OH, COME ON, PHILLY.

okay.  i know yall pretty well.  i lived amongst you for a time.  everybody knows that yall can be some hateful sumbitches when you wanna be.  we know you like to boo people.  sarah palin.  beyonce.  santa claus.

but yall gon throw a BOOK at MY PRESIDENT?!?!  COME THE FREAK ON!!!

like.  im at home takin my earrings off right now.  don’t NOBODY throw a book at MY president!  oh no, chile!  that’s when miss benita go OFF!!

(via BlackInformant & Katchin05)

 

the 5 worst things about the move

sigh.  sorry for the inconsistent updates here lately.  i have a million excuses if anyone is interested, but i’m gonna assume that nobody really cares.

remember when i started my list of the 5 best and 5 worst things about relocating from philly, pa to lousville, ky, but only had time to post up the good stuff?  well after receiving a complaint inquiry regarding where the hell the rest of it was, i figured id get off my butt and post up the bad.  so!  with no further achoo:

ONE:no more SEPTA. 😦 easily one of the most irritating things about this city.  getting around is a bitch and a HALF, i swear to you.  everything in this city is so spread out and far away from everything else.. getting from one side of the city to the other is pretty much a guaranteed 1 hour bus ride.  what’s that you say?  why don’t i just take the train?  why, i’m glad you asked!  THERE IS NO FREAKIN TRAIN!!  this place is forever bragging about being the 16th largest city and all that jazz.  ha!  talk about never knowing what you got til its gone.  i, for better or worse, have adopted a Big City view of driving and public transportation.  driving is expensive, bad for the environment and a hassle that i’ve become unaccustomed to.  and public transpo, when it’s good, is eco friendly, convenient, and there’s a certain joy that comes with knowing that you’ve always got a designated driver.  the bus system here blows.  it just blows.  i wouldn’t mind it if it didn’t blow so bad, but it blows.  the scheduling is erratic, the routes are ridiculous.  and the stigma against the bus and bus riders here is really annoying.  so overall… i really miss sucky SEPTA and all it’s sucky flaws. 😦

the 5 best things about the move

a lot of folks have been asking me how the big more has gone (if you’re just tuning in, i moved back to my homeland of Louisville, KY, after living in Philly, PA for about four years); how i like it, how things are goin, etc etc.  i don’t know what it is about me, but sometimes i have, like, a mental block that keeps me to responding to comments and questions online and stuff.  i can’t explain it but sometimes its just hard for me to do.  so, for the convenience of all you nosey bastards out there, i decided to comprise a quick list of the 5 best and 5 worst things about the move, beginning with the best things and in no particular order:

ONE:the lower cost of living! in this economy, who wouldn’t enjoy having to pay less money to do necessary shit like eat, drink, have fun, and generally live?  nobody, that’s who!  no clearly, my broke ass hasn’t really had a chance to get out there and be too active on the capitalist playground, but i’m sure its common knowledge that smaller cities mean generally cheaper costs on generally general things.  allow me to offer as an illustration these two craigslist ads, the first for a 1 bedroom apartment near the University of Pennsylvania in Philly, the second a 1 bedroom apartment near the University of Louisville in a similar neighborhood.  and i’ll throw in a third: a TWO bedroom apartment in a similar Louisvillian neighborhood.  not too shabby, eh?  if i ever find a fricken job, i living here could get me to Richy von Moneyheimer status before we know it!

