
“Having a bad boss isn’t your fault. Staying with one is.”
– Nora Denzel
There are three people I think about virtually every single day:
- My late mother
- My late best friend
- My former boss
Christopher Pierznik is the author of 9 books and has contributed to numerous websites on a variety of topics including music, sports, movies, TV, personal finance, and life. He works in corporate finance and lives in northern New Jersey with his family. His dream is to one day be a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
“Having a bad boss isn’t your fault. Staying with one is.”
– Nora Denzel
There are three people I think about virtually every single day:
There are different kinds of biographies.
Some attempt to tell the subject’s story objectively, recounting what happened and placing it in context, but without editorializing or offering opinion. Others are planned as hit pieces, hatchet jobs with a clear intent to damage the person. Still others come from a place of admiration, presenting the individual in a glowing light at every turn.
It’s difficult to tell what It Was All a Dream: Biggie and the World that Made Him by Justin Tinsley was originally aiming to be, but the final product certainly falls into that last category.
Definition of alter ego:
1: a second self or different version of oneself: such as
— via Merriam-Webster.com
What is RZA’s best solo album?
Actually, back up a moment. Can you even name every RZA solo album?
The 2010s was a decade in which the line between rap and other genres became not only blurred, but largely nonexistent. Referred to by some as the “melodic era,” it was no longer a rarity or even a surprise to see a hip-hop artist transition into harmonizing, and while that had certainly been done in the past, it now became de rigueur as Drake, Young Thug, and many others rode that wave to stardom.
At the same time, some dudes stepped onto the scene and began flooding the market with their own music that sounded fresh but at the same time reminiscent of projects that had been released in the mid-’90s. No singing, no theatrics, just grim street tales of drugs and violence delivered over grimy, pounding basslines, creating a “gnarly sound inspired by the slimy criminal underbelly of Buffalo, New York.”
My first regular writing gig was for a website that was based in Baltimore. I transitioned into a contributor after starting as an unlikely reader. I wasn’t from that area and did not know anyone associated with the site. I most likely would never have found it had the site not had such a catchy and memorable name: I Hate JJ Redick.
“It’s not the cooking that is the problem; it’s the deciding of what to cook that’s the problem.”
That is how my wife describes the daily struggle of deciding what to make for dinner every single night.
I began playing organized basketball at the age of six. As a third grader, I was with the fifth and sixth graders; in fifth grade, I was playing with the middle school kids. I continued playing through my senior year of high school.
What is the best film of all time?
Most film scholars (and wanna-be film scholars) proclaim that it’s Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’s 1941 masterpiece that inarguably changed filmmaking forever. Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, and Gone with the Wind are often in the conversation as well.
Excluding The Godfather, how many times have you heard someone mention one of those films as their absolute favorite? How many are populating a casual filmgoer’s top five? How many Lawrence of Arabia conversations have you experienced in your life?