The Problem with Plaxico

I was reading a message board recently where half the posters were calling for the head of Plaxico Burress. Just like the Mayor of New York, they wanted to see the Giants receiver thrown in jail for discharging a weapon in a Manhattan nightclub and accidentally shooting himself in the thigh. Period. Let's forget that quaint notion that you're innocent until proven guilty or that the jails are overcrowded enough as it is -- with real criminals.

Nope. Let's make an example of a celebrity. Let's show we treat them the same way we treat the poor kid on the street.

Only he isn't being treated the same.

Because while it's true that there's a mandatory sentencing law in New York for carrying an unlicensed, loaded weapon the fact is that few people charged with the offense actually end up going to jail.

In fact, Jim Dwyer, writing in illuminating detail in his About New York column in the New York Times last week, makes this exact point. He quotes John M. Caher, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services who says “Less than 10 percent of the people charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, which carries the mandatory prison sentence, are ultimately convicted of that charge.”

In addition, there has been much speculation that the very fact that Burress is a celebrity will net him special treatment, but not how you think. It appears that prosecutors may not agree to a plea deal in this case, even if they would in other, similar cases -- because they want to send a message: if we throw Plaxico Burress into jail, we'll do it to anybody. Which is a load of horseshit because it sends more than just one message, like it's okay for the law to be applied to different people differently. Nice lesson in civics there, Mr. Mayor.

I'm not about to condone Plaxico's behavior. It was stupid, even if he had a reasonable concern for his safety, which I'm sure his lawyers will argue. Just four days earlier, another Giants receiver, was robbed at gunpoint. There is also a disturbing recent history of gun violence around the NFL -- a number of players have been severely injured, even killed by gun violence. Last year, Washington safety Sean Taylor was murdered during a home invasion. This September, Jacksonville lineman Richard Collier was shot 14 times by a man he reportedly had argued with, ending his football career at age 27. The shooting left him paralyzed below the waist and had to have his right leg amputated above the knee.

While his history is not as checkered as Collier's (he had substance abuse problems and at least one DUI arrest -- and so far none of that history has appeared to play a roll in the shooting), Plaxico's past is troubling, there's no doubt about that.

The guy clearly needs help, but he's no Terrell Owens. Not even close. What he did last year, showing up every Sunday and playing like a warrior despite ankle and knee injuries that would require offseason surgery, earned the respect of every man in his locker room. It also earned him a contract extension though I think the Giants took too damn long to ink that deal and as a result, Burress skipped most of training camp. How much this led to his problems (on and off the field) this season is uncertain.

On a team of mostly model citizens, he's unfortunately stood out this season. He is a very complicated man -- extremely bright, yet very emotional and extremely, painfully private. His teammates describe him as likable but aloof and distant. And while he's been accused in the past of not leaving it all on the field every Sunday, he has showed up for the Giants when counted upon. It's a cliche, I know, but if anything, his behavior this season feels like a classic call for help.

Does that make him a victim? No. Does it make what he did any less wrong? Of course, not. Should he go to jail? Hell, no.

I think he should be treated like every other first offender in this sort of gun case, not made an example of because he's a public figure. Fine him. Get him some counseling and take away his license to carry a weapon. And let's not pretend he murdered anybody.

Yeah, he certainly could have hurt someone and he certainly should have known better. But let's not turn his stupidity into a referendum on gun control. If New York City or any other place for that matter wanted to get guns off the street, they could do it. That's another argument altogether.

You gotta think Burress has finally received his wake-up call. You would hope anyway. We don't need to lock him up to teach him that lesson -- that's not what jail is for anyway. It's to put away people who are a danger to society.

