Insane Analog

I’m putting all of the pictures up tomorrow evening.

Don’t worry peoples, I got you.

This video is so awesome on so many levels. I’ll list them off encase you’re oblivious to the facts:

1. It’s a Heavy D. video (who’re the boys?)
2. Kid Capri produced the song
3. Brett Ratner directed
4. Chris Tucker is in it
5. Brett Ratner + Chris Tucker + Jackie Chain (not in video) = Rush Hour
6. The Noxema Girl: Rebecca Gayheart

The best part of this video is clearly Rebecca Gayheart. Honestly she’s beautiful; it’s her look near the beginning of the video that gets me every time. Plus, I have a thing for out-of-place white women in various situations. I can’t explain why, sorry, but this is a damn good example of my obsession. (She was dating Brett Ratner at the time, so that explains her feature.)

(Had to jack this series from my homey.)

Some of you may or may not know, but I’m a budding rapper average musician. I’m apart of a music group called The Novapilots with my boy Doug, and we have some various inspirations that somehow feed off of each other. Seriously. We don’t even know how that shit works, but it does. He started a series on his blog called Musical Inspirations and since we’re partners (and we copy each other all the time, like secretly feuding brothers trying to one up on the other) I decided to follow suit.

You see, I was raised on Hip-Hop. If I had any culture to identify myself with, it would definitely be the one that birthed the rap music. So I take all things Hip-Hop very seriously and and with that I have a critical eye on it all times — and with that said, Hip-Hop sucks now.

What?

Anyway, that’s another piece for another time (BUT IT HAD TO BE SAID!). As a lyricist, one my main inspirations is a young rapper from Chicago named Lupe Fiasco. He has two mainstream albums: Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor and The Cool, which both received critical acclaim from critics in Hip-Hop and other genres alike.

What attracts me to Lupe is mainly his nerdiness. My man drops references to everything from Street Fighter II to your favorite anime (his name is a slight play of Lupin The Third). And needless to say, his lyrical tenacity is absolutely ferocious. His flow is consistent on every single song, and I swear he just gets better with time.

Example from, “The Coolest”:

And so begin our reign (rain), the trinity–her and I ‘caine (cocaine)/

No weatherman could ever stand where her-and-I-came (hurricane), hella hard…/

That’s just a little bit. (He doesn’t really rap about cocaine. — its a concept album, people!)

Lupe and I have a lot in common; we know about the negativity of the streets and wish to keep it out of ours and others lives; we’re super nerdy and make it known in our raps; and we’re both from the mid-west. I know that may seem kind of trivial to some of you, but the mid-west Hip-Hop community is truly something special. We tend to stick together and build friendships, and feed off of each others success so we can all see the limelight. A midwest warmth, if you will. Gotta love it.

Here are some of my favorite songs from Lupe. The Coolest is one of my favorite songs of all time, just so you know.

The Coolest

Streets on Fire

I Gotcha feat. Pharrell

Obama: You know, George, I gotta thank you for making it so easy for me.

Bush: No problem, Barack. I had to make it up to Kanye West somehow — 808′S & HEARTBREAK, BABY!

For the first time in my life, I was apart of something truly historic: a black man ran for President of The United States, and he won. Barack Obama sealed his place in history as the first African-American to ever run our country, and by doing so quelled a giant fear from the minds of other blacks in America:

We no longer have to be afraid to achieve our goals.

One of the hardest and saddest things about being black in America is that we feel we have certain restrictions placed on us because of our skin color. Some jobs, roles, or titles in society are not meant for us to have and that has been deeply rooted within our psyche in generations. We are taught to shoot for the stars while we’re young, but that is almost the same as believing in Santa Claus; it sounds good to us while we’re young, but as we get older we start to realize the truth. We learn to accept it and live our lives doing the best we can while feeling that society is sub-consciously against us. Some of us never try to achieve our seemingly far-fetched aspirations, but some do, and those lucky few who do succeed put cracks in the “wall of forbidden dreams” for us, giving us a little bit of hope that we can keep cracking the wall until it won’t be there anymore.

On November 4th, 2008 that wall was torn down by Barack Obama.

Essentially, America is a land created by white people, for white people. So naturally, the position of head of the country should belong to a white person. However, with the postmodern philosophy of this country –land of the free, equal opportunity for all, etc.,– we should have had a non-white President a long time ago. Until now, there was an unsaid belief that anyone except a white person does not belong as Commander-in-Chief, and will not be. Case in point, some parts of the oh-so-coveted American Dream that many of us wish to live are a lie — a dream deferred, if you will.

But when Barack won the election last Tuesday, all of that changed. The wall was finally torn down. The product of a white woman from Kansas and an African man from Kenya –which makes him black in America’s perspective– ran against the traditional American ideal in John McCain and won. With that victory, he symbolically told all blacks –and other minorities– that we all can someday reach the same plateau that he has.

To hold the highest position in America as a black man, when we brought here being seen and treated as less than human, signifies that we can finally live the American Dream too. No longer will we have to be self-conscious about our race while applying for a job, or a school, or being apart of some type of organization or institution — we can finally do whatever we put our minds to, and not a single person can hold us back from achieving what we want.

The night when Barack won, the happiest tears I’ve ever cried came from my eyes. My friends around me were absolutely jubilant while I stared the television screen in a trance; I was so moved and inspired that I couldn’t move a single part of my body. When Obama emerged from the backdrop and walked to his podium, so many emotions ran through me. My faith in America was once renewed once again. My sense of black pride reached an all-time high. But most importantly, my innate fears of society had forever been defeated. It was the single most liberating moment thus far in my life.

