A Midsummer's To-Do List

If you live along the Northeast coast, you've been suffering perhaps through the summer that wasn't. With August in sight though it seems futile to keep fighting the elements. Better to embrace the cool afternoons and breezy mornings.

Why don't you:

1. Behold a Masterpiece. Sit on the steps of the Met after studying the heiroglyphs carved across pieces in the museum's expansive collection of Egyptian art.




2. Salute the Sun. Enroll in a local yoga class, dance course, gym, taking advantage of any introductory offers by going as frequently as you can in the first week.

3. Discover and Download. Underappreciated music. Erykah Badu's 2003 Worldwide Underground is an EP composed to get her through a spell of writer's block. But it has gems ("I Want You", "Back in the Day") and her hand-scribbled liner notes are bound to move you.

4. Put Your Fruit in Your Mouth. For a few consecutive days, I dare you to try eating 4-6 varied fresh fruits (not dried or canned) for breakfast and lunch. Thank me later.

5. Recall the worst or most regrettable thing you did in the last month. Forgive yourself for it today - and forever.



6. Go to an outdoor concert and Rock That Thing - literally. I've been to so many shows, rhythm & blues specifically, where I'm pleased and astonished by how folks step out. Talkin' Sunday best here. I'm convinced they have an even better time than I do.

7. Make it a Current Affair. Lie in the park or just perch on your porch to read an article about a subject that challenges you. The Economist is a treasure trove; The New Yorker is good too. All done? Read a book and finish it.

8. Turn the Dial. "I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)." It took me forever to register that the message in Mariah's track was absurd and downright unhealthy. Rid your iPod of love song cliches that celebrate the long-suffering man/woman.

9. Get the Scoop. Order an ice cream with every topping you can fit on it, calories be damned for one night.

10. Admit Your Blue Crush. There's something so rejuvenating about being by the water. Go to the beach, the pool, the shore, jump in or just get your feet wet.

11. Now that it's Raining More Than Ever...On a gloomy day, go out for for drinks where the menu is festive: sangria, pina coladas, margaritas, whatever. If they've tossed an umbrella in it, even better.

12. It's not About the Bike. It's just about learning to do something you never got around to: learn to swim, play aooustic guitar, ride a bike, cook three must-eat dishes...

'See If I Care, Good and Bad Hair...' Beyonce's Baby Sis Learns the 'First Cut is the Deepest'

Beyonce's baby sister parted ways with her weave this week and the critics, celebs and civilians alike, took her to task for the offense of unnecessary baldness. I thought she looked chic. What did you think - is it a glamour(ous) 'do or a glamour(ous) don't?

The junior Knowles, who's tried everything in the last year from war paint to day-glo bodysuits in her feeble attempt at shining beneath the total eclipse that is Beyonce, seems already to be buckling under the weight of the backlash.

A friend told me that Solange has since been spotted wearing a wig. (Side note: Kanye is dating a chick, Amber Rose, with a nearly bald, blonde 'do and the reaction to her futuristic 'fro has included a contract with the Ford modeling agency. Hunh?)

Feeling pressed to respond to the overwhelming response, Solange took to her Twitter account, and addressed the uproar in a hyper-punctuated series of tweets. The gist of it was that she simply wanted to get free.

We all know that in pop/soul music, big hair, long hair, fake hair, processed hair are de riguer unless you're among the bold and beautiful few like Erykah or Jill.

ONLY reason i responded to this i have is because i was disappointed to see my name more talked about then #iranelection. dont. want. a. edge. up. or a perm. because. im not trying. to make this “a style” or a statement. i. just. wanted. to. be. free. from. the. bondage. that. black. women sometimes. put. on. themselves. with. hair."

And we do. I once rode an A train to Brooklyn and realized that Every single black girl in that car had Naomi Campbell-length tracks sewn into her mass of concealed cornrows. Indeed, with my own straightened, always weave-less shoulder-length 'do, I was an anomaly. It was as if a decree had come down: If it isn't long, it's wrong.

Once, years ago, I pulled a Solange and took scissors and clippers to my head after some emotional isht and went to my brother's barber shop to shape-up the nape. The male barbers were disappointed to say the least.

