Posted in Arts on Sep 24th, 2009
Nobody reads feel-good stories. Why is that? Is it because we don’t believe good things actually can and do happen, or if they do, then it’s a fluke? I mean, we all know bad things happen; the question there is just a matter of how often or how bad. And face it: doesn’t it make [...]
Posted in Advertising, Arts, Culture, Media on Jul 23rd, 2009
If you took Dave Chappelle, Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil, Noam Chomsky, William Prescott and mixed them all together you would get Gustavo Arellano. He has been labeled by some Mexicans on one end of the spectrum as a Vendido (sell out) and by others a quintessential intelligent articulate writer and every thing in between.
Two-and-half weeks ago, actor Kirstie Alley, famed of ’80s TV sitcom Cheers, Jenny Craig weight loss ads, and sashaying in her hosiery on Oprah, told me, on Twitter, that African-Americans and Italians are “more free and fun and light hearted” than, I guess, people who aren’t African-American or Italian.
When she said this, I was actually [...]
Posted in Arts, Culture, Uncategorized on Jun 25th, 2009
This past week driving down a main street of the community I live in, I came upon a garage sale in front of a business. I have always been fascinated by looking at people’s possessions when they reach their end at estate sales or in this case the business closing.
As I scanned the items on display [...]
Posted in Arts, Entertainment, Religion on Jun 17th, 2009
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvRO_D5eUOE]
Living in Harlem, I’ve been seeing Asian tourists coming uptown for years, and that would little suprise most people. What might get their attention, though, is that many of these sojourners don’t come here just to eat at Sylvia’s, or merely to sit in the back of Abyssinian Baptist Church and hear its choir’s masterful [...]
If you think Americans have lost their way, maybe it’s time for us to take a gander at the inspired wisdom of Gene Autry, America’s Singing Cowboy, so we can all learn to be good cowboys and earn our white hats. Here’s the code that directed his long and prosperous life.
Gene Autry’s Cowboy Code
The Cowboy [...]
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust
Frenchy was on to something there. As is the way this blog is shaping up. Readers are certainly being exposed to new landscapes, via headlines and videos and images that they may have missed; however, I don’t [...]
Posted in Arts, Business, Entertainment, Happiness, Media on Apr 15th, 2009
I could attach it to my new fat Mac, the one-drive wonder that set me back the outrageous sum of $2795 and it might have done some significantly awesome black and white graphics with MacPaint, one of the two programs it ran, but the laser printer was still an embryo in a university lab somewhere.
Posted in Anglo-European Primacy, Arts, Culture, Education, History, Law & Justice, Racism on Mar 25th, 2009
When my friend Chidrup and I talked about racism in the US, there was a big chunk of information missing from his understanding: He didn’t know about the history of white domination and the enslavement of African people in the United States for nearly four-hundred years.
It was hard to tell Chidrup the truth. I’m proud [...]
Posted in Arts, Culture, Uncategorized on Mar 9th, 2009
I live downtown in a mid-size East coast city. Within a radius of two blocks of my house are five museums, six churches, a library, a soup kitchen, and three homeless shelters. Demographically speaking, we inner-city dwellers are the “risk-oblivious”…artists and homosexuals mostly, who gentrify a difficult area. Mixed in, of course, with the homeless [...]
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