* Please note that I’m writing from a cis, straight black lady perspective, and this ain’t meant to reflect everyone’s experience. I know you know that, but I just wanted to say it.
* And don’t even be like, “What about Tiger Woods?! He’s black and plays golf.” If you were walking down the street and saw one pomegranate seed sitting atop a pile of shit, you wouldn’t go, “That’s a parfait!” You’d register it as doo-doo and Electric Slide yourself to the right and out of harm’s way. Not the most eloquent example, but you get the point. Woods’s presence and the period he dominated doesn’t erase the racism that has been woven into fabric of the sport.
* Do you sense a running theme here? I love Debra Messing, Laura Linney, Loretta Devine. Basically any forty- or fifty-plus actress that your mom and, more importantly, your single auntie loves, your girl Pheebs loves.
* Just a reminder to the world, you can be both Jamaican and black, but based on the dude’s reaction, he not only did not know that, but he clearly thought being Jamaican is better than being black.
* Y’all. I. Freaking. Know. Fox & Friends is an unmitigated disaster, so when something objectionable is uttered on this program, it should not come as a shock. It should be taken in stride the way you do when you’re reaching for your second dessert during the holidays and you’re confronted with the ancient Aunt Corrine-If-You-Don’t-Shut-Your-Damn-Mouth-thian proverb: “Once on the lips and forever on the hips,” and, instead of cussing her out in front of your cousins, you laugh like Denzel Washington in every movie ever, stare her in the eyes, and double down on the Cool Whip.
* Y’all. I. Freaking. Know, the sequel. Coulter lumped Maher in the group, so I have to honor that, even though we all know Bill Maher is the trash that Native American Iron Eyes Cody was crying about in the 1970s “Keep America Beautiful” antipollution commercial. And yes, I know that Iron Eyes Cody was an Italian dude the campaign pretended was NA instead of hiring a real Native American. #HollywoodIsIg. Anyway, Bill Maher is problematic AF, and it’s kind of fitting to use trash to describe other trash.
* Yvette Nicole Brown is a talented blacktress aka black actress. She is also a little more than a decade older than me, but I have been going out for the same parts as her since I was twenty-eight. Now that I think about it, I’ve been asked to audition for forty-something black women since my midtwents, and I fully believe it’s because all black people age at the speed of a snail trying to hail its Lyft—#TheyCantAllBeGems—and none of these white people know how old we are. They just know Blue Ivy eating chips at the Grammys and Cicely Tyson being one thousand years old and acting better than everyone else in the game. The rest of us? We’re just a grab bag of coconut oil, full lips, and flawless skin who can be any age.
* If you haven’t seen Game of Thrones, I ain’t gonna judge ya! The show had been on for six seasons before I started watching it, and I only checked it out to impress a guy, which, while not full-on trash, is def food scraps for compost that is then used in a neighborhood co-op rooftop garden. Anyway, I’m fully obsessed with GOT now, and one of my favorite storylines of the whole series is Jorah being the Drake to Daenerys’s Rihanna. Jorah’s always looking at Dany with loving eyes, and she just responds Mr. Rogers style with, “Today, we’re learning about the letter F, which stands for ‘friendship.’”
* Btdubs, I’m fairly certain that Thurgood Marshall didn’t graduate from Howard University School of Law, start a private practice, found the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he was the executive director, then was appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President John F. Kennedy all before becoming the first African-American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United states, a position he held for twenty-four years, all so I could half-watch three episodes of Suits in order to present this flimsy ass argument to y’all. But I like to think he would admire my moxie.
* One hundred thirty million girls are not in school, and it has been proven that a lack of education is directly linked to the worldwide extreme-poverty crisis, so Poverty is Sexist was created to not only raise awareness but also to encourage people to be active in eradicating gender inequality and put pressure on world leaders to fully invest in women and girls.
* You know how there’s pressure on white women to keep their bathroom pantry stocked with Kiehl’s at all times? All right, well, imagine that pressure times a thousand plus racism when it comes to edges. In the black community, “edges” refers to the hair around the hairline, including baby hairs, and there’s a lot of pressure on black women to make sure the hair is perf lest they be judged as uncivilized people.
* You know when someone is singing the nash anth when they barely have the skill set to get through the “O say can you see” part? That’s what “shooting your shot” is. It’s you telling your ego and inner doubt, “I got this,” and going after something or someone you have no business going after.
* “THOT” is a loving acronym created by a dude that means “that ho over there.” Ugh, but also lol. Btdubs, “Ugh, but also lol” will go on my tombstone.
* This reference is for those old enough to remember back in the day when they had to call the movie theater for movie times, when they knew people’s phone numbers by heart aka BCPC aka Before Cell Phone Contacts, and when playing Fred Astaire’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” was a signal some hanky-panky was about to go down.
* While most girls my age were all about Brian Littrell or Nick Carter, my young ass had designs on Kevin, who I think we all can admit was older-looking and seemed like he was spending his off-hours clipping coupons for Back to School sales because he’s all about getting his kids what they want while being frugal as hell. What can I say? I like guys who have #IPayMyChildSupportOnTime face.
* Look, vegetarians and vegans, I love y’all, but I’mma need you to stop trying to make nonmeat “cool” with absurd street spellings. That’s like when record execs have rappers do a guest verse on a Tim McGraw song as if that’s going to make Tim McGreezy more enticing to black listeners. It doesn’t. It just makes them go, “Aaah, I guess that rapper wanted some extra cash to go on vacation and I can’t even judge. I’ve sold Tummy Tea on Instagram so I could chill at a Sandals resort for four days.”
