Cool Is Effortlessness

The Agony Of Zac Efron

Zac Efron is not cool, and this pronouncement is neither an insult nor a revelation to him. His lack of cool has nothing to do with the fact that, as a preadolescent, he lived for community theater or that he tried to get away with wearing a fedora to school at 15. Cool is effortlessness. Efron is all effort. Whether you’re the type who watches High School Musical and starts feeling so tingly that you think you’ve finally gotten your period, or the kind for whom watching it makes you fantasize about living in a European country where euthanasia is legal, you can’t view a choreographed number like HSM 1‘s “Get’cha Head in the Game”—in which Efron and his Wildcats teammates sing while manipulating synchronized bouncing basketballs—and not immediately understand the level of commitment the project would demand of a 17-year-old. [Details]

The World It Seems So Very Small

Lauryn Hill is back. Sort of. One of my favorite songs ever. From Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill

“Nothing Even Matters”

No Words Left To Speak

Before Lauryn Hill… Diana Ross & The Supremes “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” No subtext; I just like the song

6,870 Words

There are 6,713 words after this. Words that may one day resemble a book.

The piano girl on 114th loved to play her black and ivory. Ivory keys on black bought by her father. Her father who’s never there. Everyday, she practiced. Repeated. She practiced, the piano girl Kendra from 114th. Long, thick black braids down her back, she lived in a brownstone with her mom, and her mom told her the piano would get her nowhere. Her father was absent. There, but never there. He came and went, brown hat and slacks, khakis, was all she saw of him because he came and went. Drank his coffee black, came and went. Every morning before school, Kendra played her piano. Started off with Beethoven’s Ninth—placed her hands over the keys, listened, and drifted off to a place. Kendra in the morning did this until her mom yelled stop. Time to go. She was the child of the house, the piano girl Kendra from 114th who’s 14.

Sure Look Like A Star

Just keep trying and trying
It’s just a matter of timing
Though the grinding is tiring
Don’t let ‘em stop you from smiling
Just keep trying and trying
Sooner or later you’ll find it
It’s surprising how inspiring
It is to see you shining
Cause in the dark of the night you’re all i can see
and you sure look like a star to me

short story about waiting

Tomorrow I’ll have coffee.

And I’ll sit on a bench in the morning, a green one, and wait for the pigeons to come.

Because they come every morning.

The coffee will be black with sugar, lots of sugar.

Sugar to keep me up, in the park, as the pigeons keep me waiting.

I won’t feed them but I’ll watch, as they feast and feed me.

Can’t wait.

Our President, the Writer

At least from early adulthood if not before, Barack Obama was clearly driven to write; to trace that continuing compulsion, from the days when he penned fiction and then memoir to his present speechcraft, is to recognize that writing is anything but a small part of Obama’s life. It’s basic to who he is.

“I think he sees the world through a writer’s eye,” says senior White House adviser and former Chicago journalist David Axelrod. “I’ve always appreciated about him his ability to participate in a scene and also reflect on it. I mean, I remember when we were meeting clandestinely with the guys who were vetting the vice presidential candidates. There was this courtly southern gentleman who was doing the vetting. The president said to me, ‘This whole scene’s right out of a Grisham novel.’ [GQ]

Barack Obama’s Work In Progress

First

Blocked

I said, “I want to write a novel. But I don’t know what to write.” Mom told me try to put myself in it and maybe that’d make it easier. I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. This isn’t Adaptation. “It’s not that easy,” I said. I screamed it, actually. I exclaimed it. It’s…not that easy. She says it is. I disagree. We disagree over and over before dropping the matter altogether.

We’re in the kitchen discussing the matter. The kitchen is in Philly. I’m trying to write a novel, but I have no idea. I have no ideas. Plural. No idea that’s original. My mom tells me stop. Think. Sit. Just stop. I tell her it’s not that easy. It’s…not that easy. We disagree over and over before dropping the matter altogether. We drop so many matters. Altogether.

We sit at the table and brainstorm.

Mom asks, “What do you want to write about?” I’m 19. She says, “Kayla, what do you want to write about?”

“I don’t know mom, that’s the problem!” She doesn’t understand. She’ll never understand. “I want to write about me… But not with me in it.”

She sighs. She laughs. “You want to write about you.”

“Not about me, but someone like me. I mean, something someone like me would read.”

I pause. I stare, suck teeth. “You get it?”

“Write about you.”

It’s not that easy.

Why News Still Matters

“In the middle of all this gossip and speculation that permeates peoples’ lives, I still think they know the difference between real news and bullshit. And they’re glad that someone cares enough to get things on the record and print the truth.” -Russell Crowe’s character in State of Play

When We Exhale

“I shed a lot of stuff, a lot of unnecessary weight in the last three or four years. I left a lot of old luggage behind, and when I did, the blessings just started pouring on me, and the light in my spirit started to lift again.” -Whitney, Ebony, October 2009

With a voice that gives you chills and makes her whole face sweat, Whitney Houston is one of the greatest balladeers in the history of music, missteps and all. She’ll be on Oprah’s season premiere on Sept. 14 & 15 in a two-part interview. The new songs are cool, but these are some jewels.

“Greatest Love Of All”

“Exhale (Shoop, Shoop)”

“Where Do Broken Hearts Go?”

Summer

When it rains, it feels like a million mini plastic army men marching on my face. The grass, prickly and soft. And when the clouds part, they’re gone. Though I wanted them there. Gone too soon.

Birthday Boy

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. -Maya Angelou