Scar Tissue/Mutombo

I should have left well enough alone*. I shouldn't have yielded to temptation.

That way, I wouldn't have wound up in the hospital.

[stylist scratching over record]

An explanation: yesterday, upon finishing

(a meatball sub)

work, I returned home to find my wife and daughter out. I smoked a square in the den** (shhhh!), listened to some music (forebodingly, one of the songs was "SPAM" by Milk -- nee D -- and Ad Rock), watched the finale to season 4 of Quantum Leap, then realized I had nothing to do.

This of course is not a rare situation in which I regularly find myself. But instead of tossing off, I opted to toss on my black Nikes and head down to the Tancheon for some sweet basketball love. I hadn't played in nearly two months, and knew that it was probably my last chance to get my fix before Old Man Winter reared his ugly head.

Shit was in full swing when I arrived, but I managed to get into a game of 4-on-4***. Now, I hate 4-on-4 -- too many bodies hanging around the basket. Shit tends to be a crowded house like Don't Dream It's Over.

I played all right (like you care), but my hands were too numb to get into a good shooting rhythm. And if there's one thing I've learned during my short stint as a member of the Seoul Samsung Thunders, it's that if you're not performing well in one area, it's best to switch things up and try contributing in other ways.

So I started to box out and crash the boards like everyone else. Sometimes I'm such a motherfucking conformist.

Then, GEORGE MICHAEL AND ANDREW RIDGELEY!**** Your psychedelic homeboy was clocked like an MLB fastball.

I got hit in the face with an elbow. At first my entire head was numb. I thought that maybe I took one on the nose. Certainly the blood spattering the court was an indication that this was in fact the case. But when I plugged my nostrils to stop the imagined source of the flow, I found my arm was soon as sanguine as Carrie on prom night.

Here's the funny part: there's a hospital close to the court, and it was there I went -- but not for medical assistance, rather to wash off my face in the bathroom and stop the flow -- coming from a nickel-sized gash a half inch below my right eye -- with toilet paper. What can I say, I was a little woozy.

I managed to stop the blood flow, but judging from the wound I knew without a doubt that I would require stitches. (To all my friends, expect to hear me say "How am I gonna get a scar up here eating pussy, meng?" a lot. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.)

So I hopped in a cab, told my wife the situation and asked her to wait outside, and after picking up the Big Nurse and the 18th Letter, Fam Sparkles was headed to Seoul National University Hospital.

A good time was had by all. I got my face sewn up and the little girl got to see a dead man on a stretcher. Beats Disney Land. I can't wait to go back.

As for the owner of The Elbow That Shook Bundang, I never did learn from whom it came. Doesn't matter. For he is not to blame. You and I know where that dubious honor rests.

PS - I'm still pretty.

* Someone erased my contribution to buzzer beating; and while that may help prove that democracy still works on Wikipedia, at what cost? Creativity, that's what cost.

** I like to give my apartment's bourgeois rooms fancy-sounding names. For example, my balcony is the aviary (insects have wings), and "the bathroom" is instead called the Mecca of civilization, culture and influence.

*** I won't even mention the fact that the number 4 is unlucky in Asian culture. Except I just did.

**** I sincerely hope someone out there appreciates that.