You're watching, and I don't know how you're doing it. I just watched, and I don't know how I did it. But I know I'll never do it again. I'll never watch Stephon Marbury on streaming Internet video again.
Oh, maybe one more time ...
Marbury is magnetic, but for all the wrong reasons. He's not smart or provocative or funny. He's not inspirational or motivational.
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| Stephon Marbury has forsaken the last vestige of privacy in his life. (Getty Images) |
And ... I ... can't ... stop ... watching.
And neither can you. Almost 100,000 people tuned in live -- and millions more have used taped Internet clips -- to watch him melt down into smaller and smaller puddles of The Man Formerly Known As Stephon Marbury. Right now, what's left of Marbury could be sopped up with a piece of toast. And Marbury being Marbury, he'd probably eat it.
He's already eaten Vaseline. Live. For your amusement. After asking the company that makes Vaseline to hire him as a pitch man -- "Come see me," he says. "Ten million and up." -- he reached a finger into a tub, pulled out a dollop and shoved it down his throat. He was doing it, he said, because his throat was sore, and because a friend of his had a grandmother who used to recommend swallowing Vaseline to cure a persistent throat ache.
To recap: Marbury swallowed a handful of petroleum jelly goo because his friend's grandmother at one point in her life said it was OK. And he did it live, on the Internet, as you watched.
He's insane.
And ... we ... can't ... stop ... watching.
Which is what he wants, obviously. He wants attention, and for the life of me, I couldn't tell you why. The guy has been in the public eye since he was 14 on Coney Island, when he was said to be the best schoolboy basketball player to ever come out of New York City. He was a star in high school, he was a star for one season at Georgia Tech, and then he was a star for a decade in the NBA. He has made more money than you and I could count, much less spend, and he has signed autographs for 15 years. I bet the last time he walked down a street without people gawking at him was in middle school.
When people like that become publicity-shy hermits, like surly Ted Williams or even grouchy Albert Belle, it makes all the sense in the world. As far as attention goes ... enough is enough. But with Marbury, it's never enough. He gives away the only privacy he has by hooking up an Internet camera and pressing the "play" button. And when he's not doing that, he's on Twitter, which is where the narcissist things are. And a few days ago, on his Twitter feed, he literally gave away his cell number -- it's 917-923-7775, apparently -- and invited people to "call me anytime. Love is love. I love you more than you know."
He's insane.
And ... I'm ... starting ... to ... be ... scared.
For him. Not scared of him. Marbury seems harmless to other people -- other than the NBA coaches he has gotten fired over the years -- but he is starting to look like a danger to himself. And about that, I'm deadly serious.
Deadly.
This guy is losing it. I'm not sure he ever had it, honestly, but reality has become a wet bar of soap that he just can't grip. He broadcasts himself in a passenger seat of a moving car, and when the car jolts as if it has hit something, Marbury waves it off: "That ain't nothing but the devil," he says.
Most other times, Marbury broadcasts himself without a shirt, and possibly without any clothes at all. Who knows? He sits there and stares into the camera and says things like: "Do I believe in aliens? I don't know, because I've never seen one. But I believe in Jesus because I saw him in the shower the other day."
He's insane. Jesus might well come down to Earth to visit people on occasion, but He's not visiting Stephon Marbury in the shower. Only a self-absorbed egomaniac would think that shrouded figure in the steamy mist is Jesus. (That wasn't Jesus, Starbury. It was one of your brown-nosing friends offering to soap your back.)
Another time Marbury sat in front of the camera, did some meditative motions with his hands, and turned on a gospel song. And then proceeded to bawl for five minutes. He wasn't crying. He was wailing. Every now and then, someone else in the room would walk near him and throw an arm around his shoulders while Marbury sobbed some more.
Apparently Marbury has friends, but he doesn't have good friends. A good friend would tell him to turn off the camera, remove it from his computer and smash it into 12,000 pieces. But these guys so rarely have good friends. Self-obsessed Bengals receiver Chad Johnson changed his name to a mangled Spanglish version of his jersey number -- Ochocinco -- and has gone to live video as well. Why? Because none of his "friends" is strong enough or smart enough to tell him to shut the hell up, grow the hell up and turn off the damn camera.
So it is with Marbury. Even the media is starting to cringe at Marbury's antics, but none of his "friends," the leeches who hang around him because he drives phat cars and picks up bar tabs and attracts stupid chicks, has the courage to tell Marbury he's making a fool of himself. And none of his "friends" cares enough about Marbury to see that he is dissolving right in front of our eyes.
All of our eyes.
Because he's insane.
And ... I ... fear ... he'll ... die ... on ... camera.
