I have a lot of free time these days, and sometimes I spend it watching the Balkan music channels. Bulgaria is the best. To be a female pop star in Bulgaria you must be ridiculously good looking and you must be nearly naked in your video. The male pop stars are all funny-looking ass clowns. These are two of my favorite typical Bulgarian music videos.
The people in my city dont really care too much about basketball but they love music performances. There are posters everywhere advertising pop stars coming to the clubs to perform. We struggle sometimes to get a couple hundred fans but when Serbian Idol (pictured right) came to town, there wasn't an empty seat in our arena.
It's really difficult to explain the strangeness of the the cultural change that I have endured in the past week. There is really not a whole lot of things similar between Costa Rica and Macedonia other than being 3rd world countries. I went from jungles and volcanoes to dry plains and mountains. From speaking Spanish a language I comprehend fairly well, to the Cyrillic jibberish known as Macedonian. From monkeys and parrots to sheep and goats. I had a 2 day vacation in the U.S. to buffer this transition, but it was not enough to buffer the strangeness that I feel having returned to Macedonia. My last few days in Costa Rica were very sad for me. We ended our season with a heartbreaking loss in the finals. Panamanian Isaac St. Rose banked in a three pointer with 8 seconds left to take a 1 point lead and end our season. While having the one player in the basketball world who I truly hate end my season was extremely frustrating, the fact that he did so with a lucky falling down bank shot truly was an emotional punch in the junk. Having a coach who I truly like and respect, announce that he would no longer coach and begin to cry would tug on my emotions in my final days. I knew that things would never be the same and that I would probably never come back. Yet as I was about to leave I realized how much I really liked Costa Rica and the people there. We had a couple end of the season parties including one on my last day at my favorite place on earth: Hooters (best sponsor ever). I also hung out with the karate girl on my final day. I am really going to miss her even though she is probably very crazy. Because of the language barrier it is really difficult for me to determine her level of craziness, but I know its there. Despite this she is a really cool girl, and I enjoyed kicking it with her(pun intended). Still I had to go because I accepted a player/coach/GM role with a missionary sponsored basketball team in the same city I began my troubled pro basketball career. Amazingly I started receiving job offers immediately after I committed to go to Macedonia. After months of unsuccessfully searching, everyone all of the sudden wanted to see my resume. It figures.
So we are currently entrenched in the middle of the playoffs for the Costa Rican basketball championship if you can call it that. I end that sentence with uncertainty because I really dont think anyone is certain how the playoff format really works. I will do my best to briefly explain it. We finished 3rd in the regular season, which entitled us to a first round bye. We ended up playing the winner of the 4th and 9th seed in a 3 game series. That meant by the time we started the playoffs there were only 3 series going on (bear in mind that this is an odd number). Obviously the 3 winners advance but also the highest seeded loser. Anyway, we won the first round and ended up setting up a semifinal series sandwiched around Halloween. As the Escazu Witches, how we did not schedule a home game on Halloween has got to be one of the biggest publicity fopahs ever. If I know one thing about Costa Rica, its that there are no shortage of hookers. How hard would it have been to go to downtown San Jose, find a few old run down women of the night, desperate for work, and dress them up as witches. We already had these models (pictured right) walking the baselines to advertise. By the way, models on the baseline make it very hard to concentrate while shooting free throws. Yet there were no spooky Halloween decorations and no hooker witches. Hell we didnt even bring out our weird looking witch mascot for our game the day after Halloween. I was very disappointed by this. However, I cant argue with the results as we won both games and advanced to the finals. Actually its more like a quasifinals because if we win the series we will have to play another 5 game series against the exact same team. This is because this is considered the closing tournament and Barva won the opening tournament when I was in business school constructing spreadsheets, this has the potential to be a 10 game series. Today is game 4 and we are down 2 to 1 with the last 2 games of this series on a neutral court. Elimination time and its not over until the dama gorda sings. Playoffs?????!!!!!
Yesterday afternoon on my way out of Escazu I was passed by several police cars. By several I mean about 40, and I thought to myself that something pretty serious must be happening, probably a bank robbery or a shoot out. After watching the news I discovered that an OIJ officer (which is kind of like a Costa Rican FBI) was murdered by some Jamaicans. Yet with all these officers flooding the are, the criminals were still on the loose. They found some other Jamaicans, but they were not sure that they were the right ones. I have yet to be arrested in this country, so I don't know much about the police force here. I do know that when shit goes down, cops here arrive in force. On Costa Rican independence day, I was in downtown Heredia, where a full out party broke out in the streets. (Pictures posted later) Soon a barrage of police in riot gear came and even though they were being pelted by beer cans and other objects, they managed to shut down every bar, clear the streets, and avoid a riot. Still I cannot give them too much credit as when my passport was lost/stolen and I went to the Escazu PD to file a report, they took down my information in what closely resembled my 2nd grade science notebook and sent me on my way. I am not holding my breath for this crime to be solved.
It has occurred to me that very little has been written about basketball, which is the primary reason I am down here. If you didn’t know already I am playing for the Escazú Brujas. For those of you that don’t habla español, a “bruja” is a witch. Yeah that’s right I’m a witch, not a wizard, a woman with a broom and black cat. We only actually use the witch hat in our logo (see left photo), but you can find witches all over Ezcazú. The biggest liquor store in town is named La Bruja, and the first thing you see when you walk into Hooters is a giant stuffed witch. If you know spanish you can read about the legend of the witch here: http://www.guiascostarica.com/mitos/mitos22.htm To summarize it, a grampa found his granddaughter (who was a well-known witch and quite possibly a prostitute) naked and in a trance behind his house. She told him not to tell anybody and the old man waited 2 days before he blabbed to his neighbors. After that some kind of crazy curse takes over his house where shit falls off his roof and he hears cows trying to tear down his house, and when he goes outside, there is nothing but the smell of shit. I swear that I am not making this up. I dont really understand the rest of the story, but there is something about an earthquake and a knife fight with a giant black pig. Anyway, despite our lame mascot, we have one of the 3 best teams in the league. Costa Rican basketball is a lot like playing at a city park. Some of the guys are pretty good athletes (as evidenced by this photo of me getting dunked on), some of the players are relatively skilled, but almost nobody really knows how to play basketball. Most of the gyms in the league are worse than your average high school gym in America. I never thought it was possible to have a rain delay in basketball, but we have already had 2 in our home gym. We actually played a half with newspaper covering all the wet spots on the floor, and I am not talking a sheet or two, more like 10 full pages, making the court a quasi-obstacle course. We have also had games delayed for power outages, camera crews failing to show up, and well...just for the hell of it. Most of the teams are in the San José area, with the exception of Peréz Zelderon which is a few hours away in the mountains, and Limón on the Caribbean coast. I feel like the league might be down in comparison to last year. Maybe this is the result of the recession which would actually benefit an economically strapped team like our team. Here are the major players in the league:
Barva: The reigning champ and deepest team in the league. Led by a pair of Panamanians, they are the most athletic and best constructed team in the league.
Liceo: They are like the NY Yankees of Costa Rican basketball. They overpay players assemble a massive amount of talent and often come up short in the end.
Limón: A team of all black guys from the Caribbean, they are the bad boys of the league. They are talented, exceptionally dirty and have a pair of massive postmen.
Santa Ana: Funded by a wealthy gringo who also coaches, this team is talented enough to compete with anybody, but with the discipline of a high school JV team, they rarely do.
UCR: The sneaky college team that overachieves. They don’t have the most talented team, but they do well by playing fundamental basketball and shooting well.
The rest of the pack: They mostly suck.
The refereeing in the league is incredibly inconsistent. They will allow a style of play somewhere in between “don’t get within one foot of the shooter” and “go ahead and beat the living crap out of each other” Being that I am a gringo and the tallest player in the league, most teams get the go ahead to incessantly beat my ass without penalty. We are coached by Nic Marin, a Nicaraguan who was a former student manager at UNC. He is not the best coach I have played for, but he is one of the coolest. Nic is a family man and works at a bank by day. To paraphrase Nic, he is robbing from his own children to partially fund the team and my living situation. I am not sure how his wife feels about that, but I am cool with it. Rule number one in basketball: you need to feed your big men. Team updates can be found at the facebook group page listed here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=53631384741&v=wall&ref=ts
Yeah its been about 2 months, so what? Only blog superfan Brian Rosefield wrote me asking for updates, so the rest of you can shut your bocas. I moved out of my coaches parents mansion in Escazú, and am now living in Heredia. Heredia is not quite as luxurious as Escazú but it makes up for it with activity and fine women. The house is not quite as nice as the country club that I moved from, but it definitely beats the hippie shack I first lived in. I have a room adjacent to the garage and situated beteeen a random Cuban guy and the 16 year old sister of my teammate. I still do not know the Cuban guys name because everyone in the house calls him chico. All I know is this son of a bitch wakes me up every morning a 5 a.m. riding off to work on his scooter. Some of the people in the house have insinuated that he is gay, but I cannot make that call because the only time we have talked is when he comes home late at night and insists that I eat the bread that he brought from his job at a bakery. I generally have no problem with this guy, but I can't say the same for the fire breathing she-devil in the next room. I am not an expert on Latin culture, but I am pretty sure having your quinientos does not give you the right to be a huge bitch until adulthood. Her name is Melisa but I call her Paisa which roughly translates into dirty Nicaraguan. For the record, I love Nicaraguans but in Costa Rica, (as U.S. citizens) they are like our Mexicans. While there has always been tension between us, there was not always a mutual hate (she even asked me to her prom). I think things changes when a)after witnessing her eating habits, I called her an elephant in front of her grandma or b) after coming home all proud showing off her new nose ring, I told her that will be great for picking up Gothic guys. After my infamous student athlete of the year speech where I infuriated the entire Equestrian team, I should have learned that I need to be a little more sensitive with my words towards women. But after she called me a Canadian, I lost my composure. Also in the house live my teamate and his mother. I get along great with her, better than anyone else in the house. She is your typical crazy latina single mother. Works all the time trying to get paid, looking for any opportunity to scam some guy out of some money, and getting smashed with her girlfriends when ever she gets some free time. I have spent the last couple months playing ball, reading, and becoming absolutely dominant on a Nintento Gamecube 2007 version of Madden. Many days I do not even leave the casa, but I do have a few interesting stories which I will update the next couple weeks. Stay tuned. (Below: The Paisa in her prom dress)
Someday the 7 or 8 people who read this blog will get a conclusion to the world surf games adventure when I recover my repressed memories. For now you will have to suffice with an update of my recent events. I was evicted from my house a few days ago as the crazy hippie downstairs turned off all the electricity. As much as I am for the green conservationalist movement, I am not a damn Amishman. Power and running water is a luxury I would rather not give up. So for the time being I have moved into my coach's parents house which is like going from a minimum security prison to a country club. There are like 4 maids running around constantly trying to do something for me since I am usually the only one home. The Escazu Brujas have been fairly successful since my arrival. We have only lost one game to the team currently in first place. I have found that I do not get a lot of love from the referees in this country. After the game we lost, I was bleeding from both arms, yet I could not remember shooting one free throw, heck I cant remember drawing a foul that was called. I have been hanging out a lot with a girl on the national karate team. I really dont understand half of what she says, but I pretend to be fascinated by every word that comes out of her mouth. Women seem to like this.
If you haven't heard, Bill Laimbeer was hired a few days ago by the Minnesota timberwolves to join head coach Kurt Rambis. Does the hire of two of the NBA's all time great scrappy white guys add up to a championship trophy? Only time will tell. They still can't convince Ricky Rubio to come to the artic city of Minneapolis, but at least Kurt got a shout out on CNBC's fast money yesterday.
Hang 10? More like hang over. Actually just a slight headache, but I head to the store anyway to pick up some agua. Since I am low on cash I have been using my credit card for just about everything. I am not going to use my credit card to buy 1 water, so instead I bought 3 waters, and gave 2 to the hot Israeli chicks in my hostel. I don't know why, but something about Israeli girls really gets to me. Oh yeah, I remember. It was the Israeli girl who I dated in Lithuainia who tore my heart out. She was pretty much the only girl during my whole stay in Europe, that I had any kind of feelings for. She was unbelievably fine, and she was in school to become a brain surgeon. I had plans in the back of my head to marry this girl. I did find it strange that she always hung out with 2 girls from Lebanon, a country which her country was at war with during the time. Anyway, she ended up using me to jump her way up to a higher profile American basketball player named Reggie Freeman, who was an all american at Texas. She then used him to get to Tanoka Beard who was like the Shaq of Lithuanian basketball. I never heard from this girl again after I left Lithuania, but if I had to guess, she is probably living with Pau Gasol in L.A. plotting how she can get to Kobe. Anyway after giving the Israeli girls the water, things became kind of awkward which is usually what happens when you do something nice for a girl. Anyway, I caught a ride out to playa hermosa again with Denis and his crew. We ended up getting a traffic ticket for jamming too many people in the car, which ended up being about a 2 dollar fine. The surf games were pretty much the same thing as the day before: some people surfing and a bunch of fine women prancing around on the beach. At least that is what I saw. I ended up hanging out with the El Savadorian surf team for a while. They had driven 28 hours in a van to get to the competition and they were pumped up. I talked with the sponsor of the team quite a bit and he was also impressed with the female fan turnout. He then pointed my attention to a lady directly in front of us and asked me how old I thought she was. I claimed I didnt know, maybe 18. He told me that she was 15 and it made him wish that he was 17 again. I agreed that she was the hottest 15 year old I had ever seen. After letting the pediphile vibes pass, I took a few pictures with some of the El Salvadorian surfers (this guy with