I Think I'm Smart, But I'm Not Sure

I really feel like there are some aspects of life where people are still in high school mode and don’t even realize. This idea is centered around the saying “People are still [doing/using that]?”. The world moves so fast these days that one year something can be popular and the next year it can be defunct. I remember, before I went to Korea, Blackberry was the hottest mobile device, but after I came back it was all about the iPhone or Android.

The thing that really gets me is that grown adults will take time out of their day to make fun of you that a bunch of people decided was no longer cool or acceptable to use. I was talking to a co-worker the other week about talking to one of my mentors on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). In the middle of a serious conversation, his only response is, “People still use AIM?!”. Really? Who cares? I don’t use AIM daily, but there is one important person in my life that still uses it, so when I have an important question to ask or want to get in contact with him, best believe I will be going to the nearest computer or my iPod to pull up some AIM.

But after his response, I just felt like it was a popular kid telling one of the regular joes that they just lost cool points. Luckily, I didn’t have to go through that in high school, but I know it happened.

Things like Myspace, AIM, Blackberry, and more things may be defunct in the “keeping up with the Jones” community, but who really cares? I may think it’s interesting that someone is still using a certain device, website or application, but there is no need to make them feel like a loser because they still do. We’re all adults. We’re not a bunch of pimply-faced teenagers trying to crawl to the top of the popularity pyramid. Well, I guess maybe all these people are just older versions of their high school selves. What a shame.

So, we all know that Jay-Z is getting up there in age. Through my random nomadic roaming on the internet, I have found people saying that since he has breached his 40s, he’s getting “too old” to rap. Uhhh…why? The concept of rap is all of 30+ years old, it hasn’t even been in existence long enough for a load of people to get old doing it.

Now we know most of the rappers that were there in the beginning (Grandmaster Flash, Big Daddy Kane, The Sugarhill Gang) are no longer at the top of the charts, but it’s not because they are old. It’s because they lost their relevance. They style of rap evolved and if you come out today with the same cadence that they had back then, you’ll be looked at as a loser.

Jay-Z looks like he has the ability to evolve with the change of the rap space. I believe he could still be an innovator. But just because he’s 40 doesn’t mean he’s too old too rap. There’s no basis for that assumption. Why isn’t Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin too old to sing? Why isn’t Steven Tyler to old to rock?

I swear young Black folk find the dumbest things to band together over. I think Jay-Z can rap as long as he is able to stay relevant.

I hate the idea of “coming out” for celebrities. I really don’t understand it. Especially considering that straight celebrities don’t have to “come out” for being straight. I understand it on a personal level because you probably want to prepare your family before you bring home a person of the same sex and call them your boyfriend/girlfriend.

But why do famous people have to “come out” publicly? I’m pretty sure if you just start walking around kissing and holding hands with someone of the same sex, it’s pretty safe to say that you’re gay. They don’t owe anything to the public or the media.

I know a lot of women who finally find out that Anderson Cooper is gay, have that deep sigh. I know I did. Lol. But I hope he never “comes out”. I hope he just continues to live his life with his partner.

I’m not sure about how accurate this video is, but this is basically illustrates how I feel about the science vs. religion argument. I’m not even sure how to write about this from a balanced perspective because, I’m not sure how other people who practice religion feel about science. But through the many articles I’ve read and comments I’ve seen under YouTube videos, I definitely know how atheists and agnostics feel.

This is the video (29 Years Old and Hearing Myself For The 1st Time) that caused me to enter this topic into my “saved drafts”. Now this was the spark, but I have no feeling (science vs. religion) and the actually video. I’m just happy for her. But when I started to read the comments, that’s where this topic came up for me again. I’m assuming someone said something like, “Thank God…What a miracle…What a blessing” to which someone responded, “No, it’s science.”

Now let’s forget about the YouTube video and concentrate on why people make science and religion arch nemeses. Every time there is some breakthrough in science it’s like atheists are like, “Woohoo! Another one for the home team!” I don’t understand how finding the cure for some disease or inventing/finding a new form of energy proves God does not exist.

I don’t even think that evolution proves that there isn’t an intelligent designer. I think it makes the designer even more intelligent.

I’ve seen articles and interviews where scientists have said that their profession solidified their belief in God. Here is a list of scientists (bigwigs) that believed in God (Famous Scientists Who Believed In God).

Now this is not a case for atheists/agnostics becoming Christian.  This is just a question of why. Why do people try to make science and religion mortal enemies?

…in the way it is established now.

After seeing this commercial, and reading about many other things that companies have done that are obviously dumb, I always wonder, “So this [insert product/advertisement/etc. here] went through all these levels of approval and there wasn’t a woman/black person/Asian person that said something?”

And then I had this sort of epiphany. Two things. First, maybe no one is high up enough to feel like they SHOULD speak up (minion status). And then I thought about me. I’m in the animation industry which is made up of a lot of white males. While at my university, I realized that I will probably have to learn how to maneuver around certain things like “Oh, you seem different.” or those wonderful jokes that white people think are hilarious, but are obviously racist, but they don’t realize it and tell you the joke anyway. 

After years of having to maneuver through these different prejudicial situations whether they be about gender, race, religion or something else, people become either immune or accepting of these things and begin to have this rose-colored glasses effect of not seeing what’s really there. So when your a woman on the team for Dr. Pepper Ten, you’ve become so hardened that when they ask you, “Will this offend women?” (If they even asked that question), your response is “(Well, it doesn’t offend me [anymore] so) No, it’s not offensive to women.” Or maybe when a woman brings it up, a man gives that response, “Nooooo!!! You’re over-reacting.” *shrugs shoulders* I don’t know.

In the case of the Nivea ad:

I think no matter how long I’ve worked with some people, I would think twice about using any form of the word “civilize”. Personally, I don’t the picture in and of itself is offensive, just the tagline could obviously be viewed as offensive.

So how do you get to a place where your opinions matter, but you haven’t been softened or hardened by your experiences and can actually add an opinion of merit that does not just fall in line with the contemporaries around you?

About a month ago, Toure (Google him) was on CNN talking about Tyler Perry (as all educated Black folk like to do). A lot of the comments he made drew a lot of scrutiny from many people. He called Tyler Perry’s movies the equivalent of “Cinematic Malt Liquor” which is hilarious to me and I had to give a couple hand claps for the creativity behind that line. Here’s the video:

Touré Calls Tyler Perry’s Movies: “Cinematic… by JrDollarez

After that aired, many people had some choice words with Toure and I saved his responses and a couple responses from others. Here they are (sorry about the size, Tumblr only let’s you do so much):

I feel like the responses I posted are typical of the fans that try to justify the low quality of Tyler Perry’s films. I think that some of Toure’s tweets make really good points. I think a lot of people don’t like his response in the video because it’s straight with no chaser.

For me, I respect Tyler Perry as a business man…only. I’m aggravated with him as an artist. I mean…go take like two classes or something. Explore and hone your craft. When people go against Tyler Perry, his fans say, “he’s writing about what he knows.” Well, the point of being a creative person, is at one point expanding what you write about. I’m pretty sure George R.R. Martin, author of “Game of Thrones”, doesn’t have personal experience in living in medieval times, but there’s a little thing called research.

Another favorite response of Tyler Perry fans is, “If you think it’s so bad, why don’t you go make a film?” Would you say that to Roger Ebert or Richard Roper? Would you tell that to every sports fan who complains about the players on his team? People can critique an artist’s work. It’s the responsibility of the artist to either take it and apply to the future or leave it.

At this point, I don’t really have a problem with Tyler Perry (it doesn’t seem like he’s listening to people anyway). But his fans need to stop being horrible justifiers. Be a fan, no problem. But when you KNOW the quality is low (because everyone doesn’t see it as low quality), don’t try and defend it.

Maybe this is the reason I like music from the 70s the best. That’s where most of the current music comes from anyway. I guess that’s the decade where ultimate creativity stopped or where people stopped caring about it. Beyonce has come out with a few videos in which she pays homage to many different choreographers. The Beyonce naysayers are always ready to jump on Google to see if her videos are completely original. I’m not really concerned about that aspect of the situation. What am kind of “disturbed” about is that when people bring up the fact that her videos aren’t original. The Beyonce “Stans” (stalker fans) say that the person who original did the work should be grateful that Beyonce is making them relevant again. Really? … Really?

