One Reader's Recommendation (and a Recommendation of Our Own)

The following is from an e-mail our friend Lillian (who co-wrote with Coqui the Das Booty hit "Fuck the World") sent us the other day:

I know you try to stay away from holiday publicity on your web site, and I wouldn't tell you how to run your show, but this is black history month, and I am reading a book by a really good black author and I thought maybe you would want to check him out and put some of his stuff on your page. His name is Edward Wilmott Blyden and his book is Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. It was written over a hundred years ago and his style is similar to the style I have seen lawyers use.* The book is really good especially since it makes predictions about the future of Islam and Africa, and they don't come true. Hee hee.

We haven't had time to check it out and post excerpts, but the recommendation is up there for all. Note to readers: you can read it in March, too.

Our Black History Month recommendation: Michael Thelwell's novelization of the movie "The Harder They Come", for its vivid portrayal of the lives of Jamaica's poor--both rural and urban--in the 1960s and '70s, and for the compelling, shoot-em-up story of the folk hero Rhygin.

It's a pretty good soundtrack too.

* Note to fellow law students: what does this say about our future profession? That it's stuck in the past? Mired in the muck of silly conservatism? We suspect that Mr. Blyden's book is well written, so maybe the comparison isn't justified. But anyone who has spent some time in law school is doubtless familiar with the metastasization of the judicial opinion, and with the common law's reactionary adherence to the jargon and rules of centuries past. We think that three years of law school should get us a degree in Pleonastic Obscurantism rather than a Juris Doctor. Or, to justify the inclusion of 'Pleonastic' in the title, a degree in Pleonastic Obfuscating Obscurantism. Indeed, we look forward to the day when our name will be followed by an imposing POO.