Happy New Year

It hit me last week that the last two posts on this blog were tradition--Fourth of July Muppets and the Pogues on Christmas Eve. Not much in between. And by "not much," mean nothing.

Part of that is because I'm dealing with a lot more words at work than I ever have before. Part of that is that the world outside work is crazier than it has ever been. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I've been alive for [REDACTED] years, but I can safely say that even in the tense closing years of the Cold War I never felt like everything was teetering so close to the edge.

We also moved to a new city-state with a new imaginary mascot, the merlion:

RAaaarrgurgle

Singapore presents its own unique challenges, such as schools with Cordon Bleu-trained chefs and a price tag to match, and an equatorial sun that will burn the health right out of your skin.

But for all that, there is much to be thankful for in 2018. Health and happiness. Good food. Loving family. A Chiefs quarterback that can do this...

... and is only like 19 years old.

No one can say what 2019 will bring. I suspect there will be many moments of global instability and wackiness, and if the two years since November 2016 have taught us anything, it's that expecting things to return to normalcy and stability on their own is... not a great plan.

So here's to hope, and action, and for good things in the year ahead.

Rock Chalk

It's been a while since I have written about basketball. This is mostly, I think, because game time (usually in the early morning hours in Singapore) is often *exactly* the same as toddler time (usually the early morning hours anywhere). Don't let anyone tell you I'm indoctrinating my kids; I could easily have set them down in front of the TV to watch some KU hoops, but I've been good.

This year's Kansas team has been... interesting. I've woken up to see some really bizarre scenarios: three home losses! A five-star recruit quitting to go play in Europe! A near-total absence of depth! But at the same time, they have beaten more top-quality teams than any other program this season. There's something about the team that, when it works, works really well. They won the Big 12 regular season championship and the conference tournament.

The first trophy of, one hopes, many.

And this morning, they went to the Final Four for the first time since 2012.

I watched most of the second half on my laptop, in the dark, while I ate my cereal. Then suddenly it was overtime, and I was late for work, and I "watched" the last five minutes by getting score updates on my phone.

And they won. They beat Duke in what may have been the best heavyweight showdown of the tournament.

Basketball is fun, and a nice distraction from all the other craziness in the world. It would be an even nicer distraction if the Jayhawks, just as they did the last time they were in San Antonio, won their last two games.

Just like old times

Frank Mason III was fun to watch in college. Not just because he's a Jayhawk (which is awesome) but because he had an uncanny ability, maybe more so than any player since Jacque Vaughn, to take the tiniest crack in a defense and break the whole thing down for a scoring opportunity. It looked a little something like this:

Now he has been drafted--by Sacramento, in the second round--and is trying to play his way into a guaranteed contract in summer league games. A friend posted this clip of highlights from his latest game, and I have to say... it looks like he's doing the same sort of stuff as a pro that he did in college. It's uncanny:

I've never been a huge fan of the NBA, but if Mason sticks, that might change. He's that fun to watch.

They did it. They did it!

After losing the World Series in seven games last season, the Kansas City Royals are once again world champs.

As I wrote last year, I have clear memories of the games, the celebrations across the city, the parade. I was right there in the middle of it in '85, a nine-year-old watching the games on TV at home and the victory parade on TV in the cafeteria of my elementary school.

Now I have literally never been farther from home--7,796 miles, if Google is to be trusted--and the Royals have done it again.

I wish I were there to celebrate with my Kansas Citian friends. I wish I had been there to watch some of the nail-biting late innings with my parents (and my dad, especially, who HATES nail-biting late innings). But in the end, I can't complain: I'm here with Mrs. Blog and the increasingly adorable Little Blog, and thanks to the Internet, I was able to follow nearly every minute of the post-season. That's literally a win-win.

And you know what? Thanks to that 7,800-mile distance, most of the games came on around breakfast time here in Hong Kong. And thanks to the extra innings, right around lunchtime on November 2, I was able to see this:

Go, Royals!

Kind of a big deal

Yeah, yeah... you are by now tired of first sentences that go something like, "I know it's been a while since I've posted, but blah blah blah." So we'll just dive right in.

First of all, Kansas won the Big 12 again. This is cool not just because it's incredibly rare for one team to win a power conference 11 times in a row, but also because it sets the stage for a Spinal Tap reference:

Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Second of all, the conference was exceptionally tough this year; some number crunching indicates it was actually the toughest conference top to bottom. And that means the Big 12 tournament, which starts next week, will be unusually fun to watch. Just about every matchup either puts two ranked teams against each other or involves general bad blood.

