Famous Black Firsts: First Black Basketball Player Bucky Lew

For this Famous Black Firsts I found out something. At first I was gonna do the first Black NBA player but it goes deeper than that. Who was the first Black to ever even be allowed to play basketball? That would be Harry “Bucky” Haskell Lew. Born in 1884 he was the first Black to be integrated into a game in 1902. Looking at his family history it made since that he'd make some kinda impact. 

Born in Massachusetts, his family did things like serving during the American Revolution, civil rights activists, his father was a delegate during the Equal Rights Convention in 1891, and the home that his grandparents lived in was a station on the Underground Railroad. Bucky played violin before entering the dry cleaning business with his father. When he was 14 he joined the YMCA young employed boys basketball team. Yes. That was a thing. 

Why I'm Using A Deprivation Tank

For a few years now I've wanted to try a deprivation tank. I'd heard of them for quite a while but never knew why you'd want to use one or where they were even located. What really got me into the idea of actually using one came from the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. I'm sure that's what most people that go to one of these places says and I almost want to not give the same answer when I go.

Next week I'll be heading to Float Labs in Westwood for a two hour deprivation experience. Like I said, I'd planned to do this for a while and after making these plans with others and it not panning out I realized that I needed to just do it myself and not wait for others to join me. This is how I am with a lot of things in my life for better or for worse. I've noticed that when I include other people, or worse, tell people that I am going to do something chances are it will take longer for me to actually do or not get done at all. Once I announce myself as a form of accountability my brain shuts down action.

Famous Black Firsts: Cowboy Bill Pickett

The first Black cowboy/rodeo performer was named Bill Pickett. He was born in Travis County, Texas in 1870. He was the second of 13 kids and born to a former slave for a father. When he was 20 he married a former slave whose father was White and a plantation owner because that's how folks rolled back then. By the time he was 10 years old he left school and worked on a ranch. While working on a ranch he created a form of style for taking down steer called bulldogging. Its also a wrestling move whose name now makes sense to me. This technique was created after he saw how bulldogs took down steer and is crazy as hell.

He would jump from a horse, grab onto the steer, and bring it down by biting its lip and pulling back. Eventually it became just twisting their head until they crashed to the ground. This evolved into a sport and is still done till this day. He started participating in rodeos around the country and said that he was Comanche so that racists would allow him to participate. In 1921 he was in two films, The Bull-Dogger and The Crimson Skull which makes the next sentence far too ironic. After retiring in 1932 he was killed when a bronco kicked him in the head. Ain't that a bitch?

Click here for previous Famous Black Firsts.  

Famous Black Firsts: Football Player Charles W. Follis

68% of the players in the NFL are Black. But professional football had to start with one man. That man was Charles W. Follis. Born in 1879 in Cloverdale, Virginia, Follis was the third of seven children. While in college he declined playing for his school and instead played for an athletic club. In 1901 he joined the Shelby Blues who were a part of the APFA which is now the NFL. After five years of playing he was injured and his career was over. He also managed to play baseball in the Negro Leagues as a catcher as well as a power hitter because boredom is a bitch. This was during the crazy time of football where the helmets had no guards and were made of leather.

Follis died in 1910 from pneumonia at the age of 31 because back then if you sneezed you started writing your will. It wasn't even until 1975 that it was widely discovered that he even played by finding old newspaper clippings and seeing that he had signed with a team. Nowadays if you turned on a game and saw zero Black guys you'd think you were in an alternate dimension. Imagine being the first Black man on a football field. That shit would've been terrifying. 

Click here for previous Famous Black Firsts.  

What I Do And Why

Drawing. I have been drawing since I was little as an attempt to be better than my oldest brother. I still draw but its one of the things I do that I forget about the most. When I draw now its usually for a friend or when I do those Quinno & Dante Draw assignments. For me the best part is when I am done drawing and I get to ink. Inking makes everything look better and is just so much fun to do. 

Drawing I don't get as much pleasure out of it because in my head I watch my characters animated and when I draw them its just a snapshot of a piece of the action. When I draw it feels like I am chasing a ghost which is pretty much what I'm doing in an attempt to be as good as my brother was. Whenever someone tells me that they can't draw I tend to tell them its because they keep saying they can't. 

Radio. I started my Ross Radio Show and Ross Radio Quickie Shows because I was complaining about the radio too much. When I complain about something I try to do it better myself instead of contributing nothing. These shows are fun to do and I always listen to them again when I am cleaning or doing one of my hobbies. 

I play a lot of styles of music from classic rock, rap, metal, and soul. I grew up listening to a lot of styles and want to share it with others. I love when I send someone a link and they tell me that they love the songs or haven't heard one of the songs since they were younger. Not all of my friends have my taste in music so I like when someone digs a musician that I do.

