The post office is raising rates on stamps again. I hate when they do that because I have to buy a whole bunch of 2 or 3 cent stamps to make my old stamps useable again. Then I spend a month sending regular envelopes of mail with two separate stamps affixed. It offends my delicate artistic sensibilities. Not to mention I hate when the price of anything goes up. My regular egg and cheese Croissanwich at Burger King costs $0.20 more damn near every time I go. And now that I’ve written the name down for the first time, I might have to change my regular order. “Croissanwich”? Really?
But back to stamps. I think the price of a stamp was $0.25 for my entire childhood. Or maybe it was $0.32. But whatever it was, I don’t remember it ever changing. Now the price of stamps changes like they’re pumped out of Middle Eastern soil and manufactured by adhesive refineries operating at artificially lowered capacities. Next time I go to the post office they’re going to have one of those big sign towers and one of the incredibly miserable USPS employees will be out front with the long pole/suction cup sticking up the day’s prices.
Of course, a friend of mine says we shouldn’t complain about the price of stamps because odds are we can’t hand our letter to anyone else on the street and expect them to deliver it to LA or Philly or Miami for $0.41 or whatever the rate bumps up to next. To which I reply, 1) I like to complain, and 2) you can get a crackhead to do anything for $0.41.
“The next time I see that ‘bleachy-haired honkey bitch‘ I’m going to wring her scrawny little neck!” Ced didn’t even look up from the notebook where he was working on a Sudoku puzzle. By now he was used to me bursting into rooms and hurling insane declarations. I call it starting a story “in medias res”. I learned that term in my 12th grade AP English class while studying epic poetry. Epic poems start in medias res (in the middle of things) so that the reader is thrust into the action of the story. The details of the past are filled in later, like poetic flashbacks. It’s more dramatic that way. As soon as Mrs. Stevenson wrote it on the board, it became less of a literary term and more of a credo for me. Ced understands, so now it doesn’t phase him at all. That and he really really likes Sudoku.
“Who are we murdering now?” He asks, taking a sip of coffee. “I just want to make sure I have the right size trash bags.”
“Hollis FUCKING Gillespie! Who else?” I then had to explain to him how Chrisco has been prodding me to compile my columns into a book for years, because, according to him, I’m like the rap Hollis Gillespie. I had shrugged it off at the time because I knew the book wasn’t really selling. What’s the point, I thought. Who wants to read about one odd chick’s quirky observations about life? Then I find out that she’s touring to promote her third book and her - get this - TELEVISION DEAL! What the hell? “What’s she got that I don’t have??” I demanded.
Ced furrowed his brow, then rotated his pencil to erase a misplaced 6. I would not have reacted, except that Ced never messes up on a sudoku puzzle. He’s sort of a savant. I had struck a nerve. The last time I asked that question, we were sitting in a coffee shop just like this one. I had just left my 7-year-old daughter at a play date with my friend’s son who is in love with her. When I left, they were planning the menu for the “cat wedding”, a touching union of his new Siamese kitten and my 16-year-old spayed calico. The little boy wasn’t that interested in the feline nuptials, but he liked to get practice in, since, according to him, he and my daughter would be planning their own wedding one day. The theme, he said, would be Spiderman.
It was stupid, of course, but it made me tear up anyway. My 7-year-old had found true love, even though she was oblivious to it at the moment. Even my old-ass cat could manage a May-December romance of sorts. I, on the other hand, was doomed to spend my days roaming the earth alone, unwanted, unloved. I panicked and begged Ced to meet me at our usual coffee shop, where I later stormed into the place, and right in middle of everything, demanded that he stop dicking around with his chickenhead girlfriend and marry me already.
He didn’t appreciate it then, either, and he told me so, the first and only time I have ever heard him raise his voice to me. The other coffee shop patrons, of course, didn’t know why. They were just coming in on a dramatic scene. They didn’t understand how us heroes of epic poetry get down. See, epic heroes are extraordinary figures, usually with superhuman qualities. They can accomplish amazing feats, but in every epic poem the hero is eventually brought down by the classic fatal flaw, hubris. I knew Ced had always had a little crush on me. I taught him things, I made him laugh, I could read his mind, and my smile is like angels fucking. Yet, I had failed to consider that no matter how superhuman our friendship was, expecting him to forget that he loved his girlfriend was the arrogant blow that mortally wounded his respect for me. She was a sweet girl with a good heart. She had stood by him faithfully to make their relationship work. Failing to respect that only showed why I was alone.
It took us a long time to find another coffee shop after my outburst got us ejected that day, but here we were again. I lowered my voice and calmed down. He looked up at me, finally, but he didn’t have to say anything. As usual, I read his mind. Yes, Nat Porter’s got an extraordinary pen game, and her insights are downright heroic, but banking on her talent so much that she doesn’t see she needs to respect hard work, that just might kill her career.
“I know. I’m being stupid. I know I’m a decent writer, but Hollis Gillespie actually put in the work and made it happen for herself. Of course she deserves everything she has.” I sighed and sank back into my chair. Ced leaned over the table and kissed me on the forehead. “You’ll get there. I know you will.” He handed me his pencil and notebook.
Next time I see Hollis Gillespie, I’ll probably hug her. I won’t even introduce myself or explain why or anything. Sure, she will probably be confused being thrust into the middle of some stranger’s professional epiphany, but that’s how we epic heroes do. It’s more dramatic that way.
Every once in a while I happen to visit someone’s home or office and notice their collection of African tribal art, and I can’t help but question the appropriateness of it. Sure, the masks and figurines are visually appealing. The approach to symbolism and use of negative space are so different from the European-style art we’re used to, that you can’t help but be drawn. Even Picasso was fascinated by the the art he found on his trips to Africa, so much so that he mimicked some of the elements in later work. (That’s right, ya’ll. Picasso was down with the aesthetic swirl.) Still, I am wary of bringing tribal art pieces into western decor because, well, sometimes it isn’t supposed to be art at all.
The fact is, what is referred to as tribal art is often more like “found objects” in the sense that it wasn’t created with the intention of serving as an art piece, but someone found it and decided to hang it up somewhere because of its visual appeal and, perhaps, the statement it makes out of context. This has nothing to do with its original function. At times, this countervailes its original function. There’s something a bit suspect about using a fertility goddess as a paperweight. I know that original tribal artifacts, or authentic-looking facsimilles thereof, are often sold by industrious African merchants capitalizing on Stuff White People Like. Yet, the fact that Africans are willing to hustle to make ends meet doesn’t make it any easier for me to see replica Igbo ceremonial masks in Pier1. Even more unsettling for me is when people collect the real ones. Now you have a village god nailed to the wall above the cat’s litter box.
To be fair, you have no reason to find me credible. I failed Art History and slept through African American Studies. I have only a little bit of knowledge about where different pieces come from and what they mean but no personal attachment to any of it. While I was contemplating this essay and the sources of my unease, I realized that my opinion certainly isn’t the most relevant. So I grabbed an African and asked him.
He explained to me that there are some pieces sold in mass that everyone accepts as decorative, while there are others that are supposed to be sacred. Because, over time, the export of sacred artifacts robbed so many believers of their spiritual objects, they shifted their focus to immovable things like mountains. Now many people feel as though their traditions have survived the violation of trade because the spirit still lives on in holy places, which are not so easily taken. Of course, this is one man’s take on things. Certainly their are other voices, other perspectives.
And perspective is important. No, I don’t expect white urban hipsters to start respecting the religious rites of far-away villages more than they do their own sense of fashion. I can’t see myself blaming someone for liking to have something in their house because it looks cool and goes with the loveseat. But I can’t help but wonder if appropriating someone’s culture to brighten up your foyer would be possible if you truly understood what it means to them? Does it require a certain level of disrespect, or at least disinterest to exoticize a person’s life in that way? Can I use the Bible as a coaster? A crucifix as a coat hook? May I purchase the wedding veils of dead brides from their bereaved widowers because they would make bitchin’ curtains?
Or perhaps the significance of an object ends when it leaves its owner. Living in Philadelphia, I noticed that alongside the large population of Muslims who still adhere to strict dress codes (hijab, full length dishdasha, etc.) there are non-Muslim black women in head-wraps and men in 5x white tees. Coincidence? ‘Fraid not. We see, we like, we copy. Maybe that’s inevitable, and if people find it offensive it’s only because they are sensitive, since the trivialization of their culture is only part of a larger system of oppression. Maybe everybody’s sprinkling salt, but only the wounded feel it burn.
We here at Chrisco Spins are not only dedicated to intelligent debate among our own bloggers, but are absolutely committed to providing a public forum for those in society who seek an outlet for opinions classified as “untraditional” or “non-mainstream” or “certifiably insane.”
In this initial installment of our occasional “Let’s Ask…” segment, celebrity guest blogger Tom Cruise, noted film star, Scientology expert and couch-jumper, answers a question from a select Chrisco Spins reader.
Dear Crazy Tom,
Y’all. OK, so I was kind of like married to this dude - let’s call him “Hay-Fed” because he’s got a face like a horse, ha ha HA - and like it was all crazy and sexy and shopping for trucker hats at Wal-Mart late at night all barefooted and a WHOLE lot of eating hot wings with champagne three meals a day from room service and, I mean, it was real classy at first, y’all, but then he knocked me up and I popped out a kid and then he was all up on me like some humpy dog and THEN I had another baby like all right away and I couldn’t sing no more because of all the peeing and pooing and burping — and the babies were just as bad, y’all. So I dropped his sad skinny ass and got all bald, which I thought was a good idea at the time but kind of sucked because I found out you sunburn real bad on your head unless you wear pink wigs. Anyway, people have been saying I’m crazy and I can’t sing and dance and I’m a bad mother to my babies because I maybe HAVE been known to let them play with my cigarette packs. Oh, and I kind of was rushed to the hospital once. Or twice. Or like a few times. For rehab and stuff. Ask my mom. She’d know. She knows it ALL, y’all, and she will TELL you that just like she tells ME that ALL THE $&*@ING TIME OH MY GAWD!!!!!
Thanks, y’all - “Crazy” Brit Brit
Crazy Tom says…
Wow. OK. HA HA HA HA HA!!! You’re… you’re… you’re… you’re GLIB, Brit Brit! YOU’RE GLIB! I’ve done RESEARCH on psychiatric drugs and THEY DON’T WORK! HA HA HA HA HA!!! ARE YOU LISTENING?!!! Only WEAK-MINDED PEOPLE take them and a simple AUDIT from my friends at the Hollywood Hills First Church of Scientology Savings & Loan would work WONDERS for you! KATIE, THE LOVE OF MY LIFE HA HA HA HA HA, and I just sent our good friend BROOKE SHIELDS a coupon for a free mind audit (bring a friend - HA HA HA HA HA!!!) and she LOVED IT!!! Her exact words afterwards were “Xenu loves me, this I know… L. Ron Hubbard tells me so…” YEAH, BROOKE!!! HOW MUCH DO I LOVE THIS WOMAN?!!! NOT AS MUCH AS I LOVE YOU, KATIE!!! AND YOU, SURI!!! YEAH!!! YEAH!!! YEAH!!! I AM IN LOVE, AMERICA, IN LOVE I TELL YOU!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Yours in the joy of jumping on random couches - Crazy Tom
Coming soon: In the next installment of “Let’s Ask …” celebrity songstress Beyonce Knowles discusses her love of ultra-diva Tina Turner, except for La Tina’s unfortunate ’80s hair period.
This morning I opened an e-mail from my boy Doug in which he had forwarded a link for the lead-off single for the new Roots album, a track titled “Birthday Girl”. He briefly prefaced it by saying that, even though there had been some negative reviews, he thought the video would be a hit. He asked if I thought it could get regular play.
I really need you to just watch this, please, so you can understand how very silly that question is.
Of course it will get regular play!!! Dorky teen boys getting their “gifts” unwrapped by a mischievous-looking barely legal chick(en head?)* and the implication that as soon as a young lady hits that magic number, she’s smash-appropriate? Yes, Doug, I’m afraid this just may be a hit, if for no other reason than that the video features porn star Sasha Grey. This video is wank fodder for so many reasons. It will probably never matter that Black Thought is actually rhyming about THE TOTAL EFFING OPPOSITE idea.
I dunno, man. I’d say it was a “no-brainer”, but that term just feels oddly inappropriate in this context.
*Do we even use that word anymore? Is it fair to categorize her as such, just because she graduated from high school with dreams to break into the porn industry? Hmmm…
I’ve been having an argument for the past decade or so. I had it again this weekend after Barack Obama was called elitist. I sat down to write about it, but I also had The Daily Show on and Jon Stewart made my point beautifully. So, since he’s funnier than I am, I yield my podium to the honorable comedian from New York. (p.s. Cue it in 7:15 or so to get to the part I’m talking about. The rest is just background)
In most things, I am not a proponent of blind faith. I am a professional skeptic whose cynicism runs really really deeply. But let me talk to you about an exception to that rule.