Now for my second sermon in two days: this is the problem with mandatory jail sentences. For one, they're too rigid and don't take into account what almost always are extenuating circumstances. Second they rely far too much on an idea long ago debunked -- that harsh prison sentences are a major crime deterrent. Third it ignores the fact that sending minor offenders to prison exposes them to more violent offenders and likely influences them negatively, as opposed to "scaring them straight." Fourth, mandatory sentences haven't proven to significantly curtail violent crime and in some cases, makes dangerous criminals more dangerous. All they do is put an insufficient Band Aid on the issue of chronic recidivism, which is the real problem. Full-court handling of suspects who commit lessor crimes -- including psychiatric counseling and rehabilitation support -- works for most first-time offenders (those who aren't sociopaths or severely mentally ill and even some studies have shown it can work with a percentage of that population too) by preventing them from turning into violent criminal in the first place. If we really wanted to make a difference in violent crime, we'd stop locking everybody up and start spending time, money and resources on prevention and rehab of early offenders. Get them when they still have something to live for. Don't get me started. Fuck.

Okay, I'm done.

I just don't think there's any serious person who could put Plaxico Burress into the category of "danger to society." Everything he's done has been self-destructive pleas for help. At the moment, despite imposing a very severe penalty (one I think is warranted), the Giants seem to be willing (at the moment anyway) to ride this storm out to see if Plax can get his shit together.
It's possible that while his season is over for 2008, the Giants would welcome him back next year -- provided of course that he prove he's addressed his behavior problems.

This shouldn't be seen as coddling a rich superstar, but instead the pragmatic actions of an organization that wants to protect its investment while at the same time understanding there is a difference between a troublemaker and a guy who is clearly troubled.

I hope Plaxico can find his way through this. Even if he never plays football again, he's a bright, thoughtful man and he owes it to himself and his family to straighten his act out.


Better Days: Burress catches the game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLII

Big Three Bailout

I don't know much about whether the government should bail out the Big Three, but it doesn't take an economist to see the short-sighted greediness of the American auto industry. For almost every major advancement in auto safety and fuel economy and improvement in workers' rights and benefits, Detroit has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point where it's a wonder they have any fingernails left.

All their protestations to the contrary, that the government has, for example, made them meet stricter fuel economy standards and put windshield wipers and airbags in every car isn't the reason they're bankrupted.

I've heard the argument that the industry is making the cars that people want. But that's just bullshit. While Ford, GM and Chrysler were putting all their efforts into making unsafe, inefficient, badly designed SUVs, the rest of the world's automakers (with a notable exception here and there) were making better cars. Which is why I drive a 6-year-old BMW that's running, after 80,000 miles, as good as it was when I drove it off the lot in 2002. The reason the Big Three were making SUVs was because they were cheap to make and had a far bigger profit than regular cars.

By the way, if you remain one of those people who still think that the only problem with SUVs is that they're not fuel efficient, or you're still under the impression they are NOT the most dangerous vehicles on the road for everyone, including the people driving SUVs, than read this book and get your facts straight. Seriously, if there is an object outside of guns that has a clear moral identity, I don't know of one. SUVs are unsafe. People who drive them are not bad people but they need to understand that by just being on the road with other cars, they are making the the world more unsafe for everybody. And it's a canard that SUV drivers are more safe just because they are in bigger, heavier cars than everybody else. First of all, just making the argument is frightening, because it means you could give a rat's ass about other people's safety. Second, it's statistically a lie. People IN SUVs are more likely to be seriously injured in an accident than if they are in a sedan. You can look it up.

Okay, sermon over.

Back to the Big Three, who are now, hat in hand, begging for a $40 billion bailout from the U.S. Government, all because they didn't look farther than the road than their own diamond-studded driveways. The only reason Congress hasn't kicked these idiots to the curb yet is because it would mean putting hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work.

That doesn't mean giving them a load of cash is a good idea though. What the fuck to do with them then?

Michael Moore posits one idea on his website today that, in general at least, seems to make a lot of sense to me. Moore is the Flint, Michigan native whose documentary films include "Bowling for Columbine," "Sicko," and his first major film, "Roger & Me," which chronicled the effect of General Motors on the city of Flint, Mich. (The Roger in the title being then-GM Chairman Roger Smith.) So he's not usually my go-to guy for objective political commentary, but I find if you look past his ego, the guy does have something important to say. In this case, I thought it was worth sharing.

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Friends,

I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:

My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.

More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps.

Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.

And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies.

But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.

Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.

This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.

This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.

What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Prop 8 - The Musical

Why I Love Pugs

Reason No. 1: They know what friends are for.

