Vegan Lemon Cake ⏤ Vol 49
Vegan Lemon Cake ⏤ Vol 49
Little miss mommy brain and a different decade of fun!
Hi! 👋🏽
Two things that were bound to happen as a parent happened last week, on the same day, last Friday.
One, I stubbed my pinky toe on one of JJ’s wooden floor toys. My toe was swollen for almost two days. And two, I left home without a bottle!
JJ had two appointments in the morning, one near our house and the other downtown. After the DT appointment, I had plans for lunch with my girlfriend.
When I got home from his 8:30a appointment, I put him down for a nap and took the used bottle out of my bag but forgot to replace it with a clean one. After we finished up at appointment #2, I knew he would be hungry.
I am digging all in my bag. All of a sudden, I’m like…
I couldn’t believe I had forgotten a bottle. I am supposed to meet my friend for lunch, and I am 25 minutes away from home.
I ran out of the appointment without checking out. I told them to call me to schedule the next appointment. I had to make a game-time decision, risk driving the 25 min back home and cancel lunch with my friend or go to the nearest store and pray they have a decent enough bottle JJ would drink from.
I chose the latter.
I safely race over to Dollar General and run inside, holding JJ and my credit card tucked in my bra, car keys in hand, nothing else. I asked the clerk where the baby stuff was and headed to that aisle.
I knew they wouldn’t have the brand bottle we usually used, but they had our second choice. I snagged that and headed to check out.
Now the clerk was nowhere to be found. I’m hollering, “Hello, hello. Excuse me,” all up and down the aisles because I am on a tight schedule. JJ had about 15 more minutes left in him.
She takes her precious time moseying back to the register and rings me up uber slow like I don’t have a desperate look on my face. I snatched that bottle out of her hand so quick because I was like can’t you tell I am in a rush?
When I get in the car, I text my friend to ask the kitchen for some boiling hot water. I had to semi-sterilize this new bottle somehow.
Finally, I pull up to the restaurant. There was a park right out front; look at God.
Steaming hot water is waiting for me when I get to the table. After a speedy but efficient sanitization, JJ happily drank his bottle. His day and my lunch date were saved.
The minute I got home, I put an empty bottle in my car. I won’t be caught slipping like that again. Nope. But I am sure that is not the last time I stub my toe on one of JJ’s toys.
Let me dig into this delicious vegan lemon cake I picked up from a vegan soul food spot in downtown Columbia. Delicious! 😋
Today’s Topics:
Little Miss Sunshine
MTV
Little Miss Sunshine ☀️
The throwback Little Miss series has turned into modern-day memes and tweets if you've been watching social media lately.
Before I share my favorites, let’s have a little history lesson.
Before the Little Miss series took off, Mr. Tickle was the first of many Mr. Men books. The first Mr. Tickle book was published in 1971 because the author, Roger Hargreaves, 8-year-old son asked him what a tickle looked like. Next thing you know, Roger was creating Mr. Tickle.
Fast forward to 1981, the Little Miss series was born with Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Naughty, and Little Miss Sunshine.
In one of my group chats, a girlfriend dropped a few Little Miss memes, and we assigned a character to each person. Since then, I have enjoyed quiet giggles while reading these modern names for Little Miss.
The Instagram memes are cool, but y’all know I love me some Twitter.
We’ve all been on rinse and repeat one too many times. Either you or your bestie are rotating who is making a terrible decision.
Who is this in your friend group?! Screenshot and send this to them now!
Being a parent, this is my entire life now. I can’t watch anything without subtitles.
Now JJ is on 100% on Bobbie. I’m back to this life.
I got a good laugh reading this one.
HELLO!
What’s your Little Miss or Mr. Men saying?
MTV
Happy Birthday MTV! 🎈 Today MTV turns 51 years old.
On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01a, MTV launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by John Lack and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown.
On MTV’s first day, they played 116 different music videos. Some played five times during their first 24-hour period, mainly focusing on rock-n-roll and heavy metal. Of course, not one of these videos featured a Black artist.
Between ’81 - ’82, MTV didn’t play any videos from Black artists. It’s not like there weren’t any videos from Black artists to broadcast. For example, prominent artists of that time, Miles Davis and Rick James, publicly complained that MTV was deliberately not playing Black music.
Rumors say a CBS executive had to step in and threaten to pull all the videos if they didn’t play this one particular music video. Can you guess who the artist was?
None other than the goat himself, MJ.
Michael Jackson single handily changed the game for Black artists on MTV. Once Billie Jean aired, the flood gates opened, and the channel focused on heavy metal, rock & roll, and white artists began to shift.
Here are the four other videos from Black artists that helped change the look and sound of MTV.
Prince — Little Red Corvette (1982): This wasn’t his first major hit or popular music video. This is the one that sent him skyrocketing on the pop charts and on to MTV!
