Ron Isley, Jesse, Cornel West & Shaft

Chicago is flooded with tits and ass today.  I want to personally give a big

shout out to whomever it was that invented the Taste of Chicago.  Lunch was

an absolutely beautiful thing today.  Everyone is heading east towards Grant

Park, and India Arie is playing for free tonight too???!!!  Since it is so

cold here most of the year (summer just started last week), when it finally

gets hot here, women don't know how to act.  I'm not complaining though.



I thought the free Badu concert was Bohofest 2003, but I have a feeling that

tonight will be something special.  I can feel it in the air.  At Badu, it

was a straight up headwrap and Nag Champa fest.  There were more women

wearing fabric with nothing underneath than at an Indian vegetable market!



But it just seems so forced and contrived here in Chicago.  I don't know, I

saw more butts bending over, showing the top half of their ass cracks

because this fabric that is obviously being worn wrong just screams, "Hey,

look at me, I'm progressive and don't wear underwear!"  No bras, thongs

popping out the top of pants, what more could you ask for on a beautiful

sunny Chicago afternoon?



---



For my birthday (it's tomorrow bitches!), my sister came up and took me to a

concert she wanted to see.  I thought a birthday gift was a gift for the

person you're giving it to, but she never got that memo.  My sister is a

terrible gift giver.  One year she gave me CD for Christmas that I already

had.  So instead of saying well we can take it back and get you a different

one, she said, "Well give it here, I don't have it."  and kept that mother

fucker.



So she takes me to go see Ronald Isley.  It was also a part of this Rainbow

Push coalition conference so it was quite an interesting evening.



First of all, 50 year old black men think they are just the coolest mother

fuckers in the entire world.



You know how you walk by that one black owned store that every metropolitan

area has that sells suits for black men?  I always wondered where are the

guys that buy these zoot suits?  Now I know.  When they are not busy being

extras in Michael Jackson videos they're at Ron Isley concerts.  I saw more

white hats and sparkling dresses than at a black church on Easter.



The show was supposed to start at 7:30.  First up was the local radio

personality who comes out and yells "BANG BANG BANG!" to which the audience

responds, "SKEET SKEET SKEET!!"  Obviously some sort of inside joke that I'm

not a part of, I yell along on the 8th and final time.  After numerous

thanks to Michelob, passion fruit cognac wrapping paper companies and the

like, the opening band comes out.  I can get into smooth jazz and all, but

there is no need to make Prince faces while playing the guitar!!?? You're

playing smooth jazz for chrissakes!!! I was waiting for him to pull out the

lighter fluid and light his guitar on fire, because he really thought he

just played some mindblowing shit.



Next up was the DJ playing old school cuts and people dancing in the aisles.

When I came back in from getting another Jack and Coke, the crowd was up on

their feet cheering and screaming!!!  By the sound of the crowd, I thought

Jesus was on stage!  I look up and it's Jesse.



Jesse Jackson has been giving the same speech since '82.



KEEP HOPE........ ALIVE!

I AM....... SOMEBODY!

I AM....... SOMEBODY!

KEEP HOME....... ALIVE!

UP WITH HOPE....... DOWN WITH DOPE!



I mean really, do they even make dope anymore? Does anyone even still sell

dope? Or has dope just become a pseudonum for any type of drugs that are

sold in the hood?  I would hope that dealers have moved on to bigger and

better things, but I could be wrong.



So Jesse brings up Cornel West, Danny Glover, Shaft, and some children then

they present an award to Ernie Banks.  No lie.  I saw Shaft give Ernie Banks

a hug.  Then Jesse being a promoter of positivity, forces the crowd to sit

through an ear shattering performance of untalented local rap groups who are

rapping about keeping hope alive, being somebody, and are full of hope.



After more old school jams, the next group comes out................. mother

fucking CON-FUNK-SION!!!



I saw Confunksion.  They were an old school group when I was a child!! So I

know they're old now!There were like 90 people on the stage playing

instruments, all wearing sparkling suits doing synchronised dance steps.  It

was beautiful.



