As mentioned yesterday, I was in the United Center for the Bulls victory over the Heat, but, rather than offer analysis of the play and strategy of the teams, I learned some much more important things on the West Side.

1. The Chicago Bulls Dance Team/Cheerleaders, the Luvabulls, have no redheads.  How is this possible?  The had a redhead last year.  One of these girls can't dye her hair?  I'd never know, and every squad needs an auburn-locked lass.

2. Biggie Bagel totally smoked the other two racers in the Dunkin' Donuts race on the Jumbotron.  Who says David Bluthenthal is the only Jewish player in the NBA?

3. DO NOT eat three Italian sausages with extra giardiniera when the only thing you've had for breakfast is two pots of coffee.  Bad things will happen.  Very bad things.

4. Shaq really doesn't seem that big when you see him from the last row of Section 327.

5. The Benny the Bull dirigible crashed into the seats behind the Miami Heat's bench during the fourth quarter, much to the ire of the fans sitting there because it became stuck, and they couldn't watch the Bulls squander a nine point lead even though Shaq and D-Wade were on the pine with five fouls.  When the UC staff disentangled the fallen airship, they moved it to the nearest tunnel.  However, it still blocked the view of the polite spectators who appeared to rain friendly greetings on the inflated bovine's handlers.  So, they finally and horribly deflated the mighty idol.  I cracked a  Hindenburg joke to the rabid Bulls fan next to me, but, although he could explain the NBA's complicated seeding system with extreme clarity, he had never heard of the Prussian blimp.  

Anyway, if you're interested in what took place on the court, see Foul Balls, and for an examination of Tyrus Thomas' brain see FreeDarko via Deadspin. -KD

Greetings from the Final Four!  With Leather is on location and will occasionally write about what's going on in the ATL or Hotlanta or whatever it's called.  Read Dispatch #1 here.

Following the crap-tastic Florida-UCLA game, I met up with a friend of a friend at his apartment near the Emory campus.  He had gone to the game as well, and was admittedly exhausted from a hard Friday night celebrating the end of med school finals.  I was worn down from a long day of travel and an even longer week of work.  It was midnight on Saturday night.

I said, "So, do you feel like getting a couple drinks or something?"

"I dunno.  Do you feel like going out?"

"I mean, I'm pretty tired, but I could go for a beer if you wanted one."

"I guess I could," he replied, "if you really want to go out."

Silence.  I felt an obligation to report on Saturday night in Georgia.

"Yeah, let's just go out for a beer.  I should check out the scene and look at Southern belles."

I had called his bluff.  "Actually, do you mind if we called it a night?"

I laughed.  "Yeah, man, it's cool."  He went to bed, and I checked my email before falling asleep on the couch.

And that was Saturday night.  Woo!  Can you feel the thrill of the Final Four?  Is my wild lifestyle too much for you to handle?

If you thought that was HOTT, get ready for my Sunday (note: it rained all day yesterday, and today it's cool and cloudy, making this exactly like my Super Bowl trip).  I went on an hours-long trek to get my digital camera fixed (it suffered a debilitating injury on St. Patrick's Day) that proved to be absolutely fruitless.  So that was pretty cool.  Get ready for no exciting pictures tomorrow.  Then I checked into my new living quarters, in which there are no college students here to party.  Then I stayed up late to write an offensive Kissing Suzy Kolber post.  I am fucking EXTREME.

And now it's time to get pumped up for tonight's championship game.  I'd say put all your money on Florida, but it's been repeatedly proven that I'm a dipshit about college hoops.  But fear not, I promise to go out and experience some semblance of nightlife tonight, even if it means starting tomorrow's posts later in the morning.  Even if it means going to a strip club. 

Correction: especially if it means going to strip club.  See y'all tomorrow!

Greetings from the Final Four! With Leather is on location and will occasionally write about what's going on in the ATL or Hotlanta or whatever it's called.

If the Marine Corps prepared me for any aspect of sports blogging, it's executing a hastily assembled plan on short notice. Just two months ago I went to Miami for the Super Bowl, and now I find myself in Atlanta, when as recently as Friday afternoon I didn't have weekend plans. Here's how it happened.

