Terrorist, or failed mixtape rapper?

When 5-0 killed that bum CD peddler in Times Square the other day, they found in his wallet a cryptic message scribbled on the back of the business card of an arms dealer from Virginia. Or at least that's what they told the New York Times. The message (and I'm paraphrasing, for time): "I just got done watching the Last Dragon. I'll be damned if I end up in a paddy wagon." Roflcopter.

'90s babies might need to consult IMDB to find out what the Last Dragon is. The New York Times at least got that part right. But they made it sound as if the message itself was some sort of symbolic statement. Like maybe this guy was a jihadist, and his goal was to commit suicide by police, or whatever it's called, and then the cops would find that card in his wallet and the line about the Last Dragon would be printed in the paper, as a signal to his fellow jihadists.

Some Scotty Templeton figure at the Times must have seen that the business card came from Virginia and started thinking with that where there's smoke there's fire logic. Didn't some guys from Virginia recently get busted for trying to join al Qaeda via the Internets, as if it was a Facebook group (People Who Can't Stand Freedom!!!)? Or was that Georgia? I know the terrorist who shot up Fort Hood was in communication with a terrorist based out of Fort Hood. Wasn't he also from Virginia? Hmm...

I couldn't help but be reminded of when the DC sniper started leaving notes, and he'd end each one with "our word is our bond." Or at least that's how the Wilford Brimley-looking sheriff pronounced it on MSNBC. Then the dumbass anchors would discuss what it might mean, when it was obviously just the '90s-era rap slang. Had it even been revealed at that point that the DC sniper was black? If not, that should have been the dead giveaway. That and the fact that he was taking weekends off.

If only Raymond Martinez had a black man's work ethic. It sounds like he was a real hustler. As discussed in a post on my own site the other day, he was running a scam that involved asking people their name, writing their name on a CD, and then intimidating them into buying the CD. The tallest hispanic person I've ever seen was like 5'10", which makes me wonder just how intimidating this guy really was. I mean, if that guy from Heltah Skeltah who was a pimp pulled some shit like that on me, not only would I buy the CD, but I'd probably sign over the deed to my house in a shanty town. It needs a lot of improvements anyway. But if it was Raymond Martinez, he'd pretty much have to show me that machine gun he carried. And how long could he have gotten away with pointing a machine gun at people in Times Square?

Whereas it sounds like he'd been pulling this CD shit for a while. He almost certainly made more money this year than I did, even though I've got an extra two weeks or so. Times Square is full of sorry-looking people asking you if you like comedy (which I actually don't), but the NYPD felt it necessary to crack down on this guy in particular. And a video of him just surfaced on MTV, back in '08, competing against Kanye West in a trivia contest. Which would suggest to me that he was in Times Square back then, and MTV needed a black guy for this trivia show, so they sent one of their interns down to get him. Someone at the New York Post turned up MTV's own video of this show the other day. I went to watch it just now, but MTV had it removed from their site. I guess they don't want that studio where they used to tape TRL associated with machine gun toting hispanic mixtape bums. Probably a smart business move on their part.

If there was any question as to whether Raymond Martinez was just an especially desperate mixtape bum, this trivia show, as described in the Post, should put it to rest. Martinez actually beat Kanye West, but only on some ol' bullshit. Martinez failed to answer fairly obvious questions about "Children's Story" and Tribe's "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo," while West nailed questions about the relatively obscure Diamond D and Jeru the Damaja - thus proving that Kanye West really does know better, he just won't do better. But Raymond Martinez got him in the end, by naming every rapper who appeared on DJ Khaled's "We Takin' Over" when Kanye couldn't. Is it any wonder this guy had to invent a scam to sell his CDs? Obviously he didn't know from good rap music.