don't fuck wit me cuzzzz ima go get my (water) gun!

Super Soakers!?! oh shit son! i don't how i arrived here, but it's not fucking important. all i know is this was another of the many examples of the paradigm shift that the 1990s represented, marketing-wise.

if you're at or near my age, you have no problem identifying the numerous instances where you were directly and furiously marketed to, with various foods/snacks/drinks, dolls, action figures, vehicles to house said action figures, and movie tie-ins. we were there for the start of this lunacy.

of course, the Super Soaker water gun was an integral component of this plastic and sugar-rich strategy.

honestly, i didn't know the Super Soaker was invented by a black man, Lonnie Johnson. looks like Stevie Wonder needs to re-dub that song of his:

Stevie: "and who invented the most popular water gun of all time, raking in over 200 million in sales for Hasbro, Inc.?"

Chorus of kids: "Lonnie Johnson, a-black-man!"

my parents were extremely trepidatious about buying me any toy that resembled a gun, so it took me a while to get myself into the madness.

at the start, i had the miniscule Super Soaker 30. a sidearm. had to fill it up after every shot. shortly after i got that piece of shit, i got this water balloon slingshot. fucking weak. the balloons were tiny and impossible to fill, and the slingshot itself was incredibly difficult to draw. one day i did get a shot off. nailed a kid right in the face. he cried for hours. didn't see him much after that.

after weeks of my selfish, incessant pleading for an upgrade, my rents finally buckled and copped the Super Soaker 50 from KayBee Toys.

basically the AK-47 of Super Soakers. cheap, reliable, effective and everybody had one. so many summers of targeting the kid who "couldn't get wet," feverishly pumping away, building pressure, forearms aching.

after my 50 was in shambles from a year of mock warfare, i stepped up to the Super Soaker 100. gangsta gangsta at the top of the list.

i must admit, however, that i never got my hands on the 300. this was basically a cannon, with a backpack water reservoir that held something like two or three gallons of water. basically a weapon of mass destruction in the context of backyard water fights. i also wouldn't have minded that MDS shit either. basically a reworked 50 with a swiveling nozzle so you could ice cats around corners. genius.

during my fledgling years of high school, i, along with a few other friends (including one who was on that 300 shit) would drive around, blasting random cats on the sidewalk, laughing our asses off. oh those precious, harmless years of weed experimentation.

we filled our guns with brightly colored, syrupy juices and sodas, so that not only would our victims' clothes be ruined, but so that they would be swarmed by bees as well. fucking hilarious.

but one summer, a bunch of cats on the westside drove around doing the same shit, only they filled their joints with bleach. ended up hitting an infant in the face. bad news bears, of course. apparently babies and bleach don't mix. go figure.

so from then on, the baltimore police dept. was on the prowl for any and all (black) kids wielding Super Soakers.

the end of an era.

but though i've been out of the game for over a decade, it's good to see a new generation of young bucks getting in on what we started. gotta teach these kids to embrace the gun-toting spirit of American masculinity. nice and early.

yo yo trav hold up! yo yo. yo yo. yo. yo yo trav hold up!

"i been rappin for about seventeen years, ok? i don't write my rhymes anymore! i just kick it from my head. i can do that. no disrespect. that's just how i am."

here goes...

"innnnn west philadelphia born and raised,
on the playground is where i spend most of my days,
chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool,
all shootin some bball outside of the school,

when a coupla guys, they were up to no good,
started makin' trouble in my neighborhood,
we got in one little fight and my mom got scared,
she said 'you're movin with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air,

i-pulled-up to a house about 7 or 8,
and i yelled to the cabbie, yo homes smell ya later,
looked at my kingdom i was finally there,
to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air."

you'd be surprised how many cats can spit this song from the top of their domes. i've been on a bus full of wastyfaced kids that, after i began singing it with some random chick, sang along without flaw.

television rules the nation.

and i love how Will's finger waving, fretting, bag lady of a mom in the intro to the show looks nothing like the actress that eventually played that character when she was introduced into the saga. i kinda would've preferred that they maintained the caricature. or how they replaced the Aunt Vivian character a few seasons in. we weren't supposed to pay it any attention. not necessarily unique to the show (pretty common actually), but still pretty funny.

what i loved even more were the serious episodes, or in '90s sitcom speak, the "special" episodes. Will getting shot during a hold-up, his vagrant dad re-entering his life.

you just couldn't get away with that in today's television.

it's called escapism for a reason.

strange froot.

the imagery's unmistakable. uncomfortable, right? of course it is. one of the darkest chapters in the dubious history of this land of the free, home of the knave. so imagine my dismay when, while perusing the sewers of the MySpace megapolis, i stumbled upon a chick that listed "lynching niggers" as one of her interests.

jesus christ.

but this wasn't one of the usual suspects. oh no. this was one of those cosmopolitan, chronically tattooed, pudgy, i-wish-i-was-Bettie Page types. you know what i'm talking about. i mean it's kinda hot, but honestly, it's 2007. what the fuck was so great about the '50s anyway? was it the Cold War paranoia? the Jim Crow segregation? the shitty tekmology? just wonderin'?

but anyway, back to our lynch artist. you know, i really don't even know where to begin with this. but i will say that though obviously this chick wasn't serious (there were black faces in her comments section), i'd kinda prefer that she was. at least then i would get the impression that she understood the gravity of implying that you enjoy "lynching niggers."

while i'm at it, this brings to light another haunting, MySpace-centric trend i've noticed as of late: the wanton use of "nigga/nigger" by adolescent white females as a term of endearment.

unlike Al sharpton, Russell Simmons, or Dennis Hayes, i'm not going to turn this into a BLACKS ONLY blame game or some referendum that indicts the entire black race for creating the circumstances that would lead to this painfully insensitive irreverence. nope. i'm not an asshole like that.

instead, i'm going to turn this into a drawing of conlusions, primary among which is that collectively speaking, my generation is a bunch of fucking shitheads.

how else would you explain the atrocious ubiquity of MySpace, the condoning of Paris Hilton et al., or the broad acceptance of a band like Fall Out Boy? Sure, every generation has some shit band that's a bastardized version of a better, but less marketable artist or group, but there's just something about those cats that's pure fucken EVIL.

to further my claim, i offer another example. Brit TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson did a series for the BBC in which he roamed about Las Vegas, "Jaywalking style," asking cats to name a (as in one?!) country in Europe. of the 12-15 interviewed, none could. not even one. 75% of them were of "my generation." unforgivable.

but before the "Baby BOOMers" take their cocks out of their mouths long enough to say "i told you so," let's not forget who raised us, eh? who forged our sensibilities. who gave us our right and wrong. who it was that was supposed to educate us. that's right you fucking potbellied hippies, it was YOU!

quite frankly, there's no reason for our current state. most of us came of age during the pinnacle of American, nay, human civilization: the 1990s. Sure the nascent years of Hunter S. Thompson's post-American century have sucked a fat dick so far, but who better to turn that around than the most beast generation the world has ever known?

so in closing, to the chick that's into (or not into?) lynching, hopefully you read this, go to your local gun shop, buy a pistol and swallow a bullet. or better yet, shoot over to Home Depot, cop a 20' length of rope, ring around the rosie, and leap off a chair. see how that bothers ya.

and to the rest of you. wake the fuck up! there's a battle outside raging and you've forgotten how to fight.
vive le cirque!