Fashion criticism is dangerous. The reigning method seems to be the fashion police format made popular by the late Joan Rivers. The comments come by the second. Each one funnier and more cutting than the last, they prey on the petty racisms, sexisms and ageisms that present themselves as acceptable opinions.

Madonna Says Her Met Gala Outfit Was a "Political Statement" https://t.co/rd8ZT0w2AI pic.twitter.com/Qk1yQUe5ro

— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) May 8, 2016

At this year's Met Gala, Madonna turned up in a Givenchy dress that revealed both her buttocks and her breasts. The insults were a flood. After the event Madonna claimed that the garment was a political statement. She said, "My dress at the Met Ball was a political statement as well as a fashion statement. The fact that people actually believe a woman is not allowed to express her sexuality and be adventurous past a certain age is proof that we still live in an age-ist sexist society."

Madonna has arrived at the #MetGala 2016! 😱😂 pic.twitter.com/K4eRmecFqv

— Shady Music Facts (@musicnews_shade) May 3, 2016

There is truth to her words. However you must wonder if the criticism levied at her was because she is getting along in the years, or because it is an abortion of a dress. I cannot think of a single celebrity that could possibly have pulled it off. It is common for women in that industry whatever their age to display some aspect of their sexuality but it is uncommon for them to truly leave nothing to the imagination.

It works as a statement. The revelation of both the buttocks and the breasts at an event where they are not usually seen will more often than not set tongues to wagging. It would have worked better if she'd said that her appearance at the Met Gala was her attempt at bringing the plight of women the world round to the world's attention before the event. If that was the case then she could have come out on the red carpet naked with the words, "Ageism is Bad. I am free to show off my body as I see fit" written across her length and breadth. If she'd done that we would have spoken about the cause she was fighting for and not the way she looked. 

It's the same way you phone in to work a good hour before when you know that you're going to be late. When you turn up thirty minutes late with a story, it seems a little bit like an after thought. Be that as it may, she deserves applause for drawing the attention of the universal fashion police from the truly trivial topic of her clothes and placing it quite firmly on a far more deserving cause.

Happy Days,
Afam

There is an urgency and a violence to parenthood that only Nigerians understand. Spurred on by the Bible verse that says, "spare the rod and spoil the child" and the truly astounding realisation that no successful man or woman in existence has two heads, Nigerian parents demand perfection from their children. It is a practice that defies location.From Lagos to Alaska, Nigerian Children all understand the meaning of Dr. Do Good, the agent of parental discipline.

All of this has been mined for the creation of a new television show called African Booty Scratcher that will be hilarious. How could it not be when it's created by Damilare Sonoiki who's most famous for his work on Blackish. The television show is about Nigerian family in America that struggles to balance giving their son a better life while ensuring he maintains their traditional values.


It's a story that I think needs to be told. If my Nigerian childhood is anything to go by it will be some of the funniest material you'll see when it's made. If I were to write a song about it,

"AFAM GO AND PLUCK THE CANE!"

Would be the beginning of the first verse.
And.

"AFAM! YOU WILL NOT KILL YOUR FATHER!"

Would be the beginning of the chorus.

However, there's a catch. To see it made, you'll have to support it with your hard earned cash. The producers need your help to get the pilot of the show made, and to raise the awareness they need to get the show on a major network.

They've got a kickstarter page that you need to support. If you don't support it, we'll continue to sit here and complain about how our Nigerianness has been South Africanised and Hollywoodised by Will Smith's portrayal of Dr Bennet Omalu in Concussion. So put your money where your mouth is, and use your increased Guarantee Trust Bank Limit for something other than your ASOS shopping needs.

Happy Days,
Afam

Click here for the kickstarter page.

And Click here for the show's website. There's some seriously cool merchandise there. I recommend the African Booty Scratcher hoodie.

