Category Archives: Books
Listening to Remade in America
Having been a guest on former Federal prosecutor Preet Bharara’s podcast, “Stay Tuned With Preet,” Bassem Youseff decided that if Preet could get a show from Cafe, so could he.
Bassem was a surgeon in Egypt who, during the Arab Spring, started a YouTube series to show what was really happening on the front lines of the protests. This grew in popularity until he was offered a TV show, and that grew in popularity until he was hitting 14 million viewers a week and being called the Egyptian Jon Stewart. And until the government decided his humor and honesty was dangerous and tried to arrest him. He tells a hilarious story while speaking with Preet about being brought in for questioning by the authorities, and as much as I laughed at this, I can’t believe someone in the government or a member of the pro-Islamist faction that also hated him, didn’t find some reason to execute him.
That’s the shorter, less funny version of how Bassem essentially had to flee to America, so definitely go and listen to his appearance on “Stay Tuned” when Preet went live at the Apollo theater, and then check out his new podcast, “ReMade in America.”
It’s the second episode of his show that made me stop what I was doing and really listen, as it seemed to be a convergence of multiple ideas and stories that had been circling me recently. In this episode, Bassem speaks with Baratunde Thurston about controlling your own story, your narrative, and how the United States was essentially built on destroying an entire race’s ability to do just that. As George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
As Baratunde begins to talk about that, about the history of slavery and the systemic, institutional racism that is the inoperable cancer of our nation, I was reminded of a passage by James Weldon Johnson that I came across the other day, that I believe comes from his book “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”.
“…but if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall.”
Asterisk at Society6
Based on a vintage plastic bag design from the Buffalo & Erie County Library in Buffalo, New York, this design is available in two versions; with the light border that was featured on the original plastic bag that resembles a Polaroid photo, and one without.
Originally I was only going to make a replica of the original design with the border, but after removing it, I actually like the version without it better. You can click the images below to check out both versions, Asterisk and Asterisk Instant, and leave some comments about which you like better.
Hemingway In the Afternoon
A few weeks ago marked an important day in literary history when, on June 7, 1933, Max Eastman published “Bull in the Afternoon”, an article reviewing and poking fun of Ernest Hemingway and his nonfiction work, Death in the Afternoon.
This would prove noteable months later when Hemingway would confront Eastman over the article. Specifically, it seemed Eastman’s criticisms of Hemingway’s insistence on an overblown sense of masculinity and a constant need to show off his chest hair caused the great author some distress.
Hemingway demanded Eastman read his critique aloud so that he might berate the man for his opinions. When he refused, Hemingway smashed the book into the critic’s face proving that there truly are fewer things more fragile than a male ego. This may never be so true as when it concerns a man whose reputation and self worth was based so much on the idea of a superior masculinity.
Hemingway later inscribed the book he had broken on Eastman’s face with, “This is the book I ruined on Max (the Prick) Eastman’s nose, I sincerely hope he burns forever in some hell of his own digging” which the critic kept in his personal collection for years.
Gas Station Burrito 