Twistinado

Music in 2008: A Music Dude review

2009-01-07T11:55:00.003-05:00

No intro needed...littered with typos, here's a look back at music in 2008 for your casual consumption as we kick off '09...

Most Poignant Example That Black Music Is Underappreciated: My favorite album of the year and the best album of the year is Q-Tip's The Renaissance. There have been many grown-up hop albums that are often actually hop albums struggling to grow up. Q-Tip's newest joint is the most effortlessly grown album ever. From the subject matter to the vibe to the production to the artist, it was an album whose target audience was grown people with grown taste. If my little cousin Kadara (17, i think) said she didn't like the the Tip album, I'd say, "That's cool. He didn't make it for you." If my little sister P (27) said she didn't like Tip's album, I'd disown her. The Renaissance is like Black on Both Sides, if Black on Both Sides were made by a Gen-Xr in his 30s in 2008 for fellow Gen-Xrs in the year 2008. Yet, you won't find this classic album on any of the year-end top 10s and it didn't garner ONE Grammy-nod. I have this theory that black artists suffer from the fact that black artistry is not truly appreciated in their music. You either have to be ultra-bombastic or ultra-popular to get recognition from fans and critics. Subtlelty, vibe and creativity is a an avenue that typically only white artists are priviledged to drive on. Keep in mind that, in the nearly 10 years between 1999's Amplified and 2008's Renaissance, Tip made Kamaal The Abstract. If you never heard or heard of Kamaal The Abstract, it's because Tip's label at the time, Arista, never released it. It's one of those hybrid black music albums that featured heavy doses of jazz, hop, soul and rock all fused into one composite entity that me and my boys coined Bridge Music (I wrote about it on our old music website). The album predated Andre 3000's Love Below and Mos Def's New Danger, Common's Electric Circus and everything from Cee-Lo's pre-Gnarls cuts to K-Os, etc. The album is astounding in ways that can't be articulated. But unlike rock and indie artists that are allowed to stretch out and create and boundary-push, Tip's label deemed that the public wouldn't dig this new music...and I mean that literally, it was basically the first sull manifestation of a brand new genre of music. Think about how groundbreaking that is! The thing is, Arista was half-right. Much of Tip's audience would have scoffed. Joints like Kamaal The Abstract and, germane to 2008, The Renaissance are the richest examples of black music, so it annoys me that these albums are generally ignored. I'm urging all of you to kop Tip's album (lord knows we don't have to pay for it) and listen to this joint and then tell your friends and then go see Tip in concert and do all that is entailed with supporting great art. Tip made this for us.

One Is A Rock Star, The Other is Literally The Corniest Human Being Alive: Did you hear Carter III? Of course you did. Weezy gets down. Did you see his performance on SNL? Of course you did, Weezy gets down (I need that SNL version of Lollipop in my life). Did you hear 808s and Heartbreak? Of course you did. Kanye goes in, this we can't contest. Did you see his pious, profoundly nauseating performance on SNL where he tried to mimick Chris Martin and Bono, while turning a vocal performance that was worse than the worst karaoke performance you've ever seen? One of these days, I'm gonna break into his LA studio and beat him over the head with his Auto-tone machine.

I'm Not A Hipster, But I Dig These Dudes: MGMT, I dig these dudes. I don't dig the whole album, but I dig these dudes because they made "Electric Feel", which is probably the most accessible of the cuts. It's the kind of song that slays me. And if you don't know (they probably don't know either); they can only make a song like that because Parliament/Funkadelic came before them. It sounds like a weirded out MJ tune, a little further out than some of Timberlake's stuff on FutureSex...but the way the track marches and chants forward, that's so P-Funk.

Proof That The New Generation is a Wack Generation: Yeah, I'm on that "old man ish"...when me and my nigs were growing up, you could be a Tribe or Mobb or Wu or Nas or Kast and get love from your peers and teenagers. I was a teen when Illmatic and 36 Chambers and 93 Til Infinity dropped. We actually LIKED dope hip hop. Nowadays, a young man like Black Milk drops Tronic and nobody under 25 is pumpin it unless they're with their older brother or cousin. And Milk is 23! Tronic might be the greatest ehibition of production prowess we've witnessed this decade...and this is a decade that gave us Fantastic Vol. 2, Madvillainy, Mama's Gun, American Gangster and Late Registration. The kind of robotic funk that Dilla started on Trinity and shaped more on Rough Draft (my boy Trav called it industrial which is probably the illest way I've heard it described way), he diverged from it when he made The Shining, like he dropped one toy and picked up another one. But Young Milk took those parts put it on a Motown assembly line (again shouts to Trav) made some kind of one-man rocket and took off to the cosmos. "Bounce" turns me into a caserole. "Give The Drummer Some" breathes so effin hard. And yet, only some old head like me digs it. The weird thing is that Milk gives you some of that same pointless swag that wacksters like Yung Berg and Plies drip with, except he does it in a hip-hop way, with classic production. Oh well. All I'm saying is that one day I'm gonna crash my car listening to "Hell Yeah".

If I Can Listen to Two Acts Right Now: I'd choose Muhsinah and J*Davey. Davey dropped in '07, Muhsinah rushed me in '08. I reviewed Muhsinah's EP Daybreak here. She's like an accessible Georgia Anne Muldrow. She's heavy enough to extract the prettiest melody from Pharoah Sander's 32-minute "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and coo "Once Again." She's a singer-songwriter-producer that is creating music thick as Pam Grier in the 70s.

Are You Kidding Me?: I'll never forget driving down Wilshire in L.A. and hearing Fellie Fell say the following: "This is a brand new hot joint from M.I.A. -- 'Paper Planes'!" Brand new?!?!!!! That album (Kala) came out in the summer of 2007! I thought I was late when I first got hip last winter! Then the Apatow gang uses the joint for Rogen's Pineapple Express commercials and I got my little brother asking me to forward him "that new M.I.A. joint." Insane.

Is She The New Mary J?: Every generation of females needs an artist whose voice and lyrics express the angst and anger that comes from living in James Brown's world, right? Gen X had Sade and Mary J. Well, there are artists that have, collectively, carried Sade's torch. Sade's music was reflective and moody and, in relative terms, quaint. Women like India Arie and Jill Scott inhabit that world these days. But -- and here comes some good ol' classic Vince stereotyping -- what about the greater sect. Sade sold millions, but we can all agree that not every 14 to 34-year-old in the 90s and early 00s was digging on Love Deluxe and Lovers Rock. But I can pretty much guarantee you they dug CD-skips into 411, My Life, Share My World, and Mary. Lauryn Hill seemed poised to grab that mantle and then ascend to strata that would make her one of the 50 Greatest artists of all time, regardless of genres. Unfortunately, she succumbed to whatever forces have put her on mute for the past 7 or 8 years. So Mary has continued to drop albums and womankind has continued to dig them, but, I'm sorry, those joints suck. It's not good music. I remember hanging with my friend one night and she put on Mary's Breakthrough for me, attempting to convince that Mary still made good music. Each track sucked, but she dug the snot of them. I just remember thinking, "Man, these women need a new Mary." Well, enter Jazmine Sullivan. I first heard Sullivan's "Need You Bad" this summer as I was standing outside a sneaker shop on Broadway in Manhattan. It kinda floored me. Then came "Bust Your Windows" which, as a man, didn't really impress me, but sounded exactly like something that would take off with women. Then her album, Fearless, dropped and, one by one, most ladies I talked to said the "loved" her album. I never want May to stop making music. If Madonna and her Oscar De La Hoya Arms can continue to drop albums, then so should Mary, she's a legend. But maybe a woman like Jazmine can inch Mary's Oprah-music off heavy-rotation a little bit. If I hear "Just Fine" one more time, my nuts are gonna fall off.

Two 2007 Albums That I Pumped Relentlessly in 2008: I'm gonna go to Sweden, impregante Yukimi Nagano and make us some Anthony Knights. Seriously, I'm gonna lover her down and seed some afro-asians. Little Dragon's self-entitled album dropped in September of 2007 (I wrote a review on it for All Music) and it has stayed in heavy-rotation. One day, I'm gonna make a short film about two young mutes falling in love and this will be the soundtrack...this and Miles' Nefertiti. A few months after Saul Williams gave the world The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust in November of 2007. If there were a such thing as predominantly black raves, this is what we'd play. I'm craaaaaaazy late on this. But I remember pumping this joint on the NJ Transit and when I took of my earphones, my ears were bleeding, it was a good bleed though. If it's black-rave-music ("DNA" "Banged And Blown Through", it's also black-protest-music ("Raised To Be Lowered"). One final note: I'm gonna throw a party just to drop "World On Wheels" and you better dance.

The Album That Takes on Great Significance Based On Recent News: When it first dropped, I dug The Root's Rising Down, but didn't love (although my boys did). "Get Busy" got really busy, making it on to most my playlists (especially the slept on Peedi Crack); "I Will Not Apologize" was slick; the album was dope. But then I heard The Roots were no longer gonna record and only periodically tour because they signed on to be Jimmy Fallon's house band when he takes over the Late Late Show when Conan takes over for Leno. The Roots -- since I became aware of them with 1994's Do You Want More -- have held me down. Not one wack album in the whole discography. Their worst album, Tipping Point, is slept on. And, for a swan song, Rising Down is stupendous. I'm hoping however, that Fallon falls flat on his smirky face and The Roots can resume.

Hardest Working Man in the Rap Business: Blu dropped Johnson and Johnson with Main Frame AND dropped the gem that was CRAC Knuckle's Piece Talks with my dude Ta'Raach. Both albums were stellar. The CRAC Knucks was my fav album for a good six weeks.

I Know They're Different, But...: This chick Adele is no Amy Whinehouse. How this chick gets all the acclaim for 19 just irks me. But people support her and I can dig that, since she is, at least, an artist. Meanwhile, Muhsinah and Georgia Anne Muldrow might as well being throwing tennis balls against the wall.

Other Albums That Tickled My Ears: Portishead's Third, Dwele's Sketches of A Man (this might be a classic), Badu's New Amerykah, NERD's Seeing Sounds, Gnarls Barkley's Odd Couple, Nas' Unlreased Nigger Album (the mixtape, not the untitled, more watered down label release).

RIP Freddie Hubbard

2009-01-07T11:53:00.000-05:00

A lot of important, influential, famous people died in '08. Hometown legend Tim Russert was, perhaps, the most celebrated. George Carlin's passing hit me in a weird way, since I had recently started studying a lot of his performances. I wish my brain was as sharp as his was. But, by far, the death that hit home the most was Freddie Hubbard's recent passing.

Freddie died a couple days ago. He was a jazz musician, played some of the most stellar trumpet in the history of mankind, dropped classic albums in three different eras and, could arguably be considered hip-hop's most sampled jazz artist. If he isn't, he's right up there with Herbie, Miles and Donald Byrd in terms of hop's go-to jazz musicians. I am positive that Red Clay -- Freddie's most popular and influential album -- is the most sampled jazz album of all-time. Most famously, Tribe pulled the bass-drum-keys rhythm from the head of Red Clay's title track. What bugs me about this is that the obits in the big papers don't mention this, which is criminal. Anytime a musician has a profound effect on the foundation of a brand new genre, specifically the forward-thinking production we heard on Native Tongue recordings, then that needs to be mentioned near the top of his obit since it makes him more than just a giant in his own genre.

That's thing about Freddie, though. He's maligned. He started off as a prodigious young voice in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (tho he was overshadowed by Wayne Shorter who happens to be, probably, the greatest songwriter in jazz history). Then he dropped a string of albums as a bandleader -- Ready For Freddie being my favorite -- that showcased what was an unparalleled expertise on his horn (tho, for all the greatness of that music, it seem staid when compared to what the Miles Quintet was doing at the time). Then he dropped two early 70s albums -- Red Clay and Straight Life -- that are among the greatest albums ever made...in all of music. Freddie is one of those jazz artists that can give you some cred with me. If namedrop Freddie (or Billy Harper or Joe Henderson or Tony Williams, etc) and have a working knowledge of his discog, then I know that you aren't one of the zillion jazz impostors out here that simply SAY they dig jazz. What happened to Freddie, though, is that, by the mid-70s, he was making some fairly corny albums. I say that with a heavy heart, but it was true. Even still, there were some gems on those joints.

As I write, I'm listening to "Kuntu" off of Liquid Love. It's a storied album around these parts, an album my Pops sold when he was a young father in a financial bind then spent years trying to track down. But because Columbia hadn't re-released much of Freddie's mid-late 70s catalog, it remained unattainable. (This was before EVERYTHING was koppable on mininova, isohunt, itunes or some pirate-blog). At any rate, my boy Rek tracked down the elusive vinyl copy about six or seven years ago, had it transferred to CD and dropped it on us during one of our sessions. I think my Pops' brain burst. I went into a coma. The track has this afro-cuban rhythm with Freddie going berserk on top. Liquid Love stands out as a tremendous effort in the midst of a bunch of duds. Freddie's labels, chiefly CTI, wanted to make pop-jazz and Freddie followed suit, often with disastrous results. Then, Freddie busted up his top-lip and lost his chops, had trouble blowing his horn in his later years. I just think that the stupid four or five year period in the 70s unjustly mars an incredible career.

Whenever I listen to The Black Angel's title track I swoon -- same thing with "Sky Dive". Straight Life's "Mr. Clean" is filthy. Freddie's rollin on "Far Away" off Breaking Point. He may not have emoted and influenced like Miles or created new language and vocabulary like Satchmo and Diz, but Freddie could do ANYTHING on that horn. He'd probably win a game of Trumpet HORSE on his horn...and he made great music for a good 20 years. He deserves a better eulogy than what he got.

Brazen Street Beggars

2008-09-06T17:48:00.001-04:00

As Hurrican Havana related tropical storms rain away my Saturday in NYC, allow me a long, senseless moment to talk about a new breed of street beggars...

One of the most unique, random aspects of minority life in America is the mutual public acknowledgement between those of the same ethnic gender. Unless they work in a restaurant kitchen or are at a Tyler Perry play for some reason, they are typically around a ton of other white folk, so I don't know if they developed this type of encounter too often. For minorities it has generally become second nature. Let's say a Mexican woman sees another Mexican woman while shopping at a Crate & Barrel in suburban Portland...I guarantee you they share a smile. And that seemingly reflexive smile was actually an unspoken conversation: "I see you mija. Word to Mexico, you're hair is looking extra bonita."

Black men are notorious for this kind of public acknowledgement. We do The Head Nod. We have to be the smallest ethnic group of free citizens in the US. With, like, 90% of the black male population in jail, I think that Native American eunuchs are more populous among the free American citizenry than my negroes and I. Add to that the somewhat shared self-consciousness many deal with when walking, banking, shopping or doing anything amongst the general public -- the idea that everyone is looking at them, looking down on them and, on a psycho-analysis level, looking past/beyond them. This has made for generations of gestural greetings for people that we don't know personally, but with which we feel an intrinsic kinship strong enough to be compulsed to making direct eye contact and nodding one's head -- sometimes even mustering an accompanying waist level fist-pump or even actual mumblings like "alright now" or "yes sir" or "what's happnin, man." This is actually outrageous given the cold dearth of human pleasantries exchanged between normal strangers on the street or in marketplaces. Black men even Head Nod when they pull up next to each other in cars. If you subscribe to the notion that black men -- succumbing to socioeconomic gravity of few opportunities -- are the quintessential "crabs in a barrel" ethnic gender; then these random moments on the street should have been the subject of an academic documentary long ago. To this day, the moment after I hit a brutha with a head nod, I still marvel at the ventriloquist quality of the whole encounter. in urban cities, you tend not to make eye contact with people you pass on the street or going the opposite way on a shopping mall escalator (unless you live in the south or the sticks). Yet, there is this outside, emotional, definitely historical force that moves you to begin peering up as the brown face encloses, make eye contact and nod your head. It's not always a noble motivation...sometimes it might be "I see you black man and I'd like to keep my wallet and watch; let's not be a statistic" or "I see you black man and I know you might think I want ruckus, but I'm gonna flash you this grin, nod my head and mumble a barely audible greeting. This all means that you can relax; I don't want us to be a statistic." But most of the time it's "I see you black man. And I know you see me and you "see" me. Peace."

This whole excessively long, rambling string of reflective babble was a tragically non-sequitor way of talking about the new breed or brash Street Beggars.

Yeaaahhhh, I know, sorry.

This same familiarity and unspoken kinship between black men has made for some extremely alarming encounters between me and black men that clearly aren't bums, but they're begging like bums.

Don't get it twisted: I'm not Armstrong Williams or Bill Cosby. This isn't some derogatory reprimand calling for shiftless nigras to get to tuggin on their boot straps. I def don't believe there's a work ethic problem amongst black men. Like Obama said, a lot of these folks (poor, struggling folk in general) don't even have the metaphoric boots to begin with. But there's always a fringe in any group. And there's a very small percentage of black men -- albeit very brazen and audacious -- that have begun taking advantage of the Afro-American Man kinship. The same unwritten, unspoken, ethereal, internal, abstract "thing" that moves us to Head Nod, moves some kats to walk up to us and have exchanges like...

Brazen Street Beggar: "sup, bruh. I don't mean no harm, ya know. No disrespect, but I aint even gonna lie to you...I need 'bout sixty-fo cent to go wit my dollar, 'fo I can kop dis 40. I aint even gon' lie to you man...I'm just tryna' feel mellow tonight."

Me: "I can dig. But you know good-n-well that I don't have 64 random cent in my pocket. Here's a buck, tho."

Far be it for a kat like me to deny a dude a little late night medicine. He caught me going into the "hood-spot", the liquor store that stays open til 1am on weeknights (every city has one). This happened earlier this year. That, when I got back in the car, I recapped the story to my boy. But I was more amused at the preface to his request, the fact that street begging is always annoying, but never "harmful" or "disrespectful" and, of course, the grand preposterous'ness of asking me for an amount of money -- 64 cents -- that would include pennies.

But it was my dude that made, perhaps, the most keen social observation of the year (save for my Pops' early summer epiphany that there's no such thing as a young "wino"). After I expressed my amusement and annoyance at the "bum's" request-preface and donation-amount, my boy was like, "and this ni$$a wasn't even a bum!"

He continued: "Dude...look at us. He's like 50 and we're some young dudes. I'm drivin' this old whip with a carseat in the back. You got on a tattered replica jersey, faded sweats and flip-flops. This dude got on brand new Nikes and a new jean jacket! We look like some scufflin dudes that ran out the crib to kop a night cap and this clown looks like he just got off work! What made him think he could ask for money?! That ni$$a don't need 64 cent!"

Then he said it: "Man, a black dude sees another black dude and he don't even gotta be a bum to beg like a bum."

It was so true. Not more than a week later, I was at a gas station. A young kat, maybe in his early 20s came up to me, commented on that vintage Smif-n-Wessun I was pumping, then dutifully asked for a dollar, followed me in the store and kopped a brew right in front of me! Whatever happened to the lies about "bus fair" or getting a meal. Not with this cat. He seemed like a perfectly able-bodied, non drug-addicted young man, except, I guess it was a broke week for him, so he automatically felt that our blackman-kinship entitled him to a loose dollar in my pocket. This was basically akin to him approaching me and saying "Say, b!:$h, how much you got on my Colt 45?!"

Black men usually don't take these far-reaching, "you-got-some-super-nerve" liberties with any other ethnic gender (forget white folks, who, at least they have guilt. A blackbum will approach a Caucasian light years before they approach the disapproving gaze of a black woman).
Check it out sometime. A real blackbum will approach a sidewalk table of white folks with dough-eyes, a severe limp and all the "so sorry to bother you angelic people"-deference in the world, maybe invent a sobb-story or create a sobb-story cardboard-sign "I Loss My Woman To STDs, Will Cry For Food". Right after the performance, he'll see a fellow blackman and get all chummy, come struttin' over on some, "say man, let me hold bout 40 bucks so I can kop some taste and have a little disposable income left to snatch me a whore. Ya dig? I know you dig."

That's for real beggars...but the Brazen Street Beggar -- the ones that aren't homeless, insane or down on their luck, but merely temporarily too broke to kop a brew or a steaksub -- wouldn't even fathom bringing these wack requests to regular folk.

I'm in NYC right now and I've always found Gotham's homeless people to be oddly refreshing. Last year, on my way to the office, I'd post at least 10,000 hobos lining Broadway, but I wouldn't be bothered once, save for an occasional jing-jing from a cup'o coins. It makes me appreciate both the fact that NYC's homeless lot stays invisible and unassuming after years of cruel New Yorker treatment, but it also makes me appreciate the other sector of beggars -- the street performers, the kids selling Twix for $10/bar, the dudes that approach you with stories like, "Man, I'm tryna get enough dough to give to my b!+$h so she can get an abortion." They may be brash, but at least they're not brazen.

RIP Winos

2008-07-14T16:42:00.001-04:00

I'm sitting on my parents porch, right now revisiting Sa-Ra's Hollywood Recordings. When I listen to music for more than backdrop, I usually have some "taste" with me. "Taste" is what older black men call alchohol. I happen to be drinking Wild Irish Rose out of a plastic cup. It's the product of what was a bit of an evening journey.

Earlier in the afternoon, my father, while doing the lawn, approached the porch to hit me with what was, to him, a bittersweet anecdote.

"Yo, Vince. Check this: Man, the other day, I just had a jones for some 'white'" (Wild Irish Rose -- known as the drink of choice for jitterbug lushes low on funds-- comes in red and white. But in the hood, it's simply refered to by its color. You don't ask for Rose, you simply ask for a "white" or a "red". In fact you don't ask for a pint of white, you as for a "long neck white" they're called "long necks" because the bottles are long, slim cylinders that resemble Will Ferrell's character in the Oblong cartoon)

He continued: "So I went to my spot to kop and they said they had one more long neck left."

Then he dropped this revelation on me that made me practically spit out my coffee onto my Esquire.

"And the dude behind the counter said that's the last one he'll ever sell."

Huh? WhatchutalkinboutPops?

"Man, Vince, them suckaz at Richards (the manufacturer/ghetto vineyard) are discontinuing all the long necks, baby!! Can you believe that, man?!

I couldn't. So Pops and I decided that over the next few days, we're gonna travel to all the local liq-stores and buy out the last of the long-necks, so, as Pops said with a straight-face, somber-tone and heavy-heart, "So we can give them a proper home and proper goodbye."

Pops is not a wino or lush, but when he was a teen, he cut his drinking teeth on Rose. Before he found Jah, his claims to fame where being able to shoot 30-foot jumpers, "out-cuss a nigga" and, as he's said often, "drink a lame under the table." He first started with red then moved to white. Although he suscribes to ridiculous urban-myths like "drinkin that red puts freckles on a nigga's nose", he said that his crew chose Rose because it was "better" than the other lush liquid back then, namely Rose' chief competitor, Thunderbird. So if/when he cracks a long neck white (always in the paper bag) and takes that first sip, he's trippin down memory lane. He might as well be listening to Bitches Brew.

Anyways, all the Buff liq stores are selling out. I went to a spot in a poor white neighborhood called Black Rock. Nothing. Then I went to a new spot that opened on Main Street. The girl looked at me and said, "they aint makin them no mo. We been out since Fursday."

So I went to an old trusty, Pernell's on Fillmore. (I know the actual names of liquor stores in the cities I've lived in.) He was out whites too, but he had three long neck reds left. So I kopped to fifths of the white and the three long neck reds.

Mr. Pernell was sittin in the back with his arms folded over his liquir-n-ribs gut and said, "you got the last of 'em, youngster."

Then the jitterbug workin the counter, a mid-40s aged kat, rockin a wife-beater, talking on a cell phone with fake-diamond bedazzlers, dropped the bottles on the counter and in the most eery James Brown voice said "Uh! 11.50!" Not "eleven fifty", but "elemem fiddym" Then he winked. He knew it was a moment.

Rose has always been a stalwart of hood liq-stores, specifically the long necks. If a wino has about 2 bucks, he's going to the medicine shop and koppin a long neck white or red.

When I got back to the crib I asked Pops why on earth they would discontinue a wino staple. He swigged his red and then hit me with one of the most heavy generation-gap observations in a while.

"I don't know, baby. I mean, I'm sure they did their consumer studies and what not, but probably the gist of of it is that you young boys just don't really drink wine no mo. I mean, when yall wanna go get some taste, yall aint koppin no wine."

I was like, "Yeah, I dig. I guess it aint no winos anymore, huh, Pops?"

I mean, my dude Rek said when he would pick up an occassional long neck, the counterman would usually ask, "dis for your grandfather?"

Think about that. There are plenty of Gen X drunks and lushes, but no winos. What 20-40 year old says, "Man, I got a couple singles on me...hmmm...let me go kop some wine"? Probably like, .056%.

Don't get me wrong, like I said, there are plenty of Gen X drunks, just not winos. I mean, even take my crew (not my CHS crew, my other crew) for instance. Our tastes run the gamut. We like to $120 bottles of single malt scotch, but we also kop malt liquor -- our generation's Rose. When Rite Aid was selling Hurricane's for 99 cent last summer, me and Rek would just look at each other and say things like, "It's Katrina Time" or "Let's get Huey'd". But wine? Na.

We call one of our boys "Vino", but not because he drinks cheap wine, just because he "looks" like a wino.

When we were young and broke, we didn't buy wine, we bought cheap brandy and nicknamed them after jazz musicians and athletes based on their initials. E&J became Elvin Jones, Christian Brothers became Charles Barkley.

Me? I can spend close to $200 at specialty beer stores and do so in every city I live in. But I also made habit of buying Puerto Rican rum when I lived in tampa. That used to be a typical satirday or sunday for me. I'd try to recreate some dish I saw on Food Network or throw some meat on the grill and drink rum with names like Ron Rico or Juan Carlos. The thing is, they cost like $8 for a full fifth, $10 for a whole liter. If that's your official poison, itd probably put freckles on your nose like the red.

Still, Ron Rico was cheap go-to, not wine.

I have no idea when this shift occurred. But, by the 90s, Wu-Tang was pitching St. Ides, everyone in John Singleton flicks was drinkin OE, Spike Lee was parodying malt-liquor with his atomic-bomb bottles and young men were choosing cheap brandies over wine. (Maybe my fav song of 2008 is Dwele's metaphoric ode to cheap brandy)

It's sad that Rose is getting discontinued (long necks at least). I personally attach a very romantic tag to the wino-archetype. What isn't quaint about some old dude with a lil dough, drinking drinking cheap, ghetto vine? A jitterbug-sophisticado is Americana to me. My generation swigging on big 40 bottles or mixing juan carlos with RC Cola is just no where near as deviantly distinguished as a snaggle-tooth old timer sippin a long neck white.

RIP Rose and RIP winos.

For what its worth my father has vacilated between extreme ways of euologizing the death of long necks. He toggles between directives like, "Vince put those in the back of the fridge, some peoples' eyes aint even worthy of looking at the majesty of a long neck" to the other end "Man, Vince, I think I'm gonna start drinkin Rose at dinner parties."

That's nosalgia speaking, but let's be clear: somwhere in Cleveland or Detroit or DC or Dallas or Compton, there are winos mourning. They just lost the medicine for their cough.

Black Men Don't Whisper

2008-07-14T16:39:00.001-04:00

I love watching Jesse's Obama-Nuts gaffe on YouTube, but I always end up kinda feeling bad for him. I'm sure he actually wants to rip Obama's nuts from his crotch, he said so and caught on a hot mic, but he didn't wanna get caught, I don't think. Poor geezer.

Don't get it twisted, I think it was preposterously dumb what he did. I mean, I have a proclivity for being offensive...it's actually quite miraculous that, to be so tragically obese, I'm flexible enough to perpetually stick my foot in my mouth; but when I'm on television and hooked with a mic, I keep my El Salvadorian jokes to myself. It actually boggles the mind that Jesse would ever say something so inflammatory with a camera pointed at him and a mic near his mouth. But he did. Apparently his frustration (and likely jealousy) is/was so strong, that he couldn't hold it in. He was like the biblical Jeremiah in that way, I guess. His urge to let some one know that he wanted to paw Obama's nads from tween his legs was so strong that he had to get it out there and then. Problem is, he's a man -- a black man at that...so whispering wasn't an option. If J could've leaned over and softly whispered that vitriol, he would have. Except, well, that would've been, hmmm, how do I say this, uhhh, well, that would have been really gay.

Men don't whisper, unless they're trying to seduce a woman. Whispering is typically viewed one of two ways: effeminate or sexual. If Jesse would have leaned over and whispered to that black man (whose name escapes me), that black man may have have elbowed him in the chin. I'm sure there's going to be some schmuck reading this saying, "hey, wait a second there, fella. I whisper to my pals all the time." To you, I offer a pat on the back, a doggy biscuit and some sage advice: stop whispering in other men's ears, sir. I ask my fellow mates: how often have you felt some man's hot negro/anglo breath seeping into your ear or down the side of your neck? Probably never, right?

Jesse hit us with the gangsta move. Did you see him? His lips were severely pursed, his neck was taut and he spoke his castration plans through gritted teeth. In a way, it was similar to what big, old black woman do at baptist churches. "Look at that skirt that this heffa got on." Big ol black women at baptist churches do this not because they're adversed to whispering, but because the physical act of whispering is too much of a spectacle. Jesse did it because a man should never have his mouth anywhere near another man's ear lobe.

Trust me, if Amy Holmes would have been seated next to the Rev, he'd have leaned in for a whisper in a second. "Amy, I hate Barack just like you do. Talkin down to the black folks. I wanna remove his primate genitalia. Anyways, whatchu doin after this, sweet thang? Why don't you come back to my hotel for Operation Push." Why? Because Amy is a sexy lil somethin and the Rev would have been OK with getting close enogh to smell her perfume. But he didn't wanna smell that black man's (name still escaping) stetson cologne.

It's too bad. Now he's getting pounced on. Women deal with menstrual cycles and child births. Men can't whisper to other men. I'm struggling to determine who's got it worse.

Tim Russert and South Buffalo

2008-06-15T12:03:00.005-04:00

Before I get into Tim Russert, let me first say that learning that Wolf Blitzer was also a native-Buffalonian was a ridiculous revelation. Us Buffalonians ALWAYS had to hear about Russet and his Buffalonian roots, but somehow Wolf flew under the radar...at least my radar. And my man Blitz is, like, My Dude. I'm a late-night reveler, so I rarely woke up in time for Meet The Press to see Russert do what he did better than any other journalist. If I was up that early, I was probably off at a religious meeting (that's my hypocrite steez...I spend Sunday mornings either brushing the whiskey residue off my tongue or reading the Bible. Yes, you should absolutely judge me). But, the Situation Room is typically on one of my televisions during the early-evening (the other is either on ESPN or Food Network). I think Wolf is a great journalist, but he's actually a fairly sucky host. He stammers and repeats himself all the time, but I find this inviting. Aside from Lou Dobbs -- who is the most entertaining of curmudgeons and brings a unique independent/socialist perspective to polisocial issues -- Wolf is my favorite host. If I'd have known he was from Buffalo I'd have bored people with that factoid at all times. On some, "Hi, name's Vince. I'm from Buffalo, Wolf Blitzer's hometown." Granted, he's from Kenmore, which borders North-Buffalo, but folks from the Buff suburbs won't be in Iowa and say, "I'm from Lackawana," they're from Buffalo. Blitz even graduated from my semi-alma mater UB. Wow. This was good to know.

The only reason I knew this is because Wolf said so when recounting conversations he had with the recently and tragically deceased Tim Russert. Pretty much every politician, analyst and journalist were all in agreement that Russert was, by far, not only the highest profile political journalist; he was also the most influential political journo and unanimously viewed as the best political journo. There is rarely that kind of consensus about ANYONE in ANY profession. Tiger and MJ can claim that. Maybe Steve Jobs can claim that. Stevie Wonder could claim that in the 70s. Will Smith can claim that as a box-office Hollywood Star. But, seriously, the amount of people that are unanimously viewed to be without peer in a given profession is probably astonishingly small. Wolf was two years older than Russert, but said that he viewed Russ as a mentor of sorts, which is quite telling. I can't tell you one person that is two years younger than me, even my age, whom I look up to. Russert was that good and that charismatic and that compelling, I guess.

Getting back to Buff, though, Wolf told of a story where he and Russert were one of about 10 people invited to meet the Pope a few years ago. I'm a Jehovah's Witness, so I don't have any type of experience to put context around this type of encounter, but given how reclusive the Pope is, I assume this is a huge deal, specifically for Catholics like Russert (Blitz is Jewish). Anyways, Wolf said Russert was like a wide-eyed fan -- much different than the tough interrogator he was on Meet The press, regardless of the position of his guests -- and remarked (im paraphrasing) "Who'd have thunk that two kids from working class families in Buffalo would have risen so far in their profession that they'd be among the select few to meet the pope?" I was shocked. "Huh, Blitz is from Buff?!" I always took him to be a New York Jew, maybe from Long Island.

