How Rap Music Boggled My Mind

My 101st Blog

2008-04-18T10:00:00.002-04:00

According to my blogger.com dashboard, this is my 101st blog. I thought I would commemorate this occasion by listing some of my favorite places to eat in New York City.

It's no secret that I am not a picky eater. I like food in many shapes and varieties. However, it's a misnomer that I am some kind of "foodie"; I'm much more comfortable eating stuff served in its own wrapper than I am choosing the correct fork with which to spear a cylinder of raw fish atop a bed of mesclun salad. Here is a list of some of my favorite spots for fast eats while strolling around New York in between lunch and dinner.

Rickshaw Dumplings
Honestly, I'm more impressed with the genius of this place than I am with the food, though it is quite tasty. You order from a selection of six different dumplings, including a delicious duck variety, choose fried or steamed, and then you can decide to have it alone with a dipping sauce, or in a specially-crafted soup or salad that is tailor-made for your dumpling. The kitchen is just cranking these morsels out constantly, and as you stand and watch them through a pane of steamed glass, you realize how easy it is to make a dumpling. They've got to be the most foolproof food, all wrapped in their doughy purses and plopped in a sauna. At ten bucks a pop, why aren't I making this at home? Oh yeah, it's because I'm a lazy fuck. Thanks, Rickshaw!

Caracas Arepa Bar
A couple of hole-in-the-wall spots near the corner of 7th Street and 1st Avenue, Caracas is split into two entities: an arepa "bar," a tiny place with three or four tables and a counter, and a cramped restaurant with seating for about thirty customers. Larger folk like myself would probably find it more comfortable to order from the bar establishment and wolf the food down outdoors. For those not in the know, an arepa is a flat corn cake with a split in the middle, like if a piece of corn bread married a pita. That middle is then stuffed with something very delicious, from steak to whitefish to plantains, and everything in between. This is the kind of place you want to go with someone else, so you can split your order and get a taste of everything. The empanadas are nothing special, so stick with the arepas. And don't sleep on the home made beverages: my favorite is the Chicha, which is like drinking a rice pudding.

Benfaremo, the Lemon Ice King of Corona
Okay, so if you're not going to be at the U.S. Open or the somewhere in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, you're probably not going to want to make this trek. But if you do, I promise it will be worth it. These guys have been making the best shaved iceys for over sixty years, and the proof is in the ingredients: real fruit. If you get a cantaloupe flavor, you will find chunks of cantaloupe in your icey. Same goes for every other flavor, except possibly for weird ones like popcorn and peanut butter, which I have never tried. Who wants an icey that tastes like popcorn? All of the fruit flavors, however, I can attest to. The place is nestled right on the southern end of the infamous Spaghetti Park, an Italian stronghold in this overwhelmingly Latin neighborhood. You can't miss it, just look for the gated traffic triangle with Italian flag bunting draped around it and a half a dozen old guys playing Bocce inside. White folks are welcome to stand and watch, but don't even ask if you can play winners.

Sammy's Halal Cart
And while you're already hanging out in Queens, swing by Sammy's Halal on the corner of 73rd Street and Broadway in Jackson Heights. Halal carts have become more and more prevalent on the streets of New York, eclipsing hot dog vendors in number last year, but Sammy's is the best. How do I know? Well, he was a 2006 Vendy Award finalist! Seriously, that's just reaching. A "Vendy"? Give me a fucking break. Next they'll be giving out "Beggies" to the best panhandlers and "Robbies" to the best con men at Penn Station. The chicken and rice platter at any Halal cart is key to determining its worth, and Sammy's has the best around. He throws carrots, peppers, and onions in there, and doesn't chop the meat until it looks like it was blasted with a twelve-gauge shotgun. The white sauce seems to be a discernible mix of tzaziki and yogurt, which is better than most sour cream with who-knows-what concoctions you get on the street. Very delicious, and this cart is right outside of the 74th Street/Broadway subway station in Queens, which is pretty much convenient to anyone that wants to make the journey.

Remembering Dungeons & Dragons

2008-03-06T17:00:00.001-05:00

Gary Gygax, creator of the popular role-playing dice game Dungeons & Dragons, died this past Tuesday. I never played D&D as a kid, it seemed too complicated and I didn’t care for the whole swords and sorcery bit. Still, it affected my life because so many of my peers were playing the game, and because it was constantly being discussed in the media. This was during that twilight time, after pinball machines, but before arcade video games would become the new scourge of America’s youth. In honor of the man that made goofing off in your parents’ basement a serious pastime, I thought I’d reminisce about Dungeons & Dragons and its younger, but apparently more wise sibling, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

My brother was a big Dungeons & Dragons fanatic for a little while. It really fit in with his whole metalhead aesthetic. I was strictly forbidden to attend or even watch his D&D games, which suited me fine because it seemed incredibly boring to me. I was fascinated, though, by the Monsters Manual, a hardbound book of all the available monsters one might encounter in the D&D world. I marveled at the terribly-drawn pictures of monsters like Black Pudding and Hippocampus. I wondered what I might do if I encountered an “Eye, Floating,” as was described on the pages within the manual. I mean Eye, Rolling I could deal with. But Eye, Floating? I guess I’d have to hide in a garbage can or something.

Much more than the game or its monsters, I was entranced by news reports about how obsessed kids got over this game. I would read any article, watch any special news report, or hear any anecdote about these poor fucks that lost charisma points and hung themselves in their parents’ closets. I don’t know why I found it all so amusing. I definitely didn’t think I was too cool for the game; on the contrary, I felt like somewhat of an outsider because all of my friends were playing it. Maybe I felt it was their just desserts for pursuing something so mind-warping, and not fawning over the things I enjoyed, namely Smurfs cartoons and die-cast Transformers toys. When the movie Mazes & Monsters came out, I was an instant fan. Why did I care so much about these wayward retards that couldn’t tell the difference between a board game and real life? Was it jealousy that I wasn’t playing along, or just my natural inclination to laugh at losers? I like to think it was for the latter reason.

So RIP Gary Gygax, a visionary who devised a game that made geeks around the world feel cool, if only for a moment. It goes without saying that, without Dungeons & Dragons, games like The Legend of Zelda, DOOM, and Final Fantasy might never have been created. Don’t get it twisted, though. If you like these video games, you’re twice the nerd that a D&D player is.

Refuse to Regret

2008-02-21T17:34:00.002-05:00

If you're like me, you get most of your life advice and personal affirmations from myspace. There's no end to the whimsical quotes and passages that you can have posted on your page to give it that unique touch. Yes, we know you like to drink--heavily--but what exactly do you like to drink? Only by posting an animated .gif depicting a sparkling bottle of Hennessey can we really know that.

There's one I've noticed that's been popping up more and more:

I guess as the First Internet Generation starts pulling into the train terminal known as age thirty, they're starting to review their lives with a more critical eye. "Perhaps I shouldn't have chosen my college classes based around the time of day they began," or "Maybe it wasn't such a smart idea to spend all of my dispensable income on weed and bootleg porno movies." I know there are plenty of people out there with tattoos they no longer identify with. Turns out the Insane Clown Posse seems a lot less insane once you turn twenty-three.

What's so unnerving about the .jpeg contention above--besides how desperate it sounds--is that it is actually terrible advice. We make mistakes in life, and we can reflect on them and regret those decisions. The trick is not to dwell on this regret and let it keep you from making future mistakes. Blithely asserting that you have (il)logically denounced regret doesn't absolve you from the emotion, and the way some of you thirty-something-or-others are carrying on, you could use a little hindsight. Imagine you could travel back in time and meet yourself at age sixteen. How would you react? What would you say? I'd probably tell myself to invest heavily in Microsoft and hop back in my Delorean.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

2008-01-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

Crusading Principal/Teacher Movies

The Good:
Lean On Me

The events depicted in the movie, based on the true story of Principal Joe Clark and his crusade to save Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, unfolded when I was still in elementary school. I attended with a largely white, middle-class bunch of Smurf-loving students, for whom drug abuse meant taking extra Flintstones chewable vitamins in the morning while mom had her back turned. Still, my principal at the time was inspired by the heavy-handed antics of Mr. Clark, and he began to overuse his megaphone to belt firm words of encouragement as children sat in the lunchroom, attentively, with their hands folded. I’m not sure if it was due to the stern efforts of my principal, but I can say that there were no shootings or stabbings at my grammar school during the entire time that I attended.

This movie is great, featuring a commanding performance by Morgan Freeman as Clark. The moment the titles begin, to the wailing strains of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, you are treated to a high school that resembles a prison more than it does an institution of learning: a girl gets her shirt ripped off in the girl’s bathroom and is fondled in the hallway, a well-dressed drug dealer with a briefcase full of his wares is let into the building through a fire exit, and a teacher has his head beaten against the floor until his eyes roll back into his head and it is splattered with blood. Freeman is called in to bring the school back to code, which he begins by immediately expelling several hundred offending students. The most memorable character, however, is Thomas Sams, a chubby student played by Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins. His best scene is when Freeman takes him up to the high school roof and instructs him to jump, since he’s already ruining his life by smoking crack. Hopkins blubbers, “You can’t kick me outta school, Mister Clark, I can’t tell my mom I got kick’d outta school.” Hip-hop fans will also remember him as the guy who hung out with Queens-based rappers The Lost Boyz, smoking lots of cheeba and probably eating them out of house and home.

The Bad:
The Principal

Sometimes a movie is made that joins two actors, each from difference acting disciplines, and the result is some amazing on-screen chemistry that entertains and delights audiences. This movie does not feature that kind of chemistry. This movie joins Jim Belushi and Louis Gossett, Jr. in a fictional story about their attempt to save a crime-ridden high school from drugs, gangs, and violence. Belushi plays Rick Latimer, a grade school teacher who is “promoted” to principal of the failing Brandel High by his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, who I guess is on the board of education or something. It’s payback to Belushi for kicking his ass in the first scene. Immediately, Belushi teams up with the school’s head of security, played by Lou Gossett, and they tangle with the biggest bad boy in the school, Vic, played by Michael Wright—that’s right, the guy from The Five Heartbeats. So what you’ve got here is a pudgy principal who comes off about as tough as Andy Milonakis, and a bad guy who was still fondly remembered as a reformed thief from the V television miniseries. Belushi sets the pace for this clunky piece of crap, seeming uncomfortable on his motorcycle, unrealistic during drawn-out fight scenes, and awkward when delivering the simplest dialogue. Gossett gives a passionless performance as well. The movie climaxes with a bizarre game of hide and seek between Belushi and Wright in the school shower, which for some reason is divided into various, rusty cubicles and looks more like the de-lousing station at Ellis Island than it does a high school locker room. My high school had very few violence problems, and there weren’t any working showers in the gym. Of course, my high school principal didn’t ride a motorcycle or give impassioned speeches to a disinterested student body, either. This is why New York City has such a low quality of education.

