thesleeplessmanlaments

"And then there's Leroy Smith. Now you guys think that's a myth. Leroy Smith was a guy when I got cut he made the team - on the Varsity team - and he's here tonight. He's still the same 6'7" guy - he's not any bigger - probably his game is about the same. But he started the whole process with me, because when he made the team and I didn't, I wanted to prove not just to Leroy Smith, not just to myself, but to the coach that picked Leroy over me, I wanted to make sure you understood - you made a mistake dude."

-michael jordan

can't sleep. need to. gotta drive tomorrow. but i think this is one of those times where the thing i need to do is being overshadowed. i have come to a realization this late at night/early in the morning: i need motivation of a certain very specific nature, and to be honest, it's kinda hard to talk about. which is why i've decided in my infinite wisdom to tell it to the drewniverse.

i must admit, i am not confident my writing is more as gooder than it used to was, so don't not make with that bad talking about it.

what motivates you? money? praise? the respect of your peers? maybe it's just the knowledge that you did whatever it is you set out to do. perhaps the promise of a better tomorrow fuels your drive. well, cousin, none of that pretty shit works for me. i tell myself i'm gonna earn a nice salary and nothing. just nothing. i don't care about money. i never believe people are being totally honest when i receive any sort of praise. and even if they are, praise makes me physically uncomfortable. and what in the blue hell is respect anyway? you can't rightly quantify it. there ain't a unit by which you can gauge the amount of respect you get. "hey Shiz, you wanna go out tonight?" "sorry Keef, i'm about 7 centarethas short on respect today. i gotta hit the gym and turn in early" is a conversation you've never heard. ever. and even if you think you got it, you can never be sure that it's genuine. i mean, what guarantee do you have that niggas have the same opinion of you when you're out of earshot? none. nada. sorry but your peers? they're the most likely to form negative opinions about you because they see you all the time. they know the crust of you. they see you at your worst in the most high stress situations of your respective lives. eff the respect you think you have. i've heard more foul shit about people from the ones who they see on an academic and professional level in the past year than i ever have. you know what i don't hear a ton of? respect. next please. and tomorrow isn't promised so that doesn't motivate me. trust me i've tried. i wake up on a daily basis with the promise that i'm going to better myself that day and go to bed every night vowing not to repeat the same mistakes the next day. guess what happens the next day. no, guess. if you said the same old bull, congratulations, you get a cookie. 

it's not even a cookie for real. the cookie is a lie.

so what motivates the masked warrior? i warn you, this is gonna sound really shitty. like really shitty. it may even cause your opinion of me to change, but dammit, i think i can handle the shift. if not i can always remove the mask and walk around in anonymity. my motivation is simple: spite. that's it, really. i don't want to be rich or respected or even "happy" whatever that is. what drives me is the desire to throw my successes in the face of whoever i perceive to have doubted or misunderestimated, misjudged or undermined my talents and abilities. and hell, it worked for michael jordan, who attributes his drive to win in no small part to the collection of grudges and emotional wounds both real and perceived he amassed through his career (he even thanked leroy smith, the kid he was left off his high school roster for, albeit [half]jokingly, in his hall of fame induction speech). look, i don't hold grudges. my christianity kicks in really hard in that department, so i can't help but forgive. but i never forget. you dare to tell me something, act in a way, hell, even hint at a suggestion that you're better than me, that you don't think i have what it takes, that i'm not good enough? congratulations, you just became the target of my vitriol filled success missile.

i write my success in korean. keep reading to find out why....

you don't even have to mean any harm by it. hell you can even like and honestly respect me, but if i get that twinge of doubt from you, better believe i'm grabbing whatever brass ring you thought my arms were to short to reach. hell i might grab the harder to get brass ring just because, fuck you! you don't tell me what i'm not capable of! don't believe me? i once went on a three game win streak against a close friend of mine who was more talented than me because he said i couldn't beat him... in a game of pickup basketball. and you know what? he's still better than me, but he would never be able to say it again. he got real mad and wound up throwing the ball away, but still...

