Buh-bye 2005

• Graduated from NYU
• Quit FYI
• Hired by Putumayo
• Started WeRoqq
• Got my first apartment
• Signed Chilli
• June 13, 2005 - sh'amon!
• Lost a friend
• Made my reality tv debut
• Learned to stay away from anybody whose nickname begins with "Big"
• Had my work published

See y'all in 2006. Love ya lots!

Season's Greetings

Christmas playlist:

All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
This Christmas - Donny Hathaway (predictable, but oh so good)
Little Drummer Boy- Michael Jackson
Peace on Earth - Bing Crosby and David Bowie
O Holy Night- Mariah Carey
Deck The Halls/Bring a Torch - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Happy Xmas (War is over) - John Lennon
Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto - James Brown
Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town - J5
*bonus* Sleigh Ride - TLC (had to rep for my girl!)

Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings and all that good stuff. Hope you got what you wanted and if you didn't, I hope something even better is coming your way.

Happy Birthday, Grandma.

Today would have been my maternal grandmother's 85th Birthday. I know the tone of this blog has been pretty somber lately, but this isn't going to be full of sadness and woe (at least not too much...). My grandma was awesome. When I was little, I would wait with eager anticipation to be able to call her and tell her everything going on in my life. My grandma watched Soul Train and would gossip with me about my favorite pop stars. She had a mouth like a sailor and spoke whatever was on her mind. She just rocked...you had to know her. The last years of her life were pretty sad because she was all but held hostage in a substandard facility in the middle of Western PA, but even in that miserable establishment, she still managed to be herself. While most people simply meanander about in a wheelchair, she always looked like she was hurling herself towards combat in her chariot. This picture is from the last time I saw her. After snapping the shot, the two of us whirled around wearing reindeer antlers and very loudly sang Christmas carols. One of the hillbilly nurses brought around a basket with "presents" which consisted of foam used to separate the toes during a pedicure and an afro-pick... Presumably for the home's one black resident. True to form, my grandmother selected the pick and then announced "I'm gonna use it to scratch my culo." She was still herself after her stroke, it's a shame the people entrusted with her care by a corrupt system treated her otherwise.

Some of my happiest memories in life are being little and sitting around my grandmother's dining room table during Christmas and I always imagined I'd have it someday. Unfortunately, that dining room set was sold during the estate sale, even though we asked for it...so I'll never be able to have it. In fact, I have none of my grandmother's belongings to remember her by thanks to the greed and bitterness of others. BUT I have my memories....and a clear conscience...and that's worth more than material possessions.

So Happy Birthday, Grandma. You were one of a kind, you were the greatest and you were loved.

5 things you didn't need to know about me.

Michael over at The Cynical One tagged me. I'm supposed to list 5 random facts about myself.

1. When I was three years old, I inadvertently shop-lifted a Mickey Mouse comic book from a shop in Germany. I told my mom that I wanted to get it because it was pink and didn't realize that she wasn't listening to me. When I got home and my mom realized that I had it, she told me that the kinderpolice were going to come and arrest me and that we had to run back to the shop and return it immediately.

2. My hip clicks when I walk and I can pop it out of place. Beyonce also has a similar "talent" and that is one of the many reasons why she'd be my girlfriend if I was into chicks.

3. When I was little, my mom would take me to work with her and actually put me to work. I was assembling press-kits at the ripe old age of seven. When I see 20 year old interns screwing up simple stuff like that, I want to beat them about the face.

4. I don't have any concept of average intelligence. In my mind, you're either smart or an idiot...and then I have no use for you. However, I have a soft spot for those who are cognitively challenged and find that they often have other extraordinary talents. I like savants.

5. I have no self-control if cashews are anywhere near me. I can't eat just one, or two, or three...or half the jar. If they're in front of me, they'll all be gone in 15 minutes flat. I have to ask my roommates to keep them in their rooms where I can't find them if they want to buy them. I hate most other nuts, though.

People I'm tagging to do the same:

Shukmei
Kurt
Sam
Dave
Randa

RIP Bill

One of the first friends I made at NYU, Bill Clarey, took his own life this weekend. We met the very first night of Freshman year at Third North and he was sweet, funny and engaging. He just graduated this past May and was working at the Daily Show. I can't imagine what demons drove him to do this, but I hope that he has peace wherever he is.

God bless him and protect his soul.

I'm almost over it, I swear.

