Breaking Bread Together, Or The Last Days of Flava Flav

I was invited by Keith + Mendi to the Schomburg in Harlem but could not make it. I believe Mendi was reading. I have to conserve my cash, movement is only for job interviews or meetings that will lead to some freelance work. So, I stayed in today. I have been feeling funny, not too good.

My father made red beans and rice -- New Orleans style (or maybe I should just say our family recipe). It was delicious. He showed me a bit of how to make them today. He just lifted the lid and I saw the beans and smoked hocks bubbling. He has great pots, I am jealous of some of the cookware. I grew up in a family where eating is very important -- like, to a point, people judge your character by how well you can cook -- well, almost.

So today, Flava Flav won out over uptown high culture and ancestral continuity in Harlem (sorry, I missed you J). In the end I watched the Flava of Love 2 marathon. I was interrupted by life as usual. I typed a memo for my father. I have become his on call typist for a little extra money, today I did my work for a pack of Gillette Fusion razor refills. So, I missed the first episode where one chick shitted on the floor and got into a fight. That is one crazy chick. How can you just shit on a floor? Then I fell a sleep during the very last part of the episode where the porn queen was outed! That episode was a bit too drawn out and I woke up early yesterday morning. I needed to catch up. Then I kind of roamed around the house during the episodes I saw. Did stuff like taking my medicine, eating dinner (I had too much of the rice and beans), talked to my ex-girlfriend in the Bronx, a good friend from Nashville (let's call her Nashville Mamma), caught a bit of the Duke rape case coverage on 60 minutes (I didn't see all of it so I won't comment, but what I did see was riveting and very telling about Southern politics and the shift in demographics and political tools used by the black community), blah, blah, blah. In the mist of all that life, running around me, I missed the third-to-the-last-episode which I had never seen.

By 9:00 pm I endured New York's mother's visit to get to the anti-climactic finale at 10pm. Flav picked Deelishis in the end because New York was acting too much like her crazy mother during the final date. So, her face was cracked twice. Check VH1 for the details.

I talked to Nashville Momma, these were her observations.

1. Flava Flav looks like a burnt iguana over an open spit with olive oil spread all over his body.
2. Flava has a big dick.
3. Some people are so ugly they are beautiful (I still have a crush on Tricky that no one understands, and another friend has a secret crush on Shabba Ranks).
4. Flav loves New York.
5. Some cast members are actors (maybe most).
6. The show is degrading to Black people, since for most peopletelevision is all they see of the wider world regardless of race, money, or neighborhood.

I empathized with New York to a certain extent in some weird cosmic way. I have waited for a person. But I am a man, so I just eat the shit and keep pushing, maybe that person doesn't even know.

But as for Flav's choices, I think just about all the chicks had these unbelievable bodies, especially Bootz and Buckeey. My repressed heterosexual self, who I will name Sam, wants a threesome with those two.


On the homosexual side of the stream Michael J. Sandy was taken off life support on Friday October 13th, after being hit by oncoming traffic while fighting off and fleeing from his assailants. Keith Boykin and Blabbendo have posted blogs about the crime. Moving back to the NYC area is piquing my perceptions of danger, and it sometimes seems as if parts of Brooklyn/Queens are disjointed bones of a Southern county locked into the 5 borroughs. There are random attacks and lynchings there. It makes you wonder about education, people's contact with the outside world, and how people will face the re-working of New York by outside forces.

Michael J. Sandy was black and bi/gay(?).
Brighton Beach.
Howard Beach.
Crown Heights.
"1989 the number another summer (get down)/Sound of the funky drummer"
Public Enemy.
Me, 17-years-old, riding shot gun in August of 1989 from DC to New Jersey in my stepmother's Maverick. We hear the song "Fear of a Black Planet" on the radio. We hear about a boy getting killed. This was exactly 1/2 my life ago. I wonder what star I am living under? I am going to track it and navigate by it, cause this is no coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence.