Video Of The Week: Public Enemy

This week marks the 25th anniversary of one of my favourite rap albums of all time, Public Enemy's Fear Of A Black Planet. It was groundbreaking in its social commentary for kids of my generation (the funk movement had previously done the same for those 10 years older than myself) in regards to the racial tensions still prevalent in the U.S. of the late 1980s and early 1990s - and which are still present today, believe it or not less in the day-to-day activities and behaviours but still ingrained in a systemic bias against minorities and poor people in general, and by extension Black people in particular, who remain 10 times more likely to get arrested and then jailed for minor offenses than White people regardless of income bracket, and the statistic's way worse when wealth is factored in.

Of all the songs on Fear Of A Black Planet, few resonate more with inequality as 911 Is A Joke, a catchy, groovy, incredibly smart Flavor Flav number on how what passes as an emergency service pretty much does its best to avoid servicing inner cities and therefore directly puts Black lives at stake. It's 2015, and the slogan Black Lives Matter is still prevalent in American streets. There has been little progress in how the institutions (schools, police, justice system, hospitals) treat the human beings it is responsible for, this despite individuals' behaviours changing drastically in the past 25 years. People mingle, shop at the same stores at the same time, everyone under 35 has ''a Black friend'', which was a running gag as recently as in 1992, and yet the system is the same, even with an African-American in the White House - in his second term, no less - and another one in charge of the Justice system.

And the biggest problem with that is that American Culture is widely exported and prevalent in most of the Western World; yes, most people can make the difference between their own country's situation and the United States' (and few of them have a spotless race-related record themselves), but there's the inevitable mixing up of the common histories that makes their problem everyone's problem.

Sometimes I like to turn my brain off, but most times, I prefer my entertainment saddled up with a healthy dose of the truth, and this song just might be one of the main reasons why.

Africa, Unite!

Why do I always get myself in these situations?

I cut down my Facebook friends' list from 5000 to 3500, and still I'm left with idiots strangers I usually completely disagree with.

Case in point:

Like, how is sympathizing enough when they are fucking staving to death? Are you eating popcorn while watching them die as entertainment?

In any event, here's what I wrote as a retort - honestly, I thought I was just going for one paragraph, didn't think it'd get this long:

I know I was wrong to use what I perceived was racism on their part to reverse-argue with them using false-racist analogies. And I didn't go any further on there because it already seemed like a long blog post.

This is what I was alluding to in my last post. Well, not really, but it's fuel to the fire. People are cruel, insensitive, self-centered assholes who care about no one but themselves. If it doesn't affect their own little fucking world, the want nothing of it; but when it does hit home, then everyone should come knocking, and there better be a fucking telethon on every TV station in the world, broadcast live on fucking YouTube, 'cause shit is BAD and they need help!

This is what governments should do: take part of your money to offer services which wouldn't make sense for you to take care of on your own, shit they have a better system in place to assemble and get going: emergency relief, streets and infrastructures, schools and education in general, hospitals and health systems, police and national defense and prisons, fireworkers - anyone covered by 9-1-1 - and helping folks like you live their fucking lives - on your street, in your neighbourhood, in your city, your State/province, the whole country. And making mutually beneficial deals with other countries, and helping some of them out when they're in trouble so they can help you out when you're in trouble.

The minute it stops working and your money goes to shit (or corruption), what should happen, is the system should come to a complete halt, and folks should get to decide whether it's time for a re-haul, a reboot, a new philosophy, or none at all. If it's ''none'', then you shouldn't have to pay a penny more in taxes, and there should just be two laws: 1. don't steal; 2. don't kill. Everything else should be free game. Sounds like a Republican wet dream, a Libertarian manifesto? Think again - it's from every  anarchist handbook. Funny how it makes more sense than the shit we're living in every day, doesn't it?

''Why don't we take care of our own problems first?''

Yeah, every time we try, we're either screwed by politicians or by some of the folks we're trying to defend:

Montréal:

Hiding their identification numbers

Turkey:

Occupy (Oakland and Wall Street):

Once again, Yan (and countless others) is right: this world isn't worth saving. The minute you're out of line, they will break you away from their system, and shove you into the correctional system, which no longer corrects prisoner's behaviour in order to rehabilitate him back into society; no, it corrects the statistics, protects the status quo by eliminating dissidence, so that they end up getting what they want - their opinion to be the majority and the de facto Rule Of Law - even if they need to remove the actual majority to get there. Louis C.K. has this great line:

I read something in the paper that really confused me the other day. It said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities... Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80 percent of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like "Look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority."

And we're back to Africa. Which Barack Obama said we should help feed. What a world-weary socialist.

Sure, I digressed, but I came back, didn't I? And I found a way to put colourful pictures in the post...

He Left His Heart Out Of San Francisco

I was going to title this ''What A Fag!'', sarcastically of course, to bring the point home even more, but didn't for two reasons: 1. I'm not a stand-up comedian and probably wouldn't be able to get away with it, and 2. there are still too many stupid people around who would not bother to read on and would get angered up by taking away exactly the opposite of what I was going to say.

Also, I think we've used that word with its demeaning meaning for long enough and enough times to not be allowed to use it ever again.It should be retired and put in the Hall Of Fame of shitty derogatory terms as a first-ballot entry.

So ''Generic Fucking Title'' it is.

The stereotype about San Francisco is that it's ''all fun and gay games'', a paradise of civil rights, human rights, parties, free speech and health, full of hippies and homosexuals and winning sports teams that beat the shit out of your regular Houston Texans, New York Yankees, Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks - everything a Republican would like to make illegal.

The reality is otherwise: a mere bridge across from Oakland, one of the harshest ghettos cities on the West Coast, both cities are stricken with extreme poverty. With poverty come social issues , class warfare, and often a reduction of peoples' rights privileges entitlements equality programs. California - one of the U.S.' most liberal states - is bankrupt, and with a lack of funds usually comes cuts and disputes.

Add that boiling mixture to pro football's machismo culture and the stigma associated with homosexuality in African-American communities and you get the statistical anomaly we had during Super Bowl week, when the San Francisco 49ers' Chris Culliver said this, when asked about a recent campaign of players coming out in favour of gay marriage:

No, we don’t got no gay people on the team, they gotta get up out of here if they do.

What most people who say that type of comment fail to realize is that they all hurt the same, and they're all born out of fear and a ''divide and conquer'' mentality for those who can take advantage of it. Replace the word ''gay'' by any one of the following to realize just how much: Black, Hispanic, Jewish, retarded, handicapped. It's also true for other groups: women, Quebecers (most notably in hockey or Canadian politics), miners, smokers, AIDS patients.

To make amends, Culliver spent time with a LGBT group last week, ''learning'', and ''using his high profile as an athlete to help''.

Fine. But why do I feel like as soon as he got home, he took an hour-long bath in Purell?

Landfill Harmonic

Here's a truly inspiring story about recycling - not just stuff, but souls.

How Music Is Made

Legendary guitarist Johnny Marr (of The Smiths and Gorillaz fame) has specific ideas on what makes music innovative, which he shared in an op-ed piece for Independent.ie, which was culled from a lecture he gave.

He makes quite a few valid points, but his conclusion seems to have hit many things on the head:

That's the first rule of thumb for any artist. If your friends like it, then you're on the right track. The second rule of thumb is that if you're going to follow the first rule, then you'd better make sure that your friends have got pretty good taste, or else you're scuppered. And I suppose the third rule of thumb is to make sure that none of your friends work for insider record companies. I know you can be mavericks within the music industry. I don't want to say you have to do this, you must do that, the gospel according to me is... What I mean is that all the greats did it from the outside. And that's a very, very inspiring thing. We live in an age of such conformity and uniformity and stifling conservatism. I don't know how that happened, but we do. This idea of the outsider has to be identified and celebrated, cherished, encouraged and theorised over. I want to see more people, and I know there are people, waiting to be like those I have described: the McLarens, the Oldhams and the Lydons.

To finish, the title, (Lou Reed's) "Walk on the Wild Side", came from the 1956 novel by Nelson Algren, A Walk on the Wild Side. Algren said of his book, "[it] asks why lost people develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives." That song explains it all, that title explains it all – it might as well have been called "Walk on the Wild Outside".

 My friends have impeccable taste: they keep inviting me to play at their shows and fundraisers, they start bands with me - both of original material and covers... and I honestly love what they do as well. It seems we keep raising the bar for ourselves, amongst ourselves. And some people take notice, which is also cool.

Everyone Likes A Good Yarn

Les Ville-Laines are a group of like-minded ladies who practice the art of yarnbombing - public knitting followed by displaying their creations on public property.

Yesterday, they did so at Viger Square, a place many homeless people call home. They also brought them blankets.

My friend Eli Larin, photographer, documented the event.

Hockey (Jerseys) In Africa

Peek at them here.

Some are quite obviously bootlegs, others are real and pretty.

All are a good cause.