OMAR: Barry woke up and said, “AWWW FUCK. I’M STILL HERE? Y’ALL AIN’T LET ME GO?” The previews had your boy runnin’ on a treadmill but fallin’ and shit, still in a wheelchair. Yo, Zoom got in this dude’s fucking mind. He gon’ need to pull a Korra and meet up with Zaheer to guide his ass back to the Speed Force. Y’all know damn well the original Flash, Jay Garrick, is Zaheer in this scenario too.
Jay is going to be such a fucking nice guy about it instead of straight entering the room doing the running man (unironically) while singing, “I told you so,” which will get remixed into “I tried to tell your ass,” then chopped and screwed into “Buuuuuuuut dooooooooooon’ttt nooooooboooody wannnna listennn to Jaaaaaay. (Eraaa-eraaa.) Listennnnn, listennnnn to Jay.”
WILLIAM: See, I disagree. Barry needs to find a way back into the Speed Force and resurrect Earth-1 Harrison “Not Really” Wells instead. That’s your Zaheer moment. Also, can we talk about the fact that the beginning of every episode, Barry talkin’ about “…and I am the fastest man alive”? Muthafucka, we’ve met two villains who were speedsters and both them bastards were faster than you! Barry ’bout to get sued for slander, but I hope his lawyer has a wheelchair-accessible entrance cuz your boy still got the wind chimes for legs right now.
OMAR: I literally have no words for how he can come back from this next episode. In the intro he needs to be like, “My name is Barry Allen… I’ma skip the shit I usually say about being the fastest man alive, because the doctor said my long-term memory should be coming back in about a week but there some shit goin’ on I think… and I am the only one fast enough to stop it. I am the Batman—I MEAN FLASH!… I AM THE FLASH.”
Barry going to need Derrick Rose’s help to come back from this injury and then get Iyanla or Dr. Drew to help get his emotional shit together, ’cause I guarantee that boy still lyin’ in the fetal position as we speak, talkin’ ’bout, “Cisco at S.T.A.R. Labs made the suit and all my gear, I really don’t want to have the conversation with him about me shitting in it.”
WILLIAM: Man, he ain’t gotta worry about that conversation because Cisco vibed that suit after they had to cut Barry out of it and saw that nothing but shame and bodily fluids were ahead, so he burned that shit quick. And the intro for the next episode shouldn’t even be an intro to The Flash. It should be Barry doing a commercial for Depend adult diapers. That shit should be one long infomercial with about twenty minutes of Flash content. My faith in humanity needs some breathing room. I can’t watch another full hour of Flash this soon after the massacre.
Black Nerd Crush Blues: Myra Monkhouse Deserved Way Better
OMAR HOLMON, aka Adorkable Words of Affirmation
EVERY TIME A Black man says, “Black women don’t like nerds,” somehow, some way, the universe or the internet will inform him, “You want it to be one way but it’s the other way.” I can’t tell you how over the “Black women didn’t like me ’cause I watched Dragon Ball Z/I was practicing Bruce Leroy’s glow choreography in the mirror” narratives I am. There’s this tendency to act as if Black nerd girls are scarce or a rarity if they weren’t within your immediate vicinity growing up. Look, I’ma tell you like writer Brittany Williams said it, “Black nerd girls aren’t a rarity. We ain’t unicorns. We’ve been here all along.” Damn right, and you know who doesn’t get enough credit for being at the head of that charge? Myra Monkhouse.
*fist over mouth* I said, Myra muhfuckin’ Monkhouse. How you gonna try to Mel Gibson (in What Women Want) Black women with a generalization that they don’t fuck with nerdy Black boys (and technically implying they wouldn’t mess with nerdy Black girls either—it ain’t all about cis, sis) when on January 29, 1993, in season four, episode fourteen of Family Matters, the teen crush game got crushed. The girl-next-door game got changed. Myra Boutros Boutros Monkhouse (say the whole name if you nasty) stepped on the TV screen and *Drake voice* nothing was the same.
