Render Ramblings. Opening Lines: Hip Hop v.1

The progress bar isn’t moving. I don’t know if that’s the computer frozen or an existential metaphor. ‘Not quite understanding this WP interface either. It’s been aeons since I’ve logged on.

Although it might be accurate (nope) to refer to me as a pincer populated crab, what I’m going to type out over the next 15 minutes or 15 days (4 months) between pixel pushing is not based on the kids being on my lawn. I hit a point where I didn’t listen to music regularly so my references are to where I was closer to active. You want to help me out on what I might I have missed, cool. I’m not a social media cat but such intervention would seem appropriate for this medium.

Over the last 6 years or so, *stop*. [It’s been days since I started this sentence and I forgot where I was going.] Spade begat Ghetto begat Destruction. Explanation: I got my Spade Ghetto Destruction CD in the mail yesterday. I have the vinyl from ’94 but I refuse to buy speakers for the turntable. It was easier to find the DVD burner and rip it. SGD had been signed to Zoo/BMG and released 12 tracks of “ghetto metal”. In ’95 the acid test was applied when I unleashed the final cut “Never Could Kill Me” on the kids who had been tortured by their mother’s insanely saccharine choice of noise pollution. The 6 year olds slammed against the walls and each other like they had been infused with an IV of radioactive glucose. Victory for the hardcore!

You never could kill me!

I will get to the point… eventually. In ’96, Weapon of Choice released “Highperspice” on a Sony imprint which I think was Eddie Vedders label “Loosegroove”. Track 6 is “Spade” – in homage to SGD. Lonnie Marshall, leader and bass player of WoC (search engine nightmare group name but Lonnie is one of my favorite bass players), came up on the L.A. scene along with members of Spade, Frija, Caustic Monkey, Underground Railroad, Blackasaurus Mex, etc. You know what I’m talking about: Al’s Bar, Raji’s, Gaslight, etc. Side note 33.3: One of my favorite Thursday things to do was cruise through the L.A. Weekly music section to see the crazy ass names playing. I’ve probably typed this before — The top two were Don Knotts Overdrive and Phlegm Cocktail.

Let ze sheet hit zee fan

Anyway, last connection that reminded me to finally type out this collection of opening lines was Righteous Family. The Righteous Family were/are? Inland Empire MCs who had hooked up with Backlash (members of Frija) to do some distortion heavy dub rock hop stuff. One of the most fucked up yet funny things I saw on the strip was them at the Viper Room. During someone else’s set 2 of the cats were in the mosh and sandwiched a dude. You could see cartoon stars and birds circling homie’s head. ¡Loco en el coco!

No order list genesis and from the dome so accuracy is optional —

1) “Bionic” by The Righteous Family were one of the earlier performers at KNGR: Underground Radio most commonly known as “The Good Life” or “Open Mic Hip Hop at…”. They released an EP around ’96 and the first lines of “Bionic” starts as such:

Sammich

“This man is made of Earth, wind and FI-Yah! Moon with the Sun and Good and Bad just like one plus one. But there’s two reasons why I won’t die: My soul goes on and I won’t never live no lie.“

When I first heard them do that cut, it was live and I just shook my head. The comedy of electrifying a sensitive anatomical part for activation later in the song didn’t hurt either. But I’m talking about openings.

2) “Raw” by Big Daddy Kane. Simile rhyme LIKE a mofo but BDK is strafing fools throughout. I heard this on KDAY and the speakers were glowing red.

The High top fade

“Here I am… R_A_W. A terrorist here to bring trouble to phoney emcees I move on and seize. I just conquer and stomp another rapper with ease.“

3) “6 In The Morning“, Ice-T. Oh, Tracy, Tracy, Tracy… (my cousin’s namesake. About the same age, too.) Heavily *cough* inspired *un-cough* by the rhythm and rhyme of Schoolly D’s “Gucci Time” and “P.S.K.”, Ice the hustler T mined those motifs and busted out an all-time classic. ALL TIME! That mofo could do no wrong. I even forgave him for my purchase of Cold Cold Wind. Ice-T was like my older cousin who always was in the mix and a step ahead. ’87-88, at a stop sign on Crenshaw and 54th in my ’79 280ZX who pulls up beside me in a red Porsche? I revved the engine like we were going to race. I was joking; I barely knew how to drive stick at the time. Whether he knew I was clowning or not, light changed and he laser beamed that German chariot to the vanishing point. Power LP cover? Yep, never going to one-up T.

“Six in the morning police at my door. Fresh Adidas sneak across the bathroom floor. Out the back window, I make my escape. Didn’t even have time to grab my old school tape. Mad with no music but happy ’cause free ’cause the streets to a player is the place to be“.

Technobeat

4) “Colors“, Ice-T. I literally don’t remember a single couplet after the 1st quatrain hence “favorite opening lines”. Not really a song that earned repeat status. Don’t know if I used the terminology correctly but Mr. Holmes is decades removed from grading my Engrish.

“I am a nightmare walking, psychopath talking. King of the jungle just a gangster stalking.”

Pantone

5) “Paid In Full“, Eric B and Rakim. Rakim said exactly what I was feeling. Nothing like preparing for another day of a cop slapping the cuffs on me because he was on a break between donuts.

“Thinking of a master plan ’cause this ain’t nothing but sweat inside my hands. I dig into my pockets all my money’s spent. So, I dig deeper and still coming up with lint.”

No Ofra

6) “I Ain’t No Joke“, Eric B and Rakim. Probably my last double up. Just hard emcee baptism.

“I ain’t no joke. I used to let the mic smoke. Now I slam it to the floor and make sure it’s broke. When I’m gone no one gets on ’cause I won’t let nobody press up and mess up the scene I set.”

Hahahaha

7) “Conspiracy“, Gang Starr. From “Daily Operation“, Guru had that rasp in his delivery that made lines feel like they had been etched in some stone from antiquity. The entire album was bomb. I used to put lines in the bottom gutters of my magazine. I believe I used the first line in my 3rd issue.

“You can’t tell me life was meant to be like this, a Black man in a world dominated by whiteness. Ever since the Declaration of Independence we’ve been brainwashed by just one sentence. It reads, ‘All men are created equal.’ That’s why corrupt governments kill innocent people.“

You can’t tell me…

8) “(Delta Force One) Ced Gee“, The Ultramagnetic MCs. I’m a fool for Ultra. Absolutely one of my favorite groups; One of my worst interviews. Totally my fault. I went to Wild Pitch or whatever label’s office and face planted the interview. Hungry as charged. My brain was misfiring from jump with no energy to fire up the dendrites. Woe unto the can’t-grab-and-go vegan trying to get to the meeting on time in ’93 NYNY. See, Parliament freed my music sensibilities when I was a youngster. Ultra let me know there were no walls to the microphone.

“I’m a radar sending message to competitors eliminating another predator from the face of the Earth. Not the first to feel the wrath of my curse. Competing just like David and Goliath. My rhymes a slingshot and yes they triumph over the weak minds that claim they’re giants.“

Hello.

9) “Black God Theory“, Sa-Roc. Newest thus far. This was the first song I heard of hers while at the gig 2017ish. The big beat and 5ths are in my Rock Box reflex. The entire song is draped in numeric and gnostic reference with hard cadence points. So, I check the video for confirmation… I’m all in. Burn Me Up.

Burning microphones and incense

“They said I was a walking contradiction: Black and intelligent, cerebellum heavy like a gatlin fiction (?). I got a whole crew that will murder you mathematically subtract your existence.“

Maybe I’ll add to this; Maybe I won’t. I lost the thread awhile ago but now I know how to add YouTube embeds in this version of WP. I was set to abandon the platform. Got some work or sleep to do now so… adios.

Documentary burn center

I’m going to have to make some new callouses soon, I know. The trailer has Ramsey Lewis’s “Dark Eyes” which I have not yet cleared but “it’s temp”…right? There’s the necessity of discipline to counter the time slippage, the motivation drain, the vampires, meteorites falling on your head. You keep on pushing because this m***rf**** ain’t going to push itself.

Pajaud: Art + Work

Three hours searching for rights holders of 5 images, I found 4 and the remainder remains mysterious. Fees range from $50 per to $499. Well… there only about 200 more to go through. Clearing audio, I started with audio from UCLA’s Special Collection Library. Audio of Pajaud being interviewed, $250 per incident. Let me tell you briefly about documentary productions as I’m learning on the fly: Pain in le’keister. I knew prior to seeing this through but now I know. I know. I know. See the copious amount of ointment and gauze making me look like a mummy?

