The Best Hand I Ever Played

8/12/2011

Although I finished this session at Motor City Casino down $70, this was easily the most fun I ever had playing poker because of the challenges and decisions I made that night. Also, I tripled back up with aces when my stack got down to $60, which helped. This particular hand more than made up for the loss..it was literally a hero call that even the pros would be proud of.

Hero: Q-10 offsuit

Villain: Q-?

Pre-flop: Three players limp in, and I have position on all of them.

The flop: Q-J-8(?)

- Action is checked down. At this point, I assume I have the best hand, but there is little point in betting. The pot is small, and every straight/flush draw would call.

The turn: 7

- At this point, I feel like building a small pot, so once it is checked to me, I bet the pot and am called by a guy two off to my left. I do not have any kind of read on him because he is fairly tight and quiet, but I can't put him on a hand that beats me because he is the type of player who would bet the flop with top pair.

The river: blank

- The river does not complete a flush, so I fairly confidently bet out $15. I am almost immediately raised to $40 and have to go into the tank for about five minutes. The following is the play-by-play dialog:

Me: Forty total?

(Dealer nods)

Me: (To Villain) You wouldn't happen to be in a showing mood, would you? Show me if I fold?

Villain: (Snickers, shakes head) No.

M: I have a queen. (To dealer) If I show my hand, it's dead right?

Dealer: Yeah, you can't do that.

M: (Announcing out loud) I think that you think I was trying to buy the pot. I have a queen, but I might have kicker problems. (Long pause) The only thing I'm really worried about is 7-8.

(At this point, I stare at him for about twenty seconds. It's a borderline call for me, and then I see him gulp while staring straight ahead.)
M: I call.

I turn over the Q-10 and one half of the table erupts in congratulations. The guy sees my hand and very reluctantly mucks, showing a queen himself. This is my proudest hand to date for a couple reasons: one, I approached the hand and acted exactly as a pro would, and two, I was stuck three buy-ins from my last three sessions, I could have just snap-called impulsively only to be shown a suckout, instead I got to make fifty bucks the hard (but rewarding) way.

Before I Forget: The Compendium of Highlights From Student Teaching

Quotable quotes from my year of student teaching in Maryland:

"That time I spent teaching was more rewarding than 40 years working at the office."

- My Aunt wistfully reflecting on her brief teaching stint during Thanksgiving

"WHYYYY must you leave us, Mr. G? WHY!??? Don't get raped by the kids at Flowers! Bye forever"

- This is literally what one of my students from my first high school wrote on a farewell card.

"Mr. G, one of my friends saw you walkin' down the hall today and was like, 'Girrrl, that boy is cute!'"

"Wait, what??"

"It's ok, it's a good thing."

(Notices my mentor teacher in the background)

"..You cute too, Mr. Fairfield."

"Mr. G, you bein' sarcastic again?"

Me: "Frida, when have I ever been sarcastic with you?"

"Right now?"

Me: "Sort of, but it's not really sarcasm."

"Yeah, sometimes it's like almost a lie AND being sarcastic."

"That's gon' be me on top of that mountain one day."

- One of my students upon seeing a video for one of the China travel tours.

"Why's it always so hot in here?"

Me: "You really wanna know why? I had them turn the heat up in here cuz I was cold."

"...You weird."

"Yo, dawg my teacher just told me how to say 'I want to go back to Hooters' in Chinese!"

- The day I reached one of the top 3 least motivated Chinese students

Me: Wow, her shoulders must be hurting from carrying your team.

Girl in a different group: Wooww, none of you were listening, he just fried yo' ass!

"Hey, why'd you throw that paper at me?"
Me: "I didn't throw it at you, I was dropping it softly."

"I'll drop you softly."

"Hey, Mr. G how do you say your last name again?"
Me: "Glotz-ho-ber."

Other student: "See, I told you it was like 'Luxembourg'!"

Me: "Luxembourg is a country."

"Hey, Mr. Ge Laoshi, did you say you were from China?"

Me: "Nope, I'm from Detroit."

"Oh, I thought you was from China." (Pauses)

"...Is it cold in Detroit?"

"Girl, that's Ge Laoshi! He's the little intern I was tellin' you about for weeks!

Ge Laoshi, you a good teacher."

- 3/14/2011. Boom.

"I wouldn't mind having two whole periods of Chinese."

- 3/21/2011

Student recording in the language lab: "Wait, so how would you end the conversation?"

Me: "Well, I guess I could just walk away."

Student: "No! On the computer!"

Me: "High five"

Student: (Thinks about it) No, you sarcastic. You're gonna move your hand."

"Ooohh! I felt a spark!"

- 3/31/2011

Student: I think I found an article, does this count?

Me: This is an article about Honduras.

Student: That in China?

Me: No, it's in Central America.

Student: Yeah, they don't look Chinese.

Student: "Wait, you ain't comin' back next year??"

Me: "Uhh, not unless the principal tells me they need another Chinese teacher."

Student: "Aw, I would take your class. I'm becoming attached to you."

"...not in a romantic way, though."

(The day after I missed class for a job interview)

Student: "Yo I need to talk to you!"

Me: (Thinking they're about to complain about the class) About what?

Student: YO, YOU CAN NOT JUST LEAVE US LIKE THAT! OH MA GAWD, HOW COME YOU DIDN'T TELL NO ONE WHERE YOU WAS GOIN'??

Me: (To another student) Well, I just got yelled at by a student.

Student 2: Yep, welcome to Flowers.

"Word on the street is: you used to have dreads."

"Nah, his hair too soft."

"Ge Laoshi, are you comin' back next year?"

"I don't know, you wanna ask Mrs. Jones (the principal) if I can come back?"

"YEAH! You have to, you're like the best!"

Other student who is almost as sarcastic as me: "Nooo, don't get him promoted!"

While working on an in-class project:

"Can you go get me a pencil?"

"Whatchu want, a regular pencil or a color pencil?"

"Reg'lar pencil."

"Well they ain't got no regular pencils, guess you gon' sit there looking crazy then."

(Looks around at the art supplies in his hand)

"Scissor fight!"

Student using my laptop: "Ooooh, you play Texas Hold 'Em?"

Me: "Yeah"

Student: "I like that game it's fun."

"...Do you like Yahtzee, too?"

(While playing Hangman, my mentor teacher draws an executioner on the board)

Student: Ooh! Draw a club with spikes!

Me (off to the side): Why would he need a club? His job is to pull a lever.

Student 2: Wait! Give him an axe!

Me: HE DOESN'T NEED AN AXE! HE HAS A GALLOWS RIGHT NEXT TO HIM!!

"The Father of My Baby is Gonna be Pacific-Islander": The Kentucky Derby 2010

Over the past three days I have completed a grueling trial of endurance and testicular-fortitude which only a fraction of America's populace have been fortunate enough to experience. America's most historic and prestigious gambling/drinking event, otherwise known as the Kentucky Derby is a compelling hybrid of gambling on animals and barely regulated debauchery, or in other words, a microcosm of what makes this country great. What goes on behind the scenes at the Kentucky Derby can best be compared to an atom bomb explosion: something that is strangely beautiful, but because of its sheer shit-tasticness should not be stared directly into. Because the entire course of events took place over 50 hours, most of which were spent drinking copiously, I lack the long-term memory to provide a full account; the following are highlights from each day:

Thursday, April 29

5:45 PM: Drove for 7 hours in rush hour traffic for almost 400 miles from the Detroit area to Louisille, Kentucky. Upon attempting to park on a one-way city street with an inappropriately high speed limit, I am almost rear-ended by two pickup trucks, and hear one driver shout "YEW KAIN'T DOO THAT!!!" in a voice straight out of the movie "Deliverance". I hide my face so they do not see that the Yankee driver who stopped right in front of them is Asian. This would only confirm every stereotype they were ever told by their Dad/brother/cousin (which could all be the same person...only kidding).

6:00 PM: Arrive at my brah's house in downtown Louisville. Everyone at the house has been piss-drunk for hours. Several of them tell me how relieved they are to see me because they have been shouting "JIMBO" at every car that has passed by since five o'clock. Thanks to the great game of beer pong, I don't even have to worry about dinner as food has instead been supplemented with Miller Lite. Periodically, the host runs outside to check on the pig that is being roasted on a spit. Somewhere off in the distance, a dog barks.

11:00 PM: Shit is about to get real. Someone suggested playing an overtime game of beer pong with 21 cups per side. In the closing minutes of the game, someone puts on the theme song from "Chariots of Fire" for dramatic effect. My partner and I win because I am afraid to lose with this song playing. An hour or so later, someone drunk-drives us to get Mexican food and I pass out shortly thereafter as other drunk people make fratty, homoerotic comments while I try to sleep.

