On Voting/A product of your society

18 yr old me, little tiny freshman in university, fell in love. With a poster (NOT POSTER SHOWN- I'm still looking). It was @ dear departed Wax Traxx, and it was an original poster announcing the release of Public Image’s first single, “Public Image”. By accounts of my Manchester cousins, it was a moment in time when that single was released: P.i.L. was Johnny Rottens first band after the demise of the stunning Sex Pistols, and ‘public image’ was a brilliant song full of energy that in my book eclipsed anything the Pistols ever did. My cousins talked of the uproar @ the record stores to get a copy of it. Again, a moment in time.

The poster I’m talking about showed the original lineup, dirty and scruffed, under the words “Public Image Ltd.: a product of your society”. I asked the owner “how much?” and he just laughed- never gave me an answer.

I voted on Tuesday in the municipal elections. I voted Dorothy Brown for mayor and Jim Sommerville for alderman. As a city worker, I’m tired of Da Mare’s underfunding of the schools, the underfunding of the CTA, and the non-opposition of the city council. It’s a joke. He’s a joke, and so is our machine alderman, Ginger Rugai.

It’s kinda funny, being a grown up person. I grew up in Marquette Park, and if you’d ever said to me way back that I’d be voting for a BLACK person for mayor, I’da laughed @ you big time. No way !! so we grow and change in life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m All-American, and I understand that in the same way I speak English as my first language Ive imbued all sorts of attitudes that I don’t even know about. We’re all tainted by being American, in both the wondrously wondrous ways (I love being an American, no one’s even close) and in the shitty ways.

A favoured part of the book Autobiography of Malcom X is the part early on when he’s just gotta have the conk hairstyle favoured by some in the 40’s and 50’s (and now, I guess). In the movie Malcom X this idea is expressed when Denzel Washington (Malcom X) takes the towel off his head after getting the conk and looks into the mirror and asks his frenz “Looks white, don’t it?”