the walk of shame. pretty girls and celebrities don't tongue tie me, bank tellers and grocery cashiers do. having to make that small talk while waiting for a transaction to process or gross total to appear is just confusing to me. i start to think anything out of their mouths is directed at me. i'm standing in line, there's a pause while the teller's waiting for my check to cash, she says "i'll be right with you sir." i immediately answer back "oh, okay, no problem."

clearly, any intelligent person would reason that she was talking to the guy waiting in line behind me. but when faced with three minute conversation situations, i just sort of freeze up. i figure the interaction between me and them (them and me) is so short that i can pretty much say anything; so i kind of forget to concentrate about saying something.

i end up responding to "have a nice day" and "come see us soon" with non-standard unslick outros like "cool, see you later" or "peace." the correct response for normal humans is to say "thank you" and/or "you too."

then as you walk away, you feel kinda stupid for not following the standard outro procedures. but at the same time, you kind of already committed yourself to saying stupid things when you declined to concentrate on the task at hand. so really, in those seconds post-idiocy, do you get upset at society for having these meaningless yet brain draining outros? or do you get embarassed for yourself because you suck so bad at them?

help me, help you. due to my strange fascination with john f kennedy, i'd always admired anything that he started or was associated with -- for totally irrational reasons and as hindsight has proven, often misplaced loyalty. among the things i admired was the peace corps; established by jfk in 1961 to counter the 'ugly american' and 'yankee imperialism' sentiment in third world countries. basically, the peace corps was started so that america can say "hey look, we're not that bad, we do good things too!" this might be distilling the essence of peace corps down to a very negative statement, but somehow i can't shake that feeling.

now, i haven't had a ton of friends go to the peace corps, but i've had maybe two or three. and everybody i know has at least one friend who dedicates two years of their life abroad -- just like we all have that one [insert stereotype] friend, we all have a peace corps friend. so my "experience" with peace corps is very limited and gleaned only from their reactions or from what i've read and surmised. so as a disclaimer, all that i have to say about the peace corps could be totally off base, in which case, oh well.

from what i can figure, the peace corps is not so much about helping the people in other countries as it is about helping yourself (and the united states). there's a certain undeniable "i'm a good person" cachet to working in the peace corps. for certain types of individuals, going into the peace corps is pretty much a requirement before they can move onto successful careers in moralizing and doing good deeds.

and what i can surmise, most peace corps volunteers don't really end up doing a whole lot. for example. some peace corps volunteers are sent in to help with creating an irrigation system or some such task. what does your typical peace corps volunteer know about irrigation? not a whole lot i'd imagine. but off they go on a few weeks training and a "green thumb 101" handbook. now, i don't know how often farming is actually a peace corps activity, but the idea of sending in college-aged volunteers as so called experts -- often without the necessary skills -- is a bit ludicrous to me.

and let's cut to the chase here. going to the peace corps is essentially a big adventure and "finding myself" mission. peace corps volunteers take on the challenge of living in a different country, they deal with bugs, drugs, whatevers and they emerge out the other side as a better, more worldly, person. well, maybe not better, but more worldly for sure.

they take pretty pictures, they describe rustic settings, they revel in the breakthroughs they've had in learning to converse with the local baker, that kind of thing. but really, what are they doing? it seems to me that most peace corps volunteers leave our shores seeking something, with only an inkling of an idea that they're helping someone(s). which is fine i guess, as long as they realize what it is they're actually doing. humanitarians? i'd lean on the side of "no." then again, someone's gotta do it, misguided as they are. and if not me, then why not you?

"the peace corps has always had a problem assuring volunteers and itself that the job assignments overseas were real and meaningful. too often peace corps assignments have been marginal and sometimes nearly nonexistent — with ill-equipped young people having to fashion a job on the spot under the watchful eyes of local people."
-peace corps hurt by unwise policies-

i would imagine that girls who are skinny but constantly make remarks about “oh my god, i can’t believe i’m eating this (half a) fry, oh my god i’m going to be fat” would make a lot of inadvertent enemies. other girls must hate that. if people were given free rein to annihilate other people, i’m sure “girls who are skinny but act like they are sinning with each breath of air they inhale” would be among the first to go. you have to wonder if these girls are doing it because they are socially conditioned to think that a lady does not over indulge, or if they are just not-so-subtly sticking it to their more fleshy peers. i would like to think it’s the latter, which would be far more amusing. but somehow, i think it’s the former.

"ever since i was little, i loved basketball more than just about anything. randomly, inexplicably, coincidentally, the greatest team basketball player of my lifetime landed on my team, in my formative years, and i had the privilege of watching him, day in and day out, for 13 years. his work ethic and his competitiveness rubbed off on his teammates. he always rose to the occasion when it mattered. his passing was contagious. when you watched him long enough, you started to see the angles he was seeing; instead of reacting to what just happened, you reacted to the play as it was happening. there's mchale cutting to the basket, i see him, get him the ball, there it is ... layup! bird gave that to us."
-an apostle of basketball jesus-

“larry bird just throws the ball in the air and god moves the basket underneath it.” it's hard for me to justify my love for larry bird. in bird's prime, i was still in taiwan and not conversant in basketball or english. during the celtics' three titles (1981, 1984, 1986) i didn't really watch any sports. the only reason i liked larry bird and the celtics was because my dad liked larry bird and the celtics. that was enough for me apparently. with every other sport, i just decided to pick a player, a team, or a city (usually pittsburgh) and liked that organization until i found a better reason to like another organization.

i had all sorts of weird reasons for liking certain players. i collected baseball cards of players with mustaches for awhile and knew only those players. i didn't even really like mustaches, just players with mustaches. i liked the way "bonilla, bonds and van slyke" sounded together. i enjoyed how every team in pittsburgh had gold and yellow as their team colors. i admired the asymmetrical helmets of the steelers. i liked saying "roberto clemente" and was touched by the circumstances of his tragic death.

through it all, i only ever truly loved the celtics. which is odd considering i never saw any game in which the celtics were actually really good. i saw bird, mchale and parrish as they were declining. i never saw dennis johnson play. i saw danny ainge in phoenix and portland, but not in boston. i feel like all my "memories" of great celtic wins are only from (the same) highlight reels.

i've read nearly every celtics related book i could get my hands on, and have a respectable base of celtic knowledge, but i wasn't fortunate enough to be cognizant of bird when he was the living legend. it's not like i can honestly say that "those celtic teams were great" because i've never really seen them play. it makes me question just how much reason we really have to have to like anything. then again, if mustaches are reason enough to collect men, then why not any reason under the sun to like anything?

heard'em say. i'm about to become a taste hypocrite, this is my story. i used to dislike kanye west. not hate really, just dislike a lot. i thought the hype on him was way too huge, he was lauded left and right for his lyrical skills, his witty rhymes and his intelligent subject matter, he was the next coming of biggie. no such thing i said/say. i appreciated kanye's production skills, but as a lyricist, it bothered me that he was perceived by the public as the greatest thing since hip hop hit suburbia. kanye's rapping style was more comparable to nelly's sing-song than anything else i could think of.

plus, kanye's ego didn't really rub me the right way. i saw him on punk'd or something and there he was with his upturned collar and his pink polo shirt running around being an egotistical maniac. i couldn't dig it (him).

but people around me loved him, and my current roommate started to ride kanye's jock like he was kanye's original video ho. so really, i was surrounded by kanye all the time. but i'm a man of willpower and character, i did not turn. i enjoyed kanye's work during my infrequent forays into the night life, but never in my mind. i stayed true to my initial impression of kanye despite being bombarded by "kanye is great" opinions all around me.

i must say however, that during all of this, i had the utmost respect for kanye's "through the wire," which i thought was just the greatest song. that was a track that i could get behind, in thought as well as execution. but that was it.

more kanye hating moments came after i found out about him teaming up with common, and then his work with john legend. i was never that high on john legend, thinking him highly overrated and really annoying after a few songs. again, his "ordinary people" was an amazing song, but that's about it. trudging through john "legend's" full album further reinforced my idea that kanye was ruining things and not deserving of his lyrical accolades, since it sounded to me like he penned most of mr legend's lyrics -- which were disgracefully shallow and utterly boring. kanye's work on common's new album was also just so-so in my opinion. i took it a bit personal that an ultra magnificent emcee such as common could only gain popularity as the sidekick to some flash in the pan. i'm sure common was insulted too, although i'm sure he enjoys the money he receives from being associated with kanye.

then i read about kanye in time magazine. about his struggle making it as a non-ghetto, too suburban, rapper. about his professor mother, his pastoral marriage counselor father, about kanye's struggles and dedication to his craft. kanye may be one cocky fool but he had to be, because everyone shut him down everywhere. the real turning point for me was watching kanye's "driven" episode on vh1. i watched it three times over one weekend, and i got sucked in each time. i started to see where kanye was coming from, and i could get past his braggadocious demeanor. plus his music was growing on me.

i found myself listening to kanye's first album over and over, and a few tracks (all falls down, spaceship, got'em high) started getting lodged in my head. i was getting kanye-fied. heavens me, who was i? kanye was also immortalized in his "bush doesn't care about black people" speech, and that was just a ridiculously great moment. then, during an early thanksgiving dinner with some friends, we discovered that his "family business" track was really the best hip hop holiday music. try it, i dare you.

and now, with kanye's sophmore release, "gold digger" is just an infectious dance song, and "heard'em say" is fun to sing along to. so yeah, i guess i like kanye. dammit. i still don't think he's the greatest thing since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but he's better than i thought he was.

i doubt anybody cared about this, but i feel like i owed it to kanye. if i'm gonna dance or sing along to his stuff, i might as well retract my previous negative opinions about him. this isn't a love letter however -- most of his songs still suck -- just a statement of taste hypocrisy. i think i have better things i should be doing, but somehow this was important to me. thanks for listening. and thank you kanye, i guess.

this is a request mr radio man, just one desire from a hip-hop fan. what has "east coast rap roots, funk influences, syncopated beats, duo rapping and the heavy use of slang?" yes, that's right, gangstarr. thanks to a heads up from superlum, i fiddled around with pandora today and i was amazed. my life changed, seriously. pandora is a web service that lets you find music that you like based on what you already like, and then they play it for you. sounds ridiculously great right?

other sites let you rate certain songs and they'll select upcoming songs based on those selections, but as far as i know, pandora is the only service that analyzes a song and then matches up that song's criteria -- thanks to the music genome project -- to recommend additional songs. so it's not like "if you like nelly you'll like lil'jon" or whatever, it's matching up the songs based on "has similar east coast rap roots, the heavy use of chordal patterning, a tight kick sond, barebones arranging and an electric bass riff" type stuff. is this crazy or what? heck, it's fun just to see what they say when they break down the songs. i didn't even know that i liked "melodic part writing and busy synth hat." but i do!

when i put in gangstarr as my first selection, pandora played a gangstarr track, "skills," and then it started to play other songs. you can thumbs up or thumbs down the songs to give pandora a better idea of what you want to be listening to. the first selection pandora made for me after the gangstarr track was "proceed (live)" by the roots, one of my all time favorites. i was hooked. the next few selections gave me songs that i already loved or introduced me to artists that i didn't even know i loved yet:

radioactive - large professor
wherever you are - mic geronimo
lyrics to go (tumblin' dice remix) - tribe
moving to my beat - j boogie
crush on you - mr cheeks
6th sense - common
no comparison - 9th wonder & buckshot
all over again - raekwon
the way you do it - little brother
incredible - krumb snatcha
remind my soul - akrobatik
the movement - inspectah deck
bluebird - one self

by the time digable and dj jazzy jeff rolled around i was already aim-ing and emailing everyone to try pandora out. i'm in heaven. the only "bad" song that pandora recommended me was "balla babyz" by chingy, but i can forgive that since i started adding in criteria other than gangstarr. after i dialed it back to just gangstarr, pandora didn't miss. not once.

and because i didn't want to be unscientific, i started a new station and tried out pm dawn, to some mixed results. apparently pm dawn -- "hip hop roots, rap influcences, r&b influences, mild rhythmic syncopation and acoustic rhythm piano" -- is similar to marques houston, n'sync, mariah carey and brian mcknight. not exactly what i was looking for. but who am i to argue? this pandora thing is amazing -- plus they have an interesting blog. go try it out like right now.

rejoice people, rejoice!

"some scholars contend that pandora's 'box' may have been a mistranslation, and her 'box' may have been a large jar or vase, forged from the earth. in fact, there is evidence that suggests pandora herself was the jar. in ancient greece jars commonly bore images of women. the jar was said to have been in a jar form because of the similarities between a jar and a woman's uterus."