So I’m over my homeboy’s crib, leafin through a Newsweek at the end of the Lakers-Denver blowout, and I see they have an article on Sesame Street. First page is the big three: Ernie, Bert, and Big Bird. Second page is Oscar, The Count, and Elmo. Then it just kinda hit me that Elmo is Grover 2.0. Now, I haven’t watched Sesame Street in a good while, so I really have no idea about Elmo’s rise, but I kinda felt some typea way that Elmo stole Grover’s shine.
*****
I recently jumped into the modern era and got a Blackberry. It’s cool and all, but I wasn’t all wowed by it until I put on the google mobile apps and did the speak-n-search. THAT got me siced.
*****
It’s weird that I own Coming To America on DVD, but get excited to see it when it’s on TV. The only other movie that’s even coming close with that, is Baby Boy — with the difference being that I really dislike Baby Boy, but am compelled to watch it over and over.
THE FIRST BULLETIN Tuesday that a Bucks County woman and her 9-year-old daughter had been kidnapped made national news because it was all just so unbelievable – a car crash on a busy street, mysterious men in a black Cadillac and a mom who made a frantic 9-1-1 call while trapped inside a trunk.
Yesterday, the world learned exactly why the saga of 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten and her 9-year-old daughter, Julia Rakoczy, was so incredible.
It just wasn’t true.
And in an ending that was ironic beyond belief, mother and daughter were tracked down last night in America’s ultimate land of make-believe, Orlando’s Disneyworld, where police learned the pair had fled Tuesday on one-way airline tickets with $12,000 in cash.
One time…just for kicks and to make it interesting…can the ostensible assailant be a white man?
Travis Henry has been bumped down the ranks a little bit. Make way for the new king. By some distance. Try this out: 29 years old. 21 kids. 2X w/ four kids in the same year.
I haven’t gotten into the whole waterboarding-torture discussion, because I’m deliberately staying away from the partisan politics of it. But suffice it to say that, having almost drowned on several occasions, that sensation ain’t nothin nice. Understanding that, I give the side-eye to anybody who’s all talkin bout ‘it ain’t torture’ all cavalierly.
Now, I’m not tryina draw a larger implication from this. I don’t know that I would necessarily say that torture is off the table, except for the very pragmatic problem of the fact that somebody will say anything to get the torture to stop. But to argue semantics over whether waterboarding is torture…come on, now. I see your lips movin, but you ain’t sayin nothin.
Born in the comments of a post on the most famous Jackson at False Hustle is this question: who’s the all-time most famous person with the first name Michael? Some contenders:
I’m thinking your top 3 are, in order…
1. Jackson
2. Jordan
3. Tyson
….
- Moore
- Vick
- The Archangel
-
There could be any number of people after that, but the distance between 1 and 2 is great; the distance between 2 and 3 is light years. With the first two, as long as the conversation is understood to be about their field of endeavor, you could get away with only using their first name and everybody would know who you’re talking about. Tyson, on the other hand…if he were to get a one-word appellation, it would probably be Tyson rather than Mike.
Politics is work. Hiphop is music. Hua Hsu seems to get this, although it’s less that it’s “unfair” to expect rap to be “constructive” – implying that it could be — than that it is purely illogical. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever “going,” we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn’t “concern” us in the least.
I’m gonna step outta character and give him the straight co-sign here. At the end of the day, for all the potential we thought it had as a means of societal change, all hip-hop is, and ever was, is a genre of music. The fact that it was more “ours” in the sense that it required less — less training, less equipment (you could get busy with one guy rappin and one guy beat boxing), and less of an organized structure to be heard (all them cats who started out by sellin tapes outta their trunks) — meant that we could tell our stories as we wanted them told (to a degree). That suggests the potential of revolutionary change. BUT, and this is a sofa, that’s all tied to the ability of the music to get you to want to shake your butt.
As somebody who was at one point enthralled by hip-hop, and still likes it a little bit, I can tell you first-hand, positive messages with wack beats and/or rhymes gets no play. And I like to think that my nerdish tendencies make me more likely to go against the grain in that sense. But I’m tellin you: at a certain level, it doesn’t (or didn’t, at least) matter what the rapper was sayin. Either it was dope or it wasn’t. If it was, play on. If it wasn’t, reject and eject. Simple as that.
