Two books for your Gheorghemas wish list And a doofus to lead this country
I assume you're all working on your Gheorghemas wish lists. For Day 2 of Gheorghemas, I'm channeling my inner Dave and recommending two books for you to include. But I'm not Dave so my list will be fun and reflect the spirit of Gheorghemas.
First is Ghostface Killah's forthcoming biography titled "Rise of a Killah." According to the publisher, the book "is intense rather than comprehensive," which I guess translates to "it's short." It isn't available until May 14, 2024, but Gheorghemas often drags on for several months (and in fact Gheorghemas 2015 is still ongoing as the twelfth day hasn't published yet) so it will be a timely gift nonetheless. I, of course, will opt for the digital audio version, nah mean. Hopefully Jack Urbont and Andrew Coffman will enter appearances.
Second is "The Ananda Accords" by Zeke Springer. I've known Zeke for over 20 years and I'm stumping hard for his self-published first novel. It's a sci-fi thriller about a peace mission gone wrong. Go get it on Amazon.
About six years ago I wrote what I consider to be one of my best posts here--a long rambling description of my old Subaru as an introduction to a meditation on the 20th anniversary of "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)." Simply put, you can never have too much Wu-Tang.
To that end, I encourage you to watch "Of Mics and Men," a four-part series about the Wu-Tang Clan that will start May 10 on Showtime. Here's the trailer.
I think it will be eye-opening. The Wu is just like us! Who can't relate to a story like this, for example.
Live from the offices of NPR in Washington, DC, a Gheorghemas concert was recorded last week celebrating 25 years since the release of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Lots of fun little touches here, including stringed instrument accompaniment, RZA adjusting on the fly to reflect support for the #metoo movement, Young Dirty Bastard taking his father's place, and a poetic interlude.
Give yourselves 20 minutes, in keeping with the spirit of the season.
“The RZA, the GZA, and Ghostface Killah walk into a spaceship full of vegan sliders” sounds like the start of a joke. And I guess it is. But it’s also the premise of a new four-part video series to promote White Castle’s new vegan “Impossible Sliders.” It's real and it’s fantastic.
“It’s kinda crazy on Earf right now, so we came to space to acquire some knowledge and gain some perspective.” That’s some true and deep shit.
Here are a few things I've seen or heard or thought about that I didn't have time to turn into a post or weren't really big enough to turn into a post.
1. Ghost & Meth & Comey?
Ghostface Killah and Method Man somehow or other met James Comey. I'll make like Zuckerberg and let you create the content in the comments. Just no homey/Comey jokes please.
zmother gets her Christmas shopping done around August, certainly no later than September. She hates Christmas shopping so she gets it done early. Holidays are always fun in zhome! I'm less of a Scrooge and don't get started until December, unless I see something that screams out to be gifted to someone in particular. Like these socks for Mark.
Or these for Whit. Or maybe these for TR. Or these for Squeaky. Or these for Teedge. Even rob.
We're very late to the party on this one, but if you haven't watched The Americans you should. It's all available on Amazon Prime and it's all good.
One of the interesting aspects of The Sopranos was the idea that a murderous gangster comes home from work and has to deal with all the same mundane and difficult stuff as everyone else--his son gets bad grades and acts a fool, his wife spends too much money, his mother breaks his balls, his sister is out of control, and so on. The Sopranos made this dynamic clear right from the start of episode 1 and carried it through to the end.
The Americans spins this theme. Every marriage has difficulties, or at least things happen in any marriage that make things difficult. For Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, they not only have to deal with their kids' undesirable behaviors, they sometimes have to figure out how to dispose of dead bodies or weaponized bacteria because they're Russian spies. The tension between them as partners-in-crime serving their Motherland and as husband and wife is set out from the start and makes the show engaging throughout.
For example, we don't do dentistry like this in zhome.
KRS-ONE's lyrics are timeless. "Sound of the Police," "Bo! Bo! Bo!," and "Who Protects Us From You?" are all 20+ years old but these anthems against police brutality are relevant today. "P Is Free," "Love's Gonna Get'cha," "Drug Dealer," and "Illegal Business" are also 20+ years old but still reflect the impact of illegal drugs on American life.
Also relevant is his 1995 single Rappaz R.N. Dainja in which he states "Some rappers like to come to the party, hopin' to leave with somebody, check, I come with skills and I leave with your motherfuckin' respect."
Simply put, MCs can't stay out of court.
The latest rapper to put down the mic and file a complaint is Andre Roxx, whose real name is Marques Andre Johnson. Andre Roxx (not to be confused with Greg Rocks) is a member of the Midwest Killa Beez. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but he asserts that this makes him an "affiliate" of the Wu-Tang Clan--apparently there's a West Coast Killa Beez and presumably other directional Killa Beez consortia.
This is relevant because there's a guy named Andre Johnson who goes by Christ Bearer (not to be confused with Paul Bearer), and he's a member of the West Coast Killa Beez. In a haze of drugs and depression, Christ Bearer decided to cut his penis off and commit suicide by jumping out a window. He was successful in all but one aspect of this endeavor: he survived the fall. A reattachment procedure failed, but he's past the depression and in a good place, positing "I'm alive, penis or no penis."
You can intuitively see why this story is newsworthy. Somewhere along the way though, the injured party's identity got garbled. "Wu-Tang affiliate and Killa Beez member Andre Johnson" was confused with "Wu-Tang affiliate and Killa Beez member Marques Andre Johnson" and the penile puncture was attributed to the wrong rapper. Various media outlets reported that Andre Roxx sliced his schlong when it was really Christ Bearer who diced his dong.
You can see how this might happen--I've addressed this exact situation before (in the comments). These types of details are important, at least to Andre Roxx. As an initial matter, Andre Roxx was in a Pennsylvania jail when Christ Bearer mutilated his manhood and jumped out the window at a party. While this provides factual cover for Roxx, his fellow inmates didn't appreciate this nuance and took it as an invitation to start "threatening, harassing and attacking him." He wound up in protective custody and isolation.
Once released he "made thousands of telephone calls, to every disc jockey and promoter he knew, as well as cold calls to clubs and promoters, but was unable to generate any interest." The take-home here is that if you're going to present yourself as a tough-as-nails MC from the streets of Shaolin, you have to have fully intact genitals. Indeed, Bar Stool Sports opined "How can you be a rapper without a dick? What's even the point? Would be like being a blogger with no hands."
Despite the fact that most if not all of the media outlets covering this story corrected the self-immolator's identity within a day or two, the Wu-Tang Clan went so far as to renounce Andre Roxx on their website, stating "This M*********** Ain't Got S*** to do with The WUTANG Brand" next to a photo of Andre Roxx (and not Christ Bearer). He thus lost his Killa Beez status, and with it the opportunity to make $2000-$4500 per performance, with bookings occurring 4-6 times a week.
Predictably, social media commentators piled on. Upon the online release of his next single, people commented stuff like "This shit so hard make me wanna hack my dick off and jump off something tall" and "Look, it's the dickless wonder" and "bye bye Johnson" (a play on his last name).
Perhaps the most painful impact is on his social life, "as many people who might otherwise be social or romantic connections do not want to be seen in public with him." Everyone swipes left on Andre Roxx because they think he's cockless.
So he did the only thing he could do. He hired a bankruptcy lawyer and filed a complaint in Federal court in Delaware. Well, I suppose he could've hired a commercial litigator or, heaven forfend, an IP litigator to handle the potential soft IP causes of action. Instead he has two counts of libel and a false light invasion of privacy claim. Negligent infliction of emotional distress might've been a nice count to include and maybe something like a Lanham Act violation for improperly tarnishing Andre Roxx's brand, but who knows what the laws of Delaware look like. It's not like they're available online or anything.
