Diatribes by Joah

Coming to your closet soon...

For favorites from the Air Jordan III Fusion Series

Kanye likes these Converse Woolrich's too.

And of course 'Ye loves these. They're his very own designed Louis Vuitton kicks. Retailing for $900-$1,200.

One of the cool styles for the new Nike Air Max LIVESTRONG Editions.

And for you X-Men fans...Nike had Wolverine in mind when they made these.

Non-Disclosure Agreement

Friends and Colleagues,

I'm coming up on two full years of Diatribes by Joah here at Typepad. I've been blogging much longer, but the time I've put into this site is one of the most fun and important things in my life because it gives me a chance to open up my life in a lot of ways and share the things that interest me. People always ask me how much time I spend on it and I always tell them that the average post only takes me about 10 or 20 minutes, not because I don't care more but because I'm so interested and excited about sharing whatever it is that I decided to blog about that it comes out in a flurry.

All that being said, I wanted to briefly tell you about some exciting new developments that will a) make for good blog material and b) keep me really busy for the next 6-12 months (at minimum) and c) require you to be vewy vewy qwiet as Elmer Fudd would say.

The first major development has to do with my next book. The working title is 'He Said Austin, And They Listened' and it'll have plenty to do with Austin and my love of music and festivals. I can't tell you more yet, but give me a few weeks and I'll have plenty more to share.

The second major development has to do with the sneaker store, Sneak Attack, that I mentioned a couple of months back. It wasn't just an idea or a YouTube video. It's really happening. Stay tuned.

Love,

Joah

P.S. I called it Non-Disclosure Agreement because I want you to keep all this news a secret for a few more weeks...

Not a Friday Jam, But Definitely My Jam

Drake's "Successful" off his So Far Gone mixtape. Look for his debut album, October's Very Own, later this year. Kanye and Lil' Wayne are big fans. Between Drake, Broken Social Scene, Malcolm Gladwell and Ryan Reynolds...Canada is comin' up.

The future of the Republican Party

Over the last few weeks and months, I've heard more and more of my liberal friends tell me how much they like Meghan McCain. Sure, they don't agree with her politics, but they do appreciate her candor, charisma and sometimes they agree with her inclusive and non-conservative positions on important issues like gay marriage. They follow her on Twitter.

I hope Meghan represents the future of my party more than Rush and Ann and Dick, but these days I'm not so sure. Those three may personally see to the end to the Republican Party as Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan knew it before I ever get a chance to see another Republican elected to the Oval Office. Obviously 2012 is off the table.

It's not that Rush and Ann and Dick aren't fairly smart people (I say that loosely) with a lot of history within the Republican Party, it's just that that's all they have now: history. They haven't seemed to push past 2002 when Bush's popularity was at an all-time high.

{They look like they're on the set of the game Clue.}

Ever since then, they've each spouted positions that have done little more than narrow down the scope of the Republican Party to that region of the country that I've spent my life - Texas to Virginia. They pretty much made sure the Midwest, New England and West Coast Republicans said "not my party" somewhere between getting trounced in the 2006 mid-term elections and Obama's victory.

And now they're doing the insane thing of going after Colin Powell. And scheming a way to go after Sonia Sotomayor, the woman who will become the first Latina on the Supreme Court. As my friend and former boss Mark McKinnon recently wrote:

"If the GOP is ever to be resurgent, it has to pick its fights carefully. The tendency is, unfortunately, to shoot at everything that moves.

Here are a couple of fights we don’t need: Colin Powell and Sonia Sotomayor."

I couldn't agree more.

There's a saying that "you have to hate losing more than you love winning" to be the best at something.

If the Republican Party, at least the conservative sect of it, took heed to this I think they'd realize that rather than rely on what used to work (scare tactics, rallying the supposed "base" and exclusivity), they should focus on what will work in the future (inclusion, listening before attacking, caring about the environment).

If Rush and Ann and Dick think they're paving the way to winning more elections, at the state or federal level, then they may want to recall what happened to Rick Santorum, George Allen and Sarah Palin on their election nights in 2004, 2006 and 2008, respectively.

You know what though, Republicans have one major thing going for us. Loyalty. Even though I whole-heartedly support Obama's presidency and don't foresee any Republican candidate for president in 2012 getting my vote, I consider myself a Republican. Colin Powell voted for Obama, but still considers himself a Republican as well.

But that loyalty is waning fast and we know the culprits. Don't we?

Help my friend get a Goode Ass Job

Murphy-Goode wine is hiring someone to tell you all about how great their wine is and I have the perfect candidate, my friend Ashley. Favorite her video @ http://www.areallygoodejob.com. Takes two seconds and one confirmation email.

Don't get it twisted...Kobe is still King of Clutch

Beez, the first cat I ever loved

News About My Recent Break-Up

Have you heard that story before? The one about the guy and girl who go to grade school together but then one of them moves away before they're old enough to develop a relationship. Then when they're older, they magically land in the same place and fall in love?

Well that's the story of me and DC. (Note: cities are women, which explains why I love them so much.)

Met her on a middle school Beta Club trip, never forgot about her for one second, and I moved to the East Coast after college not knowing we'd fall in love, but knowing I'd be near her.

I'm actually not really sure we fell in love in the sappy, romantic-comedy kind of way, but it was pretty serious. We spent 3.5 years together. I met her family. Her aunts, Virginia and Maryland. I became interested in the things she was interested in, namely Ethiopian food and Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. I didn't get into go-go music though no matter how hard she tried. And I'd like to think I brought a few things with me from my previous relationships and taught her a thing or two.

But I knew it wouldn't last. We argued about just about everything it seemed.

I continuously asked her why she refused to get into fashion. She'd point out how much I loved Redeem on 14th Street and I'd retort that all the Capitol Hill staffers wearing over-sized and out-of-style Men's Warehouse suits was quite pathetic. She did try to appease my sneaker fetish by getting Stussy, Commonwealth, The Greater Good and Palace5 to open up around U Street though, so I gave her points for that.

Even worse, she had this undying belief that customer service was something that you had to pay a premium for. If I wanted a meal for under $12, I'd get the food and nothing else. Bartenders pretty much stop serving you if you don't tip them after paying $6.50 for your pint beer. Even the trashmen refuse to leave your trash bin in a nice, neat manner...as if taking care of the trashcan itself is no longer a part of their jobs once the trash is removed. She hated me for pointing all that out. She had no response. How could she? Long ago, she'd become the kind of person who was used to deciphering the haves and have-nots and, even with recent advancements and socio-economic gains, had refused to give into my pleading for some genuine hospitality.

And, as if that wasn't enough, there were all kinds of things I brought up about her body that probably weren't fair to her. But I was immature and didn't know comparing her to other girls I'd dated or eyed was the wrong thing to do. So I routinely talked about how the lack of fashion was topped only by the lack of design prowess amongst the nine-story buildings; how she wasn't at all friendly to bikers and had a God awful bus system (she retaliated by expanding the Circulator service); how few cool bars there were (although we always had fun around 14th and U, especially at Saint Ex); how much the Redskins sucked, not to mention the Nationals; and how unpredictable she'd get about the weather: one day it's 55 and rainy, the next day its 85 and sunny.

I do not share this to say I was always right and DC was always wrong. Nothing would be further from the truth, but let's just say I did come out on top most of the time. We started teetering on breaking up a number of times, but then I'd always think about how great she is with neighborhoods, like Dupont Circle and Mount Pleasant and how it's so easy to visit her (thanks to the 3 airports, affordable buses to New York, and Amtrak service) and how much I loved running with her all over, around the monuments, to Great Falls and in those distinct neighborhoods.

Ultimately, it was the 2008 election that did us in. I was just too much for me.

Having to hear a million and one conversations about how anyone not named Obama might as well be Satan and how dumb I was for thinking otherwise was just tiring and annoying. Here I was thinking DC was open minded and could help us find common (or at least middle) ground, but DC basically stood by and sanctioned every single conversation or argument against my views because she never listens to the other side.

She's been a card-carrying, vote-down-the-line, blue-as-the-Pacific Ocean Democrat for as long as I can remember, and 2008 was her time to shine. Initially, I had no problem with her political leanings, except when she made me, someone who is extremely well-versed and well-read in political history and campaign tactics, sound as if I had missed the boat to Harvard University and chosen the path to prison instead.

I don't feel particularly good about this in hindsight, but I got so fed up that I started cheating on her (online at first, then I started making more trips) with Austin, a girl I'd started seeing in high school long after I'd first met D.C.

Truth be told, getting to spend those 3.5 years with D.C. wasn't about finding the one and getting married as much as it was me making sure that what I'd felt those many years ago was in fact real.

Now I know it was. And she knows it too. Which is why I can visit her, like I am now, and feel like we've reached a good place where we can talk about our issues with an open mind and go back to our lives away from one another with our lessons learned. 

She's still a bad dresser though.