The musings of a madman...

Disclosure: This is an album from a good friend of mine, I received my signed copy in the mail a couple weeks ago... Busy with changing items in my life to be discussed in a blog this coming week, I am just now getting to finishing the review. Different from my usual fare, this is what one might categorize as Electronic music, though I know full well that Mike is just as capable of hip hop, even raps a bit himself. All songs written, produced and arranged by the big name on the front of the disc. As I live with a seething hatred for iTunes, I had to name and tag all the tracks myself in order to rip them using Windows Media Player, which I have learned to hate less. [ Phlip note - feel free to ask me how it is I am syncing my iPod in private and I will share] Now with the introductions out of the way, let's get down to business. 1 - Heavenly Bodies We start things off here with a very interesting string arrangement. This is followed a couple bars later with the introduction of mor

This is one I been thinking about and talking over for a while now. As I do, I presented the question to the vast Book of Faces on Sunday at 7:34pm. "Question of the day... Would you rather be WANTED or NEEDED? Do not answer this unless you can provide an explanation of WHY with it." And I would then sit back and wait on responses from those who I have befriended. Remember that, as ever, responses are 99% unedited, with the ONLY exception being that I MUST make quotation marks right. First respondent, as a thanked participant of MOST of these conversations, was former coworker, Tiffany, with... "I have answered this somewhere before.....wanted. I prefer someone is CHOOSING to be with me, as opposed to them thinking they need me for some reason or another. I hope they made a choice in the matter, not stayed with me out of some kind of necessity. Anyway, needs can easily be met anywhere, and sadly enough....very willingly. " Next was high school classmate, M

(well, not quite, but we'll get back to that shortly) Some of the two of you, those aged 28 and older for sure, should remember late 80s/early 90s sitcom Full House . If not, click that link and come back to read from here. In a nutshell, this show --along with America's Funniest Home Videos -- is the reason that people see Bob Saget as "corny and wholesome," and predates when we were ALL fucking done with the Olson Twins 20+ years ago. Anyway, for something new we're gonna do here on the blog, we're going to take something that is abjectly white and, well... Paint it black. What that means, if you don't get it, is that we will remove the stereotypically white America stereotypes and add some black ones in their place. So let's do this. From the above-linked Wikipedia article: Set in San Francisco, California , it chronicles widowed father Danny Tanner ( Bob Saget ), who, after the death of his wife following the birth of their youngest daughter Mic

What one side calls a "tax deduction," the other sees as a "revenue stream," it seems... Between the circuses that is the whole Nas/Kelis dilemma, where he is being raked over the coals for more in a month than I make in a year for child and spousal support. And for what?!!? Does she not have a career of her own? Are there not some established norms for what it costs to raise a child for 2 people, then a FAIR comparison to what BOTH parents make a year for FAIR adjustment, "custodial parent" be damned... Another example is the semi-recent exploits of a certain Siohvaughn Wade , where it seems that she is now seeing that she will not just be GIFTED an exorbitant chunk of that windfall that D-Wade is about to take in about 7 weeks and is now acting out. First she tries to play to the sympathies of the female judge by suing his alleged "mistress." Now she can just lay back out of court and there is no way a judge would even need her there, not with

[ Phlip note - this is a "slightly inebriated lunchtime with Murph" post I have been sitting on since I got home from Atlanta 2 weeks ago] ... is a gym sock and an orange. The gym sock MUST be a knee-high, Tiny Archibald status. Think of the endless possibilities... Non-Lethal Crowd Control When pressed by an unarmed crowd, you will swing your (preferably dirty) gym sock at the onslaught, probably catching the lead right on the jaw. A quick reload on the recoil gets you into the next. Not only are you controlling the crowd by way of making examples out of people, you're also giving them a full day's supply of Vitamin C. Homeless Suppression "Hey, brotha, can you spare some change for a--..." Say no more, once you have unleashed your fruit-juicy effectiveness, you will have not only circumvented the need to donate that money by providing nourishment in the form of antioxidants-laden citrus, you will also kept him at a safe distance. Self Defense Come on, loo

Why does it feel like we've been here before? Wait, it is more than likely because we have . My last posts on basketball (2 links, that) were rife with concern that Cleveland SHOULD be a problem for anyone they meet. In so many words, I had conceded to the inevitability of this being their championship season. Man, am I EVER glad I was wrong. Look, I know it seems like I am hating on the boy, and to that I will admit, fuck it. What bothers me not is the amount of times he gives, through his actions, REASONS to be hated on. No one remembers how he reacted to being blown off the court in his first finals, as no one expected them to be there, even themselves so their sweep was not even a small surprise. We ALL remember his walking off of the court without even congratulating his "friend" Dwight Howard, then offering the excuse... “It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that...If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them,” James said. “It doesn’t

