Cobb

Peer Recognition

A Word on Ray

My sister sung with Ray Charles. She was one of the Uh Huh girls of the Pepsi commercials. Well, not one of the models who did the commercials, but one of the real singers who did the voice over. She also toured with him various places here and around the world back in those days.

What she told me was that Ray Charles was a musical perfectionist, and when he was on stage giving a performance he was one man, but during rehearsals and recordings he was somebody else. Certainly a stage personna is going to be dfferent from the real man, but it's something I never really thought of when it came to Ray.

Ray Charles had a staggering work ethic, and brooked no BS when it came to the music. If you can imagine that I've been tough on hiphop, try to think what this blind black international superstar composer would be like. I recall hearing that he had absolutely no tolerance for people who couldn't read music. Sometimes he would, depending on the room, decide to perform a song in another key and anyone who couldn't hack the transformation got kicked to the curb. He was a tough old dog.

I've never been a fan of his music, but there was no escaping it. He was a man who got his due, and yet somehow didn't. All people wanted to hear were the same old songs. Georgia, America the Beautiful, Hit the Road Jack. How that must have worn on his nerves. But he delivered. Those songs are Ray Charles, and really nobody else can do them. I do remember when he played America the Beautiful for Ronald Reagan. That song was never the same.

Ray was another man who at some point in his career lived near 'The Dons'. We used to drive by and point out his house. Ray Charles lives there, we'd say. Of course we'd never see him. Ray, we only knew the half.

Coup

Mike Ruppert is at it again. I had almost forgot about this ex-LAPD officer who shouted down DCI Deutch when he came to Los Angeles' First AME Church to try and explain the CIA-Crack connection. This time Ruppert sees devilish doings in the resignation of Tenet having to do with the Plame investigation. His angle? It's part of a setup by the CIA to take W down.

If you have nothing better to do than stew in Ruppert's juices, take a peek. Of course there's more than a grain of truth. But who can tell which through his breathlessness?

For the record, I think Ruppert's not a loony, but he'll never get dignified. He's a muckraker whom any day might find himself in a politically engineered character assassination. In other words, he's pissed off the powers that be, and for that he has earned the title of lone wacko, whether or not he deserves it. He has been deep enough undercover in joint LAPD / intelligence community activities to understand how twisted our tactics can get, but he's betrayed the colors. He's always looking over his shoulder, poor blighter.

CCR South Central

The South Central chapter of the California College of Republicans had its monthly meeting this evening. The two hours flew by. I am so jazzed about the opportunity these guys are offering that I didn't even mind much that the Lakers got smashed.

We got off to a rousing start over the issue of the County Seal. Several of the people in attendance had been to the hearing the other day. I don't have a great deal to compare this with, but the passion over this issue is a real hornet's nest. I just wrote that this is a stupid fight, but I think it's a lot bigger than I imagined. There was plenty of ACLU bashing going on, and while I agree that this was a dumb move by the ACLU, sometimes they are right. But I wasn't about to speak up for them tonight. Mike Antonovich, it is rumored, will be trying to put the question up to the public. Republicans are going to get a petition going. This is going to be a litmus issue and I suspect that Yvonne Burke, Gloria Molina and Zev are going to be regretting their intemperate characterizations of the defenders of the cross. Molina says she's willing to go down for this. Good.

There was a touching presentation on Reagan by Jay Master, the man who created in 1981 the biggest political club on Cal Berkeley's campus - a Republican club. His experience reminds us that impossible odds can be defied.

There was much to comment about in this, the first of my meetings with the CCR, but what impresses me the most was the enthusiasm and sense of serious mission that all the folks in the room had. Men and women, young and old, black, white, latino and asian. Everyone had their individual connections and people wanted to know more people, get connected and meet up.

There was a palpable collective concern about Republicans willingness and ability to 'march down Crenshaw', but one of the the black old timers in the room reminded us that's exactly what George Deukmejian did and it wasn't too difficult. This same gent reminded us that he had run for office and managed to get over 50,000 votes with only $1,500 in campaign funds.

The manager for the Bush campaign for the Valley was there and we spoke for a short time. He told me of a candidate from Las Vegas who narrowly missed becoming the first black female Republican to be elected to Congress. His hunger for candidates was palpable.

I can't help but notice, from my own perspective, how similar this desire for African American participation is to other experiences. I'm telling you now, from my own eyeballs, that it's genuine. I've been in rooms full of fanatics before and I know what it's like to have a scary kind of feeling in your gut when you really don't want people around you to succeed. I didn't expect for a minute that it would be that way and it certainly wasn't, and I can't say that I was surprised by the enthusiasm. Yet it felt very oddly like a tremendous secret, and like a new adventure.

In many ways it reminded me of my first days with NSBE. In college, blacks in engineering along with the business majors were often the butt of jokes. There were always those who mocked our ambition to work in Corporate America. But we did what we set out to do, and there are still plenty of people who don't know NSBE, and cannot imagine the kind of successes it has delivered.

What excites me most, of course, is the machine. I'm in on the ground floor of Republican inroads to West LA and LA County which is dominated by Democrats. There's nothing but opportunity ahead.

You See This?

A PhD in Mortal Kombat

(full reprint)
A PhD in Mortal Kombat
By Mary McNamara
Times Staff Writer

June 6, 2004

A pioneering USC group tries to get into the heads of players to learn if the pastime harms or can help.