The Mediocre:
Stand and Deliver

This movie I haven’t seen in quite a while, but I did watch it about a dozen times on HBO around 1989. It’s about rebel math teacher Jaime Escalante, well played by Edward James Olmos, and his struggle to escalate the test scores of a bunch of wayward youths from the barrio. Like Lean On Me, this movie was based on a true story, but unlike Lean On Me, it is a story that probably didn’t need to be told on film. I get it, the children are our future and an education is the best defense against adult shiftlessness, but stories like this are a dime a dozen. I know it won all kinds of awards, and it’s a very good movie, but pales next to the others in its genre. Olmos never beats the shit out of anyone, there are no brutal rape scenes, and the students give relatively believable performances. What this movie needed was a climactic showdown between Olmos and a gang leader, fought on motorcycles while whipping chains at each other. Olmos’ comb-over would be flapping wildly in the wind as he screams epithets in Spanish and uses the power of calculus to determine his opponent’s next move. The film also could have used some more comic relief, maybe in the form of Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins. He does affect a Spanish accent just before a key scene in Lean On Me, when Morgan Freeman listens to he and his cohorts sing an updated, gospel version of the school song in the boy’s bathroom. Someone do the world a favor and upload his rap album, Chunk But Funky on Ichiban Records

The Bell Tolls at Midnight

2008-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

The still night was broken by the muttering of a silent oath by a Derringer .45. A body slumped to the floor with an agonizing groan. The doctor was dead, murdered by an intruder that absconded through the open window. Within moments, police arrived on the scene.

"What's all this here, then?" exclaimed Sergeant Jerome, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. He was winded and sweaty from hauling his massive frame up four flights of stairs. Four beat cops surveyed the crime scene and mined it for clues. A court reporter snapped photos for the morning edition. The body, a well-respected doctor of bloodology, lay grotesquely prostrate over a model of the human uterus. Sergeant Jerome let out a low whistle and said, "Mom is going to be absolutely distraught." The sergeant and the doctor were brothers. I forgot to mention that before.

Before long, world famous Detective Robinson arrived and took in the all too familiar scene before him. "I see a death like this every day," he muttered, "and it never gets any easier." He nervously flipped a playing card between his index and middle finger as he looked about the room. Right next to the corpse, he saw an overturned curio box, ornately carved and well varnished. Detective Robinson picked it up and examined it carefully. It was empty, but he was sure it was a clue.

Robinson pressed a small button on the bottom of the box, revealing a false bottom. Underneath a small panel of wood, the detective discovered a will and a silver ring with an emerald inlay. He removed the ring and examined it in the sunlight. It glinted off every facet, giving the gem an unearthly glow.

"I know who the killer is," announced Detective Robinson, "and it is someone in this room." By this time, there were a dozen people in the room, including the doctor's wife, his butler, a man from whom he purchased groceries every weekend. Each of them had reason to kill the doctor, a point which I neglected to reveal earlier. Also, his brother, Sergeant Jerome, walked with a distinct limp and always kept his right hand in his front pants pocket. The suspects looked at each other nervously, then one stepped forward, gun drawn. "You'll never catch me alive, copper!" he screamed, and leapt out the window and ran down the street. Detective Robinson was crestfallen. The man who fled was his son, who he thought had died in a fire ten years earlier but who had contacted him that very morning for the first time since the tragedy. A grandfather clock in the doctor's mansion began to strike the hour. "The bell tolls at midnight," sighed Detective Robinson, and he crushed the doctor's wife to his mouth for a breathy kiss. This was going to be one of those cases.

Year End Wrap-Up

2008-01-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

In the annals of history, 2007 will probably be remembered as the least-significant pre-Apocalypse year of this century. It wasn't a great year, it wasn't even a good year. It was a mediocre year, and considering how things have been in the world lately, a mediocre year is still above average. The folks at steady bloggin' decided to sit down and have a virtual pow wow about the important events of 2007, which turned out to be a handful of crummy albums and movies and some strange news items. Enjoy the poignant and strange ramblings of Alaska, Vanderslice, Kalel, Piff Tannen, Philaflava, and yours truly. Thanks to all of steady bloggin's steady readers, we hope to have a productive and entertaining 2008.

Jay-Z, American Gangster

ALASKA: More like Boring McBoringson

KALEL: My favorite album of his since Blueprint. But then again I'm a sucker for strings and guitars.

VANDERSLICE: Old Dog with Old Tricks.. wack beats, wack raps, Jigga man should've called upon Just Blaze.

REGGIE: I think it’s great that Hova was inspired by a movie to return to his glory years of rapping about drug dealing.

PIFF: I watched the story tellers. it was aiight, but i didnt check out the album cos the 9 hour movie took up all my time and interest.

PHILAFLAVA: Album came and went. Much better than Kingdom Come but after the leaks hit this album had very little replay. “Fallin,” Say Hello” and “Ignorant Shit” are all some of my favorite songs of ’07..

Radiohead's "Free or Outrageously Expensive" album release

KALEL: Great idea, but I don't like the ideas it spawned.

ALASKA: Freelicious

PIFF: It would be free for me either way. Donations is just another way to say "free."

VANDERSLICE: I've never listened to Radiohead, but I like the idea. I wonder how much money they made.

PHILAFLAVA: One of the best albums of the year. And a revolutionary change for music.

REGGIE: I understand that one must purchase this album to become an Omega-Level Scientologist.

Kanye West vs. 50 Cent

ALASKA: About as exciting as Rocky Balboa.

REGGIE: Kanye should have Just Blaze pass 50 Cent a note in homeroom. It’s obvious that they “like” like each other.

KALEL: My favorite artist of 2007. "Stronger" still knocks the shit out of "I Get Money"

VANDERSLICE: I wish it would have had a 2Pac & Biggie effect where they both died.

PHILAFLAVA: Who cares? Both their albums were extremely underwhelming, but I suppose Kanye won the battle, although I’m sure he could care less after losing the biggest asset in his life.

DJ Khaled: Really the beeeeessssst?

KALEL: Reminds me of the kid at the lunch table that wasn't really cool, he just lived next door to the cool kids so he was "cool by geographical association".

ALASKA: Isnt he an Arab? How has Homeland Security allowed this to happen.

VANDERSLICE: Not even second best, or third best.. or good period.

PHILAFLAVA: I can’t wait for his stomach to explode like Stay Puft and all of South Beach will be covered in marshmallows.

REGGIE: DJ Khaled is like an inexperienced chef that puts too many ingredients in his soup. Or, more literally, orders a soup from a restaurant that has too many ingredients in it. Then he adds motor oil.

PIFF: I don't know how many dicks this dude had to suck to get to where he is at, but he must have done a great job to be able to yell over ginormous posse cuts that sound like all the rappers do is watch old episodes of Miami Vice. I mean really good, cock and balls into the mouth at once.

Lil Wayne: Greatest Rapper Alive(?)

PIFF: No.

ALASKA: Had his moment, then of course that moment ended and the hilarity began.

KALEL: He stinks. If this was 1994 he'd be boo'ed out the game for biting someone elses style.

VANDERSLICE: I'd rather be deaf than listen to Lil Wayne.

REGGIE: I started to get into his music once I realized that he is severely mentally retarded.

PHILAFLAVA: He’s top 5 current, but he isn’t even close to be labeled the greatest anything. In fact, when he retires I’d be surprised if anyone had this dude on their top 25 list. He’s schtick is entertaining, kinda like Noreaga back in in the late 90’s, but just because you keep up with pop culture and constantly make reference to 80’s throwbacks despite being born in 1982, doesn’t make you the greatest anything except hype.

The UGK album everyone hyped up pre-release and subsequently stopped talking about the minute it dropped

VANDERSLICE: UGK.. one down.. one to go..

ALASKA: I met Bun B in Houston, he was hella cool.

REGGIE: RIP Pimp C.

KALEL: I'm a big fan of UGK, and I don't even think Houston was excited about the album until Pimp C died. Sad state.

PIFF: RIP Pimp C, I ain't heard it yet. I'm still listenin to "Ridin Dirty".

PHILAFLAVA: I blame this on the leaked material. It was a double album and more than half was leaked months (even a year for some) before it dropped. It is still one of the best LP’s of ’07, if not the best,.

Transformers: The Movie

ALASKA: I hate cars and robots.

PIFF: I knew which Transformer was the black one as soon as I saw him.

KALEL: Check on the rep, yep, second to none. Dope movie.

PHILAFLAVA: Didn’t see. But I adore Fox so I plan on it

VANDERSLICE: No soundwave, no Vanderslice. Fuck that new wave shit

REGGIE: I’m glad they distinguished the theatrical release as The Movie, as opposed to Transformers: The Overhyped Marketing Campaign or Transformers: The Toy Brand Desperately Clung To By Hapless Thirty-somethings.

The Simpsons Movie

ALASKA: I fell asleep three different times.

KALEL: Eighty minutes of pink frosted covered goodness. Could've been more, but good enough for me.

VANDERSLICE: Skipped it. The Simpsons haven't been dope in 10 years.

REGGIE: The first third was pretty funny, then it fell off. A microcosm for the entire series.

PIFF: I bought the DVD but still havent watched it. If the movie cant top the "Treehouse of Horrors" with the vomiting frog, I will be disappointed.

PHILAFLAVA: This was equivalent to Kanye’s Graduation album.

Live Free or Die Hard

PIFF: Die Hard is right, it took forever for people to die in this clusterfuck of a movie. Live Gay or Die Gay should be this movie's name.

ALASKA: Has that dude in it.

VANDERSLICE: Skipped it, Die Hard with a Vengeance was the absolute rooftop for the series.

REGGIE: Well of course Bruce Willis can live free, he gets Social Security and Medicare. I would live free too if I had a nurse to feed me prunes and wipe my bottom.

PHILAFLAVA: Didn’t see because I hate that Apple commercial dude.

300

PHILAFLAVA: Good, but overhyped by net nerds and virgins.

ALASKA: Only thing gayer than Will and Grace.

KALEL: Biggest dissapointment for me. Really looked forward to it, Heard great things about it. Then I saw it.... It was like watching a really cool music video, but that's about it.

PIFF: All historical/social gripes aside, this is a man's movie. I was almost moved to tears at the end. No homo.

VANDERSLICE: Stupid romans.. I never seen this, nor will I ever.

REGGIE: I thought the title was a description of the movie’s length in minutes, so I passed on it.

TMNT

ALASKA: Is that anything like YOTMB??

KALEL: Loved it!

VANDERSLICE: I didn't see this either.. Casey Jones was that dude.. was he in it?

REGGIE: I’m glad that someone finally went and did a more realistic movie about mutant turtles that do kung-fu under the guidance of a wizened rat.

Are We Done Yet?

