It’s only March, but Mo’Nique is indeed the frontrunner for the Best Year Ever Award. In a little less than a week, the self-proclaimed queen of comedy and Golden Globe (and Screen Actors Guild) Award winner, will probably win an Oscar for her work in Precious, despite her reluctance to “campaign” for the little gold statue.
Talk about a come up. Read more »
Today is my birthday. [Golf clap.] I’m officially too old to be writing for this blog. Moving on.
Consider this my obligatory, quite random and uninspired response to the Tiger Woods’ apology: It was boring, about as interesting as watching golf on television. Like, seriously. How can I take voyeuristic pleasure in something so…um, vanilla [talking about the speech, not Woods' taste in women]? For a guy who sends such racy text messages, I was expecting a much more electrifying statement. If Tiger Woods had read from his Blackberry I assure you all that his apology would have actually been worth talking about. Maybe he should’ve used Autotune. Is there an App for animating an otherwise mundane statement by a professional athlete?
How much more satisfying would it have been if Woods had just walked up to the podium and said, “My wife made me do this…”? Read more »
Dear John Mayer,
Dude, wtf? I was in New Mexico off grid for a few days; I get back home to the Chi, and every straight black girl with a blog now hates you. I had a message in my Facebook inbox with a link to your Playboy interview, so I figured it out. Note to self: friends don’t let friends interview drunk.
Normally, John, I wouldn’t be paying much attention to you. My homegirl, Maegs swears by you, and insists on torturing me at work by playing your albums. I don’t quite understand the allure. You’re kind of like Corinne Bailey Rae to me: people love you, but you bore me to pieces. Don’t get me wrong. I love my sensitive white boys. I dig Damien Rice. Josh Rouse’s 1972 is my album. Amos Lee’s “Skipping Stone”? My jam. Yet for whatever reason, whenever I hear Maegs humming “Daughters,” I start hitting the snooze button. However, you woke me up with your Playboy interview. You infuriated others. You made me shrug. Then again it’s kind of my moral obligation as a blogger on this thing we call pop life to say something, right? So here’s my “something.” Pay attention.
Hey folks,
Insomnia combined with this sinus thing I’ve been battling for a couple of weeks has me behind this morning. I hope to have a new post up this afternoon, k?
Love,
me
My fellow Boilermaker, Drew Brees with the Lombardi trophy
Dang. So I had this long post-Super Bowl entry ready about sports and how I don’t enjoy trophy presentations after the game and the plantation model in professional sports and everything, but I just can’t post something like that right now. Not this morning. Not when there are people still partying in the French Quarter. Read more »
Note: Late week, Professor Cohen had a talk about the Black Youth Project, including the blog, on campus. I just want to say thanks to the folks who complimented me on my writing here. It means a lot, and I want to express my deepest gratitude. I’m sorry that I was socially awkward. I had hoped to engage with you better, but I’m a dork. That’s why I prefer to write.
Also, a special shout out to my friend, Rosa for suggesting I write a post on the Super Bowl.
I just don’t know how Chris Matthews does it! My experience at last year’s inauguration–a.k.a. the second biggest event in black history, just one acre and half a mule behind freedom–left me cold, irritable, hungry, and so over the large crowds only hours of attending rap concerts with my homegirl, Maegs helped me successfully navigate. I lost Hope at the Silver Spring metro station, but, encouraged by the sight of all those black folks draped in American flag-inspired fashions, I did stash a little post-race elixir in the glove compartment of my car, only to freak out when I got pulled over by a Pennsylvania state trooper, and demand that Maegs toss it out into the darkness of the Keystone State night. Since then, I’ve become even more obsessed with blackness. So much so that I can’t shake this feeling that somehow I must have mistakenly taken the red, black, and green pill instead of the blue one like I had intended. (Morpheus is such a trickster!) As a result, I’ve spent the last year haunted by race, becoming more racially paranoid than an octaroon at a Mississippi Klan rally. Read more »
My real post will be up in a few minutes, but I just had to post this. Questlove reminded all of his Twitter followers that D’Angelo’s album, Voodoo was released ten years ago today. It is still one of the most miraculous albums I’ve ever heard, and one of greatest live shows I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it was better than Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation Tour.
Folks need to be listening to this album all day. The first time I heard it, my response was a tepid, “Okay.” Then, late one night, I played it again and something just clicked. I’ll never forget that moment. I played Voodoo non-stop for weeks, took it everywhere with me.
A Twitter friend contends that “Spanish Joint” is the best song on this album. I told her “Africa” had to be my favorite. Her response was that “Africa” wasn’t a song, but a meditation. Can’t say I disagree with her.
It’s the MLK holiday, which probably means that you’re not reading this. Or if you are lucky, perhaps your boss gave you the day off, which means you’ve just stumbled out of bed still hungover from that extra night of clubbing, regretting updating your status message while drunk, and contemplating whether or not to participate in that day of service with your fellow frats and/or sorors. It’s tempting, I know, but forget about it. Tutoring inner city kids in math for one day doesn’t really help at all. So just make yourself a Screwdriver and finish reading this blog. There’s a better way of showing how seriously you take the legacy of Martin Luther King, and you don’t have to listen some to black intellectual bloviate through a King Day lecture, or pretend you care enough about a cause to actually march about it. You can show your support for the King holiday by joining my campaign.
One thing that really irks me about white supremacy is that it allows folks–mostly white men–to say really bigoted and racist things, and make lots of money doing it. Racism is not just the process of institutionalizing prejudice and methodically discriminating against black folks and other people of color, it’s also a very lucrative business, a capitalistic endeavor that allows purveyors of the commodity to make mad dough. And, as always, the kids with melanin doing the hustlin’ make the least amount of money. Sure, I suppose Flavor Flav got a nice stack per episode, but Pat Robertson is worth at least $200 million–and he gets to be a racist bigot in the name of God! Read more »