Ice Spice: 2023 Mangoprism Person of the Year

Thanks to Ice, the rap zeitgeist flows through New York City in 2023.

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP802 Person of the Year

Dec 26, 2023


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The moment Ice Spice got the music industry’s attention came late in the summer of 2022, when she dropped the music video for “Munch (Feelin U).” Filmed at St. James Park in the Bronx, a few blocks from the apartment Ice grew up in, the video finds her flanked by a phalanx of baddies and rapping in an smoky, unbothered monotone rasp. The one-liners she dispenses in rapid succession—casual up-down glances and quick dismissals of lames—feel no less devastating than the brash lyrical gunplay of her New York drill forebearers Pop Smoke and Sheff G.

The moment Ice Spice became anointed as the next princess of rap came only a couple months later, when rapper and internet genius Lil Nas X posted a video of him dressed up as her in “Munch” for Halloween—complete with mint green bandeau top, nimbus of ginger curls, and safety orange talons. 

In hindsight, Lil Nas X’s video was nothing less than a prophecy of Ice Spice’s incredible and nearly frictionless ride to the heart of the pop zeitgeist in 2023, which echoed his own 2019 breakout. In 2023, Ice released her debut EP; netted a bevy of top 5 singles on the Hot 100 in collaboration with Pinkpantheress, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift, including one via the Barbie movie soundtrack; performed on SNL; and released a signature drink with Dunkin and signature Chia Pet. Working with RiotUSA, her secret weapon producer (and fellow SUNY Purchase dropout), Ice cracked the algorithm by blending drill and Jersey club with R&B, bubblegum pop, Gen Z Bronx girl slang (the cutting edge of linguistics), and graduate-level internet fluency.

Looking past Lil Nas X, two other stars help us triangulate the appeal of Ice Spice. The first is Pop Smoke, the slain drill prodigy whose conquest of the NYC rap scene and emergence as an international star in less than a year runs parallel to Ice’s trajectory. Pop filled a void—he crystalized a forward-thinking sound, embraced and validated drill’s pop potential, and became the city’s greatest homemade crossover rap star since Nicki Minaj and Cardi B.

Ice Spice is picking up Pop Smoke’s torch as an avatar of and ambassador for outer-borough NYC culture, a rapper expertly weaving drill and pop sensibilities, a Hot 97-ready commercial artist who embodies the axiom “I didn’t sell out—I bought in.” Pop and Ice were born only a few months apart, and there’s little doubt that they would have collaborated by now if Pop were still alive.

(Disclaimer for the following paragraph: I say this all as a straight white man, and a proud Munchkin.) The second star who offers a lens to understand Ice Spice is 2023 Time Person of the Year Taylor Swift. In the year when Taylor Swift monoculture usurped the Marvel Cinematic Universe as our most prevalent cultural deadend, even Taylor was not the year’s alpha girl’s girl. Exempting presumed Mangoprism Person of the Century Beyonce, that honor would go to the person Taylor Swift brought out this year at her MetLife Stadium show: Ice Spice. Ice visibly feeds off female energy for her physical confidence—it’s apparent in her music videos, old photos of her with her high school volleyball team. The only time she doesn’t seem all-powerful is when she’s performing onstage alone. (Give her all of the backup dancers!) While Taylor’s music is interior, Ice’s is referential. Her sonic and visual aesthetic is that of a girl raised by Snapchat, Spongebob, Sheff G, and bodega cats. She holds a mirror to a borough and raps in conversation with the music, culture, and technology that swirls around her. Taylor builds her own world; Ice brightens the world we all share. ▩


The Guy Who Runs Buffstreams: 2022 Mangoprism Person of the Year

Watching sports on the MacGyver’d illegal streaming platform, I seal myself in my pod, transcending space, time, and adult male loneliness.

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP607 Person of the Year

Dec 20, 2022


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On Sunday afternoons in the fall, when the clock strikes 1 p.m., if I’m home, I boot up the website Buffstreams. I slog through a minefield of pop-up gambling and porn ads until I arrive safely at a bootleg stream of NFL Network’s NFL RedZone. I have reached my destination. More than likely, I will spend the next several hours watching football on my laptop, alone, changing from RedZone to the Seahawks game when that starts. Maybe I’ll take a warm bath or bake a loaf of banana bread while I Buffstream.

Buffstreams is a MacGyver’d online cable box for the spendthrift sports fan and/or degenerate gambler—those unwilling or unable to shell out $60-80 a month for Fubo, Sling, or YouTube TV. Held together by duct tape and rope, it broadcasts virtually every live sporting event—illegally—and its ever-changing URL suffix (currently: buffstreams.is) reflects its on-the-lam-from-the-FCC status and ethos. Whether I’m in the mood for the NFL, Monday Night Raw, or a cricket match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Royal Challengers Bangalore, I can turn to Buffstreams knowing there’s about a 75 percent chance the stream will work just fine without breaking down.

I Buffstream the World Cup, the tennis and golf majors, March Madness, NBA playoffs, F1 races. There are few sweeter words in the English language than the ones I wait all week to hear at the beginning of each RedZone broadcast: “seven hours of commercial-free football start now!”

The Buffstreams chat on any given stream is full of spirited political discourse and feels very male. Though I have graduated from broke boy 20-something bachelor to married 30-something with a 401k, Buffstreams still provides me with a security blanket, a chance to slink away from my wife to my virtual man cave and float away into the amniotic online ether and beam up into the wide world of sports. When I Buffstream, I seal myself in my pod, transcending space, time, and adult male loneliness. I always feel better going into my pod than coming out of it. Lazy Sundays with Buffstreams are unfulfilling, but they’re always comfortable.

I recently watched the unforgettable World Cup final between Argentina and France with friends at a bar in Brooklyn. I watched the match and I watched my French friend vacillate from depression to euphoria (The Mbappening) and finally to a zen acceptance of Messi’s awesomeness, just as four years earlier, I had watched the same Frenchman pierce the air with a guttural French scream when he realized that France was about to win that World Cup. Years from now, this scene at the bar will live on like a food memory—highlights from France-Argentina will powerfully conjure a moment, a place, a group of people, a sequence of emotions. Such is the communal nature of sports viewing.

By contrast, Buffstreams puts a man on an island. Buffstreams Island feels somehow even more welcoming and natural than it did when I was 23 watching football, hungover, on a precursor to Buffstreams. The pandemic disrupted the rhythms of friendship in a way that feels maybe permanent and I became more accustomed to being by myself. Also in the last few years, me and most of my friends all got engaged and married. I’m now a wife guy who wants nothing more than to be a devoted husband. I don’t drink much anymore. I now have two dogs whose sole mission in life is to cuddle. My couch exerts the gravitational pull of Jupiter. I’m a homebody. I’m washed. Sports will always be a given for me. Right now, Buffstreams is the flavor. ▩


Asim Chaudhry: 2021 Mangoprism Person of the Year

Chaudhry’s character Chabuddy G delighted us with his incessant peacocking, self-delusion, and capacity for reinvention

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP414 Person of the Year

Dec 28, 2021


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For the last two years my favorite TV show has been People Just Do Nothing, a BBC mockumentary about a clique of man-children who run a shitty pirate radio station in West London called Kurupt FM. The Kurupt FM boys fantasize about mainstream glory yet remain stubbornly devoted to drum & bass and UK garage, commercially outdated strains of club music from the ‘90s and early ‘00s. People Just Do Nothing is a show about the slow death of big dreams, as well as the hijinks that ensue when delusions of grandeur persist.

I first learned about PDJN from the rapper Danny Brown, whose own artistic identity revolves around the fact that, against all odds, he didn’t develop a sustainable rap career until his 30s. “People Just Do Nothing is almost like my music—it’s so fucking funny and self-aware, but also so dark,” Brown said. “I don’t shed too many tears, but [the series] finale definitely struck a chord. For it to end the way it did—with main character MC Grindah realizing that he’s in his 30s and music is moving on without him, and he’ll probably never make it in the industry—that was something that was so close. I was pretty much like that.”

