Afrogeeks

Self publishing

2012-02-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

So here's the new push. It's actually the old push. Self publishing. Did it once, got a book deal. All gravy. I could go ont eh hunt for another publisher for the new book but i think I'm going to e-publish it. But like with all the bells and whistles. Like hopefully get a well known oakland Graph artist to hit me with some art. Get Mr. super trouble Fenyang to do audio tracks for each chapter, maybe even get a small flash game going on for it. Bundle it all for a 2.00 fee. Why? Because why the hell not, that's why! Already got my old pardna from CodeZ doing edits so we'll see what's the what. In the meantime I'll be coming back here on a semi-regular basis to update foolios on the process. Everyone does it differently, this self publishing thing. I say its all about the luv!

More l8r.

Why I'm ashamed of my amazon account

2011-07-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

The day is approaching when I will be a published author. The liminal people is still on track for publication in December, by small beer press. Having done so much already in the writing world, you'd think I'd be a little calmer about this fact, but no, I am a teenage girl on prom night when it comes to this book coming out. At 13 I'd promised myself that if I wasn't on the New York times best seller list by the wizened old age of 25, I would kill myself. I mean what would be the point of being an old writer, right? But now I'm older and am so thankful that my youthful ignorance didn't take me down any dark roads. Besides, who the hell wants to read a novel written by a 25 year old? Jokes!!!

But as I look back on this process, on what it's taken to get this book published, there's one person and one place I have to give thanks for. I want to be clear, I'm giving thanks for the help with the publishing and not the writing. I hate the writing. The writing is the affliction that some of us either do or end up in an insane asylum. I love the writing when it's good, it holds me and caresses me and tells me that in the end the comfort this world has is nothing compared to the comfort my own mind can give. I despise the writing for withholding that comfort from me until I get the phrase, the paragraph and the tempo just right, for me.
That's not this entry. This entry is about the polishing of the craft. Of turning the masturbation into intercourse if you will. One can be an excellent writer and have no one else ever see their work, even now in the age of the Internet. One can spend that time crafting the perfect sentence only to find it strikes like a club footed lindy hopper on foreign ears. A good writer needs a community. Renee swindle has been that community for me.

Ms. Swindle is a writer. She does nothing else but write and teach about writing. Real writers have day jobs, a prominent writer once told me, paraphrasing the worst bumper sticker ever. Renee's day job is talking about writing. She was kind enough to let me into one of her writing workshops a few years ago. She didn't like me at first, she would later tell me. But she let me in and workshopped the shit out of my paper babble along with about 12 other people.
Wine and snacks were provided, laughs were plentiful, but let's be clear, this was no bullshit session. In the vernacular of the black drag queens of my youth "ms. Renee gave much workshop". You couldn't coast with inattention to another's work. And when the critique came for your work, feel free to defend yourself, but you'd probably be better to just take it in. Because of Renee's commentary I tossed fifty pages and a title. "Your audience should be able to pronounce your title." she told me. Fair point. In return I had a tighter twenty pages. Still don't have a new title for that novel though.

At the end of that writing course, we had an open reading at Diesel, a small bookstore in Oakland. For all of Amazon's great selection and value you can't have a local reading there, especially if you're not even published yet. Diesel let a group of folks trying to get there shit together have a reading. If that's all they did, there's no way they'd stay in business. When my homie Chris lane needed to hype his new zombie book (a must for those down with the genre or those who appreciate awesome art), his big launch? Yup, Diesel. So when I self published the first edition of the liminal people and I needed brick and mortar spots to carry it, I hit up two spots: the now defunct comic relief, and Diesel.

More than carry the book people told me they hyped it. Anytime I came in they told me how it was moving, they were interested in me as a published author, even though I had only done the book on my own. Every time I walked into diesel, I felt like a writer. Still do.

When I was a kid I worked/volunteered , ever so briefly, at a legendary bookstore in Harlem called liberation bookstore. It's my standard of a community owned bookstore; knowledgeable staff, awesome selection, bargains, the holy trifecta. Diesel has all three plus readings. My heart soared when I saw a former student of mine working there for a summer job once. It's a damn good spot.

But I haven't been lately. The last book I got there was a discounted copy of winter's bone over six months ago. $4.00! Meanwhile my amazon shopping cart has 7 items in it, though to be fair two of them are dj gear shit. Still though, I'm an ass for not backing up the spot that's backed me up. I'm out of taken right now but here's a promise Diesel: when I come back, I'm blowing some paycheck $ with you.

As you Renee, nothing but love my friend. Thank you for your commitment to the craft. You're an inspiration.

The limitations of positive thinking

2011-06-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

Initially this post was meant to be A love letter/apology to Digible planets. I was disloyal during the period of the second album. See that first album, reaching, a refutation of mind and space had me giggling like a underage tranny who just got to meet Rupaul. Keep in mind this was waaay before the term black emo would have made sense to anyone, before people understood that not everyone had to be hard, hood, or hustling. Cats could be reaching. That album reached back to the heroin laced mellow of black urban think of the 60's without being retro, and infused it with a 808 type rhythm that let you bump it in your Walkman as well as your jeep, if you had such things. It was political, timely, smooth, and live. I got mad when Martin Lawrence made fun of them on def comedy jam. Those were my folks!

But then the Blowout comb came out. What had previously been a meditation on the inequities of abortion rights turned into full on quotes from chairman Mao, the referencing of every black person as comrades, and a nostalgic trip I was simply unwilling to take. I defamed them, I scandalized their names, I was that backbiter. I won't lie about it. I'm not a "positive" guy. I don't call other black people brother and sister. When someone calls me Black man, the funniest instance of this happening occurred when a dread dude was pushing his car down the street and yelled to me "Blackman! Help! ", I usually correct them with my name. I let the dude pushing the car slide, he had enough problems. It's not that I'm not proud or happy to be black, it's just that the positive shit seems a bit excessive to me. Plus it often glorifies the late 60's-70's as some mythological heyday when all dashiki wearing nettles could hang out together and effect social change through the use of blunts and revolutionary rhetoric. This ignores the realities of things like Kwanzaa being created by Ron Karenga, a known F.B.I. Informant. (Reason #22 why you'll never see my ass at another Kwanzaa celebration). See I told you I wasn't positive. What bugged me about the blow out comb was that it assumed a communal sense of nostalgia for that time. I don't like my albums assuming that much about me.

About five years about I listened to the blowout comb again. Wow! It's simply an amazing album. It's what dead prez wish they could think about and say rationally. It's how smart Common wishes he was (I know he's on the album but think of me as the anti-common. Nobody is that positive). It's black Brooklyn in the summertime, rum soaked Georgia peaches with powdered sugar and a touch of cayenne, and the mind of a 1st year black college student reading frantz fanon for the first time. It's political but it also sounds really good. The confusion for me back in the day was addressing it as a hip-hop album. Blowout comb is a jazz piece. You have to have heard a miles album to pick up what they were laying down and at the time I simply wast that versed.

All of this has come about because of my new love for Shabazz palaces, butterfly's Seattle based project that is simply ripping shit up. It sounds way more D.I.Y than either of the Digible albums, and as a result sounds more true to that original sound. Without competing for vocal time, my man is able to let his lyrics bounce off the beats and tempos his drum kits and machines lay down. Plus the tribal moles and guest vocals on his tracks just makes me want to get in the car and just drive in the dead of night pumping both seven song albums over and over like I'm some teenager who just woke up to the idea that blackness can be beautiful.

So this is what this post was going to be. Then I did a little more searching on the break up of Digibles. Looks like the group fell victim to the same 70's B.S. that many of the political movements of the time did, namely not compensating the women equally. I can't get into too much of the politics of it because I don't know them. But now even Digibles got a pall cast over their legacy. It makes me sad. Maybe the fam can get back together. Ya'll are like Voltron. Individually fascinating, together, unstoppable.

BUY IT!!!!!

2011-05-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

My Awesome book

is available for pre-order here

You should buy it before the groupies snatch up the 1st editions. If you're an editor, or write a blog or such and you're interested in an advanced copy. Leave a link to your work and contact info in the comments section. If we're a match you'll get a pre-proofed book.

Trying to say something new about OFWGKTA

2011-05-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

The niggerati still haven’t gotten fully up on the juvenile rambling of the LA black skater Archetypical macks. No doubt accusations of adolescents and immature masculine performative posturing will be leveled, and maybe it will be well deserved. But a couple of week ago I was having dinner with Kamau Patton and he came out with the first new real question I’ve heard about these cats in a while.

“You think they’re channeling that old school gravediggaz type shit?”

For those of you that don’t know gravediggaz was the nightmare side project of RZA (If you don’t know who RZA is GET OFF THIS PAGE NOW, FOR REAL!) ,Prince Paul, and two other cats. Fat team up, right? Exactly. It was dark, scary, not ok, mentally unbalanced type stuff that spoke to some of the psychological WTF! that black kids were enduring everywhere. Imagine the Geto boy’s My mind is playing tricks on me vibe for an entire album. Yeah. Like that.

So Kamau’s assertion was more than viable. It’s a question informed by Tyler’s lyrics. His “Therapist” is a reoccurring character on his racks. Mad references are made to fantasies of duck tape, butt rape, huffing glue, and mixtapes (Sorry just had to rhyme it) And Tyler does run shit in an early Rza sort of fashion.

But even then I couldn’t buy it. Peep the video below and remind yourself, this is a hip-hop show.

First off, Hodgy beats, the younger scrawnier one, is straight dominant off that shove! Love that kid. But peep that whole vibe. From the predominantly white crowd to the small bit of Tyler’s song that you could actually hear. It’s all more hardcore than horrorcore. It reminds me of one of the second all black hardcore show I ever went to. Other cats from L.A. n fact. I refer to Fishbone of course.

So I had to disagree with Kamau. And as we are both boisterous New York cats of some age and stature it got loud. But we grown and realized it’s not an either/or situation but a both/and. What I can say definitely is that I haven’t this excited for hip-hop for a while. I‘m glad everybody got over being gangsta, but I was scared cats were going to be taken that Kanye route for a while, or that backpack to the club type shit again. But when see kids at the mosh pit starting songs of like ”Got all the black bitches mad cause my man bitch Vanilla/She trying to get her groove back like Stella…When it comes to the perception of your shit I’m Helen Keller…” know the ascent of the I don’t give a fuck afrogeek as truly begun.

Wrote the above a while ago. Yesterday I read the New Yorker article about Earl. He’s the band’s lost member. The New Yorker found him. He wasn’t lost. But he did have some striking similarities to my generation, and so did Tyler. To wit, Hey, grown ass black men. IT’s not your fucking kids responsibility to find you and form a relationship with you. Whatever the hell happened between you and that woman there’s a young black male out there who has a target on his back. He shares your blood. That means you bear some of the responsibility of teaching him how to navigate this world. If you choose not to, I don’t give a fuck if you’re a poet or a convict, you don’t deserve the title Man. Yeah, it’s a title. Yeah I said it. Got a problem with that, come see me. It’s retarded how happy I get when I see a black man hanging out with his kids. And its retarded how few times I see it.

Annnnd...

2011-05-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

We're back. With the new book coming out, pressure for some kind of black geek anthology, and the need for a general place to rant, figured it might be time to come back to what I love. Folks are still commenting on the Black emo post, WHICH WAS FOREVER AGO...so I know people are still reading this bad boy.

Anyhow, People often wondered when we first started this what exactly did we mean by black geek? I think Donald Glover makes it plain. Fucking love this guy. Saw him live. As my girl said "His songs make me think he needs a hug and some pills." I agree. I also think that's what makes him the archetypical afrogeek. Along with his dancing in this video.

NALO HOPKINSON TODAY

2009-11-03T10:24:00.001-08:00

Please circulate widely...

The Departments of Music and African American Studies at UC BERKELEY invite you to a special event:

Open the Unusual Door:
a reading and talk by science fiction author

NALO HOPKINSON

science fiction writer
author of Midnight Robbers and Brown Girl in the Ring
winner of the Aurora Award, the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, Gaylactic Spectrum Award
Finalist for the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award
nalohopkinson.com

TODAY TUESDAY NOVEMBER 3
128 Morrison
4pm

The book is done!!!

2009-09-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Come on out OCT. 3 to Comic Relief in Berkeley, California to celebrate to release of "The Liminal people" my new book! From 7-9, Drinks, music, and food, all will be provided. Hope to see you there.

Comic relief
2026 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94704-1117
(510) 843-5002

www.theliminalpeople.com

Why can't I stop laughing?!

2009-07-21T18:15:00.001-07:00

Am I wrong to like the pirates?

2009-04-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’m not just saying this to be counter…whatever, but this pirate thing has been a blown a bit out of proportion.

First off, real talk, if those pirates looked like Johnny Depp, American would have been cheering for them, no matter who they jacked. That’s just the realness.

Second of all, brothers are from Somali. Yes, Somalia right next to Ethiopia. Remember when people used to send money to Big tittied Sally Field so she could save the darky babies in Ethiopia? Well, the Somali’s were starving as well, only no big tittied white ladies gave a shit about them so they starved. I’m not surprised that the ones that grew up don’t give a rat’s ass about international property.

Third, From what I’ve read these “pirates” used to be fishermen until the same international community that put a bullet in their brains started dumping everything from old tv’s to toxic waste off their shores. All the fish went dead and the Pirate nation was formed.

Don’t get it twisted, I’m glad the merchant marine dude got back safe, ad the navy SEALS did what they had to do, but we start getting into major trouble in tis country when we point fingers at the bad guys just because we don’t like what they do without asking why they do what they do.

Also, for real, a life boat versus the USS Wreck-a-nigga? We all knew how that was gonna end up.

They probably did too.

In point of fact, I know longer feel like an Afrogeek.

2009-04-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

My comic book reading has gone way down. I no longer care who wins in the latest battle between the x-men and the dark avengers, though secretly I hope its Osborn’s crew. How sick is that?

My movie preferences now lean more towards foreign flicks and documentaries. Secretly I wish the Waltz with Bashir guys would just go around the world using flash to and personal narrative to make all wars personal and beautiful.

Even my halcyon remembrances of jungle and drum and bass are giving way ever so slightly to, I know this will be offense to many, my love for the clipse.

But fuck it, Rick Rubin is producing their next album so…

The moniker of Afrogeek no longer feels like it fits. It seems one of those childish things one puts away as they get older and more secure in themselves.

“So is that it? IS Afrogeeks officially over?”

Nah.

If I were to follow the lead of the comments on this blog I’d call it Black Emo (Peep the comments. I mean its ridiculous) and have a devoted group of followers. But that’s not where my heart is.

Were I after the controversy I’d follow up like a few other cats and trace the post racial United States we live in. I mean Obama’s elected, right? What’s the worst that could happen? And while that stuff interest me, its not all consuming.

In truth, Nothing is all consuming for me right now. I’m doing a lot. Afrogeeks will be where I share some of that. Pictures, for instance. Music, Mixes, My book, coming out in July, political thoughts, reflections on the legalization of Marijuana, frustrations and joys of teaching health education classes as well as religious histories of drugs, hypes for friend, disses of enemies, all of it will come on here.

Part of the reason of the lack of post over the past year or so has been this sort of need to feel pure about what I post, to make sure it appeared to the afrogeek audience. I’m not so much giving a shit about that anymore. And I don’t want to go through the trouble of starting a new blog. Friends and foes alike know to find me at this url. No need to disappoint. SO this is me, doing me.

Got a problem? Go suck a dick on the real, all ya’ll reckless tongue waggers.

P.S.-I need a tight web designer for my book website. Someone highly versed in flash and relatively cheap would be wonderful. Hit the contact me if you are that one or can point me in that direction. IF you’re not the one but hook it up I’ll hit you back with a “Don Draper doesn’t care about you” t-shirt. Or a “I’m beginning to doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion” shirt.

Deuces

The crumb trail starts here

2009-02-12T19:53:00.001-08:00

Tunes to read the liminal people by.

The Liminal people is my novel, which will be out within the year. Listen and prepare

I don't wear tight pants

2008-10-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

They make my nuts hurt. That being said... If i did, I'd be all up on this video. Fuck it, I still like it, no matter how retarded it is. Maybe because its so lysdelexic.

Get familiar! White boys are trying to Kill...Oh wait a minute we knew that already

2008-10-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Get familiar!

I’m not really trying to write my whole post on how I’m a black man that’s not all that down for Obama right now. Don’t get it twitted, I need my president to be able to raise his hands above his head and I don’t nedd my ice president to be a pitbull with lipstick or whatever the fuck, But I’m also not under the mistaken impression that apparently most of D.C. is under; I don’t believe all the slaves will be free, reparations will be in full effect, and I’ll get twenty acres and a mule when Obama gets in the white house. That being said, I’m not hating profusely on any black man making his cheddar, supporting his family, and not giving a fuck about what Mister Charlie thinks or says about him. Yet and still, Real life playa of this playa hater game knows that cheese crumb snatching bitches come on the regular when you walk with your nutsacks in your hands.

To wit.

This shit ain’t news man! Crazy red neck cracker boys from down south been trying to ice educated black men since forever! What’s news is when white people peep it for the first time. We been saying this shit forever, first black president better have a mexican vice president or that niggas gonna get shot at his acceptance speech. Of course it’s not the third grade drop out from under funded public school drop outs that Obama really has to worry about. They get close to the president and it’s a stain on the Secret service’s rep. And they can’t tolerate that. Nah, it’s the elite Ivy league boys and girls, his classmates that he was smarter and more focused than. It’s the professor’s he didn’t manage to charm and so had to out perform, it’s the rest of the talented tenth who didn’t pick Obama to lead the pack. These will be the real threats when he’s in office, not the 21st century Dukes of Hazzard.

I still don’t trust that Obama. I hear he converts with terriers.

I wish I was a trustafarian...

2008-10-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Actually I don't, but my man Roots Manuva dropped that desire/joke on his most recent album, Slime and reason. Truth be told the album is just decent. But cat's been holding it down so long his decent is tighter than most of the shit that's released recently. Even the new Streets album makes me a little sad...like homie didn't try to hard to make bangers because he knew no one would buy the album. On the real, the album that's been kicking my tuckus on the regular for the past little bit is The Bug's London Zoo. So why am I mad at the cat?

For one, London Zoo? That's your title for all these mad cool vocal black scientist running shit in the u.K? What the fuck does that make the white boy who corrals them all? The zokeeper? I know, I'm reading more into it than necessary. Right? Actually, I thought the same thing until I peeped this video off of xlr8r. The freeze frame of dude with his gun finger's in Warrior queen's dome was bad enough but then his approach to her, laughing at her day gig... Yeah, real talk I'm sensitive to race shit, I work with some nutty ass white people, and yeah he did put her on so props for that, but there is some arrogance some white boy strut off the dude that I can't really get off of.

http://www.xlr8r.com/tv/81

Don't get it twitted, Man puts a solid album together. Peep the track. But I ain't buying him any drinks if I see him at the bar, that's all I'm saying right now. Warrior Queen might make me switch over to big girls if I catch her...just kidding.

Real talk though.

I nominate the Dark Doctor

2008-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Anyone who wonders why I’m a New Doctor Who head simply does not know me, or good television. Rooted in over three decades of Science fiction Doctor is to the U.K. what Star Trek might have been to the U.S if it had stayed n the air…and Shatner had learned how to act. By definition it is my favorite genre of storytelling, the serial. It’s damn near impossible to get closer to the modern epic than to generate a host of characters developed by a host of writers in multiple formats for audience that may never meet. Plus the ideas on the show hurt my head, stone statues that live outside of reality and can only touch you when they’re not being observed, the last dregs of humanity being transformed into sociopathic balls of technology desiring the death of their predecessors, the family of blood, a skin swapping scarecrow wielding intergalactic nuclear family that feeds off of time energy (Whatever that is), the shadows f forest that now live in the universe’s largest library, and of course, the Daleks.

