Sometimes, when I’m blowing a white guy, you know, for the entire time his dick is in my mouth, I totally forget he’s white!!!! ;) Kidding of course — about forgetting, not about going down on white guys. I actually do that. It’s fun. Anyway. An oldie but goodie from fellow New Yorker Elon James White’s This Week in Blackness. He’s funny! :) And, ooh, ooh, ooh, two thumbs up for the Big Bird jacket.
From the monthly archives:
January 2010
Finally, sunshine! It’s been raining in New York for the past few days. I miss summer. Last week, via Twitter, I stumbled across a tweet referencing Funky Brown Chick. Although the site attached to Molly Muffin‘s Twitter looks like a spamblog, they linked to the YouTube clip below. It was nice to see a video shot during a time when I traipsed around Midtown with bare arms, only concerning myself with hanging out in the sunshine with my friend Rachel. Sprinkles fell from my cupcake, not the sky. The official start of Spring 2010 is March 20th. Can’t get here fast enough.
On a different note, I haven’t updated in a while because I’ve been going out a bunch. When the sun is hidden behind grey clouds and the mercury level on the thermostat drops, my natural tendency is to eat comfort food and hibernate in my apartment. This year, I’m determined to brave the cold and stay active during winter months. So, as always, in between Funky Brown Chick posts, you can keep up with me on Twitter and Foursquare.
On a good day, upwards of 3,000+ people visit this site. Funky Brown Chick isn’t huge. It isn’t extremely tiny either. But, enough about me and my site. A bit on Haiti. I’ve given up on closely following the news about the series of earthquakes and aftershocks; It’s too heartbreaking to repeatedly look at the pictures and watch videos. That said, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in (or haven’t donated to) the Haitian people’s struggle. And, sooooo, because today is a special day, here’s my birthday request: If you are able and you feel moved to do so, please make a donation to YELE, Red Cross, Partners in Health or one of the other humanitarian organizations. If every FBC reader gave only $1 today, collectively, that would be a nice little chunk. But, here’s the thing … I’m kind of “over” fashionably loudmouthed Haiti supporters. So, whether or not you choose to give today, feel free to make it your own little secret if you’d like :)
I have a story for you. By now, you’ve probably heard the U.S. has a black president, right? :) During the 2008 election campaign, A Peach-Skinned Guy Friend Who Shall Remain Nameless (APSGWSRN) gave me shit because I didn’t originally contribute to APSGWSRN’s fundraiser or go to a lot of the events he arranged.
HIM: “I really expected you to be there. Obama would be our first African-American president. This would be really historic.”
By way of context/background … APSGWSRN comes from privilege. Elite boarding school. Ivy League. Etc. I was proud of his volunteering/service to Obama. That said, I didn’t appreciate him spoon-feeding me guilt about not being as (visibly) active as he was. Just because I didn’t specifically contribute to APSGWSRN’s cause doesn’t mean I didn’t contribute to the cause. Plus, I thought, but didn’t say, “By the way, where were you in 2004?” Because, you know what? Even back then, Obama was still black. And, he was running for a seat in a U.S. Senate that hadn’t seen anyone who looked like him since 1999 when Carol Moseley Braun was there. However, in 2004, Obama wasn’t fashionable. Many people outside of Illinois hadn’t heard his name — nor could they pronounce it. And, it wasn’t hip to say “I volunteered for Obama” because, quite frankly, who cared. Yet, had Obama not won the Illinois seat, he wouldn’t be APSGWSRN’s president right now.
Same with Haiti. The country was poor and in need of help before the earthquake … and still needs help. Sometimes, it’s not about putting your money where your mouth is. It’s about shutting your mouth, and putting your money where your heart is.
