Danny Granger is the latest NBA All-Star to help English, baby! share basketball slang with English learners all over the world. We met with him after an Indiana Pacers practice. Since the team played a couple of preseason games in China, I asked him about that and he said the fans were rowdy. I grew up in New Mexico where Danny went to college for 2 years and I saw him play there. The arena at the University of New Mexico is called the Pit and gets very loud. So if he says basketball games in China are rowdy, he is not joking around.

I also enjoyed watching Danny play in the World Championships last summer. It’s always interesting to see someone who is usually the star of his team play a more supporting role. That’s why the topic of Danny’s lesson is the difference between being a “role player” and a “franchise player.”

As he explains, a role player on a basketball team is someone who comes into the game for a limited period of time to do a specific thing such as block shots or play defense. But there’s another kind of role playing I thought Danny might be into. You see, Danny loves superheroes and he has built a Batcave into his house. What is a Batcave? Well, it’s where Batman hangs out and hides his cars. I can’t find a picture of Danny’s Batcave, but here is a good drawing of Batman’s by Paul Rivoche and you can see some quotes from Danny describing it on Ball Don’t Lie.

Image of Grangerman via Weekly World News.

President Barack Obama recently spoke at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, very close to the English, baby! headquarters in Portland. We were fortunate enough to obtain a media pass for the event so we could share the President’s words with our international readers and help them learn some English along the way.

While watching the speech, I took notes about what might make a good English lesson. Some interesting phrases and terms he used were “gadget,” “lag behind” and “paid off,” but we decided on “hustle” for the lesson.

The message of the speech was about how important education is in the global competition of the technology business. You can see in the comments on the lesson that this message actually meant a lot to our audience of international students. While they may not be engineers, they all have something to hustle for too.

Neither our cameraman Scott, nor I had seen Obama in person before, so it was quite a thrill. Scott had to arrive very early to set up our gear and all of the media had clear security and be in the room long before the President. After waiting for a couple of hours, it was sort of a shock when Obama walked out on to the stage just 50 or so feet away. He started the speech with some jokes too!

Waiting was actually kind of fun though because we got to hang out with all the other media there. Everyone from our local newspaper, to major television networks like CBS were there. It was interesting to watch all of these outlets in action. As you can see, we were working right next to them in the media area.


We had our own little station, right behind the spot reserved for CNBC.

I was glad they let me keep the press pass as a souvenir, especially considering it is “PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT”!

The latest celebrity English teachers on English, baby! are none other than Layzie Bone and Flesh-n-Bone of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. When I saw the group was fully reunited and coming to Portland, I thought, “How cool would it be to get them to teach a lesson about being at a crossroads?” Thanks to our friend Cool Nutz who introduced us, that dream became a reality.

Unlike most of our English lesson interviews with famous musicians, which take place before the show, this interview occurred at about 1am, after a Bone Thugs concert. It was fun. The guys were loose and happy to chat. They liked the concept of English, baby! and didn’t want to stop at one lesson, so here is some bonus footage in which they teach some very high-level slang. This was an English lesson for me as well!

It is so cool that these guys spoke so slowly. They seemed really aware of the fact that they were helping people in other countries learn English with this interview. They were such nice people–and to think, the crossroads in the both of their lives involved going to prison! I hope Bone Thugs has lots of success with their new album.

Visit Bone Thugs’ website here.

To give someone a buzz means to call them on the phone. We know a lot of the students who use English, baby! to learn English would love to practice speaking English on the phone with an American. So we decided to start something we like to call the Ebaby! Buzz in which one of the actors from our Ebaby! cast, calls you on the phone!

For the first Buzz, we asked our Facebook fans to change their profile photo to the English, baby! logo. Jaider from Colombia was the first to do it, so I gave him a call! Listen in:

My favorite part was Jaider’s mom shouting for him to come to the phone. He explained that he was in the shower because he didn’t think I was really going to call. But Ebaby! Buzz is for real! Watch English, baby! and our Facebook and Twitter to find out how you can win one of the cast members giving you a buzz!

