allaboutgeorge

2006-08-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

*blows dust off interface*

I've been blogging over at ALLABOUTGEORGE.com and NEGROPhile for a good while, but poking around on some work projects gave me pause to log back in, so, um, hello there.

2003-05-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

Test post.

2003-01-14T14:03:00.000-08:00

Sacramento Bee, Diana Griego Erwin, "Shaq's 'apology' for racist barb at NBA foe Yao doesn't measure up"

[...] O'Neal also taunted Irwin Tang, the author of the Asian Week piece that called O'Neal out, saying Tang was a person who "just doesn't have a sense of humor, like I do."

A typical defensive tack. What is he really saying here? That mocking Chinese people is funny and the rest of us just don't get it? [...]

[...] According to the Los Angeles Times, O'Neal sat in the locker room after Friday's game with a recorder pressed to his ear, saying "toy-inchee" over and over. "Chinese for 'I'm sorry,' for when I see Yao Ming," he told reporters. Laugh it up, O'Neal.

Unfortunately, "toy-inchee" is a Cantonese apology. Ming speaks Mandarin.

2003-01-14T02:56:00.000-08:00

UC Berkeley professor John McWhorter is wrong in Suzy Hansen's "Another shade of black" -- short-sighted and facile, if not disingenuous; stacking a fact here and a hopeful thought there and a pop-culture reference nearby and calling it a response. Sure, you can be a wiseguy and reply, "Well, damn, George, isn't that your M.O., isn't that what you yourself do? What do you want, credit?" No. I want to understand what I don't like there and also here, in his recent take on race distinctions as one of last year's overrated ideas.

My take on this year starts with mice. We have learned that only 1 percent of our genome diverges from a mouse's. With only 300 genes distinguishing us from tiny, mute, artless vermin, the triviality of racial distinctions becomes clear.

This year America has been full of signs that we are realizing this in our hearts and getting past race. White supremacists staged a rally in York, Pa., in January, only to be outshone by a 400-strong interracial "unity rally."

Interracial relationships are on the rise; increasing numbers of caf�-au-lait Americans will soon find the question "What race are you?" as yesterday as Harry Belafonte calling Colin Powell a "house slave" sounded in October.

The black Congressional incumbents Cynthia A. McKinney and Earl F. Hilliard, questioning the "blackness" of their opponents, were defeated. The Bond and Austin Powers girls were black.

We're not there yet � but we don't have as long to go as we're often told.

2003-01-14T01:25:00.000-08:00

L.A. Times, Erika Hayasaki, "Reading, 'Riting and Rap"

[...] Nancy Brodsky, 23, a teacher at Samuel Gompers Vocational Technical High School in New York's South Bronx, has her ninth-grade students listen to a song by Dead Prez before reading George Orwell's 1945 fable "Animal Farm," the classic commentary on the Russian Revolution.

The rap song "Animal in Man" is based on Orwell's use of animals to represent figures such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. In both works, a group of pigs seizes power on a farm and turns on the other animals. The creatures then revolt against the boss pig, Hannibal.

The last verse in the Dead Prez song says:

They took his tongue out of his mouth.
And cut his body up for sale, for real.
You better listen while you can.
It's a very thin line between animal and man.

When Hannibal crossed the line, they all took a stand.
What would you have done? Shook his hand?
This is the animal in man. [...]

Good work, Nancy.

2003-01-13T17:35:00.000-08:00

A competitor for Black Entertainment Television? Krissah Williams at the Washington Post says one's on the way by the middle of this year from Radio One. I can't wait to see it -- not that the prospect of a 24-hour news-and-entertainment channel is enough to get A. and I paying a local cable provider again, or (d'oh!) that said local cable provider where we're moving at month's end is likely to carry it.

Doc catches a Case and praises two favorite news organizations from Ol' Blighty.

2003-01-12T22:54:00.000-08:00

*sigh*

GeoURL

2003-01-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

Miami Herald, Audra D.S. Burch, "'The main streets of black America': Blacks find pride in streets named after King"

N.Y. Times, Jane Gross, "Studying Race, Privilege and Intellectual Levels"

Orlando Sentinel, Kelly Brewington and Stephanie Erickson, "Historic black towns struggle to survive" (with picture gallery)

Raleigh News & Observer, Vicki Lee Parker, "Beyond black and white"

Guardian UK, Hannah Pool, "The new black"

The Town Talk (Alexandria, La.), Eugene Southerland, "Interracial marriages"

2003-01-12T04:36:00.000-08:00

Observer UK, Emily Yoffe, "Bridge of Sighs"

[...] Twenty-one years ago, Air Florida Flight 90, on its way from Washington National Airport to Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, crashed seconds after takeoff, its wings frosted with snow and ice. As the Boeing 737 hit the 14th Street Bridge, it sheared the tops off cars stuck in a traffic jam caused by the storm. On the plane, 74 people died, including three babies; and four people were killed in their cars. There were only five survivors. Television crews filmed them as they waited almost half an hour in the ice-filled water to be rescued, hanging on to debris from the plane. A young office assistant for a government agency, Lenny Skutnik, briefly became famous when he dived into the river and, on national television, saved a woman who was about to drown. [...]

At age 10 and a half, this was hugely frightening. I'd flown on a plane twice before. The first time was to Florida, most likely Walt Disney World. We must have flown down from Washington on Eastern Airlines. I remember coming back with a toy Eastern plane. All that stuck with me was the then-impending Epcot center, which I might have confused with a trip later that year when my family wound up going to see the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, with its geodesic-sphere-topped building that, I thought, was What The Future Is Going To Be Like.

2003-01-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

Aaron 8Legs' Grandma Duck is no longer in any pain. Godspeed and Ashé, ashé, ashé.

Bad Subjects, Elizabeth Hurst, "Speaking My Conscience" (via wood s lot)

WampumBlog notices the Washington Times' "Fighting Whites inspire imitators" as well as a little vaccine manufacturer accountability.

Jason Toney's written his first article for Vibe.

Ralph Nader will guest-host on Monday's CNN "Crossfire"? Can't wait!

Guardian UK, Estelle Addley, "Faking It"

[...] "All I know from the men I've ever spoken to is that they like girls to have an arse on them," she tells GQ, "so why is it that women think that in order to be adored they have to be thin? Very thin?" [...]

*sigh* Now is the Winslet of my digital discontent.

In between episodes of running into A., Joe Pennant got to check out the People's Republic of Berkeley's civic proceedings.

I owe Adrienne many thanks for lacing me recently with largesse.

I have a feeling I'm going to want to PayPal a few sawbucks to Cory Doctorow after I finish "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom."

Jacked from Cheek: the Global Consciousness Project.

Freaky Trigger Christmas Joke. You'll laugh 'til all is quiet on New Year's Day.

2003-01-10T17:16:00.000-08:00

Alternet.org (via Intervention Magazine), Frederick Sweet, "Green Party 'Terrorists'" (via David Grenier)

[...] At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a Justice Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely terrorists � just as likely as al Qaeda members. [...]

2003-01-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

Washington Post, Adam Bernstein, "Mamie Till-Mobley; Civil Rights Figure" and Donna Britt, "One Woman's Unending Pain; Another's Silence" and Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts Jr., "Open casket opened eyes"

2003-01-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

storySouth, Jason Sanford, "George Wallace and the New South"
Contra Costa Times, Daniel Borenstein, "Oakland's Reeves rips GOP racism"
N.Y. Times, Adam Liptak, "Death Penalty Found More Likely When Victim is White" and Emily Eakin, "Malcolm X Trove to Schomburg Center"

2003-01-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

N.Y. Times, Selena Roberts, "For Progress, Perceptions Must Change"
Silver Spring, Md., the town where I (and, at times, Oliver, Tony, Marcus and Edmond) grew up is majority-minority now.
First chapter of Bruce Sterling's "Tomorrow Now"
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deborah Tannen, "You get stereotyped when you drawl, y'all" (via C.)
Oliver looks very young on TV. Anil's goatee is (or should I say "was") cute.
S.F. Chronicle, Rob Morse, "A stimulus plan to get America rolling again" Bikes? I like bikes.
Shit, shit, shit. First I read about Hanne, and now I read this. For most of '98 and early '99, A. and I used to live over on Sixth Avenue.

2003-01-07T17:14:00.000-08:00

George Lucas, digitize this! Alex Golub's "My Weekend with Leuschke.org," Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4 and (finally!) 5.

2003-01-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

N.Y. Times, Guy Trebay, "Bring On the Clowns: Goofy Today, In Stores Tomorrow"

[...] the distinction between clothes produced for the runways and those designed for the tanbark is no longer sharp. It is not merely a matter of fashion don'ts becoming must-haves, of consumers being encouraged to flout the conventions that once forbade wearing plaids with stripes. Rather it is that markers of minority, and often outsider, cultures (drag queens, performance artists, clowns) have been taken up by fashion, which has carried them to the mainstream. A half-century ago dreadlocks would never have been encountered outside a sideshow tent or the hills of Jamaica. These days you would be hard pressed to avoid them on a college campus or, for that matter, on catwalks in New York and Milan. [...]

Note to Trebay: Go buy a copy of Outkast's "The Whole World" and Common's "Electric Circus," and don't mock the 'locks.

