Jason Toney

Whut Up?!

"Have your arms in the atmosphere like particles to dust" -  Bahamadia, One-4-Teen (Funky For You)

...cuz baby I got the potion...

Don't bother me, Jade Empire has me (and I think I'm finally on the final leg of the game)

Despite all the blow outs so far, every first round series of the NBA playoffs this year has an interesting story or compelling matchups. I'm on the Shaq and Flash train Miami stee-lo. They are the only team I've watched with any regularity this year and D.Wade is just a pleasure to watch on the basketball court. That splitting the trap and cutting directly to the basket move he's got is just the truth. A Suns-Heat (or, begrudgingly, a Suns-Pistons) matchup would be the best for the finals but I think it's going to be a team out of Texas from the West and quite possibly the Rockets.

52 Books in 52 Weeks deletion: I stopped reading The Gospel According to Harry Potter. It is a book meant entirely to provide arguments for nervous Christian parents that Harry Potter isn't turning their children to the occult and, in fact, has some relationship with their belief system. I don't have a problem with looking for a spiritual connection with Potter. It is a grand battle of good and evil and faith plays a huge role in what the characters do in each book. I even made it past the author's introduction where she explains that every book she and her family read, they relate to the teachings of the bible in some way (Seriously? We can't just have a fun read without searching Psalms for the appropriate life lesson for our wayward souls?). No, I stopped reading because I don't need to be convinced and I didn't want to have to break out my bible to follow along. And I don't want my Potter muddied by someone else's beliefs. And to all you folks that believe a wildly popular but essentially fluff children's novel is going to turn your kids to Satan...get over yourselves. I mean, really now. The book burning brigade has never been cute.

So, next up will be Six Easy Pieces by Walter Mosley, moving way up the list. I should've been at the Festival of Books listening to him speak today but I never remember to go get tickets for the FoB stuff.

Coachella next weekend. If you're going, holla at me. Zap Mama, MF Doom, Rilo Kiley, Jamie Cullum, Amp Fiddler, Jean Grae, Eisley, Buck 65, and K-Os on Day 1.  Black Star, The Faint, Roni Size, Z-Trip, The Perceptionists, Arcade Fire, Pinback, M.I.A., and Diplo on Day 2. You're jealous.

I'm not all over Kanye's new track like everyone else. That Camp Lo joint is bananas though.

We're about to launch a content blog at work sometime in the next month. I'm very nervous about it.

That will make 5 blogs I have to deal with. LJ and/or Yahoo 360 are going to be serious backburner style and who knows how often I'll actually post here?

People putting me on meme blast? I see your action and I'll get at ya when I get at ya. Hopefully soon.

It's been over a year now. I'm going to start running again.

First. Get new running shoes.

What more can I say?

52 Books in 52 Weeks: In the Shadow of No Towers

"We ain't gotta get deep or go soul searchin'" - Les Nubians, Temperature Rising (featuring Talib Kweli)

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon). Don't ask me why this counts towards one of my books when the compilation of a story arc from Powers didn't. Maybe it's the material. This is serious stuff even if it is done in inks and bright colors. Spiegelman's personal journey through his life in the aftermath of 9.11 is interesting and shocking at times and poignant always but it isn't as moving as I expected it to be. I've moved past 9.11. I moved past it a long time ago. I wasn't overwhelmed when I went to ground zero last fall (maybe all the commerce that has cropped up in front of the giant hole in the ground has something to do with that) and I wasn't overwhelmed with emotion reading through this harrowing frought with fear and anger and emotion. It is some amazing cartoon artwork though and is worth having around for the cover alone. I don't really have a recommendation on this one. I think if you live in New York and lived there during the time. If you have a personal connection with 9.11 and its aftermath or if you're still able to find that emotional connection with that time (I'm just numb to it at this point) then there's a lot to be taken from reading it.

Otherwise? You can skip it.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Can't Stop Won't Stop

"You see my way of doing things is sort of different." - Jean Grae, A-Alikes

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang (St. Martin's Press). I have to step my game up. That was my first thought after closing the cover of Jeff Chang's tome of grit, grime, power, pain & pride. It ends with a photo of fists, young, many hued, dual gendered fists, raised in the air outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention that was in my home in front of the building where I go to see concerts and Lakers Clippers games. I have to step my game up.

I don't read a lot of contemporary history books. I think it is incredibly difficult to put events into a context that is accurate and relavent in historical terms as they are happening. A good journalist presents all the facts in a situation and allows the reader to form opinions, hopefully without much guidance by the journalist's own opinions. A good historian, though, provides the context for which the reader can see how the threads of time and place and people and actions come together to form something significant for the world around them and after them. What Jeff Chang has done with Can't Stop Won't Stop is do exactly that. Like hip hop itself, it all has a rhythm. What did The D.O.C. say? Rhythmic American Poetry. Yeah, and so much more.

One would presume that if you've been a lover of hip hop since the 80s, you know its basic roots. If you weren't in New York at the time -- I was a wee one in Maryland and remember shutting the door in my room so my 8 year old self could get down with a vinyl single of The Show and La Di Da Di in a grey album jacket on my cookie monster record player -- you listened to the radio and you saw Beat Street and Wild Style and you knew about graffiti and deejays and emcees and beatboxing and breakdancing and poplocking. That all came before you but fast forward five years or ten and now you're in it. You're 13 with Eazy Duz It in your Walkman turned down low so the curse words don't leak out into the kitchen and get you a beat down. You're 15 and not getting what today looks like comedy: Kid N Play tapes next to your PE tapes next to your X-Clan and your Paris and your MC Hammer and your Tim Dawg and your 2 Live Crew and your Redhead Kingpin and your Kwame the Boy Genius and your Salt-N-Pepa and your MC Lyte.

The sub-genre labels weren't there yet.

You're 16 and there's a riot going on. The real LA riots and the riot in the minds of young people who look like you (and many that don't but you don't know that) and the sometimes sociopolitical but mostly party and bullshit rhymes of NWA become the highly politicized words of Ice Cube and that energy drives you to want to be involved with politics and with art and with culture and with...just with something. With change.

You're 19 and you're volunteering for political campaigns. You want to be a speech writer. You march. You make signs. You Americorps. You organize. All the while, you're nodding your head to this and you're not really making the connection between the energy of the music with the rhythms of your life.

You're 22 and you don't know where all that energy has gone. It is elsewhere. It is more concerned with getting paid than getting over. Its warring over imaginary lines. Its getting shot in Vegas. Its getting murdered in LA. You still love the party but you're getting tired of the bullshit.

You're 25 and you're watching that Democratic National Convention. That peaceful protest. That riot of the mind going on. Yeah, you're watching it from the comforts of home. You always thought you couldn't stop. that you wouldn't stop but maybe you did.

Jeff Chang provides the context for why all of that happened for me and while it isn't a blueprint for what happens now, it gave me goosebumps when his story of my history left New York for Los Angeles during my formative years, when hip hop and who I am came together like voltron. What I realize now is that I'm not nostalgic for that time in the music and in the culture, I'm hungry for the spark that it provided for my soul. It isn't hip hop that is in need of a revolution, in need of a push forward. It's me.

And you.

Gotta step my game up. Get up. Stand Up.

Can't Stop. Won't Stop.

Best book I've read this year. Easily.

Sleep Deprived Reviews

"I ain't Hov, I just know what I know." - Freeway, Flipside (featuring Peedi Crack)

I'm so yawning at the screen right now.

The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah Carey. It's like that, y'all. It's like that, y'all. It's like th-th-th-that y'all. Just get it. I'm recommending the iTunes version with two bonus remixes of It's like That (one of which features Fat Joe whose two current singles might even make me cop his album). It is just a solid, solid, contemporary R&B album with some particularly special moments. Stay the Night is the best song on the album, hands down, but I'm also digging Shake It Off and Fly Like a Bird. If Nelly had stayed home instead of lacing a track with weak vocal stylings, it might be a perfect album for a post-Glitter Mariah. Even with that one misstep, Emancipation moves to the head of the class in what has been an underwhelming year for me for albums so far in 2005. It makes me anxious for a lot of the other hip hop tinged albums that have had promising lead singles. Common, Gorillaz, Mary J. Blige, I'm just sayin', step your game up. Mariah's on fiya.

Side note: I can still remember the days of Mariah releasing two versions of tracks for urban and pop radio (and I know lots of artists did it in the mid nineties but Fantasy was maybe the most egregious) and am so glad that isn't the case anymore.

Fade To Black, Jay-Z. The best parts of Fade to Black are the studio sessions. The different producers on the album are such characters (but DJ Quik and 9th Wonder, where ya at?): Rick Rubin the grizzled veteran who has Mike D working on Tibetan Freedom tracks upstairs while S-Dot is getting his hard rock grimy on in the basement; Just Blaze getting clowned for his video game jones; Kanye West's youthful exuberance and vision; Pharell's infinite coolness. My favorite moment though is Jigga and Timbaland in Miami. Timbo throws a few beats at Jay while Jay softly chides him, "He ain't got that bounce." Timbo plays a hot beat and tries to sell Hov on it. It will eventually become Potion for Ludacris but it isn't hot enough for The Black Album. Then Timbaland hits a button. Oooh whee. Jay's head starts nodding. His lips start moving. The wheels in his head start turning. Dirt Off Your Shoulder is born. That's some magical shit.

The concert footage is good too and probably the finest Rap show to ever happen but R. Kelly's appearance was unfortunate and a reminder that the two went out just a year after this "retirement" show and that Jay has performed several times since then. He and Beyonce kill it, though. Mary J. kills it. That Madison Square Garden crowd kills it. It is a showcase of why and how we can still love hip hop in the 21st century.

Left of the Dial, HBO Documentaries. I used to think Randi Rhodes was grating on Air America. Her voice is screechy and she has so very little patience for alternative viewpoints. As I spent the few weeks getting acclimated to the station in it's brief time before the long hiatus in LA during it's launch last year, I just couldn't get with her program. After watching the documentary, I kind of love her. I love her self-doubt and her desire to be recognized for what she had already accomplished and being able to step back from her a little bit and see where it all comes from, I get it now. Somebody has to be the unwavering screaming voice of liberal and progressive sensibilities and Randi does an wonderfully infuriating job of it.

What else I love about Left of the Dial is how it's showcase of the startup of the radio station showcases the liberal idealism and optimism that I hope most people on the left have. They are trusting that things are happening the way they are supposed to. They believe strongly that they will succeed. In the face of incredible setbacks, they spring into some inspired action that puts the station in even more homes a year later than they ever expected.

That makes me smile and makes me proud of those people trying to hold the banner for the political battles I think are important.

That said, I still can't really deal with Janeane on the Majority Report.

In the Out Doorway

"Now all the teachers couldn't reach me and my mama couldn't beat me" - Jay-Z, December 4th

My sister performed as the lead in her high school's production of Up the Down Staircase this weekend. Their play is based on the 1967 film about a young teacher's first year at an inner city school in New York . It's the blueprint (almost exactly in some cases) for other flicks that followed like Wildcats and Dangerous Minds (and even Lean on Me to some degree) and the TV series, Welcome Back, Kotter.  The point of the dramatic elements of the story is the idea that  in this world of chaos and bureacracy and fear and economic and social turmoil, that these kids are searching for someone to geuninely care, to not dissapoint them the way that so much of their world has, and to show them a way. They go up the down staircase because they don't know any other way to go.

Being in a high school auditorium in hard wood chairs among fifteen to eighteen year olds, I realized that I'm an adult. I leaned over to my mother and said, "This is why I don't have kids...they never shut up." I mentally tsk-tsked girls in pants slung too low on their butts and boys mistaking obnoxiousness and bravado for confidence. I remembered how big that world was when I was in it and how small a world it is to me now. I marveled at the significance of it all for these 300 people in the auditorium and how seriously they take the roles and norms in this space.

