The Landriest of them All

We live in an age of manufactured amicability, counterfeit coalitions, bogus considerations, and, indeed, ersatz partialities. "My partialities ersatz?" you will no doubt counter. "Not so!" 

Oh, but they are, friendo. They are.

No area of the Universe is such phraseology more applicable to than Sports. Do you really believe that Chris Paul and LeBron James are Friends? Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley? Steve Nash and Massimo Ambrosini? Oh, you poor, poor fool! I've got some beach front property in Hawaii to sell you!

(It's marked up like 13%, ha ha)

There are those that will contend "you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." First of all, real f******* original. Second, check out this conversation I not only transcribed but also took pictures of before a game earlier this season

 Yo Deron
 What up Zydrunas Ilgauskas

As they* say, the proof is in the pudding. Modern Sports are downright Contemptible, from their hyper-propogandized communiqués to their amaranthine battue for our respective exchequers. It makes me sick. 

*pudding eaters

Such an introduction should prove sufficient edification then as to the refreshment granted me as I unearthed the tale of the Landrys twain.

Not many people know this, but Carl Landry and Landry Fields have known each other for years and years.

It all began in 1997. Carl is from Wisconsin and Fields from California, but both found themselves at the same science camp in the Midwest that summer. 

Carl was the gregarious middle schooler that also happened to be extremely interested in earth sciences. Also, dentistry. Fields was a precocious (almost) 10 year old who was super into bottle rockets. He once built one - this was way later though because you can't really be a good bottle rocketeer until you're at least like twelve - that went to outer space. No lie. Pluto actually. The two shared a tent, and the setup was not terribly unlike Holes (without Rick Fox).

When you ask Carl about it now, he laughs immediately. "I remember Landry was just a weird kid. He was really into basketball and his favorite player was Patrick Ewing, so he would just run around making faces and yelling "Patrick Ewing, baby" and making faces. Just weird s*** like that"

For their final project, the pair created a bottle rocket that would also double as an earthquake simulator. "Yeah," Field recalls now. "It sucked."

Landry and Landry were linked by a common interest in not only basketball and ostensibly science, but also and more importantly, by their first and last names. If you were unaware, the name 'Landry' is one steeped in rich tradition. Many a bishop, restaurant, and conquistador has been be-monikered thusly, and both Landrys had been registered by their parents in the International Society for Landry Advancement. So even after returning to their native lands (Milwaukee and the LBC), Carl and Field would often attend meetings at their local chapters, communicating via Skope, a.k.a. indie Skype. 

Carl ended up attending the University of Purdue, where, as Wikipedia does well to note, "he was known for his power dunks." In all honesty, it had been a while since the Landry name had had much national prominence. The attitude towards the name during the period can perhaps best be described as "Landry Shmandry." Carl was bringing Landry back (aided by the sizable contributions of Ali Landry). Fields and Carl remained close friends, and even though Carl recruited Fields heavily to Purdue and even though Fields ultimately chose Stanford because during his recruitment trip the Lopez twins were going around with this universal remote thing and changing everybody's channels oh and also they had this laser pointer that could shine for like ten miles, there were no hard feelings. 

Today, everybody knows the Landrys. Fields followed in his friend's footsteps, and for my money, should easily be this year's rookie of the year. Carl is a Louisiana legend. Together, they represent a new wave of Landrydom.

But what does it mean to be Landry though, in its most base, elemental form?

Says Fields: "Let me put it this way. In terms of definitions vis-a-vis Landriness, it is an unerring commitment to upbear those principiums, which when perlustrated as essential constituents of an effulgent quantum, ululate imperiously - no, barbarously! - the substratal lionization conferred upon Landrys. Q.E.D."

Sheer poetry.