I have an new article about Black Superheroes on MSN. Check it out, leave some feedback and tell a friend.

In case some of you don’t fully grasp the meaning of what the doctor told me earlier today, let me break it down for you as simply as possible…I tested positive for Swine Flu. And just in case some of you still aren’t following…I have Swine Flu. Or more specifically, I had Swine Flu, but I’m probably over it by now. The fever is gone. I’m no longer coughing up huge green chunks of nastiness. Most important, the body aches are gone. I’m told that my case of H1N1 was mild. Can’t imagine what a severe case was like. All I know is that the fever cause nerve inflammation, which resulted in some of the most intense pain I recall having. That was the main reason I went to the emergency room after enduring a fever for three days. The pain was amazing. And not in the good way, where the endorphins in the body kick in, and you get kinda/sorta high. No, this shit just plain hurt. It was a bit like my relationship, in which I get nothing positive out of it, only pain and misery.

So that’s my story. I had Swine Flu. It’s not nearly as exciting as I would have hoped, but given time I will most likely embellish it—maybe talk about blood oozing from my eyes or something like that. For those of you that really care, I’m feeling much better now. And please, feel free to mention me in conversations: “My friend, David Walker, he had the Swine Flu. No, he didn’t go to Mexico or have sex with a pig, although he has dated some losers. No, he just got it from some guy he works with, who didn’t cover his mouth when he coughed. Yeah, you should check out his website, www.badazzmofo.com, or maybe buy one of his films on DVD, either Black Santa’s Revenge, or Damaged Goods. I mean you should do that even if he didn’t have Swine Flu, because he’s kind of cool.”

Whenever I have some free time at work, I’ve been teaching myself how to use Adobe Illustrator. I doubt that I will ever use it for more than doing cyber doodles, but it’s nice just be learning some new tricks. We also have a drawing tablet and one of those electronic pens at work, but I haven’t used those yet. The pictures that I’m posting were “drawn” freehand, using the mouse (which isn’t easy). This first drawing is something of a self portrait. It was the first piece I completed in Illustrator.

This is Frankenstein’s Monster. It is the second piece I completed in Illustrator (although I started and deleted a few others before finishing this one).

Of the pieces I’ve completed, I like this Batman one the least. It was the third one to be completed, but I think it actually looks rougher than the others.

I decided to do a close up of the Hulk for my fourth piece. I really like how most of it turned out, especially the mouth.

Luke Cage is my most recent Illustrator project, and I think the best as far as execution. As you can see, I don’t have problems with faces, but I’ve been really uncertain about drawing bodies. I’ve tried few, but working with the mouse was too difficult.

I’ve been in a weird state of mind lately, and have been finding it difficult to express what I’m feeling. Then an idea popped in my head of an image that looked a bit like the one pictured here. This is how I’m feeling.

Check out my latest article on MSN, the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.

During the height of her popularity, my mother bought me and my cousin Sean each one of those Farrah t-shirts (the kind with an iron-on transfer of her in that red bathing suit). Both of us got into serious trouble for wearing the shirts to school (Sean more than me), and from that experience, I got my first real lesson in the Freedom of Expression. I don’t think I had ever even heard of the Constitution or the First Amendment until my mother went ballistic over our right to wear that silly shirt.

Like so many other boys in the 1970s, I drooled over Farrah. She awakened in me a yearning that I could not even begin to understand. I would look at her and want to do…something. I just wasn’t sure what it was I wanted to do. I remember seeing her, I believe on the Donnie and Marie Show (or some other equally lame variety program), in which she was wearing some sort of cavewoman outfit. I was convinced at the time that I could see one of her bare breasts, which at the time was the most exciting thing I’d ever witnessed. I guess, in some sort of twisted way, Farrah helped me along my way when it came to the sexual objectification of women.

