Black Pioneer Stuntmen

An excerpt from NPR -

For 2 Black Stuntmen Breaking Into Hollywood, 'You Were Subject To Get Hurt'

Willie Harris and Alex Brown, photographed in Stockton, Calif.

For some African-Americans who have been in Hollywood for decades, though, this is a familiar story. Willie Harris and Alex Brown, two black stuntmen who first tried to break into the movie business in the 1960s, quickly realized that studios wouldn't hire black stuntmen.

"When we were starting, anytime they had a stunt to do with a black actor in them, they would paint these white guys in blackface," Brown recalls, on a recent visit to StoryCorps with Harris.

"We wanted to prove that black guys can do stunts," Harris says. "But we couldn't get anyone to train us."

So they trained themselves. After their day jobs, they set about perfecting their craft in public parks. On Wednesday nights, they'd practice falling onto donated mattresses and throwing punches while Los Angeles police watched from a parked car nearby.

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468157462/for-2-black-stuntmen-breaking-into-hollywood-you-were-subject-to-get-hurt

Afrofuturism Mixes Sci-Fi and Social Justice. Here’s How It Works.

Jason Ikeem Rodgers conducts The Orchestra Di Toscana Classica Part 1

This Kid - UGH!

From USA Today - (bold is mine)

A student breaks into his teacher's phone and distributes nude photo of her, and she's forced out.

(Photo: WYFF (Greenville, S.C.) News-4, via AP)

When we were kids, the teacher’s desk was a fearsome island, a place you didn’t approach unless you absolutely had to.

Clearly, things have changed.

Take what happened when a South Carolina high school teacher left her cell phone on her desk last week to, she says, do her hall monitoring duties for a few minutes.

That phone was swiped by a 16-year-old male student, who then opened her photo library, went through the teacher’s photos, found a picture of her nude that she had taken for her husband (as she would later freely admit) for Valentine’s Day. The student took a snapshot of that photo with his phone, then sent it around to anyone and everyone he chose.

According to the teacher in an interview with a South Carolina CBS affiliate, that student later told her, “Your day of reckoning is coming.”

Now, I would like to state, proudly, how old I am. I am old enough that 1) If I took something from my teacher’s desk 2) If I dared to leaf through it 3) If I ever uttered the words, “Your day of reckoning is coming” to ANY ADULT IN THE WORLD — my day of reckoning would have already arrived.

I would have been thrown out of school, no questions asked, which would not have mattered, since my parents would have grounded me for life.

Instead, last week, the only day of reckoning was for the teacher, a 13-year veteran named Leigh Anne Arthur. Thanks to this kid’s antics, she was pressured to resign, she said.

And, until Friday, after the public outcry had grown loud, the student had not been punished or charged.

Like I said, things have changed.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2016/03/09/south-carolina-high-school-fires-teacher-nude-selfie-student-thief-column/81541862/

The Blind Leading the Blind

Ben Carson has just announced he's supporting Trump for President.

It goes to show you that even smart people can be stupid.

Unlikely Business Partners

From The Root -

2 Former Los Angeles Gang Rivals Created a Catering Business

Trap Kitchen LA is the brainchild of  former Bloods and Crips members.

http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2016/03/_2_former_los_angeles_gang_rivals_created_a_catering_business.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

The New Footlong

From Salon - 

“Size queens take note”: Chicago hot dog stand creates the “Trump footlong” and “it’s yuuuuge” 

The description of these 3-inch long dogs is as honest as the man whose name they bear — so, not at all 

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/11/size_queens_take_note_chicago_hot_dog_stand_creates_the_trump_footlong_and_its_yuuuuge/?source=newsletter

Quote

From Very Smart Brothas - 

MARIA SHARAPOVA MUST’VE HAD SOME SHITTY DRUGS IF THEY MADE HER LOSE TO SERENA 18 STRAIGHT TIMES

~~~~~~~~~~

Now, I’m not sure what meldonium is or what it does, but I do know that performance enhancing drugs are called performance enhancing drugs because they are drugs that presumably enhance performance. I also know that Maria Sharapova, the world’s highest paid tennis player, has lost 18 consecutive times to Serena Williams. The most recent being Jan 26th, the day she was drug tested. Which makes me wonder which performance these drugs were enhancing. Did her hair get more blonde? Did she get better at typing? Did her guacamole improve? Is she doing a better job responding to emails and text messages in a timely manner? Can she drink a whole Hennessy fifth? (Some call that a problem, but I consider it a gift.) Did she receive an especially cruel version of the same powers as Bradley Cooper in Limitless, with tennis courts being her only kryptonite? Can she Wobble without forgetting her steps? Or learn how to summarize shows to friends without spoiling them? (An underrated great quality to have.) Did she become a crocheting maven? Like, the best motherfucking crocheter in the history of crocheting? Can this chick loop the shit out of some yarn now?

http://verysmartbrothas.com/maria-sharapova-mustve-had-some-shitty-drugs-if-they-made-her-lose-to-serena-18-straight-times/

You're Never Too Old to Twist & Shout

To My Irish Friends . . .

From The Associated Press - 

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, genealogical research website Ancestry.com is making 10 million Catholic parish records from Ireland — some dating to 1655 — available online for free to help people trace their Irish heritage.

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:b6c1df6496f64070a59e8b4fbd702551

Real or Fake?

From USA Today -

How to spot fake product reviews.  Just copy the URL of the product onto the page, and wait for the analysis of reviews.

http://fakespot.com/top-fake-reviews

This Dude Should Rot in Hell!

Great News!

An excerpt from The New York Times -

New Procedure Allows Kidney Transplants From Any Donor

In the anguishing wait for a new kidney, tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists may never find a match because their immune systems will reject almost any transplanted organ. Now, in a large national study that experts are calling revolutionary, researchers have found a way to get them the desperately needed procedure.

In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients’ immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor.

The method, known as desensitization, “has the potential to save many lives,” said Dr. Jeffery Berns, a kidney specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/health/kidney-transplant-desensitization-immune-system.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%203/10/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All&_r=0

Daylight Saving Time Explained

Texas. Texas. Texas. Part 3

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lawn-mower-dog-texas_us_56e0e731e4b0b25c9180d662

Bionic Fingertips May Be Medical BreakThrough

Meet 15 Black Tech Innovators Diversifying SXSW

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/03/meet_15_black_tech_innovators_who_are_bringing_diversity_to_south_by_southwest.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

A Touching Moment

From The Root -

Photo of Baltimore Teen Praying Over Homeless Man Goes Viral

The unidentified teen was walking to the bus when he saw a sleeping homeless man. He stopped, knelt, touched the man's foot, and prayed over him.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/03/photo_of_baltimore_teen_praying_over_homeless_man_goes_viral.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

School Janitor Singing Sam Cooke

The Return of the Black Panther

An excerpt from The Atlantic -

The Return of the Black Panther
A behind-the-scenes look at the revival of Marvel’s first black-superhero series—and an exclusive preview of the first issue

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

~~~~~~~~~~

Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of The Uncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power. That is the premise behind the wimpy Steve Rogers mutating into Captain America, behind the nerdy Bruce Banner needing only to grow angry to make his enemies take flight, behind the bespectacled Peter Parker being transfigured by a banal spider bite into something more.

But comic books provided something beyond escapism. Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. Some of this was personal. All of the comics I loved made use of two seemingly dueling forces—fantastic grandiosity and ruthless efficiency. Comic books are absurd. At any moment, the Avengers might include a hero drawn from Norse mythology (Thor), a monstrous realization of our nuclear-age nightmares (the Hulk), a creation of science fiction (Wasp), and an allegory for the experience of minorities in human society (Beast). But the absurdities of comics are, in part, made possible by a cold-eyed approach to sentence-craft. Even when the language tips toward bombast, space is at a premium; every word has to count. This big/small approach to literature, the absurd and surreal married to the concrete and tangible, has undergirded much of my approach to writing. In my journalism here at The Atlantic, I try to ground my arguments not just in reporting but also in astute attention to every sentence. It may not always work, but I am really trying to make every one of those 18,000 words count.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-return-of-the-black-panther/471516/?utm_source=atl-daily-newsletter