Peaks and Valleys: Falling From Grace

While talking about the Mike Vick saga again, a friend and I started to consider if there were any other bigger black collapses. We came up with an intriguing list of the 15 greatest falls from black grace. To make the list, you either lost a lot of money, did something mad stupid, ended up in jail or something along similar lines.

But the key is the people listed had to be on top of their game at some point. We’re starting at the bottom and going to the top, or should that be the other way around? Who knows?

There are a few Joneses and Barrys, a couple of Marions and Roberts, the Godfather of Soul, the self-proclaimed King of R&B and far too many Mikes. But first we'll start with the dishonorable mentions.

Dishonorable Mention: Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Suge Knight, Isaiah Washington, Terry McMillan, Lil Kim and Wesley Snipes.

No. 15: Star Jones – She lied to us. She said she lost the weight through hard work, even though we knew she lost it through her wallet and surgery. For lying about something so major for no reason, she gets a spot on this list above the druggies, bullies, homophobes and psychos.

No. 14: James Brown – The Godfather of Soul had a few falls from grace, a few spats with drugs and the law. But most recently his body lay in house for an extended period of time as his family members struggled about what to do with it because he didn’t redo his will.

No. 13: Marion Jones - Once considered the fast woman in the world, we learned why she was just that in federal indictments alleging she used performance-enhancing drugs. Her then-husband CJ Hunter was suspended from the track for using drugs, and she probably was right there with him. She then went on to date and birth a child with sprinter Tim Montgomery, who also succumbed to steroid use and scandal. Oh, yeah, Marion also lost all of her money and had to sell three properties including her mom’s crib to raise cash.

No. 12: Ron Isley – Mr. Biggz evaded paying his taxes since before he made “Between the Sheets.” He also took his dead brother’s money. Ron also recorded and performed a song written by R. Kelly named “Contagious.” The lyrics are disgusting if you really listen to them. Your contagious/touch me baby/give me what you’ve got. Really?

No. 11: MC Hammer – Helped run the Oakland Athletics as a child, but didn’t learn about money management from owner Charlie Finley. Hammer blew up, put everybody on the payroll and went bankrupt.

No. 10: Marion Barry – “The bitch set me up.” Former District of Columbia Mayor was caught with crack cocaine and a woman in a hotel room in 1990 while still in office. He stepped down as Mayor but was re-elected in 1995. We are a forgiving nation. There’s hope Mike Vick.

No. 9: Barry Bonds – “Accused” of using performance-enhancing drugs to improve his play on the baseball field even though he was already a lock for the Hall of Fame. This happened under Baseball Owners and Bud Selig watch, and they didn’t disapprove. Broke sports most hallowed record, the home run record, this summer.

No. 8: Master P – In 1999, he was worth more than $350 million. In 2004, he filed for bankruptcy. Three-hundred and fifty-million plus. Seriously? But he’s bankrolling off of Lil Romeo still.

No. 7: Condoleezza Rice – She’s smart as can be and an accomplished pianist, but she is also George W. Bush’s No. 1 go-getta. Need I say more?

No. 6: Whitney Houston/Bobby Brown – Their fates are tied together. He started falling before he reached his peak (and he did peak with the Don’t Be Cruel album), and when they got married, he brought her down with him. She called him the King of R&B. Then the television show. Drugs marriage, and coonery are a lethal mix.

No. 5: Michael Jackson – Even if he didn’t do anything to that little boy, Mike is mad crazy. Funny thing about him is that if he announced and booked a 30-city US tour, it would sell out in a week, and grown women would still pass out.

No. 4: Robert Kelly – What we said about Mike is almost true with Kells. Most of have seen what “the person alleged to be Robert Kelly” did in those tapes to that girl who looked a little to young to be “ready to go all the way.” But we still bump his music like we did back in 1992 when Twelve Play first dropped.

No. 3: Mike Vick – Stands to lose over $100 million in salary and endorsements because of his dogfighting scandal. Will likely be spend a year in jail, and be suspended for the next two NFL seasons.

No. 2: Mike Tyson – Got his ass whooped by Buster Douglas. Was convicted of rape. He lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of it. Let’s not forget that he bit a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear off, told Lennox Lewis he wanted to eat his children and then tattooed half of his face.

No. 1: OJ Simpson – Do I really need to go here?

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If She Ever Feels Alone ...

The year was 1988. I was seven years old (and on my way to eight and the third grade). My brother and I owned our first record, Michael Jackson's Bad. I wouldn't say the word "butt," when Michael said "Yo butt is mine," because I thought it was a curse word.

The world was moving to cassette tapes. And I followed. The first cassette tape I purchased? This single from the boy band The Boys. It's called "Dial My Heart."

