Still in Miami. Game 4 tonight. Strangely, I'm pulling for Shaq and the Heat, which is a feat if you know me and my Lakers loyalty. I guess I'm pulling for them so that I can come back during the Finals and spend a full week doing what I've been doing..which is basically watching playoff basketball, spending aimless hours on Lincoln Blvd and Ocen Dr. and Collins and Washington, eating good food and looking at ridiculously beautiful women and then parting with my nigga Claudy in some VIP room. Serious good times.

This is a story I did on Wade, by the way. I think it turned out fairly well.

Back home in Tampa Bay tomorrow. I got so many stories to tell and the exclusives will get posted on this site. Everybody enjoy trhe day off. I hope somebody is barbecuing...u gotta throw somethin on the grill today and I dont even celebrate Memorial Day.

In South Beach: Me, Myself and Everyone

I’m coming atchu live from South Beach, easily one of my five favorite places in these here United States of Amurca.

When people think South Beach, they most likely think Ocean Drive or Collins or Washington. And that’s perfectly fine. Those streets are marquee and rather enjoyable. In fact, I’d like to make them my wife. But, if you’ve never been to South Beach, there’s also this street, or area I guess, called Lincoln Blvd. It’s a street that acts like a mall (if malls were hip and not huge testaments to western commerce where white kids go to max out Daddy’s Amex and black kids go to loot disturbingly long white T-shirts that tend to get caught under their news Js when they walk). Picture Georgetown’s M Street or Buckhead’s Peachtree or Hollywood’s Sunset…but then picture those streets without a road separating both sides of the street, instead, there’s a huge court yard the runs down the middle and the very center of the courtyard are strings of tables and chairs and couches, so it looks like one long café in the middle of these restaurants and shops and stores and galleries. I feel real strongly about Lincoln Blvd. I feel like, if I were a street, I’d wanna be Lincoln Blvd. I sincerely feel this way.

There are many things that make me a unique, substantial and magnificent human being – things that mask the fact that I’m actually vile. Of these, memorizing Keith Jarrett piano solos, sculpting sculptures for the Modern Museum of Art and French-kissing are mighty high on that list. Nestled between amazing abilities like being able to do 13 consecutive squat thrusts in 7 seconds and spitball quantum physics with nerdballs at MIT, is my profound ability to entertain myself in the midst of people entertaining each other. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, I discarded any inkling of discomfort when it comes to eating at a restaurant alone, going to the movies alone, sippin a good single malt at a bar alone, catching live music and doing just about everything entertainment has to offer…alone.

It’s puzzling. I grew up with five siblings and spent 10 years in an 8x8 room with two little brothers (Chrish smelled like spit because he used to suck his fingers until he was teen. A smelled like sour crotch because he didn’t like showers and used incessantly scratch his itchy sack and then randomly touch every inch of every inanimate object in our closet of a room). I also grew up with too many friends to even bother counting. One might the think such a fella would have trouble hangin with himself. I am no such fella. We’ll dig deeper into this some other time. That ramble was to preface the utter enjoyment of hangin with myself on Lincoln Blvd Friday night.

After sweatin out my polo in the Miami mug I settled on Nexxt Café. I asked to be seated in this little nook in the corner and sat outside for the next two hours, drinking, eating and chilling by myself, but doing a whole lot of observing and Patriot Act-level eavesdropping. It’s in these setting that a black man came to some random realizations and rejuvenated some dormant thoughts.

Miami is the US Capitol for androgynous men. I couldn’t help but notice this. I know male models run rampant around this city, but why is it cool for them to wear jeans that were really made for Shakira? I feel a certain way about the new dress code and…I gotta say, the feelings not too good. There’s an obvious euro-influence on the new dress code. In fact, there’s no doubt that men in Paris and Milan and Barcelona have been dressing this way for a few years now and it’s finally coming stateside. That’s the way fashion trends trickle. But shouldn’t there be a firm belief throughout humankind that it is not appropriate for men to wear hip-hugging jeans and baby-doll, midriff T-shirts?

These men aren’t gay, although I’m sure some of them are. But the startling thing about this frightening spiral toward rampant aesthetic androgyny is the fact that many of these men are attracted to women and – this’ll make you bite your bottom lip – women are attracted to them. Some of these men were canoodling with flyest of airborn honeys.

True story: Last night my server approached and asked me what I wanted to drink. Because I was relaxing and it was South Beach and I tire of always being cutting-edge and radical and kinda awesome, I was gonna be a sheep and order some $12 martini that no man would buy other than a cornball or a gay. Then, in walked a man wearing the same jeans Fergie wore in that video where this black boy in leather comes pn the screen, out out of nowhere, and asks her what she’s gonna do with all that breast inside her shirt. I mean, these were the exact same jeans. And he was a T-shirt that came ‘this close’ to exposing his navel. He looked as close to women as possible, without going over board and dressing in drag and getting all Felicty Huffman on niggas. There was no way he’s not a gay, I thought. So instead of ordering the sheeptini, I ordered a Makers Mark, my staple. The order was less out of desire as it was out of some deviant, misguided defense mechanism. I’m thinking, “I’m here alone, gazing aimlessly at any and everyone and instead of having a mustache to provide my masculine scamp, I can’t seem to get past this Puerto Rican-whisker stage…I better order some thing brown, in a short glass.”

