BET

Last night I had the pleasure of sitting with my boyfriend for 4 hours while he was a guest on the Koolout show on WVON 1690 A.M. radio. I must say that I was duped, we went to Jokes and Notes earlier for some laughs and to support his “Get A Job” co-star Lil Rell. I guess the show was going a bit longer than he anticipated because we ended up rushing out to the radio station, for what he told me would be about a 20 minute talk segment on Maxim 13:22 production company and the short film ‘Don’t Bite the Apple’ that he did with them.
About three hours later they were talking about BET and the 2011 BET awards. Koolout had just taken a caller who was concerned about whether or not Black people are overly critical of the channel and whether or not the award show was good. The only person in the room with whom I actually agreed surprised me.

Koolout was going on about how BET perpetuates all the negative stereotypes about Black people and how the BET awards were unorganized and of poor quality compared to something like the Grammys. My first thoughts were, wow, why do people not only keep comparing BET to every other station that is not even trying to reach a Black audience and the BET awards and the Grammys are two totally different things with two totally different budgets
Tina the female co-host to Koolout’s Sunday night radio show surprised me by sticking up for BET and the 2011 awards. She was the only one in the room who had watched the awards and said it was very organized and they did a good job of mixing the old with the new with the variety of performers. She was also the one who pointed out the budget differences between the BET awards and the Grammys. Now she also said that the BET awards was live and that the Grammys are not, which I’m not so sure is true but the budget differences are obvious in the look of the two different channels.

Sitting there listening to a bunch of Black people berate BET then start offering ‘Well they are doing betters’ after the only non Black said she thinks BET and Debra Lee are doing a good job, did not sit well with me.

I wonder when people started watching BET, because BET was never so terrible to me.
I didn’t hear this much complaining about it when it was just a channel that played videos on every one of its shows.

For the rest of the story click here.

My memory of BET before Debra Lee is Midnight Whispers, (which I looked forward to every night), College Hill, Rap-City The basement, 106th and Park, reruns of Comic view, bad movies usually staring rappers, Uncut, and infomercials and religious shows after hours and on Sundays. There was also BET J, the ‘more mature’ counterpart to BET and I loved that channel. The programming was varied and fresh, it only had one show that played videos that I can recall and the videos were less Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and all of Young Money, and more Eric Roberson, Beyonce and maybe Common.

Outside of a handful of Black shows sprinkled across a handful of white stations that’s what Black Entertainment was at the time. And then BOOM, one day BET was the downfall of Black people everywhere as if Flavor of Love was part of its Tuesday night line up, as if BET set the formula for rap music videos to feature thick dark girls and any kind of light or white chick, blunts, fancy cars and cash falling from the sky. No people, BET was just a platform for some of the the shit that Black people created and tuned into, to be televised.
Now admittedly I have no idea what went on behind the scences, who knows if the people who created good and positive shows like ‘Everybody Hates Chris’, ‘Girlfriends’ or ‘Making the Band’ came to BET first for a chance to have their show created, or if they went right to WGN, ABC, MTV etc.

As for the awards shows, I didn’t get to watch them last night, but I hope to catch a rerun. I won’t be blaming BET if they don’t catch all the Bitch, Nigga, Fuck, Pussy, etc. and bleep them out on time, that doesn’t make them unorganized in my eyes.
4:55p.m.

...It never ends

We all just looking at each other crazy

Right now that Big K.R.I.T. song, “ They got us all fucked up,” is playing in my head.
I mean WHAT a day.

You ever been in a situation where a friend is telling you a situation they were in and you want to understand and be supportive, but you really don’t agree with the logic they used to react in the way they did, but because its your buddy you kind of smile and nod or kindly say well I understand both sides or something like that, but in the end here you both are just kind of looking at each other crazy because each of you can’t understand why the other can’t understand the other and maybe because you feel your right, there’s really no need to keep trying, you just know its time to move on. Well in hindsight, that was what my whole day was like, I didn’t understand people, that I thought I had and understanding with.
Let me start a little backwards and just plan out my tomorrow. So I’m going to wake up late, and I’m not going to leave this house. I’ll get up around 10, maybe even 11 a.m. make few phone calls then FOCUS on creating my own watermark/ little signature thingie, that I feel the need to put on the bottom of all my pictures just so my work that’s out there is attached to a name. I notice it on the photos of almost everyone who considers themselves a photographer on facebook, but a couple days ago when I discovered this blog therealkesh.blogspot.com, I noticed her little signature at the bottom right of all the photos she takes. I notice most bloggers photographers or not, don’t have it. Anyway between that and Project Runway, I really don’t plan on doing shit on this day off, I just need another moment.
Now back to the beginning. After a bit of washing, a little facebook stalking, and downloading a couple songs I got ready for work. We all know I hate my job, and if you aren’t aware I work for a large chain, big box, discount retailer. I won’t say the name of course. So I get to work and as usual, my hard shell formed around me by the time I hit the sales floor, these people, as in my co-workers were already pissing me off and I had been on the clock all of 5 minutes. The hard shell, just for clarity is my attitude change. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not nessesarily he nicest person, and can be mean, but I’m good-hearted and goofy, when I’m in my natural habitat, ain’t a damn thing natural about this job, this is how a shell formed around my, my attitude there is very rude, and patience very short.
In the restroom right after I decided I wasn't doing anymore work for the night.

So today was going like most other awful days there, and today I was looking forward to my work buddy coming in so at least I’d have someone to be goofy with and not feel like I’m doing all the work, but today, my work buddy became just one of the people I work with. Basically, I called her to come help me do something, we needed to do to make the rest of the night go smoother and faster for us, and she completely ignored me, I tried to justify it like maybe she didn’t here me, maybe she’s on break, maybe… well there is no maybe because we’re work buddies, not just people who work in the same department. Her ignoring gesture set the tone for the rest of the night bullshit because of course, I worked my ass off with no help, while she worked her smaller side with help from the store manager, further giving me an attitude because now I really can’t understand why you can’t come to the side we ALL have to do before it gets bad, which it got really bad and at that point I’m realizing that I’m getting NO help probably because these mutherfuckers are used to me being the only hard worker and take for granted that I take care of business with out much direction or assisting. Well I thought at a certain point I’m just going to stop and see what they do then, I’d already been working as if I was 3 people that day and after the customers left I was going to slow down to not just being one person, but be one average worker, like the buddy who ignored me. I just needed to see how far they would try to push me without so much as an acknowledgement to how much I’ve already done. Well, they pushed me even further, this time right off the edge, but it took me complaining to my friend about this fucked up day to realized that I’d been pushed over the edge a long time ago, and didn’t even fucking realized it.

I have become average. A slave to that mutherfucking paycheck, and some semblance of security in knowing its coming every week. I was pushed over the edge exactly a year and a month ago, I had just about finished building the website all on my own, when I endured a series of events at that job that didn’t lead to me just quiting, and going even harder on what I was already working hard on at the time, which was my online magazine. From being overused, my money being stolen out my locker by a co-worker, to being told by my manager that I got a promotion, then being told during my review, not to long after my money was stolen, that my attitude changed because I wasn’t promoted. Mind you the manager telling me this is the same one who told me to apply for the promotion, because I was getting it.
All of this negative stuff happened at this job in the short time frame between July and August and I didn’t react like a natural go-getter would and QUIT! All because I wanted to keep my credit good and pay off my two credit cards first and more importantly I was saving up to pay for a couple trademarks and fees for forming my LLC. Good reasons, but that should never have kept me in fear of letting the bullshit go and seeing the quiting as my golden opportunity to spend more time on my company. Instead I just hit the bottom when they pushed me over that proverbial edge. I stayed there long enough to allow myself a hard time with the climbing back up. Just like exercise when you stop for a while it becomes hard all over again to get back in the habit of doing. I was used to climbing, I’ve been climbing my way to the top for a long time and I somehow let this bullshit job, with it’s lazy bullshit people knock me off stride so much so that I have get back used to doing what I been doing, climbing.


Not taking it personal, just saying…

Now on to the next story of the night, which is just me telling you about some shit I learned a long time ago, that I had to remind myself of a couple hours ago. So I’m damn near running skipping down stares to catch my train tonight after I left this bullshit job and just as the train comes to a stop I notice my old college pal on the platform. We acknowledge each other with a hug and all that smiling “heeey, funny seeing you here?” stuff and I’m thinking aww, this should make for an interesting spin on my usual train ride, definitely keep my mind off the bullshit job.
Graffiti on the train ride home with old college friend that pretty much summed up the night.

Well the main thing I’m going to remember about this conversation was when he said
“How you plan on having a (successful) magazine, if you don’t watch tv?” Black girl, furrowed eybrows attitude begins here. What! Hold on Hold On hold on, let me explain. Apparently because I said I don’t watch much television, he assumed, I somehow don’t stay abreast of current events. Before I said anything about the internet duh! Or why would he say such a dumb thing to me I asked for other examples of how he came to this conclusion about me not being abreast of current events his examples goes back to the beginning of our small talk. He was coming from a free screening of some movie call The Town with Ben Affleck and other mutherfuckers I could care less about. Anyway when he said the name of the movie and dropped Ben Affleck’s name like we all went to college together and I failed to say “Ohh yea I saw the commercial on tv, how cool, I want to see that, was it good?” he kind of mentally gave me a strike 1, then I don’t know what we were talking about when he likened whatever it was to a fifty Tyson of 50 Tyson or #fiddyTyson and I had no idea what he was talking about he gave me a strike 2. So when we got to him exclaiming “ how you gone start a magazine, and you don’t watch tv” I’d already striked out. Before I hit him with the leftover attitude I as calmly as possible asked him why I needed tv, to have a successful magazine, he said I’m not aware of current events. This is when my attitude spilled out a little. So all because I don’t know about the movie you just saw and some dumb ass trending topic on Twitter (which I’m not on but didn’t tell him so he would have further ammunition for his stupidity), I’m not going to be able to get a successful magazine off the ground?! For starters you have no idea what the magazine is about for two are you not aware that before there was tv, there was newspaper and magazine! And last and most importantly are you serious, with a movie and a trending topic being “current events” REALLY? I mean I could see if I was like Oh I’ didn’t know Obama just mentioned something about the war being over and troops coming home, or Oh I had no idea Daley is about to retire or Ohh the oil not spilling anymore. Those and the almost countless amounts of misguided Black kids killing each other along with what songs Kanye is leaking off his upcoming album are trending fucking topics to me smart ass!
Wheew, now that that’s off my chest, the lesson I learned from my encounter with him, is that I already know and accepted the kind of person he is. I’ve known him from the beginning of college to be just who he is and we were friends once, And I knew then not to get in depth with him on certain things because we would just be looking at each other crazy. I learned then that sometimes you don’t understand people, you think you have an understanding with, and that doesn’t have to make you any less understanding toward them.
The day was September 15, 2010 Wednesday3:05a.m.


Could've used a little bit of this, before work today.

To and from "work"

From my Palm to my ear to our eyes, yesterday I had the pleasure of being on the train from 87th to 63rd with only one other person on in the same car with me, and then when she got off and no one got on till the next stop I took more pictures. Truth be told I always liked taking the train it’s the people and the shit they do that take away the fun.





SideNote: the whole people taking pictures of them phenomenon amazes me. I would go further into that but I don’t feel like it so on the next subject, which is that fact that this month is coming to a close and I haven’t posted as much as I thought I would but I guess its not so bad for the first month since no one is looking anyway…yet.
I still have tons of work to do and my next brick is organizing a small photo shoot along with picking up as many hours as possible at retail hell. Speaking of retail hell this is what the store looks like at the end of a Saturday night,





and guess whose job it is to put all that back. I might start carrying my point and shoot around because I don’t think you get the gist of how much trifle that is through the cell phone camera. Actual stories of retail hell coming soon.