The musings of a madman...

Fun fact: On June 22, 2011 there was not a SINGLE baby item in my house… Then I left work on June 23, 2011. As ever, I jumped in the car, picked up my mother and took her home. As I walked in the house, Katie was ending a call and advised me that she was pregnant. To those who know what we WERE planning, this was a ton of bricks on the both of us. For the entire of the prior 7 months, Katie was planning for a bariatric surgery and had a schedule date of 06/28. The pregnancy test that had (now) cancelled surgery was a part of the pre-surgery performed on EVERY woman scheduled to have it. As active and consenting adults, the disappointment of this happening when it happened was one thing, but the urgency of planning for a baby overrides such sensibilities. We went to premarital counseling immediately upon receipt of the news and started planning. OB appointment set for the following week to establish how far along we are and begin some REAL planning for this.

The year in question here will fall anywhere between about 1987 and 1994ish… From 87-91, you will find me in the floor in the den in my grandmother’s house, homework on my right and radio on my left. From 91-on, I am at a round table sitting in my bedroom with the arrangement of my homework and radio remaining the same. The radio has a recordable cassette tape in it, set to “Record” and left sitting on pause, so as to not miss a song I might like when it came on the radio. The first of this period would see the radio set to “Power” 97, and from 1990 (I think) it was set to 102JAMZ – which these days is known as the worst “urban radio station known to humanity. Keying on yesterday’s discussion of cassette tapes and recording on them, the “Pause Tape,” not to be confused for something that might include ghey-sounding one-liners from someone currently on the radio after which one might say “pause,” was the largest part of enjoying music back in those days. Before the advent of the i

Yes, the album... Fuck what you thought, this is another on my top-10 all time albums. To frame this conversation… The year was 1988, I was 8 years old, 9 days short of my birthday and school was just released for the summer session. As described last week, we did the park thing, then a sports camp at A&T that the 31 year-old me cannot remember the name of, then it was to the task of having a summer. In the in-between, “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” and “Raw” had penetrated the radio down here and my older sister had the tape. Well, my interest in music has never waned, so first I copied her tape, and damn if I didn’t use the money my brother and I hustled to buy a copy of the tape for myself. At 8, I am inclined to think that this was one of the first times I did that. I would go on to play that tape and play that tape and play that tape until 2 things happened… I knew EVERY word on the damned album. And… I broke that damned tape and had to buy 2 more before buying it on CD summer 1

I know one of the two of you might be so inclined to ask... well, probably not. Where have I been? Moonlighting. The homie (and fellow Lakers fan) Tony Grands came at me before the NBA season and asked me to cover the Lakers for his spot. Given how I LOVE to talk basketball, I obliged without haste. A few posts in, it was noticed that when I mentioned more than just the Lakers, we got even more attention from his regular readers and avid Googlers, it seemed. Expansion took place. Needless to say, I have enjoyed my time spent blogging the NBA (blogging is not journalism, necessarily, so I didn't have to pretend to be objective), but the season has drawn to a close and I am back to my own spot. For a look through what I have been doing once weekly, then every game of the NBA finals, stop by his spot and check out the "headbands and jockstraps" tag. You will find all of my posts there, as well as a few more on sports on the site. Feel free to comment, stay a while and read

Anyone connected to me on the book of face or the Twitters may often wonder just where the ideas that become statuses/tweets/blogs come from. Though my mother and I do not live together, we work for the same company in a tiny town, and she lives right around the corner from me, so we carpool. 20 minutes starting at 7:15-7:20ish in the morning and then again at 5:15 in the evening, 5 days weekly unless one of us is off for whatever reason… The conversations between she and I during those rides are usually enough to make me think of something to post somewhere at any given time. Yesterday, the topic was 'just what in the hell IS it that kids do with their summers?' I will start with how our summers went through elementary, middle and high school. Elementary (K-5th grades): School ends, we spend the summer days at my grandmother’s house. First week after school, mama drops us off on her way to work, we eat breakfast, go play OUTSIDE, come in for lunch, back OUTSIDE and then mama

