The musings of a madman...

            The sweet thing about this post will be how little it actually wound up costing.  I honestly had no plans when I went to the store to make it, but when I walked past the fish, it was priced so perfectly that I could not have left it there.  I went into the store with intentions on getting something simple and inexpensive to cook and it was ABOUT to involve some chicken and probably potatoes, but then this happened. Cast of characters… 3 small packages of farm-raised catfish (wild catfish are fucking disgusting bottom feeders) nuggets  ($1.33, $1.35 and $1.45, respectively): ½ cup of lemon or lime juice ($1.79 for the bottle): Call your mom on the way home from the store and raid her cupboard for a few handfuls of Jingos and cheez-it crackers ($0.00): ½ cup vinaigrette of your choosing ($0.00, already in the house): Seasonings of your choosing ($0.00, already in the house): (not pictured) 3-5 dashes of Worcestershire sauce an

            This is a concept that I have ATTEMPTED three times before finding success with it.  I would say “with varying degrees of success,” but I would hardly refer to anything that even I left the situation saying “it was good, but not like earth-shattering or anything…” myself as a success. It turns out quite simply that I was overthinking it.             Inspired by the mountain of leftovers back at Christmas – and a meatball recipe I'd devised ONLY for the holidays but have been demanded to revisit – I realized that this would be DEAD-ass simple. You will need… 2 bags of peeled, deveined, tail-off RAW shrimp: (did y’all notice that bags of shrimp are now coming in 12oz instead of a pound these days?) You WILL need to use raw, because already-cooked shrimp will be too tough when you finish. 1 box of Stovetop Stuffing: ( I preferred the Savory Herbs one, but you can use whichever you choose) 1 medium-sized yellow onion: Seasoni

(fiscal Cliff, get it?)             With all this “fiscal cliff” talk, I was thinking that even though there WAS some kind of agreement reached, that what we the American people will be given will be of no real benefit to us.  With that said, our elected government that is supposed to be “by the people, for the people” will continue to be shown as anything but. I think I could propose a better solution, one that keeps the American people involved and interested in the process, as well as subsidizing the process in and of itself at the same time.  The Huffington Post reports that the exchanges between Harry Reid and John Boehner became quite heated, with each accusing one another of being more about their party than the common good of the American people.  It is said that at least twice that Boehner told Reid “go fuck yourself.” [ link ]             To be totally honest, I would have gladly paid this $5 bill I have in my pocket right now to witness this taking place.  S

     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

7: The Spirit of Competition      It is no secret that basketball, like any sport, is competitive in nature.  The fact that score is kept and a winner is declared at the end of the competition defines that.  What may or may not be up for debate is just how similarly appointed as a competitive medium that hip hop is. On the surface, Billboard releases their Top 200 and Rap/R&B-specific charts once weekly to outline who sold the most copies of their songs/albums each week.  In a 2012 economic climate, every album or song sale is a hard-fought-for sale, and it stands to reason that artists and executives are cognizant of this and work hard at either bending tastes of their audience to the enjoyment of their work or bending their work to the will and tastes of their desired listening public.      With these things in mind, the heat of the battle has the tendencies to cause the participants to become a bit testy while competing in their craft.  Night in and night out, obsce

            So it’s 4:30pm on Black Friday.  I had successfully managed to not have to leave my house to do anything other than pay a couple of bills as I might do on any payday Friday I should so happen to not have to work.  Hell, it is what I would do if I HAD to work.  Stops also include also payday standards Food Lion and ABC (grocery and liquor for those who don’t live here) for the items I would normally acquire to get me through a weekend.             As my child is still only one year and four months old, she does not yet have the tastes that even MIGHT require that I stand out in the ball-chillingly 25º morning before a store opened to buy her anything.  Responsible adulthood has unlearned me the habit of really wanting many things for myself that aren’t directly tied to the experiences of holding down my house for Ava and my wife.  About noon, coming in from taking my mother with me to the grocery store for a second time and returning back after dropping her off and

6: “Who Can I Trust?”      It has been said that when you reach a certain income/exposure level, you can never date a “regular” person – at least not one who didn’t know you before you had anything. The same is to be said for the people you will have in your circle.      What remains in application is the exhibited fact that the only person/people you can trust to understand your situation and problems are the ones who have been through similar circumstances themselves.  When, as we have discussed, NBA players and rappers more often than not come up through the same ills we understand the connection that they come to have.  As nothing is ever perfect, we’ve seen even these situations go sour and end ugly – usually just with the loss of a friendship and hopefully not the loss of a friend.  To that ends, the “bosses” of both camps spend major time and resources on educating and guiding them to the building of healthy interpersonal relationships, and even THEN it falls on deaf