IT WAS DONALD STERLING IN THE OWNER’S BOX WITH THE TAPE RECORDER!

A Scapegoat for Social Sickness Sounds Nice, but Racism Has More Than One Hideous Face.

No more than a week ago, Donald Sterling donned the stroke-slanted smile of a rich, old, white bigot (post-op). Until this morning, Sterling was the proud owner of the Los Angeles Clippers –a team that’s touted as one of the best in the NBA. Just days ago, the decrepit Donald had been enjoying the extramarital company of a young lady who came fully equipped with a lawsuit filed against her by Sterling’s wife.

That is, until his noble mistress recorded conversations between herself and Sterling and leaked them to the public. In these private squabbles, Sterling made several racist comments all while pleading with his half-Mexican, half-Black girlfriend to avoid public pictures with the likes of blacks, specifically referring to Magic Johnson.

This morning, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, issued a statement whereby he banned Donald Sterling from his current post for life and charged him with a $2.5 million fine.

It’s the stuff of soap operas. There’s talk of suing on any number of grounds.

Now, I prefer details on current events to generalized Buzzfeed lists.

I like honest, informed opinions to rote social media campaigns and bandwagon mentality.

I prefer Due Process to knee-jerk reactions.

For the same reasons, I’d rather we elect a President, in this time, with a longer record of International Policy to the White House instead of an inspired and less-qualified celebrity.

And you may call me old fashioned, but I choose facts over libel and slander.

Because of my penchant for these things, I am bemused.

I’m unclear as to which clause of his contract with the NBA, as an owner, renders Donald Sterling subject to the penalties he received this morning. Honestly, what the fuck does Adam Silver believe he’s done?

I ask this not because I believe bigoted men like Donald Sterling ought to keep ownership of a money making franchise, particularly one that is reliant upon involvement from racially indiscriminate spectators. No, I pose my what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking to Mr. Silver because I believe in REAL social transformation.

In order to enact this change, I believe an assessment of any and all root causes is paramount.

Unfortunately, I am a white woman. I was born in the mid-eighties to parents who were each educated at the university level.  My schooling was prestigious and my mother and father made sure of that. Now the advantages I have put me at a disadvantage in being able to fully understand all the facets and effects of racism.

I did not choose multicultural studies, nor gender studies or minority studies, as a focal point of my education.

I am a mere writer. I am an idealist, too. I advocate for love and beauty in all things. I can find joy in the painful struggle and have found myself thanking the universe for those whom and that which might be considered my opponents.

And, I’ve got to say a big thank fucking God for all that wholesome marrow in my soul because in countless ways, I am a failure.

As a self-proclaimed anti-feminism feminist and humanist, I’ve turned the other cheek when I’m fearful. I’ve had sex against my will, more than once, and not because in all of those instances I was outright date-raped. I’ve laughed in a group setting when friends and lovers made bigoted statements. I’ve chastised myself for others’ ignorance. What I aim to make clear is that in cases where I have had the power to oppose prejudice, I have cruised on the low road. I ignored it and even played along. I compromised my beliefs so as not to make waves.

In those cases, I had a choice. I chose to live beneath my ideals.

I am appalled by Donald Sterling’s remarks and I make claims to want better for this world. Yet, I have complete confidence that if I had recorded every second of my last year on film or digital audio, the playback will show that I’ve said something racist, or acted in a way that demonstrates the overall intolerance, dismissal, or judgment of a person of a different creed, race, religion, gender, or sexuality, etc. based upon that characteristic alone. And I’m sure it happened more than once.

To my friends and family: I am sorry I’ve let you down.  I won’t let myself be ashamed because I think shame lends itself to further self-flagellation. Instead, I write this now and I vow to do better.

Without making an excuse for my admission, it is important that the reader please note: in my core, I do not believe that anyone is inferior to anyone else. Sometimes I struggle with understanding others when language barriers arise, but I don’t find blame or take issue with those who communicate differently.

