blacksnextdoor

*Traduit de l’anglais par Abdoul Sow – merci Abdoul!

IF YOU DON’T READ FRENCH, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ENGLISH !

J’aimerais mentionner d’abord, qu’en ces moments d’incertitude spirituelle, je fais une des deux choses. Je lis mon Coran ou bien, je regarde un film d’Ousmane Sembène.

Comment je peux comparer les deux?

Eh bien, les films de Sembène et le Saint Coran transmettent un regard très profond de l’essence de l’être  humain.

Je comprends que l’oeuvre de Sembène n’est pas sacrée comme le Saint Coran, mais si  vous  êtes  une personne de race noire et que vous êtes en apesanteur, ce qui est souvent mon cas, rien de mieux ne  vous aidera à avoir les pieds sur terre que de regarder un film de Sembène.

J’irais jusqu’à dire, gardez un film DVD de Sembène sur une étagère de votre boîte à pharmacie  entre  le Tylenol et la bouteille de vitamine C.

Si vous pensez comme moi que tous ses films sont profonds et que vous ne savez pas lequel choisir, je vous recommenderais Mooladé.

L’intrigue: six filles s’enfuient pour échapper au rite de circoncision. Deux d’entre elles préfèrent se suicider que de subir l’opération. Les quatre autres se réfugient chez Collé Ardo, une femme qui a été gravement  mutilée lors de sa circoncision ce qui a entrainé une incapacité d’accoucher sa fille par voie vaginale  et, était obligée d’endurer les peines d’une césarienne  faite par une ouverture brutale au ventre,.

Si la fourmillière du village est un  monument au premier Roi du village, et la mosquée du village  un monument à la conversion du village à l’Islam; la cicatrice sur le ventre de Collé Ardo, dévoilée dans un début de scène quand elle soulevait sa camisole pour attacher sa pagne, est un monument à la révolution qui commence quand elle s’engage à protéger les filles qui demandent sa protection afin qu’elles ne soient pas circonscrites.

Collé Ardo n’est pas une heroïne. Elle n’est pas une autorité du village, cependant elle doit faire face aux Saldanas, une bande de femmes tyranniques  en robes rouges avec des mouchoirs de tête dont leurs couteaux tranchants ont été ordonnés par la tradition de couper les filles du village. Elles viennent chez elle pour la terroriser et l’humilier pour ne pas laisser sa fille se faire circonscrire et pour avoir  abrité les filles qui ont échappé à ce qu’elles considèrent comme une purification.

Sembène met PURIFICATION en majuscule dans les sous-titres pour nous faire comprendre  l’usage peu sincère que  les Saldanas font de ce mot. C’est un acte de violence qui viole l’espace physique le plus intime de la femme. Ce n’est pas du tout de la  “purification”, cependant le mot est un instrument comme leurs couteaux qu’elles utilisent pour se maintenir au pouvoir.

Ainsi on est ici dans un village africain idyllique avec des maisons faites en argile. Avec des femmes noires portant  du tatouage autour de leur bouches. Avec des hommes forts drapés de leur étoffe qui peuvent déchiffrer les sons des tams-tams comme des mots d’un livre. Il y a une influence arabe à la culture de ce village, c’est indéniable, mais, cependant ce sont des peuples noirs, avec leur propre tradition dans leur propre pays et qui se prennent eux-mêmes en charge, et cependant il y a quelque chose de fondamentalement corrompu dans leur mode de vie auquel Collé Ardo refuse de se plier.

Voici ce que j’aime chez Sembène. Ses personages ont en eux totalité du potential  humain, le bien et le mal, ainsi quand on  regarde un film de Sembène, les réponses aux problèmes des peuples noirs existent dans la tete noire et peuvent être résolus, à travers une réflexion interne rigoureuse.

De toute façon, je pourrais écrire un livre si je continue et je veux maintenir mon blog simple.

Pendant que  je regardais ce film, Collé Ardo m’a rappelé Obama, et  les Saldanas me font penser aux forces du statu quo dans ce pays qui essayent d’arrêter le progrès parce qu’ils sentent leur pouvoir menacé. Ils feront tout  ce qu’ils peuvent  pour nous maintenir  misérables.

Ce voyage à travers une ère Obama où nos écoles deviendront des places où nos enfants  vont  vraiment apprendre, où nous aurons un accès abordable aux soins de santé, où les riches ne seront pas les seuls  Américains  qui comptent ; commencera en fait  lorsque les gens vont défender ces choses et arrêteront de se laisser faire.

Obama a une volonté d’acier sinon il n’aurait pas pu arriver jusqu’ici, mais assez à propos d’Obama.

Si Collé Ardo n’avait pas bénéficié du soutien des autres femmes du village, les Saldanas n’auraient jamais dépose leurs couteaux.

Moolade

First I’d like to mention, in moments of spiritual uncertainty, I do one of two things. I either read my Koran or watch a film by Ousmane Sembene.

How can I compare the two?

Well, both Sembene’s cinematic stories and the Holy Koran impart deep, deep insights into the essence of what it is to be human.

I understand that Sembene’s work is not sacred while the Holy Koran is, but, if you’re black and lacking gravity, which is often the case with me, nothing will help you to get your feet on the ground better than watching a Sembene film.

I would go so far as to say, keep a Sembene DVD on a shelf in the medicine cabinet between the Tylenol and bottle of vitamin C.

If you think all his films are as profound as I do and don’t know which one to choose, I would recommend Moolade.

The plot: six girls flee their circumcision ritual. Two commit suicide rather than undergo the procedure. Four take refuge with Colle Ardo, a woman who herself was so badly mutilated during her own circumcision that she was unable to give birth to her daughter vaginally and was forced to endure the pain of a cesarian cut across her stomach.

If the village anthill is a monument to the village’s first king and the village mosque is a monument to the village’s conversion to Islam, Colle Ardo’s scarred stomach, shown in an early scene when she raises her shirt to tie her skirt, is a monument to the revolution that begins when she vows to protect the girls who ask her to save them from being cut.

Colle Ardo is no hero. She’s no village authority, yet she has to stand up to the Saldanas – a tyrannical band of women in red frocks and head scarves whose sharp knives have been ordained by tradition to cut the young girls in the village. They arrive at the door of her home to terrorize and humiliate her for not having had her own daughter cut by them as well as for harboring the girls who have escaped what they refer to as ‘purification’.

Sembene puts PURIFICATION in caps in his subtitles which makes you aware that the Saldanas usage of this word is disingenuous. This is a violent act which violates a woman’s most private physical space. It is not ‘purification’ by any description, yet the word is a tool like their knives that they use to keep themselves in power.

So here we are, in this idyllic African village of mud houses. Beautiful black women with tattoos around their  mouths.  Strong men draped in fine fabric who can read the sound of drums playing like words in a book.  There’s an Arabic influence to the culture of this village that’s undeniable but all the same, these are black people whose traditions are largely their own in their own country, in charge of themselves – and yet, there’s something inherently corrupt in their way of life that Colle Ardo refuses to submit to.

This is what I love about Sembene. His characters contain the totality of all human potential – both good and evil so that when you watch a Sembene film, you’re in a world where the answers to problems exist within the black mind and can be resolved, through rigorous reflection from within.

Anyway, I could write a book if I go on and I like to keep my blog simple.

While watching this film, Colle Ardo reminded me of Obama, and the Saldanas made me think of the forces of the status quo in this country who are trying to stop progress because they feel their power being threatened. They will do whatever they can to keep the rest of us miserable.

This journey into an Obama era where our schools become places where our kids really do learn, where we really do have affordable access to medical care – where the rich aren’t the only Americans who matter will only really begin when people stand up for these things and stop being so easily pushed around.

Obama has a spine of steel or he wouldn’t have made it this far – but enough about Obama.

If Colle Ardo had not won the support of the other women in her village, the Saldanas would never have put down their knives.

It’s been a while since I heard from Hamid but last week we were in touch quite a bit by email and phone. Hamid is an Arab friend of a friend of a friend getting his own consulting practice based in the Middle East off the ground, trying to identify a candidate to oversee some kind of water treatment project over there on a temp basis.

I didn’t understand why he didn’t think he could find someone with the sought after skill set locally but he insisted the ideal recruit was going to come in from the US or Canada. As per a contract we created together, I would assist in the search.  If the government agency he was consulting for – and I am not saying exactly what Middle Eastern government this is for many reasons — chose to hire someone I referred, I’d make a fee.

