…..before the end of “Hunger Games!”
Category Archives: news
Melki Speaks His Mind (On “Empire” Season 2 and Trevor Noah, “The Daily Show”‘s New Host)
I have begged my friend Melki to get a blog so he can share all these comments on emails he sends to me, and instead he just gives me permission to use them. So, here goes:
On “Empire”‘s second season:
The good thing about “Empire” coming back, Melki, is that it diverts attention from the news that the Bill Cosby total is now PAST 50!
This is great in many ways only because it reminds me of early hiphop and jazz when all the great artists worked together on the same projects. Ludacris had a role in this episode and my man who played with Wesley Snipes in Sugar Hill. All these great actors who won’t getting no shine from Hollywood. With Empire and Kevin Hart’s Real Husbands eury black actor is getting some checks and Tyler Perry’s name ain’t on it no more! LOL! 🙂
So I can use this for the “Drums” blog, Melki?
sure! I just don’t want the Lion trying to roll up on me! These internet streets is real, sun!
*******
So, Melki, what do you think about the brother who’s taken over from Jon Stewart?
All I can say is Trevor is way funnier than John Stewart.
Sadly, well not too sadly, but he and John Oliver are the funniest and hardest hitting right now.
Haven’t seen the latest Colbert *&$! and “The Nightly Show” is running 3rd in the realm of news satire.
Oliver’s addressing of the issues and Noah’s comedic timing put them above every one else.
Wilmore is on their trail and is blacker which is always good!
OCTOBER 15th UPDATE FROM MELKI: A few notes on Empire. The actor I mistakenly identified as Michael Wright is actually Andre Royo: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0747420/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t29 he plays the streetwise attorney who has quickly become Lucious Lyon’s right hand man, willing to do whatever it takes to keep him out of jail. The last episode also featured an almost video done in the Black Panther motiff addressing the issue of police brutality which is becoming more and more a prominent aspect of the tv show. While being arrested by some jump out cops, Cookie screams ““If I die in police custody, I did not commit suicide.”….so this means my last post about art and protest uniting for this generation is starting to hit home more and more.
A Belated CONGRATS To…….
…….Ta-Nehisi Coates for his Genius Grant honor!
My hope is that like the Hulk, the angrier he gets, the stronger he gets! (And vice-versa!)
His victory has inspired my scribe crew! We’re all gonna hit it harder!
OCTOBER 14th UPDATE: And CONGRATS on being a finalist for the National Book Award!
Urban News Service, Huh? Okay, Bring It!
Hmmm. A rival to the Trice Edney News Wire. Shades of the Associated Negro Press vs. the NNPA News Service!
For the sake of national Black journalism not narrowed down to one person, his may have to be the first time I’m ever gonna root for something led by Niger Innis! Maybe…..!
Something About October Magazines
Because the ones I’m reading right now are “off the chain,” as the post-modern expression goes.
This must be the month magazine’s submit for the National Magazine Award, because the Sunday going-to-meeting clothes have appeared on the last Rolling Stone (excellent articles on the Pope and cover-boy Trump), and October’s Smithsonian (the Egyptian pyramids, Einstein, the Brazilian Gordon Parks, and Hemingway)! I’ve viewed Smithsonian as a wannabe National Geographic, but it does more than that. I especially like its articles on technological and popular culture history.
The October National Geographic promised and delivered on a lost city in Honduras, the Congo River, Sweden wilderness, sea wolves and, on the cover, a new link in the human evolutionary chain! WOW!
OCTOBER 15th UPDATE: Was happy to read this.
Christopher James Priest Talks About His Time As The Writer Of Marvel’s “Black Panther”
My favorite comicbook author not named Grant Morrison 🙂 talks about his run–my all-time favorite in the 49 years of the character’s existence. Priest’s run that made me a “Black Panther” fan! I no longer collect comics, but I will make an exception for this Priest BP collection!
(And I want to point out that what Priest says in Part One is what I say in my chapter of “Ages of the Avengers.”)
Ta-Nehisi Coates has his work cut out for him! But I’m sure he knows that!
My Recent 88.9 WEAA-FM “Mark Steiner Show” Appearance Talking About Extreme American Politics….
…..is here.
The New, New Black Public Intellectuals (Or, The Digger-ati ;))
Leave it to Michael Eric Dyson to write this. (I remember he did something similar almost 20 years ago in his book “Race Rules.” )
It’s an interesting list. It would be a bit more interesting if it included people I met over the years, like Jared Ball and Rosa Clemente. They are no strangers to public intellectual work, but, alas, they don’t color within the lines.
But then again, looking at the older generation:
* Herb Boyd has written about 25 books in the 30 years since he left academe AND he has TWO National Association of Black Journalists awards (one with Dyson!), including a NABJ Hall of Fame award: when does HE get picked as a starter on the schoolyard? When he turns 80 in three years?
* Another friend and mentor, Don Rojas, should be writing and teaching right now about the Grenada revolution.
* A Black radio broadcaster I grew up listening to, Imhotep Gary Byrd, is holding on in the 21st century, incredibly, with a free two-hour show on WBAI-FM on Friday nights and a WLIB/WBLS two-hour simulcast on Sunday nights. He will turn 70 (?) in 2019: when does HE get a DAMN NATIONAL show in either/both broadast mediums!?!? Almost 30 (!) years ago in Newark, when I had more hair and teeth than I have now :), I used to listen to the Rev. Al Sharpton on Byrd’s WLIB show, so how can Sharpton get TWO national Black radio shows and ONE national white TV show and Byrd, with almost 50 years in the game as a living legend, can’t get ONE of these?!? (Even the guy at The New York Daily News who used to cover Byrd and the rest of New York City’s Black radio fairly just got canned. :))
* And, if we can broaden out to Latinos here, will Amy Goodman hire Juan Gonzalez as a REAL “Democracy Now!” co-host once The slow-death News lets him go? How much more award-winning (I still remember his “stolen” Pulitzer for 911 ash) investigative journalism does his 66-year-old, clearly-spends-all-his-spare-time-writing-serious-history-books butt has do? When he’s cut, will he get the $200,000 a year New York City professorships others of less stature, ability and accomplishment get?
I just remember that Manning Marable and Earl Ofari Hutchinson were among those who started this “post-Civil Rights Movement Black public intellectual” thing 40 years ago on the Op-Ed pages of Black newspapers that only a few give a crap about now. Time is not the only thing that keeps on slipping into the future.
And Now, The Geek News:
Okay, THIS would be the geek news of the month
(with a special note of this grievous wrong “writed” 🙂 )
but, of course, it was superceded by this journalistic-superhero stream crossing!
Coates is one of the greatest nonfiction writers of my generation, but he is a little too, uh, um, mainstream and American for me, so I’m interested to see if fantasy will allow him to really open up, as it were. Marvel’s Black Panther will be the perfect vehicle for that.
Thank You, Jack Larson, The First Jimmy Olsen America Saw
First Batgirl, Yvonne Craig, and now this! Who remains alive from my telly days as a wee lad? 😦
(The above is not his best performance (it’s not even a regular episode, but a special film presentation sponored by the U.S. government for American schoolchildren. I am using it because it was in the public domain.)
OCTOBER 20th UPDATE: Indirectly speaking of Superman on TV, I liked this “Supergirl” article, because it explained why American broadcast network television has gone superhero-crazy.
Drums in the Global Village 