My belief system is that love reigns while fear cripples, and I feel that everyone has the freedom to believe and act in anyway he or she sees fit, so long as it harms no other creature.

I certainly do not want to open the floodgates of criticism and hate mail and anger, though I understand that public statements are exactly that. My goal for those who believe others are inferior based on the aforementioned categories (or other defining attributes) is that they do not see this as a rallying memo or badge. This is an acknowledgment of my hypocrisy.

My question remains: What the fuck has Adam Silver done?

If I, of liberal mind and values, openly admit to turning a blind-eye and/or enacting bigotry in my life, then what does this say about the world around me?

I don’t feel that censorship is an option. I revel in our right to speak and write and advocate for ourselves. Perhaps the answers I seek will come from those like Donald Sterling. Perhaps understanding and reason is where I should turn.

Using logic, why have we, as a society, let ourselves hold onto something that has no scientific backing? Why do we still let our friends make “fake-hipster-racist*” comments and tell jokes that perpetuate inequality among our peers, children and students, and our role models? Why do reputable news stations continue to make sexist comments about a woman who has more diplomatic experience than our current Commander in Chief? And he is a black man, isn’t he? Does that fact alone prove that we’re evolving as a nation? God help us if that’s why we elected him.

Is Adam Silver’s decision to fine and ban a bigot from his seat as owner of an NBA team because he believes it’s the right thing to do?

If so, where were the stipulations for Sterling’s conduct and personal beliefs when Silver and other members approved him as an owner of the Los Angeles Clippers?

God help us if society’s prominent figures continue to take the path of least-resistance in all they do.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, though. Perhaps Silver’s decision takes into account variables of which I’m unaware.

From what I understand, there is no morality clause in Donald Sterling’s contract. What happens when the former Clippers owner sues the NBA and/or Adam Silver and/or his instigating mixed-race ex-girlfriend?

The system protects our right to speak candidly. No one can take Donald Sterling to court based upon those recordings because they were not legally obtained. I could be wrong on all of this (this is based upon the very little I know about the law and I welcome any/all input on this matter), but it seems like Sterling has a relatively strong case against those parties.

And what if Donald Sterling wins?

This man believes that if he pays someone for a service, that person is beneath him and he commands authority over him or her. This financial inequality is accepted by both Sterling and society. He has made his opinion clear in his recorded statements to his ex-girlfriend and in a previous testimony he gave in 2003 about paying a woman for sex, stating

“…you are not together with her. You are paying her for a few moments to use her body for sex. Is it clear? Is it clear?”

If Sterling contests this decision in court, he could possibly be back in his seat above the “black bodies” he has on payroll and we’ll sit here, feigning dumbfounded and twiddling our thumbs.

What will you Clippers fans do, Los Angeles? You could mosey on back to The Staples Center in your gold and purple once more… It’s not an absurd proposal; you’ve been fair-weather fans so the return to Kobe shouldn’t be too shocking. Ooohh… might The Clippers be an all-white team?

Eight years ago, in 2006, Bomani Jones wrote for ESPN: "It was fun to laugh at Donald Sterling when he was a joke. Now that we know what he's up to when he's being serious, he deserves a lot more attention."

Why haven’t we been paying attention? He’s been serious about demeaning human beings throughout his entire life.

Perhaps we just sit and wait. Maybe enough of the bigoted old white fuckers will die out. On second thought, maybe we should callous the living fuck out of ourselves as a wildly irresponsible and self-centered generation and hire a nice Kevorkian-enthused Euthanasian [sic] to get the ball rolling. Wait, shit. Is ‘Euthanasian’ racist?

*I do not believe in the term fake-racist; this refers to a specific type of racism that I’ve seen develop over the last few years. I have friends (yes, I still call them friends) who will say something bigoted to get a rise out of others. I don’t believe this is outright xenophobia, however my firm sense is that this propagates a casual and permissive attitude toward bigotry. Please see this link for an interesting take on what I call fake-racism and/or hipster racism:

COLORLINES: Two Black Poets on Hipster Racism

Challenge Mediocrity.

