Once upon a time, you promised to love for better or for worse.
And so, through sickness and health, you tried your best in your marriage.
Maybe that worked. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe you got the relationship you dreamed about, but in the new novel, “The Perfect Marriage” by Kimberla Lawson Roby, desires outside this household are stronger than the ones inside it.
Denise Shaw had everything she’d ever wanted.
She had a very-well-paying job she loved. Her adoring, handsome husband, Derrek, who’d come from a broken home with shaky roots, also had a great job with a fat salary. They had a beautiful home, fancy cars, good money saved, and a wonderful, smart daughter who was the light of their lives.

Yes, things were stressful sometimes. Life was hectic. Yes, she and Derrek used cocaine, but it was just a harmless little now-and-then pick-me-up.
Derrek, on the other hand, thought they needed to stop getting high.
When he was a child, Derrek’s parents were addicted to crack and the drugs became more important than their twin sons. Derrek and his brother were raised by their grandparents, which was the best thing that ever happened to Derrek. Dixon, however, had become an addict like his parents and he was always asking for money.
Over time, that destroyed the brothers’ relationship; in fact, Derrek hadn’t spoken to Dixon in three years. So when Dixon’s number kept popping up on caller ID, Derrek was annoyed and angry. He wasn’t about to give more cash to some deadbeat drug addict. Dixon was just no good.
But then Derrek learned that his brother wasn’t calling for money. He was calling to say goodbye because Dixon was terminally ill. And when he died just hours after the two patched things up, it sent Derrek deep into grief.
Instead of reaching for his wife for comfort, though, he reached for something powdery white…
Scan the first few pages in this book and you’ll know exactly what’s ahead. You know – but you can’t not look, which is a curious downfall for “The Perfect Marriage.”  
It’s an uncomfortably squirmy book to read simply because we do know what’s coming, and author Kimberla Lawson Roby doesn’t make that discomfort any easier: her main characters seemed awfully uppity to me and I thought, without ruining the plot for you, that the actions of their “smart” daughter were pretty dumb.  On one hand, that distastefulness heightens the experience of reading this story. On the other hand, that made me race to end it.
(“The Perfect Marriage” by Kimberla Lawson Roby, Grand Central Publishing, $19.99, 192 pages.)

by Amber L. Bogins

DETROIT (Real Times News Service)--No longer Snoop D-O-Double G, Snoop Lion is gearing up to release his twelfth studio album in May entitled “Reincarnated”.

by Britney Spear

DETROIT (Real Times News Service)--Can't we all just get along?

MONTAE RUSSELL (Photo by Gail Manker)

If you were to roll back the clock, say 45 years, you would truly appreciate the saying, the more things change the more they stay the    same.  Although “Thurgood” chronicles the life on the first African-American associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the struggles he contested and won are now being dismantled.
Thurgood Marshall, a native of Baltimore, graduated from high school and enrolled in Lincoln University with the intention of becoming a dentist. However, an incident in a local movie house where he and other Lincoln students (including Langston Hughes) were to sit in the balcony became a turning point in his life, and the nation.
While it may be understandable to assume that “Thurgood” would be about the nation’s first Black Supreme Court Justice, the play is really about what shaped Marshall to later become the man who would later integrate the highest court in the land.
To sell this one-man production, Homestead native Montae Russell had to reach deep into this actor’s bag and pull out all the stops for this 90-minute tour de force performance.
The play is set in the Howard University Law School Auditorium and Marshall is reminiscing as he shares his life story. As Marshall, Russell assumes his persona through more than five decades, moving from retired justice to an undergrad to a law school student to a young attorney itching to fight and dismantle segregation.
Russell conveys the wit and humor of the late Justice, and draws on the righteous indignation the Black men in America know all too well.
The high point comes when the arguments of Brown v. Board of Education are heard, Russell conjures the fire and brimstone conviction of Marshall while alternately assume the personae of the smoothest and highly successful white attorney John W. Davis.
Russell works hard and earns his standing ovation at the play’s conclusion and the audience gets a fascinating lesson in civics and history through the eyes of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.  
“Thurgood” continues through April 7, at Pittsburgh Public Theater at the O’Reilly Theater, Downtown. Tickets are $23-$55 (students and ages 26 and younger $15.75 with valid ID). For performance times call 412-316-1600 or www.ppt.org