Monday Morning (Mc)Nuggets

So much has happened since the late time I blogged, I figure I'd write a little blurb about everything.

Just Wrong. Common and Queen Latifah are starring in a new movie.  I want to shoot myself.  It looks terrible.  I officially hate them both. So much that I want to pull a C. Delores Tucker and declare war on them.  Does anyone have a spare bulldozer?  I have some CDs to destroy.  Just Wright beats the idea of a Why Did I Get Married trilogy, I guess.  And neither Common nor Queen Latifah have starred in a Tyler Perry flick.  Let me re-think my position.  Wait a minute.  I just remembered Bringing Down the House and Common's GAP commercials.  Nevermind.

Working Notes on Post-Soul: A Nonsensical Purge

The dissertation is a late 20th century/contemporary project.  I use the myth (read: common notions/imaganings) of California and California-invested/centered/curious novels to delineate the evolution of blackness at the end of last century.  I'm (still/currently) working on a chapter anchored by Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle, a satiric novel about a Los Angeles, CA "street" poet and basketball star named Gunnar Kaufman.  (Yes, Gunnar as in Myrdal and Kaufman as in Bob.)  On one hand, I'm glad to do the work.  The last chapter was on Danzy Senna and multiraciality, and I was just tired of the mixed-race discourse.  It was frustrating for someone as committed to blackness--as an identity, as a symbol of working to (potentially) undermine white supremacy, capitalism, etc.--as I am to have to become a mini-expert an implicitly anti-black, anxiety laden position. 

Negro Is, Negro Ain't: On Erica Jong's Version of Oprah

Last week, Erica Jong wrote the most random "book review" (or something) I have ever read in my life.  In her Huffington Post blog, Jong, apparently charged with discussing Kitty Kelley's recently published unauthorized biography of Oprah Winfrey, essentially writes about knowing both Winfrey and Kelley, and admits that she hasn't actually finished the text in question.  (Note to self: Figure out how to get a gig like Erica Jong.)  In this latest version of "I knew [insert famous person] when...," Jong had the following observation about the divine Ms. O:

Snippet of a Random Conversation

Scene: Chicago. Today. The April weather is June-like


Me (driving): I used to see a therapist who worked in that building.


N (in the passenger's seat):  Did she help? *very brief pause* Nope.

I love her.

Eating iChips By the Waters of Babylon

The other night, some friends and I were hanging out in a hotel room listening to music.  At some point, the Eric Benet song "Ghetto Girl" featuring Meshell Ndegocello (dude, I know. I assure you that it was not my iPod. I'm not saying I don't have the album, I'm just saying it ain't on my iPod.), and for the life of me I couldn't remember what album the song appeared on.  Neither could anyone else.  But we were all too lazy to grab one of our web-enabled phones to Wiki the query and scratch the curiosity itch.  I joked that these were the kinds of moments when some kind of transparent Google page needed to appear as if in midair so that one could type in the question without having to move from one's very relaxed position.  Someone asked where something like that would generate; I shrugged and replied that maybe it would be like a kind of projection from our eye that just appeared in front of our face.  My friend, Imi said it would be called an iChip, and it would probably be inserted in your brain just behind your ear.

Today in Post-Race History: Stripes

Dear Tiger Woods, 

Welcome back, sir!  We have missed you.  Your re-emergence will undoubtedly help the multiracials get their swagger back, and just in time for the 2010 census!  (How many boxes do you check, Tiger?)  2009 was definitely a bummer for the American mixed-race, but now, with BHO passing health care reform and your return to the golf course, 2010 will be the year of Mo'Nique, Tyler Perry, and the racially ambiguous.  The post-race universe is back in order.

Last year was tough for world's most famous Cablinasian.  You experienced every part of that portmanteau, Tiger.  You started off as the best golfer in the world, dominating the sport so thoroughly that only Benjy Compson wailed louder than those good ol' boys yearning for the days of yore as you raise yet another trophy over your head [Ca].  Yet the sex scandal combined with that Vanity Fair cover darkened not only your future, but your skin tone, and we wondered if you'd been hanging out in the driving range in the midday sun too often, or had visited Jack Johnson's grave while on the tour [bl].  Embarrassed, you disappeared for three months [in], only to hold a press conference and remind us that you were a Buddhist, and thus not sexually predatory [asian].  Working your way through all those stereotypes in a matter of months must have been tiring.  I'd take a long vacation, too.