Profunksticated

Profunksticated had to come out of hiatus for a minute to comment on the loss of Michael Jackson.

I can’t believe I’m feeling a certain kind of way. I feel like I lost a second cousin who was my age. When I first heard the Jackson 5, I honestly believed whoever singing lead was a girl. I found out otherwise, of course. Girls in my fifth grade class would play those large-spindle-hole 45 rpm J5 records such as I Want You Back on those snowy days we could not go out for recess.

I liked the Jacksons when I was 10, 11 and 12, but as I entered my teen years, they became just another group playing in the soundtrack of my life. That’s not to say I didn’t like them. But their still-bubblegum style was competing for my musical attention with funkier groups such as the Ohio Players, Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind and Fire, War, and of course, Parliament-Funkadelic. Matter of fact, the first album I ever bought was a Motown label, but not the Jackson 5 . It was Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta. I loved the cut I Want to Be By Your Side.

By about 1975, I figured the Jacksons were done as I hadn’t heard much from them.

But then in early 1977, my senior year in high school, I was laying half-asleep on the couch in the living room with WDAS-FM playing on the stereo when I heard this real smooth cut with a group singing the lyrics “Let me show you the way to go.” I was shocked when I found out those singers were the Jacksons, minus Jermaine, on a new record label. Wow, they’ve come back and strong, I thought.

Then Michael went off on his own and blew up like a hydrogen bomb. You all know the rest of Michael’s story, so I won’t rehash it here.

My 21-year-old daughter shares a birthday with Michael Jackson, which is August 29. My wife went into labor on August 28, 1987. Had it not been for the fact that our baby was too big for my wife to push out — the doc tried everything to bring our baby into the world, including forceps and a Dirt Devil (just kidding) — my wife would not have undergone the Caesarean section that resulted in the birth of our first child, weighing in at nine pounds, seven ounces, at 32 minutes past midnight Mountain Time on the 29th.

Had our daughter been born before midnight, on Aug. 28, she would have shared a birthday with one Richard Sanders. Who is Richard Sanders, you ask? He’s the actor who portrayed the nerdy, bumbling newsman Les Nessman on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati.

Nothing against Mr. Sanders, but I think my daughter got the better end of the deal, being able to brag that she shares a birthdate with the late King of Pop.

RIP, Michael Jackson. And may God comfort the Jackson family in their time of loss.

Random stuff:

The Spouse plans to petition for a recount in the recent school board election in our NJ township. Now that the absentee ballots have been counted, she is behind the third-place candidate (who is the only incumbent running this year) by only five votes of more than 3,400 cast. She plans to show election officials a pattern of impropriety, including the incumbent refusing to leave a polling place when told to leave by election officials and a poll worker at one site almost getting into my wife’s face because she was slightly within the 100-foot distance from the doors.

I’ve spoken to my landlady, who also is a teacher, about the results. She recalled that she helped a fellow teacher with a Virginia school board campaign some years back. Of course the teacher played up her educational credentials, just like my wife. But that woman lost. My landlady’s blunt assessment is that “no one gives a damn” about educational credentials when it comes to school board politics. She suggested that if my wife runs again next year, she hold her nose and try to align herself with the local political establishment.

***********************************

I saw the movie Obsessed with some friends at an early Sunday morning showing in Virginia. I sat with my arms across my chest for about the second half of the flick with a scowl. Why?

I really wasn’t feeling Idris Elba’s character Derek being put out of the house by Beyonce’s Sharon because he DID NOT MENTION that some crazy woman on the job was trying hard to come on to him. And Derek, unlike a lot of men and to his credit, didn’t bite. If I’m Idris/Derek, I’d have morphed into Stringer Bell and had the bee-yotch whacked.

Sorry, if that’s me, I’m gonna be real pissed if my wife tries to put me out behind a failure to say something. I’m not moving. She may have a right to be upset. However, not saying something, as a marital offense, doesn’t rise to the level of being asked to leave the home. And many men will tell you that the reason they won’t say anything is because they fear receiving precisely the same irrational reaction Sharon exhibited.

***********************************

I just wrapped up my first course in the IT master’s program, which was Managing the IT-Enabled Enterprise. Now it’s on to Business Architecture and Process. One thing disturbed me. We were assigned to review and comment on each others’ final group papers, describing a restaurant’s IT environment and action plan.

I found two of the papers appalling in that they were filled with misspellings, bad grammar and busted syntax. And this is supposed to be graduate-level work? I wanted badly to say something, but all the comments are open on a thread for everyone to see, and I didn’t want to embarrass anyone. I initially chalked the bad writing up to students for whom English is not their first language. I see that here at work all the time and have to clean up that writing. I checked the authors’ names on one particularly bad paper, but those names indicated to me they were born right here in the United States. I’m thinking I may speak with my academic advisor about that.

Fortunately, my group’s paper was relatively clean, thanks to yours truly.

Pro muses on a very cold mid-January day on the East Coast:

Remember this post? Seems that scenario has played out on that Bravo show Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The story goes that DeShawn Snow, the wife of NBA star Eric Snow, was booted from the show for not being “hood” enough and failing to bring the requisite amount of drama and conflict common to these cheap, unscripted “reality shows.” I watched RHOA one time some months back. I wasn’t impressed.