PIFF: Ice Cube is still trying to release gangsta albums afer making these movies. Historical status aside in rap, nigga, are you done making garbage ass movies yet?

ALASKA: Sadly, Ice Cube fell off and now he is dragging Katt Williams and Tracy Morgan down with him.

VANDERSLICE: Ice Cube went from the wrong nigga to fuck wit' to the house nigga to hang out wit'. I don't know how he looks in the mirror, even with those huge bags of cash it's abominable.

REGGIE: I can’t wait to sit my child down and explain that the same person guest-starring on Sesame Street ain’t the one to get played like a pooh-butt.

PHILAFLAVA: I don’t have kids and I don’t care to see Ice Cube act, so no.

Spider-Man 3

PHILAFLAVA: Didn’t see this either. The teeth on Dunst bother me so much that I have avoided most of the Spider man movies.

VANDERSLICE: I didn't like this movie at all. The Sandman? In a real live action movie... Stupid idea, even sand packed and wet isn't doin’ shit.. just get a vacuum.. real stupid movie.

ALASKA: Watched it in Boise on IMAX. It sucked about as much as anything has ever sucked, it actually might have sucked more than everything that has ever sucked combined. Oh and Kirsten Dunst on a forty-foot HD screen is terrifying.

KALEL: I thought the dancing scene was hilarious personally, but it wasn't my favorite of the 3. Some of you nerds need to get a hold of yourselves and stop letting little shit ruin movies for you.

REGGIE: It was clever to pit the superhero against a spider’s natural enemy: sand.

PIFF: Movie was garbage. I could kick this Spider-Man's ass. He used to be my favorite super hero, and now he is a flaming homo doing the tango in a bar. Also, im glad to see Topher Grace playing venom the same way he played Eric Foreman. Judging from that, I could kick Venom's ass too.

Knocked Up

REGGIE: I thought this was a boxing movie.

ALASKA: Saw it mad times.

VANDERSLICE: I never saw it for one reason or another, I just remember hearing the lead role bitch in a movie called Knocked Up doesn't get naked.. so I passed for lack of realism.

PHILAFLAVA: I thought it was great when it first came out, then I went back to it and realize it wasn’t as great, but still really good.

Superbad

PHILAFLAVA: Great movie. This is like the American Pie of the new generation. I can see people going back to this a lot. A lot of memorable stuff.

ALASKA: Michael Cera is gold.

KALEL: Sooooooo glad the "McLovin" fad has died down. Wonderful movie though.

VANDERSLICE: The best movie to come out in 2007 EASILY.

REGGIE: Honestly, I wasn’t so impressed by this movie. I thought the McLovin stuff with the cops was great, but otherwise the story seemed awkward and unformed. The jokes were so transparent that you got them before the set-up was done, and then they drove them into the ground. It is a good movie, just not as funny as it was hyped to be.

PIFF: Great flick, not as funny as Knocked Up to me, but still solid as shit. I want to stick my face in Katherin Keigl's buttcheeks and fall asleep.

Iraq

ALASKA: We are about a quarter of the way through this war.

KALEL: Even with the war and protests against it, we still aren't seeing demonstrations akin to those seen in the 60's and 70's. Iraq has exposed more about the American people than the American government.

VANDERSLICE: The Iraqi people have been at war forever, democracy isn't going to stop it.

REGGIE: The first thing we need to do is stop them from using the letter Q inappropriately. Everything else will fall into place.

PIFF: Call of Duty 4

PHILAFLAVA: "It’s the bomb baby, the bomb baby…”

Looming war in Iran

ALASKA: Not as good as the original.

KALEL: Not looking forward to it. Can't all of these disputes be settled in the Olympics like the good ol' days?

VANDERSLICE: Rocky 7 fights in the Sudan.. cause If I can change.. WE can change.. EVERYBODY CAN CHANGEEEE

REGGIE: Come back Ayatolla Khomeni! All is forgiven!

PIFF: Call of Duty 5

Lisa Marie Nowak, the astronaut that drove to Florida wearing Pampers in an attempt to kidnap her lover

ALASKA: I mean who hasnt done this

PHILAFLAVA: I think Galvatron should turn this bitch out.

KALEL: Houston represent!

VANDERSLICE: Asians in Times Square did the same thing just to see the ball drop. I admire the dedication.

REGGIE: I like how the general reaction was like, “Oh, this lady drove across three states to kidnap her former lover and use sexual torture devices on him in her makeshift dungeon…but she wore DIAPERS? That bitch is CRAZY!”

PIFF: White people.

Nancy Pelosi (Democrat) becomes Speaker of the House

PHILAFLAVA: I have such a hard-on for this broad. She is truly a piece of ass.

ALASKA: I think her last name means 'ball' in Spanish

KALEL: Who?

VANDERSLICE: I wonder if she bakes cookies for congressional meetings.

REGGIE: I think she’s a great person to represent the ineffectualness of the Democratic party.

PIFF: Democrats and Republicans are the same. This is not news.

Bob Barker leaves The Price Is Right

KALEL: The most electrifying man in game show history. And he fucks mad bitches.

ALASKA: The Grey Trapezoid’s biggest victory to date.

PHILAFLAVA: Last time I saw Bob Barker on TV was when Adam Sandler beat him with a golf club.

PIFF: I mean, the nigga fought in the Civil War with Dick Clark, they both should get to retire and take a break.

VANDERSLICE: Drew Carey is addicted to hookers and gambling, what better place to be than The Price is Right?

Tony Blair resigns

ALASKA: Now he can dedicate more time to his witch project.

KALEL: ...and cleans his nose from GW's manhole.

REGGIE: I could never trust a man whose surname is a woman’s first name.

VANDERSLICE: Who gives a crap.. stupid British accent.. go suck on a fag and drop dead.

PHILAFLAVA: Sell-out.

PIFF: No more gay sex for Bush when he goes overseas.

The final Harry Potter novel

VANDERSLICE: Books are for queers.

PIFF: Call me when Harmoine turns eighteen.

KALEL: Everyone I've talked to loved it. I never got into them, but I hope they make a movie out of them one day.

REGGIE: I wanted to read this, then I remember that wizards and sorcery are for nerds and gay men.

ALASKA: Was great

PHILAFLAVA: I am not a homosexual, therefore I don’t read these homoerotic novels.

Barry Bonds

ALASKA: I think Congress should put all the issues of the day on the back burner and deal with this, because its important, like really important. Thank god for 24 hour sports news.

KALEL: He doesn't have a neck.

PIFF: I hate baseball and Barry Bonds is an asshole. I don't care what they do to him.

VANDERSLICE: I think they should let players use steroids and the people who don't use steroids should be allowed to use aluminum bats. Stupid Bonds is gonna end up like Lyle Alzado wearin bad headwraps and speaking in a soft HIV-like monotone voice.

PHILAFLAVA: Barry Bonds is practically O.J. without having killed anyone.

REGGIE: I think MLB should set up a separate facility for the Chemically-Enhanced Hall of Fame. Then Keith Hernandez could get in as the best player to use cocaine and Rogaine in a season.

Some kind of weird blog chain thing

2007-12-05T13:30:00.000-05:00

My blog hero, Danielle, roped me into this strange bloggers' game. Being that she is, to me, the alpha and omega of bloggers, and since it is not exactly a trial to do so, I will play along. However, since I don't read any blogs but hers and my blog bredrens', I'm going to make up my own rules and not tag any new bloggers at the end. Everything I could ever hope to know about Deebo (and life) I have learned from TwerpsWorld, and there are a lot of things I would probably rather not know about the Steady Bloggin' familia. What they've offered to say about themselves to this point has been...illuminating enough. Let's leave it at that.

Here's how it works:

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog. (Done.)

2. Share 7 facts about yourself. (I'm gonna.)

3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs. (Nope, and if you don't like it, I'm taking my ball and going home.)

4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. (Not applicable.)

Seven Facts About Me:

1) I hate guns. Whenever a police officer is near, I imagine horrifying scenarios where someone gets a hold of his/her gun and starts bucking wildly, or the officer goes on a shooting rampage, or something else happens where the gun will be fired in my proximity, and I will die of gunshot wounds or a heart attack or both.

2) Though I am an obvious rap geek, I barely listened to any new rap from the years of 1994 to 1998. For many, these are the "golden" years.

3) My favorite color is purple.

4) I don't really enjoy nature. When I travel, I prefer to go to other cities than to go camping or whatever. I can appreciate a nice sunrise, but then I want to go back to an actual bed with an actual mattress and actual pillows.

5) As a general rule, I have more respect for and seek the counsel of ladies over men. As MF DOOM says, a lotta dudes is too rude, and there's too many "let's not, and say we do" dudes.

6) I bought at least six new pairs of Adidas this year and not one new pair of pants.

7) I have a recurring dream where there is a fire at my house and everything I own is incinerated. Instead of being a panicky nightmare, it's actually quite a soothing dream, and I often wake up disappointed that I still have so much crap.

There you have it! The rest will need to wait for my tell-all unauthorized biography. Which drug did I sniff from the cleavage of a pre-op Carmen Electra? You'll have to buy the book to find out!

My lethal weapon's my mind

2007-11-29T14:51:00.000-05:00

Movie making in New York City

I like movies, but I pretty much hate Hollywood. Not the place as much as the institution. Those privileged douchebags that spend staggering sums of money to churn out sub-par bullshit. I think the best art is created when one is working within a limited set of parameters and produces something unexpected, beyond those boundaries. But when you can throw bundles of cash at a project to justify your mansion and a yacht, what you get is some predictable crap targeted to the most lucrative demographic. They might as well be slanging bootleg Rolex watches in Rockefeller Center, for all of the thought and care that goes into many major motion pictures today.

What really annoys me is when moviemakers get permission from the Mayor’s office to shut down areas of New York City to make this garbage. It’s completely unnecessary, and it’s an obnoxious way for a movie producer to say, “Look at me! I’m a big shot! I fucking shut down Fifth Avenue in the middle of a work week!” And while these retards set up their little ten-minute shot, you’ve got production assistants running around the periphery of the set, shooing people away and acting like you’re bothering them. Motherfucker, I work here. I don’t get to stand around with a walkie talkie, telling the lighting designer how I got a handjob on the set of Evan Almighty while directing an underling to pick the sprinkles off a dozen donuts so the movie’s primadonna star won’t have a shit fit. I know every second costs you oodles of dough, but that’s not my problem. If I were running the show, you’d still be down at the bus station positioned at the glory hole in the men’s bathroom.

