Hustler

NEW YORK- - In publicity shots, he's mean and threatening - all muscles, tattoos and bullet wounds. His lips are usually tight, his eyes like razors. But here in his hotel suite at the posh Essex House Hotel in Manhattan, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson often flashes a toothy, boyish grin. He's easygoing, downright gregarious. The rapper reclines in a plush chair, swimming in dark jeans and a black and white pullover from his G-Unit clothing line. Sometimes, he jumps to his feet, lithe and animated, to illustrate a point.

NO, DAD-GUM IT, I'M not going to do a column on the Revvum Jesse Jackson. I won't. Everyone understand that? I won't do it. This is the non-column on Jesse Jackson. Heck, you aren't really reading this right now. That's the question I've heard the past day and a half, of course. "Are you going to do a column on Jesse Jackson?" The query is prompted by the good revvum's personal troubles, which came to light Wednesday. It seems that raising hell about racial injustice and poverty or being a race hustler - which seem to be the only views of Jackson - weren't all that he's been up to the past couple of years.

ESTHER, CHARLES, Pauline and William. It's doubtful you'll ever see their names mentioned in the pages of some history book. But here, at the onset of Black History Month, I think of them tenderly, reverently. They are my beloved grandparents - all of whom are now, sadly, deceased. William proved a stalwart presence until his death at 90 about a year ago. With the myriad activity that occurs each February honoring great leaders and traditions in the African-American community, I can't help but acknowledge the people right within my own family.

He has been in five movies, 40 countries and thousands of pool rooms. He met his wife, Francine, giving her a lesson in the game. Mike Massey grew up in a little town near Knoxville, Tenn. "on the other side of the tracks" and wound up in his sport's Hall of Fame. Picking up a pool cue for the first time when he was 8 and starting to play seriously when he was 13, Massey saw potential shots on the smooth green felt like a tailback might see a developing hole on a swath of green grass.

Dallas -- I DUG INTO my pocket and gave a buck to a street person the other day. Does that make me a good Samaritan -- or a sucker?The disheveled fellow said he was hungry and needed some money for food -- a point that hit home with me since I was walking into a restaurant for lunch when he approached me. From what I could tell, the man seemed to be speaking the truth. He was hollow-eyed and haggard.Still, my momentary compassion came not without some skepticism. Only a week before, in virtually the same spot, a desperate-looking woman had asked me for a dollar or two. Her car, she explained, had just run out of gas and she needed to get home.

Because he regards all straight employment as human catastrophe, Eddie from South Baltimore, the semi-well-known bookmaker, is making his way along Hanover Street this frosty morning with four imitation wool sweaters in a plastic bag."Worth $89," he explains by way of sales pitch."Too much," says a guy regarding them with the eye of a connoisseur."I'll take $20," says Eddie, never one to split hairs.Historically, Eddie makes his living booking horse races and ballgames and numbers. But, owing to the football season having ceased and the state having become the biggest lottery operator around, it's fallen to Eddie to supplement his income in a variety of other ways.

THE ALL-TIME line about Pete "Bananas" Prevas came from an East Baltimore bookmaker who sometimes did a little side action selling warmed-over merchandise from the trunk of his Oldsmobile."

The Madam, by Julianna Baggott, Atria Books. 304 pages. $24. Who wrote the book where a dancing bear lived upstairs in the boarding house -- with an orphanage thrown in for good measure? Aha! John Irving! But not this time. It's the third novel by Julianna Baggott -- although one of the children happens to be named Irving, and coincidences are always suspicious. As in the real Irving, when the dancing bear is dead and buried, we know that the other characters have also struck the worst of times.

Baltimore Police said yesterday that their discovery of a cache of homemade DVDs featuring young men smoking marijuana and spewing violent threats, as well as appearances by homegrown NBA star Carmelo Anthony, has provided them with a trove of criminal intelligence. The set of at least seven DVDs, one of which became public on Thursday, was apparently made by a group of Baltimore men in an effort to intimidate police informants. The videos are sold on the black market and were discovered about two months ago by police, who used informants to purchase some of them.

Cellphones and the Internet have not only altered the way we communicate, they have changed the way we can injure one another. The telecommunications revolution has created the capability of causing far greater harm to children than the bullying many of us remember from when we were young. The omnipresent nature of the Internet means that there is no place for the child who is victimized to hide. Not even one's home is a safe haven when repeated, vicious attacks appear on Facebook and Twitter.