The one that’s a writer

Every now and again I'll find myself being reminded that not everyone else is as jaded as I am about the media. A lot of people are really impressed by that sort of thing. That's probably why there is such a thing as XXL in the first place. Who'd a thunk it?

The other day, I was at Christmas at my cousin's house, and this one cousin of mine comes up to me all like, "Dude, I've got this artist I need you to check out." As if I'm Diddy or somebody. Then it occurred to me: Oh yeah, that's right. When I'm not working like a Hebrew slave at the BGM (which seems like more often than not these days), I do sorta kinda work for a rap magazine.

Then it also occurred to me that the last time I'd seen this guy was at this birthday party that took place a couple of years ago, but seems like a good 10 years ago. I remember, it was the same day that Lupe Fiasco was invited to guest blog on this site. It was either on or around 9/11, appropriately enough. (If I'm not mistaken, my cousin's birthday is on 9/11.) This was in my first year of blogging for this site. I'm coming up on the rough side of the mountain on the end of my third.

Brendan, one of the many people now who've been in charge of this site, hit me on my cell that day, and I lied to him and told him I was at work. More often than not back in 2006, I would be pulling the day shift during the week at the BGM. I would wake up at something ridonkulous like 4:30 in the morning and come up with a post, so I could be at work by 7. You can tell I was in my early days of "professional blogging," and hence somewhat concerned with making a name for myself. There's no way in hell I'd do anything like that now.

If people aren't that impressed with me... well, what can I say? I'm just not a very impressive person. That's how I got into blogging in the first place.

Anyhoo, the reason I didn't want him to know I was at work was because I was having lunch at a Chinese buffet, and I didn't need too many people knowing I'll occasionally have lunch at a Chinese buffet. Again, this is one of those things that just doesn't bother me as much at the ripe old age of 27. For what it's worth, if it's one of these shitty buffets where there's no seafood or anything, you're kinda better off going during the day anyway. You save two bucks - it's just, you gotta have a system that's capable of going six plates deep of mysterious looking deep fried meat at 11:00 in the morning.

Brendan called me up talking about how he invited Lupe to do a guest blog, and the first post was all going off on me, and that if I wanted to, I could probably mount some sort of response. If you were around back in those days, you might remember that shit. He called me the dreaded n-word and threatened to jump off in my ass. Nullus. But I don't want to get off topic here. So I had a decision to make: Either head home and see what this crazy Muslim sack of shit said about me, or finish what I came to do at this buffet and then go read it. Of course, I chose the latter.

Then, later on that day, my mom called me and asked if I wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory for my cousin's birthday. It sucked, because I had already been to the Chinese buffet that day, and if I'm gonna spend $8 on a meal, I'm gonna try to make sure I don't have to buy any more food that day. And you know how they do at the Cheescake Factory. Some of that shit's just wrong, even by Bol standards. But if you've been reading my shit for any amount of time, you know I'm not about to turn down any free Cheesecake Factory just because I went hard at the Chinese buffet a few hours earlier. Fuck that noise, Jack.

I can't remember whether this guy was already reading my work for this site at that point, or if I mentioned to him that night that I'd recently begun blogging for XXL. But as a writer, i.e. a petty motherfucker, of course that sort of thing is gonna be important to me. Don't even let a broad tell me she reads my shit. Which, I'll have you you know, not only happens more often than you'd think, but it's almost always at least reasonably attractive women. I figure it's because I spend so much time dogging ugly broads that my female audience has mostly been reduced to women with fairly high self-esteem. If that really is true, it lets me know that the important work that I do here hasn't been all for naught.

At any rate, there's hardly anyone I deal with on a personal level now who isn't aware of the work I do on the Internets, and now also in the print version of XXL. For example, at this other party I was at the other day, people kept coming up to like, "You're the one that's the writer, right?" A few people, none of which fit the XXL demographic (i.e. children and inmates), even came up to me like, "I heard they're letting you write for the magazine now." Then my parents had actually bought a copy of the issue with Fiddy on the cover and had it sitting out on the coffee table. (My college diploma, meanwhile? Probably water logged in a box somewhere.) So now pretty much everyone they know has experienced me chuckling at the fact that Eli Porter is a tard, and Mos Def's wife is a hoo-er, and so on and so forth.

Which is a trip. Of course, it's occurred to me the sheer reach of my words over the Internets. But I never really think about other people reading my shit when I'm writing it - because it's just me down in my mom's basement, getting it in. If I did, I might have to change my whole style up. You know how important it is to me what other people think about me. I can't have people thinking I "make fun of retarded kids," or that I'm "obsessed with pr0nography," or anything like that. Fortunately, everyone who actually stood there and read my column in front of me, or claimed that they'd already read it, pretended to like it, despite the fact that it's not really that good.

It just goes to show the importance of being polite.