Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to the latest episode of the official Dom J Radio show hosted by yours truly. Hi, I've been well, hope you've been blessed. I've been drinking plenty of water, minding your business. This is a special episode, as you'll see from the number 824.
If you know me, you know I'm a Lakers fan, and if you've been watching the news and not hiding under a rock, you're aware that Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others were tragically lost in a helicopter crash this past Sunday in Calabasas, California. I go through that, grieving the latest in sports previewing my Super Bowl prediction, as well as the latest albums I've been listening to, all that much more after this, read your message. Next is a spoken word selection entitled Fractures. You can find it featured on the official Dom J word press page at officialdomj.wordpress.com.
Fractures of next. Fractures. Dissect the present as the future's past. Snapshots and moments, misremembering memories, photos and videos, best preserved first dances and last dances.
Digest the death of another icon for hours I cried off and on, laughing at myself, mourning someone I never met yet will never forget. Ingest, the trite sings of first for everything, everything for a reason. First settling, relentlessness is the mama mentality that each one teaching one furthering our collective better. A mission in perpetuity.
The marathon continues forever. Fractures. What's good official Dom J read your listeners. It's your boy Agent Jerry.
Stop it about it. Let you know Dom. Love podcast man. I appreciate the support man.
Thank you. Thank you to all the podcast listeners, the show listeners, friends and family. Thank you. Sending y'all those good vibes that get energy right back at you.
Up next you'll hear from one of my closest friends I asked them to describe this face of life. I'm very excited to hear your thoughts right after this. What do I call the spasal of my life that I'm in right now? Oh, that's a hard one.
Let me give you a bite. I really don't know. But if I had to give you a name or a title or something like that, I have to say this is my grind time. I'm chasing money.
I've had multiple jobs and every job that I change I always go for the bigger money. It can literally be the same job, same job title, but it's more money so I'm just trying to get that repertoire. So I'm making money. So I'm chasing money.
Just chasing the bag as I say. Where I'm just building second-get-net experience and trying to get the biggest check I can get. I feel you on that, man. Life is definitely similar in a lot of regards for myself.
A continuous climb, a continuous grind. Respect, man. But you already know that. What's understood I got to be explained.
The marathon continues, bro. And so it was definitely a first for me and going through this latest episode of brief. It was the first time I remember crying for somebody I had never met and then realizing going through that was okay. I think it's one of those situations where you just feel I can't speak well.
For others, I speak on what I know from friends accounts, from my own account of what it's like when you are a man in this country, a black man specifically dealing with problems that may be attacking your mental state. I think being able to express grief in these sort of moments you saw these sort of outpouring to immediate impact from people that did know Kobe Bryant, that did know his daughter, Gigi, that heard about the crash and seven others that were also lost in it. I think it's one of those moments where you just got to be comfortable to express yourself. I think it's important not to always react in such a visceral manner as we live in the news cycle.
It's immediate and this is one of those things that immediately impacted on a global scale. But just like with other news, there was misinformation, TMZ being like the first to really break news and that in itself was unsettling for me in the sense of they're not in reporting news for the sake of accuracy and for the sake of news integrity as they are for the click date. I mean, if I'm just calling this fate a spade, I respect what they do in the sense of its capitalizing on the current state that people will digest content. But that was not the manner in which I wanted to learn about that sort of information.
Unfortunately, we don't always get to pick that. But I think this has been a tough week. I was thinking about what I wanted to say. And it took me some time to really just gather my thoughts.
You know, I'm a sports junkie. I love sports talk shows. I incorporate them basically into my daily routines. And it was hard to just watch them immediately.
It was hard to watch a lot of any sort of television for a while. It took a couple days to really get back to feeling like I could discuss it. And that was really only until I had written part of that poem that I just read, fractions. And I think whenever you're going through this as a man, you just got to be comfortable enough to feel like you can express those emotions because you should be able to.
But it's the sort of dichotomy that we live with of being strong, not really showing too many emotions, the occasional smile. But then sometimes even if you're too smiley, that can be a situation in which the public views you in some sort of light that may cast aspersions on the sort of character or person you are, which is the craziest concept. But that's the sort of fucked up society we unfortunately live in. I'm a more private person in most instances, but I felt the need to share it because it was true.
It was just real. And the people I've seen as I've also grown up and grown into myself, I saw Kobe Bryant go from high school, you know, sensation to champion to legend. And I think it's been one of the deaths that's affected me the most outside of my own immediate family. And I think that's part of life when you realize you don't expect it at any particular moment it can happen.