In a priceless twist his dinner companion arrived around the same time as my Makers. She looked portugese and she rooked marvelous. She looked so downright good that my innards reacted and I got the bubble-guts for a few secs. I kinda stared at this exotic beauty for a moment, just long enough to replay her image in some daydream next week. Obviously this guy was a gay and she was a fag-hag, I wouldn’t be disrespecting him if he happened to catch me ogling this damsel. Then he grabbed her hands, started staring at her, she changed seats so they were kitty-corner to each other and then, this androgynous creature started france-kissing this like there was no tomorrow…I mean, like, literally the world was set to end today and france-kissing helped them cope with the cloud of this impending doom.

That’s when it hit me that there are women, very good looking, feminine women that don’t mind these new androgynies. After that I started noticing all these men, wearing booty jeans and body shirts, sporting women on their arms. “There’s nothing good about this,” I said to myself.

About midway through my evening at Nexxt, after I had sampled some double-stuffed potatoes rolls, some chicken madeira and was waiting on my apple tart, a really fat woman walked by. She was basically shaped just like me. Same height, same morbidly obese body parts…although, she didn’t have my six-pack abs, but her midsection was round, sloppy and disgusting like my identical-twin, Benson. Keeping in line with being the female version Vince, she was very pretty like I’m really handsome. What struck me about this young lady was that she was struttin SO hard up-n-down Lincoln Blvd. I mean, homegirl was on the catwalk. And I’m thinking, “You mean even really fat broads have model-walks in Miami?”

At a table about 10 feet away, there was a nice eclectic group enjoying dinner. At the end closes to me there were four girls. A lovely black number, two gorgeous Latinas and a sloppy Irish-broad resting her breasts on the table like she was a church-going Big Momma. Soon they get up. The Irish-broad lifts her breast off the table, but doesn’t bother to lift her gut from over her belt and also doesn’t bother pulling down her shirt. I shake my head. After I finish judging the Irish-broad I notice that the three women that got up with her were all, like, 5-11. It was kind of unsettling. One moment they appeared to be your average really good looking women enjoying a couple bottles of white wine with their friends. Then they get up for the meeting in the ladies room and it’s 8th & Ocean. Then it seemed like for the next 36 minutes, 5 out of every 8 women that passed by were the same height as Allen Iverson.

A little earlier in the evening I saw a group of black women -- dressed in the best ghetto fashion Miami had to offer – walk by Nexxt. It was a pack of maybe four or five. It jolted me, you know, seeing a group of black girls. Miami is one of those great cities where you have representatives from every country. I bet there’s even some from China that lives in Miami, not to mention Kazhikstan. The two men sitting at the table in front of me were talking in some eastern-European language. When I was talking to Vino on my cell for a bit, I was talking in broken English. There was a table on the other side of the café with a party made up of people that were clearly from some northern African country. It’s just a beautiful thing and something I immediately started to miss, reflecting on the lack of diversity most parts of Florida.

But seeing that group of black women shocked me and its because I just didn’t see many of them. South Beach overwhelms you with Latinos, not so much blacks. It’s bittersweet. You’d like to see more black women, but Latinas are unique in that they blend, amazingly, the hallmark body-parts of white and black women into what is often one seamlessly divine shape. One after another they walked by looking blessed and they knew it.

I started thinking: all these lovely Latinas aware of their beauty, fat women walking like Naomi Campbell, all these tall 8th & Ocean chicks – Miami is stuck on beauty. As much as I love South Beach, I wondered if I’d tire of frivolous atmosphere.

I’ve never really stopped to think how my family appears when we go out to eat. Never bothered to spend to much time analyzing how things usually proceed, either, other than acknowledging the fact that we typically have a jolly-grand time.

After midnight, a group of four sat down at the table vacated by the Portuguese chick and her androgynous boyfriend. It appeared to be a mother, a father, a daughter and another woman. But I couldn’t get the relationships nailed down for the life of me. Because, judging by seating arrangements and interaction, the fourth women could have been an aunt or maybe she was the teenage girl’s mother and sister to the husband or wife. I spent a good deal of time doing knowledge on this and out of exasperation, and a bit of irritation, I decided the mother-father-daughter family was taking the fourth woman out to eat as a Thank You for getting the daughter in Florida International University. You see, the fourth wheel was the girl’s guidance counselor. That’s when the daughter tapped the fourth wheel on the shoulder and said, “Mom, move your plate, you’re not giving Uncle Carlos any room.” The family tree had taken root.

As I observed them interact I noticed that they didn’t talk a lot. I mean, there were 5 minute stretches where the whole table was silent and they’d all be individually doing what I was doing or twirling their glasses of water. When they were taking their first couple bites of food, they didn’t even offer each to taste their dish or ask how the others’ dishes tasted. It was kinda sad, to tell you the truth. There are few themes that run throughout the majority of the world’s culture. But in most countries, I always thought that family meals were joyous occasions. I mean, weren’t those scenes in dramas where the families sit around the dining room table and force three or four monotone words out there mouths to break the silence…weren’t those dramatizations? You mean, most households are like that? And this scene, it was even more odd. At first, I was so delighted to see this family out on Lincoln close to midnight, about to snatch some grub. They must be a really close group that enjoys each others’ company, I thought. Then they hit me with the dinner scene from a Lifetime movie and threw my whole equilibrium off. Now why you wanna go and do that now, huh?

