I am invincible in these sunglasses... [011]

Stuck in my head: "Sunglasses"
Black Country, New Road
For the First Time

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Some housecleaning: A friend mentioned that she couldn't find an option to subscribe to my blog, something that hadn't really crossed my mind. I started reading about Blogger's support for email subscriptons, and came across this article by Too Clever by Half. I've got to read more about using a service (as outlined here), but I'm not crazy about the idea. For now, I'm going to maintain status quo... and I doubt many of you are reading this shit, anyway.

If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. I'd love it if people read this, but it's just a personal blog, and your privacy/contact information means more to me than you reading my prattle.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming...

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I steered back into social media for the duration of the NFL playoffs, but I need to pull back into this sphere. I deleted about a hundred motherfuckers over the last few days because I couldn't stand the bullshit whining about halftime shows, television shows, thumbing of the nose, or by any other name of a rose. Y'all aren't so cute that I can't live without the hourly updates.

In the words, of Ask a Ninja, "Baby, you never had it to begin with..."

That said, I think it's important to mention that I had a really great experience today ("Today" meaning February 17, '22): I ran into someone I'd not seen in a long time, or rather... they recognized me in my hooded sweatshirt, its hue the beacon of University of Texas at Austin Longhorns Burnt Orange that I flash in a sea of "purple dog shit".

I could feel my eyes welling up - after all, it's nice to catch up with someone you haven't seen in a while, and it's doubly important if it's someone who spotted you out of the crowd.

We were both more heavily involved in music than we are now (he probably still is, I am semi-retired). We had a brief conversation, traded phone numbers, and I feel like a reset button got pushed.

Now how often do you get that from a five minute conversation?

I'm really looking forward to trading some texts over the next few days. I've always been really attached to people and do not subscribe to the "people suck" narrative. Sure, it's disappointing when I get hurt, but it's also really amazing when you apparently make such a mark on someone that they recognize you by the ponytail and the hue of your alma mater.

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I wanna talk about the Super Bowl halftime show for a moment.

A social media person whom I have never met stated the following: "If you don’t like hip hop/rap, and you hated the super bowl halftime, then you just don’t get it, and that’s fine. I don’t get why people dig ditches for a living, but I don’t berate them for it."

Well, to start, my maternal grandfather dug ditches during the war. "It was work," he'd say, and the orchards in South Texas needed irrigation systems. Plus, brown folks weren't allowed to do much else in them days, and if you would like some knowledge, I'd invite you to watch The Valley of Tears, a documentary about the town where I was born, and the abject racism that still exists.

Bonus points: I had my mom watch this, because she and my dad both picked onions during summers when they were kids. She knows people interviewed in this doc.

Additionally, I watch the Super Bowl because I watch football all fucking season and live and die by my teams (fuck russell wilson, though, robotic mufucka). I don't watch fucking commercials or the fucking halftime show. Couldn't care less. I gotta agree will Bill Burr on this one:

Let's be real, though, this uproar is about both racism and "slacktivism", what hip-hop music represents to people, and all the trappings of the arguments that go with it. If watching Dr. Dre, Snoop, Mary, and Eminem are hills y'all wanna die on... I mean... when was the last time y'all were at BLM gatherings? Maybe instead of yelling one way or the other, you can get in the fight - feel free to sign up here.

Eminem is just Pat Boone and Elvis, anyway, making hip-hop "safe" for white folks. The true genius of Dre is that he made what was considered "dangerous" by white america into a highly profitable medium all while reducing costs (i.e. rock bands often write their own stuff and take a cut of the writing and publishing profits, often costing more to produce; hip-hop doesn't work that way). Dre ran away with all your money, and good for him.

I was a bigger fan of Mos Def, anyway.

The only halftime show that was worth a fuck was Prince's performance in Miami (and he's paying homage to Black artists before him). He was even plugged in for the event, unlike the head rot shitty peppers

Besides, the halftime show is for old people.

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Pet peeve: "Mazzy Star" is the name of the band. The singer's name is Hope Sandoval, a Mexicana from East L.A.

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Ten days 'til Texas. I need a break from you weirdos. I'm looking forward to Delia's tamales, low eighty-degree weather, and Whataburger.



-CST.