Category: New York


The Little Baller that Could

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April 10, 2009

nate090403_1_250Nate Robinson Blasts Off

In an otherwise forgettable season, the shortest player in the NBA gave an unforgettable performance.

Amid the darkness of the season that’s about to end, N8, as he’s called by texters, has been a rare flash of light, a mini-comet across the bleak firmament. There have been little guys in the league before, the near-pygmy Muggsy Bogues, Earl Boykins, Michael Adams, Spud Webb, and the estimable five-nine Calvin Murphy, who backed down from no one. Useful players all, but none of them were athletes like Robinson. Everyone has their favorite N8 YouTube move, the incredible double-pump dunks, the way he literally jumps over people. But none of these feats quite matches the cosmic block on the seven-foot-six-inch Yao Ming in 2006. [New York]

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The High Price of Fashion

Filed Under: New York, reading magazines by lucky — 2 Comments
February 25, 2009

Exhale… I have been writing. Still am. I’ll post links when they’re published, but just caught up on the last three issues of New York last night and in one of them was a great story about a kid from Queens (my hood), Kevahn Thorpe, who keeps getting arrested for shoplifting, goes to jail, shoplifts, goes to jail. rinse. repeat. All so he can stay fresh.

He really seems disillusioned, unaware or perhaps uncaring of the fact that he could use his love of fashion to get a job as a consultant or launch a real career. And make lots of money off of his passion and buy his own clothes or get them for free. He’s unfazed, currently serving time in prison.

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“The Fashion Thief”

When his frustrated mother threw nine pairs of sneakers down their building’s trash chute, Kevahn waited up all night and was there when the sanitation workers unloaded the garbage compactor to retrieve them. His junior school year had started, and he was reveling in his new reputation. “If you’re walking down the street with average clothes, people won’t pay attention to you,” says Melisa. “But then you walk down the street wearing, like, a thousand-dollar outfit, people gonna look at you a certain way. He’d hide stuff from his mom and keep it here. He’d actually come from Queensbridge in the morning and get dressed and go all the way back out there.” [New York]

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The Unemployed

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December 29, 2008

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My Laid-Off Life

Since August, 33,000 New Yorkers have lost their jobs. Here are seven recent casualties. [New York]

“If I could just get back into an office, any office, I wouldn’t be worrying about my daily existence. I also probably wouldn’t be downing shots of whiskey on Wednesday nights. I rouse myself from severance-inflicted post-drunk slumber and head out into the world. I regret feeling so sick and failing to get anything done; but what have I failed to get done? It’s these nihilistic thoughts I’m getting tired of.”

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Where does Depression Hurt?

Filed Under: New York, i like this part, reading magazines by lucky — 2 Comments
September 24, 2008

disclaimer: I’m not depressed, don’t email me

This New York Mag article from this week’s issue is about author David Foster Wallace. It doesn’t mention his suicide until the end of the story, but as a reader you’re able to (should) pick up on it if you hadn’t learned of the news elsewhere. The final graf (excerpted below) struck me because it goes against what I normally make myself believe, which is–to make a long theory short–that everything will be alright. Naive, yes, but even amid my general pessimism I like to believe that the best always emerges from the worst and that there’s always a way out. But happiness, it turns out, is relative.

I remember doing an interview with The Game, the rapper, who was experiencing a bit of depression at the time (whether you want to believe him or not is up to you). I told him the pain goes away. It has to. He hit me with, “What about the people it never goes away for?” My naivete smacked me like Ike. I’m young. I don’t know everything, so my interviews with artists are sometimes lessons for myself as well. And conversations, I hope. I realized there are people who find the worst way to make “it” go away.

“So here is the miserable truth that those of us who are given to depression are forced to face when David Foster Wallace commits suicide: It didn’t and doesn’t turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it.” (Beyond the Trouble, More Trouble, by Elizabeth Wurtzel)

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Toni Morrison’s Still Writing!

Filed Under: New York, just dope, reading books, reading magazines by lucky — 2 Comments
August 26, 2008


I minored in English & American Literature in college, which meant there was an ishload of reading to be done (I took an entire course on August Wilson’s plays). Among the books I fell in love with was Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye. It’s a story I wish I could have told, the type of story I would write. Young, Black Pecola Breedlove wants blond hair and blue eyes (the bluest eyes) ’cause she thinks it’ll make her pretty. Not just that. Possessing these physical qualities associated with beauty, she thinks, will erase all the mental and emotional ugliness she’s seen. It’s about identity and the things that make you wish to change yours, the things people say and do that stay with you. The people that make you question your own self and the power in all that. The writing is incredible. I’d like to get to a place like that.

This is the excerpt from Amazon that describes Pecola’s family:

“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question…. And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.”

Point is, New York Magazine informed me today that in November Toni Morrison is coming out with her ninth novel. A Mercy. A story about slavery that doesn’t focus on the race issue. Or rather, chooses not to see it as an issue. And I was just wondering if that’s possible. like if that’s just talking about the situation while avoiding the conversation. Ms. Morrison is one of those authors who brings incredible perspective to complex issues. But, with this, she says:

“I really wanted to get to a place before slavery was equated with race. Whether they were black or white was less important than what they owned and what their power was.”

I’d like to agree with this possession-over-race theory…but obviously it’s not so cut and dry. I remember a discussion in one of my English classes. We wondered, if it just so happened that Black people were the ones with power and Whites ended up as slaves, would everything as it is now be reversed? Were the color lines drawn out of pure greed and desire for ownership? Either way, I’m intrigued. I’ll be reading. What Toni says at the end of the NY Mag article is great:

Yet none of this is to say that Morrison thinks race has run its course as an American topic (even if Obama wins). “Crude and crass as most of it is and, really, uninformed as almost all of it is, the discourse about race is important,” she says. “But the real conversation should take place among white people. They should talk to each other about that. Not with me. I can’t be the doctor and the patient.”

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