I'm sure this, like all memories, has become a bit sepia-toned with age. But I remember getting into a game on an early day of the 1988 Big 8 tournament to watch Oklahoma (I remember because they had Skeeter Henry) play Colorado (I remember because they had, and still have, a buffalo mascot). My dad had gotten tickets. Kemper Arena smelled of sweat and popcorn. And cheering on two teams my 12-year-old self only vaguely cared about with my dad was... awesome.

Sadly, most of the games will be on at an hour that not even an unhappy Baby Blog would care to be awake at. I'll either be watching solo, or on time delay. Either way, I'm sure there will be a stream of text messages that will give me a pretty good idea of how things went. And then it's on to the NCAA tournament.

So here's to some great basketball. This has always been my favorite time of year for sports... even before Kansas' streak started.

Shades of 1985

It's been a busy month. Mrs. Blog and I now have Little Blog; Hong Kong is (extremely politely) demonstrating in favor of full democracy; and of course the Royals are in the World Series.

I'm still figuring the first two out, but I have some experience with the third one. I was in grade school when the Royals played the Cardinals in 1985. At the time I didn't realize it would be the last time in a long time they would even get into the playoffs.

The aftermath looked a bit like this.

Now, 29 years later, they're back. My perspective this time around is a little different because instead of being a kid surrounded by revelry in my hometown, I'm an adult surrounded by a near-total lack of interest in baseball, 7,500 miles away from home.

My memories are a little sepia-toned, as childhood recollections tend to be. My classmates and I (and our teachers, who were no doubt more interested) watched one of the day games in the cafeteria. There was a parade on TV. George Brett was king of the universe.

I have less personal experience with this team--although I did get to a game last year!--and it's much harder to watch them play live, but it's still cool. They have a great story, of a good regular season and a sparkling (undefeated until today's game against the Giants, booooo) postseason. The style of baseball they play is genuinely interesting, with lots of incremental moves to gain advantage, and disruptive speed. Their bullpen is outstanding. Come to think of it, it's kind of like watching "Major League."

Anyway. Scenes like this are amazing to see, even from afar...

... and I hope that despite the lackluster Game 1, there will be more to come. After all, way back in 1985, when the Earth was still cooling, Kansas City lost its first game against the Cardinals.

And we all know how that turned out.

It's that time of year

Ah, the winds of autumn. Here in Hong Kong, the signs are everywhere: leaves not falling from the trees, brisk chill absent from the air, apple cider and pumpkin spice lattes nowhere to be seen. (There are, however, plenty of people roasting chestnuts on streetcorners, but they do that during the summer too.)

And, oh yeah, college basketball. There's nary a sign of it in the 'Kong, but on Tuesday Kansas hits the court for the first time this season.

That's right--a shakycam video of a video screen in a basketball arena at... a glorified practice session this month. It doesn't get much dorkier than that. Fortunately, as noted above, actual basketball highlights are right around the corner. Happy autumn!

Schrodinger's baseball

Oh, hello, Readers of the Blog. It has, once again, been a while. This time is mostly because I was out of town on a thoroughly incredible vacation to Bali. I mean, I suppose I could have written a post or two while lounging next to this...

Making a splash in the jungle.

... but wouldn't I be better off just, you know, swimming? Yes. Yes, I would.

As I told Mrs. Blog, I had that old Eddie Money song stuck in my head toward the end of the trip. But unfortunately, the two tickets to paradise were round-trip, not one way. So I'm back now.

And, it turns out, I have missed a few things. Several Friends of the Blog have pointed out that the Kansas City Royals, who for years have existed basically to provide a reason to go sit outside and eat hot dogs in the summer, are now suddenly contenders. I am happy about this.

"Nice job. Nice job. Nice job. Nice job. Nice job."

I can't help but wonder whether there is some weird karmic correlation here, where the farther I get from K.C. the better the Royals do. Does simply checking the standings and noticing "Hey, they have stopped being terrible!" ruin their play? Is it like talking to a [REDACTED] in the eighth inning of a [REDACTED]?

The answer is almost certainly "no." And after all, I have already observed the cat--I mean, the baseball standings--so the observational damage is done. All that's left now is to enjoy the ride... and, I hope, the playoffs.

The universe is a basketball, and it has exploded

I really don't know what commentary to add here--it's Dennis Rodman sitting next to Kim Jong-un. And they're watching the Harlem Globetrotters (three of them, anyway) show off their fancy dribblin' in front of a crowd of identically dressed North Koreans. The clapping is polite, rhythmic and almost in unison.

And then there's a basketball game.