Growing up in Buff, you always knew that Russert was a Buffalonian, because he touted his South-Buff roots so hard. Not just Buffalo, South-Buffalo. This actually annoyed me a little bit, because he and everyone else referred to it as "Russerts roots in hard-working South Buffalo." This used to incense my father when I was a teen. Russert went real hard at this in his book about his pops as well. I can remember Pops saying how there were a lot of coded messages in the book, messages about how "things used to be", which is usually code for, "before blacks started effing things up", which is what many working class whites felt about black-infestation and white-flight of the 70s and 80s. And the "hard-working" thing is always extra conniving because i have NEVER read ANYTHING or ANYONE refer to working class East Buffalo neighborhoods as "hard-working" unless they're refering to the last vestiges of East Buffalo that remain predominantly Polish.

Working-class and poor white hoods are always "hard-working", people "doing all they can to survive"; working class and poor black hoods are typically full of welfare recipients, addicts and shiftless nigras. That's just the way it's always been.

I don't know Russert, but, judging from the fair way he treated most of his guests, I can only deduce that he is a man that is remarkably free of some of the ingrained bigotry that infests South Buffalo. South Buffalo is a large section of Buffalo that is predominantly Irish-Catholic. Much like the Italian half of North Buffalo and the Polish enclave in East Buffalo, there resides a great deal oh white-resentment in South Buffalo. It all spreads from working class, ethnic white's relationship with blacks that began when they came over to America and competed with the newly emancipated blacks for jobs and, to a large extent, respect from elite whites or WASPs. Over time, as various social policies were created to assist blacks catch-up after slavery and jim crow, the ethnic-whites viewed these as unfair handouts, since, in many cases, they were in similar situations -- at least economically speaking. Not to mention, there's always this thinking that the lazy-blacks never take advantage of the "handouts" and don't display the same "boot-strap" mentality of this nation's immigrants. None of this is news to anyone that lives in a midwestern or northeaster city with large populations of blacks and ethnic-whites.

Well, South Buffalo is Buff's reigning champ for racial intolerance, the kinda hood that will probably overwhelmingly vote for McCain, even though it's a hood mostly composed of registered Democrats. It remains, to this day, an uninviting sector of Buffalo for blacks. For what it's worth, I went to school with South Buffalonians and they all tended to be cool. I got to know many of them and counted them as friends during our days walking the CHS hall. They're the type that, if I had the stupid-audacity to walk into a South Buffalo bar, would probably immediately tell their less tolerant friends, "He's cool, don't break that Molson bottle over his afro, please." ((random aside: Not to compare, but I think that is the sole, yet marked difference between the intolderance you see in black hoods versus white hoods. White hoods are territorial, on some, "You don't belong here" type steez. If I happened to be at Jazzy's or Birchfields or Humboldt Inn (which I rarely am, prefering the more multicultural dives in other hoods) and one of my long lost South Buffalonian classmates walked in, I'd automatically wave them over to take a shot of medicine with me, but I don't know if I'd fear for their safety (unless, they were wearing gaudy jewelry, because blacks love to rob folks). Blacks have been beaten down to the point where, in America, we generally have no sense of entitlement or ownership, definitely not enough to shoot a visiting South Buffalonian a "what are you doing here? you better kick rocks before I beat you senseless" glare.)) But, back to my point, I think I got along well with my South Buffalonian classmates so well because everyone in CHS tended to be cool because of its overtly liberal atmosphere. You'd never hear any white student call a black person a nigger and there weren't student body factions based on race-hating. No skinheads in CHS or black dudes walking around beating up poor white cats just for shats and giggles. We were a laudably intermingling student-body, something that I am immensely thankful for experiencing given what lies ahead for every ambitious minority. Now, South Park High in SoBuff? Well, that's a different story. I had boys that went to South Park and told me stories about getting jumped on the bus and what not (much like white kids that went to my school were mugged in the Fruit Belt). Or, my old-pale Eric (our school's Eminem, without the rhyming skills), from the LoveJoy district, used to tell us horror stories about black families getting their windows busted in and ish. Buffalo was/is like that.

Talk to a young black guy from the East Side today about his gig and you'll hear, "Man them whities ain't gonna let me do my thing." Talk to an older white man from South Buffalo about the city at large and, if he's honest, he'll begin on some diatribe about black people ruining the city. Buff is bad. It can be a very welcoming and fun city, but there's a perpetual racial-geyser bubbling beneath the surface.

I don't mean to taint Russert's legacy or disrespect his recent passing, but the sadness of seeing such a young and vibrant man pass while in his career-prime was tainted for me because I had to constantly hear newscasters and folks that have no knowledge of South Buffalo talk about it in such reverential terms, like it's the All-American, Everyman neighborhood. If South Buffalo is All-American, then this effin country is screwed like a whore. I can tell you that...

Anyways, three cheers to Tim Russert, one of Buffalo's greatest sons. Who knows, if this world and I are still here when I'm 50, maybe I'll be on the Media Mount Rushmore with Blitzer and Russert. Russ, Wolf and Vince. And Irish guy a Jew and black Vince, three faces side-by-side, about as unified as race-relations will ever be in our beloved hometown...we just need to get an eye-tal up there with us. Calling all Sals and Nicos -- Buff and journalism needs you. Yes We Can...

My Week in LA

2008-06-10T17:29:00.004-04:00

(Please excuse the litany of spelling errors, broken sentences and generally cryptic/retardedy thoughts....this was not spell-checked or re-read...)

A couple weeks ago, I was in southern California, appearing on Jim Rome Is Burning for the first time. The Forum is a segment of the show where he invites two journalists on the show to discuss sports topics. As far as my television appearance go, it was easily the most high-profile appearance and something I thank Jim and Mike for. I met them last year when we were discussing some possible employment opportunities. Since then, I've kept in regular contact with them and they both gave me the good look coming on their show. Mandt is an excellent dude and great tv producer. Rome might be highest profile sports personality in the country, made even more impressive because, although he has a show on ESPN, he is not an ESPN-entity, he's his own man and has forged a ridiculously lucrative and influential career, almost on his own. Just being around those dudes at work is like a lesson

As fun and educational of an experience it was to be on the forum, the highlight of the week was hangin in SoCal. I can't get enough of LA and it sucks that it's all the way on the other side of the country.

They put me up at the Hyatt in Huntington Beach, since the studio is in Orange County and LA traffic is so horrendous. I'm not a beach-dude. I'm about as urban as they come. I like concrete and buildings and dive bars and cafes and corner-stores where I can kop $1.50 40oz malt liquor. And it's a good thing I don't like beaches, otherwise you'd run the risk of seeing me in all my burlesque glory, sorta like Martin in Big Momma's House two, except I'd exchange the onesie for some trunks. But I am a nature-dude. Does that make sense? I may not like laying on the beach, but I love DC during cherry-blossom season, take trips to see resplendent trees in the fall...that kind of stuff. In that respect, my room was awesome. it had a balcony that looked out on the pacific ocean. I kept the balcony door open 24-7, so I smelled, felt and heard the Pacific throughout the day and night. You can't get that in downtown Dallas or Detroit.

My afternoon habit was buying fast food. I never ate breakfast, so by the time I left the studio in the afternoon, I'd be near-starving. I tried them all -- In-N-Out (a favorite from previous trips to SoCal), Carl's Jr., Jack-N-The-Box, Del Taco. The West Coast is king of fast-food options and, between the ridiculous amount of beef, fried potatoes and alcohol I consumed, my digestive system was wrecked for a week. Unfortunately, I wasn't on my foodie game this time, so I don't have too many stories about fine-dining...I'm saving that for next trip.

Monday and Tuesday night I stayed in Huntington Beach for the most part, which was a corny option. Orange County is souless. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the MTV shows Laguna Beach and Newport Beach...well, those depiction of OC are not far off. It's very white, very suburban, very rich...very corny. People may mistake LA for being nothing but Hollywood (starlets and wannabees), Compton/SoCentral (gangbanging nigras) and East LA (essays that wear their shirts buttoned to the top)...but it's not. LA has a surprising and commendable cultural mix and a ton of distinct neighborhood with a lot of character. Ornage County does not.

I got to the telly Monday eve and watched the game in my room, ordered room service and chilled out, but Tuesday, not having any real plans, I watched the Lakers game at a bar on Main Street, which is Huntington Beach's main drag. The scene was typical...a bunch of beach bums, tanned white women with tigo-bitties and trustfund brats...besides the fact that I'm not the kind of dude that minds being the only black dude in the room, there's a difference in crowds when, say, you're at a predominantly white bar in Adams Morgan in DC than, say, an all-white bar in Capitol Hill? An atmosphere can be multi-culturally inclined even when it's composed of one race. But then you have places like Ornage County that are monolithic, isolated and insular. But here's all that I needed to feel like one of the guys -- they were all cheering the Lakers...ha, my people. And of course the Mexicans were clearing our empty beer cups and shot glasses. Ultimately, aside from the pro-Lakers atmosphere, the actual bar and bartenders sucked, though. It was one of those spots that poor sucky drinks in plastic cups, but it was packed and young, had the game on loud and a slew of flat screens. And LA won! It wouldve been a really cool experience, sharing -- for the first time in my life -- a significant Lakers win with a bunch of fellow Lakers fans in Lakerland...but there was thic black girl....

This black girl took obnoxious to profound levels...I mean, it was beyond my Vince-On-10-Obnoxious level.

There were two black couples in the bar and me. So 20% of us were acting like a Class A rube. This loud-a$$ black woman was shouting at obscene levels in support of the Spurs. I was afraid that someone was gonna call her a "black b*tch", tell her to shut her monkey-mouth up, then I was gonna have to get valiant and help begrudgingly seek justice with the other afros on site. I doubt she even knew the name of two players, she was that kind of bird. She would clap extra loud and long after a Spurs bucket. She called Kobe a "b*tch" at least 100 times, at the top of her lungs. And she was drinking an apple-martini out of a plastic cup -- what a typical afro-bimbo. She paced the bar, screaming and yelling "woooooooo!!!" during timeouts when the Spurs were up. I'm an anxious Lakers fan and, although I have tons of patience for true fans, supporting opposition in a non-obnoxious kind of way -- you know, some good-natured needling -- there is never a need for some bimbo to be in SoCal, at a sports bar, mindlessly rooting for the opposition. She embarrassed me. And if she embarrassed me, well imagine what her boyfriend thought. The three blacks she was with were all Lakers fans, so it annoyed me that her boyfriend didn't 1.) have the gonads to calm this bish down; 2.) instruct before entering that it wasn't kosher to be obnoxious just for the heck of it. A couple times I shot a menacing glance their way and the dudes looked at me with this sheepish grin like, "Sorry, bruh. But you know how they are and you know how we are. Whatcha want me to do?"

I find it comical that when I'm out with a group of black women they tend to have little patience for the Girls Gone Wild kind of white woman. If they see two or three white women getting kind of close on the dance floor and dancing a little too dykey, or if they hear them screaming too much, they all get this tense look, like, "I'm about to slap this attention-whoring white-chick." yet I don't think there is any ethnic-gender more annoying and grating than out-of-control black women. When any kind of man is out of control, it's usually not annoying, more like threatening, since a fight always seems within the immediate future. But not only are out-of-control black women rubish, they also think they can intimidate everyone, specifically white people. There was a bully-streak to this woman's behavior and it frustrated me that these soft southern californians were letting it go down.

That whole experience really typified SoCal -- outside of the hood, it's very soft. I always say that a city really doesn't have full character and heft unless you get some ethnic whites in the mix. It goes without saying that she wouldn't have been acting a fool in Watts or East LA, since logic would hold that some Lakers-loving gangsters (and make no mistake, Angelenos LOVE the Lakers) would have made it abundantly clear from the onset that her kinda behavior was gonna be met with the threat of violence. But she got around white folks and thought she could act out. Well, you can do that with WASPs, but ethnic whites -- Irish, Polish, Italian -- don't play that garbage. In fact, insulting their teams might be more of a volatile act than insulting a family member. Whites in SoCal are a bunch of bidussies, so this bimbo invaded a pro-Lakers bar and acted a fool. It was such sweet silence when Kobe went off at the end and shut her up with the LA win.

Later that night, i hooked up the GPS system and drove up and down Pacific Coast Highway and Ocean Blvd, from Huntington thru Long Beach, pumping my iPod...now THAT was a good time.

The next day I got up with some old friends from Buffalo. We met in Santa Monica and watched the Detroit-Boston game at fairly swanky sports-bar, if such a thing isn't automatically an oxymoron (to get to Santa Monica, I drove through Venice Beach and Marina Del Ray...I wanna live in Venice...the residential hood and the arts/entertainment district around Abbott kinney Blvd is nothing like the touristy boardwalk....it was dope.) Sitting at the table next to us, there was a crew of Pistons fans from Detroit. I tried to let them down gently when I told them that Boston was gonna win, since Detroit spent all it's energy picking at the lead. They didn't believe. So I just smiled as the final buzzer sounded and the Cs were walking a way with the vic. That was a typical NBA game. One team gets up by a big lead, the other team expends ridiculous energy to get back into, but doesn't have enough to actually pry away the lead and get the W.

The ill thing about games on the West Coast is that they end in the early evening. So you don't go out to watch the game, you watch the game while you're out and then really go out. Later that eve, we made our way to Hollywood and went to the Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd, which is a famous and fairly historic comedy-haunt in LA. Interestingly, basically the whole cast of MadTV showed up to do bits and none of them were extremely funny, which is probably why I never watch MadTV. Pauly Shore dropped in for a hilarious 10 minutes, though. I was never a Pauly Shore fan, his MTV persona was about as bad as his movies and his movies were atrocious. But, on a stage in a club, he's got a pretty strong presence. He's excessively vulgar and comports a deliberately stoned persona, but it all works. During the week, the pros descend on clubs like the Comedy Store to try out different bits they'll use on tour. Pauly came up with a with about 5 or 6 crumpled sheets of print-paper, which he had stuffed into some sweats that he clearly copped from WalMart. And almost every other comic would end certain jokes with "I guess I won't use that one" or subtely mutter things like, "So they like that one."

There happened to be one guy there, however, who insisted on laughing raucously at every joke that was told. he was the worse kind of audience member for others in the audience. His laugh was grating. He was a knee-slapper and the guy that ends every laugh with strings of "Oh god" and "Oh nooo" and "Ahhhhhh god." Even some of the comics had to put dude on Front Street, like, "Was it really that funny, guy?!" Initially it was mildly amusing, his hysterics. then it became intriguing, then puzzling, then annoying, then alarming...and finally you became numb. Take Robert Deniro in Cape Fear -- the scene in the movie theater -- and multiply that by 1,348...that's how this rube was carrying on. But hypocritically, this one comic -- a weird looking guy, who dressed like a bag man, looked like he'd mug and rape you in an alley, stood hunched over with his shoulder length hair covering his face and told self-deprecating jokes that were Rodney Dangerfield, if he were sadistic and suicidal -- had me and Mike rolling and we happened to be the only one's laughing. There's something about a frightening looking comedian telling dark knock-knock jokes and ending them with, "Please like me...or I'll kill myself," that we found hysterical. And I can assure you it wasn't the Makers Mark.

After that, we were denied entrance into a lounge on some "this is for cool people only". Even though that had never happened to me in LA before, neither in all my time in NYC, San Fran, Atlanta, DC, nowhere -- I thought it was such a wack "LA" moment. It wasn't the "We have a dress code" kind of thing. It was the "LA thing" where the doorman looked at my friends and I and just didn't wanna pull back the rope. Didn't matter that it was a Wednesday and no one was in line...the spot was obviously too dope for us. We left the Comedy Store well after midnight and LA closes at 2am ( which is absurd coming from NY where last call is at 3:45. L:ast call in LA is at some stupid time like 1:30. This is no joke, but there are plenty nights where I dont even get my night started til after 1am) and walked across the street from Comedy Store to this nameless spot. My two firends and I (the Benzes, a guy and a gal), we just wanted to sit at a bar, hang, catch up, spend money and mind our buisness. We got up to the bouncer and he just stared at us. Mike was like, "Okaaayyy. What's up? How's everything in there." The bouncer responds, "It's cool," without making eye contact. I'm like, "Aight, are you gonna let us in?" He says something coy, gay and rude like, "We're cool for now."

"WHAT, NIGGA?"...at least that's how I wanted to respond. I can see if your at capacity, or if there's a line, or if it's a group of 5 guys walking up, or if there's a dress code...there's a litany of reasons to deny someone entrance into your establishment..."We're cool for now" is not one of them.

I kinda got buppie on him, though. I was like, "You're cool for now? What does that even mean, dude? What's makin you cool. Explain cool to me." He greases me with the silent treatment. I felt like gettin at him how Leslie Mann got at the doorman (Craig Robinson bka Darryl from the Office) in Knocked Up. Remember how she just kept calling dude "Doorman!" and then Craig broke doorman-character and divulged how he hated playing gatekeeper. I'm hoping either 1.) it was a gay-bar and he didn't want heteros effin up the vibe or 2.)Puff, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jessica Biel and their entourages were up in there a the cool-quotient was way too high for normal people. Otherwise that was just some LA bs and it bothered me. But you know how I get down, just give me some oak and some whiskey and I'm good. So we walked a half-block to the next spot and ended the night there.

It should be mentioned that LA bartenders pour ridiculous amounts of alchohol. If you ask for a whiskey in Buff, Orlando, ATl, DC, NYC, most places, you often get a shot. If you ask for a neat whiskey, they might give you a double shot in a tumbler. In LA, they give you like 6 oz of the good medicine. It's insane. By the end of the night I was nice and fuzzed, which made our encounter with another Buff-transplant all the more entertaining. he was Asian, which meant that he was most likely kin to one of 4 or 5 Asian families in the Buff metro area. he also hailed from Lackawana. An Asian in Lackawana is like a Prius in the parking lot of a Lynard Skynard concert. I can't remember if I said anything offensive to him, but chances are I did. Anyways, he finagled the bartender to serve us shots after last call and invited the Benzes to his house party. I also think he asked Sarah if she modeled or some other "LA" question. I'm predicting with a good deal of assuredness that any party this dude throws is quintessential-lame. He's the dude on Chippewa, at SubZero, dancing with teenagers, singing along to Akon. trust.

Thankfully, I had Thursday off, since there was no show. So I woke up late, drank wine on the balcony, ate lunch with my visiting cousins and my uncle BJ, who now lives in LA. Then I headed to downtown LA to catch Game 5 of the Lakers-Spurs series. You know the story. LA clinched thanks to a gangsta-Kobe performance. When I left the arena I pumped the Snoop-Kurupt "Lakers Theme" all the way down Wilshire on my way to Hollywood. It was euphoric and made me wanna spend at least one year as a single adult in LA, during NBA season.

I ended that night in West Hollywood with two journalists friends of mine. The bar was dope, except the men were serving us our drinks barechested...bare...chested.

One of my friends -- a self-proclaimed "fag-hag" -- was a female, thankfully...otherwise it would have been uncomfortable. I just don't see any reason for that. Unless it's Chippendales or a male strip club, I just don't see any reason for a dude to serve me my drinks without his shirt on. I know that's probably just a West hollywood kinda thing, but this bar wasn't overtly gay. What I mean by that is, it didn;t feel like a gay meat-market. There were plenty of gay couples, but just as many hetero couples and a healthy share of straight women. Maybe like in that episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Larry and Jeff were opening a restaraunt with Ted Danson and they were having the pre-opening meetings about menus and wardrobes; the pre-opening mtgs for the Abbey must have went like this, "What should our servers wear?" "Umm, how about jeans tight enough to hopefully reveal the outline of their shafts....and no shirts!" "Fabulous!" it was still a good time, but i'm sayin...put your shirts on, fellas.

By Friday, I was petering out. I had spent the past three days staying out till 3 or 4am, drinking like Jimmy McNulty and eating like a teenager or a 2006-2008 Vince. The show went well, then I went back to the telly to take a nap, hoping that I wouldn't be a zombie later that night. I ended up hangin in Long Beach with a friend and her friends. By the time I got back to the telly, I had enough time to pack and get to the airport for the morning flight.

As far as late-May biz-n-pleasure trips, this one ranks right under Memorial Day Weekend 2006, when I was in Miami covering the Miami-Detroit Eastern Conference Finals and VIP clubbing in South Beach.

Funny, my girl J -- who has been to LA far more than me -- did Rome's show the week after me and she did something interesting -- she did all the tourist stuff -- she went on the Houses of the Stars tour, watched pickup basketball on Venice Beach...stuff like that. Back in the summer of '04, I was in LA for a few days interviewing for a post-grad internship and I did the Hollywood Walk of Fame thing, but that's about it. Maybe in the midst of work and revelry, next time I'll take out a few moments to tour a movie-studio lot, see Will Smith's crib and stuff like that...seriously...or maybe not...maybe I'll go back to that lounge-spot on Sunset, call that dude "doorman" and piss on his Kenneth Coles...it could either way....

My new neph Aidan

2008-06-10T15:47:00.002-04:00

My little neph Aidan was born Thursday night/Friday morning. I got a call from Moms during the middle of the 4th quarter of the LA-Boston Game 1, telling me that Aidan was on his way and me and my younger-bro Adam needed to get going immediately. The little nig had to rear his precious little head during the end of Game 1, didn't he? Ha. He was a couple days past his due date. I actually wanted him to drop the prior week, while I was in LA, so I couldve given him a shout-out on television. But he dissed me.

It's already apparent that the immediate family -- and extended fam to a larger extent -- is gonna revolve around this young dude. He has two significant distinctions. For the immediate fam, he is my parents first grandchild and me and the sibs first niece or nephew. For the extended fam, he is Lydia's first child, Lyd being the Queen Bee and Unofficial Favorite of the Thomas and Frazier cousins. She was the first girl and semi-perfect child of the first slate of kids, which included my big couzzes Rashaad, Jason and Ryan; Lyd, me and my twin-cuz Halima. Every new addition is met with excitement and affection, but Lyd's first kid is a big deal. It's never articulated that way, but you can sense it.

The sibs and I are a weird pack. There are five us: Lyd (30), me (29), P (27), Chrish (25) and A (23). Until Lyd got hitched in November, that question started coming up: "When are one of them gonna finally get married." And as our cousins and close friends started popping out kids with increasing regularity and my parents siblings and friends reveled in grandparenthood, there was some pressure building. Straight-up, I was thinking about going to a trailer park and seeding-up some pwt with low self-esteem or making my way back to the hood and giving some early-20s hoodrat her 8th illegitimate kid. But, alas, not even they were falling for my advances.

But seriously, not get too Freudian or Spockian or Philian, but there's something at work with me and the sibs. Our friends say it's a mix of "outrageous standards" or commitment phobias, the list goes on. But Aidan looks like he's gonna be the only grandchild for quite some time, unless one Christian's condoms malfunction.

I have two groups of blood-brother-like friends that are basically separate entities. The one group is all Jehovah's Witnesses. I kid you not, but every last one of them is married. Rek, Vino, Sheez, Nast, Swayz, Dubb, J, San, all of them. Two have kids, one has a seed on the way and I have all the rest on the clock. I am a martian in that group. My other crew is, basically, a crew full of martians. Up until a month or so ago, when Gee proposed to Meredith, we were a group of unmarried, childless black men closing in our 30s. You might think that college and careers were part of the reason, but not even that truly explained the bucking of the statistic/trend. And again, we've spent enough sessions debating why things are the way they are, but you can't really put your finger on it. These things kinda just happen the way they happen. And I'll probably be the last of that crew to get hitched and seeded, too.

So when the Thomas fam learned that Lyd was pregnant it was some wild news. I'm sure somewhere in the glee, my parents were also breathing a figurative sigh of relief, like "Finally!"

Mom and Pops, mind you, are from that generation that married early and started squeezing out kids almost immediately and with regularity -- at least that's how it was with black folks in Buffalo. So when they saw their children marching on without so much as a single, meaningful relationship that they could see lead to marriage and then, at last, a grandbaby, I'm sure it was unsettling for them. But, as always, Lyd to the rescue.

No joke, Aidan is kind of a savior in that way. My other sibs may not have even given a milisecond of thought to the grandchild issue, but i used to think about it occassionally in my reflective moments. And since I knew (hoped) I wasn't gonna be letting my sperm fly into any ovaries any time soon, I was hoping that, at some point, that grandchild would come -- but under non-stressful circumstances. For instance, if Adam came home and alerted the fam that he impregnated a Haitian immigrant with AIDS, well, that wouldn't be so dope. Or if P came home and told the fam that a one-night stand with a drunk Italian in a Jims Steakout bathroom resulted in a her mulatto fetus, well, that wouldn't be so sweet. Lyd, however, is happily married, with a healthy son and she even left NYC to come home for Aidan's first year or so. And my parents are giddy. They're saying all the ridiculous grandparent things. About an hour after Aidan was born, my Moms was standing outside the newborn room, with her palms and nose pressed against the glass, alerting us to things that are biologically impossible. things like, "Ooh look guys, Aidan's laughing at Najib." This is patently absurd, seeing as though newborns can't smile, let alone be amused and react by laughing. Moms is sure of it though. Pops says that Aidan already has a distinct personality. You gotta just smile and go along with them. They're going to be a handful as grandparents though...I'm sure of that.

I'll be gone soon, but for these last few months in Buff, I plan on spending a good amount of time with my neph. One of the few regrets I have about leaving Buff and visiting so infrequently (I was a once or twice a year dude) was that my young-young cousins practically have no idea who I am. I can't have it like that with my neph AD...that's my nickname for him, AD, like Adrian Dantley AD.

But anyways, another grand shout to the new Lyd-Aidan-Najib trio. Good times are ahead.

Buffalo Braves

2008-06-10T15:39:00.002-04:00

In this month's SLAM, issue 120, the one with my basketball-crush Chris Paul on the cover, I have a feature on the Buffalo Braves, an NBA team that left my hometown less than a year before I was born. All Buffalonians should check it out...

Twist Update

2008-06-10T15:26:00.002-04:00

It's been a while. So, I'll spare you all the apologies and the promises of more regular blogging that I'm sure I'll break. Before I start writing a few other posts, let me update you on the career-tip, which, ultimately, was why I started this blog 4 years ago -- to keep my extended and scattered fam abreast of what I was doing and where I was at.

I am in Buffalo these days and probably will be for the next few months. I'd like to be gone by Labor Day, but we'll see how things go. Career-wise, my proverbial star is on the rise. I'm just trying to capitalize on momentum. Here are a few links for you check out...

These are my online SLAM columns. Most of them are very hoops-centric, but a few delve into other topics (single moms, YouTube, man-crushes, etc)...

This link takes you to the YouTube clips of my ESPN appearances. Since early this year, I've appeared, in a fairly steady stream, on ESPN shows like Outside The Lines, First Take and, recently, Jim Rome Is Burning (I'll be writing a post soon about my time on Rome in LA)....

Asian Pickup Basketball

2008-04-24T14:15:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I was at Alumni Arena, trying to shed the weight I've gained over the winter which is equivalent to a fat 10-year-old. I've "gained a fat 10-year-old" over the past 4 or 5 months. It's sad. At any rate, my normal routine at the gym is to co about 30 minutes of cardio, hit a few machines, go play some ball and then hit the sauna.

Because it's finals time for most of the kids, the campus, specifically the arena and gym, are like ghosts towns around this time. So when I hit the court to put a few shots, the only cats playing were a group of Asians, with the few requisite girlfriends standing on the sidelines looking demure and afraid of the big black man that just walked in the gym wearing a hoodie.

Depending on how much ball you play, where you play, what city you're in and a few other variables, you have varying degrees of familiarity with the phenomenon that is Asians playing ball. The best place to take this in is on the campuses of huge state schools, in my case we're talking University of Buffalo. Asians probably make up 10%-15% of the student body. Now, when you're talking about 25,000 students, that means anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000 young Asians walking around campus with 4.0 GPAs and fuel-efficient cars.

I have a theory and it's that foreign studying Asians don't party. I never see large groups of Asian kids at the college hangout spots. I suspect, in the most ignorant manner possible -- that they are either studying or doing something far less damaging that whisky shots. One of these things is playing basketball -- an abhorrently poor brand of basketball.

When it comes to basketball -- the Asians come out at night. You won't see them too often during the day, when the gym courts are packed with pickup games. And it's for two good reasons: 1.) they'd like to save this leisure activity as a evening substitute for normal college revelry and .....

Asians Only Play Basketball With Other Asians
I have yet to see even a token black or white male playing in an Asian pickup game. It's startling to walk on a court -- no matter where or when -- and see that one HALF of the court being used by a group of Asians and only Asians.

You want some other hallmarks of Asian basketball? here they go...

Asians Will Never -- Under Any Circumstances -- Play Full Court Basketball
They adhere to this rule with fastidious and comical conviction. I have no idea why. You'd think with their healthy diets and slender frames that a good game of full court wouldn't be a problem, but then you recognize what's holding them back...

Asians Don't Know How To Dribble A Basketball Like An Adult Male
Have you ever seen toddlers or grade school kids try to run while dribbling a basketball? It's cute isn't it? Tey fumble the ball, have to turn around and go retrieve it, then start the process over again. Well, when you're dealing with young adult Asian men, it's not cute, it's tragic. They lose the ball dribbling it so high over their shoulders that it drifts over their head. Some throw caution and rules to the win and dribble with two hands if the awkwardly physical Asian defense gets too tight. For a group of Asians to play full court would be a grave sight, for it would entail the ball never passing half court, or men straight picking up the ball and running or dribbling with two hands, like, say, Richard Simmons or some other gay blade that never bothered mastering the insanely difficult skill of bouncing a ball. You'd think those scientific Asian minds could master the mechanics of bouncing a ball.

Anyways, to ensure some fluidity to the game, they only play half-court basketball, which sometimes gets ridiculous because....

Asians Never Bother Putting A Ceiling On How Many Dudes Can Play At Once
These niggas will play 10-on-10 -- no bull. I once saw a group of Asians playing 6-on-6 halfcourt. Do you know how insane that is? yes, they're a typically diminutive ethnic gender and, yes, they're used to living in cities like Tokyo and Beijing, where there are 50 million people living in a city the size Yonkers...but still, what about rules? It's disconcerting to see 15 Asians frantically running around a halfcourt, double-dribbling and shooting up airballs.

These dude will also pull out a 4-on-3 with no problem, like they're 10 and one of the dudes is 16. Remember how that might have went back in the day? We had a dude like that in my crew. He was, like, 25 years older than everyone, so sometimes, if number were uneven, he'd count as two people. Well, all that trash stopped when we reached junior high. It doesn't for young Asian men. If 9 of them roll up to the court on a Thursday night, then it's gonna be a 5-on-4 scrubfest.

It's a scrubfest because they have the weirdest games. For instance...

I've Never Seen An Asian Successfully Make a Layup
There are only a few conclusions to an Asian Drive and none of them include actually making the layup. After the Asian has double dribbled his way to the basket, he will either shoot it over the backboard, violent scoop it to hit the bottom of the backboard or get tackled by the Asian defending him..at which no foul will be called, they will simply get up and continue playing.

Also....

On The Court, Asians Will Neither Stand Upright Or Jump When They Shoot
Seriously, they are always in a crouching position. Perhaps this comes from martial arts training. What this does, however, is totally prohibit them from ever making a pass that leads to a bucket, what is known as an "assist". Asians play assistless games, namely because they're always crouched, unable to see the floor and the fact that the teammate they pass to knows neither how to dribble or complete a layup.

They also never jump when they shoot. And because the defender is always playing either butts-to-nuts or crotch-to-crotch defense, this leads to an inordinate amount of blocked shots, which always leads to EVERY player on the court pursuing the loose-ball. That means that almost every possession there will be a moment when anywhere between 8-22 Asians make a mad dash for the up-for-grabs ball. It's chaos, I tell you.

You know what else bothers me?...

Asians Let Girlfriends Play
And they are usually still dressed in their school gear -- jeans, flip flops, tank tops. I once saw a girlfriend playing with her winter jacket on. This displeased me. Here i thought Asians came from a strict patriarchal society where broads knew there place, but they come stateside and get all egalitarian on me. "Sure, we need another body so we can make this an 8-on-8 halfcourt game...and do us a favor Sun, we need to legitimize this game, so keep on your parka."

