Heroes Aren't Gods

They're men who have done extraordinary things and touched our souls

My Professional Mantra

"I believe in the training of children Black even as white; the leading out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters, not for pelf or peace, but for Life lit by some large vision of beauty and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers, like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation."

Shadows

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

The R-A-K-I-M...

It's only fitting that I also give props to Rakim



I'm not a regular competitor, first rhyme editor
Melody arranger, poet, etcetera
Extra events, the grand finale like bonus
I am the man they call the microphonist
With wisdom which means wise words bein spoken
Too many at one time watch the mic start smokin
I came to express the rap I manifest
Stand in my way and I'll lead a ??? words protest
MC's that wanna be dissed they're gonna
Be dissed if they don't get from in fronta
All they can go get is me a glass of Moet
A hard time, sip your juice and watch a smooth poet
I take 7 MC's put em in a line
And add 7 more brothas who think they can rhyme
Well, it'll take 7 more before I go for mine
And that's 21 MC's ate up at the same time
Easy does it, do it easy, that's what I'm doin
No fessin, no messin around, no chewin
No robbin, no buyin, bitin, why bother
This slob'll stop tryin fightin to follow
My unusual style will confuse you a while
If I was water, I flow in the Nile
So many rhymes you won't have time to go for your's
Just because of a cause I have to pause
Right after tonight is when I prepare
To catch another sucka duck MC out there
Cos my strategy has to be tragedy, catastrophe
And after this you'll call me your majesty
My melody...

Redman's dopest verse....

Look up in the, I got the verbs, nouns and glocks in ya
Enter the centa, lyrics bang like rico-chet
Rabbit, I brings havoc with an A-K matic
Rollin blunts an all day habit
I get it on like Smif'n'Wes
Punks take a sip and test
Who split your vest
The funk phenomenon
I'm bombin you like Lebanon
Blow canals of Panama
Just off stamina
Styles not to be fucked with, or played with
Fuck the pretty hoes, I love those Section A Bit-ches
Hittin switches, Twistin wigs with
Fat radical mathematical type scriptures
I dig up in your planets like Diga,
Boo, scared you, blew you to smithe-reens
Fuck the marines, I got machines
To light the spliff, and read Mad magazine
I fly more heads than Continental
Wreck ya 5 times like US AIR off an instrumental
Look I'm not a half way crook with bad looks
But I may murder your case like your name was Cal Brooks
I breaks em up proppa
Ask Biggie Smalls 'Who Shot Ya'
Funk doctor, with the 12 Gauge Mossberg
Look, I got the tools like Rickle
To make your mind tickle
For the nine nickle

The Pleasure Principle

It is my opinion, that Janet Jackson in "Pleasure Principle" is the dopest.



Really.

Yeah, "Love Will Never Do" was good...

"Anytime, Any Place" was sexy on a higher level...

But for me, where that intersection, that confluence, of sexuality + innocence + optimism all meet, really took place within the presentation of the "Pleasure Principle" video.

Sometimes

"....I'd rather spend my morning digging through some records instead"

Most of My Heroes.....

Charm & Confidence

When a guy knows how to use those two traits, he won't have any problems talking to women!

Peace, Prosperity, & Paper

"A-E-I-O-U
...and sometimes Y"










I'm going to check out that documentary on one of the best groups in Hip Hop history later this evening after work. I'm excited beyond belief. This excitement is boiling while I'm at the gig because I don’t want to come across to my co-workers how giddy I am. I'm really trying not to bounce off these here walls with the amount of excitement that I have.

A Tribe Called Quest(ATCQ, Tribe) was the music to the latter part of my childhood bumping me through adolescence, and finishing me off halfway through college. Its important to say that Tribe was indeed the soundtrack to very key moments in my life. From scouring Rand McNally atlases to find out where exactly is El Segundo (California), to wondering what Q-Tip meant when he said “38-24-37” on “Bonita Applebum” , all the way through figuring out its “Relax ya self girl! Please settle down” on “Electric Relaxation” and finding myself saying “Now why you wanna go and do that, Love, huh?” on a semi-weekly basis. At one point in time, I even described myself in an online forum in the exact same way Phife Dawg did. The music that Tribe has blessed us with, me, especially, is timeless.

