The Case of Will Leitch & The Burning Q-Tip

The Case of Will Leitch and the Burning Q-Tip
PART 1.

Mr. and Mrs. Negro had one child. They called him TAN, and so did everybody else.

Mr. Negro was the head of all media, and the chief mind on matters of race and culture. The CEO or Chief Ethnocultural Officer. Whenever a TV station or radio show or magazine needed counsel, ideas, or understanding of some race/culture related issue, they’d ask Mr. Negro. And Mr. Negro always had a good answer for them. His track record in the realm of race was without blemish since 2005.

But Mr, Negro had a secret weapon. And that was his son, TAN. No one would believe it, but it was really TAN that provided Mr. Negro all his fodder. The streak since 2005 was no coincidence; it was also when young TAN started his blog.

Now TAN would help typically help his father solve cases for free. But after a while he realized he enjoyed ethnocultural matters so much he should open up a detective agency to help others solve the mysteries of race and culture. So he stole some money out of his father’s wallet, rented out a bodega, and set up shop. He hung up a sign to advertise himself:

As fate would have it, one evening around midnight Q-Tip came marauding into the office. He was clearly bothered by something. Q-Tip, of course, is a living legend, the lead rapper of iconic hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. TAN immediately roused to attention upon recognizing the face.

Tip scanned the sign and fished around in his pockets. Eventually he took a quarter-water out from inside his jacket and looked TAN in the eye, "I don't have any change on me, but I can give you this drink. I have a problem, and I want to hire you." Apparently Tip had happened upon some tough fiscal times of late.

TAN looked at the quarter water. It was cherry flavor. His favorite. He smiled and reached for the Bible on the desk that he hollowed out and used as protection for his copy of The Low End Theory. He lifted the CD towards Q-Tip and said, “Yo, Tip. Do you know how much prep school and college cooch this CD got me? If Obama owes something to the Cosby Show, then they owe something to you as well. You’re the soundtrack of our assimilation. Certainly mine. I’ll take the quarter-water -- cause you know I love me some cherry drink -- but trust, i got you on expenses and all of that for this case.”

“So, now, tell me, what’s the scenario? forgive me, but ... you on point, Tip?” TAN asked.

“all the time, tan!” Tip chorused back.

Q-Tip was calmer after quoting an old classic. but he was still pacing as he spoke, “I don’t know why I’m bugging out. But there's this crazy article online. I think it's offensive, but I'm not quite sure. it just feels wrong.”

TAN was puzzled, "well, it’s an internet article. why don’t you just ignore it?"

"hmmm, well yeah, I was going to do that.... but then after i read it I decided to say something."

“You COMMENTED?!!?” TAN knew entering the world of anonymous commenters could only spell trouble for a veteran hip hop artist .

“What did you say, tip?”

uh,something like this:

Songs of Evil: Notes on Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You"

A few weeks ago they released the 25th anniversary edition of Whitney Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston.

Whitney is sort of fascinating as a human embodiment of the philosophical conundrum of "Theseus' Ship (props to Jen Dziura's one-woman show for reminder on this).

The Ship of Theseus paradox poses questions of identity and authenticity in the form of a riddle/parable: If a ship leaves the port -- in this case Theseus' ship -- and while out at sea has all its planks replaced over time, piece by piece, when it returns to port with all new parts is it still Theseus' Ship?

Now you may or may not know that some scientists will tell you that our cells are regenerating every 7-10 years. In effect, we all have a little Theseus Paradox in us: our whole bodies are renewed over time, piece by piece, but we stay (in some essential way) the same person.

In the case of the fourth best-selling female artist, the paradox is striking: If when we met Whitney she was a god-fearing, clean-cut, singer from heaven, and then twenty years later all of her cells have changed, and she's a crack-smoking, Bobby Brown f'ing, reality show ghetto diva doing very little singing. Well, is that still Whitney Houston?

I don't know.... But, uh, ANYwhitney, I didn't want to unpack our enigmatic angel in this post, but rather her song, "Saving All My Love For You" which got stuck in my head upon revisiting her debut album.

