Category Archives: random

What Exactly Makes a “Good” Parent?

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What a difference a month makes

As any NFL fan (and most New Yorkers) undoubtedly know, there’s an annual ritual that occurs somewhere between the 3rd and 8th weeks of the NFL season each year. The New York Giants will be struggling, a few anonymous sources from the team will leak quotes to the media about how much the entire team hates head coach Tom Coughlin, and a few prominent beat writers and reporters will pen articles about how the team has tired of Coughlin’s rigid ways and that it’s time to make a change.¹

Seriously, if you were to look up the term “hot seat” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of a red-faced and exasperated Coughlin in the middle of the same exaggerated head shake/eye roll combo an assistant principal at a high school would make after hearing that the gym locker room toilets were clogged again.

He’s never won (and never will win) coach of the year. Whenever Sports Illustrated or ESPN.com does one of those anonymous player surveys, he’s always the choice as “the coach I’d least like to play for.” He’s not regarded as an evil genius like Bill Belichick, a guru like Jon Gruden, a master motivator/player’s coach like Mike Tomlin or Pete Carroll, or even an “old guy whose best days are behind him but still has something in the tank” like (the extremely overrated) Mike Shanahan. He is actually a stereotypically bad assistant principal — a micro-manager whose obsession with mind-numbing routine and authoritarianism ends up undermining the power he already has².

But, as of Sunday night, Coughlin is the head coach of two Super Bowl champions, a feat matched by few others. A man many wouldn’t consider a great (or even good) NFL coach has twice bested the man thought of as the best football coach of his generation.

Today, the Coughlin narrative is that he’s an underappreciated motivator and technician. The end results (two championships) have justified any means, and 50 years from now, no one will remember that he came within a hair of getting fired every year. All they’ll see is “Tom Coughlin = two-time Super Bowl champion” and they’ll assume that he was a great coach.

Now, there’s an obvious parallel between coaching and parenting (and teaching, even), and I brought up Tom Coughlin’s career because it ties directly into a question I’ve always had about parenting.

What exactly makes a “good” or “great” parent?

This seems like it should be an easy question to answer. A good parent is a selfless individual who loves their children unconditionally, stops at nothing to provide for and protect them, teaches them whatever needs taught, and models good behavior.

But, if the ultimate goal of a parent is to make sure their offspring are productive, capable, and well-adjusted members of society, what’s to make of “good” parents who were, to put it bluntly, failures?

How do you gauge the parental merits of loving, selfless, and upstanding individuals who’ve raised kids who grew up to be liars, deadbeats, thieves, rapists, murders, and Laker fans? Would you consider a parent “good” if they were successful and happy and well-adjusted, but their children were the exact opposite?

Perhaps, like a “good” coach who just wasn’t able to find a way to motivate his team, maybe a good parent with sh*tty offspring has all the proper parental tools but just didn’t apply them properly…making them bad at being a parent

On the flipside, what do you make of people who’ve managed to succeed in spite of what looked to be lackluster and/or deficient parenting? The man who’s managed to become a renowned surgeon despite his overbearing and still hard to please alcoholic father? The woman who never received a single compliment from her ruthless and manipulative mother but ended up being a caring, successful, and well-adjusted lawyer and mom herself? The kid from the projects who, after seeing how heroin tore apart his family, got a PhD. in neuroscience to study addiction and help make sure what happened to his family doesn’t happen to any others?

On the surface, no one would say that any of these people had good parents, but you can’t deny the fact that their relationships with their parents helped motivate and inspire them to become who they are today. Again, if parental merits depend on the offspring you send out into the world, the “sh*tty” parents definitely succeeded. Perhaps these parents, bad as they may have seemed, were only doing what they thought it took to ensure their children’s success as adults.

And, just as you probably won’t hear any Giants complain about Coughlin’s rigidity or out-of-touchness today, you’re probably not going to hear any of the people from the last paragraph complain too much about how they were raised.

If the Giants don’t make the playoffs this year, Coughlin gets fired. Now, though, each of his negative characteristics become pluses through euphemism. (i.e.: “he’s a micro-manager” turns into “he’s steadfastly committed to excellence”)

If these people don’t turn out successful, the drunk dad is an asshole, the manipulative mom is a bitch, and the kid with the addicts in his family just had too much on his plate to overcome. If successful, though, the asshole dad becomes “a guy who believed in tough love,” the bitchy mom is just a “perfectionist who wanted the best for me,” and the kids from the projects reflects on all the sacrifices his people made to help him make it.

I guess I’m trying to say that whether a person is a good parent or not is completely arbitrary, completely variable, and completely dependent on the quality of kid they produce. But, to be honest, I don’t even really believe that. A part of me still thinks that, despite what I’ve tried to prove today, good parenting is like pornography — you can’t really define it, but you know it when you see it. 

Hmm. I forget which Gladwell book it was (actually, it might have been “Freakonomics.” I really have no idea), but I remember a passage in it that basically stated that the best parenting is done before a kid is even born. The genes you pass on to him and the financial situation he’s born in do waaaaay more to help (or hurt) him succeed than anything you can do as a parent.

If this is true, perhaps coaching and parenting are more intertwined than I thought. As any Giants fan will surely tell you today, “good coach” is just another way of saying “he was lucky enough to have some good ass players.”

¹There’s an article at Slate.com that goes much more in-depth on this “ritual.” I remember reading it there, and I know it’s somewhere in here, but I couldn’t find it yesterday.

 

²No shots at any assistant principals reading this

—Damon Young (aka “The Champ”)

Why Dating Me Could Suck

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This would be me if I was white and she just asked me how I feel about the Kyoto Protocol.

Quite obviously, I am the bees knees. I’m very important and I have many leather bound books and my apartment reeks of fresh mahogany. And ladies, when I get married, it’s going to be on top of a mountain, and there’s going to be flutes playing and trombones and flowers and garlands of fresh herbs. And there will be dancing till the sun rises. And then my children will form a family band. And we will tour the countryside.

You won’t be invited.

I’m all that. Silverfish handcatch swag.

Yet, I realize that there are things about myself that could drive any woman to drink. I know that we spend a lot of time in this corner of the internets explaining why we’re all perfect beings who listen to classical music and sh*t fairy dust couplets of Shakespearean sonnet, but alas…we’re not all without flaw. Personally, I’m just an ordinary people. I don’t know which way to go. My iPhone tells me one thing but my heart tells me something else.

All yokes aside (*rimshot*, no Rusty Trombone), we all love to explain why we’re great dating partners and why everybody else is the problem. Well, today I decided to let you in on the unawesomeness that can be PJ3. Basically, the things about dating me that just might suck. Or at least could drive you absolutely batsh*t. And by you, I mean women in general. Keep in mind, I don’t think that I suck, just that I understand why some things about me could suck to other people who indubitably suck for not being as fawesome as I am. Just like that, I undid all the goodwill.

Allons-y!

1. I get absolutely booooooooooored with politics and deep discourse as a rule

I have a friend who likes to be apart of nothing but deep conversations. Can’t knock her hustle but I’m so not that dude. In fact, I often bore of depth and purposeful rigamaroll. I’ll write about it on occasion and spend time really digging, but at the end of the day, I’d rather talk about why it’s impossible to move as much weight as so-and-so claims. Or pop culture. I love waxing philosophical about pop culture and the characters involved. Basically, while I can speak about things that require reading, I’d rather spend my afternoon talking about ninjadom.You can keep your C-SPAN dreams. I will talk about why we won’t make it as a people though. Ad nauseum.

2. I’m insanely insensitive at times, especially when it comes to race matters

Sometimes I even surprise myself with the sh*t I say outloud. People tend to find it endearing, until they hate me. You think I just write like this? Naw son, I talk like this normally. It’s not a game. Ask all the El Salvadorans I keep calling Mexican. Point is, I’m going to say something insensitive…often. Sensitive ninjas need not apply even though sensitive people love putting in applications for stuff that will burn them. What’s in your wallet?

3. I can seriously eat at the same places every.single.day.

That drives folks crazy. One thing I hate f*cking around with is my food. I do not like ordering sh*t I don’t understand and then not liking the sh*t I didn’t understand in the first place. Basically, I’m a foodie’s worst nightmare. Of course, I’ll try anything once. But its hard for me to appreciate your $35 presentation of sorbet…which I really think you should call sherbert and come in rainbow colors.

4. Speaking of food…I’m always ordering chicken fingers

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, beyotch.

5. I really could do a movie night 7 nights a week

Now I wouldn’t actually force that upon anybody. And also, my movie night isn’t codeword for bone. My Netflix queue is gangbusters, my dealer. I have every bad black movie flagged and I really want to watch them. It’s perfect bonding time because Bad Black Movie Watching is a communal activity and contact sport. Add some liquor to the mix and it’s all good like a Sunday in Baltimore. And just to prove to you that I’m not just trying to swagsurf you out, I may put you out afterwards. Point is, I can see why this could get old for anybody real quick.

6. I hate doing cultural sh*t just for the sake of doing it (same with going out out)

I’ve learned that a lot of people, especially in DC, like to do sh*t just to say they did it because it exists. Can’t knock the hustle, Jay, but eees no me. If I said it, I meant it, bite my tongue for no one. Call me evil? I’m unbelievable. You want to go see that exhibit of the first insecticide repellant plant in African-American history (what?). Naw duke, I’m trying to go get my “Rack City b*tch…rack, rack city b*tch on…”

That’ll do pig.

Well there you go. I put some of my non-sense on blast. Won’t you be my neighbor? What about you might drive other folks crazy?

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka MR. BAD BLACK MOVIE KING aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

Am I Missing Something?: Dallas Teen Missing Since 2010 Is Deported!

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Sometimes you just feel like a white guy with black outlines.

You ever come across a story or an article that throws you for such a loop that you don’t know which way is up? Or you can’t tell left from right? That was me this morning when my boy forwarded me an article entitled: Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported. <—please read that and watch the video

Now my first inclination was to be pissed at the government (damn you Obama!) for being so damn inept that they’d actually manage to pull this off. Not only that, they managed to send a 15-year-old teenager to Colombia because they effectively didn’t verify her fingerprints to find out who she really was.

But something just didn’t sit right with me on this one. Then I realized that NONE of it made any sense. It created so many questions in my mind I had to take a small chronic break because ninjas be brownnosing these h…well you get my point.

So let’s just start at the beginning of this f*cktasticness. Mmkay? Mmkay.

Fourteen year old Jakadrien Turner runs away from home in November 2010 after being distraught over her parents divorce and her grandfather’s passing. And ends up in Houston. Okay. Plausible. Runaways do runaway sh*t and end up in cities they aren’t from. Why Houston? I have no clue and apparently neither does her family. However that’s where she went, got popped by police gives a fake name that comes up on Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s radar (ICE) and ends up in motherf*cking Colombia because ICE are some inept f*cks. That’s the gist.

But wait…she either gets forced into a work camp or something (highly unlikely) or finds a job (still highly unlikely but more likely when considering that….). I’m guessing she found a job because if your ass is stuck in some kind of work camp…you ain’t updating Facebook. And if she’s updating Facebook, is she searching for help or just, ya know, updating Facebook. Changing her status and liking ninjas pages and whatnot (at press time she had not liked VSB’s fan page).

The thing that puzzles me about this news report and article is that it never states what ELSE these ninjas were doing to find her? Did her parents (divorced, not dead) and grandmother just figure she’d be back at some point and let that sh*t ride for a year and some change? Wasn’t nobody ridin’ ’round and gettin’ it anywhere? Am I to truly believe that this ninja didn’t update her FB page UNTIL she got to Colombia? That just doesn’t seem likely now does it?

I have a kid. You better believe that my arse is going to be ALL over the place on this one. I know Noriega. The real Noriega. He owes me a hundred favors and one of them would be to find my kid.

Let’s shift to the government for a moment, shall we? Lawd lawd lawd. Why for come you suck so much? So Jakadrien gets fingerprinted and then they never verify her identity? Of a teenager? Yeah she lied about her name. Speaking of that, how gotdamn unlucky do you have to be to hit the Colombia deportation lottery on picking a name? Sheesh. Here’s the bullsh*t. You do not get deported literally 10 minutes after you get busted. Nothing happens that quick. This was sheer ignorance and all around don’t-give-a-f*ck-ness at play. She says she’s such-n-such and we got a warrant. Put her on a plane, boss. Those prints came back and nobody looked at it. Fire everybody. Literally.

But then we get to Colombia. Somehow, she has the wherewithall to work and survive in Colombia and be in a good enough space to update her FB page? Her grandmother never said that her page was filled with pleas for help. I know kids say the darndest things these days but damn, there’s resourceful and then there’s the chick from Colombiana. Hmm…pun.

I’m still questioning the sheer validity of this article. Real spit. The missing report is real. I sawed that online. But if our government is actually deporting Americans…accidentally…why for come this isn’t national news. Thus far only this Dallas news station is reporting it and a slew of other folks on random ninja sites and some article on Clutch that did a slightly ratchet job of just recreating the Dallas story.

Apparently she’s in a detention center, pregnant, and the Colombian government won’t release her. Again…how come this ain’t on CNN. Or the Washington Post. Or the New York Times. Isn’t this kind of a big deal?

Like, in the pantheon of big damn deals, wouldn’t “U.S. Government deports one of its own to Colombia” kind of a game changer? It’s just me? No?

My people…what am I missing? Does this story strike you as odd as it strikes me?

Hell, do you even believe this?

Talk to me.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

Peep Panama’s latest post over at Guyspeak: 50 Things I’d Rather Do Than Remove My Mother’s NuvaRing.

Love & Hip Hop and The Proposal

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Beware, there are a lot of strong faces in this picture.

You know how women tend to map out their weddings? Even the most hardened, thugged out, stabbin’ ninja woman has some vision of her wedding. And the proposal? Yeah, they all have an idea of what they’d like it to look like. Sure reality and fantasy may never collide but the idea, the hope, is always there. And I’d bet double or nothing that Chrissy’s ideal proposal looked nothing like the pisspoor one that Jim Jones gave to her on the last episode of vh1′s academic and rigorously brain teasing show, Love & Hip-Hop.

If you know Black people. There’s a solid chance that 78.5% of them all watch Love & Hip-Hop every Monday night. That number includes 100% of video hoes as they all view the show as comeup central.

I’m half surprised that Jim didn’t just throw the box at her and say, “gotcha b*tch. Happy now?” I’m being hyperbolic but he didn’t even kneel down. And he tried to play this cool, detached, somewhat pissed role cum captain save-a-ho at the end with the sweet gangsta thing that went terribly wrong. And do you know why? It’s impossible to be hardcore when proposing to a woman. It’s one of the moments in a man’s life when he’s truly vulnerable. It’s like putting up a Christmas tree. It is completely ungangsta to put up a Christmas tree. You ever seen a jolly thug? Some random ninja with a Santa hat and a .45 tucked into his waistband while laying tinsel every so gently on a fir? Smiling? While sipping on some eggnog and eating oatmeal raisin cookies? Exactly. Let the thug go. Jimmy…couldn’t do it. He basically handed her a box, said “do you want to marry me?” and then feel proud of himself for giving her what she wanted. Except the whole time he didn’t even really look like he wanted to be there.

Except…she didn’t care because she’s been waiting for that ring for some seven years so she was just happy to get it. Except now what? Except, right. Which begs the question here, does the proposal matter that much?

I’m only asking because if you’ve been waiting for seven years (or three or four, or whenever she proposed to him) to the point that you keep grandstanding, talking about leaving and having your oddlyfaced friends help you pack up stuff from a house that you really don’t want to leave with a life you don’t want to give up, do you even care how he does it? Or are you just happy that he does it. And I’m inclined to believe that Jimmy wasn’t trying to give a dbag proposal. He just didn’t know how to pull off thugged out and vulnerable man at the same time. And real talk, calling it a dbag proposal might be overstating.

Which brings me to some more overstatements: Love & Hip-Hop is one ridiculous ass show. So Jim Jones proposal makes perfect sense. We have one of the most unattractive attractive women on the planet in Emily, a woman who’s been chasing Fabolous since before he could misspell it seems. And she just can’t get it right. Then there’s Olivia. Bless her heart. You may remember her…actually,  you probably don’t remember her at all. First she tried to get us to “Bizzounce” years ago and we didn’t. Then 50 Cent tried to convince us that she had star power…DURING HIS HEYDAY. Think about that. Even when 50 Cent was on TOP of the game he couldn’t convince us to care about her.

This from a man who made Tony Yayo relevant. Again, think about that. Kimbella, oh Kimbella. I’m sure she’s hot. I’m sure I don’t find her hot. Maybe its because she annoys me so much. Though not as much as Teairra Mari who for the life of me has contributed nothing to the world aside from a great rack and the song “Sponsor” featuring Gucci Mane, which, I actually loved. But on this show…pointless.

Yandy? She mildly amuses me but only because she’s just somebody else who latched on to the Jim Jones bandwagon. Nancy, love her. But I tend to like crackheads. And then there’s Chrissy.

I cannot stand her. Many women I know love her no-nonsense attitude….except when it comes to Jimmy. Honestly, if it wasn’t for all of her instigating and fighting, I’d hate her more. But alas, she keeps bringing the gun to the knifefight so she does possess value.

Look, the show blows. There’s too much boohooing over men that don’t want them and then too many talentless women attempting to be somebody in the world. There’s really no reason for this show to exist.

But at the end of the day, Love & Hip-Hop makes me realize that despite the fact that I’m not rich, apparently me and Jim Jones could live in the same neighborhood since there seem to be a plethora of tiny ass houses right next door to him. (Seriously, did homeboy have his house built in a neighborhood full of 2 bedroom homes?) The problems that these broads have are not unlike everybody else’s problems except they’re potentially more ridiculous because all of their fame is due to the men they’re associated with. I find it so interesting how many women love these shows considering how they fly in the face of nearly everything women get so pissed at men for saying.

These women are the living embodiment of a Tyler Perry movie without a script but women tune in every Monday with reckless abandon. THEN talk sh*t about the terrible Tyler Perry movies and how they do a disservice to women everywhere. Okay. Alright.

What’s the draw? I don’t know. But the next time any of y’all who love these shows tell me Tyler Perry is selling us out…I’m going to throw my show at you or one of those bottles Kimbella threw at Erica Mena. And then I’ll have Chrissy yank your lacefront.

So real talk…why the hell do people love these shows so much? Don’t tell me the drama…it can’t be that simple? And speaking of the proposal to Chrissy, does it matter or is the fact that it happens that much more significant in general?

Talk to me…what’s with the love for Love & Hip-Hop?

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3