THE ROOT DOWN'S SIX WORST DEVELOPMENTS IN HIP HOP'S HISTORY

Here at The Root Down, as many of you know, we're a hip hop friendly environ in which discussions or simple declarations are often made about it's greatness or failures. We critique, we praise, we question and we clarify. Because we proclaim to be friendly to hip hop, much in the way that sometimes being a "true friend" or a friend of notable awareness and honesty might require someone to confront a friend in their asinine behavior or otherwise erred perspectives, we too feel like we were granted the license to do the same to hip hop. Maybe only because of our investment in it as consumers, but nonetheless, even if not performers...we all critics, homie.

This is not to be an argument of who's realer or who's the realest. This is not to pin underground against mainstream. East against west. This is just a brainstorm I had when jogging the other night and thinking (as my brain was light on oxygen, admittedly) what were the splits, the events or the eras in hip hop that did more harm than good in the long run? Where did hip hop go wrong and play itself? What created this creative sinkhole that dominates the game right now? We have to be able to trace it back to something right? Man, I love italics.

This ain't in chronological order. In fact, it's in absolutely no logical order at all. Chrono or otherwise. I'm a big fan of hip hop history, though. If I could somehow draw it out on paper, I would. Maybe I will one day. I've had interest in dropping everything and becoming a film maker and doing a huge 20-part series on hip hop from the beginning to the end like Ken Burns. That'll be after I do this marathon. It's true, though. Like in religion or politics. You can look back in the church and it branches, breaks off and creates new denominations as a result of a disagreement, a fundamental argument, how worship is conducted, etc. Hip hop kinda did that as well. There's all these splits, sub-genres, movements, regional sounds and trends, but let's be real, it's all just hip hop. Politics are politics. Beliefs differ, but there's consistent underlying themes that perpetuate it from generation to generation. But for hip hop (and all popular music, jazz, blues, reggae, country, punk, etc) it was in this constant mutative state for about 20 years until it basically mutated to nothing. What are we left with today? I would contend that 90% of the hip hop out there now (as opposed to about 40% about ten years ago) is like the waste product of a pop factory that is simply broken. It's uninspired. It's dry and, unfortunately for its listeners, it's barely waned in popularity. It still remains as the most vital cultural impact of the last 30 years even though it's last ten years has been riddled and marked by a definitively miserable output.

You can debate that last point all you want. You ain't gonna change my mind.

CONSCIOUS HIP HOP

Ah, my very favorite of the ambiguous and sometimes completely undefinable sub-genres to come out of the late 90s. Let's be real, though, there's always been acts that many would attempt to classify as "conscious" hip hop from the very beginning. It's been how hip hop has tried to correct itself by saying there's an alternative to, basically, everything else and that is this weird and peculiar presumption of "consciousness." Identifiable by cats who carry themselves as educated, esteemed and enlightened as if there's a jet stream of consciousness that they coasted in on that's going to settle hip hop's score and bring thought and context to what is otherwise an unconscious state. It was really heightened by the surge of Christian hip hop acts that were reversing many of hip hop's sins of the past with clean, scripture-based prose that essentially washed the blood off of hip hop's hands in the eyes of the popular media. It gave families a safe alternative to the edgier acts on the market. While this rise in Christian hip hop was happening, Common Sense dropped the "Sense" but actually upped his consciousness from his earlier recordings. Rappers started donning sweater vests and collared shirts. They dropped the thuggery for a new costume that was visibly more affluent. Lyrically, they shed their references to all things "street" unless they were talking about the traps of the streetlife and how to avoid them. I mean, let's keep it positive. Kids are listening.

C'mon. Be real now. What this unfortunate fabrication would suggest is that hip hop, up to this point, was not conscious. That 2Pac and Biggie were just thuggery and not capable of speaking on a conscious level. It's like Tipper Gore got her way. Like government-approved hip hop. That's not to say these self-proclaimed "conscious rappers" were not indeed talented and genuine in what they were doing and rapping about, but making the distinction that this was conscious would suggest that everything else was less or not at all. My suggestion would be that all hip hop is in one way or another conscious not just that which is defined as conscious. NWA was pretty conscious. Public Enemy was definitely conscious. So was Mos Def. So was Ice Cube. De La. Geto Boys. Yes, 2Pac. You bet. These small and insignificant splits in the genre are really no splits at all because they all reconnect to the main highway just over the hill. It just gives a fan a piece to grab onto during a transitional period in their life. Whether it was created by a bank of writers, Tipper Gore, All Music, the fans or the artists themselves, such splits in hip hop are futile. They're truly silly. And, in most cases, they're created by those who have the least invested in it. In protest, I always wanted to listen to the most unconscious hip hop...reckless, irresponsible, socially damaging, violent, obscene and altogether wretched hip hop with no regret. I turned out alright.

SCREWED AND CHOPPED
There's possibly nothing that more perfectly exemplifies the idiocy and ignorance of modern hip hop better than the "chopped and screwed" trend of the early 90s. In short, a DJ from Houston discovered a new and less-innovative remix method in which you slow down the rap recording to approximately 70 BPM and then "chop" up the recording by skipping and cutting the record in single-second increments which effectively made bad records even worse (editorial influence). DJ Screw contended that by slowing it down, it helped a listener ease into a more mellow state and then could more easily soak in the lyrics now being delivered at a punishingly slow and low tone. It was something that not only did I really fail to see the genius in it, I found it straight up comical. It sounded like something was terribly wrong with the record player (again, more editorial influence). Click here to get an idea. The DJ was named DJ Screw and, after making this "discovery," referred to the tapes as "screwed and chopped." Before long, it took massive hold over the southern sound and dudes were "screwing and chopping" up rap recordings from Houston to Memphis. It was said that the best way to enjoy these recordings was to listen to them while drinking "syrup" (also known as "drank" or "sizzurp"). And to take excessiveness and irresponsibility to new levels, DJ Screw, the genre's founder died of a lethal dose of "syrup" which was a potent combination of alcohol and cough syrup. The irony is almost too much to bear. That'd be like Charlton Heston getting fatally shot in some horrible hunting accident.

Now, I'm from Texas and I was selling records in East Texas when "screwed and chopped" (see also "slowed and throwed") was hitting its regional highmark. Nationally, it was still waiting to peak (and it never really did). Every stoplight, every fast food drive-thru, every basketball court, every mall parking lot...it was everywhere. How it caught on I'll never know. You ask others from deeper in the state and they'd say, "How could it not?" It has since died down in popularity and is likely to completely phase out in the next couple of years, but let's be real, it'll be back.

So why, you ask, would something so popular be considered amongst the worst developments in hip hop's history (according to The Root Down, of course)?

Firstly, in my humblest opinion, something that takes very little talent to create should have never left a city block, much less half of the nation. These crazes happen all the time. It's like the autotune in popular R&B music. Singers no longer need talent to carry a note. Autotune will do it for you. To call DJ Screw a "deejay" is a little far-stretched. Wouldn't you say? That practically makes me a DJ. I mean, I can put on a record. I can slow it down. I can chop it in Audacity. Hell, in two years, they'll probably have an iPhone app so you can screw and chop anything. By the simplest of means and least effort possible, cats thought, all of the sudden, that DJ's came out of a box like some Alphonso Ribero b-boy kit. It cheapened the game. It stunk up the DJ's claim. DJ's used to be all hip hop had. Rappers were just mouthy fools that would tell people to get off their asses and dance. But the DJs were the force. DJ Screw slowing down records so you can listen to them and enjoy them while drinking cough syrup? Why don't you just go by your birth name, bro. You ain't no DJ.

Sometimes the dumbest things actually stick. And when they do, everyone wants to do it. It's like that party that everyone within a five-mile radius goes to. And once they're there, you have to basically run out of beer or have the cops come in and break it up. That was screwed and chopped. We let too many morons into the game because someone left the back gate open. They came and drank all of our beer. Or sizzurp, if you prefer.

Secondly, I'm a little pissed that Houston's legacy is more screwed and chopped and not Geto Boys. Not Def IV. Rap-a-Lot. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they thought that the Geto Boys were from Los Angeles! I hated to react the way I did, but I bounced back, "Bro, Geto Boys are not only from Houston, they are Houston." I guess we all go through this as aging heads though. That argument of who was first. Who was better. The thought that the Geto Boys' lock on Houston has been erased by DJ Screw and Michael Watts is a depressing one. Signed "Sincerely, Crotchety Old Hip Hop Head"

I need to start a Hip Hop Preservation Society. Every art form and musical genre seems to have one.

NO LIMIT RECORDS (1997-1999)

Hip hop was on a pretty good roll going into 1997. 1996 brought us classics like Reasonable Doubt, Ironman, Stakes is High, ATLiens. But as the sun began to set on the "Golden Age," Jiggy was coming in. Collossal rap radio took form on hits like "The Crossroads," "Mo Money, Mo Problems," and Freak Nasty's "Da Dip." 1997 was the year of two labels. Bad Boy Records which brought us Ma$e, Puffy and, of course, Notorious' Life After Death in the same month he died. And No Limit Records which actually had been around since 1993. Master P and his camp were like a freaking record plant. They would record, produce, gloss and release records at a rate that would make the major labels' jaws drop. And they were rolling in it. I remember working in music retail these years and it seemed like anything these cats put out just flew off the shelves. And, lucky for us, they put out tonnage. Unfortunately for hip hop, though, they put out tonnage.

All they needed was a hit to keep the cash flow up and they got it with "Make 'Em Say Uhhh!'" which came out in 1997 sending Master P's Ghetto D soaring. Once that cash started making its way back to the label, there was no stopping them. And if there's any label that perfectly hit on the "strike while the iron's hot" approach, it was No Limit. They weren't interested in longevity. It was strictly an I-gotta-get-mine operation.

This label (an indie, mind you) released an astounding 46 full length records. Master P, the label's founder released a solo record in each of these years along with running the label all while retiring and coming back from retirement. Problem with No Limit, though, was we're not necessarily talking about a Def Jam or Tommy Boy here. These guys weren't really that talented. So, in essence, you had a dominant label with very little talent at all split amongst it's stable of artists putting out more records than any one record store clerk could keep track of. And when the toilet backed up, shit went everywhere. They flooded the market and ruined it for everyone else.

These were formidable years for hip hop. You had the game shifting back to this capitalistic, short-term model where artist development was secondary to the quick buck. The game's veterans were going into other business ventures. And we left the control the Master P's of the world and they quickly took that crappy old mixer and beat machine and converted it to cold hard cash. Do I solely blame Master P for hip hop's demise? No. Absolutely not. Not solely. But for the volume of releases that this dude put out in the marketplace and not really a single classic record among them, it makes me truly ponder on what hip hop would've been like had he not shifted 30 million units of sub-par hip hop into the marketplace in three years. He owned the sound of 1997-1999. That's three years or 10% of hip hop's existence. You don't think that's not enough to change the taste of hip hop heads for years after? I don't know think we've yet recovered from those years. I liken this period to the steroids era of baseball. If you're wanting to put butts in the stadiums, hopping up hitters to crank 480-foot home runs every night is one way to do it. Not sure if the overall contribution to the game is healthy, but you can make some serious cash along the way. Another New Orleans label by the name of Cash Money Records rose to popularity at the same time on the strength of Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up" and, much like the No Limit model, they were quick to react putting out Hot Boys, Big Tymers, BG, another Juvenile record and Lil Wayne's first solo over the next three years. Ain't nobody in the game bigger than Lil Wayne and it's almost 2010. You have 1997 to thank.

*Big Bear neither a No Limit or Cash Money artist--just a notable Pen and Pixel gem.

THE BACKPACKER

It always seems to be the cats that are out to save the game that end up doing the most damage. The intentions of the "backpacker," I believe, were always good, but it always backfired and hip hop suffered because of it. The term "backpacker" is said to have a few different origins. Likely, though, it's origin was from graffiti writers who would tote paint, tapes, tips, a bag of weed, and whatever else around town as they'd be tagging different structures or trains. You were a self-reliant warrior going into battlegrounds and train yards to hone your craft. In the mid-to-late 90s, however, the backpack was part of a wardrobe, an accessory that was less functional and more an identifiable element of a "freedom fighter" for hip hop...the backpacker. What they wore or what they were called is really less important, it's what they stood for.

The backpacker, often times a late-adopting caucasian, felt that, firstly, garb and sneakers would give them an edge into the hip hop community and they would "dress the role" firstly and then modify their tastes and musical preferences to fit the mold of a hip hop fan with, of course, an "underground" hip hop lean. Their pants were baggy, usually rocked skate shoes or Adidas shell-toes with the loose laces and they had their backpacks doubled up on both shoulders and always rocked a lid to the side. What they were always carrying around in their backpacks, I'll never know. The backpack became this symbol, almost, of something that was part of their artillery. Like they were always ready for anything. I saw a dude at show, one time, hop out of his car and put on his backpack. Whatta nincompoop. That was like driving the skatepark.

There were two main arguments of the backpacker and they couldn't just help but get into it wherever they went. It was their never-wavering mission.

First, there's the "underground" vs. "mainstream" distinction that they always were preaching on to ensure that everyone knew how to identify all. And, in short, "underground" was the dopest hip hop out and "mainstream" represented the major label machine that was incapable of making good hip hop because it was played out on the radio and supported by BET and MTV. It was a position that was riddled with fallacies because any underground artist that wasn't trying to make it to a major label is either stupid or a liar. The upstreaming of an act from the minors to the majors is really all that independent artists want unless, of course, they can maintain their artistic vision and make dough at the same time. Those labels and/or artists represent the lucky miniority of the independent game. They have no interest in going to the major label. The argument that underground hip hop is inheritantly better because it's undiscovered is laughable. I would contend that underground hip hop has never really been any better than the "mainstream," there's only been more of it. 80% of the game is not on an independent label and out of that 80%, probably only 15% of it is close to meritable musically and artistically. The remaining 20% of the recordings come from the majors and only about 30% of it is close to meritable by the same definition. For the sake of my argument and nothing else, let's assume these numbers to be sound. Out of the 80 records that came from independent labels, 12 of them would represent some of the finest hip hop out that year. Out of the 20 records from the major labels, six of them would hit the same mark of artistic achievement. By the numbers, it would appears that independent hip hop doubled up the major labels, however, it took them 80 albums to do it. They're mainstream nemesis was batting .300--much better than the .150 of the independent labels. But it would appear to the backpacker, that the majority of the good records came from the independent sector. Incorrect, the overwhelming majority of the bad records came from the independent sector...68 to 14 to be exact.

