This afternoon I took my Granddaughters to Jeepers in Northland, a mall that borders on Southfield and Detroit. A ghost town of wig shops, hair and nail salons and ghetto fabulous clothing stores. Northland has become a shocking shadow of its former self, a used-to-be vibrant place where the incredible Anita Baker on her way to the top met her ex-husband. The Target store rules the miles and miles of parking and mall space now. Macy's gives it that step above a strip mall credibility.
Jeepers is a decent, downsized Chuckie Cheese knockoff, an affordable indoor amusement park, a Las Vegas for kids where no one loses. As soon as we enter it's understood this is a children's world with decibel busting noise. Kids zip, skip and run through the place on dirty carpets; a place of games, rides, Pepsi products and other uppers, where the pizza is so bad my granddaughter looks up at me, shakes her head as she begs me with her eyes to "please let us eat in the less bad food court." The thrill of fun is promising as I purchase wristbands to unlimited rides and game tokens for the girls. Happily, I sit down to watch the grins spread across their faces as they load into the kiddie roller coaster.
Amid the noise, it's surprisingly peaceful inside. Mostly mothers, grandmothers, aunts and the occasional dad or uncle. Young mothers, African American and Arab alike with a sprinkled mix of other people of color. Arab women wrapped from head to toe gossip joyfully switching between Arabic and English. I'm drawn to gaze at their painted faces, heavy mascara and the sedated glitter embedded in their head wraps, it's hard not to notice how beautiful, how glamorous they are in the middle of the afternoon. I wish...
Jeepers is deceiving at first glance. It has the appearance and functionality of an amusement park, but if you stay long enough and look deeper it's really a fence operation for the getaway it provides to these mothers and their kids. An astonishing place to relax and read and not worry where the kids are or whether they're happy, safe and having fun. It's an urban picnic, where adults and kids intersect in a much needed vacation from the harsh reality of shrinking budgets to public schools.
Emergency Financial Managers Needed! What...?
I can't resist the air hockey game. I'm competitive, but alas the girls collapse in giggles when they beat me. Between the puck and the air that shapes the destiny of game, it was a whole lot of FUN! When my two angels grab my hands we skip like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz over to the big game section, where we feed tokens into the slots of even more games and scream even louder as the machine spits our winnings; a mile of green tickets to be redeemed for the cheapest, tiniest toys you've ever seen and made in places I've never heard of.
"We're hungry, Grandma Satori," they look up at me, all arms and legs and rub their non-existent bellies. There are “Cash Only” signs on nearly every greasy spoon vendor in the Food Court. The Comerica ATM machine charges three dollars to withdraw money. I could buy almost a gallon of gas with the $3.00 fee. Shit. I return the smile of a woman who has been smiling at me since we sat down. Who says Detroit is bankrupt when it comes to smiles and friendliness? Who says it's no longer a neighborly place?
Suddenly, the woman asks if I have any change? My Granddaughters look at me. I look back at them. My change had already been spent on food and tokens and everything else in this "cash only" hell. I have to tell the woman "sorry, no." Odd, she didn't appear homeless, just friendly. Wait a minute... I look around the food court and notice other friendly looking people. They seem at first to blend into the mainstream food court traffic of the under and unemployed. Unemployed like me or as I like to think of myself, between acting jobs. The only thing that appears to separate us is a certain dinginess of spirit.
Spirit!
I remind myself I'm in a game called, "I Wanna Be on the Mo'Nique Show." A game that makes me feel rich with the currency of possibility, the prescription for an uplifted spirit. I'm committed to this adventure where every single person and experience is part of and sharing in, though at times it doesn't always make sense or feel particularly good. I want to share with these homeless in the mall, Detroit and the rest of the world, you're coming with me to the Mo'Nique show! I'm made in Detroit.
Listening to my Granddaughters chatter, I reflect on the homeless woman I help to sponsor when I can with the occasional dollar on my way down the northbound ramp of the Lodge Expressway. She stands on the corner of Howard Street, her backdrop the old MGM Grand Casino turned DTE Energy parking structure. The ching-ching of the fabulous new MGM Grand made its grand opening a few years ago at its Third Avenue location downtown. The woman demonstrates each time I see her that she is a worthy investment. The first time I gave a dollar she was very thin and had an unhealthy look. A few years later, her cheeks are filled out, there is flesh on her bones and the cream colored trench coat she wears is clean. She has successfully blended into mainstream pedestrian traffic, but for the sign and the cry for help scrawled across it, she stands erect both humble and proud. I feel sad looking around the food court... then scared and angry. It will take more than my pocket change to fix the unfairness unfolding in Michigan and other industrial states in America. Shall we march or is that too passe? Maybe "We the People" should just stop paying taxes in a rebel act of civil disobedience?
Jeepers is a decent, downsized Chuckie Cheese knockoff, an affordable indoor amusement park, a Las Vegas for kids where no one loses. As soon as we enter it's understood this is a children's world with decibel busting noise. Kids zip, skip and run through the place on dirty carpets; a place of games, rides, Pepsi products and other uppers, where the pizza is so bad my granddaughter looks up at me, shakes her head as she begs me with her eyes to "please let us eat in the less bad food court." The thrill of fun is promising as I purchase wristbands to unlimited rides and game tokens for the girls. Happily, I sit down to watch the grins spread across their faces as they load into the kiddie roller coaster.
Amid the noise, it's surprisingly peaceful inside. Mostly mothers, grandmothers, aunts and the occasional dad or uncle. Young mothers, African American and Arab alike with a sprinkled mix of other people of color. Arab women wrapped from head to toe gossip joyfully switching between Arabic and English. I'm drawn to gaze at their painted faces, heavy mascara and the sedated glitter embedded in their head wraps, it's hard not to notice how beautiful, how glamorous they are in the middle of the afternoon. I wish...
Jeepers is deceiving at first glance. It has the appearance and functionality of an amusement park, but if you stay long enough and look deeper it's really a fence operation for the getaway it provides to these mothers and their kids. An astonishing place to relax and read and not worry where the kids are or whether they're happy, safe and having fun. It's an urban picnic, where adults and kids intersect in a much needed vacation from the harsh reality of shrinking budgets to public schools.
Emergency Financial Managers Needed! What...?
I can't resist the air hockey game. I'm competitive, but alas the girls collapse in giggles when they beat me. Between the puck and the air that shapes the destiny of game, it was a whole lot of FUN! When my two angels grab my hands we skip like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz over to the big game section, where we feed tokens into the slots of even more games and scream even louder as the machine spits our winnings; a mile of green tickets to be redeemed for the cheapest, tiniest toys you've ever seen and made in places I've never heard of.
"We're hungry, Grandma Satori," they look up at me, all arms and legs and rub their non-existent bellies. There are “Cash Only” signs on nearly every greasy spoon vendor in the Food Court. The Comerica ATM machine charges three dollars to withdraw money. I could buy almost a gallon of gas with the $3.00 fee. Shit. I return the smile of a woman who has been smiling at me since we sat down. Who says Detroit is bankrupt when it comes to smiles and friendliness? Who says it's no longer a neighborly place?
Suddenly, the woman asks if I have any change? My Granddaughters look at me. I look back at them. My change had already been spent on food and tokens and everything else in this "cash only" hell. I have to tell the woman "sorry, no." Odd, she didn't appear homeless, just friendly. Wait a minute... I look around the food court and notice other friendly looking people. They seem at first to blend into the mainstream food court traffic of the under and unemployed. Unemployed like me or as I like to think of myself, between acting jobs. The only thing that appears to separate us is a certain dinginess of spirit.
Spirit!
I remind myself I'm in a game called, "I Wanna Be on the Mo'Nique Show." A game that makes me feel rich with the currency of possibility, the prescription for an uplifted spirit. I'm committed to this adventure where every single person and experience is part of and sharing in, though at times it doesn't always make sense or feel particularly good. I want to share with these homeless in the mall, Detroit and the rest of the world, you're coming with me to the Mo'Nique show! I'm made in Detroit.
Listening to my Granddaughters chatter, I reflect on the homeless woman I help to sponsor when I can with the occasional dollar on my way down the northbound ramp of the Lodge Expressway. She stands on the corner of Howard Street, her backdrop the old MGM Grand Casino turned DTE Energy parking structure. The ching-ching of the fabulous new MGM Grand made its grand opening a few years ago at its Third Avenue location downtown. The woman demonstrates each time I see her that she is a worthy investment. The first time I gave a dollar she was very thin and had an unhealthy look. A few years later, her cheeks are filled out, there is flesh on her bones and the cream colored trench coat she wears is clean. She has successfully blended into mainstream pedestrian traffic, but for the sign and the cry for help scrawled across it, she stands erect both humble and proud. I feel sad looking around the food court... then scared and angry. It will take more than my pocket change to fix the unfairness unfolding in Michigan and other industrial states in America. Shall we march or is that too passe? Maybe "We the People" should just stop paying taxes in a rebel act of civil disobedience?