Famous Black Firsts: Porn Star Johnny Keyes

While watching SNL last night a name was mentioned that I'd never thoughts of when I was doing my Cool Shit Black People Invented the last few years. Who was the first Black porn star? Who is this man that risked so much so that years later we could watch men that looked more like ourselves having sex on camera while wearing sunglasses, white socks, and baseball caps? 

Well, turns out his name was Johnny Keyes and he was slinging mad Black dick. He was in the Swedish Erotica series of films but is best known for Behind The Green Door where he fucked actress Marilyn Chambers for 47 minutes on film until she actually fainted. Everyone thought that she was acting but she wasn't. This man dicked her into another state of consciousness.

Born in 1940, Keyes was an amateur boxing lightweight champion in the U.S Army. He has a degree in theater arts and has taught theater as well. He performed in Hair and The Wiz for live performances. He currently plays jazz in Seattle and a few years back was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame.

Johnny Panic: Being All Inspirational And Sh!t 2 of 2

Click here for Part 1.

I'm standing backstage and flexing in the mirror. Ronica is pretending to not admire it but I see her smiling out the corner of my eye. I turn to her and smile and she starts laughing. This teacher woman is having none of it. Wonder what her deal is. Ronica gives me a hug which means she is about to give me orders.

“Walter?” she says. I smile. “I know that you know how to behave yourself so try to with these kids.”

“I will.”

“I assume that you'll curse but there are some cameras here and the last thing you need is more bad PR after what happened in Nevada recently” she says. What she's talking about began with me wanting to know if Area 51 still existed and finding out that it still did but not before causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Stupid government. “Behave yourself.”

“Yes, sex kitten” I tell her. “Where's Zazz?”

“Looking for a new shirt” she says. “Why did you wet and burn his shirt?”

“'Cause...”

“You can't keep being mean to him” she tells me. Zazz walks in wearing a shirt that is two sizes too small. Just when I'm about to laugh Ronica elbows me.

“Don't say a damned thing” Zazz hisses.

“Ooh, teacher!” I say. “Zazz cursed!”

“Please don't swear” the teacher lady tells him.

“Ha! You got in trouble!”

I'll skip all the rest of what happened where Ronica made me take Zazz outside, give him a heartfelt apology, and fly to New York to grab a shirt from a place he really loves. Let's get to the part where I talk to these dysfunctional ass kids.

Five Things I Learned Assistant Editing

After working in reality for about four years and working in transcribing (click here for that) and reality TV in general (click here for that) I have decided to finally do Five Things I Learned Assistant Editing. This isn't gonna be some tell all information or dogging any particular show that I've worked on. Its more about information that for those that want to work in reality TV or want to do something more to learn.

Reality TV is different than any other jobs that I've had in that upward movement can happen very fast as long as you try. Yes, it helps to know someone in a higher position but if you don't know your shit it is just as easy to be exposed as not knowing what the fuck you're doing.

Kids These Days 49

I have had conversations with Cam and Mala about how there are certain foods that we ate as children that we wouldn't touch as adults. Mostly because we are far more concerned with things like bacteria and germs that we were back then. The foods that I think of immediately are pickled. Pickled eggs, pickled pig feet, and just plain big ass pickles in a jar.

The least bad ones of these are the plain pickles. They were about the size of your young arm and could be grabbed right out of the jar. No gloves, no tongs, just your nasty ass playground hands reaching into a jar that hundreds of others had. And you didn't get this from the supermarket. Oh, no no no. You went to the liquor store (Webb's on Central east side represent) and got these. I doubt the juice in the jar was ever changed but we didn't care. It was good. Just get some Kool Aid or if you were a broke ass you got your hands on some Flavor Aid. That shit was the devil. You'd add an entire bag of sugar to end up with some colored sugar water which is also what its called when I sweat.

Johnny Panic: Being All Inspirational And Sh!t 1 of 2

Nobody tells me what to do. I'm a superhero, damn it. But right now a teacher is giving me the rules of conduct while talking to a bunch of junior high kids. I hate junior high kids. They're the worse. Junior high is where you learn how to be an asshole. I've never met someone that was one way between the ages of 12 and 15 that turned out different than what I expected.

But what do I know about junior high anyway? I was home-schooled. Sorta. I've had these powers since I was little so keeping me in class would've been stutarded. How could they force me to do homework when I had the ability to physically toss the school across the city? They couldn't! That's how! So I picked up stuff along the way from reading books like Dragonball Z and watching Beakman's World reruns.

“Remember to not curse.”

“Okay.”

“These are children.”

“Okay.”

“You will be speaking for one hour.”

“Okay.”

“Are you listening?”

“Okay.”

“That's not an answer, Mr. Panic.”