Doctor Who is like the X-men in that when its written poorly it drowns in its own history. I’ve seen some of the old episodes and while I’ a fan of some of those dated gems, others I’m glad I missed as a child. But the David Tennet/Russel Davies Doctor’s all make me tingle on the inside like a schoolgirl on her first date. But now Russell is gone and I hear tell David Tennet might not make it much past 2010. So who should the new Doctor be? I’m not fan enough to say but there is a rumor floating around that has my nipples hard. If the moniker has not already been assigned let me be the first to call him, the Dark Doctor.

For those of you unfamiliar, let me explain the plot device/serial extender that makes such a switch from pasty faced (but cute) David Tennet to Patterson Joseph possible. The doctor is an alien who re-generates a new body and a new sort of psychology whenever he’s mortally injured. There’s been about 11 different Doctor’s since 70 something. Now peep the new doctor, maybe that is.

Never been a dark doctor before. Yeah, I’m gassed. Maybe they’ll let me write a story for them. Something about alternative dimension entities that wish to destroy the virus of currency before it infects their reality. Yeah, like I said I’ve been writing.

80's black bodies dominate the fillmore...but we knew that already

2008-10-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Imagine your big sister was a back-up dancer for Salt-n-pepa back in the day of the yellow hair and crisscross jackets. Imagine she wouldn’t let you copy her moves but you’d sneak into practices and sit still and quiet, memorizing every isolated head jerk ad wild rotation of hip and head. Imagine you ran back home and practiced these things in the mirror until you got them as right as your imagination could make them. A few years later you watched S1W’s gear and knew it to be super duper fly.

Question: What would be your ideal job today?

Answer: Backup dancer for Santogold.

And the gas? The thing that still has my head spinning? It’s that the little hipster white children eat it up like pop rocks on the day their daddy told them he was getting a house of his own but he'd still love them.

Yeah, I’ve been gone for a while. I’m writing books.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

2008-07-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

Ya'll want to know the real foulness of the whole thing? I've never thought Mrs. Obama looked hotter. I Know, I know, I got problems.

More white girls

2008-06-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog on any kind of regular basis then you will love, not like, love, I’m through with White girls. Calm the fuck down! It’s not a miscegenation gone right tale. It is the quest for the tragic mulattress, but I still run around my house doing from Imitation of Life scenes so I’m Ok with the tragic mulatto narrative so long as its somehow self conscious, and it totally is in White Girls.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again here, while the movie is awesome, the story of the movie, a black independent film that doesn’t bow to conventions is what’s fucking hotter than slave’s neck. If you are in the bay area, at all, like even down in Concord or some ass end of the world like that, you owe it to yourself to take a trek up to the Roxie on Friday, or shit, any time over the weekend or next week, and peep this flick. You’ve got a 50/50 chance of meeting me if that’s any enticement. And just so that everything’s above board, I’ve gotten no money, power, fame, or sex off of talking about this movie. I just happen to like the shit out of it. I know you really want to go see Kung fu Panda this weekend, but try and support an independent black flick, ok? Your local afrogeek will thank you.

Why I named my new scooter Shaka

2008-06-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how you and yours got down, but when I came up we had copies of the ANC papers framed on the walls. I was told to tell my third grade teacher that I couldn’t salute the flag until the U.S.A. divested all investments from south Africa. I was raised to think of South Africans as a homogeneous rebel fighting group that was in constant struggle with the reality and concept of Apartheid. This kid I knew, with a family like mine, named his favorite pitbull Shaka. I don’t know about you all, but I grew up with South Africa on the mind.
That, in part, is what motivated me to pick up Red on Black: The story of the South African poster movement. The other part was that I wanted to go around putting up posters, reminiscent of those Apartheid posters but with a more contemporary feel. I wanted to show people what happens when the art and the message are devoid of the quest for profit but instead focused on expressing a vitally important point.

And it was in this deeply insightful, artistically focused place that I decided to watch, what is for me the ultimate movie about South Africa, Shaka Zulu.
If you were alive in the 80’s don’t act like you didn’t watch every single episode of Shaka Zulu. Unless you were one of those prep for prep kids or something. Shaka Zulu, as a tv watching experience was AWESOME! For my adolescent boy self. First and foremost, with a nod to Martha Warfield, there were titties everywhere! I mean, I honestly don’t understand how it was shown on network tv, but there were African titties and nipples and sex and everything. And it was just out there. I mentioned Marsha Warfield because she has this awesome joke that goes alone lines of “How come when white women show their breasts its pornography, but when black women show their breasts in anthropology?” All I can say is God bless Anthropology!

But aside from that, you’ve got this dude Shaka coming through like a straight savage. I mean before Braveheart, before revisions of everyone from Christopher Columbus to Caesar, there was presented, for popular enjoyment, an extremely buff dark skinned military captain who wasn’t afraid to fuck with white people. Hell Shaka wasn’t afraid of anything. Plus he had that voice; it never rushed and was never loud, only powerful and slow. I know that the tv series has issues and it was generated in part to help keep Zulus from joining with other tribes during apartheid, and I know that the story doesn’t accurately portray what the Zulu kings life was really like, but as a piece of tele-visual drama, it was a narrative that a dark skinned black boy like myself could get into. As I look around at the media landscape I find less and less material that speaks to me on that Shaka Level. All this to say, I bought a scooter. And his name is Shaka. Don’t trip, my car’s name is Puttanesca.

As for the posters…Well I’m not a visual artist. I’m a writer. So over the summer I’ll be posting podcasts of a previously unpublished book here. Maybe it will change the world. Maybe people will just like it. We’ll see.

David Paterson for President!

2008-06-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

Fuck the dumb shit ya’ll. Let’s put politics in it’s proper place, it’s all a three card monty game for the most part. It’s all about how to get the most in without using up all the Vaseline. We all know its true. We try to act like its not but we know, you know like a foot massage. The best a politician can hope to do once in office is push the random piece of legislature through the proper channels with the force of a pimp on John street, every now and then. David Paterson, however, is the exception that proves the rule. Here are four reasons why I’d vote for the current governor of New York as the President of the United States.
1. Dude is blind. Whatever he does after that, the dude navigates the world sight unseen. He’s like a black Matt Murdock
2. Ok, so he takes over for Elliot Spitzer after the reigning governor resigns in a swirl of controversy over a $1000 a night breezy being an state line item. (Little caveat here: The only reason I have any grief on this one is that he used official funds. As far as I’m concerned, you should get a willing and eager servicer of needs as soon as you get appointed to any official office. But kids in new York still think there are 48 states while Spitzer is blowing $150,000 on getting his dome blown). First thing my main man Paterson does after getting sworn in is tell all of god’s green. “Yeah, I get mad play from freaks. My old lady does to. Deal with it!” GANGSTER!
3. The man doesn’t flinch from controversy. He demands same sex marriages in other states be recognized in New York. Aside from Cali, who else is on the record like that? And a black man on top of that, endorsing without a second of consideration. I don’t see Obama doing that. I see Obama making speeches about hoping same sex marriages one day meet Dr. martin Luther King up on the hillside with his dying white mom with no healthcare. Paterson is down for some action steps.
4. BIGGEST OF BIG however, bigger than Jimi live in ’68, bigger than Macy Gray’s ‘fro, bigger than the balls on the President, Paterson pardoned SLICK RICK! I mean Rick’s shit was so stupid anyway, some dumb attempted homicide beef. Plus Rick already did five years for that drama. So fuck the dumb shit, Slick Rick can now live without fear of being exported like mad cow to the U.K. It’s done. Over. That’s it! Ain’t nothing else to say. Put a period on the end of that sentence. I’m making the t-shirts. Runaway write in candidate Paterson for president. If not, then maybe just pimp of the year.

Dance only if you can

2008-05-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Damn near every time I step in the club I have this one question that bubbles up on me like bad bbq, “What the fuck are they doing on the damn dance floor?” I mean you go to the typical non hood bay area spot and fools are looking like they’re either profiling for the latest coochie flashing pop stars video or even worse, standing in the middle of the god damn spot texting. Yeah yeah I know, people like to text. But kill that noise on the dance floor. Unless your baby’s mama is telling you she’s got your signed hard covers of Miracleman over an open flame and she’s going to torch them unless you can explain why some fifteen year old breezy keeps calling, you don’t have to return the damn text at that moment. To quote an old tune “So all you fly mothers, get out on the floor and dance. Dance I said!” Dance like you mean it, like your life depended on it. Get loose on the coordinated movements and all that noise. Just free flow like you don’t know how to do shit but let the music take you over. Dance like you’re possessed. Fuck it , get possessed by the music. Stop talking so much. Put the drink down, stop caring about what she thinks you look like, or whether or not he’s noticing your ass. Stop dancing like every move is just a precursor to getting banged or doing some banging. Enjoy the music. In short, dance like Elephant man up above.
Questions abound. “Why oh Why, Afrogeek, are you picking on those poor unfortunate souls who think they can dance but really have just watched too much bad MTV?” Many reasons my friends, many reasons. First off, I’d like to feel comfortable at more than one club in my area. Right now, I can only really cut loose at the local Oakland spot that spins dance hall on a regular. Second of al, my hope is that if full on negritude revives its dominance of the dance floor, maybe dancing will stop getting as gentrified as my neighborhood. I mean it’s all good to have all kinds of folk up in the dance floor, but we of the burnt faces need to be holding it down proper, essentialized notions of blackness or not. And I’m tired of not being able to dance without a female partner for fear of being mistaken as the dude who is pushing up on females. I dance because I feel the music and I like to sweat, not because I want to hump. If I want to hump, I’ll say something like... “Wanna hump?”
Of course the third and final reason I’m picking on foul fools who think they can dance but just end up pissing off anyone with a sense or rhythm has absolutely nothing to do with anything noble. It’s because I hate white people. Ok, not all white people. More like this one fat, unctuous, retarded, bloated, pasty faced, sour milk breath, splotchy skinned, cubic zircona wearing, hobbit looking, friction thigh having, pork sandwich eating, pee drinking, pre marital sex having outcast from the black sheep of the family known as the butt uglies. But at the time she was reping so much more than that.
Peep game: I’m riding shotgun with my boy Moki at the bar he bounces at, just helping out ,doing my bit, you know; Checking I.d.s, clearing off tables, helping keep a lid on shit on a crazy Saturday night at a bar I affectionately refer to as a place where you can end up with period blood on your pants. Real talk. It’s crazy in this piece. Anyway, I’m chilling at the door when the poster child for abortions (with a coat hanger if necessary) walks up to me and offers the following repertoire:
Skank Ho: You voting for Obama?
Me: No.
Skank Ho: You a republican?
Me: No
Enter Skank Ho #2
Skank Ho #2: Shut up, you can’t ask him questions like that. He could be a felon or something.
Original Skank Ho: You shut up, I got two black children I can say whatever I want.

I know what you’re going to ask me. “So what happened after you smacked the taste out her mouth?” The truth is I don’t hit women nor do I conversate with people who have less than ten brain cells, so I had to let it go. But then this dizzy, disrespectful mother of two doomed black children starts hollering Too short lyrics on the dance floor. I wanted to walk up t her and say “Hey, dingbat! You are in spitting distance of Oakland. No one here gives a fuck that you know all the words to a Too short song. Shut the hell up!” But she was knocking drinks off of tables from across the bar so I couldn’t get close enough to fully get my point across. But yeah. That’s why I felt the need to do this post. Go dance like Elephant man and leave the rest alone, ya heard?

RIP Rory Root

2008-05-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

I worked for this man. He was not the best boss. But he was a decent person and gave me my first job at a comic book store. I will miss you Rory. When I'm feeling a little more stable about it I'll write about the time I saw Rory naked. True story. For now, I think I'm still too fucked up to laugh about it.

I wish Tom waits was one of my white friends

2008-05-07T17:26:00.000-07:00

Picture me in college. Ithaca New York. I'm dating one of the cutest women I've ever known in my life. We share cigarettes, talk politics and teach each other the joy of discreet affection. The world is far from perfect and soon I will be forced to leave this idyllic scnerio due to too big a mouth and a serious lack of cash flow. But I don't know that at the time. At the time, I fall asleep every night with a small marijuana scented red headed Grecco-Peruvian listening to Tom Waits Rain Dogs on tape. I still love that girl and I still love Tom Waits.

The girl I have spoken to in years. But whenever I need to feel a sense of wonder in a time of misery, I know I can rely on good old Tom. I swear I thought the man was black for the first year I knew of him. Only a black man could make feeling bad sound so good I thought. Shows what I know. I've had the good fortune to see the man live twice. I count those shows among the best, like Maceo Parker and Nina Simone. If you get a chance go. If you don't pick up everything he's ever done and bow done to the drunken raspy melancholy that is Tom waits.

An open letter to my white friends

2008-05-04T23:50:00.000-07:00

When they come for me, maybe this year, maybe the next, whenever they come for me I will need allies. I will not need people to be afraid for themselves. I will not need people to acknowledge their limitations. I will not need anyone to call my mother. I will need you, my white friends, to stand up and say "It is wrong that you do this to my black friend." Yes, refer to me as your black friend, so that no one can forget me. I do not think it will be other black people that will come for me. So you as a white person standing up for me will have an extra significance. If you need help with the idea of doing this, watch all 12 minutes of a white man standing for his black friends.

Feel it in the air

2008-05-04T23:26:00.000-07:00

The era of Black independent film, as one viewer so interestingly phrased it “Not coming from a place of hurt.”, is coming. I’m less sure how I feel about the statement than I feel about black folks doing films not scripted to the whims of Hollywood, yet not all artsy-fartsyed out. Regular readers and friends are aware of my association with the infamous “I’m through with white girls”. A more meditative, and frankly more visual compelling flick that I just came back from was Medicine for melancholy. Comparisons between the two flicks beg to be made but that’s someone else’s charge. I just want people to go out and see this study of: Blackness, Hipsters, San Francisco, color saturation, the lack of melanin, and the abundance of isolation urban life sometimes offers. The website gives the skinny of the flick, but I’ll sum it up briefly here: What happens after a one night stand between alternegroes in the city by the Bay?
And yeah, I’m sure this will be on DVD at some point. But you know what? Go out and support independent artist, especially black ones. If you went to see Iron man, which I did and loved (Stay until the end), then you ca go out and see what someone of your generation is trying to put down on celluloid. Don’t be a buster!

P.S: Good news, I'm through with White girls will have a week run at the Roxie theater in San Fran in the middle of june. Come by, meet the afrogeek, hang out with indie movie folk. It'll be cooler than a polar bear's toenails

Real talk #1

2008-05-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

To officially start off the subset of this blog called real talk I actually have some real talk from my man Moki. Moki is my dude that I call when the white man at my work says some shit that makes me want to remind him that not only do I not need his job but he's not going to need his teeth much longer if he keeps being so cavalier in his manner towards me. Moki don't tell me to calm down, doesn't ask me to be reasonable, doesn't try and explain senior whiteys internal motivation. Moki just says shit like "Sometimes you need to remind people where you come from." and "Game recognize game son. You playing chess while these cats be playing checkers."

Occasionally Moki leaves me messages on my machine about the state of the world as he sees it. My man gave me the most stunning break down as to why th war in iraq will not be won by the West. "They strapping bombs to little retarded girls man. We can't handle that shit. You ready to put a bomb on a retard and send her ass out to Osama and whoever? Nah man, we ain't got the stones for this fight."

So in deference to the homie who only speaks that real talk i submit the following transcript of a voicemail I got from him last month.

Hey you what’s going to irritate me? What’s going to irritate me is the next time that I never hear a white mother fucker make an excuse for another white mother fucker about some shit they did that’s hella faulty but somehow I’m supposed to understand. Uh, John Mccain? Can you please stop apologizing now for the anniversary of Martin Luther King assassination, stop apologizing now for not understanding all the issues at the time when you voted against martin luther king day as a holiday and somehow now you’ve seen the error of your ways and “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking about and..” Listen man, I would just have more respect for white mother fuckers who said “Listen man, the only reason there ain’t no holiday for you black people in America is because…you really haven’t done shit, ok? Let’s just be clear about that. As far as we’re concerned, peanut butter, stop signs, uh building this mother fucker on your back and getting strapped with lashes, hey nigga, you ain’t done shit. So until you’ve done some shit like, you know, mother fucking, you know, straight genocide of a people, disenfranchising whole countries, uh, you know, all that shit, hey man, ain’t a mother fucking holidays for you people unless you do some shit. Cause right now we’re not that impressed. Martin Luther King? Who the fuck was that nigga? We don’t give a fuck about him. Nigga please. Get the fuck out of here.” But all that other shit about what they talking about Oh hey we didn’t know…whatever man. Why though? Why do you want me to believe this shit man? Terrible. John Mccain (In bad John Mccain voice “Arrgh, Sorry, seen the error of my ways. I didn’t know what I was thinking” White person you knew exactly what you were thinking. Real talk. Real Talk.

Rev. Wright for president.

2008-05-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

I swear I’m about to start a new section of Afrogeeks called Real Talk. Real Talk is where no reckless tongue wagging is allowed and real negroidal individuals get to present real negoridal facts without fear of caucosoid or other reprisals. And my first guest speaker would be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I’m listening to this preacher trying to figure exactly what he’s saying that’s so twisted. Shit, He reminds me of The good rev. Cecil Williams back in the day at Glide. That’s good church right there. But its in his statements and in Obama’s lack of support for those very statements that I find the courage to say (write) the thing that I’ve been passionate but hushed about for so long. Many will accuse me of deliberately taking the counter position just to be contrary, but hopefully now, if you understand and empathize with what the good reverend was saying you’ll see my reaction as more than mere thoughtless banter…

FUCK OBAMA!

I ain’t ever felt that dude. Not since day one. If I have a black president I want one that demonstrates his negritude in a discernible way. I don’t need a great apologizer, that shit just sets us loud dark boisterous negroes back; “If Obama can behave, why can’t you?” Cause I’m still black in America dagnabit! I behave well enough to keep a job and help folks out when I can. That’s about all the good I got in me. When fools step up otherwise, they get beat down. I need a president that can feel that. Not a dude that hears a jay-z tune from three years ago and tries to incorporate it into his shtick. Along the same lines, the politics game Obama played with the Reverend Wright has me seriously questioning dude’s integrity. He went from I don’t know nothing about no hate speech, to a more polished version of “Can’t we all get along” to “Forget that old crusty preacher.” Ok, if he wasn’t down from jump then where’s the problem with saying that? Or how about “I wasn’t in church on that day. He don’t say that shit around me.” Or what would have made me vote for the dude “Yeah, that’s my preacher. So what? You don’t like what he said? Don’t go to his church.” I want to go up to Obama and ask “Homie, where’s your nut sack?”

I know I’m giving up my black people card by hating on Obama. Well let me just get this out the way while I’m at it: I hate Common! I hate all positive rappers! I hate Lil’ Wayne! I don’t find Asian women particularly attractive! There, ya happy now?

