Don't Believe the Hype

Ok, so it looks like I can't embed YouTube videos at all in Thailand. Here's the link (I would suggest opening it with Ctrl+right click and just let it play while you read). I also want to explain the purpose of these essays. As I mentioned earlier, my biggest academic flaw is that I'm an undisciplined writer. The point of these essays is to get me in the habit of writing on a regular basis. I'm sure a lot of people would rather read about traveling in Thailand than literary criticism, but it's one of my goals with this blog so bear with me.

(This essay revolves around the NBA draft, which happened in June. While I realize this is old news, and has been covered extensively, I feel that I have a new angle to present. I also am writing this with the assumption that the reader knows nothing about Ricky Rubio and Hasheem Thabeet. If you are relatively familiar with both you can simply skip to the "Implications" section without missing anything.)

Ricky Rubio is thought to be a Spanish basketball prodigy. He was the back-up point guard for the Spanish team which placed silver in the Beijing Olympics. Known for his dazzling passes, he has been favorably compared to "Pistol" Pete Maravich. Most importantly, if you read this website, then you know that he also looks like a Jonas brother.

This year, at the age of nineteen, he entered his name into the NBA draft, and was drafted 5th overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves, but there was a major problem. Prior to the draft, young Ricky had already chosen the teams that he wanted to play for: the Los Angeles Clippers or the Sacramento Kings (with the #1 and #4 picks, respectively). Further, through his agent, he threatened Memphis (#2 pick) and Oklahoma City (#3), warning them that if they drafted him he would remain in Spain. He also refused to participate in pre-draft workouts or combines with any team other than Sacramento. The Kings were in desperate need of a playmaker, and Rubio appeared to be the perfect fit, so it was simply assumed that they would grab him when they got their chance. Unfortunately for Ricky Rubio, Kings' GM Geoff Petrie, one of the most respected GM's in the NBA, wasn't quite as enamored with Ricky as the rest of the NBA and ESPN. Petrie had legitimate concerns about his lack of athleticism and questioned his ability to score in the NBA. When the Kings came onto the clock, Petrie instead opted for the dynamic Memphis guard Tyreke Evans, who had been personally endorsed by Barack Obama no less.

The Timberwolves, with the fifth and sixth picks, sensed a golden opportunity to seize prized trade asset and snatched Rubio with the fifth pick, then took Syracuse playmaker Jonny Flynn with the sixth as insurance in case Ricky opted to stay in Spain. Their fears turned out to be well-placed, as moments after being drafted, he made it know that he would probably remain in Spain, and skipped the post-draft team interviews. However, the strangest part of this saga has been the fallout; the national sports media (primarily ESPN, but not Jay Marotti, go figure) was quick to defend Rubio and criticize Minnesota GM David Khan, saying, "Of course Ricky's not going to want to play for the 'Wolves; he's going to have to compete for playing time with Jonny Flynn."

Now I should point out that Rubio is not the first athlete to try and punk several teams in the draft. Players such as Steve Francis, Jamarcus Russell, and John Elway have all attempted similar feats with varying degrees of success, but have been severely criticized by the media, especially the African-Americans Francis and Russell. The glaring distinction is that all of them had been absolutely dominant in their respective sports for the entirety of their college careers. Basically they had proven themselves time and time again. Rubio has not. While he was on the Spanish national team, he was largely invisible during his playing time in Beijing. It should be fairly obvious that the distinction between Rubio and Steve Francis is race, but the case of Ricky Rubio extends deeper when he is compared to fellow 2009 draftee Hasheem Thabeet.

Hasheem Thabeet is a Tanzanian-born center who played three years of college basketball for Georgetown. While at Georgetown, he was quite possibly the most dominant defensive center of all time, averaging over 4 blocks a game. In spite of this, Thabeet has largely faced an army of doubters, many of whom immediately proclaimed him as a bust the moment he was drafted second overall by the Memphis Grizzlies. Many pundits have made racially-tinged remarks comparing him to fellow African Michael Olowokandi, one of the bigger busts in draft history. In addition to this, Thabeet will be forced to compete for playing time with 7"2 Hamed Haddadi and 7"1 Marc Gasol, who is coming off a solid rookie campaign where he was named to the NBA All-Rookie 2nd Team. Yet in spite of all these negatives, Thabeet has remained completely positive, expressing his gratitude at being drafted by Memphis (not exactly one of the choice teams in the NBA).

When you compare the profiles of Rubio and Thabeet, you observe one potentially-dominant skill and a lot of question marks. Rubio's passing is his calling card, whereas Thabeet's shotblocking is his. Both will probably struggle to score consistently in the NBA. However, Thabeet has size (he's 7"3) and athleticism which Rubio does not possess, yet Rubio is thought to be the better prospect. Personally, I have concerns about each of them, but the national media's glaring discrepency in tone has made the racial overtones of the 2009 NBA draft so overt that you'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss them.

The Implications
On FreeDarko Dr. LIC wrote that Rubio was shitting on the American dream. I think it's even worse than that. I see Ricky Rubio as the symbol of Old World Europe, coming to colonize the Americas just as his ancestors did 500 years ago. He arrogantly believes that everything should be handed to him as he dictates. Like the Spanish with their guns, horses, and diseases, he has bamboozled (I was really looking for an excuse to write "bamboozled") the natives into thinking that he has something to offer, but really he brings absolutely nothing. The biggest fear that I have about the entire Rubio saga is that it will set a precedent for foreign athletes looking to come over to the NBA. Just imagine what would happen if every European player was able to make the same childish demands as Ricky Rubio. If that were the case, you might as well throw out the lottery system. While it's a flawed system, it does give small-market teams a glimmer of hope. Teams like OKC (Kevin Durant), Cleveland (LeBron James), and New Orleans (Chris Paul) have been lucky enough to get franchise players because of the lottery system. What if the future superstars decided that they didn't want to play for Memphis, Charlotte, or Milwaukee? There would be absolutely no social mobility in the NBA; you would be stuck with perpetual winners and perpetual losers. What is already a huge problem becomes even worse.

The case of Hasheem Thabeet is equally troubling. Thabeet represents postcolonial Africa. He possess many valuable commodities (he's an athletic 7", when have GM's and pundits not lusted after them?), but because of his African heritage, he lacks any semblence of credibility. Critics love to point to Olowokandi and Saer Sene, but weren't Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo or Americans like Andrew Bynum and Dwight Howard pretty damn raw when they entered into the NBA? The great ambassadors Olajuwon and Mutombo seemed to pave the way for Africans in the NBA, yet they still face huge hurdles just to get into the NBA. What if one day the next Olajuwon or the next Mutombo decides it isn't worth it, and plays soccer instead? Why do we want to discourage humble, hard-working Africans while encouraging bratty, spoiled Europeans? Neo-colonialism is at work in the NBA and ESPN, and it needs to be addressed. It is not healthy for the league just as it is not healthy for the world. By the way, I wasn't joking when I compared Ricky Rubio to Cortes.

A Solution
Having studied postcolonialism in literature and history for majority of my collegiate career, I realize that it can be a depressing field. I don't want to come off as a complete downer, but I am skeptical about the NBA's willingness to correct itself. I do have a simple solution. While it won't cure the media's racial hang-ups, it will solve some of the league's problems. I believe that a clause should be added to the NBA draft: a player must sign a contract when he enters his name into the draft stating that if he is selected in the 1st round, he must play for that team that season, unless the team signs a waiver allowing him to remain elsewhere. I'm sorry, but 19-22 year-olds who have not played a minute in the league should not be given any kind of leverage, especially when they stand to earn more in a season than many Americans earn in a lifetime.

The Plane Ride

So I can't embed YouTube videos from this computer, but here's the music I had in mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j21ULe2hrY4



So, I've actually done a lot of flying, but usually it is of the 1 hour to 2 hours-variety, so this was a bit of a new experience for me. Here's what I did:

• Flew from Little Rock to Dallas (about 45 min.)
• 5 hour layover in Dallas
• Flew from Dallas to Seoul (a little more than 14 hours)
• Saw Seoul from the inside of the airport (it actually looks very similar to Texas from what I saw, i.e. nothing)
• Waited another 5 hours to fly to Chiang Mai
• Flew from Seoul to Chiang Mai (a 5 hour flight)

Needless to say, my ass isn't going anywhere near an airplane for six months.

(Ed note: I'm going into "bro"-mode for a second) One big positive of Korean Airlines is this: every stewardess is tall and very pretty. While this is rather sexist on my part, I will say that when you're crammed into a uncomfortable position for an extended period of time this attribute goes a long way. Thankfully, the flight itself was eventful, except for one instance on my part.

After Terminator: Salvation they showed this Korean movie called Chow. Chow, from what I could gather, was a B horror/comedy (think The Mummy, Snakes on a Plane, Evil Dead, etc.) revolving around a giant boar terrorizing the local population. Some of the comic relief provided was by an American redneck who was dressed in camo for the entire movie. I didn't really watch the movie, which I kind of regret now, but instead just dozed off. While dozing, I had some kind of day-dream or nightmare that the plane was crashing. Unfortunately, I had not forgotten this by the time I woke up. I wake confused as hell, because I'm on an airplane and I thought that I was dreaming that. Further, there were a bunch of strange noises coming from the movie, which in my panic I interpreted as the airplane's engine sputtering. Thinking that I was on the verge of death, I went into survival-mode, which, for me, is apparently doing nothing. I got as low into my chair as possible (practically on the floor) and looked around the plane at my fellow passengers, who were either asleep or watching the movie, with the big crazy eyes and wondered, "We're all going to die! Why the hell isn't anyone else panicking?" This lasted for about 10 min., during which my palms were sweating profusely. I eventually got to the point where I thought that we were still going to crash, but maybe not at this instant. So I convinced myself to read because it's better than waiting to die. I kept a death-grip on my Kindle for another 10 min. when the panic attack (or stupidity) finally wore off, and had a normal flight from then on. Needless to say, I'm really happy that the lights were turned off and that everyone else was asleep or ignoring me because it was damn pathetic on my part.

