Cobb

As I Like It: Favorite Books Now

These days I read books strictly for pleasure. As a young adult, I always had some pang of guilt if I wasn't reading a book that I thought was important or significant in some way. I also had a rather circumspect personal life, and quite frankly I enjoyed reading at home a lot more than meeting the kinds of people I mostly ended up meeting.

I've always had a love-hate relationship with my intellectual curiosity. That is because I always ended up satisfying it, and having done so removed myself from the social sphere of people I knew. I have never known anyone - or had an active social life with anyone who read the same things I did, and I always felt that every new page I turned was a step into further isolation. It was very difficult being me at the time. I was unmoderated because I was always trying to be what I knew.

That was then.

Today, my guilt twinges me ever so slightly when I think about various classic pieces of literature I have yet to read. And yet I was only recently comforted even more by a lecture by Dr. Larry Arnn who said that the most intelligent man he ever knew said it's useless to try to know much about any more than one thing. So the very idea of broadmindedness is, perhaps, a survival skill of the mediocre. Enough of that.

Cryptonomicon
This is by far my absolute favorite book. I came upon it entirely by accident having given up entirely on the genre of science fiction. A friend recommended it and I could not put it down. Only Foucault's Pendulum before it had the sweep and scope of it, and I found it a great kind of secret revelation of the sort I am most fond - given my fascination with nukes. As an IT guy, I found various aspects of it perfectly riveting. Anyway great, great book. Top shelf of my bookcase.

Underworld
You may be coming to see a pattern here, and I suppose there is. I have mentioned before that I truly dig big fat historical fictions. The only thing better are histories themselves. Unfortunately, most writers of history, well all I've seen, are fairly boring. DeLillo, however, tells a ripping great story with, I think, the mind of the modern American man rightly nailed. If yesterday's man was something like characters of Updike, then today's belong to DeLillo. And yet DeLillo has gone completely off my radar. I haven't had the passion to read him other than that one work. I wish, I suppose, one could combine the narrative skill of DeLillo with the flair for the factual of McPhee. That would be a hell of a stunning writer. Maybe when I'm 60.

Overworld
Bracketing DeLillo's mastery of the internal is my most favorite of the external, Kolb. I think there is, perhaps, no greater adventure than that of the secret adventure on the geopolitical scene. This is what it looks like to knock about among machers.

The Neveryon Series
I basically asked one day what is the greatest science fiction book of all time. Most people conlucded that Samuel R. Delaney was number one, and so I went to his legendary work. The best thing I can do to describe it is to talk about society on the verge of formalized education. How did it come about? What was the inflection point when learning about things you didn't do every day became something of the province of the ordinary man, as opposed to royalty?

The Pentagon's New Map
This is the best big idea book I've read in a long time. I've been trying to eat up some of those, but neither Kaplan, nor Friedman, nor Gleick have done it for me. I probably will go back and read more Halberstam, but man Thomas PM Barnett is on top of things. I'm actually looking for an economic view of the same things. That search continues.

Also rans of the era:

The Company / Modern Manners / Freakonomics / Confessions of a Street Addict / My Life as a Quant / Quicksilver / The Ender Series / The Prey Series / The Hitchhiker's Guide / Basin and Range / Irons in the Fire / The Diamond Age / Great Apes

Only Three Hundred Billion

Last week on CNBC while the price of oil was going up and the confidence in mortgage backed securities was going down, an economist stepped up and said that none of this matters in the global economic scale of things.

I don't have a good perspective, but I'd like to get that on the global economic scale of things. But he said, maybe we lose a couple of hedge funds and that costs about 300 billion dollars. But this kind of disruption is not going to hurt the big banks, and it's time for senior debt and longer term folks to move in. One commentator said he was surprised that so many of these more speculative players played for as long as they did. Well, I suppose you can always find somebody to say that, after all there are bulls and bears of every stripe and degree out there in the market.

Still, 300 billion? Mark Haynes kinda freaked and let the cat out saying that he had all kinds of friends who would be hurt if hedge funds went under. I rather suspected this for some time now, since CNBC has been over reporting the whole subprime drama. There's a certain kind of investor who has no business playing in the hedge fund market, and that includes anybody who doesn't own a significant piece of CNBC, but enough of that speculation.

When I did a minute of research for my last post on reparations, I discovered that the annual income of black America is about 500 billion dollars per year. In perspective, the annual budget for the entire US Armed Forces is about 430 billion. 430 billion is about 20% of the entire federal budget.