You couldn't convince these kids, though. Their tendency to enter arguments with unrivaled bias was expected. Mos Def was their king. Jermaine Dupri was the enemy. Jay-Z had some respect, but only for his early recordings. Once a dude sold a million records, it took you off the cool list. When Eminem came out, it really rattled the backpacker's argument because here was a cat with legitimate talent, but he was building his success on mega-producer Dr. Dre and super-major Interscope. In response, they hailed white emcees Slug and Eyedea from Rhymesayers camp as their response to Em's successes. We've got talented white emcees too. Slug's actually only part caucasian. His father was part Native American, part African American, but visibly he appears white. White enough to a backpacker. Such arguments are silly, I know, but these come from actual run-ins I've had over the years. Wonder what those same cats are saying now as they're taking a smoke break from dropping frozen french fries into a hot friolator at Sonic when the talk about Mos Def and Talib Kweli who, both individually, got upstreamed to major labels. Jean Grae's been dying to get picked up. Warner Bros blew that chance. She's blowing up the blogs now saying that the independent game just doesn't make ends meet. It's like backpackers almsot want their heroes to suffer, live poor lives as independent artists. It's like some sort of weird martyrdom. So there's the "underground vs. mainstream" battle and then there's the even more dreaded "hip hop vs. rap" argument.

In short, the two names became almost commentary on the quality of the music. Hip hop had the "emcee" and rap had "rappers." Rappers were less introspective. They talked about guns, women, cars. Rappers were incapable of being political or sparking social change. They were just thugs with mics. Emcees, however, were truly more invested in the game. They were lyrically gifted. They possessed an uncanny ability to "battle" or "freestyle." Rappers didn't even write their own material so they'd never be able to "battle." It is by that distinction that would set Eminem apart--an emcee in the mainstream game. A rare breed, indeed. The sounds of rap music would make a backpacker's ears bleed. The harsh sounds of a rapper stinking up the mic, talking about weed, drive-bys, the ghetto. The only exception was that you could get grandfathered in. Ice Cube was safe. Although, his current recordings would be measured on the same level. His first four records were safe, though. The backpackers thinking was anything old could be good. Anything new, had to come from this pocket of independent labels or else it was considered to be below the level of listenability. They had a preference for the Golden Era. Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, all Native Tongues, EPMD, etc. 2Pac wasn't assumed though. He was a little too thug for most backpackers. Eazy E, maybe.

The grand fallacy in this thinking is that, inevitably, it only prides itself on the past and doesn't embrace current artists. It's hung on nostalgia and anything from a certain era is automatic. Anything past a certain era is suspect. I don't mind the notion that anything from, say, 1992 or 1993 was dope because, largely, it was. Things were good back then. But to suggest it's impossible for good hip hop to come out in 2009 or 2010 is a little lame. In my most restrospective moments, I've said things like this. I guess to know a backpacker's thinking is to kinda be one yourself. But I denounce their presumptions. They write the rules and hold everyone to them. There's no fairness in their thinking. They can argue against everything. Like James Brown said, "Your talking loud, but ain't saying nothing." It's argument for argument's sake. The noise that these fools created over about a five to seven year period in their circles, their forums, their threads on their websites just played the whole game out with their fingerpointing, their accusations and their crucifixions. It's because of these dudes that I kinda fell out of love with hip hop. Every show I went to was littered with them. Every independent record store I went to was infested by these chumps. I felt like to like hip hop, I was somehow one in the same with them. They wrote too many rules. They preached this elitist bullshit which was coded with something so cryptic that no one could make sense of it. And they held everyone to it. And, worst of all, they preyed on the weakest of hip hop's fans so their army grew to a size which was unstoppable and it just kids who thought they knew, but in the end had very little clue. Hell, most of them weren't even born when Raising Hell came out. What do you really know, son?

INSANE CLOWN POSSE/PSYCHOPATHIC
It's like Krush Groove meets the trailer park meets thousands of soda-guzzling carnies meets Hot Topic meets the WWE meets every junior high school's remedial math class meets the Kiss Army meets the Wal-Mart pregnancy test aisle meets the Wal-Mart break room meets the Wal-Mart smoker's lounge meets the tractor pull meets the meth lab meets the Cheetos aisle at Wal-Mart meets the furthest place from a treadmill meets every failed gimmick to sell a hip hop record meets every knuckle-dragging primate who thought he/she knew what hip hop was the first time he/she heard The Slim Shady LP.

The biggest problem is that they sell like crazy.

Not that I'm fair of judging off looks alone, but damn, now I know why they wear facepaint. Don't know I would've picked the Insane Clown Posse to outlast most of the other groups from the early 90s. It's definitely a statement on the brain cell count of their average fan that this same gimmick wouldn't get old after 17 years. That's a freaking lifetime. I'm thinking back to 17 years ago. I was 15 years old. I thought I'd marry my first girlfriend, play in the NBA (even though I hadn't notched one minute on the A-team) and enjoy my offseason in my cabin up near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Well, I'm 32 and none of panned out for me. And I didn't just realize that wasn't going to happen yesterday. I realized that about, uh, 16 years ago. The typical ICP fan (and yes, I intend on generalizing), still lives like they're in high school (or junior high if they're now in college). They're consumption of recreational drugs, video games, caffeine and ICP's music has stunted not only their behavioral development but also their potential as contributing members of society.

Yes, that's a mattress and a garage door. These are your juggalos--the affectionate name given to ICP fans and faithful followers. As much as I hate elitist pricks that make rules and say things like "they suck" or "that ain't hip hop."

They suck and that ain't hip hop.

THE LIVE INSTRUMENTATION PHENOMENON

Back in 1991, MTV "Unplugged" hosted their first ever rap-only "unplugged" performance featuring among others De La Soul, Tribe and Mr. Deodarant Balls--LL Cool J. If you remember the performance, you know what I'm talking about. Featuring a supposed "electric unplugged" performance of "Mama Said Knock You Out" by LL, we all knew it was only a matter of time before live instruments replaced the drum machine or more sample-based hip hop. Samples were expensive. Drum machines sometimes were quite dry and lacked any heart. Live instruments had the ability to bring soul back to the music. To give the music another dimension not yet realized. Plus, it would make dreadlocked morons dance like hippie chicks.

What bringing in live instrumentation into the game, hip hop began to cross over to cats who had always denounced hip hop because it lacked any significant musical accomplishment. It didn't require it's participants to do anything other than rap and, we all know, that takes no talent at all. It also relieved the stigma that rappers and, moreover, the DJs/producers were thieves of previously recorded music. By performing live the breaks instead of sampling them, it gave credibility to the music because, let's be real, if you're performing it live, it's not really stealing. Right?

What really happened with live hip hop is that it opened it up to a larger audience that really had no appreciation for hip hop's core. And it always seemed to be bigger in the Mountain states: Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana. One could only guess it's because of the large contingency of jam band fans in the mountains. In Houston, hip hop's best enjoyed in their car, rocking the trunk and absolutely annihilating the eardrums in every car at the intersection. Once you dip into the mountains, it's like hip hop's best enjoyed on bongos and an acoustic guitar.

It's not unusual to find that these peripheral fans of hip hop truly enjoy the live performance, but find very little takeaway from the actual recordings of those performances. As great as that night's performance was, that elation only lasts as long as their buzz. When they wake up in the morning, they take off their hip hop hat and are back to their lives. Ask one of these cats about Kool G. Rap. The Beatnuts. They wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about. Go save a whale, duke.

The whole live hip hop game is played. It's tired. It's not this new revolution that's going to save hip hop. Simply because the excitement is only in the performance. The recordings don't translate. And it's the recordings that will act as hip hop's archive for future generations. The immediacy of live hip hop quickly expires. It's like milk in that way. KMD's Mr. Hood is like raw honey...it never spoils. Live hip hop is too gimmicky. It relies on too many conditions to be consumed. And I don't care how good your drummer is, they can't replace Clyde Stubblefield on vinyl so don't go into no "Funky Drummer" because I don't wanna hear it. Give me the original.

Look at the best in the genre: The Roots. These dudes have been doing it for years and there's certainly something to be said for being first. However, every record they release, they sell less and less, but they have no problem selling out shows wherever they go. Less "fans" and concert goers are concerned about their records. They just wanna see them jam live which they've proven reliable for. Here you have one of the most talented crews in the game whose albums are actually getting better, it seems, with every release, but no one would know because no one buys them. They'd be the best selling crew out they had the same ratio of record-buyer to concert-goer as, say, Insane Clown Posse.

Recognize, son.

Sincerely,

The Root Down.

THE SECOND AND LAST OF THE LONG RUNS

Almost 400 miles later, my longest run behind me, I await and finish out my training heading up to Runday Sunday in Dallas, December 13th. Only fitting that I return to the town that raised me and do the "award tour" of Lubbock. It started early on Saturday morning. The goal was to finish it in three hours and 35 minutes. Accomplishable. By doing so, I would have just enough time to shower and then make it to our seats at the Jones for OU versus Tech.

I'd go to 98th Street all the way to 4th Street. Close to entire latitude of the city. I started at 4:55AM by stretching, eating my two bagels, one banana, ibuprofen, water. I had some technical difficulties with my iPod but substituted the 80G in the Nano's place. I made it to my starting point by 6AM and began my run by heading south. It was freezing and I had not planned on such a low for the morning. It was 27 degrees and I had my running shorts and my Lions t-shirt. Nothing else. It was so cold that I got hypothermia on the third mile stretch between Slide and Frankford. I was jogging and trembling at the same time. I couldn't wait for the sun to rise. It was so cold that water was not exiting my body. A problem because my fluids were to replenish me in the places I needed it. It just went straight into my bladder and stayed there. So I ducked into a yard on the way down Frankford to empty my bladder.

Almost got run over on Frankford by a driver that threw his brights on me, failed to yield to me and stayed in my lane and honked at me as he passed by. Yeah, I gave him the one-finger salute as I pressed onward.

Passed our old house on Frankford and continued down toward what is now Marsha Sharp Freeway. It was passable at Chicago which is what I originally planned, but then remembered my dear friend Ty who was killed at the intersection of Chicago and, what was then, Brownfield Highway. Thought better of it and changed my route slightly. Passed Danny's house. Passed Danny's parent's house. My old junior high as I made my way toward my old neighborhood. Passed Agape Methodist where I was a member of Troop 543, the meanest Scout troop in history. The corner of their lot where I first played tee-ball. Past 13th and Vicksburg where Aaron and George were killed when we young. Past another one of my childhood houses right across from my first elementary school...Rush Elementary. Headed down Toledo past Dale's childhood home. Went by my 7th Street home and hugged family at the corner. Proceeded up Salem to my grandparents street where my Gommy handed me an apple the size of a softball. It was the juiciest apple I ever had. I continued to 19th and Quaker where I turned it toward Covenant Lakeside where I'd circle the park. Fatigue was setting in. Family kept making drive-bys as I pressed onward. Good to have them along the way.

My hip was giving me serious problems. And my left hamstring. I continued back across Quaker to head toward my high school. Passed Coronado and headed south on Utica toward 50th Street. Passed Westmont Christian where I went to church after my parents divorced. Continued to Dupree Park where my mother lived nearby just after my parents divorced. Headed over on 58th Street to Memphis. Up Memphis to 66th Street and then around the park where my lovely wife and I once pondered on what was going to happen to our relationship when she moved to Tyler, TX. Her apartment was right there. I stayed in one just up Quaker.

Ended at the EZ Mart on Quaker just south of the loop. It took me three hours and 35 minutes. Not a minute more. Not a minute less. When I arrived back at my mother's place, my lovely wife was frying up my favorite...bacon. With eggs topped with salsa. I ate the eggs, the bacon, two Krispy Kreme chocolate cake donuts, two glasses of chocolate milk, one glass of orange juice and about 30 ounces of Gatorade.

So now, I finish out my training by scaling down my runs. I'll fill in the time with working on my hip and hammie. Maybe a little swimming. Keep my diet in check.

It's been a long run to this point. Don't want to screw up now. Stay healthy. Plenty of vitamin C. Water. Don't get sick. I gotta get Kool Aid back out on the trail. Dude's been ill for the last two weeks or so.

Lovely wife celebrates a birthday on Tuesday. Not telling you which one, but I'll give you this clue: Larry Legend. Fams coming in on Wednesday for Thanksgiving in Amarillo. Fried cajun turkey, sauerkraut and chocolate bourbon pecan pie on the menu amongst other things. Gonna be some purdy good eatin'.

Ya'll rest up and enjoy your week and Thanksgiving.

THE FIRST 18-MILER, ER, UH...19.4-MILER

Been a bit, Root Downers...regrettably. Have had a busy couple of weeks. Always do this time of year. Nothing different there. Of course, you put "training for a marathon" into anything and it eats up whatever else you were planning on doing. If you're not running, you're recovering. Like this morning behind a nice mug of coffee listening to LL Cool J's Walking With a Panther recounting yesterday's first 18-miler.

This is it. I got two 36-mile weeks consisting of two 5-milers, one 8-miler and then one long run at 18 miles. That's a big week. I'll do this twice and then we wind down going into the marathon. Even with the marathon on the final week, I'll only run 34 miles that week so this makes the longest distance weeks in the training. I've had some killer runs this week. There was the five on Monday where Kool Aid and I tore through the neighborhood like killers on the loose. We started out at "prowler" and ended at "predator." We were trucking that night. Then, my eight on Tuesday was my historic "Prefontaine on Fire" sprint where I clocked eight miles in eighty minutes. A personal best for that distance. The 18 I was set to do yesterday came at an optimum point in my training. Of course, as luck would have it, Kool Aid's gotta temperature so I was going to have to leg this one on my own. I drew out my route which would take me from essentially center city all the way out to the northwestern edge of town. Preferably at sunrise. There's something great about hitting the path before everyone else. Get to the earth before every moron in hurry tramples it to death. There's just something about it that's intoxicating. At that hour, the city is not only silent, it's paralyzed. Nothing's going. It's just you in God's great landscape splitting the air and breaking the serenity with your soft footsteps and light pants of breath. Here's the path.I woke up feeling great. A little tired, but whaddya expect for a Saturday morning at 4:45. I stretched, lubed up, munched some ibuprofen, a banana, a bagel. I stepped out into the morning air and it was thick with this wondrous fog. I couldn't even see the end of the driveway. It was cold and a wind was hurriedly pushing the fog down the street. Perfect.

