November 2005 Archives

"His hair is like inverse Sontag."

NOW v. Schiedler hits the S-court while O'Connor still presides.

"At issue," says the Feminist Majority brief, "is a nationwide injunction prohibiting PLAN and Operation Rescue from conducting blockades, trespassing, damaging property, or committing acts of violence directed at abortion clinics. The injunction has not affected peaceful protests." --Essentially, whether women and clinics can be protected from far-right pro-life groups that would circumvent a woman's legal right to abortion--and obstruct her ability to obtain it-- via threats, intimidation, and violence. Factor in related bombings, murders, and attempted murders, and fundamentally, it becomes a value judgment in human terms--potentially assigning a measure of import to the lives of women and doctors, whether our rights are worth protecting...whether *we* are worth protecting, based on our choices. (We may have the right, but does the gov't have our backs if we exercise it?)

"Women's access to reproductive health care is at great risk," said Gandy. "Time and again, our fate is put in the hands of nine justices. With three critical cases set for hearing, the power and consequence of who sits on the Supreme Court will be demonstrated mightily on Wednesday."

Admittedly, I am a little afraid of the plane ride, though international flights always show the best movies, in more languages than one. Mid-air, though, what can you do about flight anxiety, except grip the tray table at the moment of turbulence, try to pre-cog the scenario, so if/when the pilot finally announces over the intercom "we're going down, we're going down," you've already experienced it in you mind. (it's all about control. my control.)

I'm not afraid enough to sweat, though. With these kinds of personal-apocalypse scenarios, I aim for objectivity--calmly divining the issue at hand with enough distance to slightly chill--just gotta see it through seven-or-eight hours. Read the paper. (INternational Herald Tribune.) Absorb a couple records. (Rollin in the Ruins, Get Hustle; Ma'at Mama, Ursula Rucker [song 14 "poon tang clan"!].) Finish a book. (Our Time, Susan Brownmiller.) Also, on a recent long plane ride, a close friend of mine met, and eventually frenched, a newly divorced 42-year-old oil magnate from Texas who began romancing her the second she chided him for harbinging evil and, quote, "driving an Audi," end-quote. Nora Ephron, are you listening? Instead of imagining the plane drilling deep into the Atlantic Ocean in a blaze and whir, I will rest my head on the acrylic pillow, watch Le Double Vie de Veronique on the passenger tele, and dream of serendipitous mid-flight love-encounters.

The last time I visited Paris, serendipity reigned.

It's Bastille Day, 2003. Jessica and I are re-routed from Berlin into Paris en route to Barcelona because Love Parade has just ended and a million neon-chaps-donning ravers have to Eurail their ecstatic asses out of Germany, stat. Rerouted into Paris on fucking Bastille Day! we exclaim, like 87 times, in English, to the German ticket agent. Ha! Ha! What luck!
We share a traincar with two Austrian 18-year-olds who have not washed the sweat of trance in three full days. One seat is empty. Just before departure, in walks a tall, dashing fellow with a fancy pointy haircut, who is wearing a black sweatshirt with asymmetrical designs on it. Our initial exchange is as follows:

Dashing Fellow: "Are you American? You look familiar."

Me: "Yes, I'm from Portland."

Dashing Fellow: "Did you go see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs play in Portland last year?"

Me: "Yes, I did."

DF: "My name is Patrick. I am the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' documentarian. I recognize your face, from editing hours and hours and hours of footage of you, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, dancing vigorously in the front row of that show."

So began France: a chance encounter with a stranger we should have already known. The train ran all night. I spent most of it laid up, motion-sick, back in the traincar. Jessica and Patrick gabbed in the hall, compared notes on all the American friends we had in common, and chainsmoked (fumee) "Phillip Morris" cigarettes and/or the last of the Gauloises Blondes, while I chugged Mineralwasser and tried not to barf.

(I was successful in not-barfing.)

