Best of Chicago/2007 Cont.

Number 92 at Tank Restaurant--corner of Broadway and Argyle. --if you like that Thai soup with the coconut milk, this will pretty much blow your doors off. Tom Ka Gai is basically nectar of the gods and this Vietnamese version with tarot root, basil and all the fixins makes it seem flat and palid. What? Sublime.

Jibaritas at the Boriquen Cafe on 1700 block of California. --when you invent a sandwich that then becomes popular around the world you're probably doing something right. Originally made here for the owner's Puerto Rican father while he was visiting, you can now buy one in most major cities! Get the Jibarita instead of the Jibarito--the difference is maduros (sweet plaintain) instead of regular plantain and it makes a big diff. The sandwich, btw, is a steak sandwich, smothered with garlic sauce and mayo on fried plaintains instead of bread. Put a little of their homemade hot sauce on it and just go ahead and order two with yellow rice. Be warned, tho--no first dates, no pizza grease dabbers and no tuxedos--it's so greasy you can almost ice skate. Keep it real!

Other reasons to love the Chi:

We're so bad we got our own dance. Footworkin' and stepping. Not that I do either one, but I love living in a city as big and rich enough with love that folks are doing it for themselves in the early 21st century. Do your mu-fuggin thang.

The same with trains. They're not my preferred means of transport, but there's an unfadeable charm involved when one goes by overhead.

Real estate prices. What other major international city can you buy a house for $250K for? Hell, the last apt I looked at was a block or two from the L, 2.5 miles from Whole Foods, less than a mile from the lake and a 1300 SF 2Br with Den and dining room for--wait for it--$219K. And taking offers. And yes, it was redone in '03. Hardwoods, granite, 20 windows, fireplace--the whole bit.

The people. --Except for the occasional kook who will pound on the hood of your car while cutting you off (true story--from out the driver's side window)--the folks are pretty fucking down home. It takes a lot to rile them. They usually don't honk and are suprisingly friendly, amiable and all around happy. Doing tha damn thing.

2007 Love--Black Nerds and White Gs

Might as well start in on the best of 2007.

This may also be a "things I love about Chicago" list as well, just cause I've been thinking about doing something like that for a minute.

Musique:

Dude N Em--Watch My Feet --how often can you make 150 BPM hip hop, introduce a new dance style, rep your hometown and get signed? These mo-fos make it look easy. Plus they wear heavy metal spike wristbands.

Enur and Natasja--Calabria 2007 --how often can you be one of the best dancehall DJs in the world, be from Denmark, be overwhelmingly revered in JA, and get on hip-hop stations in the US? Did I mention that the main beat is a single sax note?

Kanye--Kane did it agin. In his own words, he got more pop, more big and more black. It'd be hard to argue with him on that one. Can't Tell Me Nothing is a fave, but Stronger is solid and Good Life grows on ya. Do your thing baby.

Lupe--Superstar is the st-hit. Plus check out youtube for his freestyle of The Cool ("lupe cool freestyle"). Chilling. And don't tell me shit about slam poets--especially if they still sound like Alan Ginsburg. One of the few (two) albums I bought.

Band of Horses--Funeral --It's hard for us white folks to overcome our ennui long enough to really bang shit these days, but I love the Willie Nelson-esque way baCK on the beat lyrics. Depressing but nails the shit out of it.

Cool Kids--Black Mags --What ever happened to just having fun? Ask the cool kids.

MIA--Boyz --I can do without the post-whatever pseudo-communal politics, but she sure knows her way around a futuristic Indonesian banger. Plus, probably the only member of the indie-rock world in good standing that I'd even consider fucking--Marc Jacobs endorsement nonwithstanding (hey, I don't expect perfection).

Timbo--Shock Value --Three or four bangers on that puppy. Just hope they weren't stolen from Arabic pop samples without clearance. Plus he did the beat for..

50 Cent--AYO Technology

Lil Mama--Lip Gloss --What part of kick don't you understand? I take mental sound engineering notes every time I hear it. Nuf said.

Rihanna--Umbrella

The Fratellis--Chelsea Dagger --White! But they're from Ireland so it's likely they escaped the Puritanicanical crush. Is it really so simple that if you're white you're going to sound uphhfy unless you overtly want to fuck? If that's the case--count me in.

I'll give honorable mentions to Duffle Bag Boy by Player's Circle and Whatever You Want by Nicole Scherzinger, just cause they're so 60s stone soul stomp'd and fuckable respectively.


Cultcha:

What I liked most about 07 was the solidification of the whole black nerd, white g thing. The world really is unifying right before our eyes.

It's not just Kanye doing a remix with Fall Out Boy, but how honest he is about it.

>Since they ain’t Black
>When they get money they don’t ball out boy
>They just buy tight jeans till they nuts hang all out boy
>They figure they dress tight
>So we gon dress tighter
>He dress white, so we gon dress whiter

Some day us white folks will work our way up to the same level of immediacy and honesty.

Or maybe not.

It has not escaped me that a lot of this is germinating in the Chi. Kanye, Lupe, now Dude N Em (who can't really be called nerdy, xcept that they are self-consciously fun enough to get white luve) and the Cool Kids (who, but for their beats and vocal registers would be indie). (Juice, too, but he didn't put anything out this year--and he's too busy trying to be record label hard to express his true nerdness/intellect--even though all the real money's in being either a black nerd or a white g.)

And, of course, the original self-proclaimed wigger: Billy Wimsatt, who extolled the virtues of being a young white guy running around the ghetto, and encouraged suburban kids to move to the hood. (They are, but possibly not like Billy imagined.)

He was from the S. Side in Hyde Park, where the U of Chicago is. Where--very interestingly--Milton Friedman championed free markets and got called lots of names long before 100s of millions of Chinese had been lifted out of poverty by market reforms..

Is it all related?

I think absolutely.

Or rather, I think that there's nothing that's not true.

What it is, it is.

Geography being the same as anything else. What something looks like being as true as what it smells like, how it feels, or what it stands for.

East and West are the external, global representations of the two hemispheres of our minds.

And the middle easy--whoops, I mean the middle east--is where neurons and ideas come together to nurture and grow (Iraq was where some consider the biblical garden of Eden to be). Which makes it either heaven or hell, depending on how well tuned your shit is.

And it can just as easily be easy as hard. Depending on how knuckleheaded you/I/we R.

The web is our global mind. And it matters little what politicians tell the youth--if they have access to youtube, they'll want the future no matter what.

Wherever sex, the economy, personal growth is repressed, problems develop that overwhelm the controls put upon the desires. (Gotta name check the Catholic Church and Islam here, though most all of us do the damn thang.)

And, with a little REAL motherfucking faith..

(ie: that god/the universe loves you enough to make your strongest desires as motherfucking holy as your weakest ones.)

And a few minor economic tweaks..

(ie: letting prices on content float).

We should be able to deliver that shit we've all been dreaming on so long we don't even believe ourselves anymore.

Barack and his "purple" politics are a manifestation of the same thing: a hybrid.

The only thing that ain't up to snuff is business. Because it won't allow prices to float on it's most loving, most eastern and most loving creations: culture.

Us white folks are holding on tight. Hoping against hope that we'll all become nice enough, non-profit enough, or whatever that we won't have to give up on regulation--repression--and instead can think our way to a future that somehow FEELS more loving.

Instead of feeling our way to it, duh.

Which is impossible, of course.

No matter. There's not a dam built that's stronger than little old water.

And no matter how strong your cherry orchard, the aristocracy's days are numbered.
So get your licks in now as a middle management pimp. There will soon be scores of much richer, much more powerful artists who can use you to watch their books.

Hell, I could use you.

White G out.

E

Why Wait?

I'm starting to see business not as competition but as the expression of mutual desires.

Sounds like new age hooey but it's actually true.

A sale isn't where confrontation or competition occurs, but where mutual desire can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Everyone is on the same side--we all have things we have and things we want.

When two people communicate and establish a mutual desire--and establish enough trust to complete an exchange--a sale happens.

As Puritans, we've repressed our desires so that we believe business unholy--because, like a kiss, it leads to the expression of greater desires unless leashed and bound.

But the overwhelmingly loving and feeling-rich universe will not be thwarted. And putting a lid on our sexuality, creativity, finances--or anything else just makes them that much more valuable. And thus that much more likely to occur.

Like the Catholic church. Squash sex in your priests and you ensure that you will be dealing primarily with sex for years and years to come. Unhappily, of course, but that's all part of the process.

If we won't give ourselves what we want then we must atone for our belief that the universe is a repressed, unfriendly, dry and cold place. Because it's not and as long as we believe that we'll continue to make choices that don't bring us what we want.

