It's extremely difficult. Remember this, and keep practicing.

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Somebody defaced the movable letter sign in front of the Meredith Mathews YMCA on 23rd Ave. What could it possibly mean?

Put on some boots & braces and hop on an exercise bike! Rude boys on a yoga mat! Ben Sherman, Fred Perry, Chelsea cuts, Lonsdale shirts, bomber jackets. All of these things at the Meredith Mathews YMCA on 23rd Ave.

SHARP skins only, don't be a jerk.

Maybe it's yesterday's casual racism, but in case you hadn't heard—the new ad campaign for PopChips features your boy Ashton Kutcher doing a variety of characters, all filming a video-dating intro clip. (What the fuck that has to do with weird-but kinda good-tasting-chips, I have no idea.) He does a sensitive biker, a British hippie (in fact a piss-poor Russell Brand impersonation), and the real heat rock—an Indian Bollywood producer named Raj, who also proclaimed the Chili Lime PopChips flavor to be "the Bombay." His shitty Apu-style accent, nose prosthesis and noticeable brownface makeup rightfully riled up a good deal of people, especially after Hari Kondabolu, New York rap crew Das Racist, and blogger/tech vet Anil Dash started kicking up dust about it on Twitter. (There was a really good article by Dash about how everybody responsible for this campaign could actually work to correct this likely unintentionally offensive mistake, instead of just pulling the ad, offering a lame apology and sweeping it under the rug until the next time—which, it seems, is exactly what is happening.)

This is old news, though; what's still getting me about all this is the reaction that Das Racist is getting from this situation. God help anybody of any color if they dare object to white people making racist characterizations of them; the anxieties of mainstream Americans regarding "their country" (and their privlieges to run roughshod over anybody else) that they perceive as being "lost" in these days and times really bring out the best in people. The DR Twitter timeline is full of retweets of angry, stupid people telling them to "pump gas," that they'll rub DR's faces in dog shit, that they like "bang Indian chicks," and such. I spoke with DR's Honorable Prophet Dapwell about this situation. "This is the most inundated with crazy white people we've ever been, for sure," he tells me via phone. I ask if there's been death threats. "I mean, there's threats of violence for sure; I'll read one that I just got...'you guys are fucking stupid...and you live in Brooklyn!!! I'm going to find you and beat your sensitive asses' pussies.'" (Yo, that does't even really make sense, dog.)

Dap tells me that it's the younger heads around 19 or so, born after events that might lend some context, really don't seem to understand the ruckus: "they literally dont understand why blackface, brownface, yellowface or whatever is disrespectful." (Maybe they just need some good old fashioned, racially-charged murders or trials or OH WAIT.) I personally think any paint on any face, whether you're a racist actor, a Juggalo, or a molly-tripping MGMT fan, is an affront to god. "I just feel weird," Dap sighs. "Today just feels really weird."

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I mean, at least he's honest...

...is his former '60s band the Amboy Dukes were SO FUCKING GOOD. Their radio hit, "Journey to the Center of the Mind," is an amazing million mile an hour rave up. Lord knows HOW that ended up on AM radio! I can only imagine the amount of payola. Thing is, the rest of the A.Dukes catalog is just. As. Good. Yeah, so, it's hard to know I have ALL his records sitting in my collection...and I that I love the shit outta them.

I even have his first couple solo records. They're fucking great also. Whatever...I, however, have NEVER bought anything new so he's not gotten any of my cash...but still...I sometimes feel a little guilty.

THIS post, "63 Reasons Why Boybands Were Better In The '90s," is a couple days old, but have a look, for real...it's quite disturbing. Uh...the styling...seriously, WHAT THE FUCK!? My fave is #32. "Our boybands had awesome hairstyles, like Justin Timberlakes ramen noodle hair."

Also: they were boys, but not actual bands. So, "boybands?" I never understood that angle. AND...JORTS?! Wow.

So, about Canada: Tay Sean couldn't get in. We thought this might be the case, and we had a day off before Toronto, so while in Pittsburgh we met up with an 206 native/LA resident, the young savage Mike Mash, AKA Documentary Mike (he's seen a documentary about everything), also known as Research Mike or occasionally Mike Concepcion. When Tay couldn't get in, we had to roll him back to Buffalo, where he'd be camped out for a couple days about a block from the world-famous Anchor Bar; first though, we had to get back into the US.