A major Lithuanian newspaper, lrytas.lt, recently created a news story out of our English lesson with Lithuanian NBA star, Žydrūnas Ilgauskas. In the Google translation, you can see how the author pulled quotes from our interview and put them together in the newspaper style. The story has been getting good traffic–it has more than 70 comments.

The Celebrity English Lessons we feature periodically on English, baby! have gotten lots of media attention since the last time we posted an update like this (though we have been posting some as we go, like the various places that picked up our Sheryl Crow lesson).

An Australia-based basketball site, A Stern Warning, also covered our Ilguaskas lesson, as well our English lessons with Carmelo Anthony and Rip Hamilton. Cleveland.com, the website for the daily newspaper there, The Plain Dealer, picked up that pair of NBA lessons too and thetruthsports.com really got a kick out of our discussion with Carmelo about his nickname in China. Denver Stiffs, a local Nuggets blog, gave it some love as well.

XXL, the leading hip-hop magazine, posted our English lesson with Tech N9ne, as did The Boom Box, who also included E-40′s Ebaby! lesson.

Finally, if you’re going to interview Weird Al, you’d better hope it gets a friendly post from yankovic.org. Fortunately, ours did.

I’m sure we’ve missed some coverage of our lessons, so if you notice any we haven’t posted here, please leave a comment. Feel free to direct us to sites you like to read that might interested in posting our English lesson videos as well!

After more than three years of acting in our English lesson audio and videos on English, baby!, Beren’s last soap opera episode goes on the site today. She has relocated to a new city and since she may come back someday, we left her character’s exit open-ended. Perhaps one day she will resolve the disagreement that causes her to leave her friend group, but it won’t be any time soon.

Over the years, I’ve seen lots of comments from members saying that Beren was their favorite member of the cast. I remember one in particular said she was “only sensible person in the soap opera.” That seems about right, especially looking back on this description of Beren’s character that we put together for her early on:

Beren is mysterious, with a very unusual personal life that she regards as perfectly normal. Despite this, she’s a kind of oracle to whom the other characters go to for advice. She’s a good listener and the kind of person who comes through at the last minute with an obvious solution to a problem everyone else was wracking their brains about. She’s deadpan, sort of a straight man. She’s also lots of fun at parties. She’s a side character whose comic relief leaves you wanting more.

While it’s sad to lose her character, perhaps Beren’s greatest contribution to English, baby! has been her knowledge of pop culture, which really came in handy for our English lessons about American music and movies. As a musician, she was very aware of culture. I remember she knew who Lady Gaga was before anyone else on the cast. Even if she doesn’t appear in the English lesson dialog, Beren’s influence was often there.

Now that she is settled in her new home in Detroit, I asked her to answer a few questions via email.

Jason: You’re moving on and we’re so sad to see you go. Tell us why you are leaving and what are you going to do now.

Beren: I’m moving on because it’s time to move on!! I loved being in the Pacific Northwest, and will one day return, but for now I’m in Detroit. I’m going to be doing a lot of the same things I did at “home”: playing music, working at a pizza shop…

Jason: Is there a lesson you made that stands out as your favorite or least favorite?

Beren: Ah, yes. My favorite lesson: the infamous evil twin episode. It was fun to make, and still makes me cringe to watch.

Jason: Why should more Ebaby! members come see your band on tour?

Beren: HA!! They should come because the tunes are good, and fun to dance to. And because we will most likely need a place to crash and will hit you up for your couch/bed/kitchen floor.

It’s funny that Al Yankovic’s new book for children is called When I Grow Up, because when I was a kid, I pretty much wanted to be Weird Al when I grew up. I remember the first time I saw the “Amish Paradise” video on TV. I thought I had lost my mind. I simply could not believe something so cool and hilarious could exist and be on TV.

Naturally, I was thrilled when Weird Al agreed to do an English lesson for English, baby! We cover two meanings of the phrase “grow up” in his lesson.

If you’ve listened to Weird Al’s music, you can tell he’s kind of a genius, so I knew he would be a great English teacher. There were so many good vocabulary words in this interview, that it was hard to choose which to highlight. In fact, I’m sure some ESL students will have to watch it a few times to get it. Luckily, the topic of jobs and careers is relatively easy to understand.

