The 1st anniversary of this here joint passed by on January 12 but I was too busy to even notice it. Even now I can’t really put together a celebratory post because… eh, I’ll talk about that later.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Beans vs. Cornbread! With any luck, year two will be made of less fail than year one!
So on this day that celebrates the struggles of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, I can’t help but to think about something my mother said to me last year after the demonstrations to get the Jena Six a fair trial caused more threats. When my mother was growing up, Black folks couldn’t sit in the regular seats in the old Robin’s Theater downtown and it was unwise to be in certain parts of town when the sun went down or you’d catch hell from the police. She was alive during the Civil Rights movement so it’s not some weird abstract concept to her. What my mother said was, “It feels like we’re going backwards.”
I’d been thinking the same thing but I figured it was skewed by my limited perspective. I’m 34, so I haven’t seen the same level of racism she saw. Right now it’s not as bad locally as it was when I was younger. I have stories from the 70’s and 80’s that could easily derail this whole post, but a lot of what I deal with now is stuff like going into a store with a white friend while explaining why employees are suddenly following us everywhere and not going to remembering which stores to avoid because they have prejudiced staffs. What’s messed up is that it’s always seemed like it was getting better up until around 2001 or so.
Back in 2006 I vaguely mentioned on my sites that I had a paid website assignment that I never explained or pointed to. What happened was that someone came to me to put together a website that detailed the workplace discrimination that they were fighting. I can’t go into detail and the website never made it onto the internet, but I saw photocopies of the threats and police reports filled with things that most of America claims to be a thing of the past. I saw things that, excuse my language here, pissed me off. No, not pissed off at white folks but by the fact that the other people in the company didn’t seem to give a crap until it could hurt their public image. Then I was mad that nobody was talking about stuff like this. You’d find more news reports about the squabbles between pairs of iced-out, shirtless rappers than about an innocent lives being threatened.
As irked as I was about that discrimination case, I can’t even imagine what it was like to live in the days of Jim Crow and Sundown towns. Then imagine being Martin Luther King and fighting for the equal right of all people while being the target of both the lawless and the law itself. How do you shoulder that kind of weight when you become one of the focal points of the movement? I heard that the person who performed the autopsy on him said that he was stressed out to the point of having the heart of a 60 year old man. He and the others around the world who fought (and fight now) for equal rights endured a lot of pain in the hopes that those who followed wouldn’t have to know that same strain. So instead of this being just another holiday, this is a day to think about them and thank them for what they’ve done for this world. Sounds cheesy, but I think they deserve far more than that.
Random news things that I’ve run across:
The Black Church and the Hollowing Out of Black Politics by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
A good article, even if it’s disturbing and sad. It’s sad to see that some of Black pastors and politicians are using the same crooked, divisive moves that were used against those that came before them. Here’s a quote:
The fears of those who predicted that billions of dollars in faith-based subsidies distributed by the Bush Administration to churches across the country would build a Republican patronage machine in white constituencies, and severely blunt the prophetic edge of the Black Church, may be coming to pass. Where once Black pastors were among the few who could speak truth to power with little fear of economic retaliation, many may now have ministries with governmental funding streams to worry about, while the least principled among them have been emboldened to ape the talking points and political interventions of white right wing ministers. In the current context, given the flood of corporate money available to pliant African American politicians, and the lack of local news coverage that might facilitate their being held accountable, the interventions of the Black Church into politics only threaten to take those politics further and further away from the desires of African American constituencies.
And now a Newsarama article by Dirk Danning about the whole Spider-Man marriage thing that I kinda don’t care about. What scares me about this article is that he also makes a perfect wrestling analogy that makes sense if you follow wrestling. I’ve been thinking the same thing about how many of the things that I enjoy seem to use the same tactics. Imagine paying for a wrestling Pay-Per-View to see how a rivalry finishes up only for it to drag on to the weekly show. Sounds like a lot of comic book Big Event mini-series, hunh?
Well, I’m going to end this thing on an up note:
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Well hot damn.
Here’s a quick post of random things I’m up to at the moment:
1.) ‘That thing’ that I was working on but only mentioning in a vague manner like Peter Potamus is now done. Click the pic over there to get all the info and I’ll have a post all about this later on in the week. If you know me, try not to act too surprised that I drew a background.
2.) Random pics that I haven’t forgotten about for other people: Snake-Eyes v.1 (currently in loose pencils), a kunoichi from the Punisher arcade game and a redrawn Martha from Combatribes because the old one turned out horrible.
3.) ScrollBoss’ first 2008 update hits tomorrow with a MUGEN version of Shinobi’s first stage, a review of Toaplan’s Knuckle Bash and some other random things. And damn me for not taking a pic of the Knuckle Bash cabinet when All American Comics had it in their store a few years ago. I think the cabinet is the only thing that tells you what the hell the characters’ names are. The Shinobi stage isn’t 100% perfect, but it’s better than the one wiped out by the horrific HD crash from a few years ago. I am NOT going to spend more of my life trying to record the timing of the little squirmy ninja hostage kids for a stage that, honestly, no one else is really going to give a crap about. At least it’s done and I can take it off the W.I.P. page.
This post is for any friends that are on social networking sites. Not that anyone reads this blog, BUT STILL.
