Category: Me Myself&I

For many years, and even now, generations of black folks who migrated north to escape life in the south, returned down home in search of a spiritual nourishment, a healing, that was fundamentally connected to reaffirming one’s connection to nature, to a contemplative life where one could take time, sit on the porch, walk, fish, and catch lightning bugs. If we think of urban life as a location where black folks learned to accept a mind/body split that made it possible to abuse the body, we can better understand the growth of nihilism and despair in the black psyche. And we can know that when we talk about healing that psyche we must also speak about restoring our connection to the natural world.

bell hooks dropping bombs in 1994 in her book Sisters of the Yam.

I concur with her. Often when people tell me that I look very calm (despite the fact that I go through a very large amount of anxiety), I think that I explain this to connecting with the earth. I am down to earth. I like to contemplate nature. I grew up in the countryside before hitting the city lights and it never left my soul.

When things get complex (as they are in the city), strip it all down. Live more simply. It’s quite easy to do when you’ve been used to do nothing in the front yard, just being in the sunny wheat field.

It’s a lot harder when your life has mostly been about impressing folks around to prove your worth.

You are not a value. You are a conscious. A beautiful, deep, conscious. Connect with the earth. The rest will follow.

Player-empowered league doesn’t work well because the team aspect is left behind.

To win championships and play pleasing basketball, you cannot leave the team aspect behind. It is a team sport.

Player-empowered league means players think about themselves first. That means high salaries. That means less defense and more 3s (it’s a lot better for one’s body longevity to shoot long distance than to drive in the paint). That means a WAY more boring game. If regular season is quite boring these days, it’s because of that trend. Because games are now a bunch of individuals barely sharing the ball and if so, it is to find someone on the perimeter. It’s too dialed in.

It also destroys the playoffs. We can see right now how those teams built out of nowhere, assembling like giant robots, can be hit or miss. If the stars play well, cool but that also means blowouts, not really great to watch. If the stars don’t play well, not only the rest of the team can’t pull miracles while the stars dissociate, but the team culture and spirit completely disintegrate. It’s all about personal stats now.

And that’s foul.

There’s no more sticking together to make this shit work, which is part of the deal. That’s the only way to reach the next plateau, when the whole team becomes One. When you win championships.

Look, I can’t feel bad for multimillionaires paid to play basketball. A rookie ranked last in the NBA is making $1.6M in a year. That’s roughly what most people in the west will make in their lifetime. The average salary in the WNBA, including vets is around $100K. 40 years ago, NBA players often needed a second job.

Fans will get into debt to buy tickets and jerseys. A star jersey is $300. So they would do that to go see superstar players not give a fuck, or barely, because they’re getting paid and that they got rings with previous teams or will later with another team? That’s not a good look.

I hope the franchises that nurtured a team spirit will win big in the next few years. We need that. We need sustainability, not growth.

It’s just funny sometimes. While Naomi announced today that she would withdraw from the French Open, in Paris (where I  was born and grew up) later on I was reading bell hooks on black women and she writes:

This is not a simple task indeed. Naomi chose health after probably pondering for years about it. Now she’s at the top of the tennis world, she is mistakenly perceived as ungrateful. She only wants to live a good life. Once again, it shows that filthy wealth and fame are not what make one happy.

She might also understand that this might cost her some opportunities in the future for any cause for which she would need media coverage for.

C’est la vie.

Fascinating book. I always forget that Adidas and Puma brands are from the same family. Or that leisurewear comes from people having time off, thanks to industrial revolutions. Anyway, do you know about the Nike Air Force Ground (Green/Dirt)?

The leave is optional

“Death is coming, you just wait”

Well Mr. Mooney death came, rest in peace. I’m sure y’all are having a hell of a ride, in a 76 Cadillac Coupe, obviously talking shit about us.

(I can’t start this without mentioning that I know about the allegations of molestation around him, however, it hasn’t been completely cleared nor demonstrated; benefit of the doubt it is. And, if we still play the music of Michael Jackson who enjoyed looking at kids’ booty holes like Dave Chappelle says, then Paul can be praised for his talent as well)

I got hooked on him watching Chappelle’s shows. I immediately started to get my hands on everything he’s ever been in. All his standup comedy, his book. I’ve always loved dark humor and absolute irreverence in comedy. Going ALL the way there, takes courage but also means that you understand social dynamics and can dance with them. Paul was so good at that, taking you there and hitting you with the most honest and searing funny sentence. “we fucked up your tennis…”

I think he was that rowdy on stage because he wrote for others, for years. You edit, you shape words for different people and then you go on stage, randomly burning the fuck out of everyone. Because you can. Paul could.

