GRABBINGSAND

nineteen. eighty. nine. a number, another summer, sound of the funky drummer. music hitting you hard, ’cause i know you got soul. (brothers & sisters.)

last night my DSL was working. miracle of miracles. and the frustrating thing about having such an intermittent connection is that once you get it running, you feel like you need to do something worthy of such broad broadband. you paid for it, you went to all the trouble, so use it. but then you just sit there, staring at the screen, bathing in the cold blue monitor light, pondering.

but last night, i don’t know. i just felt inspired. blame it on the V-103 old school mix i heard a few sunday afternoons ago, and i decided to revisit high school. i graduated in 1989, from a high school that was about as white as an ivory soap bar, 99 and 44/100s percent caucasian. rap and hip hop was mostly foreign to me, thanks primarily to that environment. but there were instances, glimpses. somebody dubbed me a run-dmc cassette in junior high, i could’ve sworn it was ‘king of rock’ though it might have been their first album – the one with ‘it’s like that (and that’s the way it is)’ and another track that started with:

‘when i woke up. this morning. and got out of bed. i had so many strange thoughts. goin’ through my head.’

and i can remember that last spring in junior high, eighth grade, standing at the ‘horseshoe’ and waiting for the bus to take me home. and there we would be, 12-year old white kids imitating run-dmc. we might have been ignorant of all that had come before, only barely remembering snippets of sugarhill gang from elementary school skating parties, but we heard something that was beyond cool. the critics will claim that rap didn’t really cross the cultural line until run-dmc met aerosmith in the studio for ‘walk this way’ – but in 1984, we were already lining up for the music to come.

later would come exposure to public enemy in college. i missed ‘do the right thing’ in the theatre, but caught it on video. there was just something about the hip hop and rap that was produced between 1984 and 1990. the similarities were easily traced and tracked, as many owed their rhythm sections to james brown riffs and george clinton bassthumps. but it was quality, samples that mattered, lyrics that rocked. hip hop today, well, it’s just sad.

so what did i do last night? while napster is still a free world of giving and sharing, i am taking advantage of it. i found all of those tracks that i remember from high school, needing to test them with my older ears. kool moe dee. old public enemy with chuck d rapping about his olds 98 (‘the ultimate home-boy car!’). slick rick. monie love. and you know they still sound good. you can’t say that about all of those songs, most of those songs that filled the airwaves in the 80s. let the nostalgia buffs and the kids that weren’t even around listen to the milli vanillis, the new kids on the block, even the simple minds. sure, ‘alive and kicking’ is a great little song, but come on.

and i am not discounting all of modern hip hop. but you can keep your puffys, your snoops, your cash money millionaires. i need no bling bling. metal rap is over. long live the standard bearers and the revolutionaries like outkast, erykah badu, the roots, jurassic five, lauren hill.

i go to work. like a doctor. an architect. a boxer.

once again gainfully employed. actually have been for a few weeks now, but i felt it best to wait it out, just make sure that i actually had landed and this wasn’t just a temporary financial bandage. the new place is good, incredibly stable, with headquarters that eerily resemble superman’s fortress of solitude. all that is missing is a visit from terrence stamp and friends from the phantom zone. kneel! kneel before zod! i really dig terrence stamp for some reason. could be the voice. could be the way he can play any role and make it not only believable, but incredibly cool.

american movie classics played the restored cut of hitchcock’s ‘rear window’ this past sunday night. you just cannot get much better than that. is it in my top ten or so movies i posted last year? by god, it ought to be. great cinematography, sharp as tacks dialogue and that plot, that simple plot that pulls you directly into jimmy stewart’s obsession with the goings-on of his neighbors. and who else but hitchcock could take america’s favorite lawyer and turn him into one of the creepiest would-be-wife-murderers in film history?

wal-mart. 24-hours. the place gives me the creeps because of its sheer retail mass, but when you need dress socks at 10:15pm at night because the ones you have keep disappearing, well, there is little choice. the toy section is pitiful now, still recovering from the holidays i suppose. i always look to see if there is anything new that might go on my desk, always looking for a conversation piece, but the pickings were slim. i saw that they have re-issued the original he-man action figures in shiny collector boxes. same old mold, same old plastic, new big ass price. $11. wow. they were only $4 back in 1983 or so. never got into them anyway. they just seemed too squat and burly. at the time i was way into g.i.joe figures and star wars toys. the joes came with backpacks and all sorts of weaponry, not to mention the just-this-side-of-reality military vehicles. you could try to play with the joes and the star wars figures simultaneously, but the star wars toys were at a horrible disadvantage since their legs couldn’t bend at the knee. a g.i.joe could pilot an x-wing fighter, but luke skywalker on a motorcycle just looked stupid. and painful.

why is it that i sleep rather soundly for about six or seven hours only to be just as drowsy the next morning? could be the schedule. i just can’t see going to bed before midnight, it seems like a waste of time, of possibility. something might just happen between 10:45pm and 12:15am that will affect me for the rest of my life. you never know.

did i make any resolutions this year? as a matter of fact, well, sort of. i did resolve to keep this new job as long as i possibly can. and i think i was considering a renewed interest in exercise, perhaps running, maybe returning to the karate that kept me healthy in high school. the worst thing about karate was when anyone at school found out about it. what belt are you? brown. brown?!? what does that mean? it means that i am about three ranks away from black. oh really… then show me something.

like i am some sort of trained monkey. i always refused. performing is one thing. being someone’s private sideshow is another.

more theatre work. ‘i hate hamlet’ opens this week in roswell. i am playing gary. a producer. not as out-and-out evil or ruthless as claudius, but still fun to play. it has been awhile since i have worked at village playhouse, and i am not sure if i am up for a full six week run. too late to turn back now.

so. yes. i’m back.