Too Stupid for words

Remind me not to eat random food I find laying on tables... oh wait I have enough sense not to do that to start with.

Talk at Pomona College

If you're in the Los Angeles area or particularly at Pomona College I'll be doing a talk there on Thursday at noon. The flier is below, I look forward to checking out the sagehens.

Somebody get the gauze...

... In a month or so my ears are going to bleeding. Bill Cosby, Black America's favorite father, has decided to release a Hip-Hop album next month. Thankfully Cosby had the foresight to not rap on it ... thank you God, for real! But the album will be 'positive'. Call me the eternal cynic but there are very few rap albums that have fit this mold over the years that have been worth listening to. If you're not wearing a dashiki, locks or flowers, I don't want to hear it. And for all the folks who have been wondering about Cosby's recent rantings and if they a function of "old Black man disease" then check out this Atlantic Monthly article. For the record, I think the Atlantic monthly article is interesting but really skews what conservatism means and personal responsibility is.

1 picture = how many words?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. One of the most striking images I've ever encountered and occasionally have on my desktop is "The Soiling of Old Glory." For me, the image captured the complex (albeit negative) emotions that surrounded busing as a solution to school segregation. While we often think of racial antagonisms as rooted in the South, these tensions were present all over the nation. The stain of racism is sometimes deepest in the parts of the country where White and Black live near, but not always next to, where we compete for resources, and where the things to be gained from hatred are the smallest. Boston, in the case of this photo, typifies that reality. Recently Slate ran a slideshow series on the image to accompany the new book on it. I don't have the book, but I wonder could words ever capture the meanings and magnitude of this photo. I surely know I couldn't.

A Sunday Chuckle

So the "national dialog" on race has begun. Here is a HILARIOUS take on it.

Thanks to Atlasien on Rachel's Tavern for posting it first.

Butter Nut Reduction.

Okay, so this video is pretty funny, it's from SUPERDELUXE. It made smile.

Step Into a World... again?

I'm sort of in a different mood today. I could tell from the first time I woke up that I'd be moving and thinking a little different. For a couple of moments now I've been caught up in nostalgia of the past, but I know that the past is just that. As I was looking at HarlemWorld the other day I saw that reality. It was recently announced that Harlem will be the new home to a luxury car dealership. I had to pause and think for a while about it. Think about it, not just about gentrification, I know all about that. In fact, I've put some of my feelings out there already.

But really what does it mean to live in a place where the poor and the rich meet, but never really meet? NY is gotham city, it is the place where race, class, and reality have to come together, but somehow never do. It's almost a dream world. As I thought about this, I could hear the Blondie and KRS mash up (yeah, we didn't call it that when it came out but that's what it would be called now) Step Into a World. The airy vocals of Deborah Harry of Blondie, the chanting and braggadocio of KRS collide to capture a sound clash. But it's the clash that's beautiful and slightly cacophonous, full but empty? It's all there, but something is missing. In many ways, it's almost like the 80s in redux.

While it's easy to talk about progress and distress, in reality, people are at the center of these battles between development, renewal, and changes. In many ways the only thing left are our memories, but what happens when memories fade? What happens when the place you want to take someone to remember is no longer there? How do we create new memories? Can we really even "create" memories?