The Entertaining Oddballz

I think it’s a shame that we have to ask that question.  My question in response to that would be too much of what exactly?  Not directing it at you per-say, but the fact that that it is a question that the media asks.  It almost feels as if it is an attempt at media-self justification for the lack of representation of disabled people in media.  I am not familiar with that Times article and I read the publication accordingly.  According to the U.S. Census there are over 56 million disabled Americans, roughly 1 in 5 people. https://www.census.gov/…/cb12-134.htmlThe statistics for disabled children are harder to come by, but what those numbers indicate is that one would assume toddler-aged children are interacting with disabled people every day. I know in my daughter’s Sunday school class she has peers, children, who are disabled.  So, it’s not as if a cartoon with a disabled character would be interjecting an otherwise unfamiliar identity into the lives of young viewers.  These potential viewers already know disabled people. I (the creator of The Oddballz) am the disabled father of a toddler with many friends and an active social life.  She knows that I am disabled, as do many of her friends.  Children spend a lot of time watching television, in addition to socializing.  There are many great offerings out there like Sprout, for example.  To me, it is not the potential presence of the disabled in media that would be harmful to children.  I would think it is the absence of people they see everyday in real life that might cause more confusion.  What we seek to do through our concept is foster a representational presence, where children are exposed to disabled people in media as well as represented in media that might send a confusing message.  Do kids wonder why they don’t see representations of their disabled peers in media?  What message does the absence of those peers in media send to non-disabled child consumers of media about the value of disabled identity?  What message does it send to disabled children about their own self-worth?  It’s a shame to me that with so many talented writers, we still have a segment of the population (roughly 20% according to the government’s data) that doesn’t presently exist in media.  Are we saying that there is something repugnant about the disabled identity? Virtually no family across the globe is untouched by disability in some capacity.  That vacuum is a shame.  But it is also an opportunity.  If you go to a city playground, you will most likely see disabled kids, and disabled people present.  And it’s insulting to insinuate that a disabled identity would somehow be TV-MA.  However, we can simultaneously use that vacuum to our advantage and portray disabled individuals, and children in particular in a positive light.  Our disabled character “Willie,” is a talented kid.  He’s got a cool wheel chair, tricked out with fire-ball paint.  I think our position is that: “Okay, the media has left this vacuum, that positions us to dictate the tone of the representation.”  There are millions of children across America who are disabled who don’t have a space in the social order created by media.  So we cherry-picked a nice space for our disabled character.  We think it addresses the two problems that I discussed earlier.  First, disabled children themselves, who were previously unrepresented, get a champion so-to-speak.  They can see that our character “Willie” has value within the frame of the concept and maybe that can put an end to some of the self-hatred.  Second, this generation of non-disabled kids, who has never grown up with a representation of disabled children and may not know how to deal with disabled children’s “otherness” get to see what they see everyday, that disabled kids have hopes, dreams, desires, talents, and abilities just as they do, that the disabled identity isn’t some kind of automatic relegation to ostracization.  They can see that our disabled character has friends, is functional, is an asset as a human being, and hopefully they can then see the disabled children in their classrooms and neighborhoods as assets as well.  I like to compare our concept to Dora a lot. My undergraduate major prior to going on to law school was American Culture, where we studied representations of different cultural groups in media.  I think if you look at the way children who grew up in the generations exposed to Dora view the Mexican identity presented by that show, see cool elements in it.  My daughter prefers to say “vaminos” to “let’s go,” because of how fun Dora made it. My child’s not Mexican, but she knows Spanish phrases because of Dora.  She has Dora pillowcases, a Dora umbrella, and big Dora stickers on her wall.  I’m very big on diversity and cultural inclusion and cross-cultural understanding.  I think children learn a lot of their social norms from television and take that into the world around them.  So I’d like to think the same way children’s TV made this young Mexican character a rock-star and learning Spanish cool, it can portray disabled children as assets and rock-stars, and make disability cool.  And, the truth of the matter is, in a lot of classrooms, there are “cool” disabled children.  As we said 1 in 5 people in this country are disabled.  It’s only in the artificial world of media (even well-meaning media like PBS) where disability is a nebulous subject.  So how can we question if kids are ready to see a representation of something they see everyday?  We’re not talking about drug use or salacious content being forced upon minors.  We’re talking about depicting their peers.

