Mmm, Cut The Check. Roots. Michele. Michelle. NASCAR et. al.

So ?estlove tweets that the Roots have something for Democratic Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann's, walk-on for Jimmy Fallon's late night show this week, alluding it's Fishbone oriented...

They decide to rip into Fishbone's 1985 classic, Lying A$$ B*tch as Michele Bachman strolls out for the interview.

"la, lala, la, lalalalala.."

Jimmy was reportedly respectful and kind on the show.
However, I REALLY would've wanted to be a fly on the wall for the debriefing up in the NBC corporate headquarters with Fallon on speakerphone...

Naaw, naaaw, funk that; what I REALLY want to see is Barack, Michelle, Michele, NBC's late night programming vice-president Dough Vaughan, and Fox News Senior Executive Producer of News and Politics, Jay Wallace, hashing this out at my local coffee outlet, Blue Bottle Coffee over here in Jack London, Oakland!

That would be the shizzinit!!
(come onnnnn, you know you'd join me...)
There was a leetle funk as she participated in a one-word-answer-per-que session when Fallon said President Obama and she replied, "finished."

But hey, weren't Michelle O (and Dr. Jill Biden) were boo'd at a Nascar event just last week?

Let's just keep all this bad behavior pushin'

The world is blurring as challenges to preconceptions about gender, color, politics, and culture in general are fading like watercolors.
(respect eviscerated it's more like IDGAF on 30 # test text!)

And people are plain, not being nice...
[and since there hasn't always been a lot of niceness anyway, I suppose all this is okay...]
Does anyone know that in the digital age, we'll be able to replay these things "...fuh'evah?! Fa eva eva, Fa evah evah?"

Get ready for a really freaky campaign year.

Po poo poo politico pot -shotin' BIG time.


We however will report our take on things, will be looking in quite other directions to big up those positive things that elevate hard working individuals on the come-up. Regardless of race, political affiliation, or affiliations in general.

(...we don't want to end up on an ANONYMOUS hit list! tee, hee, kinda.)

Love and Relationship hold answers- but you gotta be ready to receive.
Our New Year's Resolution came early; right about on Thanksgiving.

We're on some Love and Relationship Ready-To-Receive from now on.

Get with the plurals, people.


-b.p. d'oiseux, p.bhlecksi parmella, frank niao, & dirty branden bengz

Before Your Faculties Leave You

...believe that self-reflection can serve you well. There’s nothing like enjoying Thanksgiving with people with their own interesting bottles of perspective. And when the time comes to share the wealth and have a tasting of all outlooks, stances and reasoning- well it can get a little like Biggie’s Party and Bullshit.

I mean you find out who thinks Obama’s insistence on revamping health care is going to ruin the country- from someone like say, a lifetime nurse who is a cancer survivor. With rebuttals to confront the short term memory loss of the gradual and deliberate degradation of one said countries image and word through insufficient foreign policies as ingredients for our current political stew.

(I know, I know, I can hear all the "awwwwwww -isht"'s now..)

Or maybe it’s conversation about the social stratification across our nation that is surely finance based. Swaths of class position, determined by your annual income, inheritance, lineage and or place of origin that color our landscape from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceanic coasts. Sound waves awash with sentences that tell of how two young black women would look a man like b.phlecksi parmella up and down at the World Trade Center, hone in on his Yale sweatshirt, and vehemently let him know, “YOU didn’t go there!”
(He’s let go of that, but sends a warm Thanks for the lovely introduction to the East, ladies.) In that simple statement, they let a young black man know so much more...
- whom was only in New York by invitation from a long gone art hero- Mr. Keith Haring.

Life most certainly has it’s challenges - our conviction is this:

No matter what your preoccupation or aspiration, if you can find the time to make sincerity, patience and introspection a priority- these practices will indubitably see you through the fires that will decimate your landscapes of safety.

The BWLP message at the dawn of 2010 is to adopt your heart with a conviction towards truth. Not a truth that so much bears your own stamp of approval- it's rarely that... but the truth of what is, right then and there- without thought immersed in pure experience-

and move with who you are- from moment to moment.

We understand that this philosophy doesn’t appear compatible with planning-
but we're convinced there’s a bigger one for each and every one of us.

BE about it y’all.
Blessings to you.

"..a rock on, and YOU don't stop!"

From the BWLP crew:
b.p. d’oiseaux, b.phelcksi parmella and dj frank niao

Trees, Not Ephemera

Trees.

About Barack Obama’s clinching the presidential nomination, Recently gay Roman Catholic author, Richard Rodriguez, noted in the SF Chronicle, “on election night, (he) found himself in a Houston hotel room weeping after the official announcement had been made. And thought "those tears cannot be forgiveness for everything we've done to African Americans in our culture,...noting further that:

slavery, lynchings and segregation are too embedded in the nation's memory, It will not be washed away with one man's election. There are a lot of ghosts in this country, and ghosts don't get expelled with one election."

This got me to thinking more about our preoccupation with trees and their social relationship to us of the hip hop constituency.
Preoccupation with TREES!? you say.
Yup. Trees.

Particularly us here at Birds Who Like Pomegranate. One thing you would notice upon entering our office- would be the extensive photography of trees throughout West Berkeley. Some in full leaf fro’s, to the strikingly spare. And even some from our recent trip to Peoria, Illinois.
Being that the majority of our supermodels are of the deciduous type, those who’s leaves begin to turn at the onset of the autumn, we have our aesthetic preferences. We admire the stature and branch viewpoints of what goes down in the hood. In the Bay Area, our urban landscapes are not without trees. If they could talk, many a homicide could be solved. Just that notion alone is worth digging a tree. Think about it.

As an aside, how many of you are accustomed to, what I can only relate to as an antiquated African American familial practice of, picking your own switch for reprimand. In other words, picking out your own switch for somebody to beat your ass with. It’s a psychological relay of sorts- meant to intensify personal reflection towards redemption after performing a bad deed. After all, you did something wrong, so you’re about to get your ass whipped for it.
Don’t do it again?

In our December broadcast, we included a phenomenal tune from Malika Madremana who describes how some racist boys she encountered gave her cause to see trees as enemies- no doubt with ties to lynching references. So it’s 2009; how should YOU see trees? Maybe as we see them- as nature’s fly on the wall or as THE barometers of environmental health.

The United States Forest Service National Lichens & Air Quality Database and Clearinghouse is a fine reference for detecting your local air quality- just by looking at trees around your way for lichen. Lichen, are a growth collaboration between a fungus and a photosynthetic partner. Basically, fungi are nature's decomposers and photosynthetic plants make food from sunlight. These two entities come together as one to grow on trees, plants, rocks, fences, and soil, et al. Thriving in various air quality conditions. So if you see some, you can reference the type to get some info on YOUR air quality...for all you alter ego backyard scientists out there in hip-hop-landia.

Sorry folks, the geek come out at light for this particular emcee.

But seriously, I do want to say this, I laid eyes on the most beautiful specimens (trees not lichen) encapsulated in frosty crystalline this past December 22nd, 2008 in Peoria, Illinois. Iced out trees that gave credence to the cheesiest decorative Christmas schmaltz found in any pharmacy after Thanksgiving. Now I understand. In nature it goes down gorgeous beyond belief. I may now be put to rest.

S’go.

(this editorial will be featured in the upcoming BWLP Mixed Media Music Magazine for January 2009, premiering 1/15/09)

November Issue Broadcast through the Weekend!

enjoy.
-djfn

History, Posters and Vocabulary

November 5th 2008
Something great big and important has occurred.
Barack Obama has been elected as the 44th President of the United States of America.
It is historic because he is African American, in light of the turbulent history towards people who have been considered minorities in terms of their social power, this is a feat that speaks to every American and person outside of our borders.

Personhood
Barack Obame being elected by the majority of this country’s diverse citizenry says to the world that WE CAN aspire towards an ideal. We as Americans can aspire towards greatness and can accomplish what humanity deserves: decency, humility and a commitment to come together to work towards peace and personhood. That’s right, personhood: sisterhood, brotherhood, partisan-hood, racial-hood, and cultural-hood. The very act of Obama becoming our 44th president shows the world unflinchingly that we are evolving towards loftier aspirations than what we have currently achieved in this country- for our world.

How Do You Spell OBAMA?
I could explain the details of my take on the evolution. But I think I can best express how this translates from an experience with my 2nd and 3rd grade combination class at a ground zero of financial and resource poverty in a distinctive part of Oakland, California. On Tuesday, November 4th, 2008- yesterday, I gave an assignment to my students. I had a training to attend for half a day so the assignment had to be completed after I was gone. The activity required them to put their weekly vocabulary words in alphabetical order on a poster with a title and a nice border.
At the onset of the activity one of the first questions an eight-year-old asked another was, “How do you spell Obama?”

Allensworth
My substitute arrived soon after and I was out. As an aside, to my utter surprise, the arrival of my substitute presented none other than a distinguished 70’s-ish African-American gentle man of fair skin, blue eyes, straighter hair, whom was a member of the Allensworth historical organization. I immediately recognized him from from his visit to my classroom where he appeared in period costume to my class in January of this year. But at the time I was teaching in another school district alltogether! For those of you who don’t know, Allensworth is the only town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans on August 3, 1908. Colonel Allen Allensworth, the norther California community’s founder, was previously one of Kentucky’s delegates to the Republic national convention in 1880 and 1884. (see full details at: http://www.friendsofallensworth.com/allensworth/allensworth_history.html)

Digression
I don’t mean to digress, but as a firm believer that there are no accidents, but mere unfolding of what is to be- I felt something freaky going on. Suffice to say, what and when things occur in our lives- truly shape who we are. You can either be present and take it all in- or die in ignorance.

100%
When I returned to my class, I returned to posters where the alphabetization was completely on point- albeit secondary to the messages about Barack Obama. All 20 of my students are African American with the exception of one: he is Latino.
“Go OBAMA”
“OBAMA!”
“WE LOVE YOU OBAMA!”
..are just a few of the banner inscriptions. And, there were Obama portraits that consumed more space than the alphabetized vocabulary- 100% accurate by every student.

Welcome to a Small Piece of Change.