This Monstrous Chinese Shaq Statue Was Kinda Funny Until Bill Plaschke Got a Hold of it

Bill Plaschke is about as funny as a fried egg with broken glass served in old tennis shoes. His self-righteous indignation is the sports writing equivalent of being rapped on the knuckles in a 17th century church. Good thing they sent him to Beijing with a camera, where he can do some good by documenting this giant statue of Shaq that inexplixably towers over Chaoyang Park in Beijing. The hammy “prayer” to O’Neal is a waste of oxygen in a city that sorely needs it, but that’s what the mute button is for (Sidenote: I sometimes “mute” Plascke’s columns and read them only for the acrobatic line-breaks). ↵

↵↵Then again, maybe China is so darn big that, if you look long enough, you can find a statue of anyone with the slightest bit of public visibility. Next stop: Del Harris and Mario Lopez staring each other down over a game of Risk, with the future of the universe hanging in the balance. I hear they’re building one of me, too. It’s by a water fountain and will have eroded in one-hundred years. Deep, I know.↵

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