I was hanging out with the Greek Professor (and the Indian Playa) on Friday night, in what turned out to be a pseudo high school reunion. Seeing six people, most of whom I've seen maybe once or twice in the last ten years, was nice. The Professor pointed out that he read my post here on the Knicks-Tel Aviv game, and in particular the line about the Black Israelites:
The Professor: Yo, I remember those guys from back when they were in downtown Brooklyn, near the Atlantic Avenue Mall. They were in front of Dr. Jay's. They would scream at the white people walking by... "Look at the white man. Look at him, shopping with the money he's taken from us!" I'll vouch for that. I remember it well, too. I remember one time they said something like "The white man isn't really white... he's red! Look at him, he's red, it shows through his skin! He's the devil."
We both agreed that they have since toned down their rhetoric, especially when they moved into Manhattan (to the 34th Street and Time Square areas). Or at least in public - they still have a pretty clear doctrine. I haven't seen them in... like four years, at least. Do they still have the show on public access? Did they lose the battle of public access to the Jewish Task Force?
The Professor is good for a few old skool stories every time. He reminded us of one of the more ridiculous stories from high school:
"Do you remember the time we were hanging out with John, the half-Jamaican, half-Norwegian guy, and his friend Ray showed up?"
"Nah, not really. I don't think I was there."
"Ray lived in Washington Heights, same as John. He went to school at Kennedy, which is in the Bronx, but nowhere near where our high school was. One day we're chilling with John. All of a sudden Ray come over, pedaling on his bike. His face is all sweaty. He had biked all the way from the Heights, to here, non-stop!"
"Why?"
"We're like 'Yo, Ray. What are you doing here?' As soon as he caught his breath, he explained:
"I was standing at the corner with a couple of my boys, when one of them decided to toss a molotov cocktail into a fire truck that was stopped at the red light in front of us. The truck caught fire, and I just broke out."
"Why did your boy do that, Ray?!?"
"No idea what he was thinking, I just broke the hell out and jetted."
The Professor finished the story: "That night, I was watching the news, and I saw these two guys being arrested for setting fire to a fire truck in Washington Heights. It was Ray's boys." You got to be careful who you hang with.
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There were plenty of jokes about how many days I take off (I should now note that I took yesterday afternoon off, too, hence no new posts as I prepared for a long night by taking a nap).
"I'm reading your posts, and you're taking days off for Thunder, days off for Razor, taking trips to Miami, to Morocco for two weeks (actually, 17 days), taking trips to Costa Rica... hell, you even took a day off to cover the Marbury trial! What the hell? You've gone from cutting class in high school to cutting work in a little over ten years."
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The Professor at one point, for reasons I have since forgotten, listed off all the former names for that megaclub on 54th Street on the west side of Manhattan:
"It used to be The Mirage, then Carbon, then Exit, then Earth, and now it is Terminal 5."
A couple of my friends had gone there the night before to see MIA perform. They got there around 10ish (they were drinking in the neighborhood until then), and said it was a good show, but the venue isn't great.
I can barely keep track of that kind of stuff. I'll walk into a bar nowadays, and remember that it was something different maybe 5-10 years ago... that happens all the time. Plan B in Alphabet City (not Studio B in Brooklyn) was Drinkland. The Copacabana is now on 34th Street, but it used to be on 57th Street. It's was where the old Red Parrot club was. SML's mom used to go clubbing there a lot when he was a kid. I used to find the flyers in our mailbox for the Red Parrot. They smelled glossy.
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Speaking of old mega clubs and the such... one time a bunch of us went over to The Tunnel on Sunday night, to Funkmaster Flex night (sidenote: "Funkmaster Flex Night... hard to get a ticket for... Funkmaster Flex night". That's David Letterman making fun of Funkmaster Flex back in like, 1987. 20 years later, Flex is still using it as his DJ signature).
The Tunnel in the mid to late 90s was a scene on Sunday nights. Every car you saw was absolutely sick. It cost like $30 to get, and I wasn't pay that much. Neither were my boys. But The Tunnel had several parties on that block, and some of the other ones were much cheaper to get into. Instead of waiting on line and paying $30 for the Flex party, we would pay $5 for one of the gay parties, then once we were inside we could sneak over into the Flex party.
To get into the gay party, you had to have your ID verified by one of those ID machines. Those machines also scan your ID, too. So soon after sneaking in via these parties, I would start getting flyers in the mail for, you know... "NYC's Best Male Only Parties" and the "The Hottest Males In The City". To make matters more interesting, my Driver's License had my mother's apartment (the one I grew up in) as the address, so these flyers, addressed to me, were being sent to my mom's place. She started wondering a bit more about my social activities after that. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Hot In The City, by Billy Idol:
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Unrelated to anything: I really enjoyed this Cracked article entitled "The 15 Most Outrageous Claims In Pop Music History". My favorite? From the entry on Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day" (a classic):
Ignoring the fact that a good
day for Ice Cube means not having to use his AK, we're going to go ahead and
make fun of him here: what sort of asshole keeps track of assists and rebounds
during a game of pick-up basketball? When he's playing wiffle ball, does he
brag about his W.H.I.P. stats and claim that he's gone 22 straight games
without committing an error?
That's an Isley Brothers sample, if you didn't know. "Footsteps in the Dark". Ron Isley (Mr. Big) is a funk pimp:
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Almost done... two pics for ya, from the subway:
I've seen this add a million times now on the subway. But it took me at least a week of seeing the ads a million times to realize that the TV show advertised is not called "Jah". I'm not a smart man, I admit it.
There you are. Photographic proof that OJ's book has sold at least one copy. It's the Goldman family approved version, with "If" in tiny letters, and "I DID IT" in extra-large letters. Also, every page as the subtitle at the top: "Confessions of the Killer". Leave a comment
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4 Comments
Comments
laughing quite hard at those last two photos w/ comments.
can't believe people actually bought that thing. and that they are physically able to read it out in public.
About Ice Cube, I actually vented about that exact comment in a recent post in which I was making fun of this youtube mix of Kyle Korver which used "It Was A Good Day" as background music which is a really bad selection to go along with Kyle Korver's game. Especially because the only triple-double Kyle Korver would ever get would be like, shots attempted, dribbles, and "times easily dribbled around by opposing SF's". Or Ashton Kutcher jokes.
The other thing that impresses me with Cube is that assuming they played to 21, he really would've had to thread the needle to get ten points and ten assists.
I gotta admit, though, if I'm like 0-8 from the field, I'll start taking count of boards and shit to get myself in the game. But assists is a step too far.
what sort of asshole keeps track of assists and rebounds during a game of pick-up basketball? When he's playing wiffle ball, does he brag about his W.H.I.P. stats and claim that he's gone 22 straight games without committing an error?
Sadly....I do that in baseball/wiffle ball/softball. In basketball, not so much, but one of my friends does. He'll be like, oh I had 17 pts, 12 boards and 4 assists. I'm like, "How do you keep track of that while running up and down the floor, yo?"