2003-01-07T03:28:00.000-08:00

L.A. Times, Tina Daunt and Jill Leovy, "LAPD Offers 1st Data on Traffic Stops"

The Los Angeles Police Department stops members of different racial groups in numbers roughly proportional to their share of the population, but blacks and Latinos are far more likely than whites to be removed from their cars, patted down or searched, according to a study released Monday.

The data, from July through November of last year, were the first statistics publicly released as part of a federal consent decree that requires the department to collect information to determine whether officers engage in racial discrimination.

Among the findings: Thirty-eight percent of drivers stopped by police were recorded as Latino, 33% were white and 18% black. According to the 2000 Census, the city's population is 46.5% Latino, 29.7% white and 10.9% African American.

Of those pulled over, 7% of whites were asked to step out of their cars, compared with 22% of Latinos and 22% of blacks. Once out of their cars, 67% of the blacks were patted down and 85% were subjected to a search of their person, car, residence or belongings, while 55% of Latinos were frisked and 84% were searched. Meanwhile, 50% of whites were frisked and 71% were searched.

Information on pedestrian stops revealed a similar pattern of blacks and Latinos being patted down and subjected to searches more often than whites. [...]

[...] Jack Riley, director of the Rand Institute's public safety and justice program, concurred.

"It's easy to measure the number of people who have been stopped and ticketed," Riley said. "But what's harder ... is then drawing conclusions about when police behavior is disproportionate."

Researchers have struggled to determine the baseline against which to compare data on traffic stops, Riley said. Population statistics are not enough, he said. Researchers must consider not just how many motorists live in an area, but also when and where they drive.

"It is very hard to get good information on people's driving habits and patterns without enormous investment in measuring," Riley said. "There are literally tens of thousands of intersections in L.A., not to mention miles of streets. All those people driving on them are potentially committing driving violations. You have to got to understand what they are doing."

In addition, he said, analyzing the data properly requires adjusting for factors such as the level of crime in a given area and the number of calls for service, which may affect how many officers are deployed there.

The racial makeup of people on parole and probation also matters, Riley said, because "if you are on probation or parole, police have a presumptive right to stop and search you and question you. That's part of appropriate, proactive policing." Given the difficulties, said Riley, who is helping to analyze data for the Oakland Police Department, "I'm not convinced that looking at this kind of stuff is very useful. I don't think it gives a police department a strong tool for understanding how to do their job better." [...]

Bonus round: The study (PDF; 3.2 MB)

2003-01-07T01:52:00.000-08:00

Funny where you find a birthday girl when you bother to look for her -- even right down the street from our apartment, according to Carolyn Jones' "Putting the art in BART"

The metal panel, which was installed two weeks ago in front of De Lauer's news stand on Broadway, is called "Their Eyes Were Watching God," from the Zora Neale Hurston novel. It features a central area adorned with eyes glancing expectantly in different directions, surrounded by a representation of the Oakland hills.

Bates said: "It's supposed to suggest that something is about to happen, something is about to be born, and you never know what you're going to get." [...]

And then there's the play, the stamps (coming Jan. 24) and those new biographies.

Bit of a contrary spirit, though, eh?

NOLA.com, Susan Larson, "Wrapped in Rainbows"

[...] And there is the complete text of her letter to the Orlando Sentinel decrying the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. "How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them? . . . I can see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a white school social affair." [...]

San Francisco Chronicle, Nia-Malika Henderson, "Her own muse"

In the fall of 1939, when noted folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston began her tenure at the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham, an all-white theater group from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill invited her to present her plans for creating a Negro folk theater and a drama department. And, as was often the case, Hurston began her talk with a colorful story: While she was driving to the segregated campus in her convertible, a university student yelled out to Hurston, "Hi, nigger." Not content to have anything other than the last word, she replied, "Hi, freshman!"

While it is impossible to know whether or not the audience understood that Hurston's joke was on their closely held Southern mores, many were undoubtedly taken aback by the thought of a colored woman driving a car, and a convertible no less. And surely in recounting an ordinary racist exchange, and recasting it as a joke, Hurston was again setting herself up as a fiercely independent thinker on matters of race. At a time when black artists like Richard Wright and Billie Holiday were concerned with lynchings, Zora Neale Hurston was making a race joke in the hotbed of the South. For anyone who had read her 1928 essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," where Hurston insisted that she wanted no part of "the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it," her flippancy was no surprise. [...]

Bonus round: "Mules and Men" and Village Voice, A.J. Verdelle, "The Largesse of Zora Neale Hurston"

2003-01-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten, "African-Americans at the top: Where is coverage and context?" (via Romenesko's Media News)

[...] Maybe these individual achievements don't add up to what one would hope. When you connect the dots, you don't get a picture that signifies the end of social discrimination in these strikingly individual successes. Maybe the dots are still too widely separated by the divisions of class and race that continue to exist."

Republicans need to take this to heart. I'm hopeful, but I don't expect context on prominent blacks; one of the reasons I blog the way I do is to take that on. I haven't been all that disappointed. There's little context in stories about Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. They're George W. Bush's living proof that his administration is inclusive; they come off like "air quotes." Their presence lets people stop thinking about issues of race and class, but it doesn't stop those issues from being germane. They'll still be the elephants in the room, even (and especially) if William Rehnquist's retirement should elevate Justice Clarence Thomas (or White House counsel Alberto Gonzales) to the Supreme Court's top spot, or if a path is somehow cleared for Rice to become (notice how I don't say which) Bush's vice president. It's trompe l'oeuil "affirmative access." It's power, not representation (skim Gary Younge's "Always in the shadows").

[...] Notwithstanding the casual, culturally ingrained bigotry that emanates from Conservative party associations, the right embraces equality to the extent that it believes everyone should have the right to exploit anyone else. It seeks neither to redress the imbalances of the past, nor to address the lack of opportunities of the present. So when it promotes minorities and women it promotes only individuals. Those who emerge under its banner do so free from the baggage of history and community. And since they are travelling light they can also, when the opportunity arises, travel fast. [...]

You could argue that this is less of a factor for Chennault, O'Neal, Raines and Parsons (at least two of whom I've seen lauded this year, even if Rutten hasn't, on the cover of Black Enterprise as recently as this year).

African American Publications, "Richard Dean Parsons"

[...] "There are a number of other black executives who have elevated positions in corporate America," said Parsons in Black Enterprise. "The process is rolling forward, even if it isn't moving as fast as some of us would like." Despite his distinction as a high-ranking black in business, Parsons downplays the racial aspects of his success. He has claimed that race was never a "defining character" in his life. "I don't do anything differently than I would otherwise because I have that responsibility to my family," he told the New York Times in 1994. "Whether I was an African-American, an Arab- American, a Jewish-American, or some other American, there are a lot of people who I cannot let down, so you have to live your life a certain way to be a role model to the people who are important to you."

You could argue it. For now, I won't.

Bonus round: Billy Cheng (with "In the Black" author Gregory S. Bell), BW Online, "A Slow Walk Up Wall Street for Blacks"

[...] I don't think any community looks down on an African American for simply for choosing to work on Wall Street. I think they only look down on successful African Americans if they have made it on Wall Street but fail to use that knowledge and other power to give back to the community. So I think that today, it is not the act of going to Wall Street that people examine, but rather what one does after achieving success in the business, and if that success is used to help others. [...]

2003-01-06T17:57:00.000-08:00

Ack. What did I learn at work today? I drop handled compliments like they're hot. To top it off, I've become The Guy Who Overtalks at Meetings. (Stop me before I cut in again! My specialties, you ask? Going that extra mile for the only-funny-to-myself pun, and the reanimation of disputes both Minor and Previously, inna von Franken-schteen stylee.) And the day's not even over yet. So glad it's Friday. Never needed a weekend more.

2003-01-05T23:07:00.000-08:00

'So What,' by John Szwed

Sometime in late 1947, Miles was stopped one evening on 52nd Street by a thin white man in a cap and workers' clothes. Miles had seen him in the clubs, munching salted radishes from a paper bag. What he wanted from Miles was permission to make a big band arrangement of "Donna Lee." He was Gil Evans, an arranger for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra. [...]

2003-01-05T00:08:00.000-08:00

Associated Press, Jets 41, Colts 0

[...] This was the first NFL playoff game featuring two black head coaches. The Colts' Tony Dungy and the Jets' Edwards, longtime friends, are the only black head coaches in the league. Edwards spent five seasons as Dungy's top assistant in Tampa before becoming the Jets' coach in 2001.

The student came out on top of the mentor because his offense was unstoppable, his defense stingy and his special teams dominant.

"I'm just thankful for our friendship and the chance he gave me to stand here and be a head coach," Edwards said.

Dungy said he'll be rooting for Edwards' team the rest of the way.

"They played awfully well and made us look awfully bad," said Dungy, who took Indianapolis from 6-10 to 10-6 in his first season after being fired by the Bucs.

2003-01-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Kevin Young, "Mrs. B and Me," "Urgent Telegram to Jean-Michael Basquiat," "Satchmo," "Eddie Priest's Barbershop & Notary," "Langston Hughes" "Negative" and "King Zulu."

Oh, and a preface to the screenplay for Hal Hartley's "Flirt" that makes me want to see it again. (The movie, not Hal Hartley.)