Pressed play on the iPod and started out. The pace was good. Breathing was quickly locked into tempo. Hydration was optimum. I carried with me enough food to fuel me out and back. Two bags of jelly beans, two goos and a banana. As I made my way out on 9th all the way to the edge of town, the sun began to slowly rise lighting the landscape around me. The heavy blanket of fog surrounded me. It was so thick at one point that I wouldn't have known I was even going up hill until I saw headlights that appeared to be coming down from the sky in front of me.

It was the greatest setting for a solo run. Just me, a few rabbits, a herd of cattle and a punishing northern wind. When I turned north into the wind, it almost reduced me to a walk. And, just at that moment when I was rocked backwards, the intro to LL Cool J's "Goin' Back to Cali" broke the silence. I took a deep breath, put my head down as the wind drenched my beard with morning dew and tore northward. Thanks, LL.

Geez, you'd think this cat was never a rapper with Google image search. I had to hit up five different pages before I could find a picture of him not in a beautiful suit on the red carpet smiling like a nincompoop. Here we are. Here's the LL I was running with.

You know, LL's pretty played. Dude's from Queens. Don't you root for the Mets if you're from Queens? Everytime I see that dude, he's rocking a Yankee lid. Guess Mets are old school. That was back in 1986 with the World Championship team with Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter. That was a long time ago. Yankees have won five championships since then. LL probably doesn't even watch baseball. He probably just has problems matching his outfit to the orange on the Mets hat.

Why is it that anytime there's a special on Led Zeppelin on television, the Wilson sisters of Heart are flown in as the Zeppelin experts. I swear, I turned on Biography this morning and, in the first five minutes of the Led Zeppelin Biography, there's Ann and Nancy in their gypsy garb talking about Zeppelin in their whispy fascinated tone. Seriously, don't you have a state fair you should be playing at? Go away. I hate Heart with a passion. Chicks were Zeppelin biters. Go listen to "Barracuda" and tell me it ain't a direct bite of "The Immigrant Song."

But I digress.

When I made out to Soncy and Tascosa Road, it was time to turn it back to the city. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" blasted into my brain as I jogged onward. With the wind now shifting to my left shoulder, I powered forward actually gaining speed as I climbed back into the city. The inclines and declines on this path were remarkable. Easily more challenging than anything I'll see in Dallas. I think the most brutal portion of White Rock is a 1.3% grade for about two and a half miles--18 to 20.5 and then it goes downhill for the rest. I was doing 2.5% grade for a half mile at a time.

As I came into town, I arranged to have my lovely wife follow me for mile 13 to the end at 18. She met up with me in West Hills with dogs in tow, threw the hazards on and crept behind me offering encouragement along the way. As we made way back into our neighborhood, I was approaching 16 miles. Only two more to go. So I took a route that I knew would measure up to two miles and I would end just down the road from the house. I sprinted the last block to make sure I didn't end in a crawl. End strong.

I doubled over at the end. My legs immediately tightened up. It only took about two minutes for the muscles to shrink and shrivel. I stretched as quickly as I could to avoid cramping. Walked back to the house and perched myself on a stool in the kitchen and chomped a sandwich, a glass of milk. Hopped up and it was too late. My muscles already tightened up. I could barely walk. I went into the living room and laid out. The pain lasted for about fifteen minutes. Took a shower. Some ibuprofen. Walked it out. Felt a little better.

My ending time was 3:35. Pretty long for 18 miles. Not yet convinced that my ending time was close to 12 minutes per mile, I decided to go out and drive the entire thing and confirm the distance. Turns out that my distance was 19.4 miles--overshot my goal by 1.4 miles taking my average per mile down to 11:05. Overall, that's a great time for the hills I ran, the wind that I was jogging headfirst into and the hour at which I started.

I ate a burrito from Sharkeys after that, laid down on the couch and immediately passed out. When I awoke, I was hungry again. I stood up from the couch and my right leg almost gave out from under me. My knee, thigh and hamstring were on fire. I sat back down. Now's when you let your body heal. Nothing strenuous. Take it easy. That's the rule on Sundays.

Last night, we had some friends over for dinner...birthday dinner for the wives. I ate a ton of food. I was so hungry. Bruschetta, a NY strip, shrimp, zucchini, spinach ravioli, chocolate cake and ice cream. I had a couple of beers over the evening and by about 10:30, I could barely keep my eyes open. I went to bed on by back, with my legs outstreched and my hands on my belly. At 5:00 this morning, I awoke in the same picture....the pillow still folded behind my head and the blankets over me not even slightly disturbed. I laid in one position for five hours. Something my body never does.

Snapped to my feet at 6:00. Leg feeling better. Had two bowel movements already this morning. Hungry again. These 36-mile weeks have my body going crazy.

Doing it all over again this week. Marathon's under a month away. This morning's a perfect morning for Sly's There's a Riot Goin' On.

Keep up, kiddo.

COL' NEW YORKIN': DAY ONE

Tuesday morning, the fourth official day of the j3 Family Runaway 2009. We awoke early needing to catch a 8-ish train from Boston's South Station to Penn Station in Manhattan. Big day for a Dallas girl and a high plains drifter like myself. This was the city. Not only that, it was our first time on a train that went faster than highway traffic and didn't just go around the amusement park all day. In fact, I spent most of the morning worrying about whether or not I would be spotted as that cat that's never been on a commuter train. It was really just a practice in imitation. I just followed what everyone else was doing. Plains, trains and automobiles, homie. Hell, we'd even sneak a ferry in there for good measure. When they approached the train, so did we. When they boarded, so did we. When they sat down and put their tickets up above their seat, so did we. And when people decided to knock out and take a nap, so did I.

The train was perfect for sitting back and listening to Mingus which is what I did as I drifted in and out of sleep. We were on the shady side of the car so it was perfect napping although it was difficult to not want to take it all in as Massachusetts and then Connecticut sped by. I'd be watching businessmen poised in their seats playing on their laptops and thinking, "Man, this makes my four-minute commute look straight-up heavenly." To think of doing it even twice a week is almost too much to stand. By foot, I'm only 25 minutes away. These dudes are crossing three states for work. Say what you will of the Panhandle and the Yellow, you can't front on a four-minute commute. For lunch everyday, I'm sitting in front of my television in my house for 45 minutes of Dan Patrick, a nice salad and a handful of peanuts. Would New Englanders/New Yorkers consider that a significant upward step in the "quality of life" scale? Not sure, Connecticut looks really nice as it flies past your huge eight-foot Amtrak window. Sure has something on West Texas there. Or was it Rhode Island?

At one point, I switched over to Steely Dan which went quite well with the ride into the City. Pretzel Logic to be precise. Some parts of the rail were a blinding and confusing series of tunnels, canals, ravines, bridges and otherwise unsightly areas. Worth sleeping through, really. But it was interesting because you knew you were nearing the big city by the quality of the tags. As you crept in on the city mile-by-mile, it became more intense, more inescapable and more vividly overwhelming. I didn't get much because, well, it was moving by so quickly.

Before we knew it, almost every crevace, nook and corner of everything in sight had been tagged. Nothing was off limits. These dudes would tag your grandma if she was within a block of the train. No where was out of reach.
This led to the cyclical argument that my lovely wife and I always tend to get into. What's graffiti worth? Who benefits? Truth be known, she hates almost everything it stands for. That's alright. I hate about half of what it stands for. The other half, I fully embrace. At one point, she just stopped talking and, instead, any time we passed a tag (which was every ten seconds really), she'd just look at me, pinch her lips together and then just shake her head at me. Like I was the one that did it. I've always loved graffiti. I don't love vandalism though. To qualify graffiti as vandalism before even considering to be art firstly is a tragic mistake. In my humblest opinion, some graffiti is undoubtedly art and then some is just vandalism. It's now a matter of where you did it, it's how you did it. If someone keyed my car, that's vandalism. If someone took white spray paint and wrote the word "chump" on my car, that's vandalism (and incorrect). If some cat bombed my car with a bumper-to-bumper burner with three-color faded fill-ins and shadows. I'd still say that my car was vandalized because, by definition, it was. However, it's art first and foremost. When you're sitting on train watching the countryside fly by at 60 MPH and no idea how close you are to your destination, the only indication that you're getting close is the underpasses start to become these flashes of kaleidoscopic colors. You can't read what any of it says because it's moving by so fast, but it's walls absolutely covered from the inch closest to the ground to 20 feet up the wall. It's like the city speaking for itself.

We ran into some nasty delays on the way in because there were trains backed up on the track. After about forty minutes, though, we were moving again and the city began to reveal itself to us as we snaked through the outskirts of Queens on our quest for Manhattan. I fired off pictures panickly as I saw more and more of Manhattan. I was fixated. Sometimes not blinking. From this distance, Manhattan looked small. I was pointing out landmarks that I recognized frantically.

This was likely the last good view of the city that we had before entering the final stretch of track into Penn Station. We'd disappear into a series of subway tunnels taking us under the city, under the river. Before any of us could blink, we were there.

We grabbed our bags and, again, just imitated what everyone else was doing. "Just do what they do. Go where they go." We needed to get a cab to our hotel. And MetroCards. First, we make our way up to the street. The City's not very friendly to luggage. Made me want to retire to a backpack fast. I've got my crazy-pimp suitcase with three wheels trying to navigate it through the crowds, halls and staircases. There's just no easy way around it.

Once we came up street level, my jaw dropped--momentarily, of course. You gotta keep moving. It's quite a sight for a cat from Lubbock, Texas where municipal codes prevent businesses from erecting signs taller than their building and billboards are strictly governed to protect "the flat" of Lubbock. When you see Manhattan and you stand in the middle of it, the City not only feels like it goes on forever laterally, it also feels like it goes on forever vertically. It's hard to not become slightly suffocated at first sight. I'll admit it. It was awesome.

We quickly waved down a cab which was much easier than I was anticipating. Hopped in and began heading uptown to our place which was just a stone's throw from Broadway/Times Square.

More on the cabbies later, but I gotta tell you, it's like a headrush sitting in one of those things flying through traffic. Amazing how traffic works in a city like New York. It's almost like objects floating in a rushing river except nothing ever touches. The traffic has a behavior all of its own. It's instinctual. It's anticipative. It knows every next move. And almost 70% of the vehicles are cabs. They absolutely rule the streets.

I was looking for the Cash Cab because, as it would turn out, we would need the cash desperately. More on that later as well.

After arriving at our hotel, we found that, as luck would have it, our room wasn't ready, but it was cookie hour and I learned in my travels, if anyone offers you a free cookie, take it. We chilled in the lobby, made phone calls, dropped off our luggage with the concierge to lighten our load and then, my lovely wife reminded me to tip. It's at least a buck a bag anytime someone touches your bag. Lesson learned. Only I'm touching my bags from here on in. The city's an expensive place to live because everyone expects a tip, it seems. And I'm a cheapass. So you can see where this is heading.

I just put on Jeru the Damaja's Wrath of the Math. An old dusty vinyl copy that I haven't played in ages. That good ol' Brooklyn illness.

We headed down to the subway to grab the train out Brooklyn for dinner and sights. We're attempting to buy a MetroCard and the damned machine is saying that my debit, which is all I carry, is invalid. In fact, so is my lovely wife's. So not only do we find in Boston that you can't rent much on a debit and credit's king, now our lowly debit card isn't even working. So I fork out another $50 or so for two MetroCards. I inventory our cash flow--good enough for dinner and dessert, but not much else. Maybe the machine just wasn't reading our cards right. I mean, for one, it might make sense, but both cards not reading was a little unsettling. Anyhow, boundlessly, we boarded a train bound for Brooklyn.

Once arriving, we took a short walk through the neighborhood and ended up at the highly recommended (thanks, George) Grimaldi's Pizzeria.

Once again, we're seated next to people we don't know. Like at the same table. Takes a little getting used to. Good thing about NYC though, is that there are so many different languages, they're more likely to not even know what you're saying and, if they do, changes are they don't care enough to listen. It was pretty amazing, though, that the majority of people we ran into spoke something other than English. You were almost expectant that someone wouldn't speak English. It was almost everything but. English is still the most prominently spoken language in New York, say, 60%, but the other 40% is split amongst a hundred different languages. I'm from Texas. It's predominantly English and Spanish. That's about it. And that's about a 85/15 split.

Nonetheless, my lovely wife was looking, well, lovely. I was too hungry to think about much else than a nice warm pie and a tall Brooklyn Lager which I hadn't had since the Sox whooped the Yanks back in 2004 and an unfortunately Yankee fan lost a little bet to yours truly.That pizza was the real deal. Makes me kinda jealous of New Yorkers. I mean, being from Texas, we don't really have anything super cool to claim as definitively Texan. I mean, barbecue? Is that definitively Texan? Cowboys? Hmm. Okay. Anything else? Country music? I mean, Nashville's the capital. You can get damned good barbecue in Memphis--probably better than Texas barbecue. When you're sitting under the Brooklyn Bridge chomping on a big ass piece of pizza with a nice tall beer, you feel pretty special.

We exited out into Brooklyn and walked around a bit before ending back up at the Bridge for some ice cream and enjoy the sunset as well as the beautiful view of Manhattan as the night draped the city in darkness. From this vantage point, you feel pretty small as the skyscrapers of Manhattan tower into the sky.

Likewise, Lady Liberty looked tiny just sitting in the harbor. She was absolutely dwarfed by everything else around her. You grow up thinking she's the size of fifty Godzillas and then you realize that's she's not even the size of one. That little excursion was on the second day.
Also feeling pretty small in Brooklyn was probably the only other Texan under the Brooklyn Bridge at that same moment: Country recording artist Jack Ingram. He was there attempting to break a world record for the most consecutive radio interviews. I don't think there was a previous record though. If there was, no one was talking about how much that was. Jack was just shooting for 24 hours. Does that mean that the previous record was 23? Who would stop anything at 23 hours with 24 is just such a nice round number? It's such a cool number. Divisible by two, three, four, six, eight, twelve. Twenty-three? Lame. So I don't think there's anyway that there was a previous record. So Jack set up camp under the Bridge and people were just calling in and asking him questions. What's funny is that if he did this in, say, College Station, Texas, he'd be surrounded by drunk and hollering college kids until the last minute. Here, though, in New York City, no one cared. There was a lingering manager, publicist, label rep. I met him a long time ago and I was thinking of reintroducing myself until he mentioned you pick up his new record at Wal-Mart or Amazon. Thanks for nothing, Jackass. Hope you sell two units. And both to your parents.

We walked back to the start of the Bridge near sundown so that we could begin our walk back to Manhattan as the City was lighting up.

I love Brooklyn. It was much more my steez. Manhattan's cool, but Brooklyn was just the right pace. Just the right people. Just the right view. Just the right attitude. And, man, there's some crazy music that came from Brooklyn. You'll just have to peep that NYC MetroCard Mix that I threw up a while back. As we walked on the Bridge, the City offered its money shot.

The Brooklyn Bridge, while enjoyable, was a panicky and frantic affair as cyclist and joggers ruled it's wooden footbridge. I almost watched a child get obliterated by a cyclist who was about to take flight he was moving so fast. Guess there's very little slow in an urban environment of such a size. There's no loafing lane. It's go fast or go away.

We did find time to snap a few shots as we handed off the camera to a German couple. Or was it French? Slovakian? Who knows.

Shirt courtesy of Daunda. Thanks Wil. End day one.

A DAY IN THE LIFE: OCTOBER 31, 2009

Photoblah-g from Halloween, 2009.

Started it off at 500 with a banana, a bagel, four Advils and two glasses of water. It's standard for a +10-mile run.

At 600, I sat down in front of the TV set in the living room and enjoyed a Biography on Stephen King (I guess that Halloween is the connection here) while I stretched. Interesting that he was about to throw Carrie away until his wife found the unfinished manuscript in the trash and demanded that he re-write it. Gotta love lovely wives.

By 630, Kool Aid and I were on the road and running. I love running in the morning. It's so peaceful. You can basically run in the middle of the road without worrying about getting mowed over. Especially on a Saturday morning. I enjoyed TV on the Radio for the earlier part of the run, White Stripes for the later part. 16 miles total. Hammy still giving me issues. Left IT band tightened up around the ninth mile. Here's a pic from Kool's neighborhood. That's an oncoming car. One of a few very few we encountered at that hour.

By 800, we were on the backside of the Tascosa Country Club making our way to West Hills. This was about on the eighth mile.

Mile 12 at 900. I was attempting to take a pic of me blowing a snot rocket. No dice.
Flew by the store at 1000 to get cash, some syrup and sausage for breakfast. My lovely wife offered to make waffles and sausage. I had two waffles, a fist of sausage, some milk, gatorade and a couple of Advils. And at 1000, I got kisses from Tucker who was happy to see his Pa.

At 1100, I was still drinking my coffee. Planning a trip to Lubbock. Yes, I stole this mug from Daybreak about 14 years ago. Still use it.

1200 I was packing my bags for the Hub City. Lot on my plate for the day.

At 1300, I was passing beautiful Happy, Texas. I love the panhandle. I love how flat it is. It's good for clearing the mind of all the garbage and noise. Just point the front bumper south, hit the gas and enjoy the view. I brought a box of CDs to audition on the road. I hadn't done that in quite some time. Just left the iPod in the Yellow.

1400: discovered a gem in the stack. A compilation from BK One courtesy of Rhymesayers. I haven't heard good hip hop in probably three years. This was a welcome listen. I jammed it all the way into Lubbock. Also notable from the stack was this Shades of Brown record. Dopeness. 1500: Ice cream at my grandparents' place. Gommy insisted, I obliged. We watched Tech struggle with Kansas. Our quarterbacks suck. Either way, though, they're my team. Can't change that.

1600: helping my father get hooked up with Facebook in his office upstairs. This is overlooking the park out back.
1700: my nephew showed up dressed as Shrek. My niece was dressed as a princess. I jacked his mask and played Shrek.

1800: Tech decided they wanted to win on Saturday and turned it up in the fourth quarter breaking a 21-21 tie and winning 42-21. It was enough of a bore to knock out Austin the cocker spaniel. I was at my mother's place talking to Sharon and enjoying a little relaxation. Mom was playing Catholic mass.

1900: dinner with my Mom at Rosa's. I had the burrito plate. My mother made a comment about how no one else in our family eats raw onions like I do. They should.
2000: I have no picture for 2000 hours because I was attempting to take a shot of Krispy Kreme at night going about 40 MPH past the store front. The result was a blurry picture of a Wal-Mart. Just worth noting that I was that close to a Krispy Kreme and resisted stopping and locking myself in the bathroom with a dozen of devil's food donuts. Instead, I proceeded to the local stores to do a couple of compliance checks and then stopped in at United to buy my first six pack within Lubbock city limits. I chose Harpoon. This was at 2100. Harpoon is so good. One of the many great things that come from Vermont.
At 2200, I arrived at Danny's house. Dude went off on decorations for his Halloween party/fiancee's birthday. Nothing sets it off like the bloody shower curtain, though. I'm a fan of the classics. Psycho specifically. And duke had more smoke machines than a Ted Nugent concert.
By 2300, the party had jumped off. I was enjoying my Harpoons talking to the many interestingly dressed folk. Kinda felt like the party pooper for not dressing up, but I never do. I have a hard enough time being myself that being someone else is just too much of a challenge to have fun doing it. Ran into Leangelo...the man of many trades. Tonight, he was a German countryman. It would figure that he would opt for the only costume that is accessorized by a 80-ounce beer stein.2400...midnight. When the real freaks come out. I always feel bad for girls who feel forced to dress like prostitutes for Halloween. I mean, it's really a shame that girls feel pressured into wearing close to nothing like Halloween is some sort of stripper contest. Even more bizarre, though, is when men feel like they need to dress like prostitutes. Like this cat. Kudos for the most awesomely weird costume I've ever seen a dude his age wearing.
And just take my word for it...yes, he was wearing the shorts too. Just another day in the life of yours truly.

#28: "RAP TYRANNY"

LAST EMPEROR
"RAP TYRANNY"
ECHO LEADER 12"
1999



First time I heard Last Emp, believe it or not, was on Lubbock radio...the late KTXT to be exact. It was about 10:45 on a Thursday night and I just finished playing a softball game and was making my way home. Thursday night was hip hop night on KTXT and Wil was telling me that I needed to tune in. So, on my drive home, I turned it over to KTXT and the very first thing I heard was "Rap Tyranny" splitting the silence. In many ways, from the very first line, it split much of the monotony I had been dealing with. Back in 1999, Rawkus was reaching veteran status and, although we didn't yet know it, was soon to dim. Everyone was stretching to achieve that realness, that cred. Everyone wanted to be around at the beginning. Everyone wanted to be down with the surging independent scene and it was a rat race for heads to pronounce themselves to be more underground than the next. In many ways, I was the same way.



But "Rap Tyranny" obliterated all of that. It was perfection in a hip hop track and from the first time I heard it, I was reminded that one's perception of me meant much less than just listening to what I liked. And liking what I like. I didn't need anyone's validation by saying, "Yes, you're correct. That's good." I know what I like and I know what I don't like. I don't need a magazine to tell me what's good. I don't need MTV. I don't need writers. I don't need that mixtape friend. I don't need radio. I don't need iTunes. I don't need Hip Hop Connection. It just took a chance moment on a KTXT broadcast and I said, "Yep, that's it."


"Rap Tyranny" is a ferocious sub-three minute party jam that shakes its ass harder than almost anything out there. Two verses and one chorus is all it takes for Philly's finest, Last Emperor, to slay heads.


"Subjects and predicates / Proper mic etiquette / All beef, I'm deadin' it / Hip-Hop confederate Face me, you better get / High priest and Jesuits / Against the Emp your attempts will seem effortless / I make the girls wanna kick their heels up / Klingon warships throw their shields up / Rippin' the reels up Wounds never heal up / Mad Soul controls the razor-sharp steel cuts."


Add to it the Commodores' "Assembly Line" break and what you have is an resurrective and downright anthemic b-boy classic. While Last Emp would fade in the post-2000 hip hop landscape, "Rap Tyranny" is as sturdy as hip hop songs come and will, undoubtedly, withstand the test of time. And this thing was a freaking b-side! They just don't make 'em like they used to...back in 1999. Oh, those were the days.

And as good as "Rap Tyranny" is, it's still only #28 on this list. Just wait, kiddies.

BACK TO THE WAY THINGS OUGHTA BE

With the early and fitting exit of the Red Sox from the 2009 postseason, it really dawned on me that all of this Red Sox-this, Red Sox-that bandwagoning from the last seven or so years has finally corrected itself. The Sox just didn't have it this year. Hurt by underperformance of key players, poor free agent acquisitions and riddled by key injuries all year, the Sox were only in a position to surprise, but not win it all. As they began the year full-throttle, the Yanks struggled, but we knew that with all that money invested, in time that team would perform. Their second half would be unstoppable. The happy moronic A-Rod would return with his arms wide open like some messianic Scott Stapp characterture. His goofy equine-like gallop, Miami-Beach highlights and doh-faced interviews. Ah, heeeeeee's baaaaaaaaaack.

Back is the Derek Jeter fist. I mean, nothing says Yankee victory like the trademark iron fist. Little Boy Wonder even set the all-time Yankee hit record solidifying his position as a "true Yankee." Whatta laughable notion. He's not a "true Yankee." He'll never be a "true Yankee." You can't be a "true Yankee" without winning a championship. Whatever. Guess Don Mattingly will never be a "true Yankee." Anyhow, probably no questioning Derek's greatness when he was collecting championships like postage stamps back at the end of last century. There in their third longest drought without a championship in the history of the Yankees. What if they don't win this year? How long can Yankee fans live without a championship before they start jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge? 12 years? Less?

Thank goodness they're back, though. I'm tired of all this Red Sox hate. They love you one year, they hate you the next. I would just prefer indifference. Back when the fans adored them and no one else cared. No one else cared because everyone was too busy loving or hating the Yankees. This year kinda reset the AL East. The Orioles were back to the basement. The Jays were the potential upset north of the Border. The Rays were good, but not good enough. The Sox chased first all year and swiped the Wild Card and the Yankees ran away with the division and are likely to take it all. Probably without losing a single game.

Then there's Joe Girardi who goes from babbling new guy to quiet and confident mob boss putting hits on squealers. He's like Torre's mini-me. Sitting there with his arms crossed, subtly singling runners, looking just below the brim of his cap. He's like a character actor who just does it by imitation. And, really, is coaching a team that has more all stars than entire divisions combined truly that difficult? Don't you just kinda sit around and think, "Damn, this job is pretty easy." Anyhow, good job Joe Torre, er, Girardi. The only hard part of your job is wiping ol' man Georgie's backend after his monthly bowel movement. Okay, sorry, that was below the belt. Literally.

Then, there's this guy. Like the guy who showed up at the party at the very last second and didn't bring any beer but just drank everyone elses. I mean, in the true spirit of excess, adding Marky Mark and the Money Bunch to a line up that already included A-Roid, Gehrig Jr., Captain Clean Shaven and Godzilla seemed a little unnecessary, but remember, it's just about getting what the rest of the division (i.e. the Red Sox) can't.

Not that the Sox didn't want him. I mean, who wouldn't want this guy.

Then there's Nick Swisher. The fun-loving nucleus who sticks his tongue out and toggles between either a "hang ten" or devil horns. Keep it loose, have fun. Act like a moron. Work on a few new handshakes. High five the crowd. Work that "he loves the game" schtick. It worked in 2004.

Uh, whatever.
Yeah, then there's "act like you've been there before" Justin Chamberlain. He's a starter, he's a reliever, he's a starter, he's a reliever. Who cares. He's neither. He strikes out five and then blows a lead. He's the guy who pumps his fists like he's never struck out a .300 hitter before and has all those reel-ready huffs and puffs, poses and finger points to the heavens like he just wants his spot in the Sportscenter intro or SI cover. Someone give this dude his own sneaker and give him what he wants. Any tool who tells a cop after getting thrown into the back of a squad car for suspicion of DWI, "You know I play for the Yankees, right?" loves his place in this world a little too much.

And then there's Sabathia and Burnett. How do you fortify a pitching staff? Well, not only do you go out and get the most expensive pitcher on the market that no one can afford, you snag two of the most expensive pitchers on the market that no one can afford. Sabathia plays with such a fake zeal and wonderment like, really dude, did you expect anything less to happen? Stop screaming when you get out of a pinch and don't worry, you're gonna win a championship. Trust me. If you need any reassurance, just go into the locker room and read the names on top of the lockers and stop all your fist pumping and crazy mound antics. You've reached the promised land. Congrats. It's much easier here than it was in Cleveland. Just throw it on cruise and take a nap. Your ring will arrive in April.

Thank you, Yankees. For finally stepping up your game and rising back to the top of the East. Now the Sox can return quietly to number two and stop playing this spend-your-way-to-the-top game of Monopoly. For the Sox, the future's in the farm system. Make the right purchases. Win the easy ones and half of the hard ones and pitching, pitching, pitching. Just nice that we once again wear our hat with pride in the organization and not have to deal with the lame "Sox suck" comments around every corner. The Yankees now can own that hate again.

In the meantime, the Red Raiders once again rolled into Lincoln, Nebraska and rocked the Huskers who were #15 in the nation, 31-10. Longhorns squeaked out a win against the Bradford-less Sooners. Oh well. Guess Oklahoma really is good for nothing. Oh yeah, the Cowboys of Stillwater gotta good team. Should be the next biggie to fall when they face the Raiders in Stillwater in a few weeks. Might have tickets to the Raiders and Sooners in Lubbock. Would love to see the Raiders toss Bradford on that shoulder again. Have a speedy recovery, Sammy, we need you to play in Lubbock.

WHEW...SO WHERE WAS I?

Oh yeah, I was training for a marathon. Still doing that. Knocked out my 12-miler at 5:00 on a Wednesday morning. I say things like that, sometimes, just to exert some sense of superiority. Truth is that I'm not really any better than you. I just enjoy doing stupid things to my body. We're gonna start calling this TEAM BEARD because I have the most righteous Forrest Gump face apron right now.

(pause for gulp off a Santa Fe Pale Ale...goodness)

Plan is to knock it back once more this weekend and then let it shag all the way until race day and shave the night before. It's col' nasty right now.

Training is going well. Well, it's going better. Tuesday night, after returning from Juarez, I took to a six miler and ended up straining my foot. It hurt so bad, I had to stop and rub the foot. It felt like someone drove a nail through the top of my foot. We legged out the rest of it, but only ended up totalling four miles. It was a horrible attempt. This was near a week after my last run. My mind was eager, but my body was unwilling.