We got to the border a little after 6pm. The second that bruh at the gate (Cuban-American I'd guess, stocky, mustachioed, darker than me) heard that one of us got turned around, he instantly got loud and ornery with us. "OK, everybody's going in," he said, interrupting the driver's explanation. "EVERYBODY'S GOING IN," he shouted over him again; like that, armed, armored DHS goons swung our doors open; Tay, who was trying to get off the phone with his lady, was the first one they saw. "GET OFF THE PHONE, MAN," said the goon. They led us out one by one, then d'd us up like the opposing team, one goon to a man. They surrounded us and walked us into the building; "GET YOUR HANDS OUTTA YOUR POCKETS" yelled the insufferable pig with a gun behind me. "Put em in hard," the superior guy instructed the rest; this meant the detainment pen with hard seats, I think. On the other side of the clear wall was the soft-seat section, where a brown family with two young kids sat. Tay waved; they stared. "They gonna bust us just for that, watch," someone joked. "Like, how you know them? They part of your cell too?" After watching a half hour of Nancy fucking Grace (while they tossed the van for contraband we wouldn't be stuipid enough to cross the border with), we were led to another room, and instructed to sit facing a wall as the officers questioned each of us individually. There's nothing quite as poisonous-feeling as the impotent rage of being hemmed up by police. Eventually we were let go and back on the road, where we got our guy hooked up with a room. We jumped back across the border with minimal static and proceeded to Drake's town, the T-Dot.

Our mood was dark as the midnight sky outside, but we were relieved to be headed for the lights, rid of all the mess back home for a couple days.

Kenyon College (founded by Episcopalian Bishop Philander Chase in 1824) was a blast but they are true to their motto "Kenyon Is Not Near Anywhere." The spot had the bass up to unholy levels—this intimate gallery felt more like the cabin from Evil Dead 2 when the spirits were BOOOM-trying to break through from the other side. The kids there were cool, way into it, and had almost kind of a Cornish vibe to them, just some liberal arts students grinding it out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Heads drove up from Columbus, such as the openers, tropical popsters Way Yes, whose percussionist flagrantly admitted to biting Tendai's steez after seeing their latest KEXP session (just no shame to his giz-ame). A trio from Lexington, KY were big fans; as we sat in the van for a sec, I played the lean, unselfconscious funk of Velella Velella's Atlantis Massif, which got me asked "who is this?" about four times.

Buit wasn't all smoke and love: before we left our hotel, just five minutes up the road from the Kenyon College radio station that played Shabazz, THEESatisfaction, and Kung Foo Grip, Ish and Dai spotted a cat, another guest of the hotel, with a swastika tattoo on his leg. That got us talking as we picked our way to Pittsburgh, rolling through the deepest, most isolated-looking backwoods cuts I've ever seen. "Did you hear about the shootings in Tulsa?" My small-town anxiety was starting to kick in tough right around Coschocton, OH. Dust, trees, pickups, churches, beat-looking houses, and the occasional pissed-off guy with no sleeves. I'm a lifelong inner-city denizen, and this Hee-Haw shit was officially not gittin' er done for me. I accidentally erased the steps on my Google map to get to our destination, just as the service went completely south; we trucked on, eyeing our surroundings warily. We talked about poor people riding for these rich idiot conservative devils who didn't give a fuck about them. "Arch ignorance," the Palaceer said. And then:

Palaces put on a show that felt like a fuck-you to the day's horrors, and even the middle-aged-dad-looking guy felt it. There's always some corny, rude folks in the mix, sometime literally. This guy, much like the America we keep running into lately, is unnecessarily hostile for some reason. The track's too low, dude, can we cut it up a tad? "I'm not changing it," he says to me. He's still yammering as I walk away. "The cops told us to turn the bass down," he says to Tay Sean. Plus some mo' shit I can't even quote. OK then fam, it's your world.

OK, Chicago goes off. What a gorgeous city, and they clearly gets live. Motherfuckers were packed into Lincoln Hall thick as hell, and bopping especially hard in the front. I thought these motherfuckers were going to start slamming to Shabazz, which might be a first. I read a review of the Milwaukee show that mentioned how they couldn't take SP's "punishing bass." It's cool, what some take as punishment, others see as a gift, I guess. According to the monitor guy, last time SP's touched the place, that bass knocked a tile off the wall; to me, that's that shit.

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OK, so I am in a Ford service center in Gurnee, IL. I don't wanna talk about it, but all is OK. I had some pad thai from someplace I just wanted to share what I found in a place we recently visited; first person to tell me where these amazing paintings are gets a big sloppy kiss from my guy Charles Mudede on demand (I'd do it myself, but I'm out of town). I'd caption these bad boys but words don't really suffice do they? Don't let that stop you, though.

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