Finally at 11:00 Ronald Isley takes the stage looking like a fat old

under-achieving pimp.  He went through the cuts, "Between the Sheets", "It's

your thing", "Who's that lady", etc.. and you almost felt sorry for him.  It

was mostly theater, with multiple scantily clad women that wouldn't touch

Ron with a 10 foot pole dancing around him in lingerie like they all want

his body.  If it wasn't the women, it was men in suits carrying briefcases

trying to act out some sort of secret undercover spy mission on stage with

Ron being the hero.  My sister was loving every minute of it



Finally for the encore, and I can't think of anything more right to end this

evening: A guest appearance by R. Kelly.  To massive cries of approval from

the audience and a crew of young women in the front row waiting to get peed

on, he did a duet with Ron Isley.  I couldn't take it anymore.  I grabbed my

sister and we headed for the door.



-c



CD of the moment: Reggae Gold 2003

Mood of the moment: Indifferent

sideburns & co-workers

I just came back from the bathroom and realized that my sideburns are

uneven.



Like, WAY uneven.



Like, what the fuck was I thinking uneven.



...



We recently rearranged the desks in our office and I now sit next to this

loud and obnoxious kiss ass who everyone can't stand except for the boss.



So I walk in this morning and the first thing out of his mouth is, "What's

shakin' C-dawg?"



I'm not sure if he thinks he's being funny, or cool, or what, but he just

sounds utterly ignorant.  This is the same guy who has referred to arabs as

'towel heads' and purchased the 'Iraqi's most wanted' playing cards.



I mean, did he expect me to run over and 'give him some dap'? .... maybe he

thought I'd throw my hands in the air and yell, " WEST SIIIIIIIIIIIIDE UP IN

THIS BEEEEYYYAAAATTTCCCHHHH!!!!!"



he recently purchased the latest Snoop Dogg CD, so everything out of his

mouth rhymes with 'izzle'.



Headphones are my friends.



-c



CD of the moment - Jamiroquai - "The House Mixes"

lost pubic hairs

Answer me this:



How does one lose 5-7 pubic hairs during a trip to the urinal?



I can understand maybe one or even two stray hairs falling out as a result

of a late night trim up for the girlfriend who is coming in town the next

day.  But five or six?  I mean pubic hairs aren't like eyebrow hairs that

need to be plucked.  And even if they were, why get the urge to pluck them

at the urinal?



Maybe they weren't plucked, they just fall out?  I wonder if this is how

baldness happens.  The hair just starts to fall out, and before you know it,

there is none left.  Maybe people who go bald up top, also go bald down

there?  I've never seen a bald man's private area. (and have no intention

to, except for my own one day)



This really struck me as odd, and I can't figure it out for the life of me

how someone can lose that much pubic hair in a single trip to the urinal. 

It must be from multiple people.  I mean, I didn't examine them to see if

the hair follicles were all from the same person, and I didn't have my handy

pocket DNA tester, so I guess I'll never know.



I thought about something else the other day while I was watching TV late

the other night.  I was watching the rebroadcast of Oprah which comes on

around midnight here in Chicago.  I had to think about this for a minute,

but I came to the conclusion that Oprah could get it.



The thick thighs, the corny giggle, the self-assuredness, and the best thing

is that she still has that janky Southern girl in her that shows from time

to time.  Yeah, Oprah is a hottie.  I said it.



~C



CD of the moment: Curtis Mayfield - "Live in Europe"

I don't care about yo baby!!

I'm sorry.  Call me insensitive if you wish, but I do not give two ounces of

shit about a co-workers newborn baby.  I am really happy for people with

children, especially people I know that have children.  I really care and am

interested in seeing the new pictures, etc...  But for the folks at work

that I have no vested interested in, I don't give a shit.  Family member of

friend has a baby, different story.... but these fools?  Hell no.  These

MF's come in and show off their little digital baby pictures every fucking

day.



"Curtis, come here for a second.",

"Sorry, I have to get these drawings out.",

"Oh, it will only take a second. Come here real quick!"

"I really have a lot to get done here."

"Just for a second come look at these.  I just took them this morning!"



... it reaches a point where you realize that it will always be quicker to

just go and act interested rather than keep working and be honest with them

that you don't give a shit.



I'm trying to work here ya know!??  About 5-6 times a week I get called to

one of 3 newborn parents' computer to look at the latest baby pics.  I'm

tired. I mean I'm really tired.  The baby looks the same to me as it did

last week!!!  Just hit me off like once every 6 months with the highlights

of the past few months or so and I'll be straight.  But you do not need to

call me to your desk every other freakin' day to show me another photo of

your big headed alien lookalike baby!!  I don't care!!!



Wouldn't it be nice though if the conversation went like this:



"Curtis, come here for a second."

"It's not more fucking baby pictures is it?"

"Well, yeah."

"C'mon dude.  I just saw pictures on Monday.  He hasn't grown up that much

in two days! Show me next month."

"Yeah, but look what I have him dressed up in!"

"Seriously, that kid is probably pissed off you keep playing holloween with

him.  This week he's a banana, last week he's a dragon, you're going to give

that kid some fucking identity issues."





On another complete different point, women always wonder why it is so hard

to be honest much of the time.  It's really not that we aren't honest, but

more often than not, we have a pretty good inclination that you don't want

to hear our honesty.  It would more often than not, hurt your feelings, hurt

you, and we don't want to do that.  We really don't.  So believe us when we

tell you that we lie because we don't want to hurt you.  If we were always

honest, without fear of hurting your feelings, more conversations would go

like this:



Her: "So what would you like to do tonight baby?"

Me: "Can we just stay home and fu**?  Once.  For like 10 minutes?  And you

won't get upset?"



I'm not saying it would always be like this.  But sometimes, that's how it

is.  Most of the time I don't mind showering you with love and affection,

foreplay, and working it for 40 minutes (okay, 20).  But sometimes.... you

know...



Anyway, maybe it's because I don't want kids right now.  I wouldn't mind

having kids with the right person, but I want them to pop out and be like

six already so I can start taking them to their tee ball games and shit. 

The other thing that pisses me off is that once you have kids, you start to

move up in the company.  NOW all of a sudden you're grown up, can handle

more responsibility, etc... This one guy comes in with his sonogram pictures

every other week to show off that he is about to have twins. read: "There is

no way I'll be able to work as much as I have been and as a matter of fact,

I'll need some more money to take of this huge responsibility in my life."



This is what it all REALLY means.  Now you have to buy diapers every fucking

week so you need this job much more than you did before.  Now you will be

much better at kissing the bosses ass!  Whereas, a man like me, with no life

threatening ties to Chicago, no one else to support or go home and report to

if I decide to bounce.  Therefore, these new mommy's and daddy's just keep

getting pushed up into higher roles, with more work than they can handle

because the boss knows, they'll do anything to keep their job.  They can't

afford to lose it.  Me on the other hand, if they fire me, the only person

they're pissing off is Visa and Mastercard.



You want to move up on the corporate ladder boys and girls, make some

babies.



-c



CD of the moment - Lizz Wright - "Salt"  <----- Real cool, jazzy shit! 

GREAT CD!!!  I highly recommend it.

the African-American printer

the lesson for today is:  "ask and yee shall receive."



Ya know, sometimes it's the little battles that matter.



About every 3-4 months we replace a printer somewhere in the office.  The

printers are always named after a dead architect. So all of the main ones

have been used already, Gaudi, Wright, Sullivan, etc...  So the last few

printers have been a woman, a japanese architect, and then we went back to

white guys for a while.  So I sent an e-mail to the powers that be and asked

them to consider having an African-American architect as their next printer

and even gave them two suggestions.  I figure the accounting and office

services departments should be represented along with the two black

architects in the office.



So sure enough, the next printer to get replaced was the biggest, baddest,

fastest, most cool, most slick, 42" wide color plotter.



and it's named after a black architect.  See the e-mail below.



sometimes you just have to ask for what you want.  It doesn't really mean

much in the larger scheme of things, but a little awareness never heart

anyone.



