Guest post by The Man Upstairs (aka, "Kenneth" in this write-up)
In Game Four of the Celtics-Cavs series, toward the end of the game, you may remember the gargantuan dunk LeBron had over Garnett. It was a monstrous, traumatizing, titillating display of talent and human athleticism. I've said this before, but the reality of the matter is that both LeBron and I are human beings, yet he can do that, and I have trouble making a left-handed lay-up. The spectrum of humanity boggles the mind. But I digress.
Immediately after the dunk, you can hear Kevin Harlan narrate, "OOOOoooHHH!! LeBron James, with no regard for human life!" The way he delivers it, it's probably my favorite sound byte of this year's playoffs. I think it's the preposterousness of it, as if a LeBron James dunk could kill someone. But Harlan makes it a great line. It made me want a sportscaster and/or color person to narrate my daily life. Think about it.
"Kenneth, finishing the last tab of his twenty tab Excel model ... presses F9 to run ... everything works, it's time to save it and print it out ... OOOOOoooHHHH!! Tom Kenneth, with with no regard for human life!! Did you see that?! Wwwwooow ... Let's go down to Michelle Tafoya, standing by Tom's favorite printer."
"Thanks, Kevin. What you saw there has become part and parcel of the total package that Kenneth has really developed over the years. He's really worked on his mid-range collating skills, as well as his ability to post up smaller notes. We've seen him save files with his mouse or by pressing CTRL + S, right or left-handed ... he's really ambidextrous at this point. I had a chance to sit down with Tom's father, John Kenneth, this past week, and here's what he hand to say."
[fade to awkward interview spliced with home video footage]
"When Tom was a boy, we used to tape his right hand to his side and force him to press CTRL + S with his left hand. From a very young age, it was clear to us that Tom had many special talents ... but absolutely none of these would allow him to become a professional athlete. Once we knew that Tom was bound for the white collar world, we put him through a gamut of 'real world' exercises on a daily basis. His mother used to mix vodka into the water bottle he took to swim practice on Thursday nights, so that he'd be hungover for school on Friday's."
"There you have it ... back to you Kevin."
"Thank you, Michelle. Well, Reggie, what do you think about that?"
"You know, I think it's a great message to the youngsters out there. Kids look at the performances put in by guys like Tom and how far he's come, and they assume that it's God-given talent. And it is that, it is the talent, but it's also the endless nights of pointless assignments, practicing DCF calculations in Polish notation under a single light in the driveway, writing an ungodly number of emails over the years. Look at the way Tom's hands rest on the home keys - that's not born, that's built. Someone - probably some overweight, middle-aged woman with eighteen cats and an inferiority complex - beat it into him at an early age that that is how you type. So it's the talent, and it's the work. It's all that. You don't get to where a player like Tom Kenneth is without a lot of hard work. ... Or some really solid familial connections."