the mask asked first) and went back to find Denis and the crew. They were doing what almost every guy was doing this afternoon, drinking beer and looking at girls asses. I could only take so much of this, so I told them I was going to buy some beer. I never went to buy that beer, but I did run into a gringo girl I had met last night. After watching her smoke with some Ticos and playing some imaginary volleyball, I headed back to the competition to find my crew which by this time had abandoned me and gone back to San José. I was perfectly ok with this, except for the fact that these guys were my only access to a camera, so sadly there will be no more shots of flip throught the surfgames escapades. Since I had ignored most of the people in the hostel the night before, I made up in my mind that I was going to be extra friendly tonight. I also made an executive decision to limit my drinking, as past experiences have taught me, when I drink heavily, bad things happen, very bad things. Papas and Burgers, the restaurant who Tony the guy I met yesterday mentioned, is right next to my hostel, so I decide to go and try out a meal. I go in and start talking to the waitress, an attractive gringa, and ask were is Tony the owner is. She told me that Mark is the owner and he is standing right over there. I explain to her that some bald guy named Tony told me that it was his restaurant and apparently I was lied to. Tony is actually a guy that does construction, and I had a feeling I would see this guy again. I got the Picasso burger and it was bloody awesome. After the meal I headed back to my dorm room where I was greeted by a guy dressed in a wifebeater named Jermarín from the Dominican Republic. Since I had just eaten, I had to turn down his invite to go get dinner, but I told him we could kick it later. I had a goal to be more social, so I went up to the kitchen where there were two fine Swiss girls and a Brazilian guy who was all about trying to convince these girls to go play pool with him. Later I would meet a Chicagoan named Derrick who would label those chicas the "untouchable swiss girls" because of all the guys they ignored throughout the week who wanted to hang out with them. Back down in the lobby someone was blasting some old school Ini Kamoze which I had to go check out because it is one of my favorite jams of all time.
Turns out there was a party in the Lobby between Wilson, the Tico hotel keep, Chapo the hotel surf instructor, and Adaim a half gringo, half dutch guy, who didnt work at the hotel, but was there almost all the time hanging out and trying to pick up the euro chicks who came through. Eventually Adaim, I and Jermarín the Dominican would go out to a club called Ganesha (named after the Hindu God who is the remover of obsticals, not the scrawny indian in the IMBA program.) Jaco was much calmer on this Sunday night, because most of the Ticos had returned to San Jose. I was taking it easy, but Jermarìn was determined into peer pressuring me to drink heavily, and Adaim was already drunk. Jermarín quickly found a group of 3 tica girls who were all sharing a cocacola. I had a bad feeling about this 3 headed coke drinking monster, and as soon as they finished their soda they were asking me a Jermarín to buy them smirnoff ices. Jermarin pretty much begged me to pitch in and of course after the drinks were bought, it was an all out dance party. And whenever there is a dance party, there I am busting out the splits and hurting myself. I told myself I wouldnt do the splits again but I did and ended up causing a bruise on my knee that lasted weeks. At least the pure hilarity of Jeramìn in his wife beater and Adaim's drunken dancing eased the pain. Watching those two dancing idiots go crazy while some random guy who wasnt dancing at all came in and took the girl they were trying to woo with their moves, was priceless. I wandered off and bumped into a guy from New York who told me that I needed to be dominating these girls with my size. He also gave me the best advice I received all weekend "Watch out, if a girl here is not a hooker, she is a hooker" So taking that advice I did an about face and approached the two most obvious hookers in the bar and started talking to them. They tried to get me to buy them a beer even though they both already had full drinks and I wasnt even drinking anything anymore. I told them I didnt want their services and asked what kind of bullcrap friendship requires me to buy someone a drink. They agreed with me, and then we all went to the ladies bathroom and took some pictures on her camera phone, until some lady busted in all angry, got in my face and asked me to leave. I have never felt so unwelcome in a women's bathroom before. When I got back to the dancefloor I was getting a lot more attention than before and everybody was trying to take a picture of me when I wasnt looking. I would find out later that Jermarín had told everybody that I was Michael Phelps and I didnt want to take pictures with anybody. The night ended with Jermarín unsuccessfully trying to convince the 2 heads of the 3 headed coke monster who hadnt left with some guy, to come back to our sweet hostel to party. When we got back Adaim tried sorting out some earlier drama that occured with one of the Israeli girls, while I downed some milk and had a bonding moment talking to Jermarín about how dancing and buying drinks almost never pays off. I then demonstrating to the other Israeli girl how I busted my knee doing the splits, as she was clearly impressed, and went to sleep.
(Editor's note: I will not write a conclusion to this saga so if you want the conclusion plese ask me in person)
I wake up early and make it to downtown bus station by 7 a.m. in time to make the 7:15 bus to Jaco, but there is one problem. The explosive diarrhea that has manifested itself in my system has politely asked me to buy the ticket for 8:30. So I'm like ok Runs you win, and I go to the McDonalds baño to let my friend go free. While I was waiting for the bus, I came across a young man originally from Wisconsin who was working at a call center in San Jose. I picked up a strong gay vibe from this guy, so even though my gay radar has been faulty at times, I tried not to get too friendly. The bus ride was pretty uneventful apart for the friendly fat girl sitting next to me sharing her gumdrops with me. Sometimes fat people eat everything in front of them, but this lady felt compelled to offer me some of her rations even though I had not said one word to her. This seemed like a pretty normal occurrence at the time, but would actually lead to an important cultural discovery and a bit of deja vu on day 7. When I got to Jaco I immediately walked to the Hotel Haan which is my preferred destination when I stay in the town known for its surf and prostitutes. Luckily they had an extra bed left in the dormitory. After checking in and borrowing some of my dormmates Africa scented Axe deodorant (Stop judging me, you know you have done it. It was a spray can and I just got off a long bus ride, and Africa scent is not what you would expect) I headed to catch the bus to Playa Hermosa. After asking around to find where I could catch this bus, I hopped on only to come to a dead halt just minutes later 3km from Playa Hermosa in a giant traffic jam. At this point the people walking on the side of the road are passing us, not to mention the guy riding on horseback while simultaneously rolling a joint. After an hour long 2 mile bus ride, I finally arrived at the World Surf Games, aka "Try to hide my boner" Olympics. Seriously, there were so many fine women at this thing that it was very difficult for me to get any kind of concentration on the actual surf games. However, I did manage to watch the games at some point and here is what I observed:
1. The female surfers don't look anything like the chicks from the movie Blue Crush. The lady surfers were not nearly as attractive as the spectators, except for maybe Puerto Rico. One of the girls surfing for Puerto Rico was hot and she was a bad ass surfer too. At least I imagined she was good because I really have no idea what makes a good surfer. Actually, I really don't even know if she was hot because she was out in the ocean the whole time, and these old eyes can't see like they used to.
2. To hell with Hawaii!! Not only did Hawaii field their own team apart from the U.S. team but they also brought their own flag with their flag carrier hit me in the face with it. Last time I checked Hawaii was a state so why did they bring this US-UK cross-breed monstrosity of a flag?
3. Anytime there is an excuse to drink during the middle of the day, Ticos will take advantage of it. The beach was packed with people partying and not paying any attention to the games. And any time there are people drinking, there are also people who want to take pictures with the extremely tall man, sometimes without even asking.
4. This thing apparently was a bigger deal than I thought. Teams came from Ireland, Japan, South Africa, Australia, etc. Every continent was represented except for Antarctica.
After a while on the beach I headed back to the stage area which would be the future performing area for several mediocre local performing acts. Actually there was a one guy that was a pretty good gangster rapper. While I was back in this area a gringo with his shirt off named Tony walked up and started talking to me about what most people talk to me about: how big I am. Tony informed me that he has been living in Costa Rica for 18 years and after getting out of jail is now rich again. He told me to come visit his restaurant, Papas and Burgers and told me that I should come ride on his boat. Mid conversation, I get interrupted by Denis (pictured right) a guy I met playing pickup basketball in the park last year. Denis works for HP and hung out with me last year when I went to Jacó. As Denis temporarily leaves, Tony, a man with a tatoo on his head, calls Denis a shady guy. I defend Denis, but I think Tony had a good point. Anyway, minutes later I would end up joining Denis and his crew and commenced to drink. I am making an honest effort to cut back on my drinking, but the choice is never easy. Either I can be sober, unsocial and safe or I can drink, be the life of the party, and put myself and everybody around me in danger. I always try to find a happy medium but it never ends up that way. So of course I started to drink, and eventually ended up like this------------------------------------------------------> And when I end up like this, I end up doing things. I can't remember everything, but I can remember the stupid things. Things like picking up prostitutes and holding them over my head, or riding on the back of an ATV doing wheelies in the middle of a street with a random Tico without a helmet. I do remember being incredibly scared which leads me to believe I was not that drunk if I feared for my life. I also remember there being a bunch of women of all ethnicities all over me, and I was constantly getting cockblocked by members of my own team. The last thing I remember was talking to a random girl on the street before starting my own survey on the street in spanish: (me translated) Hey hotdog guy, who is prettier, this girl or me? (hot dog guy) "She is prettier" (me) "Wrong, I am prettier dude, duh." At this point team cockblock grabbed me and made me walk back to my hotel. Maybe it was not such a bad idea.
