What Are You Thinking?

A couple days ago, I saw the most gorgeous girl, dark hair, porcelain skin, big round eyes, fine features. She was sitting in a Swiss Chalet booth, staring off into space, as some dude in an ugly grey poly-blend poly and adjustable back baseball cap talked at her. Come on, man.

Bitch Is The New Black. A Losing Strategy.

From this months Atlantic.

"In early March, Obama sent me an e-mail. It presumed no intimacy. It was titled "Will you make a call for me? And It asked me to call six people, and, if needed, employ a script that I could access on his website. The theme of the e-mail was "connection"..."

If you don't get this, you probably were one of the people who resents blogs, hated Online Journalism class and thinks the New York Times will be around forever. If this immediately clicked with you, then the future is yours. Obama gets it, and that's why he's won.

Happy Belated International Worker's Day

My apologies for being so late with it. To celebrate, here's a picture of Fidel Castro wearing two Rolexes. Che Guevara also wore a Rolex Submariner, retail price $6000. Think about that next time you buy a Che shirt.

I apologize for the lack of frequent updates. I've been working 6 days a week lately, and am mentally taxed. Not to mention, there's a frequent lack of things that antagonize me. Next week should be a good one...I can't post it untill the 14th, but its going to be big for me.

Product Placement

I don't know much about marketing, but I know this; bad product placement makes me feel dirty, like I want to take a shower.

Well executed product placement, on the other hand, can be awesome. Sure, its blatant advertising, but it gets you excited about the product and helps you identify the brand with something.

Even better than that are the sublte placements, like the Roger Dubuis in Entourage. Only a true enthusiast would catch that, but there's still the chance to win over another fan and potential customer to the brand.

Hip-Hop For Old People, Part 1

Dad:

You know, I read the stuff you wrote about these rappers and their genius. Why don't you write something that explains these songs to people who don't get rap?

I'm going to do just that. Remember how your high school poetry books would have commentary that broke down the stanzas and explained the antiquated terminology? That's what I'm going to do, but with rap. If you want to follow along, then obtain the song, listen to it once, read the lyrics, then listen again while reading them/the context, and hopefully you'll have a better understanding of the song. Hip-hop is loaded with cross references to other artists, songs, events, albums, cars...you name it. The good thing is that once you dig deeper into the music, you understand more and more.

The first song I chose was "Old English" by The Game, because it's straightforward, a ballad about life in South Central L.A. The title comes from the malt liquor brand "Old English" which is popular in the hood, and from the Old English lettering that is a popular font for tattoos.

[Chorus]
Ol' English (la-lala-la-la-la-la)
Ridin' by gettin' high
Smokin' on that chronic drinkin' Ol' English
Rags tied gangs signs
Letters on my hat in
Ol' English (la-lala-la-la-la-la)
Drive by homicide
R.I.P. tats in Ol' English
Westside 'til I die
Niggas pourin' out that Ol' English (la-lala-la-la-la-la)

This is the hook. It's fairly self evident. If you didn't know already, chronic means marijuana, a rag is a bandanna and tats are tattoos.

[Verse 1]
Once upon a time in the projects yo
I watched my uncle Greg put D's on his six-fo'
I washed it on Monday so he bought me a gold chain
Shopped crack and watched "Colors" and I soaked up game
Drove the Impala on his lap that was my role model
Used to let me kill the corner of his 40-ounce bottle
On the weekend him and my pops flashed the 'Vette
'Til one weekend my uncle got stabbed to death
He got murdered by a fiend my pops ain't like that
He was from Nutty Block they used to call him Maniac
Crazy ass nigga wit' a Black Panther tat
Kill a nigga cross him out on his Compton hat
Told me when I got older I would understand that
It's blood in blood out and ain't no turnin' back
Few summers went by and we moved across the tracks
13 that's when I had my first

The first two lines talk about The Game watching his uncle put rims on his 1964 Impala. The song then deals with the death of his uncle at the hands of a crack fiend, and the subsequent revenge. Lines 13 and 14 explain how once you are affiliated with a gang(in this case, The Bloods, hence the term "blood in, blood out"), there's no way of reversing it.
[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
I was the first nigga wit' a Starter jacket on the block
Used to build model cars and let the muthafuckas hop
Moms banged Hoover Crip she was known for sellin' rocks
Let me collect the 40-ounce bottles in the dope spot
Bought my first Converse thought I couldn't be stopped
When I creased up my khakis and threw on my Ronnie Lott
Used to think that I was hard so I stole my brother's glock
And that's the day my life changed 'cause that night he got shot
Killed by another crip over his Rolex watch
I got high for three years off that Chronic from the Doc
I was drinkin' 40-ounces a lot
And every liquor store in Compton sold out the day Easy dropped
I start bangin' red laces in my Adidas
Drinkin' out a brown paper bag on my first drive-by
I was a menace to society
But I never left fingerprints on my

