EWA100 - #21. The Juice Crew - The Symphony (Part 1)

21. The Juice Crew - The Symphony (Part 1) (Cold Chillin'. 1988. From Marley Marl's LP In Control: Volume 1)

Raven Mack: This is the greatest posse track ever, in fact probaby why that term even started to exist. And fuck it, Juice Crew is the greatest rap crew ever. Big Daddy Kane is a hall of famer. Kool G. Rap, even though he's never had commercial success of extraordinary status, is pretty much considered one of the greatest lyrical MCs ever. Masta Ace gave birth to three-quarters of the underground MCs there are. And even Craig G remains a legend to this day when it comes to freestyle super destructibility. And anyone who hates Biz Markie hates floppy-eared puppy dogs playing with cherub children of all colors in a lush field full of hundred-dollar-bill trees.
That being said, this song for me is like those old parades the Russians used to have through those Tetris buildings of all their military strength. You see, the Russians never used all that weaponry, but they had it and liked to flaunt it once every so often. "The Symphony" is that flaunting of power, because The Juice Crew was a ridiculous collection of ass-kicking talent. Marley Marl had assembled the motherfuckin' team - so much so that to this day dork whiteboys like myself still regard them as THE motherfuckin' team of all-time.
Which really makes me wonder what kind of stupid shithead MC Shan must've been, because around the same time of this record was when KRS was molesting Shan with the battle raptures. You would think if the Juice Crew was an unbreakable bond of a crew, then KRS would've felt the fury of Kane/Biz/Craig G/Kool G/Ace all at once. But he never did. Which just goes to show how great The Juice Crew was, because when they had a chance to trim the fat by letting it melt in hellfire, they left Shan hanging.
Of note is the fact that I can only assume there is a second part to this song, and that I've never bothered to hear it. I'm sure it's out there on seventeen thousand rap nerd blogs (oldschool88thru91onlyb-sidesthabest.blogspot.com), but I don't need to seek it out. I'm already straight with this.

Mike Dikk: Raven’s write-up reminds me of a personal story that is at most, very loosely related to "The Symphony", but since I very vaguely remember this song when it came out, and I didn’t really start listening to it until several years later, I have nothing really notable that directly relates to it, so I’m going the abstract route.
It may seem stupid to people not into sports, but I feel very lucky that I got to see the greatest athlete of my generation in real time, and not just a part of some sepia toned highlight film. Of course I’m talking about Michael Jordan. Basketball has never been my favorite sport, but all of the other great defining athletes are more or less dudes that played sports before my time. Sure, Barry Sanders was easily the best running back I’ve personally ever seen play the game of football, but I’m sure some old codger would tell you how O.J., or Jim Brown, or fucking Larry Csonka was so much better than Sanders. The same goes if you mention Montana or Marino. Some wrinkly fuck will crawl out of his coffin to bring up some QB from the '50s who played without a helmet and one-and-a-half legs and still managed to throw 600 yards per game. Baseball is even worse, so I won’t even get into that. However, you can’t really argue with Michael Jordan as the best basketball player ever. I think sometimes people may bring up Magic Johnson, but I got to see him play too, and as long as you aren’t judging by nerd stats over pure athleticism and entertainment value, then Jordan wins out.
This story isn’t about Jordan anyway. It’s about how annoying it got to like the Chicago Bulls in the late '80s/early '90s. It was annoying, because EVERYONE I knew liked the Chicago Bulls. I don’t think there was a kid in my school that strayed from that path. I got sick of being on the same side with everyone else during the '90/'91 season, so I switched my allegiance over to the Golden State Warriors.
It may seem like an odd choice to you in retrospect, but this was the season of Run TMC: Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond, and Chris Mullin. They were the best looking triple threat on paper and absolutely explosive on offense. If you follow the NBA, you’d know Run TMC quickly disbanded when Richmond went on to play for the Sacramento Kings the next year. That one season though, I was all about Run TMC and I swore to myself they were the best thing going on in basketball and fuck Michael Jordan. They would eventually lose in the West semifinals to the cocksucker Lakers, but to me, The G. State Warriors 1990 squad was the best non-Michael Jordan-related squad in basketball history.
Realistically, I’m sure the Juice Crew Squad was slightly better at rapping than Run TMC was at playing basketball, but in my eyes they are equal. Of course Kane, G. Rap, and Ace would represent RUN TMC. Marley was the Don Nelson and I guess Craig G. was Sarunas Marciullionis, i.e, the talented guy everyone forgets about. Thankfully, Shan and Biz weren’t on this track because I can’t think of Warriors comparisons for them. I guess Shan would be Tom Tolbert because he sucks, and Biz would be World B. Free because that’s a funny name and Biz is a funny dude. We would have to overlook the fact that World B. Free was on the ’80 Warriors and not the ’90 Warriors though.

Download: The Juice Crew - The Symphony

EWA100 - #22. A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario

22. A Tribe Called Quest (Feat. Leaders of the New School) - Scenario (Jive. 1991. From the LP The Low End Theory)

Mike Dikk: Here’s a little known fact about me: I can see into the future. To back up my bold claim, I predict that Raven will proclaim the next entry on our never-ending hip hop bullshit countdown the best posse cut ever. He’s wrong though, because THIS is the best posse cut ever. Of course if you wanted to be anal about it, it’s more like two groups rapping on one track than a full-blown posse cut, but you get the idea.
I got The Low End Theory once the “Jazz/Buggin' Out” single came out, so I already played the shit out of “Scenario” by the time it was released as a single. That was a surprise in itself because rap groups hardly ever released their posse tracks as singles, but this song was too good to be left as a secondary track.
“Scenario” was also the track that sealed public opinion on Busta Rhymes. It was clearly obvious to everyone that he should become a solo artist, and I was definitely in that camp, but I can tell you, I’ve never liked one Busta Rhymes solo thing. I don’t really know where Busta Rhymes solo career rates with John Q. Asshole, because the internet has slightly re-imagined the history of hip hop, and I know those first couple Busta records were all kinds of popular when they came out, but I’m not sure if it’s still acceptable to like them. I do know he made everyone look stupid on “Scenario”.
Continuing on with "Scenario"’s amazing feats, it was the first track I know of that spawned a sequel almost immediately after, and it was just as good as the original. The sequel had a verse by dead rapper Kid Hood, who became the first “genius” rapper that died before his time years before Big L did the same thing. At the time, I remember everyone (“everyone”, meaning The Source) speculating that Kid Hood was going to be Rap’s Next Big Thing, but if you go back and listen to his verse, it wasn’t that spectacular, unless they were grading on the off the charts homophobia, then yes, Kid Hood should have been the next big thing.
Shortly after the success of "Scenario" I and II, a lot of dumb fucks in my school would talk about how there was a "Scenario" III, IV, and even V, but I guess that could be a testament to how great this song was, that kids actually made up imaginary sequels to it. Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists did teach me that the original idea of "Scenario" was supposed to feature all Native Tongues members, and they supposedly recorded all of their parts, but in the end, they decided to cut everything out except for the ATCQ and LONS parts. I find all of that really hard to believe since that was the heyday of the 12” remix and it seems like they wouldn’t let something like that just get thrown out. There’s still a glimmer of hope in my head that the "Scenario Full Megamix Edition" will pop up on some nerd’s blog someday, and you can guarantee it will show up on my blog the day after that and I will claim to own it in real life so I can get tons of internet blowjobs and maybe win a blog award so I can retire from life and finally jump off that bridge I always talk about.

Raven Mack: I will be honest, I slept upon this at first. I was not down with the Native Tongues movement, and there is no pseudo-gangsta wannabe in me that caused it. In fact, if truth be known, I was quite the lighthearted hippie fag at times in high school, though I've always attempted to keep myself at least fringely interested in as much different shit as possible. So it would seem the Native Tongues would've been my shit. And I got that first De La Soul tape, and it was okay, but to be honest, that shit was kinda wack at the same time. But I gave everything a try. I dug The Jungle Brothers, and to be honest, never really gave a fuck about ATCQ until later on once Phife decided to be awesome in his own right. As I think I've mentioned, I hate the sound of people whisper rapping, and Q-Tip was one of the early pioneers of this style. It may make hippie chicks' hairy underwear-less vaginas throb with anticipation, but it makes me want to stab motherfuckers with two-foot pieces of rusty rebar. So needless to say, I slept on this shit.
However, once this single took over the world, I was not the type to be all like "Fuck Native Tongues" to the point that I couldn't dig on it. One will not open themselves to new things if too hardheaded. And I think I might've got a dub of Leaders of the New School's first tape because of this single, and I realized, like most of the rest of the earth, that Busta Rhymes pretty obviously stood out, and that Charlie Brown may have been one of the worst rappers ever in the history of rhythmic speed-talking.
And now I am an older dude with a wife who has one of those new-fangled ipods and two daughters - one eight and one four - who I like to plug in Christmas lights in the kitchen on a Little Friday evening (aka Thursday), drinking ice cold Miller High Life Lights with tomato juice, and playing all the old school bullshit I've forced my wife to accept on her ipod so that when I have to drive for us to go waste like three hundred dollars for one block of cheese, some olive oil, and some fucking container of yogurt that's got living creatures in it that's supposed to be so good for me it'll add years to my life at stupid assed piece of shit Whole Foods, I can at least listen to an old school jam or two to keep me from slicing open the world with a three dollar broken Reed's ginger brew bottle. This means that, perchance, "Scenario" will come on, which it has, and I will yell out, like everybody else who grew up at that time, "ROWR! ROWR! LIKE A DUNGEON DRAGON!" which has caused me to figure out if I should explain to my kids about Dungeons & Dragons the cartoon since they yell that shit now too and have no idea what the fuck a dungeons and dragons is, probably figuring that shit to be related to Belle and the Beast or some other Disneyfied princess brainwashing bullshit.
Also, due to the influence of Black Moon, I will also yell out "POWERFUL IMPACT - BOOM!" and I've always secretly wished I was saying that while smashing our family car into the front windows of the Whole Foods right as that line came on, crushing a bunch of Zen Buddhist hippie dudes picking through organic fruit with over-analytical pretentious eyeballs, as rich as a Republican businessman, but as full of shit as a Republican preacher.

Download: A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario (I was also going to post the Scenario Remix here but I can't find it on my god damn computer, even though I know I have at least 3 separate Mp3s of it. I'm sure you've heard it anyway.)

