A Season To Remember To Forget Remembering

I have no idea what that title means, but I couldn't decide if this most recently extinguished Sixers season was one to remember, or to forget, so there you go. What ended quietly and most effortlessly(for the other team, in this case Toronto) a few days ago was yet another season in which our lovable and gullible 76ers failed to bring us home any bacon from the store. Instead they showed up with fetid tofu and a bag of magic beans.

Will we yell at them for settling for the magic beans? Yes, we will scream expletives and cover them with flem and foamy spittle. Will we scoff at the beans and flash exasperated looks of contempt in their direction every chance we get? Absolutely, no opportunity to mutter outraged sour grapes in modulated tones will be wasted. Will we, the editorial staff at the Dalembert Report, see this tofu and bean combination as a waste of our time and effort, our devotion and pride? Will we simply throw the tofu in the trash and flush the magic beans down the toilet, thus freeing ourselves from any potential harm and heartache they will almost definitely bring? I wish the answer was yes. Sadly, it is no. We will season and then eat the tofu, we will plant and water the beans, all the while cursing our efforts as if we were acting against our own will in some way; a couple of gamblers forever stuck in a casino to whom we owe no money but where every card game is dealt by Shawn Bradley, every roulette wheel spun by Glenn Robinson, every slot overseen by Brad Greenberg. Of course we will plant the beans, and coo at them, and leave the radio on for them when we leave the house. After all, whoever sold them to us said they were magic. They might grow.

In this case, our beans are several draft picks which once upon a time seemed a death-and-taxes lock to be a steppingstone to future dominance. What only a couple months ago looked like a day of watershed potential(This is the Watershed!! for all you Steven Seeholzer fans out there), that is, the day they announce the lottery results(sometime in May), now looms as just another gloomy afternoon spent watching the Phillies lose and the Sixers getting leapfrogged by less-deserving teams who refused to not quit, unlike the Sixers, and so will become better(hypothetically) for it. As it stands the Sixers will chose 12th in the 2007 draft. Many great players have been chosen 12th and lower, unfortunately, many more great players have been chosen 11th and higher, so pardon me for feeling more than(or is it less than?) dubious towards this position. However, on the brighter side of things, our main man Sammy D played all 82 games this season and for most of it kept his sneakers laced and his paintball gun collection locked and loaded, just like his silky new jump-shot. As Sammy goes, so go the Sixers, and that leaves me, and us, in a position that I think the title of this post speaks to quite nicely. Hopeful and confused, or hopefullessly confused. We'll hit you with the season recap later this week!!

Apologies...

...are in order to all three of you loyal DR readers for the lack of posting last week. Even Sammy D (and his loyal DR-editing aficianados), are enitled to a little vacation once in a while. Rest assured though, we are now returned from our sojourn to the Confederacy and will henceforth be posting (and dunking) with regularity.

More details on our little southern adventure soon to follow. In the meantime...Happy Birthday Hip-Hop!

Sammy, the Sixers and Suicide

Since there's really not much to be said about last nights 76ers game and the way its personified the egregious, unconscionable disgrace that the 2006-07 season has been, we're just posting this mornings daily online conversations between your DR editors:

kenz1980:i though i told you to shoot me in the head this morning
me:yeah...
kenz1980: still can't even look at a NBA standings chart
me: no
dont do it to yourself
kenz1980: oh well
11:49 AM
me: if we hadnt gone through thats shit show of benching iverson we'd be like the 5th seed in the east right now
kenz1980: true, and i think right now we'd take anybody in the east sans detroit and miami
fuck cleveland
fuck chicago
FUCK washington
they stink
me: seriously
11:50 AM
kenz1980: toronto would be tough
me: does webbers contract still count against the cap next year?
kenz1980: yes
of course it does
he's a curse
a blight
me: so basically we are looking at the exact same team next year?
theres no way for us to improve?
11:52 AM
kenz1980: yes, plus some 7ft european who we've never heard of who weighs 150lbs
who we wil pick at 10
kenz1980: i wonder what our odds are at this point
3%?
11:56 AM
me: nah less
kenz1980: fuckin shoot me
kenz1980: what a season it's been
me: i wish i could be happy about it
but its just depressing
kenz1980: i remember clearly getting blown away in memphis and we had the worst record in the league and a top 3 pick was our destiny
and it was consoling
that was ages, and many many horrible wins ago
me: theres nothing to do but hope another season of playing with 'dre makes everyone better
kenz1980: you're right
me: we can find a silver lining
kenz1980: at least there's a phillies game tonight
oh wait
they SUCK
me: should i just 9-11 out the window right now?
11:59 AM
kenz1980: probably, except you're in the 30-30 club, and nobody in that rareafied level should harm themselves
except with drugs and booze and women
12:00 PM
me: when sports fail us, there's always those

But What Ever Happened To Burglecutt?

The mental state of the man who's tasked to remain in the office past the appointed witching hour of 5 o'clock is seldom a pleasant one, especially on a day where his various sports franchises have left him such a state of bleak abandonment that he wonders what's the point of having a professional sports team in the first place.

In such dire straits, he turned to the one man he knew he could always count on when things got tough: Samuel Dalembert. WWSDD? he wondered.

As if guided by an invisible hand, he summoned up the Dalembert Report on his desktop. From there it was a simple matter to click on the ever-present Warwick Davis link, and there, shining out from the pulsing computer screen like a diamond hidden in the coal-black rectum of Djimon Hounsou, was proof that the forces of good had not abandoned his world entirely.

While filming 'Prince Caspian' in Queenstown, New Zealand, I dropped into the Flight Experience centre there. This is a place where you can take the controls of a commercial airliner in a simulator.

I was greeted by Laura Hopkirk who is the manager of the facility. I made a booking for a one hour flight with a qualified pilot. During our conversation, I mentioned how much Queenstown had changed since I was here twenty years ago while shooting 'Willow'. Well, she almost fell over! She told me that she was baby 'Elora Danan' for the New Zealand part of the shoot.

We both exclaimed 'what a small world it was', then I stepped aboard 'Davis Airways' Boeing 737' and took off for a scenic flight to find 'Willow' locations around New Zealand's South Island.

Little Elora Danon is all grown up, and she filled out fa reals!

And Baby Makes Three!

Sixers fans. I ordinarily am not one to make a big deal for celebrity gossip. Back in Haiti, I was often pursued by photographers from the island's many gossip rags, who would stop at nothing to snap photos of me in the most egregious of situations. That their cameras were most often unreliable models constructed of sugar cane reeds and corrugated tin is the only reason none of those pictures are around to embarrass me today.

That being said, I would like to congratulate my main man Wesley Snipes, star of such wonderful pictures as Blade, Blade 2, and Blade Trinity, for welcoming the newest edition to his family. And for giving the kid a completely inscrutable name.

Massive respect to Wesley for having a kid as he faces Fed charges, which I am confident he will beat with the help of this man.

And lastly, I would like to thank for the photo Paul Scott Adamo, who i have never met but who certainly has an amazing selection of ties.

Of Mice and Munts

In a spine-tingling pregame montage before tonights broadcast, the always on-point producers at Comcast SportsNet gave us a rundown on the DR namesake's accomplishments to date. We found it notable that not only is Sam the 6th best shot blocker in Sixers history, but he is one of only two NBA centers to play in every game this year. Neither Comcast nor The Google was able to tell us the identity of mystery center #2, but we're assuming it's not this guy, known to some only by his nickname: The Deathstick.

Which, coincidentally, is also what Tom Gormican calls his penis.