George Jetson Got COVID

Stallone shadow boxes with the Pope

"Holistic Master Coach" says "you do not need glasses" and will heal you for $11

Pediatric care by chiropractors borders on child abuse

Another Christian influencer arrested for child abuse

Cyclist Who Kneed Girl, 5, to Ground Wins Court Case

America's Closer To "Imploding Under The Weight Of Its Own Absurdities" Than Many Realize 

   

 The Navy is 'too woke' because 'people are doing poems on aircraft carriers'

Bill Gates Booked An Entire Restaurant For Two Days Just To Sip A Diet Coke And Leave

Why I Hate Dave Logan & I've Only Just Read His Name

"So many bridges have been burned all at once. It's an awful situation, but if it happened to any one of us, the outcome would be the same."

 - Dave Logan, of the USC Marshall School of Business, on Sony's Amy Pascal possibly losing her job over racist emails

1961 was the year I was born in South Central, Los Angeles. I met my father and mother, as strangers, when I was 13 and 40, respectively, having only intermittent contact with them after that, to which I blame respectability politics. I can’t remember how many foster homes (some nice, some not) I was “raised” in. I took hellish beatings in them all.

Except for visits to a foster home by the “insurance man,” who my Great Migration “parents” of the time treated like a God, my first interactions with whites came about because it was discovered I was “smart.” By testing well in the 9th grade, I had won the honor, on my first day, of being seated between two white troublemakers the teacher wanted separated. Once I was introduced to the class, and between them, their exchange went like this:

“Hey, Marty, you like niggers?”

“Yeah, I think everyone should own one.”

I immediately got a bad reputation for using my desk - the kind with the chair attached - to bash both of their heads in. I didn’t care. I cared even less when we were punished “equally,” with them being sent home while I was made to wait in detention, until the day was over, and the school bus I caught at 6:30 AM returned we blacks to neighborhoods defined by gun fire.

The first time I was invited to a white person’s house, unexpectedly, my friend’s mother took one look at me, clapped her hands together and exclaimed, “Excellent: we’re having fried chicken for dinner!” My friend, mortified, hustled me to his bedroom, where I sat alone, surrounded by posters of his white heroes, as the two of them apparently discussed proper comportment.

  “There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.”

 - President Barack Obama, on what awaits the dark and successful

That friend, and two of his white friends I later met, went on to be cops. When we were kids, we’d sit in a soda shop (they bought mine) and, to my disgust, the three soon-to-be “officers” would make fun of the Mexicans working in the kitchen. They said they were only playing. Meanwhile, I couldn’t go to the same parties they did, couldn’t get the jobs they did, easily, and wandered the streets looking for shelter. One of the whites, the most sociopathic of the three - he beat up his girlfriend, and kept knives and “Japanese Throwing Stars” for the walls he occasionally punched holes into, when emphasizing a point - volunteered to work South Central, Los Angeles upon graduation. I think about him a lot when I consider, of my 20 black running buddies there, 16 are already dead. In 1979 I was encouraged by white parents to join the military as an out.

  “We, as a nation, have failed. It’s as simple as that. We have failed.”

 - Attorney General Eric Holder, on police abuses

I didn’t join the Navy to escape the ghetto, really, but because they had a drafting program, and I was artistically inclined. They cancelled the program as soon as I graduated the racially-fraught ordeal of boot camp, and when they asked me what I wanted to do then, I told them to send me back to South Central. “Not going to happen,” I was told, “you signed the paper - we own you.” I told them to put me on the next ship leaving the States.

Out to sea, I served under a redneck who also liked to throw knives, and - since he signed my progress reports - made it one of my jobs to return them. He, and another white guy who never rose above E-1, knew more about the ship than the Captain. Together, they smuggled drugs onboard at every port, eventually resulting in an investigation into why so many sailors were jumping over-board (myself included) and hoping it wasn’t merely that we were one of the first crews forced to endure an extended deployment of 9 months at sea, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

I spent the last 8 months of my enlistment in the brig, having developed the nasty habit of clocking officers, in an unsuccessful bid to cancel my enlistment. I spent most of that time in solitary confinement, next to an extremely violent black guy named “Green,” who required six guards to escort him to the showers. I admired him, and he admired my singing voice, requesting I serenade him to sleep each night with songs I made up on the spot. It was a talent I hardly knew I had.

  "I was socialized well into adulthood. I was in the Navy nine years. I was formed before I started to do this. So, I think people that grow up their whole lives and were practicing their whole lives in the basement are different. Also, I was a severe stutterer until I was nearly 30,…I wasn't socialized to where that was how I validated myself.”

 - Bill Withers, interviewed in Rolling Stone, after his nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 I was released on June 6th, 1983 and not long afterwards, found myself back as one of the few black guys in San Francisco’s fabled "Mabuhay Gardens,” attending a Flipper show. Their drummer, noticing my alienation, graciously bought me a beer and, later, encouraged me to keep writing songs. I did, and - while never getting rich - would eventually go on to be in a few of San Francisco’s most iconic bands.

When I finally went solo in the early 90s, wholly rejecting respectability politics as “The Crack Emcee,” my work was first positively reviewed by the LA Weekly. Later, the writer said he’d gotten some push-back for covering me favorably, and was told if he ever did again, he’d be restricted from new releases by the record company. He apologized if he’d hurt my prospects, but, as a black man, he was also afraid for his own:

Last I’d heard, that writer - a "smart" and talented guy - was sleeping in his car.

