Of GOATS and Men

I'm watching (out of the corner of one eye) another casual, yet boring debate on whether LeBron James is The GOAT. In full disclosure, I detest making lists -- with the exception of giving instructions or going to the grocery store. But I've participated in this and similar arguments on multiple people, places, and subjects with too many people to count. I have my opinion on James and others, but it's not my focus here. Instead, I'll share this idea for consideration; greatness is an altogether separate quality from 'best', 'excellent', 'most valuable', etc.. It speaks to those individuals, places, events, etc., that transcend their respective spheres of interest or simple moments in time.

The idea of someone or something being The GOAT is extremely subjective. It's affected by our individual selective bias, attention, and retention as much as 3rd parties influencing what we see, hear, and read. Even those of us who are very well versed on a given subject can't read every book, see every video, or experience every event to present our opinions as authoritative over that of millions who are likely witnesses to that same experience and many others. Such pronouncements are really outrageous when considering they're made in the moment without much regard to history. As much as it's entertaining to argue James as The GOAT over the Black Mamba or... gasp (!)... Air... it's nonetheless a bit irrational considering we have a generation of people who didn't experience the impact of Air in real time. (I'm sorry, but trying to figure out Air's impact on society from YouTube videos is a fool's errand.) Those of us who are completely flummoxed by the mention of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Bill Russell as The GOAT should take their seats and remain quiet until called upon.

So all you wannabe influencers, tastemakers, gatekeepers... ease up off the gas. Let the rest of us enjoy and appreciate all of these outstanding people, places, and things while keeping an eye out for the emergence of new greatness in the future. It's the one thing we can all be sure about.

Welcome to Downtown Largo and the Hard Sell

My granddaddy had a saying that putting a kitten in an oven doesn't make it a biscuit. The Metro station at Largo Town Center was recently renamed 'Downtown Largo', and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission has announced its new headquarters will be built there. Downtown Largo?

With all due respect to Prince George's County, MD County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks, M-NCPPC, and the county's marketing team, Largo is not a town for it to have a downtown, uptown, midtown, sidetown, or whatever. A 'town' is defined as having two characteristics: defined boundaries and its own government -- neither of which Largo possesses. I get county leaders and residents wanting to put the best face forward when promoting Prince George's County and its communities as places to live, work, and play. But all too frequently there comes a point when advertising boils over into hyperbole that overpromises and underdelivers. The new hospital center and now M-NCPPC moving its HQ there are truly notable developments. But outside of attending a Commanders' game, those of us who don't live or work in Largo or its adjacent neighborhoods, including Kettering, the town of Capitol Heights (!), Landover, Lake Arbor, or parts of Mitchellville, have zero incentive to travel there regularly. (The former Largo Town Center, which was an attempt at rebranding the Blvd at Cap Center -- itself conceived as a destination for replacing the Capital Centre -- and immediate surroundings never really caught on.) I have absolutely nothing against Largo or the county's newfound energy for its development. It's a very nice community with a LOT of upside. I would be comfortable living there. I'm only saying the hard sell's unnecessary. I would rather see the effort that's put into hype redirected into ventures whereby residents, local businesses, corporations, and organizations can buy in and exercise their voices in a sustainable future for Largo and communities throughout Prince George's County.

$.98 Movie (Non-)Review: Coming to America 2

The process of creating art is hard.  Creating art by way of an assembly line is terribly difficult.  And creating art that finds widespread acceptance among consumers is exceedingly rare.  Eddie Murphy is one of the few people who have managed to pull off the elusive trifecta of creating a body of work over decades which is of consistently high quality and is commercially successful.  He has even pushed the envelope on his considerable talent with noteworthy dramatic performances as in Dreamgirls. The point here being Murphy has earned the benefit of presenting us with occasional flops. 

But Coming to America 2 sucks.  I mean... it's really awful.  It's Best Defense bad; Meet Dave bad.  It's not as if I held expectations the sequel would recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the first movie.  I don't believe I was influenced too much by the advance hype.  I was hoping for a mildly entertaining update on the lives of Akeem, Semmi, and other characters from the original; something I'd watch just to pass time.  However, CTA2 failed to meet even this minimal standard.  I actually passed out after about 35-40 minutes out of sheer boredom.  And to think I turned away from my normal routine of Sunday morning public affairs TV for this.

I'm kinda, sorta okay now with having watched this bomb though, because as I stated earlier Murphy's body of work earns him the occasional pass.  I did get an extra hour of sleep.  I dreamed I was a studio executive about to reject a proposal for a sequel to a classic movie or TV series... or worse, a remake.

