Frequent CSTB contributor David Roth makes another well deserved appearance in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, profiling the Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas. Dropping a few other names you might be familiar with, Roth proclaims Gil “the NBA’s first true 21st century star.”
It’s fitting that so much of Mr. Arenas’ popularity involves the Internet. Slam Magazine‘s Lang Whitaker recently called him “the NBA’s first blog superstar.” It’s hard to disagree, considering that Mr. Arenas was given a favorite nickname by one blog (“Agent Zero” originated with the Wizards fan site Wizznutzz), adopted said nickname after he was told about it by another blogger (Dan Steinberg, author of the Washington Post’s popular D.C. Sports Bog ), and now explains “Hibachi” on his own blog (actually a transcribed phone call with an NBA.com staffer, but rich in blog-style mental channel-surfing).
Of course bloggers love him. James Morris, a co-founder of Wizznutzz, has compiled “a notebook full” of prospective, dazzlingly free-associative Arenas-related sneaker commercials, one of which “involves an elaborate magic-realist sequence featuring Zero Mostel.”
Not get all post-mod on you, but given another DC icon’s history collaborating with a member of the Mostel clan, Wizznutzz’ scheme is really just part of a longer, richer artistic tradition.
I’m writing, of course, about Henry Rollins’ performance alongside Josh Motel in “The Chase”.