Wednesday, November 16, 2005
I've missed my blog.
I thank everyone who is still reading this site; I understand that my post absence has not helped. My short, quick, Portsmouth, Virginia public library PG-13 explanation? My parents are sick. I flew home two weeks ago to find my father suffering from complications of triple-bypass heart surgery and my mother hospitalized from a shattered knee. I spent four days last week where the only people I spoke to face to face were confined to hospital beds, with various medical technologies and tubes hooked up to their aged flesh. Sirens wail, numbers flash, and electronic signals constantly monitor the utter frailty of human life.
It was my executive decision to return home. My sisters are busy with their own lives, as they should be. My younger sister assisted my parents when my father had the major surgery, and my older sister has been helping out the family since time immemorial. I chose to assist now. I was not prepared in any sense for the ramifications of that decision.
I hate Virginia. I've always considered myself from the Old Dominion, but not of the Old Dominion. In the past six years since I started college, every weekend or short visit to my hometown bleeds difficulty and heartache, shattered friendships and omnipresent ostracism. Virginia is my own personal hell. I'm enveloped, saturated, drowning in the guttural, gun-barrel, ghetto mentality of every Southernplayalisticadillac wannabe musician and each curvy, busty, voluptuous, bottle-blond, sedentary, collard green, fatback, cornbread-fed big booty Brenda with three children under age five, freshly manicured nails from Ms. Trang's and more fake hair than the floor of the Waldorf-Astoria penthouse suite during eleven A.M. checkout when Shawn Carter awakes Ms. Knowles with a sweet shoulder kiss after a rambunctious night of passionate, athletic, fresh-to-def lovemaking.
Yes, my friends, the Roc is in the building: the crack rock responsible for the walking dead who appear on my parent's suburban streets at three in the morning as I return from Virginia Beach clubs, the diamond rock reducing all my demographic to materialistic, petty bourgeoisie, desperate for the recording contract or the lottery winnings that will transform their minimum wage weekdays and marijuana haze, strip club weekends into a permanent Young Jeezy video, replete with butter pecan Ricans half-naked, feeding grapes on command and dark-skinned apartheid refugees nasally singing their nursery rhyme hooks. Hell, that's probably attributing too much to the C-student Black P-Town multitude - since youth imagination was the first casualty of war in urban Reaganomics' Iran-Contra, since community pillars leave ethnic enclaves as integration benefits the educated, since no one in my hometown really cares if Tim Kaine beat Jerry Kilgore with a wink and a nod from Governor Mark Warner (D-VA), let's be honest. All we want today is Laffy Taffy.
D4L, with the new album Down For Life, detonated the urban music scene with their annoying, distasteful, anti-intellectual, and downright ignorant improvised explosive debut Laffy Taffy. Ladies and gentlemen, coonery has been digitized for your i-Pod enjoyment. Down here, that simple synthesized bassline pops on, and within the first three notes the dance floors are filled with the bouncing breasts and popping posteriors of every sista in the club, dancing with reckless abandon the syncopated simpleton shake of absentee Negro respect. I'd love to find some redeemable creative quality to this excuse for popular music, but I can't. I hit the wall, stand motionless, and wait for the new Three Six Mafia hit to come on. To be real, I'd love to love my people, but I hate to watch my people hate themselves. But no one cares; everyone's too busy. My people get rich or die tryin', and the morgues always have more room. I've seen the hospital beds we leave behind.
I thank everyone who is still reading this site; I understand that my post absence has not helped. My short, quick, Portsmouth, Virginia public library PG-13 explanation? My parents are sick. I flew home two weeks ago to find my father suffering from complications of triple-bypass heart surgery and my mother hospitalized from a shattered knee. I spent four days last week where the only people I spoke to face to face were confined to hospital beds, with various medical technologies and tubes hooked up to their aged flesh. Sirens wail, numbers flash, and electronic signals constantly monitor the utter frailty of human life.
It was my executive decision to return home. My sisters are busy with their own lives, as they should be. My younger sister assisted my parents when my father had the major surgery, and my older sister has been helping out the family since time immemorial. I chose to assist now. I was not prepared in any sense for the ramifications of that decision.
I hate Virginia. I've always considered myself from the Old Dominion, but not of the Old Dominion. In the past six years since I started college, every weekend or short visit to my hometown bleeds difficulty and heartache, shattered friendships and omnipresent ostracism. Virginia is my own personal hell. I'm enveloped, saturated, drowning in the guttural, gun-barrel, ghetto mentality of every Southernplayalisticadillac wannabe musician and each curvy, busty, voluptuous, bottle-blond, sedentary, collard green, fatback, cornbread-fed big booty Brenda with three children under age five, freshly manicured nails from Ms. Trang's and more fake hair than the floor of the Waldorf-Astoria penthouse suite during eleven A.M. checkout when Shawn Carter awakes Ms. Knowles with a sweet shoulder kiss after a rambunctious night of passionate, athletic, fresh-to-def lovemaking.
