Pissing Excellence in the Wind

Today (March 7^th, 2011) is the day that Prodigy of Mobb Deep is released from prison. I’m happy for him and his family. Prodigy is one of my favorite MC’s. That’s not to be confused with being considered one of the best. Wu-Tang has always been full with great MC talent, anyone of them who could conceivably maintain favorite status. However, only a couple of the noted rhyme slingers out of the Wu-Tang camp would ever be considered one of the best to ever breathe on the mic.

On the other end of the spectrum, an artist like Jay Z would probably easily gain a consensus of opinion that he is one of the best ever. This consensus would be achieved easily amongst both his peers and music fans alike.

However, this doesn’t mean that Jay is one of your favorite artists. At least in my case this is true. As I’ve grown older I have been able to greater appreciate Shawn Carter’s vision and approach to his craft. With that said, there are many other artists that I enjoyed much more than the Jay Z songs that came on the radio and many of my friends listened to incessantly.

Case in point, the Old Dirty Bastard. He wasn’t even the best MC/artist in the Wu-Tang Clan, but he was hands-down my favorite. While everyone was fixated on Method Man & his clever wordplay early on in their career, ODB was the one who I was listening for. Old Dirty had this ability to verbalize the sounds in his head and use inflection to capture his sentiment perfectly without the use of actual words. For example, one classic ODB line goes: “I’m cherry bombin’ shit, BOOM, just warming up a little bit, VROOM-VROOM.” Before Old Dirty, no one was crazy enough to even attempt a line like that without the fear of intense ridicule and career suicide.

Back to my point, Prodigy, one of my favorite MC’s comes home today. It makes me feel good to both publicly welcome back to this side of the “G wall” and to be able to use his work to make a valuable point today. Mobb Deep’s music (particularly the “Infamous” album) sonically captured the feeling of many youth on the violent streets of urban centers across America. In the song “Survival of the Fittest” Prodigy rapped, “There’s a war going on outside, no man is safe from. You can run but you can’t hide forever, from these streets that we done took, you’re walking wit your head down scared to look. You’re shook, cause ain’t no such thing as half-way crooks.”

The verse from “Survival…” is a classic. More importantly, the sentiment that it communicates is powerful and represents a turn in the genre where artists began embracing “reality rap”. Whether or not it was truly Prodigy’s first person narrative, he wrote in the voice of a young urban outlaw in one of the most dangerous areas of New York. He spoke to the mentality of youth entrenched in urban warfare, a game of survival of the fittest. Most importantly for the purposes of this writer & this blog he embraced his deviance as normative, he embraced his monster.

Sure, Mobb Deep is predated by the likes of N.W.A, Ice-T, and Kool G Rap. However, what makes them different is that their music wasn’t about them being “the guy”, the dope man, the quintessential gangster. Their music was more on par with a slice-of-life perspective of the low to mid-level everyman.

Here’s where things take an interesting and most unexpected turn. One must keep in mind that although there is a grain of truth to what is being communicated through Mobb Deep’s music, it’s still only entertainment. That monster music is there to entertain individuals with truths, half-truths, exaggerations, critical omissions, and flat out lies for art’s sake. Not even Mobb Deep is Mobb Deep (See Jay Z’s summer jam performance from 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay-Z_vs._Nas_feud). Prodigy (legal name, Albert Johnson) went to jail for losing his sense of balance, for letting his monster roam free without rules, for letting Prodigy overrun the will and conscience of Albert Johnson. Basically, he was imprisoned for going Charlie Sheen (the verb, not the proper noun).

It took my muse recently to direct my attention to the spectacle that is Charlie Sheen. It seems that everyone has developed an opinion one way or another about what has widely become recognized as his media meltdown. Up until the last few days I purposely looked away figuring that this had no bearing on me, or how I live my life. However, mark my words when I say that there is something that we can all learn from the grand unmasking of Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen is not only a monster. One worthy of not only our acknowledgement but our full, undivided attention. He is a samurai without a master and no rules of engagement. He is THE monster, his deviance is unrivaled, his candor unmatched, and his filter, nonexistent.

