side character syndrome
first day out, turn my levels off 🎶
aw shit i ain’t posted since september…ugh…*cracks fingers* this thing still on?
*blows mad dust off the keyboard*
been locked in with work for the last few months, copped the new knee (deadstock fr), doing the baby giraffe walk till I get my strength back, so thanks for ya patience in the meantime, new loosies content soon come.
audio? visual? who knows, just keep it locked 🤝
ashley: we linked after i did a set and years back and we’ve done nothing but effortlessly grow together since. always proud to be your friend and as i said: “your growth is my growth, and mine is yours” to many more years of sneaker shopping and soul search- SOLE SEARCHING THAT’S THE NAME OUR SHOW ONE DAY DON’T LET ME FORGET 👟
camryn: my lil mentee finished her first short!!! let’s gooo, the takeover has begun ✨
lucas: big tings a gwan my g! shout out to a new gig and moving in with ya shorty. proud of the bounce back and love to see the growth. feb 2, knicks-grizzlies, see you there 🌱
jordan: shout out to your show going tf up and you ain’t need to beatbox your way to the top. sorry i can’t be at your bachelor weekend; having one knee in the club might be the end of me 💍
fuck amelia for calling me “ol bionicle leg,” you lucky me and the spirit of the mata nui ain’t talked in a minute (luv u) 🌽
rj barrett, immanuel quickley, julius randle, and obi toppin: bing mf bong 🏀
karen and jordana: my homies getting them tv credits up! proud of y’all, always got mad love.🎨
yoss: copped the new crib?? let’s throw a house party when my leg starts legging again 🏡
miriam: new job, new start. you been going through a lot lately so i hope this is a new day for you over there. big ups you, char, and cally. ✨
quincy: the short film is doing numbers, i’m proud of you my g ✨
val: welcome back from france. i was tired of explaining to my friends that i don’t have a fancy therapist, just one who *is* french. the city missed you 💊
dr. alaia: you crazy for this one. shout out to you for giving me this new knee. still tight you didn’t make that shit with cupholders and butterfly doors like i asked but still thank you 💊
yera, dan, and brett: you already know, thanks for being knee crew, we gonna wrangle this bitch ass quadriceps muscle ong
dewayne: big ups for you selling that project, black writers forever fr fr 🔥
mom and dad: thank you so much for coming all the way from ohio to come and take care of me during surgery and right after. you know how much i don't like being taken care of and hate breaks (i wonder where i got that from…) but i won't lie; it kind of felt good having my mom and dad take care of me again. 👑
happy birthday dad, there’s no me at all without all you guidance, patience, kindness, and hours spent playing soccer and watching msnbc together. i love you so much, pops ❤️
maria: thank you for being my legs until i can walk again. thank you for dealing with my stubbornness and insistence on being independent. i don't know what i would have done without you and the moment that i am free from this leg brace, we doing a 3-day spa, i swear to you ❤️
all the homies who’ve pulled up to check in on me while i recover, i love you! mars, rama, pop, ashley, leah, karen, doye, joey, bianca, nicole, ray, jah, grace, and all y’all mad mad love ❤️
friendsgiving crew: thanks for coming through and becoming really really vulnerable with people that you either knew decently well or didn't know at all! food was bussin, decolonization and anticapitalism was in the air, and level three soon come 🍚🍚🍚
sjv crew: we (back) outside ✨✨
finally:
my baby sister turned 25 in september. i hope you know how much i appreciate you and look up to you. life is tough and you been rolling with the punches for a minute now. just know i’m still the big bro you can hit up to knock niggas heads around. so so so grateful i got you for a little sister and even luckier that, through it all, you’re still here with us, with me.
welp, lemme let you get back to learning how to make weird noises as you stand up; you one of us olds now, ms. gen z. i love you, aiche.
oh yeah I turned 30 and maria made this fire cake and threw an ill lil kickback for me:
today’s word of the day is “projecting.” watch out for people putting their problems onto you.
lessons mean nothing without application.
boyyyyy after percocet, that future mask off track hit different. i heard them flutes in my dreams
new sensitive rapper name: lil spoon
never done an opioid and you know i’m mr. rogers level washed because melatonin and percs had ya boy feeling like a 7 hour kid cudi hum every night
dear white people season 4 really saw shmigadoon and said “niggadoon. run it.”
ted lasso refuses to stop curbstomping your heart, doesn’t it?
i’m gonna have to george bush the button on saying “nigga” at work because i’m code switching so much, i don’t know who i am any more
saw shorty getting dragged for pretending to be a decorated military official to get into a tv writers room and would like the same energy to be applied to writers who pretend they have black friends for the same reason
omarion about to put 🎶 a vi-rus where your heart post to be🎶
iatse gang on this side, strike these hoe ass producers into submission, we got your back
i deadass thought squid game was just gonna be a follow up to that documentary where that guy definitely didn’t fuck that octopus
sometimes i think that people who write tv think that people who watch tv are too fucking stupid
free drill rapper name: betty glocker
little mans really crossed state lines to do big murder and the judge was giving him forehead kisses and uwus like a mf; I was surprised that he didn’t make him a plate right then and there. rittenhouse and zimmerman, fades soon come
if you’re reading this, please let me know if i should come out as ace to my whole job. they keep telling me to write scenes about heterosexual fucking and i’m just like “they passionately smooch or whatevs?”
