Back to the Flashback: VHS

[caption id="attachment_1581" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="If all the tape is on the left then it's rewound right?"][/caption]

I could always tell the caliber of people I was around by their VHS collection. Nevermind what movies they had, I'm talking about the actual tapes themselves. If their tapes had labels and the writing on those labels was printed up in a factory and accurately said what movie it was, then I was in wealthy company. I can tell you for a fact that not one movie in my house had a real label on it. 99.9% of our movies had a blank tape label with the name of the movie written in black magic marker.

I guess I should say movies (plural) because we never used the high quality SP recording speed. That was the one that only gave you two hours time, but the movie actually looked like something. No, we used the EP speed which gave you six hours and you could fit maybe three movies on there. Of course they looked like they were recorded with viewmaster and had all those lines going through it. Sometimes we had a good working VCR with a tracking button that could fix it. Other times, we just dealt with it. Besides, crappy picture was the least of our problems.

If your movies have handwritten labels then you only came across that movie one of three ways: Bootleg, copied from another tape or copied from TV. Every good ghetto person knows somebody who could get them a "good copy" of a movie that was still in the theater. Usually it was the dude in the barbershop, because they'd actually play the movies in the shop like it was Circuit City or something. There'd be some huge out of focus picture on the cover box, and the tape itself may or may not have a fake sticker, but the movie was somewhat clear. Ironic, this goes on today with DVDs.

[caption id="attachment_1588" align="alignright" width="277" caption="Anybody else remember Erol's?"][/caption]

Then there were the movies that people copied themselves. Sometimes people were balling like that and had two VCRs. They'd rent a movie, play it through one while recording it on the other. At first that would get you a real clear copy until Erol's Video, Blockbuster and Hollywood caught on to that. Then all of a sudden you'd be sitting in someone's house and the movie would go dark for a second, come back light, turn red...do a lot of weird stuff to deter you from copying their movies. Of course this didn't work because these were the same people watching bootlegs with people walking in front of the camera and half the screen out of focus. The last thing we cared about was some distorted coloring.

Ironically, the most ghetto of all methods wasn't the bootleg from the theater or the badly tinted Blockbuster rip off. The most ghetto was the one that crept up on you. You go over someone's house and start watching a movie. You get about fifteen minutes into it and all of a sudden the bumper from the network comes up and you see a commercial.


[caption id="attachment_1589" align="aligncenter" width="257" caption="Hold up..."][/caption]

CBS MOVIE OF THE WEEK: DIE HARD! Will be right back

Hold up, did you record this off REGULAR TV?  That's when you start laughing your ass off. I don't know what's funnier, the people who try to pause during the commercial break but just mistime it or the ones who don't even care and just record straight through. My grandmother has just joined the 1990s and has a VCR now. She buys tapes from the flea market. In the middle of The Color Purple a commercial for Windows 95 came on. I'm still laughing over that one.

Flashback: Tapes

I bought my daughter an iPod Touch. She's one and a half. I was twice her age before I got a music player and it was a suitcase-sized Fisher Price Record Player. It got me thinking about how far we've come.

[caption id="attachment_1580" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Remember Tapes?"][/caption]

Remember these? Do you remember scrambling for one when a new hot song came on the radio and you just had to record it? Remember how you used to grab the first tape you saw and do a quick mental assessment of whether or not you could tape over it? This was back before they started playing the same song over and over on the radio. Even though your recording was gonna start halfway through the first verse, you recorded it anyway. Remember accidentally taping over something you liked and being pissed? You get halfway into a song and then hear a new song start playing.

How about wanting to tape something so badly that you stuck a wad of paper in that little hole on top or put scotch tape over it so that you could record over it? Then people would come over your house or see the tape in the car and think it was whatever album was on the label and you had to tell them, "Naw I taped over that. This is off the radio" and nobody had a problem with that. Instead of calling you out on being ghetto, they actually wanted to hear what was on your tape. "Yo, this is a good tape. Can I dub this joint?" Everybody had either a double tape boombox or the dual cassette player that was on the "multi-thing" stereo. You know, the one that had the record player at the top, the radio in the middle and the tape player at the bottom. And all of them had that little three digit counter as if you were gonna sit and calculate how many seconds were in each song. Those were the days...and I do not miss them one bit.

Especially  this:

[caption id="attachment_1584" align="alignleft" width="203" caption="Cassette Tape Rewinder"][/caption]

Soul Sister

No baby book will tell you this, so you're lucky to be hearing it from me:

Children sleep just to screw with you. It's in their constitution somewhere. I'm tired. My job is Daddy Day Care and I do it well, but unlike real day cares, there is no relief person. That means that I don't get to go on break, or take a lunch. The illusion that most people have is that children are small versions of humans. They eat, drink, run around and eventually sleep to replenish energy. Common mistake.

Children run on various forms of energy: Food, solar, nuclear and the souls of others. That last one is what mine is running on right now, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The child woke this morning and I fed her. We then began our day of singing songs, dancing, learning what things are and all the usual child-rearing stuff. Around noon, I started getting tired. Picking up a 28 lb weight over and over again, letting it fall on you, jump on your ribs and scream at you tends to tire a person out. She switched to solar power.

We played for another hour or so before I started running on fumes, so I closed the blinds and tried to put her to sleep. She switched to nuclear power. I got desperate and turned to the electronic babysitter (television) and let her watch Sesame Street while I attempted to make a sandwich. She didn't like that episode so she found me in the kitchen.

I gave up and decided to just go to the store and pick up something for dinner since she had no intentions of going to sleep. I got her dressed (A feat that would make an excellent challenge on American Gladiators) and then we were on our way to the store.  kept saying, "If she falls asleep, I'm turning around." Of course she fell asleep as we were walking in the store. I ran through that store like it was one of those shopping sprees on TV. In and out in under two minutes. I damned-near ran home. It took me 5 minutes to go 10 blocks uphill carrying bags and pushing a stroller. Add that to the two minutes that we were in the store and she slept a total of seven minutes.

Why did she wake up as soon as I put the key in the door? I know I didn't make any noise. I did it so slow and meticulously that you would've thought I was disarming a bomb or something. Strollers and car seats are like those external cell phone battery boosters. You know, the ones that charge the battery in like two minutes. You can be gone seven minutes or seven hours. It doesn't matter;The minute you bring that kid back in the house, they're gonna wake up.

So that brings me back to my original point: She's gone from food to solar to nuclear and now she's feeding of the souls of others...me.

 

Ipod? Touche?

Christmas Eve. It's finally here! That's not excitement, but rather relief. I welcome today like someone from the Titanic welcoming a rescue boat. They--and by they, I mean retailers--started the Christmas season back in July, so naturally I'm a little tired of the guilt trips in the store. Speaking of guilt trips...

I've been wrestling with this all week: Is it wrong to give a toddler an iPod Touch for Christmas? Two years ago, I would've answered my own question with a resounding yes. Now, I'm not so sure. We have a Macbook, iPhone and iPad. All three cost a human organ, so naturally we put them in high places to keep Gizmo away from them. But kids get into things. They're like those raptors on Jurassic Park. They never attack the same place twice...they remember.

One day she got her hands on the iPad while I was in the bathroom. My heart sank, at first, when I saw her with it. Then I noticed that she was actually using it like an adult. She sat it on the ottoman and was standing there looking at photos. Not erratically pushing the screen. No, what she was doing was methodical. I pushed the home button, closed the cover and sat it back in front of her. She opened it, slid the unlock button and pushed the weather app. She looked disappointed, pushed the home button again and swiped around until she got back to the photos app. Somehow, just by watching my wife, she figured out how to use it and she knew that the only real button--the home button--started you over again.

That was two months ago. Fast forward to yesterday and she's sitting on the couch with my wife's phone. She turned it on and then took it to my wife because the input unlock code screen came up. My wife typed it in and my daughter took it back to the couch. She looked at pictures and videos of herself for a second, then went to one of the apps that plays nursery rhymes and a few minutes later she went to the Music app, turned it sideways to get to coverflow and swiped around until she saw Stevie Wonder and started listening to My Cherie Amor. She put the phone down on the couch, got up and started dancing.

Now there are only about thirty songs on my wife's phone since she uses Rhapsody most of the time, but the few that are on there are just songs from my daughter's in the car playlist. I highly doubt she thought, I could really go for some Stevie right now. In all likelihood, she just pushed a random song, but it's the fact that she knows how to navigate to only the stuff she wants that makes me think she's ready for her own iPod Touch.

I've heard the arguments about development and that kids need three dimensional stimulation from toys and real books. She spends most of her time pretending to read her board books and playing with her illogically-expensive brain toys. Back in the mid 90s, all of the commercials for computers showed adults doing spreadsheets, word processing and kids looking at extremely dated games. Today, commercials for Windows 7 show kids doing spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations to ask their parents for dogs. We live in the 21st century. Five year olds use iPads in school now. Is it absurd to see an almost-two year old with an iPod Touch or is it preparation for things to come?

 

Elf Magic

Me: Grandma, do you think Santa Claus will bring me a...

