In the fullness of time
also Wicked, the Nation of Islam, and Saddam Hussein
¿What you heard?
AI talks are dope because just about everything is said in the future tense. I went to one on Monday, and dude kept on speaking about the years ahead using a phrase I’d never heard before. He kept on talking about this and that AI advancement coming to pass in the fullness of time.
At first, I pish-poshed the phrase, but dude was relentless, and I grew accustomed and then finally fond of it.
In the fullness of time, I’m gonna rekindle my work-life balance.
In the fullness of time, someone will actually pay me to write. 👀
In the fullness of time, I’ll look back on this post all dribbly-eyed with nostalgia, my very first Substack.
What you doin’?!
So in the same way that Gregory Maguire turned L. Frank Baum’s Wicked Witch of the West on her head in Wicked (spoiler alert! she actually isn’t that wicked), I’m tryn’a turn the Nation of Islam’s Yakub on his big head in my latest feature screenplay, Black Genesis.
To be honest, I’m kind of fuzzy on what was so wicked about Elphaba in L. Frank’s Oz, but Yakub is a big bad in NOI mythology because the Nation believes that white people are devils, and they believe that Yakub created them.
How do I justify such a sin? Well, like Elphaba (and Joker and Maleficent and Cruella de Vil), Yakub is simply misunderstood.
What you seen??
POSTCARDS FROM BUSTER (2004-2012) is a PBS Kids show that was slammed by both IMDB and the federal government, but I liked it ‘cause it successfully thwarted my expectations.
The premise is that Buster (Yeah. The aardvark’s bunny rabbit best friend) travels to a new place every episode and learns about the lives of local kids. I’m watching ‘cause it’s a comp for Gullah Binyah, my own kids show that replaces the travelling bunny with a travelling Black girl.
When Buster ends up in Nashville, I’m prepped to watch 26 minutes of white kids talking about rock and roll, but instead, it’s a little Kurdish-American girl lamenting the fact that her dad is off soldiering in Iraq and explaining that her family moved to the US to escape Saddam Hussein.