Friday, April 30:

7-11:30 PM: Around this time, the rest of the crew arrives, most of whom I haven't seen in at least three years. To get an idea of what we did, picture everything I wrote about yesterday and extend it about three hours. A lot of what was overheard/said probably shouldn't be repeated in the interest of good taste, but just know that there was more ribaldry and, at one point, dudity than you could shake a stick at. The smart collection of people would realize that since we had to start our day early tomorrow, the correct life choice would be to stop drinking and turn in relatively early. I will give you one guess as to what actually happened.

Saturday, May 1: D-DAY

The exact opposite happens. We are all awoken at about 8:30 after falling asleep around 5 to "The Circle of Life" from the Lion King movie and the ten of us drive in a van with no seats to a country club just to take a shower. Every blueblood in the club knows exactly what we are doing last night and I resist the strong urge to shout, "BITCH YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE" at a couple of them. After dressing in our Saturday best we load said van with a beer pong table and enough liquor to float a boat and head off to Churchill Downs to begin tailgating around 11.

The van ride makes my butt and legs fall asleep and my stomach feel so atrocious that the first thing I choose ginger ale over beer as my first drink.

Several of the guys get rip-roaring drunk before we even enter the race track by playing their patented game of "drunkball", which involves throwing ping-pong balls at beer cans, running to pick the ping-pong ball up and chugging that exact same beer. This attracts a minor crowd of sketchy people closing in on their mid-30s of when they were two years removed from college as opposed to ten.

Around 1:30 the area next to our parking spot looks like Hurricane Katrina, prompting us to finally pack up and lurch the mile or so to the race track. Bear in mind, we are not actually going to the Derby to sit in the stands to watch the races. The track is so big that there is actually a massive, fenced-off infield where the vast majority of the crowd goes. On this day, it has rained so heavily that the infield is one giant mud pit and the wind is so strong that huge tents are blowing all over the place. By the time we arrive, impromptu mud wrestling matches and slip-and-slides have popped up everywhere and the National Guard is already trying to arrest the people who are running on top of the Porta-Potties.

We stake out our own spot as close to the track as possible and at this point I am stuck baby-sitting the worst drunk girl in the world. I pass the time trying to convince her I'm Jewish and at some point she utters the quote that appears as the title of this post. After some time, she punches my friend in the head and stumbles away at which point I realize several of the other guys in the group are trying to start a fight with a group of people from Georgia about infringing on our spot with their tent. After everyone finishes arguing about nothing, people head over to place bets/eat funnel cake/drink mint juleps and while waiting in line I am accosted by an Indian guy who drunkenly explains to me how one out of every five people is Asian. I tell him I don't believe him because we are the only two non-white individuals here.

The bad weather has not let up and I am worried about catching pneumonia, so we decide to leave around 6. Predictably, as we make it back to the parking lot the sun comes out and one member of the group is sitting on the ground in the spot where the van used to be. It turns out that half of the group had already left, and I can only imagine what the drunk car ride back home was like for them. Arriving back at the house, we discover that the host's younger brother has been arrested for public intoxication, which may or may not have been because he was carrying a hollowed-out binocular flask and decided to look through it.

Thus ends the account of the 2010 Kentucky Derby, where I did not end up seeing even one actual race. If there's anything that can be learned from this weekend, it is that you shouldn't miss out on catching up with old friends and that we need to bite the bullet and rent the party bus with the fireplace and stripper pole for next year.

An Event-Filled Week

For the first time in a while, I went out this week more than I stayed in, a fun but not generally advisable way to live your life post-college. So here's a cursory breakdown of the different days that I went out from Sunday to now:

Sunday:
My roomie's birthday is tomorrow so we scope out the local bar where we want to celebrate, i.e. we think of a flimsy excuse to get drunk on a Sunday. We start pre-gaming and end up at the bar sort of late; it is Sunday so no one is there except us. We play pool and drink, I personally am waiting for the gay Korean vacuum salesman to show up and hit on one of the other teachers (note: I honestly feel that being a "gay Korean vacuum salesman" should give you pseudo-celebrity status no matter what country you're in). We shoot pool by ourselves and yell at the bar girls for no reason. Then we go to McDonalds and get too much food. I microwaved my Big Mac when I got home and burned my mouth. Life is good.


Monday:
It is now my roomie's birthday party and we've arranged a surprise party that has somehow been kept on the DL for at least a week. Between classes I make a very quick trip downtown and buy us matching t-shirts, despite him clearly mentioning that he doesn't want gifts. After class everyone makes their way over to the party while the roomie is distracted by going out for a quick birthday drink. The party is a success, despite people failing to yell "surprise!" and come out on cue. We play beer pong with our students, everyone gets schmammered and then we go downtown. There is a breakdown in communication and people end up at the wrong bar, including me. I order a Mai Thai that has no fruit juice in it, so whatever the opposite of a virgin drink is, it was basically that. This makes me mad so I end up meeting some acquaintances for food at 2 AM. I remember that the Mai Thai cost me 50 yuan, which makes me mad, so I go home. Yeah...that's about it.

Wednesday:
After a day of rest, we go to an invite-only party with free food and beer or as agnostics call it, heaven. After drinking too much, I catch my second wind and drink more. People are lame so I have to pass up an offer to sing karaoke, which makes me somewhat annoyed seeing as how the party was winding down by 10 PM. Things start getting weird around 1 AM and I start getting pissed that I'm still in the same place; my phone runs out of batteries, which I use as my reason to leave. After that I meet a girl who I like after she gets of work at around 2 AM (TWO FUCKING A.M.) and we go with her friends to a restaurant I don't recognize where they dote on me like I'm an idiot ten year-old. At dinner number two they proceed to do random things like give me milk from a bag, get soup with chicken's feet and tell me to not be polite with them and thus not say impolite words such as "thank you" and "I'm sorry". I don't need to tell you how difficult it is to avoid saying "thank you" and "I'm sorry" to a group of girls when you're in another country. We leave at about 3:30 which is good because I am tired, still buzzed and my contacts are digging into the back of my corneas.

Thursday:
The supposed culmination of the week. There's a party bus to Suzhou (a neighboring big city) and I'm on it! I make the rookie mistake of forgetting to bring booze with me on the bus, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise as the bus gets lost and by the end of the trip several people have to get out and pee in the nearby lake. When we get there, my first impression is how recockulously lame the party is. Aside from the people from the party bus, there couldn't have been ten other people there, all of whom were sketchy foreigners and skanky Chinese girls. The mixed drinks taste like Kool-Aid from camp with a touch of vodka and the beer isn't cold; this couldn't possibly bode well, says I. At some point I get drunk, and two people partially spill their drinks on me, luckily they are girls so I resist the urge to keel-haul them, whatever that means. People start leaving at around 1:30 and my efforts to steal a footrest from the club are thwarted when other people foolishly follow my lead, thereby tipping off the staff. Apparently, Suzhou has a curfew because none of the other clubs are open, but on the way there a girl shows me her booby and I was not opposed. The party scene blows so we get back on the bus, where a hot chick passes out on me. She is heinously drunk and I am petrified that she will throw up on me. Thankfully she doesn't due in large part to my ability to sing "Hush Little Baby" in T-Pain's synthesized voice. We make it back home by 3:30 or so and the girl feels like a big bag of sand. Now I know what some people may be thinking, and the answer is that no I did not make out with her. In fact, after I carried her down from the bus and went back to look for her shoes, she had already peed on her feet. I caught a cab back home with a Turkish guy who was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates hat and had a nice long sleep, interrupted only by the loudspeakers playing creepy music from the neighboring kindergarten.

Minutes from a Fun Night (4/1/09)

6:45 PM: There is an event scheduled tonight where teachers meet for coffee with students and shoot the shit. People are cautiously optimistic. We arrive at the coffee house and there are three people there.

6:50: People sit down and start talking. Much to our relief, more students arrive. I am talking with one guy who I know is really cool, another student I haven't seen before and another student who is cute and my age. Things are good.

7:30: I drank too much tea. Time to make wee-wee.

7:45: It's clear that two of the students are much more advanced than the other one and he's a little uncomfortable. At one point he gets up and runs away, either to answer a sales call or because he doesn't want us to see him cry. Realistically, it could have been both.

8:45: The event is over, people have to get home. I plan on going to a local bar and watching people play poker. Two of the female students suggest that me and two other teachers go to a karaoke bar instead. I have a crush on one of the girls so I agree.

9:30: We arrive at KTV (the karaoke bar) and get settled in. I sing "Jessie's Girl", "Harder, Better, Faster" and "Africa". During "Jessie's Girl", one of the ladies we're with leans over to me and asks, "who is James' girl?" I realize that she's implying I like her friend, which I do. Clever. A little later, I learn that she likes me too. Life is good.

9:31: I hear the girl has a boyfriend in Shanghai. Time to cut the brakes on his bicycle. A girl calls me "flower-hearted" in Chinese. I nearly punch her. I am then told it means, "flirt" or "player" in English. I nearly punch her.