Season is over, and I am done with poorly pretending to be objective. LeBron James is on vacation again, and while I cannot classify it as “early,” as it took place at the end of an NBA Finals series, you bet your ass it is bitter, considering the outcome of said series… Does it feel at all odd that I am thanking/praising the team that outed my Lakers for completing this? Perhaps a little, but my dislike for LeBron James has been allowed to supersede any anger I might feel for having taken advantage of a Lakers team that did not bother showing up. At the top of the season, Dallas was 5 th at best on my radar among teams I thought would still be standing at the end of the playoffs and Miami was somewhere around third or fourth. That taken into consideration, you bet your ass I am surprised that we’re now discussing them with the finals over. Congratulations, Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban can now resume his motormouth ways and thank you for finally

Last week, I was perusing a web forum I administrate on, and interact with the users as well. One who I have become pretty good friends with through the years tossed out the question, and I quote… “What happened to R&B GROUPS? Maybe there were too many in the 90's (even though they made a hell of a lot of good music). But how do you go from that to virtually none?” After 46 minutes of work (the kind that pays the bills), 4 minutes of deliberation and about 4 minutes of typing and retyping (from 10:38 am to 11:33am in total), I volleyed back with… “The general thing became that the ‘group’ idea was kinda lame. Think of the videos and shit, they would all be singing the same song to the same one girl. Was this a plan to run a train on her, or fight over her? Therefore... Groups became solo acts or stopped singing ballads and shit.” [ Phlip note – I snickered uncontrollably at the thought of a group of R&B dudes singing to a chick to run trizz on her too, just for the recor

Warning… This post will come off as a bit upset, a bit off-base and an increasing level of intoxicated with each such element growing the longer it takes me to write… Last night, somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:40ish (yes, that is 2 “approximate” descriptors in one sentence), I arrived to the building deeded to me. Alcohol in the fridge, Chinese takeout on my fiancée’s plate and I am sitting down at my computer, my usual first spot I stake out in my house… Zo! posts the status that says… “Gil Scott-Heron, an extraordinary talent and HUGE influence and inspiration to many of us creatively. Rest in peace... ” … man… you’ve GOT to be kidding me… Beyond that, though? Dude, the Lakers swept a couple weeks ago? My air conditioning not working right? My job apparently hates me? NONE OF THAT mattered now. The response I could muster was… “this news just ruined my night” Then I took up my mobile communications device to retweet/tell people, all in my continued shock from the news

What a run it was, ¿que no? It’s been said that when your inevitable demise is met by universal cheer, you were either REALLY good at what they wanted to be or were a really bad person. I guess sports, as an arena in general is funny like that. One minute they hate you and the next they love you, sometimes stopping in-between to not bother with differentiating what or why they love or hate, just following what other people say is the proper response. Growing up in NC, where college basketball is God and deep-seated passive-aggressive racism his only son, Jesus , I see it daily in the form of individuals who cheer for or against Duke and UNC. Seeing it first hand is the number one way to become intimately acquainted with the very motives of the “anyone but…” -type fan. Of course, I am talking about the Lakers’ embarrassing loss yesterday to a team that, if history indicates ANYTHING, will inevitably choke and let their fans down… I’d left my house at the end of the second quarter, as

Look, I know it is documented, my distaste for baseball... there is no denying, however, that it is the second most commercially viable sport in the United States right now, NFL Labor problems notwithstanding... But! I would greatly and unfairly be underplaying the necessity of the contribution of Jackie Robinson – and what it did to pave the way for April 8th’s topic – if I let my disdain for the sport he happened to play at the time to keep me from speaking on it. That said, the influence spilled over to other professional sports in the US as well. I mean, if the most popular at the time sport is taking on black players, then it is only natural that the others fall in line. I will not go into the outcome in terms of established majorities in said sports to date. People often ask me what my favorite baseball team is, and while my answer is usually something in the neighborhood of “fuck baseball,” if I had to choose one, it would probably be the Dodgers for the very act of the chan