The musings of a madman...

You know how important the memory of things that meant a lot to you as a kid are when you’re adult? That is where today’s post comes from. I mean, the fact remains that Brand Nubian’s albums were only a little more than mediocre – say “pretty good,” I might – but there was ALWAYS that one song that would stick to your conscience. As I type that sentence, the real fans among us are simultaneously remembering 3 or 4 of those songs. Punks Jump Up… All For One Slow Down and for those who acknowledge Puba’s solo career… 2000 One thing they always say with musicians of any sort is that it is not so much what is said as it is the voice used to say it. Some of what Grand Puba and Brand Nubian advocated or spoke on (mainly the Islam-based subject matter) might have them on a no-fly list in 2011. It seemed more in the late 80s/early 90s that it was all about the music, and beats that could jar your fillings and the above-named catchy tunes and hooks were what the doctor ordered. So why am I

March 3, 1991... Motorist and (then alleged) drug user Rodney King is spotted speeding on the 210 in LA, and – by his own admission – RUNS at speeds of up to 117mph, for fear that a DUI would violate his parole for a prior case. Off of the freeway, the chase continued through surface streets, now having taken on several more black-and-whites and some choppers. Cornered, King stopped and he and his compadres were ordered from the car and complied. King, on the other hand remained in the car initially and (according to officers) acted strangely when he finally did step out. Cops converged on him with guns drawn, but put them away and tried to take him down with hands only, but they say he resisted. Superhuman strength, mixed with the previous odd behavior, led the patrol officers to think that Rodney King was dusted, but toxicology tests prove otherwise. At this point, another officer ordered the others away, and King allegedly yelled “DON’

With the end of the Civil War, the task of reassembling the country – this time in a slavery-free configuration – was squarely on the shoulders of the United States Congress… On this day in 1867, the first of the Reconstruction Acts was passed. The others would come over the course of the following year and one month that followed and lived on in spite of President Andrew Johnson’s attempt to veto the acts. We can thank Congress for killing Habeas Corpus and, with it, The Supreme Court’s appellate power over a case such as this one. I ALMOST stopped short of saying WHY this is relevant to black history, but I think it should be obvious in exactly what the points of the act contained. § Creation of five military districts in the seceded states not including Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and was readmitted to the Union (so they couldn’t get cute and try that bullshit again) § Requir

(silly graphic retired until next February) On today's date in 1875, Congress approved the Civil Rights Act , which granted equal rights to people, guaranteeing that everyone - regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude - were entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations" (lodging, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other entertainment venues, for those who don't read English good) . Under this, if found guilty, one would face a penalty of between $500 and $1,000 and/or 30 days to 1 year in prison. As one might expect by its timing, the law was rarely enforced, especially after the 1876 presidential election and withdrawal of federal troops from the South. In the 1883 Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), the Supreme Court deemed the act unconstitutional on the basis that Congress had no power to regulate the conduct of individuals. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits discrimination by the state, not by individuals. Fret

At the suggestion of my mother and the confirmation of the idea at the hands of a good friend, I am going to CONTINUE the black history posts on beyond the month of February. I will ATTEMPT to take this all the way for the whole of one year’s worth of posts, but we know that sometimes time and complacency become a draw on creative juices. That said, the approach will be largely the same, presenting a historical event/birth/death of someone brown as it relates to black in America people, but not necessarily ones that you are bludgeoned to shit with in school. And I will be doing it without the silly graphic from here on, at least until next February. Also, I will be back to more of my normal postings as well, again time permitting. Wish me luck!

On this day in 1932, the patent for the automatic gearshift was secured by a black man in San Francisco named Richard Spikes. No one seems to know anything about Richard, but I damn sure know enough about automatic transmissions to know that they seemed to have stopped informing most new drivers how to changed their own damned gears. What we DO know is that he is also the inventor of those turn signals for which none of us can now HAND signal our intentions when the lights fail. In all, 10 items were developed or directly patented by Spikes, but the most lastingly important is the one that allows lazy women a free hand to hold their cell phone as they run me off the road in their Expeditions.

As a North Carolina resident/native and Los Angeles Lakers fan, I would be wrong to let James Worthy's birthday pass without mention... We know James' pedigree... NCAA Champion at the University of North Carolina. 3-time NBA Champion with the Lakers 1-time NBA Finals MVP As the top-name role player on the Showtime Lakers, we can argue until we're blue in the face that he rode Jordan into the NBA from Carolina, then Magic and Kareem to the NBA hall of fame. I do not subscribe to that line of thinking, if only for the consistency with which James played, even if he always was an "assistant pimp." Career averages of 17.6pts, 5.5 rebounds and 3 assists on a team that features top scoring (Kareem) and assists (Magic) talents suggests that something was very right with his game to me. Anyway... I do enough basketball talk over on Reading & Writing is for Dumb People , so let us stop short of taking this post there... Instead, let's bid James Worthy the happy bir

It is often assumed that I am punctual just out of habit, and find it odd that I call it heredity... One habit I took from my granddaddy - alcoholism notwithstanding - is that being late or absent irks the fuck out of me. Extenuating circumstances are extenuating circumstances, and they continue to exist as a caveat to never say never, but damned if I am habitually late or out, even if I am clear on the signs shown that my employer hates my guts... When I CAN get here, I get here, and on time. I have been working since I was 16, and looking back over my history, I have missed more time to… Deaths in the family (3 in the whole of 16 years) Deaths of dogs (just couldn’t make myself want to go) Weather (one missed day and a bit of late time for travel complexities) Traffic (yes, sitting in the car on I-85 counts) 9/11 (building closed 2 hours into my shift) Car trouble (much less than you might think, considering I have never owned a car newer than 6 ye

No, I am not telling you that Muhammad Ali has died... I am simply saying that this marks the date of his "official" conversion to Islam. Regardless of your views on religion, be it organized, non-organized, cults or just ANTI, you have to respect the strength of a public figure willing to stick their necks out for what they believe. This is ESPECIALLY so when that decision can put their wellbeing, safety and ability to continue to sustain in peril. That said, even though I am not Muslim, I can give all the respect I can muster to the champ for this leap of faith. ESPECIALLY so when considering the heat he took for it (and his actions resulting from it) in the years that immediately followed. Sure, I COULD have done Ali/Liston yesterday, but out of respect for the champ, I decided that THIS date is probably a bigger deal to him than that one ever was.

I COULD have done Ali/Liston from 25 years prior, but you will see why I did not do that tomorrow. There is NO secret that (pre-Buster Douglas screwjob/fake rape charge) Mike Tyson was my favorite boxer EVER ... On today's date in 1989, in the midst of a failing marriage he should not have been in and ahead of the personal shit that would derail his whole career, Mike Tyson fought Frank Bruno in a fight that represented the first time I had ever seen Mike even remotely STUNNED in a fight. Alas... ... that thing they say about fool's gold... 5th round knockout, Michael Gerard Tyson victorious after the ref stopped the fight while Tyson beat mercilessly on a laying-on-the-ropes Bruno. 9-year-old-Phlip was happy.

This one is a direct play on yesterday's post, and definitely one of those asshole moves of mine as it relates to the topic of Black History Month. As you read this, I more than likely have a pair of Nikes on my feet. The same can be said for EVERY black dude I have seen this week. The same can be said for the dude I mentioned on the 9th and 17th, considering the company made him more rich than basketball probably did directly. Anyway, what's the point? Nike was started by a certain Philip Knight, and today is HIS 73rd birthday. Don't you just LOVE stereotypes? Somewhere, RIGHT NOW, in America all at once, there is a black kid being beaten up for his Nike Airs, and an African in a flea market selling a bootleg pair to someone for $45 bucks. In my demented mind, these combined facts make the founder and majority owner of the company relevant to a series of Black History Month posts... Ain't that crazy? Anyway... I can't hate or judge, as I am enjoying the comfort and

You know, when I undertook this as a project, I had no idea how many people/events we actually WERE made to hear/read about in school actually WERE born DURING Black History Month. But... Today is W.E.B. Du Bois' birthday. W.E.B. standing for William Edward Burghardt. Look, we know about him, and if we don't, Google is a good friend of ours... Pan Africanist First Black Doctorate Graduate of Harvard Headed the NAACP when they mattered were more necessary Author Possessor of a bad-fucking-ass mustache and a great many more important things... I will have a thought of unearthing my copy of the book that titles this post as a celebration of the day, but don't hold me to that.

And by "doctor," I mean Dr. J, Julius Irving. The dude who influenced Michael Jordan to become Michael Jordan. Look, there is little I can say about the man that has not been said in his time on the planet, so I will let a highlight video tell it this time. Happy born date to the great doc!