[Chorus]

The second verse starts off with him talking about how he got a Starter jacket, one of those nylon windbreakers with a sports team logo. They were big in the early 1990s. The model car reference is related to building model cars patterned after lowriders with hydraulic suspensions, and the next line outlines his mother's affiliation with the Hoover Crip gang and her career as a crack dealer. Line 10 has some great wordplay; usually, drugs are picked up directly from the port of entry, so upon hearing the line, it sounds as if The Game got a large drug shipment. Instead, he's referring to Dr. Dre's debut album The Chronic released in 1992 and considered a classic. A good example of the referencing that goes on in hip-hop. Line 12 refers to the death of Eazy-E, a well known rapper in L.A., as well as the practice of pouring out an entire bottle of liquor as a tribute to someone who recently died. Line 13 refers to The Game's affiliation with the Blood gang, whos colours are red, and Line 15 is a reference to the film Menace II Society.

[Verse 3]
I got a lot of dead homies some blood some crip
This is life stop watchin' that "Boyz N The Hood" shit
You see this red rag hangin' out of my jeans?
I went to twenty funerals by the age of ninteen
Then I went to college basketball was my dream
Quit the team 'cause I rather shoot rock wit' the fiends
Wanted to be Freeway Rick
He showed me how to trun a stolen 5.0 into a brick
Bought a Cadillac thought I was rich bangin' DJ Quik
On Crenshaw got jacked for my shit
Took a long chronic hit and thought about the time
When I was 12 years old and I emptied my first clip
Hit my first switch same night fucked my first bitch
Thought I was dreamin' 'til I pinched her tits
She caught a stray bullet ridin' shotgun in my shit
So I got her name tatted in
[Chorus]

Fortune Favours The Bold

I hate to hear people bitch about their shitty lives. If you have cancer, thats one thing, and something you can't control. If you're stressed about school, I sympathize, because we all are. But if you constantly complain about how your life sucks, how you're unhappy or single or not where you want to be or what you want to look like (shudder), maybe the problem is on you, not external factors.

I just got a huge break in the field I want to get into. Next week will be my "tryout". All the expenses are paid for, I'm flying first class and staying at a 5-star resort, nothing less than the best, doing something I love to do now and would love to do for the rest of my life.

How did I get this? I hustled hard. I sent my resume and my samples out to more publications than I can count. And you know what? Every single publication, save for two of them, rejected me. That's less than a 1% response rate. Of the two that I got a positive response from, one couldn't hire me because of cross border visa issues (even though it was literally a dream job of mine, and I had people doing their best to help me get it), and the other publication I emailed at the last minute, and now I've got an assignment for them that is going to be published nationally. Even better than that, the guys at the first publication have put me in touch with another outfit in the Europe that is recognized as the gold standard in its field. Thankfully, I have an EU passport. You're all welcome to visit me in 2009 should I get the job. Next year I'm helping Anand launch a full length TV show version of The Not So Much News. That will open huge doors for me by itself...and I don't even want to go into broadcast (not in that sense, at least)

The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't and you lose.

Balls. You make your own luck and your own opportunities. What's the worst that can happen? They don't reply to your email? "Sorry, our intern position has been filled already"? To butcher a quote from Mark Cuban; In baseball, if you get a hit 4 times out of 10, you're a hero forever. If you get a hit just once with an internship or any other kind of opportunity, mission accomplished.

You Can't Be Serious

So now Heather Kere wants to boycott Starbucks because they're supports of Zionism which, according to her, is "racism".

Here's a letter I emailed to the staff of the Ryersonian and the Eyeopener. If you have an opposing view, I'd love to hear it, but I reserve the right to tear you a new one.

Dear Ryersonian Staff,
When will the staff and students of Ryerson begin to acknowledge Heather Kere's attempts to boycott entities related to the state of Israel for what it really is: anti-semitism. Ms. Kere's track record should speak for itself. She has consistently tried to exclude Israeli professors from academic discourse, has attempted to label Israel with the odious and despicable "apartheid state" label and now is trying to boycott Starbucks due to its "Zionist" connections. What's next, a boycott of Jewish academics and businesses? While we may be living in the "progressive" 21st century, Ms. Kere's behavior suggests Ryerson is stuck in a climate similar to Germany in 1933. While not all criticism of Israel is anti-semitism, her systematic attack on the country's civil society, not to mention the ideology of Zionism, an aspiration that most Jews share in common, veers dangerously towards that side of the spectrum. I would ask that the university take some measures to censure her, but thankfully, the students have already done so, by not re-electing her.
Sincerely,

Derek Kreindler
Second Year Journalism Student

In response, I'm starting a movement to exclusively drink Starbucks products. You all know my hatred for this place under normal circumstances, so you know how seriously I'm taking it.