IN Paris, Patrick let us crash at his flat for three hours, before we snuck out to explore; The Eiffel Tour was the only place open nearby, it being "fucking" Bastille Day and all, so we ate oranges in the gutter, found a tourist enclave where I procured the French version of Dramamine for six Euro (then, eight dollars, now something more like twelve**), hit an internet cafe, and became Friendsters with Patrick's Friendsters***, both real and fake. Took to our sleeping car in the new train six hours later, woke up to the sun making the Andorras gleam like copper.

What I'm saying is, photos of Paris "today" (and hopefully mp3s) to follow.

**addendum: a paranoic's exchange rate, maybe something more like... eight [$1 = .84 Euro]

***(That was the summer Friendster jumped off; with new-addicts' saliva, we spent roughly 1/5 of our vacation in internet cafes updating our fake Friendster profiles with epic Euro missives. My Friendster persona met so many low-rider-bike-riding Barcelonan honeys--honeys who liked dancing, honeys who liked bass--that she temporarily forgot her angelic husband, Chad Todd Wiltermann...

Chad, at that point, had already been jailed for engaging in premarital intercourse with my Friendster persona--imprisoned thanks to her hyper-litigious Evangelical Christian parents--but he had not yet been stabbed in the kidney with a shank over a pack of Camel Wides.)

Hearth, harvest and photoshop... Mo made this while the tofurky baked:

We hardly left the kitchen, parsed/(then dismissed) bourgie-ass Maureen Dowd as we julienned carrots and boiled turnips. She cut-and-pasted autumn leaves, I busted out with a pie. Trad Southern sweet potato. The candy root. Delicious, hearty, simple. I think you should make it, too, so I am giving you my version of the recipe. Personally, I feel compelled to bake at least 57 3/4 more of them before sweet potato season is through.

* 1 sweet potato, size L or XL
* 1/2 cup softened butter (unsalted; sweet cream)
* 1/2 cup raw sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar (do not pack)
* 1/2 cup plain low-fat soy milk
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Boil sweet potato for 40 to 50 minutes. When it is soft, run a stream of cold water over it and slough off its skin. Break apart in a large bowl, then add butter. Mix well with a mixer. Stir in remaining ingredients in the following order: sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla. Beat on medium speed until it is smooth, then pour it into a 9-inch pie crust (recipe below). Bake that shit at 350 F for like an hour, or until you stick a knife in the center and it emerges unsullied.

CRUST
1 1/2 graham cracker crumbs
1/4 c. raw sugar
1/2 cup melted butter

Mix crumbs and sugar together; stir in melted butter. Line pie plate with mixture, pressing firmly into place. Chill for approx. 20 minutes before spooning in that sweet potato concoction.

NOTE ON VEGANIZATION:
To veganize and disensugar this pie, sub in 1/3 c. stevia herb for both sugars (as a rule 1/3 c. stevia = 1 c. sugar), marg for butter, 1 slightly overripe mashed banana for both eggs or if you don't want it to taste banana-y try one of these.

Use soy milk even if you are not vegan or veg, it makes the pie fluffier.

Finally, with a moment to look around, I found Chez Shepjournalism had entered crisis mode. My bed, on rollers, has somehow migrated to the middle of my room/office. Generally tidy, nigh every spot of it cluttered now. Six days ago's Times, six months ago's XXL, six years ago's New Yorker, last month's Elle GIRL. Pajamas, pumps, sneakers. I have taken leave only to read the paper and Your Blog. Nov. 22 came and went with nary a whistle. I have barely had time to mind my self-care. I have performed the routine: showering and exercising and changing my clothes, pounding lemon-cayenne tea, popping Advil, spooning a dollop of yogurt into a cup now and again and then trudging back to the desk.

I did make time for a maintenance-pluck of the brows, so there is that.

Those are the human things. Atop the desk, two machines. The computer. The elaborate and flawed recording device that allows me to hook up the walkman to the cell phone. In case someone phones who I have to record. It's happened. Two days ago I got a call that could be considered "a break in the case"; loitering Union Square and dizzied by sleuth's adrenalin, I practically stole the megaphone from that one protester dude who hangs out in Union Square, you knw the one with the cowboy hat and cape, just to broadcast the joy.