Hippies that try to get me to register as a Democrat

I’m not technically a Democrat, but I sure as fuck ain’t a Republican. I normally vote for the Democratic candidate in local and federal elections because my opinions are more in line with those candidates’. But nothing turns me off to the party more than some unwashed, bearded pothead standing around on the street with a clipboard, trying to get me to sign up for the Democrats so he can feel like a political crusader. It’s enough to make me go conservative and smoke a carton of cigarettes while popping off my handgun, preferably at one of these dickheads. You want to make a difference for your party? Take off that Superbad t-shirt and put on a suit. Act like you are representing a political party and not some righteous frat house with a seven-foot bong in the foyer. Give me more to think about than just being “against Bush,” because that was the last presidential election’s tactic, and it didn’t work then. Bush is fired in oh-nine no matter who wins next November, so come up with a better platform than “Dems ROCK!”

I really believe that the Democratic party doesn’t want to win. They certainly don’t act like it. I mean, here you’ve got an election that should be a lay-up. Democrats already control Congress, the president’s approval rating is in the shitter, and even die-hard Republicans profess a desire for change. All they’ve got to do is pick a moderate liberal with a decent haircut, and the Dems should be in like Flynn. So who are the front-runners? A leftist black guy and a conservative, abrasive woman. Why don’t you run Martin Lawrence dressed in drag and Jokey Smurf while you’re at it?

People that refuse to acknowledge another person’s skin color when it is pertinent to the conversation

I love how people will often say, “My friend Jerome, who just happens to be black…” In the words of George Carlin: is his mother black? Is his father black? It didn’t just “happen,” did it? The guy is black by design. And while people will often interject a person’s ethnicity or hue into conversation for seemingly no reason, if it’s going to help me understand what the fuck you’re talking about, then by all means, be descriptive. Case in point: a friend of mine was telling me a story about how he and his co-workers got new uniforms. He then fell all over himself to say, “This one guy…he’s black…I don’t even like to mention it…I mean who cares if he’s black…but he is a black dude…anyway I say to this guy…this black guy, whatever…’hey, you’re looking cleaned up!’ And this guy…the black guy…he says, ‘What, you’ve never seen a black guy in a suit before?!’” Now here’s a story where the person’s skin color is integral to the tale. I’m going to find out he’s black by the end, anyway, so why not be up front about it from jump? It’s not like you’re saying he was dribbling a basketball and eating watermelon while the story’s events took place.

I get the same kind of shit in my office. “Oh you know Mary…she’s about five and a half feet tall, always wears these red shoes, has thick-rimmed glasses…she’s always on the third floor…you know who I mean?” Then, after five minutes, “You know…the Hispanic woman on the third floor.” Well why didn’t you fucking say so? Are you so blind to skin tone, you haven’t noticed the office is ninety-eight per cent white? Because if you did, then you would understand why pointing out a non-white person’s skin color would be the first and best description to give. And you never hear the shit in reverse. No one ever says, “Oh yeah, Keith Van Horn from the Dallas Mavericks…you know, the bearded guy…the one with the close haircut…the guy that runs fast…” No, you say, “The white guy on the Mavericks.” You don’t even need to say his name. I’m not pro-racism, I’m pro-clarity. I don’t have time for your self-effacing bullshit.

New York City living

2007-11-16T11:51:00.001-05:00

My first apartment was probably the best apartment, all things considered. It was right around the corner from my parents’ house, the second floor of a two-story, two-family brick house. The apartment was described as a two-bedroom, but it really only had one usable bedroom, a tiny “sewing room,” and another room that could be used as a den or something. That last room opened out onto a nice patio which looked onto the roof of a pocket protector factory and the backyard of a local dive bar. It had a lot of windows; the front of the house was an almost solid wall of glass. The whole place was newly-carpeted, had a large living room and dining room, and a full bathroom.

I shared the place with a friend of mine from the neighborhood. We got along well with the landlord and his family instantly, and we were able to talk him down two-hundred bucks in rent. I don’t know why they liked us so much, since we treated the apartment like a frat house. The local dive bar became our second living room, and my roommate and I would spend four or five nights a week down there. Sometimes, we’d go in on a Saturday afternoon and stay until closing. My roommate was able to get us a glass top dining room table, which was mainly used to break up weed. The front of the house looked onto a corner that had a twenty-four hour deli and the local bus stop, and sometimes my roommate would shoot paintballs or throw eggs at people waiting for the bus. Even though the rent was incredibly low, we moved a third friend in about six months after we started living there. He took the den room. We were a bunch of guys in our early twenties living behind a bar, and it was a pretty good time altogether. Eventually, my first roommate started to get fucked up on drugs, and the guy living in the den and I decided to strike out and get another place after about a year and a half.

The second apartment I lived in was a real dump. We took on another roommate, a round, little man that looked a lot like the “time to make the doughnuts” guy from the old Dunkin Donuts commercials. This place was billed as a three-bedroom garden apartment, but it was really the basement of an apartment building in a Queens neighborhood called Sunnyside. The rooms were big, and there was a backyard strewn with garbage, but the living room was separated from the building’s boiler room by a thin door and the place had cockroaches. Not those little, innocuous cockroaches, either, but cockroaches you could strap to the bottom of your feet and skate around on. The hot water would sometimes come out completely scalding, and in fact an upstairs neighbor successfully sued the building manager when his handicapped son was severely burned. One night, the three of us went out to see a movie, and when we came back we discovered our place had been robbed. One weekend, the boiler died and it was so cold indoors that you could see your breath; I had two frogs and a fish in a twenty-gallon tank that died as a result. Also, the Dunkin Donuts guy was a real whiny bitch, which was actually the second most unpleasant thing about the situation.

The first most unpleasant thing about this apartment was that, about six or seven months into living there, the side and back yard would fill up with sewer water and create a kind of shit moat around the building. I remember that I didn’t want to believe that the sewer was backing up into my yard, and I pretended it was “laundry water,” which makes no sense at all. One couldn’t deny the turds and toilet paper and steam rising from this stinky pond, however, and once this happened, preparations to move began again. The Dunkin Donuts guy went his own way, and my original roommate and I went to a real estate agent, determined to live in a decent place. The best thing about the apartment in Sunnyside was that it was half a block from the subway, and, from that point on, proximity to the subway was a major consideration in getting an apartment.

We got a decent one-bedroom in Astoria, Queens, just on the southern side of the Grand Central Parkway. It was on the first floor of a decent four-story apartment building, which was part of a larger complex of four-story apartment buildings. My roommate took the living room, and outfitted it with a false wall for privacy. The apartment was okay, not great, but miles ahead of where we had lived in Sunnyside. To my memory, we never had any problems that weren’t taken care of in a reasonable amount of time. The kitchen was pretty large, and the bathroom was decent. I only lived there with my roommate for about four months, though, then he moved on for a variety of personal reasons. I moved my girlfriend in, and she helped to make it very cozy. We stayed there for two years, I believe, then we decided to move on to another, larger apartment.

We used craigslist this time, and to great effect. We were able to get a two-bedroom apartment about ten blocks away, the second floor of a small townhouse, with utilities included, and a driveway space and backyard. The landlady was taken with us immediately, being that we were a young white couple, and my girlfriend and I didn’t have to have credit checks or anything. It came with a brand-new air conditioner and a very large eat-in kitchen. The drawback here was that the landlady and her nephew seemed to feel that they could come into the apartment at any time for whatever reason, which perturbed me and drove my girlfriend berserk. I lived there for about a year and a half, then we split up and I looked to move back closer to where I had previously been in Astoria.

A friend of mine was doing real estate in the neighborhood, and after a few places, he eventually got me a very cheap basement apartment with a backyard, right off a major thoroughfare in the neighborhood. I was dead against taking another basement apartment, but as time went on, I was getting desperate for a place, and this one was pretty big and right where I wanted to live. Ultimately, it was a big mistake. I quickly learned that I had no desire or ability to take care of a backyard, and the place was always damp with periodic cockroach sightings. The bathroom was tiny—so tiny, in fact, that the sink was in the shower stall—and it had no ventilation to speak of. The windows were larger than casement windows, and so it got a lot of light, for a basement, but that only highlighted the fact that the place sucked. After a few floods caused by inordinately heavy rain, I determined it was time to move.

Which brings me to my new place, about five blocks away from where I live now: a clean, sunny one-bedroom on the first floor of a small, three-story apartment building. The rooms, including the kitchen, are very large, and the bathroom is reasonably updated. It has a bathtub, a sink outside of the shower, and, best of all, a window. I’d like to think that after five apartments, I’ve figured out where and how I like to live, but I know that I’ll eventually move from this new apartment to another one, maybe to a bigger and better place in another neighborhood. This is New York City, after all. You don’t take space, you only rent it.

I did my part

2007-11-09T15:46:00.000-05:00

Most people are satisfied to go with the flow. They never make waves. They never offend anyone. Most people would rather do the easy thing than to do the right thing. Not me, though. I believe that anything worth doing is probably going to be difficult. It might not make you any friends. Your actions might be detested at first. But if you’re morally right, you’ll be vindicated in the long run. That’s what I believe, anyway. This is why I did not hesitate to correct my grandmother when she used the phrase “colored guy” during last Sunday’s dinner.

I remember it clearly: grandma was talking about a recent trip to the bank, and said she struck up a conversation with the fellow behind her in line. Without reason or provocation, she casually mentioned that he was a “colored guy.” I dropped my fork, still loaded with mashed potatoes. The entire family turned their heads towards me, alarmed by the clash of silverware on china. I stared at my grandmother, who stopped her story mid-sentence, for a full minute. Then I declared, “Grandma, it isn’t ‘colored guy.’ No one says ‘colored’ anymore. The phrase is ‘African-American.’” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms, pleased with my admonishing but necessary blurt of truth. I felt as if the spirits of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were standing behind me, nodding in approval. The family went back to eating and my grandmother continued her story, but I know my words were heeded because my grandma didn’t mention this gentleman’s ethnic or racial affiliation for the rest of the evening.

This isn’t the first time I have taken steps to quell racism. I recall another time, when I was in the candy store with Ralph, captain of our school’s basketball team. He just happens to be African-American. A store employee, who just happens to be Asian, was hanging around Ralph and eyeing him closely. I strode right up to this Asian person and, loudly enough for Ralph to hear, explained how unfair it was to shadow Ralph just because his skin shade is darker. I defined the term “racial profiling” and said it was more than immoral, it’s unlawful, and Ralph could sue the establishment for harassment. It turns out that the Asian guy wasn’t an employee at all, but a friend of Ralph’s. But I think I made my point that day. I certainly gave them all something to think about.

I feel it is my duty to expose and condemn racism wherever I see it. I may have only been on this planet for sixteen years, but I know racism is wrong, and I know it’s up to my generation to put an end to it. That’s why, as shameful as it might be, I have no compunction about putting members of my own family in their place if they show themselves to be racist. We’ve all got to pitch in and do what we can to make the world a better place to live. Otherwise, it will continue to be run by corrupt Mick cops and Dago politicians.