“Okay.”

Folks Still Read: Autonomously Yours

I have read a lot of books and don't write reviews as much as I really should. Mostly because people like to say they have no time to read but will post and re-post stuff from Huffington Post and Buzzfeed daily but not take the time to read something I have written. Yes, this is me being bitter.

I have friends that do many forms of creative things so when they want or ask for my help I am grateful because I love the process of creativity. K.N Parker previously wrote a short story called The Death of Death that I reviewed. This story shows that not only can he write longer stories but that he has grown as a writer in this time.

I've read another story that he was working on, one that has nothing to do with either TDOD or this new one Autonomously Yours, that blew my mind. The way his brain works is on a strange wavelength that I dip my toes into but have not truly dove into. Autonomously Yours is a story that will make you laugh, cringe, and question not only the future in terms of robotics but also relationships and letting go.

This is the story of a robotics engineer named Dr. Harold Okamura that is given the chance to create a realistic robot. I don't mean realistic as in “Oh, look. It thinks its people!” I mean it looks, feels, and behaves like an actual human. And it is built to look, act, and do anything you want.

Who The Hell Is Delvin?

My name is Delvin and this picture was taken while hiking at Kenneth Hahn by Donna Williams. You all know me as Dante, your only Black friend, him downstairs, Chocolate Hammer, or whatever terrible things you say behind my back when I'm not around. But my real first name is Delvin. Like Melvin with a D. Now, I didn't choose to be called Dante. Every guy named Dante, spelled in whatever weird ass variations they use, have been assholes. I've never been able to get a solid version of where this name came from or why it was given to me.

There have been a few versions. A guy that one of my mother's friends used to date. A football player. I was gonna be named Damien but thank god that didn't happen. Damien's are worse than Dante's! The reason I was not shackled with the name Damien was because my mother's friend told her that it was the name of the devil child in Omen. Funny that she went with Delvin which is a single letter away from Devil and Dante which, after Damien, is the second name most associated with hell. Go figure.

I found out that I was a different human being after coming to school late for the first time when I was 9 years old. This may have been one of my last days at my elementary school and I went to the office to get a tardy slip. I had never had to get one of these before (yes, I was that kid) and after a few minutes of them calling for this Delvin kid that I'd never heard of they alerted me to the fact that Dante was not my first name.

My world was rocked.

Teachers Sex Trip

Ooh, teachers. I know a few folks that are teachers and ones that used to be. As far as I know none of them have boned any of their students. Two teachers at South Hills High in West Covina have for sure boned some students. Insert Jamaican horns and cheering. If you are someone that is easily offended you should stop reading right now and assume that I am gonna say a lot of terrible shit.

38 year old Melody Lippert and 30 year old Michelle Ghirelli were arrested last Saturday after it was found out that they took a trip with students and had the sex. No, the school had nothing to do with this trip. The teachers took these kids on a trip, had the sex, and as always one of the boys got lippy and word spread. Probably from jealous female students. This is where I get worse.

Drunk Mother And Bulldozed Homes

45 year old Florida mother Angela Woodworth was arrested after her 11 year old son and four of his friends jumped right out of the car she was driving. Why would kids do this? Because mama was loaded. Last Tuesday the four boys ran into a Steak n' Shake in Gainesville after Angela hit a pole while driving. She ended up chasing them inside of the restaurant and screaming at them because Florida. Police found receipts showing that she had bought two pitchers of beer at a bowling alley and four more drinks at a Ruby Tuesday because mama gets thirsty. 

She was arrested and charged with marijuana possession, resisting an officer, and felony child neglect. For some reason she was not hit with a DUI. Judging from her mugshot she doesn't seem all that phased by anything that happened that evening and her son is probably in for a world of hurt when she gets home. I have been in the car with a drunk driver, and let me tell you, that shit is a different kind of fear. I love when you can look at the picture someone is taking during what should be one of the worst moments of their life and they left every fuck to give outside. And their dignity. That shit is worthless. 

One Less Yoga Pants To Check Out

There is a Christian blogger named Veronica Partridge that wrote a post about no longer wearing yoga pants in public. Now I for one love yoga pants. Behind short plaid skirts and shirts that don't quite fit yoga pants are the best thing to happen to my eyes in terms of women wearing clothes. Yoga pants are like short women with wide hips: a gift from the gods.

I mention that Veronica is Christian because that is how she presents herself and her blog. You'd never know what religion I follow unless you stumbled into my closet but by then its too late and the living floor consumes your soul and only then shall you know what true fear is. She made the decision to stop wearing yoga pants/leggings in public after talking to her husband. By the way: I don't know the difference between yoga pants and leggings. I'm gonna always refer to them as yoga pants the same way I call my chair a couch and beige burgundy. Deal with it.