DKelSmith Weblog Aficionado Average Debonair Man vs. the Vicissitudes of Life

Man...what the hell is going on? I was searching for something to watch on television the other day and flipped to the cable guide. As the endless channels of drivel slowly scrolled by, the "Playas Guide to...." caught my eye. Out of a morbid sense of curiosity I flipped to MTV or VH1. Hell, I can't tell which is which anymore, except I think VH1 actually plays music videos........ Anyway, this show called the "Playas Guide", basically critiques movies, songs, television shows, or actual events that influence "Pop Culture", On this particular day, being that the 20th anniversary of a famous Brian DePalma film had rolled around, they were critiquing Scarface . The panel of sophisticates included none other than, Scarface, Ice Cube, Raekwon (Of the Wu Tang Clan fame), and a few other rappers whose faces blend into the myriad of typecast studio machismo. What was most disturbing was the fact that all of these people talked about this movie as i

Pimp Juice anyone? I really can't believe that this is going to hit the markets. While I do admire the business savvy of today's stars, I think that we have become to complacent with the moral relativism of our society. Pimp is a bad term, no matter what the connotation. And, the idea of our youth, more importantly, my kids walking around with cans of "Pimp Juice" makes me shudder. Look at the can..... The font inscription is reminiscent of those oh-so-unforgettable, but yet we would love to forget 1970's. Too bad that kids nowadays look at the word "pimp", and they think of something "cool", "hip", or "stylish". I think it is really pathetic when you think about who a real pimp is, and what a real pimp does. pimp ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pimp) n. One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer. intr.v. pimped, pimp·ing, pimps To serve as a procurer of prostitutes. I needn't w

A very, very, very bad Daddy...... Second child caught in apparent murder-suicide dies Police: Father intentionally drove SUV into truck Tuesday, September 16, 2003 Posted: 6:36 PM EDT (2236 GMT) You can view the article in its entirety here . Stories like this utterly disgust me. This guy is worse than Susan Smith, if such an analogy is even possible. Apparently this guy was going through a divorce with his wife of 10 years, and things were not going his way. In an apparent suicide note he laments about not getting a job, and makes the bizarre statement that if he is not there to raise his kids, then "nobody would". I cannot imagine a person being cruel enough to hurt a child. Any child, let alone your own flesh and blood. Apparently he drowned his two year old daughter and attempted to drown his 4 year old son. Then the genius takes the other two kids in his SUV and pulls out in front of a tractor trailer that is hauling cars. Un-be-liev-a-ble. He

Two years and counting... Today is September 11th, 2003. Most of us realize that this is the second anniversary of those horrific attacks that killed approximately 3,000 American citizens in New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Since that time, American Forces have swept across the Middle East, toppling tyrannical regimes and attempting to bring peace and order to the region. "The War on Terror". That seems to be the catch phrase that everyone uses to describe what many believe is protection against radical islamic extremists. However, we are not winning the war, not on terror at least. Yes, we did beat the Taliban, we crushed Saddam's best troops, and we have begun to round up lunatic after lunatic. However, we are still terrified. So much so that we question the sincerity of our government's efforts. We are terrified about money, terrified about how thin our Army is being stretched. We fear that today there could be an attack by Al-Qaeda that could commem

Bad Daddy... Okay, the only reason that I am sharing this experience with you lucky viewers is the fact that I finally had the nerve to tell my wife about this. I often hear about people doing such ridiculous things as "forgetting to take their kids out of the car in the summertime, and coming out and finding them dead in the car seats later in the afternoon." I often scoff when I hear these reports and say, "How could you forget your child in the car?" Well, I had a similar situation, although I did not forget my child in the car, or anywhere else for that matter, but I thought that I had forgotten her. My wife went out of town to visit a friend of hers from College. The boys were at their grandmother's house for the week, so it was just me and my daughter Alexandra(Alex) for a few days. Since we were running low on food, I decided to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. After I wandered aimlessly from shelf to shelf for about an hour, I figured I h