2011 UH Cougar Watch-Record Breaking Cougars Eat Up Rice

The Ruck Fice shirts were in full effect along with a raucous sellout Robertson Stadium crowd that braved rain brought in by a cold front transiting the Houston area to watch the Coogs take back the Bayou Bucket with a 73-34 victory over our crosstown rivals.

The 18th ranked Cougars are now 8-0 and 4-0 in C-USA West Division play, and matches the 1979 SWC championship squad and the 1990 team for the best in school history.

Rice put up a fight in the first quarter.   The Owls took advantage of the rain, their Wild Owl rushing attack and three Cougar first quarter turnovers to forge a 17-7 lead after Tyron Carrier took the opening kickoff and returned it 100 yards for a touchdown to tie former Clemson RB CJ Spiller's NCAA record of seven career touchdowns and take an opening 7-0 advantage before the skies opened up.  

But once Case and Company got it in gear and Rice stubbornly kept trying to blitz Keenum and play the speedy Cougar receivers in man coverage, UH scored touchdowns on nine of its next 11 offensive possessions to quickly erase that 20-14 deficit and forge a 38-20 halftime lead.

With Rice lining up in a seven man front and daring the Cougars to throw deep to beat them, UH accepted the challenge and repeatedly toasted the Rice secondary like Quiznos subs.for the rest of the night.   

Mmm mmm tasty.    

The guy doing most of the toasting was Patrick Edwards.  He caught seven passes for five touchdowns and 318 yards.  He tied Elmo Wright's UH school record with five TD receptions in one game and the career record for touchdown at 34.

Case Keenum after the shaky start was 24 of 37 for nine touchdowns and 534 years with one interception.   He also passed Graham Harrell of Texas Tech to become the all-time FBS leader in career touchdown passes with 139

Rice had a record setter in this game as well.  Owls running back Tyler Smith got loose for a 97 yard  touchdown run that broke the Rice school record for the longest one in their 100 years of playing football.

It also broke the C-USA record that was set by UH Antowain Smith in 2006 that was a mere 96 yards.   

Next up for the Cougars is a road trip to Alabama to face the UAB Blazers and a trip to the Superdome to play Tulane on November 10.

Shut Up Fool Awards-Halloween Weekend Edition

It's getting close to the end of October, and that means girls and ghouls all over the country will be descending on your doorsteps on October 31 in search of candy.   For those of us in the trans community, Halloween has a different meaning as the Trans National Holiday.  

But before we get to discussing the Trans National Holiday and how much I'm going to miss walking down Hillcrest Avenue in Da Ville, it's Friday, and time for me to focus on what fool, fool or group of fools exhibited a frightening lack of brain cells and scary amounts of stupidity.

The nominees for this week's Shut Up Fool! award are Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich,  a group nomination for Fox Noise, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Pat Buchanan, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Ron Paul.

But this week's Shut Up Fool! winner is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) who came out of his undisclosed location to attack President Obama for sowing as he said in a speech to the conservafool Heritage Foundation “fear and envy” with his “divisive” call for raising taxes on the wealthy by a few percentage points.

“He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators,” Rep.Ryan said

Project much Paul?   The only 'intellectually lazy arguments' happening here are the one flying between your flapping gums.  We in the 99% of America are tired of the treats you pass out to the 1% while we get the tricks.  Even your own constituents in Wisconsin have slammed you for being a class warrior for the wealthy.   Don't even get me started about the many ways you Republifools have been 'divisive'. 

That would take me another post or two to compile them.

Thank God Election Day 2012 is 13 months from now on November 6, 2012.

Rep. Paul Ryan, shut up Fool!

HCC Southeast Panel Discussion On 'For Colored Girls'

If you TransGriot readers thought I was parked in front of the television watching the Bayou Bucket clash between my beloved UH Cougars and Rice at the Rob last night, I actually was spending some time down I-45 from UH enjoying a panel discussion on the Houston Community College Southeast Campus that started at 7:15 PM CDT.

As I've mentioned to you peeps who read this blog, I'm a little better connected than some of my haters presume I am, and it turned out one of those connections played a major role into why I attended last night's event.

Two weeks ago I was watching the rebroadcast of a METRO board meeting on the local cable access HCC-TV channel.   At the bottom of the screen was a crawler message advertising some upcoming events on the various HCC campuses and the contact person and phone numbers for further information on them. .  

One of the events that was advertised was a panel discussion entitled Reflections On  'For Colored Girls'- Confronting the Challenges of Race, Class and Gender in the 21st Century and was being presented by the Africana African-American Studies & The Women And Gender Studies Programs at HCC's Southeast Campus. 

That campus is not too far from the house and the panel discussion was scheduled for a Thursday night so I made a mental mote as I continued to watch the METRO board meeting to consider going to the October 27 event. 

I did a double take when I saw the name of the person who was the contact person for that event, a longtime friend of mine named Antrece Baggett. 

Talk about small world moments.  We hadn't seen each other since 1984 and she is now the Program Director of the Africana African-American Studies & The Women and Gender Studies Programs at HCC Southeast.  It also turned out that this was also the first event she was coordinating in her new role as the director of the program.

After watching the crawler message go by a few times to ensure I jotted down the phone number correctly, I called her yesterday afternoon to make sure the program was still happening.  Once I got the business end of the call taken care of she figured out it was moi, and we picked up conversation wise as if that decade and a half had never passed.

