windy wwwwoo

FROM September 30, 2004

Autumn is the time when I have been in New York City the most, and so it is strange for a place I've barely lived for two months to not only smell familiar, but for its streets and shops to evoke memories of ye olde lovers und concubines -- with whom I've shared the city's brittle winds and the crush of concrete and Brooklyn's loping, particular fall gray. When hope alone was the horse we rode in on; that was a sweet taste.

Instead I will tell you about the road trip I took with Ezra, the crooked, funnily planned one from New Orleans to Las Vegas. While he gambled away Death Cab's show money until 6 am, I ingratiated myself to the feather bed in our room in Paris, France (Hotel), watching VH-1 extrapolate upon Joni Mitchell's great popularity as wartime escapism, on a 32-inch television incongruously set in a Louis XIV walnut hutch, with lavender-colored fleur de lis dancing all around the wallpaper. That was Spring. But the light got lower to the ground as we sped back through Louisiana's spooky marshes, to the ornate death-angels and XXXs of amateur voudoun-ists at Marie Lavelle's gravesite. We ate hot beignet and sludgy chicory and I accidentally drove the hot'n'sporty rental car onto 400-year-old cobblestone, nearly killing a white-haired crone/tarot-card reader in a purple velvet cloak, who righted her divinity table, then patiently directed us back to the road. It was the same gray then as Brooklyn in September, methinks.

Dear higher power of nature, please don't let New York or New Orleans fall into the ocean.

In far more-pertinent-to-you news: the new De La Soul video is up on Blastro. Song about gold-digging materialism I'm kinda eh on, but the The Grind Date is a good record -- better than any of the AOI stuff, thanks Beyonce's Dad -- and I'm surprised that's the single, because there are at least four or five tracks on there with better production. (Perhaps it's because in those tracks, they're mostly dissing undesignated mainstream rappers and defending hip-hop's old ways?)

Also thanks to Nick Catchdubs for not only recognizing the woman making these is my soul mate, but for emailing this link. Jadakiss' head really is that round.

Side Note: I am, however, disgusted and exhausted by videos where women gather 'round the rapper-owner dressed like Carrie Fisher in the Jabba-slave scene of Return of the Jedi, and psychically tethered to them in much the same way. Just because I don't say it every day, doesn't mean it's not a constant. Man-friends and righteous defenders of hip-hop: please take into consideration as you elevate its music and deploy its codes, that its ugliest side propels your sisters and moms into constant psychic suffering. (Tangentially related aside: the search string "Is Cam'ron Gay?" has now surpassed "poodles" for the amount of randomly googled hits this blog gets.) Everybody's always stepping on somebody.