A little more organizing. A little Christmas cheer.
✌🏾
This morning I thought to myself, I'd really like to update my blog... but I have nothing to share.
I'm not going anywhere these days but to target, various grocery stores, and back home again. I'm not doing anything but working, cleaning/decluttering the house, and trying (mostly failing) to keep up with a toddler. None of the above is postworthy! So I'm just going to type until my brain feels thoroughly dumped, 2013-style.
I just came here to update my blog, and blogger has gone and updated their entire user interface with no option for me to "revert" to the old interface, and now I am thrown.
I feel like somebody's parent trying to figure out technology...
oh, wait.
So, let me set the tone by taking a quick walk down memory lane.
(Scroll to the bottom for my list of pros and cons)
As a Black person, I don’t always want to watch movies like Harriet (2019), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Birth of a Nation (2016), and I Am Not Your Negro (2016). While these movies were made about us, I’d argue they were not made for us. These are not FUBU films, and while they do have their own place in the film canon, there is more to our story than our struggle.
When I sit down to watch a movie for date night, or for girls night, or for a night in with my family, I’m not turning on something that will remind me of my ancestors’ pain; I have enough reminders of that in my regular life. Instead, I’m choosing to watch something that tells parts of our story that rarely get shown to mainstream audiences, because if there’s an all black cast, the marketing is always tailored to black audiences, because themes like love, pain, fear, and the like can’t possibly be universal. Right?
One thing white people have probably never experienced is going to see a movie specifically because the cast features people who look like you (whether the plot looks appealing or not). This is a unique part of the minority experience in America that I have come to recognize in recent years.
So today, I’m sharing a list of Black films that do not focus on our existence in relation to white people, but ones that feature us in regular, non-racial scenarios... because we have those too! While general audiences were praising movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) and Love Actually (2003), we (Black people) we’re watching those but also enjoying goodies like Deliver Us from Eva (2003) and The Preacher’s Wife (1996). I grew up loving Clueless and House Party. Get you a girl (or guy) who can do both. We love a well-rounded viewer.
This list is not comprehensive, but I tried to include a variety of options from different decades. Most are from the 90s though, since this when many of my favorites were released, and I only want to include films I personally love and cherish. Are movies like Shaft (1971) and A Raisin in the Sun (1961) classics? Yes, of course! But they're not personal favorites. The more well-known Black films like The Nutty Professor (1996), Good Burger (1997), Coming to America (1988), etc. were excluded. I also omitted movies where a black lead was paired with a white lead (i.e. Men in Black (1997), Training Day (2001), Shawshank Redemption (1994), etc.) Those are important, too (Money Talks (1997) is one of my all-time favorite comedies), but I find the presence of white main character usually makes the movie more “palatable” for non-Black audiences, and that’s not the purpose of this list.
Rom Coms
Quarantine 2020 brought out some crazy things in all of us. Some people turned to baking bread from scratch. Some turned to Tik Tok. Some turned to online shopping. Some turned to at-home fitness. Me? I turned to stress cleaning and candle burning.
I re-vamped my office space over Memorial Day weekend.
My "office" was previously located in our upstairs loft area. That space overlooks the living room downstairs, and it would get too loud throughout the day with the child, the dog, and tv and other random noises. My concentration was compromised, so I migrated to our bedroom since I could close the door and tune out the other sounds.
I went down a creative rabbit hole on YouTube late last night and feel the need to share this message from fellow creative Reggie Ballesteros.
He's a stay-at-home dad and photographer, and he recently teamed up with some other content creators to talk about all the ways us creatives (specifically photographers) get stuck in our own head when it comes to putting ourselves out there.
Yesterday, I was out running errands and decided to listen to a random Soundcloud playlist. Soundcloud has been my preferred music streaming service for years, and now I remember why - so many good artists that don't hit the mainstream are hidden in there.
Lianne La Havas' cover of "Say a Little Prayer" started playing, and I just put it on repeat... and then proceeded to go down the rabbit hole of her discography. This woman has the voice of a goddess, and so, I wanted to share.
❤️
another day, another evening stroll. ❤️
People are out here cutting their own bangs, making sourdough bread from scratch, learning new TikTok dances, and doing push-up challenges on social media. Me? I'm just reading to stay sane. There are a couple from the archives, a book, and a financial report about having babies.
All over the place this month.
if we all have a vice, mine is candles.
i have been talking about tidying the backyard for literally three years now. we had finally worked it in the budget and we ready to call people out for quotes and estimates. then the pandemic happened. maybe it’s just not meant to be. at least my blooms are still bloomin’.
🌺
Hey! Want some stuff to read and chew over that has absolutely nothing to do with this global pandemic? You've come to the right place! Grab a cup of something tasty and gather 'round.
***
It'll also be interesting to see how spending changes during a global pandemic. Do I buy enough groceries to fill my fridge? Do I order take-out to support local restaurants so they can pay their bills? Do I participate in these really good random sales since brick-and-mortar stores are seeing less foot traffic? I don't know, but I'm figuring it out as I go along.
Anywho, I shared it on the slack channel but also feel like it'd be fun to document it on TAS. So, here's everything I spent last week, before the world health organization declared a global pandemic.
Back in 2015, shortly after J and I got married, I started working a temp job in downtown Decatur, GA. Right next door was a newly opened smoothie shop: Kale Me Crazy. Everyone at the job would talk about it, mainly because of the quirky name, but our newlyweds budget was so tight that I couldn't justify the price tag of a gratuitous smoothie, not even on payday.
Now, almost five years later, Kale Me Crazy has multiple locations around Atlanta, including one near my current office building (why are they so obsessed with meee???), and now... I can afford it. LOOK AT GOD!
So today I stopped in for lunch to see what I've been missing.
There's an episode of Broad City where the girls visit a pop up shop in New York. The whole place is a frenzy - a madhouse. One of them buys a shirt and they leave. About 10 seconds later, they realize the saleswoman forgot to remove the security tag, so they turn around and go right back. The pop up shop is gone. Nothing but white space and empty racks with hangers in disarray. Hilarity ensues, and the whole episode is comedic gold.
Until this weekend, I had never been to a pop up shop, but that's the idea I had in my head. Glossier arrived in my city a few weeks ago, and curiosity finally got the best of me this weekend. So I dragged Gabriel and Meredith out to Ponce City Market, where we stood in line for about 20 minutes before entering the shop. It was, indeed, frenzied, but not nearly as wild as shown on Broad City.
Some home shopping 🐶
Some sitting in Atlanta traffic 🚘
I hardly ever share pictures from around the house, and that's mainly because there's only about one hour each day where the natural light shines through well enough for quality shots. Most evenings are spent chilling out with candles lit and a book in hand or a movie on the big screen (usually both at the same time because I love background noise),
In an effort to share some simple, everyday moments, I took a few pictures of what 7pm in the Active Spirit household usually looks like and am posting them here - in all their grainy and fuzzy glory.
Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Social Icons