A Couple Things XIV

until my forthcoming novel blog

-- My DC post is definitely coming, as is my Commish stamped point guard list. I feel a Music Dude post is in order soon.

-- One of the reason I absolutely LOVE Florida, is because we have hurricanes here. I LOVE these life and property threatening storms. Florida is so dope. Anyways...Albert is upon us. Havent been outside, yet...but Albert sounds like he's trying to get frisky. In a couple minutes I'm venturing out there. But I'm a soldier, so I'm good. One good thing is that its only 78 degrees outside.

-- I'm finally on myspace.com...I'm vinnytwist...so go add me as a friend if u haven't already. I guess it's a fairly cool site and for others -- school age kids, people wookin for wove -- it's probably incredible. Either way, I think it's up there with Tivo and the ipod as the most important developments of the new millenium.

-- The Sunday night I was in DC, I bit into a piece of chicken an felt a sharp pain shoot from my jaw through my body. This pain was so strong that it made my knees buckle. This pain was so strong it managed its way through the numbness of a day full of drinking alchohol. The next day it returned and worsened, to the point I had to visit the dentist on some emergency steez last Wednesday.

Remember that cavity in one of my wisdom teeth? Yeah, the one they diagnosed months ago? Well I procrastinate on important things like the longer I wait, the greater the reward. Except its about as opposite as that can get. Point is, the cavity decayed down to the nerve and got infected. They put me on penicilin and Vicatin. The pain has subsided, almost to the point where I might be able to rationalize puttin off the surgery, but I'm forcing myself into that office tomorrow. Not that I'm fleeing from pain (its not really painful at all)...just that I'd rather sleep, or work, or watch Blankman on HBO than be sittin in some chair...but it needs to get done.

-- Last week I had a nice novel blog all written up on my VIP sessions in Miami clubs with my niggas Claudy. It was tale of how different the music and mentalities of men and women are down south. How men are 10 times more mysogonistic in the South and how women -- partly from conditioning, partly from reacting to the mysogony -- are submissive in a deviant way. It was like a different world...an entertaining world, in a subversive way, but very different. By the end of the nights, I was expecting to see men pooring champagne down the front of some of the chicks' dresses and yanking their hair. It's a rap music thing, straight up.

But for real -- different world. They played nothing but Southern music: Rick Ross, Pimp C, Yung Joc, Jeezy and of course TI. The one time they played Jadakiss, the VIP room got a lil testy. Hiphop has changed, yall. The South runs ish. Atlanta is the new NYC and Southerners can mush Yankess in the hiphop face like we're cornballs...it's odd and wrong. Nobody up North has the cajones to let these clowns know what's what -- only some old skool preacher like KRS or golden-age owner like Nas or new school judge like Lupe voice dissenting views, but theyre viewed as haters or judgemental...so be it. But those nights in the Miami clubs were almost shocking...it was like "Wow, the blance of power has officially shifted in a very real way."

-- The Sports Journalism Institute was going on this past week. Its something where my parent company Poynter, invites some promising young minority journalist to St. Pete and they put them thru a journalism boot camp of sorts. My nigga GLee was in the spot helping out...he's like the uber-mentor for a lot of 25-below journalist. I used to work with him when I was newsaiding with the Post. He was a high schools editor back then. Now he's like, third in charge at the Boston Globe, doin his thing in a real way. We got up Sunday night and all the SJI kids were there, too.

It's where I met two pleasant kids from Fresno State. I told them that back in 04, i met a guy named Nathan Hathaway, who went to Fresno. It was during the summer when we were both interning at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Nathan was a Mormon. Nathan was one of the most genuine, nice dudes I had ever met. I mean, just all around pleasant. He was always interested in getting to know people, getting to know about things. He's one of the people I was glad I met that summer. Nathan also had a scar that started toward his forehead and went back across his scalp. It was from surgery. I can't remember the specifics, but something happened to Nate's brain when he was a young kid. Maybe he had aneurism, I believe. Anyway, I remember us all sittin at Will's (another intern who lived in Atlanta) crib near Emory...just kickin it. Will and his roomies threw a lil party. At some point, I started on some Good Life rant and Nate was fascinated. We mustve kicked it about that for a good 30 minutes. Then talks to turned to his scar and Nate took us on this emotional journey to what happened, how recovered and how he's dealt with it all his life. Dude was just such a good kat, for real.

Anyways, while at Wet Willies this past Sunday, I'm chattin up the two kids from Fresno and start tellin them how I know Nate -- expecting that knew who Nate was, since he was the editor of the college paper his last year in school. They both knew him. But then the girl, a cute lil Asian number, dropped the worse news of the year on me. Nate died in January. I almost dropped my drink. Apparently he had a seizure and went into a coma and never came out.

Are you serious, right now? I mean, really. Of all the people to go prematurely, Nate was not supposed to be that dude, especially after homeboy did all that fighting. And especially since the kat was such a good dude. Worse news of the year.