Last night, ESPN aired the first installment of a series entitled 30 for 30. Since this is ESPN's 30th anniversary, they decided to pick 30 compelling stories from the past 30 years, find a director who is passionate about the subject, and then present it to us the fans. It was the brainchild of my main man, and favorite writer, Bill Simmons, and the beauty of this series (to me at least) is that it is palatable to everyone, just not hardcore sports fans. Each story has a strong human element attached to it, that supersedes the sport they are discussing..aka I can get my girlfriend to watch (although she didn't last night..no pressure though).

The first installment last night was on Wayne Gretzky, and I thought it was beautifully done. It did leave me wanting more, but that's just me being greedy. I also thought that there should have been a round table discussion after the show with all the parties involved in the story to discuss everything the documentary could not cover. In fact, in my humble opinion, after documentaries air in general, a round table discussion should be mandatory. The reality is, due to time constraints, not everything can be included into a story, movie, song or whatever, and a separate discussion with those involved, goes a long way in filling in some of the gaps. Plus, people love behind-the-scenes type stuff. That's why DVDs with deleted scenes and interviews are so popular; that's why shows like Inside the Actors Studio have been so successful, and its why movies like This Is It will be such a hit (and yes I bought my tickets already). Folks want to see what's going on both in front of and behind the camera. That's what was missing last night..I went way off on a tangent.

So as I came into work this morning, I found myself wondering who would I do a documentary about? Who do I feel strongly about, to do the level of research necessary to produce some sort of documentary. Off the top of my head I can only think of two people: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who I can't seem to nail an interview with to save my life and the late, great writer, Mr. Ralph Wiley. Considering I know Wiley's son, Cole, I could probably pull that one off, more than I could the Kareem one. But realistically, I am probably a couple years away from being able to pull that off the way I'd really want to. But last night's program has inspired me to keep it as a realistic goal.

I feel like I just rambled and rambled for a few paragraphs..