Optimal Energy/There’s More Out There/T.I. IN REPOSE

I finally saw ATL last week with deep-posseist/ dun linguist/Sabres torch-singer Will G.C., and two days later, compelled still, he composed the most extensive text message I have ever received, two paragraphs in length, during business hours, when I did not answer my phone, excerpted as follows (with permission): “Remember the way the camera would pan from the girl crew’s feet up to their eyes every time they made an entrance on screen? Shit was DIRTY in retrospect. Yo.” YO, INDEED. And, coolly, there was sex and gaze but no real “implied subordinance” in the cameratrix: ATL’s man-gaze is not the selfsame man-gaze of yr average eyecandy 2K6, and maybe less man-gazy than, say, Kelis’ “Bossy” video. It’s from the glossy lens of mister bonnie & clyde, mister fallin’, Chris Robinson, director, who films all humans, inanimate objects and other pleasantries, like they’ve just been basted with honey. His elongated booty shots and gam-to-lipgloss pans were evocative of the friskiness of teens in the heat, those awesome young moments of burgeoning sexual curiosity, when everything gleams candy-apple fine. The camera lingered on T.I.’s luscious mug too, and his alternately sexual/sly eyes– it woulda been silly not to: T.I. is a perfect argument for the fraternally-twinning, hetero-female and homo man-gazes–Chris Robinson, director, let the camera fix on the mug: TI in a white tee, kissing his girl in the front seat of the car, sinewy and graceful, always focused on the eyes; he kept our brains on track by casting B as a dynamic, ethically airtight rollerskating champ whose only weakness is his fierce love for his little brother and his desire to date an honest girl. No complicated tropes of sensitive thuggery, but no Catholic Omarion, neither: just a nice kid with some nice dreams. Which is partly what I liked about it–it was nuanced but not cliche, innocent but not demoted, and of course, like all my fave love stories/musicals (every one ever made), it dove right into class issues as the crux and test of all attraction.
Here’s a good interview with Chris Robinson on NPR, intro’d by Farai Chideya, also known as really fucking awesome jrnlist lady, about Atlanta as “cradle” of black America, and about making movies that convey many-tiered views of black America, as opposed to only choosing between say “hustle & flow” or “soul plane.”
I want to see it again.
COINCIDENTaLLY RELATED: also-deep-posseist Nick B. and I broke out to Chioma’s b-day party this weekend, celebrated at Empire Skating, BKLYN: the birthplace of roller disco, according to the sign, which I believe because it was carved in wood in a very stoic font. Nick was wearing a fancy sweatshirt that read “SKATE OR DIE.”
The last time I stood on skates was on a Tuesday in 1989ish, Jessup Elementary skatenite, Cheyenne Wyoming, when my friends and I spent our allotted $3.50/two hours trying not to fall over, always awkward, cutting the corners even in tandem, during couples’ skate, holding hands and wobbly like little fawns.
My knees, and Nick’s too if it’s ok to say, were all newborn-on-wheels at first, so we rolled around the kids’ “just practicin” rink for awhile before we graduated to the fast track. The grown-folks rink was intimidating, demarcated by lifesize neon palm trees and populated by professionals riding customized skates since ’78, going at least 20 mph faster than us and making the lights trace out and streak as they whizzed by–so when we were finally good enough to skate there, about an hour in, I was real proud of us.
I did not fall once, and even managed to bounce and snap a little bit. DJ Cue, the man behind the decks, was playing R. Kelly “Ladies Night” upon our arrival, then transitioned into house and “Hot Music,” shouting out the “25 and overs,” essentially “anytime he plays a song made after 2001,” as Nick put it. Then: snaps, bounce, reggae, promoting his own reggae classic mixtape by ADD-edly playing the first three seconds of every track on it, while apologizing because “it’s not really skating music,” and shouting out “all my Caribbean people,” and “all my 25s and over,” simultaneously, excessively, endearingly. We decided he was drunk and left around 2, but not before vowing to return at least a gillion more times this season: Empire Skate, a honey-scented summer post-up spot, for reals.