Monday, April 10th, 2006

It’s My Birthday

…and I got a book due. Won’t hear from me for a while!

In the meantime, Expand-O-Links and Rapid Fire returns:

+ Much respect to everyone in the streets today. All eyes on Paris for inspiration. Here’s Rinku Sen on La Marcha.

+ Two great pieces on preserving the music of the great Horace Tapscott in the Los Angeles Weekly, here and here.

+ It’s your turn to remix David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts!

+ Florida’s sophs are coming back. A UCLA-Florida rematch in the Big Game?

+ A’s, baby. (You didn’t think I’d have a blog entry without talking about how good my team is, did you?)

APRIL 11…

+ Proof of D12 was shot this morning. He’s dead at the age of 32. Is there something going on in Detroit?

+ I didn’t even know this ran. I was somewhere getting my back twisted up in some airplane seat. Me on “golden age” hip-hop, but probably not the era you’re thinking. Please post any tips for curing angry sciatic nerves.

posted by @ 9:03 am | 5 Comments

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Peter Scholtes on Juvie and New Orleans

Peter Scholtes writing passionately and on-the-mark in “Can’t Go Home”:

“In an era when rap videos aren’t supposed to be political, ‘Get Ya Hustle On’ is dreamlike street theater. Yet it’s also a document: Months after Juvenile shot the video with director Ben Mor in December, the Lower Ninth Ward looks pretty much the same. On the afternoon of February 27, my girlfriend and I drive over the bridge on North Claiborne into what looks like a ghost town. There are cars on fences, houses blown into the middle of the street, and no working stoplights for miles. Spray-painted signs include: ‘No bulldozing,’ ‘No trespassing,’ ‘R.I.P. Fats: You will be missed.'”

posted by @ 9:28 am | 1 Comment

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

Cyril Neville: "This Is My Country"

From Dallas Morning News columnist Thor Christensen on the new New Orleans Social Club release:

“…some of the album’s most powerful moments are etched with post-Katrina pain: Willie Tee’s ‘First Taste of Hurt,’ John Boutte’s version of Annie Lennox’s hit ‘Why’ and Cyril Neville singing Curtis Mayfield’s 1968 civil rights anthem ‘This is My Country.’

‘That song taught me that we, the people, have a right to change the [expletive] that’s going on,’ says Cyril, 57. He’s sipping Tazo Calm tea, but it doesn’t seem to work. ‘We have a right to be pissed off–and to say whatever I feel, even if other people get pissed off at me for saying it.’

He speaks from experience. First, he came under attack for wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans’ during a hurricane benefit show in New York. Later, he became a target for The New Orleans Times Picayune’s Chris Rose, who devoted two columns to ‘The Bitter Neville Brother From Austin Who Besmirches Our Name.’

‘Cyril, baby, the storm is where it’s always been: In your head,’ Mr. Rose wrote. ‘Leave us behind, if you want. But don’t trash us. Not now. Not ever.’

Mr. Neville admits the columns stung: ‘When I start thinking about Chris Rose, I have to put on Jay Z’s ’99 Problems’ and sing along.'”

posted by @ 9:20 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Longview

Argh. Pretty crappy Monday for this sports fan. Oh well. UCLA has 2 more years to go, (as does Cal–technically if nothing else), and, if everyone stays, a Florida-UCLA rivalry could be something amazing.

Meanwhile, despite Marcos Breton’s pessimism–BTW he did a great book on the A’s and Miguel Tejada several years ago–we got 161 games to go, and 2 more in this series.

posted by @ 8:44 am | 3 Comments

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

Barry Area Forecast: Poor Visibility, Severe Overheating


What you think you see may not be what it really is…

This billboard had folks hysterical over the weekend. Turns out it isn’t what we all thought it was. It’s just an ad campaign with uncanny timing.

Do I think Bonds did it? The evidence seems to pull hard in that direction. Do I think steroid usage should go unpunished? No. I’m not from the “Legalize It” camp. Do I think this is all about race? Yes I do.

Here’s Dave Zirin injecting some very welcome nuance and clarity into the Barry Bonds debate:

“Is [the Selig investigation] racially motivated? The question is too simplistic. The fact is that Bud Selig is deflecting criticism off the owners by putting the heat on the most prominent player in the game who happens to be Black. Whether this is conjured up in some back room or not is beside the point. MLB owners seem willing to sacrifice Bonds if it keeps Congress and the public off their backs.”

posted by @ 10:57 am | 1 Comment

Monday, April 3rd, 2006

Throwin Up The W, March Madness/Opening Day 2006 Edition


Big Baby: “Damn, Farmar! Who’s your barber?”
Garrett Temple: “For real, dog, he give you a glow stick with that?”

If, as the LA Times says (and I concur) the Bruins Still Get No Respect, it probably has to do with Jordan Farmar’s early 90’s “raving, I’m raving” haircut.

I love you Florida, but yall are going down. I don’t love the Yankees, and Toure is gonna owe me lunch. Westsiiiiiide!

posted by @ 7:30 am | 3 Comments

Friday, March 31st, 2006

Two Brothers With Checks: Seattle, Portland


Curse that puny digital camera flash!