The same goes for Al’s book. It’s surprisingly straight-forward. His name appears on the cover as simply “Al Yankovic” and the book isn’t especially “weird” or experimental. The language is really creative. It might be a little advanced for some kids (or ESL students), but the tougher words, like “hydraulic torque wrench calibrator” have fun sounds so you can enjoy them even if you don’t know what they mean.

While if it didn’t have his name on it, you probably wouldn’t guess the book is by Weird Al, the voice is clearly his. It’s easy to picture him reading the book aloud. And in way, the story is a metaphor for his body of work. The book follows the imagination of a kid who runs through many possible careers, some outrageous (giraffe milker) and others more common (teacher), and never picks one. Al is the same way–his music covers every genre and he has also studied architecture, been a filmmaker and now a writer…and lucky for us, an English teacher!

You may or may not know that Tracy McGrady is huge in China. The anticipation of having the one-time leading scorer of the NBA on the same Rockets team as Yao Ming really excited the fans there. The dream never came to fruition due to injuries, but McGrady remains such a fan favorite that he was almost voted into the All Star game last year despite not having played that season due to injury.

Now McGrady plays for the Detroit Pistons, so we attended their practice planning to talk to him for our Celebrity English Lessons series. But he was unavailable. Who else on the team would have an international angle to discuss?

Luckily, the team’s PR staff suggested Richard “Rip” Hamilton because he had just been to China. I’m really glad we got to talk to him. He got excited as soon as we started talking about China and it seems like he had a really good experience there. He also did a great job teaching the terms “coast to coast” and “run the floor”.

At first, I didn’t recognize the NBA Champion and three-time All-Star without his famous protective mask. Somehow, the mask makes him look a little scary, so I was pleasantly surprised when he was so friendly and eager to talk to us. I suppose the intimidation factor is a bonus for him on the court. You know, in addition to avoiding a repeat of the facial injuries he suffered in the past.

Image: Rip guarding T-Mac before they were teammates. From Reuters.

Usually, Greg Graffin, who has a PhD from Cornell, teaches life sciences and evolution at UCLA. But at a recently appearance in Portland, he gave an English lesson for the ESL students of English, baby! as part of our Celebrity English Lessons series.

Greg was on tour with his band, Bad Religion, while also doing events on the side to promote his new book. I met with him at the book signing at the Bagdad Theater in Portland and, in addition to getting a book signed and one for a friend, asked him to explain what “against the grain” means, since it’s the title of a well-known Bad Religion song and album.

It’s interesting–while talking about “against the grain” Greg brings in another, similar idiom, “swimming upstream.” It’s probably because after 20 years of singing the song, the two are closely related in his mind. Take a look at the lyrics of the chorus:

Against the grain: that’s where I’ll stay.
Swimming upstream, I maintain against the grain.

I discussed the carpentry origins of the phrase in the lesson intro on Ebaby!, but it’s actually helpful that Greg brought in another image so that the English students on the website will have an easier time remembering the meaning of the phrase.

Bad Religion is actually my favorite band, so I was extra thrilled that Greg was willing to do this. I interviewed him once over the phone back in 2007, but it was an honor to meet him in person!

On the most recent episode of As The World Learns, the English, baby! soap opera, one of our long-time cast members, Marni, impersonates Donald Trump.

Normally, as co-writer and director of the show, I have to convince the actors up to this sort of thing. Not this time. This was all Marni’s idea. She knew the slacking character of Ella was going to have to change her ways soon, and she suggested that she could impersonate the billionaire star of The Apprentice to scare her straight. When she presented the idea, it seemed so thought out that I assumed she had dressed up as Trump before.

Turns out she hadn’t–it was just a crazy idea. So the day before the shoot we needed a wig to match Trump’s trademarked messed up short hair. I picked one up that would have worked, but in the mean time Marni made one out of a rug that was just so terrible that we had no choice but to use it.

Compare the two and watch the video!

Top Image: Everyone wanted a picture with fake Donald Trump, including the crew who only rarely ends up on camera. From left to right, sound engineer Shawn Willis, co-writer and director Alexis Nelson and Director of Photography Scott Ballard.