Note2Self-byPharaoh

Self,

Today, my parents called me, letting me know that they were going to be in the area and wanted to stop by to visit. The surprise in that was that this may have been the second or third time that they have been to my place. I usually just go to visit them along with my brother and grandparents (and other family member who all live in the house I grew up in with my parents.)

It was nice visit, they got a kick out of seeing some some of my pictures I have framed around my place. They like the art and the overall feeling of "home" I created in my space. My Dad commented that my aunt, K, (his sister,) has rubbed off on me. Which made me feel like I kinda got it going on.

It was a short visited...they were only here for about an hour. It was nice, maybe we'll have to arrange another soon.

Sincerely,
Pharaoh
PS it was a nice way to end a weekend and sine today was the last day of May, a month.

Self,

ok I asked a strange question and my friend went to Youtube for the answer, why did he do that?
This wasn't the direct response to my question but it was related.





The part that makes this so funny is the ladies' commentary off camera!

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

Self,

Well as I said, this coming weekend for me and probably many other Southern Californians represent the beginning of Summer and I said I was going to change the playlist on the page.

So going into the first holiday weekend for the season I figure it would be a good time to kick off the party!

The play list has tracks that makes me (and I hope some of you) just bounce! the list is all over the place but I had fun compiling it and I hope you enjoy rockin' to it.

Ok I know that there's a couple tracks that are going to raise a few eyebrows. The first section is the dirty section...it is somewhat representative of the raw nasty raunchy freaky whorish side of Pharaoh....lol yeah he exist I keep him caged most times or on a short leash when I let him out, for those deserving. However I mention this because is probably where the first eyebrow will pop. That track will most likely be "How Many Licks" from Lil' Kim. As much as I like the original, I love the juxtaposition of her nasty lyrics and the ferociousness of the violin in the remix here. The other track is going to be "Took the Night" by Chelley. I know it sounds SO gay...but I think its soo FUNNY...and therefore I love to hear it.

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

As promised to my Bahamian Papi who's tending the "gaytes." Here is the first installment of the True Diva Series. For a while it was hard to decide who should be the first person that I recognize as a true diva. The answer finaly occured to me when I remember something from my childhood. My first trip to Washington DC was with my mom and brother we toured the US on Amtrack (a fantastic experience that I think would be great to recreate with Prince EsQuire for our 30th anniversary of friendship.) Well, we were only in DC for a day, and just could hit the "hot spots," all the things that tourist do. One of those hot spots we went to was the Smithsonian. (I mean who wouldn't it's the US National Museum, right) One of, if not the only exhibit that I remember from that visit was dedicated to "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald. I don't know if the exhibit is still up, but the link goes to a website that reminds me what the exhibit looked like at that time. I'll either have to take a trip to investigate or have to appreciate hearing from any loyal subjects residing there that would be kind enough to report back.
Anyway, so who is more deserving to be honored first as a true diva than someone the government has already bestowed it's greatest honor. (Click on the link and there's a paragraph stating that Miss Ella was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)


With that said, I give you a moment with ....Ella Fitzgerald!

Enjoy!




OK here's an encore.



Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

As I recently told my new favorite Bahamian Papi, (he's my only Bahamian Papi..lol and yes I know he's not really mine, but I think it safe to say he is my friend so you know what I mean,) it seems when I get ready to pen a "Note 2 Self" the "writer" in me takes over the "blogger" and tries to push out a novel and the note get a little long but I'm going to try to keep this one short.

The first was the show "Gospel Gospel Gospel," which as I mentioned earlier I saw Friday, May 15, 2009 with my parents and my aunt. The show was very good, very entertaining and well done although it had a few things that I personally didn't care like but still overall outstanding. The show officially was performed Saturday, May 16, 2009 as a benefit performance at supposedly $250 a seat. What my family and I was able to see was a dress rehersal, hence the free tickets.


"Gospel Gospel Gospel" was produced by and stared James Pickens Jr, from "Grey's Anatomy." The show also featured, Rocky Carroll, pictured here in his role in "NCIS" on CBS, but I remember most from when he was in "Roc" with Charles Dutton. The show also had a special appearance by Loretta Devine, who's name should be regonizable enough to know who she is, but I'll lend a picture to jog everyone's memory, all the same. And lastly,Kenny Lattimore and Chante Moore, also made a special appearance. (I know I'm talking about a gospel show but this picture of the couple is so freakin' sexy!) Oh the show was opened by Vicki Winans, who also made a later appearence in the show.

The show was a journey of the genre of gospel music through its historical evolution and its influence on our culture at different points in time. Starting with what I call the old "Field-hand Spirituals" of folks "moaning, groaning, wailing, howling, and screeching" in praise of God to some of what we currently hear on the radio like Yolanda Adams and Kirk Franklin.


