Dear Mr. President, I'll Never Ask You to Dance a Jig For Me

Someone tell Fort Worth, Texas resident Jennifer Wedel that this...

...is not the President of the United States.

Today during President Obama's pretty cool Google+ hangout where he took questions from the public, Wedel had the chance to ask whatever less-serious--not on education, the economy, or the war--question she wanted. She had the nerve to say, "I was wondering if you could stand up and give us a little jig real quick." 

Where was the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey to give Wedel THE LOOK when we needed her?

I know Obama is half Irish and all but seriously, who in their right mind would ask the president of the most powerful nation in the free world to stand up and dance a jig? 

But it gets worse. After he kindly demurred, explaining that Mrs. Obama generally makes fun of his dancing--nope, not all black folks can dance--but that he does sing every once in awhile--which we know from his well-done Al Green verse at The Apollo a week and a half ago--Wedel INTERRUPTED him to ask that he "sing for us." 

I choked on my Earl Grey.

Was it racism? There is certainly a history in this nation of black Americans, no matter their accomplishments, being reduced by white people into a stereotype of shucking and jiving performers. Given that the disrespect shown to this president is already to the point that other politicians think they can point fingers all up in his face--something that is unprecedented in American history--the questions do take on a racist connotation, even if that was not Wedel's conscious intent.

Her questions were also evidence of poor manners and an overly familiar demeanor. People nowadays don't "get" that just because a prominent figure is being casual with you via a social media channel, that doesn't mean you turn around and get all homies unidos with him. Mr. Obama and I are undeniably equals in the sight of God, but I can still give him the respect his role requires. I mean, this wasn't a chat with some X-Factor contestants or the cast of Glee and she should've had the sense to realize the difference.  

What really gets me is that Wedel asked those questions after the president told her to send her unemployed husband's resume to him. Heck, if the POTUS offered me that, you'd best believe I'd have better sense than to ask to ask him to dance or sing for me.

Everybody Wants to See a Nearly Naked Man at the End of a 24-Mile Run, Right?

Imagine you're putting in the last steps of a grueling 24 mile run and as you reach the top of the hill at the Santa Monica Pier, you see the brotha above with his, er, snakes on display. I mean, does the recession have folks so desperate for dollars that they're willing to stand on a stool and pretend to be--I don't even know what to call that outfit...African stereotype?--complete with animal print skivvies and a couple of dollar store rubber snakes in the hopes that tourists will toss some cash into a can?

And yes he did turn around and wiggle his, uh, animal print jock strap front--for real, it was a jock strap-- in my direction. I was SO wishing I had my girl Diane's new t-shirt to fling at him.

Anyway, it's only 50 days till the Los Angeles Marathon which means that lately I've been putting in major training miles. Today's run was just 2.2 miles shy of a full marathon distance. I know some marathon training programs only have folks running 18 or 20 miles before race day, but my running club, the L.A. Leggers, runs a 20, 22, 24, and a 26 milers before easing up a bit (runners call it tapering) in the month before race day. That way you get multiple chances to figure out how to get yourself through the last section of the race.

No matter how many times I've run the kind of distance I did today, it's still no joke. It was so hot out there (thanks, January heat wave) and the air was so dry (thanks, Santa Ana winds) that I had plenty of time to psyche myself up by repeating endless you-can-do-it messages so that I could keep putting one foot in front of the other and actually get back to my car. 

Seriously, I'm just an average person. I don't have superhuman powers that make me able to run 24 miles. I'm not a morning person either so me hauling myself out of bed at 5 a.m. on a Saturday morning after going to bed at 2 a.m. to go run long distances does not put a smile on my face. But it's all mental at this point.

Someone recently asked me why I post twitter and Facebook updates during my run--they wondered if it's distracting and if I'm not fully enjoying the running experience. One, I like to post about running because I think anybody can be a marathoner if they put the work in.

Two, if I tell the world I'm running 24 miles today, what am I going to do, turn around and only do 18 because I feel tired or my knee hurts? It's just not my personality. I like to be able to do what I say I'm going to do. Sometimes it doesn't work out because I don't have a clone and I have a tough time saying no to people. But with running, which is pretty much the only good/selfish thing I do for myself, I have to make it work.

You know what else works? Some hype tracks to put the bounce in the ounce really help make the hours spent running pass more quickly. I rocked this mix by Sander Van Doorn and this one by Dave Dresden, along with the latest podcasts by Dada Life. But that last mile and a half, I pulled out my you-are-almost-done-so-crank-it jams.

1. "Stars Come Out" by Zedd: This track is just bubbly electro perfection and it ALWAYS helps me pick up my pace. That's why I save it till the end:


2. "What Happens in Vegas" by Chuckie: Hands down one of the HOTTEST songs of the past year. I tend to really zone out to this track and so sometimes, I run the last mile just listening to this on repeat over and over:
 
3. "Sofi Needs a Ladder" by DeadMau5: I trucked the last half mile to this today. The first minute and a half is just genius. And when she starts singing "drop you like a needle on the record/watch you walk in circles hit the beat..." LOVE that.
Yeah, I was feeling all good, rocking my Deadmau5 and then I come up the hill and see homie standing nearly naked on that stool. I'd been concentrating so hard on finishing strong that I guess the stars decided I needed a little LA-style ridiculousness at the end.