Because of that one night, I can honestly say that anyone can shoot for the stars — it’s not just a fairy tale anymore to put a smile on someones face. It’s a real tale; the tale of Barack Obama.

Now, the founding fathers of this country can truly be proud. The American Dream is every American’s dream, and Barack proved it to us.

God Bless America: The Land of Opportunity

I’m supposed to be some sort of a writer and that’s why this blog exists; practice makes perfect, but I’m not practicing.

Dammit.

The reason why this is so upsetting to me is because throughout the day I think of at least ten things to write about, but I never actually take my time and start scribbling. It’s honestly a lack of self-motivation, I guess– it’s damn sure not time, because Lord knows I have a lot of that to spare.

So here is a promise I’m making to my blog, and you, you attractive reader you: I will write something at least twice a week. That may not seem like much at first, but believe me, it’s enough to find some type of groove. You have to learn to crawl before you walk, right?

So there it is. If I don’t stay true to this, get ahold of me and bitch at me. That even goes for you random readers too, not just the dedicated ones my friends.

For some reason, I have deep love for comics. Ever since my big-wheel riding days, there was something about comics that instantly hooked me in and kept me captivated more so than any movie or traditional book could. For a while I used to think it was the killer artwork, but recently I’ve come to my senses and discovered that it’s not the art that entranced me, but the story lines.

Some of you may be thinking, “uhh, duh” and I totally understand that because that’s the essential reason why everyone reads comics. But I have a strange infatuation with well-written stories–I dissect every detail in hoping to find some deeper theme than the obvious. I ask myself questions: “How can I relate to this story?” “What was <insert character here> really trying to communicate on a philosophical level?” Those questions are prominent to myself because of the medium that they exist in, which isn’t particularly known for it’s social/philosophical commentary–at least from outsiders looking in.

To see the world of comic books (or omniverse, to throw in some nerd cred) talk about contemporary issues had me taken aback a bit, especially in Ultimates 2.  Even though they were being a little too overt and not as ambiguous for my liking, I still was surprised at the validity of the overall message. Here’s a few examples:

And to top it all off, U2 was all about how America is viewed from a worldwide perspective (read: hated) and how it would suck for us if everyone decided to put us in our place…

Damn.

These types of things may be new to comic vets, but I’m kind of new at this.  Like I said earlier, to see this type of stuff happen in a world where people are made of brick and can completely bend reality at their will is kind of surreal to me. The usual “save the world” notion of comics has gotten old, I suppose. To see these themes infused into the lives of our favorite characters is fresh to me, and I’m excited that I can expect a tickle of thought-provoing from Bendis, Loeb, or Morrison and the like. Discovering new perspectives, whether real or fictionalized, are always rewarding for us as people. We need to see things from a different light to get a full-view, so if Thor, Captain America, or even Magneto can tell it like it is, then let tell it.

Thanks comics, for making me think a little.

Thats it, right there.

Ms. Dawson, I’m not quite sure what it is about you that makes me want regret every girl I’ve dated in the past. I really think it’s those lips you have; they look as luscious as a southern sunday dinner after a baptist church service.

Yes, I went there.

Leave it to Jay Smooth to tell it to us like it needs to be told.

To my fellow young voters: GO FUCKING VOTE! Don’t just have diaherra at the mouth and say you’re pro-Obama (since nobody I know is pro-McCain) and not vote for him. We have the power to take this election, so let’s show America what we can do.

Obama/Biden ‘08.

If you don’t know, you betta’ ask somebody.

It has come to my attention that the few readers I have are not hip to RSS/Atom feeds, which are a pretty big component to Web 2.0 nowadays. So, out of the pure generosity of my heart, I’ve decided to take some time out of my busy night to school you cats on this nifty bit of technology which makes keeping up with your favorites websites a lot easier.

So first, the definitions:

• RSS: Really Simple Syndication
• Atom: Atom Syndication Format

RSS and Atom feeds are basically efficient ways to let you know that new stories have been published on the world wide interbutts. Blogs, news sites and the like have adapted to and benefited immensely from the use of syndication feeds and so have their readers. It’s just quicker and easier for both parties!

Here’s a brief rundown of the difference between the two formats:

• RSS updates are essentially headlines and a brief description of the article with links for comments, other news submissions link for sites such as Technorati and Digg, etc.
• Atom feeds pretty much give you the whole story — you don’t even have to visit the original site! Quick and easy!

And how do you know if a site uses RSS or Atom feeds? Typically, in the far right of the address bar in your browser of your choice, you will either see this or . If one of those icons are not at the end of the address bar, just look around on the page a bit; there might be links that just say rss, atom, or subscribe. But remember: not every site has syndication! So if the icons or links aren’t there, then sorry, that site sucks.

Now to actually read the feeds, you’re going to need an aggregator. Luckily for us, there are a lot of them to choose from. Here’s a quick list of the more popular notifiers (most aggregators on the web can read both RSS and Atom, by the way):

• Bloglines
• NetVibes
• FeedDemon
• NewsGator
• Google Reader (my personal recommendatio)

I don’t really know the specifics of RSS versus Atom; I can just give my preference of the two and I’m Atom all day, everyday (I like keeping my Firefox tabs down to a minimum). However, RSS 2.0 is more accepted and therefore popular on the net. So you know, to each their own.

So there you have it — a little bit of Web 2.0 for those who aren’t hip. Incase you were wondering the address to my feed, it’s http://feeds.feedburner.com/insaneanalog/astro. So subscribe and make me feel better about myself and this damn blog.

(If you’re looking for a more detailed explaination of RSS and Atom, click here)