May 5, 2012 · 11:13 PM

You Say Azealia, I Say Azalea: Part I

Said the Hip-Hop Florist: “Which one do you want?”  “Yes, please,” I replied.

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Beyond the weird similarity of their names,  Iggy Azalea and Azealia Banks seem like versions of the same person, but from parallel universes.  This is a cool concept off top, ’cause it suggests that somewhere out there, there’s a white Scissorhands who makes indie pop tunes with old school hip-hop influences, writes about how utterly comprehensible women are…and is famous.

But, I digress.  These two have had a very public war of words going on for the last couple of months, and as as symbol of hip-hop’s race and gender conflicts I found the whole thing fascinating.  But, before I give you a war report, you need to be briefed on the combatants.

Banks is a 20 year-old native Harlemite who got the industry buzzing in 2011 when she released her single “212” (the area code for Manhattan).  The music for the track itself is a sample of a bouncy, playful, electro house song by producer Lazy Jay and sounds nothing like anything anyone might associate with Harlem…except for the ratchet-ass talk about “cunts gettin’ eaten.”  And when I say that, I don’t mean it the way I’d mean it if I were talking about the music of Houston-festishizing fellow Harlemite A$AP Rocky.  I’m talking ’bout the fact that this sounds like some straight-up fist-pumping, ecstasy-enhanced, White Folks ClubTM shit.  One listen tells you that this woman is a smart, artful rhymesayer in possession of an open mind that she’s filled with a buncha DIFFERENT shit.

When you think about it, that probably isn’t so surprising since she’s a product of New York City’s famed arts high school LaGuardia, alma mater of Isaac Mizrahi, Slick Rick, Liza Minnelli…and Nicki Minaj.  From an early age, she was prepped to draw inspiration from an outside world that was inaccessible to most black girls in NYC.  I mean, she spent time listening both to Interpol AND Lil’ Kim as a teenager…which was like, three fucking years ago, in case you forgot.

After a failed deal with label XL Recordings left her depressed and detached, she picked up and moved to Montreal to regain focus.  Since “212” went planetary in 2011, she’s been storming Europe, working with Adele producer Paul Epworth in London and performing for cultural bigwigs like the King of the Vampires Karl Lagerfeld in Paris.  C’est la vie, and her new life really began once she catapulted herself out of the hood and, importantly, out of America.

Iggy, on the other hand,  spent the better part of a decade trying to land her amazingly melanin-deficient, yet seemingly ample ass in pretty much the exact muthaeffin’ spot that Banks vacated.  Growing up in Mullumbimby, Austrailia, she was a lonely, shunned elementary schooler who was introduced to 2Pac at age 13 and never looked back.  A year later, she was getting booed off stage at rap battles and…

Wait a minute. I want to pause right here and take a moment to have y’all reflect on how bad you must be to get the Sandman treatment in Arsefucking, Austrailia.  Think about that, seriously.  That’s like showing a newly sighted, formerly blind woman a painting you did and having her be so unimpressed by it that she pulls up her dress, summons the requisite muscle control, and takes a piss on that bitch standing up.  Horrible.

But now imagine how big Iggy’s femballs must be, ’cause she didn’t give up.

No, she kept at it, and using money that she saved from her commercial cleaning business (hustle), she moved to Miami in 2006 at the age of six-fucking-teen.  She made ends meet by both working illegally and doing illegal work, the latter consisting of credit card scams (hustle hard). All the while she kept at the music thing though she knew no one in the industry, that is until she bounced to Houston, got mentored, and finally started sharpening her darts, as the Wu might say.  Moves to Atlanta and L.A. followed, and at the start of 2011 she uploaded the homemade and fragrantly titled “Pussy Two Times” video to YouTube.  By August of that same year it was easy to see that our favorite Aussie was on the come-up, as she released the still vaginally themed but MUCH more polished “PU$$Y” promo video to fuel interest in her first mixtape “Ignorant Art.”

Listening to Iggy would provide most people with no clue that she’s from the twangy-ass Land Down Under.  I mean, babygirl straight sounds like a New York chick who spent a few years visiting her peoples down south or some shit…which she halfway is.  And that’s interesting, because Azealia Banks often sounds like a Harlem chick who spent years raving with white girls in Brooklyn…which she absolutely is.  It’s scary how much these two seem to have in common, which makes it all the more sad that they’ve got enough beef between ’em to host a barbecue.  With shrimp, of course…so Iggy can skew it.  ‘Cause she’s Australian.

Now there are a couple thoughts as to why this beef popped off.  You know I got my opinion, but since I’m past my 800 word limit for you ignorant bastiches, you’ll have to read the rest in a couple days.  That’s right, I’m DOUBLE POSTING within a week.  Yay, for you!  And for anybody making cracks about me not having written the conclusion of “Beauty and the Beast” yet, close your mouth ’cause nobody cares about you or your life.  Beautiful art takes time to produce, and so does this shit.  So just wait.

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March 9, 2012 · 3:05 PM

Beauty and the Beast: Part I

A Beauty in Brooklyn

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For a person who’s as social as I am, I can function quite nicely as a lone wolf.  It ain’t uncommon for me to go out midnight marauding by my damn self, whether it’s because I just need some time alone with the man, the myth, the legend (that’s me, for those of you keeping score at home) or everybody else was just lame as hell and couldn’t motivate.  The kid will make something happen if that is what he so desires, and it was on just such an occasion that I met one of the most interesting characters that I’ve come across in New York.

I was fresh from downing my second or third Five Points (think Long Island Iced Tea but for people with class) at 67 Orange Street in Harlem, walking down Frederick Douglass Blvd.  By the way, I mean literally walking down the middle of the street – Five Points is no jizzoke – when my gaze ran across this slim, caramel woman with a whole lotta gams and, to literally top it off, close-cropped blonde hair.  She was working at the beer garden across the street.  (Yes, there’s a beer garden in Harlem.)  Before my internal cop could say, “Move along.  There’s nothing to see here,” I saw her see me.  Then she did the unfathomable: she yelled out, “Come on in!”  Apparently, my internal perp was still a bit skittish, ’cause I yelled back, “Who, me?” as if I were getting fingered blamed for some crime that I had yet to commit.  “Yeah, you!”  Was the retort, complete with hands-on-hips action.  My ass was across that pavement before you could say, “Lederhosen und hefeweizen.”

We became fast friends.  I say “fast” because within 10 minutes Shahi was asking me to accompany her on a boat party the next day.  Oh, and I say “friends” because within 11 minutes Shahi had disclosed that she was married to a man who was back in Toronto.  But she needed somebody to go on this cruise with her!  And it was going to be so much fun ’cause it was a soca themed cruise!  Yay!

Have I mentioned, dear reader, that I get seasick like it’s my government job and that I HATE soca almost as much as I HATE reggaeton?  How about the fact that I can swim about as well as the sperm of a 75 year-old former cyclist?  No?  Well, yeah.  All of that.

A Beast and His Teeth

So, did I go?

You’re gonna have to tune in next week to find out.  In the meantime, I’ve included a little something to get you fiends over the hump and soothe the savage beast.

It turns out that one thing that Little Miss Mrs. Shahi didn’t disclose within the first 11 minutes of our meeting was that she can muphuckin’ sing.  I mean, I look up on Twitter one day and all of sudden I see that she’s mentioned me in a tweet with a link and lo and behold, babygirl has auditioned for “Canada’s Got Talent,” singing “Fly Me to the Moon.”  (Watch the audition here.)  As soon as I heard it, I knew that I was gonna have to get in there (Ahem.  AHEM!) and snatch those a cappella vocals, then put ’em on track that I’d build from the ground up.  I wanted to flip it so that it would put a totally new spin on a pop standard…and show Shahi that she wasn’t the only one that can do damn surprises around this joint.

I did this totally without her input or knowledge initially, ripping her vocals directly off of YouTube, so blame any shortfalls on me.  But if you like it…give me like 75% of the credit.  OK, OK.  60%.  Check it!

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February 17, 2012 · 1:18 PM

Fists and Fury: Chris Brown and the Limits of Rage

Love...in a hopeless place.

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What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?  Maybe you had one, two…maybe two more drinks than you shoulda had before whippin’ the front of daddy’s S-Class into the back of a K-Mart.  Perhaps Alex from Finance caught you fudging the numbers just a tad on that expense report from the last convention in Vegas.  You know, the one when you and Rick snuck away from the group to hit up Peppermint Hippo and he told you he left his corporate card back at the hotel…after ordering two bottles of Armand de Brignac and putting like 7.6 lap dances on credit.  Or maybe you did something that was a whole lot worse.  Maybe your biggest mistake was not only stupid, but also despicable.  If so, you’d be rolling in the deep with Breezy himself, Mr. Chris Brown.

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a dude sleeping under a rock in the Mariana Trench, you know that Chris was accused, plead guilty to, and was convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend Rihanna.  For this offense he was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community service.  More importantly, he was rightly strung up by the public and the media and forced to endure a well-deserved gauntlet of castigation and ridicule.  Oh, and he was unofficially banned from the Grammys, which is widely touted as the biggest night in music.

That Grammy embargo was lifted this year along with the lid on Hell, apparently.  I mean, muthaphuckas was UPSET.  For many folks, dude’s appearance on that stage was like bringing a pork chop sandwich with melted cheese into the Holy of Holies…on a Saturday.  In their minds, Chris Brown should remain persona non grata for the remainder of his life, and anything less is a (gulp) smack in the face to women everywhere.  They would have us accept the view that the stain of domestic violence is one that cannot be erased from the abuser’s hands.

I believe in the primacy of justice in a good society.  Therefore, I cannot do that.

Think back again to that stupidest and/or darkest deed of yours.  Now imagine that instead of it being someone’s moderately embarrassing  joke on Thanksgiving, or a grimy spot blessedly obscured by the sands of time, it occupies a massive stage, leering at you beneath an ever-blaring spotlight.  While this description fits Chris’ situation perfectly, it also applies to those of hundreds of thousands of other African-Americans who made mistakes big enough to put them in the grasp of the grinder that is the American criminal justice system.

According to the Independent Committee on Reentry and Employment, up to 60% of the formerly incarcerated in New York State alone are still unemployed one year after they make it home.  On top of that, many states don’t allow those with felony convictions to vote, thereby denying these individuals of the very essence of citizenship.  Once you consider the fact that black males are incarcerated at a rate that’s seven times higher than white men, the Instagram I’m sending should be hittin’ the top of your goddamned feed.  One man described his utterly pitiful situation this way: “You can’t get a job. You can’t vote. You can’t do nothing even 10 or 20 years later. You don’t feel like a citizen. You don’t even feel human.”  This is changing, but not nearly fast enough.  Whether it’s due to a warped sense of morality or a willing indulgence in vengeance, too many people refuse to give these individuals a second chance, and that ain’t justice.  That’s just bigotry wearing a self-righteous mask.

I am in no way suggesting that we should just toss homeboy’s offense into the sea of forgetfulness and pretend that it never happened.  While none of us were there and as such cannot know exactly what went down, we know that Chris admitted to wrongdoing.  And since he’s a celebrity, what HE should know is that his personal life will always be somewhat public.  (Sorry, kid, but that’s the cost of doing business.)  As such, I have no problems with reporters asking him questions about the incident and its aftermath or comedians taking the piss out of him during routines.  But banning him from any public appearance?  Blowing up Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere with rants that suggest his Grammy appearance and win were like, the equivalent of Bull Connor hosting the BET Honors and winning an NAACP Image Award?  I think notly.

Dude is trying to pick up the pieces.  Keep in mind that he was 19 years old when this went down and that he’s still only 22, attempting to deal with the onslaught of a force that won’t take “I’m sorry” for an answer.  Take a second and reflect on how befuddled thou were in thine own mind at that age, then give Chris Brown a similar chance to learn from his mistakes and become a better man.  Yeah, he occasionally has verbal and electronic outbursts, or breaks a window or two, but this is to be expected from a still maturing human.  As long as he keeps his hands on a mic and not on a woman, we should let this man live.  Odin knows, none of us are without sin.  So back away from the stones, or don’t be surprised if that glass house of yours suddenly gets a little draftier.

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January 20, 2012 · 1:34 PM

White Girls Have More Fun

Yeah, I know Maya Rudolph ain't white, but she passes better than Tim Tebow. So, whatever.

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Let me begin this missive by admitting that what follows is probably going to offend you.  I say that off top for two reasons.  First, I want you to know that I’m self aware enough to understand the delicate nature of the topic that I’m addressing.  Second, calling out the offensive nature of a piece semi-shields the writer from any subsequent fecal downpour.  It’s kind of like saying, “Hey, I told you that this one might make your ass itch.  Don’t blame me if you read it and got upset.  Matter of fact, I’m mad at YOU for reading it…inconsiderate bastard.”

Look, I can only expound on the truth as I see it.  And well, to be honest, lately I’ve been thinking that white women have a helluva lot of truth on offer.

Eh-hem.  Now that half of you have thrown your computers out of the window in fits of rage not seen since the CW cancelled “The Game,” I’ll continue.

When I say I’m seeing truth, I’m really talking about truth of being.  That is, living life in a way that is consistent with one’s authentic self, which leads to greater enjoyment, AKA fun.  I gotta say that in general, white women seem to be having more of it than their black counterparts.

OK, let me not overstate this.  I’m really talking about a specific part of living life, the part that has to do with love, sex, partying, and general good times.  Whether or not white girls are better at achieving positive work life balance or expressing their own political preferences vs. those of the patriarchy are for another writer to consider.  This is “Recognize & Realize,”  not “Feminism, Poetry, Pop-Culture, Sex.”  (Not that anything is wrong with that, in case the owner of that blog, Stephanie, actually reads this.  I mean, some of my best friends are feminists…)

I should also clarify things by saying that my comments are probably only applicable to educated women, too.  (Incidentally, educated in this context means having secured or on track to securing a college degree.)  Why?  Because those are the women with whom I’ve spent most of my time.  I’d be lying if I said that I could speak to the ins-and-outs (no pun intended) of blue-collar Beths and Bernices, ’cause well, I haven’t really gone there…that much.  All I know is that pound for pound, educated black women have way more stick up their butt, and like the late Bernie Mac said, “I don’t mean that in no nice way.”

A woman's body language can be so hard to read.

Beginning in high school, through grad school, and beyond, I’ve been amazed at the ease with which white women seem to live in their own sexual skins.  Hanky-panky doesn’t necessarily have a freakin’ timetable associated with it in Becky’s books.  It’s like you just say the right thing (or shut the eff up), pull the right levers, be there at there at the right time, and you’re off like a prom dress.  Ridiculously refreshing.  But dude, you could be trapped with a bougie black woman on an island after a zombie apocalypse has decimated 99.9% of the human population, and she’ll still make you wait ’til like the 4th date before she tosses off that grass skirt.  (Do y’all even realize how hard it is to make a coconut martini with REAL coconuts?)