We know that Charlie (CS henceforth) has lived a privileged life, and that’s putting it mildly. CS is the flesh & blood embodiment of Ricky Stratton from “Silver Spoons”, never having wanted for anything. He grew up to work in an industry where his career path is determined by his awesome talent of being born the son of a famous actor. There is no real reason care about the man as a normal human being one way or another.

But wait, as he grows older he begins to diverge from his path of normalcy in privilege. We would be remiss if we didn’t note that normal is a relative term and is most likely an unknown in this equation. So, we’ll equate normalcy with common perception given our socio-cultural metanarrative on what we should assume an upstanding well-to-do man to behave like.

CS has been berated, less for his lifestyle choices and general position in life than for his language and attitude of superiority. Surely, knowing what we know about CS up until this point in time, should you poll all Americans on if they would trade places with CS today, at least 80% would (and I consider that a low figure).

The man has fame, wealth, family, lives a rock star lifestyle, has an open relationship with two women (“the goddesses”…who also allow him to have orgies with porn stars), and just got fired from a job that is required to continue payment to him of millions of dollars. The man has tiger blood coursing through his veins. He is a miracle of science. He is right. That is winning. The media and the court of public opinion seem to disagree, but I don’t know that they should.

What his critics contend is that CS has lost sight the fact that it was not his reckless and deviant behavior that achieved his present lifestyle for him. The monster & drug that is CS is not perceived by the public as either virtuous or meriting his extravagant behaviors and attitude. In fact, common knowledge would indicate that it was the meticulous balance of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by his father that secured him the opportunity to embrace the monster’s ball that he calls life. The monster unchecked is a dangerous thing. No one can go all “monster”, all the time.

Nobody likes the monster to walk amongst us unabated, and even fewer condone his/her selfish indulgences in theory. No one wants to acknowledge its existence though we all have intimate knowledge of its whereabouts and how it moves through life. His (what the astrologer would call) “off the record” behaviors have become the CS narrative in its entirety. I personally think that it’s all a well choreographed act. Nobody during the course of one conversation drops that many priceless quotable statements. Dave Chapelle couldn't make up such an outrageous persona (Wayne Brady was good...but come on). No matter what, the material that he’s producing is of the highest quality. Either we are watching the epic self-destruction a solipsistic hedonist or maybe as CS says we should just, “sit back & enjoy the show.”

Welcome home Prodigy. I hope that you get a chance to check out the drug that is CS. No matter how you slice it, he’s winning. As Prodigy could tell you better than anyone else, life is a game. It is, “survival of the fittest, only the strong survive”...and all CS more than surviving, he's winning.

Enter: Alistair Cookie

As a youth, I was a big fan of Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. Of course I was. When I was around ten years old it was normal for kids my age to watch and enjoy those shows. Naturally, kids would be drawn to different characters and we would argue over our personal favorites. But I had a particular interest in the monsters that were featured on these shows. I enjoyed that the characters who were monsters had a tendency to “go monster” from time to time. The same case could be made for the characters that were animals (think “Animal” from the Muppet Show), aliens, and weirdos.

I think that what caught my attention and imagination most was that being a monster as performed on the shows meant being deviant or “bad” sometimes (and not necessarily at other times). Sometimes being a monster translated into being uncivilized or giving into “primal” or base urges. Such behaviors weren’t condemned but they did serve the purpose of reminding the other characters and viewers that they were monsters (and that’s what monsters do). There was a certain element of chaos and recklessness that for instance, Cookie Monster, could deliver but other intriguing characters like Ernie or Fozzy Bear could not.

My absolute favorite skit was the “Monsterpiece Theatre” bit from Sesame Street. The Muppet Show may have offered more nuanced themes and matured humor, but for some reason the “Monsterpiece” sketch resonated with me the most. For those unfamiliar or in need of being refreshed, Monsterpiece Theatre was a parody of the popular 70’s – 80’s program “Masterpiece Theatre”. The PBS show was well noted for its refined English host (Alistair Cooke) would introduce segments of an ongoing miniseries filled with drama and mystery. On Monsterpiece Theatre, Cookie Monster played a monster playing the part of a refined host (Alistair Cookie) of a television show, but prone to outbursts and erratic behaviors.