I left during intermission and went to my car. I had a bouquet of flowers for my sister. I returned and attempted to enter through the door nearest the street. I was through the doorway when a woman said, "Oh, I'm not allowed to let anyone in this way." I looked at her for a moment wondering if the whole point of the play we all were attending was lost on her. I wanted to ask if she saw any irony at watching a play where unnecessary discipline was consistently being mocked and played for comedy while being a monitor for a rule that served no purpose. Instead I chuckled and walked back through the entrance that had become an exit.

My sister was wonderful as Sylvia Barrett. She's not the most nuanced actress yet but her emotional connection with the audience is strong and natural. She makes the role hers. She never breaks character. In a company of kids much more comfortable with the comedy than the drama, she's able to give some scenes with no dramatic weight a little power. I'm gushing and biased but it's true.

The question now is which path will she take? There aren't any clearly marked staircases and doorways before her. Choices abound with risks in all.

And no gatekeeper guarding the way.

Friday Saturday Random Ten - No Name, No Theme Edition

"I know you better than you think I do." - Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Truth Hurts (featuring Roisin & J-Live)

Apparently I can only post lists now. Maybe I'll actually do a real post later today. Anyway, just do what Rox and Lauren do.

Out of 529 songs on the iPod Mini, we've got ourselves a

Friday Random Ten

1. Lust for Life - Vikter Duplaix
2. Blame It On the Tetons - Modest Mouse
3. Girlfriend is Better - Talking Heads
4. Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads
5. Let's Get Lost - Tina Dico
6. Don't Say - Jon B.
7. See Line Woman (Jerome Syndenham and Kerri Chandler Remix) - Nina Simone
8. Ordinary People - John Legend
9. Drop It Like It's Hot (Remix w/ Jay-Z) - Snoop Dogg
10. Hayling - FC Kahuna

Athletics + Addiction

"Make you dissapear quick like you're part of wind then laugh, aHaha ha, then laugh again." - Q-Tip, For The Nasty (Featuring Busta Rhymes)

Since I got linked by a blog called Sports Jones yesterday, I figured it was as good a time as any to talk sports here. I should do it more.

• The key part of the Men's NCAA championship game (outside of Sean May being unstoppable inside) was a coach's decision. Roy Williams had UNC play an aggressive zone on the perimeter that extended the Illinois guards another foot or two behind where they are used to launching threes while trusting that his bigs could control the middle. That was the difference between a 12-40 three point shooting night and something much much worse for the Tar Heels.
• Speaking of May, Wilbon and Kornheiser think he could be a Charles Oakley type. I'm thinking more like Elton Brand.
• Tiffany (and an LA Times Op-Ed) wants to know where's all the Women's NCAA news coverage? ESPN isn't to blame for the blackout though. They've done an exceptional job this year of giving the tourney its props and treating things like Pat Summit's insane victory total with the proper context they deserve.
• The Lakers. Blech. In talking with my parents this weekend, I didn't realize how heated I am about the Lake Show. They made horrible off-season decisions and the Heat look wonderful. I can't imagine what the Lakers can do to compete with upper echelon teams in the west and I can't imagine Lakers fans ever thinking of Kobe in rarefied air ever again. On the buildings across from Staples where they used to feature images of Kobe, Shaq, and Phil (and sometimes Horry and D-Fish and Karl Malone) they now feature classic shots of goggled Lakers Kareem, Big Game James, and Kurt Rambis. I doubt that would be the deal if Shaq was still here.
• I don't care about baseball.
• I also don't care about steroids.
• The End

Friday Random Ten: Suffer the Fools Edition

"Uh Huh, this my shit. All the girls stomp your feet like this." - Gwen Stefani, Hollaback Girl

Out of 473 songs on my iPod Mini, we've got ourselves a

Friday Random Ten

1. A.D.A.M. - X-Clan
2. An Echo, A Stain - Bjork
3. Kiana - Wildchild
4. Monday (End Credits) - Jon Brion
5. You're No Good - Betty Everett
6. Jerk It Out - Caesars
7. Since U Been Gone (Kelly Clarkson Cover)  - Ted Leo
8. Number One - John Legend
9. Never Can Say Goodbye - Jackson 5
10. I Don't Mind - The Decemberists