Good Riddance, Summer

The summer is a highly over rated season. I know, I know, everyone looooves the summer, it's blasphemous to even suggest that it's actually lame. There's been literally thousands of songs, movies, books, television shows, whatever, dedicated to the virtues of summer. The sun, the fun, summer love, blah blah blah. That's all well and good when you're a child who has nothing to do for two months but read comic books, jerk off and play x-box in the comfort of your parent's air conditioned home. But alas, when you're old and defeated by life like we are, the summer is nothing more than a tease, like all those maxi dress wearing P.Y.T's who aren't your wife on the subway (maxi dresses are the proper term for those dresses that every girl was wearing this summer. You know the ones). Speaking of the subway, the iron horse is particularly torturous during the summer months. During the surrounding seasons, it's merely a pain in the ass to take the train to and from work every day. During the summer it's the closest many of us will get to a living hell we can complain about to other people. You thought homeless people with AIDS smelled bad in the spring and fall? Hoo boy, are you in for a treat. The Fall on the other hand is pretty under rated. Sure, there's been a few songs and movies bigging up Autumn throughout the years, but it's usually just talking about the changing colors of the leaves and new beginnings. In other words, gay shit. The Autumn is under rated as a time to truly get twasted off your ass. The summer is well known as the time for after work outdoors drinking, but I'd counter that 60 degrees is the perfect time to sit outside and drink your sorrows away. If you're a sports fan, you have many reasons to love the fall. Let's be honest, the summer is a dead zone for sports. Around July, even the players start getting bored of playing baseball. There's a reason it's called the dog days of summer. Besides that, you have the Olympics and all it's boring sports every 4 years and what else? The WNBA? The end of summer means the beginning of football season (college and pro), a time to get drunk 3 or 4 times a week, and a valid excuse to ignore your wife. Baseball games actually mean something, and the NBA is right around the corner. There's a reason Autumn rhymes with awesome.

So, throw your cargo shorts back in the closet, break out your hoodies and light jackets and bid farewell to the most over rated time of year. Screw you, summer. Check back in with us in December when we start bitching about Winter.

A Quick Rant about Wiz Khalifa

Look at that picture! This is one of the hottest rappers out right now? He looks like what would come out if Lenny Kravitz had sex with a crack head, gave that baby up for adoption, and then that baby was raised by gay beat poets. Rick Santorum saw this picture and said, "yeah, you know what? Maybe abortion isn't always bad". I'm not against some forward thinking fashion, but I'd say Wiz looks like he robbed a grandmother on her way home from church, but I think the grandmother would kick his ass if he tried. Even the two dudes next to him have a look on their face like "yeah I know he looks like an anorexic Maxwell, but hey he's paying for us". One of those guys is his boy Chevy Woods, so I guess I can't hate on him for trying to get his foot in the door with whoever, but c'mon Juicy J! You're like 40 years old, been in the rap game for a hundred years, you have an OSCAR, for Christ's sakes! There's got to be a better meal ticket than this. And Flex must be thinking "I used to DJ with Biggie and Wu-Tang. I used to set the trends and influence urban music when I dropped bombs on the exclusive Nas and Jay-z songs. I was instrumental in the culture. Now I do Lugz commercials and shill for weirdos that look like this. Where did I go wrong?". Or maybe he's just thinking, "what's that smell? Smells like burnt chicken grease and pistachios". This picture is also further proof that Amber Rose would bang a toilet plunger if it had a record deal and a video in rotation on 106 & Park. And to top it all off, he can't rap. At least Kanye justifies wearing skirts by being talented. For shame, hip hop! We can do better!

PTU Old Man Rant: Why Doesn't This Generation of Kids Root for the Home Team?

Allow me to be old and crotchety for a second here (or older and crotchetyer than usual). If you have any younger cousins or siblings or if you just hang creepily around high schools in your van, you've no doubt noticed that there is an epidemic of misplaced sports allegiances among the youth of America. And I don't mean just frontrunners like we grew up with, the Bulls or 49ers fans who just got their Starter jacket or Jordans because they were the best team at the moment. That's been going on forever. I'm talking kids closely following the Chargers and Nuggets who've never left Brooklyn. Ask any 15 year old what teams they root for and you're likely to hear something like: Patriots, Thunder and Padres. What happened to civic pride anyway?

There's a couple reasons behind this phenomenon. One is the rise of fantasy sports and the focus on individual stars over the team. Even if you don't have a fantasy team you can't really avoid the emphasis that's placed on individual stats partly because of it. ESPN has shows and tickers dedicated to fantasy. The NBA was the first league to really emphasize the individual as star with Jordan, Magic and Bird and the other leagues soon followed suit. It's easy to start liking the Vikings simply because Adrian Peterson is a beast, hometown rivalries be damned. I have a nephew who lives in New Jersey and likes the Nuggets just because they had Carmelo Anthony and continues to root for them still even though Melo plays for a team much closer to home. It seems dumb to me, but it's fairly common place these days.

Individual players aren't the only reason that the kids root for whoever they feel like of course. Another huge factor is the options. Just like Chris Rock once said "A man is only as faithful as his options", a sports fan is only as faithful to his city as his choices as well (or so it seems). Even when a young Bagels was growing up in the 80s and 90s, we didn't have too many teams to choose from. You had one or two games a week on nationally in each sport and then you had your local teams on every night. Almost by default, most people become fans of their city's teams. [As Hater J points out, this is also why there are so many damn Steelers and Cowboys fans around. They were on all the friggin' time back in the day. Also, those people are idiots]. Now, it's different. With League Pass, NFL Ticket, Direct TV, a network for each major sport, twitter, live streaming games online and a million other types of media, you can follow an entire season of any team you damn well choose. Combine that with the fact that most kids don't get their sports info from their local paper or newscast like previous generations, but from a nationally distributed form of media like ESPN and there's no reason for a kid from New York to even keep up with what's happening with the Jets and Giants. Just 10 years ago, it was hard to be a Chargers fan if you lived on the East coast, but today you can rock your Philip Rivers jersey on your couch every week with pride, even if you will no doubt look like a jerkoff.

What it comes down to, really, is the world is getting smaller every day. People are connected (at least technologically if not physically and emotionally) more than ever. I wrote recently about how someone like ASAP Rocky seems like a fraud to me since he's imitating a style of a region that he's never even been to never mind grown up in, but the genesis of a Harlem rapper who sounds like Lil Flip is basically the same as a kid from the Bronx who roots for the Ravens. There's no city to be proud of when we all live in one big region. And now I'm going to get back in my rocking chair and watch the Knicks on MSG while I listen to old Biggie records. You damn kids.

Is ASAP Rocky Any Different From Vanilla Ice?

Hip hop trends these days move swiftly and mysteriously. In the past (old man alert) rappers would develop underground followings through hustle and (usually) acquired industry connections via mixtapes from the usual tastemaker djs, most of whom resided in New York, and for the most part based on talent. With the new millenium, came a new breed of rapper and the method of getting buzz went beyond just rapping a freestyle on DJ Clue's monday night show on Hot 97 and landing a song at the end of a Kay Slay tape. 50 Cent ushered in the mixtape era, releasing cds that were more like albums and the trend of rapping new songs over other people's beats. With the presence of the internet growing larger every second, though, a new type of rapper has emerged: One that isn't all that talented but has the type of buzz that used to be reserved for underground beasts who tore up every guest appearance or radio freestyle they touched (think Canibus or DMX). Enter a 21 year old kid from Harlem with a Texas fetish named ASAP Rocky.

ASAP, not at all to be confused with mumbly white people rapper Aesop Rock, is probably the most talked about new rapper out, and just this past Monday released his first highly anticipated mixtape to mostly positive reviews and internet drooling. He pretty much came out of nowhere, appearing sporadically on the rap blogs and Pitchfork since this spring. Mysteriously dropping a video or mp3, mostly inspiring people to say "who's this kid from Harlem that raps like Lil Flip?". And I'll admit, I kind of dig his music. The beats are ambient, drugged out stuff that i like and he's a decent enough southern rapper, but the one thing that I can't get past as I listen to LiveLoveASAP is this kid is a fraud. If we call out people like Vanilla Ice or any of the other rappers who are found to be living a lie, why not this guy? Being a white person who acts black is one of the most ridiculed characters in existence, mostly due to the idea that it's someone trying to be something they're not in order to look cool. The word poser comes to mind. ASAP admits he loves Texas although HE'S NEVER EVEN BEEN THERE. He just knows what he sees on tv in rap videos and hears in the sizzurp soaked UGK albums. Sound familiar? . Rick Ross gets lampooned by many rap fans for his former life as corrections officer, and rightfully so, but is that so much different than a dude from Harlem who's never been in the state of Texas that imitates the drawling sound of someone who was born in Port Arthur? One difference might be that ASAP isn't intentionally deceiving anyone. He says he's from Harlem pretty much on every track but he's still adopted a persona that is not authentic to who he is as a person. Hip hop used to be a culture that valued authenticity over anything else. Remember keeping it real (the real term not PTU's adopted version of drunken athletes with crappy cars)? I'll admit I'm a little biased since New York isn't the center of the hiphop world anymore, and the death of regionalism has always been a pet peeve of most of us at PTU. I know I sound 1000 years old but the ascension of the internet and social networks as the primary means of communication and entertainment for the youth these days is to blame for kids who grew up in New York that root for the Patriots and rappers that were born in Harlem that pretend to be from down south. We live in a global village where you can pick and choose what area you want dress like, sound like, and what teams to root for regardless of your actual hometown. I'm not saying that's wrong, really, but if we're going to clown Vanilla Ice and Rick Ross for living a lie what about the fake country boy and his styrofoam cup of lean, ASAP?