Monday, October 24, 2005
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is a TRUE LEGEND - revered in Detroit (as throughout the world) for what she sparked in Montgomery, Alabama, where she contributed into changing things in a MAJOR WAY. Segregation was the norm all across the United States until little Rosa Parks refused to put up with it any longer one day, on a fateful bus ride...! One could even say that Martin Luther King Jr would have not been the man that he became (and a target for murder, eventually) had it not been for Rosa Parks! For Rosa made a tremendous amount of noise with her defiance, which caused MLK to come forth that much more virulently, that much sooner. In that, Rosa Parks resembles. somewhat, the Rosa I know; she who was an unwitting party to my enemies when we were children, exposing me due to her reckless actions! But that is most definitely another story; and it was all on a much different scale, too (the coincidence was just too much not to mention it though! Ties in also into my famous ''name theory'' - your name tells what you are; just look at your namesakes and you will see what you truly are... THAT is the theory! Try it out and you will see how eeriely on the mark it gets to be, 9 times out of 10!).DETROIT adopted Rosa Parks when her own town became hell for her and her husband after the famous bus riding incident that would start the ever-so-slow process of change in abysmal America... Of all places - DETROIT! The alleged 'Hockey Town' that rarely ever wins it all in that sport... The city whose Lions, Pistons and Tigers basically... suck. Motor City with an industrial bent that has a bad case of the bends nowadays... A sleazy town rife with crime and riddled with sickening poverty that keeps getting worse and worse by the day. Thus, a city with few heroes, if any - even though a certain Elongated Man supposedly once lived there (and that's another story - again. But speaking of which: fans of the allegedly-fabled *Justice League of America' probably all failed to recognize the cameo by a Rosa Parks lookalike in the very first issue introducing a new team that would come to be labeled as ''Justice League Detroit'' indeed. It was, alas, a disparaging nickname for the group, at the time - since these alleged fans failed to see how good it truly was or could have been. These fans are the same type of people who saw angels only in the likes of Lady Di - but never in a Mother Teresa... or in a Rosa Parks! Luckily, not all people are like that... hmm?)
The JLofA issue where Rosa Parks made an unexpected appearance -though incognito or, really, under an alias- just when the League reformed in a much more... shall we say heterogeneous way? Look for Mrs. Parks putting the moves on team leader AQUAMAN at a party that wraps up that tale! (Ok - I am kidding; it was a respectful welcoming kiss on the cheek - this being the welcoming commitee to Detroit! Check it out below... It was a most significant trivial moment though - given that the hero is blond and white... Rosa Parks was indeed the forgiving kind - that kiss was symbolic of her not holding a grudge against all whites for the acts of a very few...)Detroit may have been an odd choice to relocate to - but it was one that worked. For no, a few rotten apples do *NOT* waste the whole basket - thank God! Verily -and luckily- not all people (in Detroit or around America - and the globe) are like the insufferable bigots who would not let Rosa Parks sit where she wanted to sit in a freaking yellow bus that went up and down Cleveland Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama in the fifties. Life was simpler back then, most nostalgia-stricken souls would say - but a lot of things were simply cruder, too!
Mrs. Parks was 42 years of age when she committed her famous "act of defiance" in 1955; an act that was to change the course of American history overall and earn her the title of "mother of the civil rights movement" - for this was an act that would be reverberating throughout the world for decades! As a matter of fact, some would say it is still making waves in middle-America and in the deep south to this very day...
''At that time, Jim Crow laws, in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction, required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.'' Hence, a man would think it within his rights to ask a woman to give up her seat so that he could sit his lazy a$$ down; as long as the woman was black of course - and he was white. Truly, with details like this a core part of their history, why in blue blazes do the Good Ol' USofA think themselves so great - and the ''leaders of the FREE world'' at that?!? And HOW can they fashion themselves as such nowadays when there are still those who would agree with this behaviour even today, in the very heartland of the great nation that they are... Hmm? They need a hell of a lot more than the silly little comic-bookies featuring Captain America or the Justice League of America in order to pull wool over anyone's eyes - including the dumb as f*** brats who gobble up such cheap propaganda! For, in truth, America is rife with INJUSTICE, really! But I am digressing...
