WOO!
Remembering when WWE star Ric Flair outhustled our columnist at Comicpalooza
May 10, 2024, 4:51 pm
WOO!
Comicpalooza is coming to the George R. Brown Convention Center, May 24-26, so pop culture, sci-fi, comic book fans, and whatever are on high alert to get their nerd on.
The lineup of celebrity guests tops anything in the history of the event. Slated to appear are: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and James Tolkan from the Back to the Future franchise; WWE superstar John Cena; Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez from Napoleon Dynamite; Rebecca Romijn, Anson Mount, and Andrew Robinson from Star Trek; Shannen Doherty and Rose McGowan from Charmed; and the stars I’ll be lining up to meet, Creed, Oscar and David Wallace from The Office.
There will be an exhibit floor packed with merchants selling all kinds of stuff that appeals to this crowd. There will be comedy shows by the Geeks of Comedy, House Party Comedy, and live wrestling matches featuring the heroes of Texas All-Star Wrestling. There will be cooking demonstrations for kids, cosplay competition, and trivia contests.
For more information, including ticket prices, times and dates for the celebrities, etc., click on Comicpalooza.com.
I’ve been to a couple of these events. They’re huge. I promise you will see things and meet people that you don’t run into during Little League games and Junior League meetings.
An amazing true story
In fact …
Comicpalooza was the scene of one of the great snubs of my career – and trust me, I’ve been “better-dealed” a few times.
They say you should never meet your heroes because they’ll inevitably let you down. It happened to me.
A few years ago I was invited to participate in one of these pop culture festivals at the George R. Brown. They told me, just come up with something. I created a game show called “Win a Date with a Nerd” – a takeoff on the old Dating Game.
Originally the idea was to have a nerd ask questions of three really hot Hooters Girls but I couldn’t convince three Hooters Girls to waste their afternoon on something so stupid. Ultimately, I talked one attractive young woman into picking her date from three total nerds straight out of central casting. These nerds made Sheldon, Leonard, and Howard from Big Bang Theory look like Navy SEAL Team 6 — the guys who got Osama bin Laden.
The game went OK and to this day I have no idea if the date actually took place. I’d like to think it didn’t because it would upset the delicate balance of nature and the Earth might fall off its axis.
Anyway, my favorite professional wrestler Ric Flair was at the event and I met him outside the building. Because there was street construction that limited parking, organizers arranged for limos for guest participants. I was waiting for my car to take me home.
I was talking to the Nature Boy, slobbering over him pretty good, when a car pulled up and the driver yelled out my name.
Flair said, “That’s me,” hopped in the car and the driver took off. No wonder they call Flair the “dirtiest player in the game.”
Another car arrived a few minutes later, and the driver hollered, “Ric Flair.” I tried to get in the car, explaining what had happened. The driver thought I was hustling him and pulled over to wait for Naitch. No way he was letting me in that car.
I wound up calling a friend to come get me.
This article originally appeared on CultureMap.
Adding a player of Kevin Durant’s caliber was too valuable an opportunity for the Houston Rockets to pass up, even though it meant moving on from Jalen Green just four seasons after they drafted him second overall.
Durant was officially acquired from Phoenix on Sunday in a complicated seven-team transaction that sent Green and Dillon Brooks to the Suns and brought Clint Capela back to Houston from the Hawks.
General manager Rafael Stone is thrilled to add the future Hall of Famer, who will turn 37 in September, to a team which made a huge leap last season to earn the second seed in the Western Conference.
Asked Monday why he wanted to add Durant to the team, Stone smiled broadly before answering.
“He’s Kevin Durant,” Stone said. “He’s just — he’s really good. He’s super-efficient. He had a great year last year. He’s obviously not 30 anymore, but he hasn’t really fallen off and we just think he has a chance to really be impactful for us.”
But trading Green to get him was not an easy decision for Stone, Houston’s general manager since 2020.
“Jalen’s awesome, he did everything we asked,” Stone said. “He’s a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic along with being just a great human being. And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works really hard and is really nice, you should value it. And organizationally we’ve valued him tremendously, so yeah very hard.”
Green was criticized for his up-and-down play during the postseason when the Rockets were eliminated by the Warriors in seven games in the first round. But Green had improved in each of his four seasons in Houston, leading the team in scoring last season and playing all 82 games in both of the past two seasons.
Pressed for details about why Green's time was up in Houston, Stone wouldn't get into specifics.
“It’s the NBA and you can only do trades if a certain amount of money goes out and a certain amount comes in and there’s some positional overlap or at least overlap in terms of on ball presence,” he said. “And so that’s what the deal required.”
In Durant, the Rockets get a veteran of almost two decades who averaged 26.6 points and six rebounds a game last season and has a career average of 27.2 points and seven rebounds.
Houston loves the veteran experience and presence that Durant brings. Stone noted that the team had arranged for some of its players to work out with him in each of the past two offseasons.
“His work ethic is just awesome,” Stone said. “The speed at which he goes, not in a game … but the speed at which he practices and the intensity at which he practices is something that has made him great over the years and it started when he was very young. So of all the things that I hope rubs off, that’s the main one I think is that practice makes perfect. And I think one of the reasons he’s had such an excellent career is because of the intensity with which he works day in day out.”
Durant is a 15-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion, who was the Finals MVP twice. The former Texas Longhorn is one of eight players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points and he won NBA titles in 2017 and 2018 with the Warriors.
Now he’ll join a team chasing its first NBA title since winning back-to-back championships in 1994-95.
“Everything has to play out, but we do — we like the fit,” Stone said. “We think it works well. We think he will add to us and we think we will help him.”