"A villain my idol? No. He's a super-villain!"

Around my freshmen year in high school I started to become a true sneakerhead. I became infatuated with Nike SBs and over the course of the year I learned to identify every single shoe released under the line. My sneaker knowledge as a whole tripled in the course of about four months.  Also around this time, my friend Daniel started skateboarding again. With my newfound love for Nike SBs it seemed only right that I started skating too. Daniel urged me to become what my favorite shoes were supposed to service: a skater. I pushed around on his board for a while until I saw my first skate video (even though it was truly a promo), Nike SB’s “On Tap”. I was blown away by Shimizu’s style and Danny Supa’s technicality. I was introduced to skateboarding on a whole other level. The next day I bought my first skateboard.

 

It’s safe to say that that video introduced me to skateboarding that changed my life. It also introduced me to music that changed my life. The one song I’m talking about specifically is “All Caps” by rapper MF DOOM played during P-Rod’s segment in the video. MF DOOM’s flow was heavy and lumbering. The beat was grimy yet intricate. It was a sound of hip hop I’ve never heard before and I was instantly hooked. I ran to my computer as soon as I plucked the song name and artist from the credits and downloaded the song. From there, my journey to find out who DOOM really was began. I found his biography on the Internet and learned everything about the man behind the mask, Daniel Dumile. I learned about the early days with KMD, the death of his brother, Subroc, and his retreat into the shadows of NYC. I discovered his other aliases like King Geedorah and Viktor Vaughn. But during the early days, all I cared about was the character DOOM. I downloaded DOOM’s first two albums one track at a time (don’t worry, I ended up buying the re-releases later) and burned them to two CDs. I played those CDs all the time, nonstop. He became my idol, DOOM that is, because he allowed me to escape to a world of superheroes and super villains but with gripping lyricism.

The first DOOM album I actually bought was “Madvillainy”, a collaboration DOOM did with producer Madlib (Madlib would later become one of my favorite producers after I purchased the album). The cover image is epic and I had the case propped up on my stereo for at least three months. The booklet inside contained all of DOOM’s lyrics in written form, which made me marvel even more at his skill and technique after I was able to read the passages I might not have caught while listening.  Soon, I could recite DOOM’s verses like an old church going grandmother could quote the bible. He was my favorite rapper no matter what.

Now years later, I’ve heard and own everything DOOM’s put out. I also own all the albums of the people DOOM introduced me to like Madlib and Count Bass D. So, this post is in honor of my idol, DOOM, and his new album “Born Like This”. Keep trying to take over the world my brother and keep lacing us with this hip hop gold.

This is part one of my DOOM post. Above this is one song from each one of DOOM's albums. Part two will focus on Dumile's other aliases.

 

Resurrection and Transition

After a two-year hiatus, I am back. My original blog, birthed in '07, had two posts and probably two readers. It was my inaugural attempt at blogging before I shut it down to use Myspace blogging instead. The reason for this was readership. To be honest, this is just another ripple in the ocean of personal opinion showcased by the Internet. On Myspace, I could post a bulletin and get at least three or four people to each post. With this blogger thing, all I can do is throw the link up in my forum signatures and hope that people are bored enough to read it. I don’t have a Facebook and I deleted my Myspace a long time ago. I lost my taste for Myspace over time and Facebook never fascinated me the way it did others. I found the whole thing silly quite frankly. Now, however, I feel a need to speak from the comfort of my computer on life to whoever wants to listen. I’ve been getting into a lot of arguments lately, but not angry, squalid ones. They were actually satisfactory, healthy, balanced arguments about interesting topics. I wanted to share my outlook on certain issues with the whole world as well and so, I resurrect my blog from the ashes.

I am currently transitioning in life from high school to college. My four years in high school have been excellent. I’ve had a ton of fun and met some really cool people as well. I can say that I have no enemies, although I have burned bridges, but I feel that these instances were necessary in the progress of my life and my subsequent maturation. Sometimes in life you must move on and leave things in the past no matter how much it hurts. However, you also must learn to forgive people and rally behind them no matter what they’ve done to you (or to others). The thing I’ve learned though, is that forgiveness or elimination of a person from your life should be determined on a case-by-case basis. You cannot use the same policy for every person.

