I’m not a big an NBA fan as my blog bud Ron is. I haven’t paid too much attention to the NBA since the Johnson/Worthy days of the Lakers, and after that, only a passing interest in the finals. I’m a Tar Heel alum, and even I tired of Jordan’s dominance. However, I love watching college hoops (ACC games especially, of course). So I do get interested in the draft and seeing where the players I’ve watched closely over the season end up as professionals, how they may contribute to their team, and if they’re underclassmen, whether or not they should have waited.
With that, let’s take a look at this year’s draft. (more…)
It’s been 40 years since the Hawks moved from St. Louis to Atlanta, and during their time there they’ve mostly been dismal. It’s been eight years since they even made the playoffs, and lately such topflight players as Jason Terry have opted to take less money and go elsewhere rather than earn max dollars playing for a team universally deemed as a failure. You have to be at least 40 and maybe older than that to remember when the Hawks were a championship contender. Sadly race played a factor in the breakup during the early ‘70s of a potentially great club. “Pistol” Pete Maravich was drafted, which was a great move. What wasn’t so great was subsequently letting Joe Caldwell go to the ABA and losing Bill Bridges for simply being cheap. Of course during those years the Hawks always ran into either the Lakers or the Knicks (yes, there was a time when the Knicks were a great team) and got bounced out of the playoffs.
The second contending edition had Hall-of-Famer Dominique Wilkins, Doc Rivers and Tree Rollins among others, but could never get past the Celtics. The last decent Hawks team with Dikembe Mutumbo and Mookie Blaylock actually had the Chicago Bulls down by two games in a playoff series, but then Michael Jordan took over and quickly erased any chance of a Hawks victory. But those days are long gone, and the Hawks have been little more than a joke throughout much of the last two decades.
Perhaps the most amazing sports paradox of the moment is the fact that pro basketball, a sport dominated by African-Americans, has so little traction in heavily black cities like Atlanta and Memphis. The Grizzlies once seemed on their way to becoming a popular attraction, but last year’s 22-60 nightmare took all the wind out of those sails. Their best player Pau Gasol wants out of town, they now have a rookie coach and new general manager, and things just look bleak.
Meanwhile everyone wants to live in Atlanta, but no one wants to play there. If the Hawks make more idiotic draft moves despite having both the number 3 and number 11 choices, they’ll lose even more of the few fans they still have left. It’s hard to implore anyone to come out and watch a hideously coached, ineptly run franchise, and it doesn’t matter what color the people running it are if the product stinks.
Ron Wynn
1408John Cusak
Samuel L Jackson
Dir: Mikael Håfström
It sounds like a horror film written by Jerry Seinfeld. “Hey, you know those hotel rooms? Man, what’s up with those hotel rooms?” That, and a maudlin sub-plot involving a child who’s passed into the beyond, are about all there is to the new Stephen King adaptation 1408. Then there’s John Cusak, the eternal young rebel kicking and screaming into middle aged responsibility. As a one note joke, King’s oft repeated treatise on the fear of commonplace inanimate objects being given a malevolent soul, the film could have been a dreadful bore. However, Cusak’s presence morphs the drudgery into an interesting look at a man forced to modify his outlook on life. (more…)
The battle lines have been drawn among African-Americans regarding language and content, and it’s quite clear that things aren’t going to be simple (if indeed they ever were). The latest target is comedian D. L. Hughley, whose comments on a recent Tonight Show regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team didn’t exactly go over well with many people. These included such insightful remarks as “these were some of the ugliest, nappy head women” he had ever seen. The furor over that hasn’t settled down yet, and on June 16 Hughley found himself the target of protesters during a concert at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. Pastor Kyev Tatus of Servant House Baptist Church said that “It’s not only that comment, he has a history of demeaning our community in such a way that it’s not funny anymore,:
Hughley responded by saying “I believe that freedom of speech is a zero-sum proposition. Too many times I have watched clowns like these pretend to speak for the masses. I can only speak for me. Isn’t there a child you can help teach to read, a war to help stop, an unjustly accused man you can help get out of jail? I will not apologize for telling a joke about the world as I see it.” (more…)
With the fall season lineups now in place and an array of mindless reality shows set to flood the networks for the summer, it’s time to ask a familiar question regarding upcoming programs for the 2007-2008 television year. Where are the African-American dramas? There’s never been a surplus of Black drama on the network airwaves, and since the failure of Under One Roof and City of Angels no one among the alphabet soup of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox or the CW seems remotely interested in doing anything with Black actors beyond comedies and putting African-American faces in supporting roles on some highly visible properties.
In fairness, Grey’s Anatomy could be stretched to fit under the thematic boundary of a drama, although in truth it is really a daytime soap opera with nighttime production values. But at least it does have Black actors in featured and key roles, and doesn’t (or at least in the past) restrict opportunities for these characters to have complete and meaningful interaction across the board. It will be quite interesting to see what the fallout from the Isaiah Washington fallout will be to the show’s direction in the fall, and also what happens on the planned spin-off.
Still, it seems hard to believe there’s no audience out there after all these decades for a dramatic show with Black lead actors. Showtime had Soul Food for five years and the ABC Family channel will be bringing back Lincoln Heights in the fall for a second year. HBO’s The Wire takes place in Baltimore and essentially operates like an urban drama. But not even Spike Lee can convince the major networks they can launch and sustain a dramatic program with either a mainly Black cast or one spotlighting primary Black faces in an ongoing series of thematic situations special to the African-American experience.
But one also wonders why BET hasn’t begun its own array of dramas. They clearly have the largest Black audience among either broadcast or cable entities, and as a Viacom subsidiary could definitely set an example by showcasing one or two possible Black dramatic productions a year. This would not only seemingly fit their mandate of being first and foremost an “entertainment” entity (something they always trot out to deflect criticism about a lack of public affairs shows), but would also put them in the forefront and provide more opportunities for African-American writers, directors and producers, all of whom are sorely underserved in the current Hollywood climate.
Talented people like Kevin Hooks, Thomas Carter, Paris Barclay and many, many others who are now serving as executive producers on shows like Prison Break would probably enjoy the opportunity to spearhead their own creations on an African-American outlet (even if it’s not black owned anymore). Whatever else anyone says about BET, no one can deny it enjoys vast audience loyalty and a reach far beyond that of its primary rival TV One, which sadly still can’t get satellite companies like Dish Network to add it to their lineup.
A few years ago this was a hot topic in television circles, but now it seems almost everyone in the Black entertainment world has consigned themselves to an absence of dramatic properties and become, if not content, resigned to a steady diet of comedies and reality shows. While commending Tyler Perry for the clout he enjoys in getting a 100-episode commitment from TBS for his new sitcom, when will (if ever) his counterpart in dramatic circles emerge?
Ron hosts a radio show on 88.1 FM WFSK Nashville called Freestyle, if you didn’t already know. This week, topics include Isiah Washington’s dimissal from Grey’s Anatomy, the upcoming Conscious Music conference in Nashville, and should standards be lowered so more students from poor families can get scholarships from the Tennessee state lottery. I’ll be able to sit in this week and join Ron and Regina V. Clark and Diallo. Stop on by at 6:00PM.
At the near midpoint of Black Music month, rap bashing seems to be back in season. Certainly no one has to like everything, and there’s plenty of rap that doesn’t catch my ear, but then there’s also plenty of things in every other genre from jazz to reggae and gospel that also don’t do much for me. But so much ire directed at rap is coming from uninformed, misguided and in some cases elitist types like Washington Post columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams who weighed in with this nonsense. “African-Americans have seen intellectual cultivation, education and self-expression through the arts as the “key to equality.” Hip-hop culture is a denial of that history: it evolved in the streets, as a “cool pose” by young, uneducated black men filled with anger, violent impulses, and misogyny. Over the last two decades, that pose has come to define blackness: for middle-class black teens, “Keeping it real” means imitating thuggish hip-hop stars, while doing well in school and treating people respectfully are “acting white.” It’s crazy, really; of all of America’s ethnic and racial cultures, only Blacks have adopted the values of the lowest rung on their hierarchy.” (more…)
Last night’s 75-72 abomination in the third game of the NBA playoffs just narrowly missed breaking the all-time record for fewest total points in a final. You have to go back to 1955 and the days when Fort Wayne, Indiana was in the league to get a worse outcome and that was back in the days of set shots and supposedly far inferior athletes. What this current San Antonio Spurs/Cleveland Cavaliers mismatch is doing besides sending people racing away from their television sets is also spotlighting something that many people repeatedly miss when talking about and analyzing basketball at any and all levels. There is an enormous difference between being a great athlete and being a great basketball player. One doesn’t always equal the other, though when it does (people like Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, etc.) the results are phenomenal. But unfortunately so much of current pro basketball has become two-on-two isolation, walk the ball up the court and try to do a backdoor lob for a dunk. This in turn is pretty easy to defense, especially when you have a veteran, well-coached team that knows how to rotate people to open shooters quickly. San Antonio has simply decided to double, if necessary, triple-cover Lebron James and take their chances with everyone else. They also don’t fall off him the second he drives the lane the way the Pistons did. When James heads for the rim, people on both the weak and strong sides collapse, forcing him to either pass off or try to score over two or three people. (more…)
How rap is performed and recieved in other countries is one of my significant interests. I’m particularly interested in the scene in Japan. Though B-boys have been doing it big in Japan since the 80’s, many peeps are still a bit surprised that Japanese cats rap, let alone that the music is best selling and has influenced the pop music landscape there. For reasons I’ll get into in a follow up post, some people have an almost reflexive reaction to non-African Americans performing rap music — that those non-Black, non-poor people are “stealing” the music and culture, that they’re committing “cultural appropriation.”
I disagree. For now, I’ll hook y’all up with some youtube flicks of Japanese MCs and DJs doing their thing.
First up, Shing02, an indie rapper best known to the anime nerds for his contribution to soundtrack for the animated TV series “Samurai Champloo.” Here he is doing his Nujabes produced songs “Luv Sic and Luv Sic (pt.2)
Tha Blue Herb, a crew representing Hokkaido
Dabo, coming more from the pop side, collabin with a R&B singer Pinky
Skip the dorks from the TV show at the beginning and forward to the kids freestyling in the park
The following info will go on the “about” page, too, however, we need some posting up in here!
We are a group of writers, artists, musicians, bums, and ne’er-do-wells based in Nashville, TN. Many of us write for local and national magazines, some have appeared in plays and movies, some slave away at 9 to 5’s, keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the local entertainment scene.
So if we’re all such big mainstream media stars, why a blog?
Well. We’re also mostly people of color. Women. GLB. We like the freedom the Internet provides us to discuss things in a way that we sometimes cannot in print or on television or wherever the corporations are in control. Also, we hope to engage a like minded audience, people who may well want to hear about things, events, ideas, controversies, that aren’t discussed in the media.
We want readers to engage in the conversation as well. However, we don’t want things to get ugly. We understand people get hacked off and jacked up (and may even let fly with the occasional profanity). Still, that’s no reason for:
name calling
harassment
race baiting
And the like. Like Russell Simmons said, let’s chill on the B-word, N-word, and H-word.
Look at me, using “we” like I speak for everyone involved. I’m sure others will have their say on the matter as well.
