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I'm back in San Francisco and I have a magical window of wireless connection! Which is an uncanny reminder of this past holiday, when I was rapping at the YMCA for a gaggle of inner-city youth. It was incredible how put-together the night was, what with an amazing sound engineer and moving spotlights. Without any rehearsal, they played my beat CD and the whole stage went black. They timed the spotlight to shine on me right on the third beat of the bar, and then cut out again to black on the downbeat of the next bar. Obviously I was supposed to freestyle something when the spotlight hit me, but the first time it did, I was literally a deer caught in the headlight and I spluttered something like, "Guh-guh-guh-ga, wuh-wuh-wuh.. wah!!!"
See, I had learned something from Jay-Z's freestyle with Big L in '95. Jay would make mistakes and still make it cool to do so. For instance, when he said, "Here I come... a-guh-guh-guh-gain..." However, being an abstract pioneer of tremendous depth, I decided to take his idea a step further, not even bother with intelligible words, and choke out mere syllables. Next time, I'm going to go yet another step in artistically challenging my audience: John Cage the whole performance and not say anything at all. An 8W montage in blinking lights.
So, what do I have to say right now other than coo-coo-ka-choo. I almost missed my flight this morning because US Customs is very, very suspicious of me. I am sent to another room because my student record says that my program ends in May 2007, and, to figure out whether this is true, there is an elaborate process. First, a highly trained officer needs to sit there for three minutes while staring at a wall, sip a cup of coffee, chat with his other uniformed buddies who debate why coffee is better than Coke, email his mom, play Tetris online, and then -- and only then -- wonder out loud what his password is.
Apparently, as I am eavesdropping on their conversation (because, let's face it, unlike them, I'm not here for the coffee), they have different passwords for different databases, and my guy is having trouble dealing with the truths of his world. This is their dialogue:
Guy 1: I always forget what my SEVIS password is!
Guy 2: I know. I always do that too. And then you have to reset all your other passwords.
Guy 1: Oh, I hate that. Resetting the passwords for every database takes forever.
So that's why I'm here? Because you can't figure out why your password for Hotmail isn't working in the government database and now you're taking 15 extra minutes, thinking of new passwords??
I'm not making any of this up. Well, maybe the Tetris thing.
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