hell you don't even have to suggest it! if i think you might be perceived by other people as better then me, that someone else might doubt my abilities next to yours, even if the thought never entered your mind, too bad, i got a missile for you, too. ask Devin Roundtree. who is that? just the guy who was making straight A's in my department back in undergrad. i made it my personal mission, even though he was a cool guy who had never personally given me reason to believe he doubted my ability as a student, to never let him get an A that i didn't match. two year later, i go from academic probation to graduate with honors and you know what? my last three semesters in school i was a straight A student. and every waking moment i vowed he wouldn't be better than me.

even in video games! if a friend of mine beats me in a PvP game whether its a tourney fighter or a sports game or RTS, whatever, i'm prone to make them play me until i win. i've come to blows over this.

artists depiction

and it takes every bit of reasoning in my body to not start training for the octagon. not because i'm into the idea of getting face punched and armbarred for fun, either. here;s why. i'm a 12 year old red belt in Tae Kwon Do when it comes to my 12 year old attention that TKD would be an Olympic sport starting in 2000. that was all i needed to hear to run to my instructor and inform him of my intention to train for the 04 Olympics because, you know, i'd be the shit by then. at this time i was fully prepared to make this sport my whole life. i told my folks that i was going to korea to study at the Tae Kwon Do university in Seoul. all i wanted in life was to be great at TKD. you know wat my instructor says? "IF.... IF you can beat Sam,  i'll prep you for the Olympics in 04" my 12 year old world was shattered. no more TKD university. no more Olympics. no more serious TKD. why? because my 12 ear old brain didn t recognize the challenge. see, sam was in his mid teens, and the closest i'd come to beating him with my 12 year old ability was not getting my ass handed to me. i could SORTA hang with him, but i wasn't in  mid teen form at 12, i'd not even started t grow into my body yet! (i was already about 5'6" and over 200 pounds). i got my black belt, but all my fire was gone. and today, 1.5 degrees and a teenager older all i want to do is shove that if in mr. kempka's face SO HARD by bludgeoning grown men until they say uncle. and twist their limbs outta socket for every fight i should've been more into. and it takes every bit of civility and higher learning in me to not do that.

and you know what the fucked up part about kempka's "if" was? i stood almost head and shoulders over everyone else. i could beat his brother, who was my age. i wasn't allowed to face most people 1 on 1. the adults would strategize to face me last on sparring days in hopes that id be worn out. you know, from ass kicking.when he needed a hitman to humble somebody who thought they were too good for the discipline side of martial arts training, he didn't sic sam on em. it was me! i was the hitter! i was the one who humbled that ass. if only he'd said "WHEN you beat sam" instead of "IF you beat sam" the little orientation speech we got when we first got to hofstra might have included "... and Olympic athlete" and i would've quietly fist pumped to myself.... and now i really wanna fight....

... like this.  this is how i wanna fight

OK so what am i writing all this for? other than the fact that this was swelling my melon and keeping me awake i gotta admit something, and it's a thing i've only just come to fully accept. the simple truth is i've developed a far to structurally sound wall of fuck it around my vitriol center and thus no fuel has been able to reach my motivation ducts. it was a combination of too many good things and a few devastatingly hurtful instances happening in quick succession. the same minor slights that got me in law school (too a little too long on those recommendation letters, didn't ya,professors??) and fueled my pre law school weight loss (i know you can't recognize the sexiness, college girl. you don;t have to say it. i'll  show you how sexy i can be [side note: yeah, so my desire t not fall into the diet related health pitfalls my uncles, pops and grandfather did was the reason. the girl was the catalyst]) no longer seemed to work for me. nothing did.

recently, the mortar that held the fuck it Wall together evaporated and the vitriol has started to seep through. and with the mortar now up in the clouds, something punched a hole in the brick. for the first time in almost a year and a half  i felt the twinge again. hopefully it wasn't just an apparition. i NEED a new Leroy Smith. my old one's are broken.