I hope I don't/didn't come off bigoted/prejudice/ignorant with any of this. I mean, at the end of the day, Asians, Too, Is A Beautiful Thang

Stuff Vince Does and Doesn't Like

2008-04-09T13:32:00.002-04:00

I told you that I was gonna have my won personal response to the websites Stuff Educated Black People Like and Stuff White People Like. They're my two favorite websites on the Internet right now and I wish they were like some of these other blogs that update multiple times per day. Anyways, as I went through both sites, I found instances where I thought, "Yep, I'm definitely on some EBP steez right there" and other instances where the EBP rhetoric was insufferable. That's been somewhat of an insecurity of mine. You all know that buppies irritate the snot outta my nostrils, but, in so many ways, I'm a true-blue buppie. For a dude that grew up in a working class family on Buffalo's crack infested eastside, I don't know if that's an accomplishment or an indictment. What I do know is that buppies/EBP can be a hoe-azz sect when they wanna be.

I've also tended to be a black dude that could identify with a certain type of white person, mostly the kind of white person describe in hilarious satire on the Stuff White People like blog. I found my self scouring that list and mostly thinking either, "Yep, I love that or feel that way, too" or "yep, i love those kind of white people." I'm a fan of two types of Caucos 1.) hard-partying manics; and mostly, 2.) liberal, semi-gult-ridden whites that are hip enough to know that white people aren't hip. It's #2 that gets extensive insight from the SWP blog.

Anyways, this just might be what I needed to get my own blog poppin again, a jumpin off point for some thoughts, anecdotes, etc...I wanna begin by lookin at the first 5 items from the EBP website...

1. Fraternities and Sororities -- I have very close friends, both male and female that are Greek and I spent much of my early 20s, my first years in DC, railing against the Greek culture in the most obnoxious way possible -- whether that be purposely standing in the way of their ridiculous and stupid souped-up conga lines or getting thrown out of a Homecoming step-show for being a disruptive, drunk-jerk -- so I don't wanna start spewing any vitriol, here. But, I'll never forget how startling it was to see how omnipresent Greeks were at HBCUs. I spent my first few college years reading novels at University of Buffalo, a large state school with a predominatly-cauco student body. Blacks were a real minority, BLGOs (Black Greek letter organizations) were an even smaller minority. When I went to a college party, Qs weren't crawling on the floor and barking like dogs. And most of my disdain for BLGOs was the notion that I ascribe to it, the notion that most of the pledges were sheep that used these organizations to attract friends and be apart of something. Followers have always annoyed me and, to me, frat boys were the quintessential followers. As I've grown older, I see the good and benefit of BLGOs, but only the grown-adult portion of it. College-age greeks still get the gas-face.

2. Neo Soul -- Here's a portion of what the blog said: "Neo Soul music makes educated black people feel like they are getting in on music that regular blacks don’t know about. The most popular neo soul artist is Erykah Badu….even though some of us may feel she’s a little bit crazy. Some educated Blacks have distanced themselves from Ms. Badu because too many people know about her. Neo Soul allows these educated blacks to feel they are the only people who know about these artists and are the only ones educated enough to understand this music. Once an artist “catches on,” it’s time to move on to the next undiscovered talent." There is no greater EBP cliche and identifier than this music, to me. It rages with buppieness. But here's the thing, EBPs don't actually have good taste in music, they simply follow trends and attach themselves to what "seems" highbrow. That's why they can't tell the sonic difference of direction and quality between, say, India Arie and the new Badu. People don't understand this, but Badu really stopped making neo-soul after her first album, because she understood that the genre had become a cartoon. Same goes for D'Angelo. Neo-soul is for the Glen Lewises, it is the tired, musical carnation of No. 5 on this list, the hackneyed poetry slam. That's why I can't get down with a lot of EBPs. Neo-soul, however, is not the EBP equivalent to indie music. White people actually take their music seriously. The artist they like are musicians and actually write out substantial lyrics. They really do seek and search out hidden gems. That's not neo-soul. Neo-soul is basically just EBP pop music. I love Angie Stone, but Angie Stone is as much an EBP poster-girl as she is a great artist. Give me Georgia Anne Muldrow everyday and allday. Neo-soul is for squares.

3. Baked Chicken -- I didn't know this was an EBP thing. But I gotta admit, I'm a baked chicken dude, although I'll always enjoy a good piece of fried chicken, so long as you soak it in butter milk and coat it with a nice seasoned-flour. This is an excerpt of what the blog wrote: "Educated Black People have a more sophisticated taste. We like BAKED CHICKEN. Some even go so far as to use lemon pepper seasonings, but this is only for the upper echelon blacks with advanced degrees, so don’t try this at home if you only have an undergraduate degree. Now if you want to really show off your education, bake chicken breasts only! By eating baked chicken, we educated Blacks feel as though we are beyond the stigma of eating common fried chicken." Now, I believe that a good deal of the baked-preference is due to health concerns, which should be a greater premium in the black community. But, somehow, fried chicken did become the modern-watermelon in that it was used as the food-stereotype for niggas. More than anything, buppies and EBPs are image conscious and spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on distancing themselves from niggas theoretically and aesthetically. This would definitely mean getting your chicken fix -- because buppie niggas still love chicken -- without stooping to the perceived porch-monkey levels of frying the chicken. Of all EBP MOs, this baked chicken stance is one of the most trifling.

4. Natural Hair -- I love black woman that rock their hair natural. I think it's sexy, because, not only does it look hot, it also says a lot. I wrote this column about it when I was a young pup. I think it says it all...

5. Poetry Slams -- i HATE...let me repeat, HATE spoken word. It is the most cliche, hackneyed, imposter-portion of black culture right now. Spoken word and poetry slams are about 2 years away from caucos fully taking it over like they've done break-dancing...that's how bad it is. Every BS nigra thinks they can string together a few big words and spit them in the same exhausted staccatto/cadence and feign like they're sophisticated and above the nigger-fray. I liked this portion of the EBP blog: "It also allows us to show off our verbal rhythm, because true slampoets……..always…….talklikethis ……because if you don’t …..thenyouare …..a …..FAKE …..poet *thoughtful look*." I tried to watch Def poetry Jam last year and it was excruciating, like a construction worker was jack hammering my ballsack.

Stuff Vince Likes

2008-04-07T19:52:00.002-04:00

Ever seen these sites?

Stuff Educated Black People Like
Stuff White People Like

Well, these twi sites have really thrown me for the most entertaining loop in quite some time. Get ready for an epic posts about why I like and don't like some of the Stuff Educated Black People and White People like...

Some more of my ESPN YouTubes

2008-04-07T19:45:00.001-04:00

For those that didn't get a chance to check out the past couple weeks' ESPN seg...here they are...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-btMYSX_M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwm-TbnsU5Q

(FYI...if you don't check the blog that often anymore, I post all of these on my Facebook page, if your on Facebook)

Google is evil and awesome

2008-04-01T11:19:00.003-04:00

I absolutely LOVE Google. It's reached a critical point. I mean, these dudes and this company are so impressive that I'm beginning to think of them in a conspiratorial light.

I watch a show on HBO called In Treatment. It's about a shrink, played by Gabriel Byrne (Dean Keaton from Usual Suspects, Tom Reagan from Miller's Crossing) and the whole show takes place, primarily, in his home office. It ran five evenings per week for about 9 weeks. The same patients came back at the same time each week. Monday was a sultry young woman that had a crush on Byrne and wanted to ball him. Tuesday was Blair underwood's character, a military dude that left his wife, killed a bunch of Arab kids in an air strike and had a litany of other emotional problems. Thursday was the fractured married couple, etc. Wednesday was my favorite day. That's when Sophie came thru. Sophie was an Olympic hopeful and suicidal brat that may, or may not have been sexually abused by her absentee father.

Sophie is germane to this post about Google because she dropped one of my favorite television lines of the Spring. there was one episode that began with Paul (Byrne) unexpectedly paying a pizza delivery guy. Minutes later Sophie arrived, the pizza was hers. She goes off on some tangent about she hadn't eaten all day and, while on the bus en route to her session, she searched google for a good pizza spot near Byrne's office and had them order and deliver the pizza. Byrne, your typical old dude, seemed surprised and asked, "Google can do that?"; Sophioe smirked and responded: "Google can do anything."

"Google can do anything." If you don't agree with that, then you need to get hip. It's scary, because if Google channeled its genius and mind-boggling resources for evil efforts, I'm of the mindset that it could probably rule the world.

Anyways, I awoke this morning and did what I do every other morning, I put on the pot of coffee, piss and check my email -- always in that order. Google has a really simple and informative log-in screen for Gmail. Many times, it'll have announcements if there's a new Gmail feature (Gmail, by the way, is leaps and bounds above every other email provider. I seriously can't understand why any of you rubes still deal with AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail...). This morning, I was greeted with this announcement:

NEW! Gmail Custom Time
Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything -- if only it hadn't slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.

Pre-date your messages: You tell us what time you would have wanted your email sent, and we'll take care of the rest. Need an email to arrive 6 hours ago? No problem.
Mark as read or unread: Take sending emails to the past one step further. We let you make emails look like they've been read all along.
Make them count: Use your custom time stamped messages wisely -- each Gmail user gets ten per year.
Worry less: Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered.

You have to recognize how simultaneously great (in an extreme way) and evil (in a debased and devious way) this is. I mean, just in terms of utility, this is, perhaps, the most awesome email development since email was developed. For a irresponsible, forgetful and also conniving schmuck like me, this is a proverbial godsend. I'm ALWAYS forgetting to send emails, or missing a deadline. But that second bullet is sooooo greasy. "We'll let you make emails look like theyve been read all along"!!!!!! That is sooo grimy. So now we can not only lie that we sent an email to a significant other, business partner, scorned friend, offended parent, etc; but we can make it seem like they're the idiots that never received OUR communique.

It could go like this:

You get an email from this friend that invited you to a dinner party that you really didnt want to attend. The friend is mad that you didn't show thru. There was acold plate of lamb chops and stale glass of red wine sitting in front of a seat meant for you, not to mention a bored bimbo they had invited for you to meet. Your friend is furious, mainly because he/she suspects you blew the engagement off to do something trivial, like play with your ballsack watching the Flavor of Love marathon and drink vodka. That's when you send them a custom time email that shows up as read in their inbox, the day before the engagement, telling them you had a project with a changed deadline and you had to go in the office. Then you send them an email, blasting them for being sensitive and imploring them to check their inbox "for real and not like an illiterate idiot"...and you demand an apology, too. This ish is sinister.

"Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered"?!?!?!!!!!! Wow.

At least they have the foresight to only allot 10 per year.

But here's what I can't shake: I can't shake the feeling that this is an April Fools joke.

Book Nerds are Shallow

2008-03-30T13:32:00.003-04:00

I loved this essay in the Sunday Times about deal-breakers for book lovers. It's called "It's Not You, It's Your Book." It begins: "Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”"

I found that hilarious, telling, pathetic and enviable all at once. In the next graf, the essayist, a book lover, sates: "Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast."

Or there was this nugget later in the essay, from Augusten Burroughs, the gay-blade that wrote Running With Scissors. I've never read the book, but adore the film, which, I'm sure, makes me a rube. But check one of his recollections: "The author recalled a date with one Michael, a “robust blond from Germany.” As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, “I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett.” That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”"

All of this is quite humbling, since I'm a very proud non-book reader. I read newspapers and magazine, neve finding the time to read books. Well, actually, I have no inclination to read books. I guess that my own personal symptom of growing up in the ADD Age. A book is too daunting, time consuming. They're also somewhat pompous and self-serious. But I admire book readers. They're cool to me. Not cool as in: "Yeah, dude is aight." Cool as in: "I wish I was a book reader." And, in all honesty, I could totally see some potential main-squeeze kicking me to the curb because I'm an ignoramous when it comes to novels. I had to google and then wiki Pushkin. I've never had any desire to read Proust. This usually surprises people when they find out that I'm a writer, but that's the reality. I'll read non-fiction, but films satisfy my fiction jones.

I identify with these kind of people, however, because I'm a music snob. On a fundamental level, I would probably never fall in love with someone that isn't passionate about their music. Or, someone with poor, schumck-tastes in artists and albums -- I'd probably sabotage that kind of relationship. A lightweight music head can head for the next lame. "You never heard Fullfillingness First Finale?! Peace." "You think jazz is boring?! Bye." "You don't wanna go see Bilal?! I'll call you a cab." That's me, in a nutshell...I'm serious.

The irony in all this is that the book and music snobs have these deal breakers and go around sifting and filtering relationships, based on some deviant notion that they are ensuring that they link up with someone of similar heft, depth and gravitas. But the mere fact that we're using entertainment (books, music) as a barometer or litmus test is as shallow as it gets.

Leave it to someone from the Daily Show to sum it up best: "If that person slept with the novelist in question, that would probably be a deal breaker — more than, ‘I don’t like Don DeLillo, therefore we’re not dating anymore.’”"

Mekhi Martin, my new neph

2008-03-24T01:18:00.004-04:00

This is a bit belated, but props, 'spect and love to my dude and new nephew Mekhi, born earlier in March. Lil' man is a champ. Here's to hoping that he grows up to be a better ball player than his Pops. (Dubb, remember how you and Freeze used to shoot sideways?! Ha.)

Nothing like a new member of the Extended Fam. Don't hurt 'em Khi.

The Wire: An Appreciation

2008-03-18T16:24:00.005-04:00

I don't necessarily have a Favorite Show Of All Time. A lot of shows contend for that spot: Cosby Show, Different World, Seinfeld, 24, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lost, Sopranos, Six Feet Under...and The Wire. Here's what I do know, however, that (with apologies to Six Feet Under and Lost) The Wire is the greatest television show of my lifetime. In fact, it's not as close as folks would think. I'm saying that The Wire is clearly, conspicuously, the greatest show to ever grace television screens since March 6, 1979.

Two Sundays ago, the show ended amidst critical praise and cultish devotion; but relative anonymity. Millions and millions of Americans tune in to watch tripe like ER -- or even American Idol, for that matter -- but if you were standing in a room of 1,000 folks, Nielson ratings show that only 3 or 4 other folks, on average, would have seen The Wire.

How is this possible? How could so few people tune in to view the greatest and most compelling dramatic series of the past 30 years? Here in Buffalo, I had two, maybe 3 people that I knew, who dug the Wire. In NYC, that number ballooned significantly. All my SLAM co-workers were Wire nuts, I used to eavesdrop on Wire conversations. Same thing for my time in DC. But while in Florida? Nothing. My friend Maese was in Buff a few weeks ago. He's a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. he says that The Wire is a constant topic of conversation amongst Sun newsies (inevitably because a major story line from this season deals with the Sun, the former employer of the show's creator and principle creative mind, David Simon); but Rick said that his friends back in his hometown of Albuquerque are completely oblivious. Forget, for a moment, that folks from Albuquerque are oblivious to a whole bunch, a recognize that it's a sizable city and metro area, yet, The Wire isn't even a blip on its Desperate housewives radar. That's similar to how I feel here in Buff, which is troubling, since Buff is the same blue-collar city as BMore, with a similar type of drug-trade, crime-rate and poverty level. The Wire should resonate incredibly in Buff, yet I wouldn't even think to bring up The Wire in a random conversation with a patron at the bar. They'd be like, "The What?"

It's funny, because, in 2004, I spent a summer in Atlanta, interning as a journalist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The office is located in downtown Atlanta, a few blocks from Broad St., a sweet little city block of restaurants and lunch spots, close to cars, strictly for pedestrians and hungry Atlanta employees. I used to hit Rosa's all the time. It was NY Style pizzeria and the line was usually out the door. You had to shout your order and then move down the line, get to the cash register, pay your money and then wait a little while longer for your slices or calzone or roll to come out the oven. One day, that summer, in mid-June, I believe it was a Monday or Tuesday, I was in Rosa's waiting on my slice and these clowns in front of me were yapping about the previous Sunday's Sopranos. I hadn't seen that episode, yet. So I put my hands over my ears and started singing some type of nursery rhyme. I probably looked and sounded like a fool. Unfortunately, I didn't do this until one of the dumbies said something about "I can't believe what happened to Adriana." So, of course, I watched that episode waiting to see what happened to Adriana. Of course, it happened to be the episode where they wacked her. I was consistently missing Sopranos episodes that season and this was before I had Tivo or DVR, so I used to tread lightly, wherever I was at, guarding against hearing any tidbits about the previous week's Sopranos. But that's what you had to do with the Sopranos. it was a water cooler show, so wherever you went, you were likely to hear random people discussing the past episode.

That NEVER happened with The Wire --EVER. I couldve gone the past 3 months and still not know that Omar was merked by a sniffling little punk or that Clay Davis got off. I never heard anyone randomly talking about Bodie getting shot or McNulty boning a woman on a car hood or Rawls getting scoped in gay-bar.

The only time The Wire was a topic of random, public conversation was the days after Stringer met his death. I remember that night. I was staying with my boys in DC during that season.. It was between internships in Atl and Orlando and I had returned to my evening shift at the Washington Post. I used to come home late Sunday -- actually Monday morning -- and me and my nigga Gee would watch the show when it showed up on On Demand. Gee said nothing to me before we began the episode, he just has a stupid smirk on his face. That whole season, me and the crew had heated arguments about the divergence of Stringer and Avon. Anyone who watched the show since it's beginning had fondness for the Stringer-Avon bond. But when Avon went to jail and Stringer took a greater hold of the cartel, it became clear that they weren't two thugs of the same cloth. Avon loved the game and recognized his limitations, that he was kingpin within the game but not necessarily built for the same type of success outside of the game. Stringer looked at the game as a means to an end and he saw the end in sight and was trying to persuade Avon to a more legitimate means. Stringer had always been my favorite character on the Wire, my boys typically dug Avon. By the time Stringer started angling for Avon's imprisonment and Avon gave up Stringer to enemies, it was clear "something" was gonna go down, but I never expected for Stringer to take that kind of L. There was definite justice in his demise -- getting gunned down by two people that he dealt the most grimy with -- but I had begun to think of Stringer, not McNulty, as the show's central character. it was unthinkable that Simon and Burns would kill him off for good, but they did. That was the beauty of the show, not the more metaphorical and abstract complexities and depth of the show -- that stuff was compelling and incomparable as well -- but, at the end of the day, it was just an exciting and dramatic hour of television, every week.

Of course, to boil it down to just that is definitely somewhat trivial. The Wire, afterall, was the most stark, realistic, true, honest, poignant depiction of urban America that we've ever seen. What makes it even more significant is that this played out over 8 years in more than 50 hours of film. This wasn't a three-hour epic that focused on one very concentrated, finite theme, like Do The Right Thing or Boys In The Hood or Mean Street or whatever....this was a slow-moving, deeply-profound series of complex and varied themes and stories that offered a panoramic, yet, acute view of the urban American landscape.

Think about all the characters and all the sectors of the urban America that they hit: schools, law enforcement, single parent homes, drug addiction amongst parents, drug addiction period, the media, politics, the absence of black male role models, peer-pressure, etc. A lot of these topics sound very surface and cliche, but The Wire actually "went in" on these topics. Because it's hard for me to explain how/why this show addressed these topics in a ground-breaking manner, let me just give you some bullets on certain characters, themes, moments or episodes that were especially compelling...

--- The Kids. The kids really resonated with me. I have a special affinity for young black youth, mostly because I grew up in -- in the context of the back community -- privileged circumstances, what with two parents, food, shelter and God. But when you grow up in that environment, surrounded by less fortunate peers, it makes an impression on you.

The most compelling moment of any of the kids story wasn;t when Dukie was seen on a drug corner at the end of Season 4 (depressing) or shooting up heroine in the series finale (made me put both palms on top of my head, let out an audible groans and tear up) or when Michael couldn't remember the piss-balloons (somewhat unbelievable, but still emotional) or when Randy sat in a hospital, bloody, goading Carver for his broken promises (scary)....the most compelling moment was actually a collection of moments, call it a story arch and it began when Namond had former Lt. Colvin take him home after a near-brush with a stay in a juvie dentention center. Colvin dropped him off at the steps of his crib, his mother opened the door, slapped Namond upside his head and began emasculating him about his fear and aversion to spending time in juvie. Apparently he was a woos and had no honor because he b*tched up at this prospect. yet, Namond had, on countless occasions, told his effed up Moms that he wasn;t his father. His father was Wee-Bey, Avon's No. 1 source of muscle and one of my all-time favorite characters on The Wire. Namond's Moms wanted Avon to be like his father, "a soldier" as she would say. Colvin saw something in Namond and knew that his Moms was pushing him down an unwanted path. Namond's Moms was forcing this young man on the street to go make the family money, enough dough to maintain their hood-rich lifestyle. this wasn't make-believe, there are slews of former drug-dealers-girlfriends and drug-dealers-wives that ask the same of pre-teen, early-teen sons. They think it's honorable and warranted. It's a warped world. When Colvin recognized that Namond was allergic and downright scared and unequipped for this life, he went to Wee-Bey, in jail, and asked if Namond could move in with him. In one of the next episodes, you Namond's moms talking to Wee-bey in jail, spouting some garbage about how she wants Namond to be "a soldier", how it's in his blood. Wee-Bey responded (and I'm paraphrasing) "The man (Colvin) say the boy could be whatever he want a be, a doctor, a lawyer..." I was struck by that moment because that kind of hope is nonexistent in the community. It was bittersweet, then, when we saw Namond winning a high school debate, the surrogate child of a loving home. He was clearly on his way to great, productive, non-street things. Meanwhile, Randy had turned into an ornery thug in the foster system. Dukie was days away from getting strung out on heroine, living with hobos after an unsuccessful afternoon of trying to land a job, and Michael had turned into a serial killler. that's what these street-muscle dudes are, they're serial killers. I think that The Kids illustrated, better than any other story arch, why the hood is the way it is. it's cyclical and influenced. Boot-strap rhetoric has no home in the hood -- often.

--- I wonder how many of you out here think that Barack Obama is anything but a politician, that he's he's different, that he will "change" things. I wonder if his rhetoric inspires you. I'm not here to rain on anyone's parade; and you all know that I have no political affiliation (might sound hokey, but I vote for God)...but as smooth and oratorial (word?) that Obama is, dude is a politician. he ain't wholly different, he just speaks better and has a different set of pipe dreams. I like Obama, I find him riveting and Pops and I just had a discussion about how he might be a tad more principled than your average Washington-sullied sleazeball, but dude is a politician.

I hated Mayor Carcetti, seriously. From the jump, I knew he was man on a mission and all the rhetoric and righteous-indignation he feigned would be exposed at some point. Season 5 was did a good job sof showing how these politicians abandon promises in order to garner re-elections or, in Carcetti's case, to salvage or, perhaps, develop ties and bridges that will help them into more prestigious offices. yet, The Wire, as always, did this in such a 3-dimensional manner, because, for everyone duplicitous decision that Carcetti made, i saw "why" he did and it never seemed entirely devious or negligent. What it cast a bright light on was the nature of politics and how city governments have so much to do with power, leverage, self-interest and straight-up political devices; maybe even more so than it has to do with serving a constituency. In a very warped and deviant way, the dirty Clay Davis was a more loyal and concerned politican than Carcetti. Now that's powerful.

--- I saw Omar in Gone Baby Gone, that Affleck-directed, Boston-based film noir. When he popped up on screen, the word homosexual did not pop in my mind, his sawed-off shotgun did. Omar is also in the new Sheek Louch video and a host of others. These rappers don't look at him as a homo-thug, they look at that character as a cold-blooded gangsta. I think too much was stock was put into how much Omar advanced the notion of homosexuality within the black community, a community where a black male is still inclined to call a gay man "faggot" or beat him with a pipe if the gay man accidentally hits on him. I think that The Wire did Omar's character justice by not overplaying his homosexuality. that's what a lesser show would have done. We'd have seen Omar blowin some light skin fairy's back out every episode, or walking with a switch, etc. Oh, believe me, we saw enough. I had to cover my eyes more than once when he went in to slide his lizard tongue in some man's mouth, but the central theme to Omar's story -- what couldve been overshadowed by placing too much emphasis on his sexual orientation -- was the fact that Omar was like the show's moral code. A killing-spree stick up man was the most poignant manifestation of right-and-wrong. that's dope to me. he was reckless, fearless, heartless and gay; but at the end of the day, he was stick-up man with a God Complex. I truly believe he felt he was meting out just punishment. I'm gonna miss that dude.

-- If there is indeed a Wire movie in the works, I'm most anxious to see what comes of Michael. it was easy to see that, as Seasons 4 and 5 progressed, he was developing the same street code as Omar. So when we say him with sawed off, jackin' niggas, it was surprising, but logical. What's too bad is that he had such a big heart and was such a compassionate cat. He couldve been a great husband and father. Instead he's destined to father several illegitimate kids and be a virtually absent social and familial presence in a community that sorely needs him. It's sad.

--- And, finally, Marlo. I don't wish people harm...but I'll say this, all season I wished him a slow-death.

All-in-all, I'mma miss this show, a show me and my nigs started watching on an HBO-whim. It was like, "Well, even though it seems like another trite cop show, where the boys in blue hunt down the young black criminals, it's HBO, so it has to be good." And it was -- exceedingly. I look across the television landscape these days and no show comes even remotely close to depicting this ignored sector of American society, at all, let alone as wonderfully and epic as The Wire did.

Spitzer and 'Stutes

2008-03-13T12:37:00.002-04:00

'Stutes is one of my favorite abbreviations of all-time. I think my man Frank came up with it back in the late-90s when my crew and I had virtually invented a brand new language. We basically spoke in a code. Ugly women were "doctors", man-balls were "monials", dudes were "emcees"...there were a host of other gems. But "'stute" was easy and grand. You could break it out in front of grown-ups and attitudinal females and it'd almost always float right past their ears without notice and we'd get a good chuckle. Plus, it's just fun to say -- go on, say it: Stute. Make sure you hyper-pronounce the Ts. Comedy.

Anyways, Monday, I came home, flicked on CNN to catch some Lou Dobbs-curmodgeonity about Mexicans and recessions and got a buncha sex-talk. Apparently our good govenor of New York State was buying stutes from NYC and transporting them to DC for periodic trysts.

As the kids would say: OMG!!!! AYS?!?!?! (that's "are you serious" right?) ICBT!!!! (I can't believe that) TINF!!!!! (This is nuckin futs!).

I was shocked and appalled...well, actually, I was amused and surprised at all.

I don't really have anything insightful to say on this subject or "scandal", but I'll simply ask this: If you take every govenor, the mayor of the country's 50 biggest cities and the male members of Senate and Congress, i would shocked into cardiac arrest if less than 90% of them had 1.) extra-marrital affairs; 2.) bought some high-=price stutes.

To me, it's utterly ridiculous to act surprised when we learn that these men are tipping out on their wives. It's just what they do. That's like part of what being a man in a position of political power involves. You can be an ungly, neandrathal looking schmuck like Spitzer, but have the connect and dough to pay for a 'stute like "Kristen". By the way, I saw her pic on Radar magazine's website...she's pretty cute. I was expecting your garden variety, shapless white woman. She was not that.

Look, I'm a Christian dude...so my moral standards are stringent. I don;'t advocate or even apologize for adulterers...but i'm also aware. Spitzer had that sack-of-bones-wife with her coiffed wig and cold womb laying next to him every night, of course that crooked dude was gonna buy some fresh skin for his stays in DC! And so do his peers.

Here's what I don't understand...let's forget for a moment the extreme hypocrisy on his part (he was a crusader for anti sex-trade laws), let's just talk about the reality: all politicians are unfaithful...so why should this dude step down? I watching CNN and a lawyer said that if Spitzer were prosecuted, it'd be the same level misdemeanor as a speeding-ticket (the kind that suspends a license). I guess it's the don't-get-caught thing, huh? You can't be a "known" adulterer and hold a public office. Aight. I mean, at the end of the day, dude is wrong and deserves punishment...i just think it's unfair that his peers probably had some 'stutes heels to the ceiling that same night and they'll serve out their useless terms scott-free.

Here's what I'd love to see, however: a female senator or Mayor, outed for buying male-escorts. Whatever happened to Women's Lib?

Twist is back...

2008-03-13T12:30:00.002-04:00

Please forgive the absence. I blame it on my laptop. It's been down for quite some time and it makes instant blogging a problem. Anyways...if you haven't gotten the e-mails, i'm grinding out an embryonic tel;evision presence lately. Below you can find the YouTube links to a few ESPN appearances. Check em out if you haven't already. In the meantime, let me get to writing a few novel-blogs...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Ozhel2mHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEr_qGKOjeU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGC6Uogbikw

Career Update: The Commish

2008-02-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

I'm currently wasting away in Buffalo, hoping to be back in NYC full-time by late spring. That means my social life is about as robust as an old man, in a wheel-chair, whose wife just died.

My writing, however, is really hoppin' right now. I'm a columnist with SLAM Magazine. The columns occur weekly online. We named the column The Commish and you can go here whenever and check anything new that I've written. And most of my previous columns have been archived. I also have feature in the newest issue that's on stands. It's a nice piece on Danny Granger.

I've also been appearing on a few radio shows here and there. I'll try to shoot a quick note when it happens in the future.

There's also some other things I'm proactively trying to pursue that could be some big moves. But everything is a process and niggas gotta be patient. So stay with me as I keep risin to the top.

The Great Mary J Blige

2008-02-10T12:29:00.000-05:00

I do a lot of reading on Sunday mornings. This particular morning, I was fumbling around The New Yorker and came across an incredible article on Mary J Blige. It's written by Sista Souljah and it's sort of a personal oral history of Mary J Blige's rise to fame and why it happened, what made her special. It's old, published in 1999. I guess, at this point, that's considered Mary's mid-career. It was during the time where she was coming out of her destructive phase and just about to launch her Oprah phase.

That's what I call Mary, at this point. She's music's Oprah. It's all self-help, betterment, you-go-girl rhetoric with her these days. And, to be quite honest, she doesn't make very good music any longer. Well, let me rephrase -- she undoubtedly makes "good" music, it is well crafted, professional music. But it's not vibrant and it definitely aint hip. But I dont think that's what she's after. She's an Oprah, making music for women -- of all ethnicities and socioeconomic levels -- ages 25-50. And I'm sure she makes music to "teach" or guide younger women. My Mom, who is 53, can dig on Mary...and I assume that my little cousin Kedara might do well to throw on some new Mary, too.

But this article, written with great poignancy and perspective by Sista Souljah, describes the greatness of young Mary -- the What's the 411, My Life Mary. The Mary that helped revolutionize a segment of black music. Archetype Mary. Paradigm Mary.

I believe that Mary J Blige is one of the 10 most important music figures of the past 20 years, right up there with Cobain, Dre, Radiohead, Nas, Cube and anyone else. This article reinforces that.

The Sad Tale of a Caffeine Junkie

2008-01-30T12:16:00.001-05:00

There are certain things that you cannot, under any circumstances do. Things like, "Don't call a broad a 'b&%$' -- to her face." Or, "Never touch a black man's radio -- or step on his gators." Or, "Never ask a woman her age." Or, "Don't stop at gas stations in the deep south, at night, if you're colored."

Chief among these NO-NOs is, "Don't you ever, ever, ever, at any time, anyplace, ever brew decaf coffee in a pot that isn't CLEARLY marked 'Decaf'!" If the pot doesn't have an orange handle and spout or if it isn't marked "Decaf" then a nigga is to assume that it's regular coffee.

Some rube in the office decided to display a grand level of hubris and made some 'Decaf' in the regular pot, only to announce over the intercom -- about an hour later -- that we were all mislead and he was so sorry for the mixup and that it won't happen again. He's right, it won't happen again, because I'm going to slit his throat right in the middle of him sending some loutish message to one of his FaceBook friends.

I'm serious about my coffe, as I detailed in this previous blogpost about my discuss for mulatto coffee. But the Decaf Shenanigans goes past frustration. It's beyond irritating. It's dangerous, for I, folks, am a chemically dependant, full-fledged caffeine junkie. This deserves an illustrative story...

In November, I had the pleasure of watching a close friend get married. Even better, my nig J allowed me to accompany him to Chicago (his wife's hometown) for the few days leading up to the ceremony. We left Monday night. By Wednesday afternoon my head felt like Onyx was stomping it out with early-90s Timb boots and I had the shakes. How did this happen? How did I get here? How did I become a straight-up junkie?

Coffee, much like beer, tasted disgusting to me as a little kid. But far before I was able to truly enjoy the subtle tastes and flavors of good whiskeys, bourbons, single malts, cognacs and vodkas; me and my crew were drinking cheap brandy, malt liquor and such. Our motto was: It ain't about how it tastes, it's about what it do to your face! In other words, screw the fact that this jug of Christian Brothers ran us a collective $12, we'll buzzed and fuzzed soon enough. I was drawn to coffee for similar reasons. I didn't start this java routine until my freshman year in college. trying and restless times those were. So I used to snatch Starbucks before morning and afternoon classes. It perked me up. When I moved on my own and got a coffee maker, it became a routine. I'd set the timer. It'd get so bad that, on some nights, I'd dream of my first cup in the morning. That first hint of the aroma is truly one of life's most underrated pleasantries.

For close to 10 years, I probably went without coffee, maybe 50 days. When you think about that, it's kinda sick. It means that most years, maybe only once every other month did I experience a java-free 24-hour period. Now, I wasn't the nigga that would drink 6 cups a day -- I was a reasonable 2-3 cup dude, but it was the consistency that developed the dependency.

Let's fast forward to this past November and Chicago....

The Saturday preceding the trip, I woke up late and uncharacteristically skipped the coffee, figuring that it was to be a lazy day and I'll rendezvous with my caffeine Sunday morn. That night I got up with my dude Chuck and his cousins. We went out, had some drinks and I was naturally a little dehydrated the next morn. I woke up rushing, however, trying to get ready for the Sunday Night Bills game, one I was attending with a large crew. Tailgating was to be starting soon. Beer, whiskey, meat, fires and touch football were on my mind -- not coffee. Before you know it, my nig Jathan was honking his horn and we were on our way. That evening was beautifully brutal. Cold weather, charred meat, grown-man whiskey -- stuff that you need to recover from. When I retired that night, it had been a good 36 hours since my last cup of coffee. Not cool.

I woke up the next evening -- yes evening -- having only enough time to pack and head over to J's crib so we could beat morning traffic and hit the road. He was moving to Chicago, which meant driving his jeep, with a U-Haul hitched. I managed to snag a cup of Starbucks early Tuesday morning right before we hit the road. We arrived to Chicago late that afternoon. Upon arrival, we unloaded J's stuff amidst the cold and rainy Chicago weather and then headed over his in-laws for the evening. Waiting there, was Uncle Leon, J's Pops. If Uncle Leon is anywhere, then some moonshine is not too far away. Predictably, Uncle Leon had Brandon smuggle some 'shine (illegal in the US) into Chicago. After about 2 cups of 'shine (very modest, for me) and multiple games of spades, we went back to J's crib late that morning and I checked out.

I woke up Wednesday with a severe headache and muscle cramps. Seriously. Over the previous 4 days, I would have usually consumed anywhere between 8-12 cups of coffee. I had one. Wednesday went along and I was beyond sluggish. People kept asking what was wrong with me. I was passing up liquor, wasn't laughing much, wasn't talking much. Just in pain, tired and fighting a headache. I figured I was just worn out and maybe catching a cold, but later that night, when my body temperature started fluctuating and I was walking around with a blanket like a pregnant woman, I started wonder. I went to bed that night trembling like a bish, in a hoodie and balled up in a blanket. Other cats were walkin around in boxers and Ts.

I bypassed the coffee again on Thursday. No coffee maker in J's crib, no coffee drinkers in the midst and no Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks in clear sight...I was jammed up, plus, my mind was moreso on the weird way my body was behaving.

By the evening, as I was drinking seltzer and walking around like an Old Maid and basically ready to fall asleep at 8pm, my boy was like, "Dude, what is going on with you?!" which was the point when it finally dawned on me that this could actually be me on some junkie steez, withdrawing from coffee. I ask Sis. Storey to make a pot of strong coffee. I sipped down two cups that evening and, in a fit of desperation, copped a cup of Subway coffe Friday morning. Wouldn't you know I felt brand new.

It was sad. Folks were keeping an eye on my coffee in take for the rest of the weekend on some, "Vince did you get your coffee today?", like I had diabetes.

So you see how serious this is. When it's morning-time and I'm coming for my caffeine fix, don't be the idiot that brews some decaf in the regular pot, throwing off my equilibrium. Stunts like that will get a nigga cut. Seriously, it's that real.

There Are No Blind Women

2008-01-28T15:12:00.000-05:00

I've never seen a blind woman in my life. Wait, scratch that, I've never seen a blind woman younger than 85, in my life. I'm serious.

The other day, I helped a middle-age man onto the campus shuttle after he beat the snot of my shins with his walking stick. He sat once on the bus and thanked me. It was all good. This was not the first time I helped a blind person. Being blind, is the illest ailment of them all, downright debilitating. When I see a blind person, I'm always taken back with sympathy. I can't imagine what it'd be like. And their images usually stay with me for some time. This is all to say that, for the life of me, I cannot recall one single image of a female ages 1-day to 84-years walking with a blind-stick. Makes me think that the whole Hellen Keller thing is a humungi lie. She might have been deaf and mute, but I'm calling that broad's bluff on being blind. She saw that wall she banged into. She also saw the mess she made when she'd knock over her porridge in disabled frustration.

Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Marcus Roberts -- these are men. If there was such a thing as a blind, pre-senior female, one of them birds would be bangin out some killer chords on a Moog. You notice how well Al Pacino played that blind man in Scent of a Woman? That's because he tapped into his masculine genetic predisposition to possibly being blind. On the other hand, Kerry Washington played a horrendous version of a blind woman in Fantastic Four. This wasn't because she was a poor actress, it's because that's like asking an Asian to play a believable role in a film about pick-up basketball -- genetically (and theoretically) impossible.

I don't know why woman aren't able to get blind. But I figure it's similar to how men can't catch fun-bag cancer. Isn't it fair how these things even out?

I mean, yes, men don't have to carry 8-lb kids in their wombs. But then again, women never have to worry about the gift of sight, until they hit 85. And that's the hotness, because being blind sucks. Have you ever seen a blind man crossing busy intersections? Or walking into snow banks? Or caning a pile of dung, only to sidestep into a puddled pot-hole? That ish is for the birds....well, technically, i guess it isn't.

My latest toothpaste

2008-01-16T12:25:00.000-05:00

I brush my teeth with America Ferrara.

Rappers on Roids...Mary J too

2008-01-16T11:30:00.000-05:00

I was flipping through some music video channels the other day and saw Amerie. Periodically, I brush my teeth with Amerie. I say periodically because there are times when I find her DDG (drop dead gorgeous (how cornball was that?)), and other times when she looks somewhat average. In this particular video, she was closer to average. This basically meant: OK, Vince, no Amerie-induced chubbies from this one, so flip to the next channel, 'cause the song was sho-nuff wiggidy-wack. But just then, I realized it wasn't her song, she was merely singing the hook. I came to this realization when I heard a nasally voice rapping in a cadence that resembled the rev-break nature of toy race cars. It was Chingy, the clown that gave us the seminal rube-anthem "Right Thurr". This is a song in which he spits, "Gimme whatcha got for a pork chop/She threw it at me like I was a shortstop."

This new joint with Amerie was just as bad. The video images, however, were quite different.

"Right Thurr" dropped in 2003. That video featured Chingy as a skinny, lanky, big-greasy lipped bish, standing around some ghetto spot while St. Louis bimbos did the chiecken-head dance. Let me reiterate that aside from his greasy smackers, he was a lanky dude. Well, fast forward to 2008 and this dude was up in this new video looking like Lavar Arrington. I mean he was massive. His chest is like two tree stumps.

He's not the first rapper to make this transformation. 50 Cent went from being a chubby, scarfaced rascal to a black Rambo. Timbaland went from having dude-tits to looking EXACTLY like Barry Bonds, including the huge chest and arms. Remember "Sobb Story" or "Scenario" or "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See"? Busta was shaped like a regular man. Now his neck is roughly the width of a New York City block...seriously, Bust could stand at the corner of 34th and Park and the other side of his neck would be at 34th and Lex. This is not an exaggeration, either. Did you see Dr. Dre at the Vibe awards last year? He looked like some type of farm animal, the working kind, like a mule or something, like he should be having relations with cows, he was an ox...it was discombobulating.

I'm bring all this up because there was a story in the Albany Times-Union that named rappers and Mary J in a steroid report. Apparently, allegedly, these folks got shipments of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.

And you know what? I believe every bit of it. I don't care if they did or didn't. Timbo can have an IV connected to a vat of roids and it won't make him produce classic tracks like "FuturesSex", that's what acid is for. 50 on roids doesn't present the ethical and moral problems of Bonds on roids. But these folks aren't growing to these mammoth sizes without being on some kind of performance enhancer...and not the stuff u kop from GNC. Chingy wasn't just lifting a lot of weights. That greasy-lipped nigga is on a juice-regimen. Believe it.

And what of Mary J? Poor thing. She's 37 and the broad has lived a hard life full of abuse. She's been abused and she's abused, as in, she's abused narcotics. Now she's turned her life around and everytime you see her, she looks fabulous. And she has to. So, I totally believe this woman was like "Aight, I gotta keep this figure tight, so get me some substance that'll help." Now you see her and her fatty is still nice and plump, and her legs are still fleshy, but toned and she also has a washboard stomach. Thats all love. What is disconcerting is to see this woman and her manly arms and shoulders. It's like, Lay off the weight-training...I mean, what, you wanna look like Chyna? Mary's arms looks like she's training for a supporting role with Sly Stallone in Over The Top II.

This is all leading up to what will be my favorite nugget of news for 2008, because it's bound to happen, it's gotta happen, it's inevitable: Someone is gonna reveal that Tina Turner has been juicing since the last time Ike spread-palmed her mug againt the bathroom sink. That 89 year old woman cannot be shaped like that naturally. There's not much difference in her muscle structure and that of, say, Wesley Snipes.

Human Growth Hormones, bka HGH, are known as a fountain of youth. Well if that bish Tina ain't forever young, I don't know who is.

And she had several reasons for motivation. She gotta keep them legs right. She gotta stay in shape for those top-grossing, worldwide tours. And she had to train for one last throwdown with Ike before he croaked. There were no news reports, but I guarantee you that Tina had one last showdown with the most famous spousal-abuser of all-time. She probably walked in his dirty @$$ pad, and, you know how you collar someone up? well, she probably soul-patched him up and started working that nigga while she still had syringes stuck in her cheeks.

I know Tina was juicin, Chingy too.

Michelle Obama

2008-01-04T07:19:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the recent absent...and this is by no means my official return blog, but did you see Sis. Michelle Obama in that turquoise dress last night?! I hadn't noticed before, but homegirl has some curves. Impressive.

And is it just me, or does she resemble Condoleeza Rice? They both have that politico, coiffed whig, sittin ontop of some cranium commando size heads that house wide smiles that reveal signs that say "Next tooth, 100 miles." And they both favor skirts that end a few inches above the knee.

One last thought was Clair Huxtable a fictional character whose style was influenced what was the professional woman of that time, or has Clair Huxtable influenced the style of these broads like Obama and Rice of today? I wonder...

Asians playing pickup ball

2007-12-20T00:06:00.000-05:00

this post should be up soon. it will be rude, ignorant and make you think much less of me than you already do...

10 Best Albums of 2007

2007-12-19T15:48:00.000-05:00

I haven't hit you with a Music Dude post in a while. But, I'm gonna spare the reintroduction and get right into business. 2007 was a tough year to get a handle on early. We had classics, we had progressions, we had dissapointments...all that. What follows is my Best of 2007 Top 10. BUT, before I get to the Top Ten, here are few other albums that caught my attention for varying reasons.

2007 Guilty Pleasure
Rise, Samantha James: I like dance music. Not dance music, as in club music; but dance music as in, the kind of mood-music they play in chic lounges. I love how airy it is...it's kinda sultry too. Well, a few months ago, while at work, I grabbed a CD off my dude Khalid's desk, solely because the white woman's face on the cover was somewhat enchanting. Plus, SLAM's sister publications are XXL, King and Scratch; so, usually, the CDs lying around almost always hip hop. What was the deal with this white chick's CD infiltrating the Harris Publications fortress? That's what I asked myself. So I snagged it, itunes'd it, podded it up and listened on the train ride home. I sat there entranced the whole way. This kinda music isn't for everyone and I'm assuming that most young black men would consider it somewhat gay -- OK, ultra-gay. But I dig this ish, and Samantha's album in particular. Her voice floats, the production flickers. She's like a new-age Flora Purim with an LA (not Brazilian) vibe. I'm a fan.

2007 Sleeper
Waitin' To Inhale, Devin the Dude: This was such an entertaining album...a mix of Dolomite and Mike Epps set to some really groovin production. And Devin is very experienced emcee with skill to burn. My personal favorites were "She Usta Be", a song about how this fine broad became a fat whale as an adult; and "Don't Wanna Be Alone", where Dev struts his crooning steez.

2007 Dissapointment
8 Diagrams, Wu Tang Clan: Wu Tang is my favorite hop group of all time and one of the greatest musical acts in the history of American music. RZA is the greatest hip hop producer of all time and one of a handful of TRUE musical geniuses. He's up there with Prince, Dylan and whomever else. Now, even though Iron Flag was underwhelming and it had been six years since the last Wu album, I held out high hopes because RZA was said to have taken this immense, grand, glorious musical leap with this album. primarily because RZA didn't save the album. So when I heard this joint, I was actually kinda depressed for the rest of the day. It wasn't garbage, but it may as well have been. I hate that my favorite rap group is irrelevant. I knew the Mcing would bore me, but I was expecting much more stellar work from the Abbott (RZA). He has some dope joints, but a lot of snoozers and not really any beat that even remotely sniffs his best work.

Before the release of the album, Raekwon went on some rampage about how RZA's new steez was F'n up the Clan vibe. He clowned RZA about always having a guitar strapped to his chest. He was kinda right, but for the wrong reasons. Rae's a narrow-minded music-midget who should stick to rhyming about drugs and clothes and not challenge a genius. However, Rza's guitar work on this joint was corny. He sounded like a dude that learned a few chords, progressions, licks and decided to trot them out on the album for no real reason other than his own entertainment, indulgence.

Sad to say, but I'm also sick of hearing Wu Mcs. these 40 year old men need to hang it up. Deck sucks balls. Meth still has the flow but is predictable and completely trivial. U God is the worse emcee on the planet and i'm not exaggerating. Rza still has his moments as an, but that could just be because i admittedly ride his jock. GZA still spits. Ghost has his moments, but he's been grating on me for the last 4 years. He's a cherry-head with crystal goggles skiing on a glacier of buttermilk rivers. His blue-cheese wallys go ill with his pancake apple jack skully. Burn em, Theodore.

2007's Unreleased Album of the Year
Land of the Lost, J*Davey: No unreleased album will EVER top Bilal's Love For Sale, which is probably one of the 100 greatest albums of the past 50 years. No joke. This isn't quite that transcendant, but it is still a collection of music that gives me the shakes. Were it an official release, it'd be vying for Album of the Year. The work on this joint was astounding. The production was slightly less textured than the Sa-Ra (an album in the Top 10) and nowhere near as complex and heavy in harmonic terms. But the production was still astounding and the chick is a very special songwriter, almost on Georgia Anne Muldrow's level and a little more accessible. Check "Let It Bleed". They break a lot of new ground throughout this album. Seriously, it bends my mind.

The 2007 Jazz Survivors Crew
I really dug all these albums this year. The Miles Davis box set was probably the most important release of the year. All the other albums listed below are from men that are my age and are pushing the boundaries of jazz. they're venturing away from the normalcy of acoustic sets and bringing in more electric vibes. It's all heavy, heavy music.
Jeremy Pelt, Shock Value: Live at Smoke
Marcus Strickland, Open Reel Deck
Kendrick Scott, The Source (disregard the wack review)
Christian Scott, Anthem
and lastly...
Miles Davis, The Complete On the Corner Sessions

My Favorite, Unassisted Find of 2007
Kenna, Make Sure They See My Face: I was flicking through video channels one night when I saw this wild, artsy, esoteric video. It starred a black dude galavanting around the LA night scene. The music was blazin. The name of the song was "Say Goodbye to Love", the artist was Kenna. I had never heard of this dude before, but from the sound of the track, he seemed to tied to the Neptunes camp. Not in a Clipse way, in a N.E.R.D. way. So I got up, flipped on the computer, downloaded his album and through it on the pod the next morning. It's my 2007 Gem. I love it when black folks do rock music. Sure, we invented it, but because we then moved to other genres and stopped really pursuing the rock idiom, it has become an overwhelmingly white music. Thankfully, whites have kept it thriving and have put their own stamps on it. They do it well. There are far more Eminems than Vanilla Ices in rock music. But when a nigga gets down, it's still something special, even if the said product doesn't compare to Radiohead's best work or something. With that said, I absolutely love this Kenna product, because you get the energy and rawness of rock, but with a lot of soul and funk. It's like a lesser version of N.E.R.D., which makes sense, since Chad produced much of the album. A bunch of gems on this joint. My absolute joint is "Loose Wires", it's sexy.

And finally...

The Top Ten Albums of 2007

10. American Gangster, Jay-Z: American Gangster is perhaps hip hop's first memoir. His recollections from an experienced adult's 20/20 vantage point. Recounting everything, sometimes from the psyche of the young Jay, other times with hindsight of current-Jay, but always with a keeness and clarity. And this is all done over some of the best instrumentation I've heard on a hop album that wasn't headed by Soulquarians. Truthfully, it's kinda classic.

9. Desire, Pharoahe Monch: I'll let my man Chuck explain this one (part of a review that was posted on ThisIsRealMusic.com) ... "In this current era that finds the first generation raised entirely on Hip-Hop longing to find their place in today’s immature state of the culture, Desire proves that there is such a thing as Hip-Hop for adults, giving its audience of grown-ups a more mature version of the music on which they grew up. Seamlessly wading through nearly every human emotion, Desire can make you laugh, cry, dance or just nod your head in satisfaction while simultaneously addressing every current relative topic of interest with grace, character and intelligence. Pharoahe’s superb storytelling and quick-witted wordplay renders Desire as an entertaining pleasure with incredibly high replay value, a seemingly endless range of subject matter and an impeccable cinematic value that is far too rare within the genre, rivaled by only a few other albums the likes of Rea and Ghost’s Purple Tape and Nas’ It Was Written. This level of poetic photoplay is all but non-existent within today’s unimaginative Hop scene. Containing virtually no filler, together with apt production and Pharoahe’s ability to make an entire album without ever taking a break on the mic, Desire is reminiscent of the remarkable albums of the genre’s illustrious past."

8. Graduation, Kanye West: This was a great album, in hindsight. Initial listens may have turned off some, because it was such a departure from previous efforts. I thought his last album, Late Registrtation, was a touchstone, not just in hip hop, but all music. I was expecting for Ye to continue on that rich path. Instead, he jetted off on a detour that, ultimately, was leading to another destination. Once I allowed myself to arrive there, I was please. then again, I'm not completely aversed to pop music. This album is an achievement. I didn't think it was possible for someone to rap and make "stadium music" as Ye calls it. When I say that this was a hip hop pop album, I don't mean a hip hop version of a Britney Spears album, it was a hip hop version of an album like U2's All You Can't Leave Behind. That's pretty spectacular when you put that in perspective. When you listen to the album, the bulk of the songs is so anthemic and rich that you automatically envision being at some music festival or Ye performing it at a sold-out MSG. I can see hop fans not digging it, but it's still a great album. Afterall, My Favorite Musical Moment of 2007 occurrs right before the third verse of "I Wonder", when Kanye takes it to the bridge with those lush strings and then it breaks back into the triumphant drums and synthesizers as Ye asks, "How many ladies in the house? How many ladies in the house without a spouse?" That line and break was meant for nothing other than a sold out arena. Classic.

7. Kala, M.I.A.: This will probably get the top spot on most year end magazine and website lists. it's an excpetion album, made by an inspired, special artist. I do, however, think her backstory plays into how much love she gets. Still, at the end of the day, her artistry trumps everything. She's militant, insightful, sassy, crass, witty, complex -- all that. And she does so over what has to be the most ecclectic mix of worldly beats in popular music. Everyone needs to get hip to this chick, if you're not already.

6. Tru3 Magic, Mos Def: This album was panned by critics and pulled off record store shelves after less than two months in stores. Everyone was dead wrong about this album. It wasn't a classic like his first two solo efforts -- Black On Both Sides and New Danger -- but it was about as stellar as a non-classic album can get. in fact, it's Mos' track record that keeps this album from being a classic, since we have no choice but to hold it up against against his previous work. As far as the album goes, I'll let my man Tony do that work (this is part of his review that was posted on ThisIsRealMusic.com) ... "One of Mos’ greatest talents is his ability to manifest raw human emotions in his songs. Of course, the music on Tru3 Magic is sonically pleasurable and mentally stimulating, but, maybe more impressively, Mos utilizes his rare ability to tap into the soul of the listener. He is not afraid to let go of his “cool” and inadvertently appears ice cold. Tru3 Magic is uncut, grown man music, intended for an audience with an educated listening ear. The album celebrates Bridge music and, were it not released so late in the year, would have been the best album to drop in 2006."

5. The Hollywood Recordings, Sa-Ra: The Top 5 albums on this list are all classics. I've said enough about this album to anyone that talks music with me regularly. This is my favorite album of the year, maybe even by far. As for the product ... the production is exceptional. The amount of textures found on these tracks is far and above 99% of what you hear. Every 4 or 8 bars a new instrument, new key, new mood, new something is introduced. The music never gets old and sometimes its straight up, bona fide transcendant classic, like instrumentation on the "Hollywood Redux". As for the vocals, the bridge genre is really a mood based music. The fact that Sa-Ra typically sings in more hushed tones is because tt aint about the lyrics, the vocals are often supposed to serve as instruments. There's this refrain "Do Me Gurl" that sounds like its a "response" to the "call" of the sharp harpsichord. The way they write music is really beyond creative. Raheem DeVaughn is creative. These nigs is in another realm. They have a Sa-Ra sound. "Glorious" sounds like noone but Sa-Ra, with that electro bass and those oddly harmonious vocals. Even there more neo-soulish songs like "So Special" and "Ladies Sing" are layered with so much sonically, cascading keys, horns. And more than anything, this album grooves. I mean grooves that are different than funk. More like a pungent aroma. This was the quintessential vibin' album of the year.

4. The World Has Made Me The Man of My Dreams, Mechelle N'degeocello: N'degeocello is one of the great artists of my lifetime. I know you've read a lot of hyperbole thus far, but don't let that diminish what I just wrote. I mean that sincerely. I was born in 1979. When I tallk about "artists of my lifetime", I mean any artist who's career initially began flourishing in either 80s, 90s or new millenni. That includes Madonna, MJ, Public Enemy, Radiohead, whomever. N'degeocello is up their in the 95 percentile. I just think that, often, her overt homosexuality makes people shy away. Like on her previous album, Comfort Woman, she has a song where the chorus says "take me down to your river, I wanna get close to you." Well, she's obviously talking about felating her lipstick lesbo girlfriend. That can turn folks off. But, musically, she is very close to the Prince kinda realm when it comes to musical ideas...and that's what people are missing by ignoring her releases and her insanely good live shows. This joint, though?! It sent my hurling off a clift, seriously. It's just so positively nasty that it's insane. My brain rumbles when I listen to this album. In particular, "Lovely, Lovely" and "Evolution" are some of the grimiest, rockin, bad-a$$ tunes you'll from a soul sister in your life. It's not that she just may be the greatest living non-jazz bass player, but her overal approach to music and her sonic ideologies are legendary. Seriously. If she were white, she'd headline summer festivals and win Album of the Year awards at the Grammys.

3. I'll Sleep When You're Dead, El-P: To be honest, i've avoided this album this long because i'm about all tapped out on white brooklynites doing hip hop. Every month, I have to write about 10-15 short biographies on various undergroung rap and rock artists for AllMusic.com. Having done a slew of these, i get annoyed with all these white rap artists who moved to NYC from everywhere and they all bring this self-righteous, quasi-progressive, geeky, I-Am-Hip-Hop kind of wackness and it just gets annoying. They all wanna be the next El-P. PLUS, I simply have trouble with this kind of music, the jilted-rythym, barely-harmonic/melodic kinda hop with some dude rapping incredibly intricate, stuffing 100 words into a bar. This is why i probably won't listen to this album very often, but it's also why I'll Sleep When You're Dead is a classic. The music is OUT THERE! I mean it's some incredibly moody, complex, ambitious, schizo stuff. You can hear the brilliance when listening the first time. If I did a top 10 favorite list, this joint prolly wouldnt get honorable mention (I "like" the will.i.am Songs About Girls more than this joint)...but 10 "best"...this joint is outrageous. It's just that, lsietning to it is almost an assignment.

2. The Cool, Lupe: I don't know what to say about this album, other than it's remarkable. Just Lupe and his production team offering a touchstone piece of art. After my first listen I knew I was listening to greatness, striaght up. I was straight floored at how much of an artist he is. Artists have mastered that nuances of making great music, whether it's an adlib, a vocal inflection, a break or bridge, some faint percussion underneath, it can be anything...things that make really good songs become actually great. This album was full of that. it's an astounding piece of work, man. Again, this is remarkable and along with Madvillainy, Like Water For Chocolate and Late Registation, the only pure hop release of the new millenium that can spar with the great albums of all time, regardless of genre. You'll read a lot of reviews that will tell you otherwise, but from the eclectic production, to Lupe's super-style-flipping, to his seriously weighty subject matter and the way he turns inane fodder into social critique (this niggas has a song about Cheesburgers ("Gotta Eat") that can be used as a metaphor for a number of things), this is classic material. Don't get it twisted, just get it.

1. Yesterdays Universe, Yesterday's New Quintet: This was my review I wrote for allmusic.com ... "Madlib lets you know what he's after at the onset, with cover art emulating Ornette Coleman's free-jazz pioneering Ornette! and a hip-hop-rooted revision of Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" as the album's first song. The familiar "Brew" vamp is updated with Madlib's genius sensibilities and a welcome addition to Yesterdays New Quintet: the jazz-drumming, hip hop-producing Karriem Riggins. For the next 14 tracks, Madlib, Riggins, and Azymuth's Ivan Conti create the most stunning fusion of jazz and hip-hop to date. Madlib began this in March 2001, indulging all of his eccentricities, tastes and ideas with Angles Without Edges, where Madlib one-man-banded his way to a forward-moving testimony that appropriated everything from jam band vibes of Soulive and Beastie Boys-style organic hip-hop, combining it with freewheeling, experimental jazz ingredients to produce an album hailed as an evolution. Yesterdays Universe, however, is meaner, nastier and even more ambitious. Madlib has clearly grown as an artist, mastering the area where the improvisational nature of jazz meets the sampled urbanity of hip-hop. The additions of Riggins and Conti give the music even more textures and emotion. While "One for the Monica Lingas Band" is pretty and expressive, the hallmarks of this album are tunes such as "Street Talkin'" and "Marcus, Martin and Malcolm" — the former sounding like a jazz breakbeat and the latter sounding like a new-millennium, reared-on-hip-hop version of Joe Henderson's early '70s work. You don't hear music this daring and edgy in the jazz idiom, nor do you often encounter music this evolved and creative from its hip-hop peers. The 12-minute "Vibe from the Tribe Suite" is an instance that happens rarely in music, when it seems that new terrain has been discovered and you aren't just listening to a quirky hip-hop producer dibble and dabble at his whim, but that a full-fledged, unique musical idea has developed. The bassline is sinister, the drum rhythm is as head-nodding as it gets, the distorted flute staccatos with an MC's cadence, the piano chords are from the school of Mwandishi-era Herbie Hancock, and the soprano sax is off-kilter. The result is a musical and creative statement that caps an album full of new statements. This album is an early 21st century landmark flushed with the optimism and possibilities of a new frontier. Madlib and Yesterdays New Quintet are the bold first settlers waiting for other musicians (if they can) to follow the leaders. "

Charlie Weiss should be fired

2007-11-30T00:19:00.000-05:00

I was in Chicago all last week, watching my nigga Jathan wed his beau, TeKoa. While there, I was accosted on several occassions by my nigga Sleezy from Oakland. He said if I don't quickly write something desparaging about Charlie Weiss and Notre Dame's double standard that he would hop on a red eye to Buff and "murder you, Blood." And he was serious. He meant me harm. His threat would usually be something like, "Yo, V, for real, Blood -- if you don't hurry up and write something about them busters in Indiana and how they givin' that nigga Charlie Weiss third and fourth chances...for real, Blood, why haven't you wrote something on that?! They ran Willingham off campus, but this nigga can go 0-26 and he gettin contract extensions??!!?!?!!!"

I feel you Sleez. And so here it is, in case anyone thought different:

CHARLIE WEISS SHOULD BE FIRED!

Sean Taylor and the Tuck Your Chain Epidemic

2007-11-30T00:14:00.000-05:00

You heard about this football player, Sean Taylor? He was murdered in his home. Folks don't know if it was a blown robbery, a hit or what. This is the most recent of a string of criminal acts perpetrated on athletes. I write for SLAM, which is a basketball magazine, but felt like this Taylor situation was pervasive enough for an editorial on our website.

Here it is, check it.

Marbury's bout to start snitchin...

2007-11-14T14:19:00.000-05:00

I wrote this SLAM piece last night on the Death of the NYC Point Guard. It was my initial reaction to this Knicks-Zeke-Marbury saga. But this was before I knew that Marbury was trying to F'n BLACKMAIL Isaiah into letting him start. This dude basically said, "If you don't start me, I'm snitchin'." This is the biggest b**ch move ever, specifically from a dude that reps the BK and acts like he's That Dude.

Zeke's reaction, however, makes me wonder. He's saying homo things like how "this happens every Novemeber and then we kiss and make up." (And he says it in that soft-whisper of a voice, with his arched eyebrows and that effeminate smile, which is half-hilarious, half-oft-putting). Now we all know Isaiah to be an egomaniac and incredibly proud, maybe even haughty. Yet, he went as far as to say that he welcomes Steph back to the team -- after Steph basically said, "If you don't start me, I'm droppin dimes on everything from the time I saw you and Anucha role playing by the pool and she was bare-chested wearing your trunks and you were rockin' her bikini. Or the time I you and Mr. Dolan bumpin and grindin to "My Humps" It's all comin out if you actually have the balls to start Mardy friggin Collins over me." After all that, Isaiah is gonna welcome him back?!

This sounds conspicuously like appeasement to me.

OR...

Isaiah is behaving like an understanding father. I think this is what I'm going with, because ALL SUMMER, STEPH WAS ACTING LIKE A CERTIFIED BREAD BASKET!!! Have you seen the youtube clips of the television appearances he was making during the summer? he was speaking, behaving and thinking like someone either on drugs, medication or just off his rocker. And I think Isaiah really feels for the dude and is trying to work this situation with some maturity and empathy. Let's not forget, this isn't the first time that Steph said he had dirt on someone and was gonna spill beans. he said that after the Larry brown season. On the final day of the season, as he cleared his locker, he told the reporters to come back in a month and he'd give everybody "the real story". This never happened. I'm sure he has dirt on Zeke, just like I'm sure Zeke and all his teammates have dirt on Steph. All of my close friends have dirt on me and vice-versa. This shouldn't be news. But I guarantee nothing comes out. This is a cry for attention and, you know what, i think Isaiah is handling this well. I wouldn't be taking this stance if I didn't think Steph is going insane. The other day one of my nigs watched a youtube clip of Steph losing his mind and after watching it, my dude said "I just think he needs a father." I actually agreed with that. Steph needs someone to help him regain his sanity, because he's acting beyond erratic these days.

I didn't ask for this Mulatto coffee

2007-11-01T18:34:00.000-04:00

I was just coming back from grabbing a quick afternoon coffee at the café downstairs and two thing REALLY irritated me. First, I told the little El Salvodorian teenager behind the counter (you knew I had to get in a racial description) to put in "a very little bit of cream." I'm a black coffee dude, but in the afternoon, I treat it like a dessert and drink it with a little cream (enough to merely coat the bottom of the cup and slightly lighten the complexion of the coffee) and sugar (one packet). I always make this clear to people making my coffee, if I'm at one of the cafes that don't allow you to fix your coffee the way you'd like (most do). It's one of the reasons I typically don't go to those type of cafes, specifically for an afternoon cup.

But for some reason, I didn't feel like walking the extra block to Starbucks or Jadora and chose to go to this cafeteria style café downstairs from my building and ordered the aforementioned coffee with "a very little bit of cream." In essence, if the "barista" (and I use that term very liberally here) does things right, my coffee will be Kobe's complexion and not its usual Dwyane Wade shade. But this broad chose to dump half the quart of cream in my cup and slid me a Derek Jeter cup of coffee!!!! I WAS INCENSED.

The reason I was so angry is not just because this woman totally ignored my request (she may be a Salvo, but she spoke bueno 'glish, so there were no communication issues); but the real irritation is the tango that inevitably ensues after these kind of gaffes. That tango includes me asking the barista to please pour out a certain amount of ounces of the light-skin coffee and add some more regular coffee for pigment-purposes. Now, I have an incredible knack for eying how much of the light-skin coffee needs to be replaced with regular coffee in order to get my cup of joe to the right complexion. But the problem is that the baristas rarely listen to me…I mean, the reason we're doing this dance to begin with is because they very clearly intimated through their initial dismissal of my request that they're not really trying to work with me too tough. For this particular cup, I was sure that a 4 oz swap would take my cup from "Purple Rain" Prince to "Humpin Around" Bobby Brown and then I could just get the heck outta that amateur operation and get to sippin.

Except, homegirl didn't listen and we had to swap three whole times!!!!!!! Eff being difficult. There's no way a Grace-Jones sippin nig like me can pay for a cup o' Lena Horne and not feel like my very soul has been compromised. I take this bean bizness serious. Go ask somebody.

And of course this trash-café didn't have the sleeves for the cup, so as I walked back to the office my hand was getting scolded.

Scolded hands = frustration, but I'm still a gentleman at heart, so when I see an older woman rolling a briefcase (not a suitcase, but a briefcase), I still muster the Samaritan in me and hold open the door for this old bitty and her companion, who was rocking a natty three-piece suit and looked like Bill Nighy, Ian McKellan, or any other British transplant (Brits all look the same, just different shades of caramel-teeth). Both of these non-mute humans walked through the door and said absolutely nothing. No thank you. In fact, they didn't even muster a smile…not even a smirk! I was so livid that I even spit out one of those smarmy "Your welcome" at them, maybe guilting or shocking them into a guilty thank you -- to be honest, I'd have been happy with an exasperated, begrudging thank you. Nothing!

What are people thinking during these kind of pseudo-encounters?!!! Do I look like a door-man to you? Do I resemble a bell-hop in this track jacket and these jeans and chuck tayors, holding a coffee? This is obviously my job, right? I hold doors for old British broads and their beaus. That's what I do. And, in fact, I do this and do not expect even the most common and fundamental courtesy of eye contact, or maybe a smile, possibly a thank you.

Getting greased twice in 5 minutes is so very hard to process.

New Jay-Z

2007-10-31T19:08:00.000-04:00

Bout to hop on the train and listen to this new Jay-Z album (American Gangster, release in conjunction with the new Ridley Scott-Denzel-Crowe-Grazer film opening up this Friday)....I'm prepared for dissapointment....

More NBA thoughts.

2007-10-31T18:13:00.001-04:00

For my playoof predictions and some team insights, go to the post below this one...in the meantime...here are just some random thoughts on the new season.

-- I'm ecstatic. Around late August I get a modest NFL bug that usually involved some palpable anticipation for Week 1 and some big blowout viewing day where I sit around with either fam or friends and watch football and football-related programming from 10 am until midnight. But by mid-September, with the NFL sheen having worn-off and my pennant attention just rounding into form, I'm overcome with sports depression, longing for MY season to start up. By October, with meaningless training camps and empty trade talks only stoking that frustration, I'm going bonkers. So that first week of NBA action is always like Christmas for me. Extreme anticipation and rarely any disappointment. Yesterday's Houston-LA game ended up being kinda special. My favorite moment? On Houston's last possession, the one where Oreo-cookie Battier hit that 26-foot prayer, Mac had the ball approaching the top of key. Of course, Kobe was guarding him. It looked like it was gonna be mano-mano and Kobe was crouched mad low to the floor and then pounded his palms on the hardwood, like "BRING IT NIGGA!" That's why Kobe is my nigga. NOBODY else in the league, other than KG would have been relishing that chance to stop a peer on that stage so much. It's that kind of mentality that makes Kobe at least a head above his peers. He wanted Mac to try to win the game on him so bad. As un-hip-hop as Kobe is, that was so hip-hop, right there.

-- I'm kinda tight on the new string of NBA commercials. What's with all the melodrama? Other than the RV joints with the ESPN personalities and the players, every other commercial is like some mini-drama. Wade's commercial; Bron's commercial; those NBA is amazing commercials. Everything is so serious. And it brings me to an issue I have with the NBA. On one hand, I hate how they pander to casual fans with ish like dress codes and what not, but it's in trivial stuff like commercials where they could do stuff to attract causal fans and I'd think that -- in cynical America -- the casual fan would be more interested in commercials that generate superficial excitement than some commercials that are trying to tug heart-strings or exhibit the "weight" of the league. For me, being an NBA fan on the maniacal level that I am, it's a weird position, because fans like me always feel like the league is under attack, because it is. MLB super-fans have it good. Even with steroids, their game will ALWAYS have storied traditions to fall back on and, when all else fails, MLB will always have the advantage of trotting out nonathletic, very ordinary looking white dudes for American fans to identify with. Aside from the beauty of the game, you cannot tell me that history and the identity-connection fans have with the ordinary-joe lookin players doesn't weigh heavily into fans love of the game. Mike Lowell looks like a friend or relative of 75% of the fans that come to Fenway Park. Paul Pierce does not look like their friend. (I think this is why UFC is overtaking boxing in popularity as well. Plumber-Crack Joe loves to root for Chuck Liddell, but not a Mexican that looks like one of the essays taking one of his pal's construction gigs). The NFL is the NFL because games are events and games are events because games don't happen often. And the NFL is the NFL because it is still a league where the most important and identifiable position is predominantly manned by Americana white dudes. Yes its fast and ferocious -- but make the games twice/wk and make the QBs all look like Randy Moss and let's see how popular it stays. The NBA has a litany of issues, all exacerbated by short-history, length of season and the way the players look and behave (and when I say behave, I don't necessarily mean bad-behavior). Real fans notice this and real fans hate the way the NBA is generally treated by media and other sports fans, so real fans are consistently concerned with the NBA getting things right and getting the wolves off our backs. With that said, these commercials -- a way to advertise the league and the stars -- seem to be counter=productive or, at the very least, ineffective...unless you're a real fan.

-- I'm not a Utah fan -- by any means. But I am a Boozer and Deron fan. And they both represent (in different ways) two recent trends in the league. Remember when point guard was a dying position? No one knew how to run a team...it was a bunch of wannabe Zeke's pounding the ball into the arena's basement. Well, the position is still far from where it used to be, but there are more quality, natural points today than at any point during the past 10-15 years. While the point guard position was dying a slow death, big men, particularly power forwards started proliferating at ridiculous rates and all these dudes were ultra-skilled, thanks to Magic and the door he opened for versatilty coming from dudes taller than 6-7. In fact, the two trends could be linked. The slow-death of point guards was actually partly a product of the new versatile big men that could get their OWN shots, hence rendering playmaking less of an essential for modern point guards. Point guards started becoming lead guards, with Gilbert Arenas being today's best example.

These days? You have point guards like Mike Conley coming in the league and dudes like Chris Paul and TJ Ford already here and yes Deron Williams. I think Deron, in fact, may be the best and most complete of them all. He shoots well, is a ridiculously strong perpetrator and finisher, knows how to run an offense and plays sticky D. I clowned Deron coming into the league. I was all about Chris Paul, who was more prototypical at the time (Deron could showcase everything at Illinois because he played with Dee Brown and Head and they all sort of shared PG responsibilities in many ways). And although Lil Chrissy is still my dude, I think Deron is iller. They both, ultimately, are the two best examples that young niggas coming in the league these days are actually taking the PG responsibilities seriously. This is incredible news for fans.

On the flip side, Boozer is an aberration amongst his generation of big men. He may not be as versatile as the big men that came in the league between 93-00, but all those dudes really knew how to play basketball. Whether it was Webber, KG, Duncan, Brand, Coleman, LJ, whoever...these dudes could handle the rock, pass out of double teams, shoot 18 footers, rotate on defense, conduct successful drop steps, shoot little bankers off the glass. I feel like that generation produced the most skilled (although not most accomplished) set of big men in the history of the game. Fast forward to today and the only dude I see playing seriously heady ball from the recent 5 or 6 drafts is Boozer. Boozer aint the most skilled or athletic, but he's the smartest and most consistent. He won't stall an offense, he knows how move in the flow, he can hit 15 footers, you can throw it down to him in the post, he's an excellent rebounder and great POST DEFENDER. When I say post defender, I mean post defender -- a nig who doesnt let opposition get great post position, denies the ball, stays on his feet, boxes out, closes in tight on his weakside help assignments...not these other knuckleheads that are consistently out of position and come flying in the picture trying to swat balls, collecting fouls, allowing back doors. Amare and Dwight are my two whipping boys for this trend because they annoy me when I watch them play. Dwight is great rebounder, but streaky defender and sometimes horrible offensive player. He can only dunk it seems. Amare is fantastic with his innate sense of how to roll and rub off picks and find away to drop buckets in close, but besides that his offensive game is limited, he's NEVER averaged even 10 boards a game and he's an atrocious team defender and post defender. Chris Bosh is soft and looks like a Raptor and has no scrotums to speak of. Okafor is a great defender, but his offensive skill set is limited Dwight Howard-limited, but mad limited. There is not one kat rollin right now that could hold KG, Duncan or even Webber's jock straps when they were in their primes. Somethin better give, because as much as like Boozer and love his approach to the game, if he's the most reliable and productive big man of thew generation then I might have to start rethinking my Platinum age theory.

NBA Preview: Playoff predictions

2007-10-31T15:24:00.000-04:00

Before I get into some rambling, biblical thoughts on the new season; let me just say that I've had up to here with cornrows. They are the new mullets and I'm championing a crusade against them, because black men can't be walking around with the equivalents of mullets. We already have gold fronts, 87-button suits and gators...let's let rednecks and hillbillies monopolize the game on once-faddish-cuts-turned-cultural-identifier-for-the-low-brows. I'm writing an essay on this that'll be posted on SLAM by week's end, I promise.

With that said...I was watching Inside the NBA last night and Chuck said that he's more excited about this season than any other season in his days as an analyst. And, word, I kinda agree with him. I've been shouting for a while that the NBA is either in the beginning stages or the very midst of a renaissance, a post-80s/MJ heyday for real fans -- I've called this era the Platinum Age. Crazy talent abounds, almost every squad is one trade or young-player-leap away from, at least, playoff contention...it's a great time, for true fans. But for a nigga like me, I also enter this season annoyed and afraid, for the Lakers, my favorite team (in all of sports, not just the NBA) is preparing to trade my favorite player, Kobe (this after years of me hating his MJ-cloned intestines). And on another coast, KG may finally be able to nab a ring, along two of my other favorite players, except their doing for a franchise that I hate for sports reasons, but, more importantly, for historical and social reasons. So, at the moment, I'm amped, but I'm also upset. Twist is so complex.

Let me start by droppin my playoff predictions (note,I'm seeding like the playoffs where each division leader is awarded one of the first three spots, even if there are other non-division-winners with better records:

WEST.

8. Memphis over Golden State: Given the way GState played against Dallas in last year's first round -- and during the latter part of the season -- everyone is still on the bandwagon. I'm officially off the bandwagon, although they remain one of my favorite squads in the league because they ball like a bunch of supremely-talented niggas mistaking the hardwood for the blacktop. I've always said I love cocksure and moxie and swagger and they got a lot of it. But they also have issues, namely health (B Eezy),; a hard-drinking coach who just might be the human personification of an impending-heart-attack; and the daunting task of no longer being a surprise. (Notice I didn't mention the fact that Stephen Jackson is a captain). Meanwhile, Memphis is lurkin like an assassin and only a few people are taking notice. Unlike GState, they are neither streaky, mercurial, nor gimmicky. I kinda think theyre strong and will prove to be ultra-consistent...remember, they were good for a guaranteed 48-52 wins for like 3 or 4 seasons in a row before the recent lottery seasons. Stoudamire holds things down while Conley matures. Rudy Gay is a year older. Gasol is healthy and has his compatriot (Navarro) with him...Milicic adds depth...I'm tellin you, don't sleep.

7. Either LA or New Orleans: I say that because I still don't know if Kobe is gonna play out the season. If he does and Mar comes back healthy, then LA is actually a better team than last year -- a year older, added Fish, Mihm comes back for some quality minutes. I'd pencil them in for 44-47 wins and a 7 or 8 seed. If not, I'm saying New Orleans because my mind tells me that they're ready, but my gut says they still aren't strong enough to weather a full season of the West into a playoff berth. But the addition of Mo Pete and a healthy Pedja definitely makes them a better squad..well see.

-- But at the end of the day, it's really about these next 6 teams, of which one will inevitably end up having a disappointing season, I'm just not sure which one.

6. Utah: Check this out, out of all the young stud big dudes, I'd take Boozer. Yep. Over Amare and Dwight and it's because Boozer actually knows how to play basketball. More on that later. I like this squad -- alot actually. And when I say i like them, I mean that I like their talent, because we all know that black men cannot root for Utah in good conscious, much like Duke, the Celtics and KKK Grand Wizards. But Utah looks really tough and deep and young, but smart young. And Kirilenko looks to be back to 04-05 form with that performance in the opener. Deron is sick like terminal cancer. And how much u wanna bet that Sloan doesn't smell like gin 24-7?

5. San Antonio: Doesn't matter though, right? They always pick it up during the playoffs. That's what we say (and btw, seeds 1-6 will all have 52-plus wins, so the Spurs will probably get 53 or 54 victs, but not the 60 they'll need to win the toughest division IN ALL OF SPORTS). Problem with this seed is that they'll be playing an ULTRA-TOUGH first round opponent. Seriously, all of these Western Contenders need to be gunning for a 1 or 2 seed or they could EASILY get bounced in the first round. The Spurs better not mess around too much.

4. Houston: Yao and Mac WILL get hurt and miss a combined 20 games, at least. it's in those two niggas contracts to go down with an injury during the season. Mac could sprain his brain drinkin a slurpee, real talk. Yao could break his index finger working some chopsticks. These niggas are in the biz of being gimpy. No way they both play 75 games this season, so I can't see them winning the division. But they most definitely scare me in the playoffs, but they're not TOO scary. Adelman is a good coach, but not great. It's funny, because toward the end of Magic's career, Portland was more talented than LA. LA was always piecing together squads to to make up for old Kareem and put around Magic and Worthy, but after 88, they were never the force they once were. Portland, meanwhile, was consistently DEEP, athletic, talented and frisky. But they never got a chip. And, don't tell me that, sometimes, you wouldn't look at those Sacramento teams and say, "Yo, these niggas should actually be beatin' LA." So, no, Adelman is not an EXTREME upgrade over Van Gundy. And I love the offseason moves, but the point guard position remains manned by Skip and Mike James...we'll see about rings or conference championships.

3. Denver: I think this squad is getting overlooked. Martin is back and that makes a world of a difference. And they all get a full season together. I just have a good feeling about this squad, they give me a warm feeling, like comfort food and Coach Karl's mock turtlenecks. I don't have any real intelligent, well-founded reasons for this pick; I just have a hunch that things will click.

2. Pheonix: Aint nuttin changed. I am excited to see how Hill balls with this squad. One of the immediate impacts is that, during Nash's EXTENDED breaks (this nigga plays, like, 18 minutes a game or some ish), Hill can run the show and allow Barbosa to focus strictly on scoring. This could spell big time trouble for opponents.

1. Dallas: Eff Dirk. This is Avery's team, now more than ever. And I feel like my nigga will have his team playing with boulders on their shoulders all season. At the end of the day, I think they remain the most talented and deepest and well balanced team in the L...now watch them tank and win something like 53 games.

EAST (be careful about the disrespect you throw over here. I really think a number of these teams can compete with the big boys out west)...

8. Miami: No team with Dwayne Wade will miss the playoffs unless something catastrophic happens. If Wade can play 70 games and Shaq can squeak out 25-30 minutes a game for 45-55 games, then I see them in playoffs -- period.

7. Cleveland: This team annoys me. I dont understand whats goin on. No Varejo, no Vulacij...no PG upgrade...and Damon Jones is still getting time on the floor even though he can only dribble with his back to defenders. This is gonna be a long season for Bron.

6. Toronto: They profited from a weak confernce last season...now that squads are healthy and improved, they'll go back to being marginal.

5. Jersey: I know adding Magloire isn't adding KG, but I think he's an upgrade over Mikki Moore. Kristic is back. Nachbar, Boone and Williams are a year older and the Kidd-Vince-RJ are healthy. I think they're gonna be murkin squads some nights, straight-up.

4. Chicago: Seeded this low because they won't win the division. I think they'll finish with, maybe, the second best record, though...much like last season. I think no differently about this squad this year than I did last year. Deep, defensive-minded, frisky and a solid contender,though I never see them having what it takes to contend in anything other than theoretical discussions. They're definitely a team with a ceiling...that is, unless Thomas turns into a beast, which is possible, just not this year. And I've been on record before and will go record once more: I am not a huge fan of Luol Deng. He's good, but will never be great. He'll never even reach Shawn Marion status. Etch that in stone. His best year will be 18-8-3-2-1...he might have 3 or 4 All-Star berths in him...but folks act like he's destined for greatness or elite status. Ain't happenin, homey.

3. Washington: As you all know, the Wiz are my East Coast squad. I grew an extreme affinity for them during my young adult years I spent in Washington where I watched anywhere between 50-65 of their games a year on Comcast. This is not a homer pick, I truly believe they're the best team in their division. For more, here is my preview I did for SLAM.

2. Boston: I still don't know if I'll be able to root for the Cs based on how I feel about the Celtics organization and the city of Boston. But, at least, part of me can't help but feel excited for three of my favorite players (KG is in my top 5 after Kobe, Wade, AI and Gil)...but when I watch the squad I still see a squad in flux. They'll p[lay inspired ball all year and be one of the most committed and THE most hungry team in the L...but I think it'll take them a while to hit their stride and you might see a couple 4 and 5 game losing streaks. I'm saying they could win as few as 50 games or as many as 56-58. I'd know more by All-Star break. And this team is not as thin as folks continue to parrot. Tony Allen, Posey and Perkins are actually pretty solid in my book. Rondo still scares me though. I think, however, KG-Pauly-Ray hunger will beat out Detroit disinterest when its all said and done and these dudes will finally get to play on the big stage.

1. Detroit: See, to me, ain't nuttin changed about the East. Detroit is still the best team in this conference and still one of the best teams in the league. Age and attrition has not done THAT much damaged and, on the low-low, this squad messed around and got young and deeper. That's some Joe.D work right there (still one of the 3 or 4 best GMs in the L and easily the most under-appreciated). The younger-deeper issue has been made by many, and although I'm nowhere near a staunch believer in an unproven like rookie Stuckey or the super-young Amir, I really think that energy and friskiness is gonna help this squad. The weak link on this squad is most definitely Sheed (who is lookin svelte these days) or Flip Saunders, but it's the DYNAMIC between the players and Flip. This doesn't rear its head too often during the regular season, but it has surfaced quite violently during their past two playoff runs. But after two straight defeats in the ECS and the embarrassment of getting ran by that despicable Cavs squad last season and the new blood in the lineup, I'm smelling a very dangerous Pistons squad that might unfortunately send KG home early this year. At the very least, they're gonna finish with the best record during the regular season.

"Y'all wanna be rockers?!"

2007-10-24T13:17:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was watching late-night ESPN with my Pops and my lil bro and a commercial for College Game Day came on with Kirk Herbstreit, a classic American white dude, in shocking attire. He strolled in the frame wearing an electric blue pimp-suit or zoot-suit or whatever you call those 12-button joints with the jacket that comes down to your knees and wide-leg pants, made out of material that could probably substitute for a ghetto-bird's weave. Kirk was also rockin a top hat and some gators...everything was the same color. It was astoundingly hilarious to see this white dude dressed like Bishop Magic Don Juan ... or Shaq ...take your pick. That ensemble is the exclusive territory of ghetto black men who grew up without fathers...or black men who grew up with fathers that grew up without fathers. No self-respecting black man that isnt Shaq, a wide receiver or a comedian would ever be caught close to dead in those get-ups. But a white dude?!!! The only time a white person would ever be caught dead in that ensemble is if he was white trash that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. that's why it was so hilarious to see Kirk in the suit and inevitably why he was dressed that way for the commercial: not only was that a cultural identifier for blacks, but more specifically, a sub-cultural identifier for blacks. that sub-culture -- pimps, trifling athletes and men that were never called 'son' -- is on the totally opposite end of the sociocultural spectrum from Kirk Herbstreet, hence the comedy.

This is bringing me to my extreme disappointment with the new trend toward young blacks dressing like The Ramones.

Before I get there, I started thinking about this today while listening to NPR this morning. During Morning Edition they ran this story of Dallas Mayor Dwayne Carraway, who was seeking to legally ban "sagging" of the pants. They're calling it the "No-sag rule". If you've seen a rap video for the past 5 years, the way for young dudes to rock their pants is to literally buckle and belt them around their thighs so that their jeans are literally under their buttocks. Carraway said that initially "it would show their boxers..then it started showing their dirty boxers...then no boxers at all." This was incredibly startling. You mean some of these bamas were walking around, sagging their pants while they were bare-balling??!?!!!! Hard to believe, but whatever. My point here is that, although I think it's stupid how low these young dudes and young rappers like Hurricane Chris and Soulja Boy rock their pants; I'm not up in arms about it, because that's how we used to rock our pants back in the day, just a little bit higher. (Everything gets lower with each successive generation, most importantly morals, hence another NPR piece about a school district in New Jersey passing out condoms in middle school). Anyways, it's all hip hop, maybe just a little more extreme. But I most definitely remember adults CONSTANTLY telling me and my peers to pull up our pants or shorts and it's like, "I'm trying to be like Grand Puba or Jalen Rose not Donnie Simpson." My brother Gee was still saggin his pants at the age of 23, well after it was acceptable -- that's how pervasive it was. So I can respect, on a fundamental level, these young cats new interpretation and manifestation of hip hop style. "Do you" is my model there...just don't walk around without shoes and brush your teeth.

HOWEVER, I do not and cannot accept or see why/how these young people -- mostly in more urbane environs of NYC, Cali, Miami, Chi, etc -- are dressing like they are Sid Vicious or part of Green Day. The only fashion-trend more inappropriate and annoying are fat puerto rican women that wear mid-drifts; unfortunately I see both in the Bronx when all I wanna do is walk the two blocks to the bodega in visual peace.

You seen them, right? They were the ULTRA-tight jeans that cling to the calves, and can't fit over their waist because 1.) they're too tight and 2.) THEY'RE NOT EVEN LONG ENOUGH!!!!, so they sit right under their arses. These jeans are literally 3 to 4 inches too short, they actually dont have enough fabric. And they typically have on smedium shirts that comes just to their waist, so u literally see their boxers, as in: the boxers are part of the outfit. (The ghetto nigs imitating rappers at least wear long T-shirts that look like maternity dresses.) For a white dude with a jet-black mohawk that wants to learn how to bang out a killer guitar solo, it's cool. But for thse dudes? Nigga, when did your Young Jeezy-listening, black-planet-surfing a$$ become a punk rocker?!!!! How did this come about? Kirk Herbstreet was joking when he rocked the socio-cultural identifying pimp-suit/gator combo in the commercial. These young impostor-niggas is halfway serious. This is no different than some black dudes to all of sudden start rockin Bob Cousy shorts on the ball courts and dribbling only with their right hand. this is prevailing against the very core of black style.

Look, I'm no fashion police. I'm typically one stain or rip from looking like a hobo...but I don't try to make fashion statements. there has always been a give and take between Negro style and euro fashion and most of us meet in the middle. But there has also been those extreme of trifling on the negro end and cornballness and/or oddities on the euro end and neither ethnicity ever ventures to the opposite ends unless they were adopted or abused as a kid.

I guess what I'm saying (if 'm saying anything at all) is that Carraway should stop focusing his attention on trivial things like sagging in his ow city or education or crime and start traveling to these other cities and throwing these wanna-be-punk-rock traitors in jail.

50 Cent said it best recently on Hot 97 with Flex when, bewildered, he remarked: "I was in Southside in my old hood the other day and these kids were dressed like rockers! And I'm thinkin, 'Yall wanna be rockers?'"

I never thought I'd say this and I'm really on some narrow-minded BS, but straight up...get these kids some G-Unit gear, 'cause I'm done with this trend.

"I can hear you getting fatter." -- David Spade

2007-10-24T13:03:00.000-04:00

I'm the fattest I've ever been in my adult-life and periolously close plummeting to the surreal depths of my early teen years would I was the size of Bruce-Bruce. This is no surprise to any of you that have seen me recently, inevitably downing some pint of specialty beer or gnawing on something with cheese bread. I looked at my Homer Simpson midsection this afternoon and man-tits and my "he's gaining too much grwn-man weight" face and said enough is enough.

Therein lies the problem. I've been saying enough is enough for about a year now and, for the first time as an adult, have been shamefully unsuccessful at halting the weight-gain, much less beginning some lasting weight loss. I just had to get suits let out the other day. But guess what? they still don't fit. I found myself uncomfortable on the plane and it's becoming a chore to tie my shoes. The other day, laboring around Delaware Park in a toutoise-jog, a fast-walker passed me. He was in his 50s, tanned and wearing George Michael During His Wham Days shorts. He yelled "On your left", then zoomed by me in slim-n-trim contempt. When I was shopping for a track jacket at Dr. Jay's a couple months ago, the Mexican pointed upstairs the second I stepped in the joint, as in "upstairs big man. No XXXL down here."

All of these slights, embarrassments and inconveniences and I still haven't focused my diet or excersize regimen to ensure I start droppin some pounds. Like my man Mad Dog said, "ENOUGH'S ENOUGH!!!! ... ENOUGH'S ENOUGH" I refuse to hit 30 and be on some "well, this is just the way it is" steez.

I guess that's it...

Lou Dobbs

2007-10-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

I don't watch conservative television, so I can;t actually give you miuch insight into how I feel about people like Brit Hume, Chris Wallace, Tucker Carlson or Anne Coulter. I do watch CNN and I can tell you that Lou Dobbs is an interesting character.

Today, as everyday, he had some segment touching on illegal immigration. This particular piece was alluding to some health care cutbacks -- reportedly putting uninsured children at risk -- to help fund an initiative that gives drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Heading this initiative in NYS governor Eliot Spitzer. Dobbs called him a bunch of different names, among them (if my memory serves me correct), "weakling", "pu$$yface", "yellowbelly" "disgraceful bish" and "unAmerican, blowhard lout."

Let's just say that Dobbs thinks very lowly of Spitzer and very strongly about anyone that, either directly or indirectly, aids the continued influx of illegal immigrants.

Dobbs is basically a populist. He rides and dies for the average american citizen. One of his segments is entitled "The War on the American Middle Class". Dude seems genuinely and stikingly concerned with the recent trend of average Americans becoming more and more disadvantaged. I think he, and many others, are terrofied now that a great deal of whites are experiencing the plight that has long plagued minorities. Dobbs seems to think that illegal immigration is largely responsible. They take jobs, indirectly lower wages, and drain tax funds as they flood schools, jails and hospitals. That's how he's telling it and he has some points.

But, at the end of the day, I gotta say that this, seemingly stately, empathetic and good-willed old man is straight up and down xenophobic. You can;t tell me that Dobbs doesnt go ape-ish when he sees a Mexican working on an interstate, or a Haitian in an emergency room or an El Salvadorian effin up my (I mean his) burrito at a Chipolte.

( As an aside, I love how he's such a curmodgeon that has absolutely NO QUALMS about not only assasinating politicians/pundits character, but downright challenging the way the brains function or if they function at all.)

If Dobbs was a conservative republican that opposed abortion and gay marriage he'd be viewed as a straight up racist. count on that.

I'm just sayin....

in the meantime...

2007-10-16T14:42:00.000-04:00

I'm working on some new musings...until then, you can check a few of these reviews and pieces I've wrote on some other sites.

Here's my Wizard's preview for SLAM online.

Here are some recent reviews of some albums for allmusic.com. You can look for me to start writing some columns/blogs there, too. So consider this a brief appearance by the Music Dude...

Eric Roberson,...Left
Yesterday's New Quintet, Yesterdays Universe
Georgia Anne Muldrow (as Patti Blingh and the Akebulah Five), Sagala
Myron Walden, This Way
MArcus Strickland, Open Reel Deck
De La Soul, Stakes Is High
Wallace Roney, Jazz
Shape of Broad Minds, Craft of Lost Art

Ugly Betty

2007-10-11T20:05:00.000-04:00

I just think you all should know that my new Hollywood thing is America Ferrera. I brush my teeth with Ugly Betty. You see her at the Emmy's? I'm a fan.

Crazy Musicians and the D Train

2007-09-25T15:58:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, on my commute home, a bum boarded the train at 59th street. This is a prime stop for the subway acts hoping to get some pity money, since the D is an express and it travels all the way from 59th to 125th without one stop. So that's about five minutes of unfettered access to anyone willing to pay attention. This key because, on normal routes, there are stops every minute, so a trio of acrobatic teens from Southside Queens can't get through a full breakdance routine or a group of sombrero'd Mexicans will get their rendition of Guantanamera cut short, right around the time that the shortest one starts a solo he'd inevitably flub.

Anyways, this makes the rush-hour D a prime train for entertainment. Sometimes the entertainers are actually talented. Often, they are just nutcases looking to score a few pennies for their next hit, pint of Wild Irish Rose, pack of smokes…or double-cheeseburger, if they're responsible.

Monday evening, as I was listening to the new will.i.am on my pod, I noticed the people I was facing were sort of cracking smirks. I turned around and there was this 6-5 crazy-dude, on all fours, playing a Casio keyboard and blowing the clarinet.

Let me say that this was a fascinating performance. I'm still a new New Yorker, but even I have grown tired of most of these performances, specifically on the train ride home. But, at my core, I'm a sucker for loose-screw bread-baskets getting' it in.

Forget for a moment that Manfred (that's what my Pops calls all anonymous people when he's referring to them in derogatory terms) was the same height as Ray Allen and kneeling in the aisle playing a Casio keyboard. Focus on the fact that he had programmed it to play a house-techno-club backbeat, something sounds similar to "My Humps".

Also focus on the fact that throughout his number, he'd pose existential questions to an imaginary woman name Miranda, which was some computerized women that lived in his Casio. Miranda would always answer "Yeeessss", in a breathy, porn voice.

Forget that he was playing a clarinet to add texture to this diddy. Pay attention that homeboy was straight incredible with it, blowin Trane-like solos over a beat that sounds like he kopped it off Jamiroquai's last album.

He'd also randomly hit us with maxims. My favorite being:

I do not steal
I do not rob
But I wish like hell that I had your job.
Your job, your job, your job, your job.

He did this in a "My Humps" cadence, while pointing at each passenger with one hand and droppin ill, mood-setting synthesizer chords with the other.

Forget that his voice was eerily similar to Gil Scott Heron and focus on the fact that he looked Gill Scott Heron as well.

This brings me to a point that I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the years: I bet that 30-40% of the crazies in this world are former musicians. Not singers or writers or producers -- musicians and songwriters. People that play instruments. To think of some of the stuff they consistently speak through their instruments -- well, I think you gotta handle that stuff in an altered mindstate. Miles was high off blow throughout the 70s. George Clinton was an acid addict. Jimmy popped mo' pills than a little bit. Who knows what Prince was on from 1982-1989. This is why Stevie Wonder is such a marvel.

Anyways…those drugs will wear a brain down and, next thing you know, you're Manfred, kneeling on the D, blowin clarinet.

Manfred, for what it's worth, did not even receive a dirty nickel from the D Train passengers.

McNabb and black quarterbacks

2007-09-23T16:27:00.000-04:00

This was actually what I emailed a colleague of mine in the sports media industry on this whole McNabb issue of whether or not black quarterbacks face more criticism. My nig, Gee, has been on my case about throwin out my thoughts. This is basically it. Let me know what yall think...

-- I don't know if I believe that black qbs get more criticism thanwhite qbs, as in: "We get heckled and lambasted and white qbs areeating cake." In fact, I know I don't believe that. All qbs -- eventhe great ones with blond hair and blue eys -- get scrutinized andcriticized. qbs like Manning and Favre get their fair share ofcriticism. But ask yourself this: If Favre was black, would he stillbe getting the carte-Blanche from Green Bay fans and brass? I thinkthe answer to that question is almost obviously no. Green Bay fans aredrawn to Favre's middle-American charm...they are not drawn to VinceYoung "walkin' it out" as a TD celebration. So successive 20-INTseasons are getting him axed or metaphorically lynched. Yes, RexGrossman gets bludgeoned and his squad went to the Super Bowl, buthe's also a very average qb. McNabb, for a 5-year string, was one ofthe 3 or 4 best qbs, yet the scrutiny he was under and criticism hereceived was pretty intense.