The bus in which the infamous act of intolerance took place (much more shocking to me than Rosa Parks' alleged act of ''defiance'' - which I would not have seen as such at all had I been around in 1955!) is now a museum piece, imagine that...! Another testimonial to man's folly - is it not? Of course, Jim Crow surely thought it was already quite enough to allow men and women of colour to ride in the same bus with whites, to begin with... That bus has only the value that Mrs. Parks' bravery gave it - and even the Crows of this world will admit to that, nowadays: they have no choice. However, to make that bus a sideshow attraction while bigotry lives one in the heartland is the apex of hypocrisy. Leave it to Americans to reach it - multiple times a year, month, week...!It is very doubtful that it has any bearing on Mrs. Parks departure from our cold cruel world, but her crossing over on a Monday evening reminds this luminous blogger and former wrestling fan that there is that white man from the Northeast-led WWE who has its main television program on Monday nights -RAW, on the USA network- and that he recently downgraded a young promising black talent -one Shelton Benjamin- in favor of, ultimately, an aging southern gentleman, revered veteran of the sport: the very white and platinum blond-haired Ric Flair. Note that I have been a Flair supporter for years, mind you - but I did notice he was predominantly from the South - and his Horsemen never did include a Black member either. He did ''put over'' black and white opponents equally, though. Not so with Vince McMahon - the white man from the Northeast, owner and barker of the WWE. He NEVER had a Black champion (the WCW was the only one to cross that barrier and no, I don't consider 'The Rock' black but really of mixed heritage; mulato at best) - and he has, with his treatment of Benjamin, quickly gone back on his word to ''let nothing stop (Benjamin) now''.
EVIDENCE! 
Gerry Conway and Chuck Patton were clearly trying to send a message here:
one of peace and unification of the races, in Detroit!
They disguised Rosa Parks a bit, christening her ''Mother Windom''
for the occasion, but the entire thing couldn't have been clearer:
what, with the Parks clone giving a peck on the cheek
of the closest thing to a white supremacist DC could have
(an Atlantean -remember how much the Nazis loved the
legend of Atlantis, folks- and one who belongs to the
predominantly-white Super Friendly Justice League...!)
what else does one need to acknowledge
this first-ever ''unlikely crossover'' between
reality and five-color myth?
I never got wind of what Rosa Parks herself
thought of this ''Mother Windom'' homage, alas...
Have you?
Shelton Benjamin (who, I imagine, would have been firmly supported by both Rosa Parks as MLK Jr. just like Nichelle Nichols was for her work on Star Trek!) has gone from title-contender to pre-carder faster than you can say... bigotry? Things have changed - yes or no? I say no! Flair effectively asked Benjamin to sit in the back while he took one more glorious ride on Space Mountain (his allegorical reference to his championship runs - and spotlight stealing! Among other things...)
Just like that white man was asking Rosa Parks to go sit in the back of the bus, in 1955...
It truly is Vince McMahon asking though - not Flair. However, having said all that, once again I must make clear that I am merely making luminous connections for greater understanding of all that goes around... and comes around... no need to sue me, Vince! That is, if your people are reading me at all - of course! Your people and my people can converge onto an arena somewhere, sometime, and have a free-for-all brawl for not much at all; THAT we can do, sure... if that will solve anything!
But I digress. (Tis my unruly thing to do - now sue me, won't you?)
Rosa Parks - you were one of a kind.
You are missed. No other Rosa compares or comes close to YOU!
