AFRICA FRESH! New Voices from the First Continent An anthology of African writing only featured on the Internet until now, this book features the collected works of writers for the G21 AFRICA section of G21.net. The eight writers represented here are from around the continent and present an exciting look at cutting-edge fiction and reporting from the first continent today.Buy the book or get a downloadable PDF copy now! 
A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor.
SUSTAINING PATRONS
RON DIENER,
DARHL STULTZ,
MATT STOWELL,
TIMOTHY MEADOWS,
TERRY TERRIAN,
CHERYL HILL NATION,
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We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance.
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Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks. |
Next Scheduled Update: Friday, 24 March, 2006
 G21 Interviews: Presley Chweneyagae by BRAD BALFOUR
New York, NY, USA - For Presley Chweneyagae, making "Tstotsi" was more than just a job or a spotlight; it was an act of redemption for a kid from a small, poor town from the northwest province of Mafikeng who made the transition from local actor to international star of an Oscar-nominated film. But thanks to South African director Gavin Hood, this young guy from a tough neighborhood was able to construct the life of a mentally deranged thug ('tsotsi") and criminal gang leader, showing his human side both because of that experience and in spite of it as well. G21: Were you surprised at how brutal you became when you saw yourself on screen? PC: Yes, definitely. It was like asking myself, "Are you capable of doing that [laughter]." G21: Except for Butcher, the gang member who shanked the people, you were a pretty nasty guy. PC: Yes, I was a pretty nasty, but it's probably because I grew up around guys like him, so it was easy to relate to. Plus, it was just a lot of cut and paste [laughs] of all these people. PC: You grew up around killers? PC: Yes. It was tough. There were people stabbing each like in the daylight and stuff like that. G21: You grew up pretty much after apartheid - how old are you now? PC: Yeah, pretty much. I'm 21, sir. G21: Apartheid was more than 10 years ago [the first democratic election was in 1994; the system was coming apart around 1990]? PC: I was born in a northwest province in 1984. G21: So you pretty much missed it; was it interesting to talk to people who experienced it? PC: Definitely. Because I've read books about apartheid, I kind of learned a lot [about it] but people look at me funny because I don't really understand it. I guess that's what you say, like when you go out or someone just calls you a "kafir" [a derogatory word originally meaning non-believer but in this connotation meaning "nigger"] you think "Oh so what." It doesn't really get to me the way it does to a person who experienced the whole thing. ... READ MORE  G21 Interviews: Baratunde by ROD AMIS
G21 World HQ - My interest was raised as soon as a friend sent me the e-mail telling me about a comedian who had just produced a free book that you could download online. He said the guy reminded him of a hip new version of Mort Sahl and I should check the book out, in .pdf format, for some ideas about humor for your World's Magazine. The comedian's name was the euphonous and unusual Barantune. My idea, upon reading only a couple of opening chapters, was that this young man was certainly someone worth talking with. I contact Baratunde where he resides, in Boston, MA, USA and we decided to talk. Here with the transcript of our conversation. G21: We see that you bill yourself as a "vigilante pundit."??Where did that concept develop for you? BARANTUNDE: When I published my first book, Better Than Crying: Poking Fun at Politics, the Press & Pop Culture, I had to write a new bio and press release. I had always billed myself as a "comedian and writer," but that didn't explain at all where I was coming from or what I was about. I mean, Dennis Miller is also a comedian and writer, but a) he's not funny anymore and b) we're completely different. I wanted people to get a sense of me in just a few words. As I looked around at all those so-called "talking heads" on TV discussing politics, I realized that all these folks are generally over 45 years old, white and men. These "pundits" looked and, all to often, SOUNDED the same. Based on my age, race and upbringing, I knew I didn't fit in with that crowd even though I was also talking a lot of politics. I'm more irreverant and waaaaaay more interesting than those cats. Thus was born the "vigilante pundit." I like to think of myself? rollin' onto the set of the McLaughlin Group with my afro and droppin knowledge bombs left and right! When people ask me "what comedians are you like," I tell them to consider me a younger, browner, hipper Al Franken or Jon Stewart. G21: Your book for free download, The Mojo Quarterly:??Keep Jerry Fallwell Away from my Oreo Cookies is described on your Web site as an "Open Source" Comedy Book.??Tell us about that, please. BARANTUNDE: I've been performing my whole life. As a young kid, I played in a Youth Orchestra in Washington, DC. In high school and college, I did several plays and musicals, and about four years ago, I started doing standup. I immediately realized that there was NEGATIVE money in the comedy game for someone at my level. ... READ MORE We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! |
ROD AMIS ON BECOMING A CLASSIC:
10 March, 2006: As we open this first edition of our Tenth Anniversary Celebration, your World's Magazine finds itself in a problematical position. It seems difficult to maintain the stance of being an "outsider" and unorthodox Web publication when, by all evidences, we are now a classic of our genre simply by dint of being around for ten years on this medium. Nowhere was this brought home to me more than when attending the Online Journalism Review (OJR) independent publishers' conference in Los Angeles this month. The people who made it a point to seek me out or seek my advice made it clear that, though we are a unique publication, we are also a venerable one.
On a medium where the new is celebrated and the survivors are few and hardy, your World's Magazine earned its stripes long ago. We are now among those publications with a predictable format with which are readership has grown comfortable, we appear regularly and our level of performance is anticipated. We make it look effortless, or try to do so. All of these facts speak to being a "classic" rather than a rebel or a maverick, though that is how we have taken to defining ourself.
But it's difficult to call yourself "that hip little station at the far end of the FM dial" during a week when your publication receives a citation in a Reuters UK news release, as we did this week because our book imprint arm's production, Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent, makes the short list for a fiction prize (Lulu.com's Blooker Prize) or during the same year when one of your writing team is awarded a prize by a major publishing house. (NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI and the MacMillan Prize in African Writing, respectively.) Equally so when Kenya's premier literary critic, Evan Mwangi, who teaches African Literature at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA, writes a lengthy review of the G21 book that appears in the Sunday Nation, Kenya's largest newspaper.
None of these are incidents that happen to "outside" publications, they are rather things that a "standard" publication comes to expect. You can only begin to imagine how difficult it is for an old rebel like myself to accept that what I am doing, have been doing these last seventeen years in total and the last ten here online, has achieved its goal of setting a standard. There are more Web entities and journals on and offline that have coalesced with what we say and stand for today than when we first began our effort.
In my jocular moments, I quip that "around 2003 the rest of the world caught up." ... READ MORE
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| BC Bud |
This short takes an in-depth look at the booming marijuana business in British Columbia. Where enough pot is produced in "Grow-Ops" to provide every resident of the Canadian province with a pound of the high potency bud. |
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