fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
I don’t remember Larry Wilmore from The Daily Show. I didn’t watch it often enough to catch him doing his shtick, the “Senior Black Correspondent.” So when he started hosting The Nightly Show w/Larry Wilmore, I didn’t know what to expect. I saw this brother with a huge head, and I thought of Mr. Potato…
Way back when during my waning days at UCLA, not long after I came out, the Daily Bruin did something unconscionable. Buried in the paper appeared a story about the campus police arresting some guys cruising each other in a men’s room. And the paper printed their names. I was mortified. And livid. With youthful, righteous…
Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra had many great soloists. Indeed, it was a band of great soloists. But one stood a notch above them all, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Jazz writer Scott Yanow states that Hodges possessed “the most beautiful tone ever heard in jazz.” He formed his style early in his career and never varied…
Lots of screaming occurred during the Republican National Convention this past week. The Never Trump folks had a series of hissy fits as they tried in vain to derail the inevitable. Hampered by shenanigans during the Rules Committee, overruled on the floor of the convention by the chair, a group of folks saw no other option…
I started writing a very different post the other night about the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. I wrote a draft about the need for police departments nationwide to better police themselves, to root out bad officers, and to hire better officers to begin with so that problems do not occur. And then…
My earliest Beatles memory: Mom dancing in the kitchen and singing along with “Hello Goodbye.” I peered at her through the bars of my crib. I was probably 3 or 4 years old. My parents, my three older brothers, and I (no sister, yet) still lived at my maternal grandmother’s house. Having been born a…
A megathrust earthquake struck on June 22, 1996. Mom died. So powerful an event, I knew it had happened without solid confirmation. The nurses kindly said that there had been no change in my mother’s condition, though the pauses in their speech told me what they did not want to say. Later that morning, I…
The other day, I listened to Kate Bush in the car on my commute to and from work, specifically tracks from The Whole Story. This album has a special place in my heart and history. I first heard it, and listened to it obsessively, when I came out 28 years ago. So I will forever…
{Editor’s note: This piece in celebration of music was conceived and written before the horrific events of Saturday night, June 11, in Orlando, Florida. the gar spot conveys condolences to everyone affected by this unspeakable tragedy.} I have a cold. I hate getting late spring/early summer colds. The weather invites outdoor explorations, but the body’s…
A dog whistle silently signals to its target audience that the speaker will work to prevent “those people” from interfering with your life without mentioning “those people” by race, color, or creed. In the context of Ian Haney López’s book, Dog Whistle Politics — How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle…