Have you listened to this song recently? I personally had not, and after being briefly enamored with the parodic possibilities of turning the song into an ode to eye-crust called "Saving All My Crust For You", I realized the song is one of the most purely evil songs I've ever given my attention. It's selfish, obnoxious, and pretty much morally reprehensible. If that proves to be a harsh assessment, then it's at the very least disingenuous. Like some sort of romantic Trojan Horse purporting the spirit of true love, when it's no more than the the deranged fantasy of an intolerably narcissistic lunatic.

The title of this song suggets a paean to waiting, pining, fighting, and willing ones way into someone else's heart. In a different context, perhaps a noble sentiment. But as per the setup of the song, you get a sense of some rather questionable pathology lurking beneath the surface. Some notes on all this after the video below.


~~

Kinsleydamus on Michael

Before I trot out a bunch of MJ posts, I wanted to point at what I found to be the most striking article I've read in the past week. That being Michael Kinsley's "The Prisoner of Commerce" on The New Republic.

The commerce/capitalist angle tells so much about MJ:

This points up a second way Michael Jackson's sacrifice for art is different from, say, van Gogh's. Jackson's art is also big-time commerce. Corporations supervised his development, and even bigger corporations are making millions off of him: CBS (which features Jackson on the cover of its 1983 Annual Report), Pepsico (which has $50 million riding on a Jackson ad campaign). Time Inc. (which sells magazines by putting him repeatedly on its covers), and others. It's happened in front of millions of paying customers.

So many people, so many corporate entities with a huge investment in one human being. So clearly not a way to live.

Kinsley also adds good points on the freakish elements of Jackson's personality being lapped up and/or exploited as part-and-parcel with his art. He takes a Time magazine cover to task for glorifying quotes like Steven Spielberg (after E.T.) saying, "He's like a fawn in a burning forest ... I wish we could all spend some time in his world." Yes, a fawn in a burning forest does sound like a rather pleasant afternoon now that you mention it, Steven.

Many of these "we're all complicit" takeaways are embedded in the tributes and articles being trotted out now, but the trump card here is Kinsley wrote this in 1984, when Jackson was 25. It's positioned as one of these counterintuitive articles that now represent the instinctive path for journalists. In hindsight the Spielberg quote, or Jane Fonda's "His intelligence is instinctual and emotional, like a child's." are ludicrous. Obvious warning signs. Back then they were part of the MJ publicity-puffery machine. Part of his aloof cool.

Kinsley is a big-time alpha-journalist with plenty of credentials on his resume. But as someone who leans apolitical, this is the sort of piece that gets me on his bandwagon. I want to call it incredibly prescient, but at 25 MJ had already been a "prisoner of commerce" for 15-20 years. So I guess it just underscores our collective lack of reflection, our willingness to be swept away.

But take MJ's capitalist incarceration, and throw in the child abuse and racism and you have the three pillars of his dysfunction. The imperfect storm that resulted in something that was more natural phenomenon than relatable human.

The Prisoner of Commerce [TNR]

Michael Jackson RIP: "ABC"

The End of Pop, looking at the story and legacy of Michael Jackson one song and video clip at a time.

1.2: The Wicked Witch of Motown

The songwriting collective that bequeathed MJ and The Jackson 5 four #1 singles was called "The Corporation", and they remind me of the wicked witch in fairy tales who shows up when The Prince or Princess is born and gives some sparkly gift that's also a terrible curse only realized over time. Like a diamond ring that allows the wearer to turn any piece of doodoo they touch into gold, but then every ten years, on your birthday, one of your fingers fall off.

That character in fairy tales is usually mean, and I wouldn't want to ascribe the karmic sin of "evil intent" to The Corporation -- songwriting collectives, after all, have the noblest of goals; championing Art over Artists -- but in the narrative of MJ King of Pop, these guys are playing that oft-forgotten role that sets our hero on his predestined journey. The gift-curse of the gold-doodoo ring, or somesuch.

"ABC" is the second #1 single, but the first that showcases a little of this weird yin-yang golden-doodoo relationship.



So on one hand it's a song that's the epitome of "bubblegum soul"; this is what a songwriting collective should produce: Fun, bouncy, danceable hits. On a musical-enjoyment level, it's brilliant.

But then, on the other hand, from a distance you might think: hey, wait a minute. did that 12-year-old befroed boy just tell the girl (presumably older) "to git up and show him what she can do?" And how "t-t-t-teacher's gonna show her how to get an 'a'?" Huh? What in tarnation is this fresh befroed boy talking about? What does he know enough about to t-t-t-teach anyone?

This is a definite theme from the early Jackson 5 era. There's an empty soulless precociousness that conjures images of Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageants and child labor laws.

WYSIWYG: Sex On Shrooms (Pt. 1)

Last night I read at WYSIWYG: Worst. Sex. Ever. It was my first time reading for a crowd. I've performed, but never read for people that actually paid money to have words read to them. So I was a little nervous. But I also felt good, because I used to read in class all the time. In fact I was a fairly dominant reader in grade school. Always had the hand up strong, confident, just thinking, "if you want the shit read right, call on this motherfucker right here. Don't call on the stupid motherfucker who might get left back over there." So anyways, I think that background helped me get through the experience in one piece. I think there will be video of the performance, and if/when I can get my hands on it, I'll post it. In the meantime, in between time, I'll post the story and the song/epilogue (that I didn't get to perform) here. Thanks to the TAN supporters that were in the house, especially whoever was yelling "Holla!" in the beginning, that always helps a negro feel at ease.

Here's the video of the reading.

I'll be posting the story in segments, since it's sort of long for one big post.

And for the record, the following is a true story based on a sort of true story.

I went with a straightforward title on this and called it, "The Time I Had Sex On Mushrooms" Or alternatively "How I Got My First Wife, But Not Really"


An underestimated part of the assimilation process is the drug culture.

It’s always been interesting to me that rappers and street thugs are stereotyped as the “drug dealers,” “drug lords,” the “proud purveyors of proscribed paraphernalia and potent, perniciously poisonous product.” But when I was growing up in the Bronx, all I ever saw was weed. That was it.

Then when I went away to boarding school (choate) and college (trinity), it was a different story. This was when I had my mind opened - pot, coke, Ritalin, qualudes, lsd, mushrooms, MDMA, and that’s just the bare essentials. Maybe I was a naïve boy, but this is when I saw real drugs. And real drug users. At home in New York City, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, sure we had crackheads. But then I’d go away to Connecticut, presumably getting away from the toxic environment, and now there’s motherfucking crackheads going to school with me. My freshman year in college, we had crackheads all over the place. Motherfuckers had money, but they were still crackheads.

Anyways, the universal pervasiveness of crackheadedry isn’t the point today, it’s just a little preamble to demonstrate I didn’t know anything about mushrooms until I went away to school.

So this particular episode started out with a big group. It was freshman year, and just one of those classic college weekends where twenty whipper-snappers get together on a Saturday afternoon and decide they’re going to get wasted. We were going to trip all day and drink all night.

There was an electricity in the air, that feeling of kids about to do a lot of wrong shit. Many of the veterans were breaking off into groups, planning different activities to do during the trip. For me, it was only my second experience with shrooms, and most of the activities sounded too advanced for someone planning to be insane for at least the next 6-8 hours. Based on my first experience, I was fine with just hanging around in the dorm staring at walls and floors. So I ended up with a group that stayed in the dorm. Three or four of us went to a room, and eventually I ended up paired off with this girl.

This girl, let’s call her Kate, was pretty. We lived in the same dorm, and saw each other around, but didn’t really know each other. So we ended up hanging out, and when you’re tripping and meeting someone it can either go horribly or swimmingly. And she and I were like effortless laps in the English Channel (this particular line was thrown in specifically for literary peeps, and because it was a "reading series," which is amusing because it's not phenomenally "literary"). We developed this trippy thing where we’d talk and then both of us would get thirsty at the same time and go to the hallway for a drink. Then we’d laugh and note our “thirst synchronicity” and start a new tangent.

After bonding for a couple hours, eventually some other friends from the group barged in on our connecting-session-for-two and announced they were going across campus to North, another dorm, and I was to join them. I wasn’t eager to leave Kate, but these were my guy friends, and I couldn’t diss my guy friends for some girl I just met while tripping. So I left Kate, and our connection, and our trips to get water, to go across campus with the fellas ...

continue Sex On Shrooms (Pt. 2)

Breaking: Trinity College's Assimilation Program Stronger Than Most

I can't say much on this. I believe these pictures say more than a million words about life at my alma mater *slowly shakes head in shame* Trinity College.

