The Death of Kwanzaa

Its almost about that time of year when you might start hearing about the Holiday that isnt. Nooooo I'm not talking about Black Friday, I'm talking about Kwanzaa!!!! Kwanzaa is the Holiday you cant really talk about because no one wants to be politically incorrect. Some of us though, really DO want to know "whats the deal with Kwanzaa? About 5 years ago,"Kwanzaa" showed up on hallmark cards, and in local and National television news stories. How did Kwanzaa make the jump from 60's radical idea, to "Hallmark" type mainstream celebration?

Kwanzaa was created by an American, Maulana (Ron) Karenga in 1966 to symbolize African family values...and to give blacks an alternative to Christmas. Karenga was also founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI. The roots of Kwanzaa are nefarious indeed. I dont care how benificial the concept of the Holiday is to some. The very essence was/is to create an "us vs. them" divide, around arguably the World's most unifying Holiday. How wrong is that? The answer to my question about how Kwanzaa has been legitamized over the last 5 years in America's National Psyche is, "I have no idea!"

Enter President Barack Obama. What do you think Obama will do with Kwanzaa? Can you say "Cant touch this"? America will follow Obama's lead on small matters like this, and Obama will leave Kwanzaa A-lone. I'm guessing in about six years it will be completely dead, as it should be. So Hallmark, are you listening? Mainstream Network News, let it go! We dont need any more made up Holidays to divide us. We have Christmas, Hanukkah, ...and Festivus for the rest of us.

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Last FM is the BOMB!

Elvis Costello. Elvis Costello rocks my world. I feel lucky to have been around the same time EC wrote his songs, to the point where listening to his greatest hits feels like a soundtrack to my life. Allison, Pump it up!. Whats so special about peace, love, and understanding? Watching the detectives, Shipbuilding, Love for tender, Radio, Radio, and So like Candy. But hey, I feel the same way about Prince, too. Party like its 1999...and the Boss! Jungleland and Born to Run. Tom Petty, "Wont back down"... and lets put on a little John Mellencamp -Pink houses and *Poof* I'm instantly a hell of lot younger as I hear Mr Mellencamp say "Aint that America"... and I can track time and places with the one hit wonders like Nick Gilder's "Hot Child in the City" (Who doesn't like this song? and did you know Nick is a GUY? Always sounded like a girl to me ) and Steely Dan's Aja - I close my eyes and I'm on the beach in L.A. OK, so where the hell am I going besides memory lane towards Manhattan Beach? The mother of all applications for the iPhone (The World's BEST Gadget in the history of gadgets), LAST FM. magically and wonderfully plays your favorite music. You put in your favorite artist or song and LAST FM finds the artist and the song, and then it goes one better, it keeps playing the genre of songs from other artist... without a commercial!!!! Its CRAZY cool awesome all at the same time. Its like having your own little DJ playing your favorite songs. There is also a nice detailed "Bio" on the artist that brings back the long lost idea of learning something about the band, something peope used to do, and also spinning the record on my finger (that you still cant do that anymore). If you really like the song, just add it to your playlist. (I just added the English Beat "Tears of a clown" Boom!... AND GET THIS, it shows the band's TOUR dates, for like RIGHT NOW. Attending the concert?, there is a tab to indicate if your planning to go..or you might go, and then it takes you to a map of where the concert location. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? It THEN links you to your BUDDIES, where you can see who is going to the concert!!! Lets say you just broke up with Zack or Mia... no Problemo, LAST FM gives you a list of other peeps hitting up your tunes, and also GOING to your SHOW!!! (Hey... the Killers - December 14th at the Gibson in LA OR Dec 9th at the WaMu in Seattle (I saw them last summer, and the Killers R-O-C-K!) I mean, you could get a date for a concert AND meet your SOULMATE, all at the same time ! This is one unreal application for people who like music and gadgets, and people with gadgets and music. Its the motherload of music! You can also send songs to your friends!!! Better than the shuffle on your iPod - I like it that the next song is a total mystery, BUT it will likely be in your "wheelhouse" - Like Al Green's "Love and Happiness" its makes you do right, and make you do wrong...make you come home early, and stay out all night long...its the power of love". Now who doesn't love AL Green!!! Babies born last night, instantly move their new booty's to Al Green. I LOVE this gadget!!! Last FM is da BOMB!

The World's Ugliest Porsche! - The Panamera

There are ugly cars...and then there are UGLY cars! Shockingly, Porsche's long awaited four door sedan, the "Panamera", is a BUTT UGLY car! This is a really tough pill to swallow because (if anyone cared to read my earlier blog on my favorite cars), you would know that I am a Porsche enthusiast, big time! I'm at a point now where it would feel strange NOT to have a Porsche in the garage. Porsche makes special cars... er, well, they used to make them anyway. This is a car that was targeted for a guy like me. (Mid life crisis family guy cornered to "do the right thing" and buy a four door family car, passing on a 2 seater Porsche and becoming a grown up with a *uber* fast Porsche Sedan. But Noooooooooooooooo! I wouldn't touch this car if they GAVE it to me (and please Porsche, dont try to give me one, I will trade it for a Maserati or a Jaguar. I'm not sure WHAT they were smoking in Stuttgart, but they were smoking something good! These are not the engineers that gave us the sublime Carrera, or the understated Boxster, or even the curvy Cayman. WHAT were they thinking???

There is a silver lining with this four door disaster. Maybe Porsche will give up on trying to design a Sedan (unlikely), OR, they will go back to some of the "teaser" designs leaked earlier and "tweak" some beauty in it. As it is today, this is one Edsel of a car, and I can bet you that the auto world is not going to do the typical Porsche "cha cha" over this Autobahn stinkbomb. Its a modern Edsel, no matter how fast it is. In this Global free fall economy, how in the WORLD could Porsche make a sedan, so hideous from every angle?

Kinda bigger than the first Black President...Disney's First Black Princess!!!

By Arifa Akbar, Arts CorrespondentThursday, 17 July 2008

When Disney announced it was casting its first black princess for its latest animation film, the African-American heroine was hailed as a positive role model for little girls and an ambitious marketing ploy, not to mention an attempt to ward off the allegations of racism that have lurked since the heyday of Walt Disney Productions in the 1940s and 1950s.
But now the film studio finds itself fending off a chorus of accusations of racial stereotyping in its forthcoming big-budget cartoon, The Princess and The Frog: An American Fairy Tale, which marks a return to hand-drawn animation.
A musical set in 1920s New Orleans, the film was supposed to feature Maddy, a black chambermaid working for a spoilt, white Southern debutante. Maddy was to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from the clutches of a voodoo magician.
Disney's original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like "Mammy" – a unwelcome reminder of America's Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation.
The heroine has been recast as Tiana, a 19-year-old in a country that has never had a monarchy. She is now slated to live "happily ever after" with a handsome fellow who is not black – with leaks suggesting that he will be of Middle Eastern heritage and called Naveen. The race of the villain in the cartoon is reported to have also been revised.
The film studio began making changes a year ago, first to its title, The Frog Princess, which some had interpreted as a slur. Amendments to the plot followed.
Rodney Hinds, features editor of The Voice newspaper, said: "We are talking about a big company who has had to go back to the drawing board. It's disappointing... Some of the stereotyping of people from our community is still rigid in people's minds. We have our own dreams and stories like everyone else, and we want them to be portrayed positively. This is about how people are perceived and a princess is normally a positive character who most people aspire to."

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Uppity's spin...

Now this is pretty Amazing Stuff. We are getting our first Black President BEFORE we are getting our first black Disney Princess. I guess better late late late than never (They opened the first park over 50 years ago). My 4 year old has already been to Disneyland a number of times already, and she has punched her "Princess" ticket for "Ariel", the redheaded Mermaid Princess. She is all about Ariel (She was Ariel for Halloween (meaning she is STILL sporting the Ariel duds till they fall off of her)) and she relates to her above of all other Disney Princesses because of her great love for the pool. She even told me she is intent on becoming a mermaid and a mommy when she grows up. Not sure if Tiana/Maddy will draw any mindshare with my little Princess, but I do think its interesting that Disney took sooooo long to make this addition. However, digging into the "Disney way" and its history, its really not all that surprising it took so long. Part of Walt's vision fantasy of Main Street USA, involved zero things Black. Even the audio-animatronic "Great moments with Mr. Lincoln" completely skipped any mention of slavery. There was only one spot in all of Disneyland where you could see a black Star, and that Star was Aunt Jemima. Yep, from Opening day in 1955 until 1970, the only Black star at Disneyland (Not counting Mickey) was Aunt Jemima. (See a picture of her from the Park below) The Frontierland restaurant that is now the River Belle Terrace was the Aunt Jemima Pancake House from 1955 until 1962. After absorbing the adjacent Don DeFore’s Silver Banjo Barbecue Restaurant, it became Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen, a name which it kept until 1970. That was also the year the Black Panthers sat down to dine at Aunt Jemima's, and that pretty much ended the Aunts gig at Disneyland.

So it appears Black folks are "movin on up"! Now even Disneyland is stepping into 2009 with a new Black Princess. All I can say to that is...Woo Hoo!

Dare to be GREAT!

Next time you're in a conversation with someone, talking about a crazy idea you simply don't understand, where you don't see how its "going to work" or you "can't get your head around it", Don't be so quick to dismiss the absurd. The silver lining in this down economy is there will be tons and tons of new opportunities....Opportunities we cant even imagine right now. We all have a little Bill Gates, or Larry Page in us... The key is, you have to be open to new ideas, and you have to ready for anything.

BHO - LBJ or JFK?

Obama will be sworn in as our 44th President on January 20th, 2009. Already he is being compared to LBJ, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy!!! I cant ever recall, nor have I been able to find such comparisons being laid on a President Elect! The chances of President Obama coming near earshot of the transformational policies of the "New Deal" in the next four years are so unlikely. Clearly, big changes are desperately needed, but I'm doubtful we will see transformational changes (such as) overhauling, and completely reforming Credit card companies legal right to insanely charge whatever interest rates they like on the backs of the poor. (and look for the Credit Card Companies to be the next big Industry to go bankrupt (and boy did they have it coming...and Oooooooooooooooh No bailout for you!!))...but real change in this toxic and still Lobbyist driven political environment??? The People voted for Hope, but come on... will the people get their due ahead of AIG, Wallstreet, Ford, GM,??? We are in the back of the line.

I don't want to say Obama isn't capable of becoming more than simply being the first African American President, but how in the world can you say Obama's name in the same breath as Roosevelt (Either TR or FDR) or Lincoln, before he has even been sworn in??? We desperately need a"get things done Politician like LBJ. I'm not sure people can appreciate just how extraordinary a politician Johnson was, nor how much he contributed to the American way of life. In many ways we would not HAVE an Obama some 40 years later without LBJ.

Talk about a game changer...

LBJ as a CONGRESSMAN. gave Electricity, (yes Electricity!) to his West Texas district as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. The people of West Texas suffering through the great depression, didn't have power in their homes nor on their streets. In 1957 as a Texas SENATOR and Senate Majority leader, he convinced Southern Democrats and Northern Liberals to pass the first Civil Rights Bill since reconstruction. Compared to LBJ, BHO's "Pre-Presidential" resume is kind of weak, wouldn't you say?

So in reality, it was LBJ who led the charge for Civil Rights in the Senate, not Kennedy, yet it was Kennedy who won the 1960 Nomination. LBJ became JFK's #2. LBJ and "#2" Never quite went together. Bobby Kennedy didn't like him, as did most of JFK's Cabinet... He was the outsider. And then one sad day in November (exactly 45 years to this day in 1963), LBJ became the 36th President of the United States. Remarkably, he convinced the entire Kennedy Cabinet to stay and help begin the end of Segregation after suffering an eight-month-long filibuster, with the Civil Rights act of 1964. I'm not sure (and many others also believe) Kennedy could not have got it done by 1964, or perhaps at all!. Quoting a Historian "This Southern President broke the Southern system of racism".

As President, LBJ declared war on Poverty. 35 Million Americans lived below the poverty line at the time. So, with that, the "Great Society" was born. This was the son of the "New Deal". LBJ wanted to help everybody, not just the poor. He won in 1964 in a landslide. LBJ gave us Medicare, Medicaid, and federal education funding, which continue to this day. (Of course, those programs years later have been sliced diced, marginalized and minimized).

For all LBJ has done, he simply does not get the love, appreciation, and respect he deserves... On the other hand Kennedy gets all the Glory in a revisionist "Camelot" and all the Kennedy Moxi. At the end of the day, What did Kennedy do while he was President? He had about 1000 (1036 days to be exact). He gave us the Peace Corps, one hell of a inaugural speech, and yep, he gave some of us "Hope" (Play Twilight Zone Music and insert Charismatic Black President here). But I digress. Lets Hope (and you gotta have Hope) President Obama will achieve greatness and rise to the Zenith of the unappreciated greatness of an LBJ, and not the hype of a JFK.

Peace Out!

Four wheels of Love... My Car Obsession

Some people love cars and others tolerate them, but I think most people "like" cars. Since I wrote about the Motown Meltdown, I thought I would share with you my car obsession.

Lets start with my FIRST car. The four door, lime green, 1972 Buick Le Sabre. (ABOVE) Every teenage boy LOVES his first car. I loved my Buick. I picked up girls with this car...I got around town, I listened to Cheap Trick and Queen (with some really bad speakers I paid for with my afterschool job at MacDonald's. I drove all over Ohio in this baby... and I also forgot to put oil in it. (No one told me about the oil). One day, the engine exploded. And that was the end of my first car.

Move a decade later and I am r-o-l-l-i-n-g in a Suzuki Samurai! I'm (amazingly, picking up girls with THIS thing) , I am all over Houston with this puppy. I even remember to add oil once in a while. This was not a comfortable car. The AC barely worked! Slightly cool air coming out along with mostly hot air from the engine and Mercury like Houston, Texas. It was like a motorcycle with four wheels...No, skip that, it was like riding a horse through the desert...but I was happy.

And life got better... way better. I was blessed to drive some of my dream cars (which I'm about to share). At the time, the Samurai was a dream car to me, and it got me around town, and come to think of it, the little thing was great on gas.

This was my first 911. This was like my "Barack Obama" moment of Cars. "Yes I can!" When they gave me the keys, I simply couldn't believe it. I wanted one these things since I was a kid, and this one was mine! I was only 30, so you couldn't call it a mid-life crisis. I have had cars much nicer than this since, but very similar to the feelings of getting my first car, my first Porsche was crazy exciting...I couldn't wait to drive this thing. Remember Tom Cruise driving his Dad's Porsche in "Risky Business"? Tom did donuts in an empty parking lot. Just like Tom in the movie, I drove to an empty lot and did donuts (driving the car backwards in a continuous circle of joy). I really did that...and probably shouldn't admit it, but, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. There is a smell that these older Porsche have, that the new ones seem to lack and Purist call it the "Porsche smell". This 911 also sounded better than the newer ones I bought. It had what they call a "Whale tail". Truly, this was a street legal race car. Worth every penny. I didn't try to pick up girls with this car, it WAS the girl. I was in love with this car, and she was not a cheap date. I didn't mind.

And then we come to the most Beautiful car I've ever owned. This is a 1963 Porsche 1600 S. Mine was silver (like this one) with a red leather interior. The only car I ever bought on e-Bay, and the ONLY car I sold for more money than I paid for it. As beautiful as it was, I could only drive it to a few places. I also had to carry jumper cables and it leaked oil a little bit. I didn't have the mechanical skills, and I take that back. I had the skills, I just didn't enjoy working on the car. Looking back, I think I would really enjoy working on the car, just like now I enjoy cooking. At the time, I wasn't ready to own this kind of car. I regret selling it though. Oh do I regret it. Maybe one day, I will get another one. Super special car. Stunning... A Stunning car.

The 1998 Ferrari F355 Spider. This car was my Dot Com Car.

The Nation was on a giant drug called the NASDAQ. This was my gift to day trading. I didn't tell my friends about it because I was never comfortable "owning" a Ferrari. The stereotype associated with owning this car is so not true. The Ferrari folks I have met are the nicest people. Not arrogant, not flashy. They just loved these cars. I've had two Ferrari's. (Not at the same time but over time) The silver 355 and a Rosso Firoano 360 Coupe (a very rare colour) I even made the trip to the Ferrari factory in Maranello, TWICE to tour the plant and the public Museum nearby. In the end, I couldn't stomach the constant attention. The attention was constant. I did like that I could park this car just about anywhere and not worry about a ticket, but I didn't like there were almost ALWAYS people near the car when you would come to drive off. Maybe if I lived in Cali it wouldn't have been an issue. Who knows? In Seattle, its an attention grabber.

This was the best sounding car I ever had. There is the unmistakable whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine" of a Ferrari, and the 355's had that sound DOWN! The car was a rock star of sound. No need to listen to the radio...the car made its own music.

So what the hell am I driving now?

I'm not going to say. We all need a little mystery...and I'd like to hear your guesses. But what ever "it" is, I'm still driving around town, and I'm still rocking to Cheap Trick and Queen, and ok some Kanye, (this time on some really fantastic speakers). And instead of picking up girls, I will pick up my wonderful girl of a Daughter, from Montessori school.

Ah, progress. :)