The Shield Mini-Episode

(Firefighter and cop)

Having trouble waiting until the April 3rd premiere of Season 6 of The Shield?
Upset that FX delayed your Mackey fix with Courtney Cox's bland drama "Dirt?"
Do you need the emotional closure that only Lem's funeral can provide?

According to TV Squad, there is a mini-episode coming sometime in late February, early March that will fulfill all these needs.

By the way, The Wire gets all the credit for the real social issues it tackles but can the Shield get some love for predicting the blatant racially motivated murders of Black people by Mexican gang members in L.A.?

I think it was Season 5, where a Mexican kid shot a black person in the street due to a prison beef.

Shit is so real in L.A. that there are actual strike teams rolling around called Gang Impact Teams trying to clamp down on this gang shit.

I need April 3rd to happen quickly.

What The Fuck Is Wrong With (White) People?

(The Jesus Horse is no more.)

I love my white folks and I call out everyone equally on this blog, but I'm going to go out on a racist limb here and assume that the vast majority of people who gave a crap about Barbaro, the racehorse that was injured and eventually died and posted about it on the NY Times are white. Let me know if I'm wrong.

I followed this story briefly when it broke months ago, but then I realized I was reading about a horse so I stopped.
Now that the horse is finally dead, white people have lost their damn minds on the NY Times.

I kept reading this shit hoping it was a joke.
Peep this nonsense from the NY Times blog posting,

• 1.
  January 29th,
  2007
  9:08 pm

  I cried when I heard the news.It is so sad,Barbaro fought so hard to live and run as he did in the Kentcuky derby.The whole country adopted this horse.

  — Posted by mary weiner

• 2.
  January 29th,
  2007
  9:09 pm

  What a fighter he was. We can learn from the animals.

  — Posted by Jenney

• 3.
  January 29th,
  2007
  9:15 pm

  Many millions share the grief of the owners and the doctors who worked to save such a beautiful creature. He will be remembered.

  — Posted by Buck Rutledge

• 4.
  January 29th,
  2007
  9:16 pm

  Barbaro had become a national celebrity, with many of us rooting for him; he was such a spirited soul. Sad he had to be put down, but at least with horses there can be some euthanasia.

  The amount of money spent to save him, however, versus how much we put towards someone not independently wealthy, shows where our priorities have gone. I would guess a number of preschool centers could have been funded for the price. His “price” and treatment raises lots of ethical issues, not the least of which is sports betting,or even gambling, and those industries which exploit people and animals. Still, he had a good spirit, and I feel badly for the vets, trainers, jockeys and owners who I am sure were very attached.

  — Posted by Sally White

• 5.
  January 29th,
  2007
  9:19 pm

  Barbaro’s death deeply saddened me and my thoughts and prayers go out to his owners, the surgeon and medical staff who cared for him. Barbaro was a true champion in every sense of the word. He blessed us with his beauty and dignity and grace His spirit and will to live were truly inspirational.I held out hope that there would be a miracle and he would survive, despite the overwhelming odds against him. Animals teach us so much about life, love, compassion, kindness and responsibility. We are all interconnected in the web of life. May Barbaro rest in peace and may he continue to inspire us all.

  — Posted by Phyllis J. Silva

And those are the restrained comments...

What
The
Fuck?

Can anyone explain this nonsense to me?
Why are people crying their brains out over an unprocessed bottle of glue?

What about Darfur?
Sean Bell?
Nixmary Brown?
Cheryl Green, the 14 yr-old black girl that was murdered for stepping into a Mexican neighborhood?
The close to a 100 U.S. troops that have died in January '07 alone not to mention the countless Iraqis civilians?

Have people run out of issues to stress out over?
Am I an evil puppy kicking bastard?
Or have I completely missed the boat here?

Serena Williams Will Eat Your Children

(The arms should tell you who won.)

A damn week passed since everyone chimed in on the last Obama post. I meant to post more about that and other shit but life had different ideas.

I will come back on that later in the week but in the meantime I couldn't ignore these two pictures I found on the NY Times after Serena smashed Sharapova in the Australian Open.
Looking at those pics, Sharpova never had a chance.

I've never seen a woman's arms that made me want to go to the gym immediately.
Damn Serena.

Forget playing tennis, could you imagine trying to sleep with this woman?

Old Fashioned Racism, Gotta Love It...

(Play baseball you terrorists!)

Political refugees from the most war-torn countries in the world were granted asylum in Clarkston, Georgia were they are insulted throughout the town and during soccer games, which the town wants to ban.

That's that good old southern hospitality.
I guess that beats dodging rocket propelled grenades in the Congo.


- The black mayor of white town Greenwood, Louisiana gets his house shot up by what we can all assume was white people.
He doesn't think he's going to run again for mayor again.

Smart dude.


- It's not like we all didn't know America is racist, but reminders like this show me what Obama could be up against in 2008 if he runs.

I wasn't deluding myself into thinking American was Rainbowland and he was going to win the presidency in a blow out, but I think he has the potential to shake shit up for any Democrats who enter the '08 race and try to halfass their opinions to appeal to Christians and Nascar fans.

Democrats will have to be on their toes if he can drum up real support in the next year or so and he can do that.
Besides, no one wants to watch Clinton, Kerry and Edwards outbore each other.

I still have to check out his book, but from what I've seen the dude is pretty straightforward. He cleaned out his immediate closet by admitting to drug use. He has a nice looking family and despite the fact that his first name sounds like Iraq, his middle name is the same as Iraq's ex-Presidents' name and his last name rhymes with Osama, he is a Christian and has a normal looking black wife with two normal looking little girls. No interracial family pics to scare away any white parents off the bat and his family can rock the hell out of some Jesus pieces if people need reassurance that he is cool with Captain Christ.

And who cares about his experience? Bush had little experience and he surrounded himself with a cabinet of supposedly knowledgeable and storied politicians and we see how that is working out...
Experience doesn't mean shit if you are ingrained in your ancient inflexible ways of governing.


Despite all this, the realest shit to me is the fact that he has to overcome black racism more than anything else.
Peep the LA Times article on the hating ass Negroes he is encountering.

Black people are really mad that he is a real African-American with a parent from Africa and not of Jim Crow roots.
His campaign is already striking up a lot of real conversations about what the fuck a black person is.

I'm American born but my family came from the West Indies and I have a scary sounding Muslim name. Not as scary as Obama's though.
Am I considered black? None of my family ever picked cotton in America, maybe somewhere else.

Obama was raised by his white mother in areas that ain't exactly considered "the trap."
Do you have to be from the hood to be black?
Seen all three "Friday" movies?
Should we check his music collection next?
Or find out how many white broads he's twisted out?
C'mon.

Most (black) people don't even know their ancestry past their grandparents.
Besides, in America you only need one drop of colored blood to be considered Negro. I didn't set shit up that way but that's life.

As far as I'm concerned, if you look black in America you instantly absorb the entire African diaspora, whether you like it or not.
Ask my boy Amadou Diallo...

For The Love Of All That Is Holy... No Brady In The Superbowl

(I suck! Yeaaa!!!)

I don't care if he went to my college or if he won 18 Superbowls in a row.
I hate this guy and Peyton's commercials are infinitely better than his.

Maybe his best bud Bush can wipe away the tears.


Also, Tony Dungy needs to stop with these pictures. (Big ups to Sam on the pic.) Sadly he's playing another black coach, which mean you can expect another one of these pics at the Superbowl.



Also, coaches need to stop thanking God for their victories.
God doesn't care about football. At all. Especially the team you play on.

I really like football, a lot, but God doesn't give a shit who wins. At any sporting event. Ever.
This trend must end.

If God cared about sports, I would rather he pick a winner in the genocide match going on over there in Darfur.
But that's just me.

Snitch of the Week: 1/14 - 1/20 (911)

Bloomberg got 911 accepting digital images and video?

Say word.

Expect snitching to at least triple in 2007.

Mayor Bloomberg, for introducing the ancient art of snitching to the 21st century, you are clearly the Snitch of the Week.

Sharpen up your discreet phone cam skills.

Snitch of the Week: 1/7 - 1/13 (YouTube)

It was only a matter of time before people started getting busted via YouTube.

In an age where people don't care about government surveillance because they're too damn busy volunteering all their info on MySpace and Facebook, it's only right that YouTube start catching those criminals smart enough to commit crimes in the purview of a working camera.

YouTube is the D.A.'s best friend. (ABC News)

According to the article people have been caught,

• Stabbing people in the club
• Using a fraudulent credit cards at Hom Depot
• Rioting at colleges
• Attempted break-ins
• And other assorted video-recorded crimes.

I love it.

YouTube for letting everyone broadcast their (illegal) ignorance, you are the Snitch of the Week.

Barack Obama: Watch This Negro in '08

(Hillary is not feeling this.)

I don't think its hyperbole to say that this Obama cat is more relevant that all the black leaders alive today. With many tiring of the old, white and male aesthetic that dominates our political landscape and the image of them shooting each other in the face on hunting trips and planning out secret wars in steam rooms, he has a chance in 2008 to become a leader to a lot more.