Yes, my friends, the Roc is in the building: the crack rock responsible for the walking dead who appear on my parent's suburban streets at three in the morning as I return from Virginia Beach clubs, the diamond rock reducing all my demographic to materialistic, petty bourgeoisie, desperate for the recording contract or the lottery winnings that will transform their minimum wage weekdays and marijuana haze, strip club weekends into a permanent Young Jeezy video, replete with butter pecan Ricans half-naked, feeding grapes on command and dark-skinned apartheid refugees nasally singing their nursery rhyme hooks. Hell, that's probably attributing too much to the C-student Black P-Town multitude - since youth imagination was the first casualty of war in urban Reaganomics' Iran-Contra, since community pillars leave ethnic enclaves as integration benefits the educated, since no one in my hometown really cares if Tim Kaine beat Jerry Kilgore with a wink and a nod from Governor Mark Warner (D-VA), let's be honest. All we want today is Laffy Taffy.
D4L, with the new album Down For Life, detonated the urban music scene with their annoying, distasteful, anti-intellectual, and downright ignorant improvised explosive debut Laffy Taffy. Ladies and gentlemen, coonery has been digitized for your i-Pod enjoyment. Down here, that simple synthesized bassline pops on, and within the first three notes the dance floors are filled with the bouncing breasts and popping posteriors of every sista in the club, dancing with reckless abandon the syncopated simpleton shake of absentee Negro respect. I'd love to find some redeemable creative quality to this excuse for popular music, but I can't. I hit the wall, stand motionless, and wait for the new Three Six Mafia hit to come on. To be real, I'd love to love my people, but I hate to watch my people hate themselves. But no one cares; everyone's too busy. My people get rich or die tryin', and the morgues always have more room. I've seen the hospital beds we leave behind.
15 Comments:
At 11/16/2005 01:15:00 PM, Bullet Proof Diva said:;
OMG you came back!! YAY.. Welcome back J!
ok, let me go read now, LOL!!
At 11/16/2005 03:46:00 PM, Jgracefully said:;
I went to Mary Baldwin, in Staunton...and whoa; I feel you on the Dominion drama.
On the other hand, you seem to look down on those chicks that go to Ms. Trang. She needs the money, they need their nails done, and whas' so bad about a weave??
Why isn't the jheri curl as culturally relevant as a turban??
Don't be like that, J. The people you describe have a difficult time just BEING in Virginia all the damn time; they don't need to be lambasted by you, huh?? Why you so stoosh, lately? *rolling my eyes* Be easy on the hood-pity.
In the immortal words of Too Short: "Even though they put us down and call us animals -
We make real big banks and buy brand new clothes -
Drive fancy cars, make love to stars -
Never really saying just who we are..."
They are aware of no other ways to identify and express themselves other than the ways in which you have described. It ain't so bad to be ghetto, James. At least crack is phasing out...be glad about that.
At 11/16/2005 04:21:00 PM, James said:;
Hey ladies, thanks for posting!
Bullet Proof, yeah, it's been a while, but I hope to be back full time now.
J, my problem is my frustration. I'm so stressed! I'm 24; this is the first time I've seen my parents this under the weather, and I did not handle this stuff well. But aside from the massive medical stress, nothing about Virginia has changed. The imagination lack among my contemporaries is my problem: as you said, our people are not aware of other forms of self-expression, but they do not manifest new forms themselves.
When a Snowman t-shirt is the most interesting urban graphic of the year, Black youth have a problem. Is it bad to be ghetto? No. But it is bad to have 'ghetto' become one's only possible self-identification. The language of commerce, of politics, of academia, of power in our venerable nation is not Jive, or Gullah, or Ebonics - it is standard American English, with clipped tones and direct sentences, with active verbs and varied adjectives. Unless our people recall this while Ms. Trang massages our cuticles, we have a problem.
But I think I need a whole other post to discuss the cultural relevance of turbans and jheri curls. Damn, that was a great question! I'll revisit that.
But, ladies, thank you again for reading this site and posting. It's good to talk to you all again.
At 11/16/2005 04:58:00 PM, deeblizz said:;
James, have you ever really thought about evolution...have you ever thought about it on a personal level. If you do you will understand that it is not meant for everyone to see what we see. It would be ideal, and yes very easy if people all saw the same reality, but we DON'T. They are asleep to the depth of understanding that it requires to understand all the connections that must be made between history, sociology, psychology, common sense and politics. You do. It's not because you are better. It's because you had a differnet life, thanks to your family. They are taking in what the outside world projects at them, and blindly spewing it back out, sometimes beautifully (as in music and dance, how can you hate on anyone for dancing?) sometimes disgustingly (as in Condoleeza). No processing. Think about early man. There was a time when it HAD NOT OCCURRED TO US YET that a round wheel would make moving things easier. Then somone figured it out. THat person didn't go around bitching about "All these dumb ass cave men, what the fuck is wrong with them, why are they so stupid, why haven't they figured it out?" That is what is going on here. Damn, James...you see what they haven't seen yet. I have seen some things myself. Now we have to show them. Get over it and get to it.