So who am I voting for? Peep the conversation below ot learn more about why disdain for Obama and why I voted for the Ice queen from the Chronicles of Narnia-minus the cool cornrolls.

me: Told you about that punk ass obama
7:40 AM Halima: ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. lrejworuieoqir eqwklj1U9010
7:41 AM is how I feel about him right about now. Don't double back and condone after your Race 101 and brushing your shoulders off...I should take his penis away from him I am so bloody putoff!
7:42 AM me: See, anyone can be down for the cause when there ain't no niggers around. It's harder to be black when some darkies with inappropriate syntax and grammar are around, "dem cousins" so to speak. The rev wright happens to be that loud cousin. Act like ya heard
7:43 AM Halima: Exactly! The loud ghetto, mother-was-a-crack-head cousin that has not place in assimilation.
I have a whole side of them--and I LOVE the hell out of them-inside and outside the house.
7:44 AM Obama missed that part of Blackness in the slums of Hawaii with his culture-friendly grandfather..
Honolulu I mean..
me: Like I beensaying!
7:45 AM But ya'll obama lovers keep talking like he's a secret revolutionary
While he's given no evidence to support that idea
7:46 AM Halima: LOL! there is nothing secret about his faux revolution. I still love him, think he's sexy and would have his babies if I were not afraid that Mrs. Obama would black my eye, but I am disappointed.
7:47 AM Obama is a politician, understandable. But even as a politician running for president, he screwed up. Just don't pull any more fooleywang or black folks are going to throw you in that Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice pot--the one where Dave Chappelle trades you for a white person!
me: Give me an old crusty white woman who's husband cheats on her and plays the saxophone with negroes any day of the week, at least I know where her foibles lie.
7:48 AM Shit, what we need to do is call in Dave as a write in candidate.
7:50 AM Halima: She is so crusty and pickled, hell hath no fury over a woman in power who is unloved and overlooked for an intern.
"Billary's" politics are scary, sometimes scarier than Bush's.
7:51 AM me: But they are known.
Halima: At least Bush was/is outright with is rubbish, but Billary hides her real views and pretends to be all left-wing when really she is a republican-dike bitch in pearls!
7:52 AM me: Look Hillary is like that bullshit little street corner dealer who don't let a mother fucking thing slide. If its 2 for $5, then its 2 for $5, not $4.95 and i'll hit you up later for the rest. And god forbid that little hoppers momma hit him in the morning cause then he's busting dope fiends heads all day every day. That's HIllary, she'll make shit personal but she'll get her money.
7:55 AM Halima: LOL!!!
7:56 AM me: Real talk!
7:57 AM Halima: Real talk, she's still scary.
________________________________________ 5 minutes
8:02 AM me: I need a scary commander in chief. I was reading the new Richard Price novel "Lush life",( if you love the Wire, read homies shit Dude wrote clockers), anyway there's this Yemeni in there talking about how he loves Bush talking all "Where I'm from our father's don't explain things, they just do it. Maybe you don't understand why at first, but you do what he tells you because he's your father. later on you realize he was right all along. Bush is the father of the country." And while there's no way I'd go that far, like ever, sometimes the president just needs to be able to lay down the goon hand without having to explain a good god damn thing. And you can bet, once you give hillary the keys to the white house, that goon hand is going to get some exercise. First thing to go? All female interns with iqs lower than 92
8:03 AM Halima: Wait, is my IQ lower than 92? I need an IQ test.
8:04 AM me: Would you suck Bill clinton off? If so, then yes
8:05 AM Halima: I like the colored daddy philosophy from the Yemeni dude, its so colored..."But why I gotta do this" say Halima. "Because I said so now go before I take my belt off" says her father (more so Mother)..
8:06 AM Gross. I can feel the salad I ate for breakfast inching up my throat.
I do not do pinks!
me: You realize this entire conversation is going on Afrogeeks, yes?

NO, you can't smell my penis

2008-04-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe I'm trying to make up for the fact that i haven't been writing for a while by putting up crazy ass what the hell type videos, but well, there it is folks. Ummm, I don't know really what to say about this one. A pretty smart friend of mine claims this woman is the next gen feminist movement wrapped up in an R&B song. Yeah, well, at the same time, homie couldn't recognize the organic intellectuals that are the "WU" so...IN the meantime, she does say "Can I smell your dick?" like twenty times in the video, so if for nothing else she gets play for that on afrogeeks.

It's only funny because of the accent

2008-04-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, this shit cracks me up not because its wrong but because its so right. See, I'd love to have Professor East as my professor. Shit, I think I am professor East. I just did a lecture on Antonio Gramsci and the Wu-tang at University of San Francisco earlier this week. Pop culture does matter. Maybe I'll post my power point presentation of the lecture up here soon.

The following is why...

2008-03-26T20:23:00.001-07:00

Dubstep is going to take over the world.

Rza=Cee-lo...without the dress...and willing to do some kung-fu

2008-03-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

Much has been made in certain circles about the sibling rivalry amongst certain members of the Wu-tang clan, specifically the God Ghostface and the Supreme Intellect Raekwon’s supposed maligning of the Wudang swordsman Rza’s production of 8 diagrams. According to some reckless tongue wagers (Yo I’m trying to get that phrase in a rap song so spread it. You know what it means, people who talk too much and ain’t got Nathan of importance to say) the drama was that the aforementioned courageous dup didn’t want to flow the “geek shit” from the 8 diagrams. This is, supposedly, why Rza wasn’t on tour with the rest of the clan.

Now first and foremost let it be understood that the Wu is indomitable. This is some internal beef that got writ large over the internets thanks to people who don’t like seeing a bunch of former black thugs make good in the C.R.E.A.M. game and just want to illicit some B.S. But geekdom was mentioned and as a result I must make a statement. I choose to support Rza, Pretty Toney ("You’ve got to have vision Willie." I swear a woman quoted that too me and I was about to have an accident on myself) and Lex Diamonds, by offering up an analogy. His name is Cee-lo.

Before Gnarles Barkley, Cee-lo ripped the skin off my dome like he was an Apache whose pony was stolen by a white man with the following verse:

As individuals and as a people we are at war
But the majority of my side got they eyes open wide
But still don't recognize what we fighting fo
I guess that's what I'm writing for to try to shed some light
But we been in the darkness for so long, don't know right from wrong
Y'all scared to come near it, you ignore the voice
In your head when you hear it
The enemy is after yo' spirit but you think it's all in yo' mind
You'll find a lot of the reason we behind
Is because the system is designed to keep our third eyes blind
But not blind in the sense that our other two eyes can't see
You just end investing quality time in places you don't even neeed to be
We don't even know who we are, but the answer ain't far
Matter of fact its right up under our nose
But the system taught us to keep that book closed
See the reason why he gotta lie and deceive is so
That we won't act accordingly
To get the blessings we suppose to receive
Yeah it's true, Uncle Sam wants you to be a devil too
See, he's jealous because his skin is a curse but what's worse
is if I put it in a verse y'all listen to some bullshit first
We ain't natural born killas, we are a spiritual people
God's chosen few
Think about the slave trade when they had boats with
Thousands of us on board
And we still was praising the Lord now you ready to die
Over a coat, a necklace round your throat, that's bullshit
Black people ya'll better realize, we losin, you better fight and die
If you got to get yo' spirit and mind back and we got to do it together
Goodie Mob means, "The Good Die Mostly Over Bullshit"
You take away one "O" and it will let you know
"God is Every Man of Blackness"
The Lord has spoken thru me and the G-Mo-B!

For those unfamiliar, this verse was spoken, not sung, and was a total break, a méconnaissance, to use the lacanian term, of gangsterism. For while Cee-Lo articulates himself fully and totally in the verse, it is the poetic compassionate voice within the genre of Rap at that time that breaks the central narrative of hardness and thugnificence. In this moment, on the debut Goodie Mob album, Cee-Lo claims black geekness as the epitome of maturing hip-hop.

While The Goodie has somewhat fallen off somewhat in recent time, please remember that they are the beginnings of that dungeon family crew that birthed the renaissance negroes known as Outkast. Also, while Cee-Lo performed as the geek set in the gangster frame that was mid-nineties, he also let you know he wasn’t the buster to steal on. “Don’t test me boy, cause I’m about it!” In short he danced that line of being the intellectual sitting with the thugs unapologetically having read Samuel Delany.
Back to the Wu.
Rza’s grimy qualifications, if we really need to go there, are already established. Been there, done that. So what’s the point of the performative aspect of that gangster rap shit? Don’t get twitted, I’m ok if that’s your life now, that’s what you’re into now, then yeah, talk about what you know. But if you’re not car jacking, jewelry heisting, busting grills with four fingered rhinestones on now, why talk about it? So you’re predominately white audience can get a sense of the “realness”? I implore the Gods to let some of that drama slide. Lest the most ostentatious and amazing collabo that is Wu-Tang suffer the fate of the Goodie.
And keep in mind, Cee-lo left Goodie to go on and produce made crazy illness, total geek rap if you will, with the Gnarles Barkley thing. Rza been already done soundtracks and flicks. Not to throw salt in the eye of other Wu members, I understand everybody’s on some Think and Grow rich ish, but aside from Meth, Rza is one of the most defined sounds when it comes to the Wu. Not the vocals but the productions, the off key beats, the samples from the “What the hell” era, this is the backbone of Wu. The geekdom is part of that, but the geekdom is part of hip-hop. You don’t believe me, check out Run-DMC in the 80’s. While the big pimping cats was rocking multiple gold chains, furs down to the ground and bespeckled shades at midnight, what was Dmc, big eye glass Adidas jumpsuit cat saying? “I'm D.M.C. in the place to be
I go to St. John's University. And since kinde-garten I acquired the knowledge. And after 12th grade I went straight to college”

All that to say, the geek is part of hip-hop. The dj is a master of the technological soundscape. That’s not some “learned in the streets” type wisdom. That’s some studying needed. And to study that which you don’t get a degree for is Geekdom. A friend bought me a shirt for my birthday that reads “Smart is the new gangsta”. People laugh when I wear it. Is it so bad that I want it to be true?

P.S: while searching for links to this post I found the one I’m putting below. Ummm…Ok, Rae, Ghost, don’t take the thing about Rza being like Cee-lo too seriously. I mean, Cee does have some issues, ya’ll know that, right?

Iron man starring Victor Bout

2008-03-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

Where the average person sees coincidence, grand master therapist Carl Jung caw synchronicity, purposeful definition and meaning. Of course Jung also went nuts and thought poop was divine so you can’t everything he says as gospel. But I tend to buy into that whole synchronicity thing. For instance, I think its remarkable that mere months before the Iron Man movie comes out,the real life Iron Man... one Victor Bout, is captured and awaiting extradition to the U.S. For those not in the know Bout is a Tajik born arms dealer that’s run everything from blood diamonds to ICBM’s to any and all who desire them. There’s not an African dictator in the 90’s that didn’t receive guns, ammo, planes, or training from Bout or his associates. And like Tony Stark, he’s far from a bad guy, just a business man. If you’ve seen the movie Lord of War, it’s loosely based on him.
In a trailer for Iron man, Tony stark is referred to as the Merchant of Death. The book written about Bout has the same title. It would be awesome if the movie went into the emotions and politics surrounding arms dealing, but it’s a Marvel movie and they’ve made a point to stay away from politics. Still, Victor Bout as Iron man, or Iron man, as a 21st century weapons dealer makes me smile a bit on the inside But then again, I am an afrogeek.

I'm through with White girls...yeah right!

2008-02-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I’ve been talking about this movie everywhere but here. Don’t know why I haven’t put it up ere before, probably because I covered it originally for Code Z and I had some cross pollination issues. Doesn’t matter. Point of fact, I’m through with White girls is one of the best movies out there. You watch it and you’re watching a cultural moment, the affirmation of the genuine afrogeek. It’s the afrogeek tale complete with Hafro-canadians, comic book obsessed 80’s tv references, and of course, crazy ass white chicks. The only thing serious about this flick is heart and if the title throws you off, peep the trailer. It’s a good hearted fun flick. If you’re in San Francisco tomorrow, it’s playing at the Metreon tomorrow 8pm. Hit me up with an e-mail early enough and I’ll see if I can get you on a list. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer. If you want to know more about it, peep the article I wrote about the flick months ago.

Oh yeah, the reason you haven’t been seeing anything from me is not because of any drama online. My dog died and I’ve been under. I’m peeking my head out of my cave just to get the sitch on the weather. But haters be warned, I’m still more than willing to pop a lip out of place if ya’lls reckless tongue wagging starts wetting my ear, ya heard?

I like White women...I don't...Fox news

2008-02-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I haven't been writing much lately but that's only because I've been going through shit. Still, every time something like this comes to my attention I feel the need to share. Deal with it.

Jared Weisfeld is the hardest white boy on the planet

2008-01-30T14:17:00.000-08:00

Anyone who can manage ODB is hard in my mind. Umm, I can't really say more about this video because I can't ever talk shit about Wu, or ODB. But, umm, that stuff about the butt...Umm, Yeah. Ok, so more articulate stuff later, but umm...Ok I gotta...sorry. WHAT THE HELL ODB? WHY DIDN'T THEY FIX YOUR TEETH FOR YOU MAN?

And I'm out!

2008-01-17T17:38:00.000-08:00

After some serious consideration, I made the decision to no longer be associated with, or contribute to, the AfroGeeks blog. It has turned into something that is symptomatic of the web-verse: fruitless animosity. AfroGeeks started damn near two-years ago after Ayize and I attended a tribute to the late Octavia E. Butler. An icon of Black SF was no longer with us, and (I’ll only speak for myself) felt the need to celebrate her contribution to my life, and the lives of other AfroGeeks and Alterna-blacks. It was really important to me that we had a voice in these genres (SF/fantasy/horror/etc.) that we loved so dearly, in any medium: from comic books to television. I wanted a place where, if we couldn’t all meet in person, at least we could respond to each other in cyberspace. And you kind folks responded in such great ways.

The commentary was lively and hilarious—on both sides—and the divergent personalities of Ayize and myself made for a good cross-section of viewpoints. Then things changed a bit on both sides. Critique became snarky while what was supposed to be community building became a bit divisive. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been too overly optimistic that AfroGeeks would be a nice atoll in the sea of cyber bullshit. I’ll own my naiveté. It would be easy to defend this shift by hiding under the aegis of “that’s how the world is.” Like we aren’t a part of the world. I wanted this spot to be better than the world. And now I realize that that idea was a bit much to pin on a little blog.

Maybe I’m being too overly sentimental (read as soft) but I really wanted AfroGeeks to be THE destination for people like myself—to be able to discuss our favorite stuff without having to worry about the sometimes-ridiculous task of being a Black person in this society. I also wanted folks to get together and create their own stuff, no longer having to eat the crumbs of Joss Whedon’s table or suck at the entirely too-old teat of George Lucas. Basically, I wanted this blog to be the harbinger of a new Black genre aesthetic. Milestone comics was a long time ago and I wanted that same fire to be applied to movies, comics, video games, and puppet shows (which I’m putting the finishing touches on). Hell, I wanted a fucking revolution, but it didn’t happen.

A while back, I started to remove some of my older posts because I wasn’t feeling how the blog was going. Then I got inspired, but my inspiration wasn’t enough. Reading some of the commentaries, and the responses to them coming from this end…that shit disheartened me. So I slowed my contributions and focused on other projects. And now it is time for me to focus all of my energies in a new direction and try my hand at my own personal revolution.

My change of heart came about because of a few personal, yet beautiful, incidents in my life and also my desire to not be so damn confrontational or defensive. I’m just trying to chill. So, as K-OS said, it’s time for me to exit. But you’re in good hands.
Ayize seems to have a real passion for this and I will enjoy reading his future posts…and your commentary. Well, some of the commentary.

I hope folks start to create more genre stuff because I like to consume as much as I like to create.

Be good and be good to each other. Hope to see you all at WonderCon.

Shawn Taylor

I'm mad as hell...and the Price is right made me that way

2008-01-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

Ideal music for reading this post:

If you can find the black Sun Empire track that starts with the famous Network sample above. Much as I love hearing old white men pissed off, it sounds better with the drum and Bass behind it.

Ok so during this academic break I’ve been getting up later and going to the gym. Different crowd, same sweat. Not much difference in the working out demographic, but different stuff on the tele for sure. For the infrequent reader I pretty much sacrificed my first born tv to the literary gods and have been reading and writing up a storm ever since. My only exposure to regular tv is at the gym. And at around 11 in the afternoon they have this show on which is basically a bunch of speed freaks doing the weirdest shit just for a chance to earn some gaudy ass prizes. It’s called the Price is right.

Now understand folks, I’m about twenty five paces away from the misanthrope line as is. If there were a way to be advocating for the apocalypse without joining any particular religion, I’d be there. If God came down right now and said “Fuck it, you’re all going the way of the dodo bird.” And somebody said “But why god?” I’d smack them with pictures of starving babies in one hand and Las vegas in the other and prepare for divine annihilation. In my view humanity has only a few redeeming characteristics that make us worthy of survival, and those traits are being eroded day by day. None of those traits are found on the Price is right.

First and foremost, how dare the Reagan/Bush oligarchy tell me to not do drugs growing up while allowing that show to stay on the air. I’m sorry, but no one gets that excited over a fucking washing machine. And if they do, then its called a fetish and they need to see someone about that. I never watched the price is right before. My mom and grand mom used to, but that was just my time to go and read comics. It’s ridiculous. Alien cultures will descend/ emerge being willing to converse with us as though we were all on equal intellectual footing, then see the Price is right and erupt in alien gut laughing at how easy it will be to dominate us . “Just give them prizes M’kknc, and watch how they dance.” One will say to the other.
Slightly more seriously is the Valorization of disposable income this show promotes. One of the contest I saw was nothing more than guessing the correct prices of crap you don’t need. And if you one then you got to spin a wheel for a dollar in order to get to the final showcase showdown. And once you get there then you compete against one other person for more crap you don’t need. The best of which is of course…A NEW CAR! The show has been on since 1972 according to Tv.com, and I can totally see the Soviet union using that show as a prime example of the “Problem of the decadent West”. No doubt Al-queda is doing the same. Since when is knowing the price of things knowledge enough to get you those things? Aren’t games supposed to provide chances to hone essential or desired skills? Aren’t prices of consumer products in large part left up to the will of the profit makers? I know, I’m a communist.

To be fair, I never listen to the show. The monitors sit above me in the gym like the great square demi-gods demanding their sweat sacrifice while I tune into my new gym playlist (see below), so aside from the closed captioning and my paltry lip reading through my watery gaze, I don’t know what they are saying. All I know is I look at the Price is right and I see what’s wrong with America.
“Who cares?” I hear you asking. “Stop picking on tan innocent tv show, ya freaking afrogeek. It’s not important.”

Here’s why it is important in one word, hegemony. The price is right, the young and the restless, gossip girl, all this shit is the norm, coming from a long line of culturally vapid elites. Meanwhile The wire is starting its last season tonight. Put it together, Someone could have been born and raised a child watching The price is right. The wire only gets five seasons. Why? No cultural dominance. We’re so happy to see complex people of color stories that we revel in the one story and allow it to exist in a contemporary desert, searching for others like itself. Meanwhile The price is right contestants are given free samples of Phen-phen then told by the voice of God to “Come on down” and guess how much the American psyche should go for on the open market.