-- a quick theory: if an athlete looks, behaves, sounds, believes,exists similar to you or your crew or your fam, you're gonna give themmore benefit of the doubt. If you think someone is cool, you're lessquick to judge or critique. America, much of it, thinks/thought Favrewas/is cool. They thought this about Bradshaw. They think this aboutBrady and Brees. Buffalonians felt this way about Kelly. So if thesefolks threw 300 yards and 2 TDs to an anemic receiving corps, whilemaybe butchering a fourth quarter drive and throwin a pick or two, butstill WIN -- even in Philly -- I doubt they'd get McNabb's reactions.Remember: They boo'd him on Draft day. They didn't want him.Speaking of which...

-- real quick story about race relations in Philly, because I hearpeople bringing up Schmidt as an example of a great Philly ball-playerthat was boo'd. And that's cool, but it's known that Schmidt wasaloof and some of his actions (or lack thereof) left room for Phillyfans to misinterpret. McNabb, mind you, is a good guy. He's corny,but good: polite, affable, good work ethic, respectful, etc. But there are very intense racial divides in Philly. This is allexemplified by Geno's -- perhaps the most famous spot for cheesesteaksin the whole city. Me and the crew always roll down to that part of South Street to cop some cheesesteaks when we're in town gallivantingaround. But we always purposely cross the street and get our steaksfrom the other tourist-trap, Jim's. We go to Jim's because Geno'sfeatures a big plaque of a dead police officer, with the words"murdered by Mumia Adult-Jamal." This floored me the first time I sawit. Mumia, in the black community is Exhibit A of the corrupt legaland judicial system and one of the all-time lightning rods between thecommunity and the police (much like Amadou Diallo in NYC). The shortversion of Mumia's long story is that he was convicted of killingofficer David Faulkner (white). Many feel he was wrongfully convictedand sentenced. Others (perhaps just as mny), feel he's guily, or, atthe very least, received his due process and folks should shut and letMumia rot in jail for his life sentence. This was/is an internationalstory. To post such an inflammatory statement ("murdered by MumiaAbdul-Jamal") in front of an establishment that serves thousands ofblacks and/or people that support Mumia's cause is indicative of thebrazen chasm between Philly ethnic communities. If I had to wagermoney, I'd bet that men of the Geno's ilk don't want a McNabb playingthe most important and high-profile position on their squad. ThisCOULD very well be the case in many other cities.

-- I think to really look at this issue we have to start at thefoundation. The foundation indicates to a dude like me that America,although increasingly more tolerant of black qbs, still wants thatposition to stay dominated by white males. (this is going somewhere.)I think this because it seems to be the way American perceptions andchoices operate in mostly all sectors of our secular lives. It seemslike the collective American conscience believes that we should belead by white men. This is true of our CEOs, Presidents, Senators,coaches, captains, star actors, pilots and, most definitely, qbs.Now, Costas, like many Americans, said that it's only fair torecognize the strides that America has made recently. And yes, thereare instances that belie a shift in tolerance and maybe even anoticeable shift in ideology. The Democratic presidential nomineewill either be a woman or a black man (we'll see if either wins,though). Back in the day, Sidney Portier was the only black man given"leading man" roles in Hollywood. Now you have Will Smith, Denzel,Cheadle, Foxx and Terrance Howard. Bob Johnson is an owner. TonyDungy is a Super Bowl winner. Rappers own their own labels, Jay-Z isDef Jam's CEO. There are black surgeons, pilots, CEOs, etc. Thepercentages in all these fields are very low, but progress is beingmade to accommodate those with UNDENIABLE talent.

-- These things bring me to another aspect of this discussion. 1.)Take Hollywood, for instance. You have dudes with moderate talent,like, say, Josh Lucas or Jude Law, who get role after role after role,while black men of equal or greater talent struggle for worthwhileroles. Why? Because studios worry about bankability. Why? Becausethe American public has shown, with their dollars, that they'd rathersee a poorly acted film with Lucas, than a stellar acted film withCheadle.And 2.) Blacks are given shorter leashes for leadership roles becausethe prevailing reception is one of, what I perceive to be,conditioned-skepticism. It's like, "OK, Let's see if he can get thisdone." If Fred Thompson becomes President, that won't be the"prevailing air", it will be, however, with Obama. That was the"prevailing air" with Willingham, but not with Weiss. What this doesis create an atmosphere of impatience, second-guessing and criticism.Willingham's head would be on a silver platter getting carved anddivvied up to the Domer boosters at a banquet hall right now. Forqbs, it means that black qbs typically get pulled (again, what Iperceive to be) faster, are out of the league faster and deal with afan base that moves more quickly to the "he's not the one, getsomebody else in here."Buffalo is very similar to Philly, maybe not as extreme, but verysimilar in that Buffalonians love their squads, but are very tough onthe players. Thurman Thomas was constantly skewered here. Jim Kelly(very similar to Donovan in that they're qbs that have moments offrustrating ineptitude, but far greater instances of excellence) wasrevered here. If Kelly played in Philly, the fans would ride withhim. I'm sure of this. If Donovan played here in Buffalo, the fanswould kill him.

-- I think there's an attitude of: "We're not racist, we're not goingto begrudge you a chance to play qb, but we still don't know if youfellas are equipped, so you better prove us wrong." That's what itis...with coaches, qbs, senators...it's a "prove us wrong" attitude.That leads to unfair criticism

-- I think, in the end, it's the overall treatment that is differentfor blacks and not, specifically, the level of criticism. For onething, there are fewer black qbs, so when one of them gets criticized,it's going to seem more concentrated.

-- You know, it's like television and film. There is room for theridiculously dumb films like Soul Plane or television shows likeFlavor of Love, as long as there are quality films and shows thatbalance those Stepin Fetchit images with smart comedies and compellingdramas, which we rarely get (I point to my favorite TV station forprogramming, HBO, which is premiering around 10 new shows this year,none of which focus on minority story lines. shameful.). So in theNFL, Grossman and Pennington get KILLED, but Manning and Palmer andBrady get praised. One white qb may get prematurely yanked from astarting spot, only to have another white qb take his job or seeanother white qb in another market afforded the opportunity to playthrough his struggles for the whole season. But when there are only ahandful of black qbs in the league and they're getting skewered bylocal press/fans, locked out of training facilities, etc...well, it'seasy to see why/how McNabb could make such a statement.

-- one last thing...did you see those childhood pictures of McNabb?He wasn't winning any best looking contests. His head is shaped likean eggplant, which has made it almost impossible for him to find ahaircut that works. His afro was deplorable. His braids were a sadcharade. And his baldy is disconcerting. He should just wear hishelmet in all interviews and commercials. (speaking of NFL playerswearing helmets in commercials

This is no Dream Team

2007-09-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

My latest piece for SLAM. This one blog-style compaing the Dream Team from '92 (MJ, Magic, Bird, Barkley) and this year's Team USA (Kobe, Bron, Melo). My boy's were clownin me one day saying that 1.) I don't blog enough and 2.) I sit around twiddling my thumbs all day. They said if my time is taken up writing elsewhere, I should post links...so here's one...

'07 Team USA vs '96 Olympic squad

Idiocracy

2007-09-05T15:06:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of viewing Idiocracy the other day. Idiocracy is a film from Mike Judge who gave us all the gift that is Office Space and the 90s gem (or garbage, depending on your take) Beavis and Butthead. The premise -- in short -- is that Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph are accidentally cryogenically frozen for 500 years and after a a trash avalance (literally) their pods are opened in the year 2550 to a world full of idiots. Luke Wilson was a very average slacker by today's standards and Rudolph was a 'stute (my short-term for prostitute) whose pimp was played by Scarface, who went by the name of Upgraydde. This slacker and prostitute were relative geniuses in 2550, surrounded by a bunch of low-brow retards. The population became overwhlemingly stupid -- as the story has it -- because during our day, the dumb, dense and stupid continued to breed at alrming rates, while intelligent humans were either preoccupied by careers, only had one child or the cruel gods rendered capable men impotent and the capable women were cursed with barren wombs.

All the questionable and concerning trends of today spiraled to comical and ridiculous depths. You should check the flick, its comedy.

What I found most entertaining was Judge's version of the most stupid Americans, namely: poor white trash, immigrants (primarily mexicans), frat-boy jocks and blondes. Conspicuosly absent from most of his satire were niggas, who can rival any underbelly-underclass when it comes to sheer ignorance and irresponsible baby-making, thus the perpetuation of a dumbing down of the human population. I guess us blacks has straight gangsta'd guilt-ridden whites into straight submission when it comes to making fun of us, whch is why a chick like Sarah Silverman is at once jarring/uncomfortable (and kinda sexy), but definitely fresh.

Anyways...before I fully digress...I found this fantasy world that Judge created to be not that farfetched. Poor and stupid people make a ton babies, partly because sex is a fun diversion from a pitiful life, partly because contraception is expensive, partly because -- if college, private school, family vacations, little league, dance classes, etc arent a part of your version of your version of child-rearing -- tax write-offs can help. I read a story in the NY Times that said SAT scores dropped across the board...they dropped because more kids are taking them...I read that as, more regular, stupid, porr kids are taking the SATs. I absolutely believe that as America's population explodes, it's exploding with dumb folks. I meet less smart people everyday.

When is the last time you met someone and said to yourself, "Wow, that person seems sharp"?? But how do you meet or encounter someone -- say a hillbilly with a mullet or some schmuck rockin his jeans around his knees which forces him to waddle like a cripple with two broken hips -- and say, "That is one ignorant lout"??

There's only one way to reverse this troubling freefall toward a world full of rubes: all intelligent women, come and mate with your boy Twist, Big Love style. Will build a nation full of jerks with an obesity gene, but at least we'll bright.

This Vick thing...

2007-08-28T10:42:00.000-04:00

literally writing this post now...

random...

2007-08-28T10:37:00.000-04:00

Props to my nigs Brandon and Jason, who swung through Buff, left the wives in Oakland and chilled extra hard. I do feel that it's extremely important to mention that B's nickname is B-Nasty -- Nast for short; and Jason's alias is Sleezy. You haven't lived until you can refer to someone in your crew as Sleezy everytime you address him. Imagine that -- introducing someone by sayin, "Yo, John Doe, this is my man Sleez." Or, "Wuddup John Doe? Yo, meet my nigga Nast."

Also, I'm drinking a gallon of water everyday to detox.

That's really it...

We're Gainin' On Ya!!!

2007-08-09T14:38:00.000-04:00

The title of this blog is one of my favorite chorus-quips from my favorite band of all time, Parliament-Funkadelic. It comes from title track off the 1975 classic Chocolate City album. Throughout the whole album, but particularly on that song, George Clinton paints this picture of an America that is quickly becoming less WASPy and more colored. He used the term "funk" to describe and allude to so many things (drugs, sex, freedom, religion, being hip, food, existence, the list goes on)...and on this album he saw a trend toward a funky nation (eight years later it was One Nation Under A Groove, a nation where everyone had achieved Funkentelechy and conquered the unfunky squares that didnt "swim"). D.C. had long been referred to as the Chocolate City, because it was one of the few cities where there was a black majority, but where that black majority thrived.

So on this song the Brides of Funkenstein kept refraining "we're gainin on ya!" over this too-hip funk strut with short horn riffs and what not and every so often, George would come in and say stuff like "Cant'cha feel our breath?/All-up around ya neck." It's simply one of my favorite songs and a joint that makes me wish I was a teen or young adult in the 70s. There's a part of the song where George offers his dream presedential cabinet (the cover of the album has all the Washington monuments the color of chocolate, including the White House)...anyways, his cabinet is made up of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin (first lady), Richard Pryor, Ali (secretary of defense)..etc. They obviously wouldnt know the first thing about running a country, but back then it had to be cool to here someone present these individuals -- who happened to be the absolute best at what they did, game-changing, genius-icons -- as part of a funky takeover.

My favorite part of the song is when George said: "There's a lot of chocolate cities around/We got Newark, we got Gary/Someone told me we got L.A./ And we're working on Atlanta / But you're the capital C.C." C.C. being short for Chocolate City, D.C.'s nickname. Now, a white person may look at that and say "by all means, you can have Newark and Gary." After all, people in my generation have grown up equating, specifically, Newark and Gary to predominatly black cities whose two major charactersitics were/are blight and murders. But thats the thing...they hadnt become that yet in 75. George was embracing and loving the fact that these cities were becoming predominatly black and funky. All you read about in the papers back then was how white-flight was killing these cities (and it was/is, since -- unless its Houston/DC/ATL -- u need some white faces and a few men that have sex with men to keep cities vibrant); but George was like "funk all that!" We're gainin on ya! That was back in a time of optimism for black America. There was a feeling of civil rights victory in the air. Everyday, in many of the cities, a black baby was being born, a black kid was going off to college, a black man/woman was breaking down a barrier. And here they were, embracing these cities that phobia-riddled whites were fleeing (they were smart). George loved it all. He saod "Someone told me we got L.A." and although LA still has the largest black population, the MExicans got LA...but that cool, theyre funky too. And boy did blacks EVER get Atlanta.

As much as I love D.C., you have to call Atlanta the new Chocolate CITY, sense gentrification keeps pushing blacks out of that actual city and there's a new flight, Black Flight, going on there where upwardly mobile blacks continue to set up shop in suburban counties. PG County, my old hood, is the most wealthy, predominantly black county in the nation. Atlanta, however, hasnt yet gotten to the point where gentrification is taking scary roots in the CITY. Partly because not EVERYONE works in the city. I always get on my girl Iola about how far she lives from the city and she always says "You dont HAVE to live that close to Atl, because of all the office parks all around in the suburbs." D.C. on the other hand has a daytime population of 960,000...that's almost doubling its census pop of 580,000. But DC is also the 8th largest metro area in the nation and during the day most of the working pop jams the beltway and clogs the VA bridges and comes to work in the C.C., which has a lot of white folks (previously inhabitants of the Va suburbs and Mont. County and the new young-pro white population) sayin "F this. I'm buying a condo...in the city." (i'm incoherently rambling, but roll with me.)

But still, I kinda think Atlanta is a corny Chocolate City. Dont get me wrong, I actually love Atlanta. Yesterday afternoon, i was IMng my friend Sumaya, I was telling her about this dish Emeril had made on his show, she told me about her meal at his new restuarant in Atlanta where she resides, part of the meal was cheese grits, I told her I used to always kop cheese grits at the Flying Biscuit, a great brunch spot by Piedmont park that I used to frequent on my way to work when I was interning at the Journal Constitution. thinking about the Flying Biscuit and Piedmont park and all ATL's diff neighborhoods had me extra nostalgiac...i love the place and would live there in a heartbeat. But D.C. had something extra about it. ATL still seems new and frivolous and there's something very TD Jakeish about their very affluent black population. D.C. had this ill mix of semi-yankee/semi-country traditional locals, black politicians and black intelligencia that made for -- in my opinion -- the illest mix. Howard had a lot to do with it. And of course we know that, aside from being geechy and petty, much of ATL black pop is gay. Its the black San Francisco, except, black gay men dont bring with them an arts community and good taste; they bring Chris Brown concerts and chocolate men wearing lip gloss and husbands pokin these transgendered men in the kulo. i'll digress.

Anyways...I'm babbling, specifically because the gentrification going on in DC and places like Harlem and Brooklyn are SO bittersweet. bitter because the historically black hoods and cities with such import are getting erased and reimaged, but sweet because many of these hoods are being rebuilt and recast. In 2015, maybe even 2009, wont be no gun-bucking in BedStuy, just eateries, cafes, bookstores, indie clothing shops, art stores and friendly, bohemian neighbors. I mean, that aint all THAT bad, even though it is.

In the midst of all this bellyaching, tho, is the very real reality of what is going on in ALOT of American cities. That is, they're gettin funky and colored. This was all documented in an article in today's NY Times: "Minorities Now Form Majority in One-Third of American Cities." Cities like LA, DC, NY, Houston, Dallas, Atl, Raleigh are all inhabited by a mostly colored population. That's real. Its an interesting read, so check it out.

George was right. We're gainin on em.

Oldie but Goodie: Shuttin up Buppies

2007-07-30T15:39:00.000-04:00

With all the NAACP posturing about killing the word "nigga", somebody shouldve walked up to them niggas and told them all "Well you somebody's niggas, wearin them nigga ties."

Hence a fav post from the past: Shuttin Up Buppies.

The Animal Kingom: The real Kings of NY

2007-07-30T14:57:00.000-04:00

I love the random things I encounter in New York. For instance, you already know that I'm not exactly an "animal dude"...i dont like petting horses, squirels annoy me, i despise cats...dogs are about the only animals i rep with and even they arent my best friend. This makes me kinda leery when it comes to animals and I react to them in weird ways. Some even give me nightmares. I've told many of you about my nightmare, while living in Atlanta, of some spiders that crawled out the cereal box, into my cereal bowl and swam in the milk, mocking me. Many of you read about my Floridian nightmare involving a lizard I trapped in my guest room (its the third story in the post I believe).

Well, the interesting thing about NYC animals is that they arent afraid of humans. Rats runs the city. Squirrels will jog along side you like there's an invisible leash and you're taking them for an afternoon walk. The cats are mangy and moody. None of the dogs are trained. It's literally a zoo. You ever seen that scene in Madagascar where Alex, Mellman and Gloria were roaming Manhattan streets chasing after Marty? That wouldnt surprise me if it happened in real life...seriously, if when I left work, I saw a lion, giraffe and hippo looking for a zebra, I'd simplyrun across the street and keep it movin, but I wouldnt be like "how is this possible"...animals act like this is their domain around these parts.

This is all a long, convoluted way to get to my experience this morning, walking to the train. You can enter Bedford station by either walking up a steep hill and entering on Grand Concourse or going under an underpass. Its the summer, I'm obese, so I typically choose the underpass. But the underpass is unequivocally, inarguably the domain of the pigeons. The nooks and ledges are their homes and the cement that us humans walk on is their toilet. pure and simple. and they mosey around on the ground, often cutting off your path, the way toddlers, geezers and blind people do.

This morning a particular one straight gangsta'd me out of my path and then stopped as i sidestepped it, like it had a problem with me. This really concerned me, since I put absolutely nothing past an animal in NYC. Part of me thinks that rats mug young women at knife point when no one is looking. Anyways, this pidgeon is staring me down, but I keep it movin because I'm not really tryin to get into a scrap with this fowl, specifically since its hot and ultra-specifically since I'm about to head under the underpass where his crew is camped out. I'm a writer, not a fighter and I'm also not tryin to be rollin around on the cement covered in their ish. So I swallow my pride and keep going, but as I pass him, I'm lookin at the pidgeon out the corner of my eye because I dont wanna be caught by surprise if it chooses to hit the Kid with a sucker punch or somethin.

Here's where you know I've lost it tho and that these animals have really gotten in my head. As I pass the pidgeon and enter the underpass, the light changes and all of sudden the pidgeon's shadow gets ENORMOUS. This causes me, a grown, supposedly sane man to violently turn around with balled fist as I yell, "Yo!!!!!!!" In a moment of insanity I truly thought this pidgeon had morphed into some monster-pidgeon the size of an elephant and was about to pimp slap me with his gigantic wing. Straight-up, my heart was racing and everything.

When I turned around and finished yelping, sure the pidgeon was still ice-grillin me, but it was still the size of just a regular ol pidgeon. So I calmed down, unclinched my fists and briskly walked by the rest of his gang into the station. I was kinda embarrassed, specifically since the pidgeon's smarmy crew was heckling me. I don't know, for some reason, the way they were flapping their wings just had this mocking-air about it. it might have just been me.

To make matter worse, not more than 30 seconds after the train doors closed, a bum was hawking ONE unopened tube of Krazy Glue. This quietly sent me through the roof, since all I want out of my bums is a racket that begets some forethought and guile. WHY THE EFF WOULD I NEED KRAZY GLUE??!?!?!?!!!!! And is their a product that can more conclusively indicate that it was stolen? Bum, you obviously stole that unopened Krazy Glue, but it was the wrong product to steal, as no one sitting on a train is trying to repair a piano stool.

Whatevs.

NAACP: Niggas, Please

2007-07-25T17:29:00.000-04:00

Cant necessarily recall the day of the week, but a week or so ago, I turned on CNN and saw some grandiose "funeral" staged by the NAACP to put the "N-Word" to rest. NAACP wants the word "nigger" and all its derivatives to die, cease to exist in our vocabularies. I think this is a bunch of BS and that them NAACP niggas need to wake up and get real.

There's just no way you can provide me with any valid argument to convince me that the black community's use of the word nigga is at the root of any larger problem.

I dont wanna be on some "NAACP has more important things to worry about", because I actually believe the organization truly thinks our use of this word is a microcsmic problem. And I'm also not the kinda dude that spouts the moronic "we use it as a term of endearment" rhetoric, either. Whereas that is definitely true in some cases (hence the Q-Tip lyric in "Sucka Nigga"), I use the word in a variety of ways and I'm not sure if my usage connotes positivity 50% of the time. Put it like this, I try my absolute hardest to never use the word around strangers, young people, white people, asians, arabs, some hispanics, older folks, in professional settings, amongst niggas rockin bowties. So its apparent that it's a word for which wide, rampant and indiscriminate use should be discouraged.

With that said, I will "nigga" my family and friends to death. I grew up in a "nigga" using household. My Pops is a "nigga"-using fool. My friends will "nigga" a nigga off a cliff. It is as much a part of my vocabulary as the word "is".

And lets be clear, if I'm upset with a black person -- or really any color person -- I'm most likely gonna call them a "nigga" as in, "Nigga have you lost your mind?! Why would you spit in my face?!" Or, if had an irritating experience with an El Salvadorian at my local Chipolte, at some point in the story I'm bound to say "And then this nigga hit me with about a pound of guac, when I specifically, in English, told the nigga 'No guac, but go heavy on the cream.' Sun, I wanted to strangle the nigga."

BUT, if me and my nigs are having a mini reunion and one walks in the door with a $70 bottle of single malt scotch, I'll most likely pound him up and say something like, "This is why you're my nigga." How many times have I said, "I love that nigga"? Probably a gagillion.

It's a complex word with complex usage. I watched LeBron's historic Game 5 against the Pistons in Buffalo with my Pops...only Pops was asleep for the whole 4th quarter and both overtimes as LeBron turned in the greatest Playoff performance of all time. I mustve shouted at him to wake up after each of Bron's buckets. he finally woke up around 1am while I was watching the press conferences. I said, "Nigga you just missed LeBron go OFF! The nigga scored the Cavs final 29 points!" Two different types of "nigga" in that sentence.

I mean, really, "nigga" is pretty much synonomous with "man". It's just that "nigga" or "nigger" obviously has a sordid history in this country. But then again, so does the word "boy". White men used to call black men "boy" to emasculate them, as well. That's why black men started calling each other "man" ("Wassup, man") -- to combat the disrespect of the white man's use of "boy". But then we started calling each "boy" too. "That's my boy." "Wuddup, boy?" "The boy is bad."

This has the same built-in fraternal use as the word "nigga". A couple years back, me and my nigga Rek hit up a Buffalo diner one early morning to kop some steak and eggs. Pano's can get kinda crowded at times, so we had to stand and wait to be seated. That's when some older white man, maybe in his 50s, condescendingly placed his hand on our shoulders and said "Xcuse me, boys. Let me by here." My nigga Rek (we were about 24 or 25 at the time) looked at him and asked super incredulously "BOYS??!?!?!!!!" That's when the idiot white man smirked and said, "Sorry. Fellas, can I get by here?" And we moved.

These words, as I said, are complex. It depends who says it, the tone, the context, etc. I see no point in why we need to put the word "nigga" to sleep. I'm not the HUGEST proponent of free speech. I'm a bit of a conservative on that front. I agree with the Supreme Court's ruling that high school campuses can be policed by adults for speech that goes overboard (this was recent when some kids had some wild display that disparaged Jesus). But, the same way I use the "nigga" frequently on this blog, I believe rappers should be able to do so in song, same as script writers should continue to write it into scripts.

(Note: I believe men should retire the word "bitch" and go to more classy terms like "broad", "bird", "dame", "skirt". The more innocuous and sophisticated, the better. "Tramp" and "slut" are OK, too.)

This is all just mindless venting and ranting. I just think this firestorm over the use of nigga in the community is overblown and the grandstanding by the NAACP was just stupid and not worth a drop of water in a bucket. Them niggas shouldve stayed in their air-conditioned office.

Yall know how I feel: Niggas Is A Beautiful Thang.

Music Dude: What I've Been Bumpin...

2007-07-25T17:15:00.001-04:00

I wanna hip yall to some music that's been shredding my face lately...hold tight...it'll be up soon...

Music Dude: Back yappin' 'bout Common

2007-07-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

Yes-yes, yall. Man, I haven't had a Music Dude post on the blog in millenia...at least it seems that way. So, I'm back at it. Actually, what I'm posting was part of a 50-msg email string I had with my niggas yesterday. The topic was Common and his new album, Finding Forever. A little prefacing context:

Comm's new album drops July 31st. Leading up to its release, one of the crew members always had some smarmy comment to make about how the album was gonna be wack, others were excited, me, I was guardedly excited. Well you know us ThisIsRealMusic.com kats get the drop on ish the second it hits the net, so we manage to scoop the album this past Monday. When it comes to dudes like Common, their releases usually call for a lot of discussion and that's what took place recently. What you'll read is a response to my nig Gee who thinks this album is a near classic (which it is not) and my nigga Trav who was ishin on Comm's lyrics like he's Young Joc and also made some comment like, "This is Comm's album for white people" which sent me thru the roof.

Anyways, in true Music Dude fashion, I think I wrote about 64,382 words in my response. dig...

*********

-- to me a 4.5 is a near classic. it means that there's just "something" that is keeping it from being a classic. I dont know that I can call Finding Forever a near classic, which is funny, because I think it is better than Be, but i rate Be as the near classic and Finding Forever as about as strong as a 4 can get. Let me explain...

For Comm to make a classic or near classic at this point he either has to return to Bridge or take a 3 or 4 year hiatus, come back and be just as dope. its very hard for someone to drop a classic or near classic album that is void of context. and by context i mean some extenuating circumstance that is either informing or imposing upon an album that is otherwise just really good sounding soundwaves. Be was a near classic because it was a return for Comm. He came "back" to regular, good ol' hop and returned as an even growner emcee. his classics and Be all had some kind of context and represented some sort of plateau or touchstone in his career. Ressurection was the album he dropped in the midst of hop's new golden age and it was an album where we first saw COMMON and not a pseudo Das EFX biter from Chicago. One Day It'll All Make Sense saw Comm at the peak of his frisky, young-boy emcee skills (like a 88-90 MJ). He was athletic on that joint, PLUS started making more socially conscious songs that we didnt hear on Resurrection (his joints with Lauryn and Lo come to mind). Like Water For Chocolate was Comm at his peak as a hip hop "artist" and introduced us to Soulquarians. Electric Circus might be the best Bridge album ever (it's really starting to challenge New Danger). Those were the classics. Then he came with Be, a near classic. What we have to realize is that Comm had an eight-year, four album string of bonafide classics. Resurrection, One Day, LWOF and Circus arent even borderline classics. There is no arguing those. 8 friggin years and 4 classics. That effin incredible. if u add Be to that equation, thats a 10-year span with 5 albums of impeccable quality, all of which represented some shape-shift, artistic progression, refocus or persona development. What I'm getting at here is that it is im-friggin-possible for Comm to do anything at this point to really shake things up, unless he returns to Bridge and helps further crystalize that young genre of music or if he takes 3 or 4 years off to make movies and then, after we miss him greatly, he returns to satiate us (similar to Desire, which is why i think niggas are semi-falsely giving that classic status).

So what we get is Finding Forever, another impeccable album that can only be rated but so high because there's no context to push it up any levels. EVERY artist plateaus...not some, EVERY artist. I find it interesting that Marvin dropped Hear My Dear as his last album. its friggin mind-blowing because its so good...but had he not died, he'd have finished his career and probably not had any more classics. Steve plateaued. By the time the 80s rolled around, he wasnt droppin classics. Prince's last classic was Sign O Times (i believe), his New Power Generation stuff wasnt classic. Stillmatic was a classic not because the music was so overwhelmingly dope, but because Nas returned to making great music. The albums he's dropped since have all been excellent, but none classic. What makes Finding Forever and Common so special is that he's plateaued but maintained the excellence. Every great artist -- and Common is a great artist, top 20 of all time in hop, no question -- anyways, every great artist has their classic run and at some point a human being has no room to really grow THAT much. the chore is staying relevant and good once the exploration stops. and thats what Comm did, here.

-- Trav comically said that Comm dumbed down his lyrics and made mention of the pop culture lyrics. I think its important to note that there's nothing wrong with making pop culture REFERENCES. For instance, on Kingdom Come, Jay had basically gone pop in a lot of ways, yappin about Chris and Gwyneth and that wack ode to his homey locked up in the clink. that annoyed me. Comm's pop culture references are basically punch lines. and, at least to me, they never come across as forced or contrived.

with that said, its VERY important to note 2 things. 1.) Common is the greatest lovesong writer in the history of hip hop. 2.) Comm is every bit the story teller that Nas and Pharoah are. Let me explain...

Hop has never been a genre built for love songs because its always been so charged with machismo and/or lust. So an emcee's primary goals has always been to trumpet his greatness, challenge competitors, release aggression, rebel...that kinda stuff. By the time an emcee gets to the topic of a woman, it's usually to describe some tramp that broke his heart, gave him the clap or to let a woman know how much he wants to bone her or its a story about how he pursued a vixen. Even when Pharoah writes a song like "The Light", he's really only giving us a tale about how this women blew his mind and how he made her his. There has never really been such a thing -- in hip hop -- as songs that earnestly speak of love and relationships with any sensitivity, because, well thats gay. And there also hasnt ever really been a slew of dudes that speak about love and relationships with any depth (Mos is Comm's only peer). Comm has a SLEW of these songs from "The Light" to "Nag Champa" to "Love Is" and his songs like "Go" are so much more complex than others. My fav of his love sogs is "Star 69" of Electric Circus which is an ode to Badu (he plays with her name in the chorus, calling her E-rot-ica). Its not his best lovesong and it uses phone sex as its theme and his flow is simpler but between his lyrics and Bilal's chorus, i just always finish that song thinking "no one else does this in hip hop."

Well, songs like "I Want You" and "Break My Heart" off Finding Forever continue this trend. btw, the way will.i.am spirals the track off into that fantasy-sounding bridge at the end of "I Want You" is the absolute ish. I grimaced on the train today when that part of the song broke. and then we get to his story telling. Not too harp on Trav's cornball agenda to trivialize Comm, but he had the nerve to scoff at Comm's "uplift the black people" motif as if he's tired of it. What i find incredible about Comm's uplift the people missions is that he often does this, not through preaching, but through stories that are often based around characters that falter or crush under the weight of whatever is inherent to being black in America. And that whole structuring of his songs is unique. Whereas Nas often takes full songs to tell his stories and Pharoah deals in a lot of metaphors and Ghost is extra theatrical; Comm usually has songs that are made up of three vignettes. For instance, i love how on "Driving Me Wild", the first two verses separately tell a story of an individual whose pursuit of some elusive, superficial goal is costing him/her something greater. "Black Maybe" is done the same way, with each verse telling a short story. And although Comm's topics aren't extra wide-ranging, he always profound. so how can u get tired of that?

As a former emcee and current writer, I envy the guy. When I listen to Stevie Wonder, i wonder (pun) what it's like to be that eloquent and Comm is one of the few emcees that have that same effect on me.

I also wanna reiterate that Common is the only emcee (along with Mos) that you can put in the same category as Smokey Robinson or Stevie or Paul McCartney or whomever when it comes to lovesongs. yall niggas may scoff at that because hop aint really about love songs, but when u start getting into arguments about hop's place with the other genres as a full, developed, three dimensional musical art, that has to be a apart of it and Comm and Mos allow hop to stick its chest out.

