Aren’t You Supposed to be a Rapper?

A few nights ago my friend MC Neal called me. We hadn’t spoken for some time. We haven’t seen each other for even longer. About once a month we make plans to make plans.

MC Neal guest rapped on my album, on a track called, “The Cool Style”. He asked when we were going to collaborate again, and I had to admit, I haven’t thought much about rapping lately. For a while I was working on the follow-up to Blarin’, which was to be called Aaroneous Claims. I even recorded five tracks for it. But I’m only happy with two of them.

A while back I’d been talking about retiring from the rap game in order to become a businessman. Mostly this seemed like a cool thing to do. Jay-Z did it. The thing is, now I basically have retired, and meanwhile, Jay-Z has unretired.

Note the similarities in pose between Jay-Z and MC Aaron.

I’m thinking of putting out a greatest hits album. Maybe a few tracks from my album, and then some others I recorded at various times over the past year. That could be smooth. Even better than retiring after one album is retiring after one album and then releasing a greatest hits album that clocks in at about 25 minutes.

2007 Top 10 Flicks

1. No Country For Old Men – I’ve already seen it twice. It’s just incredible.

2. There Will Be Blood – “New Year’s is for amateurs,” my friend Anthony informed me. So we decided to go see this flick at 10:30 on New Year’s Eve. It was the right move. The theater wasn’t too crowded, and afterwards we got beers. The movie is amazing. P.T. Anderson is a real master. In this movie he addresses major issues, capitalism vs. religion. It’s remarkable that he could make a masterpiece ensemble film like Magnolia, and then make a masterpiece character study like this one. He’s so good with actors. And the score by Jonny Greenwood (the guitarist from Radiohead) is brilliant as well.

3. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Great performances, especially by Casey Affleck. He’s also terrific this year in Gone Baby Gone. And it’s shot really well. Understated, but slowly envelopes you.

4. The Lives of Others – The characters are drawn out so beautifully, as are the scenarios. And what can I say, I love movies about surveillance. Amazing that this is by a first time writer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

5. The Darjeeling Limited – Anyone who dismisses it as just another Wes Anderson movie is dumb.

6. Zodiac – This one is underrated. David Fincher rules, and here he explores a side of police work we don’t usually see in film. Plus it’s freaking suspenseful!

7. Inland Empire – I’ve got to see this one again. As usual with David Lynch these days, it takes more than one viewing to take it all in. All you can really appreciate upon first viewing are individual scenes. The scene where the neighbor comes by and slowly reveals that she’s not quite a neighbor gave me chills. David Lynch is my favorite director, along with Stanley Kubrick.

8. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – I had avoided seeing this one for a long time. Somehow I’d lost faith in Philip Seymour Hoffman after seeing him in a couple mediocre movies. But man, his performance here is awesome, as is the fact that he just completely let his body go for this role. He’s heavy both physically and emotionally. I was surprised how good this movie is. Ethan Hawke is also really good. Sidney Lumet directed. It may be more of a guy’s movie. It’s quite depressing, but so unique and well done. Many of the scenes manage to be over the top and realistic at the same time. I don’t want to give specific examples because it’s best to see a movie like this without knowing anything about it first. I will say that it starts slow, and you need to give it about ten minutes before it gets going.

9. Michael Clayton – It’s tough to say what I like about this movie without giving the plot away. So I’ll just say George Clooney is excellent, and his character arc is subtle but powerful. While he is rated highly as an actor, he is still underrated. This movie is not flashy but is very well done. One of the things that really stuck out for me is all the cell phones, what it’s like to be someone who must answer his cell phone when it rings, and much of the time it rings, it’s bad news. The director, Tony Gilroy, wrote all three of the Bourne movies. The fact that this movie is only #9 on this list shows that this is a great year for movies.

10. Hot Rod – Hilarious.

Honorable Mention: The Bourne Ultimatum; Eastern Promises; Death Proof.

If any of you are interested, last year’s best movie was Little Children.

Clusterfuck

What is a clusterfuck? Isn’t it just a cluster? So why does it get to have the word fuck in it? That doesn’t seem fair.

Like bumblefuck is not a bumble. It is its own word. But clusterfuck and cluster mean the same thing.

Cornbread Sucks Ass

Whatup ya’ll. You know what food item totally sucks? Pizza? Wrong! Pizza is awesome. It’s cornbread. Cornbread sucks ass.

Cornbread tastes bland and bitter. The only reason people think cornbread goes well with chili is because chili is good enough to overpower the crapiness of cornbread. You know what else goes well with chili? Regular bread. Or crackers. Or anything.

This chef is smiling because he is not about to make some cornbread. Man, that is an enormous cookbook.

And so does cornbread.