Fighting the Toby complex workout mix

Lionrock, packet of peace-The chemical brothers
My street-Muderbot
Are you ten years ago-Tegan and Sara (Don't ask, but twenty something twin teenage lesbians make me want to run faster)
Dig a hole-Jay-z
Untitled-Modeselektor
paper planes-M.I.A.
Hustlin-Rick Ross (Blame Kat Williams)
Jungle brothers (Aphrodite remix)-Jungle brothers
Work it, extended remix-Missy Elliot
coke and Wet-Spankrock
YOu'll find a way-Santogold
We be clubbin-Ice Cube and DMX
Respect-Biggie
The knock-U.N.K.L.E.
Party like a rockstar remix-Shop Boyz
Till I collapse-Eminem
Got your money-ODB
Duppy Durex-Mr. Vegas
Simon says Pharoahe Monch
This is why I'm hot (Jamaican remix)-mims, Baby Cham, Junior reid
shakiyla-Poor righteous teachers
Stand up-Ludacris
I'm so hood Dj Khaled
Broke Niggas!-Turf Talk
dumb it down-Lupe Fiasco
release yo delf-Method man from the 187 soundtrack
Fiddle with the volume (Ghislain remix-Lady Sov
Sirens (Chase and status remix)-Dizzee rascal

Beware the Mp3, coming to you soon

Lenoardo dicaprio is Willie Lynch!..just kidding

2008-01-04T15:13:00.000-08:00

Let me start with a clarifying point. I am not a positive black man. I do not buy Bean Pies. I don’t own Dashikis. I am not Mr. Super black. Arrested development is my current favorite tv show, seconded only by Angel/Buffy. My favorite dish is goat cheese pesto lasagna (My secret ingredient is lemon soaked eggplant), and yes, I date stringy haired white women. I am no thug, but I do not run from that street shit some seem scared of. That does not make me positive, only a survivor of the cracked out streets of Harlem circa 1980-1990. My point is that I make no claims of authenticity about negritude, it is a tedious claim at best.

However, I was raised by authentic hardcore intellectual activist negroes. And while I may be a disappointment to them, I learned some of their lessons well. To wit: How to make a slave by Willie Lynch is completely and totally false! NO for real! I know everyone from Wu-tang (By the by the pretty Toney album is like self help for former thugs, purchase it ya’ll) to Talib Kweli. If you are a black person in the US, no doubt you heard or were even possibly raised with the myth of some white slave owner who documents the breaking of the negro spirit in order to fashion a competent docile field hand. I rank this tale among one of the greatest science fiction stories ever produced for black audiences, in part of its near universal appeal , not to mention its humanistic view of slavery; In my mind the notion that people have to be taught to abuse and denigrate others speaks of a natural ignorance I simply don’t believe human being possess.

Be that as it may, continue to dance with me on the point that the willie lynch narrative is a total fiction (By the way, if anyone knows of any thesis work that examines the multiple Lynch narratives please send it my way). Ok so this non positive negro(myself) goes to the movies yesterday to fulfill familial obligations and checks out The great debaters. By and large the movie does not offend. The best twenty seconds was no doubt Denzel's verbal sparring with preacher ghost dog. Shut up, I know his name, but he'll always be ghost dog to me. I am an old time fan of Denzel and so I watch and enjoy…except for the woman casting her affirmations “Umm-hmm!” and her aspersions “Now you know that’s not right”, in her outside voice, directed at the screen while sitting behind me. Yet and still, I remain clam…UNTIL THE WILLIE LYNCH B.S is cited in the film by Denzel! Come on, Denzel, Oprah! Get with it. It’s the 21st century, we can’t be quoting lies about black people to black people in movies anymore!

The point of all of this is simple: Oprah and Denzel are not the king and queen of all black people and the word lynching did not come from a slave owner named Willie Lynch. And my resident niggerologist agrees with me. I’m happy to take on any challengers about this one, so long as you come at me with more than something you found on the internets.

Uncle Ruckus' Favorite Christmas Songs

2007-12-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

ALL I WANT CHRISTMAS
(IS SOME PRETTY WHITE WHITE SKIN)Lyrics by Gary Anthony Williams
Music by Nick Jameson
When I wake up Christmas day
I hope all my cares done faded away
All I want Christmas
Is some pretty white skin.
Pretty please Jesus Christ,
Make my skin 'bout as white as converted rice
All I want Christmas Is some pretty white skin.
White presents wrapped up in pretty white paper
Underneath the Christmas tree Lord want you take a hint from that
And wrap up poor black me (in white!)
Jesus won't you fix my mess
And cure this curse of negro-ness
All I want Christmas
Is some pretty white skin.
White skin, snow white skin
I'm alabaster, my friend
White skin, snow white skin
Ain't no club I can't get in.
Can't you see me walkin' round the 'fluent part of town
Telling all the black folk to leave. (Scram Darkie!) Baby don't you think, I'm pretty in pink?
It's the greatest gift any colored man can receive.
You can have yo Jangle Bells
And yo Fa La La and yo Ho's as well
All I want Christmas
Is some pretty white skin
Is some pretty white skin
Is some pretty white skin

CHRISTMAS IS FOR CHILDREN(especially if they white)
I
Christmas ain’t for grown folk
No sir, they all had their turn.
They stood underneath that mistletoe
They watched the yule logs burn.

Every mama every papa,
Who’ve seen the reindeer’s flight,
They know Christmas is for children
Especially if they’re white.

Chorus
Merry christmas white children
On that blessed Christmas morn
Wasn’t no Negro in the crowd there
When that li’l white boy was born

Merry Christmas white children
May all your dreams come true
Christ didn’t die for the coloreds
His blood was shed for you.

II
Snow-swept lanes and sweet mint candies
Red ribbons all around
Choo choo trains and dolls and dandies
It’s all wasted on the brown

Presents wrapped in Christmas colors
Overfowing Santa’s sack
This is only for white chilren
Not them un-damn-grateful blacks

Chorus
Merry christmas white children
On that blessed crhistmas morn
Wasn’t no Negro in the crowd there
When that li’l white boy was born

Merry Christmas white children
May all your dreams come true
Let them have they February
Cause December’s just for you

And ya'll think I'm out of pocket? aka, maybe I should write for the new york post

2007-12-20T15:53:00.000-08:00

1st off, Peace out Ike. Shouldn't have beat Tina like that man, but you was an r and b cat when r and be meant rhythm and blues, and god knows you had both.
2nd off, for this headline, and a thousand others, the New york post needs to just lay down and die. I hear all these fourth estate cats lamenting real journalism. To them I know say simple "If you care so much about journalism, how come you never say shit about the New York post?" This is just some sad bullshit. Actual headline people, I'm not making this up.

News Home
IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH

The 'Net and the Arithmetic Rise of the Cyber Bitch

2007-12-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

The Internet is great for a lot of things: purchasing books, looking at porn, getting directions, rudimentary research, and figuring out where a movie is playing. But what seems to be the primary mission of the ‘Net is to produce a legion of cyber-bitches. You know of whom I’m speaking. These cyber-bitches usually sign their names “anonymous” after writing something racist, misogynistic, or just plain stupid. The ‘Net has succeeded only in allowing the proliferation of these digi-cowards. You have to be real bitch-made to use the anonymous option when the ‘Net is already a continent of anonymity. You are removed from the sound of your words, from your intended audience, and from the actual writing itself—you are more connected to your words via pen and paper than typing on a keyboard—so why would you try to hide any further? It’s a facet of loser-dom that is damn near impossible to comprehend. What are you so afraid of?

If you doubt me, take a look at the comments section on any news agency’s site. Hell, check out any site where any idiot can post. For every piece of intelligent commentary, there are a dozen comments from “anonymous” posting things like, “first, bitches”, or “you have cheeseburgers?” or baleful quips like, “kill all niggers,” or “fist that bitch.” You’re kidding, right?
If you cannot stand by your words, do not present them in any fashion. Not audibly or typographically. Our world is in too precarious a spot for the cyber-bitches to be allowed to continue wasting our most precious resources: time, attention, and synapses.

I challenge all of you to sign your shit. In the 21st century there is no reason for people to hide under the aegis of anonymity. This early in our new aeon, we have to hold each other (and ourselves) accountable for all our collective multimedia bullshit. Otherwise, we’ll be continuing to traverse the same pothole filled superhighway of the previous century.

Don’t be afraid to stand by your words, thoughts, or beliefs. If you want to use the word “nigger” or say something as stupid as the commentator on my post about PK/FR, own that shit. Stop being a punk.

People want to say that the ‘Net is our highest form of representative democracy. If this is the case, another Asian Tsunami and another Katrina should wipe us out for our hubris. Shit, I’ll be the brother with the tattoos, shaved head and muscles doing the rain dance.

Stop being so damn cowardly or I’ll make it my life’s work to short-circuit all of you cyber-bitches.

Word is digital-bond.

Shawn Taylor

First and foremost, all praise due to the honorable Aaron McGruder…

2007-12-18T19:15:00.000-08:00

Most dopest of the ill afrogeeks this side of the main man Tricky, giving much honor and praise to his geekonomics, flipping the script from small time tracer to big money making adult swim cartoon making Boondocks with much alternablackness for the masses.
And with this respect and praise questions and concerns regarding the future of the above stated project, offered in the most non haterade sipping manner imaginable. To wit I ask simply:

Are there way more “niggers” in this season of the Boondocks, or is that just me? I mean I’m just saying. An occasional nigger here, nigger there I can’t complain about. Shit, I love it. But it seems like every other word out of Riley’s mouth these days is Nigger. No, No I’m not on that old Paul Mooney, we can’t say nigger anymore(Sorry Paul, I love you like that uncle that wont bail you out of jail but will put $10 on your commissary so you can get some toothpaste but I can’t back your call on that one), but it is a little disturbing when Riley talks like some old hood cats on the corner and nobody pops him one in the jaw.
Maybe its just the shift, I swear I don’t remember him being so nigger-centric last season. He was all “You that’s kind of gay” for damn near everything. I don’t know what to make of it. Plus we got Ruckus, who is like my inner monologue whenever I have to ride public transport and have low blood sugar. And while I understand the comic genius of Ruckus, to be honest, sometimes he hurts. For instance when he is trying to get the Nigger out of Tom, who had been possessed, he brought with him the things niggers are scared of; a Billy club, a whip, a noose(I may be making that one up), and a job application. For real man, a job application? That’s fucked up. Plus when they were all beating on Tom…I don’t know, it was near when all the Jenna 6 shit was going down, maybe I was just sensitive, but it wasn’t humorous to me.
And as usual, with all black comedy I find myself thinking what I hate to think, I wonder what white people are saying about this. And not that any artist should live in fear of their audience, unless of course they have the tendency to enslave people, but I know that I don’t talk about the Boondocks with the White kids that I work with. At the same time I make sure to dialogue with the black kids I work with when something problematic comes on. I’m not on some PMRC angles on this, I like the show, it should stay on, but I’m wondering about the Dave Chapelle effect here.
Dave left his show, not because he was high assholes, and not because he had a nervous breakdown, cracker mcCracker, but because he had an internal boundary about what he was willing to do to make ,people laugh. When he felt seduced to cross that boundary he felt it was time to go. I have mad respect for Dave Chapelle for that, and I guess I wonder if Mr. Mcgruder is feeling any of those similar pangs, respectfully.

If anyone has done a Nigger count on the Boondocks, please send in the numbers. Otherwise I’ll start mine, at least on the last season.

America is evil, just ask the Canadians

2007-12-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

My solution to the TV writer’s strike is to do what I usually due, find alternative sources of pleasure. Like reading. But it was in my copious amounts of comic book reading that I saw reference to a Canadian TV show called Intelligence. I’ve had good luck with Canadians and television; I fully admit to thinking Degrassi junior high was one of the best shows on the planet. So I gave it a shot. And like a black tar junkie who just found some Cambodian brown brown, I was hooked. Such a tight show. And it features a hot black woman who isn’t married to a white dude! No offense to all the black women married to white dudes who read this post, or he white dudes themselves.

The basic premise revolves around two characters, one the kind of the Toronto weed trade (White guy), and the head of the organized crime division who is about to be made head of Canada’s new intelligence service (Black woman). Canada believes that it can no longer rely on the C.I.A and other foreign intelligence services to serve their best interest. Her idea is to use high powered underworld folks as her primary sources of intelligence. Folks can earn so long as she gets her information. Maybe the show is a little too talky for the average American, or Canadian for that matter, I hear the show was canceled as of this season, but I found it refreshingly smart, balanced, and provocative. Plus Max Headroom is in it. Oh such a later post, but what the fuck happened to Max Headroom? Where’s that DVD box set?
Perhaps the best praise I can give the show is that it is the natural heir of another, perhaps the best espionage television program ever. Again, not produced in the U.S. I’m referring of course to the Sandbaggers. Understand, I have sex with other TV shows, but I make love to the Sandbaggers. It’s a cold war British espionage show that basically makes James bond look like Captain America on crank. It is a highly cerebral dialogue heavy show that speaks with authority about what it would be like to actually run a secret service for a country. Sadly the weight of bureaucracy weighs these spies down more than watches that can shoot lasers or shoes that allow them to walk on walls. Some nimrod tried to get me to watch the new British spy show Mi-5, and I almost had a restraining order placed against me. The sandbaggers is the cold war writ for the small screen. Intelligence is the dismemberment of the intelligence community post the invasion of Iraq. While budget problems don’t seem to be hampering the Canadians, American business interest (and the C.I.A.) do. And not to give too much away but one could make the argument by the series finale that everything would have been fine if it weren’t for the damn Americans.
So if you’re hungry for tele-visual stimulus, have an affinity for the covertly crafty side of things, and have a big hate on for Christmas cheer, torrent your ass some Intelligence, or Netflix you some Sandbaggers.

For all you muggles out there

2007-12-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

This is the only solid track on Kala. And before you accuse the kid of sipping on the haterade, I was down for the chick back in the Piracy funds terrorism days. And I still think that's the tightest all around project with her voice on it. Everything on Amazon was done better on Piracy. As for Kala, the only reason people are jizzing on it is because they felt bad for sleeping on Amazon. But this track, for teh Clash sample and this video for the B-boys doing their thing, and for MIA being real on it and saying straight up she just wants to jack you (us) for the money, for all that, I'll give this track some love.

The life of an Afrogeek monk

2007-12-16T22:38:00.000-08:00

I’m contemplating it. Not the lack of sex, to hell with that noise. I’m just saying I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about everyone but the Me, myself and I. The turntables, drum machine and Korg have dust on them, the novel looks like the last forgotten pile of detritus on a forgotten planet headed for the blazing sun of obscurity, and the death pangs of my brain reverberate with the sadness of the ancients. “I’m a hustla Homie, you a customer, cronie.” That used to be my line. But I keep linking up with folios who do not have the hustler spirit in them and as a result feel mine getting drained. But on the solo, doing what I love in the way that I love it, I’m like Rza in this piece; I’m the lone wolf sans cub, wolverine on a solo mission, Biz marke without the drum machine.
And so it’s back to the known. Nose to the grindstone hardcore solitary art of geekdome transmogrified by the resources to make the tardied seem spicy. Back to the essentials, the beans and rice of it, the old school chucks with duct tape keeping them from talking, you know my steez. Of course you do because you frequent this blog on the regular, you check it daily and send up mad prayers of hate when there’s nothing new on it. You laugh at the jokes and wonder where a kid is at whenever those of the negoridal persuasion do something super fly or just questionable. No one had to explain to you what an afrogeek was because you are one, grew up with one, humped one or was humped by one. You know its an irreplaceable style and you want to taste its flavors. Well guess one, when my dome is on tight, its by beans and rice so expect more from me.
Such as Mash it.com. No for real. Download the Dj kowalasky mix and move your ass like Bobby Brown was on it…

Ok see, someone just sent me an I.M that explains my lifelong reluctance to fuck with the unwashed masses. CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW SOLDJA BOY IS NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY WhEN HE CAN’T EVEN SPELL HIS NAME RIGHT?

And if anyone writes in that he’s a young man who did all his beats on a laptop and how great that is, please also include a mailing address so I can send you a full on slap across the face. Just because he made a crappy album and put it on youtube does not make him worthy of a Grammy. Oh wait, I forgot, the Grammies sold out on talent decades ago so maybe it does. I’m pretty sure I posted my rage about “It’s hard out here for a pimp” being performed in front of poor old Sidney Poiter, not to mention being nominated for a Grammy last year, didn’t I? After that I sounded like Uncle Ruckus for a good week. I feel some anti negro sentiments coming up in me again.
My antidote for this depressing news is as follow: Watch the above video for as many times as your funny bone allows, then listen to Santogold, aka, my new reason for listening to music. This track makes me touch myself.
I’m back fam. And I have powers!

hygiene from Ghostface

2007-11-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Yeah I'm still on my ghostface love. I mean he does so much for the community. For example, click here to learn all there is to know about hygiene. And once you've figured out exactly what he's talking about, can you please post it in a comment? For real. I mean, I love the man, but half the time I'm getting this whole Pooty tang vibe, like I can hear him, and I can understand the words, but when you put it all together you end up being like "Wha?" My boy Adam says he'll transcribe it all for me. If he does I'll put it up for you all. In the meantime, Can i say that i haven't been as excited for an album since Dizzee dropped hi mes all over the floor? OOOHHHH! Ghostface, Dizzee Collabo? On the turntables this weekend

WU-TANG! (A la Dave chapelle)

Parkour is not a fad

2007-11-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

-Normally I don’t respond to what is said by my compatriot, but I have to step up and give a much better explanation of my beloved Parkour (PK) and Freerunning (FR). A brief description of the differences: PK is about getting from point A to point B with as much economy as possible. FR is more about aesthetic beauty—all of this done in the urban environment.

-I’ve been a traceur (practitioner of PK) for close to ten years.
PK/FR is wholly about reclaiming the city. Most people wander through cities either looking up at skyscrapers or looking down in hopes of avoiding the homeless and dog shit. PK/FR helps you to develop an almost 360-degree type of vision. The disciplines/movement philosophies help you to get into a particular type of zone. It is sort of like competitive athletics, in the sense that when you’re on point, you can do no wrong. All of the balls sail into the goal, you run the table when playing pool, or you’re jumping higher and running faster than ever before. This state, in PK/FR is called the flow. And once you achieve it (it is not as mystical as it sounds—all it takes is focus, confidence, and just a little athletic ability) you can experience a city in an entirely new way. Cities (especially major ones) can be so isolating, but with PK/FR you can be on some non-super powered Jack Hawksmoor shit—experiencing the city as an entity (and being apart of this entity), and not just slugging through slabs of concrete, sheets of glass, and funky miasma.
Marry the concepts of PK/FR with Guy Debord’s concept of Psychogeography and you have what could be looked at as a post-modern philosophy for the modern city dweller. But don’t take my word for it.

-For those of you who are local, contact me and we can hook up so that I can show you how to truly experience the city. It is so much more than just running, jumping, and flipping. You can only know it if you do it. B13 has nothing to do with what the disciplines are about. Once again, you can’t know it unless you do it.

Shawn

What an afrogeek reads

2007-11-24T21:08:00.000-08:00

YO:

So I’m literate. Not like I know how to read, I don’t find that a proper definition of the word, but rather I’ve been doing nothing but reading since I put two in the back of the head of the televisual altar in my abode. And I’ve been staying true to the genre folks, re-instating my fugitive identity as afrogeek addicted to the word. So here’s a list of works that I’ve been consuming in the past three months, with mini reviews. Time to turn off the tvs and pick up some books…and guns. Oh yeah, the images are...well I couldn't think of any images so I just put up some stuff to remind all the black people reading this that at one point us reading was a capital offense. Homie right above, he was just trying to take some time off to read a poem is girl sent him. Now look how they did him. Just for reading a poem. Seriously though, don't take the images too seriously.

Chocky- Here’s the problem with American sci-fi, its not as good as British stuff from fifty years ago. In about 150 pages, Wyndham challenges the notion of imaginary friends and creatures from other planets. It has the potential to be extremely creepy but ends up being surprisingly tender.

The Midwich cookoos-Turns out Grant Morrison didn’t make up the Stepford Cookoos. Also turns out that John Wydnham should’ve been what I was reading growing up. I always knew there was something definitely fucked up about the Suburbs. Funny thing about the Midwich cookoos is it trips on this very surreal sort of anxiety about sameness. Similar to the need for multiple renditions of “Little Boxes” at the beginning of Weeds, to illustrate that while everything may look the same, they are actually different, Midwich offers the frightening possibility that there is no difference amongst the super washed.

Terminal-Vachss is what all hardcore zealots wish they were, a life long soldier in a battle against this enemies, any deranged lunatic who thinks abusing kids is a good idea. I’m honored to say that I’ve read every book this man has put out and I’ve even had lunch with him. I promised myself I wouldn’t contact him again until I’d publish something worthy of his eyes. With Terminal he’s raised the bar yet again. Old friends get hurt and new folks enter the periphery of the family known as the Children of the Secret. Vachss writes the hard core legacy that Hammet and Spillane only saw in their nightmares. It’s not sensational, No LA Law type bullshit. It’s the real talk. Read him and learn him.

Cinnamon Kiss- I’ve been told for a while that Easy Rawlins was a cat to get to know. So naturally I pick up what is supposedly the last book in the series. It’s ok. I like the fact that he’s a detective with a day job. But there’s something a little too positive about him. A sick child who needs medication? Seems a bit too cliché. Me, I want to read Mouse’s story, but maybe that’s only because every line written reminded me of Don Cheadle. All in all, it’s a weekend book. I could’ve chilled until the softcover came out, but I like to support black writers.

The traveler-Wow, what a mixed bag. I read the Traveller, and the sequel, Dark river. Premise wise, I’m ok with it. Big bad all encompassing Panopticion in your brain baddies want to take down the “Travelers” folks who can project their spirits, light, don’t get too caught up on a name, to other dimensions where similarly weird societies and folks exist. Keeping the travelers safe are the Harlequins, bad asses with swords, nothing but combat training and the manners of lame zoots (If you can name the reference and you’re cute I will have your baby). This is one of those stories that suffers from the publishing/film rubric. There has to be a love interest, there has to be a reluctant hero, the “good guys’ have to by sympathetic, the bad guys have to be vilified. It makes what could be a complicated and intriguing set of interactions mere bullet points on the plot train. That’s not all that makes these two books weak for me. First off, they make heroes out of Pakour (players, jumpers, man-apes?) in the second book. What’s up jumping on the band wagon…three years too late. Once B13 came out, the hype should have died. Plus Pakour, while kinda funny to look at, is not a way of reclaiming city space. It’s running up walls and flipping and shit. Shit, that’s like saying the movie Wild thing was a stunning commentary on the socio-economic realities of gang life during the Regan era. Yeah, that was just an excuse to mention Wild thing, I admit it. Anyhow, the final reason I’m just not loving the trilogy is the author. They make such a big deal about the dude living “Off the grid”. I’m like Who gives a damn where you live, whether or not you have a credit card or a phone? I get the sense homie is taking this stuff a little too seriously. Are we all being watched all the time? Yeah. But so what? Do what our cousins the bonobos do and show them your shit. Whose going to say anything against you after that?

Babylon babies-Yeah, ok, so tons of fun, if not highly dated. Whatever you do, don’t see the movie and think you’ve read the book. It’s French translated (And I get the sense that some of the nuances of the language are missing) so it rambles a bit like the French, but there’s lots of explosions, sex, and glowing people delivering the future of humanity through cloned typhoid mary type babies.

Blink-Note to the publishers of Blink. IF you want to make this book a bible for the black geek class, put Malcolm Gladwell’s picture on the cover. Finally read this work an have so many story ideas spinning off of it. What’s really funny is reading current fiction, comics, you can tell whose taken his ideas to heart. Like I swear a new support character in Moon Knight is a thin slicer beyond compare. Seriously, I'm seeing a gang nerded out beyond the pale (pun intended) negroes with Gladwell like hair analyzing split decisions and making them with a sort of preternatural quickness. It's a possibility is all I'm saying. Read the book if you want to know what I’m talking about.

The world without us-It’s real out here folks. Global warming, airborne illnesses, lack of resources. It’s only a matter of time before we’re all waiting on line for our plankton rations. But for some reason,a world without us makes me feel not so bad about that prospect. Don’t get it twitted, I’m not going to be on the plankton line, I’ll be out in the desert with my people, learning how to survive on a thimbleful of water a day, but A world without us explains beautifully how the end of humanity is not the end of this planet. For instance, without “us” (and by us the author means humans, not just black people) it would take about a week for Manhattan to flood. After that critters would start coming back. Not human bound critters like rodents and roaches, but opossums, rabbits, gophers, wolves. Man, wolves in Times Square. What a sight. Right now, the way things are going, I’m predicting a super resistant form of staff, or whooping cough, Chicken pocks that wipes out 65-85% of the human population, some 12 monkeys type shit. Once that happens, then maybe we can go back to driving SUVs.

Children of men-Ok, I love the movie, love it. Especially love the Zizjek commentary on the DVD. The book, which I equally love, is so freaking different its worth the read. For one it is delightfully pessimistic. I mean a guy being honest about how he didn’t want to have children and so when his daughter died, he wasn’t exactly sure how to feel. How fucking real is that? That’s why I read. No, not the content, but rather where else would you find such a sentiment? Hollywood and Tv edit out such real emotions and the internet often over-inflates them for the sake of being edgy. Regardless, the novel creeks out a barely sci-fi plot along the broad roads of human anxieties about aging, state control, and the population as a whole. It’s not sure that if you love the film you’ll love the movie, but it you’ve got a bit of misanthropic idealism in you, a sort of “80% of the human population is gone? So what?” Then you’ll dig this book.

Empire Star-Unlike my esteemed colleague, I go for Delany quantity and not quality. I like these little “What the hell” thought exercises Delany. I wish the publishing world still allowed for 132 page experiments, but sadly, that’s what blogs are for. Anyway, this is one of those rare treasures you find at the used book store and kill in a matter of hours but spend three weeks thinking about afterwards. I get the plot of this one mixed up with “Life as a series of semi-precious stones” a short story from his collection, “Aye, and Gomorrah…” though I don’t know why. One is about a temporal shift and the problems with faster than light space travel, the other is about a series of identity shifting adventures one, or many intergalactic criminals take on. The deception with Delany is that he sounds so very facile, but to read him is to be confronted with a host of question marks. I’m dead smack in the middle of a short story homage to him that has nothing to do with sci-fi and where he is never mentioned, only a weird fantasy I have about the man’s daughter. Not teat type of fantasy, you pervs. Anyway, Negroes with imaginations need to read Delany the way Negores with guns need to read Fanon.

Emotions revealed-Yeah, dog. Pretty sure, I’m going to be reading your faces and being able to tell if you lie to me. That’s right, I’ll be on some old Jedi type shit, cause I’m studying this book like it was the holy Koran. And once I meet Mr. Ekman, and study with the man, it’s on like Donkey Kong. Seriously though, mad respect to a person who has spent decades studying human emotions and the facial implications of said emotions. Sounds crazy but its helped me out in a lot of my work.

More than Human-I’d have more hope for the world if there were more writers like Theodore Sturgeon. This book is what I want to write, Sci-fi that is not limited by teleportation, telepathy, and anti-gravity machines, but enhanced by them. The tale is about the next level of humanity, a cooperative Homo Gestalt, and how a particular gestalt is formed. The last time I felt the tenderness I feel towards this book was reading Elfquest graphic novels as a kid (Shut up! This is afrogeeks, I can admit I read Elfquest here). This is an gentle tale that rubs rough on your notion of conscience, morality, and the unified theory of humanity. I’m not a hippy but this book would turn me into one.

This is your brain on music-Consider it research. I’m not going to get too into it because I keep having this paranoid feeling like all my ideas for bad b-grade sci-fi movies are getting made by hacks with less talent than me, but the connection between what we hear and how we think is simply too hot to be ignored. It taps into some old tribal knowledge type shit. And without getting too Altered States about it, just know that how we think actually changes the physical form of the brain. Already I’ve said too much. David Goyer is about to read this and take my ideas away. Fuck you for messing up Blade 3 Goyer!

Electric Ladyland-This is the 33 1/3 book on Jimi’s album of the same name. Now 33 1/3 is a mixed bag. Some of them spit hot fire, like the Tribe one. Some which I won’t mention, just drag on and I’m left wondering what goat did this man have to orally satisfy on camera to get this gig? Luckily, John Perry has not Chupacabra tendencies. The author of the Electric ladyland has what I think all true Jimi fans need, an honest understanding of Jimi as a bluesman and an appreciation of what he brought to technology and not the other way around. The way I read it, Jimi is to the guitar what the dj would later be to the turntable, a liberator.

Ok yeah, fifteen books in three months. Plus my usual weekly batch comics. I’m a literate mother fucker. No wonder I haven’t been writing a lot. I know what you are wondering, “What are you going to read next?”

Well right now I’m about a ¼ of the way through Oliver sach’s latest musicophilla. I’ve read everything the man’s out out since “The man who mistook his wife for a hat” when I was in high school. Don't let Awakenings fool you, he actually has some insight into how humans behave.
The purple Cloud, by M.P. Shiel will get killed this week
Gladiator at law-for the weekend.

And then I shall stop reading for a little bit and write, which is what I’m supposedly good at. But really folks, turn that idiot box off. We just don’t have the time to be wasting our mines from off work to one in the morning anymore. There’s things to do, ways to think, time is not on our side. Make something…or break something. But do something.

And if you have any suggestions for stuff I should be reading let me know.

One!

Why I love Keith Knight

2007-11-16T22:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know what he's saying

2007-11-16T17:56:00.000-08:00

Ok, first and foremost understand that I stand by this statement now and forever: Anyone who can translate each and every wu-tang lyric, I'm talking all the side projects and everything, deserves a PhD. For real, no joke. In fact, I think every african-american studies department needs a Wu scholar, an individual not necessarily gassed on the Wu but understands the crossroads of Shaw brothers, 5%ers, and underground economies that Wu represents.

That being said, and knowing full well that I got mad love for ghostface for being one of the grimest individuals on the planet point blank, end of sentence, don't try to say a thing about it before I brush your teeth for you son,...WHAT THE HELL IS MY MAN TALKING ABOUT? Those words don't go together. The big doe rehab? I feel like a crusty baby boomer (Whaddup adam!)trying to listen to liquid swords. Like I know he's speaking English but it just don't make sense! You have so much doe(dough?) you need to go to rehab? Ok, but if you're in rehab for spending cash, do they put cash all around you? I'm not hating, I just don't get it.

I'll tell you this for free, it's gonna be a Wu christmas for this boogie negro. The dig doe (dough?) rehab drops on the fourth and the next week Wu's 8 diagrams comes out. John Frusciante from the Red Hot chili peppers is on it and not to cash in all my street cred, but "Blood sugar sex magic" and "Uplift Mofo party plan" were my god damn soundtrack in high school. Plus, it's Rza. Really, what Rza needs to do is put out an instrumental album and just blow the dome of the entire fucking planet. Put a period on the end of the Wu sentence like a mother.

Sorry, but whenever I write about Wu-tang, I have to talk like Ghost. So to say peace out, here's a poem from the master lyricists. And since some don't know how to read: this is the Wu! If you're easily offended, don't peep what's next! (I'm sick of crab ass wish-the-PMRC-were-back-mothers!)

Mercury raps is roughed then God just shown like taps
Red and white Wally's that match, bend my baseball hat
Doin forever shit, like pissin out the window on turnpikes
Robbin niggaz for leathers, high swipin on dirt bikes
Voice be metal like Von Harper radio bubble
Murder sleep away camp, the fly lady champ
The arsonist, who burn with his pen regardless
Slaying all these earthlings and fake foreigners
In the Phillipines, pick herbal beans, bubbling strings
Body chemical CREAM, we burn kerosene
The conviction of my tape is rape, wicked like Nixon
Long-heads inscriptions with three sixes in
Kiss the pyramid experiment with high explosive
I slapbox with Jesus, lick shots at Joseph
Zoomin like binoculars, the rap blacksmith
Money's Rolex, with sparkles, Chef ragtop is spotless
I'm Iron Man no cheap cash metal I'm steel alloy
True identity hidden inside secret tabloids
Breathe oxygen both sides of my jaw carry oxes
The track hit like the bangers, in hundred watt boxes
Yo jostling these cats while Little J be deli-ing
Sip Irish Moss out of Widelians

Some people are dumb...even afrogeeks readers

2007-11-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

OK, so the first comment posted to the previous post was this

Are you an idiot! How dare you put porn (no matter how absurd it is) on a site where young people visit? You've been offensive before, now you're just low. No wonder you never sign your name. The shear audacity...not even putting a proper disclaimer in your text, stating that anyone below 18 year olds should not watch, that is irresponsible. My daughter is fourteen and clicked on this this morning and was disturbed. You just may have a lawsuit on your hands.

Mary Kearns

Open reply here Mary Kearns. Sue my ass! Who said this was a kid friendly site? And if your 14 year old daughter clicked a post that started "If the thought of wayward white women having sex with a degenerate black puppet offends you..." and was offended, maybe afrogeeks isn't the issue.

Fucking morons!

If the thought of a wayward white woman having sex with a degenerate black puppet offends you...

2007-11-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

I'm so down for this movie. I know its wrong but, I'm so down for this movie. It's like chucky meets one of my uncles.

Token White boy

2007-10-28T11:21:00.001-07:00

If I were a white man I’d want to be this one. Andrew is one of those crazy intellectuals that’s so freaking humble and genuinely intelligent that you’d be in danger of referring to him as just another Chelsea hooligan, if you didn’t take the time to properly reflect on his genuine question “So what do you listen to?” Most likely he’d mean music, but if you said the sound of nothing, he’d probably give you some hippy Buddhist silent head nod thing and you’d feel touched by a bodhisattva; trust, its less invasive than being touched by an angel. Still, mention anyone from Don Letts to Rick Rubin and he’d probably have a story or two either about them or someone he’s worked with that’s tight with them. If you had five hours to kill, I’d recommend saying something to the effect of “I don’t see what’s so great about Led Zeppelin anyway”. Whatever you do, however, don’t insult his friends. While Andrew Goodwin is a true gentleman in every sense of the word, he stands up for his friends in a way most people on this planet have forgotten how to.
Andrew’s started a blog, which for my money is basically free tuition to the coolest cultural studies class ever, the inner workings of his mind. No for real, he goes seamlessly from Adorno to The Prisoner, and back to freaking Zeppelin. In under a month the man has generated more texts than I have in two freaking years, and none of it is rant or bizarre (yet sexy) personal ads. The only reason I’m not truly envious of this man is that he still know nothing of graphic novels or free jazz. Those are the only two chinks in his cultural studies armor but with a carnivorous mind such as his, it’s only a matter of time before he’s got a black beret on, humming a Coltrane solo off of interstellar journeys while deconstructing Warren Ellis' Planetary.
Go check out his blog. You won’t be disappointed.

Andrew, you’re my token white boy of the month on Afrogeeks!

PS. If you ever run into the Professor of pop ask him what you call a black man who flies a plane.

The invevitable rise and fall of Niggytardust

2007-10-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

Every time I get my mouth ready to talk some smack about Saul Williams, dude comes out with an album title that is so funny, I just have to hear it, or steals Slick Rick's cat, or does some collabo that just out of this world. I'm not a man prone to panic but I swear I either had a panic attack or a spiritual experience one night at the justice league, the former name of the independent, when him and Dj Krush did "Coded Language", Plus he rolled with this black dreaded cello playing chick who was hot! Shit, the only reason I even want to hate him a little bit is because he helped to make slam poetry so damn popular that anyone with a depacote prescription still thinks its the thing to do. But homie was just trying to get paid, so no hate on the Saul.

Peep his site, you might just get a free album

Fuck a Prius

2007-10-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

Voice recognition is racists!

Ok, so I am absolutely fed up with talking cars, cell phones that dial when you speak into them and all this other bullshit technology that only works for white people. And dumb white people at that! That’s my overall issue, tech is being made for a lower and lower IQ. Case and point, Prius Drivers! All a-holes, all white. Even the black dude on Weeds that bought one ended up dead. To all Prius drivers, you know who you are, just because the car isn’t making any sounds, doesn’t mean its not on. You still have to drive! You can’t go twenty five on the free way just because you’re in a plug in electric fucking shitbird of a car!

A friend of mine has one of these moronic vehicles so I’ve ridden in one. Let me say, not a negroes car, not even an assimilated negro like myself (See previous post). For instance, you don’t put your seatbelt on, it snitches. NEGRO CARS DON’T SNITCH! And this isn’t like a “Hey put your seat belt on please.” Type buzzer It’s like “Um, excuse me police officer, I don’t want to interrupt but I have reason to believe that the person in the seat might not have his seat belt on” type consistent bleating! I hate a bitch ass car!
Here’s the straight no logic part of the car. Ok, so you back up in the car and there’s a camera that comes on so you can see what’s behind you. No drama there. But then there’s that Beep Beep truck backing up sound. Ok…wait for it…the sound only comes on INSIDE the car. Bitch ass car, we know we’re backing up, you don’t have to tell the drier we’re backing up. Tell everyone else! Shit, can’t even snitch right!

Ok, but here’s the real drama. It’s got the whole Bluetooth thing so you can make a hands free phone call. Ok, well me, I’ve got one of those afrocentric names. I didn’t choose it, I was saddled with it by my parents. Does the Prius recognize my name when you say it out loud? Of course not! How about my friend Arkeem? Or Nzigha? Or Doughboy? Dedan? Nothing! But Suzy, Sarah, Molly, Dan, Ralph, and Paul and call get their hands free phone call from inside a fucking Prius!

And its’ not just the Prius, Fuck Jott! Fuck my cell phone for not recognizing my people, fuck the programmers who program this shit. Here’s a clue programmers. You want real voice recognition? Watch the Wire, collect every name you can from the extras credits on the Wire, and program your software to recognize those names. Until your cell device can tell the difference between a Dijonaise and a lemonjello, don’t call it voice recognition. And I’m out.

2007-10-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

Wanted: Assimilated Negress

Black (or some derivation of) woman who is fully assimilated into the dominant culture. Most likely you straighten your hair, hold a master’s level or higher degree in a field other than business administration, and are often confused for a Caucasian on the phone. No doubt ghetto people frighten you, you’ve summered in the Hamptons, the vineyard…or anywhere else. You know the difference between polenta and grits, orzo and long-grain rice, spaghetti and angel hair pasta. Even better you appreciate a merlot or Syrah but are confused by fourteen inch rims and platinum grills. Basketballs are confusing to you but at some point in your life you’ve played tennis, lacrosse ,soccer or field hockey. And you were good! You were raised playing some classical instrument and most likely all of your boyfriends have been white or Indian. You’ve spent sometime over seas but only in the most cosmopolitan places, London, Paris, Prague, maybe Nairobi. All your friends are white, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Indian, or mixed. You are always the only black girl in the group. You have no ass, at least, not for a black girl. Or if you do, you are ashamed of it. You don’t know what grape soda tastes like and you don’t see what’s so bad about Marin county.