Southern California Wildfire Provides Danger, Entertainment

2007-10-25T10:45:00.000-04:00

Five-day blaze claims hundreds of acres worth of nation’s attention

San Diesel, CA – A raging wildfire, that began Sunday and has burned almost five-hundred thousand acres of Southern California, has become America’s number one source of entertainment this week, according to an independent survey conducted by The New York Post. Half a million people have been evacuated from their homes, the largest in the state’s history, but three times that amount have been glued to their televisions to watch the brightly flickering flames and spectacular plumes of smoke that have resulted from this natural disaster.

“We are worried, but not too worried,” said Robert C. Wright, president of television network NBC. “Ratings for this week’s episode of Heroes were good, but as the week continued our ratings slipped. Barely anyone watched last night’s episode of Phenomenon 101, a show which desperately needs the viewers. We’re counting on new episodes of 30 Rock and The Office to help us bounce back from this tragedy, which is affecting a lot more than our hillside properties.”

Images like this one have captivated the nation's attention over the last week

Other sources of entertainment are not faring as well against the ever-changing mosaic of fire. Major League Baseball reports that only twelve-thousand people outside of Boston watched game one of the World Series last night, five-thousand fewer than expected. Flagstaff, Arizona resident Gertrude Pickelsham said, “I switched back and forth between baseball and coverage of the fire, but by the fifth inning I just stuck with the news. [The Colorado Rockies] were getting shellacked! The citizens of San Diego have a better chance of surviving the weekend than the Rockies.”

Perhaps no Americans are as entranced by the wildfire than Californians themselves. “I watched it burn for about five hours yesterday from my patio while sipping iced tea,” confessed Mark Galebreadth of Orange County, “I completely forgot to call my mom and watch the new South Park.” However, as Mr. Galebreadth points out, "South Park will be re-run a bunch of times before next week; wildfires like this happen once, maybe twice a year.”

California firefighters and legislature hope to put an end to the blaze before this Saturday, when professional football games will air on national television. “This fire has caused almost a billion dollars in damages, a third of that from lost ad revenue,” said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a hastily-convened press conference yesterday. “It is imperative that we contain this fire so that it doesn’t conflict with any more prime-time programming. If that means I have to enter the flames myself, burning away my synthetic skin and exposing my titanium robotic interior, then so be it.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

2007-10-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

Annoying sitcom neighbors

The Good:
Steven Q. Urkel from Family Matters

The guy that launched a thousand nerd stereotypes. He wasn’t even in the regular cast at first, but once he stepped over the threshold of the Winslow house, broke a Ming vase or something, and uttered, “Did I do that?” America was hooked. Honest to a fault, he embodied everything about the classic underdog: the social awkwardness, his wiry and slight frame, and wearing suspenders on pants that fit perfectly well already. Ever see those guys that wear suspenders and a belt? What the hell is up with that? Make up your mind, buddy. You have to take risks at some point in your life.
Jaleel White, who played Urkel on the series, must have no ego at all, because the producers put him in so many stupid situations and costumes. He didn’t just play the loveable, bumbling nerd, but also dressed up in petticoats and a Sunday dress to be his Southern cousin, Myrtle Urkel, his wayward “gangsta” cousin OGD (Original Gangsta Dawg), and he donned a suit and took off his glasses to become his genetically-altered self (later clone) Stephan Urqell. The latter character was supposed to be his “cool” persona, but it just made Jaleel White’s astigmatism even more evident. I hope he laughed all the way to the bank with those roles, because there’s no way he can ever be taken seriously as an actor again.

The Bad:
Harriet Brindle from Small Wonder

I understand that the sitcom neighbor is supposed to be annoying, but are we really supposed to want to cave his/her face in with a bat? Harriet Brindle (played by Emily Schulman) had no redeeming qualities to gain the audience’s sympathy. She was in love with Jamie Lawson, an equally repellant child that co-starred with the robot V.I.C.K.I. Harriet would section off her pigtails with yarn. She would climb through windows when locked out of the front door. And every word she uttered was like having a turkey thermometer jammed in your ear. Considering his two closest female peers were Harriet and an unfeeling robot that lived in his wardrobe, it’s safe to say that Jamie Lawson ended up being a homo.

The Mediocre:
Wilson from Home Improvement

The faceless and uni-named Wilson from Home Improvement was actually a good fit for the show, which itself was painfully mediocre. The shtick with Wilson was that lead character Tim Taylor would ask him for advice through their shared fence, and Wilson would impart sage wisdom, calling on a seemingly endless bank of philosophical and practical knowledge. And you never saw his face! Isn’t that hysterical? How can a guy with no face know so much about life? God, that’s hilarious! People who read too deeply into these kinds of things probably thought that Wilson represented an everyman; a person that could represent any one of us, and the feats we might accomplish if we applied ourselves and our minds to pursuing our dreams. More realistic people understood that, by not showing his face, they only had to pay the actor who played Wilson half-scale.
NOTE: While Wilson was not really an annoying neighbor, the sitcom itself is annoying, and all of the characters on it by extension.

Nostalgic Resources Dwindling at An Alarming Rate

2007-10-11T09:36:00.000-04:00

1980's pop culture references almost totally depleted

Thewaywewere, USA -- A report released yesterday by a team of research scientists at Mayberry University revealed some surprising results: the good old days are getting closer and closer to the present with each generation. "There was a time that we could look fondly upon yesteryear as a simpler, more naive time," announced Dr. Franklin, who headed up this intense, three-year study, "but now, 'yesteryear' is a time of political corruption, rampant drug abuse, and social deviancy. And practically anyone can get a Monchichi from eBay or watch The Smurfs on YouTube."

The report, titled Conserving Our Nation's Nostalgia, details an alarming trend in reminiscence. Once a pastime relegated to the elderly and pompous members of society, now all age groups recall the recent past happily, even if they weren't alive during the period in question. Each decade is thoroughly mined for historical fact and popular references, and then it is packaged and sold to the masses in the form of compilation albums, retro clothing, and television programs featuring b-list celebrities. The study further reveals that, as a result of this efficient culture mining, our nostalgia reserves are rapidly shrinking, with the whole of the twentieth century up until 1989 completely exhausted. "At this rate," warns Dr. Franklin, "we'll be wistfully remembering 1994 release of the motion picture Dumb and Dumber by 2008."

"Conserving our nostalgia is key," continued Dr. Franklin, "if we want to escape from our dreary present. The past should not be handed down in serial television shows and lengthy books, but by slow-talking, doddering old people, to whom barely anyone pays attention." Dr. Franklin made some suggestions to members of the scientific community and the press, gathered in Ridgemont Auditorium at Mayberry University. "The first thing we need to do is stop the rampant digitizing of our new wave and glam rock recordings. They should be preserved in their original vinyl and cassette format, so they will be confounding to today's iPod generation. The next thing we need to do is take re-runs of Who's the Boss? off the air immediately."

Not everyone shares in Dr. Franklin's nostalgia doomsday predictions. "The report is pure histrionics," commented Professor Lasky, who attended the conference surrounding this report. "The way Dr. Franklin tells is, we will be down to Kerbangers and freeze-dried ice cream tomorrow. The fact is that there is still plenty for everyone to get nostalgic about, one just needs to look a little deeper at the instances that might not be as rosy-colored." Professor Lasky illustrated his contention by recalling Diana Ross' 1983 concert in Central Park, the 1986 World Exposition in Vancouver, and Phillip Morris buying Kraft Foods in 1988, all moments of the 1980's that have not been widely recalled. Professor Lasky admitted, however, that these instances were not as sexy as the time Donna Rice was photographed sitting on presidential candidate Gary Hart's lap aboard his yacht, The Monkey Business, in 1988.

Despite his detractors, Dr. Franklin says the situation is very dire. "There's hardly anything worth recalling from twenty years ago," he said in his closing statement, "and more and more young people are reflecting on moments so recently, their nostalgic potential is ruined before it had a chance. If we don't do something to preserve our nostalgia, then we will have no choice but to improve our present day, and frankly, I don't think the current pack of idiots that run the world are up to the task. Don't taze me, bro."

I think there's something you ought to know

2007-10-04T09:01:00.000-04:00

Even though this is our first date, I believe we've made a real, lasting connection. It's like we've known each other for our entire lives. I don't want to rush headlong into anything, but as I gaze into your eyes, I imagine what it might be like to look at that face forever, as we face the future hand-in-hand and by each other's side. I feel like I could tell you anything, and that's why I think I should divulge a few things that weren't on my match.com profile. I want to be really honest and keep no secrets so this relationship gets off on the right foot.
For one thing, I'm not a real blond. I get my hair dyed every week so that the roots don't show. My real hair color is dark brown, and it's not actually this curly. I use a fair amount of product to give it some body. Another thing is that my eyes aren't actually green. They're also brown, a lighter brown than my hair but still fairly dark. I use contact lenses, and I have a pair that makes my eyes look more hazel, as well as a glow-in-the-dark pair I use for Halloween. I'm sorry to have misrepresented myself to you, but it's important to me that you know what you're getting before we take this relationship to the next step. And there's more, my darling. I hope you don't think any less of me.
My boobs aren't actually this big. Truth be told, I don't have any breasts, so to speak. I have a rare breathing condition that requires regular maintenance on my lungs, about two or three times a month. In order to facilitate this treatment, my lungs are actually situated outside of my body. They're covered by a thin layer of gauze, and for our date I used a lot of concealer and a ruffled blouse to make them look more breast-like. The bottom of my lungs are tucked into my skirt. See? I got this breathing condition when I was shot a dozen times carrying three kilos of cocaine in my uterus through the Florida Everglades. I was able to submerge in the swamp and hide from the authorities for days, but unfortunately the packages of cocaine burst inside me and I sustained permanent pelvic damage. As a result, I can't feel my reproductive organs at all. I have to wear a diaper because I never know when I am urinating. But that's not how I damaged my lungs. They were punctured by gunfire and then filled with swamp water, which festered inside of my body over the several days I hid from the law. My body went into toxic shock and my kidneys completely shut down. So six times a month I need to go to the hospital for a painful and lengthy dialysis. I don't have any health insurance, so I provide oral services to gentlemen at the bus station. I think you know what I mean by oral services. They like me because I can pull my dentures out and minimize their discomfort.
Oh, it feels so good to be completely honest! I just knew you would understand. But there is more to my story, my darling. I haven't always looked like the woman you see before you. No, I never was a man, but about ten years ago, I was a pygmy marmoset being used for experiments at a Swiss genetics laboratory. I'm not really sure what happened, precisely: there was some swine DNA, some bovine DNA, and some kind of top secret mutagen that was developed by scientists involved in chemical warfare. I don't remember the process, obviously, but that was as much as I could glean when I escaped from the laboratory and grabbed as many files as I could. That's when I learned that I could kill people with my mind, sometimes inadvertently. I've pretty much got it under control now, but for the first few months I accidentally murdered the cashier at the Burger King counter every time I went in to buy a Triple Whopper. And that's another admission: I need to eat flesh to survive. I can quell my cravings for a while by consuming large quantities of meat, but eventually I need to eat raw flesh and blood directly from a living being. It doesn't need to be human, darling! I'm not a vampire. However, I will need to bite into a stray cat or dog from time to time. I really hope this doesn't disappoint you.
I can see from your reaction that you are pretty surprised, and I don't blame you. But now that we've got all of that nasty business out of the way, we can begin our relationship on a foundation of truth and honesty. Being that I am such an unusual woman, I am pretty sure I'll abide by and accept any of your faults or nasty habits. Except for smoking. If I find out that you smoke cigarettes, I'm going to kill you with my mind.