-Diana
At 11/17/2005 07:00:00 AM, aplomb said:;
Hey J,
Glad to see you back, but sorry to hear about your parents, I will definitely keep them in my prayers...and in regards to your feelings of melancholy towards our people...please believe there are some out there making us proud...they are just not all over the TV, they are in the neighborhoods doing the best they can with what they have...I have a perfect example...I was with my best friend last week, we walked into a fast food restaurant in "tho hood"...he order his food, he then told me to order mines...this little girl and boy walked up to him and asked for change, he asked them yall want some food...they said yes, he ordered their food, then another man walked up to him and said, can u also order some for me, and he did so, and gave him the change from all of our food...I say all this to say stay encouraged, there is some good out there...Lata
At 11/17/2005 01:50:00 PM, Jaimie said:;
I'm glad you're back, although I'm sorry about your parents' health. I hope they feel better soon.
Take care of yourself too.
At 11/17/2005 10:58:00 PM, Jenn said:;
hey sweetheart, as i tell you everyday, i'm sorry to hear about your parents and i hope they both continue to recover.
At 11/18/2005 12:11:00 PM, James Manning said:;
James, welcome back and I hope the best for your parents. I've been going through medical issues with my folks for years. It doesn't get easy but you learn to appreciate when they are having a good day.
As for Virginia, it can't be any worse than Memphis. I was stationed there for six months in '90 and I thought someone took me back in time. The coonery was offensive. But my father lives in TN now and I went to Memphis last year and nothing has changed.
like Deeblizz said, evolution isn't meant for everyone. take it easy on ya folks - educate those that seek it and let those that don't bask in their own world.
Glad to see that you are back.
At 11/29/2005 12:17:00 PM, solitaire said:;
Hello my friend!!!!
I was wondering what happened, bro. I was getting worried.
I'm sorry to hear about your parents. I will be praying for them.
Your writing didn't fall off...no, not one bit.
I'm enveloped, saturated, drowning in the guttural, gun-barrel, ghetto mentality of every Southernplayalisticadillac wannabe musician and each curvy, busty, voluptuous, bottle-blond, sedentary, collard green, fatback, cornbread-fed big booty Brenda with three children under age five, freshly manicured nails from Ms. Trang's and more fake hair than the floor of the Waldorf-Astoria penthouse suite during eleven A.M. checkout when Shawn Carter awakes Ms. Knowles with a sweet shoulder kiss after a rambunctious night of passionate, athletic, fresh-to-def lovemaking.
That was THE BEST run-on sentence I've read, ever.
I was trying to figure out if jgracefully was being sarcastic... I hope to God she was...
At 11/29/2005 11:37:00 PM, Jgracefully said:;
Nope, solitaire...I really support ghetto shit, and not in a patronizing "I-mentor-on-the-weekends" kind of way.
Regardless of it's beginnings (slavery/antebellum disenfranchisement) the people that wear cheap weaves, acrylic nails, and listen to D4L - are people, too. (Even though folks act like they ain't trying to admit it)
Why look down on them for the ONLY culture they know?? Have any of you read "Manchild in the Promised Land" by Claude Brown?? How about the classic "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith?? Coming up in a deprived, poverty stricken environment brings out aspects of the human character left unrealized by the affluent. Much in the same way black kids in the ghetto rarely grow up and eat people.
It's okay to be intelligent...it's even better to be self-confident and cultured - but if you aren't raised in a habitat that encourages those traits, who says that you can never grow to appreciate those things? There's no way to gauge culture, potential, or "ghetto" - if you really think about it. Kids in the 'hood ain't doing that bad. Really.
They'd be doing better if people stopped feeling sorry for them, though.
At 11/30/2005 09:07:00 AM, Anonymous said:;
Here's hoping your parents a speedy recovery. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
T
At 11/30/2005 11:15:00 PM, James said:;
Whoa, everyone's been back here before me. Some comeback, huh?
But seriously, mad love and thanks for BulletProof, JGracefully, Deeblizz (What's up Diana!), Aplomb, Jaimie, Jenn, James M, Solitaire and Trump. Thank you all for your kind words towards my parents. It's been a trying time for my family, but we're making it through. Your kindness has really made things easier.
At 12/01/2005 09:51:00 AM, Anonymous said:;
*whispers* pssst...am I Trump? I like that! It fits me. If you were referring to someone else then I'm stealing it from them.
T
At 12/01/2005 05:11:00 PM, James said:;
T, you've been Trump since I started this site. Check the Friends section for your shoutout.
At 6/13/2007 04:49:00 PM, hustler said:;
Great Marilyn photo!
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