With the Los Angeles Lakers bowing out in the second round of the NBA playoffs a couple of weeks back, Metta World Peace has a bit of extra free time this summer. Players do all sorts of things once their seasons end — spend time with family, work on their game, do charity work and more. One thing many love to do is travel, and World Peace is no exception, taking a trip up the West Coast from Los Angeles to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada this week.
The Lakers forward formerly known as Ron Artest seems to be enjoying the "cloudy and damp" climate and how it affords you the opportunity to do classic Vancouver stuff like go for a hike, go to Whole Foods and tell bullies to "beat it."
As a matter of fact, World Peace dug that B.C. weather enough to take part in another time-honored offseason athlete pastime — making a television appearance. In this case, to deliver the Vancouver Island weather forecast on Canadian broadcast network CTV. As you might expect, it went great. Behold:
A full transcript follows. Even if you were able to watch the clip above, you really should read the words just to confirm that they were actually spoken.
"There's a line up here, I don't know what that means, but the Earth is moving right now," World Peace begins, swiping his finger across the flatscreen (which may or may not be a touch screen) to set the weather map to spinning. "And Port Hardy — 13 degrees. Pretty cold, I'm assuming. And it's raining everywhere. It's amazing."
NOTE: Your immediate inclination might be to say, "Does he realize that that's 13 degrees Celsius and not Fahrenheit?" This is a good question, and reasonable to ask. However, it's worth noting that 13 degrees Celsius is still only about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty cold considering it is June. So let's give MWP the benefit of the doubt on that one. Sound good? OK, great.
All that rain makes World Peace laugh.
"It's raining everywhere to Victoria," he continues, pointing to a city on the lower right-hand side of the Vancouver Island map. "She sounds like she's hot, um, but she's actually cold. It's 14 degrees. And, uh, the Gulf Islands. I'm assuming ... it's cloudy and rainy, too. Put a hat on. Um-brella.
"And, uh, what's that?" he asks, pointing to a spot on the upper left-hand side of the map. "Tofino! Little tofu. I like tofu. Yes. Eleven degrees up there. It's like 11 degrees everywhere, except for these two places [World Peace points to two areas on the right-hand side of the map marked "13" and "14"], so, you know, dress warm. And, um, yeah, Lower Islands, tomorrow, hopefully."
World Peace points to a white patch at the top of the screen, above the "Lower Islands" graphic.
"There's snow up there," he says, excitedly. "But I don't know those names, so we don't have to worry about those places."
World Peace looks to the blue part of the screen to his left.
"And it's water over here," he says. "So we're on Earth. Vancouver. I'm happy to be here."
World Peace points to the top left of the Lower Islands map.
"I'm assuming it's cougars and bears up there, too, so ... watch out," he says. "Don't go over there. Stay away from there."
World Peace spots a smaller patch of green in the lower left-hand corner of his screen.
"To get from this island to this island, take a boat," he says. "I'm assuming."
He turns to face the camera, spreads his arms wide and beams.
"So yeah — this is beautiful," he says. "CTV, baby."
Fin.
I think we can all agree that this is precisely the direction most local TV weather forecasts need to take in the future. Since meteorologists are pretty much never really accurate about the conditions you will face once you exit your apartment and step out into the world around you, they might as well be entertaining. An "NBA Weather Specialist" seems like a really good way to accomplish that goal; here's hoping more affiliates start similarly thinking outside the box.
Video via Canadian hoops aficionado Doug Eberhardt.
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