A website to find pickup basketball games

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: these internets need a site for pickup basketball.

There’s nothing right now. Nothing. Okay, there’s InfiniteHoops, but it’s not used much and it doesn’t have the right focus. There’s a page at wikiHow. Whatever. At a minimum, the site could be blend between a wiki and Google Maps. Add a page for a location or court, describe the level of play and when people play, and give it a location on a map.

Ultimately, the site could have…

  • Games searchable by skill level, times played, and specific areas (i.e. neighborhoods in urban areas)
  • Player bios and profiles
  • Rules and definitions
  • News and alerts for games in a particular neighborhood

This is a site that has to be done! It could be both a place to find a game and a place that covers the news of pickup ball on high-profile sites.

Someone, do this!

UPDATE: I found a decent article on courts in Chicago (where I live). Hope that helps someone.

I am not kidding: My sister is impossible to contact.

My sister is astonishingly hard to get ahold of. Below is a list of communication attempts I’ve made or others have made in the last few years, and reasons why these attempts were unsuccessful.

Method Reason(s) for failure
Phone call to her house Phone was broken
Cordless phone had dead battery
My nephew picked up the phone and then hung it up
My nephew picked up the phone and refused to get my sister
Everyone in the family was asleep
Phone was off the hook
No one felt like picking up the phone
No one could hear the phone
Message left on home answering machine Machine was turned off
Memory was full
No one checked the machine
No one wanted to listen through the 47 existing messages to hear my message
Message left with another family member Forgot to tell her
Phone call to her cell phone Battery was dead
Phone number had changed
Carrying Tyson’s phone instead of her own
Couldn’t hear the phone (despite having the world’s loudest ringtone)
Couldn’t locate phone in purse
No cell service
Voicemail left on cell phone Didn’t check her voicemail
Phone call to her work In a meeting
Student answering the phone accidentally hangs up on me while transferring
On vacation
Office number has changed
Voicemail left at work Had too many other voicemails to worry about
Postal mail No one checked the mailbox
Mail was stopped and has been piling up at the post office
Moving houses and I can’t figure out where I should send it
In-person visit No one heard the doorbell
My sister was actually home but other family members didn’t realize it
Email to her work account Mailbox was full of spam and message got lost
Too busy to reply
On vacation and was not checking work email
Email to her personal account She told me to email her at work
Text message to her cell phone Impossible; she had Verizon turn off this feature
Commenting on her LiveJournal She’s written a total two entries and hasn’t updated it in years

Oh well. I still love you, sis.

Addendum: Don’t call me a “techie,” either

I’m not a “techie” and I’m not an “IT guy.”

“Techie” is what:

  • Non-techinical people who don’t understand technology call technical people. This is fine.
  • Non-technical people who look down upon technical people call technical people. These people can go fuck themselves.

The Tom Sherman expression

It’s not limited to this Tom Sherman. That asshole in NYC (who seems to be the same sort of asshole I am) has the same expression.

The other Tom Sherman
(On the right)

This Tom Sherman
(On the left, duh)

RELATED: Another expression shared between Tom Shermans.

A brief message to the person who jacked up my car at 3 o’clock in the morning, removed the lug nuts from the passenger-side wheel, took the wheel (presumably to replace a damaged wheel on his own Scion TC), and left my 3-wheeled car for me to discover at 8:20 a.m. this morning

Thank you for leaving the lug nuts from the stolen wheel in a neat pile next to the wheel drum.

It was quaint and really quite thoughtful, and I must say that having those lug nuts simplified matters for me today.

no wheel!

Michael McFarlane Drive in Chicago?

Who is Michael McFarlane? And why does his name take over Berwyn Avenue for a few blocks?

michael mcfarlane dr

I don’t get it!

Adidas Chicago store phone number

adidas chicago store

It’s evidently 3.129.320.651. Now that’s creative!

Another surprise: It’s pronounced “ahh-dee-das,” not “a-dee-dass.” Or maybe that was just the phone chick’s accent.

UPDATE: A friend of mine sets me straight on the pronunciation issue:

the reason the pretentious chick at the adidas store pronounced it like that is because that’s how it’s pronounced all over the world. adidas is the nickname of the founder of the company, adolph dassler, or adi dassler.

And a little more… the same friend tells me that the Adi started the company with his brother. They had a falling out, and he started Puma. Crazy!