+

wordle's take on Manti's girlfriend

i did a wordle on the internet dating RQOD. it's pretty much the most awesome. look it!!!!

thanks to lost key productions for the groovy internet love pic

shallah a dream

because i know people don't know how to separate stories and criticisms from hate, i gotta preface this entry by saying i'm a huge fan of the Wu, and the chef's "only built 4 cuban linx" is one of the greatest albums of all time. he had the best verse on "C.R.E.A.M.". he basically wrote a chapter in my hip hop life story. OK so now that we've established that i got love and respect for the chef as an artist and a man:

my theory is that watching the above video messed with my head. not on some psychological programming, or nothing  like that. i guess that a better way to say it would be that i saw the above video and the incredulousness of seeing Raekwon the Chef's uninformed knee-jerk reaction to a question about homosexuality in music while sitting next to Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, an openly gay and socially active actress and aspiring MC, sent my overactive synapses firing on overdrive. questions like, "did he not just hear Snoop talk freely about being openly gay in hip hop and how it was just her being herself?" and "he also just heard that it's people you wouldn't suspect who were LGBT in hip hop?" to craziness like "how long before her and Chris take the chef into one of those vacant houses for talking reckless?". it was interesting but at the time seemed to be only a brief distraction within the confines of that particular trip into the doldrums of the YouTubes.

"chef this pistol, nigga"

of course it wasn't over. when i finally laid my head down that night the weirdest dream came over me. is that a weird way to describe having a dream that it "came over you"? i don't know, i mean dreams aren't conscious. you don't decide that you're going to have a certain dream. you just sorta dream about whatever strange, psychologist's boner fuel happens to pass through your subconscious during your several  rem sleep sessions on a given night. and usually you can't control them. take the dream i''d been having before the one you're here for. over the course of about three nights i dreamed about having a dream only to wake up and find that i was still dreaming. eventually i figured out that i was dreaming and tried to wake myself up, and you know what? it still had a false ending. and then there's the thing that most skeptics assert to alien abduction stories.

see, during this series of dreams within  dreams (inception?) i experienced physical sensations. like in one a dog or something bit me on the ass, because dogs are assholes (get it? thank you! i'll be here all week) i woke up because i felt the teeth sink in to my luscious man cheeks.of course nothing was there, but i felt it. in a different dream from earlier, i got in a mild car accident, but the way i was aligned caused my spinal cord to sever. the crazy thing is i felt my body go numb. like i seriously could not move. the shock caused me to wake up. it couldn't have been for more than a few seconds but it felt like a few years, i shit you not when i say i could not move my arms or legs.

then there's the thing that i have just now decided to call  tearing back into reality. what's that? that's what happens when you realize you're dreaming and want to wake up, but the weight of the reality in your dream holds you in place so you have to literally tear through it and pull yourself into the waking world. ever seen somebody wake up really suddenly after stirring in slow mo for a few seconds? hats probably what happened to them. dreams are weird is my point. now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

so i had this dream later that night. in it i was like a Jules winnfieldian hitman or something. i don't know for sure, but the evidence suggests that. see i had THREE count em THREE pistols, and they were all shiny. like i took really good care of 'em. the plot to the dream was that someone had stolen my silver and black pistols and me and my gold pistol were off to get that MFer. when we found the person, (i don't remember whether it was a girl or guy. it was probably a girl, so for the sake of argument) she wanted me to  perform a hit if i wanted my pistols back. being that i didn't just shoot her and take my pistols (it had to be a girl, come to think of it. i always fuck up dudes that disrespect in my dreams. like the one where i spent the whole dream kicking this guy's ass because he tried to fight me. or the one where i had the epic final showdown with john cena in a cul de sac surrounded by the cast of 8 mile) i decided to do the job. she showed me the video of the person i was to hit and it was Raekwon the Chef. i asked why i had to hit one of the auteurs of hip hop and she said, "keep watching".

