Please say the...

Not the biggest Lil' Wayne fan by any means, but I actually want to see this...

Show Me Your Best Combination!

A huge pet peeve of my wife, but when I do dress up (Monday-Friday, and an occasional weekend night), does it get any better than black pants and brown shoes?! My thoughts exactly.

I'm predicting the extinction of black dress shoes for men in the next 3 years.

Last Friday, an honor roll student at Fenger High School on Chicago's south side was beaten to death. The student, Derrion Albert, 16, was caught between a feud between youth from the Altgeld Gardens housing projects and youth from the surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, this will not be the only Chicago school student to be killed by violence this year. What is going on?

A person with their cell phone camera captured the scene:

Memories are Golden

Michael Jackson videos that premiered on Fox, TGIF, America Online when it first came out and every kid talked about how their family was using their 10 hours a month (we were the family that got 10 hours when everyone else was up to 50 hours a month, 14.4 when everyone else was 28.8, with your parents getting pissed because the phone line was always busy because you were on the internet), Real World when they had 'real' people on it and you knew you were too young to be watching it but you watched because your older sister did,In Living Color, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", the O.J Simpson trial when you would come home from school and watch all the way until your parents came home from work, the transition from cassette tapes to cd's, Virtua Fighter and Sega Dreamcast and Neo Geo and Super Nintendo and Ridge Racer and Final Fantasy VII and Sonic the Hedgehog (not having any of those made it a requirement to know how to make and keep friends), Fruit Gushers, Fruit by the Foot and Eggo waffles and, of course, Golden Grahams, where they were only good during the first minute and became a chore to eat once they crossed the one-minute threshold and became soggy. Those moments shaped our mind and souls, thoughts and interests, wishes and desires. Memories.

Tribute from The Chef

Lost under the music radar this week following the pushed-up release of Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 album was Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II, his follow-up to his first album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.
Almost 14 years to the day Raekwon released his magnum opus, he returned this week with the sequel.
Quick aside:
In those 14 years, he released two other albums:
Immobilarity (overlooked in exactly the same vein as Nas' It Was Written; check The Table, Casablanca, Live from New York and Sneakers to see for yourself) and
The Lex Diamond Story (let's just say it makes Nas' Nastradamus seem like a classic). Needless to say, the new album is getting rave reviews (which it thoroughly deserves). The standout track for me is Ason Jones. You might have known him as:
Ol' Dirty Bastard
Osirus
Big Baby Jesus and
Dirt McGirt (my favorite of all)

Even though he passed away five years ago, this was Raekwon's tribute to his deceased brother from the Wu-Tang Clan, Ol' Dirty Bastard. It doesn't get more hip-hop than this.

Yale or jail. Penn State or the State Pen?

Teaching begins for me in just about a week. It represents my 5th year as an educator. As now made famous by Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers book, there is something called the 10,000 hour rule. Basically, mastery of a craft or subject requires, on average, 10,000 hours of practice. By my calculations (which means even having to include the first year, which was something of a punch to the gut of self-esteem), 9 teacher-related hours x 180 days x 4 = 6480 hours. So I'm at 64% on the Mastery Gauge, right?
Now, obviously reaching 10,000 hours at anything doesn't mean that you are guaranteed to become a master or expert. Some people have been rapping since they were 12; yet they sound more like a Muppet baby than Mr. "Weezy F. Baby." The theory simply posits that most people famous for a craft or art (musicians, athletes, etc.) required practice above and beyond the 10,000th hour to truly demonstrate mastery of their artform. Somehow, I can already see a dad somewhere in America calculating just how his son will become the next Pele or Federer using fuzzy math equations.
Back to me, though. I enjoy teaching for reasons too numerous to recite. I'm anxious for the new school year to begin. I have gotten better as a teacher every year. And while I might not become an expert in two years or so, I will most certainly be better, and my students will be all the better for it.
** The title pertains to one of the few teachers I actually remember. I had a Spanish teacher in middle school named Mr. Lora. He would always pontificate, "Education is the key. Either you can go to Yale or jail. Penn State or the State pen." The Penn State reference aside (not quite on Yale's scale), his influence always stuck with me. Those are good teachers. Teachers either have moments that stay with you or they 'stay getting on your nerves'.

This is a video of the school where I teach. Enjoy.

Kobe...likeable?

Funny 'interview' with Kobe Bryant. He admits that if he played Bin Laden in one on one, he would tomahawk jam right in his face.

For me, this adds 5 to push him past 20% on the likeability meter.