10.27.2007

NFL WK 8: North division teams

This is the first week where my drunkenly half-assed mathematical ranking system seems to be flawed pretty badly, but I am no scientist at heart... I trust intuitive nature and stubbornly sticking with a plan till the brutal end. So I will keep the weekly rankings going according to the stupid shit I set up at the start. I guess I could just randomly pull rankings out of my ass each week, following all the football expert memes of how "OMG! Only two real teams and a few contenders and a bunch of FREE AGENCY ERA SHIT!" Fuck it man, it's football. And this is a stupid weekly list where I pretend I know more shit than anybody else because I sit on my ass drinking beer watching the bullshit. Except I don't pretend. I don't know shit either. I'm just some dude on the internetz, talking up the Game of the Egg, as an illegal Mexican cat I used to work with would call it, all trying to be derogatory, with his stupid assed tiny soccer ball bag hanging from his rear view mirror like a single nutsac. Of course, as I deride futbol, I’m sitting here watching Footballer’s Wives on DVD. I’m gonna write some motherfucking scripts for this shit as a football team in America. That shit would be huge. Anyways, the stupid rankings this week...

#1: GREEN BAY PACKERS (5-1, #6 overall) - Brett Favre passion for the game plays like 13-year-old linebacker mentality last glorious run young defense could it be blah blah blah. With no running game, I give it another three weeks, four at the most, before the rest of the NFL is like, “Oh yeah, let’s blitz the fuck out of Favre, and watch him heave four or five punt-like interceptions down the field.” I also saw some shit about how the Packers have that name because of the meat packers union buying their uniforms the first year or some nonsense. Which conjures up all that corrupt union mafia shit, Vince Lombardi in Green Bay namesake of the Super Bowl trophy, and this might be Favre’s great last run, as booked by whoever the real life Robert DeNiro in those big old man Jew glasses in Casino is.

#2: CHICAGO BEARS (3-4, #10 overall) - If stupid Brian Griese can play even halfway decent, what’s left uninjured of the Bears defense might get fired up and carry them to a wonderful run. Except let’s be real, Griese is still a shitty QB, just not constantly shitty like Rex Grossman. Still, stumbling through to a 9-7 record in the NFC might get you a home playoff game.

#3: PITTSBURGH STEELERS (4-2, #11 overall) - If I had to rank these eight teams free from the confines of my stupid system, I’d probably put the Steelers number one. Maybe I listen to too much sports radio though, as the talking point bullshit is Patriots #1, Colts #2, then the Steelers. And I really like Mike Tomlin, but the Steelers are vulnerable because Roethlisberger is apt to fuck it up here and there. Although with that big goofy mug of his, he looks probably more likely to back up Mac Davis on the North Dallas Forty than any other NFL quarterback.

#4: DETROIT LIONS (4-2, #12 overall) - I had readed an article of recent link in my electronic mailings about how that Inuit dude Jon Kitna was now a born again Christian and how he's all, "Yeah, we pass all the time, that's what we do. Plus we pray together, and I convert dudes into loving up on some Jesus shit. That's just how we roll." First off, even if Christians doing physical combat on a team called the Lions is sorta funny, but not really because you have to know history bullshit for it to be funny, and even then it's not really funny, just a weird little slice of irony. And irony is stupid because it's become a synonym for stupid faggy things hipster college dumbasses do. This will probably be the best post-Barry Sanders season the Lions have had. They're really building something special with 17 first round drafted wide receivers finally getting whittled down to a couple of them plus a former defensive back from the Rams, all masterminded by genius Mike Martz and executed by a living, breathing Jack Chick pamphlet.

#5: BALTIMORE RAVENS (4-3, #15 overall) - I used to always wonder how the Ravens kept Brian Billick, the most self-absorbed self-hyped piece of shit coach the NFL has had in decades, but now that his hairline is blowing up and his cheeks are puffing out and he's looking like a third older Belushi brother not born with any sense of humor, I like these decisions. Because eventually he'll get cast aside, and no other team is gonna want a fucking blowhard douchebag coach who already mediocred his way through something like ten years in stupid Baltimore. Maryland is the most identity-less state I think I've ever been to. Even fucked up states like Indiana and Alabama are fucked-up so carry that personality, so you can find nice little niche corners of good times. Maryland has the personality of one giant abandoned strip mall. The women have no ass and they like gay music. Eating a fucking crab does not make up for it to me.

#6: MINNESOTA VIKINGS (2-4, #19 overall) - Adrian Peterson had that break-out performance a couple weeks back, so head coach Brad Childress decided to assign an assistant coach to keep track of Peterson's touches and Chester Taylor, who was their previous starting running back, to keep them more even. This led to a shitty showing for Peterson last week since he didn't get much of a chance to do anything, and they lost a close game to the Cowboys. Brad Childress clearly is more geared to being a baseball manager, overthinking stupid shit and thinking numbers mean everything.

#7: CLEVELAND BROWNS (3-3, #21 overall) - The Brady Quinn era has been sidetracked by Derek Anderson performing Tecmo Bowl style off the bench. It's actually funny as shit that the Browns traded their opening day starting quarterback before the second week. Charlie Frye will forever go down in history as the quarterback who basically got dropped off at the bus stop after a bad game. I visited Cleveland last year one time and got really fucking high and was having a hard time dealing with those weird fuckers. It's like the hopelessness of the midwest, but they've got like a 20% yankee accent going on too. It confused me, and I was forced to eat pancakes at a shitty roadside waffle house and flirt with the ugly yet beautiful sorta rican waitress until I could partially sober up enough to make the long forced straight drive back home to comfortable scenery. She smiled at my flirting one time a sad, acknowledging, "Sorry, I'm a slut, but not that much of a slut; if things were different we could've raised mutants of our DNA together amidst our mostly self-created poverty, for as long as it was still sometimes fun, and then we'd split, full of hate for each other, yet tied together by our genetic intertwinement."

#8: CINCINNATI BENGALS (2-4, #25 overall) - I don't think there are actually any Bengals fans out there, just mostly Ocho Cinco fans, who are more akin to NBA fans who latch on to tomfoolish characters more often than a home team of some sort. The Bengals are really a stupid team, with their high-powered offense misfiring, and I'm not sure they have a defense to really speak upon, which is odd since Marvin Lewis was supposed to be the defensive black head coaching genius saviour of black people quarterback sacks like L.T. turn the Bengals around. And I guess he did turn it around since folks thought they were gonna be good this year, but nobody seems too shocked they're sucking it up either. That's their history, and you can't escape your history, no matter how fast or far you run. So fuck you, stop running. Settle down, find a nice vaginally unblemished mind slut to make some little creatures with. Get yourself a townhouse and make homemade porns when the kids are at grandma's. Enjoy your life. There's nothing wrong with having roots.

10.26.2007

Loose Ends



In less than 24 hours, I am moving from crappy Albany, NY back to crappy CT. This will not affect you the reader at all, except that I might be absent for a little while, but who cares?

Anyway, before I take another break from the internet (I've been on break from this site for like 2 weeks now) I just wanted to say that I don't know if the monthly 25 is coming out this month, since it's like 6% done and it's almost the end of the month. So if it doesn't happen this month don't become a whiny baby about it.

Also, the Fall Classics is moving along swimmingly, except we need two more entries before we have all 16. Please get in touch with a mix. A lot of people showed interest that haven't produced shit yet.

Here's what Group C and D look like until two more jerks step up. Spread the word.

Group C:

- DJ Swann
- Choplaruski
- Keenon
- D-Mo

Group D:

- Raven Wack
- Sun Diora
- ???
- ???

Ok, well I have nothing else of interest to say. If I get a break from packing, I'll put up Jay's newest Shining White Revue, but it will most likely have to wait until I figure out how to use internets in Connecticut.

EDIT: If you're board, please visit and register for the Kaiju.net message board. It's where the true internet creeps commiserate.

10.23.2007

FALL CLASSIC: 1st Rd. Group B


OVERVIEW: You probably know this shit already, or if you don't just scroll down or click the handy title bullshit at the bottom of this post and you'll see what's up. But this is a contest. I have been working on building a trophy and shit already. It's gonna be mantle-worthy like a motherfucker. This is the second group of four (out of sixteen entries), and we're up to like 13, so if you hurry the fuck up, you might still be able to get in. When we write our shit, it's me (RM), Mike DIKK (MD), John Dawson (JD), and Keenon Mobb (KM), but again, you probably already know that shit too. I just like to clarify because I don't want anyone accidentally thinking I like the same dumb shit John does. Unless I actually like the same dumb shit.
Oh yeah, on the last round finale tip, the public poll put the PSY/OPsogist with 17 votes, Mike DIKK with 14, Chivato with 5, and Emil with 4. Adding that bullshit to the other bullshit we ranked them, they finished with this total score breakdown...
PSYOPSogist - 16 pts
Mike DIKK - 14 pts
Chivato - 5 pts
Emil the Finnish dude - 1 pt
This means PSY/OPSogist moves into the final round bullshit where dudes (or lady dudes if applicable) make a 45 minute mix to please the internerd world. Big props to Emil and Chivato for sharing and jumping blindly into this thing with no real idea of how it was gonna actually work.

Here's this round of four's entrants...
ENTRANT #1: What It Is's I Ate Shit & All I Got Was This Stupid ID Tag mix - What It Is is the dude who does the Tree Beats blogspot, and he even included a really fresh cover for your iPod machine when you download his jam.
ENTRANT #2: Webconn's True Hip Hop Entertainment mix - These are some cats from up in the Pacifist Northwest doing their thang. Here's their myspace.
ENTRANT #3: Jay Pud's Dumpster Baby mix - Jay is Mike DIKK's homeboy from way way back when they both had red and black lumberjacks, with matching hats. Not to match the lumberjacks, but they wore matching hats. They were a crew. Jay Pud has not website, but he represents Weed, Sex, and Titties.
ENTRANT #4: Dart Adams'z Selected Songs from Mixtapes Better Than Albums List mixtape -
Dart is the man behind the Poisonous Paragraphs blog joint, and this is the mix he did.
And here's how us expert ass whiteboys ranked these four mixes (for winning purposes, what we rank as #1 gets 3 pts, #2 gets 2 pts, and #3 gets 1 pt; and the open public poll scores 6 pts for #1, 4 pts for #2, and 2 pts for #3, so your public consciousness is worth double and has the power to heavily sway but not completely overrule what we think)...