I got word that I’ve been awarded “conditional” acceptance to an online Master’s degree program in Information Systems. The “conditional” is due to my relatively low undergraduate GPA. Never mind that isht was 27 years ago. Don’t they believe I’ve matured just a little bit since then? I must maintain a GPA of 3.0 during my first three quarters/semesters of my attendance. Whatever.

I’m glad, but I’m not really all that overjoyed. I’m only hoping this educational endeavor will be worth the price and help me become an expert in one topic as opposed to being a generalist with broad but shallow knowledge in a lot of areas. I start in March; the program is to last about two years.

The interview with the tech firm earlier this month yielded a rejection. The recruiter e-mailed me a note saying that despite my “impressive resume’,” I’ve been eliminated as a candidate for the proposal manager position. Again, whatever. There’s at least one other iron in the fire. We’ll see how hot that one gets.

This brother has a future on Saturday Night Live!!! Funny!!!

Yeah Pro’s been away a few days, wanna make something of it?

Pro knows the below vid is more than a week old, but damn, this is funny. I years ago stopped watching Saturday Night Live on a regular because I thought the show was on borrowed time. But this election season, the show has hit a new high as evidenced by this amazing piece. And it turns out that the “rapper,” Amy Poehler, did this just before birthing a son. Lord knows this kid’s gonna have jokes in pre-school.

And I don’t know if you all remember the original Weekend Update from the 1970s, but it sounded to me like Sarah Palin momentarily dropped that Upper Midwestern accent to affect a perfect Jane Curtin-esque “And have a pleasant tomorrow” when she closed the skit.

On the sports front, it’s been a bittersweet weekend. The bad news first: The Philadelphia Eagles lost today to the Washington Redskins. Seems Washington is for real after beating two division rivals (the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys last week) on the road. The Eagles, with two wins and three losses, are in big trouble. They’ve got to turn it around and fast if they expect to even sniff the NFL playoffs.

Now the good news: The Philadelphia Phillies won their divisional series, beating the Milwaukee Brewers in a best of five. Now the Phils face the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant in a best of seven series. The winner goes on to Major Leage Baseball’s World Series.

*************

And how about O.J. Simpson? You talk about a long, hard fall from grace. Found guilty on all counts stemming from an alleged armed robbery of two memorabilia dealers in Las Vegas, the ex-Buffalo Bills running back, car rental pitchman, actor and football commentator may end up like too many other black men — spending the rest of his life in prison.

Simpson, in blackjack parlance, was dealt the legal equivalent of a face card and a five for a total of 15, with the dealer showing a 10-card. He had to take a hit, drew another 10-card and busted. He’s going to appeal, but has to sit in jail while the legal maneuvering plays out.

And that Simpson was found guilty in this relatively petty-assed crap on the 13th anniversary of the acquittal in his murder trial was especially eerie.

*************

As promised, here are some fuzzy photos from Pro’s childhood, as captured from home movies. Try not to laugh too loudly.

Barack Obama seeks the counsel of a fictional former President, one Jed Bartlet. An excerpt:

BARTLET Senator.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s call it even.

I cracked up.

What a sad weekend for African-American male entertainers. First Bernie Mac in Chicago passes on Saturday. And today, Sunday, Isaac Hayes dies in Memphis.

Most people know Mr. Hayes best for writing and recording the “The Theme from Shaft.” I first heard Mr. Hayes as a 10-year-old a few years earlier, listening to an LP called The Isaac Hayes Movement, with cuts like “I Stand Accused” and “One Big Unhappy Family.”

In honor of Mr. Hayes’ life, I present some old school in the form of one of my favorite songs, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” written by Clifton Davis, as covered by the late great Isaac Hayes. May you rest in peace in a big vat of Hot Buttered Soul.

Profunksticated commented on stereotypes over at his man Lord Hannibal’s spot, where he posted a video of an insurance spot starring a black couple being married. He responded to one of my comments and I quote: “Blacks are most often portrayed as coons with no measurable intelligence or cultural refinement. ”

If LH thinks in 2008 that commercial was bad, he ain’t seen nothing yet. Let’s head back to 1943, when Warner Brothers released a piece of animation called by some one of the greatest cartoon shorts ever made. Only one problem: It features, by today’s standards, some of the most racist, over-the-top caricatures of African Americans ever committed to celluloid.

This World War II-era short is called Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. It was one of those many cartoons that that was shown in theatres prior to the main feature film before the advent of television. It’s likely many of you have never seen it. I’ve seen the cartoon for the first time only four years ago. That’s because this piece of animation was deemed so racist that it was banned, along with other racist cartoons, from the mainstream media.

My advice would be to read this piece about the cartoon, which puts it in a historical context, before you watch it. And once you watch, be ready to feel something.

It’s been awhile since Profunksticated has provided his readers with a little old school. Today it’s Pleasure’s “Sassafras Girl,” from spring 1977, my senior year of high school. Oops, almost forgot to mention that today, April 1, marks 31 years since I attended my senior prom with a, well, an aquaintance from the neighborhood. Wow!

This band was better known for its hit cuts “Joyous,” and “Glide” a couple years later. But “Sassafras Girl” is a nice jazzy piece. Listening to this causes me to build a mental image of a pretty woman making tea from the so-named root. Enjoy.