Hotwater Cornbread

I don't like the taste of cornbread all that much. Cornbread probably was created because Dollar Tree needed its own brand of box cake. It's one of the most overrated "a la carte" items on the soul food menu. What the hell is corn meal? Sounds like something you feed to pigs about to be slaughtered or what Big Baby Davis eats for his mid-morning late breakfast.

But cornbread to me has been one of the most referenced foods if you have ever held a conversation with Jody. It started over a decade ago with the movie Love For Sale;  two comedic relief characters performing the catchy song "Hotwater Cornbread" in a romantic comedy full of comedic relief characters. And it hasn't ended.

I used the song name for my usernames, gamertags, and occasional stripper name. Most people know I love nicknames and alter aliases (to where every person in my phone has their own nickname and personalized emoji). I find a name or an object or idea and my brain will loop the phrase or image until it is dissolved into my mind, for eternity. All of the movies, people watching, rap songs; one thing is snatched up from art and my brain has to have it and obsesses over it, like a crack-fiend. You may imagine how certain antics Jody does now comes into full play.

Fast forward to the spring of 2018. Hotwater Cornbread has evolved into Gentrified Cornbread and has become the epitome of who Jody is. All of the southern soul influences of food, culture, exercise (or lack thereof), people, etc. Everything I do has been refined to be more acceptable or polite in today's society, based off my ignorance of the word "gentrification"

- Adding chia seeds to pasta dishes
- Teaching a hour-long Vinyasa flow with Lauryn Hill serenading middle-aged white people
- Hanging pictures scientists of color throughout the hallways and in my classroom
- Running in well-lit neighborhoods but blasting King Sosa, Big K.R.I.T., & 21 while making aggressive physical gestures
- Making the devastating combo of pasta, red meat, and cheese in a hamburger helper but dumping sun-dried tomatoes, arugula, and sweet peppers in that bih for a veggie boast.

Maybe I am getting the definition of gentrification mixed up with "adding seasoned salt, black pepper, and garlic powder to chicken that hasn't been cooked properly"

Nevertheless (or nonetheless) the idea of gentrification to Jody has always had a negative connotation, especially with housing development. Of course renovated housing in Denver has displaced thousands of families to better suit couples with no kids who can afford high rent gourmet brunch spots on Sunday mornings.

Wait, let me restart.

Gentrification is supposed to make things more desirable, optimal, and beautiful. Right? The idea of Gentrified Cornbread is to improve on the design of everything imaginable. The food, the culture, the housing, the wellness, etc. Whoever the mayonnaise-colored man who started all of this kicking working class out to pop-up high-ceiling booty-looking houses left a bad taste in most people's minds. But a good taste if you ever get eggs benedict; I recommend you try Tupelo Honey's near Union Station. Simply sublime.

Until I saw my first piece of actual gentrified cornbread. It was pale. Not held together well. Chia seeds made it look like a rotting corpse that was stuck in a river for too long. Drier than the crevice of my thumb and index finger with no cocoa butter. Tasted like the one time I ate kibbles 'n' bits when I was 15 that no one dared me to eat.

Maybe scratch this whole entry or completely digest it, you're an adult. On paper.

This all started with the movie Love For Sale with two comedic relief characters in a romantic comedy full of comedic relief characters. And it hasn't ended.

I don't think it ever will,

"Hotwater Cornbread" by the fiction rap group K3 & No Doubt from over a decade ago started the chain of ridiculous nicknames Jody has given himself.

"Hotwater cornbread

I said,

Got popped by the feds

Now I'm seeing red

I pee'd in the bed,

I must be dead"

Navajo

It has to be noted that I don't think Masego in his song Navajo is a racist for making direct yet sexy references to a woman who he calls an "Indian" who people normally identify as somehow who has been there since the beginning of a relationship or someone who is rooted in their culture. Eh, maybe he might be a little racist. Still hits though.

I am going for a 4-miler and queued up 3 Masego tracks that keep my pace honest. I think about my worn burgundy sleeves that stretch about 3 inches past my wrist, how my knees look like I've been kneeling on mummy caskets, and if I should switch out my Colorado expired tags to my unexpired Virginia tags.

Finally have gotten back into teaching yoga which flopped after my full attention had been diverted to the school year. I routinely forget that I have my 200-hr yoga certification, and it seems like I am not to assertive about earning back that $3k.

Yoga has been by far the best physical fitness to practice to remediate me after yelling at precumbescents and having my award-winning hips planted in a car for 1.5 hour commutes lately. I still have night terrors that my booty will look like Hank Hill's gluteus maximus.

