high a profile athlete that displays the passion and will to succeed in a place that he truly loves, his hometown of Cleveland/Akron. There is a humility and sincerity in his words that ring true through anyone that has loved a place they call home. I had to re-read the article to make sure he was talking about Cleveland, OH. Not even the founder of Cleveland ever spoke such high praise of that city. LeBron also talks about his regret for leaving the city in the first place and how tough of a decision that was on him and his family. But now he’s back home.

LeBron isn’t just returning home in physical form. Going back to Cleveland and writing his letter is just the beginning of his damage control on his own image and public approval rating. Sure, all six Heat fans in South Beach are burning their LeBron jerseys. But the rest of Miami is clueless to what happened. They’ll find out LeBron left the team the first time the Cavaliers stroll into town. Then they’ll collectively shrug their shoulders and go back to hanging out on the beach and not caring about sports. In Cleveland, they’re trying to un-burn the jerseys they burnt in 2010. A lot of people don’t understand the midwest sports town psyche. Sports are everything and the city of Cleveland is a passionate fan base and no exception. 

As far as basketball goes, of course this is a good move. It’s never a bad thing to have the best player on your team. I expect Cleveland will compete in the weak Eastern Conference starting immediately. If you’re a gambling man, let’s just look at it this way. Before the NBA free agency period started, the Cavaliers were at one point 75:1 odds to win the title. By the time LeBron James signed with the team, they were down to 4:1. Huge impact? Heck yes. As always there will be teams like the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers vying to dethrone LeBron with their heart and grit strategies that never work. For the first time in 4 years, Cleveland can laugh at those jokers and say “bring it”. The king has returned.

Classic SPT: Ode to Boardwalk USA

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Not Boardwalk USA… but cheeseball promotional that it could have been. (Courtesy Polygon.com)

Here's another Classic Still Playing with Toys article from January 7, 2010, celebrating how awesome Colorado Springs and Aurora, Colorado's Boardwalk USA arcades were… enjoy!

Dave and Busters, ESPN Zone, they all owe their existence (in my non-professional opinion, of course) to a small chain of arcades that were ground zero for some of my fondest memories as a kid with the guys. Boardwalk USA was a dream come true... video games and pinball machines old and new as far as the eye can see - and all you had to do was swipe a card to play. Listen to me weep like Glenn Beck about how simple life used to be after the jump...
There were three Boardwalk USA arcades (to my knowledge without looking it up) in the Colorado area, one in Aurora, one in Colorado Springs, and another one somewhere out in Arvada if memory serves. The premise of Boardwalk USA was simple: show up, pay $20 for an "all-day" pass which was a Boardwalk USA themed credit card that you swiped on a reader where the arcade game coin slot would ordinarily be, and then play video games until your fingers bleed. I know that this doesn't exactly sound revolutionary given today's technology (he says as CES is currently unveiling arcade games in Las Vegas that do everything but punch you in the face "for reals"), but at the time it was bigger than the microchip.

It was genius, not just because it was an excuse for our parents to drop us off in the morning and not have to think about us until closing time at 6pm, but because as a kid the thought of unlimited and "free" arcade games was as appealing of a fantasy as Tom Hanks' loft apartment in Big. Yes, of course I realize that this was before the opposite of sex while hormones were spiraling out of control took priority over such things.

I can still, to this day, remember vividly the car rides both with my parents and with Nate Wright's mom out to the Boardwalk USA in Colorado Springs, which was like Mecca. Not only did it have the appeal of the unlimited video games which was the trademark of Boardwalk USA, but it also had go-karts, a mini-golf course, and laser tag which were included in the all day fee that you paid (in moderation and with a catch, of course). Birthday parties, random Saturdays, it didn't matter what the occasion was, you were always excited and looking for an excuse to beg the parental units to drive you out to Boardwalk USA...

The first and hardest question was always: where do you start? 

There were hundreds upon hundred of arcade games, all lined up like the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course it was difficult to map a plan of attack... inevitably, I usually ended up at the sit-down Atari Star Wars arcade game. The vector-based game mixed with the appeal of sitting down in an enclosed (kinda) X-Wing-like cabinet was just too cool to pass up each and every time that you went to Boardwalk. Sometimes you'd have a system on which games to hit and when. Sometimes you'd just jump from Blades of Steel over to Robocop then join up with the guys on the Simpsons Arcade game, tackling each and every game until completion. And why not, any time you'd die and hit a "Continue?" screen, all you had to do was swipe your Boardwalk USA card and you were back in action.

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Boardwalk USA and Steve Renfrow's patent application for the Boardwalk USA card… the ONLY imagery I was able to find about Boardwalk USA online to date. No photos. Nothing. 

Next, you'd head outside for mini golf with the guys. Usually by the sixth or seventh hole boredom would set in and it would turn into a contest of who can bounce the golf ball off the outside building wall, back onto the green, and maybe into the running stream that followed the course. Such activities usually led to one of the poor miserable Boardwalk employees coming over to politely ask you to leave the golf course.

And then, by the end of the day when you realized that you were frantically swiping your card to beat Cowboys of Moo Mesa, that you were pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel and it was okay that whichever parent had graciously agreed to be your ride was itching to get back on the road to Franktown. 

Understandably, I think it became difficult for Boardwalk to turn a profit in its later days (especially as the home consoles became more elaborate and everyone started owning an NES or a Genesis) as they would introduce new pricing schemes like "Premium" and "Classic" games, where you'd be able to play the older arcade games on an unlimited basis but you would have to buy "credits" on your card to play the newer games (which is currently how our good friends Dave and Busters and ESPN Zone are structured). Shortly after that, I remember Boardwalk then going to a strictly credit based system where you'd get the equivalent of five quarters for a buck... and then without warning overnight, Nate's mom drove us to the Boardwalk in Aurora only to find that they had shuttered the windows and locked the doors for good.

Since that time, such establishments have all but disappeared in this 2010 Xbox-Wii-Mom What's an Arcade-world that we currently live in. Staples of Colorado childhood like Boardwalk USA, Celebrity Sports Center, and FunPlex are gone for good and, unlike the weirdos on Fox News, I'm not going to sit here and weep and tell everyone that times were much better back then, because I'm pretty envious of all the awesome stuff that kids have available to them today. They're making new memories and fifteen years from now will probably be lamenting at how cool Wii Golf was.

But the ten-year old still inside me would love to go and spend a day at a Boardwalk USA that remains intact as it was back in 1987/1988, with Nate, Ian, Ben, and the guys... and to pay $20 for an unlimited free-play card... and to find myself bored and playing Cowboys of Moo Mesa by 7 or 8 at night...

Just one last time.

Girl Meets World S1E2 - "Girl Meets Boy" Review

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Pay no attention to the near college-aged kid on the far left… it's not quite illegal. Yet. (Courtesy eonline.com)

I've had a lot of reservations about the new Girl Meets World, a sequel that of the 1990s ABC TGIF show that picks up with former kids Corey and Topanga dealing with now being parents themselves. Especially after an overly saccharine Disney Channel TV spot confirmed fears that the show was going to be more of the same from Disney Channel and not exactly a harkening back to the glory days that ABC ruled the airwaves on Friday nights.

Admittedly, part of the resentment might stem from the realization of my own sheer mortality. Yes, it's a bit strange to see the characters who were elementary school aged kids at the same time that you were now as the teacher/parent roles on a spin-off of the same series. But I was also worried that the toothpaste commercial "hey, buy a bunch of songs off this Disney Channel Radio Pop Star's Album" show invading series creators' Michael Jacobs and April Kelly real vision was in store.

This weekend, I caught the first two episodes back to back and the pilot had me worried. All of my fears seemed to be realized, it was the same over-saturated hyper-real Disney Channel fodder that makes me never want to have kids. When my wife walked in during the closing moments of the show, she asked my thoughts (she had watched the episode previously on one of her days off) and I mentioned that it just felt strange. Something was just off. And where was Mr. Feeny? Granted, William Daniels who has been my hero since he quipped back and forth with David Hasselhoff is nearing 90 years old… yeah… let that sink in for a minute or two. But it seemed strange not having him there to get things kicked off on the right foot. Sure enough, he pops up for a brief fleeting moment at the end of the episode during one of the stranger sequences of the pilot. For that reason going into the second episode, I had zero expectations for the show other than for it to be white noise while I did other things on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

The second episode "Girl Meets Boy" had me intrigued, at least at first. Centering around the students' reliance on cell phones, the premise was something right out of TGIF. Changes and tweaks were made from the pilot going into the second episode, for example Maya (played by Sabrina Carpenter)'s overly sexual and incredibly creepy and off-putting make-up was toned down, thankfully. And overall, the second episode felt less stilted and more like a classic throwback to the 90s than the pilot did.

A funny, but a little alarming comedic moment comes when the kids enter a library and aren't quite sure what to do with a stack of books. I get that digital technology has replaced research and reading in 90% of applications, but I'm hoping that kids haven't completely become inept in a library. A legitimate Amblin-era giggle was elicited from me when an elderly librarian shushed the kids and their reaction was an in-unison "DAH!?!?!"

But the biggest reaction that I had to the series' second episode was just how creepy it is that the show has chosen to cast a male "romantic" lead who is three or four years older than everyone around him. Lucas (played by Peyton Meyer) may have the One Direction boy band charm that every male Disney Channel star is required to exude. But when he's standing next to anyone else in his classroom, it's a little on the side of creepy. The episode focuses on a budding relationship with he and Corey/Topanga's daughter Riley played by Rowan Blanchard, who is 12 years old both behind and on camera. But standing next to the driving aged Peyton Meyer, you get a really gross feeling as the two of them eyeball each other akin to when one of your friends suddenly sparks an interest to your younger sister.

