YOU KNOW YOUR ASS IS GETTIN OLD IF… (EARLY 30’s EDITION)
30 is the new 20. That’s what they keep telling me. But with the aches, pains, changed views and realizations that are going down, I’ve realized maybe 30 is the new 30 (or in my case, 32). Nuthin wrong with that, but to all my fellow early 30 somethings, keep this in mind…YOU CAN’T PARTICIPATE IN A RETRO FAD IF YOU DID IT THE FIRST TIME AROUND. I mean you can, but you’d better look 19 if you decide to rock a mohawk and you’re not Mr. T. And when you start going bald, attempting the receeding hairline cornrows is a bad bad bad bad bad look man. Bad. Anyway, if you remember any of this shit or any of these things apply to you…you’re gettin old as hell…
1. You were lovin Crystal Pepsi and just knew it would be the next big thing (oops).
2. You thought Zima was healthier than regular beer because your piss came out damn near clear.
3. You wore your shirt tucked in so people could see your disconnected Radio Shack beeper. The said beeper had girls diggin your style regardless, so when you see somebody profiling on a Blackberry they look soft to you.
4. You bought a Black Bart Simpson t-shirt in Harlem and when the white kids in school saw it, they thought it was defective.
5. You now realize that despite the fact that this 21 year old Pratt graduate looks good, you’d much rather stay home and serve it to the kleenex than listen to this dumb broad talk about her "mid-life crisis" now that she’s done with school. And how she thinks it’s ridiculous that she has to take a bus to the Morgan stop on the L train because of late night track construction…before she asks you about some mash up version of "Love Lockdown". Shut up, bitch.
6. You remember buying a bootleg cassette tape for the first time and being mad that there were no damn liner notes.
7. Your first time seeing Chris Rock was ordering one rib and a sip of soda in I’m Gonna Git U Sucka.
8. You had a crush on SOMEBODY from Head Of The Class (Robin Givens was my first..um..u know).
9. You bought a pair of Reebok Pump sneakers and spent the next 10 hours in front of a basketball hoop pumpin up them shits up and trying to dunk the ball and were crushed when you found out it was all a scam. I cried. Fuck Reebok.
10. There was always one kid in school that could dance real well on some Club MTV shit and he always wore those Z. Cavaricci pants with the double belts and a floral print shirt. He somehow drove a Mustang in the 9th grade too, pumpin some 2 In A Room or Twin Hype in the car.
11. Your school was closed for an asbestos scare and you accused your moms of trying to kill you when she made you return to school after it re-opened.
12. Your moms was nervous about you seeing Juice, Menace II Society and Boyz-N-The Hood in the movie theater because early 90’s hood movies always ended in a fuckin shootout.
13. You remember the whole school buggin out and being scared to get laid when it became known that Magic Johnson had HIV (I wasn’t gettin no play any fuckin way so the shit didn’t matter me none).
14. When money got tight, you bought all your clothes at Big & Tall Men because they had those Knights Of the Round Table brand rugby shirts. They had the same logo as Polo, but the horse was facing in the opposite direction. $29 a shirt playboy.
15. You remember watching OJ Simpson in the Bronco chase on TV and cheering him on like he was in the Indy 500 or some shit (at least I was).
16. You now realize that Omega-3’s aren’t the name of a new hip-hop trio.
17. You just knew that Cross Colors was gonna re-invent the fashion wheel (oops).
18. You’re scared to play pick up basketball now because you know you’ll be in pain for a month.
19. You thought Capri Sun had the most genius packaging ever (it really did and still does).
20. You NEVER EVER EVER let it be known it was your birthday because when people found out you’d get 1500 birthday punches and come home all lumped the fuck up (do they do this shit anymore or do these kids just slap box in real fights, throw gang signs and talk a bunch of shit…besides dressing like women?)
21. You collected CD longboxes and hung them on your wall like 3-D posters until the music industry got cheap and downsized the packaging (while near doubling the price of the CD…RIP Music biz, you deserved it).
22. You blew on your video game cartridges like a madman when the game wouldn’t load…And the first dude in school to beat Mike Tyson on Mike Tyson’s Punch Out wouldn’t shut the fuck up and stop bragging.
23. You wore a Triple Fat Goose coat inside out because the lining looked like an MCM jacket and it only cost $89.
24. You’ve done one of these current fashion trends the first time around -probably about 20 years ago- and it bothers you deeply to see others your age fully embrace them like they didn’t do them back then (high top fades, Mohawks, loud ass tight shirts, etc). Yeah, that’s a pic of me in 9th grade.
25. You have no shame in leaving a club/lounge/party at 11:30, because you finally realize that good things rarely happen after1AM and you’d rather miss a possible night of wild debauchery than a possible classic installment of Sports Center.
Welcome to the club!!!!!!!!!! And behave accordingly….
July 7th, 2009 at 9:42 am
CO-SIGN ALL OF THE ABOVE!
July 7th, 2009 at 9:48 am
thanks for making me feel old
July 7th, 2009 at 11:06 am
J Zone is a Genius!
List was maaad funny J!!!
Them Knights of The Round Table shirts is some real shit!! Fake Lo anyone? Hahaha
July 7th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I thought Reebok Pump would make me better at sport => EPIC FAIL
July 8th, 2009 at 7:51 am
kids gettin beat up for they birthday was the shit, made you tough… in my hood you not only got beat up but you were expected to spring for the motel room and the keg with your b-day money… that shit kept the sissy level low… ever since Columbine they been runnin rampant and ruining everythang! Bring back the bullies!!!
July 8th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Birthday punches need to be brought back. As does being able to whup your kids ass as a parent. Why is it that these video games can get all 3-D and feature killing, but everybody’s knuckle game went south and parents cant regulate without some nosy neighbor callin the po-lice? Back in the days most kids were tougher, but not as bad if that makes sense. They respected adults and you wouldn’t hear about em beating up an old lady for a gang initiation. but take a 15 year old from the 80’s/early 90’s against one of these modern day kids in a fair one and its a wrap. the ol school kid would knuckle down the new school kid and the new school kid would go call his gang for help and shoot him instead of takin the loss. soft.
July 12th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
YOUNG! Co-signing on EVERYTHING, especially #20…I remember my freshman year I had gotten through most of the day without anybody finding out it was my birthday. Then when I was in gym class, a girl I was friends with in Junior High remembered and wished me a happy birthday. I got lit up in the locker room afterwards.
The lack of fear of somebody being able to whip your ass is the leading cause as to why there’s no respect now. Kids are pussies now, but run their mouths. And I don’t care how in style it is, if I were a teenager now, you wouldn’t catch me wearing my sister’s jeans like they do now.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I saw a fight at a high school basketball game 4 years ago. They were slap boxing, so I thought they were playin around. Nope it was real. No knuckle game at all, fightin like girls, slappin each other and talkin loud. But then they’ll jump you in groups of 10 or pull out a gun on you. I refuse to fear a kid in some saggy spandex throwin gang signs but don’t know who Tookie Williams was. These kids are soft.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I’m 31, and far too many of these apply to me. I remember being mad that NBC cut into the NBA Finals (Ewing-Hakeem, for fuck’s sake!) for OJ and AC. Can’t play streetball more than once a year (bum knee and back) myself and I keep much earlier hours. Getting old creeps up on you.
What about if you watched “In Living Color” Sunday nights and “Yo MTV Raps” like 5 days a week, and saw the old Celtics’ Big Three (Bird-Parish-McHale)?
July 16th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Yo! MTV Raps 5 days a week: those were the golden days. I still have tapes that I made off the TV (hooked the tv up to the stereo, taped the songs off the show!). now them are DVD´s I would buy!
The day I turned 30th, my digestion was like “fuck this hard work” and I am fighting a beer gut ever since. shit. I used to be able to eat a whole cow and walk back to the buffet for seconds without even loosening the belt.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:42 am
I still got all my MTV Raps and local access rap show VHS tapes. I was just thinking how I’mma take this rare clip of Wu-Tang in ‘91 on public access TV (actually it was GZA, RZA, ODB and one of their boys) promoting the Words From the Genius album and ODB is killin it on the beat box. Anybody know how to upload VHS to youtube?
July 16th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
I was @ the game when Magic made the announcement
July 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
what about the “reggie bar” — candy bar…
or land of the lost..?
or that stupid interactive show ” pix”… on channel 11 i think? when u had to say ” pix” for the ball to move?
atari ? commodor 64?
August 10th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
#14…..that’s all I’m sayin’.