Our bones make snapping sounds like K’nex. Crack your knuckles out in space, and the bright pop of bone-on-bone at the joints is a plastic sound. An unnatural thing. We probably developed the entire concept of synthetics based on this whiplash snap alone. A flash of inspiration out of this alien thing that lives in our fingers, our toes, the necks and spines of us. Maybe a knee sometimes. All full of plastic polymers cracking back and forth like interlocked Legos.
I like to imagine people as the bendable puppets with the wooden ball joints. Swiveling wrists and hips and ankles, posed. Bodies are funny things like that. The bits and stuff of hair and clay made of the same bits and stuff as the Earth – all Frankensteined up and set loose to do things on our alien planet with plastics. Like painting and music and – oh, hey – maybe some basketball. That’s a plastic thing on the Earth that people seem to like quite a bit much in these parts. There’s also a book involved.
Tonight, minding the smattering of sky fluff on the ground, author Keith O’Brien will present his new book, Outside Shot: Big Dreams, Hard Times, and One County’s Quest for Basketball Greatness, at The Summit location of Barnes & Noble. A book that doesn’t have absolutely anything to do with ruminations on plastic and cracked knuckles, O’Brien’s story has everything to do with the journey of the Scott County Cardinals, chronicling the tumultuous ride of the 2009 boys basketball team.
Starting at 7pm, you can join your joints up with O’Brien for a special reading and signing of Outside Shot. Put on all your bits and stuff to keep your own bits and stuff cozy and head out to for a spell to talk basketball in all its beauty of funny moving bodies and synthetics.
The Summit location of Barnes & Noble is located at 4100 Summit Plaza Drive. For more information, call (502) 327-0410.
Image: Courtesy of Louisville Free Public Library website www.lfpl.org