But the barber who reluctantly edged me up was far more cruel than Bow Wow to Solange. He seemed personally offended, bent over my head, barking, "Did you do this shit over some guy?!"

When I saw the flicks of Miss "Soul Angel" on the 'Net, I was right back in that barber's chair on Long Island. Felt for her. You can tell when someone's reaching, searching. And black women inordinately dig deep by confronting their hair.

In that period, I learned some ugly truths but I learned some profound, enduring truths, too, that I might not have if I hadn't been stripped down to my barest essentials.

Here's hoping Solange logs off Twitter and goes deep.

Left at the Altar, NBA Star's Ex-Fiancee, Kesha Nichols, Keeps 'Dancing'

Kesha Nichols Breaks Down Her Breakup

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NBA player Richard Jefferson's jilted fiancee and former Nets dancer, Kesha Nichols, recently gave an interview to ABC's Diane Sawyer.

Watch the video linked above and you can't help but think girl is vying for someone at ABC to offer her a slot on "Dancing With the Stars." It worked for that chick from "The Bachelor", right?

At around (-2:00), notice how Diane keeps harping about how much money Nichols may have lost on the $500,000 wedding (not $2 million as has been reported). Listen for her dodgy, why-do-you-think-I-was-dating-an-athlete?? response, lol. (kidding!)

Nichols also got a six-figure parting gift from the former New Jersey Net for her trouble. Would that pacify you if you were left at the altar?

In the Age of Obama: CNN Rolls Out 'Black in America' Part 2

When it was given its premiere in July 2008, even those I knew who were largely oblivious of the 24-hour cable news cycle tuned in to CNN's "Black in America" series, hosted by Soledad O'Brien.

O'Brien's own mixed heritage (a mother from Cuba and father from Ireland and a complexion that reflects the mosaic of the black diaspora) was a clear marker that defining "black" would be a task in and of itself.

In the weeks following airing of the first installment, I heard broad complaints: The approach was too anecdotal, i.e., the segment producers focused on too few families.

Or the subjects fell under two stark extremes of the economic spectrum, either hand-to-mouth, or upper-middle class, as with the family of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who ironically finds himself in the news just as the series' second package has its debut.

There were those who were angered at a percieved lack of focus on the black success stories. After all, how many of us watched the program on TV or streamed it online with our "Obama" buttons pinned to lapels and shoulder bags?

But for many of the first-generation black Americans, whose parents immigrated to the states from the West Indies or regions such as Ghana and Nigeria across the African continent, there was a sense that our story was overlooked.

There's a unique brand of double consciousness that you learn to navigate when you're carrying the culture, customs, food, language of your parents alongside that which you've been born into.

In many ways, I represent my parents' immigrant mindset, including an emphasis on education, back-breaking hard work, and fiscal responsibility; in other respects, I've embraced the legacy of all the everyday black American heroes who made it possible for us to be here in the first place. But I think it's a story worth exploring.

On the suburban block on which I was raised, the percentage of families from the American South and from the Carribean was nearly equal. And as much as we were neighborly, there were moments that divided us... . The poet Sonia Sanchez calls that being "wounded in the house of a friend."

I don't have high expectations that part two of CNN's much-debated series will offer groundbreaking coverage tonight, but I'm sure I'll catch it. It seems the conversation is a start. Will you watch?

Arise: Obama in Accra

Regardless of your opinion on Obama's handling these past six months of the economy, healthcare policy, the two active military conflicts, and the slate of other issues he'll have to tackle in his first term, you had to be moved by images of the president in Ghana this weekend.

The son of a Kenyan, he was given a son's welcome in another country miles from his ancestral home. Obama even addressed Parliament while in Accra, remarking, "I have the blood of Africa within me." Outside, crowds cheered and chanted his name.

The scholars are always saying Obama represents an era that is post-race, but it seems dubious that another American president from say, Hope, or Little Rock, would have earned this kind of reception.

'Breathless' on Bastille Day (Gangsta Flick With Subtitles)

Is it any wonder I'm a Francophile? When I was 6, my parents took us on a family vacation to Paris, where one of my aunts was living in a flat with her then boyfriend, a long-haired Frenchman in blue-and-yellow Adidas, who's now her husband.

