I AM SUCH A GIRL (“album promo brings tears to my eyes” edition)

KEN-DRICK!

Here we go, a little emotion on a Sunday morning flowing through my girly brain, courtesy of RapRadar posting this video of Kendrick Lamar's show last night at the Music Box. Ken's komrade Game showed up for R.E.D. album promo  moral support of course, and proceeded to konvince me that he's a pretty nice guy - which is basically a big manipulation tactic by Game to make me forget about his musical output and that time he seared my eyes with his “acting.” But I'm relaxed. I'm just going with it. It's Sunday and I'm not religious but I do pray for peace, no traffic accidents, lots of ice cream, some freaking tight lyrics - and also for things that remind me of how lovely humanity can be sometimes. On with it, then -

Top 5 emotional girly moments in the video, Cuz! (my set affiliations will likely fluctuate throughout this post, and anyway it doesn't matter because at this point green is the most important color in all our lives, yes?):

1. THAT SUIT. So much hash-tag-ery occurring in the building on Saturday night, of course, but also so many Hundreds shirts, I'm sure of it! SO MANY. And yet look at KL in his nice black jeans and sport coat, dressed as if he's going to a completely different function than everyone else. “It's Saturday night, you'll probably wear that shit to church,” AMG said one time to a young lady in the club. Ken's show was Friday night, plus he seems like a super clean dude who doesn't wear things more than once, I mean he really keeps it tight and right, so he'll probably wear that outfit just for this show alone. Then tomorrow he'll have it cleaned and nicely pressed. Looking good, sir. And I know I keep saying it but Kendrick Lamar is just a really fresh name. You should run for President with that name, young man.  

2. REMINDERS FROM JAYCEON. I know where I live, both because I have an adequate grasp of geography and because I listen to Power 106 for a good 70% of my driving time and that means constant “west coast/Cali/LA” drops are flooding the inside of my Civic, however: Game saying THIS IS THE MOTHERFUCKIN WEST COAST in that nice rasp of his (sorry; I'm a girl, remember?) and continuing with I hate when they say that the west coast ain’t poppin just feels good to a young lady from the greater LA metropolitan area. I know my mom loves me but it's still nice to hear it from her. I know I'm a nice person but it's still nice to hear it from my buddies. On a very similar note: OH MY GOODNESS, GAME! YAY! This IS the west coast! I exclaim. Oh Game, I hate it when they say the west coast ain't poppin too! We agree about some things and that is nice! I like some of your songs even though my blog would tell you otherwise!

(tomorrow morning I'll wake up and be embarrassed I wrote those last 2 things. I like the Scoop DeVille stuff, and I like that “Red Nation” but, I must be honest with myself, that's more because of the Eazy snippet and because of Cool & Dre's dexterity with shuffle-y drum programming than because of anything Game said or did in any of those songs. Ah well.)

3. I LOVE YOUS FROM JAYCEON. “I love you,” Game says to Kendrick, with his arm around him in that way that men do - affectionate but still keeping the body in a guarded position should a scrap occur even though you know a scrap's not going to occur, it's just that men have to make it look that way because of the limits put on them by our culture when they want to express emotion. “Dre, I love you. Snoop, I love you. Jay Rock, Scoop, Kurupt, Roscoe, King Tee, Pooh, Eiht, Tyson Chandler, Venus and Serena. Even if you're from Lynwood or Willowbrook, I love you. Skinny-lady blogs, I love you most of all. Apartment 680, Echo Park, birds in the sky, old records, the NFL about to start, cookies, ice cream, puppies. Logan, I love you. I love you - all of you.” Aww! Hold me! It's promo, all promo, but it's still heartwarming - like when Game volunteered at the animal shelter last week and provided updates about it, remember? “Sparky is a lab mix and has the nicest big brown eyes. ALL ANIMALS deserve good homes! ADOPT!  #REDAlbum.”

4. PUNS FROM JAYCEON. “One thing me and (Ken) got in COMPTON...” Teehee. 

5. SPECIAL APPEARANCE BY DANTE, WHAT IN THE FUCK. Kendrick's a little too preachy at times, dropping some important historical names in verse without any real gravity behind it, criticizing his generation for sippin cough syrup like it's water, blah blah, but he just turned 24 so that's forgivable. (I was a realll pretentious piece of work at that age.) “Who gives a fuck?” Ken also says, “We never do listen unless it comes with an 808.” Not sure if I'm included in the “we” but just for argument's sake, let's say I am - and Kendrick, my dear, what's your point? 808 taught me everything I need to know about car stereos and sex. But holy Christ, fucking hell, Mos Def is at his show in a sharp red button-up and shiny shoes, oh I just realized Mos is the only other dude in the place going to the same fancy function as Ken, I mean they're in those matching sport coats, and people, my affection for these two men in this moment trumps all. (This is the video's second-greatest moment - almost as aww-inducing as the crowd chanting Ken's name at the beginning, but not quite).

Bonus emotion: The part in the video right after it cuts out, when Ken tosses it to Kurupt and he does a version of “Ohh!” that makes everyone in the audience rip their hair out and scream, it's so incredible they can't believe it's actually happening.

Bonus bonus emotion (not really emotion, though - just a funny thing that fits in here): Nobody is apparently down-er than the Los Angeles Almanac, the website on which this map of Compton appears. CITY IN RED BELOW, SOO WOOOO, etc. etc. 

 (No color added for emphasis. Nothing added for emphasis. The LA Almanac just knows).

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Reppin hard for that LA Chamber of Commerce (also, there is a human named Spanky DeBrest, and audio from that CoFlow show).

Goodness, my dear, of course apartment 680 is still the finest place in Los Angeles to spend time - the Rawkus and Stax stacks, the many Wax Po issues that you may hold and look at after you've washed your hands (please), the infamous big blue couch, an afghan made by my grandma's own two hands (hi Bill!), a bag of cherries from Vons. 680's been able to maintain its relevance in a time of newly-opened bookstores downtown and sunny days that make the sidewalk sparkle, ready for me to walk down it in a sundress while the “Hyperbolicsylablahblah” instro plays in my head. You simply must stop by apartment 680 during a trip to my city, Los Angeles, as it is the best place in town second-best place in town after the Battle Station recreation a lovely place to visit, third-best place in town once you've been to the recreated Battle Station and this fantastic new bookstore at 4th and Spring with 1000-ft. high ceilings and some sort of dead animal's head on the wall.

Everybody knows you have to be stompin if you're born and raised in Compton, Big Sean keeps claiming West LA, of course you got the Fairfax contingency, there's scary stuff in some places but you ain't gotta worry if you stayin north of Wilshire, and half my almost-famous rap ex-boyfriends have falsely claimed Nickerson Gardens, but let's not forget downtown, a noisy paradise, tribute to masonry - it's tall and cool and well-built, much like myself. And The Last Bookstore is there. They didn't have the Robb Report, but I made it through, and nothing I bought was more than $4! Lovely! Then I wrote a post about it in which I listed the books I bought in order of how excited I am to read them.




7. Alice McDermott, Charming Billy. Our protagonist Billy was charming, of course - but the back cover tells me he was also a guy from Queens who loved poems and had a bit of a drinking problem, which is a slam-dunk in terms of getting me to take my dress off (sorry, Mom).

Would this book's title make a good mixtape name? Yes indeed! This is obviously what Danze was talking about when he started dropping hints a few months ago.



6. Alice Munro, Hateship, Courtship, Friendship, Loveship, Marriage. You can't really go wrong with Alice's stuff, and I liked The Love of a Good Woman. Short story collections are my weakness, as are stories set to music and told by masked, monotoned big-boned gentlemen from New York.

“His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.”

— Munro, speaking for me when asked to describe my feelings about Daniel Dumile. Thanks, mama.

Would this book's title make a good mixtape name? No, it would not; it's too long and a bit of a mouthful - and that, coincidentally, is what she said.

5. TIE:

Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn. While its title is the same as that Ghosty/ODB buddy-cop soundtrack album that nobody ever heard (Rifkind shelved it in '94), I would have bought this book anyway because Lethem seems to be a good dude who would probably forgive my shameless posting of pics from the bathing suit gallery. Motherless Brooklyn also won something called the “Gold Dagger” award for crime fiction, thereby making it the book with the most tangential Wu associations currently in my collection. (Gold Dagger is that Rae mixtape from '03). And Lethem's first book was called Gun, with Occasional Music, a name that is just begging to become a mixtape title.

Edward P. Jones, The Known World. If I paid better attention to Zinn I'd probably have known that there were days when free black men owned slaves. But who has time to read some wacky liberal's version of history. Who has the tiiiiime. I am a busy lady. Those bathing suits and records aren't gonna buy themselves, you know. I'm curious to see whether this one's any good, because at first glance it seems like it must be pretty bad, just a terrrrrrible concept for a story - like, oh goodness, I don't know, Tarantino's latest move of cinema stuntery, making a feature about slavery? Just off the dome, you know, that's what hit me: QT's future film, the apex to be reached in the realm of bad ideas. However, Jones' book has gotten great reviews and it does sound like an interesting tale (former slaveowner leaves his human “property” to his widow; it is unclear whether she will free them; narrative tension ensues). It's been called “a sprawling story built around a morally bankrupt social institution,” which is not about the music industry but about slavery (that's the same thing!, Prince would argue, because he's turned into somebody old and cranky).




4. James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That title would fit in nicely at the top of this blog, directly under the header, to prepare my readers for the massive amounts of MC groin-area-riding that I do so lovingly in my posts. The phrase is from the Bible, a fact I was unaware of due to being raised by heathens in a southern California weed den. (I loved this upbringing, but that doesn't mean I can't be a tiny bit wistful for my non-childhood of going to church and hearing all those fantastical tales and beautiful phrases in the Bible).

This one was an instant purchase once I held it and turned a few pages, because the book's just nice looking, beautifully laid out - a mix of straight narrative form with some poetry and photos, which is what happens when you get a professional photographer (Evans) and writer with an unfair level of skill (Agee - poet, film critic, journalist, etc.) to collaborate. These 2 wrote about poor white people before Yelawolf made it the hot new thing; it's a classic and I've never read it, so I'll read it now because it's the morally appropriate thing to do. Also I am vain and don't want to appear foolish; if someone asks me if I've read it but I have to say no, I'll be embarrassed, like what happened with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance until I finally cracked it open at age 16. “The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you,” Pirsig informs us - the machine, of course, being your motorcycle, your earthly human body, your old Rawkus records, or any number of breaks you have in your collection. “There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.” Amen, brother.

