Someone I know lost her brother two years ago. Her family didn’t know who did it. Last week a young man was killed and the word got back to them that this was the person who killed her brother. I asked myself that if that many people know this was the person why they just didn’t tell the police and give their family closure. Then I thought about the fact that while they would have had closure someone else would have probably got shot for snitching and another family would be grieving. I couldn’t think of a scenario where at least one more person was killed and that is depressing. It leads back to the only real option that we have to stop the killing cold turkey. The cycle continues and I don't know when it is going to end.
Councilwoman Shelly Midura says she is not running for re-election. I respect that decision and think everyone else on the council should not run as well. There’s no way you can be in this city government for the last four years and not be so drained that you can barely keep enough composure not to start cursing at people during meetings. I will go even further and say I am going to be extra skeptical of anyone over eager to run for office or re-election. The task facing the next group is going to be so great that no one who is not insane should be that excited about the job. It's good to have ambition and want a shot at the job but I think some hesitation in running for office is normal.
Lets all agree that the jobs that are being lost now were already in the process of being eliminated months before the stimulus was passed. Unless we were going to cut a check directly to every company in America with a guarantee that no one loses their job there was no way to stop most of these layoffs from happening. That's what companies do when they are having financial problems. If there are 500 employees on your job and 200 of you get laid off, someone has already figured out how to make that place run with the 300 people that are left. Even if things get better there isn't necessarily a need to hire anyone back.
In the past month I have met three people who recently moved to my city and got really good jobs within two weeks of being here. At the same time I know qualified people who have been here their whole life that can’t get an interview. It’s time to switch up the game plan. Everyone from the city needs to put an out of state address on their resume. I think the hood zip codes have been flagged for file 13. We just need to find a way to hide our accents. Don't feel less worthy if someone puts in a good word or sets up a job opportunity for you. Everyone else is doing it.
I’m happy to report that I am still not on Twitter and Facebook is looking kind of shaky to me. It’s strange that no matter how little information you put on your Facebook profile it can find everyone you went to school with, worked with, or had a date with in the last 20 years. If you are one of those people who wanted to ignore your past then you shouldn't be on Facebook.
Today I had a few minutes at work and decided to look at the kind of emails that are in my spam folder. Am I the only guy that thinks if the subject matter that comes through spam was all legit my life would be legendary and iconic? If the offers in spam were real there would be guys calling in from work just to check their email all day.
One of the few cool things left about living in the city you grew up in is going somewhere that kicks in a childhood memory. Tonight I went to a convenience store and parked in the same spot where when I was nine years old my brother put my dad’s Ford LTD and we started rolling backwards into Bayou St. John. I still remember me and my sister screaming in panic while my dad ran out of the store like the black Indiana Jones to jump in and stop the car. That was a good day.
This song is dedicated to all the people who are struggling with something at the moment. Try to stay positive and if you just need to smile think about me wearing the black hat the brother has on in this video because I think I want one.
I would like to dedicate this song to all the folks who made slow jam tapes why listening to Papa Smurf's Mellow Moods on FM 98 radio in New Orleans. I remember sitting there for hours for Papa to play a certain song you wanted on a fresh 90 minute Maxwell cassette. You couldn't walk too far away because there wasn't a lead in to the song unless it was the first one after the commercial break. Everyone used to sit there for hours hitting the pause button off and on until the tape was full. It never failed that the song you really wanted to record used to always come on when you were at the end of the first side of the tape and you had to be good with your hands to take it out and turn it over to record the remainder of the song on the second side. It was that problem or Papa Smurf would start talking before the song was over and mess up your timing so you had to run back to the stereo and hit stop so his talking wouldn't mess up the vibe on your tape when you took it to your girl's house. Our high school nights were spent talking on the phone and making tapes from Mellow Moods. I remember those times when you would be on the phone a little too late trying to talk all smooth to some girl and all of a sudden someone's parent would pick up another phone in the house and be like "ummm....you need to be telling him goodbye and taking your ass to sleep". That was one of the greatest mood killers of all time. Something’s Missing by The Boppers is a hood classic in New Orleans. It makes me want to meet my lil boo in front of Popeyes on Rampart and Canal so I can take her to the dollar show at the Loew’s State Theater. If our parents didn't know what time the first movie started and she’s not scary we can sneak into a second movie and watch two for a dollar. If she was willing to sneak into a third movie you let her wear your chain or your jacket because she was special.
