Sardonic Sistah Says

Every workday morning when my bus drops me off on 6th St I pass by a row of big empty buildings.  They used to be upscale restaurants (one was a five-star for over 40 years) but now they are just empty shells; where they were once teaming with life, they stand abandoned as a tribute to a dying downtown nightlife.

As I survey the edifices from the opposite side of the street I replace the old buildings with different businesses.  I think where the french restaurant used to be would be a great place for a Morrocan restaurant.  And next door to it, maybe a Korean Grill?  Or an upscale Latin-Vietnamese fusion place.  I can see a changing landscape to businesses that would reflect the gradual changing of faces and cultures that are now inhabiting the Queen City.

I’m not sure if that is something that could be recognized as being needed in a city that sees racial diversity as having two or three blacks in a sea of white. 

But then, people have different ideas about what makes something “diverse” anyway.  For some people, heterogeneity would be an array of varying hues.  Or, excluding race, some would think a cross-section of ethnicities and cultures means more to diversity than color.  Others think that economic variance brings more of a variety than race and culture would.  Then there are sexual preferences, although they are harder to gauge just by looking at a person’s appearance.

These are the things that run through my head yesterday as Sybil tells me about her plan to build the perfect lair –I mean hiking club –so she can meet her dream man.  She’s planning on making the cards so she can pass them out to potential cute male hikers.  She asked me to suggest some places she could go and hang up a flier and pass out cards and I suggested this one area.

“But isn’t that a gay area?” she asked.

“Well… yeah… kind of.  But an eclectic bunch of people seem to roll through there.  What’s the problem with having gays join?”

“Because I’m a gay magnet,” she said.  And she is.  When we were in our twenties most of her closest male friends were gay.  Unintentionally they became her ideal and her stand-bys during her spate of being sans boyfriend.  But now, for the makeshift community she’s building, she wants to create a group that is racially diverse but restricted by age and sexual preference.

“I don’t want to go there,” she dismissed the diner I suggested because it was in that neighborhood.  “Isn’t there a place in the city that is creative and conservative?”

“No, not really.  A creative conservative would be an oxymoron here, don’t you think?”

Our city is not only stratified by race but also by class sensibilities.  One day while visiting my best friend Vee on the westside of town I was in dire physical need of coffee and went in search for a Starbucks or a coffeehouse.  There was none to be found.  In a five mile circumference around my home there are at least five eight Starbucks and three or four independent coffee shops.  I find it odd that coffee houses would be pervasive on my side of town and asked friends who lived on the west side what gives?  Why no Starbucks?    There’s one in the grocery store on Harrison, a friend said.  They didn’t see a need for it and my notion for having a surplus of them (I thought they just needed one or two on a main throroughfare) seemed so eastside to them.  The eastside is where those with money (or those who desire it) seem to habitate, they said.  The westside is the working class; they’re for Godliness and no nonsense.

No, we can’t meet.  No, no intermingling.  East is east and west is west and everything is just fine, thank you very much.  So on the westside diversity constitutes of being catholic or methodist or presbyterian and on the eastside one would find the chichi clothing stores, the art galleries and, for some reason, an abundance of coffee houses.  For the eastsiders diversity is what street you live on and which neighborhood.

My city is divided by race with neighborhoods that are nearly all black or all white.  Yet in some of the roughest sections there are oases of affluence on a few blocks.  You can be walking down a street that seems to be a rough, blighted area with a few small trees and houses that need a lot of work with large dirt patches in their front yard and then turn the corner and be among tall trees and large houses with lush lawns. 

In a lot of those black areas there aren’t a lot of black businesses.  And we are just beginning to have a discernable latino community, which at first was spread throughout the area but now seems to be concentrated on the lower westside.  My thoughts were that it seemed cool; we could finally be like other cities and maybe have a Lil Havana or a Chinatown or Koreatown; there could be ethnic enclaves that one could patronize and get authentic food (yeah, I’m thinking of my stomach).  J disagrees.  He likes the fact that the races (aside from African Americans) are interspersed among the community and thinks the idea of different neighborhoods inhabited by race or ethnic groups to be exclusionary, even if they are self segregating themselves. 

