#726 Soul City Gazette Profile: Crash Jenkins, Last of the Chronic Crashers- Toure

#726 Soul City Gazette Profile: Crash Jenkins, Last of the Chronic Crashers- Toure

Many disgruntled workers have said it, or wished it: “I’ll never drag myself out of bed to race to some thankless job to slave under some merciless massa. That’s pain, man. I’d rather get hit by a Mack truck.” Koko Jenkins kept to that thought seriously and became a professional car crash victim. He’s been collecting settlement checks since he was a teenager. Now at forty, he’s the last of he breed. He’s injured, slothful, but at least he isn’t a working stiff.

The way he figures it, life is pain no matter what. But if you can choose a moment of a lot of pain, or a whole life of pain, there’s no choice—get hit, collect money, than sit in from of the TV the rest of the year.

Notable Passage: “Plan when and how you’re going to take your pain and you’re winning.”

Rating: 7-6-6-7 Total= 26

#691 How Babe Ruth Saved My Life- Toure

#691 How Babe Ruth Saved My Life- Toure

Sports allegiances are a serious thing, and if you are a serious sports fan you know that there are unspoken rules about which team you are allowed to root for. And if you ever think about changing your allegiance from one team to another, you better have a good reason. If your team changes cities for example, or if you move cities, maybe after a certain interval you can change teams. But there is one hard and fast rule in sports allegiances in American sports: Red sox fans and Yankees fans hate each other and you cannot, EVER change allegiances from one to the other. 

“For a Bostonian to become a Yankee fan is for a Kennedy to become a Republican, an Irish Catholic to become a Jew. The Sox and Yanks are more than sports teams—they’re extensions of the local ego.”

One prep school kid is duped into thinking he can predict the outcome of the 1986 World Series and bets every kid in his New England school that the Mets will win. When his whole world is about to come down on his head, his life is saved by the “Curse of the Bambino.” Suddenly he changes his tune:

“If you could choose your parents you’d choose the best. If you could choose your team you’d choose the Yanks.”

Fun story, some of the details about betting are a little unbelievable (like needing to offer 75-1 to get people to bet one side of a World Series). No matter, GO YANKEES!!!

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#663 It’s Life and Death at the Slush Puppie Open- Toure

#663 It’s Life and Death at the Slush Puppie Open- Toure

This is a political science lesson played out on the tennis court. Two teenagers who attend the same junior tennis academy in Harlem are playing each other at the Slush Puppie Open tennis tournament. The favorite is Kwame Christmas:

“Kwame had been abandoned by his dad, and for him, tennis was about roaring back at the world. It allowed him to exercise the anger inside him through using his arm like a bullwhip, swinging hard and free.”

The director of the academy liked Kwame because he played like Malcolm X would have played:

“Attack the weak…We’re not here to have points given, we’re here to take them! To attack those whiteboys with a fury! You must play this game the way Malcolm would’ve played it! He would’ve hit the ball hard because he was all about acquiring power for the black community! He would’ve always held serve because holding serve is like controlling your community.”

Kwame was entangled in a heated contest with a lesser player from the academy, Paul Flambe. The director did not like Paul’s game, and considered it akin to Booker T. Washington:

“Paul talked proper. He used big words and pronounced everything crisply…[he] could sit on the baseline for hours and retrieve  almost any ball…he never felt the need to crush his opponents, never wanted to attack the net, never wanted to end points suddenly.”

This practice of wearing his opponents down aggravated the director, calling it “Uncle Tom Tennis.” But this day it won, he beat the top ranked Kwame. And that was sin enough to get all the other boys at the academy to see him as an enemy. They attacked him for beating their Malcolm X:

“Paul struggled the whole time. Especially when we slipped the noose over his neck. We held him up the way people hold people in victory. Then we dropped him.”

Toure is not subtle nor does he parse his symbolism. But the stories are so well done and packed in a clever delivery system that somehow makes the lesson entertaining. However the lessons are harsh and grave and need to be discussed. Why do we treat those political opinions slightly different than ours to larger penalties than those diametrically opposed? Those who agree with the teachings of Malcolm X should not be the enemy with those who agree with the teachings of Booker T. Washington. Not at all!

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#635 Solomon’s Big Day- Toure

#635 Solomon’s Big Day- Toure

This is quite a fantastic story about childhood, imagination, and art. Parents day is coming up, and the children of the class are supposed to paint something to be exhibited for all the parents to see. Solomon wants to paint a masterpiece, something that will show his parents his creativity, and how he sees the world. He wants his voice to be art.

His father is a cynic, and an alcoholic. He sees the city as he sees himself: dirty, sad, and bitter.

“This city is a crucible of corruption filled with predators and prey and if you slow down for a moment, you’re somebody else’s lunch.”

“Solomon had his own eyes. He loved the city. The city to him was a party, and all-day every-day carnival, where people slept or stood on the street playing drums and horns, and doing dances, and telling jokes, and the big green daddy trees of Central Park stood watch over the baby trees, and cars seemed like animals.”

Before painting, Solomon looks at his big art history book and goes straight for his favorite painting for inspiration, Romare Bearden’s The Block. It’s a Harlem streetscape and mirrors his own positive proud feelings about his neighborhood.

In a string of dreams and hopeful moments, Solomon imagines his school painting is a big hit, something that makes him famous and sought after. He’s the next Basquiat. He imagines a world where he can paint his future and hide within his own art. If you feel like your art give you value, than it does. Simple as that! 

This is a wonderful love letter to creativity. Once you feel that freedom, you never want to go back:

“But he wouldn’t go back. He couldn’t go back to a place where people made him live in between the lines when he knew that there were places where you didn’t have to.”

Notable Passage: on the truth of art: “If you want to mirror reality, get a camera. If you want to make someone understand reality, then you have to lie a little. You have to distort things, to exaggerate in a way that reveals the way you see things.”

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total= 38

#607 The Playground of the Ecstatically Blasé- Toure

#607 The Playground of the Ecstatically Blasé- Toure

Jamias (never) is a new hot club in a lost corner of New York City. Despite it’s location, it if always packed and full of celebrities and the city’s A-list names: “They were that overnight New Crew all ecstatically blasé”

The DJ played only songs from artists who died tragically young—Biggie Smalls, Curtis Mayfield, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Tupac, etc. and the menu was all creepy delicacies like spider’s legs. The place was a house where aspirations went to die, the entire staff was “an army of soulless dreamers.” This story is a good piece of satire for all those artists, singers, actresses that never make it past waiting tables. It’s like hotel California. Hey, sometimes being a hostess at a big time club in New York City is fame enough.

Notable Passage: “There’s no place like home, but New York City is a close second.”

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30

#572 My History- Toure

#572 My History- Toure

This story is pure fantasy. It’s a list bullet points invoking many of the racial injustices and black leaders from the American experience; and instead of listing the awful things that happened, Toure reverses them. For example:

-Hiphop never becomes materialistic and commercial, and continues as Black America’s CNN, putting knowledge on the street, building the political consciousness of a generation…

-Muhammad Ali wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-Vietnam War efforts.

-Basquiat survives heroin—Sly survives coke—Pryor survives himself.

-Stevie Wonder is named Poet Laureate.

Some them are socio-political, some are pop-culture. As a whole is seems at first like a childish exercise, a little naïve even, but given the entirety of the list, by the end it hits home in a way that is both powerful and depressing.

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30

#544 Attack of the Love Dogma- Toure

#544 Attack of the Love Dogma- Toure

Mojo is on a date with a beautiful blonde woman. They are having a wonderful time, and they are both feeling like this could be something real.

“He was the smartest guy she’d ever met. She was more at peace than anyone he’d ever known. He loved her lips. She loved his hands. It was too early for promises, but promise was in the air.”

They wanted to continue their date, but Mojo was worried.

“Black and Blonde together in Soul City? He knew better. He knew as every boy who grows up in Soul City knows, that if you were in Soul City with a blonde after dark, the Love Dogma would get ya.”

And that’s exactly what happened when they parked for some ice cream. Mojo got yanked out of his car by a snatch squad and was taken directly to Dr. Ziggaboo at the Love Dogma’s Reassignment Center. Here they took black men that had a blonde obsession and reminded them about black beauty. Like something out of 1984 this Orwellian re-education program that was creepy and over the top. Mojo got out just in time. All he wanted was a chance to see if this woman was the real deal.

