Alan Paul 2013-05-22T09:37:02-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=alan-paul Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Alan Paul Good old fashioned elbow grease. It's Not the Sugar's Fault That Your Kid Is Hyper tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1074004 2011-11-08T10:24:09-05:00 2012-01-08T05:12:01-05:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/
This one is so widely held that it defies all logic, and really does make refuting it a waste of time. But here we are, a few days after Halloween, my house filled with sugar-y treats and I keep hearing friends and neighbors talking about how their kids are wired on sugar and going wild. I could scream. I could tell everyone they are full of it. Or I could just post this link, and hope some of the people who I talk to read my blog.

Now, calm down, let your kid gorge on candy and then put it away. But when they start pummeling each other with sofa cushions, do not blame the Snickers bars.

MONEY QUOTE:
In my favorite of these {many} studies, children were divided into two groups. All of them were given a sugar-free beverage to drink. But half the parents were told that their child had just had a drink with sugar. Then, all of the parents were told to grade their children's behavior. Not surprisingly, the parents of children who thought their children had drunk a ton of sugar rated their children as significantly more hyperactive. This myth is entirely in parents' heads. We see it because we believe it.
]]> Mazel Tov Mike Brown -- and Why His Hiring Got Me Thinking tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.867568 2011-05-27T11:06:37-04:00 2011-07-27T05:12:01-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/
It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, and I mean that quite sincerely. Brown being in the news has me thinking about the awesome character Darryl Dawkins, the sad tale of Lenny Cooke and the ongoing superhero saga of Lebron James.

Let me explain.

I met Coach Brown 10 years ago when he was an assistant for the Spurs and I was covering the ABCD high school all star camp for Slam magazine. The big event of that camp was the long anticipated showdown between the two elite players: Lenny Cooke and Lebron James. Just typing that sentence makes me sad.

We all know what happened to Lebron and the hoops fiends reading this know what became of Lenny. He was supposed to be the next great New York player, but he flamed out for a million different reasons. I'm not sure where he is now; last I heard he was playing the Philippines. I spent a memorable day cruising around Bushwick, Brooklyn with Lenny for a Slam feature trying hard to get a beat on his elusive personality. I remember the precise day: September 9, 2001. It was a beautiful, crisp blue New York Sunday. Two days later the world seemed like it had come crashing down, and writing up the Lenny story over the next few weeks, it seemed like I was documenting a years-old experience.

A decade later, the very idea that Lenny's name was uttered alongside Lebron's seems bizarre. This post lays out Cooke's melancholy tale pretty well and includes some video footage of him circa 2002.

Now back to Coach Brown. This was the lead of the ABCD story I wrote for Slam after several days camped out in the New Jersey gym watching games.

Sometimes you actually can believe the hype. Slam diary keeper Lebron James set the Adidas ABCD camp on fire on day one by saying that he may just become the first high school junior to declare for the draft (a fact reported in Slam 54, but news to the likes of the New York Times). Then he went out and showed why the idea may not be as ridiculous as it sounds. Throughout the four-day camp, James displayed the type of court sense and vision, unselfishness, ball skills, shooting range and precise passing that even an idiot could recognize as greatness.



"The game comes very easy to him, yet he seems to have the demeanor to keep coming at you," said San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Mike Brown. "He has a lot of the intangibles we as coaches can't teach. But he needs to complete his senior year of high school before he even thinks about going pro."


Ironically, just a few years later, Lebron and Brown's careers would end up closely intertwined, with Brown coaching the Cavs and Lebron for five years. He eventually lost his job at the altar of trying to appease LBJ as the Decision neared. Now he'll have another go in the NBA with another superstar to try to build around and keep happy.

After meeting him at that ABCD camp, I spoke to coach Brown with some regularity for several years, as he became a trusted source. I rarely quoted him, but he helped me on quite a few stories and was always courteous, thoughtful and insightful.

Years later, I was in Shanghai for the 2007 China Games between the Cavs and Raptors when I ran into Brown and then-Cavs GM Danny Ferry walking through the lobby of the Ritz Carlton, the NBA's headquarters there. They looked anxious to hit the elevator but I managed to get coach's attention, say hi and reintroduce myself. We had a quick, friendly handshake before the door closed and he zipped upstairs, ahead of the pack of Chinese reporters headed his way.

As I turned away and walked back towards the lobby, I saw a mountain of a man headed my way: the unmistakable Darryl "Chocolate Thunder, Double D" Dawkins. I had profiled him for Slam too, years earlier when he was coaching a minor league (USBL?) team in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. I reintroduced myself and shook hands, half my arm swallowed up in his massive paw, then posed for this picture.

By the way, other participants of that 2001 camp included Chris Bosh, whom I described as a "talented beanpole"; Raymond Felton, Gerry McNamara; Travis Outlaw; and Charlie Villaneuva. There was a lot of buzz around pg Sebastian Telfair. But there was no doubt about who the star attractions were. This is how my piece ended:

The highlight of the regular camp came when Cooke and James went head to head. James won the game with a buzzer-beating trey and outscored Cooke 24-9 while also finding Leon Powe and other teammates for easy buckets whenever the d collapsed on him.
Most impressively, he made Cooke work damn hard for every point, as when the senior brought the crowd leaping to their collective feet by shaking James' tight d with a series of lightning fast between-the-legs dribbles, then sinking a tough, leaning, fall-away j.



It was doubtlessly all enough to leave the boatload of college coaches in attendance weeping into their post-camp beers. Neither Cooke nor James is likely to see the inside of a college gym any time soon.
]]> RIP Robert "Tractor" Traylor: A Personal Rememberance tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.860781 2011-05-11T21:35:15-04:00 2011-07-11T05:12:01-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/
Tractor was starring for U-M when I lived in Ann Arbor in 96-98, and I wrote a piece for Slam magazine about him, and watched him play a lot. He made tremendous strides during his career there, and started passing out of the box his final year; he had sort of been a blackhole before then. When he lost a bunch of weight prior to the draft, I took him seriously and, combined with the improvement I had seen, thought he was going to thrive in the NBA, despite the fact that he was simultaneously too small (6-8) and too big (300 pounds or so) at once. I remember laughing at the Mavs when they traded his draft rights for Dirk Nowitzki, some German teen I had never heard of. Oops.

Tractor's legacy at Michigan is cloudy. He was part of a team that let everyone down in a million ways, and he was one of four players, along with Louis Bullock, Chris Webber and Maurice Taylor who seem to have taken money from Ed Martin. Aside from the money, the team was a really a letdown on the court, never achieving what seemed possible.

But Tractor was a garrulous, friendly guy and a cool presence -- and what a perfect nickname, in this era of severely diminished ones. During the weeks before the '98 Draft, he was working out for teams and my wife Becky and I were in the old Detroit airport. At the last minute, they announced a flight cancellation and a gate change for us and I took off running because we knew that it was a blood-in-the-water, first come, first served situation.

I turned the corner into the correct corridor at full sprint. Becky was trailing me, pushing our infant son Jacob in a stroller. I was flying, bags flapping behind me, when I almost ran smack into Tractor. He was on his way back from workouts and had lost a ton of weight but was still massive, like a brick wall. I stopped, said hi, reintroduced myself, shook hands and said, "I gotta go."

He laughed. As I ran away, I looked over my shoulder and said, "Tractor, you look great! Keep working hard."

And he smiled this huge smile and said, "Thanks, man. I will."

Soon after, I was at Toys R Us and saw a U-M Tractor bobblehead, which I bought and placed on Jacob's dresser, next to a little Josh Gibson figurine. Both are still there 13 years later.

RIP Tractor. Gone far too soon.
]]> My Unlikely Journey from Journalist to Chinese Rockstar to Voice Actor tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.836304 2011-03-16T11:43:55-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/ audio book of Big In China, My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing.

Shortly after my editor at HarperCollins accepted my manuscript for Big in China, I began bugging her to let me read the audio book. No one else could capture my inflections and my intentions in this first-person memoir, the very personal tale of my family's adventures and experiences during three and half years living in Beijing. The book explores my relationship with my wife Rebecca and our three kids. It deals with my struggles dealing with my father's cancer from half a world away. It details my unlikely climb from stay-at-home dad and freelance writer to Chinese rock star and the deep relationships I developed with my Chinese bandmates as we barnstormed across the country.

