So the economy is officially in trouble: today was the first day of my first 9-to-5 job in seven years. (Stakes is high, even in Europe.) I could recount the whole story of English blogger Petite Anglaise (great book, Catherine) and how she was scandalously fired from her job years ago for anonymously blogging about it. But needless to say, I won’t be giving specifics about my slave. (If you’re LinkedIn savvy, you’ll dig it up.) I’m a journalist, though, and the first day went well.

I’d by lying if I claimed to subsist comfortably on checks from The Village Voice, Salon, TheRoot, Vibe, book royalties, etc. I might’ve gotten by before becoming Family Guy, but that’s done. Vacationing in NYC, I sadly discovered two of my favorite Manhattan Barnes & Nobles shuttered for business (at Astor Place and on 6th Avenue). Books ain’t doing well; the deliberation between my agent and publishers over my next book is taking longer than usual. Once you sign a contract, the check is huge, but it arrives like two months after laying down your signature. So: a job, my first since literally showing up at 106th and Park Ave at BET every day back in 2001.

No “woe is me” though. Most people, uh, work for a living. My more recent gigs doing lit editor duties at Russell Simmons’s Oneworld and the French blog-aggregator site Wikio were stay-at-home, have-laptop-will-travel joints. And my book advance cash is around the corner. For everybody else strapping on their mild-mannered Clark Kent glasses on a daily basis, here’s recognizing the Superman longjohns underneath. (Or Lois Lane/Supergirl. Not that Lois was Supergirl. Not that she wore glasses either. Ah, you get the point.)

Growing up named after Miles Davis, I guess I had a healthier interest in jazz than the teenagers around me ODing on Spoonie G (though I was one of them, too). The first record I ever spent money on, at the Fordham Road Crazy Eddie’s around 1984, was some kind of My Funny Valentine compilation by Miles. (The second: UTFO.) But even though I’m a critic, I’ve got to admit that my knowledge hit a wall back in my 20s. I know my Miles, Monk and Mingus, my Holiday, my Coltrane (both John and Alice), a little Ellington. But that’s literally everybody whose music I’ve enjoyed over the years, barring an occasional Don Cherry disc. Pop’s Christmas gift this year was Ken Burns Jazz.

The DVD compilation is 90 hours of video including all the extra bells and whistles, but each of the 10 shows in the program are nearly two hours long: more like 20 hours in all then. I’m up to disc 5 now, where bandleaders Benny Goodman and Chick Webb are about to battle for swing supremacy up at the Savoy in Harlem. It’s been so worth my time. I saw some of these episodes when then originally aired in 2000, but I couldn’t make the commitment to sit down every night for it like that. I knew I’d own it, and I’d watch it then. Nine years later…

“Creole Love Call” by Duke Ellington is the best three minutes of music I’ve ever heard. (I got mad in NYC weeks ago when I saw the Dolce & Gabbana commercial with Matthew McConaughey and Miles Davis’s “Générique,” my all-time favorite jazz tune – now everybody‘s gonna hear it – so I think it’s supplanted.) Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” was as omnipresent and iconic for its time as, like, “All About the Benjamins” or “The Show.” Being raised in the South Bronx when hiphop started, I don’t need to catch up on its history the way I guess a lot of Generation Y cats born outside of New York might need to. I remember it all firsthand without the Ego Trip Book of Rap Lists (though I love that book anyway).

But jazz is different. I know the names – Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, Buddy Bolden – but not the music, not beyond the seven people in the first paragraph. Now more than ever, it’s possible to just grab the whole discography of, say, Sidney Bechet and stick it in my iPod for later. I got 80 gigas, what else are they for? My knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk) race man reaction to Ken Burns back in 2000 was that he was a culture vulture putting undue emphasis on jazz as an American music, as in, “blacks were part of it, but it wasn’t their creation.” Maybe that’s why I stopped watching, in fact. Now that I don’t live in America, I realize the truth of his point much better. I’m a lot less hypersensitive about theft from the race than I used to be. Yes, whites were there, they were in it. I don’t think Burns exaggerates their importance. From the disc I’m up to, Satchmo is obviously god, without whom the Brady Bunch theme wouldn’t have had any swing decades later. Thank Pops. (In fact: “thanks Pops.”)

Saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the night after Christmas down on Broadway. France gets movies way late most of the time – L’Etrange Histoire de Benjamin Button won’t be out in Paris till February 4 – and so I was determined to see as many flicks as time allowed while in NYC last month. That meant Cadillac Records, Doubt, The Saint (walked out; sorry Frank) and Fincher’s latest.

I’d been warned about the Forrest Gump feel to the movie, so I wasn’t put off. The running joke about the elderly guy struck by lightning totally did not work for me, but I expected the movie to be kinda middle-America corny from the beginning. Oscar worthy? Well, super-populist. Oscar worthy only if Forrest Gump was really Oscar worthy, though I think sometime-France-resident Brad Pitt deserves one just in general.

I don’t rush to the movies for David Fincher films, but I seem to have seen nearly all of them anyway: The Game (nice little mindfuck there), Se7en, Panic Room, Fight Club (how 9/11-prophetic was that ending?), Zodiac. That last was a little too cerebral for the average moviegoer, so he’s mining Spielberg sentimentality with Benjamin Button for his first real PG-13 family movie. Very Titanic, very Forrest Gump. I haven’t seen something like this in a while, I was beginning to think movies didn’t come in this model anymore for better or worse.

For those that don’t know, Brad Pitt ages in reverse with the help of believable CGI, but I didn’t feel I got my $12.50 worth (god, $12.50… when did that happen?) till he started to turn younger. When Pitt looked Botoxed for his late teenage phase, the film had me.

Here, though, I’ve got to publicly disagree with my man George from the 360hiphop days: Taraji P. Henson’s role is – I repeat – nothing for Academy votes, it’s totally on the Gone with the Wind tip. (Though, I know, Hattie McDaniel got an Oscar.) And yes, other people do feel this way. Loved Tilda Swinton though.

My two-week visit to NYC last month made me realize more than ever how many different MMLs I’ve been in my 38 years. If I called it the Facebook Effect then maybe you’ve noticed it about yourself (presuming you’re on Facebook): all the different people you’re connected to from all your different jobs or schools or friends of friends… You’re always just a click away from someone who has a completely different idea of who you are than the next FB friend.

In America weeks ago, I saw dancin-ass singer (and ol college classmate) Mark Darkfeather and my ol Truman High homie Carla up in the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors art exhibit, and ended up at Cafeteria with Carla; ran into old coworkers from Tower Video (I was 19) and Vibe (I was 28) at the Apollo’s Labelle show; had a late dinner with high school chums Reggie and Ivan with Brooklyn renaissance writer emeritus Michael A. Gonzales up in Harlem; saw singer-songwriter Sun Singleton (3x fast?) of the 90s hiphop media clusterfuck, poet Mtkalla Keaton and keyboardist Tjade Graves from the Brooklyn Moon days, and FB delight DJ Crystal Clear all for my Sly Stone reading at Barbès in Park Slope; crossed Oz actor muMs from the old Avant Yard days at Cozy Soup n Burger in the Village (me & the missus were exiting, he was entering) on our collective b’earthday.

I’m normally a pretty segmentary cat. Meaning: I’ve had friends for years who never met each other because I always spent one-on-one time with them and they never crossed paths. Why? Dunno. When my first book release party went down four years ago up in the Bowery Poetry Club, and loads of people from different areas of my life started showing up at Barnes & Noble readings, I felt like I was attending my own funeral. Like how Crisis on Infinite Earths squoze together the superheroes from all the Earth-1/Earth-2/Earth-Z/etc. universes into one adventure? My social life has become the ill-ass mashup.

Anyway, I wouldn’ta blogged about it, but it seems that a lot of people are probably tasting quite a bit of this these days via Facebook. Or MySpace. Or (snicker) Friendster. How does it feel for y’all? Me, I’m just havin a “whoa, I’m 38, I been a buncha different MMLs” moment.

Happy new year, furthermuckers! I spent half of last month in my old hometown of New York City visiting friends and fam for the holidays, with no means (or time) to document any of it. But there was the Alvin Ailey 50th anniversary show with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Orchestra doing Duke Ellington behind the dancers; there was my Sly Stone multimedia reading at Barbès in Park Slope, Brooklyn; there was Labelle at the Apollo and much more.

Let’s build.

Spoiler: Patti Labelle’s voice blew out the Apollo’s amplifiers! Concert cancelled in mid-stride. (No riot, much to Harlem’s credit.) Labelle – the glam R&B/borderline-rock trio from the 70s made up of Nona Hendryx, Patti Labelle and Sarah Dash – hadn’t performed live in over 30 years. Like I said for the Voice in November: “opening for the Who and the Stones sportin glam that could make Bowie throw shade, the girls were a genre-bending phenom that couldn’t debut today in a gazillion years.” Their Apollo date, one day after my b-day, was their return to the stage in support of Back to Now, a Lenny Kravitz/Gamble & Huff-produced album that ain’t half bad. I scored a press ticket, and my parents were due to come with, having paid for their own $75 nosebleed upper-mezzanine seats.

And so, what had happened was: a snowstorm hit the city. Which turned to rain. And the resultant mush ruined the Apollo’s wiring. Moms refused to troop from the Bronx; I took the missus, who was all too familiar with Labelle’s “voulez-vous coucher avec moi.” Labelle’s not a favorite old school group of mine, not particularly. I’ve got a soft spot for Nightbirds (especially “Space Children” and “All Girl Band”) from hearing the album nonstop when I was 3, but that’s nearly it. But a night like this was clearly history in the making; I couldn’t not go, especially on a rare trip from Paris to NYC. The trio opened with the Cole Porter cover “Miss Otis Regrets,” did a truncated “You Turn Me On” (another personal all-time favorite), and tried to tackle “Candelight” when all of a sudden, Patti sounded muffled. And the sound never improved.

A timeout was called. Twenty minutes later, the Apollo institued an open-bar free-drinks policy while waiting for Con Edison to show up to Harlem at 9pm in the pouring sleet. I bumped into old Vibe cronies like Bevy Smith and current Apollo publicist Nina Flowers; junket journalist Karu Daniels; and my ooold school homie Courtney Anderson from college summer Tower Video days. Found Dad, told him I was certain they weren’t coming back on from the moment they closed the curtain.

Then they came back on. Flanked by a 40+ choir. A cappella, without microphones, Labelle blew the house down with “(Can I Speak to You Before You Go to) Hollywood.” Tickets were refunded for everyone who couldn’t make it back the following night, but they did it all over again 24 hours later. I couldn’t make it – Harlem dinner party – but I still left feeling I caught the real history right there. At 64, still ain’t no force like the voice of Patti Labelle.

When I was 15, I got the second girl I’d ever had sex with pregnant. Our secret lasted a few crucial months until blowing up in our faces, when both our families found out right around Christmastime. Her operation that January was the skeleton in my closet for a long time, but this is not that story. It’s weird, the details that stand out in bas-relief from an experience like that, details like the LP I bought from The Wiz on my way to the Brooklyn hospital with the girl’s sister and pops: 8, by Madhouse, the pseudonymous Paisley Park Records jazz-funk fusion band with Prince on nearly every single instrument.

In fact, the (yes) vinyl record I picked up that day in 1987 might not have been 8, but instead the long-playing 12-inch single “6 (End of the World Mix),” which – in a fine point you couldn’t invent – made it to #6 on the Billboard black singles chart. This was, remember, the age of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F,” when a plucky instrumental sans lyrics could still become a radio hit. Madhouse was Prince’s cute little side project; with the Revolution’s Eric Leeds (late of The Family, of “The Screams of Passion” fame) on flute and sax, Prince had someplace to place his jazzier, slightly more avant-garde ambitions. But the Madhouse band was officially anonymous; no one was credited on the album sleeve.

Both “6” and 8 featured Prince’s busty sometimes-girlfriend Maneca Lightner on the cover in an itsy-witsy, teeny-weeny little polka dot bikini. She’d model for the funkier followup 16 later (the same year!), and its singles, “10” and “13.” Maneca also featured in the group’s only video, “10,” and she eventually became a record exec at Virgin and Warner Bros. And yeah, every Madhouse song was identified by a number instead of a title. I spoke with old Revolution keyboardist Dr. Fink a few weeks ago, and he told me tales of doing double duty during the 1987 European tour for Sign o’ the Times, also playing in Madhouse as the opening act. Much as I dug Madhouse (for what it was), Fink shared stuff I’d never heard: like how they’d pick a different sexy woman from the audience every night to hold up the numbers to the songs as they were performed, like at a boxing match.

Prince recorded a tune for Miles Davis called “Can I Play With U?” the year before 8 dropped, which Miles laid down trumpet on but never released. I may or may not have heard it live in the course of my first Miles show at Avery Fisher Hall way back then at the JVC Jazz Festival. From that spark, Prince initiated the so-called Flesh Sessions, a bunch of improv jazz pieces recorded with Sheila E., Eric Leeds and Levi Seacer Jr. at Sunset Studios in L.A., meant to result in a pseudonymous album/band called The Flesh. (At least according to biographer Alex Hahn’s Possessed; Dr. Fink had never heard of the sessions or The Flesh.) Instead, he quickly revamped the concept into the one-man-band of Madhouse. Before his death in 1991, Miles Davis rerecorded some Madhouse tunes meant for the unreleased 24 album: “Penetration,” “Jailbait” and “A Girl and Her Puppy.” Though 24 never happened, a Maneca Lightner cover exists, and a track called “17” appears on Prince’s 1994 compilation record 1-800 NEW FUNK.

By 16, Madhouse supposedly consisted of Eric Leeds on sax, Levi Seacer Jr. on bass, Matt Fink on keyboards and John Lewis (most likely an undercover Sheila E.) on drums. In concert, the group performed wearing black hooded robes. Tracks were playfully interspersed with snippets of dialogue from The Godfather. The former sax player tours occasionally as Eric Leeds’ Madhouse; I missed his Paris show this past July at Reservoir. As you might imagine, I’m working on a Madhouse piece at the moment. My brother Chris hit me with the super-rare 16 CD for Christmas, so I’ve been reliving that time period when Prince was more prolific than the neo-soulers he inspired could ever dream of being. I went ahead yesterday and created a Facebook group for Madhouse for the handful of Prince fanatics who have memories of any of this ever having happened. Join up and speak your piece!

(Unfortunately, Prince has wiped YouTube clean of Madhouse’s one and only videoclip. The following is Hard Life: a silly, unreleased short film directed by Prince and featuring music from the 8 album.)

Last Friday the Forum des Images reopened in the first arrondissement center of Paris. The film archive/theater has been closed for business the entire four years I’ve been living here. In the interim, they’ve been showing an eclectic movie schedule over at the old Max Linder panorama theater (marble floors, etc.). Back in May I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid there for the first time (Paul Newman rest in peace) and some kind of live country hoedown performance of the soundtrack took place onstage before the movie. My other time there, for a preview of Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris, Julie and her parents (who act in the film) answered questions after the screening.

The Forum des Images is smack-dab in the middle of the Forum des Halles mall, less than 100 feet from the UGC multiplex I frequent the most. The cinémathèque has a large film archive; it’s possible to join up and rent movies like a library. They relaunched after years of renovation with a special New York cycle of films including Manhattan, Annie Hall, The Godfather trilogy, Tim Burton’s Batman (?) and Carlito’s Way, among others. (Funnily enough, because I leave the City of Light on Saturday for two long weeks in New York City.) If you’re in Paris, do partake. Here, a choice scene from 2 Days in Paris. Julie Delpy and I met at the Hôtel Pont Royal last year for drinks and she’s a sweetheart.

I went to the Grammys once. It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Nominations for the 51st annual Grammy Awards were announced yesterday and it took me back to that night in 1998; I haven’t watched the Grammys since Prince and Beyoncé did their duet four years ago (one of the best Grammys nights I’ve ever seen, actually). Here it’s all about Les Victoires de la Musique. But the annual Grammys ceremony was a staple in my northeast Bronx household growing up, as important as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Here Comes Peter Cottontail or any Charlie Brown special. I’d run out of the room for the boring shit (read: country music), but it used to be a really enthralling show, especially with my youngish parents’ running commentary.

Long story short: I did a lot of writing for The Source in their heyday and I convinced Selwyn the editor-in-chief to cover the Grammys in case anything interesting went down. Ads and respectability for the magazine were both up up up, and scoring press credentials for the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall was easier than probably even Selwyn thought it would be. (He went himself the following year.) Naturally, what I really wanted was a seat in the hall. Anybody who heard about me going to the Grammys afterwards assumed I probably had a seat next to Clive Davis. No. The press corps are in the back where they belong, to catch musicians as they get trotted offstage with their Grammy in hand to be interviewed.

I spent most of the show on the phone with Toni, a law school ex who I knew would be sitting home watching the show on her couch with an Absolut and tonic. I’d have to break our conversation occasionally with a “I’ll hit you back, here’s Aretha Franklin,” and take notes while the winners were interviewed. The backstage area was all kitted out, mini-tents with MTV/E! Network/etc. backdrops set up everywhere. I’d go take a piss and pass Beck or Stevie Wonder in the hall. Breaking the fourth wall like that was one of the best parts of the job back when I first earned my stripes, one of the reasons why hundreds of college-newspaper student editors across the country are dreaming music journalism dreams as we speak.

Guiliani pissed off the Grammy board two years later somehow (it was his specialty), and they up and moved back to California. By then, XXL sent me out there to cover the 10th anniversary of the Grammys’ hiphop category (Lauryn Hill’s year), but I ended up watching the whole show in my hotel room on Sunset Boulevard. I remember the Persaud Brothers throwing a party, bumping into old Spelmanite buddy Tanika Ray outside the spot, and ending up at the Viper Room and Hustler Hollywood with author Ronda Racha Penrice (then an up-and-coming Rap Pages scribe). Ah, the go-go nineties. I should start a furthermuckin Nostalgia Thursdays.

As for this year’s noms: Radiohead’s In Rainbows, obviously. I never liked that Coldplay album, their bid for U2 status. Their past two joints pale next to their first two. And (heresy alert!) I wouldn’t know a Ne-Yo track if P.T. Anderson made it the theme song to his next three-hour opus. The Grammys are old-hat per usual. Any list that doesn’t have “Love Lockdown” and “Womanizer” up for Record of the Year is too slow-motion for my ass.

With food on everybody’s mind right about now, I’ma get back to this Beefaroni-to-brie au poivre thread I started earlier. The gist before was about how, for example, I had to explain sushi to my stepfather a few years ago while I was chowin down, but I wasn’t hardly raised on raw fish or Whole Foods Market. I remember South Bronx super- markets and bodegas with sawdust on the floor (no lie), and mangy cats walkin around, no doubt to handle the mice. TV dinners were allowed back in the day. My great-grandma’s soul food would put Sylvia’s to shame, but I grew up like any other 1970/80s black boy: I knew Tang, Spam, Bosco, Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper and all that. Chinese takeout, pizza, McDonald’s, etc. I wasn’t anything like a “foodie” until I moved to France.

See, in France, everybody’s a foodie. My wife would never buy a boxed cake by Entenmann’s; she’d just make one, and it’d taste 20 times better. Parisians grow up just naturally knowing about wide varieties of wine and cheeses (I knew Swiss, American and that’s it. But brie, rochefort, trou du cru, comté, and so many others are, like, common here.) There’s that Sex and the City joke Carrie tells about never using her Manhattan kitchen, and it’s true: I used to cook once a month tops living in Brooklyn and Harlem back in the day. Now, I eat out a whooole lot less and I prefer it that way. Granted, I’m married now, and my lifelong attraction to artists finally matched me with a master of the culinary arts. (Who’d want Chinese food?) But still.

Gotta shout out my homegirl, superfoodie Emma Feigenbaum, here. Dated her twin Zoë onceuponatime, and had the pleasure of her eggs Benedict and smoked salmon out in the Hamptons (Wainscott?) a few summers ago. Since that particular onceuponatime, Emma got down with Martha Stewart and scored a cohost spot on Everyday Food. The poor little rich girl deserves it.

As for me, since living in Paris, I can finally (at 37) cook more than curry shrimp and spaghetti. (Wifey doesn’t cook all the time.) Here’s my menu sample:

1. spicy scallops with capellini
2. snapper with spicy crab-and-andouille sauce
3. fusilli salad with fried zucchini
4. swordfish in creamy tomato sauce
5. stracciatella (Italian egg drop soup)
6. scallops with hazelnuts and browned butter vinaigrette
7. roasted cherry tomato and ricotta pasta salad
8. curried scallops with spinach
   
9. vegetarian ziti gratin
   
10. mackerel vin blanc
    

Last month director Quentin Tarantino started production here in France on his next film, Inglourious Basterds (incorrect spelling intentional). Last night I saw good ol Jackie Brown at the Cinémathèque Française, which I’ve probably seen only once since its 1997 release. Tarantino was rumored to be remaking Russ Meyer’s boobsploitation flick Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! starring Britney Spears before a change of heart, and I’m glad about it. For one, Death Proof (his half of last year’s Grindhouse) was pretty much already Faster, Pussycat; for two, I saw the Meyer film back in the day (after hearing Janet Jackson’s “You Want This” video was inspired by it), and it blows.

What I’d totally forgotten about Jackie Brown was the whole “nigger” controversy of the script (38 times and counting!), and how wince worthy it is for Tarantino to have directed the villainous Sam Jackson through that kind of dialogue. I don’t own any Tarantino DVDs (too easy), but I always give it up. His screenwriting totally changed the game in Hollywood for a minute; there were so many “bad guys spend two hours talking wittily” movies in the wake of Pulp Fiction. He found his voice and he stuck with it, he owns it. He makes cooking up a Tarantino movie look easy: insert gratuitous shots of women’s feet; play underrated, overlooked 70s soul on the soundtrack every few scenes; do the trunk-of-the-car shot; use actors past their prime (Pam Grier, John Travolta, etc.); take 70s cinema tropes like karate flicks or blaxploitation films or road movies and update them ironically; etc. He owns it, though. Mix and match these elements at your own risk; you’ll just be a copycat.

Inglourious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Mike Myers, French actresses Mélanie Laurent and Léa Seydoux and others in a World War II flick set in German-occupied France. Escaped war prisoners are on a revenge mission against some Nazis, and in another storyline, a young woman seeks revenge for the death of her parents by the same Nazis. Tarantino’s on a timeline to release this at Cannes 2009.