All About Me, Me, Me and My Other Personality

A retrospective on ... um ... me


















Me and the news team ... I'm the black one ...

Nearly four years ago I came to Bakersfield with essentially no money and a job offer to be an education reporter at The Bakersfield Californian. I bounced around a bit before my dream job (entertainment reporter) opened up and gave me the chance to run far, far away from daily reporting to the land of pretty people and rock concerts.

One of my first major to-dos was when I got to give the entertainment report on KBAK. Aah. The memories. I used to get up at the butt crack of dawn and go on KBAK-TV 29 to hang with the homies and chat about local entertainment. Yeah, me, Lisa and The Shoopster. That was super sweet even if I was super sleepy. I actually miss it. Maybe we need to try to get back together. Make our thing solid again. After all, I totally got to bring on jazz musicians and a guy in pink tights dressed as a "flamboyant" Jack Frost.

That woke em up!


Rebecca and Jenitta: two characters from a very elaborate cartoon universe.

For a brief time at The Californian I did illustration work, all based on the fact that I'm a cartoonist and an art school drop out. Although I think they liked my work, it was too hard to juggle it and be the entertainment reporter.

This panel is from my comic strip "Nerd Girl," which I wish I would go back to working on. Oddly enough, I have never scanned in the character from the strip who is actually based on me. "Rebecca," the chick who sits in my bio-box is my happy, alter ego who wears too many colors and likes pink a whole, whole lot. My character, "Maddie," is a nerdy, misanthrope who has bad luck with men. "Jenitta" is a flashy composite of every pretty black girl I knew back in St. Louis who hated me. They were just so pretty and wore such great shoes and thought I was like this geeky troll in their way.

Hate's a strong word. It was more like I didn't exist.

"BAP" by the way stands for "Black American Princess."


Me winning the Bob Hardy scholarship ten-thousand years ago from Southern Illinois University -- Edwardsville.

It wasn't that I didn't try to be a BAP. Good Lord, I did! I dated a Moorehouse man. My hair was long and straight. I bought clothes like a fiend. I wanted those pretty bitches to accept me. But I could not hide the nerdiness no matter what I did. We'd all be sitting around, talking about Louis Vuitton or Tupac when all of a sudden I'd find myself trying to explain the Lost Poets as the grandfathers of rap and quoting "The Revolution Will No Be Televised," then going into an indepth explaination of how us and Europe leaving Germany to rot after WWI paved the way for fascism and the rise of the Nazi party.

Then I'd encourage them to vote or go to class and stop worrying about marrying a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fratnerity Inc.

Oh yeah. I lost all cool points.


Deidre Marlene Belton, the girl who put the "D" in "diva," my little sister

Of course, Deidre, my baby sis, was born with an obsene amount of cool points. You can't trade them in for cash or anything, but she never has a problem getting dates unlike myself and "Big Sis" who ... Big Sis Denise, when did you last go on a date? I'm at the two year stretch myself.

Of course, I CHOOSE to be alone. Which, of course, is just some garbage lonely people say. Deidre and I are so close that we have to spend long periods of time appart from each other mentally and physically. We love each other, but we still get on one anothers nerves. I think we need to see therapy or something. I keep turning into her mother whenever we're together ... her crazy, depressed, "stage mom" mother. And we both already have a mother who does just dandy at the job (without going on "Sports Kids Moms and Dads" on her). I think it's because I always thought that she had a chance to be liked by those pretty bitches. Hell, she was pretty enough! She can dance. Hell, she majored in theater and dance in college.

Alas, it wasn't meant for any of the Belton sisters to be liked by the BAPs. (The real kind. Not whatever the HELL was in that movie with Halle Berry.) Although Deidre had the aloofness and looks, they didn't like her either.

Damn us with all our brains and OPINIONS!














My old column picture. I don't look like this anymore either, but, well, close enough.

Which is why I chopped off all my hair nearly five years ago and grew out a natural with mixed results. Right now my hair is in a curly bob thing. I don't know what you'd call it. So it's not even that long anymore. I don't worry about the BAPs anymore. I fully embrace my nerdome ...

Although I still love to gab about a Louis Vuitton handbag from time-to-time.

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