Blackey Fontaine: Connecticut's Philosopher King.

This one's all about me. Feel free to skip. But I am dry snitching on people I grew up with so it might be entertaining.

I'm from a small town called Bitch Please, CT. The population of my High School, at the time of my graduation, was somewhere just under 700 students. There weren't 700 kids in the class of '99. There were, like, 680-something students in the entire High School. There wasn't exactly a huge pool of people there, it was more like a puddle. It's tough to have a winning football team when you have a nose tackle with a club foot. It's tough to find a prom date when there are girls with inverted nostrils. And, of course, it's tough to have any kind of intellectual conversation when everyone was too busy drinking Coors and watching "Beavis and Butthead."

So, I guess it was refreshing to some people that I came along. Teachers, especially, loved me. Even as a youngster, I kind of thought this was because the teachers in this lilly-white town were astonished that I wasn't carrying a gun and trying to jack kids' sneakers. The "he's so well spoken" idea promptly exited my mind when my third grade teacher, Mrs. Apgar, started deferring to me on geography issues. But for whatever reason, likely humility or fear of elevated expectations, I didn't like to think that I was any smarter than the majority of my peers.

So how did I get from there: a timid eight-year-old; to here: a cocky 24-year-old? I started paying attention to the dumb shit other people say.

I have witnessed a continuum of idiocy that has made me so confident in my intellect that I went from intentionally acting ignorant to saying things like "micro/macrocosmic scale," "apt comparison" and "perhaps."

Exhibit A:
7th Grade. The end of the school year was approaching, the weather was nice, and for some reason (probably that in light if the aforementioned nice weather and twilight of the school year) the teachers let us play kick ball, like all day long. So I was on first base and took a small lead off the bag because when I play kickball or whiffle ball, I stay ready for that hit and run. Anyway, Steve Paulsen who was playing first base said to me "No leading." I don't quite remember my exact response, but it was likely something you could imagine me saying today, only with less profanity. Steve Paulsen's punk ass responded by calling me a "piece of fuck." What? I turned around and called started yelling at him saying "Yo, that word is a verb. There's no such thing as 1/4 of a fuck." He just blushed and reiterated "No leading."

Exhibit B:
I went skiing with some people when I was maybe 17 years old. One of the adults on the trip, a High School guidance counselor commented "You ski good." Even back in '99 that made my skin crawl. I tried to explain that you "are" good, but that you "do" well. She came back with, "So, should I say you're a well skiier?" What could I really do at that point? Seriously.

Exhibit C:
By 2002 I had progressed from correcting grammar to developing something of a social conscience to facilitate my feelings of superiority. I was a student at NYU, then. No longer the big fish in the small pond. But when I needed an ego boost, I could always rely on the idiots I grew up with to make me feel smart again. Jay-Z did his unplugged show on MTV and it really was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. But a former friend from Connecticut didn't much care about the music, rather he concerned himself with Mr. Carter's rather interesting shirt:

Here's how the conversation went:
Me: The Roots' version of "The Takeover" was pretty hot, like how they flipped the beat on all those Nas songs.
John "I'm a Bitch" Bennett: Yo, that shirt was hot.
Me: And Jaguar Wright doing the background vocals on "Song Cry" was pretty cool too.
John "No, seriously I'm a woman because I gossip and wear Burberry" Bennett: I wanna get one of those shirts. Was that Jesus on there?



Now, you can't even see the whole shirt in the picture, but does that look like Christ to anyone? Which of the gospels mentioned the red-starred beret that the Messiah wore? I guess Jesus was a revolutionary, but did he ride a motorcycle or keep a diary? I subsequently explained who the gentleman in the picture was, only to have John "I go to a tanning salon" Bennett say that that didn't seem like the kind of person he'd like to support in t-shirt form.


With that, the defense doesn't quite rest, just yet. It's something that's ongoing. Just this weekend, I had to explain the difference between irony and a paradox to someone (and that name, I'm not naming because this is someone I respect unlike those imbeciles from CT mentioned above)

I know I'm not the smartest person in the world. I mean, I hang out with Dave, so I learn shit every day. But god damn is there a huge segment of the population that I feel superior to, and they all happen to be in the Nutmeg State.

Yalies, I'm coming for you next.