It’s like that, and like this, and like that, and uh.

“Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” is one of hip-hop’s all-time jams. It thumped back in 1992, and it still thumps. This fact has nothing to do with anything more than a moment in time when I was listening to that song as I was writing this introduction to a blog no one reads. But hey! We don’t do it for the attention.

“We?”

Yeah. Us. Artists.

We are on the cusp of football season, folks! The middle third of the year is running the home stretch. Soon we’ll be telling each other how shocked we are to see another year go by.

Paris

The Olympics started last Friday. I was briefly inspired by the sight of all the athletes from around the world pulling up in their little boats and gathering together in front of the Eifel Tower.  That illusion didn’t hold long, though. The five rings that make up the Olympic flag still wave, but who gives a shit if the world comes together for a couple of weeks to compete in (mostly) niche sports that we only care about every four years. The bombings and shootings and stabbings and home invasion robberies don’t stop. People aren’t nicer to each other. There are no lessons learned from the Olympics, but it is a good opportunity to sell some product.

Imagine there’s no countries.
It isn’t hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for.
And no religion, too.

Juliette Armanet beautifully sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” during the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Imagine what an eighty-three-year-old John Lennon might think if he was alive to see that.

Crapshoot

According to Grammarist.com (a Found First Marketing company, 2024), “crapshoot” is a metaphorical term that takes its meaning from the beloved dice game craps. Because the outcome of the dice is impossible to determine, a “crapshoot” is a situation whose outcome is unpredictable. Often, people use in in reference to a business decision, but here I am using it to describe a new hobby that I picked up: creating video content.

Some folks might tinker on cars. Some folks might mess around with woodwork. Some folks paint. Some write. Some do drugs. Some folks do it. People do a lot of different things to pass their time in a manner that feels both productive and relaxing. I decided to produce a short video once a week in which I talk for a few minutes while sitting at my desk at the end of my night. Cool.

“Why is this a crapshoot?”

There’s no financial investment, so I guess all I have to lose is some dignity by uploading videos of myself talking. That feels like a crapshoot because no one likes being mocked. Some people don’t care. I walk the line.

Annuals

In my family, there are two months during which most of us in the gang have our birthdays: January and July. In July, two of my brothers (one older and one younger), a sister, a niece (same day as my oldest brother), and my dad have birthdays. Throw in my father-in-law and a few friends into that mix. Lots of birthdays in July because our folks and other people’s folks were horny during the holidays. Egg nogg has that affect on some people.

My dad’s birthday was on July eighteenth. “Was” because he passed away three years ago. I mentioned this on a “Saturday Night Special” from earlier this month, but it’s impossible to pass a deceased loved one’s birthday and not think about them. I think about my dad every day. When this July eighteenth came and went, I thought about how strange it was that three years have already gone by.  How?

He would have been eighty-four. Damn. That’s old. I don’t think any of his siblings made it much further than that. He went at eighty-one. I’ll be forty-three at the turn of the new year, in 2025. Twenty twenty-five. The constant march of time—for some towards life and for all of us towards death—that is what trips me out on days like July eighteenth. That day used to be the celebration of a rather important life in my world. It’s no longer that, and with each one that passes, I move further away from those celebratory memories.

The best I can do is carry on his celebration in spirit, day-by-day.