Monthly Archives: December 2011

12/30/11

Occupied: A 2011 Year in Review

Woah. I am way too sentimental for this. I thought memorializing, in song, my first 12 months of operation was an ask. But, this review, the last song of the year and end-cap to my first full calendar year, has gotten the ipoetlaureate all weepy for the memories. I was just forced to watch this DVD slideshow of my wife’s paternal family over the holidays and when I wasn’t fighting back waves of violent sobbing for its John Denver sweetness and sap, I was so thankful for the capsule of nostalgia it reflected. I just can’t hardly bear all this remembrance.

It’s not worth out-thinking the room. This year was roundly defined by the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements and their various martyrs. And, just because everyone else is saying so, I’m not going to call this The Year of Phoenix Jones simply for the contrarian play of it. Although you have to admit he had a pretty awesome 12 months. But, certainly there are other candidate story lines.

By almost any standard, this was one of the most scandal ridden years in political memory. We were constantly yfrogging or Craig’slisting various biological regions or sharing our intimate affections over permanent digital media somehow surprised at having it later read into the public record or groping corporate underlings or failing to report child rape or, good heavens, just about everything else. (I’m sort of confused how my WordPress autocorrect is still not recognizing “yfrogging” or “Craig’slisting.”)

The Republican Primary race has been a dominant if not historically absurd story. Obama would normally have serious heat to answer in light of the continued economic condition, for which he may or may not have any real responsibility and which actually is enjoying some present uptick, but he appears likely to face something like either an impossibly stiff robot or a raving ghost of Republicans’ past.

Mother nature had more than her share of moments. Brutal flooding in the Midwest and Australia and Thailand; the earthquake in New Zealand; the hurricane across the Northeast; and the tsunami in Japan, to remember only a few.

The emotional markers of Steve Jobs’ passing and the 911 Ten Year Anniversary will stay with us for some time. I’m not sure it can be overstated the peculiar concurrence of Osama Bin Laden and Momar Gadhafi’s deaths. In a blink, the two boogeymen of a generation gone from history’s stage.

And, concerning our armed forces, the all but complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell were powerful and life-course altering moments in the lives of those families.

For all the candidates vying to characterize 2011, I certainly return to the bravery, and sometimes irrationality, of those that stand up to preserve what they have or to make more possible what they don’t. Throwing off totalitarianism or occupying prominent Financial District streets in protest. But movements don’t have to be grand or violent or caught on fire or even somewhere else. Sometimes just occupying your own plot of the planet is a great place to start. Consider mine occupied.

Thanks to all of you who have made this site so productive and worthwhile and entertaining in 2011. Your regular traffic here gives me the joy to continue. I promise to work even harder at rap news in 2012. Just your luck, huh?

Please don’t forget to pick up your copy of YEAR ONE the complete 80 song anthology from the first year of song blogging operation: thepressjunket.bandcamp.com. Your financial support makes progress, here, possible.

Performed by the ipoetlaureate. Produced by pumpkinFoot and this little group you might have heard of, Coldplay.

The last song blog of the year here:

Family Drive 2011

12/26/11

Eightballin’ 2011 Redux: The Miss/Make

Well if you haven’t heard, you haven’t been reading, because I brag about it nearly every third post. But, on New Year’s last year, I made in song, all my news predictions for the coming year.

Let’s just say – I nailed it.

Like double clutch reverse over a Kia nailed it. Like Bob Cousy between the legs no look nothing but net. Like Steph Curry step back 35 footer. Like hard-charging Zach Randolph sweatband nailed it. Like Amare Stoudemire thick-rimmed glasses and bow tie nailed it. Like LeBron getting it done in the . . . errr, I mean, Nowitzki one-legged jumper, nailed it.

I thought before I made my Eightballin’ 2012 predictions song, I would confess the exhaustive list of successes and sporadic moments of miscalculation. In basketball parlance and as a tribute to the glorious return of NBA hoops on Christmas day, my misses and makes:

“Snake bites” – make.

“Tsunami” – make.

“Hurricane” – make.

“Volcanic eruption” – make.

“Forest fires” – J.J. Berea scoop shot make.

“Political corruption” – make and one.

“Shopping at retail stores” – CP3 floater in the lane make.

“More than 5 or 6 visits to my website” – make (somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 13, seriously).

“Countries at peace” – make.

“Countries at war” – aging Tim Duncan soft off the glass make.

“Middle East will still be at war” – Pau Gasol avoiding contact baby hook make, see id.

Kate Perry and Rihanna duet/Billboard hit – Ollie from Hoosiers turnover off the leg.

“Piers Morgan gets cancelled in months” – in and out (this one may still be on the rim).

TSA kicked out of airports – goaltending.

Dallas Mavericks win NBA Championship in 6 games – windmill dunk from the free throw line over Yao Ming while pumping a Shake Weight.

David Blaine stays awake for 12 days – err, timeout when you got no timeouts left?

WikiLeak of bank documents in May – Dwight Howard hard-off-the-back-iron miss.

Someone in the Senate will be outed as gay – not what I meant, but maybe an own-goal tip in?

“I predict I’ll feel sick at the way we behave” – free throw make; I did, really.

Dow Jones Industrial Average to 12,000 and then back – court length alley oop.

Unemployment rate to 8% – Ray Allen from the baseline falling out of bounds.

More HD less 3D TV – Russell Westbrook refusing to pass runner in the lane make.

“a little something then a whole lot more” – make.

Patriots win the Super Bowl – pinned against the glass.

Phillies in 5 – airball.

“Duke gets upset by 2 against Pitt in the Championship” – Hakeem Olajuwon open-hand rejected into the seats.

“you heard right here Bin Laden will be curtains” – a 60 foot leaning runner and 4-point play at the buzzer.

Doubt me at your own peril in 2012.

12/26/11

Uncharitable Donations

You may remember this from last year. I get knocked out by a Salvation Army volunteer.

Make sure to check back all week. Good end of year material in the works.

Performed by theipoetlaureate d/b/a sintax.the.terrific & rheomatic.

Today’s song blog here:

Salvation's Army

Salvation’s Army can be purchased at itunes.com.

12/23/11

Merry Christmas

Performed by ipoetlaureate and Sojourners Music. Music produced by djclutch.

Evergreen

12/21/11

Camp 22

It’s easy to Team America mock the Dear Leader. He looked and behaved a fool.

And, it’s a credit to the complexity of the human psyche that, merely as a function of physical and emotional distance, we so easily dismember the comedy of a totalitarian murderer from the tragedy he imposed. Kim Jong Il operated one of the most brutally savage regimes in the history of mankind. Many rulers have butchered their own citizens. I’m not sure any have done so as heinously as Kim Jong Il, in modern times, while simultaneously demanding the kind of obsequious displays of affection he did. Through contrived famine and labor and prison camps he killed millions of people. Mass Games to his glory that he simply chose not to attend. Again, these are the ironic hallmarks of abuse at any level — violence and guilt. He was just really sadistically good at both. And, maybe the most harrowing part is the the tent of isolation under which North Koreans have performed for so many decades.

So, in case you just got around to caring, Kim Jong Il isn’t a fictional marionette imagined by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He was a real dude. And, don’t be confused by the silence emanating from the peninsula or maybe even your local paper. The screams were all nightmarish if you had been there to hear them.

There is various legend around his birth and childhood. Some aggrandizing, some excusing, some accusing. He was romantically born in a cabin on Mt. Paekdu along the North Korea and China border. Propaganda has it that his mother told him that the mountain was where his father had defeated the Japanese and that someday it should be his home. At three, his younger brother drowned in a pond at their estate in Pyongyang. Some have suggested the drowning occurred at Jong Il’s already pathological hand. There is no good evidence for it. His mother died from pregnancy complications just two years later. It’s always easy to pin adult wickedness on childhood trauma. But, maybe too often it’s something of the exact opposite. Maybe this sort of imperial wickedness flows from too much privilege. Lives with no difficulty leading to power without empathy. Maybe, Jong Il was simply a product of sugar and spice and everything nice. Maybe, that’s what dictators are made of. Oh, and failed communism.

My bad, yesterday. This song is not catchy or for kids. 2 obituary songs in a week’s time right before the holidays. Nice.

Performed by ipoet. Produced by pumpkinFoot.

Today’s song blog here:

Sugar and Spice

12/20/11

Don’t Be a Hater

Like my wife. She thought this was insignificant. My Tim Tebow song on the front page of the Houston Chronicle?? (It will be gone before you read this.) That’s big willie. The full article is here. That means I’m probably huge with Brian Cushing and the janitorial staff at the Houston Galleria food court. I was finally able to post a screen shot below. WordPress’ latest software update is apparently “updated” in such a way as to not allow me to easily upload any media. That’s pretty useful. So much for my ode to Kim Jong Il, which I recorded today. My kids have been humming it all afternoon. Pretty catchy.

Well, at least they labeled me a “Christian rapper” as soon as humanly possible to ensure readers would be able to formulate as many preconceived notions before not depressing the link. I also appreciate the implication that I’m Delilah-Late-Night-Dedications serenading the Denver QB, to whom I’ve “dedicated” the song. Wait, I should be grateful. No, I shouldn’t. Yes, I should. This just in: “Christian Rapper Argues with his Christian Id and Buddhist Super-ego Over Religious Labeling!”

Super, super thanks to Sketch the Journalist who made all of this happen and who has quietly and selflessly served rappers like myself in the press for years. (If you wrote the copy for the front page link, brother, please pretend the penultimate paragraph was a glitch in the WordPress matrix or something Plastic embedded as a prank, while I will proceed to spoon out my eye.) I can’t say thank you enough.

12/17/11

A Deathbed Confessional

I don’t have the time to say all that I’d like to about Christopher Hitchens. It’s an especially strange thing to have to make these comments, about maybe the most famous atheist in the world, the week before the Christmas holiday. And, yet, for me personally, it’s all somehow perfectly fitting. Over the past 2 or so years Hitchens has been significantly at the center of my spiritual life.

He was a writer and political journalist and activist and orator above anything. He became associated with the neo-atheists, of Four Horseman fame, later in life, but to remember him as an atheist is to miss him as a gift from God. He spun the English language like the bat of a feline paw. In debate he exercised poetry and obscure literary quote like they were teleprompting. He had impeccable comedic timing and was the most entertaining, if not persuasive, debater, I’ve ever seen. I spent hours upon hours on YouTube with his debates and interviews. I’m a sucker for the psuedo-intellectual harmonic of the British brogue. He had just a stunningly quick mind. People like Hitchens remind you that there are some smart people that you know. And, then there are some smart people. He was wicked smart.

Where I’m normally a champion of reasonableness and discretion, I was moved by his confidence and adamancy. I thought there was an intellectual honesty to his views that I craved even more of for myself. Not to be banal, but there simply is never a place to stop reevaluating what you believe, no matter how deeply and longstandingly held. The writings and speeches of Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris became a kind of religious devotional for me. I’ve spent my whole life finding faith in all the places it’s so readily and typically found. Church, Bible studies, pastors, evangelists, Scripture, commentary, scholarship, devotionals, hymns, conferences, religious radio. Although arriving at a different endpoint, I have always found kinship in the fervor of atheism. In some sense, I feel less connection to those who might profess religious views comparable to mine, unthinkingly so, than I do with those who have asked the deepest questions even where they depart in result. I needed a shot in the spiritual varicose and a group of atheist fundamentalists ironically administered it.

It’s a lot like Christmas. As we insist on engaging the story of the Incarnation in the same way over and over, it becomes some sort of pitched whistle we can’t hear anymore. We’re increasingly numb to its force. It’s like the diminishing effects of drug. With each successive use the narcotic is less able to reproduce the initial experience. We have to find a way to rattle the cage. Like rolling down the window or slapping your own face, drowsy on an overnight drive. Exploring Hitchens’ anti-spirituality was, itself, of such tremendous spirit for me. It made me alive in a way that great Christian apologetics increasingly couldn’t. It takes me to the same place of devotion and awe and curiosity that I’ve felt in other genuine pursuits of faith and worship.

He died this week of esophageal cancer. Some called it the judgment of God. Others called it the opportunity of God. He was prayed fervently for and against. He was conscious of his religious detractors and proponents alike, and he predicted their possible reactions at his demise. He was adamant in interviews that any posthumous news of a deathbed confessional or conversion should be dismissed altogether or, in the least, disbelieved as ineffectual because, even if somehow made, could not be considered as having been made by the real Christopher Hitchens. Maybe some deluded, hysterical, and failing version of a ghost of that person might utter such gibberish on last minute fear of death and eternal judgment but it could never be any reflection of the real man’s cogent and incomparably sharp mind, he said. I always loved the calculation and resolve of it. If ever a man has scoffed knowingly, even welcomingly, in the face of eternal judgment, he did. But, I hope Christopher finds that he was terribly and utterly wrong. I also hope that we’re proven equally wrong. And, I hope most of all that somehow the Lord and Christopher are laughing right now at the ignorance of us all. Let God’s grace be bigger than even we could ever imagine this Christmas.

I got this text from a friend about the news of his death: “And, now he knows better than the rest of us.”

He would have hated this post and song. But, I don’t care. He certainly didn’t care what we thought!

RIP C.H.

Performed by ipoet. Produced by pumpkinFoot.

Today’s song blog here:

I Didn't

12/12/11

5280 Feet

I tried to delay this topic. Actually, that’s not true at all. I was never going to address it. Didn’t even feel any real pressure to. I had a couple folks ask me about him on Twitter but wasn’t inspired. And, that’s not because I don’t cover sports or am somehow above a cheap human interest story (I do, and I’m not). But, to me there was no real story in a Tim Tebow song. Certainly not one that had any fresh angle that I was excited about. Now, Egyptian elections? On it.

At some point, however, you can’t be a credible rap news site and continue to avoid such a national event. The David Gergen’s of the world start taking you a little less serious. Bill Kristol doesn’t call quite as often. Serious people look to me for what it all means. To help them make sense of the mysterious world of the National Football League.

I really don’t have the energy to recount the entire Tim Tebow story. All-time great college quarterback at the University of Florida. Universally doubted as an NFL caliber starting QB. 4th string on the Denver Broncos depth chart. As a result of impossibly bad play by the starter, Kyle Orton, a crush of public opinion forces the hand of Bronco management who starts Tebow after a 1-4 start to the season (for my non-sports readers that’s 1 win to 4 losses). Tebow is mercilessly criticized by pundits and performs at a statistically absurd low level. All the while, he leads the Denver Broncos on an inexplicable 7-1 run, in spite of barely being able to throw the ball in a manner that resembles, in any respect, a thrown football. Included in those 7 wins are 5 or 6 of the most improbable comebacks ever seen, culminating in yesterday’s most stunning victory over the Chicago Bears at Mile High stadium in Denver. The Broncos were down 10 with two and a half minutes left and won 13-10.

ESPN commentators, who have been tearing apart his technical ability for months, stared blankly into the cameras postgame. And said things like “wigi board,” “magic eightball,” “floo powder,” and “banana pants.” Actually, they didn’t say “magic eightball.”

Another critical detail about Tim Tebow: he may be the most outspoken athlete concerning his Christian faith that there has ever been. Eye black with bible verses. Kneeling prayers mid game. Heaven pointing. Pro-life commercials. Glory-to-God given before EVERY statement to the media. Every single one.

I have never been a Tim Tebow fan. He was a gator. Who could reasonably cheer for that?

