burnaby t wallace

The New Kids on the Block are getting back together.

Yeah.

You can say whatever you want, but I know deep down inside…

Nevermind the nonsense noise and barrage of high hats and beats, many of the representatives of the industry just, well, I’ll just let you read this little interview (warning: bad language) by XXL Magazine of DMX (cleaned up, of course, for your reading pleasure).

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the f**k is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the f**k?! That ain’t no f**kin’ name, yo. That ain’t that n**ga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the f**k outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The n**ga’s name is Barack. Barack? N**ga named Barack Obama. What the f**k, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his f**kin’ name. Ima tell this n**ga when I see him, “Stop that bul****t. Stop that bul****t” [laughs] “That ain’t your f**kin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.

But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that s**t a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the f**kin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done f**ked this s**t up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a f**kin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All f**kin’ bul****t. All bul****t. I don’t give a f**k about none of that.

We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.

Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.

The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.

So early this morning, I had one singular thought. In my drowsy just-got-up state of mind, I thought to myself:

Polka is the original house music. Whoa.

So I was listening to the radio and I thought–whoa, Pearl Jam is coming out with a new album.

No…

It was Bruce Springsteen.

How weird. He sounded just like Eddie Vedder, maybe in my early morning disorient.

Pearl Jam should come out with a new album.

So, I got all caught up in the American Idol Gives Back thing from last week. I watched it, saw Josh Groban and was mildly entertained by the celebrities doing some weird song. I enjoyed the whole Carrie Underwood song (so I bought it on iTunes) and had fun seeing Jack Black do his thing.

So I figured that I would donate some money and help out those kids in Africa and the US.

When I received my credit card statement, I looked and saw a charge from Idol Gives Back.

However, it was from Beverly Hills.

So, I ask that Idol not only give back, but move out to cheaper rent locales. The whole Idol thing doesn’t need to move, but the place that runs the charges could relocate to, say, San Bernardino or something. Seriously, I can only imagine the faces of the many people from different parts of the US who get a statement and wonder what on earth they must have charged in Beverly Hills.

I have made an update to the “Not So Much…/Things that are Lame” page.

I took off Kevin Federline, frankly, because he has stopped making music (hopefully). I added Snoop Dogg because, frankly, he is sticky-icky-lame.

Read the article that inspired the D, O, double-G to pass throught the gates of suck.

On Friday, I went to (with the exception of the first row auctioned seats) the best concert ever. It wasn’t a rockin’ band or some mosh pitting group–it was Josh Groban.

Granted, I missed the opening day for the Padres (and they lost anyway), though I sported the retro Padres jersey all day–all sporting events were forgotton as soon as I sat in the comfortable lodge seating of the iPayOne Center.

Unfortunatly, my camera phone is not that good, but I managed to get this picture.

He seemed funnier than you expect someone like him to be. What was cool was right before his last song, he left the stage only to return in a Padres jersey.

Seriously–Josh Groban rocks. The opening act was an African musician–also very good. He also had the same violinist he had the last time he was in San Diego.

 He also performed a song from the musical Sweeney Todd and did the chicken dance for everyone.

I don’t like rap. I mean, I really don’t like rap. It’s not so much the little Civics and SUVs with spinners that thump my inner organs–which, admittedly, sometimes tickles. It’s how rap has now become cookie cutter fast-worded yelps about the hoochies, the money, and the vaunted bling bling. It’s also the entourage of saggy bottomed way too-oversized clothing wearing celebrities with sparkly silver teeth accepting awards for having the most popular song–you know that youths listen and look up to.

Well, I started listening to Akon. A friend of mine thought I might like it–weird. Anyhow, as I am checking out my new MP3 player (that is not an iPod), and much of my other items are encoded to only run on iPods–my listening selection was limited. I decided to give Akon a chance, if nothing more than background noise to cover the low hum coming from my desktop computer.

I have to admit, it’s a very listenable album. That’s saying a lot, coming from me. Most of my daily listening involve a local radio talk show, then nothing but Christian music, some rock, some country, and even some classical. It harkens back to when I felt rap was good…a time where laid back political testements were riding beats song by Fugees and before Ice-T was a musical artist–not an actor and Sean Paul was no where to be found.

A few tracks reminded me of my Marley days. Don’t get the wrong idea, there’s still some tracks that talk about the money (OK, buddy…you own a Gallardo, we know). However, he sings about love–yes, the actual feeling and not the bump and grind type. It’s a fun album, it’s catchy, and minimizes the words that start with F, S, B, and N’s (are you listening Fergie?). Plus, Akon doesn’t sound like a scary bullfrog (like DMX, Ja Rule).

I guess I’ll have to listen to it more to figure out what to completely make of it, but at least my car’s audio system can stretch its legs and rediscover it’s raison d’etre.

technorati tags:akon, rap

After one decent band, and a not-so-much band, and standing for 4 hours already, we finally got to see Chris Daughtry at the Belly Up Tavern. If I could sum up the whole concert in two words…

Hurtyfeet Daughtryisawesome

I will be posting pictures soon.