You beautiful woman you, I want to dirty naughty things to you.
I am a black geek. I’m a hairy gym frequenter who, like you went to boarding schools and Ivy league institutions, but unlike you I rebelled. Not into the waiting arms of hood mentality, but into comic books, sci-fi, and target practice. The result is a viciously smart creative subaltern po mo negro with great aim and the flirting skills of a freshmen in college (Wanna hump?) Like a wounded cub who strayed too far from the pack, I now realize my place is back with the suburban negroes. I want in. Help me to re-assimilate and I promise you some of the freakiest physical delights your whitewashed ass can handle…and some it can’t.

Dead serious

Art and Ownership

2007-10-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

Hello Folks,

Just a quick note to let all of you know that I'll be blogging over at powells.com as part of the mini-celebration of the 331/3 series. I should be up on either 10/24 or 10/25.

Check it out.

Hope everyone is doing well.

--Shawn

Another quick note: We want to post your musings, thoughts, etc. Send them to us and we'll throw you up. This blog is as much yours as it is ours.

Easy.

Even grandmas are stacking up on old wooden pistols

2007-10-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

See, here I was trying to write some literate stuff on how I'm so happy I've been reading and writing so much. Then people have to send me this image. And where is this from, you might ask? The mother fucking C.I.A.

It's not Halo 3 ya'll. This is grown man times. No bullshit.

I am not an afrogeek, he is

2007-10-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, so see if you can find what my girl Halima calls the Double consciousness moment. I need to write a thesis on that one moment. I fucking love this kid.

Dhalgren

2007-10-08T10:00:00.001-07:00

Where is, as Mos Def would say, The New Danger? I just finished reading Chip Delaney’s Dhalgren—something I do every two years—and recognized just how dangerous the book is. A queer brother writing what has been termed SF, shifting perspective, non-standard narrative techniques…the novel is heavy, but not in a bad way. It was first published when I was three-years-old and I read it (for the first time and a first edition) when I was nineteen. And I’ve been reading it ever since.

But where is the new Dhalgren?

Some would argue that Kodwo Eshun’s More Brilliant than the Sun fits the bill in a very specific way: It heralded a new way of looking at SF. And I’ll argue with anyone that electronic music is SF made audible. The sad thing is many people won't have the chance to read Eshun’s book because it is a) out of print and, b) costs over $200 on the after-market. You might want to get together with a few friends and all of you can chip in to buy the book and take turns reading it. That’s your homework.

While I hold SF/Fantasy and horror dear to my heart, most of the stuff produced by Black Folks is rather safe and pedestrian. The last Black-themed/centered work that really hit me was Octavia E. Butler's Parables books. And this was a long time ago.

I feel that the Afro-Geek/Black-Nerd/Alterna-Black aesthetic needs to be dangerous. It is our duty to confront the banality of the world, to offer different perspectives on how the world can be. To rewrite our existence and attack the stasis-quo. And I’m not just talking about books.

We need better films. Eve’s Bayou was probably the last Black-themed/centered film worth watching. There are a few films (Son of Man is a great example) that try to address the multi-facets of Black life (of course these aren't American films), but Who’s Your Caddy? Soul Plane? Code Name: The Cleaner? Get the Fuck out of here.

Music has always been a great place for alternative Black expression. Check out Alice Smith, Bows, and Charlie Dark. But this is not enough.

Television is full of shit. I urge all of us to boycott the box. Even though I am enamored of genre television (BSG; Trek; Heroes (the only brother was a convict married to a white girl, and the only sister—who messed with white boys, was killed; Torchwood (best new show, but the only Black character they’ve had (so far) was a killin’-ass cyborg woman); Eureka, a Black female agent who loves the white boys; and I could go on and on? I asked this before—could a Black themed genre show fly?

But I’m an author, and it always comes back to words. Where are those imagineers who create different worlds in the middle of the night? Where are those who create the monsters of tomorrow, and then gives us the means to defeat them? Where are those writers who make me get a dictionary, an encyclopedia, an atlas, and a bible when I read there work?

I want (need) to be challenged emotionally, spiritually, and psychically.
Where is the new (next) tome that will leave a Dhalgren-sized hole in the Afro-sphere?

Shawn

Almost made me cry

2007-09-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

So here's yet another post connected to the now year old Black Emo post. This is a comment someone left; Someone who finally understands what I was talking about. I love all you little undercover and over cover Black emo kids. Swear to my moms!

hey im a black emo girl too and it doesnt show because im scared. when im alone i start listening to all these rock ,heavey metal and screamo music like i love it its so esay to relate to . but im a poser because anytime im near black kids i act all fake like a typical black girl who yells alot and gives adittude and also my frds always make fun of emos so its so hard for me to come out and say that im a black emo and i love screamo. i cry alot because i dont really feel that i belong anywhere and im in the wrong person like my dad and sister said. i dont listen to hip hop or r&b and the only hip hop artist i actually know is kanye west but i dont listen to him. i just tryed to listening to him . the only person who knows im emo is my close frd and cousin and my broher and sister who dont accept it .everyday im trying to look for some hip hop artist or r&b artist to like but it just doesnt intrest me and i guess i am who i am and im emo and one day ill hopfully find my confidence and say i love all these bands and style but for now im just trying to figure out if im wrong or right . thx afrogeek for writing this and making it a topic because this is the first time i told anyone or anything hehe.

This is about to be my anthem

2007-09-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

I'm just saying: For years everybody and their momma been telling me and Lupe Fiasco the same thing. Big up the Niggerati! Big up Negritude! Big up broke ass black non wanna be boogie bamba bomb!

If this is what they are doing to white college boys god help us all

2007-09-20T11:46:00.000-07:00

Ronald WImberly and shit

2007-09-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yo, I usually don't like cross pollinating Afrogeeks and Code Z, but check out the interview I did with artist Ron Wimberly, the artist on Sentences: tehe life of M.F. grimm hitting shops tomorrow. Then run like a slave from the plantation to your local comic shop and grab three copies of the book. It's a banger!

Things I'm digging on

2007-08-30T13:26:00.001-07:00

1. Being Black. We are just so damn beautiful, unruly, passionate, and strong. I look in the mirror everyday and thank the universe for melanin.

2. M.I.A.'s new album Kala. Flawed, messy, but still more interesting than 90% of what passes for music. Paper Planes is the standout cut.

3. Hereoes Season 1 on DVD. The show is dope--but is it just me, or didn't they allow Nikki and Dl to kiss? Mohinder and that lightweight Betty Boop looking white girl kissed, but no salt and pepper loving.

4. Celebrity meltdowns. Maybe every overrated star will pull a successful Owen Wilson and get back to the business of making art. I don't give two shits about "celebrity's" personal lives. Entertain me, cotdammit!

5. The impending marriage of Black Canary and Green Arrow. Call me sentimental.

6. Live action role-playing games (LARPS). I met this brother who was kind of square by day, but turned into this fierce Kemetic vampire at night. More on him in a later post.

7. Love. I'm in love and the shit is so dope.

8. International Travel. The idea of nation-states is about as outdated as What's Happening. We live in a global city--let's hack that mutha!

9. Writing. I've found my spark again. It's not so much about inspiration as it is about just doing the damn thing. Don't talk about it, be about it.

10. Chocolate. It is just so damn good. I've been contacted to do some reviews of local chocolates. I'm getting free chocolate and I'm getting paid to write about it. The world is such a beautiful place.

All love, all the time.

Shawn

The internets is a funny thing-Black Emo Part Deux

2007-08-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so last year, June to be exact, I made one of my oh so famous rant post (totally orphaned by the spell check I'm realizing) decrying the absence of Black Emo. I wanted to know where it was. I quote (myself) "I’m asking about a cultural space of black emoticons that don’t worry about being savvy."

Here's the line to the original post.
Man I swear that post has generated more consistent comments than anything else n this damn blog. And more confusion for me as well. It's like some people knew where I was coming from and other black kids just got straight defensive. So just to make myself clear: I think Black Emo is the cutest little thing in the world. I want to kiss and hug all the little black emo kids and tell them to whine and cry their little hearts out. Emote all your passions until there's nothing left but the spent drained viscous fluid that was your soul left in your malnourished frail frames. Do you! Because in doing you, you extricate the 21st century Negro from the frame of "authenticity", you liberate the descendants of African slaves from the chains of "Keeping it real", you promote po-mo afro negro counter-"hood" hegemony.
So dance your depressive dance of mourning for all those souls not yet dead,. Fling your emaciated tatto covered frames upon the altar of designer pharmaceuticals and discount clothing. Bow to the deities of disinterest and delirium. And know that this afrogeek affirms your right to not only exist, but thrive... as much as your kind tends to do.

If you are in the Bay, come and check me out.

2007-08-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

What's up, A-Geeks? I hope all is well. I kow that my postings have been a bit sporadic, but I have been trying to complete a few differnt projects as well as working on a sci-fi, afrocentric puppert show--it's going to be nuts.

But enough of the excuses. If you are in the Bay. come check out the 331/3 reading at Pegasus Books, in downtown Berkely.

Mention that you read AfroGeeks and get a special surprise.

Hope to see you there.

Peace,

Shawn

33 & 1/3 reading

Sunday, August 19th, 7:30 pm
33 1/3 is a series of books written about important and/or seminal music albums. Reading from their books will be Kate Schatz, author of Rid of Me, Douglas Wolk, author of James Brown Live at the Apollo, and Shawn Taylor, author of People's Instinctive Travels and Paths of Rhythm. Join us for this dynamic event. Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, (510) 649-1320.

Would you scrap with lions for the youth?

2007-08-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Watch the whole thing, don't turn away.

I'm just saying, imagine if we fought for all of our youngsters this hard, negritos? What would happen if we stop saying things like "He made 16" like it wasn't supposed to happen. That's all I'm saying. I'm in Oakland, where eight african-american males were killed this past weekend. It's easy to blame the youth, but I wonder sometimes, if we all grew up under the protection of momma Water buffalo.

But at least I’m not an Indian

2007-08-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

Man, I just watched Pathfinder, aka Indians versus Vikings. Why, you may ask? Because I am a connoisseur of the craptastic. Man, I would hate to be a movie or T.V. Indian. I mean they can’t do shit without some white dude who thinks he’s like them. I’m not really sure why they made this movie, wasn’t last of the Mohicans enough? Here you’ve got these Indians living in these lands for generation upon generation in synch wit the land and everything in sets look like they were designed by the Elfquest people. Then all of a sudden hairy biker dudes with fat bellies and thick ass flavor savor beards come barreling thorough and the Indians are like “Nob! What are we going to do Brain?” Only instead of Brain, they got some pale faced skinny white boy who was left behind from the last visit from the Hell’s angels, I mean Vikings. Naturally the kid saves the day. In the end its some very thinly veiled “white worship/mixed raced folks are so cool” hot propaganda mess. I was hoping for some serious violence but all I got was that damn digital blood shit. Hollywood and independent film makers, enough with the digital blood ok? I like the “squees’ filled with real blood packets. The digital splash shows you’ve got more money than talent. Hire a good sfx person and stop leaning on the digital monkey boy back at the labs.

Ok, so after Pathfinder, to avoid doing work I read Scalped. I been trying to mess with the individual issues, but I knew it was a white cat writing it and I have problems with Caucasoids writing primarily non Caucasoid characters. But I decided to put my initial bias aside for the sake of a potentially good book., besides I used to read Scout It’s a really good book! The problem with the book is not that its written by a white dude, that’s just funny. No the problem is that it doesn’t need to have Indians in it. The thing reads more like a Western than anything else, a dirty, shit kicking, fuck ya in the eye type Western. And its good for that, so I’ll probably keep reading it, but damn, I’m so happy I’m not an Indian.

Kunta Kinte had High blood pressure

2007-08-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

I am the child of field negroes. I say this with little pride. Not because of anything those people did; they survived off of the left over scrapes of grub and built half of this country. They chopped wood and carried water not to find their spiritual centers but to avoid the bite of the whip. What little respite from their labors were found in joyful communion with each other. Still, I am not proud to be the child of field negroes, because I ma left with their legacy.
I worked as a field negro almost a decade ago. There was no whip, no dogs on me if I ran, but I labored in the fields from dawn to dusk thirty planting, hoeing, weeding, and picking. I threw 40lb bails of alfalfa,, straw, and hay twice a day every day, because hungry animals don’t know its Sunday, as my old boss used to say. I shoed animals and milked them. I shaved sheep and castrated piglets (keeps their weight down, so you can hold on to them long enough to sell them). Yes, my friends, before I was an Afrogeek, I was a Nature Negro. They called it an internship so they could pay me $80 a month. I lived off of beans and rice and whatever I could pick from the fields. I read my books, did my writing and cried when my favorite goat died. I weighed 190 lbs and had not an ounce of fat on me. I say once again, I worked as a field negro.
Ok, I’m 5 foot 11 inches. At 190 lbs, according to the Body mass index I was overweight. Now while that work as a field negro was hard it also had the benefit of sculpting my body. Along with my “no fat cause I got no money” diet I can honestly say that I was in the best shape of my life. I ran up mountains, man! Mountains! With backpacks on. But according to the health council of America, or whoever came up with the BMI, I was overweight. Last month I went to the doctor for something totally unrelated and I was told I have high cholesterol. I’m thirty one years old. I don’t eat fast food. I’m at the gym at least three times a week. I run four miles every other day, and I have high cholesterol. I am not proud to be the child of field negroes.
My people were never allowed anywhere near any kind of Big house. We didn’t get table scraps, we got the scraps of the table scraps. If you see my cousins, you’d understand. Not one of them is under 6’2. All of them are big people. Not necessarily fat, in my eyes at least, just big black folks. I’m the runt of the litter at 5’11. We have a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, the whole nine. It’d easy to blame diet, and yeah to some extent its true, but there’s also the legacy; The legacy of the slave trade that made it such that those African Americans with high blood pressure were able to survive the months at sea in sub-human conditions, the legacy of sub-standard nutrition that allowed those African slaves who retained all types of cholesterol to be better suited for abuse than those that were accustomed to healthy foods. The legacy of maladaptive bodies. I’ve understood for a long time that African-Americans were not meant to survive in the United states in a socio-political context, but its coming to me now as a embodied concept.
I’ve always laughed at the notion of reparations. America’s not giving shit up and black people need to do for self, case closed. But in my dreamy sci-fi mind, I imagine a world where a people are killed, bred, and fed to need corporate only chemicals to keep them alive. In this dream, the chemical in the form of the whitest pill on the planet is called reparations. Then I wake up and find a doctor telling me to take a pill for the rest of my life that will lower my cholesterol. I’m just saying, is this the world we really live in? Is this the racially harmonized future the positivist preach about? Understand that this is not distress, this is confusion.

So I am not proud to be the descendant of field negroes. I am not embarrassed by them, nor ashamed. But I cannot be proud. It’s an ambiguous place to be at, but I believe that ambiguity to be the most genuine state of truly aware African-Americans today.

Imagine if we could harness this power for something good?

2007-08-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

We got criminals in other countries doing our dances from like twenty years ago. Can you imagine the state of black america if we were strategic about our influence? And the tranny criminal playing the girl is killing me with the eye movements.

It takes so little to make me happy.

2007-08-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

Jesus christ had dreads...and so did I. But that's another story. Big story, maybe not story but just something that makes me proud to embrace my negritude with both arms, the boondocks are coming back! Hear that haters? Fuck your rumors, fuck your bullshit lies about how Aaron mcgruder had gone the way of Dave Chappelle, who is not crazy either by the way( Just cause a black man gives up some money you all think he's smoking crack and getting therapy in South Africa). I love the boondocks. Shit it's the reason I can't get behind the no "nigger" movement. Some people need to be called niggers. Not white people, not asian people, just some ignant ass negroes with no common sense. It should be said not in a loving way, not in a proud way, but in a "Have you lost what precious little sense god gave you?" type way. And that's what Boondocks gives, along with biting social commentary, hilarious characters, and the cutest little Riley on the planet. I still laugh when I think of him chasing santa claus with a paint gun screaming "Pay what you owe, Santa!" That's a sentiment that strikes at the heart of every ghetto kid on the planet! One caveat to my joy, as a recent detractor from the uni-mind that is cable, I'm hoping those cartoon Network cats have the common sense to put the shows on Itunes on the regular. I'm just saying, some cats can disguise their Ip addresses and be downloading stuff with impunity. Not that I'm such an individual. I find such people reprehensible...Who the hell am I lying to, HACK THE MOTHER FUCKING PLANET, BBEYYYTTCCHEESSS!

And now for our keynote speaker: master P

2007-07-16T15:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve been trying to follow the path of righteousness lately. I’ve been staying away from pork, temptations of the flesh, and that old heathen devil brew known as the mojito. And I’ve been trying…I say I’ve been trying to keep my personal level of profanity down to its absolute minimum. Then I hear that the NAACP replaced Bill Clinton with master P as a the keynote youth speaker this year. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU BACKWARDS BULLSHIT NEGROES!? I swear on my moms I’m about drive over to Justin Timberlake’s house and give him my black card. I’ll be like “Dude, since everybody else seems to want to give you a ghetto pass, let me officially donate my Black card to you. Take it, you want to be black so bad. I’m sick of these Negroes!”
I’m not against Master P. I actually think the man is a brilliant marketing entrepreneur. But is he the one the youth need to hear from? With all the shit that’s going on for black people these days you pick a former rapper turned dancing under the stars man as your go to guy? What Malcolm Gladwell was too busy? Obama said No? Don Cheadle was off shooting another movie? Master Fucking P? No wonder enrollment numbers for the National association for the advancement of CERTAIN people is so low. Fuck it, next time ya’ll se me, don’t be surprised if I’m speaking Hindi trying to pass myself off as the only dark skinned bollywood star.

10 Questions

2007-07-04T14:18:00.000-07:00

1. Don’t you miss Justice League Unlimited?
2. Even though the movie sucks, don’t you watch Dune every time it comes on?
3. Is Lauren Hill’s behavior just crazy, or is it a sign of genius to come?
4. Speaking of Ms. Hill, does the beginning of the Fugee’s Ready or Not still give you expectant chills?
5. Was Katt Williams’ The Pimp Chronicles this generation’s Raw?
6. Sticking with the comedian theme: Now that Dave Chappelle is off the air—and out of the public eye—is there any funny black folks on the scene?
7. Is A Vampire in Brooklyn really as bad as I think it is?
8. What haven’t you purchased TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain?
9. Is LA Haine really the French Do the Right Thing?
10.Maybe it's just me, but isn't enhanced melanin content a super power?

--Shawn

2007-07-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

First the gun draws/then you know/something’s happening—uttered by a voice that is both threatening and mournful, Gun Draws is one of the most political songs of the summer, and an anchor track of one of the year’s hottest releases. Even though the joint was leaked some time ago, with the rise of gun violence during the summer months—especially here in the Bay Area of California—it (hopefully) will get the heavy rotation that it deserves.

And for all of the idiots, who believe that it is a pro-gun joint, pay attention to the lyrics. It is decidedly anti-gun.

Rotate it again and listen with better ears.

Pharoahe Monch’s Desire is the album that hip-hop fans should be back-flipping in celebration of its arrival. It is everything that hip-hop is: witty, dangerous, clichéd, political, frustrating, hypocritical, contradictory, metaphysical and just plain ill.

Pharoahe has always been one of those lyricists that people have said, “if only he had the right beat.” My man has the right beats. I also heard that he has put together a touring band, so expect the live shows to be off the skeleton.

The album swings from the gospel longing of the opening track, to the hip-hop-a-billy of Body Baby to a surprisingly effective retooling of Public Enemy’s Welcome to the Terrordome. This is my favorite track. While the original version was a window into the apocalypse, Monch flips it on some Sign ‘O’ the Times, state of the union shit. I was bouncing so hard in my car that I almost had an accident. It would have been worth it.

Run, not walk, to your music store of choice and cop it.
♠♠♠♠.5 (out of 5)

-Shawn

My brother from another mother...

2007-06-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

...he's the bad guy in this short. Yes, I know it has nothing to do with Afrogeekdom, but I gotta rep for my fam. Watch it and love it.

STRANGLEHOLDS TRUE TO JOHN WOO SHORT FILM CONTEST

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I'm tripping, right?

2007-06-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

How do you define racism? I tend to define it as taking advantage of the benefits of one's race without regard to whom it may harm to do so. So yea, in my definition black people can be racists. But we don't make video games about it. That's some crazy shit. Case and point, Border Patrol. There is a game where you pretend to be an illegal Mexican immigrant trying to get into the country without being attacked by the border patrol. I'm going to write that again in case you missed it: There-is-a-game where-you-pretend -to-be-an-illegal-Mexican-immigrant-trying-to-get-into-the-country-without-being attacked-by-the-border-patrol. Now I'm not Mexican. Ain't got no part of Mexico in me. I don't even like Mexican food. But that shit is wrong. Dead wrong. Of course we know that, right? People know its wrong and just accept it, right? Wrong! Check out this article here by the CEO of deadline games, developers of the video game, I shit you not, I swear on the holy Koran I shit you not, Chili Con Carnage. His argument is that there is a double standard applied to video game companies. Fuck you man! You got a move in your game called the Burrito blasts! I can't handle your whining. That song everyone's a little bit racist is a fucking joke, not a life motto. I'd also like to let out my own personal racism at this point saying I personally have issues with White South Africans. It's like kicking it with post reconstruction white people, Mother fuckers don't know how to act around emancipated children of slaves.

Yeah Yeah I know, What about Def Jam's ICON or any other video games that have racalized characters, are they all racist? Short answer, YES! Longer answer, racial depictions have never been put out without bias, so why should I assume that there are no biases in video game depictions of raced characters? the question isn't "Why do you see race everywhere?" but rather, what work has gone into assuring that I won't have to?"

Totally unrelated Phonogram feeds my anglocized literature fetish like nothing else since the early days of Hellblazer. And Tyler got me in to see a special screening of Black Sheep which is probably the best new horror flick out, ever! Peep the trailer below.

A pretty sounding girl asked me to put this out there

2007-06-20T20:56:00.000-07:00

My favorite racist joke of all time: How do White fairy tales start? "Once upon a time..." How do black fairy tales start, "Ya'll Mother fuckers ain't never gonna believe this shit..."

So ya'll mother fuckers ain't gonna believe this shit. I'm on my way to get some fried fish and okra and the comic book store calls me. Todd (Hi Todd) big man manager of the shop calls me and is all "There's this girl here who wants to talk to someone about black villains in comic books." So yeah, I just talked to a total stranger about black villains in comics for like an hour. This is my life.

Anyway, the conversation revealed my inability to think of major black villains in comics. Maybe its because I'm always focusing on the white man as evil. JOKE! Kind of... Anyway, does anyone have a comprehensive list of black super villains in comics? I'd love to see it. Ok, I'm off again cataloging appearances of black people on Angel. 4 in the first season, including this bad ass. I'm trying to set-up an interview for codez about this movie, but if you get a chance, peep, I'm through with white girls. It's the best romantic comedy with black people in it since hav plenty.

10 Questions

2007-06-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

1. Where is Cody Chesnutt?
2. Will there ever be a black genre (sci fi/horror/magical realism/fantasy) show?
3. If it did happen, would it be as well written as Buffy?
4. Doesn't it make you want to vomit that Tyrese is up for the Luke Cage film--to be directed by John Singleton?
5. Doesn't a Luke Cage film make you want to vomit?
6. How many black scientists can you name?
7. Laurence Fishburne as the voice of the Silver Surfer--yeah or nay?
8. Speaking of Larry...Were the Matrix films the last great representation of people of color in a genre form?
9. Are you as excited as I am about the new Bad Brains album?
10. Will the Transformers film live up to the pure amazement of the kick-ass trailer?

--Shawn

Fuck her!

2007-06-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

Quick rant:

I’m all hectic busy doing stuff for school as well as codez but I had ot take a moment to write this rant: If this cracker ass rich snobby whore of a slut doesn’t do her full fucking sentence then every hood homie and sis who ever had a cousin, mother, brother, uncle or play cousin who got locked up for no good god damn reason needs to go bang down her damn door, force feed the slag a pork sandwich, then carry her trifling ass back up to county. And if PoPo don’t want her, pull some old school Malcolm X stuff and just post guard up in that mug making God damn sure her scrawny ass can’t get out of prison. I’m so pissed at this crap you have no idea. Yeah its because I’m not sleeping, but its also because I know straight thugs from ages 12-17 who sorted their lives out and made some rectifying decisions about the way they thought, only to be violated on some out of county probation violation crap. Now they are career felons. By that I mean you don’t have a career because you’re a felon. Meanwhile, Blowjob-on-a-stick gets to walk out of jail cause she’s got the clap. I try and stay away from the pop crap, I swear I do, but this little retarded wanna be slut is getting on my last nerve. And don’t say its not racial. Didn’t Lil’ Kim do her full jail time? So fuck Paris Hilton. I know its not an original sentiment, but it’s genuine.

In defense of illegal downloading

2007-06-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Not that I am a super fan of the law but when its reasonable to comply and it doesn’t piss me off, I follow the law. I’m more a fan of the laws of the common good than of corporate necessity but I’d be a liar if I said that I was still the rampant disregarder of laws I was in the past. But some laws, some rules are just retarded. More to the point, some laws regarding the web, international trade, and music just need to rammed up the ass of whatever greedy fucking suit thought of them. Case and point, the new Dizzee rascal cd.
OK, so I’m on the xl recording e-mail list, it’s the British based company that has Dizzee, and rjd2 signed and used to have M.I.A as well. Any way, they send me an e-mail saying the new dizzee is out. Well, you all know how I feel about Diz right? So I take some old cds that I’ve ripped already and sold them back to my favorite cd reseller. Easy as this sounds I have to go to Berkeley, which I really can’t stand and deal with the cd buying guy who is lamenting the passing of his chosen career field. Word to the retailers of the world, don’t bitch about how no one is buying cds anymore to someone in the cd shop. Just not cool. Anyway, I do the quick scan and I’m all “what the hell?” I talk with the people who work there and everyone’s all “Sorry homes, ain’t no Dizzee rascal out today.” Fuck, I’m thinking. My damn anglophillic nature has gotten the best of my yet again (I could go so into that right now, but this ain’t that kind of site. Suffice to say, British chicks are hot and I’m a moron.)

No drama I’m thinking. It’s a UK release but I get UK shit all the time. I mean haven’t I been following this entire season of Doctor Who? And they don’t even broadcast over here? But see I’m still trying to be legal about it. So I go corporate and hit up ITunes UK. Sure enough they have it. You can hear the clips and everything. Cost 79 pence to download each track. Figure, I’ll take a hit on the conversion but screw it, anything for Dizzee. So I clock to download an d the bastards transfer me to the U.S. ITunes store, where its not available. What the hell?

The truth of it is, some bomb ass Uk grimster is going to put that album up for downloading sometime today or tomorrow and depending on how I feel, I will download that shit. But this is one of cases where it’s the RIAA’s fault, or whoever the hell else is responsible for making sure tariffs are paid. The days of multiple release dates are over people. The days of DRM are fast approaching their end as well. If its gonna blow, let it blow. I’m from New York. Back in the day some Nigerians would have already burned the Dizzee cd and be selling it, complete with cover and endnotes, on 125th st. for five dollars. What the hell makes people think that we don’t all have a little Nigerian in us? Shit, if I didn’t love Dizzee so much I’d be bootlegging my main main’s bread and butter. But its not the artist fault. It’s the RIAA and all the rest of those corporate cock suckers. So fuck them up their commercial little asses. This rant has been brought to you by my reading of Lawrence Lessig’s The future of ideas, Free Culture, and Code 2.0 in the span of nine days while not sleeping and on 1000 mgs of 5-htp a day. Yeah, its’ that kind of week. Next on the literature parade is the complete (or as complete as I was able to find on Amazon) science fiction catalog of Samuel Delany while on an unconfirmed amounts of Provigil. Yeah, I’m on some Doctor Strange sort of vibe.

Been A Long Time

2007-06-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

What Up?
Sorry that we’ve been so out of touch, but Ayize and I have been working on our individual projects and I know that I have been a bit overwhelmed. If all goes well, there will be some great changes to enhance the entire AfroGeeks experience.
On another note, the book that I wrote for the 331/3 series is out now. It is about A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. It is available from all major bookstores and amazon.com.
The gist of the book is a view of hip-hop through an AfroGeek lens.
Even if you don’t get my book, please support the series. If you are a music geek, the series should feel like a homecoming.
All Peace. All The Time.

Hostel 2-aka Why I'm afraid of rich white people

2007-05-31T00:25:00.000-07:00

The heart of the American body is capitalism. If that heart were to have a malignant tumor , it would be titled Hostel 2. I just got out of the theater from an advance screening with the director. Ok, first off, if you hate slasher films, don’t go see this movie. If you love slasher flicks, the then gods of blood and gore have blessed you and Eli Roth is your prophet.
Hostel 2 picks up exactly where the first leaves off, both literally and symbolically. In the vein of The empire strikes back, Evil dead 2, and Superman 2 it truly is better than the first one. Those who know Eli Roth’s work (Cabin Fever, Hostel, and the Thanksgiving trailer from Grind house) are familiar with his cinematic lexicon of straight ahead harder, faster, longer death, blood and gore. Hostel 2 can easily be seen as his master thesis on the semantics of the decapitated and disemboweled. The coup de grace which I will not be a prick and spoil for anyone, will leave some feeling vindicated and others just plain sore. But rather than focus solely on the gore of the film, (There will be debates about whether such a film, but really they will mean genre, is necessary when the country is at war, children are killing other children, and a little white girl is lost somewhere in America. The answer of course, is Yes) I choose to look at the unstated terror the film represents: Rich white people.
Anyone familiar with Hostel 1 or Hostel 2 knows the basic premise, people pay to kill other people in the middle of central Europe. Now while the first movie warned stupid white children against taking advantage of the economic desolation of the white third world, this sequel allows for a clearer analysis of those paying for the privilege of killing. These are affluent white (in one case Asian) people with PDAs and corporate jobs who play golf and have families. They sniff cocaine in moderation and jog in the morning, all the time thinking about the type of power they will radiate once they’ve killed someone else. At one point a character, a potential killer, asks his friend whether or not they are sane. His friend replies of course they are sane. In places where there are no laws, “Like Chad or New Orleans…” people kill each other all the time. Yes, he said like Chad or New Orleans. Now its easy to be disgusted by such a statement, but I personally appreciate the honesty. See, a lot of times people don’t understand why some white people scare me. I’m not afraid of all white people, just rich ones who feel like they are lacking something in their lives. What they could be lacking is witnessing the death of a crazy negro with dreads who writes rambling blog entries. You know, like you’d find in Chad or New Orleans.
I won’t spoil the ending of the film by giving you the moral of the tale. Suffice to say the justice meted out in the film speaks to the reality of heart of not only the United States, but also the world. Not for the feint of heart, Hostel 2 is the best, and most potentially thought provoking slasher flicks I’ve seen in years.

Dwayne McDuffie interview

2007-05-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

I would have loved to post this interview on Afrogeeks, but Codez hooked it up, so Code z gets it. It don't mean I can't link to it though. Dwayne McDuffie is one of the key figures behind Milestone comics, the Teen Titans and the Justice League Cartoons. And yes, I got to interview him.

It's like Sesame Street

2007-04-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know gift of gab did it first on A to G, but Papoose just gained a litle more respect from this Afrogeek for the below. Still doesn't match up to Dizzee rascal though. No one does. Much as I can't deal with Rupert Murdock, its worth fucking with Myspace just to check out the new dizzee tracks. but whatever. Peep below.

Stop snitching? Stop smoking crack first

2007-04-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

To snitch or not to snitch, that is the question. Actually, it’s not. It’s a reduction of a complex set of societal challenges into a slogan that can be put on a t-shirt. Keeping the complexity alive allows for the question: Given the legacy of police brutality does it make sense for those who engage in the guerilla economy of drug dealing to police themselves of their communities? And if so, do those self appointed individuals properly maintain an order that allows civilians, i.e. those not involved in the drug game, to live their lives in a fashion that regular policing would not support? Not so easy to put on a white T.
I was raised not to speak to police. I mean literally. They didn’t have any business with me so I should have any business with them. Even before I started doing the minor dirt that I did, however, I was stopped by police, had dogs sicced on me, had an N.Y.P.D’s knee in my neck for running for a bus, you know all the standard shit a young black man in the U.S has to deal with. But as for this bullshit question of if there was a murderer in my building would I call the police, my answer is and probably always will be “Hell yeah!”

What kind of moron do you have to be to allow yourself and possibly your family to let someone with a casual disregard for human life chill anywhere near you? As for this code business, does the “code” have a way of protecting me and mine from this murderer’s aggression? Because if not, I would firmly suggest the “code” check out my new website, www. movethefuckon.com and kill that noise. I do agree that there should be a way for communities to police themselves, but when has that not turned into some mafia related type shit? I pay taxes, I ain’t paying the “code watchers” or whatever they’d call themselves. In some ways this seems like some childish antics; “What the police don’t want to protect our communities the way that they should? Well screw them then, we’ll just police ourselves.” Which would be fine, if the main proponents of the idea weren’t individuals tweaking off ever increasingly powerful drugs.
See this code shit seems like a conflation between some seventies post black panther politics and a marketing campaign done by some pretty smart drug dealers. And yes, there are smart drug dealers out there. Take the cat below for instance. Now he may sound like mumbles the unintelligible, but this negro has turned his main nemesis, snitches, into his bread and butter via a series of dvds called “Stop snitching”. Of course, he’s arrested now, but given the options he’d set up for himself by being in the game, namely, jails, institutions, or the grave, I’d say he made a pretty smart move for himself.

What does this have to do with afrogeeks? Well when your neighborhood drug dealer starts selling dvds called “stop snitching” with his crack, maybe he’s not just a drug dealer. Maybe he’s an Afrogeek as well.

Freaks on a Plane

2007-04-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

So I was on a plane and I saw two brothers that I thought I could strike up a conversation with. One of them had on a Green Lantern shirt and they had a stack of graphic novels between them. What luck, I thought to myself. What are the chances of meeting AfroGeeks on a plane? We made small talk around how jacked up Black Folks are portrayed in comics and other genre forms and what we’d do to fix the situation, if given the chance.

A lull hit our little triad until one of the cats asked this question, “If you had to kick it with one comic chick, who would it be?” I was certain that I did not hear him correctly so I asked him to repeat himself. He did more than repeat, he rephrased, “What comic broad would you f*%k?” He then launched into what he would do to Storm. His boy hopped right on the freak train and talked about having a threesome with him, Shadow Lass (from the Legion of Superheroes) and Wonder Girl (from the Teen Titans). Then they had the nerve to whirl their expectant eyes on me.

I was at a loss. I thought about telling the flight attendant that the brothers mentioned something about a bomb and the white house but I did not think that that would be a good idea. But I considered it.
I said nothing. I put on my headphones phones and dialed the iPod to the Fishbone, Bad Brains, 24-7 Spyz, Public Enemy and Orange 9mm mix and entered my own world where I wondered: When did AfroGeeks become AfroFreaks?

Nasty.

Sirens coming!

2007-04-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

Just got the release date of the new Dizzee rascal album. Reminds me of just how much I freaking love the old school U.K sound. Mickey Finn, Shy Fx,

Goldie, Congo Natty, dillinja and Lemon D, M beat, Tricky, all of it. I swear to God I was going to move to Brixton just to catch the buzz. That low freq jump up sound made not only for good sounds but for the requirement of the body moving.

Keep in mind, this is back when Black men in the states didn’t dance no more, all we did was dis. (Peep that you Cee-lo fans) Meanwhile people in the Uk were going through gyrations on the floor like it was going out of style. Sometimes, when I don’t want people to believe I’m from the U.S I try to speak with what I like to call my “Tricky” voice. Just listen to Maxinquaye, an awesome name for an album by the way, and try and do the whisper thing he does on the “Hell is around the corner”. Makes you sound British and tough.

I love Tricky. I love Jungle, I love grime, I love 2 step, I love Drum and Bass. I know it’s a case of the grass being greener on the otherside but if you’ve never heard of any of the music I’ve mentioned go find it, turn your bass all the way up and pretend like Big brother’s not watching. I swear you’ll have fun

The Fox is not Jolie

2007-04-12T19:15:00.000-07:00

OK, You all know I try not to take this media shit with much seriousness. I mean manipulation of images is fun and cool and all but its not that serious, right? Freaking wrong. Step 1, Mark Millar, bad ass comic book man puts out a bad ass super villain comic called Wanted, a few years ago. It was super dope. Main female villain is a Catwoman knock off dyed bronze named The Fox. Hot like fire and black, or at least Puerto Rican, right? Like a young Eartha Kitt. So how come Angelina Jolie has the part in the movie? What the hell is going on Hollywood? She is not black! And I know its some pasty faced producer in some high class Hollywood hotel suite snorting enough blow to kill an elephant that lifts his head up right before he has a heart attack and says “Hey guys, Fuck a black chick, they have too much attitude anyway. How about we get Angelina Jolie? She was like Tomb Raider.” That shit for brains passes out but his coca induced fantasy lives on. Can you leave the good black parts for the good black actors. Or at least stop making bad black actors play good white roles (See the Kingpin in the Daredevil movie to know what I’m talking about.)

Nalo Hopkinson Interview

2007-04-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

March 6, 2007,

I’m sitting with Nalo Hopkinson, author and editor of many books starting
with Brown girl in the ring and topping it off most recently with The new Moon’s arms. I’m really fortunate to know Nalo. One because she’s cute as all hell. Its not just her looks but its that Caribbean/Canadian accent peppered with words like “bloody” and “Yum”. She’s also one of the most consistently banging sci-fi/speculative fictive/magical realist writers today. I first met Nalo after she came to my rescue on an internet forum which will remain nameless. Since then we’ve been buddies. She was gracious enough to take time away from her adoring public to sit down with the Afrogeek and let him pick her brain.

Me: How does it feel to be one of the primary science fiction/ speculative
fiction writers of color?

Nalo: You know I’m going to argue with the term, right?

Me: I’m hoping you do.

Nalo: It feels bloody weird. I’m not one of the primary anything. I’m one of the few, so de facto I’m one of the primary. It still feel bloody weird. No, I’m not going to tell a story, but I could.

Me: Why don’t you tell me about your latest book?