I’m also a little queasy of Jesus cheerleading. Full disclosure, I wore a “Jesus is BOSS” (as in Hugo Boss) shirt in college. I have spent my entire life being roughly public with my faith. I guess in time I’ve been increasingly concerned about what those displays really say to others and about myself. Jesus himself asked us to do our praying in closets, not on corners. And, there is just something too rote about thanking God every single time you open your mouth. I wrestle with how to keep the name of God precious. The Divine is not something to hide. But, it’s also not something to parade, like a float.

What is happening in Denver is fundamentally a sports story. The roster of the Broncos has rallied around a young and relentless quarterback and are outperforming their talent. It’s one of the greatest underdog stories we’ve seen in a while.

It is at the same time a story about faith. Not that God has picked sides in the AFC West. But, that He is our strength in all things. Tim Tebow knows that truth and is unafraid in life and in football.

I am as happy as I’ve been in a long time watching the Broncos be really special at football week after week. I’m also happy that Tebow honors the Lord in it all.

Performed by ipoet. Produced by pumpkinFoot.

Today’s song blog here:

All Things

12/6/11

YEAR ONE: Album Release

What Southern Living may or may not be calling the greatest collection of instrument playing and voice modulation since Little Jimmy Dickens’ May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose, the ipoetlaureate has made available, for purchase, the entire 80 song catalog from the first year of operation here at ipoetblog.com. Others are saying things about the record. Many have said even more words about it. Insiders have proclaimed it a project that can be heard, possibly. Sports Illustrated said something roughly to the effect, “Why, I never.” Similar praise has been echoed by people.

Over the course of the year, 2, 3, maybe even as many as 4, people have pleaded that I make the songs available. Although their pitiful dreams and infatuation with my talents mean very little to me, I saw this as an easy opportunity to make as much as $50.

It can be purchased at any fine retail or online establishment, as in only right here. Happy Holidays! Buy 3 or 4 for your family.

12/5/11

Holla Back

Holy Manu Ginobli, the Republican primary season starts in less than a month! I’ve been limited in my coverage. Mostly because this is a non-partisan site and it’s too easy to be misinterpreted as partial one way or the other in a 90 second rap song.

I’d say the most disappointing thing about modern politics and certainly this particular primary is the tendency of the process to force candidates to talk along the memo points most appeasing to the base. Of course, this is ancient to politics. It’s just become increasingly exaggerated in its lunacy. So people like Paul and Huntsman, of some balance and independence, can’t gain any real traction even where in practice and performance they have been more conservative than the more ostensibly viable candidates, in the current frontrunner, Gingrich, and the unrelenting has-been, Romney. That’s not an endorsement of Paul and Huntsman that’s just a recognition that if you go off script there is a cost and not necessarily one commensurate with the actual policy differences at stake.

The easiest take on this crowd of candidates is mockery. If you’ve been following, SNL doesn’t even modify the dialogue. Its live comedy sketches are virtual reproductions of the debate transcripts. You can’t make this stuff up.

I think the more sophisticated take is that the 21st Century candidate is a victim of two things.

1. Preposterous scrutiny. I heard someone comparing the foibles of Gingrich to those of Reagan (divorce, flip-flopping, etc.). The difference is that Gingrich’s entire political and social careers (certainly ripe of material by any standard) are cached on the world wide webinar for your second grader to Bing. If we do not modify our sense of righteous indignation, not a single child of the sexting generation will stand. Their every flagellation in an audio database.

2. This sort of unrelenting scrutiny drives people ever more to neuteredly efficient and vapid speech. Candidates that won’t answer the question. Candidates afraid to talk detail and nuance. Candidates that won’t venture even the slightest disagreement or departure with the base. We all wind up talking and listening and living in the echo chamber of our own agreement. We listen to the same talk radio and read the same books and parrot the same ideas as of those with whom we already agree. There is no real accountability from within and heaven forbid we ever consider some view from without. Does it ever strike you as a cosmic miracle of impossible odds that the party you belong to always gets it right and the party with which you are opposed always gets it wrong? Maybe not.

Holla back.

Performed by ipoet. Produced by djclutch.

Today’s song blog here:

Echo Chamber