This is a magical time. We are in the Make-believe Era. Our society has reached an age in which anyone with a wifi-connected device has the freedom to invent stories, self-promote, create worlds within worlds, and contrive entirely fictitious personas as the result of the Internet. Creatives can indulge their sense of power. Yes, the Web gives us access to incredible tools and information, but there is a necessary degree of responsibility for this kind of leeway. Every day, that necessary degree of responsibility goes unmet.

How many times do you scroll through your Facebook feed and click on something a friend shared, only to find you're disappointed with the link (including my fucking blog)? Next time you get the urge to waste your time, perhaps you should ask yourself a few questions:

1. How does the title of the page or article read?

- If the title reads like a line from an eighth grader's journal entry, it's probably best that you leave it alone.

- If the title suggests that a certain group of individuals should "just give up," you may want to bypass.

- If the title claims that the article's subject is funny, unbelievable, or adorable, ask yourself why you're wasting your work day.

- If the title has a number, therefore indicating that the article is a list, move the fuck on. I am contradicting myself because I re-posted a listed set of guidelines, allegedly from Goldman Sachs (though I can't be sure of the source), on what it is like to be a man. The list was good.

2. Is this a reputable publication?

- One of my favorite tests for whether or not a source is reputable is knowing if the online site has had  a physical counterpart before the Internet.

- If the page contains "Huffington" in the title, it's no good. The Huffington Post was once a liberal's source for political information but is now water-logged by nonsense and fluff. Anyone can write for The Huffington Post. Anyone.

3. How bright is your "friend" who posted the link?

Sapiosexual: adj: (of a person) sexually attracted to intelligence in others.
n: a person who is sexually attracted to intelligence in others.

Just as we come in all different shapes and sizes, we all vary on the spectrum of intelligence. And how lovely is it that we love and accept each other despite being at different writing skill levels and/or varying stages of reading comprehension? Generally speaking, if your Facebook friend has a history of posting bullshit on his Facebook page, why are you reading his posts and clicking on his links?

This checklist is far from perfect. Nothing on my blog claims to be stringent or pristine. It is, like me, a work in progress.

However, I am honest. 

Many of these posts, write-ups, and articles are lies. 

Over the weekend of Thanksgiving 2013, a man named "Elan" created a stir by 'live-Tweeting' his fight with a woman on a plane during a flight delay on Thanksgiving Day. After I read the opening few lines, I stopped. It was clearly bullshit. 

It 'came out' that the fight and article, which included staged photos of notes written between Elan and his opposition, were lies. The truth emerged after the man received backlash for his treatment of the woman, who he'd made out to be some kind of selfish monster. As I said, I stopped reading the initial 'report' after a few lines so I'm not sure what Elan did to the woman, but that's irrelevant. The sad fact is this: if that article was a ruse, its follow-up could be as well. And who cares, really? Was this fight showing the world anything other than two examples of people with bad character?

Those of us who watched the film "Exit Through The Gift Shop" saw a hack; Mr. Brainwash was a self-proclaimed artist hailing from France. As the 'mockumentary' moves forward, we see the artist lacks conviction in anything other than creating middle-of-the-road versions of what Banksy and other street artists had already done. The Frenchman did it to make a name for himself...
And the film was directed by Banksy. As viewers, we are left wondering if the entire film was a joke and if so, at whose expense? Banksy's multi-tiered approach to "Exit" asks us to question the validity of everything we are told is art and information. As a twenty-something in America, I think it is a healthy place to rest, psychologically.

Are these poorly-executed online musings asking us to look deeper into our culture and explore the data we are served? Should we question them, or just read and accept the content as mere entertainment? 

Let's say the countless posts are intended to broaden our view. If so, I take further issue.