Would or would not be a good mixtape name? Would! It sounds like a '90s-rap-music-homage mix that someone would do, then email me about to try to get me to post it. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, hosted by JuJu and Craig Mack. Valiant effort, sirs, but the only '90s-homage mix I will ever recognize is that time 9th Wonder was at the Do-Over. It was perfect. I'm writing this from my spaceship that orbits Saturn. Earth had nothing more to offer me after I heard his set. 



3. James Campbell, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. Chosen because James Baldwin managed to be dignified, all the time, goddammit, despite living in a country with hostility toward gayness and blackness, and despite having to listen to contemporary Norman Mailer yammer on about the coolness of blackness (and generally thinking about coolness way too much to ever be cool). I salute you, James Baldwin: professional dignified person, excellent writer, and, most importantly, ideological road-paver for Lil B.


Talking at the Gates would be a good mixtape title, though only in the right hands (Monch, Scarface, Banner); Chris Brown would try to get away with it as a theme tape (songs about his relationship with Jesus; “the gates” being those of Heaven) and then I would be forced to hire someone to assassinate him for being such a bratty, pretentious moron. It would be the morally appropriate thing to do.



2. Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. At #2 because I'm told Mr. Jones had some type of career as a music producer, and I enjoy reading about such men. He also had a fondness for, shall we say, ladies of a certain... look. Tupac hated that, but I happen to think it's pretty OK since I have this particular look! I win! Oh - except that being a blonde-haired nubile female beginning a romance with Quincy with the hope that he will treasure you even as you age and your body becomes less than stunning is some pretty fierce delusion. He makes babies at a rate only rivaled by Rod Stewart, or maybe Shawn Kemp? Or no, wait - Cromartie? But you can't fault Peggy Lipton or Nastassja Kinski or ______ (blonde nubile female, take your pick) for wanting to be near the dude, or at least I can't; like Chappelle said when they asked him to justify his claim that Michael Jackson was innocent of any crime: “He made Thriller. HE MADE THRILLER.” Who doesn't want to sit at the kitchen table and eat eggs and toast with such a human, even if you know there's heartache coming up when you are inevitably replaced by the next lady in his life?




1! Graham Marsh and Glyn Callingham, The Cover Art of Blue Note Records. Nothing in it is as stunning as the image on that new Adrian Younge album, but still! It's Blue Note covers! Of course it's #1 on the list. Random page I flipped to that happened to seal the deal: Dexter Gordon, Our Man in Paris. I mean, c'mon. How could I pass it by. “You're coming home with me, darling baby,” I said to the book, clutching it to my (very attractive) bosom.





- Another Hit It and Quit It jazz edition just feels right to listen to after a bookstore adventure. It's just really beautiful, plus I learned about the existence of one Spanky DeBrest. Baddest name in all of jazz-cat-ery.

Part 1.

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Part 2.

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- Joe Tex - “Buying a Book.”

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- COMPANY FREAKING FLOW. Ten steps Eight steps ONE STEP to Perfection. (that step is clicking the link, silly). I believe a certain concertgoer put it best on the evening of July 16, 2011 A.D.:






The Last Bookstore
453 S. Spring St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 488-0599

Pros: Good books; cheap books; AC; it's about 2 miles from apt. 680; staff leave you alone when you're walking and browsing; “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” started to play on their sound system right when I walked in. This really happened.
Cons: None. It's heaven.











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Dopamine - Sunset & Rosemont.

And then there are those times when you are feeling sad because cops talk to you all the time, and then you go into 7-11 and they're playing “Viva Tirado” by El Chicano and all of a sudden nothing's wrong.




If neither this above nor this here (jefe, maton, father of Scoop DeVille) moves you then you are a soulless individual and I cannot allow you ever to see me naked.







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I'm in love with my car radio, episode 34,000

I'm your Internet girlfriend and I don't ask a lot of you, other than daily shoulder rubs and you laughing at my jokes. And every once in a while I want you all to pay close attention when I start to go on and on about individual songs on popular radio. This is as close to egotism as I get.

(PS, I'd also like everything I do to be written about in Futura Bold Italic against a red background, like in a Barbara Kruger piece or a Supreme anything. Other than that, I am humble and lack egotism).

On the mighty 101 freeway this evening, I heard some fine pop music; 64 miles, 94 minutes, 10 radio stations, and 7 “Bottoms Up”s later (SEVENNNN, I swear to god, I counted), I have made my selections and here they are: the best “driving back to LA from Mom's after Thanksgiving” songs and what they mean to me. What they mean to all of us.






“This Christmas,” Donny Hathaway. And so it was decreed on this day that the only Christmas songs allowed in apt. 15 are this Donny H. classic, “Christmas in Hollis,” that Pogues one, Prince's “Another Lonely Christmas,” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with Darlene Love's crybaby vocals ripping up the insides of my heart (the effect it was supposed to have, probably because Spector was poking her with a hot wire hanger just outside the booth to get the best performance out of her).

When I’m between salon visits, my hair starts to turn reddish because my highlights are fading. It is during these times that several people have commented that I resemble noted American pornographic thespian Faye Reagan. I don’t see it, other than you can see my freckles when I don't wear makeup. But that’s ok, because she is pretty. I'll take it. Sometimes I also get Anne Hathaway with lighter hair, because we both have those too-large eyes (baby deer lost in the forest). “Anne with highlights,” my mom says. I'll take that too, because Anne Hathaway is pretty and because the comparison makes me feel close to Donny Hathaway. Anyway, Donny's version of this song is the gold standard, the beginning and the end, the only one, pure, uncut, straight from the fields of Afghanistan. This is the ONLY version of this song you’re allowed to listen to. I mean it. I will turn this car around. You can have Kanye and your other false prophets; I'll take Donny and his quiet suffering, his turtlenecks, and his doomed, beautiful voice.




