Steven Litt’s Neighborhood

Please peep my second oldest friend thatonedood's blog.

fresh dls. fresh clips.

he took good care of me in seattle this weekend. last of my 3part vacay.

Ok... one month left yall. ONE MONTH.

not even. i'm tryna be done by 11/20.

but for now, for thatonedood... the mp3 version of wale's live performance of pretty girls on late night with jimmy fallon. if you didn't know i have a very crazy love affair with the roots, and well this is just the ish.

here's the vid...

Seriously, can ANYTHING Top this???

The headlines say it all. Here's a select few.

• " On Barack Obama's Nobel: Prize for appeasement"
• " Obama's Nobel Prize will Exacerbate His Narcissistic Tendencies"
• " The Last Thing Obama Needs is A Nobel Peace Prize"

• " Obama Says He's 'Humbled' and 'Surprised' by Nobel Prize"
• " Obama: Nobel Peace Prize is 'call to action' "
• " President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Viewed Positively in 62 Percent of Twitter"

And as if it weren't clearly articulated above:

• " US divided over whether Obama has done enough to merit award" 

Clearly– this man could sneeze and people on both sides of the fence will loose their minds, and yet he hasn't even been in office for a full year.

NYC I'm Coming Home, built with love, and help.
P.S. Didn't manage to set an order, just shuffled it every time I played it... lame? Maybe. Convenient, YES.

September is over. Out with the old.... I'll drink to that. 
SF->LA->SF

October is here. Halloween too. Here's to reconnecting with the past.
SF->PK->NYC->SF

November is just around the corner. Here's to being on the brink, but not forgetting what's up– Same page, different book, the sequel. I can definitely drink to that.
SF->SEA->SF 

Thank you Woffsilog, for sharing this HufPo piece.

Blueprint 3 came out... and well it made me cry three times. Waxed nostalgic for NYC and my old self.

HAD to resurrect this one and pair it with this audio clip though. Not like Jay had seen my shit, but hilarious to me nonetheless.

There are those songs, that you come across where you neither like, nor dislike the artist, but nonetheless the song just hits you a certain way...

I've had a lot of those lately.

Then there are those songs that you find hidden deep in your iTunes library that you forgot were there, again an artist you're pretty much indifferent to– maybe someone put it on a mix for you, maybe you're like me and felt as bad/non-significant as the song might be you may "need it later" for a "never going to happen but I can still dream I'm doing a one woman show" type deal. And that song hits you, hits you hard.

I never really denied the power of music, but I don't know that I take full advantage of its awesomeness. And then, amid finally feeling like I'm on the road to get my head right– despite a crazy summer/last month I remembered this hook.

"Now we can ball seven days, six nights

If that head and that p***y get right
Hey, match ya panties with ya bras get ya shit together
Go get ya hair and nails done get ya shit together"

All I could think was "SANG IT T.I. Sannnnnng it."

Yet another mantra to add to the many I've tried to come up with to, indeed get my head right (I'm pretty sure those lyrics are not accurate, but I don't care. I come from a family that invents their own. I hear what I wanna hear).

I took a mini vacation last weekend and the following learnings helped me get my shit together... though I can't promise it actually involves matching my bra and my draws.

• Experiencing something for the first time, can often ground you and remind you of who you are and what you love. Case in point; Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.

• Having little faces great you in the morning, saying "Good Morning Auntie Magtonic" while scratching their bellies and yawning" is a pretty rad start to your day.

• Sometimes seeing something abnormal, that you wouldn't normally care about can pull at your inner "smooo mooo" and make you have the excitement of a 5 year old.
  

• Writing your thesis in your bathing suit makes for such a productive day.

• No matter how much you believe this will change, your oldest friend is eye candy for the ladies and will get better service than you in restaurants, so start asking him to use that to get you free drinks or desserts.

• It's okay that you aren't ready to drink in an airport bar alone. According to DG, "you can drink alone at an airport bar once you hit 50. It is actually quite liberating to be a crone. Nobody messes with you and you don't give a shit if they do."

• And lastly, Long Beach Airport, is still Long Beach.

First this... 

I have a confession. I secretly (and not so secretly) idolize Tina Fey. I remember reading an article about her in The Onion a few years ago that said that by the time she was 25 she was already head writer at SNL– a not so on point but close enough dream of my own.

I'm 26 now. Going through it and nowhere near achieving that level of "want" in life. Don't necessarily have the life I want, but oh... oh how I have my sense of humor.

For what its worth though, the last few weeks have left me trying to get my head straight, and I think I'm successfully on that path (more on that later). In the process though, I'm not sure how I would have gotten through any of it were it nor for my ability to laugh.

Examples Include:

A friend suggesting I needed to find "hella appropriate swag" whatever that is.

A Tracey Jordan/Morgan quote from 30 Rock: "Stop eating people's old french fries pigeon. Have some self respect! Don't you know you could fly?"

The following quote: "as the great pamela anderson once said 'writing in a bikini is always better'" (Paraphrased).

But this... this was the best.

Back story: My best friends all live in different states (well, I guess I could say both physically and mentally) than I. I mentioned that when in some sort of crisis there are only 3 that seem to react to me in all the right ways, be it pushing me or leaving me be.

 Result: J-Boog suggesting we play a game wherein we debate what two other people we would genetically combine ourselves with if we had to/could.

Within seconds I randomly chose another ambiguously raced person I know, and Obama to... I believe as I put it "create a super race... just see what the mix would look like."

J-Boog proceeded to go off, saying that it didn't need to have a purpose, if it had a purpose he might as well have tried to become the most amazing basketball player ever.

I went off about combining myself with J-Lo or Catherine Zeta-Jones to get some uber beauty (by my definition), if that's what we were talking about (as he'd turned to think of dashing men to combine himself with). This led to possibly uniting my favorite comedy entities... Tina Fey, Luciell Ball... and so on...

HE then came up with the best combination ever.

"I'd totally combine with Tina Fey... NO..." screamed my Jewish J-Boog. "I'd combine with Andy Samberg (current SNL cast member) and... like an intense gentile...." He paused to think. "OH THE POPE"

It makes no sense, its totally ridiculous. But it got me through a few days of nonsense. So here my friends... after at least two hours of figuring out how to do this... is J-Boog, Andy Samberg and an intense gentile.

There's something oddly sad about it.

I want you to believe magtonic's world is not always full of only tragic– and it truly isn't– but ranting and tragedy are kind of like cousins.

That said rather than a complete recap, lets just say I have been reminded by the events of the last few days (you could assume weeks, months, years and you'd still probably be on point) that life is too short to really trip off of minor events, but that doesn't miraculously make the ridiculousness of them disappear.

I need to get my head right, got too many people in it as an old friend said. Personal stuff, school stuff, and now friend/life stuff. Passings, illnesses, frustrations, all adds up. But comparing them is apples to oranges, my best friend suggested.

But when hope isn't something you do, because you're a pragmatist and not much of a dreamer. And wishing on unicorns, leprechauns and miracles are your go to because you're a comedian– when you're at the bottom what can you do except jokingly wish on the imaginary. What's left?

Refinding your swag. That's right. Listen to the most ridiculous music– that ish that hypes you up, brings you down, makes you sing out loud on a crowded bus, and bump your head hard enough for others to notice– wear your favorite kicks, look for "hella appropriate swag" (whatever the hell that is) in others.

Though I've made "swag" my goal to work towards in light of things for only the past 24 and would like to do it in some sort of organic way. Should I get desperate, I do have an option to expedite that shit....

We can thank J-Boog for this... Reminding me that life is just a series of schemes aimed at making you constantly refind your swag.