Three movies are dominating my thoughts today, The Day After Tomorrow, Soul Plane, and Blazing Saddles. Blazing Saddles is what I’m watching right now, so if any dialogue slips in there, that’s why.

I saw Day After Tomorrow(DAT)yesterday. Last week, I saw a lot of commentary condemning DAT as basically a liberal polemic to get people worked up and worried about global warming. At the time, I was thinking, “it’s just a disaster picture. Why make a political isse of it?” Then I saw it. Blogging affiliations and ideology notwithstanding, I’m not about all that “liberals do this and liberals ain’t that” nuttiness. Stuff like that gets me bored and makes me tired. Then I saw the movie. It really was all political. The Vice-President was obviously supposed to be Cheyney, and the President was supposed to be Bush, although he physically resembled Al Gore. Then at the end, there’s this scene where the VP (who becomes President when the President dies) gives this speech about how we always thought we could keep consuming at the rate we always have and whatnot…

Now I’ll be the first one to say that I’m not the one who’s gonna sit up there and act like all the talk about global warming is junk science. I’ll be up front and say that I haven’t read all (any of) the serious literature, but I’ve read some opinions on the issue. The biases of the writers precludes me from taking any of the opinons very seriously. Basically, as with any scientific ideas that pass through politics, I’m suspicious. Junk science is not confined to one side of the aisle. And even if the global warming will not lead to climatological disaster, is there really a reason we shouldn’t take care of the environment? Is there really a reason to act like it’s a bad idea that we not drive everywhere just because we can? I don’t think so, but that’s just me.

At any rate, that’s my political beef with the movie. As a disaster flick, it has problems as well. I like disaster flicks, especially those concerning natural disasters. As a result, I usually hang my little physics knowledge at the door. When I go into the theater, I know that there are going to be some things that just couldn’t happen in this world. That’s what made it film-worthy. The only problem I have is when the science in the movie is not consistent. For the sake of anybody who may be going to see this movie, I won’t get into all the flaws right now, but suffice it to say that the weather ain’t the only anomaly in there. I say this understanding that there is a formula to disaster movies and knowing that I’m just going to be disappointed most of the time. I want to see people gettin’ it. If people are getting wiped out, I want to see one of the main charcters get it too. Unless there’s a specific reason for Protagonist, Protagonist’s family member/significant other/dog/ NOT to suffer, they should be right out there too. But that’s just me.

Charlie: Bart, they said you was hung!
Bart: And they was right.

Ambra has written at length about Soul Plane, as have Joseph C. Phillips (via Booker Rising). They’re right in condemning that piece of work as a 2004 minstrel show. For a while, I was thinking I would just write the most stereotypical things I could think of (like listing the top 5 fried chicken joints), but it got to be too much work. Also, I started thinking about something. Why are we so pressed over a movie? Granted, it’s a waste of film and a capital waste of money (18 million for that crap? Yeah, it’s all politically expedient to talk about what we could do for schools with the money we’re spending on the war in Iraq and all that, but what about the money we spend on movies, both on production and consumption? I bet that 18 million could liquidate all but the most indebted school districts, but we ain’t gon’ talk about that. And we surely won’t mention the monies spent by regular people going to the movies. I’m not exempt either, by the way.)

Anyway, the fact that Soul Plane has been made is the least of our problems. Not to justify it at all, but it’s like this: when we talk about the stereotypical presentation of Black folks in the mass media, the underlying premise seems to be that if we were portrayed differently then it would diminish the impact of racism, since some people’s only experience with Black people is via the television and to a lesser extent, the movie screen. Connections are often drawn between characters in the current “work”, for lack of a better term, and the classic stereotypes of Black people, many of which were present in D.W. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation, aka The Klansman. Since Birth Of A Nation was used as ostensible grounds for racist actions, then the thinking seems to be that keeping those stereotypes going helps to perpetuate racism. I don’t know that I’m sold on that any more. It seems to me that people who want to be racist don’t need a movie or thugged-out hip-hop or OJ Simpson or anything else to justify their position. Racism is not logical. People may attempt to justify their racist attitudes with examples of Black “misbehavior” but the truth is, it’s not the behavior that the racist objects to, it’s the person, whether he’s Dr. King, Farrakahn, Snoop, Dr. Charles Drew, Bill Cosby, or whoever.

Having said that, I will reiterate that I think there are more than enough grounds to protest this piece of crap being made, but I think we also need to maintain some perspective on the matter. We can’t just go around looking for all the stereotypes that can possibly be conferred onto a character in movie. One of my favorite examples from when I was taking a Blacks in Film class at Temple was Kramer from Seinfeld. If Kramer had been Black, people would have been protesting that he was just an updated version of the coon stereotype. He wasn’t Black, though, and he was one of the most popular characters on the box at that time. At some point, characters just have the right to be funny and people have the right to their sense of humor, as unsophisticated as that may be.

I will cosign on Joseph C. Phillips’ call for diversity within Black cinema and television because that’s the real problem. It’s not Soul Plane, per se, it’s that Black folks don’t usually support good dramas or smart comedies. But then, “good” drama or “smart” comedy is just a matter of taste. Personally, I never liked Martin, but I know lots of people who thought it was the funniest thing on television. As far as I was concerned, it couldn’t get any worse than Martin, but that’s just me.

Now, one thing that did disappont me about Soul Plane was that it was not a spoof of other movies. I only know one person who saw it, and she watched the bootleg (how poetic is that?), but she said she would’ve been mad if she had paid to see it. It would be one thing if the point of the movie was to make fun of the stereotypes, but I don’t think there’s enough separation between the charcters and their actions to signify an awareness of the stereotypes. They’re not poking fun, they’re being it for real. Juxtapose that with Blazing Saddles, which exists solely to mock the conventions by which the characters think and move. There’s probably a good satire in Soul Plane somewhere. Too bad nobody thought to bring it out.

I bust a rhyme to dust frustrated rappers
Thus crush competition, lights out like the clapper.
- Pharoahe Monch

What!

Reading this article on school vouchers, “Vouchers: The Right’s Final Answer to Brown” I admit that sometimes it’s very easy to see issues through a partisan lens. Sometimes, I read stuff and I’m think of what the Wino told the Junkie in Richard Pryor’s piece, “Better lay off that narcotic nigga, that shit done made you null and void.” But then I have to step back and give it a better reading and see if there’s anything valid I can take from it. In this case, there’s not much, but I’ll see what I can do. What it does, however, is typify what I think is the main problem of the Black Left, they hug white racism so hard that it’s almost like they’re addicted to it.

I’m not one of those pollyanaish negroes who thinks that racism is nonexistent. A couple weeks ago, I told my mother that I don’t think racism will ever cease to exist in America. It’s ingrained too deeply and too many people have stakes in its existence for it to go away. That said, there comes a point at which we have to realize that fact and move on. In the Laff-a-lympics, Yogi’s team didn’t stop trying because Dick Dastardly’s team was cheating. They had to adjust their strategy because of the cheating, but they didn’t stop racing and complain about how unfair it was. Granted, that was a cartoon and it was scripted so that the Dastardlys would eventually lose, even if they won an event or two, but the principle still applies. I don’t even think racism is necessarily all that pervasive, but for the people who do, racism can’t be the cause of all Black folks’ problems. If it is, then the racists are right, we’re just as dumb and stupid and incapable as they say we are. We know better than that.

I have two main problems with this article: one, it seems to go along with the general idea that segregation, or perhaps to be more specific, separation, is necessarily a bad thing. That idea is not explicitly addressed, but the general tone of the article seems to fall in with the integrationist model, where having different “races” at the same school a de facto better situation for the Black students. I don’t deny that nowadays it tends to work out that way, but it was not always the case, and it does not have to be, in any case.

My second problem with the article is in its attempt to argue against vouchers without having some alternative. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I have serious reservations about vouchers. I’m not comfortable with the notion of creating a permanent underclass by sending poor students (both financially and academically) to “schools” that are little more than holding pens for prisons. It can be argued that many public schools are already just that, but if the few real students who do attend those schools were to leave, then what would happen to the rest of them? Should we replace the teachers with correctional officers and leave it at that? That problem becomes compounded when we realize that even with vouchers, there are some families that couldn’t afford to put their children into private schools. One of the times I was writing about Good Times, I started to go on a whole tangent about how if the Evans family existed now, with Michael and Thelma being as smart as they are, James and Florida still wouldn’t be able to put them in any private schools because they were just too poor. So what, then, should Michael and Thelma have to go to prison schools because they’re too poor. Then there’s the fact that private schools don’t have to take anybody. Voucher or no, they can turn a child down for any number of reasons. In short, then, I don’t see vouchers/private school “competition” as the panacea that some others do.

At the same time, I don’t see how any self-respecting pro-Black person can sit there and act like the only problem with public schools is that they’re underfunded. Please. Public schools, particularly urban and rural, have some serious problems. In the urban schools, the students most dramatically affected are Black and Latino. While I don’t know that vouchers represent the solution to the problems public schools face (in fact, I know that they don’t), given the state of public education, if my allegiance is to the kids, I would be willing to try anything. It can’t be worse than what’s there now.

In this article, none of the issues I listed above are even addressed. Instead, vouchers are presented as a continuation of white flight from public schools after Brown. The valid nugget I believe this article holds is its presentation of history. While I don’t think it’s necessary to dwell on the past, it is instructive to have a clear view of what has happened. The problem here is that in the desire to make white people culpable for something, the authors ignore the fact that in cities like Detroit and Cleveland, some of the most vocal supporters of vouchers were grassroots Black folks who were tired of their children graduating high school unable to read. These people are glossed over as “African-American front groups.” Like it’s impossible to hold a viewpoint different from the Black hegemony and still be pro-Black. But we already know that’s what they think.

Better lay off that narcotic.

Here’s a story about one of my grade school teachers. She tried to get me to sing in the Christmas play in 5th grade. I knew better.

Seems like everybody and zer cousin has written somethin about Bill Cosby’s statements at the NAACP dinner last week. I’m not above adding my voice to the rest, but I want to see if I can get a complete transcript first. At any rate, here you can read LaShawn,Ambra, Cobb, and Clarence Page.

For now, I’m more interested in looking at Bill Cosby’s stand-up work. Not necessarily trying to come up with a ranking, but just positioning him among his peers. In reality, he’s in the pantheon, but in the interest of giving myself something to talk about, I’ll probably include some people on the very next strata.

When I think of the great comedians, I have to start with Richard Pryor, primarily because the people that came before him are a little before my time. I have some Redd Foxx records and I’ve heard Pigmeat Markham and Moms Mabley, but if you’ve ever been to a comedy show, then you know the dynamic at a show is very different from what you get on a record. I think the comedy record that best gives the feeling of being at the artist’s show is Robin Harris’ Bebe’s Kids. I should also be careful to include Flip Wilson and Dick Gregory in this group, even though I’ve never actually heard Dick Gregory tell a joke. I’ve read/heard some funny things from him, but I’ve never heard him doing a set. Of course, as I was coming of age, Eddie Murphy was killing it and then courtesy of the Def Comedy Jam, I came across Bernie Mac and Cedric. Robin Williams used to be up there for me too, but it’s not quite the same for me any more. I don’t know if because he’s gotten older or because I have, though. Same thing with Steve Martin. Then by the late 90’s it was all about Chris Rock and now Dave Chappelle is getting a lot of attention, but he’s been gettin’ it in for a while.

Now that I’ve done my obligatory name dropping and bias disclosing, here’s the deal: any historical look at Black comedians has to include the element of protest that informed much of their work. Not so much for the ones before Richard, although there may have been some overtly social material in their acts too, but definitely after Richard, that was almost an expected part of any Black comedian’s routine. (Because I’m not so familiar with his act, I don’t know if Dick Gregory comes before Richard or after…I’m thinking before, but I don’t know) Bill never really got down like that. I remember reading back in the 80’s that when Cosby initially started off along that route but then another comedian told him, derisively, that if he lost his color, he wouldn’t have an act. That’s when he started to focus his material on childhood.

Some people I know think that in centering his material on a non-confrontational topic like childhood, and by being particularly non-confrontational about it, Cosby was accommodating the “powers that be.” For them, the Richard paradigm is in full effect: give ‘em (white people) hell every time you step to the mic, even if you just sneak it in as an aside. While I think there’s enough fodder there for an interesting discussion, I think it misses what seems to be an existential sort of Blackness. That is, Bill Cosby never had to put his Blackness in the audience’s face because it was already in the audience’s face. When he did the “Fat Albert” routines, I don’t think there’s anybody who has ever imagined that Fat Albert or Weird Harold was not Black. What’s more, he wasn’t apologizing for his Blackness or downplaying it, so much as he just presented it like it was a given. I think it’s similar to Zora Neale Hurston’s use of the Southern Black vernacular, esp. in Their Eyes Were Watching God. To the extent that she was making a political statement (and knowing her politics, if she was at all, it was to a very limited extent), it was the implicit statement that these people’s lives were valid and worth talking (reading) about, as did their manner of speech. I would argue strongly that that does not make him an accomodationalist, even if it does not mark him as a radical.

(For any lit majors out there, there’s a pretty good paper topic in there to be fleshed out– Cosby’s apolitical comedy : the overtly political Black “establishment(?)” comedians of the time, esp. Richard Pryor :: Zora Neale Hurston’s stories, in which white racism gets minimal ink : other Harlem Rennaisance writers, esp. Richard Wright. Got your Black lit in there, plus you get to listen to a whole lot of Richard Pryor. I wish I had thought of something like this when I was in undergrad.)

Another interesting element of Cosby’s routines is that his style is primarily storytelling. This doesn’t separate him from anybody, but I think it is definitely one of his strengths. One difference between Bill and Rich is that Bill generally narrates the stories, sometimes speaking in character, whereas Rich was good for going into character and staying there for the entire routine. Think “Mudfoot” and “Wino and Junkie.” Speaking of voices, does that “white guy” voice start with Richard? I have to go back and check out my Redd Foxx collection, but I think the “white guy” voice, as well as the whole “Black people v. White people” as a routine staple starts with Richard Pryor.

Looking at Bill and Richard together is interesting because even though I think Richard was on a whole different level for a lot of reasons, more people tried to imitate him than they did with Bill, whose work and stylings are a lot more accessible. Not saying that just anybody could do what Bill did, but nobody could do what Richard did. It’s not uncommon, though. There are more imitators of Prince than Michael Jackson, and far too many young Black people would rather be athletes than engineers. The irony here is that Bill Cosby, outside of being a stand-up comedian, is much more widely revered than Richard; I think it’s safe to bet that he’s richer than Richard, too. I don’t think it’s hard to understand why, though. It’s the cussing.

As anybody of some age knows, Lenny Bruce is the Curt Flood of cussing on the mic. Redd Foxx did it first, but he didn’t get suffer the political repercussions that Lenny Bruce did. Redd Foxx just couldn’t get work. (Don’t know who Curt Flood is? Take a break from this and google him. He’s an important figure, whether you care about sports or not.) After him came George Carlin and Richard. Okay, so Richard didn’t invent cussing on the mic, but he was very profuse with it. And even though Bill tried to separate Richard from his imitators by saying that Richard’s cussing was a function of his speaking in character, it’s not accurate. To tell the truth, Richard’s cuss volume decreased in character. When he was speaking in his own voice (figuratively), he cussed a lot more. In the same way that the basketball players who have come come after Jordan have lessened the quality of the game by focusing so much on the spectacular things he did that they lack the fundamentals (Kobe & KG obviously excepted, the Def Comedy Jam era comedians did much the same thing. (Except, and I hafta vent this here: one time there was an old dude on there who basically bit Richard’s whole routine. I forget which routine it was, and I don’t remember the dude’s name, but as he was up there talking, I was finishing his punch lines. I was about to go off, but I didn’t want to hear Butterscotch’s mouth. Or maybe it was Redd Foxx he was jacking, but the point is, I knew the routine and I was mad he got up there acting like it was new.) It seems that many of the more recent comedians kept the cussing but forgot the jokes. They’re topically limited to “Black people v. White people” (with the requisite “white guy” voice) and sex, maybe expanding it to relationships. I ain’t gon’ front, sometimes it’s funny, but most times, it’s not.

One of the last brothers who cussed a lot but had ridiculously solid fundamentals was the late Robin Harris. I don’t know if I would go as far as calling Robin Harris a genius, but he was at the very top of the next tier. He was certainly the king of comedy once Eddie went off to be a movie star. Robin Harris was solid. He did something comedians rarely do any more: he told jokes. Nowadays, most comedians’ acts consist of observations highlighting ironic elements, sometimes using excessive hyperbole. Robin Harris did that too, but he told actual jokes with a beginning, middle, end, and details that held the joke together. To this day, I can’t think of an isolated joke that is better than his Piccolo Player. Now, Robin cussed a lot. He cussed a whole lot, and it was not always integral to the joke, but his material was so solid that it didn’t even matter. (At the same time, if you really break down the way people talk like I do sometimes, you’d have to admit that Robin Harris said the word “motherfucker” the way it’s supposed to be said. He popped it like a bath towel.) He also had incredible “dozens” game. Vulgar as he wanted to be, but when it came to squelching hecklers, he was ruthless. Like that time he was like, “Somebody put somethin’ in his mouth, cuz my zipper’s stuck.” Now that’s ruthless. Unfortunately, he passed away just as he was about to come into his own.