I had the dreaded nine O' clock. Some of you will read that and shake your collective heads at me, but I am not a morning person. I think mornings are brilliant. They've got this uncanny habit of deleting the misfortunes of the day before. But I would think the better of them if they weren't so inconvenient.

I've made a new found commitment to punctuality. It's rather un-Nigerian of me. In Nigeria, it is hardly ever better late than never. It is more often than not better late than ever. However, I am certain that I won't get an appropriate reference if I am even a minute late to any of my lectures. That is why I woke up at 5am to make it to a 9am.

The plan was to make it out of Tottenham by 7:30, that way I'd be at university for 8:15, but I didn't have a stitch to wear. The things that were clean were un-ironed, and the things that were ironed unclean.

I am so annoyed by the unappealingness of unironed clothes that I cannot even stand to look at them. So I hopped out of the shower and did my best to disguise my naked disdain. I believe that my clothes will not look good on me if I spend hours telling them that they are the ugliest things in the history of ugliness. Clothes have feelings too.

Would it be the pink Jack Wills shirt, or the stripey Ralph. Would it be the H and M t shirt nicked from Hobbit or the Levi Flannel nicked from the brother father? I didn't know. I put on my boxers, got a cup of coffee from the kitchen, returned to my room to gaze at the clothes on my bed. I finished the cup of coffee, went to my desk to see what twitter was saying. I turned from my desk and looked back at my bed with a face that said "All of you are useless."

I sat there for 2 hours and a bit, procrastinating before I decided that it would have to be the pink one.

I made it out of my building at 8:15. I wasn't doing badly but things had become dangerous. I was now a rush hour commuter. There's nothing wrong with being a rush hour commuter if you don't mind being squashed like a sardine while you try to discover the offenders. The man that didn't shower and likely hadn't for three days, the hand that seemed to be trying and failing from brushing against your crotch. The heavy breathing in your ear.

I was about to be disgusted with my situation when I discovered that I didn't mind. I was like London, don't go wasting your emotions, lay all your love on me (complete with body parts, bad breath and body odour).

Happy Days,
Afam

On the menu today we've got Omawumi, an Itsekiri Nigerian singer whose music is really rather good. It's a brand of raw African pop that competes directly with the polished touches of everything that Don Jazzy touches. She's got a flair that's reminiscent of Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Angelique Kidjo. As such it is no surprise that she is the main course.
Our soup is Zinnia, the face of HFtv Africa's Da Chat. It's a show that interviews Nigerian celebrities. The interviews typically are typically over 16 minutes long. Omawumi's interview was shorter, and that's because she walked out. Now, Zinnia is not a journalist. Her facebook page it says that she is a recording artist, singer, song writer and an on air personality. After the interview that she had with Omawumi she should consider restricting her efforts to music.



While I worked with Star Gist (an entertainment news show on Africa Magic) under Vimbai, I was told time and time again to exercise caution and empathy. She said, "If you are harsh or crude in the way that only bloggers can be, you will kill the show." This was just after I had written a red carpet rundown that was more malicious than hilarious. She was right.

After that interview, Zinnia will probably find it difficult to secure another. No celebrity in their right mind will willingly throw themselves into an out of control frying pan.

And it was a frying pan. Quite early in the interview, Zinnia asked about the father of one Omawumi's children. She said, "rumour had it that when you were having your daughter, it wasn't your husband's it was your manager's." It is a question that is both difficult and rude, especially when you consider that Omawumi had probably not been informed that the question would be asked. In that, Zinnia showed that she is both unethical and tactless.

The next question was similarly tactless. "Now when you got married... rumour had it that you got instead got married to Dr. Frabz?" As far as I know, Dr. Frabz is not the man that Omawumi has said that she married. It went straight from the frying pan straight into the fire. It is the sort of slut shaming that serves no one.

As insensitive as those two questions were, they paled in comparison to the last one. It was delivered in a rambly, disorgarnised fashion; the sort that makes efficient transcription impossible. A reasonable summary would be, "Do you think that the rumours of your drinking and smoking habit make you unfit to be a mother?"

