Author: tacks

Digital Artist and Professor at LaGuardia Community College
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Happy Birthday to The Microphone Fiend

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Today is the birthday of William Griffith, better known in hip hop circles as Rakim, also known as Rakim Allah, a.k.a. the microphone fiend, a.k.a. the God MC, a.k.a the Greatest MC of ALL TIME in my humble opinion. He is turning 47 today.

Rakim took his name from Sun God RA and the ancient Egyptian kingdom of KIM. He was one of the first MCs to move from simplified verses into a style that blended complex metaphors with internal and multisyllabic rhymes culminating in a laid back delivery. At a time when other contemporaries like LL Cool J, KRS-One, and Run-DMC. delivered their vocals with screams and force, Rakim defied those conventions by developing a flowing style capable of verbally deconstructing an opponent all while making it seem like he wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

When he released the track “Follow the Leader” and I heard how Continue reading “Happy Birthday to The Microphone Fiend”

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The Knicks really suck!

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I went with Jonas to the Knicks game this afternoon. My cousin has season tickets and gave Jonas the tickets as a Christmas present. I had heard from a number of people that the team was really doing poorly this year but I was unprepared for just how bad. The Knicks really suck.

The final score of the game was 110-82, which sounds better than it was in reality. They were playing against the Charlotte Hornets, a team that is currently 14-24, and were down by nearly 50 points at the end of the third quarter. I haven’t seen someone get their ass whupped that bad since I was a teenager and came in three hours late after my curfew. I told Jonas to go ask the Knicks coach if he wanted us to go and suit up. We couldn’t have been much worse.

 

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Lone wolves ride alone!

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A few months back my wife and I signed up for an introductory motorcycle class. We have been doing all of these semi-adventurous things as a way to celebrate her promotion to full Professor and her year long sabbatical. Over the past year we have gotten NRA Certified for Pistols, taken up Thai style cooking, started practicing archery. I am proud to say that she just got her motorcycle license after a 2-day intense course at the Motorcycle Safety School (MSS) at Lehman College. I wasn’t able to join her because of my work schedule, which is sad because we always have a lot of fun together doing this type stuff.  The good thing is that she is no longer opposed to me getting a bike. Plus she is now talking about wanting to travel down Route 66 on 2 wheels for our next big vacation trip. Personally I would rather ride through Europe, but we have time to figure all that out. I still have to get my license.

 

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Throw ‘ya guns in ‘da air!

It appears that my Groupon and Livingsocial addiction continues onward. My wife and I spent the day at the New Jersey Firearms Academy taking the NRA sponsored Basic Pistol certification course. We had the opportunity to work with some great instructors. I hadn’t been to a gun range in nearly 20 years but the instructors at NJ Firearms made me feel very safe and comfortable. They introduced us to 9mms, 357s, 45s, 40 Calibires, 38s, and 22s (revolvers and semi automatics).

So overall it was a good day and I confirmed a couple of things that I always suspected. One, Chow Yun Fat and John Woo are absolutely full of crap. Two, shooting ranges are radically different than the paintball competitions that the family and I use from time to time. And three, my wife is a much better shot than me and definitely not the person I want to piss off. However, while my wife  once again showed me up, I did much better at the range than I did on the motorcycle training course from a few weeks back. Plus I had a really great time and met a bunch of really cool people.

Midlife crisis – 1, James – 1.