You better play the background, and sit back down

Son, my form is too nice, my handle's precise
I'll take you right or go left
Because my game's so def, and now you're mine
-Gangstarr, "Now You're Mine"

shortyrock is back on the floor. four games into it, peep the stat line: 4.5 points per game, 2.3 rebounds per game, 2 steals per game, 1.3 assists per game, and seven turnovers per game.

compare to this to a freshman year the looked like this: 9 ppg, 3.1 rpg, 5.9 apg, 6 spg, 4 topg.

and a sophomore year that went like this: 9.1 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 4.9 apg, 4.6 spg, and 3.6 topg.

the road to recovery is a long one for ACL injuries, but hopefully she can settle down and hold it down for the fam. which reminds me, i need to sneak moms dukes up here before the season disappears. there's another game this saturday, but it's in vermont so that shT ain't hapnin. I'll just have to wait until next week.

Angry Black White Boy

Been reading up on hip-hop scholarship, particularly in academia, and the host of interwoven subplots that come into play. Interestingly enough, the notion of experts not of color on subjects specifically for and/or about people of color is nothing new, yet still fascinates and bewilders me concurrently. Check out what next Monday has in store 'up the road.'

Brothers About Change will be hosting an event Monday January 23, 2006 at 6:00pm in the Raytheon Amphitheater at Northeastern University. Author, poet, and rapper (huh?) ADAM MANSBACH will be our featured guest as we try to breakdown and understand the complexities of racial identity. The event will begin with performances by ADAM MANSBACH from his book, ANGRY BLACK WHITEBOY, a novel based on a white man's acute understanding of white privilege and his attempts to expose it. It will then transition into a discussion centered on white privilege, racial politics, and the way our generation is dealing with race and racism. It will be followed with a question and answer session. Please join us for an entertaining and humorous view on a serious topic.

Skepticism is sure to be one of many immediate afterthoughts for some. But I may have to hit it up nonetheless.

I'm trapped in corners bustin shots at Time-Warner

I'm America's nightmare
young black and just dont give a fuq
I just want to get high and live it up
so fuck a 9-to-5
and why you tryin to slave us
with minimum wages
slammin my n!ggas up in cages
-Onyx, "All We Got Iz Us"

Borne of a banal necessity. Steeped in surreal history. Conscious of the cause du jour. We fight with inner and outer demons throuhgout our days on the regular, but only find times to address them when we least expect it. I may have written Lying Eyes back in 1998 or so, but I came across it and it resonated with me. It's a bit choppy, misspelled, illeterate (lol), rushed, fragmented, and disconcerting; but that's the emotion with which I wrote it at the time. like those southside boys said, living life on the edge of dangerous, where you living, never giving a shT, cuz we living in it [shT]. Now if only I could fine that demo tape I made...then all those prior creative juices should start flowing freely once again, right?

Lying Eyes

Street fiends make cream
While cash rules everyone
With iced jewels
And a disdain for school
Peep those freshly-cut fades and Air J's
With the mad fat bubble gooses

The noose is loosened
Then pulled tighter
The fire gets brighter

Eyes turn glassy and stark
Like chalky coal from lighter fluid
A river must have run through it
And up in your ass
So think fast
Catching whiplash
Mind states shift

Mental quips and split spliffs
Leaves wrinkled weed in the midst
Burning trees like anti-environmentalists
The coke-crack epidemic is sytemic
Ain't no accident
Just a migraine headache
Boring a hole through skulls
While over life we mull

And wonder in passive voices
Making choices
Like to smoke or to puff the lah
Or go raw
Because many get left moist
With wood-grain stains
And red dots from blood unclotted
In the clutches of predators gone AWOL
Seizing shrunken balls
Off of project walls
In hotel halls
And corrupt corridors

Linking schizophrenics to anorexics
It ain't only the mentally dyslexic
That be seeing life backwards

Progressively slumping
Lower into slums
Claiming to be dumb
But I know that you're smarter, son
You're just not thinking harder
Or hard enough

But I will not allow you to be a tough guy
And look me in my eye
And lie
And disavow the beat of the drum
And the thump of one's
Own heart

When will you start
to open your eyes
And realize
Your demise
Has already begun

Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need

just trying to live my own reality show...sans the miscellaneous hoes and commercial breaks. I've been able to take care of a good 3-4 resolutions that needed to get dealt with. i signed up, got trained, and met my new mentee last week. i got the pic of my 3 great-grandmothers all together. i signed up to do some outreach work this weekend (Brooklyn on Saturday and Boston on Sunday). and i found someone to take the reigns of the alumni association. nice. however, i haven't opened rich dad, poor dad in over a week and i desperately need to finish it because it made me realize some extremely obvious shT that also needs to be dealt with with the quickness. it also spawned several deep, introspective observations that may be much too personal for me to share here, but I do need to talk through.

but now on to other matters...

...this unfortunately answers the question as to why I had to take that detour around Baltimore Monday morning. quite the sad story. and i'm sure more will come out in later days.

...and apparently, the n!ggas have not left the building. yet another shooting; this time in Quincy, that claims another life. interestingly enough, i just so happened to come across this essay by John Chuckman. I'm a bit conflicted in how I feel after reading it. There is a sensibility in me that nodded at many of the points he had to make. However, it was tinted much too much with an air of contempt for me - the black male - than I may be able to stomach. A little bit of bias sprinkled in with some scholarly rhetoric and a dash of immigrant animosity definitely makes it a interesting read to say the least. I was instantly trying to search for a deeper meaning while also extrapolating it to apply to Boston. We got neighborhood sweeps to proactively start rounding up cats with outstanding warrants, while we also have a governor who is barely here that plans to veto a bill that would allow illegal aliens that graduate from MA high schools to pay in-state tution rates.

yet, shT is apparently very real in the field, B. this shT is astounding. from the mouth of a student. regardless of race, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, or what hood s/he reps; there is an obvious issue at hand. this should be required reading for all city officials. man up, b!tches.