Stop Snitchin'? Stop Saggin'!

Yes, do it, Atlanta! And I can see that St. Louis needs to follow suite with similar sagging laws soon. The saggin' trend is so intense and pervasive here that I've been snooping around the 'hood with my camera during my visit home, clandestinely taking the above pictures of guys' butts. They're an elusive lot, though. Hard to snap shots of, like butt-a-flies!

Men and their ass-showing thing really ought to have been outlawed a long time ago. Companies such as Sears, your basic plumber, your basic cable company... All of them have done society a grave disservice by turning the other cheek toward employees who bear butt crack. There is nothing so disgusting. Nothing. Not even hip-hop kids with sagging pants.

But here again, America needs an attitude adjustment. Too many people laugh hysterically when older white men expose their fleshy, jiggly posteriors. But now that urban youth, particularly black kids, have taken the shocking look and twisted it into a (horrid) fad, suddenly we need laws, Laws, LAWS!!

And I agree. But we needed these indecency laws years ago, when this sloppy phenomenon started among service workers. When strangers began coming into our homes dressed in ways that assault the senses. For as distasteful as I find hip-hop pants saggin', I'm thankful the wincing and squinting I do when I see it isn't because I'm seeing the actual cheese.

Opinions:

* St. Louis sports writer Bryan Burwell ties in Michael Vick
* Shamontiel sounds off at Associated Content
* Atlanta's possible actions @ Mingle.City

Technorati links:

saggin
sagging
Atlanta
hip-hop
butt cracks
photos

Read the whole post...

Max Roach to Jay-Z ... Bebop to Hip-hop

Love it or hate it, it's hard to miss the dotted line in African American history that's taken the music world from bebop to hip-hop. Draw your own conclusion, but the life transition yesterday of jazz drum master Max Roach coinciding with Forbes giving Jay-Z the crown among hip-hop cash kings says something mighty powerful...

New York Times on Max Roach's life and achievements

MP3.com covers Forbes story about cash kings Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Diddy, Timbaland, & Dr. Dre

"Tell My... Horse," 2006 post at ViqiFrenchFever about hip-hop, 50 Cent and the messages


Technorati links:
jazz
max roach
hip-hop
haiti
jay-z
africa
Read the whole post...

Sites For Writers to Promote Books and Build Traffic

While online exploring ways to promote my book, which I categorize as my * suspense memoirs *, I've been more astonished than before by how quickly hot, new spaces crop up, catch fire, and help build traffic for writers. Or for anyone else, for that matter.

Because one of my redundant gripes in life is, "No one ever told me that... Why didn't someone tell me?" I'm sharing some of these sites with you. Again, I've stumbled upon them in the context of searching for good writers tools, but if you're not a writer, you'll still probably find them useful.

1. Scribd.com -- This could be called Free eBooks or PDF City, and I mean there's a PDF or ebook at Scribd on all kinds of cool, obscure stuff. I don't mean obscure in a bad way at all; I mean of great value and high quality, which can be rare in cyberspace. Extremely user-friendly and clean design. The link opens on my own, first entry at Scribd, but you know to explore once inside. After you read my memoir PDF, that is. ;-)

2. Shvoong.com -- I'd heard of Shvoong, but hadn't ventured there until now. I was reminded by a fellow Associated Content writer that here was a place to not only write my own book review, but serve it up for others who hopefully would like the material and write book reviews, too.

3. PayLoadz.com -- A venture of PayPal (which is owned by eBay), PayLoadz provides a space for creatives to sell all types of digital goods. From ebooks and music MP3s to software and how-to instructions, someone seems to offer it in the PayLoadz Store. For example, download how to build a garden bridge, how to knit a cool handbag, how to write a book, and more.

4. Squidoo.com -- There's been much written lately about Google and what's being called the "Squidoo Slap." Meaning that Google grew frustrated with the spam abuse at Squidoo and either removed peoples' high-ranking sites from Google search or buried them. But there's still a strong and supportive community at Squidoo. Even through Google, Squidoo brings nice traffic to the lens about my memoirs just fine.

5. Blogger.com -- I hadn't used the search function at the top of this blog in a while. And just when I wanted to, I discovered it was gone. (Like I said, nobody tells me anything!) I wanted to search for other writers on Blogger, book review writers, you name it, but it took a minute to figure out how. I wound up changing my profile page (i.e, my occupation line) from PR and Writer to just say Writer, and there "everyone" was. Wasn't there a time when you could choose from the universe of what types of bloggers you wanted to search for here on Blogger?

Bonus: This isn't a site for writers, but I love Tabblo.com and the wonderful photography there. Great community and some very creative photo essays there, too. Check out this wacky Tabblo by Gretel!


Technorati links:
books
book reviews
book review writers
memoirs
memoir
free ebooks
Read the whole post...

Tom Snyder : Tomorrow May Never Come (Again)

Finally, it's happening: I'm committed to letting my memoir manuscript see the light of day! It's been a long and somewhat painful process. Two years ago, I was 90% "there" in terms of sealing a wonderful publishing deal with a New York publisher. But ultimately, things didn't go as the editorial director and I had hoped. Disheartened, I didn't even look at the manuscript again for two painful years.

But life and timing are extraordinary, unpredictable things. Mysteriously, the death of late-night talk show legend Tom Snyder of "Tomorrow With Tom Snyder" has given me the impetus, indeed the vigor, to dust off my tear-stained humor memoir manuscript and just see what happens with it online as an ebook.

In the wee hours of the morn, I finally did just that! I now have a PDF available of the entire manuscript of my humor memoir here: http://editred.com/viqifrench.

There's also a free sample download of the entire first chapter available.

I should explain that Tom Snyder figures quite prominently in the very first chapter of my book. When I was young, I'd sneak and watch "Tomorrow" when I was supposed to be asleep, reposing to gear up for the next day in elementary school.

It's impossible to convey how intrigued I was by "Tomorrow." The only other bigger fan I've identified is my guy Conan O'Brien, whose unusually solemn and heartfelt condolences about Tom's passing nearly brought tears to my eyes.


Tom Snyder's guests absolutely floored me: witches, warlocks, murdurous cult leader Charles Manson, Alfred Hitchcock, lesbians, transsexuals, communists, UFO spotters, and so many others. There's no doubt his show played a part in shaping my freakish persona (and Conan's apparently!).

As a result, many of the stories in "Daddy's Gonna Buy That Baby A Jaguar" seem to be about my hilarious "encounters" with ghosts, cross-dressers, and other unusual characters and situations from my teen and childhood years that I hold dear.

On that note, I humbly release the essay I wrote two years ago involving Tom Snyder and my fantasy pet and muse, Killer, a bad ass jaguar. Please let me know what you think!

Key links:

* Get the sample PDF chapter including Tom Snyder here: Daddy's Gonna Buy That Baby A Jaguar

* Learn much more about the book, where I'm coming from (i.e., St. Louis and Philadelphia at my Squidoo lens: A humor memoir with an upROARious bite!


Technorati Links:

Tom Snyder
Writers
Books
Humor Memoirs
Television
Conan O'Brien

Read the whole post...