“Bottoms Up,” Trey Songz. This was played 7 doggone times during my time on the freeway tonight, you guys. I guess the evil little playlist-compiling elves at ClearChannel were thinking that that this would be good to drink to at your uncle's house. I was mad at the frequency with which I heard it, and yet I have not lost any appreciation for the song’s woooahhh-oh-ohhh intro, with Trey doing his moaning Kels impression*, the drumroll at 00:47, the double-timed “up”s during the last part of the hook, or the way the whole song is put together. Nice job, KaneBeatz. I hate Nicki’s verse, though, where she does babytalk and starts off with a list of different kinds of booze. It’s like in “Monster,” when Jay just lists a bunch of scary things (demons, ghouls) and then asks what they have in common. UHHH THAT’S NOT RAPPING, SHAWN.


*I can sing this whole part, with no breaks or pitchiness. I also nail every single I know in “Ain't No Sunshine” whenever it comes on the radio. BREATH CONTROL.

Vince, who I swear I've seen around my neighborhood, getting his American Spirits at the store on my block.

“Linus and Lucy,” Vince Guaraldi. Of course this is burned into our childhood memories, the Peanuts kids dancing to it, but please disregard that and listen to the whole thing with fresh ears, as it is lovely and trance-inducing. My brother also informed me that this song powered a Pat Duffy skate part. The only other jazzy tune I know of in the history of skate parts was “Traneing In” in Video Days. And now, as always, I am thinking about how much fun being a boy must be. Girls don’t have that gene that makes you guys want to hurl yourselves off of things, and that’s fine. But every time I see a good skate video part, or hear anything from It’s Dark and Hell is Hot, I get jealous and think being a dude sure seems like it would be fun. Luckily, being a girl is fun enough for me 'cause we get to wear cuddly lounge-y cashmere underthings*. Also fun: this song's meter changes while battling traffic at the 101-405 interchange. That's some joy in my Japanese coupe right there, you blockhead.

*































want/need. Thank you in advance, based god.







“Sunny,” Bobby Hebb. I never said a proper goodbye to Bobby and I should have. But hey, have you ever heard James Brown’s hot burning fire version of this song? You should.



(best YouTube comment:

“Lady Gaga, you piece of crap. Watch God's incarnation of groove, bow down to Sir unbeatable electrifying unreachable Mr. James Brown and repent, you good for nothing illuminati bitch.”

I’d say it were time for this person to attend anger management class, except I completely agree with him.)




“Shotgun,” Jr. Walker & the All-Stars. They say guns clap just like people do, right? I done been down this road before, all pleased with myself for realizing that Jr. Walker and Dilla both decided to call one of their songs “Shotgun.” Must be a Detroit thing. This one’s about high heels and shooting somebody, just like all the best Clipse songs, and of course it all makes wonderful and perfect sense.




“The Return of the D.ST,” De La. 1) Handclappy intros are the best. 2) If something’s, uh, coming, it’s always a nice touch to announce it. Just a couple times, though—if you start saying it too far in advance, and too often, the other person who's there stops believing you. HI MOM.

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“No Hands,” Waka. Stripper songs, stripper songs, guess which one of your favorite nerdy lady bloggers loves stripper songs. All we ladies want in a man is 1) a combination of Wale in “No Hands,” 2) Obama, and 3) our dad/grandpa/nice uncle. That is, someone who sweats out weaves, has a powerful presence without resorting to shouting, and tells us Don't ever change, you're perfect and beautiful, but still calls us on our shit since someone always agreeing with you is boring. It took me a little while to give in to Waka and his lovely cheekbones, but here I am. (Thanks for saving me a seat, you guys; nice to see you all here!)

I have many questions about life. So many questions. How come nobody told me about the MF Based mixtape, for example. When will Nipsey and Wiz eat a cheeseburger (so skinny, those boys!). How come Jay-Z never did a verse in which he referred to himself as having x amount of JIGGA WATTS (Back to the Future on TV earlier today). Where is Jeezy. Why doesn't Plies go by Algernod Washington instead because that is a far superior name. Whyyy. And finally: how long will oddballs rule the rap game, bodying everything and everyone with their siren songs. Rap is only going to get weirder in the world in which we live, our own Theatre of the Absurd. I cannot wait.




“All I Want is You,” Miguel feat. J. Cole. All we ladies want when a dude is mean to us is for him to lose some sleep and be very very sorry. There should be some karmic payback for every cruel deed committed, just to make some sense of this crazy world. This song’ll get that estrogen flowing, like when Gaga comes on the playlist loop at H&M and me and all my sistren among the racks of $25 skirts have that tiny, private moment of joy and sing along in our heads.

I wonder sometimes/I wonder if I was wrong/Tryna do right by you got me here/Now all I am is alone. Ah yes. Of course. I recognize an “I cheated; I'm an idiot” lyric when I hear one. 'Cause her eyes, and those hips/And that ass don’t compare at all/And at best, all they do is distract me. Goddamn right; perhaps you should not have strayed from the hips and ass that were waiting for you at home, young man. Aw damn, I love it though. The pathos. That heavy bass drum and the sad echo applied to the vocals makes my progesterone level spike 50%. Salaam Remi produced this, along with “Fu-Gee-La,” and I therefore love him forever and ever amen.




