Gilbert updated his blog today and as you would probably expect, the primary focus of his latest entry is his newest tattoo.  Here’s what he had to say:

Since the tattoo message was all about change, it was a miracle when I went in to get it done. Instead of it hurting, it actually felt good like the needle was giving me a hand massage … I’m lying, it kind of hurt a lot.

I got the tattoo done on the Friday after the election down in Orlando because I always get my tattoos done down in Orlando.

But as we all know, when Gilbert does something he does it big, so you had to know that he couldn’t just stop with a tattoo:

At my house in the garage I had a mural of me airbrushed on the wall as the black president. After Obama won the Democratic ticket about a month and a half ago, I had him airbrushed on there next to me. When he won, I had the mural painted over and I’m going to have a new one airbrushed on there with the presidential shield and the whole Obama family.

If you haven’t seen the original mural, it’s the picture at the bottom of this legendary post from Dan Steinberg about Gilbert’s pool.  It should be interesting to see how the new version turns out.  Since the main focus of his new entry was on politics, he also cleared up where he stands on the voting process:

At first I was trying to be funny, but obviously when you’re talking about politics you can’t be funny. When I said, “My vote doesn’t actually count anyway,” that was because I’m a resident of Florida and I still have the memories of how Bush cheated us a couple years back so I was joking that at the end of the day my vote doesn’t really count anyway, but I’m not sure everybody got the joke.

To set the record straight, I ended up voting, and it was worth it for all of the excitement.

After talking about one of his recent commercials, Gilbert gave his thoughts on the new FreeDarko book:

I read my parts of the book, FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, and that’s some entertaining material. I kick it off with a foreword, talking about my man Penny Hardaway and then the FreeDarko boys take over for the rest. I want everybody to go out and purchase it. There’s a stat in there that the further I get from the basket, the higher my shooting percentage goes up. It’s true, but it’s one of those stats where I don’t take a lot of shots from that far (I think they say I’m 20-for-46 from wayyyy downtown for my career or something) so it’s not like I’ve taken 100 shots from there.

(Without getting too far off-topic, I think Gilbert is selling himself short on his long-long-long distance shooting, but there’ll be more on that later.  Anywho…)   Once he finished his book plug, Gilbert talked about what he’s seen with the team so far in the season:

I spoke after the Milwaukee game, and that was the first time I really interacted in a meeting this year. I just said what I see out there. It had nothing to do with basketball, it had everything to do with off the court stuff.

The best teams are the teams that hang around each other, that love being around each other off the floor. Those are the best teams that go on to do good things in this league. When you start separating yourselves off the floor, you start separating during the game. You don’t know how to talk to each other when things get rough.

But we’re getting closer now. We’re getting back to where we were when we were playing well. If you’re getting along off the floor, it’s going to eventually carry onto the floor.

After giving his thoughts on the team, Gilbert goes on to give an update on his rehab and when he think he’ll be back:

I get anxious being on the sideline when they’re struggling. I started playing Nick Young one-on-one (I beat him 9-1, he was so embarrassed) but the trainer said he’s not going to let me go any earlier than mid-December to January.

So even though I’m playing one-on-one against Nick, my trainer said that no matter what’s going on with the team or how I think I feel, he’s not releasing me until mid December.

So there you have it.  I think if he can make it back by December 25th, that it would probably be the best gift that anyone could ask for.

There’s plenty more in his latest entry including his thoughts on the Iverson-Billups trade and his take on  Chris Paul’s tremendous start.  But don’t take my word for it.

- Let’s start off with the latest on GIlbert’s rehab.  Here’s what he had to say about his progress to the Washington Times:

If this was eight games before the playoffs, and i had to play, I’d be playing. I’m at the same spot where I was last year when I came back that Milwaukee game. So, if I had to, had to play, I would just do it. I don’t know if it would hold up or not, though.

So far no official return date has been established, but a late December/early January return still looks like the most likely option.

- Speaking of legs, here’s Gilbert’s latest commercial from Adidas, prominently featuring his…legs:

- There are some fashions that only a few people can pull off, and then there are some that just make you wonder.

- The newest comic from Garbage Time All-Stars is up at Ball Don’t Lie.  This week’s comic focuses on how Gilbert and Josh Childress are adjusting in these tough economic times.

- The Serious Sports News Network (which, as you know, is very serious) has all the info on Gilbert renting out his house on Craigslist for people who want to check out the Obama inauguration.

You’ve heard a lot about Gilbert’s Obama tattoo.  Now finally, thanks to NBC Washington, we have a picture of Gilbert’s newest ink:

Considering how little space the we takes up, I’m surprised he didn’t try to fit can in there, but it’s his hand, not mine.

As we’ve been telling you for quite a while, today was the big day for the release of FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac. This is of course relevant for all Gilbertologists out there because Gilbert is the focus of one many essays in the book (you can read an excerpt of it here) and Gilbert himself wrote the foreword for the book. It’s a must read for any Gilbert fans out there.

I went to Borders today to check out the new book and I have to say that it’s quite possible that the book has exceeded my already lofty expectations.  The foreword by Arenas is great.  It might not be as goofy as some of his blog posts, but you can rest assured that his quirky nature still shines through.  Big Baby Bellafonte did a tremendous job on the illustrations in the book and if you’ve ever read FreeDarko, than you know that the writing doesn’t disappoint either.

I was literally thiiiis close to buying the book right then and there, but I decided against it since the copy that I should have the copy that I pre-ordered by Thursday.  That’s right, even though I knew I had a copy of the book on the way, I almost bought another one because I didn’t want to wait two more days.  It’s seriously that good.

There’s going to be a lot more on the book in the coming days and week (what else are we going to talk about?) once I get a chance to take a deeper look at it.  Until then, here’s the place to post your thoughts on the book if you’ve gotten a chance to take a look at the book.

Remember all of those mixed signals we were getting from Gilbert about his political beliefs?  Well, maybe this clears it up some:

Arenas has decided to show his permanent support of President-elect Barack Obama with a tattoo. Arenas had the words “Change We Believe In” tattooed onto the fingers of his left hand in cursive writing. Then, Gilbert showed the outside of his pinky finger, which had “44″ inked on it.

Granted, that’s kind of weaksauce compared to this, but obviously anytime that you’re getting a tattoo, you’re making a permanent statement about whatever you’re getting inked.  So does that mean Gilbert’s had a change of heart?  Kind of, but not exactly:

For a player who said he wasn’t even going to vote just three weeks ago, Arenas changed his apolitical stance quickly — and dramatically. Arenas said on Saturday that his previous comments about not voting because he was afraid of having higher taxes were “a joke that nobody got.” He added that he always planned on voting for Obama but was waiting to find the right reasons.

“I wasn’t going to sit there and wing it for no reason,” Arenas said, “Like oh yeah, he’s black so I’m voting [for him]. I could’ve said I was voting for [John] McCain because he’s from Arizona and went to all the games.”

This could be a case of Gilbert’s revisionist history, but at this point I can’t even really speculate.  I think the best thing that we can all do at this point is nod and smile and pretend to understand what’s going on.