My inbox filled up fairly quickly with resumes from a series of highly qualified Pakistani engineers.  After forwarding their paper work on to Hamed – or Dr. Mostafa as he likes to be called and getting little or no response, I spoke to Hamed by phone on Thursday.

Our discussion was not as insightful as I needed it to be. I found him vague in terms of who he thought the ideal person for the job was. Finally, he mentioned that the government always preferred guys with ‘blonde hair and blue eyes.’

It was awkward. There was a tense back and forth between us about the resumes I had sent. I was disappointed and shot him an email the next morning, letting him know that I was no longer interested in partnering with him on his search because of new priorities. As a P.S., I added:

I am shocked to hear that the _____ government prefers their consultants to be white males from the West. Here in the U.S., we’re realizing that some of the best minds in business are coming out of India and China, and I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve recently kicked out an incompetent white male President and replaced him with a much smarter black one!

Coincidence that last week President Obama reached out to the Arab world through Al Arabiya. He was typically genuine and earnest and did his best to convey the message that Americans and Arabs can work together in mutual interest.

My question is, is it really, truly in our black President’s best interest to ignore the anti-black climate of so much of the Arab mainstream than to address it head on?

Anyone who follows, Blacksnextdoor, knows I dislike Condoleeza Rice but why was it necessary for the Palestinian media to depict her in that infamous cartoon as pregnant with a monkey or use the fact that she’s black as part of so many of their otherwise justifiable attacks?

And as black Iraqis collectivize into The Movement for Free Iraq, hoping to improve their social mobility in a society where black skin is hardly an asset, is this an Iraqi social issue best left to white and black Iraqis to sort out — or the continuing civil rights struggle of people of African descent that the world’s most powerful black figure should acknowledge?

I notice that African Americans see commonality between themselves and the Palestinians. I’m not sure how mutual this sense of commonality is.

Certainly as far as Darfur is concerned, the Arab world would clearly much rather turn its head.

Still, I can see a socio-political collaboration between global Blacks and Arabs with Barack at the center possible that would take the dynamic between the West and the Muslim world beyond a military one. 

As the world sinks economically,however, Barack Obama is under pressure like Fareed Zakaria said, “to save capitalism.” So the focus for him, some would say, has to be bread and butter.

But for Barack’s presidency to be successful, he’ll have to continue to inspire this country and the world to reach for higher ideals. The symbolic nature of being a black American Democratic President demands it.

One could say a very quiet, bloodless revolution has taken place.

Blacks have taken over the White House.

Or as I heard a famously bigoted Spanish speaking colleague complain to a family member on her cell phone, “This is horrible. This country’s going down the drain.”

I’ve noticed too many times, immigrants with no history as long or as tied to the creation of this country from the ground up – literally —  as African Americans, waving American flags at the same time they exhibit extremely anti-African American sentiments.

A few years ago, my son and I got in a cab in Meriden Connecticut en route to Wesleyan University in Middletown. It was a perfect day and as he hurried from the cab to return to his dorm, he looked so inspired, his shoulder length dreadlocks bouncing as he rushed back to complete a summer program he’d already begun. My motherly reverie was quickly interrupted by the cab driver as he coasted off.

“Your son goes there? Wow. ” He began. “Black people lazy.  Very lazy.  No computers.  No studying.  All they want is to steal and sell drugs. You’re lucky. Your son is different .”

I instantly regretted having asked him to take me back to the train station and considered getting out, calling the company and requesting another cab. Peering into the rear view mirror, all I could see was someone gold-brown with a coif of jet black hair and an equally jet black unibrow.

I wasn’t able to tell if he was aware he was making the most racist observation one stranger can make to another, and intentionally insulting me or was someone so out of touch with the American mainstream, he considered this acceptable small talk with a black female passenger.

“How long have you been in this country?” I asked.

“Not long time.” He shrugged.

“Obviously, because you don’t know very much about African-Americans, “ I fired back, adding in afterthought, “Are you a citizen?”

You can find both my maternal grandparents on passenger lists at ellisislandrecords.org. I’m not exactly Captain America, but my reasoning was that if he had been given the educational materials on U.S. history and society that immigrants study to become citizens, he wouldn’t be so ignorant.

 “I am a citizen, miss.” he sang in an impatient tone.

I tipped him the same amount I would have tipped a driver who had not ruined my afternoon, fearing that by not doing so, I would somehow make his negative perception of black people worse. Noticing the angry stare he was giving me as I got out, I realized I shouldn’t have given him a dime. It occurred to me that I should place a complaint with the dispatcher. Too overwhelmed by the whole thing, however, I merely boarded my train feeling upset.