2003-01-04T04:34:00.000-08:00

Guardian UK, Benjamin Kang Lim, "More work, less sex, Chinese told"

Washington Post, Peter S. Goodman, "Sex Trade Thrives in China"

2003-01-04T02:49:00.000-08:00

Weekend reading, filtered through the hazy memory of a few PBS Empires series episodes on Queen Victoria, is most likely Michael Ignatieff's New York Times Magazine cover story "The Burden" (mm-mmmm, not just for white men anymore!) and "The forefathers of imperialism," Walter Russell Mead's Los Angeles Times review of Walter Zimmerman's "First Great Triumph."

2003-01-04T01:46:00.000-08:00

C.'s e-mailed love tap (via her Daily Dose e-mail list) about "Stakes is High" led me to this week's The Nation cover story, Ann Powers' "The Power of Music" forum with Boots Riley, Carrie Brownstein, Amy Ray, Eddie Vedder and Tom Morello:

[...] You are a historical agent. History is not something that has happened in the past and that is made up of names and dates and places of kings and generals, history is what you make in your home, in your place of work, in the streets, in your community and in the world and your actions -- your actions or your inaction is directly affecting the fate of the world that you live in and should be treated with that gravity. [...]

2003-01-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

Contra Costa Times, Daniel Borenstein, "GOP's state vice chairman in hot water"

A leading candidate in the upcoming race for chairman of the California Republican Party distributed an article suggesting the nation would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War.

The article was included in a 1999 e-mail newsletter that state GOP Vice Chairman Bill Back sent to party members. It was written by Bill Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism, an arm of the right-wing Free Congress Foundation.

"Given how bad things have gotten in the old U.S.A., it's not hard to believe that history might have taken a better turn," Lind wrote. "... The real damage to race relations in the South came not from slavery, but from Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won." [...]

[...] Shannon Reeves of Oakland, state party secretary and the only African-American member of the state GOP executive committee, was outraged.

"There's no room for bigotry in the Republican Party and I don't think there's a lot of room in the Republican Party for people who distribute bigoted information," Reeves said. "What's appalling is to have the vice chair of the Republican Party distribute this and act like I just sent it around to kick up discussion. I absolutely reject that notion."

Reeves said he was not supporting either of the two candidates for party chairman. But he added that Back has resisted his efforts to bring party activities to Oakland and reach out to African-Americans.

"I wonder, does the African-American community have any value to the leadership of the party when leaders send out something like this, not considering at all this would be offensive?" Reeves asked.

"On the outside, when I go home, I'm called the Uncle Tom sellout black Republican. But when you get people like this, it just sets me back from the work I'm trying to do."[...]

Also useful: California Republican Party profiles on Back and Reeves.

2003-01-03T20:27:00.000-08:00

Predictions from textism and The Daily Kos.

2003-01-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

S.F. Weekly, Darren Keaster, "Preaching to the Unconverted"

[...] "When someone gets beat with a bat, that's not cool, but [neither is] violating someone's personal space. ... If motherfuckers would have came in on me, they would have got they ass whupped too, straight up and down. I definitely wouldn't have taken a bat and tried to kill somebody over it, but the point would have been made." [...]

Last thing in the world I thought I'd see is a Morehouse grad named Martin Luther going out like that over that foul beatdown incident last semester. I didn't have to take anything but soap, a washcloth and shower shoes during the fall semester of '89 I spent living at Holmes Hall. Try making your point nonviolently, M.L., with a rapier wit, sense of self-possession and a lack of fear, for yours and your brothers' and sisters' sake.

UPDATE: The Prime One's Mike points to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Gays feel left out of Morehouse brotherhood"

2003-01-03T00:14:00.000-08:00

Guardian UK, Val Wilmer, "Obituary: Clare Deniz"

[...] As a black woman moving in snobbish circles, Deniz swiftly recognised the need to comport herself with dignity; she had stylish dresses and tailored costumes made for her, and bought the best accessories she could afford. Such behaviour was important for black artists establishing themselves in prewar days, but, although she was seen by some as a fashionable adjunct to her husband, as a pianist she frequently worked more than Frank, the guitar being an optional instrument. [...]

Guardian UK, Stuart Jeffries, "The black Dvorak"

[...] Why have there been so few black classical composers? Musicologist Samuel A Floyd asks this question in his impressive book The Power of Black Music (OUP), and gives two answers: "First, emerging from slavery only in the 1860s, significant numbers of African-Americans were barred from majority-culture musical institutions and, consequently, were generally prohibited from learning and internalising the behaviours, myths and rituals associated with concert-hall practices. Second, many African-American composers ignored or rejected the myths and rituals of their own culture, making impossible the fusing of their traditional myths with the rituals of the concert hall."

Both of Floyd's points suggest that a better question might be: why have there been so many black classical composers? It's a thorny one, embracing such tricky but gripping sub-questions as: was Beethoven black, and if so does it matter?

Does the fact that Haydn was known as the Moor suggest that he could be black too, and if so, should we re-evaluate his work? Do black jazz composers such as Duke Ellington (who wrote suites, serenades and other classical-sounding stuff) and Scott Joplin (who composed an opera) count, and if not why not? [...]

Guardian UK, Alexis Petridis, 'I hope your ears don't bleed'

[...] Worried that if I just sit around my flat listening to Throbbing Gristle all day, I might start baying myself, I venture outside. This proves to be the biggest error of judgment I have made since embarking on the project in the first place. It's difficult to know exactly what would be the ideal activity to engage in while Throbbing Gristle provide the soundtrack. But I can reveal that shopping in central London is not among them. A journey by Tube is even more like a descent into some netherworld of the damned than usual. The heaving crowds of Oxford Street, nerve-jangling at the best of times, are rendered nightmarish.

I stand it until about 4pm: less than halfway through my 24-hour marathon. Aware I am regarding my fellow shoppers with bulging eyes and am in danger of developing a twitch, I rip off my headphones. I am unprepared for what happens next. My ears are assaulted by the most appalling noise I have heard all day: children screaming, couples arguing, teenage girls bawling at each other, buskers playing tinny carols and, underpinning it all, Cliff Richard's Mistletoe and Wine. I replace my headphones. [...]

2003-01-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

A. and I gave notice at our building. We're moving to downtown Walnut Creek, 94596 by month's end.

2003-01-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

San Jose Mercury News, Matthai Chakko Kuruvila and T.T. Nhu, "Multiethnic multiplex in Fremont will close"

The owner's shutting down the one where A. and I went to see "Hello Brother" the day we got married. Thank goodness the Gateway Plaza Naz8 (conveniently across from Fremont's BART station) will stay open.

2003-01-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Rabbit, rabbit. *

L.A. Times, Brian Lowry, "King Stern's legacy: He launched the raunch"

[...] The only aspect of Stern's act that hasn't been widely co-opted is the most distasteful -- namely, the not-so-subtle racism that peppers his show, from "Black Jeopardy" to the jibes directed at sidekick Robin Quivers during his recent "world's meanest listener" contest. Then again, to the extent such material reflects pandering to a sub-lowest-common-denominator segment of the audience, there are clearly plenty of indirect parallels elsewhere in the media. [...]

Just one reason I don't listen.

2002-12-31T06:09:00.000-08:00

Shared sacrifice, my sweet ass. Rep. Charles Rangel wants Sparta. You remember Sparta, yes? Rep. Rangel, John Fogerty just called. He wants to know if you know "Fortunate Son." (Hint: The answer's not "No, but if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.") Maybe it's a Democratic outflank-Bush-on-terror thing. I couldn't tell you. I'm not a Democrat. If that's what this is about, then damn it, don't they pay attention to polls?

2002-12-30T17:34:00.000-08:00

Eartha Kitt, quoted in Norman Solomon's "The Penn Paradox" over at Common Dreams.

[...] "If you walk through life needing everybody to love you, you will never do anything." [...]

There has to be something, an agency or collective or collaborative effort to replace the Voter News Service if it should go under. The absence of information about population segments comes too close to an anti-initiative, an inadvertent privacy, a blindness that risks serving the status quo. I mean, I like these black voter turnout projections; don't get me wrong. I don't want to be entirely dependent on mainstream media. I want as much information about these things as possible.

Oh, dear.

New York Times, Gwen Kinkead, "To Study Disease, Britain Plans a Genetic Census"

[...] If the $120 million project, called U.K. Biobank, goes forward, and enough people volunteer for pilot studies, 1.2 million healthy Britons from 45 to 69 will give blood samples to the Biobank. From their blood, DNA will be purified and frozen. Ninety percent of the donors will be white. The rest will roughly reflect Britain's demographics.

From these, 500,000 will be chosen for the project by 2008.

When they sign up, volunteers will get brief health examinations and will answer 10-page questionnaires about their socioeconomic and psychological status, reproductive history, exercise, cellphone use and beverage preferences. They will note their diets for a week.

For 10 years, they will be followed through their national health care records, which will be copied into the Biobank. The data will be anonymous, but not completely, to allow for updates by doctors or new questionnaires. By 2014, 40,175 are expected to fall ill with diabetes, heart disease, stroke or cancer. Another 6,200 are expected to have Parkinson's, dementia, rheumatoid arthritis or hip fractures.