THE NUMBER ONE MIX OF THIS SET:
RM: I went with the Treebeats dude's mix, and honestly this could've gone either way with the Dart Adams mix or this one, as both caused me to enjoy things I probably wouldn't have given a fuck to bother with otherwise, but the Treebeats mix was actually one long continuous mix as opposed to a collection of mp3s. I have a new laptop that came pre-equipped with the worst computer virus ever called Vista, so everything fucks up regularly and nothing works like I would expect a technologically advanced machine to work to make my life easier. Instead it makes me cuss and want to smash it, and to be honest, as soon as I save up the ducats to buy a rebuilt super machine off my new-fangled gadgetry uber-genius bro-in-law, I will actually smash this thing with a sledgehammer. I mean, fuck this machine. But dl'ing a mix of songs, I don't know if that shit opened in the right order or not, so I don't even know if I listened to Dart's mix the way it was meant to be listened at. The Treebeats mix was standard hip hop stuff - good enough to take a spot in the 100 sleeve $1.50 CD-carrying case I got at the flea market, but not special enough to get left on the passenger seat for easy access and inevitable ruin.
MD: Like Raven said, this was one continuous mix, and the overall mixes in thie group were... lacking to say the least. The first half or so of this mix was just kind of there, but once that "I Get Money" instrumental with the "Top Billin'" acapella kicks in, it's awesome from that point forward.
JD: The Jay Pud mix - I loved this to death. Mike has said that Jay isn't the biggest hip hop fan in the world, but the dude opened his mixtape with some cover of the theme to Welcome Back Kotter, then went into Jay-Z? "Didn't I Blow Your Mind" into Camp-Lo? That shit is fucking brilliant. Maybe he didn't do it on purpose? But whatever, even if by chance he stuck those songs together, it is amazing.
KM: The Tree Beats mix. So far, this was the first entrant that's beat-blended in the strictest sense of that term. The first 6-7 minutes of this were a little slow, then it went into a Zion 1 song I actually tracked down (which is the sign of a good mixtape, definitely). It hit some more indy-ish stuff that was okay but didn't rock my world, but that faster piano one that kicks in after the RJD2 was fucking nice. The deal with "Top Billin'" reminded me of this shit I was obsessed with working into a set like 2 years ago where I segued from songs that use that BLANK IS CHILLIN, OTHER BLANK IS CHILLIN WHAT MORE CAN I SAY deal and ended up with the Audio Two. But then I got obsessed with reggaeton and dancehall at the same time that week, so it all turned to shit and that set got scrapped. Anyway, the blend on this one is solid. I hope he did it himself, or else my foot's in my mouth again. The last song on this was a good closer, too - someone tell me what it is. I could be wrong, but this had a West Coast Good Life/Project Blowed kinda feel to it. I could totally get blazed and chill with this on and be content for 30 minutes. It's got the proficiency along with a selection of music I haven't heard for the most part. It's also missing the cheap pops that a lot of the entrants seem to be running with for this contest (Premier, Kanye, Nas, Common and that one goddamn Wyclef song) , so that gives it bonus points in my world. I don't use iTunes, so I missed out on the hoohaw controversy entirely.

THE NUMBER TWO MIX OF THIS SET:
JD: The What It Is mix. I am going to agree with Madlib Dikk on this because the mix was blah until "Top Billin'", then it got much better. Bonus points for the pic of the peeing vagina. I am sure that will cause an upload or two.
RM: I put Jay Pud's mix at #2, and honestly, it might've even took the #1 spot if it wasn't for that goddamned "Lollipop" song. I don't know if it's on some latchkey Stand By Me retro bullshit tip, but I used to work with this half-retard black bitch with a jheri curl in 1997 type retard bitch, and all night long (we worked second shift), she would either sing "Lollipop" or that fucking "Sugar Pie Honey" song, constantly, both stupid sugar songs and her a stupid bitch and seriously, if I ever get rich, one thing I'm gonna do to abuse my riches and go find that bitch and stab her.
MD: I'm giving my boy Jay the number two spot here. I could have flipped a coin between his and Dart's mix, as Jay's is a bunch of mp3s of songs I've heard before versus Dart's bunch of mp3s of songs I've never heard before. I went with Jay's because I am stubborn and old and don't need to be hearing any new shit. There's nothing special here, but at the same time, there's nothing totally appalling.
KM: Jay Pud Fucking Badass. I can't hate on the entrants for submitting un-blended mixes (HI, SWANN!) because when I make mixtapes for people I know, I rarely blend them, I just don't have the time. A lot of the mixes have some unifying theme that doesn't involve the tempo anyway. I suppose that makes me a lesser mixtape artist, but most of the people I know like my shit. Anyway, to get back to Mr. Pud, I had to choose between this and the Dart mix. Since they're both a collection of songs, I had to weigh the strength of how I like the songs. It's not possible to determine intent if it's not declared, so I have to assume that Jay just got 9 songs he really fucking likes and zipped them hoes up for this. On that basis alone, I give the nod to Jay - not only is there Kotter, one of the nicest songs off Blueprint, the fucking Dramatics and Camp Lo (which may have been thrown in for Mike) and then a couple hiphop joints I could dig (WHY IS EVERYONE PUTTING IN WYCLEF, THOUGH?!?!) - Jay throws out his trump card with the Paperboy song. "Ditty" is one of the best jams ever. I wasn't gassed up for the stuff before it, but that one did it for me. I don't know any special "Lollipop" fans so that one didn't taint my lil' outburst.

THE NUMBER THREE MIX OF THIS SET:
MD: Dart took a bunch of songs from mixtapes and made his own mixtape out of them. It's a very postmodern idea. I wasn't a fan of most of this stuff on here, but I must say, that was my favorite Lupe Fiasco song I've ever heard because he doesn't seem to be talking about anime or robots or any other subject matter that would appeal to your average Hot Topic shopper. Also, the Scram Jones song is really good, but I think it more than shows that he's going to be one of those dudes that's known for his freestyles without ever being able to pull off a really great full length album. Oh, and lastly, this mix reminded me that I need to find that Kano mixtape on the internets one of these days.
RM: Yeah, I put Dart in the third spot too, and I felt bad because Poisonous Paragraphs is one of my favorite blogs. Actually, I'm lying. Dart's blog (as well as the recently discovered Invincible Bully blog) is one of those few blogs I mean to check every couple of days, but honestly, nobody really writes interesting shit on rap nerd blogs half the time, so I unfortunately build up that stereotype and then forget to check things like Dart's blog for like a month. Fuck it though. I guess the world doesn't want long-winded nonsense written meanderings so much as the latest mp3 to add to their ever-burgeoning collection of shit they'll never do anything more than put on an external hard drive.
JD: True Hip Hop Entertainment. Okay, if you haven't heard this shit, get on it. It is 100% serious so far as we can figure out, and the last freestyle made my sides hurt from laughing. I want to adopt all of these kids and finish my basement, so they can sit down there and crank out mixtape after mixtape. I give them credit for making a real mixtape. These dudes are trying to get on, and where else would you go to spread your word? Dumpin.fag, that's where. Oh, and fellas, next Seattle Mariners diss track, please namedrop Dave Valle.
KM: Dart Adams, M.D. The idea itself is interesting, but the songs didn't prop it up proper. The MOP and Consequence joints were nice, I could deal with the rest of them - it just left me a little cold. I'm one of those people that still thinks "Pump It Up" isn't that bad - my own blog people all think I'm odd for that one - the diss track isn't as good. At its core, I wind up comparing Jay and Dart - they both have competent Kanye choices, they both have varied rap picks, and a couple songs I could live without. I had to go with the one that made a mulatto say "daaaaaamn" and so this one lost out on that head to head.

THE WORST MIX OF THIS SET:
JD: Dart Adams mix. I love your blog, and feel bad sticking you last, but it was a mixtape of mixtape songs? It really bored me and was the hip hop muzak we always bitch about. This was a good block, and your mix may have went farther if we have a bracket with Diora, Forest Gump, a dead Ronald Reagan, and a piece of coal.
RM: I put the True Hip Hop Entertainment guys in last, though props to Web Conn for taking the leap and throwing his shit out there for complete strangers to shit all over. It kinda bummed me out though, because I have always hated that Whiteboyz movie because, to me, it's Danny Hoch - a New York Jew with hip hop love - stereotyping rural white fucks in the midwest and how bad they are to stereotype black people and rap music. But then I hear this T.H.E. stuff and I realize there are actually dudes like that, and that ruins all the comedic mockerying of Danny Hoch could do. It fucking sucks. I did some google research, and Federal Way is a suburb of Seattle, so these guys are apparently leaving bodies to rot in the sun on the outskirts of the Pacific Northwest's Emerald City.
At the same time, I hope these guys don't jump on a Greyhound and come to Albany, where both me and Mike DIKK live, and Shaq stomp the shit out of us. Because if they act this hard on a mixtape, they probably try to be at least a fourth that hard in real life from time to time.
MD: I don't even feel like talking about this. I'm not sure if these kids are joking around or if they're super serious about their rap careers. This is like Icy Hot Stuntaz bad, which would lead me to believe it's a joke; but at the same time, there's nothing that gives it away as a joke, and the kid who sent it to us and claimed it as his own, and the corresponding Myspace page aren't selling it as a joke, so who knows?
Anyway, you have a few kids fucking around with a computer mic rapping about wearing Shaq sneakers really badly. This is good for a few laughs, and I suggest everyone download this, but I'm going to wait until we are like three or four mixtape challenges in before I vote something like this number one and make the whole thing a total joke.
KM: The I can't zipfile mix. This reminded me of this one Jewish kid from New Jersey I e-knew on an old Delphi board who swore he had an IM rap battle with Kool Keith. At one point, he decided to come out with some shit called Count Dollars & DJ Chunky Irving, which was him making iffy beats and rapping with a voice filter about nigger dick and prison rape and cornbread. Dude thought he was breaking boundaries, always sent me tracks, and I never could figure out how serious he was about that shit. These Webconn kids sound like some 14 year olds playing with a karaoke machine. I wonder how much Crunchy Black charged them for a shout out or whatever. If there's a music video for anything these dudes have done, hit me up with a Youtube link - I imagine it's something worthy of that place in the mall where you can get a video for 15 bucks. These kids talk way too much about their dicks and fucking imaginary women that are probably fat guys typing on the internet from their mom's basement in Poughkeepsie. MUHFUKKKIN SHAQS! In other news, there's some real hard thugz living in Federal Way, WA if my experience at relay is any indicator. They even have deaf gangsters, yes that's plural on purpose. Raven's just acting though, he's got homemade Vietcong booby traps out on his property - you crazy Pacific Northwest Hoods better watch the fuck out or lose a foot.

