Finally uploaded clips from the other weekend. Click to load video: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=498965809467. It’s 24 hrs of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in less than 5 mins. Waking at 4 am. Crowding with Arianna Huffington’s 10,000+ folks at Citi Field. Riding a packed bus 5 hours from NYC to DC. Scrambling on DC’s subways to get from RFK Stadium to the rally. “Seeing” Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in the distance. Partying with friends & hanging on the roof.
I hope I don’t oversleep. I’m supposed to wake at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow to roll out of Manhattan on The Huffington Post‘s pre-dawn party bus to DC. I’m going to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or March to Keep Fear Alive. Yay Stephen Colbert! (Watch him tell congress he doesn’t want his fruits and veggies picked by Mexicans, or buy his book I Am America (And So Can You!).) Yay Jon Stewart! (View his Obama interview; buy his book Earth: A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race). For those of you not going to DC, I’ll take pictures, videos and post tweets of the rally to take you along. Good times to be shared by all! By the way, if any of you know of other not-be-be missed events, exhibitions or other shindigs in town during this weekend, let me know. I’ve heard about a couple Halloween costume parties, and I might attend. A friend of a guy friend is throwing a yacht party, and I’ve stopped just short of threatening him with physical harm if he doesn’t take me along ;) I’ve never been on a yacht. I’ll let you what, if anything, happens with that invite. In the meantime, since we’re talking about political stuff, here are a few reader favorites from the news & politics section of FUNKY BROWN CHICK® over the years:
Sexual predator Dharun Ravi and his pal Molly Wei really piss me off. I posted Student Who Was Secretly Filmed Having Sex Commits Suicide to Facebook. If you haven’t already joined our conversation, do it now. Reading about Tyler Clementi’s death, one of my readers asked a wider question: “How are we going to keep the cyber community a safe place for our children?” Rabidly online since coding my first website in 1995, I know we need to strengthen laws and get our courts up to speed with technology.
For a moment, pretend the internet doesn’t exist — because, quite frankly, that’s when most laws were written. I could be wrong, but I’d be hard pressed to believe Dharun would’ve placed an ad in his local newspaper, thus broadcasting his plan to create a secret porno of his unwitting roommate. Also, I don’t necessarily believe Dharun would’ve hid in the closet with an old fashion camcorder, filming his roommate so he could burn the tape to DVD, CD or VHS and distribute it. That’s not to say people haven’t done shit like that in the past. My point is this: Had Dharun Ravi done those things, people might more readily consider him a sociopathic sexual predator. Further, criminal punishment might be more stringent and the hard evidence against him would be stronger — that is, a copy of the paid, printed advertisement instead of a deleted Twitter confession. Judges and juries understand newspapers, camcorders and spying. They don’t always understand ustream, iChat and “the Twitter.”
When you strip away the bullshit, what we’re left with is this — Dharun Ravi sexually violated Tyler Clementi by forcing him to unwittingly star in gay pornography, then actively promoted and distributed the footage. I can only imagine Tyler felt raped and violated by the betrayal. Though they haven’t pulled the body from the water yet, his family and witnesses say Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. Read Virtual Homicide, Real Suicide. Dr. Keith Ablow is both right and wrong. No, technology isn’t the problem — dehumanizing another human being is. However, he’s correct when he says, “If guilty, Wei and Ravi are killers, though they will never be charged with murder.”
Let’s talk about Dan Savage’s latest project. While I appreciate what he’s done to push sex information out to the public, I disagree with his blame-black-people views on the very real problem of American homophobia. Having said that, I totally commend him for launching his deeply touching It Gets Better Project to combat LGBT teen suicides. LGBT youth are up to four to eight times more likely to consider suicide than their straight peers. In recent years, kids such as 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and 13-year-old Ryan Halligan have hanged themselves simply because their schoolmates thought they were gay. I give a damn about Tyler Clementi and LGBT youth because I write about sex for straight, gay and otherwise-oriented people. Professional terrain aside, I’m saddened whenever any child or young person kills themselves. What decent fucking human being isn’t?
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Image of GW Bridge by Mary. Excerpts of this post originally appeared as a Facebook conversation.
Shout out to Nicky for reminding me to post the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number 1-800-273-8255 as well as info about the Trevor Project for LGBTQ youth in crisis.
