Super Bowl Ticket for One

Am I the only one who likes watching the Super Bowl by myself? No matter what the scenario I usually find myself irritated for most of the game unless I’m watching it by myself. First, there’s the whole sports bar scene where about 1000 people crowd around 3 or 4 flat screens hanging on the wall. Sometimes the sound is turned up on the TVs but you can barely hear it because it’s being drowned out by people yelling and screaming. Sometimes you’ll get sound until there’s a timeout and then it’s club time and the music is blasting at ear splitting levels. At every sports bar you always see the same characters, like the guy who’s sitting at the bar turning around every two minutes to see what girls (sometimes what guy) is looking at him,then he has to get up several times so every one can see his coogi sweater or new leather jacket that he has on. Not to be out done, you’ll have the woman who’s there either with her boyfriend or with a couple of other girls on the prowl (typically cougars) who will sash shay past your table 100 times so you have no choice but to look at her out of shape butt squeezed into some wack apple bottom jeans. Usually I have a headache by the second quarter from straining to hear my friends over the music or screaming over the music so they can hear me. The sad part is I’m still considering this option for Sunday.

Many people enjoy going to mini house parties to watch the Super Bowl. This option is cool if you either know a bunch of the people there or if some of the people there are knowledgeable about football and you’re able to have some good debates. If you don’t have one of those two things going for you then you’re in trouble. I went to Super Bowl party one year and had somebody’s drunk uncle spitting in my ear for 5 hours about how good the Steelers were in the 70’s he kept saying words like “Kordaback” instead of Quarterback. I don’t know if that was as bad as time when I went to a S.B. party with this girl I was dating. She knew most of the people there and I didn't know anyone. (Big mistake) Of course there was a hating guy at the party who kept saying phrases like “remember that time" to this girl and then looking at me for my reaction. After the 5th time I gave him a serious mean mug only to remember that he was there with 3 dudes and I was only there with that girl. I think we probably had a combined weight of 250 at the time. Not good odds for us. To make matters worse, the girl kept responding “ooooohhhh I remember that”. I remember that was the last time I went out with her dumb ass.

Most of my friends are doing their own thing this year and most of my wife’s friends are wack so I don’t know if I’ll be doing the house party thing this year. I’ll probably just end up watching the game on my couch at home by myself. Actually this could be a great father/son bonding experience. I can explain to my son why daddy is getting mad at the TV even though my favorite team isn’t playing. Then I can also explain what a “point spread” is and what is the “over/under” and how it’s relevant to paying the mortgage this month and keeping the heat on. Yeah that’s what I’ll do, I’d much rather hear him say “daddy, touchdown” then to have someone’s drunk uncle spitting in my ear saying “You got to sack da Kordaback “ all night.

Intuition- Good but a little less would have been better

When Jamie Foxx’s last CD “Unpredictable” dropped in 2005, I waited several months before I even listened to it. I said I would wait until at least 5 people said it was good or decent and then I would listen. I think this was a direct result of the memories had of first CD “Infatuation”. Yeah that’s right Unpredictable was not his first CD, his first one came out in 1994. He was fresh off of In Living Color and not yet a movie star, so it was hard to take him seriously as an R&B artist. To make matters worse, one of my boys would always want me to play the CD (tape back then) in my car. I was a teenager at the time pumping Biggie and Wu-Tang so this request always seemed a little gay but I listened to it anyway. There were a couple of good songs on there but mostly weak songs with terrible production. He didn’t have the heavyweight producers beating down his door back then. Anyway, I gave Unpredictable a listen and really liked it. I thought Foxx and Kanye made a great team and he held his own on the other tracks. So I was definitely anticipating his new CD “Intuition”.

“Just Like Me” sounds like it could have been a leftover from Unpredictable but in a good way. It’s a song that grows on you and it seems like whatever T.I. jumps on instantly becomes hotter these days. I was also feeling “I Don’t Need It”, even though it sounds like a poor man’s “Sexy Back” it still sounds different than the average R&B heard on the radio. As an added bonus I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out whether they were saying the word Bitch in the chorus. I’m getting really tired of hearing LiL Wayne ……wait I’m lying, I’m not tired of hearing LiL Weezy so I enjoyed “Number One” also. I think it had more to do with Just Blaze’s production and less to do with Weezy and Foxx’s faux rap/singing. The next three songs: “Digital Girl”, “Blame it” and “She’s Got Her Own” are all hits. Kanye rips it on Digital girl and Blame it is already a club banger. I hope Ne-Yo is getting paid for Foxx taking his She Got her Own remix because it’s not on Ne-Yo’s weak CD and it probably could have helped. It appears that the second half of the CD is dedicated to slow jams. I wasn’t feeling “I Don’t Know”, “Freaking Me” and “Slow”. The last two sounded like a songs that Silk would have done in the mid 90’s. One of my favorite tracks has to be “Overdose”, almost everyone can relate to the feeling of jonesing too hard for one person and feeling like you're dependent. A good smack in the face and a “what the f**k is wrong with you”, usually cures that feeling….At least for me. Anyway, although I’m not a big fan of The Dream, I do think he is a good producer and definitely blessed Foxx with some hot tracks. I think Jamie Foxx would have been smarter to cut down on some of the tracks, maybe to about 11 or 12 and the CD would have felt like a banger from beginning to end.

Who Works on MLK Day?

Me that’s who! Instead of enjoying the NFL games that were on yesterday, I spent most the game thinking about coming in to work today. I watched the game at a local sports bar and at least 5 people said “what, you have to go to work tomorrow?” Even my friend that I was there with kept giving me a hard time saying “we can leave, I know you have to get up and go to work in the morning”. None of that was bad as when I first told my mother I had to work on Martin Luther King Day. She works in Human Resources so benefits and paid holidays are very important to her. Her initial reaction was “WHAT????????” Pretty much the same reaction as when I said my company only gives us 6 paid holidays, except this time she added a “Oh Hell No” for good measure. All of this feedback got me to thinking if I should be going in to work at all. Any way you look at it, my company is sending a message to its employees, specifically its minority employees that they’re not going to recognize a federal holiday honoring a man who has been credited with leading the civil rights movement in America and the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. And its not like I work at McDonald’s or even with the metro transit system where I would need to be there to help other people get to work. No I work for a large corporation that contracts out to the federal government, meaning we’re working for people who are off today. So how can I show my dissatisfaction with this situation? I can just take the day off but with a 2 year old that goes to daycare I need all the vacation hours I can save. I can tell my company that they should pay me for the day because it is a federal holiday but I’m sure that conversation would end badly and with a 2 year old that goes to daycare I need all of the money I can earn. So I decided on going to work but not actually working, regardless if it’s something that I do everyday anyway. I know being here today is my fault for not taking the necessary steps in my career to ensure that I would be fully in charge of whether or not I had to work today, so I’ll take the “L” this year and celebrate in style next year…….sleeping.

Game?......What game?

It has taken four days but I’m finally ready to talk about the Giants losing this past weekend. It was a sad, sad day in the Allweez household. Ok maybe not the household but definitely for the daddy part of the house. My wife and son were oblivious to the fact that my favorite team was getting their taints handed to them by the Eagles. I knew I wasn’t over the game on Monday when I picked up my son from his daycare and saw that one of his classmate’s parents had on an Eagles jersey and I immediately wanted to punch him in his neck. And I would have done it if he wasn’t about 5 inches taller and 80 lbs heavier than me. All I could muster was “Aww man take that jersey off, ha ha ha”. Ha ha ha my ass. My pops had been warning me since week 14 of the NFL regular season that he didn’t want to see the Eagles in the playoffs and I told him to basically shut it, the Giants will handle it. I’m almost positive my Pops jinxed the game five weeks in advance. Thanks Pops.

I knew we (the Giants) were in trouble when Eli Manning turned into Eli from 2006 and threw his first pass of the game 5 yards short of wide receiver Steve Smith. We ended up kicking a field goal and losing the momentum we had from the long opening kick off return. It was all downhill from there. I have to pin most of the blame on this loss on Eli anyway. And don’t hand me any bull about it being a windy day and that affected his throwing. Donovan McNabb played with the same conditions and he played like it was 80 degrees out. It was funny hearing the commentators and various people talking about how Eli misses Plaxico Burress. NO SH*T! He’s 6’5 and can jump, you take him away and Eli can no longer just throw it up and have Plax go get it. Neither Smith, Domenik Hixon nor Sinorice Moss are game changers and Amani Toomer runs like he’s 50 years old at this point. Even before the playoff loss I though Plax should be brought back next year and this only reinforces that point but he would definitely be on a short leash. One man is not bigger than the team. With Osi “Five Hour Energy” Umenyiora coming back from knee surgery the defense will be strong again next year. I swear if I see that damn 5 hour energy commercial one more time I’m going to.........buy it. Many people will argue this but I believe Brandon Jacobs has to go. I like the way the offense flows with Derrick Ward starting and Ahmad Bradshaw coming in off the bench. Ward is a much better pass catcher and to me he runs just as hard as Jacobs and he’s 40 lbs. lighter. We’ll be alright. And I guess I’ll be alright also. I think I, like other Giants fans were spoiled after last years magical run and all the excitement that came with it. There’s nothing like having people congratulate you on your team’s victory because they know that was your team from the beginning and you didn’t just jump on the bandwagon. I hate people like that! I guess I’ll just have to sit back and see if Donovan McNabb can take “us” to the Super Bowl. Go Eagles!

