The Urbane Urbanite

Tyler Perry's latest film, Good Deeds , debuted last weekend to an underwhelming $15 million . But don't cry for him, Argentina. He's got three more times to get it right this year. With The Marriage Counselor , Madea's Witness Protection and Alex Cross all slated for release before Christmas, he'll more than recoup any losses at the box office. But does the top-paid man in entertainment risk overexposing himself? The Grio asked that very question in an article that ran on their site last week . Jarrod Harden and I, along with a few other folks, received the link to the story via email. Here's Jarrod's response.

I didn't lose anyone on September 11, 2001. I don't even know anyone personally who lost a friend or loved one that day. And because of that, I've always felt like an observer, like a voyeur who stood and watched this heinous, horrific thing happen to other people. If I had to guess, I would say it's because of the way I watched the attacks on The World Trade Center unfold: From a large office window in New Jersey, just close enough to know that what I was watching was real but far enough removed to be out of harm's way.

The Urbane Urbanite has been around for 15 months. And in that time, I've written quite a few personal posts - a tribute to my 92-year-old Granny after she passed away; the uneasiness I feel about my mother getting back on the dating scene ; a confessional about feeling like a quitter when it comes to my acting career - but the most personal post, by far, has to be the interview I did with my father. The Conversation with Dad post is the most popular, most talked about piece I've ever written. It has elicited the biggest reaction from the readers of this blog and goes down as the most cathartic writing experience I've ever had. Besides providing all of you with a gutsy, engaging piece to read, it also did the unthinkable: help me get to know my father a little better and bring us closer together. In the year since publishing the post, I've gained a ton of new followers. So in honor of Father's Day this weekend, I'm reblogging my Conversation with Dad fo...

I've been having the same nightmare once a week for several months straight. The nocturnal reverie always stars a teenage me in the tail end of my senior year in high school. The dream typically begins with me strolling the school halls with textbooks in my hands, chatting up my fellow classmates. And usually ends with me groveling at the feet of a teacher whose class I've cut the entire school year, begging her not to fail me. And then, just like that, I wake up sweaty, out of breath and clutching my neck where I imagine pearls to be. I hate this dream. Hate it. Mostly because it feels so real and always leaves me in bed trying to remember if I actually graduated high school or not. Yep, the dream feels that real. For the longest, I've been trying to figure out the reasoning behind this recurring dream. Is someone trying to tell me something? Should I retake the Praxis test I failed two years ago and succumb to my urges to become a teacher? And then last week, ou...

I was 8-years-old when I owned my very first album. Up until that point, Mom would purchase singles for me. The first single I ever owned was the Inspector Gadget theme song sampled joint by Bad Boys. And yes, it was a vinyl record. I'm sure Mom still has it. She's a pack rat. But the very first full length album that I not only owned but listened to from start to finish was Tracy Chapman's eponymous debut. The young man who drove the church van would always talk to me about this album that he could not stop listening to. One Sunday, he surprised me with a copy he recorded for me. After church, I ran straight to my tape recorder to give it a listen. Even at the tender age of 8, I could recognize good music when I heard it. I instantly connected with Tracy Chapman , especially the popular single "Fast Car." Backed by a gentle percussion and acoustic guitar arrangement, Chapman narrates a story of loss, hope and despair as her dreams for a better li...

Tucked away in a top secret location, handwritten using my favorite writing utensil (a Pilot Pen Precise V7 roller ball ink pen) on a titleless sheet of paper torn from a legal size notepad is a list of everyone I've ever had sex with. Yep. I keep a list - and yes, it's numbered.

*Throws self on carry-on bag* Why Lawd WHY? *Sigh* Yesterday, I came home from a fantastical extended weekend getaway in northern California. (Review coming soon.) I had a ball. That jaunt was just what the doctor ordered. The cat's meow. The bee's knees. The yin to my yang. The - well, you get the point. But I swear, as soon as my flight landed at JFK and I walked down the jetway into the airport, my shoulders started to tighten, jaws suddenly clenched and all of my day-to-day anxieties came flooding back to me at once. Granted, I was extremely jet-lagged, had been awake since 3:00AM Pacific Standard Time, didn't sleep on the plane, had indigestion from dinner from the night before, barely ate anything at all and sat in traffic for 3 hours before I got home, but still, there was something more going on here. Because I'm a hypochondriac, I hopped on my phone (as I sat in traffic) and Googled my symptoms. Turns out, I'm suffering from Post Vacation Depres...

