Reggie Theus Gets the Axe

Former Star of Hang Time Gets Canned



"Theus, the former player who dabbled in acting and broadcasting before becoming a coach, seemed an ideal coach for the showbiz-loving Maloofs, and he did better than many expected in his rookie year. But a slow start convinced the impatient Maloofs to change direction again — and it will cost them financially."

I don't know what the Kings expected. If you ever watched Coach Fuller on "Hang Time" you could see that he had no control over his players. The only reason the Deering Tornadoes won at all was because Manning refused to let them lose. When you lose your job to the guy who tended bar on "My Two Dads," you're not much of a coach.

About This Blog and Its Creator

Welcome to Mann to Man. Let's first deal with the name and the picture. As you probably inferred, Peter T. Mann is not my real name (The hip dude with the bag over his head may have been a clue). It's what people who don't write call a pen name, what fancy-schmantz writers, and those pretending to be such, call a pseudonym, and what Interpol calls an alias. There are many bad reasons to use a pseudonym and a few good ones. I have chosen to use one because one of the novels I have written contains what the movie industry calls "adult themes" and "sexual situations." It also has some really fun swear words. For most people, this wouldn't be a problem. For me, it could be.

I work in a field and at a place that may not look favorably on my current manuscript. Although we enjoy freedom of speech in this country, that particular freedom is only really useful in keeping the government off our backs. It doesn't offer much protection from employers and public sentiment. Just ask John Rocker.

The other problem is that sometimes I like to write things that don't involve fart jokes, the F word, and sexual innuendo. In fact, I have a finished manuscript for a middle grade novel that contains none of the above (Ok, there is a scene that takes place in a bathroom and a character does have his pants around his ankles). I want to be able to write both kinds of books, but I don't want eight year olds picking up my YA stuff just because my name is on the cover.

All of this is incredibly presumptive on my part, of course. Right now, I have exactly two finished manuscripts, one rejection (contest), no agent (although I have an Excel spreadsheet of 120 and I can tell you that Josh Getzler is a baseball fan and since my MG revolves around baseball, he's getting a query in the next month of two), two pub. credits (both for poetry, for Christ's sake!), and I've never even met anyone in the publishing industry. So yeah, having a pen name because I'm worried about eight year olds emotionally scarring themselves by picking up the second of my two un-submitted novels might be just a tad presumptive.

But what the hell, it worked for Barack Obama.