30 Years to Life

I vaguely remember back in the day when "The Wood" and "The Best Man" came out, people were saying they were weren't representative of the African American community. WTF? Have you never heard of Buppies. I mean come on son. As everyone knows, I love LMN, and they actually played a black movie today, "30 years to life". This is definitely one of my favorite movies, mainly because it shows well to do non-ignorant black people. Not every black movie has to be those semi minstrel movies like, Soul Plane and ish.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about "30 Years to Life". This is a great movie for a couple of reason. #1, as said before, they showed well to do black people. One was a lawyer, one was trying to make partner at a business firm, they were just doing it up. #2, I think it is an accurate depiction of black friends in their mid to late 20's. Granted, I am still in my early twenties, however, being in grad school, most of my friends (outside of law school) are in their mid to late twenties. The relationships are real, the struggles are real. In addition, I think it addresses issues that young black professionals deal with.

Freaking great movie man...

Road To Health and the ENT Doc.

So I am listening to 98.1 this morning and Tavis Smiley was on there promoting his, "Road to Health" tour sponsered by Kaiser Permanente. So he was calling off all of these random facts about health in the black and brown communities and it was extra disturbing to me. And it really wasn't anything new, it was just the fact that I guess I was listening to it on the moring commute not expecting to hear it. Except he lost me when he said that the black community has produced historically the best athletes yet they are the most unhealthy people... there is no correlation. Just because A does not mean B. Come on now Tavis. But seriously, it is so sad that black people are so unhealthy. And a lot of it is all about eating. Actually, I think all of it is all about eating. In the old days, black slaves had to eat things that were NOT supposed to be eaten because it was the only thing they were given. They were not given the more "healthy" parts of animals... naw naw... they were given the parts that white people refused to eat (uh lets see... chitlins, pig ears, feet, hamhocksm, gibblets all come to mind and more). That junk is not good for you... I don't care "how good it is"... it is not supposed to be consumed by humans. Blacks in the past ate this because they had to survive... but blacks now eat it because of tradition and it is making them unhealthy. It's all about this culture of good soul food... but man, you are becoming so unhealthy because of it.

It makes me think of the movie, "Soul Food". I had never thought about that movie until I watched a "Boondocks" episode where Riley goes to say how the movie was about a black family who ate alot of bad food. Then "big mama" got sick and died of all the things that black people usually die of and then the family kept the tradition alive by gathering every Sunday and eating the same food that probably contributed to big mama's demise.

I can't help but think that things that help instill a culture in black people are also killing us... hmmm. Think about it.....

Is THIS What Black IS?

http://www.zshare.net/audio/bootz_going_off-mp3.html

This Bootz/Larissa character is absolutely ridiculous. She just said, "I'm just showing you what black is" on the radio to someone. Naw chick you just showed everyone what ghetto is. That is what you are showing people. It's not even cute... and she swears it is. Do NOT bring down the whole race trying to say that is the way black people act? You are a disgrace to the race. You are absolutely foul and shameful. And then she is trying to act like she has reason to act the way she does.

But you know what... here's the thing... the argument is basically about how Buckwild is disrespecting the black race by the way she acts. What's funny about it is that Bootz wants to say Buckwild is disrespectful to what she's doing... but Bootz whole person is disrespectful. She disrespects pretty much everyone she comes in contact with... she's on a radio show talking like she is. It is absolutely uncalled for. She's disrespecting the entire black race by saying she is what being black is really about. Is that what you want people to think black people are? Just ignorant and disrespectful? And it's worse because she's a black WOMAN. People already think poorly of young black women... why would you perpetuate the stereotype even further?

Well if being black is acting like Bootz... I don't wanna be black anymore. Imma be African American or a person of darker than "average" pigmentation then. lol. It's called learn how to have an intelligent argument without screaming and cursing like a banshee. It's called learn how to respect others opinions so people will take you seriously and not see you as a spoiled ignorant child. No one thinks people are worth the time of day when they act like that... they are just eventually dismissed.

You know... this whole show disturbs me. YES I watch it for comedy... but then when you think about it, it's not GOOD. If people outside of the black race what this and haven't had much contact with black women... this is what they would think we all are like. "I Love New York" wasn't so bad for the men because they weren't acting up.. they were just constantly drunk. These chicks are just shameful!

And you know what... I don't care if people disagrees with me... in fact, I welcome dissenting opinions. I'm about to get my doctorate in arguing... I need the practice.

Yeah, you really aren't cool... sorry

I can't say it enough... but I just don't really understand why people like T-Pain. He sings with a vocador (the thing that makes his voice shake), he can't write, he steals people's verses and to top it off...he's not even remotly cute. I mean how do you make it in the record business with lines such as, "I'm In Luv (not love) Wit a Stripper" and "she made us drinks to drink, we drunk em (got drunk)... and now I think she thinks I'm cool". I a really confused by this.

And then, this dude gets arrested in Miami because his show went over and he flipped out like he really was somebody... throwing the mic and everything. Let us be appropriate, mmmkay? What's the word for a man diva? Well whatever it is... T-Pain +3 is really trying to be it. Not that diva's have reason to act the way they do... but usually when you act like you're the ish.... you kinda are. You aren't some heavy-set dude from the "M-I-A" with dookylocks in his hair.

With all that being said... the beat of Bartender is kinda nice... but his lack of lyrical content and just overall grimeyness just kills it.

Um, You're A Loser.... Thanks

You know, I was just watching MTV (there is nothing on TV, cut me some slack... gaa) and at the end of every show, they play like a 60 second clip of a video. Now, I just saw this one video... I don't know what the title of it is, but it is the song that goes, "through some d's on it". Wait, I believe that is the title of the song. So the clip that I saw was dude standing in a crowded intersection (I think) rapping about how he just bought a Cadillac and he was now ready to put some "d's" on them. By the way, I think d's are rims, never heard this word before, but the kept showing rims, so I am going to assume that d's are rims. Anyway, I've digressed... the video was just ridiculous... so dude is rapping in this crowded intersection with cars driving around them and chicks on the roof and all that junk.

So HERE is the part that confused me... during the video, dude is singing and then they are showing like montage clips of I guess people where he is from or whatever. There was this one scrawny dude with no shirt on and he was just staring into the camera like he was proud and junk. And when I say scrawny, I don't mean emaciated looking, I mean like dude thought he was swole but he just really wasn't. And then they kept shooting all of these houses that looked just tore down and everything. And people were in front of them with all of these expensive cars. I mean WTF??? Be Real with your life guy, be real. You are living in squalor like conditions yet you have a car that probably could buy you a house. I mean it is absolutely ridiculous. Just like hella proud! Standing in front of these houses that looked like shacks with 100,000 worth of car on the lawn. Give me a GD break. Now, there is nothing wrong with a video that shows the conditions of poverty such as that, "Po' Folks" video that showed the typical life of a rural Mississippian (I believe). Nothing wrong with that because they don't have the means to do better and the video was showing that part of life to people that don't usually come in contact with that sort of thing. But that video... just made no damn sense.

Conclusion: Take your D's off your car and throw some of that obviously D money on your GD house, how about that.

Hottest Man Alive

I was just re-reading a couple of my latest posts, and I came upon my Prince defense post. I feel the need to elobrate on this a bit. Prince Nelson is a freaking genius, in all aspects of the word. This guy started in 1978 and is still going strong... that is 29 years! Prince himself is only 48 years old! But anyway, he busted onto the scence in 1978, a liberal time, but still nowhere near where we are today (and no, we are not at the uptopian place, I am just speaking in reletive terms). He had his oversexualized songs, his oversexualized videos, and his oversexualized self to boot and he still had mad success. I mean be real, dude looked like a cross between a man and a female, yet he was non-mistakenly a sexy man. He had permed hair.... but yet, he had a chest full of manly chest hair. Contridiction much? He had assless chaps and yet he has been known to be a lover of women. Yet people were able to overlook all this and celebrate him for the artist he is. He has a crazy falsetto, yet his speaking voice is deep and sexy. Lol.


Seriously, look at that feathered hair! Lol! Yet, he was/still is undeniably hot.

Oh yeah, and Prince had an album in 1988 called "Lovesexy"...note the combination of Love and sexy into... lovesexy... dost that remind us of anything? Possibly FutureSex/LoveSounds.. Justin Timberlake??!??!?? How dare you try to clown Prince in a song, but you have copied countless things from him... you are not original. Dang, see I'm bout to get upset again.