-- production wise...i gotta admit, i effin miss Comm with the Soulquarians. as good as he and Ye are as a tandem, nothing beat him working with Dills, ?uest and Poyser. With that said, Finding Forever is really cementing Kanye West as one of the great music producers in the history of music. That top 7 list needs to be extended to 8, because when Ye sits down and works on a full album (Dropout, Be, Late Reg, Finding Forever) he does not miss. What I like about Ye is that he's one of the few producers that is making music to really stand on its own as a piece of art. u can tell he slaves over the songs and is always thinking of inventive ways to approach things. its like he's trying to blow ur mind each time out and i think that goes in line with his personality of being very insecure and lusting for accolades. But the production this album is just so tight, and the guest producers ( will.i.am, Devo Springsteen) kept the level very high.

-- i'm giving this album a 4, but only because, at this point, its pretty impossible for Comm to go any higher, given the fact that he's already 10-plus years into a classic career.

Arabs vs Africans

2007-07-24T20:28:00.000-04:00

I'm just here to let you know that Arabs stink just as much as Africans. I mean, Africans dont have a monopoly on stinch, naa mean. I walked past an Arab today on my way from work and he had the whole block smelling like his natural body odor stinch. 6th ave is a huge street, its the friggin Avenue of the Americas...if u can take over the smell of a whole NYC street with all the exhaust and falafel stations, hot dog stands, sewage -- that's some funk. And thats when it hit me that 96.7% of Arabs stink.

Trust me, I know full well the power of African funk. Everyday on my commute to work, I have about a six block walk down Broadway, which is lined with Africans hawking Nikes and watches and such. The smell is palapable. I stopped going to a pizzeria on 28th and Broadway because African stinch would mess up the way my slice tastes. In D.C., i lived in a NE suburb full of Nigerians, whose smell is a little less tart, but more musky than Kenyans. Africans can funk it up and the world knows it.

But Arabs, I believe, are underappreciated in this arena. Ask yourself, save some pretty boy son of an oil tycoon, have you ever encountered an Arab wearing cologne? Not me. Like Africans, they subscribe to the natural code. And, maybe its the curry, but their natural oils and body odors are more pungent. in fact, i kinda think i should be commissioned to study this for some hygiene association. this battle needs to be settled, because i know that everytime and African passes an Arab on the street, they secretly check to see which smell is the most powerful. I bet the Arab wins 4 out 7 times.

Yeah, I'm rambling...but I'm just sayin...Africans arent the only people doin serious damage with their funk games.

(note: Northern Africans -- somolians, ethiopians, egyptians -- are like African-Arab hybrids, based on their geographic locations. but i typically find them to smell more like Arabs. just thought u should know.)

NY Times piece on Rudy Gullianni -- read it

2007-07-23T15:39:00.000-04:00

This New York Times piece is a really good read on Rudy Gulianni -- who could very well be the next President of the U.S. -- and his race-relations problems.

I remember how there was talk of reaaranging the double-term limit on a mayorship so that NYC could re-elect him...this was after the way he handled 9-11. But what that did was overshadow much of the controversy that clouded most of his 8 years in office. Although crime dropped and Times Square commercialized and delapidated neighborhoods gentrified; dude was a Class A prick, specifically with NYC's black population (I think there are like 3 million blacks in NYC). Much of this centered around police tactics, with Diallo's shooting being the most egregious well-remembered.

And Gulianni also has the Bush-sickness of simply not extending olive branches or seeking communication. Bush hasnt met with Congressional Black Caucus since he's been in office. Gullianni regularly rebuffed black leaders requests for face time. I partly understand why these politicians behave that way. Powerful blacks like pile it on Republicans. Groups of blacks can be like angry wives that wanna shove wrongdoing in people's faces, make irrational and ridiculous rquests and belittle/emasculate/triviliaze folks by condescension and accusations. So cowboys like Bush and Gulianni take it straight to the "I'm not even pumpin' wit yall" level; which is kinda gangsta, but wholly faulty for a country with America's history and ongoing problems with race relations.

Anyways...the Times provides a nice chronological look at the race-relations missteps of Guilianni's mayorship and asks some pretty logical questions about how that would translate if this dude was leading the friggin country.

Also, this dude has been divorced, like, 84 times. This means he's either a schmuck in the sack, a poor communicator, belligerent, gay or all of the above. I'm just sayin....

2007-07-10T16:40:00.000-04:00

-- I'm in the midst of what has become an afternoon routine during my stints in Buffalo, where I watch my nig Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room, drink that last cup of coffee that was one too many (yall know i got self control issues) and procrastinate getting my writing done and/or excersizing.

Today, Wolf and "The Best Political Team on Television" or whatever he calls his troop are reporting some pretty interesting things.

For instance, Bush's approval rating is at 29%, its the lowest approval rating for any Preseident in the history of the U.S.; below his Pops' rating at the end of his term, Nixon during Watergate, Post-WWII and early civil rights Truman and Jimmy Carter, who looked like Mr. Rogers and perfect candidate to be a pedaphilic Catholic priest.

What's funny to me is that Bush seems no worse of a Pres than he did when America voted in 2004. I was stunned when he won. I dont vote due to religious belief and convictions of political neutrality (I have no faith in any human to run America or the world. I'm not sure John Kerry or Al Gore would have done DEMONSTRABLY better. The world keeps getting worse no matter whos in office)...anyways, I kinda feel like America is getting their just punishment for re-electing this bufoon. Did these people, in 2004, think he was gonna do any better? Hadn't he provided a claer track record of obstinance, dimwittedness, duplicitity and crony agendas?

But whats REALLY comical is that number -- 29%. Really, who thinks this dude is doing a good job? Who are these people that approve? Those are rhetorical questions. I atually met many people who pumped with Bush when I lived in exurban Florida. These are two types of people (here come the stereotypes)...one group is hillbillyish and say things like, "We need to keep bombin' the sh*t outta them Osamas for knockin our towers down." The other are white collar martians that wanna kick out all the mexicans and reverse Brown vs Board. They all make me chuckle and then furrow my brow. But its their America. I'm just livin in it, hoping theyre not serious when they tell me to "go back to Africa."

-- One other thing made me both laugh and shake my head. This dude David Vitter, a US Senator, is now involved in some scandal when he turned up in some ultra-exclusive D.C. escort service. Outrage has ensued. I just ask myself, What US Senator hasnt had some extra-marital affair? I think the perecentage is much less than 25%. Just sayin...

more randoms

2007-07-05T11:40:00.000-04:00

Until my next caper or epiphany...you'll be stuck reading these random thoughts...

-- There's a tiled platform in my parents living room. It also has two arched six or seven foot mirrors. Whenever little ones come over the build they stand in front of it and perform for themselves. One of my lil sis' close friends has a daughter that attends the school she teaches at and sometimes she comes home with P and waits at the build for her Mom to pick her up. If I'm home she heads right for my iPod, asks for me to switch it to Beyonce and then spends her time in front of the mirrors in, what I'm sure, is her fantasy world where she is Beyonce.

Today the stakes were raised, though. As I said, my sis works for the schools, so she has summers off. During this time, she has volunteered to periodically watch my cousin Halima's daughters, Tatyana and Imani. They just spent the last 20 minutes putting on Cheetah Girls performances for P and I. I'm talking rehearsed renditions where they take turns singing portions of each verse and dance choreographed moves. Its special stuff. Theyre two years apart, 9 and 7, and remind me of my little brothers at that age. Except, instead of performing Cheetah Girls routines, my lil brothers were splitting globes in half, putting them in the back of the sweatshirts and performing Ninja Turtles fight scenes.

I didnt have a brother my age, so there wasnt any of that from me when I was younger, nor my sisters since they were 4 years apart. But when you're close in age and the same gender, you become like one person. Lil Mani said something revealed something very telling a moment ago when she stormed in the living room and pouted on the stage in front of the mirror. She said, "Vince, tell Tatyana to let me play the piano with her." Taty was in the foyer, bangin out some keys and crooning. I told Mani to let Taty have her time on piano and then she could play after her. Mani said: "But she dont sound right by herself. And I dont wanna play by myself neither." I asked why not. She said "We only sound right together." Like I said, one person. Taty is getting to that age where she's gonna want to be an individual, though. I dont rememeber when that happened with my lil brothers, but it was def before Chrish hit his teens. By that time, I could no longer expect for them to perform "Da Mystery of Chessboxin" (which would include Adam taking a squirt of his puffer and bloqin it out like weed smoke). Those were indeed the days.

-- speaking of my lil cousins. They watch a alot of Nickolodeon. Hannah Montana seems to be their favorite. Its basically a show about two teenage white girls that sing. What's important is that Billy Ray Cyrus plays their father. Whats more important is that they think Billy Ray Cyrus is cool. This just amused me. I'm struggling to figure if there was a sitcom figure of my youth that was a complete and disastrous cornball during my parents days. I cant imagine so. Its all disorienting.

-- speaking of Nickolodeon, do you realize how many programming options these kids have today? They have like three Disney channels with cartoons and sitcoms designed for them specifically, plus the Cartoon Network and a few others. Its crazy. Back in my day we had a few after school cartoons and Saved By The Bell....and Double Dare. remember that? And during the summer I watched David and the Gnomes and The Monkeys. Remember the Monkeys? I would actually buy that as a DVD if I could.

-- I'm on a TV kick right now and as such, I gotta talk about HBO for a moment. Have you seen the glut of new shows that'll be premiering this year. It must be something like 10 and NONE of them are based around black characters. this kills me. You mean not ONE pilot where the central characters were black or hispanic passed through HBO brass? Of course. So why wasnt any picked up as a series. There are probably a zillion answers for this, but none of them would truly be a valid reason. The most inane, trivial and weird subjects are used as a basis for dramas pitted around white characters, but chances are never taken otherwise. The reason why this frustrates me in HBO's case is because they do their shows so well. You know you'd get some well written shows with complex characters and useful dialogue, etc...instead we're forced to watch UPN or WB shows or corny FOX shows or blacks as criminals on serial crime dramas or token black doctors. it's all irritating. but whatever.

-- very quick: there's a brother in my fam's congregation that wears a ridiculously fake and tragic rug on his head. My lil bro calls him Toupe Fiasco. Yep.

Musings from your Muse

2007-06-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

No one has ever referred to me as their muse, save my Afro-American Lit teacher at Univ of Buffalo. Professor Powers. She remains my favorite teacher to this day -- over KRS One, but I guess slightly under the Lord and Life.

Anyways. Shame on me, right? A whole month went by. More than a month. I'm at work, right now, in the midst of a lull between articles that need my keen eye and sense of judgenment; so instead of doing some research for a story that's due in a couple days or writing some music review; I thought I'd reaquaint myself with my online diary, my weblog, my blog. Not that a nigga has too much to say. But I definitely have some ramblings. Dig (and as always, excuse the horrible spelling and choppy language, since i'm just gonna start typing)...

-- this morning I had the taste for a decadent pancake. I dont eat pancakes too often. I enjoy them immensely, but if I make breakfast, it's usually some type of egg sandwhich. And even when I go out for breakfast at a diner, I'm not the dude that orders pancakes. I'm a rye toast kind of nigga. But when I do make pancakes at the crib, it's usually on the fly. Just the pancake mix, add water, drown the skillet in butter and get in my belly. every once in a while, though, I choose to get fly with it and instead of water, add an egg, milk and melted butter into the pancake mix and then vince-it-up with some type of extra ingredient. In the past its been butterscotch chips, white chocalte chips, mangos, strawberries, blueberrys, oatmeal...well, a nigga didnt have any of those logical ingredients, so I used some rasinets. Yep. Raisinets. But dig, it was a magnificent treat. Pancakes, I've found, are very similar to cookies, in that they work well with chocolate candied ingredients. I see no reason why one wouldnt enjoy reeces pieces, or M&Ms or crumbled butterfinger in their pancakes. I get the feeling that I'm onto something here.

-- I believe that in a previous blog, I mentioned that the Bronx is a borough of Puerto Ricans and Italians and a small enclave of Jews settled at the most norther tip in Riverdale, right? I was wrong. Now, me andmy sis still make up 2/3 of the Afro population (there is only one other nigra resident in the whole borough, but technically he's not a resident, since he's homeless. Dude's name is Lester Ferns. He sleeps on Jerome, a few blocks south of Fordham. He wears clothers that stink a stank stench of funk, but he's somehow managed to get his dirty fingernails on a pair of pristine Nike Dunks (quad-color joints). Lester Ferns, yall.)...anyways, yesterday, as I was walkin to the train, I noticed that everyone that passed was Asian. This blew my mind. How did I not notice that a pack of Orientals inhabitted this aartment building right on the Fn corner of Bainbridge and Bedford. As I passed by thisintermittent sucession of yellow skin, I smiled, happy to see another ethnicity. This is good. And while I'm here, I've never seen an asian walking a dog. Not here, not in Central Park, notAt Delaware Park, not down the Mall in DC, not nowhere. This is no coincidence. I'm sure this can be exlained through some type of social science examination. I'm on this.

-- I could tell you a NYC subway story everyday. LITERALLY EVERYDAY. Here are three from the past month...

*****The new thing (or maybe not that new) for the train-beggars (dont know the city term for this kind of person) is to act like they're cut from the same cloth as the Biblical personage Stephen. He was a stoned to death for following Christ, but as he was being pelted with heavy rocks, he asked god to forgive his murderers "forgive them Father for they know what they do." That's the new sentiment for these dudes that get on the trai, relate some sob story and then ask for money. It's all a bit surreal and it never gets old. Even the most grizzled New Yorker at leasts glances at these people. My favorite beggar came courtesy of this dude that I'll call R&B. He was about my age. A good lookin fella, in the kind of way where you'd say "If he wasn't down and out and looking haggard and as if he hasn;t had health insurance for a couple years...if all of that wasn't the case, he'd be a handsome brother." No homo, but I think like that about haggard niggas, like "if he was doin better with life, would he be a normal looking dude or would he still look like the personification of a worn out dish rag? Ya know, the kind that gets hard and crusty and white is now maroon from wipin up cofee nd ketchup." Because, some niggas have seen the days of normalcy pass by, so u dont even wonder about them. These men are usually older, with fewer teeth, less hair and slacker jaws. Anyways, R&B was a beggar that was one round at the laundromat, a shower, a physical and some good news away from lookin regular. Because he was younger nigga, I chose to pause my ipod and here his pitch for help. He began by saying he had two kids, with two on the way: "One from the fine and lovely mother of my two beautiful daughters; and the other with a young woman I made a mistake to. I didn't make love to her New York City. I made a mistake to her." Yes he said this...and continued: "But I'm a man and accept my mistakes. I don't run NEw York City." At this moment he whimsically broke into his gospeldelic rendition of Mint Condition's "Pretty Brown Eyes". It blew my mind. Believe me when I tell you that if you gave me 100 chances to guess what he was going to say after "I dont run New York City", an imprmptu Mint Condition reprisal wouldve never came up.

Anyways, after singing his lungs up his esophagus and out his dirty germy mouth he put us on notice: "I aint about no bojanglin and gettin on the train and dancin and singin for money. That wasnt for yall, that was for me. Singing helps me live. But if you like what you heard, please help me out as I try to provide for my family." He walked from one end of the train to the other and got nothing but a couple coins from some jitterbug nigga in a suit that probably got at R&B about puttin together a doo-wop group. As the train was prparing to halt he hits us with his Stephen rhetoric: "I came and asked for help as a humble man. For those of you that gave out of the goodness of your heart (one man), me and God thank you. For those that werent able to give at thios time (or just chose not to), may God bless you more than he blesses me and may you get, in return, 10 times what you COULDVE given today." I obviously didnt remember that word for word, but that was a pretty accurate recap. Homeboy not only tried to play the selfless role, but he had the audacity to put everyone on Front Street, as well. Classic

---- There was a one-armed man playing the harmonica. He was Central American -- i feel you need to know that. And I rarely see a dude with LITERALLY no arm. Usually you get a nub, but my man's left sleeve was totally empty. And his harmonica game was horrid. Horrid because he couldnt play, but also horrid because he wasn;t puttin alot of effort into it. My guess is that he found the harmonica and thought he could fool everyone and turn it into a beggar's act on the train. You know when someone doesn't know the answer to a question, they'll answer in a hushed-mumble? That's how Suave was playin the harmonica, in a hushed-"es is a confuses instrument"-mumble. But that left sleeve was swingin so hard and empty that I felt compelled to drop some silver change in his Cosi's cup, which, by the way, also had a plastic spoon in it. (You needed to knwo that too).

---- Everyday I step foot on that platform at the 34th street station, i face a dilemma that truly plagues the F outta me. Do I cram on to the D train (which is an express train and cuts about 15 minutes off my commute back to the crib); or do i take a seat on the less crowded B train, but extend the commute as it tops at the gazillion stations between midtown and Fn Siberia (aka the north Bronx). On this day I chose the D train (like I usually do, but not always), because I'm impatient. There's always a chance you can snag a seat when a bunch of people exit at 42nd, but not always. And if you don't get on then, you're standing; and if youre standing, you always run the risk of getting stuck next to the wrong person. In my case, that evening's wrong person was a square-faced Mexican with arms the length of my baby cousin Zadok. So, because he couldnt reach the railing from a normal distance in this cramped train, he had to pull ALL THE WAY up to my bumper so he could grab hold with his hobbit hands. This meant that his stomach (and at maddening times) his crotch would bang into my thigh (because he was short). I spent the whole ride with him rubbing his gut on my lower body and breath his poblano breath on my elbow. The next day, I took the B train.

-- I know everyone doesnt have 50 minutes to sit in front of a compute, but this documentary on George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic is fascinating. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7yyT7K-5jg

Over the past year, PFunk has grown into my favorite ban -- ever (well, besides Wu-Tang). I wrote an essay on them here. And this documentary is a great look at their rise. I've watched it 6 times in two months.

-- My absolute, unabashed, consensus, downright favorite thing about the Summer is women and their sundresses. First off, a pretty sundress can make an ugly broad look glorious. There's something about the colors, the way the fabric falls and flows...I think it's a majestic item, the sundress. But what I love most is to walk down the street on a breezy day and see the ladies do that walk where they hold both arms stiff against each leg so their skirt doesnt fly up. I mean, that's the most wonderful stride on the planet. Eff a catwalk-walk, the sundress-on-a-breezy-day is the more cute than a catwalk-walk is sexy. I smile when I see it.

And I'm not necessarily an oggler. Unless its late and I'm out with my dudes, you probably won't see me turn around and stare at a chick's backside after she walks past me, no matter how much I want to. I'm a disrespectful dude in general, but I pick my spots. So I just let the sista walk by and be about gettin where she has to go without me stopping my day to turn around and look at her flesh, which leads to a chubby, which makes my walk uncomfortable since my man isgonna be doin the bump with my zipper for the next block. BUT, what I do love, are those rare, fleeting moments, when you're standing on a corner and an unsuspecting breeze shoots by and a honey's sundress flys up ever so quickly before she frantically corales the fabric down, but giving me just enough time to peak at her panties. That's when she drops her head a little, slumps her shoulders a little and crawls under some figurative rock with her cheeks fire engine red. i LOVE that, man. They make my summers, i'm tellin you.

back at it: fam, italians, stuff

2007-05-21T17:13:00.000-04:00

In all honesty, I really long for the days -- that brief three month span in the 05 summer to be exact -- where I had a mindless gig and was able to blog for 8 hours a day. I dont long for it in a "boy, I wish I wasn't writing for a living, rather answering phones and twiddling my thumbs" kinda way. But it was like a perfect storm. I was fresh off an incredibly fun internship in Orlando, back in the Strict crashing at my boys pad with tons of stories and a good 8-block hour of the day, every day, when I had nothing else better to do than indulge my daydreaming and voyeurism in the form of extra-ridiculously-long rambling blogs.

But this freelance thing is no job for the lazy. I'll say that. Much like when I was in school, there's never many instances where I can be doing nothing and feel all too comfortable with it. Back in the collegiate days, 2 or 3 hours in front of a television or surfing the web or CD shopping at Borders meant precious time wasted where I could be studying or drafting some paper, feel me. These days, its the same way. Either I should be finishing a project or pursuing a prject. Otherwise my transient NYC-Buff back-n-forth will continue much longer than my sanity and wits can suffer.

This is all getting at the point that, several times a day something random happens that I'd like to turn into a novel-blog and i always end up letting it pass. because when it comes time to sit in front of a computer and run off at the mouth, i always get this concerned feeling that I should be regurgitating about some person, album or issue i have to write about. it wasnt like this when I worked for the papers. You have allotted times during the day or after events to focus and bang out your piece and thats that.

ahhh...i'm rambling. anyways, as I always, I'm offering a guarded promise that you'll all most likely scoff at (which is perfectly reasonable); but i'm really gonna try to be more frequent on my blog. its only right. with all that said...here are just some random notes...

--- RIP to the blogs most loyal reader, my lil cousin Melonie. She used to be a teller at a relatively quiet bank where she had ample time to surf the web for music news and online shopping and, of course, to read her big cousin's blog. She's since quit that gig and took one for the fam, offering to be the primary day-carer (word?) for her lil nephew and my lil cousin, Zadok. Which is probably why she hasnt left an excoriating comment reprimanding me for the recent month-plus absence. Miss ya baby.

--- speaking of lil Zadok. He is the first male born into our extended family in close to 20 years. 20 YEARS!!! Ever since my lil bro Adam was born in 1985, we've had 20-plus year string of baby girls. Every uncle, aunt and cousin that have given birth to a new seed in the Thomas or Frazier line has given birth to a girl. This completely screw with the family dynamic, specifically considering my older cousins (Shaad, Jason and Ryan) are semi-AWOL. At most family gatherings its the uncles, the aunts and (unless my blood-brother (childhood friends I refer to as my brothers) roll thru) it's me, Adam and about 20 women. Which means they rule music, conversation, you get the picture. And it's cool. Female family members are also more likely to laugh at our jokes and humor us. And it's always cool to have an excuse to sing along to Jill Scott or Musiq and feel like a total schmazool. The larger point is that Zadok is being treated like somewhat of a family Messiah. It's a huge deal. The true benefits of his arrival will come when he is old enough to walk and talk and me and A-Eezy can begin grooming him into an obnoxious, ridiculous, caricature S.O.B. like every other Thomas Man. My twin cousin Halima will most likely not appreciate such a sinister plan, but after 20 years, can anyone blame us...just wait, I'll have using the word "nigga" before he's in pre-school. ha.

--- speaking of niggas. Charm School is a reproach. Noone on that show makes larger fools of themselves than two gut-bucket broads that happen to be blackies. I've documented here my reticence to indulge these shows, starting all the way back with Being Bobby Brown (which I sorely miss), specifically because of the concern that these idiots are being used by ignorant folk in non-urban America as cultural identifiers. These women and Flavor Flav are Susie from South Dakota's entree to black America, whereas I'm fairly certain that Screech is not the typical white dude. Some may feel that its overboard and condescending to believe that some hicks from Middle Americ or suburbia or segregated urban areas would be dumb enough to believe that most black women act like Larissa (though this actually might be closer to the case)...but everytime I watch the Sopranos I swear that it severely shapes my general view of Italiam-Americans. This might be an even bigger problem. Follow me here:

The easiest way to identify a black person is by the color/shade/hue of their skin (and our low credit scores, propensity toward crime and wide noses...kidding) I bring this up because, to see Larissa or B. Brown or Ying Yang Twins is most definitely stereotype-perpetuating, but you also see Tiger Woods, Obama, men in suits on the train and myriad other regular blacks throughout the day. The Tigers and Obamas can most definitely be passed off as the exception, but more and more, its becoming harder for an individual to validate thinking of Flav as a norm, but rather one member of a rather large underbelly. OK? (suspend an ultra-critical line of thinking and just roll with me here for the sake of my exorcizing this other, larger concern.)

But let's take Italians. It was just earlier this year that I learned that, typically, a last name that ends in a vowel is usually from some type of Italian American family line. Other than that, there is literally no physical identifier that I can personally ascribe to an Italian American. Arabs, yes. Asians, yes. Hispanics, yes (specifically Hispanic women over the age of 35, since they tend to resemble Anthony Hopkins). Jews, maybe. But Irish? No. Polish? No. Norwegian? No. Italian? No. Call me an idiot, but they look like very similar to every other euro-ethnicity to a large extent. So what happens? I start taking my cues (like a feeble minded rube, albeit) from either Hollywood or very extreme characteristics largely associated with Italian Americans. Is this grown man wearing a track suit to dinner thats tight enough around his crotch to his ball-bulge? He must be Italian. Is this white man/woman especially loud/crass/vulgar? Must be Italian. I'm sure I meet literally tons of Italian-Americans on a daily basis that act nothing like the Sopranos or the Italians in Spike Lee movies (Spike has a serious problem)...but unless, fopr some reason, I learn that they're Italian, you won't find me correlating their behavior with "being Italian". I wont meet a regular man at a grocery store who behaves like your average American and connect that with acting Italian. But if he's in the line and the cashier has to call for an item check and its making him late and he yells "OHHH! It's like waiting for paint to dry over here!" It's like "he must be Italian." Have you read this last paragraph? And I claim to be halfway enlightened. This is a HUGE problem.

I bring this up because I watch the Sopranos religiously. Often two to three times a week. It's one of my 4 or 5 favorite shows ever. Increasingly, tho (maybe over the past 3 to 4 seasons) I've always found the show to be just as comical as it is dramatic and the comedy often comes at the expense of the Italian characters who are often portrayed in such an ignorant fashion that its downright hilarious. "This," I ask myself, "is how THESE people get down?" I know, i know. I once read an editorial by an Italian American sports journalist up in arms about the way the NFL could bully a show like Playmakers off the air because of its negative depiction of pro football athletes, but the Italian American community wasnt able to effectively get the Sopranos thrown off the air for its constant perjorative depiction of Italians. Yes, the show is dramatizing a very small subset of Italians, but they're gripe is no different than the African American gripe that: When there are not enough aletrnate shows that reinforce positive aspects, then you get ignoramouses like me that cant help but basing generalities off these extreme cases.

Think about the Sopranos...has there ever been a truly positive character on that show? Any balance? HBO has given us The Wire (my favorite show ever), where blacks are criminals and corrupt politicians (even if the characters are three dimensional and realistic), with a few do-good cops here and there; Oz, with a bunch of nigger-inmates; and Def Comedy Jam, which, for all its opportunities, is a bojangling exhibition. Aside from that, there have been a few HBO films (like the latest joint with Latifah) and Def Poetry Jam (hackneyed and sickening, but at least its not disparaging) and thats it. Yet, I ride or die with that channel. Italians have been given The Sopranos and thats it. Just sayin...

Anyways, thank goodness we only have two more Soprano episodes left in the series. As soon as its over I'm gonna start my own personal rehibilitation effort

2007 Playoffs: unedited reactions

2007-05-04T14:11:00.000-04:00

First...I got some news for ya. My freelance work is picking up. You can catch me ion next month's issue of SLAM. SLAM is like Vibe, or better yet, XXL (which is our sister publication and housed on the same floor with us, KING, Scratch some of other pubs under the same media umbrella) for all basketball (NBA, NCAA, Streetball and high schools). I'd say its most popular with fans 10-35, specifically 10-25 and urban kids...they read SLAM way before they read Sports Illustrated. I also edit for SLAM, as well, so I guess you can call them my employer, but not in the full sense. Also, you all see that link to allmusic.com on the side of my blog...that's been my No. 1 source for music info (reviews/bios/discographies/release dates) for the past 6 or 7 years. Well, based on the stuff I've been doing for ThisIsRealMusic (which, by the way, our new issue just hit the web May 1st, go check it out, we got stuff on Sa-Ra, Eric ROberson, Anthony Hamilton, OC, Parliament-Funkadelic...) they asked me to be a part-time music critic.

Anyways...back to SLAM...I've been covering the Toronto-New Jersey series for them this past week. You can catch my stuff at slamonline.com. Meanwhile, I got an email from my friend Jemele (the Sojourner Truth of black women sports columnist, better known as that black girl who writes for ESPN and said that Kobe is better than MJ)...she mandated that I provide some thoughts on the first round of the playoffs...I told her I'd blog about it. So here it is...

First of all, J has this habit of calling athletes sexuality into the question. Not in a "I think Carlos Boozer gave Kirilenko a reacharound in the shower after Game 6 as a thank you for finally showing up and helping out the squad"...it's usually much deeper and absolute, like "Dirk is a b***h a$% p8$&y!" More accurately, i guess, she calls their gender into question.

Within weeks of meeting this women a few years ago, we were all sitting over my boy Kyles crib watching the ACC tourney and conversation turned to Steve Francis (who was the star of the Orlando Magic at the time) and she was calling him, "a vaginal ho".

I'm taking this opportunity, to cosign her emasculation of Dirk Nowitzki. One of the aspects of the Nets-Raptors series I've harped on was how soft Bosh was playing. I've always considered him to be too finesse and girly in the paint to ever be considered elite in my book, but I'm totally baffled at how unassuming he's been in this series when he should be stepping up. I remarked to some Toronto fans that, if Bosh played for a team that mattered on the national scene, he'd be a pariah by now and all you need to do is look at Dirk for evidence. He's getting deservedly trashed. And he should. Barkley said it best on last nights postgame show (and echoed comments I wrote about Bosh), when he said its not that Dirk is having an off nioght, its that he doesnt seem to be trying.

Mark Cuban likened Dirk's performance to Michael Finley going 1-18 against the Spurs in 2005...but Dirk's performance is entirely different. First, Finley was one of three stars (him, Nash and Dirk) so it wasnt absolutely incumbent upon him to carry the Mavs that year, whereas Dirk is the unidisputed alpha dog on this Mavs squad and a poor performance from him can spell doom. But second, and most important, Finley was aggressive in that game. He shot 18 times. Dirk took 1 shot during the Warriors decisive third quarter when they scored 18 unanswered points. ONE F'N SHOT!!!! HE SHOULD BE SHOT FOR TAKIN ONE F'N SHOT!!! Its inexcusable. More than anything, the Mavs needed to see some agression and confidence from Dirk during that quarter, not some cowering douche-bag, willing to let the game carry one without trying to will an outcome more favorable for his team.

I thought Bosh had been the worse performer of the Playoffs, but it's clearly been Dirk. And even though Avery was probably outcoached by Nellie, I'm placing 80% of the blame on Dirk, much like I think people calling for Mitchell's head in Toronto is faulty, since Bosh is acting like a slit.

As far as the Warriors go, other than the Lakers and the Wizards, I'm riding with G State. My father always says that its hot to see a team full of "brothers" and when he says "brothers" he means our darker shade negros. One of the reason's why Duke still seemed elitist and almost sinister was that they only seemed to recruit lighter skin players for a while, save the few exceptions (Brian Davis, Tommy Ameker)...it was like they were saying: "If we gotta bring in Negros, lets not get to negroish". But when G State trots out Richardson and Baron and Pietrus and Jackson and what not, its an ill look, seriously, just the look of the team is hot, especially since theyre a body of interchangeable parts -- all 6-4 to 6-9 -- and they're running, leaping all over the place. Teams are gonna have problems with them for the remainder of the playoffs. However, Utah and Houston will both manage better, I think, because they have big men that present the same offensive problems for GState and GState's smaller lineup does for its opponent.

Everyone went hysterical when Avery went small, but I think it was a good idea in theory (minue the psychological drawback). The thing about Dallas big men is that none of them (not Dirk, not Diop, not Dampier) were gonna be killin the GState small guys in the post and as you can see, everyone on GState was flying in the air grabbin boards, too. For instance, when its said an done, Jackson and Harrington and Richardson can jump as high, if not higher than all of Dallas' big men. Diop and Dampier arent the most savvy dudes, so its not like they clearin out mad space and bullying the lil guys and Dirk is a softy...so the Mavs didnt even have a clear advantage inside using big men. Houston will, so will Utah. Either Yao or Boozer will give GState fits. And Deron is more apt to slow Baron down than the Mavs shrimp-PGs...we all know what Tracy can do...even Juwan could give them problems. Fact is, I don't think GState is gonna be running Houston or Utah off the floor next round. we shall see.

I would spit on my Lakers, but I'm just frustrated.

However, I would like to remind everyone that Miami payed Shaq 20 million this year and will be doing so for 2 more years.

back on the blog: classic 'pranos

2007-05-03T14:40:00.000-04:00

Wow...I don't think I've ever gone over a month without a post. I'll give you an update on what's been goin down, soon...until then, check this email I sent to some Sopranos Friends yesterday...I have a followup theory/confession/quandry, but I'm trying to gather a few thoughts (and work) before I start stream-typing...Anyways, I'm back.

People:

I really wanted to send out an email Sunday night, right after I
checked the West Coast 'Pranos...but didnt wanna spoil it for others
that hadnt caught it yet...i'm assuming everyone is caught up now.

