Podcast: Erykah Badu, Ron Harper, Clover Hope

 

Host Rob Harvilla begins the episode by talking about how one of Erykah Badu's songs that samples a Kool & The Gang song reminds him of Ron Harper's Basketball Camp. Ron Harper reminds me of the Chicago Bulls, so I said this.

To me, a salient fact about Ron Harper is that he and Toni Kukoč have matching shark tattoos. But that's just me. My thing about Toni Kukoč is, I love him.

Anyway, Erykah Badu is fckn awesome.

— Erin O'Riordan (@ErinORiordan) January 4, 2023

Well, she is.

Harvilla's guest is Clover Hope, the music journalist who wrote The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop. [Not an affiliate link. Informational purposes only.]

But Twitter is a dying platform, so please feel free to join me on Mastodon. I'm a big fan of the #Bookstodon tag.

P.S. My brother and his family gave me a gift card for the winter holidays. I picked out these books:

One is Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951)-adjacent. The other is a book about British witches written by Juno Dawson, a trans woman, one of America's most-banned authors, and definitely not transphobic.

And now, because I happen to be in between day jobs at the moment, please enjoy the following affiliate audiobook link.

Bummer New Year: Unfortunate Literary Happenings of Past Januaries

Previous Installment in this Series: Bummer Halloween

January 3, 2014: Islamist extremists burn the Christian books of Al-Saʼe  Library in Tripoli, Lebanon.

January 5, 2015: Danish martial artist/model/actor Khan Bonfils is rehearsing for a London stage production of Dante’s Inferno when he collapses suddenly. Paramedics are unable to revive him, and the 42-year-old is pronounced dead at the scene.

January 7, 2015: Two Islamist extremists target the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Twelve people are killed, including five cartoonists and two editors.

January 8, 1970: Actor George Ostroska, playing the lead role in a St. Paul, Minnesota, production of Macbeth, dies of a heart attack at the beginning of the play’s second act. Ostroska is 32 years old.

January 9, 1946: Poet Countee Cullen dies at age 42 of high blood pressure and uremic poisoning (kidney failure).

January 11, 1879: The Birmingham Central Library in England catches fire and loses about 49,000 of its 50,000 books and other circulating materials.

January 12, 1965: Author Lorraine Hansberry dies of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34.

January 14, 1898: Mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, dies of pneumonia while suffering from influenza.

https://www.redbubble.com/i/sticker/Alice-Is-the-Problem-by-ErinORiordan/134066500.EJUG5

January 19, 1729: Restoration-era playwright William Congreve dies of complications from internal injuries he suffered in a September 1728 carriage accident.

January 23, 1943: Algonquin Round Table wit Alexander Woollcott, who regularly performed on the radio, appeared in a panel discussion about Adolph Hitler on CBS Radio. Listeners noticed he was uncharacteristically quiet during the discussion. 

In fact, Woollcott was having a heart attack. He wrote “I am sick” on a pad to paper to let the other participants know he needed medical attention. He died in the hospital a few hours later.

January 28, 1960: African-American folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston dies from heart disease after suffering a stroke.

January 29, 1933: Poet Sara Teasdale overdoses on sleeping pills, an apparent suicide. She is 48 years old.

January 30, 2006: 55-year-old playwright Wendy Wasserstein dies of lymphoma.