Shooting the Messenger

Today there was some miscommunication at one of our Mavs ManiAAC appearances. People were lined up to get the autograph of Josh Powell at 3pm, however, Josh wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 4pm. The Mavericks street team and ManiAACs were going to be at the appearance from 3-5, but Josh Powel, who is a player, was only supposed to be there from 4-5. So around 3:30 people started asking us when Josh was going to show up and I said 4pm, and that there was a miscommunication on the website. Obviously people were upset, some more than others. One particulra guy started firing questions at me, “What about the fans? Will he really be here at 4?” He was being so nasty I finally said, “Hey, I don’t have all the answers, I am just the messenger.”

After going to the Martin Luther King parade and a few other appearances I can see how it would be easy to become jaded – people always want what you can’t give them. For some reason when some people see an entertainer or a performer the first thing they think of is, “What can I get for free?” Most of the time they request free tickets, but other times they want beads or posters. Sometimes people will beg and beg and you feel bad at first and then you start feeling a little put out.

I guess it just comes with the territory, and the territory lately has been getting quite a bit more fun. The appearances have been fun and you always get to meet new people. Today I met Liz and Blair, two promotional gals sporting trendy shades and other Mavericks swank. They sold calendars for 5 bucks for charity and I helped them with some seriously good marketing strategies. My favorite was the shopping cart roll by – but they didn’t employ that strategy today, they wanted to save it for later.

I also got Josh Powell’s autograph and I got my picture taken with him too. He was really cool and I told him that I have been a ManiAAC all year and he is the first Maverick player that I have gotten to meet. We became instant best friends and he took me for a ride in his Denali with 24 inch rims. We got slurpees and power bars and shot hoops. I showed him how to do a few cross-over moves that I learnt back in the day when I was living in the projects – it was wicked tight.

Anyway, that was pretty much my weekend, except for Karaoke and the Mavs win over the Utah Jazz, but I will save those stories for another blog post – maybe.