Who needed the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, right?

The hotel we stayed in had a balcony overlooking a narrow street, and I remember the furnishings being velvety red. Every morning, like clockwork, a staffer came with what I can only call hot cocoa (but really doesn't do it justice), croissants, soft butter and various preserves.

We walked the Champs, visited the Eiffel Tower, and several majestic churches. There are pictures of me with chunky sneakers on and sweaters tied Preppy Handbook-style around my shoulders: I'm cheesing! So I guess the love affair started on that trip.

I tend to gravitate to all things Gallic and with Sunday being Bastille Day, I celebrated with a first-time screening of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image (and MAD), as part of the series French New Wave Essentials.

You know it's 1959 because Jean Seberg's Patricia has an internship at a Newspaper, The New York Herald Tribune, which she hawks in the evenings on the streets of Paris. When asked by her petty-thug boyfriend, Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo), why she likes being a writer, she says, because "I make money and I'm free."

Patricia is an American student, in France as well to attend classes at the Sorbonne and she gets wrapped up with her BF, not realizing he's on the lam for shooting a cop.

But what makes this b/w 90-minute flick essential is the dialogue (Godard was a respected film critic before he tried his hand at filmmaking; co-writer Francois Truffaut devised the concept) and the radical use of the jump cut.

You keep thinking you've missed something when in fact, Godard and his cinematographer have deliberately removed footage in the editing process.

In one scene, Patricia meets up with a journalist from the Tribune for drinks in Montparnasse. He's promised to assign her stories, and he does. But why is she on a park bench making out with him a few hours later? [Laughs] A buss for a byline, I guess.

Poppy: Making It Safe For a Discerning Girl To Sport a Coach Bag Again?

Although it was never a prestige brand with the price point of logoed counterparts like Gucci or Louis Vuitton, for a time Coach enjoyed a respectable reputation as an entry-level label for aspiring fashionistas. One of my favorite gifts was a slim, Kindle-sized tan Coach shoulder purse I got for one birthday from my brother.

But while the houses of Gucci and LV battled counterfeiters and Canal Street bootleggers, rapidly dreaming up intricate designs that were harder to knock-off, Coach's relative affordability precluded illegal reproduction - and made it an easy target for shall we say, less fashion-minded customers.

The label was eventually hijacked by buyers who took off like gum-snapping thieves in the night with the oversize-C's slapped onto everything from their sneakers to wallet chains and wristlets.



But the company president, Reed Krakoff, aims to remedy this with the newly launched Poppy collection, which buries the signature C's in favor of bold color and rich textures like a scribbled-over vinyl tote and more grown-up patent "Glam" bags. Are you sold?

A Little Sumthin' Sumthin' Bout Maxwell's Time Away From the Industry

Je Vais Te Raconter Un Secret...Semi-Annual Sale Ends July 14

What are you wearing? No, not right now. To sleep. There comes a time in every girl's life when you have to take stock of the underwear drawer, a merciless inventory. Do the 100% cotton boy-cut briefs outnumber the french-cut panties? Are you heavy on "PINK" and Gap Body but lacking in La Perla and Cosabella?

Recession-minded gals can dip into Victoria's Secret until Tuesday for marked down frilly things, lacy demi-cup bras, and nighties. You have to be willing to slug those giant mesh bags over your shoulder and forage but there are almost always some good finds.

Indulge your inner Brigitte Bardot, seen here with her struggling writer-husband, played by Michael Piccoli in Godard's Contempt (1963). Of course, Bardot's Camille sleeps mostly in the buff in the French New Wave classic, but one imagines that her lingerie selections are as eye-catching as her wardrobe for day. Pretty things.

Beyonce's Big "Ego" Makes for a Disastrous Video

First let me say that I think "Ego," from the deluxe edition of Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce, is one of the more clever uses of a double entendre to emerge on the pop&B landscape. This isn't the regrettable analogy of "You Remind Me of My Jeep."