I felt compelled to right about my 2 weekend trip to the world surf games. Day 0 is pretty boring, but I promise the action will pick up in the future posts.
Estar de chicha = to be in a bad mood (costa rican slang) Usually I am a pretty optimistic guy, but at this point, estoy de chicha, because I am broke, my roommates are broke, and my low paying baskeball job can't support everybody. Now I live on this mountain pictured below, so I should have no reason to complain, right?
Yet I am on the verge of depression because I spend my days, jobless, in the upper floor of a house built by hippies wherein I must squat down a full foot to take an icy cold shower or sit in a chair to cook on our world class electric burners. So as I sit in the house on a Friday night listening to my roomate complain about his financial situation, I make a bold declaration that I am going to Jaco tomorrow. After my roomates try to talk me out of this dangerous journey, I say "me voy" and head to bed.
That man walking my street with the machete is Marcos, the neighborhood gardner. While all you soft people in the states use landmowers and hedgetrimmers to beautify your yards, Marcos gets everything done with a rusty machete. Marcos seems a little on edge to me when I talked to him, and I don't think it is out of the question that he floips his shit and uses that machete on something else than the weeds in my yard.
1. Hannah Montana and High School musical backpacks are huge here. I saw 4 today alone. Normally a grown man riding a bike and rocking a Hannah Montana backpack would be just cause for him to surrender his man card. However, this seems to be perfectly normal here.
2. I need to stop trying to do the splits. Have you ever seen a guy on a dance floor who tries something that he has no business doing and often ends up hurting himself or the people around him. Well that is me, everytime I get in full dance mode and try to end my dance routine by jumping up in the air, ending in the splits, and tearing the shit out of my groin.
3.Never fall asleep with a crazy woman in your house. This one seems like common sense but sometimes a woman is so crazy that you would rather leave your own bed and pass out on the couch just to avoid dealing with her craziness. Wrong move buddy. The possibilities of disaster are endless here. I have never had someone try to sexually take advantage of me before, until this past weekend, when this nutjob repeatedly tried to twang on my wang while I was just trying to get some sleep. While many people may not believe that this is a bad thing, just take my word. It was terible.
4. I need to make some changes in my life. I am a grown man with a masters degree in international business and a fair amount of intelligence. Yet I am playing basketball for a job and living in a shack in Costa Rica next to a hippie who wears, not one, but 2 hawaiian shirts at a time. It is time to grow up and use my life to make a difference for God. Like the great MJ once said, "I am starting with the man in the mirror. I am asking him to make a change."
It has been 4 long years, but finally Flip Diesel has come back to the internet! Why the return? well..IT DOESN'T MATTER why The Jeez returned, but the millions and millions of Flip's fans called for it. If you didn't watch wrestling during the late 90's the previous rant probably didn´t make any sense, much like my life. The last time I ended my blog, I left off somewhere in Mexico right before things got interesting, and I developed a new level of drunkeness that carried off and on for 4 years through several different countries. Now I am in an internet cafe in Costa Rica in the mountains outside of San Jose with a couple more degrees and the ability to speak spanish that I lacked when I last wrote a blog. I just arrived yesterday after taking care of some business for my O.J. size legal battle against the state of South Carolina. The neighborhood I live in is pretty cool. House is right next to a stream up in the mountains. Havent seen to many good looking chicas around, but there is a guy with a machete who has been walking the streets. I am not quite confortable enough with my spanish to ask him why, but if I had to take a guess, I think he is a chicken killer. I will keep you posted. Any way I gotta go, more adventuras to come.
performances. There are posters everywhere advertising pop stars coming to the clubs to perform. We struggle sometimes to get a couple hundred fans but when Serbian Idol (pictured right) came to town, there wasn't an empty seat in our arena.
