The Mothership is in Prince George’s County. Probably within walking distance from were I live. But I’m not gonna find it, though. Not even gonna try.

Reputed funk scholar, Thomas Stanley supposedly knows where it is, but won’t tell. He says, “It is very important, I think, that we not seek truth at expense of myth. Music and Myth are, after all, P-Funk’s most enduring legacy.”

Thinking beyond P-Funk a little bit, I don’t think that’s always a bad approach to take. Certainly, in most cases, it’s important to get to the truth behind the myth, but this is one of those cases in which finding out the truth really can’t improve anything. It’s much better to imagine that the Mothership really went back to…wherever it came from than to think that it’s somewhere rusted out, covered in detrius in some field in Suitland.

We know there are other myths that persevere in spite of the truth. I can think of several that surround the topics du jour. In those cases, I think we’re poorly served by not having the truth to shine the light on the situation. But what are some other myths that need to remain mystical?

I bet it’s in here.

Really? confederate History Month? Seriously? Followed by a second-day mention of slavery? Say word. Well, just to show that I’m really back doing this blogging thing again, and to prove that I’m ready for any eventuality, I’m celebratin’ too.

I’ve heard jokers who claim confederate allegiance/alliance talk some talk about reasonable people being able to disagree about the causes of the Civil War and whatnot — meaning that they think the cause wasn’t the physical enslavement of my people — but I’m gonna say no on that. True enough, I can disagree reasonably, and I’m reasonably sure that the reason they propose is neither reasonable nor factual (if slavery wasn’t a critical element, then why would it be in the state constitution of each of the confederate states?), but to deny the big, gray elephant in the room stretches me so far beyond my reason that it renders me unable to reason reasonably with one so bereft of reason.

But while arguing about history is sometimes entertaining, ultimately, life is about wha’chu gon do now. And I recognize that not all supporters of the confederacy are racist. But to those people I’d ask this: what about the confederacy are you looking to preserve? And given the fact that that imagery carries such baggage — terrorists flew that flag as their own! — what could you possibly hope to achieve by using it?

I really don’t think there’s a valid answer for that one. And if that’s just my prejudice speaking, then so be it.

Yo…on The Amen, Corner I stood lookin at my former hood
Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good
Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn’t mask it
Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn’t mastered
I choreograph seven steps to heaven
And hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavened
Veteran of a cold war It’s Chica-I-go for
What I know or, what’s known
So some days I take the bus home, just to touch home
From the crib I spend months gone
Sat by the window with a clutched dome listenin to shorties cuss long
Young girls with weak minds, but they butt strong
Tried to call, or at least beep the Lord, but didn’t have a touch-tone
It’s a dog-eat-dog world, you gotta mush on
Some of this land I must own
Outta the city, they want us gone
Tearin down the ‘jects creatin plush homes
My circumstance is between Cabrini and Love Jones
Surrounded by hate, yet I love home
Asked my God how he thought travellin the world sound
Found it hard to imagine he hadn’t been past downtown
It’s deep, I heard the city breathe in its sleep
Of reality I touch, but for me it’s hard to keep
Deep, I heard my man breathe in his sleep
Of reality I touch, but for me it’s hard to keep

Either of the three verses on Respiration could have made my all-time list, but Common gets it for one reason: word play. One of my favorite things about Common’s style is his use of homophones. The “hey man corner” is simply among my all-time favorites. All things being equal, and in this case, they are, that’s about enough to make the difference.

Summer Soft – Stevie Wonder
Spasmodic Movements – Earth, Wind, and Fire
Superman Lover – Johnny “Guitar” Watson
Sign O’ The Times – Prince
Shut the Eff Up (Hoe)! – MC Lyte
Slow Down – Brand Nubian
Solid – Mandrill
Soon As I Get Home – Faith Evans
Slam Pit – Beatnuts, f. Common
Sometimes I Rhyme Slow – Nice & Smooth
Soul Power – James Brown
Steve Biko – A Tribe Called Quest

I don’t even know how to approach this. My original intent was to add whatever team Donovan got traded to into the rooting matrix. But with Donovan being traded within the division, I just don’t know what to do. Am I supposed to start rooting for the Redskins? Ugh.

And I’m not particularly thrilled with the Eagles right now.

I spent a little time driving through “fly-over” country last week. Made more than a few passes down IL Route 59, between Joliet and Aurora. I almost didn’t recognize it. Back when I lived there in the early 90’s and before, most of that was farmland. Once you got past Plainfield and the glass factory, a few houses dotted the landscape, but for the most part, there were fields on every part of the street. Not any more. Now, by my informal count, there were about 736 strip malls, with every store you can imagine — repeating every five miles. But it was the same stores. If it hadn’t been for the old gas stations, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize where I was.

