Entries from November 1, 2007 - December 1, 2007
A Macabre Episode of MTV Cribs
Like most sports fans and the general public it’s his murder that has brought Taylor’s life into focus. We are learning that many of the images that brought him to fame were a blend of his actual superlative talents as a football player, and a mishmash of conclusions drawn about young men elicited from a mishmash of preordained stereotypes. That the truth about this young man’s life comes about after he’s passed on is not surprising. This unfortunately is a very common occurrence.
What we do know for sure is that Taylor was accidentally murdered during a burglary attempt at his Miami home. Four suspects have been arrested and detained, and over the coming weeks and months the lives of these four men, all of whom younger than Taylor, will receive due scrutiny. One ESPN report alleges that one of these young men worked as a gardener at Taylor’s home, and another, is the cousin of a man who Taylor’s sister is currently dating. This matted helix of allegation and truth, distance and proximity will unravel soon enough to give the officers in the case the necessary information.
Sure, someone is out there has already penned the piece blaming hip-hop, and I’m sure that black youth culture is being explicitly and implicitly critically derided on airwaves throughout the country.
There is a pop-cultural elephant in this room, but in my mind it ain’t hip-hop. The more that I think about Taylor’s death and the recent spate of break-ins that have also befallen basketball players Antoine Walker and Eddy Curry, it’s hard to get the MTV show Cribs out of my head. When it was first introduced Cribs was a pop-culture phenomenon. It took the blueprint of Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and made it hipper and more accessible to young people. One of the first things that my friends and I noticed during Cribs’ early days in the aught was the huge discrepancy between the accommodations of professional athletes and their hip-hop peers. On end of the spectrum were the lavish abodes of NBA players Penny Hardaway and Jayson Williams, and on the other end was Redman’s legendary modest abode. As the series wore on the homes started looking alike and the celebrities appearing on Cribs became increasingly self-referential, making their own allusions to other homes that had been profiled. More recently it seemed as if MTV had exhausted its roster of celebrities to profile, and after a while indoor basketball courts and plasma TVs were no longer new—in other words the thrill was gone.
Having become overly familiar with the appointments of celebrity home, it was only a matter of time before criminals got the idea to start robbing them. Cribs had provided thieves with a blueprint of what a celebrity’s home would look like, what kinds of furnishings it’d contain, and how to maneuver through the space. The show inoculated a generation of young adults with a level of materialism, greed and envy, that as the tragic death of Sean Taylor has shown us, is finally beginning to rear its underbelly.
Ferentz
in Current Affairs, Sports
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The Brothers Size
New York Magazine's Jeremy McCarter offers this positive review for Tarell Alvin McCraney's play The Brothers Size which is currently playing at The Public.
Tarell Alvin McCraney follows in Daniel Beaty’s (Emergence-See) footsteps, giving the city another extraordinary play by an immensely promising African-American dramatist fresh out of school. Read More
Edwidge Danticat Reads Tonight
From New York Magazine
Ferentz
in Books, Haiti/Haitians, Literature
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Get Launched
I attended the first of one of these showcases over the summer and was blown away by the performers selected by curators Nyakya Brown , Kibibi Dillon and Tamilla Woodard. It's well worth checking out if you're in the area.
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND
THE ZIPPER & LAUNCH WORLDWIDE
JOIN FORCES AND MOVE THE LAUNCH SERIES TO
THE ZIPPER FACTORY (336 WEST 37th Street)
On Friday, November 30, LAUNCH, the popular series that supports and celebrates talent on the verge of fame created by Nyakya Brown , Kibibi Dillon and Tamilla Woodard , moves to The Zipper Factory (336 West 37th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues) with the LAUNCH of Sherry Boone in The Super Star Artist Show . Show time is at 9:30 p.m.
Sherry Boone is one of today’s most electrifying artists, with a body of work that spans from Broadway to Opera. On Broadway, she received critical acclaim for her performance of Marie Christine at Lincoln Center, and was also seen on Broadway in Ragtime and Jelly’s Last Jam . She debuted with The National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center and has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, The Toronto Symphony, The Nashville Symphony Orchestra and the Hartford Symphony. Most recently, Ms. Boone co-starred in The Royal Festival Hall’s production of Carmen Jones in London.