Jessica and I have labored on this story so intensely and for so long, she felt compelled to analogize our co-reportage to the sweat of a red hot chili pepper.

seeing this through to finish: not unlike anthony kiedis' naked chest. hello, world. it's me shep. back in the flesh. as Brendan would say, RIPPERSVILLE.

Thanks to Mo for loaning me her space bar, eight hours before a major deadline. Journalism journalism.

space/bar/busted/12/hours/before/major/deadline/experimental/j'urinalism

space.bar.busted.12.hours.before.major.deadline:.experimental.jnrlsm

space
bar
busted

12
hours
before
major
deadline:

experimental
journalism

Also, FYI< cute band alert: Sonic Youth Lee Ranaldo interview up at Pitchfork. no kim gordon so no talk about free kitten = best band of the '90s or mariah carey's mariah careydom, but lee is cool, articulate (prepared) and "diversified" artistically.

tomorrow:
yayo.clubexit.nyc

also: a beleagured titan

AND I love Jona because he is the type of person who, for his birthday, curates a show of his friends' art.

also also: if you are in Paris, France, EU from 1 decembre-9 decembre, so am i. my days are already booked (i.e.: whisking my windswept whiskedness around cobblestone streets, procuring camembert and baguette with marisa, being gorgeous, "otherstuff,"being stalked by my rich 45 year old francophile ex-boyfriend/future husband (YES, ThAT IS A SATC REFERENCE--AND I WATCH OPRAH TOO).

at night i become a belle du discotheque, though, and we would love to kick it. holler, we can talk polygamy and postmodernismes, sarkozy et de beauvoir--everything i do already, but en francais.

i hope you are keeping up on the high drama that is the riff raff juelz santana comment box. right now someone posting as "tony yayo's waif" (tonys_girl@gunit.gov) is having a "commentfite" with a juelz fan and an LI area code. it's going deep, with phone numbers strewn about.

My interview w/Pharrell is in the new Spin (dec. 2005, the one w/fallout boy on the cover.) Edited a bit for space; here's a preview directly from the transcripts:

JS: What about your unconventional ass metaphors? Like “your ass is a spaceship I wanna ride,” and in the single “Angel,” you sing “your ass is like a loaf of bread I want to slice.” Do you have any other next-level ass sexaphors you’re holding back?

PW: Wow, that’s a great title, next-level ass sexaphors. Well, let me be clear. When I said, “your ass is a spaceship I wanna ride,” right?

JS: Right.

PW: I was just trying to be cool. And in this particular record I said your ass is like a loaf of bread I wanna slice, it’s like yeah, she’s got a fat ass right? But there’s so much more if you cut into it—and not into her ass, but when you cut into the actual, what it represents.

HERE ARE THE BEST PARTS OF THE INTERVIEW (that were on the record) THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE FINAL PIECE>

JS: There are rumors you are getting married to a supermodel named Vashty. Are you?
PW: No. I’m a private dude with the girl I love. I’m private. I’m just a regular dude.

JS: Are you the regular dude that’s going to give us the Clipse’s next official album one day?
PW: Yeah, absolutely. I wish it was something that I could talk about but it’s not me, believe it. They’re in a contract that they don’t necessarily want to be in. I wish there was something I could do about it but unfortunately I can’t. All I can do is wait.

JS: How often does Skateboard P skate?
PW: Last time I skated, I got a ramp at my house in Virginia and Terry that’s on my skate team. My homeboy Terry Kennedy is the lead guy on the skate team and his boy Black Mike skated as well and he was killed when they went back to the Westside or whatever. He’s a good kid, rest in peace. But terry, but Jimmy, jimmy’s from philly, there’s my brother kato, Kevin and there’s little Jacob he’s like 15 years old. I still skate when I get a chance, but I haven’t had a chance to. I’ve been in the studio, in the studio, in the studio. I haven’t been able to do shit, but I can’t complain cause I got some monstrous shit about to hit the block. Monstrous. Not just my record, I got a bunch a shit.

JS: What is that shit, besides dropping more ice creams?
PW: Which by the way, I feel so blessed. I have to say that. You always have to take a thank you commercial break. It’s absolutely necessary.

JS: I got you.
[silence]

JS: So are we pausing with a moment of silence for the commercial?

PW: [hahahah] No, not necessarily. I gotta say. That new Twista record is something serious. Um. Why am I drawing a blank? I can only say the word Jennifer. I can’t answer any more questions beyond that. I can’t say too much more beyond that.

JS: Uh…
PW: But wait til you hear this shit. Whoa. We going back in with Snoop, we goin’ back in with Slim. I got a bunch of stuff comin’ in. I can’t think all the way through.

JS: If you could be doing anything else, what would you be doing?
PW: I’d probably be an art teacher or something.

JS: Art or art history?
PW: History? I love history itself.

JS: Really? What’s your favorite part of history?
PW: Egyptology.

JS: Yeah?
PW: Yeah, I love that shit. Forget about it.

JS: You mean Egyptian mythology.
PW: Yeah, like Osiris, the Sun God Ra.

JS: I got the udjat tattoo’d on me. The eye of Horus.
PW: Yeah? Really?

JS: Yeah.. Egyptian mythology is my shit, too. What do you like about it?
PW: I’m fascinated by it, it’s like the cornerstone for the Masonic practices. All that stuff fascinates me because it’s instilled deeply into our government and our culture. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but there’s a lot of history there with Masonry and that kind of stuff. I just like to study different things. I might be getting a little too deep into some of the shit that I’m reading it into but I like a lot of that stuff. Like the Da Vinci Code is a great book. I like that kind of stuff. The history of the sciences, the people who put our country together and the doctrines and the basis and the premise and their vision and the oaths they take, the secret societies, I’ve always been fascinated by that stuff. But I’m an A&E, Discovery Channel, History Channel mobster. If I’m not watching like, the animals and shit, if I’m not watching baboons fighting and shit, chimpanzee behavior in comparison to humans, I love a lot of those discovery shows and history shows and ancient mysteries of the bible. And when I’m not watching that? It’s definitely SpongeBob, South Park, you know what I’m saying? With a fresh bowl of Cinnamon Toast or FruitLoops or some shit.

JS: Other than dropping the heaviest shit on the world, how do you think people will respond to your solo record?
PW: These are my words. Take them and let them do what they’re gonna do to you. My album was meant to evoke conversation and debate. And to definitely shine out the human light. All the readers of the lyrics and the listeners and all the people that just feel music within, it’s meant to promote individuality, you can do whatever you wanna do. It’s not impossible.

Subject: Dear Constituent, In response to your email letter
From: CongressmanMajor.Owens@mail.house.gov

For Other Issues contact Brooklyn, NY District office at 718-773-3100

The 5 train at Atlantic-Pacific departs in a slow whine of two notes. They are the exact tones that begin "Somewhere" from West Side Story, the verse that is.

A. Juelz Santana is the same height as Riff Raff A2. My Juelz Santana promo whistle is the second most literal promotional item I've ever received. The first most literal was a packet of incense, promoting Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek's REflection Eternal. A3. Juelz did "Oh Boy," "Hey Ma," (two verses, two minutes) "There it Go" et "Mr. Postman"--my position in relation to the PA made it sound like he was rapping through a kleenex--I do remember thinking on the first few bars (bars? phrases? morsels?) of "Oh Boy" that his syllables, many of them mono, were dropping with mealy thud, like cap'n crunch right after it hits the soy milk if you know what i'm saying. this coulda been a side effect of the kleenex. I was also paying a modicum of attention to subA1. The genius "NOV. 22" shirt, subA2. his soft, dewy complexion. Juelz Santana will definitely ride the charisma train thru his 20s, but he knows that moisturizing now will keep him looking young well into his golden years.

subA3. Perhaps my affinity for a well-moisturized fellow is the reason my friend The Birthday Man (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BIRTHDAY MAN) believes I am, quote, "The only person on earth who likes 'Fuck Bitches.'" ITEM: QB DUN PRODIGY, FKA "GULLY," SPOTTED AT KIEHL'S WITH LINDSAY LOHAN "LOHANATING"; "ERYKAH BADU" COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT

Is 50 Cent is the "Erykah Badu" (as opposed to the actual Erykah Badu) of Mobb Deep?