I don’t know if I’m capable of wisdom per-se, but I’m glad you mentioned that there are lessons to be learned from all-types of people.  “The Oddballz” isn’t just a concept about disability.  We also seek to address diversity and cross-cultural understanding, gender equity, bullying, and childhood obesity.  It’s simultaneously called a “disabled” concept, but the characters are all athletes.  When a child consumes “Oddballz” material it’s not just a dose of disability entertainment.  I’m a certified educator myself, although I need several more surgeries before I can enter the classroom.  I was privileged to box around the country before being diagnosed with a disability.  We’ve got NFL athletes and World Champion boxers following us on twitter.  So I don’t want to stray from your question, but I want to be clear that we address more than simply disability with our concept.  That’s something you can read about on our website: http://www.theoddballz.com/why-we-re-odd-1.html.  However, I do think it’s part of our mission to foster greater understanding of what disability is for both young and old audiences.  What I would want to pass along is that disabled people like many of these children’s brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, or grandparents are not akin to Zombies or some exotic form of life.  When you talk about 20% of the population, that’s not a small alien group, that’s a group that’s very much part of society.  I think what we’d like children to know is that again, disabled kids (and adults) are just like them, with the same feelings and consciousness.  We may have some limitations.  I was told in 2013 I’d never walk again due to back disability.  For a former athlete that was devastating.  My daughter was 2 at the time and we’d have to do the Science Center and Aquarium in a wheel chair.  But that didn’t mean daddy was any less human than when I was sparring 3 hours a day.  She knows I like to get up, and get out, and enjoy a nice sunny day like she does, and enjoy live music and other activities anyone else does.  I am walking now, thank God, but everyone’s situation is different.  I may be a little slower to get myself together in the morning to where my medicine’s kicked in and I’m ready to go to the pool.  She had no choice but to pick up her blocks growing up, because with my back I certainly couldn’t do it.  But we’d like to stress that with disability there is no broad brush that can be applied.  One person’s condition might have different symptoms than another’s.  And, as with the previous question, kids know this from personal experiences with the disabled people all around them.  But I think bringing it into a media concept can crystallize for these young people, the humanity of disability.  Their disabled friend may not be able to run around the museum on the field trip like they do.  That doesn’t mean he isn’t just as into the dinosaur exhibit, or the geology, or anything else.  I’m not sure I’m necessarily wise, but I have encountered a plethora of ignorance from adults as a disabled person, who expect me to be able to turn my disability on and off as the social setting requires.  I think if there’s a gem to given or if we were to make a specific point, it would be that disabled people are regular people, but have “special needs.”  And, for healthy children to socialize with those who have disabilities, a little bit of understanding and tolerance goes a long way.  Unfortunately, the generation whom are adults now did not get that message.  So we are hoping to create a more aware generation.  I think “The Oddballz” concept can be a facilitator of that more enlightened society going forward.