The best character in People Just Do Nothing is Chabuddy G, the relentless grifter played by Asim Chaudhry. A friend, manager, and hype man of Kurupt FM, Chabuds is not beholden to the same musical-biological clock as the group’s narcissistic leader Grindah. He is an undocumented immigrant from Lahore who has assimilated into the rhythms of London life in flamboyant fashion, a self-styled “ultrapaneer” who is constantly concocting new hare-brained schemes big and small. Each venture—the Kurupt FM studio soundproof walls, the knock-off designer T-shirts (“Dolce & Gabbana? Nah mate, Deepak & Gurdev.”), the asbestos-infested DIY nightclub—is doomed to fail. PDJN charts the excruciating downward trajectory of Chabuddy G. In each of the five seasons, his ponytail grows longer and his life takes a new turn for the worse. His Polish mail-order bride Aldona leaves him; he becomes homeless. But the hallmark of Chabuddy is that he never gives up, a testament to his self-delusion, desperation, and determination. He doesn’t change much over the course of the show, even as his prospects grow steadily more bleak. If anything, defeat emboldens him. With nothing to lose, he courts failure with gusto.

Chaudhry met the other creators and cast of People Just Do Nothing during college through music. They conceived the show as a take on the 2004 pirate radio docu-series Tower Block Dreams, filtered through their own experiences in hip hop, pirate radio, and fake garage crews. Chaudhry was known then as a battle rapper, and he operated behind the camera for the show’s early webisodes before debuting Chabuds on-screen, building out the suave persona he sometimes used to prank call brothels.

Chaudhry has notably appeared in DC superhero movies and Stephen Merchant projects, but no matter how far he goes as an actor, he will always have a hard time topping his portrayal of Chabuddy G. It is probably not a coincidence that his most iconic role draws heavily on his own life. Chaudhry has said that Chabuddy is a composite of his own dad, uncles, friends, and supremely overconfident UK comedy characters like Del Boy and Alan Partridge. Chabuddy claims to be the unofficial mayor of Hounslow, the West London melting pot from which Chaudhry hails.

The legend of Chabuddy G still grows in 2021. Earlier this year, BBC Films released People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan, a film that picks up the threads of Kurupt FM three years after the series ended with a deeply bittersweet sense of closure and new beginnings (including the launch of an exciting new business venture for Chabuds). Chabuddy is still living out of his van when he gets wind that Kurupt’s pugnacious single “Heart Monitor Riddem” has become an unexpected hit in Japan. And so, he jets off to Tokyo with the Kurupt boys to capitalize on this seemingly golden opportunity. 

In the movie, as in the show, Chabuddy shares apocryphal biographical details from his past. For example, we learn that, in the ‘90s, he took over a Hounslow titty bar and saved it from certain economic death. Chabuddy exists in an alternate reality, one of his own invention—and indeed, what a life this man has lived. He’s like the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World™, but the opposite and even more interesting.

This year, the line between reality and fiction for Chabuddy G and Kurupt FM continued to blur. Chaudhry regularly posts as Chabuddy on Instagram and TikTok, dispensing questionable advice and realizing the character’s ultimate destiny as social media personality. The musically talented cast of PJDN put out an album of wall-to-wall Kurupt FM slaps, a showcase of their slick, call-and-response-heavy take on garage that illustrates how the group’s pronounced character flaws, more than the music itself, is the root cause of their depressing lack of success in the show. In the music videos, Chabuddy G can be found bribing used-car salesmen and bopping in the background with his black pleather jacket and Gator-skin shoes. Undoubtedly he is drenched in his “Sean Paul Gaultier” signature cologne. He even stars in his own song, “Aldona,” a funky lament about his ex-wife. (“She was so cold… yet so hot.”)

My own wife can’t stand Chabuddy G. As I’ve rewatched People Just Do Nothing several times in the last couple years, our opposing reactions towards the character has been something of an inside joke. While Chabuddy’s swashbuckling fashion choices, unwarranted confidence, and incessant peacocking tend to nauseate her, these things have brought me great joy. To borrow a phrase from the comedian Jaboukie Young-White, Chabuddy, by his nature, is always raw-dogging reality. As I have maintained a relatively staid lifestyle, his vivid, if pathetic, existence has resonated with me and given me vicarious pleasure. I admire his capacity for adventure. I am drawn to his complicated and largely invisible backstory and his instinct for reinvention. Hope springs eternal in the heart of Chabuddy G. He’s a self-made man, even if he has nothing to show for it. ▩

Banana Monk

The performance artist Jan Erichsen’s work deviates sharply from mainstream internet food culture—yet would not exist without it.

Jan Erichsen

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Published
MP407

Sep 14, 2021


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Late in 2019, the artist Maurizio Cattelan arrived at Art Basel Miami Beach and duct-taped a banana to a gallery wall. The fair opened, and news of the fabulous fruit quickly swept the globe. In Oslo, Cattelan’s viral sensation caught the eye of the Norwegian performance artist Jan Hakon Erichsen. “My initial thought was, oh no, he ruined it for me!” Erichsen recalled. “Now I can’t use my bananas anymore.”

Erichsen hopped on Instagram and re-uploaded a video that he had originally posted the previous year, to assure his legion of 700 thousand-plus followers that his interest in bananas was authentic. In this video, which was originally inspired by Cattelan, he rigged a baseball bat as a slingshot and sent it flying into a banana that he had duct-taped to the wall of his studio. In truth, the 41-year-old artist has been destroying bananas with homemade torture devices on Instagram since he began posting to the app in late 2017. Sometimes, he turns his banana into a weapon. Other times, as with his exquisite “Dolce Banana” turtleneck, and his old Instagram avatar, in which he wears a pair of overripe bananas as earrings, the world’s most popular fruit becomes a fashion piece. Like Cattelan’s duct-taped banana, which satirized the prestige and pretension of Art Basel, Erichsen’s bananas are site-specific: they are native to the internet. But unlike most food posts on Instagram and social media, Erichsen’s are not designed to entertain, educate, or induce salivation (or envy). Within an ecosystem grimly premised on users’ compulsion to self-project, Erichsen, through force of creative repetition, has forged a world of his own, energized by a novel and particular set of rules, imperatives, and possibilities.

Balloons and food are the principal subjects of the GIF-length snippets that Erichsen uploads to Twitter and Instagram each day. When not terrorizing bananas, he might be stomping out a grapefruit with a hatchet duct-taped to his shoe or crushing a wheel of Pringles with his bald head. Other foodstuffs featured in Erichsen’s videos include spaghetti, taco shells, cucumbers, watermelons, and crackers; more recently he’s experimented with almonds, kiwis, and rice cakes. “Whatever surrounds me is what I use,” he said in a phone interview in February 2020. “I eat a lot of bananas. What I’m often trying to do with the objects I use is find an untapped potential in them.”

Erichsen said that he is drawn to danger and destruction as themes. His first internet performance project came in 2006, when he and a friend “pretended to be a black metal band who thrashed homemade pinatas” on MySpace. Today, his videos often make use of his collection of over 500 knives, which he acquired in 2003 for an art school installation that invited visitors to walk below a sea of blades dangling by strings from the gallery ceiling. In one two-minute compilation that has amassed 19 million views since he posted it to Twitter two years ago, he pops balloons with a creativity and determination that brings to mind the suicide montage from Groundhog Day; his array of jury-rigged, gravity-assisted contrivances evokes the burglar defenses of Home Alone.




Balloons and Erichsen’s preferred foods share certain traits: they are ubiquitous, tactile, contain the potential for humor, and are innocent victims. However, balloons have few connotations in the context of Instagram, Erichsen’s main platform. By contrast, food lies at the heart of Instagram’s aspirational ethos. On Instagram, in a 21st-century update on the still lifes of the Dutch Golden Age, food and its mode of presentation serve as an efficient shorthand for wealth, taste, and lifestyle. As a gastronomic hub where cooking tutorials and restaurant ads appear alongside everyday people’s brunch adventures, Instagram encourages users to curate and compose their culinary snapshots with the care of a sous-chef plating a dish at a Michelin star bistro.

Erichsen’s work diverges sharply from mainstream internet food culture as well as the curatorial and performative nature of Instagram. And yet, by playing with the language, aesthetics, and forms that frame our social media posts and interactions, he makes videos that could not plausibly exist anywhere outside the internet.

Erichsen is not merely echoing social media conventions, but also operating in the traditions of video performance art and food art. “I’m very interested in how people use video,” he said. “That sparks a lot of the interest in what I do. That’s also kind of what I’m investigating online. I see similarities to how performance artists that did that in the beginning, like Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden, when the camcorder artist came onto the market. They didn’t know how to use the camera, they just turned it on and started filming themselves. And nowadays, people are doing the same with the smartphones and posting it online.”

Erichsen wears many of his influences on his sleeve. The abiding sense of danger in his videos is an open tribute to Burden. He cites Ernest Wurm’s one-minute sculptures as a key influence, and he invoked Wurm’s “self-portrait as a pickle” directly in one cucumber-smashing video in March 2018. Six weeks later, he attempted a banana plank stunt as an homage to his “lifelong obsession with Charles Ray’s ‘Plank Piece I-II’.”

The ‘60s produced a handful of Iconic works of food art, like Warhol’s Velvet Underground & Niko album cover, Yoko Ono’s apple, and Claes Oldenburg’s larger-than-life comfort food sculptures. Since then, food art has become more referential and eager to use food as a material: like Jana Sterbak’s 1987 Vanitas, a 50-pound dress made of raw flank steak; David Wojnarowicz’s 1992 broken, stale baguette stitched together with red yarn, a reference to his more famous “Stitch in Time”; Kara Walker’s 2014 Marvelous Sugar Baby; and Chloe Wise’s “designer” handbags made of bread crafted out of urethane and sesame seeds. 

Online, food is reduced to a visual medium, which means that various corporate interests and friends fishing for likes must go further to convince the viewer of its deliciousness. (Mukbangs, the popular Korean ASMR feasts, constitute one notable, intersensory exception.) 

Erichsen does not carry this burden. His videos are bathed in fluorescent light and staged in the bland nowhere space of his unfurnished, seemingly doorless studio. His visual style, his character’s neutral affect, his standard-issue dad fashion, and his choices of foods to destroy and wear all seem purposefully generic. He seldom acknowledges that his materials are actually edible. He is a radical anti-gourmand who divorces food not only from its most basic functions, but also from its cultural associations. 

In stripping his work of reference points, Erichsen diverges from other Instagram-famous food artists. Nicole McLaughlin’s wearable “upcycled” vests made out of microwavable popcorn packets and sugary cereals are rooted in the world of streetwear. David Henry Nobody Jr. references household brands like Hellman’s, Chef Boyardee, and Campbell’s in grotesque self-portraits that split the difference between Arcimboldo’s 16th-century fruit portraits and Warhol’s soup cans. By contrast, Erichsen’s videos suggest that he is some kind of artist-monk who knows of no world beyond his studio.

Still, Erichsen’s short, informal videos clearly demonstrate his fluency in prevailing languages and aesthetics of social media culture. He often uses social media tropes such as #OOTD fit pics, skincare routines, and weekly rituals. He said that in 2018, he became serious about posting to Instagram and changed his work habits accordingly, adapting his approach so that he could churn out 2-3 videos per day rather than toil over months-long projects. Eager to proliferate his work across social media, he made his TikTok debut by “vibing to Rick Ross’s Bustin with [his] kiwi hat.” “I don’t understand TikTok at all and I intend to use that to my advantage,” he tweeted

In some ways, Erichsen’s most kindred spirits are internet figures who use food as a means of absurdist comedy. Beginning in the early 2010s, the YouTube channel EpicMealTime presented food on an inhuman scale in videos that featured lots of liquor, yelling, calories, and a guy named Muscles Glasses. Similar displays of masculinity-infused maximalist cooking can now be found on TikTok. Another YouTube channel, HowToBasic, makes disturbing and violent food tutorials. The Twitter user Pangzai periodically goes viral from his home in rural China for downing disgusting mixed drinks in one gulp.

Erichsen’s indifference toward food’s most fundamental appeal is striking and engineered for virality, but it becomes mundane as it plays out over the course of his hundreds of videos of oddball performance art. While Cattelan’s duct-taped banana struck like a lightning bolt, Erichsen’s Instagram project has come into focus over months and years. Scroll through his feed and witness a man stuck in purgatory. The boring reliability with which he uploads a new post each day is offset by the tension of not knowing what deranged stunt he’ll dream up next, and the mild concern that he’ll run out of ways to tinker with food, balloons, knives, and carpentry equipment.

The most tired critique of social media is that people share the most boring aspects of their life—the cereal they eat for breakfast, the selfies they take when they’re idling at work and school. Through his loose, diaristic approach to his food experiments, Erichsen has located the point where the banal loops around and meets the absurd.

“I felt a great sense of creative freedom when I started posting videos every day,” he said. ”My creativity can go a little haywire sometimes, and I finally found a way to get every little thing I make out in the world.” ▩


June Tunes II

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Published
MP105

Jul 02, 2019


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Last year, Mangoprism launched a monthly series called ~Mangoprism Selects~, a round-up of my favorite new music. The series only lasted one month, but we’re rebooting it a year later with 15 of the best songs from June, plus a handful from May (!!).

There might not be July Tunes next month, but June Tunes will live forever. Look out for June Tunes III dropping next year.

TL, DR: scroll directly to the Spotify playlist embedded at the bottom of the post.

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – “Cataracts”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7AnyVmVGtns%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent

The best song on the probably the best rap album of the year. [Full album review]

Goldlink – “Joke Ting” feat. Ari PenSmith or Cokewhite feat. Pusha T

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rQ8lLwR0Xx0%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent

Deliciously humid, like it was recorded inside a greenhouse.

Free Nationals, Kali Uchis, & Mac Miller – “Time”https://www.youtube.com/embed/fFns8chkyq8?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Lil Nas X – “Panini”https://www.youtube.com/embed/1PrWA4C8eLw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Not nearly as good as “Old Town Road,” but just as catchy. [full album review]

Mndsgn – “Browneez”https://www.youtube.com/embed/j0fZbNSy-Cs?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

From his “beattape-inspired album.”

Mach-Hommy – “Mittrom” feat. Earl Sweatshirthttps://www.youtube.com/embed/lfqbHaLyug4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Mari – “Sermon Sippin”https://www.youtube.com/embed/4ARd8BmEHNw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

My most illustrious rapper-friend.

Isaiah Rashad & Kenny Beats studio snippethttps://www.youtube.com/embed/xNjwxRGVacM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Snippet of the year?

Benny the Butcher feat. 38 Spesh & Jadakiss – “Sunday School”https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ero1Xexyhs?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Pusha T had an incredible month with his features on “Cokewhite,” “Palmolive,” and Benny the Butcher’s “18-Wheeler.” With that in mind, let’s shine a light another good new Benny t.B song

Dreamville feat. JID, Bas, J. Cole, EARTHGANG, & Young Nudy – “Down Bad”https://www.youtube.com/embed/ibvxfN7G6Gs?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

88-Keys feat. Mac Miller & Sia – “That’s Life”https://www.youtube.com/embed/4oviKWgwzE4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

This song really pulls on the heartstrings.

