(I took that picture with my cell phone. Yes it is a Randy Moss jersey.)
This past week I received a package in the mail from students in Ms Anderson’s class at the Hotchkiss School. After I performed there for MLK Day, she had mentioned that she was going to incorporate contemporary performance poetry into her classes, but I didn’t know she meant right away!

So when I picked up the yellow envelope in my building, I felt the same way I feel before I eat pie. Wicked excited!

I’ve been carrying around these poems with me and reading them on the train to and from work. I even brought them to the coffee shop where I like to get writing done and spilled half a cup on them. (That’s when you know it’s important, when you inadvertently mess it up.) At this point, I’ve read them all at least 3 times.

Anyway, there’s a lot of talent in that packet. Thanks for the warmth in winter everyone.

Allen Iverson – forever a member of my Top 5 Dead or Alive – showed up for All Star Weekend without his braids.

Damn homey.

It’s weird to me that I have a profile on IMDB.

But I guess not as weird as the fact that I’m like, you know, acting in a movie. If you live in the Bay, or plan to be there in mid-March, go check out one of the screenings of The Humberville Poetry Slam. And then come back and tell me I didn’t ruin the movie.

Thanks.

Yeah yeah so he won like 8 gold medals at the Summer Olympics and we were supposed to love him and everything. People started throwing around phrases like “Greatest Olympian in History” and “Greatest Athlete of All Time” and it all kind of seemed to fit because he did something nobody had ever done before. EVAR!

But what was aggravating about it to me was how he competed in 8 events and won them all and got the accolades from the press, but I didn’t hear the press saying that swimming is the only sport you can win that many medals. USA Men’s Basketball played 8 games as well, and won every single one of them, yet in the end, players received ONE gold medal apiece.

And so even though it was kind of exciting that he was so dominant in a sport I’d never cared about before, my initial Phelps fandom disappeared about 5 seconds into the first interview I saw him do on TV. The words he “says” seem to fall out of his mouth like chewed food, making him annoying to both hear and see. But worse than that was how he presented himself, like the adulation was long overdue. He had a huge chip on his shoulder, which probably stemmed from the fact that he’s been a douche his whole life and nobody has ever wanted to be his friend.

Am I making an unfair assumption? I doubt it. How many times have you done something you wouldn’t want the world to know about? And don’t people always have cameras around? But isn’t it fairly rare that you or your friends have truly damaging pictures plastered all over the Internets? For someone who has as much to lose as Phelps to have one of his “friends” straight sell him out like that, he must be an insufferable prick.

While I don’t get down with smoking, it’s not so much the smoking that bothers me. It’s the attitude that he can do whatever he wants because people love him. But the thing is, nobody loves you anymore Michael. Your body is shaped weird, you house loose marbles under your tongue, and most of all, you act like a dbag. Who wears their hat backwards? Were those the 2008 Olympics or was that 1988?

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