The song is written by Harold Lilly and Elvis Williams. (Beyonce gets a writing credit too, courtesy of Daddy, but you know she didn't write anything but her signature on the back of the royalty check.) In it she extols the dimensions of her man's considerable (ahem) ego before the song crescendos into a humming gospel riff:

He got a big ego, such a huge ego
I love his big ego
He walk like this cause he can back it up

Yet whereas the clip for her matrimony-seeking mega-hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" elevated the track by way of Fosse's choreography and the Balmain-inspired rehearsal room costumes, the video for "Ego" is just a bad retread.

Beyonce also gets a directing credit here (Again, thanks, Matthew Knowles) alongside her longtime dance director, Frank Gatson. The bodysuits are resurrected, as are many of the now familiar head spins and twirls. Her latest, "Sweet Dreams," is yet another take on the formula.


More woeful is that she swapped the sleek look of the earlier video for a drag-like makeup job that made me think of the Cat Lady aka Jocelyn Wildenstein. Don't you think they kinda look alike?

With Kanye on the remix, I just think creative minds could have cooked up something more enticing instead of trying to bait the legions of dancing Stans who crowned her Lord of the "Ring" when they uploaded their own versions of that video onto YouTube.

A Single Beaded Glove At Jackson Memorial Proves God is in the Detail

A German architect, Mies, used to say of his buildings, "God is in the detail." That's what I thought when I realized watching Michael Jackson's public memorial on Tuesday that the singer's five surviving brothers, serving as pallbearers, each had donned a single, beaded glove.

Rituals and symbols can be so powerful: Broken glass everywhere at a Jewish wedding, the jumping of a broom at another; white-gloved debutantes at a coming-out ball, and veiled second-graders wearing the same on the occassion of a first communion.

Even more than some of the infinitely moving performances - Stevie's plea, John Mayer's instrumental - the sight of the brothers Jackson with their hands sheathed in MJ's signature sequins just seemed the perfect touch.

The Beautiful Life

It is the city that never sleeps, and because Gotham more than lives up to its reputation, every once in a while I find myself fleeing in search of some shut-eye. In South Florida, a slice of paradise, it's easy to become disenchanted with the NY.

The stench of sewage, discarded fast food, and sweaty bodies pressed for space can't compete with the scent of fresh cut grass, maturing fruit, salt water, and wide open spaces.

But on the last Wednesday in June, I skipped across town through Central Park, bypassing the bus, and stumbled upon a fashion shoot for what must have been either an advertisement for jewelry, high-end gloves, or both.

Just below a footpath, I spied a crew, each clad in a distinct industry uniform of black, guiding a very tall, blonde model who was elegantly turned out from the waist up.

A small group of onlookers gathered about them, at street level, as I snapped a few pics on my camera phone. Then, just as soon as they'd set up, they folded the large lighting apparatus, relieved the model of her accessories, and dispersed. In a New York minute, they'd vanished. A fleeting reminder of what makes the city so magical.

Someone's Gonna Love You on a Black Summers' Night

I'm almost afraid to download the entire Maxwell album. Frightened that the disc, BLACKsummers'night, out now after an 8-year respite, couldn't possibly live up to the large expectations set forth by the lingering lead single, "Pretty Wings."

I wish all men got better with time the way this neo-soul singer has. I've had two Maxwell sightings in the last half decade or so. The first was at an Urban Outfitters in the West Village and he was chatty with me when I went up to him giggling and giddy.

The second, last year, in TriBeCa, was just around the corner from the Cary Building where my newspaper's offices were situated.

He had shorn his thicket of locs by now so I had to give a second look, and as he unchained his bike from a railing, I looked again. He seemed serious, far off. I wanted to say something meaningful.

But what? Thank you for recreating Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work"? That Urban Hang Suite was the soundtrack to which I fell in love with a boy and "Reunion" played as it came to a halt?

I said nothing. I watched him mount his bike in dark cargo pants and a ratty black t-shirt, riding down West Broadway, perhaps a version of these lyrics forming in his mind: "If I can't have you/ Let love set you free / to let you flap your pretty wings around."

How to describe his face, every visible muscle? Mmm...he was heartbreakingly handsome, the stuff of sonnets and rambling soliloquies.

