It would be easy to dismiss Kendrick Perkins as a mere brute. His 6'10" and 280 lbs. make him a tree trunk of a man, and his face is a grimace carved from stone--call him Mount Rushmore, but with a mean streak.
Kendrick Perkins earned his first pay check when an anonymous gentleman, stinking of Cuban cigars and cognac, blessed with a raspy voice and a knack for speaking from the shadows of any room, offered him a job taking dives: "All you have to do is take a few to the jaw, throw a few solid jabs to make it look like you've got some fight in you, and then just go down, just go down, son, that's all you've got to do." Kendrick didn't go down. Instead, he cornered the old champ, Shaquille O'Neal, and derailed his comeback effort by busting his lip open, bruising his eyelids shut, and forcing him to spit teeth out like sunflower seeds; and, in return, the people threw popcorn at Kendrick and booed him from the ring.
Kendrick shunned the boxing ring in favor of another, stepping into a ring with a wild bear, named Dwight. The bear roared and gnashed its teeth, clawing at the air, and Kendrick laughed, hearing the roar as a yawn and seeing the clawing as a wave. Kendrick walked right up to the bear, grabbed its right paw in his left hand, and put his right arm around its waist. The bear shut its jaw--stunned--and Kendrick told it to dance. The two of them then waltzed throughout the night, but the ringmaster withheld Kendrick's paycheck on account that there was no blood, that Kendrick failed to bait the audience into thinking that Dwight was indeed ferocious, to which Kendrick responded, "The damn bear's name is Dwight. How scary can it be?"
Jobless and alone, Kendrick sat at the bar, when a sweaty, pale-faced dude, named Danny Ainge, burst in through the kitchen, "Does anybody hear play drums?!? We need a drummer." Kendrick had never played drums, but he often tapped his foot in rhythm to the radio, so he told the man, "I've never played drums, but I often tap my foot in rhythm to the radio." The man looked past Kendrick, and then he looked around Kendrick, and then he settled his eyes directly on Kendrick, "I guess that'll have to do." He handed Kendrick a duct-taped pair of sticks and said, "Kick the bass. Hit the snare. Don't get carried away with the cymbals."After the show, Kendrick's ears were ringing, and he couldn't hear whatever it was Kevin, the lead singer, was trying to tell him. He tried to read Kevin's lips but failed, so he just sat there nodding his head, thinking to himself, "this sure as hell beats taking punches," while Kevin leaned in closer to Paul and said, "Man, this brute's ignorant. I tell 'im to pick up all the equipment and he just nods, like he was a fuckin' bobblehead."
Somewhere there's a seven year old Boston fan whose prized possession is a Kendrick Perkins who nods his head at anything and everything he's asked to do.
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