Hope you all enjoyed a lovely MLK holiday! (I went to WNYC’s MLK: Generations Speak.) Speaking of Things That Happened During the Weekend, did you catch the Golden Globe Awards? Hollywood Foreign Press gave a lifetime achievement nod (the Cecil B. DeMille Award) to Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro in presenting the honor: “Marty sleeps, drinks and eats film. I hear there are videos on the Internet of Marty having sex with film.” Ah, sex tapes. How àpropos! Recently, over Sunday night nibbles with three pals, I asked: “Have any of you ever taken nude photos of yourself or made a sex tape?” To my surprise, all three said “no.” I believe them … I just felt a little awkward being alone in the group. Granted, I’ve never made a full blown sex tape; that said, I’ve watched plenty & I’ve slapped my nude-but-not-visible videos on YouTube as well as bra/boobie shots. Plus, if you read Funky Brown Chick during the early years, you know I used to regularly post pics of my bare brown flesh in undies. I don’t think there’s anything inherently shameful, naughty or indecent about nude bodies.
On a related note, watch the above “Lemme See (Your Dick Pics) video by Carolyn Castiglia, Shawn Hollenbach and Soce The Elemental Wizard. (Pssst! You might recognize the latter from Jen Kwok‘s Date An Asian Man.) Okay, so, curious to know how many people have privately taken dick pics / boob shots or other bare flashes, via my Twitter, I asked the internet: “What percentage of people have made sex tapes or taken nude photos?” One of the immediate replies: “I don’t know numbers, but I think it’s a much bigger % than people would expect.” I agree. So, now I’ll ask you: Have you taken nude pics of yourself or any of your lovers? Have you ever made a sex tape? The comments section awaits your stories.
Don’t agree with the gendered “biological nature” stuff. For example, in discussing what men and women want, they mention: SHE may want to bask in the afterglow of your special time together by expressing her hopes and dreams of your future together. I don’t know about you, but I’m much more likely to fall into a deep, coma-like sleep after sex. Mouth open. Snoring. A trail of drool lovingly linking my mouth to the dude’s chest. Anyway. Enjoy the video!
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PS: Posting something happy today to lift spirits / mood a bit. Like everyone, I’ve been keeping up with Haiti. Very sad :( You probably already know this, but you can help via Partners in Health or by texting “Haiti” to 90999 or other means.
If you visit this site on a regular basis, you may know we usually celebrate “Manly Monday” at the top of each week by giving a nod to something/someone manly. Yesterday was an anomaly; I posted an update to let you know why I went MIA. So, getting back on schedule, today’s pick is kind of a “Testicle Tuesday.”
I recently discovered Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement address on Ted. I knew he was co-founder of Apple and former CEO of Pixar, but I didn’t know his background. Abandoned by his biological mother, he was raised by a working class woman who didn’t finish college and a high school dropout father. To quote Barry Switzer, some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. That hardly sounds like Jobs’ story. To be sure, he has a level a privilege. At the same time, based on his words, I get the impression he didn’t have much handed to him very easily in life. In my mind, his success is therefore all the more inspiring. Watch the clip. Particularly, I’m interested in what he says about following your passions.
“You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future,” Jobs says in the video clip above. “You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart — even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And, that will make all the difference.”
Easier said than done. I often feel awkward when I talk to people with EXTREMELY linear career paths. You know the type: John Doe majored in XX, took an entry-level job in XX and is now the VP of XX at XX, Inc. They seem so put together as they march from A to B to C.
I’ve followed my intuition and made what I thought were “good decisions” with whatever limited amount of information I had. At times, I didn’t succeed at things I wished I had. In other instances, I’ve experienced successes at points I expected failure. Hardly a linear career path, I’ve taken high school students on educational excursions to Greece to learn about Homer, worked as a bartender in London, managed a film program where Roger Ebert taught, completed a stint at an American Embassy abroad and done other things simply because I thought they’d be interesting. It’s as if I go through life marching from Point A to B to π (3.14159…) to Q to 72. It’s all a learning process, and I’ve collected an expansive and eclectic skill set along the way. For example, I don’t know if I would’ve had the courage to stick in out in New York if I hadn’t survived living in London on my own. I’m not sure I would’ve felt comfortable pouring my private life into a memoir if I didn’t already have 5+ years doing it on Funky Brown Chick and elsewhere. It’s like that line in Desiderata, “[W]hether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” I instinctively know that, but sometimes it’s good to hear it again. So, thank you TED (and Steve Jobs) for the reminder.