A slam-dunk for democracy? A propaganda exercise for the Evil Empire? WHO CARES!? My. Mind. Is. Blown.

Dunkin' ain't easy...

... and, technically speaking, it ain't necessary, either. Unless, of course, you're holding a dunk contest. In that case, as we see from this dunk competition in the Chinese pro league--the CBA--it is necessary to the point of repetition.

I'm definitely not one to mock other cultures for how they play my game of choice; I have shared the blacktop with ballers all over the world, many of whom have at least semi-schooled me and my old-guy knees. But if you're going to hold a dunk contest, make sure it involves actual, like, dunking, e.g.:

It's a little perplexing, actually. At my athletic peak--and let's be honest, it was more of a big hill than a mountain--I could dunk a women's ball (which is slightly smaller than the men's version) using one hand on a regulation-height rim. So I don't totally understand how professional basketball players who are both taller and in better shape than I ever was are having a hard time with the relatively straightforward act of throwing the ball through the hoop at point-blank range.

On the other hand, the CBA is doing well, and China's love of basketball has attracted major attention from the NBA. So maybe it's only a matter of time before the "shoe stuck to the backboard dunk" is just another part of the sport's lexicon.

The Art of Old Guy Basketball, Part II

Good evening, dear readers. I write this to you from a chair, which is not in itself unusual, but it is a chair from which I will not easily rise. That's because for the first time since arriving in Hong Kong, I played ball.

Oh, yes.  The Parents of the Blog got me a basketball for Christmas. I had been in the market for one for a while; our digs in Hong Kong are basically surrounded by public sports facilities, including some nice basketball courts. Many a day I walked by, taunted by the pristine nets--not chains!--well-maintained backboards and playing surfaces that, as far as I could tell, appeared to be scrubbed weekly, if not daily.

Someone pays close enough attention to the courts that the trapezoidal "international" foul lane…

The geometry makes it more fair, or something.

… had been scrubbed out at some point and replaced with the NCAA standard free-throw lane. Not only that, but the NCAA three-point line, which was recently moved to 20 feet, 9 inches, was up to standard. And you could see where the old one was before the groundskeepers scrubbed it off.

How to use the NCAA three-point line.

Anyway, the point is, I had been wanting to get out and see how bad my shot had gotten since hooping it up in the Middle East. Today, I did it (after buying an air pump at Toys R US. Don't judge; the sporting goods store was "sold out" of pumps).

The result is, as I mentioned above, extremely sore knees. But I finally got a glimpse of what street basketball in Hong Kong means, at least in our little overplanned high-rise forest of a neighborhood. Several observations:

1) On the courts where I was playing, everyone wanted to be a guard.

2) No one played a ton of defense.

3) The average height was greater than that of the rest of Hong Kong, but still less than 6-foot-3, i.e., me.

That meant several things. Point (1) meant that I, a guy who somehow managed to be a post player in high school (second-most blocked shots in freshman history, holla!), had an advantage in not just height but know-how. Everyone was willing to give up position in the paint, no one seemed to see my patented, and by that I mean totally telegraphed, shoulder-fake coming, and I boxed the hell out of anything that moved.

Point (2) meant that when I did get away from the basket, I could square my shoulders, set my feet, not jump, and have a clean look at the hoop. It also meant that by playing any defense AT ALL, I could affect the game. This type of nominal guarding saved me the embarrassment of wheezing to a halt on a court full of young whippersnappers.

Point (3) meant the obvious--even my 36-year-old, bad-kneed self could get away with not jumping a whole lot and still getting rebounds, blocking shots, and so on.

In short: It was the perfect recipe for a game of Old Guy Basketball. I didn't dribble much. I passed a lot. I didn't shoot more than a couple of times beyond three feet. I was probably really annoying to anyone chasing a rebound under the basket.

And my team won.

I will take comfort in that as I ice my knees.

Ask an Offensively Sweaty Gweilo III: Playing it Cool

Hello, faithful followers of this irregular column. It's been a while since our last installment--which found the titular gweilo swimming in perspiration mid-summer--and there is news to report. Specifically, the arrival of autumn.

Summer was not. Not Abu Dhabi Hot, but uncomfortably warm, especially when walking to work in long sleeves. It was also wet. We had a big ol' typhoon, and for a while there it was raining almost every day.

September, though, seems to have been equipped with a meteorological "off" switch for all that stuff. It's sunny. It's breezy. And most important, I can make it from the MTR stop to my office without mopping my brow even once.