After some insomnia-driven facebooking on Saturday night, I wrote a long rant about how much I hated high school. Basically, I was condescended to, underestimated, passed over and flat out discriminated against because I was a little too ethnic (and not in the "model minority" way) for the tastes of some of the teachers and administration (feel free to tell me that I have a persecution complex, because I probably do, as a result of what went on in those halls of hell). I decided to take down my diatribe for fear that my website would come up first when you google the school and I never want to be associated with the cursed institution again.

Amid all of the ranting and complaining (and there was a lot of it), I did make one point that I want to share with you guys:

[High school] made me acutely aware of the institutional and de facto racism that exists in systems of education (and in the world). There's something wrong when the kids who live in your neighborhood, who were in the same level classes as you, instantly end up in the average or below-average classes when they get to high school. Black, Arab and Latino kids don't suddenly become idiots in 9th grade. The fact that their presence is often missing from higher level classes is indicative of problems with the pedagogy and teaching methodology. It crushes people. I'm still smartin' from it, imagine all those who just said "Eff this shit - I'm out." What potential gets washed down the drain because a couple of miserable people want to destroy the ambition of those that they don't deem worthy of success?

Weigh-in and whatnot.

Let's play match-maker.

Set Mimi and MJ up on a date already! Something tells me that they'd make sense to each other.

Mimi earned 8 Grammy nominations yesterday, so congrats to her. Hers is probably my most played CD of 2005 and I even bought the re-release so that I can drool over dear Wenty on the special DVD. I still think "Stay The Night" should be released as a single, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

On an unrelated note, check out Sarah Silverman's "Give The Jew Girl Toys." Kicks Adam Sandler's ass.

That's all for me today. It's snowing in New York and I need to take my check to the bank before it gets too frightful. I gotta do Chrismahannukwanzika shopping this weekend.

What would we do without Jawn Murray?

From BV Buzz:

Rumors are abound that a certain R&B darling is suffering from a terrible bout with depression. The buzz is that said singer has been admitted to the hospital several times in the last two months, depressed about her struggling music career and some shoddy developments with her business affairs. Apparently her stress-relieving bad habit hasn’t helped her cope with her most recent emotional misery.

My guess is Brandy.

Page 92- "...I can remember lux-uriant curls greased in imitation of Michael Jackson on the cover of Off the Wall."

I read Minaret by Leila Aboulela last night. I suppose one wouldn't classify it as a great novel, but it was good enough for me to stave off sleep until I was finished. I love reading about the Sudan and its people, but not only of the situation in Dafur (not to diminish the importance of addressing that). My father is so nationalistically Egyptian that I sometimes forget that his father was Sudanese. I know so little about my paternal grandfather. I know that he was 14 years old when he came to Egypt, after his father passed (the story went that he was super strong and lifted a fire truck to save people under it - he then went back to his house and died...yep, that's all I got). He came to Egypt to be a boxer, but his quick mind and charismatic ways earned him a position in several incarnations of Egypt's government. He was politically savvy, apparently, always managing to remain unscathed while others with similar party affiliations were expelled (or worse). He didn't die until I was about 10 years old, but I never met him...never spoke to him...I don't know him. I'd like to know more about him. Sometimes I'll see a Sudanese woman and think I see a familiarity between her jawline, cheekbones and mine. I know I don't look Sudanese to most people, but I like to feel some sort of connection, even if only in trivial aesthetics. I wonder about my great aunts and what their lives were like - if they stayed in Sudan, if they came to Egypt, if they married well...if they married at all. I know I'm a clone of my mother, but do I look like them at all? The only time my father has ever mentioned them is to tell me that they got their butts pinched when they went on the Hajj because "they had very big behinds....you know...like you have a big behind...they had very big behinds." Maybe someday I'll know a little more.

On an unrelated note, I spoke to my father on the phone on Friday and tried to lighten up our conversation by jokingly telling him of my plans to marry Wentworth Miller and directed him to Wenty's guest spot on The Ghost Whisperer. My father said that he was handsome (my father is so secure with his own looks that he never hesitates to give others props when props are due, he's also been known to say, in all seriousness, that "it has not been easy being as handsome as I am, it has really worked against me at times"), but then his voice took on a cautionary tone - "But just because he is handsome, does not mean you should rush into marrying him."

Um, Dad, he's a star on TV who doesn't know I exist. I don't think you need to worry about me marrying him anytime soon.

"It is possible with you," my father said, "You are capable of anything."

Not bad... :)

Underground Egyptian

.....Steve Jobs was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin to Joanne Simpson and an Egyptian Arab father. Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California then adopted him. The writer Mona Simpson is Jobs’ biological sister....

Who freakin' knew? As a sign of ethnic solidarity, he should immediately hook me up with the new video iPod.