WTF PHILADELPHIA

more like SUCKTA!

i know this blog isnt about me, but this entry sorta will be.  strictly philadelphia related, so there’s a good deal that none of this will mean anything to the lot of you.

this is a rant about septa.  if you’re not from/living in philly and are still reading for some reason, septa is the city’s transit system.  this is specifically a rant about the 46th street train station.  this is specifically specifically about how it totally and completely sucks.

okay, firstly?  the escalators NEVER work.  there are two escalators.  nearly every day, one is out of service.  now, i have my lazy moments, but i dont fall into a fat fit because i have to walk up a flight of stairs.  i go for the stairs most times anyway.  but to know that MY tax dollars paid for this shit and it has the nerve to be inoperable and unusable most of the time?  hell no.  fix it or give me some form of a refund.

that’s reason number one why the station sucks.

reason number two is the bright, clean, pretty sales window that HAS NEVER BEEN OPENED SINCE THE STATION ITSELF HAS.  wtf is your problem??  why do you think this is okay, septa??!  can i tell u quickly why it isnt okay?  because i cannot tell you how many times i have stood in a line longer than the one at the gates of heaven to put my $2 fare @ the fare window because everybody in front of me is buying transpasses and 10 packs of tokens and using debit cards and standin around waitin for change and shit AS MULTIPLE TRAINS PASS US ALL BY.  that’s what the big bright clean pretty sales window that i helped pay for is for, septa!!!  you got all this fancy shit at this station and YOU AINT USIN IT.  its infuriating!

GET IT TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!  EXPEDITIOUSLY!!!

thanks,

the management

girlfriends, rejoice! baseball is over!

we now return you to your regularly scheduled boyfriend.

but seriously folks… YAAAAY!  WOOOO!  GO PHILS!!!  i didnt even like baseball until like a month ago.  we dont have a pro ball team back where i come from, so its never been a big deal.  that’s prolly why its been so amazing to see the whole city go absolutely nuts for it.  i understand though; louisville did the same thing x yrs ago when U of L got into the Final Four.  all hours of the night, floodin the streets, bumper to bumper traffic.  ppl on foot.  ppl in cars.  ppl ON cars.  literally.

actual picture from the actual pandemonium

that was a big deal, but super small compared to what went on last night.  my neighborhood was fairly calm; i took a walk around and some corners were full of people yelling randomly at passers by; all the horns were honking.  some girl in a ‘girls gone wild’ hoodie ran around the neighborhood twice yelling GO PHILS! by the time i’d made it to one end.  lol.  it was fun.  meanwhile, on broad street:

omg how did he even get up there??

needless to say, most of my coworkers arent here today.  if i wanted to go ‘where’s waldo’ on that picture up there, i cld prolly find at least 4 of them in there.

in conclusion, very cool stuff.  this is sort of new to me, since im unaccustomed to living in a city with any kind of pro sports team.  i think i cld be more moved by everyone else’s emotion and hysteria than i am by the actual win.  i dunno tho; im really happy for everybody.

and by far, my favorite part of the game:  phillies fans took the time out of the rabid cheering to boo Mayor Nutter after he took the mic @ the stadium after the win.  lmao!  what assholes.  i love philly.

**broad street pics from here

wtf, philly metro. + way to go, j. andrew!

i meant to write to the metro (one of philly’s free newspapers) abt this, but i got sidetracked and then i just plum forgot. 

philly metro has gotten into this thing lately where they attempt to be funny and witty in their discussion of politics and the presidential race, right.  they sort of suck at it.  i love the metro, dont get me wrong but.. they just need funnier writers (IF YALL ARE READIN, GET AT ME).  in monday’s edition, someone wrote a segment called ‘5 things that can win it for mccain or obama.’   according to their list, the number 3 thing that john mccain can do, and i quote directly:

Get Michelle Obama to look as angry as you do.  People don’t like you because of your attitude?  Have you seen this woman?  She’s ready to go ghetto on someone’s ass.

now, im an asshole.  i appreciate the assholishness of others so long as it stops short of ignorance.  im not mad that they talkin abt Michelle lookin angry.  everybody looks angry sometimes!  but (can you guess what im finna say here?)…

WHY SHE GOTTA BE READY TO GO GHETTO THO??  i mean honestly!  if she was white she wldnt be no kindsa ghetto.  but naw, michelle’s bout to go ghetto.  sigh.  graduating from princeton and harvard, becoming a lawyer, and being poised to move into the white house apparently still aint enough for some folks to separate blackness and ghettoness.  lame move, metro.  someone with a better grasp of comedy and comedic writing wldnt have to take such a lazy leap tryin to get some laughs.  TWO DEMERITS FOR YOU.

