I’d Rather Listen To “Straight Outta Hollywood” [Friday Thoughts With TeeCoZee]

Have an afternoon. Please. It’s on the house. Ignore the smell. Just take it. Come on! It’s Friday, August 14, Two Thousand and Fifteen. The weather in Brooklyn is 89˚ but it feels like it’s 88˚ which makes no sense, thanks for the consolation and somewhere, somebody is trying to figure out how a heat index can be below the stated temperature. Wouldn’t that make it wind chill? When he figures it out, he will hopefully let us all know and we’ll go out for falafel. Meanwhile, I have some things on my mind.

– Diet Mountain Dew is strangling my soul. I swear, they put Melatonin in this stuff. The more I drink, the more liable I am to fall asleep mid-sentence [which is what happened to me last week]. Here’s The Top 5 Better Names For Diet Mountain Dew:

5) Bizzarro Dew
4) I Can’t Belee It’s Not Mountain Dew
3) Mellow Dew
2) Mountain Drank
1) ZzzDew

– I was told to write about pants, so here it is. I have a strange relationship with pants. As much as I enjoy wearing them, I can’t bring myself to care about them. As the rest of my wardrobe is meticulously designed for optimal Power Clashing™, I tend to wear the same pair of jeans every day. Err, it’s 3 rotating pairs of the same exact jeans and all of them are worn the fuck out. They’re not so much blue anymore as they are white and brown. Perma-stains that will never get out but rather become part of the base fabric. Sometimes, I look at my pants on the train and realize that they make me look like a hobo. While the rest of my clothing has gone through hours of scrutinization, my pants give off the message that I could care less. Which, I guess, adds more meaning to my mission. So I guess I’ll continue with the shitty pants routine, pun probably not intended.

– I really want to see Straight Outta Compton. Wait, no I don’t. As much as I love headphones and Beer, I’m a cheapskate and use Panasonic earbuds/drink Coors Banquet [The Worlds Most Yellow Beer]. This means that I’m probably not in their target demographic. I also don’t like biographies that function as handjob giveaways. I’m going to try my best to keep myself out of trouble and explain in simple terms why this movie is wrong. So lets look at the hard facts.

* NWA was formed in the late eighties, reflecting a protest for angry black youths nationwide. Their debut album, Straight Outta Compton, was viewed as a war cry for a revolution to come. To follow up the album, Ice Cube decided he wasn’t making enough money and bailed. The other 4 tried to make more money with 2 sub-par albums and also bailed, because they could make more money separately.

* They made more money separately [Even Easy E, who was worth 8 million at the time of his death]. In the meantime, they did nothing to help ease civil unrest. In fact, it all basically got worse.

* Now that they are running out of opportunities to make money, they decided to get together and produce a film about their story, as a call to arms to young people today that racism in America is a huge problem, all the while the protagonists start making money, which in return, makes all of them a lot more money and does nothing to solve civil unrest, but merely recycles the prophecies they told 30 years ago to an audience too young to remember them.

* In fact, Dr Dre was so “inspired” by the making of this film that he decided to make a new album “inspired” by the film. Inspired is a loose term, as the album will surely push his net worth into the billions, which is a goal he’s been dead set on for years. Relevancy is a lucrative thing.

* This is all a shame, because Friday is one of my favorite movies of all time and I should always be supportive of an Ice Cube-F. Gary Gray creation.

Now before you get all high-brow on me and my shallow-minded approach, consider the inverse: A guy makes a film that protests global warming and makes a lot of money. 30 years later, the same guy makes a concept rap album about the film that he made and how its success raised awareness for global warming, which by the way, we should address as it has gotten a lot worse. In return, he gets to make a lot of money. Would you Spotify “Straight Outta Hollywood”?

Probably not.

– On a similar note, my neighbors were having a backyard party last weekend. They had a PA system and the whole works, blasting some typical Biggie hits as they chanted to every word. But to my surprise, 30 or more people stated in unison “and if you don’t know, now you know ____”, with the complete silence of self-censorship. That was when I decided to look down and see that they were all white. So I guess Lower-Central Stuyvesant Heights might be in full Gentrification Mode. But where in the hell are my dive bars with $5 PBR n’ Shots, god damnit?!?!?

– In this weeks Letter From Coze, I’m going to respond to a few comments re: me pooping myself and writing about it:

What if some girl that likes you looks at your Facebook and sees that you pooped your pants?

There are no girls that like me and if they did exist, they wouldn’t be disgusted, but rather proud that I was brave enough to write something so stupid.

Now I’m just afraid that you’re going to randomly poop yourself at any given time.

I saw you cry once. Now, every time I see you, I always expect you to start crying.

OLD PEOPLE DO IT ALL THE TIME AND THEY DONT LOSE FRIENDS BUT THEN AGAIN THEIR FRIENDS ARE DEAD

THEY LOSE FRIENDS ALL THE TIME

What if your boss sees it?

I’m not linked to my company on Facebook. But then again, I’m the only Troy Turnwald on Facebook. And I did just get a massive promotion. Shit, maybe I should delete the ad for it…

Is that Debit or Credit?

I was gonna write a check…

But seriously, why would you write about pooping yourself? Did you actually poop yourself?

Yes, I did poop myself. I wrote about it because it happened and I had nothing better to talk about. If you actually had a problem with it, maybe the Friday Thoughts are not for you.

– A couple of years ago, I was really drunk at the bodega vestibule and had to pee. Trying my best to hold it back, my bladder and pee-pee relented and I proceeded to spin around in a circle, muttering “uh-oh” to myself repeatedly [or rePEEDedly lolz]. The guy that was planning on mugging me was not pleased, as I got urine on my wallet. This story may or may not be true. Figure it out, Summer Sanders.

– I got really geeked last week when I saw an out of service R-32 C train that was in a 4-cat set but still assigned as a C via the rollsign and front/back LEDs. What surprised me more was that even thought the 8 set was split into 4, they still went through the effort to assign the front and back LEDs as a C. I asked around the forums as to where it came from/was going. Keeping in mind that it was on the downtown express tracks, one deduced that it was a loaner going from ENY or 207 to the Pitkin yard. In my opinion, it probably did come from ENY, as the summer swap is coming to a close. But then again, I also heard rumors that the summer swap was going to be semi-permanent and also, why would 4 r-32 cars stay at ENY? So I’m thinking maybe the other half was damaged and dropped off at 207 for repairs. And then the 4 car set was actually going to…Far Rockaway, to run the H shuttle? That’s interesting. If that’s the case, I should leave some calendar space open for a fan trip, as I would love to ride the fan window over Jamaica Bay Crossing one more time before the 32s are retired and I will never get laid.

– The peeing at the bodega story is not true. The mugger was actually entertained by my shenanigans.

Try this trick over the weekend: Call your Dad. He misses you. And he also has an anecdote to tell you. You’ll love it.

Have a fatherly weekend, everyone!

-TeeCoZee