Ever since they were children, Steve Choi, Ethan Levy and Elaine Chan have been told by people who never met them that the great passion of their lives, the thing that captivated and moved them, was the enemy of intellect, emotionally damaging and quite possibly the end of civilization as we know it.

Choi, Levy and Chan are gamers. That is, they play video games with serious devotion and intensity. They are also students at the University of Southern California — Choi and Levy, both 22, are entering their senior year, and Chan, 21, is working on her PhD. But far from merely overcoming their digital predilections to succeed in college, these three and others like them are using their knowledge of games like Mortal Kombat and the Sims to further their education. As members of USC's Computer Games project, they are the local vanguard of a new academic discipline: video game scholarship.

Choi recalls that his mother gave him a computer when he was 8 because she felt computer science was the career path of the future; she was, however, less then thrilled when her son began spending much of his on-screen time playing games.

"All our lives we've heard how terrible it is," Choi says. "I wanted to offer the other side of the question."

Created through the Annenberg School for Communication, the Annenberg Studies on Computer Games is a multidisciplinary, multigenerational, multilingual research group dedicated to the study of computer games. The year-old group is one of several game-related projects springing up at universities around the country. MIT, Stanford, the University of Michigan and Northwestern University have various projects researching different aspects of interactive media. But USC's computer games project is probably the largest and most diverse collection of professors and students studying the vast yet mysterious world of video games. The research at USC focuses on the gamer rather than game design or development, and much of what they are doing is groundbreaking.

The project is the creation of Peter Vorderer, who heads the school's entertainment studies program, and Ute Ritterfeld, a German research associate professor with a background in health sciences and psychology. "We are trying to find out not only what is bad but what is good," Ritterfeld says. "Every new technology is met with fear and criticism. When picture books first came out, people said they would ruin children's imaginations; with radio it was the same; movies, television the same. We are trying to find out what is real and what is just fear."

After years of snubbing video games as a phenomenon not worth researching, scholars are now frantically attempting to catch up with an interactive media industry that is increasingly prevalent, seemingly permanent and still so new that the people developing it are the ones who are using it.

Ritterfeld says the topic itself is polarizing. "The nongamers consistently criticize the games, the gamers defend them. They honestly can't imagine any harm in them. What's really needed is more research."

Chan knows what true gamers face — she spent one summer doing nothing but playing the online role-playing games she favors. Over the years, though, she has learned to keep her gaming habits to herself. "Whenever I mention that I'm sort of obsessed with video games everyone is shocked and horrified and asks, 'Well, how did you make it to USC?' " she says. "Even in the computer group," she adds with a laugh.

The 20-person USC group is an international lot, including members from Germany, China, Ukraine, India and Korea as well as all over the U.S. In the past years, it's developed or launched studies into areas as diverse as the effect of violent games on brain activity, the motivation of gamers, the benefits of interactive learning, and the role of narrative and character development in the games themselves.

While two of the studies will focus on the hot-button issue of violence, most are geared toward discovering what psychological needs the games fill and what role they can have in education and mass audience entertainment.

In one study planned for this summer, researchers will test the conventional wisdom that interactive learning is more productive than rote. "Everyone assumes children will learn more if they are playing a game," Ritterfeld says. "But we do not know that because it has never been tested."

Vorderer, who has edited several books on the psychology of entertainment, is already compiling a book about gaming, which he believes is changing not just the industry but the definition of entertainment.

"When we started, we thought, 'Well, games are cool and under-researched so this will be a good area,' " Vorderer said. "But the more work we do, it is so striking how everything is connected to games. The military, the movies, education, everyone is doing games."

There's Always a Bigger Fish

Today I had an extraordinary conversation with somebody who used to be rich. He was the first black somebody to buy property in a snooty neighborhood. He got heavily involved in local politics in this snooty city over such issues and got in trouble with the city fathers.

Once upon a time when all we had was Eddie Murphy movies, there were all sorts of dramatizations about what happens to blackfolks who piss off the wrong whitefolks. These days we pretend that everything is cool, and it's true to the extent that for most of us below the glass ceiling, it is. But what happens when a black multimillionaire pisses off several white multi-multi-millionaires. Well, if this brother's story is to be believed, it aint much different from Rodney King.

I exaggerate slightly. But let me ask you this. What would you do if you had a choice of being beat down like Rodney or sued for $15 million (that you actually have?). Well it turns out that this is what happened to homeboy; he faced cops that were, how shall we say, connected to a spiteful district attorney. They lied and it cost him more money than most of us make in a lifetime.

At every level of society, we all have our struggles. There is nothing gained that cannot be lost and there is no immunity from predators. You just bump up a class to where the sharks have platinum teeth.

Now in case I'm sounding alarmist, understand that this happened quite a while ago and he has recovered nicely, thank you. But the story served to remind me that petty vindictive bullies are at all levels of society, and there are a great number of creative ways to destroy people, even wealthy people.

Watch your back and remember Cobb's Rule #7.

Where?

Not long ago I was talking about rhetorical patronage. Here's an example of the kind of reaction to a failure to get rhetorical patronage.

"Politically, African-Americans can hardly get past that he started his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss.," said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), referring to the area where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. "It was such a strong statement that the KKK endorsed him on the same day."

"You can't forget that," Jackson added.

Well, he's right. You can't forget it if you never knew it. Jackson's failed Rainbow Coalition still stakes its claim over the memories of African Americans, and here he's claiming to represent us by saying we never got over Reagan vis a vis this. Granted, I wasn't paying attention to Reagan at the time, I supported Anderson. But I also wasn't out looking for ways to be offended, much less trying to establish that large swaths of African Americans are offended in retrospect.

Somebody send the Rev a Hallmark card and a box of tissue.

Republican Antipathy to Civil Rights

In domestic American political talk, it is a token of faith that the GOP is hostile to non-whites and against Civil Rights in general. There are many reasons for this talk, but I won't go into them at length. Most of them focus on the 'Southern Strategy' and I want to get a little bit closer to that logic.

I can't recall when I first heard about Glenn Loury, but it was probably back in the early 80s when he was cited as one of the first black neocons. I didn't pay much attention to, nor was I familiar with his work, but I did know that he was a member of the Heritage Foundation. He famously quit that organization upon the publication of Dinesh DSouza's 'The End of Racism' a book with with Loury has serious questions along with many other Americans. In particular it was DSousa's failure to examine the history of the Republicans' race baiting tactics in the South that angered Loury. The details of this controversy are somewhere.

In my own anti-racist activism it was precisely this kind of disrespect from both parties that I sought to highlight. My own Race Man's Home Companion stands as an attempt to dig below the politics of identity to the common values of Americans of all races who would, properly informed, act in concert to remove racism from American politics. I believe I found a solution but it is a situation many consider not to be a problem. In light of that, I have begun to think of American politics in terms of the amount of racism inherent in its states of equilibrium. There is a certain amount of lip service required of both parties which pacifies the majority of Americans. It is only when events overtake the casual discussions of race that the party figures (and chatting classes) feel motivated to debate with some force.

It is because I recognize those tipping points that I feel that both parties must be racially integrated. Whether or not people believe it, Loury's resignation represented a stinging reproach to conservatives. After all, his academic credentials far outstrip those of the young D'Souza, and if after all you need credibility on economic issues a Loury is worth several D'Souzas. Be that as it may, politics is politics and that means sentiment often trumps reason. But when it does and policy is made the arguments on both sides are well worth examining.

It was in the spirit of tipping points and political argument that I have decided to examine the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I will refer to it in this light as HR7152 or 7152 (which is, if you ask me, a very l33t tag). It is when you begin talking about HR7152 that you must inevitably confront the work of Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Republican who famously said that Civil Rights guarantees was 'an idea whose time had come'.

Boot to the Head

The other day, I was listening to some old comedy routines. One of them is entitled 'Boot to the Head', in which a mystical martial arts instructor teaches urban wise-asses a lesson in patience. One of the urchins, challenging the ancient Chinese secrets of the master quotes the character Mel from the old TV show Alice. For his insolence he gets a boot to the head. This illustrates a theme in my writing, or something that should be a theme in my writing, which is the sustainability of black culture.

Simply stated, one hundred years from now, people will forget Nelly, but they will still be playing Thelonius Monk. In the words of Stanley Crouch, there is some music which seeks to 'elevate with elegance', and then there is music to shake your ass to. Seeing as men and women will always have reason to shake their asses, it won't really matter if it's Nelly or someone who has yet to be born, rise to pop stardom and then fall into obscurity. The asses will be shook, the tune forgotten. But for those cultural productions which are part and parcel of the will to reach excellence and perfection, for those which sustain the spirit, the memories will be strong.

Allawi Speaks

The carping haters are going to have to shut their mouths for a while. They'll come up with new excuses, of course. In the meantime, the Iyad Allawi is saying things like:

"In conclusion I would like to remember our martyrs who have fallen for freedom, for honour and for Iraq, and in the battle for the liberation of Iraq."

That means the coalition. He also reserved some special passion against the militias, bringing to mind GWBush's speech singling out Al Sadr as a criminal.

“These cowardly terrorist acts have delayed and will delay the return of normal life and destroy the national economy and the souls of the people and their daily bread.”

I'm looking forward to hearing an Iraqi leader as a credible ally. I expect the haters won't be shushed long, but perhaps they'll turn off Al-Jazeera for a minute.

Bluehats & The Grid

One of the harsh lessons of Iraq is that it is now a bit more difficult to expect a proper empire. Anti-Americanism is a lot easier to spread than one might have previously expected.

The Left pretends that they have solutions and they are half right, if Sally Struthers is any example. But Americans on the whole I think share a sense of responsibility for victims of tyranny abroad. We engage philanthropically in humanitarian relief and aid. Still I have a strong sense that our efforts would be so much more meaningful were we able to take ourselves to those remote places and live among the people we seek to help.

On the international grid, we could support a distributed empire. Everyplace that is FedExable, GSMable and ATMable could be a potential outpost for the largesse of the West. And why not? Do we not have Iraqis in America who repatriated? I wonder why it is we haven't heard back from them on NPR? Perhaps they are quite satisfied with the American engagement and therefore don't square with the program directors sense of outrage at Bush's 'aggression'. That aside, we do have Americans of every persuasion who have lived here in the nation that functions well. Who better to spread love, joy and endless commodities?

But there is the matter of security. Even before the sums of cash from Western investment assists the new third world economies of choice, there must be a stable government. And it is is in this shadowy time period that we find ourselves in Iraq. After the ceasefire and disarmament of militias and before the national army is in place. This is the time, under optimistic circumstances, that Americans somewhat less hardy than Halliburton roughnecks, Red Cross volunteers and Wackenhut mercenaries might sieze the opportunity to ply their trades in countries like Iraq.

