While having breakfast with Erik Noisewater this morning, I'm not exactly sure what made me put it on, but I keyed up "Enter the 36 Chambers" by The Wu-Tang Clan on my Sonos. I haven't listened to that one all the way through perhaps since the last millennium. As a matter of fact, this may have been the first time I have heard it in any other form besides cassette. You see, back in the mid 1990's when you bought an album, part of the process of deciding if you wanted the CD or the tape was whether or not you anticipated putting it on in the car or at home. You had to be rich to have a CD player in the car. Rap music to me was just cool as fuck to roll to in the car to like a pimp; leaned way back with one hand on the wall. You know, a white, dorky pimp.
Best pic of a Wu-Tang dad I could find.
There will never be another group like the Wu. A collection of rappers that talented from the same projects, all with something to say, with a sense of humor, with artistry and integrity, and with a brand new gritty style no one had ever heard. Very rarely can I listen to a rap album all the way through, especially as I get older. Even back then, I always thought it a little too bold of an idea when guys were coming out with double disc rap albums. But if there were 36 tracks on the Wu's debut, I gladly would have cruised the mean streets of my boring suburban town listening to every last one. Actually, it is so rare that I will listen to a rap album all the way through. I came up with this analogy, and let me know if it makes any sense to you.
Rappers are like professional wrestlers. So awesome to me back then, but as an adult I can't tell you anything about the modern day ones.
I could go down the rabbit hole from hell researching 1980's pro wrestlers, and I can still kick some rhymes when I hear those throw-back rap joints.
Behold: Ravishing Rick Rude. The best bad guy wrestler ever with his porno mustache, mullet, and sick abs, about to give some fool the Rude Awakening.
I have heard Kendrick Lamar is incredible, but I can't say that I have heard one thing by him. Still, I give him credit for going by his given name. Takes balls because those rapper names are so much more fun to think of and easier for fans to remember. Chance the Rapper sounds like just about the greatest guy for my city of Chicago, and I love everything he does for his home town. I just don't know squat about his music. It is like those lyrics just don't enter my brain like they used. They all soaked in there and stayed forever when I was a kid. I would hear a Beastie Boys song and have the whole song memorized after two listens. Now I hear that autotune sound and I just tune out, so to speak. There is no more room in my clogged-up, old balls brain.
Before the Internet there was no way to know for sure what all the lyrics were unless there was a lyric sheet in the album. Rap albums rarely had those. Metal albums almost always did, and they would even tell you which guy played each guitar solo. To figure out the rap lyrics I would put on headphones and write down each line and rewind them. Sometimes I would have to just jot down what it sounded like phonetically.
Even Ja Rule loves puppies.
I'm almost always playing my Sirius radio stations in the car, but on the actual radio there is a station, 104.3, which is all old school hip-hop and R & B. The other day I heard them playing that Ja Rule duet where the girl goes, "Love it when you fuck me, baby." Haaaayoooooo! They forgot to play the edited version. Young Erik Noisewater learned some new fun words in his car seat that morning. Some of the songs I never would have thought of until they popped up in the car 30 years later. For instance, "Freak Like Me" by Adina Howard.
This slice of R & B badd-assery came out a few years before Lil' Kim or Foxxy Brown. No woman back then was announcing that she was "freak," liked to hit it and quit it, and was every bit of a "dog" as the fellas, whilst she stuck her disproportionate derriere into the camera.
Hey, so I have to run. Baby Noisewater has a 1st birthday party for one of his little friends. That's our life now. Right or wrong. Anyone have any thoughts on old school rap, wrestling, song lyrics, or anything at all? Hit me up in 'dem comments!
Friday, March 14, 2014
I had one of those days at work yesterday where I wasn't feeling well, and I was being pulled in a thousand directions and never felt like I could get each task done right before getting yanked into the next more urgent thing. The whole time I knew the day would be capped off with the wake of my friend's mom who just died.
And wakes are not fun. So I'm mingling through the wake, and I'm not a strong mingler to begin with, but put a dead person in the room and I'm twice as bad. It's really hard because you see someone you haven't seen in a while, and you blurt out how good it is to see them and you got a big smile, but then you catch yourself looking too happy, so you dial it back down with a frown and smooth it over with something like "I just wish it wasn't under these circumstances." I could maybe blame it on being sick, but it's probably more about the crippling fear of me and everyone I care about getting older and dying. I left thinking what a terrible performance I put on in there. I know I'm as sad as just about anyone in there, but while I'm in there I can't get over my own shit to just act normal. So I cried in the parking lot a little.
Driving back to the city from the burbs at around 8 at night, I find myself dozing off. I switched over to the naughty station on my Sirius radio thinking that sex stuff will keep me awake, and there is a porno actress giving relationship advice to callers who want advice from porno actresses. The one guy says that his relationship with his girlfriend is not going well and he has a couple of "side chicks" going. Porno actress host says that the right thing to do would be to end things with the girlfriend because it's not fair to carry on these other relationships with her around. Now there is proof that women in the "industry" are not without morals, right? Then the caller says that his girlfriend is crazy for a variety of reasons, and porno actress does a total 180 and says "Oh yeah. She's crazy. I guess just keep it going with those side chicks." What the heck? How quickly she changed her tune! Now, I realize these women are not without their foibles, but stand by your convictions, woman!
Anyway, to sum up, or if you just skimmed to the end:
Paragraph One: Dr. Ken bitches about having a bad day at work and feeling sick, as if that doesn't happen to everyone.
Paragraph Two: Dr. Ken's dear mother of his good friend died, and she was the sweetest woman you could ever know and baked the world's best chocolate chip cookies that the whole block tried in vane to duplicate. She left us far too early and she will be missed. And nobody knows how to act at a wake.
Paragraph Three: As you may have already suspected, porno ladies are not the best place to seek relationship advice.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
If you were a Bear fan in 1991, then you no doubt still have fond memories of Bears' receiver, Tom Waddle, and his series of unbelievable catches in a playoff game against the Cowboys, catching a series of passes thrown across the middle and getting absolutely creamed over-and-over. I just watched his highlights again, and the poor guy was slow to get up after some of those hits, looked really woozy and disoriented, and was given smelling salts and sent back out on the field. He caught what was then a Bear record for receptions with a late fourth quarter touchdown, but he just didn't look excited about it. In fact, something looked very wrong with him. As it turns out, he doesn't remember getting that touchdown or anything else that happened in the fourth quarter.
Waddle is a sports radio host here in Chicago, and when the often talked about NFL head injury issue came up, Tom's co host, Mark Silvernman, asked him about the concussions he had during that famous game. Tom said that he not only forgot that quarter, he scared the hell out of his wife when they were driving to the hospital for tests together and he had no idea who she was. Despite the fact that Waddle and "Silvy" have worked together for a number of years, seem to be friends, and have no doubt talked about this very game on and off the air numerous times, Silvy admitted on the air today that it's the first time he ever heard that story about him not knowing who his wife was.
Waddle was then asked if knowing what he knows now about traumatic brain injuries and their lifelong effects, if he would take that game back. He seemed unsure, admitting that it didn't matter that much because they lost the game anyway. But he did say that at 46-years-old, he can now put his ego aside and admit that the right call is for a doctor to make the call that a player can't return to the field in times like those because now what is important to him is spending time with his wife and kids and being able to have the brain capacity to have the memories of his family's life events.
Today was one of those days where I parked my car but stayed inside to listen to the end of this piece because I was so moved. Waddle was a hero of mine as a kid. He was a slow, blond, white guy around 6'1" and 185 pounds. About the same description as me when I watched him play that game as a kid on my television in Chicago's suburbs, only now I'm an inch taller and afraid to say that I'm a little on the wrong side of 200. I still idolize his gutsy performance from that playoff game, but like Waddle, now that I'm a little older and wiser, I now see the importance of protecting the players. The game wasn't that long ago, and just give it a look. Is there any way in hell in today's game that he would have been allowed to keep getting back onto the field taking those licks and looking the way he did? I sure hope not. Yes, I consider him a hero, but I'm also very thankful his brain weren't more damaged, and he still has that wit to make me laugh on my ride home from work in the afternoon.
. . . and I got through on the first try! The producer guy picked up, asked me my name, I told him my name, and he liked what I had to say and said he'd get me on the air. As I sat on hold, it dawned on me that I gave my real name, so I hung up.
