w00t
I quite enjoy sitting in the PC lab of the library’s basement, listening to Shoutcast radio on my Grado SR-60 headphones and navigating the Internet. Somehow, listening to Internet radio in a public computer lab is more satisfying; it’s like a forbidden fruit, even though they supply you with a miniplug hookup specifically for headphones. Well, I can still pretend.
First off, I must correct you, Jason: getting beat by “9 points,” as you state here, is a blowout in boxing. It’s like getting beat 121-87 in basketball, or 11-3 in baseball. It means you got your ass kicked.
And to continue the boxing theme, perhaps an analogy should be made between this weekend’s joke of a heavyweight bout and the joke of a bout going on in BLOGWARS™. I should ask: which is closer, Mary vs. nickd, or Tyson vs. Etienne? Or perhaps more appropriately, which landed harder: this barrage from Mary or this right from Tyson? I’m inclined to choose the former. Perhaps we should just start calling Mr. Disabato the “White Rhino” from now on?
Ah, yes, which nicely segues into my take on Ms. Jones unbridled barrage on nickd… or was it really directed at nickd? h0 h0 h0, she seems to have looked past her present opponent to the championship and offered several pointed barbs for (gasp) me! Well, everyone knows that I can’t keep my mouth shut when challenged, so let’s see what the Chancellor of Chastity, the Countess of Cocktease, has to say about me, shall we?
Mmm, first, let me link the entry again — and for those of you who are infrequent visitors to the Capitalist Mafia page, please brace yourselves — you’re about to witness a triumph of HTML splendor. But I digress. Let us move on to the content…
So now Jones responds to Konik’s insults about her taste in music, huh? How timely! You are like the child late for school running after the bus with her pants around her ankles. I pity you not.
And then about the men’s movement… now while I can’t exactly argue that about it’s “mentally-masturbatory” status (hey, by the way — you needn’t hyphenate that, dear … just an FYI from an anthro major), I can question the source, and the source is… ta-da! A poetry major! Woo! I thought that shit died with William Wordsworth! All poetry is good for is gettin poonani (ask Ali G). And hey, one more thing: if you want mentally-masturbatory, click here. (Sorry Mark, but hell, she dated ya. :)
So let’s just consider that an opening statement, a preface of sorts, Ms. Jones, because I’m gonna tear you up in the championship. I know it might get downright nasty — and no, I’m not talking about your hair. But I’m playin to win, baby.
p.s. I took half the Nuge pics on that post. Thanks for the BLOGWARS™ points, babe.
Taking hip hop to task
Ahh. Waking up from a nap — now that just throws everything off. My whole sense of time is destroyed for the day. Of course, the reset button is a full night’s sleep, but that’s hours and hours away. Oh well, I think the pleasure of sleep in the middle of the day is worth it.
So yesterday I mentioned that hip hop should not be valorized. Quite by serendipidity, things got a little rough at a contest for MTV’s Hip Hop Week, thus providing me with the perfect example to support my hypothesis. Hip hop deserves no admiration.
Now, I will be the first to admit that hip hop is catchy music. In fact, I love it, and I have since I was 13. There was a time when I was even a regular wiggeris classicus, truth be told. But every year, as February — that vaunted “Black History Month,” time of nauseating TV specials dedicated to one race and one race only — rolls around, we hear about what a fabulous art form hip hop is. We hear about how it tells the story of the street and the ghetto. We hear about how it offers project youth a “way out.” For good measure, perhaps we even hear some do-gooder prof talk about oral tradition among the African-American community (sorry, that’s the anthro major in me talking).
But let’s be honest. Let’s look at today’s hip hop for what it is: you’ve got a simple beat that any high schooler can make and someone freestyling over it. Two elements. Beat and talk. The former sounds cute, but takes no talent. Let’s talk about the latter. Let’s talk about what everyone gives the rappers respect for, that is, the flow.
Now I should not be too cavalier in my assessment of hip hop. I never said it was easy, and there’s no way I could freestyle. It’s a skill, one might even say an art, and it takes talent and practice. But guess what? So does unicycling. So does juggling. So do gymnastics. So does writing term papers. So does debating. Nothing separates freestyling, the second constituent part of hip hop, from any other skill in terms of the talent and practice required to effectively practice it. So let us now move to its content.
And herein lies the problem. The content of hip hop sucks. Why is Eminem popular? BECAUSE HIS SONGS ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE. The other guys are so fucking worried about rhyming that their lyrics make no sense! Have you ever read the lyrics? I mean seriously, tried to decipher the meaning behind this shit? It’s disgraceful, downright disgraceful. When an MC comes along who can flow, who can rhyme, and who can actually string a few coherent thoughts together — well hell, that’s a recipe for success. But precisely because there are so few of those out there — and sorry Puffy, but you belong to the rule, not its exception — my disdain for this so-called art-form remains high.
Of course, beyond these music-oriented criticisms, I could criticize the culture itself. The hip hop culture — or the culture which values hip hop, in any case — has produced the famous Biggie-Tupac tragedy, but also countless other murders and lesser casualties stemming directly and indirectly from the general hooliganism promoted in hip hop. Now, although I do feel like a stodgy seventy-something for employing the phrase “general hooliganism,” I do not think it appropriate to praise hip hop as a cultural category when it carries this much baggage — one might even say collateral damage (in the vernacular of the day). In the post-Columbine days, for example, zealots were eagerly waggling their fingers at first-person shooting games as the cause of the tragedy. Yet somehow, the hip hop industry seems to be spared much of the same criticism when those in its community are gunned down day in and day out, and all the new rap music does is glorify this lifestyle. I’m not saying hip hop is the cause, but I am saying it doesn’t alleviate the problem one damn bit.
As a society, we don’t valorize heavy metal. We don’t valorize punk. We don’t valorize emo (THANK GOD!). So why the hell do we valorize hip hop? I’ll leave you to figure out the answer to that.
Divergence
It’s odd to me how quickly two people can diverge when circumstances dictate that they’re never going to see each other again. Case in point: the ex-girlfriend. Or hell, maybe I was just clueless about the girl when we were going out. Now granted, all of my knowledge of her presently comes from her website, but I’m constantly left thinking, “how did I date this girl?” Besides my own doubts, two recent events merely fueled the fire.
- I saw a friend of her friend’s at a party, said hi, and reminded him/her of who I am (i.e. “I used to date Anna Marie”). The reply: “Oh yeah. That seems like it would be hard. She’s really selfish.”
- In a group project for German Lit, it came up that one of the members was premed. I mentioned that I had dated an HPME, and another group member said he was dating a first-year HPME and asked me what my ex’s name was. I told him. “Oh,” he replied, “I heard Anna’s kinda crazy.”
Yeah, I’d say we’ve diverged.
Gio’s was fine. Nickd insisted that I’m mean to everyone, including my friends, but I take this essentially as one would take Puff Daddy telling you that you sold out. That is, not very seriously. I distributed Ali G CDROMs to the posse, and I’m eagerly awaiting feedback from the kids who’ve never seen him before. IM me.