"... and furious anger"

so as i watched the video got stranger. first rae's voice got lighter and lighter, more like a deep voiced lady than a gruff rappers voice. then his hair grew and straightened so it hung over his shoulder like Cher in the 70s. then homie started to grow boobs! u was like "wtf is happening to Shallah Raekwon?!" she then scrolled down and i saw the caption for the video: "raekwon talks about being the first transgender rapper" i kept thinking "damn, as long as i've been into Wu Tang how did i never notice Raekwon changing into a lady?". then i woke up.


the moral of this story is, some rappers need to enlighten their views on the world or they might end up the subject of a gender bending revenge epic in the recesses of the drewniverse...

mini post: excitement

things like this keep me up at night...



yasiin bey x mannie fresh

OMFGOD

which was the reaction you had if you're as big a hip hop fan as me

good mornin'!!!

grammy's aint cool no mo'

jay "i've admitted several times that i dumb down my music for commercial success" z has been nominated for 46 grammys (not counting all of the 6 he's nominated for this year) in his career and has more than 14 wins (not counting the 3 he won tonight). andre "i'm the greatest MC of all time and here's the proof: you've never brought me up in the debate because my greatness is a given. ask talib kweli" 3000 has 20 grammy nods (precluding his 2 tonight) and only 6 wins (all with outkast). why is this a problem? let's examine the history books.

 

talib kweli: hip hop expert

what do you see in the all-time classics chapter's hip hop section? under all time classics? you see the numbers. jay z has 2 all time classics under his belt (reasonable doubt, the blueprint). how many do you see under andre 3000? i'll tell you. you see 4. twice as many as jay z. what are the four? as follows: southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, aquemini, stankonia, the love below. ok, so if you're a huge jigga mark you can make an argument for black album or even volume 2, but you don't question dre's classics. unless of course you're the grammy organization, in which case you've seen fit to reward the greatest MC of all time half as often as the richest.

straight from the A wants you to know they took that picture. click to hear my fave jay/kast collab

 now i don't want y'all to think i'm just taking a dump on grammy because i dislike jay z, because he's awesome. ok, fine. you want a more egregious example? lil "i jacked my flow from juvenile, Gilly the kid, and most recently drake" wayne has 18 nods and four wins not including this year. only 2 fewer than the greatest MC of all time. and MORE than NAS! Queens bridge's finest only has 9 nods prior to tonight. [link]

this guy has more grammys than Nas... 

and that's why i have a problem with grammy. ever since steely dan beat all the contemporary artists in the major categories (because they legitimately made the best music that year) and everybody (disclaimer: that terrible article caled lauryn hills '98 grammy success a goof... we at the drewniverse do not endorse that message, and in fact refute it vehemently), yours truly included (i was young and hadn't learned how to be sexy yet) threw a ratings killing fit, the grammys have become the AMA and billboards big cousin. same old chart humping formula ([popular * not terrible]/insufferability brought on by saturation = award) with a shiny new "we'll also nominate the black keys" veneer. here's the full list of winners and noms before we get started.

link

 i'm wrong? well then explain how you reconcile this:

 
 w/ this:

those are graphics of a pole conducted by the grammy website asking the people who they felt the voters would chose as the best album in the rap category vs the result. remember how grammy markets itself as the organization that awards the most outstanding music of the year? the people who answered that survey did, and cast their vote for the album they felt was best. what resulted was one of the most thorough ass whoopings i'd ever seen in a poll. 58% of the people thought the superb, provocative bitch slap to rap convention that is Food and liquor 2 was so good that the grammy voters had no choice but to acknowledge it.

however, in keeping with their decade long overreaction to the steely dan backlash, grammy went with the safe choice. the sweet cream ice cream bland "take care". the backlashers even knew that take care stood no chance, coming in with a laughable 18% chance of winning.