You think most would say that? Really? That makes me laugh as well.  I lived a very healthy childhood.  Music was a part of my life early.  I got to perform at the White House as a kid and tour to other cities, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Toronto, Virginia Beach.  I got to sing the national anthem at the NFL’s NFC championship game.  Then I got to box at Sugar Ray Leonard’s gym and compete around the country in Detroit, Las Vegas.  I appeared in TV commercials.  I played high school football and ran track.  I represented my college in intercollegiate athletics.  Then I got a scholarship to law school.  Then, I got sick in my 20’s.  It’s a running joke with my “healthy” friends that I lived 20 lifetimes worth of action already before I got sick.  Once I got sick it was just terrible. Everything fell apart. (I’m joking.) I got to get into hip hop, as I was in the hospital 20+ days and hospitalized 10’s of times, and I ended up enjoying music so much I found myself back on the radio for hip-hop, and was a part of a team that produced a Grammy Nominated song.  I met most every celebrity in the genre and worked with a lot of them.  I was living a life that a lot of people would consider a dream at that point, albeit interrupted by hospital stays.  Now, I don’t know that that is the typical experience for a disabled person.  But me facing the employment discrimination that the media tries to tell you doesn’t exist, allowed me to move to Atlanta and record with the hottest artists in the world because there weren’t any corporate opportunities for me even though I had graduated with High Honors from college and stuck it out and gained my law degree.  I was even elected by my peers to represent our law school class in the student government, and in that role formed a corporate partnership between my law school and a homelessness advocacy group where we tutored the kids in battered women’s shelters several times a week.  So I just kind of shake my head at the idea that one’s life is over because they’re disabled, as we should. That sounds like the perspective of someone whose been blessed to have more than their share of first world problems. I think the kid who lost that election to me might have thought his life was over for a week and then he got over it.  I bet the guy trying to break into the industry while I was participating, thought he was the one who got the unfair end of the stick.  However, there’s a serious side to it that’s not so funny where people really can lose a lot of their livelihood and functionality.  I had to give myself a shot in the stomach once a day and one in the thigh once a week.  I was prone to going back to the hospital often.  But if anything, my love for life increased, because I saw how precious it was.  I did feel bad for myself from a corporate standpoint because I saw how bad discrimination can be in a work environment.  And, my heart goes out to those who haven’t recovered from that, or who have experienced serious degeneration of their physical condition.  But for the most part I felt like I was stunting on most healthy people.  I would keep in touch with my healthy 9-5 friends back home like, “Have a great day in the cubicle, I’m going to knock out some beats and hooks with so and so, and probably do a crippled two-step on some VIP section’s couches afterwards, so don’t hit me until tomorrow afternoon.” It was tongue in cheek, but that was our way of coping as friends, for me to let people know, look, I’m okay. To a lot of my guys, I was in an enviable position. I had lived a pretty fortunate life up to that point.  But when I was diagnosed with disability, I was determined to make things better than they ever were.  Of course I missed boxing and competing, but there are plenty of 30-year-old guys, disability free on the couch that miss high school football, the Al Bundy syndrome.  I was determined to keep pursuing life.  I think that’s something people who’ve never been in the predicament don’t understand.  Life doesn’t stop when you’re disabled.  You don’t get to call time out. You may take more sick days than usual here or there but you don’t really know who you are until you have to be a stronger version of yourself.  It’s like in the Batman movie when the Joker asked, “Would you like to know which one of your friends are cowards?” You find a lot of strength you didn’t have.  So I say that to say that I don’t think I found any particular strength that many before me haven’t, or climbed alone out of some deep hole that no one’s ever returned from.  Disability isn’t the end of life it’s the beginning of a new life.  And for me, it translated into drive to succeed at something new.  Thinking about contributing to the music industry at the level where I was and being around that scene, a lot of people will look back and say “I remember when that song came out, we did XYZ.”  I will be able to look back and say, “I remember when that song came out, the artist finished recording it, put it on a flash drive and we took it to the club for the DJ to premiere it.  Some people might have traded a limb to be where I was in life at that time.  I will say that being in touch with one’s mortality, if anything, is something that gives a lot of perspective.  And I think someone who would say they’d feel their life is over because they had a disability doesn’t have much perspective on life and I would feel bad for such a person.  