But back to subprime. Today Countrywide reported that it had about 150 billion in cash to weather any storm upcoming. Compare that with, say Bank of America which has about 1500 billion in assets. Citibank has 2200 billion.

So some people are going to lose their shirts, but it's not going to be the big banks. So I'm relatively confident that we'll muddle through. People are talking about a 10% correction in the Dow, which shouldn't be so devastating considering that it just broke through 14,000 two weeks ago.

The Family at Lucy Florence

This was an excellent weekend for me, as I'll be posting about it for several entries. But the first entry is about the black man and his family at Lucy Florence.

Lucy Florence is, of course, one of the premier destinations in Leimert Park Village. If you want to get a taste of gentility, and have a very civilized cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon, there aren't many places to match LF. Still, there are other reasons to go, poetry readings, community and political meetings, brunch and the art gallery.

Sunday, I was there for the tea. As I chilled and checked my email while sipping on a huge cup of chai spice with honey, a man entered with his wife and two kids. After some time we chatted about this and that. I discovered he was from Curacao and that he spent some time in Germany. Although it wasn't the first thing I noticed, I did recognize that they seemed particularly wholesome. The boys 12 and 9 were attired in similar polo shirts and the gentleman was clean shaven with glasses and a short conservative haircut. He reminded me something of a slightly nebbish Greg Morris.  I thought to myself that this was the kind of family I'd like to hang out with some time.

I probably spoiled the moment as I started asking questions about whether or not Curacao was in the British Commonwealth as a prelude into questions about the politics there. He corrected me by informing me that it was Dutch and a shadow crossed his face as he considered the fate of the place. Still not quite independent I think.

As Shay mentioned in response to my post about the internal black culture wars, I have to agree that foreign born blacks are probably not integrating well with us black yanks. I can't say that we're making it easy, and certainly from the looks of things, they're not particularly interested in our drama either. And yet I cannot help but think that there will be class affinities between Africans, Caribbean and American blacks that will be expressed sooner rather than later.

Mine is only anecdotal evidence, but I have confidence that these bonds will emerge naturally. Simply to the extent that a 'looks like us' affinity works, I think real friendships will come of simple social interactions. From my experience, especially with older men from the Caribbean, many of these bonds will emerge over politics and religion. The conservatism is clear.

I too have recognized my own admiration for the cunning ambition of many Nigerians I have encountered here in the States. I think one day I may come to trust them too. America is a different game for West Africans, and for South Africans as well.

I suspect Americans of all sorts will have some difficulty parsing all that out. With so many of us thinking about Jamaica, for example, in stereotypical terms, we may find that many blackfolks will not out their own ethnicity. That will make for an interesting century.

Internal Black Culture Wars

As I step back and look at the purposes and issues at Cobb, I think one thing I should talk about is what I see as a shift from an external culture war (from the 80s) to an internal culture war. There are a number of fronts and a number of players and some of these battles are playing out in the blogosphere.

Political Battle: DuBois vs Washington vs Jes Grew
I see there being three points of a triangle for black politics. Among the primary and popular blogs are the Left Liberal, Right Conservative, and Centrist Progressive camps. Our respective loci are, from what I can see:

• Blackprof for the Left Liberal Classic Talented Tenth DuBoisian perspective
• Prometheus 6 for the Centrist Progressive Organic Jes Grew perspective
• Booker Rising for the Moderate to Right Washingtonian perspective

These three websites are each very popular and sustain the most lively and informed debates you are likely to find.

Publicity Battle: MSM vs The Emerging Black Media
One of the things that I've noticed over the years in combatting stereotypes and other shallow thinking about Black America is that the mainstream media's ability to underscore falsehoods and inaccuracies about who blackfolks are is greater than blackfolks own ability to represent themselves accurately. This is slowly changing. The truth is getting out.

While it is my premise that black culture is transparent, it doesn't mean that everybody has a sophisticated understanding, and that is what's required to contextualize the conflicts over black representation. The 'positive images' battles still rage. I must say, however, that I am dumbfounded by the flop this year of the film Black Snake Moan. How that never managed to raise any discussions of race is perplexing to me.