“Its not really self segregation,” J argues.  “They move into those areas because no one else wants them in their communities.” J is a student of urban planning and ethnic studies and then proceeds to lecture me about the planned building of neighborhoods, the marginalization of minorities, and the disenfranchisement of the poor.  Although he’s Korean,  he wouldn’t appreciate a Koreatown in our city unless it could be built up and as prosperous as the richer city communities. 

“I’m against planned minority ghettos,” J said.

Although I can see his point I can’t concede it.  Sometimes people want to be around what makes them comfortable which may include being around others with similar backgrounds and heritage.  I have a friend whose mother lives in the projects and even when they moved her out to do a two year renovation she moved back in when the time came.   She grew up there and then raised her son there; it was all she knew.  The community is beginning to change, though so I’m not sure how much longer she will stay but I suspect that when she moves again she will search for another place that offers her the same feeling.

But going back to my vision of a utopian society it would be a place where all cultures could co-exist peaceably side by side and it wouldn’t matter what color someone’s skin was or what religion they practiced.  No one would care if someone loved someone else who was the same gender.  There wouldn’t be any class barriers.  I’m sure I sound like naive dreamer but I don’t think I’m the only one….

(John Lennon music swelling in the background to a finish)

“I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will live as one”.

Macy’s department store has angered hispanic Americans with their t-shirt that says “Brown is the New White“. 

I wonder if the person whose bright idea it was to imprint that slogan on a t-shirt is dumbfounded about how it went over in the latino community.  You can take that phrase a few different ways and a couple of them are pretty insulting.

It might surprise some in the majority that many in the minority don’t aspire to whiteness.  I can see how they might get that confused, considering they have all the cool stuff and are running everything.  But many who know their heritage and where they come from don’t want to trade it in to move up; they want to move up and carry all of that along with them.

But with the rapid browning of America maybe in a few years we will white people sporting the t-shirts “White is the New Brown”?

Sometimes when I’m bored on a Monday night I will watch the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic show on TLC.  The show is about grossly obese people who won’t/can’t lose weight so they check themselves in to get help.  Most of the residents sneak food in or have accomplices that sneak it in to them.  One episode I saw made my jaw drop as I watched a guy decide to amputate his gnarled leg because he knew he just couldn’t give up the food.

It’s like that for some folks.  Some people are addicted to food and they just can’t leave it alone like crack or bad tv.  But just because someone has a drug or an alcohol problem it doesn’t mean that those around them will soon succumb to the problem.

The New England Journal of Medicine says its different for weight gain.  According to an article in today’s NYT if you run with a fat crew then, you too, will probably become fat. 

I have friends who weigh close or over 300lbs and I am no where near that.  In the black community some people don’t feel a woman is sexy until she hits 160lbs and has some meat on them bones.  I know when I was at my thinnest (126lbs) I was told by my female elders needed to eat and gain more weight, not lose anymore and once I hit 130 I got their seal of approval.

But for the country at large, I don’t know if I agree of the peer pressure to gain weight or even women trying to keep up with the Joneses.  I think the study is too simplistic in its approach, what about cultural attitudes and access to healthy food?  What about the use of food as a means of socializing? 

And what I really fear is that people will use this as a way to discriminate against overweight people. 

I think we can all agree that as a society we might all need to lose some weight but I don’t think we need to jettison a group  socially because we are afraid they’ll raise our cholesterol.

That’s just my two cent.

A few years ago when Kelis made her debut with the song “I Hate You So Much Right Now” I was in love with her music.  Finally a song of defiance and with a touch of punk rock. 

But that went by the wayside with the quickness.  Black female empowerment doesn’t sell music.  When they aren’t being arm charms in someone else’s music video they are boy toys in their crooning, like Lil Kim’s pseudo-confidence that is closer to concubine.  Artists who think their power comes from talking about what is between their legs instead of what they have between their ears.  When singers like Fefe Dobson and Cree Summer (I know, hard to believe) tried to put out music with a rock feel and lyrics that didn’t talk about sex they became marginalized.  Jean Grae has a record deal and is a spitter whose putting out more than just vacuous lines of rhymes, but black radio isn’t showing her much love.

My friend just sent me this link to Raging Geishas and I’m in love with this group.  This is the kind of stuff my daughter and I have been on the search for.

Peep them on Myspace and the article from the Miami New Times.

Where was this group when I was going to punk concerts?

It premieres tonight.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a hit.

Jumping around from the blogs and upset media critics about the show and how the name change (from Hot Ghetto Mess to We Must Do Better) isn’t necessarily going to make a whole lot of difference for a show that may predicate itself on being an advocate for change but instead is helping in the deterioration of the black image.

But its not the only show.  I’ve complained about Flavor of Love (if PE sanctioned Professor Griff for anti-semitic comments he made in the 80s they definitely need to curb Flav for his beyond the pale minstelsy on the tube), I Love New York and then Charm School.   Popular with white and black audiences, these shows help to promote the buffoonery image of African Americans.  Many people will tune in to watch our shame parade around in prime time and, the sad part is, some will be thinking that it really is a way to elevate the community.

Except for me.  I put a parental lock on BET after I viewed one of their video shows that resembled soft porn.  I agree with the title of their new show, We Must Do Better, but doing better for a lot of black parents will mean locking out that station.

So, Sybil emails me to ask if I knew anyone who could help her create a website.  She wants the website to try to encourage more people to join her hiking club.  Aside from being her main form of exercise, Sybil wants to use the hiking group as a way to meet single men her age.  She had joined another established group but most of the other members were over 50.

“And you can come, too,” she offered.  “Bring your husband.  I want to make it as diverse as possible.”

On the first couple of hikes she invited three other people and only one person showed up.  She’s hoping with the website she can attract people who are over 30 but under 50 with diverse races and, of course, a couple of males thrown in with the females.

I am wishing the best for her but I don’t know if it will happen.  The city we live in sucks for singles and throw in the fact that Sybil is a tad bit on the eccentric side and has hit forty its going to be harder.  It would also help if she knew what she wanted.  She kind of knows what she wants: she wants a male, non-black, over 33, under 50 and that’s about it.  I told her she needs to be more specific; how does the universe know what you want if you don’t know what you want?  She told me she was being specific –did I mention she’s ditzy, too? 

She calls me up at work one day to tell me that this gorgeous Indian man is standing in front of her and she needed to know what to say.

“Well… have you tried hello?”

She giggles like a school girl,”Yes.  But what do I say next?”

“It depends on what he says.”

“But then what do I say after that?”  I could not see myself being a hi-tech Cyrano to her Christian.  How can I comtemplate everything that he, a stranger, can possibly say and help her to look witty, alluring, and seductive all while she has a phone glued to her ear?  Its impossible.

But I see where she’s coming from.  She just turned 40 at the beginning of the year and for the last four (maybe five or six, I lost count) she’s been celibate.  She hasn’t really tried to date since she returned back to the Midwest with broken heart when things didn’t work out between her and his Asian guy.  Now she’s wondering if she made the right choice in coming back.  She had a bigger selection of Asian men (her preference)  on the West Coast and since she’s been back she felt as if no one is giving her the eye, not even black men.  Which is untrue.  There have been black and white men that have expressed an interest in her, she just hasn’t felt an attraction to the men who were feeling her.  And the one she was feeling for a moment was not for her; he’s was Asian but he was gay.

Its not like she’s not an attractive woman; she’s very pretty actually.  In her younger days she has done some modeling and she looks like she could be Brandy’s older sister.  Personality wise she’s like like a black Phoebe from the tv show “Friends”.  For real, no embellishment there.  She plays the guitar just as well and, although she has never written a song like “Smelly Cat” her punk-folk songs she penned when we were in high school were about as quirky.  I don’t know why she’s single.  I’ve met less attractive women who are paired up.  I know women who are nuttier than she is and 10 times as mean and they have a man.  But for some reason whatever Sybil is sending out into the universe, the universe has reward her goodness in the form of a man.

I don’t know what to tell her.  Hang in there? It seems so trite.  I tried to introduce her to the world of online dating and encouraged her to go on to MySpace which, yes is teaming with oversexed teens and twenties, but seems to have some serious minded mature men on there.  She created a profile that was about as exciting as a blank sheet of paper.  I tried to give some tips (none of which she followed).  Aside from Tom she made one friend –a black guy.  I knew that wasn’t going to go anywhere because she’s not attracted to black guys; I’ve never known her to date one.  She’s dated white, red, and yellow but never black guy, at least not seriously.  After a few months she deleted her profile.

“I don’t have the time to go on there,” she told me.

“If don’t have the time to go online how are you going to find time to date?” I asked.

But she wants to date.  And she wants my advice, although in the past anything I have told her she immediately did the complete opposite of –with disasterous results I might add.  Once 40 hit she’s feeling the pinch so she’s looking to find a guy, any guy well almost any guy, if you’ve read this far you know the criteria (preferably Asian but almost any non black, a bit eccentric like she is).  But if whites have a hard time of dating in this city then for African American women is veritably non existant for a lot of us. 

So what can I say that she will even give any heed?

“Just because you are 40 don’t act desperate,” I said.  “You are still a hot commodity so no sex on the first date.”

“What if I want to?” she asked.

“But you don’t.”

“But what if I–”

I interrupted her.  “No, you really don’t.  You give it up early you set the tone for the relationship and that’s all it ever will be is sex.”

“Its been such a long time,” she whined.

“Girl, you’ve gone this long without it you can go a bit longer.”  She was quiet on her end of the phone.  “Sybil!” I was exasperated.  “For real, you can.”

“Yeah… okay.”  Her voice was small and unconvincing.  Its gonna be a long journey.

Dunbar is one of my favorite poets.  He’s a native Ohioan so I have to give him love.

This guy here deserves a lotta love, too. And he also hails from Dayton.

Check out his interview on NPR and also his performing schedule.  I’m kinda hurt he’s not coming my way, but I’m going to have to see about that.  I’ve gotta make it happens that he performs because I don’t have the time to hunt him down.

Rev Al Sharpton is backing NY Senator Antoine Thompson’s idea to pull public investments from record companies that won’t curb their hyper-masculine artists who insists on denigrating black women by calling them “bitches” and “hos” and disparaging the rest of the black community by referring to one another as nigger.

Sounds like a good idea.  So why aren’t I happy?

I would be more inclined to think a substantial change was forthcoming if it was the artists sanctioning their brethren or the audience making their voices heard by witholding their money by not buying the pablum the record companies are putting out.  I’m curious to see what effect it will have with government officials stepping in on the act?  Will it be positive or will the Tipper Gore effect come into play?

I was a teen in the eighties; that’s when you listened to your raunchy music like Darlin’ Nikki after midnight.  Listening to artists on the radio today make the raunchiest of music back then seem tame.  Back then it was mostly alluded to; double entendres were tools of skilled lyricists.  Today’s rappers and singers have no time (or wit) for that.  Everything is on the table, when they are singing about fellatio or cunnilingus they use street parlance of getting head, going downtown, eat my….

But back to the point,  those of us who wanted to hear the full version of Little Red Corvettte, Darlin Nikki or whatever knew to just stay up after midnight to hear it.  At sixteen, seventeen I was going to the record store and buying Too Live Crew’s “Throw That D” which had the real version on the other side.  I bought the records home and left them out for my mom to see because I knew she wasn’t going to go through my albums.   But then one of my older brothers went through them (that dang bible thumper) and told on me.  As a child of God I gave my questionable albums away to my good friend who didn’t have a mother or brothers who would check and where at her house we could listen to our filth flarn filth in peace.

So when Tipper Gore came out with her idea about record labeling (similar to movie ratings) my family thought it was cool.  I personally didn’t care because I knew it wasn’t going to stop me from listening to what I was going to listen to.  I found out about music from my friends who found out about from their friends or local makeshift djs.  We passed around mixtapes.  No one was going to stop the music.

So yeah, I’m wondering what effect the crusade will have on musical tastes of our young.  As a mother I don’t pay attention to the ratings on the music.  My daughter doesn’t buy cds.  I buy her cds.  But much like it was when I was a kid, she gets some of her music selections from her friends (for her its mix cds).  Long ago I had a talk with her about music selection.  I let her know what was appropriate to listen to and what things she didn’t want seeping into her subconscious by repetitive chanting (like women are bitches and hos). 

The other day as we were driving down the street we talked about how everything on the music sounds the same and I mentioned that it goes like that in spurts.  I told her about how for a while everyone wanted to sound like Prince, then it was Teddy Riley (she didn’t know who he was), and now its whomever it is.  We were listening to K-Os at the time and my daughter noted how his sound was different.

“Everything on the radio wouldn’t be so incestuous if they played artists like him,” she said.

Which is true.  But what big radio station is advocating on his behalf?  Or Blackalicious?  Or Michael Franti?  I list about ten positive young rappers and singers who have a unique sound but don’t get any airplay.  Sheeple need to ask themselves why is it?  Is it because their music isn’t as good as the folks on the radio?  Or is it because the big companies have the radio stations so hemmed up that they play whatever it is they send over.  When selling product its not conducive for companies to have an intelligent consumer. 

Being young and being dumb almost go hand in hand.  People don’t really expect much with their music except good beats and a catchy hook.  And if parents aren’t worried about what music their children are listening to then why would anyone else be?

I’ll be keeping an eye on media watchblogs like What About Our Daughters.  Something tells me its more the voice of that enterprising young sister than a sudden attack of conscious that has Sharpton looking critically at the record companies anyway. 

On Sunday my daughter and I went to see the movie Hairspray.  We’ve been waiting for it to come out and would have went to see it on Friday but our day was filled.

So now that I’ve seen it… eh.

The music was great although not memorable except for the final song, “You Can’t Stop the Beat” and “Good Morning Baltimore”.  The acting was good; I really liked Elijah Kelly who played Seaweed, he’s a great singer and dancer.  I’ve never seen the broadway rendition, but I have seen the original several times and the original 1960’s music is stuck in my brain (The Roach and I’m Blue are iconic) but I would never compare Adam Shankman’s musical to John Water’s original.

As I think back I realize it might have been the setting.  To get good seats my daughter and I went to the movie theater close to our house instead of the one in the city or across the river.  We couldn’t help but notice we were the only faces in the room; the place was filled with white movie goers of all ages and there were parents there with their tweens.  As I watched the dance sequence where Tracy, Seaweed and the black cast members dance and sing on a bus I think to myself, “I wonder if my mother would like this movie?”

And I hit the problem right on the head.

I love Waters.  His movies are fun and irreverent.  They thumb their noses at the man.  But I wouldn’t necessarily call some of them family movies.  His movies and usually his audiences are filled with subversives.  We come to laugh at ourselves but also to feel empowered by the fact the those in the mainstream didn’t get the joke. 

Who else but Waters could get away with putting all the black kids in slow learner’s class?  Or decide to have beatniks (wonderfully played by Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek) chide Ricky Lake’s Tracy for being so uncool because she was a “hair hopper”.   Or have a fat girl become the most popular girl on a dance show anyway.  Waters doesn’t see things the way the rest of the world sees them; he views life through glasses that makes up down and down up. Similarly to how Tim Burton puts a moribund twist on the world, Waters has a way of creating parallel worlds that we sort of recognize as being a negative film strip of the place we are living in.

Perhaps its because times have changed that Waters can be seen as customary.   Nothing will probably ever be able to top the lunacy of Pink Flamingos but daytime talk shows like the Jerry Springer Show and Maury Povich come close.  The side show performances of those programs make the unmentionable mundane.  I once turned on the Springer show to see a man argue that he should be allowed to marry his rodent because they had a spiritual meeting of the minds.  

Shankman’s Hairspray kind of felt like an afterschool special with a moral: I’m different and that’s okay!  It might have even been a line in the movie.  Looking back forty-five years ago it seems more like nostalgia than it did when it was 1987. 

So, if you are in the mood for an upbeat, feel good movie (and these days who isn’t?) then I would still suggest going to see Hairspray. 

My heart has just dropped. 

I cruised on to NPR’s Tell Me More and saw that my favorite poet/performance artist Sekou Sundiata has passed away.  I became introduced to Sundiata’s work when I found out he had been signed to Ani DiFranco’s label.  I bought both of his cd’s (Long Story Short and The Blue Oneness of Dreams) and I have been known to use his poems on my mixtapes and cds that I make for friends.   I love his poems Isle de Goree and Black Boys to Men.  I love the sound of his voice as he read his words; his cadence and inflections are better than anything being played over beats on the radio.

I pray for his loved ones and hope they know his words reached many.