One of the best parts of watching NBA games on TV is seeing the shot of the players walking into the arena. They usually have on some fancy clothes and headphones and are walking with a lot of attitude. Even through they change into their warm ups and uniforms quickly, players like to really dress up to go to games.

In a recent poll of NBA players by Sports Illustrated, Zaza Pachulia ranked among the most fashionable players in the league. The 7-foot Atlanta Hawks center, who originally hails from the Eastern European nation of Georgia, has good taste in general. He owns a very cool-looking bar in Atlanta called Buckhead Bottle Bar.

So since our Celebrity English Lesson series has covered a lot of basketball slang, we figured why not have Zaza teach an English lesson about fashion language? We met with him at his hotel room in Portland the afternoon before a game. He showed us what he planned to wear that night and talked about what it means to sport something. Since he didn’t know we would be coming up to his room when he picked out the outfit, we get a really authentic look into his suitcase!

Zaza also want to share some more advanced fashion slang with the English, baby! members, so he talked about the term “swag,” which he says is very popular in Atlanta. It’s amazing how much swag Zaza has while still being a really friendly, down-to-Earth guy.

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.

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.

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.

Carmelo Anthony’s nickname is Melo for obvious reasons. But it works on two levels because he’s famously mellow and easy going. You can see it when you watch him play in the NBA–he doesn’t ever seem to lose his cool and it enables him to do things like make game winning shots with four seconds left.

Sure enough, when we attended a recent Denver Nuggets to talk to Melo about Amazing, the upcoming movie he shot in China last summer, and to add him to our growing list of Celebrity English teachers, he lived up to the name. As I mention in the video, the guy has a lot going on, but seemed really calm and focused stretching and running defensive sets and then laid-back and focused on us when we started talking to him for this English lesson on the slang phrase, “mellow out”.

It’s really interesting to hear that Carmelo doesn’t like his Chinese nickname, Tian Gua (甜瓜), which means “sweet melon.” One commenter on the lesson explains that it came from “his sweet smile, lovely babyface and polite behaviors.” All good ways of gaining fans in China, but not necessarily intimidating to opponents, I guess.

Our friend Cool Nutz did us a big favor and recommended to his friend E-40 that he do an English lesson with us. E-40 is a very well-known rapper from Oakland, California. He is actually the first artist to be the subject of a regular Ebaby! lesson made of a conversation between our actors and later to personally appear in an interview. We met with him when he played at the theater just down the street from the English, baby! offices in Portland earlier this month.

Maybe it’s his clothes, or maybe it’s the way he walks and talks, but any room instantly gets cooler as soon as E-40 walks into it. Before we met with him, he was signing autographs for a large group of fans. You could feel their excitement over meeting him.

E-40 is a natural fit for a Celebrity English Lesson because he uses a lot of interesting slang in his music. In fact, he used a lot of slang in our interview with him. We tried to include a lot of the simpler phrases and terms he used in the editing of this video so that English students with an intermediate level could understand it. I think it came out well. It’s interesting having a celebrity do an English lesson about time and work–subjects you would actually see in an ESL text book!

When I was preparing for this interview, I learned that E-40 invents a of slang phrases. You know the phrase, “What it do?” Apparently that’s his. I asked him what his latest slang creation was. It didn’t make the final cut of the lesson, but here’s E-40 explaining “for the energy.” You should be hearing this one on a daily basis in a year or two.

Finally, I love how E-40 threw up the metal sign for this photo. We didn’t even talk about metal, but somehow he must have known I am a metalhead. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Tech N9ne was running around looking like a member of Gwar that day.

Visit E-40 online.