So, I would just fall out every time I caught the show. Here’s this monster in a silk robe and ascot, seated in a high-back chair, and smoking a pipe while talking broken English, slowly. I loved every minute of it. In fact, I probably love it even more now. In a certain light I relate to that character. Yeah, I said it. I relate to an imaginary, puppet-monster character mocking the performance of an aristocratic English gentleman. How is that so different from what I do now? I’m an invisible man who code-switches so as to not only be acknowledged, but embraced by a community that thrives on its ability to keep others like me (and sometimes me specifically) invisible...or at very least, a puppet. In some ways, the monster in gentleman’s clothing is how I see myself. To take the relation a step farther, the opposite is probably equally as true, I can also be a gentleman in monster’s clothing. That is surely an entirely separate entry however (tie a knot around that point and we’ll come back to it at a later date).

Since I was a youth I would watch personalities like Alistair Cooke (not Cookie), teachers, politicians, etc., and be amazed at how well they performed their identities. I would wonder if one could always stay in the moral, upright, dignified character. I would wonder who they were when they were “off the record”. I couldn’t believe that Alistair Cooke could be the Masterpiece Theatre guy at home and behind closed doors. What a bore he and others with similar performances must be if those characters were their totality (kill yourself Alistair Cooke...not "Cookie").

I am Alistair Cookie. I live in a small library and smoke a pipe. I am a cookie-eating monster posing as a refined gentleman with an innocent milk mustache. I am a man predisposed to erratic, monster-like behaviors. I am sure that the ‘Masterpiece’ host was too. It’s just that at some point I decided to own up to the fuzzy, wide-eyed monster hiding under the silky robe. 2011 is the year of the monster within. Reporting live from inside a couple single malt highballs, somewhere deep in a thick fog of pipe smoke, planning your untimely demise.

The Problems With Birthday Sex

Conventional thinking would have it that birthday sex is a cause for celebration.  After all, what’s more individually satisfying than sex, and more self aggrandizing and gratifying than one’s birthday?  The mere thought of combining the two should naturally conjure thoughts of fireworks and reckless breakdancing fits.  As far as that last thought is concerned, maybe it’s just me who gets excited and explodes in to dance moves like: the robot, the schoolcraft, & the cabbage patch (I can’t breakdance, but if I could it would be the ultimate expression of joy).   As a footnote, I have to include that when dancing is inappropriate or space is constrained, I simply Earl Flynn to myself (some of these are regional dances, but visual reenactments may be found via You Tube. Try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5hRRr7JWQ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvzqbnT4Vk ).

But I digress, getting back on topic, culturally, we celebrate the idea of sex on our birthday.  One’s birthday is a special occasion for a myriad of reasons.  Not only is it an occasion where the individual celebrating the birthday is allowed excessive gluttony and self-serving behavior but others are expected to both cater to and encourage it.  One’s birthday is also a rarity, occurring annually with no exceptions, so it holds a treasured status.  Combine this understanding of accepted birthday behavior with the very concept of sexual intercourse and all sorts of deviance and indulgences (if not prohibited, then simply unpracticed) are added to the field of play. 

Popular music even has a song celebrating such an occasion entitled, “Birthday Sex”, by Jeremih.   The title of the song, like the physical performance, purposely lacks poetry.  It’s egregious in its sense of purpose and general approach towards its craft.  The chorus of the song simply repeats, “birth-day-sex, birth-day-sex, birth-day-sex.”  It is melodic though painfully simple and uncreative.  It drones on at an obnoxious pace forcing its way into consciousness.  Yet again, I digress.

Sex on one’s birthday is an expectation that grows with age.  In one’s youth, sex is far more common and yet, still very new and exciting on a consistent basis.  However, as the brutal harshness and redundancy of everyday life begins to take its toll, one’s birthday in and of itself becomes a refuge.  And on this day of the year when selfishness is virtue, those drunk on the wine of immodesty want the ultimate power, sex.  Yes, sex gives the power to an individual to completely dominate (or allow one’s self to be dominated by) another, physically and/or emotionally.  Without it being explicitly stated, our cultural understanding is that birthday sex should be easily the ultimate sexual experience.  It’s a once-a-year 24-hour free sex pass.