As sobering as that was, nothing was more sobering than the before-and-after reality reinforced by the three females. They looked to be Dominican. The daughter was a pretty girl. Very nice shape. Could pass for 21, but she drank water while the others drank alcohol. I figure she was somewhere between 17-19 years old. Just about to hit her prime. The world is hers. But that world stops spinning and for Latinas, it doesn’t stop spinning and stay still for a while. It automatically reverses. Whereas they are, perhaps, the most beautiful ethnicity during that 18-35 stage; it’s like they hit 40 and suddenly they look like they stole my shape and Che Guevara’s mustache. As the pretty Dominican girl looked on as her mom and aunt pounded Coronas, she seemed to be remarkably unsuicidal. Teenage girls aren’t always the most optimistic creatures, this girls half-full mentality was character-victory.

Remember those remarkable skills I have that I was telling you about? Well, I’m sure you already knew that I can read minds. And if you don’t know, now you know. That pretty young Dominican thang was planning to beat the odds, buck genetics. She was thinking “Maybe if I lay-off the ales I won’t look like a Spanish Jerry Stiller when I’m 38.”

That’s when I put my credit card and receipt in my pocket and stepped off.

It's a horse. So, really...

Let me go on record as saying I couldn't give a rat's anus about some horse breaking its leg. That's right, I said "it", not "his". I've never understood the hores racing thing. It just makes absolutely no sense to me. Like, when SportsCentury selected Secretariat as one of the 50 Greatest Athletes, it was just really stupid and dumb. The pageantry of the Derby is a little interesting, but after that, what's the allure? Why not cover dog racing the same way?

Don't give me any updates on Barbaro's condition. I don't give an eff. He's an animal. Color me cruel, but that's just the facts. I obviously don't endorse animal cruelty and I enjoy typical enjoy the species. I think horses, in particular, are quite majestic, but please quit with this madness. Like this nation should be gripped by a horses injury. Are you serious? Really, are you serious right now?

Unless I'm reading Hunter S. Thompson's take on the ridculousness of it all, please spare me.

"Florida's not so bad," pundit says.

Sunday's and some Saturday's tend to be the only days that I wake up early (usually for religious reasons). Today, it's because this cavity has spun out of control and it's going to be the death of me. Even after drinking close to a full bottle of liquid Tylenol, the pain is still a grown-bish. So, instead of just lying in bed creating rythms out how the pain throbs, I just woke up.

And, ish (!), ran out of cofee yesterday. Which means I had to leave the house, which brought me here, to work, downloading music (my laptop refuses to download a burner...frikkin firewalls).

Before I got to work, however, I braved the densest, thickest fog I'd ever seen. It was like I was literally driving through clouds in the sky. It was actually kind of magnificent. I had the windows down and the sun roof open, too, which was cool, because it's morning so the temp was cool. And as you drove through this fog (that had to be made of something other than moisture), these figures would appear, kinda blurry-like -- the palm trees. And it's morning, so you could still hear the birds chirping. And it's Sunday morning, so the roads were kinda empty. And it's here, on a cool Sunday morning, driving through fog that you can only get in Florida, catching eery glimpses of tropical trees you can only see in Florida (and a few other American regions), that I acknowledged that Florida living ain't that bad. I dump on my new home a lot here on the blog. But in actuality, it's a lil aight.

Bread and Roses: Immigrants

I don't really stand anywhere on this whole immigration debate. My stance, if you will, is semi-omnipresent. 'm over here on this part of the issue, over there on another part, off yonder on yet another part.

I feel a certain kind of way about immigrants. We know this. You know I have problems with El Salvodorians, simply because Salvos refuse to learn English and then wanna take my order. I have a problem with Mexicans because Xcans randomly turn up in Pizzerias and that's just not ethical. I also have problems Puerto Ricans (they're citizens, yes, but I figure I get this out while I'm on the subject of Spanics). I feel like Ricos should have never had the audacity to create reggaeton. That music will never be reputable or appropriate.

But when it comes to my Latin brothers trying to escape abject poverty that most Americans don't know and come Stateside to make a meager living and send some dough back to native family members flailing in ridiculous conditions...I gotta say that I'm pro-immigration. I'm a fan of the immis. I think what they do is really on some "testament to the human spirit" type ish.

Time magazine dropped an issue last month on the immigration debate. I guess it was informative, although it spent a whole lot of time dwelling on the Washington-jostling. But there were salient points brought out that chopped the issue down to a size that I could wrap my arms around.

I guess I'm a buppie (black yuppie) at this point. I say that because, immigrants ain't takin my job and I think that detaches me from this issue, somewhat..or at least I detach myself. But they may take someone else's. A common refrain I hear is that they perform the jobs that most Americans won't. I feel that to a degree. But I know some Americans that wouldn't mind helping out ona construction site. That's my word. They also say immigrants are a strain on the economy, that they tax my tax dollars with their kids in American schools, with teachers spending extra time to teach them English. They say their hospitable bills are charged to the game since they typically don't have insurance. I say that if America wants to prance and stomp around the globe as some harbinger of freedom and goodwill, that it should (as it has done throughout history) do so here and provide a haven for some of these people seeking a better life (and when we say better, know that this is a very relative term). I didn't check Dubya addressing the nation on immigration (but I was ridiculously upset that he pushed back 24 a good 30 minutes. couldn't they have done this on another day, like Friday?). But I read all the requisite analyses the next day. My hunch? Niggas'll figure somethin out. This is one issue with an accessible middle-ground...I feel strongly about that.

