work hard play hard

A quote from L. P. Jacks in his book Education through Recreation (1932), has been an inspiration for me in my quest to find the "balance."

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."

I'll be fine once I get it...

Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness" depressingly sums up our pursuit of fleeting pleasures, and the emptiness that follows..

a sobering critique

"I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold....
I'll be fine once I get it, I'll be good......

Tell me what you know about dreamin’ dreamin’
You don't really know about nothin’ nothin’...

you don't really care about the trials of tomorrow

rather lay awake in a bed full of sorrow."

if your not a rap/r&b fan, a great cover

simplicity at its best..

artists often come up with complicated sounding lyrics to make up for a sub-par jams, but this is a great example keepin it real , and keepin it simple. rock on.

Sheryl Crow knows best...

Recently, I have been watching the series on the History Channel called "America: The Story of Us." I have really enjoyed their recreation's that bring to life this country's interesting history. It can be hard to create a historical documentary that adequately covers all the historical details of an event or time period, while remaining entertaining at the same time. This show does a great job of collapsing key historical events into a very comprehensive and contextual format. It can be very hard to hold my generations attention, especially with educational documentaries, so I have to give them a thumbs up on the production of this series.

I only have one small qualm. It is just something that annoys me , and does not really detract from the show. Throughout the episodes, there is commentary from various "Great Americans" if you will. Now, the politicains, historians, and other civic leadership I understand. But Sheryl Crowe and Michael Strahan , really????

Either way, I plan on buying a copy of this series when it is out for sale.

Summer Baseball

I haven't written for a while and had a few ideas for posts but never followed through. What happened last night merits a post.

Our townhouse is in Southwest, which to local DC people seems to be not very well known. I assume this is because it is still not very developed, but non the less, my roomates and I are very content down here. We have the waterfront fish market, the Nats stadium, Safeway ( they just completed the new one!) and Zanzibar! We make the most of it.

Of course, like any big city there are good parts and bad parts. I don't consider ours particularly bad, though we sometimes like to joke that we live in the "ghetto soufwest" due to a few rough surrounding neighborhoods. Honestly, I have never felt concerned or unsafe walking around the area. The rule of thumb though is to just not be stupid, and mind your own business. Don't go walking down certain streets , or engage in conversations at 1 in the morning.

Last night, I went to a Nats game with my roomates. We all came home from work, fired up the grill, and indulged ourselves with tuna steaks and bud diesel. Good times. We only live 4 blocks from the stadium so we walk to the games, which is most excellent especially since its summer.

After the game, I was walking back with the Ginjah Ninja (his new nickname will become clear) and Duff. We were on M St. which is a fairly busy street which is the optimal (safe) route to the game. It would be faster to travel another route, but like I said, there are some things you know not to do. Even though I had been warned, I tried the inland route once. Bad idea.

So as we walked by the basketball courts, (which I had just finished explaining by plans to ball with the locals over the summer) , we heard a series of loud bangs, probably less than 50 yards away. This was happening as we were crossing the street. I didn't even look in that direction, disming it as fireworks, and continued blabbing about the basketball courts. It continued, and I looked over to see Ginjah Ninja going into crouch mode telling me that it was gunshots. I looked down the street and saw a group of people under a tree in a poorly lit corner of the park, the blasts still going off, and a guy sprinting from that area. I still wasn't entirely convinced it was gunshots, but we kept moving. I kept telling Ginjah that it wasn't gunshots, that we were fine, ect. After we were some distance from the area, we turned around and waited to see what would happen. Probably about 3-4 minutes after the whole thing occured (seemed like a while, especially since there is a police station down the street), we saw about 5 cop cars speed down that same street we had just been at, and saw an ambulance, firetruck, ect.

The Ginjah's suspicions had been confirmed. We just sat there in disbelief at what had just happened. Turns out, some guy just got shot in the foot, probably over some dispute. What I imagined happening is two guys got in an argument, the other pulled out a gun, shot him in the foot. Then as the victim ran off, the other guy fired shots in the air to scare him off, or he was actually aiming to kill the guy and missed. Who knows. The police report was really brief and incomplete. What is certain is that there was a lot more than one shell casing.

Anyways, turned out to be an interesting night. Didn't really sink in till later, that DAMN. Thats two blocks from me! Oh well, what can you do. I mean , at least stuff like this will keep yuppies away for the time being.

Welcome to the future

I went through a phase last year where I was addicted to finding really stupidly funny and wierd videos on the internet machine (primarily using Stumbleupon). I have not continued this hobby, however I am always kept in the loop by my friend Rook who routinely sends me the treasure finds.

On this disgustingly humid, rainy, day here in DC, as I sat at work going through Williamsburg withdrawal symptom, I was sent this web gem by none other than ROOK dah GOOK. Meet newest reggaeton sensation, Mini Daddy. This kid is fat and Mexican. He loves ice cream and burritos . Whats not to love? Not only that, but he hails from Monterrey, Mexico, one of the many Mexican cities plagued by ongoing drug cartel violence, so he probably has some street cred too. He was first discovered by Daddy Yankee and was brought on stage at one of his concerts. Check out at recent interview with this rising star.

Rook and I are going to send him fan mail. We are going to send a poster that says we are his number one fans. We are also hoping that he comes to the United States soon to perform a concert. We plan on being being in the front row, wile'n out with all his 12 year old fans.