A problem lies in the ease with which we share and re-share and post and re-post links. It's too easy to forward bad intel. And we are lazy. As a whole, we are not curious. We don't question the reliability of the information we are given especially when it comes in the form of "entertaining" Internet articles. Nothing is given a second comb-through. No one checks their sources and our Facebook feeds become incredulous and even libelous. 

I propose a call to bring back the English language and revive formal publications.

Let's hold one another to a higher standard. 

It is up to the intelligent minds of the world to use proper grammar. Jesse Pinkman was a fictitious character on a television show. He fumbled over language and was intentionally dumbed down by a writer who completed college and earned his position on AMC's Breaking Bad. Though Pinkman's words were "YEAH SCIENCE," I implore you to not let any sentence of yours end with "...because Science" if you'd like to be taken seriously. These neologic choices are not cute turns of phrase for originality's sake. Many people are just jumping on a terrible bandwagon.

e.e. cummings is a fine example of a man who took the time to understand the rules of the English language and the proper use of grammar and punctuation. In his work, he elected to do without many of these markings and guidelines. I don't know a lot of wordsmiths or poets via Facebook, off-hand, but the number of people with potential-e.e. cummings status doesn't quite stack up to the prolific 
number of people posting on the Internet within the last hour (myself included).

Without shoving words like crusade down your throat, I'll ask that some of you join me. Start caring about the things you say and do. Start curating yourself.

Take the time to understand your work. Give a thorough fuck as to what it is you're writing. Back yourself up. Cite your sources. Let's allow the news to be the news again. Stop promoting bad writers. Stop funneling misinformation. Start offering up truth and beauty. I beg for the cessation to point-and-click-forward of cold grey bathwater. 

Find out what turns you on and write it, paint it, film it, photograph it, or create some other medium with which to express it. Chances are you have wonderful things to say and show the world.

Note: this blog doesn't count as reputable. I'm a self-proclaimed idiot with standards.

Chaos Genius

With not so much as a blink for a warning, my thoughts tend to march off. Their path is dictated by tangential leaps and non sequitur turns. One can liken it to this example of a YouTube search:

We have a woman. Let’s call her Mandy. Mandy types something inane into her search bar. Her quest might begin with ‘people attacked by animals funny.’ Forty-five minutes later, she’s glaring at a still screen of orange flesh, violently poking her mouse pad to make it refresh. Time Warner can’t seem to buffer a video titled “Makeup Tutorial: How To Fake Abs Using Bronzer” and she’s left without directions to apply the shimmer powder over the bronzer. Mandy is in a ‘streaming K-hole.’ When she realizes her agitated mood, Mandy emerges from her trance. She has no idea how she got from a camel spitting on a reporter to pudge-contouring.

And that is how my brain functions. Or malfunctions. Mind you, I have no list of recent searches, much less a History tab; and my connection operates at an immeasurable rate of brain speed.

Do

       You

              See

                                                                How

                                                                                     Little

                                                                                               Effort

   Is

       Required

                            To

Derail

Me

While

                       I

                                   Must

   Work

                     Tirelessly

To

       Steer

                                                                                    Even

                                                                               Just

        Slightly

               Back

                                                                      On

                                                                Track

                                                             ?


          Be patient... Under the hood rumbles a wild intelligence and unmatched desire.

An Introduction

An Introduction

I'm starting this website during an interesting time in my life. I will be 28 years old in exactly two weeks (this began October 29, 2013).

During the last year, I fell in love with a charismatic British music video director while living in Los Angeles. After day one, he moved me into his massive vibrant kitsch-stocked apartment in the hip neighborhood of Los Feliz. Ours was one hell of an 'how we met' tale. A palpable connection enchanted anyone within a mile of our duo. Our eyes unleashed twinkling golden hearts when telling friends and family that I’d been with women, and he’d been in a bathrobe and a pink cheetah-print scarf on that fateful Sunday. Our smiles tried outstretching our jaws. We were proud.

