Conversations With Blacktress

Okay, I’m kind of freaking out right now. How am I just finding out today that Roger Ebert has a black wife? I’m a discredit to both my primary and secondary race – that of film scholars.
Have I been living in a cave????
I like to think that, as the world’s preeminent blacktress (“preeminent” means ‘popular among my friends,’ right?), I’ve got my finger on the pulse of American culture, especially film and television.
Apparently, if it’s not the tale of a genetic anomaly or a pregnant teen, I’m just as in the dark as my 93 ½ year old grandmother.

I give this coupling TWO THUMBS UP!

If I’d known about Ebert’s black wife, I would have certainly profiled her for BHM!!!

I think my favorite quote so far (as I scour the interwebs for news of their love), is this:

"One of the things I admire about Roger is that his ego and his intellect enjoy a challenge," she says. "He likes a woman of substance who is smart and has something to say."

In other words, Roger’s not afraid of a strong black woman!
I guess I need to start hitting up the nerdy, film-critic set to find a man who can go toe to toe with a blacktress.

This decision comes in the wake of a recent exchange I had on the streets of NYC. It was a page out of Conversations With Deb, so ridiculous that I couldn’t even believe it was happening to me. So embarrassing that I had to go home and eat a brownie right afterward. So tragic that I had to share it with you, gentle readers. Here goes:

Monday night, around 6:30pm, I'm walking down the street with my friend Danielle, talking about life.
Me: I'm never going to find a boyfriend.
Danielle (loudly): Yes you ARE!
Random Man Crossing the Street, smiling at Sojourner and Danielle: No you're not!!!

This man was not homeless. He was not visibly intoxicated. He actually kind of looked like a grown-up Harry Potter.

And yet he still knew.

Blaxploitation

I am so not feeling the plantation today. I think I’m still holding bitterness from yesterday, when I had to come in during a snowstorm even though both the massa and the overseer were out. In silent protest, I spent much of the day quietly grading film papers as part of my side hustle. For some reason, my coworker’s nit-picking and anal nature has been getting on my last nerve. He’s all “focused,” with an “attention to detail,” and “the desire to do his job.”
Ew.
I woke up yesterday and shoveled snow before coming to work. This is BHM, y’all—I should NOT be so oppressed. This is blaxploitation at its best (or worst, depending on your point of view). After reading a paper on “Point of View Shots in Aladdin” (Yes, Disney’s Aladdin.I swear, these kids never cease to amaze me), I thought I was seriously being punk’d.
I ended up leaving work early, as the pretense of productivity became too much to maintain. I at least gave my email a look-see from my home computer, just in case massa was watching me electronically.

I am so being blaxploited.
Speaking, of blaxploitation, why not celebrate BHM today with a trailer from one of my favorite blaxplotation films—BLACULA.

I own this film on VHS.
Yep, I said it.
And no, it wasn’t purchased ironically in 2008. I had to beg my mother to give me her copy back in, like, 1998, and she made a big deal out of how hard it was to find and how I better not lose it.
My family is very serious about black cinema.
You should be, too:



I think my favorite line of the trailer is “Blacula….Dracula’s soul brother”


I’d like to make a third one (oh, yes, there’s already a sequel, Scream Blacula, Scream), starring myself as Blacula’s love interest. It’ll be called:
Blacula Meets Blacktress: Black Love 4-Eva
Maybe we can get a crossover with the Twilight kids, maybe get sparkly Pattinson to have a crush on me and fight Blacula to the death for my love?

Let’s get this into production, people!

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.