Childhood in a Bag, A Not So Trivial Pursuit*

* Republished from The Urban Erma, March 2011

A close friend recently hosted a “Game Night” and all of us who attended were charged with bringing our favorites. Rising to the challenge, I brought a goodie bag full of old school: dominoes, cloth and wire jump ropes for Double Dutch, and a sack full of classic metal jacks. You heard me. Jacks! Yeah, I took it there. You can’t get metal jacks anymore. You see, now we care about children choking on small metal objects, in my generation not so much. I’m not saying parents ate their young back then, but they didn’t see the need to over protect us from toys made with lead, asbestos, mercury, or depleted uranium.

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Taken for a Ride

Image courtesy of Damian Brandon/
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Big Named Car Service That Advertises on TV that I normally use recently doubled their price for a trip to the airport so I called The Small Local Neighborhood Car Service instead. Spoiler alert: It was a mistake.

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http://theurbanerma.podbean.com/2013/11/20/taken-for-a-ride/

Brazilian Wax On, Wax Off

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

A popular joke in my act is about my first-ever Brazilian wax being done by A Very Angry Russian Woman who – as she’s ripping off the strips of cloth and my dignity – says to me: “In my country, I was gynecologist.” She didn’t really say that but humor is born out of pain. And getting a Brazilian wax was an excruciating and yet instructive experience.

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My Bank, The Vendor, and Me

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I toyed with naming names but The Who isn’t as important as The What: piss poor customer service from corporations that should know better. But for clarity let’s call the relevant players My Bank, The Vendor, and Me. I paid a bill online but due to a website error I was double billed. I contacted My Bank and they said there was nothing they could do. An electronic payment is not like a check. You can’t request a stop payment. Once the funds are approved it’s out of their hands. I called The Vendor and they said there was nothing they could do either, because they did not yet “see” the money in their system and most likely wouldn’t for up to 72 hours. And poof just like that over $1,000 of my money was gone off into the ether. 

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My Brief Thoughts About Kenan & Saturday Night Live

MY PERSNICKETY MOMENT OF THE DAY^SM

Dear Reader, I wrote this post a few weeks ago and it appeared on my website and The Huffington Post. I share it with you here and I hope you'll find it interesting. 

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What? No Binders Full of Black Women?

As a black female comedian I’ve been asked to comment on Kenan Thompson’s recent statement about why there are no black women in the cast of Saturday Night Live. Since no one is going to ask me about the government shut down, the debt ceiling, or why an entire season of the BBC show, Luther, is only four episodes long I will share my brief thoughts on Kenan.