Back off the road for a few minutes. Portland, we love you. Despite the steady Twin Peaks-style drizzle, there was so much love, books, music, art, and good food in the city, it never felt cold. Big shout to Chris Riser and the Powell’s crew, Connie and the global hip-hop headz, Chris Funk and The Decemberists, John Jay and the W+K crew, Kevin and the Nike crew. In Seattle, calling out to Joann, Jeb and Trev from AR-15, and Drew Wobbly. Like the UCLA Bruins, we’re coming back.

And while we’re on the topic, here’s a great report on why the West will win this weekend, no matter what yall East Coasters say. ACC? Big East? Psssssh. Fall back, and take ya Yankees and Red Sox and Dipset with you. It’s all about the Best Coast in ’06!

posted by @ 5:05 pm | 3 Comments

Monday, March 27th, 2006

Rapid Fire :: Random Droppings On The Road

TUESDAY

The Seattle Public Library turns ya boy into SFJ.

+ Thank you to everyone who came out last night to the UW Bookstore. Toure and I say: we love you Seattle!

+ Spring has barely sprung. But the streets are talking. Millions! Here’s Juan Gonzalez on the national walkouts. (And BTW, did anyone peep HBO’s Walkout? Some sort of pop-cultural prophecy, loop-of-history thing. Lalo, I know you hate Eddie, but hey, you gotta admit this is kinda cool.)

And while we’re at it, Paris is still burning , and it looks more and more like 1968 everyday. No doubt this will intensify the anti-hip-hop campaigns.

MONDAY

Buy this book, or steal it!

Random thoughts in between massive amounts of work while road-tripping (an expanding thread):

+ Prince’s new record “3121” isn’t great, but it’s not bad. The lyrics are trite, certainly less interesting than “Musicology”. On the other hand, the songwriting is incredible, but something’s wrong with the mix. The textures are there, especially the percussion and his guitar, but they’re mixed very airlessly, antiseptically, with not nearly the amount of ecentricity and experimentation the sounds deserve. How good could “Black Sweat” be with Jazze Pha working the knobs? How good could “Love” be with, say, Timbaland behind the boards? Doesn’t he need the work right about now anyway?

+ George Mason is what sports is all about. Speaking of which, just began reading Dave Zirin. You must check out What’s My Name, Fool? Brilliant. My new favorite sportswriter, next to Scoop Jackson and William Rhoden, and sometimes-sportswriter Will Blythe.

posted by @ 2:58 pm | 7 Comments

Saturday, March 25th, 2006

500,000 Strong In Los Angeles!


Doesn’t this say it all?
Photo Credit: SCHA-LA on LA Indymedia

Reports are 500,000 in today’s Gran Marcha in Los Angeles to protest the Immigration bill! (LA Times headline is here.

Yes, it’s spring. And the youth are getting restless.

Thank you to Sister Rosa for the Indymedia link.

posted by @ 8:13 pm | 1 Comment

Saturday, March 25th, 2006

Mike Davis: Who Is Killing New Orleans?

More politics of abandonment. Planned shrinkage continues on the Gulf Coast, with even the Black middle class as targets. Mike Davis in the new issue of The Nation on Who Is Killing New Orleans?:

The paramount beneficiaries of Katrina relief aid have been the giant engineering firms KBR (a Halliburton subsidiary) and the Shaw Group, which enjoy the services of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh (a former FEMA director and Bush’s 2000 campaign manager). FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, while unable to explain to Governor Blanco last fall exactly how they were spending money in Louisiana, have tolerated levels of profiteering that would raise eyebrows even on the war-torn Euphrates. (Some of this largesse, of course, is guaranteed to be recycled as GOP campaign contributions.) FEMA, for example, has paid the Shaw Group $175 per square (100 square feet) to install tarps on storm-damaged roofs in New Orleans. Yet the actual installers earn as little as $2 per square, and the tarps are provided by FEMA. Similarly, the Army Corps pays prime contractors about $20 per cubic yard of storm debris removed, yet some bulldozer operators receive only $1. Every level of the contracting food chain, in other words, is grotesquely overfed except the bottom rung, where the actual work is carried out. While the Friends of Bush mine gold from the wreckage of New Orleans, many disappointed recovery workers–often Mexican or Salvadoran immigrants camped out in city parks and derelict shopping centers–can barely make ends meet…

The Republican hostility to New Orleans, of course, runs deeper and is nastier than mere concern with civic probity (America’s most corrupt city, after all, is located on the Potomac, not the Mississippi). Underlying all the circumlocutions are the same antediluvian prejudices and stereotypes that were used to justify the violent overthrow of Reconstruction 130 years ago. Usually it is the poor who are invisible in the aftermath of urban disasters, but in the case of New Orleans it has been the African-American professional middle class and skilled working class. In the confusion and suffering of Katrina–a Rorschach test of the American racial unconscious–most white politicians and media pundits have chosen to see only the demons of their prejudices. The city’s complex history and social geography have been reduced to a cartoon of a vast slum inhabited by an alternately criminal or helpless underclass, whose salvation is the kindness of strangers in other, whiter cities. Inconvenient realities like Gentilly’s red-brick normalcy–or, for that matter, the pride of homeownership and the exuberance of civic activism in the blue-collar Lower Ninth Ward–have not been allowed to interfere with the belief, embraced by New Democrats as well as old Republicans, that black urban culture is inherently pathological.

posted by @ 1:34 pm | 3 Comments



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