Oddly enough, all that rambling was actually just a horribly roundabout preface for me reccommending a movie: Bread and Roses. It dramatizes what were real life events -- mexican immigrants march to get their cleaning jobs unionized. But it touched on so much else. There was the immigrant trying to work to go to school. The immigrant that used to prostitute herself in Tijuana to provide for her fam before coming to LA. It depicted how immigrants deal with an almost "less than human" status sometimes. There was a point where one of the cleaners said that the buisiness workers walk by him like "he's invisible." And I can't say that I'm much different. My nigga Brody is up in that bish and I like how he does what he does. Check the movie out. Even though it's not neccessarily dealing specifically with an immigrants struggle toward citizenship, it does offer a candid and accesible look at the lives of some of these immigrants. I'm no Ebert&Ropert or Jeffrey Lyons or Howard Kurtz or NY Times film critic, but I doubt you'll be dissapointed.

The Commish: coming soon...

I try not to do too many lists on the blog. Simply because I think it's a bit campy. But when there's something that I'm the World's Only Authority on, well, I gotta give it to you, which is why I did the top 7 hip-hop producers thing.

Recently, ESPN dropped a top 10 point guard list. It was very flawed. The rubes doing the voting must've been high, drunk or sedated. And then recently my nigga Chuck hit us with an email referencing the Larry Brown rumors and randomly decided to drop his own take on the top 10. Naturally it was more accurate than what came of ESPN's list from their slate of yahoos. When I responded with my biblical list, I told the crew that it wasn't up for discussion. But a few good questions were raised in response. The record needs to be set.

There is nothing in sports that I know better than point guards -- nothing. In the coming days I will post the top 10, fit with rambling, all-encompassing explanations that both confuse and enlighten. stay tuned....

The Bamboozling Muhammad Ali

I watched a SportsCenter segment on Floyd Patterson this morning and I was struck with an epiphany of sorts. Muhammad Ali was/is a harmful influence on me.

Doesn't that sound real extra? I know it does, but I really feel that way right about now. See, Ali is THE major figure for me when it comes to boxing before Sugar Ray Leonard. Not only does he dominate my version and recollection of boxing from his bout with Liston to the last Frazier fight and everything in between, but he's also dictated how I viewed the men he boxed. Everything he said I believed. I mean, really, I believed it from the first time I saw footage or heard tapes of him saying it, right up until today or I saw/heard evidence to dispute it. That's how overwhelming and magnificent his personality and mouth was. He spoke and acted like a deity.

So guess what? Liston was a big, stupid bear. Patterson was a disrespectful, jealous old-timer. Foreman was a vile goliath. And, Frazier, oh my...Frazier was everything negative, especially an Uncle Tom.

That was my version of those men. The version that Ali promoted. Only, that's what he was doing all along -- promoting. Except, his word/version was semi-biblical to me. Ali was/is that dude, that figure.

But I read now, I hear now; that Joe Frazier was the quintessential black man. The dude just trying to get his life lived. The man beloved in his neighborhood. The man that looked out for his people. Were their Tom elements to his interaction with the media? Probably. But what man of meager beginnings wouldn't seek to secure and develop a Good Guy image with the American public. Looking back, I can't fault Frazier for the stances he took, most notably the stance to somewhat take no stance at all. This wasn't OJ Simpson retreating/fleeing from the community and his roots. This was a man that probably didn't have that compelling of an opinion anyway. And essentially this was a man that was a good black man, pretty far from a Tom. But Ali was smart. And just as much as he was smart, he was also very much the opportunist and, in hindsight, perhaps a bit defeatus, hypocritical. Why would a man that claims adherance to principals and claims concern for the community skewer a good man with what he knows to be, at the very least, semi-false character-accusations?Why would you publicly call a black man a monkey and guerilla back then, when that was a seriously real viewpoint many Americans had about blacks? And, in a bizarre way, Ali was his own sort of Sambo. To write that actually made my heart skip a beat. But I watch footage of him and he's putting on a show. No, the joke was rarely on him. But there were times when I (in my newfound adult wisdom and insight) seem to view Ali as pandering. It makes me feel a lil warped.

I feelin a certain way, right now, and it's not good. My overall impression of Ali has changed a bit. He's still, probably, the greatest man of any sports figure. He's still sports greatest gangsta and best boxer. He's still Ali. But I watched the Patterson segment this morning and paused. I sat there with my legs crossed, holdin my cofee and paused. Like, "Hold up, you mean Patterson was actually a good guy." One of my favorite pictures is of Ali standing over Liston after he knocked him out. Ali is yelling/scowling at him. It's so gangsta. I could feel Ali's posture and his reaction. It was that black man angst and indignance coming out in a very raw form on a very grand stage and it was F'n awesome. But one of my favorite fights was the Patterson fight. You know, one that boxing historians call savage. Legend has it that Ali would bust the over-the-hill Patterson in the face and ask, "What's my name?" Because Patterson refused to call him Ali and kept calling him Clay. The great myth is that when Patterson would appear to waddle and be close to getting knocked out, Ali would uppercut him to keep him on his feet so that he could keep whoopin em. (NOTE: There's a documentary that chronicles Ali's early fighting days and his rise to the top. Precious stuff. Shows lots of television footage. Ali and Cossell, stuff like that. There's one scene where Ali is arguing with Cuiss Demato. Cuss is basically calling Ali a bum and saying that Patterson would've murdered him in Patterson's prime. And that, even though Patterson was a shell of himself, Ali was a sissy and couldn't even knock him out. This is another way to look at the fight. Was Ali keeping him up to prolong the punishment? Or was Ali simply not powerful to knock out an obstinant grizzly veteran?) That was always one of the quintessential boxing stories to me. And I always looked at the fight as exhibiting a personality/quality/character that many black people shared during those days which led to change. But I'm looking at that now and thinking to myself: Yes, Ali was indignant, as perhaps he should have been...but was he also be unjustifiably mean? Should I stop applauding that performance the way I do?

I know Ali is universally beloved, these days. But I sincerely think that's more on a bandwagon than on principle. Why do all these people love Ali? What changed. He had that same twinkle in his eye for his whole career, but people still found a way to hate this man. Now all of sudden you love him and he's your hero? Why, because he's harmless? But with that said, as I watch documentaries and specials and segments and I see how they portray the boxers that Ali railed against, I notice the victim brush that they paint them with. And I wonder: Is this some backhanded way to subliminally assasinate Ali's character and am I drinking the Kool-Aid? I wonder that, but I don't believe that. Ali, I think, could be a jerk at times. A great jerk, an entertaining jerk, a (somehow) noble jerk -- but a jerk. Never to be hated or excoriated, but a jerk. And most of all, a persuasive jerk. That's what this all about...about the fact that Ali was so persuasive and so captivating that I had pegged good men as bad men. Think about that. A crime lies within that.

One of the ironies of all this is how, to a man, these men that Ali skewered, all forgive him in the end. I tend to think it's out of pity. If Ali was still prettier and faster-talking and quicker-witted than Frazier and Patterson and Foreman, I believe it'd be another story. But still. Sometimes I see a footage of Frazier with him arm around the Parkinsons Ali and feel bad that I felt certain ways about Frazier. And when I saw footage, this morning, of Patterson coming up to Ali at some banquet and giving Ali, seated and shaking, a hug and kiss on the head, I thought: "Shame on you Ali." You gotta think that inside he feels a sting in the pit of his stomach over some of that stuff. You might think that their forgiveness hurts him even more.

Ali is still my No. 3 nigga (Magic, Jim Brown, Ali). There's no changing that place. And ultimately, I think no less of him. I'm just glad that, now, I think much, much more of the other men.

I'm a Floridan now. Booooo.

I don't know what I thought coming down here to Florida. I mean, sooner or later it was bound to happen. I'd have to go and get my car registered and get some Florida plates and get a Florida's drivers license. I was dreading that day, though, because that would be the day I became a Floridian. Well, it's official now -- I'm a Floridian.

Don't diminish the effect that this has had on my psyche. I still find it hard to concede any validity to someone who grew up below Northern Virginia. It's silly and ridiculous, but I'm not the only one plagued with this delusion, though, so don't judge me.

My Pops used to say things like, "Man that country nigga don't know what he talkin bout." Didn't matter what the person said half the time, all they needed was a drawl.

So, as I kept moving further South, I grew more shamed. For a while, I used to feel unjust pride whenever I pulled out my NY drivers license in DC. It was like "That's right. I'm from up north. I'm cooler and smarter than you." Soon, though, the Strict grew on me. By the time I got my Maryland drivers license and tags, I wasn't too upset...but there was still that feeling of, "Yo, I'm not a New Yorker anymore." That drivers license identified me being almost southern. Sometimes I wanted to give people my life story when I whipped it out. Ya know:

"Sir can I see your I.D.?"
"Sure, here it is. But as you can see, I just got that recently. I'm actually from up north. I don't walk through public places without shoes on."

I'd usually digress because I didn't want a situation like,

"Well I may be from the south, but at least I'm not a fat boy." or "Well I maybe country, but at least I can grow a mustache." At which I'd drop my 40 oz. St. Ide's and run out the store. But the knee-jerk inclination to explain away my new southern identity was always there.

But like I said, the DC metro area is a great place. So I never really felt like cutting myself when I got the requisite Maryland identity indicators. That changed when I moved to Florida.

I generally feel like Florida is the wackest state in the Union. I feel that way because 1.) It shouldn't be wack; and 2.) for some reason, people think that it isn't wack.

Sure, South Florida -- specifically South Beach -- is magnificent; Orlando has its perks -- Disney, Universal and couple cool neighborhoods; and here in Tampa Bay there's Clearwater Beach and Hyde Park. But that's it. You're not getting much else out of me.

Over the past year I had four Florida instances that were semi-epiphanic and most definitely telling of why Florida is the wackest state in the Union and why it pains me that I have a Florida's driviers license and have to drive around with Florida tags.

- When i first moved to Florida last summer, I was big on "getting to know the real Florida" This meant that when ever I was driving home from a road trip or my travels took me anywhere that wasn't urban, I'd try to stop off and take in the scene. Get a keen look at places that weren't Miami, Orlando, Tampa Bay or some beach. I'd think about ducking into a remote gas station; maybe slide into some smallish diner and order a cup of coffee and some apple pie; roll into some dive bar and kop a beer. I'd always get cold feet, though. As some of you may not know, most of un-urban Florida is straight up deep-south, hickville to the bone and I was always weary of puttin my nigga-life on the line.