Stepping into Robin’s place is Bernie Mac, whose act seems like a cross between Bill Cosby and Robin Harris. (In fact, Bernie Mac played Robin Harris’ brother in House Party 3. I don’t like admitting that I actually saw that piece, but I thought it was tremendous casting that had him playing Robin Harris’ brother. They’re both dark-skinned, got similar beetle eyes, cuss like it’s going out of style…that’s a match. I could definitely imagine them sharing a bedroom when they were younger, capping on each other all night.) Not the same lasting impact of either, I don’t suspect, but he is very, very good.

I honor of the release of Soul Plane this week, I’m making a list of the top 5 fried chicken joints.

1. Pathmark (a grocery chain in the states surrounding New Jersey. If you’re ever passing through, stop and get a 12 pack. But only go to the stores in the ‘hood.)
2. Popeyes
3. KFC (original recipie)
4. Home-cooked. (I hafta put Mom and Granny somewhere, but I can’t front like I’d take them over Pathmark or Popeyes…KFC might be a batle, though.)
5. Church’s (I thought they went out of business but I went to one in Philly last week. They put honey on the biscuits!)

Seems that more and more people are giving up on the mainstream media as a source of information. I made that decision a long time ago, but for different reasons…sort of.
Although it’s fairly obvious that the media has a liberal slant, I can’t say that I think it’s deliberate. Well, maybe it’s deliberate, but I don’t think it’s necessarily malicious.

I was one class short of a minor in Af-Am Studies, concentrating on Black portrayals in the mass media, so this is something I know a little bit about. I used to be like many of y’all, getting mad and disgusted and frustrated at the presentation of things on so-called news, but then it finally sunk in: the “news” is just entertainment in disguise. That’s why it’s so much about having a telegenic anchor; ze (instead of he/she. Gender neutral and good for Scrabble.) has to have a face the people can trust. Not that ze has to be trustworthy or any of that, just look like it. Same thing with the other people on the set. They have to seem like they get along, otherwise the viewers won’t watch. I critique it, but I participate too. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like the news down here in Washington, because I think the newscasters are corny; if banter was breakaway pants, they still couldn’t pull it off. Moreover, and more to my point, as an aspect of entertainment, the “news” exists solely to ensure its own survival. Period. Conservatives may say that it has a liberal bent, progressives may say that it has a conservative bent, but if anything, the media is like a paperclip, bending all ways at all times. I think it tends to go one direction more than another, but that’s mostly because of where I sit. Here’s a for instance:

For all my conservative friends out there, if you still look at local network news, watch how Black folks come across, Black males in particular. You think Christians get it bad, look at my phenotypical demographic. See if you can count how many Black faces are attached to local crime vis a vis any demographic. Not that Black males are the only criminals in your town, mind you, and you needn’t consider that the majority of the victims of Black criminals are Black themselves, just read the blurbs and look at the pictures. What I’m saying is this: the stories that get told on the news are intended to provoke the viewer into feeling that something is not right. Because at the same time that they’re showing these supposed-to-be scary Black dudes, look at the pictures of the victims. Even though statistically, the ones who are getting done in look like the perpetrators, that’s not what you normally see on the “news.” That’s not a compelling story because unless a young Black male has an angle, like being a promising student or athlete or something, there’s less of a likelihood that the ordinary viewer will care. Again, if you think I’m exaggerating, just watch for a few days, preferrably with the IB muted. Look up statistics about who does what to whom, and then think about all the other crookedness that’s going on in your area that didn’t make the IB news broadcast. What are the stories didn’t make the show because they were covering the Friends finale or because the anchor got artificially inseminated and felt the need to share it with the viewers?(yeah, that actually happened in Philly. Why did she hafta be Black?!)

