Calls media.
All right, if you knew here, you know this isn't normally how we move. This is going to be a vastly different episode, kind of like I'm gonna get a little meta, you know, pull pull the curtain back, not just sort of like do what we normally do, which is like, you know, translate politics to the lingo that you.
And I talk.
And it's also like so close to the election to just let me just pause for a second, because god dog has been a year now. If you're not into none of the meta stuff, you want to get back to the Blase black woo wool and shall skip this one. It's all good, but I'm gonna keep it the buck with y'all today.
Hood politics, y'all.
All right, first ever into the politics history trigger warning.
I don't know why I never thought about.
Ever doing these, because I figure y'all knew what y'all signing up for you. So you're gonna hear some hard r in words in this episode, but also a lot of West Coast representative because I mean, what a glorious time to be from California. We got the Doyers in the in the super Bowl. The Lakers are actually winning games. Shout out JJ, thank you so much, you actually call timeouts like this is glorious. Brownie's gonna go to the G League because he does not belong on the You
did it, you did it, You did your thing. You guys played together.
It was cool.
Now let the boy become a pro at the pace he needs to become a pro. Anyway, we had the east Side Classic with which is the two East LA Boyle Heights schools, the Boyle Height schools called Roosevelt High, which is where will I am went to, which is the neighborhood I live in. And then you have the East LA school Garfield High. Now, if you saw Stand and Deliver with ever James almost you got ganas that
took place at Garfield High. So the east Side Classic is just a legendary tradition between the two Torolo schools in on the East side of LA. And that happened the same night that the Dodgers was Game one in the World Series, the same night the Lakers played, which was the same night that USC played, which was the same night that the Forum and SOFI and the Hollywood Bowl all had concerts going on probably the worst traffic day in history but I tell you what. We hit
a trifecta Lakers one, Dodgers won USC one. But the beauty is the fact that we won against the Yankees. I mean, can you just it? Can it be more? Can it be a Can this be a more beautiful moment? America? This is your gift La versus New York Tims versus Chucks, the Air Force Ones versus Cortes, I'll be cool versus what's aft fool like bacon, egg and cheese versus tacos? Like,
come on, can anything be more American than this? And I have this haunting feeling that this was God's gift to us to have some sort of joy before this election goes off a week I think away from electing a new president. And I'm not gonna hold you. I'm feeling nervous, not so much about the election, but what the election implies and how the rest of the holiday season is gonna go. I already feel my lizard brain, my fight or flight getting activated, and part of that came from this situation.
Last week.
I think it was Wednesday, I took the train up to Universal Studios like Believe or Not, Like I live in East Lost, mostly off from Cali that listen to this show anyway. So took the train from East Los E Line to you can take the E Line to seventh Metro and then you take that whether.
You take that to the B.
Right that goes north and it gets off on at Universal Studios to meet one of my homeboys, who was Mihaomie L. Craig, who was having a little studio sessh you know, which is like my usual. He's in town, go see the homie. You know what I'm saying. Listen to pick out beast bug out like that's my dog's There's a cool thing about being friends with musicians, like whenever they're in town because I need the same thing. Like whenever I'm in town, like there's a few hommies I I tap in with that.
I'm like, what's up.
I'm trying to you know, trying to see what's up, and most of the time they'll drop what they're doing to make sure that I'm having a good time in the city. I try to do the same for them. So world up there, we took a break to do the blackest thing ever was you know, walk to the liquor stuff. But we knew we the new version black dudes, because we both got cambouches, you know.
Anyway, I mean, this is North Hollywood. We're on Kuwanga, like.
This is across the street, across the freeway from Universal Studios. It's like there's just mansions behind us, like it's it's North Hollywood. And as we're walking, what I thought was like one of those like Kia little SUVs, but what Chray saw as like a Lexus suv. We hear top their lungs fucking nigger as the guy drives by. And I've been called a nigger before, but like and it's always like the drive by niggering, like nobody ever really want to smoke.
And for a second, it took me a second to register of what happened.
