The musings of a madman...

I know what you're thinking "shut the hell up, Phillip, you don't bake!" ... and you would be right in that observation.  I usually don't, but I was up yesterday morning watching the Food Network and I had a couple of dollars to buy myself something, so I went down to the grocery store and made some plans. Start with a flat of crack cocaine King's Hawaiian rolls And dice them up Then a container of grocery store Croissants Dice them up too, put them in the same bowl and toss them together to mix Rub the pan you will use with butter, put all the diced bread in it and set it aside Genuine Swiss white chocolate bar Once you hit it with the knife, it will start breaking up nicely, get it as fine as possible Put it in a bowl, add semi-sweet chocolate chips (or chocolate/peanut butter if you're me) and toss to mix (sorry, forgot to photograph them "tossed," the white chocolate is underneath) Spread them on top of and...

2: Acknowledgement and Acceptance      With a mind fully focused on the facts that basketball remains a sport that requires VERY little to get into as far as resources, and hip hop a musical medium that (at the time) required little in the way of classical musical training, it seems only natural that kids from lower-rent areas would be into either, or even both of the two simultaneously.  The connection between participants of the two is more than natural.      What could not be assumed was that either would be accepted as continuingly viable forms of entertainment or even recreational activities.  For what they were and the relative obscurity from whence they came, they would surely be a hard sell to say the least. With that in mind, it is (or was) only fair that both would initially cultivate and grow in areas with less-than-affluent populations and grow from there up, sometimes (or often) moving those less-than-affluent ...

            2012, an election year… As it is an election year, it was ALSO an Olympics year.  Of late, as in the last 4 weeks we have witnessed a few Presidential/Vice-Presidential debates.  To be totally honest, the debates were the most contentious and therefore entertaining that I have seen in my voting life.  At 33 years of age, this will have been the 4 th election I have been able to legally vote in (and I have voted in each, for the record) and that fact got me to thinking.             The Electoral College renders votes in some states more valuable than others, and that has caused some people to simply decide not to bother with voting at all.  Strangely, as I mentioned on another site last week, those “I ain’t gonna vote” votes have a newfound value to the people who want you to vote for Romney simply because he isn’t black Obama.     ...

This will be my shortest one of these ever, but it really was just as easy as I will make it out to be. 1 - go to Grocery store with daughter, buy boneless/skinless chicken breasts, bread crumbs (regular OR panko, I used both), and parmesan. (pictured: cute baby and none of the ingredients) 2 - cut chicken into strips and dip into all-purpose flour, set aside 3 - set out an eggwash (mine consists of 2 beaten eggs and one dash each apple cider vinegar and olive oil and some seasonings), and a 3-to-1 mixture of seasoned bread crumbs and parmesan. (additional option: add some crushed sunflower kernels and/or cashews - use the mini chopper to dust them up nicely) 4 - dip floured chicken in egg wash, then roll in bred crumb mixture, then place onto a foiled/sprayed cookie sheet 5 - pre-heated 375° oven for 45 minutes or until the fattest part of your thickest one is 165° with the meat thermometer Enjoy! I warn that these will be crispy the first time you have them, ...

1: Humble Beginnings      We all know the story of basketball’s beginnings. Dr. Naismith was commissioned with the creation of an indoor activity to keep kids in his YMCA busy on rainy days or in the harsh New England winters in Springfield, MA.  In a dearth of seed money or other outside resources, a peach basket was nailed to a wall ten feet in the air and the objective was to throw the ball (then a soccer ball – specifically-designed basketballs  wouldn't  come until later) into the basket within the constraints of a set of rules he had written out prior to nailing the baskets up. Compared to what “basket-ball” – as a then-skeptical Dr. Naismith called the game in his diaries – would become, it really doesn’t seem feasible that beginnings get more humble than that.  From his brainchild, the activity became sport played in YMCAs throughout the US, spreading through the rest of North America as well and eventually into high schools a...

     Allow me a moment to explain what it is we’re about to embark on… Back in May, I had this idea that I would write a book that would detail the connected histories of Hip Hop and Professional Basketball.  In June I got married, then had the week leading up to my birthday off of work.  In that time, I got a lot of work done on it, but it was not shaping up to be voluminous to be worth attempting to pursue a whole book’s worth of writing on.  As of the date that I type this (10/15/2012), I was a hair over 10,000 words into the project and running out of steam enough to carry it any further.  I mean that to say that I was almost “done,” and would need an amount of input up to about four times the amount of words I had put into it.      Given the length of what I DID have, though, I would not be willing to let it go to waste, and that is what brings me here today.  Instead of a book, I will publish the presentatio...

A repost of mammarial proportions ... (yes, I know that "mammarial" is not a word, or was not until now) I'd originally posted this blog in October 2007, and as the date draws near again my mind has not changed one little bit, nor has the importance of the subject at hand, so here goes... Do you know what this week is? According to   NYC Cancer Prevention , the 3rd Friday in every October is "National Mammography Day." I know what you're thinking, "But Phillip, you don't have titties," and the jokes of my man-boobs are damn near moot, as they are just about gone now. I DO have a sense of humor about myself and I know that I am     still not a small person by any stretch of the imagination, but I digress... I have taken on the vigil to make sure that no woman misses out on their mammogram this coming Friday. I work for a company in the healthcare industry, so I am 100% sure and clear of the shortcomings in availability an...

Meatballs, that is. Warning, there might be gratuitous innuendousness in this post. Every Tuesday for the past 5 (going on 6) weeks now, I have made meatballs from ground chicken/turkey sausage.  These were the ones I made two weeks ago.  Each time I have come up with a different sauce to cook them in, only once has that sauce been a standard red spaghetti sauce. Ground Chicken/turkey meatballs in a cheese sauce Cast of characters: Cream of Chicken and Cheddar Cheese soups, cheese of your choice and chicken broth Diced peppers/onions One pound of ground chicken, one pound of turkey sausage, you can use beef and pork if you eat those.  I do not And dice up some turkey bacon in your chopper (optional).  Naturally, you can use regular bacon if you eat red meat Toss in the pepper mixture... ... and some bread crumbs grate a little of that Gouda you had in the fridge and need to use (optional) Two eggs (or one egg for every pound of meat) g...

            Two years ago, 10/30/2010, I emailed two friends with an idea I had knocking around in my head.  Both told me that it seemed like a good idea at the time and that I should pursue it. Well in the months that followed, I would find out that another member of my family was coming and all of the panicked planning that comes with such things and I had kind of forgotten about the idea.             Operative words: “kind of,” as no idea is ever fully killed.  Fast forward to 9/10/2012, I was in a conversation with a third friend (mutual to the first two) about something totally unrelated.  The conversation turned to books we might write, and I explained to him my idea and how I had been basically sitting on it.  His first response was “that kinda sounds like a movie,” and when I lamented that I knew not where I would take the story, as in how to present everythin...