Patrice O’Neal

Patrice O’Neal is one of my teachers.  Only a brilliant artist can finesse political incorrectness these days.  He brought the stuff floating around in your head to light with an undeniable humor and intuition about the way the ugly truth really works in your brain.  His comedy was a relief from the distasteful images burning holes in our brains amidst media pressure to think proper thoughts.  Conversely, in his comedy, there was an implied sensitivity about the subjects that he ridiculed.  It takes mad skills to be able to balance the two.

He didn’t play to the least common denominator, the way that a lot of comedians corralled on these “comedy” specials do.  He talked about unpopular, marginal things, and you’d find yourself nodding involuntarily at them.  Yes, some of his comedy made me cringe — but it was worth it.  You can’t doubt his intelligence.  I found him refreshing.  I’d take him over any politically correct person using all the ‘proper’ lingo, etc., whose actions indicate otherwise.  As a black comic, he didn’t use his comedy as an artless tool to lash out.  I know his comedy wasn’t for everyone.  Too bad.

http://nymag.com/news/features/patrice-oneal-2012-5/

Why Thanksgiving Exhausts Me

I love my relatives and friends, and I am grateful to have them, but I prefer not visiting them on Thanksgiving.  I don’t need to get into that old ass argument about what the holiday really means, because really who gives a fuck.  Everybody wants food, and everybody wants a holiday.  Period.  So it’s not going away, despite periodic bleatings of ‘protest’ – something about the Native Americans giving the gift of corn to the white man, who pays him back disproportionately in mass murder.

Thanksgiving exhausts me.  You wind up traveling fifty-hundred hours to grandma’s house, over the river and through the woods.  You get there and it’s hot as hell from all the burners going, and this makes me sluggish, as the winter boots, socks and sweater that I wore to keep me warm on the way are totally superfluous at this point.

The worst part of it is the food.  You can’t tell by looking at me, but I don’t really like food.  I’m still waiting for those food pills of the future from the Jetsons to be invented.  Food has too many demands.  I hate having to stop what I’m doing to eat it, and I don’t like making a big deal out of shopping, planning meals, cooking, washing dishes — I am a good baker though, and that’s because I like cake.  It’s probably politically incorrect for me to say this but I don’t give a shit – generally, I’m afraid of food.

A hot house filled with the olfactory overload of food — jammed to the gills with all this stuff we don’t need to be eating, gives me complex feelings.  Really on Thanksgiving, under the guise of celebrating gratitude, we’re really celebrating gluttony.  Thanksgiving is a ‘heavy’ holiday — the demands of travel, the heat of the burners and oven filling the house, the exhaustion from watching the host bust their ass sweating and carrying all those trays, the claustrophobia you get from the excess of food filling every crack and crevice, having to help the host clear the table and wash dishes — having to rush back home again because the next day I usually have to go to work; and finally, going to bed with a bloated gut.

In conclusion, I hope that this post doesn’t cause my loved ones to disinvite me to Thanksgiving dinner.

Naked

It’s a racket!  Go ahead — throw money at these people.  They just want you to buy all their stuff.  A fall wardrobe, winter wardrobe – Oh spring’s here, I need a spring jacket–bah!  You can wear that same jacket in spring as in the fall.  I ain’t no slave to consumerism!  It makes no sense to have all these clothes.  Who cares what’s in fashion.  Clothes from 1982 cover your ass the same way in 2012.

Yeah I got thirty year old clothes.  So I know how holes work in clothes.  In shirts, holes start in the arm-pit area.  In pants it’s the crotch.  Crotch holes were in at one time so people thought I was in style — hehehe.  I wear clothes until they fall off.  I just had to throw away my grey shirt.  The holes in the arm pits were so big that the shoulder part wouldn’t stay on.  But I know how to beat the system.  When I wear shirts with holes I put jackets over them so no one sees.  Sometimes I get compliments on my overall look.  These people don’t know I have holes and that gives me the inner titters, like the time I went on an interview wearing a skirt suit with no drawers on.

On occasion I’ll wear a holey shirt straight out in the open.  I’ve been doing holes for years.  Back in the eighties my boss said they called me ‘corporate militant’ behind my back because I wore runny stockings and holes sometimes.  Mme. Weebles will tell you the panty hose industry’s a racket.  Oh wait a minute – oh wow — years ago another boss bought me all these clothes – I know sexist, inappropriate, yeah, yeah – anyway, I thought it was because he liked me but now as I’m typing this, I’m thinking maybe it was because he felt sorry for me.

When I want to, I know how to dress up.  And, when I do it, I do it right.  I have a Persian lamb coat and leather pants that I paid lots of money for.  But I’m no fool.  I made sure to wear those pants every day since I paid so much for them.

My clothes are like old friends.  They know my body better than a one night stand. While I think dressing up can be an art, generally I think getting dressed is a pain in the ass.  I’d rather be naked.  I’m naked now.  My ass by the way is clean.  It’s important to be clean when you wear your clothes a couple of days in a row. Oh yeah, and I change my drawers everyday — when I wear them – AND — I always floss. It’s not cool to wear your clothes everyday and have plaque on your teeth at the same time.