The Decade According to Pitts
Posted: December 30, 2009 Filed under: Growing up, People, Pitts Indeed, Relationships, Thought Food | Tags: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2008 election, 2009, barack obama, jon pitts-wiley, love, men, portsmouth abbey, Relationships, robert horry, the decade, the inauguration, the lakers, women, yale 1 Comment »
As you may or may not be aware, a new decade will begin on Friday. Since lists are what people do at the end of things because paragraphs with common threads are just entirely too difficult to cobble together, I’ve followed suit with a random hodge-podge of observations, thoughts and things learned over the course of ten years.
2000: We were league champions after going on an improbably post-season run. Knocked off Wheeler, 53-51. In my career, we only beat Wheeler once. Lesson: Only one game counts.
2001: 9/11. Vagina. Lesson: You can learn all things from war and genitals.
2002: High school graduation.Robert Horry hit that shot against the Kings. on my graduation day. Lesson: Robert Horry is the Butterfly Effect.
2003: Yale. The Michelle. Being an idiot regarding several things, mostly The Michelle-related. Lesson: Flattery is the key to infidelity.
2004: The College Dropout (album and real life). Lesson: Being a nightclub bouncer is infinitely more interesting than folding pants at the Gap.
2005: Yale, again. The Justice League. Argentina with The Intercontinental Champ. Lesson: You can always go home again, but it might not be how you left it.
2006: The best and worst day of college happened on the same day. Iberia. Lesson: Sometimes, you have to make trades, especially when you don’t have a choice. Also, sometimes friendship is no friend at all.
2007: Yale graduation. Lesson: Getting in is easier than finishing.
2008: The Spirit Warrior’s Dream. The Feath. The Election. Lesson: It’s usually the one you never saw coming.
2009: Freezing at the Inauguration. Brougham gets married. The Feath begins work on The Franchise. Lesson: It’s about grown man time…
Kanye and Gaga = Shrug
Posted: December 21, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, Thought Food | Tags: 2009, copenhagen, dave lachappelle, indiana jones, jon pitts-wiley, kanye west, lady gaga, michael jackson, nidal malik hasan, photo, Pitts Indeed, president barack obama, the black snob, town hall meetings Leave a comment »
Because of the above picture, my buddy The Black Snob is just now regaining feeling in the left side of her face.
As I look at it, all I can think is: Kanye’s not that swoll.
That’s about it.
Far be it from me to disavow allegiance to calling out fuckery–I make a living of it frankly and will probably snap about something or other in ten to fifteen minutes–but this just doesn’t bother me. It’s not that I don’t like it or will spend time defending it; it’s that I don’t really care.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think 2009 is the Year of Submission. Not submission in that people agreed to whatever was going on–the year started with The March on Washington II, transitioned into people acting a donkey at town halls and will end with people getting lumped up in Copenhagen–but rather a year in which things topped each other to the degree that, after a certain point, you just sort of shrugged and say “OK.”
This was a year that had no ceiling and apparently isn’t winding down. Stuff will continue going down until 11:59 on the 31st. Count on it.
Michael Jackson, along with every celebrity ever died, a dude shot up a military base and a serial killer’s bodies stunk up a neighborhood. And a cop shot Oscar Grant in the back on the BART platform. And the president was compared to Hitler daily. Tiger had sex with one out of every three cocktail waitresses in the United States.
Perhaps this pic has been brought to my attention far too late. As of December 21st, I can’t muster the strength to even kind of speculate as to why Dave LaChapelle wanted to make this happen. Nor can I speculate as to why Kanye wanted to carry a naked Lady Gaga, doing her best airbrushed blonde bombshell, out of the jungle looking like a zombie Indiana Jones who spends his free time doing crunches in the antiquities wings of Egyptian museums.
I just don’t know. And I care less than I know.
So to this photo I say: OK. #KanyeShrug
Jon Defends the White Girl, et Al
Posted: December 17, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, Thought Food | Tags: black women, carrie prejean, chris henry, elin woods, george clooney, taylor swift, up in the air Leave a comment »
Here are a few stray thoughts that defied 140-characters.
1. Since people are hard up for a racial angle in this Tiger debacle, here’s one: I think a lot of people of color aren’t actively defending Elin Nordgeren’s G status because she’s a white girl. People were obviously tickled by the prospect of her busting Tiger’s ass, but it seems that there’s a dearth of people taking up arms for her. This could be a result of the 2009′s inundation of faux-victimized white women (see: Swift, Taylor; Prejean, Carrie) that we’ve been forced to stomach. So let me be a colored who says this: Take his ass to the cleaners, Elin. You didn’t deserve that.
2. Since his wife is going to divorce him anyway, Tiger might as well curb that indefinite leave and get back to work. I imagine the PGA Tour feels the same way.
3. I’m not advocating hostile isolationism, but I do find myself wondering if a nation can be global and still mind it’s own damn p’s and q’s. I appreciate that the US has to set examples and all but…we could stand to get our own house in order.
4. When I hear about cats my age dying, especially if they have kids or are about to get married or something of that nature, I take it a lot more personally than I used to. Peace to Chris Henry.
5. There was something about the Up In The Air ads I wasn’t feeling. This seems about right.
Post-Racial is the New White
Posted: December 15, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, Soap Box | Tags: barack obama, genealogy, michelle obama, warren buffet 4 Comments »
Oh snap! Barack Obama and Warren Buffett are distant relatives!
According to their family trees, the two men who at times shared the stage together during the 2008 presidential campaign are seventh cousins three times removed.
Genealogists at ancestry.com announced on Tuesday that Obama and Buffett are related through a 17th century Frenchman named Mareen Duvall.
…
The discovery was made by accident when the same team of genealogists who had researched Obama’s family tree went on to investigate details about Buffett’s relatives.
“We recognized the name Duvall and it made us wonder if this was a connection,” said Anastasia Tyler, the lead researcher on the project. “So we started focusing on Duvall.”
As much as I would like to believe this sort of thing makes news for the right reasons, for reasons to demonstrate just how close humanity really is, I’m fairly certainly this is yet another case of white people the people running things protesting a bit too much on matters of diversity.
Never do you read headlines about the various public figures of color who the Obamas may be related to. No; it’s always these white people who they are kin folk with and the tone is always one of being utterly wowed as if a biracial man and a descendant of the forced African diaspora (read: slavery) sharing relatives with white people is something to drop a jaw about.
But there’s the rub with all the post-racial confetti that’s been tossed about since November of last year.
As I said a few days ago, from the dominant culture’s perspective, the trend has a whole lot more to do with seeming an acceptable member of the dominant culture than it does with human progression that sees beyond race’s limiting confines. Shorter Pitts-Wiley: ‘Post-Racial’ is a hip, multi-culti version of white.
The Obama Memorial Side Eye Award Goes to…
Posted: December 14, 2009 Filed under: Pitts Indeed | Tags: afro picks, barack obama, fail, publisher's weekly, racism, terrible cover fail Leave a comment »This.
Cool Pic + Terrible Play on Words = FAIL
Wednesday One-Liner
Posted: December 9, 2009 Filed under: People, Sports | Tags: high school sports, mackenzie mccollum, pregnancy, volleyball Leave a comment »
"Nobody puts baby in a corner! Except to serve."
Kid, just know that your mom willingly put you in harm’s way.
Tiger Likes Becky. And?
Posted: December 8, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, Soap Box, Sports | Tags: becky, cablinasian, cheating, cross over, elin woods, golf, jon pitts-wiley, jump-offs, men, Pitts Indeed, tiger woods, US weekly, white girls, white privilege, women 3 Comments »
They're not Tiger's...OR ARE THEY?
I don’t have any personal investment in Tiger Woods’ personal life. Frankly, with each new trick that takes her lunch break to give US Weekly an exclusive scoop, I find myself feeling terrible for Elin Woods and their children. A wife and children deserve better than this. Still, I have to admit I find the newfound outrage regarding Tiger Woods’ jump-off choice particularly amusing. Many Black folks have wasted little time pointing out that all of Tiger’s jump-offs have been white. Read the rest of this entry »
Desiree’s Disarray
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: People, Pitts Indeed, politics, Thought Food | Tags: desiree rogers, event planning, michaele salahi, secret service, state dinner, tareq salahi, theatre, white house, white house social secretary, william shakespeare 2 Comments »
All the world’s a stage and we are but players.
And somewhere among the players, there are stage managers making sure everything is in place to make the players look good.
Being a stage manager is a thankless job and those who do it are usually overly-stressed task masters with masochistic tendencies. When everything goes off without a hitch, they rarely get the credit deserved. When some prop is out of place or some light cue is too late, it’s the stage manager who hears about it first and last and until it is fixed. Oh, and stage managers get the pleasure of interacting with players, players who are often something less than a delight to deal with.
Such is the life of the people behind the people. Read the rest of this entry »