While I was driving, I started to wonder. Is this what so-called real America looks like? This is the place that our values are supposed to be most encapsulated? A place where there’s a McDonalds for every turn of the odometer? I remember being forced to watch a movie set in the 50’s where one character, a military type, was explaining the dangers of communism. He pointed out that if the communists took over, we would have no choices. Everything everywhere would be the same. But I guess that’s not completely the case here. I guess we have the choice to buy our Quarter Pounders from different owners.

Really, I don’t know what to make of what I saw. I suppose a part of me is just dismayed because where I’m from doesn’t look like it did when I lived there. Change is difficult, even from 700 miles and 15 years away. There’s a part of me that feels a certain comfort when I can drive through an old neighborhood and see the tree I fell out of, or the bait store I used to stop at before I went fishing. I suppose that sensation is what drives a lot of the protests about…well, everything. Incremental change is slightly discomforting; wholesale change is alarming. Had I been back more frequently, I might have seen the transformation as it was happening, so I wouldn’t be quite as shocked.

At the same time, I think it’s important to recognize that change is not necessarily progress. I’m sure that the changes that Route 59 has undergone signify that a lot of people have made a whole lotta money — and that a whole lotta other people have spent a whole, whole lotta money. People have been able to claim their piece of the American Dream, working hard and owning a spacious home and some property. For them, I’m sure that the change is equivalent to progress. For me, as someone who doesn’t live there anymore, and as someone for whom that lifestyle is not the ideal, none of that is really better, it’s just different.

In the end, I think that in some way, Route 59 does represent what’s really real about America. It’s not about the dichotomy of the rural and the urban, because Route 59 is happening everywhere, and at some point, even the suburbs become urban. It’s really the combination of the two. Real America is not ‘or,’ it’s ‘and.’ Real America is rural and urban. It’s working hard and getting over. It’s the religious and the secular. It’s homogeneity and diversity. It’s the individual and the collective. It’s ‘what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours and what’s ours is ours, and every possible permutation of the three. That’s not just different, it’s good.

I’m watching Lee Daniels on HBO’s The Black List 3, and I’m struck by one thing he said:

“There’s an African American President, there’s Oprah, and then there’s…Us. I tell stories about Us.”

See, this is my major beef with a whole lotta the Black folks who don’t necessarily speak for us, but will sometimes talk like they do. There seems to be some sort of disconnect between what “regular” Black people do and what happens to the outliers. What puzzles me most is the threshold between “regular” and “outlier.” To use television families, I think many of us believe that Black people writ large are closer to the Evanses than we are to the Huxtables. And while it’s not quite in style to act like there aren’t any Huxtable families any more, it’s still okay to act like they’re Halley’s Comet.

While I can understand the “whatever you do to the least of these” philosophy that tends to accompany these types of projections, I don’t like to see what seems like self-negation. If a person has to act like he doesn’t exist in order to call attention to someone else’s plight, or to perhaps restate it more generously, take the focus off the possibilities he has enjoyed in order to highlight the “real” Us, is disingenuous. It’s someone who has done well but believes himself to be an outlier claiming that someone who is an outlier in the opposite direction is a more authentic representation.

I call false. The Black middle class is a lot more robust than many of us give it credit for being. I think a big part of my shift to the ideological center happened when I realized that I wasn’t as much an aberration as I had previously believed.

On The Black List 1, I saw something else that’s not as much an aberration as some folks would have us believe. Among some populations, there is the mistaken notion that Al Sharpton, to name a name, does not critique the excesses of Black popular culture. False. Even without making a big production of speaking about any specific artist, he actually went at the whole justification for certain genres of rap. But then, he always has.

I am kinda waitin to see if they’re gonna put a name-brand Black centrist or conservative on there, though.

I don’t particularly fool with Slim and Baby’s musical progeny (with the exception of Weezy just a little bit, and the unfortunately catchy “I’m Still Fly”), but I cannot be mad at this:

Cash Money Records co-founders, Birdman and Ronald “Slim” Williams are trying their hands in another business venture outside the music world. They’re now expanding their portfolios into the oil business.

The New Orleans-bred brothers have launched an independent oil and gas company called Bronald Oil & Gas.

Via the company’s mission station on their website, BronaldOil.com, they say their initial focus is the “exploration, production and development of oil and gas reserves from conventional and unconventional formations.”

For a number of reasons, I hope the succeed.

– and his name is Brett Favre.

Look at the video proof: