Tuesday Keel-Billed Toucans

Good afternoon! There'll be a Knicks game this evening. To tide you over until then, I have procured delicious, organic links for you to enjoy. Yes, all the links are free-range.

- I've spent my afternoon reading about toucans, watching videos of toucans, then eating as much fruit as I could find because the toucans made fruit look so good. I ate a banana and a lot of blackberries. Here's a thing I learned about toucans: Toucans have a ball-and-socket joint where their tails go, which means they can flip said tails all the way in front of their tummies and touch their faces. A lot of them sleep like that, sorta curled into a ball. The keel-billed toucan is supposedly the basis for Toucan Sam. Some say he's actually a toco toucan. He doesn't look like either of them.

- I'm really into toucans today.

- Real-life human gathering news: I will be in attendance (though not reading, I assume) for the Varsity Letters thing on Thursday. It's going to take place during at least the first half of the Knicks-Bulls game, so we'll like hustle en masse to a bar to watch the game afterward. On Sunday afternoon during the game, we're going to hold another meet-up at Full Circle. I'll post a full announcement asking for RSVPs and stuff tomorrow.

- Big Baobab Silverbro and Jiminy Cavanaugh spoke to David Roth about our book. It's a great interview.

- Two excellent columns on the offensive majesty of the Knicks' win streak by Howard Beck and John Schmeelk.

- The coincidence between Pablo Prigioni's insertion into the starting lineup and the Knicks' 12-game win streak has quietly been one of my favorite parts about the last few weeks. Jared Zwerling notes that Pablo's the first rookie guard (ya know, "rookie") to win 12 straight games a starter since Danny Ainge in 1982.

- Until Zach Lowe pointed it out, I hadn't noticed these unusual switches the Knicks have been making between shooter and driver.

- When Steve Novak isn't producing (i.e. hitting threes), I tend to assume he's helping the Knicks just by virtue of spreading the floor. Recently, that hasn't been the case at all.

- Cool.

- I made this video for the Wizards media people to preview tonight's game.

- Mainly for census purposes, Howard Megdal lists all the tall people on the Knicks and their present conditions.

- Amar'e Stoudemire has been running on an anti-gravity treadmill. It's going well. Now we just need to figure out how to suck the gravity out of MSG.

- The Knicks make a couple appearances-- both as perpetrator and victim-- among the greatest individual performances of the season.

- Estimating how much Iman Shumpert's hairdo would have been worth to Adidas, had the NBA let him keep it. (I imagine that value is exactly why such things can't fly).

- Mr. Fishner's "Week in Knicks". It was a good one.

That's all for now! I'm going to creep down to Ben and Jerry's to get a free ice cream cone. Alone. Just me and my ice cream and maybe the ducks that hang out at the park. See you later!