Raw, Unfettered Baskebanlysis for Halloween Time

Do you remember John Goodman?  I hate to cut in, mid-scene, but the narrative demands it.  We are in a motel room and John Goodman, burning, walks in.

Anyway, the fire is burning all over the motel but John Goodman appears to be unaffected by the smoke or flames, (naturally, given his extraordinary nature) even as the foundation of the motel may be destructed. In your mind I want you to try and turn the fire surrounding the man into an aura of power.  Yes, let's take this image to the next level.  First picture the fire, in its complexity and red-hot hydra-legs reaching out in every direction..  But now that fire is also a 60 foot radius of undiluted, spherical, visible and translucent energy.  You can see him but it blurs his face a bit.  Alright, so it is red-orange pure power surrounding a smiling John Goodman who is carrying a shotgun. Just for fun let's also put him in his red and white flannel and his jeans and maybe overalls. Still surrounded by a red-orange glow.





(But with a Red-Orange Glow and His Arm is Shot Gun)

Source


He is shouting "I'll show you the life of the mind" and he is ascending.  He can fly, evidently.  He stops rising, a mile above the great Pacific Ocean that surrounds the (island) motel hotel.  We zoom out and look at him from afar, with the ocean in view.  It is clear that he is substantial, and the power sphere surrounding him is massive.  But we are also given a sense of his ultimate smallness, and ultimate (if only too perfect) humanity.  Yes, he is large, immortal, and possibly invincible.  But just as we impart these qualities, we have to remember that there is an equally perfect subjective experience, with which John Goodman is no doubt experiencing the world.  In passion and dispassion are his words ripped from his mouth into our souls.

Okay, so we have this image of John Goodman, in a translucent ball of energy in the sky over the great Pacific, carrying a shotgun.  So now, I want you to mentally change the mental image of John Goodman's plump, jolly face shown above into Shaq's.

In the course of the transition from the Good Man to the Big Freeze, we are required to slowly warp the contours of their faces and change the skin tones, and to turn the flannel into a Cavaliers jersey.  Goodman's shotgun thus becomes his genie lamp and a basketball made from shotguns. This is beautiful, don't you agree?  Now we must, in the interests of fairness, change Shaq back into John Goodman, in the same way.  Smooth transitions are the name of the game going both ways.  We have to collapse the parts of the face that need it, but very delicately, like a mental plastic surgeon that cares.  No change is unsupported by the robust architecture of a man's face. Now, once again, change John Goodman back into Shaq, and now, again, turn Shaq into John Goodman.  As an exercise, I want you to repeat this process forever, as if swishing the images like mouthwash from one side of your mind to the other. Except you can't spit this image out after 30 seconds, because it isn't mouthwash, it's a jolly, perfect face from two angles, roles, colors, and uniforms. Ebony and ivory, live together in perfect harmony.  You can't ever forget this image, which is only fair because neither can I.  Embrace the mind-wash.

Postscript:

Readers should note, I'm not the world's biggest fan of Lebron, or Mo Williams, or "Big Z".  In fact, I detest "Big Z", as he is now known. Detestable is the ineffable Žydrūnas Ilgauskas and inexplicable is my contempt.  Perhaps it is simply that he has taken the heft of John Goodman and the ostensible charm, but corrupted it into a formless, liquid mass of incompetence and impotence.  Nothing more have I to say to such a lunk as "Big Z".  What is his purpose?  What gap in existence or essence is "Big Z" filling?  However as for the superior counterpart of "Big Z", that is to say Shaq, the Big Diesel, the Big Aristotle, etc., well...He is supremely essential.

Prediction 1: The Cavs will defeat the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals.  

Mark my words.

Mark my prophetic words.

The next post will be on the Western Conference Finals.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't I.

UPDATE: I know some of you will point out that "Well, it wasn't strictly necessary to post that Ebony and Ivory thing", guess what?  I totally agree with you.  However, the dialectic of Shaq and John Goodman, throughout their careers, has mirrored the dialectic of Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney that, in the spirit of Halloween, is rather horrifying and geometric in its symmetry.  The comparison of the two pairs of actors and musicians, respectively, is so striking to me with every passing day that I spend at the library researching the foursome.