The butt which is famously connected to the hips is by far the most interesting part of the body to me. It can be a pancake or resemble to apples or have the texture of a spoonful of jell-o, or big and hard like something that may be big and hard. I obsess about the genetics that I am alley-ooping over to my young ones when they hatch from underneath their momma's buttcheeks which will be bountiful. What id I have one of those loser's kids who have no booty or maybe the kid who has to have butt-pads installed so it won't hurt when they sit because it is all bone, like wings from B-Dubs. What if my kid is twerking on someone and somehow elbow them with their own butt? Tragic,

Tragic.         

The song "Navajo" by Masego found its way into my playlist through it's hard bass and sexy sax solo towards the end of the song.

Blood on The Leaves

I think about how my life will be when I am 32 years-old. I think about how my Papa feels whenever I call him and catch him at the right time for a 15-minute conversation. I think about how a kid reacts when I redirect them after talking during an exam. I think about what would happen if I didn't leave you. I think about about how painful that needle is when it hits my skin after every tattoo.

I think about how my body feels since it's been over 2 months since it hasn't had some sort of alcohol in it. I think about you a lot. I think about holding my body weight directly over me in gym and how vulnerable I feel underneath it. I think about the two bites I take before swallowing a forkful of chicken pad thai.

I think about how Noname was feeling when she performed Bye Bye Baby and if she didn't mind if I cried singing along with her. I think about the endorphins that flood my body when I hear a Cameo song when I am lifting. I think about what that guy was wearing on his crotch in that one Cameo song. I think about how Astro & Snoopy feel after I run them every Saturday morning at Hilltop.

I think about how hard it has been for me to enunciate specific words since I was 7 and wonder if I should take more speech classes. I think about my old friend who committed suicide a month ago and wondered if I could have helped. I think about how wacky it must have first sounded when Kanye West mixed together "Strange Fruit" & "Down 4 My N*ggas".

I think about how Shanita feels when I send her obscure memes with no context. I think about much joy I feel when I post a new dance video. I think about the people I blocked in my life because they made me feel like rotten two-week leftovers. I think about the 180 kids I left in Norfolk and if they ever think about me. I think about how Christmas lights look on my skin as I wrap myself in a fleece blanket and pass out on the carpet.

I think about how much I love running in the city and weaving through black figures and illuminated posts. I think about you and me and leaving behind the mundane life of a stable 25 year-old. I think about the people I instinctively hug or call after a run or if I get off of work. I think about how rooted I feel when I flow through triangle series in a Vinyasa flow.


And when I think about everything and the mind gets flooded...

"Blood on the Leaves" by Kanye West has always had a special place in my heart.

So Many Details

I'm standing on a street corner off of Colorado & MLK Boulevard, waiting to meet up with a new friend to go a night jog. My legs do a light jig to stay warm in an early 40s wind chill, moving to the rhythm of a Toro y Moi tune. I have on my Norfolk State dri fit shirt, running shorts, and backward baseball cap completed with a worn pair of Newtons. The circle emblem on my wireless headphones flash a dim blue symbol, representing I am locked into some "phat beats".

To a regular mayo Denver resident, I am a crackhead having a seizure on a corner looking to buy some contraband. But if by contraband one means "friendship" well lock me up with TayK-47. I have been living in the Denver metro area for about a year-and-some-change and have been lacking on making friends. Or one may say "crack-a-lackin". I snicker to myself as I start on dynamic leg movements. Maybe it's my aggressive friend invitation initiation or reluctance to meet new people in a conceived squad or tired from the tirade of being a teacher from a work week, thoughts running through my head as I hit baby lunges.

It is 4:30, and I've been waiting on this corner for what it must have been 45 minutes. Or 3 minutes. Either way the sun transitions to cover and my shiny black-boy legs reflect the illuminated street lights. My phone vibrates and I quickly delete the "flakiness" that I have almost become accustomed to millennials.

It sucks that I have begun the trend as; the "oh let this person be on standby in case something else comes up" and I miss the commitment of pre-internet. If I didn't show up to my friend's house in 2006, one may assume I am as good as dead.

I wonder if I could have handled more than 4 or 5 friends at one time. In middle school, high school, college, post-undergrad; I typically had 2 good friends, 2 or more back up friends, and a dirty dozen of associates. If one died then at least there was one to support afterwards. Like Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy. What a formidable squad, as I check my phone for the 10th time in 3 minutes to see if this potential best-friend-forever will pop-up. We met at a coffee shop about a week prior, so I assumed it was meant to last until we were 90 year-olds playing Gamecast like it never went out of style.

My hands are starting to lock up, I reckon it is time to go if I am going to protect my recently moisturized kneecaps from turning into dust. I queue up my favorite Toro y Moi album Anything In Return and start a route over the flashing lights off of the Boulevard.

The song "So Many Details" brings nostalgia to my mind, as it connected me to one of my best/worst best friends of all time.

I Will Find Him

When I was 19 years-old, I saw the film Man of Steel 3 times in less than 18 hours.

