So we have with us here at the dear ol’ websty a feller with whom I’ve been enjoying a most enlightening and scintillating email correspondence recently. Said feller happens to be the inventor and purveyor of what looks to be a very clever whetstone, see; after noting the shameful confession I made here to my total lack of any sharpening skills or experience—a confession made all the more shameful by the fact that I have never once walked out my front door without at least two (2) edged weapons of some type or other on my person, and often more than two, since the frabjous and life-altering day when my dad took me to the long-gone Boy Scout Supply store on Westinghouse Blvd in CLT to buy me my very first pocketknife at, oh, about age 12, I think—he got in touch to inquire if I’d be interested in receiving one of his whetstones, gratis.

Included in that inaugural email was a link to his business website, a to-the-point, minimalist affair whose central feature is a video laying out the stone’s functionality, as well as some instruction on how it’s properly used. All this I took a good look at before getting back to him; frankly, I was happy about his generous offer, while also being a little intimidated by the long odds against my being competent to actually master the skill after lo, these many years. Even so, though, what sort of pathetic jackass would I be if I let a little intimidation cut me off from a new experience? The prospect was so contrary to the manner in which I’ve conducted myself over the course of my entire damned existence that the novelty of it stung me, and not in a pleasant way. So naturally I said sure, bring it on.

The email confab continued on from there, broadening in scope as these things will, until this very evening the topic of the incomparable James Brown was introduced with a query as to whether I was a fan. As any person of musical intelligent and erudition must, I responded with an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up endorsement of the incomparable Godfather of Soul, then meandered from there to Eddie Murphy’s impeccable Brown impersonation on SNL during the brief period when it almost watchable. And that’s when it hit me like a thunderbolt what tonight’s musical embed simply HAD to be.

So for those of you CF Lifers who are kindly disposed to Brown and Murphy, hey, no need to thank me for this video bounty. Thank malachi31619. I’ll open with Eddie because, no matter how good they were, nobody ever followed James Brown in the days of his greatest glory without getting their ass stomped into a sticky red paste. As the last vid confirms, even in his latterly days the Godfather was still no slouch. He was a tough act to follow all the way to the final walkoff.

Expect a review of the whetstone after I’ve spent some time with it, whether I conquer it or it conquers me.

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