<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nBig week for Dhani Jones. After his Cincinnati Bengals disposed of the Detroit Lions, 23-13, the linebacker/TV star/zoo volunteer/fashion fanatic/poet/artist dished with GQ about the NFL (the Bengals are sprinting toward the playoffs and he&amp;#39;s leading the team in tackles), the bow tie revolution he&amp;#39;s sparked, Tuesday&amp;#39;s Season One release of his TV show, Dhani Tackles the Globe (he travels to foreign countries in the off-season, trains in their local sport, and competes in those sports at the end of his stay), and his overwhelming desire to be James Bond. Warning: all topics are covered.\n\nGQ: Congrats on the win against the Lions. You guys are 9-3, poised to take the AFC North, and the Bengals just clinched their second winning season in 19 years. Are you guys pumped?\n\nDJ: Yeah, I mean we&amp;#39;re happy... but we&amp;#39;re not going to be satisfied with where we are now, you know? We&amp;#39;re definitely not going to become complacent about what we&amp;#39;ve accomplished at this point. As quick as it can be at 9-3, it can be at 3-9 season. So more than anything it&amp;#39;s just keeping our heads in the game and an even-keel sense of purpose.\n\nGQ: You&amp;#39;re having a great season personally, too. You&amp;#39;re leading the team in tackles and obviously getting the job done. Is that all going as planned?\n\nDJ: As planned? I don&amp;#39;t know if there&amp;#39;s ever a plan going into the season. The most important thing regardless of my stats or anybody else&amp;#39;s stats is the win-loss record. In the locker room people are always telling me, you&amp;#39;re doing this and that. I don&amp;#39;t really pay that much attention so long as we have a &amp;#39;W&amp;#39; in that column; that&amp;#39;s the kind of thing that makes me really happy. It blows all stats out of the water.\n\nGQ: During the season when you don&amp;#39;t have as much time, are you still able to indulge in some of your other hobbies?\n\nDJ: Yeah, I mean everything I like to do from racing my radio control cars to doing work at the zoo to poems to the TV show. There are a lot of things that I like to involve myself with, but I have a pretty packed schedule nine times out of ten. I have a good sense of working things in at the same time so that I can get all my hobbies in line.\n\nGQ: You split your time between Cincinnati and San Diego, right?\n\nDJ: Yeah, I split time between the two, but we&amp;#39;re here in Cincinnati so much of the season that you have to reside here. In the off-season I&amp;#39;m in California, but my off-season only consists of about five days. When we shoot the show, there&amp;#39;s ten episodes, and every episode takes about ten days apiece. So that&amp;#39;s 100 days, almost three-and-a-half months, and then the season is about seven months. So there&amp;#39;s just not that much time off. There&amp;#39;s the season, there&amp;#39;s Dhani Tackles the Globe, then there&amp;#39;s spring and summer football, our OTAs. So the time I spend in California is quite limited.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nGQ: The Season One DVD of Dhani Tackles the Globe was released this week. What are some of the episodes of your show that you particularly love?\n\nDJ: Switzerland: Shwingen, that was amazing. You&amp;#39;re just up in the mountains and you&amp;#39;re competing in a sport that you have a little feel for\u2014but more than anything the reason it&amp;#39;s memorable is it was the first place where I thought people were looking at me thinking, &amp;#39;What are you doing here and why are you playing this sport? You&amp;#39;re just doing it for your own selfish reasons. Or are you really trying to learn?&amp;#39; And at the end of the episode it was apparent to them that I was there to learn\u2014learn about the people, learn about the culture. Then of course the Cambodia episode, eating tarantulas. And then eating bugs in Thailand. The Australia episode with the surf lifesaving\u2014just being out in the water when it took me forever to swim. I was in the water that one time for a half hour going nowhere and then I swore I saw a shark, and then I got to the finish line and everybody was eating their lunch and dinner, and they were like, &amp;#39;Man, he&amp;#39;s taking forever.&amp;#39; There were a lot of episodes and a lot of distinct memories. Spain: getting hit by the surfboard. Almost getting killed by the jai alai ball. I could go down the list.\n\nGQ: And are the Bengals&amp;#39; trainers still cool with it\u2014your particular brand of off-season cross-training?\n\nDJ: I think there&amp;#39;s always a concern. The cross-training is on me. You do what you know is best for yourself to prepare your body for the hardships and the treachery of the season. So I try to put myself under the most amount of pressure\u2014willingly and unwillingly at times. And then you get to the season, and you realize, I don&amp;#39;t have to travel anywhere? I don&amp;#39;t have to talk to anybody if I don&amp;#39;t feel like it? I can eat normal food? I can get some sleep? Besides the fact that I&amp;#39;m only playing one sport during the season; I&amp;#39;m not doing ten different sports, on ten different continents, against ten different groups of people who have different dialects, and languages, and personalities. You see that in the DVD, from Thailand to Russia: the personality of each coach, of each competitor, each teammate, each city. They&amp;#39;re all very different.\n\nGQ: You played football in high school and college and for eight years in the NFL before filming that first season of the show. Do you feel that the show has legitimately helped you step up in football?