Encounter #105: Kobe's just like you, nerd. (Not!)

I'm waiting for the day when we hear about how Zen Master got Kobe to read something goofy like Alan Watts or how when he retires he plans to sit down (maybe treadmill it?) and really read Truth and Method. (He loves the Continent, right?) Until then, here's a story about Kobe buying comics after hours for his plane ride to China. (Yup: this is timely shit.) In any event, since my basketball blogging is strictly parasitic for the time being (and probably will remain so), I should again announce that I'm of the camp that, asshole or no, Kobe is fucking fascinating; singular in a way no other superstar has been. It's kind of similar to what makes Chris Bosh so cool (on the surface: they have personalities!) but Bosh's youthful enthusiasms are charming whereas Kobe's odd trajectory to now makes him more enigma than a known entity, a mamba with all kinds of crazy fighting inside that only shows up in how ferocious he plays. Here's where the Gadamer comes in: what is play for this dude? I've seen him laugh, I've seen him jump over things on youtube with a smile, I've seen him arm in arm with teammates and trophies; I've rarely seen him smile on the court, in a game, and when I have it was during some broadcast-muted trash talk with the other team's luminary. I guess plenty of athletes are intense and fierce competitors. But, and here comes that cliché, there's something else in how Kobe attacks, and how Kobe walks away from, the basket -- even a fade away is cut-throat for him -- that makes him so good and so ruthless and so compelling. I mean, he said, "I like that dark shit," when asked what comics he likes, and I think there's other stuff going on there, too. The idea of Preacher appealed to him. And apparently he's a big fan of 100 Bullets, too. That's some down right abject mess. Maybe Kobe will read Georges Bataille instead of Gadamer. Hyuck, hyuck. --RWK

[Pic 1, stolen from the original post, of Kobe with Lee's Comics' intrepid reporter slash employee Taio Iwado; Pic 2 stolen from Tirico Suave]