It was a doozy. Vito Jr's shower action was disgusting, but a
relief...I thought the kids were gonna sexually assault the young
dude, like shove the stick of soap up his keister or something
deviant. Tony showed again how cold and selfish he is (gambled away
that dough then conned Marie into letting Vito Jr go to that school
for delinquents). That hot latina number from She Hate Me dumped AJ
who still communicates in teenspeak like he did 3 or 4 seasons
ago...Let me cut to the chaste, though...

One of the opening scenes has\d Tony, at Satriali's engaged in a
sitdown with to Marie, Gay Vito's widow. She's whining about her
son's recent degenerate behavior...something about a neighbor's cat.
She's fed up. Tony seeks to provide a little logic by saying: "Well,
in a way, that's to be expected, ya know, with Vito's passing and all
that entRails." Of all his english gaffes ("Why can't we all get
along like the great Reverend Dr. Rodney King Jr.?")...I think this
was the most comical. And that's saying a lot since five minutes
later, when describing Phil's recent swag and semi-disrespect he said
"It could be the hoobras when they become boss." That's the first
time I ever heard someone pronounce "hubris" as "hoobras"...I'm hoping
hoobras is some Italian slang I'm not up on, though I doubt it, since
Chase and the writers insist on giving us moments where these men seem
past ignorant.

And speaking of Phil...a few days after refering to Vito Jr as a "turd
that didn't fall far from the faggot's a$$", he sat down with young
Vito to see if he could talk some sense into him. As he's looking at
his nephew rockin all black, black lipstic, black nailpolish, he says
in disgust: "What the hell is wrong with you? You look like a Puerto
Rican whore! You make me sick." The "Puerto Rican whore" comment just
about ended my night, it was too much...I couldn't contain myself
(yall know how much idiotic bigotry entertains me). The writers
outdid themselves with that. There was no reason to qualify "whore"
with "puerto Rican", except, there actually was a reason, because it
cut that much deeper -- I definitely would've prefaced "whore" with a
low-grade ethnicity like afro american or mexican.

I have a couple Italian friends that cautioned me against getting too
many cultural identifiers from the Pranos, but isn't it basic fact
that a good deal of them hold (specifically) hispanics, blacks and
gays in below-human contempt? Phil's comment was classic and
indicative.

Ironically (but undoubtedly on purpose) Tony visited Hesh Rabkin, who
is always characterized as a stingy money-grubbing Jew, and said about
Cleaver (the film Chrissy made) "It's a very unflattering portrait of
Italian Americans." Ha.

Music Dude: American Idol-atry

2007-03-28T13:13:00.000-04:00

Because so much of my time and actual music ramblings are now committed to ThisIsRealMusic.com, I recognize that I havent done a Music Dude blog in a while. As much as I enjoy the T.I.R.M. work, there's nothing like the unfettered ramblings and rants I get to drop in this space. So The Dude is back...and since its been such a long time, I got a wholelotta ish to say...

AMERICAN IDOL
This show is a problem. I never used to watch the show, always seemed stupid and corny and basically for old retirees and girls. The most I would get is when my little cuzzes would make these highlight tapes of the "rejects" and show them to me and we'd crack up laughing and then that'd be it. As far as me sitting in front of a television every week yay-naying some amateur knockoffs while some fat black man that sounds and acts like he's an SNL skit where a white man is playing an exaggerated version of a black...i mean...the whole show always seemed irredeemable. I'm a little more exposed to this since I moved to NYC, because my sister watches this all the time...its something I never had to deal with living by myself. Much like Lyd's red carpet play-by-play, she does the same with these poorly dressed, copy cat rubes that prance on the stage sounding like Beyonce, Justin Timberlake or beat boxing in the middle of a Dianna Ross song...this ish is steaming hot trash.

But what really opened my eyes to 1.) just how much of a pervasive phenomenon this show is, and 2.) just how much this threatens the integrity and artistic fiber of music; came during my couple months back in Buffalo, playing Scrabble with my aunts.

A true highlight of my week during my Buffalo stay was Sunday, when I ventured over my Aunt Kimmy and Uncle Tip's crib and sat down at the table with them and my other Aunt Kim to play some post-dinner Scrabble. I don't play spades or poker or any of that, I play Scrabble...and not all that good, mind you. I prolly played a total of 50 games during those 4 months and I won ZERO times...came in second maybe 20-30 times, but never won...this, actually, is irrelevant. Back to American Idol...I used to make these playlists on my iPod (a little old skool, some new stuff, some classics, some obscure joints, that kinda steez) and we'd groove while trying get that Triple Word Score with the "Z".

The weird thing would be when a Stevie Wonder or Anita Baker or Whitney Houston or Dionne Warrick or Curtis Mayfield song would come on and one of my aunts would say something like, "Ooh, remember when Stacy did this on American Idol? What was that, 2 years ago?" And they'd smile and nod their head. One time, a Stevie track came on and my Aunt Kim said to my other Aunt Kim, "Heyyy. Remember, Kim? This is Niko's song." Now mind you, my Aunt Kim is prolly one of the baddest listening broads on the planet earth. She grew up in the same house as my Pops, so Aunt Kim can sang you every Delfonics tune and hum every tune off Miles' Sketches of Spain. This is no lightweight we're talkin about here. But this American Idol trash has become such virus that it's infecting the way we identify straight-up-n-down bonafide classic songs. Its gotten to the point where legitimate music enthusiasts can begin to correlate a classic song to the snaggle-toothed amateur American idol contestant before the legendary artist that sang the song.

My Uncle Warren had had enough at the point. He looked at me incredulously like "Do you see whats going on here?" then looked down at his tiles, let out an exasperated chuckle and muttered to noone in particular "That's STEVIE's song, not that American Idol boy's."

The song was "All I Do" off Hotter Than July, one of those joints with a classic Stevie piano melody, one where he gives us those classic Stevie moments where he strains his voice so hard you think his larynx will burst. Yet, my Aunt Kims really like this Niko guy (I remember seeing him on a tape my cousins showed me. He was a squarish R&B dude, one that girls and women would develop an affection for. The only reason I remember him is because he's the great baseball player Ozzie Smith's son.). Because my aunts liked him so much, they remember all his performances and because he didnt win and hasnt shown up anywhere else, they probably miss him, so when "All I Do" comes on, they think about him before the friggin genius blind man that penned the song, sung the song and played practically all the instruments on the song. Think about that for a second. American Idol must be stopped.

And I'm not worried about my Aunts. Theyre cool...unless slews of nerdy black guys with good voices start to overwhelm the contestant lineup, my Aunts will be fine. But what about the younger generation? Really, what just about everyone born from 1984 and and back, specifically the ones that dont come from families that are big into music? But really, what about them all? These are children that don't know who Pearl Jam is, but they know some cheeseball with dirty hair sang "Jeremy" on American Idol...so it's not Pearl Jam's song, it's the dirty-haired cheesball's song. Or, "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You" won't be Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's tune, it'll be "Oh, this that hipless skank and slack-jawed gay dude's duet in '06".

I'm tellin you, the possibility and, frighteningly, likelihood that classic works of art by incredible artists and musicians are being hijacked by a lowest common denominator, ameteur talent show is the most threatening attack on music of the new millenium. Not illegal downloading, or snap music or Joss Stone or Hot 97 -- it's American Idol. So either people start keeping this show in perspective or I'm gonna start mobilizing the troops to get this thing kicked off the air (fat chance, but i gotsto family).

Racial Profiling Is The Pits, Pt. II

2007-03-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

Last week, me and my niggas Trav and HotTub (yes his name is HotTub) embarked on a road trip to Durham for some ThisIsRealMusic.com business. We rented a van, departed Philadelphia, hooked up the iPod, kopped the snacks and put the Chrysler on cruise. These things are simple and normal and the exact opposite of extraordinary. That is unless you are three black men driving a van down the 95 and 85.

We were stopped TWICE on the way to Durham. Once in southern Virginia and then again a few miles past the Va-NC border. These were classic cases of racial profiling, aka driving while black aka a nigger's America.

Let me tell you a little bit about gay people. They annoy me. Not because they are men that do other men missionary style or women couples where one looks like Naomi Watts and the other looks like Gary Busey. No, they annoy me because they negligently compare their plight to that of the negro american. There is just absolutely no comparison. Three gay men won't be pulled over without cause because a cop wouldnt know they were gay, lest they were wearing pink, lime green and periwinkle sweaters tied around their necks, singing Liza Minelli at the top of their feminine lungs with the windows down. Even still, they'd be allowed to go about the merry way. But the fuzz can't spot a blackie from a mile away and the mere sight of brown skin seems to be reason enough to put on the blinkers and protect and serve.

Somewhere below Richmond, we were in our groove. We were making good time, talking business and, of course, rappin about music. That's when Trav frantically turns down the music, asks "what's that sound?", looks in the rear view and sees some unmarked car flagging us down with blinking lights and a siren. The cop walks up on the driver side, asks for licence and registration, but gives us no idea why we've been stopped. At this time, HotTub is just waking up (he slept for the whole trip except during the times when we stopped for gas or were stopped to be racially profiled), Trav meanwhile, is on pins and needles. He's the kinda black dude that is completely aware of the police/blackman dynamic and, instead of reacting with defiance, indignation or exasperation...reacts with frayed nerves and calculated submission. My first question to the kop would have been "may I ask why I've been stopped." Trav never asked the question in the midst of a 5-8 question interrogation. Trav also generally thinks of me as a loose cannon and confrontation-escalator, so I was trying to just be still and quiet, so as not to heighten his concern over where this encounter was going. But then, after no explanation, this pig cop asks Trav to step out of the car. At that point it was like "screw this cooperation madness", so I asked this idiot cop why were pulled over. His response: "Ohhhhh, some speeding, changing lanes without signals and a bunch of other stuff." Huh?!?!?!!!!! "Some speeding"???? what is that exactly? Did u clock us going 70 in a 55 or was it just "some speeding."

Anyways, Trav steps out the whip and follows the cop back to his car, where the cop has Trav actually sit inside the effin car!!!!! When has this ever been protocol? They sit there for a good 10 minutes, while the cops rabid, drug sniffing German Sheppard barks in Trav's ear. After he checks licenses, comes back to the car and asks me about the trip (to make sure our stories check) he lets us go without issuing a ticket, issuing a warning, nada. Know why? Because we werent speeding, driving reckless or doing anything other than very normal things that people do when they drive.

Let me tell you a little bit about black men. Some of these niggas make it hard out here for a Vince. If you don't know, a fairly common practice for kats in the drug game is to travel up and down the 95 and 85, in rental cars, with drug packages. Thats how the drugs make it from the docks to the blighted urban centers up and down the east coast. So, I guess, a cop sees some young black men in the driver and passenger seats and figures "what are these two monkeys doing in a van, with Pennsylvania plates? they obviously arent taking their family to Disney World." So they pull us over ("us" meaning young black men in general) to check out what we have in the whips. Similar to when I got pulled over on S.R. 50 in Florida, a state road that runs East-West from Hernando County (a suburban Tampa county where I used to live) to Orlando. Apparently, drugs make their way West, from Orlando to Marion, Sumter counties on SR 50...so when I was returning from hanging with some friends in Orlando one night, I got pulled over, had my car sniffed by a dog, patted down and told to stand with both of my hands behind my head. This all speaks to the dilemma that racial profiling poses...there is a moral responsibility to respect the individual ur profiling. Imputing me with criminal activity based on the color of my skin is downright disrespectful and demeaning. Then again, there is the responsibility to monitor criminal activity and certain criminal activities are perpetrated by a certain profile. I can't totally dismiss this. If me and my nigs happened to be transporting the drugs, then cop who stopped us would be prescient as opposed to a profiling bigot.

Let me tell you a little bit about white cops. Excuse my language, but the tend to be some fairly pronounced d-heads. About an hour after we were first pulled over -- this time I'm driving -- this cop starts tailing me, then pulls beside me and drives right there (a good 10 miles below speed limit) for half a mile. Finally I just pull over without him even putting on his signals. At this point I'm fuming, Trav is petrified and HotTub is snoring. I'm enraged because I don't speed. I don't speed because I used to speed when I was a young buck and it resulted in a suspended license. So these days, specifically on road trips, I set the cruise control at about 5 mph over the speed limit and just chill. I know for a fact that cops won't bother vehicles as long as they stay with 8 miles of the speed limit, since you dont get two points on ur license unless ur are 9mph over the limit and above.

So this a-hole kop pulls up on the passengers side. Asks for license and registration. He's about 50, looks, talks and acts like a southern football coach, which basically means he looks like Nick Nolte, talks like Dubya and acts like an alpha-male schmuck with one testicle and penis envy. Once again, we arent told why we were stopped. But after a string of questions and the most detailed inspection of our licenses and rental agreement, he asks The Tub, "Hey, buddy, you had that seat belt on the whole time?" Tub being a grown man in the back of a van. After Tub says he's been wearing the seatbelt the whole time, Nolte asks Trav to step out of the van and follow him to the squad car, where he once again gets interrogated while the licenses are run and a German Sheppard foams at the mouth behind his ear. And once again, Trav is let go without a warning or ticket and barely an explanation for why we were stopped other than "It looked like your partner didnt have his seat belt on." WTF?!?!?!!!

Let me tell you a little bit about HotTub. He's the kinda guy that appears to be high all day. I don't know if it's the oblivious smile or the things he says, but whatever it is, it's the pinnacle of comedy. As we got back on the road, the playlist was in the middle of "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", a Beatles track. HotTub decides to turn that melody into a country song, whose chorus merely refrains, "Gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, hang him from a tree." Tub's hijinks totally trivialized the weight of what we were going through, but it was hilarious way to articulate what we were all basically thinkin: Aint nuttin changed.

Let me tell you a little bit about Barak Obama and Jemele Hill. Them two niggas is successful, but don't get it twisted. I love how everyone looks at this Obama phenomenon as an indication that we have reached this beautiful space in American race relations. Please cut the charade. As great as it is that people can see past Obama's skin and recognize some incredible talent and commendable drive and encouraging ambitions and visions -- that doesnt mean that this represents even a small slice of the way America operates and handles its ongoing relationship with minorities. The same way I can view Hillary Clinton as very capable women, but generally consider most women to be ditzy broads that welcome deviant forms of domination. Because straight up, Obama and Tiger could be driving that same van and they'd have gotten pulled over, too. feel me?

I mean, my friend Jemele is most definitely an American success story. This is a black woman, barely 30, raised in a single parent home in Detroit of all places. Now she's on ESPN, wearin make-up givin it to Skip Bayless...she's a star in an industry dominated by ridiculous white men with agendas. As I've said before, just thinking about her success makes me smile. She's also one of the people that an ignoramus would point to and say, "See, America is fine. It aint like it was before Rosa Park's feet hurt." And this is partly true. There are more opportunities afforded and it might be easier to achieve these days, but there are core injustices that remain a huge part of the black existence. Me, Trav and The Tub are all law abiding, college educated, upstanding black men. We were on our way to NC Central University (a historically black college) to document a hip hop class and talk to kids and generally do stuff that the average buffoon doesn;t associate with black men, since we're typical viewed as criminal-minded rubes with big penises, potent sperm and no sense of responsibility. Yet, we were subjected to the worse kind of infringement AND the pre-existing dynamic our ethnic gender has with police forced us to kowtow and behave like kids. It's the most emasculating experience you can imagine, one that had Trav (the dude forced to sit in these cop cars) holding back tears.

That's what it's like for us, many times. You fight your whole life on a mission to achieve and, in many ways, put your fellow black men on your back so to speak and show the skeptics how we get down. And then they hit you with one of my favorite American sentiments: Not so fast, nigger.

...

2007-03-18T23:57:00.000-04:00

blogs coming soon....

What Would A Whitey Do

2007-03-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

Just so you know, black people don't live in the Bronx. That's straight up. There are the Jews in Riverdale, the Italians in the northern most section, headed into Yonkers...and then the rest of the Bronx is all hispanic.

Seriously, though, Lyd and I are the only black people that live in the whole borough. I'm not joking. Well, besides one other dude. True story, I was walking down Fordham Rd. the other day (Fordham is to the Bronx what Jamaica Ave is to Queens and, say, Fulton or Flatbush is to BK) and the other black dude living in the Bronx spotted me across the street. He shouted out: "Say, brotha, whatchu doin up here?!" Then he threw up a fist, flashed a smile, walked across the busy street, gave me a hug and offered to buy me a duece-duece of malt liquor.

I just want to reiterate that there are no black people living in the Bronx.

With the borough being OVERWHELMINGLY hispanic, I've found myself behaving like a caucasion (one "whitey" per blog, thats my allotment). This means that I travel to perform routine functions that are available much closer to my abode.

Almost all of the errand type functions I take 10-15 miles north into Westchester County, an overwhelmingly white suburban county of NYC. When I go grocery shopping, I forgo the two supermarkets in walking distance and drive 15 minutes to the joint in Yonkers. I go to a gym in Westchester County because I don't want to have to deal with front desk girls that can't really undertstand me and I'd like for there to be at least three bottles of disinfectant in the whole gym. If I wanna catch a flick, I'll either head to Manhattan or travel north to Bronxville or Palisades.

What it illustrates is an inherit distrust of everything that has to do with quality when it comes to my hispanic neighbors, similar, I guess, to how my parents used to bypass two supermarkets on the East Side of Buffalo to hit the Tops in North Buffalo. Yeah, its a class thing, but I cant help but notice the snobbery every time I get in the car and drive away from the colored people.

It's funny, because when it comes to Blockbuster, I try to find the most hood store I can, my thinking being that, the more hood, the worse patron-tastes...

Women and Red Carpet

2007-03-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

...or I guess that should really say Women and Red Carpet AND Award Shows.
(random aside: the house I rented in Florida had red carpet. and one of the bathrooms was purple...just sayin...)

I'm sure this is no revelation to anyone, but women take red carpets ultra-seriously. Watch the pre-show for the Grammys or Oscars or VMAs with a feme and it's really alarming how worked up they get over who is wearing what and how their hair looks. It must be what the opp-sex thinks about the way us kats scream at the tele during sporting events, huh?

I guess I fall somewhere in the middle. I have dudes that are zombies during a good game and others that are maniacal. My new move for the past couple years has been to just clap my hands extremely loud...catch me during a close Laker or Wizard game and I might get a little extra hype, but nothing ridiculous.

My sister, Lyd, is ridiculous with the Red Carpet commentary and reactions. She literally had something to say about every star that passed the television screen. I'm not talking about simple, "Oh, she looks beautiful." or some customary catty quips like, "Oh no she didn't come with that much cleavage." Sis was breakin ish down like she the equivalent of a Red Carpet John Madden or something. Not only that, but her reactions were incredibly emotional...when Jenniffer Hudson stepped up to kick it with Seacrest -- who, I've come to find out, is flamingly gay -- Lyd actually through her arms up in the air and groaned in lamentation. Hudson's silver Star-Trek shoulder-thing depressed Lyd for a good five minutes. Other times she was excoriating stylist for the way they did their stars hair, "How she gonna pay you money to make her look good and you let her walk down the red carpet with her hair lookin' a mess? You know good well she should have worn her hair UP with that dress!"

I sat there beside her for an hour consistently dumbfounded. Aside from the gay fashion reporters (always entertaining in a deviant way), the Red Carpert (for a kat) is only good to see some beautiful women looking their best. Beyonce was hot, Jessica Biel was hot, Kate Winslet was hot, Penelope Cruz was hot and Helen effin Mirren was hot (I got such a crush on ol' girl...her, Phylicia Rashaad and Meryl Streep...these things cant be explained, they just are what they are...), Jada Pinkett is looking more masculine each day...on the carpet she looked like Juelz Santana in a dress, Will is going gray...these are the very superficial things I notice and pay any mind...Lyd was so keen during the pre-show I was more entertained watching her reaction, it was over the top.

It prolly has to do with that whole Vicarious Life deal. Men do that with athletes, since most of us can't march a squad down the field in 2 minutes like Tom Brady or reel off 12 straight clutch-points in the fourth quarter like Kobe or hit the walk-off homer like Big Pap. Broads will never look as glamorous as Beyonce or Cameron Diaz. And the same way us kats play virtual GM and armchair quarterback, commending and deriding personnel decisions and actual athletic proceedings and coaching strategies as if we're more qualified than the professionals...the same way we do that, women seem to think they know what would look best on Kerry Washington and how Hillary Swank should wear her hair so she looks less like Kevin Bacon. To hear Lyd last Sunday was to hear a woman that must have never made a wrong fashion decision in her life (although if I was honest I would have to say Lyd stays fly with her gear, but still...).

Midway through the Red Carpet, when it was first hitting me that Lyd was taking this thing ultra-serious like it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals or the bar exam, I made some stupid comment...something like, "I can't believe you're getting this worked up." That's when she revealed that, in most cases she doesn't even watch the actual awards show, she just watched the red carpet and then switches the channel. "I don't really care who wins what, I just wanna see what they're wearing." awes.

my bad

2007-02-26T16:44:00.000-05:00

Forgive the derelict'ness' of my blogging last week...i had deadlines...but i'm back on the block...musings to appear soon...

On my Nyquil

2007-02-16T14:38:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music tonight, catchin my main nig Mos Def with the baddest young piano player on the planet, Robert Glasper. But I been sick all week, so I held off koppin tickets and then, of course, the joint was sold out.

I was also supposed to be pounding the pavement for most of the week. But its fairly cold and snowy (nuttin like upstate and WNY), so I've been holed up in the apt, writing and watching CNN.

This being sick ish is for the sparrows, man. So annoyed, dont even feel like writing about...so i'll just repost a blog classic. enjoy this lil blast fron the past:

http://twistinado.blogspot.com/2005/03/tussin-dex-and-listerine-fathers.html

Aguilerra?!

2007-02-12T17:39:00.000-05:00

-- I went to a J Dilla tribute concert in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Good crowd. The spot where it was held, the Galapago Art Space, wasnt a bad venue. Pharoah Monch got on stage and performed a bunch of Dilla classics. Solid time.

The fact, tho, that Monch was the dude on stage paying homage to Dilla's legacy is an important thing to me. If you're gonna get an artist to lionize a dead-legend through inter[retations of their music, then the living artist should make sense. Monch made sense. He was on Dilla's posthumous The Shining, he's an underground legend and from (basically) the same school ya know?

But yesterday, we had Christina effin Aguilera singing "It's A Man's World" at the Grammy's. You all know how dearly I hold the Godfather of Soul. Along with Miles, he was THE artist of my childhood. And you also know how much i tend to despise Aguilera. I don't discredit her as a talent. She's a monster. glorious voice. a lil sass. and she's even pretty. i get all that. but she's a culture pirate and i hate that. When I think about it, this is exactly the type of stunt she and the Grammy's would pull...selecting that broad to showcase and perform a rendition of a James-great on the biggest televised music event of the year.

That would have been like Eminem being the host of the Dilla Tribute....nah, better yet, like Fergie doin the Dilla tribute.

I was literally INCENSE seeing Aguilerra trying to do James. I had a chemical reaction. That was, in effect, James' Grammy euology and they got some bimbo to do the honors. Here's a list of notable artist that would have not only been a better ideological choice, but more capable of capturing that soul..

Bilal, R Kelly, Bobby Brown (dont sleep, Bobby woulda killed it), Usher, Jill Scott, Mary J, Cee-lo, Beyonce, Cruchy Black fron Three 6 Maf...anyone.

I cant stand R Kelly, but he would have murdered that number.

Getting Christina to do that joint was like the NFL Hall of Fame selecting Billy Jean King to do the induction speech for a deceased great. King was a great athlete, but not the right person the gig.

Later in the show, during the montage dedicated to the recently deceased, they sorta made up for it with the "Night Train" intro, followed by Chris Brown doin hus thing and then Danny Ray coming out to put the cape over the mic stand as the lights dimmed. That ish got me emotional.

Trimspa, bish

2007-02-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

-- I been sitting here working on my laptop with CNN playing in the background for the past six to seven hours and there has been, maybe, 15 cumulative minutes of news coverage that didn't deal with the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

This is perplexing me. I just can't see how this woman's death can hijack a cable news channel for almost two full days now. Surely, more important news items are breaking, developing, effecting as we speak. Thats not self-righteous, corn-cynical babble...that is effing real talk. If a movie star, musician, etc dies...I'm cool with coverage and retrospects and ish. But this broad?

But then I thought about it: If Paris Hilton died, I'd probably spend, at least 20 to 30 minutes checking out coverage and being generally interested in what happened. Which crystallized things for me. Apparently, Anna Nicole started this whole famous for being famous jump-off..and for someone in their mid-30s to late 40s, this is somewhat newsworthy.

I just find it to be puzzling. somehow we let these people grab our attention. Lets talk chicken and egg...if the media never began the obsession with Anna Nicole (a busty, red-lipped, ditz-brained gold-digger) or Paris (a skeletal, hot-crotched, closet-bigot) then they wouldnt be famous and require any news coverage when they overdose on some type of drug.

My nigga Wolf Blitzer is on right now and, interspersed between a shot-down US helicopter in Iraq and some Obama news, The Cafferty File has finally asked the question: "What the eff are we making this junk worthwhile for?" But not so fast, as soon as Blitz and Caff wrap up, Blitz lets us know their will be more coverage on his show: "Autopsy Results" and "Battle Over Bucks" being the two topics...On the friggin Situation Room?

I'm bout to turn it to the Food Channel...which is where it shouldve been to begin with. my girl Paula is on.

ThisIsRealMusic.com -- Feb

2007-02-05T11:31:00.000-05:00

Check the new issue of T.I.R.M. Good stuff for music dudes and music chicks.

the NEW Humboldt Inn: I ain't no sellout

2007-02-02T04:21:00.000-05:00

I usually go right to bed after these experiences which probably represents a shift in my life. In Florida, whenever something ridiculous happened, the first thing I did would be to come and type into this box so everyone could read. That stopped being necessary in Buff and NYC, since I could just tell my lil bro and sis or my lil cuzzes or Vino or whomever.

But yesterday was a bit of watershed moment for me in my short period of Buff-entertainment.

My nigga Jathan is basically my only single friend left in Buff. Everyone else has either moved or gotten married or never lived in Buff to begin with. So, he's been the only kat I've hung with on the reg, since I've been back. We thought it be fitting to go kop some elixirs before skate outta town. The night began at Bullfeathers, usually a pretty lowkey spot with a serviceable jukebox...except, this night it was packed with nearby college students who had the juke on lock, playing a nauseating mix of Akon, Metallica and LL Cool J. The Roots made a brief appearance in someone's playlist. Things were looking up, then "Smack That" followed and I furrowed my brow, swigged my cognac and began a lamentation.

As more drunk girls with vodka breath kept bumping into me like I wasnt there and more jukebox-travesties kept slicing through my ears, we decided to jetski on outta JPs. Where to? We didnt know. Then I remember that my girl Tara bartended at the Humbold Inn. For those not familiar with Buffalo, you should know that the Humboldt Inn, for 90% of my life, was like a senior citizen hangout. This is where a 50-year-old mack-daddy (the slick nigga who goes heavy on the cologne, wears his shirt unbuttoned down to the tip of his belly, maybe a few gold teeth, possibly a top hat, maybe a cane, definitely an liquor habit) can spit sinserious game at some old gals (nasty, horny older women that knew how to do all the latest dances, primarily the tootsie-roll and Da Butt). When you would be driving down E Delavan at night and cars were parked on both sides of the expressway-overpass, then you knew that the socio-cultural phenomenon that is the Humboldt Inn was poppin and all of Buffalo's finest old swingers had descended on this lil bar to comprise a real life middle-age meat market, where two 50-year-olds might be grinding to Earth Wind & Fire, while Cisco James is kickin it to Etta Scott, tryin to get him some poon-tang.

But dig...somewhere along the way, they switched the steez up. So much has changed in Buff since I left in 2000. There are many more options for the average young person -- from your standard bar on Chippewa to the hipper spots along Elmwood or around Allen. But its still a desolate wasteland for "those" kinda blacks. When I say "those", I mean niggas that can't move in and out of different lanes. "These" kinda blacks only wanna be around other blacks in environments that are...ghetto (ouch! can't stand that word, sometimes). You put one of these niggas in a regular pub, a college bar or a lounge and his brown eyes might start bulging out of his head. Thats just how it goes. I guess there isnt anything wrong with that...but then again, I wish it weren't that way. There's something really fulfilling about stepping out and hittin a spot that has a truly "mixed" crowd...not mixed as in, a bunch of mulattos are walkin around...mixed as in people from diff races and maybe even socio-economic stratas are together havin a good time. (But there's also something exhilarating about steppin into a spot where the majority of the folks there are similar to you..ie..like the same music, same educational level, similar outlook on life, etc).

Back to the NEW Humboldt Inn....

Last year, my sister called me. She had arrived in town a couple days before I did and she was heading out with one of her old friends. I asked where they were going and she said "Toomy's taking me to the Humboldt Inn." I laughed so hard I almost got throat cancer. I'm thinking, "I know we're mature adults now...but what are you young ladies gonna do, surrounded by old men that look like John Witherspoon and smell like english leather cologne?" That's when Lyd hit me with the Buffalo-scene revelation. She was like, "Nah...Toomy said its for us now. We'll see." Lyd's review of the night was easy to predict: "Duuuude, that spot was so ghetto! Classic Buffalo-black!" Weeks later, I got up with my girl Nish while she was visiting Sarasota. She spoke of going back home and hitting the NEW Humboldt Inn. She seemed amused by it all. She even described the hierarchy and how the spot was socially-sectioned: "OK, all the so-called ballers were in this one section, the drug-dealers' girlfriends were over in this part." I was fascinated. So when I visited my girl Tara's crib for a gathering she threw and she told me she bartended there on Thursdays...I was like, "I gotta check this out before I leave Buffalo."

Well, that day arrived yesterday. The first thing I asked the doorman was the most important question of the night: "Is Tara working tonight?" That's what this whole thing was about. Needless to say, I didnt wanna be in this spot if my girl wasnt bartending. The doorman replied: "You mean the light-skinned girl?" I'm thinking to myself: "Well, Tara is light-skinned." So Jathan and I get frisked (the first sign that you're in one of "those" spots) and head in. I'm looking for Tara...no dice. Infuriated, I go up to the bar and ask one of the servers, "Is Tara working tonight?" Turns out she had left at 10pm. At this point I'm ready to jet. No need for me to stay. Then the server hits us with this "But since yall here, yall might as well buy a drink and chill." Huh? Jathan surveys the scene and says, "I kinda wanna soak this in while I have the chance." So I say, "If yall pour a good drink we'll stay for one. Do you pour good drinks?" She comes back with about a half-shot of cognac, tastefully presented in those little plastic cups you get at the dollar store. But the damage was done, from that point forward Jathan and I sat back and observed the goings-on.

I consistently try to do the whole "looking-glass self" thing and make sure I'm not turning into the OTHER kind of "those" niggas. The siddity nigga. The nigga that cant pump with his people. Living in DC, you can insulate yourself in the black-bourgosie culture and it can eff u up. But even still, certain scenes can make u say some crazy things. Jathan hit me with a classic lug about 10 minutes into our stay, after a d-boy walked by with a big-tummy chick in a jean onesie on his arm...J said, "I hate going to spots where I look around and realize that I'm just a better person than everyone in here." I cracked up when he said it, because it was so haughty, but might have been true. My superiority-complex was raging uncontrollably for a good 15 minutes. It was also unsettling for girls in there 20s to walk by, smile at me and be missing a tooth. Times like those make you come to a full realization that we need some universal health care up in this bish.

The music was atrocious. When "Wifey" by Next is playing and the night's emcee is woofing on the mic, you're not in the proper establishment. I also got the feeling that if I walked up to ANY of the women in the spot and asked them to marry me that 1.) they'd accept with only minimal cajoling..and 2.) I'd be saving their lives. I mean, I really wanted to be on some Captain Save-a-Ho for real. I also got the feeling that if there were 100 women in that spot, they had probably popped out a combined 300 kids and i didnt see a single wedding ring. Some of the men probably had babies by multiple women that were in the spot. It was just such a classic scene.

After we finished our half-shot of yak, we skated out the door and headed to Staples on Allen, a spot my girl put me onto last weekend. We each kopped a specialty brew and the bartender hooked us with a free shot of Wild Turkey. That was so much more my scene than the NEW Humboldt Inn.

I dont know yall...I watch Flav of Love and I Love New York (even though Chuck D has implicitly told me that these shows are sinister tools)...I'm runnin from my people at the NEW Humboldt Inn...if I don't watch it, I might become a sellout. I'm bout hop in my whip, though, and head to the DMV...best believe By All Means Necessary will be playin on the pod.