Nalo: You want me to summarize one of my plots, don’t you? (Laugh) Ok,
you have a 53 year old woman living in the Caribbean in an archipelago that
doesn’t exist, because plausible deniability is good when you come from
the Caribbean. She was christened Chastity as a girl, when she was ten her mother
went out to sea and never came back. When she was 15, she got pregnant by her
friend Michael because she was trying to help him figure out if he was gay or
not. Her father was so angry by this that Chastity moved out to the big island,
the main island, and raised her child out there. And even though Michael wanted
to co-parent she pushed him away. At some point she looked over her life and
decided she needed a name that more reflected her life and re-has renamed herself
Calamity. So when the novel opens she’s fifty three and at her father’s
funeral. When she was a child she could find things but she suppressed that
power when her other went missing, she was afraid of what she would find. But
now as she’s approaching menopause, all these years of accumulated suppression come bubbling to the surface. So every time she has a hot flash, something from her past literally materializes in front of her. Plus there’s the little boy on the beach and the monk seals (Laughter)

Me: I hear good writers are always trying something new with their novels. What
were you trying with this novel?

Nalo: I was trying to write something with a more conventional plot than the
last one…

Me: So you failed miserably?

Nalo: (Sticking her tongue out at me) Not according to Gary Wolf. I was trying to do that and I was also being spurred on by the whole Black men on the down low thing which gets on my last hairy nerve. It just feels like a media ploy to keep black women pissed off and scared of black men and I’m tired of it. So I don’t know how effectively I wrote to that because writing a
message novel is very rarely a good idea but it was definitely on the forefront
of my mind.

Me: A lot of your work has to do with sex, sexuality, and gender. I’m
thinking of the Salt Roads in particular. What’s the reason behind that?

Nalo: Blame Chip Delany. I don’t know the reason behind it. Sex is fun to write. With science fiction and fantasy you can actually take things beyond where people want you to go and sex is a good place to do that.

Me: In the latest novel there’s a lot of time spent of menopause, which
isn’t a popular topic amongst sci-fi/fantasy writers. Are you afraid of
the books reception?

Nalo: It never occurred to me to be afraid. Fantasy readership is aging. And I was thinking about the phenomenon of the poltergeist which is not a ghost but the suppressed sexuality of a girl going into adulthood. I thought if there’s magic that happens at that end then we need magic at the other end too. Because menopause bloody well needs some magic. I don’t see why not menopause. So much of the idea of power, especially for women, is linked to menstrual cycles. But I don’t believe that women lose their power after those stop, so I
played with it.

Me: This book tour is not just your work but a tribute to Octavia Butler. You
want to talk a little about that?

Nalo: Octavia, E. Butler, as far as we know, the first black woman science fiction
writer. She was not much older than me. 58, I believe, when she fell outside
her home February 8, 2006, and died. She’s left a lot of people grief
stricken and missing her. And when I spoke to my editor, the day after Octavia
past, was when my editor said that they were intending to send us both out on
tour together. This is a way of sort of…knowing that she’s going
to be on the tour with me anyway…This is a chance for people to have a
little bit of her, to invoke her presence by having people come and read a bit
of her work.

Me: What's your favorite Octavia
Butler story?

Nalo: You mean something she wrote or something
she did?

Me: Something she did.

Nalo: I was once with her at a convention in France and the last day of the
convention in the last panel the topic was “Whose future?” And there
were about nine of us on the panel. And we were all trying to figure out what
we were going to say. This is a convention that happens in multiple languages
with simultaneous translations. It’s just a huge thing. When we go to
the panel, we found that the moderator had been switched. The woman that was
supposed to have been moderating wanted to talk about women and the future.
She had to leave and she handed it over to a man who thought the panel was how
astonishing it was that everyone on the panel was a woman . (Laughter) And as
we were passing microphones back and forth as we tried to get through this,
I saw Octavia reach for the mic a few times then pull back at the last second.
She leaned over to me and whispered. “No No No, mother always said if
I can’t say anything good I shouldn’t say anything at all.”
And then one of the local writers in the audience stood up and said “You
know the wonderful thing about having women in the field is that men write about
the big things and the women write about small things.” And Octavia said
“Give me that microphone.” I’m sure she said it in a more
polite way but that was the effect. And then she proceeded to very gently, tell
him what it was like. She never tore him a new asshole because she wasn’t
like that. That man did not realize his guts were being served to him on a platter.
She simply made her point and the panel went on. But I clearly remember that
“Give me that microphone” moment. (Laughter).

Me: For people that don’t know her, why should someone read Octavia Butler?

Nalo: Because she was seemed to have no fear looking last the present day. Sci-fi isn’t the future, it’s a funhouse mirror on the present where you can focus on one thing or another. She was one of the people who did cautionary writing, the sort of “If this goes on.” And she was so good at it.
She talks about power, she talks about race, hybridity, even when she isn’t
specifically talking about races on this earth, she talks about the problem
of people having power over each other. She talks about how, as a species, we
like those on top, we always like to dominate each other and how that could
be out undoing. The cool thing is that when I first read her work I thought
of it as harsh. But now when I go back I see the humor, she had a sort of sly
humor, I see the humanity I see the hope. Reading those books is like visiting
with an old friend. So many people from so many different backgrounds have had
a similar response to her work. It’s worth reading just to figure out
what that is all about.

Me: What’s next for you?

Nalo: Get through the tour without such a bad Fibromyalgia flare that I can’t
get out of bed.

Me: where are you next?

Nalo: D.C. ,Baltimore, then New York, and finally
Ft. Lauderdale. Then I have to finish a novel by Nov. 15

Me: Any advice for Afrogeeks?
Or sci-fi people in general?

Nalo: Don’t limit yourself. Don’t assume
you have to look for a publisher who is black. Don’t assume no one will
understand your work. Don’t put up the barriers yourself because then
they’ve won.

You big koala bean head.

2007-04-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

Sheila E is incredibly hot in Krush Groove. That is all.

Keith Knight Interview! Respect the prophet!

2007-04-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

2007 Wondercon-

Keith Knight is pretty much the chilliest socially conscious funny black man
doing comic strips today. He’s one of those cats I see kicking it at all
types of conventions giving and getting love like its going out of style. He’s
always fun to interview because he’s always got something going on, either
a new cd with MarginalProphets, a new art project, or just something funny
to say. He just sold a copy of “Are we feeling safer yet?” Only
$14.00. He signs it for a girl named Martine then tells her the best place for
the book is the bathroom “Then invite friends over.” He smiles.
She just bought a magazine rack for her bathroom so she’s happy. While
I’m sitting there shooting the shit with him another artist who has a
strip in the Daily Planet comes over and genuinely thanks Keith for taking the
time to respond to an e-mail the other man has sent. “It’s Barry
with a B right?” “Yeah, you’ve got a great website by the
way.”

Keith: The size of the books,
I made them so they’d fit perfectly on the back of the toilet or on the
magazine rack in the bathroom. They’re the same size as the old Archie
digest from back in the day.

ME: So what’s the upcoming project you’re
most excited about?

Keith: Ok, man I’ll say something. I’m working on
the K chronicles as a daily strip. I’m not exactly sure when its going
to happen but folks should anticipate seeing the K chronicles in a new way,
but also in the old way, but also in the new way.

ME: A new angle that’s come
up in your work is the political. It’s always been broadly socially critical,
but there’s a lot more pointed political critique. Any particular reason
for that?

Keith: I suppose after September
11, it got more political because of all the crap that went down and continues
to go down all over the world especially with the Bush Administration. But I’d
have to say lately it’s been getting away from that. I think everyone
now knows how horrible the administration is and so I’m not on that tip
for too much longer. Now I’m just figuring out where to go next, which
for me is the move. To see how the strip is going to change with the move (Keith
Knight has abandoned the Yay Area for Hollyweird and we wish him the best).
The one thing I don’t want to focus on is the obvious L.A. stuff. I actually
want to show the good side of L.A., you know the stuff you don’t talk
about. Especially in the bay Area. Everyone up here is all “Oh you’re
going down to L.A? You’re such a traitor” (I was one of those people)
Expect to hear about some good stuff about L.A.

ME: Yeah, ok. So you’re black.

Keith: Oh really?

ME:: How has that blackness thing
worked out for you lately in comics? Has it gotten easier or harder?

Keith: Well this interview taking
place in early March, is coming right after Black history month which is always
the busiest time for me. I always get lectures and stuff like that ( We get
interrupted by fans and Panell, a local artist who has done back up work for
Lil Gloomy and was on crew for the Afro samurai videogame until it flopped in
his face like a dead fish. We all start talking about Black snake Moan. I refer
to it as a great Uncle Remus story. That’s when Keith says)

Keith: You know when I went to
see Hustle and Flow at the Sundance film festival I couldn’t believe that
thing won. I was like “Are you kidding me? The heart warming tale of a
black pimp and his hoes? And all these white people are “Oh my god this
is beautiful.” And someone asked the question to the director, “Do
you feel awkward being this white guy doing this black pimp story?” He
did this awkward answer, then someone from the audience was all “Don’t
be ashamed to be white.” Yeah it was weird and bad and horrible. I mean
it was an Ok movie but the fact that it won Sundance as the...It was like Oh
My god. Whatever. That’s a whole other interview. What were we talking
about?

ME: Black history month being the busiest time for you.

Keith: Oh yeah. I just did an
interview with the Chronicle about how when I first started out the only time
I got calls was during black history month. What’ I’d say was “Thanks
for contacting me and just to let you know I also work the other 11 months of
the year.” Now that I work all throughout the year I anticipate February
being the busiest time on the month so I send out business cards out and all
that to make sure I get the work. So in that sense, it’s good to be black
in the industry. And in another sense it’s just bizarre. I’ve had
editors say “Oh we’d love to have your strip but we don’t
have any black people in our town.” But the editors are white and they
love the strip. So I say “You’re a white guy and you like my strip
so why don’t you think other white people will?” Then they just
think about it for a minute and walk away. So you know, its just a weird weird
thing. But its nice to see a lot of people coming up and doing their work. More
and more you see people of color coming up in conventions. I was just talking
to this one young lady who does a strip I think would be a great daily and I
told her its an angle you should use, The first Asian American female doing
a daily. I mean that’s the way they market you. It makes you cringe but
anyway to get in, and then you show people how great you are no matter what
color you are. And I understand that people will probably market me as a replacement
for Aaron Mcgruder , but anyone who knows my stuff knows its different. And
that will be proven once I’m in.

ME: Any words for aspiring artist
wanting to break into the strip industry?

Keith: Perseverance. Keep taking stabs at it, keeping working
keep grooving. Look at stuff you like, and stuff you don’t like. Find
out what it is you like and why and what you don’t like. Then proceed
as you see fit. Do a comic you’d like to read. Don’t try to anticipate
the editors. They’ll be enough people out there trying to hinder you so
just do yourself. If its an idea in your head, get it out on paper and hopefully
it’ll help spawn another idea.

Should We Be Afraid?

2007-04-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

BERKELEY
Poster urges revenge for 'Zebra Murders'
Carolyn Jones

Friday, April 6, 2007

Some Berkeley residents found a poster on their doorsteps this week from a white supremacist group calling for skinhead "death squads" to take up arms in an "Aryan people's insurgency."

The materials also included a flyer saying, "Avenge the Zebra Murders," a reference to the 1973-1974 Bay Area killing spree of 14 white victims by what prosecutors described as a black racist cult. The material was published by a group in Oroville (Butte County) linked to former KKK leader Tom Metzger, said Anti-Defamation League regional director Jonathan Bernstein.

The language is too vague to fall under Berkeley's hate crime law, said police spokesman Ed Galvan. Greg Withrow, leader of the group promoting the pamphlets, said Berkeley was targeted because "people there enjoy flying their little Communist flags."

America is so screwed up.

--Shawn

2007-04-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

Its rare that I get to post something genuinely “Cute” here. But at the African Diaspora film fest in Oakland the other day I came across this flash movie and went “Awww” like a little white girl who has seen a poster of puppies or some shit. Peep it, its cool.

For real?

2007-04-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

Honestly, no lie, I have no idea what the fuck to do with this video. If you can actually make out the lyrics, they aren’t that bad, kind of tender and all that noise. But the presentation? I mean at first I really thought the dude had down syndrome. But then I have to think, where else but Youtube is homie gonna get noticed? And he’s out there, doing his thing, as tweaked as it sounds. Now I will say that absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, explains him in the shower. You ain’t D’angelo playboy, nobody wants to see that. Anyway, tell me if I’m just being hyper critical or is ok to be embarrassed to be a black person whenever someone makes reference to this dude.

Explain the absence

2007-04-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

I know that’s the question you’ve all been asking. “Is he dead?” “Did he have an aneurism?” “Have the sonic psychic sexy sirens from Saturn stolen his soul?” No No No. It’s all good in the boogie hood over here. The real reason is because I’ve been sitting on two interviews that I really want to put up but just haven’t had the time to transcribe yet. So I didn’t want to put anything up. But in that delay I managed to miss the one year anniversary of Afrogeeks. I’m a tard. Afrogeeks is gonna be doing bigger and better things in the very near future, that’s a promise. I’m talking full on website and shiznet, video, audio, cartoons, crack! Ok, maybe not crack. But all the other stuff. Stay sharp. In the meantime I’m going to re-post my initial musing on what Afrogeeks is as I believe its even more important now than ever before.

Given: That the relation between a people and their technology
is worthy of study.

Given: That black people/Negroes/peoples of African descent/darkies manifest flexible
interfaces with technologies not crafted in initial design.

Given: Said Negroes/ Black folks/cultural children of slaves/ Blacks, who consistently
search for new synchronic relationships with Mech (as in the mechanized technologies
designed for end users who have minimal understandings of software coding), have
an ambiguous relationship with mainstream Black culture and form an antagonistic
dyad with corporate commercial “Black” culture.

Given: The deification/(Archetype making project) of the Smith is a cultural practice
that still exists today physically in the continent of Africa amongst the Dogon
and within the psyche of all those whose melanin count is a consistent consciousness
making quality; It can be given credit for magical thinking/magical realism/science
fictions/ and speculative frictions.

And whereas:

1. The digital divide is nothing more than a ride around the real issue, an undeserving
educational system which is self-perpetuated by slave mentalities.

2. Black youth are consistently the trend setters in non computer based Mech (see,
pagers, cell phones, Bluetooth, Blackberries, DVD players in cars, etc) and yet
are still mislabeled as being technologically behind

3. You can’t be a part of the real hip-hop for over three months without
knowing what dope producer programmed her/his beats with.

It has become necessary

…for a symbol, a nime, phenomenological psychopomp
that can encapsulate everyone from Octavia Butler to Alice Coltrane and still
leaves room for the unborn un-reality makers who perform in the void that we all
coalesce from; A banner that those geeks of African descent who can quote Deep
Space Nine can join under; A standard by which those Samuel Delany junkies who
bump Outkast can stand by; A flag black comic book readers can wave to distinguish
themselves with; A sign posted on the doors of houses where little nappy headed
children are educated about orishas, griots, the symbology of the dollar bill,
while given sonic guided tours of John Coltrane’s Interstellar space; A
warning in the form of an E.M.T. ray (Etic mech tech- Non sentient technology
that offers any new technology it encounters such a foreign interface that the
tech begins to break down, either quickly or slowly depending on the intensity
of the ray.) to the cultural pimps, the scavengers of custom, the marketing maggots,
the acidic academics that lack praxis, telling them in no uncertain terms that
the afrogeek is here fore and ever more strongly associated with their anti-hegemonic
brethren, the alternablacks, the non thug associated celebrators of post soul
anti-commodity negritude plus X-And they are no longer to be FZUCKED WIT.

We invite the new rituals, the sacrifices of sweat,mech, tech, soft and hardware.
We refute the nationalization project of some of our folks but wish them well.
We see the nation as a colonial project that has no choice but to copulate with
the corporate structure. We on some other. Some party and some bullshit…but
with lazer guns.

Also, Totally random, but as some of you may or may not know, I love black people with accents. I can do a pretty good Ghanaian accent, and my British accent had some yardie boys fooled. But I swear to all the gods you’ve forgotten about I love me some cute sexy black British sci-fi accent. And the new companion to the longest running sci-fi series ever on TV, Doctor Who, is a Black Iranian woman. Love her, be her. The actress is half black and Half Iranian. She’s cute and all, but it’s the voice. I’d say run out and check out the new Doctor Who but its only available in the U.K. Unless you do like you supposed to do with the technology thing and get yours!
Meanwhile, expect more soon. I’ll be posting much this week and the next. Stay smart chillins. And remember the original black woman coda:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

White Alvin Alley

2007-03-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, so totally post dated post. But like two or three weeks ago, I went to see Alvin Alley. A family friend Dwana is like the big badass in the troupe. She's the bald headed sis in the video below. But anyway, so I go and I'm all prepped to see some black people do some black choreographed moves. So why then do I see like five, I swear I'm not lying, Five white chicks? Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with white people dancing, but in the premiere, fuck the dumb shit, the only major black dance ensemble? And not like one octoroon rocking it in the back, I'm talking five full on Caucasoid dancing Revelations.

This goes back to this thing me and my cousin always talk about. I swear that in five years everyone is going to say that Filipino kids invented break dancing and djing. Why? Cause black people as a whole don't claim our cultural products. Freaking integration has tweaked the black consciousness to such a degree that were more concerned with assimilating than holding on to cultural products that exemplify our history and our struggles. Hardcore rappers are in such a rush to be thought of as successful that they take the most readily accessible status symbols they can find, Ice, booze, and beamers, and bitches. All of which can be bought for the price of our culture. Sadly there's a conflation in the minds of many black people today that see these trappings as their cultural legacy. While I'm not one of the "backpack to the club crew", I confess to empathizing more with their anti-capitalist stance, than with T-Pain and his love for the stripper (Though I really do like that song). In the end I feel the commodification of black culture becoming more and more self evident as fewer and fewer black people are willing to be unpopular and truly outlandish. I don't see this as a political issue, but rather a cultural one. But who knows, maybe Afrogeeks as the ability to be the vanguard of some new type of hybrid negritude that defies commodification but isn't rooted in some b.s retro 60's jargon. Stranger things have happened, right?

“I’m asking if ya’ll feel me and the crowd left me stranded…” Talib

I Came In Third

2007-03-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Mr. Terrific is the worst character in an otherwise great comic series (JSA). What kind of ability is being the 3rd smartest man on Earth? Oh, I forgot. He can’t be picked up on or recorded on any type of electronic device, as well. The 3rd smartest man? That’s like coming in 3rd place. He has his little spheres that buzz around him like digital flies on cyber shit, but is DC serious? The 3rd smartest? No one remembers who won the bronze. Also, for those who read JSA, doesn’t the 3rd smartest man ask a lot of questions? Every panel dude is asking a question. Not an investigative question, but a “what the hell is going on?” query. I’m not going to even mention that my man is in 3/4 blackface. The “T” painted on his grill is not for “Terrific” but for “Turd”.

Enough of my brief ranting. Now I want to pose two questions to the community:

1). Who are the other two (white boys) who are smarter than Mr. Terrific? I’m thinking Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor, but I could be wrong.

2). Has there ever been a Black comic book character who has been done correctly? I kind of like Vixen (but she still has that whole animal/exotic vibe). I liked Storm when she had the Mohawk. Black Panther is getting better and Jon Stewart as Green Lantern is cool (sometimes), but I can’t think of anyone else I dig.

I eagerly await your answers.
--Shawn

See this is how that Whitney/Bobby shit started.

2007-03-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

Word to the wise: Don’t start shit with hookers…especially if they’re cops. What the hell Kelis? Calm the fuck down, girl. I know you how much you hate me right now and all but you’ve really just can’t be out there yelling at hos. What the hell folks?

http://www.netmusiccountdown.com/inc/news_article.php?id=12199