Universal Grind Control

Common is back a year and half after he made his last CD “Finding Forever”, which I thought was a good but suffered a little bit from Kanye West’s heavy production hand. It had mix of mid 90’s Common sprinkled with some party Common and a side consciousness. His new CD “Universal Mind Control” let’s you know right out the gate that Common is ready to get his b-boy/club banger swag on. With the booming base of the famous Africa Bambabata sample followed by the chorus “this is that new shit”, I immediately wanted to start popping and locking. This song took me back to the “Planet Rock” days and one summer cookout in particular in which my grandmother had me go get her a beer inside neighbor’s house. It was night time and there were about 100 African masks hanging on the wall inside, waiting to scare the shit out of me while “Planet Rock” is blasting through the speakers. I ran through the house like Usain Bolt at the Bejing Olympics. Anyway, it’s also clear that Common is not campaigning for writer of the year with lyrics like “My uh is in you body, my uh is in you mind/check my dictionary, that ass is so defined” on Punch Drunk Love featuring Kanye. Thankfully Kanyeezy spares us the pain of listening to him sing with the autotune machine. I’ll give a run down of the other songs I like on the CD: “Make My Day” featuring the always underrated Cee-Lo, “Sex for Suga” the title speaks for itself , “Announcement” featuring Pharrel was a 2 or 3 listen song before I liked it and “Gladiator” old school CommSense crushing you in your f**king head!

The CD drags a little towards the second half of the CD, “Changes” got quick skip, “What a World” and “Everywhere” sound like a new wave/pop mix but I figured there would be a couple of throwaways. I guess it comes down to whether you like Neptune’s production and whether you like Common a little lighter on the consciousness. For me the answer is yes and sort of. I’ve always enjoyed The Neptunes and they’ve toned it down a bunch since the NORE “What What” days. And I believe Common has a lot more B-boy in him than Mr. Crochet pants, so I don’t think he’s selling out at all. He’s just showing another side of his personality just
like anyone of us would do.

Bed Wars with Junior

A serious point of contention between my wife and I recently has revolved around my son sleeping in our bed. At two years old he takes up his fair share of our queen sized mattress. His constant moving can be felt through out the night. “He’s just trying to get comfortable”, my wife says. I don’t think he’s trying to get comfortable, I think he’s trying to find new angles to kick me in my nuts! And that’s just on normal sleeping nights, this isn’t counting the nights when he’s having his ninja-fighting dreams, then he’s kicking me in the face like Adam Sandler in “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan”. There have also been times when he starts running in place in the middle of the night, where he’s going I have no idea. Maybe he’s dreaming about picking up his toys that I scrape my feet on when I’m walking in the dark at night. Maybe not. I love how he finds a way to end up laying horizontal each night, no matter how many times I lay him back vertical. When he’s horizontal his favorite thing to do is put his feet on my back like it’s a coffee table. I move his feet off; he puts them back on, challenging my Daddy status. One day last week I decided to pull out my secret weapon: A heat seeking funk fart! He quickly pulled his little pajammied feet off me. Score one for the Daddy-Man! For my safety (and his), I can’t keep up the funk farting so I’m going to have to think of something else. I was thinking about putting on a giant Elmo mascot head and waking him up in the middle of the night so he would be too scared to sleep in our bedroom but that would just lead to more bad dreams and more running in place and more nut kicking. I was extremely tired last night and seconds from picking him up and placing him in his own bed in his room, when he put his arm around my neck and said “daddy” softly and went back to sleep. In my head I was thinking “You’re all right little man, you’re alright” (Like a bad 70’s black movie actor) That may have earned him another week or two in our bed but after that he’s going to his own damn bed!.............Sure

Down, Set, Criticize

Neither the Eagles nor the Vikings are one of my favorite football teams, but watching the game between them on Sunday was kind of depressing. Although I was happy for my son to see two people that looked like him playing quarterback for their teams, I winced at every Donovan McNabb overthrow and every Tavaris Jackson pass thrown at the feet of his wide receivers. With each incompletion the image of black quarterbacks in the NFL took a hit. In a year in which black quarterbacks were constantly taking a media beating, this game only added insult to injury. The downward spiral really started last year with Michael Vick’s incarceration. Football analysts had already considered Vick to be just a physically gifted athlete who didn’t possess the skills to play the quarterback position. “Skills” being code for intelligence. And this was before he started pretending he was Will Smith in I Am Legend and choking out dogs. If you go down the list of black QB’s that started games in the NFL this year: Jason Campbell, DeMarcus Russell, Vince Young, Daunte Culpepper, David Garrad, Jackson and McNabb, only Seneca Wallace was given semi favorable reviews. But there was little mention of what these QB’s had to deal with during the season. Campbell was learning from his 3rd offensive coordinator in 4 years, Russell is playing for one of the worst organizations in the NFL in the Oakland Raiders, I think Vince Young is dealing with problems that go beyond football that he needs help with, Culpepper was set up to fail coming in trying to help the Lions who ended up with zero victories, Garrad ending up losing 4 starting lineman, one of which was shot 14 times and is now paralyzed. Jackson may be out of Minnesota soon but he’s young and still has time to develop.

McNabb easily receives the most negative press of all the black quarterbacks. I’ve always liked McNabb, we’re close in age and I was impressed by the way he handled himself after he was booed on draft day. I was also glad he took the high road and didn’t stoop down to that clown Terrell Owens level of shucking and jiving. That’s why I was so surprised when he admitted after a game earlier this year against the Bengals that he didn’t know NFL games could end in a tie. Whether he knew the rule or not, he knew better than to say he didn’t know. Listening to some of the sports talk radio after the game, I could just feel some of the caller’s venom towards McNabb and you sense that they were ready to say “stupid n****r” after each sentence.. Even with some of the disappointment McNabb has had the last couple of seasons,his stats (30,000 passing yards, 200 TD’s and a 73-39 win/loss total) leave him as one of the best black quarterbacks to ever play, alongside one of my childhood idols Warren Moon. Thankfully he was able to bounce back and lead his team to the playoffs and quiet some of his critics. Watching Ohio State’s freshmen quarterback Tyrelle Pryor last night gave me hope that there are future black stars at this position but it ultimately rests on McNabb’s shoulders and how far he take his team in the playoffs. With all that being said, I hope his @ss goes home this weekend since I’m a Giants fan but I hope he plays well enough not to receive most of the blame.

Kanye West- 808's and Sleeping Pills

For my first blog entry I’ve decided to review Kanye West’s latest CD (I usually say “album” but I’ve decided to use CD in this blog for the readers who haven’t found at least one strand of gray in their hair yet), anyway I chose Kanye’s 808’s and Heartbreaks for my first album because he’s been a lightning rod of controversy over the last couple of years and people can’t seem to get enough. And I’m also a fan. The big question everyone had was “Is Kanye really going to use the autotune machine for an entire CD”? The answer is yes and to answer your other question before you ask it: IT SUCKS! It starts off slow and depressing with “Say You Will”. It’s bad enough that he’s whining about a girl playing games with his heart but you realize quickly that the autotuned Kanye is going to be a problem. Some of the words are not understandable and his voice makes T-Pain’s voice sound like Luther Vandross. At least Kanye uses his regular rap voice for “Welcome to Heartbreak” over a nice little Drummer boy rat-tat-tat-tat beat…..Oh wait, hear comes autotune Kanye for no apparent reason ruining the already drepressing song. “Heartless” is the first actual head nodding song with backround production sounding similar to an in his prime doctor Dre, which makes you forget about the autotune for a while. “Amazing” continues the head nodding and finishes with a strong performance by Young Jeezy. Say what you want about Jeezy but on big time collabo projects he brings it, like in the verse I’m Amazing/ Born on a full moon/ I was bread to get in/No spoon. Yeeeeaaaaaaaah!

And that’s where the “fun” ends, more autotune and depression follows. I don’t care what anyone says “Love Lockdown” sucks, I don’t want to have to wait every other 45 seconds for the bass to kick in. Now if I’m in the club and I’ve had a couple drinks, I’m going to be nodding my head like the dudes from that Saturday Night Live sketch and Pepsi commercial, pretending I know the words… “Paranoid” was the only other song I liked on the CD, probably because Mr. West uses his normal rap voice for part of the song….Did I mention autotune and depression were heavily involved in the rest of the CD? That and a bit of screaming from Lil Wayne. Some people will say at least Kanye took a chance and did something different but this shit doesn’t apply. I liked the chances he took on Graduation with “Stronger”, “Drunky Hot Girls” etc. but I don’t need any extra depressing thoughts in my life; being married, having weird friends and dealing with this economy crisis is depressing enough thank you! Here’s hoping Kanye finds the new love of his life in this new year and gets back to over the top stunting that we all love.

Intro

Welcome to the Allweezgot blog site. I decided to start this new year by creating a blog. Blogging about the different things that interest me and/or get on my nerves. Hopefully writing about my thoughts will bring a little more sanity to my life and not make me want to drop kick someone walking too slow at the train station, mail a shit sandwich to my boss or beat my wife and son for laughing too much. I’m kidding about that last one but you get where I’m coming from. As it states in the title I will write about sports, entertainment and everyday life shit. I plan on doing at least two entries a week but we all know how schedules change. Hopefully there will be some people who are able to relate.




Allweez