Current Obsessions: Weird History, Reliving Single, and 'LA 92'
Things move so fast these days. It’s nice to sit down and track what you’ve been focusing on.
This post is my faulty attempt at molding the sludge of content I consume into a presentable sculpture. Things move so fast these days. It’s nice to sit down and track what you’ve been focusing on.
And this week, I’ve obsessed over…
YOUTUBE: Weird History
Like most millennials, I loved the nostalgia fueled I Love The 70s/80s/90s series from VH1. It was an important and entertaining way for me to put the past in pop cultural context. Now, YouTube channels like Weird History have filled this void.
YOUTUBE/PODCAST: S1-E8 - Episode 8 - Raising the Bar featuring Stacey Abrams
26 minutes into this episode of the ReLiving Single podcast hosted by Living Single co-stars Erika Alexander and Kim Coles, something really magical happens. Special guest Stacey Abrams shows up and succinctly describes the power and importance of television. She also gives a killer pitch for what should be a TV series called Maxine Shaw: Attorney at Law.
DOCUMENTARY: LA 92
LA 92 (currently available for free on YouTube) is a shining examples of what documentaries can be. There are no talking heads. There is no narrator. It’s just an expertly curated and organized series of footage from the era including people on the streets and newscasters on television, with the occasional block text. It’s a tough watch but has given me the greatest understanding of the buildup to the Rodney King riots, as I was just 3 years old in Los Angeles when it all went down. Just yesterday I was telling someone how the bulk of what I know about this era is from the jokes Black comics would make on stage in the 90s and early 2000s. So, it was refreshing to see this and not just rely on the complex hearsay that’s been passed down over the years.