Imagine what an American plumber could do in a land needing plumbing where the per capita income is $500 a year. Could he purchase a compound and ramp up a business? Could he stay on the international grid and with a translator demonstrate what know-how he learned in the good old USA? It seems to me that the answer is yes, provided there was security.

I don't know how to judge the effectiveness of the UN Development Program, whose job this is supposed to be. But we have reason to believe that it is full of corruption given what we've seen on the Oil For Food program. That's a shame. But sooner or later the edge of the Global Grid is going to encroach on every habitable part of the world and Americans are going to be there, not only just watching on television or following blogs.

This is the new empire; get used to it. What remains to be seen is why we use the UN at all and if they can be trusted with security.

Visualize Industrial Collapse

Gerard published this beauty. It embodies so much about what unnerves me about lefties, which is their spiteful disregard for the world they refuse to understand. Considering that this heap seems to be in a junkyard, it probably wasn't difficult for its driver to visualize industrial collapse. And like a good socialist, he surely believed that nobody should drive a factory fresh car so long as he lived in his lumbering billboard.

I just keep wondering about the smell on the inside of that thing. Some combination of weed, patchoulli, sweat and dog.

'Ist Bombs' to Swallow

There are three words that dainty and sophisticated folks are able to use which putatively disable practically every movement since the Stone Age. You've heard them. They are the unholy trinity of evil ascribed to everyone from Thomas Jefferson on down. Racism. Classism. Sexism.

I would include Colonialism, but that's just a kind of clumping of the other three. Colonialism, in the newspeak is predicated on the arrogance of rich, white men who want to advance upon and possess the bodies, minds and spirits of the poor, the brown and the female. Or so I hear all the time.

This morning Jelani Cobb comments on Cos again over in Africana. His is an interesting piece that makes the last minute concession to the universality of uppityness. It would have been a damn sight better had he thrown in some other characters besides Jerry Springer. After all, not everyone white got cleaned up at the same time. Some of them needed Christ, others of them needed to get off Booze. There have been all kinds of temperance movements in American history and a decent comparison of the many could have given us access to a bit more literature from which to measure the effectiveness of Cosby's career. Instead all we get is the narrow context.

From the Old School perspective, as should be clear by now, Cosby was and is correct. But if the bomb of Classism is to be thrown at his feet, the question is whether it should be absorbed, deflected or disarmed. Me personally, I'm ready to swallow the Classist bomb as part of a daily meal. By now it causes little indigestion. But to do so begs the question of what uplift is all about. I take a simple approach, and say that integration is sufficient to give us the view of the benefits of American life. After that, pursue happiness.

I am as proud of the Civil Rights Movement as anyone. But despite the fact that every playing field hasn't been pressed flat, there are still leg muscles to develop and sprinting to be done. Those of us who are lucky enough (The harder you prepare, the luckier you get) to have legs which can help us bound hurdles (if not tall buildings) should not be ashamed of our progress nor our attitude towards it. But is it inevitable that black progress will entail use of the 'master tools' which brand their users Racist, Sexist & Classist? Well that's the message implied in criticisms of Cosby and of most movements outside of the aegis of the black left.

But specifically to Classist. Yeah, we're Classist. We participate in a system that treats different people different ways. But the very mobility of African Americans demonstrates that the system is open, and whether or not you believe that all blacks who move up a class are tokens or not, their existence cannot be denied. African Americans are graduating from highschool in astounding numbers as compared with 50 years ago, and I take that as absolute proof. Those who crab over black success in the American system need to think more carefully about what they suggest if only because they make fools of themselves by not recognizing those blacks who have passed the bars. Black highschool graduates are not an insignificant minority. We are the majority. And yet to take the Classist criticism to its logical conclusion, there is something wrong with those who have a highschool diploma when they act superior to those without. But what is the left saying about Cosby? He's wrong because the highschool dropout rate is not 50% among all blacks. It's clearly not, we're all doing better. So it is insulting to those blacks who are not dysfunctional.

Let me repeat that in bold: Cosby is insulting to those blacks who are not dysfunctional. So to dismiss Cos you have to assert that most blackfolks are actually possessed of some class mobility - that we're doing better than all that. Well of course we are. But who considers black highschool graduates uppity? Nobody, which is as I said, evidence of the fact that blackfolks are making their own legs work no matter what the angle of the playing field. This is the exact same recognition which will come in every aspect of black life by the ethnic champions. But they need (estimated) numbers not principles.

For those of us who stand on principle and have our uppity aims, we are certain to be targeted with the Classist bomb. Eat it with pride. It's an acquired taste, but you'll eventually find yourself in broad African American company. Those ethnic champions will sing your praises eventually, in the abstract of course. They don't know you, just the statistics.

Welcoming Seal

The ACLU is an example of an organization that is so broadminded that it has become flatheaded. What the hell is up with these people? Too much time on their hands, I suspect.

What's wrong with this picture? Why it has a cross on it. And some people might be offended by that? According to the ACLU the presence of the Christian icon makes the seal of the County of Los Angeles less welcoming. According to that logic, we might as well change the name of the city. Or why not rename Pico Boulevard to someone other than that outlaw Pio Pico? Or better yet, why not rename the ACLU because in this case they clearly don't have A CLUE.

Full Spectrum Warrior: First Look

As combat sims go, I have to say that this is the most realistic I've played. I think it's going to have a serious hold on me for some time to come.

I've only gotten through the basic training of Full Spectrum Warrior, something that took me the better part of 2 hours, and I am very impressed. The first thing I notice about this is that it doesn't give you a whole lot of fancy weaponry. It gives you soldiers. What's so incredibly cool about FSW is that it's not cool.

I've played Ghost Recon, its follow up Island Thunder, Rainbow Six 3 but this one is by far the most realistic. Although Splinter Cell comes close, I'm more dependent on info over the squawk in this game than any other. Whereas in Metal Gear, it gets downright annoying talking to Otacon, I really look forward to hearing Charlie 32. Second only FoeHammer, Charlie 32 is the best voice to hear.

On the last part of the MOUT, I encounter the tank. Hey, I can call in support! Gnarly! So I light up the tank and the mortars start dropping and the whole damn place is shaking. I'm a whole block away and it's still scary. Brings it home.

Couch Potato

I spent a lot of time reclining this weekend. Instead of being interactive, I settled for the gut-out hands in the pants slouch. All I needed was stale pizza, flat beer and flies and it would have been American Gothic a la Homer Simpson. Still, there's something to be said for an America that affords so much retarded relaxation. A full fridge and paid bills makes one ready for entertainment.

Harry Potter
Like most parents, I enjoy the idea of a fascinating and popular series about kids meeting the challenges of school. So it was a pleasure to say "We're going to see Harry Potter" and have the kids yelp with delight. We got great seats in a theatre 3/4 full Sunday afternoon.

So what happened to Pavarti Patil and Lee Jordan? More than ever this flick focused on the three protagonists, and brought forth a bunch of subtle and clever touches illuminating Hogwarts. Hagrid's hovel is more unforgettable than ever now, as is the Whomping Willow. Nice job, full of some genuine frights and adult speed plot revelation in the Shrieking Shack. Finally Malfoy is revealed to be a complete ass clown with almost no power whatsoever over Harry. A fine job overall.

Lakers
What an embarassment. If Malone thinks he's going to get a ring playing like that, what 5 points a game, he must be smoking. That had to be the least impressive game I've seen in a long time. Shaq is not what I watch basketball for. I suppose I should give props to Detroit for shutting the Lakers down, but the whole thing looked sloppy. I don't think I've seen so many kickballs and jumpballs.

Sopranos
OK it had me going for a while. Was Tony going to give Christopher a knock upside the head? But it turns out that Christopher is the only true believer left, and it was clear in their clench that Tony recognized this. So next season he should get more action. The question is did he really thing Adrianna was going to do 5 years for him or is he just lying to himself. He's off the booze and clear. Wow. So Brooklyn opens up and the Feds are back. That was truly a surprise. Buscemi's out. We saw that one coming. Domestic tranquility is being restored to the Soprano household, which will start in new digs for next season. I wonder who owns that real house in Jersey. Should go for big bucks...

RIP

The Death of the President

GW Bush is lawyering up for an investigation into L'Affaire Plame. If he is re-elected and winds up dirty, he'll be impeached. I'd vote for his impeachment if he proves dirty enough. I said it before, and I'll say it again, this was unforgiveable.

Let's get to the bottom of this rabbit hole, shall we?

Nigritude Ultramarine

What is Nigritude Ultramarine? It doesn't mean anything, but it might prove useful for reasons I'm still unclear about. Anyway, Anil and Gerard did it, so I'm doing it too. Someday I'll understand.

Invincible

Ronald Reagan, more than any American seemed utterly invulnerable. He was the Teflon President. I was not one of those who fell under his spell but I do appreciate how he changed the nation.

Whenever I am inclined to think of Reagan in a positive light, which is better than half the time, I think of the days before him as cynical and defeatist. The image that comes to mind is that of the prototypical 70s action movie, especially those cheesy ones with bad guys on dirt bikes. 'Escape From New York' was a pre-Reagan movie. 'The Warriors' was a pre-Reagan movie. In the pre-Reagan days, there was nothing America could do right, our self-image was that of a place doomed to nuclear armageddon or polluted wasteland. Our future was Love Canal or the bombed out South Bronx or 1984.

But we have to think of the days after Reagan as that of a truly changed nation. One that looked into its soul and decided that it had a can-do attitude. That sometimes it took a little arrogance and a swift kick in the pants to get things done. That it was worth taking the risk and going with a gut reaction.

It took a long time for America to right itself, and while we are myth-making, it's probably reasonable for me to consider my own attitudes as somewhat typical of the times.

XBox Fantasy

The game world just gets better and better. This weekend I'm going to be immersed. Say bye bye family, daddy's going gaming. I've got four new titles to play with and it's going to rock.

Riddick
This is a big surprise. I've only played a little bit but this is a really innovative game. It's one part Splinter Cell, one part Doom, one part Deus Ex. It's totally cool and confirms that Vin Diesel is going to be the next Bruce Willis. It's got the most fabulous use of shadows I've ever seen in a game. I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one. I thought the latest Hitman was too dark. This one seems to have struck the right balance.

MX Unleashed.
OK this one is for the kids, but I had to try it. Not bad. Not quite as engaging as Moto GP or Rallisport Challenge, but not bad.

Full Spectrum Warrior
I'm going to write a whole piece for this game. The greatest thing about it is that it's not cool.

Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow
I turned this one in much too soon. Forget Blockbuster, this is on Gamefly now, so I'll keep it until I finish all the levels. I just got to Paris and am still in the subway.

Bloody Peasant!

Better than Israel

The latest figures show African American unemployment at 9.9% up .2 from last month. Where is that in world standards? Check it.

Mixed But Unequal

Several months ago I missed an opportunity to exercise my public speaking skills. I was going to stand up at the local School Board meeting and invoke the spectre of Eminem. In fact, I was going to rap and drop a few curse words in. The reason? The school district was cutting back on music education.

A point that I'd like to emphasize over the next week has something to do with what happens when we allow people to fail. I think the principle stands for just about every relationship I can think of, and I find it to be a very powerful idea.

Aside from fuzzy notions of altruism, this point was slammed home to me a couple summers ago when I was the first casualty of an IT project meltdown. As a contractor, there's a sort of work called 'at will employment', which basically means you can quit at any time for any reason without giving notice. It also means they can fire you at any time for any reason without giving notice. The latter happened to me. I had a job on Friday, I was told over the weekend not to go back to work. I practically had to threaten to call the police in order to get my property from the office.

The lesson I took from this is Cobb's Rule #7. An enemy is someone who doesn't mind if you fail. There are all sorts of ways to qualify that assertion, but I leave it plain. You'll find it comes in handy if you ever find yourself wondering how you're going to pay the rent while surrounded by smiling faces.

What has this got to do with music lessons for elementary school kids or any larger examples? Here's the bug for your mind. The next time you hear a car with a booming system playing offensive lyrics you should get mad. You probably already do. The more refined your tastes are the more likely you are to be offended. Not every booming system spews rot, but you know it when you hear it. But you shouldn't be too mad at the poor knucklehead who actually believes Biggie Smalls to be a role model. Some of your anger should be directed at the public school system which never taught that kid how to appreciate good music.

My point is that we have let these kids fail, and although the occasional annoyance of boom boom clack (or an exposed tit for that matter) is not about to grind our civilization to a halt, it illustrates that we cannot escape this failure. We are all the public, mixed in together. We are unequal and we are enemies.

Plink

Poetic Blacks & Commie Rats

Now is one of those occasions that the corrective influence of blackfolks on particularly rabid elements needs to be heard. I heard somebody going 'round saying Langston Hughes was a commie rat and there ain't gonna be no crap like that. Although I don't see it as my life's mission to defend every African American from every smear any nut is liable to make, beating up on Langston Hughes is something I don't take very kindly.

Like most elementary school kids in my neighborhood, I was instructed to memorize poems by Langston Hughes. The Negro Speaks of Rivers was the first. And how many times after hearing the Negro National Anthem (felt in the days when hope, unborn had died), have we had our eyes well up at the sentiments of a Mother to her Son?

Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps. 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now— For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Pops was always a fan of Hughes' character Jesse B. Simple and although I was a bit young to understand the humor, I certainly understood the effect on my parents.

But life ain't no crystal stair, so it comes as no surprise, not that we should take it in stride, that in an effort to crush Kerry, folks feel nothing about spitting in the face of Hughes. Kerry has a hard enough time standing on his own two feet without such insults. And it is not without irony that the very basis upon which this sensational claim is made points to that sham witch hunt, the McCarthy Hearings. Do read the entire piece, you'll see that it makes my point precisely.

Of course Langston Hughes was not likely the kind of man who would be troubled by such commentary from certain Americans. After all, he went away to live in Mexico and found respect. He went away to live in France and found respect. And yes, he travelled to the Soviet Union too. But to suggest that his inspiration for criticism of America came from Marxist dogma is the profoundest ignorance.

And I suppose I would let that lying dog lie, but today I just cannot. That is partially because of something I learned of his influence on Thurgood Marshall as I wrote about him in these days of reflections on Brown. (Listen to Juan Williams' audio). Hughes was the man at Lincoln University who convinced Marshall to take politics and law seriously. But it's also because he's black like me.

What the Hey @ CIA?

Trigger Fish shows scuffling and rumbling for a new head honcho at CIA. I don't know what the hell is going on over there. Is it just me or does it strike anyone strange that there have been too many DCIs over the past 20 years? After Casey came (Webster, Gates, Woolsey & Deutch) four in 10 years. Tenet seems to have stuck around longer than any, and 7 years is a good long time. But did he turn it around? Is the CIA over its shuffling at the top? Every time they have a new head of the CIA or FBI I get a very weird feeling.

I think something big and dirty has gone down, let's see if the insider gets it.

Chalabi Dropped

Today's news about Chalabi is especially juicy, and I think it points directly to the storms of intrigue and infighting between the White House, Pentagon, CIA and FBI. In particular, I think Richard Perle is looking especially egg-faced today.

Assuming you know the story and/or are vaguely familiar with basic spycraft and/or information theory, you were probably laughing out loud at this paragraph in today's NYT.

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

That's rich. Echoes of Cryptonomicon huffduff.

My money says some spymaster at DIA who has been pissed at Chalabi for a long time put into motion this plot to discredit him once and for all, with the possible cooperation of State (or at least with the knowledge that Colin Powell could benefit from a discredited Chalabi who now becomes the 'source' of 'all' the 'bad intelligence' about Iraqi WMDs).

Sooner or later, Chalabi would become expendable especially given the way things have turned out in Iraq which make the PNAC crew look better than they deserved to. What career Pentagon intel officer could stomach Perle's pontifications and the general besmirching of CIA and other US intelligence organizations? Time to show what they can do.

So, suspecting as any spymaster should, that Chalabi is playing both sides of the fence, they set him up with a 'drunk' agent who 'inadvertantly' says that Iranian codes are broken. Chalabi falls into the honey pot and spills the beans.