If you're familiar with Spike Lee movies, you know what the title of this one refers to. If you're not, I will tell you that was what was yelled out just before Malcolm X was gunned down on 02/21/1965. Yes, Malcolm was on the stage at a meeting speaking when a disturbance broke out, which opened the floor for someone to step right in and shoot him with a sawed-off, then two more with handguns made sure the job was done… Onlookers grabbed and beat on one of the shooters, but the others got away. Three people were charged and arrested, one at the scene and two via eyewitness accounts. The two fingered by witnesses maintain innocence, but the one who was clearly guilty refused to name his co-defendants, so all did time. All have since been paroled or otherwise released as of last year. Reasons for WHY he was killed remain varied and largely will see the aisle divided several directions based on race, religious affiliations (up to and including s

Okay, I will be serious(ish) from here on... On today’s date in 1895 at the age of about 78 – the birth dates of blacks were not recorded back then – Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, passed away in Washington DC. His life, as we all learned, served as a counter to the assumptions about black intellect that still dog us to this day (thanks, Gucci Mane fans!). That said, there is no need for me to delve deeply into the gritty details of what we know of his life. Even a perfunctory Google search will give you ALL you need to know about the life of Frederick Douglass. Or Wikipedia , if you’re feeling lazy. What I am here to do more than anything is to introduce you to why we should not forget the chance to celebrate the life of those who have helped to drive us to where we are, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Again, not here to give super-lengthy posts to be plagiarized by one of your lazy-fucking children in years to come, I will stop her

Who? Vonetta Flowers is an athlete (bobsled) and on this date in 2003, became the first black woman to win a gold medal at the winter Olympic games in Salt Lake City. If you aim to learn more about her other than the accomplishment named in the above sentence, please use the links that take you AWAY from the above-linked Wikipedia entry, as it seems only to exist as a testament to how ignorant internet users can be. She retired from competition in 2006 – presumably to raise her twins born after the Salt Lake City games – but the size of her accomplishment will live on.

Today, I am skipping over things such as… · The birth of Dr Dre (until I get Detox, I refuse to discuss Andre Young) · The death of Dale Earnhardt (he was not black) and… · Trinidad being surrendered to a British Fleet (even though this is ‘technically’ a “black” topic) Nope! in lieu of all of those, I am discussing the first publication of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . “but Phlip, how the fuck is THAT on topic?” Thanks for asking! One character; two words… Nigger Jim. Look, I have read the book a few times, I know that the words only appear together ONE TIME in the whole 300something pages, but damned if that has not become a great many peoples’ go-to in the whole “what I know about Huck Finn” info share. The tenor of the book was accepted in negative light and critically panned because of such language choices, and I guess one could see that as valid in the grand scheme of things, considering that the b

Also posted over on Reading & Writing is for Dumb People [link] All-Star weekend is upon us, which means a couple of things... Some marriages will be ruined in LA this weekend. Phlip presents a mid-season report despite the season being closer to 70% done than "halfway." For my mid-season NBA report, I am here to eat some crow as well as to be able to say “told you so” at the same time. Odd, I know… In my pre-season post , I said that the San Antonio Spurs were not dead yet, and my prediction was that they would turn it up in the playoffs. Scarily, however, they have had it on all the way through the season, all while Popovich is resting Tim Duncan so effectively that he is having the worst regular season statistically of his career. This is scary because he is being rested for the long haul. That said, I am EXTREMELY surprised at the Spurs’ success of this season, at least in the regular season. As a fan of the Lakers, the fact that Tim Duncan’s effectiveness is bei

Michael Jordan happens to not be my favorite basketball player and human being... I concede that he was the best basketball player ever, but that in no means makes him my favorite. Michael Jordan's eyes are yellow, damn what you say or think to the contrary. and... My granny always told me some shit about not saying anything at all if you don't have anything nice to say, and I have already run afoul of that once or twice in one half-paragraph and one image. so... Today is Michael Jeffrey Jordan's birthday, happy birthday to the dude who invented the market for $100.00+ sneakers.

You know, you never know how full a career some of the people I randomly-as-fuck choose to profile had until you choose to look deeper into it… Yes, we all know Reading Rainbow (which made us all think he was gay), and Roots. But… I didn’t know him as a director as well, from TV shows I heard of (but never watched) JAG, Cahrmed and Soul Food: The Series. Yeah, we remember the Star Trek shit, and we pretended to ignore Roots: The Gift in 88. We vaguely remember him as MLK in Ali. Voice work saw him on Batman the Animated Series, Pinky and the Brain, Captain Planet and Transformers Prime. [Phlip note – I know some self-righteous individual is waiting to say “man, I knew ALL of that, where YOU been?!!?” and to that person, I say eat a dick] His directorial resume impresses, even though I have only sat through like 8 episodes of Star Trek in my whole life, and probably none are among the 28 he directed inside of 4 different seasons, but I know th