Heavier Than The Seventies

An online quote grab from a July 20th New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert said that the average male is now 17 pounds heavier than in the late 1970s and women are 19 pounds heavier.

Who knew?

As someone who has You Tube-d many a 'Soul Train' dance line, it wasn't that surprising since the clothes back then were so tight and, yes, skinny. I still remember a pair of my third-grade plaid pants with sticky, plastic knee patches sewn in on the inside - it was like playing with starched curtains on. All I needed was the 'Jaws' iron-on patch shirt to go with it, but no dice.

Thirty years and 17 pounds... I guess that means the average guy today couldn't rock the outfits Tavares or Earth Wind & Fire did, which looks fun -- you gotta give credit where it's due. I still don't know how they did it.

  

My Mom

Just wanted to send up a special shout-out of love to my mother, Sigridur (Sirry), for all of her love and support. I thank her for everything...and for her being a good sport about the last post; it was fun to remember. I love you Mom! - Kalli

Picture Day- Fall 1978

I posted this photo on one of my Facebook updates months ago because it still makes me and a lot of people I know laugh, especially if they know the back-story.

Remember 'picture day' back in elementary school? You'd wait for weeks after taking your school photo and then the teacher would hand out the 8x10 open-faced envelopes of your picture -showing your photo to what seemed like the world in class? Growing up back East, it could get pretty rowdy, especially if you had the misfortune to have your eyes half-closed.

Picture day: you had one take to get it right. I still remember my first grade picture and getting cracked on for wearing what looked like lip gloss (it was Chap-Stick), but it was a good picture. In 1976 I posed in front of a stock liberty bell for the bicentennial and that was cool. 1977, I wore a shirt with a man parachuting out of a plane or some reason (who designed that stuff?), smiling with one- and- a -half adult front teeth. I didn't like that one so much. (pictured, right)

1978 was going to be different. 1978 was an awesome time for a kid like me : full of good music, a mom who took me and my brother everywhere on weekends and out to dinner once a week for good grades. There was an energy, a fly, grown zeitgeist that I wanted to embody myself, 8 years old or not. Besides, I was an old soul.

I loved music. My Mom bought lots of it from Harmony Hut, Waxie Maxies, plus another cool store on Branch Ave. in D.C. I'd dream my way into album covers, liner notes and lyric sheets.

Rick James was bustin' out of L7, a braided super hero in vinyl pants and boots...The O'Jays in matching suits, synchronized and smooth....Teddy Pendergrass, another great singer, but I thought he looked mean, like one of my friends' salty dads that might break out the belt if you woke him up too early with cartoons.

Hands down, my favorites were the Isley Brothers. Those album covers with the crazy decadent outfits, three-pronged belts and 'stack' heeled shoes. That's what I wanted to look like. Especially Chris Jasper, the keyboardist and guitarist. He looked like a cool lion. For picture day this year I'd take my best shot at being a Kid Isley.

Beer at Obama's

I grew up in Maryland, a state of varying racial acceptance when I was growing up in the '70s. Like anywhere, it depended on where you lived, worked or ventured. Which isn't to say that there weren't horror stories or barbershop talk about so-and-so getting kicked in the gizzards for nothing outside of a D.C. cabaret or house-party gone angry. Or worse. Still, people knew and expected their fair rights.

We lived in a racially mixed neighborhood where the Black Mrs. Valentine called your Mom, reported you for cussin' during a baseball game in her backyard just like the White Mr. Russell scowled and told you not to walk on his grass. Washington, D.C. was ground-zero in the culmination of many major civil rights efforts in the 1960s. My white grandparents marched with their Black neighbors and friends. They commented that their landscape had actually improved with integration.

There's never been a racial garden of Eden but my fears of the police as a child were more centered on the 1970s reality of visibly abused wives, of every hue, being escorted back into their homes by police who couldn't make arrests unless they’d actually witnessed the blows. That was the immediate real-life horror.

