Listen to this: Corinne Bailey Rae is a breath of minty, fresh air in a hodge podge of formulaic, hot, stinky cow dung. A dash of Macy Gray, a dollop of Erykah Badu, two helpings of Billie, and a sprinkle of Martina Topley-Bird, and she is the result. Very relaxing. Songs of note are: Put your records on, Trouble Sleeping and Enchantment.
Read this: Dark Dreams, a book of short horror stories written by black writers, compiled and edited by horror writer, Brandon Massey. Some great authors have contributed to this, and it's rare to find a volume of horror stories all cleverly written by Black writers. C'mon, Tananarive Due is a contributor!
Rent This: Paradise Now. A poignant and controversial movie about two Palestinian men, recruited as suicide bombers. The two ponder the decision to go through with the mission assigned to them. Watch as they spend their last nights with their families and grapple with being "martyred", up until the very last minute they're strapped with bombs, and sent to the designated and ill-fated targeted city.
Watch this: Chappelle Show, the Lost Episodes, debuting this evening on Comedy Central. Ah, take care Dave, I came to know your comedic genius for a, seemingly, brief period. You've left me with enough fodder to cackle over for a while: Tyrone Biggums, Clayton Bigsby, Rick James-Bitch, Prince... Need I say more? While Chappelle show was cutting edge, and I will miss it, I think I understand Dave's need to step away from the hype surround his sudden celebrity. Anyway, these last few episodes, before Dave's sudden departure gives us, his fans, some semblance of closure. Critics are deeming them a little darker... Dave is grappling with his meteoric rise and the B.S. that comes with it, via these last few skits.
Go to this, if possible, or keep your eyes out for it: Into Me/Out of Me @ the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in NYC. Coordinated by head curator, Klaus Biesenbach, Into Me/Out of Me is group of exhibition works, collected from Andy Warhol, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mona Hatoum and various other artists. The exhibition explores the relationship between the human body and the material world via three processes: Metabolism, reproduction, and violence. Ken Johnson of the NYTimes desribed Into Me/Out of Me as: "fascinating, comical, repulsive, and annoying in its relentlessly literal insistence on the most grossly physical and often humiliating aspects of human experience." All good reasons to go see it.