Sons of Samoa versus Tongan Bloods

Looks like this week was Pacific Islander gang week. Mom, Dad and I wound up in the middle of a street fight between Samoan gangsters and Tongan gangsters. Dear God these guys are huge. There aren't very many people who make my 6'4" father look small and at one point we were surrounded on all sides by about twenty guys who made Dad look like a Munchkin. Which I guess would in turn make me look like a smurf wearing a red coat.                                                                                 

It's really hard to believe that Samoans and Tongans would carry the animosity between the two islands to the United States but then again I will never understand the gang mentality. So in the middle we strode between Samoan Crips and Tongan Bloods fighting in the parking lot of a dance club that was featuring a concert of some Samoan rappers.

Really there's such a thing as Samoan rap. Everybody is rapping now. White guys, Asians, Indians, Arabs and everyone is trying to out do each other over who is the toughest and hardest gangsters. For my money the scariest rappers are the Germans. I don't know what they are saying but if you start shaving the heads of tattooed Germans and dress them all in black while they are yelling at on camera it starts to make me a little nervous. I would probably be even more afraid if I knew what they were saying.

But back to the Samoans and the Tongans. So the Samoans had been at the club to listen to the rap and the Tongans came later knowing that their rivals would be there. Bedlam ensued when the two groups meant. My parents and I were across town when we heard about the brawl in the parking lot between the two groups. By the time that we arrived in the Maybach the police had already arrived at the scene but they weren't going anywhere near the fight. The good thing is no one was using any weapons the bad thing was that none of them thought that they needed any weapons. Did   I mention earlier that these guys were huge? So as long as they weren't endangering bystanders with gunfire the police decided that the safest course of conduct for them was to let these guys fight it out and hopefully tire themselves out before trying to arrest anyone.

Dad had another idea. I don't think that I have ever been so thankful for being nigh invulnerable with the strength of ten men than I was on that day. I needed every last one of my superpowers on that day. Mom Dad and I jumped into the fray. I thought I was doing a pretty good job fighting until I got picked up like a doll and tossed about ten feet out of the melee. That was embarrassing. I'm supposed to be a superhero and I'm getting tossed around by gangsters. 

I picked myself up of the ground and brushed off my clothes (and bruised ego) and headed back in to the row. Between Mom, Dad and myself we were eventually able to put an end to the clash...but it took awhile. The police came and handcuffed all of the guys. For most of them they had to used two pairs of handcuffs in order to be able to handcuff them behind their backs. Meanwhile the crown of onlookers including but not exclusively these guys girlfriends were yelling and throwing stuff at the cps and us. It was a crazy seen that night. I hope I next get to fight just a regular old super-villain.

Stuck in a Locker

I hate having a secret identity. I don't even want to have a secret identity. I think that it would be just fine if I could be Actionlad all the time. I bet if everyone knew that I was Actionlad that I would be dating Jenny Howard and not Stacey Williams (not that Stacey is horrible but Jenny is amazing). What I'm positive of is that if I didn't have to maintain a secret identity for the sake of my parents, Dart and Deca-Man, that I would not have had to have spent thirty minutes in a locker at my school this afternoon.

I hate Josh McIntyre and I hate that I have to let him bully me for fear that if I didn't people would discover that I have the strength of ten men. Technically I have the strength of ten twelve year old boys but that just doesn't have the same ring as saying "strength of ten men", so I like to say I have the strength of ten men. Besides I'll be "a man" one day anyway so I might as well get use to saying it. Today, however, I was in a locker. Josh and his henchmen Doug Jones and Jose Gonzalez stuffed me inside my locker today after school while half the school was watching...and I had to take it. I could literally crush these tools  and yet I was the one in the locker until my friend's Kenji and Juan were able to open the locker. So while I waited in the locker I spent the time thinking about different ways to inflict physical pain on Josh and his pals. At first I simply imagined beating them up but after the first couple of minutes I started to get creative.

I had some good ideas. I could drop them off the side of a building and then run and catch them before they hit the ground and take them back to the top of the building again only to drop them again over and over and over again. I also though about buying a bunch of raisins and then throwing them one at a time at these guys with a combination of my super-speed and super-strength. The resulting force while not lethal would hurt them like hell. Then I just got angry and I thought about drawing and quartering them all but I realized at that point that I was probably going a little over the top. So I just imagined myself pelting them with garbage. That was a good thought.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity Juan and Kenji let me out of the locker.  They said that they had to wait until all of the other kids got bored and went home.

10 Worst Black and Minority Super Heroes Ever

10. BlackGoliath: Worst name ever because it's so redundant. Not only does it contain my personal pet peeve for an African-American character; putting the word "Black" in the name. Is anyone going to really confuse  Bill Foster  with Hank Pym or Clint Barton the previous Goliaths? Is there really someone out there that needs the additional verbal cues because they couldn't figure it out by looking at him? "Oh you're the BLACK Goliath? Are there really people so racist that they would be in need of saving and yet they would say "No thanks, I'll wait for the White Goliath"?

Every African-American male in America over 6 feet tall after he leaves a room full of non-Blacks is referred to as "the Big Black Guy". How is "the Black Goliath" an AKA?  If anything it would make a good name for a porn star (where offensive doesn't matter) but as a super hero name it is a bust.




