Picture Show

Saw The Last King of Scotland today. I loved it and talked to the Harlem Baker about it off and on. But later I realized I loved the performances very much, and I loved the cinematography of the African landscape even more than where the film took me. I won't talk about the specific parts of the film that hints at it not being perfect, but I will give a clue.

The descent into the "chaos" mimics The Serpent and The Rainbow and for me that is where the objectivity that the film proposes in showing the decadence of Idi Amin and his destructive path starts to fall apart. It is very much about the carte blanche that the world gives a young European traveling to the third world, and its destructive force. It is not about the political situation that got them there in the first place.

I will leave it at that. Great Performances. And up to a certain point a great movie until the pin slips and we are left with another chaos of Graham Greene's scale and accidental white tourists' folly.

Further Delays in Our Departure

OK,

Got word from the large bureaucracy across the Hudson, I don't have a position, they screwed up my application. And they say I have to wait until June. Plus they had more applicants than positions open, so I have to wait.

I don't have time to wait.

Well, all the other applications are out and . . . I have to wait! I am pissed because I was offered my German job back the day I interviewed for this position. There is something about New York's gargantuan civil service departments that has always been hard for me to deal with. Add local politics on the block an in the boroughs, or the lottery system for affordable housing, and it all becomes mind boggling. But there are still reasons to be here.

I have about 6 pitch letters I plan on writing for Q & A's.

So, if I am terse with my blog postings over the next couple of days it is because of writing and reading . . . I got about 3 books circulating through my fingers.

Got to look forward.

An Interuption to Our Normally Televised Program

Sorry, I have about 4 entries qued-up for edit. Between McGeevey, the lack of Coloureds in Harlem for President Clinton's blogging luncheon (who would have thunk it? Right?), another 2 job applications (one in the states, one for overseas), subsequent reading on local politics, the U.N. madness, war, my freelance gig and a real dive into my book collection trying to sort out what I can get rid of and what can stay, I have not had time to look over my entries.

I am striving to have them more polished before posting.

Time to turn things up a notch.

I will have much more to say in a couple of days.

Ciao.
LM

Deutschland Be-Bop, Talkin' Shop, and the Return of the Pop Princess

I have spent the last 3 days talking to people from Germany. Everyone is doing just about the same. Most of my friends there are straight and have families and that is cool, but Europe is odd. There is always the sense that any relationship is possible because people are far more mature and realistic about their inner emotional selves (it is how German's express their inner selves that leaves you wondering); but, you still are not a man unless you are married. Well, at least in Southern Germany. In the North it is a little bit different . . . but in all honesty, there seems to always be this distinction between places in every country of North and South. A linguist from Holland swears there are books on the subject. I don't need one though, I have grown up between the North and South all my life.

Speaking off marriages and real men, is Whitney really divorcing Bobby Brown? Maybe she caught a glimpse of her own reality show.

I love Whitney.

Anway . . .

talked to my friend, the north German musicologist. He is the only gay one in the bunch. We had a chat about hip-hop and how to put on a conference. He knows nothing about the first, but everything about the second. We had interesting conclusions. He said the problem is going to be the money. That seems to be the problem with all things in Academia. He also looked over a proposal I had given him. He said that he did not want to sound discouraging about my conference idea but blah, blah, blah . . .. Why do academics also try to make things so painless and are so concerned about ones feelings? I guess it has to do with one's need to nurture talent, but in the end, I have worked outside of the university system enough to want to just roll my sleeves up and work. There is something to be said about how we conduct business in the Ivory Tower. Something about the type of work we do and issues of objectivity and subjectivity keeps the lines fuzzy. Correction is alway so ephemeral, there is always something else to comment on 5 minutes from now. I guess I just have issues. I have been oscillating between the two worlds so long I become impatient with each one now.

PS
The problem with Britney Spears is that she became a legend before the cards were marked by the judges. Aretha is the Queen of Soul, Whitney is the true Pop Princess and Mary is the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. Now that Spears' teeny bop banter has been spliced to reveal that she is just an industrial strength sweet confection manufactured by the spin machine, I feel sorry for her. All those reviews and pop critic cats were feeding at the trough in the late 90's, hailing her as baby Madonna, when in fact she just pushed envelopes with her stylized videos and performances but few emotional buttons through her voice. Madonna was busy riding her ray of light into the middle aged afternoon sun, defiantly anti-cabaret (she left that to Celine Dione) and distinctly British (with a Scandinavian producer) when high pop critical society (shame on you Michael Musto and Rolling Stone) pushed Britney onto us with her Lolita sexuality causing every American father to hypervenilate during the MTV awards. I wished Whitney would get back into the saddle and do the Natalie Cole thing but faster and harder, pushing air up and through scared vocal cords, belting like a 1st alto at sister Mary Walker's family church off some dusty road between Bessemer, Alabama and a county line, looking 20 pounds heavier and fresher.

The Cybersphere As A Portal To Grooving Ass

GeeeWhizzzz! I have all these blogs linked to my blog. I have started to check them out, and through them I have seen some have retired, while others are still blogging. I also found a long lost friend of sorts who I have to hit up this week when I go down town.

I also found an old friend that is now a jet setting producer. He just followed his dream and did not think that much about it, which is starting to be my motto of late. He goes to Norway and London all the time. He said that he wanted to produce a song with me before I left because my voice is very old, like 1950's scratchy Ben E. King or Sam Cooke. It is somewhat like that. It depends on what I sing. But it has been so long since I have sung regularly and it is hard for me to find a place to do it. I should find a gospel choir. I like gospel.

But I could care less. I found him, and that is the important thing. 3 years ago his world was turned upside down, as well as mine when our inner circle started to unravel under the strain of life. No details but, it was funky. I wonder about black gay men's shit. Or black bisexual men's shit. Do people really know what a tight rope this is in the community? But things are changing. I saw some New Orleans Bounce videos on Youtube. They are all self made, and the boys are really bouncing . . . like the girls on the videos that everyone detests. It was weird, I turn a half cocked eye at the girls with the gigantic asses like they have been pumped up with Afrosteroids, but the boys wiggling does something to me . . . as long as the onion is not too big . . . but big is relative . . . no?

Does this make me hypocritical? I look at the girls as being used, but I look at the young men and think . . . hummffff. Would I think about the women differently if I was 100 percent straight?

OK, I gotta go. It is the beginning of the weekend and I have to finish a couple of applications, finish the list of references I am making, catch up on my Publisher's Weekly back issues, and clean-up my list of blog friends on the right. I have not been as diligent in trying to read them all as I should, but I have been in transition. Funny, today listening to New Orleans Bounce and watching Booty Shaking and craving sweet, salty and greasy things . . . I all of a sudden missed The South. I like that anybody can be delectable there. It is a very, very nice feeling.

The B-Side Fest Continues

It is continuing today. I have been listening to Prince's B-Sides for about 2 days now. It is OK because I am slamming out applications for different jobs while I still waiting for a response from that unmentionable pack of slow ass civil servants a state over. Damn!

The day has been peppered with affirmations that my creative sap is rising, if not my survival skills concerning being a freelancer. I started to make a list of all the people I know. So, I am ready to play cards. If I have learned anything over the last 6 years it is that your prosperity in life depends heavily upon those that surround you. And, on the flip side, you can gauge your emotionally state through those you choose to be friends or lovers with . . . if your life is a revolving door. So it is important to chose the right folk or you might as well be alone.

OK. Enough of the soap box.

I saw Noah's Arc, Project Runway and Million Dollar "Something" tonight. So it is late, needless to say. I like these shows because they reflect the things I am going through creatively, sexually and financially. I guess it is best summed up by a need for a greater understanding in all of those areas and how I operate. Noah's Arc is cool, but it is more like watching a comic book adventure series like captain America or Bullwinkle from the '70's-- or a television novela -- than a serious drama. The way they collectively resolved the Guy storyline was boring. No! I am sorry it was sophomoric. They should have just not attempted to do it at all, but I am not that frustrated . . . let's march on to the next comic filled frame next Wednesday . . . though I am wondering if Noah's accident/conflict/crisis will bring a necessary character shift, which it must, through all common sense when it comes to good writing.

I want to see something unexpected on Noah's Arc, otherwise we will be left with two dimensional action figures of black gay life and love, which is not a bad thing with all that hot Nubian beauty they prance in front of the camera, but a little krptonite would be cute too. Maybe that is why I like the show, I am trying to figure out where I fit in, and I don't see it exactly. But the bigger question is why I am searching for myself on LOGO. I think it is being thrown back into a market driven economy where I should receive my subliminal signals of belonging and cues for what to buy at the mall through television. It has been almost 2 years since I have been back, and it is very difficult to resist the advertised candy.

And on Project Runway . . . Laura won! Great! I think she is a very interesting woman. My bet is that Uli will be kicked off in the next round. But who knows? It is so very much about what people like and don't like. It would take a total lack of judgment for the judges to kick Michael off, he could thread a wad of Dax hair wax on elongated buffalo tendons and call it charmeuse and dem bitches would love it. But I don't hate the brother, I love that they love him, it is just that the competition is so stiff now. Jeffery and Laura are impeccable to me too. Uli is just into the sun dress, that is all she can do . . . which reminds me to tell you guys something about Germany when I a bit well rested.

The last thing I want to mention is my post on August 25, where I said that my grandfather would have had no problem figuring out that ad. I have changed my mind. I wonder what he would have thought, seeing that I never meet him, I just grew up with the legacy of his activism around me. He was one of those armed deacons that guarded Martin Luther King when he visited Mount Olive Baptist church in Anniston, Alabama and he was big on urging people to pay the poll tax in order to vote. There is a part of me that understands what level of comprehension my grandfather's actions required, but then there is the question of sexuality, nudity, play, male bonding and the second World War. What would have been his perspective sans Derrida? That is the true question, and could I ever know for certain what his thinking dictated to himself internally verses what he expressed externally. I know that he was worried about raising soft men, but is that the same as a faggot? Is it being feminine or is it the fucking?

I wonder.

I have depicted him in fiction before, maybe I should try and sketch it out.

September 12, 2006

On the morning of September 12, 2001 I was living in Tuebingen, Germany on Lazarettegasse in an apartment above a bike store. The entire building used to be a coffin workshop. It did not surprise me because there was a feeling that a little girl was always running through our house, between the toilet and my bedroom. I remember that morning because I woke up and realized that what I saw on television was not a dream. There was still that lingering feeling that the MGM Lion was going to pop up and I could turn off the television and get on with my life. Instead I went to the Deutsches-Amerikanisches Insititut, saw my co-workers, had a coffee and sat down to watch more television. It was fall, I was sad, I was teaching way too much for the money, I was preparing for ghastly commutes and I spent every bit of extra time I had with Das Experiment.

Tuebingen was like Nashville in the way that I always felt I had to get moving or I would be trapped. It was different than Nashville in that I found a great love (little did I know how it was going to fundamentally change me) and with love you can live anywhere. And that is the beauty of a relationship, it makes life more habitable.

I am such a romantic.

I think I am going to leave it at that. I am going to try and bash out an article that deals with Willie Ninja and the New York I seem to have lost. I drove up the Westside Highway to see that the piers near Christopher Street are gone. It looks like a water park in Chicago or Toronto. It just doesn't feel like New York. I was in Brooklyn this Sunday, and Fulton Street between the G and C train stops looks like Park Slope. Everything is so white and middleclass. Not a bad thing, but nerve racking none-the-less, that what I used to think of as some sort of spiritual resting stop. I used to eat at a resturaunt near there because I knew the cook and she used to lift my spirits up. I remember going their after a funeral, a young lady that sat two desks in front of me died of breast cancer, she was only 28. That meal and those smiles were just what I needed that day. Now I struggle to find the resturaunt on that block.

New York used to be accessible, now it is prohibitively expensive. I used to walk briskly down that same street because it was on the edge of crime land. Now it looks like HGTV adopted the block.

Man!

Enough of my ramblings.

I will write a bit more later.

When I am done banging out at least one timely article to sell to somebody.

I have started to get back in the groove.

PS

One of the dangers of exile is that you miss all the hyped events and movies in your home country. Youtube came to my rescue again . . . this time it was Whitney Houston singing at the Michael Jackson tribute. Besides Usher looking weird with that wolf fur draped around him, Whitney did look like death moonwalking to your front door. Damn! Now I see why we needed an intervention.

I still think there is something epic in her life and how it mimics our current state of Black America. My stepmother's best friend and her husband came to have coffee and Sunday chat. I remember Peter saying "I miss the Cosby show. It depicted black folk as we really are." Yeah, I thought, but what about "the depiction" we slide with honey and rose filtered lenses to ourselves rather than what we want white folk to see? That would be a different show: Preppy black children smoking blunts and oblivious to their sero-status. We fault Whitney, but she mimics us and our values and what we ultimately do to our children through expectations. And that was when I realized that my parents wanted me to turn out like one of the Cosby kids, a doctor (doesn't matter, medical or intellectual) with an empty smile and an American dream, brandishing impecable sweaters. I had forgotten totally with whom I am living and what these guys want!

Maybe I can negotiate for more emotional space now. Thanks Whitney!

What Do You Call 6 Naked White Men in A Canoe?

I have kind of been in a cocoon for the past couple of days, eating like a pig. In the midst of all this gluttony I came across this picture, or rather it was sent to me on one of my groups. Take a close look at the background. It is very interesting.

Note: The ad is cut off on the left hand side. It should say Buna Bathtub. The rest of the ad is truncated on the left hand margin also.

The thing that has made this interesting is not just the colored folk in the back and the white men washing in the canoe, it is my review of old material from graduate school now that I am back in New Jersey and have box after box of books to scrounge through. I have been separated from my babies for sometime now.

Right now I am reading "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966) by Jacques Derrida. It is very insightful seeing that the first time I read the article was in undergraduate at Hampton my senior year. Little did I know that I was suppose to master the damn thing 8 months later when I went to NYU. Now, I see things much more clearly. I am convinced that the white folk needed deconstruction more than I did to understand this ad. I am sure that my grandfather opened up a magazine at Fort Campbell in 1944 and was hip to its "meaning".

Uhmph.

For the Love of Rammstein, Pricasso and the Undesirable Skill Set

When I was in college I was in love with this girl in the typical Aquarian manner of not knowing whether to be her best friend or to fuck her. I mention her because I am listening to Prince's B-Sides which probably best describes my sense of heterosexuality -- obsessed and surreal -- smitten with starfish and coffee -- wanting to be freakily her girlfriend and her boy toy at the same time. Maybe that is where the confusion starts for women cause I don't really look like a freak. Back then I was nerdy, linky and quirky, today I am a bit chunkier, hairy and my nerdiness has given way to a bumbling limp wristed brute, but my inner purpleness has stayed the same.

This girl and I used to sit on couches and "smoke", looking at everyone in the room; and in turn, everyone enjoyed our "epiphanies". I think we were fascinated by how people appeared versus how they really were. Those intuitive practices have proven detrimental in my post-undergraduate world where the truth is suspect to profit margins, wasteful spending and the recital of theoretical paradigm shifts that mimic origami.

There were 3 girlfriends that progressed through my life to the soundtrack of Prince: my high; school crush; my fiancee, and the girl my father wanted me to marry, who happens to be Miss Epiphanies Summer of 1992. I don't think anyone in our family is over that relationship. So, in the spirit of those days on the Virginia Coast and the girlfriends that followed I would like to make a list of some observations I have had over the last couple of days.

Rammstein
Man, where do I start. Maybe I am in the Rammstein age now as opposed to Prince. It partly has to do with my time overseas, but now it has to do with the number of cute Latinos that immediately ask me what "Du Hast Mich" means when I tell them where I used to live. I guess I love their music and have spent a couple of lost hours looking at their videos on the world wide web because I never noticed them before. I mean I have heard their music and seen their videos, but not all that stuff the bubbles up underneath them. They are industrial and soft at the same time. They are like the lumberjacks in the black Forest that ride the rivers on freshly cut logs. Or the manual workers that drink their Hefeweissen and Pilz in the red light district. I guess that is part of the attraction. Somewhat sexual, but mostly the romanticized idea of being in a band, or a military unit, or a baseball team. I missed the whole experience. And just recently I realized that in college I was one of only 7 or 8 men in the English department at Hampton and then after that I was at NYU where I was definitely hit over the head by the radical feminist movement hammer and gender bender axe. I was only 21 (have I lamented this before? I think I have.).

Rammstein is like a requiem for me. It is like a secret confession concerning what I lost in terms of male bonding and just being rough. Sometimes I feel like I was railroaded and could have spent my time learning something else about the world beside the healing properties of salt and clay in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, or the 19th century upperclass British female angst and alienation of a million dinner parties in Jane Austen's novels. My senior seminar at Hampton was Women in Shakespeare. I had no choice, there was only one seminar. I was the only male out of 30 or so women taking my exam that year. Crazy. I just ran around chain smoking with Miss Epiphanies and watching my dreads grow. But I have started to mourn that lost boyhood where I was spit out of undergraduate seminars into a world where I was looking at myself and other men in such a dirty prism.

After NYU I regained my rights to the clan through some beer binges and evenings at pubs surrounding Rutgers; not to mention, working at the men's Ralph Lauren collection in Macy's at Menlo Park Mall and hearing regular discussions of how my male friends were banging my female friends. I remember at the food court an Albanian gyros stand owner, that must have been 26 or so, told me that life is making money and taking care of a child. Funny he looked like a member of Rammstein. And it was the first time I had heard that sentence from anyone's mouth.

Pricasso
Man, I could have thought of this. Actually, I am a bit upset that I did not. The past couple of days have been sort of a rest up for the new world that I am awaiting to enter. A world where the price of a 2 bedroom/2 bathroom condo has skyrocketed to above one million dollars. While surfing the net I found a story about Pricasso, an Aussie that paints with his cock. After watching Puppetry of the Penis a couple of months back I have become more than aware of how light hearted people have been (or have become) down under concerning dicks. After watching the ABC Nightline Special on AIDS in Black America, and the controversy over Plan B, I wonder when we will lighten up about our bodies on both sides of the Mason Dixon line. It just might help us talk about our bodies and what we do with them besides feeding them beyond the point of a diabetic or hypertensive explosions. I remember reading about a black pastor in the 1920's that advocated food as a replacement for carnal pleasures. I will have to look this cat up. I wonder what was his effects on the population as a whole, and I wonder what it can tell us about our current state of body consciousness -- dick in hand.

Skill Set
Ok. I apologize, I am about to be cynical. I hate this word "skill set". What does it really mean? When I hear people use it I feel like they have been brainwashed just like the imbecile that came up with the word synergy. It is an impossible term that is used to communicate in very specific language why you can have the job, or why we are not going to train you to do the job. And this American term is so right on point, which is what makes it so dangerous. It is a catch phrase that sums up the situation in a very overstated way. It is a consummerist reflex in out language. It emboldens the speaker because it is a way of turning someone down with very little emotional attachment: "Yep, that is just the way it is. You do not have the skill set we are looking for at this time." It also means that those that master this language know when to use it and how to make things sound clearer in terms of policy, allocation of funds, distribution of responsibility, blah, blah,blah.

Skill Set lays out the bacon in very certain terms, the only problem is that ironically no one has asked about who decides what those skills are. The human resource managers and corporate head hunters of course fondle its meaning, and we all know what a lovely group of people they are. I just think it allows a massive amount of room for pushing people around in little boxes. It is a dirty word that is creeping up in our technocracy that many have confused for entertainment.

Other Blogs
I have been reading a whole bunch of blogs in the past couple of days. I think it is my way of catching up with NYC. I have learned a bunch of things. The New York Press for example is withering away, and with it a time in the late 90's that I remember vividly. I am also finding many blogs by New York writers that have moved away; some of the articles I have found mimic my life choices step by step if not under different guises of credibility. Meghan Daum captures it very brilliantly. Substitute "hip-hop" for the Upper Eastside reality, or Quincy Jones for Jann Wenner or Tina Brown; and, Fabio! I come from the alternate universe where keeping it real became the new literary chic and my black college "I'm Building Me A Home" jubilee suit and tie were just dusty Edwardian threads of a life less than ghetto fabulous. It was much less than the power fantastic to me too, unbeknownst to them. In the end, it did not matter.

Now I am back in NYC. And I have read a million little blogs the last couple of days that have a lot of shirtless brawny celebrities, or are full color bling bling camera phone tricks and treats for you to gobble up hour after hour. I seem to always use more words. My blog always seems to be about me and my head. It is a little embarrassing, no? I have stopped saying I am an aspiring novelist or historian or what have you. Where does writing get you with other people in the end? I am starting to think you just simmer in your own pot, peeking from your cranium now and then to pick up new things for the stew. It could be totally different tomorrow. I could be painting with my prick. It might be fun, especially when you have to adjust the thickness of the brush.

The Journey Back

It feels like a holiday. I have been waiting and waiting for people to call and tell me if I have work for the fall. I interviewed on Sunday for a second job on 59th and Lexington. It is nice, non-descript, rich, European, touristy and low traffic. Perfect for me.

The other treat was the first episode of UFC 4. Fantastic. First fight was great.

The big job is still a question. I have passed the time with the Harlem Baker who baked a cake for me so I could take it to S and A and their kids' house. S and I talked for a long time. She has so much to bear and is a totally different person than years ago. But she is not sad nor has she aged. We talked about the sadness that comes with maturity. Not a depression, but a realization of who you are and what you want simply makes some experiences unnecessary. You are old enough to know the outcome, realize that you are wasting your time or circumstances and relationships will not giving you what you really need. So there is little thill in new experiences, cause you have an increasing encyclopedia of them.

I left on Thursday and just got back from THE CITY today. That is what my father calls NYC, with all the foreboding of carnal acts, rude people and a lack of respect for capital.
New Jersey.
The Harlem Baker.
Prospect Park.
An hour to Brooklyn from 145th street on the local B train.
A faster journey to Port Authority on the Q,
but 20 minutes underground by foot with my bags.
An hour and a half on the turnpike and Route 27.
As I slept on the bus there were many voices in my head,
and so many people around me were drowned out by their own iPods.
I think I am overstimulated.

Something in me craves solitude. I dreamt of Vermont last night. Actually, it was a guy named Vermont. His face was unfamiliar, but when he said his name I recognized him from childhood. I wonder what the universe is trying to say. I don't know a John Vermont in real life.

S said she would be willing to go. Maybe we will. But first the beach if E coli if down.

What Happened to the Month of May?

I just realized that I did not post anything really during the month of May. I started back working at the Fires of Hell Brazilian restaurant in Nashville. Which reminds me, The Arabian Princess gave me a call from Cashville/Nash Vegas today. He wanted to know if I was going to Ms. A's birthday party at Bar 23. I told him I was in N.J. Then he wanted to know if was going to Cocks in the East Village. The Slut.

Today was an interesting day. My father is distressed that his 11-year-old daughter has been watching Fergy and Kellis's new video (What should I do about apostrophes after names that end with the letter "s"? Does anyone know about adding that extra "s" after the apostrophe? I am never sure. Plus, book editors are much different than magazine and newspaper editors, so I never ask an editor cause I am still confused about commas and the item listed second to the last in a list, just before the word "and".) He says it is soft pornography. My stepmother says that "Check Up On It" is soft porn, but "Deja Vu" is not. It was an interesting conversation. I told dad that The Pussycat dolls were practically burlesque.

My stepmother looked at my sister who was sitting on the couch by the time we got to such details and said "Do you know what burlesque means?"

My sister looked up at me and said "No."

I said in a pendantic and brazenly patronizing manner, "They are strippers who work where they serve martinis."

My stepmother looked at my sister and said, "Do you know what a martini is?"

My sister said, "No."

"Littlemilk, You have to learn how to talk to younger people." my stepmother said in a dry voice (of course she called me by my family nickname, which everybody knows; and, I am certain this oh-soooo-delicious Sting and The Police like anonymity would die an awful death if I revealed that to you. But most people know who I am anyway, and might have used my name so what does it matter anyway?).

Man! Accounts like my stepmother make me tired. They are so matter-of- fact and clear about everything. My sister just looked at me. Then she smiled. Then she went on to humming the lyrics to "Deja Vu." I am the only artist in the family. My father is a biologist. My mother is a retired civil servant. My stepmother is an accountant, a real Ubererbsenzahler who makes lesser penny pinchers piss in their pants and simple minded bank tellers just say "Fuck it!". My other sister is a perpetual student in the art of paper pushing. She is striving to be a medical records Meister. My youngest sister is a natural actress and has already been in 12 plays and she is only 11. Maybe she will be an artist like me. There are no others. My uncles, aunts and cousins are engineers, armored truck drivers, eighteen wheelers, camp counselors, investment bankers, high school teachers, kindergarten teachers, retirement home executives, principals, members of the paparazzi and perpetual takers of the Bar after two previous Masters.

My father had declared early during breakfast that he did not know when we (as in the James Earl Jones in COMING TO AMERICA Royal middleclass Family "we", or just the letters "W" and "E" for the Well E-cheived) started the day off with videos.

"We have always watched CNN first thing in the morning." he said looking out onto the lawn contemplating the brown splotches that look like miniature reminisces of U.F.O landing, his hands aimless circling the brim of a large clear water glass with a soapy sponge.

Well, needless to say, things are changing in our household.

1. My father and I are making some sort of peace. He is not so presumptive about what is good for my life and what isn't. He held up a Christmas picture of me and my "other" sister when I was 5-years-old and she was only 3. We were all smiling then. I wore a brand new blue flannel housecoat and leather slippers, my sister had plaits in her hair. My father asked me if I remembered.

I said "Yeah!", holding back a microscopic tear and trying to enable the cookies on this stupid PC so I can read the New York Times online.

I was generally a happy kid. But later today, while half listening to this 16-year-old girl go ape shit on Dr. Phil, I felt nauseous as the love crazed, Northeastern, plain Jane, harpy accused her then absent from the camera mother of being a liar, as her distraught father tried to figure out what to do. Somewhere in the distant rumbles of the television background noise, I heard Dr. Phil talk about children and the stress of divorce. Ironically, the subliminal messages from the boob tube were being transmitted through my skull, while my stepmother and I were talking about my younger sister choosing not to go to her first dance. "She would have been the youngest one there." my stepmother said with her feet elevated and a cushion positioned neatly in her lap.

Little Sis is already old enough to go to her first dance. I am already part of my father's first failed family. I am part of my mother's previous stint as a single mother (that girl on TV is screaming too fucking loud!).

2. My youngest sister is into everything but still a child. She says I am weird. I believe she is picking up on something but just can't figure out how, or why, I don't fit in. Maybe, it is the manic gardening? Is gardening bisexual? Maybe I should say I am a landscaper? No, that is definitely bi. Well, I am about to dig up some of the shrubs anyway.

3. My stepmother is getting older. She is right. I have a hard time adjusting my speech, humor and mannerisms to those that are younger, say below 16-years-old.

The Harlem Baker said that I have to channel my talent for being a teacher to my family. I have to except the fact that some will get me and others won't. But the problem is, no one gets me; and, I thought at one point, that my youngest sister got me.

But she doesn't.

Maybe, she will come around one day. I didn't really like my first dance either. Actually, I came home and watched television teary eyed. My mother didn't notice as she gave me something to drink (probably orange juice, I luv orange juice). I felt I missed something big that was suppose to happen that night. I figured out then too, that I didn't fit in just right. I had to change something, so I could pass.

I was 13 and in the 7th grade.

Sis' was 11 and in the 6th.

I wonder if it was this May passed (?)

A Rebel With a Pause

OK.

I need a break. Losing yesterday's blog was really serious. Damn PC's! Gosh I wish I was at home on my Mac! This crashing shit is too dramatic for me. And we had printer problems while my youngest darling sister was working on her project. That stressed me out too. She is bossy and accidentally hit me in the head with the tip of a pool stick, while she was intentionally giving me orders about my coffee cup. She is like my stepmother.

Later I asked if she was going to put her hands on me while I was in the garden, she laughed then thought a second time about being bossy. I still love her. I know I should not encourage this behavior . . . but, I can't help it. She is my little Jersey Girl.

So, I must say that anyone with an 11-year-old anything roaming through their house on two legs, all fours or just stationary in a pot has all my best wishes and much respect. And anyone dealing with a budding 7th grader (my sister is also very gifted) gets mad praise and my humble acknowledgment of gratitude for keeping at bay the compressed energy that is in their bones and threatens to knock out all who inhabit the earth if one of those hormoned challenged children channel all their commotion to their 7th chakra/third eye. My sister and her friends are a cross between Punky Brewster and The Fifth Element!

I am serious.

Like kneeling down in front of a horse while a flaming sword falls into the hand of my 7th grade geography teacher serious.

I have that much newly found respect for her and all that had to deal with me in Middle School/Junior High.

Other than that. Uneventful day. I took my father to the mechanic to get one of the cars fixed.

I listened to my father's Xydeco Willie tape all the way.

I miss French spoken that way. I wonder if it (Cajun/Creole) will survive the New Normal.

Aaaah!

Lucille.

Every girl who is sweet and grainy is named Lucille.

Gardening, the Garden State, and Harlem

For the love of God! I just lost a blog!

It was very good. I liked its range. I talked about my father's house, the Harlem Baker, my youngest sister, my stepmother's double hip replacement surgery and my father's silence.

So, I am just going to leave it at that.

Maybe it was just good that I got it out of my system.

I could not say much about my father.

I am not sure if I am in live with the Harlem Baker. It has only been a week. Not even that. A week on Tuesday.

Pre-teens are tiresome beyond belief.

And Leela James is singing Sam Cooke over my speakers.

That is my new normal.

Misfits of Science

Misfits of Science


Now, that Logo by broadcasting brothers in tight underwear on national television, not to mention that bubbalicious light skinned doctor , has changed my life for the better I have a confession to make. I am a You Tube addict. And it has changed my life forever.

Today, after printing out all these possible places for me to apply for work in Manhattan, the tune for Misfits of Science came to my mind. I can't remember the year it came out, but it must have been around 1985 or 86. The theme song had this great eighties technotronic beat machine industrial post-new wave neon coloured valley girl construction to it. And the girl who sang it was really singing. She had pipes and could lay waste to all its complexity. I used to just sit in front television and listen to the opening theme song then change the channel. Which many people obviously did because it did not stay on the air that long.

Anyway, I found this obscure gem on You Tube after a life time of not hearing it. You Tube is changing our world forever. This memory became physical on the cyber plane today. Maybe it is just me, maybe I have been living in a hole. But I feel freakin' great.

And tell me how could I not know that I was different from the other boys when I was listening to this.

High Faggotry or The Importance of Spades and Fried Chicken

Holy Hell Logo! Where have I been for the first season of Noah's Arc?

Living in a house in Tennessee with only basic cable, that's the hoppin' John where.

Rarely, if ever, do I get up and start to blog directly after a television program in the middle of the night, but I have just seen two episodes of Noah's Arc and I am really hooked. Not just that, it is the raw giddy side of black gay life that is really spectacular. The "chul'dren" are dropping the irony and double entendre like a well rehearsed vaudevillian encore.

"You better kick bitches!"

Sorry, the inner butch queen voguing femme was just released. Maybe I need to name that alter ego. Plus Jodi Watley's version of "Borderline" was playing at the end of the episode. Damn, I don't know fellas, her new album of remakes is bound to bring out the icing over the yellow cake.

I guess looking at the show I see a lot in it that pulls at my heart strings because I have been to the club attached to my friends like a bunch of lion cubs; on the three way trying to make things right; and, at the parking lot eyeing the candy outside the store. And in away I have been in all the character's shoes, sometimes simultaneously, but most of the time unbeknownst to my everyday world. Flashback Germany (except for the clubs). Flashback Publishing (too busy fooling with the chicks). And fast forward to the family reunion in 2007 (extend Black families just don't understand).

So, as soon as I get some money I am buying the first season on DVD. And as soon as I get a chance I am going to talk to the Harlem baker about this. He is Noah and I am the guy with corn rolls at this junction of our St. Nick strolls. I think. But he knows more than me. He seems to be in the world, I have been up to my neck in books for the past couple of years.

In my previous life (the mid to late 90's) I was part of an underground culture championing the rights of the homeless kids in Time Square or watching the booties shaking at Stella's or Cats on any given weeknight before waking up and going to a 9 to 5. Now, eight years later, I am part of a mainstream ambisexual event complete with television shows, political engagement and a boiling down of queerities that strangely aspire to be more inclusive, but can still drive a wedge between us under the guise of Down Lows and Metrosexuals. Can I just hook up with a hairy muscle bound mechanic? I saw one yesterday with two earrings in his ear? Do the rules still apply.

Regardless, I feel reborn, like I can't fuck old way anymore; the ball trophy I want is New Way. I am too young to be legendary, but I am old enough to remember all this coloured gay life before it was this glamorous. I remember it when it was dangerous to utter it, and that I am glad to see change. But, unfortunately, it is still dangerous to live it, and that may not change for a while.

The Aristocrats

I saw this movie The Aristocrats last night on HBO 2. It was absolutely hilarious and jovially disturbing. I want to buy it and show it to all of my friends. And I want to buy the soundtrack as soon as I get some money. I have a new appreciation for stand-up comics. Especially Penn and Teller as they talked (not really, only one of them talks) about art and it being about the "singer" and not "the song".

Comedians seem like a great fraternity to belong to.

I should join.


And if that was not enough, my youngest sister who is going to the 7th grade did her impression of Nicole from Cycle 5 of America's Next Top Model and New York from Flava of Love Season One this morning after returning from a sleep over.

Priceless.

Pondering

Not much to report. I went to 2 block parties in Harlem around St. Nick. One of them was a street renaming in the honor of The Dance Theater of Harlem. Then had two red velvet cupcakes made by the Harlem baker and a cup of espresso. I also watched him toil in the garden on his street corner. I left Brooklyn and made it home to New Jersey where my parents had bought me Chinese food.

They are very, very nice and giving.

So, I guess I will just sit here and think for a while. I have to wait for my job interview results. The week has been all encompassing, with much to take in from the city and problems to solve. But for the first time in 6 years I heard a live jazz band on the streets of Harlem and received blessings from a missionary family in Spanish screaming Jesus Loves You over a bull horn after glances to the right produced great mental snapshots of Yankee stadium and the frontier across the East River known as the Bronx.

After a week of looking through the Village Voice and reading about gentrification in the New York Press, I wonder what is going to happen to all of us who hover around the island of Manhattan. Is this madness sustainable? I think that is the appeal and great failure of New York, it just keeps collapsing on itself over and over like a man shuffling a deck of cards.

But today of all days, I should have took my camera. There was a lot to see and report.

Vacation

I didn't do anything today but watch Youtube.com. A while back, while I was in Nashville watching DVD's with my best friend, I remember us having a conversation about how I needed a vacation from my everyday life. Nashville was great for physical healing, but it was not helping nor producing anything else for my career or sanity after a certain point.

So, today I took such a vacation. There was a brief feeling of guilt because I could be out looking for work at a temp agency or calling people I know from the publishing industry. But I would as soon as not bother. It would just mean the real American rat race of a cup of Joe, two eggs on a roll with beef sausage from the Yemenite bodega near my subway and a Daily News; plus, having my balls chewed off by a successful New York PR firm executive that finds my attitude less than "serious'' because she can't get over the fact that I finished her simple stapling assignment and seem clueless to the fact that her newly Manhattanite blue-blooded-booty by marriagte gave three fifths of a shit to contact the same temp agency and hire me for a third day. "Most other firms would not let their interns let alone temp workers be entrusted with such an important task." she would say taking off her glasses and leaning over the desk, barely inhaling to recite her austere filth with a stationary set of molar and lips spread thin over a her patrician canines.

Fuck da Bitch!

So, I stayed home and watched Youtube.com. There were some great little films by some Swedish teenagers or twenty somethings that I thought were really funny. And I saw a great short from Mexico that dealt with violence and fags in the public toilets. I should link think them, but I will do that later.

Another interesting thing happened on Wednesday August 9th. I went out with the Harlem baker. First lunch at Republics, followed by a stroll in the village, a visit to the Adidas store and finally coffee at Cafe Borgia II.

There is a little used bookstore on Mercer I think, just south of 4th. We went in together, and to make a long story short (I could not see the categories because I have lost my glasses again, so I had to deal with the book attendant's sly, dry non-verbal stoic rancor), the Harlem baker told me upon exiting that he found the place too dry to stay inside. In fact, he had slipped away while I was looking for a copy of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus because I had to turn mine into the library before coming up North. I bought a postcard with Wittgenstein's picture as a consolation prize and am using it as a bookmark.

There was something about the baker's frankness in the matter that caused a bubbling realization to formulate and hit me in the face like a succession of bricks. He just did not like the atmosphere of the bookstore, so he left. I feel that an intellectual would stay in such a situation to figure out what the problem is, why it feels wrong. And there my friends, is where the problem lies for our type of folk.



Well, I am done with that.

Awaking to the Terror Plot Or How My Insulin Victory May Turn Sour

I was in Brooklyn, sleeping on the living room couch of Sylvie and Andre, trying to get my head around a little romance that has been brewing between me and a baker from Harlem and the anemic cash flow that is effecting my quality of life in the Big Apple when I hear Soledad O'Brien say something about a terrorist plot and dangerous liquids in plastic bottles.

I went back to sleep.

This has been a problem of mine. Lately, if I must sleep alone, I have to have the TV on and the volume down low. A friend of mine said it is a sign of loneliness. I have not talked to my counselor about this, but insert the Harlem baker into my bed and this little quirk does go away.

Anway, I awake about 2 hours later at 9:00 am to hear that all shit has broken loose and if you are flying anywhere in the country or overseas then no liquids are allowed in carry-on-bags. Nor can you drink your last can of Arizona Ice Tea's Watermelon Punch that your jiggaboo ass bought in bulk at Sam's Wholesale Club. Isn't that a hot ass mess of a situation? Not that I discourage it or think that it is invasive; it is just very serendipitous that I just got finish writing about my airplane flight from Nashville to NYC and outlined in detail my the condition of my bad nerves and how my insulin pump could be mistakened for a bomb that is strapped my body.

Later that day, through all of the coverage, I heard another CNN reporter list all the exceptions to the rule . . . insulin is on the list.

OK. Cool. But my name must always be on the prescription bottle. I remember when I first became diabetic I used to just buy the insulin without a prescription, but in the last 10 years a bottle has gone from 30 dollars in this country to 60 dollars. So, I don't do that anymore. But the other thing that is nerve racking is that I have thrown away all of the boxes that contained my Novolog short acting insulin and my Lantus long acting insulin. I just have the little bottles. The problem is that my name and prescription numbers are written on the box. The carrying cases for insulin and needle are made to hold viles of insulin not boxes . . . they won't fit in my refrigirated cases any other way.

I wonder what other restrictions I will have to endure in the future? Am I the canary in the mine shaft, experiencing first hand the restrictions of our new American society that is beginning to look more and more like an Israeli security style state? I love the way the conservatives have boiled down all drastic changes of public policy and societal regulations into advertising agency outsourced sound bites like "The New Normal." Our consumerist society is very receptive to digesting information in this way. Is this fashion? No, it is not! It is as much fashion as my insulin pump is an accessory.

I mean, first I am treated like a fucking crackhead by the granola children at Wild Oats in Green Hills. Not to mention the William Sonnoma incident where the bitch told me I could not afforn anything in the story. Then, I can't marry my boyfriend. Now I can't fly.

Funny, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Harlem seem so safe to me now.

Book Survey

Mendi O. sent me some questions about books the other day. And after reviewing her answers I thought it was a great way to find out how others approach books and what makes them tick artistically. So here we go.

1. Book that changed your life?
Alejo Carpentier's Kingdom of This World/El Reino de Este Mundo is number one on my list for a million reasons. I did not understand baroque and its use in the literary until I read it. It is also skeletal and delicate in a way, especially the parts where Pauline Bonaparte contracts yellow fever, and the black servant caressing the stone effigy with his hand the same way he massaged her in life. It also made the Creole world available to me and turned me into a surrealist or maybe a surrealist reformer. Carpentier's life also became my idea of what an artist/intellectual is in many ways. I am not finished with this book, his other novels, his work on music nor his life. It is a life long masterpiece for me.

2. One Book You Have Read More Than Once?
I am embarrassed to say that I am not really a person that reads stuff over and over. Books that I have combed through more than once are rare. But there are a few. So, for the sake of picking one that I have chomped down on more than once, I would have to say that Tar Baby by Toni Morrison is that book . Sometimes it is for what I feel is a fractured love story; sometimes it is because I like to contemplate Valerian; sometimes it is to pick over Ondine and her family's blessings and curse; and at other times it is for the shear imagery and characterization. I also like her narrative voice in this novel; it is very matter of fact. The book is NOT my favorite of Morrison's, but it is far from imperfect. Its span is so wide that the holes in the narrative become ornate in a way. Paris, New York, the Caribbean and the uninhibited spirit of dreadlocked, horse backed, maroons riding in the middle of the night meld back and forth with no real center axis. All the characters are believable; it is the situation that I am still trying to figure out with every reading. There is something very isolated about the character interactions that make it an enjoyable problem in the end.

Screw it, there is another. I could read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles everyday of the week.

3. One Book on a Desert Island?
This is a hard one. I think maybe Tropics of Capricorn, Tropics of Cancer or Nights in Clichy by Henry Miller. There is something that still captivates me about Miller. I started reading him in my senior year of high school, and I could not get a single page. Every time I picked up one of the Tropics it felt like a different story to me. I guess I am addicted to personalities as much as books. I remember watching Reds when I was pretty young, maybe 8 or 9, and being totally amazed by all those people that were interviewed. He was the most captivating personality to me before I knew who he was. That 20th century world in all its funk and power is what I would want to read about on a desert island if time is not an issue.

4. One Book That Made You Laugh?

Groove, Bang and Jive Around by Steve Cannon, which also gave me a raging hard on in the first couple of pages.


5. One Book That Made You Cry?
The end of Ben Okri's The Famished Road made me feel really melancholy and tearful I must say. I enjoyed that book beyond all others in so many ways. His work is unbelievable. There were points of extreme comical farce and there was a level of sadness that underscored absolutely everything in his imagery. I can't even describe how it made me feel and how it made me think about writing. His spin on Magical Realism is the closest to melding the everyday spiritual connections allowed in many African cultures and the sure slide of the marvelous, both act as a wonderful floor board for such strong imagery.

6. One Book You Wish You Had Written?
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau and the fact that it was written in a Creole dialect and won the Grand Concourt is even a greater accomplishment for what it has done for story telling. I also like the fact that it is written almost as two novels. The first half is a daughter telling the story of her father and is written in the second person. It ends with a wonderful tribute to the father spoken by the daughter. The second half of the novel is the speaker telling her interviewer about her life. There, it shifts to first person. And in the course of these two lives we see the history of Martinique.

I wish that I could have written that book in the sense that I could never have written that book. It is Chamoiseau's superhuman linguistic attentiveness and the social consciousness he brought in writing a master piece in Creole that makes it great. Don't get it twisted, I only read the translation. I wonder if one day I will be afforded the opportunity to understand the novel in the original language. In that way, I wish I had such abilities to write in a totally different language.

7. One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written?
That stupid On the Down Low by J.L King. It is like, "Please, give it a rest". Do most women believe that black men have a penchant for sleeping with one another any more than other social and ethnic groups? The author feeds into very anti-male themes and ideas . . . i.e., the reasons there are no good black men around. Plus, it is divisive in a very toxic way. Does sexuality always have to be discussed in terms of deviance from social norms and Terry McMillan dreams? I guess it does.

Man!

8. One Book You are Currently Reading?
Michel Foucault's The Order of Things. I can't even talk about it this dude gets me so mixed up, connected, disconnected, energized and zapped all at t he same time. And I am only on chapter one, which is a magical chapter.

9. One Book You Have Been Meaning to Read?
Ulysses by James Joyce. I want to read that book so bad that I can taste it, but I need more time. Don Quixote is another one that is on my list.

10. Now Tag Five People
Well, let's see. I guess I will ask some friends. Angryblackbitch is number one on the list. Then maybe jockohomo. Pissed Off Pencil is a good blog. I will have to think of two more.