DeLaWho? DeLaWhat? DeLaWhere?

For some reason, today's rain feels refreshing and productive. It has been a good rain not a gloomy rain. As I have walked to classes today in the steady drizzle, I have tried to figure out why. And as I entered Crawford after my last class it finally dawned on me. The rain is hitting objects other than the ground. As the raindrops fall from the sky, they hit the green leaves of the trees and other foliage. The rain provides a soothing white noise of sorts. So soothing that I think I will take a nap. *this signals the end of a random but necessary post*

The NFL Draft could be one of the most over-hyped events in sports. It is a made for TV(ESPN) event if there ever was one. And each year, it gets more and more coverage and it gets more and more of ESPN's resources are thrown at it. This year, in order to satisfy those people who need constant stimulation AKA those with +(-ition), ESPn broadcasted from multiple sets in multiple locations, switching from set to another as numerous scrolls streamed across the bottom of the screen for all of those people who need MORE information. One of those people bringing the constant (IV) of information is the ageless wonder, Mel Kiper @ ESPN.com or Mel Kiper @ melkiper.com. A man whose sole purpose in life is to analyze each teams draft picks and maintain a full, slick, greasy, and healthy head of hair.

This year there was a lot of hype and excitement surrounding the draft with the whole Clarett and Mike Williams early entry situation as well as the introduction of yet another Manning to the league. And as any self-respecting network, ESPN sucked both of those subjects dry by constantly interviewing the young Manning, who would have been better off by not saying anything. But, I digress...The draft started at about 12:15. In the first round, each team gets 15 minutes to make a selection or a trade at their assigned draft spot. And on Saturday, it seemed as though each team used every last minute. As if the draft didnt go on long enough, Saturdays draft seemed to drag on and on and on. It is one of those events where you want to watch in the beginning, but once the first few picks go by, you spend the next 3 hours waiting for your team to pick. It is almost a chore to watch. Youre damned if you do, damned if you dont. You gotta watch it, but it hurts to watch after a while. In the end, the Draft leaves you with mixed feelings of frustration, boredom, excitement, and confusion. The draft is a unescapable and required waste of time which I will always be fooled into getting excite about.

I agree with fellow group member, Christine. She "blogged" that Ben delivered our speech very well. Using his New York attitude and expressiveness, he did an extremely effective job with inflections and emphasis'. He even slowed down his swift NY delivery for those from the slower, lower states (myself included). Well done, Ben. I thought that Fatima really projected well, especially in the beginning during the "I have a dream..." portion. She really emphasized that part of the her introduction well.

So, I just got the Van Hunt CD as well as the soundtrack to the Ladykillers. Both of these CDs impress me, especially Van Hunt. I mentioned seeing him opening up for the Roots and Blackalicious. Lets just say, his debut album is amazing. Pick it up. I will try to review both of these CDs a little later.

Quick question: Did anyone go to see Nick Swardson on Monday night. If you missed it, you missed out on an hour and half of hilarity. I was really excited to learn that he was coming here to Denison because I saw his standup on Comedy Central a year or so ago. He repeated some of the material from his standup, but it was still funny. I will try to review his show as well a little later, but I will leave you with a paraphased version of one of his funniest jokes.

"So me and my friends were down in Mexico building libraries and one night we went out to have a little fun. One of my friends wanted to score a blunt. Just one single blunt. So he walked up to this guy and asked him if he had a blunt that he could buy. The guy said "No, but I have heroin." What kind of selling point is that? What is my friend going to do, turn to us and say "So he does have a blunt, but do you wanna die?" Just imagine if this guy was a cars salesman. If you ask him if he has a Honda Civic, would he respond with "No, but I have heroin."

Obviously, this joke is all about setup, but it was hilarious none the less. REVIEWS COMING SOON.

It is rare in this day and age that a professional athlete would turn down a $3.6 million dollar contract for a contract of 18,000 a year in order to serve and protect his country. Pat Tillman, former Arizona Cardinals defensive back, was killed in Afghanistan. While one soldiers life does not have more importance than any other ones, Tillman set an example of selflessness and sacrifice for our whole country. He sacrificed a lifestyle that many people only dream about. It was a tough and honorable decision that he made last year when joining the Rangers. Mark Schlereth of ESPN.com says it best,

"I never played football with or against Pat Tillman and I didn't know him, but I wish I had. Simply put, he was an American hero. He had the courage of his convictions to walk away from the money, prestige, celebrity and fame that an NFL career offers. To do that takes incredible amounts of integrity and heroism.

Tillman made the ultimate sacrifice so that the people of this country could be protected. He should be honored by Arizona State University, the Arizona Cardinals and the NFL. I regret that I didn't know this amazing human being."

I think i have been scarred by last nights occurence. Shaving will become a trying task to perform because I fear that people will break out into acts of public affection. Anytime you see or hear people having sex in place that is usually not used for sex, it burns those events into your mind and wont let you forget them when you enter that place. As of right now, three of the four shower stalls have been dirtied. Shower#1 Last Night's Events, Shower #2 - a drunk mans' personal urinal (his business lasted around the same amount of time as Austin Powers' bathroom visit after he was thawed out from the 60's) (that was witnessed by my roommate), and the Shower #3 More sex, probably the same bunnies using the 1st stall. So far, nothing has happened in the fourth shower stall that I know of. And right now, thats all that matters. I think i may just continue posting about this until I get it out of my system.

Last Thursday, a speaker came to talk about the evolution of Hip-hop and the business of it. I really wanted to go but I had much work to do, but Fatima went and it seems like she took a lot of positive outlooks from it.

Last night, a little after two o'clock, I walked into the bathroom with a razor and shaving cream in hand. The shower closest to the door was on. I washed my face and applied the shaving cream. I was almost finished shaving when I heard a female groan with pleasure. I convinced myself that I was hearing things because it was late. Well, I was wrong. I began to hear the slap of human flesh against human flesh. And the yelps of joy rang louder as I tried to touch up the spots I missed. Confused and bewildered, I stood there for 15 seconds to make sure that I wasnt making stuff up in my mind. Movement of the shower curtains was in unison with the noises being produced by the act being performed in shower #1. Like a deer in the headlights, I walked out of the bathroom. Apparently, the two people had been going at it for the 5+ minutes that I was shaving. I dont even know how to end this story because it was so unexpected. I mean its one thing to hear a girl giggle in the shower stall next to you, which I have heard. But, it is another thing to hear a girl get to the point where she can no longer hold back her happeniss. Before last night, I knew the showers were probably the sight of many a fling, but to see and hear those acts in progress was another thing. People who havent been put in that situation may say, oh Ivan stop being so uptight, but when your actually there you dont know how to react. I think I wouldnt have been so traumatized if I heard these sounds as I was walking in. But, the fact that they came after a couple of minutes of being in there is probably what has confused me so.

Sincerly,
Confused in Crawford

So, my friend Zach Daniels and I have put a lot of money and effort into our "dream" of DJing parties on campus. I purchased some relatively cheap (in truth, they were not cheap at all) Direct Drive Numark Turntables as well as some vinyl. We bought some speakers, an amp, a dual CD player with a mixer integrated into the unit. Tomorrow, it is all coming together because we are DJing the DG Formal. If anybody in this little community Gilbie has created is gonna be there, let me know what you thought of the job we did.

By the way, Gilbie, I understand there have been a lot of issues with the new Google email service dealing with privacy or the lack thereof. I just wanna have some input on how the system works. We will see how it goes.

When I signed into Blogger today, I saw an unfamiliar icon which was promoting google's gmail. It is currently in its testing phase and I was glad to sign up and I felt special to help them with their product testing. email me at specialed@gmail.com.