I’m here! Sorry for the post-free days. As many of you know, for the past two years, I’ve been working on my first book. I finished a 280+ page early draft ages ago, and I’ve been editing it ever since. I hoped to be completely finished by the end of the summer or, at the latest, end of 2009. However, the project took a different turn. I killed two chapters I’d already written and created new ones that were more fully developed and gave the book a stronger arch. God, I’ve learned a lot over the past 24 months of working on this thing. In writing a memoir, there are so many different ways to re-tell the story. For example, take today. Thus far, I:
- Woke at 7:00 a.m. to the sound of a rooster crowing (my cellphone’s alarm clock ringtone). I don’t usually use an alarm but I did today because I stayed up late last night and I worried I’d oversleep.
- Read morning news online — BBC News and New York Times.
- Checked Twitter, Facebook and my blog.
- Showered, brushed my teeth, put on lotion, dressed and left the house.
- Logged 20 blocks (1 mile) for my daily morning walk.
- Ate Cheerios for breakfast.
No one wants to read a laundry list of “I did this, then I did this, then I did this.” So, if I was writing a story about of my morning, it would read very differently based on the theme. If I was writing about being a native Illinoisan living in Manhattan, I’d focus on the fact that I use a rooster’s crow as my alarm, and I’d describe how different it feels to walk a mile surrounded by skyscrapers instead of cornfields. What I ate for breakfast wouldn’t matter so much, and I’d leave that out of the story. If I was writing about healthy living, I’d focus on the fact that my morning beauty products and toothpaste are made of all-natural and organic materials. I’d talk about the importance of diet (eating Cheerios instead of fried eggs and bacon) and exercise (walking a mile every day). In that story, the fact that my alarm clock is a rooster’s crow wouldn’t really matter and I’d leave that out of the story. Either version could re-tell what happened to me today. But, the specific details included in the story depends the larger “theme.”
So, that’s what I’ve been working on with the book — figuring out which details of my life should be included and which ones shouldn’t. The other thing I’ve been doing is: editing. Now that the story is more fleshed out, I have to make it more readable. As an example of editing, check out this sentence on Nicolas Cage’s Wikipedia page:
“Despite these successes, most of his lower-profile films have performed poorly at the box office compared to his mainstream action/adventure roles.”
For clarity and to ease the read, the sentence could be edited as follows:
“Despite mainstream successes in action/adventure roles, many of Cage’s lower-profile films have delivered poor box office results.”
I’m not editing Cage’s wiki, but I am editing my book line by line to make it a clearer read. So, yeah, that’s the book update. At present, it looks like I’ll be finished by the end of this month. In fact, though (thankfully!) I’ve already been approached, this is the very reason I haven’t signed with an agent yet. Until I’ve written the whole thing, I didn’t really know: (1) what the book would be or (2) when I would finish it. I’ve contributed chapters to others’ books, written articles and completed other creative projects, but this is my first book. It’s nice to finish it on my own time and without the pressure of outside deadlines.
What’s next? Starting in February, the next step will be to pitch agents. Once I’ve found the right one, they’ll pitch the book to publishers. Once it’s found a publishing home, it will be printed and ready for bookshelves. Of course, there are no guarantees. So, my fingers will be crossed throughout the whole thing. And, of course, it’s an ongoing process. (Once I have an agent and publisher attached to the project, they’ll likely request additional edits, changes and others things.) For now, I’m just really happy about the progress I’ve made thus far. Okay, so, this was totally a long, disjointed post, but I wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to on the writing front. I’ll be back to updating Funky Brown Chick on a regular basis now. Expect more sex, dating and relationships posts this week! :)
Big thank you to the ever-lovely Nick McGlynn and his co-organizers for
renting Times Square Art Center‘s loft space for last night’s New Year’s Eve bash. Partied with 400+ people overlooking tourists awaiting the ball drop. See photos at Random Night Out.