Watch the video:

NFL: Northern Division Teams (preseason)

#1: Cincinnati Bengals (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Ickey Woods is the perfect emblem of the haphazard Bengals franchise – the perfect loveable loser doing his goofy drunk step touchdown celebration, and being that happy retard to make you feel like, “Man, I know these guys suck and have always sucked, but that dude sure seems to be having fun with it.”
TEAM HOSS: Rudi Johnson played high school ball in the Richmond area, and gets overlooked because of flashy fat-mouthed Chad Johnson on the team, which is good I guess, because he can continue to quietly do everything he needs to be doing as a running back, without making opposing linebackers want to cripple him.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: There is no doubt that Boomer Esiason is an annoying fucker, and maybe the worst dude who ever got tagged with the nickname Boomer that ever existed, except for maybe Chris Berman, who I have to think probably gave that name to himself.
TEAM ASS: Oh Chad Johnson, when nobody knew who you were and you had signs stashed in snow banks, you were great. Now that you have had about 7000 opportunities to talk up a shitstorm that you’ll never completely deliver on since half the defenses in the league probably have bounties on your paralysis, you are not nearly as entertaining. Perhaps not even the best seven-year wide receiver out of Oregon State on the Bengals team, much less an NFL ELITE!
SENIOR PLAYER: Fat Willie Anderson was a first round draft pick in 1996, when the Bengals were mired in sucktitude, and Al Qaeda was our ally. The type of good-natured goofy southern black dude keeps himself slimmed down to make 350 on the scale that every football team dreams of having for a decade or so on their line.
VA BOY: Ahmad Brooks was like high school player of the year coming into college at UVA, and he never really met that potential, even getting dumped off the team or some shit and getting picked up in the supplemental draft since he missed the regular draft… something shady and screwy like that. Still, the dude was always almost awesome, and you had to figure he’d turn that corner eventually. Becoming a starter under a Marvin Lewis team probably gives him a better chance at that than he’s had as a pampered blue chipper up to this point.
FORMER HURRICANE: No Hurricanes of note, so we will say back-up safety John Busing who played at the Miami of Ohio Non-Offensive Redthings team.
WILD SAMOAN: Offensive lineman rookie free agent Dane Uperesa, who in all likelihood will be cut by the time you read this.
THE ICKY: Back-up defensive end Frostee Rucker.
THE RUDY: Special teams dude/reserve safety Herana-Daze Jones, whose hyphenated first name I cannot even begin to understand.
JOCK GENIUS: I don’t get the whole Marvin Lewis coaching thing. Dude was pretty good as d-coordinator in Washington, but how does he end up having his first head coaching gig of a team that scores like 42 points a game and loses by a field goal? I guess because his mentor was Brian Billick, who is an offensive genius who coaches a team that only allows like 12 points a game but still loses by 2.
FANTASY JERSEY: I would like a #84 HOUSHMANDZADEH in retro black with the orange tiger stripe sleeves, in honor of the greatest Punjabi to ever play the game.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 12 to 1 – A very scary situation, because it’s like everything rides on Carson Palmer being as awesome as he might be. You see his knee pop again in a play and they could show a slow motion replay of the bench during the play and it’d be like when Lisa Simpson broke Ralph Wiggum’s heart.

#2: Chicago Bears (15-4 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Eliminating Redskins players, whom I’m an admitted homer for, I don’t think there’s ever been a greater presence in the professional football game than William “The Refrigerator” Perry. Giant gaptoothed half-ignorant southern black dude runs in short yardage touchdowns during team’s heyday. Now, I think Perry sells his own line of hunting gear or some shit, and as a guy who has spent most of his life in the rural semi-south (Virginia is questionable border territory overrun by fucks from up north), I have a large appreciation for the black redneck. They are a sub-culture who keeps things like cockfighting and fried chicken gizzards going strong when most other people have given up on that shit entirely.
TEAM HOSS: Center Olin Kreutz, who sounds like some Norwegian biker gang President, and actually acts in that manner as well. He’s the guy who broke his teammate’s jaw a year or two ago during a fight at a shooting range. It’s too bad NFL players make so much money and cripple themselves so badly nowadays, because an MMA challenge fight of Olin Kreutz vs. Tank Johnson would be a pretty good main event for an NFL-themed EXTREME BATTLECAGE CARNAGE PPV, or some similarly extremely named event.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: I have many a nerd online friend who claim to be Bears fans, probably because they were all raised by whatever television their absentee mom left plugged in when she went to work every night during the mid ‘80s, but there are few former NFL players I hate more than Walter Payton, even if he did die from cancer. He could’ve died from AIDS cancer he caught from his Darfur refugee wife he met while digging babies out of the 9/11 rubble and I’d still hate that stupid jheri curled fucker.
TEAM ASS: How the fuck is Rex Grossman still the QB? I mean, that dude actually fumbles more than he throws touchdown passes. I can understand stubbornly sticking with that dude last year, because they were like 13-3 (I can’t remember exactly, though I think I might’ve wrote it above), and Lovie probably wanted to make a point or at least not tinker with the chemistry. But still, even though they made the Super Bowl, that dude did nothing to warrant not at least having some mediocre career back-up to come into camp and challenge him. I mean fuck, you could plug Daunte Culpepper in, who was begging for places to play, and he couldn’t be as bad as Grossman.
SENIOR PLAYER: Bears’ balls are constantly hiked by two guys they got in the ’98 draft – center Olin Kreutz and long-snapper Patrick Mannelly.
VA BOY: Back-up tackle John St. Clair, who was a very successful whiteboy at UVA, where a lot of eventually very successful whiteboys go to college. I hate all those fuckers, perhaps from watching too many ‘80s skater movies with the misfit vs. popular jock with frosted blonde hair during my developmental years.
FORMER HURRICANE: Return superstar Devin Hester is one of those ultra-fast south Florida boys who has earned his hype. Hopefully he will learn how to cover a wide receiver before his speed gets lost to age.
WILD SAMOAN: Seems to be no Samoan pride in the Windy City, so I will go with defensive lineman Israel Idonije, who I can only assume was raised by the MOVE cult in Philadelphia, except his last name isn’t Africa, so it must’ve been an offshoot movement.
THE ICKY: Starting linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer sounds like he’d be the perfect foil to Rodney Dangerfield’s uncouth attempts to join a ritzy country club full of wacky former SNL actors.
THE RUDY: Fringe roster member safety Brandon McGowan is the only undrafted free agent who started with Chicago that’s still on their roster. By default, he is their Rudy.
JOCK GENIUS: Jerry Angelo seems to always step up to screw up whatever momentum the Bears start to achieve. The Lance Briggs thing had hints of that impending, and you have to figure Angelo’s managerial execution of cheap ownership is partially to blame for why they keep sticking with Rex Grossman. But still, I give them this year intact before it all blows up in the off-season.
FANTASY JERSEY: Like any stupid hipster doofus 34-year-old, I would proudly sport a black #72 PERRY jersey, although I’d get ultra-hipster doofus emeritus about it and get one of those gay-assed alternate orange colored ones.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 14 to 1 – when Rex Grossman is your quarterback, you will not win a Super Bowl. I mean, Trent Dilfer was considered an amazing Super Bowl champion, but he was just unexciting. He never fumbled every other snap and tossed more passes to the starting cornerbacks than the starting halfbacks.

#3: Baltimore Ravens (13-4 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Too young a franchise and too bland a history to have an all-time great. I mean, probably four of their best five players all-time are currently starters.
TEAM HOSS: Steve McNair, even as a hobbled old vet, gave the Ravens hope to be more than a punishing defense. I imagine his smoke-and-mirrors motivation from the pocket could probably have another good season, maybe two, squeezed out of this franchise, furthering Brian Billick’s ability to cash giant paychecks he doesn’t deserve.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Again, their all-time shithead is still starting. See below.
TEAM ASS: Ray Lewis is such an annoying mongoloid, doing his stupid pre-game dance that I’m sure he practiced in front of locker room mirrors like a teenage girl time and time again to make it just right. I don’t give a fuck about that “his posse stabbed some dude to death” nonsense, because seriously, how many dudes wearing full length white fur coats don’t have posses that are apt to stab someone to death; but the fact he’s still around and acting like some wizened sage of the game is just ridiculous. You cannot be seen on homemade Luther Campbell videos getting lapdances from girls with cursive handwriting on both fleshy ass cheeks and ever become wizened sage of anything, except for maybe how to make good fermented wine with old raisins and orange peels in prison.
SENIOR PLAYER: Kicker Matt Stover played for Baltimore when they were still the Cleveland Browns. That shit happened before I think there were DVD players or satellite dishes that didn’t take up ten square feet of your back yard and swiveled slowly like death rays.
VA BOY: Back-up linebacker Dennis Haley, from UVA.
FORMER HURRICANE: Aside from Ray Lewis, the Ravens also have high-profile former Hurricanes in running back Willis McGahee (and his bionic knee) and safety Ed Reed. McGahee, you always have to worry he’s going to crumble into a one-legged salary cap penalty any play, but Ed Reed is the real deal. That dude is scary awesome, and everything I, as a Redskins fan, wished Sean Taylor had ended up being.
WILD SAMOAN: Haloti Ngata, 350 pounds of pineapple fueled mayhem on the interior of the defensive line.
THE ICKY: I have done this type of list for about ten years in different formats, usually a zine article somewhere or another, but pretty much every year cornerback Samari Rolle has made it for sounding like a piece of sushi.
THE RUDY: Bart Scott is the heir apparent to Ray Lewis’ spot as King of the Defense, and Scott came into Baltimore undrafted out of Southern Illinois in 2002. A punisher, like most Ravens’ defenders seem to be, as if they eat PCP and gunpowder with their HGH in the off-season.
JOCK GENIUS: I used to know this dude who covered the Ravens for a couple of years and did weekly interviews with the coach on some radio show, and he was a huge Baltimore Ravens fan. He told me, with firsthand knowledge, that Brian Billick is even a bigger self-pretentious asshole than you would expect.
FANTASY JERSEY: Fuck fantasy, I’m sure if I hit up the Rugged Wearhouse outlet, there’s probably like 17 cross-stitched factory defective purple #9 MCNAIR jerseys on the shelf right now. Too bad I’m broke like always.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 15 to 1 – Ravens seem to be poised to be one of enhancement talent teams that could easily power their way to the Super Bowl to get crushed by whatever feel good story the NFL storyline writers are trying to put over. It would give us great “last hurrah” stories about Steve McNair, and also career vindication for Ray Lewis after the whole stabbing bullshit before the last Super Bowl. The Ravens could easily fill up 14 days worth of special interest stories in the sports section building up to losing the Super Bowl next winter.

#4: Pittsburgh Steelers (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Perhaps I am grief-stricken, but I just found out like last week that Justin Strzelczyk died from a car crash at some point since he stopped playing football, and apparently had an old dude’s brain damage from his brief NFL career as biker gang looking ‘70s style leg whipper anchor of their offensive line in the early ‘90s.
Actually, I just googled that shit and apparently he was a deadhead wacko who ran from the police in high speed hot pursuit, which led to his own death, when, after about forty miles of Dukes of Hazzarding it, he ran his pick-up truck into the wrong lane, hitting a tractor and trailer full of hazardous materials that blew up both vehicles on impact. When cops first turned their lights on behind him, he gave them the bird and threw a beer bottle out the window. They set up road spikes, which he blew out one tire, but ran for another twelve miles on three tires and a rim before wrecking into a trailer that some doofus trucker volunteered to block the entire road with to help out po-po. Vanishing Point, motherfuckers. Reading that sealed his spot as my all-time favorite Steeler ever.
TEAM HOSS: Guard Alan Faneca is about as close to a Strzelczyk-type they have now, but mention should be also made of James Farrior picking up the lead menacing proud black man linebacker role Joey Porter vacated that the Steelers have also continuously kept going over the years ever since they gave up on whiteboys when Jack Lambert finally retired.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: I’d like to say Terry Bradshaw, but who can hate Terry Bradshaw? Sure, he’s a doofus, but he also in all likelihood did cocaine lines with Burt Reynolds off many a man’s wife at one point. Of course, after Bradshaw, and before Ben Roethlisberger rode them to a Super Bowl win, they had a long line of born loser quarterbacks, best exemplified on the lackluster scale by Bubby Brister and on the grander stage by Neil O’Donnell.
TEAM ASS: Starting defensive end Brett Keisel almost ended my pre-season Redskins-are-gonna-be-awesome-this-year naiveté by attempting to break Jason Campbell’s leg, so since I can’t really find fault with most Steelers, he is the team ass in my mind.
SENIOR PLAYER: The ’98 draft was a decent one for the Steelers, in term of long term productivity, as Alan Faneca, beloved Korean hero wide receiver Hines Ward, and nickelback Deshea Townsend all joined the team in that year’s draft.
VA BOY: UVA-alum tight end Heath Miller is one of those lumbering bruisers of a tight end that wreck their way into the end zone and make old school football fans who wish Jeremy Shockey would get decapitated smile in appreciation.
FORMER HURRICANE: Top ‘Cane on the team is back-up tailback Najeh Davenport, who seems like he’s been around forever, even though this is only his sixth season, perhaps because NFL programming makes sure to shove a ton of Green Bay Packers’ games (his former team) down our throats every year.
WILD SAMOAN: Roaming safety headhunter Troy Polamalu is a long haired hero to all Polynesians. Also, my bad for saying “headhunter”.
THE ICKY: Reserve center Chukky Okobi is a 300-pound black dude that makes me think of murderous little creepy assed dolls. I do not like the dynamics of that mental blend.
THE RUDY: Starting running back Willie Parker was undrafted out of UNC, and has done well in taking over since Jerome Bettis retired, though he seems to have a little too much Chad Johnson in him at times.
JOCK GENIUS: It is always noted on the TV football programs how the Steelers have only had like two coaches in the 300 years they’ve had football games on the banks of the Ohio River. It would be a big spot to fill, but Mike Tomlin seems like one of those player-friendly young coaches who will make it big. Unless he ends up being Herm Edwards v2.0. But I don’t think he will. He has honest eyes, and I trust him.
FANTASY JERSEY: Without a doubt, a #73 STRZELCZYK, in memorial black.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 25 to 1 – I feel sorry for Ben Roethlisberger because he will always be that dude who won the Super Bowl his rookie year, but he will never be Tom Brady. I wouldn’t even give them 25 to 1 to win their division.

#5: Green Bay Packers (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Charles Martin had a short-lived NFL career, and very little of that was in Green Bay, but he was the guy who wrote a hit list of opposing players on the game towel he wore on his belt, and then proceeded to blindside and german suplex Jim McMahon onto his brain, ending his season, and destroying any hopes the great 1985 Bears had of repeating in 1986. I know the Packers won like 19 titles before there were Super Bowls and your average cheesehead funny-talking Wisconsite whitey could rattle off like seventeen great dudes who never wore facemasks and tell hilarious stories at the Western Sizzlin’ buffet in downtown Green Bay every Tuesday night during the off-season, but for me, Charles Martin will always be The Man.
TEAM HOSS: Cornerback Al Harris is one of those skinny dreads black dudes who filled the role Mike McKenzie left behind last year of being the really fast guy on the Packers who tries to chase down opposing dudes going long for a touchdown. Actually, I guess the Packers are more of a defensive team now than they have been in many years, which is great timing since Brett Favre seems to be finding his Neil O’Donnell groove.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Fuckin’ Desmond Howard, that dude sucked. Runs back one kick return for a touchdown in a Super Bowl and that helps him pretend he wasn’t a major over-hyped suck-ass for his entire career.
TEAM ASS: Favre, who I, like anybody else, used to love. But I’m sick of the “loves to play the game” stories, and how much he’s gone through, and shots of him on the sidelines smiling in between him heaving the ball downfield for anyone to grab like a seventh grader’s hail mary during recess once the first bell just rang meaning this is the absolute last play of the game. If he had retired a couple of years ago, he might have still be held in high regard on my part, but as it is, he’s just an annoying ass dude who fucks up more often than not. If he was solid enough a dude to accept a second-string role, playing the wise-cracking goofy veteran player-coach position to help mold that Aaron Rogers kid, with wacky practical jokes in abundance plus post-game locker room quotes full of drunken south Mississippi colloquialisms, then he’d still be awesome. But he’s not that guy; not even close.
SENIOR PLAYER: Stupid Favre came over in a trade with Atlanta in ’92.
VA BOY: Rookie wide receiver David Clowney was expected to play a good part in their offense, but with Donald Driver all gimped up, I’m sure that chance only grows. He played at Virginia Tech, never forget, fuck Seung Cho.
FORMER HURRICANE: Tight end Bubba Franks is a hoss with pretty good trumped-up stats being Favre’s dump-off guy ever since Mark Chmura retired to dedicate himself to fingering the babysitter’s vagina in his hot tub.
WILD SAMOAN: In lieu of bonafide authentic Samoans present on their roster, I’ll go with Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila. A sign of how racist we all are is I have no idea about the linguistic habits of separate regions of Africa. That Gbaja-Biamila dude could be from Nigeria, Botswana, or Somalia for all I know. On one hand, I could learn myself this bullshit, but on the other hand, I can just make myself feel good that at least I know those three countries are in different regions of the dark continent, putting me ahead of probably 97% of my fellow stupid Americans.
THE ICKY: Safety Atari Bigby. Why the fuck did his parents name him Atari?
THE RUDY: Starting defensive end Cullen Jenkins came to the team undrafted out of Central Michigan University.
JOCK GENIUS: Kurt Schottenheimer is their secondary coach, and he’s also genetically inclined to fucking suck.
FANTASY JERSEY: Green #53 MAD DOG jersey for Mike Douglass, who was scary as fuck when I was a kid. He still is actually. I google searched that dude and he’s like 50 and all ripped to the gills, running a fitness and nutrition operation.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 40 to 1 – Favre will probably mix in enough touchdown passes with all his errant interceptions to break Marino’s career record, and then he’ll wobble back off to southern Mississippi to catfish his way into the twilight of his life. But that’s about all that’s notable that’ll happen this year. It will be interesting to see how Rogers turns out afterwards because the Packers’ Favre understudies used to be hot commodities in the NFL (Matt Hasselbeck, Aaron Brooks, so on). Does Favre still help out though, or has he become the shitty old man holding onto his position well past his prime that I suspect he is?

#6: Minnesota Vikings (6-10 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Whoever that dude was that ran the fumble recovery like 70 yards the wrong way for a safety. He pretty much summarizes the Minnesota Vikings existence.
TEAM HOSS: Do they have one? I guess I’ll say Steve Hutchison since he gets paid like 50 million dollars to block. That shit’s funny when you’re highest-priced free agent is a guard. That’s also how you end up with someone like Tarvaris Jackson as your starting quarterback of the future (until he ends up being the new Quincy Carter).
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Fran Tarkenton was a very annoying individual on Monday Night Football, and his brother Chip has been just as annoying for like 37 years as the nightly sports anchor on Richmond’s ABC affiliate.
TEAM ASS: Defensive end Kenechi Udeze, coming out of college at USC, was supposed to be the prototype of the NFL’s New Defensive End hybrid super destructor of stealth. Last year, he had zero sacks.
SENIOR PLAYER: Center Matt Birk joined the team as a sixth round draft pick in ’98.
VA BOY: Safety Darren Sharper not only came out of a small school – William & Mary – but he’s carved out a solid long-term career for himself, entering his eleventh season. Locally, and this is some statistical shit I either read in an article or some drunk dude told me at a bar, William & Mary has the highest rate for in-state colleges of suicide and lesbian chicks. Not hot lesbians either, the normal kind, just young.
FORMER HURRICANE: Tackle Bryant McKinnie has been their most solid fat black dude on the offensive line ever since that other fat black dude died from heat exhaustion heart attack a few years back. Befitting a former Hurricane, I believe McKinnie was one of the people who had public loving from a full steezie on that lake boat trip of doom the team took a while back, too.
WILD SAMOAN: Fullback of the future Naufahu Tahi.
THE ICKY: Clipboard quarterbacks Brooks Bollinger and Tyler Thigpen sound like a couple of Beamer-driving pastel polo-shirt wearing sucks who would want to kill me for selling them some bad cocaine I accidentally gummed up trying to faultily cook into rocks, except for they wouldn’t kill me because they were rich kid pussies who don’t kill people in real life, unless you want to go ahead and consider the slow death 95% of us suffer under the power of assholes with names like Brooks and Tyler an actual killing.
THE RUDY: Richard Owens and Heath Farwell are special teams stars entering their fourth and third years respectively, undrafted yet cashing large NFL paychecks due to their wonderful ability to hurl themselves into other muscled-up humans at full-speed during kick-offs and punts. God bless them both, and the bastard children that will have to tend to them when they suffer from Alzheimer’s at age 47.
JOCK GENIUS: Brad Childress may be the most non-descript head coach of the past decade. And he has a starting quarterback nobody has really heard of before. This should be great.
FANTASY JERSEY: Alternate black with purple trim #81 MOSS jersey. I usually hit the Rugged Wearhouse place for scratch-and-dent jerseys this time of year, and like two years ago they had a black one like this for Daunte Culpepper, but I think I got a Cadillac Williams jersey instead, and apparently didn’t have an extra seven dollars for the Culpepper one, which I think I’ve regretted at times, especially when the Love Boat thing broke out.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 50 to 1 – they don’t seem to be actively considering themselves in some sort of rebuilding stage, but they also don’t seem to really have anything to build a team around, so I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe that crazy oil tycoon dude is just running the team into the ground so he can move it to Los Angeles, where no one will care about them.

#7: Detroit Lions ( 3-13 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: In my lifetime of wasting hours upon hours watching the foozball matches on Sundays, there wasn’t a more-fun dude to watch play than Barry Sanders. If motherfuckers want to get all indignantly dorked out and have an asterisk beside Barry Bonds home run record, then I want an asterisk beside Emmitt Smith’s rushing yards record where when you look down at the bottom of the page at the asterisk, it says, “Only because the far superior Barry Sanders retired early rather than play for the suck ass team he was stuck with.”
TEAM HOSS: Having watched ACC football the past few years, I can confidently say that Calvin Johnson will not end up being another Detroit Lions highly-touted first round draft pick wide receiver bust. That dude is out of control.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: I’d like to say Joey Harrington is destined to get this title when he retires, but let’s be honest. It was Wayne Fontes mediocre-is-the-new-great mentality instilled into the franchise so deeply that led to things like three first round wide receivers combining for like 32 catches or the Joey Harrington era or even having Matt Millen stay around as long as he has.
TEAM ASS: Since they dumped the two suck-ass ballyhooed wide receivers, there’s no one on the team you can really give that much hatred with Matt Millen still around.
SENIOR PLAYER: Jason Hansen has kicked field goals for Detroit since being drafted in ’92.
VA BOY: Starting halfback Kevin Jones played at Virginia Tech, but that’s a high profile football program. I prefer to highlight the perseverance of Paris Lenon, a linebacker out of University of Richmond, who was working for the U.S. Postal Service when he tried out for the Panthers, and has now had six years in the NFL as a devastating headbuster on special teams.
FORMER HURRICANE: Back-up tight end Eric Beverly, who actually played at the other Miami. Oh wait, he just got cut. So no one.
WILD SAMOAN: Rookie defensive lineman Ikaika Alama-Francis. You know the Francis part is his probably his mom. White women are so much more apt than white men to hook up inter-racial marriages; plus, white women are about three million times more likely than Samoan women to want their maiden last name included as part of their kids’ names.
THE ICKY: Linebacker Boss Bailey’s first name is his actual real first name. He’s the brother of Champ Bailey, and apparently their parents were really into manifesting a positive destiny for their children. Luckily, Boss was good at football so he didn’t have to end up running a rural Georgia prison farm, which was the second most likely outcome.
THE RUDY: What I said about Paris Lenon.
JOCK GENIUS: Matt Millen, who I think will never get fired. I mean, he’s got a new lease on life every year it seems. I think he’s fucking a gay Ford heir or something. However, if Calvin Johnson joining the team causes Jon Kitna to start throwing up Peyton Manning-like fantasy stats, you can bet the “Mike Martz is an offensive mastermind” meme will start firing up yet again.
FANTASY JERSEY: New school black with blue letters #20 SANDERS.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 60 to 1 – Football nerd analysist wisdom seems to be the Lions will be better this year, and start moving in the right direction; but they are still the Lions, so I would never expect anything more than 9-7 and a wild card road game, even during their greatest run in our lifetime. This will not be such a year though.

#8: Cleveland Browns (4-12 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Uh, Jim Brown? Isn’t that dude generally considered to be the standard GREATEST DUDE EVER, which him kicking ass in blaxploitation flicks probably only enhanced such status. Ozzie Newsome or Matt Bahr never blew up the Russian Mafia trying to ruin the already run-down dark-skinned inner-cities of America with tainted PCP.
TEAM HOSS: Ted Washington, formerly of the Patriots, is 365 pounds and 39 years old. The fact he does not die of a heart attack and still continues to literally “fill the gap” in the NFL is amazing. I hope he writes some motivational books before he keels over seventeen months after he’s finally forced to retire.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Uh, Bernie Kosar, king of suck?
TEAM ASS: His crippled kid battling brain fungus aside, I have never much cared for that Joe Jurevicius dude. He always seemed to me to be like a new-fangled Steve Largent, and who the fuck liked Steve Largent?
SENIOR PLAYER: Kicker Phil Dawson has been around since ’99, which I think was when the re-launched this franchise.
VA BOY: No former collegiate Virginians there, which is understandable, because I’ve been to Cleveland, and that’s a shitty place. In fact, most of Ohio is pretty fucked, but I guess it gets by because it can always be like, “Well, at least we’re not Indiana.”
FORMER HURRICANE: Soldier/tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., who hopefully will do more actually football awesomeness this year than motorcycle stunts or leg breakings. This guy was supposed to be the super-human destroyer of every AFC North defense coming out of college, and instead he’s been nothing but a steady promise of “next year”. Perhaps that’ll be this year.
WILD SAMOAN: Reserve guard Fred Matua, since he has almost 100 pounds on rookie defensive end Melila Purcell.
THE ICKY: As much as I’d like to say defensive lineman Babatunde Oshinowo, to hipster doofusly mention how down with the traditional jungle rhythms of Babatunde Olatunji I am, it’s impossible not to pick a name like the one owned by rookie wide receiver Syndric Steptoe. Also, honorable mention to linebacker Mason Unck.
THE RUDY: Starting cornerback Leigh Bodden is entering his fifth year, undrafted out of Duquesne, which I didn’t even know had a football team.
JOCK GENIUS: The coaching tree genius of Bill Belichek will be challenged like never before this year, as Romeo Crennel is in his third year at the helm of the Browns, and without any of the success fellow Belichek understudies Charlie Weis or Eric Mangini has had. Why is the black guy always the first one to get killed?
FANTASY JERSEY: Shit brown #32 BLACK JESUS, which of course would probably get me stabbed over, or at least shirtjacked.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 125 to 1 – The Brady Quinn wild card adds intrigue to the Browns this year. Could Quinn be what general managers on draft day thought he wasn’t? Will The Soldier get it together for a break-out year? Can Jamal Lewis resurrect his career in Cleveland? I’m sure Browns fans, using the same naiveté I use as a Redskins fan every spring, are considering themselves reserved when they see the Browns getting a wild card win and then losing on the road in the divisional round of the playoffs, setting up next year, where they win their first of five Super Bowls in a row.

Redneck Hippie LPs

Rednecks and hippies are two of the most despised breeds of American left to make fun of, and rightly so in most cases. However, as a youngster with young parents and their wild and wacky menagerie of friends, the main impressive influence on my early life was a weird hybrid of redneck and hippie that they all were. Shit, I think I was like 9 and sleeping over at a richer friend’s house one weekend before I realized that the majority of grown-ups did not look like people on the gatefold of a Lynyrd Skynyrd record.
These redneck hippies, to this day, are held in high esteem by me, because they’re open-minded enough to not be stupid rednecks (which would be terrible decision because non-whites have reefer too), and they’re also not naïve and pacifistical like stupid hippies, so they’re apt for violence and craziness. In fact, just last weekend I was at a rock show, and this older punk fuck from Richmond was fucking with me because I didn’t want to go outside and get high with him, saying some “Then why do you look like a stupid hippie then?” referring to my dreadlocks and the sandals I was wearing (generic thrift store old black man sandals, not $350 super-hippie brand name shits, just to clarify), and I answered, “Because I like to fight stupid fucks who like to hate fucking hippies.” We all had a good life and got a round of shots.
Anyways, I figured since this is mostly a hip hop-related blog, I’d write about something that none of you will care about at all. And it won’t open you up to anything because most likely you’ll just think I’m a dumbass redneck hippie cuntface loser and this shit will mean nothing to you. Which is fine, because most likely the redneck half of me would want to fight you over something trivial in real life anyways. But then the hippie half of me would want to be cool enough we could have a beer together and maybe smoke a blunt together in the alley or something. However, none of this would ever happen because the redneck hippie’s natural habitat usually involves a picnic table and horseshoe pits in his own backyard, which is probably as far as I’d make it your way anyways. Well, nonetheless, here are seven classic super-awesome Sunday morning bloody mary huevos rancheros in a skillet type albums to be playing on your beat up ass component system you’ve acquired piece by piece over the years from various pawn shops and thrift stores, anchored by one of those giant silver receivers with huge knobs and little tachometers and shit like ‘70s mad science in full effect.

#1: ZZ Top – Tejas
I put this one first because this is probably the album that’s gotten the most spins on my turntable in the past two months. If you only know of ZZ Top for their ‘80s “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” era MTV renown, then you are missing the fuck out. Before they got all electronic and video-happy, they were one of the grimiest ass rock-n-roll bands you could ask for. There’s really no dissing a lot of their early work (Tres Hombres is most well-known, but ZZ Top’s First Album and Rio Grande Mud are even better), however, this Tejas record, I don’t know, ol’ Billy Gibbons was in a motherfuckin’ zone on this one. It’s got that same grimy blues rock they had become known for, but this album is mellower than fuck at the same time, but not in a faggot jam band type mellow way. More like taking mushrooms in the desert and shooting a pistol at rocks all day long type mellow, which is more befitting the redneck hippie mentality. I’m constantly changing the dumb shit I say should be played at my funeral… actually maybe I should explain redneck hippie funerals from where I grew up. Usually, they involve a bunch of longhaired people who never go to church going to a church in their finest pair of blue jeans, listening to some preacher talk for a bit, then we go bury the dude who had a massive stroke or wrecked a van or something get chunked in the ground. People will say very funny shit about the dude and how crazy but good he was by the grave, then everybody will go to one of his family member’s houses and everyone will drink a lot and do drugs around a large fire with music blaring for the next day or two. Seriously. I have been to two actual funerals in junkyards. One of them the dude actually had a pinebox coffin with a confederate flag draped over it and somebody opened the windows of their car and blasted “Freebird”. No shit. The shocking thing was THERE WERE PLENTY OF BLACK PEOPLE STANDING THERE, plus some orientals. Nothing racist about that dude in his actions, so no one would be all hung up about semantics and historics and all that analytical bullshit. Anyways, my point was, at my funeral, if someone just loops up “Asleep in the Desert” for like the half an hour people are shoveling dirt over me, that’d be fine. Of course, I’ll be a dead ass motherfucker, so it won’t really matter to me then.

#2: Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger
Willie Nelson is kind of the God of redneck hippies. Back in the ‘70s, once biker movies had opened people up to the fact that there was a breed of redneck that was probably more down with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda than the crewcut rednecks of Easy Rider (well, maybe not Peter Fonda, he was kinda preachy and shit), Willie let his hair grow out and started rocking for the drug-addled country folks of America. Outlaw country became a marketable genre and dudes grew an awesome variety of scraggly facial hair.
A lot of people love some Willie Nelson, but you can always tell a true Willie Nelson fan, like deep into the mix, if you ask them his best record and they say this one. Because really there is no other better Willie Nelson record, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is a stupid fag who reads too much music critic pseudo-literary bullshit. Willie was making some good concept albums back in the ‘70s, with themes running throughout, which seems to be completely lost on modern musicians, maybe because modern formats are downloads instead of slabs of physical vinyl with two sides comprised of circles and all that new age aesthetic (hippie half of me firing up on that sentence). But Red Headed Stranger is seriously one of the greatest theme country records ever made. Shit, it’s one of my top five albums ever if I could only have five for the rest of my life. This is the perfect record for drunken Sunday mornings (like I said, redneck hippies don’t go to church unless someone is dead, but we tend to hold the story of Samson and Delilah in pretty high moral regard).
My two younger sisters actually went to see Willie Nelson tonight somewhere in North Carolina, and we will all meet up at my mom’s house tomorrow since my wife is out of town, and I’m sure we’ll all drink beer around a big fire and get the kids to do funny dances and my sisters will talk up how awesome the Willie Nelson show was, even though they’re both probably high as fuck on some sort of wacky neon-colored new-fangled weed strain so you can’t truss it completely, and I will be jealous I couldn’t go. But fuck it, someone’s got to bring up the next generation.

#3: The Charlie Daniels Band – Fire on the Mountain
Again, like ZZ Top, mainstream thought misses the boat on Charlie Daniels, though he has turned into a chump-ass in his old age. For most people, Charlie Daniels means that “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” song, and to put it in rap terms, it’s like when people talk about how awesome Outkast speaking on the “Hey Ya” song. It misses the rillest shit. For CDB, there are a trio of classic records that would be welcome in the redneck hippie’s record collection cabinet – Saddle Tramp, Nightrider, and this album. The only reason I chose this one is because it has “Long Haired Country Boy”, which is about a thousand times more of a “Freebird” style anthem to the average redneck hippie than “Freebird” is. Pop culture kinda ran with that “Freebird” stereotype, and it’s all too often sadly true at times, but “Long Haired Country Boy” is THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ ANTHEM. There is no higher song. Which is why Charlie Daniels seems a chump ass now. Original lyrics to that song go, “I get stoned in the morning, I get drunk in the afternoon,” and nowadays stupid assed Chuckie Fiddlehead sings, “I get up in the moring, I go down in the afternoon.” Fuck that shit. I understand growing old and wanting to distance yourself from reckless behavior, but fuck. What happened to that youthful attitude? I mean, Willie Nelson just had tour bus stopped last year full of mushrooms and weed, and he’s probably at least a decade older than Charlie Daniels. I guess Daniels wants to keep his corporate options open so he can fiddle around during Super Bowl halftime shows and use that overplayed “Devil” song to sell Hyundais to the fickle-minded.
Also, on a side note, just in case a person stumbles across this bullshit who is actually into this type of music, a motherfuckin’ awesome and not well known CDB album is Te John, Grease & Wolfman, which has alternate versions of a lot of their lesser known songs off the major three albums I mentioned, including a sick-ass redoing of “New York City King Sized Rosewood Bed”, of which the original version appears on Fire on the Mountain. Just in case you were wondering and shit.