The DNA of these people will be read and compared, and any normal gene variants, the one-nucleotide differences in DNA that make one person's biology different from another's, will be tagged for study.

"Then you will be able to see patterns: X number have this sort of genetic makeup and this kind of lifestyle, and Y has that, and you can start analyzing, if you like, the nature-nurture, environment-genes secret," said Sir George Radda, the molecular cardiologist who heads the Medical Research Council, a sponsor of the Biobank. [...]

New York Times, Larry Rohter, "A Government Gig for Brazilian Pop Star"

[...] "We have to free ourselves a bit from the idea that the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture is to produce culture [...] I don't think so. I think the role of the ministry is to create the conditions in which culture can be made and improved and to act as a bridge between those who make culture and those who consume it."

He's a Green Party member. His hair's starting to lock. The country's left has more issues with him than the country's right. What's not to love about Gilberto Gil? We've got "Quanta" in our CD collection. I may have to dust it off and, uh, inspect it for public-policy ideas. Through headphones. Think the neighbors will mind if I sing along? At top volume?

2002-12-29T06:39:00.000-08:00

You know, you could be reading Michael Bowen or Ejovi Nuwere.

Oh, Michael? He doesn't know what he's started. Poor fellow. He actually got me thinking about micropayments again. They're a figment of bloggers' imaginations. His Web pages were some of the first noncommercial content I ever read online.

Y'all are getting your Kwanzaa on, right? Today's Nguzo Saba principle is ujamaa, or cooperative economics. To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together. One year, I bought an ad off Oliver. (I mean, really. Better him than Robert Johnson.)

This year, it's been more along the lines of gift economies: exchanges of attention and expertise and thoughtful consideration. Adrienne knows what I mean. So does (e)L. D.J. So do Gwen and Tyler and Cecily. And Donald, too, bless his heart and several vital organs to be named later.

2002-12-29T05:54:00.000-08:00

While listening to a radio station play a band's single, Hans-Christian Holm's Alternative Spanish Dictionary can sure come in handy.

2002-12-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

Filling a much-needed void has its cloaking shields up. Hanne's fans, her cliquish claque of clicksters, dab hands all, have already begun drawing a blank. I draw no conclusions between mention of Hanne, and anyone who may or may not have forwarded Adam Clymer's "U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On"

The National Cancer Institute, which used to say on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.

A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement, which contradicts the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised version of the page.

Critics say those changes, far below the political radar screen, illustrate how the Bush administration can satisfy conservative constituents with relatively little exposure to the kind of attack that a legislative proposal or a White House statement would invite. [...]

I like to say that donkeys have four legs, and that calling a donkey's tail a leg doesn't mean donkeys have five legs. I like to say it, but sometimes the things I read make me want to bellow it. Atonally. Over and over. At the top of my lungs. But then I remember that I have a Web site, nu?

2002-12-29T04:42:00.000-08:00

I will not set my watch for sometime between the early evening of Saturday, February 1st, 2003 -- six days after the upcoming Super Bowl, immediately after a new moon (just like on January 15, 1991) with Mercury retrograde safely past, lowering the odds of any black-cat glitches in the Matrix -- and the early morning of February 2nd ("Groundhog Day," anyone? Anyone?).

For future reference, add 6 hours to Universal Time to get Baghdad time.

I will direct my Stonefishspine-requested W.I.O.I.Y.W.I., W.I.O.N. vibes there and send my leftovers here.

2002-12-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

Westword, "The Message"
Latino Vote: Weblog of U.S. Latino Political News
Associated Press, "Filipinos Fight to Save Calif. Enclaves"
Shift.com, Lisa Yeung, "Rice is her Vice"

[...] "I still live in the same neighbourhood and I still get the 'china' (the Spanish word for Chinese woman -- she's Filipino) call on my way home," she says. "And -- what is that -- (she sing-songs:) "Ching-chong-ching"? I don't know what the hell they're doing. But I still get that. And it's amazing...what, it's 2002? And there are still people who do that." [...]

2002-12-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

PBS Online NewsHour, "Assessing the significance of the Lott controversy"

[...] SUAREZ: You might say they have nowhere to go but up. A poll taken Sunday by the Gallup organization says six percent of blacks in the United States say the Republican Party best reflects their views. But a lot of Republicans, Professor Berlin, are trying -- say they're trying to get American politics to a post-race, issue-based footing. Is that possible now?

IRA BERLIN: That's interesting. Issue-based -- what exactly is that going to mean? My feeling is that voters, both white and black, generally read their understanding of politics is fairly shrewd and fairly correct. That is there's a reason only six percent of black people consider themselves Republican. What exactly are the issues that are involved here? We know in some ways we are a more segregated society than we were in 1956. We know that changes in terms of the distribution of wealth have not changed greatly; that a disproportionate number of people of African descent are at the bottom, that affirmative action is a policy, in its various forms, that is something that black people are very interested in.

There are a whole variety of other issues that also draw black people to the Democratic Party, even with all of the baggage that the Democratic Party itself, you know, itself carries. Now it seems to me, if you want to move black people out of the Democratic Party, you've got to address those issues. Is the Republican Party prepared to do that? [...]

2002-12-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mae Gentry, "Mall at Stonecrest offers black and white Santas"

Santa at Stonecrest has an identity crisis.

Sometimes he's white; sometimes he's black. And mall managers aren't sure what to call him.

Last year, when the newly opened Mall at Stonecrest celebrated its first Christmas, a white- bearded, rosy-cheeked Santa greeted shoppers and their children.

But metro Atlanta's newest mall, on the border between DeKalb County and Rockdale County, draws customers from both areas -- heavily black south DeKalb and predominantly white Rockdale.

"We had a lot of requests from the community to fulfill both markets that we have here at Stonecrest," said marketing coordinator Kimberly Handberry.

So mall managers hired a local African-American actor, Charles Black, to work weekends and dubbed him "Cultural Santa," leaving the daily duty to what they called "Traditional Santa." When word of the two Santas broke out, irate people contacted Stonecrest's marketing director, Donald Bieler. [...]

2002-12-26T19:21:00.000-08:00

Guardian 2002 bumper news quiz

You scored 33 out of a possible 50
More alert than most. Check the answers page to see which areas you need to work on for next year but otherwise give yourself a pat on the back.

2002-12-26T18:02:00.000-08:00

Sacramento Bee, Peter Schrag, "California secedes -- A midwinter night's dream"

It began as no more than a gesture of protest, when a group of California Democrats, led by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, put on the November 2004 ballot the California Dignity Initiative, a measure calling on the state's congressional delegation to renegotiate California's relationship to the Union. [...]

2002-12-26T14:15:00.000-08:00

Washington Post, Daryl Fears, "People of Color Who Never Felt They Were Black"

[...] Although most do not identify themselves as black, they are seen that way as soon as they set foot in North America.

Their reluctance to embrace this definition has left them feeling particularly isolated -- shunned by African Americans who believe they are denying their blackness; by white Americans who profile them in stores or on highways; and by lighter-skinned Latinos whose images dominate Spanish-language television all over the world, even though a majority of Latin people have some African or Indian ancestry. [...]

Me, too. From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, and so on.

For later perusal: The Atlantic, Maggie Scarf, "Intimate Partners" (after vague curiosity with Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's latest work on single women) and Esquire, Jonathan Nolan, "Memento Mori" (after curling up with A. to watch rented copies of "Afterlife" and "Memento," which sandwiched a sojourn to the Piedmont for Almod�var's "Talk To Her").

2002-12-25T14:03:00.000-08:00

So this is Christmas. And what have you done?

2002-12-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

John and Kate Snyder (née Maletz), witnesses and photographers when A. and I wed in September 1999, have had a busy year. Good on 'em!

2002-12-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

CitySearch Live Daily, Colin Devenish, "Joe Strummer"

[...] Do you ever feel like you're in competition with your past?

Not really, because it's so long ago. The past is past. I always feel to live in the present. Blank piece of paper is always the same. You've got to fill the blank piece of paper. It's crazy.

You've got to face up to your past. It can feel like a millstone in that situation, but mainly, I feel proud about it. It's a good spur to try and top that. I don't really dwell upon it. You can't throw yourself off too much. It's great to live in the moment and not think too much about the past. It can really drag you down. I would say the past is like treacle. It can get stuck on your feet if you go back. Can't get in and out that easy. Dylan said, "Don't look back."

Washington Post, Desson Howe, "The Prefect Who Rocked My World"

[...] I suddenly remember that he once wore a T-shirt with a heart on it. It said: "In case of emergency, tear out." I never imagined how much it would hurt to think of that now." [...]

2002-12-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

PopMatters, which I don't visit often enough, has Mark Anthony Neal's "White Chocolate" schooling fools on Lady T, and David Sanjek's "Fate Wears a Fedora" on Jean-Paul Melville, director of probably my favorite French-language film ever.

There is no greater solitude than the samurai's...unless perhaps it be that of the tiger in the jungle.
--The Book of Bushido

Jane Lagrange: I like it when you come round, because you need me.

Jef Costello: I never lose. Not ever.

Martey: Who are you?
Jef Costello: It doesn't matter.
Martey: What do you want?
Jef: To kill you.

Olivier Rey's associate: He's a lone wolf.
Olivier Rey: He's a wounded wolf; now there will be a trail. He must be disposed of quickly.

Police Superintendent: I don't like forcing the pace to extract confessions or get information. I'm very liberal, a great believer in the liberty of the individual ... in people's right to live as they choose. Provided that the way of life they choose harms no one else ... and is contrary to neither law and order nor public decency.

Police Superintendent: Don't you love him [Jef Costello]?
Jane Lagrange: No.
Superintendent: Really? I'd have said you did. Laying yourself on the line for him like that, I thought you must love him.
Jane: You're not the psychologist you imagined.

Police Superintendent: Have you ever thought how close girls like you are to being prostitutes?

Jane Lagrange: If I understand you right, I'll have no problems if I perjure myself. If I insist on telling the truth, then I can expect trouble. Am I right?
Police Superintendent: Not quite. Because the truth isn't what you say, it's what I say ... despite the methods I am obliged to employ to get at it.

Gunman: Nothing to say?
Jef Costello: Not with a gun on me.
Gunman: Is that a principle?
Jef: A habit.

Jef Costello: Who sent you?
Gunman: I can't tell you that.
Jef: Yet you could try to kill me. Look at me. I'll ask you just once more. Who? Name and address.
Gunman: You don't know him; he's not in our league.
Jef: Don't keep me waiting.
Gunman: Olivier Rey ... 73, Boulevard de Montmorency.
Jef: That's how you became unemployed.

Jef Costello: Trouble? ... Because of me
Jane Lagrange: No, you've never meant trouble for me.

[Jef pulls a gun on the Piano Player]
Piano Player: Why, Jef?
Jef Costello: Because I've been paid to.

2002-12-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

At this point, I don't know why Rep. Cass Ballenger even bothered to paint his family-heirloom black lawn jockey white. (via BuzzFlash)

2002-12-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

Bill of Rights Defense Committee, y'all. Prominent in the best burgs and villes, from foundations up to the windowsills.

2002-12-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

An old meme (via Black Belt Jones): one's Dungeons & Dragons alignment. My results? Chaotic good. (Specifically: Law: 0, Chaos: 5; Good: 4, Evil: 3 -- my specific choices were here) Which I'll need to poke around into D&D to understand more clearly, since (like Howard Cosell) I never played the game.

---------------------------------------

Of course, by now you are arguing with my answers. Here, then, question by question, is the logic of each answer.

Question 1 gets to the motive of the character. Good characters are always looking to make the world a better place; therefore, answer B, rescuing the weak and helping the helpless, is the good answer. Lawfuls see the world as necessarily being structured, and the unstructured elements as breaking that down. A quest into the unknown has the primary purpose of taming it; therefore, answer A, putting things right, is a lawful response. Answer D, acquiring wealth and power, is definitive of the evil alignment; evils believe that such is theirs by right. As to the chaotic, there can be little reason for such an adventure except the adventure itself, and so answer C, enjoying the thrill of the dangers, is the best choice.

Question 2 looks at character, belief, and personality by considering an alternative career path. The good character will want to do something to help others, especially the poor, so an herbalist, answer C, is the best choice. Evil characters will still want to claim what is theirs, and so answer B, bandit, comes closest. A man-at-arms is clearly involved in a defined position in an authority structure; he knows whence his orders come, what is expected of him, and who he commands. All this, answer A, will appeal to the lawful character. As to the chaotic character, he has no need of any of those things, but wants to live his own life. Being a hermit, answer D, is the easiest way to escape from the structures of society.

Question 3 is the first of the corner alignment questions. Each of the four heroes defines (at least in the popular conception) one of the four combinations. Robin Hood is definitively the chaotic good hero, opposing all that is law and structure because it oppresses the people, and taking the profit he gains for his opposition and giving it to them. Answer A thus credits chaos and good. King Arthur, on the other hand, built one of the finest orderly systems, complete with law and enforcement, command and authority, to bring down the notion that might makes right and establish a good society. He, answer B, combines good with law. Attilla the Hun is most noted for tearing down structures in Europe and Asia. Although he maintained a highly disciplined army for the purpose, he is seen as a raider who destroys entire countries to line his own pocket. This is very close to the heart of chaotic evil, and falls as answer C. When it comes to moving within the dark side, Darth Vader shows us clearly how one can be entirely out for one's self while being completely obedient to a master and strictly part of a chain of command. His entire aspect combines the disciplines of law with the values of evil, and so answer D is the lawful evil choice.

Question 4 restates question one, using names instead of descriptions, to reach the motive of the character in a more poetic way. The soldier, answer A, is the one in the authority structure, the lawful. Heroes are those who rescue others for the sake of the rescued; answer B thus is the good answer. Answer D, the rogue, describes those trying to better themselves at the expense of others, frequently by deception, and is the evil selection. The adventurer is the one who does this because it is there to be done; he is the chaotic, having no better reason to explore than that he may.

Question 5 asks what should happen when the adventure is over. The first answer, wipe out the party and abscond with the money, is clearly the evil answer; many an evil party has passed out of existence because one of them understood answer A as the correct choice. Answer B places the planning of another venture in the hands of those in charge, the lawful decision. Answer C points up that good characters are always seeking to do good; adventuring is generally a way of gaining the means to do so, and the doing good continues between the adventures. Answer D breaks the party up. To the chaotic, the party is a necessary evil which exists for the purpose of the adventure; when the adventure is over, the party no longer really exists except as a group of friends who might adventure again someday. While the lawful thinks of the party as ongoing, an authority structure which continues, the chaotic rejects this notion, and opposes any idea that party rules apply to party members when the necessity of a present danger does not exist.

The issue in question 6 is structure and planning. This is a law/chaos issue, of no real interest to good and evil. The lawful character will choose answer A, because he believes in planning as the best means to achieve goals. The chaotic character will reject answer A, preferring answer B, maintaining flexibility as a way to seize opportunities. The good character would be less interested in these aspects, but would tend toward a balance in which there is enough flexibility to help others, however strictly the plan is formed, thus choosing answer C. Finally, when it comes to planning, the evil character will always keep in mind his maxim, look out for yourself first, answer D.

In question 7, the other corner alignment question, the issue is the nature of government. Answer A describes a belief in which government is ultimately minimized, making it possible for people to be freed from the oppressions of law to just be good to each other the way they would be were it not for the pressures on them to conform. This is a chaotic good belief, and so credits both chaos and good. The lawful good opposes this view, maintaining answer B, that crime must be controlled (by law) in order for everyone to prosper. The lawful evil character does not care about the rest of society, but recognizes in a strong government the opportunity for him to move into the position he deserves, and so chooses answer C, expecting that he is one of those best people. Answer D is the song of the chaotic evil, that the government is trying to keep us in our place, refusing to allow us to do what we want.

Question 8 is the slavery issue. This is difficult to understand in our society. Slavery itself is not a good/evil issue, but a law/chaos issue. It is possible to perceive slavery as a force for good, providing a home for those who would not otherwise have it by employing their services to produce for society at large. In a society in which slavery is legal, lawfuls will not oppose it on lawful grounds, because on lawful grounds it is, as answer C suggests, a reasonable solution to certain economic problems. Conversely, chaotic characters will always oppose enslavement of any creature in principle, whether or not it's legal, and will thus choose answer A. To the good character, the issue is not slavery itself but the treatment of slaves by masters; if slaves are generally well treated, there is not much about which to complain. However, answer B suggests that to the good the inherent flaw in slavery is its openness to abuse by the strong against the weak. As to the evil character, he believes that society should permit him to have what he wants. Although slavery is not a good/evil issue, he sees himself as worthy of being a master if slavery is to exist, and to be treated with deference even where it does not, answer D.

The relationship of the individual to the civil law is the next issue, in question 9. Of course, the lawful believes that law is essential to society, answer C. The chaotic follows that great American maxim that less is more, answer A, rejecting the need for law. To the good character, it is a non-issue. If you are good, says answer B, the law will ignore you. As to answer D, the evil character also sees it as a non-issue. Law or no law, you can make whatever is there work for you. It is your advantage that counts.

Finally question 10 asks us about our unwritten duty. The good character sees, with answer A, that we are all connected, and have a duty to help everyone else. The lawful character, taking answer B, thinks of duty more in terms of the authority which must be obeyed. A duty to himself, answer C, is the evil character's way of thinking: put yourself first. As to the chaotic, perhaps there are some duties to freedom and liberty, or perhaps some have duties to masters they have chosen to obey, or duties to philanthropies and charities to which they are pledged, but in the final analysis you cannot tell anyone that everyone has any specific single duty. It depends on who you are. Thus answer D expresses the chaotic view.

2002-12-21T22:38:00.000-08:00

Washington Post, E.J. Dionne, "Thurmond's GOP"

[...] African Americans in the South are among the best-known victims of states' rights claims, but they were not alone in having to turn to the federal government to seek vindication for their rights. It also took federal power to advance the rights of workers (through the Wagner Act and wages and hours laws), to protect consumers and to guarantee the rights of small investors. Federal law protects the rights of women, the disabled and members of religious minorities.

