"Rock" the bells
i just wanted to share that the rock the bells "hip hop" tour came to town this weekend.. when i heard the lineup earlier this spring; the roots, wutang, mos def, kweli, murs, cypress hill, public enemy etc etc i was like dope. it apparently came this weekend and i missed it.. well by the skin of my teeth.
yeah, so it was at randalls island and i guess i wasnt really checking for it like that cuz i didnt get tickets or attempt a list.. i'm kinda busy on this thesis thing (if i hadnt mentioned that already).. anyhoo, i did leave the house on saturday to go to harlem for the joint bday bbq of my thirty-something friend Alicia (previously mentioned on blog,Jason's wife:) and my friend Evan's seven year old daughter, Nina (so precious).. anyway, on my way over from queens on the m60 bus a bunch of young white people in cargo shorts got on in long island city and the bus driver was giving directions to randalls island. we soon saw a block long line on 125 and lexington of tank topped cargo shorts wearers.. i was thinking warp tour (though they looked alittle too clean-cut for warp tour).. and the driver explained over loud speaker to the rest of us as we stared in awe at the line of complete (and i mean complete) whiteness on 125 that there was "a Rock concert" going on at randalls island..
he was mistaken (as was i).. indeed it was some of my favorite hip hop groups.. i've noone to blame but myself for not being there.. what about you?
more on dem dollas
is your name on them? remember they can take'em away. they can make'em mean nothing. they done did it before.. the world market is softening. here's a tip-invest in tech and staple goods, if you must. most of all dont make the dollar your God. hold something real. each other X
back to black-- i mean blogspot
yeah-- so i'm back at blogspot.. literally zu's place..
07.18.07 Prince Paul Tribute
so funny i put the a prince among thieves clip on my page yesterday and today hear about this tribute to Prince Paul (aka ppdiddy aka pablo picasso). for those that don't know he was the DJ for STETSASONIC (the first hip hop band), produced DE LA SOUL'S first three records (word) inventing the hip hop skit along the way, produced CHRIS ROCK'S comedy album (no sex in the champagne room y'all), formed the GRAVEDIGGAZwith Rza, Fruquan, and Too Poetic, recorded the first hip hopera/ a movie on wax, ' a prince among thieves,' (which by the way i am working on for my master's thesis on Theft- well, a positive reformulation of theft and hip hop aesthetics- but more on that later), and recently appeared as a judge on Ego Trip's the White Rapper Show.
he continually makes some bugged out good soundin shit and has given much to this thing we affectionately call Hip Hop.. plus how often to we get to pay tribute while folks is alive (i mean he aint that old or nuthin but does joke bout retiring soon..)
yeah so i gotta get my ass out of jersey and get there.. i dont know most of dem underground cats performing (i's old and can barely keep up with hot), but the juggaknots is the truth, so imagine its gonna be a nice evening.. get there if you can!
Underground EXP Presents:
A Tribute To:
....::PRINCE PAUL::....
with live performances by:
:: JUGGAKNOTS
:: BEATBOXER ENTERTAINMENT
:: TISAEDU
:: L.I.F.E. LONG
:: SUBCONSCIOUS
:: BULLY MOUTH
:: WRITTEN ON YOUR PSYCHE
:: PICASSO
DJ Sammy Figgs on the decks.
Hosted by KAVA
Doors Open at: 9:00 PM
Cost:$10.00
LADIES FREE BEFORE 10PM
GALAPAGOS ART SPACE
70 North 6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.GalapagosArtSpace.com
07.17.07 new gilded age?
Current mood: awake
yeah yeah.. dem dollars.. not sure if you seen this from sunday's times but what is glaringly apparent is that these levels of uneven income distribution (5 percent of the national income goes to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution) and low income and estate taxes for the very rich were only matched pre-stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression.. tis a warning sign i'd say. not to mention folks ("like sisters") getting shot over 2000 bucks in this money hungry society. redistribute dem dollas, and lets live for something other than the accumulation of wealth... Obama for president! and Wu Tang forever:)
BUSINESS | July 15, 2007
The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
Today's titans often see themselves as pillars of a new age of prosperity, one in which their successes and philanthropy have made government less important.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html?ex=1185336000&en=667c84661d3d9faa&ei=5070&emc=eta1
ps. i'll soon be finished with grad school and starting my job hunt..:) holler at me if you know of something interesting..
07.11.07 imagine
Current mood: peaceful
its so dark out here in jersey at night.. the sky which i spy through the tall trees that surround this house and give shade during the day, is bright.. meanwhile on this balcony my laptop is the only light. i am home and staying in jersey with my great-aunt until my subletter moves out of my house uptown.. .i am here also to finish writing my thesis which would have been difficult with my two year old bro running up on me at my dad's in queens. i miss him- he seemed upset when i went by the house this weekend to visit, though when he went to the library today my step-mom says he asked for his shister.. i am a bit away, no longer 3000 miles removed, just 45 mins staying with aunt reesey in jersey. a beautiful 91 year old woman that gets up at 5 am each morning, walks to the track and comes home to work in the garden. it has been nice spreading the red mulch in the garden and as she says as we survey the yard each morn, 'its fabulous'. shes an amazing lady -- looking no older than 75, eating veggies, fish, and fowl, and tending to her immaculate house stocked with an amazing history. she an actress and is writing her memoirs of growing up in virginia, the battles btw her african and indian families, and life in the entertainment industry. a founding member of the negro ensemble company her credits include five on the black hand side, play misty for me, the wiz (on broadway, she was the good witch to stephanie mills' dorothy), sesame street (davids gandmother), cosby show (heathcliff's mom), smoke, sommersby, etc etc etc. a rich life she has had. she was who my mother lived wiith when she first moved to the ny from bermuda as a 17 year old. she not my real aunt.. she became friends with my grandmother when she was touring with the nec and visited bermuda circa '65. they remained friends and she would send her kids down to the island summers to stay with my granny, aunts and uncles.. so growing up she was like my moms mom away from her home, as well as the granny on cosby show and my ticket onto the set of sesame street where i discovered that big bird was a man-- who knew? not me.. in any case, shes taken me in while i complete my thesis and wait for my apartment to be vacated. i could say alot about my aunt reesey-- like how i fell in love with harlem spending days at her brownstone on hamilton terrace (sugar hill) as a kid, how i wanted to be on broadway cuz of seeing her in the wiz as a youngin, how as an eighty year old she enrolled in a screenwriting class at columbia, wrote a play about her inspiration, the first woman stand-up moms mabley, producing and starring in it, or how when we go to the local shoprite to get her bananas (and my cigarettes-- yeah yeah, i'm gettin enough lectures from her-- 'do people still smoke?') every black person in the store stops her and asks her to hold their baby and it still would not encapsulate her. she a GREAT LADY- and its weird how a ninety year old with wit and grace can let family secrets roll off her tongue whether youre ready to hear them or not. luckily i done did some growing of my own and while it aint easy - i take it all in. i gotz two and a half more weeks here.. to work in the garden, finish this thesis, and drink 'health wine'. ha! i'm just remembering how she used to sneak my bros and i sips of champagne when we were young.. yeah but she makes shit up and determining whats fact and whats fiction is oftentimes difficult yet she inspires me to imagine a world i dreamed of before i learned of its ills as i step back into it grown, yet faith-filled.
05.07.07 the bottom
Monday, May 07, 2007
the bottom
In Forgotten New Orleans, Life and Hope Stir at the Bottom
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: May 7, 2007
New Orleans
New Orleans is slumping into hurricane season. The danger is not just in the weather. Hotels in the French Quarter are hiring private security squads to soothe jittery guests; the police are considered outmanned and unreliable. Those polite young men with black polo shirts and Glocks are not busboys. The restaurants and bars are humming, though, and the beat of rhythm and blues pours into the street. It is a faint approximation of a civic pulse.
Outside the tourist zone, New Orleans remains a city of indolence and ruin. On the edges of the Central Business District, fires are erupting in abandoned buildings, at least three in the last week. The smoke curling under the highway overpasses has an ugly chemical smell. The Lower Ninth Ward is still mostly empty, vast and mute. But there is hustle and energy in the baking heat, in places like the parking slabs near Home Depot and Lowe's, where Hispanic, black and a few white laborers gather every morning for work.
I came here to talk to day laborers, because I had been told that this was the worst place in America to be one. The money was good after Katrina, in August 2005, and the work pace was frantic. Men were recruited for jobs that were plentiful, though seldom as good as promised. Conditions were dangerous and sickening. A glut of workers soon lowered wages for everyone. Intimidation and abuse were common, often by contractors, sometimes by cops.
The dozens of men I met told similar stories. They stay because there still is work to do. They gather at 19 sites, usually in or near home-improvement stores, waiting for trucks to pick them up for drywall or painting, demolition or tile work. They work without gloves or masks or the promise of medical care. Crooked contractors withhold pay and threaten violence if the men complain. Wage rules and safety standards are not enforced.
A city that cannot restore order or rebuild itself has somehow summoned the energy to harass the people who are doing much of the building and repairing. Squatters and workers living in tents in City Park were evicted last year, and the bustling day-labor market at Lee Circle has been shut down. Latino laborers are routinely being arrested. In Kenner, a suburb by the airport, where people shout "Go back to Mexico!" from passing pickup trucks, the police rounded up more than 30 laborers in January for congregating outside Home Depot. The men paid $240 fines and now meet across the street.
The city is full of perils, but there is startling kindness, too.
After 17 Latino day laborers were arrested in Gretna, a suburb, in February, they were bailed out of jail. Not by anyone they knew, but by members of the New Orleans Survivor Council, an organization of African-Americans that meets at a church in the Lower Ninth Ward.
The men, who belong to a grass-roots group called the Congreso de Jornaleros, or Day Laborers' Congress, decided to act on their gratitude. They formed a volunteer crew to repair the ruined house of a council member, Ora Green, on Orleans Avenue. They meet there every afternoon from 4 to 7.