Because I thought, sometimes you know, when people do to drive by yelling, you can't really tell exactly what they were saying. But then you started figuring it out and you're like, I was like, yo, did he just then you're looking at this where we are. This is North Hollywood. This is North Hollywood, like what we're street from Universal Studios? The hell is happening? I'm just bewildered. Craig completely goes
into fight mode. Now, at some point I thought maybe maybe it was one of the homies who was just being stupid and was gonna pull into gas station and then jump out and be like, man, you know, I thought like it was just gonna be some joke, but like, that's not funny, boy, as you almost got stomped out right now.
You know.
But no, of course coward keeps on to the freeway entrance and drives off. And I don't know what in that, first of all, what you're doing in this part of town to be able to say something like that. We started to see who was playing at the Greek Theater? Who at the Who's at the Hollywood Bowl? It was apparently it was an imagine Dragon's concert happening there. Hopefully that wasn't one of y'all fans. I just we just couldn't figure out, like, who in the hell would.
Be that bowl? And why why are you that bold? Why now? Man?
And then to end this week with I just something that can't I'm trying not to describe this thing as a clan rally. It's just so hard to not see it as such. The last few your your closing arguments as a candidate for presidency, This this rally at Madison Square Garden, which normally is like, look, man, that's their thing, Trump being Trump, y'all like that. It's not my cup of tea at I don't understand what y'all see in him, but it is what it is. This one was just man,
this one got to me. And then you couple that with my Lord just auntie, Like, why can't you just why is this God's a thing so hard for you? Why can't you just how come you can't just like what you got yourself to say that Trump's are fascists. I just don't understand why you can't why I do understand, but God, dog is so why can't you just denounce this war? Why can't you just why can't you just promise you gonna divest? Like what who got like who got your mama tied up? So that you can't say
what we all know you need to say. Oh and you know what else, homie, This little Dirk thing, you know, he's facing murder charges off, a murder for hire, this drill music stuff like I've never like like these kids is dying and going to prison and just it's a great article in Rolling Stones.
No the Rolling Stone. That's what the bar magazine is called.
By andre g I got put onto and by the Homi ray Neutron and incredible visual artists about just drill music.
Drill rap is truly.
A dead end, Like we need to have the conversation about this, and it just got me really like, I mean, I'm all in my feelings right now, y'all.
So this episode is just for us.
I just want to encourage you to take care of yourself. So here's some ways that I take care of myself and I plan on taking care of myself, and I encourage you to do the same. So with this being so close to the election, that's no reason to try to bring up a whole new topic. Like you know, like I said, everybody making their closing arguments and I just feel like on the brink of exchange. But the
thing is like when you grow up poor. Now I say this not to like undermine the efforts and the success that my parents had in my lifetime, that the poverty for which we started in and the poverty that was before my time pales in comparison to where we ended up. My parents like even when they split, both of them really ascended a ladder of financial security.
That was a lot of ups and.
Downs in my childhood, like realizing that like we had well, you know, it was it was more like instability. It would be like, you know, one month we buy in like shrimping salmon and lobster is another month it's like fried baloney sandwich.
We just couldn't forget it.
It just we was never really like cool, which is probably why I saved money so well. But I did not have it like a lot of my friends or even Alma had it, you know, first immigrant, you know, textiles, sweat sweatshop, you know, or Mama worked in like they had it worse than us as far as like socioeconomically. But at the end of the day, the point I'm trying to make is a lot of times you don't
know you in the hood till somebody tell you. You don't know you poor until somebody pointed out to you somebody I forget, like it was a joke running around my little social feeds, was like, hey, when did you know you were poor?
Like what was what was the thing for you?
I could tell you a few the moments for me where I realized, like I said, it wasn't that bad for us? You know, it could have been worse. I think a few things happened with me. One was when I had told somebody wherever I was that I was going to go to my grandmother's house. And I told them where my grandmother lives, you know, at this time, seventy thirty San Pedro, you know, south central LA. And this was me being out of like not in that neighbor hood anymore. We we had moved to San Gebol
Valley at the time. Who still, I'm like, this is Belinda, Like, y'all, it's I'm like, it's bullet holes in our garage door, like you know what I'm saying, Like, I don't understand what.
The issue is, you know.
So when I told them I was going there, and the way that they kind of class they pearls was like it was just a little shocking to me because I'm like, well, first of all, we used to live there, like before we was here.
Number one, and number two.
I'm like, I spent my first five years because my grandma baby sat us and my cousins and I played outside all the time. I don't know what you're talking about, right,
And then and of course you knew. You know, there was Dwayne and Dwight that lived because street I wasn't allowed to play with because they was you know, lim limo outside than we were, you know what I'm saying, like and you know the kids down the street, and you know, later on, you know, after this experience was when I saw my first gun and you know what I'm saying, like stuff like that, you know, but like again you just think it's normal.
But then I'm like, I don't understand what y'all.
So was like my grandmother like this old lady, Like shit, this is her, she lives there. And then my cousin's grandmother lived down the street, you know, on on his his father's side of the family. Like they're you know, cause I'm related to his mother, you know what I'm saying. So like I was like, bro, like this is what do you like? This is our name? Why what are
you talking about? Like it just took threw me off kind of like really they were so freaked out that I spend my weekends in South Central Like it was just it was that shock.
That was one of the ways.
Another ways was when I realized my neighbor after the neighbors that were there when we moved in, when they moved out, that it ended up being a crack house.
Like I did, didn't.
I just thought they were camping, like they just didn't turn to life cause they just like camping and they cooked with candles.
It was like fun, Like, no, nigga, that's a crack house.
Like I just I like realize we lived next door to a crak I didn't know, you know what I'm saying. And then eventually they moved out to and then somebody you know, moved into the house and like took care of it again.
You know.
But yeah, like stuff like that. When we left the San gab Valley, my parents got a tax returned, moved to the Inland Empire, and then shortly after my parents split and joint custody whatever.
Right, So uh, but going back to my old neighborhood.
And seeing that, yeah, our garage door was riddled with bullets. I was like, oh my gosh, this house gets shot up. And then just realizing like, oh, that's not normal. Everybody don't go through that. You feel me like stuff, you know, just writing letters to my cousins in jail and putting together packages like realizing that that's not like everybody don't do that, Like I just I didn't know.
We went to go have dinner.
With another one of the families from my church, and I remember my dad preparing us like, Okay, now when we go to their house, I don't want you acting all weird because they house is real, it's a lot bigger than ours. I was like, what, I ain't worried about they house? Like what are you talking about? And then we walked into the house and I was like, god, syu'all you have an upstairs and then just like just an in ground pool, like just all these like cues that.
I'm like, Bro, we're like, we're in the same Sunday school. I see y'all all the time. That's how y'all live.
Like just what I'm trying to say is there are moments that you don't realize you're in a heightened sense of danger, and you just get used to it. So we found joy in ways for which we learn to take care of ourselves, even living among some very violent in neighborhoods and very precarious times.
You know.
I have a lyric in one of my songs what I call serp sandwiches, the delicacies of the disadvantage, making greatness without anything inside our pockets.
Understanding that like, yeah, it's a syrup sandwich.
You know, you ever had a serp sandwich, then you probably wasn't poor, you know what I'm saying. I realize now like struggle meals for white people as casse role. Now, I know, I'd never thought about it like that, Like, oh, y'all, just whatever's in the cabinet, you just put it. You put it in the thing and make it crunchy on top of that cheese. It's fine, It's oh my gosh. I was like, I realized, like I'll never eat it, But I realize I actually appreciate struggle food.
I had no idea. I really had no idea.
But the point is we found joy even in the midst of the wildness that we lived in. We found ways to find joy. So that's what I want to do right now, because I feel like it's about to be crazy.
Find ways to find joy.
All right now.
The guiding principal for is that you know, joy is resistance. The phrase comes from a poem called Joy is an Active Resistance by toy Derricott. She like was born April nineteen forty one, professor at a professor of writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Now, of course, like all the other things that black people make, that we created for our survival, ends up getting its teeth taken out of it and becomes a platitude, especially in the era of Trump.
But I'm doing this.
I'm bringing this up to like refang, like put the fangs back into what we're trying to say right now. And what that tradition comes out of is if you can think back to the songs sang on, plantations, dances, created the Chitlin circuit, the creation of blues and jazz, this.
Is the tradition. The tradition is we are unbreakable.
We are unbreakable in a way that it sometimes can even compound the hate towards us, because even in your ability to wield power and stamp us out and segregate, once you built that, you, as in the system, built this fence to block us in. You looked over into the fence and realized we made it work. And now you want what we created in there, jazz, blues, hip, hop, all of it. So I say that to say when I look at videos in Palestine of kids doing parkour,
skaters skating over rubble. When I see stuff like that, hear me because us singing Negro spirituals in the slave ships or in the Nigga quarters doesn't mean that.