The black blogosphere is beginning to have a higher profile, and while notable black bloggers have been slogging it out in the trenches for years, new ones on the scene are filling out the profile nicely. This set of writers now has the critical mass to give every issue on the radar a thorough analysis and commentary. In that regard, faster than traditional columnists and deeper than black radio, we're moving forward while pop culture seems to be moving backwards.

The more I talk to people, the more I hear them sing the praises of 'Good Times', the old TV series as a good example of ordinary blackfolks. Today, writers in Hollywood cannot do that well.

So it's the deep variety of us vs the shallow simplicity of them.

Class Battle: Cosby vs Dyson
The controversy between Bill Cosby and Michael Eric Dyson represents a fairly deep fracture within African America because it has so many implications. I'd like to reduce it to class, but it's political as well. However since I think one's way of living has political implications, I'm going to be so bold as to suggest that, at least within black America, the class dog wags the tail of politics.

Cosby defends the collegiate preppy side of black America and Dyson has a problem with the locus of black agency outside of the working class. To suggest that the collegiate side should lead the working class side is anathema to Dyson. Dyson, a fast-talking leftist college professor, would like to represent the underclass as well. I reckon he'll do. Both gentlemen assume that a greater amount of unity would serve the duBoisian purposes of race raising, and I'd fault them both on that score but their commentary is no less vital. This battle is far from over.

Cultural Battle: Hiphop vs Itself
Some would characterize this as true hiphop vs commercial hiphop. Fair enough. The battle rages on.

Community Battle: Cops vs Crooks
I don't have to tell you that blackfolks don't trust cops. But blackfolks don't trust black cops either. I think black cops are tolerated, and I think black crooks are tolerated. When ten crimes go down people get fed up. When one cop messes up, people get fed up and show up at protests. The protests get noticed, and by and large black communities are not appreciably safer today than they were 20 years ago. How can 20 years of policing a community produce no results? What we have here is a failure to communicate, and for a clear majority to choose law & order. I am tempted to blame the Coalition of the Damned and write off many black communities as part of Sherwood Forest. I am at a loss to explain this dynamic. It's not a particular focus of mine.

A Seething Biological Sack of Testosterone

Every once in a while it's fun to attempt to find out what Kevin Drum takes seriously. It's difficult to tell given the yahoo density in his commenter community, but you gotta love a post entitled 'Men Are Pigs Part 487'.

So: if you're dealing with a man, negotiating puts you at a disadvantage compared to men who are applying for the same position. Your choice, then, is to either negotiate and risk not getting the job at all, or to stay quiet and accept a lower offer than a man would get. On balance, I think I'd still offer the same advice I always have, since I suspect the downside of negotiating might be a fairly short-term thing. Still, "the worst that can happen is that they say no" is obviously a little too glib, especially if you're dealing with a seething biological sack of testosterone on the other side of the desk.

How and why walking scroats end up being the bossman is an interesting and challenging question to begin with. I'd happily stipulate that this bit of social science is valid for what it's worth but I think perhaps it elides a bit of virtuous rationale.  As I continue forward on what I think is one of my stronger observations about the failings of feminism and multiculturalism, substantively that they substitute demographic features for virtues, I will attempt to show that their defenders are making essentialist fetishes out of gender, race and ethnicity and that social science is their bitch. So sure men use power differently with men than they do with women but is that necessarily a bad thing? To place the blame on testosterone is a dual edged sword. If it is human nature for men to negotiate with men do so and women not to, is that necessarily wrong?

I've considered recently that if I step up and assume one day in the future, some measure of executive capacity, I would like to be one of the guys who puts Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to work. But I would enjoy very much doing so without turning my company into some kind of regimented bootcamp, ie not woman friendly. The advantage of hiring vets is that I would not have to deal with whiners - as I spoke again with The R this week and I can consistently recall in other such conversations about the down side of managing people, is that the boss often gets dragged into personal drama of the sort they thought they were rid of in middle school.

And yes I am indeed the kind of individual who would proudly state that I enjoy 'kicking ass and taking names' in my professional life, and I do in fact subscribe to some notions of business competition as non-lethal combat. But I am not particularly attracted to zero-sum games. I much prefer generating win-win scenarios which is what distinguishes business contracts from warfare.

I'm tending to believe that our common sense understanding of the difference between men and women is going to prove more useful in the long run and that the social constructions of multiculturalism are going to bring a lot of folks to a bad end.

