With all the talk about Chris Brown and Rihanna, I’ve been talking and writing a lot about domestic violence. Chris and Ri were not married, are not related or cohabitating, so their incident comes more accurately under the heading of assault or another term I am hearing a lot of lately –Intimate Partner Violence.

I’ve been trying to broaden the conversation because I have been assaulted by women, and I know how helpless you feel as a man caught up in it. Every man I know has a “crazy bitch” story, as in “that crazy bitch tried to punch/cut/stab/club me. “ I don’t know what happened between Chris Brown and Rihanna, but I know that studies suggest that women instigate these crack-ups more times than we think. I really feel Byron Hurt’s attempt to get at men who abuse women, because we can all agree those “men” are sub-human. But while he wrote out the 10 excuses men use for hitting women, I kept waiting for the women’s list. I’m still waiting. I dig B’s idea, but I think we have addressed the equation from one end for long enough and found that it doesn’t work. The numbers haven’t gone down, and there has been no change. So it may be time for a new approach. Shaming, blaming propping up the double standard and polarizing the conversation doesn’t move it forward. We have to not just acknowledge that women hit men and that it is wrong, but figure out how to stop it. Trying to emphasize he frequency or disparity in the numbers misses the point, since some much of IPV involving women hitting men goes unreported. I think we have to agree that it’s wrong or agree that there is a double-standard.

First, let’s figure out what exactly we’re talking about.

» Continue reading “Ten Things Men Can Do When Women Attack”

I planned to attend my 20-year high school reunion, but mostly, I ended up just going to the meet and greet, which was the night before. I paid and everything for the reunion, but I had my son Saturday night, so that pretty much trumps everything.

My best friend came by and picked me up, and off we went. Back before I moved back to Cleveland—almost six months ago–he was pumping up the reunion—“y’gotta go, dawg!”—but it wasn’t that interesting to me. There was no one in particular I wanted to see. But the more I thought of it as fodder for writing, then the more sense it made to go. Like I said, I ended up not going to the reunion itself, but the meet and greet was probably as good as it was going to get.

» Continue reading “High School Reunion Rules”

Retired New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan recent skermishes in divorce court serve to underline why there need to be changes in the child-support laws—and I have come up with the perfect solution. It’s a fact: men that make a lot of money get taken to the wash in divorce court, and that makes sense to me: if your wife is a (quantifiable) partner in your success, then she should be compensated for that investment. Quantifying that investment is complicated, but no matter: alimony, in a lot of cases, is warranted.

People that say ‘the child support solution is to wear a condom’ are generally pretty stupid people who would have you believe they were born in a manger with Three Wise Men bringing gifts. 85% of us were not planned. Most of us were conceived in the back of someone’s car or, like me, on a couch in my grandmother’s basement. The only reason she keeps the couch, she says, is because I was conceived on it. How about that?

Well, that’s another matter entirely.

Re: child support, men should pay up, because the purpose of child support is to provide care to child long after a relationship or marriage has been terminated. That makes all the sense in the world. The vast majority of mothers need this money to make ends meet and support them while they try to make a go of it, single-parent-stylee. I’m down with that. What’s confusing to me is the idea that support should somehow make the child’s life on-par with the father’s life. Nah. These laws are antiquated, and assume that women don’t cake like men do. If Mommy is losing like that, and we want the kid to live like Daddy—>shrugs<—I say Daddy should be given custody. That makes more sense to me.

Most often, the amount paid to the mother seems to be more about adult support than child support, and it’s not uncommon to see mothers riding fine, iced down, and find your seed out there in holey shoes and moth-eaten Old Navy gear, eating pot-pies for dinner. The women sometime don’t work, and child support becomes their primary income. And there is no way to know how much of that is being used for her upkeep, and not the kids. So how do we fix that?

Child support should not be based on the income of the father—that’s ludicrous. That’s basically encouraging women to use children like paychecks and lay back. And if you need child support to survive, again, you should consider giving custody to the father. I think there should be a different formula for determining child support that encourages all parties involved to be responsible parents.

The Ultimate Child Support Solution goes like this:

» Continue reading “The Ultimate Child Support Solution”

Sen. Joe Biden has been named Sen. Barack Obama’s choice for Vice President. The best thing people of color can say about Biden is he’s like cold faucet water: you can add any flavor you like. He doesn’t have any rep at all with black folks. He called Obama “articulate” once, but he can be forgiven for his imprecise language: white people everywhere are struggling to come to grips and articulate their emotions about discovering an eloquent black man, what, with his relentless swagger and terrorist fist bump. Obama looks familiar to Us, but to white America he remains an extraterrestrial, and Biden has been to this point as bereft of adjectives as most of his ilk. So obviously, he gets a pass.