The Roots are on tour right now preparing for their album release and the subsequent album tour. Check out their first single, Don't Say Nuthin off their upcoming album entitled The Tipping Point.

So, I was walkin back from class today and I noticed that there was a bit more green to be seen on campus. It seems like all the flowers and trees started showning there colors. Yesterday, we had our first thunderstorm and it looks like there is another one heading our way. The campus looks much better during this period of time and it seems like people are generally happier. With this in mind, i think that maybe our winter break should be extended 1 or 2 weeks. This would allow us to have a winter session, which would be pretty cool. It would also allow us to enjoy the great weather that we have been having recently. We would be on campus less during the grueling winter (a time where visible happiness is sometimes lost on anyones face), and more time on campus during the spring and early summer. I think peoples views of Denison would change substantially since a lot of the complaints that i have heard is more about how miserable the weather is as opposed to more school based complaints. Believe me there is always room for improvement with this administration but the additional days of warm weather might change some peoples feelings about this school.

"Hear" it is Eddie. As I said, I went to OWU for a Roots Concert on Saturday night. The concert was downright amazing. This was my third time seeing them and it was the worst concert - soundwise- of theirs that I have seen. However, it was their most impressive concert because it was held in their "Physical Education" Center (cause Gynasium is way too high school)(Shown to the left). Notice that the gym consists of a dozen or so dome-like structures. Inside the gym, the ceiling was curved. This curved ceiling provided interesting...well, terrible acoustics. Sounds would reflect back onto stage causing this weird echo effect. The opening act was a new soul/rock/blues/r&b artist Van Hunt. People try to compare him to D'angelo or maybe even Saadiq, cody chestnutt, or maybe even Maxwell. But, he is in his own music genre. When he came on stage not many of the OWU drunkards had shown up, so it was relatively calm. I really enjoyed his 30 minute set. He has an amazing voice. It was actually pretty funny because he is originally from Dayton, so his family including his family made the trip down to OWU for the concert. SIDE NOTE: take a listen to some of his stuff Anything, Highlights...I could go on but just check out his website.

Back to the concert, Blackalicious was the next act to come on. I was a little disappointed. I have heard that they are pretty good live. But, with a combination of muffled instrumentals and indiscernable lyrics, the performance was poor. Gift of Gab, who raps pretty fast, would start getting excited mid-rap and would begin to make no sense at all.

The Roots are one of the premier acts in all of music right now. They are progressive musicians who tour yearlong. They tour like they used to back in the day (i really have no clue). It doesnt matter if they are promoting an album or if they are just out there for the sake of touring and playing music. They provide an outrageous amount of energy on stage and play to the crowd with entertaining solos. On saturday, they made up for the terrible acoustics with an energy once unknown to man. Recently they lost their lead guitarist, Ben, to Incubus. Ben was replaced by Martin Luther and Kirk Douglas. His replacements were outrageously amazing. Incubus' gain was also the Roots gain. Martin Luther has an amazingly soulful voice to go along with his skills on the strings and Kirk Douglas was his equal if not superior on the guitar. His solo was amazing. The Roots ended up playing some new stuff from their album. The new stuff was pretty good, but I couldnt really tell because again the acoustics were so terrible. The terrible acoustics were really evident when they played a song called Quills off their most recent album. In the sequence of the song, the entire band stops-pauses-then starts back up. In a hip-hop song it has the effect of a record stopping. There is usually a moment of pure silence that sounds like music genius as the next sequence begins. It has an amazing effect live. However, the acoustics as they were muffled the moment of silence which makes the song. However, the Roots were able to overcome the sound problems to come through strong.

Towards the end of their concert, they go through a sequence of solos. Hub, the bassist, jammed out and then they transitioned into Rapper's Delight, then, the guitarists had their solos, then ?uestlove and Knuckles had a "Duolo" of sorts. They played on the same drum set, speeding up---slowing down in unison. Their solo went perfectly until the last moment when they finished raised their sticks to bang once more on the snares and cymbals. There was supposed to be about half a bars worth of silence until the last notes. Knuckles got a little excited and came down to early. He realized his mistake and he and questlove hit the drums in unison at the desired time. Knuckles took it in stride with a big smile and shared a laugh with ?uest. It was cool to see that happen cause their "Duolo" was so flawless.

The Roots are always good for some misc. stuff. Here are some of them in list form:
-During "You got me" which usually features Erykah Badu, ?uest and knuckles silently introduced the beat of J'Kwon's "Tipsy" which is also the beat for The Clipse's "Grindin" and as "you got me" faded out, Martin Luther proclaimed "Errbody get another piece of pizza/Errbody get another piece of pizza" (references tipsy).
-At one point, Black thought started by saying "Im the real rick james bitch. What did 5 fingers say to the face?" He pointed the mic to the crowd as they yelled "SLAP" and then the Roots proceeded to play "Superfreak".
-They also played a little bit of King Tubby. The dub master that I think I have referred to earlier.
-The solos are always filled with some interesting stuff. Usually, they end up covering popular songs. This time they covered, "get low", "damn", "yeah"....basically all the Lil' Jon stuff, and then they did a couple more covers and the show ended.

Exhausting, yet revitalizing at the same time. Thats a Roots concert in a nutshell.

A couple days ago Ryan had some complaints about iTunes and the fact that he could burn CDs and that they converted songs into a weird format. One of the great things about iTunes is the fact that you can use it to convert songs from format to format. If you dont want to convert songs into AAC format, then you can convert them into MP3, WAV, or AIFF format as well. In order to switch to one of these conversion formats, a simple set of actions can change your formating preferences. Simply, select the edit portion on the title bar, and scroll down to the preferences option. Select preferences and then select the importing tab. Once you have selected the importing tab, you can select which encoder you want to use when importing. Press OK and all your problems are solved. Then, you can import songs from CDS in MP3 format. If you right-click on a song that was previously converted to AAC format, the right-click menu offers you the chance to convert to MP3 format assuming you have switched your importing preferences.

In the case of burning the CD, try creating the playlist of the CD and then pressing the burn CD button. Eventually, the program will trigger the CD drive to open up. Then insert the CD. I dont know if that quite explains how to do it or not, but maybe it will help.

Well it is a beautiful day outside and I am getting some work done cause I am going to a Roots Concert at OWU tonite. I will post about it tomorrow morning before I go to Cincy for some business.

A couple nights ago, I took four quarters downstairs and rolled them into the vending machine. I picked my PEPSI out of the dispenser and opened it up. Much to my delight, I recieved one of the hundreds of millions of songs that PEPSI and Apple are giving away. So I downloaded iTunes and downloaded my first free song. I ended up downloading Method Man feat. the Bussa Bus AKA Busta Rhymes "Whats Happening" because I was excited abou this new realm of things to explore. I got excited and used up my free song too quickly. I wish I had bought one of the songs off of the Dilated Peoples' new album "Neighborhood Watch". But, it was exciting none the less. I have tried to stay away from iTunes for the simple reason that the urge to have an iPod would be too strong...and it is slowly growing again. I noticed that Alex has walked into to class with the signature white apple headphones in his ears. What do you think of you iPod? How has it worked out for you? Lemme know.

Take a look at this beautiful piece of machinery. It has the same amount of space as my hard drive. I know dad checks my blog sometimes and I know a certain sophomore at Denison whose birthday is coming up in June and he really wants a 20 + GB iPod. I hope that isnt too shameless of a suggestion.

Well, it looks like the Ohio weather has returned with today's rain. Its almost refreshing...well maybe not. This post is actually simply going to serve as a referral to Dre's blog. She recieved some mindblowing news about her ex in Iraq. The news she recieved far surpasses the level of drama associated with the housing lottery. It must be a confusing time for 'dre.

Just as was about to go to sleep, I checked gilbies blog (say what you will), but I was glad to see that he was back. Check out his first non-class related blog in a while. Glad to see you back, Dr. G.

This past week has been one of uncommon inactivity when it comes to blogging. It wasnt that I didnt have things to blog about in fact I dont know what it was. Maybe it was the stretch of four or five days of pleasent weather that we enjoyed despite of the gloomy forecasts that promised rain and clouds. I think my brain had associated blogging with the grey clouds with which we had unfortunately become to familiar with over the dreary winter. Well here is to continued bright and warm weather. And a special thanks to brie and jordan for the compliments. Right back at cha.

I caught the tail end of Dr. Condaleezza Rice's testimony to the 9/11 Commission. SIDE BAR: here is the text of Rice's testimony. I was very impressed with the portion of the testimony that I saw. She didnt deny the fact that the federal gov't was not prepared for the attacks upon the nation. She offered straight, clear, and precise answers. Obviously, I am not a fan of the current administration, however, I found some of her answers to be refreshingly un-Bushlike (sorry, gratuitous Bush statement was too tempting). If you take a look at her prepared testimony you can find many of the rhetorical figures that we have covered in this class. I found the following portion of her testimony to be very interesting:

"Long before that day, radical, freedom-hating terrorists declared war on America and on the civilized world. The attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the rise of al Qaeda and the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on American installations in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, the East Africa embassy bombings of 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, these and other atrocities were part of a sustained, systematic campaign to spread devastation and chaos and to murder innocent Americans.

The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not yet at war with them. For more than 20 years, the terrorist threat gathered, and America's response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient. Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late."


She seemed to give the excuse, however valid, that the bush administration was just as irresponsible as previous administrations. I dont know what to think about it. The one thing I do know, is that you can always second guess someone after the fact. I dont question the bush administration about the 9/11 attacks. I have questions for them about the Iraq war and their fixation with Hussein.....(i am having trouble bringing this post to a conclusion...The end).

I just wanted to let Gilbie know that I have thouroughly enjoyed this class. His passion for the exchange of ideas has really inspired me throughout the class to keep an open mind and express my views about certain issues and to share my love of music. I have been able to explore and expand some of my views on the world of politics and the affect that certain elements of speech have on their audience. I just wanted to let him know that I appreciate the work that he has done in this class. I know he is going through a difficult time right now but I have faith that he will find himself in a good position after this school year. Hope everything works out for ya Dr. G.

According to MTV.com John Kerry, the democratic candidate for president said on MTV that "I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important."

The Democratic candidate added "I think that there is a line you draw between government intervention and the right of speech and the right for people to express themselves, but do I think there are standards of decency in that? Yes, I do. Do I think that sometimes some lyrics in some songs have stepped over what I consider to be a reasonable line? Yeah, I do. I think when you start talking about killing cops or something like that, it bothers me."

Kerry continued "I'm still listening because I know that it's a reflection of the street and it's a reflection of life, and I understand all that. I'm not for the government censoring or stepping in. But I don't think it's inappropriate occasionally to talk about what you think is a standard or what you think is a value that is worth trying to live up to."

When I first read this I was surprised. Once the shock wore off that he would address the question "Well, we know that you were into rock and roll when you were in high school, and we know that you play the guitar now. Are there any trends out there in music, or even in popular culture in general, that have piqued your interest?" with his response. I was pleased that he stuck his neck out. He mentioned some of the positive aspects of hip hop and mentioned some of its negative aspects. And while he said those things he also took a shot at the gov't and gov't censorship. At least thats what i think he said. I wonder if Kerry "gets down" to NWA?

I hope that Allison did not misinterpret one of my previous posts. I wasnt trying to imply that your posts about tennis were not interesting. I was only asking if it would continue after the semester ended. I hope you didnt misunderstand me. Anyway, the girls tennis team deserves props for their performance thus far. Check out their impressive wins against 2nd Ranked Washington & Lee, OWU, and Allegheny. They are currently 8-1. Damn...thats good.