Hell, what guy named Mohammed hasn’t been inundated by wannabe funny dudes and drunk cuties with the chorus from “Award Tour”?
Their body of work was consistent and spanned more than a decade. And although they haven’t made music together in over a decade, I still can’t help but look back at those years with rose colored cazalle shades and smile. Which I probably should do when I go see this documentary tonight…

A Struggle That I Like....

All bullshit aside, I just like seeing a black woman in some jeans that (attempt to)hug every curve that "The Hugh heffner on High" bestowed upon her. I have said before that there are some women on this planet that I would be a happy mu'fucka to accompany them jean shopping.

Case in point...

Life Isn't Fair At All!

One of my softball teammates working his side gig....

Gone, but not forgotten

RIP TO GERALD LEVERT!


He would have been 45 years old today.

Favorites of White Bread Soul

because not all of them have blue eyes nor did/do they stick to just soul/RnB....


1) Teena Marie
How can you argue against “Lady T”? She gave us “Firm Biz”, “Portuguese Love”, “Déjà Vu”, “I Need Your Lovin”, etc…Motown was afraid to put her own face on the albums because folks would not have believed that she was white. They did so anyways and nobody cared. On top of that, she dated Rick James AND was at one point in time signed to Cash Money!!!!

2) Justin Timberlake
Anytime your first solo record has nothing but production by The Neptunes and Timbaland, you just might have a R&B album in the making…I even accused him of stealing Usher's mojo from him(but it was really Tamika that did it) just because I saw some similarities between them. The dance moves, the falsetto/1st tenor registry. Honestly, dude has got some chops that i should have believed at first listen to "Gone" when he was with N'Sync.

3) Hall & Oates
"Say No Go", "Sarah Smile", even "Private Eyes" gets love from me on this list. A few cats back in the day even did covers of their songs that garnered attention.

4) Jamiroquai
As far as Brits having soul goes, these guys carried the mantle once Heatwave went into a deep freeze. Wham! was more pop, but these cats were grooving from an RnB foundation that eerily mirrored The Brand new heavies(Who don't qualify because of N'Dea Davenport on vocals) at the time. They did kind of go hand-in-hand you could say. Joints like "Return of The Space Cowboy", "Virtual Insanity", "Cosmic Girl", and "Canned Heat" are good examples to mention, even if they kind of branched off into disco later on in the 1990s.

5) Robin Thicke
I'll blatantly say that putting him on the list afforded me the reason to post up a picture of his wife. However, he actually has made contributions to land him on this list. "Wanna Love You Girl", "The Sweetest Love", "Lost Without You", & "When I get You Alone" all had some soul(albeit some disco rehashing with that last anmed joint) that folks got down with unquestionably.


6) Simply Red
“Holding Back the years” and one of the best covers of “If You Don’t Know me By Now” that would put Jaheim into oblivion(it won’t be hard to do now) is good enough for me!

7) George Michael/Wham
This is a curve ball but its valid in that “Everything She Wants” is an 80s banger and “Careless Whisper” can be played regularly on any quiet storm radio show in the USA. The only negative is that cover he did of Stevie’s “As” with Mary J. Blige…


8) Jon B.
It hurts me to put him so far down, but dude really ain't had nothing substantial since "Are You Still Down?"...and that was when Pac was officially alive! But, still, dude had some joints and he kicked it off something stellar by having his first single as a duet with Babyface. I knew dude would be a force to mess with when he did a cover of "My Cherie Amour" on NY Undercover(I'm still mad that it didn't make the soundtrack to that show).

Honorable Mention: Michael McDonald, Rick Astley, Remy Shand, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bobby Caldwell, Maroon 5

Happy Birthday to The Cos!!!!!

