Welcome to August, 2023
Welcome to August, 2023
Thoughts On "Home," Five Jokes, A New Short Story, Podcasts, & Recommendations!
Table of Contents:
August Letter from African America: Welcome Home
What You (May Have) Missed: “Five Jokes!” + A New Short Story!
Recent Pods: Genre Reveal Party, and Yub Nub
Consider Consuming: A Substack, Books, & A YouTube Video
Something from the Vault: What Is Black Twitter?
Upcoming Shows: Movie Quiz!
Song of the Month: Strawberry Letter 23
Letter from African America (August, 2023)
Dear readers,
A little over a week ago in July, I purchased a carton of eggs that expires five days after my wedding in September. Do eggs usually last that long, or is the universe simply reminding me of how close the big day is in the strangest way possible? Mysterious ways, indeed…
A week before those eggs, my fiancée and I were in Los Angeles darting from one corner of the city to the next for food tastings, clothes fittings, makeup/hair trials, and more. And although I grew up in the city of angels — those recent rental car treks allowed me to understand it in the most complete way. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I finally felt like an adult in the place that always made me feel like a kid.
I grew up in South Central Los Angeles (now just known as South Los Angeles), in the same home my father and his seven other siblings grew up in. During my youth, the neighborhood was dangerous — I think. Something called the “crack epidemic” might have been going on, but I honestly don’t know for sure. I only interacted with the inside of the house, or the inside vehicles that took me to other parts of the city where I was mostly indoors. I remember watching movies like E.T., thinking, “Sure, I guess the divorce of Elliot’s parents’ is kind of sad, but look at the neighborhood where they get to roam around and have adventures! What’s he moping around for?” The punchline to that gripe is that by the time my nuclear family moved to a new city where it’d be totally fine for me to go outside, I had absolutely no interest in it. Books, television, and film became (and still are) my outdoors. But I’m slowly learning to appreciate the real thing.
During this trip (a week before the egg, remember?), my fiance and I visited the old L.A. house that I grew up in. I hadn’t seen it properly in well over a decade — maybe even two, and my memory had morphed it something mythic. Sure, I’d driven past it a few times, but something about parking the car and walking up to it caused tears to swell. Suddenly, I could relate to those sentimental moments in fiction where someone like Captain Kirk or Picard looks upon their Enterprise with melancholic pride. This house was once the Enterprise for my family. And I’m sure the house is mythic for every member of it in ways I can never know or comprehend.
George Carlin referred to home as “…just a place for my stuff, ya know? That's all; a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know?” But there’s no denying that some of that “stuff” is memory and emotion. I thought the lawn was bigger than it actually is. I remember when that gate was green, and it fell on me. I recall the time thieves broke in, and my mother — noticing the edge of a stranger’s bike in the backyard while returning home with my sister and me — made the right decision to take us to the park instead of walking in. I remember parties, ducking under tables whenever we heard gunshots, my old room, my grandpa’s old room, my cousin’s old room. Rooms that used to be rooms to my aunts and uncles before I was even born and are now rooms to people I don’t know at all.
What made this trip different? Perhaps it’s the progressive tone that weddings set, and the concept of moving on to another stage of life that makes reflection so much easier and impactful. I can’t help but think that as much as I enjoyed looking at the old house, the old house also enjoyed looking at me.
“Hey, I remember you.”
Don’t forget to look at the expiration date on your eggs.
Sincerely,
Tim
WHAT YOU (MAY HAVE) MISSED
FIVE JOKES! (A new Letters from African America series)
As Twitter crumbles and all of the new apps emerge in its wake, I’ve decided to focus my attention on writing a burst of jokes each morning and share them with subscribers here. If you are already signed up for my emails, you’ve likely seen these lurking in your inbox. Turns out I really enjoy rummaging through headlines and groggily figuring out how to turn them into something entertaining for you all. Be on the lookout for them each weekday morning! Or, you can find them here in the “processing” section of my substack.
A New Short Story!
Black Man with a Whip and the Terror from Tech-Town is the latest short story entry in my Alternate Timeline substack. With everything going on it’s been difficult for me to keep up with the “one story every few weeks” rule I’ve been trying to hold in place, but once things settle I’ll get it all back on track. This new story is loosely inspired by the July 28 premiere of ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ as well as the June 21 controversy over the A.I. generated title sequence in Disney+’s ‘Secret Invasion.’
I hope you dig it! The stories are free to reed, but for bonus content like “Behind The Story” where I showcase the development and research that goes into writing them, you have to either be a paid subscriber to Letters from African America or Alternate Timeline.
RECENT PODS
Genre Reveal Party
I was a guest on the season finale of Genre Reveal Party (hosted by Dave Maher and Madeline-Lane McKinley) to discuss Jerrod Carmichael’s groundbreaking standup special, Rothaniel!
Yub Nub
Speaking of seasons, Yub Nub (the Star Wars podcast I co-host with Greg Iwinski and Jim Fagan) has wrapped up its longest season yet! In this season 5 finale titled “The 80/20 rule in Star Wars, WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike update and Outlaws,” we check in and download the latest with the strike, Andor's delays and Tony Gilroy's opinions of the work stoppage, plus Outlaws news out of Comic Con and Greg lifts the curtain on one of the Star Wars writers' golden rules.
CONSIDER CONSUMING
Due to various strike rules, I don’t feel comfortable highlighting the many wonderful TV shows and movies I’ve been watching as I normal would in this section. Okay, I’ll mention one, but instead of the actual title, I’ll use word that rhyme: I’ve REALLY been enjoying Bliss Pool on Lulu. Anyway, here are some non-AMPTP affiliate things I think you should consider consuming.
NEWSLETTER: Agent of Weird by Alec Worley
I was delighted by a a recent post from
listing my Alternate Timeline substack among many other sci-fi themed newsletters. It helped me find the burgeoning sci-fi community here. Ans because of that post, I looked at his Agent of Weird newsletter and became an instant fan. There are some great gems here, like his piece on The Five Types of Twist Ending and The Pitfalls of Writing Fantasy, which I’m sure I’ll be returning to for guidance again and again.BOOKS: Out There Screaming (a horror anthology curated by Jordan Peele) & True True by Don P. Hooper
This first book isn’t out yet, but I can’t wait to pre-order it and so should you! Wait, does that phrasing make sense? Anyway, I love Jordan Peele’s work, and have often thought about how great it’d be if he got into publishing. So, I was excited to see that he has ventured into this space by cultivating a collection of horror stories from various writers titled, Out There Screaming. I can’t wait to dive in because it seems like reading these will bring even more insight into the types of nightmare fuel that inspires him to tell his own stories.
Moving on from Peele, if you aren’t familiar with Don P. Hooper, you should know that he’s a talented comedian, filmmaker, poet, actor, writer — and a pivotal part of the WGA East’s pickets during our current strike. He’s got a teen & young adult fiction book out now called True True which centers around a Black teen from Brooklyn who struggles to fit in at his almost entirely-white Manhattan prep school, resulting in a fight and a plan for vengeance.
I’m excited to read it. And, if you live in NY, you should consider attending his Brooklyn Heights Public Library presentation of the book TODAY, August 3rd at 6PM ET. But if you can’t, you can also check it out on YouTube!
YOUTUBE: The Page that Changed Comics Forever
Bless the algorithm for guiding me to this video about the work of Bernard Krigstein. There’s a lot of great information here about the evolution of comics and the soul-crushing underbelly of the industry.
SOMETHING FROM THE VAULT
The internet has changed so much recently. Twitter is now X, Facebook now has something called Threads which is connect to Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook through a larger brand called Meta, etc. It’s hard to believe there was once a time when our nation asked simple questions like “What is Black Twitter?” That’s exactly what my pal Ian Abramson and I lampooned in this 2013 sketch about that topic.
UPCOMING SHOWS
“Movie Quiz” - August 5, 7:00PM @ Brooklyn Comedy Collective (TICKETS)
SONG OF THE MONTH
You can now count this section as yet another aspect of Letters from African America that I’ve finally cracked the code of. In previous newsletters, the songs posted here (while great) have had no true focus. But from now on, they’ll be connected to the personal chunk at the top of these monthly updates.
Having said that… and given the fact that I wrote a lot about the concept of home earlier, the song of August is Strawberry Letter 23 by Shuggie Otis. Why, because Otis is an Angeleno and there is something distinctly Los Angeles about his music. They feel like long drives out of and back to the city. Also, well, the song is about love and I’m about the get married.
But more than that — the cover of the song by The Brothers Johnson (who are also from Los Angeles) also counts as my song of the month! There’s a distinct L.A. sound the their rendition as well. If you listen to both versions, you can sense the exact vibe of the person who decides to listen to one or the other while cruising through the streets.
Tim! Thanks so much for the recommend!