Doing Emersons

Because I swear last night my eyes witnessed that little cherub soaring in a celestial arc, an angelic X circumvolving through the air on its midpoint axis, before gravity pulled him down from the 5am twilight and accordion-smashed his spinal column through his skull and all over the pavement.

My brain says it happened. The Internet says nope. I Googled ‘verne troyer poleaxed by yao,’ ‘cute little fella gone too soon,’ and ‘does mini me’s death open the door for weeman?'Nothing. Either the story hasn’t popped, twelve hours after the fact, or I dreamt the whole thing up and am still inside the dream, which if that is the case, I stand before you no longer able to decipher reality from parallel reality……which, if that is seriously the case…

Facts reveal truths, yes? But so what if I, all this, you, everything, is in my head? How can one distinguish a concrete fact when one is hallucinating his existence? Wait, say the word fact: fá-kata. 15 times fast: fá-kata-fá-kata-fá-kata. What is a fá-kata? An inalienable certainty in reality? Whose reality? Because mine? Last night? My best friend, RayRayBoomBoom, our favourite bartender, Will the Thrill, and I all witnessed Yao freaking Ming demolish Verne freaking Troyer with a freaking bolo punch. Read the rest of this entry

Look at the forearms on Weeman. If it kicked off between these two, at best, we would be looking at an unfair mismatch, which easily could snowball into a senseless tragedy of medium-smallish proportions.

(First published in the Huffington Post on 9 August 2012)

Nolan, you and I have a problem. I spent £27 ($42) taking my wife and 14 year old to see The Dark Knight Rises. I want £17 back. If you don’t pay up, we fight.

Here is the breakdown: My wife and I will let you keep £1 from each of our tickets because of the very cool exploding football field scene. We would like the rest of our money refunded in full. And although my son was pissed off with the plot holes, he was able to override elementary brain functionality to focus on the visuals. I’m good with you keeping £8 of the £9 for his ticket. Hand back £17 and we avoid a situation.

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(First published in the Huffington Post on 16 July 2012)

The night after I published Facetime with John Amaechi, a thought kept smashing around in my slumbering head until jarring me awake: ‘What if I focused on getting facetime with famous (or notorious) people who I admire, and reported my findings back to the reader?’ That was it, crystalized in a sentence – that was where I wanted to live.

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(First published in the Huffington Post on 8 July 2012)

It has been a month and a half since I interviewed John Amaechi. My idea was to write a piece about a fictitious gay NBA basketball player on the threshold of coming out of the closet. The timing seemed right as sports talking heads (1, 2, 3) and NBA power brokers are suggesting the first pro athlete playing a team sport in America will imminently be calling that press conference.

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(To read Part One click here)

I am calling a press conference tomorrow……..

An NBA superstar at the door frame of the closet; one step and I am out. In 24 hours my spike-trending @name will detonate the building that houses Twitter’s servers. Because when a worldwide A list hero in the I Love This Game and Where Amazing Happens league says he is gay, it changes everything. Read the rest of this entry

(First published in the Huffington Post on 21 March 2012)

(To read Part One click here)

I saw the TMZ video of Jason. The images, although disturbing, didn’t shake my stance on Kony 2012. I thought: ‘Here is a sensitive guy being torn to shreds in a maelstrom of worldwide scrutiny,’ and, ‘Jason’s back and legs are looking stacked – must be hitting the gym hard for the press junket.’ Yesterday a friend sent me another link that is more troubling. Read the rest of this entry

(First published in the Huffington Post on 16 March 2012)

I am angry enough to spit rust. Here is why:

Our fourteen year old son, BK, goes to boarding school. This past weekend was an exeat, which means all kids are cleared off campus after Friday classes so that frazzled house parents can get hammer-drunk on Friday night and still have two days to sober up before boarders return Sunday evening, and my wife and I get to spend 48 hours with our BK, everybody wins. Read the rest of this entry

It has been an entertaining inaugural month of blogging for big daddy HuffPo. Along the way my readers have shown they are fun, fearless and out of their minds. What better forum to deliver this gonzo community of lunatics to the world than the launch of Kambo’s Mailbag. Below are actual comments from actual readers:

HuffPo reader – The Knight of Swords
(re: The Oscars: A Live Blog)
Thank God for your blog…..now HuffPo gets to finally experience what newspapers throughout history have…..the smell of a wrapped fish, a puppy in training and the inside of a parrot cage. What was that abomination? Read the rest of this entry

(First published in the Huffington Post on 29 February 2012)

(To read Part One click here)

I didn’t think there would be a Part Two to this Whitney story. No real need is there. Except that it was not quite finished with me.

Part One was titled Would Whitney Be Alive if There Was No Bobby? It was a rhetorical question. I need to take the rhetorical out. Make it a real question, and close the file with an answer. Read the rest of this entry

(First published in the Huffington Post on 27 February 2012)

As the Academy Awards are across the globe and in the middle of the night, I imposed an assignment on myself to write an inaugural running commentary on our favourite awards show of the year.

Somehow I convinced my wife to stay up and watch. We both knew my mission – to distil three hours of coverage into the eight minutes everyone cares about. You guys all owe me one.

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