YOUR VOTE TIME:
After our full-of-shit rankings, What It Is sits on top at 11 points, Jay Pud has 9, Dart Adams sinks in at 3, and True Hip Hop Entertainment has only 1 point. Basically, What It Is is in control, but points values are doubled with the public poll (6/4/2/0) so Jay Pud still has a chance to win and everybody else can be a spoiler. I think we're gonna do some wild card shit too where we do an extra poll for all the second place finishers to have a 5th wheel in the final round. Mike will set the poll up when he gets home from drinking. I think he's celebrating his birthday with unemployed binge partying for like the next three weeks. And I am far too hungover to try and figure out a motherfuckin' sparklit.

10.22.2007

Ask A Pornstar - Kaiya Lynn

So, in the tradition of the book "Ask a Mexican", I decided to copy that (since I hardly have any original ideas) and do "Ask a Pornstar". There just so happen to be quite a few pornstars who like hip hop quite a bit, and not just the club shit that you get jiggy with. However, due to the notoriously flighty nature of porn chicks, I am not sure how often I'll be able to do this segment per se, but I thought it'd be a cool and maybe interesting.

The particular pornstar in question is Kaiya Lynn. She's been in the business about 2 and a half years now, and she just so happens to be a friend of mine, and a hip hop fan herself. I first produced the movie ""PervAsian" with her as the main star on the boxcover, and after we became friends and I realized she actually liked having sex and giving blowjobs for real, I hired her to work on projects I was working on a lot more. Everyone loves a pornstar who likes to fuck, after all. There's too many bitches that mail that shit in.

The first picture you see here is a picture of us at a party we went to after the GZA concert when he appeared at The Knitting Factory a couple years ago out here in LA. The second picture was at a party last year. The third picture is one that she took especially for this blog, actually, its a "personal" one that you won't find on all those porn sites. And no, I didn't make this shit up, she answered it all coherently and articulately as I transcribed it here. If you ever see her at a convention, ask her and she'll tell you.







1. So how long have you been a fan of hip hop?

A very long time, 15+ years since I was a wee little bear in the hood.


2. Who's your favorite hip hop artist and why?

Tupac. Because that is where my heart is. We both grew up in the same neighborhood and all of his videos, especially "to live and die in la" is a documentary of the sights and sounds I knew as a child. I know the experience of growing up in south central la and can relate to what he says on a personal level even though we didn't grow up on the same block. But I have seen the poverty, the police, murders and robberies, gun fights and that changes you in a way that is hard to describe unless you have lived in the community or were blessed with the gift that Tupac had which was to make you visualize the experience through his songs. Another reason that Tupac is my favorite is because not all of his songs were about his life, some were just songs you could just dance to or listen to and feel happy. (ie california love, gangsta party)


3. Who's your favorite hip hop GROUP and why?

I don't really have a favorite hip hop group. I have always been a fan of individual hip hop artists because you can see there unique characteristics and sometimes those get washed away or looked over when you are in a group. I am a big fan of collaborations more so than groups.



4. Are there any artists you wish would come out with a new and good album?

Hmmmmm. I am getting sensory overload with what is being shown on video stations and the radio. It seems to be the same eight songs and I only like one of them...I think. Honestly, I still listen to my old stuff from Tupac, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Dre Dre and NWA if I am listening to hip hop and I am content with that. Reason being see next question...



5. What are your thoughts on the state of hip hop today?

I think there is a bunch of songs that are catchy to the younger folk that experience hip hop as it is now and not as it was when it was becoming a major force in the music world. It seems like anyone with a new dance move can get a record deal when other artists who are lesser known and possibly not tapped into are looked over because it is felt they won't meet the mainstream criteria and not make as much profits.



So that's that. She's a girl and all, and she's cool and all, but we're both busy and I ain't got time to ask her more questions. But if you'd like to pitch some (REAL and NOT porn related, I'm sick of that shit) questions, I'll be happy to field 'em to her and maybe get her opinion on some shit before we move onto the next pornstar.

And yes, I'm working on my mix. I already picked the songs, now I just need to blend 'em.