My subject died in 2015, a few weeks before his 90th birthday. He was a cool old dude. His wife has been a cool dudette. Pajaud (William Etienne Pajaud, Jr. to be specific) got to see the skeleton of this before he moved on so everything else has been polish. That spit shine glow has yield a mountain of clearances and a pile of low resolution images that I need to replace to make it street legal: meaning I can’t do any commercial shit with it. No TV, license streaming rights, home video…

As an individual, you don’t do a documentary expecting a huge payoff. Big wigs have their payoff already on deck. My wig, not big. I would like to break even on the costs and get the doc out there on the widest platforms possible to give Pajaud and his intersections the greatest exposure. I’ve substituted some of the imagery with animation and for audio I’ve been sneaking my axes out of their coffins. You know I can’t replace the distinct sound of Dinah Washington. Oh the horror! Maybe around 2011 I’d asked Pajaud if there was some music he preferred. He said definitively, “Cristo Redentor” by Donald Byrd. I use the original on the front end and his later rendition on the tail.

Eyes On The Prize and Killer of Sheep, if I’m correct, were two flicks that didn’t see a home video release for years because of music clearances. You have to decide if the music is integral to the project. I haven’t made my decision yet as I haven’t gotten to the music phase of the cost research but don’t be surprised if the soundtrack reads “Crisco Repentor” by the time I’m done with the abacus.

Between boring the shit doing Google and Bing image searches I’ve been reading this Clearance & Copyright book to refine my understanding of the game. 100 pages in, I’d say it’s cleanly written. I should probably skip to the parts I need but I find the ancillary information interesting and helpful. For the 1st time I’m considering the whole crowdfunding thing for the clearances. My “I ain’t working on this anymore” deadline is end of August but if you look it up on IMDB it claims that the doc was finished in 2013. Incorrect. Hell, I’ve had at least two major hard drive and logic board failures between then and 2017 which required me to re-cut the thing from scratch. It actually has made for better versions.

Anyway, I need to prep for my eyelids to take over. Crisco Repentor can wait a few more days.

Overcooked Vegan 8: Production Notes

I had to sneak a show in before the year expired. Overcooked Vegan 8: Okra StEwww. It was shot one-cam on the fly except for one halogen 650. For whatever reason it took me a while to get a rhythm on the edit. In part, I believe the child expected to do a solo episode so she came out a bit salty and took a bit to thaw (sounds vaguely cannibalistic). Cutting around the low energy got the edit down to 4 minutes. It’s been in the can since late September. I held onto it under the premise of adding the new intro and editorial elements but time dictated that I push them back until the next iteration. Ultimately, I preferred having this segment out now and working on getting the new flow grouped under volume two in 2017.

The audio was heinous (the unfortunate norm) because I couldn’t afford to test the mic gear in a timely manner. So for audio post, I enlisted Songhay System to use its copy of Sound Forge but I wound up getting a better version out of Izotope RX3.

In terms of talent, as I’ll employ some of the original ideas that I have yet to try, I’ve expanded my search to attempting to bring more people in who should have a greater network than myself. I’ve also cut loose the online sites for talent as they haven’t yielded any decent results for me over the last couple of years. I’ll probably use Backstage a couple more times then I’ll determine the ratio of public service to business of this endeavor.

In typing the URL for this morning while updating the web site I came to find out that there is now a video game called “Overcooked” that launched August 2016. I’ll delve into that deeper down the line as I’m curious as to what that might mean to this production. Now, I need to figure out how to embed video via URL in this new WordPress interface.

Testing… where’s the damn preview option?

Found the preview. Ok, keep the URL on its own line. No more going through the media URL.

It will all be over soon

That’s what “they” said. Is there a definite timer on this thing? There is a cascade effect. Good lucky, bad lucky are the opposite sides of polarity. Polarity is magnetism. Magnetism is a force.

Your probable cause

The mofo slapped the cuffs on so tight that it took extreme effort for him to remove them from my arms after his drill was ending. His trainer commented, “how did you even get them on that tight”? 77th Division, how I have not missed you. My prior comment was “loosen the cuffs or take me in”.  Probable cause: the norm = Black man.

What irritated the most out of a long list os that they waited until I was a block away from my son’s school. I would have preferred that he observed the entire thing.

Over the last two years I have been reintroduced to so many ghosts of my youth. Some genius in her 20s called me a “ni**er” and stated that I “should still be a slave”. I literally hadn’t been called that term in 30 years. As to chattle slavery, it ended in the US legally Dec. 6, 1865, the day the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. Maybe I have some memento shit going on.

What I find now is more dumbasses think they’re smart because of autocorrecshin, search engines and the general distance that technology affords. No culpability is performance enhancing drug of entitlement. Studio gangsta need no scars.

The weirdness continues. Technology. I’m a Note user. The Note7 was announced and I’m all over it. Buy it 1st week and my already crappy economy craters. Four possible gigs dissolve. I have this bill from the carrier about to hit me then what? It turns out that the Note7 is actually an incendiary grenade! Cool. Actually not. Samsung wants all of these mofos off the playground. Man, you making me go iPhone? Vommmit.

Back to my nigra-loving girlfriend and the piglets. They actually reminded me of what my immediate struggles were detaching me. I don’t keep up with current events. Those retro manuvers returned me to the understanding of how far and how little this society has grown.

This being a phone post from my unreturned grenade, I’ll have to call it now. Takes forever to type properly. I’m not a phone tapper. Maybe the iPhone Pro will be easier to type posts.

A Head of Miles

I’m turning my back on perspective

Expressionistic bio-pic. Obi-Won Kenobi 2.0 and Mouse do cocaine, point guns and under Cleveland for NYC. Blue-eye framing, Last King of Scotland is Burning in Mississippi. But does it get made without that format? It’s not a documentary. Good colors with an aural fixation on Sketches of Spain. My lawdy, Francine got some legs! Do I like the movie? I don’t know if liking it matters to me. It’s competent. Transformative? No, but it’s not Saldaña-Jolson‘s sequel to The Jazz Singer.

You want me to Jack Johnson yo’ ass again, Obi-Won?

Elvis “Detroit” Mitchell and Don Cheadle dropped data: 8.5 mill, 30 day shoot. Obi-Won 2.0 loves motorcycles. I don’t know if Lenny Kravitz liked the flick; I’m bad with walking up on cats plus I was Ti-Red.  Rare set up for me.

 

I haven’t had access to shiny people in a long time and its set up was different than most screenings: WGA, Writer’s Guild. No apartheid. Everyone close enough to play hot hands. Too much fatigue so I hopped in the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper and autopilot-ed myself to a self-induced coma.

Woke up seeing that I had built a web site and typing in fragments. Shit, somehow I cleaned up the kitchen. I was looking for evidence of malnutrition and partial discipline. I found a renewed energy to find some new energy once I renew my energy. Didn’t find it today. Starting is easy. Finishing is difficult. Modal. Modalities. Modes. Solo. Combo. Solo.

Maybe, I didn’t have to bring up Al Jolson’s revenge. But maybe Al Jolson’s first movie was enough. It’s bad enough to have to be unnecessarily comparative “Black” film

Veronica Mars, you gonna git baby-ed up f**king ’round like this!

versus “black face” film. I was talking about Miles right? Davis didn’t exist in a vacuum. Mouse said dude had mentioned that he would hate to have a dry documentary-style flick about him. So Mouse painted with colors and time. Marty said a House of Lies is the truth and
gave me little reason to disbelieve him. I honestly don’t feel like remembering the film but I know I saw it; I’m seeing colors today. That’s a good of a sign as any. Editing was quick chop chop in the beginning. Idiosyncratic and planned parallels as it settled. Modal. Done typing and ain’t proofreading at all.

Overcooked Vegan e7: Production Notes – 2015’s Aftertaste

2015 was intended to be a 6 week old memory by now but its dirty sock stench is still wafting about. Episode 7 is a symbol of will to power and serendipity AKA “I’ll take it”. 4:00 am, January 1st my production computer decided that it no longer needed its logic board. I had shelfed all other projects to finish chopping a feature that would have been done by end of day.

My Overcooked Vegan footage and assets reside on a 6 TB RAID thunderbolt port only. None of my re-purposed machines have thunderbolt nor can they push the software. My friend David at Sixor12 offered me time on his trashcan Mac and I did a quick tune and render of what was to be “episode 7”.

This segment was also a bit of happenstance. My son had changed his mind (again) about doing his comedic cooking segment. It turned out that his brother had learned to cooked something and he wanted to try it out. Upon arriving to his brother’s father’s pad, I realized I hadn’t charged the camera, didn’t bring any other gear, so by the end of the cooking I had to use my phone to finish – Hence no money shot of final dish. Plus those boys lit into that food milliseconds after the stove top cut off.

I had held out 3 months or so from uploading another episode for reasons that I’ve mentioned before now. Briefly, fatigue, improvement of audio/video, experimentation… Given the necessity of social media and the general use of targeted forms (tutorial, single personality, etc) of Youtube, I’ve had a bias against the medium and wanted to find a broadcast medium to utilize. At worst, it would be a prototype that also pushed some useful options out there for viewers.

So as I crawl towards a new computer rig I have to stay creative. Pencils and paper have made their presence even greater. My searches have led to some inlets for (American) public broadcasting and I’m in the cursory stages of figuring out commercial broadcasting and streaming mediums. I’m looking to upload 3 to 5 new segments so that I can cut down to 6 24 minute episodes. Next chance I get, I’ll pull from all footage and put together a pilot to show it closer to my vision.

In the interim, those looking to do their own shows might check out jokeandbiago.com. They do podcasts and are a production company that picks up projects they like to see if they can get them on air. Their forté are reality shows but they write that they are open to good ideas. Another thing I’ve learned is to search through people’s crowd funding campaigns. That provides a range of understanding of inducements and expectations.

Tired of typing all this on the phone so I’m pulling the plug on this one. I’ll have to figure out how to get phone WP drafts over to desktop WP but that’s a battle for a different soldier today.

Overcooked Vegan episode 7 is up

Brother’s Spicy Tofu Noodles is stir fried and laid to the side. I tried a more YouTube friendly format here. Production note for the episode are forthcoming. First, I have to update the site with this episode. No rest…

Apple is starting to **** me off again

04:00 am, January 1st, on my final day of edit for a long term project, my production computer decided that it would not be able to face 2016 and summarily offed itself. I mean FOUR HOURS!!! into the year and the gizmo had already lost all hope. Logic board done.

Now, I’ve been up against it for a spell. It’s bad enough that 2015 was a real mofo and was grinding up people I know for dog food. That general malaise led to me not posting on this blog for awhile as I waited to see where all the pebbles would fall on the rice paper. Now, in partial vent mode, I return to the finger dancing arts with a typo-phobic rhumba that no virgin eyes should witness.

I have a stack of 6 dead Powerbooks dating as far back to the Titanium 500 mHz. The problem: Logic boards. Logic board is motherboard in Apple-speak. I’ve had at least 3 desktops bow out with terminal logicboarditis. And replacing a logic board outside of warranty is basically saying “buy a new rig, holmes” because the part itself costs so much. Know an option? Let me know. (The old PC laptop took a dump 2015 also, but that’s not a logic board issue).

It seems that maybe I work these rigs too hard but come on, 9 logic boards? But that’s what’s not getting me. I need to spec out what I can get that runs what I need. The “genius” at the Genius Bar, after taking 1.25 hours to confirm that the logic board was at issue couldn’t tell me the lowest end Mac that can push consumer level 4k. Oh how genius. The fucking Apple.com site and its award-winning UI makes it a fucking nightmare to find info on the main program that I use a Mac: FINAL CUT PRO X. Ultimately, I type in the “/finalcutpro” or do a click from a search. I’m mean what fuckery is that?!

Apple couldn’t give a flying snot about what I think as they pledge increased diversity in hiring yet exclusivity in product while oversimplifying their product line and their web site. Suck it, Apple. I fucking hate all permutations of Windows but all applications that I run of my Macs run on the PCs, too. Well, not FCP nor Logic. Plus last year for the first time in over a decade, I made all but one of my external drives Mac-only. The quantity of Terabytes that I’d have to transfer to have that data production ready returns me back to my safe word: FUCK!!!! I am a little irritated today as you might have noticed.

I lost a couple of “clients” because losing the computer in such a bad timing (post December expenditures, etc.) crippled what I could immediately do, but honestly, those people wanted the works and don’t pay like they deserve my attention. I’m much better off without them. I need to get the job done and it seems again like Apple wants to make it difficult for me to do that. I should not have to sift through a bunch of BS and a million clicks just to get to the info I want, asshats. “Macs, iCrap, OSX, Apple Software, More iGadgets and shit…” That’s my free UX consultation for you sons of Jobs. The first hit’s free.

“I thought he would cuss a lot more than that. Should I be scared or something?”

Hit the road

Volatility below, clouds above.