Off The Wall and Into Pop Music HIStory...Remembering Michael

Most of us will never know even fleeting fame firsthand. Michael Jackson knew uninterrupted fame, on a global scale, for more than 40 of his 50 years.

And it was a life that was chosen for him, and at an age so tender, that I still wasn't allowed to walk home alone from school at the age when Mike, 11, was fronting his five-man band on the "Ed Sullivan Show."

As a media circus worthy of MJ's Neverland Ranch unfolds in the wake of the death of the King Of Pop, I find that there those who would demonize him - and those who will lionize him.

For the former, Michael's transgressions, including an unpalatable affection for children and young boys, specifically, and a disregard for his own human anatomy, can't be overlooked. They overshadow his contributions and considerable innovation to the point of total eclipse.


To the latter, MJ is both a genius and a victim, as helpless as any child against the parasites who beset him in search of a payday. That he mutilated himself was only proof that The Gloved One was not one of us - he was larger than life. The child molestation charges? Unbelievable. Michael, they argue, was a eunuch, asexual, and thus incapable of anything as ordinary as sexual urges.

I hate to ride the middle, but MJ's legacy calls for perspective. Peter Pan, in his prolonged adolescence, might have withstood his morning wood. But a real-life, 50 year-old man (even bearing the scars of a sad, unusual childhood) would not have. It's "Human Nature."

I don't know for sure what went on during those reported sleepovers, but the singer was at least guilty of terrible judgement and a towering sense of invincibility. It's impossible to separate these acts from his biography.

That said, if Michael had stopped recording after 1982's Thriller, his impact on the pop landscape would still be immeasurable. But the hits kept coming: Bad. Dangerous. HIStory.

For those who complain that Mike hadn't created anything fresh in the last decade, I point to LPs by Usher, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake, Keri Hilson, The-Dream. Should I go on? His imprint is pressed onto all of their projects.

So I'm choosing to focus on the discography, the songs too numerous to rank here: "The Way You Make Me Feel" "Rock With You" "Say, Say, Say"... . It's the one facet of Mike's life that'll remain untainted.



To any fans, who like my brother, E, and our after-school friends, once converged on a basement in red zippered jackets thinking we could make moonwalking magic of our own - I say "Remember the Time."

R.I.P. MJ

Catch a VIBE: For Millions of Readers, Urban Mag Was a 'Rolling Stone'

I don't remember what year it was, maybe 1994, '95, but I recall that this fairly new magazine, VIBE, was featuring an up-and-coming songstress from Yonkers, N.Y., on its cover. Mary J. Blige was a little bit R&B, a little bit hip hop, and all soul. She peered out from the cover that month in a floppy red apple jack hat and a red oversize hoodie. Maybe she even had shades on, that trademark scar flashing back to her hardscrabble roots.

What's the 411? had been certified classic, but My Life, which had just dropped, was truly groundbreaking. It was that issue of VIBE that cemented for me the power not only of music, but of music journalism. We now had our very own Rolling Stone.

I loved that issue (couldn't track it down though; Feb. 2008 pictured, here). It was a demonstration of how a thing could capture all of what you were feeling at a certain moment.

Blige, at the time, was considered a really difficult interview. I remember being in school reading about spats she had with writers, getting drunk with them. But she opened up to VIBE about her personal demons, including addictions to heroin, and her man, K-Ci of '90s R&B band Jodeci.

I read stories like this with relish, but also the reviews, clever sidebars, and gorgeous fashion spreads in the magazine's large-size format (which I often tore and saved).

There would be more iconic covers to come in the next decade and a half: Biggie and Faith coupled up in the back seat; 'Pac and the Death Row clan assuming menacing postures before a dark background; years later, a newly solo Beyonce, drenched, asserting her divadom.

VIBE was where you connected to your musical heroes, particularly at a time before the mediatakeouts made knowing what they were up to as simple as ordering in, and the nahrights made waiting a month for anything seem quaint. Still, even online, the publication proved there was something to be said for having a legacy to stand on.

Quincy Jones now says he wants to buy back the brand he founded and helped build before it succumbed to market forces, and reinvent it online. I had the opportunity to work for a time with the stellar staff at the mag; hope Jones makes good on that.