So what? Well, to a Nationalist, that’s incontrovertible evidence that the media, controlled by conservative interests is engaging in a systematic plot to devalue the lives of Black males. I don’t think that’s the case, but I also know if the news was really objective, it wouldn’t look like that. If you watch the news like they watch the news, you’ll see the pictures they see, whoever “you” is and whoever “they” are. What I really think is going on is that the media is “conservative” in their presentation. That is, they tell the same stories the same way because that’s what they think people are comfortable with and that’s what they think will keep the people coming back– so they can do what? Sell soap, beer, cars, and fast food. Ultimately, that’s the point of anything that comes on the television. Any idea, social, political, or otherwise, is secondary to that.

• Funky records
• Hagler v. Hearns (one January I was in the 5th of a 6 mile run, when an electronics store had its display television playing this fight in the window. I stood there and watched the whle thing and caught a cold that lasted 5 weeks.)
• Redbones (for the uninitiated, that’s a light-skinned Black woman. Usually, the reddish undertones of their complexions sow through, hence the term.) Preferrably with that willowy mermaid build, like ‘Scotch.
• Women with natural hair, especially afros and cornrows w/just a peek of scalp
• Used book & record stores
• Gel pens, specifically the Pilot P700. I like to sketch with pens and that’s just the best one out there, bar none. Every time I see a .7 mm pen, I try it out, but there’s nothing out there that’s in the league of the P700.
• A crossover followed by a dunk (like KG did Wednesday night.)
• Football (my mom has the NFL network ad I have watched it every day this week.)
• Madden
• Great MCs.
• Organists who know how to make a B3 talk.
• One-punch knockouts. Yeah, Roy got caught, but rmember, when he won the light-heavyweight title way back when he did it on a one-punch body blow . I had never heard of such a thing then and don’t think I ever will again.

Note: I wrote all this on the 20th. I don’t feel like post-dating it, though.

I don’t willingly drop 20 dollars on a CD, but in the case of Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Strange, I had to do it. The first song, Shoo-B-Doop And Cop Him is the source of the sample in Ice Cube’s Once Upon A Time In The Projects. I’ve been looking for this song for about 18 months, so I really didn’t have a choice. I don’t know if I would say it’s worth the whole 18.99, but there’s a couple songs on here that will probably find their way into regular rotation.

I also copped Debra Killings’ album, Surrender. Ambra suggested it to me and I was very impressed. While I was in the Gospel section, I saw some old Milton Brunson records that my mom used to have. I’m still undecided on whether I’m gonna get them or not, but my I know Granny would be excited to hear some of those song, so I’m leaning towards yes. It depends on what else I get into today. Might fool around and get an MP3 player today, but I’ve been talking that foolishness for months. We’ll see.

…

LaShawn wrote yesterday about the NAACP’s suing of a county in MD over the number of Black kids who get put into remedial classes and whatnot. Overall, I agree with her opinion, but I think there’s something to the assertion that Black kids, especially boys, tend to get a much shorter leash when it comes to disciplinary action. Truth is truth and as the kids get older, many new teachers , young and perhaps smaller than the kids, are just flat-out afraid. And it’s not like the kids are doing anything exceptionally bad or terrifying; they’re acting like kids, trying to see what they can get away with. Walter Williams has written about many teachers not coming from the most stringent of academic backgrounds. I don’t know about all that; I majored in English. What I do know is that instead of that touchy-feely how-to-teach stuff they need to teach potential teachers how not to be punks. For the year I did teach, that was just about the only thing I had going for me where classroom control was concerned; I didn’t know quite what I was doing and many times I lost control of the class, but they knew I wasn’t a punk; it wasn’t just gonna go down in my classroom without me saying anything and I wasn’t gonna back down. I tried it the administration’s at the beginning of the year, not touching the students and all that. That’s when this little boy used to come into my classroom every day talking about, “Tooley, you a bitch.” I’d tell him to leave, but he wasn’t listening to me. Why would he, when he could walk from whatever class he was supposed to be in to my class, call me a bitch, and nothing would happen. For the longest time, I didn’t even know his name. But then, he came in my room with that racket on the wrong day. I was already pissed off from hearing Butterscotch’s mouth, and here he came. He didn’t know I had coached seven wrestlers to the league finals a few months earlier. I snatched that fool up, showed him four of his pressure points, and chucked him out of my room. After that it was all good. He even protected my door against other would-be interlopers, one time plugging somebody in the lip.

