Your twin.

Ever met your twin? Okay, all the twins out there are excused from this question. I’m talking to the non-aberrant birthed people (kidding, twins, kidding). Really, have you ever met that person that drives you MAD, because they remind you of someone. Someone you thought you had a pretty good relationship with. I met mine. Oh lord! He’s annoying. But is he annoying because he is so much like me or is he just annoying. My vote is for just annoying. It makes me look better. Okay. so he’s reflecting some of my more, ummm, challenging character traits. It’s an eye opening experience. I recognize my words coming from a foreign, male mouth. My words are kinda mean sometimes. It’s not intentional. Well, most times it’s not intentional. And, boy, am I sarcastic. Can I let a comment go by without a flippant or snide remark? Oh, and I must work on my listening skills. Fortunately I can fake it really well, because I’m so smart, but I really shouldn’t fake it. (Oh, did I mention my modesty?) Okay, so I have some demanding qualities---but, I’ve got some good ones as well. Honest self-analysis comes to mind.

Going to Final Fridays on March 31
Listening to Chris Brown (younger, gentler Usher— and it’s nice to hear about sweet puppy love),

Professional Networking Events

I’m no good at this stuff. Making small talk with bankers, marketers, and sales. What? I don’t even know what these people do. Bankers=rob people. Marketers=convince people to buy things they don’t want. Sales=pressuring people to buy things they don’t want. I’m a snob. I do justice for a living. What can be better than that? Medical doctor comes close. (I’m being facetious….doctors are neck and neck with us prosecutors.) But anyway, I can’t understand how to navigate these type of events. Do you stick by the people you know? Do you venture off to talk to strangers? Is this a dating event? Do you invite people you are interested in as a way to ask them on a ‘non-date’? It doesn’t make sense. What do you do with your hands? Do you keep a drink in them? Do you keep them at your side? What do you wear? Business casual? Power suit? I’m confused I tell you. I do believe at the last event I attended I was the darkest thing in the place besides the mahogany bar. I felt like a Cabbage Patch Doll in a sea of wanna-be Malibu Barbies. Not a comforting feeling. Of course there were like a handful of Highland Barbies with their little square rimmed black glasses, but they still act like Malibu Barbie. Oh lord, I’m so judgmental. I may need a 12 step program.

Listening to 10 years’ Wasteland. Kinda Incubus like (I still love you Brandon!!!)

Black Folks are Irish Too

If I get one more crack about the ‘black Irish’ this week I’ll scream. People here in Louisville, must have all failed history class or they were all taught from the same racist, revisionist history book. First thing: Black people in America are a mixed race. No one of slave descent (most non-immigrant Black folks in the USA) is of FULL African blood. Most of us have Y-chromosome DNA which passes from the father which traces back to Europe and most of our mitochondrial DNA which passes from the mother is from Africa. This is the reality of slavery. Something we like to forget. Something people are not taught. Something people don’t want to talk about. My family history is a little different but not uncommon: we have Irish blood through a marriage of choice between an Irish man (great-great-grandfather) and a Native American-Black woman (great-great-grandmother). And that’s just on my mother’s side. So, yes I’m Irish, Native American, African, and what I hear on my daddy’s side Arab as well. So, listen up, Black Folks are Black because just like the color black absorbs all the colors of the spectrum we absorb all the racial groups of the world to make one rainbow race.

Harlem Sweeties
by Langston Hughes

Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,
Caramel treat,
Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat.
Peach-skinned girlie,
Coffee and cream,
Chocolate darling
Out of a dream.
Walnut tinted
Or cocoa brown,
Pomegranate-lipped
Pride of the town.
Rich cream-colored
To plum-tinted black,
Feminine sweetness
In Harlem’s no lack.
Glow of the quince
To blush of the rose.
Persimmon bronze
To cinnamon toes.
Blackberry cordial,
Virginia Dare wine—
All those sweet colors
Flavor Harlem of mine!
Walnut or cocoa,
Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar,
A chocolate treat.
Molasses taffy,
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream.
Ginger, wine-gold,
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary—
So if you want to know beauty’s
Rainbow-sweet thrill,
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.

I'm wasting my time

I'm chasing a dream. I'm trying to captor a specter. I’m trying to put escaped air back into a balloon. I want someone desperately who doesn’t want me at all. I know I’m being a fool. I know I’m wasting energy and time. Time is gone forever. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, so I guess its like running in place. Why do I want him? I don’t know. I’ve wanted him for so long, I don’t know anything else to want. I don’t know any other way to be. I don’t know life in any other context. If I had any shame when it came to this person, I would be completely humiliated by the pining I have done over the years. Yes, I said Y-E-A-R-S, not minutes, days or months….years. I don’t think there is one time I’ve been doing one of those adult acts *wink, wink* and I wasn’t thinking of him. Of course, he’s no where to be found during those situations, but he is always on my mind. (Certain people are not going to like that statement, oh well, it’s the truth. There is no accounting for where the mind wonders during that most intimate act.) I don’t say this to dis who I’m with or boost the ego of the object of my love (obsession?), I say it only because it is the truth. I like to call the object of my passion (mania?) the one. But shouldn’t this ‘love’ be mutual? I just know he will break down one of these days. One day he will succumb to my charm, wit, beauty, or all three. One day he will see the light. One day he will understand that there is no one mo' better for him than me. One day I’ll grow a third breast and be a guest on Leno.

Listening to blue-eyed blues way before Justin Timberlake: Jonny Lang.

Oscar shines a light on America’s dirty secret

Not only was there an upset at the Oscars last night, there was a giant smack down of American values: Racism. It’s not gone. There is no colorblind society. Race was the problem of the 20th century and it is the problem of the 21st century. Crash was given the Best Picture award vindicating a 16 year old blind eye by the Academy to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1990. Crash was a fantastic movie. It showed that racism is virtually impenetrable. It showed white angst, black sorrow, white baseless fear and hatred, black self-sabotage. When Terrance Howard’s character tells Ludacris’ character: “You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.” I wept. It’s something that every middle class Black person wants to say to every 50 Cent wanna be kid on Broadway. The dream of the slave was to read, to write, to learn, to vote, to be free of torture, oppression and subjugation. The dream did not include bling, weaves, hatred of education, disrespect of elders, erroneous beliefs of blackness, or erroneous beliefs of whiteness. This movie also did a wonderful, wonderful thing. It planted a very important seed. It shined a light on something is never talked about: white’s examining their fears. This is the only way racism is really going to be solved. Racism is not a black problem, a yellow problem, brown problem or red problem. It’s a white problem. All others are the victims. The hate that hate produced. Beliefs of white supremacy are just as detrimental to this nation as beliefs of black inferiority. This movie moved beyond liberal guilt and red neck hatred. This movie went beyond super thug and middle class oreo. Hopefully, now that Crash has won such a prestigious award more Americans will see it. A dialogue can start and maybe things can start to change here at home. Then we can truly be the beacon of light to the world. (It will never happen.)

Watching The Boondocks.
WATCH IT NOW. BUY THE DVD.
LONG LIVE ADULT SWIM!