First and foremost, let it be known that I’ll never claim Urkel as Black nerd king (Dwayne Wayne first of his name the only godfather we acknowledge). I’ll admit he was funny (hilarious even), but “is this my nerd king?” No, he ain’t have that crown. However, when muhfuckin’ Myra Monkhouse stepped on the screen? I wanted him to stop pining after Laura Winslow and win (i.e., not mess this up with Myra). When they first met, Steve casually mentions that the name Myra stems from a seaport in ancient Lycia. Myra says she is aware and notes that the name Steve is derived from the Greek word Stephanos, meaning “crown.” Yeah, Myra ain’t come here to play. She’s with the wits, and even after Steve makes a spectacle (read: ass) of himself later that night, Myra is down to wear him down.
Y’all lames are corny with that “Black Women don’t like nerds” shit.
—Will Evans
Myra was a Black woman that loved this nerdy lame Steve for the nerdy lame that he was. Don’t you sit there and say, “Oh, but that’s a TV show, this is real life,” as if art don’t imitate life, my guy. Representation matters, right? Myra wasn’t some damn made-up hobbit or alien. She’s a Black woman that fucked with nerds heavy. Also, can we just talk about how fly she was? On the real forget Steve, Myra was THAT chick. Your girl was a nerd through and through. That shit was all up in her alleles.
Nerd boys wanna talk about the perfect pop culture nerd girl to relate to (and then quiz them to “make sure” they’re a nerd as if they’re a replicant? Host?) and not give academia nerds their due. Nerd is a spectrum, fam, and all the hues matter. Myra was brilliant, strong, and could code-switch with the best of ’em. That girl-next-door shit was just to navigate through the world, but when that mask came off? Myra. Was. With. The. Shits. You remember the greasy she spoke to Laura Winslow? When she was telling Steve not to fucking change himself into Stefan Urquelle ’cause he was great the way he is? Maaaaaan, this guy Steve out here literally becoming someone he’s not for Laura, and Myra stood by this flip-floppin’ mofo the entire time. Even after she Kendrick Lamar “still will take you down right on your mama’s couch in Polo socks”-ed him! Arghh, ya girl got caught in an isosceles love triangle and was still saint-like patient with Steve. You can’t tell me Myra Monkhouse ain’t deserve better.
I’m a Black nerd and that shit was illegal until like 2003.
—Donald Glover
Don’t talk to me about Black women not being here for nerds when Myra Monkhouse was clapping for them to win all day like she was cheering in the crowd. I won’t stand for it. I sit down and scoff at that notion. Just ’cause you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just ’cause it ain’t within your immediate grasp doesn’t mean you’re not going to have a wild encounter with one on your Pokémon adventure leaving Pallet Town… I’m saying when you get older and leave your familiar surroundings, you’ll see there’s a whole world out there with different people to meet and greet who will share your interests, be they Black women/men, just try not to be trash upon meeting them ’cause then you were the reason they ain’t fuck with you all along.
Myra Boutros Boutros Monkhouse (yeah, I’m nasty) was the beacon of hope that somewhere out there some Black woman (or Black man) gon’ fuck with your nerdy Black ass for who the fuck you are. Myra was witty, funny, and adorkably oblivious (when she wanted to be).
As sweet as Myra was, she was way more savage and shady when she felt it was time for the gloves to come off (even if it really wasn’t time for ’em to come off). She was on Steve just like he was on Laura Winslow, and son couldn’t hack it most of the time. They had Myra being obsessive and possessive of Steve on the show way more into the later seasons, but fuck a load of that, man, nah. Y’all not gonna pigeonhole my girl into a stereotype. The way they had my girl go out, man? On some criminal shit trying to frame Laura Winslow and being three shades away from Basic Instinct? I rebuke that ending for Myra. That shit Dragon Ball GT to me, I don’t count it. Myra Monkhouse still a queen in the Black nerd girl realm as far as I’m concerned.
I say all of that to say this: fuck what you heard,
Black women been ’bout the nerd and put some fucking respeck on Myra Boutros Boutros Monkhouse’s name, my g. Never forget the most underrated of the teen crush game. Never forget, before Black girl magic, there was Black girl science and ya girl got the Nobel Prize for that shit. The only house I pledge is Monkhouse, muthafuckas. Fuck Full House, bring me Monkhouse, muthafuckas. Get you a girl that can play Nina Simone on the Myron Floren Polka Master accordion, muthafuckas. [Editor’s note: Omar, how many times you gonna say muthafuckas?] Shhhhhhhh! Not while I’m pouring praise to the best nerd girl to ever do it to these muthafuckas.
Pay homage, you serfs. Don’t talk to me about Black women not fucking with Black nerd boys/girls/nonbinary gender–conforming, when Myra Monkhouse was standing right there with you with the Viola Davis Fences face the entire time. *DJ gunshots* Don’t you ever forget who was there for your ass, telling you to do you, every T.G.I. Friday lineup. Myra muhfuckin’ Mounkhouse. *Jamaican air horn*
The Push and Pull of Watching Mad Men while Black
WILLIAM EVANS, aka Roger Sterling’s Uncredited Driver
WHEN I WAS still a teenager nearing my high school graduation, I remember going to (being dragged to) my father’s work functions or to dinner at the home of his colleagues. My father is a really smart man—brilliant, really—and was a chemist at, let’s say, a really large company. He had ascended into some management hierarchy where the higher he rose, the less people he saw that looked like him. There were times we would be at these large functions with a hundred–plus people and there would be two, maybe three other Black families. My father didn’t seem to know them. Years later, I realized they may have been at a different employment level than my father and therefore didn’t cross paths with him. It was a reaffirmation that Black folks were still “out of place” in the realm of successful business structures. That was also in the mid-’90s.
I used to watch Mad Men with two different minds: “this is a really well put together show that entertains me,” and “this is a show that doesn’t relate to me in any way, shape, or form, with no interest in doing so.” For those that aren’t familiar, Mad Men is a drama about an advertising firm in New York during the 1960s (mostly). It is a rich and beautiful TV show with a great cast and usually great writing. The costume and set designs are possibly the best in TV history and they often are very true to the times. I guess. As I’ve stated before in talking about period TV shows, they almost always focus on upper-class white communities. The combo of the time period and the financial class of the people being portrayed often leaves little to no air for people of color to breathe on these shows. But let’s be honest, they aren’t really making the attempt either.
The two minds that I used to watch Mad Men have congealed into one for no other reason than it was on forever. Having debuted in 2007 and not ending until 2015, for me Mad Men is the cool uncle that has always said problematic and privileged shit at the family gatherings, but after a while, you have just reached your breaking point and the comments he makes aren’t as cute anymore. We got ninety-two episodes of Mad Men (which is thirty episodes longer than Breaking Bad, FYI), and you barely need two hands to count all the people of color that have appeared on the show. And please name a person of color that held any social station above an elevator operator or a secretary. I used to watch Mad Men as appointment TV until I just had my fill of the unapologetic exclusion around season six, when it got relegated to “I’ll catch up in the middle of the week” status. By the time season seven began, I had dropped the show altogether.
Well, I am a completionist and eventually finished the show. Spoiler, the inclusion didn’t get much better. Let’s also be crystal clear about something: this isn’t an oversight or omission. The demographic of Mad Men, or lack thereof, is completely intentional. The show’s creator, Matt Weiner, and his staff have been very deliberate in the story they want to tell and have been pretty unwavering in that approach. Weiner doesn’t care about the criticisms of the show’s lack of minority representation or impact because POC aren’t really part of the story he’s interested in telling. Mad Men has plenty of “taboo” topics to speak on, like the abuse/treatment of women in its environment or the sexual orientation of some of its characters. There just isn’t room for someone of color to be that important on this show. Some critics have praised Weiner for that approach, that he’s willing to tell the story he wants regardless of the pressure he receives for it being so myopic. I can’t find any Black critics saying that, however.
One of the things that kept me hanging on to Mad Men was the progressing timeline at work and thinking that it might lead to more (for lack of a better word) integration in the casting. The fruits of such patience resulted in a couple of Black secretaries to go with the Black maid in Betty’s household. Gee, thanks. Except for the aforementioned elevator operator and a pickup guitarist in California, there’s been more Black men married to a Kardashian than have been on a show that was on the air for eight years. The criticism that Weiner received in regard to race on the show (that is, outside of the critics who don’t simply fall over themselves to praise him) was that Weiner handled race rather clumsily when it did come up.