My new artist game has been weak lately. By the time I find out about someone I really like their album is damn near a year old. It's still not too late to let everyone know that from here on out I am a die hard Esperanza Spalding fan. My friend went to Carol's Daughter buy some stuff and they gave her this promotional CD. On that CD was the song Precious. I have been listening to it at least ten times a day ever since. The second song is just to show how awesome she is. If she ever does a show in New Orleans I am in there even if I have to sell some aluminum cans for my ticket money. I would love to listen to her sing this song and play her bass while I picked out her fro.
People often wonder why New Orleans can't seem to let go of the past and move forward. They want to know why there's so much distrust of the police department and why we can't seem to let this Katrina stuff go. Stories like this one and this one from last night's news on WDSU. I would have posted the video but Channel 6 news doesn't have an embedding code that I could find. Now, stories like this could trigger a few uncomfortable discussions about race and the police department. It could cause an officer or two to get fired or indicted. If everything in these stories is true then I think that's a good thing. At the least all of the officers involved in that bar fight should be terminated. If they can get away with lying and planting guns on innocent people then I don’t have any confidence in their capabilities to catch the guilty. If you want to eliminate the race card and conspiracy theories out of local government then you have to correct the things that make it so believable. I'm not one of those anti police brothers in general but the kind of thing that happened to Mr. Williams and his friends could have easily happened to me or one of my friends. I'm glad WDSU decided to run these stories.
I made an agreement with my blogging inner circle that I was not going to say anything about the Steve McNair story. I'm going against that agreement because with every passing day that this story has been in the news it’s getting to me more and more. I think it's bothering me far more than Michael Jackson's death ever could have. It's depressing me and I need to get it off my chest. Steve McNair was only a year older than me. That means that we grew up at the same time. At 36 years old with all the things he had going for him in his life he was killed and he really didn't have to. This morning when I was listening to the circumstances that led to his death, I couldn't help think about all the people I know under the age of 40 that are not here anymore and there is no real reason for it.
I want someone to do the research on this. Let's take a break from worrying about police brutality or what part of Africa our DNA comes from. Let’s get all the doctors and researchers together, go through the files in every major American city and find out how many young black men have been murdered for reasons not worthy of death. We haven't had any revolutions for freedom. There haven't more than a few stories of young men dying fighting off the KKK when they tried to burn their house down. I'm sure there have been some brothers who have been killed trying to protect their families but it hasn't been hundreds of them. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed at the age of 39 but he was putting his safety on the line for us all. Malcolm X was also 39 when he was assassinated. MedgarEvers was 37. All three of those men died fighting for something and trying to better the condition of their people. Tupac was killed at the age of 25 and for what? He had a fight at a casino and that's all we know. It's pretty much the same story for Biggie. It's not just famous people. There are guys I played ball with that are no longer here. There are guys I used to blow spitballs with in the second grade that are no longer here. There are guys who could make me laugh to the point of tears that are no longer here. There are people I loved like brothers that are no longer here. The one thing they all have in common is that I couldn't tell anyone why they were killed so soon if they paid me to.
Things would be so different without all that lost. It often gets to me because I have two brothers, cousins and friends that are out here everyday and we are all too young to be worried about our mortality. I'm not having a bad time with anything personally but the amount of my contemporaries that are not here for silly reasons is weighing me down. You can have whatever opinion you want about the events that led to Steve McNair's passing but the bottomline in the end is that he shouldn't be deceased today and that's the case for a lot of brothers.
Yesterday there were four people murdered in the city. That's a very violent day. Living in the city is strange in a way because with all the stories of violence in the news you really don't see it unless you are involved in it or get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you go to work or school, mind your business and surround yourself with like minded people you can live through everyday without experiencing any of the drama first hand. I know there are people who think everyone in black neighborhoods drive pass guys shooting at one another all the time and don't react because it doesn't bother us and we like it. That's not true. Most of us have no idea what is going on in the streets. We find out about things just like everyone else. It's a strange situation because we still live close enough to know family and friends close enough to the activity to care but we are not personally close enough anymore to feel a part of it. After awhile you start believing it and say things like “I wish these people over there would get their act together”. That’s what happens when you try to brainwash yourself. Every now and then something pulls you back into reality and makes it personal.
Things are going okay for me. There are some general issues that piss me off and I am still a bitter storm victim but right now from a day to day standpoint things are cool. I have mentioned this before but one of the ways I keep myself upbeat is I don't follow the news as closely as I used to. That makes it hard to be a good blogger but the negativity of the news becomes unbearable sometimes. I read the headlines and get an understanding of what's happening but I don't dig too deep. Sometimes I go a day or two without looking at all. Last night I was playing around on the Internet when I finally checked the news and saw the stories of all the killings. There was a double murder in the Iberville Housing Development that caught my eye because of the location and ages of the victims (There won't be anymore links to news sites on this blog until someone figures out how to clean up the comments section. I am not promoting any websites that condone people disrespecting my race.) I was reading the story and I thought to myself I haven't heard from my people all day. I have a godson and his mom living in the same building where this crime occurred. Normally during the day I can expect at least a few text messages from her even if she's just forwarding some horrible joke someone sent to her. I realized that not only hadn't I heard from her Tuesday but I didn't hear from her on Monday either. So now instead of lying down to watch Family Guy I am up on the cell phone checking on people. There goes that false comfort zone out of the window.
She and the boys were fine. She did know the guy who was killed along with the young lady. Plus, there was another double shooting a few blocks away and one of those guys was her cousin. At least he's going to live. That would have made the fact that I didn't check on them until midnight suck even more. The question I have is why do I feel the need to apologize to her like I am the one firing bullets through the project all the time? Claiming ownership for actions you are not involved in is difficult to do. I guess that’s why so many of us don’t get involved and talk about every other issue but this one. See, I wasn’t thinking about stuff like this yesterday morning.
I don't think there was much production in the work force today as millions of people found a way to watch the Michael Jackson memorial. I don't have any comments specifically about the memorial since I was one of the few people that chose not to watch it. It just wasn't my type of thing. This post is about a certain type of person that reared their ugly head today before, during and after the event. I'm talking about the person that yells out insane stories and ideas during a group discussion. Everybody knows someone like this. If you can't think of anyone that means you are probably the person. Let me explain what I am talking about.
So everyone is sitting at their desk today making sure their connection to whatever site they are watching the memorial on is working and naturally the topic of discussion is Michael Jackson. Everyone has their own space at our office but there are no doors or walls so we have group discussions sitting at our desk and everyone just yells out loud. Well that was happening during the Michael Jackson discussion when all of a sudden someone shouts out.
"Michael Jackson and Diana Ross have a love child being raised by Tupac in Cuba at Fidel Castro’s villa!"..........WHAT?
"Quincy Jones had a hit out on Michael Jackson's life because he wouldn't let him produce Thriller Part 2!"........What kind of bulls...is that?
"Jermaine Jackson is Usher's daddy but they kept it a secret so Joe Jackson wouldn't get mad!".............speechless
Now you have a dilemma. You really want to turn to the person and say shut your crazy ass up and stop reading foolishness on the internet but you can't because you have to work with them 8 hours a day. You can't try and debate it because then you will spend the next 20 minutes pulling up all kinds of bootleg gossip sites that are going to show up on your weblog at work and you don't feel like explaining that later. At that point your only chance to get out of this without hurting anyone's feelings is to send out a mental signal for someone to call your desk phone, or your cell phone. It would be nice if the FED-Ex came in with a delivery or the fire alarm starts going off. You just want something that could give you enough of a break in the conversation so it can die. Unfortunately none of that happened today because everyone was probably watching the same thing they were. The only thing that saved me from hearing the theory that Michael Jackson's kids sleep in underground chambers is my headphones and the Isley Brothers with a message for my coworker because she needed to be working instead of putting her crazy on display.
