Welcome Sistafriends!

This is no longer the Kalisha.com blog. I took it down from my site because I didn't want all these strangers who don't know me up in my personal biz. This is now OUR blog! This is our place to vent, rant, bitch, stay in touch, update, all that! Work, family, men, politics, sex, money, drugs, rock and roll...whatever! No holds barred. This is not a place to hold back-- no one can find us here (blogs can not be listed on search engines). Let it rip! I'll be checking in with you all a couple times a week, so post your little hearts out. Even you Aicha- you're chained to a computer anyway (and I do mean chained you poor little thing....!). Love you all!

Kalisha

First topic of discussion: What ON EARTH is really going on with the brotha man? Why are they not courting and marrying us, and most importantly, do we still give a fuck?!?!?!

What Kalisha Forgot

Well, when I asked my friends to add comments for me on my blog I had no idea that you had to actually join blogger in order to post a comment (who the hell has time for that except for insane writers who need to pump out thoughts all the time?!?!)...so for all y'all who responded over email to my request for V-Day tunes...I can shout yours out here....

Okay, my girlz (and a few of my boyz who were ever so hesitant to give up their playa mackin' secrets!), told me I forgot:

D'Angelo's ENTIRE Brown Sugar album (how in the world could I forget that one?!?!). Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it brings back some nostalgic college memories of my sweetheart....

Any Brian McKnight song (spoken by a TRUE playa whose lucky I love him enough not to blow up his game). But I've always told my unsuspecting friends to WATCH OUT whenever a man puts on a Brian McKnight album.....

Maxwell's "Til the Cops Come Knocking", Common "Come Close" (awww....that was truly my jam Summer 2003), Janet "That's the Way Love Goes" (one of my favorites ever) and some early 90's cuts....."It Never Rains" by Tony Toni Tone and "Pretty Brown Eyes" by Mint Condition (Serita you got straight Class of '95 high school ghetto with those two, but I have to say you are definitely right!!!!)

And my girl who shall remain nameless because I refuse to call you out for this one, said I forgot Ginuwine, "Pony". Oh God!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In my opinion, that's one of the most tasteless, anti-luvmakin songs I ever heard, but whateva works.....do you.

Okay....Kalisha's World shall now rise up out of the gutter which is such a necessary break from the life of an "author" and return to the original high-brow literary pursuits and loaded intellectual pontification one has come to expect from our leaders and cultural generators of today......I got 3 essays to finish as soon as I get settled back into Illinois: "My First Year in New York," "Upstate: What It Means Depends on Where You Say It," and I'm working on an essay about my recent, first-time visit to Alcatraz while in San Francisco to promote a book where I've created an imprisoned character (I'll figure the title out as I go along....)

V-Day evening playlist for getting in the mood and staying there (tried and true!)

U know Black folks like to start out everything noisy, dramatic and strong, so ladies put this on when you trying to kill the mood and you telling the brotha "You ain't gettin none tonite!":
1. Destiny's Child "Soldier" MY PERSONAL FAVORITE VERSE:
We like dem boys up top from the BK
Know how to flip that money three ways {Three ways}
Always ridin' big on the freeway {Freeway}
(Wit that east coast slang that us country girls be like)
Low cut -- wit the deep waves {deep waves}
So quick to snatch up your Beyonce {Beyonce}
Always comin down poppin our way {Our way}
(Tellin us that country girls the kinda girl they like)

OK, now that we got all that out the system, here's the actual playlist:

2. #13 on Confessions: "That's What It's Made For" ( trust me, "Burn" and "Confessions" ain't got NOTHING on this one)

3. The old but not forgotten Love Jones Soundtrack, especially Maxwell's Mello Smooth "Sumthin' Sumthin'" remix (#5)

4. Floetry "Say Yes", "It's Getting Late", "Butterflies"(Numbers 10, 11, and 12 on the LIVE album (gotta have the LIVE version))

4. Few standard but very necessary classics: Al Green "Let's Stay Together", Isley Brothers "In Between the Sheets", Gaye "Sexual Healing", Chaka "Sweet Thang", Aretha "I Never Loved a Man"

5. 20 minute Jill Scott interlude (while y'all replenish munchies and the water (or Gatorade in the most serious cases)): "Cross My Mind" off the new one, "Long Walk" and "Lyzell in E Flat" off the old one, "The Way" off the live one

6. some noisy and soft selections off Miles' Someday My Prince Will Come album (will take you all the way to 4 in the morning after you've replenished the fluids and energy)

7. Just a lil hip-hop: Talib Kweli's "Love Language" featuring Les Nubians (on the unfortunately forgotten Reflection Eternal), Outkast's "Prototype", Wyclef and Mary "911", Missy's "Pussycat"

8. 20 minutes of early '90s throwback: Bobby "Rock Witcha" (the extended remix), Ralph Tresvant's "Sensitivity" , Silk "Freak Me Baby", Jodeci "Come and Talk to Me", R. Kelly- "Your Body's Calling" (the original but ESPECIALLY that remix)

9. THE Simulated Orgasm Classic in the Making: #4 on Mama's Gun by Erykah "I Want U" (7 minutes brothas!)

10. Bring it back home full circle, with Beyonce: "Speechless" #9 on Dangerously in Love

THE AFTERGLOW CUDDLE and SPOONING BONUS TRACK: Janet and Aaliyah we ain't forgot'cha: the last song on 1986's Control "Funny How Time Flies", and the last song A released before she passed-"Rock the Boat"

I CHEATED....

Okay okay I said I was not going to buy ONE book at all while I was on tour but at my signing today in St. Louis, at Left Bank Books, there was a signedof Sister Helen Prejean's Death of Innocence:An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions sitting right on the counter, calling my name, "Buy me, buy me...." I think the autographed copy sticker sealed the deal. I couldn't pass it up...OK, it was only one!

How is it that a nerdy bookworm has come to stop reading?

Problem with being on book tour is that I'm contstantly in book stores and therefore looking at all the books I keep promising myself I'm going to read as soon as I slow down (if I slow down), which will hopefully happen come March 1 when I settle into a cozy quiet house in Illinois so that I can finish the homestretch of second book....so for now I'm just making my list of all the books I am going to devour as soon as I stop living like a gypsy and get all my stuff in one place and out of friends' closets and basements, and also get my beloved futon out of Harlem storage so that I can curl up on with these books (in no particular order):

50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time (I sneaked a copy to the B & N cafe and read Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, Simone de Beauvoir to Nelson Algren, and Napoleon to Josephine already!!!!), I can't remember who compiled
Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad, Betty deRamus
Collected Stories, Carol Shields
Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zaphen
God's Gym, John Edgar Wideman
Brick Lane, Monica Ali
Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
More Than You Know, Rosalyn Story
Some People, Some Other Place, J. California Cooper
Mercy Mercy Me, Michael Eric Dyson
Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag
Can't Stop, Won't Stop:A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Jeff Chang (must remember to beg my editor for a copy--please please please....)
Telling Tales, editor Nadine Gordimer
The Art of Seduction, Robert Greene (for the history, not the tips because I don't need them)
My last couple Poets and Writers even though all the deadlines have now passed (damn!)

While I'm at it, lemme add all the movies:
Open Water
Finding Neverland
Are We There Yet? (YES, I'm a DIEHARD Nia fan no matter what....)
Million Dollar Baby
Boogeyman
Unforgiveable Blackness
Swimming Pool

I'm really scuurd for a change....

Normally I don't like these Hollywood freakshow movies, i.e. SEVEN meets SILENCE OF THE LAMBS meets SCREAM knockoffs, but SAW is actualy some good crazy stuff. Not to mention, the non-linear narrative and jigsaw backstory are keeping my eyes glued to this television and wondered where this movie is going to go next. If my girl Tara wasn't here watching it with me, I might actually be checking the door a couple of times to see if it was locked (okay, okay, I might even peek into the closet too before slipping back into bed). Now that rarely happens to me these days with Hollywood "horror" movies. But not only am I freaked out by the maniacal, elaborate scenarios that the killer has concocted in order to mentally torture his characters into physically torturing themselves, but the movie actually has me pondering the lengths I might go to in order to save my own life versus caring about that of another's. Okay, Tara--don't be scurd. I would never rip open your stomach (or anyone else's for that matter) to get a key out of it which would save my life---I'd be the one who died helplessly shaking, crying, begging and praying (really praying).But I guess Danny Glover wouldn't have signed up for a film that didn't at least attempt to inject a shred of philosophical introspection into absurdity. In any case, far-fetched but freaky enough and original enough to hold my attention longer than THE GRUDGE. And at least the writing is fresh. While main character #1 is wasting away in a stanky, bloody, locked bathroom with main character #2 (oh btw main character #1 must kill #2 in order to get out of this craziness, or they both can saw off their ankles in order to free themselves), he announces: "This is the most fun I've had without lubricant."
PSS. AND WHOA WE JUST SAW THAT THERE'S A FREE HUEY! POSTER ON THE WALL SOMEWHERE IN THE MOVIE! Aiighhtttt......!!!

Okay okay we back now this movie just done got stupid....two grown-ass bloody men on the floor of a dirty bathroom, shivering, bleeding to death (after #1 just bludgeoned the killer with a toilet seat), pleading..."Please don't leave me...." Well, at least somebody had the balls to finally kill this man. See... I HATE HOLLYWOOD! They always manage to find a way to turn sugar into shit.

Vampire must come to life.....

So, I'm in the throes of my second novel and it is finally going quite well and then all of a sudden, this vampire night owl has to stop her night writing routine and go on tour. Author tour is a rare blessing these days, so I'm not complaining. I'm only asking my characters not to get mad at me for neglecting them in order to truly "work". I had to lock them away for a while but I hope they come back when I'm back alone, and ready for them again. So now that I'm on tour and flying at least every other day, it is going to be impossible for me to think so I have put my computer away. I really, really can't think coherently before noon. Airport security people who have to keep frisking me like I'm in some thugged-out club (because all my tickets are one-way on this tour and they ALWAYS ticket one way folks) please forgive me for being the cranky bitch who rolled her eyes and neck at 7:30 am when she would normally be just entering R.E.M. sleep.....