Mighty Sugarcane – “Made of Love”https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?visual=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F631272375&show_artwork=true&maxwidth=800&maxheight=1000&dnt=1

Instagram’s personalized ad algorithm recently delivered me Mighty Sugarcane, a jazz-fusion trio from Cyprus. Between the obscure, barely intelligible vocals cloaked in heavy reverb and the keyboardist’s  Joe Zawinul-esque solos, they remind me a lot of Weather Report—if Weather Report was doing the soundtrack to Mario Kart.

Big K.R.I.T. – “K.R.I.T. HERE”https://www.youtube.com/embed/rtIj3hwTax0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Jai Paul – “Do You Love Her Now”https://www.youtube.com/embed/VKOmW_KYcEA?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Cory Wong feat. Caleb Hawley – “Limited World”https://www.youtube.com/embed/9mCw36PZZeE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Cory Wong : Vulfpeck :: PJ Morton : Maroon 5.

BONUS: May Tunes

Rosalia – “Aute Cuture”https://www.youtube.com/embed/CLFUhty8EF4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Catalonia song of the summer.

Pop Smoke – “Welcome to the Party”https://www.youtube.com/embed/usu0XY4QNB0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

NYC song of the summer.

Kaiit – “Miss Shiney”https://www.youtube.com/embed/QkQZszzZZLg?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Kaiit is a 21-year-old Australian who makes crispy R&B—get to know her.

Denzel Curry – “Birdz”https://www.youtube.com/embed/h6Wy3gwb8_s?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

I heard this song for the first time on laptop speakers and the beat still blew my mind.

Polo G – “Deep Wounds”https://www.youtube.com/embed/GIDTSzFSexM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Backyard Baseball: Where are they now?

by

Danny Schwartz Rhys Watkins

Season Categories Published
MP101 Life

May 07, 2019


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“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”  – Nabokov

Untold years ago, kids from the neighborhood would come together at Parks Department Field #2 to play ball. In those simpler times they were titans of the sandlot, kings and queens of their domain. They have long since dispersed into the wind like dust after a headfirst slide into second.

We tracked down 30+ original Backyard Baseball superstars and announcers to learn what has become of them since the old glory days.  Here are their stories.

Ricky Johnson: International porn star. Porn alias: Richard Johnson. Came up as understudy to Brian Pumper before ascending to porn stardom with iconic role in Mr. Hands biopic. 7x AVN Winner.

Sidney Webber: Accidentally gets pregnant while studying abroad and gives birth to a half-Brazilian child named Gustavo. Sells illustrated kids’ cookbooks at town mall kiosk in Redmond, WA.

Ashley Webber: Moves to LA after high school with big dreams, initially toils as waitress. Hires the Kardashian’s go-to butt implant specialist and rebrands herself as Instagram model/belfie virtuoso/spokes-ass for Flat Tummy Tea. Attempted foray into rap derailed after she runs over Lil Pump’s dog with her G-Wagon while leaving her mixtape release party and Pump serves her a career-ending diss track.

Marky Dubois: Roadie for Willie Nelson, later switches to roadie for Imagine Dragons, who let him in to the band as the tambourine man. Band lands residency in Vegas, where he immediately becomes addicted to benzos. Hits rock bottom, scrapes himself off the floor, now makes a living playing tambourine along to the hottest pop songs on the Las Vegas strip.

Lisa Crockett: Elopes with Jorge Garcia during her Rumspringa. Bel-Air-based tantric sex swami, works to repair rich marriages on the fritz.

Ernie Steele: Barber for the stars. Notable clients: Steve Buscemi, Jax from Vanderpump Rules, Halsey, James van der Beek, and Stedman Graham. On a mission to bring back the Friar Tuck.

Kenny Kawaguchi: Made a fortune in buckwheat futures, then lost it all in a Ponzi scheme run by Vinnie the Gooch. (They still haven’t caught him.)

Vicki Kawaguchi: Vegas nightclub promoter who books Imagine Dragons through her old buddy Marky Dubois. Has seven cats at home: Sylvia, Meowiscal, Paulina, Mr. Clanky, Poncho, Dick Cheney, and Tits McGee. Dick Cheney is the most photogenic of the bunch. Earns six figures a year on the side as a pet influencer using the Instagram handle @dickcheneythecat.

Billy Jean Blackwood: Returns to her Cajun roots, becomes Mardi Gras queen, and starts a crawfish diner: Billy Jean’s Bayou Boil and Broil. The business fails after one year. In need of some quick cash, she starts a cock-fighting ring on her uncle’s farm, eventually serving a six-year prison sentence. Still lives in Shreveport, LA. Falls into deep depression after Kickstarter campaign to re-open her diner falls $24 short of goal.

Mikey Thomas: Successful D-3 college baseball career; slugs 24 home runs and voted conference Player of the Year during senior year at Randolph-Macon. Career in politics culminates with successful bid for mayor of Yuma, AZ. Makes national headlines when Yuma becomes first American city to legalize bestiality.

Jorge Garcia: Decades of marital bliss with high school sweetheart Lisa Crockett. Best-selling erotica author. His novel “The Land Of Milk and Honey” spends 34 weeks at the top of the New York Times chart and gets adapted into a film starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep. Garcia brings on his old battery-mate Richard Johnson as love scene consultant.

Gretchen Hasselhoff: Barista at Bondi Beach cafe for years, returns stateside and scores a gig doing makeup for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Angela Delvecchio: Returns to the family business in South Carolina—Marlboro Meats—and expands the hot dog empire nationally. Becomes largest owner of hogs in North America. Partners with the MLB to be the sole purveyor of all-pork wieners in American baseball stadiums.


Tony Delvecchio
Has a falling out with his sister Angela and is fired from Marlboro Meats. Takes his passion for foods to the high seas and moves to Japan, where he becomes a high-end tuna fisherman supplying yellowtail tuna to Tokyo’s top sushi restaurants. Hunts via GPS and drone and locates a 950-lb tuna in the deep Pacific. While tracking it down, gets caught up in a typhoon which sinks his boat, “Mrs. Butterworth”. Perishes at the age of 28 doing what he loved.

Illustration by Oona Watkins/@oona.seas

Dante Robinson: Junior Top Chef finalist. His soufflé flops in the season finale, and he goes into self-imposed cooking exile for five years. Resurfaces years later on Tijuana street food scene flipping tacos al pastor by day and churros by night.

Keisha Phillips: Pioneers cricket-based protein bars and dog food. Purchases 40-acre plot outside of Peoria, Illinois to produce crickets to meet skyrocketing demand. Establishes a partnership with Angela Delvecchio and Marlboro Meats to offer the first cricket-based hot dog.


Reese Worthington: Develops yips while playing second base for high school JV team, hangs up his cleats after he he puts his manager in a coma during routine throw to first. Devastated, but eventually rediscovers passion for performance and fitness in college. Drag brunch superstar by day, cage dancer by night. J.K. Simmons’s personal trainer.

Maria Luna: Becomes obsessed with Seth Rogen while marine biology Ph.D candidate at UC Santa Barbara. Stalks Rogen for months until he files a restraining order. Moves to the Galapagos to study blue-footed boobies. Runs the massively popular Twitter account @SethRogenDaily.

Stephanie Morgan: Early advocate of crypto, developed a blockchain marketplace which she sold to Marc Cuban. Now lives on a ranch two hours west of Austin where she raises prize-winning peacocks, ostriches, and other flightless birds.


Luanne Lui: Moves to Vancouver, gets involved in competitive lumberjacking with a specialty in log rolling. Takes home the lumberjack triple crown by winning first place in the Vancouver Chop, Oslo Sweepstakes, and Quebec City Challenge. Loses her left arm below the elbow in a chainsaw accident in Bangor, ME, and is forced to retire in her prime.

