Ten Year's Later...Life Without Left Eye

Who remembers how excited you were when the new TLC disk dropped?  How hyped were you when TLC was on the MTV Video Music Awards?  Where were you when Lisa "burned the house down"?

Oh , how much has music changed since we lost our gem of the 1990's, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.  Gone are the days of the girl power attitude, the anthems: "No Scrubs", "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", "Creep".  Music was in the prime of a happy marriage of hip hop and R&B...and it was good.

Lisa's presence touched so many and her death affected us all.  I'll never forget Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and his NASCAR team paying tribute by donning black stripes under the left headlights of their cars during the Pontiac 400 that year.

I've been a Dale, Jr. fan ever since...

My last memories of Lisa Lopes came from the VH-1 documentary "The Last Days of Left Eye".  I saw a very different side of her.  She wasn't angry about her past.  The free wheeling and, sometimes, self centered artist was gone.  My only regret was that the world was unable to share the joy she felt towards the end of her life.

While the last ten years quietly slipped by, music had to evolve and evolve quickly.  The TLC era was essentially over. TLC moved on with their lives and so did we.

I hope she knows how grateful her fans were, and still are, for her everything she has done for music.

I, for one, was and still is.  Thank you Lisa.

The Ugly Is About To Come Out...

Now that we're dealing with a real case in a court of law, I feel the need to say a little more about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

During his hearing today, George Zimmerman apologized to Trayvon Martin's parents for shooting their unarmed son.  Yahoo! News reports that his apology was "disingenuous" in the eyes of Martin's parents.


That wasn't what bothered me.  It was the comments that followed....My goodness!!


"Why are they suing?"  "Where's Jesse Jackson?"  "Al Sharpton said..." "He had it coming!"


All I could do is shake my head.  I though we saw the worst America has to offer during President Obama's first term.  We ain't seen nothing yet...


Check out the comments after you read the online news about this.   You'll see what I mean.


Let me know what you think! Find "My Three Cents" on Facebook and sound off!


To be continued...

My American Childhood: Thank you, Mr. Dick Clark

Who remembers Saturday mornings as a child?


Before 24-hour "toon-a-thons" and the magic of "On Demand",  all we had were after school cartoons and Saturday mornings.  Let's see what I can remember...


"The Smurf"s, "Super Friends", "Pac-Man", "Scooby-Doo" (an American Icon..thank you!) and many others.


My Saturday mornings in the 1980's consisted of some yummy cereal, my pajamas and my cartoon favorites.  As I got older, I still enjoyed some ink and paint, but as all pre-teens do, I began to gravitate towards pop culture.  So I took the step of watching TV beyond Noon.  Even then, options were limited.  There wasn't as much pop culture in the media as we know it today.  MTV was in its infancy and there was no internet to speak of. We had the radio, cassette tapes and TV.  


Growing up,  music was very segregated.  There was "Black music",  basically R & B with a younger, hipper sibling called hip hop, and there was "White music" generally pop music, rock and dance music.  These were very clear barriers that were seldom crossed...


...until "American Bandstand".


Dick Clark made the impossible possible in my eyes: creating a level of musical diversity that I never experienced before.  For years, I watched such artists such as Madonna, The Gap Band, Rick Springfield, and Sheila E., all of whom performed on the same stage.  


I'd never seen anything like it.


Young people have so many options where music is concerned these days.  My daughter, for example, can be watching Drake on BET, texting her friends about Kesha, has Mindless Behavior on her desktop and download all kinds of music to her computer (with my approval of course!). I wish I had it so good at her age. All we had were "American Bandstand", "Soul Train" and (for those from the "D") "The Scene".


I'm very grateful for what I had.


My first and lasting exposure to diversity in American music is credited to Dick Clark.  Thank you for bringing rap music to TV, thank you for allowing me to appreciate pop groups like Wang Chung and Talking Heads.  Thank you for putting my favorites on the air: New Edition, Bobby Brown, The Time, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Blondie, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, Jody Watley,  The Gap Band and so many others...


You changed the game forever.  Spin the hits for the angels, Mr.Clark.

My Friend...The Season

Like it or not...sports is our escape.

It's been a tough month for the fighters of social injustice.  Between the ongoing Trayvon Martin situation (Unfortunately, I still can't call it a "case".), to our local school district putting 12 year old girls in the same building with 18 year old boys and call it "restructuring", the socially conscience and politically active have been pretty close to, if not, exhausted.  I've seen protests at the State Capitol, watched the marches take place all over the country, and I think we've all been "Romney-ed" and "Santorum-ed" to death.  Dare I say it, I'm even sick of looking at the White House Press Secretary.  I, for one, have been tweeting, posting, commenting and now blogging and still  find myself pretty stressed out because I think I'm not doing enough.

The good news is...the day I've been waiting for is finally here.  It's circled on my wall calendar, I've saved it on my phone and I've paid homage to it on my Facebook page.

Major League Baseball has returned when I needed it the most.

I don't pretend that most of my friends out there are as enthusiastic about baseball as I am.  Plenty of my friends and family are following the NBA and getting ready for the playoffs.  My husband is continuing to follow our hometown Red Wings.  The Masters is making its grand return.  And we're keeping up with the NFL off season.  Many of us are in the throws of an NCAA hoop hangover and I, for one, am still waiting for the Mayweather/Pacquiao match up that will NEVER HAPPEN!!

Sports takes us out of the drama that is our lives.  Its the only venue where Blacks and Whites, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, union members and their employers, and the "lefts" and "rights" can agree on their hometeam, on who is the champion favorite, the best shot, the fastest pitcher and the most entertaining pregame show.  Sports was the only thing, in my opinion, that reunited a country after the September 11th attacks.  Sports kept us calm after an intense presidential election in 2008.  Baseball is keeping my nerves in check as I prayed for the shooting victims in California and on the eastside of Lansing this past weekend.  My Detroit Tigers kept me from crying hours after I learned that my son will be born with Down Syndrome.

Sports has it's place.  It knows its place.  It never pretends to be the most important thing on Earth even though it is for many of us.  Sports is there for us when we lose our jobs, when church folks are tripping out and when the mourners go home after we bid farewell to a loved one.  The Tigers are there when we fight with our friends.  The Steelers are there when you worry about your family.  The Bulls are there when a natural disaster strikes.

Sports is here for us when we need it....always.   Embrace it. Appreciate it.

Enjoy your season.