Posts Tagged ‘opinion’
New Site – Black Perception; regular, everyday issues occasionally from an African-American perspective (but is isn’t a Black site).
Posted on: May 24, 2011
- In: Associated Content | Black | blogging | opinion
- 1 Comment
I want to thank everyone for their continued support of this site. I may go ahead and import my blogger site here so that there are two copies of it. In the interim though you can find my work at blackperception.com that is it, no blogspot.com or anything I went ahead and purchased a domain. I was looking for a domain that would communicate the fact that this was an opinion site being ran by an African-American. The irony of it is that I do not really run a Black site, I talk about everything and will occasionally do so from an African-American perspective but it is a marketing gimmick. I wrote a lot of articles over on Associated Content and received a lot of traffic whenever the topics happened to talk about issues that were of interest to the African-American community.
I even got a gig at a Black site, but that didn’t last. I actually got the idea to call the blog Black Perception from that site; perhaps not implicitly but it may have ran in the back of my subconscious. That site had the word Atlanta in it, but it was really based out of New York. But since Atlanta is synonymous with Black culture … So I think after many, many, different names and angles I might actually be onto something. If you enjoy what I wrote here two years ago you will enjoy that site. I have also realized that marketing is often more important than writing itself. If you have a good angle you can exploit you can show people what you are really about later on. We’ll see how it works, again, thanks for your support.
I found a great site from one of my peers on AC. Check it out for yourself:
An honest and straightforward discussion about her own journey to recover as well as look at her poetry and articles and a Q & A section for anyone wanting to know more about recovery. It’s a great site, well worth checking out.
Is there too much sex on TV?
Posted on: September 29, 2008
My oldest articles at Helium
Posted on: July 22, 2008
Here are some of my older articles at Helium. As you can see I started out doing a lot of reviews.
Yeah I’m still ticked that 50 used vaporware to keep things going. His albums suck right about now, but I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Can’t say much more about Jay’s albums, but he’s actually been gone for a long, long, time, far longer than the media was willing to admit.
I really liked my review of Dreamgirls. I probably was hating, but I thought it was rather good at the time. I could have shown a lot more bias. I still feel that Jennifer Hudson owned that movie, and that it was another play for Beyonce to get an Oscar and that Eddie Murphy delivered one of his best performances in a long time, but that Eddie did not get the Oscar because of his relationship with Hollywood at the time.
I’m surprised “Something New” wasn’t picked apart and analyzed by more bloggers. It was a great movie and broke out of the premise that was supposed to stereotype it. Great performances in that movie and it lived up to they hype.
I continued doing reviews. Brooke Fraser’s album was an odd CCM record like many at that time; a struggle between “beats” to satisfy the secularists and straight talk about Christianity to satisfy those looking for new Gospel. I don’t think it really went anywhere though.
MTV had a shell of a show with Next, but I think it was the inspiration for BET’s “Hell Date” and a number of imitators.
Yeah I got burned by Beyonce again, I tried a few more times but I’ve given up talking about Beyonce, though my articles on her did slightly better over at Associated Content.
This was the definitive article on payday loans for about a year now. I got a lot of traffic and it was my real breakthrough on Helium. I’m still a hater but I will add that Virginia may be set to change the laws on payday loans. Last I heard something was introduced that provided for a database that would ensure that if you owed on a payday loan here, you could not open up another one there. That debate went on for quite a while, a lot of difficulty in passing it was that Virginia is a very independent, rugged state and people tend to be anti-governmental intervention. It’s a place where your problems are your problems and mine are mine, and if you want to get your life together you will, that sort of thing. But of course if anything gets in the way of what the Commonwealth wants, which is more development, more people, prosperity, so on and so forth, the government steps in anyway. Payday loans were ruining the quality of life that the Commonwealth wanted for Virginians, that’s the bottom line. As for myself personally; stay away from these loans at all costs, run for the hills it’s never worth it and it’s always trouble, regardless of what anyone tells you some people just may not have felt it like I did or wasn’t as upside down as I was but they’re always a waste of money.
I loved this show in the beginning. It is becoming a caricature of itself. Her next show, Stylisa, is getting mixed reviews. I do like that she picked a thick model for a change but I often doubt her real intentions for doing so.
A lot of people miss the boat on topics that truly are worth talking about, so I was all alone with this one. But HPV is a serious issue and young girls should be vaccinated; we’re all self-righteous about the fact that they shouldn’t have sex, but you did at 12, 14, 17, I mean come on …
This was another breakthrough article. I actually got on the first page with this one. First off the writer of the Time article I referenced was hating, straight up. It was worth looking into and made for a great opinion article about another opinion piece. His points illustrated just how the debate about Barrack Obama would form with African-Americans over the year to come.
At Associated Content I got a lot of response from the locals on this article. Virginia Beach is still a study in contrast because it is the largest city in population the state of Virginia, about the largest city in the country in terms of sheer land size (Suffolk is larger though), and definitively the most suburban, post-urban, new urban city out there. It hates old urbanism but puts a bad taste in your mouth with it’s overly sanitized version of new urbanism. At the time they were pulling a WTC and gutting out the soul of the area in what was key real estate and creating a downtown out of thin air. In some aspects it is still working, but it is hard to visit the area without thinking back to what was and contemplating what could be, which is still consistent with life in Virginia Beach in general. At Helium though there were no takers no other writers answered this article, which was dissapointing.
The Virginia Tech shooting angers me, because I think a lot more could have been done. I often wonder if that shooter fit the stereotype of other disaffected, estranged, disenfranchised individuals of other races or cultures if more would have been done sooner. Had it been one of those skinhead Aryans, or a militant Black guy or an Arab if something else would have been done. The school failed the students on that day, straight up, regardless of how you look at it. This was an unpopular article with my own slant but better than most I guess.
Coincidentally, none of the writers who espoused their opinions on the shootings had anything to say about the release of the videotape, which is telling. I mean absolutely no one; either Helium was running a contest at the time or there was something cool in the marketplace, I mean what gives. How can you have an opinion about one without the other?
Tommy Hilfiger has been in a weird place since 2000. I still on occasion see people wearing it, but he really has to create a new identity for the label for it work in the post nineties climate.
This is the last article I’ll reference, because this is getting rather long. It was straight up talk about why I have no plans on returning to Ohio, but also deals with efforts the state was making to convince businesses to relocate there. I’m not sure what Ohio is doing now, but it was an interesting effort at the time and worth noting.
A Sarcastic Look at the Mega Mansions and Pretentious Exurbian Lifestyle that Defines Us
often wonder if the dream of getting into a house you can’t afford through an adjustable interest rate loan doesn’t have some truth to it because this housing crunch typifies how mortgages, which used to be sacred, have turned into postmodern credit cards and payday loans. In fact it often isn’t the size of the home people are dealing with that is the problem as it is the individuals who are trying to live outside of their means in those homes that is the real issue. For example, I live in South Norfolk, which is part of Chesapeake but more so a neighborhood within that city that serves as a poor suburb of Norfolk. It’s one of the poorer neighborhoods in Chesapeake next to a true slum in Norfolk, which is more of a bedroom community that is growing into a city of it’s own. About half of the city is developed, as it is nestled in-between the rest of Hampton Roads and North Carolina. Plans to exploit the other half are still on the table, but because Chesapeake has wet lands and infrastructural concerns as it is talk of building the Southern area of the city up are sort of kept out of the way. But if they ever really were to get around to it they could come close to or exceed Virginia Beach in population, if it were done right, as that city has more or less put something pedestrian and utilitarian wherever they could whenever possible and exceeded their supply of available land to build on.
This hasn’t come in the way of dreams to redevelop the city into a similar ultra-suburb though. Where I’m at homes are rather small and built so close that driveways are in front of the house rather than beside them. You don’t get much space here, and there are a lot of working class individuals. There is a rather interesting development close to the library that would bring nice housing into a neglected area of the neighborhood and bring some upper middle class citizens to the community which should change the demographics going forward. So why is there an enormous mega home like more than 8 times the size of all of the other homes in the neighborhood on Old Atlantic, an arterial road that connects the neighborhood to Indian River, an upscale community, via another arterial road in an area that isn’t as great (though you can’t tell it becuase it is more spread out). It isn’t the size of this home that is so disturbing, but the location. Housing projects are right behind it, and it’s twice as big as some of the other mega homes built on that street. Why in the world would someone build such a home in such a neighborhood; it isn’t one of the nice townhomes that are redefining Chesapeake that were built on that street. Those homes can be rented for like $1,500 a month, this monstrosity has to be like at least three times that amount. In fact it is for rent, which is a sad commentary on the fact that people get into properties and are quickly overwhelmed then again given the size of the place they could just be renting out some rooms, which some people would kill to have.
For months though someone lived in there, the windows were open to the street and you could tell that there wasn’t any furniture inside, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if the people were sitting on the floor watching an overpriced high-definition television without cable pulling their content over the air. It is one thing to have a twenty million dollar home on the Upper East Side, like what you see in movies like Panic Room, it blends into the aesthetic of the neighborhood and actually compliments it. People wouldn’t even know that it was a home.
