This just in: Yunnan posts on hold until computer, best known for its role in 2008: A Beijing Disgrace Odyssey, decides it no longer wants to kill me.

Consistent with my long career of ass backwards predictions, beginning with me breaking 100 at Midlane when I was 6 yrs-old with a La Jolla 2-iron in my bag, I prophesized sitting volleyball to be unmarketable and as appealing to fans as sitting shiva. Subtract the free food and you've got yourself a funeral. Well, if I wasn't born in hot dickity-two, I was wrong, just like that time I bought stock in laser disc tongs just prior to The Matrix DVD release.

Turns out, balloons and banners showed up in droves to cheer on their respective delegations. Contradictory to Paralympic spirit though, the cheering sections were segregated. As the Balloons knotted the match up at 2 sets a piece, their fans floated obscenities towards the banner fans, whose paper thin tolerance was well documented. The Banner squad, however, managed to hang tough, spelling out their toughness to the sitting volleyball world, ultimately deflating their opponents along with their overblown fanbase.

Double helix in the sky tonight . Throw out the hardware. Let's do it right Aja. When all my dime dancin' is through, I run to you.

Yunnan 1.3

Dali is postcard material. Mountains border the east, and a lake borders the west, with the Old Town of Dali nestled adorably in between. We arrived at the Jade Emu Guest House and were greeted by the owner, Australian Dave, and his Chinese female possession (this is how he treated her, at least). Dave was the first of several ex-pats we encountered who seemed like they had fled their homeland in haste. I’m talking people with grim pasts: from actually showing up to school naked to premeditated vehicular manslaughter. From shoplifting videogames from Best Buy to shoplifting children from day care. I don’t blame them either. If I were burying the bloody (or naked) hatchet of my past, I’d be on the next flight to Dali sitting first class sitting next to Michael Jackson.

One such fellow was the owner of the Bad Monkey Bar, Mike, who grew up in Lake Forest. I don’t blame him for wanting to be on the opposite side of the planet from Lake Forest, but I got the feeling from talking to him that the Ralph Lauren-sponsored suburb decided old Mike had a few too many pleats in his pants. Or, his family was Nouveau riche, which is enough to get you exiled from there as well.

Either way, Mike’s bar was shady. Seated at the bar was a squirrelly British fellow with heavyset, blonde polish ladies in his right and left holsters . They becoming rambunctiously faded, but were not, in fact, drinking...

(To be continued)

This gentleman was getting a bamboo tattoo upstairs at Bad Monkey. Thats a piece of bamboo, whittled into a sharp point and soaked in ink. The tattoo artist uses this object to repeatedly stab the design into your skin. So, instead of graffiti, you get a George Seurat. Personally, I'd rather spend my Saturday in the park with friends.

Yunnan 1.2

The buses don't pass by here much anymore.

A typical restaurant in Dali where the fresh ingredients are displayed in the front of the restaurant. Perfect for pointing. But where do the ingredients come from?

Dali's fresh food market, idiots! (Elegance in Meats?)

Born in the sauce.

You may recognize the woman on the right, still in character from her starring role in the Nintendo64 smash hit, Zelda.

Kanoodling

In the Paralympics, a substitute prosthetic limb is called a "prosthitute."

An abundance of lovin' filled the air as George Benson and co-headliner Al Jarreau were dually invested in "this love," at the Beijing Exhibition Theater Thursday night. A friend of the family, the Givin' It Up tour's sound engineer met my demands, upholding my precedent of total-access privileges by comping 3rd row tickets and providing VIP passes for Action Bassman and I.

The sold out concert made me bounce, wiggle, and do this and that in my seat. Afterwards, we concluded Al Jarreau is a spastic lunatic and George Benson is the hippest dude on the planet with a facelift. He's had more work done than Beijing prepping for the Olympics.

Yunnan.

It began on a street corner outside the Kunming bus station at 10:30 Tuesday morning. It was overcast and refreshingly cooler than Beijing. My travel compadres, Bassman and Diane, and I were trying to find a restaurant, which in a Chinese city is like trying to find a homophobe at an NRA rally. As we surveyed the street corner for options, I saw a donkey pulling a man on a bicycle pulling a flatbed with recyclables piled on it. Then, a motorcycle sped around the corner, and in its sidecar was a goat. As I rubbernecked to make sure that wasn’t a Klonazapam hallucination, when I saw a Chinese man with the world’s greatest mustache, like the tail of a raccoon under his lip, watching over a child, pants around ankles, peeing in the middle of the sidewalk. After lunch, we hopped the bus to Dali. A four-hour nap later, we arrived and were greeted by a hyper-energetic, middle-aged, female cabby…

(To be continued)

Remember way back to a few weeks ago when the media was nutso about China's oppressive government restrictions? Anticipation of competition seemed ancillary to that of Internet snooping, limitations on protesting, and pollution issues. ESPN's Jim Caple suggested then, that we should look introspectively at our country's policies before deeming ourselves virtuous. Acknowledging, like we all should, that China's relations with Darfur are deplorable, Caple reminds us that our own foreign policies are far from rosey. Working with journalists throughout the Olympics, I did not get the impression that anyone felt legitimately stifled. We covered events, asked questions, and wrote stories with complete immunity.

Cut to the ongoing Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Caple's suggestion, in fact, was fully appropriate. With journalists covering the circus-like convention being gassed, roughed up, and arrested by military forces for conspiracy to riot, the RNC makes Beijing look like a First Amendment foreign embassy.

Previously in staunch support of all brands of fear-mongering, I do not support this instance as it's being used to unjustly suffocate the pen and pad.

Glen Greenwald is all over it.

Move over Jay-Z, hello Jaiye Bynoe (by-no-eeeeee). I've been listening to Jaiye for years now, ever since GOD, disguised as a bike messenger, delivered his demo to Mickle Jickens' corner cubicle in New York. Jaiye's style is distinct from the rest of the candy rappers out there. He's not about "sonic quality." He cares not about "flow," or "musicianship." He's isn't all obsessed with "making sense." He's a vessel through which the the plights of homelessness and romance -- not mutually exclusive -- are depicted.

My favorite jam is Freaky Freaky. Never, in the history of R&B, has a "boom boom clap" beat been so sensually employed. Jaiye really brings it from the heart (as promised by the album title) on this track.

Only you can make me do the things that you want me to do. When you're far away, and I can't get, to you. Waiting impatiently for your return, I...really...miss you.

Here, Jaiye spits hot truth gravy all over the perils of separation anxiety. Plus, who among us hasn't waited impatiently for something or someone? I know right now I'm waiting impatiently for my PA, Zhu, to bring me a wintergreen julep to wash down this lobster omelette. And afterwards, I'll brush my teeth, from the heart, with a liberal application of Jaiye Bynoe's truth paste.

Jorance Chan (Jackie, his Hollywood nickname) is multi-talented. I've been saying it for years. He's not just the stereotypical, ass-beating, Chinese buddy movie co-star we've come to adore in movies like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon. Jorance also makes a mean cup of jo. I ordered a cup from Jackie Chan's Cafe at the Beijing Airport. It woke me up like a roundhouse kick to the jugular, the likes of which only Jorance could deliver to a miscellaneous Chinese bad guy in a warehouse. Well, that bad guy was my early morning fatigue, and that cup of coffee performed all its own stunts, let me tell you.

If you don't believe in Jorance Chan's versatility, look no further than at the wall of his cafe, adorned with his many faces hanging crookedly. (Is he trying to get work from this display?) He's everything from CEO with a smile, to cause-you-a-world-of-pain with a smile. Even better, he'll leave room for cream.