See, I think a lot of these teachers come in thinking it’s gonna be like Dangerous Minds; the kids will be tough and mean-looking, but deep down, they all have hearts of gold and it’s the teacher’s job to bring that out…before Christmas break. It don’t work that way. Now before I started teaching, my mom told me I would have to come in wearing my “gorilla suit.” I heard her, but I didn’t listen. I had my own ideas. I planned on being that cool teacher that wore jeans and gave the tough assignments that they would secretly like. (I had my own “Dangerous Minds” daydream.) Lesson #1 reiterated for the 100,000th time —listen to your mother. It’s like dealing with a puppy—you have to let it know who’s in charge right from the get-go. If you don’t, you’re in trouble. So I said all that to say that sometimes teachers recommend kids for behavioral special ed because they don’t know how to “man up” in the classroom. Kids are gonna be kids and they’re gonna test the limits. Repeatedly. Even when you think you’ve got it established, they’re gonna test you. That’s what kids do. That’s what people of all ages do. Need teachers with some heart. You go to teach in the city, you ain’t goin’ back to the days when the worst thing that could happen was a kid might pop zer bubblegum. In city classrooms, it’s for real.

…

Copped a couple Joe Tex records at the used shop. Joe Tex is underrated. I don’t know how he fared on the charts, but he made solid records and albums. (I need to discipline myself to stop using those two interchangeably, since they’re not really the same thing.)

A couple weeks ago, I got the 45 for Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman), today I got the LP, Bumps & Bruises. I’ll probably try to give it a spin when I get back to the crib.

I’m visiting my mom for a couple days. She has dial-up (got me back in 1997) and was waiting for a phone call, so no posting for me yesterday. Normally, it wouldn’t make a difference, but yesterday was Malcom X’s birthday. I’m usually surprised at how little attention it gets, even in Black circles, given his iconic status. Anyway, let’s put it in some perspective:

May 17th- Brown v. Topeka Board of Ed.
May 19th- Malcom X’s birthday
May 28th- Soul Plane comes out.

I’m sorry–Soul Plane? Are you kidding me? Instead of protesting the Nielsen Ratings, as you can read here at Booker Rising, (Al, you just got finished “running” for President, and your first move, the very first public thing that you do, is protest that Black people aren’t adequately represented in idiot box surveys? Need to be protesting all that IB watching we do, but that’s another post.) Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson need to be protesting that piece of trash. They’ve taken a perfectly good Robin Harris routine and ruined it. I can’t wait until they jump on this waste of celluloid in The Boondocks.

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Looking to close out this hip-hop generation gap stuff, I looked at the Letters to the Editor in the new issue of XXL magazine. If those letters are any indication, the record-buying public has been totally duped by marketing and promotion. These jokers have no clue about what’s important in a rhyme and what’s not- or maybe I’m just getting old and grizzled. If so, I’m glad about it.

One dude in the letters said that Scarface was better than BIggie, but Biggie got more attention because of a New York bias in the press. I’ll admit the NY bias, and I’ll admit that Scarface is better than I give him credit for being- his name never comes to mind whenever I’m making a top-whatever list, even though he deserves a passing thought, at minimum. Maybe I’ll put some time in listening to Scarface and see what’s what.

Also, I just happened to be checking out the IB myself today (I can look once or twice a week.) and MTV had a list of the 22 greatest MCs. I wasn’t surprised when 2pac came out to be number 1. The first rule is, always know your source’s biases.

After reading There’s A God on the Mic, with Kool Moe Dee rating himself #5 all time, I had to reappraise his work. In the process, I ran up on a copy of his battle with Busy Bee in 1982. It’s kinda hot now, but 20+ years ago? That thing had to be crazy. I guess that’s why, when cats like Kane and Rakim (how was Kane not even on the MTV list? These kids are fools!) talk about who influenced them, his name keeps coming up. Or else, they’re just pleased at their ratings (#4 and #2, respectively) in the book.

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Watched my first playoff game of the season. Timberwolves v. Kings. With Kevin Garnett and Chris Webber out there, I would’ve been happy no matter who won, but Butterscotch wanted the Kings to win, while I kind of wanted to see K.G. win another series. The TNT production is good and the song kind of reminds me of the NBA on NBC, so I could handle it. They even have Doug Collins calling the games. It’s almost like going home, but not quite. (And K.G. is officially a beast. He was one already, but playing like that in a game 7? He’s certified now. If he can do something against the Lakers…we’ll hafta see what happens.)