But when you build a monstrosity in a ghetto it’s a little odd. Chesapeake is growing rapidly and builders aren’t really paying attention to how the new construction fits into the area anyway. You always see high rise office buildings or hotels built in really odd places blocking off a view of something else. But commercial construction is only pretty for so long anyway before an area becomes overwhelming. It’s somewhat acceptable; but where are those people in your ear, like a homeowner’s association, reminding you of the greater significance of what you are doing in a time like this?
That home would have been more at place in an area like Indian River, where homes that size are the norm. It isn’t likely that South Norfolk will see any heavy economic development in decades to come to even come close to supporting incomes that could justify the construction of such a home any time soon; much of it is still industrial, and wealthier people rarely want to live in such an area because industrial areas have a “grimy, gritty” aspect to them.
Yet those homes pale in comparison to what you see in Virginia Beach; homes in excess of one million built close to each other in large tracts of suburban development in the middle of the city. If I want a multi-million dollar home I won’t live in 12 bedroom home in the city that looks like everyone else; I might move into a high-rise so I can get some real culture and atmosphere with that home. I could live downtown in one of the cities and really enjoy the life; why would I want to live in a home with property where I can see you grilling on a Saturday afternoon with nothing but a frail fence separating what little bit of land I have?
But they are simply repeating what they have seen; Atlanta was doing this twenty years ago in the eighties, just there it was in growing suburbs that would grow to define the larger metropolitan area. Not to mention that California has been one big suburb (or at least looks to be) since before I was born. Yet you are still living that same commuter working class life that everyone else is, you’re just in a nicer neighborhood driving farther than the next person. You have nicer stores around you selling Coach purses and Ann Taylor within walking distance, as opposed to urbanwear or perhaps a Family Dollar. Maybe you can run downstairs to Starbucks if you live in a high rise or buy organic food at the complex across the street.
It used to be that if you had money you would move out to the edge of the suburbs (the country) and build your own home and you would get plenty of land and could really say that you are doing something. No one lived out there anyway, so they had small roads and neighborhoods without any street lights and some overpriced grocery store and a strip mall but it didn’t seem out of place. But now those same areas have grown in unmanageable ways, and those quaint roads have turned into multilane behemoths or worse yet, turned into highways that feed into the larger expressway. So they build the houses closer together, and they ruin the ambiance of what was exurbia.
These days someone that used to live in the ghetto was sold a dream that they could actually afford that life “way out”. So they apply for loans, perhaps of a half million or more if you’re in the heartland, a few million if you’re on either Coast, to get a home that is large enough to impress who you know but forgettable by the standards of the rich so you can feel that you have arrived. The interest rates skyrocket, the mortgage is out of control and now you’re looking to the federal government to bail you out.
At one time there was plenty of money in real estate, it was a respectable profession and there was no shortage of middle class individuals with disposable cash, good credit and discretionary income to buy whatever you were selling. So what happened, was everyone greedy, or are times lean and people are finding creative ways to maintain the lifestyle they used to enjoy. Was it the rhetoric that people could invest twenty thousand into a property and sell it for a hundred thousand over last years assessment, “flipping houses” or the realization that creative ways could be found to encourage homeowners to try to make a profit on what they were already getting equity on?
So now you’re stuck in some mega home in a neighborhood with some weird name sitting in one of three lanes headed in this direction at a traffic lane going nowhere, because let’s be honest, you go to home and go to work and that’s about it. You haven’t the money to really live the life and your Saturdays are consumed with choices like whether or not you’ll participate in the neighborhood garage sale or go to Sam’s club to buy that new HDTV. Of course they’re having that garage sale at one of the local churches in the neighborhood, because the homeowner’s association doesn’t condone using anyone’s property for commercial interests.
You drive past 20 other such neighborhoods and you get downtown, but not before driving through some of the ghettos downtown is surrounded with. Do you take the expressway, the safe, tourist way through, or do you actually take the streets; it won’t be long before you run up on the high rises that the rich and upper class live in. They’re really paying the same amount you are, but they seem to have a real community, people are walking around there is a lot of activity and the atmosphere seems more organic than out where you’re at.
