Archive for July, 2009


Limitless XIII – Musketeer

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July 10, 2009

The original Batcave was a basement apartment a few blocks down from Memorial Stadium.  It was the first time I lived without roommates: it was glorious!  I’m no one’s playboy, but the extra privacy and freedom loosened me up alot.  Out of the Greek life, I was content to ‘serve out my time’ before heading to either coast.

I forgot the exact circumstances, but one of my closer friends from freshmen year asked if I was down to roll out for Spring Break.  The Colonel.  Why do we call him the Colonel?  Because to this day, the Colonel is one of the most charming brothers I’ve ever met.  Even now when I sense he’s not telling me the whole story, I’ll yell at him: “Man I’m not one of your girls!  Don’t be trying to charm me, just tell me what’s up!”  The Colonel is a New Orleans native; my mother made him gumbo one holiday when he couldn’t get back home.  My family’s loved him ever since and vice versa.  If we were a wrestling stable, I was the ‘brains’ and the Colonel was the ‘muscle’.  So that leaves out what?  That’s right: the ‘clown’…

The longest running friendship I have is with a kid who grew up two houses down from me.  We rode the school bus together until I got my first car.  From that point on we were Beavis and Butthead (it was in the mid 90s, cut us some slack).  Beavis (as I still call him sometimes) if by far the funniest cat I’ve ever known.  I’m a professional storyteller, but this cat has the Gift of comedy.  Beavis is the one guy I know who could tell the story of the most humiliating moment of my life, and have me dying laughing at my own humiliation.  I’m a year older, but he’s an artist, he came to KU, he eventually pledged Alpha.  He’s very much the younger brother I always wanted.  And he was the third Musketeer in our spring break trip.

It’s a movie cliche but it’s true:  taking a trip with somebody inevitably enhances or destroys the relationship.  You’ll have inside jokes and memories that will only make sense to the people you share the experience with.  I’m not going to spend paragraphs talking about ‘Check Out Time’, Similac, ‘sippers and tippers’, Everclear, or Redman’s ‘Doc’s da Name 2000′ album.  But I’ll say a lifelong clowning session started that week.

The years after that have been filled with episodes.  Pimping out on a memorable Miami trip.  Wrestling and talking crazy in New York City (my first national TV appearance).  I don’t consider it coincidence that in two of the most infamous stories of my sexcapades, well the Musketeers weren’t in the room, but they damn sure were in the vicinity.  But that was many, many, many years ago, we’re all good boys and decent gentlemen now…

Beavis was the first of us to get married.  The Colonel and I are still looking, even though I’m a lot closer (Yeah I said it fool if you’re reading this!)  The glory days are over and all good things must come to an end.  One of my major life creeds is maximizing your life potential while minimizing the amount of stupid shyt you do.  Well these two guys (and the self proclaimed 4th Musketeer, Linus) have seen me do a LOT of stupid shyt.  To put it another way, these guys have all seen me be human.  And I love them for it.

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Limitless XII – The Killing Joke

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July 9, 2009

“That’s how far the world is from where I am.  Just one bad day…” – the Joker, the Killing Joke

I had been biding my time for three years to get back to a point where I could follow my true ambition.  My grades were fine, I was in a grad school training program; as long as I avoided doing anything stupid, it was in God’s hands.  Going into my last year, the Frat had a nice nightclub, we won the big stepshow in April, we won Chapter of the Year.  We had a lot of momentum from anyone’s perspective.  Naive as it may sound, my plan for my senior year was to follow the lead of the oldheads who brought me into the Game:  show up at the Burge at 12:30, shake a few hands, maybe one stroll around the party.  Defend the stepshow title in April.  Pass the torch to the neos as it was passed to me.  The Greek version of the hip hop head I guess.

What happened next was entirely different.  A brother who didn’t pledge me (i.e, someone with no rank) decided I needed to be put in my place as far as the Frat was concerned, and me being apart of ‘their’ plans.  I was completely blindsided and frankly, extremely insulted.  But it raised a good question: In what ways did I need them?

  • I had a Chapter of the Year plaque on my wall.  I was on multiple stepshow championship teams.  Did I really have anything left to prove as an Alpha?  (Nope.)
  • I adopted my Islamic name since joining the Frat.  And I had also chosen my career path.  So even on the best of the days, the Frat was the third biggest part of my identity.  Was it irreplacable?  (Definitely not.)
  • One thing I’ll always give KU credit for was making sure I had fun in the midst of whatever I was working on.  It was my senior year of college.  Did I have any interest in getting into a pissing contest?  (Hell no!)

The separation was clean and surgical: I didn’t wear paraphenalia on campus, I no longer went to the Burge, I didn’t show up at the nightclub (it would shut down anyway after what I’ve been told was one of the great club fights of the Jayhawk years).  If you were a freshman that year, you probably didn’t know I existed.  It would be the beginning of what has carried into adulthood: we’re all still friends to various degrees, but we’ve also all established distinctive individual identities, we’re all friends with different groups of people from Kansas, et cetera.  So I spent my whole senior year buried in textbooks right?  Hardly…

I focused on my other interests.  I was the last of my generation’s ‘hip hop’ Alphas.  The radio show had to go on: by the grace of God (literally) a couple of the Muslim brothers under me loved hip hop the way I do, and took the reins of the show.  I would still pop in once in a while to crack jokes and freestyle with them.  I made a couple guest appearances at house parties with my boys who weren’t Alphas; it would be the beginning of what would actually become my adult inner circle.  More on them in the next chapter.  I wanted to have fun my last year at KU, and I had a ball!  I really can’t complain. 

I ended up applying to the same schools I wanted to apply to out of high school.  It was an afternoon in the spring when I got a phone call from the Den Mother of the Peter Stark Producing Program.  Now I have no idea how someone looks when they win the lottery, but I know I woke up a neighbor or two that night.  I can still recall the acceptance letter I recieved: “…your classmates will be coming from Harvard, Yale, Boston College, Dartmouth, Kansas…“  I didn’t care.  I wasn’t intimidated at all.  I busted my ass for many years to create an opportunity, and I got it.

I wish I could tell you that after I got what I wanted, I chilled out.  But I didn’t.  I wasn’t at the point in my life where I could say ‘success is the best revenge.’  I felt I dealt with a lot of naysayers, a lot of haters, a lot of fake friends.  Just to put myself in a position where I could do what I love to do, live where I wanted to live with whoever I chose to live with.  My teenage ideals revolved in large part around putting black women on a pedestal that the mainstream rarely does, and showing black people the beauty of our culture.  Now idealism was meeting pragmatism for the first time.  It wasn’t some old white man in some ivory tower who was discounting me; it was much, much closer to home.  I came to Lawrence with the expectation I would make no lifelong friends, I wouldn’t meet my wife, and I proved myself right (granted in a completely Anakin Skywalker sort of way).

In time of course I would be proven wrong; we’ll get to the how and why of how that part of my life played out in time.  My next step was packing my car and heading to a place where I heard it never rained…

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I Left My Childhood at Staples Center

Filed under: Inspirations — 2 Comments
July 7, 2009

First of all, B.E.T., go to your room and don’t come out and until we tell you to come out…

Our seats ended up being on the far end from the stage but right next to the tunnel where all the celebs were going (they saved the floor for the VIPs for the most part).  So briefly we were at most 10 feet away from John Mayer, Kim and the Kardashians, Kobe, Magic, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Shawn and Marlon Wayans, Robert Townsend, Dionne Warwick and a lot more famous folk that escape my mind right now.  At first it was cool, then the…how should I say this?  Well the people who clearly saw this as a ‘once in a lifetime chance to be that close to a famous person’ crowd starting pulling out their cameras and posting up by the tunnel.  And this was before any of us really knew how much of a ‘memorial’ this really was going to be.

My friend and I were debating this before it got underway, but when they brought in the casket and the choir started singing, the tone was set.  There would be no dancing or moonwalking today.  I’m sure the folks who were still holding out hope this would be a straight up and down tribute concert were heavily disappointed.  I still have a head cramp, but this is all still fresh in my mind so I wanted to get my thoughts out while they’re still fresh…

Rev. Al:  Whatever suspicions I have about you from time to time, you even had me standing and clapping today.  I’m pretty sure I even yelled out PREACH once during your speech.  You do your thing well…

Stevie brought out the first set of tears (for me) personally.  A beautiful song from someone who obviously knew Michael from his earliest days.

John Mayer:  How dare you.  You were supposed to play ‘Beat It’ or ‘Dirty Diana’ or something rock.  How dare you play my song, my song, so beautifully.  That’s when I completely lost it.  After the song, my friend looked at me and I told her (in complete sincerity), “I’m done.”

Magic:  You all heard the story.  I don’t know if the television cameras caught this, but for the first time I can ever remember, even Kobe had a complete sincere ‘THIS Negro!’ look on his face when Magic was telling the KFC story.  That’s what kind of day it was.

On a side note, I’ve said this before, but man my people now how to worship!  There were too many knuckleheads in there sure, but most of the crowd seemed to be genuine MJ fans, and a lot of black people.  It was church in Staples Center today my friends… 

Jennifer Hudson:  Going back to Dreamgirls you always put a smile on my face when I see you hit the stage/screen.  And I’ve heard you blow harder, but it was a memorial so you played it well for the circumstances.

Brooke:  Until the end of the memorial, I thought she humanized Michael as much as anyone has in his later years.  Very good tribute.

Usher:  Man, I got love for you, but Lord knows I can’t call myself a ‘fan’ of yours.  Today was probably the first and only time we’ll be nearly eye to eye on something.  Fitting tribute to your mentor.

Marlon:  Completely tore me down again.  Those two were always the two little ones and it showed in his speech.  I never had blood brothers but I have friends now who might as well be brothers to me, so that pain of losing someone who you grew up with and who watched you grow into a man is very scary to me.

 Paris:  Lord, Lord, Lord.  If on some level you couldn’t feel for that I don’t know what to tell you.  I really don’t.  We’ll all see what happens next for those kids, but God willing they’ll be raised by someone looking out for their best interests.

I’ve got my program and my ticket set aside, I’m about to cut off my wristband.  I haven’t decided where I’m going to store them yet, but it will be somewhere special.  That memorial service was so much better than I ever imagined.  We all should get such closure and such respect from our loved ones in the end. 

I’m still drained.  I need to rest now.  God bless Mike.  You’ll definitely be missed.

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Public Enemies

Filed under: Movie Reviews — Leave a comment
July 4, 2009

 

public_enemies

It’s my favorite genre by far, but at this point in the game it is damn near impossible to break new ground with crime drama.  Public Enemies is a really good movie on its own.  Michael Mann, Johnny Depp and Christian Bale doing a film about the true life story of John Dilinger.  If that sounds like it can’t miss, it’s because this is one of those rare situations where it really couldn’t.  Greatest crime flick ever?  No.  Greatest crime flick about that era?  No, I’d actually rank The Untouchables and Once Upon a Time in America as better movies of this time period of gangsterism.  Best film I’ve seen this year?  Probably. 

I knew enough about Dilinger’s story before going into the theater that nothing caught me completely off guard (a little disappointing).  It’s a tribute to Michael Mann’s storytelling ability and the work of the cast that I was entertained for nearly the entire movie.  On top of the two leads, there are a lot of great performances and great character actors in this movie.  There’s an old saying that for actors, you should play your role as if you’re the star even if you’re aren’t.  Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup stand out because of their name value, but there were at least three or four other ‘That Guys” in the film who got a smile out of me, just for showing up and being in this picture unannounced.

We’ll see what the box office is when that comes out Monday, but all in all a solid piece of adult entertainment.  A little on the long side, but if you know Michael Mann that’s to be expected.   

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