“I Got 5 On It” (original), The Luniz. Much like how I become an honorary Latina every time “Suavecito” comes on, I am suddenly and without warning straight from Alameda County whenever I hear some Luniz. I believe it was my beloved OG rap crush El-P who once said Just because radio don't play you/Doesn't mean that you great. The inverse of this is also true, and has become the theme for this whole list--just 'cause you hear it on the radio don't mean it's not great. The remix of this one has Dru Down's entertaining You can bend her over the table/But be sure that you bring my stallion back to my stable, a callous reference to the trafficking of women's bodies, but unlike people at the Voice, I have the ability to separate my real life from my enjoyment of song lyrics (sorry, I can't let this Odd Future thing go). The remix also has Richie Rich's verse, and Shock G's. But the original has the superstylish Pass it 'cross the table like ping pong, I'm gone/Beat-ing my chest like King Kong. Only it sounds like gaowwwn, and Yuk rhymes it with King Kawwnnng. The line I got more growing pains than Maggie never has gotten enough love in this lady's opinion, either.



In 1996 Oakland, Ebonics was introduced, the concept spread throughout the country, and everybody in America either laughed or got upset. In 1995 Oakland, The Luniz put E-40 on their remix and he became a young Logan's after-hours language tutor--teaching me to think differently about English, like Robin Williams did for those kids in Dead Poets Society.










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I said hey hey hey/What you got to say

Hollywoooooooood!

Hollywood swingin'!



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I LAUGHED, I CRIED. Ron-Ron thanked his psychiatrist. Adam Morrison bragged that he now has twice as many rings as one K. Garnett. Bow Wow and Jesus Shuttlesworth underestimated the power of Queensbridge which is just so foolish. Really, that's like trying to win a championship series with jumpshots instead of consistently scoring down low. I mean, how dumb can you be.








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D. Fish's Isaac Hayes beard disappoints. USC. Rap underperformers. Drake's stranglehold on the hearts of journalists. Goo.

• That beard, my favorite beard on a human this side of Frederick Jay Rubin, could not out-play Shrek and Donkey. Sigh. That's not how we practiced it, gentlemen. And now I'm going crazy, I'm sitting alone in my 4-cornered room, starin at candles. My mother's always stressin I ain't livin right. It's fuckin messed up, you guys, this mind of mine.


Isaac Hayes - “Hung Up On My Baby.” (my baby = the Lakeshowww)

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(It was either this or Sam & Dave's “Hold On, I'm Comin,” produced by Mr. Hayes but I would have failed you if I did not mention the sexual fervor that is Steve Cropper's guitar, which you really should listen to like it's the first time and take in that title, that chorus, like the promise that it is. Sweet Jesus, what a song. Makes my heart skip a beat, I tell you.)













• Presenting, for one night only, in all its glory - Thank you, Barry Switzer: the story of a girl, her blog, and a pasty old football coach turned TV analyst who stood up for a scrappy LA team.


Everybody hates the popular/beautiful girl, even if she's really nice. They dislike her success. Nobody could be blessed that much. No fair. Let's be mean to her. Haters to the left, and then form an orderly line out the door and around the block. Such is the tale of the football squadron at the mighty University of Southern California, clearly the only school in NCAA history to have the thick, murky waters of cashmoney sin lapping up on the shores of pure and true academia/rah-rah sportsmanship. For shame, Mike Garrett and Pete Carroll! Reggie Bush was allowed to drive a car and live in a house?

OH WAIT. That's only what we're supposed to believe. I'm far from a Reggie Bush fan (he's got a bitchy and Napoleonic air), but the shoulders of Reggie Bush are currently being burdened with blame and it's not fair. If you see something, say something, right? Barry Switzer notes that Reggie Bush getting cars and cash is the norm rather than the anomaly, it's been that way for years, and it'll just keep happening when you have 19-year-olds padded up on TV, making cash registers sing for athletic departments across the land. Switzer's comments are my most recent addition to the long, long list of things that people should just say out loud and stop omitting. Feel the power of truth. Rihanna's voice is not good. Glen Davis' eyes are too close together. Fucked-up Eminem was better than the sober version. Stop the charade already.

I have no reason to like Barry Switzer, since I'm ambivalent about the Sooners and I wish the Cowboys nothing but malice and a fiery end off a tall cliff, but credit has to be given here because it's due. He is exactly right here. Agents and Escalades aren't the problem but a symptom of a larger problem/issue and I wouldn't even really call that issue a problem. The kids in uniforms play for free and they yield millions of dollars for their schools, millions of merch units sold, millions of viewers on TV, and make working-class girls like me want to go to those schools and walk in their halls. Although there are Division I coaches with better names (1. Izzo; 2. Stoops), Switzer’s on-point distillation of this issue renders him Today’s Winner. Nice one, Switzy.


O'Jays - "For the Love of Money." Lookie, it's a pun! Orenthal's name! I RULE.

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Gamble plus Huff plus bass plus wah-wah. Pretend it's your first time hearing this; demand the DJ put this on when you come into the club, and I'll see you from across the room and swear you're Nino Brown. I mean, the resemblance is really uncanny.







• Things I wish were better, rap-wise:

Minaj—love her and the way she p-pushes it real good, and the ludicrous amount of fun she seems to be having on the microphone is only rivaled by Chris Bridges, but I thought she was above the “Look At My Ass” hustle (which is a hustle I strongly wish I had thought of, as it is highly successful). The debate of why we hold the "Look at my ass; I'm classy" girl (Beyonce, Rihanna) and the "Look at my ass because it's Warholian" girl in higher regard than girls like Nicki shall be deferred at this time.

Why is everyone acting like those Big Boi songs are good? (These ones). They're too busy, the beats are too crowded, the choruses are dumb. More Organized Noize, please. More playin tennis with Don Cornelius, please. We playin on the moon, bitch. PACE.
“General Patton” and “Shutterbugg” aside, I demand better. His record's still .500 at this point. I swear, sometimes I think you guys only like stuff because your friends do.

Q-Tip is annoying me steadily. The 16-year-old me deep inside is pouting.

CNN's "Let's Get Money." Let's leave the throwaway tracks thrown away, Nore, mi querido. It's called manners.

That J.Cole, not fantastic. It's called “Higher” and while I admire its aspiration, it does not take me there. I mean, that title is simply not a reality. Are all biracial MCs on some sort of wackness kick? (please see next bullet point, below)









• I know way too many Drake songs right now/That I didn’t know last year. I blame bloggers, the entire province of Ontario, and Jimmy Iovine. Drake is only useful as a plot device (heroine vs. antagonist whom she hates and would never sleep with, but what's this? Sometimes she finds herself humming that pretty part in his hit song "Find Your Love" [the third find your heart in the chorus, with the key change], though this has less to do with Drake than it does with the production power of melodic princes No ID and K. West).

Caramanica’s piece about him was wonderful, of course, but did not succeed in what I believe was an attempt to make Drake a sympathetic character in the saga that is Pop Music. There's talk of his emo mastery, of course, except that I'd like to mention that everyone signed to Rhymesayers is superior in this regard. His alleged handsomeness is cited, of course, but he just can't compete with T.I., the true beauty queen of popular rap (those perfect white teeth!). The most memorable things I took away from the article are that Drake’s worldview is that Girls Are Mean (Rihanna) and he once leased a Phantom and parked it in front of the damn house even though his mom couldn’t pay the bills. OMG, you can’t handle it. The realness. It’s too real for you. There's some foolishness of youth that we've all gone through, yes, but that's just offensive. He sure was gauche for a rich kid.

And ha!, look at this, the end of this salacious story (last few lines)! Even Drake’s fans are the worst, lamest kind of criminals--Van Der Sloot, failed pro poker player and alleged girl-killer, loves Drizzy's rhymes, his realness. Everybody knows having your music incite the killing of a Texas state trooper is true hiphop. I'm getting tired of spelling it out for you every time.














• Goo is 20 this month, and Kim and Kim's husband and Lee and Steve are still ten times more hiphop than everybody except Scott-Heron, Crazy Legs, the melodic backbone that holds up “Trans-Europe Express,” and Rick Rubin's NYU dorm room. I don't have any cool older cousins who introduced me to this record. I had to learn the shit all on my own. (I'm kind of bitter, but hey. It built character. Made me the woman I am today. Etc.)


“Dirty Boots.” I left this one out of my Best Opening Track rant of twentyten.

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Yeah but at least my team's guard doesn't look like Bow Wow, and other news.

All Khaled does is win; my darling Lakers, unfortunately, do not live by this same credo. If you are an NBA official, you woke up this morning to a whole city--my city--hating you. Congrats. The metaphor here is something like this, if you're a whistle-happy man in zebra stripes:
LA is the rest of the world, or maybe just the UN, and you're Israel, just fucking up all over and not bothering to even pretend to be bothered or ashamed 'cause you know you've got America bankrolling you. And there's a Dick Bavetta in there somewhere.

Anyway, everyone needs a credo. They are easy to live by and help organize your daily activities. All Channel Live did, remember, was spark mad izm. All Stevie does is think about you. All me & Kellsies do is break up to make up. And all I do is try to fill up the emptiness after a home-court loss with videos of foxy beatmakers, a DJ Premier story that makes me weepy, and Fauvism as a platform for me to bemoan the existence of Drake.






• Oh No loves his big brother, grew up about 5 minutes from me, and is a proud purveyor of that “raw, nasty, gangrene, go jump off a bridge, toilet bowl music. Disgusting, nasty.” That’s what he's about.

Usually my credo is “If you have to say it, it's probably not true.” But in this case, it's true: he makes disgusting, nasty, old-lady-next-to-you-on-a-bus-bench-about-to-drop-dead, flesh-eating bacteria, dirty, oozing, nasty instrumental shit. Sorry, Mom. OX CITAAAYYY.










• Reef the Lost Cauze, featuring OH MY GOD, Kool G Rap and RA!! - “Three Greats.”
First Prize, Most Accurate and Succinct Song Title, June 2010.


Courtesy of Robert H. Unkut. (or whatever his middle initial is)







• Just before Guru died, Premier visited him in the hospital and performed some kind of last rites that I'm ill-equipped to comment on. So here's a description of the event, handled with classy restraint, from XXL:

(Premier) stayed a short time (in the hospital room). Five, seven minutes, he says, before a nurse came in and he left. “I just wanted to tell (Guru) how much I loved him, period,” he says. “Whether he could hear me or not, I know somewhere he heard me. It was ill. His eyes were almost half open, and it was like he almost was awake, but he wasn’t… I took my Gang Starr shirt off, and I took it and rubbed it against his body, so he can feel the logo. I knew how much Gang Starr meant to him. Even if he moved on to another chapter in his life, I know how much Gang Starr was important to him. We did way too much to just completely block it out and act like it doesn’t exist.”