Her: Santa Claus? Your mother aint tell you about that yet? You are too old to still be believing in some damned Santa Claus. We buy all that stuff. There aint no Santa Claus. 

Me: Huh, but where do you keep it?

Her: We hide it somewhere or she puts it on layaway and picks it up at the last minute. That's why she be so tired in the morning, because she's been up all night wrapping that stuff. You aint never notice the handwriting is the same on the presents?

Me: No.

Her: Plus, how does he get in the house. We boarded up the chimney before you was even born. And when yall lived in that apartment, how was he getting in there? You know he aint climbing through nobody window over there. They woulda been killed him.

Me: Why did yall tell me that then?

Her: Because it's special. It's nice to have something to believe in when you're young. But, hell you almost nine years old. You don't need to be walking around here with that in your head. At some point you just look foolish.

I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. I don't know how most kids feel when they learn the truth, but I wasn't really devastated. More than anything I felt stupid for wasting my time writing all of those letters. I was a super nerd as a kid. What's worse is that I didn't have anyone to play with growing up and I was always by myself, so I had a LOT of time on my hands.

I used to write Santa Claus a letter at least once a week. And these weren't your typical letters either. I approached it like I was writing a grant proposal or something. There would be about a page dedicated solely to listing every accomplishment of the week, every opportunity to do wrong that I avoided and a reminder of past good deeds from previous weeks' letters. The second page would be an updated list of what I wanted along with footnotes. The final pages (yes, pages--plural) would be an appendix complete with charts, schematics and concept art for the custom toys that I wanted the elves to build.

I never wanted just the stuff you could buy in the store. Ironically, I felt like my mother could go buy the stuff out of the store, Santa had a workshop and should therefore present me with a custom made gift. So I had ideas for radio controlled planes that turned into cars and ran on AA batteries instead of those bulky D ones. I drew diagrams for what I thought would be cooler versions of the Transformers already in the store.

It used to take me hours to draw these things up and then I'd run to the mailbox and drop in my letter. A guy from the post office came to my school one year and told us that we didn't need stamps on letters to Santa because they traveled by elf magic. To this day I wonder if any postal worker ever saw that thick envelope and wondered who the hell was sending Santa Claus a legal brief.

Please Hammer Don't Hurt Em

I just want to vent...

Facebook is a gift and a curse for the stay at home parent who desperately misses daily social interaction with people who don't ride around in strollers. Today though, I'm just annoyed.

The religious zealots have one mo' 'gin to send me a request for Bible Wars, Bibleville, or Bible With Friends. Also, until you take those half naked club pictures off your profile, lay off the Bible verses inside every status update.

I'm tired of hearing about your relationships:
Day 1- I met someone who is great, praise the Lord.
Day 2- My person is the second coming, praise the Lord.
Day 3- I'm gonna marry this person and devote everything to them even though I've known them less than a week.
Day 4- We're having a baby.
Day 5- My person's ex better stay outta the picture because I'm the new flavor of the week!
Day 6- F@%K these B$#$#(# who don't support our love.
Day 7- I'm in pain.
Day 8- I hate everything
Day 9- I can't believe my ex is a deadbeat parent. I thought I knew my person so well.
Day 10- I met someone who is great, praise the Lord.

I would also like to see some fact checking before posts go out. I don't want to be the one who always has to correct someone. I read something the other day that made absolutely no sense, but how would I look to be commenter #25 who said, You know this is an urban legend right? I checked Google after reading the first sentence of your post and all of that is just BS. That makes not only the poster look stupid but the 24 other people who also didn't think to verify it first.


Okay, I'm done venting.


 

Occupy North Pole

I've been going to the mall a lot this past week and, for the life of me I can't understand going broke for the sake of Santa Claus. I understand wanting to keep the magic of Christmas alive, but I personally think that Santa is the perfect scapegoat for keeping your financial sanity this Christmas.

Feel free to copy the note and apply it to your own child. I plan to print mine out in calligraphic font.

Dear (child's name)
I can only give you one toy this year. I'm sorry that I couldn't do better. Just know that you have two parents who love you and vow to put your needs before their own and that is something many kids do not have. You've been so good this year and you deserve an explanation: This has been a challenging year for me both mentally and financially. After that Amnesty International piece about sweatshops, things just went downhill. We lost a lot of elves to the Occupy movement, some just quit out of principal. Oil prices went up when the Libya conflict began and it made importing goods from overseas just too expensive. In the end, it was PETA that did us in. As I've said on record many times, the reindeer never submitted a formal complaint about the working conditions before! With so many things eating into the bottom line, it was inevitable that the North Pole would be forced into bankruptcy protection. The best I could do was smuggle out gifts from the estate to give to kids who really deserve them. You are one such child. While I remain optimistic that we'll be around next year, just in case, I want you to wish you Merry Christmas for all future Christmases.

With Love,
Santa

It's Not Mission Difficult, It's Mission Impossible

[caption id="attachment_1537" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="That, boys and girls, is what Santa would have to do if PETA took away the reindeer"][/caption]

(No Spoilers)

Go see Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. I haven't enjoyed a movie that much in almost forever. I went into it expecting it to be just so-so. I figured the last one was okay, the second one sucked and the first one was pretty good, but aged pretty badly. This one would probably have one or two good scenes and be a nice way to kill two hours and $19.

Yes, it cost me $19 to see this movie--a fact that I spent 15 minutes cursing about as I watched the little "buy your tickets" timer run down on Fandango. My wife had to be the one to push the button for me, because I cannot understand how movie tickets went from $7 five years ago to $18.50 for one person today.

I share that rant to highlight the fact that I went into the theater ready to criticize everything, but I came out grinning from ear to ear. Was it a thinking man's film? No. Did the plot make much sense? Not really. There was just enough plot thrown in to explain why they were shooting at people and to give the sound system a break in between making explosion noises. As cliche as this sounds, the scene from the poster above literally took my breath away. I never get excited in movies, but I even let out a loud "YES" when that scene was over.

Also, it doesn't hurt that the new Dark Knight Rises trailer premiered before the film. I don't want to get my hopes up, but it made The Dark Knight look like that old Adam West Batman movie.

Go see MI-4...and see it in Imax. It's worth every penny, all one thousand eight hundred and fifty of them.

Segregated Santa

Random Christmas Memory #6

The Maury Elementary School Christmas Breakfast of 1988

I used to feel so special at the thought of Santa Claus coming to my school personally to find out what we wanted for Christmas. Every year we'd all gather in the multipurpose room--The poor school's all in one gym, auditorium and cafeteria complete with tables that either folded down out of the wall or folded up perfectly so that they could be rolled up against the wall.

That year we had something that resembled grits but tasted like a burned box of Rice-a-Roni, a piece of sausage that also tasted like burned Rice-a-Roni and an oven-warmed pecan twirl (Again, poor school). Santa sat up on stage, occasionally belting out a ho ho ho, while the rest of us ate and Mrs Claus led us in a few carols.

Finally it was time to line up by class and go up to take a picture with Santa (if your parents sent in the minimum $5) and when it was finally my turn, Santa came down with a bad cough. Mrs Claus told me to come have a seat by her until he came back. We talked for a minute or so and I happened to look over to my right where, behind the curtain, I see Santa pulling off his fake beard and drinking a Coke. My whole world shattered.

My teacher, Ms. Turner, told me that I was just seeing things. Of course that was Santa Claus up there. When I got home, my grandmother had a different explanation:

Was he Black? Well then you should've known something was wrong. Ain't no such thing as a Black Santa Claus. You think these White people around here are gonna let some Black man go running around their house at night and not call the police? No, child, that wasn't Santa Claus. It was someone who works for him. The real one can't be everywhere all the time, so he sends people out who pretend to be him so that they can find out what you want for Christmas. He sends Black ones to places like Iverson Mall over there by Montgomery Ward and Woodies and then he sends White ones downtown to Hecht's and all those places with White people.

Of course I went to school the next day and shared this with my teacher who simply told me to never tell anyone else that. I look back, and I'm kinda thankful for that. Well, not the whole segregated North Pole thing, but the fact that she knew that I wouldn't buy anything less than a overly detailed explanation. In doing that she allowed the magic of Christmas to go on just a little while longer.

Disney Revisited: Beauty and the Beast

A lot of these movies seem a lot darker after watching them again as an adult with my daughter.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="202" caption="Ten bucks says he eats her."][/caption]

Beauty and the Beast has to have the worst fairy godmother/witch/whatever the magic lady was at the beginning. Okay the guy was an ass, I get it, but you punished his entire workforce? There were like a hundred spoons and forks alone in the Be Our Guest musical number. When you throw in the people turned into plates, glasses, bowls, tables, mirrors...it gets up into the hundreds.

I assume everyone didn't live in that one castle. Imagine all the families wondering why Ma or Pa never came home from work. The tea kettle had her grandson with her. His parents probably thought he was dead. They moved on and had another kid. I mean, what do you go home to after all those years of absence. Wives remarry. Houses are evicted. And all of this because your boss did something? Was she an evil fairy godmother or something?