Later, growing up for a time in Florida and living in Chicago, there were first-hand experiences of less than equitable exchanges and, yes, profiling while driving with my brother in Dunedin, FL (the cop was an old middle-school friend; he apologized and so it went) or my getting frisked with Chinese food in hand, then placed in the street, because I had a bulging object in my jacket pocket. It was a Slim-Fast shaker cup … that weapon of, you know, actors and their diets. The suspect I resembled, I was told later, was Black and wearing a leather jacket. Great, that narrows it down. I went home, let the food spoil like my mood and hoped for a better next day. These were mild examples, thank God; occurances I was old enough to expect and embarrassed by for the sheer public spectacle of it. Everyone stares at a publicly detained person, even if it's a mistake.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a detained person outside of his home on July 16th, arriving home sans house keys after an international flight. It was a lunchtime call from a worker on the same block in Cambridge, MA, Lucia Whalen, reporting what she thought was suspicious activity: a decades-old possibility and as American as the Neighborhood Watch signs that warn of it. Gates was arrested and news homepages all over the country lit-up with the grainy image of Mr. Gates in handcuffs, shoulders up and mouth open to express what can only be imagined when a renter with suitcases nearby finds himself on blast as a suspected burglar in front of his own house. The world could stare, download the image, Tweet it, fry it up in a pan and more. You could even send him a brief Facebook message, if you did a search, and say you were sorry to hear it had happened. I did. The picture alone seemed to merit that. It looked like Harvard Yard bedlam but I knew in this case he’d be alright. It was too public for it to go any other way.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. suspected of breaking into a house. The same Henry Louis Gates, renowned as Harvard scholar, teacher, intellectual and one of our trusted national navigators of the racial divide? A man with suitcases and an observed cane? If you were familiar with Henry Gates’ image, literally, the only other surreal comparison would be Cornel West getting arrested at an iHop for losing his car keys. Gates, a PBS staple with his smoothly narrated, well-produced guides to African-American life and genealogical discoveries. Wow. Didn’t look too menacing to me, even from a grainy aerial shot, but a 911-call-is-a-911-call and there was only so much to go on.

The story winds and weaves, the public discussion is like a show in re-runs. You can pick up on any day and only the polls change, and there are tons of them online, so no need to number crunch here.

From an editor's perspective I can imagine the balancing act of keeping it news. It's a hot topic: racial profiling is back! At least a third, if you follow the numerous reader polls, say that it never left. But then, this isn't Rosa Parks’ arrest either.The news grows: Sgt. Crowley's officers support him, a multi-racial group we were told; Gates' daughter interviewed her somber father for 'The Daily Beast'; Obama initially said Crowley "acted stupidly" and set off a wave of 'now-you-just wait-just-a-minute' far and wide in some circles. Obama's objectivity, it went, may have been skewed since Gates is a friend. Presidents have visible friends. Bill Clinton pardoned a friend. Obama's acknowledgement of his word calibration in speaking on the arrest to the world seemed to ease some minds after knocking health-care reform from Topic 1.

The public is split, it appears, three ways: 1) Gates got sassy. Don't beef with cops, everybody knows that. If it remotely smacks of a galled don't-you-know-who-I-am thing, that's not good. Hell, we're all suffering here. 2) God help the next person locked out of their home, a daily nuisance and calamity for untold thousands a day in the U.S. alone. Who doesn't call a locksmith and while waiting figures it's okay to try the window? How many cops does it take, for Pete's sake? 3) Unsure. This is the group mostly labeled as 'I don't know enough about it' to comment. Which could mean it's either a distasteful debate in these hard times or the mortgage and creditors are priority so what the hell is going on here? We are allowed to cherry pick our news and some want to sit this one out; too shrill, too ridiculous.

These three groups and those both scarred and those untouched by forgotten/unwitnessed racial profiling will know, if all goes according to schedule, how this particular matter ends up. Obama, Crowley and Gates will have beer tomorrow at a picnic table outside of the Oval Office. Beer-wise, we know that Crowley likes Blue Moon, Gates likes Beck's and Red Stripe, Obama has shown a preference with Budweiser and Bud Light. Maybe that'll stimulate the economy a little more. You can drink the beer of your chosen player. Racial healing, consumer confidence and branding!

Gates is participating tomorrow, he said, to help further what he calls a "teachable moment." Lucia Whalen won't be there since she wasn't invited, her lawyer said, and she doesn't like beer anyway. There won't be pretzels. There's no known kibosh on potential lawsuits or how those with the power to affect real lives will feel; because something's good for you doesn't mean it will go down easy. Just a sunset event with beers, man-talk and maybe some subtle hugging it out. Racial problems and the global obsession with them and the havoc and pain they perpetuate and hurl is exhausting. What will the teachable lessons be? Will there be a Power Point presentation? This is real stuff. The Beer Summit is folksy and scaled-down for our recessionary world. It probably won't stick but it's been a long summer and we've been watching so many public events together lately, maybe this one will be different, even if it’s a tempest that, historically speaking, hasn't ended yet.

Updated link (7/30/09): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_harvard_scholar

Flatliners Redux

Up early this morning and letting the TV run as background noise to drown the sound of my pets head-butting furniture to get more food they didn't need just yet. The top story on Good Morning America was the raid of Dr. Conrad Murray's home in Las Vegas for links to homicide in the matter of administering Propofol to Michael Jackson before his death of cardiac arrest. As with any breaking news and real-time residence searches, a static void ensues and GMA, like any news outlet, chimed in with the 'latest' news after every commercial break. There wasn't much more to say, but in deference to viewers just tuning in, in case you missed it, the lead was announced anew.

I'm not a reporter on this case. I'm a viewer and reader of all kinds of news and I'm sure it's just as much a cluster-frick for me to follow as it is for anyone else. Initially Dr. Murray was a suspect, then he wasn't, now he surely is and so on. His neighbors in his private community allowed reporters into their community, a sure sign that they are not too cool with the allegations. It's also great access for reporters assigned to the story and they're doing their jobs.

A statement appeared on the 'GMA' screen with Murray's lawyer reminding people to hold 'their breath' and wait for the toxicology report. Toxicology reports take six weeks. Period. Mr. Jackson died on June 25th. It's July 28th. What would normally be a private matter is now future public knowledge and would be jarring for anyone, famous or not. Any variety of 'Dr. Feelgood' can be found in every industry where sympathy, empathy or money can move mountains.

Whatever results arise, it takes me back to wonderings of how this even happens? We know inherently how it happens but the branches of it go in all directions. "Celebrity Overdoses!" was the next lead on 'GMA' as we were treated to archival misery of Elvis, Winona Ryder's prior prescription juggling and subpoenas of old. Propofol searches are up - it's a drinking game!- and we are reminded of how "unheard of" home use is of a surgical anaesthetic and how it's not intended for death-chic usage at home, even if you have a doctor there to stop the dose so you can wake up and go about your day.

If Propofol has become morbid decadence for the overwhelmed wealthy then what will be the next unheard-of thing? I'm sure we'll find out. The loss of Micahel Jackson leaves the media to tell the rest of the tale and fill-in-the blanks; some of it will be accurate and some of it, by sheer inadvertent subjectivity, won't be and the victim won't be able to refute or deny it. It is news to those following and taking it in but somewhere beneath the social/legal/ethical jousting is a client who, with the world at his fingertips, seemingly wanted to not, at least momentarily, deal with that world. Until he woke up. No money buys that guarantee, unfortunately, and the human folly and tragedy of forgetting that remains the same.

E Lynn Harris: When A Facebook Friend Passes

E Lynn Harris [photo courtesy of Sheletha Manuel]


In the early 2000s, working for The Hollywood Reporter magazine, I was assigned to a pre-Grammy party at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. My event-page editor and I hoped for the best. The press release for the party’s host, a soon-to-be-defunct monthly magazine headquartered in New York, was ambitious in the extreme. ‘Registered guests’ were to include Tyra Banks, LL Cool J, Justin Timberlake – a near impossible convergence of guests save for Governor’s balls, Clive Davis Grammy parties or Vanity Fair’s Oscar Party.

The Peninsula party was hosted poolside and none of the artists/registered guests from the press release showed. No more than 10 of us milled around the lit pool, eating sparingly from an embarrassment of food. I’d brought my buddy to the party; we introduced ourselves to everyone and decided to give it some more time until the party picked up. It never did.

Soon, the N.Y. magazine publisher tapped a glass and began to speak through a megaphone - in case the ten of us gathered by the pool couldn’t hear him within earshot (erm...we could).

I spent the remainder of the party with Larkin Arnold, legendary music producer of many artists, including Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross. Mr. Arnold was with his wife and she was a fun, classy woman. We’d never met before and made the best of a potential PR disaster. The Arnolds were a master class in staying viable in Hollywood no matter what faction of the industry you were in: from music recording to publishing to agencies, it’s all relative in the end and you have to keep working/creating.

I got shushed by an assistant with pleading eyes when I had the audacity to greet Nathan Morris of Boyz II Men while the publisher was talking into the megaphone and making no sense. Years earlier, at a taping for Michael Jordan at Chicago's United Center, Nathan hadn’t flipped out when I was accidentally rushed into a green room before Boyz II Men at a taping when they were the musical headliners. They are amazing vocalists and were as humble and low-key then as a No. 1 group could be. I remember being impressed by their collected calm and it was good to be able to shake his hand and mention that blip from years ago, even if we don't know each other personally. That's when I got shushed. We both laughed. It was comedy in the true sense where something is funny precisely because it’s not meant to be and the publisher spoke to his choir of assistants and staff for the next several minutes. I couldn't tell you what he said.