One day, I was feeling sassy, a bit brave and overwhelmed with irrevrance. I was driving home from some spot that my co-workers dragged me too. My tour guide and I got seperated on the way home so at some point, it was just me and this stupid dumb, pitch black road. About 25 miles from my hood I approached this bar on the right side of the road. The bar was actually a trailer made into a bar. Don't remember what it was called. Just a month earlier I had an experience where I walked into a bar and some dude gave me the finger -- didn't know anything about me besides I wasn't from round his parts and my skin was darker than his his. that motivated him to tell me to go have sex with myself. I vowed I wouldn't let that be the last time I walked in a spot like that, though. So, this time I walked in and sat at a lonely end of the bar and ordered a Bud. If I got accosted or berated or dirty looks, I wouldnt do this again. If my experience was pleasant I would keep giving this New Experiences Mission a few tries. Secretly, I was hoping that I'd get treated unfairly so I could reconcile the cowardly decision to swear off meeting Real America.

That's when an old man with green-brown teeth (he had about seven of them), saddled up next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. He smiled. I remember surveying the room in a split-second, getting my bearings and trying to feel the overall pulse. Who was looking at me? How were they looking at me? Was anyone whispering? Where people minding their business? If they were minding their business then I was cool. If I was the center of attention then it was bout to get nervous.

The ol' man with the breen teeth gave me one of those patronizing, quick shoulder massages, tapped me on my back, looked at the bartender and said, "Put that beer on'ma tab." I'm thinking to myself, "Why?" He answered that question a hot second later. "Now you finish that beer and then go on head and leave. We want you to get in that car and don't stop again until you get where you gotta go." I told the bartender that I was good on the ber and left. On the drive home I wasn't shaken up. I wasn't even upset. I just remember thinking: This is what most of this state is like. It's not that I'm unwelcome everywhere, but 75% of Florida is backwoods. How is that not wack?

And the way this state has been populated, there seem to be random patches of backwoods sprinkled all over the place. Or shoudl I say, random pacthces of urbanity sprinkled everywhere. Up north and the midwest. You usually have a city in the epicenter with suburbs that surround the city. Only once you past the burbs do you get to rural areas. It's not like that here. You can be driving through a city, past a stop-light and all of sudden it smells like maneur and you hear animals moo-ing.

- One afternoon in December I was walking across a high school campus trying to find the auxilarry room that the kids from the student newspaper had moved to. I had missed the class for a couple weeks and didn't want to seem ridculously negligent. I was already late and coming from an interview so I had on khakis and a dress shirt, I wasn't feeling too comfortable.

I walked briskly, or should I say I wandered, meandered briskly. I had about 15 minutes left to make a showing and try to say something insightful. In the meantime, I kept battling off this white-hot rage that kept trying to overtake me. That's when it hit me like Earl Campbell: I have a borderline-murderous disdain for Florida weather. Here it was December and it was, like, 88 degrees. This went on for a stretch of days.

A lot of people don't know this, but morbidly obese people sweat a lot. I happen to be the .0087604% that don't sweat as much as the other pigs that sweat an inordinate amount. But I still sweat a lot. Maybe you don't see it on my brow and I may not be wheezing like Tony Soprano, but trust that under the garments, i'm tricklin. This just doesn't jive with a state that never really gives you a true reprieve from the sun. Even when its 70s, you're so close to the equator that it feels like the sun is smothering you, like the way you feel when someone, say maybe your father, is looking over your shoulder while you read a magazine and he's chewing granola really loud or, say maybe your mother, asking you where you're going and launching into dramatic maternal concern over the friend you're leaving with. Florida sun can drive a nigga like me to insane depths of complaining and oneriness.

There's just something really unauthentic about a place that never undergoes nature's natural seasonal shifts. True, I leave people voicemails in January, letting them no that it's 71 degrees, sunny and i got my sun-roof open. I appreciate those moments. But I have far too many moments like my moment on Springstead campus.

I finally found the room. The kids laughed cause I looked a mess. I didn't mind. Not until I sat down. That's when a few beads of sweat trickled down my ballsack (sorry Mom) and swayed there like a pendulum for a moment. I just closed my eyes, pursed my lips and clinched the stack of papers in my hand. At that moment I wished Florida weather was a real person, so I could wack him in the chops and spit some real foamy saliva in his face.

I couldn't though. I had to take it. 10 minutes later the AC had cooled off my shirt and pants, but they were still damp with fat-sweat. I was standing in front of the class with my arm extended against the wall like Kramer when he was modeling the Calvin Klein underwear. Next thing you know I dropped my arm and felt that freezing/damp fabric against my skin. I made "The Oh Face". Embarrasing? Yes. Maddenning? You don't even know.

- In Buffalo, we have six kinds of animals: dangerous dogs, stray dogs, mangy cats, squirrels, sparrows and huge rats that gnaw through your garbage cans. That's it. Every once in a blue moon, Pops might spot a bluejay on some tree-limb and he'd get hysterical. "Children! Children! Children! Look! Look! Look! Awe man...that blue jay is awesome! Look at how bright blue that bird is! Awe man!" I used to think: Wait, the bird is magnificent, ture, but are you gonna act like a giddy school girl now?

I think that bluejay was the only bird of color in the whole city and it would just fly around making appearances. He probably liked Butler Ave because my father would go bananas, like a bluejay groupie.

