Knicks Morning News (2025.05.15)

Aka Donnie’s coping mechanism.

Be careful not to go as far as him, though. He got lost in the sauce and hasn’t found his way back yet. Poor guy’s happier than all of us.

i’ve been meaning to admit something. in the mid 90s i was finishing up with my therapist and she ended our session as usual, stumbling out the back door holding a paper bag, an umbrella and a GNC supersized bottle of ginseng. at that moment an obscenely overweight but otherwise unassuming fellow donning a less than pristine autographed charles smith jersey trudged in. to no fault of my own but perhaps encouraged by an unfortunate moment of aeron chair testing, the young man may well have taken me for his new clinician given what followed.

too polite to interject, i weathered an unabridged expatiation that in my mind cast a serious challenge to the impossibility of the penrose stairs. i won’t pretend to have caught every nuance being fairly untrained in a new vocation, but can recall some very acute symptoms of advanced arithmophobia, as the poor boy explained that he was physically no longer able to order his cherished 2 for $18 chimichanga special at chi chi’s without breaking into tremors, and had developed a compulsive urge to vandalize wristwatch faces by drawing eights on the nine second position. according to my lengthy notes he was also burdened with a vexing logistical predicament, having overwhelmed his parents’ composting pantry with dozens of faux armani suits and several years supply of LA Looks styling gel that were apparently no longer sartorially relevant.

fearing that this case was far too urgent to withstand an unpredictable interregnum of standard office operations, i did my best to step into the lacuna. i confidently handed over my well worn copy of awaken the giant within (prudently reupholstered with infinite jest cover art to divert public admirers) and advised doubling down on his current vices and loyalties whenever feasible to avoid acquiring the stink of a young scaramouch and future umarell before accepting his personal check and bidding our adieus.

it wasn’t until years later when searching for a regifting option and i came upon that treasured tome did the amusing nature of that exchange bring itself to light. i won’t go into detail to avoid the impression of pomp but suffice it to say at the time i was one of the more acclaimed artisans on the alt.tomhanks.fanfiction usenet. as quirk would have it what i in fact handed…let’s call him charles…was my opus forrest gump pastiche in which the protagonist, realizing both the beneficial taxation and post traumatic stress alleviating properties of forrest jr, goes on to adopt another forrest jr for every geography he’d encountered in his travels. he and lt dan, fresh off a close victory in the second annual orange country piggy-backed ultramarathon, even parlayed the celebrity rolodex he’d accumulated thanks to a secondary writing credit on ace of base’s the sign to start a lucrative consultation service in hollywood espousing the tax and reputational reward of hyperfostering until it was unceremoniously rendered obsolete by the ipo of orphanROI.com. since that day i’ve always wondered what became of that boy and specifically whether it might be feasible to seek the return of my errant largess.