Jason Toney

a big loss

"Makes me wanna holler, now I know what Marvin meant" - Donnie, Beautiful Me (The Colored Section)

This is hard for me. I've had 3 conversations about it. I've debated with myself for very nearly a week about it. It's hard because I like this person. Over the past 6 months I've enjoyed her writing. I continue to enjoy her writing at raising hell and blogcritics. I still enjoy a few nuggets of her writing on her own personal space but I've decided to remove Michele's A Small Victory from my list of most favored blogs. If I didn't like her so much, I wouldn't even take the time to explain why. But I do like Michele. She's a nice person, smart and witty and interesting. The problem is that lately when I go to A Small Victory, I leave frustrated and angry. To be very honest, much of what I've been reading makes my skin crawl. So, at this point, I've decided not to visit until the tone changes.

This isn't about politics. While it's true I don't have any right-leaning people in my bloglist, what is more true is that I have very few politically focused blogs at all. Oliver may be the only one and, if you want more truth, I debate whether or not he should stay. I read blogs that focus on things I normally wouldn't see. Culture, social constructs, language, words, music, art, life. The things that matter to me. If there is a slant on news, I prefer news that would likely fly below the radar. I like alternative perspectives.

I don't read pundits. I don't read people who aren't challenging themselves or the world to be better than it is. I don't read people that deal in absolutes. I don't read places filled with "yes man" comments, glad-handing and back-patting.

And today, I've decided not to read A Small Victory. I'm sad about that.

Michele, as I mentioned before, does also write at raising hell and blogcritics. Those places haven't made my head explode...yet.

harry allen's not the only media assassin

"What mean the world to me is living free/live and let live and just let it be/ love, peace and harmony, one universal family/one god, one aim and one destiny/Oh yeah?/Imagine life without a choice at all/given no hope without a voice at all/these be the problems that we face/I'm talking poverty and race/but no matter what the case we gotta.../hold on to this feeling/freedom" - Jurassic 5, Freedom (Power in Numbers)

Did you know that hip-hop's coming for your children (via George)?

i was dreaming when i wrote this...

"I've had up to here with the black on black..." - Quasimoto, Real Eyes (The Unseen)

I should have been pissed off yesterday. I was standing in front of the Laemmle Sunset 5 with three tickets in my back pocket for Comedian. The movie had been playing for a good 30 minutes and my friends were nowhere to be found. But it's high noon on a Sunday in the heart of Hollywood and the people watching is fine. I overhear a conversation in which it's revealed that "Fred got a few lines on a Frasier episode and now he's an asshole." A procession of character actors enter and leave Crunch Fitness and is that? Why, I'd recognize that hair anywhere...Kerry!

She looks up at me as she rides the escalator up and laughs. I close the distance between us as she says, "Why don't I know where I am right now?" We hug. "You smell good," she says. "Thanks, you look great," I say. "This is too weird," she remarks. And it is. We haven't seen each other since college. Well, I've seen her, in that commercial, on that Law & Order, in Save the Last Dance. I catch her up briefly. She reveals she's doing Girls Club and developing a show in NY. Her friend comes out of the gym and greets her and she rushes off to class. "We'll see each other," she says as our conversation trails off.

A new crush is born.

hate in my blood

"I hate you so much right now." - Kelis, Caught Out There (Kaleidescope) I hate the word 'haters'.

red hot + riot

"Your child they grow, no water you goan use?" - D'Angelo, Femi Kuti, + Macy Gray featuring Roy Hargrove, Nile Rodgers, the Soultronics + Positive Force, Water No Get Enemy (Red Hot + Riot)

The sounds of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, a style he created, is filling my world up, my senses, my soul. As this album plays, it's funk and jazz blended with traditional Nigerian root music and these contemporary artists singing or rapping above it, I know, without a doubt, that I am both African and American. I feel this music at my core. My limbs and joints jut and sway in ways that should be foreign to me, unnatural. It's not the way I have ever danced before. It is unlike any of the music videos I've watched, performances I've seen, styles I've mimicked. It feels right though, so right, as if it is from something other than what I know. It is from what I am.

aerosol cultural imperialism

"Nothing makes me want to dissapear as much as when someone opens their mouth" - Jim O'Rourke, Ghost Ship in a Storm (Another Late Night)

Oneworld Magazine has me trippin' over here. I just fell in love with every page of the current issue, the art official edition. Every page. I'm about to buy me some camoflauge street boots from bob marley footwear, 'bout to learn some more about artist Betye Saar, go rent Basquiat and Wild Style again, and find out how I can roll up in Brazil and find out what true headz are feeling in another language.

some of my best jokes are friends

Some mad hornplaying courtesy of The J.B.'s, The Grunts (Parts 1 & 2): (Funky Good Time: The Anthology)

I'm joining the NRA. Obviously, if we were all packing concealed weapons, there's no way this Sniper could have killed 10 people. I mean there would have been a gun fight in the middle of main street and I don't know who would win but somebody's blood would have spilled and somebody would've learned their lesson: Don't mess with Texas. Maybe that didn't come out right.

I'm also in support of National Ammo Day. If we all just had stockpiles of ammo everyone would be safe. Everyone needs guns and ammo.

Just like Saddam Hussein and the rest of the world for that matter. I mean, sure it's a big gun and all, but I hear he cleans it every day and puts it in a nice locked box so that the kiddies can't play with it. When everyone in the world has weapons we all feel safer right?

Or do only Americans reap the benefits of that logic?

the blacks

"I wake up and the day feels broken..." - Bjrk, It's Not Up To You (Vespertine)

Happy Sunday. The first day in a week that I have been able to do absolutely nothing. I get to catch up on some reading, watch a little TV (The repeat of the premiere of Making the Band II, which didn't lock until Thursday so I didn't get to watch an early copy, and Diary: Kelly Clarkson, American Idol which I cried during, because I'm a dork, and get all weepy when people are truly happy) and chill. With the Sniper and Iraq and North Korea, you would think that nothing else was going on in the world, so I decided to catch up on news that focuses on people that look like me.

Wanna read it? Here it go.

chill playboy

"This apartment is starving for an argument/anything at all to break the silence" - Dashboard Confessional, Saints and Sailors (The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most)

I remarked early that this was a weird crowd. There was too much Hollywood mixed in with the usual Abbey Booth faithfuls. It wasn't the right mix. A bunch of glossy blondes and their greasy bo-hunk boyfriends, a group of fashionistas wearing expensive camoflauge and vintage tennis shoes and the Booth regulars, a mishmosh of folks so touched by joee's lyrics that they try to attend every show so that they can sing along as he notices butterflies, angels, and satan.

work it

"Rally for us." - Jazzanova, Fedtime's Fight (Brazilified)

Ronn continues to be the only person I've seen on the web looking closely at the Central Park Jogger Case (which probably needs a new name now that the most relevant part of the case isn't it's victim but it's miscarriage of justice. Isn't that sad?):

At the moment, he was probably the only person in New York I knew who didn't squall with the wrath of hell that the five boys arrested should be put in the death chamber.

A few minutes later that night, I got a call from Diller.

"Did you know that Gigante is going to put up bail for Richardson?"

"He just told me. Why is he doing it for Richardson?"

"He doesn't know him. He doesn't know any of the five of them. He thinks it is a bad case. He thinks he has a duty to do something." - He wasn't afraid to be right