Yesterday I read that Scott Storch bought a $1m diamond necklace for Lindsay Lohan. Yes that Scott Storch — the one who got the boot from the Roots about a decade ago because the Roots decided they wanted an all-black band. Storch went on to produce a number of hit records including the Terror Squad’s famous banger “Lean Back,” and has recently been romantically linked to Paris Hilton whose, um, album he produced. According to reports, Storch has made over $70m as a producer.

Almost ten years ago, swept up in the cultural typhoon of the time that was the Wu-Tang Clan, I picked up a copy of Cappadonna’s album The Pillage. Two days later, taking advantage of a little known policy of Tower Records, I returned the album for a full refund and vowed never to purchase another bad Wu album again. A little over a year later I did the same thing with Raekwon’s Immobilarity. Some vows are less sacred than others I guess. Now there is no Tower Records. No tangible one at least; and I doubt If the online store would ever allow me to save 28 bucks that way again.

Point is, there’s only one member of the Wu right now. Through hard work alone, he has clambered to the top of the Wu heap. A doff of the cap to you Ghostface Killah. And to you Scott Storch. Anyone not named Ghostface or Storch would be lying if they said they saw things working out like this all along.

There was some combination of poor sleep and caffeine that had me staring out into my alley at 7:30 this morning. And though I can hardly say that Storch or Ghostface had anything to do with the event, it only makes sense to mention it now — that time renders truth into light. And an alley that was worth photographing once, might still be worth photographing if only to mark the passage of time.

When we carribeans of indeterminate authenticity get together over a turkey roast, rhythm is the most important thing. The affair starts by naming great turkeys of the past — there was that great rotisserie turkey, or the time we used a syringe to inject butter under the skin. Time-space bopping along all the while. It’s a little past midnight when the recipe is pulled out, another of the greatest hits. “It says to apply the rub about a day ago.” Rhythm.

And since we’re not really in the Carribean and, shit, not really from there either, Antonio Carlos Jobim will be supplying the samba. The rum is Hatian though, and a set of claves sits on the kitchen table for when the rhythms dig in past all the clutter. In those moments — before and after the “jamaican jerk” rub is applied to the fowl — then maybe a click-click-click-click will go along with the kitchen sashay now famous in the Rivero household.

A Jamaican rum is pulled out for good measure, and the bird is left to marinate overnight.

For your next cool breeze: B. Smith’s Jamaican Jerk Turkey, as transcribed from television a couple of years ago:

1. Marinate the turkey — (Slather in olive oil and Vernon’s jerk sauce).
2. You puts the turkey in a 2 gallon ziploc bag (after cleaning and removing giblets).
3. You shwishes around, massages, in and out.
4. You reseal and leaves in the frig 24-48 hours.
5. Before cooking, you removes the seasoning with a damp cloth, inside and out.
6. Puts the turkey in a roasting pan with a rack and cover with 1/4 cup butter, coarse salt and pepper.
7. Put stock in the bottom of roasting pan.
8. Pre-heat at 500 , turn down to 350.
9. Cook until 185 degrees in thigh and 180 in breast (roughly 11 mins per pound).
10. Baste a lot — add stock to bottom of pan as needed.

Pictures to follow, perhaps. Rhythm, you know.

Progress is fascinating. It is one of what I imagine the joys of parenting to be. Name-brand architect Richard Meier has designed a building that ominously announces the arrival of haute city living to the ‘hood, or near it anyway — Hood Hing is a short block away, though I doubt that it rates the Corcoran Group’s list of neighborhood amenities.

A friend of mine, a new father, lives across the street from the pictured building whose condos start just south of $1m and top out in the $8m range. He grumbles that the building’s architecture — so divergent from the rest of the area — is an affront to the architectural flavor of the neighborhood. Ironically, the website for the building itself touts the neighborhood’s “enchanting mix of landmark brownstones, classic architectural masterpieces, and landscaped scenery.” One man’s treasure is another man’s treasure, I presume. Still, I can’t help but to stare wistfully at the edifice as I recall the neighborhoods I have lived in that have been chopped up and condoed out to the highest bidders — now, it seems, even while I’m living there.

Joined at the hip, I’d imagine uncomfortably if the two fathers have anything to do with it, young Sage will grow in lock step with the brainchild of an old master.

Hood Hing is perhaps the most appropriately named Chinese carry-out in Brooklyn. This photo was not snapped there, but may as well have been. Two blocks away, a wall-sized photograph of the Forbidden City decorates the wall of No. 1 Chinese Restaurant. Two blocks from that sits Kam Hong which itself sits a block away from Dragon House, and so on in a never-ending constellation of cheap eats, inch-thick plexiglass, and resentful transactions.

“Learn to chill, man. Learn to chill!” The jamaican-accented woman who ordered before me at Dragon the other day had at least learned the caustic rhythm of most transactions there since coming to the states.

Staring at oneself in the mirror that decorates one wall of No. 1 with a blown-up image of some monument filling the background might be as close as anyone from the ‘hood will ever get to mainland China. The forced optical illusion itself might as well be a visual metaphor for the gossamer relationship that exists between the purveyors of chicken wings with fried rice and the folks who order it. Still, carry-outs are as much a part of the street life as dice games, tinted-out luxury SUVs, and grandmothers who lean on flabby elbows and stare down into the lost concrete below.

In my neighborhood at least, the number of Chinese carry-outs is rivaled by the number of Jamaican joints. Black americans, as ever, stand on the service side of the counter unfolding bills and trying to make ourselves understood.

There’s a kind of pleasure in seeing destruction. Maybe there is clay in the bottom of this canal that makes it impenetrable to the eye. Most likely, though, it’s the most abject kind of negligence that makes this water so interesting to look at. And so smelly.