And aesthetically, yeah, "Fuck Bitches", it's no wrenching epic tale of the gangsta-mayoral campaign/dealin' on the youfs/wrecking, but it's like 45 seconds long; it's not like Prodigy wrote a magnum opus about his transition from chucking bricks to knitting needles. (New Prodigy-hosted Whoo Kid tape, The Apprentice: From Gangsta Party to Baby Shower, coming soon to a bodega near you.) It is moving, the line when dude's like, "I want a million-dollar bitch that's still hood/if I can't have that I'll take a regular bitch that look good", (para), sad tinge characteristic of the PRodigy growl, he'll take what he can get. Sure, it's not as good as "Hey Love" (which is basically understood, by both critics and "the streets," to be Mobb Deep's best song!!!), it's not as eloquent as that, but it's got certain fawnlike qualities; I appreciate the unfamiliarity, the awkwardness of it, the honest longing couched behind its blunt language/ blunt desire.

“Fuck Bitches” and he doesn't mean it; I mean, shit. The tragedy. (Not the thug matrix.)

The ghost/seance photo exhibit at the Met is how you say "fascinating" and "whimsical," watching people at photography's birth create and conjure explanation for that which they cannot explain. If you want to make fake seance/ghost photos, email at right (though i wish it were left).

Seven hours in crotchless pants with an AK and an audience: arduous, but hardly far-fetched. She is a woman who once displayed herself for 12 days--starving, showering, peeing, sleeping--in bare suffering nakedness, the opposable thumb of the mise en scene. Marina Abramovic, performance artist, is covering famous works in a weeklong series at the Guggenheim, all of them physically exhausting at best; in a series dedicated to her friend Susan Sontag, she is quite explicitly regarding the pain of others. Last night she performed Seed Bed, the definitive wk from my top-three fave artist/architect Vito Acconci: Marina masturbated underneath a platform for seven hours while responding, via mic, to the audience above her. I missed it, but dirty talk, apparently, ensued--and intimacy was pondered. My roommate got busted by a security dude with a walkie-talkie because she was jumping up and down on the floorboards. QUESTION: Is the Guggenheim the appropriate venue for this? Isn't time-based art kind of about interaction, quantum physics, increasing the possibilities for (and paths to) truth by altering the moment? Why is the Guggenheim so austere an environment that a lumbering authoritarian yells at my roommate for interacting with the interactive art? I mean, come on!

Tonight, Marina did Valie Export's 1969 piece Action Pants: Genital Panic revamped: originally, Valie had projected pornographic images on a wall for ten minutes, then walked around the audience fully clothed but for a giant swathe of crotch cut from her pants, vagina on display. Says Export in the programme: "What you see now is reality, and it is not on the screen, and everybody sees you watching this now... Taken out of the film context, this was a totally different way for [the audience] to connect with a particular erotic symbol."

But Marina's version was pedestalized and spot-lit; no conversation, no projected images of naked ladies. Only her, sitting and shifting on a round, elevated platform, wearing a leather jacket, boots and the crotchless pants, naked below them, unshorn, wielding a real live machine gun, observing the audience looking, or not looking, or trying to decide whether to look at her pussy. When the porn star watches you, you must decide what you think right then, you must to deal with your relationship to her as woman, as art, as artist. I kept thinking she hasn't peed in five hours, but her whole shit is some variation on physical suffering, on proving she would die or kill for her work, taking her faith in art to task through corporeal endangerment (Research: Is she Catholic?). She is a self-appointed (and self-compelled) soldier of expression. And we wanted to know what she was thinking.

Marina stared from the platform into a gawky, angelic, triangle-faced woman, and tears streamed down her face. Dribbled on the gun. The whole debate 'round performance art's manipulation factor is pretty much bullshit when the "art" cries at you, cries first. Empathy trumped suspicion; the cynic groused, she's good, oh she's real good.

Some asshole yelled from above, from the second or the third floor, "What are you afraid of?" (What are you afraid of? Violence, sexual violence, the sexualization of violence, the security guard with the walkie talkie? Wasting time, wasting skills, wasting brain cells, forgetting to remove the tea kettle from the flame? Whether Marina snaps, cocks the gun, and wails, couching bullets and shrapnel in your flesh? Blowing up a balloon, it bursts, whips across your eye, slices open your retina? I can think of some things.)

This, on her fifth hour of sitting, genitals exposed, gripping the gun, looking into the new faces in the museum. You feel awkward even shifting your weight. Maybe she figured she didn't need the porn.

Amanda P, writer of books and nominee on the 2005 ILM "Ladies of Pitchfork: Hot or Not?" thread (live podcast coming '06), says:

"I've totally seen that dude with the iguana -- he walks [around our neighborhood] with it draped around his neck, like some kind of wicked lizard scarf!"

What I meant with the iguanaing and the duping:
Dude lives in a building near mine, with a direct view into my bedroom and the kitchen, and peers out his window w/binoculars in order to spy on our household (a la FBI STAKE OUT). The dragonish iguana is always in the same spot under the lamp when iguana man is spying. The dragonish iguana is the size of a weinerdog, possibly even a greyhound or a boxer. I have considered spying back with my own set of binoculars, in order to better gauge the iguana's true size; however, I feel doing so would somehow cancel out iguana dude's violation of my privacy, an "eye for an eye" in a manner of ethical exchange, and "parity" is not something I'm looking for in this particular situation.

More importantly: The Last Abortion Clinic, a good collection of links, the real-time shutting-down of clinics, and why Alito's supporter-touted "state's rights" stance on Roe v Wade, were it true, wouldn't necessarily mean our right to choose is "safe" or "intact."

Also, the Times has had "Going to Portland, OR" as Number 5 most-emailed for like 392 web-years, but I would like to note its credibility is completely busted w/out having mentioned STUMPTOWN COFFEE FAIR TRADE 4 LIFE. Sure, you could argue that Stumptown's an obvious choice for a piece on PDX, but so is the Portland Art Museum. Stumptown Coffee is--like bike lanes, Forest Park and Sleater-Kinney--an integral part of Portland culture. It's kind of a travesty that the writer missed it.

Ritchey just offered Mike Merrill the equivalent of $500,000 to bring her a pound of Stumptown in Los Angeles: the shit is that awesome.

it's voting day, put it down.

as of late, 50 is the man who couldn't buy happiness: forever sullen, paranoid. vs. jay, jay owns the universe and is STOKED!

The peeping tom with the binoculars from across the courtyard is now duped thanks to drapes and a venetian blind in the kitchen. His giant iguana, about the size of a wiener dog, had peeped with him from underneath a heatlamp. The iguana is also duped.

i spent my sat nite texting w/sean fennessey--him, wifey, and boddingtons at the computer (dateline: Manhattan) vs. me, roommates, corona and diet cola at the kitchen table (dateline: BKLYN)--and all i got was this bright, gleaming bright blogspot. My outgoing messages say: "it's the hook! the hook is the prob" but i didn't mean it like that. the hook isn't the hearth for me, either--i meant it like this.
:
The hook, ever-imperative, is a grandstand, razzle dazzle to rabble the capital. You're right: invoking my hyperbolic license, I will say THE 50 CENT HOOK TRANSMOGRIFIED RAP INTO... ???? This was precogged by Nate DOGG, who developed an early prototype of THE G HOOK and deadened the new jacks to boot. (Tho context dictates whether I indulge THE HOOK before the MIC, what can I say, I'm a dancer: I aint hearda that, diamonds on my neck, bling blaow. A! Put the hook on loop, it's good for the choreography.) But I do believe those rap dudes kowtowing to THE HOOK are faintly hoping to glimpse the waistband--even just the waistband!--of 50 Cent's sextuple-platinum pantaloons. Or, shit, probably hoping for access to the Hot 97 breakroom onna off-peak hour, maybe score a coffee in a styrofoam cup.