But to her credit, Farrah was more than a sex symbol that helped ignite the fire in my pre-pubescent loins. After seeing her in both The Burning Bed and Extremities, I began to view her in a different way. And just as she awakened in me feelings I never had before in my childhood, she helped me realize that there was so much more to pretty women than their looks. And even in her final years, as she battled cancer, she revealed a courage and strength that only added to her depth and dimension. I believe that as she faced her death, Farrah wanted to make sure that the world remembered her as more than a pretty face and a talented actress. She wanted the world to know that she had the same fears and frailties that we all do, and that none of us, no matter how beautiful or popular we are, are exempt from the bitter truths of life.

Farrah Fawcett was many women in the course of her lifetime, and I appreciate all of them for what they taught me. Rest in peace, Farrah.

Volumes have already been written about the unexpected death of Michael Jackson, and in the days and weeks to come there will be even more. Originally, I wasn’t going to write anything, because I didn’t feel as if I had anything to say that hasn’t already been said. Michael Jackson was a talented performer, whose genius was overshadowed the last twenty years by a bizarre freakshow that passed for his life. But as I’ve had time to dwell on his death, I have come to realize that there are a few things I would like to share with anyone who is interested.

Even though he was only ten years older than me, I was born into a world where Michael Jackson was already a star. One of my favorite shows as a child was the animated Jackson 5 series, and I was, like most kids my age, a fan of the musical family. As a young black kid growing up in the 1970s, the Jackson 5, and Michael especially, symbolized to me the pinnacle of what could be achieved. For many black kids in America, the Jackson 5 was more than just a group. They were the embodiment of dreams and desires for a better life outside the reality of poverty and discrimination. To be like the Jacksons was more than just to be rich, talented and popular, it was to be resplendent in the culture of black America—rocking a perfectly picked afro as a sign of your blackness—and to be accepted and loved by white America. In other words, Michael Jackson and his brothers represented the black version of the American Dream—at least as it was for me and my friends in the 1970s.

I was still a fan of Michael when he went solo, and like a whole lot of other people, I lost my mind watching him moonwalk on the Motown 25 special. I bought Thriller, and I watched MTV regularly, hoping to catch his videos. Of course, and it’s important to make mention of this, as much as I like Michael Jackson in those days, I was more of a diehard Rick James fan. Still, I had a fondness and appreciation for Michael that I would never deny or look back on with any sense of shame or regret.

Around the time Michael starting getting really weird—butchering his face with plastic surgery and sinking deeper and deeper into his own alternate reality—the King of Pop began to symbolize something very different than what he represented in my youth. At some point, Michael Jackson became something of a cautionary tale. I saw in his unparalleled popularity and success something I could not quite articulate, but now recognize as a disconnect from both his blackness and his humanity.

Somewhere along the way, Michael Jackson became something of a monster, stripped of both his racial identity and of those social patterns that society deems as “normal.” And while no one held a gun to his head and forced him to destroy his face or name his kid Blanket, every one of us that called ourselves a fan must acknowledge our own small part in making him the freak he became.

I believe that we each must take responsibility for our actions. That means that Michael Jackson must be held accountable for everything he did; and if he did molest those children, as many believe he did, he will surely answer for it on this next phase of his journey. But just as I believe we all must be accountable for our actions, I also believe that environment and circumstance play a major role in the development of all people, and can set us down paths that we don’t always comprehend. I think if you were to tell Michael Jackson when he was ten years old that he would grown up to bleach his skin white, carve up his face with plastic surgery, and possibly have sexual relations with boys his own age, he wouldn’t believe a word of it.

In his passing, I take another valuable lesson from the life of Michael Jackson, which is the greater point I’d like to make. When I was a child, I was a fan of Michael, and thought the world of him. As we both grew older, I saw in him many things that made me both sad and disgusted. But those things he did later in life are not a reflection of who he was as a child, or the entertainer he was when he recorded Off the Wall and Thriller. Michael Jackson was a talented man who brought joy to many people. He was also a troubled man who very well may have brought suffering to people. Both of those men died today, and it’s important to not let either overshadow the other, but to recognize that the complexities and frailties that reside within all of us resided also in Michael Jackson. But the difference between Michael Jackson and the rest of us is that all of his strengths and weakness, all of his triumphs and tragedies, were laid bare for the entire world to see.

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson.