the video below is an animated short I did in an art class with flash, its to the song headlines by one be lo. I apologize for the jaggedness, this is a compressed version, I do have a more fluid version I will put up later on the youtube.

The McGuirks

kids be wylin out!

So I was at work the other day and these too kids were havin' a nigga moment. what is a nigga moment you ask? Well were you ever in school and you accidentally stepped on the shoe of a really hostile black kid and he tried to fight you for it. Or maybe you looked at a black girl the wrong way like on that episode of dave chappelle? That's a nigga moment according to boondocks. And I don't mean nigga in a racist way of coarse, but in a chris rock way in his stand-up routine about brothas v. niggas. so here i am at work and we're outside tryin to start a baseball game, but the field was occupied, so we were waiting and all the boys started to play fight and play smear the queer. I said well lets play a game with a more p.c. title or at least change the name of the game cause gay people don't like to be called queer. And one kid said, 'how about spay the gay'. Ok that didn't really happen, but I thought it would be funny if it did. Now we kept telling the kids to stop playing the game and to quit play fighting, I mean, all they want to do is DDT each other, but it always gets too rough and then they start fighting. So they ain't listenin' and I'm puttin' people in time out. And then I see out of the corner of my eye, two kids standin' each other off. I wish there was a button attached to an alarm or buzzer that alerted when a nigga moment was about to occur, I would have hit it faster than the time my shop teacher hit the shut down button when he saw a kid using the ban saw without protective goggles. Just as I said "Hey!" The younger kid pushed and the older kid punched. And then I suspended them both. The younger kid cried for like an hour at least, partially because he got punched and also because he was in serious trouble. But the kid had it comin'. He thinks he can get away with whatever he wants because his mama works there. He had been so disrespectful to me. But now, I think I have him where I want him.
When you discipline children, they live in fear that you might discipline them again, and so they are nice to you. And that's how I put the smack down.

I Am Mixed America! Face it!

last night I spent 45 minutes boring black people to death with a powerpoint presentation at DePauw University. When I first arrived to the venue I could tell that the many black students there were probably more intelligent and more capable of delivering my presentation than I was but then again perhaps many of them were there so they could remain eligible for their step crew. Many of the dudes bounced it after the first twenty minutes and I think the more parched I became the harder it was to avoid adding -ed to an already -ed'ed word. Though these slips may have been freudian in nature I can't help but to chuckle that I would do something so blatantly stereotypical on accident. All in all I felt I held the attention of the elite and didn't seem to offend too many people with my ever changing views on identity. I did share a poem with the group that one gentleman asked me if he could have a copy and so this is for him. And for those mixed-americans who have lived too long in the oppressive society controlled and manipulated by the white man!

What will he look like?
With big lips and a small nose?
What will he look like?
With dark skin and straight hair?
You see, he’ll jump high and run slow
He’ll be smart but wont show.
Sure he’ll dance and sing, but it lacks that soul.
He’ll be patches of snow and he’ll be patches of coal.

He’ll be a zebra, an oreo, a skunk!

He can sit over there or he can sit over there
He can sit where he wants, but he can’t sit here

He’ll be a mutt hound
When he comes out.
He’s a checker board
Monochromatic, a rally flag and a cow,
Salt & Pepper,
He’s a key board, he’s an old movie
He’s a, he’s a house boy
That’s what he is…

(a baby cries)

He’s a boy…
He’s my grandson
He’s my beautiful baby boy.

2008

Have a good day!

I believe in riverdance.

so here's a little story about how I was stood up last week and how I now believe in the riverdance.

a few weeks ago I went out with a girl who is quite possibly the girl of my dreams. She's beautiful, she's mormon, and she's mixed and it is the hardest to find a mixed mormon in indiana. There are now 2 to my recollection. So I got one date with her and it went fine. I feel where I lacked in looks (comparatively speaking) I made up for in devinere. (yeah, yeah, I'm the humblest guy I know, give it a rest.)

things went well so I asked for another date. she consented and I told her that riverdance was coming to bloomington and that I could commandeer some tickets. and they weren't priced too bad for students. (ugh, these loud girls just walked into this computer lab breaking my concentration, ugh) so anyway, I told her we could go and then I played it cool and tried to limit my calls to her, cause I'm a playa.

so then the day before I gave her a call to make sure she could still go. and I got no answer. so I texted, no answer. then later that day, I did the same, no answer. so I'm thinkin, dang whats up? she better answer cause I don't want to waste this dang ticket to the riverdance. now, I had been to the riverdance before in highschool and I knew it was the most amaizing show on earth so I didn't want her to miss out nah meen? so I tried again, no answer and at this point I'm thinkin, man Ima bout to get stood up.

so the next day I decided I tried to contact her too much the day before and that if she was going to call then she would call, if she wasn't going to come then, whatever dude, life sucks for me. so I'm at work and my boss asks me if she got back to me, and I'm like no she hasn't, then I leave to go home and then I get a little sad. now this is the third step in the grieving process

the grieving process

Denial, numbness, and shock
This serves to protect the individual from experiencing the intensity of the loss.


Bargaining
At times, individuals may ruminate about what could have been done to prevent the loss.
Individuals can become preoccupied about ways that things could have been better, imagining all the things that will never be.


Depression
Feelings of loneliness, emptiness, isolation, and self-pity can also surface during this phase, contributing to this reactive depression.
For many, this phase must be experienced in order to begin reorganizing one’s life.

Anger
Feelings of resentment may occur toward one’s higher power or toward life in general for the injustice of this loss.
Again, these feelings are natural and should be honored to resolve the grief.

Acceptance
Time allows the individual an opportunity to resolve the range of feelings that surface.


I stand before you a healed man, and it took a night and a day to go through these processes, however they weren't in the same order. This was the order of my grievance process:

anger
This is sometimes manifest in calling said problem a hoodrat, swearing under your breath like harry on home alone, giving up on girls and the universe and then committing to never be nice to a single girl again, never take them out, not even flirt but to become spiteful and non-sexual like pete.

denial, numbness, and shock
giving said problem excuses for example, well maybe she left her phone at home, maybe she forgot to charge it the night before, maybe it fell in the toilet, I mean she wouldn't just ignore me right? she's not that kind of girl? right???

bargaining and depression
these two processes are merged together in a sob session with your mom. A conversation might go like this:
"I don't know what I did mom? I mean I didn't even call her that much, I don't think I was annoying?"
"how many times did you call her?"
"I don't know like two or three and a few texts too?"
"well don't call her again."
"how am I supposed to know what happened? It must have been something I did. If only I called on tuesday, instead of the day before, three days is too long to wait."
"well, if she doesn't call you then its her that is missing out."
"Thanks mom, you always know the right words to say."

acceptance
acceptance can only come when you find a replacement chick to make sure your ticket money doesn't go in vain, and it might be wise to pick a friend chick that will feel obligated to buy you steak'n'shake after the show.

so thats what happened to me. and you know what, it turns out that the chick that stood me up, really just completely forgot about thursday and who knows why she didn't answer the phone on wednesday. My commitment to shun the female race is still in affect until a hot lady wants to have my baby then I will say "unshun".

now as for why I believe in riverdance, the moment we all have been waiting for.

about a week before I went to riverdance a friend of mine who shall remain nameless, said she didn't like the idea of riverdance because she heard from a relative that it wasn't real. allegedly a recording was playing and a malfunction occurred and they kept dancing but the sound stopped as if they were pretending.

this led me to become very skeptical going into the show and I began to scrutinize what I was seeing. and I almost lost faith in the riverdance.

when I watched I thought to myself "how is a five piece band really making all of that music sound exactly like the recording." "this stage seems too small and there seem to be too few dancers to produce this much sound" and so on and so on.

but then I thought, you know what the sound is too responsive to not be produced by the actual motion. extremely responsive. with the dancing and the instruments and then with the singing, I heard the lead make three mistakes and she went flat one time.

there was a platform on the stage that echoed the noise of the feet. there was, it had to be.

but here is my final consensus. I don't doubt that they maybe were being enhanced by a recording. There did seem to be more instruments then what you saw. but the platform and mic really seemed like it produced a lot of amplified sound. and there was no way the tap dancers were faking it, I saw the shinny taps on their feet.
and further more, its a lot like believing in santa claus or the tooth fairy. they exist, just in a different way, but you do get the presents and you do get the two dollar bill. its like keeping the magic at disney land. if you ask any character at disney land who their boss is, they will tell you mickey mouse himself and if you ask princess jasmine who she loves, she will tell you aladin and I believe her. If you don't go to riverdance believing, it will not be a good show, but if you do believe, it will be spectacular!

I think things is lookin up for your ol' boy torlando. I haven't had any major calamities in a while and I'm kind of a happy dude. knock on some wood.

I've been preparing for this forty five minute speech that I've got to give at DePauw University in a couple of weeks on being a Mixed-American, I have personally coined that as the politically correct term, I know that some may not agree, but that is not my problem. And its cool because I have this spirit of I don't want to say activism but like I'm caught up in the civil rights vibe, but its like we all got our rights so, what's the problem, or what's the point of that. but its a different kind of vibe. Like black people got them rights but young black people don't exercise them, and I feel like there are too many who grow up and just don't realize everything that our grandparents went through to give us those. I mean there are a lot who do, don't get me wrong, but I feel like those people aren't raising a big enough voice. Thats my thing, I know there are so many intelligent people of our race but the voice isn't loud enough and I think that I have an opportunity to really evoke some inspiration to do that, through this speech. I guess its really caused me to start becoming more aware of who I am and where I came from and to not take for granted that I've got black and white blood in my veins, and to realize everyday that that does have meaning and its not irrelevant and its not a joke. I feel like sometimes mixed people become the butt end of a big black and white joke and i've been hearin and makin variations of this joke for over a decade and I'm a little over it, nah meen. its like ok i get it, I'm not all the way black, whatevs. I'm part white yes I know, I think we can all just get some new material.