My greatest joy in life has been post-disability, which has been having my child.  No amount of back pain, or whatever could sour those precious moments. When people say parenthood is the best, you really can’t understand until you’re holding your child. Parenthood is just as much a joy being disabled or any other label you want to put on it.  One thing, God designed the world to where the best things in life are free and unencumbered by circumstance.  Is chronic pain easy? No.  Would I get rid of it if I could? Of course. But for me has it sucked all the wonderful moments out of life? Absolutely not.  So while, I am pro a person’s right to decide on dignified euthanization in terminal cases, I think that we all deal with stresses, whether they be health related or not.  Some people say I wouldn’t want to live without this girlfriend, and 3 months later they’re walking hand in hand with the next “love of their life” or I wouldn’t want to live if I had to wait tables.  Then you wake up and find yourself waiting tables and you say, “Thank God I’ve got a party of 6 this is going to be a decent tip.”  Happiness is a mental state we create for ourselves, or that our Creator gives us the strength to cultivate. Like I said, there’s probably someone reading this who thought their “life was over” when their high school sweetheart left them.  I think “life is over” has become a popular culture term that people don’t mean literally.  However, I don’t want to make light of how serious disability can be.  I had friends growing up who had lost parents to the AIDS epidemic, or lost siblings to Lupus.  It’s the most heart-breaking thing in the world to me to see children with terminal cancer etc.  I pray for those healthy parents of terminally ill children and don’t know how I would find the strength to walk in their shoes.  So while I’m trying to keep the interview light-hearted it’s all-relative. There are some real tragedies in the world and my heart goes out to those families.  I guess maybe my biggest burden being disabled other than my personal functioning is it raises awareness to the even deeper suffering of others, and now you’re not just trying to heal yourself, you’re stuck hurting for others too, because compassion becomes a predominate instinct, especially if you already had it to a degree before.  But our character “Willie” is a wheel chair bound kid with the strongest arm on the football team.  Life’s not all bad for him.

Like I said in response to the first question, we’re not talking about space aliens.  There are millions upon millions of disabled people in America.  In some communities where gun violence is out of control kids might not live past high-school age.  So it’s all-relative. But without going to the extreme fringes of sectors of society where violence is commonplace, I would assert again, that disability is not a peripheral reality.  It’s very much mainstream.  To put it another way, we would never ask “How do you plan on including African-Americans into a TV series that children would understand.”  Yet, strictly by the numbers, there are millions more disabled people in America than African-Americans.  As disabled people make up 19% of the U.S.’s population, while African-Americans make up 17.9%. http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/black.html  I think there’s a great myth perpetuated by the media that disabled people are few and far between and that’s simply not the case.  There’s a reason box-stores have wheel chairs.  There’s a reason apartments and buildings must be handicap accessible.  Yet thus far, the media has not been handicapped accessible.  I don’t really view it as a challenge to unveil the disabled identity in media because it’s around us everyday.  Really, I’m almost embarrassed that I fell upon what feels like a cheat code, because it’s such a relatable topic.  It’s such an inexplicable hole in mainstream media’s list of dialogues that it was bound to be filled by someone eventually, and when that happened, I think whoever did it first was going to be sitting in a good spot commercially speaking.  Put it this way, if some wise movie studio decided to give us funding for an Oddballz movie tomorrow, they’d have a guarantee that at least 1 in 5 Americans (members of the disabled community) would want to check it out.  Tickets are what $12 to the movies now.  So you’re talking about 50 million people times 12, that’s a $600 million dollar box office.  Probably many of their family members would want to check it out too.  That is an incredible amount of untapped box office power.  That’s in the real world.  TV is the only place where only old people are sick or afflicted.  I think that’s why our response has been so overwhelming and my email is so overbooked, and why we’ve got A-list actors following us on Twitter, and why I wake up most days to find out we were written about in some publication overseas. Maybe it’s political because there’s such a big fuss with regard to stopping people from getting healthcare.  I don’t get into politics, but maybe guess if the media depicted people who needed healthcare, it would hurt a lot of politicians who base their platforms on the fact that those people don’t exist.  I honestly have more trouble trying to give you a good reason why this hasn’t been done before, than finding a reason why it would be hard to do. People all over the world are rooting for us. It’s a lot of responsibility to be the first one to bring it out.  