Can we please stop acting like it makes any sense at all that Mitt Romney is a suitable contender to beat the incumbent? I get that some people aren’t digging President Obama, I’m not exactly sure why — I mean I know why but I try to at least pretend people aren’t THAT overtly racist, however…
I digress. Mitt Romney is just a rich dude. He doesn’t represent any working man’s aspirations by any stretch of the imagination. The last rich dude at least tried to fool people by adopting a country accent.
Things aren’t great but make no mistake, this is not the third world either. It’s time to be innovative and make sacrifices, you know, like our grandparents that we wax on nostalgically about used to do. My father was born during the Great Depression. You remember that one. Yeah, something about today’s consumer-driven economy makes me think my father would laugh about today’s woes. I know things are not ideal — for every Facebook millionaire, there are thousands of people trying to figure out how to pay their mortgage or losing sleep about their lack of savings. However, let’s focus on how we got here. Let’s stop complaining and get some work done. Being the Joneses has buried us in debt. This president inherited a troubled economy and is being vilified for not fixing it. And even if you don’t dig his healthcare plan, how can you be annoyed at getting people adequate medical care? And maybe it’s not a great plan, but do you have a better one? I’m just sayin’…
I used to vent more politically with my first blog. I just felt like expressing myself. A man named Mitt doesn’t give me much hope. I’m mostly thankful that W. can’t ever run again. In the meantime, I am ready to see what we can pull off if we stop expecting politicians to fix all of our problems.
The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies is one of the best books on the business of film (some would say THE best). And earlier this year, author Edward Jay Epstein came out with an updated version of the 2010 original — The Hollywood Economist 2.0. Here’s his take on how the business has shifted in the eventful time between editions:
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Amen! D’Angelo Is Back!!
Sh-t. Damn. Motherf—ker! If you love D’Angelo like we do, this one’s gonna give you chills. GQ presents the neo-soul legend’s first extended interview and his first photo shoot in more than a decade. Here’s a brief bit of GQ correspondent Amy Wallace’s spellbinding profile, and click here to read the whole thing.
Shame, guilt, repentance—D’Angelo knows them well. To say that he was raised religious doesn’t begin to capture it. He’s the son and the grandson of Pentecostal preachers. To D’Angelo, good and evil are not abstract concepts but tangible forces he reckons with every day. In his life and in his music, he has always felt the tension between the sacred and the profane, the darkness and the light.
“You know what they say about Lucifer, right, before he was cast out?” D’Angelo asks me now. “Every angel has their specialty, and his was praise. They say that he could play every instrument with one finger and that the music was just awesome. And he was exceptionally beautiful, Lucifer—as an angel, he was.”
But after he descended into hell, Lucifer was fearsome, he tells me. “There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherfuckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces pulling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”
[Photograph by Gregory Harris]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4fheluD8Y1qe6vsbo1_250.jpg)
