On An Awesome Note

By Nick McCann

Sorry. When work gets busy, I look to athletes who write and get more hits than my blog.

Gilbert Arenas is still Gilbert Arenas. And Curt Schilling shouldn't even try.

Originally posted on Gilbert's blog after some pics of his new pool were released without his approval on the internet:

I’m actually disappointed that those pictures are on the net. That’s part of my personal life that got out. I’m disappointed that somebody that doesn’t even work at my house any more took pictures and put them on the Internet. I don’t know if he sold them or if he just put them up there, but I think it’s wrong. But hey, that’s something that comes with the territory I guess. The thing is with somebody like that, you trust them to be on your property and then they take pictures and put them online. It’s not what I expected. I found out because Daren from the Wizards PR told me, “Hey man, I saw your pool.” So I go, “Oh yeah, you stopped by?” “No, they got pictures online.” “Pictures online?” They beat me to the punch. I looked at the pictures and the pictures they got are like four months old, they’re not even recent pictures. So everybody is like, “I’ve seen your pool!” and I just want to be like, “It’s not done.” Of course, if you’re a Web Site you’re going to post the pictures because you think it’s news, but, if I take a picture of the Trump Tower while it’s under construction and say, “This is the new Trump Tower,” people are going to put it up, but it’s not done so that’s the first problem and secondly, how the hell did you get on the property to take a picture anyway? There are going to be real pictures that are going to come out when it’s done. I’ll put the pictures out. But that’s not going to be for another three months. And then you start comments like, “I see he’s having fun with his new contract.” No, actually I started this process a year and a half ago. It’s been being built that whole time. Finally it’s at a point where it’s going to be done soon and yes, from the pictures, it is like the Playboy Mansion’s grotto, only doubled. The guy who actually built the grotto for Hugh Hefner is the same guy who is building mine, so I knew what I had to do to top Hef’s. I had my people call Hugh’s people and got it crack-a-lackin’. It’s actually been coming along great, it’s just been a little slower than I expected. They said it was supposed to be done in April. But they’ve got caught up on landscaping and all of that. I haven’t really done anything with my money on the last contract, so the biggest two purchases I’ve ever had are the pool and that party I threw two years ago. I always wanted a pool and then I also have the shark tanks in there. When I saw that part in the story, I knew who took the picture. I’ve been in love with fish tanks and sharks for a while. (And not just shark jokes.) I actually bough Ken Griffey Jr.’s old tank online and have that in my living room. I knew somebody who was selling it in Orlando. Actually, the company ended up buying it back from me and building me another one for the same price because the old one was too tall. It was like 10 feet tall and there was too much water pressure to have it in my living room, or whatever, so they build me one that was rounder and shorter. I’m going to have exotic fish in there, a couple sharks, some black tips, some bonnet heads … that’s my mild tank. Then I have the tank in the grotto that’s going to have semi-aggressive fish like lemon and leopard and puffer fish and the fish with poisonous spikes that’s in Deuce Bigalow. Then I’ll have my personal shark tank that’s going to be in my basement. My basement used to be my weight room but I’m converting it to a shark tank. I cut a whole wall out down there and replaced it with a 10,000 gallon shark tank. That’s going to be my aggressive tank, only filled with bullhead sharks. If anybody knows what a bullhead shark is, it’s the No. 1 killing shark in America. It can go in salt water and it can go in fresh water. I’m going to have a salt water tank so I can have my eels and my stingrays too. I’m going to have three bullheads in there. I originally wanted six, but the guy who has to clean it once a week said that he’s not going to get in the tank with six of them, he’ll get in with three. Once they get big enough, I’ll have to get rid of them. The guy who cleans the tank actually goes and catches the sharks himself, because you know, these sharks you can’t just go buy, they’re illegal. Ever since Jaws there’s been something about fish and sharks that I’ve always liked. Also when I saw Cribs and Ice T had a shark tank in the back of his place, I was like, “Oh man! That’s what it is!!” I’ve been trying to plan this shark tank for the last seven years of my career I’ve been talked out of it by my mentor, Otis Smith. He first talked me out of it when I was a rookie and I was going to spend my whole paycheck on a fish tank. I was like “Man, I want a fish tank, that’s all I want to leave with, if I don’t get another dime I can know I got a fish tank,” and Otis shut that down. So this has been years in the making.