The prevailing myth is that on entering the US, an immigrant is granted economic opportunity unequalled anywhere else on the planet and that this economic mobility alone is what will define them as American. 

Still, there’s a little test that US Citizenship and Immigration Services requires that an immigrant pass that is written in the same disinterested voice as a driver’s manual.  I was able to find 100 of its sample questions online. Only one, which asks who Martin Luther King was, alludes to black people having played a crucial role in the creation of not just the physical, but ideological foundations of this country.

The correct answer seems to be: a civil rights leader.  I’m not sure, however,  how tangible the words ‘civil rights’ are to someone who may come from a society where minorities are discriminated against or even methodically raped and murdered as a social strategy.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 stopped lots of evil, extremely backwards behavior in this country.  More importantly, it set a standard — see MLK’s  “I Have Dream Speech”  for the most eloquent example of this — that we haven’t reached entirely, (some might say at which we’ve failed miserably) but still puts us light years ahead of so many of the countries from which immigrants arrive every day.

So it is absolutely essential to make it understood by immigrants and Americans alike, that the source of some of our countries most cherished ideals are the African-American community.

Or more simply put, there would be NO bill or legislation that grants such an open access society without thousands upon thousands of black people having visualized, protested and organized it.

May all we African-Americans work hard to create the context for an Afrocentric society that the Obama presidency presents.

Our race has never been in the national or global spotlight to the extent that it is now.  How can we really best leverage this moment?

As for those of you who didn’t get Aretha’s hat.  I have one word for you: gele. Go to http://www.gelestyles.com to acquaint yourself with how continuous this cultural continuum of ours really is!

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Trying to ease up the stranglehold of media, I search for truth at odd angles or look the wrong way on purpose.

The oddly unimportant news that Jimmy Carter’s bicycle was stolen gave me some relief from all Obama’s breathlessly euphoric pre inaugural coverage. Maybe it’s just me, but I can only handle so much spine tingling and so many goose bumps before I want to press the stop button at least for a moment.    

Bizarre but not unimportant has been the miracle plane landing on the Hudson. I got my eyewitness account from none other than Robin Roberts of Good Morning America who seems to have watched the plane’s descent from her apartment balcony.  Even with my tendency to distance myself from the crowd, I too am part of the Robin Roberts Fan Club.  How could I not be?

As I shuffle around my mirror in the morning, stealing peeks at the TV, like a pot of bubbling coffee somewhere close by, she blends right into my whole domestic daydream.

I hear chatter that she’s a closeted lesbian.  The criteria to be a straight woman seem to grow more narrow every day. Nor  does she pass the equally small minded  ‘black enough’ test.  Sooo tall, sooo  vulnerable.  I’m most fascinated by how her struggle with cancer has reinforced her femininity, transformed her in fact into this subversively glamourous force despite the rest of us.

Most anticlimactic event of the week:  Bush and that…that…you know what, Condoleeza, saying good-bye.  Does anyone really care? Did she ever exist down here on the same planet as the rest of us?

This is a woman who  – and I don’t care how much money as a consultant and speaker she makes in the private sector moving forward – will always be despised and remembered as nothing more than a nasty…well..you know what I’m trying not to say.

The way Bush trotted her about like some modern day Ota Benga, (the Congolese man exhibited at The Bronx Zoo in 1906) inviting the rest of us to join him in marveling at her ability to speak Russian and play piano.

It’s not clear that Condie spoke more than limited Russian and as for the leverage with the Russians her presence in his administration was supposed to have brought us – where is it please?

Just like McCain’s ‘maverick’ myth fell apart during this campaign as we observed his wife, Cindy, henpeck him during interviews and the Republican party pull him in a million different directions, Condie’s  having been friends with one of the girls murdered in the Birmingham church bombing didn’t cushion us from her bitter political agenda.

I have never seen anyone confuse unpopularity with expertise the way Ms. Rice did.  Will we ever forget her scowling defense of her administration’s mishandling of September 11?  Never an apology to the families, nothing.

Her subsequent global war on terror has been an empty spectacle.

Condie, the dominatrix marionette.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Anyway, refreshing doesn’t even come close to describing Michelle’s arrival on the scene.  Such style, warmth, candor, intelligence.

