The Undone Malcolm X Radio Project

The controversy about the late Manning Marable's biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking) brought to mind a radio project I wanted to do at WBAI in New York in the 1970s. Unfortunately I never got to do it. Probably because of procrastination.

I wanted to do a 90-minute to two-hour roundtable discussion that would have included several people who knew Malcolm. Those I thought of inviting to the broadcast included Alex Haley, James Baldwin, Ossie Davis, Maya Angelou, John Henrik Clarke, and Gordon Parks.

Many of these luminaries are now deceased. But if the program had taken place it would have been a memorable, if not historic, document of the life and times of Malcolm X, bringing to light a lot of previously unknown facts about the iconic Black Muslim spokesman. There's no doubt that a recording of the broadcast would later have been useful to historians and biographers.

It's still possible to do a program using the printed and recorded words of the aforementioned individuals, but such a program would lack the interactivity, spontaneity, and serendipity of a live, in-studio discussion.

The Career Student

There are three radio commercials for the job website bigapplehelpwanted.com. My favorite is the one in which a mother encourages her son, who has spent 16 years acquiring various college degrees, to look for a job. Some of the degrees, he tells her, "are B.S." She browses through the website and finds, to his dismay, an extremely esoteric job that fits one of his degrees. She rejoices by singing "Happy days are here again!" A very funny commercial.

The Multi-Talented Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino (1918-1995), British-born American actress/director/screenwriter.

"She just loved that horror stuff. I'm amused by all these so-called feminine pioneer directors who toot their own horns today. They couldn't carry her script case. We used to call her the Great Orsini sometimes. She was the packaged [Orson] Welles. She could act, she could direct, she could write, she could drink. She was so serious about it. She really was. When she acted, she was serious. When she was producing, she was serious. When she was directing, she was most serious because that's what she enjoyed more than anything else."--Doug Benton, associate producer, Thriller (NBC-TV). [Benton died in 2000. The quote is from Fangoria magazine, Issues 155 & 156 (1996). The interviewer was Tom Weaver, who reprinted it in Monsters, Mutants, and Heavenly Creatures. The interview was read on the audio commentary track of "The Weird Tailor" episode, Thriller, Season Two. (Thriller was broadcast from 1960-1962).]

A Few Words From James Weldon Johnson

"I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against the powers of hell."--James Weldon Johnson, author (1871-1938)

A Few Words From Joseph Lowery

I love this quote: "Lord, in the memory of all the saints, who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right."--Rev. Joseph Lowery, at Barack Obama's presidential inauguration, 2009. (Quoted in The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick (Knopf, 2010.)

Barack Obama, At Last

Time: June 16, 2009. Place: Harlem State Office Building, 2nd Floor Art Gallery (group exhibition). During the slide presentation, a painting of Barack Obama came on the screen, accompanied by Etta James's recording of "At Last" on the sound system. Everyone in the room stood up and applauded.

Close Encounters Of The Erotic Kind

Sean Wolfe's collection of gay erotic stories is called Close Contact: Tales of Erotica (Kensington Books). The stories take place in San Francisco ; Denver; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, among other locales and the steamy sex scenes occur in a variety of venues: a bathhouse, a park , the back of a bus, etc. One story takes place in a motel and is a send-up of Hitchcock's Psycho. Like an O. Henry story, a few of these tales reveal a twist ending that's hard not to chuckle at.

If you are easily offended by graphic descriptions of sex, Wolfe's collection is probably not your cup of tea, or should I say, cum since in these stories, plenty of it flies around--on chests, faces, walls. Need I say more?

These 28 stories start off innocently, establishing setting, characters, and plot, and before you know it, you're in the middle of hot, no-holds-barred liaisons of every conceivable kind between two or more consenting adults.

In stories that without nary a word about HIV/AIDS, condoms abound. And they are quickly pulled off 9-inch penises (Wolfe's obsession) in time for those flying cum acrobatics. Too bad there isn't a story about a guy trying to break a Guinness record in how fast cum can travel.

One drawback of the stories in Close Contact is that the sex scenes are formulaic: they begin and end the same way most porn films do--oral, then anal sex. Otherwise, Wolfe is a gifted writer, who should not limit his talent to writing erotica .