I CAN'T EXPLAIN ANY OF THIS

by Tracer Bullet, Staff Writer

This was my dream last night:

It started off at some kind of evening mass at King's College in London. I have never been to King's College in London. I've never even been to King's College in Pennsylvania and I've been inside a church voluntarily maybe once in the past 15 years. I'm there with a bunch of doughy white guys I know, but can't place.

I get up from the pew to go to the bathroom before the service and on the way, there is a television. Why? Who the hell knows. I don't know what program was on, but there is a crawl suggesting something about my brother, a Dora the Explorer stuffed doll belonging to LeBron James and the possibility that my brother has knocked up a pastor's daughter.

The scene switches to an NBA game and for some reason, my brother is guarding James. My brother is a pretty good basketballer, but he was never NBA-good and even if he was, Bron has at least eight inches and 50 pounds on him so that would be a bad matchup anyway.

James, inexplicably, has a Dora the Explorer doll behind the three point line. He drives and my brother swats it away. As the doll slides out of bounds, my brother dives after it. When interviewed later, he says something goofy but I never learn anything about him banging a pastor's daughter or what roll Dora might have played in that exchange. Perhaps it was a threesome, perhaps Dora ran the camera.

On the inbounds, what had been an NBA game has morphed into an extremely disorganized pickup game involving far too many people. James is saying he's "Unstoppable."

He is now being guarded by either Derrick Jeter or this asshole linebacker I used to play with -- they both have that light brown coloring that makes it impossible to tell if they're black, biracial, Indian, Latin or Pakastani.

Jeter/asshole replies that, because James has achieved "amateur driver" status from NASCAR, he can be fouled with impunity. I have no idea what anything in that sentence means.

James takes the inbounds, drives the lane and Jeter/asshole tackles him from behind and slams him on the pavement.

They roll around for a few minutes and when they get up, Lebron has become Spider-Man. They swing at each other a few times until Jeter/asshole absolutely clocks Spider-Man, who drops likes he's been shot.

(This was likely influenced by a show I watched on ESPN Classic this week called "Boxing's 20 Greatest Knockouts." Kermit Washington was cruelly omitted, but in fairness, it was the wrong sport.)

Of course, the crowd goes ballistic and I'm screaming, "You got KNOCKED DA' F--- OUT."

I woke up shortly thereafter. Man, I need football season to start again.