And there's nothing else to learn but what we want. We can learn that by always getting it or by never getting it--it doesn't matter to the universe. But as soon as we start to sell out we start to ensure that we'll have a price to pay to buy back in.

Ain't nobody our mommy or daddy--not even our mommy or daddy once we're grown. We want to be autonomous and free and powerful. And many jobs, bosses, clients, mates, and kids (not to mention our real mommies and daddies) might not take that lying down.

So at some point we'll have to contradict them in deed, word or belief.

Both comfort and strife build the same thing--belief. If you can't feel it happy and comfey (goo goo ga ga), then you'll learn to feel it depressed and hurting. And then, like Adam and Eve, maybe you can realize what you had in the first place. And learn to take it and motherfucking bounce it before any painful clarification is necessary.

The universe is overwhelmingly energetically rich, plentiful, and loving. In terms of feelings especially. And if we don't feel that then we must ask ourselves what we have done our of lack of faith that has caused us to veer from the true path?

It's no coincidence that economic growth, personal freedom, human rights and sexual expression all follow the same general growth rate historically.

And that the most sexually frustrated countries are also among the most economically frustrated. Frustration is frustration.

(It also gives a fantastic glimpse of how much growth potential still remains for those of us in the "developed" West--cause ain't none of us getting actually fucked like we want. We just got the actual tvs, computer and porn--the simulations of fucking--we want.)

What we learn through every transaction--economic, emotional, sexual, friendly and energetic--is how to grow. What we want, that others want the same thing--and where we share values and where our tactics diverge.

And through every repression--well, repression doesn't actually exist, just like production doens't really exist. It's just another form of enjoyment, like production is another form of consumption.

That's why white people so kinky, yo.

They love repression. They get off on it.

They enjoy and relish it.

And god bless them, it's what they've given their lives to explore.

And it's a very, very valuable enjoyment.

Perhaps one of the most. It has allowed them--us--to eat like kings, drive cars, heat our homes and enjoy the cleanest water and some of the best health care in history.

It's not all there is--not in it's current form anyway--but it is very valuable. From a spiritual perspective as well.

What repression is fundamentally is keeping one's energy to one's self. The same thing monks and yogis do.

And this allows one to be of great service to one's self and others.

But one doesn't have to be chaste to keep one's energy to one's self. Not at all.

In fact, we can't go much further even trying. I'm not sure the Taoists knew this, but they sure developed the practice of cultivating intimacy while keeping to one's self. (Interesting that keeping to one's self sounds like a problem in the blown-wad West.)

The universe is an endlessly energetic place. This is a scientific fact. A constantly expanding place that is entirely made of energy.

(Energy itself doesn't seem to grow, but dark energy, which is more fundamental and likely makes up regular energy, does appear to--it remains constantly dispersed while the universe grows--thus it not only grows but it's growth is accelerating.)

The long and the short of this scientific fact is that eventually we'll have all the time, energy, stuff and resources we want.

And all the love, sex, feelings, focus, intellect, etc.

And--and this is a big and--this time may have already come!

That is, we may already have everything we need. Just like the new agers insist. (Even though they never really believe it. When pressed even many of the smartest among them will say that not everyone can do what they like every day and get paid for it. Fuck, some of them even think that new age preaching is more important and valuable than the art they crave. This, of course, is because content prices are fixed--so our economy can't support art at the level that accounting, lawyering and all the other stuff we're tired of is supported. Real estate prices grow at lawyer rates and all of a sudden half the art is angry and the other half is tired. The remaining, third half is hurried. The other forty seven halfs never even get executed. Because those who would execute them don't believe they could afford dental care or their kids on an artist's salary. And they're exactly right. Ain't none of us stupid--we all do the fucking math--and we all do it correctly. So we all know that in our current economy you cannot do what you want and succeed financially. Because literally desire does not pay.)

Anyway--this time may be past. And if it's not past, it's rapidly passing.

Just like technology--an expanding universe means that there's more to grow.

If it's 1000 whatevers today and growing at 1% per day, then tomorrow it's 1010 and growing at 1.1%!

And just like compound interest, this is going to bring us all very, very enjoyable retirements.

More so if we know this and invest energetically in what we believe in--that is our desires (also known as following your bliss)--but eventually universally, as a birthright.

The question to us all is do we want it now or do we want to wait?