"How Tiger Can Get His Swag Back"

Steve Watkins is a funny dude. A fellow Cosby fellowship alum like myself, he also has this book out about a cartoon pitbull, DJ Dog (who wears a wave cap and sports cornrows!)who thinks he's an M.C. And there's a little black girl Republican who wears business suits. She looks like the former head of the Republican GOP, Michael Steele. Steve, why does Mya's hairline start so far back? Anyway, Steve wrote this short. Enjoy!

What is Afrofuturism?

A few years back I was attending The Black Panel at the San Diego Comic Con, and an earnest-sounding white woman asked why black people didn't read or write SF. I was impressed by her boldness in addressing a packed house of colored folk, but also dismayed that she didn't understand that black people, especially those outside of Africa, were the true originators of SF, Horror, and Fantasy. Think about it. Africans were snatched by aliens (Europeans), placed into a spaceship (their bodies packed like sardines in every inch of SPACE on a slave SHIP), and they arrived in a new world where they indured real horror, and true terror (imagine what some black women must have felt when they were raped by white men and gave birth to pale babies that they had never encountered before back home). New World Africans also had the audicity to create fantasy and science fiction: they dreamed of a future where black people would be free. So to those not versed in African or African American (black) history, it would appear that we would be woefully ignorant of the joys of writing or reading SF and other forms of speculative fiction. I was talking to my mother recently about my love of weirdness, and I hold her responsible for it. I started writing in one of my many journals about why I write what I like. And as I prepare for my stint in the Clarion Workshop, I have to remember that I come from the masters of what I write about.

Jamaa Fanaka

I caught this flick on TV purely by accident. Turner Movie Classics were showing several Jamaa Fanaka films late one night. It was originally known as "Emma Mae" for his film thesis at AFI. Later, it was renamed "Black Sister's Revenge" and given a bootylicious one sheet to cash in on the black film boom. None of the women in the film looked like the women wearing coochie cutters on the poster! Jamaa just died this year on April 1st. He's better known for all the Leon Isacc Kennedy Penitentiary movies. The first Penitentiary movie is actually hilarious to watch. Back then, every woman I knew was crazy about Leon. ("Sweetness!") What I love about this particular film is it's rawness. It really seems like a documentary to me. None of the actors are pros. The man who plays Emma Mae's shiftless boyfriend actually appears briefly in the classic film "The Mack." I really need to have a movie party that shows people hidden gems. There are so many black films I'm finding for the first time that are actually good, even though I avoided them for years. As soon as I get my house, I'm throwing a viewing party.

Steampunk/Steamfunk

One of my Black Science Fiction society friends hipped me to a new play on Steampunk.

Steamfunk. Blackness emanating inside the culture of Steampunk fiction and fashion. I love my corsets and functional weaponry jewelry. On a good day I like to rock a tribal/sci-fi/gothic fusion, but I think that I may have to steamfunk myself for Comic Con.

I am not an exhobitionist in public, and like to be low key when I go places. However, I do like Steampunk clothing and may have to wear it and bear it. The good thing is that one of my Clarion cohorts wears his goth gear with a tophat, so I'll be in good company.

My favorite goth store on Melrose, "The Shrine", has this vest I want that is crazy sexy. Now I have to budget myself. It's time for a new wardrobe to update my steez.

It happens. I go through mood swings in my fashion. Years ago I went through my Asian/East Indian/Ethiopian swag. Lately it's been sporty and the occasional black Goddess mystique. But I'm always repping for my African/Choctaw peeps. It's time to synthesize my French blood and fuse it into my tribal chic.

I really don't want to dress up for Comic Con, but I promised my friend I would, since I haven't done it since my 20's. (Duct Tape Girl!)

But with my steampunk gear, I can dress up in stuff I would wear normally with my Creole flair. And no one would know. Lagniappe, ya'll!

Got Rope? Again?

I found a pair of shoes similar to these, and I could not walk in them. But they were so fly! And with the added touch of bondage rope, these shoes are banging!

I'll have to see my friend Leesah and have her hook me up with her Japanese retailer who sells crazy boots with retarded sized heels. (Yeah, I wrote retarded.) Maybe I can practice walking in them. I want to take some shibari photos of myself for the house I want to buy, so I can hang them in my livingroom. It really is a beautiful art form.

Looking Forward to the "Prometheus" Movie Opening

I love H.R. Gieger, and the Alien movie just blew me away as a kid. His artwork was always sexual, making sci-fi hardware sensual. I always liked how his images of penetration made female images more powerful.

Most people see the act of penetration as male dominance, but I tend to look at it as female power. Men have to penetrate to gain access to the divine. Women just have it, and will only open when they are ready. Moist and ready.

I am Now an Octavia Butler Scholar

Humbling news.

I was awarded an Octavia Butler Scholarship by the Carl Brandon Society for my Clarion Workshop this summer!

It still hasn't hit me all the way. I cried when I found out I got it. I called my mother and contacted my Dad and my siblings to let them know. Then my close friends (the ones I could reach right away).

Then I told my friend and co-worker Kelley, and when she hugged me I just cried. I'm really not one for public displays of ugly cries, but I was numb and felt the impact hit me in my chest. All this week I kept checking my email and re-reading it to make sure that #1, I really made it into Clarion, and #2, I really was awarded a scholarship in Octavia's name.

Octavia was the person who told me about Clarion years ago at Eso Won books in L.A. Whenever she was in town, I would go to the bookstore to see her. The last time I saw her, she gave me a gentle scolding for not returning a library book, and urged me to apply to Clarion again. I nodded, smiled, clutched my signed book to my chest and walked away thinking, "I can't turn that book back in, it's been over eight years since I checked it out! The library will arrest me." Followed by the lament, "I can't apply to Clarion, I'm not as good as you yet!"

When Octavia died, I just felt like Venus exploded or something. She was only 58. I was looking forward to more books after Fledgling.

Octavia was my sign post.

Toni Morrison,(my other favorite writer), was the Queen Mother of my New World African past. Octavia Butler was my hybrid Harriet Tubman/Lt.Uhuru of Science Fiction, stealing me away from the typical white, male, dominated worlds of the future. She let me know that I could write speculative fiction and sell it to an audience who would read it. Folks who looked like me and other shades of me.

I'm still tripping out on how fate placed me in her path. And because of her passing, and the Carl Brandon Society honoring her work, I will be able to sit on that UCSD campus and know that she put me there.

And my job this summer is to write my ass off and make sure that when I leave, I reach back and bring more people with me. Like Octavia did.

I hope she's proud of me.

Then again, she may still be fussing at me. I still haven't turned that library book in....