* We need to pause for a sec because back in 1989, Milli Vanilli got busted for lip-syncing during a performance of “Girl You Know It’s True,” when the recording jammed and kept repeating the line “Girl, you know it’s . . .” and people reacted to this betrayal like they did in the nineties when Olestra, a fat substitute used in WOW! chips, was revealed to cause anal leakage and result in folks having soggy bottoms—#TheGreatBritishBakeOff—in their underwear. WOW! chips were eventually canceled, and so was Milli Vanilli. But cut to 2018, where lip-syncing isn’t a career killer anymore. I mean, Britney Spears practically walks around onstage like she’s looking for an available outlet to charge her phone and lazily lip-syncing the way I did at my old day job when we’d have to sing “Happy Birthday” to some dude named Darrell when all I wanted was to go back to my cubicle and watch Pretty Little Liars when I should have been autosumming data in Microsoft Excel. And she sells out every. Single. Concert.
* Lmao forever. Remember this hot mess? First of all, the spelling of the song title is disrespectful to the entire history of language, all the way from hieroglyphics down to Wingdings. Second, it’s pointless for MJ to wear nice tailored clothes in the music video if he’s just going to stand in front of a green screen displaying Microsoft Windows ’91 blue sky, which will make the video look like it had a budget of five dollars. Third, MJ and Eddie had the Harlem Boys Choir sign permission slips to miss school, delay eating their Dunkaroos, and put off their tetherball tourney all so they could dance and sing around animated clip art of music notes and peace signs. Fourth, I do not, I REPEAT, I do not want a friend who believes in me the way MJ believed in Eddie. Instead of being like, “Listen,
dawg, this song is hot trash; I’m not collaborating with you on it,” MJ was in the corner, warming up with some “may, me, my, mo, moo”s so he could deliver “Whatzupwitu” with some gravitas.
* A’ight, I need to get all the way real with you. Every chair in my home is a mess. Like I stated, the office one holds clothes, the chair by the entryway that’s supposed to be where I sit to put on my shoes is currently occupied by a stack of Target plates I want to donate to charity and for some inexplicable reason there’s a drawstring gym bag lying on top, one of the dining chairs has a couple of my couch’s throw pillows on it, and the other dining chair is a catchall that includes a hanger, a letter from Hillary Clinton I’ve been meaning to get framed for the past year, a fanny pack from H&M’s Coachella collection (lol for the rest of my life), a tape dispenser, a half-empty box of Downy dryer sheets, and used nipple covers. Okay, fine, I’m a bit of a slob; however, isn’t everyone like this? Who the hell is using the chairs in their home for actual sitting?! I feel like whenever I’m at someone’s house and all their chair real estate is available, I think, Oh, this is a person who can put together a Dexter-esque kill room and tidy it up routinely like they’re doing a showing for an open house.
* I probably shouldn’t bring up how sometimes I love not reading while you are kind enough to be reading my writing. But I must stand in my truth, and if I’m going to own up to being garbage, then I can’t pretend that I’m at home reading The Catcher in the Rye. I did try though, y’all. I got fifty pages in and was like, “Too long,” and then stopped to watch old clips of So You Think You Can Dance on YouTube.
* Listen, heauxes, don’t be over there judging me for referencing Kid Rock. First of all, I only ever listen to that intro of “Bawitdaba” before turning the song off because duh. Secondly, there’s no denying that this minute-fifteen-second intro is equal to the drama eleganza of an award-winning BBC miniseries starring Dame Judi Dench and Benny Cumbs aka Benedict Cumberbatch, and you cannot convince me otherwise.
* Most people would say, “I can’t imagine falling in love with you,” or “I cannot imagine you getting along with my family,” or even “Hanging out with you at a baseball game would suck,” but my barometer for whether I see even a temporary future with someone is if I can handle eating a basic-ass vegetable dish with them. Probably explains why I’ve been single two years because my standards make as much sense as an IKEA instruction manual. It’s kind of like when I told Ilana that people who want to cut meat out of their lives should just do the following: Everytime they want to eat steak, just swap it out for applesauce. To which, she responded, “No one has ever gone to a restaurant and asked to substitute a cup of unsweetened applesauce for filet mignon.” Good. Point.
* Lol. I know! I didn’t realize that hall of fame is a real thing either, but Jon always leads with that info the way a college football player will intro himself as attending “THE Ohio State University” even though no one says “the” before OSU’s name. Let’s just be supportive like a stage mom and go with it, shall we?
* Lol. I’m trash for that “name redacted” mess. This isn’t Watergate.
* Remember when K. Cos and Whitney go on their date and end up at his crib, and their foreplay is her swinging his samurai sword around (#NotAMetaphor), and then he takes off her silk scarf, throws it up in the air, and it falls across the blade and is sliced in half because the sword is so sharp? And you can tell she is now hella turned on? L. O. L. Can movies chill out with trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to foreplay? I don’t need my expensive silk scarf that I got on sale at Bloomingdale’s, which I will TELL EVERY DAMN PERSON I MEET THAT I GOT IT ON SALE AS A BADGE OF HONOR, destroyed by a weapon. Just tell me I’m pretty, make sure your breath doesn’t smell like the cauliflower you had for dinner, kiss me softly, and rub on my butt cheeks like they’re dice and you’re trying to roll snake eyes at a Las Vegas casino. I’ll eventually be ready to go.
* Nope on nope on nope. Enough with private accounts on social media, y’all! People will explain that it’s because they only want friends and family to see what they post. Bitch, the definition of living your life is literally your friends and family witnessing it in real time and silently supporting and/or judging you. Why involve Fios internet technology and waste the hours some folk spend learning how to code all so Sharon, with twenty-five followers, can post privately to people she sees all the time a jankity-ass selfie with a litany of hashtags that include but are not limited to: #selfie #toocute #veryfirstdayofsummer #very #happydays #notthetvshow #butwasntitgreatthough #television?
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