I was listening to NPR this morning because I am a city-dwelling liberal elitist who never developed a taste for country music, guns, Sean Hannity, or the American way. During my 5 minute trip to take my son to school, I listened to a report about a 15-year-old girl who has become a champion of the group of people who doubt that humans are responsible for global warming.
This girl seemed really smart. She was impressive. She had done a ton of research. And she had come to the conclusion that humans are not responsible for global warming and that cyclical climate change was to blame. She gets lambasted for bad science by most grown-up researchers, but she generally fires back that their science is bad. I think that’s the scientific version of calling someone a hater, but that’s a different post.
Unfortunately despite all her intelligence and considerable determination, this particular young lady and the global warming haters who champion her are missing the point. It doesn’t matter if global warming is caused by humans or not. You should still believe it.
Let me explain. If we believe that global warming is caused by humans, rightly or wrongly, we all become environmentalists. After all, what do the scientists behind the theory tell us to do? Clean-up industry, recycle, improve gas mileage, explore alternative “clean” energy sources, carpool in the meantime, protect the forests, don’t pollute. That’s about it.
It’s the global equivalent of your mother telling you to clean your room. If you’re anything like me you whined, “but why mom!!!” And if your mom was anything like mine she replied, “because it’s filthy and no one should live like that.”
Doesn’t the same sentiment hold true on the larger scale? Our planet is filthy. You can’t drink the water, you probably shouldn’t breathe the air, and I can find a Snickers wrapper in even the most remote patch of forest. If we had a collective mom, she’d be screaming at us to clean our room. “But why!!!” Because it’s filthy and no one should live like that. Failing that she would probably lapse into “because I said so.”
So think about that for a minute. Even if I believe we are causing global warming erroneously, the actions that my belief leads me to are good for me and for everyone else. Even assuming for a moment that skeptics of global warming are right, what good does that do any of us? It gives industry a free hand to pollute, it boosts the auto industry’s bottom line, but what good does it do any of the actual people that live here?
Like I said earlier, I’m no fan of blind faith. But this seems like the exception to that rule.
I realized something the other day. A relationship I’ve been involved in for 25ish years has officially come to an end. I’m out of love. All that’s left is the bitterness. Ironically enough, it took an awful movie to make me fully realize my situation. Thank you “Brown Sugar.”
Now this travesty of a movie stars Sanaa Lathan as a magazine editor who starts all her interviews with “So, when did you fall in love with hip-hop?” Taye Diggs is the record producer who loves the music but hates the industry. Oh… and Mos Def is in it. You remember Mos Def? Possible the best modern MC walking the planet who has for all intents and purposes deliberately turned his back on a genre and a culture that stands in direct opposition to everything that makes him great. Sorry for the tangent. I know, “Brown Sugar” is a terrible movie. We’ve established that. Now bear with me.
Watching this awful movie, made me realize that I’ve fallen way out of love with hip-hop. I’m not even mad when people talk negatively about it. I don’t even try to defend it anymore. People call it homophobic and I nod. People say it denigrates women and I nod. People say it ruins our children and reluctantly… I nod. As a matter of fact, forget love… I don’t even like hip-hop anymore.
Is it ironic that I’m out of love at the same point where the “artists” who create hip-hop are more financially successful than ever? I don’t think so. Because despite all the money, no one is about anything anymore. There were always money hungry rappers, but despite Dame Dash’s mantra… no one needs “all the money.” Where are the guys with an agenda? Where are the guys giving back to their neighborhoods? Hell, forget Thanksgiving turkey give-aways, “hip-hop” now has enough money to fund hospitals, public housing, scholarship funds… where are those things?
I could just be an old man. I’ll give you that. But it doesn’t feel the same. Every artist should know the business side, but now hip-hop has more businessmen than it does artists. Everyone can break down a royalty rate, but no one cares about putting changes in their production or variation in their vocals.
And have I mentioned we’ve reached a new level of embarrassing ourselves in public? Flavor Flav is banging his third season of skanks and making Chuck D ashamed they were ever in the same group. MC Serch and the Ego Trip guys are satirizing the culture for fun and profit on VH1. And somewhere Kool Herc is holding his head in his hands and crying.
I say all that, but have to take a step back and say that I still enjoy some songs when I hear them. Rick Ross’ new single got me excited. But I no longer enjoy the music as part of a love for the greater culture that spawned it. Mostly because I don’t think that culture exists anymore. Hip-hop culture was born of a certain era. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think that era is over.