We went to live shows, heard DJs, and had a chemically-enhanced weekend in Rancho Mirage and Indio at the perfect house for Coachella weekend. We spent not a single night apart for six months until we flew to England in late June (he is from London). We couldn’t book the same flight for a reasonable price so he had to leave a day before me. When I landed, he was there to greet me at London Heathrow. After a few days at his old house in Kensal Green, we set out to Worthy Farm for Glastonbury Music Festival. I got smashed out of my mind after sneaking into the biggest music festival in the world via a suitcase in the back of a cargo van (this story to come). A month later, my love and I began building our own shelter over six weeks and drove to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada.

Coinciding with the magic, I lost my job and struggled to find permanent employment outside of freelance. This took a serious toll on my confidence. I developed an infection that went undetected for three months, and subsequently my hormones and emotions were completely out of balance. I literally lost my mind and both my love and I truly could not recognize the lost, insecure woman I had become.

My once-sublime relationship was in tatters and the final cord between he and I gave way a few months ago.

It was over.

All of this dripped down over me as a wax coating; initially searing my senses. I suffered. I was lost and without my best friend. My fight diminished. Like cooling taffy, the wax was hardening and ready to cast me into a permanent model of failure. 

I took the very last minutes before I was frozen in time and decided to change everything.

This is not the first time I’ve started over. Fuck. I've gone from place to place since the age of fourteen. I've been to several schools, I've tried on different religions, including Mormonism, only to find that less than a year after that practice, I couldn't go a day without thinking of having sex with women.

I've contradicted myself and lived versions of what I imagined my life should or could be, only to find that I was digging and searching after the community or situation no longer suited me. I don't walk around telling myself I'm bad or wrong for this. In fact, there are times when I show these histories like stamps on a passport.

Yes. I am indebted to the varying hats and hairstyles I’ve donned. It is unbeatable experience.

To add, I studied English in college. I have always been a strong and unpolished writer. With this skill, I’ve regaled others and documented the lakes and rivers and oceans into which I’ve dipped my toes. But with true nomadic fervor, I had yet to seek a career in writing.

On a Wednesday night in October, I rushed out of work and I sped east down Franklin, hopped out of my car, and walked briskly to the The Hollywood Bowl Box Office. An earlier history helps explain my gesture, but the bottom line is that I was going to try my hand at one last-stitch gamble on us. As I paid for two center garden box tickets for Atoms For Peace, I wondered if he might soften. I sent my ex a text asking if he had plans. He responded by telling me he was taking a friend’s unused ticket to the same show. I asked him if he would come with me just to see if we could have a nice time together.

Well, it all turned to shit in a second. My ex was upset. He didn’t want to stay at the show knowing I’d done that. And he didn’t want to be on a date with me. And it was all too much.

After trying to convince him to go with his friends anyway, he declined. I left.

I shot a text to a friend whose birthday would be at midnight. I asked her to accompany me as a birthday present. She was elated. Next to that lovely warm bath of rejection and fucking up another night for my poor ex, honestly, what more could I ask for? 

No no no, truthfully, it was lovely and special to see her face light up and gift her that ticket. I'm thrilled the night took its turn with her.

In sauntering down to our seats, with yes-nods at each ticket checkpoint, we let go of the day and the electrified nuance whisked us into the present: the smack-dab center of The Hollywood Bowl. Exchanging 'holy fuck these are our seats?!' eyes, we beamed.

The music started. People began dancing apprehensively. I drank some wine. We befriended the other two girls in our box and I made a decision to have a great time. A few songs in, a white-haired man was making a scene down the aisle from us. Old dude was dancing, sure, but he had some flamboyant moves, the likes of which I’d never seen. He was an original.

I had only one thought: join him.