I read an article about the old Negroes (Jesse Jackson and Sharpton) not showing Obama the love he needs as he takes it national.
That is some bitter ass Clay Davis shit. (Who watches that Verizon Commercial with Clay Davis and waits for him to say? Dad got shiiiiiiiiit!)



It's pretty pathetic that the old washed-up Negro leaders of past decades would turn their backs on the best chance black people have for real representation in today's political climate because they couldn't even get close to elected. Jackson and Sharpton may go out on some bitch shit and support Hilary to undercut Obama.

It's sad because they have no fuel against him.
Shit, he even married a black woman. They can't even play the sell-out card on him.

But that won't stop the jealousy. From the article,

• “They are basically jealous,” said a Democratic strategist who has not yet decided which candidate he intends to support. “They’ve been toiling in the trenches for decades, and along comes this son of a Kenyan farmer and suddenly he’s measuring the drapes in the Oval Office.”

Sharpton and Jackson had their chances and what are they remembered for?

People remember Jesse Jackson for using his organization to pay for his mistress' baby and calling New York "Hymietown" while Al Sharpton is remembered for creating the original Duke Lacrosse rape case as well as a lot of other shady shit.

They have no mass appeal or charisma and white people hate them.

There is a lot we still don't know about Obama, like what he thinks of the L.A. race wars making "Crash" look like Mister Rogers, but anyone with the smallest understanding of the political scene realizes that you need to appeal to the coloreds and the white folks.

And white people love them some Obama. Peep Slate's nonsensical piece about how smoking makes Obama's voice sounds cool.

Right...

If Obama doesn't Kobe Bryant any white girls between now and November 2008, things should get interesting.

Condi Rice Ain't Gots No Kids... The Truth Hurts

Besides researching the drug war, the other thing that has been keeping me busy is the three ring circus of American politics. With the Democrats taking charge last week and the new Iraqi escalation things are about to go crazy in 2007.

Things got a little heated when a California Senator Barbara Boxer told Condi Rice she will pay no personal price for Iraq because she has no kids.

Boxer said,

• “Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact.”

Personally I saw nothing wrong with what Boxer said. People with kids in military will probably make better military decisions than people whose children are Jenna and Barbara Bush.

And is anyone supposed to feel sorry for Rice? She will go down as a legendary sell-out on the level of Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly.

Boxer was spitting the truth but I realized the Bush administration doesn't react well to that noxious substance. Especially when it's told directly to them. Like when Jim Webb told Bush not to ask about his son in Iraq, or when someone noted that Cheney's daughter was gay in a debate.

But apparently it has become a big deal.
Drug-addict/professional retard Rush Limbaugh had this to add,

• “Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this, an African-American woman, right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here.”
  

And others in the White House called her remarks an attack on feminism. Because you know, the Bush administration really cares about feminism and the plight of the African-American woman.

I hope no one loses focus on the 20,000+ troops that are now IED bait by focusing on this bullshit distraction.


While I'm at it, let me just get this all out.


- Cheney says U.S. must show stomach in Iraq and calls out Iraq and Iran.
If the military consisted of 200,000 cloned versions of shotgun-bearing drunken Cheney I'd say invade away.

Otherwise I'd say lets not talk shit to Syria and Iran now...
We ain't exactly dominating on the military front.


-Lieberman is still the biggest bitch ass mother-fucker in the entire U.S. Congress.

How did Ned Lamont lose to this fucking rat?
Don't let me see this fool on this street.


- Bush was an utter embarrassment on 60 Minutes tonight. I'd post YouTube video of it but I like y'all more than that.

After 6 years of his presidency I cannot add anything new about how disrespectful Bush's smirky, frat-boy attitude is, especially in response to questions about mistakes that killed hundreds of thousands of humans and horribly injured hundreds of thousands more.

The shit that really made me shake my head more than normal was when this dumb motherfucker said he was currently reading a book about France's horrible disaster in Algeria.
I pray he wasn't just finding out about Algeria because I knew about that shit going into college. That fool is 60.

He also said that Iraqis owe America a thank you for what the U.S. has done for them.
Yea, you read that right. Iraqis owe us a thank you.
Saddam was a tyrant but he kept Iraq in check and less people died a month with him than they do now. I hate to say it, but life under Saddam was ballin' in comparison to what is popping off now.

My mommy went to the market to buy vegetables and was killed by an Sunni insurgent.

My father took a job as a garbageman and was kidnapped and executed.

I don't know about y'all but I don't want the thanks a lot of Iraqis probably want to give us now.

- Not enough time has passed for Germans to make a movie about Hitler being an incompetent yet lovable oaf.
When German soccer savages are throwing banana peels at black players, Germany ain't ready.


- When Mexicans are killing Negroes in broad daylight maybe pizza chains shouldn't be excepting pesos as a form of payment.
Bad timing Pizza Patron. No wonder they got death threats. (The Shield tried to teach y'all about Mexican-Black tensions spilling out onto civilians. The Wire ain't the only showing dropping knowledge.)

Snitch of the Week: 12/31 - 1/6 (The War On Drugs)

(Daddy's on the horse)

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I love The Wire.
That is part of the reason why I've been so off my blog grind. (Peep the If Hip-Hop was The Wire comparison.)

Rather than watch old episodes of the Wire repeatedly I've been exploring the world of David Simon and Ed Burns, the two creative forces behind that show.

Their depressing world view and precise dissection of the anomie that cripples the modern American city fascinates me. One angle of that dissection that really captures me is their take on the "War on Drugs."

I went back and watched the 6 episode miniseries they did for HBO called "The Corner." It was about the drug epidemic that swept through Baltimore in the mid 90's and how that addiction worked in the confines of one family. It is the micro examination to the Wire's macro.

As I expected it was thoroughly depressing while being incredibly well-acted and written and it got me wondering how much the face of the nation's drug problem has really changed since then and lo and behold there were two articles in the NY Times about how fucked the fuck up the War on Drugs is.

Peep the realness of this article on the drug war's failure (Link here if that one is dead.)
And a more recent one here about the effects on the 3rd world countries (Alternate link.)

From the first article,

• While Monitoring the Future, an annual study that depends on teenagers to self-report on their behavior, showed that drug use dropped sharply in the last decade, the National Center for Health Statistics has reported that teenage deaths from illicit drug abuse have tripled over the same period. This reverses 25 years of declining overdose fatalities among youths, suggesting that teenagers are now joining older generations in increased drug use.

  What the Monitoring the Future report does have right is that teenagers remain the least part of America’s burgeoning drug abuse crisis. Today, after 20 years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of arrests and imprisonments in the war on drugs, America’s rate of drug-related deaths, hospital emergencies, crime and social ills stand at record highs.

It's obvious that the government has been trying to spin drug usage stats for a while now to make it seems like they're winning.
They're not.

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of Americans dying from the abuse of illegal drugs has leaped by 400 percent in the last two decades, reaching a record 28,000 in 2004. The F.B.I. reported that drug arrests reached an all-time high of 1.8 million in 2005. The Drug Abuse Warning Network, a federal agency that compiles statistics on hospital emergency cases caused by illicit drug abuse, says that number rose to 940,000 in 2004 — a huge increase over the last quarter century.

  Why are so few Americans aware of these troubling trends? One reason is that today’s drug abusers are simply the “wrong” group. As David Musto, a psychiatry professor at Yale and historian of drug abuse, points out, wars on drugs have traditionally depended on “linkage between a drug and a feared or rejected group within society.” Today, however, the fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.
  
  Few experts would have suspected that the biggest contributors to California’s drug abuse, death and injury toll are educated, middle-aged women living in the Central Valley and rural areas, while the fastest-declining, lowest-risk populations are urban black and Latino teenagers. Yet the index found exactly that. These are the sorts of trends we need to understand if we are to design effective policies.
  
  

So now whitey has the drug problem huh?

Let's see what happens.

For pointing out the realities of the 35+ year drug war that America doesn't want to hear, the NY Times is the Snitch of the Week.

Life and Blogging Don't Get Along

One part "The Corner"
One part apathy
And five parts life = Lots of non-blogging

While I get my shizzles together holla at this bit of truth from Dallas Penn and Oh Word.



The Hole - video powered by Metacafe


If you've ever been to New York or even pretend to be from New York you can testify to this.

I Thought I Was In Love: It's The iPhone...For Cingular

Let's keep this simple.

Apple released their LONG-AWAITED iPhone today and it's the truth, although the thing costs more than Dave Chappelle's diamond-coated dinosaur eggs.

It's $500 for 4GB/$600 for 8GB with a 2-year contract from Cingular in June, although I don't see why this won't work with T-Mobile.

The screen is bigger than all previous iPods at 3.5" with a good screen resolution. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 2 megapixel camera, 8GB Flash Drive a completely touch-controlled interface and all the other things that make nerds happy and help you achieve Balla Status.

Frankly, Apple should create another model of this without the phone feature and leave the music and video playback in and cut the price down to $300.
Not everyone wants to be on a Cingular contract. I know I sure as hell don't.

Anyone got that hook-up at Apple or Cingular?