Sure homes are larger, and have become uglier and have placed their large urban footprint in the wrong areas. Sure the novelty of having a large home has become an inalienable right for the middle class, as they no longer want to live in the better parts of their neighborhood anymore but in newly built cities at the edge of town. Those cities aren’t mere suburbs anymore, they have large imposing buildings of their own and house most of the businesses that the lower middle class who do administrative work and the poor who clean up the place have to commute to. Jungles of office space, mixed in with hotels and shopping with a busy, frenetic pace of it’s own that used to belong to the city. What has grown too large, is our appetite for “one upping” the next guy, and our desperation to want to belong to a middle class that is pretty much non-existent in this day and age anyway. Our desperation is too large, as are our emotional needs, driven off of the new materialism of this century. Mega homes are simply a reflection of that …
Why Writers Are so Interesting
Posted on: April 22, 2008
- In: dating | opinion
- Leave a Comment
Date a Writer for a Change, It’s an Eye Opening Experience
People always think of writers or artists in general as a individuals who want to be deep for what it’s worth, without any clear sense of purpose or belonging that are far more interested in the aesthetic qualities of intellectual depth than they are relationships with other human beings. But that generalization does not describe all writers; indeed some are the life of the party and very outgoing, but not in the way you would typically think one would be popular and certainly not always in the scenes you would normally meet people at.
Some of us who are self-professed writers, that call ourselves writers even though no one else is and need that book or article to be published in order to convince the world of our merits perhaps do belong in that category. But a lot more of us simply enjoy a good read, and want to make other articles we’ve read better or want to see what we can contribute to the discourse. So we write, though we may feel called to do so or do not particularly want to do so, at odd times of the day or when normal people would want to have normal interaction with others. Yet there is something different than a writer can put into what most would be a rather boring situation that sets them aside from the rest.
Befriending a writer is one thing, dating a writer can either put you in a position of sustainability and survival (you’re never really sure why or what the writer likes about you, others may cause you to question it) or challenge you to make yourself even more marketable to others than you normally would not have been (you’re never really the same, or perceive relationships are being different from that point). I like to look at it from a broad perspective; anyone who is actually creating any piece of work that has to be executed over a period of time with points that are even remotely abstract are writers in my book. That would include anyone from a preacher, to an actor who goes off script and improvises, to a performance artist or even most comedians. There are some common threads, mostly observational and of one’s perspective on life and art that unities them, and takes writing out of the prototypical dark ages of actually putting pen to paper.
Writers usually attract each other, though it may be some time before they realize that common thread amongst them. Chances are if you find yourself in the ring with one you have something to write yourself; unwritten as it may be or perhaps is still being conceived, but there is some story to tell or some point to make. This the atmosphere the writer is most comfortable in, where everyone is contributing something new, unique and interesting, and one their subconscious will try to develop when it doesn’t exist. It could be the barbershop among street philosophers, the church where more teaching than preaching occurs or amongst musicians or whomever. The gravitation is there, most take it for granted but the writer is relishing that experience to be there once again.
There is talk of intercultural or interracial relationships. It was a huge topic back in the nineties and still persists as even more people partake of them. You can look around for someone or something different, or you can just allow the natural connection that writing inspires to find someone to get along with. That common thread goes beyond your typical barriers of race, sex and socio-economics and will either bring about some very interesting conversations or some heated arguments about those same issues that would normally separate you from that person. Yet it isn’t enough to simply show an interest to make it work, you have to be involved in your own work or be in the plans of doing so or perhaps you do not know it yet, on some level.
Sure a lot of us are introverted and shy for the most part. But a lot more actually have something to say when we are probed about it, and even more have something interesting to say about the uninteresting. Some of us are never asked our opinions, and others are too busy formulating those opinions and observing to give an articulate answer when they really are pressed for a resolution. But you do not want to be part of that latter, anti-social group, you do not want to be that person. Because that is when the stereotypes and misnomers raise their ugly head. This is when, at best, a writer is alienated from the group; not because he didn’t have anything to say, but because he didn’t say anything when something should have been said. I still do it this day, then kick myself once I’ve realized how I must have come across.
Outside of that, there are no suggestions as to where you would meet a writer. Sure there are book signings, and readings and parties and the like, but not everyone attends those or are even interested in being there. There are libraries but anymore you have kids on MySpace and adults on YouTube passing time by on computers than people actually checking something out of the library. My best bet would be when you least expect it, where you wouldn’t expect to find them; as you eventually have to get out from behind the pen and experience life to have something to write about. Then again there are plenty right here on Associated Content …
I Had Never Thought it Would Have Come to This
I used to look forward to the future twenty years ago. Our problems would be solved through technology, racism would fade away and we would live forever. But in the new millennium we fight wars in the name of religion and keeping our country safe, which is sort of how things started. Racism is worse than ever, women still aren’t respected and it’s hard to see where technology has really helped anyone. We have spent more time trying to find an easier way to communicate with our computers through a bunch of lights and eye candy, but we’re still stuck in chat rooms, only now they’re known as social-networks. People are blowing their money on flat screen televisions so they can watch the Super Bowl in high-definition; the same people who wouldn’t spend money on anything else that buy everything from Wal-Mart or Cosco.
Everyone is pumped with vitamins so no one should get sick for eons, but the even worse colds and the increasingly violent strains of influenza you see going around suggest that viral infections are bigger and better than ever. My parents finally accept rap, hip-hop, whatever, but the music sucks these days. To be totally fair my father was one of the first on the block to have a copy of “Rapper’s Delight”, though he grew to hate it since then, hard to tell what he would have to say if he were still here. Some of us are still falling victim to AIDS in record numbers while others are living with HIV for decades.
I expected the problems that Barrack Obama has faced, but I wasn’t supposed to have to hear anything about a Jena 6 or “nappy headed hos” in the twenty-first century. You would have had to be a fool not to have seen how decisive people are when it comes to discussing Oprah Winfrey, but no one really thought we would still see African-American and now Latino women put out there in music videos or worse yet, careers built on tell-all memoirs or soft material that perhaps as many teenage girls read as grown women. We were supposed to become more civilized and cosmopolitan, but these days we are about as ignorant, short-sighted and naive as ever, about everything.
Yes it is politically incorrect to comment on it, but quite honestly, even hypocritically, despite whatever nonsense we did overseas buildings were not supposed to fall down on our own soil. I went from joking that America was impenetrable and invincible the week before to wondering who else was going to be killed in New York for the cause. We live in a world of contradictions; in Dubai the worlds richest and brightest are living in a cosmopolitan area that is being built up to rival anything New York, Chicago or any of the other world class cities has to offer but it’s still rough in places like Afghanistan. Our freedoms have been trampled by fears of what will happen to us if we truly speak our minds about what bothers us, will we be stoned at the hand of society, literally and figuratively, or do we have to live out our lives with the guilt of how that made the next person feel.
People care about animals more than they do humans, far more than they’re willing to let on and more than enough than I care to hear about. Somehow, someway, every political cause seems to come back around to someone’s civil rights, while the group who actually did die and fight for those rights for decades doesn’t seem to fully understand how they can use them to better themselves. What’s worse our economy is so interdependent on globalization no one really knows what is American and what isn’t anymore. It was supposed to help American companies compete with overseas corporations and open up our borders to trade, but instead it’s helped China exploit Africa now that we’re too occupied with how to keep Hispanics away from our borders.
Speaking of China, it’s gotten to the point where you wonder if more than two blacks are assembling together if they do not have an anti-establishment agenda or if they’re just up to no good. It sounds ludicrous, until you think of your own reactions when more than a few young black men are seen together or how society is coming down on blacks in a church in what is probably a ghetto somewhere on a side of Chicago where no one else would want to be at because everyone may have left the area because of new opportunities in the suburbs. If a pastor can mobilize a future president to destroy what was all-American about this nation from within the White House, then we’re back in the stone age of how groups like the Black Panthers were treated when they were giving out free breakfasts.
Yet you can’t say that in this country; instead everything is about prejudice and hate. YouTube, which few respect anyway, is suddenly the area for political discourse. It’s odd, because African-Americans have assimilated in this country for so many decades they don’t even realize who they are anymore, but we could instantly snap back in an instant if we’re reminded of how we’re still treated and what goes on. It isn’t everyone assembling in clubs and organizations and behind closed doors that make those of other races feel excluded, it’s certain people. A lot of African-Americans do not want to think, talk, act or even be reminded of prototypical Black politics and socio-economic issues. They do not want to think about the past and like to look forward to the future that I had thought or hoped we would be a part of in this day and age.
Instead we obsess and focus over who is calling who a nigger and continue to give the word power because we are powerless to grab onto anything else to mobilize ourselves with because so many of our institutions have been torn apart few know where to begin to create a new infrastructure with which we can empower ourselves again. No one is disputing the history of the word, but where do you go from there; if Whites weren’t using the term there would be something else to talk about, and then something else again. It isn’t that we still aren’t in a struggle, but at the same time, is it easier to attack those clues than to really try to change someone’s way of perceiving us to begin with, or worse yet how we see ourselves.
I look at Africa, much of which seems to be looking a lot more like the rest of the world and wonder how much things have truly changed because tall buildings and a metropolitan way of life is only a nice pretty cover over uglier aspects of humanity. Our high-rise projects and basketball hoops in the park didn’t help us either, neither did anything else “urban” when appreciated for the aesthetic of it; are people treated any better, are there still dictatorships, oppression, injustice, is become more “Westernized” helping the mother land or killing it. If they’re actually getting a real appreciation for it then perhaps on some level they’re better off than we are.
The Dark Side of Comedy
Posted on: January 4, 2008
I was reading an interesting review about the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie when noticing that the reviewer felt that the movie touched on some rather serious points and that, contrary to popular belief, the movie is actually well developed and gives the chipmunks more of a personality than you would expect. That took me back to “50 first dates”, an interesting movie by Adam Sandler I was conned into watching that was actually a very moving and sentimental picture about what it means to suffer from anterograde amnesia, a rather serious illness that people may have never known about otherwise. In fact some victims of anterograde amnesia, where the person forgets what happens after the injury, also suffer from retrograde amnesia as well, the type we typically associate with amnesia; such is caused global amnesia.
Now without 50 first dates I never would have even thought to research that, but it makes you think about all of the other serious movies that were disguised as comedy (despite my appreciation for the movie it is very hard to watch it, in fact I rarely laughed and it is a bit sad). This isn’t the first time one of Adam Sandler’s movies have gotten me to think either, of course any movie by prototypical conscientious comedians (with the exception of perhaps Dave Chappelle) will get you to think, pretty much every movie by Chris Rock has a message and even Bernie Mac and Cedric the Entertainer have a message somewhere in their movies. Not to mention the fact that some comedians, like Robin Williams, offer compelling performances in serious dramas (The Fisher King & One Hour Photo) as well as traditional comedies (Death to Smoochy).
Man on the Moon should have been funny, given that it was about Andy Kaufman, a comedian whose people’s opinions of him typically differ between ideas of his being a sociopath or a genius, but given that it took a look at the impetus behind Andy’s comedy it is a rather long, serious look at his life that is difficult to watch at times. I would imagine the same would be the case if anyone were ever to write a movie about Tina Fey and her contributions to SNL and other network humor such as her acclaimed show 30 Rock, of perhaps even Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. We all know that comedy often comes from a rather serious place, a dark reach that we’re unsure if we really want to know the real depths of, and for that reason we have to ask ourselves if we truly want to know the real life of a comedian.
Yet comedians and writers can often pen tales of drama and intrigue, or just plain out narcissism in ways in which others rarely can. Woody Allen remains the king of the cerebral screenplay, a writer whose work is seen through everyone from newcomers such as Tyler Perry to veterans like Ray Romano and Larry David; few can deny the impact the former comedian had on cinema and television. At the same time it is refreshing to see someone like Steve Martin deliver a message that isn’t too profound, just sentimental enough but not to the point where we stop laughing altogether; Shopgirl is an underrated movie, as is Novocaine.
The next time I’m watching an old Bill Cosby or Richard Pryor film, or perhaps dust off Forrest Gump I may have to question what I am truly watching it for. In between the laughs and the amusement are serious messages about life that are difficult to appreciate otherwise, and perhaps in trying to escape from the silly and absurd I should appreciate those fleeting moments from stress and life’s problems and think how in some ways the dumbed down “childish” approach is often the only truly liberating one I found; if nothing else it was the easiest to reach …
A Writer Reflects on Life in the City, What it Means to Him and What it May Mean to Those Who Never Tried the City Life Before
I tried living in the country for a while and I have to admit; I take my hats off to those that can do it year in and year out because it isn’t for everyone. I had always been to the country, special trips for school, holidays and vacationing with family, but had never really considered living there.
What is so great about living in the city? People think that city living means that you are all outgoing and stuff, loud, fast and quick on your feet, and just all around slick, but that isn’t the case at all. Some are like that, but many are just focused on keeping everything okay and well with their own little corner of the metro and go to work and home, and then back to work, and just like what the city has to offer.
What does it have to offer? Thousands of shops, hundreds of schools, and tens of thousands of traffic signals and intersections. High-rise buildings and small buildings not much bigger than a single family home that serve as “hole in the wall” mom and pop establishments. Mega projects that take up acres and attract thousands, on acres of land and smaller, more intimate settings. A variety and contradictory fusion of conflicting ideas about life, race and culture that it is difficult to find anywhere else.In the city you’ll find everything from those whose heart is in the middle of nowhere to those that feel that the city is never big enough, overcrowded enough, or fast enough for them. You’ll find God in places with huge billboards for the work of the enemy across the street from each other; churches with strip clubs 100 feet away and hospitals with gun shops and liquor stores within walking distance. You’ll find streets that are elevated that overlap other streets that are elevated that overlap a street that actually is “on the ground, on the street” and bridges whose sole purpose isn’t to take you across a body of water, but to ease traffic flow and take you across another street.
You’ll get lost in the city, physically, yet find yourself mentally, spiritually and psychologically. You’ll find plenty of trouble when you’re looking to cause it, and none at all if you don’t know what to do with it. You’ll drive for miles trying to escape the city, yet will almost always find some detour that prevents you from leaving. You’ll work and spend the overwhelming majority of your money to stay in a neighborhood that is within walking distance with the rest of the working class folk; thinking you should be in the rich part of town, but no, you really shouldn’t.
You’ll find ghettos a stone throw away from mansions with circular driveways, schools named after prominent citizens that died over a hundred years ago, streets named after civil rights leaders in the worst parts of town and native Americans in the best part of town. At first, if you have never been in the city before, you’ll stop to look and partake of everything, but in a matter of days you’re only concerned about whatever affects you directly because to consider everything that goes on in the city is entirely too overwhelming for any one person.
The beauty of the city is that you aren’t locked into any one mentality, look or feel or culture; if you do not like what these people over here are doing there’s a group over there that you’ll feel at home with. It really doesn’t matter where the city is at either; our biggest cities have their own unique flavor, but the size of the metro has as much to do with the pace of the city as it does the location of where it is at.
Well designed cities can be driven around and avoided entirely through expressways, leaving you to only deal with the suburban areas that sprout up around the highway so you can get where you’re going. Coastal cities and metros around the water may require you to go in a bit further in, and some cities have expressways that cut like a knife through ghettos that are elevated and prevent you from having to deal with the city at all if you do not want to.
People fall asleep while traveling but the presence of a city always wakes you up and forces you to take a look around through the window when passing through. Some areas have you going up hills over bridges and landing you back down to see a confrontational view of downtown, like Cleveland and Detroit, while other cities like Chicago will have you on a crowded interstate that slices through the city that doesn’t allow for any look around, going under bridges, and other buildings. The Hampton Roads area takes you through a thick forest through Williamsburg and Newport News then opens up into Hampton with a view of electronic billboards, anywhere from 8 to 14 lanes before you get to the bridge-tunnel, and the choice to branch off towards other highways. If you choose to stay on I-64, you have the luxury of going underwater, then back over a long bridge across water back to Hampton and then into Norfolk; yet even more highways can snake you into Virginia Beach and Suffolk, or you can ride it out and go into Chesapeake.
People say that isn’t the most metropolitan of areas, but you are confronted with the reality of the metro all the same; with a sudden shift from 4 lanes to 8, and the evidence of a highly built up area, just without the high-rise buildings, unless you detour onto one of the other roads. There are few greater satisfactions than traveling down a highway into the city; going into DC from either direction, from Southwestern Virginia on what seems like it takes forever until the highway opens up into a very compact and dense series of lanes, interchanges and bridges, and then again from Central Virginia, the only difference being that the road is 6 lanes all the way from Richmond to DC.
It goes on forever until you almost out of Maryland over an hour later, a stunning display of complex road construction that took years to fully implement. My own city is a hidden treasure as well; there are no real indications that you are anywhere close to Akron Ohio until you come up on the expressway and decide to head downtown towards the University of Akron. It opens up from trees and grass into an aged jungle of concrete for as far as eyes can see until you pass through on the other side towards Youngstown.
Regardless of how disciplined planners are at trying to develop the city, it always takes on it’s own organic presence and finds it’s own way to move people around, through and underneath the metro. Well polished ideas about what the metro should be are usually shattered once economic realities sit in; the city grows around decaying ghettos like a body reconstructs itself when fighting cancer, at times people move in and rectify issues creating new neighborhoods and opportunities, but one can never truly forget what used to be there, and outsiders can always feel the presence lingering long after the empty houses have either been destroyed or rebuilt.
Changes in the environment or topography create different patterns of growth in the metro; height limits and construction requirements change, some areas may be more “spread out” because that it is all that the land can support, from the dense construction of the cities center. New technologies comes along to make duplicating previous efforts a reality, though often at an unrealistic cost. Leadership is elected in to take control of the cities economy, services, and job market, yet often leadership’s natural inclination to bring more money into the area has them contemplating controversial projects that displace the poor and working class and favor the rich. Outsiders love it because the city has opened up for them, insiders hate it because their way of life is affected.