All bullshit aside...

Its Bill Cosby's birthday today. He's 74 years old!

I have to admit that I never realized truly how cool Bill Cosby was back in the day. I came up seeing him in this image of Heathcliff Huxtable, the family man, with a beautiful wife and 5 kids. "The Cosby Show" for all of its greatness and success, while watching it as a kid, never really told me how cool and fun to be around this man was in real life. Cool, not in the sense of a family0man, a responsible adult with the responsibilitites of being a husband and a father several times over. But as a younger man who hadn't fully matured to the point where he was a well-rounded human being.

Now that I'm older...

Now that I am an adult that has seen some things...

Yeah, Bill Cosby was The Motherfucking Man!!!!

He was a regular at The Playboy Mansion in its heyday.
He did tours with jazz musicians.
(those same musicians that would later appear on his show)
He smoked cigars.
He drove fancy and fast cars.
He helped folks out in Hollywood
(ask Melvin Van Peebles)
He was well-connected and respected.

So, I have to give reverence to an icon. Respect where its due.

What I heard Eddie say in "Raw" really didn't give the full picture as to what The Cos had done prior to that point. Had I gone off that one bit in "Raw", I would not have thought about watching "Uptown Saturday Night" only to find Richard Pryor in a cameo. I'll do some further research, but I'm sure The Cos did somebody a favor(or three) during this production. Hell, the cast is a who's who of Black Entertainment at the time. Sidney Poitier. Harry Belafonte. Flip Wilson. Rosalind Cash. Roscoe Lee Browne. Harold Nicholas. Etc al.



Nowadays to have that many Black entertainers in one movie would require a 4 minute trailer just to show the names as equal billing, regardless of screen time.

It did not register with me that "Fat Albert" the cartoon series was also used in his Doctoral Dissertation. He used a show that he created(based on one of his routines) to help educate children and then use the outcomes from that to show the benefits in his work entitled: "An Integration of the Visual Media Via 'Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids' Into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning". Mind you, he went to work on his doctorate while still being a major player in Hollywood. That's not just being talented, but also being driven and having discipline to complete tasks.

THOROUGH!!!!!

That is a trait that I am still trying to gain now. This man was already doing it before he was 40!

Even still, The Cos did what he could and its clear that alot of folks benefitted from associating with him. For a period of time, it was good to be friends with The Cos. And on this day, I wish him a happy birthday!!!!

It Is What it Is....

Whatever they lack in height, they aren't lacking for in women chasing them....

Bonita Applebum

38-24-37
You & Me hun, we're a match made in heaven

Closed Door, Inc

I've had this idea floating around in my head for just under 2 years now....

Womenfolks,

Have you ever met a guy and very soon afterwards(1-2 conversations or dates) you realized that it wasn't going to go anywhere further with him and you?

And, when this happened, you didn't know HOW to break the news to him? You're in that fresh, gray area of things where not much work/time has been invested but you already know that your returns will be shorter Katt Williams' fall from celebrity.

Well, I'm here to help!!!!!

For $50, I will meet your (soon-to-be) failed beau at an establishment that serves good liqour to break the news to him over some libations. I would do this in a manner that only a man can do. I wouldn't give him all the reasons why you are no longer interested in him. I would just tell him in a direct way that would also prevent him from wanting greater detail.

See, guys like to hear finality. That sharp sting of rejection is what we should be accustomed to by now. Much like that hair that gets caught from taking the rubber off, that sharp pain helps to let us know that things don't always end smoothly. However, folks are getting more and more(in)sensitive these days and are further and fruther delaying the breaking of a man's rejection cherry. Some women can say that they have had bad experiences with breaking things off, but not ALL of them can say that such is the case. Chances are, they heard a couple horror stories in the beauty salon and just jumped on the bandwagon like they were the 1st person.

The guessing game that women(and some bitch-made men) do in the dating scene can be a hassle. In most cases they only serve to increase the tension and hammer away at the faultlines that are working to keep gender relations connected. In order to maintain, and to possibly strengthen, these connections, i am willing to provide a service where the rejection is still there but the peril of the women doing so is not as great.

What will happen is this:

You hit me up on the email or cell(premium subscribers) and tell me that you have somebody that you no longer interested in. Now, there is a limit of time/number of dates that I do not go beyond. Much like abortions, I'm not going to break the news to a guy of yours that has already been on a tropical vacation with you or helped pay for 3 separate kits of Plan B. No, that's just rude....

What the woman will then do is arrange a meeting with the guy at a bar or resturaunt(with a bar) and I will then go in her place. The target will be unsuspecting as I enter. i will appraoch and order two drinks for us to imbibe. Once brought, i will break the news to the guy and explain to him how to move on with life. This task may be harder if the guy is coming in from out of town like a place such as Rochester, MN or OK City(because you know the Thinder Players an CFB players have the area locked up). Thing with those is that you have to seel other locales for them to mine for women.

But, me and the target will talk. the initial pain will go away and by the end pf the encounter, we both will be nice and liqoured up to get on some hoes and move along with our lives.

Most importantly, he won't be thinking about you!

Smiles

It is my opinion that if women smiled more, and didn't make it seem so hard to do so, that their actually bite would be more fearsome.

Seduction

Seduction happens when two people attempt to lure the other across an imaginary line that has been pre-determined by society at large that they should not cross. Much like a few biblical characers and other assorted historical figures, power can come into play. But in regards to seduction, this power is not based on some social position held by one of the parties involved to take advantage of the other. Seduction in its simplest form is moreso an extension of self-esteem that which is geared toward finding it's limits. Searching to find its sphere of influence in persons not yet analyzed. Even further, it can be a stance against a social norm. And, given how long us humans have been on this planet, there are plenty of these taboos floating around to flirt with by exerting our wills.

For me, seduction is alot like a confidence game in that I want to see how persuasive I can be to someone that just might be more apt in this field than I am. There is a curiosity to know how far the boundaries extend in our relationship. Not just romantically, but also platonically, too! What kind of agreement are we trying to make here? Seeing as though Men and Women cannot be friends unless the question of attraction is answered, well, I'm going to search for that answer before we continue this bottle of rum or wax poetic about Tarkanian's amoeba defense.

In the long run, Seduction should be mutually beneficial to both parties that are involved. It is a shared experience of joy and ecstasy that should in the end have both parties feeling a satisfactory level of fulfillment. For it wouldn't be Seduction if the end result is one party feeling used or unsatisfied.

Summertime Chi

This should serve as a good guideline in alot of metro areas....

Questionnaire

BAKER DATING SERVICES
Initial Questionnaire

1) Are you from the Chicago area?
How long have you been living here as an adult?

2) What neighborhood(s) have you lived in?
Have you paid cash or beer can to have your snow removed?

3) Did you graduate from college?
The same one that you started your freshman year?
How many exes were members of a BGLO?

4) Are you currently employed?
Is it in the same field that your degree is in?
Have you finished paying off your student loans?
Have seriously considered stripping or gigolo services to pay them?

5) When was the last time you had a checkup from a physician?
Do you have coverage?
Can you show proof of a clean bill of health?
Are you diabetic(the sugar)?
Have you ever consulted Maury Povich to determine paternity?

6) Are you renting or owning your current place of residence?
Any roommates?
Do they get down for the cause?
Can you fold a fitted sheet?
Have you ever ironed silk boxer briefs?

7) Do you know how to cook?
Do you know the difference between a spice and an herb?
Has any family member gotten sick from or refused to eat your food?
Are you accepting being required to cook no side dishes at all?

8) Do you have a passport?
Aside from Mexico and the Caribbean, where else have you gone?
Where would you like to go?
Have you met Dexter St. Jacques?