#4: Lynyrd Skynyrd – Nuthin’ Fancy
Skynyrd is the basis for most of the worst stereotypes about redneck types, although their hit machine nature causing them to be overplayed on classic rock stations combined with that even though almost every original member is either dead or a vegan recluse now (what’s up Artimus, in case you’re googling yourself in between hatha yoga sessions), the band has reloaded with washed-up second and third-tier younger brothers and lesser southern rock guitarists to sort of become an almost cartoon copycat of the worst stereotypes you could think of the band. It’s sad. I wouldn’t go see a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert now if you paid me, drove me there, and got me high on the way. Shit, I turned down free tickets to see them FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!
Still, I think in the “LOL stupid Lynyrd Skynyrd racists!” way of thinking, people overlook how much good ass, good natured music they made beyond the Super ‘70s Mega-Hits. This record is probably my favorite by them, because outside of “Saturday Night Special”, it’s not chock full of said mega-hits, and there’s some great songs on here. Used to be whenever I made screwtop wine bottle mixtapes, the last two songs on side A, “Railroad Song” and “I’m a Country Boy” pretty much always made it into the mix. But still, pretty much every song on this album is great, with “Cheatin’ Woman” and “Am I Losin’” on top of the already mentioned bullshit. Oh yeah, I guess “Whiskey Rock and Roller” was a minor hit too to end the second side. Still, none of this shit, outside of “Saturday Night Special” is played out, and this a great album to be playing when a guard rail sneaks into the front end of your vehicle driving drunker than fuck late one night. But I mean, we all have to get home somehow, and you’re more likely to wreck your own shit than to kill a toddler playing kickball innocently in the front yard as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers would have you believe. In fact, I think a much better way to get people to not drink and drive would be for them to be honest and have a commercial that says, “Yeah, we know you’ve been drinking and you want to go home. But if we catch you in the process, it’s gonna be expensive as shit. Like a thousand beers expensive. When you see our lights and you’re all drunk trying to sneak back roads back home, it’s gonna be just like you just bought a thousand beers that you won’t get not even one of. And on top of that, you’re gonna have to spend the night in jail. Plus call your bitch of an ol’ lady to get her to come bail you out. And you know that’s gonna end up being triflin’ as fuck, too. So seriously, don’t let us catch you drinking and driving.”

#5: Black Oak Arkansas – Black Oak Arkansas
I never even really heard of these guys much growing up, and didn’t discover them till my mid-twenties, and they’re still playing and making music that pales compared to when they were young and hungry and wild and fucking lots of bitches. But their first couple records are some good shit. Actually, I’ll only outright vouch for two of them, When An Angel Comes to See You, Would You Make Her Feel At Home is a personal favorite, but you have to be deep into the backyard picnic table barefoot in the horseshoe pits mindframe to really appreciate that one. It’ll sound kinda stupid at times to an unlounged ear. But their self-titled debut is wacky Ozark redneck rock-n-roll raucousness, pure good shit. “Lord Have Mercy on My Soul” is a classic rock station cut, but the original album has a wacky organ-laced talking intro by Jim Dandy Mangrum (probably as much David Lee Roth as David Lee Roth ever was, but about ten years ahead of him) talking about dying but making a deal with the devil and god to come back to earth to make music. The whole album is great, and winds up with “When Electricity Came to Arkansas”, which is like one of those long-winded jams that late ‘60s bands used to have, just this one doesn’t have a dorky drum solo segment and seems to be fueled by moonshine and illegal fireworks.

#6: The Ozark Mountain Daredevils – It’ll Shine When It Shines
Probably the most easy listening of the seven choices I made, but I grew up with my dad playing this motherfucker every Sunday morning after a long night of Jim Beam and homegrown. Sundays, he’d always wake up early and start blaring music like this, sipping on a beer and making a giant breakfast full of unhealthy and awesome things. “Jackie Blue” I think was a minor hit for these guys, and is pure easy listening crap on its own, but mixed into the rest of the album, it’s not that bad. But seriously, the entire second side of “Walkin’ Down the Road”, “What’s Happened Along My Life”, “It Probably Always Will”, “Lowlands”, “Tidal Wave”, and “It’ll Shine When It Shines” is about as perfect a redneck hippie soundtrack you could ask for, encapsulating the entire, “Fuck it, I’m broke but I don’t really like busting my ass for some shithead no ways so I’m gonna sit right here and maybe plant a couple of tomato plants and see if Harold wants to come over and help me empty this cooler full of beer and maybe play some Spades.”

#7: David Allan Coe – Rides Again
No list of redneck hippie music would be complete without David Allan Coe. He is known for the whole “Oh shit, he made racist tapes in the ‘70s” thing, but seriously, David Allan Coe is as far removed from that as thirty years could make him. Dude is like 75, still playings shows about four days a week on a confederate flag flying V guitar, and his long hair and long beard are all dreaded up and nappy, he talks about people needing to be more open-minded then will sing a song about transsexuals or some shit, all while some weird new age fortysomething hippie panhead mama stands right off the stage as his around-the-clock handler. Dude is outta control.
You can’t even get David Allan Coe Rides Again as a single release anymore, as it was re-released combined with his other Longhaired Redneck album. Both are great albums, but Rides Again stands out a bit for me personally because each side doesn’t really have any breaks and each song bleeds into the next. And this one is full of great self-reckless but fuck it songs like “Laid Back and Wasted”, “Lately I’ve Been Thinking Too Much Lately”, and that great oft-cited classic (due to it’s single use of the dreaded N-word – “N” being capitalized to show just how dastardly that word is) “If That Ain’t Country”.
The thing is, David Allan Coe during this time was about as close to a rapper as any country musician has been, and not just because of the speed-talking delivery of lyrics in songs like “If That Ain’t Country”. Dude wore rhinestones and drove a big long Cadillac that he’d park in front of the Grand Ole Opry just to scare all the mainstream country folks who didn’t want his type there. And his albums at that time were sure to have pictures of him holding large wads of twenty dollar bills, probably a couple of guns, maybe a dog on a chain, or standing on top of said Cadillac, with mentions of his time in prison pretty easy to find.
I pretty much figure any day now I’ll read that David Allan Coe died, because that dude is old and has lived a hard ass life. Practicing biker-based polygamy, doing prison stints for manslaughter, and just generally living that image up for the most part, even to nowadays, where I doubt he drinks and shit like he would when he was young, but I refuse to believe any grey-haired dude with a dreadlocked beard does not dabble in illicit substances on the regular. I’m gonna be a sad dude when he dies, because I love going to his shows in Charlottesville and drunkenly picking fights with UVA fratboys. Also, it’s always a great show (of course, I’m usually halfway wasted, so you can’t truss it then either). Still, today’s so-called “country” music ain’t made of people like this guy, and alt.country is just another word for fag.suburb.
Oh well, fuck it. I guess I’ll just keep spinning old shit on the turntable.

EWA100 - #23. Beastie Boys - Paul Revere

23. Beastie Boys - Paul Revere (Def Jam/Columbia. 1986. From the LP Licensed To Ill)

Raven Mack: The Beastie Boys are stupid zen buddhist dumbfuck minor league jam band goofs now, so it's hard to remember they were actually relevant to for-real rap music at one point. I mean, they could kick it with Biz Markie and shit. This song probably brought more warm feelings to American youth relations than any other though, and mostly by accident.
I have a jukebox, like a real giant useless jukebox which is basically an old man's ipod, except it can only hold 200 songs, and unfortunately every two of them have to be attached physically to each other. Which brings me to "Paul Revere". When The Beasties blew the fuck up as asshole white kids down for whatever schtick, the ginormous hit for them was that fight for your right to party song. When that was released on vinyl format (7 inch for radio stations and my jukebox eventually), the opposite side was "Paul Revere". Now, for some reason, on the actual Licensed To Ill record, "Paul Revere" was the one song that black people loved the most. I am basing this on all the black people I grew up around and how they knew the words to "Paul Revere" but probably nothing else musical by white people. And the party fighting song was definitely a huge hit amongst the more rock-oriented white folks of the planet earth ball.
I'm not sure why this song is so fucking great. I mean, the beat is weird for the time, and apparently still holds value as that goddamned annoying-ass "So Crispy" song is basically this same beat with a touch of annoying 2007 tinkerbell drum machine spice on top, but it doesn't seem like the most slamming beat ever or anything. And the rhymes are as cornily humorous as anything else on the record. Perhaps it's the story itself, since 99% of rap music, lyrically, is nothing more than stringing together metaphorical and linguistical trickery with no real attention given to cohesion of thoughts. Still, this is a great super fun song that I'm proud to have a copy of in my old man ipod (selection E11, as opposed to E12, because I insert my seven inch records with my favorite side getting top billing, not according to the retarded marketing schemes of corrupt record labels).

Mike Dikk: I have some mind-blowing theories about this song, but unfortunately they will have to wait until we get a little further into this list. I didn’t initially like The Beastie Boys because “Fight For Your Right” and “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” Are horrible songs. Seriously, if you like those songs in 2007, you need to fucking grow up already.
However, if you cut out those two songs, along with a couple others from Licensed To Ill, and strip it down to the dirty gutter songs you have one H E Double Hockey Sticks of an LP. It’s not something that can really be duplicated (not that anyone with a brain would want to) because it’s so retarded and sophomoric. Almost immediately after Licensed To Ill, it became the unwritten Rap law that you had to be totally serious when it came to rapping on record. I’m not saying every successful rap act after Licensed To Ill was completely serious, but I can guarantee you none of them were this goofy either.
Outside of the goofiness, this record became highly influential to a lot of artists, black and white. That’s why The Beastie Boys will always be the most universal group as far as rap is concerned. I think they’ve since lost all their street cred, but they were putting out records with weird jam songs on it that people of all races, colors, and creeds could get down with.
“Paul Revere” sticks out of Licensed To Ill because, like Raven said, it’s the most well-liked song by both sides of the racial rainbow. Personally, I never looked at The Beastie Boys as white boys trying to do black music back then because I only knew of like ten rap groups, and The Beastie Boys was one of them, making the black-to-white ratio not as one-sided as it would get, up until Eminem came out and balanced things out again. I’m going to end this bit here though in fear of getting too “racial”. Race is the only thing you can’t joke around about on the internet, and I joke around about it a lot, and I’m trying to be totally serious here people. Don’t make me stoop down to that level.

Download: Beastie Boys - Paul Revere

There was never an official video for this song, but Youtube has an insane amount of home made videos for Paul Revere. Some of them are ok, but most of them are crap. Since this is Dumpin.net and not IReallyGiveAShitAboutYourAVClassProject.com, I present to you the two worst home made Paul revere videos on all of Youtube. (I couldn't decide which one was worse)

The first video is some hippie douche who thought it would be a good idea to make an acoustic version of Paul Revere. This is pretty bad on it's own, but the fact that it sucks and it didn't deter this hackey sack fucktard from posting it on Youtube makes it especially terrible:



Here is the worst band I have ever heard hanging out in a bedroom that they most likely share with each other, covering Paul Revere. What makes this especially awful is that they pointed the video camera at a mirror because they couldn't find anyone to stomach this in real time. I really hate hippies.

