What up homies? I got somethin special for all mah well read ballas today.
I'm bout to lay on y’all the first episode of my new audio series: Thug Notes GET LIT,
where yo boy Sparky gonna keep doin his thing: bringin badass literature to the streets- this time
through da airwaves! Pod-waves! Whatever the hell it’s called! The show is live NOW so
check it out on Apple podcasts, or your favorite podcast app. But to give you guys a lil’
taste of what’s to come, I’m gonna drop some hits from the first episode right here
right now: 3 examples of Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems in lit. If you thought Biggie had
it hard, you won’t BELIEVE da s**t these characters went through when they started
rollin’ in the Benjamins.
NUMBER 3: Llewelyn Moss, from No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
It’s 1980 an’ Llewelyn Moss out huntin’ in the Texas desert when he stumbles upon
a satchel full of c-notes at a drug deal dat went south. Dude’s an instant seven figure
balla! Unfortunately, dat money puts him in the crosshairs of Anton Chigurh, a savage,
coin-flipping hitman hired to retrieve the stolen loot. And this dude DON’T PLAY! If
he say you dead, YOU DEAD. After sneakin’ back into the badlands to help out a dyin’
man, things go from bad to worse for Llewelyn. He’s chased across the desert, nearly iced,
an’ sent to the hospital after a shootout with the seemingly unkillable Chigurh. Man,
I tell ya: that dog Anton is Shug Knight incarnate! After hearin’ Chighur threaten to put one
in his wife’s dome, Llewelyn busts his ass to meet her in El Paso. Unfortunately,
some Mexican hit-men smoke Llewelyn, and leave his wife completely on her own against Chigurh.
And dat boy Anton straight-up WASTES her just fo’ being a third wheel in all this. Dayum!
Dat s**t is COLD BLOODED!
Llewelyn’s life went straight to s**t the moment he brought home dat cheddar. But then,
did it really? Some say his decision to help that dying man back in the desert is what
ultimately did him in. Maybe this is a sign of who Llewelyn truly is: a good person who’s just
not cut out for the thug life. Or maybe it’s a warning dat there ain’t no stopping death
for anyone, not even for decent folks like Llewelyn an’ Mrs. Moss. If the cartels didn’t
cap ‘em, Chigurh sure seemed determined as the Devil to dust ‘em both. Could Llewelyn
have skipped town wit all da moneys, or was there no escaping his showdown wit death?
Either way, Llewelyn tried to get outta Dodge wit all the muscle his bankroll could buy
him. And if dat kinda cash can’t duck the Reaper, then we ALL f***ed!
NUMBER 2: Jay Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
When Nick Carraway lands a job in New York City during the Twenties, he rents a shack
next to the SWANK pad of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious playboy who throws dope-ass parties but never
joins them. It turns out Gatsby hosts these ragers in the hopes of attracting his back
when hunnydip: Daisy Fay, who lives across the bay from Gatsby’s crib with her douchey
old-money husband Tom Buchanan. After bein’ blue-balled for years, Jay and Daisy FINALLY
start hookin’ up! Unfortunately, they do a s**t job at keeping it from Daisy’s hubby,
who gets his revenge by tellin’ her how Gatsby made all his bucks bootlegging! YO!
Dat boy Gatsby a hustla man! In another twist, Daisy decides to stick it out wit her deadbeat husband.
Girl just can’t handle the thug life at Gatsby’s side.
I thought you was a ride or die chick, Daisy.
I'm disappointed.
It looks like things couldn't be worse for Team Gatsby, until...
HOLY S**T! Tom's side b***h gets run over by Daisy! And
da girl's husband thinks Gatsby was behind the wheel! That dead chick’s crazy-ass hubby
heads down to Gatsby’s mansion an’ BLASTS him in his swimming-pool!
It’s gameover for the Great Gatsby!
