Fu-Schnickens - What's Up Doc?

Let's celebrate one of the world's least-beloved vanity rap careers. Shaq's media career has been mostly met with aggressive indifference; the man apparently recorded five rap albums (meaning that the Shaquille O'Neal section at your local record store is exactly as deep as the A Tribe Called Quest section), and his two feature film starring roles are punch lines for hacky comedians the world over. He's clearly a charismatic guy, and hell, Michael Jordan's one big starring credit was a big hit, and that guy's personality is something akin to a rancid hunk of bologna. I think there's something just kind of off-putting about Shaq - the monotone voice, that constant smirk, the jokes that aren't nearly as funny as he (and his sycophantic beat writers) seem to think they are. He's self-aware but almost too self-aware, someone who would never let himself display anything resembling a genuine human emotion. He's kind of the anti-AI (whose vanity rap career never even got off the ground), a man who's just too self-possessed, too in control. He went from precocious man-child to crusty old Brit, without passing through any of the horrible bits of self-doubt in between that define the rest of us.