Parsley

Whoever is in charge of bunching parsley is not doing a good job. There is always way too much parsley in a bunch. Recipes that call for parsley generally only call for a few sprigs. And yet a bunch of parsley contains about 50 sprigs. That is simply too much parsley for anyone not having a dinner party.

So the trick is, how do we eat all this parsley before it goes bad? My friend, it is a challenge. You can use it in certain soups, like gazpacho. You can use it in cheddar cheese sandwiches. You can use it as garnish, but garnish is LAME. Even if you’re having a dinner party. Garnish is like, Hey, let’s waste this food, in order to make this plate look slightly more appetizing.

Personally, I eat the garnish. Because I don’t give a fuck.

The question is, why do we need to eat parsley? Answer: because parsley is really healthy. I don’t know if that is scientifically proven, but I am sure of it, just like I’m sure that celery has enormous health benefits which have not yet been scientifically proven.

There are two types of parsley: regular and curly. Here is some curly:

In case you didn’t know what parsley looks like.

My mom prefers regular. I prefer curly. I have no reason to choose curly over regular, I just do. Sometimes in life you have to make decisions based on nothing. And those are the toughest decisions to make. That having been said, I would eat either curly or regular.

My mom, however, will only eat regular. We were in the supermarket one time, and she told me to get some parsley. I grabbed a bunch of curly. My mom was like, Not that kind. Get the regular kind.

You’ve got to respect it anytime anyone has any conviction, no matter what it’s for.

Humans vs. Monkeys

This morning on the radio the host was talking about this experiment some scientist did to test the estimating capabilities of monkeys vs. those of humans. The scientist set up an experiment where the monkey was shown a series of dots in a brief amount of time, and then had to estimate how many dots there were. I’m not exactly sure how the monkey logged his estimation. The radio host did not say! The same experiment was then done with students at Duke University. The monkeys got 75% right, and the humans got 90% right. So the scientist concluded that the estimating capabilities of monkeys and humans are essentially the same.

What? Since when is a score of 75% equal to a score of 90%? It seems pretty far off to me. One is a C, one is an A. 15% is a wide gap in my book.

Which is why science experiments are dumb a lot of the time. Because what the fuck? You can just conclude whatever you want?

I’m pretty sure I can estimate how many dots there are better than this guy:

There are all these people in the world who cavalierly distort what’s in front of them and turn it into something else. Please do not do this, my friends.

So listen, scientists, when you do experiments, try and come to a conclusion based on the data you collected, not whatever conclusion you wanted to come to before you did the experiment.

Peace out.

It’s funny how a lot of people, myself included, use the word “Peace” to say goodbye in instances when they are pissed off. That’s not peace at all.

It’s also funny that if you do a Google Images search for “peace in your crease,” this is the third image you find:

Isn’t that old whatsherface? That’s right, Lethal Weapon 3’s Rene Russo.

Her crease is so peaceful.

Broke

I’m flat broke. Like I’m truly broke. There’s about $100 in my bank account, checking and savings combined. I’m not sweating it though.

But the thing is, I’m tired of people who, when I tell them I’m broke, respond, “Yeah, me too.” Because generally, when you press them on the issue, it comes out that either their definition of broke is that they don’t have much money in their checking account but do have like $5,000 in savings but just don’t feel like spending it; or, they are also saying they’re broke because they don’t feel like buying you a beer. Back to that first example, you know, if you have a lot of money in savings, then you aren’t broke. You are just someone who is trying to save some money.

As for me, so I have that $100 tucked away in my bank account, I have $45 cash in my pocket, and I have about $4.00 in quarters but I’m saving that for laundry. Now, you could say I’m not truly broke, but $149 is not that much money these days.

In the interest of full disclosure, I also have about $1,500 in stocks. It’s in Microsoft. That doesn’t really count though, because it’s in this stock where I can’t take it out for about another 30 years unless I want to pay taxes on it. And besides, I initially bought $2,000 worth of Microsoft stock five or six years ago, and it dropped to $1,500. So basically someone was like, “If you give me $2,000, I will only charge you $500 to hold your money for 35 years.” I was like, “Deal.”

I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d never invested that money. Probably something meaningless, like I would’ve had one extra beer at the bar on 400 different occasions. The only effect that would’ve had is I may have puked a few more times.

I haven’t puked from drinking in years. I’m proud of that.

So being broke isn’t that great. I have to think twice before buying a slice of pizza. Do I really need to eat this pizza? Usually not. But pizza is awesome. Everyone likes pizza. Young people and old people and everyone in the middle all get super excited when the possibility of ordering a fresh pizza is introduced. Actually, I don’t think old people like pizza all that much. I rarely see old people eating pizza. Love for pizza tops off at about 65. Unless you own a pizza shop or something. Old people like tomato soup, and a good roast, or a brisket. Delish.

It looks like this old lady may be enjoying a personal pan pizza. So maybe I’m wrong. Slick shades. There is no way any sun is getting in your eyes.