July 5, 2008 4:12 AM
Pop It Like It's Hot
If you love America, then there is a sight in downtown Beijing - a few blocks away from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City - that just might warm your heart. In the Wangfujing District, underneath a giant banner tribute to and an oversized statue of Yao Ming*, there stands a time-honored testament to everything we hold dear as a country.I am referring to, of course, the pop-a-shot machine.
If you've spent any amount of time around a boardwalk or a summer carnival, surely you know of what I speak. Pop-a-shot is a majestic amalgam of lights and noise, a tribute to youth and summer and cotton candy and overvalued, oversized teddy bears. The game is simple: there is a basket, there are a half-dozen, half-inflated miniature basketballs and there is a countdown clock. When that clock starts, start shooting. When time's up, collect your prize. Then go find those skee ball ramps.
So last night, I meet up with an old American friend, Becca, who's in town for the week, and walking past the whirr of the pop-a-shot, she knows I can't resist. There are six machines lined up, but they're all full at the moment. We ask the man running the games how much it costs to play.
He points to a 10 yuan bill (less than $1.50) and four game tokens. We can't hand him the money fast enough.
Waiting for a machine to clear, I start observing the competition. I've seen all of these shots before at various carnivals around the country. Among those available for public viewing tonight** are:
-The two-handed push shot.
-The two-handed overhead chuck.
-The right-handed tomahawk.
My shot, naturally, isn't on that list. Now, I don't mean to brag***, but I do consider myself a fairly skilled pop-a-shot player. I've been honing my shot for nearly two decades. I've got Bird's high-release, Magic's touch around the rim and mostly just the all-around precision of former hero-of-the-blog Juan Dixon.
Becca and I are feeling confident as the kid on the far left steps back from his machine. He's a Costanza-style chucker, and in 180 seconds of pop-a-shot action, at the rate of three points per made basket, he's barely topped 60 points. All down the line, players are posting scores under 100. Only at the far end do we find any legitimate competition; a kid has notched 216 points. Obviously, he's been watching the handiwork of his country's NBA stars at the line.****
Our first game isn't an inspiring effort. We top 150, but we find ourselves struggling to adjust in the final 120 seconds of the game, when the basket starts shifting from side to side. We chalk up our poor performance to the jerky hoop and the strange music that's coming out of the stereos. They're playing an odd electro-pop groove with a dubbed over Chinese voice screaming out, again and again, "¡Vamos a la playa!" I'm still not sure what to make of that.
In the second game, sometime around the midway mark - and just as the Chinese-Spanish dance-hall rhythms are fading into standard Mandarin pop-gibberish - we find our rhythm. We've got balls in the air every second, and our touch is on. We know we've got something working when, after five or six consecutive makes, we find balls hanging on the rim, dancing above the cylinder with the rim moving left-to-right before watching the balls eventually drop in. When our shots collide, they're both finding a way to fall through. We top our first score and tie the guy on the other end with a 216.
We step back from the machine and hand off a single coin to a kid behind us who wants to play a game. Becca and I agree that three games will probably be enough. Consider the fact that even though it's well after 10 p.m., the humidity in the air has kept temperatures above 90 degrees. Somehow, from three good minutes of pop-a-shot, we're each sweating like Homer Simpson with 10 seconds to meltdown.
The kid finishes off in front of us, and now we step back up. We switch sides this time; a halftime strategy talk has determined that the machine's ramp is rolling balls to the right, and I make the snap decision to take my quick release to that side. But after the first 60 seconds, we're at an all-time low. We're hovering near 50 points, and we're both embarrassed. And then suddenly, we're zeroed in. We're Maverick and Goose with lock on the MiG. We're Winston Wolf with 40 minutes to work. We're NBA Jam hot. Seven...eight... nine makes in a row. The rim's jerking back and forth across the backboard, and we're barely noticing.
Only when the clock hits zero do we look up. 261. The high score of the night.
The pop-a-shot manager walks over to us. We think he's going to award us one of the yellow or green puff prizes hanging at each machine. We point to one and give him a big smile.
He shakes his head, and like a kid at the Spelling Bee, starts drawing imaginary characters in the air. We follow his finger. 420 is the score needed to win a prize.*****
We shake our heads and walk away. Becca's pleased with the effort, as any frequenter of a shoreside boardwalk knows they should be.
But I'm not thinking about the game any more. Instead, I'm straining my head down the block towards Tiananmen Square, and just wondering if there's a skee ball place over there.
*It should be noted, that while, yes, this statue of Yao is quite large, it's probably not that much larger than the man itself.**The underhand scoop was curiously missing from the proceedings. Assume that a small sample size of Chinese pop-a-shotters affected the reporting of this post.
***Aw, heck, yes I do.
****Yi Jianlian shot 84.1% from the free throw line last year. Yao shot 85.0%. As for why the Chinese tonight might have poor form, I offer you this: Shaquille O'Neal endorses China's own Li Ning sneaker brand.
*****The quick math: at three-points per basket, you would need to shoot one ball every second for each of the 180 seconds and make about 78% of your shots to reach the elusive 420 mark. Let's just consider it the Wilt of pop-a-shot records and move on.
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