On May 1, while immigrants across the country were marching, about 60 people converged on Mrs. Green's house to celebrate with food and music. Mrs. Green turns 87 on June 4. She held my hand in a firm grip as she told me how a contractor had pocketed $4,000 of her money and done nothing, except to throw up some drywall in a back room, even before the wiring went in.
As Curtis Muhammad, a gray-bearded member of the Survivor Council and a veteran civil-rights organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, grilled chicken and hot dogs, members of the Congreso addressed the crowd, hailing the unity of African-American and Latino, of black and brown, of poor and poorer. When they were done, Mr. Muhammad walked gingerly to the top of the stoop. The old slaves and new slaves, from North and South, are uniting against the same master, he roared.
People cheered, but some of the Latino men were loudly grumpy. They had thought there would be a march, as in Los Angeles and Chicago. An organizer called them into a circle to talk it over. A man with a guitar sang "La Bamba." The smaller African-American contingent clustered a few feet away, around Mrs. Green, who sat in a plastic chair in a sliver of shade. A few reporters milled around, no doubt wondering what to make of the inconclusive show of interethnic solidarity.
As the heat got worse and the empty water bottles and chicken bones piled up on the cracked concrete sidewalk, I thought how inhospitable New Orleans could be. Inhospitable, maybe, but not barren. Weeds burst through cracks, papaya trees in untended lots sag with fruit. The regrowth is spotty, incongruous, but as irrefutable as the shiny Burger Kings claiming corners in zones of washed-out desolation and the new two-by-fours in Mrs. Green's battered house.
Civil society is still torn up here, but older, more primal arrangements are asserting themselves: predator and prey, friends and family, supply and demand. Evil contractors, resourceful businesses and toiling workers are finding niches. People who dream of a better future are trying, fitfully, to create one, while the government they once thought would protect and serve them slumbers on. New Orleans has been slammed into the 19th century, and it's going to be a long way back.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/opinion/07mon4.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
05.03.07 * science ;-)
okay, so it's different for east and west, one two one two y'all.. inany case, the dark wont be so very dark in the coming month/s. give thanks.
Once in a Blue Moon
by Borgna Brunner and Anne Marie Imbornoni
Blue Moon
Although the full moon occurring Thursday, May 31, 2007, will look like an ordinary full moon, it will actually be a bit extraordinary—a blue moon.
What is a Blue Moon?
There are in fact two definitions for a blue moon. According to the more recent definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. For a blue moon to occur, the first of the full moons must appear at or near the beginning of the month so that the second will fall within the same month (the average span between two moons is 29.5 days). May 2007 will have two full moons: the first on May 2, the second on May 31—that second full moon is called the blue moon.
Note that the May 31 date applies to most of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States. In the Eastern Hemisphere, the full moon in question will occur on June 1. For that half of the world, the blue moon will be on June 30, 2007.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bluemoon1.html
04.26.07 i turn on my radio
which would be my iBook G4:) i dont own a radio these days.. so yeah i've not really experienced dutch radio... except for my girl Bibi's show, DUS DAT (that's what's up) which you can catch on Lijn 5. she interviews Black Panther, David Hiliard on this week's show check it.http://www.lijn5.com/index.php/shows/136/Dus%20Dat
i've been listening of late to my old friend and former special guest on the basketball talk show i co-hosted with Bobbito, "Trash Talk"/"On the Fence," Ricky Powell! Also, of "Across 110th Street," and "Rappin with the Rickster,' fame, his new show, Forty Deuce Radio, on east village radio is the shit. here's what i learned this week:
- Dojo's on st. marks place just closed... wow. i'd heard rumors of pretty bad sanitary conditions but it was an institution.. nuthin like sitting outside, watching the village go by, while eating noodles and chicken wings...
- the yankees are only baseball team that dont have their names on their uniforms.. no 'i' in team yo...
- missbehave magazine was started by the girlfriend of adrian moeller of mass appeal-- i was wondering why they were everyone's top friend..
- walking down the street while eating is supposedly a new york city phenomenon
- the two top draft picks in NBA are white.. one a canadian, the other european
- ricky got screamed at in a biergarden near the station for smoking a doobie and his co-host misses being able to sit on the stoop with a brewski and a joint in ny.. i wanted to tell him they/we still doin it uptown.. did i just snitch? oh well, the cops drive by takin pics of us on the stoop anyway..
they also play funky stuff+teddy pendergrass and old peoples hip hop: http://www.evr2.com/programs/45/EVR-45-FortyDeuceRadio-04-25-07.mp3
oh, by the way--- not only does mark the spark ronson have number 2 record in UK.. but spun the hot (old) shit (plus teddy pendergrass as well- go figure..) on bbc's 'the basement' this past weekend.. check it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/basement/
By the way JOELL ORTIZ in stores now! I remember when he didnt have a deal (which was like yesterday), now he's got two... cop The Brick + his upcoming release on AFTERMATH. yessir.. the doctor is in!
oh-- i met, interviewed, and went shopping for his wife, with poet laureate of New Jersey, and founder of the Black Arts Movement, Mr. Amiri Baraka, this weekend. Was truly a blessing, a gift. I'm very full.. now i just gotta finish this thesis, yo.. peace y'all.