Fast Times in the Slow Lane on Wall Street

The constant pace of technological evolution has again stirred the waters At The Bottom of the Well as it seems every third person on social media fancies themselves a business coach or financial advisor.  I understand there's a growing cross-section of folks motivated to inspire everyone toward financial security and have no problem with it.  I want to believe most of them mean well.  But, it's these... motivational speakers' (?) pushback against putting any real effort toward understanding business basics, finance in depth, or the very product/service/activity they're hyping that's unnerving.  Even hacks tend to know a great deal about their subject matter; it's just that they disregard transparency and disclosures for turning a buck.

My earliest encounters with this phenomenon online were with acquaintances who were pushing one of several direct sales/MLM/network marketing opportunities -- some of whom were sometimes hawking more than one at a time (!) -- as the road to personal economic salvation.  There are two giant flaws with this approach: one, few people are cut out to be entrepreneurs; two, the hard sell (including the use of funnels) is better suited for selling high-ticket items such as real estate or automobiles. But cellular phone service? Or energy? Forex trading software?  I'm not suggesting MLM is illicit or inherently ineffective.  It's just that direct sales... Hell... sales in general ... isn't for most people, especially when the company offers practically no support and the 'independent representative' has to rely upon their social capital to recruit new reps and moving volume in order for the 'business' to earn decent money.  Once, a female acquaintance and her brother took to bickering with me over the cryptocurrency scam BitConnect.  The brother trolled me with selfies from BitConnect conferences and screen shots flexing his supposedly exploding account balance until just days later the con was exposed and the whole racket fell apart.  Naturally, dude ghosted everyone.  Another acquaintance held classes on teaching people how to buy Bitcoin notwithstanding the fact advising investments without a license or promoting securities without making certain disclosures is illegal. 

Many of these mountebanks and hustlers will state they're not economists, CPAs, CFPs, brokers, dealers, or even business owners of any type as if the announcement magically excuses them from any responsibility for trafficking in nonsense and disinformation.  'I'm just sharing information', they'll say. However, when we ask them to explain what's behind the performance of whatever investment they're promoting at the moment, the response is, 'the price is going up', as if they're real-life characters from the movie Idiocracy ("It's got electrolytes").  It is this attitude that was at the root of the recent WallStreetBets/Robinhood/GameStop pump-and-dump scheme that's still costing retail investors millions and destroying public confidence. 

The nature of how we use social media indicates we're going to see more of this stunting in the future, and so the best defense is to ask questions and otherwise do your own homework.  Keep in mind many of the people appearing to volunteer business or investment advice often have no skin in the game whatsoever by way of professional experience or training to qualify as reliable sources.  We owe it to ourselves to always measure twice, cut once.

10 Thoughts: Episode 1 of 'The GOP Presidential Candidate Dating Game' (Also Known as The GOP Presidential Primary Debate)

I managed to make through the entire telecast of Fox News' 1st GOP presidential debate featuring the presumptive 'A list' candidates.  In full disclosure, I only watched to satisfy my occasional jones for perverse entertainment and theater of the weird.  Here are the first 10 thoughts that came to mind:

• The candidates' latest idea for outlawing abortion involves invoking the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the unborn.  The 14th Amendment, however, only applies to, "... persons born [emphasis mine] or naturalized in the United States...".  Don't these dudes read?
• The candidates -- most notably John Kasich -- gave Donald Trump a pass for his irresponsible comments on immigration
• Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson are only in the race for future book deals and speaking fees on the rubber chicken circuit
• Aside from Huckabee, most of the candidates with experience as public executives demonstrated the importance of pragmatism
• You just know someone reminded Marco Rubio not to bring a bottle of water on stage
• Rand Paul is his father with the crazy sanded off.  He desperately wants us to accept him as a 'free thinker', but... he's not.  By contrast, Scott Walker wants everyone to accept him as an friendly idiot.
• Ted Cruz' campaign isn't sincere either.  I think he's betting The Dumpster Fire Known as Donald Trump will die out by winter, so that he can resume picking up checks from soulless, faceless corporations.
• Jeb Bush is a mush-mouthed, equivocating wimp in public.  IMO, it's a calculated decision to cover up the fact he's an asshole.  The equivocating is his way of searching for an answer he thinks will shut everybody up, which is the sign of a clever person.  But let's be clear... being clever is not the same as being smart. 
• Chris Christie is an asshole too.  But he makes no attempt to hide his asshole-ness.  He actually upbraided Paul for defending (?!?) civil liberties
• The candidates are unanimous in their calls to 'repeal and replace' the Affordable Care Act.  However, not one of them has uttered a single word on ideas for what a replacement would look like.