EWA100 - #24. Eric B & Rakim - Paid in Full

24. Eric B & Rakim - Paid In Full (Zakia/4th & Broadway. 1987. From the LP Paid In Full)

Mike Dikk: I really wish someone else was writing this because I don’t think I’m going to do very good writing the introductory write up. I was really born a year too late for this. See, back in the '80s, you didn’t get to hear every record ever three weeks before it’s release date. In fact, sometime it would be entire YEARS before you heard some kind of seminal record in your specific genre of choice. Especially if you were ten and you didn’t have a job yet because you were too short to operate heavy machinery and your pre-pubescent penis was too small to become a proper gigolo. So I didn’t hear Eric B. & Rakim until well after Follow The Leader came out. Because of that, I really never listened to “Paid In Full” (the song or the record) until years later, and I’m sorry, but this stuff just doesn’t hold up as well as the stuff from Follow The Leader. The lyrics are there, but the beats aren’t as great.
It’s probably a given there would be a few Eric B & Rakim songs on here, but I was kind of surprised by this pick. I’m sure a lot more people aren’t, but out of the 5 or 6 absolute classic songs Eric B & Rakim put out, I’d rank this one the lowest. I guess if you were looking at this from a technical rap nerd perspective, it basically gave birth to the whole “I need to get money” mentality in rap music (supposedly, these are the words of others, not my own), and the drum loop is one of the most used in the history of rap music, but outside of that, there’s not much going on for me. I even like “Don’t Sweat The Technique” more than this song. I’m sure I’m committing Rap blasphemy for speaking ill will toward anything Rakim did on those first two records, but I felt I should be honest with you, the reader, since we’ve been on such a longwinded, drawn out tumultuous journey together. I really hope Raven has one of his trademark Wholesome Country Livin’ Nostalgia stories to make this write up seem like it’s worth a shit. I’m sorry.

Raven Mack: I think Mike is suffering from hipster nerd contrarian backlash, because it's standard hipster nerd nonsense to talk up the seven-and-a-half minute mega-remix of this song as the greatest old school shit ever. But here's the real talk from an expert whiteboy who owns the singles: the mega-mix is masturbatory bullshit that takes away from the simple greatness of the original version of normal length. This was standard procedure in that 1987 through 1990 timeframe to make a mega-mix of a song, and instead of today's gimmick of having five guest flavors of the month to rhyme over the beat, the old gimmick was to draw out the samples to a longer sample and to add quirky oddball vocal snippets from movies or campy old science records or news reports. Another good example of this is "Night of the Living Baseheads" remix by Public Enemy. Luckily for us all, Pete Rock came along to re-invent the remix.
The lyrical ridiculousness of Rakim, if you were to tell me to break it down to one verse as an example, it'd be this one. For real. Mike's right when he says Follow the Leader holds up better, because the beats are more attuned to the future of rap music. Still, the rhymes on Paid In Full changed the way motherfuckers even thought about writing rhymes. Rakim made shit obsolete. And whereas people had been storyteller rhymers before (Slick Rick for example), Rakim's story he's telling in "Paid In Full" is not so much a long drawn out story being explained step-by-step, but he's telling the story indirectly. You figure a lot of it out on your own, and he tightens up every fucking syllable to crispy thickness.
It's been a couple of painkiller prescriptions ago we made this list, but I remember being almost freaked out that this ended up this low. I pegged it to be an automatic top ten song when we started this project. Like I couldn't even imagine it not being a top ten song (outside of the hipster nerd contrarianism because too many dumbasses hype it up in normal full-of-shit dipshit fashion within earshot, which I've also experienced, and may be even adding to for some people) on any serious list.

Download: Eric B & Rakim - Paid in Full

(I'd like to note that by the time we got around to writing this, we had totally forgotten whether it was the original mix of this song that got nominated or the Remix. We have a feeling it was the remix but neither me or Raven are really thrilled with that version, so we are pretending it was the original mix that got the nod. So you get an mp3 of the original mix, but the video for the remix. We are sorry for any confusion or depression this will cause you.)

EWA100 - #25. LL Cool J - Rock The Bells

25. LL Cool J - Rock The Bells (Def Jam. 1985. From the LP Radio)

Raven Mack: My father was a small engine mechanic blessed with a seventh grade education. I grew up pretty smart in them schoolings, which always caused great internal tension for me, not because he hated on that shit, but because for most of the time, since I could do book reports but not pour a splash of gas into a riding mower's carburetor to trick it into starting, I always assumed my dad thought I was a homo, or destined to be a homo. This caused a lot of reckless behavior in my more immature years, trying to prove to him how non-gay I was, and probably to myself too, because with drunken him as my only father figure, reading books for leisure at like age sixteen made me question if I wasn't a fag. Seriously.
Luckily, I'm old enough now and content enough in the fact that man-love is not stimulating to me sexually that I know I'm not gay, at least not sexually. So I don't worry about that shit. Plus, my dad's dead too, because fortysomething year old hearts aren't inclined to handle weekend-long meth binges on the regular. But back then (when hot hoes didn't want me, making me question my homosexuality even more), I had to pay attention to a lot of stupid shit to not add fuel to my paranoia that pops thought I liked dicks. This means I didn't really rock much LL Cool J. Dude never wore a shirt and was always flaunting action figure abs, and bragging on his dick prowess, even kicking it that LL was short for "ladies love". If my dad thought I was a fag and I was dancing around my lavendar-walled bedroom with the myrrh incense burning to that type of shit, pops would've sent me to one of those Christian re-education camps. Actually, he wouldn't have, because we never went to church and also we were broke. So he would've kicked my ass.
I do understand, in retrospect, the awesomeness of LL's early works, especially that first album, which was probably one of the more pure hip hop outputs from Def Jam's early superstar marketing R-n-R (Russell and Rick) success stories. But to be honest, my favorite song off that record is "Dear Yvette", because it's such an obviously not gay song. Unless I pretend I'm a pre-op transsexual called Yvette while listening to it masturbating, which I did one time. But I didn't achieve orgasm, further proving I'm not actually gay, although if I was a pre-op tranny, that would mean I felt I was a woman, so if I felt I was a woman then thinking about men wouldn't be gay, would it? Hard to say. It's a fucked-up world with explanations for every stupid shit you can think of. I long for a simpler time like my dad grew up in where homos were homos and regular dudes were regular dudes. (Man, if my dad was still alive to see me writing retarded word patterns about the jungle music for overweight shut-ins and social malcontents to maybe catch a laugh off of, he'd totally start thinking I was a homo again, regardless of how many more kids I make to go with the three or four I've got already.)

Mike Dikk: When I was a little kid, I wanted to be LL Cool J so bad. He seemed like such a cool guy. My friend’s sister had a door size poster of him hanging up in here room. It’s the poster where he’s wearing all his TROOP gear, just standing there looking all bad ass. I think I liked him so much because he was the first rapper I heard that was really aggressive and straight forward. Unlike Raven, I never thought about the implications that by liking LL so much I may be a secret gay.
In all fairness, I’m pretty certain when I would stare longingly at that Door Sized poster, I didn’t even know what a gay was. My hazy self-timeline places me and my LL poster obsession around 7 or 8 years of age. I didn’t see my first soft core porn until I was at least 9, and that was most likely the first time I realized girls could be gay for each other, since every soft core porno has the obligatory girl on girl scene. I do remember that day vividly though. It was late at night on a Friday and my Mom wasn’t home yet because she was a bartender at the time. It started at 11:30 PM which seemed super late back then. The name of the movie was called “Learning To Fly” and it was one of those badly filmed euro soft core porns that Cinemax Late Night was so fond of. I remember I kept getting up to get drinks of water because I couldn’t control myself and my stubby little boner. The only scene I remember from “Learning to Fly” was some hairy dude fucking a girl in a pool.
So by 9, I knew that at least girls could like each other and kiss without instantly going to Hell. At that point, I still didn’t even know where the entrance to the vagina was. I thought it was somewhere in the bush section, and you would just lie on a girl flat and stick your penis in her bush and that was sex. It wasn’t until I was about 11 or 12 that I saw a for real porno, and my life was changed forever.
I also remember that day vividly. I was playing G.I. Joes with my friend Kenny. The same friend who’s sister had the LL Cool J poster. We were having a great time playing dolls in his living room while no one was home. Then he told me to hold on a second and he went into his Dad’s room. He came out with a video tape and put it in the VCR.. The first thing that popped on the screen was a dude fucking the stuffing out of this blonde girl outside on a picnic blanket. It was odd, because I remember there was a close up shot of her asshole and it appeared there was a bunch of saliva around it and I thought that was kind of gross. The most important thing I learned on that day was where the entrance to the vagina was, and sex had a lot more mechanics to it than I ever imagined. Sadly, once the tape was over, we didn’t feel like playing G.I. Joes anymore, and I don’t think we ever played G. I. Joes again.
I’d guess that sometime around then is when I learned dudes could be gay for each other. I’ve still never seen a gay porno. The closest thing would be when they’d have those commercials for those 900 numbers on the VHS before the actual porno movie started in the 90’s, and every once in a while, they’d sneak in an ad for a gay number as if you accidentally bought the wrong porn and you were really searching for gay stuff, but those ads would have a dude blowing another dude and I’d have to fast forward real quick as to escape the gay before I turned into a gay.
Now I’m old and I have gay friends just like your average forward thinking aging hipster, and I still believe you can only become gay by trickery. Like if you stare at two dudes blowing each other for long enough, you will become a gay, or even if you take too big of an interest in football, you will probably start getting unexplained boners in your pants anytime you hear Peyton Manning call an audible.
The only thing that keeps me from being gay is that everyday when I wake up, I tell myself that I should avoid doing anything gay today at all costs, and it usually works. I mean, sometimes when I’m watching wrestling, I slip up and find myself rubbing the crotch area of my jeans a little too suggestively, but don’t we all?
Anyway, I had a point somewhere in here. Oh yeah. Perhaps if I discovered LL Cool J when I was 13 or 14, I would have turned into a gay, but since I was only like 8, I’m in the clear, though now that I’ve fleshed out this whole scenario, I’ll never be able to listen to LL again.

