L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 2 of 5

BIZ MARKIE vs. TOO SHORT
A pair of elder rap legends, who came from a different angle. The Biz (whom allegedly cannot be beat) was a big, goofy fucker and Too Short came from the wrong end of the country and was doing lower class anthropological dissertations on the culture of pimps and prostitutes. I met Biz Markie once, at the Marriott in Richmond, while Jay-Z was surrounded by a hundred Mennonite kids getting his autograph (no shit, one of the most surreal moments of my life) and Biz was over by the bathrooms so I said, "What's up," and he looked like he was pregnant with a watermelon in his belly.
Too Short, although not the cultural icon that Biz is, is definitely something I still listen to regularly. When he gets onto his "I'm gonna make a comment about some shit other than pussy" kicks, there really ain't nothing like a Too Short song. And I guess if I was forced to get high and play Mario Kart Wii with one of them, I'd pick Biz, but in every other way, life is Too Short.
Advantage: Too Short.
ANGELA DAVIS vs. LEONARD PELTIER
And now a pair of "I'm going to college and really like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky a lot" legendary types. And being I don't want to waste my life writing long in-depth analysis of all these match-ups that ultimately don't mean anything, even within the retarded parameters of what I'm doing here in this little microcosmic corner of the interwebs, I will simply say frybread is fucking awesome.
Advantage: Leonard Peltier.
DIEGO MARADONA vs. GAYLORD PERRY
Cokehead world soccer star who did not lead his native Argentina to World Cup glory again as a coach like he did as a player, matching up against a wiley old baseball white dude who pretty much made his name off cheating, pitching baseballs with all sorts of imported illegal substances. And while the intriguing nature of being a spitball pitcher in Major League Baseball is one of the few wonderful snippets of baseball lore, and for me far different than dudes taking steroids, because there's so much more trickery and deceit involved in having vaseline hidden inside your zipper and somehow rubbing it on the baseball while nobody sees you while you are standing in the most obvious and watched place in the entire fucking stadium, it's hard not to appreciate Diego Maradona's eccentricity, which is what you call a stone cold crazy fucker when he's richer than everybody else around him.
Advantage: Diego Maradona.
PHYLLIS LIGHT vs. STEPHEN HARROD BUHNER
These are a pair of herbalist types that come through my brain via my wife's influence, who has studied under both of these people. I am sure if she were picking, it'd be Phyllis Light in a heartbeat. She is an older Alabama woman who practices the old mountain folklore ways of herbalism, and unlike a lot of modern new agey herbalist types, is not afraid to mix in some real world shit like, "Drink a Coke, just a regular old every day Coke." Her son is apparently an MMA fighter of some sort, and she has some crazy herbal farm in rural Alabama that we have apparently been invited to visit if we'd like. I'd like. I feel I haven't had a thick infusion of deep South craziness in my life for far too long, too mired down in this watered down pretend Virginia south where everybody loves bagels and lox and the New York Yankees.
Stephen Harrod Buhner has written a book called Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, which is a must-have if you are into the homebrewing shit, because he can guide you into the realm of mildly psychotropic beers. Also, I met this dude one time, painting a lady's house, and we hit it off, and he told me how happy the house was to have a guy like me painting it. I was like, "No doubt," because all houses liked me. It's just their stupid owners that made it hard to survive self-employment, not to mention the overall decline of the American economy. Plus, Buhner cold kicks it with two partners, which I guess new agey types call "polyamorism" to make it sound more impossible to deny than just admitting you got two ol' ladies in the same house. On one hand, I can dig that, and it makes sense physiologically in a lot of ways, not to mention when it comes to the companionship make-up of men's and women's minds. But I also am pretty good with my one ol' lady, which, even as good as we have it, is hard to navigate at times. Having two ol' ladies, that I'm mentally saying I'm lifelong committed to, and them saying the same, and to each other, I don't know, I can see it getting oddball as hell emotionally and filling that hunk of soul right above my intestines with a clenched fist.
Advantage: Phyllis Light.
LOUIS FARRAKHAN vs. MIKE TYSON
When I still lived in Richmond, I used to love buying Final Calls, although a few of those dudes wouldn't even sell them to me, what with me being a white devil and all. The dietary column alone was worth the couple dollar donation. There are some really great philosophical aspects to the Nation of Islam, bus pigeons, which give him some meditative moments, and just generally tries to continue navigating his way through life, like we all do, with as little a clue as anybody, but a much thicker publicly known history. There are shady industries like boxing all over - pro wrestling, porn, the music industry - that create these pop cultural monsters, squeeze every dollar they can out of them, let them burn through their small cut of it, and then dump them on the side of the road as a celebrity has-been. I just can't help but feel like Tyson's story ain't over, and some pretty crazy (in both good and bad ways) shit is still gonna develop out of this man, especially now that he's older and realizes he can't knock out the world.
Advantage: Mike Tyson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. RON JEREMY
Larry Flynt made magazines, where you actually got to see an open vagina, plus a dick beside it. And he gave us the Chester the Molester cartoon, not to mention Beaver Hunt, which pretty much helped inspire a large corner of the interweb's naked parts.
Ron Jeremy is a porn dude who did it far longer than anybody else, and with a tongue-in-cheek style. Even as porn moved far away from having people actually act anymore, he still made a living at it. But that's about it.
Flynt fought, no matter how ridiculously his arguments were, the government. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for people who fight the government over their God-given right to express their retarded perversions publicly. Plus, he's a Kentucky hillbilly who became a millionaire. Ron Jeremy's probably from like Reno or Arizona or something.
Advantage: Larry Flynt.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. SEEN
A pair of graffiti legends, both of which I'd love to have a piece by hanging up in my living room. Seen is a NYC legend of the first order, and you can actually contact him through his website to deal straight with the guy about buying some art. He's straight graffiti style though. Chaz Bojorquez, being an L.A. legend, has this weird style of script that's very obviously cholo-influenced, yet artsy as fuck. And I don't want this to seem like an east coast vs. west coast thing, but the wild styles that NY graffiti developed into is cool to look at, but it doesn't speak to me like seeing actual letters that are just barely legible do. Bojorquez's stuff is crazy as fuck, like any wild style, but still there's something that keeps it a written word with a message, even if it buried behind stylistic bedazzlement. The thing that sets him apart, for me, is how just with black and white, he can make something strong. Most graffiti relies on an abundance of color, and I've always been attracted to simple black-and-white. That's why I never have and never will get any colored tattoos on my body. Basic is solid. And then you take that solid basicness and wild style the fuck out of it.
Advantage: Chaz Bojorquez.
GRADY STILES III vs. OXANA MALAYA
Kind of an odd pairing, in that Grady Stiles III is a seventh generation lobster boy, and the heir apparent to a living as a freak show superstar, except his dad was an abusive alcoholic, and got his self killed by a hitman hired by his then wife, and Grady the III's mom. Thus, the long run of playing the Lobster family in the carnivals ended, as Grady III didn't want to follow in those footsteps. So he's a stay-at-home lobster boy (technically, it's called ectrodactyly), and even though his fingers and toes are fused together into something resembling claws, he has that head full of a carnie ass family and living on the freak show circuit as a kid to get him through life. Last I heard, like many children of severely abusive alcoholics, he doesn't drink at all either, which means he will probably mire away in obscurity in Gibtown, Florida, where the freaks are dying off, and they are building condos in their place.
Oxana Malaya is the Ukrainian dog child. More so than carnival freaks, I have always been fascinated with feral children, because we have these grand notions of what it means to be human, even if we don't subscribe to Christian dogma, most scientifically-minded people still believe in man's dominion over the earth. So I find it interesting when a child who has not yet formed into a solid thing is left to the wild. Malaya's parents were also terrible alcoholics, and sort of just kicked her out when she was 3. So she started roaming the streets, and ended up tagging along with wild dogs, who took care of her and taught her basically everything she knew when she was discovered in 1991 at age 8. Ever since that point, she's been in a government joint for the mentally disabled, being she behaved and acted like a dog for the most part, and she's slowly learned many human things, most notably language and what is considered somewhat normal behavior. But she is not connected to humanity at all, and has expressed this, saying she is most comfortable when she is hanging out with dogs. She is now 26 and takes care of the cows at the clinic's she's been in since being found.
Honestly, I think looking up to something like that is a good thing, because it challenges the whole dominion over the earth thing anyways. To be a simple dog person who takes care of cows, what the fuck is wrong with that? Personally, I think we need more feral children, not less, and I am proud of the fact that I've abandoned two of my five children in the woods.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.