____________________________________

UPDATE

I have downgraded my love to like.
I'm fickle like that.

Here's why,

• If you just can’t wait to buy an iPhone from another cellular carrier, like T-Mobile, Cingular has a message for you: you’ll be waiting a long time, my friend.
  
  Cingular’s exclusive rights to sell Apple’s new iPhone is a “multi-year agreement in the U.S.,” said Glenn Lurie, Cingular’s president of national distribution, in a press conference today at CES. The agreement also includes future models which will be introduced “soon.”
  
  And if you’re thinking of buying the iPhone through Cingular and then using it on another GSM network, you might want to reconsider. Both Apple and Cingular will sell the phone as a “locked” device. Even though it uses the GSM standard, it won’t work on other GSM systems.
  
  Hackers have made the unlocking of locked phones a cottage industry, but Cingular says that that won’t be so easy with the iPhone. If the iPhone gets hacked and unlocked, “we’ve thought through what our next steps will be,” Glenn Lurie said.

Cingular/AT&T can eat me. Imagine you found a hot computer but you could only use it with AOL Dial-Up.
That would suck quite a bit. That's what this shit is.

I would have respected Apple a lot more if they opened this up to whoever wanted this on a GSM network (T-Mobile & Cingular.)

If you like the hard rod up the ass that Cingular provides then go ahead and enjoy the fuck out of this phone.
The technology it uses is still top notch.

Fuck A NFL

(Only one of them was smiling on Sunday)

Sadly I knew all the home teams would win this week, but the Cowboys had the best chance for the upset.

I'd be lying if I said I knew we'd have lost like that.

That shit hurt like all hell and I was on my couch in New York, so I can imagine how Romo feels.
The only thing that could wash the pain away would be a threesome with his two vanilla princesses, Carrie Underwood and Jessica Simpson.

I'm riding with the Colts now. It's about time Peyton got into a damn Super Bowl.

Regardless, it's time to start blogging again. I can't take much more NFL heartbreak.

Wesley Autrey: Hero Or Madman?

It's good to have a black man named Wesley in the news who isn't dodging taxes.

Y'all probably heard about Wesley Autrey, a construction worker from Harlem who dove onto the train tracks to shield a man from an oncoming train. He climbed on top of the man who was having an epilepsy attack and smothered him in the gap between the rails and the floor.

By the way, the saver was black and the savee was Jewish.

Peep the YouTube video,




Afterwards, Autrey was rewarded by strangers, celebrities and the city alike.

Both of his daughters were given scholarships, Trump gave him $10,000, Bloomberg gave him a Bronze Medallion, he got an all-expenses paid trip to Disney World, a free year of MTA travel (worth about $950) and untold gifts and rewards from anonymous strangers. (Last week I saw a scared white family in the middle of the Flatbush jungle andshowed them how to get to Brooklyn college before someone tried to bag their daughter. Can I get something Bloomberg?)

OK, now I'm as racial as they come. I see color in everything.
Shit, I get mad when people offer me vanilla ice cream. And don't even get me started on Neapolitan ice cream. (Why does the chocolate have to be in the middle?)

But I couldn't get on the racial vibe people tried to approach this story with.
I heard all types of variations on this story.

• If Autrey was white he would have gotten more.
• Autrey only got so much because white people love to see black people risk their lives to save them.
• A white person wouldn't have saved a black person.
  
• If the guy Autrey saved was black no one would care.
• Etc...
  
  

Granted the dude was a little off to jump onto the tracks with his two daughters standing there, but if people acted sooner instead of standing around watching the man's epilepsy attack, the dude wouldn't have fallen in the tracks to begin with.

I'm going to look at this as one of those rare moments when a person transcended whatever bullshit notions of identity we hold and just acted out of his sense of humanity not that sense of "I ain't helping no _____ ass ______" that we all seem to hold.

If I'm wrong and this was racial, then I'll say this, 2007 is young. There is plenty of time for a white person to step up and save a black person.

White people, if you operate by the 2 train, let me know.
We could work out our own little rescue stunt and split the goods.

Snitch of the Week: 12/24 - 12/30 (Snitch of the Year)

(Thank you all)

Out of the stupid shit to happen in 2006, the Snitch of the Year has to be the self-snitch.

From O.J.'s "If I Did It" book to rappers writing about their crimes, there was no shortage of ridiculous stories of stupid people doing stupid shit and getting themselves in trouble.

These morons make it that much easier to find the Snitch of the Week. To the 5th amendment ignorant, self-incriminators out there, you are the Snitch of the Year.

I look forward to another year of their stupidity.