Here’s why: there’s an amateur video of a young shirtless buck dancing to his heart’s content on YouTube. He was a Sasquatch Festival-goer in Washington State and many people decided to record him with their phones. He was up on a hill during Santi(o)gold’s set. During her song “Unstoppable,” others joined in. I won’t tell you what happens next, because if you haven’t seen the video, you’re in luck. It’s easily one of my favorite things to watch and share.

So, I darted down to our version of Sasquatch Dance Sensation; truth be told, not to start a revolution or to be a YouTube subject, but because… well, why the fuck wouldn’t I? It got me a little closer to the stage, and he was on fire! I didn't emulate him perfectly, but I let myself be wild and free. A few minutes into the sweaty, silly, messy mix, I thought to check on my friend and jaunted back up to our box.

A tall man in a wide-brimmed hat leaned into me before I reached our seats. He and his friends were in the box across the aisle. They beckoned me over and said they go to shows all over the world, and the man I’d been dancing with is famous. Well, famous to them. They whipped out their iPhones and began showing me photos and clips of the white-haired disheveled menace grooving at various venues. I’d been dancing with a legend! Again, a legend to them.

We all shook hands, engaged, and laughed. They shared some water with me, and I asked the question that’d been burning in my mind since the tall man’s initial lunge in my direction.

"So why do you all get to travel around the world to shows?"

They work for Atlantic Records.

I responded with “That’s amazing!” and kept dancing.

The tall man introduced himself to me as Warren.

He was warm and funny. I had initial reservations about talking to anyone else that night, but relaxed. Maybe this was due to the wine and other substances, or because his friends vouched for what a great guy he was, but there’s also no freedom like being at a great gig. Artists can start riots. Live music physically and emotionally brings people together. Bands create movements. Shows can bond you to a place and time and as my brother Alex so eloquently put it, it’s like religious worship. 

This was part of the service where people emit "Peace be with you," somewhere between a whisper and one's inside-voice, and shake hands. Though our church requires us to belt out our names two or three times before anyone can hear us.

And, if I am honest, it’s completely against my nature to not make friends.

So, I spouted out a few things to him about myself, my activities that night (including that I'd ingested mushrooms), and I mentioned (more than once) that I had been insufferable, a  heinous version of myself, for the last few months during my recently-ended relationship.

We genuinely took a liking to one another. I live out loud. I think he appreciates that. I admitted I played Hall & Oates on repeat that entire day. He wanted to make me playlists. I bragged that my Instagram name is KatewoodMac. Somehow, I stepped out of my character enough to give him my number (I make friends, yes, but I’ll leave it there or relegate them to Facebook acquaintance). It was benign. And we were already friends, ready to share music.

We have since spent days sharing songs, playlists, artists, and remixes. We’ve gone to see music and he’s met some of my friends in bands.

As Warren and I discussed music more, I realized that my core love, my lifelong counterpart, is music. I love it with an unmatched passion and my knowledge is vast.

I will never be a perfect catalogue. I consider myself an aficionada but no savant. There are genres and artists of which I've never heard and I'm far from ashamed of this. I embrace it.

Nothing in this world brings me more pleasure than to introduce a new piece of music to a friend or stranger and see his or her face light up; I’m giddy to volunteer myself for the receiving end of that gesture. 

I feel for music the way one might feel about fresh love. I dote on it. I spend hours of my day thinking about it. I relish in its beauty and strength and it speaks to my heart in dynamic ways.  I am a blessed woman. I fall in love and feel euphoric connection by pressing ‘Play.’

This new endeavor, this blog or form of self-expression, is about everything. It’s about life and love and my experience and my adventures, but it will always come back to the music. It’s titled “Womanly Lessons I Never Learned” because, for the first time in my life I feel like a woman, and I’ve been missing out on that. I revel in the fact that I’m out of my early-mid twenties, though I’ll take these posts back and forth because there’s pure gold in some of those embarrassing mishaps, ‘best nights ever,’ and shitshow stories. Stay tuned… I just turned twenty-eight and I couldn’t be revved.