Did the beast even learn anything? He was put into that situation in the first place because the witch wanted to teach him that things are not what they appear. So what did he do? He fell in love with the prettiest girl in town. Where's the lesson? Now if she gains a bunch of weight after the wedding, pops out a couple of kids, divorces him and takes half the castle, gets child support and then a few years down the road he learns that the kids are really the candle stick guy's then maybe that would be some kind of twisted lesson. Now that would be a tale as old as time.

Well I Was A Poor Black Kid

There was an article on Forbes.com the other day entitled If I Were A Poor Black Kid, where the author reveals his strategy to overcome adversity if he were...well, you know.

As you can imagine, the article pissed a lot of people off. Surprisingly, it didn't offend me. He says that he would focus on getting good grades, using free resources from the internet to fill in the gaps that public education can't and eventually working hard to get into college. Near the end he even admits that most kids don't know the resources exist because their parents and teachers are too overworked to be able to lead them to it. It didn't sound condescending to me, but that's the whole point of this post:

Have I lost touch with my inner city roots?

I grew up almost-poor. I figure you're poor if you don't have food. I never went hungry so I wasn't poor. But I sure as hell met all of the other criteria. I slept on the floor, couch or cot in the living room for a couple of years, no heat, hot water or gas, phone cut off for months at a time, two pair of pants, couple of $5 t-shirts from Dollar Tree, and eating out of cans with white labels and black lettering. I got my deodorant and toiletries from those little bags they gave out in gym class.

Sadly I often feel the need to validate my near-poverty growing up so as to not feel bad for where I am now. I live in a decent neighborhood. Ward 3 actually and that's the part of DC where the rich White folk live. There's a person at the front door downstairs and it isn't a H-U-D cop.  I distinctly remember heating water on a hot plate and pouring it into old soda bottles that I'd put in the bed with me in order to warm up at night when I was younger. Now, I just turn a knob on the wall and the room heats up. It's nice, but I don't take the shit for granted. I remember what it was like all those years so I'm thankful for it everyday.

Still, I don't feel a connection like I think everyone wants me to. I remember being afraid a lot growing up. I didn't have a neighborhood full of cousins to protect me. I ran A LOT. To the store. To the library. To the bus stop. To church. I was like that little Black boy in the old PSA's. "My teacher says to just say no, but where I live they don't take no for an answer. They may be afraid of the police, but they sure aren't afraid of me." It's hard for me to agree with the rhetoric that "All these kids in the inner city need is someone to take an interest in them. All the schools need is funding." I remember mysterious organizations donating stuff to our school and those little bastards would break it the first chance they got. I remember the so-called "educational" camps in the summer where college students would try to teach us about math or science and the kids in the programs would have soldering iron fights a la Star Wars or throw random chemicals from the chemistry sets at each other. There were so many instances where teachers, counselors and volunteers would throw their hands up like, "I'm never coming back here."

I'm not saying that I don't believe in helping youth. I'm certainly not saying that it's a lost cause. All I'm saying is that these are some of the experiences that led eight year old me to think that most of the people around me were gonna end up in jail and that I had to do my best to get good grades so I could go to college one day and not end up in jail with them. I read encyclopedias from the 60s and 70s, I walked myself to the library and read every book I could find on any subject that interested me at the time and occasionally (but rarely) a teacher or counselor came along who pushed me in the right direction.

How is that any different than what that guy said in his article? And unlike him I don't have say IF I was a poor Black kid because I was a almost-poor Black kid.

 

Another Man's Treasure

Little known Black History Fact:
Some families have a special routine that they follow each Christmas when friends and family come over. It's called "put your stuff up before ____ comes over here, or else ____ is gonna either break all your stuff or steal it."

Ah, what a time honored tradition in my family. So one year I had the bright idea to put all of the good (and expensive) new toys in a black trash bag along with all of the discarded wrapping paper and boxes. Just to throw em off my trail, I left the crappy toys out under the tree and put the bags over by the door.

It was a mighty plan and it worked. The clepto-friends stayed for an hour or two and then left and nobody was the wiser. They left around eleven, I fell asleep and woke up the next day ready to play with my toys.

Then out in the alley there arose such a clatter.
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window, I flew like a flash
Saw what was going on and let out a WTF gasp!

There were some kids in my neighborhood who we all pretty much knew were just biding their time until they each went to prison. Well these little hellions were notorious for playing in the dumpster in the alley next to my house. I woke up to the sound of one of them yelling, Hey I just found a bag full of Transformers!

Apparently my grandfather wasn't in on the trash bag charade and he threw both bags away.

I can't describe what came over me as I watched them pull my toys out of that bag one by one. Normally those little bastards scared the hell out of me because it was so many of them and they would occasionally chase me home, but not on December 26th 1988! Oh no, that day I was goddamned He-Man. I don't remember getting dressed, I don't remember going downstairs, hell, I don't even remember picking up the mop handle that I ran outside waving around like it was my Moses staff.

What I do remember is looking the big one dead in the eyes like Dae-Dae from Friday After Next, I'll die for this shit. We had our little moment from the Michael Jackson Bad video where we stared each other down for a while. I didn't budge. Five minutes later, the standoff was over and I went back in the house with a trash bag full of toys.

My grandfather: Why are you bringing that bag of trash in the house?

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The Gift of Life

It's amazing how many different ways I inadvertently try to kill myself. From near-drownings to drug store shootings, I seem to find myself in perilous situations. This week's excitement is a twofer: Chemical warfare and Do-it-yourself-car-bombing.

Chemical Warfare

My aunt asked me to take her to go get some oil for heat. I'm surprised at how many people have no idea what that means. For the privileged: Not all houses are heated by electricity or natural gas. Some people have tanks that need to be filled with oil in order to be fed into the furnace and burned for heat. My aunt's house is one such place.

I thought she wanted me to take her to the office so she could pay for it and have a truck come deliver it. Nope. She wanted to get some kerosene for her personal heater. We put two 5-gallon cans in my trunk and went to the gas station. We were a block away from her house when some jackass slammed on his brakes to make a turn at the last minute.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. (That's called inertia)

One of the gas cans fell over. I thought it was just a minor spill so I decided to just clean it up when I got home. The ride home became increasingly bumpy, earthquake-like almost. The only problem was that the violent shakes were all in my head. The fumes became unbearable even with the windows down. That's when I pulled over and double checked the trunk. I lifted the trunk floor to discover that the entire wheel well was full of kerosene and the spare tire was submerged. I BP'd my own damn car. The guys at the fire station told me to put kitty litter in it to absorb the gas and then just vacuum it out. They said it'd also help the smell.

I spent the next four days filling my trunk with kitty litter, letting it sit overnight with the windows down, vacuuming it out and repeating. Didn't help. That brings us to part 2 of the story...

Do-It-Yourself Car Bomb

Today I went to the car wash to try and clean the trunk. I took a few household items with me. At no point did I consider how I would look to other people on the street. Imagine a guy getting out of his car at a self serve car wash at 8 o'clock at night with a black hoodie, dark jeans, skull cap, one of those masks the women wear in nail salons (the fumes), a pair of latex gloves, several bags of kitty litter, a jug of Tide, a gallon jug of vinegar, some white powder in a zip lock bag (baking soda), and some electrical tape. And, because it was dark and I'm from Southeast, I kept looking around to see who was watching me. It's no wonder that everybody left at the same time and every car that pulled up afterward peeled out when they saw me.

So anyway, that's not even the car bomb part. I ended up taking the trunk floor out altogether, because it was too heavily saturated. That's when I noticed a set of wires running underneath the exact area where the can spilled. The wires were still soaked in gas. I look on the underside of the floorboard and there's this huge charred section where I guess they either got hot or sparked a bit. So I immediately thank whatever deity guides my life for keeping me, my daughter and aunt alive.

Apparently as I was riding around with two 5 gallon drums of kerosene in my trunk, one tipped over spilling two gallons of kerosene directly on top of a set of electrical wires. All of this inside of a trunk which sits above my car's gas tank. All it would've taken was one spark to kill all of us. As far as I'm concerned, that's my Christmas gift.

[caption id="attachment_1460" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Who learned something from this experience?"][/caption]

A King Walks Among You

I absolutely love my neighborhood. I'm like royalty to these people. Just last night I was walking down the street and every single person went out of their way to avoid making eye contact. You can't look royalty in the eye, you know.

The women switched their purses to the outside to avoid accidentally hitting me. Can't hit the king with a commoner's luggage.


Some people went so far as to actually cross the street when they saw me coming. I guess they didn't feel worthy to walk on the same side as me. 

I wish I had a house. That way they could honor my wife, Tammy, by lighting a bunch of lowercase t's in the front yard.

[caption id="attachment_1354" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Good morning my neighbors! Yes, yes...Fuck you too!"][/caption]

Cain is Able

It's almost like one of those prescription drug commercials:

Do you have a vagina? If so, you may have been sexually harassed by Herman Cain. Ask your bank if coming forward is right for you.

The latest woman to come forward says that she had an affair with him for 13 years. That's not an affair, that's a second marriage. Maybe he should be President. He definitely has the multitasking thing down. Keeping two women happy for 13 years while simultaneously sexually harassing four other women and running The National Restaurant Association. I have one wife, no women on the side and I'm stressed out most of the time.

I may have been wrong about him.

 

Hurry Up and Wait.

Well, Black Friday has come and gone...Thank God!

I like to think that I didn't grow up under a rock, but the first time I ever heard of Black Friday was during my sophomore year of college. I thought it was something my girlfriend at the time had made up. It would be another four years before I'd hear the term again when I let a coworker convince me to go to Best Buy to take advantage of "crazy deals" back in '05.

As a testament to my ignorance regarding Black Friday, I showed up at Best Buy "early." Like, ten minutes before they would normally open. So at 9:50 in the morning I found myself as the umpteen thousandth person to arrive. Obviously I went home empty handed.

Six years later, I showed up to Best Buy at 11 in the morning. I learned my lesson. I just don't care. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. Some people have family traditions. I imagine it would be fun to go camp out in line with your mom or cousins after a great Thanksgiving meal. Maybe you and your best friend made a pact to go Double Dragon on em in the store. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm too picky, cynical and impatient to be a Black Friday'er. The minute someone pepper sprays me for a damn video game console that came out six years ago, it's gonna get Black real quick.

 

Black Friday...In A Nutshell

Gladiators stand in line for hours for the honor to enter a large arena where they'll battle hundreds of other people for something shiny. Those victorious in battle will then advance to the Feat of Patience where they must stand in another line. If successful, they earn the right to leave the arena but must first pay a toll equal to (but usually greater than) the value of the shiny object. They then jump in their carriages and participate in the Victory Parade which travels approximately 20 mph down the highway.

[caption id="attachment_1230" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="I'm entertained."][/caption]

Desperate Girls Are Loose!

I've said it before and I'll say it again, going to the mall while wearing my wedding ring and carrying my daughter in my arms is like pulling out the Thundercats sword.

Skeezer...skeezer...skeezer...HO!!!



[caption id="attachment_1224" align="aligncenter" width="319" caption="I don't mean to signal for them."][/caption]

Desperate girls are on the move, desperate girls are loose.
Take their offer, catch some AIDS. Desperate girls are loose.
Skee-zer, skee-zer, skee-zer, skee-zer, SKANK!
Skee-zer, skee-zer, skee-zer, skee-zer, SKANK!


A lady at the grocery store told me that she could tell that I was a good father just by looking at how my daughter smiles at me.
Women can tell those kinds of things. We can tell which men are keepers and which ones aint nothing. Imma be straight up with you, if your wife stops doing her job at home, there are plenty of women working here willing to fill in. You laughing, I'm serious. We been talking about you. All of us noticed you a while ago. That's all Imma say, she better keep it tight at home.


That is the most flattering and yet stalkerish thing anyone has ever said to me. It's funny because I know that if I were to get divorced tomorrow, all interest in me would drop to zero. It's strange how it works. As long as you're a faithful and devoted husband/father, everyone wants you. The minute you take one up on their offer you cease to be devoted and faithful and no one wants you. So I just keep playing my position.


 

 

 

My Version

Attack of the Clipboardians

I wonder who was the first person to say, "Hey, why don't we all put on matching jackets. grab some clipboards and go ask people for money in front of the subway!" I remember back in the day when "The Clipboard People" (Clipboardians?) would only ask you to sign a petition. Now they want your credit card information. They seem very well organized as a whole in the sense that you never see two different groups at the same station on the same day. I guess they have a calendar or something. Greenpeace on Mondays, Planned Parenthood on Tuesdays. Politely telling them that you're not interested doesn't work so I've been trying different methods. Here's my experience this week:

Greenpeace person: Hello sir. Do you care about the environment.
Me: Not really.

Planned Parenthood: Good Morning! Do you support the idea of a woman's right to choose?
Me: You're really asking me that while I'm pushing a stroller with a screaming chid in it?

United Way: How are you today? Do you have time to save a life today?
Me: (Pointing at the stroller) That's what I'm trying to do right now.

 

Tribute to the Unknown Soldier

I was sitting in Panera Bread the other day when a family came in. The mom was pushing the double stroller and went straight to the tables while the dad ordered the food. I could see the stress written all over the guy's face. He had that look of defeat that only another parent would understand. I know how bad it is trying to go out in public with just one toddler. He had twins.

Poor guy. He had to be in his early thirties but his hair was already starting to gray. The five o'clock shadow and wrinkled clothes said that he didn't even care anymore about his appearance. He kept his head down so not to make eye contact with anyone who might see the tears he was probably trying to keep back. I wanted to make eye contact with him, you know? Let him know that I understood. Maybe salute him or something.

Then he started walking my direction. His torso was no longer obscured by that wall-thing that separates the booths from the line. That's when I realized it was worse than I ever could have imagined. He was wearing a Baby Bjorn. It wasn't twins. It was triplets. He glanced at me briefly as he passed by me...as I wept for us both.

Checkmate.

Soooo we were in the pediatrician's waiting room today waiting for a flu shot when I made the stupid decision to give my daughter my iPhone to keep her still. Even though she was younger than every kid in there, they were somewhat (how do I put this?) siddity and I didn't want her to Fight Club any of them.

They called me up to the counter to sign some papers and I left her in the chair as she dazzled the people sitting around us by knowing how to unlock it, tap the photo app and swipe through pictures. All of a sudden I heard music playing. I could tell by the smiles on their faces that they didn't know what song it was else they would've given me a harsh look right away. Instead the women around her were smiling like, "Oh that must be her favorite song." I tried my best to sign those forms as fast as possible and get that phone outta her hand before the chorus came in.

I failed.

Their adoration turned to admonition as Kanye West blurted out:
Pop champagne. I'll give you a sip
Bout to go dumb. How come?
Yeah that's my bitch!
Yeah that's my bitch!
Shorty right there? That's my bitch!

What made it so bad is that I don't even like that song. It just happened to be the one that came on after New Day, which I do like. So in addition to being judged for a song that I don't even listen to, my daughter makes it worse by clapping and shouting, Yay!, while the song is playing. I can't help but wonder if she actually enjoyed the song or if she was applauding herself for a job well done as she'd exacted revenge for my not allowing her to go play with the other little kids.

You can't beat a chess-playing mind with a checker-player's mentality. I bet my daughter planned this from the minute I told her to sit down next to me.

The Money Aint A Thing

Up until a few days ago, I really didn't know much about the NBA lockout except that both sides were arguing about how much of the "too much money" they'd get to keep. Now, I'm a little more informed and my views have changed a bit. The lockout basically boils down to this:

The players want the revenue to be split 50/50. Revenue. That's the word of the day. Revenue is how much money comes in the door whereas profit is how much money you have left after all expenses have been paid. The owners pay expenses. They players do not. So basically the owner's beef is that they don't want to split the money evenly if they're left to foot the bill for everything else. Not all teams are profitable, so it is possible that after the players walk away with 50%, the owners are left spending more money to keep the team going than they actually made that year.

In all honesty, I think it is silly that someone gets paid millions of dollars to play a game. But I don't think the solution is simple as some people would argue. If you pay athletes less money, then that money would simply shift to the pockets of the owners and other people who make a living promoting professional sports. It bothers me when people pretend like its the athlete's fault that they make so much. It's society's fault as a whole.

Basketball shoes cost about $125 on average. NBA 2K12 on PS3 and X360 is $60. Decent seats to a game start in the hundreds, while jerseys and hats aren't cheap either. Don't even get me started on those Total Access Cable Packages. These aren't arbitrary numbers pulled out of a hat. There are marketing strategists in every business that have their finger on the pulse of consumer spending who can determine to the penny what the average person is willing to spend. The only reason this stuff costs so much is because people are willing to pay it and the NBA gets a chunk of the revenue from every item sold.

They wouldn't build multimillion dollar stadiums if people weren't willing to pay big money to sit in it and have a crappier viewing experience than if they watched from home.  We're in a recession and they're still making bank. The fault is with us. Sports have an intrinsic value in society. They're our source of escape. They give us reasons to gather together in a bar to cheer with strangers, they bring excitement and adrenaline rushes to our self-imposed monotonous and often mundane lives. We rally behind and cheer for athletes who become our champion each season. When they win, we win. Do they deserve millions of dollars for that? Apparently we think so.

 

The Circle of Life

It's late and I need to go to sleep, but I gotta get this out or I'll never get any rest:

What the hell is up with all of those animal rights people crying and breaking down over the cops shooting those animals in Ohio?

For those of you who don't read the news, a gentleman in Ohio ran a wildlife reserve and apparently stocked up on random animals. This gentleman then decided to go out with a bang by killing himself. Before doing so though, he freed all of the animals.

Now, if these were chipmunks, chimps and maybe a few dogs then I could see it being jacked up that the cops shot the damn things. Even I'm not that heartless. There were 56 animals in total. Notable animals include:

18 Bengal tigers
17 Lions
6 Black Bears
2 Grizzly Bears
Wolves
Mountain Lions...

In one description the paper wrote, "Officers were forced to shoot one tiger when it became agitated after being shot with a tranquilizer." Anything with claws, fangs and the ability to outrun me is already scary. Add to that the fact that instead of falling down, it became "agitated" when shot with a tranquilizer, and you have my unconditional support to shoot it.

Some argue that the animals were frightened and just defending themselves. Riiiiiight. I wonder what a lion does when it's afraid of something. Probably the same thing it does when it's hungry. It can outrun you, out jump you and should your out of shape ass suddenly find the strength and agility to climb a tree, guess what...It can do that too. The Lion King has confused a lot of our generation. That wasn't Mufasa, devoted father and Darth Vader soundalike, out there. That was something that could easily take out a daycare full of children and it wasn't alone. There were 17 Mufasa's, 18 Tony the Tigers and a shit load of Baloos.

You wanna be mad at someone, be mad at the asshole who freed them before killing himself.

Random Thoughts

Things I could be doing right now:
Playing NBA 2K12
Watching my DVR'd Modern Family
Taking a nap

What I'm actually doing:
Watching Dora the Explorer and letting the baby feed me pre-chewed Gerber Cheese Puffs out of her mouth.

Sidenote:
You don't notice how dirty your house is until your toddler gets into that "discovery" phase where they bring you random things they find on the floor/under the couch: Old cheerio, rubber band, twisty tie. Someone has a future in Forensics.





 

 

RIP Steve Jobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=relmfu

1-800-ABCDEFG

So I'm sitting at my computer yesterday when my daughter thrusts her ABC book into my stomach cavity and produces a series of grunts and velociraptor sounds which, in her language, means, Read this before I throw this Elmo phone through the flat screen TV!

So I proceed to open the book and she quickly flips through the pages, not letting me read any, so that she can get to the alphabet chart in the back. She points to the letter A and says, Ay! I almost had a damn heart attack. It's like the lottery, every parent hopes they win a genius child. Not just a smart kid, anybody can have one of those, but to actually have a fourteen month old who can read...I can just see people holding banquets in my honor, like...how did you do it?

I must've scared the poor baby half to death yelling out, YES, YES that is an A. What's this one? She jumped back, dropped the book and her eyes started watering up. While I'm trying to calm her down and reassure that she didn't do anything wrong, I'm also breaking out my phone so that I can record it and put it on Youtube. (Good Morning America, here we come!)

So, the camera's rolling, I pick up the book and we go at it again. She points at the first letter and says, Ay!
(My baby's a genius).

Then she points to the H and says, Ay!
(Phonetically, H starts off sounding just like A. As in Ay-CH. She's one, so maybe she just says it like that.)

Then she points to the N and says, Ay!
(...)

She looks up at me with so much hope, like all of her future self esteem is riding on me reacting the same way as I did the first time. The little people who live in my head and tell me what to do called an emergency meeting. Do I correct her and inadvertently crush her self esteem setting in motion a chain reaction that ends with her at "The Pole?" If I don't correct her will I be setting her up for a false sense of accomplishment that will eventually be stripped away on the first day of preschool when the kids laugh at her for not knowing her ABCs and thus leading to a life of crime and drugs that inevitably end at "The Pole?"

(I now know what it must feel like to be the President.)

I clapped, picked her up and gave her a big kiss.

You're so smart! How'd you get to be so smart? That is Ay...letter called N!

No One Man Should Have All That Power

Rumble, young man, rumble.
Life is a trip, so sometimes we gon' stumble
You gotta go through pain in order to become you
But once the world numbs you, you'll feel like it's only one you...
Do you have the power to get up out from up under you?

I've been listening to this song a lot lately. My childhood is unique in the sense that I was given a lot of freedom very early. As unbelievable as this sounds, my grandmother used to give me the choice of whether or not to go school each day...starting in kindergarten. I was basically the Black Little Man Tate. I filled out my own permission slips, signed my mother's name on those school registration forms each year and used to go through my grandmother's bills for her back in elementary school.

Now I'm not saying I had my finger on a nuclear button like the president, but that kind of freedom and power in the hands of a kid is a double edged sword. On the one hand, I became an adult around thirteen. On the other hand, I don't have the luxury of blaming any of my problems on anyone. I'm responsible for my successes and my failures. The latter is why I've been listening to Power (Remix) so much.

Do I have the power to get from up under myself?

I've never had to listen to anyone. There's never been a real authority figure. If I didn't like something, I just stopped associating myself with it. That went for friends, extracurricular activities, jobs and college. In a lot of ways, I'm a success story--at least for my demographic: No jail, no kids out of wedlock, went to school, you get the point. But that's not enough for me, at least not anymore.

I look in the mirror. My only opponent. (From another song

Some of my failures are the result of my not having to do anything I didn't like. I realize that sometimes you have to get out of your own way. I could sit and quote rap lyrics all day, but I'll just use one more to drive home my point.

Do you have the power to let power go?

Cheers!

Here's what I'm looking for:

[caption id="attachment_1143" align="aligncenter" width="483" caption="Technically, I'm not lying"][/caption]

Would it be wrong for me to buy a set of AA keychains off Ebay and carry them around? I'm 29 and I don't drink. That makes me a social leper to just about everyone I know. One of two things happen:

A) I'm not invited to any event because everyone assumes that just because I don't enjoy drinking, then I must have a moral problem with the concept of people drinking. (I don't)

B) I'm invited to stuff but introduced as the person who doesn't drink at which point The Church of Alcoholism sends out missionaries to explain to me that I just haven't found the right church home (drink). After turning down multiple requests to just try what I'm drinking, people secretly gather to discuss how they won't invite me to anything else because I'm no fun.

Sooooo... I propose something totally different. How about I get some AA keychains and show up to these parties, invited or not, and the minute someone asks me what I'm drinking I'll pull out my keys and tell them how I'm taking it one day at a time. That's not wrong, is it?

Is Marriage Outdated?

A friend of mine wrote a blog post questioning the Doing Me attitude of our generation. She referenced her grandparents 50-year marriage and how people no longer court or even seem to try to have any semblance of a monogamous relationship. To that I ask, Is marriage outdated?

Forget what you learn as a little kid about people reaching a point of love so intense that it explodes into the desire to change last names and buy matching rings. The origin of marriage is more deeply rooted in business than in amorous expression. Fathers set up marriages between their kids in exchange for dowries (money), treaties and to build relationships with other territories and nations. Now poor people got in on the act to stay afloat. Back then women were treated like shit so they fell under the authority of their new husband. Basically you kept his name going by having kids and you raised the kids.

Now, women go to college, they get real jobs and they put their nose to the grind everyday fighting to prove themselves equal with the men in their office who get paid more. That doesn't leave a lot of time for a family. I've been married eight years, take it from me, you put yourself second when you have a family. I think that this is why a lot of people have the Doing Me attitude. Basically, you still want sex and companionship, but none of the restrictions that come with it. I gotta say, I can't hate you for that. I was always the marrying type. I wanted a big family and I wanted to marry young. But not everyone is cut from the same cloth.

I think that if you can find someone who shares your ideals then go for it. What I do have an issue with is stringing someone along as if you reciprocate their desire for commitment. Also, I take issue with people who ignore the clear warning signs of such people. Perhaps before sex you should get together and write a mission statement, sign a promissory note or do something other than fall for the, He/She is a great person and after one date I just knew I'd found the one.

No, dumb ass!

I think I'll write a beginner's guide to avoiding being played. I don't have the time right now, but it's coming.

Sleep Is Forbidden

Days Since Last Full Night's Sleep:  675
Days Until Next Full Night's Sleep: Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number, hang up and try again.

The last time I got a good night's sleep was in 2009. It's sad when you think about it, especially considering that the baby wasn't born until summer of 2010. What can I tell you, pregnancy sucks. I'm sure it sucks for women, but if you're a halfway decent man then it sucks for you too. I went from sleeping in a queen bed to sleeping on the edge of the queen's bed, to trying not to get scoliosis laying on the couch.

What happens after reading that Dollar Store pregnancy test is different for each man. When I saw that dollar sign and sad face pop up on the test, I was elated. Still, I didn't sleep after that. That test is the beginning of a countdown timer.

Nine Months To Get Your Shit Together

I spent most waking moments either at doctor visits, work, tilling the land and picking cotton for my pregnant master or just up on the internet trying to learn whatever I didn't know: Crib recalls, ergonomic strollers, which car seat could survive a plane crash. Then of course the mommy websites introduced fear that would send me into a state of panic: Lead paint in toys, the government's sinister plot to vaccinate children, Al-Qaeda's plan to use Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes to make our kids fat. It was too much.

You're having a baby girl!

Any possibility of sleep died once the doctor told us that.

Matrix mode (activated):      Learn Kung-Fu and how to use various firearms.
Lawyer mode (activated):     What state and federal laws allow me to assault a teenage boy on my property?
Therapist mode (activated): How many hugs will your daughter need to avoid becoming the girls you met in college?

And all of that was just the pregnancy. Once the baby got here, it was like living out the movie Inception. Am I asleep or awake? I never had to get up in the middle of the night because my daughter never went to sleep. If she did then it was just a quick power nap for ten or fifteen minutes. That gave us, the stagehands, just enough time to wash out bottles, empty the Diaper Genie and set everything back up for her next show. You're not officially a parent until you've fallen asleep and had a dream that you were still awake (watching the baby) and then woke up scared wondering where you put the baby.

Happy Birthday to you...you're one years old!

You still don't sleep. You used to wake up to make sure the baby was still breathing and that no stuffed animal climbed back into the crib to block her airway. Now you wake up because the baby's jumping up and down in the crib, running wind sprints from one end to the other and throwing projectiles at you trying to wake you up at three in the morning because she wants to play.

Even on those lazy Sunday afternoons where I catch a quick nap on the couch, I find myself defibrillated back to life by an Elmo Cell Phone cracked across my forehead or eight little gremlin teeth biting my nose.

Just lay there and she'll go way. Don't move, don't flinch. The T-Rex can't see you if you don't move.

That's when she takes her little finger and lifts my eyelid up. This won't last forever. I probably won't sleep during the high school years. I can't. Someone's gotta sit on the porch with the shotgun when the little boys come knocking. But eventually she'll go to college and start her own life. But even then I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night, heart racing, hoping to God that I gave her enough hugs.

Confetti

September 11, 2001

What can I possibly say about 9/11 that hasn't been said already? The TV keeps showing programs about it, the bumpers in between commercials say America Remembers as if any of us can forget, and almost every day for last ten years politicians have used it as a talking point for some agenda--good or bad.

I watched something yesterday where one of the survivors of the World Trade Center said that, when people at work complain about their jobs, and then ask him why he smiles so much, he tells them, Any day that I come to work and a plane isn't flying into my building is a good day.

That's what I want to write about.

I've watched the footage from that day a million times since then. When the first plane hits, you see the explosion and then a bunch of papers falling to the ground. The same goes for the second plane: Explosion, papers raining down. When both towers collapsed, amid the dust and ash was a lot of papers--completely intact--raining down like confetti. I'm sure some of them were faxes. Some were memos. Others were employee records. Time cards. Legal documents. Termination letters.

Not to get overly poetic here, but something tragic happened to cause all of those papers to go flying. Each time a piece of paper left a desk or a file cabinet or a briefcase to begin its descent toward the ground, it was set in motion by the same force that ended the lives of the very people who probably dedicated so much of their time and energy to the contents on those pieces of paper. Faxes. Memos. Employee records. Time cards. Legal documents. Termination letters.

Every year since 9/11 there have been stories published about how the country has changed, how the people's opinions on foreign affairs have changed and how the world, in general, has changed, but I haven't seen anything that asks how our views towards life itself have changed. I want to read that story.

Community Service

[caption id="attachment_1081" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="Just what Dr. King would've wanted, a mani-pedi"][/caption]

Now I'm not one to knock anybody's hustle but...

GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY SPECIAL


Really?

I know this neighborhood pretty well. I didn't live too far from here. I remember back when I was in high school, a guy shot a girl in the face because she gave him a fake number at the bus stop. The area is a little bit better. Now imagine that kind of neighborhood and tell me where a $15 manicure fits into your idea of helping out the community.

You know what? I'm gonna stand up out of my hatin' chair and try to see this from a different perspective. Maybe somebody has a job interview coming up. I'm sure there's a gentleman's club still hiring in this recession. I think an eyelash extension and maybe a resume printed on some scented bond paper might go a long way in getting someone a job.

And wait, is that a Cricket Mobile banner in the far right? The job's gonna need a way to reach you, right?

Power to the people!

 

 

Highlight Reel

I took my daughter to Story Time at the local library. Basically a bunch of toddlers sit in a room and the poor indentured servant (librarian) attempts to read them stories. Eventually she gives up and resorts to singing songs. My daughter showed her ass.

She ran out the room about fifteen times. When she wasn't doing that, she was walking around the room playing duck, duck, goose by herself and when it was time to go home she capped off the morning by throwing a tantrum and falling out on the floor.

I just stood there dumbfounded because she'd never done that before. Being the only Black person in there, I felt torn because so many people joke about White parents being too lenient. I felt like it was my duty to go Roots on my daughter, but that's not really my style. Usually a good bass-filled STOP gets her back in line, but I was kind of concerned that I'd be viewed as just another loud angry Black person yelling at their poor neglected child.

I could see the anticipation in everyone's eyes as they eagerly awaited my next move. I let my daughter win that round. I played to my audience and, in my most sell-out voice, I told her that she was so sleepy, and shouldn't yell so loudly in the library. I gave her a big hug and kiss to which my daughter took a quick break from her performance to stare at me confused like, Who the hell are you? Capitalizing on the moment, she went into an even bigger tantrum as we left the library.

On the walk home, I found myself preparing for the ass-whooping that was to come. It was like a quarterback reviewing the tape of his upcoming opponent's previous game. Last time the spanking wasn't as effective because I went left with it, when I should've gone right. She's gonna utilize the couch to get away from me and I have to shut down that lane.

By the time we got home, she was asleep and I was too tired. I'll get you next time Gadget, next time!

Come and Play, Everything's A-Okay

Going into Toys R Us with a child is a stupid decision in and of itself, but when you're a stay at home parent and you need something, what are you gonna do? I tried my best to zip through aisles with the stroller shade down so my daughter couldn't see anything. I found what I was looking for and went on a quest to find a price scanner.

I honestly thought I was in the clear when I lifted the shade up. Normally the markdown seasonal stuff is in the section with the price scanner. It's the end of summer. There was supposed to be snorkels and water wings and blow-up pool toys...any of that stuff that my one year old is too young to recognize and go bat-shit crazy for.

But the devil's hands are always busy and some things were moved that should not have been there. I scanned the price and heard my daughter make that "oooh" sound. The one that usually comes right before she tries to grab a knife, electrical socket or drain cleaner. Basically, the sound that translates in my head as, "Oh shit, what do you see?" I turned around and saw...

[caption id="attachment_1071" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="This is what hell looks like"][/caption]

It was like looking over and seeing a velociraptor or something. It just crept up on me and by the time I saw it, it was too late. The next fifteen minutes were spent standing in line eyeballing every employee searching for the one who wouldn't make eye contact, because I knew that he was the asshole responsible for what was now the official soundtrack of Toys R Us: my daughter screaming at the top of her lungs because Elmo, Abby, Big Bird, Grover, Oscar and the rest of the Sesame Street residents cost too damn much.

Mission Failed.

Modern Marvels

Today we pay tribute to one of the greatest technological marvels of all time. More important than the light bulb, penicillin and the combustion engine, I present to you

[caption id="attachment_1064" align="aligncenter" width="280" caption="...Let heaven and nature sing"][/caption]

The George Foreman Lean, Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine

I don't care what race, gender, sexual orientation or economic class you came from, you know what the hell this thing is. I went to college dead broke and, trust me, that's the last thing you want to be at an HBCU. The food in our cafeteria was so bad on some days that there was a line to get to the boxed cereal at dinner. And please God, don't let them run out of milk! When I was on my last dime, hungry and considering pawning my Playstation to eat, The George Foreman Grill turned the tides of the economic war.

It started out with just frying bologna on it and slowly grew into having dorm dinners where we'd buy cheap cuts of pork chops and steak and fry them up. Then, one day when I was down to my last ten bucks, I was possessed by the ghost of Hustlemen Past.

I went to the grocery store and bought a box of knock-off Steak-ums, store brand cheese, some bread, a pack of Kool-Aid and paper plates and cups. I went back to the room, opened up my door and placed my box fan facing out into the hall. Then I fried the Steak-Ums on the floor in front of the fan. It took all of two minutes for the dudes across the hall to ask if they could "hold a sandwich."
"Three dollars!"
One of em said no, but the other was too hungry to argue and when I offered to throw in a cup of Kool-Aid, I had him hooked. In ten minutes I was out of Steak-Ums and started selling fried ham and cheese sandwiches for $2 a pop. By the end of the night I had enough money to go back out, put gas in the car and buy some real food.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Hot Dogs, hamburgers...you name it, room 301 was selling it. I did that at least two weeks straight before the RA tried to shut me down. Gotta pay the authorities off, so he ended up eating for free. I got so gangster with it that I leveled the grill off one day with a real thin book from the library. I poured like a tablespoon of grease in between each of the little slots and made some damn french fries with it.

So today, I give thanks to George Foreman and his might grill. I don't know about knocking out fat, but it sure as hell knocked off hunger pangs.

Broke 101

[caption id="attachment_1056" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Bet they don't serve this at Ruth's Chris"][/caption]

Broke 101

If you find yourself looking down this aisle, you're broke. I'm issuing this public service announcement for any kids out there who, like me, may not be aware that they're broke. It wasn't a secret that my family tried to hide from me. As a matter of fact, every time I asked for something they seemed eager to tell me that they didn't have any money. I even remember my mother telling me that if I answered the phone and the person sounded White then tell them that she isn't home.

