"Memory"

First Image of Memory Being Made
Article: click here

Source: Live Science

"MJ"

At three or four years old I was watching music videos like they were cartoons. My mom taped the "Thriller" video for me back then and we'd watch it over and over again. By the time the year 2000 hit, a Jackson 5 and the Thriller LP were the only records my father had left from a stacked collection he built prior and after my birth. I wrote a poem a while back that I ended up including on Side B of my Master's thesis titled Tape Decks. I included a link to the poem below. Michael Jackson definitely had an impact on my interest for the music video. Early on, I picked up on shows like Yo MTV Raps (late 80s) and BET's Rap City (early/mid 90s) because of my interest for videos during the mid-80s.

Today, BET's pathetic, lazy programming holds up to the low standards that its shaped its programming into over the past decade. Each year they get worse and it shows especially when one of our great musical contributors passes on, for example, James Brown and Isaac Hayes. Give it a couple more days, and it will be back to the same old business. Garbage broadcasting, no JB, no Michael Jackson, no Isaac Hayes, nothing. With that said, I've included a link to a youtube video recording of a young Michael Jackson and Diana Ross below. I don't like how MJ handled the controversy that surrounded his musical success throughout his adulthood, but I acknowledge the part his LPs played in my parent's lives during the 70s and for me during the 80s. Rest in peace MJ.

"Chocolate" by Lee R. for Tape Decks, Side B, 2008©: click here

Michael Jackson & Diana Ross: click here
YOUTUBE.com

"P-Dog"

Hip Hop cassette classic.

"Trading Card Jones"

There use to be quite a few card shops in the Northeast, around 4 or 5 in the early to mid 90's. Recently, I started revisiting one of those card shops. The last one left called "Comics, Cards and Collectibles" on Dyer Street. Around every two months or so I go back to check and see if the owner got those DC Milestone comics he says he has that I keep askin' about. The comics are never there but I always end up finding a box set of cards I use to collect as a kid. The first was the Skybox Milestone Dakota Universe Trading Card box set. It includes a caption on the box that says, "Because Great Cards Are Hard to Find". The second box set I found was the YO! MTV Raps collection from 91'. I haven't collected cards in well over a decade. Back then, I was never able to get around to buyin' a whole box set cause of the cost so when I find the box sets today for around 10 dollars, its a real cool suprise.

This year my family got me a pack of President Obama trading cards for my birthday which I was real hype about. Like I said, having not collected cards in so long, nostalgia hit. Most recently, again, I visited the "Comics, Cards and Collectibles" shop lookin' for my DC Milestones and found another trading card series that I use to collect. The Collegiate Wild Cards. Above is Kenny Anderson, which out of the hundred plus cards in this set, is one of the five worth keeping. Still though, it was cool find. Check out Kenny Anderson here: youtube.com

"soulVerse (photos)"

"Becky & Me"
-click on image-

"...The only one of my kind in so many places,
Alone. In two worlds at the same time."

*Quote from Joe Pacheco's poem titled "The First of the Nuyoricans"
Dedicated to Sonia Maria Sotomayor