Anyway, the only thing I had a problem with in the show was when the performers would "catch the holy ghost." Frankly it seemed a bit more theatrical to me than genuine, kinda like when you're in a club and kids on the dance floor are twirling and drop to the ground on beat. It seemed some performers would get the spirit right on cue, if the audience got loud enough. But maybe that's just the "not-Churchy" part of me. But like I said I enjoyed it overall.

On Saturday, May 16th I attended a show call "It's All About Love," with my friend RJ. The writer and star of the show is a woman named Toni Malone. RJ is the one who told me about the show after he had met Toni at a card party hosted by one of his other friends. From the title I'm sure it's not hard to figure out that it was basically a love story told through Toni's renditions of popular love songs, like "Killing Me Softly," "My Funny Valentine," "I'm Telling You," "Love on a Two Way Street," and "Isn't She Lovely" along with several others.


As much as I enjoyed the show, what stood out most was the guy that was the stage representation of Toni's love interest in her story. LOL yes, I thought he was rather attractive, so did RJ, as did many of the women in the audience from their hooting and hollering. He came out on stage giving you this "masculine, suave, sensual and strong man," (but not thug mind you) while interacting with Toni. Then Toni left the stage for a costume change. The band started playing another song and yall he "put his hands on his hips and let his backbone slip." Don't get me wrong I've seen men perform "ballet" movements before and still hold some degree of masculinity....this wasn't one of those times. RJ and I looked at each other with expressions that said "Aww damn he killed it!" The illusion was over. I nearly fell to the floor in hysterics.


After the show RJ and I went to Tommy's on Hollywood Blvd, Where we continued to chuckle at Mr. "I'm the Dawncer." I must say I had a really good time. I'm sorry that neither RJ or I thought to bring a camera, to capture the outing.


Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

It has been a while since I took a trip to the movies. Recently, I've seen two. The two movies were "The Soloist" and "Obsessed."


(I love the composition of this poster...well the photo portion.)

I really enjoyed this film. I went to see it with my Str8-husband and his girlfriend. In short, the film is about Foxx's character being a cello genius but develop schizophrenia early in his career and ends up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, when we the viewers and Downey's character meets him. Downey's character is a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and writes a series of columns about Foxx's character, which over time leads them to develop a friendship. The beauty of this movie for me is not the great performances by both Foxx and Downey, but rather its statements about friendship.

The other film that I recently seen was "Obsessed." I'm sure all the Beyonce fans have already flocked to the theatres to show their support. I have to say that the movie was pretty decent. Larter's ("Heroes") character was crazy, which is always a good tool for plot twists and wild shenanigans. Elba's character I think made some major unrealistic mistakes as a man who did not want to jeapordize both his family and his career. However I suppose the writers did that for the sake of the story.

I want to discuss my favorite scene from the film, so anyone who hasn't but intends to see this movie I suggest that you skip the next paragraph. I'm not giving the movie away, but I think it's the best scene and may deflate the overall effect of the film if you know this scene before hand.

For me the best scene of this movie is when the drama hits the fan and Beyonce finds out about her husband's (Elba) situation in respect to Larter's character and they are arguing. She tells him she wants him out of the house. He passionately pleading with her not to overreact and asks where is he suppose to go. In response, she shouts he can go to hell. Then in a space of a heartbeat she collects herself and calmly says, "Until then, I suggest The Four Seasons," then starts to walk out the room. I hate to sound so queenish but the line and her delivery was kinda fierce. I screemed, and even snapped for the kids....(Dammit I know the tiara gleemed/beamed just a bit. lol!)

Well that's it. I'm not writing journalistic type reviews, just mentioning that I have some sort of life...lol.

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

You ever have a moment?

A moment when you feel as significant as the tip of a needle is big? No, I don't just mean that you feel like shit, because quiet as it's kept, shit does have SOME value even as minor as it is. You don't believe me, I got one word for you - fertilizer. I mean you feel so worthless that if you had a price-tag that read "free" that nobody would want you and might even try to take you back to the store asking for a refund. Yeah, it's like that.

A moment when you just can't take anymore. I don't mean where "that's the straw that broke the camel's back," moment. I don't mean a day when you want to wave a white flag or crawl under the covers of your bed and take a "time out." I mean that moment when it feels like the world is going to implode on you!

A moment in which your mind ceases to function. Not just a "brain fart" moment where you can't remember the name of a person or a song, even though it's on the tip of your tongue. No, I don't mean a synaptic misfire either in which there's a person looking at you, waiting for a response from you and although you know they were speaking your native tongue to you, everything they just said to you sounded like gibberish. I mean truly your brain just STOPPED.

