Ron Artest, "Blind"

I think this is law school talking, but my first question upon watching this: how does team management feel about Ron Ron wearing Lakers gear in these videos?

UPDATE: It's like Ron was rewarding me for posting his latest music video. Did everyone see this tonight? (Look at the 0:32 mark):



Awesome. Just awesome.

Official Announcement: I Am Transferring to Monmouth

Hello friends, particularly those whom I've met in St. Louis. I am writing with important news: my time in Missouri is coming to a close. I have decided to transfer to Monmouth University.

I did not arrive at this decision hastily. I mulled it over for a long time during breakfast this morning. But as I weighed the positives against the negatives, two things kept tipping the scale in Monmouth's favor.

First, and most importantly, there was this:



Last night, Monmouth beat FIU by 29. More importantly, the students were complete dicks to Isiah Thomas. They chanted "Magic hates you," they made fun of the time Isiah tried to kill himself and blamed it on his daughter, they of course made fun of the Anucha situation. They even rushed the floor after a 30-point blowout over an awful team just to celebrate beating Isiah. That is the kind of vindictive student body of which I'd like to be a part. True to the New York-area ethos, Monmouth will never forget. Neither will I.

Second, going to Monmouth will place me in close proximity to the Jersey Shore, an area which I'd like to make the focus of an amateur anthropological study. I understand that MTV will be delivering groundbreaking work in this regard next month, and I want to supplement that inquiry. How can you not be enticed by this?



My first entry point will be this question: I understand that the stereotypical "guido" lifestyle entails fake tan, chemically enhanced muscles, and impossibly vertical hair. But why fist pumping?! Is that a constant move in this community? It gets about a third of this commercial's time; does fist pumping constitute a third of the lifestyle's known activity? Like, are you fist pumping while you're driving? Or while you're paying for a Red Bull?

To answer these questions, to immerse myself in a community where a seething hostility toward Isiah Thomas finds fellow travelers, and to study the law (I guess), I'll be transferring to Monmouth.

I don't even care that it doesn't actually have a law school.

BANGS: Take U To Da Movies

I love foreigners.

Enjoy your weekend.

Now Hear This. Literally.

Have you felt as though your life were suffering from a deficit of listening to me talk about basketball? Were you yearning to hear me make jokes about white people? Step out into the sunshine, you huddled masses.

On Wednesday I stopped by the Disciples of Clyde podcast for a sprawling hour of basketball talk. It is all hoops, no filler. Needless to say, I was flattered to be invited back onto the show. Dan Filowitz is many things, among them an easy conversationalist and an impressive master of a deep body of NBA knowledge.

The podcast is here. You can stream it here:



Dan is a Knicks fan, so we delved into many of the subjects I wrote about here.

Now your weekend can begin properly.

My Hurt Is More Hurtful Than Your Hurt

I don't know.

My friend and collaborator Ty Keenan traded some emails this week with me about how it hurts to root for a horrible NBA team. You see, he rides with the Warriors, so he knows.

Our epistolary exchange is up for your consumption on FreeDarko. Enjoy.

P.S. The title comes from this:

- 2Pac, Pain

Black Thought Holds Forth

- BK-One ft. Black Thought, "Philly Boy"
Good lord, do I love this. Black Thought has always been able to wield an incredible sense of pathos. It stems from the combination of his voice, his lyrics, his common focus on tangible ideas and topics, the gravitas--real or aspirational--which the Roots have cultivated as part of the brand, and so forth. He has this presence which is conflicted and steeped in experience. One of the many reasons he is under-appreciated is that Thought emits power without being loud of flamboyant.

Bathed in a somber, sole guitar and a steady but understated drum rhythm, Thought sounds particularly resonant. This track feels like the musical equivalent of a dude standing on a stage with all the lights off save for one spotlight shining down and letting him control the room. It's a cool effect.

Also cool is this new BK-One album, which is probably going to end up as the year's second best, other than Rae Rae's.

If Only We Could Kill All the Muslims, Though

What a bummer, dude.

One Man's Opinion about the Economy

Ever vigilant in her scan of the internets, my mother sent me an interesting link this morning: twelve observations about the economy from a Gluskin Sheff economist and Reuters columnist James Pethokoukis. There's a lot of interesting material here to consider, but my attention was stolen away by the first point. The bolded portion is Pethokouskis's observation based upon the Gluskin information:

1. For the first time in at least six decades, private sector employment is negative on a 10-year basis (first turned negative in August). Hence, the changes are not merely cyclical or short-term in nature. Many of the jobs created between the 2001 and 2008 recessions were related either directly or indirectly to the parabolic extension of credit.

If we assume Pethokoukis is correct to some degree--he's observing something which seems to be a positive correlation if not a direct result--it invites a question: how do you get back to creating sustainable jobs, not those built on the fleeting prosperity of credit reliance? I am not an economist or a financier, so I don't have a perfect answer. Even those people don't. But as a common-sense observer of politics, I am struck by an idea which the Democrats will never make a priority but probably should.

Our economy has been crippled by the parabolic extension of credit. Across the landscape, jobs driven by the service sector and the manufacturing sector are gone. Simultaneously, the energy system upon which this country relies is famously unsustainable, and it also carries the sad effect of destroying the environment. A path forward, then, should probably be investing heavily in the growth industries of new, cleaner energy. That is not a fresh idea, per se, and there is some focus on it, already. However, the sobering economic conditions can lend it the immediacy required to accomplish something meaningful if deft politicians can couple these ideas and push through the seemingly intractable opposition.

Now, will that happen? No. For many reasons--Democratic politicians are losers; they don't take risks; they are usually just as beholden to the same special interests as Republicans. Nonetheless, someone like Howard Dean should be on television all the time explaining that our economy, for all its former strength, was partially a fiction. And that the awful environment in which we find ourselves was created by unfettered greed and myopia. He should then explain that along with implementing regulation of exotic financial instruments and other too-high-risk devices that most of their own vendors don't even understand, the American economy requires sea change. Strengthening the economy in a way that guards against a similar systemic failure in the future demands heavy upfront investment in new industries that create lasting jobs and call for skilled workers (which would perhaps have the secondary impact of creating urgency around educational reform). That's the path forward, not solely hoping that credit flows more freely soon and limiting executive compensation. Those are easy, and almost silly as a result.

It's much harder and more expensive to demand investment in new, lasting jobs. It's certainly harder than hoping to return to the halcyon days around 2000. But yearning for a chance to make the same mistakes is the ultimate in madness.

Golden State's Mania Is Spreading!

Either The New York Times can't tell apart basketball-playing Stephens (racists), or it masked a chronicle of Jackson's eccentricity with a headline about a player, Curry, more likely to grab the average New York reader's attention.

I'm going with the former, as they've since changed the picture. But to be fair, it's a harmless error: spending so much time in such close proximity to such a deranged operation surely carries with it the risk of infection.

Rappers Can't Have Their Challah and Eat It ,Too

I just like the picture of Madonna holding a baby in a yarmulke

It's no secret that most rappers approach Jews with either casual contempt or the faint praise of positive stereotype. It's not that Jews are so affirmatively bad; they're not pushing weight or jackin' people up or terrorizing everyone. It's just that they're tightfisted, crafty, and always succeeding at the expense of others. Ask Ice Cube--no one wants some meddling Jew calling the shots. Sadly, that's just how it is--the sun goes up, the world rotates, we grudgingly recognize the Jewish element, and we do it all again the next day. Rap music!

In hip-hop, like most other venues, Jews are bankers, money lenders, T.I.'s running this rap shit, or, most sacrosanct, lawyers. Oh, the lawyers. Keep your whip newish, your ice bluish, and your lawyer Jewish. If you do, you're gonna stack chips and beat charges. This has become so universal that there are people who don't know what kosher is, but have no doubt that they want that kosher-lawyer paper. I go to law school; I know.

This is regrettable, of course, but it is what it is. The circumstance persists, people put up with it, and all is swept under the rug of a gorgeous soul sample or something that just makes you want to dance. For decades, Jewish people have consumed rap music, always issuing the token caveats required to otherwise enjoy a Clipse record without reservation. To be honest, it's much more worrisome if, say, Sarah Palin, or Bill Clinton, or even Mel Gibson thinks ill of the Jews than if Jim Jones joins that chorus. Though he shouldn't. (And, of course, we know how much esteem Jimmy harbors for the chosen people who keep him free.)

There is also the alluring, albeit intellectually bankrupt, notion that if you're going to paint a group with broad strokes, you could do worse than making it out to be competent professionals. That's why someone needs to throw a challenge flag in response to Jadakiss's verse on "Broken Safety."

Jada raps, "The economy is down/So you already know it's gon' be a lot of Hymies in the town." That's not right. He violates the delicate detente, opting against the Jewish lawyer trope, or even the Jewish doctor trope. Those are safe; people put up with that shit. Instead, Jada goes for the low blow, reviving the tired Jew-as-exploiter identity and inserting it into the contemporary economic climate. (You know, to the extent that a generic verse about drugs, money, and street life contemplates prevaling market forces.) Tough times? Can't help that all those hymies are sticking it to you while you're down.

And what's with "hymie," Jesse Jackson? Why not go for the full Michael Jackson and just re-appropriate "Jew Me/Sue Me/Everybody do me/Kick me/Kike me/Don't ya black-or-white me"? That's lame. No one raps about a hymie lawyer. Stick to the script.

Why do I post this today? Why not? Just saying....

- Raekwon ft. Jadakiss and Styles P, "Broken Safety"

- Sean Price, "Broken Safety 2"