Still with all of this ingrained in my head, I somehow didn't know we were poor. That is until I went to school bragging about how I had a potted meat sandwich for lunch. That's when I learned that turning my nose up at Spam was quite hypocritical considering that potted meat is probably Spam's slightly retarded younger brother.

So yes, if you have to shop on this aisle you are broke, but fear not...being broke makes you resourceful in your later years. If not for my training as a child I would've died of starvation in college. I was the only person cooking Lo Mein in my dorm room with vienna sausages and Ramen Noodles. (The secret is to marinate the vienna sausages in soy sauce overnight, cook on a Foreman Grill and then toss into the noodles. For a cajun take on this dish you can stir fry them by leveling the Foreman grill and dropping the noodles onto the grill for no more than 1 minute.)

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

One In A Million

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I can't believe it's been ten years. I was in high school when Tupac and Biggie got killed. People were shocked. For starters, no one thought Tupac could be killed by bullets. After he made Hit Em Up, I remember the DJ on the radio saying that Tupac's days were numbered. When Biggie died it was more surprising because it seemed like Tupac had JUST died.

But Aaliyah was something entirely different. Aaliyah's death stung a little bit. There was something about her that made people react as if they knew her personally. I remember hearing about it on the radio while sitting up in my dorm. This was before Facebook so everyone jumped on AOL Instant Messenger and the chatrooms to talk about it.

The next day was just morbid. People in class were sad about it and I remember scouring BET to listen to a choked up Timbaland and Missy weigh in on it. It really hit close to home to hear DMX sobbing. What was it about her that made a dude like him break down? For me, she was special because her calm and friendly demeanor seemed genuine. Her MTV Diary was probably the most personal I've seen.

Her death was quickly overshadowed two weeks later by 9/11, but there's something about her that still elicits a remorseful sigh when we look at what the entertainment industry has to offer these days. No drugs, no scandals, no blatantly feigned "down to earth" demeanor. She was the real deal...one in a million.

The Ground Moved. Nobody Bothered It. It Just Moved.

My daughter was asleep on the living room floor and I was in the bedroom playing my 360. The bed shook and it felt weird but I told myself that it was just someone moving furniture or doing some work on the vacant apartment next door. My nigganess didn't completely buy that, so I was trying to imagine what kind of equipment would shake my bed from the other side of the wall and then the bed shook some more like the floor was wobbling. The TV shook and I noticed the blinds swaying.

Activate Inner Nigga

I don't remember putting down the controller. I don't remember moving the nachos out of the way. All I know is that I ran to the living room, scooped up my daughter, got dressed, grabbed her some Gerber food, filled a sippy cup with water, grabbed my wallet and keys and ran for the elevator. All of this happened before the controller hit the floor.

Now an earthquake never entered my mind. I live in Washington, DC. When was the last time you ever heard of an earthquake hitting DC? I thought it was either the ghost of Bin Laden blowing some shit up downtown or my building collapsing. Because I was moving at Last Dragon speeds my brain perceived time completely differently. I figured that I must have been moving around the apartment so fast that I was somehow moving faster than the building could collapse around me.

I thought about 9/11 and how those people crowded the stairwells and died in the WTC so I made the (probably stupid) decision to take the elevator. I got outside and someone told me it was an earthquake. I really hauled ass to the car then. Somehow standing in front of a highrise full of glass picture windows during an earthquake seemed...risky. I hopped in the car and drove a few blocks while trying to call--anyone.

No answer from the wife, no answer from my friends so I drove downtown to go find my baby. I did all kinds of illegal shit to make it through traffic, but I got to her job and found several thousand people outside crowding the streets. I found her like Will Smith in Independence Day and we got back in the car and got the hell away from downtown.

Now I'm watching all of the people on the news sitting in traffic trying to get home.

Hell of a day.

Don't Trust the Sun Because All Aint Well

If you're money is currently living at Suntrust or Wells Fargo/Wachovia then this post is for you.

Starting in the Fall, both banks will charge a monthly fee for the privilege of using your debit card. Wells Fargo is charging $3 a month while Suntrust is swinging for the fences with $5. Suntrust is also eliminating their Free Checking account. Unless you sign up for direct deposit of more than $100 each month then you'll be hit with a $7 fee. At first the $7 didn't bother me. I have direct deposit--who doesn't these days? Then I remembered the other accounts. We have a joint account and two individual accounts. The direct deposit only goes into one of the three so that's $14 a month for the other two. In the event that we pay for gas at the pump, buy a farecard with our check card or just choose not to carry cash since it tends to be stolen/lost, then that could be another $15 a month. So now we're spending $30 a month for something that used to be free.

I have a problem with that. I'm a smart guy. I know where this is coming from. The government has been reeling in just how much banks can make through fines and fees. Last year they changed the way overdraft charges are applied. This year they're cutting how much the banks can charge merchants each time you swipe your card. Since they can't get the money from the stores, they'll get them from you, the customer.

They have a business to run--I get that--but they make more money off of customers already. It's not like the bank takes your money and keeps it in the vault until you pull up to the ATM machine to get it back. They take your money and use it to loan to someone else or invest in something. For the use of your money, they pay you interest. Let's say you miraculously get five percent interest from them. Well, they're gonna give that money to someone else in the form of a loan or credit card and charge them way more than that. Ever heard of 21% interest credit cards? Yeah, they are getting paid. If you're a poor schmuck like me then you don't even get interest on your Free Checking account so they get to use my money for free. Now all of a sudden they want me to pay them to screw me? I've never been into prostitutes and don't plan to do it now.

So what's the next course of action? We're moving the money to a Credit Union. Free Checking, quarterly dividends and no charge to use my own money.

Deuces!

What...The...Hell?

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You know you're in a hood mall when...
One of the stores not only sells off brand clothes, watches and gear but their claim to fame is their Rest In Peace T-Shirt business. If there was a logo for all that is ghetto it would be this damn store right here. I went to Business School, so I get it: See a need, fill a need. But...Damn, do you have to put up samples of your work with scotch tape up on the front window?

There are like fifty pictures taped to the window: R.I.P Black, We Miss You Tee-Tee. You know I have no shame, so I'm standing there taking pictures while the people inside the store are like, "What the hell is he doing?" Then the thought occurs to me, "Why the hell are all of the photos from these shirts taken at the club?" Y'all couldn't find any other pictures? I know you want to put up something recent, but did the nigga die right on his way home from the club? I mean, this is DC so it's totally plausible.

Damn Black People...damn!

SMH

Experience Required

I've been keeping a journal ever since I was eleven years old. I was an only child for nine years, so my little sister offered very little in the way of companionship when she popped out. By the time she'd learned to talk and be remotely interesting, I'd learned to keep myself occupied. Writing advice to my future grown-up self in the form of a journal was one such way. It's a practice that I keep to this very day. In the present time, I feel like an idiot. Looking back at stuff I've written...I'm not too bad.

One entry is from a few years ago. I wrote:

There are 25,000 days in your life. Your death will only happen on one of them. Don't waste the other 24,999 worrying about how you'll feel, what you'll regret and what you'll wish you'd done differently. Live your life now so that when you die, you can look back and see that the majority of those 25,000 days were good days.

Experience is a resource without which you can't expect to really do an efficient job of living. Either you start off by borrowing from the experiences of others, namely your parents and older relatives, or you go out and acquire your own. The latter is more time consuming and the opportunity costs associated with it are huge, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
(In simpler terms... If you start out with a strong support network of parents and family who've been there and done that and are good at sharing their life experience without being overbearing or alienating you then you won't have to make so many mistakes on your own. You won't have so many setbacks. Maybe you'll go far in life because you had a good start. But...if your parents aren't around, or they didn't do much themselves or they are horrible at explaining life without being dicks about it then you'll have to make your own mistakes to grow into the person you are destined to become. It'll take more time. You'll find it much more difficult, but you can't beat yourself up over it because life requires you to learn and grow. How you do it is sometimes out of your control.)

Random thoughts and journal entries. Just thought I'd share. It is my website after all.

Been Here Before

Dear Internet,
I'm writing this because no one else believes me. Maybe after I'm gone the news will google me and find this entry. I put my daughter in her high chair and gave her a cut-up banana. She wanted me to give her my spaghetti, to which I responded aloud, "I suggest you eat that banana and drink that milk. If the banana is not to your liking, you are welcome to contact our regional manager, Mommy, when she gets home."

It's hard to describe in words what happened next, but I'm gonna do my best. You know the Black woman eye-roll? Take that and add it to that weird looking Jigsaw doll from the movie Saw and that's what my daughter did. It was kind of like, "Nigga what?" but at the same time kind of sadistic like, "Don't go to sleep." She did it twice and then started laughing.

