Running with the Champion

Champion Drake, my oldest friend, has come to my village to enjoy the delicious foods and pleasures of the flesh that are offered by my people. I was especially eager to take Champion for a long run along the thatch huts and the creek where the women bathe and frolic. Being that Champion is an Olympic distance runner, I wanted to see how I measured up with the best (quite good it turns out). As always, the village children did not let us leave without sending us off with a celebratory dance and then throughout the run we were heralded with calls, songs, and high-fives.

The high-fives . . .

Readers know that high-fives have long been an interest of mine, and I generally appreciate them as much as I appreciate competing with the best. But sometimes, as I have pointed out before, high-fives go wrong. It is important to be polite, respectful, careful (don't run out at my legs), and clean. 

I bring up this last point because it turned out that Champion was only able to run one day with me, because he got pink eye from one of the children who gave him a high-five. While I was enjoying my village's lustful pleasures, Champion was forced into isolation in my royal hut. It basically ruined his vacation.

Kids - if you have pink eye, don't give high-fives to people, especially if they are world-class athletes.

(Here are two buckets of sweet fruit drink, which is supposed to help with pink-eye.)

P Jammer

Every superstar has someone or something that holds it all together - that provides a foundation upon which the star can excel. For the Long Beach scene it was Nate Dogg, for Malone it is was Stockton, for Kobe it's Cheesecake Factory chicken marsala, for the Fresh Prince it was Jazzy Jeff, for Jon Bon Jovi it was Ritchie Sambora, for my main girl it's diamonds, you get the picture.

Well for me it's P Jammer. In the late 80s P Jammer and I were storming the charts with some of the most innovative beats anyone ever heard: we were violent before gangster rap took off, we were cutting shit crazy before there was a Timbaland, we were doing more than those tired sounds that Eminem, Jay-Z, and Kanye are shitting out these days, we even dropped a little Chumbawuma.

Then one night we took a bunch of drugs, did some Ouija, and took the helicopter out from Malibu to some place in the South Bay, called Machado Lake. The Ouija said there was a wizard who could be found in the brush beneath the nest of a long-eared owl (LEO).

We weren't suckers! Like every other rapper at the time, we knew the difference between owls' nests (only a punk confuses the LEO nest with the Screech owl), so we worked our way around trees until we found that LEO nest and the wizard underneath.

Strange events followed, and the next thing I knew I was flying back in my helicopter, which was full of women in bikinis, back to the mansion. P Jammer was nowhere to be seen, but the following morning I had a new clock radio next to the bed.

Most people probably don't believe that wizards can turn their rapping sidekicks into clock radios, but I know it's true. Look at the picture below and tell me it doesn't resemble a former rapper.

Anyways, that was the end of the music career. I sold the helicopter, started playing football, received money from some college boosters, so I bought another helicopter, but then I was kicked off the team because the money was illegal for college players, so I sold the helicopter, but then I was drafted, so I bought two more helicopters, which both crashed when two of my girlfriends got in a race, and I didn't buy another helicopter until I retired from the NFL, and I flew it out here to the deep jungles near my village, and some day, some day I will fly it again.

Until then, I remember my best pal, P Jammer.

Baim Jaim - Indonesia's Baby Igor

Are you feeling paranoid?

Me and the Barcelona Bumblebee

Excerpt from Me and the Barcelona Bumblebee (unpublished):
. . . As the afternoon heat waned in Flushing, something seemed off about her stroke as Graf easily took the first set 1-6. It had happened so quickly, no one seemed capable of gathering their bearings. Here she was, my Barcelona Bumblebee, as sweet and pure as the honey of Toraja, crumbling in her second chance at a US Open championship.

When the set ended, she was clearly rattled. But how to get her to relax. I could think of only one thing, my special tool. After a series of quick gestures and signals, she took a bathroom break, and I found myself making love to the US Open finalist during the match in the women's bathroom.

We both finished quickly, and then she returned to the match with that sexy confidence and violence that I'd only seen in the bedroom. She fought through a tie-break in the second set, and handily won the third.

I was proud of her - for I loved her like no woman before or after - but even more so, I was ready to take her home for more loving, as we've always done after matches. But as the two of us entered the limo with her trophy, she began to cry.  "What's wrong, Arantxa?"
"Oh Chimi. What you did today... it was amazing. Really amazing."
"I only calmed you down, baby. You did the rest."
"That's not true, Chimi. You have a gift. That's why this is so hard."
"I don't understand..."
"If I keep you to myself, I'm only denying your gift to the other women of the world. Think about the women starving in the Third World. They need good loving from once-in-a-generation athletes too. I know you're still in high school, but soon enough you'll get drafted into the NFL, win several Super Bowls and then retire, only to play football once a year in All Star games, in which you will dominate. That will be a good life, and you will help lots of people with your gift..."
"Women."
"Yes, you will help lots of women with your gifts of love. But promise me one thing. When you're done with the NFL, please become an amateur anthropologist and do ethnographic research on Third-world women, and let them enjoy the fruits of your love as I have, and will forever fondly remember."
"Oh Arantxa, please don't!"
"It is too late, Chimi. I have to do this now, while I'm still brave. You be brave too and run fast and far like the western wind." . . .

This memoir has been amazingly turned down by several publishers, but I still hold out hope that it finds its audience some day. I know it is hard for women to understand how I could have been so committed to one woman once, but Arantxa was more than a woman, to me. And when she got married this heart of mine broke a little bit more, but it was also finally set free. Here is to you, Barcelona Bumblebee:

International Women's Day

Indonesian Taco

Here it is!

Halftime!

Earlier today, my village treated me to an exhibition of their favorite sport "congklak kaki", a game that I could only describe as some cross between soccer and mancala, where liberal amounts of bones and beads are kicked about every which way. I never could figure out what was happening, that is, until halftime. When the teams sat down on their respective sides of the field for some fluids and strategy, the halftime dancers appeared to do their dance and throw t-shirts to me and everyone else on the stools and benches around the field.

What a show! The girls showed up, wearing traditional tribal gear - feathers, hides, bones, leaves, etc. - and busted down to "My Humps" playing from a boombox.

It just goes to show that humans around the world are truly, essentially the same. Here are some pictures from the halftime show during the NBL semifinals in Surabaya, from earlier this week:

Going crazy!

The Jester in my yard