and this wasn't the only issue in that category. rick "i made the same song for 5 years" ross and 2 chainz (OK, he's cool) are nominated over the scintillating debut album from kendrick lamar? but they did it elsewhere, too. for example in the record of the year and new artist categories, the soft as tissue (and light bright lily white) Gotye won w/ his one single over the much more interesting and more prolific Frank Ocean (who also got snubbed for AotY). God forbid they reward the first openly gay mainstream urban artist and his anarchistic occultist crew OFWGKTA. and dub step is popular now, so the formerly "awards handed out earlier" segment staple, dance and electric categories were upgraded to the main show (i'm assuming. i didn't watch).

well it's late, and all this vitriol got me stressed. time to wind down with a jasmine and lavender bubble bath, sea weed wrap and full body guava oil rubdown...

black history: down by the riverside

Dr MLK was famous for a lot of reasons. perhaps no other speech in history has been as revered, repeated and misunderstood as the "i have a dream speech" recited on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. Dr. King wrote and recited that speech as a response to the hatred and vitriol that dominated race relations in Jim crow America. what the good Dr. hoped to accomplish that day in the capital was to redefine what the civil rights movement was it wasn't a hostile takeover by the black community, it wasn't a violent overthrow of then conventional ideals. it was simple: the movement was a dream come to action, and that dream was for equality in the truest since. it was a dream in which everybody in the US regardless of our ethnic background was provided equal protection of the laws not because they had to, not even because it was right, but because the differences in skin tone weren't taken into account at all. because they didn't matter. because it's stupid to treat people like they're less than people because they look different than you. this is rightfully the takeaway from MLK's legacy.

but recently, as in over the past 2 decades, the santafication of MLK has happened. what i mean is that people every year around his birthday use hm as a symbol to advance their own POVs even if their position is one that the good Dr. was publicly against during his lifetime this video from the young turks goes into it better than i can:



i wanted to know more about this riverside church speech. so i looked it up. i'm in class right now so i don;t want to do too much more,but it turns out the good Dr. was vehemently anti war. i think i should start listening now, because prof is pacing, but if you'd like to hear the riverside church speech, follow this link

10,000 pageview special: life erichment from the far east

... WE JUST HIT 10000 PAGEVIEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10k! 10 large! now i really AM your man 10 grand! and to celebrate, watch this little asian kid play the high falooting shit outta this xylophone!! TEN THOUSAND PAGEVIEW SWAG!!!!!!!!!!!

RQOD-ception: RQOD in an RQOD

today's RQOD is about RQOD's: is it better when i do an RQOD like this where i just ask a question and keep it moving, or like this where is go into some detail about whatever random thoughts are going through my head at the time? because i like the latter, but i'm not opposed to doing less work.

in other news, this cat is employee of the month here at the drewniverse

RQOD: internet dating

hmmm..... to be honest with you, i don't really care about this whole Manti hoax thing, so i won't be discussing my opinion on that. but i do like ESPN First Take [especially when they feature Ed "c'mon son" Lover as a special guest] and the Te'o hoax was one of the topics of discussion. as you all know, we here at the drewniverse believe in being timely so now that the horse is dead we won't beat it. we have more journalistic integrity than those ESPN talking heads, you see. but i did appreciate one of the points that was made during First Take's discussion of the issue. during the discussion Lover pointed out [well, to be fair Stephen A. Smith raised the point first] that it was a bit unusual for a young person to meet and fall for another person whom the have never met in person. the debate then went into whether Te'o was just swagless and naive [he is] or complicit and devious [he was probably willfully ignorant][so i discussed my opinion a little. sue me].

but i think they glossed over the most important question that their topic raised, and that question is threefold. first, there's the problem with the pressure we put on young people to succeed. now i don;t mean to suggest that i'm against a society that values achievement. i think merit based reward is a good thing when used right [i'm just not convinced we do it right]. but what we do here in america is put too much value on the reward. one of the theories for why Te'o was complicit, if he in fact was [like i said, he probably was just naive and a little willfully ignorant] is that he needed the story to garner support for his Heisman campaign. that this is even a consideration speaks volumes about the public psyche. nevermind that you've done your best, grown as a player and a person and are considered a lock for your dream career, none of that matter unless you get the achievement.

next there's the question suggested n the title. First Take, being that the talking heads are from a different generation, wholly dismissed [save for Skip Bayless] the possibility that Te'o could have legitimately connected with a person that he'd never had in person contact with. but is it possible to connect on a substantial level with a person we've never occupied space with? last night, while fake shooting people in the face playing Farcry 3 online, i witnessed two players who had never met before develop a friendship over the course of a single match to the point where they planned to "meet up" at a later date to play again. at no point did they plan to meet in person, but the connection was there.

finally, even if we concede that you can make a real connection with people whom you've never met, is it possible that the connection can blossom into love? certainly not, right? well, it seems that there are tons of examples of even online gamers falling in love with -- and even marrying -- each other based on there online interactions.

so here, after all of that, is the RQOD: can we be done with Manti's fake girlfriend now? please??

:-\

gimme some more (update swag)

*sigh*

be still 11-year-old Drew's beating heart

*LOUDER SIGH*

[you. this is what you say]: drew. what is it about ms lawerence up there that's got you so glum?

[me]: iunno... nuthin

[you again. you're persistent. go you]: but drew! but drew! you sad *sigh* twice!

[me]: well... remember about a year ago when i wrote a blog about danielle "topanga lawerence" fishel aka my school boy crush rapping on say what karaoke? you don't? well take a few minutes to read this...

familiar? ok, welcome back! those of you who followed the link now know that i promised the swagalicious ms. sam bam at lawless and flawless that ms. fishel did that IRL, and she was all, "what? no way!" and i was all, "yes, uh huh way!" and then and there set out to find video proof to support my lofty assertion. alas, dear drewninites, i have been thus far unsuccessful in my year-ish long search for said proof. if you recall that post (and since the link is literally right there)

see? there's a large arrow with words pointing to it

i asked that you, you guys, the drewninites out there in the drewniverse, help me by keeping an eye outin your various interwebs for that video. sadly even the combined efforts of all the drewninites combined have not yet been able to unearth this video. here's a little history: accoding to retro junk, say what? karaoke featured [possibly drunk/high] kids who sang hit songs and were judged and voted off. well on one special spring break celebrity edition topanga lawerence from boy meets world ripped the crowd apart with a rendition of Busta Rhymes "gimme some more", and if you're not impressed with that b/c you either don't reember that song, or had terrible taste in music in the late 90's (we don't blame you do we DARK? DARK?? um, DARK's not paying attention. something about evil doers.... that kid's weird) here's the psychedelic, pimptacular sexification of a video they made for it (Luscious told me to write that.... that kid's weird, too)

little miss fishel performed that. live at spring break. word. for. frickin. word. AND, AND she was on beat!!!! impressive right?

[you decided this was a good time to chime in. i disagree, but ok, whatevs]: but drew! but drew! if this really happened where's the video proof?! there's got to be a video somewhere, right? it's one of the rules of the internet!!
[me]: well, i thought you were going to say something asinine, bu look at you raising a valid point! go you! i was thinking the same thing  i mean you're absolutely right. rule 11 of the internet says i have to have at least photographic proof (i'd discuss rule 34, but that's another show). but i've looked through all of the things. i can't find it anywhere! did mtv eradicate every publicly shared copy? i mean, this is the only video i can even find on say what? karaoke that happened during spring break.  this guy over a replyz.com mirrors my frustration

i feel you, bruh

i know the video exists. i can feel it in my plums. now all i have to do is head to times square, raid the mtv vault, find and upload the danielle fishel video and bobbity boobity bam, video proof. at this point it'd almost be worth the NYPD beat down and subsequent prison time....

almost...