"All the songs Odetta Sings"

Odetta died today. Here's a link to the New York Times obituary. It's a huge loss for the world. According to the story, friends said she hoped to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20. How fitting for a giant of the Civil Rights Movement to have performed at the inauguration of the first African-American President. Now, it will feel like something is missing. When Rosa Parks was asked what songs she liked, she answered "All the songs Odetta sings."

I got to see her many years ago. She was a gifted singer but she also had a singular stage presence -- not something you ever forget. And she could sing almost anything from old spirituals to blues to rock music.

Thankfully there's a number of videos of her performing sprinkled around youtube. Like this one of her performing with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his variety show.

And this one from 2003 at the Philadelphia Freedom Festival doing Amazing Grace. These guys are really jamming.

Odetta was 77. She died of heart disease at New York's Lennox Hospital. A great voice of the people is gone.

The $20 Million Burn

Stephon Marbury is getting paid twenty-two million dollars this season. To sit on the bench. In street clothes.

That’s twenty-two million dollars. To sit on the bench. In street clothes.

It just has to be repeated to be believed. Even in this day and age of crazy salaries and crazier players and owners, it’s hard to fathom how anyone could get paid so much for doing so little.

The team that’s paying Marbury is the New York Knicks, a franchise that has fallen so far into the abyss of bad, that even the Los Angeles Clippers have a better reputation in the basketball world right now.

Marbury came to New York under different management amid hope that he might find a home in his home town. But if there’s anything we’ve learned about the guy they call Starbury, it’s that he has never been interested in anything but his own damn self.

I mean here is a guy who couldn’t find a way to play with Kevin Garnett. That’s how badly he wanted to be The Man. Everywhere he goes, he only reinforces his rep as a Cancer, no more so than this week when he has not once but twice refused to suit up for the Knicks who are short-handed because of cap-clearing trades and injuries.

It's been argued by some that Marbury has a legitimate beef with his bosses, who decided they didn't want him anymore and would rather he just take a buy out (a percentage of the money he's owed) and go away. This has been an ongoing saga since the middle of last season and every day the $22 million dollar man sits on the end of bench in long pants, has been one more day of the drama. Marbury has sat there quietly and yet ... well his just being there speaks volumes. Say the Knicks deserve what they get. The current owner was the owner when they acquired Marbury -- not like his ridiculous NBA max salary was a big ol' secret neither.

Marbury seems intent on walking away on his terms. Even if it costs him whatever shred of a decent rep he's got left. Seems to me a guy like Marbury who has spent 12 years in the NBA, who has never been near a championship, or ever been considered much of a team player, who has only so much left for pro ball, ought to have embraced this as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

It's not like it hasn't been done before. Think about it ... sports, politics, entertainment, they run on comebacks. It's our national pastime to embrace the bad guy/girl-turned-good story. As much as we seem to relish a good take down, it's the rise from the ashes we truly love. There is not a place in the world that roots harder and louder and with more passion for the underdog than this here U-nited States of America and the capital of comebacks is New York City. I mean pu-leaze, they wrote a damn song about it.

It's to Stephon Marbury's detriment that this is one lesson he has not yet learned.

Gotta be a difficult decision for any team to put a healthy guy on the pines. But GM Donnie Walsh and coach Mike D’Antoni, both in their first full seasons with the team, weren’t around when the Knicks traded for Marbury (getting him from D’Antoni’s Suns). He didn’t fit in then and never evolved from a look-to-score-first point guard with little appreciation for the limits of his abilities and no appreciable defensive abilities. As far as the new Knicks braintrust is concerned, he never really gave the Knicks any indication that he was figuring this out.

I had a chance to cover Marbury when he first came into the league. I knew his college coach from my days covering the ACC and he had always raved about his gifts, athletically and otherwise. But Marbury may be a classic example of a talent crowned way too early. He was such a star in his hometown of Brooklyn that he was called Starbury before he could shave. He grew up as Clyde Frazier might put it, trumping and thumping the expectations of the greats that had come before him. And he left college after just one season as the point guard for a good, but not even remotely great team, even though two of his teammates were future NBAers too.

