Work in Progress

I haven't talked a lot about the book I'm working on this here blog, because (1) no one comes here and (2) I haven't been entirely comfortable with how work has progressed. The first assertion is probably true and the second is slowly changing. Things are ramping up and, starting in 2009, I'm going to be delivering a couple of entries a week to my editor.

Here's kind of a boilerplate that I've been using to tell people about the book in shorthand:
Black 2.0 [working title] is a project that I'm co-writing with Mos Def for Spiegel & Grau, which is a division of Random House. The book is envisioned as a spiritual successor to The Black Book from 1973, which was commissioned by Toni Morrison back when she was still an editor at Random House. Described in very broad strokes, Black 2.0 hopes to look at the shifts and changes in black culture and the larger American mainstream since the publication of The Black Book.

My awesome editor Chris Jackson and I are trying to make it smart, funny, insightful and incisive. We'll see about all that. Here are some sample entries I've worked up that should give a bit of the feeling we're going for. These are subject to change, blah, blah, blah. The janky-ass layouts are all my work in Word and will be realized to brilliant fruition by our designer. Basically, if you're someone who's asked me how the book is going, this post is for you.

Get your own - Open publication

Get your own - Open publication

Get your own - Open publication

2008's Best Comics (so far)

One of my editors at Time Out New York asked me for my favorite books this year. I put together this list, with contextual descriptions that it turned out he didn't need. It's kind of an impulsive list, but I'd back most of this stuff up if pressed.

All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
the whole run, but especially # 10 where Superman struggles against his own mortality to leave a lasting legacy of good.

Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean McKeever
a perfectly dirty and intertwined noir series, full of sex, guilt and violence.

Captain America by Ed Brubaker and various
A solid re-invention of a seemingly jingoistic icon by passing the mantle to a supposedly dead sidekick filled with regret over past sins and the weight of expectations.

Scalped by Jason Aaron and various
The story of Dashiell Bad Horse, a bad seed who returns to his old reservation as an undercover FBI agent. It's ornery yet deeply affecting and every issue feels like a punch in the stomach.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight
by Joss Whedon and various
Moving the series to comics form lets Whedon and his collaborators do things that would have been budget-prohibitive on the screen and he chooses to let the characters grow rather than freeze them in time.

Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction and various
Fraction's post-movie series looks shiny on the outside but examines what happens when old mistakes come back to haunt a man who can't afford to be fallible.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
A dysfunctional family portrait that manages to avoid being prosaic by the specificity of its internal logic and sharply delineated loneliness.

Path of the Assassin, Vol. 13: Hateful Burden by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima
This installment of the fictionalized historical manga about the rise of iconic shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu had me gasping multiple at the tightrope walk of suspense and sexual intrigue. I was nearly late for a meeting with my book editor because of it.

Now The Hell Will Start by Brendan Koerner
This WWII micro-history–focusing on the trials of a black GI who shot a white lieutenant–features drug use, brutal racism and cross-cultural lust in a story that seems like it could never be true.

The Jazz Ear by Ben Ratliff
The NY Times writer listens to music with some of jazz's greatest and most misunderstood players. It opened up new understandings about the things driving musicians I already know and introduced me to tunes and people I'd never heard of before. Ratliff does a hard thing: making jazz seem accessible to to those who don't listen to it and deepening the understanding of those already trained to hear it.

Ex Machina #35 by Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris
Superhero-tuned-mayor is the high concept that drives Ex Machina but it's really about the collision of the personal and political. This issue deals with the legacy of slavery in downtown Manhattan, centering on City Hall, and Vaughn avoids easy platiitudes to wind up in an uncomfortable but honest place.

The Greatest Fictional Politician of Our Times?

Grand Text Auto

From pre-release hands-on to writing and talking about the game, it’s been damn near a month of GTA-mania for me. Here’s a few quick links to the things I’ve been working on:

Blazing Prattles
I got a bunch of folks together to talk GTA for Crispy Gamer’s podcast and everybody seems to have had a great time doing it. Let history show that my Crispy colleague Gus Mastrapa made a bold, early prophecy about possible cross-country travel in Niko Bellic’s future. (Gus was answering my question about what might be next in terms of GTA’s forthcoming episodic content.) A few days after the podcast was recorded, the internets went crazy over this shot that appeared on the Rockstar Social Club site. When talking about the Little Jacob character fro GTA IV, Gus (who also writes for Paste, the Onion’s AV Club and Media Coverage at GameDaily) also had my favorite line from the podcast: “I never knew I wanted to be friends with a Jamaican drug dealer…”


Thought/Process 004: Building Better Wor(l)ds
The idea here was to try and work out some of the thoughts I’ve been having about the intersection of story and experience in video games.

With our copter in freefall, I hit the Y button, foolishly thinking I could jump into the pilot's seat. Instead, I followed after our fellow gunsel, as if we had some bizarre suicide love pact.

I don’t know how successful I was in breaking any kind of new theoretical ground, but I’m glad to have gotten that stuff out of my brain.


Time Out Chicago review
Here we have the pitfalls of multiple-outlet deadline crunch, in that you’ll see some of the same thoughts and language I’ve used elsewhere about GTA IV crop again.

Writers I Like

Paul Beatty on Obama:

Yes, I know that after his resounding victory in the Iowa caucus, pundits decided that Barack's win proved that race was of political inconsequence, but I bet that they thought the same thing the day after O.J. Simpson was arrested.

Colson Whitehead on the Brooklyn Writer Mystique:

What do they expect me to say? “Instead of ink, I write in mustard from Nathan’s Famous, a Brooklyn institution since 1916.” “I built my desk out of wooden planks taken from the authentic rubble of Ebbets Field. Have I mentioned how I still haven’t forgiven the Dodgers for moving to Los Angeles?”

Ta-Nehisi Coates on writing his memoir (his blog is a must-read, btw):

Ah well, I can remember cats coming to school the next day bragging about how Humpty ripped it on that "the underground's down for peace among brothers" (how is it that him and Shock G are on stage together). But all I remember watching this clip was that the dark-skin chick in Oaktown 357 was a stunner. We'll get Juicy Got You Crazy in here at some point. No pubescent boy should have seen that video.

Haitian Cogitation

The latest edition of my Thought/Process column went live at Crispy Gamer. In this edition, I talk abut why it's hard to get a sense of auteurship out of video game development and some games that I think verge on the artistic. It's a brain-twisting premise, but I'm pretty proud of at least attempting to tweak the lens through which we look at video games.

A quick excerpt:

The thing about game development is that it's still a market-driven mode of creativity, and it's creativity by committee. As such, it's hard to build a body of work that evinces a particular aesthetic, a sense of where the creators' head/heart might be at in a moment of time. There's a reason that games like Rez get trotted out when the ongoing "Are Games Art?" argument boils over periodically. Rez and, to a degree, its EEE cousins try to alter the user's perceptions of sight and hearing. By intertwining the two senses closely, it attempts to blur the lines between the two in an effort to simulate synesthesia.

For more, follow the link: Thought/Process 002

Haitian Moderation

Last Saturday, I moderated a panel at Splat!, a graphic novel symposium. It was a last-minute set-up, with the e-mail asking me to participate coming on the preceding Wednesday. I had little prep time and the 9:00 am start time was hella early for me–especially considering it was on the weekend–but I think it went pretty well. (It's the first one on the linked page; things happened so quickly they didn't have time to update the info with my name and bio.) Of special note was that there were three black men on the panel of nerd experts, the first time any such thing has ever happened to me.

Here's a snippet from a blog post on Fleen:

In terms of presentation, the Who Reads Graphic Novels? and Webcomics: A Primer seemed to run most smoothly; this was probably a function of the panelists present and the moderators — wrangling smart, opinionated people is an art form, and Evan Narcisse and Colleen Venable just seemed to do the best job of it (it doesn’t hurt that Narcisse has both a conversational style and voice very similar to that of Elvis Mitchell).