Friday evening comes around. I'm sweat-drenched and twitching from an overdose of caffeine and nicotine that powered me through consecutive 12-hour days of writing With Leather and What Would Tyler Durden Do?  My boss decides to reward my insanity with Final Four tickets.  Sweet!  But, um… isn't that tomorrow?

Yes, it certainly is.  Tip-off for the Ohio State-Georgetown semifinal is at 6:07 p.m., and less than 24 hours before that I'm searching for flights.  The earliest I can land in Atlanta is 7:15 p.m., and the Continental Airlines ticket chews up $830 of my $1000 travel stipend.  Car rental is another $250, which puts me in the hole before I've even made sleeping arrangements.  Dammit.  But at least I'm going to see the Final Four!  I can hang with Deadspin's Will Leitch!  I send him a text saying as much.  Not long after, he writes back:

All flights overbooked until tomorrow night. Staying in newark tonight and hopefully getting a standby flight tomorrow. Travel is so fun!

Oh crap.  I'm flying out of Newark.  His trip was planned in advance and he's fucked.  Which means I'm fucked, too.  But it gets better.  The next morning, after Will had tried to get on two morning flights by flying standby:

No flights. Back to Brooklyn I go!

Really?  He's not going to the Final Four at all?

Nope. Back in Brooklyn. Continental blows. 

Continental???  I'm flying Continental.  This does not bode well. 

And yet… all of my flights are on time, and I arrive in Atlanta at 7:15 as scheduled.  (The secret: booking a layover in Buffalo!)  Of course, I'm not in time for the anti-climactic Oden-Hibbert showdown, but I arrive for the tip of Florida-UCLA, which at least promises WAY hotter coeds than OSU-Georgetown.

Thoughts on the game: I have the over at 130. Nine minutes into the game, and the rims have lids on them.  The score is 6-5, with no help from the ref, who — I have on good authority — is called "Curtis Interruptus" by his peers for destroying the tempo of the game.  I'm up in the highest part of the Georgia Dome, and I should have taken geography into account when I bet on the Bruins at +3.5.  A lower section section of the stadium is all baby blue with UCLA fans, and another section is Ohio State red… but the ENTIRE UPPER DECK is the blue and orange of nearby Florida.  This is a home game for them.  The blowout shouldn't be surprising.

But that's par for the course: I never know anything about college hoops.

(More to come… thanks for the pic goes to the Best Blog in a 38 Mile Radius, via The Big Lead)

This is a scan from Sports Illustrated's baseball preview issue. That's a funny quote from John Amaechi, right? But I feel like I've seen it somewhere before… but where? I just can't quite put my finger — oh yeah, that's right. About two weeks ago I spent a night out on the town with Amaechi.

I quoted him on several different topics, but I tried to make it clear that it wasn't a journalistic endeavor on my part, since I didn't write anything down at the time, then I went out and got mildly drunk that night, then I wrote a whole day's worth of posts before getting to the Amaechi story. So, while I'm confident that I correctly communicated Amaechi's sentiment, I probably didn't get his words 100% correct. (Editor's note: John saw the post and told me he enjoyed it, so I didn't get anything too wrong.) Anyway, here's how I quoted him on the Bible thing:

He was also confounded by people who pick and choose what leftovers from the Old Testament are and aren't sins: "It also forbids eating shellfish. If being gay is as bad as going to Red Lobster, I'm not really worried about it."

Wow, that's suspiciously similar, isn't it? And by "suspiciously similar" I mean "word-for-word." Listen, I'm not going to say SI lifted a quote from a completely journalistically irresponsible blog, but… wait. Yes. Yes, that is what I'm saying. The funny thing is, if they had just added "as quoted by the website WithLeather.com," I'd feel all special inside and think SI was totally awesome. Instead, SI is now dead to me.

Well, except for the swimsuit issue. That still rules.

Stealing-stuff UPDATE: Orson Swindle from EDSBS writes, "Check out page 22 of Sports Illustrated–they have a ripoff of the Fulmer Cup competition called… 'Campus Leaders' or something like that." Oh, so I guess I'm not special. It must have been uncredited blog material week for SI. Also, I need to thank Big Daddy Drew for the scan, and Henry Abbott for being the first to point the quote out to me. Look at me! Giving credit to people is easy!

Non-requisite clarification: As ***always***, I'm not serious. SI isn't dead to me. What's there to be upset about? They used a quote — it's not like I own those words. But it's either a nice little step forward for blogs or a sad step back for print media when I'm being trusted as a news source.

Almost nothing on this website should be taken seriously. It's here to provide laughs, not make serious statements or accusations or shed light on injustice or any of that. It's fun: I truly enjoy calling Canada "Canadia" and pretending that everyone from South America speaks Mexican. It's much more fun — and easier — than providing serious commentary. So you'll excuse me if, for just one post, I avoid cheap jokes.

A friend of With Leather who works in radio tried to get me a telephone interview with John Amaechi. Excited yet woefully bad at journalism, I emailed several prominent bloggers (oxymoron noted) about what I should ask the retired NBA vet who publicly came out of the closet with his new book, Man in the Middle (Big Daddy Drew: "Tell me more reasons why Jerry Sloan is a fucking asshole").

Naturally, the interview fell through, so instead I went to his book-signing at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble in Manhattan with the hopes of asking a question or two that could make decent blog fodder.

I ended up getting a lot more than that.

The event was crowded, and I took the first open seat I could find. The person next to me was Rich Merritt, a former Marine officer (like me!) with a USMC tattoo on his shoulder (like me!) who wrote a memoir (like me!) that shares details of his erotic gay experiences during "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (ummm…). But it's not like I give a shit if a guy is black or white or straight or gay or what have you. Former Marines who are also writers are hard to come by in New York, and as far as I'm concerned, that's enough common history to be friends.

As chance would have it, Rich has the same literary agent as Amaechi, and all of us went out together for drinks afterwards. What follows is a series of non-journalistic observations I culled from John's long question-and-answer session with the crowd and our subsequent travels around the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and the West Village as we sought out booze and a scene where John could see "pretty people."

• First and foremost: John Amaechi is really fucking smart. He uses words like "ethnocentrism" and "empathic" and speaks with refreshing candor. Every response he gave was infused with so much perspective that I found myself repeatedly thinking, "Yeah, why DO people care that he was a gay in the NBA?" Example: Spurred on by some excellent insight I got from Kevin Arnovitz at ClipperBlog — he's the only openly gay sports blogger I know — I asked John about how a lot of writers and fans had talked about how the bigger development would be when an active player came out, and how much that hypothetical player's talent level could make it an easier transition. He laughed off the notion of it somehow creating monumental change in America's attitudes toward homosexuals. He took a metaphorical step back and wondered how, if the hate crime against Matthew Shepard couldn't erase prejudice against gays, what would "gay Shaq" be able to do?

• On his NBA career, and choosing retirement and working with kids over suiting up for the Knicks: "They needed a lot more help than what I could give them." And again, the perspective (I'm paraphrasing): "What I did, when you boil it down, was put a ball in a hole. Ten years of my life: putting a ball in a hole. I was good at it. I could do it from 18 feet, even. Sometimes 20 feet on a good night." His stance is that working with other people and affecting lives positively is more important than playing sports professionally.

• On the level of support versus animosity from the American black community: the majority are intelligent, empathic, open-minded blacks who simply aren't very vocal in their support. "Unfortunately, the sound of a million people shrugging is silence," so the voices that carry are the loud, bigoted ones, and it's an unfortunate coincidence that much of the immediate, public face of bigotry right now is black (Tim Hardaway, Isaiah Washington).

• Near the end of the Q&A, Ebony Haith from the first season of America's Next Top Model, who is openly gay, praised John for his honesty. How did I know she was from ANTM? She began her little speech by saying, "My name's Ebony, and most people recognize me from the first season of America's Next Top Model." John later admitted that he was surprised that someone would introduce herself in the style of Troy McClure.

• On religion, and the persistence of many Americans who "pray for him" and encourage him to "find Jesus": "I'm not agnostic and I'm not atheist. I honestly don't think about it. I think about this [motioned between him and the crowd]." His priorities are people; he's bothered by people who "wander around, staring into the sun, all the while stepping on people"; and people who quote Leviticus to him need to understand that that was the Old Testament: "It's been revised, you know. There's a new edition." He was also confounded by people who pick and choose what leftovers from the Old Testament are and aren't sins: "It also forbids eating shellfish. If being gay is as bad as going to Red Lobster, I'm not really worried about it."

• John finished his Q&A by demanding that the audience not clap, suggesting that they instead "buy him gin."

• Are there gay players currently in the NBA: yes, and he's friends with them. Or was. They haven't been showing up on his instant messenger buddy list recently.

• He insinuated that he had had romantic encounters with at least one other NBA player, but noted that merely being gay in the NBA wasn't enough to build a relationship around.

• On Garrison Keillor's Salon article about how gays need to tone down the stereotype of effeminate flamboyance if they want to be accepted as parents and couples: "My response to that would be for him to go screw himself." In all fairness to Keillor, that's Amaechi's response for just about anyone who says or writes anything that smacks of or reinforces homophobia. He used that phrase several times last night.

• His favorite gin: Hendrick's. Bonus points for me: that's what I keep in my liquor cabinet. It makes the best martinis. We also agree that Tanqueray No. 10 is too sweet.

• A six-foot-nine, 320-pound man can down a gin and tonic VERY quickly.

• For those of you who don't have gay friends, gay men check out men the same way straight men check out women. John Amaechi is no different. This seems like a mundane, obvious detail, but then a woman at one of John's recent signings told him, "I didn't realize gay people could be black." Yeah.

• My friend Billy joined us at G Bar (yes, that's a gay bar). Billy is an actor and close friends with T.R. Knight of Grey's Anatomy, who was the recipient of Isaiah Washington's "f—-t" slur. In the "it's a small world" department, Amaechi had spoken with Washington earlier that day — apparently Washington is making an effort to clean up his image in the gay community and the public eye.

• Take note: Having a beach house in Malibu is a lifestyle. Being gay is a life.

• He's looking forward to going home to London tonight for nine days, and getting back into shape (note: he doesn't look out of shape, at least as far as us regular-sized people go). Next week he'll appear on Bill O'Reilly via satellite. He gave the impression that he wasn't welcome in the studio. "Well yeah," I joked, "they might catch what you've got."

• Another Big Daddy Drew question: Are there gay NBA groupies? Answer: no. At least not remotely in the way there are women available for the straight players.

• Several of the bloggers I reached out to wanted to know: is Amaechi a top or a bottom? Seems a bit of a personal question to ask of a celebrity I don't really know, and I struggled with a way to pose the question. Well, Billy and John and I had a nightcap at Soho House, a ritzy Meatpacking District club where you have to be a member or be with a member in order to get in (I fall into the latter category). While Billy spoke with an acquaintance, I asked John, "How'd you come up with 'Man in the Middle'? Shouldn't it be 'Man on Top' or 'Man on Bottom'?" Alas, he didn't take the bait, and I was left with a mundane explanation of the position of center, and not intimate details of his sex life. Sorry. I said I was bad at journalism.

And that was that. Sometime around 1:30 a.m. we went our separate ways — John across the street to the Hotel Gansevoort, me to the subway for an hour of waiting and changing trains. I felt badly that I couldn't be a better a wing man for him in his search for pretty boys, but he didn't seem too upset by it and gave Billy and me hugs as he left.

I went home just absolutely impressed by Amaechi as a person. Not as a gay man; not as an NBA player; not as a mixed-race gay Brit in the NBA. He's simply a phenomenally intelligent, good-hearted, and good-humored person. And he probably looks forward to the day that all people see him as such: minus the labels.

While the media and sports blogosphere continues to sift through the wreckage of this weekend's NBA All-Star Game, I thought I'd take a break from giving you Pacman Jones updates and deliver, instead, the dispatch filed by With Leather's first-ever Sexy Volunteer Correspondent, Sarah Spain.

Sarah's end-of-weekend report, which I could have posted two days ago had I not been sweating, shivering, and coughing in a near-death illness (turns out: NOT syphilis. Sa-weet!), is after the jump. It was written hurriedly and hangoveredly, so she asked that I touch it up, because otherwise you Internet jackals would destroy her for her syntax or improper capitalization. God bless your little hearts.

