Fuckin' Gonuts

Franchise Comfort Seeker
Hear my Symbology!
Dip and Dunk America
Fuckin' Gonuts Friday

The Bayview Library has VHS's of blaxploitation films, only they're not blaxploitation because they were made before World War II and are all about sticking to a Christian path. I guess I only evoke blaxploitation because I can't imagine anybody other than a bamboozled audience or a curious descendant sitting through them. It's too bad old shit is so boring sometimes.

They also had DVD's of The Flip Wilson show, I watched the episode with George Carlin and one of his sketches has him as the radio news announcer, a lot of dark "99% of non-smokers die" type of non-sequitors, apparently you could do anything you wanted in the early 1970's. He was interspersed with Miss Black America contestants covering Dionne Warwick songs and Joe fucking Namath.

Another episode guest'd Johnny Cash and his lovely wife (And I mean without cosmetics or DVD lovely) and had a skit where Johnny played Captain Ahab to Flip's Ishmael. Ahab got called out as the jive Turkey he was. The show adressed issues of race quickly: a chess game, what side to pick, they're both the same, then I'll pick black because black is beautiful, okay well white moves first type of jokes. Others fall a bit more flat, like a card game Namath and Carlin play with Flip where they make up all of the rules, and Flip loses all of his money, only to catch on at the end to the white man's trickery by producing from his coat pocket a book of rules for the game, showing I guess Flip's ability to overcome structural impositions, but being a bit too symbolic for a workable punch line.

My favorite line in the show was during a sketch where a voice actor was pretending to be a series of auditions for the new National Anthem, and he began one saying his name was LeBrawn Stevens, and he is from any Ghetto In America. He starts the song with the lines "You lock up all your blacks", and immediately is shut off with a not-so-loud-as-to-anger-the-black-guy "NEXT". Flip Wilson was ahead of his time, though I'd have trouble thinking of anybody who was definitively of the time of the Variety Show, as I've never seen Sullivan.

There's a reggae store that says it's Retail/Wholesale on Third Street which never seems to be open. I could see Rasta keeping odd hours, but I think this is just an indication that the whole thing is a front. NOT ONE DOLLAR OF GOV'T MONEY GOES INTO THIS BUSINESS, reads an adjacent storefront. I went for the Chicken and Waffles, after surprising another patron just by walking in who said "How you doin' Cuz, ordering happens over there". I like being called Baby as an obligatory suffix to "What do you want to order". I realize for the first time that OBAMA '08 signs in storefronts might be the most lucrative, bridge building decision merchants can make, and I wonder how that good will could translate into governing. Fireside youtube chats with the President elect at the local library, all of us huddled in our Norman Rockwell coats and finery? We shall see!