MNZ: Washingtonian September 2010

A bonus pick-up from the free magazine library bin, this is the Washington area's introductory piece on Donovan McNabb, him smiling happily on the cover, holding a football, asking "Can this man save the Redskins?" Well, that didn't turn out so well. Funny thing about finding this was I got it around the same time Dan Snyder was suing the Washington City Paper (one of those weekly alternative rags) for a piece from last November detailing a long list of infractions Snyder has committed on humanity. Basically, the gist of the story is Dan Snyder is a scummy fucker, albeit a billionaire who can do whatever he wants, and owns the Redskins, and most likely will run them completely into the ground. None of this seems unlikely to me, and what shocked me about the Washington City Paper piece was, before I read it, I didn't think I could hate Dan Snyder more. Somehow by the end, I did. Of course, no one (including me) didn't really know about the article until Dan Snyder made a big point during the Super Bowl week of suing them over the article, claiming some really nonsensical things (like anti-semitism) and basically threatening to just tie them up financially with lawsuits to bankrupt them... not exactly endearing threats from a guy struggling to maintain a positive image as owner of one of the most valuable sports franchises on earth.
But the Washingtonian article really gets at more of what Snyder is about - media manipulation. The article on McNabb is really nothing more than a fluff piece, positioning McNabb as the first real QB the Redskins have ever had in maybe decades, and how things were going to finally be better. This is a common theme I've seen as a Redskins fan. Last year it was Donovan McNabb and Mike Shanahan. The year before that it was Albert Haynesworth. The year before that it was a changing of the guard with Jim Zorn and Vinny Cerratto being officially called what he already had been - the player personnel guy. Every year there is some shifting of the same raggedy coconut shells around in fast handed orders to make it appear like, "Yeah, we're gonna win." And the local media backs this up.
I mean, sometimes it's obvious, as Snyder owns most of the sports talk in the D.C. area. But it really seems to me he has plants inside the local papers as well. The Post pretends to be against Snyder, but they really haven't lit his ass up like you would expect, outside of the occasional columnist. Snyder creates these new auras, over and over, and pretends things are better, and people keep on spending money. It's very disheartening to me, because the only sports team I am emotionally attached to beyond logic is the Redskins. So even with no actual input on what happens, my Sundays in the fall can be ruined and depressed, and usually are, eventually. But he manipulates things back into something every spring or summer.
This year will be no different. The Skins have the 10th pick in the NFL draft, and though they need a lot of stuff, including QB, they will ignore all their basic needs or a flashy young QB prospect in a year of over-valued QB prospects, who will then be thrown into the mix too early because Donovan McNabb will be run off and Rex Grossman is Rex Grossman (meaning inherently shitty), so the rookie - even if he could be good - will be quickly turned to damaged goods by too many sacks and blitz-happy NFC East defenses having field days with him. While it would make sense to draft a NT or another OL to go with last year's pick of Trent Williams, and try to actually build a football team, they'll get a QB. The media hype will pick up around the draft in April as well, about how this QB or that QB is the next big thing, a definite Matt Ryan or Joe Flacco type with the potential to be Joe Theismann, or even an in-the-raw Joe Montana. We'll get another smiling September magazine cover face who will be the new face of the Redskins, and things will be promised all over again, how it's finally gonna be different, and a new era has finally dawned.
And then by next February, that smiling face will be tossed onto the scrap heap of our memories as well, it'll be the same ol' shit, and Dan Snyder will still be making a ton of money off of merchandising, licensing, parking fees, everything. Fuck you Dan Snyder. Fuck you.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #1: “The Devil Never Sleeps” by Iron & Wine

Normally I do not get into music like this. But briefly, right as my early 2011 health breakdown started to hit, I got into Iron & Wine, and downloaded a whole bunch of their shit (or his... I don't know, from what I read I could never figure out if it was a dude or a group or both or what). It made perfect sense to me and I played it like crazy for a long minute there, all of it, enough so that I would imagine a couple more songs will show up in the coming couple of months of countdowns, being I limit it to one song per artist each month. Good acoustic-based stylings with some real ass lyrics about normal people shit.
Somewhere in the last 48 hours or so though, a change occurred. It started to sound whiny and annoying to me. I think this is all very healthy though, a good sign that I am actually healing back to who I am supposed to be. And this Iron & Wine was a good soundtrack for that time, that transition from what it was to what it is, or maybe just a solid diversion of my senses that made sense for where I was, so that I could be distracted and undergo the physical changes necessary before my mind focused back in on what was going through my ears. I am thankful for Iron & Wine and their extensive catalog of music for helping me with that. But I wouldn't exactly go out and hype them up to other people or anything. Still though, it's good stuff. And if you are a white person, and a partially moody type, I bet you'd like it. And let's face it, I would bet most of the people still around reading my blog are moody ass white people. That's not an insult at all; I love you all being there. I wish I could somehow turn these words into electric bills, but still having you out there reading my nonsense gibberish (which actually makes perfect sense in a nonsense world pretending to be in order), it is a thing that helps prop me up on the pillows at night, instead of hiding under the covers, hoping the sunshine never comes back.
STEAL “The Devil Never Sleeps”
NEXT MONTH: It's the shortest month of the year, and we are already up in it!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #2: “Hell On Earth (chopped & screwed)” by Mobb Deep

Seems like the world was a ghetto, but then they gentrified the whole thing. Wal-Marts in small towns, and cleaned up Times Square. Everything is neon signs and cleaned up at least twice a day. But it don't feel like that. It's like they keep sweeping it all up, but you know there should be some grime somewhere, so it feels like something's missing. But they sweep it up everyday, sterilize once a month, re-facade once a year. We get certain shit from the Trader Joe's all the way in Short Pump, Va, USA, Earthrock, and when we go into that cluster of predesigned buildings, my heart starts to clench in on itself. They've got a big area of apartment buildings with a Buster & Dave's underneath it on one corner, like a fake urban block but smack in the middle of a planned commercial zone, conveniently located off the interstate, with free wi-fi in all directions, and I get all furrowed brow thinking about people actually living in those buildings and going to that bar and that's their life. Do they live as couples here, and have children and raise them? Or do they move into subdivisions at that point? Does this fulfill them? Do they actually take their own trash anywhere? It's all very confusing to me as an actual human being because it feels a lot like when I ride behind a tractor and trailer full of white chickens for the slaughterhouse, sitting there in their cages, no struggle, just riding along feeling the breeze. And I know that's a somewhat corny comparison, but it feels like that to me, literally. If I am in that environment for more than like 45 minutes, I get all white knuckled and nervous and feel like there's probably a floating eyeball somewhere about to figure out I don't belong. One of the main reasons I have never seen any sort of psychologist or psychiatrist is because I know little things like that that make perfect sense to me would get me on brain drugs right away. So that I could live in a place like that and not freak out. Immunize me against my own humanity I guess.
Anyways, music follows this predesigned gentrification. Rap music has become highly gentrified, and the perfect example of this is Kanye West. I know he is the critic's darling and everyone is supposed to recognize how cutting edge and avant garde he truly has been for hip hop. But it's just gentrification. Same thing with everything else that has been popular - Drake, Rick Ross, shit man, you name it and pretend it's hip hop and I will just shake my head inside my heart. Life isn't like that though. You can't just live drinking champagne bought on a credit card, which is what that music basically is. It's background muzak, but with an alleged hip hop vibe, and it eases you into those predesigned communities. You are being immunized against your own humanity.
Life is dirty, no matter how much you sweep it up. Scars, scuffed shoes, leaky roofs, gunshots in the distance at a time that means you wait to see if any sirens come because it didn't feel right. Life doesn't feel right a lot of times, and that's how you make it right. If everything feels right all the time, then you're no longer actually feeling anything. It just doesn't add up.
This is why I can't stand that shit they call hip hop now. Can't stand Kanye West. I have given him many many chances because everybody around me keeps pointing out what a fine robe this new emperor of hip hop music is wearing, but I still can't see it. Life is not like that music, although I suspect for many people - many of you even - who have been immunized against your own self, life is like that. It makes me sad, but whatever. We all have our own paths, and sure many of them might be predetermined or engineered by others who play us like pawns, but whatever. I'm just a dude. I can't change the world.
But do me a favor, will you? Life is not like that. Life is dirty and grimy and feels nasty sometimes. Hell, sometimes the dirt and grime and nastiness is actually rather cleansing. So hopefully wherever you are, it is cold and rainy. Take this song here, this screwed and chopped version of a Mobb Deep song, and put on a heavy coat, and get yourself high on whatever you like to get high on, and go outside in the cold with the rain falling, and stand underneath of an overhang somewhere, out of the wet if you can, but hearing the rain clack clack clack on tin, drip drip drip against something piled up somewhere, cars rumbling nearby or just every so often if you're in the wilds, and just stand out in the cold and rain and grime of the real world, and pump this fucking song through your highed up brain a few times. You see what I'm saying? The world ain't like Kanye West. That's Gap commercials and Visa cards. But let it go. Breath in the dirt and grime for five minutes, and feel good to your goddamned soul.
STEAL “Hell On Earth”
NEXT UP: Whiny man musics, for a dude who was on a low spiral!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #3: “Central Park West” by John Coltrane

A good road dog is hard to find, a dude or ol' lady you can just jump in a ride with no real direction but general, head out into an early weekend, and wander through shit towns and cheap hotels, looking for whatever might have been calling you in that direction, and get back by work on Monday, maybe Tuesday. I haven't had a weekend like that in a while. Me and my boy Boogie Brown had some epic trips out to the midwest, to see death match wrestling tournaments and four-day long demolition derbies. My ol' lady and me, that used to be our main activity was to wander the weekend away, staying in crappy hotels and vibing on the strange sights and sounds all around. Solidified why I love her because she is me, we have the same soul, just in different bodies, that luckily are sexually attracted at each other like universal magnetics.
My man Boomer and me had a couple of jaunts that were memorable enough. They always seemed to involve strange encounters with crackheads though. I have been blessed/cursed with something we call the retardar, which attracts whatever person has some sort of strange story to tell, he finds me, and tells me. That always happens. Boomer has the same thing, except with crackheads. But we had a weekend wander where we drank beers at a dirt track and ended up closing down a bar by the hotel in some dead end North Carolina town, and my retardar kicked in and we had people buying us beers and Mexicans in soccer jerseys kept playing AC/DC on the jukebox and some drunk redneck dude was on the bar dancing to David Allan Coe and the bartendress seemed to be sweet on me or Boomer or us or whatever, and when her boyfriend showed up and the bar closed down, they shut the shades and we were allowed to be part of the select few who could keep on drinking. That's quality friend-making. Rest of the night involved laughing at crackheads sneaking around the building to rip each other off from the ninja spy confines of the shut down swimming pool.
Next day, I don't know, we were gonna go to some bullshit wresting thing at an armory in some other shithole North Carolina town, and it looked all burned out, like they had a Southern Krystalnacht and set half the town on fire, and it looked pretty dead end in every direction, except somewhere had to go out, didn't it? We couldn't find no hotels, so we pulled into one of those awesome country/city southern convenience stores that always have the best fucking fried chicken on earth, and sell crazy amounts of peach blunt wrappers, and I asked for directions to any sort of hotel. The lady looked at me like I was crazy, and pointed us all the way back up to Rockingham, which seemed a little out of the way, because a town with this many buildings clustered together, no matter how boarded up and run down, had to have at least one hotel. Right? No. So off to Roxboro it was.
On our way out the convenience store parking lot, stopping to let some gully ass dude in a Caprice plenty of room for entry, there's a roadside marker, slightly bent from one too many drunk drivers, in the most anonymous and perfectly inglorious place ever. It said, to paraphrase, "One block from here John Coltrane was born back in the day." Hamlet, North Carolina. Blew my fucking mind, the greatest jazz wacko there ever once was came from the polluted loins of Piedmont North Carolina. But it made perfect sense.
This "Central Park West" for me is the greatest jazz song ever made, and maybe the saddest song ever made. It's one of those songs that's so fucking sad, it makes me feel good when I listen to it. I don't think most humans really have a clue as to how to capture emotions with sounds that aren't words. Words are easier, because people understand the associated meanings of all the parts. But with straight sound, where you're digging into something that was in us before words came about? No, most people can't do it. They just learn how to pluck strings or push piano keys or whatever. If you played this song for cavemen chewing on raw Manchurian Beast meat in a fire-lit cavern, they would get it. In fact, I hope when I am King of the Universe, they let me go through the microfiche of the future, and I can look at when the earth people all blow themselves up in a fabulous frenzy of philosophical goatheadedness, and when all that is blown up and busted down to ash and rubble with the charred refuse-to-die-easies staggering around for a few months before the nuclear ash chokes the last of us away, that they let me listen to this song with headphones on while I'm listening to it. I've not gone there yet, so I'm not sure if they allow headphones and music devices in the microfiche of the future room in Universal Heaven or not. We'll see.
In case you were wondering, the hotel in Rockingham was nasty as fuck, looked like the door had been kicked in multiple times and there were bootholes in the wall by my bed as well. Boomer ran into some crackheads somewhere, and I went to the Huddle House to get us some food. The waitress was one of those sweet sad short-haired hard life ladies with eyes that put cobra clutches on my heart. The cook was a wigger dude who was drawling something about peaches and cream, and she rolled her eyes and walked off, and he looked at me and said, "She like that." It was perfect. The whole fucking thing was perfect. That's how you get to be John Coltrane. You steep yourself heavily in all that perfect, and then it just flows right back out of you.
STEAL “Central Park West”
NEXT UP: Murky muzik!

r i v z q

colorful clothes camouflage

childhood’s darkest memories –

thumbing through photo albums

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #4: “Forget You” by Cee-lo Green

Ceelo Green caused an internet sensation with that "Fuck You" video last year, which carried him all the way into a San Diego Chicken on crack costume on the Grammys last week. And God Bless that fucked up little black midget dude, because I love him. Have always loved him. I thought his first solo album was a mightily slept on classic blend of warped hip hop/soul. (By the way, I refuse to hyphenate hip hop as is the accepted English spelling. Who the fuck decides that type of shit? What makes it a hyphenated word? Was Kool Herc or Afrika Bambaataa consulted in this declaration of proper English? Definitely not I would bet.) And when "Crazy" blew up in your grandma's Buick AM radio a few years back, and everyone was like "greatest one hit wonder" about Gnarls Barkley, I felt some sadness to my heart, because I knew the solo Ceelo, and I knew how awesome "Soul Food" was, or "Cell Therapy" of course, though Khujo may have stole that show. So when he threw out "Fuck You", I wasn't shocked at all. Ceelo got in bed with the insiders of the record industry, who told him if you put string arrangements behind things, it spoke to ancient man and make it naturally more poppy and loveable. The insiders helped him groom indistinguishable pop groups like Pussycat Dolls and make himself some more money from behind the curtain. My biggest problem was that "Fuck You" was so goddamned catchy, so easily singable, so needed to be played like 19 times a day for a few weeks in a row, and then eased back to a few times a week probably, that how was I gonna get around doing this around my offspring without them learning bad habits. My wife had already exposed them to Lily Allen's "Fuck You" song pretty consistently, but navigated that territory by telling them it was a bad word, and they had to sing it as "thank you... thank you very very much." I was not entirely comfortable with this arrangement, but usually the ol' lady is the more sensible of the two of us, so I went along with it. But I knew I couldn't get by with this Ceelo "Fuck You" in wilded out street mode without my 3-year-old rolling by the dog while dressed in ballet clothes, yelling in broken toddler talk "FUCK YOU MINGO" even though we gave away the dog named Ringo and only have Artemis still. We don't need that going on.
So to the interwebz I went, and snagged the radio version, clean as a dilly bean, so we can pump it the fuck up in the house, and it is what it is. My kids are gonna learn the dirt of the world easily enough. Hell, the world is only too happy to shovel its shit all over your children, as quickly as possible, and then blame you for not putting them in a bubble. My kids know them words, because we've said them at times. But I don't want it put into catchy jingles. What's next, heroin jingles?
Sadly, I heard Pink made an allegedly awesome pop song called "Fuck" or something after this, and I thought to myself how sad that was, regardless of how awesome the song might be. The shock value was dulled, and it just seemed pathetic. We really move too fast nowadays for our own good. I suggest everybody take a big swig of cough syrup, ease off the gas pedal about 15 mph, and point out five things they see on the side of the road that are interesting.
Also, if anybody has a solid mash-up of Ceelo's "Fuck You" and Lily Allen's "Fuck You", hook a brother up.
STEAL “Forget You”
NEXT UP: My other favorite jazz song ever!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #5: “Waiting Around To Die” by Townes Van Zandt

I will readily admit that I have overslept on the country doom and gloom of Townes Van Zandt, mostly because I have found in my listening experiences that a lot of that Gram Parsons style old kinda country but more real type shit is overrated, and more geared to fake ass hillbillies like Johnny Knoxville PBR drinkers than someone like me. I don't wear straw hats, ever. But I read an interview or something with Steve Earle that talked about Townes Van Zandt back in the day, and how he was throwing beer bottles at Steve Earle while Earle was trying to play a show, and I can relate to that type of belligerence, so I stoled some Van Zandt music to give it a fresh shot. Most of it still doesn't speak to me that greatly, though I do find his original "Pancho & Lefty" to be vastly superior in emotion to the Merle and Willie version. Mostly I got into this track, because it is codeine death in a country song. I can dig that. I feel a real drag to my life right now, and am glad that I have minimized the external poisons, because I feel they could consume me at this soul vulnerable state I'm in. I can understand the philosophy of "Waiting Around To Die" because you are not the type to do it to yourself, but goddamn, seems like you've been swimming upstream your whole afflicted life, and it's pretty easy to just stop fighting and let the current pull you wherever it wants.
I am really tired. I don't say that as a cry for help or some bullshit call for attention. I could really give a fuck if anybody cares (although to be honest, and unrelated, I have been enjoying having more comments going with posts lately). I'm just tired. Tired of what I came from and trying to sort through it and make myself into what I think I should be, tired of fucking struggling all the time, tired of fighting to find a five minute window of sunshine to sit in and smile with the headphones on. My brain feels duller than it was a year ago, and that was duller than the year before. How do you resharpen yourself? I mean, it feels and looks like things are about to start happening, about to break open, but damn, it's felt that way forever already. Not sure if I'm stuck in a holding pattern or just swirling around in endless circles before finally getting flushed into the ground.
So yeah, this is an uplifting song, and one that sounds pretty appropriate in my plastic chair by the pigpen, recovering from whatever it is that has poisoned my insides I've been recovering from for two months now, smelling the pig shit in the spring-like breeze, looking down across the field, ghosts of old dogs and goats running around in the bottom. The stump to the old goat tree I used to nail dead work boots up is my table. It sits next to me, I stare at it and think how I wish I could draw pictures as pretty as the schizophrenic lines of decay and tree fiber that go everywhere on it by natural accident.
STEAL “Waiting Around To Die”
NEXT UP: A song my whole family, as well as the world enjoys!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #6: “Hometown Hero (chopped and screwed)” by Big K.R.I.T.

Wanna be a hometown hero but feel no home. Grew up southside Va. which is a fucked little place, armpit of Virginia, no Hampton Roads affluence, no Northern Virginia moneybags made of carpet. Just factories with plywood windows and pharmaceutically agile back in the day friends. And now I live in Scottsville, a river town full of fake asses who have grand designs to pretend the satellite for Charlottesville community we live in is some sort of separate small town entity. They spent thirty billion dollars to bury the electric poles and make the town quaint so you could walk around and see all the empty storefronts or whatever the latest half-assed attempt at a restaurant with a 16-month lifespan is looking like. Could be a perfect little arts town, for real crazy arts, with a public park by a levee wall and an old abandoned building that could be renovated for studio spaces. Fill up the town with fucked up galleries of retard artists and paranoid schizophrenics using electric pencils to decipher the HAARP beams. Instead we don't have shit but old timers pretending they do the arts by taking the same ol' pictures of the same ol' things people been taking pictures of for the past 67 years. I want Bread and Puppets running down the street. I want graffiti monsters climbing over the levee into town from up under the bridge, spanning the pylons. I want beautiful chaos. I want the goddamned Dew Drop Inn to be the Dew Drop Inn and I can go in there on a Friday night and drunk grandmas with tattoos will shake their flabby titties in tank tops to second-rate blues music being played by long haired dudes I saw smoking Winstons in front of the Dollar General last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody gives a shit about architecture or little slices of history you have to drive 45 minutes to go see. Give us crazy chaos and turn the town into performance art gone wild.
So yeah, I think I finally cleared all the Big K.R.I.T. off of my J.J. Krupert machine, so this will probably be the last offering of a single slice of his K.R.I.T. Wuz Here screwed and chopped you'll get. I hope you have enjoyed this phase of my life as much as I have. Album of 2010, and it was a free mixtape. On top of that it was a screwed version that most folks never caught on to.
Now, let me find a goddamned home to blow up.
STEAL “Hometown Hero”
NEXT UP: Punks jump up to die!

S14: Best College Basketball Teams in Virginia

I just got my Fan Frenzy tickets for me and my oldest to go to the semifinals and finals of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament in Richmond the first week of March, and there's conference rivalries galore going on inside the TV screens, and it's getting that first air of warmth outside, so I'm getting that basketball jones again. I have never been able to get into the NBA - too much like the WWF for my tastes, so it has always been a college basketball or nothing scenario for me. I love the rivalries, and the tournaments, and the immensity of it all, through all divisions.
Outside of the Ralph Sampson years at UVA, and Virginia Union's multiple national championships at the Division II level, my home state doesn't have the strongest pedigree of college basketball. But when has something like that ever stopped me before from wasting time with mathematical nerderies that most likely only interest me? Not often.
So being the Division III conference tournaments are cranking up this week, and the upper divisions will be winding down, I'd figured I'd do a weekly (on Monday mornings) rankings of the top 14 teams inside the confines of the state of Virginia, as determined by winning percentage, from now until there is no team left playing basketball (most likely the last week of March, if we are lucky). There are only 37 college basketball teams in the state, so the pickings are slim, but believe it or not, at the lower levels, we have some solid national championship contenders in the state.
So here is your list, for the next-to-last week of February, along with running and gunning commentary...
#1: VIRGINIA WESLEYAN BLUE MARLINS (21-3) - This team is the last actual national champion to come from the state, having won the Division III title in 2006, and been runner-up the following year. This year is no different, as the Old Dominion Athletic Conference is one of the most top-heavy basketball conferences in Division III basketball, believe it or not. Virginia Wesleyan is at the top of the conference standings going into the conference tournament this week, and currently is ranked #1 in the South regional of the NCAAs. Division III is a little odd in that there are only 61 teams in their tournament, so perhaps if Va. Wesleyan can make a run through the ODAC tourney, they can snag one of the three byes into the round of 32. A benefit to being an ODAC member too is that the conference tourney wraps up at the Salem Civic Center, which is also where the national championship (and semifinals) for Division III is played. Being they are #1 in the conference, their next game is the first one on this coming Friday afternoon, in Salem. I do not know what type of Christian type a "Wesleyan" is, but they must be good at backdoor passes.
#2: RANDOLPH-MACON YELLOW JACKETS (21-4) - Macon finished 2nd in the ODAC, and is ranked 2nd in the South regional. There are 41 automatic berths in Division III, plus one more that goes out to the best independent team, so there's only 19 at-large extra berths, so it is imperative that Macon show well in the ODAC tourney to get into the mix. Being in the South regional bodes well for them though.
#3: EASTERN MENNONITE ROYALS (21-4) - And then you have the 3rd team in the ODAC standings, ranked 8th in the NCAA South regional, meaning they are going to have make a run through the ODAC tournament to get themselves into the Division III tournament. If they and Macon win on Friday, they'll play each other on Saturday, and a win there would give the Royals a shot I guess. Eastern Mennonite University is somewhere in Harrisonburg, and all that makes me think of is going to the demolition derby at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds up there and all the sweet little Mennonite teenage girls watching the smashings on. Also, I heard from a dude that you can get really cheap crocks from some Mennonite supply store somewhere up there as well. I would probably be a Mennonite if you didn't have to believe in a stupid God or anything.
#4: GEORGE MASON PATRIOTS (23-5) - George Mason has been making national news as a potential mid-major team to crack the Top 25, and a definite solid candidate for an at-large berth into the NCAA tournament even if they don't win the CAA tourney. They beat Northern Iowa in the stupid bracket busters game this past weekend, in northern Iowa, so that only helped their case. I am amped for the CAA tournament.
#5: FERRUM PANTHERS (21-5) - Ferrum is in something called the USA South Conference, whose men's tournament is played at higher seeded teams throughout the week. North Carolina Wesleyan finished first in the USA South, Ferrum 2nd, though in the Division III South regional rankings, Ferrum is ranked 3rd (Virginia running that shit obviously), while N.C. Wesleyan is all the way down to 7th. An odd happenstance in the USA South standings means that the four Virginia-based teams are all on one side of the bracket, while the three North Carolina-based teams were on the other side, meaning we won't have a cross-state match-up until the championship. Ferrum starts this run by hosting Averett on Tuesday night. Averett is from Danville. Averett is 3-22. Averett is the sucks.
#6: OLD DOMINION MONARCHS (21-6) - ODU is currently sitting in 2nd in the CAA, and though last year's Nordic wonder Gerald Lee is gone, they still have some domineering ass dudes on their team, mostly Kent Bazemore who can be a monster. I really dig the atmosphere of the CAA tourney at the Richmond Coliseum, especially when the various in-state schools get to the final rounds. It gets very second-rate raucous up in that joint, and I've used that to teach my homeschooled child about how fun college life is, as that's one small part of the experience. I also tell her that ODU is for miscreants, because it is.
#7: RICHMOND SPIDERS (20-7) - The Spiders are the only Division I team in-state not paired up in a conference with another state team. Richmond runs with the Atlantic 10, mostly northern teams, which fits their student body well. Richmond has been one of their upper-middle class teams the past few years, and actually made the NCAA tournament last year, only to get crushed by that giant Egyptian dude and Saint Mary's (I think was the team). This year, unless they somehow win the Atlantic 10 tournament, I don't think they'll be going back to the Big Dance. But the NIT probably has their number already.
#8: HAMPTON PIRATES (19-7) - Hampton is in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, one of those historically black conferences that used to be in the awesome D II CIAA but are now small fish in the big dance pond, and usually get shuttled off to the opening round play-in game. Hampton is currently third in the MEAC standings. They just lost a double OT game this past weekend against the top team in the conference - Bethune-Cookman, and really only the tournament winner is going to the Big Dance. So all they can do is ride out these last two weeks of games, and hope to win the shootout that is the MEAC tourney in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
#9: VCU RAMS (21-8) - This is the team I pull for, my alma mater, when we go to the CAA tourney. They have been struggling lately, and don't have Eric Maynor shooting on bitches (like two years ago) or Larry Sanders dunking on bitches (like last year), so we'll see if they can pull it together. I am hopeful they at least make it to the CAA semifinals, because it's gonna suck if I'm riding up there to see the games and they ain't even in it no more.
#10: SOUTHERN VIRGINIA KNIGHTS (19-8) - Southern Virginia is part of something called the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, which I guess is schools that used to be in the NAIA (an NCAA-alternative that came about back in the day when black people weren't allowed). It's hard to tell from the USCAA website if shit is up to date or not, but apparently the top 8 ranked Division I teams go into some sort of tournament somewhere. Southern Virginia was ranked 2nd in that poll, so I'm assuming they'll still be playing some b-ball. They are a good gauge of how these things transcend between conferences, They have played D-I teams and lost (Liberty, VMI, Longwood) and D-III teams and done well (winning some, losing some). They wrap up with a pair of home games this week against Washington Adventist tonight, and Tennessee Temple on Thursday, before whatever it is that the USCAA Division I tournament ends up being announces itself.
#11: JAMES MADISON DUKES (20-9) - The Dukes are 5th in the CAA, and I'm really hoping they somehow make it to the semifinals over Hofstra, so it can be an all-Virginia final four there at the Richmond Coliseum. Also, JMU has a guy named Humpty on their team, which is awesome as fuck.
#12: VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (17-8) - Finally, an actual ACC team showing up. Too bad that Tech has once again cursed itself with mediocre play to be one of those last teams to not get into the tournament. They do this every year, and judging from their RPI and overall record and ACC record, they've done it again. Losing at UVA didn't help this past weekend. Why the fuck can't we have a good major program basketball team in this state?
#13: CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT CAPTAINS (17-8) - Christopher Newport is also in the USA South Division III conference, but not as highly touted as either N.C. Wesleyan or Ferrum, so basically starting with their home game Tuesday night against Shenandoah, their next loss will be their last one of the year. That's what makes college basketball so dramatic in the springtime.
#14: LIBERTY FLAMES (19-10) - Liberty is just down the road from me in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Jerry Falwell's school, so it's kind of a joke to most people. I mean, you don't go bragging you went to Liberty or anything. They play in the Big South Conference, a Division I league, that will always get only their tournament champion into the Big Dance, who will most likely either be shipped off to a play-in game or fed to a #1 seed in the first televised rounds. Liberty is the only real contender to knock off Coastal Carolina this year, so they a shot at losing to Ohio State in the middle of March I guess. One more week of regular season games, and then it's tournament time for the Flames.

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 1 of 36

Yes, I am going to cover the Nascar season this year at Rojonekku, for no real reason than I've had these wonderful ideas of how to make Nascar awesome again for a few years now, and just sitting on them and sitting on them, with no outlet for these wonderful fixes other than my own brain. So I'm just gonna get it out there now for you all in the world to see. If there is any sense to this world, I will be declared President of Nascar by my 50th birthday, they'll have dirt track races again as part of their stupid championship, and it will be a semi-sport of real men once again, instead of these whimper-voiced landscaping company presidents that seem to drive every other car.
Now understand, the day Junior Johnson stopped being relevant to Nascar is the day it probably lost its way. A circled race between shit-talking bootleggers is something real, while a parade of subliminal advertisements with a lulling white noise background and halfwit commentators is about as painfully post-modern as we get in America, on our last 9 decades towards demise. But I grew up with Nascar as background noise, even had a dog named Buddy after Buddy Baker at one point in my young life (he got run over by my mom), and I still try to go to my local dirt track a couple times a year, especially when they are running the Virginia Sprint series. Them bitches git.
Here is the basic problem with Nascar, and my basic fix. There are all sorts of minor tweaks and turns I'll add to the mix throughout the year, but this is the basic 101 of it all: Nascar's points system, even with the so-called Chase for the Cup, is stupid and not entertaining and boring. My fix is simple, and manly as well. You have 43 drivers qualify for the championship by qualifying for the Daytona 500. If you finish last in the Daytona 500, you are eliminated from contention. And that's how it works every race - the dude still on the list of potential champions who finishes the farthest back (or qualifies the worst, or whatever... there are a series of tiebreakers that happen at the beginning since there's a slew of drivers who do the Daytona gig but don't bother with the next five races) gets marked off the list. If you win a race, you get a pass to escape elimination one time for each win. And if you are in contention for the title, you do not shave nor cut your hair. Thus, as the season wears on, you have championship/playoff beards and long hair growing, much like hockey tradition, but has been picked up in other sports. This works multiple ways, in that first of all it's very easy to see who is still in contention to be Nascar champion for the year. It also gives the image of wild longhaired bearded real men, who don't fuck around. No more of this Jeff Gordon hybrid crap. Real men, who look like they would stab people with pool cues. And you call it the Ponytail Challenge.
This is important, even though Nascar fat cats would probably cringe at it, thinking they are some sort of awesome corporate affair nowadays. But let's face it, the Nascar demographic is a working class type who will sit there watching some very slow-paced action, contrary to the speeds. Nascar racing is very much like golf in that it just kinda keeps on going and going and then all of a sudden something might happen but then it just goes back to going and going until it's finally over at some point.
So with my system, in a nutshell, everybody who was not J.J. Yeley in today's race (Yeley finished 43rd... dead last) is still possibly the 2011 Nascar Champion. For the next 29 races, one more name gets crossed off the list. After 30 races, you are left with 13 people, so for those last six races, you double up, eliminating two drivers per week. That leaves you, on the last race, with three dudes in contention to be champion. Shit, you've got five in the next-to-last race. And all of them with longhair and beards. (This of course means you can incorporate the proper sponsors with post-race haircuts, or charity, or whatever. Really, this system markets itself.)
Today's race I zoned in and out of. I am a holiday Nascar fan - Daytona, whatever race is on Memorial Day, whatever one is on Labor Day Sunday, maybe Talladega if I remember - the basic bigger races. Plus, if I can catch them, the smaller tracks like Bristol and Martinsville. Those are far more enjoyable than the super speedways for me, especially Bristol. The fact they keep shaving off those small southern track races for big speedways in weird ass places like Seattle or Chicago or whatever, I don't know, it seems self-defeating. You are throwing termites into your own foundation.
I also sat outside and listened to part of it on the radio while sitting beside my pigpen, which was highly enjoyable. Nascar is one of those things that is better on radio than TV I think. Especially when you have someone like that Jeffrey Hammonds dude commentating. What is wrong with that guy? It's like his head got squeezed and his face is too big or something. I would say he looks half-retarded but that wouldn't be fair to the handicapped. And why do those dudes all wear suits? Who the fuck goes to a Nascar race in a suit? And what type of image are you fronting by having your TV people wearing suits? Really, 2011 Nascar is so ridiculously misguided, it's pathetic. They think they have been accepted.
The race was whatever, as I'm not too into the boring two-car race that super speedways are. I kinda wanted Dale Jr. to win, just because I feel bad for the dude sometimes, being a rich young millionaire who somehow is still a complete fucking failure in life, like the ultimate boss's son sleeping in the warehouse because he can get away with it. But then he was wrecked out like half of everybody else. And at the end, that Trevor Bayne kid was in the front. Who? Exactly. Trevor Bayne sounds like a guy who often had friends say he was with when actually they were cheating on their ol' ladies. "Where the fuck were you last night until 4 in the morning?" "Damn girl, why you so mad? Me and Chuck went over to Trevor Bayne's and was shooting pool in his basement. You can call Chuck and see." Or coming home from a cookout, fighting in the car while the kids pretend to be asleep in the back seat, "This always happens when you and fuckin' Trevor Bayne start hangin' around each other. You know that fool ain't had no sense ever since Kaitlyn kicked him out!" And the dude just kinda focuses on the road so as to not drunk drive too obviously, eventually cutting up the radio since it's a CCR song. That's Trevor Bayne to me.
Except he's a 20-year-old Nascar wonderkid. And the thing with racing wonderkids is they don't naturally just develop into wonderkids at that age. While local tracks around the country have old fuckers who've been racing for years, scratching at dollars and quarters to chase local points titles, there's always some teenager who started racing cars about seven years before he had a driver's license, who had an uncle or father or somebody just straight pouring money into it. That was Denny Hamlin at Southside Speedway in Richmond, Virginia. That's the Jeff Gordon hybrid model for success. And that seems like it could be Trevor Bayne, being he's 20 years old and already won a Daytona 500.
Except I looked the kid up on the interwebz, and he dropped out of high school to get a G.E.D. after his sophomore year. He's from east Tennessee (notorious pit of despair). And he drives for the Woods Brothers.
The Woods Brothers are an old school ownership team for Nascar, who barely survive in today's corporate environment. They are from my beloved Southside Virginia, and have scraped and struggled to maintain a competitive car, sometimes even without a sponsor, driving a blank slate of a car on TV. Hell, Bayne's car today lacked all the intricate little sub-sponsor stickers that all the other cars had. So them even being there at the end was a success, and probably bankrolled another half the season for them. At the end when it was paired up draft driving and stupid Carl Edwards was creeping on a come up, I thought to myself, "Fuck, why did I waste my time watching this crap?" thinking the monkey-faced back-flipper in the #99 would win, being he's one of Nascar's darlings (I think... I'm out of the loop, thankfully). But then my man Trevor Bayne slung down in his way and caught the push to the finish line. That shit was awesome. Like I could watch every fucking minute of every race for the rest of the year, and that's gonna be the only good thing that happens all year long.
So in my system, the young Bayne gets a free pass to be the last one in a future race, and every one else in the race except for J.J. Yeley is still in contention going into next week's race, which I think they said was in Phoenix. Most likely, I won't pay attention again that much, but I'm gonna try to remember to do a Monday update after races, and we'll track this ponytail challenge Nascar system on Rojonekku. But being I don't care about Nascar enough to watch it again for three months, most likely I'll just give you the simple update and then ramble about something barely related. But hey, that's better than boring you with a bunch of actual Nascar nonsense like it's important or something. And frankly, nobody pays me to do anything, so it's all of my own volition.
But congratulations to Trevor Bayne, you degenerate redneck fuck, and to southside Virginia's Woods brothers. You made Nascar interesting to me for about 37 minutes longer than it usually is most years.

c a r z x

strategic clutter placement

creates my camper trailer’s

word catalyst/catapult

t i p i b

the same war machine what which

freed the slaves slayed the redskins –

the great late eighteen hundreds

r r s a h

here marks the spot where southern

slaves’ and western chinamen’s

forced labors came together

c o c k b

a rooster’s strut – natural

swagger undeciphered by

man’s microscopes and membranes

g y p a b

when I was twelve, I smoked weed

and listened to slayer; my

daughter acts like jane austen

t p o s t

heaven’s seven layers of

acceptance best brace they self

for my heathen arrival

r r s a a

industrial megaliths

transport slave messages for

moloch; you can’t fight progress

f i r a i

burn this cold world back to ash,

then let’s pick up scrap metal

and build fields of whirligigs

MNZ: Juxtapox February 2011

I usually always grab Juxtapoz when it’s there in front of my eyeballs at a bookstore. A lot of the whole street art movement has become dull imitations of its own self, and frankly, Juxtapoz only perpetuates that. There’s a lot of strange art being done on actual streets that I think should fall under the philosophical umbrella of Juxtapoz, but it gets overlooked because it’s not part of the cool clique that is acceptable to them. Nonetheless, every other month, there’ll be something worthwhile in there for me, although it seems like that’s less so lately.
The February issue was interesting to me because there was a feature on a revitalization project for Detroit. Like I said yesterday regarding Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, I’m very intrigued by the decline of America’s urban and semi-urban clusters. As the recent media meme has proven, nowhere is that more visible than Detroit, a city that had a million and a half people living there in the 1950s when the city was on top of the World, so to speak, and has terminally dwindled down to about half of that now. There’s been photo essays about the beautiful neglect, articles galore written on the city, even the stupid Eminem anti-commercial commercial that launched during the Super Bowl about how ain’t nobody know how Detroit really is. But the fact of the matter is they’re reeling in public services from certain sections of the city, encouraging people to consolidate, sort of contracting themselves, creating these actual economic wastelands of areas that used to be full of people and now are pretty much fairly secluded and almost rural-feeling areas, even though there’s city gridlock of streets and water mains and mail routes and everything you’d expect with organized civilization.
Well, this art project bought up some of these cheap rundown houses in one couple block area, with the idea of bringing art to the neglect. This, I think, is a good idea, and one I’ve not understood why hasn’t happened more often. Why not have a group of young, artistically minded people buy up houses in a rundown part of a town and create something for themselves? I know this sounds dangerously like “gentrification” which usually entails running out the locals with more police presence and higher property taxes, but I think if you had people who cared about the original spirit of a neighborhood, as opposed to a grand vision of an affordable urban neighborhood upgrade, it could work.
My problem with this art project in Juxtapoz was it wasn’t functional. Of the four houses, three would not ever be inhabited. One was, and actually was my favorite anyways because it had the big weird alien cholo writing of RETNA all around the top of each room. But two of them looked more like installations that you could only look at. And if it’s calling itself “art” when it’s being done, then they’re probably not going to let people walk around amongst the place and check it out. And the fourth was like some dude just doing weird street art pieces on an abandoned house. It wasn’t a revitalization so much as giving the guy open clearance to go nuts all over an abandoned house without repercussion. I don’t know… the whole thing seemed stupid to me. I see the beauty of helping a place like that reblossom through wacky crazy art, but when the art becomes what the function is, the places loses its value as a home. And if a city, even abandoned, can’t be used as a home but only as a museum for the chosen to install their visions, then it’s still elitism, just scooped off the bottom of our world instead of skimmed from the top.

f r m a a

mentally ill ghost children

laughing just off the staunton

interstate on old state land

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #7: “People In The Country (instrumental)” by Prolo

Boogie Brown can multi-track harmonize with the best of them. His hook parts of this song he pre-manufactured and sent to me to fill up with a couple verses has so dazzled me over the past year that I still haven’t written shit for it. I enjoy working relationships like that, where the other guy can throw something at you that is so intimidating that you don’t want to let them down by doing some chump ass shit. I need more of that in my life. I do not feel there are many people within my daily routines or weekly interactions that are creatively driven by anything in particular. Hell, I’m not sure I’m creatively driven anymore sometimes. I have felt at times the passion for things dwindling in me as the shine and hum from the technobabble around me gets brighter and louder. There is never real darkness nor total silence. There is also not a group I can toss ideas off of and who toss them off of me to spiral each other up into the creative chaos necessary for good things to be born from.
Of course, I’ve been infected with demons for a few weeks now, as part of the process of cleansing myself of the poisons of my previous life. In fact, as this thing has dwindled, I am realizing that I’m not even sure how many generations this poison inside of me comes from. I’m not sure how hard I have to sweat to be clean again. But I know I am excited to see the sunrise on the other side. And I know that once I get there, the creative chaos that has curled up into a safe little ball inside of me will stretch itself back out and really be able for the first time in my life to fully unleash itself. And I am confident I will get there, without turning back for fear of the rocky path I’m walking, because people in the country do know how to get by. I have always been instilled with a survival instinct, from the same people who instilled in me a get drunk technique. But all I can do is take the good and let it grown and weed out the bad and make myself awesome and then totally skull crush the world. “As simple as a bird flying high through the sky…” Things seem complicated at times, and I’ve definitely not hit anywhere near my highest arc just yet. But it’s coming. Once I get out this hospital and this three-inch deep wound in my side the are packing twice daily and draining the demons from deep within my soul starts to seal itself back up, I’ve got three whole CDs of Boogie Brown beats to do a project with. It’s gonna be spring time, so I can plug in the camper trailer and get my out-building on, late at night loud as fuck. Then hopefully we can find a weekend to get the key ingredients back together one weekend down in Newport just under the railroad bridge from the New River, and make this Prolo thing happen one more time. Really, it usually only takes us three days of well-connected loungin’ to get a CD together. Perhaps I should start a kickstarter page for someone to rent a rundown farmhouse and financially enable me and Brown to work on music for three months straight. We’d probably make twenty albums worth of stuff, with various theme projects and strange offshoots. Or we’d build weird sculptures out of scrap stuff we found alongside the road. Either way, the world would be a better place.
STEAL “People In The Country”
NEXT UP: When will I run out of Big K.R.I.T. songs on my J.J. Krupert!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – January ’11 #8: “Sunny Meadowz” by Del The Funky Homosapien