You know, you get into death machines that are cars, buses, trains, airplanes, any number of things, any number of mode of transportation. You never know what it could be the last time. You know, just going through the daily routines. We're talking about a man who was using helicopters for the past couple of decades.
That's a man in his NBA career because even if you haven't been to LA, I'm sure you've heard on TV or from people that are from LA that the traffic is crazy. And as he was trying to be the best father possible, he was trying to minimize time spent in traffic so that he could spend it with family. I mean, that's just admirable. You know, your heart goes out for those others that are impacted during this tragedy as well.
Of course, for the Bryant family, his wife and three daughters, you have to keep them in your prayers. You have to lift them up. You have to lift up everybody that was involved in the sense that it could really happen to anyone of us in a number of ways. So it made me sort of reach out to people I may not have spoken to or to my siblings, to grandparents, speaking to friends about it, getting their thoughts and opinions.
And I think that's the sort of immediate impact an icon can have in their passing. And so I love you, Kobe. I thank you for all of the great memories as a Laker fan, for the model mentality, the relentlessness, the pursuit of excellence, even in the second act or phase of your life, when you leave the basketball court. Obvious Hall of Famer, and then turn into an icon telling stories in the creative space, which of course is something I rock with, so it was like seeing my icon go up to another icon status, you know.
So for that, I'm forever grateful, forever grateful. At the time of recording, this is the first of February, which means it is the first day of Black History Month. It was one, two, send a shout out to everyone in the minority community celebrating Black Excellence. And as such, this podcast will have more guest features in our next episode discussing what Black History means to them and some of the impacts that their idols have had as they've lived and how they shake their lives accordingly.
In the entertainment space, I'm a huge Will Smith fan. I'm also a huge Martin Lawrence fan, so it was only right I had to give a Bad Boys 3 review. While it's been so long since we saw both of the first installments in this series, I did like seeing them back on the screen together. It's hard to sort of rate this kind of movie outside of what you might consider a normal just going to the movies, seeing something and giving that sort of experience.
I'm sort of comparing it, I guess, to past Bad Boys, but also realizing it's an evolution, obviously, they're older and I thought they did a good job of transitioning as far as years down the line, sort of incorporating that into the storyline of the movie. Because I always find it odd when there's a sequel or a continuation of the saga, but no definitive time has passed or they try to jump backwards in time and then come forward or some other oddball sort of behavior Hollywood would be cooking up. But I did enjoy seeing it. I'm not going to spoil it for those that may not have seen it just yet.
I'm the type not to really rush to theaters for much, so I don't like going as soon as something drops goes in. You get everybody that's trying to crowd the movie theaters and that's one place I hate to be crowded is the movie theater. But definitely I liked it. A couple of surprise takeaways as far as casting.
Definitely some people in there that if you've scoured Netflix or are big Netflix junkies you might have seen in other series on there, so I'm not going to go into more detail on that, except it definitely was one of the biggest takeaways out of the movie. Great job of casting and a surprise plot twist ending to a degree. And that's all I'm going to say. I enjoyed it.
Nice little action movie in the midst of January. So if you haven't and you're a big fan as I am and when I say fan I'm talking about how the entire Fresh Prince box set DVD collection sort of fan, definitely give that a view. So the Super Bowl tomorrow between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs takes place on Fox at 630 Eastern time. I can't root for the Chiefs as a Denver Broncos fan.
I'm not going to root for anybody with a subdivision or in the Super Bowl, but I recognize them as having the more lethal offense out of the two. I do hold Patrick Holmes as a black quarterback as an excellent day, but I hope it's not an easy time for them by any means. As San Francisco does have a defense that gets after it and they have their own variety of weapons to use on offense, a battle of offenses who have two of the best tight ends in football, one and two, you can debate the order of them. But I expected to be a high scoring game.
If the Chiefs win, I wouldn't be surprised if San Francisco wins, I wouldn't be surprised either. I just hope it isn't a 13 to 3 board fest like we had last year. So it should be a hell of a contest. In the newly dug four year consideration music segment, I have some albums that I've recently been listening to hitting the year started with a nice, nice little mixture.
I recommend Code of the Friend lyrics to go volume one, Lil Wayne's album, funeral. This is our Shake the Snow Globe and DJ Fresh's album, The Tonight Show with Currency, for your consideration. And that concludes this episode of the official Don J Radio Show. Thank you to all the loyal listeners.
Once again, send me all that good energy. It was positive vibes going into your work week and join that last day of the weekend. However you're getting down, just take that time to tell somebody you love them. Hug them if you can.
Keep minding your business drinking plenty of water. Stand woke y'all. Peace.