And to think I missed watching 'The Avengers' for the 237th time for this.

28 Black Films Black Film Critics Need to See Before Pulling Someone's Ghetto Pass

I don't do lists.  Lists are for lazy people.  More often than not, a list, no matter how good the intentions, leaves off deserving candidates.  At other times, lists are created to lend the author or authors the appearance of credibility.  I came across an example of the latter the other day on Facebook in a link to a 2014 blogpost on Scott Woods Makes Lists from "librarian, writer, poet, and critic" Scott Woods titled 28 Black Films You Need to See To Keep Your Race Card.  The title King of All Blacks is conspicuous by its absence from Woods' blurb.

In scanning through the list, there are certainly a number of no-brainers: Love Jones, Do The Right Thing, Boyz n The Hood, A Soldier's Story.  There are several iffy entries, including Purple Rain and Waiting to Exhale.  But the list is undone with the inclusion of some real dogs, like Harlem Nights, The Wiz, and... Beat Street.

Beat Street?  WTF?!?!?

So without further ado I'm submitting for readers' consideration my own list of 28 Black Films Black Film Critics Need to See Before Pulling Someone's Ghetto Pass (ranked in no particular order):

1. Juice
2. Down in The Delta
3. Pootie Tang
4. If God is Willin' and da Creek Don't Rise
5. Shaft (1972)
6. Brother From Another Planet
7. Def by Temptation
8. The Inkwell
9. Bird
10. Malcolm X
11. Fear of a Black Hat
12. Good Hair
13. Cornbread, Earl, & Me
14. Paid in Full
15. House Party
16. When The Levees Broke
17. Dead Presidents
18. Coming to America
19. Bird
20. Mississippi Masala
21. Always Outnumbered
22. Cooley High
23. American Pimp
24. Dreamgirls
25. Antwone Fisher
26. Deep Cover
27. Baby Boy
28. Car Wash.

Honesty Ain't Policy

The main takeaway from a recent media celebrity non-scandal -- ESPN's suspension of First Take's Stephen A. Smith -- is that honesty is overrated.  Smith, certainly no shrinking violet when it comes to expressing himself, gets paid to speculate and otherwise voice provocative opinions.  Beyond the fact he was filling time, I have absolutely no clue why he decided to postulate on the dynamics of modern dating as if it provided additional insight into Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice's knocking out his (now) wife.  IMO, Smith spoke truthfully.  But in doing so, he got in trouble.

I'm not defending Smith as a victim of political correctness gone amok.  He isn't.  Neither has he been subjected to a double standard.  He forgot -- egged on by ESPN -- to make sure his self-check was turned on.  He certainly didn't help his case with that non-apology apology tweet-a-thon.  But I get that.  I am not about to rip him for demonstrating a common conceit of modern journalists, commentators, and pundits.  They're socialized to believe their every opinion is relevant, therefore valid, and facilitates healthy conversation.  ESPN is one of Smith's enablers.  Yet I've got no issue with the network throwing one of its talking heads under the golf cart. 

I refuse to get into an argument whether ESPN and Smith, respectively, were 'right' or 'wrong' as it's clear to me we humans aren't as concerned with candor, due diligence, honesty, full disclosure, etc., as many of us like to profess.  To paraphrase Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup from A Few Good Men, we can't handle the truth.  We often struggle when facing random and various facts, or more accurately, have difficulty reconciling fact with emotion.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Our brains' ability to block out select unpleasant or overpowering stimuli is actually quite impressive.  Dissonance, and in some cases outright ignorance, protects us.  There is a purpose; a value in 'for your eyes only', 'confidential', and 'need to know'.  None of us need to know everything -- the impossibility of which notwithstanding.

The corollary to We Don't Need to Know Everything is also true: we don't need to say everything.  Having the liberty to express ourselves isn't the same as knowing when, where, how, why, and to whom expressing ourselves is appropriate.  It seems many people in our culture are obsessed with volunteering their every thought or action for all to hear and see, regardless of whether the thoughts or actions make sense or if anyone is actually paying attention.  The behavior drives social media, reality TV, tabloid news, and is the basis for a 'self-help' industry that alternately attracts and repels people, sometimes simultaneously.  Considering the regularity with which individuals are censured for their public, semi-public, and sometimes private faux pas, off-the-cuff bad puns, tortured analogies, and malaprops -- often deservedly so -- my surprise is more of us aren't learning from these examples to just shut up.