Video Soul

I do not know what my obsession with music is right now... but I am obsessed. I have BET Jazz and sometimes they show reruns of Video Soul. These videos are classic, and they bring you back to a better time man. Seriously though... just listening to some of the songs, and seeing the vidoes and stuff makes me so nostalgic and teary eyed. Today... I saw Mint Conditions, "You Send Me Swinging (Remix)" from 1993. Where are the groups like this now? I mean really. They were getting it man. And "Groove Thang" from Zhane who were straight beautiful (chicks wore cloths back then).

Fledgling

So I just finished reading Fledgling by Octavia Butler and to no surprise, I have mixed feelings about the book. I liked the book and I feel that it had potential to be a good trilogy (however, her untimely death is not going to allow this to happen)... BUT the catch is that it was just like Adulthood Rites except the Oankali were replaced by vampires. But I do like how she somehow managed to weave issues of race in here too... not directly, but very subtly.

I am noticing some themes in here books here that are kinda bothering me. In most of her books, she doesn't have black male characters, she just has the one strong black female protagonist. She always has Well this is not totally true because in Wild Seed (from the Seed to Harvest group) there was Doro, and in Fledgling there was her symbiont Joel, and in Kindred, the boyfriend was black, and in Parable of the Sower, Olamina's boyfriend was African. But these characters tend to be foil characters. They don't really have any substance to them. Most of the black female characters develop relationships with white or Asian or Latin men. What does THIS mean?

She also keeps mentioning this them of longing and hunger and the need to human contact YET she professed herself to be a hermit and a loner. This I don't understand. In the Lilith's Brood trilogy the Oankali had a need for physical human contact. One of the ooloi almost died because he had no contact with a human. She also kept mentioning about how humans touch each other. In Fledgling Shori kept mentioning how she needed to be touched by humans and the hunger for blood she always had. I also think this has something to do with addiction. In Bloodchild, the same hunger was expressed through T'Gatoi and her need to touch.

And what is up with the issue of sterility? And these apocalyptic notions? And these bigger than life women?

Butler's books are just so complicated... but when things are really easy, we don't really appreciate them now do we.

Lilith's Brood

So I have finished "Lilith's Brood" by Octavia E. Butler and I have mixed feelings about the book. It seems like every book I read by her is more disturbing than the next, but still, I can't stop reading them (I already bought Fledgling and I think I am going to start it tonight).

So, "Lilith's Brood" is a trilogy that was previously called Xenogenesis and includes three books, "Dawn", "Adulthood Rites", and "Imago". Dawn was about a human woman, Lilith and her experiences with the Oankali... their changing her, forcing her to be a Moses to her people, and them forcing human sterility upon her and only making them fertile with Oankali. Adulthood Rites was about Akin, Lilith's son, who is both Oankali and human.... he eventually get separated and placed with an all human resister group and is not found until he is an adolescent. This book talks about his issues with being both Oankali and Human. Imago was about another one of Lilith's sons, Jodahs, who becomes an Ooloi (Sexless Oankali/Human construct).

Overall, a GREAT book. It showed so many inherent human flaws that most people don't think about every day. First, according to the Oankali, humans are inherently contradictory. We have very complex bodies and complex minds, however, we don't use 75 percent of what we are capable of. Out bodies just don't know how to work that way. Also, humans are hierarchical. Most of the time, we are all working toward the same goal, but the need to always rule and be on top prevents possible progress.

One more note, I think it is ironic that Octavia Butler wrote all of these books about immortal people and people who had extended lives, yet she died so "young". I mean she was 50 something, it wasn't like she was 70. But she will continue to be known through these books though...just straight genius. Who thinks to write things like this? Not because they are so off the wall, but because they are so novel. And it isn't what she wrote, but it is the way she wrote things. The development of characters are so deep... you actually feel like you KNOW the characters.

Tim Hardaway.... You Too?????

OK, so what is the issue with these publicly homophobic black men? I mean seriously. What is the deal. It is not cute, and for some reason, I think they think it is somewhat cute.

First, we had Isaiah Washington aka Dr. Preston Burke calling TR Knight aka Dr. George O'Malley a faggot in rehearsals for "Grey's Anatomy". Yeah, OK whatever, he didn't do this in public or say that he hated gay people. But wait!! There's more! At the GOLDEN GLOBES, with hella people watching, he decides to say that he didn't call dude a faggot, and if I am not wrong, I think he had the award in hand while he said it. LOL.

Now, Tim Hardaway wants to come out and say that he hates gay people. I mean hate? Why did he have to say hate? And then he goes on to say that if there was a gay person on his team, he would ask that he be removed. Seriously, for what? What purpose is that going to serve? Does he think he is going to contract AIDS or something? Does he think the gay man is going to be looking at his little pee pee while he is showering? I mean what? Just straight up dumb.

