8.31.2004
The RNC: Better with Alcohol!
All the colored folks sitting in from the cameras, the four girl-esque androids jockeying the convention and the browbeating 9/11 imagery: shameless but necessary. Dissing Michael Moore? Why not, I feel like doing it myself sometimes. But biting Saturday Night Live and "Jump?" Offensive. Unforgivably wack. Who writes this stuff, the smoking monkey from down below? What demographic does this appeal to? 1985? Weary time-travelers?
Two words: Ron Silver.
If this qualifies as righteous celebrity, sign me up for the losing team.
Since we are on the subject, here is a different smoking chimp.
Two words: Ron Silver.
If this qualifies as righteous celebrity, sign me up for the losing team.
Since we are on the subject, here is a different smoking chimp.
8.30.2004
Monkey sex, or lack thereof
Your heartbeat sounds like Sasquatch feet...
And your lungs are full of tar, like a chimp who has taken up smoking.
If you told me you were going to the DMV, I would probably ya-ya-ya-yawn in your face. But Barry Bonds can tell me he's going to the DMV, then go nuts with this new camera phone, and my heart is aflutter.
You might have a poem for me, but if it's not about Manny Ramirez, I'm not caring.
(Conversely, who cares about Matt Leinart's favorite professors? Just give Reggie 'President' Bush the damn ball.)
First it was P. Diddy and Ashton Kutcher.
Now it is P. Diddy and Bruce Willis - is that, like, a 'throwback' wingman? By wingman, I mean white-guy-as-accessory.
And your lungs are full of tar, like a chimp who has taken up smoking.
If you told me you were going to the DMV, I would probably ya-ya-ya-yawn in your face. But Barry Bonds can tell me he's going to the DMV, then go nuts with this new camera phone, and my heart is aflutter.
You might have a poem for me, but if it's not about Manny Ramirez, I'm not caring.
(Conversely, who cares about Matt Leinart's favorite professors? Just give Reggie 'President' Bush the damn ball.)
First it was P. Diddy and Ashton Kutcher.
Now it is P. Diddy and Bruce Willis - is that, like, a 'throwback' wingman? By wingman, I mean white-guy-as-accessory.
8.27.2004
summer school of hard knocks
At Sasha's semi-request, I jotted down this long, convoluted and needlessly violent story about one day of glory on the baseball diamond. It is a story of blood, sweat and triples that I have never lived down. Go read it, then come back.
My Tupac piece for the Village Voice's sneaky 'all-political' RNC issue.
I've long maintained that Jadakiss' 'Why?' just might save the world, but this remix featuring Styles, Common and Nas might be able save the world even more. (caught at catchdubs)
Overheard, not at the Enormous Room, but just at home, trying to stay awake during the Eagles-Steelers pre-season tilt:
"They booed Beyonce, which will always stick out in my mind." Duce Staley, on those spirited Philadelphia fans
"He got, like, a thousand stuff." Donovan McNabb, on new 'roommate' Terrell Owens
My Tupac piece for the Village Voice's sneaky 'all-political' RNC issue.
I've long maintained that Jadakiss' 'Why?' just might save the world, but this remix featuring Styles, Common and Nas might be able save the world even more. (caught at catchdubs)
Overheard, not at the Enormous Room, but just at home, trying to stay awake during the Eagles-Steelers pre-season tilt:
"They booed Beyonce, which will always stick out in my mind." Duce Staley, on those spirited Philadelphia fans
"He got, like, a thousand stuff." Donovan McNabb, on new 'roommate' Terrell Owens
8.20.2004
THE REALNESS
My desire to maintain this here weblog sine-waves up and down like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes, usually, I wonder why anyone should care about the banal details of someone's day-to-day, or the zany links I have found, or the meek opinions I hold, or my childhood memories of Rod Carew, or what I might have sort of maybe heard someone else say. But then I am reminded that there is such thing as a living, breathing, important blog, because sometimes, when the world is throwing their arms around you, you just don't have the time or ability to write them all back individually. I met Eddy Zheng in 1999 while working at San Quentin through a prison degree program coordinated by Laney College. I taught 'Writing' and 'Political Science' though, as one might imagine, I was the one who was getting schooled. There's a temptation to romanticize these kinds of moments wherein Person A enters an unlikely Situation X and comes out a changed person, but I can say without reluctance or politics or micro-analysis that folks like Eddy, Lefty, James and Mike were among the warmest people I've ever had a chance to meet, free world or no. Not everyone there was nice, of course, but I guess I was just lucky. Anyhow, before I start berating you with details of sad faces or tattoos or commissary or smuggled candies or denim jumpsuits, I would direct you to Eddy's blog.
"Play the eighth song on the Big L album"
"Courtney, if I ran a business--a bar, a club, or some business--I would pay you just to count my money."
8.16.2004
Props Over There
For some unknown and unknowable reason, I have never directed you to June Kim's site. June is a very dope artist. Some of you may know her from her work for the Australianrockband JET, others for the cover piece she did for this month's Flaunt Magazine. I know her for her sunburned legs and wrenchingly accurate drawings of a 19-year-old Hua kicking a chair from beneath a.....ah never mind. Again, unknown and unknowable.
The Lost Tapes
Not to say that you should, but if you've ever wondered what I thought of the Roots' Tipping Point, here you go. For a variety of reasons that may or may not include ineptitude, weariness, packing, exhaustion, a bad day followed by an even worse day after, more packing, moving, poor diet, more weariness and then more ineptitude, this was a last-minute Slate kill.
8.15.2004
"Speed from first-to-third? You can't teach that."
What is one to do when all the beach balls have been confiscated, or inadverdently hit onto the outfield warning track? How about a garbage bag? How about two garbage bags? The bleachers at Fenway Park can be such an ugly place. But then, between the stray elbows and swears, one witnesses something as impishly simple as people positioning themselves to volley and spike an inflated trash bag, and the profound idiocy of our third base coach and manager don't seem so bad after all. The third bag, though, was just plain gratuitous.
A young relation, on the far-away, hope-it-comes, but-only-if-you-do-well-in-high-school possibility of living on his own: "I can't wait to live by myself. If I had my own apartment, I'd...I'd...it would be awesome. I'd just sit around naked, eating cereal."
A young relation, on the far-away, hope-it-comes, but-only-if-you-do-well-in-high-school possibility of living on his own: "I can't wait to live by myself. If I had my own apartment, I'd...I'd...it would be awesome. I'd just sit around naked, eating cereal."