The Conversation of 11-Year-Old Boys: Bin Laden, 9/11 Conspiracies, Aliens, and Hiroshima

Think that 11-year-old boys are only wrapped up in pop culture and video games?

Spend some time with Mr. O and his friends and sure, you'll hear a bit about how much they despise Justin Bieber and how Batman Arkham Asylum is a great video game. But they're also discussing real issues with a curiosity and fervor missing from the conversation of many adults.

On Saturday afternoon Mr. O had his birthday party, and as I drove down the 101 Freeway with him and two of his best friends tucked into the backseat, I had the chance to overhear what the next generation is really thinking about.

1. Do people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki still feel the environmental effects of the atomic bombs? They say there's no way all that radiation is gone, and they wonder if they'd be able to survive a nuclear attack on Los Angeles.

2. What would it be like to grow up in either city, knowing you're walking where so many people died? Mr. O believes the spirits can still be felt and he wonders if ghosts hunters have ever visited.

3. Did George Bush know 9/11 was going to happen? They were quite divided on this and ended up deciding that Bush did not know, but other government officials probably did.

4. Was the way the U.S. military took out Osama bin Laden justified? They all believe he was a punk for hiding behind his wives and believe he should have been brought to trial or else put in the hands of the people "so they could do to him what the Libyans did to Gaddafi."

5. Yes, there are aliens! They're plotting how they can be the ones to bust into Area 51.

I'm so glad they're not shallow one-dimensional kids. I hope they don't lose this when they go to middle school next year.

OK, it wasn't all serious...there was some pop culture involved. One boy saw all my Depeche Mode stuff up in our house and started waxing poetic about how much he loves them. Seriously, that kid can come over to our house anytime!

Did Your King Day Celebration Have a Gentleman Biker in Head to Toe Pink?

Yesterday the family and I went to the 25th annual Kingdom Day Parade--and while there were celebrations and parades all across the country, I know nowhere else had a lowrider bike club in the house.

I would also bet big money that no other city had a gentleman rocking head to toe pink while cruising down the parade route. Can the church say fresh to death?

Seriously, when I grow up, I want to be him. Although, as Mr. T pointed out to me, that might be difficult to do literally since "You're a girl, and he's a boy, and you don't have a penis."

Mr. T and Mr. O both enjoyed the parade and loved seeing all the bands, and all the people who came out to march for what Dr. King demanded: jobs, justice, and peace.

We cheered the most for the many hardworking activists who refuse to stop working for equality.

Post parade I found myself thinking about how despite Los Angeles' long legacy of social activism, what gets most promoted about this city in the media is gang violence. There's more to this city than that, though, and it was nice to see it on proudly on display.

Throwback Thursday: Def Leppard and Riding a Bus to a Desegregated School

This morning I was stuck in hellish traffic and I found myself flipping through the radio stations, trying to find something good to listen to. I stopped the dial when I got to Def Leppard's rock classic "Photograph".



As the traffic inched down the freeway, I sang along at the top of my lungs with the lyrics I still know by heart nearly 30 years later. It's one of those songs that is on the soundtrack of my high school experience.

My high school was desegregated by busing two years before I got there. Kids from my mostly black, blue collar and middle class nieighborhood were bused out to a school in a predominantly white, well off area. My cousin was in that first class of black kids who were bused in, and he told me the tales of how he'd head to school, ready to learn, and see "go home n#%*%@'s" scrawled on doors and desks. Then he would get on the bus at the end of the day, with bus drivers who usually thought that kids from our side of town were nothing.

When I was a freshman, Def Leppard ruled top 40 radio and many of the white students at my school loved them--or at least acted like they did. But most of the black kids didn't listen to Def Leppard. And that style of music--the whole rock/hair metal/glam band scene became just another example of how we didn't fit in.

Once a student asked our bus driver to change the radio station to something more R&B or hip hop oriented like most of the kids on the bus wanted to hear. We were told that the music wasn't appropriate for a bus ride.

It made us mad that the drivers would never mix it up and play something new. They acted like every hip hop group was NWA. And so, as much as Def Leppard absolutely rocked, I started to hate them. I hated what our bus driver made them stand for: A white rock group was acceptable and seen as normal but stations that played black artists--R&B or hip hop--weren't.

Four years later at the end of my high school career, Def Leppard was still insanely popular, but danceable tracks from Jody Watley, C&C Music Factory, Bobby Brown, and Bell Biv Devoe had all become hits--and a black guy bused in to desegregate the school became the homecoming king.

Nowadays I will crank up some Def Leppard, but as much as I can belt out their hits, I've never forgotten how they became this strange symbol of the racial tensions in my high school and town.

On the Sixth Anniversary of My Brother's Suicide

Six years ago yesterday, my brother ended his life.

I made it through most of the morning without crying, but then I decided to send my parents flowers. The florist asking me what I wanted the accompanying message to say eroded my stoic facade. I started crying on the phone, and she admitted to me, "Gosh, you're making me cry, too."