When it came to the animal Kingdom, Buff was severly lacking. Even our Zoo sucked. It was like the size of a Super Wal-Mart (and I'm a huge Zoo fan)...pathetic.

So coming down to Florida can be somewhat amazing. In the end, though, it's just bizarre and actually fairly annoying. The first few times I saw some derivative of a swan crossing the street, I was taken aback. Splendid, I thought, this Florida ecosystem is the dookie. But soon, the fact that you'd be driving on SR-50 and see some exotic bird prancing across some brown grass strewn with garbage in the middle of the road, breathing in pick-up truck exhaust was just stupid, and sad. This would be fine if I lived in some exotic oasis or in some tropical country. But I live in Spring Hill, Florida.

Still, nothing is worse than the little lizards that crawl around everywhere. They look like lil raptors. And they're everywhere. They're harmless, but everywhere. And if you don't watch it, they show up places they're not supposed to be.

One afternoon, as I was getting ready for work, I headed out to my living room to put on my steps. I look over at my blue jean Chucks and this frikkin lizard is posted on the F'n white leather tip of my friggin blue-jean Chucks. Just posted there, froze, probably scared, because as an animal he can hear the almost inaudibly high pitch tone of the steam escaping the pores of my skin. My fist clinch up like I'm ready to punch this lil lizard in his face.

I calmed down instead. First I scanned the room to see if he brought a party with him. It seemed, however, as if he was flying solo in my abode. So, for some reason, I thought that opening the door would be the move. Like he was a fly in my car and I could just roll down the window or something. To get to the door, however, I had to move closer to the lizard and since the lizard is deathly afraid of humans, he keeps moving further and further away from the door. So I'm scramblin now. Don't know what to do. I gotta get this lizzard out my crib. I can deal with a roach, a mouse, a flamingo, but not a lizard. I was just not willing to compromise on that. At this point, my only option was the usher him into my second room that I use to store boxes, hang my gym clothes and keep empty luggae and seldom used shoes. I only resigned to this decision after several feeble attempts to play the angles and get him moving back of the direction of the door, like, I was Larry Bird and I was playing angle-defense to funnel James Worthy into a trap on the baseline. The lizard would not go for it. That bish was bright.

I got the lizard in the room, though, shut the door, locked the door and sealed the cracks with towels. I was gonna suffocate and starve that nigga to death.

Days later, I bought some chicken-sushi from Wal-Mart. Doesn't that just sound stupid to you? Well, I did it. As the night wore on, my stomach started letting me know that buying chicken-sushi from Wal-Mart might be the quintessential bonehead purchase of the new millenium. I went to bed grimmacing that night. I remember being in the stage where you're dozing in-n-out of sleep, about to get into some real nice heavy zzz's. I was thinking, "I'm gonna have a nightmare tonight, I should've nevr watched Kiss the Girls." Ever since my nigga Dubb told me that eating too late or spicy food before bed gives you nightmares, I try to never fall asleep full or with an upset stomach. But my hands were cuffed.

Next thing you know I'm into some deep sleep. And the dream sequences begin. The final one put me in my crib. It was time to go to the gym, so I opened the door to my other room to get my clothes. But as soon as I even cracked the door, a huge Jurrassic Park raptor leaped out and started clawing my face and steppin real hard on my crotch. I remember saying something outlandishly random like, "Oh no you didn't grow up this fast!" That lil nigga lizard messed around grew up to be a raptor. That's when I awoke suddenly, sweatin like a fat-bish, panting like a fatter-bish. Straight petrified. See, I know very little about anything besides music, sports, english, pop-culture, what a girl wants and sociology. Anything remotely close to science and I'm a dunce. That means animals. I couldn't tell u a poodle from a pit bull or why it rains. About the only scientific facts I know for sure is that the earth is flat and we breath in carbohydrates and we breath out oxidents. That's it. That's as scientific as i get. I had no idea if that lizard was gonna get bigger and turn into a baby gator or somethin.

Now that I was conscious, I decided to man up and go check on the lizard, see what he was up to. Had he gnawed through all my books, had me a home out a pair of my Timberlands? I was hopin I'd open the door and that bish would be belly up on one of my air mattresses, dead from hunger or carpet poisoning. Only, as I got closer to the door I went out like a pussy cat, "What if I open the door and he darts out and I can't find him and he'll be milling around my room every night, maybe try to hop on my bed and crawl in my ear when sleep?" I turned around and said I'll give him a couple more days.

It's been three weeks since i shut the lizard into that room and sealed the door with cheap towels. I haven't opened the door since. And that's what Florida and its wild animals will do to a nigga. Not only do you have to deal with driving down four lane streets, wrestling with dualing feelings of amazement and sorrow at some exotic bird steppin over an empty can of Red Bull. Not only do you have to kick your screen door at night to make sure reptile isn't lurking near the handle. But, now, i'm a prisoner in my own crib because some lizard wanted to infiltrate The Dude's castle. My gym clothes hang on the shower rail in my other bathroom nowadays and I, out of the blue, thought it'd be cool to read Native Son again, but I couldn't, because my box of books are in the lizard's room now. Eff Florida and that licnese in my left pocket.

- Whenevr you live in a place where the majority of the people were around the same age as Elvis when he died, it puts a weird spin on the community. No matter where you go in Florida, you can't escape the seniors. It's not possible. They're in your neighborhood, at your 7-11 buying bubble gum (what r u a kid, now?), they're in your cafe and they're on your road.

Really, if we were to take the bad driver stereotypes -- asians, broads, drunks -- it's really not true wht they say. For the most part, those things are fine on the road. We're dealing with a whole other species when we start broaching the subject of seniors on the road. Roads can entropically spiral toward mayhem when seniors are out between the time they wake up at 4am, until they retire for the day at 6pm, a couple hours after they've eaten dinner.

This Spring I was headed to run a few errands and hit the gym before heading to work. It was a bright, sunshiney day, I pull out of my hood and start heading south down US-19, a busy thoroughfare with four lanes on each side. As I'm moseying down US-19 at an average spped, maybe 55 mph, I notice a car behind me in the rear-view. I switch to the slow lane. This lane can be perilous because it means you have to watch for old people making right turns out strip mall lots. Danger. In fact, in big cities the far left lane on highways is the HOV lane. In Florida, the far right lane on busy streets is the Senior Lane. I rarely see a regular person driving in these lanes.

About 5 miles from the bank, you get to the huge Target strip mall witha Target, a publix, a Home Depot, a Chilis, Applebees, Steak-n-Shake and a bunch of other smaller stores. It's a very busy lot. You can either exit the lot at the two opposite ends that have traffic lights or the one in the middle where street/business planners trust drivers to make sound judgement. For some reason, seniors like to use the non-traffic light exit and it always baffles me as to why they do it. Is it a late-life crisis? Are they trying to prove a point? Is this the late-life version of purchasing a convertible? If you were to sit at this mall-exit for 3 straight hours, you'd hear a loud horn-honking about once every three minutes, usually related to a poor senior exiting that resulted in something near fatal.

It was my turn that day. Wasn;t nearly the first senior experience and definitely wasnt the last, just the most harrowing. Grandpa decided to jerk out into the lane with ABSOLUTELY no regard for oncoming traffic. I slammed on my break (tire screeching and all) and careened into the next lane to my left, to avoid rear-ending Gramps. That cause the oncoming car to my rear-left to do something similar, which cause the car in the next lane over to violently jet to the left forcing the car in the fourth lane in the grassy medium where he ran over some orange cones and probably blew his shocks.

Here's where it's gets incensing. I pressed my horn so hard that the air-bag was probably about to come out. Either that or my palm wouldve went through the wheel. I gnashed my teeth so hard that I had something that resembled porcelain residue on my gums. Out of all the oblivious senior moves I've encountered in my year here in Florida, this one took the four-tiered German Sweet Chocolate cake. But as I pull up beside the car to glare at, who absolutely knew to be a senior, the old man seemed genuinely unaware that anything happened besides him exiting the lot after picking up some lox and cream cheese. He had his glaucoma shades on and appeared to be in his own world. I nearly blew 17 gaskets.

When us humans get mad, amny times we like to let others know we're mad, especially the object that made us mad. And when we let that object know we're mad, we want some type of response from the object, no matter if it's an inanimate object. If i stub my toe on a table leg, I'm gonna kick that table leg and quietly curse it. If the table leg doesn;t respond, well that makes more angry.

In most regions, when someone does something stupid on the road and someone drives up next to them to give them the finger or shout obscenities or a threatening stare down; two things either happen, 1.) the person in the wrong stares straight ahead, which is a sheepish way to acknowledge they were wrong. And you'll be able to tell in the profile that they know they just did something fabulously boneheaded. or, 2.) the person in the wrong takes humbrage with your reaction and curses back or generally behaves just as juvenile and without decorum. And, there's one more, sometimes the person may notice that the driver who's life nearly ended reacts calmly and civilized. in these cases, the doofus driver usually might mouth some apology or don some really contrtite facial expression.

But only in Florida do you deal with the seniors who 100 times out 100 never even realize that they almost caused a 100-car collision and this happens 100 times a day. I know this is taken years off my life. It's like what Marvin says on Anger off his Hear My Dear album,

Anger, can make you old, yes it can
I said anger, can make you sick, children
Anger destroys your soul

These seniors are gonna destroy my soul, ain't they Marvin?!?!?!?!!!

What made that day even worse is that I got the gym and had to wait for 77-Sue to slide off the treadmilled, dressed in her Sunday's best, because seniors were up in that bish like locust. Which circles back to the warped sense of community in most of Florida. The fact is, seniors want no part of a community. They don't talk, don't care. At that point in their lives, the world is small, just like it is during the toddler stage.


So, no, I'm not a huge fan of Florida. I won't front. Life is good if you live in South Florida or in the few cool neighborhoods of Orlando, Tampa, St. Pete or Clearwater. There, you run into a few less seniors trying to take your ife on the road. Your trips through the backwoods are less frequent. There's less of a chance that a lizard might comandeer your second room, grow into a Raptor and so the soldier-stomp on your crotch. And the berating heat is offset by cafes, good restuarants, young people and sidewalks (don't even get me started). Living in Florida is far from living in Alabama, like I said, Florida is the wackest state because it shouldnt be wack at all.

Still, everytime I have to take out my license to write a check, pay for alchohol or get on a plane, I'll be overcome with square feelings.

I think my sis Lyd summed it when I msg'd her and a few others about finally getting a Florida license and the accompanying feelings. She text'd me back a few minutes later not trying to lessen the blow whatsoever...

"Oh my God! A Florida license! LOL. That's so lame!!!"