Hometown Boy Makes Good

I first heard about this brother during a NPR broadcast of “All Things Considered.” Since Michael Oher is from Memphis, my hometown, it caught my attention. It’s a story with a simply horrible beginning but seemingly ends well.

It seems that Oher, one of thirteen children, was headed for a broken life. His father was murdered and his mother a crackhead. As a teenager, he was caught in the revolving door of the foster care system, and for all intents and purposes, he was raising himself in the streets of Memphis.

However, he came to the attention of a suburban family who took him in, saw to it that his immediate needs were met, and made sure he got a good education. Eventually they adopted him.

During high school he tried out for the football team and turned out to be an absolute beast on the gridiron. He went on to graduate from high school and attend Ole Miss where he was a four year starter on the Rebel football team, and in his senior year, Oher earned All SEC and All American honors. And to top it all off, Saturday the 6’6”, 310 pound Oher was selected by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the NFL draft with the 23^rd pick. His future looks bright indeed.

I feel a special kinship with Oher because I onced walked the same streets he did. Though my story is not nearly as rough, I knew a lot of Michael Ohers who did not make it out. I know what the end of his story could have been. So, Michael Oher, I salute you and hope you only the very best.

The Great Chicken Riot of 2009

Hold up! Stop the damn presses!

I was just getting ready to shut it down for the night. So I decided to check out my blogroll while I wound down. Then I found this gem over on What Would Thembi Do?, and I knew I had to say something before I went to bed.

It seems that Popeye's Chicken offered a nationwide special for Earth Day, yet a franchise in Minnesota decided not to participate in the promotion. So what happened? The Minnesotan negroes went bezerk, that's what. I shit you not. There was damn near a riot. Over fried chicken? IN THE AGE OF OBAMA?

I'm at a loss for words. If I had not seen it for myself, I would not have believed it. Where do we go from here people?

Please God, Just Take Me Now!

Sometimes I get so caught up in myself that I make egregious errors in judgement. Sometimes I place so much confidence in my self-confidence, my supposed strength, that I forget to empathize with others; I forget that I, too, am subject to the viccisitudes of being. But I have been appropriately chastened.

During practically every funeral I’ve attended, there has always been at least one person to hurl themselves at the deceased’s casket and yell out, “Please God, just take me now!”. They wail. They scream out. They make a spectacle of themselves as they are hualed away by attendants.

Perhaps you’ve witnessed such a moment. I've witnessed a number of them. And usually I’ve tsk-tsk’d my way through such displays, writing them off as simple theatrics—drama. Smugly, I've decried the moaner for sullying the "dignity" of the moment and ceremony.

But recently I faced the death of a family member who I loved with all my heart. My much beloved grandmother passed away at the age of eighty-five. And the moment I received news of her death, I begin to understand the “Please God, take me now!” moment.

At that moment, at the very moment, the pain is so great, the hurt is so severe, that you cannot imagine yourself living another minute, another second, like this. The pain and hurt is so great, so severe, that nothing else matters. You simply want to slump down in a ball on the floor and weep, no wail. You want to scream out; you want to do whatever it takes to ameliorate your suffering at that very moment.

And people attempt to comfort you by telling you that eventually the hurt will fade, eventually the pain will subside. But it does not. The hurt and pain seemingly goes away for a bit, then at the most unexpected moment, it awakes again. And for a brief moment you clutch your chest, you choke back sobs, and you think to yourself, "Please God, just take me now!".

So to those people who I’ve looked down my nose at in the past, please forgive me. I, too, now know your grief, your sadness. I, too, now share in your sense of loss.

Questioning the Dyn-o-mite Dynamics of Good Times

I’m into about hour sixteen of a twenty-four hour Good Times marathon on TV-One. It’s been fun. I’ve had some laughs. I’ve reminisced. It took me back. But suddenly I’m beginning to question the whole premise on which the show is built.

You see, Good Times is based on a black family living in the projects; the hilarity grows from their efforts to overcome the chaos that surrounds them and the forces which keep them there. And it is hilarious. Until you think of the implications.

Over the five or six seasons or so this show was on the air, the family remained firmly ensconced in the projects. Every plan they conceive of to escape their conditions falls through. The father, James Evans, Sr., is killed when he goes south to pursue a better job. JJ has tremendous talent and potential as an artist, but he can’t seem to catch a break. Thelma’s husband the NFL prospect breaks his leg and doesn’t get the million dollar contract he was expecting, and the younger son Michael is not able to go off to college as he has planned his whole life because he has to stay and help out the family.

If you think about it, this is perhaps the most hapless family I’ve ever saw, and suddenly the show becomes just damn depressing. The shit suddenly ain’t so funny anymore.

But if you think about it, the show could play out no other way. If the family is finally able to progress and get out the projects, the narrative of poverty is broken, and the show no longer functions as a sitcom; perhaps, negroes succeeding just doesn’t seem so funny. Or at least it was not so funny at the time (Remember the shows staff of mostly white writers).

But wait. Another episode is coming to an end. It seems that at the end of this episode, JJ finally signs a lucrative contract with an animation studio and is finally able to move out. Thelma’s husband finally gets an NFL contract, and he and Thelma move out taking the mother with them. And Michael is finally able to go to college. It seems like their luck has changed!

It turns out that this is the last episode recorded; it is the farewell show. Now TV-One is starting over again with the initial episode. The cycle begins anew.

Ha! Seems my theory is correct.

My Meshell!

You know, when I heard Meshell Ndegeocello for the first time several years ago, I got excited! Coincidentally, I caught the video for her jam “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night)” on BET (I don’t know why I was even watching BET), and later I happened upon the CD, Plantation Lullabies, in the store (serendipity?). After I checked it out, I ran back to the store and bought everything by Meshell I could find.

And over the years, she has not failed to deliver. Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape got me through graduate school. In fact, it appeared on a syllabus or two in a couple of classes I taught.

I have yet to catch her live in concert, though. But it’s certainly on my things to do as soon as possible list. Anyway, here’s a recent interview I found on the web.



And while you are here, check out the video that started it all for me, plus I got all hyped and threw in a short funk piece. Damn, she bad!

Stuff White People Do

Can I ask you a question? Why would you show up at a festival dressed as a wizard and then get butt-assed naked? It simply makes no sense. Yet, the self-proclaimed wizard in the clip below did just that.

However, that’s probably only the beginning of the zany madcaps contained here. The police seem absolutely perplexed by the task of arresting a butt-naked man without actually coming in contact with the butt-nakedness. So what do they do? They tase him. And they tase him. And then they tase him some more.

If you have a certain disdain for naked white people, do not look at this clip!


Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.

Where is Gil Scott Heron (and Where Was He When We Needed Him the Most)

I was going through my CDs recently, searching for just the right CD to fit my mood for the moment, when I ran across my collection of Gil Scott Heron CDs. It’s been a while since I last grooved with Gil, so I threw it in and sat back.

I forgot what an absolute beast Gil was. Gil’s shit was always on the money. And what’s so amazing, it’s still relevant even now. Substitute Bush for Nixon and Cheney for Agnew, and all of a sudden, it’s a contemporary piece. It looks like republicans have been up to the same all shit for some time now.

Most people have heard “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” But Gil’s contribution is much greater than that. For a time, he was our griot, our mouthpiece. He stayed in Ronald Reagan’s ass. Poems like “H2O Gate Blues,” “Bicentennial Blues,” “B-Movie” and “Pardon the Analysis” tackled the hypocrisy and other extraneous foolishness in Washington through several administrations. If I might quote poet Etheridge Knight, “He had been our Destroyer,/ the doer of things. We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do.” He said the shit we wanted to day; he was the voice of our frustrations and misgivings.

The Bush administration might have been more bearable had we had the voice of Gil Scott Heron been available. Check out my Gil Scott Heron playlist below. It contains a couple of the poems mentioned above as well as two of my favorites.

I know that he got in a little trouble, but after he did his penance, I fully expected him to return to the stage and the studio. However, I have heard very little from him except a set at SOB’s in New York City which is embedded below. Come on back Gil; we need you more than ever.