May 2013
8 posts
Anonymous asked: Do you have any regrets?
Anonymous asked: How does a reasonably confident, curvaceous, well-educated woman navigate the dating scene without becoming someone's 'fetish' or constantly losing men's attention when she mentions her education?
Anonymous asked: How long do we have to wait to get a picture of you smiling?
Anonymous asked: i just can't stop bleeding my block. how do i leave the game?
Anonymous asked: Do you think there is anything weird about a white dude being REALLY into Blaxploitation films? I don't know why, I love them. Dolemite, Blacula. White Girls (would have to qualify). I think the black people I work with think I'm secretly mocking them.
mharp asked: I've been debating cutting off my dreads for quite a while now. Ten years strong and I think it's time to shed them. I've been plagued with ambivalence, though. I'm certain now however to do the, "big chop", partially thanks to your post about cutting yours off. Just want to say thanks for the encouragement! If there's anyone who understands what I'm feeling...
phive0phor asked: OK, we know who you think the most underrated MC is, but who do you think is the most underrated producer? (My pick is Buckwild.)
5 Reasons why "New Jack City" is utterly...
If I ever happen to become a person of particular note, and people find my existence on this earth to be truly worthy of documentation - the chapter detailing my Senior Year of High School will be entitled “Bullies, Virginity, and New Jack City”. The Bully part of the equation refers to a man-child of a 17 year old who knew that I couldn’t fight him for fear of being kicked off...
April 2013
6 posts
Anonymous asked: Is there any body shape that looks good with a mullet? I mean, like what if the guy is tall and thin, with a hawkish nose? Then the mullet is all good, right? Right?
Anonymous asked: give us 3 weightloss tips, please!
Anonymous asked: I need some advice. Every time I attend a work function my Boss goes out of his way to humiliate me in front of my girlfriend. I've told him that I don't appreciate it but he keeps doing it. Being that I love my job and the job market sucks, what should I do?
LL Cool J: The "On Purpose" Black Friend
One of the main reasons why I don’t fuck with porn any more is because I didn’t want myself becoming desensitized to it. I totally saw a scenario in which looking for standard online filth would slowly graduate into me feeling the need to see someone have sex with a Filipino single-amputee with a lazy eye - or a drunk midget with a lisp - even me begging to the porn Gods for someone...
Answering my own Twitter question: The Most...
Sometimes I feel like I’m in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. But instead of friends and loved ones not having the proper cardiovascular training or sword wielding skills to fight off the undead, thus being turned into moaning flesh eaters themselves - it seems that everyone whose musical opinion I respect winds up becoming another kind of zombie by liking some monosyllabic rapper who...
Tales from the Trail: I Hate People
About a year in a half ago I found myself in my doctor’s office, the paper that drapes the cold table that you have to sit on rustling as I nervously shifted in my seat - awaiting my doctor and lifelong friend of my parents to enter the room. I kept imagining him trying to maintain the best poker face imaginable as he delivered news that would undoubtedly rock my feeble little world. See,...
February 2013
1 post
5 tags
Dancing with Myself
Let me just state for the record that Father Time is one vindictive bastard, so dastardly that I’m sure he’s somewhere laughing maniacally while stroking a cat. As I stand with a battering ram at 40’s door, I don’t so much mind the diminishing nature of my hairline, my metabolism, the grey hair that spreads across my dome and visage more like a virus than the natural...
January 2013
6 posts
4 tags
The N-Word Loophole
There’s been a strange phenomena in my life lately where my Caucasian brothers and sisters feel completely comfortable spewing the N-word around me with reckless abandon. No, it’s not in the form of the racial slur being directed at yours truly - my history of vicious neck strikes followed by me sifting through the offender’s pockets on some High School bully shit has pretty...
4 tags
Dogtown and Z-Boys
One of my favorite movie quotes of all time comes from the 2000 comedy “High Fidelity”, where Rob played by John Cusack says “It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like.” I believe that wholeheartedly. I mean, people spend so much time going on dates, holding each others mannerisms and idiosyncrasies under a microscope gauging whether or not...
From the Michael Tomasky piece “GOP Attracting Minorities?”
“Let’s start with African-Americans. Republicans, whatever they might say publicly, won’t actually try to win more black votes. Why? Because the positions the party would have to embrace to win black votes are abhorrent to the GOP base. Which, you may have noticed, is kind of racist. Now, people like me—pundits of...
Anonymous asked: You know I'm your biggest fan, and I love you, right? That said, who's your favorite comedian these days?
Anonymous asked: Are you god?