Let's appreciate the works of Miller-Boyett

2007-10-03T20:53:00.001-04:00

As appreciators of fine art, we like our eccentrics. We enjoy the unrestrained antics of creative minds, whose output makes our dull lives worth living. We suffer the egotistical demands and strange attitudes in the hope that, ultimately, it will result in a work which will change the way we see the world. Far too often, however, we ignore the persons behind the scenes: the accountants, the lawyers, the paper-pushers that allow artists to live their unfettered lifestyles. Without them, we wouldn't have the great works that constitute our cultural relevance. I would like to take a moment to appreciate one of these minds behind the mind: the television production company known as Miller-Boyett.

They originally began in 1969 as Miller-Milkis Productions, and set about producing a few forgettable made-for-TV movies. This duo hit paydirt in 1974 when they produced a sitcom for ABC named Happy Days. Banking off the nostalgia generated by the successful film American Graffiti, Thomas Miller and Edward Milkis may have realized, at that moment, that the secret to making long-lasting, lucrative television shows is to make them as bland an inoffensive as possible. Pull the audience's heartstrings and have a good laugh track. Robert Boyett was brought to the team, and together the trio developed more hits, like Laverne & Shirley in 1976 and Mork and Mindy in 1978.

I'm not sure what caused Edward Milkis to leave the team, so I'll just make something up: late in 1979, the young upstart Boyett--a full nine years younger than Milkis--had an idea. A lascivious, dirty, nasty idea. On a dry-erase board in his garage, he began calculating the most diabolically clever television program in history: one part The Odd Couple, two parts Texaco Star Theater (starring the cross-dresser Milton Berle), and a dash of Rhoda to make it contemporary. What he came up with was the plot for the criminally underrated sitcom Bosom Buddies, starring the comic duo of Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. Milkis was furious; he didn't take a load of shrapnel in his ass in Korea so two fancy boys could parade around on television in women's clothing. Tom Miller, however, only being two years older than Boyett, loved the idea. Miller and Boyett parted ways with Ed Milkis in 1980, and never looked back.

Together, Miller-Boyett created mediocre hit after mediocre hit, each time ripping off elements of other successful television programs. There was Perfect Strangers, a kind of Odd Couple with more sex appeal. There was Full House, an unholy mix of My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, and My Two Dads. There was Valerie, which began as a vehicle for television actor Valerie Harper. Then she got uppity and was replaced by Sandy Duncan. The show was re-titled The Hogan Family, and ratings soared even higher.

Miller-Boyett were true geniuses of the prime-time sitcom, and the crown jewel of their achievements is none other than Family Matters, a show which relied on practically every sitcom device ever invented. There was the henpecked, fat father; the grating but even-keeled wife; the nosy grandmother; the annoying next-door neighbor. There was even a single mother in the form of Rachel, the wife's sister, who struggled between raising a boy on her own, and wanting to go on dates with as many men as possible (but NOT get laid--never that). As this show gained popularity, the dynamic team of Miller-Boyett showed their production prowess by never being afraid to can actors, even those central to the theme of the show. What began as the touching story of family life in suburban Chicago morphed into the ridiculously unbelievable antics of Steven Q. Urkel, a character who, during the life of the show, was made to impersonate Bruce Lee no fewer than three times. Miller-Boyett, we salute thee.

The Convenience of Creating Bullshit

2007-08-06T14:27:00.000-04:00

Last Memorial Day, I attended the wedding of two very dear friends of mine. Then they went on a honeymoon, then life happened, and today I finally received an e-mail linking me to a shared photo album containing the wedding pictures. I clicked the link in order to relive some good memories from that special day. As the page loaded, I noticed the number of photos in the photo album at the upper left-hand corner of the webpage:
One-thousand and seven fucking pictures!
Am I supposed to quit my job and pore through this endless stream of photographs? And it wasn't just wedding-pertinent pics, but lots of ancillary photos that shouldn't have made the final cut: six photos of two old ladies dipping their feet in a pool. A dozen blurry photos of people rushing around, too busy to stop and pose. Countless indescribable pictures of indeterminate origin, depicting shadowy figures doing incredible things like eating barbecue. It was like the entire contents of someone's digital camera had been vomited onto my web browser. And, sucker that I am, I hung in there for roughly two-hundred pictures.
Ten years ago, having a thousand pictures from your wedding would have been unthinkable. They would have filled about twenty photo albums, stuffed to capacity. It would have cost a few thousand dollars. But those pictures would have all been gems; the rejects would never have seen the light of day. There would be some shots of the kids, some shots of the people in attendance, but mainly you would have seen the wedding ceremony and a slew of pics where the bride and groom stand in various formations, like one of those novelty photo booths at the carnival where you can pretend to be a Wild West outlaw. The pic of a guy helping some kid get lemonade from the cooler's liquid dispenser probably wouldn't have made the cut.
I love this newly-married couple very much, and I don't blame them for wanting to preserve as much as possible from their most important occasion. Their photo album belies one of the most disheartening aspects of the digital age, which is how disposable everything has become. So disposable, in fact, that you get what is basically someone's photographic trash dumped onto your computer for you to weed through. Who can be bothered? It's your problem now. I'm certainly not going to spend three to five hours looking through these flicks, so they get stored in a folder and zipped and are promptly forgotten about. It is likely that I will never look at them again. There are so many pictures attached to this event, that for all intents and purposes we may as well assume that there were no pictures at all. That suits me just fine; in my memory, I ended up at the bottom of a pile-on by all the bridesmaids in a shallow Jell-O wrestling pit.
I've got another friend who has a nice digital camera, and on any given outing she takes about a hundred pictures. Per hour. Pictures of wrought-iron gates, pictures of fading signage. Pictures of some guy standing around on the corner, thinking about his next move. Click, click, click. At the end of a day, she can spend about two hours looking over the set, discarding the boring, or the corny, or the just plain not visible photographs. At the end, she's left with about a dozen nice photographs, two or three of which will be really good. But, in the classic sense, she is not a photographer. She's more like a photographic gambler, throwing the dice often enough to increase her chances of framing a shot that is worthwhile. What you get is a kind of incidental Tourette's Syndrome, a spasmatic clicking of the aperture until something meaningful happens. In the final analysis, you have to wonder whether she actually attended the excursion in question, or if she just documented it for later review. She can experience the beautiful day later, when it is raining outside.

The Blast Most Delicious

2007-07-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

I have written about my friend Ben in the past. I'm always wary of writing about Ben here, because I'm not sure if I can convey his special brand of thinking on the blog. But this story isn't really about Ben and his bizarre antics. It's about me putting Ben on blast, a most supreme and incredible blast, about three weeks ago.

It all began four Saturdays ago, when Ben and I agreed to hang out the following Sunday. He said he would call me as soon as he woke up, and he would get on the train to my house so we could do the usual thing, probably play video games and watch movies. I have known Ben for a long time now, and I understand that a promise from Ben to call or come through is about as good as a Canadian quarter at the peep show. So I made plans with another friend of mine to come by and essentially do the same thing: play video games and watch movies. I figured that on the outside chance that Ben called Sunday morning, we could all hang out together.

Unsurprisingly, Ben did not call Sunday morning. I wasn't really upset, but I decided I would give Ben a call around noon to lay a guilt trip on him (and hopefully get some more amazing quotables). He didn't pick up, but moments later I get a text message from Jimmy's roommate that tells me they are at the beach together, and Ben is telling his girlfriend that he is on the way to my house, while seagulls squawk and people cavort in the background. Coincidentally, Ben is lying to his girlfriend about going to my house while I am calling him to be a pain in the ass! I was amused by this, but forgot it as my friend came by and we spent the day as planned.

On Monday, I decided that the next time I saw Ben, I would put him on blast.

It was not a decision made out of anger or for revenge, but because I saw an opportunity to put Ben on a supremely delicious blast that could possibly go down in history as one of the greatest blasts to have ever been put on a person. I told people about my impending ether, and made it clear that I would put Ben on blast whether his girlfriend was nearby or not. Obviously, though, if I put Ben on blast in front of his girlfriend, it would be twice as succulent.

I rehearsed my intentions over the next few days. I knew I would bring it up casually, and then be sure to add that his word is not bond; that despite all of his claims that he is "a man," he is not being a man at all if he can't follow through on the simplest promise. It would be a great blast because this is something that is discussed among everyone that knows Ben: even though he claims to have all the virtues of manhood, he has no ability to meet things head-on. I decided I would not use the fact that he lied to his girlfriend while I called him on the day we planned to get together, unless it was absolutely necessary.

That Friday, Ben's roommate had a party at his house, and I was in attendance. Ben and his girlfriend were at the movies, and would return home around 10:30 PM. Everyone at the party knew of the impending blast. I bode my time, had a few drinks, and waited for the inevitable hour. Ben and his girlfriend came home on schedule, and we exchanged pleasantries for a little while. After about twenty minutes, I opened fire.

"Ben, what happened last Sunday? You were supposed to call me"

All of the color instantly drained from Ben's face, and he began to stammer. In a voice barely audible by trained dogs, he started to say something like "The sun...the sun was calling, Reggie." Simultaneously, his girlfriend turned in her seat and gave Ben a stare that would have rivaled Samuel Jackson's. "You didn't go to Reggie's?" she stated, rather than queried. I knew that I would not have to mention that he lied to his girl while denying my call that Sunday.

I continued: "You said you would call me, but you never did. I even called you at noon and you didn't pick up. That's not being a man. Your word is not bond." Ben was still trying to compose himself, mumbling an apology and gamely putting his hand on my shoulder in a show of friendship. Ben's girlfriend then gets up from her seat, walks to Ben's bedroom, and stands in the open doorway glaring at Ben. "I think you are needed elsewhere," I said, and Ben hung his head and walked solemnly into his bedroom, the door slamming shut behind him. He was bawled out for five hours, effectively ending his evening.

In all, my blast took less than two minutes, far less time than I had planned. But the effect was more severe than I had hoped. Ben's girlfriend was honed into his potential for lying, and he was caught in the crossfire. Later, Ben told his roommate that I had done him a favor, because his girl suggested that they see less of each other for a while. But I know that putting Ben in that spot, I turned his labyrinth of lying into a prison. A prison which unfortunately lasted only five hours of conversational torture.

On Gentrification

2007-07-11T11:52:00.000-04:00

Every week in the City section of the New York Times, there's an article about some neighborhood, usually in Brooklyn, clamoring to have itself listed a landmark district or to be de-zoned to limit the kind (and height) of new buildings in the area. It seems that these people want to preserve the unique qualities of their respective neighborhoods: the grimy coffee shops, the bullet-proof bodegas, the run-down churches that have become repositories for homeless drug addicts. Many of these neighborhood activists are quoted as remembering the good old days of their neighborhoods, reaching as far back as 1992, when said person moved to New York from Minnesota to be some stupid fucking art director at a shitty trend-laden magazine.

And you know, it's really starting to piss me off. People bandy about the word "gentrification" like it's some imposed cancer on New York society, a softening of the hard-nosed attitude that makes our fair city the butt of lame comedians around the world. Where ya from? New York? Oh, I'd better hold on to my wallet! Polite chuckling. What meaning can a joke like this hold in a post-Giuliani New York where there is a Disney Store in Times Square? How will these poor comedians make a living? I certainly don't want to see mental midgets of their caliber working retail and trying to figure out the cash register.

And the motherfuckers on these Landmark Preservation Society bullshit committees are usually the very kind of upwardly-mobile douchebags that cause gentrification in the first place! Do you think that just because you moved into the neighborhood when it still smelled like rat piss, you can claim some ownership over it? Do you really have the audacity to force a neighborhood ravaged by the 1977 blackout riots to maintain its "gritty character"? Go shove that gritty character up your assholes! New York doesn't give a fuck about your nostalgic revisionist bullshit. The city will jam a high-rise condominium down your throat and make you love it. You want grit? Move to Detroit.

I wonder what "good old days" these assclowns are really harkening to. Could it be the 1970's, when the city was bankrupt and the subway was an unreliable danger zone? Or perhaps they want to bring it back to the 1940's, when Civil Defense drills kept the city in darkness for many nights and you could get picked up and shipped off to war for vagrancy. I know, they want to bring back the gaslight era, when the streets reeked of horse manure and you wallowed in your own sweat-soaked suit by the light of a candle. The reality is that New York has been gentrifying since Peter Minuit copped the island of Manhattan from the Lanape Indians in 1625. He dumped a bunch of disparate crackers at the southernmost tip of Manhattan--a word which many believe comes from a Lenape word meaning "Wooded Hills"--and they immediately began re-fitting the land for their purposes. I don't suppose you've seen many woods or hills around Manhattan lately, huh?

I grew up in a crummy little neighborhood in the ass end of Queens called Flushing. It was by no means a crime-ridden neighborhood, but it was kind of run-down when I was younger. There was a bar or two every block. Most residents were blue-collar workers or people collecting social security or disability payments. The streets were filthy, and it was not uncommon to see drunk adults stumbling around in broad daylight (I know, because we taunted them from the safety of our bicycles).
Around 1988, the neighborhood started to make some serious changes. A tremendous influx of Koreans came to the neighborhood and began to reshape it to their purposes. Flushing became, and remains, an outpost for Korean business in America, and there is a seemingly endless number of Korean stores and restaurants in the neighborhood, with more opening every day. It's no surprise that the dickbags from the neighborhood resented the arrival of these "chinks" and their changes. But my question is, where were you? What were you doing while the pharmacy got security bars on its windows and the neighborhood alcoholics turned to crackheads? You were sitting in this dank, depressing bar, spending your paycheck on poison to kill your brain and your liver. And now that the neighborhood has shaped up, now that the severely cracked streets have been repaved, now that every storefront is occupied with a successful business, now that Main Street is a bustling center of business instead of a haven for batshit senior citizens that piss themselves and head shops, now you want to claim ownership of the neighborhood. Well buddy, if you want to live among the rubbish, then move to the garbage dump.

The one constant I've observed after living in New York for (almost) thirty-two years is change. It is inevitable. Leave a neighborhood and return after five years, and it will probably be totally different. Affluent neighborhoods become run-down crime zones. Derelict districts become high-priced loft space. And there's not a goddamned thing you could or should do about it. If you wanted creature comforts, then you should have stayed back in Minnesota.

Let's Talk About Rap, Baby

2007-06-25T12:57:00.000-04:00

I don't normally do this kind of cross-promoting thing in the blog, but I have decided to allow it in this instance since the subject is one near and dear to my heart: old school rap music. If you have any interest in the subject at all, are knowledgeable or hope to become knowledgeable about it, I implore you to check out and engage in the tournament going on at the philaflava.com forum dedicated to the golden age of rap music, T.R.O.Y.

I listened to rap as a kid, but didn't really get into the old school until I was in my early twenties. Even though I grew up in Queens, I didn't have a lot of exposure to the music. Like many of my white peers, my love affair with rap began in 1988, when It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, The Adventures of Slick Rick, and Yo! MTV Raps came out. Still, I remember a few rap joints playing on mainstream radio as a young kid, most notably "Jam On It" by Newcleus.

Anyway, I could go on at length about the subject, and I may do so in the future. But for now, please head on over to the philaflava.com forums and see what's what with this tournament. It's not a big hassle to register (for me, anyway), so don't be afraid to wade right in and start asserting your rap prowess.

The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

2007-06-19T09:05:00.000-04:00

1980's Arcade Games

THE GOOD: Robotron 2084

"You are the last hope of mankind. Due to a genetic engineering error, you possess superhuman powers. Your mission is to stop the Robotrons and save the last human family!"
I want to transport all of you to another land in a simpler time, when people used payphones and conflict in the Middle East was handled by the CIA. The year was 1982 and video games were all the rage. Not that dinky Atari 2600 or the awful Odyssey home video game system, but stand-up arcade machines, available in every pizza place, stationery store, and highway rest stop around the country. Kids would line up at these machines, plunk their quarters down on the screen to signify their place in line, and watch the vibrating pixels on the screen dance erratically while attempting to figure out just what they were supposed to represent.
One of the pluses of having to build a cabinet for a video game, rather than something on your Playstation, is that you can create a unique interface that compliments the game well. One isn't constrained within the same d-pad, button, button interface that complies with the home system. And so it was with Robotron 2084, perhaps the most fun and most difficult arcade game of all time. Robotron didn't have any cumbersome buttons or triggers, just two joysticks: one for moving the character, the other for aiming his weapon. The weapon was on constant auto-fire. Your bug-eyed character rolled around the screen, shooting a variety of increasingly difficult Robotrons while simultaneously scooping up the members of the last human family, which were sprites that resembled a dad with a briefcase, a mom in a housecoat, and two kids. Really, you could just tell that they weren't Robotrons and therefore needed saving. And that's the game. No sequential story line, no bonus levels or long ending animations, just you vs. the fucking Robotrons, screen after screen after screen. Save the last human family, and start all over again on a new, much harder screen. Eventually, the screen would be so crowded with Robotrons, it was virtually impossible to win. When you're paying a quarter a pop to play the game, that's the best strategy to follow.

THE BAD: Mario Bros.

The world's most recognized and lucrative video game franchise had a pretty lame beginning. First appearing in the blockbuster game Donkey Kong, our little stereotypical friend Mario seemed destined for greatness. Like Will Smith, we can look at the body of Mario's work and say it has been good, overall. Also like Will Smith, we can admit that Mario has been tied to some pretty weak projects. And so it was with his sophomore effort, Mario Bros., which introduced his similarly-greasy brother Luigi. The object of the game is to run around a screen and disable a ceaseless stream of turtles, crabs, and bugs by hitting the ground underneath them. That's all she wrote. It was as dull on board forty as it was on board one. Later, this fraternal duo would pop some magic mushrooms and go Super, but before that, these guys were strictly squares.

THE MEDIOCRE: OutRun

I have trouble calling this game mediocre, because at the time it was the shit. There was a stand-up version and the one pictured, a sit-down realistic version with hydraulic suspension to simulate the car's movement (mostly its crashing). The latter version is the first game I remember that cost fifty cents to play. For a nine year-old, though, it was well worth the experience to drive. Along oceanside highways, across mesa-strewn deserts, you could drive. Take the right fork, take the left fork, drive. Drive, drive, drive. That's all that happened in this game. You were in a Ferrari Testarossa doing 180 miles per hour, and Volkswagen bugs would still blow past you from time to time. After a while, the excitement of driving this pixellated landscape wore off, and you were left with the feeling of having dumped five bucks in quarters to watch a very bad cartoon. At least you got to control the radio, you never got to do that in mom's car.

Paying for the privelege to pollute

2007-06-11T14:42:00.001-04:00

I don't know how much press it's getting elsewhere in the country, but here in New York City, our Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been trying to push an agenda through the state assembly to levy a toll against traffic that wants to enter the congested midtown and downtown areas of Manhattan. This will, says Bloomberg, make it a more liveable, pleasant city, with less pollution and more available dollars to fund public transit. Normally, I'm all for any measure to promote public transit, but something about this program doesn't seem quite right. It reminds me, in some ways, of the trade of "emission reduction credits," known to many people as "pollution rights." Under this system, which was written into the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1990, each corporation (or country) is given a certain number of "pollution credits," which represent a certain amount of specific pollution a company (or country) can dispense in a given year. If said company (or country) doesn't use all of its credits, they are allowed to sell the unused quantity to another corporation (or company) that needs to belch out a few thousand more cubic feet of sulfur dioxide.
A great plan, except that it doesn't really reduce polluting emissions any more than it ensures that emissions will remain at a set level. And I suppose that beats letting companies pollute the environment completely unfettered, but what doesn't seem fair to me is that these entities can essentially pay to pollute. How can we stop these multi-billionaire oil and chemical companies from doing whatever they want in regards to harmful emissions? And how does money solve the problem of greenhouse gases and global warming, anyway? Besides lining the pockets of federal workers to pay for air conditioners, I mean.
Because global warming and pollution is not really a money issue, it's a health issue. Though here in the U.S., we are used to throwing money away on pills and surgeries and medical techniques in pursuit of perfect health, we can't rightly give the stratosphere a facelift. We could have the richest government in world, sitting atop a pile of money supplied by pollution rights, balanced precariously atop the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by water. This is the kind of issue you can't temper until it goes away, you need to put your foot down and say, "I would rather have clean water to drink than Saran Wrap." We'll chastise a lone shooter at Virginia Tech for being a nihilistic mass-murderer, but we don't bat an eyelid when Dow makes decisions that adversely affect the health of tens of thousands of people all the time. If corporations are entities that are more like people than companies, than ExxonMobil should be locked away from society without parole.
And that's how I see this toll to drive into Manhattan island; a bold, financial measure that doesn't address the real problem at all. Sure, it will keep the average idiot from tooling around on fifth avenue in the middle of the day, but how can it stem the tide of rich Escalade owners and diesel-belching delivery trucks that can afford nearly any cost to do their business? It reminds me of Bloomberg's tactic on cigarette smoking: banned indoors, taxed to high heaven, but having relatively little effect on the actual number of smokers in the city. And where is that tax money now? Funding some commercials and the nicotine patch program, presumably, though I have never seen the books on that. If we must have this toll program where the revenue is put towards public transportation, then make sure that buses and subways are equipped with air filters, because these might become the only spaces of breathable air left in the city...ah, now I understand the plan's genius.