You love to hate the city, but you rarely hate the city enough to give up on the life altogether. People from the larger metros gravitate towards smaller, less densely populated areas when they want a change of pace and those from the smaller cities that may not even have a metro area gravitate towards the larger cities when they want a change of pace. One thing is for sure, there is a city for everyone, somewhere, no matter where in the world you are living …
okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well ... 
Best B Rated Sitcoms of All Time
Posted by: goofy328 on: April 22, 2008
My List of Favorite Sitcoms that Aren’t that Great, but I Can’t Stop Watching
One by One
This isn’t a great sitcom by any standards, it ran for five seasons but may run for eternity in syndication. The show stars Kyla Pratt, another Disney graduate, who has been involved in such movies as Dr. Doolittle and Flex Alexander, who was once a back up dancer for Salt-n-Pepa. It was one of those lost shows on UPN that ended up CW that actually survived through syndication, unlike shows like The Parkers that spin heavily on BET mainly.
The downside if that the relationship between Breanna and Spirit is formulaic and entirely too familiar to viewers. The upside is the uniqueness in which the comedy involving Breanna’s father’s role in her life unfolds. The show never dealt with serious themes, like many of the sitcoms now on the CW, but is compelling enough to keep you watching multiple episodes back to back.
The King of Queens
This is one of those shows you ended up watching in syndication, but loved enough to at least try to watch the new episodes, as was the case with Everybody Loves Raymond or Seinfeld. Of course by the time you get around to watching it they take it off the air, but the genius of mixing Leah Remini, Jerry Stiller and Kevin James is timeless. Though Jerry Stiller could hold the show down alone by himself it was the chemistry between all of the actors and brilliant writing that got your attention. The schemes are reminiscent of The Honeymooners and even I Love Lucy, and the execution is priceless.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
This is one of those rare occasions when a show actually moves from ABC. It’s appeal is really difficult to describe, but it never felt like it was stuck in the time period in which it ran, like Mad About You or Suddenly Susan. I watched as many episodes as I could, as often as I could. What ticked me off those was the finale; there was no real closure to be found in it. It was like, “ok, we’re tired, it was nice knowing you”. They had Punky Brewster, Soleil Moon Frye, towards the end, and Caroline Rhea had an interesting run at being a talk show hostess for a year.
Just Shoot Me
It isn’t often I catch up with an NBC sitcom in syndication, in fact, it isn’t often I even watch an NBC sitcom, with few exceptions; Lipstick Jungle, The Cosby Show, A Different World, Frazier, okay well they were hot back in the day. But Just Shoot Me had a nice chemistry to it; a boss that never really wanted to assume responsibility but threw his weight around when it was most convenient for him, an alcoholic ex-model working a real day job and nepotism at it’s best, the boss’ daughter working there that doesn’t really want to work there. In all truth it is a horrible show, but I continue to watch it every time it comes on.
Martin
A very straight up overly simplistic show in which a comedian plays himself Martin featured the outrageous comedic antics of Martin Lawrence, which typically made up for the horrible writing and plot devices. Martin Lawrence’s ridiculous and absurd performances as Jerome, Roscoe, Edna and Sheneneh were a nice diversion and made the show seem a lot better than what it truly was. In all honesty the actual plot of many of the episodes left much to be desired, with the exception of two part episodes such as when Martin went to LA to be on a rival’s talk show.
Frasier
The seriousness, dry wit and dark humor of Frasier evokes thoughts of Newhart. Arguably, Frasier will not be remembered as being as good of a sitcom by those of the generation who loved Bob Newhart but Kelsey Grammer himself has made an incredible contribution to television as he produces CW sitcoms like Girlfriends and The Game. His work is rather evident in these shows if you watch closely. At the end of the day though this sitcom could run in syndication forever, as many shows from that time, including Cheers itself, still are. Frasier is also one of the few sitcoms to run as long as the show it was spun from as strong; though there are other sitcoms that obviously overshadowed the show they were spun from.
There are other shows, but these six shows I almost have to watch every single time they come on. Interestingly enough, other shows that were really, really good, like Seinfeld, I can’t watch now because I watched them entirely too many times when they were on both in syndication and during their first run. There is something to be sad about not allowing a show into syndication too early, although in the case of King of Queens I never would have known about the show. There is also something to be said about allowing old seventies shows like Good Times or What’s Happening Now to run in syndication on regular television networks when they are no longer culturally relevant and can never get the viewership because they show at like 3 AM.