Anyway, here's Sarah's story in my words. (I may or may not have added some sexy details.)

Sarah, rolling with blonde Super Bowl buddy Kelly, arrives in Vegas via automobile around 7 p.m. Saturday night. After stopping by the Bellagio for a bite to eat the girls head to Light, where Michael Jordan's birthday party is supposed to be. On the way there they bump into the Raptors' Andrea Bargnani and Darrick Martin in the casino. Sarah and Kelly, being frisky, cute, and becleavaged, make fast friends with the Raps, who invite them to go to Steve Nash's party at the Venetian. Sarah, a Chicago girl through and through, is dead-set on MJ, but she gives them her cell number and a wink. Then she and Kelly make out for a couple minutes. Just right there in the middle of the casino floor.

At Light, the girls are quickly escorted to a table in the VIP section with a stable of thoroughbreds. Apparently, this table is filled with hot girls at the beginning of the night so when the celebrities/VIPs arrive there is already a table of hot girls in their section. There was even a guy there whose whole job for the night was to get them all drunk and hang out with them so they'd be entertained until the VIPs arrived. A social fluffer, if you will. Sounds like a pretty good job, actually.

So they pass the time as hot young women might: by drinking and dancing and taking suggestive photographs with their saucy waitress, Natasha. But still no MJ. His VIP section of four tables sits there, empty but for the unopened bottles of Grey Goose and the unfulfilled desires of women not saddened by Jordan's divorce from Juanita. Turns out MJ is next door at Fontana Bar — he was supposed to come to Light, but for whatever reason opted against it.

2:00 a.m. Steve Nash's party has ended, and the aforementioned Raptors want to party with our girls. So Andrea and Darrick come to Light, and they promptly get booted out of the VIP section — only hot girls get to stay for free. NBA players need to pony up $400 for bottle service. At about the 3:30 a.m. the foursome heads to the Palms to gamble and eat, only the boys' moods get kind of sour: everyone wants their picture taken with Bargnani, while Martin — who's shorter than our Amazonian correspondent even when she's not wearing heels — is getting recognized by precisely no one (though that might have something to do with his level of play, and not his height). The night ends with the girls going back to Sarah's friend's apartment at 7:00 a.m., NOT, I'm afraid, with them taking over the stage at Cheetah's.

Sunday. The corporate suite Sarah was hooked up with for the All-Star Game falls through, which is just fine with Sarah and Kelly, as it gives them more time to lay in a hot bath brushing each other's hair. They decide to go to Tryst at the Wynn, where they jump the line and get in for free because an L.A. friend knows the bouncer. It is, as they say, fabulous: everything red and black, waterfalls, hot waitresses.

After enjoying some Cristal and vodka drinks courtesy a limo driver named Sal from New York (his business card reads: I make all most [sic] any dream come true), the club starts getting, as the kids say, off the heezy. Cocaine and marijuana use is open and uninhibited. There's a stripper pole in the middle of the club that ladies don't hesitate to use and Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith show up and liven up the party with — allegedly — $10,000 in singles (Pacman Jones is not impressed). Melo gets on the mike and hypes up the crowd, and Smith (Sarah: "funniest dancer ever, such an entertainer") rocks a wifebeater to the displeasure of David Stern.

So, the dance floor is littered with singles, and we really need a woman's voice for the appropriate cattiness here. In Sarah's words:

I look around–I'm the only girl in a 5-foot radius on the dance floor who hasn't dropped to her knees trying to pick up 1 dollar bills. I'm like, "Seriously, ladies, you just picked up $4 and dropped your pride."

Rowr! Watch out, that sex kitten's got claws! The cattiness continues when, as Kelly and Sarah are walking hand-in-hand (I'm actually not making that part up), some short girl judo-chops their hands apart and pushes past them. Sarah responds with a friendly shove, and then that bitch is all up in her face, acting like she wants to get steamrolled by the Spain Train. Then a bouncer shows up and throws all of them out. But Sarah sweet-talks her way out of it, Sarah and Kelly stay at the party, then around 4:30 they call it a night, just in time to avoid all the brawls and shootings.

***

I left out a few details and made up some lesbian overtones, but that's pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed it. Please direct your complaints to the assistant editor.