When I awoke this morning I threw on the first available t-shirt (following my shower of course) due to damn near every other bit of my clothing being ready for drop-off at the local laundromat, and the shirt I happened to end up with was my trust Green lantern Corps emblem tee.
Yer Bunche, rockin' it Oa-stylee.I've always favored GL tees because while thoroughly geeky, they are not as instantly recognizable to the non-superhero cognoscenti — aka the general public or those who have a life — as a Superman or Batman crest, both of which you'd have had to live on another planet for the nearly the past seventy years not to recognize. But even when hiding in plain sight while representing for geeks everywhere, I can sometimes unintentionally get into trouble. Case in point:
Some years back, just after the majority of my friends and extended family moved away from Brooklyn for greener (and cheaper) pastures in which to raise families, I was eating breakfast at the New College Diner, a place my friends and I would take over in droves every weekend for a few years, when a black dude of about sixty walked in. The guy was decked out in very Afro-centric clothes, including a kufi, dashiki and sandals of the type often seen on men from Africa proper, and his silver 'fro lent him an air of snooty dignity. But I'd seen his type before, namely one of those guys who latched onto an "African" identity either during the 1960's or early 1970's, and instantly had him pegged as an all-too-American poseur who would undoubtedly have bored the tits off me if I allowed him into a coversation.
When he entered the place he gave the diner a once-over like some visiting dignitary, taking note of the other blacks present, but stopping when he saw me , his gaze affording me tight scrutiny. As I munched my toast while reading a scholarly hardcover tome on Toho's Godzilla cycle (you knew it was an egghead book because it had no pictures) , Prince Mamuwalde haughtily strode over to where I was seated, his equally faux Nubian wife/girlfriend in tow, and stood directly in front of me. He pointed at the t-shirt I was wearing and, in a voice so affected and pretentious that he could have passed as Jonathan Harris after a melanin transplant, asked me, "Say, my young brother-man. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that is an Ashanti drum symbol you're wearing. Is that not so?" I instantly deflated his attempt at including me in his feeble game of African culture "dress-up" by barely looking up and flatly stating, "No, it's the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps, a fictional group of intergalactic cops."
If withering looks of disdain and accompanying "tsk"-ing could kill, I would have been carted out of the diner in a beat-up shoebox.
Some years back, just after the majority of my friends and extended family moved away from Brooklyn for greener (and cheaper) pastures in which to raise families, I was eating breakfast at the New College Diner, a place my friends and I would take over in droves every weekend for a few years, when a black dude of about sixty walked in. The guy was decked out in very Afro-centric clothes, including a kufi, dashiki and sandals of the type often seen on men from Africa proper, and his silver 'fro lent him an air of snooty dignity. But I'd seen his type before, namely one of those guys who latched onto an "African" identity either during the 1960's or early 1970's, and instantly had him pegged as an all-too-American poseur who would undoubtedly have bored the tits off me if I allowed him into a coversation.
When he entered the place he gave the diner a once-over like some visiting dignitary, taking note of the other blacks present, but stopping when he saw me , his gaze affording me tight scrutiny. As I munched my toast while reading a scholarly hardcover tome on Toho's Godzilla cycle (you knew it was an egghead book because it had no pictures) , Prince Mamuwalde haughtily strode over to where I was seated, his equally faux Nubian wife/girlfriend in tow, and stood directly in front of me. He pointed at the t-shirt I was wearing and, in a voice so affected and pretentious that he could have passed as Jonathan Harris after a melanin transplant, asked me, "Say, my young brother-man. Unless I'm very much mistaken, that is an Ashanti drum symbol you're wearing. Is that not so?" I instantly deflated his attempt at including me in his feeble game of African culture "dress-up" by barely looking up and flatly stating, "No, it's the symbol of the Green Lantern Corps, a fictional group of intergalactic cops."
If withering looks of disdain and accompanying "tsk"-ing could kill, I would have been carted out of the diner in a beat-up shoebox.
4 comments:
This confirms something Ive always suspected....
The Green Lantern got his start playing drums for the Ashanti tribe.
Who says comic books arent educational?
Have you noticed there's been no mention of White Lanterns for the current storyline? Think that's intentional? And wouldn't it be funny if it was John Stewart?
Green Lantern & a Blackula refernce !
Schooled, grades K-12. Nicely done!
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