rally 'round the family with a pocket full of pitbulls

In his stand-up acts, everything Chris Rock states is exactly correct.  In one of his shows, he admitted that the most racist people in the world are “old black men”.

 

With that, the taxi driver was an elderly and curious black man.  As we were on a ten-mile ride to Dolphin Stadium decked out in Virginia Tech gear, he took the opportunity to pry into the notorious school shooting, which at the time occurred one-and-a-half years prior.

 

He asked what we thought was wrong with Cho, the shooter.  Aside from other unidentified disorders, Cho was partially autistic; we didn’t see strong evidence that he suffered abuse from family, friends, or roommates.

 

Our driver seemed particularly interested in what appeared to be a shortage of outrage.  Just after the shooting, confusion spurred from lack of a clear scapegoat:

(a)    Some blamed VT’s administration for not reacting after the first incident.  If the second incident were prevented, thirty lives along with dozens of casualties would have been spared.

(b)   Some blamed VT’s counseling services.  There are only about a dozen school psychologists, and the student population continues to expand toward the 30,000 milestone.  You gotta be damn near suicide to receive any attention from the counseling center.

(c)    Some blamed the Commonwealth of Virginia’s loose firearm regulations.  The Liberal Media was quick to point out Virginia has the most slack gun laws.  However, each state has a cornucopia of firearms statutes, leaving state side-by-side comparison an impossibility.  Hey, it’s a Red State (or it was before November 2008) with a hearty deer population and plenty of woodlands.  What else besides hunting will occupy the hillbillies before sunrise on Saturday mornings?

(d)   Nobody had the balls to pin the blame on the meek Korean community.

(e)    If no one could blame the Koreans, nobody would dare blame autism.  It’s difficult enough inserting an autistic character in a movie without political backlash from hypersensitive mothers.

 

Anyways, our dubious driver was quick to point out the massive outrage and embarrassment of the Michael Vick Dog-Fighting fiasco.  All across the nation, animal rights activists, professional athletes, celebrities, Saturday Night Live, etcetera spared no expense biting into Southeast Virginia’s thuggery (pun intended).

 

So our driver hinted that Virginia Tech’s reputation was scarred more by the Vick dog-fighting scandal than the most fatal school shooting in the history of American education.  Did the Korean community get off too easy?  Is it too easy to expect Black Americans to engage in violent crime?  Leave it to the mental filter of an “old black man” to make such observations:  Koreans are the polite, soft-spoken clerks who cut your hair and dry-clean your delicates; young black men are the disenfranchised standing behind you at the ATM, ready to pounce on your cash.

 

With a bit of luck, this mentality and cultural paradigm of racial grudge is slowly bleeding to death.  Now, in the grand scheme of American history, we’re still in recovery mode from Segregation.  Some rivalry between Whites and Blacks (W&Bs) may continue for decades or centuries to come seeing as W&Bs are the “core citizens” of America.  W&Bs have been toiling American soil since the 17^th Century while everybody else hopped on the coat-tails of our prosperity.  Furthermore, it would be plain impolite not to mention the American Indians at this point; they continue to remain a footnote at the bottom of American history as victims of Anglo-Saxon Small Pox.

 

On the other hand, Obama’s election serves as a swift jab in the jawbone of America’s ubiquitous racial awkwardness.  Even though Barack is half-white/half-Kenyan, he is celebrated as America’s First Black President.  As socio-political economic issues kick his once-ambitious ass around the White House, his reign should instigate a massive paradigm shift in American pop culture.  So what exactly is the outcome of this ancillary “change we can believe in”?  We’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Back Door Beauty?

(Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one step ahead of me on this one.)

Towards the end of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", Robert Plant shouts, "I wanna be your back door man!"  I had always assumed this was a blatant reference to anal sex.  Then one November evening as I was enjoying a juvenile cover band (Vintage), I realized I was completely wrong.

The "back door man" is an notorious character in blues music.  His presence dates back to the blues of Blind Willie McTell and Lightin' Hopkins.  Lyrics paraphrased on the order of "when I walk in that front door, I hear that back door slam" are ubiquitous throughout the blues.  This back door theme is so common that a recently-established blues-rock band dubbed themselves "Back Door Slam".

Now, the tale of the "back door man" is usually told from the husband's point of view.  He steps in through the front door of his abode after a strenuous day on the job, only to hear his back door slam and find his wife's face flushed from sexual activity.  The wife is an adulterer, and the accomplice of this affair just made his escape out the rear of the residence.  As this is told in the context of the Blues, the husband either indifferently ignores the situation due to extreme depression or straight up kills his wife in cold blood.  The reaction is based solely on our songwriter's temperament.

So Bob Plant's request to become the "back door man" is an unexpected twist in the grand scheme of blues folklore.  This "back door man" is seems perceived as a nuisance on the order of a cockroach infestation.  So who would aspire to become such a pest facing dire consequences as heavy as murder?  A rock star, that's who!  It just took a jam from a few teenagers to make me realize Robert Plant isn't an open sodomite.