Chantelle Anderson on "Made", December 6th 2008

I (like every other Dream fan) watched Chantelle Anderson on MTV's "Made". The premise of the show is that high school kids have a desire, and professionals "make" the kids into the objects of those desires.

In the episode on Saturday, the young man (I forget his name) serving as protagonist decided he wanted to try out for the basketball team. His brother played varsity basketball and his sister was a homecoming queen (I think). Our young wannabe, however, was not only as "soft as a marshmallow" (quoting a follow student) but was the school's resident drama queen.

Note the use of the term "drama queen". I don't think, in private conversation, that the kid would have denied it. You know how some people are in the closet? This kid was out in everything but saying "the magic words", basically 95 percent out of the closet. He's dangerously close to one of the characters in "Men on Film", the old In Living Color sketch.

Since the kid only has eight weeks to learn enough to play varsity basketball, an intense program is started to get this kid in some kind of basketball playing shape. And the kid whinges and moans and whines all the way through it, digging in his heels and undoubtedly embarassing his poor mother when she got around to seeing the episode in all its glory. The saga is complete with dramatic walk-outs and turn arounds by the young man in question. (Dra-MA!!)

So, they manage to drag the kid across the finish line. (There's a scene where Chantelle is literally holding the young man's hand and running ahead of him on a track in the early morning, and she says, "I'm not going to carry you around this track.") The kid manages to move from the "hopeless" to "fairly normal" on the physical improvement scale, manages to learn some good defensive skills like how to take a charge - his offense is hopeless - but does not make the final cut.

Here's what my wife and I were thinking: Chantelle Anderson and others take a lot of time out of their busy schedules to move heaven and earth to help this kid achieve his goal, and the little @#$@#$ ingrate completely disrespects them. At least, if Chantelle decides she wants to go into coaching, her future students will actually strive to be ballers, instead of having to be cajoled into it.

My wife also noted that Chantelle Anderson is strikingly beautiful. In some quarters, it's considered gauche to comment on the physical attractiveness of a WNBA player, the reasoning being that it sends the message that if women aren't physically attractive, then they're worthless. There is an exception to this rule - namely that one must comment on a player's physical attractiveness that if she's so attractive that you'd be considered a fool if you didn't notice it. Chantelle definitely falls into that category.