As publication date grew near, I got an excited phone call from my editor: "Everyone agreed that you should read the book!" she said. "I know how excited you will be."

My excitement was tempered by a slight edge of panic. I had lobbied hard for this opportunity; now I would have to deliver.

I was paired with Paul Fowlie, a veteran audio book producer, who worked with me to pick a studio close to my home where I would feel comfortable. I settled onto a stool behind curtains hung from the ceiling of my friend's basement home studio to mimic an isolation booth, a bottle of water and a cup of hot ginger/lemon water by my side, and I began reading the 500-page script.

It was a remarkable experience. After spending a year writing the book, poring over every sentence, pondering the implication of every turn of phrase, I was amazed to discover a new rhythm and new levels of meaning in my own work. It felt as if I were reading for the first time.

I often read lines out loud while revising my work, because structural or flow problems that remain blind to the eye are immediately obvious to the ear. But I had never read the entire book, from beginning to end, like this and it was an exhilarating experience. There were a few lines I wished I could rewrite. I tinkered with some lines that read wrong -- one of the advantages of an author recording his own book. I drank more water than I ever have in my life. And I finished the entire book in two days rather than the allotted three -- the same as the actor they would have hired instead of me.

I was sad to be done and looking forward to the couple of hours the following week when we would reconvene to re-record the prologue (they always do that, since everyone gets better as they go along) and clean up any flaws found in the recording. I began working with Paul on incorporating music from my band's CD, Beijing Blues. As I began to get ready for the next step -- the book's launch and the readings and appearances that would follow -- I did so with a renewed confidence in Big in China and a much deeper understanding of just what the book was and exactly what it meant to me.

]]> Being Jewish in China and Discovering What Really Matters tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.831573 2011-03-08T20:07:24-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/
Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to find a warm, welcoming Jewish congregation waiting for us in China's capital. Kehillat Beijing is a lay-led congregation with a cleverly titled website -- www.sinogogue.org -- that reflected a lot about the membership. The founders had been in Beijing for many years and were intent on creating one of the few things they really seemed to miss from home -- a supportive, nurturing Jewish community, which I found immediately invigorating.

We arrived in Beijing in August, just a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah. We brought the kids to Erev Rosh Hashanah services, held in the ballroom of an athletic club atop a downtown building. The next day, after much debate, we decided to send them to school while Rebecca and I went to services. There would be no children's services and we felt the need to be a bit reflective.

I found the whole experience profoundly meaningful and deeply touching. Though I can read Hebrew, I can't understand it and my high Reform childhood left me woefully lacking in knowledge of many of the basic prayers. Services often left me feeling a bit lost. But now they were very similar to my daily life -- lots of talk in a language I couldn't understand.

But there was a big difference. The familiar melodies and rhythms pulled me in and offered a profound sense of relief and comfort; they were a safe harbor in a world turned upside down. While virtually everything about my daily existence had been radically different, the service was the same in China as it was in New Jersey. Abraham was still going to obey God's orders with his precious son and we were still going to wonder just what this story meant and ponder who was testing whom.

The relief I felt in the service made me realize how much comfort I had long taken in these rituals, which I had dutifully attended for years without much thought. Now I had been given the opportunity to reinvent myself; no one would know if I skipped services and went about my daily life. I would soon take advantage of this freedom to reboot my life in countless ways, most memorably forming and fronting a blues band with three Chinese members (and one other American) that would go on to tour China and become a sensation.

But some things were not going to change, and being forced to sort through what really mattered to us and what didn't was extraordinarily useful. I suddenly understood just what I had gotten from all those years celebrating these holidays. Being part of a small group also offered a stark contrast to the massive high-holy day events back in New Jersey. My presence felt more important in this small group. And being gathered together in a ballroom in the middle of this huge city where no one else was really aware that it was in any way a special day made me understand an obvious truth; we are a tiny minority. It is easy to forget this in New Jersey, where life stops and schools close on the Holy days.

In Beijing, it took some real thought and effort to mark the event, and that forced us to pause and really examine what was important to us and consider all the things that made us who we are.

This story is adapted from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China (Harper Collins). Available now in all formats at all retailers. Copyright 2011 by Alan Paul. For more information, please visit www.alanpaul.net.]]> What Looks Like an Anchor May Be Wings tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.829492 2011-03-01T14:15:42-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/ 100 columns and thousands of blog posts documenting my three and half years in China, I thought turning it all into a book would be straightforward. I was wrong.

I never seriously doubted I would get here, but once I plunged into turning my story into a narrative, I realized that I had set high goals for myself. It was important that it have the propulsion and momentum of my favorite crime novels by the likes of George Pelecanos, Walter Moseley and Elmore Leonard. And it was crucial that it be about more than me.

I don't read too many memoirs. I don't have a lot of patience for people who think everything they do is interesting because they did it. I went into this process very aware that I had to synthesize my experiences and relate them in a way that pushed beyond the day to day -- that pushed beyond me and reflected larger, more universal truths.

That's what I tried to do with Big in China.

I wanted to explain why my unlikely success with the band Woodie Alan was a metaphor for everything that happened to me in China but I also wanted the book to be bigger than my experiences in China. I wanted to use it to explore what it takes to have a healthy, happy marriage, how both people can be partners supporting one another's individuality and own ambitions, while also growing closer. To think about how having a family and small children can be an enhancer of adventure rather than the inhibitor so many view it to be. We dragged our kids on some crazy trips through some crazy parts of rural China... and not only were they better for it, but we were, too; we had the opportunity to see all this through our children's eyes, to understand the wonder of a mountain village child with a three inch bug on a leash.

All of this related to one of the central themes of my book: what looks like sacrifice can be the opposite. What appears to be an anchor can be a pair of wings. When you think you are dragging your kids behind you, you may be granting them precious opportunities. What others think may pull a couple apart can instead bring them together.

No one should let anyone else define who or what he or she is. There are a million different realities that any one person can live at any one time and they may all be equally valid.

As my wife and I neared 40 and our 20th anniversary as a couple, we did not pull apart out of boredom or seek adventure on our own. We didn't run away from each other in search of excitement. Instead, we joined hands with each other and with our children and walked together into the unknown, emerging on the other side better in almost every way. All of this is why I felt I had a story to tell, a book to write. This is my story.


Big In China: My Unlikely adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing was released by HarperCollins in all formats on Tuesday, March 1.
]]> You Call This Fast? The Long, Slow Birth of a Book tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.825805 2011-02-21T13:47:43-05:00 2011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/ Big In China really quickly. I know this is true because everyone says it is so, but the process has felt anything but fast to me. Now, after a lot of hurry up and wait, the real countdown has begun. The book launches on March 1.

I signed my deal with Harper Collins in mid-November, 2009 and turned in my first draft on April 1. Four and a half months may sound like a short time to produce 70,000 words summarizing three and a half action-packed years, but I had been thinking about the book for a long time; had already written several chapters; and had spent months reading through my source material -- almost 100 Expat Life columns and over 1,000 blog posts. And for a guy used to spending a couple of days or a week on a story or column, logging onto the same file for months on end was a different experience, at first disorienting and ultimately deeply satisfying.

The book went through four drafts, each sent back and forth with my editor at Harper Collins. My wife Rebecca, an ace editor and the only other person who really knew the story, was also weighing in, as were several valued friends who read chapters and provided precious feedback.

After all this, and after the book was formally accepted, I got word last fall that bound galleys were in and ready to be sent to reviewers. It was just under a year after I signed my contract. I went in to the Harper offices to write personal notes to some of the people who had agreed to consider writing endorsement blurbs.

I didn't quite realize that a bound galley was actually, you know, a book; I was imagining a spiral-bound computer printout. A friendly publicist walked me into the conference room, where I stared slack-jawed at the pile of books waiting for me. I played it cool until she left me alone in the big room, sitting at the head of a long, empty table. Then I sat there motionless, ignoring the Sharpies and note cards in front of me, just staring at the books. Tears formed in my eyes, my heart began to thump and I felt the blood whoosh in my ears.

I had been thinking about this book for four years and actively writing it for a year and now here it was. All those words I had typed, read, edited, rewrote in pixels and on printouts were now... a book.

Writing can be pretty lonely and plenty unnerving and to see my book as a book was an overwhelmingly wonderful sensation. The mere fact of its existence validated a lot of decisions I had made; it told me that I wasn't crazy all the times I blindly followed my instincts trusting that good things would happen.

