Jason Toney

Nudge

"Ain't no drag." - James Brown, Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (Part 1)

On the plane yesterday, the flight attendant offered me some two packs of peanuts. I wasn't hungry and I knew I wasn't going to eat them but I took them anyway. Her outstretched hand elicited a pavlovian response from me. I sent my left hand out to receive what was offered without even thinking. The nuts sit in my backpack right now...uneaten.

This afternoon, I walked past a person I normally see as I come into the office in the AM. "Hello," she said. "Good morning," I responded. It was 4pm.

In both instances I was reminded of Nudge's discussions of human behavior. How inertia and the automatic functions of our brain lead us certain places. Often to places our thinking, more reasoning brain matter wouldn't want us to be...if the situation was altered just slightly so that we'd have to think about it in the right way.

I went in to Nudge expecting eye-opening tips and guidance at a micro level: what could I do as an individual to improve my decision-making around Health, Wellness, and Happiness, as their tag line proclaims. Instead, what I mostly got was a macro-view that seems to be talking to policy makers about how they can improve the way they do business with "humans" making complex decisions.

Great, I guess? Sure, I'm going to take a look at my 401(k) and make sure I've made the right choice for me and, sure, I enjoyed the discussions about human behavior and why we are likely to make bad choices about things that are very important but, ultimately, it wasn't what I was looking for.

Give me something practical about how to nudge me towards better food decisions (the opening anecdote about cafeteria planning didn't really cut it) and, really, there isn't much about actual health and happiness in the book. There's a lot of great stuff about financial planning but...

But, where was the meat? If you're going to lay out such a compelling explanation of human behavior, inertia and our lizard brains and all that, give me something that's actionable as an individual. Some tools and tips to recognize and adapt my nature.

Because now I'm stuck with nuts I don't want and the receptionist thinks I don't know how to tell time.

Soundtrack to this post

• Papa Got a Brand New Bag (part 1) - James Brown
• I Got You (I Feel Good) - James Brown
• Ain't That A Groove - James Brown
• It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World - James Brown
• Money Won't Change You - James Brown
• Don't Be A Dropout - James Brown

The Big Payback: The History of The Business of Hip-Hop (1)

"Here we go (here we go), here we go (here we go). Did we miss the show?" - Doug E. Fresh, The Show

The Big Payback: The History of The Business of Hip-Hop by Dan Charnas (New American Library, 2010). In Album Five (the book is broken down in albums and sides rather than chapters and sections), I was reminded of what hip-hop meant to me in junior high and high school. I don't remember feeling like I didn't have access to hip-hop. Perhaps because I had young parents and had spent time in several parts of the country by that time. Or maybe I just thought the ways that I had access to hip hop—from receiving my first rap record, Doug E. Fresh's The Show when I was 7 or 8 and realizing that the B side, La Di Da Di, had bad words on it so I had to turn the volume down on my Cookie Monster record player to listening to Eazy E and Beastie Boys cassettes with my 7th grade friend (who was Jewish) in his house while his mom worked—was the way you were supposed to hear it. Hip Hop was for behind closed doors or getting the, mostly, sanitized versions on one hour video shows on MTV and BET (and soon on pay per video station The Box). I listened to KDAY occasionally (with its poor signal) but when Power 106 started playing hip-hop regularly and announced proudly it was where hip-hop lives...well, it laid plain what I knew inherently to be true: this music and culture had power. And it was only just scratching the surface.

What I didn't know, however, was how impactful it was as a business. I guess I've never really understood that. I've always thought of hip-hop as culturally powerful. I was a member of Urban Art Family in college because we were going to change the world through the four elements mixed with some civic and social sensibilities. Even as I grew up a true West Coast head with N.W.A. and Ice Cube tapes filling my walkman, I was always more Poor Righteous Teachers, Dead Prez, and Native Tongue than the freaky tales of pimpin' and hustlin' common in Cali. This is the world of Jeff Chang's Can't Stop, Won't Stop (which I let somebody borrow a few years ago and has now disappeared. I'll need to download it on the ol' eReader) and that book fit like a glove. Informative and invigorating, sure, but familiar. His history of hip-hop were stories that, even if I didn't know the specifics, I had felt and mostly lived through.

Charnas's book, however, is about what's going on behind the scenes. About the people who figured out how to make the culture viable and sustainable in the only ways that matter in America, by making sure the paper stacked up. Every story was a revelation, from the racism and the prejudices of the music business that the rise of rap succeeded in chipping away at to the transformation of radio and the rise of the young street hustler to CEO (without losing much of himself in the process). 

We often get cynical about hip-hop today and what it means and what it's about but the truth is that it still serves to change everything it touches. Whether it's the clothing industry or television and movies or the biggest brands in the world like Coca-Cola or advertising and marketing, it matters. Hip-hop is power. Just ask yourself if you think our current President would be there without hip-hop? No?

One of the people who came to see Bernard off was a fellow student who had come on a few occasions to see Bernard’s speeches and protests, and hung out with Bernard in the student center at Harkness Commons. He was a well-known guy around campus himself but unlike Bernard, he didn’t find his fame from rabble-rousing. He was a stellar student, the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review. And he arrived just in time to see his buddy Bernard being blindfolded and placed in front of a piñata.

The managing editor of The Source, stick in hand, took a first swing at his uncharted future—something to do with hip-hop, multiracial partnerships, and social change.

What James Bernard couldn’t see was his friend Barack Obama in front of him, smiling.

From hanging out with the founders of The Source to being the most important person in the world. Perhaps the real big payback is that we've got a funky president.

Highly highly highly recommended. 

The Failure (29)

"And I know that you're mine." - My Morning Jacket, If All Else Fails

The Failure by James Greer (2010, Akashic Books). I purchased The Failure after Lit Crawl II where Greer was a featured reader. He was impassioned and humorous and tortured and interesting and it was available on the Nook eReader app which I had wanted to try and so I grabbed it up. I liked it. I can't really explain it except to say that it's an amusing little Los Angeles story in which the little moments lead to the big plot turn (which, in this case, is revealed in the very first chapter) but, in the end, it is those little moments that linger. They are funny and occassionally touching and absurd and quintessential L.A.

What I'm thinking about tonight though is how Guy's demise (that is not a spoiler -- Sucess is not an option) is because he obsesses about the wrong things. I'm not sure that there are any right things in Guy Forget's world except for his friendship with Billy but, still, it's his own delusions of grandeur that become his downfall.He believes he's smarter than everyone else despite their being no evidence of that. He is gullible while convinced he is shrewd. He fancies himself a dramatic figure while he metaphorically walks around the world with clown makeup on his face.

It's fascinating. It reminds me that we often focus on the wrong things. We often see ourselves and the world around us incorrectly and instead of acknowledging that, we puff up. We peacock. We delude ourselves.

And, in that lie our failures.

In this book, however, lie many many laughs.

An amusing and quick read.

Recommended.

100 Bullets (11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 26, 27)

Image via Wikipedia

"Baby, are your troubles done?" - Darondo, Didn't I

100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (Vertigo). I confess to not quite getting all the most complicated plot points in 100 Bullets. The matters and history of The Trust are never quite as interesting as those of all the Hard Cases that make up The Minutemen. And I won't reveal any of the plot details other than to say that I made it all the way through still caring for Dizzy in the end, still intrigued by Cole and still scared to death at the idea that someone like Lono might exist in the world.

What I found most compelling though over these past five months reading these ten collections is how Risso's art matures and improves over the decade of work. By  Six Feet Under The Gun, his panels and set-ups are works of art page by page. The graphic novels—a medium that I usually plow through—became slow burns as I would allow my eyes to slowly take in every detail often going over pages again after the twist and turn was revealed at the end.

What also became apparent the deeper I got in was how even little moments had bigger implications later. Often much later. Azzarello never gives us throw away moments. They all are part of the larger narrative. They all give some context to the morality plays being told in each successive issue. These characters, whether small time hoods, not-so-innocent bystanders, or real movers and shakers, all impact each other. And it is always surprising how.

In the end, it's modern noir taken to a grisly, dirty, dark level that I've never read before. No one is without sin. Everyone makes the bad choice and all of it is wonderful in it's awfulness.

No one finds happiness by way of the gun.

Highly recommended.

Related articles

• 100 Bullets team to write Spaceman, a science fiction comic for Vertigo [Comics] (io9.com)

L.A. Noir (23)

"In the night." - Exile, In The Night 22

L.A. Noir by John Buntin (Harmony Books, 2009). After the Watts Riots, our city's (and the nation's) Top Cop:

"They're attempting to reach these groups...by catering to their emotions," declared Parker (an emotional man who had no patience for that quality in others." 'You're disolacted, you're abandoned; you're abused due to color,'" Parker continued, mimicking and mocking the attitudes of civil rights supporters. The civil rights movement had unleashed the virus of civil disobedience—the belief that people "don't have to obey the law because the law is unjust." At the same time, a huge surge of black migration had "flooded a community that wasn't prepared to meet them." (Parker didn't hide his own feelings about the matter: "We didn't want these people to come in," he told the panel.) Both factors laid the foundations for the uprising. One thing was for certain: The LAPD was not to blame.

This is what L.A. Noir and L.A. history in the 20th century is really all about. While Buntin focuses his story on the intersecting lives of two men—Chief William Parker and gangster Mickey Cohen, what becomes obvious both at the beginning and end of the novel is that Los Angeles, like most american cities, is overwhelmingly impacted by the intersection of "the races".

I don't know what happened in Watts except for what I read and see in books like this but I know what an L.A. riot looks like. I was attending Van Nuys high school and living in the valley in 1992 when the Rodney King riots took place. As I read through the final chapters of this, the images of that time ran through my head constantly. With this reading, however, was more anger and less confused frustration. Now knowing where we had come from, it's obvious that a city that should have learned, that should have understood it's population, simply didn't.

But maybe that's not surprising. We live in Los Angeles, once touted as the last "white spot" of America. The last bastion of safety for those disinterested in mingling with their darker skinned brethren. A city that once believed it was better than Selma but that voted consistently to keep de facto segregation in place. A city whose black population connected more with Malcolm X than Martin Luther King. A city whose police force kept tabs on everyone (and probably still does) and who thought Communism and the Nation of Islam is what riled up black folks not injustice.

We're a complicated lot, Angelenos. Our city created the modern form of policing while, at the same time, much of our city's culture and charm has been birthed out of organized crime. My idea of Los Angeles is one of that salad bowl mix of cultures and I think that's true. But what is also true is that there is this constant tension between us all. L.A. remains a pressure cooker waiting for something to set it off.

Buntin's book conveys that well. While not as elegantly and entertainingly written as A Bright and Guilty Place, it covers a much larger swath of time and gives a much broader view of this city of dreams. And while I would have liked to spend much more time learning more about how the formation and growth of LA's Black community came to pass, as well as the deeper impact and history of figures like eventual Mayor Tom Bradley, that's not what this book is about.

Ultimately, L.A. Noir serves as a reminder for me of one thing: I love this town.

A Weekend of Words

"I play it. Words and Guitar." - Sleater-Kinney, Words and Guitar

There was a line. Like around the corner and on to the little Sunset bridge line. A 60 person deep line. A sold out music show style line. But it was 6:30pm. The sun was still up. For how cool most folks in this line were, this clearly wasn't for the indie rock concerts that most often make it on the stage at The Echo. The woman behind us, in her 50s or 60s, was a travel writer. She wrote about river rafting and adventure travel but this was her first time venturing into Echo Park from the Valley and she, too, was shocked by the line.

This isn't how literary events in LA go.

And yet, here we were, 20 minutes to get in the door to see 11 authors read for 8 minutes at a time and determine who was our favorite — "A F**king Read-Off" just as the flyer promised. And read they did.The obvious winner was Dennis Danziger, whose deadpan delivery of his excerpt from A Short History of A Tall Jew was uproariously funny. Katie Arnoldi's opening trio of shorts and Allison Burnett's sneak peek at his next novel were also memorable. For some reason, however, I was most interested in James Greer's The Failure. He read it quirkily, removing his glasses and bringing the book all the way up to his face, and then tossed the worn copy of his novel into the crowd, vowing that it was the last time he would read from it. I didn't catch the tome as it flew threw the air but it seemed a perfect first purchase for the nook app I just installed on my iPad.

You see, Lit Crawl 2 wasn't the only wordy nerdy thing of the weekend. Friday involved a trip to House of Secrets for a comic book party with discussions of the new Wonder Woman and my on-going obsession with 100 Bullets (currently on volume 9). The evening ended with a trip to Barnes & Noble, an in-depth explanation of the awesomeness of the Nook with one of their salesmen and a feeble attempt to get Miss Martini to buy Glenn Beck's Fiction Thriller. We needed that trip to Barnes & Noble, though, because that Cadillac Margarita I had with dinner was knocking me on my ass.

Oh, lest you think this weekend was just about me reading things, it has also been about me drinking things. That aforementioned margarita; a Colt 45 in the back of Stories while DJs spun real live records and inanimate objects stared at me; well-poured cocktails at Little Joy while we chair danced at the bar to the delight of all those around us.

You didn't know word nerds got down like that?

We do. We did.

Indubitably.

Look it up.

Black Birds

"Birds of a feather flock together and if we got a problem we talk together." - Mocky, Birds of a Feather (Remix w/ GZA)

My relationship with To Kill A Mockingbird is similar to NPR's Michel Martin. She writes

At that age, all I really knew was that some people were nice and some people were mean. But it was shocking to me to contemplate how easily people could be designated for mistreatment solely because of the color of their skin. And, as the novel intended, it was also a relief and a reminder that advocates and allies come in every color.

I haven't read that novel in a long, long time. I am wondering if it's time to pick it up again, to be reminded that otherwise decent people will look the other way at wrong, and that sometimes, other decent people will cross the room to stand up for those who deserve it and are standing alone.

I picked up Harper Lee's novel on my own some time in Junior High. I had lived in relatively diverse communities in Maryland, the San Fernando Valley, and Las Vegas at that point and it was at that point in my life that I first had my first experiences with overt prejudice. What resonated with me was that idea that allies weren't only folks who looked like me. It reflected back to me what I had seen and felt in the world and I didn't want to—and still don't—view the world as hostile to me.

So, it was surprising, on the 50th Anniversary of the book, to read this

I refuse to go along with this week's warm, feel-good celebrations of Harper Lee's novel (published fifty years ago today), To Kill a Mockingbird. Simply put, I think that novel is racist, and so is its undying popularity. It's also racist in a particularly insidious way, because the story and its characters instead seem to so many white people like the very model of good, heartwarming, white anti-racism. - warmly embrace a racist novel, stuff white people do

and the follow-up

I remember being in class and reading To Kill a Mockingbird. . . . and I don't remember what that book is about. No clue, zero.

What I think the book is about is the word "ni**ger-lover," because that's all I heard for like, days on end in my classroom, was the teacher going, "Ni**ger-lover, ni**ger-lover, ni**ger-lover, ni**er-lover, ni**er-lover!" And then the kids, "Oh! Ni**ger-lover, ni**ger-lover, ni**ger-lover, ni**ger-lover!" - force non-whites to read 'great' literature that demeans them, stuff white people do

That's Damali Ayo (of Rent-A-Negro) relaying her experience with the book. I wonder how I might feel about the novel and story if I had to look at it through the lens of required reading in a classroom setting. I went to a pretty diverse high school and I still really enjoy Twain's Huck Finn but I distinctly remember what it felt like reading the novel aloud in 11th grade English and the awkwardness/debate about how to deal with the derogatory language of the day at use in the work. I believe I either volunteered to read those parts (or was volunteered by the teacher) and that was that. I know I said the words out loud. I'm pretty sure my internal debate was over the uncomfortableness of using that language vs. needing and wanting to respect the writing and the impact changing words in a story has. To not read them as they were written would be disrespectful -- to the author and the audience.

I have no such memories with To Kill A Mockingbird. And so, I have to wonder if that anger about the book is misguided. We can debate the merits of the characters, of the use of a "mockingbird" to describe a black person, and all of that but, it seems to me, the anger displayed in those two posts is about the fact that the shared experience of reading this book exposed, greatly, the prejudices of classmates, othered the black folks in the room, and brought forth all the awful feelings that come with.

I'd blame our long, poor history and teachers ill-equipped to handle the material for that terrible scenario. 

The book is just the light that exposed those cockroaches.

But, like Michel, maybe I should read it again.

Fables: The Great Fables Crossover (7)

"I've wondered all night about you." - Belle and Sebastian, Roy Walker

Fables: The Great Fables Crossover by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges (2010, Vertigo). I haven't loved Fables nearly as much since War and Pieces ended and, essentially, everything changed. I'm usually not one to complain about change but, in this case, I am. While I still get bits of what I have enjoyed from Fables (reinvention of familiar characters in compelling ways, fairy tale stories retold through contemporary lenses, maturity, wit, and humor), it's not nearly as consistent and engrossing. This collection continues that trend.

The first challenge is that it's much more of a Jack of Fables story than a main book one. I've rarely cared for the Jack character and I've not been able to get into his stand-alone series at all. So, strike one. Then, it seems to require pretty intimate knowledge of that series to appreciate the story. The best comic book cross-overs tell you a great story that doesn't require much back knowledge but presents the characters in such a way that it makes you want to read their stories because you've enjoyed them so much in the one you've read. This, for me, doesn't do that at all. I don't know why the blue ox is there or how Mr. Revise and Kevin Thorn and the Pathetic Fallacy are related or why they are are on the run or anything. And you essentially need to know all of that to care about what's happening here. Strike two. And, lastly, it's a story about writing. It's over 200 pages of Willingham and Sturges complaining about writer's block. This villain, which actually could be meaningful in a fictional world built around characters that know they are fictional, isn't bad in and of itself but it is never presented as a real threat. Unlike The Adversary, who seemed a worthy and insurmountable foe, Kevin Thorn is just an annoying guy with great power that he never uses to any great effect. Strike three, you're out.

I'm still a Fables fan and will continue to pick up the collections until I'm just totally bored but this doesn't bode well.

Not recommended.

What I will recommend, though, is Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love. Chris Roberson and Shawn McManus are taking a deeper look at one of the most compelling and under-utilized characters in Fables, Cindy the spy, and put together a fun read. I'm picking it up by the issue, too, and not waiting for the collection.-

Drown (6)

Cover of Drown

"Around the world. It's Saturday night." - Jody Watley, Saturday Night Experience

Drown by Junot Díaz (1996, Riverhead Books). I didn't love Drown as much as I did, and do, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It has nothing to do with Díaz's writing style. All of the things I appreciate and admire about his work are there: his sense of pace and atmosphere; his gift with dialogue and language. He still provides an inside look at world's we may think we know but don't. He exposes the layers and complexity of people living in two worlds, of two minds, in between cultures without that ever taking over the real stories of the human condition. Of the absurdities and oddities of life.

No, my problem was not with any of the writing. My problem was that, as I went with breakneck speed through the stories, we spent less and less time with Rafa and Yunior and their world and more time with Mami and especially Papi—f'n Ramon—who, after the revelations of the early vignettes, I could give two shits about. I didn't want to empathize with this kind of father. I didn't want to know why he did the things that he did or feel compelled to forgive him. For all intents and purposes, Ramon could kiss my ass.

But, Díaz doesn't walk away from these tales. He doesn't give Ramon a pass. He doesn't even suggest we should understand him. We should just know him. He deserves to be known.

Okay. I'll give him that.

It's a lightning fast read and highly recommended.

Also, I read this a month ago. I've just been terribly slow with writing about books this year for some reason.

A Bright And Guilty Place (5)

Cover via Amazon

"You have one doubt, they call it treason." - Gow Dow Experience, Compared to What

A Bright and Guilty Place by Richard Rayner (2009, Doubleday). While this narrative nonfiction tome is set in 20s and 30s Los Angeles, my soundtrack for reading was 60s and 70s California Soul. For whatever reason, it fits perfectly in my mind with what is essentially the true story of the birth of noir in America. It probably has to do with my own indoctrination into a love of noir through Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins tales. That fictional Los Angeles is dripping with soul. A Black soul. California Soul.

A Bright and Guilty Place, however, is about the creation of Los Angeles's soul and, as I've spent a good amount of time in the last few years in other American cities, this is what I'm interested in. What makes my home the way it is? What makes other places the way they are? What I find most unique about Los Angeles is it's kind of pathological desire to look forward. We don't make much of history here. Buildings get put up and pulled down without much concern for their place in time. With the sun shining bright on us nearly every day, there's a nearly constant belief that things will be better tomorrow so you can forget yesterday. There's a wonderfulness to this kind of outlook. It supports our population of dreamers and creators in a way that I haven't quite seen elsewhere.

But there's also a dark side. Dreamers are also risk-takers, sometimes to a fault. Forward thinking breeds confidence and, with it, confidence men and women who seek to take advantage of hope and possibility. In between, there are those just trying to get along and they often are hit with the collateral damage of both the bright and the guilty. Rayner's story looks deeply at that and, it seems, attempts to answer the question of whether or not our city's duality must corrupt those who seek to stake a claim here or can "good" win out?

Fans of the likes of Mosley and Chandler or films like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential already know the answer.

Doesn't stop us from trying to come out ahead, though, does it? As Rayner notes, "on an average day, Los Angeles receives 14 times more sunlight than New York."

That means it shines on a dog's ass here more often than most places.

I like those odds.