WitnessThinks…It’s Time To Move.

Once upon a time, there was an myriad of internets that focused on a rapidly growing independent hip hop scene. Message boards rife with “backpacker” and “herb” accusations, video documentation of that year’s Scribble Jam (back when your only other option was buying the VHS tape) and mp3 selections from small print 12″s were now available to otherwise clueless corners of the globe. While there had been pages with similar content in the past, these focused exclusively on obscure, awkward alternative hip hop artists and made heroes out of broke emcees who would later become as popular as the opinion based sites preemptively made them out to be.

Some of these websites were actually responsible for launching careers and while the late Hiphophunks.com was not one of them; it crossed my mind recently. It was designed to read like young girl’s idol magazine (ie: Tigerbeat) and featured hilariously shallow interviews with a mob of serious minded emcees. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet Archive, you can check out this interview with Sage Francis as it originally appeared and if you toy around with some of the links, you might find your way to other points of interest.

I remember a friend sent in some of my music for consideration and I received an email regarding an interview but the site went down shortly after. Another dream shattered.

(Edit: You can access the entire interview selection here. It serves not only as a source of entertainment, but as a perfect list of “What the fuck ever happened to that guy” rappers.)

I was reluctant to share my thoughts about the Inauguration on this blog.
Not because I have some shocking perspective on things, but mostly because news coverage has been so (deservingly) heavy over the last few days that personal reflection on the matter has been almost impossible.

I’ve had the news on since 9 am and as I type this, Dick Cheney is being pushed out of the White House in a wheelchair. This image, in addition to various others that I’ve seen in the final hours of the George W. Bush presidency have been a bittersweet reparation for the anxieties of the last eight years. And yet, I feel something that I can only describe as the symptoms of a political Stockholm Syndrome. The cold hours spent on foot in front of political monuments in D.C. with a sign in my hand, the protest shows, the canvassing, the anger, the embarrassment and the feeling that the majority of country didn’t seem to agree with my system of fundamental beliefs– somehow became welcome and almost comfortable. That’s pretty fucked up.

As for Obama, there’s nothing that I can say that hasn’t been said a thousand times by a thousand different talking heads over a thousand different news media outlets. America grew up a little bit. People wanted “change”. (Though we can’t seem agree on its definition.) The impact this has had on the civil rights movement has made for some of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever seen in my life. The evening of his election was the first time I ever felt at home in this country. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen this “American Dream” that I was told so much about in my school years. And though I feel genuinely hopeful about the next four years–I’m still panged with anxieties about the uncertain. But it’s an uncertainty I find far more comfortable than that of the last eight years.

That constitution states that even without oath, we will have a new president at 12 PM.
So here’s my last post in a G. Dub world.
Good riddance.

Well…the two shows I played in Albany this past weekend were stellar and I’ll try to get some pictures and video online soon. But this isn’t about that. This is about the time between all the four hours drives back and forth from New York that I dedicated to playing Mega Man 9 with my room mate. And yes, I’m well aware this makes me a nerd. Be prepared for more entries like this.

The most recent entry in the series decided to revert back to the gameplay and 8 bit graphics of the NES games…and apparently, they decided to make it stupid hard while they were at it. But…to call this game “hard” is an understatement. It was clearly designed from the perspective of “How close can we make this to impossible without crossing the line?” This game is SO fucking hard that my roommate and I had to leave the apartment with hopes that a little fresh air would deter us from putting the controller through the drywall. It’s not even difficult for difficulty’s sake; every challenge is designed to be very much possible, but requires a kind of precision usually reserved for jewel cutting and neurosurgery. This is the type of frustration that makes you invent new swear words, but for some reason you’ll keep coming back for another serving of delicious irritation.

Aside from bringing out your inner masochist, though, it succeeds in reminding you what it was like to be 7 years old with a brand new game again. You realize that your adolescent self could have run through this game easily, but now you’re in your twenties stamping around your living room because you can’t get a robot in blue underpants to jump over a pit of spikes. Hours of mind boggling frustration later, we’ve nearly completed the game and the jubilant high fives that have connected under this roof are only surpassed by those seen in Capri Sun commercials in the mid 90’s. Best ten dollars I’ve spent in a long time.

I was in the store the other day and came across these:

Crayola has finally seen the light.

But I was raised in an age where you approached a racially paved crossroad when it came time to break out the crayons and do some coloring. “Indian Red” seemed like an obvious choice for the befeathered guests in the Thanksgiving setting, but that was also in Second Grade, before I learned that both “Indian” and “Red” were kind of offensive in context to Native Americans. Yellow for Asians also seemed strange to me. Not just because I had never seen someone with yellow skin, but also because I wasn’t one of those privileged enough to own the 250 count box set of crayons with the sharpener on the side. This meant that the only yellow I had in my arsenal was that obscene French’s mustard color and that just wouldn’t fly.

But it wasn’t until you had to color black people and white people that you were forced to make some heavy choices for the sake of realism. I remember holding a peach crayon against the skin of my hand, knowing full well that I was way too pasty to be considered “peach”. But white, like the black crayon, would be a caricature of any existing skin tone. Brown, the same color I was using for tree bark, didn’t make much sense either.

While rummaging through the attic at my parent’s house this week, I found a stockpile of old coloring books and 1st grade class projects. To my surprise, I found that in most of these pictures, I left human skin blank. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that decision was fueled more by my anxiety and disapproval of such an inappropriately limited pallet than a deep, prepubescent understanding of racial equality, though.

Regardless, I also found a project where we had to color plants and leaves that I got an embarrassingly low grade on. The reason?

“There are no such things as blue leaves” in red pen.

Fuck you, Mrs. Morgan.