Day 31

Day 31 is dedicated to three people:
Cousin Steve: the original #31 (old school photo attached)

My man Andy "call me Andrew in 2005" Rafal: the man who was dumb enough to carve his #31 in his arm with a pocket knife at one of my parties in high school and still has the scars to prove it.

Roots Ryan Sturch: The man who treats the #31 like I treat the #21.

Classic Cousin Steve-isms from the past, straight from my quotebook:
"We are all meat from the same bone."
"I'm half wise-man and half fool. Unfortunetely, the fool makes the majority of my decisions."
"Don't ever give me your address, because I WILL find you."
"How you live is directly proportionate to how you die."
"I'm all for marriage, as long as its other people."
"Why bang somebody when you are thinking about making love to somebody else."
"If you make something your master, you sure are going to be its slave."
"The Omens are telling me to stay in Reno."
"I like all kinds of music. Sound is god, god is sound, god is sound and love."
"I struggle with reality on a minute to minute basis."
"You know what the best thing about being 32 is? I'm Jim Brown all year long. At 33, I'll be Kareem, sky-hooking your ass all year long."
"Stick around, life's gonna get pretty interesting for the next 80-90 years."
"Never drown the man who taught you how to swim."
"After you experience true love, everything else falls short. Love and learning is what its all about."
"This world is so loaded with suffering that only the scent of a woman keeps me here."

I love looking through my old quotebook at some of the classic things my friends, family, athletes, and actors have said over the years. I started it in high school. I used to write down classic quotes on note cards and put them up on my cork board wall in my room. Credit must go to the original quote machine, Max Vermillion, my high school basketball coach, who once told a player on our team that he was "so slow, in a race with a pregnant woman, (he'd) finish 3rd." He had so many classic, that I started writing them down. This spawned the quotebook. The Irony of it all is that coach Vermillion was head coach at Beachwood when Cousin Steve was there and he cut him. After my senior season, where Max coached us to an 0-21 record, he was fired. Talk about karma.

edit from cousin steve: please update your faithful...vermillion did not cut me. he assaulted me in the new gym locker room when i was a freshman, 115 pounds, in front of my friends, just because we were messing around a little out of control..and i was one of the co-captains of the freshman team. so, the next year, after experiencing coach perella's truths, there was no way i way going to go play for that guy. it was a big deal in my house, my dad came all the way over and my mother and father and i had a big sit down at the kitchen table. they tried to convince me to keep playing, but you know how i am when i turn a corner: roberto duran-no mas

Song of the Day: "And it Stoned Me" by Van Morrison