Download: LL Cool J - Rock The Bells

Youtube is telling me there was no original video for "Rock The Bells". I'm kidn of surprised by that. There is virtually no interesting Youtube clips featuring LL Cool J, so here's a little interview with Def Jam artists (including LL) from 1986:

NFL: Southern Division Teams (preseason)

#1: INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (16-4 last year)
Of course, being contrarian internet asshole, I can’t stand the Indianapolis Colts. But I’ve kinda always hated them ever since they went to Indianapolis. I mean, why the fuck would you willingly move to Indiana? Them getting Peyton Manning years ago just sealed the deal for me. I could do without ever seeing Peyton’s dumbshit face again, but instead I’ll see it forever on everything. I’m sure some company will develop satellite rays that will beam him into my dreams so I buy some new flavor of Vitamin Water eventually. Fucking robot technology ruining everything. Although I guess them winning the Super Bowl was awesome because now everybody picked apart their fairly shoddy yet streaky defense in free agency, like all Super Bowl teams deal with. I imagine it will be a long tough year for the Colts, where they are more like the Bengals again, scoring a zillion points and losing because the other teams scored a zillion and three points.
ALL-TIME GREAT: Bert Jones, when they were in Baltimore, simply because when I was a kid I always wanted football jerseys and never could have one because my stupid parents were poor and uneducated. But I had a rich second cousin who would give us garbage bags full of hand-me-downs, and one time there was a Colts Bert Jones jersey. That makes him the best, automatically, even though I couldn’t even tell you what dude looked like or how good he was or anything.
TEAM HOSS: Bob Sanders has the most non-descript name ever for a tough little punishing roaming safety with hyphy dreads and bad tattoos.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: I will say Eric Dickerson, because to be quite honest, until he was making stammeringly amusing analysis on the sidelines on TV, I always did not like that Eric Dickerson. And when he was with the Colts, it was like some chumpy team that sucked paying a ton of money for some dude who was supposed to be awesome but would never win a title to come play for them instead of the team he made his name with.
TEAM ASS: Have to be a player hater and go with Peyton Manning here. Sorry if you are the type of fag who loves the best player on the best team all the time and believe in Jesus and Joe Montana and the inherit perfection of a two-party political system.
SENIOR PLAYER: Wide receiver Marvin Harrison, a first round draft pick in ’96.
VA BOY: Nary a one in camp. Probably because people from here know Indiana is a shithole.
FORMER HURRICANE: Wide receiver Reggie Wayne, whose inherit U.ness seems to be quelled by playing with and behind Harrison. It will be hilariously great when Wayne retires and Peyton spends his last couple years having Wayne bitch at him for not hitting him often enough so that they could lose by 4 instead of 11.
WILD SAMOAN: Freddy Keiaho, who is Cato Junes’ replacement at outside linebacker. Played at San Diego State and sounds Samoan enough.
THE ICKY: Longshot wide receiver Craphonso Thorpe.
THE RUDY: Starting middle linebacker Gary Brackett, undrafted out of Rutgers back when everybody figured Rutgers was basically like Temple East.
JOCK GENIUS: I had meant to pick overhyped coaches or GMs (and Bill Polian would be a good choice), but again, it has to go to Peyton, calling seven thousand audibles a game. I hope he gets concussed enough he never tries to be a coach.
FANTASY JERSEY: I’ll stop bashing Manning long enough to say I’d most likely rock a blue #63 SATURDAY jersey.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 7 to 1 – although it looks like the defense is crumbling from injury and free agency thinning, and they already kinda had a lucky streak last year, so unless the Colts move to Arena League, it might be fairly impossible to repeat.

#2: NEW ORLEANS SAINTS (11-7 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Rickey Jackson was one of those linebackers who always had that pit bull/crackhead stare to him. I always loved that dude so long as he wasn’t like twisting John Riggins’ ankle off or some shit.
TEAM HOSS: In all the hullabaloo over Reggie Bush, Deuce McAllister quietly asserted himself, saying “sit down till third down son.” Plus, southern rappers refer to 26-inch rims as Deuce McAllisters.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Archie Manning. Not only was he kinda stupid and unsuccessful, but he procreated them two boys of his, plus more I think who are probably just as annoying in insurance sales or landscape architecture or whatever the fuck they do.
TEAM ASS: With wide receiver Joe Horn gone, I can’t really think of one Saint that stands out as being a shithead.
SENIOR PLAYER: Defensive tackle Willie Whitehead, signed in ’99 as a free agent. No longer a starter, but still a giant funny black guy to “stuff” the middle, as the football dorks like to say.
VA BOY: Nobody, which is fucked-up, because we took in motherfuckers after Katrina.
FORMER HURRICANE: Out of respect for Katrina victims, they don’t keep any on their roster.
WILD SAMOAN: Starting linebacker Scott Fujita, who sounds like he could be an Americanized Oriental more than Samoan.
THE ICKY: Rookie offensive lineman Jermon Bushrod.
THE RUDY: Has to be that Michael Lewis dude who returns kicks, never went to college, and tried out for the team while working at UPS. He is a feel-good NFL story during these trying Michael Vick is Dog-Hitler times.
JOCK GENIUS: Of course, Sean Payton. Finally got his chance and his new age light-mood awesomeness has made Saints fans take the bag off their head. Doesn’t hurt Drew Brees and Reggie Bush showed up same time he did.
FANTASY JERSEY: Black #12 COLSTON, unless they have some sort of alternate gold jersey, and actually I’d be more likely to wear a #26 one that said MCALLISTER.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 13 to 1 – and the Saints are a darling pick because they just feel so good offensively with Drew Brees and the UNLIMITED PROMISE of Reggie Bush, as well as Deuce McAllister being the solid vet to teach him the ways of NFL groupies and properly administering HGH supplements to avoid detection, and then the feel-good blue collarness of a guy like Marques Colston drafter in the seventh round last year, not to mention them being the ridiculously media-created symbolic key to the rebirth of New Orleans and all we need is a Hot Boys reunion Saints to the Super Bowl theme song featuring Master P on the hook going “UNNNHHH!” and a marching jazz band and they seem impossible to stop; which of course, to my paranoid mind that thinks the NFL is completely fixed like wrestling, means they will lose in the Super Bowl this year.

#3: CAROLINA PANTHERS (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Who could be greater than the thinning longhaired goofy white freak out machine known as Kevin Greene? If He Hate Me had ran back a few punts for touchdowns, he might be here, but still, Kevin Greene.
TEAM HOSS: From the weekly customized airbrush designs on his cleats to his undersized but hard-spirited (yet seemingly good-natured) prowess, he is the motherfuckin’ man. Plus, if he scores he will do a retarded dance. Basically, he’s everything Chad Johnson pretends to be, and with a far less braggadocios demeanor.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: I can think of no Carolina Panther worth completely hating in such a ruthless mean-spirited manner. Oh wait… Kerry Collins. (Oh yeah, there’s also Rae Carruth; but still, let’s be honest, he’d finish second to Collins.)
TEAM ASS: Being the team is pretty much composed of a loveable drug-free (haha) North Dallas Forty-style cast of characters and oddballs, it is hard to choose this one. But I will say David Carr just for being such a wash-out, although I’m sure Delhomme will screw up eventually and give him a shit to fix it.
SENIOR PLAYER: Kicker John Kasay, acquired as free agent from the Seahawks in ’95.
VA BOY: They have a ton of former Virginia Tech players on the Panthers roster, but I have to go with Garnell Wilds, special teamers/back-up defensive back because he was one of those minor role players I used to love on the Redskins before they cut him to get a better opportunity elsewhere.
FORMER HURRICANE: Linebacker Dan Morgan, who is one of those Romanowski-esque wild-eyed whiteboy linebackers who you can only imagine love hunting, drinking lots of Busch beer, and have probably hung out with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at top secret all-white strip clubs.
WILD SAMOAN: Starting defensive tackle Maake Kemoeatu, who is one of those new breed of giant lumbering dudes in the middle of the defensive line who never get to the quarterback and just kinda occupy a ton of physical space to clog up any running plays up the middle long enough for roaming linebackers to come make a tackle.
THE ICKY: Linebacker Na’il Diggs.
THE RUDY: Starting fullback Brad Hoover; seems like half the fullbacks in the league were undrafted.
JOCK GENIUS: John Fox, who fired a few top-tier assistants last year as sacrificial lambs for his long-tenure not producing anything more than one Super Bowl appearance loss to the Patriots; this of course means Fox is probably in his make-or-break year because after you dump your assistants, there’s no one else left to blame, unless Matt Millen is your boss.
FANTASY JERSEY: Without a doubt, a black #91 GREENE jersey.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 25 to 1 – although there is already “Jake Delhomme sucks” talk firing up, which was inevitable with David Carr showing up. You can’t have two high profile mediocre quarterbacks in the same NFL town that’s not automatically Super Bowl-bound without there being such talk.

#4: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Wide receiver Jimmy Smith, who did cocaine, caught a billion passes, and shared a name with the greatest Hammond B3 Organ player that ever did exist.
TEAM HOSS: I will go with Fred Taylor just because most of the Jaguars seem rather non-descript to me and I always think Taylor is the guy that got shot and killed by his beaten wife a few years back, so if you can come back from violent gun murder deaths, then he’s pretty fucking tough.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Mark Brunell, who hopefully will be forced into retirement by the time you read this, so that he can concentrate on being a right-wing dickhead Senatorial candidate for the rest of his life, forcing his Christianity and blank stares on the rest of us.
TEAM ASS: Again, most players are so non-descript (perhaps due to shitty team colors), so I will just say Fred Taylor again, since he used to beat his wife; even if he’s not that dude, I’m sure he beat his wife, I mean, he’s an NFL player.
SENIOR PLAYER: Both Fred Taylor and Donovin Darius were first round draft picks in 1998, though I think I read somewhere that Darius is out for the year with an injury, but that might’ve been Madden football.
VA BOY: Back-up running back/kick returner Alvin Pearman, who always played behind Wali Lundy in college at UVA, even though Lundy fumbled like one of every five times he touched the ball; and then again in the pros, Lundy had a chance to start most of last year for the Texans, while Pearman has quietly been a role player and kept a solid hold on one of those ridiculous fat NFL paychecks.
FORMER HURRICANE: Oddly enough, no former Hurricanes on the roster, though there’s a ton of former Gators plus like three or four Florida A&M Thuggateers on the preseason roster. Perhaps it’s a northern Florida vs. southern Florida thing that I wouldn’t understand.
WILD SAMOAN: Starting bruiser of a guard Vincent Manuwai.
THE ICKY: Longshot wide receiver Roosevelt Kiser, how has one of the most ominous names in the pro football game since Monsanto Pope.
THE RUDY: All-around dude Derrick Wimbush, most likely undrafted since he played at Fort Valley State in college, but backs up at fullback and returns kicks as well.
JOCK GENIUS: The new assistant head coach (glorified title for offensive coordinator) Mike Tice, who, when you think about Jack Del Rio’s infamous chopping block in the locker room, I bet Tice and Del Rio make for an interesting coaching pair.
FANTASY JERSEY: There is no reason for me to ever wear a Jaguars jersey.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 30 to 1 – There is no clear direction for this team, but they should be commended for being the first NFL football team to have a quarterback controversy involving two black quarterbacks (and with a third-stringer to boot).

#5: TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS (4-12 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Haha, Buccaneers all-time great. Let’s say Hugh Green because he was perhaps the only man to ever seem menacing in those awesome ass old orange uniforms.
TEAM HOSS: Ronde Barber may be the only leftover member of that aging punishing defense that Tony Dungy built that’s still a legitimate defensive threat.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Oh overrated Steve Young, if your years in Tampa Bay don’t prove that the system and surrounding cast sometimes make the quarterback, then nothing ever will. Perhaps you will continue to chump-ass your way through pre-game panels for years to come.
TEAM ASS: Chris Simms, second generation piece of shit. Also, props to him for getting his spleen ruptured and finishing that game last year; at least for one half of major level football, he had a legitimate excuse for sucking.
SENIOR PLAYER: Linebacker Derrick Brooks, a second round draft choice in ’95. Wasn’t he Super Bowl MVP that one time? If so, I would imagine the Bucs will keep him around until he’s crippled, so he can relay to the younger players how Tampa Bay actually was great one year (although they were great in the years building up to that as well; in fact, it’s always sucked for Tony Dungy that Jon Gruden rolled in, did clean-up duties to get a Super Bowl ring, and proceeded to undermine and destroy the team again ever since).
VA BOY: Again, UVA alum Ronde Barber. He and Tiki still do charity bullshit around here, and I used to work at a place that did trade show graphics and all that crap and right after Al Groh got hired to take over the gig at UVA, he (through the athletic department) ordered like $75,000 worth of like 12x18 prints of UVA football greats, framed in nice cherry oak frames (which I constructed for like $8 an hour), with beautiful double cut mats (which I cut for like $8 an hour), put together with glare resistant glass (which I sliced, and put together in the frames for like $8 an hour), and then hung with tamper resistant locking mounts through the main halls of their workout facility (which I helped install for $8 an hour). All told, I probably earned as much in the course of that individual job as Ronde tips the valet at a restaurant on a Friday night meal during the offseason.
FORMER HURRICANE: Nickelback Phillip Buchanon, whose overhyped segment of his career (in Oakland) seems to be over, but perhaps age will temper his Miami egotism into being a solid role player on defense.
WILD SAMOAN: No Samoan sounding fuckers on the team, so I will pick longsnapper Andrew Economos and pretend he’s some Greek Mafia dude who runs a sugar refinery with a heavy hand.
THE ICKY: It is always hard to ever pick against B.J. Askew when it comes to this category, but I will put aside my juvenile humor long enough to instead focus on my stereotypical brandings of greasy Italians and say that reserve safety Sabby Piscitelli has the funniest name.
THE RUDY: Being the Bucs don’t have any homegrown undrafted free agents on their roster, I will say Jeff Garcia, who went undrafted coming out of San Jose State, which is also why he was so off the radar it took him like seven years to even sniff a starting line-up in San Francisco, which has led to a nice career of being good-to-mediocre enough to get signed by every team who has a shitty starter they’re trying to scare with training camp position battles.
JOCK GENIUS: Oh Jon Gruden, watching your downfall has been good entertainment these past few years. And you’re still so young. It gives me hope that you might end up being able to work your way back into head coaching ranks in future years to suck up another team, hopefully either the Cowboys or the 49ers should they have turned it around completely by then.
FANTASY JERSEY: Easily, retro orange #24 that reads CADILLAC, although the current red ones with that wouldn’t be too shabby either.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 50 to 1 – they may never win another Super Bowl again, and I would assume that one win, even if Jon Gruden’s OFFENSIVE MASTERMIND! showed up the year they won (with that punishing defense which is aged and abandoned by now) gets another twenty years to make it happen again.

#6: TENNESSEE TITANS (8-8 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Earl Campbell; he was the first dude I watched in football I pretended to be when I was running around the back yard like a little dumbass.
TEAM HOSS: For lack of a better choice, and since the franchise seems to be pinning their future on him, I will say Vince Young; but the Madden Curse combined with the sad truth that he’s not much more than Michael Vick 2.0 is gonna eventually leave Tennessee football fans concentrating their attention on Saturday afternoons like always.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Eddie George; that dude was kind of a chump.
TEAM ASS: LenDale White, who was second fiddle in college, now is starter at running back for Titans. Also, reading through their starting line-ups, holy shit, they have nobody. (Second also, I know Pacman Jones is there, albeit suspended, but I like Pacman Jones. He’s misunderstood, that’s all.)
SENIOR PLAYER: Both punter Craig Hentrich (free agent acquisition from Green Bay) and guard Benji Olson (fifth round draft pick) joined the team in ’98. I would assume the offensive lineman’s voice carries more weight than the punter’s in the locker room though.
VA BOY: Reserve safety Vincent Fuller out of Virginia Tech, who broke his ankle his rookie season and never has really lived up to his pre-drafted hype.
FORMER HURRICANE: In lieu of any active Hurricanes, let’s say starting guard Jacob Bell who played at Miami of Ohio, who I think are called something stupid meant to not be insulting to drunk Indians.
WILD SAMOAN: Defensive lineman Jesse Mahelona played at Univ. of Tennessee, and now with the Titans, making him easily the Polynesian King of the Volunteer State, unless Three Six Mafia has a Samoan rapper I don’t know about.
THE ICKY: Defensive lineman Travis LaBoy.
THE RUDY: Starting fullback Ahmard Hall, although a Texas Longhorn product, was an undrafted entrant onto the team, the only homegrown undrafted starter in Nashville.
JOCK GENIUS: I guess offensive coordinator Norm Chow would have to qualify as the overblown genius on this roster of coaches. Jeff Fisher is a for-real genius though, because other than that one Super Bowl loss to the Rams a long time ago back when Kurt Warner was a rising NFL star, the Titans have not threatened to bring home too many Lombardi trophies, yet with Bill Cowher retiring, Jeff Fisher has the longest tenure of any head coach in the NFL.
FANTASY JERSEY: Blue on blue #89 WYCHECK because Frank Wycheck is like my all-time favorite dude to be like, “Man, I knew it was gonna suck when the Redskins cut him. Anyone could see from his third string fourth quarters performances in preseason the year they had him, he was gonna be awesome.”
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 60 to 1 – honestly, not to be a dick, but dogfighting aside, if Michael Vick can’t do that shit I don’t think Vince Young is gonna do it; although I guess Young did win one of those college spiked crystal ball title things, unlike Vick.

#7: ATLANTA FALCONS (7-9 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Wide receiver/amazing kick returner Billy “White Shoes” Johnson. He is a legend amongst people like me who worship retarded characters from football’s lost glory days. You see, with people like me, the old shit is always the bestest shit, unless it’s old shit that’s before I was around to see it, then it’s just some wack ass old shit.
TEAM HOSS: Atlanta is the new Chocolate City by most accounts, home to a slew of affluent Afro-Americans, so I find it intriguing that the defensive workhorse on the Falcons is an unassuming white linebacker Keith Brooking. Dude even played college ball in town Georgia Tech. He is one of those guys so deeply entrenched in one team that you know, even though he’ll have a crappy free agency or salary cap cut year or two somewhere else like Minnesota or Jacksonville, but he’ll be miserable and come back and sign the old one-day contract to retire a Falcon and go on to be linebackers coach or color man on the radio team or some shit.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: Deion Sanders made his name in football on the Falcons, and Deion Sanders is the All-Time Suck-Ass for pro football. High-stepping Jesus-pointing faggot.
TEAM ASS: Joe Horn is perhaps one of the more assholish players in the NFL, and not just for the cell phone bullshit, but also because back on the Saints, you have Willie Roaf as their solid anchor on the offensive line, but then Joe Horn goes and ruins it by having an affair with Roaf’s slut wife. You can only imagine Joe Horn is probably one of the guys that would’ve been busted for dogfighting involvement had Michael Vick been forced to turn in names to get his cushy plea deal. (Although, looking at the roster info, Horn might be one of the only starters I can think of in the NFL who played in college only at the junior college level.)
SENIOR PLAYER: Keith Brooking.
VA BOY: Well, with Michael Vick getting hung out to dry by the NFL probably for next year after this season’s prison sentence is served, I will choose defensive back DeAngelo Hall, whose gamebreaking ability edges out fellow Virginia Tech superstar defensive back Jimmy Williams in the Falcons secondary. Plus, with a name like Jimmy Williams, dude could get like 39 interceptions a year and nobody would remember who he was.
FORMER HURRICANE: Not applicable.
WILD SAMOAN: Reserve offense lineman Toniu Fonoti.
THE ICKY: Alge Crumpler, which sounds like some sort of devastating MMA submission hold that Russian fighters use to break collarbones for the Russian Mafia during collections procedures. Although long snapper Boone Stutz sounds like an Appalachian parallel to this maneuver.
THE RUDY: Tommy Jackson, undrafted out of Auburn, might actually be in their starting lineup at defensive tackle by the end of preseason.
JOCK GENIUS: Poor Bobby Petrino left a high-powered Louisville offense that is hyped to do crazy good this year and contend for a national championship, to take an NFL job coaching one of the sport’s most hyped super-athletes. A couple of snitches later, and now he’s looking at the inevitability of being a poor man’s Butch Davis, bound to head back to the NCAA level in about five years (three years sucking in Atlanta, one year off to spend more time with his family, then back at whatever the biggest BCS top-tier conference school is looking for a new coach).
FANTASY JERSEY: Still, old school red jersey with #7 MEXICO. I don’t think anyone has created more things NFLshop won’t let you get on a customized jersey than Michael Vick.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 80 to 1 – it is pretty obvious the Falcons are doomed, and releasing Matt Schaub seems extra-brilliant now. I bet that Arthur Blanks dude has been tempted to think really racist thoughts about Vick on a number of occasions. Haha, Blanks actually pushed Vick onto the field in a wheelchair when Vick hurt his leg that one time. What a chump.

#8: HOUSTON TEXANS (6-10 last year)
ALL-TIME GREAT: Not applicable.
TEAM HOSS: LOL, number one pick Mario Williams. Seriously.
ALL-TIME SUCK-ASS: David Carr. Get your hair cut for charity now, motherfucker.
TEAM ASS: Even though I liked him personally when he played for the Packers, center Mike Flanagan is one of those old school mentality linemen (read: dirty) who is apt to seem less sexy now that he plays in a Texans uniform. Seriously, when they announced those unis when this team started, full of post-911 fervor, didn’t we all know they were gonna suck forever? They should just scrap the team colors, change the name, and start fresh.
SENIOR PLAYER: Starting guard Chester Pitts, who was picked in the second round after David Carr in ’02. And people say they never tried to build a line for that guy.
VA BOY: Well, former UVA kid Matt Schaub is their new starting quarterback, and he should end up being competent-to-almost-great, but still, pulling for small school underdogs, I’d pick back-up linebacker Shawn Barber, who played at the University of Richmond. Although in real life, as a piece of shit workingman, I’d rather fertilize bomb both UVA and U of R.
FORMER HURRICANE: Wide receiver threat Andre Johnson, who nobody remembers because he ended up going to play in Houston.
WILD SAMOAN: In lieu of insane island types, let’s pretend running back Samkon Gado is some sort of tribal voodoo priest from Ghana. Shit, we could even pretend that first round draft choice Amobi Okoye is his nemesis, a Nigerian professor attempting to civilize the outlaw regions of western Africa through his controversial techniques of electromagnetic suggestion.
THE ICKY: Back-up quarterbacks Sage Rosenfels and Bradlee Van Pelt sound like a pair of industrial overlords sharing a couple of vodka-and-chinaman’s-bloods with Nelson Rockefeller while waiting for their fat black pseudo-slave chef lady to finish preparing roast baby with all the trimmings.
THE RUDY: Back-up defensive lineman Alfred Malone, out of Troy.
JOCK GENIUS: Gary Kubiak, former shitty quarterback, now current bound-to-be-shitty coach, although who knows? Perhaps the NFL booking committee wants to book a quality franchise in Houston to create more Texas hysteria and sort of force Jerry Jones to stop being such a rogue owner.
FANTASY JERSEY: Haha, yeah right.
ODDS TO WIN IT ALL (according to Mafia/Jew money laundering sites): 100 to 1 – haha, yeah right, although, in an ironic turn of events, they’ll probably be noticeably better than the Falcons.