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We Still Miss You

It's been six years since we lost Aaliyah. She was a force. Here's I Miss You. RIP Babygirl. We miss you, and love you.

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Flipped Script: Giving Her Your Number ....

This is my break for the day. I've got mad work to do, but I needed a break from writing. Thus what am I doing? You guessed it, writing more.

I got into this intriguing conversation with KayJay (also known as HeathClaire) two days ago about men giving their numbers to women.

In the old days, the man courted and pursued the woman. But in the world we live in today (Remember the phrase women of the 90s?) that's not always the case. Women pursue men. In public. In private. In clubs. In jest.

Not always, but they do. One of the tactics men have taken to in general is actually giving women their number instead of asking for hers. When a man does this, it usually means one of two things:

1. He's just not that into you (I hate that phrase or) and is going to let you decided if you want to call him and pursue him hoping maybe he'll warm up to you.

2. He is into you but is too shy or insecure to ask you for fear of rejection and would rather give you his number and hope that you have enough interest to call him that way he puts himself in a position where he doesn't embarrass himself.

Kayjay says she has a problem with either instance of this, and it's easy to see why. Who wants someone who's not into them and who wants an insecure man?

I, on the other hand, understand take this in from a third perspective. This coming from a guy who's not insecure and if the woman's the right one he will pursue at all costs.

Guys are flipping the roles on women, and here's why:

Every guy I know - shy, insecure guys included - has had at least one girl he had, and I mean had, to pursue. You know, the girl that he thought was too bad and gave him two seconds of her day, so he had to see if there was something more there. He gets her number and calls her the next day, and lays his game on thick like Robin's wife. (I've been there)

Then there are the inbetweens, the girls where you have some interest but you're not immediately sparked. Thus, you don't put forth as much effort as before. You may talk to her long enough to ask her for her number, but you know you won't call (I did this one last weekend). Most every guy I know has also encountered this woman.

There's also the instance where the fine girl you're not even paying attention to makes a move on you (it's happened to me, too) to get you to notice her. It's becoming more common nowadays.

All these things considered, why is it such a bad idea to give the women in situation No. 2 your number instead, and reverse the roles? It's not. If a woman has that much interest in a man (in today's world) she should pursue him the same way men have been chasing women since the beginning of time.

I mean, don't (some, not all) women get up the gall to become groupies when their favorite athlete or R&B singer comes through their city? Yeah. I know mad women who would throw their panties and all that comes with them at Reggie Bush without dude even saying a word.

Why not pursue the ordinary, good-looking brother you think is the shit at the club, grocery store, mall or Target? What's so different? If you're that into him, you should MAN up and start the pursuit.

Does this make you look like you're chasing a man? No, not if you know how to play your cards and the game right.

Kayjay is of the accord where she believes that the man should still pursue the woman.

But we're not living in the 1950s, slavery is over and racism ... you get my point with the first two. The male-female chase has evolved, and with it, we almost must evolve our games. That includes when we approach a female and how we do it.

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Do we all look that much alike?

Thursday night is always a fool, a tomfool to be specific. See, a couple of my old co-workers from a friendly neighborhood paper have started this tradition where every Thursday night we go to one of my favorite bars in Kansas City, Tomfooleries.

It's my favorite bar because I met Mark McGwire there a year after he broke the home run record (also a few years before everyone started to believe he was on roids). I was an innocent 19-year-old, and I thought that bar was the coolest place in the city. I vowed to return there often sans my mother when I came of age.

Anyway, last night turned out to be a little pre-birthday (It's on Saturday) bash of sorts. In all about 10 people I'm really close to or cool with came out to partake in our weekly tradition.

One of my friends told the waiter that it was my birthday, and at the Fool, they do things differently. They don't come and sing to you and bring you a nice dessert.

No. Your waitperson brings you a Twinkie with a sparkler in it.

So as I turned and saw the sparkler, I knew what it was. After all, I'd experienced this from the "it's somebody else's b-day" perspective a few times.

I knew the Twinkie was headed for me. But no. Somehow the waiter decided the only other black guy, we'll call him Perez, at the table was the "birthday guy," even though my friend clearly stated that it was me (not to mention when she told the waiter about my birthday Perez wasn't even at the bar yet).

I immediately put my head on one of my friends shoulders and started bugging up. The waiter finally realized his mistake and hastily moved the Twinkie, the sparkle halfway fizzled out in front of me.

As I laughed the ignorance off, all I could think to myself was "damn, they really do think we all look alike."

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Happy Birthday To Me ...

that's all. Wherever you are, know that it's a celebration because I'm 27. ... Yeah ....

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Breaking News ...

The first draft of Tryangles, my ode to that thing we call black love in screenplay format, is complete. More than 15,000 words of confusion, infidelity and love.

It's been several months since this idea first started brewing in my head, and it's been about a month since I started writing. But it's done, (Ha finuto, if you're speaking Italian. That's the only phrase I actually remember.) and I really feel good about it.

That's all I can say right now. I'm definitely not posting anything else about it (as to not actually give away any of the plot). But I'm after I go through it two or three more times and have a few people I trust look at it, I'm going to try to get some agents on game because I believe that it's what black cinema needs, a black movie that shows us in a light away from the negative images constantly cast into society.

I've got plenty of work to do now. But I think the hard part is over. My thoughts are actually flushed out on paper, and it feels amazing!

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The Big Forehead

Tyra Banks once served as a standard, the most beautiful woman in the world on an average day.

I never understood it. On her best days, in her best shoots, her head often took the shape of one of the aliens that nearly took over the world in the film Independence Day, a look that never appealed to me.

I couldn’t understand it. How could someone with a lopsided, melon-shaped head be the most attractive woman in the world? A big cranium surely should be the downfall of a woman’s looks. Not the beckoning call of her beauty. I mean, these are the same girls we call “bighead” in the fifth grade. How did they become God’s gift to man?

Then I started to think. Almost every woman I’d give a score higher than an 8 had one thing in common: the patented Tyra forehead.

Some were symmetrical, and others well, they were imperfect like Tyra’s. But for some unfounded reason, I still found them to be the ones who I endeared myself to most often.

So I decided to make a list of the plausible reasons men are innately attracted to the big forehead like the female peacock is to the male with the most beautiful array of feathers.

No. 1: Most of the girls I know with big heads are smart. Maybe there’s some sort of correlation to smarts and the actual size of the head.

No. 2: It’s nearly impossible to screw up the forehead kiss.

No. 3: If you somehow screw up the forehead kiss, you can blame it on the fact that you had entirely too much head to find the perfect spot to place the peck.

No. 4: If someone calls your woman big headed (full of herself), you can actually take that as a compliment.

No. 5: Because Tyra Banks has one. Anything Tyra has, we men seem to be attracted to it.

No. 6: If you get one of these women to fall in love with you, you’ve got a leg up on the rest of us because these aliens are about to take over the world.

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Real Man of Genius

Chris Rock is genius. Okay, maybe a comedic genius. See, the way he frames serious issues in a satirical way is a gift, an art. Rock forces you to think about these matters in a manner no one would otherwise see.

In one of his best rants, he chastises the presidency for creating societal fodder in various incidents to keep our “minds off the war.” He jokes that Bush sent the girl to Kobe’s room in Colorado; that Bush was responsible for Lacy Peterson’s death; and that Bush sent that little boy to the Neverland Ranch.

Oddly, it’s almost an accurate portrayal of our American society, and I wonder how this affects the attention we devote toward the issues that should garner the majority of our attention.

Here’s a sample.

Paris goes to jail. Lindsay Lohan racks up her 37^th DUI. Don Imus uses the term “nappy headed ho.” Isaiah Washington says the word “faggot” in reference to a co-worker. Eddie Murphy attempts to be the biggest star needing to take a seat on Maury Povich’s couch.

There are a million quasi-important things we can – and do – indulge in daily. Rarely, do we ever focus on the most important issues. Rarely, do the idiocy and buffoonery we pay so much attention actually take their proper place.

Along State Line Road, a street which separates Kansas and Missouri, sits a house with a slew of American flags in its yard. I haven’t stopped to count seeing that might cause a wreck.

Thankfully, there’s a number in the yard representing the flags’ meaning. This number changes with the growing death toll of American soldiers in our Middle East conflicts.

That number is above 3,000. If you haven’t noticed, that total is greater than the number who passed on 9/11/2001 in New York City and Washington D.C. And for what? Because we “received faulty information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.“

Back here on the home front, we’re more consumed with making sure Paris Hilton remains in lockdown for her full sentence and what she has to say afterward on Larry King Live.

A few weeks ago, Michael Vick was indicted on federal dog-fighting charges, and things started to fall in a unique, but weird perspective. I realized our federal government and our American society have made it a high priority to pursue people who fight dogs rather than aid issues of far greater importance (and I’m not saying this shouldn’t have some importance at all). But it has snowballed into our next great not-so-veiled racial debate. White and black are somehow pointing fingers at each other at protests outside of Atlanta Falcons training camp over Michael Vick and dogs, a topic deserving of its own discussion.

You could drown in the coverage of Vick and his alleged mishaps. And it’s not going away anytime soon.

This got me thinking: Maybe Chris Rock was right. Maybe the feds really do create things people will deem important to keep what should be at the heart of the public perspective at bay. Then I thought again: “That’s impossible. The federal government wouldn’t do that.”

Then I remembered, this is the same federal government that is in its fifth year of pursuing Barry Bonds, the famed baseball player who just broke this country’s most hallowed sports record. Really, how long, and how much tax-payer money, does it take to figure out whether or not someone told a white lie? That should be the beginning of a bad joke, not societal fodder.

But it is, and it’s what we talk about. And because we banter about such frivolous things that are put before us by a dollar-driven media and the government, the number I occasionally drive by on State Line Road continues growing. And Chris Rock’s words seem more ingenious.

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We’ll Never Be … (Just Friends)

The truth was a subtitle scribed
in a pen filled with ink of sin
It was two words: just friends.
Though we pretend that’s all we can be
Behind this veil we call reality,
I can tell there’s more than this fallacy
But we continue to feed each other
That’s why we’ll never be …
Just Friends

Next of kin is what I feel when I’m with you
Can’t pretend there’s not a fire and we’re both moths
Addicted to an ever-burning flame,
Still claiming we could never be more than friends.
Yet and still, we’re back at it.
And you’re telling me that I can have it,
Any way I want it.
But today, I don’t want it.
Yet there’s no way to stop me
From getting on it
Because it’s already enveloped me
Like a postmarked love letter
Sealed with a forbidden bit of bliss
And once our lips meet, there’s no turning back
From what we came to get.
You reach your high,
And I come, too.
Then we start to reminisce about the good ole days
Like only lovers would do.

Now I start to think, but not aloud
Surely there’s more to offer than just this,
Fuck friends, because we’re fucking friends
And when friends fuck, they can’t be fucking friends.
So I guess we’ll never be … just friends.
So what are we supposed to be?
Maybe we aren’t to be
Wonder what you’d say if these thoughts came out of me
So I found my pen, and made love to a letter entitled:
We’ll Never Be …
Free unless we truly express what we feel,
And stop concealing what we need to reveal to ourselves

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Barry finally got there. Seven-hundred, fifty-five home runs. I've got a lot to say on this issue.

I'll be back, shortly with more. I'm watching the game right now, and trying to concentrate.

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Are Dogs More Important Than People?

I went out with two vastly different sets of friends on succeeding days last week. Last Thursday, I ended up out with some newspaper colleagues and on Friday I went to happy hour with some of my fraternity brothers and other friends.

One topic came up during both outings, Michael Vick and dogfighting. One of my newspaper colleagues, a white male, nearly came to tears when speaking about the incidents described in the indictment. Likening dogs to children, he couldn't believe someone could be so blatantly cruel to a helpless animal. Conversely, the other party, a mostly black contingency, concurred with a unifying theme: "they're just dogs."

During the last week or so, I've been listening intently to the different arguments on both sides of this issue on a national level, and most of those people pontificating on this subject don't believe that this has anything to do with race. But after thinking it through, I believe race is at this saga's center.

Before I continue, I have to say that in no way do I condone anything related to the slayings/killings of animals for shear enjoyment. Aside for self defense, killing is wrong. If Mike Vick or any of his co-defendants were involved in the activities depicted in the indictment they deserve to be punished accordingly.

That said, we live in a world where greyhound dogs are raced on a track, and betting is legally allowed. The greyhounds that don't run up to the standards of their owners are often put down or killed. There are piles of put-down racing dogs behind veterinary offices outnumbering those found buried on Mike Vick's property.

We also live in a world where people hunt and kill deer for the sheer enjoyment of the "sport," and hang the deer heads on their walls as trophies. These things are legal.

Why? I'm certain that most keen black people in America will tell you because it's something that rich white men deem appropriate and socially acceptable.

But barbaric dog fighting is bottom barrel and inexcusable (and it should be along with killing greyhounds because they don't run fast and hunting animals for enjoyment). PETA, the Humane Society and the government officials who speak out against the idea of people doing such egregious things to animals need to be making a simultaneous push right now against all of these sanctioned entities of animal cruelty just as vigorously as they are pursuing Mike Vick.

But they won't. You know why? Because these things make rich white men richer.

One of my black friends brought up an interesting point toward the end of the conversation.

"I think Vick is definitely in the wrong," he said. "But you know what it looks like this witch hunt says about America? It looks like white people care more about dogs than they do about black people. I mean, there are so many other things that the federal government should be concerned about. Not making Michael Vick the poster boy for dog fighting."

A few interesting statistics I saw in a story the other day: 40 percent of those incarcerated are black males. Four percent of those in college are black males. Now, who is to blame for these facts?

It makes you understand why there seems to be a racial divide on this issue.

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