At that point Omawumi concluded that the interviewer did not mean her well. The conclusion was called for. The vast majority of the questions were asked with the sort of negativity that you'd reserve for an enemy. Even if the questions were called for (and they weren't) they required a sensitivity that the interviewer lacked. It is possible to ask who the father of a woman's child is without coming across as a vulture. I cannot say how such a thing should be done, but I do know that Zinnia did not succeed. You cannot explain away attempts to destroy careers with murmurings that you were looking for the truth.


Vimbai tweeted, "I don't think the lady conducting Omawumi's interview was being malicious - she probably doesn't have the tact that comes with experience."

I agree, but I'll add that she lacks the training that she so desperately needs. You cannot ambush people that do not owe the public anything with questions whose answers the public need not know.

Now, if she were to interview Bukola Saraki and ask him about the numerous allegations of corruption levied against him I wouldn't bat an eyelid. He's a public official. He owes us these answers. Omawumi owes us nothing. You cannot seek to burn her at the stake and expect that she provide the firewood for the flames.

Happy Days,
Afam.

I apolgise for this in advance. There is a spoiler ahead. If you're a fan of the Game of Thrones and you hate it when things are spoiled, then now is the time that you should leave. It may seem odd that I tell you to exit stage left, but I'd rather you thought well of me than ill. If you no longer like me, then you'll stop reading. And if you stop reading then I don't know what I'll do. 



Yesterday, the world was abuzz because a certain television character pulled a Lazarus on us. Yes! Jon Snow came back to life. To be honest I saw it coming. Kit Harrington, the actor that plays Jon Snow said time and time again that his character wasn't coming back to life, but if that was the case, I didn't see why he had to be on set all the time. It doesn't take that long to pretend to be dead. Lying motionless on a bed of stone does not take six months to film.

Some people said that he was filming flashbacks, but Game of Thrones isn't really all that flashback heavy. There is so much material to cover that there is simply no time for detailed examinations of the past, and if there is, the events that will be covered won't be anything from Jon Snow's time. Furthermore, there's the theory that he's the bastard child of Rhaegar Targaryan and Eddard (Ned) Stark's sister Lyanna.

The mysteries surrounding him are far too important for him to die.

Even though he's come back, we cannot expect that he'll be the same. In 2011 George R. Martin, the creator of the incredibly lucrative franchise said:

"I do think that if you're bringing a character back, that a character has gone through death, that's a transformative experience"

He then went on to say :

"My characters who come back from death are worse for wear. In some ways, they're not even the same characters anymore. The body may be moving, but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed, and they've lost something. One of the characters who has come back repeatedly from death is Beric Dondarrion, The Lightning Lord. Each time he's revived he loses a little more of himself. He was sent on a mission before his first death. He was sent on a mission to do something, and it's like, that's what he's clinging to. He's forgetting other things, he's forgetting who he is, or where he lived. He's forgotten the woman who he was once supposed to marry. Bits of his humanity are lost every time he comes back from death; he remembers that mission. His flesh is falling away from him, but this one thing, this purpose that he had is part of what's animating him and bringing him back to death. I think you see echoes of that with some of the other characters who have come back from death."

So what does this mean?

It means that even though Jon Snow is back and his curls remain intact he may not be the same character that we fell in love with over the course of 5 seasons. This makes things infinitely more interesting.

For the first time, there is no difference between those who've read the books and those who haven't. We're all wonderfully ignorant of what the world of Westeros holds for us. The GIf below is no longer true.


Now, for the most part, we all exist in a perpetual state of suspense. The cliffhangers are universal. We obviously can't wait for George R. Martin to finish what he started. I almost wish that he'd be like a Jeffrey Archer. That the books would come out every year, as surely as winter, summer and autumn do.

As we wait for the next episode, we can delight ourselves in Kit Harrington's very sincere apology for the lies that he told before the new season aired. "I'd like to say I'm sorry for lying to everyone." He said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

At this point I can almost say that I am glad that he lied. If he hadn't. This avid fan and twitter genius would probably not have made this.

jon snow is the new jesus pic.twitter.com/Nu0WJkBFr4

— plutao (@geraradway) May 2, 2016

Happy Days,
Afam

At first I was amused. It isn't everyday that your country's biggest star's husband goes on instagram and says that she's slept with Don Jazzy, 2Face, and Dr Sid. The ideas were turning in my head. I planned to write an article where I'd joke shamelessly about the conversation that they'd have that night. I stayed aware of the affair as it sent Nigerian twitter into a frenzy. We're all piranhas there, unified only by the scent of blood in the water. I didn't talk about it. I decided that I would only write about it if we all learned that it wasn't true. It's one thing to make fiction with real characters, and it is another to use real tragedies as fodder for your humour.

Tee Billz created what he called a temporary twitter account  and claimed that he had been hacked. That was my call to action. Operation banter atop the head of Tiwa and Tee Billz was a go. I toyed with the idea, pulling it this way and that. I committed nothing to paper and continued to monitor the commentary on twitter. And then it happened: the whisper of a suicide attempt. He stood on the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge with the intention of finding a watery death. Operation dance azonto with the gist died a quick death. I will joke about many things but I will not joke about mental health.

Mental health illnesses are dangerously common, but even more dangerously silent. You may never notice it in another, but it'll be there all the same, lurking. There may be a trigger, or they may not be. They say that one in four of us will suffer from one. I have been the one in the four. At the time I believed that I was alone, but I wasn't. Friends came through in ways I didn't think possible and my mother hauled ass on my behalf. I'd always heard that it took a village to raise a child, I did not know then that it also took a village to save one. The therapist, the GP, the friends, the family, and everyone else in between, all working to see this one through.

I cannot say that what worked for me will work for you or your friend, or your mother, or your father. All that matters is that you find something that works because there's nothing worse than losing someone with the knowledge that you did not try. Even now the village tries.

They no longer greet me with how are you doings. When they ask me how I'm doing, they don't want to hear fine. They want to know where I am in relation to the 'D'.

When I saw the posts by some of his contemporaries on Instagram I was surprised and then I was disappointed. I suppose it would have been fine if there was no stigma attached to suicide and mental illness, but you can't change the fact that there is. If you cannot reach out to people that you claim to be close to with sensitivity when they're suicidal, then maybe you shouldn't at all. It is already hard enough dealing with it in private, how much more difficult is it when your friends are the ones fueling twitter's curiosity?

You must understand that the person who tries to die by their own hand does not do so because he or she is so forlorn that death suddenly seems appealing. It is because their invisible pain has reached a height that is unendurable. The fear of death doesn't disappear, it is that the terror of life is greater.

It is similar to the way one man jumped out of the twin towers during the 9/11 attacks. He was probably just as scared of jumping as anyone would be but there was a building collapsing around him. It was a terror so great that it exceeded the fear of falling.

You may look at him or her and say don't. But you cannot understand it. You'd have to have walked through his fire and his flames to - and maybe not even then.

I showed up on time. I was turning 26. At 26 you may not have your entire life figured out, but you must have the qualities that speak to a better future than your present. The bank of mum and dad grates, and moving back home to live with your parents feels like a curse.

I was happy about being on time. There is a confidence that only punctuality can bring. A few minutes on the right side of time make for a readiness that words cannot describe. My newfound awareness of time proved to be unnecessary on the day because Sleame was late.

Sleame is a new addition to my realm of friends. He is somewhere between acquaintance and friend. The promotion from acquaintance to friend isn't something that is easily achieved. I regard my friends as treasures gifted by life. There is a friend for every occasion and then there are the friends for the end. It is my brothers and sisters for the end that I regard most highly. It is they that hold you when everything else fails.

We were meant to be jumping on trampolines at the Oxygen in Acton. He showed up two hours late with excuses and apologies scattered in a way that only the tardy can be. I didn't mind too much. I'm not one to sit around idle and count the minutes. There was a novel I'd been putting off. If he had been on time, I may never have started it.

The trampolines were a regression to childhood. It turned out that jumping from trampoline to trampoline, bouncing off the walls, spinning from right to left and left to right, touching heels and toes, all in mid air were all I could ever ask for. There was a purity to my joy. Chicken soup for my soul.

#theweekof26

A video posted by D.A.O (@troambyafam) on Apr 20, 2016 at 10:45am PDT

Mid front flip, I discovered that some of the keys to the future lie in moments lived before. Some times to be 26, you must first remember what it felt like to be seven.

Happy Days,
Afam

One of the best things about being Nigerian is how we speak. We don't speak Nigerian, but our English is truly spectacular. We use words like crinkum-crankum and discombobulate and then we colour them with expressions like kpoto-kpoto, and aboki. Some of the best Nigerian writing isn't found in our books, it's on twitter and some of it is on this blog called zikoko.com.

Zikoko isn't profound or anything like that, but everything that they put up is worth at least a chuckle.

The Nigeria expression I'm crazy about at the moment is borropose. It's a marriage of borrow and pose, and it happens when you lend something to a friend and he or she rocks it like it's theirs. Say you've worked your arse off for a Land Rover Discovery 4, and a friend of yours borrows it for a night. In the morning, you wake up to an instagram feed filled with pictures of your friend sitting on the roof with a bottle of Champagne and captions like God is good and #blessed. The nerve!

As silly as I think the practice is I am not above it. Last week, I sent my only jacket to the dry cleaners. I had worn it for about six months, and it smelled like a homeless person. It was a necessary move because I have never known eau de homeless to do anything good for anyone, but it meant that I had nothing that could cope with the icy nights head.

I went to my neighbour for assistance. A few weeks before, I'd seen him in this thick too cool for school number. It was the sort of jacket that I'd look at with longing but never buy. When I buy clothes, I think of the future. If I can't see myself wearing it in five years, then I turn my eyes from it and get something else. This coat was one of those, perfect for 25 but useless for 28.

When I put it on it was like a spirit descended upon me. I felt bolder, younger and wiser. I didn't need anyone to tell me that I looked cool, I knew it in my heart of hearts. It wouldn't have mattered very much if I actually looked like an idiot because I was immune.

Typically before I get dressed I ask myself WWED. That is what would Erkel do. When you're black and you're short and you wear glasses and your idea of a good afternoon is one spent in Waterstones, you don't have many style icons to choose from. No matter what you wear the Erkel will shine through.

And that's how I went to the cool kids capital. Strutting like a deranged Ostrich, and starting dance battles I couldn't finish. When the night was over, I returned the jacket. Spirit animals shouldn't be so casually displayed. They lack home training.

When people say that they do not like Beyonce, there is only one question to ask.

When did your fave ever?

If you do not like her work, then you cannot like work. If you do not like what she does, then you cannot like popular music. Her performances are singularly stellar. She sounds as good live as she does on her records, and she's probably the only singer alive today that can sustain a full belt through an incredibly intense dance break.

In Hold Up she sings, "what's worse being jealous or crazy?" And then she answers that she'd rather be crazy. That's clear because only a crazy person would release an album on the weekend that Prince died. Anyway you think about it that is something that most people know not to do. We only have room for so much. This weekend I only had room for Prince. I only wanted his extra time and his kisses. Everything else and everyone else was irrelevant. In the thick of my youtube Prince education, I forgot about the HBO promo that she'd made a week before.

I'm a tangential member of the Beyhive. I'm the prodigal Bee. Some of you live there all year round, in years of bounty and in years of drought. I only come round when there's new material. As a result it is no surprise that I wasn't among the first to write, but I'm fairly sure that I won't be the last.

There's an essay on the Daily Mail where Piers Morgan writes that he believes that Beyonce's a born again black woman using her new found blackness for commercial purposes. This opinion isn't just wrong, it's racist. For as long as there has been music, musicians have farmed their personal experiences for material. Some have formed entire careers off the premise that they've been shot nine times. Rags to riches stories are as common as the discovery of sex or a new found love of the powers of marijuana. Why should stories of blackness be treated any differently?

I can all but guarantee that if Beyonce had began her solo career by wearing her blackness on her sleeve she wouldn't be as huge as she is. At best she'd be Azealia Banks and at worst her career would be a gravestone in the realm of the hasbeens and the no longer relevant. Instead she hid her black girl magic in very catchy but relateable riffs about being crazy in love. Themes so relateable that her race was invisible. You may ask why she's chosen 2016 to come out with it, but the truth is you wouldn't have listened if she'd done it in 2003. In 2003 you could have ignored her, now you can't.

There is no one in this generation that could have done it as well as she. No one can tell stories about the black woman like the black woman. It is unfortunate that there are so few mouthpieces left with as much reach. When she speaks she turns the world into her echo chamber. You'll see the black power symbol at the Superbowl, and stop shooting us will find your eyes on MTV. On HBO you'll hear "if it's truly what you want, I can wear her hair over mine, her skin over mine, her hands as gloves, and her teeth as confetti."

In that you'll get a glimpse into what black girls the world round think before every job interview, as they think about the weave they'll have to wear, or the perm they'll have to get. It's what the girl that wrote to Lupita thought about while she considered buying Dencia's Whitenicious bleaching cream.
Maybe now that she's revealed her black heart, other people won't try so hard to hide theirs.

There are two ways to enjoy Lemonade. You can watch the hour long film with its black girl magic and pride, or you can listen to the songs in isolation. Both offer different experiences. When you listen to the music on its own, it's a similar Beyonce to the one you've always known. Her voice is still impeccable, her range is still breathtaking. You will be surprised that its the most genreless album she's ever made. There's rock, country, reggae, pop and R&B. It makes sense. One as gifted as she should not have to exist in boxes.

When you watch the film, you see it for what it is. Stories that touch from a black woman to the world.

"You're blacker than I remember." A friend said. I would be lying if I didn't admit to knowing what he meant. He met me when I lived in Nigeria. You're never blacker than when your blackness is challenged. There were no challenges to my skin there. Every face was as dark as mine.

I walked into the Hawksmoor on Air Street with Obi. The Hawksmoor is one of those places that you go to spite your wallet. It doesn't matter that you lose the battle in the end. All that matters is that you rebelled. There was something that said that you could not, and you showed it that you could.

We walked in off the street, without a reservation. Our reception was hesitant, maybe even cold. We said two for drinks and they said they'd see if they had room. Moments like that are dangerous when you're black. You may never say it, but you'll surely always think it. You'll ask yourself if it's because you don't look like the vast majority of their customers, and then the words of your parents will come back to haunt you. "Dress the way you'd like to be addressed." I wonder why I didn't wear a blazer and a shirt. My distressed jacket is more Shoreditch than Piccadilly.

We were taken up and the bar was empty. Obi whispered, "racism."

I didn't think it before he said it, but the moment he did, I considered it.

"No they can't possibly be racist!" I said.

"Do you ever use your inside voice?" Obi asked.

Two minutes later, our ten minute wait for someone to take our order came to an end. The waiter was so friendly that I was uncomfortable. I thought that it had to be because I'd said the R word. It had to be. What else could lead to a change in attitude so profound that I thought that it seemed like they had been arrested by the Holy Ghost?

R word or no I'll return. There's really no better place for an Esspresso Martini, and their steaks are divine. Is that wrong?

To be Nigerian is to share a bed with tragedy. You wake up with it. You work with it, and you sleep with it. I do not like to talk about being Nigerian because when I do I sound like a wife battered within an inch of her life by her abusive husband. You will tell me, "Terrible things happened in your relationship." And I'll say, "I know, but I believe he can change." You will tell me that he's hurt me in every way that a person can be hurt, and I'll say, "I can't give up on him. There is good in there somewhere." Then you'll look at me like I'm an idiot and I'll smile and say, "I'm in love with him, and even if I wasn't I don't have anywhere else to go. He is my home."

Like I said, it sounds like an abusive relationship.

I could go on about my tragedies, and all the ways I think my country has failed me. The list would be long. To a person with first world problems, my stories would inspire shock and awe. They may even move you to tears. Most people learn that life can be dark through singular catastrophes. I learned through fire trucks that couldn't put out fires, and friends burnt beyond recognition. But for a lot of my countrymen, my stories are the first world of the third world.

Last week CNN showed the first images of the Chibok girls in two years. I remember when it happened. I was in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital. At first we were not sure what happened. The numbers started at 85. Over the weekend, the military said that over a hundred of them had been rescued. And then the following week, it was revealed that none of them had been rescued and that the true figures were somewhere around 250. Even then, we were mostly silent.

I do not believe that our silence was borne of a lack of empathy. It may have been the shock of it. Some times it takes a little longer than the 24 hour news cycle for a news story to really hit home. Saratu the team leader of the Testimonial Archive Project - an organisation that documents the testimonies of those who survive the violence in North Eastern Nigeria said in the Guardian: "This is not the first time abductions have happened. This has been going on for half a decade. Boko Haram have had radical elements, which grew in prominence – and boldness – over the past three years, and it has been abducting girls ever since. I'm sure our government knew this has been happening for years. So my guess is they figured: 'What's one more?' They probably thought it would blow over."

I cannot say that this was why it took two weeks for our then President Goodluck Jonathan to speak about it, but it seemed that way at the time. And even when our government did speak, they seemed as ill informed and unprepared for it as we were. When the president's wife wailed about it, her crocodile tears were too little to late. Performed with great pomp and circumstance and no action. Her husband didn't even have the balls to visit the site of the devil's rapture.

There were protests in Abuja and Lagos. For weeks it was all anyone would talk about on twitter. Our government said that it was doing all that it could to bring them back, but only an idiot would have believed them. The last governments legacy will be its public devotion to the God, and its even larger devotion to cash. They weren't even sensitive enough to use the efficacy of Panama. This is why when the Brits rallied against David Cameron and called for him to resign, I laughed and thought, "I'll trade you our Goodluck for your David."

After a while, the noise died, and it was business as usual. You would hear one day that girls had been rescued, and you would think that they were the ones from Chibok. You would hear the next day that they weren't. It is difficult to deal with this sort of media rollercoaster while queueing 5 hours for petrol so you can get to work the next day, and going home to the fumes of melting candle wax.

Even now that new footage of them has emerged, we will talk about them for a week, while we queue for petrol and fight for dollars. Our government will dance a merry jig, and the rest of us will dance some version of the Lagos hustle.

If you are Nigerian you have been hurt. Someone somewhere has made a decision that has wounded you. With every act of corruption and every misplaced dollar someone has died. Politics isn't a game that the powerful play. It is the sword by which our lives are decided. When the sword hangs above us, slicing at will decade after decade you forget that it is there. It becomes a natural disaster when it really isn't. Your so called heavenly calamity is Bukola Saraki's million dollar house on 17 McDonald in Ikoyi, one of Lagos' pockets of wealth.

So why aren't you angry? Have you become so numb that the kidnapping of 200 teenage girls is not even worth a week of nightly tweets?

When the acclaimed directors Joel and Ethan Coen, were asked about the lack of diversity in their newest film Hail Caesar, they were defensive. Ethan said, "It’s important to tell the story you’re telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity -- or it might not." And Joel said, “It’s an absolute, absurd misunderstanding of how things get made to single out any particular story and say, ‘Why isn’t this, that or the other thing [included]?’”

