Nump is E-40’s engineer and, oh yeah, he spits too. If you remember a few years back he hit us with “I Gott Grapes.” Now he’s pushing the bounderies of spelling to make up for the lack of bounderies pushed on this video. I loved “I Gott Grapes.” I even loved both t’s in “gott,” but, since I have permission, I’m going to hate az much az I like on this joint. Or maybe the whole thing is code for “yew trees,” and some really sophisticated horticultural slang reference we’re not even knowing about. Could be. Let’s give Nump the benefit of the doubt and pass those yew berries mayne!
After the listless loss by the Warriors on Saturday, Meschery and I switched over to the Blazers game against Memphis. I had watched them on TNT on Thursday against the Suns too. And I noticed something: they’re growing playoff beards.
Yes, the entire team is bearding up. Cheryl Miller confirmed it by flirting with Brandon Roy and scratching his man moss. Now, there’s really no reason not to embrace this team. They play ball unselfishly and with gusto. They know their roles and play as a unit. And they seem like decent, bearded folk.
After an emergency staff meeting over a game of 21 at the Y, it is official. FTB unanimously endorses the Portland Trail Blazers as our team of record for the duration of the NBA Playoffs. Our mole in the Rose Garden has been notified. This does not come without a parallel observation. The Dubs are tanking and it is hard to watch.
Saturday was the tipping point. Warm weather in The Bay. Teriyaki chicken wings on the grill. Dubs game on the tube. And I’m wearing my “We Believe” Western Conference Semifinals shirt from the night of The Dunk. It didn’t take long to realize how far the team has fallen and how shockingly fast it has occurred. Two years ago, there would have been ten people crowded into my living room to watch the game. This night, three. But why the Blazers? Read More »
I took the day off to hang with my boy on his 10th Birthday. In the morning, Griffin opened his presents — Pro Evolution Soccer for his Playstation and an official AC Milan jersey and shorts. Ronaldinho of course. He put it on immediately (he’s still wearing it today).
After a few games of PES and some light soccer in the park we headed into San Francisco. First stop, Japantown for lunch and a visit to Fatlace and Super7.
Afterward we rolled through Hayes Valley then over to the Mission. Being 72° and sunny, our roll was slow. We sauntered into Density to say hi to the extended family. A few minutes later Marco Bellinelli and a few of his buddies also sauntered in. A leisurely day of shopping in SF seemed to be on everyone’s agenda.
“Hey Marco Belinelli” I said, “Nice to see you. Welcome to Density.”
Just as I approached to shake his hand, one of guys in his entourage pointed a finger just over my shoulder and exclaimed “Hey!”
I turned to see that he was pointing at Griffin, who was standing by the cash register like a deer in headlights. Then he added, “AC Milan! Number 80. Ronaldinho! He’s a gooda football player. Now, that’s a smarta boy.”
Well, I’m pretty biased, but I had to agree. I told the crew that we had indeed spend some time that morning using the digital version of AC Milan to womp on the élite teams in the English Premier League. They fully approved.
After some more mutual appreciation, a good browse around the shop and our photo op, Macro and friends, as well as Griffin and I departed.
Sure, it’s not Friday yet, but I couldn’t wait. Please welcome the newest member of the Internet-fame fraternity, Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman. Technically, he’s a DJ, but given the insanity of the mashup shown above, there really hasn’t been an acronym invented yet to describe what he’s achieved. By taking random clips from individual, single-instrument tracks on YouTube, he literally “built” songs. As in plural. No, no. It doesn’t end with the video above. Head on over to the wee little site he launched, thru-you.com and check out the other tracks.
Personally I favor the old-school talk-box flavored “Wait for Me.” Check it out. Then click on “credits” and follow the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest where you’ll find the newly famous talk boxer fielding comments innumerable from people who had never heard of him only a couple of weeks ago.
While the track shown above is anchored by one of the awesomely awesomest session drummers ever to anchor a session, Bernard Purdie, most of the material is from amateur musicians recording for exposure, friends and family, or just for the helluvit. Kutiman managed this all with minimal pitch correction, some hitchy but effective video editing, and a giant sidestep around all known copyright law. A great article on the subject can be found on Wired’s blog. His creative process sounds positively monklike, but no doubt the product of someone on an exponential mission of musical discovery.
“I moved to Tel Aviv when I was 18 or 19,” Kutiman said, “and met friends who introduced me to all this wonderful music. I discovered Parliament-Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, King Crimson and so much more. It was like gold, and I discovered it all at once, so my mind was completely blown. Once I discovered funk, afrobeat and psychedelia, I locked myself in my studio and just started playing. On this project, I was searching for the same thing.”
Searching is the key word. For Kutiman, time blurred as he crafted the project, punching musical search terms into YouTube to find and download what he was looking for. Once he did, ThruYou took on a life of its own.
I remember searching. In some 20 years as a DJ. On my knees in Amoeba or Rasputin’s or any number of other record stores, hoping against hope that this would be the day that I found Grant Green’s “Alive,” or any number of other rarefied vinyl sides. Those days are gone. And Kutiman is an ambassador of something totally new. What Wired’s Kevin Kelly–in a lecture earlier this year–called the great giant movie, the great record of humanity, that we are all hard at work recording, mastering and remixing.
Make the jump for some funky talk box, a short piece of the Bernard Purdie legend, and then let’s talk about it,
Turman
PS. Yeah, I know. Warriors lost. I watched some of it. It’s painful. No Jack for the rest of the season either. Turf Toe. At least Morrow got off to such an extent that he might cloud the picture at small forward. Oy.
We’ve had a long-running debate here at FTB about who you’d rather have operating down in the paint. Zach Randolph or Anthony Randolph. Personally, I’m partial to those long, deceptively strong cats who gobble up rebounds and don’t eat themselves out of the league. Either way, here’s a little message for the vertically challenged among us from the fine folks at This is Why You’re Fat dot com.
Stay the hell away from anything you see on this site. Seriously. The “Thurmanator” pictured above is relatively mild compared to some of the offerings. And after you’ve spent two hours inhaling phantom calories through your monitor screen, let’s renew the debate about ballers big versus long in the comments. Give me a team of Tony Parker, Kevin Durant, Tayshawn Prince, Kevin Garnett, and Andris Biedrins and I will win championships. And run. And score with impunity. Have a Thurmanator and think it over.
As I go about my day sometimes I stumble upon images that, at the time, I think could lead to an FTB post. It doesn’t always work out. Given that I have a lot of this randomness in reserve, I thought it might be nice to share a few of my favorites. Oh, if you have any thoughts about something interesting or cleaver to write for these, please be my guest. The comment box is yours.
In no particularly order.
Enjoy, Gd.
Number 1: Barak Obama RUN DC t-shirt. Straight pimpin’.
It was bittersweet seeing BD last night. My ticket benefactor, Yuri, and I kept remarking that during timeouts Boom Dizzle was walking over to the wrong bench. At least it looked like the wrong bench to us.
After what was apparently a warm reception, the crowd took to booing (or perhaps they were yelling “booooom”) every time Baron had the ball in his hands. Frankly, I thought all of the booing was silly. Al got it too when he was here, but I think he earned his a bit more, asking publicly to be traded.
But Baron, he wanted to stay. He loved being loved in the Bay. Even worked on his karma to get his contract matters in order. But the Warriors just couldn’t come correct.
At one point I turned to a neighbor who was booing loudly during some Baron Davis free throws and asked, “What are you booing at? Yourself”? That’s kinda’ how I interpreted it. Self hate.
In the end, the Dubs won the game. Handily. Both Monta and Baron had banner games, with almost identical box scores. 29 points, 5 rebounds and 6 and 7 assists. I just kept thinking they should be playing together. That was the plan, Right? The best back court in the NBA since, well, Baron and JR. Certainly it would have been better then “oil and water”. Blah!
Enough of this. Let’s discuss the picture above. The image, snapped by Yuri at the halftime shoot around, is most auspicious. Baron sauntered over to a couple of well-to-do silver hair gentleman sitting courtside and engaged in a few minutes of lively banter. All while displaying various dribbling techniques. I quickly dubbed the duo “CEO of this.com and Chairman of that.com”.
“It’s definitely like a homecoming,” Davis said last week, anticipating his return to Oakland. “A lot of memories are there, and the adrenaline is going to be circulating. It’ll be good to see a lot of familiar faces in the stands.”
Familiar faces indeed. Yuri and I’s conjecture was that Baron (or as he’s known in Scrilla-con Valley, “iBoom”) was getting a little business advice form his NorCal tech-savvy brethren. Perhaps he was even lining up the next round of VC funding for his own social network play, IBeatYou.com.
With not much else going his way in Oakland last night, I certainly hope so.
What Jon Stewart did to Jim Cramer and CNBC, Berkeley author Michael Lewis has done to the entire nation of Iceland in his latest article for Vanity Fair magazine. One good thing to come out of the financial crisis is the entertainment offered up in watching people, companies, and now entire countries getting put on Global Economic Downturn Blast. In the case of Iceland, not only does Lewis portray Icelanders (well actually just Icelandic men) as inbred, naive, sexist, pushy, and reckless fisherman who had no business thinking they could get into the business of investment banking, but he also outed them as believers in elves. Yes, those elves. Mutha-f-ing Ice Elves! Apparently, in Iceland, they’re called “the hidden people.” Maybe they’re “hidden” because they don’t, you know, exist. Just like all that money the Icelanders invested.
With their banking industry eviscerated and world fishing stocks low, Icelanders are now staking their future on novelty winter wear. I’ve written about the Beard Cap before on this blog back when it was an emerging market, but now it’s gone mainstream, and beard hats are the new US fashion craze. One company “Beard Head” sells four different flavor of beard hat, “Pirate,” “Grandpa,” “Lumberjack,” and “Viking,” and they have a snowboard promotional tie-in. The beard hat phenomena is not a bubble according to many economists. Said one, “Basically, as long as Icelanders don’t sell each other beard hats for five billion dollars, the beard hat economy will remain stable.” So, if you feel sorry for the people of Iceland (and after reading Michael Lewis’s article, it’s hard to imagine you would) go out and buy a beard hat. It might be the only thing keeping their economy afloat. Those Bjork action figures aren’t quite selling like they used to.
If you can’t find something to hate about this, well, you’re just not trying.
Somewhere 213 or 310 area code I’m sure you’ll find the televangelist Don Vincent (aka Reverend X, aka God). He’s probably still videotaping his show, “The Spirit of Truth” and looking for a cable access channel to run it.
If you’ve seen the clips on YouTube (they’ve been widely circulated), then you’ll probably understand why our man is worthy of some of our Tuesday hate. It goes something like this: preach, dance, swear, rap, swear, repeat.
Apparently his special sermons have even gotten him an invitation to Howard Stern. But I wouldn’t be knowing, because in this day and age, who pays for radio access?
