Where in the world is Kerry Stead? Kerry's an old chess mate of mine whom I haven't seen him in a couple of years. I'll never forget that time back in '99 when Nick Kordahi and I, driving behind Kerry up in Buderim (during the Australian Open '99), nearly killed ourselves with worry because we thought Kerry had driven himself off a friggin' cliff! Nick and I just sat in his car in stunned silence until we arrived back at the motel. To our relief Kerry had already parked and waiting for us. But that whole experience was pretty frightening.
Anyway, the reason I suddenly thought of Mr Stead is that he's online moniker happens to be "HipHopBandit" and I'm wondering if he's signed up with this mob, the Hip Hop Chess Federation. These guys hit the news streams this morning as they've just announced their inaugural Annual Chess Kings Invitational to be held in October this year in San Fran.
Says co-founder of HHCF, Leo Libiran:
We are proud to host an event that showcases an authentic, intelligent trend in Hip-Hop...Hip-Hop has always been about more than bullets and bling and the fact that so many fantastic rappers, chessmasters, martial artists and graf writers have donated their time to the children is proof of this in itself.
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1 comment:
Amiel,
I'd seen this a few months ago & it seemed like a poor excuse to promote African-American school chess, with a huge emphasis on Maurice Ashley & the Wu-Tang Clan, but very little else. The guy running the site from what I could gather previously, seems to be around the 1400 mark & tried to downplay the actual chess content wherever possible too. As for the hip-hop content ... well that's in the same league unfortunately, although I was surprised to read the name Okwerdz in one of the articles in the site. Having said that, most chess references in hip-hop, or any music for that matter, tend to be cheesy references to the pieces or some variation on checkmate/mate, and generally lack substance.
Good to see you're broadening your horizons though Amiel ... and I was nowhere near a cliff on the Buderim trip. Must admit that the incident with the hose on the dirt road was probably one of my stranger driving experiences however.
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