As the tip-off[ll] for Game 2 of the Association’s ‘chip finals gets underway the question looms larger than ever before…
Is Kobe Bryant better than Michael Jordan?
You don’t have to answer that question just yet, but you will someday soon and the answer could be yes.
Peace to El Gringo Colombiano.
For the last couple of weeks I have been sitting on a couple of NetFlix DVDs of the previous seasons of ‘Breaking Bad’. I was watching the show when it debuted several years ago. I forgot how good it was. The series is offbeat and dark. A chemistry teacher becomes a crystal meth dealer in order to leave his family with some bread.
It’s not that simple and it doesn’t try to posit meth dealers as misunderstood chemists. The show is about a man’s descent into madness where he gives up everything he believes in to help the ones he loves. Okay, it’s not that idealistic either. It is damn good television tho’ and isn’t that the point?
I fux with ‘Breaking Bad’ and if you knew how to mix chemicals like I do, you would too.
Editor’s note: I pulled this drop out for blogs like Nah’Right and Mr.Kamoji. When the book comes out these dudes will be buying the hardbody hardcover.
The internets is truly a web that connects the entire world. I have made re-connections with friends from as far back as twenty years ago. None of them have touched my heart as deep as my brother ScatterBlast. I haven’t seen Scatt since 1992. It was friendly and warm, but it was only in passing. ScatterBlast and I were moving in two different directions, figuratively and literally. It went something like this…
I had just locked up at the architect’s office. The old Jew and his family trusted me enough to give me a set of keys and the security code to the office. I was finally staying out of trouble and going to college ever since ThunderCracker had died. The old Jew wasn’t more than just generous, but he was also a rebbe in the classic sense. He was a teacher in word and deed. The more college classes that I passed the more money the old Jew would add to my paycheck. Fuck what ever you heard about Jews. I learned that I was a Jew as well from the old Jew. More than anything else I learned to value education and the selflessness of teachers. More on this later this summer.
I was riding my track bike up Third Avenue that night and I heard my name shouted in a familiar gravely voice. I looked over on the sidewalk and there with a broom in his hand was my brother ScatterBlast. Scatt and I hadn’t spoken in about eight months ever since he came back home from prison upstate. ScatterBlast was working at a chain drugstore and cleaning the sidewalk in front of the store as I was riding by. Scatt looked solid gold like he was in the gym and running five miles a day. That was my dude right there.
Scatt was from the original Cybertron squad. Graphic Communications H.S. b/k/a ‘Printing’ is where we used to form up in the afternoon and decide what our mission for the day would be. It might be MACY’s, Bloomies or a shearling store in the Village. It could be another high school to settle an old score or start a new scorecard. Scatt was a bonafide rider. If he was part of your mission crew then you had a knockout artist running with you. Scatt was vicious and built like a pit bull. You weren’t going to be left standing after you came into acquaintance with the business end of a ScatterBlast fist. He reminded me of the raw fury of MIKE TYSON. I guess it was like that for most people born and bred in the toughest sections of Brooklyn.
ScatterBlast lived in the Eleanor Roosevelt public housing complex in the heart of the do or die. These buildings were erected in the early sixties with Federal housing authority money. They looked nice from the outside, but the inside construction was where the contractors did the Halliburton flim-flam with government money. Interior partitions were thin and uninsulated so that even a regular discussion in an adjacent apartment became common knowledge to the neighbors. Plumbing fixtures routinely were in disrepair and vermin and rodents became tenants almost as soon as the building was occupied.
Like many center city kids in the 1980’s Scatt was raised by his grandmother, along with three older male cousins and one younger girl cousin. His grandmother’s tiny apartment acted as a transient hotel and way station for all of the family that were traveling in and out of different situations in their lives. In a crazy and unfortunate way, ScatterBlast was able focus himself better when he was incarcerated upstate. The trees and the grass changed the air around him. Now he could actually breathe.
This is why Scatt was so ruthless on the streets. He almost had to stay moving just to breathe, just to get some fresh air in his lungs. When he went home he would feel trapped again. As he experienced his older cousins’ difficulties with prison and drug abuse, Scatt would bring that frustration and sense of helplessness out to the streets with him.