I wasn’t prepared for the feedback.  It took years of grinding in hip-hop to get a level of attention I got in a month just by authentically addressing a social cause that I felt was being mishandled or ignored. (At this point I’d like to mention we are looking for communications interns to help us manage with the volume of emails, and handling social media, you can get your community service hours etc. because it has really slowed me down from making the music we started out doing this for to begin with.)  I’d also like to emphasize again, that this is not just a disability concept.  It’s a concept with I think 9 characters, 1 of whom is disabled.  Going by the math then, if anything, the disabled are underrepresented in The Oddballz if 1 in 5 is the reality.  As I said, we want to address diversity and cross-cultural understanding, which I think is very important right now with the rash of violence going on. We want to address gender equity, which is important to me as the father of a daughter.  We want to address bullying, which maybe people don’t understand how ugly it is until you’re a parent.  And, we want to address childhood-obesity, which is a dangerous epidemic in America right now.  We don’t want to be just “that disabilities show” we’re going to be a show hopefully about values, social interactions, early childhood literacy and math, a number of things beside disability.  But as I’ve said, I could have never imagined the reach we’d have especially not so fast, to have so many fans in Brazil, to be in Australian magazines and connecting with the winners of Australia’s Got Talent.  Even I being disabled myself, naively underestimated the fact that diversity is a global phenomenon.  It doesn’t stop on the East or West Coast of America.  It crosses borders.  (Note to movie producers adjust that $600M box office figure for international sales)

Well, (laughs) I wouldn’t call it a VIP experience, unless you mean Vexation, Inner-turmoil, and Patience.  I joke about it because that’s how I am.  I feel like if you don’t laugh off hardship it will consume you.  The enemy is always looking for an audience so I try not to give him one. But to be honest, the disabled deserve a lot more than free parking, particularly those who are Wounded Warriors coming home, who are criminally mistreated and deserve a lot more than they get.  But we do appreciate you guys and everyone else’s support, definitely What’s next varies day to day.  You know how that goes.  When you’re depending on other people and trying to make schedules work things shuffle around a lot.  Especially, when you consider we’ve only been “live” with the concept a little over a month.  I know we have some radio interviews coming up.  We are going to try to work on securing some funding, because we can’t produce anything without money.  We’d like to expand our staff and bring on some more people to help us with the volume of how heavy things have gotten to take a load off of the few people who are helping.

As far as “going live” that depends what you mean by going live.  We did our first event on the 15^th and it was a canned food drive for the homeless with over 200 kids there.  I’d mention the venue but I haven’t spoken to them about it.  We have several more upcoming dates tentatively where we’ll be physically out doing stuff.  Also “live” is our store on our website, you can support us and buy our first collection of songs or some Oddballz memorabilia.  I know nobody likes to pay for music anymore, but you’ve got to understand we can’t afford to do a YouTube if no money is coming in.  Our end game is hopefully a television show, DVD series, etc. i.e. Sesame Street, Dora, The Little Einsteins.  That is a ways away as I think we missed out on most grant funding for this fiscal year, so we will have to wait until the top of next year to really have good funding and then that will free us up to do production more.  I have no idea what’s going to happen, if Mark Cuban is going to say he read about us tomorrow, and wants to do whatever it takes to get us on network TV.  But the more hats I have to wear the less time I have to compose music and write scripts.  We’d appreciate it if everyone who read this spent $5 or $10 on our website.  We’re doing a donation of school supplies for needy students for back to school.  We have an app in the works. What we’re doing now is really scattershot.  We’re taking the opportunities that make sense and leaving the rest on the table for now until they start to make sense.  But MUCH, much more Oddballz content is coming shortly.  And if one of you millionaires following us would be so kind as to make a donation so that we can produce while we wait on the next grant cycle we’d appreciate it.  Or if one of the Hollywood folks would contact me and show me how to write a proper script in the format the networks want it in I’d appreciate it.  Personally, I have 2-3 surgeries coming up so I’m trying to put people in place to wear every hat I wear while I’m laid up.  But I think the good thing about the concept is it’s timeless and we could put it on TV now or shelve it and put it on TV for my grandkids generation.  The Smurfs will still be The Smurfs 10 years from now.  Dealing with disability you learn patience.  I’m comfortable knowing I could leave this alone for 5-10-20 years and dust it off for my daughter if she was interested in running it.  This is a passion for me, but family time is time you can’t get back.