I started reading the galley of Big In China on the train home that afternoon and experienced some very different emotions. "Oh my God, this is real," I thought. "I am really putting this out for the public to read."

I had some doubts and insecurities -- not about the writing but about putting my private self and family life out there in such an open way. I was also a bit horrified that a handful of lines that I always thought I'd get back to tweaking were going to be in the book. But all of that was okay. I just kept looking at the thing and thinking, "It's a book."

Now, months later, Big In China is sitting in warehouses and making its way to stores. Preorders are being packed. It's almost time for the world to meet my baby.

To read an excerpt of Big in China, please visit www.alanpaulinchina.blogspot.com



This story is adapted from Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in China (Harper Collins). Available March 1 in all formats. Copyright 2011 by Alan Paul. For more information, please visit www.alanpaul.net.
]]> How Blogging Helped Me Get a Book Deal tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.822692 2011-02-14T17:19:14-05:00 2011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00 Alan Paul http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-paul/
Craig and Jane are the creative forces behind rayogram, a brilliant web design and consulting firm. I have known them for 20 years and they have always been far ahead of the curve regarding anything technical. So I paid attention when Craig said, "You should start a blog to report from China."

It was a new phenomenon but I quickly saw the advantages of having a site to upload my thoughts and pictures, freeing me from the responsibility of sending out mass emails. One email to everyone I cared about giving them the address would be sufficient; anyone who was interested could check in as frequently as they wanted. Craig took my laptop and together we went to blogger.com and registered www.alanpaulinchina.blogspot.com.

And the rest is history, at least for me; I never would have written my upcoming book Big In China (Harper Collins, March 1), if I had not started the blog.

Before moving to China, I had spent 10 years juggling assignments for Slam and Guitar World with domestic responsibilities, as the stay-at-home dad for my three children. Now, liberated from deadlines and with no need to hustle for work, I poured myself into my new blog. I initially viewed it as merely a means of keeping in touch with friends and family, but I quickly realized that keeping this public journal was transforming me, reigniting my passion for writing.

I began to treat the blog as a job, compelled to make daily postings. Writing so much for no money represented the economic emancipation that expat living offered, thanks to highly subsidized housing in a place where everything else cost radically less.

Back in the U.S., it felt like we were on a treadmill, struggling to bring in as much as we spent, even as our salaries rose. Now I was free to follow my muse, writing thousands of words a day just to tell the story I wanted to tell.

Just before graduating college, I self-published a book collecting satirical columns I wrote for the Michigan Daily under the pseudonym Fat Al. In a short introduction, I wrote, "If you can't do it with passion, don't do it." I had tried to continue living by that creed, but it had become an ever-harder standard to maintain. Now, it seemed attainable again.

Some people reading my blog back home noticed the changes.

"Something is happening to you, Alan," my aunt Carrie Wells emailed from Maplewood. "I can feel it pulsing through your writing and it's exciting."

I knew what she meant but I didn't pause to examine it, consciously pushing analysis away and pledging to live in the moment. After almost 20 years as a journalist talking to others, synthesizing their experiences and doing my best to tell their stories with honesty and integrity, I was now telling my own tale and the very process of doing so pushed me to keep seeking adventures.

On my very first look-see visit to Beijing I hatched the idea of writing a column about my life in China. After a couple of months in China, I pitched the idea to Bill Grueskin, the editor of WSJ.com, who was only marginally interested. When I offered to write three on spec, he said, "I'd be a fool to say no to that." I doubt I ever would have made the offer if I had not been pouring myself into my posts.

I edited three of my favorite posts filled with excitement and fascination about my new life and submitted them, quickly receiving an enthusiastic e-mail letter of acceptance. The sense of possibility and reinvention I felt from my earliest days writing blog posts about my arrival in China was paying off.

Just a few weeks later The Expat Life debuted and it became a defining element of my time in China, as well as the basis for Big In China. But when I needed deeper, more incisive details while writing the book, I always knew where to turn: right back to my source material, my blog.

This story is adapted from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China (Harper Collins). Available March 1 in all formats at all retailers. Copyright 2011 by Alan Paul. For more information, please visit www.alanpaul.net.
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