Happy birthday, Foxy Brown

Yes, it's the Il Na Na's birthday. She's been in some trouble lately, but I hope she gets to celebrate today. I wanted to post something she did with Nas, a fellow Virgo, but my hard drive is coming up dry. Instead, and this is by no means second best, you get a track from one of my top-five favourite albums ever.




The video's from Fade to Black, which if you haven't seen it is probably the best or second best concert movie ever. The original was the first track Foxy ever recorded. Here's her account from the recent making-of Reasonable Doubt feature in XXL:

>>Jay picked me up from school - Brooklyn College Academy. I was in ninth grade. This was in '95. We stopped and got some Kum Kau - me, Jay and his cousin B-High. Kum Kau was our favorite spot, the best Chinese restaurant in the world.<<

I love the way she's supposed to be talking about recording the lead single from an album that is now ranked as an all-time classic, and she just goes off on this tangent about where the best Chinese was in 95. Fuck, though - ninth grade? In 9th grade my greatest achievement was shoplifting a bunch of copies of that Pink Floyd album with the blinking LED thing and selling them to friends and second hand shops. They were easy to steal cause the way they packaged them, the shops couldn't keep the discs behind the counter - they had to leave them all packaged up.

The song is so hot. Kids who want to rap should have to study the way Jay spits the (classic) line 'Promised to stay monogamous - I tried'. It's crazy expressive - you can hear the shrug where he twists the line. Also there is just something intrinsically hilarious about Jay's cheating lines. What's that bit in Jigga What, Jigga Who? Like, 'She wanted us to end cause I fucked her friend/She gave me one more chance, so I fucked her again.' Ha!

Although it's unrelated to Foxy's birthday, here is another amusing food-related anecdote from the same XXL feature. The quote's from Hov:

>>I remember recording, and [Memphis Bleek] had like six bacon cheeseburgers. I thought he was ordering shit to take advantage of me. I was like, "You eatin' every one of those."<<

I can't find my copy and soulseek is giving me no joy so - does anyone have the track Beyonce did on the beat from In Da Club? If so, can you ysi it for me - I will love you forever and happily trade for anything I have that you want, or make you a mixtape or whatever.

For some reason, lately there seem to be a lot of troglodytic sexist fuckwits in my life, and I can't really figure out why. Now, by 'a lot', I actually mean two, but I already thought one was a lot, and then last night another one landed in my lap, as it were. One of my housemates has been carpooling with a guy she has a bunch of classes with, and last night he came in for a coffee. They got to arguing about feminism, and his basic position was that its women's fault when men are sexist because they dress too slutty. That's obviously not a charitable paraphrase, but its not a screamingly uncharitable one, either.

The worst part about this was that about ten minutes before that, he'd asked me what I was doing and I said, 'Looking for work', and then he immediately called his boss, who was looking for new valets, and hooked me up with an interview. So I couldn't really call him on his bullshit, and ended up just going up to my room because I couldn't deal with it. I totally felt like Kanye in that bit from Last Call where he sells his first beat to Jay-Z and doesn't like Jay's verse, but tells him it's tight 'because what could I do? I was on the chain, man.' I was on the motherfucking chain. And now I actually have a job as a valet, so I guess I am on the chain a while longer, at least until I snap and abuse one of the digusting privileged rich fucks I imagine frequenting a valet service.

I was not on the chain a couple of weeks earlier when, after soccer, somebody mentioned a band called Rapeman. Its some kind of punk band and I guess the name is supposed to be all shocking and shit. I started saying how stupid it was, and then this guy, out of nowhere, pipes up with, man, I don't even want to say it. It was some shit you just don't say. I argued vigorously with the dude, and not in a 'hey, let's bat these ideas around' sort of way, more a 'that is a totally unacceptable thing to say, and nobody here is going to listen to anything you say from now on' sort of way. When he finally gave up, he called me a typical Aussie prude, and left shortly thereafter.

I imagine someone telling me I am pretty sheltered if attitudes like those shock me. But I am not shocked they exist. I am shocked that the energy I have put into building a lifestyle and community where I don't have to deal with them on my own time suddenly seems to have been inadequate.

I know, 'Last night I dreamed...' posts are dire, but...

Last night I dreamed I met DJ Premiere and Dr Dre. They were both really friendly, but Dre looked exactly like LL Cool J, and Primo looked like Roxanne Shante.

My new crush

Let me contextualise a little by saying, comic shops are horrible places. A couple of weeks ago I was in a part of the city I don't usually visit, and noticed a comic shop there. Since I was planning on stopping by Kings anyway, and this would save me the extra trip, I popped in. The shop was badly laid out, badly lit, and generally gross. Dank is the word I would use. The staff, a couple of middle aged guys with questionable personal hygiene, were, at best, unhelpful. I was looking for the first volume of Scott Pilgrim, this great indie title about a slacker punk dude who starts going out with this girl and finds out that if he wants to keep dating her, he has to fight and defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends. It is totally sweet, brilliantly observed, and often laugh-out-loud funny. I looked for it on the shelves, didn't find it, and asked the guy behind the counter. He had never heard of it, but basically made no effort to help me whatsoever. I guess they don't have a computerised inventory, or he just wasn't bothering to check it. He didn't, like, get up and have a look himself. He asked, 'Is it a comic or a book?' and got irritated when my answer was as confused as the question. (Its a digest-sized Original English Language manga title. Is that a book or a comic?) Needless to say, I left without buying anything.