That made Chattow slavery.
Okay, It didn't mean that we didn't stop fighting with all of our heart, mind and soul to end that type of oppression. I don't mean that at all. It just meant that there were parts of us that were untouchable, that remained solely belonging to us. And I think this is why a lot of times, outside of just the continuation of this happening, like why I think a lot of times Black people are so protective about their culture is because it's like, this is what we create, because
we're finding joy, you know. So my first thing I do is I find things that truly give me joy for me, my children. I really enjoy my children. I like audio books. A lot of times there are things that I have to, you know, learn for this that are be deeply disturbing. But then some stuff just be I stuff I just like learning, you know, and things that I just think are interested. A lot of times it be around like science and preservation. My wife she
likes apocalyptic fiction. That's like visionary fiction. Somehow or another, I became an old man and I really became a plant dad, which started over the pandemic, which is funny because my wife bought a gang of plants. She let him die and I was like, man, not on my watch. So then I got really good at that. I'm a city boy, so I didn't even own a drill until twenty twenty, until we bought a house. When we bought the house in the pandemic as the first drill ever owned, I don't.
I didn't.
I was like, I, Oh, my daddy's a city boy. I talk about daddy all the time. He's city boy, intellectual ladies man, black panther. Like that's one. We don't build stuff. We pay people to build stuff. But like when that money start getting funny. I also grew up with Mexicans. I grew up with old school Mexican me, and that was like, you better learn how to when you when it's your place, you better learn how to
take care of it, you know what I'm saying. So I got that work ethic from now, I just started calling the theals like, hey, what do I need for?
What do I need?
And it was on some like I'm glad you asked, buddy, like, let's let's get it cracking. So now, like man, I started taking a part, like our fence was falling apart us, you know, put the fence back in. You feel me like those things bring me joy? What? And I realized what brings me joy ultimately in that is like it's a job well done. I enjoy completing completing something makes
me smile. I had to find something that made me unplugged at a mentor tell me once, have something in your life as a hobby that you can afford to suck at so it's not tied to like your family's income or safety, and you just it's okay if you suck at it, you know, and just take your time and teach yourself, you know. And I found that that helps me get into flow state too. It started off as coffee, and then coffee became a job. So I had to find something else and plug completely into something else.
So I don't know what what gets you in the flow state? For me, it's I believe it or not. Yard work, which used to be punishment, like what I was. When I was a kid, you had to do yard work because you was cutting up in school. Now I'm like, well, it's my yard. So I found that. You know, you gotta find you something that puts you into the flow state that just brings you joy, and then at the end of it you're like, yo, this is this is dope.
But as we know, all of the time, you can't just put your headphones in, put your earbuds in and do things that make you happy. Sometimes you got to talk to other people. Now I can't like, I can't tell you how bad it grieved me. Like there's some things that enrage me. This this Madison Square garden thing grieved me for a number of reasons. Well I'm pretty sure you know most of them, one of which is, like,
just somebody just be loud and wrong. Rudy Giuliani talking about Palestinians are taught when they're two to kill Americans.
Bro, what the fuck are you talking about? Like not a not a fact checked anywhere?
Man? What you got the comedian out there making the joke about Puerto Rico that there's this you know, there is a big old floating pil of trash in the middle of the ocean.
That is true. He's like, I think it's called Puerto Rico. You did this in New York.
Also, God, you know Puerto Rico's American, right, it's an American territory.
God like you.
You could be like, racism is dumb, but you can't be racist and dumb. Trump talking about taking care of the Kaldan Christians. I'm like, nigga, they're Iraqi, they're Iraqi.
You want to deport them? What do you.
So you make that joke? He points out the black dude and he says, nah, he cool. You know, we was carving watermelons for Halloween. Now y'all made a miss that one. But there's a history around black people in watermelon. See, everybody like watermelon. But what what black people used to do to make a little money is we used to sell them. They ain't like that because we was getting
some financial security off of our watermelon. So that's how the racist trope around black people and watermelon started happening, because we were selling watermelon making money.
Everybody watermelon. It's delicious.
So outside of that just being an old, not funny joke, like just it's such a low hanging fruit. And then just continuing with the enemy within mass deportations and just they're poisoning our blood just like and again, just just for review, Puerto Ricans are American. Trump got an immigrant wife, and so does JD.
Evans.
They don't count though, No, they don't count. And I think you know why this stuff be so egregious that I'm even mad that I'm talking about it.
But the thing that gets me the most is y'all all stayed in there, y'all. Y'all really that all that was okay for you? You was cool with all that. Y'all was cool with y'all was really cool with all that.
I have friends who are truly my friends, who I love and respect. I'm thinking of two of them right now who I admire in some ways, who are totally bought in with Trump. And I don't know how to broach this because they're both Latino, and I just I don't know how you can be okay with this.
Now my next point, I need.
Y'all to hear me, because I can already hear y'all pushing back, like, well, black people make white jokes all the time. Well, we also didn't build a time machine and colonize the entire you know, northern hemisphere and bomb them back to the Stone Age every couple hundred years. We're not we aren't the oppressors. We're not the colonizers. Power dynamics different. So and for you to not know that, to me is like disingenuous. But put that to the
side for a second. Here's the reality. And if you ever clip if you're gonna clip, clip this, this this pot clip this part, give us the respect to know that we can tell a joke and we can take a joke. I know some listen, some people make some very hilarious black jokes, Like I can take a racist joke when I know it's a joke. I'm gonna invoke Dave Chappelle right now, which I know might bother some
of y'all. But Dave Chappelle talked about when he stopped doing The Chappelle Show that he was working on a skid and I don't remember the skid, but he was telling this interview that as everybody was laughing, there was a moment when he looked around and he was like, the way you're laughing doesn't feel the same. That is white people and the staff whatever you know what I'm saying,
and it's not so much. We can't you know, make jokes about ourselves and live, you know, among each other and just it's cool, like it's.
Fine when I know it's fine. We know.
When a joke is a joke and when it's low key not. I'ma I'm gonna push you further. That fellas that girl that you say all lighting up, it's just you know what I'm saying. It's just it's compliment, it's innocent. She know the difference you getting mad where you're like, oh, I'm just gonna get me, I'm gonna get canceled. Well, how come he doesn't get canceled? Well because she could
tell the difference. Now, of course, the exceptions of you know, things that people have existed, you know, on the on the spectrum in some ways where social cues are an issue, that's a neurological something.
You know that.
Of course, that's the exception I'm talking about. But generally, if you have a neurotypical brain, you can tell the difference, especially if you're a person of color.
We know, believe it or not.
We know when we're window dressing, we know when we're feeling quotas. We know if we're DEIHI you think that's a disc We know when we are and we know when we're not. We also know when you're just a trash human being racist. You could say, oh, lighten up, it's just a joke. We can tell the difference. Just let you know right now, we can tell the difference.
So here's what I do.
So last year I put out a conversation guide about your racist uncle Dave over the holidays. I fortunately don't have a racist uncle Dave, but I got an incredibly homophobic uncle Mumsey.
Not really my uncle Mumsey, he's passed away, rest in peace.
But the homophobic, you know, anti tran stuff be it'd be real in the hoods. Sometimes I'll be hearing stuff that like, hey, nigga, that shit is not funny type vibe, and then I'm the weird though. So I think for you, you know, white folks who have just a shred of decency when you have to just you know, giggle with your uncle.
Mark like it's hard, and I vibe with you.
Here's what I learned is that people's minds are convinced by how they feel. In New York Times just did a study about Maricopa County in Arizona about them and then people feeling like Trump won that election.
Despite how.
Many times this has been debunked, it has been proven, no matter how many times the cases were thrown, there's no amount of evidence that's going to change how they feel about this. I don't understand that, but I can relate to it because we have a joke running around here that's like, hey, hey, what's not racist? But feel
like it's racist? And to me, there's them sunglasses, them Rayven kind of looking sunglasses that attached to the back that had a strap that go behind your back, like they just sunglasses.
They just feel racist to me. I know they not, they just sunglasses. It just feel racist. The Boston Celtics, it's just a basketball team. It just feel racist. So I get it when some just feel so.
Unfortunately, in this scenario, you have to be the spaceholder. There are certain things that are obviously non negotiables. All ideas are obviously not equal, and you don't have to participate in every conversation. So one way that I take care of myself is when there is no entrance into actually getting somewhere good from a conversation. I try to find my way out of it by understanding what their
problem is, what are you feeling? So I found that with the trans situation, the math isn't mathing to them. They feel confused, like they don't understand why this is so hard for the rest of us. They like, I don't you either got a penis or a vagina. I don't understand why this is so hard for y'all. And even if you chop your dick off, you still a dude.
Like in their brain, it just it seems so simple to them, and they don't understand what we don't understand, right, So what I've had to learn, and of course this is just one example, what I've had to learn is to say it seems is to understand that they feel disoriented. And a lot of times when you just feel disoriented, you just want the thing that disorients you to go away, and they're not gonna go away, so you just gonna
have to learn to live with it. So I try to find a way to relate to the idea of feeling disoriented when just math doesn't math, And then if opportunity presents itself, show a way to just even just crack the door open to being like, well, I mean, I I know trans people like you know what I'm saying, and it's I mean, it's not. It don't have to be weird, like you don't have to you don't have to think about their genital like it just be that simple to me, Like I don't think about their genital.
I'm having a regular conversation.
With another and I found again because we you know, with Lamo Edgy, I could say stuff like that like well, I don't know, I don't I'm not thinking about his dick or lack there. I'm not thinking about it like that's that man's life or that girl's life.
It don't make me.
You want me to call you baby pooky like that, I'm gonna call you base own like that's you.
That's what you want me to call You's fine. They live on the same planet, you.
Dude, so like to me, if I could get to the like, oh you feel disoriented, let's let's deal with that now. Of course, there is, like I said before, there's boundaries. There's lines I'm not gonna cross. Well, I'm just like, I'm not even finna talk to you if you're gonna be a level of disrespect that's like just intenable. Then I'm like, all right, nah, we done. I mean,
like there's you're tripping you know what I'm saying. Of course you know there's that line, but you know, I'm I'm assuming a situation where this is a really this relative that I love. You know, they're just vehemently, violently wrong.
Yep. Then to me, that gets to.
A place that won I don't have to be frustrated because I clearly can't make you feel something that none of these facts or information can make you feel because you see in the opposite of it, but you already believe what you believe. Clearly, there is nothing we can tell these people in Maricopa County that would convince them otherwise that man Trump lost that election. I just they just gonna have to take that one today. Grade I'd like,
there's nothing I could do about that. But I understand what it feels like to feel like you're not being listened to.
I understand that.
I feel like I understand what it feels like to feel disenfranchised, even though they are factually not disenfranchised. I just don't he just didn't get enough votes. That's not disenfranchisement, nigga, that's the system. I don't know how to explain that to him, and I'm pretty sure they understand it, but they feel disenfranchised. I can understand that sometimes you just gotta save your breath. It's not a tough subject. Changed that's just let me get to this and you can
do that. You can empathize without agreeing. Another thing I suggest, which again this is what I do is I mean, it seems as corny as it's gonna sound, even in my own head, but like diet and exercise, I like, I work out three times a week, you know, for
a good forty five minutes to an hour. Now I understand I'm checking my privilege, but you know what, you know what workout can be sometimes parking at the furthest parking lot spot and walking that can count when you need to run to the store, get some milk, walk like little things like that that gives you that space.
I got to pick up my kids. I feel you bring them with you, you know.
Like there are ways that I used to call context embedded exercise.
If you ain't got one of them, gigs.
Where you can join a gym or like hit the park, and be like be at the hood. You know what I'm saying on the pull up bars. You know what I'm saying, like beer to be a part of be programming out there, which you can do too if you like. Look, man, I can't be doing them two in the morning, you know, twenty four hour fitness joints. I feel you, you know hey, but look while your lunch break at work again, walk to the shop, you know hey, and look, you know,
get a salad every once in a while. I know how I sound, but you be surprised how better your mood be when you ain't got bubble guts, when you ain't on the top of that word about high blood pressure and diabetes. You'd be surprised how much better you feel when you not fighting a hangover.
The world? Just feel way better, you know what I'm saying.
When you got a good night's rest, Nigga, go to bed, like that's another thing.
I like, listen, just go to bed.
I just I don't know, I look, I just sometimes you just got to be like, you know what the day's done. We going to bed, you know, to charge your phone in another room. That's another thing I do. My phone's plugged up somewhere else. What you're staying up for?
Do you really need to watch another episode? Just gets to sleep. We have this scale in our family.
I may have said this before between me and the preferred to her by her prefix my wife doctor Alma. Where when we first started dating, well, no, we were first married one of my best friends, one of my day ones, like tenth grade best friend. I'm officiating his wedding. He was like, yo, I want to officiate away. He's had one girlfriend besides this girl and started dating her his senior year high school. Only girl you have loved and the other girlfriend he had that was like for
a week. And that was mainly because we told we made him. We was like, y'all should be cute together, you know, ninth grade stupid. Anyway, Alma was hungry and I'm like, all right, it's all the way in Santa Monica. Again, I'm from the east side, so I'm like, oh, we got plenty of times, so tell me where you want to stop, and you know, if you see something you want, we'll pull over, we'll grab it. I'm suggested all kind of stuff. She's like, no, no, that's not it. That's
not it. That's not it. I was like, all right, well I kind of got to be there, so maybe there's something at the hotel. So we go to the hotel. It ain't got but those like pre wrapped sandwiches, right, see all of that. So she was like, all right, I'll wait for the reception. The reception was all like or dirb kind of like or dirt plate finger foods, so it wasn't enough food for it. Now I am on ten. This is my best friend, y'all, my best
friend's wedding, and like I like, I'm officiating it. I'm on he's he had he had dated her since like we were. He started dating her when he was seventeen. We were thirty one, Like, so what they had been like, I'm on ten. I am was like, I got a headache.
I'm gonna sit in the lobby.
Now what I look like, you know, shirt off slinging it over the head with like me and my nine best friends just super lit over my boy finally getting married and my wife is downstairs in the lobby Like this is just just a bad look. So I'm like, well, we gotta go, and she's like, no, really, I understand he's your best friend. I'll just be down here, and I'm like, part of me is like, girl, it's your fault. We had you had all these times you hungry. How many times did I suggest to you to stop at
certain places? Here's what I learned. What I learned is now y'all in relationships take notes. Now what I learned is this is our scale on the scale of one to Holden's wedding. Holden is his name, How hungry are you?
So? Because that is the top tier.
She gets to a place where or she can't make a decision on what she wants to eat, so I just have to get food in her.
Like I should have just made the decision.
I know that now, but at the time I needed to develop a way for which at the time I didn't know. So now I have a scale to know, Hey, we're going to need to stop this now. So self care in that situation was just get some food in your body. You'd be surprised how much better your day is if you got good food in your body.
And here's my last two pieces of advice.
One is, you know, just keep the news to a minimum in a way that we like you already know it's chaos.
You can keep up.
There is a way to keep up with what's going on in the world and not get you know, privilege and unplugging and having the privilege of being able to turn it off.
You can do both.
You can keep that diet of chaos to a minimum or to a level that's not going to burn you out. Because we need in works of in the act of resistance, in the work of making the world better, we kind of need you. Okay, you know your star player can't play all forty eight minutes, like you gotta sit down, like you could turn the TV off for a second.
Which leads me to the last part, which is this is a collective effort, and you have to remind yourself that seeing the world to become better is collective you, yourself, You, the whole world isn't dependent only and solely on you. You can take a break sometimes, we all want to see.
This world better.
So like, it's not all on your shoulders, Okay, it's the whole hood. I know this is a different episode, especially after having all these eyes on us now after the fire in Fury and the Garson Hayes. Obviously this is not a normal episode. But this ain't normal times, and I just wanted to step in and be a big homie with y'all for a little bit and just kind of pull pull back and just be like, Hey, real niggas need to break some time too.
All right, keep your head up, little Politics, y'all.
All right now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded in East Slows, boil Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If you're in the Coldbrew coffee we got Terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use promo code hood
get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski killing the beat softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com.
I'm a speller for you because I know m A T.
T O S O W s ki dot com Matthowsowski dot com.
He got more music and.
Stuff like that on there, so gonna check out the heat. Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media. Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the One and Overly Mattowsowski. Still killing the beat softly, so listen. Don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.
Traditional Chi
Edition one