Why did things go south for great ol’ Gatsby? Maybe it
was because his whole approach to life was straight-up WHACK! Brutha thought he could
buy his way back to happiness with a gangsta wad, but Daisy ain’t one of his fancy ass shirts.
That gal’s a human, and the human heart ain’t the kinda thang you can buy on Amazon.
You gotta go on the black market for that kinda crazy s**t!
Becoming rich didn’t make Gatsby any happier than being rich did for Daisy. I mean just look at her!
She’s a top-shelf socialite on the surface, but her heart is busted, her marriage
sucks, and she’s shallow as f**k. Even Nick thought Gatsby’s corny-ass view of Daisy
bein’ perfect wasn’t jivin’ with reality. Neither character was capable of achieving
the happiness they really wanted, which might be why so many people compare The Great Gatsby
to the failure of “the American dream.” What is the American dream? Well it depends on
who you ask, but it boils down to bustin’ yo’ ass ‘til you got enough bread to buy
whatever make you happy. Does the American dream hold up in practice? Well, in The Great Gatsby,
the verdict is: “HELL NAW” All the American dream got Jay Gatsby was a death sentence
for vehicular homicide. Gee, thanks for driving, Miss Daisy!
NUMBER ONE: Bilbo Baggins, from The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Bilbo Baggins is a fatass hobbit who likes to eat, blaze up, an’ do jack s**t-
Till one day some nappy wizard crashed his crib with a team of dwarves and invited him to
retake the Lonely Mountain an’ all its treasure from the dragon Smaug. DAYUM!
Dat musta been some DANK Bilbo was chiefin!
Oooooh!
After some major grubbin’, Bilbo joins the gang on a fantastic
journey packed wit stranger thangs than we seen on Stranger THINGS! That we seen in Stranger Things!
We’re talkin’ goblins, trolls, a magic ring dat Bilbo pockets, and an enormous dragon chillin’ atop a mound
of shiny bling. Smaug gets his s**t wrecked and the dwarves reclaim their mountain, but
faster than you can say “My precious,” five armies hustle over an’ start scrappin
over the recovered loot! This result in the climactic Battle of the Five Armies. Luckily,
though , Bilbo ducks the drama and survives. The lil’ shawty peaces out wit only a small
purse as his prize money, but it’s all good. He hurries home as fast as his fat legs can
carry him, cause YOU KNOW where dat money’s goin! Up in smoke, y’all!
If you wonderin’ why Bilbo didn’t help himself to more of the recovered swag, it
might be because so much of the crazy s**t in The Hobbit goes down cuz of good ol’
fashioned greed. Consider the Dwarves’ obsession to reclaim the mountain: something Thorin
Oakenshield, leader of the dwarves, regretted as he lay dying. “If more of us valued food
and cheer and song above hoarded gold,” he says to Bilbo, “it would be a merrier
world.” Just about everyone in The Hobbit
got their minds on the Dwarven treasure, which might explain why Tolkien chose Bilbo as his
main character. As a hobbit, there’s a childlike innocence to him livin the simple life- unlike
the dragons, dwarves, and orcs who all about da money and da power. If Bilbo’s turned
off by greed, that’s probably Tolkien’s cue that we should as well. That said, Bilbo
does f**k things up for Middle-Earth by swiping that One Ring from the creature Gollum. Was
this greed, or was it Tolkien setting up his future books? What’s the difference? Cuz
you know SOMEONE was seein’ dollar-signs with that move! Shoutout to Pete Jackson!
3 Hobbit movies? Boy please.
Hey, dat’s all da goods I got today! Be sho to be on the look out for more Thug Notes
GET LIT on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get yo s**t. New episodes will be comin’
at you erry week including ones on the most infamous Banned Books, Mic Dropping Moments
in Shakespeare, Greatest Bromances in Lit and MORE. You can subscribe to the podcast
RIGHT NOW- so give it a listen and show your boy some love and gimme a nice review.
Thanks for tunin in my well read ballas! Peace.