"I Bet I Can Add Up All The Change in Your Purse Very Fast" - Vintage Kanye

I Used to Say...
"Grades don't define how smart I Am"
"Grades don't dictate how successful you will become"
"Grades don't 'really' matter"
"Grades produce Low-Self Esteem"
"Grades Suck"!

That or course was before I got my grades for fall quarter
3 A's and a B+
I had to admit it was pretty exciting, and all of my family most definitely knew about it.

It was pretty tough though, I thought I was destined for straight C's at one point and was terrified about my standing in one class.

Well, I plan on spending at least the rest of this winter break relishing in my good scholarly deeds and then I have to focus on topping that for winter quarter, which tends to always be my most toughest quarters.

From the West Side to the East Side!

There is Truly No place Like Home!

School has been very hectic since I last posted! I didn't go home for Thanksgiving which was really sad, I wanted so much to be back in LA with my uncle and cousins.

People are really starting to get on my bad side. Recently I told myself that I was not going to hold any grudges with annoying people because that's not who I am. lately I have been really wanting to strangle certain people.

I can't wait to go back home ( LA and Arizona)!Im done with school for right now!

All I Want for Christmas is...

*T-Mobile G1 with Google--Bronze


Creative Reaction:
*The Cesario in Black, Purple & Turquoise
*The Dicoco Hi in Blue Buffalo with Pink & Turquoise


A stack of Hundred Dollar Bills Would not be so bad either!

On another Note:
I leave with a Throwback from Estelle

iLL-Literacy is the s**t!

Dahlak Braithwaite, Ruby Verdiano-Ching, Adriel Luis & Nico Cary are the makeup of iLL-Literacy, a collective of emcees spoken word artists and poets.










Hopefully Me and my friend Mina will see them in SF!

Daoud Hari

I had an Amazing day so far.
I went to work around 10am in the Merrill College Office and did my work just as I should. The Provost Lourdes walks in with this tall skinny man who looked very much like my father. Lourdes introduces this mystery man to every one in the office and on the wall I see an event flyer for Daoud Hari who is speaking later on tonight to talk about the issues going on in Darfur and to discuss his book, The Translator: A tribesman's memoir of Darfur. Just before I could blink and think, Lourdes turns to me and introduces us. I said Hello and he said Hello and then she took him into the back to discuss business matters. Me, being the sly person that I am, tries to sneak my way to the back of the office, pretending that I am making copies just so that I could get one more glimpse of him. After about 30 minutes they come back to the front and Lourdes tells my Boss that she is welcome to go eat lunch with the rest of them ( including Daoud Hari) but my Boss Declines. Oh how i wish so much that they would have asked me. I then saw a white kid dressed in traditional African clothing looking all kinds of silly come in to talk with Hari. Apparently the kid won an opportunity to have lunch with him as well.

And for those of you who did not know:

Daoud Hari is a Sudanese tribesman from the Darfur region of Sudan. He has worked as a language interpreter and guide for NGO's and the press on fact-finding trips into the war-torn and dangerous Darfur area. Hari was captured and detained by the government of Sudan as a spy in August 2006 along with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Paul Salopek and their Chadian driver Abdulraham Anu (aka "Ali"). During their months-long ordeal all three men were severely beaten and deprived. Upon their successful release - after an international outcry from US diplomats, the US military, Bono and even the Pope - Hari moved to the US where be began work on his memoirs to help bring further world attention to the plight of his people and country. In 2008 he published his memoirs under the title The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur.

Daoud Hari is also known as Suleiman Abakar Moussa. As he explains in his memoir, this is a false identity he created to appear as a citizen of Chad in order that he might work in the Sudanese refugee camps in Chad as an interpreter (by Chad law, only Chadian citizens are allowed to work).

He will be speaking tonight at 6:30 in Classroom Unit 2 which is around the same time as Open Mic, I guess we all have to make some choices but I have a feeling this one wont be too hard to make. I strongly encourage everyone to go.

Hip Hop Honors...It was all A Dream!

Was Nice....
Cypress Hill, Too Short, Naughty By Nature, Slick Rick, and De La Soul were among the 2008 Honorees.







I was excited to see all of them honestly, I wish Slick Rick would have done one more song but Ghostface Killed and Biz Markie Killed it with their rendition of Lodi Dodi. De La Soul was cool, I really liked them. I never really noticed how bad Hip Hop could sound live. Cypress Hill gave me timeless memories about my hometown of Los Angeles and how they get down. It is still hard for me to believe that Too Shorts parents were both accountants, just listening to his songs you would think that they were just a bunch of pimps and hoes or something. In some performances I could see that The Roots may have been the house band. Morgan was hella funny and the tribute to Issac Hayes was extremely heartwarming. I love the rendition of Mary J Blige's song that Estelle covered for the Isaac Hayes performance as well, and Cee-Lo is always my man. Dj Prince Paul and Q-tip had my eye the whole night. Me and My Housemate could not help but to bust out in laughter every time the camera captured the audience singing to the songs in such an intense in serious manner, as if they had written the song. Also they repeatedly kept showing these black dudes with these ugly jacked up flat tops which could have been mistaken for that Slim Jim guy in the Beef jerky commercials.But all good things come to an end, right after the show ended I had to step back into my world that I live in and get back to the never ending, thick readers that is my homework. It was nice while it lasted.

Here I Go Again!

It's been a while since I spoke some truth on this blog. School has started and I am feeling completely overwhelmed. Due to my laziness to go Downtown and buy my books for class I am already behind. Being a Junior is nothing like I thought it would be, of course I knew I would have more responsibilities but I dont need the bull that goes a long with it. As for friends, I would say they are non-existent. There are some people that I am really close to here but It seems like High school all over again. Don't get me wrong there are so many good people here and many of them I would like to keep in contact with after college but it seems like most people here are living for the now instead of keeping in mind their four-year plans ( if you know what I mean).

On another note...
My housemates are tight and we get a long great sometimes
Looking up internships for the summer already, I learned my lesson!
In every one of my classes I have a 10 page paper due.Nice!!!
Pictures should be up later!

Bittersweet...UCSC is gonna be the Death of me!

Well Well, its that time again to pack up all of my things and head northwest for the fall. Yep, Im going back to UCSC, Santa Cruz, the Bay, the Boondocks, College. In a way I am really excited to go back but I still dont want to go back just yet. Plans have changed so I will not have my car this quarter until winter quarter. My job is cool, My old teacher asked me to be his teaching assistant for a class of 300. I have to get ready to travel abroad and there are just so many things to deal with. I just want this year to go by fast.

Pharcyde!!

Okay so this post has nothing to do with Pharcyde but their song is drilled into my head at the moment.

I have been extremely stressed out this past week, I dont know if its because I am going back to school next week or because I am thinking about all of the things I have to do once I get there.

Im pretty excited to go back to Cali ( Big up to LL Cool J) for the simple fact that Arizona has been a drag this summer. No friends to go on fun adventures with and no beaches to visit, It was simply wack. All work and no play makes for a dull person i might say in this case. Thats all I did was work, work, work and I have nothing to show for it because I having been paying all my bills this summer. This year will be interesting with Student Media, Alpha Kappa Alpha, ABSA and other fun stuff I know I will be anything but bored. New York hopefully in the future and there will be lots of pictures being taken this year for sure.

Tribute # 3: Black Pride, Black Love; Obama Edition

Ain't nothing like a grandmothers support

So I was overly excited and elated when I saw this picture of Barack Obama's grandmother holding up an old campaign sign outside of her home in western Kenya after welcoming Obama's Democratic National acceptance speech. This picture is a idealistic and sentimental reminder of how far we have come as a people. From being ripped away from our homelands and loaded into a ship not knowing where it was going to becoming *president of one of the worlds most powerful countries. One of my friends Cynthia aka Watsonville (her hood) imagined what she would say if someone asked her what her grandchildren does, "So what does your grandson do?", "Oh he's President of the United States!"

The famous but oh so lovely fist-bump also known as the "DAP"

This picture celebrates black love at its finest moments. Michelle and Barack are G's for incorporating this into their daily regime of giving props when they are due. In a world where black women are being over sexualized in the media and black men are supposedly "forced" to date outside of their race due to the attitude of the Black Woman and Black men being so desirable, this picture restores my faith of their being such thing as strong black love in today's crazy wild world. Not only does this symbolize strong embrace and devotion but it makes me feel a sense of familiarity and pridefulness in the urban culture. Also it just makes me love them even more!

Baby Mama Drama Politics

So unless you have been living under a rock lately you most likely heard about McCain's running partner, Sarah Palin's pregnant Teenage daughter. It has been pretty much a hot topic since last week. I kind of feel sorry for the kid, there are probably tons of people saying how bad of a girl she is and how her mother can not even control her own child let a lone try to help run a country. Barack Obama courageously proclaimed this scandal unnecessary and hurtful to all parties involved and that families are off limits. In this situation practicing abstinence sounds like a darn good idea. Entertainment shows are doing too much though, making comparisons to jamie lynn spears is going a little over the edge don't you think? But who cares right, It's fair game in the world of Politics.

Tribute #2 Songs That Remind Me Of My Childhood

One of Dem Dayz- Monica
*reminds me of Santa Monica Beach


Day dreamin'-Tatiana Ali
*reminds me of Venice Beach


I Wanna Be Down- brandy
*This song reminds me of the Boys and Girls Club of Venice

Enjoy!

Barack Obama!!! Yes We Can!!

So I dont know if your parents or grandparents told you the stories about their first voting experience. Rather it be Clinton, Bush, Nixon, Bush Snr, or JFK, this election is different in many ways. This year I will exercise my right to vote for the first time in my life and I will be voting for a BLACK PRESIDENT. I Regret not writing about this sooner but I was super busy this week. I first heard about Barack Obama sometime in the early 2000's when I came across his book, Dreams from my father. Sometime later during my first year of college I came across another book of his in the airport, I bought it and immidiately began to read it while waiting for my flight (the rest is history). This day and age when African Americans are constantly being criticized by the media and the American Governement, Obama gives me and the rest of America hope that things can be changed and you just dont have to stand on the sideline and accept them anymore. I emphasize the word "Hope" in that last sentence. Watching the Democratic National Convention really hit the nail on the head for me as far as me for the first time being extremely proud to be an American. Obama is not just a "Black" president but he is an American, and Multi-racial as well as Multi-cultural, he also comes from the working class of Americans and knows what that life is like which gives him precedence when it comes to helping Americans. Whenever I hear him speak I see glitches of greatness that will manifest into something so majestic later on. I'm sure this is the same way people felt at the time when they heard MLK speak. I am just really excited to Vote this year for the first time and as Obama treads on his path to presidency you will be hearing a lot more from me.

For What It's Worth! My First Tribute #1

So I was listening to a bunch of Billie Holiday songs this past week and I couldnt help but to think about how hard her life was. Being raped numerous times as a child, adolescent and adult, having to work as a prostitute, dying from cirrhosis of the liver and having a warrant out for her rest for posession while she lay dying in her hospital bed. Why do the Great die so young? and I emphasize the word "Great" to the umph degree. One of my favorite songs of Billie is Lady Sings the Blues and God Bless the Child. She is one of the few artists I know that I could actually hear the pain in her voice. "Life is Beautiful" read one of the murals in Los Angeles depciting Holiday serenading her audience with the microphone. She is my constant reminder that whatever you may go through in life, the only person stopping you from becoming what you want to be is yourself. If you have talent you can't be afraid to use it!

So, Like a Loser

I finally learned how to do a print screen of websites online. For this project i decided to do a print screen of one of my first feature articles that I ever did for City on a Hill Press. It was hard trying to hold my excitement because it was one of the first "real" articles I have ever done and I interviewed thee original "hip hop cop" and Yesi Ortiz from Power 106 and a writer from source Mag and the most exciting part, It was chosen as the cover. Not many of my friends knew about it but i guess it was better that way. I could just remember the feeling walking through the quarry seeing my article in the window ( good feeling!). But yeah, that's enough for now, gotta go to the Rainforest tomorrow, Damn!

Finally got my internet back!

It's funny how now all of a sudden everybody wants to be a journalist. I am not exactly sure if they know the difference between blogging and the real journalism ( the kind that requires a degree). I don't claim to be the best writer in the world or anything and I know that there is a lot of work to be done so I guess I will just let my thoughts bleed onto this blog with whatever pops up in my mind.
I do believe however that everyone should write daily, its free therapy.

Postscript: oh yeah and Super Crew won! Yes Yes Ya'll, ya don't stop!

R.I.P Bernie Mac

Words cannot express how I felt this morning when I found out that Bernie Mac passed away early this morning due to complications from pneumonia. I truly felt that I had lost one of my family members. I am still in shock and cannot really grasp the thought of him being gone this soon.Bernie Mac is one of the most funniest and revered actors and comedians of his time and of the younger generation. Mac's jokes played on real problems and situations within the black family while also offering different perspectives that people from all walks of life and races could relate to. There is not one movie that Bernie Mac starred in that i didnt enjoy. From one of my favorite movies Life (one of his most memorable roles in my mind)to his numerous guest appearances on Moesha, to Mr. 3000, to Friday(many classic hood movies) to Oceans 11 and the most recent Transformers. Mac is like everyone's funny uncle that you cant wait to see because he keeps you laughing the whole time. One of my most favorite standup routines from MAC was his "milk and cookies" one from the Kings of Comedy starring fellow Kings Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and DL Hughley. Every role that is given to Mac he stands out and makes his performances more than memorable. I know in the future many will try to do what Mac did but there will never be anyone that will come along to be as great and funny as the MAC.
Bernie Mac is funny as hell!

R.I.P Bernie Mac, You will be Missed, I know you will be Chopping it up with the Lord in Heaven!