10:00: Some more girls arrive. They are awkward and harshing the vibe. I don't understand the lyrics to the songs anymore because they're either songs by Chinese singers or Nelly. Eventually we leave to go eat, which is neat because I forgot to eat dinner.

10:30 We meet more of their friends at an area in Wuxi famous for street vendor food. I am glad I'm not allergic to MSG, because I'm about to eat a lot of it.

11:00: Everyone is cool, even the awkward girls. I realize this is the first time I've been out with a group of Chinese people my age. I am told one of the guys in the group is a great drinker. It turns out he is not. I am disappointed.

11:30: All the friends leave and the original two girls tell us that we should go to another restaurant to eat "the rice in water". I assumed this was an old Chinese sexual metaphor until I learned they were talking about porridge. Both girls are cute and I have been drinking so naturally I agree.

12:00 There is in fact porridge at this restaurant, along with chicken feet. Memories.

12:30: Me and one girl persuade the other girl and the other remaining teacher to go to a club. The girls have been paying for everything so far and this annoys the other teacher. Me being a feminist, I have no objections to this, even if it makes me obligated later.

12:45: We are at the club and we get my least favorite drink in the whole world, whiskey and green tea. Chinese people always mix too much tea, making a buzz hard to obtain. Here I learn that the girl I like is neither into drinking or dancing. Shit.

1:00: Resorting to my playbook from back home, I start dancing and flirting with the other girl in order to make the girl I like jealous. This goes over like the Vienna Boys Choir singing "Single Ladies" in that it is momentarily amusing but has an overall negative effect.

3:00: We close the club down, and I realize that I may have just sacrificed long-term progress for short-term gain. Oops. The girl I like is now getting a little emo and we leave shortly thereafter.

3:45: Fun-time over. A cab drops me and the other teacher off at home and I throw 10 yuan at one of the girls who still doesn't want us to pay. The next day is slightly awkward. Go team.

China Randoms Pt. Deux

- While the Chinese may have math and badminton on lock, they're not too hot on guessing nationality, and this applies to literally all of the foreign teachers working at my school, not just me. Since coming here I have been called American, British, Canadian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Singaporean. I was listening to a class of little kids talk about me in Chinese a month ago and the conversation went something like this:

Kid 1: "What country is the teacher from?"

Kid 2: "Isn't he Chinese?"

Kid 3: "The teacher's American."

Kid 2: "No, that's impossible!"

Kid 4: "Yes, all Americans have gold (i.e. blond) hair and their skin is very, very white."

Apparently, this misinformation continues for a while. I was talking to a girl at a bar who told me that "my appearance was Chinese" but finally convinced her that there are in fact millions of blacks, Hispanic and Asian people who live in America and are also American.

- Earlier this week I went on a date with a girl who I hadn't seen in quite some time, mainly because she only gets four days off a month and because I'm a negligent dick. We went to a nice restaurant that she knew but I then made the mistake of letting her order whatever she wanted, which included three awesome dishes as well as chicken's feet and some sort of fish/donut combination. About halfway through dinner, she started to make gagging noises and I briefly considered getting another to-go box for the hairball which seemed imminent. Apparently she had choked on a fish bone and died shortly thereafter. Only kidding, she did in fact live through the fish bone ordeal but I have since devoted my spare time to figuring out a fool-proof way to eat fish that has all the bones left in it.

- I have been here more than six months and they are still playing reruns of the Beijing Olympics. This wouldn't be so bad if they played interesting matches, but so far it has been limited to weightlifting and some gymnastics. If they're really starved for stuff to put on sports TV, they could at least play American football, as the whole world should. As an aside, they do play classic boxing matches (we're talking Jack Johnson from the early 20th century), which is neat.

- While I was out a few weeks ago, I became thoroughly convinced by the end of the night that my hands had shrunk. I'm normally not a fun drunk, but I was particularly aloof this time, seeing as I was staring down at my hands at a club. The point here is that people need to stop putting roofies in my Singapore slings.

China Randoms

"I'm going to kick you in the balls until you die, but first let me have a look."

(A Chinese girl said this to me and I'm interpreting it as the pick-up line I think it was meant to be.)

Funny shit can happen in the most random places, case in point was the saga of me trying to buy a decent pair of pants and then getting them tailored. About three weeks ago I turned downtown Wuxi inside-out trying to find a pair of khakis that didn't make me look gay (this is not a homophobic insult, even gay men would have mistaken me as homosexual if I had worn pants like that out in public). Finally I found a Dockers store and paid through the nose for a pair of khakis after mistakenly believing they were on sale (dignity prevents me from disclosing their price). At one point during the trying-on stage, I told the saleslady that I knew what she meant in terms of the pants size (I could see they were 31/32) but could she please find a smaller pair. Then, like something out of a movie she replied (verbatim) "I know you know I know your meaning, but we don't have any shorter pants." Her wording initially confused me but then I understood, and laughed involuntarily. That didn't make her too pleased. Because someone apparently believes that everyone has 32+ inch legs over here meaning I had to get them tailored and was sent to the middle-aged lady sewing department staffed by six clucking hens operating sewing machines. They seemed to get a kick out of me and at one point a lady told me to go take my pants off which suprised me before I realized they did in fact have changing rooms.

On a totally unrelated note, I got third place (out of five) in a singing competition at the local mall for a rendition of "Drive" by Incubus...some people thought I should have beat the sketchy-looking Canadian who got second place by singing a tone-deaf version of a Chinese love song, but this fails to take into account the judges couldn't understand a single word in the song. Except of course, the word "Drive".

Spring Holiday Abort & The Real Reason Slumdog Millionaire is a Great Movie

The original intent of this post was to give a probably overdue update of my activities in China, specifically what went down on my Spring Festival/Chinese New Year vacay; however, that idea immediately exploded when everyone in my Spring Festival group got sick within the first day of the trip and we cut our holiday short by a couple days. Unless you find cases of food poisoning funny or amusing (and they can be), please believe when I say that I went out west in China, the city was big and dirty and I had KFC for breakfast once.

Before I went on vacation, I watched Slumdog Millionaire and in typical me fashion came away from the movie with a general opinion that differed from everyone else who I saw the movie with. First let me say right off the bat, I liked Slumdog Millionaire, I found it to be an earnest resourceful film that was entertaining even when it was predictable (you knew the musketeer question was going to rear its head at the end). If I was an asshole teacher I'd give it my least favorite grade of all time, an A-/A; i.e. bordering on great, but with a few hiccups. I'm confident that my personal opinion of the film can be accurately summarized by detailing both my favorite and least favorite scenes from the film, because both of them happen at the end anyway.

First, my least favorite scene: the ending (where Jamal and Freida Pinto, a.k.a. Hotty McHotthott, meet in the train station). It was sappy, predictable and something I might've been able to make in a movie (ergo, not very good). For a film that was driven by the "realness" of Jamal's life circumstances, seeing him alone in a train station with a hot chick that he stalker-ishly pursued for his entire life was a little much for my tastes, but I'm sure it made girls cry, so there's that. In much the same way as the death scene with Jamal's brother made me think "what compelled them to put this in the movie?" I came away from Slumdog with the sense that they probably had such little time/money to work with that scenes that should've ended up on the cutting room floor didn't.

This in no way means that I didn't appreciate the periodic breaks from reality that the film made (see: Jamal pushing his brother out a window), in fact, my favorite scene is the strangest one by far: the bhangra dance number at the end. Before anyone scoffs at this notion, first of all, get f-ed for scoffing because I am deadly serious about this being the best part for me. I for one, am a huge fan of irreverant breaks from character in movies and the dance number with every main character and extra in it made me lose my shit. The music was awesome, the dancing was Indian and Freida Pinto was in it, need I say more? My American and British friends poo-pooed the scene; some said it almost ruined the movie for them. To those people, I say you are uncultured phillistines who should be beaten mercilessly until you have flashbacks of life lessons from your parents. As someone who looks at things objectively for their entertainment value, that was easily the best part of the movie, and from what I'm told is something of a tradition in Bollywood, so if you want to be ignorant your whole lives keep telling yourself it wasn't a good scene, you're probably the type of person that doesn't wait around for the outtakes of movies at the ending credits and therefore useless.

This Could Not Happen in America, a.k.a. the Chicken Foot/Bath House Story

This is a two-part story in that it occurs over the course of two days, namely the Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. It begins with the night before me and another teacher left for Shanghai to watch the Tennis Masters tournament at the local watering hole, let's call it "Jason's" (because that is the real name, silly). I arrived with some other teachers at about 11 PM and started playing pool/foosball and shooting the shit, per usual. All of a sudden, one of the cute bar staff girls comes up to me and asks me to play Connect Four with her (this is not innuendo, it really is that game from the early 90s). Needless to say, it will be a cold day in hell when an American loses in Connect Four to a Chinese girl, so to make a long story short I beat her ass and then we played foosball and pool. At about 12:30, the bar closed and instead of going our separate ways, the teachers, staff and some other patrons all decided to go to a local club because most of us were drunk. On the way there, me and Connect Four Girl start flirting (in Chinese, because she speaks virtually no English) and then making out while her friend takes pictures. Nice. Let's take a moment to appreciate what happened to me in an abstract sense. I was totally in with this cute Chinese girl (and yes other guys told me she was cute, ass) having done nothing but playing games that I would have voluntarily played anyway. I didn't have to initiate contact, nor make the first move...the only thing that would have been better/easier is if we had first played Crossfire instead of Connect Four. I dare anyone to find me a similar scenario of this happening in America, especially when you consider what happened next:
We get to the club and Connect Four Girl (from this point on, to be known as Ada) is all over my shit but mercifully not in the clingy gold-digging way that usually characterizes Chinese female/foreigner interaction. We dance, we make out. We dance some more followed by protracted periods of making out and more incriminating pictures. Food arrives to the table because some people are lightweight pansies. Ada then proceeds to make out and exchange food with me at the same time, like a mother sparrow feeding her young. Things were peachy until the fourth round of feeding, when I couldn't see what she had in her mouth clearly. As she got closer to me, I realized she had the toe from a chicken's foot in her mouth (considered a delicacy by most Chinese and fucking weird by others) and fully intended swapping spit with me so I too could eat it.
At this point, the evening reached a crossroads. I decided that if I did eat the chicken's foot, then I wanted there to be payoff at the end of the night. Because I was drunk, the part of my brain that is opposed to eating chicken's feet was force-fed snow until it died, Russian KGB-style. For those of you considering eating chicken's feet, I can tell you it's not as bad as you think, but if you can get away with only eating one, that would be optimal. Because I'm an idiot, I stayed at the club until 5 AM instead of going home to rest up prior to taking the train. I thought I had everything locked up until I saw the teacher who was going to Shanghai with was in the same cab as me, but on his arm was a key to the locker that his bag (and therefore, our tennis tickets) resided in. Caught between a rock and a hard place, I decided to be a good friend and forget the girl, instead opting to go on a drunk search-and-rescue mission that amounted to nothing. I hope that fruitless quest by itself gets me out of some time in purgatory because I was not a happy camper when I got five hours of sleep and had to haul ass to the train station.
Side note: me and Ada are still talking. She texts me inappropriate messages in Chinese. I told her to get MSN so she can add emoticons to her inappropriate messages.

The second part of the story takes place in Shanghai after we watched a couple tennis matches. Upon exiting the stadium my friend and I realized we had no idea where in the blue hell we were and that we had also missed the last train back to Wuxi. Compounding this problem was the fact that neither of us had brought our passports, which is a must for getting a hotel. At about 2 in the morning our options were becoming increasingly limited, until a friend texted us and suggested that we stay the night in a massage parlor/bath house. If you think this is a sketchy idea, you are correct sir, especially when you consider that some massage parlors interpret "staying the night" as Viagra-powered orgies with the walking STDs that work there.
So our first goal was finding a bath house where we could just pass out and then maybe have girls wank our puds. Having accomplished this after two failed attempts we then proceeded to get two hour-long massages from girls who had no problem massaging every part of the body, probably even the colon if you let them. However, the massage parlor girls were very considerate, leaving to go home at 4 in the morning but not before tucking us in so we could sleep on the same tables where we got the massages from. At the time this idea sounded smarter than Steven Hawking's black hole theory, because I was so fatigued that I didn't care that I was practically nude, sleeping on a massage table in a bath house in Shanghai. Because being covered in Johnson & Johnson baby oil and cockteasing isn't conducive to sleeping in, I woke up as early as possible the next day to catch a train, any train back home but not before eating fast food for the third meal in a row and witnessing a murder. Just kidding with the last part, but it's not really shocking given what you just read is it?

China Observations

1. Chinese powerwashing: this is the term I've given to the ubiquitous cleaning technique used by Chinese people everywhere, that being water and a dirty rag. I understand that in most areas, people don't have the disposable income for Windex and paper towels (and that the Chinese aren't as wasteful as Westerners, so they probably wouldn't use paper towels anyway), but in certain stores or buildings, I know that the staff can take a trip down to the B&Q (Chinese Home Depot) and get real cleaning materials. Chinese powerwashing is literally used for everything, from cleaning your house (I had to re-clean mine), to washing windows, to wiping down furniture and other household items. I'm not sure if anyone's noticed, but a. the water in China isn't clean to begin with and b. you just move the dirt around without really cleaning anything.

2. Chinese architecture: a lot of people think that because Chinese people can build high rise apartments and other structures in half the time that it takes the West, this means the buildings are half as safe. There are assuredly two sides to this argument, so let's assume that first, Western contractors suck in that they get paid a lot of money to scratch their ass and take their sweet time building things and second, that Chinese buildings aren't as safe as European/American ones. Why, you ask? If you've ever seen Chinese contractors, you know that aside from the professionally (Western) trained ones who know how to operate machinery and draw blueprints, the people who actually bring in the materials and put them together use techniques that probably haven't varied much since the Great Wall was made. Case in point, there is a nice high rise apartment development going on right next to where I live, so everyday I walk past the skyhooks and scaffolding while also noticing the people putting up walls and windows with almost no equipment.

3. I am an interesting anomaly in this country: as a Korean-American, I'm not really Korean but often mistaken for Chinese. Most Chinese people think I'm Chinese, and most Korean people think I'm Korean, showing that there isn't a good method to tell Asians apart. Westerners, however, lose their shit when they figure out I'm really American. Europeans always tell me how nice it is that Wuxi is becoming such an international city and grill me about the Presidential election and the Americans I've met are happy just to have a fellow expat to talk to (Americans aren't as well represented here as the Brits and Aussies). That being said, because I am a dick I do take advantage of this situation purely for my own amusement. Exhibit A: I wait for Westerners to try and awkwardly communicate with me via gestures and staring before I talk to them in English and tell them that I'm from Detroit. Exhibit B: I go along with it when Chinese people talk to me in Chinese, but if I really don't feel like carrying on a conversation I'll say, "You know I'm not Chinese, right?" (in Mandarin)...they then feel awkward and usually leave me alone.

Before I Forget, More China Moments

Some China moments that aren't long enough to put into story form, so I'm writing them down now:

A conversation which took place yesterday:
Me: So how do you think the US was able to win a gold medal in the Olympics this year but not in 2004?
Mick (28 year-old male): I think this is because the United States used many black players that were very good athletes. For instance, the black man is very powerful and can jump very high, but the yellow man is naturally not as fast.
Me: You know what, I think I agree with you.

During my first week here at a restaurant:
Waitress: Hello, where would you like to sit?
Me (not fully understanding what she said): I ordered dumplings. (Points at receipt)
Waitress (in a voice used for slow five year-olds): I KNOW you ordered dumplings, I asked you "where would you like to sit."

In a class for low-level kids
Me: Is Maggie here? (The boy who took the English name "Maggie" raises his hand)
Me: You know Maggie is a girl's name don't you?
(Class laughs at his expense)
Me: From now on, your English name is Markus. (And yes, I wrote it down on the attendance form spelled with a K, though this is subject to change.)

While I was lost downtown, looking for a park
Me (to an elderly security guard): Excuse me, where is the nearest park?
Guard: The nearest what?
Me: PARK.
Guard (looks at me with a benevolent grandfather stare): Ahhh yes, the park. I know that place well.
(Chuckles in that "oh, you rambunctious young people" sort of way)
Guard: Yes, yes, if you go north from here and take several turns, the nearest park should be in that vicinity.

It actually turned out that the park was the next street up and I was about to come across it anyway. This just shows you that old people are always looking for someone to talk to about anything.

My Favorite China Moments Thus Far

As someone who has lived in China for five months altogether, after a while you start picking up on certain trends or cultural facets that can only be described as "China Moments". What is meant by this is a certain instance of behavior that is so outlandish and weird that it could only happen in the relatively unregulated developing world. Before I go on, let me mention that these observations are not meant to castigate China or imply that the Chinese are inferior to Westerners/Americans in general; they are merely to point out that certain cultures have not gotten the memo on certain things.

This first post contains the stories:

"Caution: Floor Slippery When Pee-Soaked"
The largest foreign supermarket in China is the French-owned Carrefour, in both number of stores and the size of each particular location. This is the place where the middle/upper-middle class in China goes to do their shopping in a pseudo-Western style atmosphere that involves chicken feet in the meat market. While walking into the store on a Wednesday afternoon, I stopped suddenly at the front entrance of the store and was apparently the only person appalled at what was going on: not two feet to my left was a child of about four, with his pants down, peeing right on the welcome mat (and probably getting urine on my New Balances. Not cool, you little shit.)
"Well this is likely because the kid is unattended with no authority figure present", I thought to myself. Nope. Right behind him was a person who appeared to be his older brother, calmly directing the toddler as to what imaginary fire should be put out next. Bear in mind, little kids peeing whereever the hell they so choose is common practice in China. Barbaric, right? Maybe, until you realize where they're coming from. In China, most people have never had the disposable income for a convenience such as Pampers. As a result, kids clothes come with a flap on it so that they can make number 1 or 2 when nature calls (though hopefully down a sewer grate or in a bush as opposed to plain sight.) Would it be nice if they had a waste collection pouch stapled to their leg? Yeah. But I doubt bratty American kids would do any better without diapers.