The other possibility here, as suggested by Canistraro is that some guy really was drunk and no US intelligence agency knows any other Iranian codes. That would be incredibly stupid, in fact, unbelievably so. But in any case, Iranian agents in Iraq are going to have to be restrained considering that this news is all over the place and their codes and cyphers are going to be changed anyway.

I say this is a fairly interesting turn of events. The question now is, where are Chalabi's deadly enemies and what excuses are they going to find to wreck the Iraqi National Congress? Hmmm.

Whose America?

Word is that Candidate Kerry has decided to make a line from a Langston Hughes poem his campaign slogan. In truth, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it is Langston Hughes. On the other hand, it's Kerry. On the whole I think I'm going to end up being negative about it primarily because we all know Kerry's a zillionaire who has got a lot of nerve appropriating this poem considering line #5.

Sentiment is not enough. My bogosity senses are tingling. Somebody help me. I could even accept this from Al Sharpton, but John Kerry? Something's wrong here. I don't know. Read it yourself and see if John Kerry comes to mind.

A Chilly Reception

As disaster movies go, The Day After Tomorrow, is too lighthearted to be taken seriously. Forget what people say about the science. Forget the ham-handed messages. Forget the stereotypes, gratuitous holes and the throwaway acting. Hmm. Maybe this whole thing will be forgotten. But the thing that kills me about this flick is all the goodness. Everybody in the film reveals their essential goodness in the face of disaster except for the evil politicians. Puhlease, it's never too cold for people to loose their morals. No riots? No panic? No murders of convenience? No looting? Not even one snowmobile? What kind of disaster flick is that? If society doesn't come apart, what's the sence of watching? Where's the entertainment value?

Oh wait, this is supposed to be a political flick. Sheesh.

It's a typical jab by liberals that politicians are stupid because they don't listen to scientists. It's true enough, but the politicians in this flick were so stupid that they didn't realize something was up when LA got destroyed by 4 or 5 tornadoes. Critics who ripped into 'Independence Day' for it's willingness to make audiences cheer the White House exploding. But when you can't accomplish politics by normal means, it's always nice to pull some Leviathan out. Emmerich pursues world peace. Uh Oh.

There's a Hobbesian Leviathan in this film too. Instead of it being some alien species making America look silly, it's mother nature. I'm not going to knock Emmerich for doofus, implausible pseudo-science; it's a fantasy film. But he fails miserably in his preaching even by science fiction standards. In that way this film falls far short of the level established by 'Contact' which actually did government vs science vs religion on one neat package.

Emmerich tried to tone down effect of the special effects and pump up the human drama by doing the old Finding Nemo theme, but it didn't really work. In that regard, these storms were hardly a match for human drama evoked by 'The Perfect Storm'. We wanted more storm! There was just too much not covered. Emmerich really should have gone for bigger and more global destruction. So much of the commentary 'and Europe and Asia are getting big storms too' should have been filled in graphically. I was waiting for the equivalent of the huge meteor hitting downtown Paris that one of those metor movies gave us a few years back. No such luck. In the end, we just wanted to see more things freeze.

For the parts delivered, they were juicy. Almost nobody thinks about microwave freezing, temperatures so bitterly cold and rapid that they could freeze your body in mid step. A whole film on dealing with the cold itself instead of the politics of global warming could have made this as good as Twister. Formulaic for sure, but entertainingly formulaic. Instead of making interesting observations about cold or its effects on people or the environment, our crew of scientists in their arctic gear navigate with a handheld GPS and collapse haplessly in the snow. Hell, anybody could have done that. Aside from the weather, being deadly, we get some CG wolves terrorizing plucky heroes. They were decently rendered but decidedly un-wolflike in their hunting tactics and behavior.

DAT was ultimately entertaining enough just for the concept. You are really afraid of the cold, and the I haven't gotten the same kind of goosebumps of seeing NYC thrashed since, well, Godzilla 2000. Even for an LA native, it was rather cool to see the goofy stereotyped LA airheads get smashed up. (Doesn't anybody care about what happens to Chicago any longer?) The hailstorms were cool. But there should have been some rivers overflowing, a train wreck or two.. Like I said, a bit too much time was spent with on the smarmy charm of the good guys and not enough on people losing their freaking minds and getting smashed in cinematically stylish fashion.

This is one of those films that you basically need to see on the big screen because there's not enough in it to be satisfying at normal levels of volume. Go ahead and waste your bucks, at least its not another 100,000 man army meeting on an epic field of battle...

P.S. The film gets an A- for it's rendering of African American (men) in the flick. There are more than a token number, they play good and bad and indifferent roles. Nicely transparent.

Ahmed Hikmat Shakir

We've all heard a lot of smoking gun bedtime stories. But here's one that has got my attention and I daresay should be all the proof anyone might possibly need proving a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Check out this story over at the WSJ. And this column at the NRO.

Don't forget this name. He's got to be the most wanted criminal on the planet.

Thieves in the Temple

I was cruising blogs and landed over at Shayla. Her post reminded me of one of the dumbest announcements I ever heard at a company I worked for.

"Be on the lookout for a black man with glasses. He is stealing laptops. He looks like he belongs here."

Libations for the Dead

Not much of a Memorial Day for me this time around. The spousal unit and I got into a very long and deep discussion about which of our families is more dysfunctional. At the end we determined to hold our heads high for the nuke, but I suspect this issue isn't dead and buried.

