A friend of mine once told me that at least once a week, if not more, we all should do something that we normally do not do. It could be talking to that person you've been avoiding, or inquiring about a job, finally hitting the gym, or basically anything that takes you out of your traditional, daily boring routine. Not only does it keep life interesting this person said, but it keeps us from going crazy. So last night, I spontaneously did such a thing. I was reading yet another stellar blog from my main man Bill Simmons, and I found myself wanting to write an article on whether Greg Oden should go to the NBA or stay in college at least one more year. Normally when I write articles like that, I don't put myself on a deadline, I just leisurely write it over a two or three week span. Some days I'll look at it, and decide I don't feel like writing, much like I do with this blog sometimes. But last night, I decided to knock it out right then and there. So I turned the tv off, I closed out all of the other windows I had open, except for Microsoft Word, and I wrote the article. After I wrote it, I submitted to a website run by a friend of a friend, and hopefully he'll put it up. I'm sure he'll ask me to edit, and I may even have to add some words to it, but the point is I did it without hesitation in a little over an hour. Those are baby steps I just took, and hopefully that will serve as a catalyst for me. We shall see.

The other thing that happened out of the ordinary for me yesterday, was that my boy Cliff sent me this book. Now why is that odd? As I've discussed in this blog before, traditionally guys don't get each other gifts, even on birthdays. A phone call is even a surprise sometimes, but a gift is a rare occurrence, and it violates the unwritten man laws. So for me to get a gift four months removed from my birthday was extremely odd, and a bit scary for me. However once he explained that he was in a bookstore and saw Dave Winfield signing a book he may be interested in, it all made sense, and it was a lot less ghey. I guess as we get older that kind of thing isn't so bad, but it is still a slippery slope, and I'll be monitoring this closely. I did start reading the book though, and it is damn good.

So this morning on the ipod, a Public Enemy song came on, and immediately it took me back into a nostalgic frenzy. And it also got me to thinking, why was Public Enemy so popular then, and why is it that their songs are still so very relevant 10-20 years later. Part of it is their subject matter(drugs, politics, questioning Bush, self pride) part of it is the comic relief of Flavor Flav, and part of it is their production team(the Bomb Squad). But to me, the main reason why Public Enemy was and is such an impressionable group is all about Chuck D's voice. No matter what he was saying, Chuck's voice damn near sounded like a minister's. He spoke in a certain tone and cadence, that almost forced you to listen to what he was saying. Not only that, he rarely smiled or joked around, so for me, I almost felt obligated to listen to the man with the scary voice, or there would be hell to pay..or maybe I'd feel like I was missing out on something. I felt like that back in 1989 when Fight the Power came out, and I felt like that the minute I heard Chuck's voice say, "I got a letter from the government..."

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos - Public Enemy