Otherwise, I guess all you need to know is, these pics are from Halloween '06. And the captions, when present, aren't mine, they come from the picture file names. I believe they're also uploaded on facebook.

I guess I could add that I never visited Trinity before I attended, but I suspect if I visited and this guy popped out the bushes holding a fake (hopefully?) army rifle I may have just stuck with my reach school, University of Phoenix.

Also, Trinity produces black folk like TAN, and white people like this guy. Slowly but surely getting a monopoly on churning out confused children. Go Bants! Get those admission apps ready!!

best friends .... despite the race difference

blackface

by far the best picture of the night

The Hipster Is Dead, Long Live The Hipster

An investigation of the rise and fall of the contemporary hipster, via the scholars at literary magazine, N+1:

In addition to the panel transcript, the book includes responses from critics Jennifer Baumgardner, Patrice Evans aka The Assimilated Negro, and Margo Jefferson, as well as essays on douchebags, Hasids versus hipsters, and ill-fated sneaker shop Alife Rivington

The pre-order for What Was the Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation is up on Amazon.

Happy to sound off in this "hipster" death knell; humbled to keep company with smart do-gooders like feminist-activist extraordinaire Jennifer Baumgardner and Pulitzer winner Margo Jefferson. Hopefully we did former hipster ideologists such as Anatole Broyard, Norman Mailer, and Robert Lanham proud.

I'll post a snippet and offer more thoughts when the mixtape book officially drops (I brought the hip hop and gold-plated four-finger rings to the party), but click here to pre-order and then maybe start ironing your smarty-pants because everyone's gonna be sizing you up while you read this on the train, in the park, post-coitus, etc.

The Hipster is dead. Long live the Hipster.

Previously/Related:
Hipster Grifter Scavenger Hunt (video)
Smells Like Negro Musk (On "Blipsters")
The Quest for "The Negro Hipster" Continues
Hipster Sensibility Matrix (w/ Tao Lin)
The Assimilator: Hipster Reality Show Casting Call

Preppy Soul: An Assimilation in Pictures

(some folks are milling about wondering: who is that Patrice Evans dude down with Grantland? well, this old Assimilation-in-Pictures post provides some clues. more to come!)

Ahh, so bright-eyed and soapy-mohawked; even liquid-soap packaging was simpler then.

Hair now dry, but still delighted with the world. A soft furry bear on your naked lap will do that.

One of these kids is smiling like a "gifted negro" with hardware to prove it, the other one's clip-on tie is black.

I look confused, perhaps because this would mark my last appearance in a public school.

Look who's leaning on the white man now; wasn't no pics like this in the BX. (Room #007, ladies.)

The Ten Blog Commandments

Lyrics:

It's the ten blog commandments!

can't tell me nothing about this content
these blogs
this media ...

for my creative peeps on the internet
i ain't forget you ….
~
i been in this game for years
your man tan's a caged animal
some blogs write rules
i'm a rap the manual
a step-by-step little ditty
from ny city
do as you please with
take it or leave it

rule number uno

I Wanna Dress Like Mike

I had sort of noticed Michael Jordan seemed to dress not quite like a champion. But only until someone started collecting the case studies on tumblr did I grasp the hilarious weight of the problem. OMG

what can you say about the greatest basketball player to ever live wearing a two-tone chopper suit?

i was expecting the YMCA look before he became the most heavily endorsed athlete ever

he had to lose a bet with Dr. J on this, right? 

I am no fashion plate, or style guru (all the people who know me are nodding their heads right now) but this is bizarro. the only explanation is that same singular focus that led him to being the greatest baller, guides his wardrobe choices. only his closet is full of L's instead of championships, and he accepts no coaching.

and lest you think it's only hanging out with the fellas

WTF is Michael Jordan Wearing? [Tumblr]

How White Bloggers Use Exclamation Points on The Internet!