Andre Roxx requested a jury and as usual I think being impaneled in this case would be a hoot. And the closing argument will be a snap. After Andre Roxx takes the stand and drops his pants to establish his unmarred member to the jury, his lawyer can simply state "His junk's in place so he wins the case." Or "His dork ain't cut so it's open and shut." Or "His pecker is viable so defendants are liable." The closing really writes itself.
Ghostface Killah's discography spans almost two decades and it's peppered with tracks about selling coke and crack, so it should come as no surprise that he's entering the legal marijuana game with some sort of vape-able oils. It's called Wu Goo, natch, and he made an infomercial/song to promote the stuff. It is, predictably, genius.
I was home for fall break sometime in September of 1993, my sophomore year at W&M. My dad kept an extra car around for me to use when I was home, a 1983 Subaru DL. It was a dusty blue with a massive chrome luggage rack on the trunk lid, which also had strips of real wood to protect the trunk lid's finish from getting rubbed by any hypothetical luggage. It looked just like this fancy GL-10 model:
It impressed no one who saw me drive by in it. My passengers were similarly unimpressed -- it had power windows and working AC, which was a bit of a big deal for me at the time, but everything else inside sucked. The whole interior was blue. The upholstery looked like fur harvested from blue mice. All of the plastic was hard and deeply grained, catching all the greasy grime and detritus that came onboard, and because the plastic was blue it provided a sharp contrast for most of this dirt, bringing the filth into clear focus. The steering wheel was a bizarre affair with two prongs at five- and seven-o'clock and small thumb hooks at three-and nine-o'clock for those who know where to properly position their fists. The controls for the lights and wipers were big black warts located outboard of the steering wheel. I've not seen such a setup anywhere else before or since, but they had a nice feel and were very functional. Kind of like tuning in Tokyo 90 degrees the wrong way. The dash had a surprisingly complete instrument cluster, including a voltmeter and oil pressure gauge. It was a lot like this, but with switches instead of window cranks.
It was a remarkably reliable car, if mechanically underwhelming. The engine was a tiny wheezy contraption better suited to powering peanut grinders than automobiles. The clutch had zero feel--push it to the floor to guarantee the gears are disengaged and slowly lift up until the tach starts spinning clockwise, otherwise there was no tangible feedback that a gear was engaged. And choosing a gear with the stupidly long shifter was more an act of divination than selection. I knew where third gear was supposed to be, but sometimes it simply wasn't there anymore. The shifter made painful crunching and clicking sounds when moved through its gates. They were so bad that I often wondered when the stick would simply snap off in my hand. Unlike all Subarus today and most from the 1980's it was only FWD, not AWD, so I once managed to beach it in a foot of snow.
It had an AM/FM radio but no tape deck. Factory beats, as TR would say. The knobs fell off before I even got my learner's permit so I had to use my thumb and forefinger as a pincers to twist the remaining metal spoke in order to make an orange needle slide left and right to select a radio station. There was a second bare spoke for the volume. In cold weather the spokes would become harder to turn, I guess because the grease in the mechanism started to solidify, so fine-tuning a station was nearly impossible after Thanksgiving. If you wanted to adjust the left-right balance or front-rear fade, you had to pull the spoke out until it clicked. Everyone on earth sets both of these parameters to the dead center detent and never touches them again. Except for my father, who loved a fucked up setting with a slight front-left bias. So every time I got the car back I had to grip these shitty spikes as hard as I could lest I go insane from the oddball sound orientation. Treble and bass adjustments were made by turning a collar behind the spikes--these fortunately did not fall off and always worked easily. It had five present buttons but pushing them merely slid the orange needle into the general vicinity of where you had previously set the button; you never knew exactly what you would get from the presets. Mercifully, it had four speakers (unlike my mother's 1986 Nissan Sentra and its one lonely cardboard mid) and acceptable sound quality. You can get an idea of it from this photo.
Despite my harsh characterization it was a fine car for my situation in the fall of 1993 and I have many fond memories of time spent inside it. You probably expect this to turn into a tale about a backseat misadventure, and a few of those definitely fall within the scope of my aforementioned fond memories. But the reason I remember so much about the radio in the Sube is because was driving it down Queen Anne Road one night in September 1993 listening to 98.7 (which sadly is now sports talk radio) when, as I approached the intersection of Queen Anne and Cherry Lane, this happened.
It was through that rattletrap device that I first experienced a Wu-Tang Clan song. Forties, shorties, White Owls, fat bags! Rub it on your skin like lotion?! Not an average Joe with average flow doing average things with average hos?! Oh shit that's the jam!! I had no idea who or what I just heard, but I wanted to hear that joint again and again.
I later conferred with some of my friends who stayed in the area and they informed me that this was a song called "Method Man" by the Wu-Tang Clan, and that they had another song called Protect Ya Neck which I heard soon thereafter. It was just as game-changingly dope as Method Man.
Parenthetically, I love this video. It looks like they made and edited it using equipment from their high school's AV closet. Everything was shot on top of or behind their project. The GZA is "The Jizah." Ghostface Killah is "Ghost Face Killer." I suspect the whole endeavor cost under $100.
Fall break ended and I returned to the Burg. Predictably, none of my fratres heard any Wu-Tang joints once during fall break, let alone again and again. So I sought out Schmandy, a white guy with dreadlocks who was considered to be an esteemed member of the rap cognoscenti by the guys in his hipper and more musically aware frat, and the fratty populace in general. I found him walking through the parking lot with a few of his brothers. When I asked if he had heard of the Wu-Tang Clan, he said no and coolly laughed and furrowed his brows as if to indicate that the name alone was goofy. I told him he needed to check them out and asked if he heard the song "Method Man" and he shook his head and stuck out his lower lip. So I said "you know, the song that goes" and spit the chorus that concludes with "M-E-T-H-O-D man!" and Schmandy replied "Anyone rapper who samples Hall and Oates must suck" and walked on.
You will doubtlessly read many deep think-pieces about "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" over the next few days because it was released 20 years ago the day after tomorrow. I could write at length about how unprecedentedly evil it sounded in 1993, how it called up images of places that nice people don't go and things that nice people don't do. How despite having big fat beats it was undanceable music, intended to be listened to very loud while very drunk and very high. And so on. Instead, however, I think the most telling thing I can write about the power of WTC's music is how I will always remember every detail of where I was and what I was doing when I first heard it. That I am also able to work in a distillation of why my time spent at William and Mary was culturally disappointing is mere gravy.
Gheorghe: The Blog, like the Wu-Tang Clan, is for the kids. Now, it might seem strange that a blog that spends an inordinate amount of it's time discussing sports, drinking and jackassery while frequently displaying pictures of women of less than the highest moral standard is all about the childrens, but that's just because you don't "get us". Much like Trick Daddy, we luhv the kids. So much so that many of us have them. And some of us even actively participate in the lives of these children.
There's a problem with these kids though. They rarely, if ever, have the same interests as adults. So, as an adult, you have to make a sacrifice. Or, you can brainwash your kids into liking the same things you like. That's the approach I'm taking. My 1.5 year old daughter can already do the Gator Chomp. And she's already listening to hip hop. I've picked out songs that have some distinctive sounds she can repeat, and then I play them in my car all the time. Songs like this:
And this:
She's learning well. And I've found another way to actually have her "learn" while still force feeding my love of hip hop to her. Courtesy of none other than Bun B. It's Bun B's Rap Coloring and Activity Book. I picked up my copy last week. If your kids still like to color, or do word searches, or play connect the dots, among other childhood activities, I strongly encourage you to get them their own copy. You won't regret it.
Posts
