It's A Connected World

I dislike most cliches. Life is short. No it's not. Time flies. No it doesn't. It's a small world.

Are you kidding me? The world is huge.

But the world is very connected, and I'm sure that's what folks mean when they say it's a small world. But then why not just say what you mean? Say, "It's A Connected World."

To what do you owe my return to this forgotten URL, you may be asking? What event has taken place that compels me to free-stream some alleged, albeit meandering, consciousness? If you must know, several events, all by themselves insignificant, have inspired me to turn on the laptop after 1 a.m. and post here for the first time in many months.

Several connected events, of course.

Some of you might know I lucked into an introduction in December with a very cool gal named Nicole who invited me to the Roots' Christmas holiday party. Not the Roots, as in Canadian sportswear (Happy Olympics, btw!), but the Roots, as in the band.

Nicole clearly is connected, much like the series of events I plan to describe here for you. I met several very interesting people that night, and one apparently is a graffiti artist. As folks left our table to mingle with others, the artist and I continued to talk. He was very interesting, his wife was lovely during the few minutes she hung around and he shared my appreciation for the bottle of Jameson that sat on our white-clothed table. It was still early in the night, so we politely sipped our beers until it became clear the bottle was for us. So of course, we opened it and drank it.

Maybe two weeks later, I started seeing a promotion for a new HBO show called "How To Make It In America." It looked so good that I actually marked down in my Blackberry calendar that the series premieres on Feb. 14, which is Sunday.

And then in late January, my friend Jake and I were talking about what new stuff we've been listening to. He recommended I check out Kid Cudi, who I later learned is from my hometown of Cleveland. Even grew up in Shaker Heights, where I lived for a few years.

Just last week, then, I saw a new promo for "How To Make It," in which actor Bryan Greenberg introduced Kid Cudi, a rising hip-hop star, who as it turns out also has a prominent role in the HBO series.

And flipping through some on-demand options late Wednesday night, I saw that HBO had pushed out the pilot for this series, as well as two short behind-the-scenes segments. I watched everything, including a scene that showed the graffiti artist with whom I drank some Jameson around the holidays. He was spray-painting the truck from which the crew is going get rich selling some funky Jamaican energy drink.

Turns out that graffiti artist is none other than the legendary Lee Quinones. I thought that night in December was pretty cool to begin with, but now, eight weeks later, it got slightly cooler in my mind. I read up on him a little bit Thursday night, and he's one interesting cat.

Though the HBO show is about making it in America, it's really about making it in New York, the Lower East Side if you want to be precise. But Quinones made it long ago, Kid Cudi is making it now and hopefully your favorite college football blogger will turn One Great Season into something bigger than just one great season. Wish me luck as I try to connect the events of that great trip and put it into book form so I, too, can have my made-it moment.