Yeah, one thing I haven’t discussed yet is really saving the best for last.  I am currently a licensed educator working on my MA in Secondary Education and after my surgeries I hope to be healthy enough to enjoy a career teaching myself.  I am really proud to say that a lot of different people are contacting us on Social Media telling us The Oddballz is helping their kids.  That’s the best part of all of this.  A new friend of mine Dr. Marquis Grant (@Drmarquisgrant) is an Autism mom and Special Education teacher and wrote about how The Oddballz is helping with her children and could be a good tool in special needs classrooms.  We’ve also been approached by local teachers here in the Mid-Atlantic about coming physically into the schools in the fall which I trust my people to do even if I’m out with surgery.  Some schools have told us they even want assemblies for the whole student bodies.  So that’s the coolest thing to me.  You can say you don’t like how our characters are drawn or how the music sounds, that’s cool.  But you can’t argue with results in schools, and at the end of the day that is more than I ever could have dreamed of.  I started what is now The Oddballz just playing around playing kids’ songs around the house for my daughter for our own enjoyment.  I was/am a consumer of childhood education products so we had kids CD’s and they all sounded like they were recorded in 1952.  I added hip hop elements with 808’s, triplet hi-hats, synths, etc.  Now it’s something that’s considered of actual educational value.  What’s crazy is the first run of songs are just updated covers of children’s classics for Gen Y parents.  Once we release our original material you will really see our own personality and who we are in terms of our teaching, our message, and our values.  But the fact schools want us that’s really special to me because when you’re disabled all you hear over and over again is how you’re unwanted.  To me a school is a sacred place so to be welcomed into a student’s mind means something.  And that’s a message I want to leave everybody with whether you’re disabled or not, don’t ever doubt your ability to create something from nothing.  When I couldn’t find a job because nobody would hire a disabled person pastors told me that sometimes God is holding out because He has a bigger plan for you, and I believe that’s come to fruition for me with the fact that we’re going to be in schools.  If you’re not a Christian that’s cool part of cultural tolerance is tolerance for other belief systems as well, but the basic message applies: if you don’t give up on yourself the Universe won’t give up on you.  Even if my body never holds up to teach full time (which I believe it will) I got to see that dream of participating in the enrichment of others come true.  So if this is not your day, week, month, or year, just imagine being hospitalized 50+ times in a decade before you hit on something.  As one of my favorite Outkast interludes went “Hold on, be strong.”  For any teachers foreign or domestic that want to contact us please email[email protected] I plan on trying to develop a small just one day lesson plan that teachers can use in the fall if they want to bring our music and characters into their classroom and of course it will be provided to you free of charge.  Last but not least I want to thank you guys for taking the time to interview us and support us.  You didn’t have to do that, but like I said this concept has brought some great folks out of the woodworks for us.  And, we genuinely appreciate everything you’ve done.  Last but not least, people, if you like The Oddballz, I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but please donate something 100% goes back into the community I put my own personal guarantee on that.  We’re wrapping up this back to school drive for the kids in need.  Please help us give them cool Oddballz book bags not the plain Jane special.

You can donate at http://www.theoddballz.com/donate.html.

And new content is coming as fast as we can clear out our inbox and make things make sense.  Thank you guys again for the interview and than you everyone who was interested enough to read about us.  “Mark Cuban hit us up!”