South Bronx is Akihabara is Damascus is South Bronx

DJs are clearly the geeks of hip-hop culture. Between operating behind electronic instruments and spending endless amounts of time searching for the best tracks in crates, these are guys who, like other geeks, are meant to live in many different forms of obscurity and contemplation. It's a perfect contrast, naturally, to MCs. There's an obvious affinity between the charismtic poet and the syncopated technician.

Both DJs and MCs also frequently rename themselves when they become a real musical act. This has also happened throughout history. The first canonical re-naming that I can think of is St. Paul, who was re-named from Saul by God. In turn, his mission was changed from one who persecuted Christians to the most Catholic of Catholics. This phenomenon of re-naming permeates culture, including hip-hop culture. This kind of rebirth leads to the creation of a "character" in music. It isn't the actual person who is saying these things or making these rhymes, it's the character. Does anyone think that Afrika Bambatta is really that crazy? That there truly exists a "Method Man?" Eminem, obviously, has explored this theme to perhaps overkill.

At one time, a DJ would thrive by playing tracks made by influential black artists like James Brown. Using James Brown today would be a throwback, but wouldn't really be considered creative in any way. However, it seems that music on the level of James Brown isn't being made today and so many DJs subsist on the detritus of pop culture, hoping to find a beat that nobody else has ever exploited. Other DJs have exploited the most popular beats they can find, mixing melodies and rhythms that are already widely known. This, to me, is what is most amazing about Greg Gillis. He takes the principles of hip hop culture, the beats, cutting, everything, and applies them to indie rock (aka white kid) culture. A great fusion and also one side of a widely diverging road - that between navel-gazing nostalgia and computer-centric beat-making, aka electro.

Jimmy Connors is my favorite tennis player of all time

Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, in no way am I anything remotely approaching a serious tennis fan. I bear it no ill will, but I'm not exactly David Foster Wallace. Yet, Jimmy Connors is unquestionably my favorite tennis player.

Why Jimmy Connors? I'll readily admit that not once have I seen him play tennis. I was not alive the last time he won a major tournament. Why do I admire Jimmy Connors so much?

The first time I even heard of Jimmy Connors was when this huge new house was going up near my neighborhood. It was ridiculously mansion-sized, especially compared to some of the smaller houses around. It even had a smaller house around back which was rumored to be used for a variety of purposes. The neighborhood kids theorized it was a gigantic doll house, a butler's house, a pool house (though I do not think there was a pool), or half a dozen other things. There was a huge fountain out front and a gate surrounding it.

This house was being built by Jimmy Connors for his fuck-up brother. After its construction, for whatever reason, there was a huge controversy about its financing and nobody ever lived in it as far as I can remember. The developer then had huge problems trying to sell the house to somebody else because nobody really wanted to live in a house that outsized all the other houses around it by a wide margin and, actually, nobody really wanted to live in Belleville. The house became kind of a blight on the entire Oak Hill neighborhood. The Oak Hill swimming pool (it was the cool pool because it was under a dome and you could swim in it all the time but everyone knew that the fun pool was Dorchester [my pool] where you could play tennis baseball and adults could drink Zima) was shut down and filled in with cement.

So to summarize, Belleville is kind of a screwed up place. This little anecdote does very little in explaining its true nature, but to do so would take a work on the magnitude of one by David Foster Wallace. It's where I grew up and it's where Jimmy Connors grew up. So that's why I like Jimmy Connors.