'21 is a magic number
and even if it ain’t, we better make it so
Georgia! I know you are voting early: black voters, Asian voters, Latinx voters, young voters — it’s amazing! Actual election day is January 5, and I’ll keep saying it: we are fighting for our lives. Case in point: I’m in Southern California, and we are on lockdown indefinitely. I’m more nervous now than I was over the summer. Please, mask up, even if you have been vaccinated. Exercise. Check on, as they say, your strong friends. Stretch your body. Make some food for your soul. Tipping is a complex situation, but right now, please tip as well as you can afford. If you are in these streets delivering packages, or ringing up groceries, or delivering dinners, or attending to the kidlets or the elderly or the sick and shut-in: you are appreciated. And please check in on yourself, too. Happy New Year. We are going to shine bright.
have like 8️⃣ things this week
1) While we are on the ‘rona: “Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us.” Ed Yong thinks, as bad as things are right now, we are turning a corner.
2) And while we are on Georgia, are folks out near Macon really “buying back the block” and creating a new community founded on the idea of safety for black people?!?
3) Grateful to Rodrigo Salazar for pointing me toward Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, and this article from Professor Tao Leigh Goffe about the “Jamaican-Chinese infrastructures of reggae.” I just followed her at Twitter because I want to know more.
4) “When something is racist, we should just say it’s racist…When someone is lying, we should just say they’re lying.” Amen.
5) Former Boston Celtic center Kendrick Perkins is my favorite new(ish) media personality/ broadcaster.
He was scowling and underrated in the 2007-08 Celtic season that ended with trophies and championship rings all around. Perk currently shows up on Boston’s local NBA feed, and as he’s under contract to ESPN, he’s on First Take and Get Up a lot. And he’s an analyst on the network’s Hoop Streams as well. I love this moment. Perk, who could not be intimidated when he was an active pro, says what is on his mind: “James Harden can’t show up to work looking like me!”).
Above, he’s breaking down Paul George. Catch Perk now because soon he’ll be way more famous and might have to temper his refreshing wildness. Let’s hope not.
6) I know you remember Connie Chung ⬇️
7) Need to do a list of the best stuff I created this year, but instead — because it’s the most true to my 2021 creative mindset — I will direct you to the essay I wrote about Sade for NPR. It’s in the family of this 2013 NPR piece I wrote about growing up in Los Angeles, DJ Green Lantern, and loving Barry Manilow (see him up top, with Whitney Houston). The Manilow piece was anthologized in 2017’s Shake it Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop From Elvis to Jay Z.
8) Speaking of mindset and mood: the below is one I currently relate to. Andre Gee is a staff writer at Complex. He has a cool newsletter called More Fire.