With the troubles of Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin's commitment issues, why isn't the Republican Party coming to Louisiana to take Bobby Jindal away and prepare him for his presidential campaign? He's everything they are looking for in a candidate. He's a Christian. He's young, smart, and intelligent. He's got a beautiful family and if I had to name the next politician to be caught up in any scandal involving infidelity he would be the last person I named. I feel confident in saying Bobby Jindal's name won't be in any scandalous stories. He's from the south and in national elections those states are going in the red column for sure especially when Barack Obama is the opponent. This is an area with Rush Limbaugh billboards and radio station that calls itself "Rush Radio". He should be able to talk the language of the base without any problems. Just like George Bush, he came into office with a budget surplus and no one is quite sure what happened to it.
What makes him the greatest hope of true conservatives is that he has the ability to cut budgets and veto anything that doesn't look good to him on paper. I don't care how many people testify and explain the need for it he won't be persuaded otherwise. You can find different ways and ideas to keep paying for something and he will still cut it if he's already convinced it makes sense financially. The people's money won't get spent on anything. People who were against the stimulus wouldn't have had anything to worry about with Governor Jindal as president. He would have cut taxes and waited for the economy to correct itself. We probably wouldn't have had any banks, credit, or auto companies. Whole cities and states would have gone under but there would have been no cries of socialism at all. Are you concerned about a public health care plan running up the deficit? There would be no need to fear with President Jindal because health care is his favorite victim. He's close half of the public hospitals in America if he had to before we went over budget. The only thing I am not sure about is his stance on national security. I don't think you have anything to worry about there. He's probably just like the other true conservatives and has no problem spending as much money as possible on defense. Did anyone see him in action when Hurricane Gustav was approaching the state? If a war broke out you would know where every regiment was, who they were about to attack and what time they were going to do it.
Isn't this the person you all have been waiting for? Don't hold that speech he made after the State of the Union against him. Please send Michael Steele or someone to convince Governor Jindal to step down immediately so he can focus on spreading his message outside of the state. Why should we be the only ones to experience true conservatism?
All the people who are tired of Michael Jackson coverage should calm down. Once the memorial service is over he will slowly start to fade out of the news. I have to admit that I am surprised by how long Michael Jackson’s death has stayed on the front page. Friday I was watching Sarah Palin’s speech and I realized how much her resignation and Michael Jackson’s death have a common thread. I know that sounds crazy but stick with me.
If Michael Jackson would have been born twenty years later than he was things would have been a lot different. Most of his fans are locked into a memory of Mike prior to 1985. The country was different back then. He was the last person to gain fame before Americans were trained that they have to be negative about something in order to validate what they like. The man had a pop album named after a song about ghost and zombies that was so popular across all walks of life he was invited to The White House when Ronald Reagan was in office and no one thought this was strange. Could you imagine if someone released an album like Thriller in 2009? The critics would smash the idea. Religious groups would protest and Bill O’Reilly would have an entire week of shows on the topic. Not only that, a song like Beat It in 2009 would be incredibly corny and never get radio play. Michael Jackson wouldn’t have had a complex and thinking he had to make everyone love him because it would have been crystal clear that a large group of people hated him. Public figures that only have experience in the current climate of our society are well aware of that fact. If Mike hadn’t disconnected from everything he would have realized this too and relaxed a little.
I don’t predict we will be having anymore global phenomenon like Mike in my lifetime. I think he was the last one of his kind. The only area this could potentially happen is sports and we knock them down too. Don't expect anyone in leadership to maintain that kind of aura. We won’t be spending any money to update Mt. Rushmore because there isn’t a chance that enough people get behind one person of any party long enough to do great things. With all the issues affecting the country, there is still time to discuss who is running for president against our current president who hasn’t been in office for six months. Everything is designed with such focus on failing and negativity that it’s taking people out of the race before they have a chance to really do anything. Even if Barack Obama does everything right and we all prosper he wouldn’t get the right credit because people would dog him anyway. It would have to happen because our country is designed to take people down once they get too big. That brings me to Sarah Palin.
When I watched her speech Friday I couldn’t help thinking I was watching someone whose skin isn’t thick enough to take all the mental strain that comes with running for president nowadays. Running a successful campaign is 20% policy, 40% marketing, and 40 % destroying all the values and reputation of your opponent. That means that you and your opponent are spending almost half of your time and resources making the other person look bad. She has a son with special needs and a teenage daughter who has a child. Does she really want to be president bad enough to put them all out there in the crosshairs of all that negative drama?
Things can appear to be one way and turn into an entirely different animal once you get on the inside. You need to have everything in order personally like Barack Obama or so stubborn and convinced you are right like George Bush that you don’t give a damn. That’s how you make it to the finish line in the national spotlight. It takes a special breed to be president and I don’t know if she has it. I believe she was real gung-ho about the proposition until she got in the middle of it and seen everything that comes with it. I hope she gets out of the spotlight for awhile and doesn’t listen to her supporters who are trying to spin this as some maverick political move because of their hope she can save the party. I think she threw in the towel and that was the right move. It was only going to get worse.
I don’t know that woman’s family so you won’t find any personal attacks here. If I did that then I would feel like a hypocrite every time I leave a nasty comment on any article that gets personal about Michelle, Sasha and Malia Obama. I’ll stick to dogging her policies as soon as I figure out what they are. I never get a thrill out of watching anyone crash and burn unless it's an obvious jackass or someone who does something incredibly stupid like sending 10,000 text messages to your chief of staff or disappearing from your state to go to Argentina to get busy with your "soul mate". Those folks have well earned the below the belt comments made about them.
The uproar about Lil Wayne’s performance on the BET Awards last Sunday sparked an internal debate all week and I passed the topic along to all my people. The issue is whether or not I am a hypocrite for being totally offended by Lil Wayne having those young girls up on stage while he sang about song about wanting to f@@k every girl in the world. I found out yesterday that one of the girls on stage was his daughter. Now this is not a post to totally dog Lil Wayne. The song in question may bother me but I would be lying if I said there weren’t a few selections of his on my mp3. The reason I felt like a hypocrite is because in my lifetime I have listened to some pretty wild music. There were some songs during my high school and young adult years that would make the average person uncomfortable. I knew all the words. So I am reading and listening to the anger about Lil Wayne’s song and I thought to myself “Who am I to criticize him?” There was a time of my life where I and my friends considered Luther Campbell a hero. One of our goals used to be to hang out with him in Miami. I am certain that if someone offered me enough money I could recite all the words to Gangsta of Love by the Geto Boys. If you don’t know the song already please don’t look it up. The fact that I knew songs like that word for word and embraced the attitude in them makes me feel a little uneasy about talking about those kids for bobbing their heads and reciting the words. I have sung along to much worse. I guess that’s why I don’t talk bad about Soulja Boy. I guess if I was 17 I would dig him too even if I couldn’t understand anything he said.
With that being said, the times I was standing at the concert rocking to the Two Live Crew was at least 15 years ago. Back then I was a young man with not much responsibility. Lil Wayne is a young man but he’s not that young and his daughter is older than mine. I think even if I was 17 years old I wouldn’t sing that song in front of my daughter or any other little babies. I’m not being a hypocrite. I am a concerned man who has grown to believe in protecting these girls at all cost. It’s a bad message to the world about what we think about our women and he shouldn’t have sung that song on an awards show and never even let his daughter listen to it at all. I don’t have any hate for Lil Wayne but that shit last Sunday was inappropriate.
He knows better and I’m sure it won’t happen again. I sure hope it doesn't.