Taking Constructive Criticism
I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day. After the usual pleasantries, things like family updates and the standard goings-on in our own personal lives - she paused, let out an exhaustive sigh and said: “Jay, I wasn’t going to say anything.. But there’s something that I’ve been wanting tell you for a while now.” Outside of small talk,...
December 2012
5 posts
beatsrhimesandlife asked: How much do you think we as black people contribute to having to define "blackness"? The black experience is so multifaceted so why is it when we want more for ourselves or have varied interests there's a notion of trying to be white or assimilate?
4 tags
A Brief History of White People Questioning my...
It seems that you can’t throw a rock nowadays without hitting an article, or a book, based on that author’s attempts to shatter what the perception of “blackness” is. Not throwing shots, but these efforts more times than not seem like nothing but elaborate efforts to prove something to anyone who ever questioned their black street cred. Personally, even at a very young...
eatcakey asked: do you know how to do the gagnam style dance?
5 tags
3 things I don't miss about drinking
Even though I’m approaching my third year of no longer routinely putting a hit out on my liver, I refuse to be one of those holier-than-thou sober folks - lecturing people whose fraternity I was once a part of, lacing them with nothing but disapproving finger wags and head shakes of shame on a regular basis. I mean, if slaves to the bottle come to me on some “How did you do...
September 2012
1 post
3 tags
5 Things I noticed after cutting my dreadlocks
After sporting dreadlocks for the better part of 20 years, I recently decided that it was time to abandon my flowing mane for a hair style that won’t provoke people to ask me if I have street grade horticulture on my person - an untamed Afro that gleefully destroys any pick or comb that it comes across. There are a few reasons that I chose to make this life altering decision: For one,...
August 2012
2 posts
Grabbing my chest in agony: A love story
Ever since I decided to forgo the days of wearing 3x shirts, fucking up shocks and box springs, and getting out of breath just by taking out the garbage - my daily regimen has been damn near identical for the past nine months - getting up at the crack of dawn to run 5 miles at a local park called Mt. Trashmore. I’m so religious about my daily workout routine that the few times I...
The Joys of being wanded at a movie theater
While James Eagan Holmes was unleashing holy hell in Colorado, very casually switching weapons to manifest his evil on scores of innocent movie goers like some sort of video game protagonist, I was on a cross country plane ride to visit my lady. Because of the number of states that separates us, every time we see each other we get off the grid Jason Bourne-style and thoroughly enjoy each...
July 2012
2 posts
Cookout etiquette for some of you savages
(An updated version of a previous post)
Now that it’s July 4th, a day synonymous with fireworks, people competitively shoving shitloads of hotdogs in their mandibles, and black people renaming it “National Cookout Day” - I feel the need to give all of you some constructive criticism when it comes to the coveted cookout. The proceeding critiques didn’t come from a few...
4 tags
D'Angelo was purposely underwhelming
In what was his first television performance in 12 years, D’Angelo performed at the the BET awards tonight - reassuring his loyal fan base that he wasn’t in the witness protection program, or abducted by extraterrestrial life forms. Before tonight I was well versed on his road back to the spotlight, everything from his brushes with the law to his body issues - the latter being the...
June 2012
2 posts
In hindsight, I'm glad I wasn't there.
About 8 years ago a real good friend of mine was murdered inside of a nightclub. The ghetto ass back-story that led to his untimely demise - The gruesome way in which he spent his final moments that resulted in him being encased in a closed casket at his funeral - How I happened to watch the local news one night and hear a reporter say my good friend’s government name, a name I only knew...
April 2012
1 post
Amtrak Encounters: Evan (Chicago)
Now I’m fully rested, fresh off my cross country train trek to California. The haphazard hygiene habits of fellow travelers no longer haunting my every thought. The thousand yard stares that Amish children were giving me, as if they were peering into my very soul, slowly fading into the background. The long term structural damage to my body that days of contorting myself into an Amtrak...
March 2012
2 posts
Sister Cynthia
Maybe it’s related to the same emotional wall one puts up when entering a new relationship, reflexively protecting your heart after having it ripped out of your chest on so many prior occasions - but when I learned about the the rapidly declining health of my cousin Melissa, I just knew that she’d get through it. Despite being fully briefed on her non-responsive nature after...
Feeling sorry for my fatter self..
A few months ago, after being told by my doctor that diabetes and a slew of other diseases that tend to racially profile unhealthy people with melanin had some serious plans to break down my proverbial door like a police battering ram - I decided that it was time for a lifestyle change. I had already stopped drinking, and that was quite the feat for someone who was a lunch pale alcoholic for...