NPR, here I come!

Haitian Representation

Here's what I've been up to, in terms of non-book stuff:

• The usual weekly Washington Post and bi-weekly Time Out Chicago game reviews keep on rolling along.


• A guest post on Level Up, N'Gai Croal's video game blog at Newsweek, just went up today. Aside from being a friend, N'Gai's one of the most well-regarded journalists working in the video game space right now and Level Up may be THE place to go for high-level critique (at least in the mainstream media) so it's very cool of him to let me play in his "house", as it were. My admittedly heady entry talks about how a solo game experience changes when it's shared, using my examples of playing Portal (below) and Assassins' Creed with a friend as a launching pad.



• Crispy Gamer, a new video game website powered by a murderer's row of freelancers including yours truly, launched about a month ago. I'm producing and moderating their podcast, Blazing Prattles, and writing Thought/Process, a monthly column of critique for the site, too. You should be able to click on my name and get a page with all my contributions so far. I'm pretty proud of the stuff I'm doing for CG so please check it out. While I was at GDC, my Crispy Gamer colleagues and I did an interview with iconic game developer Warren Spector. I kinda took the bull by the horns here and commandeered the time we had with Warren, but I feel like the resulting podcast came out great.

• Because no one demanded it, Scott Jones and I did another video game segment on the local CW affiliate (Channel 11). We talk about recent releases that are fun to play during Spring Break. You can see it here, once you scroll down a bit.

• My piece on Mat Johnson ran a few weeks ago in Time Out New York. This one was a weird tightrope to walk, since it had to talk about both Mat and his new graphic novel Incognegro. I liked Mat's writing way before I ever met him, but I didn't want the article to come off like one friend writing about another. Nevertheless, it was a fun piece to write.

On the Real

Some weeks ago, my friend Jamie told me to keep Tuesday open for some sort of mystery man-date. He then had to reschedule in two weeks because of some work drama, but the event would still be on a Tuesday. I was guessing that it would be us going to Comic Book Club, since I'd mentioned a while ago that we should check it out.


I'd never have guessed that I'd be seeing a musical. But, there we were, two straight men in the mezzanine, talking about our girlfriends until the lights dimmed. I recently read a piece in the New York Times Magazine about Stew, the play's writer/subject/performer, and thought some of the ideas in the production sounded cool, but filed it away in the back of my head. A while back, Jamie had played me some of Stew's music–from his band The Negro Problem and his solo stuff–and while I dug the power of his voice and the smartness of his lyrics, the music overall sounded too neat, too mannered for me. Passing Strange elicited the exact opposite reaction out of me. The play's a piece of "autobiographical fiction" that traces Stew's coming-of-age from South Central LA to Amsterdam to Germany.



Stew's songs wrap humor around tension around sadness with a bunch of funk, church and Broadway sprinkled all over them. (Now that I'm writing this, the music sorta reminds me of Cee-Lo's solo albums in their wide-ranging, psychedelic ambition.) He deals a lot with the idea of authenticity, especially as regards blackness. As Stew's onstage avatar tries to figure out what it means to really be an artist, to be really black and to be the real him, I laughed out in certain places where it kinda felt wrong but I couldn't help it.

The staging and the structure are spare and clever, with the small, terrific cast assuming multiple parts, singing along with the band, dancing, vamping and basically doing whatever is required of them. Stew himself narrates and interacts with his younger self, adding a fun metatextual layer to the proceedings. The emotions ring true in every bit of Passing Strange and, as Jamie said, it's good to see a rock musical that actually rocks. As I was watching it, I was thinking everybody I know needs to see this. (Some more than others: *Rakisha*)

There's no doubt I'll be seeing this again.

Check the Rime

I'm out in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, which has increased my love of the world of video games, like, a thousandfold. Seems to me like this is where the ideas flow and where people think of games as a medium first, and an industry second.



Last night, Sony threw a great party where Guru and Q-Tip performed. I haven't been a hip-hop concert in ages and honestly, my old, still-on-East-Coast-time ass was thinking about not going. "Oh, I should go home and work. Oh, it's too late. Oh, the show won't start until 1 a.m. Oh, what do I need to see those fools for? I saw them back in the day."

Fuck all that.

This show did what it was supposed to do, which I think was transporting folks back to the days when Sony dominated the home console market, instead struggling for second place the way they are now. The party started at 9, and it was a cool block party set up in a club called Mezzanine. Open bar, finger food, blah blah blah. The event firm did have some nice touches, though: basketball hoops off to the side of the stage, '70s-era flicks projected onto the wall, b-boys and girls uprocking and spinning, and my favorite bit, two barbers cutting heads, so you could get that "fresh fade from Rob" look without going to a barbershop right behind the mall.



Anyway, the other cool thing about this show was that Guru strolled onto the stage at about 10 pm, meaning that I wasn't going to lose my voice for screaming over the music or drink too much because I was bored. His hype man (no, I don't know his name; he's a hype man, for Christ's sake) was type annoying during his crowd warm-up and after, but Keith Elam opened strong with "Mass Appeal." From then on, it was a set heavy with post-Gangstarr and Jazzmatazz cuts. Guru's behind may be on the fringes, but he's stayed busy. I stopped paying attention after the second Jazzmatazz album and, honestly, the shit they did wasn't impressive enough to make me want to run out and get a complete set. I was glad to see that Guru apparently doesn't suffer from much of that angry-rapper bitterness that sets in when trends pass them by. He seemed sincere about the shit he's putting out now through his 7 Grand label. One thing that struck me about his half of the show is the depth of Guru's lyricism. Dude wrote and continues to write some pretty insightful lines. Two things bothered me about his set, though: (1) both Guru and hype-dude kept on reminding us that we were hearing hip-hop and jazz, but a live instrument was nowhere to be found. Kind of a glaring contradiction, no? (2) they also kept on referring to tunes as classics and while some of them were, some of them most certainly weren't. And, y'know true classics don't need calling out.



Which brings us to The Abstract Poet Incognito. I won't be writing as much about this set because, well, I documented much of it. I will say this, though: Tip still wants it. Jonathan Davis came out fired up and showed off a masterful command of the stage and crowd from the first note. The song transitions were seamless and even surprising at times. Dude struck some humble notes during his mic time and never ever seemed to evince an ego which, if I had his body of work, would be more than a little justified. (Unlike Mr. Fiasco, Jonathan Davis really earned his right to swagger.) Tip's band-and-DJ back-up was tight and the man himself ripped lots of classic Quest stuff. He did it all solo, too, reciting other people's parts and even crooning some hooks. The new stuff (maybe two tracks?) sounded good and seems to move away from the overly fusion-y indulgences of the never-released Kamal the Abstract album. (Todd, you better still have that somewhere for archival purposes...) Apparently, there's a new album called The Renaissance coming out in June and after last night's set, be sure that I'll be copping a CD when I get the chance. I'll let the video do most of the talking, but I'll close out by saying that it's awesome when an artist justifies the rose-colored warm fuzziness of your nostalgia.

Hater Aid

Issuu's a new website that converts PDF documents into Flash files. I decided to try it out on an old magazine piece I wrote a while back.

If Elected...

It feels like I've been away longer than I actually have, but it has been a while. I've been pretty busy and generally pretty proud of the stuff I've been doing. I'm itching to share some of what I've been working on with however many loyal readers I've got out there. (Feels so weird to type that...) Things will hopefully be approved and/or launching soon and folks will get to sample the various and sundry projects that have taken up my time.

On the book front, I had a meeting with my editor last week. We're just trying to build up momentum here and get the idea machine cranking so The Celebrity Collaborator can just jump in and press the gas. The FUNBE (friend/upstairs neighbor/book editor) and I got to talking and tried to deconstruct the intensity of the the two leading Democratic candidates' sparring. We got particularly stuck on this idea of Bill Clinton being the first black President.



While it's not that surprising that this meme has come up as Clinton and Obama vie for the Democratic nomination, it's pretty amazing that people treat it as if it's an actual issue. Let's be real: the whole thing started as a joke. A warm jest, an inclusive jape. Bill Clinton, savvy image-worker that he is, never seemed to protest too much under this make-believe melanin mantle. And, sure, he's got some offices in Harlem. And, yes, you can trot out all the other things people point to as signs that Bill's got that one drop floating in his veins: the single-mom Southern roots, the saxophone, the Links/Jack-and-Jill crew he hangs with, the ladies-man swagger and all the empathy and rhythm in his voice. Debate those all you want, but the reality still remains: Bill Clinton ain't no Black President.

I'm not talking about his political record here. I'm talking about the elusive hoodoo that makes up the collective subconscious and wells up in certain individuals. While the FUNBE (who I must note is a smarter man than myself) and I were parleying in that midtown Manhattan office, I decided that maybe, just maybe, Black President isn't even an electable position, at least not in the way that the U.S.A. selects its Commander-in-Chief anyway.

Because, the way I envision it, becoming Black President is a hearts-and-minds thing. It's about groundswell.



Fela Kuti was a Black President. (It's the title of one of his albums and where the germ of this idea started in my head.)

Miles Davis was a Black President. (Yeah, even with all his fucked-up shit.)

Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and James Brown were the Black President at the same time. (No, not Co-Presidents. Separate Black Presidents with overlapping terms. Chew on that.)

Duke Ellington was a Black President. (Thus proving that you can be royalty and President at the same time.)

Jacob Lawrence was a Black President. (On the strength of the campaign posters alone...)



Zora Neale Hurston was a Black President. (First female President in 2008? Yawn. Got there like 70, 80 years ago. Thanks for playing, though.)

Ralph Ellison was a Black President. (Hell, Invisible Man's practically a manual about the electoral process.)



That nameless, faceless S1W (Remember them? Peace to the Security of the First World soldiers. ) in the crosshairs of the Public Enemy logo? He was a Black President.


Dave Chappelle was a Black President. (And he can return to active duty whenever he wants, as far as I'm concerned.)

See, Black Presidents wage sociocultural campaigns and get elected in invisible caucuses. No announcements need to happen, because the results become readily evident. Sometimes the hoodoo vote and the ballot-and-button world might collide. (I'd like to think that Shirley Chisolm was a Black President.) The status of Black President comes from the planes of persona, iconography and metaphor, from participating in those areas in both conscious and subconscious ways. It's a dangerous alchemy that a BP candidate can't always control and, moreover, shouldn't necessarily try to. Eventually, one might find that the right stew jes grew.


I'm not gonna run the metaphor into the ground and start parsing who the Black Cabinets and the Black Prime Ministers are or have been. We can debate and disagree* on who's actually on the official roster of past and present Presidents; that's just part of the dynamic. No one person decides. Most importantly, I'd even say that you kind of know who isn't a Black President. (Sorry, Tavis...) Heck, I'll even go so far as to say that, if elected, Obama may not even wind being a Black President. He could wind up being an African-American President or a multiracial President, but it may well be that he didn't do so hot on those invisible caucuses. (However, I will quote a writer I spoke to recently who said that all it took was watching Barack greet an associate while stumping to convince him. "He gave dude a pound. Side handshake, pulled in to the chest and the pat on the back. That's not scripted. That's instinct.")


Looking back, maybe Toni Morrison was putting some rootwork on Bill. ("Oh, you know, let's call him that if it'll help him–and us–out.") What Slick Willie may not know is that nowadays he's dangerously close to Anointed Ofay** territory and those guys never become President. They're frickin' harbingers of doom.

Developing...



*Lord knows there's lots of people on the bubble. Let’s talk it out, people! Jesse? Al? Dyson? And, yes, anyone who knows me knows that I'm being generous by even putting that last guy down as a maybe.

**If you don't already know, you'll just have to pick up the book to find out what this means. 'Course, that means I have to write it, too.