JNez@thirtydaes.2010

boy do i remember this day. in fact, i’ve been waiting all summer for today, september 7 2010…it’s been 25 years (!) since i took a tumble from one of our backyard trees and fractured my right wrist in two places.

oh the pain! but not at first. see one of my buds and i were playing daredevil and swinging from branch to branch on the trees in the backyard of our home court. i’m an army brat so part of my youth was spent on an army base: fort bragg, north carolina. in september 1985 i was 12 years old and entering 8th grade at albritton middle school. i was excited because this was a brand new school on the base: everyone wanted to go there but since it was zoned by address, everyone from my previous middle school wouldn’t be going. still, everyone in my neighborhood was going and we were all so stoked!

anyway…so my best friend…dan. daniel hubbard. he was a white boy lol who was down with the black kids in our court. actually, everyone got along. lol we had asians, blacks & caucasians from all over the states living on the army base. we all played together with absolutely no issues.

so yeah, it’s a saturday…early evening around 7 or so. dan and i were the only ones from our crew hanging out that particular time for some reason…we were bored and decided to play tarzan. we had swung and jumped from several branches in this tree already so we were fearless.

it was my turn…dan had already propelled himself nearly a foot ahead to the next branch and waited for me to catch up. i swung from the branch he’d just left on and prepared my body to swing to the next branch by catching it in mid-air. i’d done it before…

…but somehow i miscalculated and ended up on the ground. it was so immediate i didn’t really understand what had happened until i was picking myself up off the ground looking up into the tree at dan’s aghast expression. ‘dude, look at your arm!’ he shouted. i looked down at my right arm and saw that my wrist was totally misshapen. ‘omg’ i thought. ‘what the hell happened to my arm?’ up until that point i hadn’t felt any pain. but then, all at once, it came.

the agony. i rushed the few feet into the backdoor of my house and greeted my mom with my broken & contorted wrist in my hand. ‘oh my god!’ she echoed. ‘we have to go to the emergency room!’

mom didn’t drive then and dad wasn’t home so dan’s mom ended up driving us to the hospital, womack army hospital emergency room. it was there that they x-rayed & informed me of my broken wrist. i was not prepared for the pain when the doctor had to manipulate my wrist back into alignment before my arm was cast. i thought i was dying. i thought he was killing me…..lol i screamed so loud my mom had to cover her ears all the way down the hall in the waiting room.

it turned out that i needed 3 casts to heal the fracture. the first was an ace bandage wrapped in plaster that stayed on for one week. then on september 13, friday the 13th, i got fitted for a full arm length plaster cast. yep. past the elbow. oh my god it made my arm itch so severely…this was just as bad as the pain from healing! i needed 3 weeks in that cast before my arm was x-rayed again and fitted for a shorter cast. this cast was finally removed on halloween, october 31 1985 and i was pronounced healed.

lol what a peculiar event to remember so vividly, huh? well not necessarily..it was and remains the most traumatic emergency to happen to me. but what i really remember about this is…

…that i learned how to masturbate first with my left hand. lol yep. i was 12 in the fall of 1985 when i discovered self-pleasure & orgasm, quite by accident.  subsequently, stroking myself was initiated with my left hand and not my dominant but at the time, useless right hand lol.  even when my arm healed i continued to masturbate with my left hand before i introduced my right hand to the pleasure…

soooo…so many songs recall fall 1985 for me: alexander o’neal: if you were here tonight; kool  & the gang: cherish; teena marie: out on a limb; doug e. fresh & slick rick: the show/la-di, da-di… i could go on and on. but my broken wrist & discovery of masturbation turned out not even to be the most significant events of fall 1985. that was to come after halloween when dad got discharged from the army after submitting weed positive urine…

…to be continued

andrew garcia was sent packing

man american idol is slacking

tell me andrew what happened

you were ahead but collapsed

under those enormous eyeglasses

oh how i wanted to have him

watch his foreskin retracting

tell me andrew what happened

i won’t watch till you come back

This was the scene this past weekend during a final four game for the ncaa championship. DaSean Butler, a popular player for West Virgina, lay writhing on the court floor in agony after a serious knee injury. His coach, Bob Huggins, took to his knees to comfort the player, first cradling him in his arms & then caressing his face and offering soothing words as Butler cried out in pain. The two were so close that their noses touched at one point.  this was a spontaneous display of fatherly affection that both touched and discomforted the huge audience that witnessed it.

twitter was first to react; bob huggins became a trending topic within minutes: most of the tweets were expressing shock & disbelief at having witnessed such an intimate moment. many agreed that the fatherly cradle & caress & physical closeness between coach and player was homoerotic and that’s what caused the discomfort. we are not accustomed to seeing men offering that type of consolation to other men. add to that bob huggins’ reputation as a win-first coach prone to outbursts & tirades against his players and then the image of this burly white man hovering on his knees astride a bawling young black man, using his body and his words to soothe as a father would a young child.

i was touched by the scene, so much so, that it got me wondering what it would have felt like to have that intimate comfort with another man without any sexual or erotic feelings. i’m not the only one, i’m sure. many young men who have never had intimacy with a father in that way still develop a healthy sexuality…why have others of us not?

what do you think about coach huggins public display of affection?

gospel artist marvin sapp is at the top of the billboard charts as his just released cd ‘here i am’ becomes the highest charting gospel cd ever.

sapp is no stranger to the charts, he’s been releasing hit albums since 1995. the new single, “the best in me” is already a #1 hit preparing to challenge his breakthrough single ‘never would have made it’. this guy has an amazing voice and pours his heart out in his songs. marvin sapp has a trifecta of great cd’s: diary of a psalmist, thirsty & this one, here i am.

i’m a fan of great voices so even as an agnostic i am touched by the passion in sapp’s voice & music. in fact, marvin sapp is speaking to me through his song “miracle” right about now. omg. where has this been hiding? marvin sapp is the man.

happy birthday mariah is 40 years old

had a vision of love & triumph 20 years ago

so many records sold that your record’s old

let’s remind them and rewind it

mariah your discography is giant

3 of your cd’s went diamond

beauty & talent you’re still shining

mariah been carrying on since 1990

a modern legend turns 40 today, march 27. mariah carey’s career now spans 20 years and today is her 40th birthday! happy happy happy birthday sweetie. i’ve been in love with your music since vision of love lit up the charts in 1990. you are my top artist of the 90s and the 00s.  you are queen…your 18 Billboard #1 hits is a record for a female artist. i believe you can dominate yet another decade.

1990: mariah carey 10x platinum: vision of love, love takes time, someday, i don’t wanna cry

1991: emotions: 4x platinum: emotions, can’t let go

1992: mtv unplugged: 3x platinum: i’ll be there

1993: music box: 10x platinum: dream lover, hero, without you

1994: music box/merry xmas: 6x platinum: all i want for christmas

1995: daydream: 10x platinum: fantasy feat. odb, one sweet day

1996: daydream: always be my baby, open arms, underneath the stars

1997: butterfly: 5x platinum: honey, breakdown, my all, butterfly, outside

1998: number ones: 5x platinum i still believe, when you believe

1999: rainbow: 3x platinum: heartbreaker, crybaby, against all odds

the 00s:

2000: rainbow/greatest hits: thank god i found you

2001: glitter: platinum: loverboy, never too far

2002: charmbracelet: through the rain

2003: charmbracelet/the remixes: boy (i need you), bringing on the heartbreak, i know what you want

2005: the emancipation of mimi: 6x platinum: we belong together, it’s like that, shake it off, fly like a bird, stay the night, say something

2006: the emancipation of mimi: don’t forget about us

2008: e=mc2: 6th billboard #1 album: touch my body, i stay in love, bye-bye, i’ll be loving u long time

2009: memoirs of an imperfect angel: obsessed, i want to know what love is, h.a.t.e. u, angels advocate

2010: angels advocate: angels cry

that’s quite a discography. i <3 mariah. happy birthday ma

i am pleasantly surprised at what a great cd this is from usher. i had all but written him off after that catastrophic performance at the 2010 nba all star game. but raymond v. raymond finally arrives as a solid, mature, well produced album.

jimmy jam and terry lewis show that they still have a hit-making formula, producing 4 of raymond v. raymond‘s best tracks, including the propulsive opening cut, ‘monstar.’ still, one of the more interesting songs on the new cd samples soft rock classic ‘into the night.’ ‘making love (into the night)’ is a mid-tempo hybrid love song/club song. very catchy.

i’ve been so critical of usher lately that ne-yo beat him out for top male r&b artist of the decade. the new pecking order starts behind trey songz. what a year he’s had. with this exceptional new cd, usher has overtaken ne-yo for runner-up. still ne-yo has a film project & album due this summer that’s sure to be a hit. unfortunately, chris brown’s escalating woes have seen him tumble into 5th place, after the-dream, with robin thicke quickly gaining.

yep. so i’ve spent the weekend welcoming usher back to the head of the class. lol how productive…what a dark, windy & wet weekend it’s been here in nyc.

usher’s cd raymond v. raymond becomes widely available 3.30.10.