  ”White Americans of modest means are more likely to have inherited something, in the form of housing wealth or useful professional connections, than the descendants of slaves,…

…If everyone’s wages were growing, and if everyone felt secure enough in their jobs to quit every now and again in search of better opportunities elsewhere, I doubt that we’d be talking quite so much about white privilege,…”

BTW, it was Sony that was so turned off by the idea of helping me, or anyone who understood the implications of my work.

But, as I sit here in a homeless shelter, remembering and writing this - I finally am happy to say - that feeling is now so totally mutual,….
 

Of Mice And Men And Fights To Win (A Long Time Ago)

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Not exactly the world's biggest Rachel Maddow fan. But right now I'm listening to everybody, trying to gauge where we are, and the Left seems to be seeing what I do - madness has gripped the Right and they don't recognize it. Conservatives seem pretty proud to be rubbing shoulders with racial resentments, and religious fruitcakes, while losing one battle after another, each to be worn like a badge of honor. 

Just a big ol' pile of nothin'.

You know, this blog used to catch shit for it's name - specifically the word "macho" - because, at the time, any guy willing to stick his chest out and say "no more" to the NewAge feminist bullshit was seen, not as forward thinking, but pretty pig-headed. But I stuck with it anyway, since I grew up around some of the baddest motherfuckers the Earth has ever seen, and Pastel World's caricature of their lives couldn't put a dent in my mine.

I bring it up because this fake "macho" posturing, among folks who couldn't burst a grape in a fruit fight, can be pretty damaging. You know what I mean - the guys who got picked on in school, trying to get revenge as adults, etc.. They're just assholes who need their asses kicked - again - but, of course, they're all armed to the teeth now (OMG - black teens!) so, for the most part, we're stuck watching them destroy themselves. And destroy themselves they will. Because they never knew how to fight in the first place. It's all talk, just as before.

I've got all kinds of battles in my background. I can still remember getting knocked down - in elementary school - and desperately trying to protect my head as a gang kicked me in every place possible. I fought 5 guys one time, totally stick-and-move, until someone came up behind me with a paint roller (like you'd use to cover walls) and planted it firmly in the back of my neck. There was a 300 lb. white guy in the Navy, after I was already injured, who used his girth to corner me before beating me into submission. And the Mexican who beat me silly, boxing, demonstrating the difference between "the sweet science" and street fighting.

But you know what never happened? No one ever lost respect for me for losing. The leader of that elementary school gang? Somehow, he and I ended up serving together for a while in the Navy, and to my surprise he'd threaten anyone who so much as looked at me cross-eyed, like he was repaying a debt. Those 5 guys (with the paint roller) unfortunately they're all dead now, but they became my good friends, too. The 300 lb. white guy, once he realized I was fighting him injured, actually picked me up and carried me to medical care. And that Mexican boxer eventually taught me everything I was doing wrong, happily, because - like all the others - he saw that what I lacked in skills, I made up with heart.

Nothing like that just happened with Ted Cruz & Co.. Instead of actually fighting, Cruz pushed Boehner towards Obama to say "Knock this chip off my shoulder," and when the president did, they cried he wouldn't let them win. Big whoop. Big Man. Just pathetic. The only one we can look up to is Boehner because he's always been the only one with anything on the line. The rest are just instigators, scattering now to brag about how they put Obama on the spot, when no such thing happened. They just lost, and the Republican Party paid the price for it.

Doesn't matter what Cruz says - or what he thinks of himself:

To my eyes, there was absolutely no honor in any of it,...

US Mercury Astronaut Scott Carpenter Has Died At 88

I always liked Scott Carpenter, he was a bit of a fool.

"You're looking out at a totally black sky, seeing an altimeter reading of 90,000ft and realise you are going straight up. And the thought crosses your mind:  

What am I doing?"

Like him, I'm shaking my head. 

Not only the second American to orbit Earth, Carpenter exemplified what became known as The Right Stuff after his capsule overshot the landing point by almost 300 fucking miles. 

He left our still-new-to-space-travel nation without communication and frantic with worry he was alive. 

But the Navy eventually found their astronaut, chillin' in the Caribbean, floating on his raft with his feet propped up.

He went around the globe three times in 1962. 

And as the backup pilot for the first Mercury mission, his was the  voice that famously said, "Godspeed, John Glenn." 

Carpenter was born in Boulder, Colorado, commissioned in the Navy in 1949, and served as a pilot in the Korean War. 

In 1959 he was selected as one of seven Mercury astronauts, training with NASA and specializing in communications and navigation. 

After retiring in 1969 he took up oceanography. As part of the Navy's (now famous and trendy) SeaLab program, in 1965 Carpenter went to California and spent 30 days under the sea.

He lived in Vail, Colorado and upon retiring founded Sea Sciences with the famous French researcher, Jacques Cousteau.

His second wife, Patty Barrett, said he suffered a stroke in September, and died not long after in hospice care.

Let it be known:

Scott Carpenter was easily the most badass #2 in history.

And John Glenn is the Mercury team's last surviving member.