10.21.2007

7-list: this week's homeschool lesson plan


The great thing about homeschooling my children is we can follow our own curriculum. I mean, we do all the normal shit so that the state doesn't repo our kids and send them to godless sexually explicit public schools to ruin their lives without them knowing any better, but we also have the freedom to let the kids lead themselves down paths of learning. My oldest is 8, almost 9, and she got into writing poetry this past year, so I've been working with her on listening to beats and coming up with song ideas and writing hooks and even lyrics. I figured if I brainwash her now, she can be like white-bred MC Lyte rural homeschool freak MC-ess of the year in ten years - basically, Psalm One but southern and white. So we outlined a week-long rhyme-writing intensive for this coming week, and I figured I'd share the bullshit with you, random internet homo, for you to laugh at me and be like, "Oh shit! He can't be serious." But I am serious.
LESSON #1 - Sunday: The great thing about homeschooling is that there is no separation of learning shit and regular life, so school is not something separate from your comfort zone for you to hate. It is part of everything. So we have school every day, and then sometimes, no days. It's very free. We are not religious people, although highly spiritual, we just don't buy into any specific brand name of morality. But we do encourage the idea that Sunday is a special day for the more loungin' aspects of your week. I work for myself, and usually six days a week, but I always make sure to either not work on Sunday, or at least only half a day. Sundays we have big breakfasts with plenty of hog and the scrambled up in a frying pan unfertilized ovaries of our pet chickens. But we've also been doing a photo project on Sundays, me and the oldest one, where we go somewhere and take a slew of digital pics. I've been doing 100 per Sunday session, and she's been shooting for like 30 or so pics. This Sunday, I'm gonna take her to my favorite local lounge spot, at the end of a road a couple miles over where I found where the black people live in my county. I grew up in a half-black/half-white county, so where I live now, with it's ultra-whiteness, it sometimes makes me feel uneasy. But I found this road where it's mostly black folks, and the type that have hot rods and broke down trucks or campers beside the house and other stupid opening montage scene type stuff from a documentary by some college kid trying to show how bad and poor country folks are. Well, at the end of this road is the James River, as well as train tracks you can hike along so long as no one catches you. So I figure a good starting lesson for the week of rhyme-writing learning is to just throw in a good Jimmy Smith mix in the truck, and take the kid over there to the train tracks. Jimmy Smith is the king of the Hammond B3 organ, and if you have never jibed up to his non-vocal music, then you are missing the fuck out. Or perhaps you are uptight and prefer electronic anime muzak rap music instrumentals to "lay back" to. I don't know. Anyways, we just soak in some "The Sermon" while heading to the train tracks with our digital cameras, talking about the upcoming week of rhyme-writing, and what she wants to get out of it. Once there, we'll walk along the river, take awesome pictures of dilapidated nonsense and dumped trash, and eventually I'm sure a freight train will come by, either one loaded with coal headed east to Norfolk, or one emptied out and heading back up into the mountains for a refill. Even out here in bumfuck, shitstate, the freight trains are pockmarked with graffiti, which is part of the reason I want to take her out there to take pics. We'll have to duck into the bushes while the engine rolls by, because sometimes those dudes can be dicks about trespassing and all, but once it's gone, you come out and snap pic after pic of fucked up looking coal cars splashed with blasts of color. I'll make sure to mention to her to note how each car is its own separate thing, but still they're all connected and make a whole. Any particular car with a nice name piece, maybe even with a character, is surely a highlight as a single entity of a car, but it's still part of the whole train. And a train ain't a train without all the shit hitched together. So after the train rolls by, we'll go sit down by the river, and I'll fire up a bowl while talking about rhymes and how each line is its own separate thing, like the train and cars, and you can have an awesome line here or there that just blows everybody's mind, but it all has to connect to make a train of thought, or complete verse. And if it's not going anywhere in particular, then it's just masturbatory nonsense. I probably won't say "masturbatory" to my 8-year-old daughter, because I'm not really ready to deal with that type of conversation, so I'll have to think of some other intense way to say totally awesome shit with no point is not as awesome as semi-awesome shit all hitched together with an obvious point to it.
LESSON #2 - Monday: Back to work week for me, so the lesson will have to be after work, probably out in the camper where my best turntable is, and I’ll throw on Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and Autobahn, and just let it play to see what the kid thinks about it. I am sure, with her knowing this is a lesson of some sort and I’m trying to trick her into learning some crazy shit, she’ll be nice about it. Now let’s be honest, Kraftwerk is like having a couple of blip blooping gadgets strapped onto your ears with aluminum tape, but that was some shit that had early breakbeat DJs going mad, and was the foundation for Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock”. Crazy German robot dance Kraftwerk. And that, along with Bambaataa’s vision of beats, was supposed to be the future of music at two different points. Of course, both of those things sound weird and wacky and completely dated to us now, because you just can’t see how the future is gonna shape up. (That reminds me of one of the last special lessons I gave the kid, about time travel, and how man is a three-dimensional creature, so we have trouble understanding the fourth dimension, and I told her of the Philadelphia Experiment, where the dudes got stuck in the walls of the ship when the Tesla coil failed and all, so now she’s all amped up on being a physicist and figuring out fourth dimensional travel. We’ll probably have to get her in some community college classes in her teen years for the proper science to be on that track though. I am limited in my brilliance, believe it or not.) But the lesson for her here is to play “Planet Rock” after the Kraftwerk, to show her what Afrika Bambaataa got from listening to the same shit, and how he made some new shit. Then we go inside for a hilarious fifteen minute segment viewing of Tron, to show her what people back in the ‘80s thought the future was gonna be like, and how we’re nothing close to that bullshit and never will be. But then we can watch Style Wars, with the early graffiti, and she can see how all these people just ran in different directions with these ideas, and she can compare it to what we saw on the freight trains the day before, because today’s graffiti is on some different shit, but it’s still the same. It’s all in how you filter everything. Plus, Style Wars will expose her to Case, that one-armed graffiti dude who’s on the super-supreme wild style tip, so she’ll hopefully be less likely to throw out that “I can’t do this” cop-out when she gets frustrated by her own limitations and having to push past them. But the point of this day is to just get across, everything around you is your input, and you filter it however you feel best, to make it perfect for you. If Kraftwerk and Bambaataa were nowadays, he would’ve dl’ed that shit on a blog and been like, “LOL, German robots on some weak ish!” and that would’ve been it, then he would’ve went on craigslist to find a tranny to fuck. But then again, it’s environment and filters, and someone out there is stealing instrumentals off the internet, mashing them up to some great wild-assed blends, perfect to have on in the background while fucking trannies you met on craigslist. And that’s awesome.
LESSON #3 - Tuesday: Just out to the camper after work for a simple mix, playing side F of the Aquemini album, with “Liberation”, then fading into “Southern Girl” by Erykah Badu, then letting the instrumental to “Closet Freak” play while I switch out cables and run the CD player into one half of the mixer to cue up “Gaining One’s Definition” from Cee-lo’s solo joint, into the radio version of “Soul Food”, then back to the CD player to let the extended live “Tyrone” play for a while while I set up the radio version of “Cell Therapy” and close out with the beginning of that “Crazy” Gnarls Barkley song, which my daughter will recognize like a motherfucker from 3000 plays on my wife’s robot apple beat machine player. I’m hoping the funk vibe of a lot of this shit will echo the Jimmy Smith I planted in her brain already, but also the point is to be like, do what you like as music, and write rhymes to fit around that. Following a straight hip hop formula is wack as shit, as all the prominent forms of hip hop (both radio bullshit and internet friendly bullshit) are formulaic as fuck to the point it makes me groan more than moan nowadays. But also, I know my daughter doesn’t really like “Crazy” because she’s heard it too much, which can lead to a good point on doing the same shit too much, which not just with a song can also apply to your style. Or words. If you say the same word seventeen times in one set of songs, people are gonna be rolling eyes at your shit. My kid needs to learn that from the jump, but I also want her to know she can mix in some singing or speed talking or even homemade language jibber jabber. This will also be the best time to go back to the “Southern Girl” 12-inch and explain what Rahzel is doing on there, with beat boxing, which fuck, is a dead art in hip hop but also like the coolest shit ever for a wide-eyed kid to hear. I mean, beat boxing is some shit you can cup your hands up to your mouth and give a shot at, right underneath the apple tree in the back yard. I’ve got a heavily rotated old school mix CD that has like a six song segment with The Fat Boys and Biz Markie all highlighting beat box skills, which we can listen to in the trunk while we ride up to the country store for a can of tomato juice for my beer. And I’ll talk about the time I met Biz Markie at the bar in the Richmond Marriott, and just explain Biz Markie. I mean, that’s one big, ugly, goofy fucker, and urban legend is he was a homeless dude cleaning car windshields and freestyling when Cold Chillin’s President Tyrone discovered him. When it comes to stylishness and magazine-friendly beauty, Biz has none of it. Yet he’s like one of the greatest motherfuckers ever in hip hop. And if I’m gonna be brainwashing my kid to be some uber-rhymewriter at age 8, I want her to understand doing her own thing stylishly but in your own style is the most important. I don’t want her running up to me about something she wrote and it’s like a shitty derivative of “Lip Gloss”. I don’t believe in physically hitting my own children, but I’d be mad dissapointed and would browbeat her like a motherfucker over that. So I’d rather nip that in the bud by encouraging her in a different direction. And if she naturally grows into being like some retarded white girl version of retarde M.I.A., then whatever, if she came to that on her own, I can accept it. I can accept my kids being themselves, even if it’s some strange ass gay shit to me, so long as it’s themselves and not somebody else’s stupid fucking nonsense polluting their brain.
LESSON #4 - Wednesday: I guess I haven’t really mentioned it, but each day we’ll be fucking around writing some simple rhymes, so she can get in the practice of doing so, and hopefully by the end of the week, I can cut her loose and just have her read me her rhymes after work instead of me going over them with her. Today’s lesson, I’m just gonna play “Eye Examination” b-side to “Dr. Bombay” by Del for her to soak in at regular speed, then we’ll go back and play it again as slow as the pitch control on the turntable will allow, to study the linguistics. She knows what words mean and already understands, from writing poetry this year, about similes and metaphors, but the great trickery of the rapping music is using linguistics to sound all crazy fucked-up brilliant with your shit, and “Eye Examination” is a great example of kooky linguistic gymnastics, to teach alliterations and also how you can make things that would never rhyme in the read form sound exactly the same when delivered vocally. (I will tell her this is the Bushwick rule.) After a few pages of freewrites, doing sound games, writing nonsense on purpose just to do stupid linguistical stuff with her, I’ll throw on m Sittin’ Sideways DJ Screw mix, real low, so she doesn’t hear all the goddamned cursewords, and we’ll sit there and try to write out eight lines or so of crazy linguistically based wordplay together. And I’ll probably ramble about DJ Screw playing shit at a slow speed and ask her didn’t it sound better that “Eye Examination” song all slow and loungin’, and she won’t care. She seems to like more upbeat stuff, but she’s young, and has yet to smoke weed, much less drink cough syrup, so that might change as she gets older. Also, since I broke down the legendary old school status of Biz Markie yesterday, I plan on this day busting out the 7-inch of “10% Dis” by MC Lyte, to give the best female MC of all-time some shine, and show my daughter that although the rap world is full of macho posturing men in goofy-looking clothing, women can hold their own. Of course, the whole “beat biter, dope style taker, tell you to your face, you ain’t nothing but a faker” line helps me drive something else home with my daughter, who’s still young, so she sometimes when writing about things, will recreate things she’s reading about (fucking American Girls) or a movie she watched, and I’ve been trying hard to hammer into her head that recreating something else is creative, but ultimately not original, and that it’s far better for her to think up her own wild stories than to just mimic other ones. She’s old enough that we’ve explained what plagiarism is and shit, but as a kid, you’ve got shit you love and you want to be like that, so you can’t just yell at the kid for biting something else. But I want her to understand that biting someone else’s shit, far worse than being illegal according to manmade governments acting as if they were god-like, is something that’s more than worth laughing at somebody about. And the person who did it first can come kick your ass. I want my kid to have plagiarism laws mean nothing to her compared to getting her ass kicked.
LESSON #5 - Thursday: This is gonna be all about playing her some Rakim, to expose her to serious mic magic, but combined with spiritual belief and all-around cocksure (haha) awesomeness. I don’t want her growing up stuck in some bullshit Who was the best of all-time? Biggie or Tupac meme, so I’ve got to expose her to Rakim early on. To this day, you can analyze (and over-analyze) so much of what he said it’s amazing. I want her to know what she believes is important should be in her words, not just crazy verbal tricks to make it sound great. Substance goes a long ways, and there are people who may be listening on the other end, and you want to give them something more than momentary attachment to something new for them to have. I’m sure after long boring seminars on Rakim with some “back in my days, we blah blah blahed the real shit” tangents, I’ll bust out a couple Ghostface songs, definitely “All That I Got Is You”, because Ghost is just as spiritual as Rakim ever was, but in a much weirder mystic way, like not nearly as confident as Rakim and it’s almost like Ghost, as cocksure as he seems, really suffers from insecurities from childhood, so he wraps it up in his out of control style. Which is fine, and I want my daughter to know about that too, because I’m sure, with her being my kid, and plus homeschooled in manners like this week’s rhyme-writing intensive, she’s gonna have some issues that she’ll want to mask as well. But the mask is not an American crook’s mask, meant to hide the true identity completely while you make some fast cash; the mask is like the Mexican luchador’s, meant to give you the freedom of your own shortcomings to do battle with outside forces as powerfully as possible, so that you can come back to what’s behind the mask knowing it has not been jeopardized by exposure. And all that leads to one of the redneck ninja lessons (that’s some other shit an older dude who just recently died who was friends with my dad and lived nearby was on; I’ve been meaning to start putting up some of his rojonekku, or redneck ninja, lessons he’s been sharing with delinquent kids for like twenty years now, but he left his box of journals to me, or at least hid them on his property where only I knew about them, and I’ve been sorting through them, and it’s kinda fucked me; dude was intense, so hopefully in the next month or so I’ll start putting them things up) about dwelling in shadows because you can hide safely in the shadows outside of the attention of those who would exploit, abuse, or oppress you. But you are also only in shadows, not hopeless darkness, so your eyes - or outlook - adjust, and you get by. Man, looking back on that last couple of run-on sentences, my kids are so doomed yet so blessed, it’s bothersome. I mean, it looks bad to be teaching kids crazy shit like all this, but fuck, what good does a public schooling do? I don’t want my kids to learn how to pass tests and sit still and listen to the authority figure. I’d rather my kid be feral and make retarded wolf children in the mountains than ever end up some piece of shit regular kid who thinks an afterschool job at Food Lion is great because it gives them extra spending money for clothes at Target.
LESSON #6 - Friday: No lesson today because about three weeks ago, after not being able to understand the BBC Radio 1 website, I accidentally discovered the weekly essential mix is on Fridays when I get home from work, so we can fix dinner, turn up the satellite radio real loud and let goofy Euro-friendly dance music blast so the kids can put on dress-up clothes from the dress-up clothes bin and get their dance on. I even strung up some Christmas lights in the kitchen (which has our biggest open space of a dance floor-ish variety). After I take a shower, I’ll go upstairs and dress normal, but I did bust out some dress-up clothes too last week, my old Duke of Hawaii outfit from a Halloween or two. Basically, I put on this weird brown-haired mod wig my kids have, but my dreadlocks stick out the back at the bottom, like a retard mullet, and I put on these white urban camo pants I have, plus a really tacky rainforest looking leaf pattern white, black, and green Hawaiian shirt. The combo is kind of like looking at the sun, and my wife hated it when it was gonna be my Halloween outfit, but the kids said I looked like the Duke of Hawaii, whatever the fuck that means, so that’s what it’s called now, and I try to bust it out from time to time, to keep my wife on her toes and to induce epileptic seizures in random pregnant women. So yeah, class suspended today, so we can teach the kids stupid dances from the ‘80s while frybread and ground turkey sprinkled heavily with cumin cooks on the stove.
LESSON #7 - Saturday: Saturday morning will be our last regular season soccer game for the kid, and this is her first year of U10, which is also the first year I've let the kids know the score during the games, since the shit up till now should be about learning and having fun. But at 8 and 9, they're old enough to start wanting to win and compete and shit but still have fun. My kid is probably one of the weaker links on the team, but she's improved steadily all year long, and mostly it's about her being more confident, not her being a lazy fat ass or something. But we are undefeated this year and have only been losing at halftime once. So usually after soccer, we have a chill afternoon, so I won't want to get too heavy on her about the rhymewriting, but we have to carry out the week-long plan. Mostly for the last day, I just want her to write some rhymes, even if it's goofy ass 8-year-old girl rhymes, that's still a foundation. Start with some Ant Banks instrumentals (I'd really prefer some Rap-a-Lot in-house producers instrumentals, but the only one I really still have that I can find easily is my three copies of "Ever So Clear"), which we can roll with for a while, then bust out the "In The Trunk" single by Too Short to move from Ant Banks to the DJ Premier remix and go into a Premier instrumental vibe. The main thing will be for her to just get in the habit of writing a rhyme, all the way through, and the goal I'm hoping for on Saturday afternoon is three almost whole verses, not necessarily for the same song, and two hooks. Before this week, we've worked on and pretty much have a running game of coming with hooks for shit that's happening. It's actually fairly amusing because we could be walking through the grocery store buying some food, and all of a sudden she'll bust out a hook about cereal boxes with cartoon characters being placed at the eye level of children. I'm hoping she won't be too fast with the writing, so we can get into a little chunk of various Diamond instrumentals from through the years, and I can talk some nonsense about how Diamond made great beats and was an entertaining MC, and then I can promise we'll work on beat-making over at the PSY/OPS house if she wants, or the next time Boogie Brown comes through town. And hopefully, she'll have a desire to put her innermost thoughts into retarded linguistic patterns of lines with rhythmic end sounds from now on.

