| The Best Column (#1) - Introduction |
| Summer has finally arrived, and with it, so has my ambition to write a lot more. You may have noticed I’ve been writing for AoN for a good deal of time now, albeit very sporadically. Luke had told me on a number of occasions that if I wished, he’d love to see some regular column work from me, in addition to my not so regular work of reviewing music. And as luck would have it, summer vacation has opened up my schedule for just that sort of tomfoolery. |
| So here I am, playing Yang to Luke’s Yin. I like a lot of things for a variety of different reasons, while he dislikes a lot of things for a variety of different reasons. He is Canadian, I am American. He likes basketball, I don’t. We are the new odd couple, and I couldn’t be happier to be writing alongside the man again, this time in the passenger seat. |
| See, once upon a time, I ran a sports website that Luke was a major (if not the only) contributor to. I then proceeded to run said sports website into the ground. This is beside the point though. The point is that I grew a great appreciation for Luke and the talents he possesses in writing, and have enjoyed discussing music, sports, and movies with him since the days of Sports-Den.Net. |
| So now I’ve gone and told him I’d have a column ready by Sunday for the site, and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write about at AoN. Sometimes an open format is the most restricting of all. That’s why I’ll most likely be switching topics quite frequently here in The Best Column. One minute I may be discussing the White Stripes interesting performance on the MTV Movie Awards, while the next I’ll be discussing the latest steroid allegations in Major League Baseball. Sometimes I may even take a break from all of that monotony and provide you with a stunning narrative of love, war, and philosophy. Probably not though! |
| You may be asking yourself, just who the hell is Dan Kricke, anyway? I’m sixteen, to be seventeen at the end of August, and I’ve been writing for various online entities since around 1999. I’d mostly written for videogame websites such as the fabled SegaDojo and Dreamcast.Net before stepping back and trying to create a fan-first sports/humor website that didn’t turn out to be half of what I had planned, in 2000. We live and we learn, I suppose. |
| Currently I’m doing the Apropos Of Nothing thing with Mr. Adams, keeping it old school while telling people I really like too many kinds of music, and also writing about videogames...again. This time it’s for the terrific Game Partisan. You should all go there and tell them I sent you, so that I receive some sort of great oral pleasuring. I love the oral pleasuring. |
| On to more pressing matters at hand, like the NBA Playoffs. Anyone who saw Game 6 and can tell me with a straight face that there wasn’t some kind of "Super Laker Fix" going on is someone I do not trust around my valuables. That’s all right though, I didn’t expect Sacramento to actually win the series anyway, so this is not a huge loss. Unfortunately, that was about as interesting as the playoffs will be getting, I fear. The Nets play far superior defense to Sacramento, but their offense is incredibly tepid. J-Kidd is great, but Mike Bibby played out of his mind and couldn’t stop the Shaq Diesel alone. Life is not fair. In fact, I still think they should just give the championship to Bibby and Sacramento. I like their moxie. Chris Webber, however, leaves much to be desired. It’s a damn good thing Memphis fell asleep at the wheel and dealt Bibby to Sac for JASON WILLIAMS. Man, for a mulligan on that one. |
| Enough about basketball, though. My Bulls haven’t been watchable in some time, and now that the Kings and Mavericks are out, the fun has been sucked from the arenas. How ‘bout those MTV Movie Awards, yeah? Jack Black actually was pretty funny, which is a lot more than I could say about his SNL performance a few months back. The White Stripes were very fun to see live too. I’d wondered how they played for some time. It was really odd to see "Dead Leaves..." mixed in with "Fell In Love With A Girl" and then jettisoned back to "Fell In Love..." again at the end. Why not just play both? |
| The rest of the show was pretty awful, as award shows normally are. I have no patience for watching celebrities receives accolades. Don’t care, maybe never will. And on that note, it is time for me to go. It’s been fun attempting to entertain, and here’s hoping future editions of The Best Column will be filled with a more cohesive fire that the whole family can enjoy. ‘Nite. |
| - Dan Kricke |
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