In that moment your heart feels so heavy with sorrow you want to weep. I didn't say cry. Crying is for babies who do not have the words to communicate when they need attention or kids when they lost/broke a toy. I mean weep. Weep like the Virgin Mary wept while holding her lifeless son. (Or any mother in that situation, for that matter.) Weep like heaven must do for all the souls condemned to hell.

A moment that defies humanity's concept of time and can't really be measure on a clock....even though you can hear the clock ticking away in your head. The well of infinity seems so shallow in comparison to this moment. The universe is only a puddle of rain water in compared to the size of this moment.

At the heart of this moment, its core, its center, that's when it all hits you at once. It all becomes too much to bear. So you want to reach out to those angels with invisible wings we categorize as friends, because you know they got your back and will help share your load. However, before you scroll through your contact list in your cell phone for the right one(s), you start to hear in your head the words that you'll have to tell your friend(s) in order to explain why you are feeling the way you do during this moment.

You don't like the way this conversation could go potentially. You start to realize you are tripping. That your feelings don't make sense. You worry that as you explain things to your friend(s) he/she consoles you, but subtly point out how irrational you are being. The trigger for this moment is so minor that it doesn't deserve the attention this moment is attributing towards it. You are frankly wasting good strong emotions on something so trivial.

Then you might even worry that your friend(s) will "sigh" out of boredom with the topic of conversation. Either simply because you feel so upset over something they think to be minor or worse they're bored because they heard similar issues before and are not really feeling the idea of hearing it at that time. And now you feel as if you just cross over the line into the stupidity section. So you start to feel embarrassed now. Let's face it, you feel bad enough as it is and you don't want to add stupidity to your list. (Too late, right?) So you put the phone back down without dialing anyone.

But the feelings don't go away.

You decide that even though you are still hurting over this, to keep from looking or feeling even more stupid about this you are going to ignore it. No, not just ignore it, do all you can to deny it ever happened. You going to deny it as much as dumb boys try to deny being the father of the child their girlfriend is going to have even though the girl was a virgin until then. You going to deny it as much as folks deny having an affair after they been caught by their spouse. No, that's not enough. You going to deny it as much as some White folks deny the horrors and atrocities of slavery by saying "It happened so long ago, just let it go and move forward." You are going to do all you can to make it seem that this moment has never existed.

But the feelings don't go away. They've compounded.

For me, that moment occurred on Friday, May 15 2009 at approximately 4:30pm.

I'll confess as part of that denial process, I told myself not to blog about it either...I mean really, it would be very hard to deny the existence of something that is right here in "black and white" for everyone to see. I mean even if I did call someone to talk about it there's always the chance that over time they'll forget, but here is well for ever. Feel me?

Well over the course of the couple days it has taken me to write this, I can say the moment has passed. Although traces of it still lingers. What helped me most to rebound from this was an event that occurred just a few hours later. When this emotional moment began, I was actually driving to my parents house. I was meeting them to go to a gospel musical show that they received free tickets for through their church. I'm not the "churchy" (yes I know that's not a real word) type but since we usually spend Friday evenings together anyway I was fine with going if that's how they wanted to spend this particular Friday.

The show is called "Gospel! Gospel! Gospel!" Without going into any details, the show gave me what I needed to get over my emotional moment. I may blog more about the show itself later with some critique but overall it was good. Yes it could have been the contents of the show that helped me sail through my personal storm. However it could have just been the fact that it was just a distraction and time itself was the real cure. I don't know. Either way I'm grateful.

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

P.S. I'm willing to discuss this in general, but not in great details. I obviously can't deny this moment, so there's no point in trying to hide from it. However, I would like to keep those lingering feelings at a minimum. THANK YOU!

Self,

I've made mention of the fact that I browse other blogs when I have time, who doesn't, right? I'm not here just to share the wisdom and knowledge of the ages, but to also learn from my contemporaries. And what I think I love about the blogger's world is that for the most part this is a place made entirely of pure thought, it's almost like communicating telepathically. (Sidebar: Does anyone think humanity will ever evolve to have that ability?) I'm not going Sci-Fi on you, but just making an analogy.

Reading and writing means being able to express and understand each other without the benefits of tone, inflection, pitch, facial expressions, body language, rhythm, cadence, and even time.* To do it successfully takes some skill and practice. Hell it is basically an artform.** Those who do it..well, should take pride in it, those who don't simply may want to work on it.

I say that because I want to stress the importance of what following a blog and taking the time to comment on a blog, means to me. The significance is the same rather I'm referring to those supporters who follow and comment on mine or the blogs that I choose to follow and/or leave comments. I thank those who have chosen to become a follower of my page. I also hope that my statement indicates the importance of communication for me.

So when I say this it comes from that space, but I know that the following may come off as a little smug or snooty. Forgive me, but I am Pharaoh, did you expect anything less - LOL? That said my smugness about communication has led me to realize that I have certain pet-peeves with some members of the blog world. Don't get me wrong I'm not pointing at any particular individuals, but just certain types of people within the blogging community.

There's only two main issue I have:

The first is the idea of anonymous comments and the people that leave them. I personally do not allow comments to be left anonymously here. NY Suitor asked why I didn't allow it, (I think if I did, he would leave comments. But since I don't, he doesn't.) I believe my answer at the time was that it was for security in so much as people didn't feel they could get away with saying all sort of wild and crazy bullsh*t. However I realize that it's more than that alone. Simply put, I think its a matter of believing that people should be accountable for the things that they say. If a person feels that they have a thought or idea that they feel is worth sharing, then they should be willing to OWN that thought or statement. If you aren't willing to put your trademark on it, then is it really important to you? I mean isn't that what patents and copyrights are about folks saying "this was my idea, I own it (and I should be the one to profit from it.)" Well there's not really any profit to be made here, but that doesn't mean disownership should take place either.

My second issue with some Bloggers is that I really find myself annoyed when I come across pages that when I try to leave a comment, instead of seeing what I wrote I see a message saying that my comment is waiting for approval by the owner. Lol, that just cracks my hide, call it my smugness again, but if I want to say something, I don't think I need the owners censorship to validate my comment as appropriate or not. I mean are these people's ego so fragile that they can't take the possibility of being criticize and contradicted? If that's the case, why have a public blog on the internet, wouldn't it be better to go to Barnes and Nobles, spend $15-$30 on this thing called a journal. You know they have some that are really quite lovely. They come either tall or short, lined or unlined, most have beautiful covers: rather religious/spiritual, whimsical/comical, or simply artistic. Some even have locks! You can use one of those and never worry about anyone else reading it and disagreeing with its contents. I mean maybe it's selfish but if I decide to leave a comment then it's cause I think I'm saying something that I want other's to hear. It irks me to think that it may not happen. If there's a chance that other's may not read my comment because you as the owner don't like it, then what's the incentive for me to leave a comment.

My page has never been set up to require my approval before someone's comment appears on the page. I have had someone tell me after reading something I wrote that they didn't like, sayto me that they wouldn't leave a comment contradicting me or "telling [his] side of the story" because he "knew" I would just delete it so nobody could read it. SO untrue, quite frankly I don't know if I could delete other people's comment from my page. I haven't tried. I know that I can delete my own, but that's about it. I really don't have the desire to erase someone's comment. I'm simply more likely to opt to counter-comment to you, then simply erase it. As a place of thought then for me each post and subsequent comment creates a chain and to delete a comment would be removing a link in that chain. The chain is strong if it's intact. We all will learn more from the cumulative chain of knowledge than from our isolated individual links.

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

* I've been told that I'm to analytical and "too in my head" at times so I feel it necessary to acknowledge and mention the fact that I recognize the fact that the lack of those things could also leave a large margin for miscommunications.

** For the record, this doesn't necessarily mean having and using "big words." But at times an extensive vocabulary does help.

Self,

I can't speak for the folks in other parts of the country, but here is SoCal, if you can spend Mother's Day outside in the backyard cooking ribs on the grill, chilling on the patio, then I'd say it is safe to call it Summer!

That's exactly what my family did on Sunday for The Queen Mother, the only thing she really did was lift her glass of Martini and Rossi's Asti Spumante to her lips or to be refilled! No, she wasn't drinking alone. Her sister, the Royal Father, The second Prince, and myself were all sipping with her.

It was such a wonderful day. It wasn't too hot, nice and sunny, just an overall pleasant day. Which got me to thinking that it is basically summer now.

So I decided that I want to do something different here for the summer. I've decided that I'm going to change the music sheet for the Royal Orchestra on the page. However, I am going to wait until Memorial Day weekend to implement the change so be on the look out and keep an ear open for it!

Sincerely,
Pharaoh

Self,

I'm a little late doing this but I was intentionally stalling.

I was stalling for a couple reasons. One of which was that I was trying to leave the post "Who is in Control" on the top of the page for as long as possible, however it's time to move on.

I was also stalling because I wanted to let enough time pass to feel secure in saying this.

I HAVE 25 Loyal Subjects now. Actually 26. But I said I would acknowledge my 25th follower!

My 25th follower is Eric Arvin. I haven't had much opportunity to speak with Mr. Arvin yet, but I do drop in on his page regularly so I think those conversations will happen, it's just a matter of time.

My next milestone will be 30 (I know it's only 4 away since I have 26 followers, but it's a round number.)

Jamar, you were about 2 days too early and Miz Milah, you were a day too late!

Sincerely,
Pharaoh