Swish,

On March 9, 2009, as the sun sank into the Mississippi River, a teeming horde of glassy-eyed, mostly milky-looking people gathered on the rooftop of the historic Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. They had come to look at 15 or so extraordinarily tall, mostly chocolatey-looking, young men.


The young men are famous for finding ways to get a ball to go through a hoop. The horde loves them for this.

The horde brought their own balls; clean brand new balls not meant to be played with. They handed the balls to the young men, and the young men wrote their names on them.



The ball bringers exhibited many... signs... of... mania when their pristine balls were returned to them with the addition of a freshly hand-written name.




Later everyone went to a fancy dinner. The tall, famous young men drew attention away from the full time celebrities who inhabit the roof. More than 677,000 people live in Memphis, Tennessee. 57 of them had obituaries listed in the newspaper on March 9, 2009. The Mississippi River is more than 2,300 miles long. A basketball takes approximately 81 days to float along the entire length of the river.