Twice in the last eight days the singular joy of connecting with a lost favorite record has come my way. That first flashback from the archives of my mind came last Friday, a reunion with Dinosaur Jr’s 1987 album You’re Living All Over Me. This set of tracks took me through the WCS deadline and pulsated through my week.
Then came the song collection that’s behind the paragraphs that open this Sojourn:
Having not heard the all-time top-10 West Coast hip hop album in ages, that 15 percent of my turn-of-the millenium personality derived from 40 Dayz & 40 Nightz—Xzibit’s best album—fully escaped my brain: Dude’s punchlines. His religious imagery. (Jay-Dub allusions, specifically) The constant subtextual opposition to Sean Combs’ detestable aesthetic. “Shiny-suited rappers” was the euphemism for a late-90s hip hop where being industry blacklisting was real.
For we were in a war, people.
What was there not to love about this brand of fight music?
Welcome to LA
Where you can see the whole city burnin’
Cuz the cops got Uzis and the dealers keep servin’
And your kids ain’t learnin shit, except this:
Sex power and wealth
Fuck everything else
—Xzibit, Los Angeles Tiimes
As mentioned in the opening video, many years ago I tried to take out Rush Limbaugh through discourse on The Root and on NPR, recording red-hot critiques that never got properly distributed. Those center-left outlets couldn’t handle my fastball. All of the stuff that’s left online is this polite piece of print.
I’ve been done had zero bandwidth for polite pieces of print. Y’all need to put that shit on the clock, too.
Sometimes I wonder what would might have resulted if I and others of my roughhewn ilk had been enabled to go HAM on Rush Limbaugh and Co. Would it have been like that dream scenario of murdering Hitler in his crib? Or more akin to Luke’s proton torpedo? Pick your Hail Mary metaphor; the language of humiliation is all that the in-power crowd respects and knows.
40 Dayz & 40 Nightz brings that feeling out of me. I want to talk big shit and destroy opponents, verbally. Spoiling for a donnybrook, I want to—as the late Golden State Warrior Saafir puts it on the absolutely incandescent “3 Card Molly”—
“Pull your spine through your mind and watch your body drop”
Because, you know, fuck those guys.
Too gorgeous up here
Tunnel Falls, Oregon
Apparently, it’s time for 10:
10 UCSC’s faculty morale even lower than school’ budget projections
At UC Santa Cruz, significant shortfalls had already set off alarms. Then along came last week’s report on faculty morale in the face of DC’s next-level cuts.
Santa Cruz Outlook
“This report also signals to me that if this continues, and all of these effects start to happen, I don’t see how we can continue to offer the same number of majors and degrees,” said Tanner WouldGo, educational policy committee chair and a teaching professor in the Writing Program. “I really worry about suspension and programs not being able to fulfill their promise.”
Lil Hit
The crypto grift is happening right in front of us. While the wealth being racked up is difficult to chart, the influence being sold to the currency’s biggest holder is obviously massive.
NY Times
‘We humans are stability-seeking creatures. Getting accustomed to what used to seem unthinkable can feel like an accomplishment. And when the unthinkable recedes at least a bit — when someone gets released from detention (as the Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was a few weeks ago) or some particularly egregious proposal is withdrawn or blocked by the courts (as the ban on international students at Harvard has been, at least temporarily) — it’s easy to mistake it for proof that the dark times are ending.’
—Masha Gessen
9 Sacha Jenkins (1971 -2025)
Ego Trip cofounder, White Mandingos guitarist, Emmy-winning documentarian—and much, much more—Sacha Jenkins died last week, and the development has hurt my heart to a stunning degree. Shawn Setaro’s inquiry into Jenkins’ career—from when it just started kicking into gear—is the nearest thing to healing tonic that I’ve found.
This Queens filmmaker’s son and I met only twice, first around Madison Avenue—I think in 2000—as I tried to leave my ESPN The Magazine staff writer position to become Vibe’s music editor. We met again five years later in South Pasadena, at the wedding of Danyel Smith and Elliot Wilson. Here Wilson eulogizes his man from way, way back.
The Cipher / Uproxx
Sacha Jenkins was OG hip hop journalism brethren, one of the few and the proud.
8 Kill two Oregon weed dealers in Shasta County? Prepare to pay!
In 2021, Meba Getachew, 32, Gunnar Yeager drove down from Oregon to sell a little weed to a Shasta County man named Simon Tikue. Their bodies were found near Oak Run, a tiny unicorporated community east of Redding. Both had fatal gunshot wounds.
Tikue’s DNA was found on the scene. A jury convicted him of the murders last August. On Tuesday, Shasta County Judge Tamara Wood sentenced Tikue to 107 years in prison, without possibility of parole.
Redheaded Blackbelt
Other charges include two counts of second-degree robbery, kidnapping for robbery and assault with a Firearm.
Tikue was also convicted of a 2019 Mary Jane robbery and kidnapping, this time in a Redding Best Buy parking lot.
Lil Hit
In the latest of an intermittent string of shady shenanigans, Shawn Kemp pleaded guilty to second-degree assault for a parking lot shooting. The legendary leaper avoids jail time, but almost certainly misses out on once-in-a-retirement NBA Finals reunion opportunities featuring the OKC Thunder, nee Seattle Supersonics Sweet timing, dude.
Yahoo Sports
The Full Herb Caen
It’s not credible that the sex worker nicknamed “The Punisher”—a significant witness in Diddy’s Manhattan trial—got that name from his style of basketball play, as cable new orgs present report with uniformly straight faces…
I am curious to see how WNBA ratings hold with Caitlin Clark out injured for two weeks…
Trump doesn’t have to lose the battle over his would-be signature legislation to see his presidency damaged. It’s the lost aura of invincibility that hurts, differently…
Kind of like Sean Combs. Dude doesn’t have to go to prison to be completely ruined; it’s the power of the conversation that’s taking back everything that nigga’s stolen…
Chillingly, this week the Meidas Touch TikTok account was given a “strike” for posting a 4547 taco meme. Administrators reportedly called the post bullying…
7 The A’s truly despise their West Sactown home
To say that the honeymoon is over is to imply that love was ever felt by Oakland’s world-famous Athletics for West Sacramento’s Sutter Health Park. Two months into an deal that could run as long as three years, the scenario’s more like the A’s are trapped in a shotgun marriage, forced to fuck someone they have no business being in bed with.
SF Gate / SF Standard
Manager Mark Kotsay’s complaint over an inability to see a critical play this week is only Oakland’s most recent. Most notably, top-free-agent acquisition Luis Severino told the San Francisco Standard, “This just isn’t a big-league ballpark.”
Lil Hit
The only ones who had accurately called that day’s OJ verdict, shoe leather reporter Jim Crogan and I shared conspiring smirks in LA Weekly’s editorial bullpen. Crogan died this week, and Steven Mikulan’s appreciation of the classic journo drives home what this loss represents.
Capital & Main
24-Hour Party People
I couldn’t in good conscience avoid writing that top headline. There are whole families in Flyover America who are starving for cine-political wordplay.
6 ‘Did you see the drummer’s hair?’
I’ve not consumed Pavements, despite being a Level Seven fan of the Central Valley’s greatest rock and roll contribution. Louder than You Think, the documentary focused on OG Pavement drummer Gary Young? I have taken in that one. Charming lil Stockton flick.
Like John Huston’s Fat City.
Meanwhile, Christopher J. Lee has indeed seen Alex Ross Perry’s sprawling new doc, and is thinking that all of its accolades are earned.
Jacobin
“Pavements emulates the gestalt of the band itself. From their origins as a noise-rock recording project with limited ambitions to the swansong 1999 album Terror Twilight helmed by Nigel Godrich of Radiohead fame, Pavement made leaps and bounds between LPs, advancing their sound in new directions while also courting a growing fanbase,” Lee writes.
Songs mean a lot when songs are bought.
And so are you.
Lil Hit
The big buzz around the NBA draft is that Giannis Antetokounmpo might be moved out of Milwaukee. A step behind that is the notion Portland will pick Lithuanian guard Kasparas Jacucionis with Pick 11.
Blazers Edge
Cintra Wilson all but gets away with murder
You can't politely fly a Confederate flag, but you can hang a Larry Bird jersey.
I'm not one to play favorites, but this free podcast episode is my total fucking favorite, so far. It builds to the kind of conclusion I wish every podcast could reach.
5 Fascist targeting of PNW ahead of sked
Instead of Memorial Day sunbathers, last weekend saw Seattle’s queerest park filled with right-wing Christians. Mayday USA drew protestors and conflict, and inevitable clashes with law enforcement. Now the agenda-driven federal government is planning to investigate last weekend’s protest.
It’s reasonable to question how Parks & Rec officials let these organized conservatives use Cal Anderson Park to bait their hook. So, The Stranger did that.
Axios / The Stranger
Inspired by a religious movement in Peru, the Mayday set is anti-abortion and anti-trans.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said last Saturday: “Today’s far-right rally was held here for this very reason – to provoke a reaction by promoting beliefs that are inherently opposed to our city’s values, in the heart of Seattle’s most prominent LGBTQ+ neighborhood.”
The Stranger’s request for information on how the event was approved appear to have gone unanswered by the city.
Six hours of protest led to 23 arrests and hours of tape that’s bound to run loop-like on conservative media.
Lil Hit
For the month beginning Monday, Washington’s Cannabis Social Equity Program will begin accepting applications for 52 new licenses, in what will be the state’s largest expansion since social equity was established there in 2020.
Ganjapreneur
Yes, we Caen!
To me, it’s weird how women burst out laughing every time I complain about being cheated out of credit for the outside sex I didn’t have while married…
That Dems have yet to make hay of the chief exec’s bankruptcy record as he attempts to drive the national debt deeper into the trillions is the greatest example yet of its ineptitude…
Essentially, this enterprise is journalistic busking. Tips are acceptable and even encouraged.
Sevens Report founder Tom Essaye should end up with credit for popularizing the Wall Street acronym TACO—Trump always chickens out—which calls out 4547’s primitive bluffing style...
Elon was twisted on ketamine and Ecstasy when sentenced three million people of color to certain death by slashing USAid. Never forget…
5 Unreasonably-yet-predictably California Senate kills vets psychedelics bill
After sailing through two committees and apparently heading toward legislative approval, on Friday the bill that would have begun a pilot psychedelics therapy program for veterans was cancelled by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Members decline to even take the matter or designate the as a two-year project that might be revisited later in the session.
Marijuana Moment
The pilot program would have been overseen by the UC system.
Under the law, Cali would have also begun a Veterans and First Responders Research Pilot Special Fund, with continuous appropriations to pay for the work. But that would be obviously beneficial, and we’re done doing that.
Lil Hit
Fifty million gallons of trash, untreated sewage and industrial chemicals run out of Tijuana, Mexico and into southern San Diego County. Each day.
NY Times
4 OKC fans’ ecstacy is Seattle’s agony
It’s been 17 years since the glorious and dignified Seattle SuperSonics left for Oklahoma, and if you think those fans up in Washington are in any way celebrating SGA, Chet Holmgren, and the rest of the Thunder heading to The NBA Finals? You haven’t spent time around those bitter, broken, restless people.
Seattle Times
In their Finals appearances, the Sonics lost to the Washington Bullets in the 1978 Finals, beat the Bullets to win in 1979, and then lost to Michael Jordan and the Bulls in 1996.
“ESPN insists on living in the past with their NBA coverage,” posted podcast host Ross Read. “I think it’s insulting to the people of Seattle to show Sonics playoff highlights during an OKC Thunder playoff game.”
Lil Hit
Acording to the PODS trends report, we’re all losing population, Spokane aside.
PODS
3 POTUS to score points off of talented kid in Clovis who just wants to run
Openly trans Jrupa Valley athlete AB Hernandez aims to compete in this weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation high school track championships. On top of the pressure to perform, the kid will gets to know that the President of the United States is whipping up a world of disapproval for political gain.
Reuters
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