I actually had a black woman tell me, after following up a very steamy initial encounter with a night full of nada in my bed, “You’re a great cuddler.  I wanted to do more, but I can’t go out like that.”  What the shit?!  Did the Great God of Blue Balls threaten to strike her down unless she sacrificed my testes on his nocturnal altar?  What kind of (un)fuckery is this?

Well, noted sociologist E. Franklin Frazier identified the roots of this problem back in the late 1950s.  In his seminal work, “Black Bourgeoisie,” Frazier let it be known that the black middle class was playing the assimilation game – hard.  Because they wanted so badly to be accepted by white folk, they actually tried to culturally OUT-white them.  This cut across multiple aspects of life, including the realm of morality.  As such, we developed the idea that a lady must never give in to desires of the flesh until – I’m guessing here – she can be reasonably certain that The People’s Slut Court would find her not guilty.  I’d argue that assimilation’s conservative grip on their panties is still quite robust and shit, 50 years later.

Meanwhile, white women found the pill in the 60s and never looked the fuck back.  I have to stop here and say that black men bear at least half of the fault for this, with all the “slut” this and “ho” that.  Dudes, if you continue with the double standards, you’re only gonna continue fucking yourself.  Literally.  But sistas, you gotta meet us half way.

Understand that no one is looking for the “Girls Gone Wild” experience.  OK, some people are, but those people are all named Colin and under the age of 25, or they’re over 35, named Eugene, and are registered sex offenders.  What is cool is the idea that folks can get together and feel free to let their hair down, do what they wanna do on their own terms, get it crackin’, or not.  ‘Cause by the way, the “not” can be cool too, sometimes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, somewhere out there somebody just let out The White Girl Yell.  Whooohooo!

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October 20, 2011 · 7:30 PM

F*ck Girls’ Night Out: Part II

Were you listening to me, or were you looking at the woman in the red dress?

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Last time around, I wrote about the stresses of navigating the choppy seas and treacherous winds of the infamous Girls’ Night Out.  If you’ll recall, I made mention of the darkness that is the dreaded Circle of Death, a terrifying feminine fortress that has dashed more men’s hopes than Obama’s first term.  Oh, that circle may look harmless enough, but be ye not fooled.  These sirens‘ greatest joy is to toy with a man, leading him ever closer to their shores until, before he knows it, his ship is splintered on their estrogen encrusted rocks.

Even if you’ve got Travolta’s moves, look like that kid Eggs from Trueblood, and are a certified mack daddy, you might still get totally crossed out.  This leaves a lot of us handsome, skilled dancer types scratching our heads.  “I was polite.  I smiled.  I didn’t stare at her breasts (that much).  Why did she diss me?”

To fully grasp what’s going on here, you’ve got to understand the basic structure of female social group dynamics.  Surprise, surprise, they’re strikingly different from those of males.

Male social groups are organized pretty much like fighter squadrons.  They can execute coordinated attacks, but are completely willing and able to break apart as necessary to accomplish the current mission.  On the other hand, female social groups operate using a totally different configuration.  More often than not, they’re arranged like teams of escort fighters aligned with a single bomber.  Those escorts will fight tooth and nail to protect that bomber, and would rather crash and burn than lose it to the testicularly endowed enemy.

Each group member has a role to play in the sociosexual war, and though the lyrics change from crew to crew, the song remains the same.  Here’s a quick rundown of the usual cast of characters:

  1. Prom Queen –She’s fine and errrbody knows it (including her).  She’s been showered with male attention since junior high and getting hit on is as common for her as misspelled signs are at a Tea Party rally.
  2. Big Mama – Who run it?  Yep, you guessed it.  Big Mama is the matriarch of the group, and while she may not have absolute authority, her opinion is so influential that it’s de facto law.  Basically, she’s the U.S. and her crew is like the U.N.  They can do whatever they wanna do…but there will be consequences.
  3. Runner-Up – She’s kinda cute.  She’s got spunk.  Still, line her up next to Prom Queen and Big Mama, and she’s just not quite there.  Maybe it’s something really small, like her left eye is kinda sleepy.  Or perhaps it’s a glaring deficiency, like a chest so flat its freakin’ concave.  At the same time, she always manages to come up short in battles for leadership: Big Mama’s beak just keeps on pecking the bird shit out of her.
  4. Gotta Man – Who cares.  Kidding.  Her relationship status makes her a wildcard.  She could be your best friend, encouraging her girls to enjoy life to the fullest, living vicariously through them.  Or she could be a spiteful ass hater whose unhappy relationship causes her to view all men through shit colored spectacles.  Dicey.
  5. Ugly Betty – Yeah, so…the name pretty much says it all.  She may be a straight sweetheart, or an acid spewing bitch, but regardless of the multifaceted and richly textured personality within her, we know one thing for certain: babygirl is as ugly as the black unemployment rate.

Wherever she goes, Prom Queen is the center of attention.  When she’s around, heads turn, eyes widen, tongues wag.  The spotlight shines steadily on this scion of Venus and more than a little on anyone around her…which is why her friends are so fiercely protective.  She’s one bangin’ ass bomber and they’re her zealously protective escorts.

If some dude comes along and snatches her up, they’re afraid that they’ll have to kiss the attention leftovers goodbye and prepare for a long, cold winter.  That ain’t about to go down, at least not without a fight.

When a dude enters Prom Queen’s airspace, the escorts immediately fly into defensive formation.  Instead of clearing out to give you room, they remain half an arm’s length away, shooting mind bullets indiscriminately and hoping that the initial barrage alone is enough to dissuade you.  Assuming you bravely continue, they’ll move on to such battle-tested tactics as Intermittent Interruption, in which they make excuses to fuck up the flow of your conversation with crap that not even their nosy ass mother would care to hear.  “I think I found a new spin instructor.  Cortez is fabulous!”  What?!  The fuck outta here with that buuuhlshit!

Anyway, if all else fails, they bring out the big guns.  That’s when someone nonchalantly says, “It’s corny in here.  Let’s go.”  That person is usually Big Mama, and Runner-Up and Ugly Betty are almost always down to follow her nut-crunching lead.  At that point, you can only hope that you’ve fired enough well-placed shots to disrupt communications between Prom Queen and her escorts, enabling you to separate her from her crew and finish the job.  If not, you may as well say your prayers.  ‘Cause you’re gonna die.  When your plane crashes.  Metaphorically.

And that’s too bad.  I really wish women would understand that their pretty friend need not be their only path to attention from the opposite sex.

  • Big Mama, channel all that aggression toward the man at the bar who you’ve been eyeing all night.  Use those huge balls of yours for good, not evil!
  • Runner-Up, realize that to somebody in the room, you’re actually a Prom Queen.  Stop doubting and own your strength and beauty.
  • Gotta Man, let somebody else grab a little piece of happiness, even if you fucked yours all the way up the wrong end.  Be a cockbooster, not a cockblocker!
  • Ugly Betty, I’ll level with you.  Yours is not an angel’s face, but maybe you do have an angel’s heart.  Let it show.  Oh, and usually the ugly girls get like at least one freakishly dope body part, so accentuate the hell outta them breastesses and/or that derriere.  It won’t hurt.

Feel like I missed something?  Want the conversation to continue?  Drop a comment below, hit me up on Facebook, or follow @scissorspeaks on Twitter.

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October 6, 2011 · 3:00 PM

F*ck Girls’ Night Out: Part I

Guess which witch was my one wish?

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Ah, the delightful delectability of a night out on the town. Maybe you’ve been cooped up in the crib and need to stretch out a bit. Maybe your boss has had her six inch heel up your ass all week like disturbingly graphic foot fetish porn. Maybe Questlove is spinning and you’ve got the ridiculous urge to watch ridiculously dressed black teenagers do ridiculous dances from a bygone era on ridiculously large screens in a ridiculously inconvenient part of town. Whatever the reason, you want to go out and get your groove on.

Unless you’re suffering some severe mental dysfunction, you realize that this means that you’re going to be in a social setting, i.e. around other people. Presumably, you also comprehend that a significant portion of those individuals will be of the opposite sex. For straight men, that last tidbit is not just an assumption, it’s actually a desired outcome. If we get to a bar or club and the place has more wieners than a Berlin beer garden in October, we will be none too happy. The artist on deck could be the reincarnation of J Dilla, Beethoven and Marvin Gaye all rolled into one, but sheeeit…ain’t no music that fuckin’ good. For men, women are to social events what ketchup is to hood cuisine: they just make everything better. Without them, shit is just shit.

From my experience as a storied amateur sociologist, females seem to have a similar need for the presence of males when they’re out and about. Heck, I’ve certainly been out with my homegirls and heard them complain about girl-heavy parties I’ll affectionately call “coochellas”. If this is true, it would appear that harmonic equilibrium is maintained. But see, that’s where everything actually goes completely batshit CRAY.

Although women certainly want us around when they go out, far too often it seems that they really only needs us to function as a sort of final aesthetic touch. Whereas women are a must-have for any self-respecting man when he’s out to party, no matter if he’s booed up or lustfully single, this is far from the case for the fairer sex. For them, going out with their girlfriends is the process by which they strengthen the bonds of sisterhood through the creation of common memories. Men are only useful in as much as they further the feminine bonding agenda.

If women are our ketchup, we’re just garnish to them. That’s why, nine times out of 10, when a dude walks up to a coven on the dance floor, he’s approaching a Circle of Death.

What this cat sees when he walks up is one fine woman surrounded by two to four less attractive women. (Although there’s a chance that one of the others might also be cute, I’d feel more secure betting on Dr. Dre’s “Detox” to drop before Christ’s return. I’ll get into why this is true in Part II.) What this means is that he’s not only got to overcome any natural obstacles a woman might have to him personally, he’s got to deal with the fact that he just broke up their little Wiccan Beyoncé ritual. And that shit don’t fly. Unless you’ve got the goldenest of tongues, you’re pretty much toast. And not the buttery-and-flaky-but-still-soft-on-the-inside kind. I’m talkin’ about the scrape-the-black-off-it-but-you-gone-eat-it-’cause-we-broke kind. No bueno.

This shit is a travesty and a tragedy, and it’s gotta stop. Not only are you ladies doing us gentlemen a disservice, you’re doing your country a disservice. That’s right. I said you’re being un-American little bastiches.

Cats ain’t got no money to be rollin’ out to spots, buying drinks and whatnot, only to leave with nothing to show for it! Don’t y’all muthaphuckas know times is rough out here in this piece? Every dollar that a man spends paying to get into Black Lion, or Club Cheetara, or Castle Greyskull, is a dollar that could have gone to buying the new PSbox3 console. Every bar charge on his pre-paid debit card is one less dollar to give to Kandi and Kookie, the stripper duo he’s altruistically supporting as they make their way toward University of Phoenix Extended Junior Associates Degrees. Shame on you. Again, I say shame!

Now, before you start bringing up old shit about how this is a free country and all, save your breath. I know that you have the right to live your life as you see fit (until the next time the Republicans control all three branches of American government). If you want to roll out to the spot and get your drink on and party and dance with your girls while you give me and my brothers some analogical, girly version of the Heisman, go right ahead. I’m just saying that if you’d like to gather all your girls together and dance in a circle, sans hommes, you COULD just save us dudes some frustration, stay your frigid asses at home, and have a goofy-ass, manless slumber party.

Or you can join some kind of indigenous tribe. Either one.

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August 25, 2011 · 2:08 PM

Stockholm Syndrome

Back in May, I was listening to two of my best friends ramble on about how I needed to roll on this excursion that they were planning for the summer.  It had been a tough winter, replete with personal and professional drama, and I was told that I needed to reward myself for making it through by going on a crew trip.  We’d party, we’d bond, we’d hang out with pretty girls, we’d embarrass our nation, etc.  It all sounded well and good until they told me of the vacation destination that they had in mind: Stockholm, Sweden.

Cue the Ben Stein face.  “Dude.  Sweden?  Really?  You want me to spend thousands of dollars for a week of blonde women and meatballs?!”  Mind you, I don’t have a problem with either of those things, (although one of them is imminently more appealing than the other).  It was more a question of whether Stockholm had anything else to offer besides Aryan lovelies and spheres of gas-inducing beef.

I need to clear up how wrong I was, for the record.  Literally.  Stockholm in the summer was so much fun that I had to write a song about it.  You can check it out at the bottom of this post.

Of course, it could be argued that the feel-good, synth-hop track that spilled out of my ticker and noggin paints a somewhat lopsided view of things.  I mean, it’s basically all about partying and women…but hey, it’s rap music.  Everybody knows that hip-hop ain’t capable of exploring such profound notions as the grandeur of cultural exchange or delight in the brotherhood of man, right?  Shut the fuck up, Donny.

Seriously though, Stockholm is a fantastic place, full of warm, friendly people.  I think I met one mean person the entire time I was there, and that was a clerk at a convenience store.  Since society apparently values me more than it does her, I’m not even going to count that little unfortunate blip on the Scandinavian radar.  Plus, the gorgeous, extravagantly welcoming women who served as our hosts more than made up for her stank ass.  Tack mycket!

Anyway, I hope you dig the track.  Imagine that you’re in your own happy place as you listen, and you’ll get the feel for what Stockholm means to me now.  Of course with my luck, the next time I go there I’ll get beaten by poliser or blown up by an anti-terrorist terrorist or something.  Whatever.

In the meantime, I miss you, Stockholm.

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August 11, 2011 · 7:30 PM

Sex Shooters: Social Media and Female Self-Esteem

If you're gonna post a scandalous Facebook pic, THIS is how to do it. We miss you, Apollonia.

Men spend an inordinate amount of time in the pursuit of encounters with sexy women.  These encounters need not be in the real world, of course.  I mean, I don’t have to tell you which industry is responsible for the big, beautiful broadband world we live in right now, do I?  Hint: it involves naked people having sex.

But guys don’t need to satisfy our sex fix with explicit material.  Women in sexy outfits, making sexy faces, hinting at sexy things that they might do will work just fine (while we’re in public, at least).  Lucky for us, ladies seem more than happy to quench our thirst for this stuff, and the rise of social media has provided them with a huge hose to like, drown us in T&A.  Sorry, Yeezy, but that’s a beautiful death.

From the crazy number of entries to American Apparel’s 2010 “Best Bottom Contest” to sites like ilikecurves.com (lots of pros, but plenty of amateurs in there), women love to let us know that they look sexy.  And I love that they love it.  I just wonder why they love it.

Don’t get me wrong.  It makes my day when I see some fine ass lady has posted a picture of herself with a come-hither pucker on some juicy, shimmering lips, rockin’ a body-hugging dress so tight it appears to be a strange but erotic skin mutation.  Freakum dresses are wonderful, splendid gifts from the gods and are right beneath leggings and biking shorts as the greatest fashion innovation since…well…clothes.