So then I headed over to Kings, which is without doubt the best comic shop I've ever seen. It is clean, bright, spacious, and the staff are helpful. They have a staff which is not made up of obsessive nerdburgers and, unlike any other comic shop I know, includes actual women. I browsed a while, and when someone asked me if they could help me with anything, I asked a couple of moderately obscure questions that they answered easily without needing to look up the answers. When I asked if they had Scott Pilgrim, another staff member who overheard me happened to know the answer off the top of his head, and told me they'd just ordered some and when they'd be in. The woman who'd been helping me was visibly excited that someone was asking about Scott Pilgrim, and raved some about how great it was. This is exactly what I want in shop staff - a combination of knowledge and enthusiasm for the product.

So the other day I went back to get the book, and when I brought it to the counter the same woman who'd helped me before served me. She brightened when she saw what I was buying, and said, 'This is by far my favourite indie title currently being published.' We had a little conversation about it. She was very sweet in a slightly awkward way. It was totally endearing. And now I think I have a crush on her.

However! I can only imagine that women who work in comic shops get harrassed by their customers on, like, an hourly basis. So I am all reluctant to ask her out or whatever.

I am happy for it to stay the kind of crush where you are just happy to see the person and have a little platonic crush, though.

Is it sexist...

Okay, it was suggested to me in the pub last night that my new T-shirt is sexist. I don't really see how, but I would appreciate any feedback. The T-shirt says:

I have a PhD*
* - a pretty huge dick

As far as I can tell, the most offensive thing about it is the 'ye-biting. But I am happy to be told I'm wrong.

Best conversation of the weekend

(Barring unexpected awesomeness today)

Context: Stoned punks claiming to like a broad range of music.

Punk: Kelis! I love Kelis.

Me: Kelis made eye contact with me, once. She was singing the words 'lets get it on in public' at the time, and she totally picked me out as the dude she wanted to get it on with.

Housemate: She wanted you, man.

Punk: I would love to get it on with Kelis.

Me: It would be rad, you could have a threesome with her and her husband.

Punk: Who's she married to?

Me: Nas.

Punk: Really! I'd totally have a threesome with them.

Me: That would be so hot. (Mimes hate-fucking Nas.) 'You haven't had a good record in 15 years. (Slap.) You haven't had a good record in 15 years. (Slap.) (Etc.)

I often use my phone's 'save message' function to leave myself little notes about things I want to remember, when I don't have a pen and paper handy. I just unexpectedly discovered a great one, which I must have written when I was extra-drunk because I have no memory of when I did it, or what the situation was, apart from the obvious. The message is:

I am being greased off by a 16yo goth!

Now I'm trying to work out where the fuck I could have been that a 16yo goth would be greasing me off?

The descriptive genius of Jack Reacher

I just read the people's history of Australian zines from Heat, after Vanessa made me a copy. I was very flattered By Lachlan's comments about me - so, if he's reading this, email me your address and this time I really actually will send you a package. I have a bunch of things I should send you, for real.

I have also been reading a whole bunch of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. Reacher is an ex-military policeman; these days, he hitch-hikes around America getting in all kinds of trouble. The novels are totally compelling and stupid. Persuader, which I'm reading now, is one of the few written in the first person, and hence we get to read exactly how we thinks about attractive women.

>>Her butt looked spectacular in the jeans. I could see the label on the back: Waist 24. Leg 32. That made her inseam five inches shorter than mine, which I was prepared to accept. But a waist a whole foot shorter than mine was ridiculous. I carry almost no body fat. All I've got in there are the necessary organs, tight and dense. She must have had miniature versions. I see a waist like that and all I want to do is span it with my hands and marvel at it. Maybe bury my head somewhere a little higher up. I couldn't tell what that might feel like with her unless she turned around. But I suspect it might feel very nice indeed.<<

Among the things I love about that, maybe the best is that while he is ostensibly checking out her ass, really its an excuse for his uncannily narcissistic appreciation of his own internal organs. You know that old joke, who cares if beauty's only skin deep - what do you want, a gorgeous pancreas? Reacher actually has a gorgeous pancreas.

For all the majesty of that passage, though, it may be trumped by a description a few chapters later, possibly the greatest descriptive sentence in the history of the English language:

>>It was like she had been exquisitely moulded from the stuff they make the insides of tennis balls out of.<<

On Wednesday, some friends are coming round to help me fulfil my long-running fantasy of watching both Godfather movies back to back; neither of the friends has ever seen either movie before. Excitement! So, I have been looking for a really good spaghetti sauce recipe to go with the movies, and so far, this is my favourite, although not necessarily the best.

>>Pour the remaning 1/2 cup of wine into a glass for yourself, go sit on the couch and look extreamly exasted. After all, cooking a fancy dinner requires ALOT of work. make sure your family knows it too as the aroma of your homemade sauce wafts around the house. Put in a movie, I recomend something like Chocola, or Under the Tuscan Sun -- You will like it, and it will keep the men foke out of the kitchen while you cook. If you ARE a man, football or something: I dont know.what do men who cook watch?.<<