So yeah, was definitely in the house to support my homegirl.  I got the bonus of seeing her mom again as well and being introduced to the president of HCC Southeast Dr. Irene Porcarello and the Academic Dean of HCC Southeast Dr. Pauline Warren who previously had Antrece's position. 

After D.r Porcarello and Dean Warren welcomed everyone to the campus and students Brandy Rogers of HCC-Southeast and Ronica Jefferson of Texas Southern University introduced the panelists it was time to get the discussion started.   

The For Colored Girls panel discussion opened with a spoken word performance of the play by Rita Hughes and another actress before moving to the four minute statements from panelists Dr. Nikita Harris of Auburn University, Dr. Rockell Brown of Texas Southern University, psychologist Dr. Valdesha Ball, MD of Baylor College of Medicine, Professor Baggett and Thecia Jenkins, the Domestic Violence advocate at 'The Bridge Over Trobled Waters .

Each panelist discussed certain themes in the movie and related it to the issues that African-American and POC women were facing in the 21st century.   Some of the issues touched on ranged from the love-hate relationship we have with Tyler Perry  to touching on the fluidity of gender and the 'unwoman' meme I've talked about here.

After taking some questions from the audience the program closed with remarks from Director Baggett and I got a chance to talk to her and Dr. Harris for a few moments before I departed for the evening.

And nope, won't be the last time I talk to Professor Baggett either.

But yeah, enjoyed getting my learn on and seeing and old friend at the same time.

We Black Trans People Need To Know Our Black Trans History

And I'm not just talking about our Black history, world history, or American history (although we need to be cognizant of that as well) but our Black trans history.

One of the reasons this blog is named TransGriot is because I was tired of Black trans people being unaware of the Black people who walked in our trans shoes before we arrived on this planet to pick up where they left off.  I was tired of us not knowing who our pioneering transpeople were and not being told our stories.  I was tired of our accomplishments and things we have done being erased.

As Chancellor Williams said in The Destruction of Black Civilization in 1975, "As long as we rely on white historians to write Black history for us, we should keep silent about what they produce."

And no, keeping silent about Black trans people being erased from trans history is not gonna happen on my watch.  To ensure that doesn't happen I started this Black History Month doing a Black Trans History quiz and as long as this blog is in operation will be doing it EVERY Black History month from now on.

Diamond Stylz in my recent Ten Questions interview with her pointed out how important knowing our trans history is, ensuring our stories are told, and why we need to proactive in passing them down to the next generation.

"One of my favorite parts about TransGriot is when you showcase some of our trans history.  It opens my eyes to a world in the past that I can't imagine living in. From Lady Java to Lucy Hicks Anderson, I appreciate knowing that we didn't just pop up in the millennium. We have been here fighting. It shows me that I have been handed a torch and I need to continue running with the torch."

That we have.   We have people like Avon Wilson, who was the first patient of the Johns Hopkins gender program.  The African descended people involved in the 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In in Philadelphia.  The people in the ballroom community which drew inspiration from the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance and Finnie's Ball in Chicago.  Trans people who were clustered in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit and Atlanta just to name a few of the cities.

And oh yeah, I am one of four African-American IFGE Trinity Award winners along with Dawn Wilson, Dr. Marisa Richmond and Earline Budd

Much of the reasons we need to know our history is not only for our own knowledge and edification, but to point out we're intertwined with and share a common history and culture with cis African-Americans.

It's also to counter the haters.   If somebody comes at me with 'Black transpeople haven't don't anything' or the other foul stereotypes they aim at us, I can quickly counter with the fact that we helped organize GenderPac and NTAC.  We have a transwoman who was a member of the Mattachine Society.  We jumped off the first trans specific protest in 1965 and the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969.   A Black transwoman was the first patient in the Johns Hopkins Gender Program.  We have a transwoman in Pamela Hayes who has written and published novels.  We had people who modeled like Tracy Africa Norman and we had present as a delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention Dr. Marisa Richmond..       

And yes, some of the legal cases that are helping to define trans legal issues or fight discrimination against us have African American trans plaintiffs in them such as Patricia Underwood, Patti Shaw, KK Logan, Diana Taylor      

We also can't forget our African Diaspora cousins like Victor Mukasa, Audrey Mbugua, Mia Nikasimo  Jowelle De Souza and Skipper Mogapi just for starters or the people we've lost along the way.


We have people such as Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Isis King, Tona Brown, Jordana and Diamond who are taking Black trans visibility to new levels.   They are paving the way for the acceptance and support we'll need to aim higher and fully integrate ourselves in the African American community so we can continue to make more history.   And yes, knowing our history is a vital building block to ensure we have the healthy self esteem and positive self images we'll need to deal with the slings and arrows of life that will get hurled at us.


I know we just didn't pop up in the late 90's and early 21st century.    Miss Major's existence tells us that along with Cheryl's, Sharyn's, and Marsha P. Johnson's.  And nope, not going to forget the transmen like Alexander John Goodrum, Marcelle Cook-Daniels,  Rev. Louis Mitchell, Kylar Broadus and countless others who are doing the work to not only advance our chocolate section of the trans community, but uplift our people at the same time.

It's past time for us to get to know ourselves by getting in touch with our Black trans history.