By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 9, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
You can call me Al. Or at least an Al lover. Al Jarreau, that is.
In high school I tried to get into the heavy metal music that was popular at the time. I tried and failed.
That more I caved to peer pressure and tried to pretend I liked the dense, loud, manic lyrics belted out by AC/DC and Black Sabbath, the more drawn I became to what, I suppose, could be called its opposite: the melodious and soulful harmonizings of a little known singer (at the time) named Al Jarreau.
I remember having more Al Jarreau cassettes in my car than any other musician in 1979. But I would never play them when a friend was in the car. But when I was alone, it was Al and me.
My first great love affair with music was with this man’s remarkable voice.
Coates’ theory is that Carson is the latest phase of an eight year initiative, “a Republican plan”, to locate a black conservative to counter Barack Obama. As evidence, the existence of four black men who have flickered in and out of the spotlight during Obama’s ascension: Alan Keyes, Michael Steele, Allen West, and Herman Cain. In pulling together these loose strands, Coates overlooks an array of inconvenient facts—that only one of them, Steele, emerged as the product of any sort of party-wide process; that West openly complains that national Republicans ignored him during his failed congressional reelection; that Cain was about as much a product of a grand Republican strategy as Michelle Bachman, who surged for about as long as Cain did; and that Keyes was not so much hand-picked, more a self anointed sacrifice with a history of parachuting into quixotic races.
The only vague line connecting all four, much less all four and Carson, is their sharing of the same skin color. Coates takes that and runs with it, with the very same snide cynicism that he charges conservatives have practiced in elevating these “Black Hopes of the moment.” It is the left’s usual penchant for dismissing conservatives, with the underlying innuendo that a black conservative’s advancement is a fraud that could never transpire without conspiracy or the hand-out of affirmative action. In other words, the same poison that Coates’ writings routinely suggest is at the root of any right-winger’s skepticism of black accomplishment, from Obama all the way down to the corner office.
I have no doubt that a part of Carson’s appeal is that he is vivid proof that not every black embraces an activist, expanding government. But at the risk of upsetting both Coates’ and Sean Hannity’s narratives, I see Carson more in the vein of, say, a Bill Gates or a Mark Zuckerberg, spectacularly successful achievers whose run of success earns them a public policy stage. That makes Carson not a race pawn, but the beneficiary of a common American archetype of making all purpose experts and role models out of gifted people.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Taking Ben Carson Seriously
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Apr 5, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
“Someone in Heaven this yesterday said, “Cut, print, that’s a wrap!”
And gave a thumbs up.
RIP Roger Ebert
===
I never met Roger Ebert. But I felt like I knew him. How many critics can you say that about?
Roger Ebert was the most human of critics in my lifetime. My first years as an avid fan of Siskel & Ebert, I favored the more academic and cerebral Siskel.
But as I matured, I found myself leaning toward Roger Ebert. And the last two decades I looked to Roger Ebert if I ever wanted to understand the meaning of a film. Or decide if I should go to a film based on the quality of that film. Or, and this is most important, if I wanted to know what a film had to teach about life.
I don’t think there will ever be a film critic who will teach us more about life through the medium of film. That is because there will never be another critic who loved film as much as Roger Ebert. And who loved life equally as much as the art he critiqued.
Most critics love their art but too often hide behind it instead of embracing life. Roger Ebert was one critic who rose above his peers and helped to create an art form of covering an art form—and managed to marry a love of the art he covered with a gift for communicating the mechanics and mystery and magic of film. As one human to another.
We lost a great friend today that most of us never met. The one who also happened to be our greatest film critic.
Roger Ebert, is somewhere today, I suspect, critiquing the production choices of Heaven.
By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Apr 5, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Idea for a movie:
An renowned divorce attorney who is a single, over-the -top, alpha-male, who has been very outspoken against gay marriage, begrudgingly takes his first gay divorce client.
Over the ensuing months, he falls in love with his client and starts a relationship, even though doing so violates the ethics code.
In the final scene, he has to choose between getting disbarred or his romantic relationship with his client.
He chooses the latter, and they marry the following May; and the former attorney opens a florist shop to make enough money for his partner to go to law school and become a great divorce attorney.
For heterosexual and gay couples.
And there is a really cool high speed chase scene reminiscent of the movie Bullet. Except it involves a floral delivery.
Just imagine this scene where everything hinges on a delivery. Of flowers. If not delivered timely, the entire arrangement (and it is a large one ) is free:
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 4, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Basketball and bigger things
Our state’s greatest challenge –and why the UL Cards don’t get the same statewide love the Hilltoppers do?
There are 418 cities in Kentucky.
Citizens in 417 of them —when asked where they live–say Kentucky
Citizens from the 418th city–when asked where they live– say Louisville
… One day, it’s my hope, we’ll be one Kentucky. We have a lot more in common than we believe. A lot more.
It requires attitudes to change inside Louisville (no city is an island) and across the state (no state today can afford to marginalize its largest economic engine–or not feel connected to its only remaining team in the NCAA basketball tournament.
From whatever city we hail, each has the same last name. Even my city’s full name, after all, is “Louisville, Kentucky”
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 3, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I sometimes wonder to myself if HBOs Entourage would have been even better –and a little more believable –if there had been one additional member of the “Entourage.”
I’m thinking a middle-aged guy–forties, maybe even middle or late 40s–who hangs with the group as a sort of really cool and very wise (and physically fit) mentor and buddy.
I’m thinking someone from the Midwest or South. Who is street wise but hasn’t completely lost his innocence and maybe has wavy hair, to help him not stand out too much as the oldest member of the boys.
Not a lot of scenes for this character the first few seasons but a growing interest in the character to the point that by the final season of the series, people are thinking spin-off.
Hey, c’mon. I’m at a point in my life where I need my fantasies to help me come to grips with the harsh realities of, well, there never really being the realistic possibility of a spin-off if I somehow crazily ended up in a series like Entourage at this point in my life. Heck, I’m not crazy….just letting my mind wander a bit with what might have been.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 2, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Yeah, c’mon. Don’t look confused. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And, yeah, I would be embarrassed too. In fact, I admit that I am right now.
Middle aged guys in business no longer play extreme sports or get into bar fights or even raise their voice in a combative way outside the home, the final domain of the toothless tiger. Remember the Will Ferrell SNL skit, “You should respect me because I drive a Dodge Stratus!”? That’s the mentality I’m getting at with the title above.
We are driving late today in the minivan and my teenage daughter and her friend are in the backseat and I get a business call I “have to take.”
It goes on and on and I’m thinking to myself, “I hope my daughter is listening to this. I’m on my game and sounding pretty darned impressive right now. Maybe she’ll finally appreciate how tough my conference calls and business meetings and PowerPoint presentations really are.”
And as an added bonus her friend was listening too and would surely reinforce this belief, I was sure, by later commenting to my daughter when I wasn’t around, “Wow, Maggie, did you hear all those acronyms you father was using? He must be really smart and important. I didn’t understand most of what he was saying. He’s a lot more impressive my other friends’ dads. You are so lucky.” (Or words to that affect)
As the call was winding up, I kicked it up a notch. Threw in some gratuitous “ROI” comment and a then long string of business acronyms that darned near made it sound like I was speaking an entirely foreign language that was so complicated it is made up entirely of abbreviations. I looked for an opening for the word “synergy” but had to settle for “coop-ition” which I kinda made up since I was already on a roll.
And then I calmly and smoothly hung up the phone and slipped it in to my cowboy-like holster. All the while knowing the ‘lil ladies in the backseat had just witnessed that there was a new sheriff in town.
I paused for a moment, and slowly swerved around to “apologize” for my important business call and, I admit it, see if they had any questions.
Both of them had put in their earphones and were listening to their iPods totally oblivious to the machismo heroics that had just occurred in the front seat of the minivan. That my wife was driving for me.
“All finished?” my wife asked with the tone I remembered hearing the first time my mom told me I was wearing “big boy pants.”
I felt like I should say “I’m playing cowboy.” But didn’t have the guts to admit it.
You can call me Al. Or at least an Al lover. Al Jarreau, that is.