I walked into the Plaza Cinema in Grenada, Mississippi at 3 separate times between the dates of June 14th and June 15th in 2013 and bought 3 seperate tickets. 3 separate times I saw the same story with the same actors playing the same characters in the same scenes fighting the same people with the same beginning and the same ending on 3 separate occasions.

Could you imagine being that obsessed, champing at the bit, to see something that you have seen numerous times? Desperate to catch a small, subtle detail that may seemingly take your breath away?
With the sense that you are actually being pried out of your seat, pulled into something that you believe to be 100%  true until the credit scenes roll? To see your own soul leave your own meat vessel and be enamored with being those characters, those fictional character whom seem like a deity?

No offense to the Guardians of "OA" but when I flow through Sun B salutations on my yoga mat or when I am running off Broadway in between cocaine-filled yuppies or if I am tossing weights doing renegade rows in Planet Fitness, I feel like I can't die. Ask my overzealous tail when I was 22 running through the hoods of Portsmouth, Virginia like I had a 757 VIP card. Those peppy neurochemicals stretch throughout my entire body in every muscle fiber, every nerve ending, every chakra that my body can fathom.

This may appear overwhelming, and it is most of time. The feeling of ecstasy that flows through my body 90% of the time when I exercise gets to me. At this point the pain I feel when I am bopping my legs in floorwipers is needed to relax me. I can't go to sleep unless I am sore most days

It is like lifting is the entree, running completes the sides, and yoga is the lukewarm water that washes of all it down. We would call music the seasoning for this soul food meal. I could eat all of this without salt and pepper, but why would I?

The workout below is entitled Boris Diaw and is to be done in 50 minutes. If you are not able to do this in 50 minutes, stop, and try again later. This is made purely from Man of Steel OST after I saw it for the 3rd time on June 15th, 2013.

Boris Diaw 

• Centipede Push-ups 4 x 20
• Wide-grip overhand pull-ups 4 x 10
• Battle Ropes 4y x 30 sec. per.

• Alternating waves (small)
• In & our waves 
• Giddy-Up Horsey Waves 
• Power Slams
• Alternating waves (large)

• Alternating lunges w/ dumbbell (front, back, and oblique) 4 x 4
• Kettlebell swings 4 x 15
• One-armed Romanian deadlift to overhead press w/ dumbbell 4 x 8 (each side)
• Floorwipers with barbell (300 movie style) 4 x 10 (each side)
• Alternating Dumbbell rows w/ push-ups 4 x 8 (each side)
• Dips 4 x 8
• Single-arm dumbbell bench press (on floor mat) 4 x 10 (each side)
• Push-up burpees 4 x*
• However long it takes you to regret eating a whole freggin' pizza in one sitting

"I Will Find Him" is a track off of Hans Zimmer's Man of Steel original soundtrack and remains the only song that makes me want to run into a brick wall head first. This is one of my favorite quotes from my favorite superhero movie of all time.

Gentrified Cornbread

It's 3:18 pm and I am sitting in a coffee shop. I used to say coffee is the devil's nectar but here I am sipping on a venti caramel frappuccino with a dose of espresso. It is not called 'express-o' don't worry, I checked.

So as you can see, I reopened my blog (again) with ultimate hopes of "chillin' tf out" during this next school quarter and updating folks on why I love physical fitness and how it connects to my overall Jonny spirit. 

This is not a "how-to-guide" on how I balance teaching yoga, running dogs, and the high-and-lows of being a 3rd year teacher as well, as I do my own fitness practices. This is just how a Jonny boy does it and yes, these things may nest its way into my blog.

I will be blindly optimistic, vent, rant, praise, throw up, eat the throw it back up again,.I will sing, dance, yell, laugh and I will do it by making paragraphs 2-5 sentences in a palpable (that's for you JW.)

I think highly of myself (even as far as calling myself J.O.D.Y. = Jon of Da Year) but I know how much life can suck and I know how blessings just fall on top of head while I ignore them because I am still cursing on why life sucks. 

But there is so much to the little things of life that are so important: like getting a good crack-of-the-neck, kids who try to race me on my 5-milers off Colfax, that guy in Planet Fitness that falsely told me I look like Terry Crews. 

Oh geez, I keep telling y'all what this blog is about to be about and what 'imma do' and la-di-da. Wait well let me get one more attempt in,

This blog is about all of the things in life that make me happy, make me sad, make me tired, make me glad; this blog is about how I ran a 5k in 17:12 while I was hungover from 2 40s and a few shots of moonshine; this blog is about how kicked a lady in a face while I was demonstrating a headstand; it is about my 5th grade P.E. teacher who called a 9 year-old with a fragile psyche fat; it is about my mom's cornbread that had a little too much butter in it that had to be gentrified by using olive oil & basil leaves. 

Welcome to Gentrified Cornbread.