Random Thoughts From the Ghetto-Volume 5

I look out my window and see the empty 40 oz beer bottles, hypodermic needles, crack pipes and abandoned shopping carts on my front lawn and I begin to think. The end results have become known as my random thoughts from the ghetto...


-Whenever I hear that someone does everything by the book, I want to take the book and smash it over their heads. The world is filled with examples of people who have defied conventional wisdom and achieved success in the most unorthodox of ways. Jimi Hendrix learned to play a right handed guitar backwards because he was left handed. His only failing grade (an F) was in music class. Beethoven was tone deaf. Soccer players need to play with both feet. However, Argentinean legend Diego Maradona never touched the ball with his right foot. He was so good with his left that he didn't have to. Larry Bird was slow and couldn't jump yet he dominated a sport where everyone else was fast and could jump. We can't define what "it" is but when people have it, you'll know it.

-Andy Warhol said, "Art is anything you can get away with." We try to prove that here on a daily basis.


-I ate so much junk food this summer, I couldn't fit into any of my dress pants for the start of the school year. I went to the Salvation Army and brought four great pairs of pants for $17. It's funny. Whenever I shop there, I never seem to run into Tim Kennedy or Brian Higgins.

-We marched in the Puerto Rican Day Parade with Mickey Kearns this weekend. It reminded me of a kid from my neighborhood growing up. Both his parents were Hispanic yet his favorite shirt read Proud to be Polish. His family must have shopped at the Salvation Army too.

-My friend told me he went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner last week. After dinner, they gave him a fortune cookie. It read, "that wasn't chicken you just ate."

-I wonder what Saddam Hussein's body double is doing these days. Remember that guy? He was the guy who looked exactly like him, that the Iraqi government would sometimes send out as a replacement whenever they thought his life might be in danger. Can you imagine how the interview process for that job went? "We'd like to offer you a job. Whenever we think the real Saddam might be assassinated or poisoned, we need you to go out in public and pretend to be him. The job might have a few risks associated with it but wait until you see the great dental plan we have."

-One of my all time favorite movies is the first Rocky movie. It's a story about a guy who gets a second chance in life and makes the most of it. I don't know why they ruin great movies by making sequels. In the first movie, one of Rocky's great traits is that he is basically punch drunk. He's been hit so many times in the head that he can barely communicate. Similarly in Rocky II, he proposes to Adrian by saying, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind marrying me much. Then in Rocky IV, after he beats the Russian, he delivers this articulate speech in perfect English to the Russian crowd. Are you kidding me? He goes from barely being able to speak to becoming the next US Secretary of State in just four movies. And so it goes...