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"The guy looks like a date rapist! Is that my jacket?" - If Brodie Bruce was in Girl Meets World.

I'm not completely oblivious to the production process, I know that it's preferable to cast old to look young. But that's the problem. This guy was cast to be the dreamy-eyed, bed haired love interest but he looks old enough to be babysitting all the kids. Especially given how young and precocious Riley has been cast to be, you just want to reach through the screen and protect her.

Other observations: the little brother Auggie, played by August Maturo steals the show. Farkle, played by Corey Fogelmanis) has potential to be the new Steve Urkel in terms of how quickly his "charm" will get old and he starts to overstay his welcome. 

But bottom line, while overall the show still oozes Disney Channel it does have those glimpses of the Touchstone Television/ABC-era which is what I had hoped it would have. It's too bad that major audiences are too cynical now and a show like this can't fly on national networks so that the Disney Channel qualities of the show could be toned down immensely. But if the show runners are able to wade the Disney Channel waters and really hone this show into what it can and should be, it might actually be a fun watch for families with as much entertainment value as its predecessor.

IDW Ghostbusters On-Going (Volume 2) Issue 17 Review

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Fritz Baugh continues his reviews of the IDW Ghostbusters on-going series for Still Playing with Toys, here's Fritz with the latest - spoilers are abound, so you've been warned...

It seems a bit pyrrhic now, with the news that #20 (#36 in the total on-going series) will be the last issue of the series. But with #17, we reach a double milestone of endurance.  In addition to finally getting a #17, something that hasn't happened to an American Ghostbusters comic since 1989, the total issues of IDW's ongoing series now beat the number of issues of NOW Comics' ongoing series.  16+17=33.  28+4=32.  Sure, I could add in the 3-D Special (which was effectively Now's V2#0), the Annual, and the 3-D Annual, but that still means IDW will beat them with #20.

I think that's a big part of why this commentary is so late-- knowing I'll only be doing it three more times after this makes me want to hold onto it just a little bit.  Like I'm prolonging it somehow.  But I'm really not so here we go:

As "Mass Hysteria" begins it's second half, we're with Ray, Venkman, and Winston on the ECTO-8, where Ray is having another dream sequence with a ghost that looks suspiciously like John Belushi... but then it turns, just before Venkman slaps him awake, into Slavitza Jovan.  This... doesn't seem like an auspicious sign, does it?

Now awake, we see that in addition to the three regulars are Mel, Whatzisface, Ron, and Ron's three former fellow Ghostsmashers, now sporting flight suits in the Ghostbuster style, but with the Ghostsmasher logo and the nametags in Ghostsmasher purple.  Why are they there?  Oh, you know, Vigo's escaped from the painting (which they never explained how he popped back into in the first place) and he's apparently on Hart Island.  

Egon and Kylie, meanwhile, are studying Dana and Louis, and Dana makes small talk by asking Egon about Janine.  Egon dodges, and Dana mentions Janine dodges those questions too.  Hah-- Dana's only really been in the loop twice over the last 10 years, and even she notices.

God damn it, I hope we get some resolution in the next three issues.

Anyway, back at Hart, Ray is having another narcoleptic episode, and this time he sees Pee Wee Herman, and then the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  If it's not Gozer trying to talk to him, it's certainly something trying to convince him it is Gozer. 

GBHQ:  Egon and Kylie realize that Vuul and Zinz Clortho are still hiding inside Dana and Louis.

Hart Island:  Vigo shows up, and he's brought the Scoleri Brothers.  This is really mystifying--we saw those two assholes get sucked into ghost traps, and presumably taken downstairs and flushed into the Containment Unit.  Ray certainly thinks they should still be there.  It's enough to make one wonder... anyway, Vigo the Butch is especially mad at Venkman, probably for trying to paint that fluffy white kitten into the painting near the castle.  We know you miss Snowball, Vigo, but don't take it out on our heroes!

... Especially after Ray gets into another conversation with Pee-Wee Gozer, and images of Zuul, Vinz Clortho, and Idulnas appear.  Idulnas... you know, last we saw of that guy, he was being dragged off by the Peoplebusters/Collectors... while the Ghostbusters were the first beings to escape them, it doesn't mean they're the last.

GBHQ:  Kylie sprays Dana and Louis with mood slime in hopes of driving out Vuul and Zinz Clortho... but it doesn't work.  It not only doesn't work, it allows the servants of Tiamat to re-dominate the pair, turn them back into giant bird-things, and go on the attack!

This... is really not good.

Another solid issue.

(sigh) And only three more to go.