Talking with Michael Tillery on The Starting Five Live

Over the weekend, I had the awesome pleasure of chatting with Michael Tillery of The Starting Five Live online radio show on RapStation.com. Mike is a longtime e-migo whom I have corresponded with for 10 years or so. Mike has been a freelance writer as well who has given me a lot of advice and mentorship on developing my own voice.

These days, Mike hosts The Starting Five Live on RapStation.com, a web platform created by Chuck D of Public Enemy. The Starting Five Live hosts discussions on sports and culture. He has hosted sports legends such as Julius Erving, media personalities such as Jemele Hill, and music artists such as Skyzoo, so it is a definitely honor to be included on that list.

Mike and I spoke a lot about the blogosphere, social media, and then talked about the New York Knicks and the mess between owner James Dolan and Knicks legend Charles Oakley.

Please go check out my discussion with  Michael Tillery. Hopefully Mike will have me on again.

The Starting Five Live 170: The Michael Lortz Interview

Flava in Ya Documentary

Music documentaries are a favorite of mine. Especially ones of old school hip hop. This one, on Craig Mack, was interesting. Although it focused primarily on Mack's early days and his relationship with Sean Puffy Combs. I would have liked to see more what happened to Craig between 2000 and 2015, when he was found in a church in South Carolina.

How did he get there? They said Craig was religious, but to disappear and resurface in a small church dropping free style rhymes is a big change. Not everyone does that.



After watching this, I am inspired to refocus on telling the story of Kenny Waters, Tampa's first hip hop DJ and founder of Digital Underground. Be on the look out for more information on that.

Everything Comes to He Who Hustles While He Waits

That's a line from Thomas Edison
Inventor
Hustler

Here is bottom line, for those wasting time
Not paying attention
Because they can't afford free speech

I've been hustling
I've been waiting
I've been working hard for years
Waiting for the big payback
In the words of the Godfather of Soul

People said James Brown was also the Godfather of Funk and Hip-Hop
I give thanks, because early hip-hop conditioned me
To create
because that's my mission
So listen close to what I say,
Because this type of shit happens everyday.

Too many people don't know their worth
Whether things changed around them
Or companies don't know the time

You only have so much time
And time equals money
Which means you can only make so much money
In the time you have

The caveat to the cause is that
Money is the root of all evil
Since money equals time
Time is also the root of all evil

Whereas we try to make money
Time roots against us, no matter what
The passing of time changes the rules of the game

Yet, we waste time when we wait
Our time becomes waste
Garbage
Thrown out with no value

So why wait?
Don't waste time
Don't let the game pass you by
Keep your value high

Hustle

Jedi, Friends, Lovers, and Princesses

I write about Star Wars often on this site, but I wasn't sure how to write about the passing of Carrie Fisher. She was important, but I was more into other elements of the saga, from the Jedi to the aliens. I was fine with letting others discuss her impact on their Star Wars fandom.

That changed, however, after reading Mark Hamill's tribute to Carrie Fisher. I realized something important.

Carrie Fisher influenced the type of women I am attracted to.

I have never been attracted to the Barbie doll type. The type of women who got my attention were strong, smart, outspoken, and driven. They could hold their own in life and didn't need a man unless they wanted one. They were more Princess Leia than Cinderella.

When I was growing up, most young males I knew usually either identified with Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. Solo was the bad boy smuggler with his own spaceship who shot first and didn't bother to ask questions. Skywalker was the kid who still hadn't figured out who he was. Solo lived life his way, from one end of the galaxy to the other. He had stories and experience. Luke was a dreamer who stared at the twin moons of Tattooine. As Yoda said, "All his life has he looked away ... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was."

With that in mind, here is where Mark Hamill's tribute to Carrie Fisher became very interesting.

Carrie Fisher recently admitted to an affair with Harrison Ford while they worked on Star Wars. Ford, like Solo, was confident and experienced in Hollywood. Fisher was enamored with him. Meanwhile, her and Hamill became friends.

Nothing surprised Carrie Fisher. She had a lifetime in entertainment. Hamill, on the other hand, admits to being from a humble, middle class upbringing. Hamill also admits to being in awe of Fisher. There is no way he had a chance romantically with Carrie Fisher.

Mark Hamill could only be friends with Carrie Fisher. Even if he ever wanted otherwise.

I've met women like Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia. Women I was in awe of, even if I also consider myself an over-achieving, A-type personality. They were amazing, bright, funny, and beautiful. I've even met some, like Fisher, from successful families with their career on a paved road to success.

But like Carrie Fisher, they had their eyes on other men. And also like Fisher, perhaps their struggle wasn't in their career but something more personal. Something at a level I could never know.

(I'm combining Fisher/Leia on purpose, as she admitted she was very similar to the character she played. I think the same is true to a point for Ford/Solo and Hamill/Skywalker. Hamill might not be a monk on a mountain, but his naivety in Hollywood must have been similar to Skywalker's as a teen on Tattooine.)

For many of these women, I was Mark Hamill. I was the guy to joke around with, have fun with, argue with on occasion, but rarely the romantic interest. There might have been love, but it was never intimate love.

Not that there is anything wrong with being Mark Hamill/Luke Skywalker. Hamill is a successful actor who has had a long career of appearances and voice acting. And by the end of Return of the Jedi, Skywalker has developed the knowledge, skill, and confidence to take on the baddest bad guy in the galaxy. Even if he never made the final strike, Luke could have killed Darth Vader on the second Death Star.

As cool as Han Solo was, he was ineffective against Darth Vader. Vader stopped Solo's blaster shot, froze him in carbonite, and handed him to Boba Fett. All in front of Solo's love interest.

Ironically, that might have made Solo's love interest love him more. That's not a case of bad George Lucas's script writing, love works like that sometimes.

On the other hand, Jedi Masters have more acclaim in the long run than scoundrels. They are recognized across the galaxy, even if they might not make better lovers. No Jedi Master in the Star Wars movies is successful in love. Most, like Yoda, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, or Luke, live the life of lone warriors or priests. The only one we know who tried to balance the personal growth of a Jedi with a relationship was Anakin, and he went off the deep end.

Scoundrels, on the other hand, are ideal for love interests. After years of gallivanting, their development typically runs out of gas. They either settle down or self-destruct. While he was a bad ass in A New Hope, Han Solo is not really important in the end of Return of the Jedi. Even Ford thought the character should have been killed. In The Force Awakens, Solo is again only a vessel for the development of other characters. Comparatively, Skywalker was such a powerful character the writers had to hide him and make him the macguffin.

I'm not sure if there will ever be a Luke Skywalker love interest in the movies. There might be. Perhaps Luke will be the Jedi who retires into the sunset with a significant other. Maybe they will make Mara Jade canon.

As for me, I know I have more knowledge, skill, and confidence than I've ever had. And although the allure of young princesses has passed, I am still looking for someone smart, strong, fun, and driven. A more mature princess, one who has perhaps been through a few battles of her own. One who understands struggle and hope.

I owe that to Carrie Fisher.

On the field at Doak Campbell Stadium at Florida State University

When I was a student at Florida State, one of my biggest aspirations was to go on the football field at Doak Campbell Stadium. I knew the right people, but I never took advantage of the opportunity. I even worked in the administrative offices surrounding the stadium and used to nap between classes in the bleachers. But I never made my way down to field level.

That changed in 2016.

In April, as part of the Tampa Bay Seminole Club, I was allowed to tour the new Stadium Club wing of Doak Campbell Stadium. The area was under construction, so hardhats were required, but we were allowed on the field to look up at the new level to get "the big picture". Although we were there to look at the construction, I couldn't help but to get a few pictures of myself with the other side of the stadium - the completed side - in the background.

Finally.

A few months later, in the end of November, I was given an even greater opportunity: to be on the field with the Tampa Bay Seminole Club before kickoff of Florida State versus Florida - the biggest rivalry game of the year. I couldn't turn that down.

The reason we were invited to be on the field before kick off was to present our very generous contribution to the FSU Care Program - an FSU scholarship and life mentor program that assists underprivileged high school students, many from broken homes, with the opportunity to go to college. It is a big deal and has helped a lot of kids do great things at Florida State.

Needless to say, our presence on the field was small potatoes compared to the impact our donation to the CARE Program will have. But it was cool for us to be on the field in front of thousands of FSU fans, alumni, and students applauding us for our actions.

And, on top of being on the field, we were also shown on the jumbotron. Definitely one of the most memorable FSU-related experiences I have ever had. It's going to be tough to top that.

Rest in Peace to a classmate we called Devil Man

I hate writing these posts. I really do. But writing is my way of processing.

Yesterday I learned that a high school classmate of mine, Tom Patton, passed away. Although I last saw him in 1995 at our graduation, Tom and I reconnected on Facebook in February 2011. Facebook is also how I learned the news of his death.

Reconnecting and being friends on Facebook is a weird thing. It is a little more revealing than exchanging Christmas cards, but only as revealing as people volunteer. I can't say I reconnected with Tom on a deep personal level, but I can say we shared many laughs over many memes and videos. Tom posted a lot of twisted humor pictures that I "liked" and he "liked" a lot of my humorous posts as well.

Unfortunately, Facebook only keeps private messages for a few years before they are deleted. Good for Facebook, but bad for memories. I know I caught up with Tom right after we connected, but unfortunately the conversation is gone. The only direct message I have with him was one from November 2016.



Sadly, he never gave me a call and we never caught up.

Our last interaction on Facebook was on December 10th, 2016. I wrote a post to announce I graduated grad school. Tom "loved" the post. Although it was only a click and only a button away from "like", that was an awesome gesture by Tom - a virtual "Great work!", better than a virtual "Good job.". Tom was one of only two people who I didn't talk to often who loved the post.

Tom's support, and that he "loved" something I worked hard to accomplish, will be a lasting memory.

As I mentioned, I met Tom in high school. We had several Electronics classes together through our junior and senior years. Electronics was a vocational elective that taught students the basics of electrical circuits and other elements of the field. Taught by Mr. Dibben, the class featured an array of characters - personally, I was kicked out of class by Mr. Dibben several times and forced to sit in a chair outside the classroom (I don't remember why).

Among the most colorful (since black is a color) characters in the class was Tom. Because of his penchant for wearing black heavy metal band shirts (Danzig, Misfits, etc), Mr. Dibben gave Tom the nickname "Devil Man". The name stuck in the classroom - I don't ever remember calling him "Tom". From what I remember, Tom got along with everyone well enough, even though he wasn't the most talkative person in the class.

To be honest, I'm not sure if Tom liked the "Devil Man" nickname. He didn't seem to mind and went with it well. Of course, nicknames in high school might be awkward as adults, so I rarely used it in our Facebook conversations - the last example excluded.

Ironically, I remember telling him that I had become a "devil man" as well. I became a metal fan when I moved to Tampa, saw some of the heaviest and loudest bands around, and had my own collection of band t-shirts that caused interesting looks. Quite the change from the hip-hop-only playlists I had in high school.

I was disappointed to not see Tom at the Eau Gallie High School Class of 1995 20th Reunion. It would have been great to see him.

Rest in peace, Tom. I appreciate the love. One day we will catch up.

Key & Peele - East West College Bowl and the Hall of Presidents

I am a big fan of Comedy Central's Key & Peele Show. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele created on the best comedy sketch shows since the Chappelle Show.

One of Key & Peele's best and most famous sketches is their East/West College Bowl. As of November 2016, it had over 36 million views on YouTube.

I recently noticed something about the sketch: the order in which the players are announced is exactly opposite of the order of the US presidents. In the sketch, there are dozens of black guys followed by one white guy. From 1776 to 2016, there were dozens of white US presidents followed by one black guy.

So being the creative sort, I found a video of Disney's Hall of Presidents and inserted the audio from the Key & Peele sketch. I like how it turned out.

The insanity of political memes

Like bumper stickers to generations, political memes have become the preferred way of choice for people to communicate their political views. They allow people to make big points with little effort. Simply take an image, put some text on the top and bottom, and you have a meme. You get bonus points if it is funny or as some sort of twist to the punchline.

For example, I created this one from a site called memegenerator.com.



Not overly funny, but the character's face combined with the condescending question does send a message.

While the above meme attacks meme culture, most political memes are for the in-group and condescending towards the "others".

But what if two memes on the same subject with different perspectives were put together?



The premise is the same: comparing the words of Donald Trump to the use of different gendered bathrooms by transexual individuals. But each meme takes a completely different perspective and attempts to insult the intelligence of the "others".

The meme on the left assumes transsexuals are not a threat, but Donald Trump is. The meme on the right assumes Donald Trump is not a threat, but transsexuals are.

It is easy to spread propaganda on Facebook. It has become a sandbox for tribalism and group identity. But when we pull media out of Facebook and look at it critically, we see how unoriginal it really is. But like a homemade bomb, it is simple, but effective.

Self-awareness and the 2016 US Presidential Election

I've been thinking long and hard over the last week on how to write about Election 2016. Not in generations has the US seen such a tumultuous and turbulent election. Perhaps not since the 1860s, a decade that brought us to Civil War. Election 2016 was ugly, personal, and divisive. It brought out raw emotions and feelings about the direction of society, not the typical adjustments of policy that typified previous elections.

Books will be written about Election 2016, its causes, and its aftermath. We are living history and it is very difficult to see where you are in the paragraph when the pages of history are being written.

I recently finished a book in business management entitled "Managing the Unexpected" by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe. This book was written to help managers identify their place in corporate turmoil and not only survive, but often turn the situation into a learning experience and prosper.

According to Weick and Sutcliffe, sensemaking is a huge part of situational survival. A big part of sensemaking is self-awareness. Over the last few days, I have tried to deconstruct not only my thinking but also the thinking of those around me to see why America is currently in the shape it is in.

From the beginning of the campaign season until August, I lived in Tampa near the University of South Florida. Not only did the Tampa metro area vote overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, but universities are predominantly liberal environments. I'm not looking at why right now, just that they are.

If you had asked me before August, I would have said Donald Trump didn't stand an ice cube's chance in hell of winning.

After my lease expired July 30th, I moved in with a friend in Inverness, Florida, an hour and 20 minutes north of Tampa. Not only were there Trump signs everywhere, but there were Confederate flag rallies on Sunday afternoon on Main Street. This was not the multi-cultural, urban environment I was used to. I'm sure if I asked, they would have given Hillary Clinton the same ice cube's chance in hell.

But given the Confederate flags and Inverness's intolerant history, I wrote off the region as fringe - uneducated, rural Florida, in no way indicative of the general voting public.

While I was in Afghanistan, the US Military deployed giant blimps around the capital city of Kabul. These blimps were used to track terrorists and keep an eye in the sky. I'm not sure how true this is, but I was told when the blimps first went up, uneducated Afghans who never saw a blimp thought they were dragons.

In Afghanistan and everywhere else, uneducated people will buy into dragons and boogeymen and conspiracy theories of Illuminati and Muslim takeovers and anything else that helps them make sense of a complex world they are unfamiliar with. It is basic human nature to attempt to process the unknown through ideas you already hold.

It was easy to dismiss the Trump movement the same way: uneducated and willing to believe the boastful generalities of a real estate mogul / media savvy reality TV star. He was rich and arrogant and willing to say whatever he had to to rile up the people. There was no doubt Trump's threats of invading immigrants and Chinese global growth had the ears of rural America, where the economy hasn't recovered and suicide rates and drug use is increasing.

A few weeks later, I continued my gypsy wandering and began staying with family in middle class, suburban Melbourne, Florida. While some members of my family have always been conservative, I quickly sensed they weren't the only ones on the Trump train. There wasn't a Hillary lawn sign to be seen in Melbourne and Facebook friends from the area constantly posted anti-Hillary and pro-Trump messages and memes.

This was Melbourne, Central Florida, about as Middle America as Florida gets. Mostly white. Mostly suburban. Not as rich as South Florida and not as rural as North Florida. And it seemed predominately, if not overwhelmingly, pro-Trump.

After a few weeks in Melbourne, I started to think Hillary Clinton was more the ice cube than Donald Trump.

It didn't make sense. People in Melbourne were educated, they had jobs, and they were basically tolerant of others. The basic preconceptions I could use in rural Florida didn't apply.

But the people in Melbourne seemed to support Trump not for who he was, but for who he wasn't. He wasn't Hillary Clinton and he wasn't a Washington insider. Hillary was untrustable and unforgivable. Even with all his faults, Trump was going to put money back in the pockets of middle class Americans. He was going to lower insurance premiums and taxes. And if he got rid of "political correctness" along the way, even better.

The American middle class walks a fine line and they know it. They don't want to lose their ground and they thought Hillary was going to move them the wrong way. Their beliefs might not be social conservativism as much as they are financial and status conservativism.

Pundits called Trump's election a "repudiation" of Obama's administration. According to Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico, Obama's vision of America was "educated and pragmatist, multicultural, cosmopolitan and globalist". I am highly educated, to include a master's degree in International Affairs, have worked and studied with people of foreign cultures, lived most of the last 10 years in a city, eat in ethnic restaurants more than domestic, and listen to more historically black music than historically white music.

Obama's vision was my America.

To me, America has never been greater than it is now. I believe in progress, innovation, and moving forward. Trump's claims that America is a disaster did not resonate with me at all. Not one bit. From the moment he declared his intention of running, there was nothing I agreed with him on.

His America was not my America. But his America is the America of more Americans than my America is.

That's a tough pill to swallow.

Does that mean the ideas of progress are gone? As bad as emboldened bigots are under Trump, the odds are very low that America will digress into ISIS-controlled Syria in four years. We will probably not be executing women in public squares for adultery or chopping off hands for robbery. Even public hangings will probably not come back, despite Trump's advocacy for law and order.

Change, especially social change, is slow. While progress is inevitable, humans were programmed with an innate fear of the unknown. They are not comfortable with change. For some, this fear and discomfort is more pronounced than in others, especially when resistance to change is tied to social or religious fabric.

But change does come. For example, there was a time when Americans didn't know what recycling was. Now it is second nature. Kids today don't know a world without it. Yet according to RedOrbit.com, the first Earth Day in 1970 was called "a Communist trick" and others said it was a "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them".

Now, barring a major Supreme Court reversal, men can marry men and women can marry women legally. This decision and its support was the result of decades of social campaigning and the acceptance of LGBT people by a majority of Americans. Even those who might not fully accept it know someone who is gay, even in small town America.

What we saw in Election 2016 was bubbles on both sides pushing against each other.

In one bubble, there is a fear of losing traditional American values, individual independence, communism, and stifling by Big Government.

In the other bubble, there is a fear of a repressive society driven by one dominant group and culture.

Like the Big Bang, the resulting matter of two highly energized bubbles crashing into each other could be something totally unfamiliar. This is the ground some political prognosticators are now observing, like scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. But instead of magnets, the speed and direction of America's social bubbles are accelerated by media, propaganda, confirmation bias, and echo chambers.

So where am I? I am still called a communist by my conservative friends and still told I am not liberal enough by my conservative friends. That's ok. One friend told me years ago that he was "Right in the Middle and Left Out". I think that is a good place to be.

Despite the popular rejection of my urban educated version of America, the nation will continue to progress. It always does. Education is slow, urbanization is slow, and progress is slow. America is a wide nation, with many different viewpoints. Cosmopolitan America isn't for everyone. Liberal educated America isn't for everyone. Globalism isn't for everyone.

But of the vision of the Obama platform, multicultural progress and civil rights should not be given up on. Those should be advocated and protected. Our world is too connected and our inalienable rights too guaranteed to limit the rights of anyone due to race, creed, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. This should be a moral calling not only in America, but across the world.

There may be Afghans who reject an international government and the presence of foreign influence in their country, but I'm sure one day all Afghans will know a blimp isn't a dragon.

Amy Schumer blocked me on twitter

Over the last few years, I've grown to admire the comedy of Amy Schumer. I admittedly hadn't heard of her when she was coming up on Last Comic Standing and some of the other comedy avenues she rose in. But in the last few years, I've watched a few of her comedy specials, her sketch show on Comedy Central, and her movie, "Trainwreck".

Even though some of her comedy is a little too sexual for me, I think she is funny and respect her grind.

Earlier this year, Amy Schumer released her first book, "The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo". In the book, Schumer writes a few things about Tampa, a city I have done a bit of comedy in. After I heard that Schumer joked that only seven people in Tampa can read, I built on the joke on Twitter, tagging Schumer in my tweets.



I thought these were innocent enough. I wasn't insulting Schumer. In fact, I was playing along with her joke.

I made one more mention of Schumer a few days later. This wasn't a joke, but was a bit defensive.

For one of these three comments, Amy Schumer blocked me on Twitter.

This is a woman who has made a living making inappropriate humor. I kinda feel honored, actually.

I can understand if I insulted her. I might even understand if I said she wasn't funny. But I did none of that. During the week local media made a big deal over her mention of Tampa in a book she wrote, I made three mentions of her on Twitter, two of which were jokes. For that, a nationally-renown comic with over 1 million twitter followers prevented me from seeing any of her tweets or interacting with her on Twitter.

That seems a bit sensitive, honestly.

I'll still check out Amy Schumer's comedy. Even though her style is not exactly my type of humor, I'll still admire her grind. She is living every comic's dream and getting to levels only the best comics get to.

But now the fact that she blocked me on Twitter is one of the highlights of my barely comedy career. Right up there with performing in front of 300 people at the Tampa Improv and getting no one to laugh in Afghanistan.

Maybe that will be my intro when I get back into comedy. Instead of "He is a very funny guy from Tampa, Florida ...", I will ask MCs to say, "He was blocked by Amy Schumer and bombed in Afghanistan, from Tampa, Florida, Jordi Scrubbings!".

I have the intro, now all I need is a new set.