10.20.2007

NFL WK 7: East division teams

My wife and kids are usually out of the house by like 7:30 on Wednesday mornings, which, me being self-employed, can sometimes lead to laying around to see the Price Is Right showcase showdown. But that shit didn't happen today because I was trying to motivate, and while putting the baking soda to my teethbones with the local radio jibber jabbering at me, they had a news item about some dude's $250,000 megamillions ticket about to expire, meaning today was the last day. I've had one of those tickets on my fridge for like four months, waiting to check it, but I didn't win the $200 mill, so I didn't really give a fuck after that. But I figured I should hold on to check that shit, just never did. Well, the news story got me all fired up and shit like, "Oh fuck, I might be that dumbass." And then I had visions of hitting the lottery office this afternoon, and having new rims on my truck by nightfall, plus a fresh tattoo of two happy looking pygmy goats eating from an intricate golden bowl full of flowers on my lower back. Lower back tattoos on dudes look awesome, no?
Turns out I didn't win $250,000, so I went and scraped a motherfucking barn for a neurosurgeon for a few hours, pressure washed the roof of it, afraid I would fall through the rotten beams and shit with my 240 lb. ass. That would be kinda awesome because I could break my back and not have to work for a while, except no insurance self-employed no workman's comp sucka ass screwed worse than before type bullshit. But there is football to allow me escape...

#1: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (6-0; #2 overall) - I have finally turned a corner on my attitude with the Patriots this past week really. I have always not minded them, I mean, it's a team mentality far more so than any other pro sports team in this era of big bucks free agency, so I've enjoyed them, all the way back to the tuck rule bullshit pissing off every Raiders fan ever for the rest of their poor pathetic lives. But I think all the "they could go 16-0" hype has finally just annoyed me and I kinda want Tom Brady to get his hips broken by Zach Thomas during an ephedrine rush. But on the other hand, I'd also like to see them go undefeated, just so those old Dolphins dudes who bust out the champagne, Cialis, and 45-year-old hookers every year when the final team loses, will go the fuck away. If you pay attention to the overall rankings I have, yes, according to my bullshit flawed in seventeen different ways system, they are behind the Colts still.

#2: DALLAS COWBOYS (5-1; #3 overall) - Tony Romo has that same light loafered gleam in his eye that Jeff Garcia always has had, so I'm figuring they're about two or three shitty games away from T.O. accusing Romo of being homo. When, of course, if ever there was a more obvious closeted gay in the NFL than T.O., then they never got much media coverage. Even though the 'Boys are doing good right now, as a Redskins fan, I am really enjoying this season as it progresses. When Jimmy Johnson set up the '90s Cowboys dynasty, it pained me greatly, and even when Switzer came in, you knew he could ride that horse for a few good years and a ring or two, which he did. But Parcells left behind sort of a half-assed wild card dynasty in Dallas, and Wade Phillips is like seven times shittier than Barry Switzer, but you can see his big goofy grown up Ralph Wiggum ass standing on the sideline hoping they eke out 42 points as the defense gives up 35, hoping he’ll have a chance to pump his fist like an old dude who just won a game of bocce balls. And knowing the Cowboys still have T.O., as a Redskins fan, it’s very satisfying, because it’s like they have a time bomb strapped underneath their team bus, and I’m watching it on TV, and everyone knows it’s there except for them. Now, just to wait for it to blow up...

#3: NEW YORK GIANTS (4-2; #5 overall) - The Giants have won four in a row, and in the mediocre is the new awesome NFC, they could storm to a Super Bowl appearance. Although, you have to figure with the two biggest figures on the team being cranky ol’ Christian curmudgeon Tom Coughlin and the first ever negro Montana Freeman Michael Strahan, there’s bound to be some sort of internal conflict by the end of the season, with the New York Jew media stirring up the shit at the bottom of the pot whenever they get a chance. (Haha, I don’t think it’s a Jew media that would cause trouble there; I just like making Zionist conspiracy comments every now and then, because it’s one of the few things that seems to still get a reaction from the godless everything is lulz internet demographic. Plus, I used to go to rense.com a lot, because I’ve got a UFOs over Mexico City footage fetish.) Also, on my shitty ass fantastical dork team, I’ve got that Derrick Ward dude, so hopefully Brandon Jacobs tears his ACL this week, because there’s no goddamned running backs to pick up.

#4: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES (2-3; #11 overall) - I’ve been working at this lady’s house one day a week, and her kid, who’s like my favorite kid because he’s 9 or 10 and he’s got a great ass sense of humor already, but he’s an Eagles fan, so I’ve been razzing him pretty hard every week about how Donovan is gonna get cut at the end of the year to go to the Bears and they’re not really trying to win because Andy Reid wants to take a leave of absence after the 12th week to tend to his drug-addled boys, and they can get a decent draft pick and make a fresh start in two seasons after they rebuild with a couple drafts and then Michael Vick at QB. It’s fun, because children are so gullible, and if you lay out a whole line of shit like that in very serious form like you read it in the Koran twenty years ago and everything up to this point has been right on, the kid’s gonna get all wide-eyed and sad because his three Donovan McNabb jerseys are about to be as useless to his ass as his two Allen Iverson 76ers jerseys.

#5: WASHINGTON REDSKINS (3-2; #15 overall) - The Redskins almost played a defensive lineman on their offensive line last week. The fact they’re even 3-2 when five of their top nine o-linemen have been injured this year already is amazing. They had this gigantic nappy-headed bad ass rookie free agent cat who fucked himself up last week, which made me sad, because he was already like one of my five favorite players. And their top practice squad o-lineman, he got arrested for drunk in public and resisting arrest, and if you’re a star linebacker, you can get out of shit like that, but if you’re on a practice squad, that’s usually a good move to get dropped, especially if the head coach is a born again old dude with an Andy Griffith “golly me” attitude. Still, they are my Redskins, and this team has a better assortment of fuck-ups, cut-ups, and wacky fuckers. Shit, Rock Cartwright is a crazy-named special teams nutjob who talks interesting nonsense, and he’s only like the third most interesting running back on the team. (FYI, of course Clinton Portis with his costumes and general goofiness is ahead of him. He gave away like 200 pairs of sneakers and all his pimp ass clothes before the season, because it was taking up too much space. Also, the Redskins have Mike Sellers, who you know how some players have a linebacker mentality? Sellers has a pro wrestler from 1979 mentality. He dyed his beard blonde and likes to run into things on purpose like any good fullback would.) They might not end up making the playoffs this year, but I can safely say I would imagine the Redskins of 2007 would have the best players-only picnic of any team. And that’s not just me being a homer.

