March Madness: The Fab Five

Last night I caught ESPN's 30 for 30 installment, The Fab Five. The documentary chronicles the two years the University of Michigan men's basketball team captured the imagination--and ire--of the sports watching public. I was a young kid when Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Chris Webber revolutionized college basketball and rocked my basketball-loving world, even more so than the Larry Johnson-led UNLV Runnin' Rebels who came a few years before them. Growing up in basketball obessed Indiana, loyalities were given to either the Purdue Boilermakers or the Indiana Hoosiers. I had always been rather uninspired by the rivalry, couldn't care less about Gene Keady or Bob Knight. But the Fab Five? I wanted to be their little tomboyish sister or something. I wanted the baggy shorts, the black socks, the black sneakers--that I had to convince my dad to buy me, because according to him, "girls don't wear black gym shoes."--and maybe even the bald head. The Fab Five documentary took me back to those inevitably heartbreaking two years when Jalen Rose was my favorite Fab Fiver and the Duke Blue Devils were exactly that--devils. Although the film primarily spoke to the part of me that never got over the Wolverines losing in the NCAA tournament, what also coalesced in the film was perhaps a incredibly pivotal moment in black cultural when desire for respect and the pursuit for respectability were abandoned, inevitably resulting into a hyper-commodified and commericialized black culture that has now reached an extremely nihilistic moment.

God's iPod

I was going to serve up a nice little nihilistic rant to begin the week, but I've thought better of it.  Instead, I will provide you with a list.  It's been a while since I've done a list, right?

Last week, I failed to give a special birthday shout out to Nina Simone.  After posting my blog, I spent most of the day listening to Nina (partly because it was her birthday, partly because I needed to get Soulja Boy's "Speakers Going Hammer" out of my head).  The exercise lead me to Youtube.  One of the comments on a clip of "Sinnerman" reads: this is on God's iPod.

I'm stealing that idea for today's blog.  What, exactly, is on God's iPod?  A few guesses (which may just look like a list of some of my personal jams, because the God I believe in has the same [excellent] taste in music that I have.  Me being made in His image and all.):