9. Tie (Sunfire/Rising Sun/Dr.Light): Why do all Japanese heroes  have to have solar based powers?

We get it Japan is the "Land of the Rising Sun" but does that mean that every hero from Japan has to have light based powers. DC even named one of its hero "Rising Sun". Really, they had to make it that obvious that the character was Japanese? If character was based in Minnesota would he be called "Lake Man"? Would a character from Switzerland have chocolate powers? I know that every character from the Global Guardians was a ridiculous caricature for their respective nations but that does not take away from my point that the Japanese characters have it the worst. 

8. Vibe: A break dancing super hero of Puerto Rican decent who speaks with the worst accent ever. There has been some retconning to imply that Vibe spoke with that accent intentionally as some sort of "stick it to the man gesture" but that is simply revisionist PC wishful thinking. He spoke like someone who had never met a Puerto Rican American would believe that they spoke.







7. Tonto: While played with great dignity by the late Jay Silverheels, the word "tonto" literally translates in Spanish as silly or stupid.

When ever I think of Tonto I can't help but think of an old Bill Cosby comedy routine in which the gist is that every time the Lone Ranger would send Tonto into town to get information Tonto would get beat up.

6. Tyroc: Talk about "separate but equal". Prior to the introduction of Tyroc we had never seen any Black people in the 30th century. The reason for that was that all the Black People were on an island country that transported them all to a separate dimension. Liberia didn't go far enough in the DC comic book universe of the 1970's.  Going back to Africa wasn't good enough. They had to remove all of the Black people from the planet.
(Dawnstar is a close runner up to Tyroc. Her Native American ancestors were abducted by aliens in the 13th century and didn't even live on Earth. Apparently in the Bronze Age of DC comics the future was free of troublesome minorities)


5. Black Vulcan:  Black Vulcan is a cheap copy of Black Lightning. Both characters share my pet peeve for including the word "Black" in an African American characters' code-name (see Black Panther, Black Goliath, Black Manta, Black Racer, Black Spider) but where Black Lightning can be cool, Black Vulcan is just lame. As a member of the Super-Friends I remember him for yelling "BLACK VULCAN!" more than for fighting crime. In retrospect all of the minorities in the Super-Friends seemed to yell a lot. Apache Chief yelled "eh neeek chock"  and Super Samuri yelled "kaze no Yo ni Hayaku".

4. Northwind: As the token minority of the Earth-2 version of the Teen Titans, Infinity Inc., Northwind was the half Black-half bird "godson" of the Earth-2 Hawkman.  He was such a lame character that later DC simply turned him into a complete bird-man. One less Black superhero.



                                                               

3. Rage:  Why not just call him "Angry Black Man"? Exposed to toxic waste as a teen age Elvin Haliday gained super-strength and invulnerability; since "Superman" was taken I guess the only other name that a young black man could come up with would be "Rage".  Also, why did he dress like a wrestler?


2. Triathalon: This pains me to say it since Kurt Busiek and George Perez are two of my favorite creators in comics but Triathalon  was just plain lame.

1. Samurai: Worse than naming a Japanese hero "Rising Sun" is naming a Japanese hero "Samurai" when his powers have absolutely nothing to do with being a samurai.

This character appeared on the Super-Friends cartoon when they were trying to bring some diversity to the line-up of the Super-Friends.  The sad part is that after decades of publishing DC had not created any minority characters of note and so Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, El Dorado and Samurai were added to the line-up. Samurai's powers were essentially wind based like the Red Tornado's and he could turn invisible (so maybe "Super Ninja" would have been a more approporiate name) but he had nothing to do with being a samurai other than he was from Japan.

Vietnamese Coffee Shop

Had another shooting to at a Vietnamese coffee shop. No one was killed tonight but by the time that the police and my parents and I arrived at the coffee shop the waitresses and the rest of the staff were already cleaning up the restaurant. Officer Ramirez had told my parents that when he was talking to one of the waitresses about the shooting that the manager of the restaurant began shouting at the waitress in Vietnamese and then suddenly the waitress could no longer recall what she had seen that night. Even the video tape from the security cameras had been removed.

Unfortunately this is not an uncommon experience when it comes to these coffee shops. Frankly, I'm not even sure if they sell coffee. They have more in common with a night club than they do any Starbucks. Each local Vietnamese gang has a stranglehold over their own particular shop where they can act with impunity. These Vietnamese gangs get to act like the Italian Mafia from the movies.

 I hate to say it but at least these gangsters make sense. They have money; the hottest girlfriends; fast cars and they never pay for a meal or drinks when they go out at night. It's like every day of their lives is a scene from Tokyo Drift.

The street level Nortenos and Surenos are fighting over nothing that I can see that is of value other than a misplaced sense of pride.

What the police did get out of the very attractive waitress, before she was told to stop talking, was that the shooting took place between two different groups over an apparent inappropriate comment to somebody's girlfriend. That's obviously not much to go on and with no victim or witnesses willing to step forward it would be impossible for the D.A. to prosecute anyone for the Reckless Discharge of the firearm let alone an Assault with a Deadly Weapon or an Attempted Murder. Who ever shot the gun is likely to get away with it.

It must be nice to live ones life outside the law with no repercussions.