#6: BUFFALO BILLS (1-4; #26 overall) - Too bad that dude who didn’t get paralyzed could’ve died and had his heart transplanted into the Bills otherwise below-average team. When your season highlight is “that one dude ended up not being paralyzed”, that’s not a good football season. The other night, I did google news top story searches for every other English-speaking country, just to see how high Britney Spears registered with the rest of the World, and the top Canadian sports story was some noted conman fuckface bragging on how he was gonna get the NFL to come to Canada, and everybody was like, “Yeah right, fuckface.” And then, like three days later, the story came out that the Bills were gonna request permissions with the NFL to play games in Toronto. For once, the internet taught me something before everybody else knew about it, except I didn’t really give a fuck about the NFL in Canada, so I didn’t tell everybody. I guess I could sit around and waste my life and look for moments like that, blog them, and upload rare breaking songs like this “Celebrate” track by Ghostface featuring Kid Capri I’m bumping, but fuck that noise. In real life has far too much beautiful pussy to talk to the faces bodily attached to said pussy for me to be wrapped up in the blogosphere.

#7: NEW YORK JETS (1-5; #29 overall) - Remember when Eric Mangini was the next coaching genius of the NFL? And then remember when he snitched on another coach about some shit every coach does? And then remember how the Jets couldn’t buy a win after that? Shit is mad fixed, brah. I bet Chad Pennington would be perfectly healthy if he was playing in Minnesota or Tennessee.

#8: MIAMI DOLPHINS (0-6; #32 overall) - It would be great if the Dolphins could go 0-16 to match up with the undefeated ‘72 Dolphins. In fact, I’d rather see that than have the Pats or Colts go undefeated. And every year while the ‘72 Dolphins are popping corks when the last team loses a game, the ‘07 Dolphins will be sitting around, spinning the chambers of their pistols, and as the last team wins a game, they close it up and just sit there looking at the pistol shaft, contemplating giving it that one last fellatio.

10.16.2007

FALL CLASSIC: 1st Rd. Group A


OVERVIEW: So these are the first four mixes of the Fall Classic Mixtape showdown bullshit we announced the other week. There are 16 spots in the first round, with four-way match-ups, and the four winners will move into the final round showdown. First round mixes are roughly within 5 minutes either way of a 30 minute mix. We already have the next four entrants in the robot machines, so if you are amped to get in on this jam, it is first come first serve, no held spots since no one's word is worth a shit on the internet. Included below are the first four entrants, download links for you, the fabulous dumpin.net reader, so's you can listen and vote as well for your favorite of the four mixes. But me (Raven Mack or RM), Mike DIKK (MD), John Dawson (JD), and Keenon Mobb (KM) will give our rankings of the mixes. Here's what we're looking at this time round...

ENTRANT #1: Emil's Guide to Finnish Hip Hop - sent in by dumpin.net reader Emil Katanjahajarashna, and it's a sampler of the underground hip hop movement in Finland.
ENTRANT #2: The PSY-OPSogist's Any Day is a Good Day to Take Pills mix - done by the PSY-OPSogist who is the wacky beatmaker for my wacky rappitty group.
ENTRANT #3: Chivato's Mega-Mix - sent in by rap internerd homeboy Chivato of Chivato's Lounge.
ENTRANT #4: Mike DIKK's The Adventure's of Donnie, John John, and the Three Six Mafia - of course, it will be insinuated that Mike, being the main dude here at dumpin.net, has home field advantage, but trust me when I tell you, we probably hate our own shit more than anyone else could probably hate it. That's why we're all internet fags, it allows us the anonynimity to escape our own self-loathing, briefly.
And here's how us expert ass whiteboys ranked these four mixes (for winning purposes, what we rank as #1 gets 3 pts, #2 gets 2 pts, and #3 gets 1 pt; and the open public poll scores 6 pts for #1, 4 pts for #2, and 2 pts for #3, so your public consciousness is worth double and has the power to heavily sway but not completely overrule what we think)...

THE NUMBER ONE MIX OF THIS SET:
MD: The PSY-OPS mix - I was really looking forward to ranking my own mix at number one, but Emory is like a Level 60 Wizard at Ableton Live, and I'm only a Level 6 Housewife at using Audacity, which is an inferior and free software program. Don't get it twisted, I am internerd enough where I have a bootlegged copy of Ableton Live myself, but I just don't have the patience to learn how to use it right, so I'm stuck cutting and pasting with Audacity.
I'm personally looking more for technical skills and bells and whistles in this little contest because I could give a shit about what songs people want to put into mixes. Unless I'm fagging out to Diplo, all music is just there when it comes to mixes for me.
Emory has a real good mix of music and wacky tricks to keep you interested. I liked that one first song a lot, whatever it was, and that song after the one Willie Wonka sample, I don't know if Emory fucked with that in Ableton Live or if that's just the normal song, but that song was the shit. I have a feeling once I find out what the song is I'm going to hate myself for liking it though. Like it's going to turn out to be Godsmack or some shit.
Anyway, Emory has already set a high bar in this contest that not even I could topple, and I'm a fucking beast, let me tell you.
JD: Just knowing how much of a fuckhead music hermit I am, it is tough for me to really dig on something that isn't strictly hip hop and nothing but hip hop, but man Emory hit the spot. I don't know what the fuck Mike was talking about with his computer D&D wizard shit, but I listened to the music. That shit was fresh. It avoided the trendy hip hop nonsense or the trying to be too cute crap, and just was a half hour of song after song that didn't suck. And after listening to some of the other entrants, not sucking is the bar to set.
RM: Well, I gave the PSY-OPS a listen or two driving home from his house massively fucked up (that's right nerds, I drink and drive, call me Car-Hitler), and I dug the fuck out of his mix. But maybe I'm just trying to overly stay fair since I make music with Emory (aka the PSY-OPS) but I'm gonna pick Mike's Three Six Muhammad Ali say no to drugs LP mix as my number one. Mostly because I listened ot that tonight while driving to town drinking beer, and there's just something about really loud Three Six Mafia on the first cool October Friday night of the year, slamming some cold cheap cans of beer that you don't have to do anything more to than let sit on the floorboard of the truck since it's cold outside and you always ride around with the window down because of the rotten chickenbones lost somewhere behind the tools behind the bucket seats. So I went with Mike DIKK's mix.
KM: Mike's mix. I always wondered if Mike could mix, because he used to post up with some large mp3s that had awesome selection but would just shift from song to song. I don't wonder anymore - I just don't care. Dude made a blendernerd like me forget about it with all this. The switches are all smooth as shit, with or without overlapping between songs. The ongoing drug soundbites slide in and out perfectly. And I did roll 'round town this weekend bumping this in my factory speakers, but I didn't have any rolled blunt products. ICY WHITE HONEY BUN OOOH THERE I AM. This is better than a few Three Six mixtapes I've paid money for.

THE NUMBER TWO MIX OF THIS SET:
RM: Without a doubt, PSY-OPS goes here. We make shitty rap music together now, but eventually I'm gonna realize I'm too white and too old to be fucking around with this shit and I'm gonna settle down and write the thirty-seven novels I've outlined on stacks and stacks of notecards out in the camper, leaving PSY-OPS to make weird ambient soundtracks using samples and live instrumentation. If ever there was a motherfucker who I wanted to get a theremin, it'd be PSY-OPS, since he already has a Hammond organ. I think.
MD: The Donnie John John Three Six Mafia mix. Even if I didn't make this myself, it would be pretty hard to get me to hate on a mix of Three Six Mafia songs. All the extra vocal samples are from this record "The Dope King's Last Stand", and that shit is way out there. I haven't heard any other people sampling this record, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was some little Asian turntablist out there making an entire concept album based off of this record.
Also, Raven's right about Three Six Mafia in October. I think a lot of people may put their big singles in the Summer Music category, but Three Six is strictly fall music for me, which is why I put this together. I listened to Chapter 2: World Domination (that album has no songs featured on this mix though) and it got me so pumped for October and November.
I think if I really put in the effort to make this flawless I could have, with a good conscious, voted for myself over the PSY/OPS mix, but there's little shit here and there that I know could have been better, and of course it's only shit I would notice because I made the god damn thing, and I'm not going to point them out to you because then you'd start hating on it too and I wouldn't get the people's vote, so fuck you.
JD: Again, this really opened me up to shit I really fuckin' hate. I have always been one to jump in on hip hop trends to see if I dig on it, but southern hip hop has always eluded me. But Mike did a good job of mixing Three Six tracks and those awesome Dope King samples. The cocaine bit going into the Three Six cocaine track was brilliant. It really sucks that Emory and Mike are in the same bracket, because their two mixes have been the ones that I have been listening to over and over. But I put Emory's ahead of Mike's because the southern shit started to wear on me near the end of the mix.
I also have to give Mike credit because I expected a mix of all Madlib/DJ Shadow/Diplo vomit, but he flipped it, and I appreciate that. No homo.
KM: The PSY-OPS mix. Emory's got the kind of mash-shit-together mentality that I can get behind. The only thing on this that I could recognize offhand was Scarface, but the rest of it was chill as fuck and made for a good drive a couple nights ago. I would brave the wilds of the wilderness to go to an S.E.P. party just to hear what kind of odd ideas Emory and Raven would bust out with after getting tanked and smoking whatever flavor of crack Raven's debuting that weekend.
After re-listening to both, I would actually like to declare a tie between Mike and Emory, but that would do a disservice to our hallowed internet traditions of ranking. They might throw me out of the club if I fuck up the ballot. The end was especially trippy, and the first time I listened to all these, the Finnish mix hit immediately afterward on my computer. I thought that the three minutes of haunting tambourine/guitar/sax solo was the intro to that mix until burning them. That would've fucked me up if I wasn't sober.