With Biden and all his cool credentials and no heavy additives, pollutants or bitter taste, Obama going to add his flavor and essentially make political Kool Aid, which was the best thing for the party. I doubt the Clinton supporters will be sipping, and I see some salt her game that her supporters might throw in the mix. But let’s face facts: Obama needed a white man in his stable. Flat out. I’m not an Obama supporter: in fact, I haven’t chosen sides one way or the next. I like to keep my politics to myself. Suffice it to say, however, as white men go, he could have done a lot worse than Biden.

Actor Julius Carry III has passed on.  Drop some curl activator or Sta-Sof Fro… for Sho ‘Nuff.

Me and Gary Coleman have yet another thing in common. I recently just put my divorce to bed too.

Signing the papers wasn’t traumatic at all–I was more concerned about missing my flight than the dissolve of my marriage. I wanted out in the worst imaginable way, but I wasn’t going without my son. See, here’s a free tip to all you Dads on your way to divorce court: the mistake you, Alec Baldwin and others make is getting the divorce out of spite in a huff, then leaving the child custody piece to be ironed out, or relying on the mother to do the right thing. Fuck That. If you feel you’ll make the better parent, fight for it. Fight like a muthafucka. Get your priorities right–sell those spinning rims and hire yourself a lawyer. And not no TV rent-a-lawyer, or a laywer/real estate agent, or anyone who will do it pro bono. Because they may have a law degree, but very often they will fuck you up by not reading the fine print. Hire someone who knows what the fuck they are doing. Someone who knows that, as a man, once you give the divorce, you have no cards left to hold. So play that muthafucka WELL. Spend that lawyer money. You’ll buy $200 Jordans but not pay for a lawyer? Ok. Truth to tell, you don’t need your kids anyway.

In other news, Dame Dash got his house foreclosed on! I remember meeting Dame for the first time at a Vibe event some years ago… dude was THE self-promoter, talking about building this empire. All these years later, he got it right, kinda. Hope he bounces back and keeps his crib.

Onward

Ok, the reborn Cleveland Scene just had a joint to celebrate being back in style and shit, and had the best spread I’d seen in a while…. Sushi and the whole nine. A lot of stuff I didn’t even know what the fuck it was, but it was crazy-tastey. I hate those small-ass plates they give you at shit like this, so I’ve devised a method to get the maximum use of every square inch of your plate.

Now, look at my plate:

The key here is to put food on the plate in a counter-clockwise fashion and build upwards, like the Aztecs. Food like sushi makes this easier. Plate-building is a skill budding journalist and writers will need to know as the lay-offs are coming fast and furious. When the food is free eat a lot. I mean, sure, I don’t know what it was, but I’m not dead , right?

HOUSEKEEPING: Sorry to subscribers who get the WHOLE ENTRY in the notifications. I’m still ironing out some bugs. Be patient.

Onward.

Is it me, or is there this weird new genre? MILF TV, where older women are flaunting their sex appeal, has replaced T-and-A TV. I’m not dissing it, I’m saying it’s kind of taking over, certainly in the reality TV game.

Reality TV either features young women, gay men, or older, ass-hot spankable woman your older sister probably went to the mall with. Which is kinda hot. For me, most of the women of reality TV aren’t old enough to be my mother, like the term “MILF” signifies. But a few are, and that’s OK with me.

I don’t know why some cats chase after these young chicken-heads, man. Younger women, while hot horizontally, are headaches in high heels. As I get older, I find that older women are highly underrated. Square biz. That may change when I hit my 60s. But given the way ladies are taking care of themselves? Maybe not.

» Continue reading “Real Housewives? Your colon and the lost ‘Hancock’ joint”

I’m not sure I understand the problem with the problem is with the new Ben Stiller film Tropic Thunder. Not that I advocate taking pot shots at the mentally challenged, but it seems to me as if the outrage of the humorless has become a cheap way to get attention and TV time. Offense and Moral Outrage has turned the nightly news into an intellectual Gong Show, where you and I validate these idiots trying to put restraints on art and free expression. Enough already. I’m over it. I think people see the way some black people can get offended and get press and think, I can do that do. It’s caused alot of apathy and Outrage Fatigue regarding racial and other issues. If another million moms, million mongoloids or a million mopes McMarch, I’m gonna go apeshit. Live your life, for Christ’s sake. Outarage is not a spectator sport.

I famously was taken to task for using the word retard, and there was some minor outrage.

I was on some talk show in the middle of Finnish-ButtHole, KY, talking about George Bush, who I described as a retard. We went to commercial break and Sue Wiley, the MILFy host of the show turns to me, without missing a beat and says. “I’ll have you know my BROTHER is PROFOUNDly retarded.”

“Mazeltov,” I said. Some hillbilly got on the horn and called my boss’s boss. They were perplexed, but I don’t know why. They hired me to be outrageous, and got thier money’s worth. Nobody that doesn’t work at a newspaper in Kentucky can spell well enough to write letters to the editor or picket signs, so I wasn’t worried. No offense to my Kentucky folks.

Anyway.

Here’s a random picture of half of my Kentucky Loft.

But I digress.

This isn’t the first movie Stiller’s been in where ‘tards were talked up or even made fun of. My work-wife Jasmyne Cannick tried to start a fire because Robert Downey Jr. plays a white man playing a black guy. First of all, let’s get this put of the way: Downey is fucking brilliant. When I saw him play white America’s first crackhead, I knew he was the ish. Jazzi wants to draw a line from Downey to Shirley Q. Liquor. That dog don’t hunt. Liquor is trying to press buttons for the sake of fun a profit: Downey is taking an artistic challenge. Acting is an art without boundaries. Art cannot have boundaries. I don’t want to live in a country where a white man can’t play a black guy, whether it’s art or it’s blackface.

Apropos of nothing, somebody thinks they’ve found Bigfoot. Jesus Christ on a Scooter.

Evin Cosby made an off-hand comment for the NY Daily News that, while very telling, struck me weird.

She said, at the opening of her store called “PB & Caviar” (an impossibly unclever name) she can relate to Sen. Barack Obama having his black credentials questioned because she’s always had hers questioned as well. “Everyone has their way of speaking and living their life. No one should be judging and assuming that because I’m black, I have to speak in that hip-hop way. That’s something I prefer not to do.” She feels disconnected from people who didn’t grow up privileged.

Right.

Nevermind that some “privileged” white people these days sound more”hip-hop” than black people–I guess it’s not surprising to hear this kind of bullshit fall out the mouth of one of the Cosby kids—the only one to have risen their head from the sand, albeit for PR purposes . What’s troubling is she’s propping up the myth of Black, not Black: the idea that there are two types of black people, and she prefers to deal only with her types of people. Evin’s got the ‘Itis–no, not THAT Itis, Cosbyitis, the self-deluded affliction of the Black middle class who believe because believe they have a certain amount of money or influence, they are somehow better than other black people, and can’t relate to “those” kinds of black people. Evin says she feels Obama’s pain. Evin–while exceptionally cute!—needs a better publicist. Evin Cosby is out-of-her-mind crazy.

It’s funny and ironic that her Dad, who once described himself as “off the corner,” made his mail talking what she calls “hip-hop,” or what linguists call African American Vernacular English and what most of shorthand as “Ebonics.” Funnier still that she says she doesn’t talk to those type of people, that she doesn’t have them in her circle of friends. She brags about it. It’s funny, but I pride myself on having friends in The White House and in Jomo’s House of Ribs: on my ability to walk through any ghetto or golf-course in America unshook. Some call it my ability to “code switch:” I call it being Black in America. To be Black in America, you better know how to get down with everyone, in every situation, because, truth be told? You never know what kind of situation you’ll end up in, and you’d better be able to talk or fight your way out, in any scenario. Black people can survive, but they can’t thrive in a vacuum. Because you may not always have money and the (white and boujie) friends that come along with it. But you will always be black, and there will always be black people who are far more willing to help you than your country-club cronies. You can’t roll talking ill on your folks and not think it’s going to find you, bad. How do you imagine you are better than people that look like you?

I don’t think because you’re black, you owe it white people—or black people, for that matter—to shuck and jive in a way that makes them comfortable. I refuse to, and that’s part of my problem. Note to Evin: I think if you want to survive in America, you’d better know how to related to everyone, or else all that pricey education doesn’t mean much. Because if it didn’t teach you how to relate to people—real people, not just the people playing Bid Whist on Daddy’s yacht—then you got cheated. Just remember when you have to shutter up your little boutique in a year or so that even Da Little People spend money. Best not to dis them.

There are two kinds of people in this country: winners and losers. And you can’t always tell who they are by how they talk. Square biz.