Admittedly, my first year of high school, I was a bit uncomfortable with the gay people in my class, but that was because I had never met any gay people before. I was 14... NOT 41, I still had a lot of learning a maturing to do to be able to understand what it really was and wasn't.

I still just don't understand why black MEN of all people tend to be the most homophobic. Seriously, I know it is and old horse that has been beaten time and time again... but if you know how you're ancestors we're persecuted for everything little they did, why would you think it is OK to do it to someone else? I mean seriously. Or even if you felt that way, why would you say it in public? Gosh, the ignorance and gall of some of these people just is beyond me. Actually, I believe the Isaiah Washington issue was a bit different.... he just slipped up, but the Tim Hardaway one is completely beyond me....

Off the Wall

SOOOOOO tonight, gotta leave that 9 to 5 up on the shelf, and just enjoy yourself. Come on and GROOOOOOVE, let the madness in the music get to you, life ain't so bad at all. When you live it OFF THE WALL!!

This is basically a follow up to this post about Michael Jackson. And like I said in another post before, I get on muscially binges, and obviously, I am on a Michael Jackson binge. HELP ME SOMEONE!

African American Interest Books

So I am in Barnes and Noble today just browsing passing time and I come upon the "African-American Interest" section. I was kind of confused about what I saw because the only books I saw were books relating to sex and violence. Now, had the title been African American Authors, there would be no problem BECAUSE the authors were African American. But African American INTEREST. Now, had there been other books in here like some Octavia Butler or Walter Mosely or something like that there wouldn't be an issue.

Now behind that "African American Interest" section, was a section that had non-fiction books by African American authors, but I can't remember. Where were the other countless authors who write fiction or science fiction... not just the Arabesque Romance authors?

I LOVE when I go into stores like Marcus Books (Bay Area regional black bookstores) and Karibu Books (DC regional black bookstores). They have such a variety of books by black authors... books you never would have seen in a mainstream store like Barnes and Noble or Borders. This is not to say that they don't have some, because they do, but not the assortment that I like.

Also, I am sooo proud to say that Karibu books actually has a STORE now in Pentagon City Mall... not just a little cart. The store was small yes, but it had lots of books... and not just sexually explicit books, books of substance. Making progress.

Don't forget to visit your local black bookstores... they needs the support.

Uncouthness

Apparently, having a perm or somewhat texturized hair makes one uncouth. This MUST be the reason for the Racial Divide. It all is so very clear to me. LOL. Taking Sen. Biden's words completly out of context here for entertainment purposes... perms make blacks looks dirty and forces them to be "inarticulate".

On a serious note, why would he think that these comments were OK to say. He meant them as compliments, but seriously, you just took a boo boo on all the other black people who have tried.

Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler has become one of my favorite writers over the past two years. Her books, while often disturbing, have an element in them that touches you. Octavia Butler was an African American Science Fiction/feminist writer, which come few and far between. Well, maybe not science fiction but speculative fiction, but who really wants to split hairs about that sort of thing.

The first book I read by hear, Parable of the Sower was actually on accident. I was in Barnes and Noble, and I randomly came across the book which was in the wrong section. The cover was a really pretty blue and had a girl on it who seemed like she was about my age. I couldn't find a book that I wanted, so I gave this book a try. The book was about this girl whose city was ripped apart and had to voyage across the country with her new "tribe". The book was great... I wasn't quite sure what it was that I liked about it, but I figured I would give her another try, so I read the sequel, Parable of the Talents.

The third book I read was Kindred, which is about a black woman who is transported back to the times of slavery. Once again, when I finished this book, I wasn't sure why I liked it, but I did.

The fourth book I read was Bloodchild and other stories. It was with this book that I figured out what I liked about Octavia Butler's writing. She is able to convey human emotions better than anyone that I have ever read (and I have read a lot of books).

This was especially pertainent in the fifth book I read from her, Wild Seed. This book is about two immortal beings who basically can't get away from each other; one heals and the other kills. But because they are immortal... they can only have each other. It is actually kind of wierd because you end up rooting for the being that kills to give into the other being because she really loved him. It was just a rollercoaster of emotions that you are taken on with her books... and I acually like it.

I am now on Lilith's Brood, which is a complication of three books Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. We'll see how I feel about these books later