For the most part I agree. The most important part of any film is the story that it tells, and more frequently than not, stories do not come with the thought that every race must be represented in their telling. However, it is one thing to make a film where all the characters with speaking roles are white, and it is another to build a world where people of colour simply do not exist.

This is the case in Hail Caesar. It is set in the 1950s in Hollywood. If the world they depicted is to be believed, the only people who were not white in Hollywood at the time were two Asians who worked in a Chinese restaurant.

I was slow to come to this conclusion. I had gone through about three quarters of the film before I realised that there was no one that looked like me in it. It would not have bothered me if the film was one of those dramas with only four characters and one location, but this was not the case. Of the 231 people that were featured in the film, only two did not appear to be white.

When people argue for diversity in film, there are always some quick to warn against the dangers of tokenism. Some skip the tokenism argument in its entirety and say, "well we looked, and we didn't find any that were suitable." If we were to consider these points as reasons why films aren't diverse then we would have to consider the following.

• There were no people of colour in Hollywood in the 1950s.
• There were no extras of colour available at the time. 

The very suggestion that those two are true is ridiculous. It's like you turning up to a class at university to find that your lecturer is a goat who believes that the world is flat.

This is one of the weird ones without any conclusion because I'm still stunned that I didn't see a single black face in two hours. Usually, there's a pimp, a prostitute, a drug dealer, a waiter, or a corrupt African junta from a fictional African country with a South African accent even when we know that the fictional country is somewhere between Gambia and Cameroon. So today I thank the Coen brothers for teaching me that there is something worse than being typecast and misrepresented and that's not being represented at all.

Happy Days,
Afam

There comes a time in the life of every blogger (by every blogger I mean me), when he must write about something that he may not have written about otherwise. This is one of those times. Now this one isn't for blatant profiteering. It's for something a lot more valuable: the bonds of the friendship contract. This particular contract allows for the sharing of favours.

I send Obi a lot of my material before it sees the light of day and he gives his feedback at all hours of the day. Obi in turn demands that I send him all invitations and press passes that find their way into my inbox.

This one is about Ferona. Ferona's a couturier that's recently opened up shop in Lagos. Their shop's on Karimu Kotun in Victoria Island.

According to their website, they are renowned for relevant couture that offers versatility, function, and wearability.

 A handy thing if you ask me, a dress that only lives for a day is a waste of money. I'm an expert in the versatility of clothes. You can ask my 3 pairs of jeans, 15 shirts and four pairs of shoes about this. I'm sure they'll agree

The clothes look like this.
And have this sort of vibe



If I were ever in need of a dress I would probably look there.

This is a thing that could actually happen. There's nothing I won't do for a good costume party. I don't think my costume leanings will ever transition to a full blown lifestyle change but who knows? All I can say at this point is that I quite enjoy manliness and the fact that walking in high heeled shoes isn't a skill that I ever forsee being required of me.

Every piece they make is created using traditional haute couture embroidery techniques and extraordinary age old couture secrets. I don't know what those are, but they certainly do sound impressive. If my tailor ever said those words to me, my eyes would become starry, and I'll squeal like a pig while my wallet weeps tears of blood and sings, "You will never ever ever... Get out of debt."

What can I say, it's what happens when Champagne sensibilities meet Cider realities.

Happy Days,
Afam

I must apologise to the lot of you for disappearing. It's something that I do rather well. I'd like to complain about my lot, and give you some deep unmeaningful excuse about the ways that all the stars needed to align before I wrote something, but you don't care about all of that. You want the blogs regular, and to a certain standard. And I want my links retweeted, and my greatness praised. I'm well aware that I may not be that great, but that's not the issue. Egos must be stroked and compliments must be fished. My self esteem is a truly fragile thing.

So I'm sorry. And back to regular programming. If I take another leave of absence, it won't be without an explanation.

Happy Days,
Afam