THE 50 CENT HOOK, and the paper that trails it, is at this particular moment, the focal point of the artform (BY artform, I mean "capitalistic medium," not "Temple of HipHop"). Is it a HOOK vs. MIC situation? No, it is "Drake Coffee Kake" vs. "Tofurkey Holiday Dinner." It is "Frottage" vs. "Intercourse." It is, most accurately, "I play men" (Puff) vs. "I spray llamas" (Jay) or maybe that's a bad example. But you're right, S. Dot Fennessey, because you've got a fierce mind: the hook's the dinero. Also, I think the 50 hook contains all that nihilism uncut, but I will have to "go to the research" (Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, 2005)* or "go do [the] research" (Jay-Z, "Go Crazy (Remix)," 2005)* to further develop this theory/art project. Thank you.

*synergy

I bought the new G-UNIT mixtape yesterday, just for the Mobb Deep.

It's called "G-Unit Radio Part 15: Are You a Window Shopper?" On the cover is "Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson," iced and standing inside a car dealership, arms crossed and dangling the keys to a Ferrari from his pinkie: power's epitome. DOLLARES. Jada and Joe and Nas and Ja gaze at him through the window, all wearing the uniforms of various minimum-wage jobs (Burger King, UPS, Jiffy Lube and Jiffy Lube): wishing they could be 50. You know, when Kanye's like, give a dude respect for working hard at his minimum-wage job, I'm like, yes! That's real (even though my feelings on golddigger are: clever, irresistable, piggish. duh.) 50 is a monolith and, Queens roots be damned, might as well be Ronald Reagan by now. (Did somebody say "Thought Piece"?) I was talking to this guy on Friday, a manager of rappers and rockers, cordial fellow, cool and witty and not trying to get over. He asks, "You ever meet 50?" I go, "No," and he goes, "He's a genius and a megalomaniac. If he'd been born in a rich white suburb, kid would be president," and I'm like well, yeah. Yeah.
Basically, yeah.
In lieu of Camelot: sales figures. The octuple platinum paradigm.

But money is a boring muse. Endless sums of it kill the dream.
Evidence: G Unit Radio Part 15 Mixtape: Are You A Window Shopper? (Get Rich or Die Tryin' Starring Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson In Theatres November 9)

The song "I don't know officer," though: I am wowed despite myself. G-Unit plead the 5th, prove they are not snitchers in their grimiest voices, but it's their grimy voices that betray the truth. They know everything. 50 sounds like he's been awake for 5 days straight, stubble to match. Spyder Loc's computer reference: "I don't know why they told you that we sold stones/we on the internet, tryna get our email on." (vs. jadakiss: "my favorite crack spot/is protools on my laptop.")

Prodigy's "Fuck Bitches" has a slightly misleading title; he is actually just "trying to find the right one," and being vulnerable, as much as Prodigy can express vulnerability in RE: women. But because it is G-Unit, we can't stray too far from the paper: the track immediately following "Fuck Bitches," Young Buck's "Fuck Bitches Pt. 2," retorts, "I got no time to chase that bitch/I'm on my grind I'll flip them bricks." Buck mentions "bitches" exactly once thereafter (though he does offer to pimp out any young lady who may be unfortunate enough to cross his path). Unlike Prodigy, he is unconcerned with matters of the heart or libido. Instead, Buck details such experiences as: running up on the club, snatching chains, and making money. When he actually gets back around to talking about "bitches," the namesake, it's to ridicule a man who expresses his love (or whatever) for his woman by buying her accoutrements for her vehicle: "Your bitch rims bigger than yours, man! What kinda shit is that?! You's a sucka for love!" and so on. On the outro: "I still looking for a New York ho. Where she at?" My guess is that she heard "Fuck Bitches pt. 2"?