monday’s metro saving grace came on the following page though, but not from its own writers; a one J. Andrew Smith of Bloomfield, NJ, sent in a letter to the paper, and i thought what he said makes a great quote so i wanted to share it:

Setting the record straight on Obama.  Let the record state:  Obama is 50% white, 50% black, 100% American, 100% Christian, 0% Muslim and 0% terrorist.  He represents a 100% change from Bush, not McCain’s 10%, and although less than 100% of Republicans are racists, 100% of racists vote Republican.

heh!  shut em down, J!

i saw (read: heard) Obama!!!

Obama was like, down the street & around the corner from my crib this past saturday.  it was the last of 3 rather unconventional stops in Philly, including the northeast & north philly.  he went WILLINGLY into north philly.  mccain aint never been to north philly!  shit, I’VE never been to north philly willingly.  i guess mccain didnt go b/c its a bit more dangerous for him.  when one of the Fuslims pulls a gun out of his beard & tells mccains to put his arms up, his inability to do so is just gonna look like indignance & Ahkbar Jenkins just might get a little frustrated at the insubordination.

that wasn’t funny.  its wrong to make fun of his issues after all he’s been through.  stop laughing.

anyway, west philly was the last stop, so i figure since it’s close, i’ll head down around 11 (he was supposed to go on at 1).  by the time i got down there, there was at least 2 million ppl there.  i stopped counting at 1 million because my brain got tired.  we were all still corraled in the line well after 1, when he was supposed to start speaking.  by the time my portion of the line reached the viewing area, the street was full of ppl pushed back for a good 2 blocks, so i didnt get close enough to see him 😦

but still though, it was so THRILLING!  seriously, i compare it to the first time i ever saw The Roots perform live; i cldn’t see them very well, but YO!  it was the Roots, alive and in person!  it was like meeting a superstar; quite a rush.

the speech he gave was pretty much the standard that you tend to hear at such events.  full of hope and change and not more of the same and mccain is out of touch and whathaveyou.  he’s such a personable person though; he just started talkin to the audience abt pie in the middle of the whole thing, branching off from a story abt stopping on the campaign trail because he wanted some pie.  ‘pie,’ he said.  ’cause that’s what i wanted.  some pie.  you make pie?’ he said to some lady in the audience.  ‘what kinda pie you make?  sweet p’taytuh pie?’

for some reason, him saying ‘pie’ over and over and over again was the funniest thing in the world to me.  and i thought to myself:  how wld this be goin down if it was creepy old man mccain having this conversation, what with his deliberate blinking and dead-behind-the-eyes stare?  itd just be odd.  he has like, 0 people skills and less believable charisma.  but, obama likes pie.  he said it and i believe it.  and as God is my witness, if i ever get that man in a room alone, best believe i will be wearing sweet potato pie-shaped nipple tassles, holding a sweet potato pie in each hand.  take that to the bank.

anyway.  he later told the crowd not to be ‘hoodwinked’ or ‘bamboozled,’ in that order.  that was pretty much a big WINK WINK to black folk, as if to say ‘see?  i aint forgot, now!’  i know, boo.  mama knows.

since im 5 ft 3 and a quarter and was surrounded by a grillion ppl, i was pretty much only able to get pictures of the faces of other rally attendees.  there werent many standout shots, but here are a few.

they gave everybody one of these stickers; i wore mine all day.

si, se puede!

they prolly laughin abt the pie

fists punctuating a chant

i wasnt the only one to wear my obama sticker all day; the whole of west philly was completely obama’d out, long after the rally, from stickers to buttons to shirts, young & old.

maybe i’ll get to see him sometime.  and smell him.  a gentle sniff behind his ear.  mmmmm

*pees a little*