The musings of a madman...

     Okay, so we have talked about the past, we have brought things up into the present.  The very natural next question is “well what does the future hold?” As much as I would love to say that I have the answer to that question, the fact remains simply that I cannot have such information.      This coming year, the NBA Commissioner of the hip hop era is retiring and one of his understudies will take his position.  It will remain to be seen whether that means that he will continue the non hip hop friendly approach that Stern attempted within the past ten or so years or if he will simply let things fall to the way of profitability of the time just before those years.  What we DO know is that kids are still playing ball, even if not outdoors as much as they did when those around my own age did.  What is known is that rappers are still dropping basketball metaphors and are still seen courtside at games.  I cannot imagine that last fact changing as long as the prohibitive-to-reg

            Call it dumb luck, call it a blessing in disguise, call it what you will call it. My initial plans were to have done this with a duck breast, but after trips to four different grocery stores in the more affluent parts of town and three DIFFERENT health food stores; I had no duck breast in my possession (Whole Foods, Earthfare, Fresh Market... you have failed me) .  My refusal to drive to BFE to the farmer’s market on the chance of STILL returning empty-handed, I trashed the idea and changed gears.             Please forgive me for the low number of images in this one, as I didn’t think about blogging it until it was already actively cooking (two days after the initial start). Start with a package of boneless/skinless chicken breasts, my package had four of them in it.  In a container large enough for all of them, put a half-cup of salt, a third-cup of brown sugar and various seasonings of your choosing.  I chose garlic powder, onion powder, curry powder, ground gin

9:Renaissance(s)      The concept that a sport or a genre of music, especially one often marginalized as “not music” like hip hop has often been through its years seems foreign to some.  The fact, however, is still that each has had an almost consistently generational window of change that can be expected to take place.  In basketball, the change can be usually marked to include a “generation” lasting about the length of the careers of the most prominent players of that time.  Often times, you hear them discussed/named in terms of the most prominent players/combinations of those particular times.  Examples include the “Celtics dynasty,” the “NBA vs ABA,” of course the vaunted “Magic vs Bird” era, the “Jordan era,” and then the shared “Shaq/Kobe era” and “Spurs dynasty” years.  Based upon the best players playing 11-15 years, those five great periods have bridged the time from professional basketball’s days of infancy in the late-40s and 50s until the present.      Similarly, an

8:Detractors Abound Despite the very much displayed facts supporting that hip hop and basketball are blood brothers, there still happens to be groups who’d sooner have it otherwise.  Following the infamous “brawl at the palace,” NBA Commissioner David Stern reverted back to his pre-Air-Jordan-days and implemented changes that specifically blackballed things that had always been openly embraced by hip hop at large; specifically the players were forbidden from “street” clothes – no jeans/athletic wear, specifically only “dressy” clothes – and big visible necklace/medallion combinations as they entered and exited the arenas in which they played.  It seemed to matter not that they were to be infrequently seen by anyone other than cameras already tasked and properly compensated with being there to cover them, instead of fans or civilian paparazzi – both of whom would lack credentials to gain that kind of access.  This approach played best into the most lucrative of buyers an