Like superfine silk, songtress Sherry Boone wraps you up in a magical musical crusade. Fasten your seat belts. Take a wild ride up up up through the superficial, the superfine, the superhuman to the superStar.
RUNWAY PERFORMANCES FEATURING:
Ground breaking Flamenco dance company Día Flamenco Stand-up comedy of Victor Cruz&
Sultry sounds & spoken word of Soulful Jones
Tickets to LAUNCH : Sherry Boone in The Super Star Artist Show are $25.00 for general admission, and $35.00 for premium seating ( reserved seating and complimentary cocktail) are now available by calling Ovation Tix at 212-352-3101 , or online at www.thezipperfactory.com .
For pre or post show dinner reservations at The Zipper Factory Tavern , please call 212-695-4600. View the menu online at www.thezipperfactory.com .
Subway Directions: A,C,E to 34th or 42nd Street stations 1, 2, 3, N,R,Q,W, S to 42nd Street
LIRR to Penn Station
Parking: For a New York City parking map, click here.
Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!
Ferentz
in Music, Arts, Theater
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The Last Good Year for White Men
There's a great line in the 2000 film The Company Man, a wonderful satire about the Cuban Missile Crisis that roundly gets overlooked. Two of the characters are at their country club and one of them says to the other, "1959 was the last good year for White Men." The line is an allusion to the setbacks that have allegedly fallen white men in the wake of the Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements. Looking at the current crop of republican presidential candidates I can not help but get the feeling that they believe that 2004 was somehow the last great year for white men.
With the Democrats not only touting a serious woman candidate but also highly regarded black and Latino candidates as well, they seem almost nostalgic for the 2004 campaign between white men Bush and Kerry. They'd likely agree that there was a certain civility to how Bush found countless ways to frazzle Kerry. Bush, the former cheerleader born to wealthy parents in New England positioned himself as the butch alternative to the allegedly effete water-skiing Vietmam veteran. As Kerry kept on rambling about Tora Bora, Bush kept on blinking his eyes, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, "dude, what the hell are you talking about?"
Unless John Edwards comes back and makes a surprising rally, 2008 it will be hard for the 2008 republican candidates to campaing with the same free-wheeling air epitomized by great campaigners such as Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Jr. They'll have to be careful in how they engage in their frat boy joshing of the democratic candidate less they get raked over the coals for calling Obama articulate, or Hillary mommy after she delivers one of her stern indictments.
One need only look at the bizarre campaign being run by Mitt Romney who's turning his back on every progressive piece of leglislation he endorsed as Massachusetts governor in an attempt to seek a conservative vote whose cache has been severely diminished by Bush and his regime. Bush, Cheney and Rove deftly playbed the James Dobson's and Ralph Reed's of this world, turning them into the Republican versions of Jesse Jackson. Cheat on your wife, go speak to Dobson. The conservative right's access to power under Bush has been greatly reduced as his presidentcy wore on. Karl Rove set in place a more centrist model of macabre compassionate conservativism that in the post Bush era would not need to rely as heavily on evangelical conservatives as Bush did---and while Romney and his fellow candidates have not fully let them back in, they are actively trying to rewind the clock back to 2004. While the democrats talk about healthcare, education and civil liberties, republicans spend their time debating waterboarding and gun laws, Romney playing the court jester bends over backwards to say how quickly he'd overturn Roe v Wade.
At the outset of this campaign the republicans seemed intent on moving away and beyond the politics of the Bush/Cheney/Rove. It is now becoming more and more apparent that instead of moving forward they are moving backward. Instead of imagining life after Bush, but life before Bush (Hillary Clinton is doing a similar thing with a twist on the democrats side). They are moving back to a place in time when white men roamed freely courting access to the white house, and invoked memories of a bygone year with little regard for the fact that for many Americans memories of those years were rather traumatic, and not so bygone.
Ferentz
in Current Affairs, Politics, Presidential Campaign
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