Going Off The Grid

A couple days ago my man Lance put up a blogpost about what things people would rather give up than their cellphones. It was an interesting post and I left a comment saying how I'd give up my cell before most of the items listed in his post but whether or not I had to give up my cell versus my computer would be the real tough decision.

Nowadays most of us are tethered to some sort of device. Whether it's an mp3 player/iPod, a computer, a cellphone, a tablet device or iPad, or something else that makes us lazier life easier, we've all got our tech-vices.

Starting tomorrow, I'm giving up one of mine completely, my computer. I sit at a computer all day most work days so many of you see rapid-fire blogposts, tweets, and email responses from me all day. But for the next 5 days, I will be without the InterWeb and the computer. Normally when this happens it's because I'm on a cruise but this time I'll be in St. Thomas for a few days (yeah I know, it sounds so horrible lol).

I think every year we should all take a week or a couple days "off" from technology. Not that long ago we didn't have all this technology integrated into our daily lives and somehow we survived. Somehow, our parents survived. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself when I realized I won't be on the InterNets for the next few days, lol.

THROWBACK! Pebbles - Mercedes Boy

Not sure why but this popped into my head today. I think it's because I had a random childhood memory of riding to school with my mom and I definitely remember this and a bunch of other songs that used to come on the radio. Ahhhhhhh, nostalgia!

P.S. - I have never seen this video before and the dancing guys well... Yeah, I dunno bout that.

Rest In Peace Jarronn

Rest In Peace Homie.

Picture of the Day: This Describes My Daily Web Browsing Experience

Dope Music: Cocaine 80s - The Pursuit EP

I have had this EP in my iTunes for a month or so now. I only came across it because I heard the "Summer Madness" joint with Common on it and figured I'd download this new "Common EP/Mixtape". But what I downloaded was actually an EP with one Common song on it, lol. I dismissed it after that and yesterday decided to come back and listen to it because I remembered that the EP had a lot of (or perhaps all) production done by No ID.

It turns out that (apparently) this a Cocaine 80s release produced by No I.D. Who/what is Cocaine 80s? Well according to the Internets it's "a collective including: No I.D., Common, Steve Wyreman, Rob Kinelski, Kevin Randolph, James Fauntleroy, Makeba and many more" (source: Fake Shore Drive). I am not familiar with those names outside of the first two but I assume they're all pretty talented folks and have their own reputations within the music industry. Whoever they are though, they made a pretty good EP!

After listening to it again last night like 8 times, I'm definitely more excited to hear Common's upcoming project (No ID will be producing all of it) and I'm telling everybody I know to download this EP because it's dope!

Download: Cocaine 80s - The Pursuit EP

THROWBACK! Clipse - Grindin'

"Legend in two games like I'm PeeWee Kirkland"


Would you believe that this was released in 2002? And even more interesting from a personal standpoint is that it was released on my birthday in 2002.

This song is an undeniable 2000s-era hip-hop classic. This probably paved the way for the mainstream coke-rap movement we had a few years back with Jeezy that was followed-up shortly thereafter by Rick Ross, and has now tapered off a bit. Now it's all about smoking weed and shyt *shrugs*. And who would have ever imagined when this song dropped that Pusha T[on] would be signed to a label run by Kanye West who was (around the time it dropped) coming off producing some of your favorite songs on Jay-Z's, The Blueprint.

P.S. - Aside from some of the joints Pharell has done for Jay-Z and Nore, this is probably my favorite work by him.

From Twitter to Real Life

Me and my buddy Lance have joked around a few times about how many of our individual friends knows about either he or I because we tweet to each other. He's got followers, I've got followers, and a lot of his followers end up following me and a lot of my followers end up following him. And he follows some of my friends and I follow some of his friends, you get the point. But a lot of his friends I've never met in-person and half of my friends he's never met in-person.

<sidebar>Which is kinda of odd now that I think about it because Lance and I did go to high school together though we didn't hang out much and we were a year a part.<endsidebar>

And because Lance and I are just as social in real-life as we are on the TwitterNets, a lot of times we meet each others friends (that we know from Twitter only) in actual real-life places and events. Yes, REAL LIFE! Who woulda thought it!

Typically, it goes something like this:

Lance: Mike, this my homeboy "XXXX". He's @XXXX on Twitter. [Lance speaks to "XXXX] Mike is @mcarroll-something on Twitter.

Me: [speaking to "XXXX"] Oh, yeah what's up man, that tweet about [insert rapper or sports figure or video vixen name here] was hilarious, good to meet you.

XXXX: Oh yeah man that was funny to me. I saw your tweet about your blogpost on DMV slang, that was pretty funny.

And that's it. All potential awkwardness about knowing someone via the InterWeb but NOT REALLY knowing them in-person, avoided. From there, if both parties are cool, everything is cool. If one or both don't like one-another, that's normal too. But at least the awkward Twintroduction is out of the way.

The "Twintroduction" is something I think Lance and I both have tons of practice at because we're both on Twitter "meeting" people and having various random convesations. In general though, I think cool and down-to-earth people tend to become friends with, follow and constantly communicate on Twitter, or otherwise regularly interact with other cool and down-to-earth people. For that reason, I'm not surprised that Lance and my friends get along well in real life just like me and his friends get along well in real life. But I can imagine it's not so peachy-keen for everyone. Hell, I'm sure I'll have an awkward "I know you on Twitter but I don't really know or want to really know you" moment. It's not like I'm stalking Alicia Keys on Twitter while waiting to meet her in real life and say "You don't remember when I tweeted you about wanting to give birth to your next child"... Nothing of the sort.

My Latest Pair: Mercanti Fiorentini Driver

It's been a minute since I did one of these posts. I'd been looking at some Johnston & Murphy drivers for a while but I didn't want to pay $125.00 for them so I took a trip to DSW a while back and saw these.

They seemed nice enough but I waited around to see if I could find a deal online or if they'd go down in price in the store and they never did. Let me be clear that the level of comfort provided by Johnston & Murphy's loafers are hard to match when you're looking in the "up to $200" price range, so I wasn't expecting to purchase a pair of shoes that would be on par in terms of comfort with what I've purchased and/or seen via Johnston & Murphy. But sometimes you find a decent shoe at DSW when you don't think you will.

I scoffed at the price of these loafers initially because I figured I could probably find something a little cheaper I was willing to try. In the end a friend let me use a DSW coupon so I went ahead and copped these for a little bit less than what they're listed for on the DSW site ($70 I believe). Just tried them on and they're comfortable (not as comfortable as the Johnston & Murphy Hembree Venetians) and hopefully they last.

Mysterious "Watch The Throne" Email

Yesterday I received the following message in my inbox suggesting that I pre-order Jay-Z & Kanye's "Watch the Throne" album.

HUH?

The same album that had a single drop long long ago and then nothing!

The same album that Kanye ran off at the mouth about on New Year's Eve saying it was dropping "in one week"?

Now, I'm supposed to get this in my inbox and pre-order the album with no word about it from Jay or Kanye in months and no "second" single to listen to? Yeah right. I guess this was a true test of my Jay-Z/Kanye STAN status. I'm glad I failed. Apparently the album has a release date of August 2 which is less than a month away. We'll see. As for the pre-order, drop another single fellas and I might consider it.

NFL Fans, this is a GREAT parody of the NFL lockout!

Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout with Taylor Lautner from Taylor Lautner

I couldn't help but laugh when Antonio Cromartie was flirting with the girl because in real life, well... Also, check out some deleted scenes below:

Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout with Taylor Lautner: Deleted Scenes from Taylor Lautner