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30

#514 The Sad Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shine Hot, The Man with the Portable Promised Land- Toure

#514 The Sad Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shine Hot, The Man with the Portable Promised Land- Toure

For two months in the summer of 1942 there wasn’t a sax player around that was as hot as Harlem’s Sugar Lips Shinehot. He blew the roof off the clubs and couldn’t walk down the street without crowds of fans looking for a handshake or an autograph.

“Time slid on and men from the record-makin companies came callin wit contracts and promises bout makin him a big-time star. And Sugar Lips was bout to sign one ah them contracts when somethin butted in.”

After a night at the club Sugar Lips was beat up by a pair of drunken sailers looking for trouble. He was beat up so bad, he could  no longer play the sax. In his despair the Reverend Scratch shows up and offers his salvation. So she makes a deal with this devil and is granted The Portable Promised Land, all white people everywhere are now invisible to Sugar Lips, he can’t see them, ever.

That’s the true story-- “If I’m lyin, I’m flyin. And I ain’t seen a feather all day.”

Notable Passage: “When you a negro white folks is like doors. You got to go through them to get most anywhere…and when there ain’t no door the door is jus bein built.”

Rating: 7-7-6-7 Total= 27

#488 The Breakup Ceremony- Toure

#488 The Breakup Ceremony- Toure

“We are gathered here today to witness the conclusion of a wonderful relationship between two wonderful people.”

This is the custom in Soul City. If a couple is together long enough but doesn’t last, the community throws them a Breakup Ceremony, an un-wedding of sorts. Each party gets to briefly air their grievance and they, supposedly, part under fair circumstances.

“The ceremony spreads the word that it’s over, freeing the two from many awkward questions, sending a tacit message to anyone who’s been waiting for the relationship to dissolve.”

It sounds very civil doesn’t it? Any reason to throw a party I guess. Today’s ceremony goes awry of course, and an good intentions are lost in a flurry of chaos. What didn’t they think was going to happen?

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

#467 A Hot Time at the Church of Kentucky Fried Souls and the Spectacular Final Sunday Sermon of the Right Revren Daddy Love- Toure

As if you couldn’t already tell by the title, we are back in Toure’s fictional metropolis of Soul City. Can’t you feel it? Today is a sad day in Soul City. Today is the funeral of the much beloved and equally maligned Revren Daddy Love.

“Daddy Love had not been a young person for many years, but he had made himself into a force of nature so great that people were shocked to discover that dying was something he could do.”

“Daddy Love was colossal, Freckles on his high-yellow skin as large as dimes, a belly as great as a jumbo TV, a mouth that made mailboxes jealous, and a frame so titanic he would just swallow a girl up with one of his patented postservice hugs.”

Daddy Love, as his name suggests, was a ladies man. Having had a go at nearly all the woman of his congregation no matter their looks or marital status. “Daddy Love’s love was as blind as faith and as democratic as the sun.”

There is a ton of dark humor, social commentary and great satire in here, but it’s also just great fun stuff to read. Daddy Love’s church was St. Valentine’s Blessed Temple of Godly Love, Sanctified Ascension, and the Holy Glissando, located in Brooklyn at the corner of Grace Street and Divine Avenue in an abandoned Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“And after a while people came to like using the drive-in window for confession.”

Sometimes faith, love, wrong, righteous, sin, and heaven are all the same thing, wrapped up in a man that is quite literally “Larger Than Life.”

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

We are in Toure’s invented municipality, Soul City. “Soul City was a place where God entered through the speakers and love was measured in decibles.” There were at least twenty-five verified religions in Soul City, all based on Soul music of course.

Huggy Bear Jackson was a Stevie-ite (as were his buddies Mojo, Boozoo, and Groovy Lou) and built a mobile shrine to his idol. The vehicle that cruised Freedom Street or Funky Boulevard would break down all the time, couldn’t go more than twenty five and guzzled gas, but it had a kickin’ sound system that would only play Stevie Wonder. It was rigged so that any other music was put in, it would be immediately spit out. Now, That’s musical devotion!

This collection is going to be a blast!

“But it was Huggy Bear’s world and in Huggy Bear’s world the music could never die. So he sat in the Steveiewondermobile, stuck at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm, chilling with Groovy Lou and Boozoo to the soaring sounds of Stevie’s seamless soul stew and the world he saw with his so wonderfully clear inner vision.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29