Two songs later, Olivia, the sole woman in G-Unit, is singing, offkey but convincing, "so sick and depressed that i gotta get upset/ for a guy 'round here to show me some respect."

THREE SONGS LATER, Lloyd Banks sings his hook from a woman's perspective: "Sometimes I feel ugly/cause i'm givin my all to a celebrity/ that doesn't even tell me he loves me/and I act like a clown/ when he's not around/ cause of him the other girls tease me/but we're more than lovers/i tell him that i'm not like the others/but nobody believes me/so I don't think he claims me/I thought I was his baby!" Ostensibly about Lloyd's girlfriend, but uh.. whose album is 50 releasing next, again?

DR JUNG, PLEASE HOLLER AT G UNIT HQ ASAP. The misery is palpable.

I am currently obsessed with Big Mike R&B Jumpoff #19. I love Ludacris' guest verses on R&B tracks: he keeps rapping 'em in the same rhythm pattern. I want to reclaim R&B as a refuge for hip-hop, rather than a vestige of it. And seriously, friends, that Jamie Foxx f. Ludacris track, it is hot. He sings, "Girl get comfortable/we bout to do something you never done before/baby not the usual/tonight we gettin' unpredictable." Jamie, with his slightly lurid pick-up-lines, adopts R. Kelly stance--did you hear the dark fantasy "Extravaganza"? Foxx is such an understudy for "Trapped in the Closet"; I mean, he rhymed "Embassy" with "Tennessee" and "Hennessey"! Jamie's leer-game is slightly more innocuous, though, 'cuz he asks: "Girl I know you're used to dinner and a movie/ why not be my dinner while making the movie?" P.S. that track is from Big Mike's R&B Jumpoff v. 19, which I now own (no thanks to Sean Fenness"SORRY, I ONLY LISTEN TO DJ SMALLZ R&B MIXTAPES"ey)

PPS> apparently the new jamie foxx has production by polow da don, who you BETTER remember from last year's "Fallen (Polow Da Don Mix)" by Mya (and the Missourian "powerballer" who shant be named). I am pumped.

In the Oct issue of Sister 2 Sister mag, in response to the question "How long have you been rapping," Lil Nikki answered, "As soon as I came out, the doctor slapped me and I said 'Yo!"

"i spit knives/ first aid gon hafta bandage ya crew": Lil Nikki, at age 14, bilingual, from Richmond VA (w/one or two disturbing and unsettling lines on "adult" themes). Now 17. Working on her metaphors, but yo, check out the flow. On scholastic par w/The Game, or rather, they both drop their rap history like baubles at the end of lines, only Game is... what, like 42 now? Plus a Trey Songz joint, plus Nikki co-rescued my ole pal Nicole Wray from Def Jam's never-gonna-be-released limbo-stasis file. (Cause Jay's running DJ like the Knicks-- sign 'em fresh & hella young; not perfect yet, but investments are gonna pay off down the line. Let your fanbase grow up with your artists. Meanwhile keep the oldsters on the starting line-up comfortable so their performances don't flag. Like yknow Ghostface. Nicole Wray? She's on those mixtapes like 'Poose. Thanks to Dipset for consistently employing my cause celebre.)

Parlez de: new ashanti + paul wall & method man "still on it" and Beyonce + slim thug "check on it," and "for the nite" by jamie foxx & ludacris listenable consecutively on the mixtape "Big Mike R&B Jumpoff #19": F-Dot as in fiyahahhhh. also, ne-yo is still my husband ("my husband" being a representative adjective defined as "the dude")

what's on jazzbo patel's desktop, on the 20-whatevereth floor of the viacom bldg: maceo mixtape, maceo mixtape, maceo mixtape, maceo mixtape, mike shinoda cd-r, maceo mixtape, maceo mixtape, empty bottle of horizon organic milk (may have been in trash).

what's on mine, on the third floor of my brooklyn walk-up (gowanus, put yr lighters up): a coffee mug embossed with the declarative statement "ETHAN LUND THINKS I AM AN ASSHOLE"
[possible topics of conversation: who is ethan lund? and why does he think I am an asshole?]