Like Rakim said, "It’s been a long time..."

Just some thoughts:

- As is customary for me, in the mornings at work, I went to take a brief break in the bathroom. As I work in shared office space, we also share a bathroom with a sales office for one of those bastard children of the Yellow Pages directory, an investment company, and the property managers of our building. So it's not exactly a private toilet for me, the only guy in my office at this point. I haven't been sitting down for three seconds when I spot a rock, no bigger than a peanut, right near my foot. Well, god forbid I step on the rock and bang my head on the porcelain, thereby rendering myself unconscious, so I use the side of my shoe to brush it out of the stall. As I do, the "rock" crumbles into pieces as I'm trying to move it. It's at this point that I realize it is not a rock, but in fact poop. And, by all reasonable logic, human poop. Look, is dog business tracked in from the sole of someone's shoe going to remain in small nugget form long enough to dislodge itself from between a Nike's rubber treads? No, I didn’t think so either. So, as I'm sitting down, plotting the footsteps I'll need to take to get out of this stall without stepping in someone's fecal matter, I'm wondering something. I'm wondering how a nugget of poop somehow managed to evade the plunge into the toilet bowl and ended up on the floor instead. My first thought went, naturally, to a need to poop so bad that it somehow turned explosive as soon as the boxers hit the kneecaps. But really, how many times have you had that urgent need, and it came out solid? Fudge splatter, sure. Nuggets left behind, unlikely. Then, I thought maybe a case of over-aggressive wiping might be the culprit. I think, however, you’d have to be not only wiping quite violently, but in some sort of weird trajectory at least one baby step from the bowl for that nugget to have gotten to that point. While logic still continued to evade me, I thought the most likely culprit, Occam's razor in this case if you will, was that somehow this overgrown dingleberry had somehow become attached high up the, uh, rectal split. And when the boxers came back up, the elastic waistband used its elastic snap to somehow propel this nugget away from the toilet and onto the floor. Really, the only logical explanation.
- So, this weekend was an interesting experiment in gambling for me. First, I think I'm finally getting the hang of craps. I played for a couple of hours on my "Hoyle Casino" program, and I’m beginning to understand the whole concept of rolling points, crapping out, and the magic of the Come/Don't Come bets. Like Sjoberg says, any game where you can bet on Come/Don't Come is good by me. Anyway, that's not the story. Friday night, Great Lakes Downs was running the "Regret Stakes," a race for fillies three years old. Featured in this race was a horse by the name of "Jean's Way." Now, you’d think that a horse named after my ex-wife in a race called "Regret" would be some sort of sign from the heavens, right? Well, I remember Jean's Way, not in a fond way, from the 2002 racing season. She actually cost me money when she came in an unexpected winner in a minor race, and my other two exacta horses finished second and third. Hell, leave it to a horse named after Jean to cause me severe disappointment and a loss of money, go figure. So, anyway, I pored over the form, looking for any and every reason not to bet the horse. Funny, I just inadvertently typed "hore" instead of "horse" a moment ago. Well, I fixed that problem. Looking at the form, there was no reason NOT to bet that horse. Opening line favorite, was third favorite on the betting board at post time, no reason to keep my money away. Except for one thing. Jean's Way is doomed to cost me money. She did (see race 8 on the card) cost me money, but only $6. I was determined not to bet a great deal on that shrewish harpy. Or the horse. Saturday was a much better day for gambling. I eschewed a trip to the golf course, as my mom and Bob wanted to play Evergreen, which is essentially a par three course. Knowing my level of frustration would have been heightened, having to spend $30 to hit nothing but 7-irons all day long, I stayed home. Mike called, and said he was popping over. Great, there goes my day of sitting on the couch. I had to think of something we could do, so I thought BLACKJACK. So we drove 90 minutes north to Little River Casino to play. I sat for about three hours, at one point coming back from $75 down to be $35 up. My last hand was two aces. It was the one hand where I had bet $15, $10 more than my usual. So I had to split the aces against the dealer's eight. I turned a 19 and a 14, and hoped to make my money back. Dealer flipped a two, hit a ten, and I got the hell up when I was still $5 up for my day. We drove back, and Bob and I ended up at the track, again. I hung in there pretty good until I finally got my big score of the year, so far. In race 5 I liked Clever Moon with Felipe Santos aboard. It was my lucky day when he went off at 21-1. I hit the place/show on him for $32, and a $1 exacta netted me $54.50. Conservative betting for the rest of the night meant that I had two track sessions and one blackjack session, totaling about 11 hours of gambling, with a net gain/loss of zero. That includes all food and programs and beer. Not too shabby.
- I'm confused about something that’s going on in the rap world. Actually, I'm confused about a lot that’s going on in the rap world, but I'll start here. Why is it that every rapper and group out there has to record a song about "The Game." You know, the rap game, the record industry game, whatever. I'd like to propose a rule. From now on, you must have at least THREE albums released by a major label and at least 2 million in total sales in order for you to tell me about the "game." How much friggin' sense does it make to see some no name rapper on his first album talking about how to win in the rap game? Doesn't make any sense to me at all.
· As long as I'm touching on rap, there's something else that’s bugging me. I remember when guns, knives, bullets, whatever, were essentially metaphors. Much like early jazz and the cutting contests in Harlem that Diz, Bird, and Monk would have, rap used to be about proving you were the greatest through lyrical innovation. Not to say that there isn’t some element of that left, but I’m disturbed that the metaphor of "killing you" by asserting that you were the better rapper on the mic has somehow been replaced with a literal "killing you," talking about guns, knives, bulletproof vests, and whatnot in real terms. What brought this on? I mean, does everyone feel that talking about and trying to be a thug is somehow the only way to gain the street cred that is the most valuable commodity in rap? Is this why brilliant artists like Mos Def, Common, and others don’t sell records the same way 50 Cent does? Because they aren't ducking bullets constantly? And far be it from me to play like a PTA parent here, but really, even if it is art, why is this the art that is being commercially celebrated? Bill Simmons, on his Page 2 column, has remarked before that it's really only a matter of time before some NBA star's posse goes after another NBA star because their boy got shut down, or fouled too hard, or was trash talked on the court. And someone's going to die. I couldn't agree with him any more. We’re raising a society of children on this music, that without proper guidance for its interpretation, is going to take these messages literally and become immune to the emotional after effects of violence. It's OK to kill someone, 50 Cent says so. I should make sure that I take blood revenge for my friend's death. All the rappers tell me to do it. Sad thing is, there are far more people who can handle this sort of exposure than the few misguided sociopaths who will feed on it. But there may come a day of reckoning at some point in the future that makes the white government, the PTA-religious-right-Republican-soccer-moms of this country cry before our legislators demanding accountability for art. Like it or not, it's this upper middle class white urban/suburban group that will be heard. And their peers, our legislators, may see a far greater danger than what Luther Campbell brought to the table almost 15 years ago. This is where things get sticky. Is art protected by our government, and can our government choose to "protect" us from art? Where I think this music is going to be in trouble when things get to this point is that, to be commercial, image is crucial. And portraying the image necessary to keep this "street cred" or "thug mystique" or whatever basically means that your art, supposedly, comes as a reflection, without disclaimer. And strong arguments can be made that without this disclaimer, an artist is an amplifier of, almost an accessory to, the crimes this art reflects. And this is what the soccer moms will shed their tears over. Just something to think about, I guess.
- Last thing - my personal top ten hip hop albums. Just to show you my tastes, and where they run:
o Raekwon - "Only Built For Cuban Linx"
o Wu-Tang - "Enter the Wu-Tang"
o Ol’ Dirty Bastard - "Return to the 36 Chambers - the Dirty Version"
o Beck - "Odelay" (an experiment in beat making that is as hip hop as non-rap gets)
o Outkast - "Aquemini"
o Outkast - "Stankonia"
o Dr. Dre - "The Chronic"
o Eminem - "The Slim Shady LP"
o Eminem - "The Marshall Mathers LP"
o Nas - "Illmatic"
Excepting that Beck album, I don’t think anything needs explanation. For me, these are my personal ten favorites from hip hop.

Until later - BG