There are a lot of things that would make Twitter better – automatic troll control, a loud buzzer sound whenever someone hastily posts shoddily-sourced news, scratch-and-sniff functionality – but undoubtedly the No. 1 thing Twitter needs is Matt Bonner.
Bonner has thus far resisted opening his own account, and we’re all a little worse off for it. How do we know? Because we saw the true power of Bonner tweets last week.
Concord’s own conquering hero, the Red Mamba himself, took over the Cimo’s South End Deli Twitter account for about an hour Wednesday to enlist the help of fellow redheads Michael Rappaport and Brian Scalabrine in putting together a team for The Basketball Tournament, an “open-application, 5-on-5, single elimination, winner-take-all basketball tournament” starting in July, with a $1 million prize to the winning team, according to thetournament.com.
Basically, it’s a hoops tourney anyone over 18 can enter for free. It’s like the biggest park pickup battle ever, if you could win a million bucks at the park.
Bonner said he’s not allowed to play – we’re guessing the Spurs wouldn’t be in to that – but he’s become the defacto general manager for the team. And his quest was to land Rappaport and Scalabrine to form the Big Red 3, likely in hopes of becoming ginger hardwood heroes.
Within the hour, both Rappaport and Scalabrine were on board, proving Bonner can flex his Twitter muscles when necessary. But that wasn’t even close to the best part.
No, that was Bonner’s philosophical waxings on topics like sandwiches and whoopie pies while he waited for word from his recruits.
For instance, he answered this question from a tweeter – is it difficult to tweet & eat a sandwich at the same time? – with this: “Yes, significant reason why (I) don’t have a Twitter account. #priorities.” Even with no Twitter account, his hashtag game is on point.
Some of our other favorite Bonner gems from the hour-long takeover:
∎ His sandwich Mount Rushmore would be “New England roast beef, Philly cheesesteak, Italian, pulled pork,” with the caveat that he likes sauce, cheese and mayo on the roast beef, “and onion roll is key.”
∎ His thoughts on another New England classic: “If you’ve never had a homemade whoopie pie . . . Put it on your bucket list.”
∎ He even had some advice for the geniuses at Apple. “Why isn’t there a text message auto-reply functionality on the iPhone? Drives me nuts. Like AIM away message style.”
He also tweeted out a picture of Tim Tebow’s biography and asked if anyone had read it, and gave a Twitter photo shoutout to Dana Scully, the redheaded FBI agent on The X Files (can she ball?)
There’s plenty more to dig in to, and you can check the Tweets out at the Cimo’s account,
@Cimos_Deli on Twitter.
Bonner wrapped things up by proclaiming his dedication to putting together the best tournament team he can – “Trust that I will take my duties as the GM of this team very seriously. #TheTournament” – before kindly thanking the fine people at Cimo’s for letting him borrow the account and charging his new redheaded teammates with helping to get the rest of the roster in order, tweeting at Scalabrine and Rappaport, “We have a team to build. Let’s get it done! #TheTournament.”
