Some of my favourite basketball players wore the number 33 -- Larry Bird and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Both were All Stars and soon to be Hall of Famers. They both won the NBA Championships many times. Larry is white. Kareem is black. Kareem was in Edmonton the other day to give a speech and got paid $33,000 to do it. Too bad he was an asshole. Larry was born in a town called French Lick. It’s in Indiana. Larry went on to coach the Indiana Pacers. He won Coach of the Year. He doesn’t coach there anymore. Kareem was in the movie Airplane as a pilot. When little Billy was in the cockpit, he told Kareem that his dad thought he was lazy on the court. Kareem got mad. Kareem was also in a Bruce Lee movie doing karate. He looked funny trying to kick little Bruce.
Jesus supposedly died when he was 33. Conflicting histories say that he was at least 40 when he was crucified. East Indian mythology says that he didn't die on the cross, was nursed back to health and then he and his mother Mary went to India to a town now called Muree, and Jesus stayed and taught until he was over 80! Yet other stories say that both Marys went to what is now France. They say Mary Magdelene was pregnant with Jesus' child and thus started the bloodline of Christ - the Holy Grail (Sangraal) if you will. But the story of the Holy Grail wasn't published or known until about the 12th century when a guy named Chretien de Troyes wrote it. There are many other versions of the story. It then kind of morphed into the story of King Arthur - drawing from history that occurred at the end of the Roman Empire. I liked the movie Excalibur. First Night was okay, but Richard Gere is a shitty actor. Too contrived he is.
33 is one of those numbers where both digits are the same. Remember how cool it was when you were 11, or 22? Okay, maybe not.
But at 33, you're supposed to be married with children, right? Wrong! But I liked that TV show. Al was so funny. I remember when he couldn't afford to go on a holiday, so he stayed at home and cordoned off the couch and TV area in his living room. Everyone pretended he wasn't home and ignore him. Then he pretended he was in an airplane landing and he even had his luggage! When he got out, his family was waiting to greet him. They were so happy. Great show.
So, um, yeah, 33 -- not a prime number, but an odd number, nonetheless. When I was 16.5, I was entering Grade 11. Ten months later, I got my first job as a produce clerk at Superstore. I got the job because I played rugby. You see with high school rugby, we won the city championship that year. I played second row. I ended up working at Superstore for six years. I took a buyout package because I was making too much money I guess. I didn't know when my last day was, so I just stopped going to work. I remember in the backroom we all talked about what we were going to do on our last day. I said I was going to eat all the kumquats - because they're so expensive and filled with vitamin C. One guy said he was going to ride one of the hand jacks around the store during the day running into people. When you picture that, it's pretty funny. We used to do that during night crew but there was no one to run into. But it was fun regardless. Fucking unions.
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