\n\nDJ: I think I step up more because no. 1 you know you have a certain level of responsibility as an older guy; a lot of the younger guys look up to you to see how you play. No. 2 I want to continue to do my show, and if I don&amp;#39;t do well during the season... Either of the two should not burden the next. What they should do is complement one another. I have to make sure that I play well during the season, give them no reason to keep me around Cincinnati in the off-season, so I can get out of here and go travel and do the things that I love. And just the same, after traveling in filming the show, I can come back and play better for the Bengals. It&amp;#39;s working those switches, if you will, to the best of your ability.\n\nGQ: At this point of the football season, are you itching to get out and travel and do something different?\n\nDJ: No, I&amp;#39;m immersed. And that&amp;#39;s what I&amp;#39;ve learned how to do over time. In a way I&amp;#39;ve immersed myself in the culture of Thailand, in the culture of Switzerland, you know, or I&amp;#39;m immersing myself in the culture of football and being all-in. There&amp;#39;s definitely times when you think about where you could travel. I&amp;#39;m thinking about putting a palm tree next to my locker. There are definitely times when you mentally get away, or else you just overload yourself. But the most important thing is to stay focused. If you just keep your head down, and you go about your business, and do the things that you&amp;#39;re supposed to do, good things will hopefully come. I think the whole team has that attitude and that understanding at this moment. There are four weeks left to go\u2014what I call the third quarter of the season. And then you prepare yourself for the fourth quarter, the playoffs.\n\nGQ: With your unique attitude toward other things outside of football\u2014art, fashion, travel\u2014are there guys in the locker room who you talk to about those things or who share those other sorts of passions with you?\n\nDJ: Yeah, there are lots of guys from Samoa and they all want me to come play rugby there. Whether it&amp;#39;s Domata Peko, or Rey Maualuga, Fui Vakapuna, Jonathan Fanene. And then you&amp;#39;ve got the hunters like Carson Palmer and Jordan Palmer and Kyle Cook\u2014they&amp;#39;re like, &amp;#39;Why don&amp;#39;t you do hunting?&amp;#39; And then you&amp;#39;ve got other guys who want to come with me, like Tank Johnson. Those guys, they joke with me, but they also understand that that&amp;#39;s just me. Everyone has their own personality.\n\nGQ: What about with fashion?\n\nDJ: With fashion, we&amp;#39;ve got a lot of guys. Tank Johnson owns part of a clothing line. Keith Rivers wears tighter pants than me every day. Then you&amp;#39;ve got a big guy like Andre Smith, who&amp;#39;s supposed to wear 4XL &amp;#39;cause he&amp;#39;s over 300 pounds, but he wears 3XL instead because he likes to looks good. Or Andre Caldwell, who has a fresh outfit every week. Or Chad Johnson, who claims to be the freshest-dressing person on the team. We all have personalities, but in football a lot of times you don&amp;#39;t talk about that because you want to focus more on the grit and grind of the season, instead of people&amp;#39;s personal styles or worldly habits.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nGQ: You&amp;#39;re a major proponent of what you call the &amp;quot;bow tie revolution.&amp;quot;\n\nDJ: One of my best friends since tenth grade, Kunta Littlejohn, was living in Philadelphia when I was on the Giants. We came down to play the Eagles and I was hanging out with him and his brother and he told me: &amp;quot;If you want to be anybody, you&amp;#39;ve got to wear a bow tie.&amp;quot; And I was like, Man, you&amp;#39;re crazy. I&amp;#39;m not wearing a bow tie. And he said: &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;m telling you, if you wanna be someone in this world, if you want people to remember you, you rock a bow tie.&amp;quot; But I still dismissed it. And then when I was traded to Philadelphia, he was still there, and he actually came down with lymphoma. And so I started wearing a bow tie in quiet support for him. He got better, and I never took the bow tie off. Then I became obsessed with the bow tie and Dhani Jones became the bow tie guy.\n\nGQ: I hear you take influence from 007.\n\nDJ: Oh yeah. I&amp;#39;m gonna be the first black James Bond. Quote me on that. Put it all over the place. That&amp;#39;s on my top-5 list of doing anything in the world. Maybe even no. 1 or no. 2, being the first black James Bond. I&amp;#39;ve just embraced 007 and all that he&amp;#39;s able to do. He can drive fast cars, he can fight anybody, he has a beautiful woman by his side, he travels all over the world, he&amp;#39;s got his personal Moneypenny, he&amp;#39;s got gadgets of all kinds, and his adventures are non-stop... I love James Bond. And he&amp;#39;s a gentleman! And that&amp;#39;s another thing about the emphasis on the bow tie, is the reestablishment of the gentleman. I think it&amp;#39;s coming back around.\n\nGQ: And you&amp;#39;ve got the Bond cars, too, right? Don&amp;#39;t you drive a vintage Mini Cooper?\n\nDJ: [laughs] Yeah, I have a &amp;#39;63 Mini Cooper. I like British cars. The &amp;#39;63 Mini Cooper, the &amp;#39;63 Triumph, and I have a Morgan Aeromax SuperSports coming in 2010. That should be the next Bond car. And I should be the next James Bond after Daniel Craig finishes up with his stint. As the first black James Bond, I&amp;#39;ll drive the Morgan Aeromax SuperSports. Now that would be hot!\n\nGQ: It sounds like you&amp;#39;re well on your way\u2014\n\nDJ: I&amp;#39;m workin&amp;#39; on it!\n\nGQ: And the NFL career just sounds like a front to get to that goal.\n\nDJ: Maybe it is, maybe it is. I should write a book: My Front To Becoming 007. I&amp;#39;m putting together my resume, my body of work to show the people out in Hollywood: Why can&amp;#39;t I? Why can&amp;#39;t I?..."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/dhani-jones-im-gonna-be-the-first-black-james-bond>