While we standing, waiting to get the airplane, I applied another layer of deodorant. It was really classy on my part, I know, but it was definitely better than the alternative. People with broad shoulders aren't meant to fly internationally. Dwight Howard probably smells like death after a 14-hour flight.

Anyway, in Seoul I met with Megan, who's also in the program, and we flew into Chiang Mai. The drive from the airport to the hotel was not quite as impressive as I thought it would be, probably because it was 1 in the morning and I couldn't see anything. In any case, I'm here to stay for at least another six months. I think I have all day to walk around and do whatever, so that's about it for me.

The Day Before the Day After Tomorrow

So I leave tomorrow. I have to wake up at 3:50 tomorrow, so this will probably be rushed. If you can't tell, I'm kind of blog-stupid and am having issues with the pictures. I'll work on that.

Some vital statistics:

• 5"10 1/2
• 181 lbs. according to my sister's WiiFit

I'm guessing at least one of those will change.

Having never left the country before, much less for six months, I faced quite a few difficulties in packing. Obviously the biggest challenge was narrowing down which shoes I was going to bring. I have about six pairs of shoes that I wear on a regular basis (and we wonder why the rest of the world thinks we're wasteful), so I had some tough decesions to make. The have-to-take's: one of pair of tennis shoes, running shoes (you can laugh, but I haven't had any shin splints since making the change to customized shoes; I'm a believer), and black shoes for teaching. The maybe's: Toms, Chackos, Rainbows, and any other pair of tennis shoes. Times like these are when I realize just how terrible a person I am.

Unfortunately, I had a major incident of bad karma today, which will be fantastic before I fly for 15 hours. I'll go ahead and apologize now to any of the passengers on board my flight. If we crash, well, my bad. I feel like the second post is way too early to apologize for not writing more (lame), but I never guaranteed that this blog would be interesting all of the time...or even most of the time. Right now I have an essay on Ricky Rubio, Hasheem Thabeet, and Postcolonialism in the works, depending on how the whole travel thing works, I'm going to optimistically shoot for early next week. If I don't post it, it probably means that I'm dead or I don't have internet. Take your pick.

The most important item I packed:

It's entirely possible that I love my Kindle more than I love my family.

The Chronic Intro

Ok, so I'm fairly certain that I don't have much to offer as a blogger.

I haven't bothered looking, but I'm positive that there are no less than ten people currently blogging about being an American in Thailand. At least one of them is smarter than I am (but no more than one of them). Another one is a better writer than I am, and all of them are more motivated than I am. You see, for an English graduate, I am an incredibly lazy writer (this is actually a fairly common syndrome among us). It doesn't matter what it is--fiction, poetry, emails, texts--I'll manage to find a way not to write it. The notable exceptions are academic papers, which I'm pretty much forced to write. I try to justify this character flaw all the time; my primary argument is that I expend so much energy when I do write, that writing becomes one of the least appealing activities when I am not required to do it.

And then I decided to go Thailand.

Suddenly everyone I knew--friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances whose names I may or may not know--told me, "Be sure to write me." "Fuck me," was my first thought, "am I going to have to write all these emails?" William Faulkner wrote, "I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and stopping." Writing emails to fifty people, that's a lot of starting and stopping. I told myself that if I were to get set on [writing], I might as well write a damn blog. If nothing else, I can just make them read this, instead writing a bunch of emails.

So here it is, Pad Thai & Chocolate Jesus, an (occasionally) fascinating blog written by someone who hates to write. I don't claim to be more interesting than most bloggers, but I have a few things going for me: a flawless memory for random pop culture tidbits and an eclectic taste in music ranging from Lil Wayne to Bonnie Tyler. I am interested in damn near everything, and I'll sometimes blog about living in Thailand. Once every week or two, I will post a semi-academic essay (minus references). I can't promise that I won't block quote myself like an asshole, but I can guarantee that at least one essay will be dedicated to sexual confusion in Disney Channel Original Movies. If that isn't enough to entice you to check this website obsessively for updates, then you're dead to me anyway. Here's my man Tom Waits, who is my everyday inspiration: