SONG OF THE DAY: Fantasy (Bad Boy Remix) (kudzu'd)

Dreams are just goals without plans. That’s the type of thing fake self-help alpha male influencers say all the time. Fantasies are just experiences without the fuck it. That’s the type of thing I say when I’m pretending to be one of them. Doesn’t really matter if it’s clever or not, mostly just posting here for data miners to scrape through, who probably don’t even understand the word patterns. Maybe three or four other people will see it. That’s the nature of modern digital existence… we’re all just skipping stones into streams of 0s and 1s making little ripples that die in the reverberation of algorithms and hopefully one of the four people that accidentally see it give half a fuck. Progress.

SONG OF THE DAY: Scorpio (kudzu'd)

The last time I went on a wander for train tracks and used record shops, I went to one in a small town in North Carolina, but the dude running it didn’t take in store customers no more. He let me in to talk though and he had a shelf full of old 12-inch singles in the back that I saw, all faded and enticing. I stopped at an old school turned into giant junk market that I had passed too, because I figured he had to have a stack of 45s in there somewhere. The Record Gods smiled on me that day, because he did have one small shelf with a stack of like 75 or so. But in that stack I found a couple very clean copies of Yarbrough & Peoples “Don’t Stop the Music”, some clean Solar Records 45s (always a groove slowed down), and yet another scratchy but wonderful copy of Dennis Coffey’s “Scorpio”, the famous break that’s been backbeat to hip hop since the beginning of Kool Herc having parties. I’ve been meaning to sample my scratchy ass copy to send Boogie Brown to use in a beat, because in our modern digitized fake perfection realm, having a classic breakbeat looped from actual raspy ass vinyl copy from North Carolina junk store adds a missing spice to our cyber-life. There’s a reason all those old breakbeats were so popular, and I bet there’s more still hiding, maybe not in American music genres, because them old school DJs dug pretty deep. But stuff is still hiding. There’s always gems you can dig deeper for.
Anyways, I’m contemplating a drive to a big ass used record store this weekend, to take my luck with The Record Gods, and see if I’ve been living right. I feel like I have, but you never know what they have in store for you. I seem to be ruled by record stores close to me that don’t believe in The Record Gods no more, and I can’t stand those secular ass bougie colored vinyl spots. If that’s your thing, fine, enjoy your life (if you can afford it). But to me, true digging is always going beyond what’s known, and keeping it cheap as you can. Ballin’ on a budget… that’s a foundational tenet of hip hop actually, which for some reason as we get all this 50 years old hype, nobody talks about that aspect as much. Capitalism co-opted the fuck out of it, and is riding the vinyl resurgence as well right now, beating it like a sick horse to crank out seven colors of the same Taylor Swift shit. I still worship The Record Gods and bypass all that shit, and I’ll take my chances with dusty fingers in some fucked up spot a boy told me about a few months back. Also hoping The Train Gods bless me too, because probably gonna try to scribble a few dirtgods while I’m wandering.

SONG OF THE DAY: Go Steady (kudzu'd)

Futurism always seems to be set in space, and in positions of authority, or at least controlling the destiny. I’ve been thinking about true funk Southern Gothicc Futurism is gonna be right here where I already am, not in space, not escaping the mess already created, but living with what’s left of the messes that got left behind. There’s never any science fiction about the kitchen workers on a spaceship, always the officers. Give me a thousand page novel of the random stormtrooper on the Death Star, fourth generation stormtrooper, don’t even like them fuckers but didn’t have no choices in life so just ended up being a stormtrooper, but before the Death Star got blow up, he could tell the vibes were off, and went awol with a few co-conspirators, and they’re living on one of them junk planets, just vibing, banging on old gas tanks to make a beat, building synthesizers out of spare parts, pitch shifted theremins the size of radio transmission towers with old cranes dangling a wrecking ball to adjust the sounds. That’s what I envision my Southern Gothicc Futurism to be, right here, down in the woods, or over there, too. My mother just passed, so I finally get to go back to the woods I fucked around in as a kid, and the old Chevelle carcass is there that I wrote all these myths about it being a time machine that goes to the Food City in Pikeville, Kentucky, so I can get with that environment again, too. The time machine is broke right now, but I can fix it. It’s gonna take a decade or so though, but I got time, even if I don’t.

SONG OF THE DAY: The One Who's Hurting Is You (kudzu'd)

Looking for a home for my DJ Honeysuckle Vines cyborg resistance Southern Gothicc Futurist slowdies show. Need an in real life vibe where people are drunk off life, believe in Universal Magnetics, and are at least basically enculturated with the idea that not doing shit is a form of resistance to every human life getting mechanized by the grind until it's impossible to think of yourself as anything more than a checklist. Once I find that home (or multiple homes), we can properly begin to unlock the deeper tenets of Southern Gothicc Futurism, magnifying the Power of Lounge for more folks to realize what they already know but got buried underneath a bunch of bullshit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Foggy Mountain Morning

Rocking the vibes of a hued man feeling like they’re walking through fog half the time, but still scratching around this stone floating through space, trying to be at peace with the path they took. Rocking the vibes of the constant seeker that always has to dig around in the dirt, and knows the reaper will always lurk, but you can’t live a good life in fear of that. Just rocking the vibes of trusting the power of lounge will always shine a little warm shade (counter intuitive, but opposites are always true in the real world) on anybody halfway trying to keep themselves attuned to how the Universe bends regardless of the crooked axis this World all too often is spinning upon. Rocking the vibes of pitch shifted Ronnie Van Zandt vocals saying, “take your time… don’t live too fast” as the days pass, but I don’t bother counting them. There’s enough fog to work through already without getting lost in all those numbers that choke a mind to death even while still breathing.

SONG OF THE DAY: Out Of My Reach

One day I'll have a G-body sitting on 20-inch chrome wheels, hopefully a garish paint job on it but even if not, I'll ride that rust all the way back into the grave. And I'll be riding down by the river on a Sunday afternoon, blasting the smooth old jams nobody ever knew but were perfect the whole time, just nobody made us know. And I'll sit there by the river, watching the train pass, riding the vibes that unclog your soul and keep the heart pumping love in all directions.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Like It

I think I am slowly working my way back to no social media. I miss the old internet, which was far more creative, kooky, and actually informative. I was reading about “cyberbalkanization” the other night, or how the internet has contributed to the fracturing of people into sub-groups, thus adding to the divisiveness of the physical world. And to be honest, the internet was plugging along just fine without that problem. I’m sure it existed, but it seemed like you were more likely to find weirdos you got along with more easily than things to be mad about. The algorithm-driven social media we’ve come to depend on has definitely mauled those divisions into different channels, and even Google search results have gotten so trash in recent months. I’m not sure if it’s an overload of bad information, algorithms pulling too heavily from certain sources, or a combination of it all. And weirdly, this stupid little blog has plugged along for well over a decade (maybe longer, I couldn’t figure out how to see the first post). We feel like we have to re-brand ourselves so often too, where if we have a new idea or new phase, we kill off all the old versions and create new ones, abandoning the layer of cringe that built a sediment of our digital existence (and an important one since every layer is built upon the previous ones). It all feels so fucked. But I still post various projects and posts here because it’s kinda like throwing a rock into a creek… it still makes ripples, even if mostly nobody sees that ripple. I guess the real difference is I don’t encounter many frogs by maintaining this page, which is a shame.

SONG OF THE DAY: Creeping Away (kudzu'd)

My mother passed away this past week, and our relationship had been strained, but there was always love between us nonetheless. Family is always more complicated and nuanced than a simple read would tell you. I drove between her house and Keysville a couple times this week while down there, and one of my favorite memories was from there, when I went away on a trip to Oklahoma and Colorado years ago. I left in Farmville, with my dad taking me to where the bus station used to be at a gas station that's not there anymore near the hospital heading out of town south on 15. But I came back to Keysville for some reason. I remember some old lady got on the bus in Richmond and sat beside me, and when we passed the truck stop in Amelia, I remembered my grandma had lived down a road to the left there (which my uncle just told me last night around the fire exactly where that was down that road). And then riding 360 past where you turn off in Amelia to where my grandfather is buried, on through the outer edge of Crewe where my mom worked at Piedmont Geriatric Hospital back in the day, on through Meherrin to Keysville, where the bus dumped me off at the old commercial building by Sheldon's Motel that used to be a convenience store and ice cream parlor, and was an arcade at one point in there, and also a video store. I think at the time it still had the remnants of a country store, and now I don't know, it's an insurance office or something. But there was no pay phone there, so I had to walk up the road to the abandoned gas station, because that's where the closest pay phone was. (It's funny, somebody renovated the gas station and now it's open again, but there's no more pay phones anywhere.) I did the old collect call trick saying my name was "Raven just got home I'm at the old gas station before Keysville" to collect call my mom. I waited to hear her answer and hear who the call was from, then hung up before she could accept charges, although she knew better anyways. Then I sat down on my backpack there under a tree and waited 20 minutes for her to show up.
When I'd gotten past that spot in Amelia, I was telling the old lady how I'd ridden all the way from Denver, through the flatlands of the midwest once coming down off the Rocky Mountains, and then the ripples of Appalachia after all that midwestern flatland, and now these hills of Piedmont felt like I'd gotten home. I was singing Jim Croce's "Walkin' Back to Georgia" the whole time I walked from where the bus dropped me off in Keysville to the pay phone a mile or so away, and I kept on singing it, over and over, while I waited for my mom to show up. She was glad to see I'd made it back, and we went to the house I grew up in, and I might've lived there a couple days or a couple months, not sure. I came and went a couple times over the years, as did others throughout the family. But I remember that day, getting off the Greyhound in Keysville, the only person getting off or on at that stop, and walking my slow way to the pay phone, knowing she knew I was getting back that day and was gonna pick me up if she was home (or I'd keep walking towards her house another ten miles if she wasn't home), and just sitting there under that tree, waiting to see her car pull up.
It could be chaotic, our family, with all the things that went on, both accepted and ignored. But there was always a lot of love too. The past few years, because of some of the things she never improved on for me, which affected my kids, I didn't talk to her. That didn't mean she didn't do a lot that I'm grateful for; it just meant I hoped for more with some things, and expect more from myself, too. One of the folks we had to let know was my parents' old friend Wolf, and we couldn't get ahold of him, but one of my mom's friends drew me a map at the kitchen table, explaining the map, and me and my sister went to go find Wolf and let him know. The map was good, but misleading, because you need the story my mom's friend Sue told me as she drew it, to go with the map. One without the other didn't work. So my sister looked at it and it didn't make any sense, so I explained it to her, and she had lived back here once years ago for a little while, and we took one wrong turn but knew enough to know it was a wrong turn pretty quickly, so made our way back to the right path.
Sue had said about where Wolf lived, "He's got a trailer, and then there's a second trailer, and he's got a third trailer there, too." And at the time, I thought, "Why didn't she just say it was three trailers?" but when we got there it wasn't three trailers at all, but a trailer Wolf lived in, but he had another trailer beside it, and there was a third trailer. She had actually described it perfectly, so that if she said he had three trailers, I would've missed it, but saying it the way she did, I knew it as soon as I saw it. We went in, me hollering, "Hey!" like my daddy had always showed me growing up, announcing your presence in a loud but friendly way, making sure folks knew you were there in a good way, but making sure they knew. Neither me or my sister had seen Wolfie in years, and he looked older but he looked good to be honest, and his home seemed perfect to his ways. We told him, and he was of course said, saying, "That's my oldest confidant." As we were standing around, talking, he shared a memory of me being a toddler, and my folks and him doing acid with somebody else in a VW bus that had a woodstove in the back, and while they were riding around, I touched the stove and burned myself. Wolf laughed, "It didn't burn you bad, but you didn't touch it again."
I think sometimes coming from environments that aren't what folks consider normal, the chaotic parts get focused on too much. But it was always full of love, lots of lots of love. I think you need all that love to survive some of these more chaotic environments folks are born into. I didn't forget all that love, but I know I was angry about the other parts of it sometimes. It's been good to go back home and remember all the love that's there, too, even if it was chaotic at times. Without all that love, I wouldn't be the chaotic good person I am today.
I know my mom still read these things for years, even after we didn't talk so much, then didn't talk at all. She'd leave comments sometimes. My sister does that too. These are stories that don't get told, for whatever reason. The "normal" world only likes them packaged a certain way, for their own gawkish enjoyment. And our world only tells these stories around bonfires or truck beds, and even then we leave out some of the stuff that nobody wants to say out loud. I need to be better about sharing these stories, in a way that's true to where I'm from, but in a way that also tells the whole story, in a respectful and loving way. Anything else starts creeping away from the truth of it all. And that truth is never simple, and it never will be, because life isn't either, if you're truly living it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tus Modos

Been fearing possible hexes in my life so also been scattering anti-hexes. It's natural for things to not go the best way in life but there are times where it feels like the vibes are off. It's also entirely plausible both those things are happening. Existence does not afford us the scientific method of changing one variable at a time, because real life has infinite variables perpetually shifting. Whatever magic you believe in enough to make real helps correct that wobble, whether it's real to everyone else or not. As I get older, I believe this more and more. I appreciate the good that the scientific method gives us, and how it does have the potential (if used righteously) to improve all our lives immensely. But it's got its limitations, and the scientific method doesn't like to acknowledge that. The human mind won't ever be able to figure it all out as fast as it is changing. We're always gonna be at least a million variables behind the curve of the universe. It's better to accept that and keep it moving than deny it and make it worse.
The problem with subjective reality and human beings though is some folks got really warped perspectives, and then catch you in their crosshairs. They believe they're right, which in their own mind they likely are. But in the overall preponderance of other minds, both human and non-human, they ain't even close to right. If you get too focused in their crosshairs, that creates problems for you. I've learned to try and lie low better than I used to, not inviting so much anti-dirtgod magic into my life easily, because enough comes along by happenstance. But it still happens, in moments you lose your focus, or just because you got caught slipping into the wrong stream of consciousness for a metaphysical minute. All you can do is try to keep it moving and throw up those anti-hexes like forearm armor, hoping to deflect the haters' curses.

SONG OF THE DAY: Person to Person (kudzu'd)

Kudzu tends to be regarded with derision by the orderly amongst us, because it’s an invasive plant that takes over everything in sight, and thus negatively reminds us of our own human history of conquest and destruction of previous cultures. The same firing synapses that led to the concept of western civilization causes the kudzu to climb up and over everything it encounters, forever manifesting a further destiny with an insatiable desire for more. Of course, in terms of humanity and capitalism, this has become an unsustainable desire that ultimately might lead to our own failure at epic level. For kudzu, I don’t know, I’m just a human being, and we’ve never seen what happens if kudzu just runs wild in order to see how it ends. I know at the spot I love down the road where every summer the kudzu crests over top the guardrail in the curve like a wave at the ocean, it can’t creep into the road because the giant machines us humans drive around stomp it to death if it reaches too far out onto our unnatural asphalt pathways.
But to be honest, I’m not even here to talk about western civilization or capitalism, but just wanted to lay down a little background on the presumed psychology of kudzu, because it’s relevant to what I was actually thinking about, which is the Bottle Gods, which I guess is actually just a Trash God of sorts, but a very specific subset of that wild spirit. I should clarify that immediately there’s going to be a problem in utilizing my English language limitations to describe these spirits as a singular “god” or plural “gods” as they’re both, and neither, at the same time. The issue with the Creative Spirits that rule our entire Universe, is they don’t follow human logic. Instead, we follow their logic, or just as likely, stray from it and manufacture immense dissatisfaction in our own lives. But the kudzu conceals a lot wherever it grows, a lush prog rock album cover-looking overgrowth that hides the previous sediments of local history.
I’d always been drawn to quartz rocks locally, because they’re everywhere back in the woods. There’s this seasonal pattern of finding all these wonderful new rocks in the springtime, but then everything gets greener and thicker and those chunks of magic get lost in the shrubs and vines, and the human mind becomes worried about disease-carrying ticks or venom-mouthed snakes, and you’re less likely to go sticking your big dumb paws down into green tangles, grabbing at things. Fall comes in and the green turns brown, and shrivels back into Earth for warmth. Then winter freezes the superficial inches of the ground, squeezing rocks up to the surface somehow, so that when springtime comes back around, there’s a whole new crop of quartz sticking out the ground for you to be dazzled by. I try not to grab every rock, and as strange as it may seem, I do kinda feel the rock, to see how loose it is and gauge whether it wants to be moved or not, before taking one elsewhere (usually to stack around my compound in haphazard piles).
Living where I live now, it’s a blessed place whose best economic days were over a century ago, when the quarries employed thousands. That boggles the mind looking at this place now, even with the remnants of the small town that’s still standing. But because those quarries are everywhere, there’s also an abundance of human foot paths that have existed throughout most of these woods, made even more possible by the fact a giant defunct company at one time owned pretty much all this land, so modern property delineations are not quite as obvious here as they are in most of our well-parceled United States of America.
In the times between when the quarries stopped being profitable and now, there’s been a lot of foot traffic through those woods still, often times with a glass bottle beverage (or two or three or more) in hand, to help pass the time. Bottles litter these woods every direction, a combination of the aforementioned foot traffic, but also sign of the old school country practice of having a house dump somewhere in the woods behind the home place, where most all the other trash has decomposed over the decades, but a pile of bottles and rusted metal cans is still surviving the ravages of time. Thus, I find a lot of bottles.
It amazes me how, just like the quartz, new crops of bottles appear regularly, even in places I’ve wandered through many times over, specifically looking for bottles. Certain shapes and sizes, I’m called to, as the Bottle Gods have tapped me on the mind as captivated. Just last week, right beside another hillside bottle dump I’ve picked through multiple times, I was pissing in the woods, and over to my left was a whole slew of old wine pint bottles plus a couple of household bottles in shapes I’d never encountered before (more of a jar than a bottle to be honest). I carried what I could but hadn’t brought my sack, not anticipating the Bottle Gods blessing me on this day, and it was too cool to turn my t-shirt into a sack by tying the arms together, as I’ve done many times in the past. I appreciate the Bottle Gods blessing me that day though, because I needed it, even if I didn’t realize that beforehand.
But a lesson of the Bottle Gods is that it’s a hybrid spirit, one influenced by human activity. And it’s somehow natural. There is no division between man and nature in finding a dimple-sided wine bottle buried in the dirt for five decades. The divisions (created in our human minds) have been blurred at that point. Not all manmade creations are like this (plastic bottles come to mind, which shrink and shrivel in gross ways over time, but never decay either). And obviously there’s a lesson there as well, in that glass is more sustainable than plastic in terms of bottling and the long-term environmental damage they cause. But saying something like “long-term environmental damage” also is moving far too deeply into manmade ideologies and loses touch with the natural existence still possible to us. So I ain’t gonna go no further into that for fear of angering the Bottle Gods, because I’m looking forward to going through a nice little foot wander tomorrow morning, with my sack in hand, looking to get blessed (if I’ve been living right). Whenever I find a good bottle, unbroken and whole, I wonder about whoever it was who had been handling that bottle when it got left behind. I just found a pile of old Miller High Life pony bottles (an unmistakable style) by one of my sitting spots behind the house, and was thinking, “Who was sitting here at some point in the past, sipping on these pony bottles?” And also how these random bottles went from person to person, with somebody sitting there drinking them whenever in the past, and the bottles being hid from any other exposure to human interaction, until I find them sitting near that same spot decades later. I know I ain’t been the only one back there. The Bottle Gods are obviously tricksters (as are most of the Gods of Greater Appalachia).

SONG OF THE DAY: Night Owl

One of my favorite things is when somebody dramatically says, “I could say some things right now, but I’m not going to,” like cracking open a can of sardines in hot sauce but deciding not to eat them even though all the cats are meowing around now. Fuckin’ say that shit, get it out in the open! I think most folks are used to not being accountable to their own actions, they assume everybody else will quiver in fear at that statement. I do not give a fuck. Air your grievances out. I love burning bridges anyways and I got a can of 5-gallon bucket metaphysical flammables on hand at all times (even though time is a social construct).
None of this has anything to do with this pretty great cover of "Night Owl" but I chose to expound upon it here. Nobody's reading this anyways other than bots scanning for data. What's up bots! I hope all your 1s as sharp and 0s are thicc as hell.

SONG OF THE DAY: Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll (kudzu'd)

Big fan of thick women who roller skate. Maybe it goes back to childhood and random roller derby scenes sneaking into my subconscious… I don’t know. But somebody who could skate into my life and then crush me, all while smiling and wearing sparkle tank top with a tattoo of a leprechaun smoking a joint on their shoulder… well, it’s a pleasant thing to encounter. I hope that’s how I die.

SONG OF THE DAY: Just a Moment

Slow spinning oldies this Thursday night at a diner in Charlottesville. Decided it all needed to be more of a spectacle so expect some chaos. In my mind, this means a Greater Appalachian Mothership is about to land. It will be a spectacle as fuck, and surely the six people who actually show up will love it, lol.

SONG OF THE DAY: Standing With You

Man, I had heard this song on a souldies mix I got off a blog, and I thought it was legit oldie from like the 60s. I was shocked to see it was Colemine and I’d never gotten the 45, since I do regular “better get all the shit I missed” orders from them and Daptone and Big Crown. Hadn’t even played the 45 slow yet, just got it sitting in the stack, because I know it’s gonna be a mind blower, and probably pair really fuckin’ well with Aaron Frazer’s “My God Has a Telephone” (also on Colemine). Already up to 3 copies of the Frazer song, and I know I’m gonna need more than one of this track, too.

SONG OF THE DAY: Samoan Cricket Bat

Done watched a lot of cricket since I first heard this song when it came out. I still don’t understand cricket all that clearly, but it seems to be a more complicated but chaotic version of baseball, and it’s the hottest sports rivalry you’re gonna find between Pakistan and India so it could conceivably trigger nuclear war. Not many sports can claim that. Like who the fuck outside of America cares about American football? We got all these nukes and nobody gives a fuck about our dumb sports beyond the border.
Related to the song, I've written and hyped up Bambu a bunch on here before, so if you're still here, you already know. But this is a hard ass song, even with you already knowing all that (if you've been paying attention, which to be honest is probably me expecting more of you than I should. No diss. All our brains are broken.)

16-Man Metaphysical Roster: NEW YORK CITY FC

{squeezed into Yankee Stadium for a long minute now}

[16-Man Metaphysical Rosters are divined using a football metaphysics methodology where minutes played over the past 50 competitive club matches determines which 16 players constitute the strongest psychic influence over a club’s current psychic trajectory. Intuitive analysis is then added, with a decidedly un-American foundation. Football metaphysics believes in the beautiful game, not the modern corporate spectacle. We have more of a love for Maradona in Mexico than Messi in Miami. One North American club is done each month, divided equally between Liga MX and the MLS, as they are the top two leagues in our home country of America (because in footballing terms, many parts of America are actually Mexico). This is now a solo project again by Raven Mack, but used to be a small group effort, so it bears saying, Rest In Peace Neil.]

Our first foray into an MLS club begins with New York City FC, who is a pretty good example of the strange position soccer is jammed into the American cultural landscape. In terms of ownership, they’re owned mostly by the same holding company that was built around owning Manchester City FC, hence the similarity in kits. But there’s also minority ownership from the Yankees ownership group. The club was not created as any grassroots effort by supporters to have a club, so much as created in a major city to seemingly fill a marketing void. U.S. soccer clubs in Major League Soccer don’t develop as blossoms of football culture followed and supported for years (which does actually happen in the U.S. in a lot of different places), but more as deciding where a new Whole Foods should be built.

But it’s a long-term process. MLS identified their desire for a second club in the greater New York City metropolitan area back in 2006. In 2013, the club started to come to fruition, finally playing in the 2015 MLS season. So the club exists, and with some high profile talent coming through as they are not lacking for financial support, as Manchester City looks to establish itself as a major American brand as well. But finding a home for the club has been more difficult, with various stadium plans dreamed up and abandoned, in various industrial sites along the margins of New York City’s five boroughs. In fact, there’s been abandoned plans for an NYC FC soccer-specific stadium in Queens, the Bronx, and Harlem, touching on all the potentially gentrified spaces needing “cleaning up” so to speak. It appears they may be closer than ever, with a site identified at Willets Point, next to the New York Mets stadium, and within sight of the U.S. Open tennis complex.

This in itself is a pretty solid exhibit of soccer in America. It has no obvious place, culturally, so it’s sort of sown into marginal spots as a sign of improvement, not unlike street mural festivals. It’s not the mainstream accepted sport like basketball of American football, but it is widely supported. The strange thing about U.S. soccer though is it seeks out the support of a privileged class, while shitting on poor folks from international backgrounds who might actually be much larger futbol fans. Willets Point being the site of their potential stadium is perfect example, as it’s been a thriving but chaotic used auto parts corner of the city for many decades. The streets are unpaved, but if you’re not afraid to venture in, affordable quick fixes for all sorts of car problems can easily be found. It’s one of those amazing places that still exists in NYC that feels like another country, and it’s mostly populated by immigrants or non-English speakers, many of whom come from places where futbol is just as religiously followed as American football is even in the football-heaviest parts of the country. But that entire area is going to be turned into a soccer stadium complete with development of hotel and commercial properties. It’s hard to imagine how long of a clean-up a giant unmonitored used auto parts zone is going to take, and it's sad to think of all the folks who were able to carve out a living in this desperate way, for years and years, who are just gonna get displaced, with no real alternative location for that chaotic mechanical type of flea market anywhere else. In its place will grow a waterfront commercial development anchored by a couple of sports stadiums that, to be honest, looks like a dozen other complexes around the country. A uniquely New York City environment displaced by just another shopping complex where white folks from suburban counties will ride the train in to watch a soccer match a few times a year, and enjoy an overpriced meal and drinks while they’re there.

So that’s soccer in America – simultaneously an outsider to the mainstream, while also being a gentrifying force that squats itself right over top the existence of poorer folks, who otherwise might be huge American futbol fans if any sort of outreach was done whatsoever. But poor folks don’t have money, and American futbol is not about actually being a cultural force so much as cosplaying as one, so wealthy Americans can act like they’re some sort of ultras group, and wave their rainbow flags of pride that don’t really give half a fuck about black trans folks or actual marginalized sex workers. It’s all kinda fucked, and makes it hard to pull for Major League Soccer as an entity, because it’s not pulling for me. It’s all about the money, but without the history of older domestic leagues elsewhere.

Nonetheless, New York City FC has existed now for nearly a decade, and been fairly successful in that short term. And somehow, by not actually having a home, a strange hominess has been found by them being forced to play in Yankee Stadium. They can’t always play there, due to it being the Yankees home first and foremost, but for the most part, they squeeze in a smallish version of a pro futbol pitch, and it’s one of the more unique set-ups in U.S. soccer, that has been forced to go on for so long while New York city tries to build a soccer stadium, that it’s made NYC FC matches have a strange marginal beauty. And in their short history, NYC FC has finished second in regular season standings twice already, and won the MLS Cup in 2021. They’ve firmly established themselves as a top MLS brand (lol), and with Major League Soccer player movement being so rapid and tied to money, they’ll likely remain that type of club, so long as the luster doesn’t wear off those baby blue kits as an off-brand version of Manchester City for U.S. soccer aficionados to claim as their own. And here are the top 16 players in terms of minutes played over the past 50 competitive matches, who weigh the heaviest on the club’s current metaphysics (through September 02, 2023)…

#1: KEATON PARKS – This midfielder’s name sounds quintessentially U.S. soccer… the privileged kid from a suburban background (Dallas area in Keaton’s case) who maintains his fees and remains in the pyramid scam that is youth soccer here, going from high profile high school to collegiate scholarship, then into the MLS after a draft. Except somehow Keaton Parks, despite that name, bypassed that traditional U.S. soccer path. After high school, he immediately signed with a semi-pro club in Texas, and got a few tryouts with Portuguese clubs somehow, ending up overseas for about five years, including making one of the Portuguese big three’s senior squad, at Benfica, briefly. In 2019, they loaned Parks back to America, which is how he landed at NYC FC, likely due to shared scouting with Manchester City perhaps? Anyways, whatever the path, he never played college soccer in the U.S., and after his move to NYC FC was made permanent in January of 2020, he’s become a mainstay on the squad, and will cross the 150 caps with club in the next month most likely.

#2: SANTIAGO RODRÍGUEZ – Uruguayan attacker who’d been an early star at one of that nation’s most prominent clubs, Nacional, before moving to a crosstown club Montevideo City Torque. NYC FC signed him on an 18-month loan early in the summer of 2021, which ran out after last season. It wasn’t clear if he was coming back, though NYC FC wanted him to badly, but he finally signed a permanent contract this past March, and is one of their key players on attack, wearing the precious #10 for the club.

#3: TAYVON GRAY – New York metropolitan area youngster who was born and bred in the Bronx but spent time in Jersey as well, and has been with NYC FC since the age of 15. Over the past few years (he just turned 21), he’s grown into key defender for the club. He also has Jamaican heritage so got his first call-up and appearance for the Jamaican national team earlier this month. He had played for the US at various youth levels, but made the move to the Jamaican team apparently, getting subbed into the match in the second half in the Reggae Boyz 1-0 win over Honduras.

#4: THIAGO MARTINS – Brazilian central defender who excelled for a while with Palmeiras in his homeland, and did a stint in Japan playing for Yokohama F. Marinos for a few years, before returning to this half of the Earth when NYC FC signed him last year. Along with Gray, the backbone of the NYC FC defense now that Maxime Chanot (next up) has left.

#5: MAXIME CHANOT – French player who’s played around Western Europe, but spent his longest gig at NYC FC for 7 seasons, establishing himself as their key defender. He went back to France this summer, playing for a Ligue 2 club Ajaccio, that’s located on Corsica, so they got that dope bandana dude from the Corsican flag in their crest. He also remains key defender for the Luxembourg national team, which has never qualified for hardly anything, as one of the smallest nations in UEFA.

#6: LUIS BARRAZA – Barraza is a Mexican-American GK who grew up on this side of the border in New Mexico, so has been in the MLS youth system, played college soccer at Marquette, and been immersed in the U.S. soccer pyramid since he was 14, when he joined Real Salt Lake’s Arizona academy. He had only sporadic appearances for NYC FC’s senior team up until this year, when he’s become their primary GK.

#7: BRAIAN CUFRÉ – Argentine left back who made his name at Vélez Sarsfield back home, which got him attention from La Liga in Spain. He’s been contracted to Mallorca since 2020, and spent time loaned to Málaga in Spain as well, and was loaned to NYC FC at the beginning of this MLS season in February, which an option for a permanent transfer. He’s done well enough in MLS to become a key player for the squad, but they’re also buried in the standings outside the pretty large playoffs window, so who knows? NYC FC has been one of the consistently more successful clubs, and they seemingly still have a good foundation on defense, but need a strike threat to takeover for offense. But also MLS is even more fickle than normal football clubs, because MLS has so much more player movement than other domestic leagues. This whole list might get angrily shook up. I guess I hadn’t mentioned their manager is Nick Cushing, an English dude who had spent a longtime managing the Man City women’s team before coming to NYC FC’s coaching staff in 2020. Though his win percentage is only at around 30%, hard to imagine a guy so entrenched in Manchester City coaching style would get run off even after one less than exciting season in charge.

#8: TALLES MAGNO – 21-year-old winger, and one of a number of Brazilians on the NYC FC squad. Magno cut his footballing teeth with Vasco da Gama in Brazil, and joined NYC FC a couple years back, and has been considered a potential breakout player for MLS, but has yet to really seize that destiny by the throat. Still, a pretty good scoring threat to be part of the NYC FC arsenal, and having been steeped in Brazilian football culture, not afraid of any potential intercontinental draws against Mexican clubs.

#9: JAMES SANDS – NYC FC’s first academy player to make their senior roster. Sands was good enough to be loaned to Rangers in Scotland for part of last season (Scottish seasons, not American seasons, which don’t sync). Born and raised in Westchester County, just outside New York City proper, but a really good example of how more sports leagues should embrace performative names for competitors. “James Sands” is boring as fuck, I don’t care how good a defender he is. But change that shit to “Jimmy Sandman” and I’m gonna automatically be thinking, “Oh fuck, they gotta watch out for Jimmy Sandman!”

#10: GABRIEL PEREIRA – Pereira is a young Brazilian attack player who spent about 16 months with NYC FC, and became a key goal scoring threat for them. His performance caught enough attention he was part of the rush of talent to the Middle East this summer, though a less glamorous path, instead of Europe to Saudi Arabia, Pereira went from the U.S. to Qatar Stars League, signing with Al-Rayyan. Interesting to see how that fossil fuel money has so suddenly disrupted the football migration patterns we’re used to this past year.

#11: JUSTIN HAAK – Born in Brooklyn the day after 9/11. Also not even a real human being, but a composite cyborg AI tech creation performed in the MLS Laboratories to create the most American soccer-looking player possible, with the most Football Manager-generated sounding name possible. The reason they don’t allow green lasers in the stands in the U.S. like they use so extensively in African football is because the lights would cause cyborg creations like Justin Haak to overheat, thus ruining the illusion of “American soccer” being competed entirely by humans.

#12: RICHARD LEDEZMA – Ledezma is an American defender from Arizona who made enough of a splash at an early age to get signed by PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands, one of the Dutch Eredivisie’s biggest clubs. He did time on the reserve team and got a few starts with the senior squad as well, but had long been rumored as coming back to America. This past March, PSV signed him to a contract extension then immediately loaned him to NYC FC. He’s gotten one call-up to the US national team, appearing ina  single match against Panama in 2020, where he was subbed on in the 68th minute and got two assists.

#13: ALFREDO MORALES – Morales is an American player of Peruvian descent born in Germany as his pops was born in Peru but was an American and in the military. Morales actually spent his youth academy years moving up the German ranks, ending up at Hertha BSC, where he also started his senior professional career on their reserve team, eventually cracking the senior squad. He moved between a few different clubs, being sort of a tweener between Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga (second German division). But during this time, he also was recruited for the U.S. national team during the time Jürgen Klinsmann was shifting the national team recruiting philosophy to get more players who were based overseas. Morales had sporadic appearances for the national team from 2013 through 2019, though he toyed with playing for Peru up until 2015, as he hadn’t made an appearance yet for the U.S. The exposure on the national team got him more domestic attention, and NYC FC signed him in April of 2021 through the end of this year, with an option for another year. Hard to say if he’ll be part of their long-term plans or not, as he’s 33 and hasn’t exactly lit it up in MLS.

#14: MITJA ILENIČ – Spent his professional career entirely in his native Slovenia, finally becoming a main player for top Slovenian club Domžale befor eNYC FC signed him this past January. He’s made another of appearances with the club so far, and is only 18, and has already graduated to the U-21 Slovenian national team, their second youngest player ever. No diss to MLS but you gotta figure after gaining some first-team exposure, the Slovenian football federation is gonna want him playing somewhere in Europe. And at the same time, what fun it must be to be a young, carefree, professional soccer contract-having Slovenian living in New York City (although I’m going by memories of NYC, not what the modern gentrified weird ass NYC is).

#15: KEVIN O’TOOLE – Former Jersey kid who was a homegrown player for the New York Red Bulls, and spent plenty of time on their youth and reserve squads, and played for Princeton collegiately, but was left unprotected for the MLS SuperDraft (lol) last year, and NYC FC seized the opportunity to poach him from their local rivals. O’Toole can play a slew of roles, so gets plugged and played here and there as needed, but still hasn’t really settled as a steady starter in any capacity.

#16: MATÍAS PELLEGRINI – Argentine winger who briefly showed flash with Estudiantes in his native country before getting imported to Inter Miami early on in their existence. Pellegrini’s been an MLS mainstay ever since, but never really caught on at Inter Miami like expected. He got loaned back to Estudiantes multiple times, but the last time, they passed on purchasing the player back, so Inter Miami waived him and NYC FC claimed him last August. He’s been a bit player at NYC FC ever since.

SONG OF THE DAY: En La Casa (kudzu'd)

“En la casa” is Spanish for “in the casa”. I learned that working a decade plus of construction. To be honest, it was the only job I could get at the time. You learn a lot by being trapped in dead ends. One of those weird things though, if you’ve never been trapped in dead ends or directed right into dead ends, you can’t really understand how fucked it feels. That’s why I suggest to a lot of people to practice shutting the fuck up more often. But that’s a hard skill to acquire when you’ve never been trapped in a dead end and are carefully looking for any tiny outlet to escape through. Anyways, I learned a lot of Spanish working construction. In fact, any time anything bad happens to me or like I stub my toe or something goes wrong like I didn’t win the lottery or I accidentally ran over a squirrel or the county sheriff just left after serving more papers, I still go “pinche escalera”. I’ve even got it tattooed on my leg, ironically in Old English letters.

SONG OF THE DAY: Pot of Gold

Just vibing man, just vibing. I could rock shit like this all day. Ordered this 45 from a dude in California but it never showed up, I guess the media mail got lost. I was being chill about it, because I know he does a lot of shit where he's at. The Power of Lounge worked, because the errant media mail package showed back up with him and he mailed the shit again. Good shit happens for those who lounge.

SONG OF THE DAY: Freak-A-Zoid (kudzu'd)

The other night, I went to bed early (I think) but got woken up by a buzzing/humming sound outside the window, like when the drug helicopters are looking for grow fields in the quarries, but closer and not as giant. Looked out and there was a blue/green glowing orb I guess hovering but it’s hard to tell if an orb is hovering or flying or just existing beyond gravitational pull, especially when it starts talking to you in a voice that sounds like Sun Ra but also your dead Uncle Ray. He got shot in a home invasion and lost three fingers on his right hand, including the thumb, so they grafted a big toe onto it so that he still had opposable digits, and he loved to thrust that two fingered one thumb hand at people and exaggeratedly go, “Nice to meet ya!” The voice told me that despite me playing records slow, I hadn’t slowed my own anxieties, so really hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface on the Power of Lounge. The voice challenged me to not really to do anything more but just to be my full self. So I’ve been working on that this week, trying to put together a more full version of dirtgod for when I’ve committed to going out in public and acting like I know what I’m doing. We’re simultaneously trying to activate full super freak mode but also just start letting the Power of Lounge start trickling in through the divisive barriers and obstacles put up everywhere. Not ones you see, all the invisible metaphysical barriers. And I’m not even trying to destroy those, because once you get into the reactionary mode of trying to destroy all that’s wrong with the world, you’re just swinging an angry hammer around everywhere all day long, and not being true to your heart. I’m just trying to seep through the cracks, and make ‘em worse. All this is gonna fall apart on its own because it wasn’t built right in the first place. I ain’t gotta do nothing but increase the Power of Lounge on my end, so that once it does all come apart, there’s a thick coating of goodness already on everything.

SONG OF THE DAY: You Played On A Player

If I got finger tattoos, I’d get PLAY on one and ERRR on the other. That’s just how I’m built.

SONG OF THE DAY: Be Thankful For What You Got (kudzu'd)

Making the most of the moments, disengaging myself from the comparisons to others who seemingly have it together way better than me. But what we see ain’t the reality, always a digital façade behind which difficulties and quietudes and various mundane comedies and tragedies hide. All manmade systems are flawed because all humans are inherently flawed as well, yet there’s perfection in that imperfection. To think you can achieve the perfect life, either as individual or collectively, is allowing yourself to push a Sisyphean stone up a philosophical hill, and is bound for disappointment. Do nothing more and do more nothing, because fuck it, you ain’t no machine.

SONG OF THE DAY: Freakin' (With You)

Retro vintage throwback flavors from the future, all our technology smooshed together and connected with the appropriate cords found on ebay, combining eras through the filter of tech limitations of the moment of whatever piece of equipment you’re happening to be working with as it trickled down to you. The Real Artists always have Real Equipment and charge you $170 for a portrait session. They were born to a comfortable bed and have never wanted for the latest metaphysical blankets to shield them from the cold nature of the Real World. And somehow these still end up being the Real Artists in the Real World, because none of it is real at all. It’s all a con, a midway game we all are living within but don’t realize, the basket with a spring on the bottom that bounces most of us into struggle and despair but some got the carnies hitting the button for ‘em from day one. So don’t get mad when you see them walking around with the life-sized Pooh bear. It was always rigged. Make art with what you have at hand, fuck ambitions of greatness or being a Real Artist. Scatter your shit everywhere, like shit, and fuck ‘em if they don’t like it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sugar Free (Deo/Super Dance Mix)

More vehicles should have mixers in them, because this is a great song for a 5 month drive time, and you could loop that beat from the first 30 seconds or so for at least two weeks. Then loop the part right after that where the hook is teased before the verse starts, and loop that for a week and a half, then drop it back to the beginning for a few hours, before finally rocking into the first verse, somewhere around the fourth or fifth week of your drive. I’m not big on cyborg bullshit, but if they gave me a mind mixer, I’d jump at that chance. The problem with most of our delusional cyborg dreams is they’re based on implants in the brain, which isn’t even where the mind is, ignoring the heart completely, so you’re gonna have a bunch of dumbasses running around with these brain implants, thinking things into the microchips with their poisoned ass brain thoughts. The folly of men, thinking they know what they know when they don’t know shit (and never have).

SONG OF THE DAY: La Motocicleta (rebajada)

Another cumbia rebajada from the archives of Sonido Dueñez… a song about motorcycles.