Annie Frazier Dedicates her life to environmental activism following the death of her childhood best friend, her pet turtle Gladys. Moves to Everglades and adopts 250 gopher tortoises to save them from extinction.


Dmitri Petrovich
: Flips his burgeoning My Little Pony passion into full-fledged career by becoming Director of BronyCon in Baltimore. After successful 15-year reign as the head honcho of BronyCon, retires from the Brony business and moves to Yuma, Arizona after childhood Dungeons and Dragons comrade Mikey Thomas is elected town mayor and legalizes bestiality.

Jocinda Smith: Four-year lacrosse all-American at Harvey Mudd. Flips PA gig on Ellen into full-time job as Howie Mandel’s personal assistant. Soon becomes disillusioned with the entertainment industry. Offered job as Bernie Brewer on the spot after Secretariat-like performance in the Milwaukee sausage race.

Sally Dobbs: Innovates on the family’s mortuary business and develops a spin-off called “Doggies Remembered,” an animal crematorium that fuses ashes of dearly departed pups with precious gems. Featured in Mortician Weekly’s “30 under 30” issue.


Ronny Dobbs: 
Big Pharma whistleblower. Dies in mysterious spelunking accident days before he’s set to testify against Cialis as a part of a Congressional investigation. Foul play suspected.

Sunny Day: Earns degree in broadcast journalism and covers bobsled, luge, and skeleton for NBC at Winter Olympics. Resigns in disgrace after an internet sleuth discovers her secret life as anti-vaxxer and flat-Earther who spends her free time railing against “sphere-cucks” in private Facebook groups.

Vinnie the Gooch: Flees the country after his massive Ponzi scheme discovered. Rumor has it he resides in a Cuban villa with Tupac and Assata Shakur. Mojito alchemist, engineer for Tupac’s bedroom studio sessions.

Illustration by Oona Watkins/@oona.seas

Barry Dejay: Broadway flameout. Bingo commentator in Akron, Ohio, Steve Kerr’s voice coach. Joins Nation of Islam during mid-life crisis and changes name to Bartholomew 14X.

Chuck Downfield: Successful day trader who frequently goes viral for his homemade Rube Goldberg machines. Chronic inability to convince a girl to date him despite his wealth, internet fame, and large penis leads him to strike up a romantic long-distance relationship with an incarcerated drug mule and ultimately star on the reality show “Love after Lockup.”

Achmed Khan: Elementary school music teacher who serves as the third in an open relationship with the mayor of Burlington, Vermont and her husband. Questions about provenance of the mayor’s child lead to special episode of Maury in which Achmed is declared the biological father. Currently penning a memoir detailing the seven-year relationship with the help of his ghostwriter, Jorge Garcia.

Amir Khan: Moves to Pittsburgh to pursue career in the sausage industry. Quickly abandons dreams after he falls in love with the heiress of the Heinz family. Now lives on an estate in Pennsylvania and spends his weekends in Iceland.

Pete Wheeler: While hiking the Appalachian Trail, meets the love of his life, moves to Cheyenne, WY, and becomes a renowned small-town tattoo artist known throughout Wyoming for his anime-inspired tattoos. Husband serves as Cheyenne comptroller and city councilman.


Kimmy Eckman: Suffers a suplex-induced spinal injury during backyard wrestling match. Remains avid professional wrestling fan despite being confined to a wheelchair, hosts the sport’s most popular podcast.

Pablo Sanchez: Gives up sports after developing crippling World of Warcraft addiction. Most of the neighborhood kids never see him again. After years of isolation in his bedroom, his old friend Dante Robinson invites him to come and WWOOF on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico. Contracts severe dysentery, hallucinates; goes on a vision quest and realizes that he’s wasted a decade of his life playing WOW and vows to never log on again. Backpacks around the world, somehow gets a job walking the royal family’s corgis in London. Starts a torrid love affair with Queen Elizabeth II. Gives the best peppermint oil foot massages, reads Jorge Garcia aloud to her in the tub. Quickly climbs the depth chart from third-tier side-piece to the apple of Elizabeth’s eye. They eventually go public with their affair. Time Magazine declares their relationship the Romance of the Century. ▩

Illustration by Oona Watkins/@oona.seas

Mangoprism Selects: June Tunes

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Jul 01, 2018


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Buckle up, ladies and germs. Mangoprism, a blog that is dormant yet majestic—the Mt. Rainier of blogs—is launching a monthly list of kick-ass songs called Mangoprism Selects. It is like McDonald’s Chicken Selects, but worse. But still good though.

How long will Mangoprism Selects last? Only time will tell. (Not long.)

Please enjoy the first installment below: June Tunes.

The Carters – “Apeshit”

The official song of summer 2018. Migos ad-libs: just incredible. Pharrell—you’re crazy for this one! When Beyonce demanded Vitamin D, I felt that.

Freddie Gibbs – “Automatic”

The best song from the most savage mixtape of 2018.

Rico Nasty – “Pressing Me”

The best song from the second-most savage mixtape of 2018.

Nao – “Another Lifetime”

Here is a pitch I sent to a couple publications that got rejected/ignored. It is pretty good—or so I thought—and 45% of the reason why Mangoprism Selects is now a thing:

While Nao’s last release “Nostalgia” recalled the sugary synthetic bursts of Whitney Houston’s upbeat love songs, “Another Lifetime” recalls the roiling synthetic swells of her 2016 album For All We Know, in which she forged her signature sound—an inventive fusion of funk and R&B that shaped ballads like roller coasters and took flight on the wings of her sweet falsetto.

“Another Lifetime” begins with Nao’s voice layered over vocoder as she bids a fond farewell to her ex in the fallout of their breakup. Regret, melancholy, and a faint but persistent hope give the song its color; the chance that they may reconnect in another lifetime affirms their love in this one. She repeats the affirmation: “I swear I won’t run / In another life, I’ll keep us bounded.”

In the song’s music video, Nao wanders the streets at dawn, ghost-like while the world sleeps. It is a tableau that recalls Maggie Nelson in The Red Parts: “To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating […] to make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into its sublimity.”

Detroit Swindle & Tom Misch – “Yes, No, Maybe”

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/444293070″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

This joint came out in May and is technically ineligible for June Tunes. But I didn’t heard it until June, and it is great.

Lawrence – “Try”

Immaculate. Sounds like a Brasstracks/Nico Segal production, but is not. Would have fit in perfectly on Coloring Book. If it had been on Coloring Book, it would have been a massive hit. But it wasn’t, so it won’t.

Jonah Nillson – “Coffee Break”

Mangoprism is home to one of the most prominent Dirty Loops stans on the planet—me, Danny Schwartz.

Dirty Loops broke up last year. Here’s an epitaph: they were a band of unbelievable skill and questionable taste. After they disbanded, their lead singer and keyboardist Jonah Nillson signed to Quincy Jones. A couple weeks ago, he released his debut single, “Coffee Break,” in which raps about coffee dates and drums on the lid of his mug with two little spoons.

Tiffany Haddish: 2017 Mangoprism Person of the Year

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Person of the Year

Jan 07, 2018


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2017 was a nightmarish year (thanks to our dipshit president and his army of goons) made bearable in part by a few modern goddesses who emerged as paragons of authenticity and stars in their respective fields. We witnessed the rise of R&B darling SZA; free-spirited ratchet queen Cardi B; and Tiffany Haddish, who stole every other scene in the box office smash Girls Trip ($139 million) and became the first black female comedian to host SNL.

Among these three, the Mangoprism POTY panel is most enamored of Tiffany Haddish. She is just delightful. In Girls Trip, she plays Dina, an agent of chaos whose belligerence, shamelessness, and fierce loyalty transforms a good old-fashioned ladies weekend at Essence Fest in New Orleans into an absinthe-fueled shitshow of epic proportions. Haddish describes Dina as a “black female Zach Galifianakis”; she is Alan turned loose in the French Quarter.