We were on a mission coming from Art & Design High School when we got into a ‘what’ on the Lexington Ave downtown express. Bodies were being scattered, from schoolkids to commuters to whomever was unlucky enough to be in our way. As the express train rumbled into the Union Square station I tried to alert everyone that we would be encountering the police since Union Square had a precinct substation in its bowels. When the train doors opened mayhem ensued as police entered and passengers fled. I transformed into stealth mode, looking out for ThunderCracker and SoundWave, making sure they both had exited safely as they were my first priority. The police however had captured Villain and Scatt. As the train was held in the station I watched the police place the cuffs on Scatt and then drag him off the platform. We made eye contact and ScatterBlast never batted an eyelid. He was stoic and undefeated. That was the last time I saw ScatterBlast, until this fateful evening as I was riding up Third Avenue.
Scatt was still the same excitable dude who spoke with determination and the volume turned up to 10. He was telling me how New York City was no longer the place for him. He was going to leave the city for somewhere, anywhere else. The one thing I will say about Scatter is that he was the type of cat that could relocate himself because he had that courage inside of him and that belief that he could make it on his own. We exchanged phone numbers, but our lives never intersected again. Not until I received an e-mail several weeks ago…
“Yo Dallas,
If this is you holla back at me! This is Scatta-Blast from the Stuy……Went to Printing in the 80s before getting locked down…..One of my boys sent me the link from FEDS mag about the CONS and I saw your name as the link! Cy told me about the article……….
Hit me up……………
Hail MEG!”
I’m telling y’all that GOD is good because behind Scatt’s government name were three letters. P.H.D. In fifteen short years this man has reached the potential inside of him that we all had. I’m not even gonna front and act like I didn’t have a piece of dust in my eye when I called my brother up. Fifteen years is a long time, too long, not to speak to someone that you love and respect as a brother. Scatt told me the story of going to Baltimore with nothing to lose and graduating from Morgan State and then Maryland University and then continuing at U of M for a doctorate in criminology. All the while, he never lost focus of why he left New York City and he never stopped believing in himself. Now ScatterBlast is a guidance counselor for at-risk kids in and out of the prison system. He is married and raising his own family while he tries to save some of the kids from the beast that is the prison industrial complex and the demons within themselves.
ScatterBlast IS the transformation.
Hail Meg!
I was wildly hyped the other day when I read an e-mail that was supposedly from the ad buyer for RocStar games. They were inquiring about my ad rates for different size banners that would be put up on the site. Now don’t get it twisted and think that I will let any peanut butter and jelly put an ad up on DP Dot Com. No sell out or we will get the hell out, but who could front on the company that created the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ videogame series. I don’t even play videogames like that, but why did I play ‘GTA/Vice City’ at my kid brother’s crib for over sixteen hours straight? That shit is wild fly bananas.
I was all set for these dudes to mail me a sample of one of their latest games along with a PS2 and a flat screen television since I don’t have one in my apartment. I guess it was just a hoax since they never replied to my e-mail but at least they inspired me to recount my own personal experiences with grand theft auto. Let me tell you about Thundercracker, Soundwave and myself and our brand new 1987 Acura Legend…
Summertime in Corona Queens is like summertime almost everywhere else, except in the shadow of Shea Stadium you sometimes hear the cheer of fifty thousand people during a Doctor K strikeout or a Strawberry round tripper. There’s also the rumbling of the old elevated 7 train on Roosevelt Avenue or the overhead roar of planes leaving LaGuardia Airport next door. To tell you the truth all of those noises composed the summer soundscape, but my favorite was the hum of rubber tires along the Grand Central Parkway. While all of the sounds I describe were precise events, the drone of motor vehicles on the Parkway was incessant.
The Grand Central Parkway was a strange animal to me. I used to ride with my father from our house to various locations throughout the city as he was a salesman. We always entered the Parkway off Northern Boulevard and then in what seemed like fifteen minutes we were transported to the distant lands of Canarsie or Rochdale Village or Williamsburg. The Parkway also brought us to bridges that we crossed to get to the Bronx or Harlem. When I was younger I had traveled through so much of the city with my dad that there wasn’t a neighborhood that I didn’t know how to navigate. This skill would be my saving grace later on.
Later on is during the summer again. This time it’s 1987 and me and my dudes are on the creep. What is worse than a bunch of smart azz jig boys up to no good quickly? I would argue that it seemed like everyone in the neighborhood was on some bad boy ish, but that would be a damn lie. Only a few of us were knuckleheads, but that was enough to paint everybody over with the dark brush. I was especially stupid too since I had been arrested two years prior in a narco street raid on Northern Boulevard. I kept my nose far away from Northern after that night though, and I had a group of brothers from Brownsville that were keeping me busy anyhoo. This was just another lazy Saturday afternoon around the way. I called T.C. and S.W. and told them to meet me on the corner of 34th Avenue so we could walk the bridge to the stadium.
Walking the bridge to the stadium was the route that cheap bastards took when they didn’t want to pay the stadiums parking fees. Some people would argue that you can get home quicker by not parking in the stadium lot and leaving your car outside somewhere, but after you walk the fifteen minutes to your car, isn’t that the same time that you would have spent in traffic in the stadium lot? One thing is for sure. You won’t be getting home any quicker if we can get in your car. In the grass fields that surround the perimeter of the stadium is a veritable buffet table of whips. High end to low end all together and accessible. The only thing you don’t want to do is pick a whip with an alarm. That’s never a good look.
The luck of my Irish grandfather was all over T.C. and I this afternoon because we didn’t even have to cross the bridge to strike paydirt. Right on 34th Avenue was a pearlized white and beige two tone Acura Legend sedan WITH ITS PASSENGER WINDOW DOWN! T.C. and I looked at each other, and then we looked around just in case this wasn’t one of those candid camera police stings since our ‘hood was kind of hot for this stuff. T.C. hopped in and banged the ignition cylinder out with our dent puller. He shifted into the driver’s seat and started the car. I hopped into the passenger’s seat and we screeched out of the parking space and went directly onto the Parkway.
You need to understand the incredible anxiety and nervousness that envelopes you when you do this. Your hands have to be focused and steady. You have less than a minute when that door is pried open to start the car. This means removing the cylinder entirely so that your screwdriver can turn on the car as if it were a master key. More often than not we were successful in getting a car, although we did suffer a scrape here and there. The bloodrush was undeniable, as was driving around New York City in something new and oh so clean. It turned out that this Ac’ didn’t just look and smell brand new, it had only 180 miles on the odometer. If JIM JONES had been riding with us he would have said “Baaaaallllin!”
There’s a reason that cars cost what they do. There is a level of engineering in a Mercedes that isn’t inside a Mazda. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with a Mazda because there isn’t, it’s just to note that you get what you pay for. What this dude had paid for was Honda Automotives’ best engineering and design. Leather and wood grain paneling was on everything. It was like riding in a futuristic stagecoach. Keep in mind the types of cars that dominated in the 80’s. The Ac Legend was broad and long but it handled like a nimble Accord. It had a beast of an engine too and I actually opened it up one evening on the Grand Central. It almost opened me up too, in a bad way, but let me slow down and catch my breath.
The Ac was, up to that point, the best car that we had ever caught. Down the road, so to speak, we caught some more Acuras and an Audi 5000, but that night didn’t end on the right note. We were mostly into Jettas, Accords, Maximas and the smaller, lower models since they were the easiest to get as far as not having alarms or kill switches. For us, having these cars wasn’t about the appearance either, since we were trying to sell the best looking cars that we came across. Things were different however with the Acura. It had a way of showing us for what we really were — a bunch of lowlife punk thugs. We would argue about silly shit like who gets to drive the car to a certain party, or who could take the car out solo when they were picking up a date. It went on like this for the three weeks that we had the car in our possession. It was going to be the death of our friendships. Instead it was almost the death of me.
I took the car out one night without telling my dudes where I was going. I imagined that they knew I was going to get the car since I was on some superiffic playboy shit anyhoo. I drove out to Rosedale to pick up this tender young thing that I had met at Green Acres Mall a few weeks back. Bagging up a grey-green-eyed chick from Rosedale is something like hitting a three pointer and a grand slam all with the same golf club. There really isn’t any equivalent metaphor, I’m sorry. I didn’t go in her house, but there were two cars parked in the driveway and I’m sure her folks had a carpeted basement. All I could think about was airing her little pumpum out one afternoon while her folks were at work.
My little angel hopped in the ride and got all giggly with all the buttons that controlled her seat. I told her that she wasn’t allowed to touch any of the controls unless she asked me first. She was so young and tender that it took all my discipline not to pull the car over and smash her right in the passenger seat, but I had to stay strong. These good little girls are really freaks, but you have to tease it out of them. If you spaz hard from the gate then they know that you are gonna beast out after they let you come inside. I stayed cool party people. Ice cold and focused. I drove from the edge of Queens all the way into the city downtown. We went to a movie on 8th Street. I want to say it was an Indiana Jones flick, but I can not remember because we spent the whole entire movie lip wrestling in the back of the theatre.
So here’s where shit gets kind of blurry and you can blame all of that on a sixteen year old boy’s raging hormones. I drove tender young’n back to her house in Queens. It wasn’t too late so we stayed in the car and talked shit. I called shorty tender younglove, but she was actually older than I was by a couple. I was going to be a senior in high school and she was going to college. In our making out and petting she unzipped my pants and began playing with my manhood. She pulled my dude from my draws and then started to put her mouth on my stuff. Real talk… This was my first oral experience. To say the least, I was blown away. As always with me, puns are meant for giggles. What else could I say. This was now the greatest day in my life. I am in a stolen Acura Legend getting blown by the prettiest hazel-eyed mall rat evar. GOD, you can kill me now.
I really don’t remember shorty getting out of the car but that’s prahlee because she left me in a worthless heap. When I started the car again I drove a few blocks and then I got out to fix my kibbles and bits. I’m moving like I’m drunk and I still don’t drink at this point in my life. I’m just not totally here or there or wherever in Rosedale I was. I find my way back to the Cross Island Parkway, which I know will take me back to the Grand Central. I drive along a route that I pretty much know like the back of my hand. The Grand Central is moving nicely too. There’s a police precinct that adjoins the Grand Central in the Fresh Meadows area, but I am totally in the groove that I own this car because I wear my seat belt and I signal and shit when I am changing lanes.
I increase my speed to about 80 miles per hour as I drive through the Jamaica Queens area of the Grand Central. In a couple of minutes I will be at the Union Turnpike interchange where the G.C. links up with the Van Wyck Expressway. I increase my speed to 90 mph. At the interchange is a small slope of a ramp that in reality is a blind hill if someone at the bottom of the hill isn’t merging into traffic properly. I approach the ramp at 100 mph. I know this because I have been watching my speedometer for the last half minute instead of the road. When I finally look up it’s far to late to avoid an accident.
With the sound of screeching tires, shattering glass, crashing carbon fiber, and shearing metal, I rear end a car that is just merging with traffic and then immediately after hit a retaining wall head on. The Acura rests on a grassy embankment alongside the highway. My first reaction is to push aside the air bags and open the driver side door, but I can’t seem to get it open. It’s probably jammed together with the back door and quarter panels due to the accident. My next instinct is to try for the front passenger door and I am able to wrest that open. I crawl out of the Acura. I feel a little tingly and numb but I can tell that I don’t have any broken bones so I try to gather my bearings. I am at the foot of a bridge that allows cars to overpass the Grand Central Parkway for Union Turnpike and Queens Boulevard. I quickly climb up the bridge and make my way to Queens Boulevard. There is a subway station at Union Turnpike and the trains stopping there will take me to the old rusty elevated number 7 train.
The following day among my friends I told them of the story and the outcome of our Acura Legend. It seemed to be just desserts to them that I should be in this cataclysmic accident after stealing the stolen car from them. Although they had figured I was off doing some kind of showboating since I always had to be ‘The Dallas’. Years later when N.O.R.E. would rhyme about getting head in a whip without crashing it, I had to laugh it off. I was just thinking about getting head and my azz nearly clocked out.