The day I realized I was a boom-bap dinosaur

2007-06-05T10:41:00.000-04:00

I believe that hip-hop music is my generation's music. Rock is for my parents, jazz is for my grandparents, but hip-hop is mine. Listening to it as a kid, I found great satisfaction in my father's complaints about that "military marching music," because I knew he was validating my feelings for it. You don't like it, dad? Good, it's not for you. It's for me.
Listening to rap wasn't unusual for my peer group growing up. I grew up in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood, so it wasn't exactly a b-boy heaven, but most of the people I knew in my age group listened to at least some rap. When It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy came out, there was a huge crossover of heavy metal-heads into rap fandom, especially in my neighborhood in Queens--the very one that birthed the metal band Anthrax, who would go on to record a song with P.E. I read stories of kids who had to hide their rap tapes from parents, and who caught all kinds of flak at school for wearing an EPMD t-shirt--I had none of that. Rap was pretty well-accepted in my neighborhood, and my friends and I prided ourselves on keeping up with the latest rap releases, sometimes to our chagrin (oh Arrested Development, I had such high hopes for you).
Rap music is a pretty cutting-edge form of music, when you think about it. It's made from already recorded tunes, using increasingly complicated recording equipment, and the lyrics are usually stripped of their melody, offering a bare bones kind of aesthetic that disregards conventional ideas about songs. Songs, they say, should be sung. It's not hard to understand why parents might be less than enthused by the monotone yelling over thumping beats coming from their children's stereos. Even Jimi Hendrix never rocked like that.
Fast-forward to the present day: I haven't kept up on all the latest rap releases (sorry, South Coast, I guess I'm still sleeping), but I consider myself a big fan and it's still my primary musical love. I have a friend that's three years younger than I who is also a rap fan since his teen years, though he came up in a different era of rap than I did. Where I was raised on Public Enemy and De La Soul, he was raised on Nas and Biggie Smalls. He believes Ma$e's Harlem World is a classic, not corny like I do. He actually likes PMD's solo album. We see eye-to-eye on a lot of things (it's not like I don't like Nas or B.I.G.), but at the core our tastes are very different.
Like a good hip-hop nerd, I try to put him on to some of my favorite music from my youth. So we came to the day I put The Goats' Tricks of the Shade on the stereo. When that album came out, I played the shit out of it: front to back, over and over and over. I wore out my tape and had to re-buy it on CD. Then I actually wore out the CD. It was a favorite among my high school friends and I, we knew every lyric and every horn stab, and I was sure my younger friend would be blown away. I put the album on the stereo and sat back smugly to gauge his reaction.
My friend listened, passively.
Then he frowned.
Then he started talking over the music!
I was offended and, even moreso, stunned. This was my shit! How could he disregard it like that? So I skipped around to some of the best songs on the album, begging him to listen. He shrugged and said it was okay.
Okay?
Just okay?!
I told him how much I listened to this album as a teenager, smoking pot and playing Super Nintendo and just digging the hell out of it. I told him how I first saw the video for "Typical American" on that call-in cable video channel, The Box, and I was so impressed that I ran out to cop the album. Everyone I knew loved this album, I explained. It's a classic.
"I dunno," my friend muttered, "it sounds like frat rap to me."
And that was that. One of my most cherished albums from high school, reduced to "frat rap." As I listened to it play on my stereo while my friend distracted himself with other things, I came to a painful realization: he was right. The Goats is part of the foundation that The Bloodhound Gang was built on. There's not much distinguishing their choruses from anthemic bar chants by House of Pain. And at that moment, I realized that I may be a rap fan, but I am not cutting-edge. I am a boom-bap dinosaur. I prefer Jeep beats in an era when everyone is driving Escalades. Soulful jazz loops move me more than staccato synthesizer rhythms ever could. And you know what, I've come to terms with it. I'm okay with being a boom-bap dinosaur. I still think The Goats are fucking great.

How to see a vagina without getting a woman naked

2007-05-29T11:58:00.000-04:00

The first time I ever saw a vagina, I was eight or nine years old. It happened in the schoolyard of my elementary school, where most of my important learning took place. A friend of mine asked if I wanted to see a pussy, and of course I nodded excitedly. He then put his palms together and held this hands horizontally, with his ring and middle fingers separated like Mr. Spock would do on Star Trek. He instructed me to do the same thing, but to hold my hands vertically. We interlocked our hands at the "V" and my friend told me to open my hands at the palm and peek inside this contraption made of metacarpals and skin. Voila! A vagina revealed itself to me that day, and it was quite a letdown.
Though I had barely any knowledge of the female anatomy, most of it having been passed on to me as hearsay and rumor, I knew even then that a vagina doesn't look like a kaleidoscope of finger webbing. I wasn't sure what it looked like, precisely--some bathroom graffiti seemed to imply that it was triangular, for one thing--but it seemed a lot more complex than what had been presented to me at that point.
In its way, the acquisition of sexual and social misinformation is its own rite of passage, one that prepares you for adulthood better than any sexual education class or moldy copy of Oui magazine can. It teaches valuable lessons that remain true throughout your life: many people would rather lie than to admit that they don't know about a subject, and when everyone agrees about the validity of a lie, it becomes a truth. Also, men will go to any length to be near pussy, even poor facsimilies of it.
This is why I routinely lie to children every chance I get. It tests their mettle and prepares them for the reality of lying and posturing they will encounter in adulthood. If a child accepts a bald-faced lie at face value and passes on that information to his peers, then you know what the future will hold for that person: a high-ranking job at the CIA. The more skeptical among them will grow up to become cynical bloggers.

I probably shouldn't have eaten all those hamburgers

2007-05-22T21:11:00.000-04:00

Oh god. I am dying. This is really it. I can't feel my left arm and my chest feels like it's going to snap. This is no murmur. I am having the mother of all heart attacks and there's no one around to help. I guess I brought this on myself by eating all of those goddamned hamburgers.
Looking back on my life, I don't really regret it. You know, I didn't pay for a single one? Mooched 'em all, tens if not hundreds of thousands of minced beef sandwiches. I could go for one right now. If it weren't for this searing chest pain, I'd stroll over to the wharf and rustle up a mark to pay for my hamburger. Tell him I'm one of the Jones boys, Jones is the name. I get paid Tuesday, and I'd gladly repay a small loan on that day. Heh. Sucker.
Even though I ate solely hamburgers for most of my life, I tried to eat healthy. I always tried to get pickles, onion, and lettuce on all of them. Sometimes I would grind a cow on the spot to have the freshest ground chuck available. Sure, it wasn't with the owner's consent or even foreknowledge, but I presume he would be satisfied that his bovine was consumed by a hamburger aficionado. Perhaps I didn't always follow local health statutes to the letter. Perhaps there was some bone or cow eye in some of my sandwiches. Perhaps that oversight has contributed to the deplorable state I find myself in right now.
I'll tell you, though, it wasn't really about the hamburgers. It was fleecing poor rubes into buying them for me. You can't understand the rush. One time, I wooed a lady who had a crying baby. She gave me a dollar to go get the little tyke some milk. I tipped my hat and high-tailed it to the greasy spoon and ordered up ten whoppers. They were more succulent than the most ripened fruit, even more because I had stolen them from the mouth of a hungry baby. I wonder what happened to that kid.
Well, no matter. Despite my unfortunate first name (my mother named me that--I swear!) I do not fear my passage into the great beyond. Though I scammed every morsel of food I ever ate, I have lived a humble and good life. I'm pretty sure I'm going to heaven. Unless they eat vegetarian up there, that is. I'd gladly sell my soul Tuesday for a hamburger today.

White History Month

2007-05-01T11:23:00.000-04:00

The only thing white folks hate more than people talking during movies is not being invited to a happening party. Especially when it’s in our own house! You may have already seen the forwarded chain e-mail that suggests how unfair it is that there is no White Entertainment Television; no United Whitey College Fund; no White History Month. On that last bit, the author(s) of this e-mail may have a point. We Caucasians have been separated from our true legacy by white privilege, and it’s time to make that privilege work for us. Finally. That’s why I propose that December (it being the whitest month) be named White History Month, and that this time be dedicated to educating everyone about the important, detrimental contributions we have made to the world.

I can picture it now: the whole family sitting in front of the television, little Bobby playing his PSP; Emily talking on her cellular phone; Dad clicking through the channels obsessively; Mom quietly and pleasantly drunk in her easy chair. Dad lands on a channel to find Charlton Heston strolling along a gallery of paintings depicting famous whites: David Duke, Benito Mussolini, Jesus Christ. He talks briefly about the legacy and tenacity of racism and white superiority, then speaks some of the ofays that we would like to remember during this month of reflection:

Francis Galton (1822-1911) – No, he didn’t invent racism, but he allowed white folk to feel good about it. He published his theory of eugenics—that’s the inherent superiority of certain genetic traits—in 1869. This was just in time for America, which was wrapping up its Civil War. We were able to put all of that bad blood behind us and move forth as a nation unified in a common belief: the scientific basis for racism

David Hume (1711-1776) – This Scottish philosopher was a major proponent of the Laws of Nature, one of which is apparently the inferiority of black Africans:

I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilised nation of that complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or in speculation. No ingenious manufacture among them, no arts, no sciences.

Of course, he only articulated what Whitey was already thinking.

D. W. Griffith (1875-1948) – President Woodrow Wilson (another upstanding cracker) is alleged to have said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true,” about Griffith’s landmark 1915 film, Birth of a Nation. A remarkable achievement—twelve reels of silent film at a time when most films clocked in around twenty minutes—it was the Titanic of its day, a remarkable technical achievement with little regard for historical accuracy. This film re-spawned the Reconstruction-era hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, by depicting the Klan as valorous defenders of white womanhood. Of course, the uppity bitches would turn around and use this to gain national suffrage rights in 1920.

Cut back to Charlton, who is sitting on an ivory throne and being fanned by palm fronds. He promises that this information is just the tip of the white superiority iceberg, and if we want to know more about white history, we should make like good crackers and do some reading at our local library. Or make your own history! Racism is alive and well in America, and there’s nothing to say that you can’t be a modern-day J. Edgar Hoover or a Tuskegee scientist. Bobby looks up from his Ratchet & Clank video game, and he is inspired. Of course, he was already a racist. But now, he is an informed racist. And that makes him twice as dangerous.