The dead and buried also didn't have much of our attention this breezy Monday, but we did at least bow our heads and pour some of our drinks on the ground. In mind was Uncle Fat Phil who died last year from complications of colon cancer.

Uncle Fat Phil served in Korea. He was one of the crew that my father grew up with, a jolly and crusty ne'er do well with an appetite for salty jokes and a fondness for skinny women. The only job I can ever remember him having was working at an old jeans outlet called Beno's. Other than that, he would show up at Thanksgiving and at family picnics and with his recipie for beer boiled hotlinks. Uncle Fat Phil was transformed by the sweetness of kids. Around us he was always a barrell of laughs, but I could always tell that my father shushed him when we showed up unexpectedly. He never talked about Korea. Nobody ever talked about Korea.

Phil, in his later years lost both of his legs and lived in a fleabag hotel in Downtown LA. He existed on VA money, period. I would talk to him on the phone occasionally, and I could hear him croaking out a smile in his raspy voice. He made us kids think, even when we were no longer kids, that we were just about the only happy part of his life.

When you kill someone in war, or even if you merely ran for your life and froze your balls off somewhere south of the Yalu river, the comfort of home and children is never far from your mind. We may delude ourselves into believing that our work is stressful and that after a hard day's work a cold beer and a foot massage makes everything OK. But a stint in a war that you lose and people would prefer to forget requires a great deal more comfort.

As I hear over and over how great the 'Greatest Generation' was and how WW2 really had defined us as a nation it becomes almost numbing. I watched portions of the dedication ceremony for the new memorial in our nation's capital noting how different people appear when they are working so hard to be dignified and serious. It marks us that we aren't more often, and it shows. Still, such things must be said, such ceremonies must be held. But nothing can substitute for the comfort of friends and families with barbecues and boomboxes out on a sunny day generating good times and pleasant memories. The veterans will have their salty talk, but they will gladly put it away when children come to play. The pundits will have their serious intonations, the geopolitical analysts will have their policy points. But somewhere along the line, the soldiers must have their apple pie and homecomings.

Yes we poured out our drinks on the grass yesterday, but I wish they could have been poured into the cup of a veteran friend of the family. Saluting gravestones is too little too late.

A Noble Sound

I've always been a fan of Wynton Marsalis. The last album of his that I purchased was 'Blood on the Fields', a large work evoking the American nightmare of slavery. I don't often listen to it. To be honest, I haven't listened to the whole thing at one sitting to absorb its import. But there are several cuts with which I'm quite familiar, my favorites being 'You Don't Hear No Drums' and 'Calling The Indians Out'. What I didn't know was that this 2CD collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1997. The Pulitzer Prize for Music? I didn't know there was such a thing, and yet there it is.

I don't have quite enough Wynton in my rotation, so I'm ripping a few more CDs this morning. I chuckle to note that J Mood still has its 9.99 price tag, purchased in the days before it was possible or worthwhile to share digital music, 1986. I am fond of J Mood, not only because its title cut was the first of Wynton's to make airplay on KJLH, LA's R&B station, but because in that album he answered his critics who said he was a bit too sterile.

Yet it wasn't until Levee Low Moan that Wynton got dirty. I was during this period. somewhere around 1992 that he began to play the old rusty trumpet and mute it with a plunger's bowl. He started getting into the deep New Orleans roots of jazz and brought forth a sound I had never heard articulated in that way. By this time, Wynton had truly learned to swing, and he revelled in doing so.

I met him backstage at BAM after his closing performance of Griot New York with the Garth Fagan Dancers. It was a wonderous show. I very much miss that element that only New York seems to possess. They still perform Griot New York, 13 years later.

My favorite Wynton Marsalis album is 'The Majesty of the Blues' most notably for 'The Death of Jazz' and the sermon Premature Autopsies. I've said that this album was the music I wanted played at my funeral. I can remember my father chiding me about thinking too much about a glorious funeral, but the power of that album was irresistable to me.

I think it speaks a great deal about what I think about when I am considering the ways and means of the Old School when I read the words to Premature Autopsies. Furthermore, when I criticize hiphop (less out of love these days) it is often because it fails to inspire a sufficiently deep sentiment such as this:

But there is another truth and that truth passes through time in the very same way an irresistible force passes through an immovable object. That’s what I said: this truth is so irresistible that it passes through immoveable objects. It is the truth of a desire for a refined and impassioned portrait of the presence and the power and the possibilities of the human spirit. Can you imagine that? I said: a desire for the refined and impassioned depiction in music of the presence and the power and the possibilities of the human spirit. That is the desire that lights the candle in the darkness. That is the desire that confounds dragons who think themselves so grand. We have heard the striking of the match and have felt ourselves made whole in the glow of the candle for a long time.

It is possible that we who listened heard something timeless from those who are the descendents of the many who were literally up for sale, those whose presence on the auction blocks and in the slave quarters formed the cross upon which the Constitution of this nation was crucified. Yet, even after that crucifixion, there were those who rose in the third century of American slavery with a vision of freedom; there were those who lit the mighty wick that extended from the candle and carried it; there were those who spoke through music of the meaning of light; those who were not content to accept the darkness in the heart that comes of surrender to dragons who think themselves grand; those who said- LISTEN CLOSELY NOW-who said, "If you give me a fair chance I will help you better understand the meaning of democracy" Yes, that is precisely what they said: "If you give me a fair chance I will help you better understand the meaning of democracy" These are they who were truly the makers of a noble sound.

There's not much else to say.