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Dancing With the Stars
Up until I was about 10 or so, dance for me was tap and tutus, toe shoes and the Rockettes, and the New York City Ballet twirling through George Balanchine’s version of The Nutcracker. It was the pretty white teacher in my Staten Island, N.Y. dance studio teaching me how to pirouette and the chorus…
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More Mumia?
A new Sundance channel documentary, In Prison My Whole Life, unrevealingly retreads the case against Philadelphia-based Black Panther-cum-revolutionary radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal was arrested (and later convicted and sentenced to death) on Dec. 9, 1981 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. That date coincides with British-born filmmaker William Francome’s birthday. The…
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Where's South Africa's Obama?
One by one, South Africa’s Moses Generation is dying out—there was another funeral last Saturday—and its demise is raising uncomfortable questions about the yet-to-emerge Joshua Generation to lead South African into its Promised Land. These biblical references arise out of a speech Barack Obama delivered in Selma, Alabama last year, when the then 46-year-old Obama acknowledged…
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Can We Trust the Brain Trust?
People are beginning to notice that President-elect Obama and his still-forming circle of advisers are a very different kind of people in power—different from those we have known in recent political history. Whereas, the Bush administration—and Reagan before him—seemed to bask in a beer-drinking, next-door neighbor image, Obama has assembled a team of highly educated…
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A New Type of Pain Killer in South Africa
What do you do when life becomes so distressing and coping mechanisms begin to fail? Teenagers in South Africa are experimenting with anti-retroviral drugs as a way to escape their realities. These drugs are designed to treat HIV/AIDS by boosting patients’ immune systems and suppress the virus. Across the country, teenagers—even those who do not…
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Meet Obama
It has become a near mantra for the president-elect: “We have only one president at a time.” But as the last days of the Bush administration dwindle away, it looks more and more like that one president is Barack Obama. Over the weekend, while Bush was flipping a coin at the Army/Navy game, Obama was…
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Still Need the Funk
For funk fans, there was no greater spectacle than the landing of the Mothership during Parliament-Funkadelic’s legendary 1976 P-Funk Earth Tour. Its outlandish amalgamation of sci-fi fantasy, Blaxploitation grit, glam rock, gospel furor and sweat-inducing funk helped propel Parliament-Funkadelic to the furthest reaches of creativity. The P-Funk Earth Tour became a new artistic bench mark…
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Office Party Politics
“The one good thing about this jacked-up economy,” a friend wryly noted, “is I think they’re going to cancel the office holiday party..” Talk about your silver linings! It doesn’t matter whether you’re treated to a five-course dinner at a spiffy restaurant or Cheez Whiz on Ritz crackers—what happens at the office holiday party can…
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Help Wanted. Call 1-800-TAXPAYER.
The unemployment jumped to 6.7 percent in November, shedding 533,000 jobs. It’s the largest loss in one month since December 1974. And since January, nearly 2 million jobs have been cut. More than 10.3 million people are unemployed, according to the Labor Department. Companies are issuing pink slips, left and right. AT&T cut 12,000 jobs,…
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Keith Sweat's New Love
So The Buzz knows that times are hard. Everybody’s strugglin’. November’s unemployment rate is the highest in 34 years. Even celebrities are feeling the drought. Scrapin’ to make a dollar. But. come on, an ode to McDonalds’ chicken nuggets? For real? Yep. Keith Sweat is helping Mickey D’s celebrate the 25th anniversary of the McNugget. Dreamin’…