Nick grills his daughter's new crush on 'Are We There Yet?'

I’ll cut to the answer: No. We are not there yet. But it appears we are trying. With rare exception, the depiction of black life onscreen brings debate. Portraying black characters who are not heterosexual turns the discussion turns into a festival of finger-pointing and giggles. What’s worse is the black community contributes most to the bigotry with our own productions.

Black comedy in particular has a rocky history with gay stereotypes; erring on abysmal (think everything from Eddie Murphy’s Raw, Soul Plane, Def Comedy Jam, or mostly anything the Wayan brothers or Tyler Perry touch). Some of these depictions are funny. But when lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people of color (LGBTPOC) only end up as jokes onscreen, it’s little wonder we have issues with coming out and accepting our sexuality.

The sitcom Are We There Yet? (from executive producer Ice Cube) offers a welcome alternative. In “The Boy Has Style Episode”, wife Suzanne suspects her daughter’s new, school crush is gay because well, the boy has style. We’ve seen this premise on television countless times. It’s the perfect setup to run through “is he/isn’t he” stereotypes and “gay tests”. Are We There Yet? offers a refreshing take on the storyline (at least, for a black sitcom).

I won’t spoil the episode by giving a scene-by-scene breakdown (at least, not yet). You can watch the entire episode online at tbs.com.

Prince says ‘the Internet is completely over’

The web is abuzz regarding the Daily Mirror interview with Prince in which he discusses his new album 20TEN, religion, and “new ways to distribute my music” which do not include the Internet.

“The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.

“They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

Prince goes on to show a disconnect from the reality of today’s music industry. As Jason tweeted “the advance thing is just wild.”

From an artistic POV, I also have an issue with Prince releasing his album as a covermount. It’s purely monetary. What sort of fan/audience targeting is that (especially when you consider the state of print news)? It’ll be interesting to see how the torrent community responds.

As we say in the South, “Bless his heart.”

.NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

It’s somewhat tragic for the .NET community too – because the perceived lack of sex-appeal on the surface doesn’t match the reality of what the platform is capable of.

Just take a brief moment to peruse through CodePlex for more than a couple minutes and you’ll find thousands upon thousands of examples creative open source projects all built in .NET.

And in the startup space there actually are a number of .NET-based startups making it big, including this week’s Hacker News / Social Media darling Woot. But why oh why isn’t there a louder .NET voice in the startup community? Why aren’t there developers from Woot working with developers from StackOverFlow (also implemented in .NET) to encourage more startups to use the extensive .NET stack to create new and exciting products and services?

And most importantly, why aren’t there more startups adopting .NET?

Their Eyes Were Reading Smut

Because Nick Chiles’ (infamous) New York Times article is related to my post…

I’ve heard defenders say that the main buyers of these books, young black women, have simply found something that speaks to them, and that it’s great that they’re reading something. I’d agree if these books were a starting point, and that readers ultimately turned to works inspired by the best that’s in us, not the worst.

But we’re not seeing evidence of that. On Essence magazine’s list of best sellers at black bookstores, for example, authors of street lit now dominate, driving out serious writers. Under the heading “African-American Literature,” what’s available is almost exclusively pornography for black women.

Prefix or Posthack

Eric Meyer argues for vendor prefixes (-webkit-, -moz-, etc.) and against a unified prefix (e.g., -beta- or -w3c-). In fact:

I believe so firmly that vendor prefixes are a good thing that I’m prepared to take the next logical step: Vendor prefixes should be made more central to the standards process. They should be required of newly implemented properties and should be the mechanism by which interoperability is declared.

A word’s worth

A kickass post by Ivan E Coyote on gender identity

For years I have secretly yawned and answered the ubiquitous gender pronoun preference question with a noncommittal shrug, thanking the asker for asking and then answering that they could basically call it like they saw it, that I didn’t really have a preference. And for years this was mostly true. Mostly.

[...]

My name is Ivan. You can call me she. For the first time in my life, this really feels like the truth. And the truth fits, and I am going to wear it.

[via Cecily]

Wayne Sutton examines how he and the fine folks at TriOut used social media tools to launch and manage location based services startup. #lbs

Steve Bruner showcases new aspects of customization available in the upcoming WordPress 3.0 release, including custom post types and the new menu management feature, using the new default Twenty Ten theme as an example. #blogging #video

The latest episode of the video podcast “Beer Diplomacy TV” attempts to solves the world’s problems (and decipher the season finale of Lost). Answers provided by Stuart Tracte, Baratunde, and Brian Brushwood, moderated by Owen JJ Stone, who I met at SXS10 via Twanna Hines and Adria Richards). #politics #video

Food Network’s new, 24-hour Cooking Channel, launches. But why isn’t it in HD? #food #tv

Thumbs Up

I have to give props to rapper Wale for turning around a PR fiasco. After news got out that the rapper was canceling his appearance at D.C’s. Black Gay Pride, the web was on fire with “homophobic” linked to his name.

Wale maintains he was unaware of the obligation (like most popular artists, he doesn’t book his own shows). After the dust settled, Wale made a special guest appearance at D.C. Black Pride Legacy Festival. For free. Now that’s gangsta. #black #hiphop #lgbt #video

Thumbs Down

Despite BP’s various cleanup attempts, the company and U.S. government warn that the oil could be leaking until August. Ugh. Houston Business Journal has continuous coverage. #news #environment #bitchlips

Basically, I am sick of the ignorance, hatred and all the bullshit. The truth that someone is gay is as odd as the fact that someone is straight. It is what it is, there’s nothing new about homosexuality and these people either need to evolve or get the fuck out of the way. If they want to hate, fine but they will have to keep it to themselves or expect complete turbulence from me. It’s insane to me that someone has that kind of time in their day to hate someone for what they can’t help and for what there is absolutely nothing wrong with.

— Henry Rollins
Queerpunks.com