As a gentle segue,

• Today in Melody and Beautiful Things:

Joy of Cooking - “Closer to the Ground.” I'm always looking for this in a round black circular format; I'm never finding it. This includes yesterday. (I got an old, ollllld, possibly-original copy of Prison Oval Rock, though. It is beautiful and it sounds like the Roots Radics are playing right there in my tiny apartment when I put it on. First Place, Album of the Month, June 1985. And June 2010.)















• Keith Richards is releasing an album of Rastafarian spirituals, and I can't even make fun of the fact that it's him doing it because it's really quite a nice thing.

Richards became friends with rocksteady deity Justin Hinds when he visited Jamaica in the '70s. Lots of jamming ensued, plus spiritual awakening on Richards' part--less like the Beatles in India (kid stuff), and more like if MC Serch became a Five Percenter. And then a few years later Peter Tosh got underused in a Stones video, but overall there's been surprisingly little reggae-poaching in the Stones' catalog. The band, I'm guessing, gave up any Jamaican style they had attempted due their inability to compete with something called The Clash.

Hinds and lesser-known local musicians comprised the group, called Wingless Angels. The sessions took place organically, says Richards. There was no planning when they began to play, and the Nyabinghi angels lifted everybody up on a glorious, fluffy cloud of week smoke.

The last batch of recordings are from 2004; Hinds died in 2005, and proceeds from the sales of the albums go to his family. “[Wingless Angels play deliberately at just slightly under heart rate. The drumming goes deeper than your bones. It's marrow music,” Richards adds. This is a beautiful phrase that will for sure show up in a future blog post. If he came up with it, I'm shocked and pleased that someone with a morphine-addled brain could be so damn descriptive.

Next up, Ras Keith takes on daggering, translated for white American baby boomers like my mom, original bashment gyal.

“He has no wish to offer other people anything other than calm.” - Socialist politician Marcel Sembat, on Matisse.

• Henri Matisse said some pretty amazing things in his day and volunteered to go to war. His gaunt face and steezy beard-and-stripes combo also set the standard for personal appearance that every dude in my neighborhood is trying to emulate circa 2010.

A relentless self-critic with overly anxious tendencies whom I have clearly based my entire persona on, Matisse said, “Black is not only a color but also a light.” Matisse also said, “You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete” (which I'll thank you to keep in mind every time I point out how surprised I am that the beauty of Ruffin's voice could be ravaged by cocaine years later), and my personal favorite, “My curves are not crazy.” OUI, HENRI! C'est si bon!

Matisse was worried about the possible outcome of WWI and felt bad about not serving. He signed up, but failed the medical exam. He appealed; he was denied. Terrible, heavy guilt ensued. His mother was trapped in northeast part of France, as the Germans had occupied it; painter friends were in the trenches. “Contributing prints to fundraising efforts for civilian prisoners of war did something to assuage his feelings of guilt, (as he was) ‘sickened by all the upheaval to which I am not contributing.’” This makes me think of current artists—not painters, but the ones wielding microphones who live in the various ventricles of my warm, loving heart, as well as the ones I despise. It's comical to imagine Drake holding a firearm, right? Panting and elbowing his way through muddy trenches. My imagination won't allow it. Did you know he did Wal-Mart the favor of appearing in one of their videos, thereby increasing their quarterly profit? SO GULLY. The masculine-lite appeal that Drake exhibits is common among most current musicians, though. They are all so skinny and spoiled. Except those M.O.P. boys and Sean P--I think they'd be very good at war.



Heltah Skeltah feat. Smif-n-Wessun - “W.M.D.” Song of the summer, 1996! PS, a rap song with a good Sean Bell line will always get posted here, just always.

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.

À bout de souffle.

A few things that make me choke up a little
(for reasons that I explain in probably too much detail):




• Bon anniversaire, “Breathless”!

Jump cuts, natural lighting, and improvised plotting; the French New Wave, I see now, has clearly provided the template for me as I blog my way through life and attempt to tell stories in an entertaining fashion.

Truffaut vs. Godard is yet another battle within the heads of nerds that seems terribly important if it's your head or the head of someone in your nerd crew, but it's a battle that most outsiders yawn at. This-thing-vs-that-thing, clash-of-the-titans bickering by members of each titan's respective fans is too emotion-laden to ever be a grown-up debate. I've seen this before, many times. Innervisions or Talking Book? Hathaway or Cooke? Champion or Polo (in '93)? Shut up, yawn, and nobody cares—unless of course you want to discuss these things with me, in which case please be at apt. 15 by 6 pm sharp for drinks & bickering.







Jean Seberg is adorable, bien sûr. I could never pull off that haircut, which requires finely textured, pin-straight hair like that of a tomboyish French girl, since I have the thick, unruly hair of my Celtic forepeople. My kind of hair looks great if you're a Kennedy on a yacht, the sun bleaching it at the tips and the saltwater boosting its natural curl. But if you live in present-day Los Angeles and don't make it to Cape Cod much because you're just blogging and daydreaming all the time, it's just a high-maintenance thing in your life that takes an hour to blow dry and looks best at about 2 1/2 feet in length. Why so much talk about hair? Oh my. I appear to have lost control of this post.