"Balls to the Bench"
One of my initial concerns upon arriving in Wuxi, China was the presence of a gym in the vicinity. As it turns out, there is a fitness club that looks suspiciously like a California villa called "Better" not a ten minute drive away from where I live where Chinese and expats alike go to flex in front of mirrors and run in place. This place has it all, cute staff (female, you homophobe), helpful trainers (male, you misogynist) and ping-pong tables on the top floor. One thing I was not prepared for was how some Chinese men conduct themselves in a state of undress. Today, I saw a heavyset man calmly walking back down to the lockerroom in nothing but his underwear/compression shorts. That means he took off almost all his clothes and walked around in plain sight where all the cardio machines are. You are fat and middle-aged buddy, put a tent on the circus.
My favorite part however was when I actually made my way into the locker room: there is a bench right next to a fan when you walk in where everyone likes to cool off after working out. Seated on the bench was yet another fat, middle-aged man with his nether regions firmly plastered on the wooden bench, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Gatorade in the other. He looked at me wearing my Under Armour and iPod strapped to my arm. I looked at him wearing his birthday suit and wang strapped to the bench. After a five second-long curious cultural exchange stare, I went to my locker and decided to come back next week with Chinese rice liquor (baijiu) to sanitize the place where he sat.

"The Food"
China's cuisine is a fascinating case study in that for every dish they have which you could eat every day, there is a corresponding one that looks and tastes like Satan's anus. Ironically, the best food in China comes from the various ethnic minorities or the Taiawanese proving that historical repression = good food no matter where you are (read: African-Americans). To call "typical" Chinese food eclectic would be an insult to the Chinese; since I arrived in September I've already had toad, jellyfish and chicken feet. If you're wondering why so many foreigners stick to Kung Pao chicken, this is probably why. The best food I've had here has been from a hole in the wall restaurant run by a Uighur family (the Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang Province) and their food is fucking delicious. Like the Greeks, the Uighurs realized early on that lamb, when prepared right is naturally tastier than any other kind of meat and like the Greeks, they staved off a million Persians at Thermopylae in 540 B.C.E. Only kidding. Uighur food is prepared simply but consistently with seasonings and marinades that are so good they could probably cook poop with them and the only thing I'd say is "well...I guess I'll wait until next week to eat it again." Moreover, the people at the restaurant have grown to appreciate the fact that I pay them enough to put their children through school. Hopefully this will be enough to prevent them from spitting in my food when they're having a bad day a la "Waiting".

Wo Zhongyu Lai Zhongguo (I Finally Arrive in China)

Ahh yes, after weeks of waiting I've made it from the D all the way to Wuxi, China (about an hour train ride from Shanghai). After arriving Monday afternoon at the eerily empty Shanghai national airport, I was met by a driver from Wuxi who carried me off to the school in a black sedan with 100% tinted windows...yeah, it was pretty pimp. Wuxi is a "small" city of five million people that is on the up-and-up from just a few years ago. As such, there is a sizeable contingent of foreigners in the city from Korea, the US and Europe. Were it not for the insufferable humidity, I would literally have no complaints about the surroundings, except maybe for the lack of a Best Buy. I'm over here to teach, but from being here one week I've already made a lot of interesting observations about the place. To name a few:

- Chicks dig my accent: I have been told by many of the students and teachers that they like my accent and pronunciation, they said it was very easy to understand and stopped just short of saying this was sexy. I for one was pleasantly surprised, as I had no idea that American accents were appealing per se, I guess they just like my voice because it sort of sounds like the voiceovers you hear on those language CDs.

- In Beijing, people spit everywhere and no one wears shorts, even when it's hot out. In Wuxi, practically no one spits in public and I saw a lot of guys wearing shorts and a minimal number of guys wearing capris which excites me, personally.

- I forgot how smoking hot Chinese girls can be. Fortunately, they all usually congregate in clubs on the weekend. Unfortunately, they really like keeping to themselves and drinking whiskey/green tea cocktails instead of going out and dancing. It's wierd.

- On a related note, I have a theory that every club in China is exactly the same. Pretty big, even by American standards, but a very small dance floor. Most of the club is taken up by tables where groups of people go and get bottle service. There's not a lot of dancing and mingling, which makes me wonder why the fuck people go out to them in the first place. The ambient noise provided by Hollaback Girl remixes can't be that good.

- My younger students told me they thought I was 35. I told them I was 22. They were shocked. One of the little boys in the class said my butt was big. Believe it or not, I took it as a complement, it means those dumbbell lunges have finally paid off.

- My toilet overflowed the first day. It was a surreal experience, as I was still jet-lagged and out of my element in a new city and to top it off, there was no plunger in my bathroom. This relates to the larger problem of shitty water pressure in China and hard, un-drinkable water that comes from the faucet and shower. I have since bought a plunger and also learned that toilets clog just from slightly larger than medium-size deuces.

- KFC delivers. It is neat.

- I get a lot of stares when I go to the gym. I'd like to say that it's because the combination of sweating that I do on the walk over and my low-fat diet have made me ripped to pieces, but it's actually because I'm the only person in Wuxi who wears their gym clothes over to the gym. As much as I'd love to change in the locker room, I'll take my chances listening to my iPod in public and being sweaty outside. At least it's easier for cab drivers to quickly identify me as a foreigner with money, so there's that.

The Greatest "Who Would Win" Disputes Settled

Have you ever been in a heated debate with a friend about who would win between Person X and Person Y, then all of a sudden, your counterpart busts out a totally sick argument that leaves you stumped and unable to think of a rebuttal? Well, worry about that no longer, here is my personal (and exhaustively researched) take on who would win between some of the most prominent rivals in the history of the entire fucking world.


The World's Greatest Knight (not named Lancelot or King Arthur) vs. The World's Best Samurai (not named Tom Cruise)
I had this debate back in high school and the results were sort of inconclusive, owing in large part to the fact that a knight and samurai, while similar, fought in two very different fashions. For example, let's assume that the two faced each other on horseback and the samurai was not allowed to use a bow and arrow because that shit would be cheap. If the knight could still use his lance, then I give this to the knight because no matter how good a swordsman the samurai is, the knight has a reach advantage of like, seven feet. However, if they're only using swords, then whether they fight on horseback or on foot, I'd give the match to the samurai. I don't doubt that the knight has skillz that killz, but so does the samurai, who would likely have a better sword and lighter, more flexible armor.

ADVANTAGE: Samurai

Muhammad Ali in his prime vs. Mike Tyson in his prime
I don't think I've ever seen this argument reach any semblance of a conclusion because people are so adamant one way or the other, either because they're nostalgic about Ali or because they watch Iron Mike on YouTube. First of all, let's start with the attributes both of them would bring: Ali's jab was fast, accurate and had insane reach. Mike Tyson was equally fast, and he possessed knockout power in both hands. Ali's defense came mainly from his footwork and his ability to float around the ring so as to not let brawlers like Tyson in too close. Conversely, Tyson's defense was due to his quickness and the high "peekaboo" guard he used while cutting the ring off from opponents who relied on footwork (i.e. Ali). As to the actual fight, let's say they're placed in a regulation size boxing ring for a twelve round bout. Once the first round was underway, I believe Ali would initially be in trouble. Ali had never faced anyone close to the type of physical specimen Tyson represented, whereas by Mike's time, fast heavyweights were more common. Moreover, I don't believe Ali ever faced anyone as fast as him while in his prime, and would likely be overconfident to the point that Tyson could score a lunging knockdown within the first few rounds while Ali "danced" in the ring.

However, once you factor in intangible factors into the fight, the balance tips Ali's way. For one thing, Ali was one of the most intelligent fighters in the history of boxing and had the drive to keep going even when the odds were stacked against him. Tyson, when compared to Ali, was a mental midget in the ring who had a hard time adjusting on the fly against craftier opponents and who usually became dumbfounded once his headlong flurries were parried. For those in Ali's corner, look no further than the match against journeyman Buster Douglas, widely regarded as the greatest upset in the history of the sport. I assume for the sake of argument that Ali would adopt essentially the same strategy of frustrating Tyson by clinching before Tyson could get his feet set and planting jabs once he was well out of the much shorter boxer's range. As a final caveat to this match-up, no one deserves the term "a puncher's chance" more than Mike, so I'd say Ali would win in the later rounds...provided a Tyson left hook didn't result in involuntary jaw removal.

