Some Thoughts
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A List of Black People I'm (Mostly) Certain Are Not White Women From Kansas
1. Tyronn Lue 2. My aunt Jean 3. The nigga who played “Poot” from The Wire 4. The cute widdle Black baby model on the box of Pampers I bought yesterday 5. Boston University professor Saida Grundy 6. Panama Jackson 7. “Shatasha” from Bone Thugs n’ Harmony 8. Summer Lee 9. That young boy at…
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Colonoscopies Are Easy! Colonoscopy Prep Is Hell on Earth!
The tragic death of Chadwick Boseman has inspired increased conversation about the importance of colonoscopies to catch colon cancer and other colorectal disorders. The CDC recommends that you wait until you’re 50 to start screening. But, since Black people are 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer and 40 percent more likely…
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35 Things I Thought Were Signs of Extreme Wealth When I Was Younger
1. A garage 2. A basketball hoop on said garage 3. A fiberglass basketball hoop (if you had this, I assumed you were Warren Buffet) 4. A pantry 5. A finished basement 6. A family with two cars 7. A salary of over $60,000 a year 8. Annual family vacations 9. Having separate hoop shoes…
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It's Fine to Just Cry, Too
I keep coming back to resilience. And how I hate how we consider it to be an essential and inherent and invaluable characteristic of Blackness. I hate it because it’s dehumanizing. Being born Black don’t make us any more resilient than anyone else. We ain’t stronger. We ain’t tougher. We’ve just been given more shit to…
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VAN JONES IS AARON BURR!
It finally dawned on me yesterday, after reading that Van Jones said Jared Kushner has “the dopest job in the world.” Which is such a Van Jones-ass thing to do and say—and not just because he’s praising the effete criminal dickwad who’s what would happen if every Jared ever and every 28-year-old MBA ever were…
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So Maybe It's Time to Defund Sports, Too
If you ever find yourself walking around downtown Pittsburgh on a Friday afternoon in the early fall—when the weather is still nice enough to be jacket-less—you’d encounter many of the amenities that consistently place it on America’s Most Livable Cities lists. The world-renowned Cultural District. Restaurants helmed by Beard-nominated chefs. Architectural and topographical marvels unseen…
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Abolish All These Damn Zoom Work Calls So I Can Be Naked While Working at Home Again
So it’s not so much that working while naked is a thing I need to do. I’m anemic, so I get cold easily. (I am the person who, immediately after checking into a hotel room, turns the thermostat to 80, leaves and doesn’t come back until the room is sufficiently toasty.) And it doesn’t feel…
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New York City Is Dead, Because I Killed It When I Left and Went Back Home to Pittsburgh: An Essay About Murder
“The city is dead,” I said, aloud, to no one, while each step I took crashed the same cement I’d fallen in love with. The pizza box I lugged with me—filled, just 32 minutes earlier, with a New York City pizza slice—was empty, except for crumbs. Heh. A metaphor, for the dead city. “A metaphor,…
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Abolish MAGA Parody Hats
Conceding even the tiniest thing to a hateful and violent twerp like our president feels like a total defeat. Unfortunately, I must admit that there are (at least) three zeitgeist-related places that he has “won”—where his influence has been total and, possibly, irreversible. I’ve never been a kumbaya-ass nigga who gave any proper shits about…
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COVID-19 Made Me a One-Issue Voter: Get the Man Responsible for 165,000 American Deaths the Fuck Out
So I guess there’s no point in belaboring my premise since it’s right there, with a bullhorn, in the title, but I do want to clarify. Getting the motherfucker(s) most responsible for the way COVID-19 has devastated America the fuck out of office is the thing I care about most right now. But it’s not…