Archive for February, 2008

Not that I ever fooled with it too much, but this commercial was inarguably the truth…

One of my favorite songs by another of my favorite emcees…

This last verse? I usedta swear it was about me.

So you’re tellin me that of the top 10 couples in TV history (as defined by AOL Television), only one is Black? Wait. Of the whole top 20, only one couple is Black? There are as many cartoon couples as there are Black couples?

Mmph.

Obama vs. Clinton ain’t no joke. I’m not just talkin about the politicans, though.

District Attorney Risa Ferman said Ortiz supports Hillary Clinton and Sean Shurelds supports Barack Obama. She told reporters Monday that the two got into an argument in a Collegeville home Thursday night and Shurelds tried to choke Ortiz. She says Ortiz then stabbed Shurelds in the abdomen.

Is he serious about possibly renaming Wrigley Field? I mean, I know he’s not joking, but is he serious?

Finally, Jay-Z is being named in a reparations suit. That’s right. Jay-Z. Jigga. Hov. Is one of the plantiffs being sued for reparations.

I mean, I generally take a dim view on the practicality of suing for reparations in the first place, but this right here? That’s that capital nonsense.

I guess some things never cease to amaze me. Take, for instance, the fact that certain forms of racism seem to be so pervasive. Intellectually, I already know it, but when I see specific instances, it can be nearly mind-boggling. Last weekend, I saw this report on the 20/20 website where they had two groups of three teenagers, one white and one Black, vandalizing a parked car in a mostly-white neighborhood. Predictably, the police got more calls about the Black vandals than about the white vandals. Surprising to me was the ratio: 10 9-1-1 calls about the Black boys, one 9-1-1 call about the white boys. I might’ve expected a 2:1 ratio, or maybe even 3:1, but 10:1? Wow. But then, that’s part of the experiment. What was even more interesting to me was the unintentional part. WHILE the white chaps were tearin’ up the car, there were some black dudes asleep in a nearby car. THEY got more 9-1-1 calls for being asleep in the car then the white dudes got for vandalizing a car.

Amazing.

But then, you hafta approach stuff like this with a modicum of intelligence. Okay, we know that white folks call the police on Black folks quicker. We been knew that. But is that simply a result of racism, or are there other explanatory variables? I mean, the type of damage they did to the car as the people passed by was quite egregious, so it’s not like they could say they didn’t know anything was wrong, but it would’ve been interesting to see what might’ve happened if they had run a similar experiment in an equivalent Black neighborhood. Do we call the police quicker on white folks, too? That, I think, is a question worth asking.

As has become common, the most interesting part to these news(?) stories is the comments that are posted on the websites. The number of comments, presumably by white readers, that try to nullify the results because there was no corresponding experiment done in a Black neighborhood is astounding. It’s like, ‘yeah, that’s what happened, but it doesn’t really mean anything.’ That’s false. It definitely means something, the question is, what?

That racism still exists is not debatable. I don’t think it’s up for too much discussion that people tend to notice people who are different first. That’s partially why arguments on gentrification tend to focus on white people, as if there aren’t Black gentrifiers. (In some areas, there are more Black gentrifiers, they’re just invisible. But that’s another discussion.) Given that, I think there’s some small explanation of the results, but not enough to totally nullify the results.

One of these days, I’m gonna do an all-time posse cut post, with each participant listed based on his optimum position. When I do, there’s no question who’s gonna be first. It’s gonna be Inspectah Deck. I don’t think there’s ever been a better lead-off than Deck, unless you count Rickey Henderson. And that’s a maybe. But of all his great leads, my favorite (although probably not his best) is the one on Guillotine (Swordz) on Raekwon’s classic, Only Built for Cuban Links.