Now in the defense of hip-hop itself, I don’t think that the architects of “revolutionary” hip-hop actually thought of themselves as revolutionaries, so much as they were putting that ideology out there on a record instead of, or in addition to the normal “i’m-such-a-dope-mc/ shake-your-booty” fare. Chuck D would tell you that he wasn’t a community leader, he made records — but that the visibility and platform that making records offered him also gave him the responsibility to say something he thought was worthwhile. Peep Fear Of A Black Planet, when he said, “I don’t know, hey, I’m just a rhyme sayer…” or Who Stole The Soul, when he was like, “sayin’ I’m wrong for singin a song/ without solutions all the dancers ask the questions (what?)/ try to be the best and let everybody know before I go…” It wasn’t the rapper’s job to come up with a solution. Nor was it the rapper’s job to actualize his ideas in the community. For the rappers who chose to do so, their function was only to articulate some community-minded idea. But even that was a sub-function, because his real job, the one that got him paid, was to sell records.
Nowadays, there are two major camps when it comes to hip-hop: those who lionize it, and those who demonize it. Those who would lionize it are forced to rely on few successful examples of anything beyond increased conversation, and those who demonize it can scarcely be taken seriously because of their desire to attach every ill that affects the Black community to a form that has, as far as most people know, only been around since 1978. Like any of the items they like to bring up — promiscuity, drugs, “stop snitchin”, et cetera — did not exist before hip-hop, or do not persist independently of hip-hop. But here’s the funny part: the only reason the detractors can really hash and rehash their arguments is because even they believe that hip-hop has some sort of power to motivate people, just like its defenders do. The only difference is in the perceived direction of the influence.
Once again: hip-hop is a musical genre. Nothing more, nothing less. My challenge to anybody who would ask more of it is this: is this a question you would ask of jazz or funk or acid rock or punk writ large? If not, ease back. Talmbout some, ‘what is hip-hop adding to hard sciences, social sciences, or mathematics?’ Miss me with that. What is it supposed to? (Cuz if somebody want’s to act new and pull out some record, we can pull examples of hip-hop records that do address elements of those questions individually, but to act like that’s the overall purpose of the genre would be as disingenuous as the initial question.) Or to quote one of my favorite records:
So when a doo-doo punk chump points a finger like a stump
Tell him ’step off, I’m doin’ the Hump.’
There’s something important in there to tease out, but I can’t quite figure out what it is. One of these days, I’ma try to work all these factors in my head into some kind of generalized theory or somethin. Like, I know there’s some connecting factor to what seem to be disparate factors, but I must not be applying myself or somethin, because it’s just not coming.
Because I officially fool with the Stillers, I guess I hafta say somethin about James Harrison.
The problem is not that he’s choosing not to visit the White House. That’s his prerogative. The problem is his reasoning — or at least as he explained it to the world. He doesn’t wanna go to the White House because if the other team had won, they would be the ones going? Does that mean he’s gonna turn down the Super Bowl championship ring or the bonus that goes with winning? Because if the other team had won, they’d be getting those, too. A simple “I don’t want to go,” might have left people wondering, but it wouldn’t have people wondering if he’s a little…off.
Having said that, if I were President, I’m not sure if I would have every championship team visit. I’m pretty sure there’s no way in the world I’d invite the Cowboys up. Maybe if they had a Black owner or somethin. Actually, any team with somebody Black in charge of something big (head coach, owner) that won a championship would get a visit. Other than that, probably Eagles, Stillers, Phils, Sixers…Caps could come up on account of Ovechkin (that dude is the truth)…I don’t know who else.
That’s How I Met Your Mother – Bill Cosby Freak Of The Week – Funkadelic Sophisticated Lady – Art Tatum Can I Kick It (Spirit Mix) – A Tribe Called Quest Under Your Powerful Love – Joe Tex Short Change – Ohio Players Martin’s Funeral – Bill Cosby Jezebel – Boyz II Men Easter Parade – Oscar Peterson Love To Love You Baby – Donna Summers Two Scoops of Raisins – Common Sense Kashimir – Led Zeppelin