Tonight went much better. It was a reassuring run, to say the least. The foot ached a little, but recovered by the second mile. By mile three, my foot pains were a thing of the past. Kool Aid made the run. It's been too long since we've had a good run together. Looks like most of our scheduling problems are starting to iron themselves out. We'll do 14 on Saturday morning. For those scoring at home, that's a half marathon. Jury's still out on the new shoes. First run out in them, I had foot pains. Not a good start to our relationship. Still have probably 60-75 miles in my Lunarlite trainers.

Ran to White Stripes tonight. Rare that I don't run to hip hop. White Stripes hit the spot.

I ain't no friend hoarder on Facebook. I really only let the best in.

Still don't like Dodge Neons and, yes, hip hop is dying. I don't even connect with the music anymore. Either I'm getting old or the music just sucks. I was at Enterprise renting a car the other day and this girl was all meanmugging and working her best ruffneck look. Her phone rang. It was some rump-shakin' mess that you hear on the radio. She showed the girl at the desk her identification and she was 16 years old. Girl was born in 1993. Girl wasn't even born until the end of the Golden Age. By the time she could even understand the music and it's context, Big Daddy Kane was getting lifetime achievement awards by the armful and Grand Puba was slinging another solo record on Koch. Girl's whole style is the art of imitation. She doesn't even know what she's reppin'. Like Jeru said...she play'd herself.

Left the country and the Red Sox were in the playoffs. Came back and they were out. That was quick enough. At least I didn't have to suffer through it. Knew that it would be a string of miracles if the Sox were to make a serious run at the title. I mean, really, I don't think anyone's making it past the Yankees. They went out and bought the talent. I might disagree with it, but seems to be working for them. Here's to the Angels. They got their work cut out for them.

Listening to Gang Starr's Daily Operation. It always tends to put me in a nostalgic mood.

So, I went to Juarez to build a house. Went with 10 others from my church including my lovely wife. Truly a hardhitting experience. Our Missions Committee gets hit alot with comments like "we have enough people at need right here in Texas, why must you go all the way to Mexico?" Trust me, after seeing it firsthand, it's tenfold once you cross the border. And, as my brother said, "God didn't create borders. We did." Juarez needs some serious help.

Time has cured many of my right wing tendencies, but I grew up in the panhandle of Texas. You're brought up going fo 'self. Helping out Mexico? Really? C'mon. We got our own problems. And most of our problems are because of them. Just keep them out. That's the Texas way. Build a huge ass fence by a river and just dare them to cross.

Here's a few facts. In Juarez, guns are illegal. With guns being illegal, where do you think they're getting them? Bingo. Estados Unidos. In fact, they make really good trade bait for drogas. Yep. Cocaine. Heroin. Marijuana. It's Mexico's biggest export and we're their biggest client. We're locked into a long-term relationship with Mexico where one societal ill feeds another. We allow them quicker kills and, well, their love is mutual. They ship a million more drug habits into the States a week. Do the knowledge, kid.

Also, in Mexico, public education runs out at the young age of 12. Then you gotta pay for it. So what happens when you're a young tike in a family of seven and your parents make only $110 combined weekly? Think you're going to get secondary education? Nah. You learn how to say your ABCs, subtraction and how to wipe your butt and then you're sent to fend for yourself. That's a sixth grade education. How much did you know when you left sixth grade? Maybe you knew the rules to kick ball. That was probably about it.

And, while the druglords are no longer ruling the streets, it's federales...about ten deep in the back of a Humvee with AK47s slung over their shoulder...and they look no older than 18 most of them. The border crossing was an absolute bummer. They made us unload our entire trailer and open up everything so they could see all of our possessions. It took about an hour thirty to make into the country. Then, you drive around Juarez and you think this is what you're protecting?

Really, Juarez is about as harsh of elements as you'll find. Not only is the poverty widespread and clearly indiscriminate, it's much worse than the States. Our poverty line is still supported by a number of government programs. In fact, the poverty line still affords minimal urban living--walls, air conditioning, a furnace, hot water. That "poverty" in Juarez is like middle class.

We helped a family of seven. Two adults raising five kids...two of which were dumped on them by the mother's sister as she fled town. She's raising them in a house no bigger than a single-stall garage made out of pallets, corrugated cardboard and computer boxes. You could see sunlight through the walls, the floor was dirt and it was built, basically, amidst a junkyard. Rabid dogs ruled the land. That and the relentless sunlight. The weather was cooler, but one could only imagine what the summers are like in that desert land. With only an annual rainfall of nine inches and wind like you can't imagine.

I met a young kid named Francisco. The lone boy in the bunch. He was a spirited kid, but obviously lacking options and experience. He'd mount a horse, beat the crap out of it, the chase a dog or a chicken. He was just rotting away on this land. It's a harsh reality. I can't even imagine waking up every morning to it. No mobility. No job. No change. No connection to the outside world. I brought with me a futbol americana (the more oval-shaped football), but he wasn't so interested. He wanted to play futbol. The round kind. I gave it my best. You could tell he was so eager for stimulation. Made me think about how sometimes I yearn to not have stimulation. I like just doing nothing...well, doing nothing but running. But that's how I get away now. I run from stimulation. Here this kid's out there with me kicking a futbol back and forth like he's been waiting years for someone to come and do this with him.

We built the house quickly. We actual slowed down to make it last and to spend more time with the family. It was all adults because no one wants to send their kids to Juarez anymore. Better for productivity, though. Learned how to make stucco. Not sure what kinda market there is, but think that if the music industry implodes and everything's free, I can always stucco houses.

Met some nice folks for Casas por Cristo. Good organization. Good folks. Whaddup, Brandon. Whaddup, El Tigre.

On the third day, the mother made us "pork." Turns out it was really goat. It was goodness, though. Spicier than the nutsack on a habenero, but it was good.

We left for the border on Monday morning. Never been so happy to be in El Paso. Amazing that, just a half mile north, it's a third world country. It's like night and day. Not only do mission trips to Juarez benefit the participant on a spiritual level, but there's a number of social and political questions that rise to the surface from such a trip. Is our neighbor Juarez also our enemy? Do we help our enemy or just let them suffer on their own just next door? I wonder if the crime rate in El Paso would be where it was if that was, say, Vancouver on the other side. Funny how we waited close to an hour and a half going into Mexico as they checked everything we were bringing in yet to the north, you can barely break speed crossing the Canadian border.

Juarez needs help. That's all I'll say. Don't know who reading this will take action, but guess there's no harm in just saying it.

Jackson hurt his back left leg. Not sure doing what. I think he was trying to dunk on an 8-foot rim and had adviced him that he wasn't gonna land it. Anyhow, confining a beagle to a "crate-like" atmosphere is proving to be challenging. Not because he's trying to escape, but he just tries to sadden you into action.

Tucker, however, is just a bundle of joy. Really because he's too stupid to know any better. That's why I like him.

I sold that Juarez experience really short. Mainly because I'm tired and need to go to bed. I hate going so long without posting, but broham's busy living. Hope you are too. My nephew Parker's celebrating his big number two next weekend. He's the bestest. And he's a big 2Pac fan. In fact, dude's more than a fan.

Friday, homie. Tomorrow, I'll run 14 miles and then pack back some serious Sharkey's burritos, then a nap, then some Texas Tech football as they'll knock off the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

I miss all of you.

TEAM ROOT DOWN MARATHONING

Col' rocked eleven miles yesterday. I guess, in journalism, once you exceed the number "ten" in a sequence, you are to transition to numerical representation of numbers. I ran 11 miles yesterday. 11 miles will get you comfortably from American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas up to White Rock Lake. This week, I'll run 12. It was a challenge yesterday. Had to run without Kool Aid. Woke up at 5:30 and went through my typical pre-run preparation and stretching. The book had spoken of developing a self-affirmation of sorts that you're to say to yourself the second you get out of bed all the way up to your run and during your run. More on that later. But I had that going through my head during the hour leading up to it. Tried not to get too hyped up though. As they advise, you don't wanna get too up for a run or your pace is ruined and you'll wear out faster.

So many rules and every runner is different.

My pregames are pretty much like this. Contacts in. Banana. Bagel. Maybe another banana. Four ibuprofen. Two glasses of water. Stretch. Stretch back. Stretch legs. Stretch legs. Stretch legs. Stretch arms. Stretch neck. Stretch back. Stretch legs again. Put on underwear. Put on shorts. Watch TV. Relax. Self affirm. Get iPod ready. Fill up Camelbak with Gatorade/water mixture. Pack supplement gel. Pack phone. Vaseline inner thighs. Vaseline nipples. Put on shirt. Tuck in the back. Put on hat. Go out front. Stretch back and arms again. Self affirm. Stretch calves. Stretch Achilles. Shake out arms and legs. Check time. Start music. Put in headphones. Commence jog.

It's done much in the same way that a warrior prepares for battle. I quietly move from room to room breathing deeply. Now become methodical. Ritualistic. Of course, in my days, from about 6AM to 7:30 is always ritualistic. If it wasn't, I'd probably say, "What in the hell am I doing up at this hour?" And go back to bed.

Suppose you get used to it.

You have many friends in marathoning. Besides my partner who is constantly there to push me and to push. It's a symbiotic relationship. Important for a runner. Doing the run yesterday was easy after I accepted on the third mile that he ain't there and I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Other important friends are your gear. Essential in a Root Down Run is the iPod. Until a few years ago, runners didn't have many options as far as portable music except the Discman or the Walkman. Both of which were incredibly bulky and limited as far as duration of play.

The iPod Shuffle however has a good four hours of play and such a very small fame that pressing play and throwing it in the small pocket of your Camelbak is fairly easy. Also, given that you can't search for songs, it takes out the temptation to thumb through which REO Speedwagon song you want to hear next. Press play and take what it gives you. That's what the Shuffle was designed for. Also, the Shuffle is quite durable and shielded from the elements like sweat, Gatorade, stompings or dog bite. Practically indestructable. My music of choice yesterday was some old DJ Shadow radio mixes. I prefer 30-45 minute mixes for continuous musical enjoyment. I don't like the song-shuffling format. Too chaotic. I'm a long-play homie.

Also, you can't do anything more than four miles without significant hydration. In the summer, you can't do more than two. That's where the Camelbak comes in. For about thirty bones, you can sport one of these beautiful packs.

In many ways, it's kinda the fannypack of the runner's world, but because we're not camels and we need constant water, the Camelbak is a necessary piece of gear. Not only is it great for hydration, it's gotta small pocket that can carry a phone, a Shuffle and one of those nasty-ass Carb packets. Also, for your upper body, while it's not that heavy at all, it does act as resistance in your run and can strengthen shoulders over the course of a two-hour run. Don't be a moron like me and bite through the valve when you first get it. I've been dealing with a constant leak and, after my ten-miler, that leak led to wetness all over the right side of my shirt and resulted in a small case of runner's nipple where a wet garment rubbing on a sensitive area just takes layers of skin right off. Yeah, bloody nipple. Read the instructions if you wanna keep your nipples. Nothing gangsta about losing nipples on a long run.

If you're running when the sun's out, you're gonna need a hat. If you're gonna run in any temperature higher than 60 degrees, it's gonna need to breathe. I started out with my Fog Hat. It worked for shielding my balding head and huge forehead from the sun, but that's really about it.

This thing was hotter than hell and was like wearing some sort of Medieval sweating torture device. When I'd take it off, it was like someone was wrenching a sweat towel over me. I needed something different. That's when I transitioned into the less fashionable, but more functional Under Armour runner's cap. Made of a mesh, those manure-fused West Texas winds go right through my headgear however my hairless top is well-protected from the sun.

They're kinda expensive. I'd prefer they put at least a double-T on there so I could represent something other than Under Armour. Looking for a different one with less logoing on it. I don't belong to anyone. Team Root Down, baby.

Other friends of Team Root Down are less gear and more related to diet/nutrition or medical preventatives. The most important of these include the banana. As much as I've hated these for, uh, the last twenty five years, I've finally trained my body to receive them again. I needed to. The banana is a high potassium food that's fantastic before and after runs because the potassium relieves cramping and aches in the body during a run and shortly after.

I munch one a day even if it's not a run day. Also, from the fruit family, I religiously much also an apple and an orange a day. Apples are good in carbs and oranges are my cold and flu preventative. It's worked the last three winters. Another important element to Team Root Down Marathoning is ibuprofen. Other than being coated in that vomitous Longhorn-orange, these puppies are great for also relieving aches during the run. I pop four of them before heading out on the long runs and three before the medium runs. And, mostly, before bedtime, I'll take a few more because it helps me sleep well--mostly aiding with backaches.
Keep them around. I like to muscle through just about everything, but sometimes it's necessary to take a pill here or there.

On the earlier runs, because I hated the sensation of Vaseline on my body, I was using baby powder to aid in the dryness of those sensitive bathing suit areas. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
It worked well on the short runs, but as we went moved into six miles and up, it was no match for the incredible accumulation of sweat so I moved up to Vaseline that, not only can effectively fix squeaky doors, it can also make sure that there's no chaffing and blistering in your hot spots. Not only that, it doesn't powder up right smack in the middle of your shorts when you're running. I wear black shorts so when that white powder hits the front of them, it looks like you peed cocaine. Not a good look.

Ah, Vaseline. Proper administration of those retro-petro can prevent a number of things--most importantly of those is the debilitating chaffing that can lay you up for multiple runs depending on the severity. Not only that, it makes you walk like a duck or a penguin. Being that I'm already naturally awkward, having to explain an otherwise unexplainable waddle is not something I'd particularly like to do. Vaseline up. Hit the nipples. You don't wanna end up being some weird nipple-less alien creature who eats poodles. Vaseline is your friend. Holla.

In my reading, there's much talk about the mental aspect of running. I think too of the spiritual aspect of running. There's a lot at work when you're forcing your body to accept, now, two consecutive hours of exertion. It's mental, spiritual and definitely physical. If one's not working, there's an imbalance and it could be detrimental.

Firstly, you're trying to maintain your pace, your rhythm, your step. You're trying not to think. Trying not to get too hyped up.

Breathe. Keep your head level. Stay on your heels. Keep breathing. Why is my belly cramping. Keep breathing. In and out. In and out. Stay loose. Stay on your heels. Head up. Back straight. Don't lean forward. When you lean forward, you're running on your toes. Stay back. Upright. Arms at your side angled down and don't clinch those fists, dude. Your shoulders will start hurting. Head level. Breathe, homie. Keep breathing. Look both ways. Proceed. Why does my ankle hurt? Don't think about the ankle. Belly cramp is still there. Breathe it away. Stay loose. In and out. In. Out. In. Out. Great, a dog with no leash. Look both ways. Wonder what our pace is.

As you proceed into the run, many of these instructions habitualize and are no longer thought. They're just done.

Breathe. Back straight. Head level. Stay on your heels.

The pains go away. The cramping reduces. Traffic is traffic. You look for it, but you're not terribly alarmed by it. Dogs? Hell, you don't notice them until they're running right next to you like one did to me the other day. I didn't even notice that I was listening to a radio interview the other day on my iPod for close to ten minutes because I was zoning and my body had relaxed into a pace and a comfortable position. The pace becomes less an issue than just making it. When you don't think of pace, I've found, you actually hit your best pace. You force it once you start to think of it.

Breathe. Back straight. Head level. Stay on your heels.

The other day, I did ten miles at a 10:19 pace. Yesterday, I did 11 miles at a 10:48 pace. More hills mainly. I think my true pace is somewhere in the middle, but am not going to obsess about it.

There's also the emphasis put on visualization in the book. That a simple loop that you can play back in your head might make all the difference in the world. They say it can be a "greatest hits" loop of a sampling from each of your best runs. Like what the weather was like, what it felt like, where you were, who you were running with. The smells, the sights. Or maybe a visualization of what it will be like finishing the marathon. Who will be there to greet you. What you'll say to them. What they'll say to you. How good you'll feel. I got the visualization of ending the race and hugging my lovely wife. That's a great one. Not quite as good, but more entertaining is the visualization that I'm running away from an army of zombies. I know, it sounds stupid, but when you're crawling up that hill, I like to visualize that there's about fifty zombies behind me ready to tear my arms off.

It's actually how I arrived at my next music project: "Music to Flee a Zombie Invasion By." I see it as a two-hour dash from thousands of zombies. Not the Night of the Living Dead variety, but the Dawn of the Dead remake variety where all of them run and hurdle like Carl Lewis. Just wait. This is gonna be ill.

Oh yeah. The affirmation. It's a little Stuart Smalley, but I get it. I'm following the book's instructions. I don't know any better. So it goes like this:

I'm a marathoner. I'll run on any day at any time in any weather. I don't ache. I don't tire. I don't get frustrated. While I wasn't born to do this, I can train my body to do anything and nothing can hold me back. With God on my side and hell on my heels, I'm running my happy-ass 26.22 miles in December.

Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Going to Juarez this week to build a home. Pretty sure I won't be running down there. Will need to find a way to knock out a 12-miler this week. Shirts should be in this week. Demand seems to be extended past supplies. The early responders to my solicitations will get their shirts. First come first serve. I'll be reaching out for addresses once I get them back from the Austin area.

New shoes come in this week too. Word 'em up.

GAME DAY IN BOSTON

Back to the vacation because, if you'll recall, we ended in Maine and that was only the first full day of our seven day vacation. Woke up on Monday morning to a nice overcast, but not enough to dissuade me from taking my measley three-mile jog as required. I took a route through the Back Bay that led me across the Charles River over to MIT and back. Now, I'm fairly certain that NYC never sleeps, but Boston does. At the hour I was up that morning, it was a dormant and peaceful city. I even beat birds out of bed. It was a rare feeling of serenity (note the first use of the word serenity on The Root Down). I was jogging in my clunky old New Balances as I deliberately only packed one pair of shoes to cut down on luggage. The 574's were not the perfect choice, but they're a nice cross-functional shoe. Heavy on jogs, though.
It was the day after a loss to the Yankees. In fact, the Spanks took two of the three games while in town. A huge setback for the Sox who desperately needed slow down the second half tear the Yankees were enjoying. Giving up two of three at home...probably not gonna do it. Of course, when anyone from the Central Division comes to town, there's a feeling of optimism and resilience because, well, we're gonna whoop their ass. Nothing says rebound like the Chicago White Sox and their batting practice-quality starting pitching. Good thing we didn't have to face Buerhle in this series. We spent the better part of the day just walking the streets of Boston. We went through the Back Bay near the commons. Checked out some of the old beautiful churches. I hit a few stores...namely City Sports...and looked at some running shoes. Talked to some statues.

At lunch, we took the train to Harvard and visited Bartley's Burger Cottage just across the street from campus. It was cramped for space, but well worth it. Some kid kept looking over his mother's shoulder and throwing fries at me...some with ketchup. My lovely wife, probably the pickiest of eaters, was in trouble. Think she jumped out and got a burger with cheese and lettuce and maybe bacon. I can't recall.
As for myself? Easy. The American Idol which had bacon, cheese, grilled mushrooms, grilled onions. Yep. Mushrooms. Finally have trained my taste to accept mushrooms.

Something very weird in the city. I'm from places with parking lots. Restaurants with tons of space, big booths, large bathrooms with stalls you can do cartwheels in. Texas has tons of real estate. In some eateries in the Northeast, you don't get your own table. You sit on a long bench next to someone you don't know. It's like a cafeteria. It was a little bizarre at first because, well, I grew up in a place where you got your own table. A little privacy. Here, there's a kid next to you throwing crap at you. Strange. I could get used to it, but it was a little strange.

Boston is largely considered one of the most academic cities in America. It has Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, Berklee School of Music, Tufts University, Boston Conservatory, UMass, New England Conservatory of Music, Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts College of Art, Emerson College, Suffolk University, Northeastern University, Newbury College, Cambridge College and a host of others. Just worth noting.

After lunch, we headed downtown to check out Mike's Pastry for a cannoli which my wife described something like a donut or some sort of fried bread that's stuffed with a filling of a sweetened cream cheese variety er something. Whatever. Let's do it. Then we'd go check out the North End. Mother Nature had other plans. The second we started devouring our cannolis, it began to pour. Great...on game day. No reason to worry, except that I purchased these tickets in February, have had them secretly tucked away in a book on a shelf somewhere in our house. I picked a date on the calendar some seven months prior of a game we were to attend, got the best tickets for that game which, at least on the seating chart, appeared to be decent tickets and now it's raining. Not only is it raining, it's coming down "hah-dah" than many of the locals have seen in recently. Awesome.
Not to be deterred, my lovely wife made the most out of it by enjoying a nice beverage--some interesting orange drink...a carbonated drink...that she drank with a straw out of a can. It wasn't Crush though. Something Italian.
The cannolis were pretty good. I opted for chocolate. I kinda reminded me of the chocolate pies I used to enjoy as a young boy. You know, the kind you could get at 7-11. They were wrapped in some sort of waxy paper and it was just like biting into a chocolate pudding pie. Kinda cold. Had to do it though. It was then I started thinking that next year, one of my New Years' resolutions would be to never turn down eating a new food for a year. Not that I would never turn down food and balloon to a whopping 300 pounds. No, I would never say no to a food I've never had before.

While we were in the area, we decided to hit up the North End to catch some hot bocci action at the bocci courts on the waterfront. Unfortunately, Mother Nature beat us there.

Guess what we play in our turd-infested backyard is not really "bocci." That's the West Texas-backyard version. It's typically played on a fine gravel court. Not grass. Not sure if I could make the adjustment to gravel. I rely on the grass and turds to slow my balls down. Er. Uh.


A check of the watch suggested it was time to head back to the Back Bay as batting practice and pre-game festivities were underway. We headed back to our swanky hotel and I threw on my traditional game garb--my red Youkilis shirt--and we headed down to Yawkey Way.

I love it down there. For a guy from Texas, the experience of Yawkey Way is unmatched. In Texas, we tailgate which largely works for football, but not really for a paced and sometimes excrutiatingly slow game like baseball. This is like one big tailgate. Even sweaty Jim Rice showed.
You know, for a Hall of Famer, dude's got an unusual glisten. Someone throw Jimmy a towel. We made our way down into the park. We follow the signs on the concourse and I was partly using my internal navigational skills. I knew we were close to home plate. We dodged through crowds on our way to our ramp. As we walked up the ramp, we were greeted by the ominous frame of the Green Monster. The Fenway experience is a claustrophobic one. With it's Green Monster, tightly seating and humble street-level disposition still makes it one of the few stadiums that doesn't share any of the characteristics of the supersized turf shopping malls that now dominate the landscape. Like Wrigley, I'm sure, the first time you see the field is when it hits you how completely badass some of these old stadiums are. It's unapologetically uncomfortable, cramped, dirty and has no parking but it's Fenway. You just deal with it. This is what I saw when we came up the ramp. There's nothing like it. The smell of freshly cut grass, hot dog water, beer, a cheap musk on the dude next to you, thirty years of gum under the paralyzing seat you now squeezed your ass into. We find an usher to help us with our seat. He glances at our tickets and then says in an obvious tone, "You're right here," and points to two seat not but an arm's length away. Sure enough, we were right there.
Early bird gets those Stephen King seats. These were Ben Affleck in the Good Will Hunting-days seats. You gotta get up early to get these seats, kid. It ain't about cheddah, homie. It's about a good alarm clock. I got in my seat, my lovely wife went to get some beers (she offered, really) and I readied my lineups and freshened up on my scoring to make sure I could hang during the game.

Tonight we'd be taking in Buchholz vs. Contreras of the Chicago White Sox. Nothing gets a winning streak started like bringing AL Central teams to Fenway. Although Buchholz would get shelled early, the Sawx hung on in a wild one, winning 12-8. Plenty of offense and that keeps the lovely wife happy. The ladies don't like pitching matchups. They like homeruns. I love the game. What can I say?

We went deep in the bullpen bringing Saito, Ramirez, Okajima (who had his own cheering section), Bard (who fired about six pitches at 100 mph) and Papelbon who I think my lovely wife fell in love with from this vantage point. Dude, how hard up are you to make a poster for a middle relief pitcher? This hawd.

Wait. Did you catch the gasface?




Nice.

A few beers, a Lowell homerun and three hits from Pedroia later, we were leaving with a win. This is always a welcome sight in Fenway.

Fast forward to tonight, we're getting our ass-ends handed to us by the Blue Jays as we trying to painstakenly reduce our magic number for the wild card from two to zero. After getting swept by the Yankees over the weekend and then having to watch them yesterday clinch the division in front of us, you'd think that we'd have enough fire in us to punch our tickets to the playoffs. This team acts like they don't want it. Better find some sort of inspiration because likely we'll be playing the Angels first round. That won't be pretty.

The next morning, we headed to South Station to catch a southbound Amtrak train to Manhattan. Plains, trains and automobiles, kid. And a ferry too. More on that later.

Listening to Showbiz and AG. And you're not. That's when y'lost.

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE FAN FROM GRADUATE

Living in the Panhandle where, let's face it, football is king and no one likes the local teams, it's important to be armed with the ability to differentiate between purely a fan and then those who actually graduated from their institution of higher learning of choice. In Texas, the University of Texas is often the default choice for collegiate sports. I mean, dudes that didn't even graduate from high school are throwing horns like wassup now and, as many of you have heard me complain about before, you can't just pick a college to root for. There's two ways to become a fan of a specific college or university. You can root for a college/university if you attend, have attended or work for that institution of higher learning. You can also root for a university if you are from the same municipality that shares the university. Now, while I went to Texas Tech, if I did not, I could still be a fan because I was born and raised in Lubbock. However, I cannot root for, say, SMU. I am only permitted to root for Texas Tech or LCU (Lubbock Christian). Now, if I'm from Lubbock but had attended, say, Arizona State, I could root for three teams: ASU, TTU and LCU, but only those three. If your city or town does not have a college or has a college with no sports, you can root for the closest college geographically. And moving to a town does not necessarily qualify you for fandom. That's where it gets especially fuzzy so we'll leave that for another lesson.

If you were born and raised in the Yellow but did not attend college, since AC does not have a sports program, you are permitted to root for only West Texas A&M in Canyon. Yeah, sure, it seems cruel, but someone's gotta root for Division II schools. They'd probably have a helluva football program by now if everyone in the Yellow backed them and came out to the games, contributed to the booster programs. You wanna root for University of Texas, you should've studied in high school. The man in the above, yes, with the beads and sombrero, likely did not graduate from University of Texas. In fact, his obsession with the school is likely to be so intense that he might often forget that it is, after all, a school firstly and a great football program secondly. The fandom reaches almost feverish levels. The combination of that man's stupid hat, Mardi Gras beads (no telling how he got those...likely he was dumb enough to buy them and you hope he did and didn't lose any clothing to get them), his knockoff Oakleys and that corny goatee, suggests that he didn't take a single year of college.

There's a number of consumer products targeted at those experience frenzied fandom (and not all too coincidentally those who also shop at Home Depot and watch Nascar). We'll just use University of Texas again as an example for no particular reason. Now, we know this to be a hammer, but for the diehard fan (not graduate, mind you), you can have it drenched in your favorite university's colors and logoing. Not saying that if you graduated from University of Texas, you're not likely to use one of these, but I'll say this: if your a University of Texas football fan in the Panhandle, you're probably more likely to have one of these in your toolbox. Or on your mantle.
If you have anything that inflates in your home that has University of Texas logoing, I would say it's especially likely that you're just a fan. It's one of those frivolent purchases that most graduates wouldn't spend their money on. Either because it's a moronic investment of cash and/or their busy paying off student loans.
Also in the department where you'd find inflatable items or Nerf are the foamy fingers. I've never noticed a college graduate using these at games. Scan the student section at any televised football game and look for the foamy finger. These are the types of purchases that not only scream high school dropout, but they also denote individuals who have drinking problems. Such binging leads to purchasing foamy fingers and then passing out. They can also lead to playing carney games when the fair comes to town. Hell, such binging leads to going to the fair. Also, notice the goatee. I see a theme.
The below are the cars of individuals with some decent expendable income, but not a lot of brains unfortunately. What drives someone to such levels of idiocy, I'm unsure.
Seriously. I mean, really...seriously? While we're on automobiles, anyone that subscribes to the catty and childish inverting of a rivals decal is certainly not a graduate. See also PEEING CALVIN DECALS. See also BACK WINDOW ALL-OVER DECALS.My Texas Tech Red Raiders go up against #2 UT this weekend in Austin. I don't think we have a trailer's chance in a windstorm, but gotta watch anyway. It really is much like going up against a tornado, you protect yourself, don't do anything stupid, minimize injuries and pray for the best. It's possible we could win this, but I'm not going to even try and calculate those odds. UT's just as solid as they were last year, we're less our star quarterback and wide receiver and we're in Austin this time. Worst of all, UT's got revenge on their mind.

