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Gamecocks Online runs a feature called Gamecock Spotlight, wherein they profile a student athlete. It's pretty much what you'd expect: a player answering fluffy questions over a montage of game highlights and shots of the player in question intensely clutching the appropriate sports ball, all soundtracked by some stock instrumental that sounds like a Jock Jams b-side. Generally, the script reads something like this:
I'm [name], [class], from [hometown/country], [position], [sport], South Carolina Gamecocks. With my free time, I like to hang out with my friends and watch movies. My favorite player is [most popular player in their sport]. I came to South Carolina because I liked the fans and the coaches and the facilities. I like [coach] because he's funny but also expects a lot of you. My goal while I'm here is for us to win a championship.
Recently, the Gamecock Spotlight fell on sophomore power forward/center (and Lithuanian) Laimonas Chatkevicius. Already the potential for unintentional entertainment is increased with the ESL element in play. While I found Big Chat to be more eloquent an English speaker as my prejudgin' ass had imagined, we still get some quality soundbites. View the whole thing here, but below are my favorite excerpts:
"The funniest guy on the team is Sindarius (Thornwell). Sometimes he doesn't know what he's saying, and it's just funny." — ST: "Hey Big Chat, I'm running over to Piggly Wiggly. Need anything?" LC: [hearty guffaw] "Hah! This Piggle-lee Wiggle-lee, is funny joke!"
"For fun, I like to...play volleyball." — Big Chat shows up to an already-in-progress pickup volleyball game. "I am play now." "Uh, but Laimonas, we're actually full so maybe ne—" "Is good. I am of your team now. Make serve."
"One thing that I discovered while being at South Carolina is a TV show called Blue Mountain State." — This cracked me up, since I assume the interviewer was looking for some sort of cultural tidbit like barbeque or the word "y'all", not a bro-ey Spike show I was shocked to find is still in production.
But for the segment's best highlight, we go to the Vine:
<iframe class="vine-embed" src="https://vine.co/v/M7UM79ZL0qP/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script async src="//platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
[laughing tears Emoji x50, skull emoji x10]
Never in the Spotlight segment does Laimonas exude half as much passion as he does when discussing watermelon. It's clearly a source of profound joy for him. The way he whispers, "oh boy, I like it" is borderline sexual. I'm guessing he provided at least 45 minutes of watermelon commentary, forcing some poor student assistant to have to sift through the footage for the best 10 seconds. Or maybe he only gave watermelon-related answers during the first take. "Okay, that was good Laimonas, but let's do another take where some of your answers don't involve watermelons." "I AM NOT SEE WHY IS THIS NECESSARY."
Still, props to the editor for stitching together an utterly hilarious chunk of melon praise. By the way, I was curious as to whether this is a Lithuanian thing. Watermelons are supposedly indigenous to southern Africa, but is it possible they've been adopted by Baltic state as a culinary favorite? I gave it the Google auto-fill test:
I guess it's just a Big Chat thing, which is fantastic because I love when players have quirks I can exploit for #pageviews. But Big Chat has some work to do if he's going to become the most celebrated watermelon fanboy on the Internet, as he's still well behind this guy:
<img src="http://gifs.gifbin.com/062010/1277465896_eating-watermellon.gif">
^That is my favorite GIF on the internet.
