Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diversity. Show all posts

Monday, November 2, 2009

What's Black and White and Red All Over?

The multi-culti staff at The Red House Furniture Store, in North Carolina!

Please watch the youtube video below, which brought to my attention by a fellow woman of color and writer. Join us both on the emotional rollercoaster.
Things to know:
This video was not made as a joke.
This is a real establishment.




AAAHHHH, IT'S SO AMAZING!!! When Richard, aka BIG HEAD, says he likes, "pumping iron, as well as pumping furniture into people's HOOOMMES" I almost wish I had 3-D glasses so I could feel his hands coming towards me.

Ten Gauge is pretty sweet, too.

I like how they added "and hispanic people, too. All people." at the very end. Someone picked that up in post-production, no doubt.

It's good to see local businesses doing their part to combat racism and oppression, while still making me feel unsafe.

Um, you're welcome, gentle readers.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Go Shawty, it's yer burfday.....



Today's Obama's birthday!!! YAY!! The chocolate silver fox turns a sexy 48 years old today, and I'm ready to go all Marilyn Monroe on his fine ass!

What do you think the security guards will do if I rock up to the White House and jump out of a birthday cake on the front lawn? Will I be tasered, or will they fall in love with me? I just feel like it'd be a good time to wish him birthday goodness, as well as thank him for my reparations, which finally came through. Holla!

What reparations? You may be asking. I got a scholarship to take FREE improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB), a well-known institution in NYC. Basically, some very liberal and bright member of Caucasia who interns there made a shocking discovery: improv is the realm of straight White boys. She decided to do something about it, and got them to implement a Diversity program. Thanks to Obama, black is the new black, and people are coming out of the woodwork to show some love to the Talented Tenth. UCB decided to jump on that bandwagon and offered up some freebies to 16 people of color.

No, no, I didn't just get it for being black--I got it for being young, gifted, and black, as well as the friend of an influential gay visionary. Comedian Jeff Hiller was telling me about the program and I was initially interested in recruiting, but without telling me, Jeffster ended up nominating me for it! Holla at a nomination--I feel like Taraji P. Henson, and this is my Benjamin Button!
Reason #256 that I love a gay man: They are not afraid to lift up a strong black woman.

I had my second class last night, and so far it's going pretty well. I'd taken a couple UCB classes before, but I could never really get into it--it's such a cult, and everyone there is into name-dropping who they've studied with, and all work really hard to be funny. Add to that the fact that it is indeed a boys club, and there just left little for the blacktress to desire. However, it is a great place to be if you want to make it in the comedy world, as anyone who's anyone starts out there. I see tons of UCB people working as talking heads on VH1 (you know, I love the 80s, Best Groundhog's Day Ever, stuff like that), and even see former teachers on "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation." I know that if I want to reach the masses, I gotta take some classes!

So I'm getting in it to win it. I'm making friends with established performers, and vowing to see more shows. Even though I'm a little rusty, my scenes have been pretty strong, and the teacher isn't calling me out, which is always good. The people in the class are all nice, and are grasping concepts quickly, but the humour isn't necessarily strong. That's fine by me, though. If they can at least not fuck up the scenes, then I'm good to go. My teacher is also so tender and smart. He's the Michelle Pfeiffer to my improvisational Dangerous Mind, if you will.

But let me bring this back to the man of the day: Birthday Boy Barack.
Without him, I might not have gotten these reparations. He's proving that 48 is the new 28, and without him I wouldn't even be blogging this right now.

Happy Birthday, Barack! I hope you like your jaunty bday hat!

Friday, April 4, 2008

NEVER FORGET!!!!

In addition to being a writer, comedian, and blacktress, I am also a grader for an undergraduate film course at my alma mater (yeah, I got my learn on when I was allowed to). I receive papers written by students of all grade levels taking an introductory course in cinema, and I wield my red pen like a sword, cutting into their hopes and dreams—and dropping a little knowledge. What I love about this job is threefold:

1. I get a little extra income coming in (I’m just a freed squirrel trying to get a nut, y’all!)
2. I get to reaffirm my own genius by judging others.
3. I get to guide young Caucasian minds, teaching them how to write thoughtful analysis and become freedom writers.
(sometimes I’m tempted to ask about their great-grandfathers’ slave-owning past, but I remember that that’s inappropriate in academia)

But sometimes when I’m reading these papers, the young people of Diversity University teach me a thing or two … and then I know why Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank, and Dainty Deb find great joy in teaching. (Granted, it’s better when the kids are impoverished and brown--cause then you can really hold your head up high at dinner parties and art openings--but well-tended liberals are better than nothing.)

Take, for instance, the current topic of the papers I am grading. They are for a film course that combines philosophy and psychology (only at Diversity U!), and has students quoting Freud, Nietzsche, and other scholars as they discuss memory and identity in melodrama. Reading 4 pages that manage to analyze the acting chops of Bette Davis and Freud’s definition of melancholy is nothing short of brilliant. However, when I saw that one of the paper topics asked students to comment on the differences between males and females, my eyes perked up with excitement. Here’s the intro to one paper:

"It is not uncommon for men to be baffled by the amount that women seem to ‘obsess’ over details and events, analyzing every word of a conversation that was had a week ago. Beyond this everyday difference and constant source of fighting between the sexes, there is the fact that women are forced to remember, while men are allowed to forget. This is due to cultural expectations and physical realities that have always existed and will always exist, and can be seen clearly in __________ and __________."


Does this student read my blog? How do they have such a firm grasp on female “obsession” and analysis of conversations that were “had a week ago”? The idea of women being forced to remember and men being allowed to forget is the crux of the essay, for in melodramatic films, male characters get to be playboys—or suffer from amnesia—while women always have to remember the magical night, the failed romance, or….THE KID THAT THEY GAVE BIRTH TO.

Reading these essays, I wondered if this was the key to the differences between the sexes: why do I freak out over a random dude not calling me after a few dates? Why do I replay our conversations in my head on loop, wondering what I said that was “too much,” while he skips happily along, going on auditions and playing magic cards—wait, I mean, doing whatever else he does ‘cause I’m not still into Magic-card Guy anyway.

I digress.

Is the reason for my obsession biological? Is it because any physical union with a man could result in our love-, dislike-, or drunken-boredom-child? My DNA says that it’s in my best interest to remember a potential baby daddy, if not for the future health of my offspring, but for the sheer need to avoid appearing on Jerry Springer or Maury Povich.

The student then went on to explain how easy it is for men to forget, and how the display of emotion common in females is not seen as a male virtue:

"though there are some cultures that are more accepting of male emotion than American culture, it is a present factor in every culture to some extent, tracing back to the fact that the male cavemen hunted for food while the women picked berries and tended to the cave and children."

(I kid you not. This is a real excerpt from a college student’s paper. A student whose parents and/or the government pay $40,000 per year for him/her to learn and write such papers.)

That is so true!!! I mean, have you seen the Geico commercials? Those cave dudes are always hunting for food and fun. Where are cavewomen on our television screens? They are off picking berries and tending to the cave and cavechildren!!!! From the beginning of time, women have had to remember everything that goes down cause men have been too busy hunting and flirting with cave-tramps. And now, in the 21st century, instead of hunting (which may be an actually legitimate excuse, since it was key to survival), all a dude has to say is that “shit’s been crazy” with them, leaving it up to you to remember when their mother’s birthday is, or when they get out of class so you can casually bump into them, or when you took your birth control pill so that you don’t end up at PPNYC.

Men are allowed to forget, and women are forced to remember.

In case you were wondering, I gave the above student an A+++ and told them to call me.