“I’ll be whatever you want me to be,” shrugs the broomstick-thin guy wearing glasses and a low cut shirt. Stepping away from his character in FOX’s “Lie to Me” the latest addition to Tim Roth’s filmography* is quite saucy! (Pssst, yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I said this was coming. Link up with me on either site for advance notice of posts and other stuff.)
Sexing it up in a new documentary, Brostitute with Tim Roth is distributed by Funny or Die and penetrates the “secret world of bro-on-bro non-sexual love for profit.” How can you NOT love this movie?!?! ;) I usually avoid film reviews because I like to enter theaters without any expectations. However, for this one, I made an exception. I highly recommend Tim Roth’s Pimp Hand is Strong in ‘Brostitutes’ by Cinematical‘s Alison Nastasi.
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*Of course it’s totally a spoof of bromance movies. But, I still love the idea. See Wax On, F*ck Off for something similar if you haven’t already.
Saturday, on Facebook I stumbled across the clip below and shared it on my Wall. If you watch Rachel Maddow, you’ve probably already seen this “That’s not the way the Nobel prize always works” video because it’s almost two weeks old. Of course I heard about Obama’s Nobel laureate status, but I hadn’t seen Maddow’s clip. Politics aside (i.e. whether or not you think Obama was a good pick), if you’re interested in learning more about the Nobel prizes and “Le marchand de la mort,” see Wikipedia, Biography, Time or pick up a paperback book on Alfred Nobel‘s life. Interesting guy. I wrote about Nobel a couple years ago. Head’s up, the clip below is 11 minutes long, but it’s worth watching the whole thing.
Heads up: The next Manly Monday pick — weekly Funky Brown Chick celebrations of everything with testosterone — will be the Kennedy men. Photo credit: New York Times. In the meantime, check out NYTimes’ detailed coverage of Ted Kennedy‘s passing.
h/t Jose Vilson
I’m still in DC. I’ll write about the car and the weekend when I get back to New York. In the meantime, I wanted to send your eyes over to an article over on Essence.com: Black Couple Adopts a White Daughter. It caught my attention because interracial adoption has been on a mind ever since a single white friend from college recently told me she’s adopting a black child. I’ll probably write my thoughts about interracial adoption next week. Until then, feel free to read the the full Essence story:
“[Mark and Terri Riding's] children are all healthy, normal-looking individuals, but it’s their 9-year-old adopted sister/daughter Katie O’Dea-Smith who draws all the attention.You see, the Ridings are Black and Katie is White [...] In a candid interview, ESSENCE.com spoke to the Ridings about why they adopted Katie, how they handle all the misguided attention, and how they plan to have an honest conversation about race with their White daughter.” [Continue reading.]
If you’d like to learn more about the family, you can also check out this Newsweek piece or this blogHer post.
A couple months ago, a fellow brown-skinned black woman in media casually told me black people don’t have sex. Well, technically, she said: “Your site’s not really a site about black issues.” I write about sex, dating, relationships and other stuff. My recent posts cover topics like to breed or not to breed, birth control and recommendations for top-selling dating books (including Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man). So, if talking about that stuff means my site’s “not black” that’s like saying “black sites” and “sex sites” are mutually exclusive — i.e. black people don’t have sex. No one told my vagina the news!! :)
It’s been said, “[b]lack is not just a skin color; it’s a quality of voice.” Tony Award-winning performer Sarah Jones and linguist John McWhorter talk about this topic further on PRI & WNYC’s “Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen” clip below. (Produced by Studio 360′s Derek John.)
Audio URL: http://audio.wnyc.org/studio/studio102408c.mp3
Nearly four years ago, I launched my site and named it Funky Brown Chick. I might move to a different city, switch up my profession or make other changes in my life, but three things will always stay the same. I’m always going to be funky. Before I was born, the word for people who looked like me morphed from “colored” to “black.” Lately, it’s African American. And, it likely the name will change again. Nevertheless, I’m always going to have brown skin. And, I’m always going to be “chicky.” I’ve been a funky brown chick since birth. I’ll still be a funky brown chick in the future.
No one needs to tell me I’m black because I already know that. So, here’s a wacky concept: It’s quite possible the sound of one’s voice — just as their chosen profession (e.g. sex/relationship writing) — doesn’t always clue you in about the person’s internal views about self-identity. Here’s an even MORE insane thought: Why don’t we agree all people are allowed to speak, write about topics, think and act as they please — no matter what they look like. I know, I know. It’s a downright kooky idea. Just saying.
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Hear my voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0l9Z0f4fqI
Related book: Not a Genuine Black Man: Or, How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs
