Hellafied Gangsta Lean

Krossed Out

Thu, 02 May 2013 08:49:28 -0400

Chris Kelly has died. He’s the one pictured above that’s closest to the camera as part of the Kriss Kross post-backwards clothing renaissance that was never truly reborn. Kelly is survived by his other rapping half Chris Smith, several others and - most prominently - his group’s legacy.

His rapping career serves as an important mythbuster for cynics today who believe music has never been dumber: Kris Kross was a Jermaine Dupree creation, marketed to propagate a fictitious rap war with rival children rappers Another Bad Creation, which was created in parallel by the Biv in Bell Biv DeVoe.

See, the kids of ABC wore their clothes inside-out, while Kriss Kross wore its clothes backwards - ‘cause inside-out is wiggidy-wiggidy-wiggidy wack. Your move, Ke$ha.

The opening salvo to Kriss Kross’ flagship hit single Jump asked you to choose between these two playground factions. Competition is good for business, so both Kriss Kross and ABC benefited from the battle; no one really “chose” a side. Meanwhile, actual gang violence was approaching its all-time peak in America.

Musically, Kriss Kross was part of the G-rated alternative rap offering for a hip-hop era largely defined by gangster rap. Young MC had already come and gone, and Kriss Kross arrived shortly after ABC in providing another alternative to DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, which itself had both grown stale and distracted by Will Smith’s success as an actor.

As is the case when previously-famous people die, the obituary transforms into a time machine. You hear that half of Kriss Kross died at 34 and instead of considering the tragedy of Kelly’s abrupt demise, you’re a child again, or you’re wearing your clothes backwards at a costume party in 1994, or you’re me at the Ohio State Fair that summer with a free ticket to see Kriss Kross shouting WARM IT UP, CHRIS! and hearing dozens in attendance shout back I’M ABOUT TO!

And while Kriss Kross has been no more for some time, now Kelly is no more, and once you get past the fond recollections of his fame you’re left with someone who died at 34, which as with all deaths so premature is perverse.

Thanks for the wonderfully stupid memories, Mr. Kelly. I will imagine you in the clouds with angel’s wings attached to the front of your ribcage.

Right hand in a trench coat: Our Retribution Will Be Celebration

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:30:42 -0400

Right hand in a trench coat: Our Retribution Will Be Celebration:

dennymayo:

The sky this morning when I left the house cast down a sense of gloom, gray clouds rolling in from the west, choking off the small stretch of open sky to the east. I headed out to run as confused and scared as everyone else. About a mile and a half into the run, I came to the Capitol, where the…

gaines without frontiers*: LISTICLE: Top 10 Shirtless Coaches Of All Time, Ranked

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:34:33 -0500

gaines without frontiers*: LISTICLE: Top 10 Shirtless Coaches Of All Time, Ranked:

gaineswithoutfrontiers:

Yesterday, a photo of Steve Spurrier coaching shirtless made the internet rounds, mostly with incorrect information that it was a new/recent thing. In fact, the picture was from last year. The confusion, however was understandable as Spurrier is but one of a grand tradition of (mostly, but not…

VERY IMPORTANT.

Photo

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 07:55:33 -0400

It’s for a wonderful cause…but the logoFAIL is just...

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:25:12 -0400

It’s for a wonderful cause…but the logoFAIL is just killing me. #drivenfagfootballgame

MR. PRESIDENT! NOT AGAIN!!

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:04:06 -0400

MR. PRESIDENT! NOT AGAIN!!

It’s not too soon. Art Modell is dead and isn’t cold...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:37:40 -0400

It’s not too soon. Art Modell is dead and isn’t cold yet, but it’s not too soon.

It’s not too soon because Art Modell’s epitaph has been written for 17 years. It goes something like this: [who gives a shit no one cares] MOVED THE FUCKING BROWNS TO BALTIMORE, AND THEN HE [who gives a shit no one cares].

Northeast Ohio loves high school football as much as small Texas towns do. They’re passionate about college football in the same way that Birmingham is. And they obsess over the NFL the same way that everyone else in America does.

So like selling mittens in the arctic circle, selling football in Northeast Ohio is a relatively simple venture. You can even sell shitty mittens and still do quite well in the North Pole. Cleveland loved its shitty mittens. It still does.

The city was happy to accomodate Modell’s Browns in the same icky “let-the-common-folk-pay-for-the-stadium-so-the-rich-owner-keeps-our-team-here” way that the rest of the league operates, except that Modell wanted nothing to do it. He even issued a public moratorium on the discussion while he was secretly meeting with Baltimore, just to make things easier for him.

Once Modell erased the Browns, a dozen other NFL cities quickly used taxpayer money to build new stadiums for other billionaire owners. No one wanted this kind of episode to happen to their town. He made Cleveland into a cautionary example of what can happen if you don’t meet owners’ demands. Or - in Cleveland’s case - even if you do.

And with that graceless act of pure fucking selfishness, Modell wrote the epitaph that finally gets to be put to use today.

So no, it’s not too soon. Rest in peace, Mr. Modell. May your grave be afforded the opportunity to stay on the same plot in perpetuity.

mattfisher: My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:45:45 -0400

mattfisher:

My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court

I’ve been sending out some impertinent tweets about Progressive Insurance lately, but I haven’t explained how they pissed me off. So I will do that here as succinctly as possible. There’s a general understanding that says, “insurance companies— oh they’re awful,” but since Progressive turned their shit hose on my late sister and my parents, I’ve learned some things that really surprised me.

I’ll try to cleave to the facts. On June 19, 2010, my sister was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit my sister as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

Read More

theclearlydope: Hello Good Morning: Mars seems chill. ll: NASA...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 08:59:56 -0400

theclearlydope:

Hello Good Morning: Mars seems chill.

ll:

NASA just landed a rover on Mars, this is the very first picture. This JUST happened minutes ago.

1:42am EST 8/6/2012

It comes from a chicken - not a bunny, dummy. #RIPMCA

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:56:23 -0400

It comes from a chicken - not a bunny, dummy.

#RIPMCA

Judges?… CORRECT.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:35:22 -0500

Judges?…

CORRECT.

Photo

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:47:07 -0500

crazyjerky: Writing Skills, Anyone?

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 08:31:19 -0500

crazyjerky:

Writing Skills, Anyone?

7thinningsketch: No Bowl For You!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:26:06 -0500

7thinningsketch:

No Bowl For You!

…want?

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:39:44 -0500

…want?

siphotos: The Urban Meyer has officially begun at Ohio State....

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:40:54 -0500

siphotos:

The Urban Meyer has officially begun at Ohio State. In this 1970 photo, Jack Tatum (32) and Jim Stillwagon (68) bring down a Michigan rusher. (Walter Iooss Jr./SI)

GALLERY: Classic photos of Ohio State football
STAPLES: What has and hasn’t changed since Meyer left Florida
MANDEL: Meyer’s main issue at Ohio State will be himself
VIDEO: From Ashtabula to Columbus: Urban Meyer’s road
VIDEO: Meyer and Ohio State are a perfect fit

THEY CALLED HIM ASSASSIN

Remembering Mitchy the Kid

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:15:00 -0500

This is a picture of me and Mike Mitchell from a St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl in Chicago 11 years ago. It looks like every other single picture I have of us: Not smiling.

It’s not because of some alpha-male macho bullshit: At the time, Mitchy went out of his way to avoid smiling in pictures. He wasn’t one of those kids who had braces as a child and as an adult that was, um, obvious.

During the late 90s prior to camera phones, it was disposable cameras that found themselves in every house party and bar. They didn’t get uploaded to Facebook or put on the Internet, but it seemed everywhere we went people were taking pictures.

Mitch was at least half a foot taller than me (I’m 5”10 without a recent haircut) handsome and - thanks to daily gym trips that sometimes spanned four hours - filled out physically. It was tough to catch him in the act of smiling. When you made him laugh, which was one of my favorite things to do in our apartment, he’d cover his mouth or turn away while doing so.

It was an open secret that he didn’t smile on purpose, so whenever we were in pictures together I didn’t smile either, out of solidarity. Look at that picture again: We were having an awesome time. Trust me. We always had an awesome time.

My fraternity brother and former roommate passed away over the weekend at the age of 38. Liver cancer is the reason according to the emails going around, but it’s the first I heard of it. Mitchell would never let you know if something was wrong.

Case in point: One day he left our apartment to go to the gym. He didn’t come back that night, which wasn’t odd - he was really good at meeting people (people = women) and sometimes a workout turned into a spontaneous date. He didn’t come back the following day either. Or the following day.

It turns out that Mitchy had a date with the emergency room to remove a rupturing appendix. He had been in pain for several days and kept it to himself. He was in agony and went to the gym to try and exercise the pain away. He rolled back into the apartment several days later and showed me his new scar. Chicks dig scars. He was proud of it, but didn’t really talk about how painful the whole ordeal was.

He was one of the most unintentionally hilarious roommates you can possibly imagine. I’d come home from work and hear The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street blasting from his room with the door closed along with thundering banging noises, and I knew exactly what was going on in there: No - it’s not what you’re thinking. He was alone. And lip-syncing into a hair brush while dancing in the mirror.

This was happening once while we had a friend over and he didn’t believe me. I cracked the door and let him peek, and there was Mitch Jagger box-stepping like a goddamn champ to Sweet Black Angel with full body theatrics. I shut the cracked door and we looked at each other and simulatenously said the same thing: Mitchell is awesome.

He was a classic chick magnet. When we’d go out in Chicago all we had to do was stand near him and wait for girls to approach, then start talking to the ones he couldn’t handle. He learned early on that was the right way to go about things after discovering that when he approached women he wasn’t quite as successful.

One night at Kelsey’s on Lincoln Ave we were hanging out when he saw a girl he was interested in talking to. She was eating popcorn out of one of those little paper bowls - alone - and he made his move. He walked right up to her and said, “uhhhh…can I have some popcorn?” (Probably not the line that I would have used, but I had to work harder than he did).

She glared at him like he had said something outragous, and pointed across the bar to the popcorn machine with an exaggerated motion. “Go get some of your ow-wn!” she sneered, with excessive rudeness. Mitchy looked over at us, as we were well within earshot, and smiled - for only a split-second.

He then dunked his giant mitt of a hand into her popcorn and grabbed 95% of what was there and shoved it into his face, with only about half of it going into his mouth. The rest fell down on his shoulders, down the front of his chest and onto the floor. “Thanks,” he said, flatly, “you can get more over there.” He then mimicked her exaggerated motion and pointed at the popcorn machine.

The only people laughing harder than we were in the bar were some other girls who had witnessed the whole exchange, and they immediately approached him. And that night, Mitchy became self-aware. Once he got his teeth fixed, he was damn near Adonis. He even began to smile in public.

I’m still in the phase where I’m having a hard time believing that he’s gone. Though we live in separate states he was always good for a random text, email or voicemail. He always asked about things, my wife, kids, whatever - not just because you’re supposed to but because he actually wanted to know.

I hope his family fully realizes how much he loved them. I hope his friends realize how much he loved them, despite what that hulking exterior often showed non-verbally. Mitchy was one of the most loyal, caring friends I’ve ever had, even though we could not have been more different than each other. I know he never wanted to show pain or weakness, and he probably wouldn’t handle sympathy all that well either.

The unselfish part of me is glad that he is no longer suffering, even though he was so good at it for much of his life, with some of his other health problems he didn’t like to talk about (that are impossible to hide from a roommate in a tiny Chicago apartment). The selfish part of me wishes he was still suffering, because he’d still be around, in pain but content. Side Three of Exile: I Just Want to See His Face.

Mitchy will always be lip-syncing in my memories, he’ll always be happy on the inside and he’ll always be exactly like I am right now: Not smiling.

cajunboy: Sad Alabama frat boy is sad.

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:01:41 -0400

cajunboy:

Sad Alabama frat boy is sad.

Based on a true story.

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:52:22 -0400

Based on a true story.

flagonthemoon: I hate when athletes do this.

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:11:46 -0400

flagonthemoon:

I hate when athletes do this.