In this series of posts, I will discuss two seemingly unrelated items that I really enjoyed at the same point in my life.
Volume1:
Somewhere around the year 1990 or so, I suddenly had rap music forced into my life. Up until that point, my main musical interests were, in this order: R.E.M., the La Bamba Soundtrack, and “Walk Like an Egyptian.” I remember the brief surge of Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff when “Parents Just Don’t Understand” hit in the late 80’s, but I never could relate to it because, well, my parents did pretty much understand me (perhaps this is why I prefer the more self-loathing punk rock of Richard Hell to the general vague anger of the Sex Pistols, but I don’t know). Anyway, rap music wasn’t on my radar. Like all kids, I was forced by my classmates to pick sides in a theoretical fist-fight between MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. I picked Hammer. But beyond that, I was ignorant. That is, until a friend decided to lend me a cassette of the album pictured above. This kid, Brian, was one of those people who are generally referred to with the use of the phrase, “I don’t want you hanging around that kid.” He was vulgar and had been left back in school several times. He lived in a housing project (or maybe it was just a really run down apartment). He often spoke of a race war between Hispanics and blacks in a way that football fans speak of the Super Bowl. Anyway, generally a bad kid. I think we bonded because we both liked the Knicks, but I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, I’m not sure why he decided to give me a copy of As Nasty as They Wanna Be, but it pretty much blew my mind. It also incited an argument between myself and another friend about the meaning of the word “horny.” Keep in mind we were like 8 at the time. Anyway, I pretty much figured out what it meant, but this other kid insisted I was wrong. But he would always refuse to reveal what he thought it meant. Anyway, to wrap up the story (yes, this story is ending – don’t come to this blog looking for traditional story structure, because Ross and I are artists who cannot be fenced in by traditional structure), my parents discovered the cassette on a trip to the Jersey shore, and that was that. The adventures I could have had with this tape in a beach setting! To this day, it was the only thing my parents ever censored or forbade me to see/hear/read. I was pissed at the time, but looking back, it was pretty raunchy I guess.
My other obsession at the time was a Nintendo game called Bad News Baseball. Most of the other kids were into RBI Baseball or that other Nintendo baseball game that was from the pitcher’s perspective that I cannot recall the title of. But my love was reserved for a different game. A game with rabbit umpires. It didn’t have real teams or players, but the umpires were rabbits. And if the batter made an out, they fell on the spot, unconscious. The other unique thing about this game was that you could enter a special code that would turn the players into girls. Mindblowing stuff for an 8 year old (this game is why I treat women equally). Anyway, I never actually owned this game. I rented it often from the local video store, probably enough times that I could have purchased it several times over with the money I spent.
Work, social commitments, adult concerns – these are what fill my days, when what I really want is to take control of a collection of pixels shaped like a baseball player, try my hardest, and if I make an out, lose consciousness under the watching eye of a rabbit with a face mask. Oh, sock it to me.
