2008 Winter X Games - excerpt from "Shaun's World" --- MEN'S JOURNAL February 2008 (Volume 17, Number 1)

Shaun White is on both the front and back covers of the current (February 2008) issue of Men's Journal. --- excerpt from Shaun's World --- by Jeff Johnson / taken from Men's Journal, Volume 17, Number 1

He's a king in two sports, the star of a Scorsese-directed AmEx ad, and the crush of girls everywhere. How does a 21-year-old balance it all—and still find time to befriend the neighbors? A day in the charmed life of Shaun White.

Walking into Shaun White's house in Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy, hilly enclave north of San Diego, is like entering the home of any college-aged dude you've ever known. Doorman? Nope. Front door? Wide open. Juicy Couture-clad assistant furiously thumbing out text messages? Nuh-uh. Just some fix-it guy in the driveway—okay, a wallpaperer—who says, "In there," before leaning into the back of his pickup truck.

So you creep through the foyer, past a suitcase—shirtsleeves and pant legs flowing out like tentacles, still half-unpacked from White's recent 21st-birthday bash in Vegas—past an open box from Birdhouse (Tony Hawk's company) containing a stack of new Shaun White skate decks, past a ping-pong table, some DVDs (Blades of Glory, The Ladies Man, and Scary Movie), finally, past a ransacked six-pack of Charmin toilet paper napping at the base of the staircase. You follow the sound of an electric bass plunking out notes and wind up in a black-and-white-velvet-wallpapered jam room.

Here's the Olympic gold medalist perched on a sofa, playing the bass line for the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army," tapping along with mismatched socks as his agent, Mark Ervin of IMG, fulfills the Meg White duties behind a drum kit. No tangible hellos are uttered. Just a nod, a smile, then White thrusts the bass into your hands, switches to electric guitar, and you're officially jamming with the Flying Tomato.

This exercise, I would come to learn, is part of a phenomenon known simply as "Shaun Time."

White has owned the house for more than a year—after moving out of the Carlsbad, California, home he purchased for his parents at 16—but he hasn't really lived in it that long. The two giant golden clamshells on the coffee table, picked out by his interior decorator, scream Long Island Mafia wife and hint not only at a slight lapse in quality control but also at how little time he spends here. "I come home and this stuff is like...somebody's just added it," White says, laughing only slightly. He asks Ervin to guesstimate how often he's actually home, between skateboarding and snowboarding events and endorsement obligations. Ervin, who is around today to help White wade through a battery of local TV and radio interviews that will culminate with White throwing out the first pitch at tonight's San Diego Padres game, considers the question for a moment, then says confidently, "17 percent."

White's introduction to the neighborhood, a gated community that was spared from the blazes that ravaged nearby areas last fall, sounds like a sitcom pilot waiting to happen. "The neighbors," White says, "were like, 'We were watching you and wondering when the parents were going to show up.'" He continues with a smile, "And the parents never showed up."

So White took the opportunity to launch a two-pronged Welcome Me attack. First, he walloped the neighbors at ping-pong. When an older Indian couple invited him over, the wife, White says, made an "authentic dish" while White dismantled her husband on his own table. Then he took down a family of five, one by one, eventually skunking the father in the finale. "You know the rule that if you get a 7-0 lead, that's the game?" White asks. "That's what happened."

To read the full article on Shaun White, pick up the current issue of Men's Journal, on newsstands now.

EXPN.com

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