Now she's only 13 months old. I am so close to safe dropping her at the hospital, but my wife won't let me. So, I'm taking alternative measures. I'm in foreign territory because exorcisms never happen with ghetto kids, so I'm trying to improvise. I figure regular holy water won't work, so I put some unopened packs of Kool-Aid inside a bible for ten minutes. I mixed that up and I'm gonna pour it in her sippy cup. I also thought about putting a picture of TD Jakes up over her crib, but if she bursts into flames inside the house our renter's insurance might not cover it.

I'm scared, so if you see on the news where a 29 year old man was bludgeoned to death by a Glow Worm and the police have no leads...please point them in the direction of this website.

The Time Traveler's Stomach

I don't remember what I was watching but it had something to do with time travel and the thought popped in my head, "What would you do if you had a time machine." Everybody probably thinks that at some point. Does it make me a greedy bastard that my first thought was to go back to 1987 and go to McDonald's?

When I was five, McDonald's was the shit. As a matter of fact, all food was the shit in the late 80's. Me and the wife were at a diner one day and I got a Coke and the first thing out of my mouth was, "Taste this, it tastes like Cokes from back when we were little." I don't care what it was: Froot Loops, Filet-o-Fish, Now-and-Laters, even Cup o' Noodle soup--All of it tasted better back then.

What the hell happened? The natural assumption is that everything is overprocessed these days, but I highly doubt that back then they had a real chef cooking up soup and then drying it out to fit in those little cups. All I know is that food today sucks.

My fat man rant is over. Carry on.

Random Question

When you watch PBS all the time with your kid, you have to find ways to keep yourself sane. Today's thought is:
When the time comes, how do I explain to my daughter what The Count is? Explaining to her that he's a vampire just seems kind of...wrong. She'll ask what a vampire is and that'll just open a whole new set of questions. "So he sucks the blood out of people to stay alive?"

Of course that does make me wonder...Is that why all of the people I remember being on the show are gone? The Black guy had a wife back when I was a kid. I'm sure in reality she probably died, but on the show...did the people of Sesame Street sacrifice her to The Count since she was old anyway? What happened to that deaf lady? Was he kind of like a gas pump counting the quarts of blood as he drank them to death?

I'm just going to tell her that he's a politician, maybe a Republican, and that's why he crunches the numbers so much.

Broke Phi Broke, We Aint Got It!

Today I lost a shit load of money trading stocks, so much so that I'm considering quitting that for good. My wife's company got bought out and while the head honchos are saying, "There's nothing to worry about," they're packing up their desks and moving to new companies. And if that aint enough, those school loan payments are starting back up again. I'm on track to becoming president of the Washington, DC chapter of Broke Phi Broke Innnnnnncorporated!

It is with all of this in mind that I find myself thinking about those murder-suicides that kept popping up when the economy tanked back in '08-'09. The idea of killing myself and my family because I'm broke just seems...retarded. I know we're not supposed to use that word anymore, but nothing else comes to mind. I'm broke. People want money from me. I don't want to give it to them and guess what...I don't have to. Why? Because I'm broke. It sounds like a problem that solves itself.

Also, I grew up in a broke family. Correction: A broke-ass family. When your parents borrow money from you and you're a kid...yo ass is broke. I hope to never go back to the days where I have to eat food from the food bank, the government or be on food stamps, but guess what...I'd do that before I'd go killing myself.

Plus, I've been close to death already. It's not cool. I tell this story a lot, but it's a good story to tell:
My doctor told me that there was a mass in my liver that might be cancer. He left that shit on a voicemail at 4:55pm on a Friday. By the time I called back, the office was closed for the weekend. What made it so bad was that the call came a week after I had heart surgery. So imagine that you're 27 years old and you find out you have a life-threatening heart defect that could kill you at any moment. Then you find out you could die during the heart surgery. You come to grips with that, survive the procedure and a week later have someone tell you that instead of dying suddenly like the heart issue, you might die slowly over the next year or so due to cancer...and they tell you this on a voice mail.

In the words of the great Negro entertainer Katt Williams, "This shit right here, nigga..." trumps any "oh I'm broke and want to die" thought that might ever run through my damn head. I have one hell of a "I wanna live" mentality. So, on behalf of The Church of Unemployment where the Right Reverend Ordale J. Allen is our pastor, I want to encourage all of you to remember that being broke is a problem that solves itself. Also, Broke Phi Broke will be having a fish fry next Saturday behind the church.

Happy Birthday!

Can you believe that a year has gone by since I started this website? I can, and so can the people at GoDaddy because they canceled the damn site for non-payment. So, if you tried to find this site over the weekend, you probably got the "domain for sale" message.

So, for my website's birthday they got $12...and I got a bill. Cheers to the freakin weekend!

I'll drink to that!

Unfriend

I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed with Facebook. I've always maintained that Facebook is the highlight reel of people's lives. A friend of mine constantly gauges her success against what she sees on people's Facebook page. They're married, they have kids, they have good jobs. I keep reminding her that people tell you what they want you to hear. Yeah, some people are married with families and jobs. That means they have a lot more things going on in their lives and the more stuff going on in your life, the more room for error. Basically, just because you find yourself in a place different than those people you see on Facebook, it doesn't mean that they're better off. It's not like people gonna post, Jane's husband cheated on her and her son is getting held back a year in school. Oh, and Jane hates her fucking boss and is seriously underpaid.

But that's not even my reason for Facebook annoying me. The newsfeed keeps showing me more and more insight into people's lives and reminding me exactly why some people are JUST Facebook friends. I want to stay in touch with these people for nostalgic purposes. Occasionally, I drive through my old neighborhoods to go down memory lane, but that doesn't mean I want to move back into those shitty apartments. The same goes for some FB friends. The way I see it, people grow apart for various reasons. Lately my Newsfeed has been highlighting some of those reasons.

This doesn't apply to everyone. If you're one of my FB friends reading this post then more than likely it doesn't apply to you (lol).

Law Abiding Citizen

There's an article on CNN.com about a recent bust where about seventy people were arrested for belonging to this child porn website. I realize that I pay more attention to stories like that since my daughter was born. I usually just write the people off as being sick fucks, but this shit was on a whole different level. The site they were on required members to upload videos of them raping a child in order to join and view content. They had to post new shit frequently in order to keep membership and membership status was on a tiered system. The highest rank required the child to be screaming and visibly upset and devastated or some shit like that. I can't bring myself to go back and read it to get the wording right, but it was very fucking sick. What really pushed me over the edge was the part about them having categories on their site and Infants being a damn category.

They caught seventy of the people and they all face thirty years in prison. The Attorney General said basically what I'm saying now, thirty years isn't enough for what they did. I always hear that child molesters and rapists get what they deserve in prison, but even if they send them to one of those prisons from that show Lockdown, it isn't enough for me.

I have a daughter, she just turned one and it's sick shit like this that has made me so paranoid that I don't trust anyone to babysit. I don't even let my mother babysit and it isn't that I don't trust her. It's that I don't know when she might go visit a friend of hers and run to the bathroom or something and they might do something. A year ago I would've told you that I'd never shelter my child and that I wanted my daughter to grow up hood tough just like I did. When I was five I started catching the metrobus by myself. In NC I thought those kids were so soft because they were driven everywhere. Well, I'm eating crow because I won't let my child out of my sight because of shit like this.

So what do I think these guys deserve? First off, I'm not saying we just go kill people without a trial. They had to post videos to join the site, right? Well, let's go to the videotape! If John Doe is on camera and we, the jury, see him raping a child. He's guilty. But his ass ain't going to jail... at least not right away. We're going Law Abiding Citizen on his ass. I'm talking torture, smelling salts and blood transfusions to make sure that he experiences pain that pushes him just to the brink of death and then we pull him back, let him heal and start it all over again. Then he goes to jail and gets the shit beat out of him each day.

I don't even know how to end this post, because I'm so damn mad.

Rise of the Planet of the Toddler

True story, no exaggerations:

I took my phone away from my daughter and put it on the back of the couch out of her reach. Now the couch is up against the wall in the living room and she isn't tall enough to climb up on the couch without help, so you can see my logic in putting the phone there. She got pissed, started screaming and when I wouldn't let her get the phone she got mad and went storming into the bedroom. She's only one, so she isn't old enough for the "who the hell are you yelling at" or the "I know you didn't just storm away from me" ass whoopings. I let it go and went in the kitchen.

I hear a noise and look over the bar to see her dragging the big empty Pampers box into the living room. Like most ghetto families, we feel that a cardboard box is a vast realm of fun and adventure for our child, so we don't throw them away. I thought she was going to get in the box or play with it or something. At no point did it enter my mind that she was going to turn the box upside down, push it over to the couch and then use it as a step ladder to climb onto the couch to get to my phone.

What in the hell do you do in that situation? She's only twelve months old so a part of me respects the ingenuity. Most kids have the memory and attention span of a fruit fly. For her to look opposition in the eye and go build a damn ladder is amazing. On the other hand, she did act like I wasn't even a factor in the whole process which shows just how little she thinks of me. I swear to God living with her is like living with one of those velociraptors from Jurassic Park. If she ever figures out how to open doors, it's over.