I eat salads often now, because I have transitioned to a phase of my life where I’m expected to eat them often, and I don’t want to subvert those expectations. I’m so immersed in salad culture, so attuned to the salad zeitgeist, that my affinity for leafy greens lightly fondled by zesty liquids precedes me. When I…

I recently saw a Billboard article that ranked every song on Janet Jackson’s fourth studio album, 1989’s Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 (we’ll just call it Rhythm Nation from here on out)—though I’m sure most folks think it’s her second album after her landmark album, 1986’s Control—and thought to myself that I…

1. I could understand a Las Vegas residency for “A Night with Whitney.” What happens there, rightly stays there, so it makes sense. Yes, that’s a non-sequitur. But so is ‘Whitney was popular let’s make her a ghost and tour her.’ I’ve been to Vegas and seen things that I have not seen anywhere else, both commercially…

If you need an example of the level of danger Pittsburgh’s black population faces for just living in the city, drive down Centre Avenue, go through the Hill District and then North Oakland, and then stop once you find yourself in front of UPMC Shadyside. Park your car, get out, and survey the beautiful campus this…

It was revealed late this morning that sentient house arrest anklet stuffed into an empty Iron City bottle Ben Roethlisberger needs surgery on his mysteriously injured elbow and will miss the rest of the NFL season. The Pittsburgh Steelers are dumpster juice this year—which is what tends to happen when you call losing…

Between two and four times a week, I come home from whatever it is I was doing before, I change into gym-appropriate clothes, I stuff a four-year-old Gap Kids baby bag repurposed as a gym bag with a pair of Kyrie 5s, a knee brace, extra socks, and a T-shirt, and I make the drive to one of the places I hoop. Some days…

They may not have the most iconic and recognizable logo of all time (I’m sure the folks involved in that debate argue about this frequently), but Nike is absolutely near the top. Should you decide to look at folks’ feet all day long, I’d wager that you’d see more Nike swooshes (also called the Nike check) on shoes…

When most people think of careers in television, their first thought usually goes to someone in front of the camera. I am no different. When I got serious about my broadcast journalism major, I too had visions of being in front of the camera to become the next Oprah. I knew I wanted to be a reporter and eventually an…

This is just an estimate, but I’d wager that, to date, I’ve heard Lil Nas X’s smash hit, “Old Town Road,” probably 75 million times. Every time we get into the car, any car, my kids ask to hear “their song.” Their song is “Old Town Road.” In the morning and in the evening. On the way to school or on the way home from…

Really?

Let us bow our heads in prayer:

There should be a word to describe the thing that happens when you have a new favorite word for a month or so and you become so enamored with it that you inject it into as many conversations as you can. For instance, right now that word for me is zeitgeist. I’ve always had a deep affinity for words with prominent “Zs”…

It’s a device you’ll often see in comedies.

While August 23, 2019, probably won’t be revered in modern black music release history the same way that September 29, 1998, is—the day that Outkast’s Aquemini, Jay-Z’s Vol. 2, Hard Knock Life, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement, Black Star’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star and Brand Nubian’s Foundation…

0:08: The first shot you see is one of KOCO-TV morning anchors Alex Housden and Jason Hackett seated next to each other, with approximately six inches of space separating them. Housden looks frantic and harried like she just completed a seance for a whiteness Voltron that hasn’t yet arrived. Hackett looks like he’s…

There’s been a whole lot of chicken talk lately. Most of the chicken conversation has centered around the new Popeyes chicken sandwich that had folks, including me and my own family, waiting over an hour for an opportunity to jump into the conversation about its goodness—which is now a thing of the past since Popeyes…

Hip-hop celebrated its 46th birthday on August 11. The anniversary of the genre’s unofficial yet widely accepted formation in the Bronx just happened to coincide with the tail end of a conversation regarding everyone’s top 50 rappers list. The thought of putting together my own top 50 list always put me off; once you…

Of the myriad possible metaphors for the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich craze of 2019—which is a thing I will tell my kids about when they ask how America voted for Donald Trump—my favorite is that the sandwich itself represents heaven. The line to wait for the sandwich? That’s life on Earth. Those who get their sandwiches…

There’s a scene in the latest episode, “Oh Mamere,” of season 4 of Queen Sugar that is maddening to watch. In it, Darla Sutton (I legit had to look up her character’s last name; I’m not sure I’ve heard it uttered a single time on the show), played by fountain of youth-er Bianca Lawson, is sitting in a restaurant as…

I don’t know when, exactly, I decided to get a Ring video doorbell, but I do know that one day I got it in my head that I needed some minor surveillance around my door, after a series of unfortunate events. Events like the various times both UPS and the USPS claimed to have delivered items directly to my front door,…