Yes, I’m emotionally ill-equipped to handle all the delirium of this upcoming inauguration, but I m ever so grateful to be experiencing this momentous change – and ever so relieved.  

I keep finding emails from Jay Markoff asking me to ‘please call Roxanne Corson @ 619-644-1564 for information on photographic magnetic signs and more’.

Needless to say, I have no idea who Jay and Roxanne are, but with spyware as pervasive and supposedly sophisticated as it is, this message strikes me as exceptionally pathetic. 

Roxanne, Jay, very good. You made it past my spam filters, but like everyone else who has received this absurd SOS, I immediately sent it to the trash.

You would have had a higher probability of having this message read, if you had stuffed it in a bottle and thrown it in the sea.

If ever there was a time for business to stop being fake and keep it real, it’s now. That’s why Boeing’s laying off its people at its commercial airplane unit in Washington.

Boeing’s no longer an aircraft company. Take the billions of dollars they’re being paid to electronically seal off the border between the US and Mexico.  Even if that project’s floundering,  it’s more ominous sounding war and security services that are most lucrative for them now and ahead.

As for, Macy’s shutting down stores all over the country.  On one hand, you could say, that it’s a tragedy to see this great American store that sponsors this tradition of ours, the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan for as long as we can all remember – start to show signs of going under – but shopping at Macy’s is a disappointment. The clothing selection is oddly random and uninspiring. In fact, at a mall near me, you can wander seamlessly from Macy’s into Target then Sear’s without realizing it.

Maybe they should team up with Best Buy to market a surveillance system that makes black shoppers even more humiliated than they already are by having to show receipts when trying to exit.

The real tragedy isn’t the demise of these awful companies — because in almost every case, it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.

The tragedy is the way we Americans are connected to them.  Spending at extreme levels has become our patriotic duty to keep the whole economy afloat so at the same time we’re trying to save and not spend, we’re being made to feel guilty for not having enabled some Hollywood studio to reach its gross revenue record last weekend or being made to feel like a deadbeat for not having made Black Friday enough of a success.

I read an article the other day on the more humble approach recent college grads are being told to take to the job market.  Instead of asking potential employers what they can do for them, applicants are being reminded to make an extra effort to make themselves worthy of the companies they’re speaking to.

In my own personal life at least, I have no idea how my own company will fare in 2009. Even so, I will not as a result become so desperate to survive that I don’t create a dignified and nurturing future for myself.

Businesses need to understand that they can’t grow or expect to be around in the long term if they’re just pimping out but not nourishing the people they rely on to financially succeed.

Hey and don’t let all this nonsense scare you either.

Hold your head high.

Up and running again right on schedule.  Start of a new year, start of a new me.  Received so many lovely greetings by email and phone, the most poetic coming from my friend Pierre Eddy Constant in Montreal who wished me a ‘pluie de benediction.’

The transition from an old year to a new one gives us a license to express ourselves with such romantic flamboyance.  Anyway, I’m greatly appreciative of this new door that’s opening and intend to avail myself of all it offers.

Still, it has been difficult to ignore the Israeli attack on Gaza. I know the Israeli intent is to attack Hamas, not the entire population of Gaza but this is war and war is war. I know the correct word to use here is ‘incursion’  or perhaps ‘siege’ because that kind of terminology makes these orgies of violence seem more akin to laser surgery, but for the sake of all those who will lose their family members and homes, I’ll avoid minimizing how horrific this all is.

What’s shocking to me is how this endless nightmare continues to be responded to with talk of ceasefire or more mortar, more missiles.  How many times have both sides been here before – and failed? What a frustrating cycle.

Was in full agreement with Mona Eltahwy’s  2 January Post-Global blog editorial, Israel Opium of the People. http://www.newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. 

I’ve been following Mona’s writing for many years, used to really enjoy her postings on the Muslim Wakeup site when it was first launched and know her to be someone with a fearless perspective on Arab and Muslim life. I think her fearlessness is driven by a deep concern for the future of Arabs and Muslims and was disappointed but not surprised by some of the comments her editorial received.

It may seem strange to some, but reading Mona’s piece I was reminded of The Shopping For Justice march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on December 16, 2006 in behalf of Sean Bell, the young man brutally murdered in Queens by rogue police.

