It Was Time For A New Look

Instead of chopping off all my hair last night, I changed my blog.

If this is your first time here, you have no idea how this space used to look. But if you're returning to my fine and dandy piece of real estate on Blog Planet, for a second there, you may have wondered if you'd clicked on the correct link.

Looks different, doesn't it? And if all you see is a bunch of yellow, that's one of the glitches I have to work out. It's not supposed to look like that!

Change is a scary thing sometimes, but it was just time to put the lighthouse template out of it's misery. I was chatting online with one of my friends a few hours ago and ran an initial "test" of this template past him. He totally called it when he said that the "lighthouse" template was never really me. And truly, I only picked it because it seemed less "ugly" than many of the other ones offered by Blogger when I started this space three years ago.

But this one, these colors, if you come to my house, these are the colors you'll see.

I'll confess, I had a lot of anxiety about changing this spot, not the least of which was a fear that my entire blog would disappear. That fear is no joke, no matter how many times I have this whole thing backed up. So for the past week, I've been doing a whole lot of reading and researching about templates and how to customize them. I know only the most basic HTML, like how to strikethru or bold something, and besides, Blogger Beta is in XML so it's a little bit more challenging to figure out what's what.

I got my feet wet by changing the template on my other blog, the sadly neglected Reading and Listening. When that one didn't completely fall apart, I made a brand new "test" blog to try out this template and experiment with the colors and fonts. The test blog was successful, but I still wasn't completely ready to take the leap. You see, when you switch templates, you lose all your widgets and links. I have a whole lot of you in my link list, and along with all the other tweaking I need to do (because it's still doing weird glitchy things), guess what I get to re-type today?

Uh huh! All the links to your blogs.

Anyway, are you bored yet with all this technical talk?

Yeah, me too. So if you're dying for something more interesting to read other than the play-by-play of changing my blog, head over to Anti-Racist Parent and read the article I wrote for them. It's called "Explaining Michael Jackson". Go check it out but don't go stalking me just because you now know about my last name.

Oh, and I'm only slightly kidding about the hair thing. I had the scissors in hand!

Tell Me Chris: Is it "Nappy AND Pretty?" or "Nappy OR Pretty?"

It's almost midnight and for the past hour, I've been busy writing and listening to an online radio station. They just played Chris Brown's "Kiss Kiss" song and hearing it again got me thinking again about something that started bugging me a week ago.

First off, I tend to like Chris Brown. I think he a very talented dancer and an alright singer. But, despite the comparisons, and his own imitation, he's no Michael Jackson. I was watching when Michael Jackson performed "Billie Jean" on Motown 25 and Michael's dancing was effortless. Michael debuted the "Moonwalk" on that show and it was just fantastic. It looked deceptively simple but it was hard to do.

Chris Brown is not effortless in his performance. His dance moves scream out, "I am hard to do and your old ass ain't cuttin' it." But, Chris has had a string of hits and "Kiss Kiss" is just the latest one. I think it was the number one song in the United States a couple of weeks ago so it's very popular. The song is catchy, danceable and it features flavor-of-the-year, T-Pain. If you haven't heard it, here it is:



Yes, the video has a few of the usual idiotic depictions of women (what's with ogling women's behinds like that?), but indeed, there's some great dancing in it as well.

So, what's my problem? Well, last week I was jumping rope to "Kiss Kiss" and it hit me that I was sort of bothered by the lyrics at the end of the song. Not that any of the lyrics offer anything profound, but the final lines really made me pause.

Chris sings the following a few times: "nappy boy and pretty boy". In the video, it's pretty clear that T-Pain is the "nappy" boy and Chris Brown is the "pretty" boy.

The way they sing it, the listener could infer that you are either nappy OR pretty. To me, nappy, natural African hair is a beautiful thing. But Chris Brown has his hair cut so low he might as well be bald. So is that why he's the pretty boy? Or is Chris Brown the pretty boy because he's lighter skinned than T-Pain?

I thought I might be reading too much into this so I called my sister and she agreed that she was also bothered by the nappy/pretty juxtaposition. Again though, maybe I'm just reading into this. Maybe Chris Brown really means that he is both nappy and pretty, and so, cough, is T-Pain.

What do you think?

And, by the way, who the heck calls themselves "pretty boy"? Michael Jackson has done some off the wall things over the years. But at the height of his female fan girl insanity, back when folks had posters of him on their walls and buttons with his face pinned on their jean jackets, Michael surely never called himself "pretty boy".

Michael Jackson: Obsession Of A New Generation

My kids have a little Michael Jackson obsession going on.

How did this all happen? Well, remember the days when MTV actually played videos around the clock and you could sit there and tape those videos onto a VHS tape? My husband was one of those folks that did that. So he has every single Michael Jackson video and lots of footage from award show performances. Long ago when he was working in a media services office, he dubbed all this footage onto one tape. Now he's converted them to DVD and my sons constantly want to watch it.

My three year-old, Toussaint, is concerned about the state of Michael Jackson's bladder. "Michael Jackson doesn't wear pull-ups."

My six year-old, Olinga, is concerned about Michael's skin. "Why can't the doctors fix him and make him black again? He doesn't look so healthy with that white skin. He should go to Dr. Yazdani." Olinga has so much faith in his pediatrician that he doesn't believe me when I tell him that Dr. Yazdani can't fix Michael's skin.

They both have fashion suggestions for Michael. "Michael Jackson needs a Power Ranger shirt to go with his red jacket."

There are also regular reenactments of the dancing/fight scene from the "Beat It" video.

This fun and exciting game usually starts with Olinga saying, "Hey, Toussaint, let's play "Beat It"!"

They debate over who's going to get to be Michael Jackson and who's going to be the bad guy. Then they jump around singing the chorus, which they believe to be, "Beat it! Beat it! No one wants to be the meat hit!"

The latest request? They want me to get some rope. Why do they need rope?

"Hey Mommy, can you tie our hands together like they do in the video?"

Olinga also loves the dancing in the video for Billie Jean. But now when we walk to the park I get asked, "Why doesn't the sidewalk light up for me like it does for Michael Jackson?"

The (thankfully, almost out) Griffith Park fire? According to my youngest, "Michael Jackson started those fires, Mommy."

"Why do you think Michael Jackson started the fire?" I asked, even though I was a little afraid of his answer.

"Because Olinga said so."

Okay. So, of course I had to ask Olinga if he said this. "Olinga, did you tell Toussaint that Michael Jackson started the fire?"

Olinga's mouth fell open and from the look on his face, you would have thought it was the end of the world. He was absolutely horrified! "Michael Jackson started the fires? Oh my God!!!"

He then jumped off the couch and ran to tell my husband, "Daddy! Mommy said Michael Jackson started the fire!"

It took five minutes for me to convince everyone that I didn't say it. Who knows how this got in my youngest son's head. He continued to say that his brother told him this.

At least he didn't tell me, "Michael told me when I was sitting on his lap."