There will be rappers I like in the future. There will be songs that I enjoy. I’ll see a new dance or hear a new hook and I’ll get an echo of the love I used to have. But just like bumping into an ex-girlfriend, those echoes will be more and more faint. It makes me a little sad to think that at some point hip-hop will be reduced to the equivalent of “you remember old girl… what was her name?”
To the group of Trinidadian gentlemen with whom I danced briefly on Friday:
I know it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have possibly known what was going through my head that night. You were just out with your friends, trying to enjoy your youth, making the best of a rainy night and a hot club with too few women to wine up on, and even fewer who know how to wine back. I get that you figured a Guyanese girl with locks down her back must know enough about what’s supposed to happen when Dawn Penn’s “No,No,No” drops. You expected me, as one of your own, to understand. The problem is I understand all too well.
West Indian men, I fear, are roosters. Lemme ’splain. You know how roosters strut around the farm, knowing it’s their job in life to bang every hen in their territory? There is never any pretense of monogamy, and all foul-kind accept this to be the way things are. West Indian men are sort of like that.
Make no mistake. I’m not blaming the men. Women have been just as complicit in allowing men to cock about. It’s actually pretty complicated. When you have a culture which frowns upon divorce, and staying married is the only way to secure your children’s rights to their father’s wealth and standing as a member of his family, and when being cheated on makes you look like you’re not handling your business as a wife while he gets to blame his natural virility for his infidelity, it makes it hard to hold a man accountable for cheating. Combine that conundrum with the long-term psychological effects of colonialism, a system in which men were encouraged to impregnate women but not always allowed to be husbands and fathers, and I can understand where the lingering dependence on sexual conquest as a form of validation comes from.
So, somehow, all of this amounts to you pressing your cock into my back every time a slow song comes on?
I remember watching my uncle hit on very young girls whenever he was out, even though he had a wife at home. He did it in front of me and my sister, like it was something to be proud of. I also remember watching his friends ridicule him for not having any children, though he had been married almost 4 years. His wife had had 2 miscarriages, but, somehow, it was still his shame to bear. I can’t help but think these things are related. I’ve watched it go down my whole life. Men forced to prove at every turn that they really are men. If, as is often the case, they don’t have access to or knowledge of other methods of proof, they fuck.
Of course, I could be overthinking. Even without all of the historical, psychological, and socioeconomic complications, nature builds us all with a sex drive. There are plenty of physiological reasons to grind on a girl in a club. It might be perfectly natural to try to wink and grin your way into her bed the same night. Not so sure about the motivation to brag endlessly about it, though. Eh, like I’ve said before, I admit I don’t always understand men.
What I do understand, though, is that if you tell a Trinidadian man in front of his boys to please not touch you and that you’d rather dance alone, it hurts. I spent a large portion of my time that night weighing my right to avoid choreographed molestation against my genuine sympathy and love for men with beautiful white teeth, vaccine-dimpled arms, and the weight of the world on his broad black shoulders. If they had been from anywhere else, I might have just been rude.
I danced for a little while, then excused myself, letting them know firmly but gently that that was all. I’m not sure if I helped or just dragged out the roosterism a bit longer. I don’t know if they could ever interpret my modest hip-swaying as love, but that’s what it was.
The post office is raising rates on stamps again. I hate when they do that because I have to buy a whole bunch of 2 or 3 cent stamps to make my old stamps useable again. Then I spend a month sending regular envelopes of mail with two separate stamps affixed. It offends my delicate artistic sensibilities. Not to mention I hate when the price of anything goes up. My regular egg and cheese Croissanwich at Burger King costs $0.20 more damn near every time I go. And now that I’ve written the name down for the first time, I might have to change my regular order. “Croissanwich”? Really?
Every once in a while I happen to visit someone’s home or office and notice their collection of African tribal art, and I can’t help but question the appropriateness of it. Sure, the masks and figurines are visually appealing. The approach to symbolism and use of negative space are so different from the European-style art we’re used to, that you can’t help but be drawn. Even Picasso was fascinated by the the art he found on his trips to Africa, so much so that he mimicked some of the elements in later work. (That’s right, ya’ll. Picasso was down with the aesthetic swirl.) Still, I am wary of bringing tribal art pieces into western decor because, well, sometimes it isn’t supposed to be art at all.
