And lower the rims to seven feet. No, wait. Six.

Before I started playing organized basketball in fifth grade, I liked to try to implement my own rules. This drove Johnny Applebee and the other kids from the 200 block crazy. (Johnny's driveway had one of the only hoops for a couple blocks in either direction.) My favorite was the double-dribble exemption, i.e., any player (mostly me) who inadvertently picked up his dribble could begin dribbling without penalty. My persistent invocation of this rule drove the older boys from down the street crazy.

Of course I grew up and learned to play by the rules. But only because the citizenry refused to recognize my absolute authority. From correspondent Matt Thurber comes this:

In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright met with Kim Jong Il and gave him a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan. Turns out that North Korea is huge into the NBA. They even amended the rules as follows:

"In 1997, North Korea introduced its own scoring system, giving eight points to baskets made in the final two seconds. According to Pyongyang's official Chongnyonjunwie newspaper, dunks are three points, instead of the usual two, and one point is deducted for every free throw missed. Four points are given to shots made from more than 21 feet and to 3-pointers that hit the net without touching the rim."

I did a little research, and sure enough: North Korea promoted basketball heavily as part of the "Grow Tall Movement" during a famine in the mid-1990s. North Korean media claimed students who played basketball were 1.2 to 1.9 inches taller than those who played other sports. It said the game "activates hundreds of millions of brains cells per second" because players must continuously make quick decisions.

Now if you can't parlay that into a reason why you should be at St. John's Saturday morning instead of raking leaves, I can't help you. Your significant other is clearly playing by a different set of rules.

Do let me know if you will or will not be there this weekend. We tip off at 8:00 a.m., as usual.

Axis of Evel

All things considered, I've taken the aging of childhood heroes pretty well. Adam West, Maria from Sesame Street, Johnny Carson. People get old and gray, die. Cycle of life. But when I heard the other day that Evel Knievel had turned 68 it hit me hard.

More than anyone else, Evel Knievel made a boy feel like anything was possible. He was a cross between Captain America and Fat Elvis, and it seemed like every couple of months the neighborhood boys would be buzzing about some new feat we would -- for now -- replicate with Matchbox cars and (for the luckly ones) our Evel Knievel Stunt Cycles.

Evel's name hinted at things your mother would definitely disapprove of, and he repeatedly defied death, which is what every boy thinks he will spend the rest of his life doing in one way or another.

Now of course, I'm a grown-up. I wouldn't dream of climbing up to that branch, or jumping off the garage roof into the wading pool. I won't even clean my own gutters. But I appreciate Knievel on a whole new level now. When he saw the fountains at Caesar's Palace for the first time in the 1967 he decided right then he would jump them. According to Wikipedia:

To get in to see Caesar's Palace CEO Jay Sarno, Knievel created a fictitious corporation called Evel Knievel Enterprises and three fictitious lawyers to make phone calls to Sarno. Knievel also placed phone calls to Sarno claiming to be from ABC-TV and Sports Illustrated inquiring about the jump. Sarno finally agreed to meet Knievel and the deal was set....

Knievel tried to get ABC to air the event live on Wide World of Sports. ABC declined, but said that if Knievel had the jump filmed and it was as spectacular as he said it would be, they would consider using it later.

Knievel used his own money to have actor/director John Derek produce a film of the Caesar's jump. To keep costs low, Derek used his then-wife, Linda Evans, as one of the camera operators....

When he hit the takeoff ramp, he felt the motorcycle unexpectedly decelerate. The sudden loss of power on the takeoff caused Knievel to come up short.... As a result of the crash, Knievel received a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist and both ankles and a concussion that kept him in a coma for 29 days.

After his crash and recovery, Knievel was more famous than ever. ABC-TV bought the rights to the film of the jump and had to pay far more than if they had televised the jump live.

Complaining about your gimpy knee makes you seem pretty lightweight by comparison, don't you think? Come and play hoops at St. John's tomorrow. We tip off at 8:00 a.m. as usual. Please let me know if you will or will be there.

Iron will and (empty) gut

My new favorite web site, displacing the long-admired Chinese People's Daily (which, in a hilarious bit of Engrish-as-a-second-language self-stereotyping, used to offer itself at the URL peopledaily.com), is News From Korean Central News Agency of DPRK.

Yes, this is the official news agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North, that is), which exists to pump out "stories" and "news releases" with headlines like:

Korean People's Efforts to Settle Issue of Korea by Themselves Supported

and:

Papers Call for Demonstrating Songun Korea's Dignity and Might

and:

President of Senegal Sends Floral Basket to Statue of Kim Il Sung

In fact, the Korean Central News Agency seems to report a lot of news about fruit baskets and flower arrangements sent to the Dear Leader by admirers both within and outside of the country. As in China, everything in North Korea is officially glorious, honorable, and mighty. Particularly, as you might expect, the Dear Leader:

"Kim Jong Il is the tested leader of the glorious party. The Juche idea of Kim Il Sung and the ideas and theories of Kim Jong Il who has steadily developed it in depth serve as immortal guidelines for our party and revolution. Their iron will and gut, experienced and tested leadership constitute the source of invincibility of our party and revolution."

(As an aside, do you think the people in North Korea, Cuba, et al. get bored of being in a state of "revolution" for 60 years at a stretch? Yo, Dear Leader: No one's fired a shot in half a century. How about spending a little time on the whole famine thing, or giving the people FM radio?)

The best thing, though, about the Central News Agency of DPRK is how it is compelled to change the news after it happens. Unlike more traditional news sources, where what's published tends to stay published, the Central News Agency of DPRK reguarly "updates" the news, i.e., makes it go away.

As an example, after North Korea allegedly detonated a nuclear bomb the Central News Agency was positively busting its buttons over the glorious event. "The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent," it announced. "It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the KPA and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defence capability."

After the first reports appeared suggesting the blast was caused not by a nuclear device but by a very large pile of TNT, this and every other reference to the glorious A-bomb was removed from the site. The most important event in the glorious history of the DPRK? Never happened.

Tired of the pre-packaged political pablum dished out by Tony Snow and his superiors? Count your blessings. You've got CNN, the New York Times, Daily Kos, and the rest. There are more blogs originating from Antarctica, with no permanent residents, than from North Korea, a country with 22 million people.

And while you're counting, don't forget hoops at St. John's We tip off this Saturday at 8:00 a.m., as usual. Please let me know if you will or will not be there.

It is . . . alive!

The SJH blog, that is. Two years ago I felt ahead of the curve for a few weeks, then shut the blog down in disgust when it began to be reported that "everyone" had one.

Then someone at the gym last week said, "Hey, you should start a web site for this. Then you can just post online whether we're playing or not."

Great idea. Glad I thought of it.