*Sigh* I hate to admit this, but no, I do not know how to swim. It troubles me terribly because the moment I tell someone that, I instantly feel like a stereotype - and rightfully so.

I'm feeling quite actorly this week. Today, I take new headshots for the first time in five years.  My old ones aren't bad, per se. But it's time for a new look. I may still look the same, but I feel like such a different person now. When I look at these pictures, I don't see myself anymore. I've grown up quite a bit over the last five years.  I'm ready to bring some new experiences to the lens. And I'm sure my photographer, Antonio, will capture something special. We've got some fun indoor/outdoor stuff lined up that I'm sure will come out great. After my photo shoot with Antonio, I will rest up for a bit and then head over to St. Luke's Theatre to perform in Love Me Like This: The Parachute Plays . It's an evening of six staged readings of original one acts to raise awareness for LGBTQ youth. The proceeds go to The Trevor Project. COME ON BY IF YOU'RE FREE! While I'm not sure if I'm at liberty to tell you exactly wha...

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about finding my very first best friend's mugshot on the New Jersey offender search website.  If you missed that post, you can read it here . He's in jail serving four to seven years for multiple counts of drug possession. I decided to write him a letter.   He responded. Twice! My first letter to him was a bit formal.  Remember, I hadn't seen or spoken to him in over 16 years.  I didn't know what kind of person he had become, what state of mind he was in or if he'd even remember me.  I wanted my first (and possibly last) letter to him to come off sincere, yet, respectful. Not only did he know who I was, but he seemed thrilled to have heard from me.  He thanked me a few times for taking the time to reach out to him.  And I was ecstatic to know that being in jail had not broken his spirit. In my reply, I went hard.  I asked him what happened and why he chose to m...

I had to give my Granny an edgy makeover while she was living at the nursing home. There's something about the fabric of a grandmother's love. It's warm and fuzzy like your favorite childhood teddy bear. Sweet and inviting like the smell of an apple pie baking in the oven. Tough and wise like an old hardcover book on the shelf at the library.... On January 21, my granny, Lula Saintainia, said deuces and went on home to Glory. I can't say that I blame her. She put in her time - and then some.

Ask anybody who really knows me and they'll tell you that I am my own worst enemy.  My biggest critic. No one is as harder on me than I am on myself.  I am not one to rest on my laurels or bask in the afterglow of victory.  If anything, I need to learn how to cement myself in the present and pat myself on the back from time to time when a job is well done instead of constantly worrying about the future. So. As the dust settles on 2010 and the dawn of a new year begins to peak over the horizon, I thought I'd take this time to reflect on the small victories that made my year a memorable one. Instead of beating up on yourself by comprising a lengthy list of unmet goals and things you need to do better in 2011, let's raise a toast to all the noteworthy things you did get accomplished in 2010. Here are ten of mine (in no particular order).

*In Sophia Petrillo Voice* Picture it: New Jersey. 1980 something.  The crack of dawn on a Saturday morning. A young (cute) little boy leaps out of bed and runs into the kitchen to fetch his favorite breakfast morning cereal: Frosted Flakes.  He fills the bowl to the top with cereal and drowns the sugary goodness in milk.  Then he runs into the living room with his bowl, plops down on the couch and crunches away while he watches The Smurfs. Y'all. That little boy was me. We all come from different places, backgrounds, religions and family structures. But if there's one thing we all have in common, it's the vivid memory of waking up bright and early in the morning to devour a bowl of beloved deliciousness. Flash forward many years later and a lot has changed.  I barely have time to grab a granola bar in the morning much less a bowl of cereal. And I be damned if I wake up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday, my day to sleep in a catch up on some...

I have a confession to make: from time to time, I find myself on the computer and an old friend I grew up with will run across my mind and I'll Google them. Such was the case over the weekend. [Name Redacted] ran across my mind. He was my very first best friend. We went to school together from kindergarten all the way to the eighth grade. He would pick me up every morning like clockwork and we would walk to and from school together. Looking back, I often wonder what drew the two of us together. Aside from us both being in the gifted and talented program in school, we were two very different people. I was an artsy, smart-mouthed, sassy class clown. And [Name Redacted] was a popular, laid-back jock. Around the way, he was known as "Little Mac" because, despite being short and skinny, he would knock you down flat on your ass in a game of football. But once we graduated from junior high school, I went on to one high school and he went on to another and we lost contac...

