50 ways to leave your lover

Wardell Franklin, we hardly knew ye.

players of the game

More on the ever stranger Kwame Brown saga, courtesy of On & On's first guest commentator, the good doctor himself, FL:

What Scoop doesn't really talk about is how not only did Kwame's pops beat up on him and his siblings, but the cat is also in prison for life for murder. I think a few of his other siblings are also in jail. And Basketball quite literally saved Kwame from the fate of his father and brothers. I think I read somewhere that he grew big enough to be great in Basketball and stand up to his father at about the same time, but his father's conviction saved him from ever having to really exercise that size. But nothing kept him from playing ball...that is until he got to the Wizards.

Unlike KG and Amare who had started trotting across the country as high school ballers, Kwame was pretty much a local kid from some podunk Georgia town. He only had one male rolemodel, his basketball coach of course, and who of course told him to turn pro. Then boom, he's landed into the hands of Michael Jordan, Charles Oakley and Jahidi White. There's a story about how during one particular workout during his rookie year White, who weighs about 3bills, sat on him. Coaching these mild-mannered gentlemen was none other than Doug Collins. And to just make it more fun, the year after they drafted Brown, they traded Rip Hamilton for the "tougher" Jerry Stackhouse, who would later admit he had no idea what he was doing on that team since he and Jordan essentially played the same position and had similar styles of play.

Scoop knows for damn well that the issue with Kwame Brown is not whether or not he is gay. What Jordan did to the kid was mess his head up and have a 19 year old fighting two dudes twice his age, while another goon, thinking this kid was going to take his job, joined in the fun. Essentially Jordan brought him back to the same environment that he thought he had escaped when he started playing basketball. Now you can charge a parent with Child-abuse, and you can charge an employer with all forms of harassment, but somehow in pro-sports (unless you're the dude who just sued Bill Romanowski) you can not say anything when Jahidi White throws you down while you're going for a dunk, proceeds to sit on you, and your bossess and teammates look the other way. Then to add insult to injury, they trade your good friend because he was not "tough enough." Interestingly enough this was the same logic that John Wesbrod recently used split up Mobley and Francis. Now I can understand Jordan bringing Stackhouse in to make his team tougher, but Doug Christie?

Of course having Jermaine O'Neal going on TV and saying that all a person needs to do is hit the gym and get their game up to solve all their ills in the NBA also does not help the matter here.

Jordan and his cronies in DC were a step above homophobic. Dudes in the locker room who walk around calling people "faggots" are homophobic. But what Jordan did was create an environment where what outside the lines could have been prosecuted as hate crimes could exist and thrive. The definition of the "flaming faggot" that Jordan, White, Oakley and Collins turned Brown into was definitely not what he could have thought it to be when he first got to DC, because it was not himself. Jordan and his cronies oversaw an anarchy of identity. Fostering a social-situation where punishment eventually overcame any desires for discipline forced Kwame Brown to revert from man-child, to child-man, and made the basketball court the place that he never intended it to be, the ring in which he had to fight his father. They turned the court into his prison.

Of course, I am riffing off of Foucault at the end and one can make an argument (if someone hasn't already done it) that the sporting arena is like the Foucaultian prison in terms of how it attempts to discipline masculine identities. But alas none of that will solve Kwame Brown's problems. For Kwame will land with the either the Hawks or the Magic next year. He will goof around with either Josh Smith or Dwight Howard, while catching alley-oops and smiling on the court. He will then give it to Etan Thomas or Antawn Jamison something awful the first time they meet.

Or he could end up like Leon and Dontonio trying to find his game and his self...I think there's still enough hope for the former to occur.

Nah'mean.

black nostaljack

A spring weekend in BK does a body good, I tell ya. Hell, the sun was even out for a minute. ("They" say it's going to get into the 70s this week. Maybe I can finally put those sweaters away.)

Checked out the Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum, which was dope. Going in, I was much more familiar with the legend and the bio than I was with the actual work. I was struck by how funny dude was -- I was really on some LOL sh*t a few times. In some spots it's just a kind of playfulness, even whimsy [did I just write that? Really?], whereas elsewhere it comes in the form of this razor-sharp commentary about history and culture and the silences of both domination and resistance. In some of the pieces, it's both. (see: "Hollywood Africans") Of course, the other thing that stands out is just how young duke was. Makes me think, WTF am I doing with my life?

Since the C's went out like lambs on Saturday, I'm going to try to scale back my NBA consumption significantly, which should free up some time for more important things like, oh I don't know, say, dissertating. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this Kwame Brown thing, however. I don't think I'm alone either. There are definitely many stories yet to be told. And although I'm no Shaq fan, I think that Steve Nash winning the MVP is pretty suspect. Unlike most such arguments, I actually think that the "If Steve Nash were black..." formulation has some legs. Money gets a lot of credit for being quick, a reasonably good passer, and having four great targets to pass to on every possession. Plus he's "smart," which is the crux of the whole thing. How smart is he, in the basketball sense of the term, and is he any "smarter" than Jason Kidd or even Iverson? It seems like Nash's intelligence -- as demonstrated in his off-the-court interests and intellectual pursuits (and as contrasted with a great many of his contemporaries) -- gets projected by commentators onto his on-court play in ways that are fairly out of proportion with reality. I'm just sayin'...

In other news, what's really good with Jeb harboring an anti-Castro terrorist in this age of no shelter for the evil-doers? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, as they say. It will be real, real interesting to see how Gonzales, Rice, et al play this one. Extradition to Chavez? Indefinite detention? Look the other way?

Finally, I believe we may just have the summer's first heatrock, as the kids say. Freeway, "Where You Been," produced by Scott Storch, allegedly with ?uestlove on the drums. Storch mines the next frontier in Third World musics for the base sample/interpolation (good thing I'm not a music critic): an East Asian-sounding flute. The percussion stutters and Free's delivery is hungry but totally on beat. Straight flowin'. Best believe this track will be on iTunes repeat for the remainder of the week (replacing Beanie's "Feel It in the Air").

ain't nothin' but a maybe

Somewhat lost in all the excitement in Chocolate City about the Wizards' playoff run (Chicago gave away last night's game -- and, thus, the series), has been the strange story of Kwame Brown, Michael Jordan's former #1 draft pick now being shown the exit.

This slightly odd, somewhat poorly-edited piece on Kwame by Scoop Jackson caught my eye the other day and started a little e-conversation amongst some friends. I'll repeat my initial commentary here and, with permission, maybe I'll add the email responses of a couple of my folks later:

admittedly, i haven’t followed the wizards particularly closely, even when they had mike. kwame brown has always just been this unfortunate draft dud to me – not “tragic” on the level of chris washburn or len bias – more like big mistake on the level of [insert name here]. his “failure” to this point was always more reflective of MJ’s incompetence as an executive than anything inherently wrong with the kid. basically, he never should have been drafted #1 in the first place.

reading scoop jackson’s piece on kwame got me thinking in another direction. i hadn’t heard before about MJ (allegedly?) calling brown a “flaming faggot.” jackson seems only to scratch the surface of the significance of this comment by talking about the insult to brown’s manhood but more or less avoiding the actual question of sexuality. is that purposeful or not? early in the piece jackson goes out of his way to describe brown’s appearance (manicured nails, impeccable braids, tailored suits) and later makes reference to beatings brown received from his father, with no further comment on context or motivation.

this is purely speculation, but my question is this: is the “tragedy” of kwame brown less about failing to live up to basketball expectations and instead about the struggles of a young black man against ostracism and the psychological and physical violence of homophobia (inside and outside of the world of sports)?

spirit in the dark

Right.

So I've been home for a week. Trip was great but, just like that, all the California love has worn off and I'm back in the muck and the mire, all kinds of depressed.

At least I have this - my favorite party of the year -- to look forward to next weekend.

stop that train

On & On is taking a little vacation out to the left coast for some much needed R & R and a little change of scenery. Any readers/critics/admirers out in the Yay Area wishing to hollerate, please do so. I welcome any recommendations for burrito spots or record stores.

While I'm gone, please feel free to talk amongst yourselves about:

• Eugenics-as-pro-choice politics

• Blood for oil

• The possibilities and limitations of black male feminism
  

• Hip hop journalism as ethnography ("these folks sure make it easy for a driver to turn left")
  

• Peanut Butter Wolf trying to put Stevie Wonder onto Madlib in a Beverly Hills men's room by 'showing' him a CD

Back in a week.

expansions

Ain't nothin', really. Frankly, I don't know how some of you dedicated bloggers do it -- all regular and topical and consistent and sh*t. Kudos to you.

Couldn't get out to the Chi for last weekend's feminism and (in?) hip hop conference, though I do know some people who were involved in various capacities. In betwixt and between all the other stuff I'm juggling, been trying to get the lowdown from various sources. Hashim's self-designation as a newly minted male feminist -- on the heels of his tacit endorsement of Lil' Jon and them Ying Yang boyz -- sparked an interesting, if somewhat frustrating, discussion.

I had more to say in response to various comments but elected to bow out of the post/counter-post exchange. My loss, perhaps. I will say this though, all sectarianism and self-righteousness aside, I think that in 2005 the line in the sand needs to be drawn well before rape and domestic violence (Hashim: "My position as a "hip-hop feminist" is simple. I expect myself, my friends, and the artists I support to treat women with common respect. This means I'm cool with artists making sexy songs, like Ying Yang Twins. I wouldn't be cool with them talking about raping, or hitting women. That's my standard."). "The Whisper Song" may be a lot things, but "sexy" ain't one of 'em.