9) What kind of music do you listen to?
Been to any concerts?
Know anybody in the band/group?
How many times have you met “Bill Bixby”?

Just so you know....

Ask for forgiveness before you go asking permission

Planking

Lots of women have done it! They just didn't know what it was called...

Arthur Ashe

"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever the cost."
-Arthur Ashe

In the beginning....

This pic makes me want to hear stories about her days at Howard and when she was young in the theatre game in NYC. I bet her and debbie Allen were some spitfires!

Deal Breaker

If they say that New Kids On The Block is better than these 5 dudes, I'll chip in on the bail money and then help you flee the country!

Just out of curiosity

When will some women realize that their knight in shining armor is going to look more like this?

Outdoor Urban Landscaping

I always appreciate a piece of good grafitti!

Tall women, yo....

I still can kiss your neck even if it is closer to your clavicle!!!!!

How many of us have them?

The best compliments that I ever got was from one of my best friends. He said that my "friend maintenance" was top-notch and that it made him optimistic that he would be able to maintain the friendships from earlier in his life just like his own father had been able to do with his college buddies.




Inside it took me back a bit. I was shocked! I really didn't know HOW to respond to such a statement. It was a private confesion of sorts and by me having just started the transitioning into adulthood, this was my first exposure to mature matterss. But a response was in order, and in my own characteristic fashion, I acknowledged his perspective and returned the feeling, in kind, that I appreciated his friendship just the same.

There are older folks out there who say that one should allow friendships to fall by the wayside. However, I'm not an advocate of such beliefs. Like all things in love, if the feeling is not reciprocated(or even the work needed to maintain the friendship is not reciprocated) then by all means, let the arrangement falter. However, if there is a concentrated effort by both parties(or all involved) then I feel that friendships should last all throughout life. No matter the distance or experiences one party goes through while the others involved may go through different experiences. I believe that if we can share those moments and accept them for what they are, then a friendship is needed. Those private moments or those shared, private moments where we can let our guard down and expose ourselves to those who care.

Besides, it is in those moments when Life happens, those times that make us reach out(sometimes blindly) for help from a caring soul. And its those folks that we call FRIEND that reach back to help us out!

Nomm Nomm Nomm

Giving honor & praise to my friends WiseMath and Kunle Solar.....

I takes good pix....

This pic should show the quiet confiedence that this woman possesses. That, and she looks badass!!!!!

I Am, I Be

I am Harold Bell, I be that dude called "Gator"!
I am Benna's son, I be getting my sense from her
I am from Chicago, I be representing 'til the world blow up
I am from Bronzeville, I be calling it "The Low End" ad infinitum
I am a Virgo, I be hella critical
I am a Mizzou graduate, I be letting kU lames know
I am a DirtBag, I be talking dirty all day
I am in between Heaven & Hell, I be on dem Shango missions
I am fluent in regular & Job Interview, I be dancing underwater and not getting wet
I am an optimist, I be trying not to get burned
I am hard to figure out, I be milking my position for all its worth

RIP Gil Scott-heron

Memories

Everytime I hear this song I think about my Grandma's Lounge...

It was somewhere on the Southside and my Uncle Lloyd(Auntie Lloyd) was the bartender from what I remember. It may have been a decent watering hole for all I care, I was just 4 years old when my GrandMa sold it. Yet, somehow music has the ability to trigger a memory in our psyches that alters our moods. Sometimes(like this one) its for the better. others, well, its a downer.

The small, brief moment of this memory that I get whenever I hear this song is that of spending time with my father and his folks on a Saturday. No mother or sister, just me and my Pops. In a smoke fille room with a the smell of liquor in the air. at the time, I didn't know that Auntie Lloyd was gay, he was just my Uncle that worked the bar making drinks and sharing a pack of Kools with my father.

Part of me wishes that I had more times like this throughout my childhood and teenage years. Unfortunately, it wasn't so because me and my Pops would grow apart and are pretty much on different paths in life.