For My Health

Since nobody's looking right now I'm blogging for my own sanity. Actually, I'm sure that Jess still checks up every once in a while...but...still....

No talk of work. No talk of dogs. Just talk.

I need to start playing piano more. I don't really know what happened to me, but I've completely stopped. I used to like to...now I have found too many excuses to not do it. It's funny how I work in a music store, got a music degree, but hardly call myself musical anymore. Hell, even in the car I just listen to sports talk radio. I should be in a band again. Mike Langhoff, the old drummer of Johnnyrook, wants to start a studio side project with me. I told him I would...but will I? Will I find some stupid excuse to not do it? Maybe.

My mom called this morning. I didn't call her back. Why do I do that?

I think about Haiti a lot still. I keep hearing about refugees that are trying to get over here in small boats and the toils that come along with that. I want to take a boat back over. If I could drop everything I would start sailing the opposite direction. I dream about the place probably twice a month. Vivid dreams. Dreams where I'm back at Wings of Hope. The kids remember me, I speak fluent creole and somehow I feel complete again. Maybe someday I'll convince Jessie to join me in dropping everything and we'll just go. If you ever call the phone and all it says is "We did it", well, we did it.

Thinking of church literally makes me sick to my stomach and twists me in knots. I think I really despise the Christian community. I wonder sometimes if that's a sin. I still believe with all my heart, and it's not like the church has scarred me beyond repair (maybe my college did that job)...I just don't relate. At all. Not even to "hip" churches I'm supposed to relate to. I still think I'm a devoted Christian...however, I get scared sometimes. If you ever read this Brad- call me.

I know it's been a while but this is too good....

Ironically, he looks cold.

This is why "This Is Why I'm Hot" is hot: Because it's hot. There are of course other reasons the breakout single from Mims, a Washington Heights rapper who intends to carry New York hip-hop on his back and restore us to glory, is hot. It ascended to number one on Billboard's Hot 100, for example, and topped iTunes' singles chart as well. But consider these other, purer, more intangible reasons why it's hot, best explained by Mims himself over the course of the song. Where appropriate, we will back him up with visual aids.

The most amazing line in "This Is Why I'm Hot"—and, even at this early a juncture, quite possibly the most amazing line of any song to see release in 2007—is "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly/You ain't 'cause you not." Brutal and unassailable in its simplicity. Consider the reasoning, first, of just "I'm hot 'cause I'm fly":




Mims is hot because he's fly. But it raises the question: Does being hot guarantee one's being fly? "You ain't 'cause you not" would seem to clear that up:




It would appear that fly and hot are interchangable. If you are one, you are both; if you aren't at least one, you are neither.


If you find completely overlapping Venn diagrams visually unhelpful, consider this tautology:



If that's a bit pretentious, then maybe a blunt flowchart works best:



The other remarkable, oft-quoted line in "This Is Why I'm Hot" is "I could sell a mil' sayin' nothin' on a track." Critics gibe that "This Is Why I'm Hot" proves precisely that; others muse on what Mims would sell if he deigned to actually say something on a track. Would he sell less than a mil'? Exactly a mil', as when he said nothing? Or a great deal more than a mil'? The song does not elaborate.

In any event, note that he can do those things, not will, which suggests he might not. As these claims and predictions are speculative, there are more possible outcomes; it seems reasonable to assert that Mims can't sell more than a mil' sayin' nothin'. Though we would love to see him try.



Sonically, the most entertaining part of "This Is Why I'm Hot" is the first verse, in which Mims underscores his hotness by touting his skill at adapting to regional styles, as the slow, minimal, eerie beat morphs beneath him, sampling both "Nuthin' But a G Thang" and "Jesus Walks." In the Dirty Dirty (South) he makes the ladies bounce. He slows it down in the Midwest per their preference. He does it the Cali way in L.A., and in Chi, in addition to adeptly moving the crowds from side to side, everyone loves his fashion sense. (If you enjoy nothing else about "This Is Why I'm Hot," acknowledge the rakish, immensely appealing way Mims says the word attire.)

Our quarrel lies with "If you need it hyphy/I take it to the Bay," an homage to the Oakland–San Francisco Bay Area's relentlessly knuckleheaded and sorta wonderful hyphy movement, with its proclivities for going dumb, making thizz faces, ghost-riding the whip, etc. (Yahdidabooboo.) But unlike Mims's other geographical shout-outs, that's all he says here—"I take it to the Bay/'Frisco to Sac-town/They do it e'y'day." First of all, no one calls it "Frisco" except rhyme-starved rappers, and the only worthwhile MCs living anywhere near Sacramento are in prison. But even worse, there's no style adjustment here—he just takes it to the Bay. This is wholly insufficient for hotness—several entities that take it to the Bay do not qualify:



The song's other two verses are a relative letdown—Mims can get chopped birds by the flock, he's got money in the bag, he coordinates his outfits, he compels you to Google the word guap, people tend to like how he records, he's into big spendin', bah. He does intimate that we will find him "with different women" that we personally have "never had," which is awfully gentlemanly of him, really. Since we're feeling charitable we'll assume all of Mims's women are hot; with regard to our own conquests, it's best to be honest with ourselves.



Though a fantastic song, "This Is Why I'm Hot" verily reeks of Skee-Lo. It's so distinctive and goofy that no follow-up could possibly do it justice. But even if Mims is not built for endurance, he has given us an invaluable gift nonetheless—reclaiming and re-energizing the word hot after years of abuse. Plumbing one's memory (with a bit of Internet aid) reveals how even reputable musicians have overused the "I'm hot like _____" construction. Behold:



Yes. Mere mortals are hot like other people or things; having ascended to a higher plane, Mims is hot like Mims. It doesn't get hotter than that.

Like I Got the Time

So Jessie did a good enough job of making me feel sufficiently guilty for not posting in a while, and I really want to be here for you when you want the Marty update, but that's also something that Jessie has been good at doing. She's beating me to the punch on everything! But still....

~ So the first item of business isn't the business of Guitar Center, the crazy weather, the ineptitude of Minnesota sport teams, or some random Hank and Wally story, but this....

SIX DAYS!

Probably the hardest thing I've done. I left what seemed like some of my best friends, my greatest comforts and the ones I could always run to when life got too stressful. The problem with these ASSHOLES is that they are trying to murder me. Literally. They make me feel soooo good and whisper these sweet nothings in my ear (lungs) that everything is OK, but in fact they really want to kill me. Bad.

So goodbye to the Camel Special Lights and the occasional Parliament buy two get one free, it's time to part ways. I can't say I won't miss you, but honestly it's the whole thing where I'm paying you my hard earned money to give me cancer and emphysema. So basically...ummm... Fuck off....

~ Speaking of hard earned money work has been crazy. I love it though. Bigger store, bigger business and it's home. Now that the 70 hour work weeks are starting to dwindle down to more like 50 it's giving me a little more energy. Well, apart from the last two days when I've been pretty sick, but once again...I blame those old friends of mine. Now the routine starts and I get this store rockin' so next year when we actually matter, we fire on all cylinders.

And I go back to Cali in a week and a half. Suckers.

Son of a Preacher Man

This man has honestly been one of the most influential people in how I developed my world view. Hopefully after this story he'll impact many more in the same way.

55040

*So about a month and a half ago I got a call from my district manager telling me that I had to start training my AM who had worked at GC for three months to be the next store manager of the Sioux Falls, SD location. So everything I learned in two years (which isn't everything) I had to teach to my guy in one month....

Gosh, it feels good to be back. Real freakin' good. By now you all probably know what was at one time the worst kept secret west of the Mississippi that Jessie and I are moving back home so I can open the Maple Grove, MN store. Basically I'm going from the smallest store in the chain to one of the highest profile stores opening this year. I'm not saying that to brag I'm saying it because...

Fuck. The last two days I've been helping out at the Twin Cities store which is about the same size store as mine. Granted, I'm not doing a ton there, just helping out with the dirty work, but I completely forgot what it feels like to be in a store that big. Its run. run. run. I ran Sioux Falls like a mom and pop shop. Laid back, loose and very...well, very not GC. That's what the situation called for. Now I need to flip it. 180. Then spin it around again. I'm not nervous in the least about doing it. Its just a matter of...doing it....

And the drive sucks again.

*Recently Kari posted that they switched over to Firefox from Safari and magically everything worked again. We did it too.

Agreed.

*Ingrid Michaelson

*And for those of you who read Jessie's blog the answer to that question you so desperatly wanted her to answer is Sawyer from Lost. Its no real secret on that one.

Hi Tech!

I'm posting this from my new Treo 700p that my lovely wife bought me for my birthday. My cellphone is way more complex than I'll ever be.

I Don't Blame You

*Its been a while, I know, and you've probably stopped checking this on a regular basis. Its up to me I guess to keep you interested, and boy, has it been interesting.

*I went to California for a managers meeting. That was nice, although I didn't get to see you, Bradley. It was beautiful there. I feel like such a business man when I tell people that I go out to California three times a year for my work. However, when that work is Guitar Center and the evening consist of getting drunk and bitching about the Operations Department that whole business thing goes out the window.

*While out there my old manager, Sean Holmes, informed me that he stumbled across this website while searching for himself on Google. He said he almost called me because he thought that I was on the brink of suicide when I first moved out here because my posts were so depressing. Well, Sean, since you stumbled across this site again while vainly searching for your name on Google, the joke's on you. I don't know how the joke's on you, but it is. You'll see....

*I voted. Mainly so I could say NO to the abortion ban in South Dakota and so that when I complain about the government and people say "Well, did you vote?" I can say, "I sure did," and then give them a box on JuJu fruits, force them to eat the whole thing in one bite and watch them choke to death. Somehow voting is the only way I can get a right to complain, but I'm sure that even if I didn't vote and carried out Operation JuJu fruit they wouldn't test me again...

*Lots of visitors came out to Sioux Falls. Drew and Leuer were here. We drank a lot and watched Death Metal Zombies starring Shengar Banta. You should go on Ebay and buy it. It's a classic. Then my mom and dad came. Dad and I watched football and complained about the pathetic Vikings offense for about two hours while Jessie and mom shopped. Just about perfect. Now we get to see Kari, Erik, Corinne, Ryan??, Finn and hopefully Lego. I don't know who Hank and Wally should be more scared of- Finn or Lego....

*Speaking of Hank- he went to the hospital again with a seroma about two weeks ago. A seroma is blood and fluid that forms in torn scar tissue and makes a huge lump. Not dangerous, but that's not the point. The point is that if Hank wants to keep getting sick like this and going to the hospital he needs to get a frickin' job. I can't support that hobby.

*This website layout still sucks. When I have time (most likely in June) I'll change it.

*For your benefit you want to check this site regularly because I have big news coming up...all the time. Don't forget about me and I will update more than twice a month.