DJ Leon Lamont

Amidst hugs and kisses, on New Year’s Eve, when I said the words “Happy New Year” to friends and colleagues, I had no idea how literal the phrase would become.  Having new experiences and thus creating new memories is what makes life fulfilling.  It makes you feel alive and as if you are actually moving forward.  More importantly, “new” defeats boredom and helps bring to mind future possibilities for obtaining your happiness and growth as a person.
One of my most exciting new experiences this year was working as a comic actor/writer in New York.    I did comic/character acting for a video for the band Genes and Machines as well as acting in a theatrical version of Vernon Reid’s Artificial Afrika during a three-week show run at Dixon Place in Manhattan. 
When I went to New York, I was prepared to a do a job, just not the job I ended up doing.  I wasn’t asked if I could act, I was simply told that I was an actor and given show times.  My only prior experience doing improv on stage up …

Recently, someone asked me why I liked the comic book character the Green Lantern so much.  The person described the Green Lantern as “boring” and “stupid” among other things.  Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion and if you don’t put much thought into the character it’s easy to come to this conclusion.
As a young black kid, my fascination with the Green Lantern was the fact that he wasn’t THE Green Lantern…he was A Green Lantern.  A Green Lantern was just an intergalactic cop and anyone could be one. 
When a black kid fantasizes about being a superhero it’s different from when a white kid does it.  A white kid only has one layer of fantasy to go through, “I am Superman today”.  A black kid has two layers of fantasy to go through.  First, a black kid has to fantasize that he is white and then proceed to a second layer of fantasy to become Superman.  It’s a fantasy within a fantasy.  As a white kid once said to me on a playground, “You can’t be Superman because Superman is whit…