ason. While having the one player in the basketball world who I truly hate end my season was extremely frustrating, the fact that he did so with a lucky falling down bank shot truly was an emotional punch in the junk. Having a coach who I truly like and respect, announce that he would no longer coach and begin to cry would tug on my emotions in my final days. I knew that things would never be the same and that I would probably never come back. Yet as I was about to leave I realized how much I really liked Costa Rica and the people there. We had a couple end of the season parties including one on my last day at my favorite place on earth: Hooters (best sponsor ever). I also hung out with the karate girl on my final day. I am really going to miss her even though she is probably very crazy. Because of the language barrier it is really difficult for me to determine her level of craziness, but I know its there. Despite this she is a really cool girl, and I enjoyed kicking it with her(pun intended). Still I had to go because I accepted a player/coach/GM role with a missionary sponsored basketball team in the same city I began my troubled pro basketball career. Amazingly I started receiving job offers immediately after I committed to go to Macedonia. After months of unsuccessfully searching, everyone all of the sudden wanted to see my resume. It figures.
highest seeded loser. Anyway, we won the first round and ended up setting up a semifinal series sandwiched around Halloween. As the Escazu Witches, how we did not schedule a home game on Halloween has got to be one of the biggest publicity fopahs ever. If I know one thing about Costa Rica, its that there are no shortage of hookers. How hard would it have been to go to downtown San Jose, find a few old run down women of the night, desperate for work, and dress them up as witches. We already had these models (pictured right) walking the baselines to adv
ertise. By the way, models on the baseline make it very hard to concentrate while shooting free throws. Yet there were no spooky Halloween decorations and no hooker witches. Hell we didnt even bring out our weird looking witch mascot for our game the day after Halloween. I was very disappointed by this. However, I cant argue with the results as we won both games and advanced to the finals. Actually its more like a quasifinals because if we win the series we will have to play another 5 game series against the exact same team. This is because this is considered the closing tournament and Barva won the opening tournament when I was in business school constructing spreadsheets, this has the potential to be a 10 game series. Today is game 4 and we are down 2 to 1 with the last 2 games of this series on a neutral court. Elimination time and its not over until the dama gorda sings. Playoffs?????!!!!!
Yesterday afternoon on my way out of Escazu I was passed by several police cars. By several I mean about 40, and I thought to myself that something pretty serious must be happening, probably a bank robbery or a shoot out. After watching the news I discovered that an OIJ officer (which is kind of like a Costa Rican FBI) was murdered by some Jamaicans. Yet with all these officers flooding the are, the criminals were still on the loose. They found some other Jamaicans, but they were not sure that they were the right ones. I have yet to be arrested in this country, so I don't know much about the police force here. I do know that when shit goes down, cops here arrive in force. On Costa Rican independence day, I was in downtown Heredia, where a full out pa
rty broke out in the streets. (Pictures posted later) Soon a barrage of police in riot gear came and even though they were being pelted by beer cans and other objects, they managed to shut down every bar, clear the streets, and avoid a riot. Still I cannot give them too much credit as when my passport was lost/stolen and I went to the Escazu PD to file a report, they took down my information in what closely resembled my 2nd grade science notebook and sent me on my way. I am not holding my breath for this crime to be solved.
the primary reason I am down here. If you didn’t know already I am playing for the Escazú Brujas. For those of you that don’t habla español, a “bruja” is a witch. Yeah that’s right I’m a witch, not a wizard, a woman with a broom and black cat. We only actually use the witch hat in our logo (see left photo), but you can find witches all over Ezcazú. The biggest liquor store in town is named La Bruja, and the first thing you see when you walk into Hooters is a giant stuffed witch. If you know spanish you can read about the legend of the witch here: http://www.guiascostarica.com/mitos/mitos22.htm
ascot, we have one of the 3 best teams in the league. Costa Rican basketball is a lot like playing at a city park. Some of the guys are pretty good athletes (as evidenced by this photo of me getting dunked on), some of the players are relatively skilled, but almost nobody really knows how to play basketball. Most of the gyms in the league are worse than your average high school gym in America. I never thought it was possible to have a rain delay in basketball, but we have already had 2 in our home gym. We actually played a half with newspaper covering all the wet spots on the floor, and I am not talking a sheet or two, more like 10 full pages, making the court a quasi-obstacle course. We have also had games delayed for power outages, camera crews failing to show up, and well...just for the hell of it. Most of the teams are in the San José area, with the exception of Peréz Zelderon which is a few hours away in the mountains, and Limón on the Caribbean coast. I feel like the league might be down in comparison to last year. Maybe this is the result of the recession which would actually benefit an economically strapped team like our team. Here are the major players in the league:
If you haven't heard, Bill Laimbeer was hired a few days ago by the Minnesota timberwolves to join head coach Kurt Rambis. Does the hire of two of the NBA's all time great scrappy white guys add up to a championship trophy? Only time will tell. They still can't convince Ricky Rubio to come to the artic city of Minneapolis, but at least Kurt got a shout out on CNBC's fast money yesterday.