So with that in mind, let's dive into the totally-not-made-up mailbag:

Q: Dear Offensively Sweaty Gweilo: It's great that you're not offensively sweaty anymore, but I have noticed you still don't make much of an effort to stay in the shade. Don't you know what the sun will do to you? Carry an umbrella!

A: Oh, trust me--I am well aware of what the sun will do to me. I am familiar with the sting of denim on a sunburn and the soothing properties of aloe. But one cannot live in fear, right? And if nothing else, I'd like to get a little bit more color; I may never be anything but a "ghost man," but a bit of tan actually makes time in the sun more tolerable. That's one reason why I don't carry an umbrella. The other is that it's not raining. And when you've got 8 million people packed into a tiny island, carrying an umbrella to protect you from the sun AND the rain can get a little awkward, no?

Q: Hey, OSG--we noticed you at a Mexican joint in TST the other night. You're always making noise about finding good comida Mexicana outside North America... what did you think? (P.S. You did not appear to be sweaty)

A: Sharp eyes. Yes, Mrs. Blog and I went to place over there to meet some friends. And you're right--I was not sweaty. We were actually right underneath an air conditioning vent, which kept me a normal temperature and made Mrs. Blog chilly. As for the food, well... they have great happy hour drink specials. The search for excellent Mexican food continues, and I'll let you know if there are any developments. There is actually a place in our neighborhood that is supposed to be pretty good, but it has always been closed when we try to drop by.

Q: OSG, in your homeland, fall means the start of football. How's that going in Hong Kong?

A: Not well, both in terms of watching it and results. I can't say that the air here is crisp and full of the delicious aromas of tailgating, so my normal instinctual drive to find a game is not at its peak. But even if I did want to watch a game, they start--at the earliest--at midnight Hong Kong time. And also they're not on TV, meaning I would have to resort to [REDACTED] measures. On the plus side, both my beloved Jayhawks and Chiefs lost their games this weekend, so at least my eyeballs didn't have to endure that.

And that's it for the September edition of AOSGA. Remember, keep those questions coming, stay cool and please... look where you're going when you're carrying an umbrella.

Droppin' Hong Kong dimes*

Hong Kong is a big place--or at least a lot of people in a small place--but even so, I can't believe I missed Kevin Durant's visit here. Worse, I apparently walked right by Southorn Playground when he was playing some pickup ball.

Showing off for a different Hong Kong crowd.

How do you miss a 6-foot-9 shooting guard in a place where the average height is something like 5-9? I dunno, but it happened. Doesn't say much for my court vision, does it?

*worth approximately $0.013

A 10.0 from the Russian judge

Watching U.S. TV overseas is more complicated than you might expect. All of the major networks have IP blocks that prevent you from accessing whatever they put online if you're outside the country, and thus outside the scope of U.S. copyright laws. Many times, you can get around this by either [REDACTED] or simply [REDACTED], both of which are illegal in the U.S., but hey, you do what you have to if you want to stay current with Breaking Bad.

The sole 100 percent legal way of watching TV abroad that I'm aware of is buying episodes on iTunes if you're in a country in which iTunes sells things. (This only recently became the case in Hong Kong, for instance)

Sporting events by definition require a live feed, which can often be found on [REDACTED], [REDACTED] or [REDACTED]. For the NCAA Tournament, I used a [REDACTED], which is legal unless you're using it to pretend you're in the U.S., and therefore are allowed to view all the CBS live feeds of the games.

Of course, right now the biggest sporting event in the world is going on in London. Allegedly, there is an over-the-air channel in Hong Kong that carries coverage of the Olympics, but neither Mrs. Blog nor I have owned rabbit ears in the last decade. Our free cable service doesn't carry it. It streams free, and live, in China, but they have put an IP block on anyone outside the mainland... apparently being "part" of China doesn't apply to the People's sports programming. Thanks, guys.

NBC and the BBC have geographical limits on where you can access their online Olympic feeds.

That's where the Russians came in. After scouring the Internet last night for a working feed, I finally came across [REDACTED], Russian site that carried multiple feeds of all the events. So I got to see this...

 Durant doing what Durant does.

... in somewhat pixelated form, presented on our television via my laptop. The U.S. didn't look great in terms of picture quality OR basketball. But in the end, I guess we both won, even if only one of us played strictly by the rules.

Welcome to the Terrordome

Life is full of speculative, pointless and interesting conversations. Often there is beer involved. Which would win, a bear with lasers or a dinosaur? Which U.S. politician would you take a bullet for? What is the most disgusting food you would eat for $1 million? And so on.

