Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Festivus came early this year: the NBA is back! Happy Holidays from our little family to yours.

ATTENTION OWNERS PLAYERS AGENTS LAWYERS AND DAVID STERN: IF OUR DEMANDS ARE NOT MET AT ONCE, WE WILL SEND LOCKOUT BEARD #38 TO YOUR HOMES TO MELT YOUR WOMEN WITH HIS EYES.

November 24, 1621: guided by the combined wisdom of Samoset and LOCKOUT BEARD #37, the Pilgrims and Indians reach a new collective thanksgiving agreement. Dinner starts on time, and not a single scheduled course is cancelled.

By the time Gibb was offered the part of the bruising Ray Jackson in ‘Bloodsport,’ however, he was so caught up in the rising tide of antilockout sentiment then gripping Hollywood that he categorically refused to shave for the role, despite director Newt Arnold’s avowed discomfort with ‘political’ imagery. And inasmuch as he bulls his bushy way through this otherwise delicately acted ensemble piece, defiantly keeping LOCKOUT BEARD #36 front and center in the viewer’s consciousness, the film undeniably takes on a powerful allegorical dimension, albeit one whose meaning is uncertain. Does Jackson’s brutal defeat by Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) signal the futility of the lockout beards movement? Or does the heroic Franx Dux’s (Jean Claude Van Damme) glaring beardlessness ultimately align him with the equally smooth Chong, thus making Jackson the narrative’s true protagonist and inscribing the return of basketball as its utopian horizon? Either way, one thing is clear: thanks to Donald Gibb’s bravura performance, ‘Bloodsport’ has earned a permanent place of honor in the canon of NBA lockout films.

She’d already taken half of everything else, this beauty of his: half of the money, half of the art, half of the best years of his life… Why not give her half of LOCKOUT BEARD #35 as well? Yes, why not? So he trimmed the hairs from the left side of his face and swept them carefully into an envelope, sealing it with bitter spittle. And as he sent it off, he had a jaunty thought: let her T. Parker open it, let Monsieur le Meneur see what he was in for.

Does LOCKOUT BEARD #34 not melt your icy hearts, owners players agents lawyers and David Stern? THINK OF THE CHILDREN, YOU PITILESS BASTARDS!

Three-piece suits > lawsuits
(LOCKOUT BEARD #33)

Now, most of us in the camp had come to believe that ol’ Jeb was just a li’l off his nut. We’d stare at him wall-eyed when he gave his sermon swearin’ that there was ‘Denver nuggets’ seven feet high if they was an inch, and that soon he’d be headin’ back over the Rockies to find them: but he were a well-enough beliked fellow, so we didn’t see fit to argufy with him. But finally one night, Adolfson got tired o’ listenin’. And he stopped him and said, “Fish or cut bait.’ Well, this got Jeb all up in a mighty flusteration, and sputterin’ and tuggin’ on LOCKOUT BEARD #32, he stalked back to his diggings. Come mornin’, Jeb was gone: he done absquatulated with nary a word, off to find them Denver nuggets. We ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since.

Alright, Dumbledore: it’s time to put your money where your LOCKOUT BEARD #31 is and magically unfuck this situation. Seriously, aren’t you like the provost wizard or the Grand Wizard or Satan or something?

Hey HONEY, have you heard the latest BUZZ about the lockout? The negotiations have been a real HIVE of activity, but so far the news really STINGS: at this point it would come as a LIFE-THREATENING ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK if they played at all this year! (LOCKOUT BEE-RD #30)

LOCKOUT BEARD #29: a beard that, despairing, is starting to consider locking itself in the bathroom and listening to that Elliot Smith song and cutting itself off.

Look, I miss the NBA like crazy. I really do. This whole thing has been awful so far, and it could still get a lot worse. But let’s keep things in perspective here: we may not have basketball this year, but at least we’ll still have lox. Delicious, salty, smoky, silky lox. Because if this were a loxout, well, I don’t know WHAT we’d do. I for one would kill myself. So feast your eyes on LOXOUT SCHMEAR #1 and remember that things could always be worse.

BEHOLD: LOCKOUT BEARD #28 MACHOS FORTH FROM THE MIGHTY HESTON-JAW OF MOSES HIMSELF! Why this particular graven image today, you ask? LISTEN AND WE WILL TELL YOU WHY! Because just as Moses once returned from the mountaintop lugging a pair of big swinging tablets the size of the moon and scared the Israelites straight, IT IS NOW TIME FOR DAVID STERN TO GO BIBLICAL ON EVERYONE’S ASS AND LAY DOWN THE LAW AND BRING THIS STUPID LOCKOUT TO AN END.

Brothers! A diptych of visions. First, a clean gray morning—a break in the forest. A kneeling hillside—no! a ruddy-faced huntsman, kneeling—a lone huntsman, communing with his quarry. The silent spectacle of man’s right relation to the universe—a man taking only so much as he needs to feed his family—LOCKOUT BEARD #27 bedecked with dew. Then: the city’s gilded boardrooms, bespattered with gore. Clamoring madness, bristling mania. Civil converse turned savage banquet—a hot-dog-eating contest between millionaires and billionaires—already-full maws crammed ever fuller—the body’s urge to vomit tamped down by pride. A screaming spiral of gluttony howling us ever closer to the edge of doom. Lowering clouds. Infinite waste.
Believe you me, brothers: you do NOT want to see how the NBA’s sausage is made.

LOCKOUT BEARD #26 CHUCK NORRIS BEARD #1