In a crammed auditorium-turned-press conference for the Clinton Global Initiative, I decided that journalism wasn’t for me.  It was midway through the Spring semester of my sophomore year, and I was asked to cover the event for my first major assignment in my Intro to Journalism class.  The assignment required me to follow the regulations of some journalism bible, while including three quotations from the representative giving the press conference in a one page summary of the event.  Pen and notepad in hand, I took my seat as the press conference was about to start.  Although that legal notepad on my lap was blank, my mind was full of ideas.  When the press conference ended about 45 minutes later, that legal notepad was still blank, and my mind was now full of ideas of sleep, or whether AJ Burnett was a viable starter in the Yankees’ rotation.  I sat through that entire Q&A session without a care in the world, speechless, with no motivation to write.

Lackluster work and a blasé attitude was what I brought to that class from that point on.  I yearned for a little creative freedom rather than simply regurgitating facts and reporting.  Clearly, I was a little stubborn and presumptuous of what to expect from a simple Intro to Journalism class, but what’s done is done, and I decided to end my short tenure as a journalist, but not as a writer.  Slim Charles Barkley will grant me the freedom to write what I want to write and say what I want to say, ignoring the archaic rules of some journalism guidebook.  So I might start a sentence with ‘so’.  And maybe I’ll start another sentence with ‘and’.  I couldn’t be less worried about using contractions, and if I want to include a .gif of a fat chick getting knocked into the water by a cut-out on some game show?  Yeah, I’m gonna do that.  Fuck it, I’m gonna curse if I want to.  Stylistically, this will not be journalism.

This is not a sports blog, or any blog for that matter, regardless of the layout, the host website, or what you might think.  The term “blog” denotes singularity, whether it’s a single author, a single group of authors, a single theme, or a single subject.  You follow a format, conform to what’s expected of you, and suppress creativity.

My ambition is not to assemble a small group of authors expressing similar ideas about similar things, but to establish the precedent that both style and subject, for the most part, are amorphous at Slim Charles Barkley.  I hope to reach out to the funniest, the smartest, and the most talented people I know with something to say, stories to tell, opinions to share, and arguments to make relative to the sports world, intertwining pop culture, music, politics, everyday life, and more.  Compound that with all of the different people they know, and I hope to establish a website that’s constantly growing, expanding, and changing with a constant flow of enjoyable pieces to read.  Keyword: enjoyable.  I want this to be one of those sites you unconsciously visit the moment you open up your laptop because you know there’s going to be something you’ll want to read.

The name “Slim Charles Barkley” was not created as an ode to Charles Barkley’s Jenny Craig weight loss plan (but congratulations anyway, Chuck).  Slim Charles, for those of you who are not familiar (and if you aren’t familiar, I immediately look down upon you), is a character from the HBO series, The Wire.  Slim Charles keeps it real, and that’s what I’ll always be trying to do here.  Charles Barkley knows what’s up, but he often takes a step back, cracks a joke, and laughs at himself because life isn’t that serious, which I plan to do as well.  Now, I just created that extremely forced metaphor describing the name’s origins as I was typing this, but I’m going to run with it.  At Slim Charles Barkley, we’re going to keep it real, we’re going to be knowledgeable, and we’re going to have fun.

So yeah, that got a little bold real fast, but minus all of the bombastic speech and grand ambition, you should get the general gist of Slim Charles Barkley right about now.  You have to start somewhere, and I’m riding solo at the moment, but I’d like for as many people to contribute as possible.  If you know me personally, just hit me up if you want to write something for the site.  If you don’t know me personally, although you probably do, just send an e-mail to slimcharlesbarkley@gmail.com.  This is your platform, let’s get it.