Point guard is one of those positions in basketball that requires schooling. To be really good, it's not enough to just have the raw skills. Maybe you can't teach "feel" and reaction, but you can teach strategy and how to recognize defenses and understanding the subtlties of offense, knowing where your teammates are going before they do. LeBron James was annointed any number of ways before he even played one NBA game. That had wonderful instincts as a passer was not in question. But go back and watch his first year or two -- oh, he's wonderful to watch but more often than not, it's clear he has almost no idea what he's doing. He's just reacting. Fast forward to the present. The kid has totally upped his game. (Watch out, too. He's gonna get even better and it's going to be wicked fun to watch.)

Marbury has never really stayed in any situation long enough to learn how to be a true point guard. Plus, he bought into his own hype anyway and you would too if the world has been telling you how great you are since the day you dribbled a basketball. Sadly, he never realized that his talent was only going to take him this far and no farther.

Stephon Marbury is stuck. And he doesn't have a clue how he got here.

It's sad. He clearly loves to play basketball. He used to play it with such joy and his size and strength and speed -- he was the whole package. He’s done some good things for the community. As an interview, he was almost always forthright, helpful and polite. He seemed like he had a bright, active mind. But he doesn't appear to be thinking this through. How else do you explain a guy whose basketball life is dying an untimely death by his own hand and he doesn't even know it? You can’t even blame his agent – he doesn’t have one.

Maybe playing might not have saved him, but not playing hasn’t been the answer. If he shows he’s still got some game, he might have convinced a desperate GM to take a shot at him. Hell, Larry Brown hasn’t made a trade since he returned to coaching (his first coaching kid since a brutal and brief stint in New York coaching Marbury). The legendary roster flipper has got to be itching to make a deal, even for a guy he once rode like an evil step father.

But refusing to even suit up is just one more boldly dumb move by Marbury who seems unable to see how much the landscape has changed since he signed his NBA max deal. The Knicks have been overhauling their roster with an eye to a future that has never realistically involved Marbury. They have a slew of youngsters who need to play, players at the age where a well-respected coach like D’Antoni can mold to his system.

The goal of course is something much, much bigger – a reality Marbury seems blind to. The worst-kept secret in the sports world is that New York is gearing up for 2010 and what is expected to be best free-agent class, possibly in the history of the NBA. The way to get there is to stop what they were doing the past decade – acquiring relatively well-known quasi-stars with big, long-term salaries. The thinking was that these players were being dumped for financial reasons that had nothing to do with talent. To be sure, it was Isiah Thomas, as GM, and owner James Dolan -- perhaps the worst sports owner ever, a title for which you might be surprised has a lot of competition – who were the suckers, uh, I mean architects of this strategy.

Of course it failed. Miserably. All it got the Knicks was a roster of grossly overpaid, mismatched guys who they couldn’t give away. It’s now fallen on the new leadership, with Dolan thankfully remaining on the sidelines, to shed these contracts. The endgame is to get far enough under the cap to afford to make a legit run at James or Dwayne Wade or Chris Bosh or a combination of two of the above.

Last week, Walsh engineered two deals that put them well ahead of schedule. The guys they traded had salaries beyond 2010 and are still relatively young, but Marbury’s money comes off the books after this season. If it wasn’t for that huge salary, he might be a hot commodity – perhaps for a team that needs a point guard for a late-season run or as a rental to fill in for an injury. But so far, there’s been no takers. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to add him to my rec league team at this point.

And if Walsh can’t get a decent draft pick or a couple guys with low or expiring contracts, there’s no reason to trade him. In a perfect world, a buy out helps both parties. But Marbury would rather be petulant.

Marbury has had a difficult year, for sure but most of it was his fault. After feuding with Brown, he fought with Thomas, who knows a thing or two about volatile, talented point guards who like to shoot. He tried to take Marbury under his wing but in the end, it was his decision to remove him from the starting lineup that doomed Marbury’s season last year. Shortly after he returned to the lineup, his father died during a game. Marbury took some time off, but perhaps came back too early, the tragedy still unresolved for him, as it would be for anyone facing that. The rest of the year was one long lost weekend.