(In honor of my inclusion in the recent NYT Opinionator exploring #blacktags/the racial divide in Twitter culture, I repost some old theorizing on how white bloggers use !!!! on the internet)


ORIGINAL:

So this post about affirmative action on Gawker sparked some interesting dialogue on its own merits, but a seeming off-thread comment about how Moe, and Gawker in general, use exclamation points in excess ("when did a communicable "replace a period with an exclamation point in every third sentence (at least)" disease sweep through gawker?") struck a chord with me.

Cause it's true. Moe does use a lot of them. And so do most of the editors on the site. And many others across the nets. And I've thought about this. And so in the comments I responded (in part):

...But I now think there's legitimate ethno-cultural cachet to the usage, i.e. "exclamation points" could be an entry on Stuff White People Like. 

I mean, it's an easy way to add energy or personality or whathaveyou to writing, especially if you're churning out posts like some sort of machine that churns out a lot of stuff. But you really don't see it much on black, hip hop, or other ethnic blogs. Knahmean? [ed:I think they/we might do more coding through slanguage. Feel me?] 

In any event, since hanging around blogger/bledia types I do more drinking, smoking, and using of exclamation points. So I think it's a grammatical representation of some part of the assimilation process!...

And I couldn't get the thought out of my head....

Seems to me there are two types of exclamation points:

The first kind are the ones lots of people use. The ones that come big, or in different colors, and used to be a remedial tool for conveying excitement in advertising/marketing. Someday spammers might figure out a way to enhance them so much that they smoke and sparkle, and pop out and shoot lasers all so you know what that hole on the top of your OJ is for.

holla!

Are The Roots 'America's Band'? (Yes)

Pop quiz!

But with a twist: We’ll provide the multiple choice answers (a la Jeopardy) and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out the correct question.

Looks like this:

a. The Beatles 
b. The Beach Boys 
c. Nirvana 
d. Coldplay 
e. The Rolling Stones 
f. Jeez, are our music sensibilities still colonized by the Brits? 
g. The Roots 

The answer is: “g. The Roots.”

WHAT IS OUR QUESTION?

[tune of the Grantland Theme Song plays in background]

Ok. Sorry I forgot to mention the timer, but: Time’s up!

...CONTINUED ON GRANTLAND...

The Roots: America's Band [Grantland]

Who Will Star in America's Cutest Hip Hop Baby Video?

I have few words for this supernova of adorableness, except to say I may be pregnant with this two-year-old Rap Star



and also, this might be enough to get the "Who Will Be America's Cutest Hip Hop Baby Video?" competition started. I guess you have to set an age limit, and at two years old the homey above might just make the cut for the "Baby Division". (The four-year-olds might be licking their chops for his graduation though.)

On the more truly "baby" end of the field, your likely #1 contender is the Biggie Baby.



Can't front on the charm of "ok, ok, biggie is coming back...", but I think I give more points for actually rapping confidently, on beat, and unintelligibly.

I guess we'll get one more on here to make sure we got a full trend piece:



 solid effort from someone taking a nap at the start of the clip. but we'll have to view the rest of the field in competition to see where it stacks up in the final rankings. stay tuned!

Mike Tyson Sings the Bossa Nova Classics!

Every time you think Mike "I want to eat your children" Tyson can no longer shock you, the 2008-2011 Renaissance Man of the Year comes up with a new chameleon transformation. And now, drumroll please, here he is singing "The Girl from Ipanema":

 

Whuuuuuut?? Well, that wasn't terrible. Think he had some autotune on it. But man, we've come a long way, baby.

5 Things I Always Tell Daisy Lowe About Donald Glover

ON THOUGHT CATALOG

I have this recurring dream.

In the dream I turn to my model girlfriend Daisy Lowe at a Childish Gambino show and say, “See, he’s like The Throne and Lonely Island in the same dude!”

Her eyes twinkle before she grabs me, plants a kiss on my lips, and yells out like that adorable Debeers Diamond commercial, “I love this man! Yes, that’s brilliant! And it’s so sexy to deconstruct it from afar, over being, like, on stage. Seriously! We should just go home and talk more…” followed by a big slow wink and a smile.

CONTINUED...

5 Things I Always Tell Daisy Lowe About Donald Glover [Thought Catalog]

"Just A Friend" = the New Hip-Hop National Anthem

Everyone knows Biz Markie's classic "Just A Friend. Probably more so than the real national anthem (also a "classic").

And it's useful for commercials:



Or Late Night television where Jimmy Kimmel got it updated it for Facebook




Not to mention my interview w/ Biz a few years ago. Which if you missed it, here's that transcript again:

The Justin Bieber Mixtape Experience

Is Justin Bieber better on old school tracks like "Dwyck:



or new school, like "Otis":




I prefer old school.

Dwyck dropped in 1994, on Gang Starr's "Hard to Earn". Here's 10 more songs from 1994 with dope beats for the Biebmatic('94) Mixtape:

Who Shot Ya (Notorious BIG, Ready To Die - The Remaster)
Come Clean (Jeru, The Sun Rises in the East)
Halftime (Nas, Illmatic)
Resurrection (Common, Resurrection)
Props Over Here (The Beatnuts, The Beatnuts)
Get It Together (Beastie Boys, Ill Communication)
Cosmic Slop (Redman, Dare Iz A Darksize
Distortion to Static (The Roots, Do You Want More?!!!??!)
Let's Organize (Organized Konfusion, Stress: The Extinction Agenda)
Crumblin' Erb (Outkast, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik)
Comin' For Datazz (Gang Starr, Hard To Earn)


The only artwork that could suffice:

Greenlight Bookstore Reading

Steamboat

TODAY


Thursday, November 17, 7:30 PM
Steamboat: A Literary Humor Series
Hosted by Bob Powers
Featuring Larry Doyle, Patrice Evans, Rev Jen, and Jon Friedman
On the third Thursday of every month, join comedian Bob Powers (author of Happy Cruelty Day) as he hosts the city's best humor writers for a night of wine-addled, text-based hilarity. This month's lineup includes Larry Doyle, author of Deliriously Happy and Go, Mutants!; Patrice Evans, aka "The Assimilated Negro," author of the new book Negropedia; Reverend Jen, author of the new book Elf Girl; and Jon Friedman, creator of The Rejection Show and editor of the book Rejected.

Steamboat Reading w/ TAN [Greenlight Bookstore]

The Culturally Biased SAT: Hip-Hop Edition

Hello and welcome to the Culturally Biased SAT: Hip-Hop Edition. This exam will help you most if you take it under as adverse conditions as possible.

1) ____ said knock you out

a. Tyrone and them
b. The Wu Tang Clan
c. Mama
d. Big Daddy Kane
e. Obama

2) Can you kick it?


a. oh, hell to the naw
b. sheeeeeiit
c. nah son!
d. yes, you can
e. knahmean?!!?!?


3) If Peter Piper picks peppers, then ____ rocks rhymes?

a. Run
b. Dun
c. Son
d. Pun
e. Hon


... CONTINUED ON THE HAIRPIN...


Culturally Biased SAT [The Hairpin]

Baby Powder Demographics: Who, Exactly, Has Got the Johnson Baby Powder and the Polo Cologne?

for those who might not know/recall, the headline is quoted from Slick Rick's famed la di da di, later reinterpolated by Snoop. Snoop changed the brand of cologne to Cool Water, but kept the Johnson's baby powder. This is telling! And this Baby Powder Code of Omertá is what I'd like to inquire about...

I'm curious about the demographics of baby powder usage outside of babies. and basketball games. I think the usage implied by the lyrics -- both Snoop and Rick have these items in tow "for all the girls they might take home" -- is the same usage I have: which is to liberally powder my balls before doing most anything as a sweaty-musk inhibitor. on really hot sticky days I also have an eye on cutting down any potential thigh friction.

now at this point i put so much baby powder on my balls they're like my version of white privilege. my boys won't even raise up off the lawn without the smell of talcum with aloe and vitamin e in their immediate airspace. and if it don't smell right they just scrunch up their faces and chill. but i've received enough "your balls always smell like baby powder" comments over the years *cough* that i wonder now if baby powder usage can be used to profile people:

Race/Ethnocultural & Baby Powder: do black people favor heavy usage over other ethnic groups? do some cultures never use it? do some people only use it in a specific way? is the hip hop lyric an indication of a hip hop/black people trend? Would Radiohead or Dirty Projectors or Katy Perry or Gaga have lyrics about baby powder for pitching men/women on sexual activities, or anything really?