I’m off to screenplay for the rest of the afternoon, so I’ll leave y’all with a classic from the Wu-Tang Golden Era. The video is just average shakes up until the part where Ghostface dons the bathrobe. From that point forward, it’s all gravy. (Question: Why are bathrobes generally verboten outside the home? Who will be the fashion icon who liberates us from this tyranny?)
A few years back, I saw Pete Rock do a DJ set during Def Jux‘s CMJ showcase. When he put on this record, the crowd went absolutely nuts. One of my great musical memories of the past decade.
Jordan // Apr 16, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Having seen a student from my alma mater walking around a grocery store in a bathrobe and slippers, I can tell you that I felt at least a little embarrassed. Both for him and myself, since people like him form the opinion people have of my former college. Personally, my feeling is that of “you couldn’t even be bothered to put on pants?”. It just seems a bit slovenly.
And man, Scarface has got to be one of the most sampled flicks in the 90s. I watched it in the theater a few months back and all I could think was “Cocaine. It’s a hell of a drug.”
Brendan I. Koerner // Apr 16, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Ah, but what kind of bathrobe was it? Stock terrycloth number with holes (aka the Grandpa Robe)? Or something swankier, along the lines of Ghostface’s sartorial choice? As is so often the case in fashion, it’s all about the quality of the duds.
As for Tony Montana’s flagship product, I believe George Carlin put it best: “What does cocaine make you feel like? It makes you feel like having more cocaine.”
Jordan // Apr 16, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Yeah, this was a terrcloth number. Pretty skeezy. Ghostface was definitely rocking a higher quality robe. I think some of it is going to come down to whether or not you have anything else on underneath said robe.
“Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography” by Dominic Streatfeild is a really well-written book on the subject. However, it’s also so depressing that I have yet to finish it.
The sections about the bio and neurochemistry of cocaine (and by extension other stimulants) are particularly interesting to me. It’s kind of terrifying just how effectively they can subvert the reward circuitry of the brain. In one experiment with a chimp, the usual “press a lever, get a dose” system was modified such that each successive dose required one more press of the lever than the last one. The experiment was stopped when the chimp got up to ten thousand presses of the bar for a dose of cocaine. Admittedly this was an animal experiment with an isolated subject that had no other stimulation, but it still tends to lend credence to the idea that one of the few things people holding people back from cocaine addiction is a lack of access due to price.
Brendan I. Koerner // Apr 16, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I’ve actually read that book. Actually led me to some great sources for my own book–I have a chapter about drug use, and Streatfeild’s reporting about cocaine during World War I was a huge help. I’m also amazed at his reporting from the jungle labs of Colombia–the guy really went all out.
You raise an interesting point that ties into my continuing-to-evolve outlook on drug prohibition. I’ll definitely be tackling that issue in the not-too-distant future–a Microkhan favorite.