By now, you’ve probably heard the bad news from the entertainment world. First, the world lost the hilarious and hard-working Bernie Mac. I’ve been a fan of his since I first saw him on Def Comedy Jam and it’s always a treat to see him pop up in a movie. His self-hating cop is probably my favorite part of “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” and I quote parts of it whenever I’m talking about some Uncle Tom. Then we get the sudden sad news that composer, singer, actor, voice actor and all-around soul man Isaac Hayes died. I don’t have words for how much I enjoyed his music and how much he cracked me up in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and South Park. Those are two really talented people that have left this Earth far too soon.

Then, it happened. You know what I’m talking about. “Aw man, they always go in threes.” No they don’t. This is what I think happens: people hear that celebrities always die in threes so people keep separating them into groups of three in their head. There’s another reason, but I’ll tell you that a bit later. Some people brought up that Estelle Getty would be the first of the three, but she passed away 18 days ago on July 22nd. Others brought up Jesse Helms but that was on the Fourth of July. A lot of people said George Carlin, but that was in June. June! How close do these three have to be? Can I put Marlon Brando, Fatty Arbuckle and the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu into the same group? It’s a group of three, isn’t it? I checked out IMDB’s ‘Died, 2008′ page and this wcbstv.com page for reference and just a quick glance at January shows that Heath Ledger died in the same month as actress Suzanne Pleshette, chessmaster Bobby Fischer, the original horror host Vampira, Sir Edmund Hillary and Brad Renfro. June 2008 robbed us of George Carlin, NBC’s Tim Russert, special effects pioneer Stan Winston, blues man Bo Diddley, Cyd Charisse, and Don S. Davis (General Hammond from Stargate-SG1). Those aren’t even complete lists! So if you’re going to group together people people in different months, you’ll have to make groups bigger than three.

The second reason that I think people tend to stretch the group time periods out is psychological. It still doesn’t fully register in my head that George Carlin is gone even though it was over a month ago. I thought Estelle Getty died a week before Hayes and Mac when it was really longer than that. It’s a lesser version of the same feeling you have when someone that you know in real life passes away. Of course, another reason why it seems to happen in threes is probably because that’s as high as many entertainment reporters can count. Ba-dump-bump!

So on this day that celebrates the struggles of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, I can’t help but to think about something my mother said to me last year after the demonstrations to get the Jena Six a fair trial caused more threats. When my mother was growing up, Black folks couldn’t sit in the regular seats in the old Robin’s Theater downtown and it was unwise to be in certain parts of town when the sun went down or you’d catch hell from the police. She was alive during the Civil Rights movement so it’s not some weird abstract concept to her. What my mother said was, “It feels like we’re going backwards.”

I’d been thinking the same thing but I figured it was skewed by my limited perspective. I’m 34, so I haven’t seen the same level of racism she saw. Right now it’s not as bad locally as it was when I was younger. I have stories from the 70’s and 80’s that could easily derail this whole post, but a lot of what I deal with now is stuff like going into a store with a white friend while explaining why employees are suddenly following us everywhere and not going to remembering which stores to avoid because they have prejudiced staffs. What’s messed up is that it’s always seemed like it was getting better up until around 2001 or so.

Back in 2006 I vaguely mentioned on my sites that I had a paid website assignment that I never explained or pointed to. What happened was that someone came to me to put together a website that detailed the workplace discrimination that they were fighting. I can’t go into detail and the website never made it onto the internet, but I saw photocopies of the threats and police reports filled with things that most of America claims to be a thing of the past. I saw things that, excuse my language here, pissed me off. No, not pissed off at white folks but by the fact that the other people in the company didn’t seem to give a crap until it could hurt their public image. Then I was mad that nobody was talking about stuff like this. You’d find more news reports about the squabbles between pairs of iced-out, shirtless rappers than about an innocent lives being threatened.

As irked as I was about that discrimination case, I can’t even imagine what it was like to live in the days of Jim Crow and Sundown towns. Then imagine being Martin Luther King and fighting for the equal right of all people while being the target of both the lawless and the law itself. How do you shoulder that kind of weight when you become one of the focal points of the movement? I heard that the person who performed the autopsy on him said that he was stressed out to the point of having the heart of a 60 year old man. He and the others around the world who fought (and fight now) for equal rights endured a lot of pain in the hopes that those who followed wouldn’t have to know that same strain. So instead of this being just another holiday, this is a day to think about them and thank them for what they’ve done for this world. Sounds cheesy, but I think they deserve far more than that.

This post is for any friends that are on social networking sites. Not that anyone reads this blog, BUT STILL.

I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine that I know from the shadowy world of MUGEN. No, not the part that makes random-ass fight videos and 10 minute presentations of their character select screen, but the part where people actually do things. I read it and it turns out that it was really an automatic e-mail from WAYN.com that was sent out to everybody in his address book or something. That automatically turned me off from joining the site, but it’s not as if I’m the target consumer of such stuff anyways. I’m not mad at my friend, but I don’t really trust any sites that do things like that.

The one that irks me more than that is Facebook. It sent me an e-mail that claimed to be from a friend with the message title, “I’ve added you as a friend on Facebook.” But it was really just some automail message that pretended to be him. Again, I’m not mad at my friend but I can’t really trust a site that sends out messages in other peoples’ names.

Look, I’m not paranoid despite what the brainwave-recording data files from the black helicopters would have you believe. And the fact that I’m not ready to trust certain social networking sites isn’t my way of saying that I’m not your friend. I just find it hard to join a website that starts telling lies to me before I’ve even joined up.

Because it just was. For me, it was somewhat balanced. I gave my site the redesign kick in the crapflaps it’s needed for damn-near-ever but now I’m dealing with small annoying bugs. I started a comic and almost immediately got stuck on it when I came up with better ideas for it. Drawing and computer coloring feels more natural again but now I seem to spend too much time working on the sites (except this one).

This started off as a rough year when my grandfather died but ends with the birth of my impossibly cute niece, Aaliyah. This is my first time being able to see a niece or nephew so young on a regular basis. I only got to see my niece Shella a few times as another impossibly cute baby, but I’ll be able to see Aaliyah on a more regular basis. This will lead to me helping to spoil that kid with toys and, as soon as she’s old enough, Duplo blocks.

So, to anyone bored enough to read this rickety blog, Happy New Year!