Alas, I’m not now nor will I ever be classified as “gamine,” and you people will just have to deal with that. You probably wife up Seberg; she just looks like the type--skinny pants, ballet flats, Camus novels and dainty facial features. Your mom would approve. You kick it, however, with the full-lipped, long-haired girl in the fur hat*. She's more fun. Cherchez les hips. (I see you, Belmondo).






*

• Fuck a Mixtape, says T.I.
OK, pumpkin. Easy now.

If he'll just keep giving me that bouncy, playful flow in that Geougiah accent, T.I. can say fuck this and fuck everything, fuck the NBA salary cap, fuck BP and fuck Rand Paul, fuck fuck all day long. What do I care. He's adorable and diminutive and has a wonderful smile (sometimes my estrogen gets in the way of true music fandom).

The mixtape is not worth all that download time so don't bother with it--the song below is the only one of quality, and since I can’t tolerate an entire DJ Drama anything (including mixtapes), I left the rest of the thing alone. Skip right to the part where my ex-boyfriend Killer Mike comes in, snappin and trappin and takin my breath away.

The song with Lil Wayne (“Yeah”) is noteworthy only because of its intro. “For those of you who care,” T.I. says--except in Atlantan, it's Cyeah. Cyeaugh. (I’ll get it eventually). I gave it a couple listens just because it's been a while since I've had any Wayne fodder. My new thing is wishing hard that Wayne takes a meeting with BP execs upon his release from jail to yell at them, or that he at least calls his next mixtape Top Kill. This is because I am not very reality-based. (I also hope that Nicki Minaj writes her own stuff and that Blu and Redman will do a mixtape with Green Lantern, but those things are probably not happening either.)


T.I. feat. Killer Mike, who will never be successful in getting me to refer to him as Mike Bigga - “Ready Set Go.” (produced by No I.D.!)

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• I'm breathless when I think of all the things an LA-Boston series means to me (which is mostly misty childhood memories of really good televised matches of sport), and when I consider the beauty of this photograph.

That's right, Green Jacket. You fucking get Mr. Worthy a beverage.

The Celtics and the people who love them clearly need an uplifting series of moments, an injection of mirth and energy, to make up for all the Guru melancholy weighing their city down. I believe a championship would provide this. However, to paraphrase my good friend T.I.: fuck a Boston team. Also, they do know it's not pronounced “selltics,” right? I've been whining about this since I was a know-it-all 10-year-old. I'm assuming people have just been too polite to inform them all these years.




Dosh & Andrew Bird - “Number 41.” Because it's only 1 digit away from Big Game James, and because they haven't made a “Number 24” yet. YET.

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• This one's a holdover from Sunday, and it's so good that I still haven't been able to catch my breath. NYC, fresh from begging and whimpering for LeBron, makes a strong comeback with this story in the Times about the origins of the metal rims in all the public basketball courts. They're made by blacksmiths--referred to as a team in the article, since there are 6 of them, of course--who cut, weld, and paint each one, by hand, from a hand-drawn blueprint, “using a century-old method that has long since vanished elsewhere.” Woody Guthrie should do a song about these guys and the related difficulties of the perimeter shot.

“The finished product is a remnant of an earlier era of the sport, somewhere on the evolutionary chain between the original wooden peach baskets and the modern spring-loaded breakaway rims used by the National Basketball Association”...

“Other cities, including those with their own share of contributions to basketball lore like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Newark, buy modern, factory-made rims. New York is among the few places, and possibly the only one, where municipal rims used at more than 700 public parks are still made by hand.”

And the opener! That first paragraph is so inspiring, I may have to copy it and hope the writer never notices:

“The old steel rim that presides over this public basketball court absorbs missed shots with an angry clank, sending the ball careening upward and the wood and metal backboard into a rickety seizure.” Sending the backboard into a rickety seizure is the particularly nice language moment for me.
















• Gasp! Look how stunning!

Lightleafs are illuminated OLED bookmarks that are as thin as a book's page and provide just enough light for reading in the dark. I'd like one of these, and maybe several more, as only then will I be sufficiently pleased and distracted enough to overlook the incorrect use of language on display here (light leaves) the likes of which I have not seen since the travesty that was the 2010 Rock the Bells poster.



The bookmark runs wirelessly, and the light is rechargeable with brightness controls to turn it down so that it won’t bother others nearby. Courtesy of DesignBoom.










• Are the rims big? Do it ride good? Lean back, right hand on the pinewood.

The god Craig Sager and I agree that the most flattering colors on one's person are those adopted from the Dreyer's* palette. The playoffs arrived right around the time my mother announced to me that all of my clothing is pastel, “which makes sense because you like ice cream so much.” Why yes, Mom. It does make sense. And yes, I am ignoring the subtext of your observation (that I'm a big girl now, too old to be wearing chocolate- and lavender-hued things).

I'm resisting the urge to say French vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate deluxe at this time, and will instead just give you all a Cream on the inside/Clean on the outside. Yeah buddy.

6 12's in the trunk, 4 screens in the deck. And yes, the outside frame in the trunk is wide.
(STOP MAKING IT INTO SOMETHING SEXUAL, YOU GUYS.)

* Edy's, for my NY cohort.









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