In Atlanta, Freaknik Will Never Truly Die

You can take Freaknik out of the A, but you can't spell Freaknik without the A, as in Atlanta.
While the notorious car-and-girl fest has been dead for more than a decade, the spirit of Freaknik continues to live on in various places around Atlanta (see "strip club" in the dictionary), usually in song and pictures. But this year is different because dueling Freaknik events have sprouted up in the city, not to mention the animated special that Adult Swim aired last week, "Freaknik - The Musical," starring T-Pain and a host of other rappers.
So, why is Freaknik getting all this love all of a sudden? And what exactly was Freaknik? Physically it was a car show with babes in them. Psychologically, it was a small-city country-boy takeover of a Black Metropolis. Well, maybe it's pent-up demand. Sometimes you just miss that freak. See, Atlanta, since the mayor that got the party started was sent to jail and back, has straightened its tie, so to speak, and given its soul to business interests. In doing so, there's been a groundswell of support for things to go back the way they were, for the good times of yesteryear to re-emerge.
Freaknik, call it want you want, symbolized Atlanta at its good-timey peak: The city was fresh from a tryst with the Olympics, millionaires and black people were moving in in droves, and most importantly, the City Too Busy to Hate had jobs. Tons of them.
But things have changed.
The city is no longer as hospitable to visitors as it once was. Unemployment is above the national average.
Jobs are scarce, good times are rare, and well, people miss that Freak.


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Does He Just Have to Have It?

In Spike Lee's big-screen debut, "She's Got to Have It," Nola Darling was documented scoring three admirers with her trademark charm and sass.
Along with the theme of the film -- the lengths people go to to find love -- was the very obvious subplot, that some people are simply sex maniacs.

But how would you know today if someone was exhibiting signs of said sex mania?
If they want it "morning, noon and night" and "in the eee'nin" as Jodeci once sang?
If they are reckless with it, demanding PDA at every turn?
If normal things like, say, passing cars, or pedestrians don't seem to mean anything to him or tamp down his lustful tendencies then ... well, you just might have yourself an addict on your hands (Sorry to some, you aint that irresistible).
Is it normal to always want it? Or is it cool to sometimes take a raincheck due to fatigue, I dunno, work, or church?
At first it may seem cute but when does it get a bit creepy?
Or does it?

Was Sigmund Freud a Freak?

Sigmund Freud was a freak. Known throughout the world as an avant garde Austrian psychiatrist, few people were allowed to be as kinky as Sigmund was in his professional life. Although he did much work in psychoanalysis, he is best known for his redefining sexual desire as the primary motive of humans. This was big at the time. For before Freud sex was seen as a taboo subject relegated to the dark bedrooms of the world, devoid of life, absent of discovery. Freud changed that. Was Freud simply a dirty old man who turned his profession out, and the world out, with his studies? Was Freud gay? The debate has raged for years. What is not debatable is that he had an insatiable appetite for sex and was possibly obsessed by it. There was one external stimulus though that may have attributed to Freud's success: cocaine.
Freud was an avid user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug and he was influenced by his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis."
When the Nazis came, Freud and his Ukrainian colleague, Max Schur, fled to London. There they advanced their studies, on no more a subject that Freud himself, who at that time had developed oral cancer due to heavy smoking. Schur assisted him in suicide after reading Freud's note: "My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk. You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense any more." Schur administered three doses of morphine over many hours that resulted in Freud's death on September 23, 1939.