Conversation with the Therapist

Dr. Rosenstein: So, how are you feeling today?

Mr. White: Well, I feel funky, as usual.

Rosenstein: Why’s that?

White: I just feel there’s a void in my life. I think I’m depressed.

Rosenstein: How do you figure?

White: I’m worried about my legacy. I don’t have much to show for my fifty-two years here on earth.

Rosenstein: That’s not true. Think about all that you’ve accomplished. What has been your life’s work?

White: I dunno. I’ve been working down at EVL Corporation since I got out of college, so I guess I’ve accomplished a lot for them.

Rosenstein: And what do they do?

White: They make satellite guidance systems for missiles.

Rosenstein: That’s something! Think of all the lives you’ve saved.

White: Yeah.

Rosenstein: And you’ve built a family in those years, haven’t you?

White: Well, that’s another thing that’s bothering me.

Rosenstein: Why’s that?

White: I just have this disconcerting feeling lately that the family unit is nothing more than a social mechanism for economic organization and reproduction.

Rosenstein: Well, I imagine that you love your economic unit very much, right? I know I love my family.

White: Yes, I love them very much. But that’s just a particular arrangement of cellular interactions through a witch’s brew of neurotransmitters within the confines of my abysmally insignificant skull.

Rosenstein: You’re skull is only as insignificant as you make it, Mr. White. I prefer to think of my skull as my reality, all that really exists to me as far as I know.

White: Yes, that’s another thing.

Rosenstein: You know, one thing that I sometimes recommend to depressed patients is to get out there and get involved. You know, make a change in the world! Join an organization dedicated to helping your fellow man.

White: My fellow man! This world is an anthill waiting to be squashed out at the whim of those cold, arbitrary forces of the endless and incomprehensible universe in which we live.

Rosenstein: You might be suffering from something we in the profession refer to as “existential angst.” You know, Merck makes a prescription for that.

White: Great. Hook me up.

Rosenstein: It’s called cyanide. It’ll kill you instantly.

White: Why not? I'll try it.

Rosenstein: I often recommend it to hard cases, and everyone I've given it to so far has been entirely satisfied.

White: Great.

Rosenstein (fills out prescription): Here you go.

White: Hey, thanks!

Rosenstein: And it looks like our time is up.

White: Well, I guess I won't be seeing you again.

Rosenstein: Nope. Speaking of which, could you go ahead and write me a check before you leave?

Letter To Dr. Dre

Andre Young
Interscope Records
10900 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1230
Los Angeles, California 90024

Dear Mr. Young,

Your rhymes have long been whack. Your beats, though catchy, are increasingly inane. I feel you have fallen off, quite frankly.

The signing of 50 Cent to Interscope two years ago marked the beginning of the decline of your stature and the loss of respect my colleagues and I had for you. At this point, we have decided that the best and most prolific course of action that we can take is to step to you. This has been an unfulfilled desire of ours for several years now, as you have been talking an increasing amount of game that you can clearly no longer back up.

Neither you nor anyone in your organization is nearly as hard as you make yourselves out to be. When you need someone stabbed, you still need G-Unit, whom I must profess my utmost respect for, for real, because they really are hard. Yes, G-Unit, though not as hard as some of the Tutsi clans of central Africa, who while in a drunken stupor will hack a baby to death with a machete before devouring its intestines, at least have some street credit. They still drink forties, live in the hood and in state prison, eat fried chicken, and roll Impalas with rims in excess of twenty-two inches.

Though you are a brilliant music producer, having engineered genius synthesized compositions such as the undeniably hip and catchy beat to “In Da Club,” which may rank among the nation’s top five rap songs of all time, you still ain’t hard. You roll a Ferrari, and according to my sources have not been arraigned for a felony since first getting rich off of “NWA” in the late 1980s. While Snoop Dogg was out murdering a guy and getting acquitted, Tupac was being repeatedly shot, and Suge Knight was in prison, your happy ass was driving a Ferrari around southern California, married to a white bitch, living in Beverly Hills.

You have repeatedly asserted that you carry “a long uzi” with you at all times, but when you were recently assaulted at the Vibe Awards by a bitch nigga, you were forced to call in G-Unit for immediate backup in the form of a brutal shank, but were conspicuously unable to produce a firearm yourself. How can you live with yourself these days? Whatever happened to “Dre day, nigga, A-K nigga!” I long for those days, those days when Dre could be relied on to actually produce an AKM assault rifle under duress. But those days are undoubtedly gone forever, for you are whack.

Regards,

C. Theodore Buckhorn