is “internet speak” the new transatlantic accent from old movies? except for this time, everyone sounds like off-brand black teenagers
america can only make squid game if it’s about girlboss feminism or llc black twitter
love therapy voyeurism shows. val, if i ever sell a show like that, you’ll be on staff.
all i know about baby keem is that he has two phones and doesn’t know who to trust
christianity is gang shit, you can’t tell me different
ah the two genders, chappellologists vs the chappelle apologists
i thought it was just me (but it isn’t): making the journey from “what will people think?” to “i am enough” - brené brown
if you need to learn about shame, look no further than brené brown. look, we're all growing and changing and trying to navigate a world that doesn't allow you to be stagnant socially, emotionally, physically, etc. we are all looking for the language to describe specifically how we feeling, avoiding the trappings of minimizing our true feelings just so things don't get “awkward.” in this book, brené brown artfully describes what shame feels like, what it looks like, reminding us the entire time that it's not one-size-fits-all.
i've written before about how much i hate grief policing but also equally hate people who grieve so publicly that it doesn't allow other people to move on. i didn't have a word for it but brene brown brought it home. the phenomenon that i hate is called sympathy seeking. oftentimes, i come back to the distinction between empathy and sympathy and i learned through this book just how many people (who were) in my life are sympathy seekers who are looking for confirmation of their uniqueness in navigating their feelings and not seeking empathy, a deeper, more reciprocal form of communicating. i have too many friends with who i have deep, honest relationships to spend any more time on relationships that do not have any sense of reciprocity.
empathy asks us all to see each other as human and shame is often used as a tool of dehumanization, whether it's to take somebody who thinks that there's a larger than life down a peg or it's to put somebody at our own level “in their place.”
the biggest takeaway from this book is just how inhumane our current system of utilizing, manipulating, perpetuating, and weaponizing shame really is; shaming people is so normalized going all the way back to our schooling and is manifesting every single day in our interactions with strangers online as well as our interpersonal relationships. we are all in need of a deeper empathy education (on top of a more patient and nuanced examination of all our interactions) and i think that if that sounds interesting to you, this book is the one.
15 minutes of shame - hbo max
this documentary, narrated by monica lewinsky, is the absolute best distillation of how shame, punishment, accountability, the internet, schadenfreude, mob mentality, and human nature, have been used correctly and incorrectly. the documentary focuses more on the incorrect use of it but touches upon shame in a very accessible and honest way.
in the last several years, shame has been used as a motivator to get people to change and the documentary tracks the path of shame from how are use it as kids and ties it to various real-life social media debacles that ruined people's lives with no real accountability. it tackles the idea “shame works” by asking us to view another person's humanity not just their ability to be a retweet or click magnet. it honestly just asks us to think for one more goddamn second before we try and demolish someone’s life. plain and simple. clearly, there are people who are outside of the scope of what we're looking for when it comes to accountability but oh, that being said, the normalized way that we use shame and take joy in it does leave bodies in our wake.
if anything, give this documentary a watch with some friends. it's something that i talk about with my friends a lot especially in an age where a tweet can be the spark of a firestorm and more people might get burned if we don't try a different way. social media has become the one-stop shop to get our shit out but what do we gain? what do we lose? is there a better way?
now that i’m free, lemme use this parole to let you know what’s up next:
frontal fatigue: the impact on modern life and technology on mental health - mark d rego md
becoming abolitionists: police, protests, and the pursuit of happiness - derecka purnell
the politics of trauma: somatics, healing, and social justice - staci haines
tapes to bump:
lowkey superstar - kari faux
trust fund babies - lil wayne, rich the kid
lately i feel everything - willow
they got amnesia - french montana (hahhhh)
that new adele pack
don’t sleep on little sims
every time that i end a job i learn not only what to do in the future but also what not to do. i took my last job to firmly plant my feet outside of my comfort zone and believe me, i was there for mad long; shit felt cold for a minute. but i thugged it out through everything and i’m grateful for the new perspective.
absolutely no shade, and big ups to the big homie and big boss for all the experience that i will carry on into the future; gonna cop some hardware for sure off this one.
lessons mean nothing without application. up next for me, write a doc so people don’t gotta go through what i’ve been through. shout out cam and ashley for the convos about all those thoughts and bringing it back. even more up next, sprucing up my projects:
griot: navigating african identity in america (a)
flyovers: why the midwest is dying (c)
ps 666: education in new york public schools (c)
freeman: reparations gone wrong (ls)
ace: unpacking generational trauma and deconstructing masculinity, hypersexuality, and queer identity (c)
freelancers: anticapitalist escapism (f/c)
mandates:
write with intention.
know what you want to say.
authenticity above all else.
kill the ego.
birth the world you want to see.
more loosies soon come 🙏🏾
Love you and so proud of you always🙏🏽❤️