Nope. No. Can't think those thoughts. But unfortunately, I do as I imagine Detroit guest starring in a new season of True Blood. Where corporate vampires take over the resources of the Motor City and suck the dwindling numbers of is taxpayers dry. Where police, fire, garbage, transit and other services seem to employ a skeleton staff. Where politicians are wined and dined by blood thirsty lobbyists with centuries old money and where big corporations change the rules and laws they don't like. The rich get richer on the bloody backs of the middle class. The richest of the rich get tax breaks they never needed a decade ago. Show me the jobs that have come from corporate tax breaks and the mythical trickle down. Labor and the middle class are having their pockets picked into foreclosures and homelessness. Governor “Swashbuckler” Snyder has unsheathed his pen, mightier than the sword and is cutting funding to public schools. Schools! Really? Food programs for children! Are you kidding me? People have march and died for the right to be educated!
"We have to share the pain of getting our economy back on track," say Republican Governors all around the land.
I look at my elegant, happy, bright and beautiful Granddaughters and cringe at the Mad Maxing of their futures. Determined, I fix my mind on the "thinking stuff" and remember "I Wanna Be on the Mo'Nique Show." I remember I'm a scientist inside a scientific experiment to "get rich." Rich has become the new middle class. It's a necessary direction if I am to keep giving to my girls. The satisfying experience I once enjoyed of theatre and film opportunities that afforded me the financial comfort to write all went down with the Dow; and now Snyder's pen has nixed incentives for filmmakers to make films in Michigan.
Thinking stuff!
I remember the meeting I had earlier with the Executive Director, Director and the writing team of a new sitcom. The pilot is scheduled to shoot in May in Detroit. My second meeting, I'm playing it loose. I wasn't all in and I wasn't all out. It was time to choose. I chose to put myself all in. It feels right to join this team of creative folk, to give my best writing in collaboration to the production. To lift and be lifted up by an idea to share with a group of good people who all have a get it done, right now energy and approach. Folks with that recognizable gleam of possibility in their eyes. I was drunk with it as we pitched our characters in a creative pow-wow, discussed the edginess and politics of our characters and the associated issues and, of course, product placement. The show has a positive premise and a moral flavor. The works is an honest, heartfelt endeavor. I've thrown in and I'm invested in a "Made In Detroit" dream.
Creativity is a discipline of mind, of progressive thought. The science of getting rich challenges me to keep my mind focused, my thinking lifted up; if not, I could make the mistake of “thinking” myself right into the "thinking stuff" of homelessness and despair. Nope. Can't go there. According to Wattles, "the thinking stuff" doesn’t judge our dreams. It simply brings them forth, no matter what they are. It's important to stay conscious.
Which brings me to night, night, y’all. It's been quite a day. Sweet dreams! Make them an intention while you slumber. My dream, of course, is to walk my Humbled Diva down those Mo’Nique Show stairs and sit on her couch, to grin from ear-to-ear when she makes the announcement that every child in America has the opportunity and will receive a world class education at no cost. Look under your chairs, ladies and gentlemen, the people have won! Wall Street will foot the bill with all that "too big to fail" money it stole and gambled on those other misplaced "futures."
In the words of a Humbled Diva, "I Wanna Be On The Mo'Nique Show by December 2011. I've got something to say.
Thinking stuff!
I remember the meeting I had earlier with the Executive Director, Director and the writing team of a new sitcom. The pilot is scheduled to shoot in May in Detroit. My second meeting, I'm playing it loose. I wasn't all in and I wasn't all out. It was time to choose. I chose to put myself all in. It feels right to join this team of creative folk, to give my best writing in collaboration to the production. To lift and be lifted up by an idea to share with a group of good people who all have a get it done, right now energy and approach. Folks with that recognizable gleam of possibility in their eyes. I was drunk with it as we pitched our characters in a creative pow-wow, discussed the edginess and politics of our characters and the associated issues and, of course, product placement. The show has a positive premise and a moral flavor. The works is an honest, heartfelt endeavor. I've thrown in and I'm invested in a "Made In Detroit" dream.
Creativity is a discipline of mind, of progressive thought. The science of getting rich challenges me to keep my mind focused, my thinking lifted up; if not, I could make the mistake of “thinking” myself right into the "thinking stuff" of homelessness and despair. Nope. Can't go there. According to Wattles, "the thinking stuff" doesn’t judge our dreams. It simply brings them forth, no matter what they are. It's important to stay conscious.
Which brings me to night, night, y’all. It's been quite a day. Sweet dreams! Make them an intention while you slumber. My dream, of course, is to walk my Humbled Diva down those Mo’Nique Show stairs and sit on her couch, to grin from ear-to-ear when she makes the announcement that every child in America has the opportunity and will receive a world class education at no cost. Look under your chairs, ladies and gentlemen, the people have won! Wall Street will foot the bill with all that "too big to fail" money it stole and gambled on those other misplaced "futures."
In the words of a Humbled Diva, "I Wanna Be On The Mo'Nique Show by December 2011. I've got something to say.
I Love it!
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