words with real bishes : mekela

(c) popart rupaul by bellonart

words with real bishes came out of an idea i had about my girls. they're lovely grown women, well-educated, strong, vulnerable, honest, supportive, and often hilarious. i wanted to do an interview format where we talk about all manner of things: the unbearable blackness of being in america, beauty, the legend that is cookie monster, and our current situations. also for the laughs. if you'd like to participate in words with real bishes, email me here. 

my first amazing sister is mekela. she's a graduate of UC davis, a substitute teacher for oakland unified school district, a mother of two gigantically tall sons, and a social media bon vivant (it was from her i learned what a hashtag even was a few years ago).

hey girl!

hey girl!

mslisa: so, tell me how we met?

mekela:  we met (about 10 years ago) as teachers at learning for life in east oakland. our supervisor was a bish! i knew you had black in you, but i wasn't sure how you identified. then you said something and i knew you were black!

mslisa: (chuckling) where were you born?

mekela: i was born and raised in oakland. i grew up in west oakland and went to oakland tech. i wasn't an east oakland person. when i was 7 i moved to kansas city for about 8 months, then came back. my grandmother lived right across the street from the dmv in temescal.

mslisa: i know you're a huge warriors fan. things have gotten super hot for them. how do you feel about the NBA finals?

mekela: i think it's so amazing! i grew up watching basketball; dr. jay and jordan, all these cool players. i broke up with the warriors once when they traded chris webber.  monta ellis was curry in 2007-08. there was always some kind of strange trade going on with the warriors. in 2012-13 monta got traded and the owner got booed out of the stadium. the team as a whole is doing so well right now. i can't believe it!

mslisa: you and i have an on-going facebook feud where you tag me with anti-cat propaganda. why do you hate cats so much?

mekela:  why do you call it propaganda?! i don't trust them. you never know where they are. i think they're plotting to murder us all and suck our breath out in our sleep.

mslisa: i sometimes tag you back with goat videos. what do you love about goats?

mekela: well, i'm a capricorn and i identify with goats. a capricorn never goes down without a fight! we're also ambitious. one of my nicknames growing up was billy goat because i did a lot of testing of items with my mouth. i think goats are so playful and friendly and cute. one day i want to have a goat farm.

mslisa: you recently posted a meme of a sexy dude for a BET film called chocolate city? girl, it was hilarious! is this real? i think it's a joke.

mekela: lisa, what's real anyway? well, i thought it was so funny, but i didn't get it. straight to BET? it was supposed to be in theaters? but, yes the film is real.  did you see the trailer? ginuwine is in it and brian white. girl, there are loads of chocolate in the movie.

mslisa: (cracking up) who is an inspiration to you as a black woman?

mekela: well today it's serena! she's super bad! but tomorrow it could be someone else, even in my own life. you know brandi is my BFF. i think she's way cool. i will say this; i was really faithful and into traditional african dance back in the day. there was a time when i was dancing with all of these black women. it was the most positive energy all the time. i was able to build wonderful relationships with those women. it gave me a lot of confidence as a black person.

mslisa: thank you, girl! this was cool.

mekela: thank you!

set fire to the stars

                                                          set fire to the stars / mad as birds films 

i always have a book of poetry somewhere; leroi jones, shakespeare's sonnets, william blake, or charles bukowski. my favorite is walt whitman's leaves of grass, a tattered old paperback which i still have and return to from time to time.  his language is sumptuous, erotic, romantic, and beautiful. now voyager, go forth to seek and find. that line to me is a sort of cipher; to be unafraid and alone in the world and my human experience, however difficult the process and passage may be.

dylan thomas is similar in his impeccable use of the english language and his startling, paganistic, and violent images of love and death (because what else is there, really? what are the two things we are doomed to experience, but love in all her anguish, bliss, and rage. and death in its finality).

i enjoyed this movie for its depiction of thomas; an other-worldly man no one could begin to comprehend. he doesn't adhere to social constraints or mores; he's a boozer, a brawler, and says what he thinks, even in the company of scholars and administrators at yale. in an early scene he's at a house party carrying a woman over his shoulder while she beats his back with a pan. ' i believe in naked women in red macintoshes!' (macintosh is british english for a waterproof coat. so, imagine that. maybe she's also in strappy heels).

the story takes john m. brinnin (elijah wood), a thomas fan and academic, on a speaking tour of the states, beginning in new york in the early 1950s. thomas immediately is out of sorts and out of place. realizing that gotham has too many things to seduce and distract the poet, they retreat to brinnin's county cabin in connecticut in preparation for their next speaking engagement.

as you would expect, thomas goes on a bender then barely makes it through his reading, only to bash the masters of the universe at yale with contempt:

' i wish we were all hermaphrodites,' he says. ' so we could fuck ourselves.'

the film is shot in black and white and the production design is dreary, muddy, and dark as if to mirror thomas' misanthropic disposition. for days, he holds onto a letter from his estranged wife caitlin before retreating to the woods to read it and has hallucinations about her. she berates him in his mind, ' ...little man, half-man, crumpled boy.'  ' ...this is how it has to be until we devour each other, until we're set free.' 

her words refer to the destructive nature of their relationship;  fueled by love, anger, poverty, and booze.

the best sections of the film and its story are thomas's poetry. his words. to listen to verse and meter and allusion and grasp at the depths; to see the images in your mind.  you understand what he speaks of and his sense of wonder.

And death shall have no dominion. 

Dead men naked they shall be one 

 With the man in the wind and the west moon; 

 When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, 

 They shall have stars at elbow and foot; 

 Though they go mad they shall be sane, 

 Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 

 Though lovers be lost love shall not; 

 And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. 

 Under the windings of the sea 

 They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, 

 Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; 

 And death shall have no dominion. 

 And death shall have no dominion. 

 No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.

birdman!

i'm a big fan of alejandro innaritu because he has such a divine nameand lyrical. one of my favorite films in the history of everything is amores perros (love dogs).

what makes innaritu such a dream is that he is a first-rate storyteller of fantastical realism (a bit like terrance malick, but with more actual talking). his films usually involve many characters, inter-connected in the same place and time; often by a random encounter, accident, or situation as happens in life.  his movies can be super deep and meandering such a biufiful which i bored out of during the first half.  babel was much better and very humanistic in its narrative.

birdman is magical in many ways. it starts out strong, then nose dives a bit near the end, but you want to stick with it like a lover you care desperately about. it's excellently cast with michael keaton
(playing a character that is a brilliant mock on his batman days, even down to the raspy voice he used).  keaton plays riggan thomson, the superstar of the birdman movie franchise. he's written, directed, and stars in a play adaptation based on a collection of short stories by raymond carver.

throw in riggan's daughter, working as his personal assistant, who's fresh out of rehab, his ex-wife, his lover, his colleagues ( the hilarious, neurotic and self-obsessed actors played by naomi watts and ed norton), and his confidant and lawyer, played by zach galifianakis (also a riot). 

riggan's existentialist crisis is exacerbated by his desire to create something with meaning. what is art? what is love? aging, death, and humanity. who is he? all of this plays out as his birdman alter-ego whispers in riggan's ear preying on his self-doubts and anxieties. man, without me you're nothing! 

then there's the technical tour de force of the film which seems like one continuous take as characters zig-zag throughout the theater, onto and off the stage, and the streets. the lighting shifts from desaturated drab browns and beiges of the old theater to luminous blues and and silver on the stage. the production design is full of clues and symbols. on his dressing room mirror, riggan has a note taped to it which reads  a thing is a thing not what is said of a thing. this across from his altar with a buddha head and lotus and his vanity poster of birdman.

it's definitely worth seeing if for nothing else the laughs, the great acting, and following the chaos down the rabbit hole.  it will remind you that most of the time we don't know what the fuck we're doing (like making a good piece of work), but we're doing it really, really well.

beyond the lights

 courtesy BET / Relativity Media

this i love. so much i've seen it twice. 

perhaps it's a bit corny, but it's one of those corny romances that works. it's a good story; full of charm, redemption, love, and transformation. the kind of chocolate dreams are made of. 

written and directed by gina prince-bythewood (love & basketball), beyond the lights tells the story of noni (gugu mbatha-raw), a gifted mixed-race black girl from brixton. her mother is white (played awesomely by minnie driver) and her black father is out of the picture. their relationship is a sort of updated gypsy rose lee and mama rose. 

' mama, i'm gonna be a star!' 'i call the shots now, mama!' 

while noni is a little girl doing talent shows, macy jean realizes noni is their ticket to the big time. it is inconsequential what noni herself may want to create with her artistry. 

fast forward 15 years and noni is teamed up as the hyper-sexualized sidekick to a white rapper named kid culprit. together, they have a string of number 1 hits and ridiculous videos. noni is glammed up in a lavender weave, long nails, and gilded pop gear. 

after the billboard awards she snaps and tries to take a leap off the balcony of her hotel. she's saved by kaz (nate parker), the cop hired as her security detail. (the fact that noni and her mom live in a glass house in LA, it didn't make much sense why they were staying in a hotel in LA?) 

  ultimately, beyond the lights is a fantasy, a fairy tale true love story. kaz is a caring, down to earth cat who is unaffected by the mania and chaos of noni's world. through his support and kindness, noni begins to transform and make changes, but she doesn't give up her music or ambitions for him. in one scene she clips the talons and cuts off the lavender weave in favor of her natural hair. 

it was refreshing to see a film narrative about a black woman and man falling in love and supporting one another as a unit. price-bythewood had to jump through mad hoops to get this film made with two black leads. it is also fantastic see a mainstream film about a black woman's transformation to her authentic self. how many recent hollywood films are released such as that? one for zero. 

brilliant. 

free the nipple

i enjoy indie, under the radar films. i never know what gem of brilliance and good art i may find (knowing that i love the dark and dreary, a friend in malmo, sweden hipped me to 'let the right one in' after she'd read the book).

unfortunately, free the nipple is not one of them gems. it rips off everything from sophia coppola's production and art design, music soundtrack style, to the guerilla girls and pussy riot's pink robber masks. there is brilliant dialogue such as, 'we didn't get the permits. i let everyone down.' 

free the nipple is a film where you don't know what the fuck is going on or what the fuck just happened. the main protagonist is with (yes, with). she's a journalist looking for an amazing story. she happens across liv and her crew of boobs-out,cape wearing protesters. they have no name or a collective purpose other than if it's legal for men to go about shirtless, why can't chicks?

then with takes over. she becomes their primary investor, manager, and coach behind the whole movement. she names them girllrillas or some shit, she magically gets a $5k check and they move from working from liv's basement squat (which looks more like a loft than any squat i've ever seen) to an abandoned indoor pool. 

there's very little character development in this story; spaces and circumstances suddenly change. there's lots of magic in this movie. such as when liv gets arrested trying to save with and is held on a
$ 25k bond. the girls throw a fundraiser at a dive bar, but they come up $ 24,500.00 short! then with's friend, jim black, a cigar smoking public relations father figure, magically writes her a blank check. (for a feminist film about women being self-sufficient and defiant, it sucked that a daddy-figure eventually comes to the rescue anyway). there's no growth here.

i wasn't sure if it was going for comedy, melodrama or a weird mash of docu-dramedy. in a word, it's a mess. there are some nicely framed shots, cool art, good music, and a hilarious cameo by jeane garafalo (who i think was doing an impersonation of the performance artist marina abramovic).  otherwise this film isn't much more than a hipster trip without substance.

this is lina esco's first feature film. how she bankrolled this project is baffling, but she has some very rich friends. maybe someone thought she's the next lena dunham; all that hip, edgy, young girl power type-shit. but dunham is hands down a much more talented writer and director.  i read esco's profile which listed her accomplishments such as modeling in france and then moving to england to work in theater (i thought, coat check or concessions?). she also does stuff to help dolphins.

she had a role on the series 'cane' if you remember that at all. it was a prime time soap in the vein of dallas about a rich cuban-american family in miami. there was lots of rum, scando, and people strolling around the family estate in white linen clothes. it was cancelled after one season.

perhaps that gig gave lina the seed money to save flipper.

i don't recommend this film at all, but definitely root for beyond the lights!

black water dragon

first post of the new year. going into my 45th year on earth. super trip that! this is the year of the black water dragon, a symbol of the emperor of china. i did a very cool illustration of this for art class with 2012 hidden in the dragon's head and body.

what will this year bring? curious. well, i've decided to either go to new orleans or haiti this year, ideally one or the other around my birthday. looking forward to see what new adventures, loves, JOB, and personal growth unfolds.

mslisa

daylight

completely forgot that time change is now. i woke up thinking it was 10am - not bad for a sleeping-in secret agent. it was really after 11am in the black hole of time. fuck! i had some things to get done, which involved driving to other places and it wasn't looking like a sunshiny day outside. damn!

fortunately, mini missions accomplished, even if the dude at the bookstore was giving me a bit of the stank attitude. i had to be compassionate; retail resale sucks. he even re-taped my box for me. so nice!

i get back to my car, hustling to get some things organized in the trunk before i leave and i'm getting hassled for the parking spot. jesus fucking christ! can't one get a break on a sunday? i was irritated. then onto the next and the next, then home. honestly some weekends i have little tolerance for everyone else out doing their thing at the same fucking time. it's like we never get a break from one another. like clown suits in bumper cars on the daily.

really it's my own shit. i haven't been out of town and into the country in months.
either something fell through, or time didn't permit, or i got sick, or i didn't get paid until the monday after or...blah blah - the list goes on. i just need to get out and go somewhere for a few days.

it seems to me daily life has become even harder to manage than when i was younger. it's not just pay the bills + do the dishes, now it's pay the bills online, do the dishes, get to that laundry, check email, dive into the sink hole of facebook. it's ridiculous.

i keep having this inner dialouge to try harder. try harder at what exactly? maintain? keep on keepin on? i'm working with 75 kids a week between teaching spanish and art and trying to hustle on the side as a personal assistant. i can barely save a dime living here, my hometown the place i grew up in. it's become more livable for people from somewhere else who could afford the move and the cost of living. the rest of locals just eek off the scraps.

it's a really fucked cycle. i know of several people who were from back east and went home within the last year. it was either too hard with a kid or futile to find another job. lucky cats really. i'd love to move back east! at least i'd be less bored and possibly more challenged. i can get on my grustle here, but it's become tedious.

i don't want to end up stuck. i want to expatriate and make a life somewhere else for a good long while; working with kids, painting, and exploring. so when i say try harder i mean get the passport renewed, hustle a bit better, once i have my passport, get the paperwork into the italian consulate. just do it, baby! :)

****

i saw battle of los angeles, which sucked. district 9 is much more creative and thought-provoking bad ass sci-fi. battle is hwood rubbish with loads of cliches (cute kids, dying dad, homie bros, the young dude about to get married who has everything to live for! the token tough chick and marine hero worship ad nauseum. honestly, the way hwood depicts marines they're indestructible macho-ines who have a very human freak out, then at a crucial moment sacrifice themselves for a group of strangers, which redeems them of the aforementioned human freak out moment. hoo rah!) there was some cool bang bang and blow stuff up good, but otherwise...zzzzzzz.

the other craptastic crap movie was tron: legacy. again with the cliches (a boy and his dog?) someone who was 12 must have written the script because really that's the only age group that could sit through it. maybe this movie could be saved by a blunt and geek out on the visuals, but *yawn* - why waste a good blunt?

dulces suenos