The Midst of Summer: by Dublin

Judge me if you need to but after many years I finally made the plunge and had Comcast come over and install cable at my apartment. Originally I just wanted internet hooked up but then I asked the lady on the phone: "If I got TV can you guarantee that I can watch every Giant's game that is shown?" “Yes” the lady replied and it was a done deal; the guy came over way too early the next morning and was drilling holes in my wall and making corny jokes, and I was drinking coffee dreaming of sitting in my cozy cave on a Saturday afternoon watching Panda knock a ball into McCovey Cove with all the windows open and a relatively large and perfectly cooled beer in my hand.

I know the pitfalls of TV. You take a break to sit down to watch Law and Order for a few minutes and next thing you know a season has passed and you haven't accomplished anything in your life. 'Not me' I said 'I'm just watching baseball and that's it.' Well Jesus, that's a lot of fucking TV when you add it up. I came home last night and flopped down to watch the game and the frigging thing went into the 14th inning. That's four and a half hours of watching TV for God's sake! It's not healthy. I went to sleep shortly after the game was over and didn't have a single dream. My brain was mush, making blank uninspired electrical pops as it just sat there in my skull, the TV having messaged it into a coma.

But hey, I deserve some coma time. I spent last weekend in New York City with the JM crew and it was all just rapping and drinking and running around and "we're running behind!" and missed flights and bad breath and everything else. It was a blast, don't get me wrong, but I'm a guy that doesn't necessarily want a 'blast' every waking moment. I want quiet moments sometimes, just some food and a nice book or possibly a Giants game on TV. Feel me? I can't function when I'm over stimulated all the time. That's the term I would use for New York by the way: over stimulating. I'm sure you get used to it but Christ, I would have to go all out for days at a time and then sleep for a week and then do a few days and then sleep another week and so on. My big question for New Yorkers is: how you decide where to eat? There are a billion restaurants in the naked city.

While in New York we got to share the stage with Roy Ayers which was an honor. He had so much class and skills and had written so many songs that hip-hop artists had sampled, it kind of blew my mind. He's seventy years old and he was getting down and having the best time with everything, not tripping at all on us young punks. One of my favorite moments was when he dropped some knowledge on the kids at Harlem School for the Arts and mentioned that as an artist you need to make sure you own the rights to your songs and that knowing the law is the most important things he could pass on to a young musician. This was coming from a man who is one of the most sampled in the business so it was time to listen up on that part.

Speaking of the kids at the Harlem School: they were the first New Yorkers I came across when I got to town. I was tired, uncaffinated, greasy, just pissed off pretty much. I get picked up at the airport and find out: nope, you're not going to the hotel, you're going to a school to teach kids. Teach kids what? About hip-hop. Oh God. Listen, the irony wasn't lost on this white guy from Graton CA when I walked in and started talking about hip-hop to thirty kids from Harlem New York. It was silly really. I stood there talking, trying to keep my brain awake and they looked out at me, bored, hungry, and not happy to be there. They were sweet kids and we had a fine time but please, let's just be blunt, I am not an educator, I'm not a teacher, it's just not me. I can talk to kids, I like kids, but teaching has to be a passion, you have to need to do it. I don't have any of that.

So after that Solati and I went out for a morning drink and then I got to crash for a few hours before playing what felt like ten shows in 24 hours (it was really just three, or four, can't remember which) all over New York and going full blast. Now I'm home, the windows are open with breeze a coming in, and the Giants are on the TV, and I think there's a beer in the fridge. I'm going to the fridge.