Quote of the Day:


Sexual relations are like a gas station. If the gas is no good, the car will break."
Heba Kotb (Cairo-based sex therapist)

The Nobel Prize for Literature will be selected tomorrow.


My pick is Adonis or Orhan Pamuk.


There is always politics behind this award.

Katie Couric numbers are falling.




What did you expect? What can we do? First, let's stop the hair change. The war keeps going on day, after day. Let's keep the same hairdo until our young soldiers are back home. OK? This could be the equivalent of wearing a ribbon. A nice statement of support for the troops. Go Katie.

Let's do each broadcast from behind the desk. No more of this standing up, walking around, as if the evening news is an audition for American Idol.

Oh, and why not bring back the glasses. Remember how Katie had those glasses during the daytime hours and you knew it was "serious" news? Yes, give Katie glasses and see what Marshall McLuhan might say.

Finally, has anyone noticed that the" editing" of the CBS Evening News is not as good as the other channels. Don't blame Katie for that...

New York Times sports-writer William Rhoden is speaking on the campus of Howard University Thursday, October 12th( at 2PM) in the Blackburn Center. Rhoden is the author of FORTY MILLION DOLLAR SLAVES: THE RISE, FALL, AND REDEMPTION OF THE BLACK ATHLETE.

There is a small exhibit in the lobby of Founders Library at Howard that is worth seeing. It's "Black Communists & Free Speech in the McCarthy Era." Showcases focus on Annie Lee Moss, Claude Lightfoot and William Lorenzo Patterson. The exhibit was coordinated by the staff of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. It looks like it will be up for a spell.

I was never good at math - so you do it:

The estimated population of Iraq is 26,074,906.
Since the war started in Iraq about 655,000 people have been killed.

How long will it take for everyone to be killed? How many people will be left if the war lasts 10 years? How many Iraqi women are giving birth to children who will unfortunately leave the womb for a grave?

I was never good at math. History makes me cry.

DANCING WITH THE DEAD

You often find yourself holding hands with your shadow.
You know she’s secretly seeing someone else.
How long has it been? You and your shadow.

In every relationship someone is always in the dark.
Just the other day the woman you love was dancing with the dead.
You wanted to know who she was seeing.

You never know when your lover might mistake you for someone else.


- E. Ethelbert Miller

Made it to the Mocha on U yesterday afternoon. I hadn't been there since the last days of Ginger G (now in Harlem). I had nice conversation with Sedrick Muhammad. A young man running for ANC Commissioner in his neighborhood (1B03). He is the type of person that represents new leadership in Washington. I hope he wins on the 7 of November.

I received a letter from Karla Davis at the Givens Collection, University of Minnesota. Folks there are awesome. Karla sent me a listing of all the things in my Charles Johnson file that I recently donated to them.

I'm slowly working my way through hundreds of files that I've kept on writers. Quite a number I decided to discard. Some clippings are just quicker to find on line these days. It's also amazing to discover how many people stopped writing, moved into other careers, or simply vanished (from my life). There were names on files I just couldn't place a face with. Please see someone in aisle 3.

Why, gentlemen, do you fear two women
who walk holding hands with their child?
Two fifty-year old men exchange rings
and kiss, and you catch mad cow disease
as fallout? What do you hate when you
watch lovers? What are you really missing?

- Marge Piercy
"Deadlocked Wedlock"

Quote of the Day:

"If DuBois has two descendants, Cornel West is the scholar and Tavis Smiley is the journalist-activist."
- Henry Louis Gates Jr.

OK Skip, I'm not buying this one...so I have to ask - Who is your daddy?
Please check these guys DNA in the next PBS special - thanks.

A smile forTavis Smiley. Profile of him in the NY Times today. Here is a link to his website:
www.covenantwithblackamerica.com

James and Esther Jackson and the Civil Rights Movement -- An NYUSymposiumOn Saturday, October 28, New York University's Centerfor the United States and the Cold War will be holding an all day symposium at the Tamiment Library "James andEsther Jackson, the American Left, and the Origins ofthe Modern Civil Rights Movement." Angela Davis(University of California, Santa Cruz) will be givingthe keynote address.The Tamiment Library is located on he 10th floor of NewYork University's Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70Washington Square South, New York, N.Y. (West 4th Streetbetween Greene Street and LaGuardia Place).For further information please Michael.Nash@nyu.edu; orMarilyn.Young@nyu.edu; 212-998-2428.

60 minutes or Oprah should do a major interview with David Stern. I'm waiting for this guy to encourage the NBA to play classical music during the All-Star game. NBA officials this year will try to cut down on uniform violations. No untucked shirts. Officials will also crack down on excessive complaining. I guess this must mean "reckless" eyeballing. Oh...and you thought things would stop with just the jackets and ties. No wonder Stern introduced a new ball.

So it's going to be Ban Ki Moon as the new U.N. Secretary-General. Let's wish this guy the best in his new job. It's going to be critical that he be very visible in his first year. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton called Mr. Ban's selection "a very significant event." Hmmm...so significant that you have to search for it in the newspapers.

Keep an eye on the Ethiopian troops fighting in Somalia. We might find this area of the world exploding again.

Reminder:
Be sure to see The Last King of Scotland this week.

On November 13th ground will be broken on the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial. It will be near the National Mall's Tidal Basin. It will consist of an arc of waterfalls and cherry trees.

Life should be about forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.

WHEN JOHN SEBASTIAN WAS A YOUNG MAN

And before I knew terror and terrorism
I believed in magic. I walked those
New York streets singing

The Lovin Spoonful.

The sky was still there and so was
My youth, just old enough to fall
From the limbs of my father.

- E. Ethelbert Miller

SPORTS UPDATE:

Let's talk football. The Redskins are not going anywhere this year. Let's just be honest. The defense is not that good - especially the secondary. Look for the QB to be injured within the next three weeks. Poor Mark B looks like Joe Montana when he played for Kansas. Anyway, the only guy I really like on the team is Santana Moss. He is the real deal. The rest of the guys are just average. I've always felt the Redskins lost their "soul" when they let Brian Mitchell go.

Bears and Ravens are looking good. It's hard to figure who has the best crack at making it to the SuperBowl until half the season is over. Oh - I have no tears for the Steelers. Boy is their QB overated. How did that guy win a SuperBowl? The refs? I'm still sleepless with Seattle.

And then there is Tom Brady. The best QB in football. Keep an eye on New England. As soon as you see them putting up 35-40 points a game - it's over baby. It means those new receivers have all the training they need.

Baseball? Pull for the Big Hurt and the A's. The media is going to try and sell you the Tigers like a GM truck. The Mets are not the Yankees. The media will just wait for Willie Randolph to make a major manager miscue - and then whisper why he was never given the Yankee big job.

If the Cardinals make it back to the World Series maybe they will play this time. Somebody in the MLB front office must have slipped this organization a Micky last time. Will someone let Mark McGwire sing the national on opening night?

Wizards -Hmmm. Watch King James drop about 45 on them in the first game. Is this Cleveland's year? Oh - did the Lakers find a center yet? The Lakers look like the Sixers-West.
Kobe should try to score 100 points in a game. It might be his only highlight this season.

I'll be following my son's games and giving updates in the E-Notes. The season begins in a few weeks. Go Widener.

Don't miss the Last King of Scotland. An excellent movie. Whitaker should be given an Oscar tonight - why wait? It would be "sinful" to give a best acting award to anyone else. Idi Amin Dada comes to life in this flick --with all the passion and horror. Check that first speech in the film. Whew...

North Korea has the bomb. You want to sneak under your desk and turn away from the windows. Are we going to die? Does every Korean in the world today now feel more powerful. What does it mean to have an A-Bomb? I once had a Spaulding ball when I lived in the South Bronx. Moonie who lived in the St. Mary's Projects hit that baby a mile one day. It went higher than the 21 floors of our housing units. We were in awe. We didn't know a ball could be hit that high or far.

Little did we know our lives would be changed when it fell to earth. The ball bouncing into the streets - where our parents warned us never to go. We had discover the power of the BALL. Every kid on the block wanted one. Even the kids who were growing up to be thieves and murderers.

I turned to my friend Dinky and asked him if we were running with the wrong crowd or just running. He said shut-up and run. I asked where we were running to. He looked over at me his face flushed with fear - Korea baby! Korea!