Question time... Today's question came from a discussion The Katie and I had over something that had come across the television. In a nutshell, the question that came of the conversation was as follows, which I posted to FaceBook, of course. "Question of the day... At what point does a woman assume, not assume or hyphenate her last name to her husband's upon becoming married?" Basically, she had asked me "what IS the point of hyphenating a last name?" and questioned the basic protocol. My explanation as I have understood and usually seen it happen will be in my response at the end. I knew I would have at least some good conversation over this one... First response came from Tiffany, with... "I think this is one of those questions that could produce hundreds of answers, it really depends on the woman and her personal attachment to her last name. I have NO attachment to my last name, so I would have no problem ridding myself of it. I th

You know, I don't know how I feel coming into this one... While Dancehall Reggae and rap make for a more natural combination -- as evidenced by BDP and the legendary commercial debut of the not-quite best ever Biggie on a SuperCat remix -- I was not too sure with how a more Roots Reggae/Rap hybrid would come across. Hell, even Capleton leaned to his own Dancehall sensibilities when Lil Jon (yes, that same one) gave him a beat to remix Wings of the Morning with Method Man. Knowing that Nas desparately needs money from an ugly divorce is needing a new creative outlet, and that Damian Marley is criminally slept-on, perhaps in his father's legendary shadow, we are to expect that this is a case of like minds coming together. For the sake of me, I am PRAYING that this shit works. And for those who doubt me, I did not become the dude to own/download literally thousands of albums because I wanted to hate on shit. Yes, often I come across an album that is an absolute fucking stinkfes

The jokes on this season are showing their age. Rappers going broke started LAST YEAR, and the Soulja Boi/Ice T thing was just a bit fresher then than now. Sure, last week's show was marginally funny, what with the light it drew to both sides of Obamamania, showing just how little sense either side makes, but it too arrived 12 months late. It is OBVIOUS that these were written a year or more ago, the pop culture references are so old that they've gone stale. With this much of a pushback, these should have been cutting room floor relics, bonus material on a DVD somewhere. Locked away in a vault somewhere and only rumored about, not on television making for way-too-late jokes. Really, I am expecting someone to yell "SIIIIIIIKE!!!" after fooling someone, or something like that. Hell, I may even see a bootleg Bart Simpson T-Shirt . [ Phlip note - 2 links, that] Anyone who knows me knows how much I Stan for The Boondocks, what with every daily comic strip on my comput

I have come to the conclusion that "I have a headache tonight" is the most bullshit excuse for not wanting to make sex employed in the world. Blame this post on the whole "The Katie and I were talking" aesthetic... We were actually talking about the science of headaches and what I learned from my own (to-be-discussed) experiences about them, then jokes were made and next somewhere during the exchange was one of my "this WILL become a post" declarations. Sex -- at least good, or even just decent sex -- is cardiovascular activity, which promotes increased bloodflow in 2 ways. Getting to moving ups heart rate, and... The redistribution of blood to create an erection, or wet up her "area," or ESPECIALLY to make those muscles she has there (yes!!!) work do the same. As an individual who on occasion goes to bed drunk, is terribly stressed by his current employer, and has suffered 3 skull fractures and a broken jaw all at once, it is sufficed to say

Been a while since I did one of these. Fact of the matter, though, is that this one was presented as an idea by The Katie. Initially, I shot it down, since people already see me as some kind of raging homophobe and sexist, but what have I to lose? Not like I have many people left to offend these days. The question, as I present VERBATIM from the Book of Face, is... "Time for a new question of the day. Please be mature AND HONEST when answering this one... Would your opinion of someone -- like a close friend -- change if they revealed to you that they were gay?" [ Phlip note - the lead in was VERY necessary, as I have friends who are more immature than I am known to be] First respondent was my cousin Gloria, with... "No. For the most part u already had an idea they were...I do have a lil cuzzo that did shock the fam. But I love her no matter what." Next was trapped-in-New Englander, Joe , with... "No. I've had a couple come out and I said "well i

Seriously... With respects to Tony Grands on this one. Thought of this while reading his post from the other day just now. Don't judge me, I been catching up on my reading since I got back in town, RSS reader is STILL kicking my ass. As I think about this, how exactly WERE Biggie and Tupac any better than Guru? It seems that as Hip Hop observers, we neglect to say that people are what they claim they were while they were still alive. I mean that to say that EVERY rapper claims that they're the best, and as a competitive marketplace I can't say that I blame them. Parlance on the subject serves it that we would be miss to not stop and think about what it is that qualifies these claims and properly assess what it is that makes them so or refutes them. I have never been a Tupac Stan, but that is more related to my having been turned off of him by the deluge of 'Pac Stans in my high school. The experience was basically ruined on me, I just couldn't see how they could b