I’m not someone who does marches usually.  Large gatherings of angry people once made politicians nervous. I don’t believe they still do. But I marched for lack of a better way to pay my respects to the father and mother.

Thousands of people marching together against police brutality in black neighborhoods… so promising, I thought – but where’s the march against black men using epidemic aggression against other black men?

If the case is being made for black life not being cheap, why don’t we really make it? So I waited days and months after the march to see if our black leadership in New York would tap into the exhilaration and passions stirred during the march to take on the larger issue of black male quality of life. So many guns and knives in our communities used on a daily basis against each other.  But it probably wouldn’t have been politically expedient to do this.  A young black man was only worthy of this level of involvement if his life was taken by the police. Not enough.

Anyway, we’re entering into a new phase time wise and thus presented with a chance to handle our lives and life itself with more creativity, sensitivity, and intelligence.  I didn’t do the resolution thing, but have created a weekly personal action plan.  Can you believe that it started with me bringing my own totes to the supermarket? Sounds trivial, but I’m noticing other people not packing their groceries into plastic bags.

Stay tuned for more coverage on my poorly conceived attempt to save the planet…bisous

2008 has been…well, long. Really, really long and unrelentlessly demanding. Besides it being the year that I paid closer attention to a presidential election than ever before, it was the year that I saw 71 movies.  Yes 71.

Some of them were stinkers, but in the spirit of sharing, here are five that weren’t.  I feel obligated to first provide some criteria for what makes these films stand out to me.  Since watching a film is a highly personal emotional experience in which, under the best conditions, I get lost, it’s not easy for me to play movie critic after the fact but I’ll try to come close.

Some of the things I need a film to do for me to like it are:

1.      Take me out of the United States for God’s sake — or if not, show me an America that I haven’t seen a million times before in a million TV shows, commercials and other movies

2.     No obvious good guys and villains

3.     Cinematography that in and of itself puts me in a trance

4.     Dialogue that’s rich with metaphor

      5.    Explore relationships that are disturbing and painful and render

             their beauty                                                                         

I also need characters, of course, that I care about. Characters, I care about are often those who remind me of people I’ve known in my own life or even myself, (which is why I like Jeanne Balibar.  Whenever  I watch her, she’s this awkward, slouchy, effete mirror I look into and better understand – and for those of you who can’t grasp how a black woman can find aspects of herself in a white actress, you’re most likely too stupid to appreciate any of these films, so go back to chasing your own tail around in circles or being so keenly aware of who you’re not, you’re the biggest bore who ever lived).

OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way,  I would also like to add that these are not films that came out in 2008. They’re films I watched in 2008. They’re all DVD’s available at Netflix, some of them may be available other ways. The list that follows is not a ranking, just a list of films that are all superb:

·         The Road to Love, Remi Lange’s story about two young Arab men in Paris who fall in love is unforgettable, deeply moving and so romantic

·         Dar Es Salaam, directed by Issa Serge Coelho is the most moving argument for a war that I’ve ever seen. Shot in Chad, the actors who play guerillas resisting an oppressive government are the most poignant soldiers ever.  Just as poignant,  the desert backdrops

·         Testamento   For those of you who are fans of Cesaria Evora, she makes a cameo appearance in this. Very poetic, nostalgic feel to this film. Epic. Seductive in a uniquely Cape Verdean way. 

·         Inch’Allah Dimanche shows you the life of an Algerian immigrant family in France. The Muslim mother and daughter in law struggling to create lives in Europe come across as uncomfortably real. In fact, at times their strained relationship calls up the extreme culture clash between me and my own mother and perhaps between you and yours

·         Bamako director Abdelrahmane Sissako lands masterful blows against the world financial powers that exploit Africa. An intellectual exercise disguised as a film, it features  Senegalese Femme fatale Aissa Maiga. If you develop a crush on her as everyone quickly does, you can also see her bounce in and out of Romain Duris’s bedroom in Poupees Russes.

Ok, that does it for me for 2008. The next time I post something new for you to read here at Blacks Next Door, it will be 2009, and hopefully that’s a good thing.

Please send me any list of five films you think I should see. Until then affectionate, emphatic kisses to all!

Have been in bed mostly since Tuesday when I returned from the hospital. Following doctor’s orders. 

Aside from browsing through old magazines, books, the internet and talking on the phone, have been staring into the empty gaze of daytime TV in search of my own personal Stimulus Package.