Labels: Black History
Friday, October 21, 2005
Ric Flair
Ric Flair - the Nature Boy - is *the* consummate professional in the world of pro-wrestling! He led by example - and he was a heel most of his career! (... which is lingo for ''bad guy'' or ''villain'' in their business - woo!) 2005 and the man is still wrestling! 1975 - he was in a plane crash and was told by doctors he would NEVER wrestle again! Not only did he make liars out of them; he did so in record time, a mere six months after the plane crash (which had left two other passengers, also wrestlers, paralyzed - and the pilot dead.). Not only was Flair back in action within six months - he was winning championship gold too! Some time after that, Flair revealed he survived another brush with death - as lightning hit his umbrella but ricocheted towards another man standing three feet from him. That man died while Flair was unharmed! Flair could have been fried TWICE OVER - yet he thrives on! Flair is THE MAN - not the Hogans, Cenas or Rocks. Certainly not his many imitators (Triple H, Double J, Y2J, HBK... all ultimately no better than Buddy Landell if you ask me!). AND LEAST OF ALL the jealous oafish brutish numbskulls who want to bully their way to the position that belongs to Flair by right - past and present chumps who attempted this include Lex Luger, ''Sycho'' Sid Vicious, Macho Man Randy Savage... and the Hitman, Bret Hart. None have ever had the finesse, sportmanship, charisma, showmanship and ring generalship of a RIC FLAIR - legitimate in his role as leader of the Four Horsemen as he was also in the role of leader of WCW (against the hordes of the NWO) and the voice of old school tradition in pro-wrestling (as opposed to sports entertainment barker, Vince McMahon). Hart and his four-to-five member version of the Hart Foundation were paler than pale imitations of the Four Horsemen... Luger was pathetic whenever HE was leading the charge for WCW (or for AMERICA - against Yokozuna, in his lame run in the old WWF / WWE...) - and Sid was equally odd and simply not believable as a good guy when WCW used him in that way in the latter days of the NWO... Savage? Elizabeth SHOULD HAVE BEEN FLAIR'S FIRST BEFORE SHE WAS HIS... she would have never been Macho's... or Luger's... and she would still be alive! But that is a whole different territory there... FLAIR will win over Triple H at Taboo Tuesday AND Survivor Series - or the WWE will go bankrupt! Call it... a luminous hunch!
A TRIBUTE TO THE NATURE BOY...
and another...
and another...
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...
(Just ask the edgy Mr. Copeland there... and his accomplice in this farce, indy wrestler Rob Eckos...)
And, from Flair's best moments... to his worst... (ALL part of the ACT!)
Labels: Luminous pundit moi, wrestling, YouTube
Friday, October 07, 2005
triple h...? naaaaah... me!!!
Ok now - time to get it on, cause we don't get along! Me and you - Triple H! Me and you - inside of a fifteen-foot high steel cage!!!
(Ok - that is extremely close to me, but is NOT me there; it is Tyler Payne. He could sub for me in there... I would still enter the cage though... 2 on 1 are always better odds... and Ric Flair makes 3... anyone else who hates Triple H, feel free to join us!).
Triple H is a rebel all right - but without any semblance of a worthwhile cause!
He deserves a tremendous beating...
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Charlie Brown
He does have one heck of a Death Wish now...
Monday, October 03, 2005
Cornelius Guevara...?!?
Cornelius of classic Planet of The Apes movies of the seventies and Che Guevara have actually a whole lot in common... Though I still think this drawing is somewhat disrespectful of the man Guevara (and doubt that the producers of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes as of Battle for the Planet of the Apes actually meant to have Cornelius (or really the son of Cornelius - ridiculously named Caesar - portrayed by the same actor - hardly rebellious Roddy McDowell) subbing for (or allegorically representing) Che in any way there... Che Guevara deserves much respect for having sacrificed all, done so much, investing himself completely into his cause - and uttering such quotable quotes as he reputedly did;"The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love." ~Che Guevara
He was either describing himself - or Christ Himself! What did, in comparison, the writers of those less-than-average allegorical movies about intelligent apes have Caesar/Cornelius utter that was so special... hmm? ''Ape shall not kill another Ape''? Thinly-veiled good reversal on man's noblest of intentions AND one of the Ten Commandments, of course - however, history shows us that man has always killed his fellow man - starting with two BROTHERS... No way an evolved ape can do better than man on this one, folks... no way! Suspension of disbelief does have its limits, you know!
Some do say that man is but an hairless ape (not as hairy anyway - less dense and consistent body hair... The sparser, the better - eh?) and how can we dispute that, really?
Speaking of monkeys though... on OCTOBER 23, 2004, twenty short days from now, an anniversary to celebrate: for it was the day that The Age reported that Australia's CSIRO knowingly released monkey-virus-infected polio shots (now linked to various cancers) to the public in the 1960s. Avian flu is not a precedent - at least the birds are doing it to us accidentally... unlike those monkey health officials. Talk about going bananas. But that is another story - aye...
For all you ever wanted to know about Ernesto Che Guevara - but were afraid to ask? Check out this link - and this one too!
Here is a great representation of the spirit of Che Guevara - surely it pleases his soul, wherever it is to be right now - far more than the Cornelius analogy does...
Poor Cardone who had to sing that...!
Labels: commemorative, lugubrious simulcast, Luminous pundit moi