The JFK episode was one of the best the show produced, as it gripped everyone on the show when it happened (the iconic moment with Loretta, the Drapers’ Black maid, sitting next to Betty on the couch while watching TV always burns in my mind). Then came the episode where everyone was at an event when the Dr. King assassination happened and everyone was like, “Ehhhh.” And maybe, scarily, that’s actually realistic, that these upper-class white folks didn’t have much investment for the life of Dr. King (LAWD, because white people LOVE Dr. King Jr., or at least specific quotes of his, now). But what does it really say to a Black viewer to watch all these characters they’ve spent years with nonchalantly shove off the King assassination? More acutely, does Weiner and his writers have any obligation to a more diverse audience?
Mad Men’s dealing with race, as far as a character study, has really said one thing from the show’s perspective: white people in the 1960s were horrible. From Roger’s blackface to the treatment of the secretaries at SCDP, the racist outburst of Pete, the late Bert Cooper’s “I’m not a racist but…” dealings, and Peggy’s just overall behavior with Black folks (like when she was suspicious that Dawn might steal from her), just about every character has exhibited some sort of racism or racial bias over the show’s run.
My problem is that they are rarely running that ideology up against anything substantial. Bert didn’t like a Black secretary at the front desk, so she got moved. Pete said horrible things in the office and eventually was made a junior partner. It’s one thing to be a showrunner and say, “Look, I’m not afraid to show that these were horrible people for the way they treated people of color,” but when it never counts for anything happening, then it becomes very hollow.
One of the cool things about Mad Men is that it rarely has characters overtly say, “The year is…,” as opposed to having a certain event postmark where the show is. The Nixon broadcast that Draper watches in a midseason premiere put that episode in April of 1970. There are times I wish this show was set in Chicago instead of New York, because by this time, Black businessmen (and a very few women) weren’t just a unicorn in the Windy City. It would’ve been great to see an Arthur G. Gaston avatar appear as the serial entrepreneur with so many businesses that the firm might be interested in. Or the possibility of them trying to woo the inheritors of Annie Malone’s estate as the firm tried to expand in cosmetics aimed at Black clients. But none of that imagination existed. Where are the Black folks of consequence in this show? If it wants to make these passing glances concerning race, then why isn’t there an antagonist or colleague that is a person of color they can’t deal with by simply moving her desk? No start-up business owner looking to get advertising that forces the firm into a quandary of what it stands for and believes in? No company that wants to use a popular athlete to sell its product that forces the fir
m to reconsider how it does business? No, we don’t have anything like that to look back on. Instead, we get Peggy living in a “bad neighborhood” populated by minorities where she gets to play the great comforter to the small, recurring role of Julio, a Latino boy that didn’t want to move away. And oh yeah, she owns the building of course. Why else would she be there?
And yet, here I am, talking about Mad Men. The show is aimed at me as a lover of good TV in its framework and construction. The show is definitely not aimed at me for any other reason. And I’m sure most think the first reason is the only reason that matters, but when you haven’t mattered in media for so long, it becomes a lot harder to ignore for you than it does for people that never had to worry about representation before. It’s a show that gets heralded as one of the best of all time—what does it matter if I wasn’t invited to watch it or not?
Mario Kart Reveals Who You Truly Are
OMAR HOLMON, aka Rainbow Road Rash
Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.
—John W. Creasy (Denzel Washington), Man on Fire
THERE ARE VIDEO games that help make you who you are. Case in point? Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. You’re with Link every step of the way on his quest as he grows up and saves the land of Hyrule. You’re not controlling Link, you’re his brother-in-arms from a third-person point of view. Throughout the game, you grow with Link and come to learn about courage, duty, and honor, traits that will help mold you into a productive member of society.
Mario Kart is not that type of game. Mario Kart doesn’t help make you who you are. Mario Kart doesn’t give a fuck about duty, honor, or saving anybody. Mercy? What the fuck is mercy? Is that a protein bar? Is that a new five-minute ab workout? Is that a useless update for your smartphone, ’cause it sounds like a useless update for your smartphone? Let me tell you something: there is no mercy in Mario Kart. Mario Kart doesn’t make you a better person. No, Mario Kart reveals who you really are. Your true self that just wants to win, that needs to win. It’s that same need that the game takes and uses to corrupt your morals and bring the abyss out of you.
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