I’m just sayin’ though, it’s like you just walked up to everybody you’re cool with and said, “Me and my girls went to the club last night and I was lookin’ tatalicious: check out these blatant, semi-lesbian photos!  But wait, there’s more!  If you click right now, I’ll throw in this trunk-rattlin’ donk shot – tilt your laptop a little and you might even see some cheek pokin’ out!”

I loves it, but why are there SO many semi-scandalous pictures of you at the club?  And of you in your bikini at the beach?  And of you in your bikini at the club on the beach?  I’m not buying that you got dressed and took those pictures for yourself, etc., etc.  That argument barely holds water in the real world and the whole goddamned bottom drops out the bucket when you extend it to posting photos on Facebook.  By definition, when you put that image on a social network, YOU WANT AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE TO SEE IT.  At least the ones in your personal network.

If you ask me, there’s such a preponderance of this behavior because a big segment of women want desperately to be sex symbols.  It validates their self-image and shores up their self-esteem.  I actually feel somewhat silly writing that because it’s not too controversial of a thought, really.  Women know that men like attractive, sexually interesting (and interested) women, so why wouldn’t women want to appeal to that desire?  We all do what we need to do to feel wanted, no matter the context.  We all want to know that we contribute to the world in some way and to be recognized for it.

Of course, most ladies also want to be respected professionals, venerated spouses and adored parents, too.  No one is denying or minimizing that fact.  It’s just that until recently, as crazy as it sounds, it was a lot easier to be a great ad executive or professor or mom than it was to be a pin-up girl, at least for a big audience.

Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram, where the artsy sexy pics go to live, have changed all of that.  Today, a woman can show everybody that’s she’s a mother AND a MILF, electronically gushing as compliments like, “OK WERK IT GUUUURRRL” and “Damn!  Tell Craig he betta treat you rite!” just stream in.  Cherie, the second year med student, need only tag herself in the mechanical bull shot with her girl Peaches to hint at how sweet a night out with the two of them might be.  Dude, who needs King, FHM or even Playboy when you’ve got the muthaeffin’ News Feed?!

Again, I’m all for it.  Self-expression, especially semi-nude self-expression of the female variety, is a moral imperative.

In fact, just to show my commitment to this noble principle, I’m inviting all you ladies to post your sexiest photo to www.facebook.com/scissorspeaks or tweet it to @scissorspeaks.  The one who gets the most positive comments will win a date with me and I’ll interview you about your experience for an upcoming post – you’ll get to tell errbody how it really is.  But here’s the catch: you’ve also gotta include a picture of you when you first wake up.

What, no takers?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

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August 4, 2011 · 2:17 PM

The Deciders

You gotta give it to him. He never shied away from a decision...no matter how hairy things got.

I’m usually a fan of liberty.  Determining one’s own destiny, living the life that you want to live, making your own choices, it’s all great stuff – usually.  Still, I’ve been thinking a lot lately that freedom of choice can be an awfully heavy load to carry.  I can’t help but feel that sometimes, it would be uber fantastic to part with some of that freedom in exchange for peace of mind.

You know what I’m talking about.

Should you move to San Francisco for the job you’ve always dreamt of having, even though you know absolutely no one there and doing so would mean walking away from a 15% higher salary?  Do you kick it with Eric, the mischievous golden boy with the soft interior (kinda like a slightly rotten Twinkie)?  Or do you get all homewreckerish and throw your chips down on Alcide, the loner with rugged good looks, a heart of gold and a crazy-ass bitch for a girlfriend?  I mean, even something as “simple” as the admittedly bougie law school/business school conundrum is enough to drive the most stable of us to drink.

So, wouldn’t it be nice to just opt out?

If you could have someone else spend time deliberating, then make the decision for you, wouldn’t that just be awesome balls?  Whenever you found yourself at a point at which your ability to gaze through the fog of your own emotions was too limited to allow you to take another step, you’d simply reach out and *POOF* a helping hand would emerge from the mist to pull you onto the right path.

Think of all the excruciating pain you could avoid and the precious time you could save!  You could approach the biggest challenges in life with a sense of optimism, free from fear of that manipulative bastard, Pride or that relentless bitch, Guilt.  You’d always be secure in the knowledge that whatever happened, you made the best decision that you could…given the available data.  (You know the applicable phrase: shit in, shit out.)

Of course, there would be some guidelines:

  1. No decision would be made by just one person.  Instead, each Supplicant would request a decision from a Triune of Selectors; one subject matter expert, one mental health expert, and one lay person.  The objective would be to assess the relative merits of an option with as holistic a view as possible.
  2. Every citizen of voting age must serve as a Selector once per year.  The service period would last for a month.  During that time, the Selector would be called to serve as needed.
  3. Supplicants can elect to pay a fee for the service, or use it at no cost.  The fee would equal 5% of the supplicant’s yearly salary.  If they are unemployed, or otherwise lack the financial wherewithal to pay, then they would be made to perform an extra month as a Selector that year.  If they choose the free option, then they’d pay nothing, but the Triune’s decision would be unequivocally, incontrovertibly binding.

You might be wondering why the cost is relatively high.  Well, as any American middle schooler will tell you after the Civil War unit in social studies class, freedom is never free.  This includes freedom of choice, kids.

The power to shape one’s life is so fundamental to having a worthwhile existence as a human being that willingly relinquishing that freedom should have a price, too.  And that price should be high enough to serve as a reminder of the value of the possession that you’re handing over to a bunch of strangers.  Plus, it keeps idiots from registering a request every time they can’t figure out whether they should get with the flat-chested one with the apple bottom or the human life preserver with an ironing board ass.

I don’t know about you, but I so would love to have this option in my life.  The decisions only get more complex as I get older, and relying on friends and family to help out ain’t always a good idea.  Are you really gonna get career advice from your underemployed brother?  Oh, and I’d guess that your divorced homegirl going through the custody battle ain’t the best source for relationship tips, babygirl.

Still, I know that this is just a pipe dream.  In the end, we’re all the ultimate arbiters of our destinies; we’ve all got to channel our inner Dubya to become The Decider.  (I know, I know.  I just threw up inside my mind a little after I wrote that.)  And hey, I guess if even that dude can accept the challenge, so can we all.

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July 22, 2011 · 3:22 PM

Drink ‘Til It Helps

"The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies." - Sir William Temple

I didn’t start drinking until I was almost 22 years old.

It wasn’t like I was bowing to overbearing religious pressure or because alcoholism runs in my family and I didn’t want to unlock the fiend gene.  No, I had opted to ignore the strictures prescribed by my childhood faith long ago and my family has produced no more winos than your average American clan.  For me, I think it just came down to the fact that I couldn’t find a good reason to start.

Ever since I could remember, I was always the life of the party.  If there was conversation, I was in the middle of it.  If there was laughter, I probably instigated it.  If there was music, I danced hard.  Unlike some of my more introverted contemporaries, I didn’t need a social lubricant.  Even when I was undergoing the process of joining one of Harvard’s elite Final Clubs, famous for hosting parties where liquor flows as freely as the women who frequent their doors, I didn’t partake.  And at the time, I kind of believed that it would go on that way forever.

Looking back, I should have known that it would be a woman that would eventually drive me to drink.

In the interest of modesty (not mine, but hers), I won’t go into the details.  But let’s just say that I wanted our relationship to go to place that she did not.  Already having drunk deeply from an emotional cocktail formed of equal parts anger, frustration and lust (I like to call it “Palpatine’s Punch”), I decided that it was time to get chemically inebriated as well.  So I drank Smirnoff, I drank Bacardi 151…I just drank.  And I got TWISTED.

The thing is, despite almost losing control, nothing that happened was outside of the realm of my 22-year-old identity.  I mischievously embarrassed my friends, I freestyled interminably, and I made out with a girl with whom I had had no previous sexual encounters.  Fun, fun, and more fun.  It was all me, just at Level 10, and I happily duplicated this experience plenty of times in the years that followed.

Of course, turning the volume up to Level 10 doesn’t always mean that the music is gonna be upbeat.  There have been more than a few times when the song that played was deeply, deeply dark and disturbing.  I’m talking about torrential tears and mumbling with despair disturbing.  I’m talking, “Go walk a couple of miles in the NYC winter so that the wind can slap you until it cuts your face because you’re alone and no one actually cares that you exist so just freeze since you’re ice inside anyway.”  Yeah, like that dark and disturbing.

But guess what?  That was me, too.

I’ve come to embrace these inner visions, even when I don’t like what I see.  Even when I don’t know what the fuck I’m seeing.  Perhaps I enjoy the latter even more than the former – it’s then that I get answers to questions about me that I didn’t even know I had.  It’s like Jeopardy: The Me Edition.

And it’s with that in mind that I implore you to devote one day out of every month to getting unapologetically, undoubtedly drunk.

Now, before you go alerting MADD and AA and the NAACP and S.H.I.E.L.D., I’m not advocating drinking to the point where you lose control of your bladder.  Trust me, I’ve done it, and it’s NOT as refreshing as it might seem.  I’m just asking you to push yourself past the point where you start to want to make some bad decisions, and then halt just before you’re no longer able to define what a bad decision even is.  Once you master this ability, let’s call it the Drunken Dance, you’ll be able to drive yourself to the brink of shitfacedness while staying safely in the realm of passionate self-discovery.

Of course, if you know that you can’t handle your liquor, please disregard everything that I’ve written above.  No one wants to deal with an idiot who transforms into a complete dungmuncher if they even smell a Corona.  That goes for you, Mr. Space Invader and for you, Ms. Sloppy Slutnasty.  Back away from the margaritas and Jäger shots, thank you.

For those of you for whom drinking is not a fast-track to Loserville, I welcome you to heed my advice.  Let yourself go…at least once a month.  You owe it to yourself.  Besides, you’re probably too broke, too busy, or too afraid of the stigma to seek real professional help anyway.  Drinking is way cheaper, plus how often can you leave your therapist’s office with a hot little thing on your arm?  Double win!

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