TAN

couple spot-on excerpts from bell hooks, postmodern blackness:

[8] Writing about blacks and postmodernism, Cornel West describes our collective plight:

There is increasing class division and differentiation, creating on the one hand a significant black middle-class, highly anxiety- ridden, insecure, willing to be co-opted and incorporated into the powers that be, concerned with racism to the degree that it poses constraints on upward social mobility (ed. note: this is me!) ; and, on the other, a vast and growing black underclass, an underclass that embodies a kind of walking nihilism of pervasive drug addiction, pervasive alcoholism, pervasive homicide, and an exponential rise in suicide (ed. note: also me! holla!). Now because of the deindustrialization, we also have a devastated black industrial working class. We are talking here about tremendous hopelessness.

[15]  Postmodern culture with its decentered subject can be the space where ties are severed or it can provide the occasion for new and varied forms of bonding.

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true story (essentially)…

INT. VON - LATE AFTERNOON

Sitting at a table in the back of the downtown NYC bar is then managing editor of Gawker Media, now internet entrepreneur extraordinaire Lockhart Steele. That is his real name. He stands upon noticing the arrival of the only black guy in the bar, PATRICE EVANS aka TAN aka THE ASSIMILATED NEGRO:

LS: Hi there, are you Patrice The Assimilated Negro?

TAN: My nigga

LS: well, uh, you’ve been very impressive, shooting up the charts and what not

TAN: yo, your name is Lockhart Steele for real?

LS: yes. wouldyabelieveit?

TAN: nah, son. you playin… your name ain’t Lockhart Steele

LS: it is.

TAN: word. can i use that shit too, then?

LS: uhhh

TAN: ….

LS: so i don’t know, what can i do for you? you reached out to me right, said you had an unbelievable offer to make me?

TAN: word. sorry about all those exclamation points, but i was high and shit and i was just sort of amped to be like getting some shine, knahmean

LS: heh, i think so.

TAN: but yo,

LS: yes?

TAN: yo

LS: yes?

TAN: yo, here’s the deal. I need some paper. I’m broke, y’know. I’m a give it to you straight. Yo. I’m f’ing broke, son. And I ain’t talking Choate-Broke. I’m talking broke-broke.

…annnd scene

So, number one: yes, this is mostly a true story. Now, yes, I am playing up my hood side a little. But I don’t think the truth is that far off. pretty sure i was wearing a big billowing polo shirt and it’s possible when elizabeth spiers showed up after that i was like, “waddup shortie, how YOU doin? can i holla after?”. ok, not really on that. but i def did say the “choate-broke” part, and i think that’s pretty raw for a first time meeting. some jungle animal instincts firing there. 

and as for the term itself, “Choate-broke” is a reference to the name-droppable private boarding school I attended, Choate Rosemary Hall. a school that currently costs over to $47,000 dollar per year to attend. mind you that’s high school cooch, high school D, i.e. a lot of room for improvement, you will experience better. now any kid of high school age will probably talk about being broke countless times, but needless to say if you’re broke and attending a school that will cost minimum $200K to attend/finish, as we used to like to say while throwing in a 50-cent bag of chips on someone’s order at the corner bodega: son, you ain’t really broke. I’m broke-broke. hook me up.

and so there you go. choate-broke. use it in your next interview! 

fair warning. i’m in florida, and thought i’d be taking this holiday week to do some sweet sweet intergalactically revolutionary blogging. but then there was no wi-fi. and there was a beach. soooo, y’know. but now there is wi-fi. so i’m gonna probably smush a bunch of it together, now, soon, before the revelry, and leave it at that. i imagine i’ll be out of dodge before anyone realizes….