Against the Giants

Finally watched this joint. Here's Shani-O:

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a slight cultural appropriation wince, though. Working through it.

Yeah, I basically had the same wince. Slightly more bothersome, is the sense that whenever I see something like this, there's always this self-mockery aspect to it. Perhaps I'm oversensitive. Anyway,  the fact is that there actually aren't many black people in this country. When 85 percent of your society is non-black, any financially succesful art-form will always end like this. I remember when people used to say "most gangsta rap isn't bought by black people." I used to think, "And?" Most Motown records probably weren't bought by black people either. This is what it means to be a minority. Deal with it.

More personally, while I recognize this as the ultimate fate, it also is where I get off the bus. This isn't just true of hip-hop, but all my childhood obsessions—comic-books, sci-fi, fantasy whatever. In all of those forms, the fandom dreamed of the day we'd conquer the world. Wouldn't an X-Men movie be awesome? Wouldn't it be cool if you didn't have to stay up till midnight, and much through Duran Duran on Friday Night Videos, just to see the new Run-DMC joint? Wouldn't it be cool if you could run a D&D campaign whenever you wanted with people from all over the world?

We won. And how. I have no complaints—it's the world we all asked for. That said, I think I like secrets. I think I love that old feeling of isolation through hobbies. Of course you felt alone. But I liked that people would see us aligned Against the Giants, with no board at hand, and say "That isn't a real game," or see us reciting "Paul Revere," and say "That isn't real music," or see us high on the Masters of Evil and say "That isn't real reading."  

Where the arbiters smirk, I will always make a home. And when they concede, it's probably time for me to move on. It is snobbery, I know. But it's my snobbery. And what else would bring me to you? For surely it must be said, at the end of the day, that this isn't real journalism. Yet.