Holla.

WENT TO THE DENTIST, LEARNED ABOUT 70+ RACE HATE

I'll be honest...it's been, probably 15 years since I've had my teeth cleaned. I mean, I brush, but not the kind where they use a pick to scrape your teeth and gums until you bleed so much that you're swallowing gulps of your own blood and, as a result, you go home and puke because of the blood in your belly. Haven't had that kinda cleaning in a while. Of course, my hygienist says that if I got my teeth cleaned more often, I probably wouldn't have that happen. Guess, then, it truly is the cleaning that only happens once every 15 years.

Regardless.

I walk in for my appointment, sign in, grab a newspaper and have a seat. I was reading the sports section. Something about Texas Tech. I hear two women talking just across from me. Probably about ten feet away. On the wall, they sit with about five or so chairs between them. One woman is clearly older than 70. A little feeble. Hunched over in her chair. She had one of those sweet grandma voices. My grandmothers are much older and, for the record, carry themselves much better--good genes. The other is a woman that's probably about mid-40s. In their exchange as I was walking in, the younger of the two women has told the other that she busses kids for a living. It leads into one of those weird elderly monologues which constantly just boarders on bitchery. Just complaining.

"This country has just gone downhill," comments the older woman. "It's just not the way it used to be. Life was so simple." She continues to talk about computers like they're an epidemic, how rowdy kids are these days and how you can't trust anyone. I check out temporarily and go back to reading. Just an old woman complaining about something. "That older generation is dying off. People like me."

Just moments later, I perk my ears up to hear here remarking something relating to "they're just so uncontrollable" and "always seem to be up to no good." I just hold the paper in front of my face and direct my ears to their conversation. She lowers her voice as if she senses me listening in. "I imagine they're just a wild on the bus."

The busdriver replies, "Well, it doesn't matter what color they are, all kids are pretty wild these days."

The older woman stands up and moves to the seat next to the busdriver. "I tell you, though, you know why they're so wild, it's because they came from Africa."

Serious. I'm not kidding.

She continues, "Of course, I remember back when it was much different for them. People used to call them (she then buries her voice) 'niggers' you know."

I sat motionless, startled.

She continues, "I always hated that word and never called them that. Except when I thought they deserved it. You know, like when they were acting like one."

Awesome stuff.

At that point, I was about to stand up, walk over to her and kick her chair or something. I didn't look at the busdriver, but she made no reply. I imagine she was a struck as I was. About three seconds later, a woman appeared to the left of me ready to take me back to the row of dentistry chairs in the back. I stood up, glared at her and cleared my throat in her direction and proceeded back into the office.

I guess when she talks about the simpler times, she's referring to when people were shameless bigots and they sprayed black kids with high-powered hoses. When presidents were white men. You know, when blacks had to use different water fountains. We forgive old people too often when they spew obvious and unmistakable hate. I think, as the younger generation, part of our social maturation means correcting the err of the older generations. You can't just say, "Okay, starting now no more bigotry." If you tolerate the hate of the older generation, you've made no progress. I'm guilty of it too. Trust me. In fact, I should've stopped this woman and said, "Stop talking, ma'am. You're about to make a really big mistake." I didn't. I just sat there purely as a witness to her racehate.

Gotta love West Texas. But let's be real. It's not just West Texas. It's not just at the dentist office. It's not just old people. And it's not just blacks and Latinos. Hate and intolerance is so thick in this country. Lucky for me, I rarely have collisions with it because the people I associate with primarily know my sensitivity to bigotry and hate. Secondly, I don't roll in public that often. I have my safe zones, but I don't particularly like being around people. For the longest time out of high school, I was a sponge for experience. I put myself in situations that made me uncomfortable so I could learn, grow. Maybe defend my point, but it grew old and exhaustive. You just can't change the world. Now I anonymously jab from The Root Down and expect to change the world through a blog that has no readership except for my closest friends and family.

Man, this coffee is dark this morning. Second morning in a row. Good thing, though. I'm so tired.

Rangers were shut out last night...again at home versus the A's. Gotta win the easy ones if you're going to make the playoffs. Sawx won again last night in the ninth innings versus the Angels. The wild card lead climbs to 6.5 games. Yankees won in the ninth as well last night. We're still 6.5 behind in the division.

I love you for who you are. Keep on rockin, son. It's Thursday.

THE ROOT DOWN PRESENTS: THE NYC METROCARD MIX

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VIA ZSHARE

Just watching the highlights from last night's games. Looks like Boston can't lose and the Rangers just kinda took care of themselves losing the last two to the A's in Arlington. It's not a done deal yet, but it ain't really much of a race either with a 5.5 game lead.

Man, that coffee's dark this morning. Holy cow. I can see my fingernails growing.

Ya'll kiddies are in for a treat. If you're just happenin' in, today's your lucky day, homie. Because this morning, I present THE ROOT DOWN NYC METROCARD MIX. The concept is pretty easy: create a mix that represents various subway stops around the city by select either songs about NYC and/or songs by NYC musicians from that area. There are a few exceptions.

Our subterraneous trip through the city begins in Flushing-Queens with the Last Poets' fitting tribute to the city, "New York, New York." While there, we roll near LL's "Farmer's Boulevard" and Kool G Rap's "Rikers Island" where NYC's hardest reside. Organized Konfusion sends us off on our way to Queensbridge where we enjoy Nas's (obvious) NYC anthem, "NY State of Mind" and MC Shan's equally anthemic "The Bridge." We cross over into the Bronx where not only do we hear KRS One, but Ace effin' Frehley, yes, a Bronx native. Then, into Harlem and, yes, we'll enjoy two different "Harlem River Drives." One by Eddie Palmieri and the other, the more popular of the two, Bobby Humphrey on Blue Note. Bronx and Harlem are just hawd. As little as I spent in the City (and, really, I think four days is a short stay for only one city and that's NYC), we didn't get a chance to head north of Central Park so, essentially, Bronx and Harlem are sadly loosely represented by maybe some obvious picks, but you can't tell me that you were expecting Harlem's own Zhiggie. Son, you lost. Once you cross 110th Street, you're moving downtown. Manhattan, Theater District, Lower East Side, Soho, Washington Square...here's where things tend to get a little hairy. So many styles, so many artists (or so many "artists"), so many freaks. Manhattan's a bustling, non-stop madhouse. It's streets are a series of veins and arteries that pump life in and out of the boroughs. You'll enjoy the beauty of summer in Central Park and autumn in Washington Square. You'll even get your freak on as you meet some of Manhattan's finest druggies, prostitutes and transvestites...a notable one named "Holly."

Get serenaded by a bum who calls himself "Ol' Dirty Bastard" doing Sugarhill Gang. Definitively New York. One exception to the qualifying elements of the mix is my new favorite saxophonist Albert Ayler. He's not from lower Manhattan. He's not even from NYC. But at the young age of 34, he boarded the Liberty Ferry which services the Statue of Liberty and as it departed from Battery Park, he jumped into the cold November waters to his death. His fiery "New Generation" and his blazing vocal approach will absolutely melt your face off. Considered to be one of his most horrid performances, I find it remarkable. Don't listen to jazz critics, like hip hop purists, they're always pissed off and everything sucks unless it's Louis Armstrong or Kind of Blue. Manhattan's completed by another notable death in the same waters and that is monologuist Spalding Gray who, also, jumped from a ferry departing from the tip of Manhattan--the Staten Island Ferry. His "Dear NYC" is a post-9/11 letter to the city...written only months before his suicide. We couldn't get to Staten Island because it's not serviced by subway so, sorry, no Wu. You can download my Wu mix from last year.

Hip hop might've been born in South Bronx or even Queensbridge, but it grew up in Brooklyn. Some of the finest hip hop from the 80s and early 90s came of the street corners of Brooklyn. The music of Brooklyn is so very rich, the culture can only be cut with a chainsaw. Like elsewhere in the City, there seems to be a song about every freaking street corner. You'll hit Brighton Beach with native Herbie Mann, Flatbush, Long Island and then head back into Queens completing the loop through the city finishing with Hollis-Queens' favorite sons, Run DMC.

Thanks to George who provided some of the backbone of the mix. He'll contend there's too much hip hop and not enough spoken word. Maybe he's right. It's hard, though, to pull through NYC, the birthplace of hip hop and not have a mix that's dominant in hip hop. Plus, that's my lean. I'm a hip hop head. I got a few suggestions during and some after I had completed it of songs that needed to be included. If I included them all, this puppy would've been five hours long. It's impossible. When you're trying to perfectly represent a music mecca like NYC, you're going to have to cut corners. And that, my friend, is why we took the subway. Even though it's not prettiest or safest way through the city, it's one of the fastest and cheapest. Just get your MetroCard and it'll take you damn near anywhere. It'll take you from almost Connecticut all the way down to Coney Island. For the traveling head on a budget, this is the mix for you. Because as little as you paid for that MetroCard, it's gets you everywhere and this resulting mix is one of duration and mass. Timing in at just over two hours and forty-six minutes, it's the very longest that I've ever completed. A mammoth mix of exactly 50 songs, it'll take a while to download so be patient, but I guarantee that it'll be worth the trip.

Here's that tracklist. Don't forget your cover art, it'll stand as a nice visual for your trip through the city with all of key stops called out. Click this right here or the link below the cover art at the top.

Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

Tracklist:

THE LAST POETS "NEW YORK, NEW YORK"
LL COOL J "FARMERS BLVD (OUR ANTHEM)"
YELLOWMAN "NEW YORK, NEW YORK"
KOOL G RAP "RIKERS ISLAND"
ORGANIZED KONFUSION "ROUGH SIDE OF TOWN"
NAS "NY STATE OF MIND"
SUPER KIDS "GO QUEENSBRIDGE"
MC SHAN "THE BRIDGE"
CROSS BRONX EXPRESSWAY "CROSS BRONX EXPRESSWAY"
KING SUN "COL' NEW YORKIN'"
TALL DARK AND HANDSOME "THE BRONX IS BACK"
COLD CRUSH BROTHERS "THE BRONX"
KRS ONE "SOUTH BRONX"
ACE FREHLEY "NEW YORK GROOVE"
LORD TARIQ & PETER GUNZ "DÉJÀ VU (UPTOWN, BABY)"
CANNOBALL ADDERLEY "THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK"
ZHIGGIE "TOSS IT UP"
EDDIE PALMIERI "HARLEM RIVER DRIVE"
BOBBY HUMPHREY "HARLEM RIVER DRIVE"
KOOL G RAP "STREETS OF NEW YORK"
JAMES BROWN "DOWN AND OUT IN NYC"
BOBBY WOMACK "ACROSS 110TH STREET"
TES "NEW NEW YORK"
SONNY ROLLINS "MANNHATTAN"
DEF JEF "DOWNTOWN"
BLACK STAR "RESPIRATION (REMIX)"
HORACE SILVER "SUMMER IN CENTRAL PARK"
MATABARUKA "JOHNNY DRUGHEAD"
MILES DAVIS "NEW YORK GIRL"
LOU REED "WALK ON THE WILDSIDE"
DAVE BRUBECK "AUTUMN IN WASHINGTON SQUARE"
THE FUGS "SLUM GODDESS FROM THE LOWER EAST SIDE"
ALBERT AYLER "NEW GENERATION"
BEASTIE BOYS "HELLO, BROOKLYN!"
CROOKLYN DODGERS "RETURN OF THE CROOKLYN DODGERS"
JERU THE DAMAJA "BROOKLYN TOOK IT"
DIGABLE PLANETS "PACIFICS"
QUINCY JONES "SUMMER IN THE CITY"
JAY-Z/NOTORIOUS B.I.G. "BROOKLYN'S FINEST"
HERBIE MANN "PUSH, PUSH"
ROY AYERS "WE LIVE IN BROOKLYN, BABY"
EAST FLATBUSH PROJECT "TRIED BY 12"
SPECIAL ED "THE BUSH"
JVC FORCE "STRONG ISLAND"
LAFAYETTE AFRO ROCK BAND "HIHACHE"
DE LA SOUL "WONCE AGAIN LONG ISLAND"
EPMD "BOON DOX"
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST "STEVE BIKO (STIR IT UP)"
3RD BASS "BROOKLYN QUEENS"
RUN DMC "PETER PIPER"

TEAM ROOT DOWN MEETS THE WOMAN LYING IN KOOL AID'S YARD

Wake up, much like I've been doing every Saturday lately...about 6 o'clock...scarf an apple, a banana, a bowl of cereal and two mugs of coffee. Took two ibuprofen and stretched my body out for about thirty minutes. Was feeling good and needed to because today we'd be doing a new high: seven miles. Drove the route with my lovely wife the night before and just driving it made me tired. I passed out face down at about 10:15. Early for a Friday night. Early for any night, my lovely wife mentioned. Yeah, what can I say, I'm an awesome date.


I'm driving over to Kool Aid's place as that's where we agreed to start at straight-up 8. When I turn the corner, there's a fairly large woman laying in his sideyard with her hands clutching to her head and face. She's on her side, but is making the swaying movements with her shoulders and legs. I pull into the driveway and hop out quickly approaching her because, well, I'm a Boy Scout. I know how to handle mentally ill women laying in residential areas. Totally. There's a merit badge for it. First, I examine the area for any contraband, blood, medication, needles. I look closely to make sure he's not packing heat or bearing a knife that could be turned on me. I look for blood on her. No evidence of anything. I then crouch down next to her and begin speaking to her.



"Ma'am, are you in pain? Do you need help?"



I put my hand on her shoulder and see if I can stir her a little. She makes no noise, but only slight motions. There's the faint sound of some moaning and sniffling. Her body is cold, but she's not shivering. Very still. Otherwise very quiet.



"I'm going to call for help. Stay still." I stand up and look further down the block. There's a woman about six houses down in the street speaking to a man in a pickup looking down in my direction. I hold my hands out to signal to her. She begins to walk my direction hurredly.



She rushes up to me and begins whispering. "We've already called the cops. I don't know what's going on. We just saw her as we turned the corner and she was stumbling around so we called an ambulance. You think she's on drugs or something?"



"If not, she should be. When did you call her in?"



"Seven forty-five. Fifteen minutes ago."



I tell her I'm going to call again. I don't have any problem calling again to tell them to hurry. Especially when the lady is dangerously close to I-27's access road and interstate. I kept envisioning her rising to her feet and then sprinting onto the interstate. I go into Kool's house and say, "There's a lady laying in your yard. Let me borrow your phone." Kool Aid, looking at me stunned, hands over his cell phone. I fire another call into 911.