I’ve decided to cut off a person I really cared about from my life recently. Her offense wasn’t atrocious to warrant my ignoring her until she did the same to me but it just came at the wrong time. My dating history after my second girlfriend has been a disaster. I’ve come across girls with emotional baggage, doubted myself and failed to speak up, had to confront a few girls about love that was unrequited on my part, dated a girl unsure about dating me and had to deal with the churning of the rumor mill. The fault lies with me. The fault lies with them. Everyone and everything has been wrong. I’ve moved too fast, I’ve moved too slowly. I’ve waited too long, or I didn’t act fast enough. Nothing felt right for the past two and a half years. So, around February, after two failed relationships that year alone (complete utter catastrophes), I devised a plan to mount a last stand. I was going to cultivate a successful relationship before school ended no matter what.

I had three candidates, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. One was an old flame, one an introvert redbone, and one a spunky, dark-skinned enigma. The old flame was, upon further thought, a horrible idea and the shy redbone would have been too awkward. That left me with the ebony enigma. I had some past history with her. My freshmen year she seemed to fancy me a bit, but, if I remembered correctly, I was currently in a relationship at the time. Ironically, when I set my plan in action, she was currently in a relationship. The bond was cracking between her and her “man” however and I continued to make moves as if the boyfriend didn’t exist. Time went on and countless texts were exchanged. I let my intentions out the bag the first time I texted her and from there things went smoothly. I walked her to class every now and then and I felt the most comfortable relationship wise since my only good relationship which was in middle school (and briefly spilled into high school). So, one night, I grabbed my phone and ordered my troops to execute the final surge. I asked her out. I was so nervous I didn’t even call. She refused my proposal and claimed that she wasn’t ready for a relationship. “Awesome” I thought. Time to wave the white flag it seemed but things got better after this incident.

After she shot me down, I found myself liking her more and more. Best of all, I was taking things slow, something I was notoriously bad at doing. Even better was that when I was around her I felt no pressure. I was never nervous; I didn’t care what people thought. I was just with her. It was just she and I no matter where we were. At least that’s how I felt. She was the chief object of my affection and I found her physically beautiful and picturesque in essence. The ebony enigma was being slowly solved. I felt great, better than I ever have and even though I couldn’t go to prom with her like I wanted to, I didn’t fess. I was beat to the break but she knew how I felt about her. Then the bomb dropped.

I was walking home with pretty much one of my best friends, if not the best, and I had that nervous feeling in my stomach. She had given me one of those “I have something important to tell you “ quips in the hallway and all day I knew it was about her and I had a horrific feeling that it was negative. So, we (me and my friend) walk about to blocks and I say to her, “What is it?” She relays the news to me like a surgeon talking to the family of a father who, no matter what the surgery team cuts, replaces, or removes, will be no more in a matter of minutes. Apparently, the object of my affection was quite promiscuous. My friend told me the small list of her exploits and most of the populace on the list I knew personally on different levels. I can’t say I was angry, at least not at first. This same rumor was told to me before about an ex-girlfriend (while I was with her) and I let it slide. Saw no reason to bring it up with my then girlfriend and predictably, my relationship with her ended shortly after I learned of my then girlfriend’s exploits. In my current case, I wasn’t angry but I did feel disappointment. She was the best opportunity for a good relationship I’ve had in a long time and she was the item of others mindless lust! The bowl for which multiple others could fill up with their watery eroticism! The participant in multiples of weightless sexual experiences! Her excuse? Human need. The carnal thirst for sex.

I was tired. Tired of being disappointed, tired of being told over and over that I’ve made the wrongs choices. The situation made me sick. I felt that I had been duped. That I was the poor sap who inherited the remains of everyone else’s juvenile pleasure. But she seemed more substantial than that, so, what was the issue? I didn’t bother to answer my own question. I was done. My troops had advanced, slaughtered the enemy and paused briefly to revel in victory until the reinforcements charged up the hill on the horizon carrying the promise of death and defeat in their hands. My troops could have rallied once more and tried to fight them off, but they were tired, tired of the cycle. They had no more left. I had no more left.

So, I eliminated her from my life. I don’t regret what I’ve done even though I felt that she was a critical part of my life. The outing of anything her was not personal. It was done to preserve my sanity. I needed to wave the white flag and look towards the future.

High school is over, and so is my involvement with its female patrons. The beacon of college is shinning even though I know damn well the same thing is liable to happen. But by then my batteries will be recharged and I will be ready to deal with such conundrums. For now, I’m running on reserve power.

As for her, she is just the ebony enigma that I thought she was when I first met her and that’s what makes her beautiful.