Tag Archives: the steelers

can’t knock the hustle?

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jay_z_001_110507

my parents love to impress me with their contemporary urban (heh) music knowledge. there isn’t a week that passes without them telling me about an npr piece they recently listened to about the connection between japan and wu-tang or how “someone called brown thinking or something from the roots” is featured on their new santana cd.

they then chide that they know more about “my” music than i know about theirs, and to prove their point they’ll play some obscure pat metheny track and shake their heads when i can’t tell them what album its from.

so, it wasn’t a surprise last weekend when my dad jokingly asked “how come you weren’t down with jay-z and the rocafella crew? we’d all be millionaires with bentleys now” after seeing a jay-z commercial at halftime of the steeler game last weekend. apparently, he’d just read some article somewhere about jay-z’s vast influence and empire and wanted to show off his newfound knowledge

“well, he and everyone else in his circle is like 40 and from new york city, so we’d have to mess with the space-time continuum for that to happen” i replied, adding,

“plus, i would have had to deal drugs too“.

“huh?”

“yeah. him and most of the rest of his crew sold drugs before they got into music.”

“oh, like biggie? ok. well, as long as he’s doing something good with his life now, i won’t begrudge him for being a corner boy or something when he was much younger. we all make mistakes.”

“eh. actually he wasn’t just a corner boy. from what i understand he was more barksdale than bodie, and actually made quiet a fortune doing it.”

“oh. is that right?”

“yup”

“did he ever go to prison or anything like fiddy cent?”

***yes. he actually said “fiddy“. between this and the biggie comment, i’m now convinced my parents have a subscription to the source ***

“not that i know of, at least not for a significant time.”

“well, did he at least make some songs about dangers of that lifestyle, to dissuade anyone from trying to emulate him?”

“nah. in fact he brags for maybe five albums straight about how great of a drug dealer and pimp he was. his rap empire is practically based on that”

“oh.”

(pause)

“no remorse at all?”

“a couple songs here and there but not really.”

(another pause)

“thats very interesting, champ” my dad remarks, before leaving the living room to check on his pork roast.

for those not well-versed in champsdadspeak, him pausing, saying “thats very interesting, champ” and leaving is his way of saying

“so, lemme get this straight: the person you all have anointed the king of rap was an unrepentant drug kingpin who’s made multi millions bragging about his fortune in blood money? your generation disgusts me. plus. how could you, an educator who’s lost at least 10 kids to drug violence, call this guy one of your favorite rappers?”

if he would have actually asked that question, i probably would have responded with some cliche about separating the man from the art, and i would have cited people like martin scorsese who produce violent films but are (rightly) thought of and lauded as geniuses. i probably would have also mentioned something about the kennedy’s making good out of a criminal past, that we all have demons, and how we can’t judge how truly repentant someone is…and it all would have been bullsh*t.

in hindsight, i’m glad he walked away and didn’t ask because i’ve never really thought about how stupid my answer sounds.

maybe i should start.

—the champ

stan(d) up

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****before i begin today, i wanted to give an early birthday shout-out to our very special liz burr, the boobs behind the vsb.com operation, who will be turning an unspecified age saturday the 6th. happy b-day lizzard****

glasses

you know, sometimes lost in my relentless smart-aleckness and sarcasm is the fact that there are a few things i’ve mentally and emotionally deemed snark and cynic-proof.

along side the ubiquitous rants, raves, roasts, and deez is an occasionally enthusiastic and unconditional fan ready and willing to spread the gospel of his favorite things, and, as break from my usually scheduled satirical programming, i’ve decided to share a few of these with you.

enjoy and sh*t

the nba

maybe the nfl is more popular, and maybe college hoops manufactures more synthetic enthusiasm and unpaid labor in the eyes of casual sports fans, but nothing else combines artistry, skillfulness, uber-athleticism, and planned improvisation like basketball at its highest level. i know its not for everyone, but, then again, f*ck ya’ll analog n*ggas.

breakfast food

i need you. i'm a mess without you. i miss you so damn much. i miss being with you, i miss being near you. i miss your laugh. i miss your scent; i miss your musk. when this all gets sorted out, i think you and me should get an apartment together
i need you. i’m a mess without you. i miss you so damn much. i miss being with you, i miss being near you. i miss your laugh. i miss your scent; i miss your musk. when this all gets sorted out, i think you and me should get an apartment together

women rocking glasses with angular frames

fetish (f?t’?sh, f?’t?sh)

  1. something, such as a material object or a nonsexual part of the body, that arouses sexual desire
  2. an abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation.

yup. sounds about right

the rza

lets put it this way: when he calls himself “the world’s greatest mind, bob digital” i believe him

the wire

it probably wouldn’t be a stretch to call me a wire missionary. there is no limit, no boundary to my promotion of this show. at this point, i could wake up tomorrow morning and read that david simon is really nicolae carpathia, and i’d probably just shrug my shoulders and spend the next 17 minutes thinking of some obscure wire-related witticism to post as a facebook status message

chuck klosterman, bill simmons, malcolm gladwell, and bethlehem shoals

i’m so in awe of each of these writers that i’m literally afraid to attempt to articulate my stan-dom. i’d feel like ciara singing a solo tribute to mahalia jackson

the pittsburgh steelers

what? you think its an accident that i call myself “the champ”? bow down to the black and gold, b*tches, and kiss the rings…all six of them

people of vsb.com, i’m curious: who and what do you stan for?

—the champ

my first time

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i’ll always maintain that it was melissa hogan’s fault.

every high school had an m. hogan. you know this chick. sh-t, some of you reading might have been this chick. the ultra-mature, ultra intimidating, ultra, ummm, “physically developed at an early age” chick who, by her freshman year was dating seniors and by her senior year was dating steelers.

anyway, m. hogan at lunchtime was basically was responsible for at least 1/4 of my early sexual education (the other 3/4′s being “dream on“, my parents, and “eazy-duz-it”.). our lunch tables were like every other lunch table in every other school in the country, where one or two students tell lascivious (and, in hindsight, completely unbelievable) sexual tales while the rest either laughs, co-signs, or nods along in silent affirmation, despite the fact that no one else had done anything even remotely close to what she was talking about. she’d hold court, and we all were captive listeners, storing every story, taking mental notes with every nugget.

one constant theme of m. hogan’s lunchtime lectures was her utter disdain of “one minute men“. one minute men were the bane of her existence, the iago to her othello, the soap to her southerner, and i made “not being a one minute man” my own personal sexual tenet.

by the time i finally got around to having sex, despite my attractive, yet *insert word that means the exact opposite of “virginal* partner and the lovely “vertical smile” anxiously waiting for me to enter, m. hogan stayed in the back of my mind. forget pleasure, i was a man on a mission…a mission to last. i even positioned myself so that her alarm clock was always in my line of sight.

because our site is pg-13 in theory i won’t get into too many specifics, but lets just say that by the 51 minute mark, i finally decided to climax because i ran out of intentionally non-sexy things to think about (for you laypeople out there, this is a common practice used by young men when trying their hardest not to climax. for example “scrambled eggs”, “mailboxes”, and “that guy on the bus with the giant diabetes foot” all went through my mind at one point that day.)

surprisingly, after she spent a couple weeks at upmc presby allowing herself to heal, my partner let me hit on a pretty consistent basis for the next couple months, but not before a couple phone conversations where i had to convince her that the “hour long chili dog” would never, ever, ever happen again. if so, she had a legal team prepped and ready to sue.

anyway, people of verysmartbrothas.com, how was your first time? was it great, good, underwhelming…or did it have potential legal ramifications similar to mine? (nevermind, don’t answer that second question)

—the champ