We go outside and stand over her with the other couple like wildlife dying from a gun wound. Kool Aid offers up a towel and we just sort of toss it over her. She kicks it off. I mention to Kools that she's starting to take on the manneurisms of WWE's Mankind.



She's just laying there clinging to her head. I was thinking she got popped in the head or something. Upon closer inspection, I notice that she's absolutely filthy. Her bare feet are covered in dirt and grime. She has something scribbled on her arm. Her cold skin is purplish in spots. I hear sirens nearing. Moments later, the first respondants arrive--a fire truck. AFD's finest hop out and approach her cautiously--even though a little more abruptly than I first did. They start trying to pull her arms away from her face. She tightens up and starts to shake away from them. Starting to become obvious that she doesn't want help.



"If you don't cooperate with us, we're going to call the police. Oh, nevermind, here they are."



About three squad cars arrive. The fire department describe their account. APD walks up to her and begin yelling at her. They start trying to diffuse her by grabbing her feet and her hands. She quickly pulls her foot back, raises it in the air and takes a swooping chop at one the policeman's gnads. I think she might've caught part of it because he became really agitated at this point. The struggle continues. I'm starting to wish that I had a video camera on me. It's beginning to turn into a COPS episode. By the way, I never mentioned that COPS is taping in the Yellow. Dope stuff. I'm thinking about following APD around to see if I can get on national television. Like walk by on a sidewalk as a guy's getting a sobriety test or something.



Swept the police blotter this morning. Don't have any more info the woman. Pretty decent start to the morning. I did however, find on the blotter my traffic accident from Thursday in which, while stationary in traffic, a punk teenager's Bigfoot pick up rolled back into the hood of my Civic and the trailer hitch basically put a whooping on my car. Check this out.
I was civil. Didn't whoop his ass or anything. Pretty aggravated. I just want State Farm to tell me my car's going to last 200,000 miles and they're going to fix it to the condition to make this possible. I mean, it was on pace to do so until youngblood's "transmission slipped" and put his truck on my hood. This is what we call a "bad touch."


Anyhow, they put Womankind on a gurney and took her away in an ambulance. Kools and I decided to depart on our jog--now 17 minutes late. Those minutes are precious when you're talking about morning traffic on our seven-mile route.


Incredible jog. The ibuprofen might have been the difference. The pace was good. Hit some hills. My legs got slightly cramped on about the fifth mile, but managed to jog it out. Uneventful until we got bumrushed by some animal that was part squirrel, part wolf. This thing came flying out from the side of a house. Both Kools and I were zoning and not really watching the peripherals until this object begins dashing towards us. Kools thought it was a squirrel, I thought it was a gorilla. After a few moments to think about it, I believe it was a dog. I caught a close glimpse of it and it looked like this.

The Yellow's official bird is a wandering dog. That's how many there are. I hate pet owners in this city. It appears to be just too difficult to keep a dog in your possession at all times--whether on a leash or behind a fence. I think that a city's population of wandering dogs is a direct reflection on the graduation rate of the city. That and the number of Nascar bumper stickers. Might be a correlation there.

This week, Kools and I will attempt, wait, not attempt...do eight miles. I'm taking orders on Team Root Down shirts. These are going to be the absolute illest shirts you've ever seen.

Keep your dog on a leash or behind a fence or they might catch a bad one on the chin. You don't want that.

WORKING ON AN NYC MIX

I've hinted about it a couple of times to a few people, but the city got me inspired to head up a mix. The concept, essentially is to start in Flushing and then travel through the City in geographical order. We'll start in Flushing/Queens, Rikers Island and then cross over into the Bronx, Harlem, Central Park, Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Flatbush, Long Island, Coney Island.

The mix will feature everyone from Ornette Coleman to Lou Reed, JVC Force to the Fugs. I've consulted with a few New Yorkers (primarily George the Guru) on inclusions and he certainly filled in the holes (including the aforementioned Fugs' "Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side"). Found James Brown's "Down and Out in New York City" this morning. You're not ready for this one. Of course, good for you, neither am I. Busy week. This morning I got a root canal in, uh, thirty minutes, then work until eight tonight. Jog four miles after that. Tomorrow, I got two Roundhouse games after work. Friday, mow the lawn and in-laws are coming in. I'll get to it sometime.

Stay up, killa.

WHAT THEY MAKE CANDLES OUT OF: UPCOASTING

Just unpacking and getting things back in order before I jump back into the fire tomorrow. The Root Down is back up and going after some time away...some much needed time away. A little fatigued and my back is sore from backpacking it the entire time, but I really can't complain. I figure you don't go to Boston and NYC to sit around and watch it all happen. You gotta get out there. And we did. I'm sitting here behind a mug of dark coffee listening to a copy of El Michels Affair's Sounding Out the City that I picked up at Fat Beats on Friday...remembering NYC fondly.

The view from the hotel in Boston

But the trip doesn't start there. It starts in an Alamo Rental lot at Boston's Logan Airport with me with my head stooped low in my own misery as the attendant explains to me that he can't rent me a car for our trip up the coast (that we've been planning for about seven months) because I don't have a credit card--only debit. You see, when I paid all of my credit cards off years ago, I shredded all of them. I have no use for them. Well, turns out, that my debit doesn't mean much to these folks because they're afraid that I'm gonna hop in one of their piece of crap Pontiacs and drive it off a cliff somewhere. I'd be doing them a favor if I did that. The dude stood his ground though. I fussed for a few minutes. I mean, I'm not going to leave with a simple, "I'm sorry, sir. I can't rent you a car." My lovely wife and I have been planning this trip for too long for me to just walk away and go sit on my thumb back at the hotel all day. I stand there like a complete moron until he offers some other advice. Eventually, dude caves. He leans to me over the counter and drops his voice, "I know that Budget has been known to take debit and I know for certain that Thrifty does." Thanks, homie. That's what I needed. I need the liberty to hop in a car that didn't belong to me, drive it into the ocean and walk away with no consequences. Not that I'd do that, but that's kinda what I'm looking for.

We walk next door to Budget and sure enough, they rent us a car. It would've been just as easy for me to find a credit card on the ground, take it in and drive off the lot with a car. We got a Pontiac. Didn't even know they still made Pontiacs, honestly. I thought they were extinct by now. They should be. It had XM though which was a pleasantry. I inspected it carefully. This tin can had about thirty different dents or scrapes. I noted every single one.

The next challenge was finding our way out of Boston which proved to not only be difficult, but expensive. Firstly, the scale of Boston is so tiny that, on the map, it would appears that you're driving miles, but really it's only feet. One thumb-width is about 500 feet and, before you know it, you're in Connecticut. You gotta have your eyes absolutely peeled because at 50 MPH, the map runs out quickly. We take one wrong turn out of the airport and end up paying a toll of $3.50 to drive about a quarter mile through a tunnel. Then, we end up on the Mass Turnpike heading due West (not North as intended) and square up at another toll booth and have to pay another $1.50. That's five bucks to end up West of Cambridge. We double back through the neighborhoods and downtown and finally get our bumpers facing North and South. When you see this bridge, you're heading in the right direction.

The premise of the trip was just point the car in one direction and step on the gas. Something I'm capable of doing and, armed with a keen sense of direction, distance and navigation, I figured there's not much that could really go wrong. The car was due back in 24 hours. No problem. We headed out on Highway 1 which maintains about a one to five mile distance from the ocean at all times. It would prove slow going because of morning beach-goers, but the view was much more rewarding then just hopping on the interstate and dashing up the way to Maine. We stopped in Newburyport, Mass so I could get me something to drink. I opted for some Dunkin Donuts coffee (which they call water in New England apparently) and we stopped for some photos just off of a dock in Salisbury just north of there. This is where I thought the steak was named, but had no evidence to support it. In fact, it didn't look to be a community of red meat eaters. Probably more seafood and vegetables.

It's was the perfect morning even despite a brush with Hurricane Bill that sent large waves rolling into the shores which made all beach-goers spectators not participants. Not that I really knew the difference between a rip tide and a regular Sunday morning because I don't usually see water puddling bigger than a playa lake, but the waves were pretty magnificent. My lovely wife tiptoed into the water. I stayed back and photographed.

Yeah, I suppose now looking at it, those waves are probably more of what I would expect from California. Not upstate Massachusetts. We continued up the coast to New Hampshire...Hampton to be exact. Not the Hamptons, but just Hampton. Nice beach community. However, I discovered that white trash migrates as far north as New Hampshire. I was surprised to find this cat riding alongside the main drag. The midriff is a dead giveaway. Either he's European or white trash. I diagnosed him as white trash. My lovely wife doubted my assessment saying that's he tan and looked to be in pretty good shape...suggesting that he might not be white trash because he looks to take pretty good care of himself. He's lean because he eats varmint and he's tan because he wears a midriff. That'd be the difference.

I applaud, though, his shamelessness. Dude rocked it like mad. We stopped at another beach and fired up a few pictures. My lovely wife built a small structure from the rocks nearby.


The waves crashed against the rocks and tossed a mist into the air. I told my lovely wife, "This is the kinda ish they make candles out of!" We laughed.

Onward through New Hampshire. It was the kinda stuff we only saw in magazines. Not used to seeing such natural beauty because I'm from the badlands of West Texas where it's an oddity to find a tree taller than twenty feet that hasn't been windblown to half it's height, water is virtually non-existent and it's stunningly flat and abandoned.

After crossing through Portsmouth, we arrived in Maine...the final state we'd be visiting on our venture. It was now past mid-day and travel proved to be pretty challenging because of the density of coastal population and its resulting traffic. Seemed like everywhere we pulled through was a thirty minute traffic clog. Knowing the interstate was only a mere two miles away at all times, we continued on Highway 1. Maine was more my steez. Less populus. More scenic. Densely painted with perfect coastlines, evergreens and puffy clouds. I'd live there in a second.

First stop in Maine was what is called "the Yorks" which consists of York Harbor, York Cliffs and York Beach. Because of Hurricane Bill's winds off coast, it was pushing waves over the roadway rendering it unpassable so we stopped off and got ourselves some grub. My lovely wife opted for the lobster looked ready to crawl right off the plate. We had to bludgeon it a couple of times just to make sure that it was cooked thoroughly. I had the prime rib and a Sam Adams which was spectacular.

Hunting for a lighthouse of up the coast, we continued through back roads and neighborhood streets until we dumped out into York Beach--a small boardwalk community with an arcade, a candy store and some clothiers. The lighthouse we were looking for disappeared somewhere in between. Rather than spending more time in the car looking for it, we parked at York Beach and took in some of the sights and the fat pale people in swimsuits. There must not be a great deal of sunlight in Maine.

After walking down the boardwalk, we hit up an arcade where we played a round of miniature bowling. You tossed these hard wooden balls the size of bocci balls at pins that were about halfway the width between a standard bowling pin and a broomstick. Place was so ill. I've made plans to have one installed in my home on the coast of Maine.

Despite my incredible form, I got owned by my lovely wife 47-43. Shaddup. There was a serious learning curve for a guy who sucks at regular bowling. The tendency to absolutely chunk this ball was assumed because it weighed only about four pounds. The harder you threw it, the less accurate you were, but physics would suggest that given the weight of the ball and the pins, you were going to have to throw it hard to ensure maximum destruction. It didn't work. She schooled me.

Listened to a spotlight on De La Soul on XM on the way up to Portland as we finally hopped on the interstate as daylight was becoming sparse with the clouds moving in. Portland would likely be our final stop as we wanted to see the Portland Head Lite...a famous lighthouse in South Portland.

Portland reminded me strikingly of Pennywise country...especially on this day. I was looking for ol' boy crawling out of a gutter. They all float down here, homie.

Thought about opening up a penny arcade and calling it Pennywise Arcade. My lovely wife thought of a few ideas for how we could make a living in Maine. Somewhere between a cupcake store and veterinary practice. Yeah, I have high ambitions. I'm gonna open up an arcade and make my millions one penny at a time just so I can name it after a fictitious clown from a Stephen King novel.

After about thirty more minutes of travel and enduring biblical downpour, we located the lighthouse. This was it. We spent about thirty minutes on the grounds. It was first lit in 1791 by using whale oil lamps. That's it in the background.



It was almost haunting as the Head Lite blew it's fog whistle conversationally with a nearby lighthouse to the north with the waves filling in the gaps. Hypnotized, I stood there in complete awe as moments passed.
It has been called the "most photographed lighthouse in North America." I guess I have to believe it because I'm not an authority on lighthouse photography.

After a few more photos were taken, we hopped back on the interstate to travel south back to Boston. It poured on us the entire way back in. Thanks for nothing, Bill. Seems everytime we head out on a big trip, we heading into some sort of weather. One outing on our honeymoon was disrupted by a tropical storm. Now Bill in Boston and Danny was waiting in the wings.

Beckett got slaughtered by the Yanks as we made our way back into Boston making a good excuse to call it an evening and plan our Monday in Boston.

I'm being ordered off the computer by my lovely wife. We'll continue more later.

THE ROOT DOWN BACK UP FROM A WEEK'S VACATING

Back in Texas. Amazing to be able to look 500 feet away and not see anything that's at least four stories tall. This $1.35 beer never tasted better. I spent $7.99 for a sixer of St. Arnold's tonight. The other night, off of Times Square, I put down $15 for a sixer of Sierra Nevada. It was worth it. But this St. Arnold's that I picked up by hopping in my car and driving a mile down the road and parking in a 16-spot parking lot accessible by two different traffic lanes without seeing a taxi was quite refreshing. And here I sort through all of the notes I took and want to mention on the blog and am thinking, I'll just give you a taste of NYC and Boston (and Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut) and then throw up the rest later.

Best vacation ever, me thinks. Better than my honeymoon? Hard to say. I was with my lovely wife, so I would say that it'd be easy for me to say that I, yeah, better than the honeymoon.

If you told me I'd be scraping sea gull feces off of a boardwalk in Maine 50 hours a week, I'd start packing tonight and the car would have a full take of gas, my lovely wife and two beagles in it by 7:00 in the morning. I love the peacefulness, the serenity. How awesome, though, to experience a direct contrast by jumping into the fire of the New York City transit system only two days later. We went from Better Homes and Gardens to a solid and unforgiving punch to the groin in just 48 hours. I wouldn't have it any different.

I don't vacate, I just walk a hair slower and speak about half as much.

Ya'll be good to your neighbor.