Run DMC — Rock Box (1984): They were the first hip-hop act to have their music videos broadcast on MTV. They created this song with a heavy rock influence in hopes that MTV would pick it up. They were correct.
Lionel Richie – All Night Long (1983): This video gave viewers a break from headbanging and got folks dancing. If “inclusive” was a buzzword in the 80s, Lionel did that with this music video. Lionel also had a Caribbean-influence vibe infused throughout the song and video.
Tina Turner – What’s Love Got To Do With It (1984): Tina is rock and roll. Once Tina discovered the sound that worked for her, she stuck with it, and that sound worked very well with MTV’s current [white] audience. It’s a shame she didn’t get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 2021 as a solo artist, but I guess better late than never.
These five artists not only changed MTV's sound but also showed others how music videos could be used to tell stories, going beyond the song and diving deep into the lyrics.
*sidenote* It’s very interesting that these five artists broke into MTV. Each one of them had a lot of white fans from the beginning. They damn sure didn’t play Rick James Superfreak. Too Black.
By 1988 MTV created Yo! MTV Raps. It was the first show to focus solely on hip-hop music.
Even more interesting is that Black Entertainment Television (BET) launched on January 25, 1980, a year and a half before MTV.
When BET began, it only broadcasted for two hours a week on the USA Network, which was called Madison Square Garden Sports Network back then. When BET was on the air, it played music videos and reruns of Black sitcoms.
It wasn’t until 1983 that BET became a full-fledged entity, independent of any other channel. But for years, BET continued to share channel space with other cable networks on local cable systems due to a lack of channel room until digital cable allowed for larger channel capacity.
Some areas didn’t even have access to BET until the early 2010s due to some cable providers saying there was an overall lack of demand for the channel or there was little to no Black folk in specific service areas.
Even with the head start, BET still didn’t get an exclusive show dedicated to hip-hop until Rap City began in 1989.
Back to MTV.
Hosted by Fab Five Freddy, Yo! MTV Raps aired for seven years ending in 1992. It paved the way for MTV Jams, which aired from 1992 - 2000, featuring a collection of pop, R&B, and hip-hop videos.
While MTV didn’t start off playing Black music videos, they did have a Black VJ [video jockey] from jump.
J.J. Jackson, also known as Triple J, was one of MTV’s original five VJs. J.J. paved the way for other VJ’s of color, including Downtown Julie Brown, Daisy Fuentes, Idalis, Ananda Lewis, and Bill Bellamy.
Did we know Bill Bellamy was a VJ?
Ananda was everyone’s favorite homegirl, but Idalis was my favorite VJ when I was younger.
Over the next few decades, MTV grew into something larger than life, airing some of our favorite music videos and creating some of the best television shows we loved growing up.
I’ll end my celebration of MTV by listing my favorite MTV shows of the 90s and early 00s. Let’s see if we have some of the same favorites.
The Real World: Back to New York, Season 10 (2001) is my all-time favorite. Season 8 in Hawaii (1999) is a close second.
MTV Cribs: We can all agree that Redman’s 2001 episode is the greatest of all time, right?!
True Life: Too many superb episodes to remember, but season 1 (1998) still holds some of the best. Ep 3 - Freaknik ’98 and Ep. 5 - I’m a porn star. I also liked this show because it showcased real-world situations and challenges.
Laguna Beach: Airing from 2004-06, this show had me making a special trip to Laguna Beach when my husband & I had our Pacific Coast Hwy road trip. I still have all three seasons on DVD.
MTV’s Spring Break: While this was not an actual show, it jam-packed some of the best shows and talent eight hours a day for a week every March. Some of the best have graced the MTV Spring Break stage.
Singled Out: I swore when I turned 18 that I would be on this show.
Making the Band 2, 3 & 4: Dylan Dylan Dylan. Aubrey looks like a different person now. And Big Mike was my favorite from Day26.
Made: I wanted to on to this show and be made into a cosmetologist. I didn’t know how this would work because I knew you had to go to school for it, but that is what I always told people after this show started getting popular.
So do we share some of the same favorites? If so, which one?
Before we go, fun MTV fact.
Do you remember the MTV show “I want a Famous Face?” Its 2004 debut season opener featured two twins, Matt and Mike Schlepp, who wanted to look like Brad Pitt. I went to high school with these guys. They filmed this episode the summer after their senior year. Guess who was front and center when filming kicked off? That’s right, ya girl.
How about they cut our scene because instead of acting natural when the camera panned past us, my friends and I decided to wave. The camera came from behind the camera and said, “you are not supposed to wave; this is all supposed to be natural.” He rolled his eyes and walked off. He never pointed the camera at us again.
There went my reality tv career!
Friend, did you notice we hung out in the 80s for a little today? I hope you enjoyed our stroll in another decade.
Next time we chat, it’s going to be a MAJOR celebration. Volume 50! Can you believe it?!
See you soon.
xo, Jemia