Stationary. I do not shoot the cam/phone and drive. I will hang a camera
out of a window while driving. So many extremes out there. A lot of people are really working hard but still coming up with nothing but lint. November, December are so often dead months for business. If you are the bearer of lint, you have to keep moving.
I’m finally getting around the keyboard a little better with my most recent finger fracture. So I’ll likely throw 3 other posts together so that i can keep my promise to myself and type this stuff 4x per month.

My soccer problems

Soccer doesn’t understand me, either.

After the 2014 World Cup, I had a conversation with a friend’s cousin about my difficulty in getting into Premier League. No one played soccer in my neighborhood. My cousin had a sun weathered soccer ball but I don’t recall ever playing with it. We had live boxing, football, baseball and tape-delayed NBA on television. In 1982 I had an L.A. Lazers (pro indoor soccer) sticker that made it quickly to the trash can. With the influx of El Salvadorians and Nicaraguans  in the 80s I started seeing more people kick that chess ball around in the parks. Hell, I even played one game of rugby in P.E. and watched a few water polo games but there was zero soccer on my radar.

My interest in finding a team was so that I could understand the game better then disseminate the info to my boy who has been fascinated by the game since he was a toddler. Whereas I have caught a few games since that 2014 conversation, I still have not followed dude’s advice to just pick a team and follow them forever. I can’t do that. Now, I know why.

Is this game between the Wankleberry Samsungs and the Nottingham Nuttsacks? I have no idea who these hopping hooligans are.

In major American sports (baseball, basketball, football) you have obvious logo branding. I don’t follow the WNBA at all but as soon as I saw a jersey with the Statue of Liberty, I knew the team was the New York Liberty. Premier has seals. I can’t see those tiny ass emblems. I do see Emirates and a gang of race car style advertising. The only thing personal that is prominent is the name of the player. That’s great if you identify with the player but you have to follow the tradition of the team if there is no recognizable style. Yeah, they have there own color scheme and some have slight design flourishes but I really only immediately recognize Arsenal. And I recognize them more for the Puma logos. The NBA has been looking into going that road. I’ll probably watch less if they do. All that human billboard stuff bugs me. In world cup, Brazil was Brazil. US was US. “Eat at Joe’s” doesn’t inspire my sports loyalty.

Little Arsenal dragon Puma. Why do they discontinue the shoes I like?

I’m not an Anglophile. Unlike Americans who knees turn to jelly when they hear some limey accent my first thought is “where did this dude park his pirate ship?” I’ve never been to Utah but I know the Jazz. When I first started watching basketball they were the New Orleans Jazz. They changed states and I could still follow or be aware of the team. Super Sonics to the Robber Barrons… I mean the Thunder. I don’t identify with Manchester, Swansea, Ham-Ville-Shire, whatever. To my knowledge, Arsenal is not a municipality. If they moved to Lichtenstein, they could still be Arsenal. Chelsea would have to move to lower Manhattan to maintain the geography/name balance. Chelsea could be a crappy town. I don’t know. They have their traditions but I need to pick a team like a baby. “I live in Los Angeles so I like the former Minneapolis Lakers“. “I hate that Leprechaun so I want every team to stomp the Celtics.” Soccer doesn’t make it easy for me.

The Flash ready to clash through the 1031 casbah

Some of the jerseys have collars. Hell no. Helllll no. What’s next, bow ties and beanies? That at least allows me to eliminate teams (though I could be confusing them with a MLS team).

I hate all that damn singing/chanting. I can still watch a game despite all of that drunken pirate shit. Hell, I hate the loud ass disco of NBA games so I realize they won’t cater to me. However, I respect that people all over the world are intensely moved by the game and the atmosphere. Listening to the Men in Blazers podcast about a year before Men’s World Cup prepped me for watching World Cup.

The best thing about soccer for me is the newness. There are still huge craters in my understanding and I have trouble watching anything televised now. Last year before the season, I was thinking I was going to pick up Chelsea but they wound up winning the title and I don’t like being a front-runner aside from my Lakers legacy. I guess they are sucking this season so it would be a good time to jump on board in terms of bucking the front runner trend but bad in all other things. I saw a bumble bee team last week, Watford maybe. Prior to that I was considering giving Leicester City a try. One of the Manchesters is powder blue and that won’t do. If anyone has a club to endorse, let me know. For now, I’ll stick with my son’s fall AYSO team, the Flash. Premier League will be ready for me when I’m ready for them.

How did this get so long? Procrastination.