So, what’s wrong with engaging in birthday sex?  What evil lies in engaging your most erotic sexual whims if only once a calendar year?  And should we not find any moral/ethical grounds for choosing an anti-birthday sex stance, where did I develop such an unpopular political leaning?

Well, it should not come as a great surprise that the concept of birthday sex is anathema to me by virtue of its own narcissism.  It is often assumed that such narcissism is normative and all individuals expect the privilege of birthday sex, which is somehow owed through birthright.  In fact, such selfishness is so normative that the very concept of birthday sex becomes cliché through the perspective of age.  It loses its creativity, vigor, and edge in becoming formulaic over the years.  Furthermore, the power dynamic can be contrived and cumbersome.   Finally, the pageantry of birthday sex takes from the sexual performance one of its major positive characteristics, spontaneity ¾or more specifically, the perceived value of being an organic object of affection.

To narrow the scope, I can speak for the married man and long-term boyfriend by acknowledging that the requirement of sex can make it a chore.  Maybe it is more true for women in these situations.  The birthday becomes a physical and emotional obligation.  Sometimes the obligation requires one to perform special sex acts and other times to be bothered to care in some capacity one way or another.  It’s assumed that two people in a relationship want to have wild, deviant, uninhibited, sex.

My conclusion is that birthday sex is a cultural artifact that tends to go overlooked or at least it travels below the radar of common discourse.  Though it may be of tremendous benefit if only as a last rights to sexual intercourse for some monogamous parties, it is largely a single person’s game.  Those who can most appreciate birthday sex in our culture are those who are single or in a short-term relationship.  For them, sex often retains a premium value.  In fact, birthday sex is little more than another excuse to have sex.  The fact that this occasion is due to a birthday establishes that the sex must be special and particularly pleasing to the sexual honoree. 

This typically is not the case for the married and those in long standing partnerships.  The power dynamic of sex between partners shifts and changes in many ways over time.  Birthday sex still has meaning, but what that meaning is will vary from year to year.  History has a way of shaping power relationships, and therefore sex, over time changing perception, passion, and overall drive. 

This all brings me back to my point and the genesis of this article.  Last week I was confronted with the ultimatum that is birthday sex and felt the need to balk on the request.  Instantly I was faced with what felt like the rejection of someone else’s natural rights.  But then came the perplexing question of how the violation of someone else’s natural rights could be dependent on my inaction.  The answer was easy, because birthday sex is not a natural right, it’s a cultural practice (& a foolish one at that).  Why should one wait until their birthday to fulfill their sexual desires and engage their sexual imagination?  What exactly is the purpose of making an event out of sex and inhibition when it is so readily available to us? It's a game of power and the illusion of compliance. That is the problem of birthday sex. I, for one, want no parts of it.

The Anticipated Loneliness of the Strip Club

Something about most strip clubs these days bothers me. And no, it isn’t the objectification of the dancers, or the way they prance and grind and pop and swing for dollar bills. I love that shit. That shit is the whole reason that I go to the strip club in the first place. It’s the owners, the designers, the architects of the strip club that usually get it all wrong. And I know what you’re thinking, The premise is simple – men pay to enter, women dance on stage and then come out and try to separate as much money from the men as possible.’ But there’s so much more to it, at least for me. If I could design my own strip club, here are some of the things I would feature:

The Entrance: First off, you have to get the entrance right. It can’t look like you are entering the backalley entrance of some all-night crap-game. No steel doors please. What we need is an entrance, non-descript, but something with a decent lobby to appropriately transition you to the world you are about to enter.