Irreverence and IDGAF stances in comedy are essential. I know, it’s “dangerous” now but I do believe that on stage, you’re supposed to do whatever the hell you want. Roast the shit out of your kids, your mama, your people, others, everything. It’s a performance, it is fine. Paul’s delivery was impeccable. Raunchy and sophisticated at the same time. That is hard to pull. His looks at the audience, gauging how hard he would go on the next joke, probably fomenting on which words to use appropriately was always already funny to me. He was playing with the audience’s mood and racial breakdown masterfully. Pushing it, always.

This is a black man who was sent to the west coast as a kid before something bad happens to him in 1940s Louisiana. He lived everything from war rationing to Oakland brewing the Black Panther Party to White Hollywood and the Sunset Strip back when it was truly the hottest shit in the world, to NYC and his comedy clubs. He’d seen it all, segregation, integration, integration failure, positive segregation, he knew what was going on. Which is why he looked mean, sometimes. He was just super tired of the bullshit.

Anyway thank you for the joy, Paul.

bell hooks’ book on black men and masculinity is spot-on.

It’s making my mind spin at full speed because her solutions to black men embracing a fulfilling life? I did them all. I avoided the traps. I didn’t follow. I created my own. I questioned. I asked. I participated. I listened.

I got lucky. Adoption allowed me to be treated as an experiment, pushing adults around me to do better. To nurture more, without giving me any pass either. My foster family was really like this. Patriarchy was around of course, but it was light and almost every time, turned all the way down when I was around. Growing up, it seemed to me that men and women were equal, except that men were faking more. But that was it.

My parents as a younger couple, were quite amazing. Both doing everything. Both doing manual and intellectual work. Both caring, cooking, cleaning. Both able to fix “anything”.

And the biggest thing: they consistently did that. Both pretty much never failing ever to do the things that need to be done in a household, for the fifteen years or so that we lived together. I’m grateful.

It makes me feel sad as shit too, because I know what my black peers have had to deal with, or are dealing with. We connect well on the abandonment issues, that ALL black folks and adoptees share (in my case I get the 2X multiplier here we go). Without really knowing why –but with strong focus and will, I did find fulfillment in creative stuff and the pit that is game development when my brothers have been trying to “get that money”, no matter what. I understand.

bell hooks’ book really demonstrates how patriarchy and late stage capitalism have destroyed opportunities for other ways to live to be discussed and tried. Her book was written in early 2000s. It is sadly so much truer now.

I keep thinking how the 2010s mobile computing era has enable the once very looked down hustler and pimp cultures (embraced by black America in the late 60s and 70s especially, as a crutch to massive unemployment) to take over the mainstream, fueling a gigantic crowd into working like crazy, most likely screwing over folks, while never questioning anything. Technology flipped the script, took 20 to 30% off people’s hard work, and supercharged every single problem that we had before mobile technology took over in the past decade. What have we done?

When bell hooks talks about black men being seen as violent and predators, I don’t forget that the main computer game field where black men showed up the most in the past twenty years, is the  field of competitive, fighting games. Of course. The stereotypes keep going and black men keep endorsing them.

A lot to ponder on.

I’ve always felt that there is a strong connection between music and basketball. The game is inherently rhythmic in nature and requires the same kind of selfless, nonverbal communication you find in the best jazz combos. […]

I discovered early that the best way to get players to coordinate their actions was to have them play the game in 4/4 time. The basic rule was that the player with the ball had to do something with it before the third beat: either pass, shoot, or start to dribble. When everyone is keeping time, it makes it easier to harmonize with one another, beat by beat.

Phil Jackson in his 11 Rings book.

He also talks in his Sacred Hoops book how basketball is so much more improvisational that other team sports: it is fast paced and allows for individuals to be themselves and improvise over a defense like no other team sport.

You know what is an activity that requires rhythm and is super improvisational as well? Skateboarding.

You know who practices music, basketball and skateboarding daily? This guy.

It’s the first time I connect those dots. I guess I’m highly attracted to freedom and doing the right thing at the right time.

It’s undeniable that the pleasure of watching the NBA Spurs team is in the fact that its players improve. Constantly. Regardless of where they are in their careers.

It’s quite beautiful to see.

This year has made me want a DeMar and Dejounte jerseys. They’re so good and so composed, getting better every year like the rest of the Spurs. Lonnie is solidifying, Rudy is rejuvenating while Patty chooses timelessness. Jakob is faster than ever. I hope DeMar stays because for real, he’s so key to their offense.

He became a beast at passing. His footwork and skills are some of the prettiest in the past 20 years. Dejounte is so special and he looks like a sponge, absorbing DeMar’s J like Kirby.

Give this end of 2021 season Spurs team an offensive center and they’re WCF contenders, straight up. And if they’re not, they’re fun to watch giving other teams the WORK. Let’s go Spurs!

My immune system after yesterday’s second vaccine dose feeling like

I’m doing okay. My place is clean, my plants are growing. Projects are being built and shipped. Financials are doing their thing.

It is hard to keep up with everything though.