Sulky black men flapping their arms and shuffling in glee when DNA tests prove them to not be the father of the children of the angry black female guests sicked on them by judges and talk show hosts for whom ‘paternity porn’ is apparently the best way to win viewers — is not stimulus.

Maury Povich. Honestly, he’s no different than a drug dealer or pimp — should be arrested for that show.

A sadist feigning concern, he follows a young woman who can’t bear the humiliation of having learned another young man she thought was the father of her child, is not, back stage.  

There —  away from the TV audience of rowdy youngsters that he oversees as if they’re his own kids — even though he’s rich and white and they’re poor, black and Latin —  he consoles her by offering to continue to help her find her child’s father.  

And she will probably take him up on it because Mr. Povich has the curious ability to deceive his guests into believing that he is somehow helping them even if that involves them being placed at the center of a ring of laughing, name-calling hecklers.  

Even if the tagline: IM BACK FOR THE FOURTH TIME TO FIND MY BABY DADDY set to a spazzed out beat can elicit nothing but ridicule, self-loathing and contempt.

McDonald’s commercials featuring smiling urban black families dunking their MCchicken into gloopy Mcbarbecue sauce with gently humming gospel choirs in the background is NOT stimulus. (McDonalds is basically a black brand these days). And why?

Because their products cause obesity and poor health…

Conning senior citizens into buying scooters too large to use indoors and unsafe to ride outdoors, people who don’t have jobs or are on public assistance into high priced degrees at make believe universities makes me wants to call the police but — is also not stimulus.

Will Smith on Oprah, plugging his new film Seven Pounds. Why was he wearing big diamond studs in each ear?

(Am I the only black woman turned off by that look)?

Sorry Will, not stimulus.

Rosario Dawson…hmmm. Getting closer. Getting closer because Rosario is indisputably hot…but alas dear, this film — is not stimulus.

That Dolce & Gabbana ad for their new men’s cologne, The One. Shot in smoky black and white to cool jazz where camera flashing papparazzis follow Matthew McConaughey into a hotel.  

So lovely in his jacket and shirt as he saunters along moody like into his room and strips down.

Absolutely lovely, yet masculine in every way. Never been a fan of his really but such a classy and sexy detour that ad is for a woman confined to ugly nightgowns and a slightly lumpy mattress until January 2 though it is still NOT quite –stimulating.

Closer: Jean Paul Gaultier’s punk girl scissoring off her hair for his fragrance, Madame.

But it was only young Barack modeling for Lisa Jack in Time Magazine that really, really took me somewhere so to speak.

My favorite is of him kneeling in sandals in that carefree hat, chin raised, egging on the world.  I don’t think there’s a woman anywhere who has a bigger crush on our brave president elect than I do. And those photos just reinforce my impression that if anyone can liberate this spiritually tapped out nation it is this man.

Really craving so much more of his sparkling aura but until the inauguration, pear crumble and vanilla bean ice cream I guess it is. 

Leave comments, notes, please!!!!

Sunday has arrived and very quickly!  It all happens so fast lately, this dizzying, close your eyes and hold on tight life.

Can’t believe I’ve made it this far.

Am kind of wishing it would stop and let me off though. Really sick of everything — and this last past week was horrific with excessive closed door meetings and colleagues suddenly, sheepishly cleaning out their desks and scampering out of the office for the final time.

“Downsizing has begun,” was how one of the twits in management tried to control the bleeding during yet another meeting after the third desk in our New York office had been vacated. “Much greater numbers of staff have been let go in Europe and South America,” he reassured…

Couldn’t even hear the rest. Am drowning in bills this month more than any other. House taxes.  Heating costs and thousands of dollars in school tuition due. Have no idea where it’s coming from.

Worse yet, tomorrow morning at 7 AM, I check into the hospital for a procedure that’s not quite surgical – no cutting – but will leave me in a great deal of pain afterwards. Morphine pump, pain killers. Recovery time uncertain. Two weeks? A month?

Champagne, anyone? Life is mah-ve-lous? N’est pas?

Since I’m on a complaint roll, I’ll also throw it out there that there’s a blogger that’s been heavily incorporating whatever she can from my blog into her blog. Can’t believe how irreverent she is. Whatever she can steal she does.

First came across her blog in September. Like a lot of blogs, it had a couple of old postings that could’ve been written by anyone and an oddly ungrammatical bio where she pitched herself as a writer for hire. Wouldn’t have known about it at all if I hadn’t first received an email from her where she mentioned she was adding me to her blog roll. Didn’t see any commonality between the two of us.  She was another black woman blogger. That was it.

Then periodically noticed she was pillaging my site for ideas on how to develop her own and I won’t elaborate any further on what a shady opportunist she is but, it’s disgusting the lack of respect she’s showing for another writer’s intellectual property.

For the record, obviously I’m against compulsively protecting everything I write or I wouldn’t be throwing my stuff up on the internet for free every week. But when you tap into other blogs for your own content, especially when you’re trying to monetize your site which she evidently is,  you kill the other site, the writer, the capacity for free exchange.

This is the way of corporations. They exploit the most natural things that human beings do, re-package them for profit and worse yet, claim exclusive rights over whatever they ultimately stole.

Most of us are familiar with how Phytopharm took the Hoodia plant that the Kung Bushmen of the Kalhari have used for thousands of years to suppress their appetites – and patented it as a cure for obesity. See this interview with Mariam Mayet at http://www.allafrica.com/stories/200804110619.html for more…

Anyway, Phytopharm sold “their innovative new drug”  to Pfizer for a whopping sum.

Many millions in fact, never including the Bushmen who did the research and development for it in the equation.

Last I heard, the humble Bushmen were still negotiating for ‘benefit sharing’ with the pharma giants of the world.

Suddenly reminded of something my Moroccan friend, Abduillah, said once: The antelope and the lion don’t drink from the same water.

But alas, as there’s less and less space that more and more of us share, they do Abduillah.

Perhaps the answer is that the antelope bring an Uzi.

May everyone who follows Blacks Next Door, have a better week than I will.

As someone who has spent most of the last five years either ‘telecommuting’ from a PC in my bedroom, trapped in an office cubicle or staring out the windows of trains, planes and commuter buses, I am on a mission to become physically stimulated again. I spent two hours in the gym yesterday and an hour today and can’t believe how aroused I feel.  

“Now what?” I guess you’re wondering.

Ummm.  Snack on pistachios? Post something new in my blog?

What an odd thing to see Plaxico Burress paraded around in handcuffs like the most violent serial murderer when all he did was shoot himself in the leg!

Little boys and teens playing baseball and football for recreation I understand — but grown men playing games for a living I don’t — so I’m hardly Ms. ESPN.

Worse yet, those passing moments when a basketball game is on the TV in the room and I’m watching muscular black men scattering across a court in shorts and jersey combos like the kind that grace the racks in the toddler section of Kids R Us while a coach, usually a white guy in a suit sternly supervises – I’m not cheering, I’m horrified.

(And when the coach is black, it’s no more encouraging to me than a black cop or black soldier executing some misguided U.S. military effort).

Slavery is this constant reference point for just about every discussion about black people even when it’s not, so I try as a policy to avoid bringing it up  – but this said — the sports industry really does seem to be derived from the plantation business more than any I’ve seen.

Black athletes are physical property.  When they veer off those carefully scripted messages they deliver like hostages, they’re punished so severely. Take Plaxico Burress:  Head bowed in shackles for not having filed some form for a gun that as a celebrity he has good reason to own and not having harmed anyone with it but himself.

Tar, feathers anyone?

Don’t know how many of you follow http://www.thedailyvoice.com an online pub that seems to compete with the more well known The Root, http://www.theroot.com.  I rarely do, but Friday read ‘The First Black President and the Racial Mountain’ by Pamela Reed, a piece in which she defends Barack from those who insist he’s not authentically black. The piece is well written and some truth is imparted absolutely but more interesting is the message thread that evolves in response. 

None other than Sudanese poet Kola Boof who got a surge of attention in the media when she revealed she had been Obama Bin Laden’s black mistress — battles it out with Pamela Reed and the other readers with such ferocity, it is far more edgy and visceral than any basketball or football game.

Not only does Kola tear Pamela Reed a new one, but she also shreds each reader that posts a comment, to bits. The funny thing about Kola Boof is that she has identified a hole in the black whole that she fiercely deepens rather than tries like the softies of black academia, to mend.  Better yet, there’s no guy in a suit that can suspend her.  She is completely off the chain. Unlike me.  In search of greater freedom. Will report back next week. Or maybe not…