The Billiken's Bluff

Falling Man:

Someone told Rumsey one night, it was Dockery the waggish adman, that everything in his life would be different, Rumsey's if one letter in his name was different. An a for the u. Making him, effectively, Ramsey. It was the u, the rum, that had shaped his life and mind. The way he walks and talks, his slouchings, his very size and shape, the slowness and thickness that pour off him, the way he puts his hand down his shirt to scratch an itch. This would all be different if he'd been born a Ramsey.

Bill Lawton is Bin Laden on a cell phone with static. Anthony Fernandes is working out of a call center in Mumbai, minus the nom de plume. Barack's middle name is Hussein and his last name is not Ramsey.



Holiday shopping season 1998. He sat shotgun outside Short Hills mall,



newly-purchased Tupac Shakur Greatest Hits double CD in bag. His dad's CD player, he wanted to hear IT. A patriarch who opted not to curse, ever, casually or seriously, above it all. Son opted for Changes because it stood for something cause both Black and White smoking crack tonight, gave him a goose bump when the climate control was right. Different versions of heaven, albeit. They agreed to disagree.



When new of Biggie's death was broadcasted on NY1 he was seated in front of his Grandma's wood framed television.



The shot heard round the world, this was not. He remembers this living room with thick carpet and a parakeet suspended in cage above the television when he heard that Biggie was not going to be alive for the release of his second album presciently title Life After Death. Why? And why did he only have one verse on Notorious Thugs. This wasn't enough, neither. His grandmother remembers where she was when JFK was gunned down or so they tell her. Plates did not leave her and crash to the floor in appreciation of gravity framed on the wood TV.






Sublime's Date Rape a jaded warning with a beat. An aunt, a feminist ready to attack, does not appreciate any nuisance when they talk her through it. But Santeria, yea there is all types of chauvinism and gun play but listen to it on the way back from Jones Beach and then write your book report, savvy?

What we care about, this type of shit, does not transfer by touch, time is not on our side yes it is.



You can't talk anyone through it. It's like liking a presidential candidate just because maybe he reminds you of a would be member of your family, just because.



You know?