I've Been Simpsonized

You've got to admit, there is a slight resemblance.  Scholar found this the other day and is Simpsonizing the entire family. I don't think that I'll be replacing the banner any time soon, but it's always good to have a number of avatars handy. I'm definitely going to put this this one to use one way or another.

You've got to hand it to the marketing folks at Burger King. Nice work guys.

Showdown At Hogwarts

The latest Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, is the most action packed adventure in the series, and it shows Harry as a very different kind of hero than we might have expected him to be. If you don't want to know any more, go away now.

Microbial Genomics: You Are One Percent Human

Earth is a microbial planet.

This is the most outstanding new idea I've heard this year.

One portal into this world is JGI Microbial Genomics. When I was at Carlsbad Caverns a couple weeks ago, the voice on the audio tour was telling us that the biodiversity in the microbes in the cave than in the entirety of North America or some such. It was a strange claim so that's why I remember it, as well as the claims that some of these were previously undiscovered. Now it's clear to me that the odds are about right.

As for the title of this blog entry, it turns out that all of the cells in the human body, most of them are microbial in origin, not human in origin. Think of the Germ Theory. Think of miticlorians. Yes. It's that deep.
 

Influential Books: Young Adult Version

Like most of my yuppie peers I spent a lot of time between being a kid and having a kid. So I think the young adult period should be considered. These would be the books that I felt made me more of the man I wanted to be, knowing what I should know, before I thought I was that man.

The Mind's I
I basically have powered my career based on the inspirations of this book. My entire orientation towards the process of decision-making in all its forms is based on the premises that they might be represented in machinery and objectively improved. As well, very serious implications to the ethics of identity and sentience were kicked off by this book. Again, I think my reaction was like everybody else's. I was 21. 

Ethnic America
This is rather a tough one. Although I had read 'The Economics and Politics of Race' and perhaps one other book by Sowell earlier (and decided that I was a neocon, around 1982), it was Ethnic America that really stuck in my head. It was this book that helped me to see African America as an emerging class that while it had its own special qualities, was bound to succeed in ways similar to other ethnics. It was also the first history book that I ever really enjoyed. It is the book that convinced me to delay marriage until I was more established in my career.

Atlas Shrugged
What can I say, I was a computer science major. How could you blame me?

The Black Power Imperative
I wonder if I'll ever read this book again. It was, after I dealt with the fact of the broken monolith, the singular reason I thought that black politics mattered any longer. Now in retrospect I'm not so sure our premises are correct. Almost nobody talks seriously about Cross' theories - essentially that African American disenfranchisement whether active or passive puts a black mark on our democracy and brings into question the very existence of representative democracy in America.  I cannot imagine that Lani Guinier has not thought through this matter. I think you can read Guinier and skip Cross, but man it blew me away in 87.

Sun Tzu's Art of War
Yep. I did the whole immersion into the tao. It was an extraordinary moment in my life. I think I'm actually ready to try it again. Wow.

Beloved
I read Beloved completely stunned. It stood head and shoulders above any fiction I had read before with its power and flow. It was like reading an improvised symphony. I have never seen the English language do the things it did before I read that, the first of many Morrison books I would read. I think Toni Morrison singlehandedly gave the multicultural movement the lion's share of its substance.

American Mythologies
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who understand the semiotic sleight of hand of modern life and those doomed to forever chase the cheddar in the epistemological maze that is Western Civ. Far beyond McLuhan's predictions, Blonsky ripped straight to Heidegger in his journey. Amazing book. It exposes post-modernism completely.

Drylongso
Drylongso is the book I should have read in 87 instead of The Black Power Imperative. Instead I read it in 93. The years in between I spent as a prisoner of my interpretation of a generational imperative vis a vis what blackfolks needed from people like me. I have never shaken myself of that entire responsibility, but Drylongso has given me a new golden rule I should have learned long ago. Black people will survive without any further assistance from anyone. Don't second guess them.

Another Country
When I was ready to have children, I began reading James Baldwin because I knew that he would moderate my passion for the revolutionary. He did. Another Country made everything personal. It took all of the politics out of life.

Also rans of the era:

Malcolm X Speaks / Tropic of Cancer / Economics and Politics of Race / Manufactured Consent / Breaking Bread / Race Matters / Turing's Man / Foucault's Pendulum / White Boy Shuffle / High Cotton / A Gathering of Old Men /  Candide / American Evasion of Philosophy / Shogun

Mrs. Arnold's Greens

Spence links to some very interesting info about urban gardening. It would be a great thing to see that on the rise. I think it's very Old School.