THE NUMBER THREE MIX OF THIS SET:
MD: Chivato's Megamix. Chivato included a little read me file with his mix where he was man enough to admit he didn't do the blends featured on here. That was nice because a couple of us thought he did them himself. Either way, I put this in the third spot because there's a lot of music on here I'm really not into and DJ blends seem to accentuate any type of music you don't like by making it more annoying. I do appreciate that he went through the trouble of mixing it all together instead of just presenting a bunch of mp3 files.
RM: Yeah, I got Chivato at the #3 spot as well, and he gets credit for jumping in blindly, because after listening to this first round of four, most people will learn what we think are good mixes in our expert whiteboy minds. There's nothing noticeably wrong with Chivato's mix, but there's nothing noticeably awesome about it either. I think it's more the result of mixtape culture being so warped. So many shitty throw-together mixtapes come out every week nowadays that no one understands mixing and blending and having something echo throughout the mixtape other than your own name shouted into a headphone used as a microphone. I could give a fuck about some new great mix or a current song on a mixtape because for me, and perhaps only me, a mixtape is in contention to be in my lifetime cycle of shit I play. I still fucking play my Tony Touch reggae mixes, plus Tony Touch #55. Also my DJ Bee best of Wu mixtape. Having flavor of the month flavors in abundance does not make for timeless classics, just passing flashes of "Oh shit, I never heard that." Fuck DJs who brag upon so-called exclusives.
I should also mention all of that is in no way related to Chivato's mix either, just more a general rant against today's mixtape culture. But if you like that shit and dl 17 mixtapes a day, you should definitely check out Chivato's shit too. Although when the fuck are you gonna listen to all this shit, man?
JD: Chivato. To just prevent saying how mediocre Chivato's mix was, I decided to google his name and see what it meant in English. Chivato can be translated into stool-pigeon, sneak, or tattletale. Interesting, because as Mike stated, the kid admitted he bit the blend off someone else, which is a shame. If he really made the mix, I would have definitely gave him props, but is that what this is really about? In my opinion, fuck no. Mike and Emory put some effort into it not just taking songs and putting them back to back. This was a blend, but not his. Truthfully, if I could understand a word of what the Finnish dude sent in, he would be above the rat fink.
KM: The Finnish mix. I have re-evaluated my initial response to this. Some of the beats are a little too Def Juxy for my taste, but there are some definite oddball gems. About three minutes in, I liked that one a lot. At first, I had trouble getting into the lyrics, but after a few spins my ears just decided to treat them like an instrument and then my brain stopped seizing up with the "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE SAYING" response. I do the same shit in my own mixes (only it's usually Spanish music) and so it was different (and later pleasant) to have no clue what people are saying but still be able to enjoy the music itself. The only thing I absolutely recognized was that "Still Not A Player" guitar/piano, that was a hoot. I like to imagine the dude's rapping about being a 300 lb. Finnish mack daddy, regardless of what he's actually saying. In closing, I am glad I got to listen to this and I wonder what the hip-hop scene is like in Finland now. I mean is it like some NYC backpacker shit? Europe shows love to Houston dudes too, though - I'm curious now. I need to see charts.

THE WORST MIX OF THIS SET:
JD: Finnish mix. Hey man, whoever you are, I am sorry. Bro, I didn't listen to more than about a minute and a half of that mix you sent in. I appreciate you trying to scrape together a whole mess of songs in some Nordic language, but I couldn't deal with it. I would rather have sat through every Lil Wayne mixtape ever than sit through a half hour of substandard beats with some odd language over it. Sorry dude, but you lose.
MD: Emil's Guide To Finland Mix (I made that name up). I feel bad putting this last, because I was probably the only person out of all of us that was looking forward to hearing this. I do enjoy hearing hip hop from other countries, but I hardly ever seek it out myself, because if you do, you're going in blindly and might end up with something like DJ Sven & MC Miker G. At the same time, if you seek out something as obscure (to Americans at least) as foreign language hip hop and someone catches you, it makes you look like some cocky prick who is just trying to be different.
With that said, I couldn't get down with the Finnish hip hop. I'm guessing all the songs on here were done by different guys, and they all kind of blend together and sound the same. That may be because of my ignorance, but I don't know. I do appreciate the cajones it takes to send a mix of weird foreign rap to a bunch of Americans for a contest that will probably feature all English speaking music outside of that. If this grouping of mixes wasn't so strong, I would have probably bumped this up one or two spots just for that, but that's why you get fucked when you go first sometimes. Either way, this was still way better than French speaking hip hop.
KM: Chivato's mix. The intro on this left me a little cold, but I don't like the Beatles. I'm not normal. The blends reminded me of how the cottage industry of Nas remix projects existed because someone put out like every single one of his acapellas. The blends were done a whole lot better than I'm used to hearing - the Jay/Talib combination was a good idea. The Lil Wayne and Kanye kinda stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle. The back and forth between different Jay and B.I.G. acapellas was a bit distracting, but it was interesting and really well done. This reminded me of when I used to enjoy Common a lot more than I do now, too.
RM: Yeah, I threw the Finnish mix in last too, which bummed me out. I'm a linguistics dork and can get into foreign hip hop fairly easily. But for me, there has to be some local flavor, like weird linguistics foreign language over a completely different sampled music homebase and musical influences and shit like that. Like if you listen to Korean hip hop or Senegalese hip hop, there's some odd ass (to my American ears) localized bullshit going on. I dig that. This Finland hip hop mix was like shitty mixtapes over top of American beats. That made it suck for me. The foreign language just added to the problem when it was recognizable samples and all, but with some crazy white hocking sound language over top that shit. I am thankful Emil sent this shit in though, and it'd be interesting to see what kind of mix he'd send in if he had a second chance, knowing we weren't Americanized super-faggots who just wanted to hear our own shit but with some crazy lingo over top.

YOUR VOTE TIME:
So from our expert whiteboy rankings, going into public poll for a week (or so), it stands like this... The PSY/OPS mix - 10 pts, Mike DIKK's mix - 10 pts, Chivato's mix - 3 pts, and Emil's Finnish hip hop mix - 1 pt. So basically, you vote for your favorite, but only the PSY/OPS or Mike DIKK shit can win mathematically. But fuck it, whatever you like the most vote for. This ain't no anybody but Bush bullshit, you vote for who you like, even if it's third party. The winner next week, when we throw up the second group of four mixes, will move on to the final round in a month or so. So yeah, vote in the poll in the sidebar and shit. Or die.

10.15.2007

R.I.P. Big Moe




I'm not going to pretend like I'm some S.U.C. historian or anything, but it's sad to see all of these dudes dying off when they're responsible for such a weird subgenre of music that I enjoy and respect in a completely non-ironic way. I'm sure I will write more when it comes time for our little end of the month dork show, but I thought I'd put up this video and do the typical blogger thing of digging out the "Purple Stuff" 12" from my collection, ripping it, and posting it up here for anyone who might actually be curious who the fuck Big Moe was. Unfortunately, this doesn't include a screwed and chopped version.


Big Moe - Purple Stuff b/w When I 12" (2002)

1a. Purple Stuff (Radio mix)
2a. Purple Stuff (Instrumental)
3a. Purple Stuff (Acapella)

1b. When I (Radio mix)
2b. When I (Instrumental)
3b. When I (Acapella)

Get it right here.

Here's the Remix of Purple Stuff Feat. Project Pat, thanks to Phatty.

10.14.2007

Shining White Revue #3


This is the column where I give my boy Jay three songs to review without telling him what they are and he gives his NO HOLDS BARRED opinion on them. Also, Jay knows around 3% of what the common internet rap nerd knows about hip hop, which makes the whole thing interesting to me. -- Mike Dikk

Song 1: Nas - Surviving The Times

Jay Pud: The opening of this reminds me of sitting in a shitty diner drinking coffee after a long night of drinking. I think it’s because it reminds me of that stupid “Beautiful World” song that my wife tells me I’m supposed to love because it’s pretty and the world is supposedly a place where flowers grow without dirt. The flow (can I use the word flow? I feel like a cockstain) is pretty good, I guess, but he just rhymed invincible and miracle, which even I have heard a million times. This is good, but it’s boring. It’s not as good as “Back in the Day” by Kareem, or whoever the fuck sung that. That song told me about back in the day but wasn’t boring. Also, I can kind of imagine Puma with the fat laces over Gucci. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rapper not on TV wearing Gucci. That’s unfair, because I’ve never seen anyone wearing Gucci at all, and I’ve never seen a real rapper. Only the kinda gay kinds that try to give me a cd at my gas station job and have some guy named Je$u$ listed as their producer. People who do bad stuff (and I’m only assuming he’s talking about doing bad stuff because it’s hard to listen to his lyrics while I’m writing this) wear sweatpants and South Pole bubble jackets. Actually, upon another listening, I’m unsure as to whether he was wearing Gucci or some girl was. I think he got some Gucci and then Gucci power got him a record deal or something. And then he didn’t do bad stuff, but got famous or something. This song is giving me a headache. I’m done trying to figure it out.

Song 2: Pete Rock 'Til I Retire

Jay Pud: Haha. “I’m a gay and I return.” (This is what Jay thought Pete Rock was saying -- Mike) And he’s gonna bring the fire. His name is apparently Pete-Rock, and that sounds like someone who was a “famous rapper” in the 80’s, so I’m guessing that this dude is like 50, and so I’m giving him a crappy lyrics pass because he doesn’t know any better. Do you know why the government will never “be busted?” This may sound like a shitty ebonics joke, but I assure you it’s not, because while I can sort of write in English, I can’t really speak it. Anyways, the reason is, if your case is “I always hate to see a black man in jail,” I assure you that the fucking high up white powers won’t give much of a shit about what you have to say. I hate to see hot chicks not blowing me. That’s all I’m trying to say. If I could talk to lady justice I’d definitely bring that up with her. Why the fuck does every other song I listen to talk about how they are either A) going to bring hip hop back to life, B) worried about whether or not hip hop is dead, or C) insisting that hip hop is still alive. Just because Nas has a stupid album title isn’t necessarily a call for crappy rappers to get into the fight. Or maybe it is, but maybe they should just stop talking about it and do it. This song sucks. I’m trying not to hate…I really am. If this song is by your hero or favorite rapper, I am sorry for being a curmudgeon. Hopefully the next song will be good. This song is not, though
.


Song 3: Cunninlynguists feat. Phonte & Witchdoctor - Yellow Lines


Jay Pud: Seriously? See, now I’m beginning to think that Mike is purposely trying to make me seem super white and all “I don’t understand.” This is black chick music. And trust me, you name a race, archetype, fucking stereotype, class, anything that you have, and I can peg their music because I work at a gas station and I know what people listen to in their cars. Or this is a black dude trying to get pussy song, and I know those when I hear them coming down the street because my ears perk up and I smell money. No man or woman alive is a better tipper than a black man trying to get pussy, at least around my block. Is that stereotyping? Probably, but not hatefully. White dudes who are into rap who are trying to get pussy always have the radio on, (Hot97, or maybe some hits station) because white chicks dig the radio. I think black chicks win out on that battle, because if I was a girl I’d much rather some dude try to lay it on me all smooth like with something like this then the Superman song. Either way, I can’t imagine that anyone not trying to sleep with a black chick would listen to this.

10.11.2007

FALL CLASSIC Mixtape Update

If you missed the original post about this WONDERFUL AMAZING TRULY ONE OF A KIND contest, go right here and read up on the rules and ENTER RIGHT NOW!!


We are doing this crap First Come First Served. So every four mixes get put into a group. Right now we have 7 in, so the first group is done and we're waiting for Raven's dial up to download a couple 30MB files within a few days. I'm personally hoping E.T. comes down from space and touches that shit with his glowing finger to speed up the slow rural Virginia internet for him.

Anyway, this is how group A is lined up.


Chivato, representing Chivato's Lounge
Emil representing Finland
Mike Dikk representing the Dumpin Home Field Advantage
Emory, representing the PSy/Opsogist

Group B Lineup:

What It Is representing Tree Beats
Jay Pud representing WST
Web Conn (?) representing something or other.
Dart Adams representing Poisonous Paragraphs

Here's some other people that showed interest but haven't provided a mix yet.

Raven Wack
BWT
Keenon
DJ Rah-Bee
Nate Science Gone Mad
Travis WYDU
Patrique Allah

We are still looking for people to fill this out, so please tell your friends and promote this on your website/Myspace/local bulletin board if you know of anyone who would be interested.

Hopefully the Group A mixes, reviews, rankings and voting polls will be up within the week.

10.09.2007

NFL WK 6: West division teams

I explained how I did the mathematics bullshit before I think, but let me fill you in on how I decide which divisions to do first. Each four week cycle, the first week, the direction of divisions with the shittiest record goes first, leaving three. I repeat that process of elimination each week till we go through all four directions. By far, the West divisions are the shittiest this year in the NFL. It's almost a shame that two of these eight teams will have to make the playoffs. (Also, if you have read these and are some Eurofuck futbol homo or don't like real football, but have read them trying to find something funny but haven't, don't try this week. I mailed this one in. I've been shook by this terribly retarded dream I've been having.)

#1: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (3-2; #6 overall) - The Seahawks rank, according to my dorkery, the best of the West, and they got stomped by the Steelers last week. I mean fucking stomped. They barely had the ball the second half, which is funny because I hate me some Mike Holmgren. In fact, the Seahawks seem to be a psychological experiment in putting together shit that sucks to me. I mean, they already had the worst uniforms with their old joints, but they somehow made them worse with the darker more Euro-somber style they kick now. Holmgren is a dickface, and Hasselbeck is one of those averagely successful quarterbacks that play forever and you just wish would get cancer or something. Shaun Alexander is the most obviously homo player the NFL has ever had. Shit, the only good thing they had going for them was Mack Strong, who has ran with the best active name in the NFL for over a decade now, and he just had to retire and shit the other day, so now that's gone too. I always made a point to get Mack Strong on my Madden teams, and he may not know it, but he's won like 18 Super Bowls in Redskins uniforms, with a slew of computer generated Hall of Fame quarterbacks, like Dale Beck and Chris Elway. So now the Seahawks are just the stupid Seahawks without Mack Strong, so there's no reason to like them. I guess that Lofa Tatupu linebacker dude is okay since his dad's name was fake foreigner talk on The Simpsons one time, but he should be playing for the Bengals or some shit instead.

#2: ARIZONA CARDINALS (3-2; #13 overall) - Haha, the ongoing soap opera of Socal Prettyboy vs. Jesus Dude was just heating up, with Prettyboy Matt Leinart complaining about having to share QB time, and then he's out indefinitely. Like they haven't even said how many weeks, just indefinitely. You know Warner's into some voodoo Jesus shit and made that happen. How the fuck else does an Arena League loser win NFL MVP, then suck his way out of that job, but still be poking around five years later? Seeing the Cardinals succeed is hilarious too because it shocks them more than anybody. In fact, I would guess most of the country could give half a shit about the Cardinals, but they get all stoked up like, "OH SHIT! Beating the Steelers at home was like our Super Bowl!" And then, "Oh shit, then we barely beat a team that hasn't won a game yet this year on the road. We are SOOO awesome this year, and SOOO totally not the Arizona Cardinals of every other year ever since like 1928." And since the NFC West is so weak, they might even win a playoff berth, which would be the greatest because for that first week we'd get 7000 BIRTH OF A NEW ERA IN ARIZONA stories, and then they'll lose like 43 to 10 to a wild card team at home.

#3: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS (2-3; #18 overall) - What the fuck is a Brodie Croyle? I think that dude was captain on the debate team in high school. Or wait, Damon Huard was the captain on the debate team and Brodie Croyle was the redneck dude who drove the extra-uplifted Silverado with like 19 No Fear stickers all over the back window. Remember when Larry Johnson was just breaking through the Priest Holmes legacy and doing Roc-a-Fella hand symbol (all credit to Diamond Dallas Page) after touchdowns? Yeah, me neither barely. I bet Larry Johnson thinks about those days constantly, wishing for Dick Vermeil to be back saying he needed diapers. Maybe I'm forgetful, but I don't think there's ever been an actual great player from Penn State in my lifetime of watching the NFL, just overrated dumbasses who end up being nothing more than minor memories for hardcore fans from their team's shitty years. Like, in ten years when the Chiefs are wherever they are at that point, people will look back to this Herm Edwards stint of interchangeable indistinguishable QBs and crappy defense and go, "Man, Larry Johnson was alright though. If only we could've ran him more."

#4: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS (2-3; #19 overall) - The Chargers beat the Broncos so now they are back! Yeah, whatever. I'm sure we'll get more sideline shots of Norv Turner's pizza cheeks held in solid worry mode, and hopefully a few more suicide watch press conferences from L.T. as well. Of the eight teams in these West divisions, the Chargers are still probably the best when it comes to potential, but with two new coordinators and an uninspiring shiftless head coach, I doubt we've seen the full embarrassing decimation of Super Bowl aspirations just yet. In fact, it has always been Norv Turner's modus operandi to continue to give hope and give hope, but just barely, but still giving it, and then it all ends, kinda like hanging yourself with a rope just long enough for your toes to touch the floor, so instead of just dying, you dangle and tapdance your way slowly towards the end for far longer than you'd like in the end. You'd rather just go ahead and die as opposed to being tortured by false flashes of promise then crushing realizations of season over, far below initial expectations.

#5: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (2-3; #23 overall) - With Trent Dilfer at the on-field helm now, the 49ers are built a lot like the Ravens Super Bowl winning team on offense - one that will scrape together around 10 points a game and not do a whole lot of anything, but won't turn the ball over. The only problem is the 49ers' defense sucks, losing a couple key dudes, and that Nate Clements motherfucker who got like 30 billion dollars to play there, well, he's one dude, and one that hardly anybody had heard of before he got 30 billion dollars unexplainedly. I kind of like shit like the 49ers though, because you have people who like the high-powered offensive shit, and then old schoolers who want smashmouth football, but slow plodding boring teams like the 49ers don't really satisfy either of those people, which is why I find it funny. I wish I could get a tape of that 49ers/Ravens game, because I'm sure it's a masterpiece. I'd like to watch that shit in one of those NFL network every play of the game but with all the middle shit chopped out ways, and with DJ Screw playing over top the audio.

#6: OAKLAND RAIDERS (2-2; #27 overall) - The Raiders have shown glimmers of hope to be honest. This game this weekend should be interesting, not only because it's standard Chargers vs. Raiders nonsense, where people tend to get stabbed or pissed on in the parking lot during pre-game drunken beatdowns, but because you have a team that was supposed to be awesome that kinda has sucked so far this year hosting a team that was supposed to be the worst shit ever that's squeaked out a couple wins already. I mean the Raiders may be the first team in the Super Bowl era who had a first pick in the first round of the draft that they hadn't sorta lined up a deal for them to play beforehand. Who the fuck has their #1 pick of the entire draft hold out? And beyond that, they're pretty much a hodgepodge of a team, but somehow, they've pulled together a couple of victories. Then again, there's so many sub-par teams in the NFL right now, it's ridiculous. Even with all that AFC is dominant over the NFC talking point you hear everywhere, if you took away the Patriots and Colts, then maybe the Steelers and maybe the Cowboys, the NFL is just one giant sludgefest of mediocrity right now.

#7: DENVER BRONCOS (2-3; #28 overall) - Watching the Broncos suck gives me great joy. I hope all their offensive linemen get ACLs torn doing chop blocks, and though I'm sad for Travis Henry's 16 children that he can't play the game of the egg because of substance problems, whatever distress the Broncos can have is good by me, regardless of how many children are hurt in the process. And why does Mike Shanahan look like a fucking wax sculpture sitting outside on a hot day all the time?

#8: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-5; #31 overall) - I played dork fantastical football this year, and it did auto-draft for me since I wasn't paying attention, and my #1 pick (and #2 overall in the league) was Steven Jackson. That turned out good. Now, they don't have an offensive line anymore, benched their good QB for his own good to play Gus Frerotte (who played for my Redskins back on their '83 Super Bowl team), and just sort of do whatever to get through the season. I don't have the schedules in front of me, but I really hope both them and the Saints suck real bad but play each other in week 13 or so, but The Superdome caves in because Bush hates black people still, so they end up playing the game in Houston's stadium, and there's like 3000 people there to watch two 0-12 teams play. I love those games between two hopelessly shitty teams. It makes me feel better about my hopelessly shitty life.