Paul Thomas Anderson wants to work with Haddish, and it’s not hard to see why. In Girls Trip, she exudes a Daniel Day-Lewis-esque charisma that is nearly unbearable to behold, as if the viewer is looking directly into the sun. What makes Dina such a great character is that she is positioned squarely in the center of Haddish’s thespian wheelhouse. Dina is little more than an exaggerated version of Haddish, who kicks off each TV interview by hitting a vigorous Nae Nae. Her uninhibited, high-octane personality inevitably charms each of her interviewers, all except Ellen DeGeneres, who just seemed confused. (Incidentally, it was DeGeneres who nearly murdered the Nae Nae by teaching it to Hillary Clinton.)

What makes Haddish’s glow up so satisfying is that the vast majority of her life has been defined by struggle. When she was nine, her mother developed schizophrenia. At age 11, she entered the foster care system. She started doing stand-up at age 15, and she’s been trying to make it as a comedian ever since.

She called her Geo Metro hatchback home. She called the Church of Scientology home. No one has turned lemons into lemonade quite as artfully as Tiffany Haddish. OBSERVE:

1. She developed a lucrative side hustle as an “energy producer” at bar mitzvahs—a hype woman stirring up a ruckus on the dance floor. She started pimping out her male friends to sexually frustrated Jewish women after one lady showed Haddish her romance novels. “She had one that was like a slave thing or whatever,” Haddish recalled in her memoir The Last Black Unicorn. “It was a big, strapping black guy on the cover, holding this passed-out white woman.”

She performed at over 500 bar mitzvahs over 11 years.

2. Haddish pooped in her boyfriend’s brand new Jordans after discovering that he had cheated on her, but not before she “ate a gang of corn so he knew it was human shit.” She then contacted the stripper with whom her boyfriend had cheated and agreed to manage her adult film career. So she hit up Brian Pumper, who used to hang out at the Slauson Swap Meet recruiting talent, and the rest was history.

3. She dated Roscoe, a disabled baggage handler at LAX, in what may be the greatest romantic saga in American history. It’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame meets Jim and Pam. The only thing more amazing than the story itself is Haddish’s storytelling ability. Please watch:

.@TiffanyHaddish is 🔥 🔥 🔥 https://t.co/6VTil4S2vW pic.twitter.com/x3Rkwuv7W8

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 8, 2017

Congratulations, Tiffany. You are the 2017 Mangoprism Person of the Year!!!!! You’re my hero.

Runners-up: SZA, Cardi B, Barack Obama, Offset, Dylan Maxwell, Desus and Mero, Maggi and Hinrika from Trapped

Marshawn Lynch, Trillionaire: 2014 Mangoprism Person of the Year

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Person of the Year Sports

Jan 15, 2015


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In this life we all yearn to be trill, in one way or another. Trill = true + real. Or is it truereal? Or realtrue?

The equation is in a constant state of flux. The two variables are never arranged the same way twice.

If you do not believe trillness to exist, well maybe you are right. You should stop reading now. But if you, like me, are a believer, you know that trillness is a rare and beautiful and sacred thing indeed.

***

When Marshawn Lynch steps onto the football field, he seems to activate a sixth gear that renders him an Ice Road Truckers combo truck experiencing brake failure with its driver asleep at the wheel. Linebackers play the Seattle Seahawks and suffer nightmares for days after. Always he comes for them, a football tucked under one arm and dreads flying in his wake, demented laughter reverberating in the empty black void of his visor. He is the boogie monster, he is the Babadook. He is Beast Mode.

***

Marshawn had an excellent season in 2014. He rushed for 1,306 yards and was elected to his 4th consecutive Pro Bowl. According to Football Outsiders he provided more value per play than any running back in the league.

More noteworthy than Marshawn’s on-field performance in 2014 were his off the field hijinks. He has always been known in the NFL as a funky dude who marches to the beat of his own drum. But the Seahawks’ historic thrashing of Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII in February vaulted Marshawn to new levels of fame and fortune. The twin spotlights of the sports media and social media shined on him brighter than ever, revealing much about his character and causing him to react to this new level scrutiny in unexpected ways.

What we learned about Marshawn Lynch in 2014 is this: Marshawn Lynch is candor incarnate. Caprice incarnate. Sprayable bullshit-repellent incarnate. He lives without pretense to the point that Marshawn the running back is nothing more than the pure, uncut athletic and artistic imprint of Marshawn the person. Beast Mode is not merely Marshawn when Marshawn activates his sixth gear — Beast Mode and Marshawn are one and the same.

In other words, 2014 was the year in which the complete and utter trillness of Marshawn Lynch made itself known. Super Bowl XLVIII was the catalyst his dormant trillness needed to erupt.

We live blind in a self-imposed fog and it can be hard to see and know that which is true and real. Trill transcends. Trill lifts the fog. Trill hits the target no one else sees. Marshawn is Picasso. Basquiat. Nic Cage.

Marshawn is Dave Bowman the Starchild and the rest of us are a bunch of cholos watching 2001 A Space Odyssey and eating chips. We cannot experience the Starchild’s trillness firsthand but, suddenly, we can conceive a way of life we didn’t previously know existed or could exist.

***

In 2014 Marshawn became the world’s first trillionaire, 1000x richer than any billionaire. His philanthropy is invaluable to our society whether he knows it or not. By keeping it trill, Marshawn is a great beacon of hope for humanity.

He is the lamp in the lighthouse. He shows the way. He waits just beyond the event horizon. Go to the light and discover the true meaning of freedom. The light is inside you. Go to the light.

TOP 10 TRILL MARSHAWN LYNCH MOMENTS OF 2014

10. Marshawn Procures Bottle of Fireball During Super Bowl Parade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNtKn8NMNA

The surest sign that Marshawn is an introvert is that he is always cloaking his face in every available accessory and article of clothing.

For the Seahawks Super Bowl parade he put together the snappy ensemble of a face warmer and a hoodie and a massive cigar tucked into his beanie. True to his Bay Area hyphy roots, he is riding on the hood of the duck boat, when all of the sudden – gasp! – he spots a fan five rows back holding a bottle of Fireball. His face warmer renders him mute but through sheer desperation he makes clear his message to the Seahawks faithful: I’m finna get fucked up.

9. Marshawn Leaps Into Pool of Slime

Marshawn was nominated for the Nickelodeon Kids Sports Choice Awards ‘Clutch Player of the Year’ and somehow lost to Carmelo Anthony. Which only tells us something we already knew: kids are idiots.

8. Marshawn Attends the ESPYs

The night before he willingly leapt into a pool of slime, Marshawn chose to remain in his seat rather than join his teammates on stage when the Seahawks won ESPY for Team of the Year, nicely mirroring his absence from the Seahawks’ post-Super Bowl visit to the White House in May.

7. Marshawn Loves his Lamborghini

Marshawn whipped out his trusty stanchions and velvet rope to cordon off his crispy white Lamborghini Aventador, which he parked on the street during a shoot for a biographical movie about his experience growing up in Oakland called ‘Family First’. Seriously can’t wait for that movie to come out.

Earlier in the year, Marshawn put on his most risqué sweatshirt and drove his Lambo to the local donut spot for a pregame meal before the Seahawks’ divisional playoff showdown against the Saints, in which he rushed for 140 yards and 2 touchdowns.

https://twitter.com/MWCherrington/status/422089207444557824

6. Marshawn Dances to Philthy Rich

After the Super Bowl, Marshawn puts ‘Ready 2 Ride (Livewire Remix)’ by Oakland rapper Philthy Rich on the locker room speaker system and proceeds to gig. A flock of media personnel quickly surrounds him with cameras as Philthy Rich affiliate Stevie Joe raps, “Middle finger to the crackers.”

Clearly, the Seahawks stadium music guy watched this video, which singlehandedly brought sagging back, and added ‘Ready 2 Ride’ to the 2014 playlist. Here Steven Hauschka is lucky/unlucky enough to be seated next to Marshawn when it comes on the loudspeaker during the Seahawks’ Week 10 game against the Giants.

5. Marshawn Goes To War With NFL Reporters

Marshawn’s dysfunctional relationship with NFL reporters came to a head when NFL fined him $100 grand for blowing off the media after the Seahawks Week 11 loss to the the Chiefs. Thus began a battle of wills that continues to rage in 2015. After the Seahawks Week 12 win over the Cardinals, Marshawn answered each reporter’s question with a simple, passive-aggressive “yeah.” In Week 16, it was “thank you for asking.”

“Football’s just always been hella fun to me, not expressing myself in the media. I don’t do it to get attention; I just do it cause I love that (expletive).”

Marshawn’s commitment to his principles is admirable but also makes him look like a bit of an asshat. He trolls reporters because they are an extension of the NFL apparatus, a.k.a. The Man. Reporters ostensibly serve as intermediaries that give fans access to the players. By subverting the good intentions of NFL reporters, Marshawn actually gives fans more access into the mind of Marshawn than reporters could ever hope to provide under normal circumstances. The model is broken — or rather, he is breaking the model.

https://twitter.com/BartHubbuch/status/546886785583046656

Marshawn doesn’t hate all media. He sat down for featured interviews with ESPN’s Kenny Mayne and Jeffri Chadiha. He does naked photoshoots, he does plumbing ads, he let NFL Japan film him sampling Japanese candy, he let Vice film him going to the jewelry store to get fitted for a custom grill. He just doesn’t like it when people get in his face without his consent.

4.  Marshawn Returns Local Man’s Wallet

In November, Marshawn joined a Seahawks convoy to Marysville-Pilchuck High School to show support after a school shooting. Riding in a Mercedes van along with Seahawks WR Ricardo Lockette, Marshawn pulled into a gas station “playing music super loud” and found a wallet lying on the ground belonging to a man (who’s last name, coincidentally, was Lynch). Marshawn and Lockette drove to the address listed on the wallet’s ID and no one was home, so they knocked on a few doors and ended up giving it to his neighbor. The neighbor recognized Marshawn but he declined to give her his name, identifying himself simply as “the dude trying to get the dude back his wallet.” The dude abides.

3. Marshawn Retweets Hennessy

99% of Marshawn’s tweets are retweets of his fans and reputable brands such as Hennessy. He pretty much never tweets anything himself unless it involves Lil Boosie.

2. Marshawn Talks to Deion Sanders

Penciled in for a 60-minute session at Super Bowl media day, Marshawn gives reporters six minutes of his time and then dips.

But before Marshawn can make his escape from the Prudential Center, Deion Sanders corners him for a NFL Network exclusive interview. With Deion posting up on him like he would a busty sorority sister at the 40/40 Club, Marshawn delivers to the world his definitive life manifesto. He describes to Deion his preferred state of being: “Laid back, kicked back, minding my business.” His belief system is evident not only in what he says but in the way he says it. He does not want to be there, but he gives Deion two minutes because Deion was once a player in the NFL.

Marshawn once again shields himself from bad ju-ju by wearing a hood and sunglasses. Even his beard seems to serve as a sort of defensive mechanism. He must use words to explain that he is not a man of words. He tells Deion: “I’m just ‘bout that action, boss.” Ironically, his economical manner of speech makes him a man of words after all. He is cogent and lyrical, as if speaking in 2 Chainz hooks. Indeed, someone later remixed the interview into a song. SPOILER: it’s a banger.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/131955401″]

1. Marshawn Unleashes BeastQuake II

In Week 16, Marshawn busted a 79-yard touchdown run against the Cardinals that was immediately hailed as the run of the year. For one play, Marshawn fully harnessed his otherworldly combination of strength and balance and wreaked havoc on the Cardinals defense, as if to prove that the original BeastQuake, his epic 67-yard touchdown run that sealed the Seahawks’ 2011 playoff win over the Saints, was no fluke.

On both occasions, Marshawn stamped an exclamation point on the end of the run by flying backward into the end zone with his hand on his junk, a departure from his standard TD celebration of gentlemanly shaking his teammates’ hands – the polar opposite of hand on the junk. Whether the hand on the junk indicated self-awareness or instinct, it flowed naturally from the run itself. It was audacious, it was bodacious, it was quintessential Marshawn Lynch, who lives his life the same way he runs the football. Get off me, child’s play.

Thai Easy Rider

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Travel

Nov 03, 2014


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You used to think people who ride motorcycles were idiots. You are now mounted atop your own motorcycle, gunning it through the Thai countryside, and you realize these people are in fact geniuses. From inside a car the road is a rendering, a hologram. From atop a motorcycle the road is densely compacted earth, the road is the truth. The proof is in the pudding. Your problems are immaterial, time is immaterial, you are in the heat of the moment. The world is reduced to its essential elements. Periodically a pick-up trucks roars by in need of a racing stripe so you reach over and press the back of your fingers against the warm metallic side of the great beast as it goes, the rhinoceros to your oxpecker, letting the dust accumulate under your nails.

Yours is not really a motorcycle, rather a stylishly painted 110cc scooter with a wire basket mounted in the front, presumably intended to hold your burlap sack of baguettes. No matter. This is your first rodeo, and your horsepower is sufficient. Your cup runneth over. The kitty purrs, the kitty roars. Bugs kamikaze dive into your eyes and activate your tear ducts. You don sunglasses. You are Peter Fonda in Easy Rider with a bag of cocaine stashed in the gas tank, and al-Hamajj is Dennis Hopper. You bang your head to Steppenwolf.

To the canyon. To the waterfall. Wherever the almighty road goes. The bike is an extension of your body, an agent of your will. You are a master tactician so you draft behind al-Hamajj and wait for the straightaway to materialize. BOOM. You grip the accelerator and crank it into hyperdrive and al-Hamajj is but a speck in the rear-view mirror.

This excursion to Southeast Asia is financially unwise, but here you are. You are 23 years old and the years are already slipping away. Driftwood. Friends post pictures of themselves traveling the world to Facebook and you are consumed with the muted anguish of FOMO, of regret. Facebook stokes the fires of restlessness in your soul and you feel a powerful urge to SEE THE WORLD. Facebook turns life into a competition — a competition you refuse to lose.

Al-Hamajj is immune to the crippling FOMO that torments us all in this age of Facebook. Back in elementary school the coolest kid was Jack. At lunch Jack sat at one end of a long table. Your popularity was a function of how close you sat to Jack. Al-Hamajj always sat next to Jack or very close. You sat three people away on a good day. Al-Hamajj’s popularity waned steadily after elementary school and all the way through college. Not that he became less well-liked, or became depressed per se, but rather more inward-facing.

A former jazz piano prodigy, al-Hamajj ceased to give a shit about piano around tenth grade. You wish he had continued to give a shit. A few days ago he told you, not in so many words, that though he was never as technically proficient or disciplined as some, Jah had endowed him with a rare style of down-home bluesy face-melting that no one on Earth could duplicate. People would come to see him and his jazz band perform and, not knowing better, set their expectations to “tepid.” And he would play, inevitably melting face as only al-Hamajj could, and the crowd would respond with all sorts of involuntary noises, hupps and whoops and profanities and foot stomps and hollers, a symphony in its own right. Jazz, the sound of surprise. Defying these people’s expectations, al-Hamajj said, gave him an enormous thrill, until one day the thrill wasn’t there anymore. Now he makes beats, and his hi-hat game is strong. Boy wonder, Boi-1da.