When I was a kid, growing up in the 'hood, there were two reality-defying facts that I had to deal with both of which I found very unfair and disturbing. The first was that by the time I could afford a chemistry set, all the chemicals in it were so old that they became inert. I actually couldn't do any experiments. It was as if the universal laws of physics simply didn't work in my neighborhood. Well that's how it felt.

The other thing was that our the soil under our backyard was just dust. You couldn't find worms in it. When you watered it, it didn't really even turn to mud. It was the strangest kind of dirt I had ever known and furthermore, besides weeds, dandelions and our strange brand of bermuda grass, nothing would grow in it. Not that my mother, who grew up in New Orleans ever tried.

Mrs. Arnold next door did not have such problems. She was from Texas and she knew how to grow greens. Her turnip greens were the best but she grew collards too. I honestly still can't tell which is which if pressed. But I know when they're good and I like 'em. There were eight Arnold kids and they ate well enough to be good football players.

My Favorite Book: Kid Version

Geoff Bennett asks an impossible question.

Another month, another in-depth series. For the month of August, we're tackling the black literary imagination every Tuesday and Thursday.

We're going to explore African Americans' connection to the written word and how our history and experiences shape what we read.

We want to hear from you: What's your favorite book or who is your favorite author? And what's the one book you wish you could read again ... for the first time?

There are probably 10 books that changed me more than any other, but all for different reasons. So I suppose I should go into that.

Call It Courage / The Secret Language
These two books were assigned to me in the fifth or sixth grade. I didn't want to read them, I thought they were stupid and I was insulted that my teacher wanted me to read them. Call it Courage was about some cowardly, skinny dark kid running around in a loincloth. The Secret Language was about two white girls away at boarding school. I read them. I loved them. I couldn't believe it. It was my first real experience of 'you can't judge a book by its cover', and my first real understanding that I could learn from the experiences of people who were nothing like me.

2001: A Space Odyssey
I read this book in the sixth grade. It was my first big book, an adult book that when I read it impressed everybody. This was the book that made me fear no books, no matter how big. Plus, it started me into loving science fiction.

Hiroshima / Fail Safe
I read these books in the 7th grade and they began my lifelong dread and fascination with nuclear weapons. My 7th grade project was about the process of nuclear fission which I understood quite well. But these were the books that really cemented in my mind what was really possible in this world. Around the same time, Nixon was impeached. I came to understand that the smartest people in the world could make huge mistakes.

Roots
Roots affected me like pretty much everybody else. I thought it was a great story and I enjoyed the affect I got by dragging this huge bestseller around and reading it in public. I was in the 10th grade.

Infrastructure at Risk

Last week as I was driving to work here in Fort Worth, I marveled at the size of the levees on the Trinity River. As most everyone in this metro area knows, June and July were the wettest months on record. It has rained every week I've been here 6 going on 7 in a row. And yet the Trinity isn't coming anywhere near the halfway point. Rain like this in Los Angeles would turn the LA River into something really frightening. I've seen it up close and it's a scary sight from the First Street Bridge.

Folks in the Midwest have their own tragedy on their hands. As of last count, there are 9 dead and dozens missing in the aftermath of a bridge collapse over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Nobody could see it coming.

Really?

With any luck, August First can be somebody's September Eleventh. In fact it probably is, except it is for people we have decided not to consider seriously. Let's have some civil engineers why don't we?

In the 80s when I was in college, Electrical Engineers were considered the kings of all engineering. Aerospace was going great guns and the computer revolution had just begun. There were jobs everywhere for these guys and they walked on water. But in fact, nobody can walk on water, you need bridges of all sorts, but the prestige for Civil Engineering was pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole. They were considered almost as low as the natural scientists. When career day rolled around, we would sneer at the Army Corps of Engineers recruiters. Fixing bridges? Yeah right. The most outstanding thing they had going for them was the Tennessee Valley Authority. Now when is the last time you heard any kudos for that American marvel?

I think today we turn the corner. That is to say, I will no longer be disdainful.

I've in fact often brought American infrastructure into discussions about the greatness of this nation. All sociological questions out of the window Americans are blessed with an extraordinary infrastructure. The power stays on, the water flows, the trucks roll from coast to coast, the internet lives and most everyone is just a phone call away. But civil engineers know we've been neglecting roads, bridges, levees, dams, and all that physical stuff. We are all mindful of computer viruses and firewalls and spam, but none of that ever killed anyone.