January 2012
1 post
My First Prostate Exam
I really do know better than this. The prostate cancer that was responsible for me witnessing a usually portly man quickly wither away in front of my very eyes could have been successfully dealt with if my father went to the doctor the moment he was feeling under the weather. So there is no excuse whatsoever that the last time I was within a square mile of a registered physician was during the...
October 2011
2 posts
I'm an Awkward Fan.
I’ve come to the conclusion that being nice, or more broadly, expressing sincere sentiments that don’t involve instigating random acts of violence or rhetorically ripping someone a brand new anal cavity takes a lot of practice. The same way your calves and hamstrings eventually stop feeling like cement after an extended regiment of stretching and jogging - I’m sure that the...
My Larry David moment: "Why aren't you dead yet?"
Last February I wrote about an old bar friend that I ran into named Teddy, and his revelation that he didn’t have much time on this planet of ours due to an advanced stage of lung cancer. That night, if you go back and read that particular entry, I tried to mask my inability to properly console someone like a normal human being by showing him a one hell of a good time that involved a...
A year ago today..
Exactly a year ago today a screeching smoke alarm was jarring me, a notoriously heavy sleeper, out of my suspension of consciousness. This time last year a big sea of flames literally knocked me on my ass the precise moment I opened the door of the room that the fire was occurring in. That same blaze intimidating me on some high school bully shit, after very foolishly trying to put the fire out...
August 2011
6 posts
Bill Withers and Stuttering
A few months ago I sat down and watched “Still Bill”, the 2009 documentary about singer/songwriter Bill Withers. As much as I was intrigued with how a legendary artist like Withers walked away from it all at the height of his popularity, Jim Brown style, and his rationale behind it. The contempt he had for the suits who never picked up an instrument in their lives telling him how to...
Upon further review: "Juice"(1992)
For a great deal of my adult life, like many Gen-Xers who have an affinity for Hip Hop and seeing people getting their proverbial cap twisted backwards on the silver screen - there’s always been a special place in my heart for the movie “Juice”. When the Ernest Dickerson written and directed crime drama first came out in January of 1992 I was 18 years old, with washboard abs...
Hillary Clinton, and "White People to the Rescue"...
Right before I finally stopped drinking, after years of giving the proverbial stiff-arm to warning signs like blackouts and sleeping with women who resembled the Nazis in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” after they looked at the Ark of the covenant - I found myself in quite the dire circumstance. See, a senseless argument that I was having with some random asshole at the bar quickly turned...
The Usual Suspects
For as long as I’ve been blogging, I’ve always resisted the urge to blog about the daily political skirmishes that commonly bombard even pedestrian observera. Not that its beneath me mind you, but because I’m fundamentally lazy I hate to admit - and most of the time what I initially consider to be an original, snowflake of a rant quickly becomes the consensus as soon as I ...
An extremely belated Father's Day post
Last February marked the 10 year anniversary of my father’s passing. Ever since I first decided to share my innermost thoughts with thousands of strangers online, I always wondered how I would approach this very post. Would it be a rhetorical highlight reel of all my father’s outstanding personal qualities and stellar military achievements? Or would it be a rather whiny diatribe...
June 2011
4 posts
Andrew Breitbart as "Lardass Hogan"
“The women in the audience screamed. Bossman Bob Cormier took one look and barfed on Principal Wiggins. Principal Wiggins barfed on the lumberjack that was sitting next to him. Mayor Grundy barfed on his wife’s tits. But when the doors opened and the interior hit the crowd, that’s when Lardass’ plan really started to work. Girlfriends barfed on boyfriends. Kids barfed on...
Surrogates. No, not the Bruce Willis movie.
One of the things that really struck me immediately following the cap pealing of Osama Bin Laden was the coordinated effort of the Bush people to take some of the credit. Sure, it made people who knew better simultaneously throw up in their mouths a little bit, based on the mass amounts of unrepentant lying that would have to go on for them to stick the proverbial landing on that type of spin -...
"Donny Hathaway Live" and the Paranormal
I couldn’t tell you if I believe in the paranormal or not. My sister claims my niece sees ghosts, more specifically she “sees dead people”, so she shelled out her hard earned cash so a paranormal expert could come and identify what spirits were making themselves known to the youngest member of my family. Apparently, according to the expert, my father is one of the many spirits...
The Art of "Setting Picks"
Setting a pick: “The offensive player who stands between a teammate and a defender to gives his teammate the chance to take an open shot.” I know I’m about a month late on this, but that made-up controversy about Common reciting a poem at the white house a while back really highlighted a consistent trend throughout the President’s first term. Sure, because they...