[Verse One: Inspectah Deck a.k.a. Rebel INS]
Poisonous paragraphs, smash ya phonograph
in half, it be the Inspectah Deck on the warpath
First class leavin mics with a cast
Causin ruckus like the aftermath when guns blast
Run fast, here comes the verbal assaulta
Rhymes runnin wild like a child in a walker
I scored from the inner slums abroad
And my thoughts are razor sharp I sliced the mic from the cord
First they criticize, but now they have become
mentally paralyzed with hits that I devise
Now I testify, the rest is I, Rebel INS
Ya highness, blessed to electrify
with voltage of an eel, truth that I reveal’ll
crush the amateurs who screamed to keep it real
Caesar black down hoodied up and fatigues
Part time minor leagues receive third degrees
Attack like a wolf pack, once I pull back
the God-U, and bust through like a fullback

Cleveland Now – Booker T & The MG’s
The Ultimate (remix) – Artifacts
Verbal Intercourse – Raekwon, f. Ghostface & Nas
September Song – Scatman Crothers
Fear – Sade
She’s Here – Les McCann
Barefoot Sunday Blues – Ramsey Lewis
The Louisville Lip – Eddie Curtis
It’s Impossible – New Birth
Put It On The Line – Lyn Collins
More Than A Woman – Aaliyah
Can’t Truss It – Public Enemy
Got It Bad Y’all – King Tee, f. the Alkaholiks
Better Half – Maceo & All The King’s Men
Olinga – Milt Jackson
Heartbeat – Taana Gardner
React – Erick Sermon, f. Redman

Not in Philadelphia public schools.

Students at area schools may soon be wondering where their burgers, meatloaf and meatballs have gone.

Those staples of school lunch programs everywhere have been yanked from the menu.

An alert went out yesterday to 196 school districts from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture advising them to remove most beef products from their school cafeterias.

The Philadelphia School District, the largest district in the state, was notified Tuesday and immediately banned beef from the schools until further notice.

“We want to be very cautious,” said Fernando Gallard, spokesman for the district. “So we’ve pulled all the beef and all beef products from our schools until we can be 100 percent sure its safe.”

Some of the beef may have originated at a California meat packing plant that slaughtered “downer” cattle and distributed the meat through the the USDA’s School Lunch Program, state officials said.

Hallmark-Westland Meat Packing last week voluntarily recalled 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef products, the largest food recall in United States history. The action was spurred by a video which showed plant workers using forklifts to terrorize sick cattle.

Now that I’m seeing that this is in response to a specific occurrence, I’m feelin a little better about it. At first I thought that this was gonna be for some ostensible health benefits.

As I said some time ago, my two favorite emcees are Redman and Posdnuos. I ran a Redman verse not too long ago, so it’s time to rep for Pos. Only thing is, it’s so hard to pick just one. Plug 1 is to me what 2Pac is to a thug. If I made records, he is what I imagine I would sound like, both topically and in terms of the literal rhymes. Take this little piece from Down Syndrome, for instance. “just a form of protozoa tryin to cross them seas?” Are you serious?

I’m Plug One-of-a-kind, for you people’s delight
And for you sucker MC’s, step to your knees
Ain’t no second thoughts and all your thoughts are from Orion
I can tell that you a devil by them rhymes you’re designin
Your play doggin tactics can’t fuck with my facets
Just because you talk all that glock shit don’t mean you can rock shit!
Your identity’s on freeze
Just a form of protozoa tryin to cross them seas

It’s more about the costume than the dunk, although the fact that he practically seems to go horizontal for a moment doesn’t hurt.

The question is whether Howard can gorilla dunk like this man right here. I’m not askin whether Howard is a player, I’m just wonderin if he can do this:

Sometimes I find myself surprised by the types of things my kids don’t know, but that’s nothing compared with the kinda stuff adults don’t know. Witness this example from an article in the New York Times on The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby: (she overheard this conversation on 9-11-01)

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

See with me, the problem isn’t the fact that people don’t know a given fact, it’s that in many cases, they don’t seem to be bothered by the fact that they don’t know. Ignorance is one thing. Deliberately maintained ignorance, however, is just ig’nant.

I love Erykah Badu and I love album covers, so needless to say, I am positively thrilled with her new video.