The Lighting: Next, you have to get the lighting right. The worse thing about the strip clubs that I’ve been in (and to be honest, I haven’t been in that many) is that they don’t use the lighting to their advantage to set the mood and tempo of the place. Personally, I feel like the house lights should rise and fall when a new dancer comes out on stage, like the way it does when one goes to the opera, or to see a live play. You have to recognize each woman’s performance as a performance, a three-act play with an opening, climax, and conclusion. As the woman is finishing her dance, the lights would go up (as if to say this act is over) and they would stay up until another dancer is ready to come on stage. So much of sex and sexuality is about picking up on non-verbal cues, about knowing how to read the signals, the signs. Varying the lights would compel the patrons to pay attention even on a subconscious level, and that would help alleviate the biggest downfall of the strip-club (see below).

The Tempo: One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen strip clubs make is not allowing some time to pass between dancers. There have been times when I wanted to go to some owners and tell them: “You know, even a teenagers dick needs to go soft every once in a while”. For god’s sake people, give us five minutes between sets. Let us mill around some, go to the bathroom, get up and get a drink without feeling like we’re going to be missing something. In other words, let the iron cool for a minute before you heat it back up again. I know it seems like a simple concept, but if this doesn’t happen, I think you very likely increase the chance the biggest downfall of the strip-club happening.

The Anticipation: I know I’m going to get a lot of disagreement on this one, but I personally think the strip-club experience would be greatly enhanced if all the dancers didn’t take off ALL their clothes ALL of the time. I think dancers should be prepared to take it all off, but should reserve the right (as part of their professional judgment) to leave the g-string on if they so desire. Frankly, if they feel aren’t getting the enthusiasm (or the tips) they deserve, they should be able to leave it on. Tell the truth, wouldn’t you be more likely to throw dollars at the stage if you though that by doing so you could make something happen?

The Other People: Perhaps Jean Paul Sartre really knew what he was talking about when he said ‘hell is other people’. It certainly is in the strip club. In my perfect world, strip clubs are designed more like opera houses, with a woman on stage below, surrounded on all sides and above by box seats (I know this presents an obstacle to the whole ‘throwing dollars on stage’ thing but we’re really moving away from paper currency anyway). That way, while sitting in my box seat, sending dollars to her via credit card (with her running total of donations flashed on a sign above her head) I could maintain the illusion that I am alone there, in the strip club, with only my melancholy, and a lone dancer taking off (or perhaps NOT taking off) her clothes to comfort me. I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but the times of my strongest desire to go to the strip club are when I feel the most lonely and detached from the world, and when I am feeling that way, I want to seek out other people who are lonely and detached. And what is the description of a dancer at a strip club if not that? Who are they if not those who have to pretend to pretend to pretend? The truth of the matter is, I don’t go to the strip club to see the dancers, or touch them, or talk to them, I go to the strip club because they are times in my life (hours, days, weeks) when I feel like I am them – just a person going through a series of motions to get paid. And at those times, they are the only people I feel can understand what I’m going through.

The Biggest Downfall of the Strip Club: Boredom, plain and simple. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than that moment of recognition in the club when one asks oneself: “What the hell am I doing here? Isn’t Sportscenter on right now?” And boredom is exactly what happens when one stops being engaged, I dare say, when one stops being surprised by what happens at the strip club. At that to me is the fundamental irony of the strip club. We all know, as humans, that what we crave most is occasional variation, particularly in the realms of sex and sexuality. But most strip clubs these days are an exercise in soul-crushing monotony. Which is funny, because the very thing that most women think men go there to get, something ‘new’, is the very thing that most strip clubs don’t offer.

Introducing a Special Guest, Deprived Single Mama

Deprived Single Mama wants to know: Why is so hard to get a hard dick for the holidays? Why do men complicate the process of getting pussy so much? DSM says: We have it, they want it, what's the problem? Sadly, The Family has no answers for these eternal questions... we can only share with you our hard fought, hard won knowledge -- wait, the Melancholy Thug is reminding me that the game is to be sold, not told...

Miss Otis Regrets

The Family apologizes for being away for so long. Some things came up that required a serious redeployment of emotional, mental, and financial resources. Once again, The Family regrets this lapse in diligence. Hopefully it won’t happen again, but let’s be honest. Knowing the Family’s family, anything is possible.

the Interlude

And he said: I don't want to sound old fashioned, but if I take you home, will you still respect me in the morning?

And she said: I won't respect you any less than I do right now.

And he said: I can live with that.