Blotter

Chivalry and restraint

On Saturday, a Patchogue woman got into a tiff with Ali Asker Baser, the 31-year-old attendant at a local gas station. It's unclear how the argument started or what it was about, but it apparently got pretty bad. So bad, in fact, that the woman ran to her boyfriend afterward to report that Baser had allegedly slapped her. Can you imagine?

Well, the boyfriend, Alex Watkins, being the chivalrous sort, immediately stomped over to the gas station to find out just why the hell Baser is slapping women around, let alone customers.

Baser apparently didn't care much for Watkins' tone, so the two of them started wrestling. Apparently for all his faults, Baser at least showed a little restraint in merely slapping the woman. Confronted with Watkins and already on a roll, he allegedly pulled out all the stops, not only stabbing him with a pocket knife, but biting off the tip of his finger as well!

Watkins was taken to the hospital, where he was treated and released. Baser was taken to the police station, where he's merely facing second-degree assault charges.

-Walium Watts

RAP: Who Shot ya part II

The sad case of Mos Def should serve as a cautionary tale to all young MCs-perhaps the most prodigiously talented rapper of his generation, Mos fell in love with the press clippings that painted him as that presumably rarest bird, an articulate black man, and turned his back on hip-hop to star in crappy Broadway shows and movies and make crappy rock albums. When I saw his new record in the bins this spring, my first thought was, "He's still alive?"

He is, but maybe not for long. Grasping after relevance, Mos called out terrifying gangster Suge Knight for his involvement in the death of Tupac Shakur at a show on the Left Coast last week. As the Los Angeles Times had it, "The svelte and far-from-intimidating rapper said he was looking for Knight and wanted to know 'who shot my man?'"

Our advice to Mos is to have his agent look for scripts with titles like Let Sleeping Dogs Lie or There's a Reason Mos Def Is the First Rapper to Talk About This in Public, lest he serve as a cautionary tale of a different sort.

-Jameson Kozrowsky