Happy rap tends to be crappy rap, which is sad, because I’d like to be able to enjoy more positive rap music. For some reason positive rap music just doesn’t have the same kick though, which I guess would be the case with conscious rock music as well. There is something very raw and rude about certain musics, and being all conscious and concerned for things dulls that raw edge. Nonetheless, a few months back, I decided to DL a whole slew of older rap, including most of the Native Tongues classics, and some west coast stuff that would fall into that same classic milk crate of vinyl as well. Most of the Native Tongues stuff fell to the wayside, just not speaking to me at all. It seemed so gimmicky and contrived, especially considering the clustered nature of east coast life, even if you did come from the suburbs.
Del’s first album though got heavy bump, and still does. Still does. I kinda let it fall to the wayside because when I was in college and it got popular, too many chump ass dudes I would not want to psychologically associate myself with were way too into it. But damn man, it’s a solid album, all the way through. Really, in my humble expert whiteboy opinion, Ice Cube’s most classic album ever was Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, and every solo record he did after that was about half as good, suffering from some sort of creative radioactive decay factor. But when you think about how good that Amerikka’s Most Wanted was, and that Del – Cube’s cousin of some sort – got his deal off the back of being associated with Cube, and that served up I Wish My Brother George Was Here, it’s a very strange one-two punch from an alleged crew of individuals, though it’s hard to imagine Del sitting around smoking blunts with Yo-Yo and Da Lench Mob, sipping on a 64 oz. bottle of Olde English. Two albums with very distinctive sounds to this day that essentially came from the same distant family.
“Sunny Meadowz” is probably the more over-the-top positive vibes song on the Del album, and somehow, despite the corny chill vibes, is an actual good fucking song. Maybe it’s the fact it’s California and not east coast, or maybe the P-Funk backbone to the sound (those two things could go hand in hand though), but, to put it simply, I enjoy the fuck out of this song. I hope that wherever you are, whether there has been feet of snow or simply standard winter cold, it is a warm beautiful day, and you will download this song, and pump it the fuck up, and sit outside in the sun for a little while today. Get that vitamin D soaking up into your skin and let the natural cleansing rays of solar aura washes vibe you upwards instead of downwards. It is almost spring. It is almost time to reblossom, motherfuckers. Make sure you grow your proper bloom.
STEAL “Sunny Meadowz”
NEXT UP: A Prolo instrumental but with the hook just no verses because I ain’t never done it yet even though I love the song already!

MNZ: Sports Illustrated January 31, 2011

Sports Illustrated is one of those vanity magazine subscriptions that offer up more purty color pictures than actual worthwhile content a lot of times, but they have to try and hold down their reputation as a place where actual quality pieces get published, so they bust out a good one now and then. This issue of SI was just such an issue, talking about Aliquippa, Pennsylvania – a shithole rundown mill town just northwest of Pittsburgh that has produced a good number of great football players over the decades (Mike Ditka, Tony Dorsett, Ty Law, Sean Gilbert, Darrelle Revis). Ever since a trip a few years back where me and Boogie Brown ended up in Weirton, West Virginia, I’m intrigued by these rust belt mill towns that are all fucked-up now. Like, the ‘80s have culturally sensitized us to rundown inner-cities, but all these whole industrial towns are turning into wastelands too. In southside Virginia where the textile factories split in the last decade, there’s wastelands there. In fact, the guy in the hospital bed next to me right now is from one such place – Martinsville – and the preacher who was preaching at his bedside talked to me about used to being a weed smoker, and now is a preacher, but also a survivalist. I was halfway expecting them to bust out a rattlesnake. But that’s how it works in those types of places – hard times, hard struggles, but people who can get it together enough to get past the obstacle course have an internal drive that you don’t often find.
Aliquippa itself was interesting because of the racial tensions, and sure, the article played the whole corny “football unified us as one” storyline, which whether it’s true or not, is still corny. But people coming from hopelessly fucked situations, finding success, and yet still being drawn back to that completely warped sense of home, that’s something I enjoy reading about. I feel like it’s somewhat a characteristic of the American success story to move away from the shithole you come from, distance yourself from it philosophically and geographically, to get on the other side of the fence and abandon your roots. This has helped add to the problems of shitholes, and ensured that shitholes remain even more of a shithole. How do we make shitholes no longer shitholes? Same way we have a bunch of shit ass kids become football champions – work hard as hell, set up good discipline, and smash everyone else in the face. Thing is, most of us want to be on the other side of the fence, not in a bad place, and our the financial cultural ways of our predatory credit system has allowed a lot of us to pretend we got it good in suburban enclaves as opposed to trapped in the obvious decay of semi-urban communities like Aliquippa, where there’s at least a good rundown part of town to show and prove that, yeah, shit ain’t like it once was, because there used to be things for sale in all those empty windows. But we tend to remove and shelter ourselves now, so we don’t know if we have it bad or our neighbors do or what. We just keep poking along, making minimum payments, hoping it all picks back up. It won’t though. A lot more of us are doomed than we realize.
Of course, some of us have always learned how to get by. Like the survivalist preacher for the dude next to me in the hospital room was saying, a country boy will survive. Except it ain’t just country boys. You grow up in the wasteland, you learn how to survive. So really the same thing that ended up making Aliquippa football a powerhouse in western Pennsylvania high school athletics will end up either making or breaking America on the world stage again. When times get worse, as they will, will this be a breeding ground for ass kickers who come up hungry to conquer the world anew, or will we just end up a slowly dying nation of overweight weaklings not understanding why we don’t have all the same nice shit our parents had.

g r f a m

concrete canvasses cause wild

differing visions to come

together at the corner