Son of a swaggering Japanese father and a gorgeous Chinese mother, al-Hamajj has become quite the handsome, atavistic sumbitch. You are unsure if he is a monk or just lazy. Either way, you are certain he draws from a deep well of wisdom. His insecurities and neuroses are the foam atop a tankard of tranquility. Unmoored from certain trappings of modern society, al-Hamajj is committed to a lifelong quest to know himself, to know his body, to become a man. As ever, the quest continues. For al-Hamajj each day is a Will Shortz crossword puzzle, a wordless koan. Al-Hamajj is trying to tell you something.

Al-Hamajj is more daring than you. He heads up out of the valley, up where the road becomes a rugged Lombard Street from hell. It means certain death and you yell for al-Hamajj to stop but he is out of earshot, oblivious to your concerns with a mind only for the mountain. He does not look back. You pull over and wait for al-Hamajj to return and stew in anger and abandonment. Forty minutes later he returns and says he was worried you had died, and you can’t stay mad at him forever. On the descent back into the valley, you and al-Hamajj exchange the lead, back and forth like two dragonflies circling each other above the lilypads, a vaguely homoerotic dance. At the crest of one hill, about a kilometer out of town, a pretty young thang wearing mirrored Aviators and bare arms walks along the side of the road. Al-Hamajj comes to a stop beside her. He flashes his most winsome smile and pats the seat behind him. “Want a ride?” he asks. “No,” she says.

The mid-afternoon rain drives you and al-Hamajj inside for a nap. Freshened, you stroll down to main street for dinner, where food vendors are packed like sardines on either sidewalk for half a mile. Tone-deaf buskers play the System of A Down songbook. You are not particularly hungry. You are Thai hungry – you could eat – and you opt for what Louie CK would call a BANG BANG, papaya salad and a bundle of meat sticks followed by a hefty bowl of Khao Soi. Al-Hamajj is more judicious than you in his choices, for financial and spiritual and health reasons. He truly subscribes to the “you are what you eat” mantra. When you and al-Hamajj and the squad roll to Wendy’s at 2am, he’ll decline to put in an order and instead bust out a canister of mixed nuts.

You arrange with Johannes, your swashbuckling Swedish friend from the hostel in Bangkok, to meet up at the one stoplight in town. You are anticipating a big night as Johannes claims to be rolling with a crew of Europeans.

Al-Hamajj doesn’t want to go out. He requires two hours between activities to reset the juices. He adheres to this policy with a religious zeal. “It’s fucking crucial,” he explains. Al-Hamajj’s immunity to FOMO makes him the opposite of activity-oriented. He is going to stay in and get eleven hours of sleep. Only through a half hour of filibuster, subterfuge, and ruthless indictment of his character do you ultimately succeed in dragging al-Hamajj from of bed and out into the warm black night.

En route to the rendezvous with Johannes you engage Al-Hamajj in a ferocious debate. You posit that Eminem is the best rapper of all time and stubbornly dismiss all of al-Hamajj’s attempts to debunk your theory. In reality you are infuriated by his obsession with the mediocre Los Angeles rapper Dom Kennedy. You are two weeks into the trip and al-Hamajj has yet to go ten minutes without reciting the same dumb Dom lyric in Dom’s signature monotone sneer. Damn it feel good to say I did my thing out here. “Dom just speaks to me,” al-Hamajj will say.

Your argument ends in a bitter stalemate. You spot Johannes on the street corner wearing a “Full Moon Party” tank and cradling a large bottle of Heineken and you go to greet him. Johannes is 20 years old and in the midst of the original bildungsroman, eight months spent dicking around in Asia. A happy-go-lucky young buck who will strike up a conversation with just about anyone, he has indeed amassed a sizable crew of Europeans, who are chummy and of varying nationality.

You and al-Hamajj are assimilated into the crew for the evening and dubbed, respectively, “America.” You roll with the crew to buy sky lanterns. You head down to the riverside and set the lanterns free. You crave beer. Some lanterns make it into the stratosphere and some escape Earth’s orbit. Others die quick and set the Thai forest aflame.

You and the crew sit around a large outdoor firepit in the back of a bar. A Thai-Rasta version of Lloyd from Entourage tends to the flames. The crew is fast taking on newcomers. Ten deep, twelve deep, twenty deep. It splinters into sects, as crews are wont to do. You run into a French girl with whom you shared a taxi in Chiang Mai. The buckets come out. Maelstroms of Sprite and liquor bound together by voodoo magik. You chat up some Swiss guy about Wawrinka. Forty-five minutes later you talk to his brother about Wawrinka.

The buckets are a force of nature. Being a lightweight, al-Hamajj is particularly susceptible to their power. You know exactly how inebriated al-Hamajj is at any given moment because his BAC is a function of the rate at which he kisses you on the head and refers to you as “my nigga.” Tonight, he goes from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. You talk to a Brit named Marco (you love Brits) while al-Hamajj spits atrocious game at an Australian member of the crew. She thinks he’s hysterical. You and al-Hamajj take to the dance floor. Collectively, your dance repertoire comprises of the Shmoney dance, the Bernie, and a little move you picked up from Richard Sherman called the Grave Digger. You and al-Hamajj intrigue and delight the ladies of the crew as you Shmoney and Bernie and Dig Graves into oblivion.

You are unsure how much time you have accrued on the dance floor but the bar is closing now. So are the other ten bars on this street. White people abound. You join the army of wildebeests and migrate across the river to a large open-air late night party palace called Don’t Cry. It is packed with merry goers. Your buzz is progressing nicely. You later learn that many of the people here are on hallucinogens.

You talk to a guy from San Francisco about his silent meditation retreat. He is a chill bro but you realize you are probably talking to too many males this evening. You repeatedly call attention to the very attractive girl sitting ten feet to his 7 o’clock. As it turns out, she and chill San Francisco bro attended the aforementioned silent meditation retreat together. He calls her over and tells her you think she’s hot. Unblinking, she puts her face a couple inches from your face. Are you gay? she asks you. You reflexively tell her, no, I am not ga a devastating mental error. You should have said, YES, I am gay and proceeded to kiss her then and there. As usual, a window of opportunity materializes and you shut it with AUTHORITY. She gives you one last lookover and storms across the bar, and there is nothing to do now but sip beer with chill SF bro and watch her from afar.

Meanwhile, the liquor has utterly consumed al-Hamajj. A food vendor slangs calories across the street. You buy al-Hamajj a stick of chicken to quell his frenzied donkey brain and he eats the whole thing in one bite. Not satisfied yet, he hops up onto the back of a police car and proceeds to Shmoney furiously. You coax him down and back inside the bar. He passes out in the corner. Then he is up and he is everywhere, no longer flesh but a laughing, loving, spitting, farting neutron star of pure energy. He is the hero of the party. He is the villain of the party. Yo soy fiesta.

Your grandpa suffered a stroke two days ago. He is in critical condition and you doubt you will ever see him again. You last saw him in August, at your cousin’s wedding in Colorado. You talked about college football, the Revolutionary War, your post-college adjustment to the real world, and such. The adjustment continues. Indeed you are in Thailand now, and you felt little when you received the news of his stroke. You’ve tried to process it, or have you. You are numb in your bubble on the other side of the planet.

You decide it is time to leave Don’t Cry and make for the barn. You bid farewell to Johannes, pull al-Hamajj from the fray, and disappear back across the river into the dark. The stray dogs are out this time of night. Al-Hamajj turns down for nothing and he yells and barks at them and chases them up the street. You catch up with him at the town’s main drag where you ate dinner. The food vendors are gone and there is a film crew of fifty or more and the whole joint is misty with dry ice crawling up the sides of the buildings. Someone with a bullhorn yells Action!and a man on a motorcycle zooms past you, the engine pitch turning fast from rumble to whine. He appears headed straight for the bank of lights on the far end of the set but then he expertly whips his motorcycle around an unseen corner and out of sight, the engine pitch rising still and fading into the distance. ▩