Call Dr. Atkins and tell him I'm running late

What was your favorite memory this year?

In April, I followed two friends into Smitty's, a 100-year-old BBQ joint in Lockhart, Texas. We walked toward the back of the restaurant, near the pits, and found Jimmy sharpening a long knife on a whetstone the size of a shoebox. We leaned on the counter and watched him as he slid the knife back and forth, periodically pausing to thumb the two-inch-wide blade. After a while he looked up, held his index finger and thumb four inches apart, and said, "It used to be this wide." He pronounced "wide" like "waaaad."

"Where you from?" asked Jimmy, whose bright white duds contrasted sharply with the soot that covered every inch of Smitty's interior. We told him (St. Paul, New York) and he slowly got up and said, "Guess I better show y'all around." He showed us the pits, took us back into the meat locker, pointed out the place where Miss Sandra Bullock had once dined, and let us poke our heads into the sausage room, where Smitty's stuffed and hung hundreds of sausages every day before smoking.

Then he took us back to the main pit and carved up enough meat to feed six or seven men -- brisket, ribs, sausage, smoked prime rib, and smoked pork chops. He slapped it all on three pieces of butcher paper ("These are your plates"), weighed it, added half a dozen slices of white bread, and sent us off to the dining area.

We silently dug into the steaming pile of beef and pork with our bare hands -- no forks at Smitty's. After a while Mike, who had arrived in Texas from Manhattan not two hours prior, leaned back and reflected on just how far he had traveled: "Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting where my boss said, 'You know, no one wants to see the sausage being made.'"

That was my favorite memory of 2006. Post your favorite here (click "comments" below), and let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops at St. John's tomorrow. There's still time to make a breakaway dunk your favorite 2006 moment!

You're not related to that James Garner?

Around mid-year I noticed the creeping, creepy prevalence of the term "signature approved." Rainbow Foods had just installed self-checkout lanes where shoppers could scan, bag, and pay for their groceries free from needless human interaction.

"By whom?" I wondered the first time I saw the message. Did The System have a copy of my signature on file somewhere? Determined to foil the automaticrats, I set out to discover what would meet with disapproval. I gradually started varying my signature until eventually it became an unintelligible scribble. It was approved every time.

I then took a minimalist approach, entering wavy lines or my initials in Morse code. Approved. So I switched personas altogether. After various presidents' and cartoon characters' signatures were approved I became more brazen. I was inspired by sports (Derek Raivio), current events (B. Obama), and the contents of my shopping cart (Orville Redenbacher, Tom Atoes).

I started using bogus signatures not just on touch screens but on paper charge slips, too. Amazingly, even when clerks appeared to compare the signature I gave with the one on the back of my card they said nothing. Once, noticing his name tag displayed both his first and last names, I signed as the clerk himself. Approved.

Yesterday, at last, I was found out. At Nordstrom I bought an understated pair of alpaca socks to complete my Christmas ensemble. I signed the slip and handed it to the prim, middle-aged woman behind the register. She looked at it, smiled, handed me the bag and receipt, and said, "Merry Christmas, Mister Cratchit."

"Merry Christmas," I said.

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Yes, we are playing hoops at St. John's tomorrow. Come as any player you like. We tip off at 8:00 a.m., as usual. Please let me know whether you will or will not be playing, and watch this space for a cancellation notice if numbers are too low.

Alternate Routes

Ever score a basket in the other team's hoop? I never did, but from the bench I watched Brad Buckentin do it in fifth grade. Brad could turn redder than any kid I ever knew, and man did he turn red after that. He was also the coolest kid in fifth grade (and sixth, et al.), so he managed to shake it off pretty quickly.

Cal's Roy Riegels was on a bigger stage -- the Rose Bowl, New Years Day, 1929 -- when he recovered a Georgia Tech fumble then turned and ran sixty-five yards in the wrong direction, toward Cal's goal line. One of his teammates stopped Riegles just before he scored for Georgia Tech. On the next play Georgia Tech blocked Cal's punt for a safety. Tech went on to win the game 8-7 and clinch the national championship.

They say more than 450,000 column inches of newspaper space were written about Riegels' mistake in the days following. For the rest of his life he endured shouts of "Hey! I know who you are..." wherever he went. He was a good sport, though: In 1971 he was elected to the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame, along with the entire 1928 Yellow Jackets team. He attended the festivities as a special guest.

"Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. (When a devastated Roy Riegels told his coach at halftime, "I couldn't face that crowd to save my life" he coach replied, "Roy, get up and go back out there. The game is only half over.") So even though my contribution seems increasingly limited to turnovers, missed baskets, and goals against I'll see you at St. John's tomorrow.

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

Dec 9: We are playing

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

Christmas vs. The Holidays

Has Christmas jumped the shark?

Not that you need me to tell you that Christmas has become a tad bit commercial. But perhaps it's time to separate the 0.057% of Christmas that's a religious obervance from the 99.943% (2004 figures) that's become a combination Mardi Gras, Toyotathon, and Super Bowl Sunday. Then Christmas could be like All-Saints Day (or, if you prefer, Reformation Day), observed by a pious minority while the masses go trick-or-treating.

While you ponder that I offer for your consideration the just-released Twisted Sister Christmas album. In addition to taking on classics such as "White Christmas," "Silver Bells," and "Oh, Come All Ye Faithful" the band gives us a new version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" with lyrics that include "five skullhead rings, four quarts of Jack, three studded belts, two pairs of Spandex pants and a tatoo of Ozzy."

Incidentally, Twisted Sister will play an all-ages show in the Twin Cities this weekend with Impaler. God bless us every one!

Please let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops at St. John's this weekend. We tip off at 8:00 a.m. Saturday, as usual.