Later on I felt guilty for crying, for still being so heartbroken six years on. It isn't that I have years and years of wonderful memories from the time spent with him. He was, sadly, caught in the cycle of addiction and incarceration that too many people end up in, and so he missed out on most of the births, deaths, graduations, and weddings in my family. Sometimes I wonder if that's what makes it so hard--when I think of his life there is a great deal of sadness and pain, and so it can't serve as a counter to the tragedy of his suicide.

When he killed himself, I hadn't seen him in a decade. The 18-year-old photo above is the last one that we would take together. He refused to come say hello when I was visiting over the holidays in December 2005, and I came back to Los Angeles only a few days before he made the irrevocable decision to put a gun to his head.

Six years on, I still think every day about going to see his body. It is a gruesome image that is forever seared into my memory, and this is what I wrote about it then:

"We stood to the side of the stretcher and Mr. O'Neal, the funeral director pulled the sheet down to uncover the face and neck. I haven't seen my brother since 1996 and there was such a sense of time stopping. I was, in that moment, unaware of anyone else in the room. I found myself focusing on his hair...shorter than I'd ever seen it, slightly graying around the temples. His closed eyes were beginning to sink into their sockets. I could see the back of his head, misshapen now, and all of the huge threads where it had been sewn shut again. I will never forget that. No book I read, no song I listen to, no story I ever write will take away the image of those huge threads."

When I wrote that six years ago, I didn't really know how true those words would prove to be. That memory comes to me at the most random times. I'll be in a craft store and I'll see threads that remind me of the threads in his head. Someone tells a story about visiting her brother, and it will come to me. Or sometimes I'll just be sitting in LA traffic, waiting for the car in front of me to move, and there it is...and so I turn up the music a little louder, trying to drown it out.

I know it shocks some people that I am so honest about all this but over the years, I've learned that this is a common tale in modern American life. I know this because too many people have written to me saying that they too lost someone who took his life because they were in such mental, emotional, and spiritual pain that whatever hell might be on the other side must've to be better than continuing to exist in this world.

I don't believe that the soul of someone who commits suicide burns forever. I believe death is just the start of something that we, with our limited focus on the physical and material, can't fully begin to grasp. And now my brother's soul has a fresh start and can continue to grow and develop.

Indeed, when I think about how much my life has changed over the past six years, I wonder how much his has changed, too. I like to pray for him and imagine his hopes and dreams blossoming in ways that I can't even imagine, his spiritual capacity expanded beyond my limited comprehension. When I think of that, that brings some measure of peace. Some sense of acceptance.

But for now, my feelings are raw, and so I will let myself cry for him, and for all that could have been.

5 Things I Learned About Blah People This Week

It’s an eternal truth that politicians lie. This week we found out that modern politicians like presidential candidate Rick Santorum lie about what they’ve said even when there’s video footage to contradict the lie.

Thanks to Santorum we know that it's possible to dogwhistle to a mostly white crowd of Iowans by saying "I don't want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money." Then, when you're called on your racism, you can have the audacity to go on Bill O’Reilly’s talk show and say, "and I didn't say that. If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of—blah—came out. And people said I said black. I didn't."

Blah people. Gosh, it turns out that this week I learned a LOT about blah people. For example:


1. Weight Loss Companies Like to Hire Blah People: Jennifer Hudson and Charles Barkley for Weight Watchers, Mariah for Jenny Craig, and Janet Jackson for NutriSystem.  Blah celebrities are getting PAID to sell losing the chub and getting fit. So why do some folks give our blah First Lady Michelle Obama a hard time for promoting getting fit through exercise and eating right--for free? Oh wait, is it because she's blah?

2. Blah Teenagers Born in the U.S. Can Get Deported to Columbia: Texas teen Jakadrien Turner ran away from home at the age of 13. She was arrested for shoplifting a year later, gave a false name to police--yes, there was drama back home and she probably didn't want to go back to her parents--and ICE deported her, even though she spoke zero Spanish. Turner is now 15 and, thanks to Facebook, she was found by her grandmother--working as a maid and pregnant. Yes, our blah president, Barack Obama, has been informed that someone effed up.

3. Blah Girls Are Experts At Articulating Racism: Comedienne Franchesca Ramsey was my heroine this week with on-point her "Shit White Girls Say...to Blah Girls" video. I have had almost every one of these things said to me, especially the part about suntans and "twins" and ALL the hair crap. It went viral--over 2 million views in just a few days--because it's such smart commentary and it's hilarious. I keep watching it to make myself laugh.

4. More White Iowans Are On Welfare Than Blah Iowans: Really, less than 10 percent of welfare recipients in Iowa are blah. That means over 90 percent are NOT blah. Hmm. I guess hard facts aren't important to politicians. Not when it comes to blah people.

5. Blah People Aren't Sitting Back And Twiddling Their Thumbs Over Rick Santorum: No, modern blah folks will rake a fool like that over the coals, mocking him with tweets like "I'm not racist. Some of my best friends are blah." I saw variations of that one so many times I can't give credit to just one person.

How Santorum didn't get laughed out of the country with that crap, I'll never know. Oh wait, he's not blah, is he?