-c



CD of the moment: Blaze - "Spiritually Speaking"



-----Original Message-----

From:

Sent:	Monday, June 02, 2003 3:17 PM

To:	Chicago Staff

Subject:	New Color Plotter



There is a new color plotter called Cassell in the print room.  As of this

morning, you should have the Windows driver [Cassell-HP5500PS on voa-ch9]

and the Cassell.pc3 [for AutoCAD] files installed on your computer.



Please contact me if you do not have these plotters after restarting your

computer.





Albert I. Cassell was one of the most successful African-American

Architects.  He is most famous for his structural & architectural

contributions to Tuskegee Institute and Howard University.  A bio can be

found here:



http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howard.edu%2Flibrary%2FCassell%2FFounders.htm%23Albert%2520I.%2520Cassell

ebay & riding with my peeps

So there is this guy in my office that gets ripped off on Ebay every other

week, and I really feel sorry for him.  Korean fellow, real nice, mild

mannered, etc..., but a sucker.   The thing is, he never really gets taken

for a lot of loot, he just doesn't read the small print.  For example, he

bought some rare japanese bootleg CD (so he thought) for $45, but after

waiting for 7 weeks, when he finally got it, it was just a CD-R copy of the

orginal.  He had spent all these time and energy explaining to me how dope

the cover art is, etc...  The only art my man got was 'TDK CD-R'.



Then there is the time where he bought this rare 300+ MB 'authentic' Samsung

chip for his digital camera.  Well, since Samsung products are made in

Korea, he became a little suspicious when the chip came with no markings at

all except 'made in Taiwan' on the side of the chip.



He's really into all the audio stuff, so the time he spent $230 on a

high-tech cable that connects his receiver to the wall wasn't really funny

until he saw it in a store for $85 the following weekend.  The worst part

about it is that he get's outbid in the last 10 seconds about twice a week. 

He'll be sitting there smiling, thinking he just got a steal on a new Armani

jacket perfect for Spring that no one else had bid on, then someone else

bids and by the time he resubmits, it's too late.



I feel for him though.  I feel for all of the Koreans in our office.  They

are all so damn serious, and don't say shit to anyone.  They don't even talk

to each other!  I don't even think they like each other.   They don't know

how to laugh at a good joke.  They laugh at each other though about once a

day, and they chatter up a storm down there in their smoking spot, but I

don't know what the fuck they're saying.  I'm guessing they're aren't too

many brothas over there, and that's the reason why they don't talk to me. 

One tried to tell me what to do once.



............ Once.



I ride the bus to work now from my new place of residence, so I just want to

leave you with a few random overheard quotes from the bus in a new little

series I'm going to call "Riding with my people"



"I ain't finna decide yet, but I reckon I'm gonna major in English"

"There are too white people that look like gorillas!"

"Bitch, don't you know it's not turquoise weather yet?!"

On the cell phone: "Yeah, I've fucked two niggas in the same day, so what?!

And I didn't even shower in between!"

"I know he's retarded, but he don't need to be looking at me like that!"

"The best sex I've ever had in my life was by this 33 y.o. named Tony.  I

was in 8th grade and..."



sad.....



-c



CD of the moment: Les Nubians - the new one... I'm not sure what it's

called...

mumblings 4.7.3

I know I haven't written in a while.. I'm busy... dammit!



A while back I had asked people to ask me something so I could have

something to talk about.  All I had was war talk on my mind, but I really

don't want to talk about the war just yet.  I did get one question that is

worth mentioning though:



"Okay...just curious about something. I was watching an episode of Seinfeld

where George went for a swim and came out with "shrinkage". He said it was

the cold water? My question is...how much shrinkage is going on? Is it just

the main head or the entire package getting shrunk. I figured I'd ask you

because you'd give me an honest answer. thanks "

I requested clarification and asked if she could define "main head" for me:

"This is why I should refrain from typing when I'm tired...I'm talking about

the shaft and the head OKAY! Now does the shrinkage affect just those guys

or the 2 boys as well??? Can't you just answer the damn question (geez) (and

stop laughing).

and GO TO HELL....

I don't like to be laughed at when I make a mistake  You're mean."