So let's hear it for public works.

The Executive Deal

On March 1 of this year, I sent out a cover letter that went a little something like this..

My extensive experience in the Business Intelligence space would make me an ideal practice manager for a large consulting firm. If you are looking for someone fluent in tech talk and business smarts, I'm a very strong candidate. I have seen technologies come and go and mastered a few of them. I make it my business to know those in the DW and ERP lifecycle. My business and technology smarts come naturally.

[..]

I am looking to work in an intense, results oriented, no-excuses environment.
Call me and let's discuss the possibilities.

They called. Now I am proud to announce that after five long months, the deal is done. And I didn't have to go to China.

The Meme of 47

Now, Here Is What You Are Supposed To Do...And Please Do Not Spoil The Fun! Hit Forward, Delete My Answers And Type In Your Answers. Then Send This To A Whole Bunch Of People That You Know...And Send It Back To Me So I Can See Your Answers, The Theory Is That You Will Learn A Lot Of Little Known Facts About Those You Know. Remember To Send It Back!

1.      WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?   
My great uncle David Cobb

2.      WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
Listening to a Stevie Wonder song yesterday.

3.      DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING
I care less about it as time goes by.

4.      WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Salami.

5.      DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
Three little Bowens.

6.      IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Definitely.

7.      DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? 
No I never used sarcasm in my entire life.      

8.      DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes. And I eat ice cream whenever I feel like it.

9.      WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? 
Only on a dare.

10.  WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
Apple Raisin Crisp

Charles Belk

  Charles Belk has been named to a two year term on the Board of Directors of the University of Southern California Black Alumni Association. Charged with the primary task of raising money for scholarships, Charles Belk's involvement with the BAA continues his 25 year relationship with the university dating back to his sophomore year in college when he was first selected as a Resident Advisor.

Currently, president and chief branding officer of Charles Belk Management, but undoubtedly a USC Trojan for life, Charles Belk's commitment to the university as a student included serving as  president, vice president and treasurer of the USC chapter of NSBE, a Student Senator, a Trojan Knight, and as a member of the Engineering Student Council, the Black Executive Leadership Council, Blue Key, Skull & Dagger and the the Senior Development Committee. Post graduation, Charles Belk continued to be involved with USC from 3,000 miles away, as a member of the Atlanta Alumni Chapter and the South Florida Alumni Chapter; meeting with prospective and incoming students; and placing USC student in summer internships.  A relocation back to southern California earlier this year allowed Charles Belk to re-establish a direct involvement with the university, most recently serving as the key note speaker at the USC School of Engineering Center for Engineering Diversity's 2007 Awards Banquet.

Only a few months back in Los Angeles, Charles Belk,  an avid community volunteer, serves on the 2007 Silver Lake Film Festival Board of Directors and the Chaka Khan Foundation Gala Committee, and is a member of the Los Angeles chapters of the National Black MBA Association and The Recording Academy (Grammy Awards). During his 12 years stint in Atlanta (prior to relocating back to LA), he was on the board of directors of Georgia Court Appointed Special Advocates (GA CASA), Hughes Spaulding Childrens Hospital, Jomandi Theater, House of Love For the Homeless and the Cobb County Transit Advisory Committee.

"Each day, I wake up feeling blessed that God has given me yet another chance, another day, to experience life to it's fullest.  Being involved and giving back is the least I can do, considering all the things that people have given me and done for me." Belk responded when asked how does he finds the time to be so involved.

With a primary mission of providing scholarship funds to support the financial needs of African American students attending USC, the Black Alumni Association has successfully reached out to African American students to provide financial aid and mentoring support for over 30 years.  The USC BAA was founded in 1976 by civil rights activist, the late Dr. Rev. Thomas Kilgore, Jr.

                            

About Charles Belk Management                 Charles Belk Management (www.myspace.com/charlesbelk) is a Los Angeles based entertainment agency that offers artist brand development & awareness and artist management. Services include a complete "branding experience" for up & coming and established recording artists, music producers, actors, models, comedians, directors, on-air personalities and professional athletes.

News & Notes Today

I had something of a fumbly radio day today. I wasn't as prepared for today's segment as I should have been. My head was a little elsewhere are I actually blanked twice. Also, I kind of forget that Farai's show is a longer format than The Barbershop, which kills me because in fact I'd rather be elaborate. Next time I'll do a better job.

Fumbles
The first time I couldn't remember the name of Dan Quayle, and that was partially because I was trying to suppress the dirty joke about him in my head. So I was self-censoring at a million miles a minute in that brief few seconds. The second time I couldn't remember if John Burns was a reporter for the NYT or the Times of London. In fact he is with the NYTimes and based in London, although he spends a lot of time in Iraq.

Michael Vick & R. Kelly
Seeing as that I'm not the sort that watches much football or listens to anything but talk radio, I'm at something of a loss to see why either of these two mental midgets should be taken seriously by anyone but their defense lawyers. If they both vanished from the planet, I'd never miss them.

I'm at a crossroads at the moment at Cobb and asking myself whether or not it is still a good idea for me to craft some defense of blackness. I mean on one hand, I'd like to say of Black Culture, that it simply doesn't include these two. They don't rank, they don't merit. They are not righteous. So I want to say that Black Culture is only righteous and they get booted and we don't have to care, period. On the other hand, if they say they're black, who can deny that? Nobody really owns 'black'. The question is, should I try? I'm going to leave that on the back burner for a while because it gets tremendously involved.

In either case, objectively speaking, they have no class and I think can only be popular with people who have no class. The world will survive without their talent, and there's something to say about talent yes, however if they can't respect themselves, then why should I respect them or their talent?

Of the two, I agree with Jasmyn. Kelly is the greater culprit and he should go under the jail. As for NAACP defending Michael Vick. They are making themselves into the new N-word.

Surge
I expected a little more backtalk on the political matter of the War in Iraq, but nobody seemed to be paying that any mind. Cool. Simple. The Surge is working and Harry Reid has a lot of explaining to do. I still think that the impact of the OHanlon & Pollack report is still being felt. But not many folks are feeling it in the black blogosphere.

Obama vs Hillary
I think Obama should stick to his guns but I know if it came down to it, he'd kiss up to Hillary. It's too early to tell, either one of them could implode between now and the Democratic convention. But I want and expect Obama to get stiffer in his differentiation between himself and Clinton. I think it's happening gradually, and the difference in geopolitical thinking is becoming clearer. That's kind of unfortunate for Obama because he's making dorky statements. Meeting with Assad and with Castro, and now his new thing for a unilateral invasion of Pakistan. Huh? What? I mean is he trying to prove? We need to handle that in detail.

Burns & Ricks on Iraq

Seaside Lagoon

Seaside Lagoon

200 Portofino Wy
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 318-0681

Seaside Lagoon separates the realists from the dainties. As you know, there are two kinds of people in the world: the kind that know everything about diapers and those who don't know shit. Seaside Lagoon is for the former and our kids.

If you're political and you read Mark Steyn (Beuller? Anyone?) you know that the EU is depopulating and muslims and various other ethnic groups are multiplying. If you don't read Mark Steyn and are single and looking for a new rock band as an accessory to your car and car stereo, then you probably do not have a childproof abode. In either case, you know something about yuppie lines of demarcation and the ability to deal with messy reality. Either you have it or you don't. The good news for those of you on the dainty and young side is that eventually you will have a kid and eventually you will grow to like its smell and chaos, rather like you look for now at nightclubs and bars. At such time you will join with the real human race as opposed to being a market demographic blip for record company execs in Century City. We on the far side of parenthood will thus welcome you.

At that point in your life, unless you have a terminal case of the (eww grody to the max) dainties and decide to turn your offspring into a houseplant, you will realize the funky genius that is Seaside Lagoon, clorinated funky seawater and all.

Yes, you can let your kids run wild. Yes they will pee in the water. Yes they will splash you, throw sand at seabirds, spill mustard on themselves, get pushed off the side, slide down the waterslide backwards, get sand in every orifice, walk around with sunburned shoulders, wrinkle up your beach towel and if you're lucky swim too soon after eating and blow chunks (although I've yet to see it happen in 3 seasons). Still, after all of that, those kids will be five times as cute as Lindsay Lohan and everybody she parties with. Why, because they're your kids, they will have had unadulterated undisciplined wild monkey fun and they'll love you forever for taking them to Seaside Lagoon.

Now go and have some ice cream. You deserve it.