ADVANTAGE: Ali, but barely

Batman (the Christian Bale/cartoon series version) vs. Superman (the Christopher Reeve version)
Let's get one thing out in the open right away: I'm biased towards Batman, but I'll admit that if Superman lands some epic haymaker on Bruce Wayne...it's basically curtains. That being said, Batman has the gadgets, the vehicles and the smarts to hang with (in my opinion) the most cliched superhero of all time. With the physical/superpower advantage clearly belonging to Superman (remember, Batman has NO superpowers), let's also take into account the fact that Supes also had a major Achilles heel, i.e. kryptonite. Anyone who says that Batman wouldn't have the resources or know-how to work that to his advantage best check themselves before they wreck themselves, because that alone could prove to be the decisive factor in this match-up. After getting kicked in the pud by a kryptonite-toed boot, you'd have to figure that Superman's powers would be neutralized long enough for Batman to put the hurt on him in some dark and twisted fashion. But let's say they didn't just meet face to face and start to rumble...even if Superman was trying to get the drop on Batman I don't think he'd succeed. For one thing, even though he could fly, I don't recall ever hearing that Superman could fly at speeds that would somehow make him undetectable to radar; I also don't think Superman could use his heat vision to immolate Batman from a mile away, I've seen no indication that this particular ability is that powerful. And Superman had x-ray vision....yeah, I don't really see that helping here.

ADVANTAGE: Batman, unless he gets lazy and Superman snaps his neck

Pirates vs. Ninjas
Ahh, the quintessential argument of historic rivals which refuses to die thanks to anyone in high school or college. Even if you assume they were both around in the 1600's-1800's, a ninja and "pirate" (in the Johnny Depp sense) probably never crossed blades due to the intercontinental gap between them and this perhaps is the main reason why the argument for both lives on to this day. Let's assume that the world's greatest ninja and the world's greatest pirate faced off against each other in some sort of octagon. I'd allow that if firearms were permitted, the ninja would probably get capped in the dome on account of the fact that the pirate likely is more proficient with flintlock guns. However, if you're talking hand-to-hand....I'm not sure you can argue that a pirate armed with a cutlass and maybe a grenade would be able to take a ninja with a kitana, shuriken, smoke grenades, flash powder and one of those sweet grappling claws.

However, a group deathmatch between comparably matched ninjas and pirates becomes harder to evaluate since both of them preferred combat in unique circumstances, i.e. the high seas and nighttime. So assuming you stuck them both at opposite ends of a coliseum and told them to go at it, you'd be asking for a pretty epic bloodbath, but one in which I think the ninjas would come out on top. Why? Let's assume the teams get the green light and bum rush each other. The pirates would be able to get off two shots at most with their inaccurate Revolutionary War-era pistols and after that, assuming that a good number of ninjas survived the initial volley, it'd basically be curtains. Also, the ninjas could answer with a volley of their own by deploying some epic smoke screens and chucked some throwing stars before-hand.

ADVANTAGE: Ninjas in a pinch

In Defense of Toronto

You know, overall Canada's not a bad place despite America (and England 's) knee-jerk tendency to malign it at every opportunity, in fact the main point I'm asserting here is that if anything, more cities should aspire to be like Toronto. I recently had the privilege of bumming around Toronto and the metro area after an eleven year hiatus from visiting the city, and I have to say that there's more going on than people will give credit for.

Oh, and here are the main reason why Toronto is pretty fucking sweet:

1. They play 90s music fairly frequently
American (non-satellite) radio stations have this shitty tendency to overplay songs to death due to the fact that their "countdowns" never consist of anything outside of the American Top 40, and accordingly, rarely include anything more than two years old. Canada however, is like the eighty year old man who just does not give a crap any more and will play whatever the hell they feel like. I was treated to a delightful audio trip down memory lane at no less than three of the random coffee shops/restaurants I walked into, and we're talking some obscure freaking songs...like the ones that you vaguely remember from when you were seven, but can't quite put a finger on the artist or title. It's amazing how Canada gets it, but the musical country of origin is more interested in the new single T-Pain just came out with.

2. Rollerblades
Yep, they use 'em, and to a pretty high extent I might add. Going off the whole "the 90s was immeasurably better than the 2000s" tack, I saw no shortage of people in the metro-Toronto area getting around the suburbs on these four wheeled, inappropriately-placed brake wonders. The best part about this was probably the fact that Canadians proved rollerblades can be used without a fanny pak and helmet with neon colors.

3. It's actually...diverse
And not even fake diversity, i.e. when there's a lot of one minority that works in the service industry and doesn't really interact with other groups...I even went to a restaurant that was some sort of openly gay establishment (there was a gay pride flag flying right outside, beat that middle America). In all honesty, for a city of 2.5 million, Toronto's outdone itself in terms of how many different shades of people live in the area. I'm not denying that these groups have their differences, which periodically creates trouble, but good on the people of Toronto for becoming an international city in every sense of the word.

4. They have the highest population of incidentally hot girls I've ever seen
Here's what I mean by that: from what I've heard, Toronto gets ragged on for not having the best-looking female populace, but I think that's a little unfounded. The trick is that you don't find good looking girls in typical places there (i.e. clubs, bars, the mall). Usually, you'll catch a passing glance at them walking the other way on the street or walking to the bathroom in a restaurant. In my personal experience, I did a whole lot of double-takes because hot chicks walked by me when I was in the walking "zone" where I don't usually like to be disturbed. That being said, Toronto's a good-looking city, you just won't see the ladies oot and aboot like you normally do.

The Top 10 Most Recognizable Songs (By Intro)

America's musical history has been fortunate enough that there are a multitude of hit songs that, when heard on the radio or iPod, people can immediately identify. This is made easier by the fact that some of the better songs ever made have a catchy intro or opening instrumental that immediately get people's heads nodding, or evoke some nostalgic memory. So here's my subjective top 10 list of the songs you can't help but listen to:

10. "Crazy Train", Black Sabbath
When you hear Ozzie shout, "ALLLL ABOOOOAARRD", I think everyone knows that the "AAI AAI AAI" part is next. 'Nuff said.

9. "Purple Haze", Jimi Hendrix
The catchiest guitar music seems to be the stuff that's simple when you're looking at the tabs but eloquent in its nature, and "Purple Haze" certainly meets those specifications. I know next to nothing about playing the guitar, but Hendrix's talent was so great, that even I knew when I was listening to someone who was a master at their craft.

8. "Smoke on the Water", Deep Purple
I was trying to figure out where to put this song and having some difficulty, because the beginning guitar part is what everyone remembers, but beyond that, not a whole lot else. I was never in a high school band, so it took me until I was 18 to learn that the band's name was Deep Purple and in actual fact, the song itself is pretty freakin' long.

7. "Final Countdown", Europe
You're damn right I went out of my way to put 80s music on this list. Perhaps it was because the lyrics of their songs were so non-substantive that most bands around this time just went for broke on the instrumentals. The go-to song of playoff basketball for two decades.

6. "100 Years", Five for Fighting
I was racking my brain trying to figure out the 21st century's contribution to this list, when this song exploded in my mind. Was it #1 on American Top 40? I'm pretty sure it wasn't, since it's really sappy. But when that piano first starts playing and you don't suffer a wave of nostalgia about SOMETHING, you're a soulless prick.

5. "I Want It That Way", Backstreet Boys
In an era where songs were driven totally by catchiness and not at all by lyrical sophistication, this song reigns supreme. If you assume that half of the United States population is below the age of 35 (or not, I don't care), that's as good as saying that 150 million people know more of the words to this song than they let on. As a straight male, I tried to think of every reason to NOT put this song on the list...and then I realized that I could lip-synch 80% of the words.

4. "Ants Marching", DMB
You sorta have to give Dave the benefit of the doubt with a list like this, as his music helps define an entire generation. Anyone in the 18-30 crowd has been living under a rock if they've never heard this song before and don't know a couple lines from it. I don't even listen to Dave Matthews Band that much anymore, but when those saxophones start playing, nine times out of ten, I'll stop and listen to the song the entire way through.

3. "I Want You Back", Jackson 5
Ahhh, to have a young(er) Michael Jackson again...I'm pretty sure this is the only song on the list that exalts the bass guitar in the opening, because it's the bass-line that everyone remembers in the song, even if the only other part you remember is the chorus.

2. "Sweet Home Alabama", Lynyrd Skynyrd
The opening guitar is good for TV shows, it's good for commercials and its good for movies. I figure something this timeless and marketable can't be anywhere lower than the top 3 and reps a state that at the time was probably better known for its folksy institutional racism.

1. "Billy Jean", Michael Jackson
Of course Michael has to be on this list more than once, we're talking about an artist with a fan base on every continent (I'm assuming scientists in Antarctica love his stuff too). You gotta hand it to this song, the only thing you hear at first is that simple drum beat, but everyone knows what comes next. A true generation gap-bridger.

Movies I Consider Overrated

Sort of on the wings of the Harry Potter post, I'd also like to submit several movies that most people enjoy, which I consider overrated. This could be for any number of reasons such as un-inventive writing, over-reliance on cinematography and/or CGI but the biggest reason is because the filmmakers intentionally preyed upon the American publics' proclivity towards vicarious living. Which brings me to my first and probably most difficult case:

The Boondock Saints
Let me start off by saying I like the Boondock Saints and found it to be an entertaining film from start to finish (especially the protracted erroneous debate about the "rule of thumb" in the beginning). However, I think that people, especially from my generation, treat this movie as the gospel if for no other reason than they like to live vicariously through the two brothers. The main reason this movie is so good is because it touches on some of America's favorite controversial subjects such as vigilante justice, shameless violence, the militancy of the Irish, and Willem Dafoe. Who wouldn't want to go around capping baddies while having Latin inscriptions tattooed on your knuckles? It makes for good film and lets people identify with a gratuitously violent cause that everyone secretly thinks is just. Having said that however, if you take a step back from it, the movie seems intensely narrow in scope and in my opinion ends on a short and absurdly over the top note (i.e. Willem Dafoe going all tranny and the brothers and their pappy shooting the mob boss after saying that hokey "prayer"). So again, I think the Boondock Saints is a good movie, it even straddles the line with being great; but a lot of people think it walks on water and I don't agree.

Fight Club
In a lot of ways, Fight Club relies even more on vicarious living than Boondock Saints because of its commentary on the rat race of corporate America. I'm not gainfully employed as a pencil pusher somewhere, but surely there's a ton of guys with pent-up rage about where they work who would love to curb-stomp their coworkers with no repercussions if they could. Another thing that makes me like this movie is that Brad Pitt turns in a good performance, and by that, I mean he's as believable as a multiple personality can be and he actually has some inflection in his voice while delivering lines. The flip side to this is that I feel the director could have delivered the same stuff without the cinematography being so gritty and over the top (most people would rather not be exposed to a subliminal image of a dude's wang, what sort of symbolism could there be in that?). Not only that, but was there no other way to progress to the great plot twist at the end without the ridiculous idea of turning Fight Club into a terrorist group? I recognize that this is one of the seminal movies at the turn of the 21st century, but I can't help but wonder if people wouldn't view it more critically if not for the sterling performances of Pitt and Norton.

300
As of now, 300 has probably become my favorite movie to claim as overrated, if only because a lot of other people agree with me. This represents the most far-fetched version of vicarious escapism, yet people love it for its hyper-adrenaline, testosterone-infused look and feel. 300 is one of two movies on this list which I genuinely dislike on the whole for a few reasons. First of all is my own personal bias: I like my war movies to be epic in scope, with sicknasty but REALISTIC fighting even down to the first-person shaky camera cinematography from Saving Private Ryan. Therefore, it's easy to gauge my distaste for this movie, because 300 didn't really hit on any of this criteria. Everything was shot so close up and in slow motion to the point where it looked like Leonidas versus twenty guys instead of the three hundred Spartans versus the hundreds of thousands of Persians. Moreover, I thought the dialog was stilted and at times idiotic (the narrator started to annoy me after a while), good for a few sound bytes, but not much else. I liked Sin City, and I feel like dark comics such as that are where Frank Miller should stay, not in what could have been the most badass movie since Gladiator.

Crash
And finally, the movie I really, REALLY don't like, to the point where I'd say it was the biggest steaming piece of shit to ever win Best Picture. Prior to actually watching Crash, I'll admit I was sucked into the rave reviews of my (white) peers, who told me to go out and watch the movie all in one sitting, ASAP. Well I did, and looking back on it, I probably should have taken a break between each contrived subplot to go get too drunk to taste this chicken, because it would've made for a more enjoyable experience. There's really no good place to start with Crash, because I hated all of it, but just for schnitzengiggles, let's begin with the fact that they had to compile an all-star cast just to get their sanctimonious point across. Nothing informs me more about race relations in America than a painful argument between Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock after Ludacris has just jacked their car. And might I add that if not for Ryan Phillippe, I never would have understood the endemic corruption and brutality of America's police departments. I personally resent the fact that they had to collect these A-listers to really drive home their all too obvious points on race in the United States (i.e. you better believe what this movie has to say, because Don Cheadle is an articulate black actor, so....yeah). It speaks volumes about American culture that a (substandard) movie had to come along in order to kick-start national dialogue about how Americans of different ethnicities interact with each other. I'm not too sure, but I think what the point of the movie was is that people of different races don't always get along, but in the end what unites us is our humanity and empathy. What? You mean I didn't have to spend two hours and millions of dollars just to say all that? Get out of town.

Harry Potter Makes Me Sad

Nothing will have a better chance of making me shit myself later in life than if people end up regarding J.K. Rowling as one of the greatest authors of the 20th/21st century. I recently had a protracted debate about the legitimacy and general merit of the Harry Potter series where I obviously took the anti-Potter perspective purely in the context that I believe she should not be exalted to the point that she is today. This is not meant to be some mean-spirited libelous attack on Ms. Rowling, she happens to have created and continues to support many charitable causes (don't believe me? Wikipedia it.) What this is meant to do is provide a dose of realism and a different perspective on the legacy of the Harry Potter series so that hopefully twenty years from now people won't speak of Rowling and someone like Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton in the same breath.

The first argument that a lot of people give me about the Harry Potter series is "at least it's getting people to read". I used to buy into this argument as well until I realized it isn't the best idea to accept the bare minimum in terms of intellectual pursuits. I've tried to read Harry Potter, and while it does not particularly agree with me, I can see how people use it as a source of harmless escapism, which is fine and good perhaps if you're still in middle school. First and foremost, it's probably a safe bet that there are scores of fantasy writers out there who are at least as good at writing a story as Rowling, yet because there is no hype machine behind them, they're doomed to languish on the shelves. To be honest, I barely view the Harry Potter series as a step up from those anime graphic novels that people read: entertaining, but surely more worthwhile books are out there that will help you intellectually as well. To my mind, no children's author has surpassed Roald Dahl, yet his estate is not worth more than a billion dollars and Rowling's is; I can only attribute this to the fact that the Harry Potter series is more irrepressible fad than truly substantive literature.

My perspective on the issue is grounded primarily in the idea that reading something, especially when you are young should expand your mind and open you up to new literary horizons. Essentially, you need to get something meaningful out of what you're reading in order to validate your time. When I was younger, I read Calvin and Hobbes comics because in addition to being funny, I deeply identified with Bill Watterson's perspective on life. When I was in middle school, I got my jollies out with science fiction as a bridge to adult fiction from preeminent authors such as Clancy, Grisham and James Clavell. The point here is that after a while, science fiction and fantasy became a phase in the reading I had done, and the best of these books I might take out occasionally to glance over for bathroom reading, but after a point I knew I had to make my way down to the Politics and Government section at Barnes and Noble as well.

Whether due to pervasive anti-intellectualism in American culture (think about it, how many Facebook friends that you have don't like to read?) or the fickle tendency of people to not look beyond the author de jure, the Harry Potter series has become a critical success while entire bookstores across America close. I am not saying that J.K. Rowling does not deserve the success she has had, millions of people can't be wrong; I am saying however, that with the multitude of other competent writers out there, she has been TOO successful. Perhaps if people are willing to wait hours for Harry Potter books, they should also make sure to buy another book from anywhere but the Cooking section; that's how I personally have found the best and most meaningful books I have ever read.

The Pistons 2.0

A casual reader on ESPN or SI.com will notice that generally speaking, most of the trade rumors going around in the NBA at this point usually involve the Pistons trying to pry away another team's best player. These trade rumors kicked off with Carmelo Anthony and have most recently made their way around to Baron Davis (?). So this got me to thinking what sort of talented but unsuccessful superstar would jump at the chance to go to Detroit? The list below shows the best fits:

1. Tracy McGrady, G/F Houston Rockets
Remember the time from about 2001-2003 when T-Mac was the shit and was widely considered the best player in the game? Due to the fact that he has the back of a man four times his age, McGrady probably doesn't have even six more seasons in him, and his play has declined from just three seasons ago. However, I put T-Mac at #1 on this list for one reason: like Kevin Garnett, he is on the short list of star players who fits the profile of a Detroit Piston.
Consider that McGrady is likely aware of his NBA mortality, is probably fiending to get out of the Western Conference and would love to be surrounded by a deeper supporting cast and you can see how the Pistons would be a better fit than the team he has now. Granted, injury is always a nagging problem with him, but even if McGrady plays only 65 regular season games, it'd be worth it if he could patch himself together for the playoffs. The other reason that T-Mac is tops on the list is that you'd figure the Rockets are itching to become a more complete team and even if they trade their (second?) best player, the Pistons are one of the few teams that can offer a package of equal value.
The Trade: Tracy McGrady for Richard Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince

2. Elton Brand, F Los Angeles Clippers
If you take nothing else from Brand's career in the NBA, at least he was one of the few highly-touted Duke players to actually meet with success in the NBA. Brand is an articulate gentleman who also happens to be a beast anywhere in the key and plays for possibly the worst franchise in pro sports. If I were Brand, a ticket out of the poisonous Clippers organization would be a godsend, especially for someone looking to prove himself after recovering from ACL surgery. Like McGrady, Brand is a maligned superstar who has not had so much as a whiff of the NBA Finals; he would get that as a Piston. A trade involving Brand and Rasheed Wallace makes sense for both teams on multiple levels; first, Brand makes a lot of money and the Clippers owner, Donald Sterling is a notoriously cheap guy. Rasheed Wallace's contract expires after next season, giving the Clippers over ten million dollars in cap relief. Second, the Clippers have another guy, Chris Kaman, who makes a living in the paint and would appreciate someone like Sheed to bring defense and spread opposing defenses. The Pistons on the other hand, need a consistent low-post scorer like none other, Brand would be brought in specifically to give the inside game a much needed shot in the arm. Again, the Pistons bring in a hungry, underrated star to make a title run, the Clippers get flexibility and the services of the most versatile power forward in the league for at least a season.
The Trade: Elton Brand for Rasheed Wallace and Amir Johnson

3. 'Melo, F Denver Nuggets
For anyone who remembers 2003, that was the fateful year the Pistons could have drafted Carmelo Anthony, instead of mega-bust Darko Milicic. Along with the Kwame Brown debacle, Darko and the Pistons' misstep both represent the biggest basketball "what-ifs" of the 2000s. It literally pains me to think of TV footage of 'Melo happily attending Pistons games and proudly proclaiming that come draft day, he would be a Detroit Piston. Now, no sports fan should ever make a claim to knowledge about the decisions of any pro athlete, but I know that if I was Carmelo Anthony, I would bear just a little bit of a grudge towards the organization that should have drafted you. Perhaps that will be one of the biggest stumbling blocks towards a trade between the Pistons and the Nuggets, but maybe, it still isn't too late to mend some fences or rebuild bridges as the saying goes.

The Trade: Carmelo Anthony for Chauncey Billups and Tayshaun Prince

The resulting roster (or, the likely roster versus the hypothetical roster):
PG: Billups/Stuckey
SG: Hamilton/Mcgrady
SF: Prince/Anthony
PF: Wallace/Brand
C: Maxiell/McDyess

Bench notables: Afflalo, Johnson, Herrmann, Hayes

The Most Typecast Actors of All Time

Have you ever been watching a movie when all of a sudden you recognize one of the actors in it, only because it seems like they played the exact same role in a different film? As the title of this post indicates, I am attempting to consolidate a list with the actors who are more typecast in Hollywood than anyone else. This list is meant to be incomplete and un-authoritative, so any suggestions are welcome.

The List (generally in order of least to most typecast, just to keep the suspense going)

Joaquim de Almeida
Role: the smooth Hispanic gangster
Examples: Clear and Present Danger, Desperado, the TV series "24"
Synopsis: you know who he is, you just never knew he had a name. The gravely-voiced oily antagonist to Harrison Ford and Keifer Sutherland alike, de Almeida is an ultimate That Guy who just happens to play the same role every time. Every time he talks in his slow, dangerous cadence, you get the feeling that he's on the verge of beating you with a whole roasted pig or whatever they eat in Portugal/Spain.

Jean Reno
Role: the French mercenary
Examples: Mission Impossible, Ronin
Synopsis: judging from IMDB, Reno has had a long and diverse career it's just that if you're not French, you've probably never seen this guy do anything other than heist/spy movies. This is the guy who could be the stereotypical portrait for French males, that is, if Gerard Depardieu were never born.

Orlando Bloom
Role: the elven blacksmith
Examples: Pirates, LOTR, Kingdom of Heaven
Synopsis: this one was almost too easy, and while I realize Bloom was never actually an elven blacksmith in any one of his movies per se, it sort of seems like it if you view his career in an abstract sense. His righteous, holier-than-thou attitude never changes, and though you want to hit him with a tire iron if you're a guy, you have to admit that his ass-kicking abilities rates up there with Steven Seagal, if not Charles Bronson.

Hugh Grant
Role: the bumbling, but charming lover interest
Examples: Sense and Sensibility, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones, Two Weeks' Notice, Love Actually
Synopsis: though he's not in the top 3, Grant is probably my prize find just because most guys aren't privy to cinematic knowledge of Hugh Grant, but watching the end of Love Actually jogged my memory. Love Actually is one of those movies where you can tell the writers created a character with a specific actor in mind and basically decided, "fuck it, he can only act one way but he's precise with it every time."

Kevin Spacey
Role: just look at his last name, it's so ironic
Examples: Se7en, The Usual Suspects, K-PAX, Superman (-ish)
Synopsis: Kevin Spacey also plays a cop in a lot of movies, but those roles aren't nearly as powerful/funny. As far as I'm concerned, Kevin Spacey's spaced-out (ha) self manifests in three separate forms: the good, but enigmatic and aloof Kevin Spacey (K-PAX), the secretive but diabolical Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects) and the bad/insane Kevin Spacey (Se7en, Superman Returns). I only wish there was a way to consolidate them all, because if you watched those movies back-to-back...there probably wouldn't be much of a difference, sans all the killing.

Robin Williams
Role: the erratic, but inspirational funnyman
Examples: Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Patch Adams, Good Morning Vietnam
Synopsis: what amazes me about Robin Williams is that he is able to get away with interjecting his style of stand-up comedy into literally every role he's ever had and no one thinks twice about it. You know what I'm talking about, the fast-paced narrative of a humorous event that you can't really make out but you just assume it's funny because you hear the beginning and end of it. This continuity of delivery and style between his most serious and most comedic roles only goes to show that by and large, people have accepted the fact that he'll usually bring one way to act to the table; that and something tragic always happens to him.

Ryan Reynolds
Role: the sarcastic smartass who provides comic relief
Examples: every movie he has done since 2002. For the nitpicky, these include Van Wilder (of course), Just Friends, Blade 3 (you read correctly) and Waiting
Synopsis: as an almost 22 year-old, Reynolds in many ways symbolizes the style of humor I've grown up with in pop culture: cynical, sarcastic and self-deprecating. Van Wilder has become one of the seminal movies of my generation, and Waiting is its under-appreciated cousin. Perhaps the only thing more entertaining than Reynolds' rapid-fire rapier wit is the fact that if you saw him from the neck up, you probably wouldn't believe that he's jacked out of his mind.

Adam Sandler
Role: the understated, but bipolar and violent everyman
Examples: his entire body of work, except "Click". Click never happened.
Synopsis: before Ryan Reynolds however, the 18-34 year old crowd was first exposed to Sandler who is even now likely the undisputed champion of slightly juvenile but touching comedy. Whether you're watching Little Nicky or Punch Drunk Love (the polar opposites in the quality spectrum of his career), you can't help but empathize with Sandler's characters who always start out as nobodies but eventually look within themselves and find that they can take control of a hotel empire/win a PGA championship/win a college bowl game/rule hell/get the slightly odd girl of their dreams.

Samuel L. Jackson
Role: the militant badass
Examples: every motherfuckin' movie he's ever been in
Synopsis: Mr. L. Jackson isn't #1 on my list for one simple reason: it's too easy to put him there. Trying to come up with cool, insightful things to say about him, I realized they've been said already. By him.

Morgan Freeman
Role: the benevolent, wizened mentor/narrator; ultimate supporting actor
Examples: The Shawshank Redemption, Bruce Almighty, March of the Penguins, Million Dollar Baby, Glory
Synopsis: One of my favorite jokes about Morgan Freeman is the one where he stars in his own movie called, "The Narrator" where the first line is him saying "Ever since I can remember, people have been telling me that they just like hearing the sound of my voice." The joke is funny because it's absolutely true; they should just rename the Best Supporting Actor Oscar the Morgan Freeman 2.0 Award.

Tommy Lee Jones
Role: the hard-bitten law enforcement agent
Examples: The Fugitive, US Marshals, Men in Black, Man of the House, The Hunted
Synopsis: it's hard to imagine Tommy Lee Jones' weathered face in any other role than the hard-to-please, no-bullshit FBI/MIB agent isn't it? This is made all the easier by how forgettable his characters were who did not fit this template (i.e. Two Face and the terrorist who looked like a member of Phish, but I can't think of the movie right now). Rarely is an actor in Hollywood so perfectly set up to play one character and one character only, he's so good in fact that I don't think anyone WANTS him to try a different character type.

These are the best of the best in my mind, I'll keep adding to the list as I go...bring on your own submissions as well