I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine that I know from the shadowy world of MUGEN. No, not the part that makes random-ass fight videos and 10 minute presentations of their character select screen, but the part where people actually do things. I read it and it turns out that it was really an automatic e-mail from WAYN.com that was sent out to everybody in his address book or something. That automatically turned me off from joining the site, but it’s not as if I’m the target consumer of such stuff anyways. I’m not mad at my friend, but I don’t really trust any sites that do things like that.
The one that irks me more than that is Facebook. It sent me an e-mail that claimed to be from a friend with the message title, “I’ve added you as a friend on Facebook.” But it was really just some automail message that pretended to be him. Again, I’m not mad at my friend but I can’t really trust a site that sends out messages in other peoples’ names.
Look, I’m not paranoid despite what the brainwave-recording data files from the black helicopters would have you believe. And the fact that I’m not ready to trust certain social networking sites isn’t my way of saying that I’m not your friend. I just find it hard to join a website that starts telling lies to me before I’ve even joined up.
Because it just was. For me, it was somewhat balanced. I gave my site the redesign kick in the crapflaps it’s needed for damn-near-ever but now I’m dealing with small annoying bugs. I started a comic and almost immediately got stuck on it when I came up with better ideas for it. Drawing and computer coloring feels more natural again but now I seem to spend too much time working on the sites (except this one).
This started off as a rough year when my grandfather died but ends with the birth of my impossibly cute niece, Aaliyah. This is my first time being able to see a niece or nephew so young on a regular basis. I only got to see my niece Shella a few times as another impossibly cute baby, but I’ll be able to see Aaliyah on a more regular basis. This will lead to me helping to spoil that kid with toys and, as soon as she’s old enough, Duplo blocks.
So, to anyone bored enough to read this rickety blog, Happy New Year!
I’m horrible at remembering birthdays, but there are 3 that I never forget: my mother’s, my sister Elizabeth’s, and my grandmother Marva’s. Sadly, she passed away in late 2002. Instead of being sorrowful and depressed that she’s no longer here, I’m going to post YouTube links to three of the songs that she enjoyed. I’ve done this before and I may have linked to the same song last time, but these are there are some fun memories tied into these:
the Gap Band – Party Train
Whenever there was a family trip in her car and the radio failed to play anything good, she’d pop in her Gap Band tape and everything was right again. I liked seeing the fun video in the brief time that we had BET in our area before it replaced by a second country music channel. Long after her tape snapped she got the same Greatest Hits CD that I had and played the songs all over again.
Maze ft. Frankie Beverly – Golden Time of Day
Another Greatest Hits CD I had then was from Maze and I eventually found out that me and Grandma thought this was their best song. Most people like “Joy and Pain” and the usual hits, but this one starts with strong funk and flows right into some beautifully moving soul music. The YouTube link isn’t a music video but the song and the album cover are good enough in my opinion.
Looney Tunes – Three Little Bops
As a kid, I’d watch cartoons from either the couch but I’d flop on the floor a few feet from the TV if something good came on. This was an instant floor-flop cartoon not just because it was good but because Grandma and Great-Grandma Nee would want the volume turned up. Everybody loved that cartoon just as much.
Whether you’re an average jill, a common joe, gift procrastinator extraordinaire, 5-star holiday cookiesmith, Cindy Lou Who, Wong Who, a snot-nosed punk what don’t deserve nothin’ due to being a snot-nosed punk all year, or a fictional character who is pouting for being drawn in a goofy Santa costume, may all you party people have a Merry Christmas! For all of you that celebrate other things either have happy ones or happy belated ones! If you don’t celebrate anything at all, have Happy Days OFF! If you don’t have days off, have a non-messed up time at work in comparison to other days that you have at a job that won’t let you off for the holidays.
Wait, isn’t that a title in it’s own way? Isn’t it? No? Whatever, man. Here’s what I’ve been doing since my last post.
1.) I’m working on a book cover for a friend of mine. Part of my Christmas vacation unpaid days off will go towards working on this because it’s such a fun picture. I’ll just say that it’s slightly video game related and leave it at that. The story of how I got the gig will have to wait until later.
2.) I put up a public beta of a graphic generator that I previewed here a few months ago:
You pick two characters and the game screen they appear on. Then you choose the portrait that appears behind the character (if they even have a portrait) and the logo. I had to resize and remake the logos that didn’t come from the Marvel Super Heroes or Marvel vs. Capcom games. You can’t just resize them because they’ll usually just look like crap.
After I’m done with the book cover, I’ll be back to work on a more versatile version of this that does more than just Vs. Screens. I may be on to something with this.
3.) Being angry that I haven’t had enough free time to play Fire Pro Wrestling Returns after waiting an eternity to buy it. Yeah, some of my Christmas free time will go towards that, too.
Once again I take advantage of the fact that our K-Mart seems to have only old stock of some things when I luck up and score the 3-pack with Lex Luthor, Copperhead and Mirror Master. I already had the single pack versions of Lex (the lime-green flavor) and Copperhead but this pack gives me the more accurate version of Lex and a Copperhead with a better paint job. I mostly got it for Mirror Master because this toy line is too scalperlicious to even hope that I’d see a single pack Mirror Master.
Hitting Toys R Us pays off with with two Cobras (a.k.a. Cobra Troopers) and my 2nd Red Ninja. I feel lucky here because I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about people trying to collect the new G.I.JOE 25th Anniversary line. Most involve people not being able to find them or finding out that some chumpcakes buy them all up to sell on eBay. It feels good to be rewarded for not running to the online stores where these things are selling with an insane price mark-up.