Off The Grid

Michel Martin queries:

And last, could you do without your e-gadgets?  We heard from a journalism professor who put her students on a techno-free diet. No cell phones, computers, TV radios or anything electronic for 24 hours. Some thought it was sheer torture while others found out that reading a newspaper isn't so bad after all.

I'm not so sure I like the phrasing of the question. But assuming there's nothing behind the question I will answer two ways. One, it's basically what I do when I go on vacation or have time to veg, but I've never really timed it. I can say for certain that sometime last summer when I went fishing with the troop, I was off the grid for several days and I surely didn't lose my mind then.

On the other hand, I think it was one of the intellectuals who impressed the intellectual who wrote the book Ravelstein (a semi-biographical fiction about an intellectual) was that Hell is human isolation. The idea of retiring in old age to some secluded place in the woods far away from human company is a fool's errand. Only someone who hates humanity would do so. There's a reason that one of mankind's greatest punishments is solitary confinement in some dungeon. We need each other or we'll lose our minds.

And so my e-gadgets are all about providing me with connectivity to everybody I know. I've got 6300 names in my Treo including the names of the kids I went to elementary school with. I keep them with me all the time. I am subscribed to 49 blogs and I know whenever they write something new. I get hundreds of emails every week. I've been wired in one way or another for decades. That's somewhat unique in that I was something of a pioneer, along with my e-peers, but more and more people live this way. We use these tools to communicate with each other.

I think to the extent there is a legitimate beef with all this e-connectivity are those who argue that our communications with each other gets in the way of our communion with nature. I agree that it does. Then again, you can't talk to a tree.

Megatron Vs Optimus Prime

It's true what they say about Shia LaBeouf. He's going to be the next great actor. Yes. He's a combination of Will Smith and Tom Hanks. He's that good, and I can see it all. His performance in Transformers is the most genuine teenage kid I've seen since the very first American Pie. The good news is that he's a bit more wholesome.

As for the movie, it's way better than the Fantastic Four by a longshot, and there are couple interesting surprises too.

First of all, this is one of the first action/monster flicks in a long time where the real humans have a chance at a human scale. Starting with Independence Day and Godzilla, we've been accustomed to seeing the entire human race made to look foolish and puny until some superhuman brain (usually the star) comes up with a one in a million shot to overcome the odds. During the course of such movies, you generally see gratuitous swipes at the US Armed Forces. You'll get the loudmouth stupid general, or the cowardly President, or the duplicitous intelligence agency. In Transformers you get some real serious squad-based action in which soldiers make a difference. It's so damned refreshing and new for Hollywood movies that half the audience will be thinking they are suspending disbelief when they see a platoon that actually fights and wins. In fact, in the Transformers movie, I'd say some of the best action is seeing how the Army coordinates attacks on the alien nasties. This is the first new Army movie in decades.

Secondly, and it bears repeating, Shia Labeouf is fantastic kid actor. He's funny. He runs like an action hero. He's expressive. He's smart and he's quirky and witty too. I've heard before I saw this movie that Spielberg sees a great future for the kid, I see it too. He's got the thing, and he brought all kinds of character to a movie that only had Bay's effects and action going for it.

As for the babeage, the female lead was horribly miscast for this movie. I can't see any reason at all to get a chick so juicy and delicious to play a high school chick other than to make LaBeouf look primed for romantic comedy flicks. From the POV of a middle schooler or highschool boy who might want to see this flick, I suppose the casting is right, as is the new Camaro which completes the fantasy. Still.

Oh yeah, Megatron & Optimus Prime. Uh.. They're cool robots? The fights between the robots are long and fast. It looks quite different from everything else we've seen. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. There isn't a lot of good baseline material for robotic fight choreography outside of I Robot which I think did a very fine job. So when the Autobots go at it with the Decepticons it's sometimes like watching Katamari Damacy on speed, there are often just two giant balls of junk going at each other and you never know when the equivalent of a kick to the groin has happened. I really think Bay should have stuck a bit more slo-mo simulcast action into some of the robot fight sequences. I think that will make the difference next time around.

On the other hand, the human vs robot fighting is done very well, most especially the desert standoffs and the hogtie scene in the LA River. Speaking of which, the location continuity on this film sucked big time. It could have been done better, but for kids, who cares. For action film guys like me, it was a problem.

The film did fill out its 2 and a half hour shell fairly nicely but I don't think it will stand up well to a second viewing. I give this one 83%.