Everyone was quiet during the sleepy train ride to work yesterday morning with the exception of one riled up mother. She was yapping away on her cell phone to her "no good" baby father. I closed my eyes, turned up my iPod and tried to tune her out. But phrases like "You ain't shit" "you good for nothing" and "I wish I never fucked with you," overpowered the Adele that was now blaring from my earphones. I didn't get too upset. I knew it was only a matter of time before she was forced to pipe down and hang up the phone when she lost her signal in the tunnel. I was right. Once the train hit the tunnel, her call dropped and all was right in the world until she started directing her baby daddy grievances toward someone else on the train instead. I finally had to turn around to see who this woman was and who had become her unlucky sounding board. My jaw dropped.

Last December, when Aliya S. King first told me the topic of a feature she was working on for VIBE magazine, my jaw dropped. Not only did I know then that a story about cross-dressing, gender-bending students who attend the illustrious Morehouse College (On Stands Everywhere Today!) would go viral and send tongues wagging (the president of the college issued a lengthy letter to the Morehouse community, refuting the claims in the story before even reading it. Yesterday VIBE published the story on their website and King was immediately condemned and met with harsh criticism both via Twitter and the VIBE message boards), but I also knew she was about to write the hell out of it, which she did. I wanted in!

Nestled on a quiet, tree-lined dead end street in Gwynn Oak, Maryland, 15 minutes west of downtown Baltimore is my grandfather's quaint Cape Cod style home. The modest, three bedroom/two bathroom house was the place he called home for 35 years. The house he bought with a mere $500 down payment back in 1974. The house he died in on Good Friday last year while sleeping in his favorite recliner, two months shy of his 69th birthday. He loved his house. It was his pride and joy - and rightfully so. He owned it free and clear for 10 years before he passed away. Since his death, Mom and I have made frequent trips down to Maryland to handle legal business and begin the inevitable clean up: clear out Poppa's closets and give his clothes away to Goodwill, sell his beloved Ford Mustang that still sits in the driveway, etc. While helping Mom clean up, I found all kinds of things...

Ever since I was a little boy, I've always wanted to be an actor. It just took me a while to figure it out. I would lay out on the living room floor with a binder full of college ruled paper and write characters names with words next to them and then read the words out loud. I had no idea I was writing a script and acting it out. You see, growing up and going to school in the inner-city, I had no real outlet for the arts, especially acting. It was all about how fast you could run, how many baskets you could make or how many touchdowns you could score. No one was checking for the little bookworm who had a flair for the arts.

By the time my father was 22-years-old, he was married with a three-year-old son and facing 25 years in jail for armed robbery. With most of his decisions marred by drug use, his life quickly spiraled out of control and we never got a chance to develop a real father/son relationship. Now, after 23 months (and one day) of sobriety, Vincent "Butchie" Conover has a new lease on life and appears to have left his demons behind. What's more, the two of us have started to communicate on a regular basis. I've spoken to him more in the last six months than I have my entire life. But with 30 years of catching up to do, I feel like there's still so much I don't know about my father. In an attempt to get to know him better and subsequently give him a chance to tell his side of the story, I asked him a series of questions. We talk about everything from what he likes to eat and what his favorite colors are to his sexuality and why he chose drugs over being a fa...

On my way home from work last week, I saw two white stretch limosuines cruising down the street carrying kids on their way to the prom. A couple of guys were hanging out of one sunroof, profiling and flashing peace signs at us common folk. And hanging out of the other sunroof, were their dates screaming yeah baby and drinking what I hope was sparkling cider out of champagne flutes. As they sped by me on their way to enjoy a night they won't soon forget, I couldn't help but think back to my prom nights. I can remember it like it was yesterday: Finding a date, choosing colors, getting fitted for a tuxedo, buying the corsage, taking pictures, running for prom king, not winning prom king and trying to find something fun, grown and legal to get into afterwards. Yep. Those were the good ol' days. And by the grace of my bootleg scrapbooking skills and trusty scanner, those days are back, baby! Here's a look back at my prom fashion: The good, the bad and the gaudy...