And when the Knicks brought in Walsh who in turn kicked Thomas to the curb -- to the delight of Knicks fans everywhere -- and brought in D'Antoni, the window of opportunity for Marbury was going to be small. I don't know how hard he tried to fit into D'Antoni's run-and-gun system. I don't know how he was in practice or if he made an effort to fit in, especially at the realization that other, younger players were going to play in front of him. I know he came into camp in great shape and he sort of said the right things to the press, but apparently Walsh and D'Antoni didn't get the impression that there star was going to be okay as one of the anonymous boys at the end of the bench.

So they asked him to take a buy out. Negotiations continued and no deal materialized. And then they told him that he wasn't going to play and the season began and the Knicks were not as bad as everyone thought they'd be. And then, well, then the LeBron James fire sale began in earnest -- a lot earlier than expected.

During the past week, the Knicks made two separate trades, dealing (among others) the team's two leading scorers this season. And one player they received in return, guard Cutino Mobley, has yet to play because of a problem discovered on his routine physical. Another guard is hurt and with Mobley not in uniform yet, the Knicks found themselves undermanned. Marbury was asked to suit up. He said no.

After he skipped Tuesday night’s game against the Pistons, teammate Quintin Richardson was quoted as saying he felt that Marbury wasn't even part of the team anymore.

“I don’t consider him my teammate. He hasn’t played with us all year,” Richardson told the New York Times. “He didn’t want to play with us. I don’t look at him as a teammate because teammates don’t do that.”

Times columnist William Rhoden wrote one of the few recent columns that doesn't make Marbury out to be the bad guy. His point is valid to a point -- I think he glosses over Marbury's role in this whole drama -- if he was a good teammate in the first place, there wouldn't be any need for this silly melodrama.

Whatever is motivating Marbury, he seems bent on sticking it to Knicks management. I would argue that most Knicks fans would like to do the same thing, too, but it’s doubtful many of us would do it at such a cost to our own reputations. As hard as it is to believe one team could make so many bad moves in such a short period of time, buying out Marbury doesn’t seem like one of them. If Walsh and D’Antoni don’t think he’s committed to the team, than what choice do they have?

Sports is a business. You look out for yourself. We’ve all heard athletes repeat those mantras. But doesn’t looking out for yourself include owning your mistakes and demonstrating that whatever your personal goals may be, you believe in the brotherhood of team?

If Marbury has proven consistent at anything over his career, it’s that he’s only out for himself. He had a chance to repair some of that damage. Whether he got bad advice or he’s just mad doesn’t matter. He’s not going to win this war.

That doesn’t mean he’s not going to get his. Oh, he’s gonna get paid. It might even happen this week, as the Knicks seem ready to give into his petulance and pay him his $22 million dollars. I’m sure he’s going to see it as a victory.

But at what cost to his own soul?

Update (November 28, 2008): The Knicks announced Sunday that they have suspended Marbury for one game for refusing to play. The suspension carries a one-game fine -- which is just under $200,000 for those counting at home. Meanwhile, Marbury was quoted in the New York papers as saying he doesn't "trust" D'Antoni and that the whole situation is the fault of Knicks' management. The NBA Players Association said they would appeal the "baseless" action. The plot thickens.

Marbury during better days.

Take Down on Pug Mountain

My first pug, Louie, has had a tough go of it lately. He's coming off his third operation in three years -- for the same ailment, an infection in a bone in his ear -- and this time, the recovery has been slow. For awhile there, we were worried he wasn't going to get better. But he's turning the corner. He's only 7 or 8 years old, only middle age for a pug, and he's a tough guy, perhaps from his years living on the streets of L.A., where he was found before he came to us.

Our new pug, Chamuco, whose name means "Little Devil" is full of piss and vinegar and wants nothing more than to follow his big bro around the house except when he wants to "play". This means biting Louie's legs and neck and trying to get his dander up. More often than not, it becomes two pugs rolling around the carpet. This is what puppies do. But mature dogs don't always like it too much. Louie puts up with it mostly. Sometimes he hides under the table to get away from the devil.

But every once in awhile, he fights back. Here is one such moment, captured on my husband's iPhone.


I feel so proud.