Occasionally these conversations have utility in real life. At least if you're a professional athlete. A recent piece in The Onion AV Club reminded me of a discussion I had more than once with Friend of the Blog Erin, who at one time was covering professional baseball in Northern California. Players got to choose their own "entrance music" when they appeared in the game, you see, and that led to the obvious question: what would your music be?

Of course, when most people enter the office--including me--there is no fanfare, let alone music. A grunt from the security guard as we scan our badges is best we can hope for. But if I could arrive at my desk to the thundering chords of the "Indiana Jones" theme song, well, that would get my day off to a much better start. Another classic example is the movie "Office Space", which is filled with inspirational music:

Coming back to the question of athletes, though, it really is a tricky question. Do you want to inspire? Intimidate? Simply play something you like listening to? Ideally, all three. Which is why I'm voting for Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome" for the entrance music in my alternate-universe career as a fireballing closer.

(This would earn bonus points if I played for a team with a domed home field, of course)

What would your entrance music be?

The way the ball bounces

So, yeah, the DARPA test didn't really go the way they wanted. Bummer. I hope they give it another shot.

But meanwhile, another interesting (if unrelated and considerably less explosive) scenario is afoot. The Big 12 Minus Two is now Minus Another One, as Texas A&M makes a play to join the SEC.

What does that mean for the University of Kansas? Good question. As a fan who grew up during the Big 8 era, I would be bummed if the geographic rivalries that made the conference special disappeared into a half-dozen other conferences.

KU's performance in the two big NCAA revenue sports--men's football and basketball--should be enough to make it attractive to any of the remaining power conferences. Basketball is a no-brainer. The football program's occasional brushes with greatness are enough to make money.

But even leaving geography out of the equation, I have no idea where they would be the best fit. KU roughly fits the profile of a Big 10 state school, I guess, but neither the Big 10 nor KU have been anything more than lukewarm about that idea. The ACC has a lot of other good basketball schools. Maybe my vote is with the PAC-10 (or Pac-16, whatever it is now), which would possibly bring the In-Laws of the Blog into the fold as KU fans.

Who knows. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out, and I'm sure that from a revenue perspective, KU and the other Big 12 schools will land on their feet. But I still can't shake the feeling that the diaspora means the Big 8 magic--diluted in the Big 12 years--will now disappear forever.

Top of the World

That's the headline that I wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as an intern when the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup in 1999. It was excellent, thrilling to watch, a source of pride for the country's athletic programs. And of course it led to this iconic shot (which ran on the Journal Sentinel's front page):

Hey, it was a hot day.

Last night, I happened to catch a reply of the most recent big victor for the U.S. women's team in World Cup play, when they beat Brazil. The game was decided on penalty kicks (just like the '99 final game), but the iconic moment was here:



Now that's a hell of a pass. Now the U.S. is in the tournament's final four and plays France today. They have a good shot at winning it all. And with any luck, the team's next two games will be just as thrilling to watch... with identical outcomes.

Tournament time

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.

Why the "Hey Song" is stuck in my head

For the first time in forever, the Chiefs have a playoff game that I can watch. And for the first time ever, I will be watching that game in the Middle East. It is just the latest in a long string of moments where ordinary things seem weird when you do them in such an odd place.

I watched a ton of football growing up. It was kind of a weekly ritual: I and several Friends of the Blog, six to 10 or so, would gather at one of our homes. There would be lots of soda. Pizza, usually--the square kind from Little Caesar's, which was cheap and made right down the street. We'd go outside to throw around the football at halftime. There was a heavy punching bag hanging in my parents' laundry room on which we would occasionally take out our frustrations if the game were going badly.

Jamaal Charles was 4 years old when I started watching the Chiefs. Ouch.

Now there aren't really any rituals. Sometimes Mrs. Blog and I go to friends' houses to watch the games. Sometimes there is pizza. Once there was even a football.

The only point here is that I'm happy the Chiefs are in the post-season again, and I'm happy to have so many good memories of cheering them on as a kid. And who knows, maybe someday I'll look back and recall how one year, my favorite NFL team won the Super Bowl when I was living in a part of the world where the halftime ads constituted the best programming of the year.

Yes, I realize it's football season

The Chiefs' young defensive players have figured out how to play football. The team is 3-0. The Jayhawks are adjusting to a new coach and new coaching scheme. They are 2-2. Hell, even my fantasy team is 3-0.

But none of those teams have their own music video featuring a rapper who was not paid by the athletic department.

GameON from Kansas Jayhawks on Vimeo.

Hip, hop, dunk.

And that's my sports post for the week... at least until the Chiefs win again.