I still haven't responded.  I'm not really quite sure how to answer.  I've

never quite examined myself shortly after exiting a pool, I'm usually more

preoccupied with eliminating the suction that occurs between the swim trunks

and your 'package' which would only expose the shrinkage.  The only reason

why this is such a pressing thing to address is that you don't want to give

anyone the impression that may catch a peek that you're always that size. 

Quite honestly, I'd be happy if lovely young lady was looking in that

general direction at all, so it wouldn't really matter.



So I was making a CD for myself to get me in the Spring mood last night, you

know something all nice and warm-like.  Then when I woke up this morning

there was 4 inches of snow on the ground.



My first attempt was all kinds of smooth and chilled out on a jazzy tip, but

the Tresvant-volume was way too high so I had to start over.  I figured a

good way to harden it up a bit would be to throw a mellow dancehall number

in there and maybe a house track or two.  But in the process I had a moment

of insight and am bothered by the fact that all reggae can be split into

three categories: 1. Praising the almighty, most holy, king of kings, lord

of lords, JAH!!!!! Rastafari (with a little reverb on the end)  2. Smoking

spliffs and 3. Hating on homosexuals.  I'm thinking there is some sort of

male identity crisis for the latter 1/3.  Just an observation.



Have you ever just freaked out and did some shit you know you had no

business doing but it felt so good that you didn't regret it later?



I went out and dropped $40 on four 2" thick bacon-wrapped filet mignons over

the weekend, then cooked them on my George Foreman grill.  It's not like I

had some sort of high intensity steak cooking oven as recommended in the

directions, but they were fucking delicious anyway.



I hate it when directions do that shit.  That's why I never open my

cookbooks at home.  I always find some sort of cool cookbook in the sale bin

that I'll purchase, but I never use them because I'm always missing one

ingredient.  No matter what it is that I look up to cook.  I'm missing

something.  The thing that makes it worse is that at one point, you know you

had everything required to make the dish, but now that you've decided to

make something, you're missing something.



I went to go make the marinade for my steaks and it required fresh garlic

and rosemary among other things.  Now I usually have garlic and I've been

using the same little 3 oz container of dried rosemary for like the past 4

years.  At some point in the last three months I ran out of rosemary, but it

has never occurred to me to throw rosemary on my grocery list, so it always

gets overlooked.



My grocery list is simple.



fruit

meat

pasta

vegetables

breakfast food



... what I come home with depends upon what is on sale when I get to the

grocery store.  From here the rest is pretty standard: milk, cheese, butter,

toilet paper, etc...



I saw the craziest today.  I was walking around the corner approaching the

elevator and I caught this client farting.  He thought no one else was

around and it's not like I heard it or anything, but I just kinda saw him

lean into it ya know?  Like he needed to give him self some leverage on that

left foot to assist in the release.  He just looked at me and smiled like he

didn't do anything.  Nawwwww MF.  I just saw you lean into your fart man. 

Could you imagine if I would've asked him, "Excuse me sir, did you just lean

into your fart?"  He probably wouldn't have liked that too much.



I've had it with the war talk.  You can't get away from it.  The newest

phenomenon that I've noticed is that since there isn't anything new,

interesting or 'exciting' to talk about the networks are all operating on

some psychological type shit to make you stay tuned to their network.  It

works like this:



Everyone has their 'experts' talking, but since if they just showed the

expert talking, you'd flip the channel because at this point, everyone knows

you don't give a shit what Jill from the Institute of Childhood development

disorders has to say about the effects war on television has on children. 

So they do this split screen thing where they show you the person talking

(always on the left) and then they show you some US soldiers kicking in

doors or something exciting in the other window. 



But the action screen

inevitably always has absolutely nothing to do with what the person in the

other screen is talking about.  Now you throw in the stock market ticker

thingy at the bottom and all of a sudden there is a screen full of shit

going on!!  Someone's talking on the left, someone's kicking down doors on

the right, we're finding out about other shit on the bottome of the

screen... now all of a sudden we have a reason to stay on the channel, but

really when you break it down, ain't shit else going on that wasn't going on

last week.



-c



CD of the moment: Danny Krivit - "Expansions"