asked me how old I thought she was. I claimed I didnt know, maybe 18. He told me that she was 15 and it made him wish that he was 17 again. I agreed that she was the hottest 15 year old I had ever seen. After letting the pediphile vibes pass, I took a few pictures with some of the El Salvadorian surfers (this guy with the mask asked first) and went back to find Denis and the crew. They were doing what almost every guy was doing this afternoon, drinking beer and looking at girls asses. I could only take so much of this, so I told them I was going to buy some beer. I never went to buy that beer, but I did run into a gringo girl I had met last night. After watching her smoke with some Ticos and playing some imaginary volleyball, I headed back to the competition to find my crew which by this time had abandoned me and gone back to San José. I was perfectly ok with this, except for the fact that these guys were my only access to a camera, so sadly there will be no more shots of flip throught the surfgames escapades. Since I had ignored most of the people in the hostel the night before, I made up in my mind that I was going to be extra friendly tonight. I also made an executive decision to limit my drinking, as past experiences have taught me, when I drink heavily, bad things happen, very bad things. Papas and Burgers, the restaurant who Tony the guy I met yesterday mentioned, is right next to my hostel, so I decide to go and try out a meal. I go in and start talking to the waitress, an attractive gringa, and ask were is Tony the owner is. She told me that Mark is the owner and he is standing right over there. I explain to her that some bald guy named Tony told me that it was his restaurant and apparently I was lied to. Tony is actually a guy that does construction, and I had a feeling I would see this guy again. I got the Picasso burger and it was bloody awesome. After the meal I headed back to my dorm room where I was greeted by a guy dressed in a wifebeater named Jermarín from the Dominican Republic. Since I had just eaten, I had to turn down his invite to go get dinner, but I told him we could kick it later. I had a goal to be more social, so I went up to the kitchen where there were two fine Swiss girls and a Brazilian guy who was all about trying to convince these girls to go play pool with him. Later I would meet a Chicagoan named Derrick who would label those chicas the "untouchable swiss girls" because of all the guys they ignored throughout the week who wanted to hang out with them. Back down in the lobby someone was blasting some old school Ini Kamoze which I had to go check out because it is one of my favorite jams of all time.
After a while on the beach I headed back to the stage area which would be the future performing area for several mediocre local performing acts. Actually there was a one guy that was a pretty good gangster rapper. While I was back in this area a gringo with his shirt off named Tony walked up and started talking to me about what most people talk to me about: how big I am. Tony informed me that he has been living in Costa Rica for 18 years and after getting out of jail is now rich again. He told me to come visit his restaurant, Papas and Burgers and told me that I should come ride on his boat. Mid conversation, I get interrupted by Denis (pictured right) a guy I met playing pickup basketball in the park last year. Denis works for HP and hung out with me last year when I went to Jacó. As Denis temporarily leaves, Tony, a man with a tatoo on his head, calls Denis a shady guy. I defend Denis, but I think Tony had a good point. Anyway, minutes later I would end up joining Denis and his crew and commenced to drink. I am making an honest effort to cut back on my drinking, but the choice is never easy. Either I can be sober, unsocial and safe or I can drink, be the life of the party, and put myself and everybody around me in danger. I always try to find a happy medium but it never ends up that way. So of course I started to drink, and eventually ended up like this------------------------------------------------------> And when I end up like this, I end up doing things. I can't remember everything, but I can remember the stupid things. Things like picking up prostitutes and holding them over my head, or riding on the back of an ATV doing wheelies in the middle of a street with a random Tico without a helmet. I do remember being incredibly scared which leads me to believe I was not that drunk if I feared for my life. I also remember there being a bunch of women of all ethnicities all over me, and I was constantly getting cockblocked by members of my own team. The last thing I remember was talking to a random girl on the street before starting my own survey on the street in spanish: (me translated) Hey hotdog guy, who is prettier, this girl or me? (hot dog guy) "She is prettier" (me) "Wrong, I am prettier dude, duh." At this point team cockblock grabbed me and made me walk back to my hotel. Maybe it was not such a bad idea.