The night ended with the Peninsula Hotel being the place-mark of another assignment completed after-hours, made worthwhile by off-the-record talks with durable people decades into their careers. I was in it, but not exactly of it. I wasn’t lodging at this hotel; I could and would go home to dishes, stacks of magazines and five hours of sleep. It was worth it.

E Lynn Harris’s occasion last week at the Peninsula Hotel was to be a completely different experience, one of excitement and top-tier business to attend to. Mr. Harris was an author whose explorations of adult sexuality, same-sex and not, relative to Black protagonists (and antagonists) were genre-breaking and put him in at a plateau all his own.

His first novel, Invisible Life, was the mid-‘90s equivalent of Flowers in the Attic to a generation of readers: an old-school viral wave of word-of-mouth and excited testimonials. What some may have felt was lacking in strong writing ability never hampered his sales and 15 years later, in 2009, Harris was still a publisher’s and readership’s dream with an undimmed following.

E Lynn Harris had a Facebook account. Known for his personal touch with fans and for answering all of his fan mail personally, his profile page was a swirl of connectivity. I became one of his FB friends and was surprised it’d even happened, our six-degrees putting us in touch. We weren’t friends in the personal sense but as friends within the comforts of Facebook, along with over 3,800-plus of his friends. I had the bravery to tell him, after the end of my Hollywood Reporter years, that one of the things I was working on was a fiction novel of my own. He encouraged me and many people who shared the same thing with him. He would send replies to the briefest comment or greeting, always encouraging.

In the publishing world, where so many people are in flux and no one really knows what anyone does or did anymore, the connection to such a genuine person was beyond refreshing. MediaBistro.com newsletters, while incredibly informative, are full of eyes-rolled jibes about the percentage of Hollywood’s unemployed suddenly at work on novels in unison. Writing without a work brand’s stamp of currency can be tricky territory. Every writer knows how serious they are or aren’t about their own work.

E Lynn Harris’s ego-free joviality was a breath of fresh air and appreciated, coming from a former corporate executive who became a best-selling author. He’d written his own ticket. His Facebook tone was that you could do the same, too: all 3,000-plus of you.

I remembered my college literature teachers telling first-person stories of Gloria Naylor typing out The Women of Brewster Place at a kitchen table, announcing to her guest that, “Somebody’s going to buy this!” Ntozake Shange writing and staging For Colored Girls…. in between stage-changes at a bar in New York City and being ready when the opportunity came. Mr. Harris self-published Invisible Life in 1991 and sold it from his car and beauty shops before Anchor published him. This populist grasp was reflected in the personal tones of his status updates on Facebook, the most recent ones involving an upcoming trip to Los Angeles. He was looking forward to it, announced it on his FB wall, and his page filled with well-wishers.

Last week he made the trip, traveling to Los Angeles by train. E Lynn's assistant confirmed to the Associated Press of a momentary blackout he experienced while on the train. By Wednesday, July 22, 2009, Harris posted his arrival in Beverly Hills and said he missed Los Angeles sometimes, was enjoying the weather and looking forward to a meeting the next day. The replies to his status on his B page were plentiful. I offered my own comment that while L.A. was a bit moody with all the money in flux (read, recession), I hoped he would enjoy his visit here and raise a toast to himself. E Lynn was at the Peninsula Hotel, in town to promote his latest novel, Basketball Jones, and having a film meeting as well: all great reasons to be in L.A.

Thursday, July 23, his last status update asked his ‘FB family’ for prayers: he was having his film meeting shortly with an executive from the production company. He mentioned new cologne he’d bought the day before for the occasion.

Friday afternoon, July 24th, E Lynn Harris was the # 1 Yahoo! search term. It would have to be something monumental, for someone on the mass-media radar since 1994, to suddenly be the most-searched name online. The search results led with his obituary. Overnight.

Harris turned 54 a month earlier. From the vantage point of a Facebook friend, it was a shocking real-time ending to the steady, familiar narrative of a person sharing a real-life process with his audience. Status updates in the digital realm = self-actualization in action. It's relating to other how we’re leading our lives, what we’re feeling, doing and what’s happening since you last checked. The end of this connection due to E Lynn’s premature death became a seismic jolt for a network of thousands looking for their sincere avatar to keep winning.

Four days since his passing, E Lynn Harris’s Facebook page remains active with continuous posts bearing expressions from his friends who were cheerfully made to feel like they were.

There will be no status update. The journey is over, save for his many legacies to his survivors, family, peers, students, loves and readers. We will have to figure it out in our own time and ultimately that will happen, as it always does, off-line.

Update: As of December 26, 2010, Mr. Harris's Facebook page is still active, with over 3,161 friends. He is missed. - KG