EXCLUSIVE: Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton Gun Fight Pictures

Through my shady underground connections I got my hands on the footage from the locker room when Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton dropped guns on each other. It wasn't easy to obtain, but the good part is that these stills I captured from that fateful night prove that this wasn't that big of a deal. Here's how the events played out.

First, Arenas pulled out one of his guns.

Not wanting to be punked, Crittenton responded in turn.

After they realized how silly they were being, they got over it and gathered around for a picture to squash the beef. Crittenton even disarmed himself, trading his gun for some throwing stars.

See, it's no big thing. Just a couple of bros with guns in the locker room. They were even smiling the whole time.

Case closed.

Child Custody: Hell For Lesbian in Vermont

We all have exes we really want to slap, right?

But what would you do if your ex - who you also had a baby with - claimed she was now straight and ran away with your child?

If you were any sort of normal person I'm guessing you'd be pretty pissed, quite frankly.

Well that's exactly what 'former-lesbian' Lisa Miller has done. Miller and her ex-partner Janet Jenkins got a Civil Union back in 2000 and Miller gave birth to little Isabella Miller-Jenkins in the same year. (That is not the family in question above - there we have an example of a real happy family.)

Now however, Miller has renounced homosexuality altogether and has pretty much gone into hiding in order to keep the child for herself.

The couple broke up way back in 2001, and courts in both Vermont and Virginia ruled in favour of Jenkins, even though she is not the birth mother. Miller did however have some custody over the child, but had since been warned that she may lose her custodial rights if she violated orders any further.

So Miller, who is now in hiding, was probably just scared of losing her daughter for good, but what was she thinking? Now her chances of seeing her daughter on a regular basis are next to nothing.

Jenkins has recently stated that she just wants "to be with her. Like any normal parent."

Thanks to morganSDGLN at Twitter for the tip!

The 2010 Blowtorch State of This Website

There are two times a year that I thoroughly reassess what is going on with my life.

1. The end of the year.
2. The end of the NBA season.

During these times, for discussions relevant to this website, I contemplate the future and direction of this website. Mostly, I just try to think about how many times I can say "this website" before anyone catches on. Apparently, three.

Anyways, the year end assessment isn't new, even to this website, but it's helpful. A year, it seems, is a pretty easy demarcation for reflection. 2009 was a good year for The Blowtorch. Traffic increased about 25%, with each month other than August showing an increase from the previous year¹. Additionally, RSS subscriber numbers consistently increased.

This past year also saw the debut of Trey Kerby at Yahoo! Sports, with the Phenomenal Swag column so graciously offered to me by friend of the Blowtorch JE Skeets. That column did well, even occasionally ending up on Yahoo!'s front page². This tells me two things.

1. The Blowtorch aesthetic is marketable.
2. The Blowtorch is viable.

-------------

Over the holidays I did a lot of reading, and there were a few lines in things that I read that challenged me. First, from a delightfully insane GQ profile on William Shatner:

GQ: "You know," I say, "Kelsey Grammar once said something interesting about you to our magazine."

Shatner: "Kelsey's a friend of mine! What'd he say!"

GQ: "About your acting technique. He said "It's total self-delusion, and it works!"

Shatner: "Well, what'd he mean by that?"

GQ: "I think he was suggesting that you're some sort of accidental genius, someone so far up his own a-- that he somehow manages to come out the other side with something truly sui generis and brilliant to offer."

And from Chuck Klosterman's Eating the Dinosaur chapter on ABBA:

"They were not attempting to replicate or refute anything else that was happening in pop; they were living in ABBA World, where ABBA Music is the only sound that exists."

Both of these passages say essentially the same thing: that to succeed, you need only to develop what works for you. We see this in Zach Galifianakis becoming hugely famous at age 40, or Jay-Z releasing Reasonable Doubt independently. Time after time, people who believed in what they were doing were right because they kept doing what they were doing, no matter who was paying attention.

-------------

Commit. Embrace. Grow.

That is my mantra for 2010, my action words, if you will. Commit fully to whatever it is being created or experienced -- ain't no half-steppin'. Embrace the triumphs and failures associated with those experiences, and learn from them, either good or bad. Grow, whether learning a new skill or developing an already present skill. There is always some way to get better.

-------------

2010 is a year for getting better. What this means is up to you. For me, it means really trying to do what I want by being who I am. Tiny, small, inconsequential personal wins governed by staying true to that idea prove that life-changing successes are possible. That's what this year means to me.

1. August 2008 was an aberration based on my legendary post "A Guide to Wearing Headbands."
2. Probably my two greatest triumphs of 2k9 were two posts on basketball shoes gracing Yahoo!'s main page.