Yes, it's good that many Republicans have come out against what Lott said. But it's significant that many of his earliest and most forceful critics were neoconservative former Democrats (Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol come to mind) who never shared the old states' rights faith. The first Republican senator to issue an outright call on Lott to quit was Rhode Island's Lincoln Chafee, who, as his first name suggests, speaks from his party's oldest tradition of support for federal power. [...]

2002-12-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

Frightening, what you find (via Daypop) while looking for a simple article about marriage.

The Age, Peter Ellingsen, "The man in black who see red"

[...] They are the most radical and outrageous expression of the frustration some men's groups feel with the Family Court, and what they see as its pro-women bias.

But theirs is not just a crusade to turn back the clock. By demanding adultery be treated like murder by the courts, the Blackshirts are seeking the creation of a law that does not currently exist in Western society.

"Adultery must be met with the greatest severity," Abbott says. "I'm very angry, but I don't yell. I just make a list of men and women to die." [...]

2002-12-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

Times like this, I wish I could say I was glad it's all over. But I can't wish it, I'm not glad and it's not over.

2002-12-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

Cecily's placing blame over some foolishness. Rep. Cass Ballenger? Yes, you. Trent Lott-envy much? And you, Rep. Mel Watt? Yes, you. Tom Daschle-envy much?

Aside: "House Negro," by the Washington Monthly's Ta-Nehisi Coates, on J.C. Watts' "What Color is a Conservative?"

2002-12-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

At the Guardian, John Aglionby's "Articles of war" points out something that nagged at my mind when I first read about the feds' "We love Muslim people" push.

[....] In his opening remarks at the magazine's launch, the American ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph Boyce, said the publication was aimed at promoting mutual understanding and correcting misperceptions about America.

"I hope you will remember that the images you see [on film and television] are filtered through the need to entertain and stimulate and make a profit," he said. "The world they depict is often as unrealistic as the special effects used to create it."

Fair enough, but "Muslim life in America" also seems to do its fair share of filtering in order to present the desired image of Muslims' life being predominantly wholesome family fare. For example there is no mention or photos of arguably four of America's most famous Muslims, namely Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan - the leader of the Nation of Islam - Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. Its credibility certainly suffers as a result of such omissions and suspicions mount as to the true intentions of the book. [...]

Too problematic, probably. Why educate, when it's simpler just to filter?

2002-12-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

New York Magazine, Anne Thompson, "Spike Lee's Game" (via PopPolitics' Daily Finds)

[...] "I understand that I've never had a film that made $100 million [...] I'm not complaining, Oh, Hollywood won't let me make these movies. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, I'll bide my time. Marvin Worth bought the rights to Malcolm X and waited 25 years before it got made. I'll get the money to make these great films."

2002-12-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

Opinion Journal, Shelby Steele, "Of Race and Imagination"

[...] Democracies expand individual rights past the barriers of race, class and gender precisely by encouraging imaginative identification with difference--by asking men to put themselves in the shoes of women, whites in the shoes of blacks, and so on. And minorities are always asking others to put themselves in their place because they know this is how equality will be experienced and become undeniable. Minorities also know that racism and bigotry are always a failure of this kind of imagination. In the face of difference, imagination is the only way to common humanity. Thus minorities also know that racism and bigotry are the perfect collapse of imagination. [...]

2002-12-17T14:35:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Chronicle, Emil Guillermo, "Lott's Racial Honesty"

[...] When Ward Connerly started rallying to get rid of affirmative action, his tack was Proposition 209 -- the so-called Civil Rights Initiative. That bit of rhetorical dishonesty characterizes the contemporary onslaught against race equity. And it's been a winning strategy: Proposition 209 passed, and affirmative action no longer exists in education or public contracting in California.

The tactic has spread to other states, and as long as conservatives whistle the same tune, all has been well.

But now Lott has exposed the true subtext, and the conservative tactic seems like an ugly charade.

So Lott has embarked on his "apology tour," saying things like, "We need strict enforcement of civil rights laws on the books and all laws on the books to guarantee equality and punish racism."

The man's seen the light.

No wonder conservatives are leading the charge to get rid of him. He even bothers professional minority conservatives such as Hispanic American Linda Chavez and African American Armstrong Williams. They've chimed in with others from the right to drum up a "Lott Out" campaign. Of course they have. With Lott being so honest, they have no credibility on race issues now. Instead of looking like opportunistic mouthpieces for the right, they start coming off as true hypocrites, guilty by association.

That's what Lott's honesty did. He's brought all the memories of racism forward, and he's letting America see the ugliness for what it's become. Hard to fight, hard to define -- until, in some unguarded moment, the truth blurts out. When that happens, suddenly we realize the fight for racial equity is far from over. [...]

Quod vide: New York Times, Lynette Clemetson, "Black Republicans Speak of Their Outrage at Lott"

2002-12-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

To consume over a leisurely, rainy weekend: David Brin's "We hobbits are a merry folk ..." Common's "Electric Circus." The Roots' "Phrenology." Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris." Dmitri Ehrlich's "Inside the Music: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians about Spirituality, Creativity and Consciousness." Frank Herbert's "Dune." DVDs for "Gosford Park," "Amores Perros" and "Afterlife."

2002-12-17T02:53:00.000-08:00

Anil Dash asks: So, who owns your identity right now?

My identity? I responded:

I do, but only to the extent that I am willing to work for it.

My identity is a form, visible when struck by radiation at certain wavelengths.

My identity is also a void, a vacuum that nature abhors.

Form is emptiness; emptiness, form.

Not to creep up on any Buddhism 101, or anything.

When you put "all about George" into Google, you don't get what's-his-name or who's-the-fellow. Not Bush, Washington, Jefferson or a cartoon character strong as he can be.

2002-12-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jerry Berger, "New lawmaker from O'Fallon, Mo., learns political lesson No. 1: How to eat crow" (via the Progressive's No Comment)

[...] You could have heard a pin drop on the floor of the Missouri House during a recent mock debate to train freshman legislators after newcomer Rep.-elect Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, committed the first gaffe. Davis cited the House rule book to prevent current Rep. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, from continuing to speak. Davis said members "cannot be recognized on the floor to debate unless they are standing, and I don't believe he (Graham) is standing." Graham, a six-year vet of the House, has been in a wheelchair since a car accident 21 years ago. Rep. Tim Green, D-Spanish Lake, waited merely seconds before he told Graham to proceed. [...]

2002-12-16T19:53:00.000-08:00

Washington Post, eMediaMillworks, "BET Interview with Sen. Trent Lott"

2002-12-16T03:51:00.000-08:00

"The Years of Rice and Salt," Kim Stanley Robinson:

[...] Of course we are reborn many times. We fill our bodies like air in bubbles, and when the bubbles pop we puff away into the bardo, wandering until we are blown into some new life, somewhere back in the world. [...]

2002-12-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

Detroit Free Press, Mitch Albom, "A ridiculous response to Lott's remarks":

[...] And in the middle of all this noise, here is the only question that matters: Do blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minorities really feel that anyone is looking out for their interests in this, or just covering their own behinds?

Houston Chronicle, R.G. Ratcliffe, "GOP struggling to reach minorities, adviser says"

[...] "In the (2000) election, one of the greatest failures of our campaign was to get 9 percent of the African-American vote," Republican strategist Karl Rove said. "No party can be a great party if it does so poorly in such an important part of our great culture." [...]

[...] "People are not going to change their attitudes overnight. They want to hear from us time and time again," Rove said. "Even where we share common values and common outcomes, common desired outcomes, they're still suspicious of us -- and they have good reason to be." [...]

2002-12-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

"Language and Markets in the U.S.," Hispanic Business magazine.

Rocky Mountain News, Stan Kupper, "On a wavelength far from home" and the National Association for Hispanic Journalists' PDF for "Network Brownout"

2002-12-15T02:29:00.000-08:00

Hanne goes to the movies.

Some collected quotes from Albert Einstein.

San Francisco Chronicle, David Kipen, "Phrase phreaks' (0 hits) rejoice online":

[...] According to Phrase Finder, "weapons of mass destruction" comes not from some Defense Department monograph, but from a pacifist essay credited to Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell called -- deliciously -- the Pugwash Manifesto. It's named after the Nova Scotia burg of Pugwash, where Einstein and Russell drafted the document in 1955. [...]

2002-12-14T03:41:00.000-08:00

At Randomwalks, talk of what Nader's up to turns into re-doubled in-Dem-nity.

2002-12-13T03:36:00.000-08:00

Um, so, OK. Mysterious loss of server files. Trouble re-configuring Movable Type. It's been a drag working with files on my end before, but not this bad. The fault lies with me. I claim sophistication on few fronts. This is another front where I can improve with a little effort and time.

Call this a hiatus-blog of a sort, until I figure out what to do and how best to do it. Which means I'll continue to post. I may not archive this stuff, though. We'll see.

2001-12-08T01:29:00.000-08:00

"Robots in disguise!": ... in December's Remix Magazine.

The essence of the transformer scratch is a rhythmic cutting off and on of the sound while moving the record back and forth or letting it play. Using that simple technique, you can create an amazing variety of sounds.

2001-12-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

Heteronormativity can blow me: ... and Audre Lorde reminds me why (spurred by a Kinky Thoughts entry that I remembered when looking back through an old page's link to a review of "The Day Lady Died," a classic Frank O'Hara jam and then the archive where I got all that Mark Doty stuff from last week:

Claudia Tate: I am frequently jarred by my sometimes unconscious attempt to identify the sex of the person addressed in the poem. Since I associate the speaker's voice with you, and since I'm not always conscious that you are a lesbian, the jarring occurs when I realize the object of affection is likewise a woman. I'm certain this disturbance originates in how society defines love in terms of heterosexuality. So if we are to see love as a "universal" concept, society pressures us to see it as heterosexual.

Audre Lorde: Yes, we're supposed to see "universal" love as heterosexual. What I insist upon in my work is that there is no such thing as universal love in literature. There is this love in this poem. The poem happens when I, Audre Lorde, poet, deal with the particular instead of the "UNIVERSAL." My power as a person, as a poet, comes from who I am. I am a particular person. The relationships I have had, in which people kept me alive, helped sustain me, were
sustained by me, were particular relationships. They help give me my particular identity, which is the source of my energy. Not to deal with my life in my art is to cut out the fount of my strength.

2001-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

Pearl Harbor: ... The University of Colorado's Ira Chernus in Common Dreams:

The Pearl Harbor myth tells about a final and complete victory over the enemy. In an era of terrorist threat, clinging to such a myth may make the myth irrelevant. It perpetuates the historical conflict that spawned the problem in the first place, insuring that there will be no final victory. It helps make the words of Vice-President Cheney a self-fulfilling prophecy: "There's not going to be an end date when we're going to say, 'There, it's all over with.'"

Unending war is not what we are supposed to celebrate on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

2001-12-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

Bock-eroo Banzai: ... SFGate says Audie Bock (no friend of Rep. Barbara Lee) will not run to replace her.

2001-12-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

I was a teenage preppie wannabe: ... I was busted in my freshman English class by my teacher, Mr. Steptoe, for hiding reading material behind my textbook. (Telltale signs: I didn't answer him when I was called on, and I was sitting in the front row of class -- and I was one of those Hands of Perpetual Levitation students.)

The material in question? Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppie Handbook."

Of course, this was 16 years ago. I believe the statute of limitations has expired. But on certain still nights, I can hear the laughter of my classmates ringing in the air before me and see the single raised eyebrow of Mr. Steptoe, a Roscoe Lee Browne manque if ever there was one.

2001-12-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

Blogger's nice, isn't it? I like Blogger; don't you?

2001-08-29T02:20:00.000-07:00

Bear with me: ... I'm getting the hang of this host-change thing. It's quarter past 2 in the morning. I'm not at my best.

Shampooed the locks Monday, but didn't get around to shea-buttering them down till this afternoon. I think it went well. I can ponytail the ones at the base of my scalp, but the rest are too short to gather up in back properly.

2001-08-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

Formica?: ... I like-a.

2001-08-28T00:03:00.000-07:00

Tricky: ... from a July 2001 Remix magazine interview.

What effect would you like your music to have, and how do you see yourself as an artist?

I think I'm more about emotion than about being a head-rocker. Some music makes your head nod, and that's good; I love those drumbeats that make you go [bangs his head]. I'd like people to listen to my music with headphones by themselves rather than go out to hear it in a club. Sometimes I'd like to make a bangin' track, but I'd rather be there with the emotion. I want to touch people's souls. That's the one thing I wanted to do at the beginning of my career, and it's the one thing I want to do now. I'm really in it for that. You get all the good things that come along with it -- the traveling, people treating you good -- but I want to touch people's souls. And I don't think it's worth me doing music if I can't do that. I want to go a bit deeper than the ears. I want to touch you inside there. I want to make you feel something. I've still got that now. That's what keeps me going.

A woman once came up to me after a concert. She was telling me all this beautiful stuff, and I didn't want to hear it, y'know what I mean? I was just about to walk away, and she says to me, "Look, I don't want to seem to go on, but I mean what I say: you're in my home and you're in my children." And that blew my mind. That was the heaviest thing anyone's ever said to me. She plays my music to her kids. That's heavy, and that's what I want. That is better than a royalty check -- and a royalty check is good!

2001-08-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Cover stories: That's funny. The twins on the September cover of this magazine are wearing saris and jeweled bindis. And September's cover of this magazine has a headline for their cover piece taking readers "inside the city's wild new music scene -- a tour through rock, hip-hop, and house to the genius of DJ Qbert." But that curly-mopped lanky dude with the Led Zeppelin T-shirt, that couldn't be Qbert, could it? Nah. It's Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind instead.

Thank goodness Sheerly Avni's article is worth the two months she says she spent living on C--- Lights, screwdrivers and coffee to write it.

And I give Jenkins cool points for discoursing on cred and the Invisibl Scratch Piklz: "I made music to make my own world. I didn't make it to create borders and exclude others -- which is what having cred is all about. ... Qbert is the Dalai Lama of scratching. And their recognition is coming, don't worry. But then what will happen to their cred? Oh no! Fuck you, cred motherfuckers."

And Qbert has something to say, too: "I just like to dig up new sounds, find new things -- you have to continue growing. And I don't mind being sampled by others. I believe in Karma, and I think music should just make people happy."

2001-08-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

Mack Reed: ... on morale-boosters for journalists and what you need to know before you wander off to Burning Man on impulse. (via James)

2001-08-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

A letter from Cuba: ... Noy Thrupkaew recalls healthcare, jiniterismo, race and labeling as belonging.

I am called "china" quite often during the trip. But it doesn't really feel like people have an idea of what personality traits a china has or a stereotype in mind (i.e., hot geisha chick, godamn foreigner, come do my laundry and make me chop suey, etc.) when they say the word. It would make me feel quite different, I suspect, if I were to be called any one of those other words. But instead of sounding like a commentary on my personality or an ethnic slur, "China!" seems more of an astonished observation-a "look at that pink elephant" exclamation.

And for that reason, I start to feel much freer in Cuba than I have in my travels in Asia, where the clash of my appearance, clothing, behavior, language skills, and people's ideas about me cause much confusion and consternation for them, and oppressive feelings of being inescapably foreign and "off" for me. Not to mention the resentment I feel at the white people who claim to have found their spiritual home in these countries where I feel so strange. But in Cuba, if I explain what I am, I am never doubted. I am never expected to act a certain way (in contrast to "not Thai enough," "not really American, either," in Thailand; in Japan, "How much are you, baby?"; "Why do you speak English?"). Nor do I feel people scrutinize my behavior to make sure I conform to their ideas about me.

I don't really speak Spanish, however, and I am only here for twelve days, so perhaps ignorance is bliss. But this ignorance has been liberating in many ways-I am in no position to indulge my Virgo Gone Bad tendencies to be an expert, flog myself for not knowing everything, or plan my interactions with people down to the last detail like I've too often tried to do in Thailand and Japan. I'm a fish completely out of water, a "china" out of "China," finding out that charades are fun when language fails, that when you are lost you often find good food, and that chaotic uncertainty and gnawing fear can give way to a sense of spontaneity and discovery that is, well, brand new for me. I remember a Buddhist term I learned in school-shosin, or beginner's mind-a state of newness and egoless, clear perception that the beginner has and that an expert should strive towards, a state that I have only started to explore in Cuba because I have no other option.

So even if it is ignorance, it is amazing to feel free of my face even if someone chooses to remark on its difference. And it is yet more unbelievable on those nights when I am walking in just the right light, when I am with just the right dark-haired travelers, when I am wearing just the right clothes, and a Cuban person will speak to me in Spanish, asking the time or how to get to a certain place, and then say, puzzled at my nonverbal answer-"You aren't Cubana?" When this happens, I am tremblingly happy, ashamed of daring to think that I could be free of my hyphenated self and my privileged American life-a stranger eavesdropping on someone else's story of home who can just barely, guiltily picture herself a part of it.

2001-08-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

Chocolate Genius: ... the musician also known as Marc Anthony Thompson in an interview with Vivien Goldman, talking about how music is still his passion: "Art is an effort to gather your tribe. Hopefully, mine will come with me."

2001-08-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Changing hosts: ... I'm doing it, so I may slow down a little bit on the posting-every-day pace for the next week. But what do you guys care, anyway? You're moving into dorm rooms, driving to Burning Man, making plans for the long Labor Day weekend or just laying low, aren't you?

In case you care, I'm heading from here to over here. Double the room, half the cost, slightly less data transfer per month -- and all the stuff I know nothing about, but intend to try on (CGI-BIN, MySQL, PHP, etc.).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back down to B-and-N's cafe at Jack London Square. I want to try out new site layouts and play with a couple of articles, and Ankita wants to do other stuff. This was us on Sunday:

George: *catches The Wife ogling a black-and-white photo of Vin Diesel bare-chested in the shower in the new InStyle magazine* Turn the page! Now!
The Wife: But you can't see his face!
George: Oh, yeah. It just increases the mystery for you, huh?
The Wife: *big smile*

2001-08-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

Mondo Grosso: ... Ernie, weren't you listening to this a couple of weeks ago?

But I shouldn't care because above all, MG4 is a statement about the aspirations of the person who buys this disc. Such a person will watch "Sex and the City" to verify which shoe boutiques are currently en vogue. Such a person will look out for which West Village restaurants are the talk of the town. Such a person will not have read A Man Without Qualities, but will own and prominently display an import boxed edition. If these are your aspirations, here is a perfect album for you. But those of us who feel underdressed when shopping at Target can also enjoy MG4, as long as we're not paying too much attention.

2001-08-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

Keba Konte: ... I got a copy of one of his prints at a fair in Berkeley a year ago. It depicts a little boy leaping over a graveyard, and it's on our kitchen wall.

2001-08-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Aaliyah: ... A June interview from BlackVoices.com.

2001-08-26T03:10:00.000-07:00

Canadian Ham: ... or rather, a Maclean's article about a brother from another ~~planet~~ country. (via Cecily)

2001-08-26T02:39:00.000-07:00

Korla Pandit: ... He was on my mind 'cause of a Sylvia Chan article about Asian influences in hip-hop that mentions him. I had no idea Pandit was really black, not Indian.

2001-08-26T02:17:00.000-07:00

Saul Williams on Macy Gray: ... excerpted from the September 2001 issue of Interview magazine.

SW: You seem to focus a lot on self-expression and exploring your taboos on the album. Are you OK with discussing some taboo issues?
MG: Of course.
SW: Do drugs play a role in your creative life?
MG: There are a few songs -- probably the majority of the album -- that were written when I was a little, you know, beyond. I think what drugs do is send you to places that you normally don't go and you can see things from a different perspective.
SW: Do you think that the use of hallucinogens in the black community could have a powerful effect on how black people perceive their experiences? Especially with all that talk about "keeping it real" -- what if reality was altered a little bit?
MG: I don't know, but speaking for myself, it happened to me when I was at USC, which was mostly white. One time when I was on acid at a party, I had this big revelation that because I was one of the only black people in the crowd -- the only one who had what I had -- I was powerful. That was the first time I completely flipped being black. And I've thought that way ever since.
SW: How dominant was the issue of race when you were growing up?
MG: My mother was an activist in our city [Canton, Ohio], and I was always really proud to be black. But I went to a boarding school with all these rich white kids. I think there were about 12 black people in the whole school. So even if you are proud of who you are and where you come from, [in a mostly white environment] you still have to do with subtle insults and being slighted. So I'm just saying that that [experience] was the first time I saw that for myself -- that I felt powerful.
SW: Do you think that black people are free?
MG: No. We've been so sucked into what society has brainwashed us to be -- you know, that slave mentality, that we're secondary. And I think subconsciously most of us have bought into it. But I think society has given us everything it's going to. No more emancipations of freedom or whatever else we feel they owe us. If we want to go any further, we have to emancipate ourselves, and think about ourselves differently.

2001-08-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Suggestions: ... for covering the transgender character on the upcoming CBS drama "The Education of Max Bickford." (via jessi)

DO refer to Helen Shaver's character as Erica. Only refer to Shaver's character as Steve as needed to detail Erica's backstory.
DO use female pronouns when referring to Erica.
DON'T use quotation marks around "female," "woman," "Erica" or female pronouns when referring to Helen Shaver's character.
DO use the term "gender identity" to describe Erica's sense of herself as a woman. Gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation.
DO refer to Erica as "a transgender woman," or "a male-to-female transgender person" - not as "a transgender." "Transsexual" may be used, but "transgender" is preferred. Do not use "transvestite."
DON'T say that Erica is "pretending" to be a woman or "posing" as a woman, or imply that Erica is not "really" a woman.
DO use the words "many" and "most" when discussing transgender people. The transgender community is very diverse, and over-generalizations should be avoided.

2001-08-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

Today's tune: ... is Zap Mama's "Call Waiting" (narrowly beating out "Songe").

...an eerily acid-jazzy extension of the Alexander Graham Bell fixation Daulne revealed on Seven's "Telephone."

... The only weak link in the tracks of Am A Zone is "Call Waiting's" very basic drum n' bass and an ungraceful attempt at trance; Zap Mama sounds more like Bjork and the dialing and telephone ringing blares like it?s supposed to hammer the songs? name into our heads."

... Une d�claration d'amour par fax. Les moyens de communication modernes sont un th�me r�current de l'album. Nous sommes aujourd'hui tellement press�s que tout doit se faire par t�l�phone ou par les autoroutes de l'information.

... This song just makes me grin, due to the fact that, well, it's just so simply sexy.

... "Call Waiting" features Marie Daulne's haunting voice set to light drum-and-bass and the brisk, striking sound of pizzicato violins and an acoustic bass. If the boys of Massive Attack were to grab some djembes and African folk records, hang out with Angelique Kidjo and smile (much) more, the result might sound something like this.

2001-08-25T03:38:00.000-07:00

Newt Gingrich: ... Amazon.com book reviewer?

2001-08-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

Greece is the word: ... when it comes to two D.C. theater companies' latest offerings here and here.

2001-08-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

Madonna: ... first condoms (a kind she doesn't seem to like, actually), then a bit of common sense (which I think she'll like even less).

By insisting so neurotically on her four-year-old daughter's femininity -- when the nearest Lourdes should be getting to make-up is Burnt Sienna on her nose during finger-painting sessions -- Madonna reveals more about her own insecurity than we ever wanted to know. We've seen her nipples, we've seen her bush, we've seen it all - but her naked psyche is, I fear, the most unacceptable private part of them all.

2001-08-25T02:03:00.000-07:00

DJ Spooky: ...last night, That Subliminal Kid played with Matthew Shipp at the Aldrich Museum on Main St. (heh, DJ Spooky, playing on Main Street -- now that's overground acceptance!) in Ridgefield, Conn. Anybody know how it went?

I mean, I only know 'bout it 'cause I went to the Stamford Advocate's homepage looking for a Patrick Verel article on bhangra and found this.

"Anything can be remixed, whether it's the sound of wind or the rain, even satellite feedback," he says. "It's just the basic ways it all flows. All songs are just remixes of each other; there's nothing that's really original."

But if, as Miller states in the liner notes of "Under The Influence," "hip-hop, techno, ambient, illbiant, drum'n'bass, and dancehall reggae are just terms used to hold a place in our minds where we dance together," how does he know where to begin?

"I just go on my own internal intuition," he says. "It's like a language that we all speak. You can understand music better than even a foreign language."

2001-08-25T01:43:00.000-07:00

The boob tube: ... the Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson says it's turned black folks into boobs.

No one watches television as much as black folks do. The television is on in the typical African-American household 76 hours a week, or 101/2 hours a day, according to Nielsen Research Media and TN Media. That compares with 54 hours a week in all other households. That means that a television is on a lot more hours than a child attends school. It means we are letting television run our lives and running education right out the door.

Based on scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress tests, 34 percent of the poor readers watched six hours or more of television a day. Only 6 percent of the best readers watched that much television. And you can guess by now which children were consuming that much television.

A recent study by the department of instruction in North Carolina found that 40 percent of African-American children watched six hours or more of television a day, compared with 16 percent of white and Asian-American children. Students in North Carolina who watched six hours or more television a day were a full year or more behind in classwork.

2001-08-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

"Golden Boy": ... today, though, I am feeling it. (RealAudio | RealVideo)

RES found Doc, the missing link to her sound, after a friend turned her onto Esthero's Breath From Another. "I just thought that record was dope and I knew he was the one I needed to work with in order to do what I wanted to do," she explains, adding, "I liked the string arrangements he had on that record, the different noises he creates in his music, and how he uses the guitar to build every song from scratch. He also had that hip-hop appeal and edge I wanted."

How I Do opens with the incendiary "Golden Boy," a loungy, drum 'n' bass-tinged track about illusion vs. reality and blowing up spots: "Why are you selling dreams of who you wish you could be / A prince in all of the magazines / They have no words for the man I've seen / You talk real fast before they see your face / Now would they love you if they knew all the things that we know?� Those golden boys are all a fraud / Don't believe their show."

2001-08-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

Dinner last night: ... There was delicious food, enjoyable company -- and the oddly appropriate feel of following some cable channel's broadcast of "What Lies Beneath" with the first few minutes of the Gary Condit/Connie Chung ABC interview.

2001-08-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

"You Rock My World": ... Listened to the first single (RealAudio) off his Oct. 30 album, "Invincible," at Michael Jackson's site.

You get a bit of pop-culture convergence in the first minute, with MJ and Chris Tucker (whose love for the Gloved One is evident in the smack-talking -- "I bet you Never-Never Land you can't get that girl! ... All right, then: Jamonit! JAMONIT!!").

From Valsadie's "America Misses Michael Jackson":

Just watch one of the surprise hit films of late 1998, "Rush Hour." The film�s star, Chris Tucker, refers to Michael in a handful of the film�s lines and even performs some of Michael�s signature dance moves.

Producer Rodney Jerkins overhauls some "The Way You Make Me Feel"-style lyrics (which Michael sings but I can't quite clearly make out, other than the chorus), grafts them onto a really pretty piano, a rhythm that barely pushes 90 bpm, a few of those odd percussive sounds that I could probably duplicate on my cheap Yamaha pre-MIDI keyboard and some canned strings.

I give it a 6.5 out of 10, mostly 'cause I haven't heard him in a while and it's nice to. (Nostalgia, I guess.) That, and I'd rather listen to him than most of the stuff on this week's charts. *shrug*