I know that Beyonce Stans can be extreme so you can’t really dwell on what comes out of their mouths, but last week on Twitter I saw a similar situation. Rickey Smiley’s special “Open Casket Sharp” premiered on BET last Saturday, October 15, 2011. While I didn’t watch it, on Twitter apparently Comedian Steve W. Brown was making an uproar. He tweeted that Rickey Smiley was doing one of his acts from way back. Amidst the “yeah rights”, “get over its” and “Ricky Smiley’s being doing that for years”, I saw someone tweet, “Why don’t you just be grateful that he’s stealing from you?” Huh?

Why is this such a prevalent phrases? You come home to see your house broken into, and they robbers have taken everything. Don’t complain! You should be grateful! You weren’t using half the stuff in your house anyway. People in my generation are so complacent and backwards. I’m glad I’m not like these people.

“You are using black and white culture interchangeably as good and bad…” - Emily Maitlis

The only people that think Black culture is NOT monolithic is educated blacks.

It’s amazing how much people try to compartmentalize things like Black culture and Hip Hop. When out of touch white folk (and sometimes Black folk) talk about rap/hip hop, they talk about how violent it is and how the artists are always talking about money, sex, etc. It’s gangster rap this, gangster rap that. That’s how you know they know nothing about it. An example of this is when Common was invited to the white house and Fox News labeled him as a “gangster rapper”. Ha! Common?! Really? Anyway…just like the color, the only thing associated with Blackness is negative. The man in the video, David Starkey, was trying to equate Black culture to criminal acts.

Black culture is not all about crime and materialism, just like Rap/Hip Hop is not. Some of David Starkey’s views sound similar to a lot of views I’ve heard from “urban” Blacks. He obviously thinks that speaking articulately is “talking white” and “being Black” is destroying cities and killing people. Oh and “black music” is only rap (because there isn’t jazz, rock, r&b, etc.)

White people are allowed to have different kinds of people, but Black people can only listen to rap, smoke weed, be unemployed, be born in struggle, be violent, on and on and on. And I purposely read the comments, so to see people agreeing with Starkey and adding their misinformed two cents is crazy. Definitely, some “New White Hood” folks in the comments.

What do you think?

This is definitely not something I only go through, but it’s amazing how people try to tell you or assume what you can and can’t do…especially people who “don’t know you like that”. But it’s worse when you’ve proved them wrong and they obviously don’t remember this fact and continue to tell you what’s going on in the “real world” and why you can’t accomplish what you set out to do. And this is not even in a “shout out to my haters” kind of a way…mainly because I don’t like the idea of haters, but in a “I’m being realistic” (but I’m really being inadvertently negative) kind of way.

When I was nearing the end of my contract for my English teaching job in Korea, I was starting to make moves to go after my actual passion, animation. Multiple people were asking me why I would give up such a nice job and how bad it was back in America. This whole idea perplexes me because my point of thinking is, why would I continue working a job that is not my passion? No matter how good it is (and believe me, teaching English in Korea puts people in a fairytale where they forget what they originally wanted to do in life). I went to school for four years and acquired loans to pursue animation, not teaching.

So, in not listening to them, I landed an animation job in Korea. Fast forward about 8 months and now I want to continue my career in America (after I finish a year in Korea). One of the people that discouraged me from letting go my teaching job, reminded me again how I should just stay where I am, (again) how bad the economy is in America and all the while I’m thinking, “Didn’t I prove you wrong once before?”.

There are other instances where people take how they would react, respond or play out a certain situation and attribute it to me. People just like pushing their low expectations of themselves on me. But naturally, my normal work ethic is other people’s over-achieving. I can’t help it. It’s how I was raised.

P.S. I don’t think I’m better than other people. I believe that the exact time when you decide you’re better than someone else, is the exact time when you’re not.