Who is Panama Jackson?
He’s the lightskint half of VSB. You may remember him from such luminary documentaries as “The Other Splash Brother” and “I Know You Hear Me Looking At You: A DC Gentrification Story”.
Okay, well, where the hell has he been?
As you can tell, he cares about DC’s gentrification problem, so he has decided to singlehandedly try to keep DC as Black as possible by having as many kids as possible.
Huh?
Well, on May 13th, Panama’s third child, and second son was born.
Three kids? Who does that anymore? He’s fertile.
Yes. Yes, he is.
But, what does having another kid have to do with being absent from VSB for so long? He’s just writing posts. How hard can that be?
Harder than you might think. See, Panama is on “paternity” leave, which means that he’s been at home doing his duty to help mommy out as much as possible because there now exists one hell of a full house over there in SE DC. Not only that, but “paternity” leave is more of a symbolic thing because he’s been doing his DAY job along with his home job for the past 3 weeks AT HOME. It’s hard to sit down and focus on writing when you’ve got screaming babies, screaming bosses, and household duties that need taking care of. He might be as handsome as Superman, but Panama is only a man.
Sounds like a lot of excuses to me.
You’re right. It does.
So you’re saying that Panama basically just took a flier on VSB-related work since his son was born. Not cool, man. Not cool. He should be used to this baby life by now.
This is a fair point. And what you’d be surprised by is that while he hasn’t been writing, nearly every single day has been full of OTHER VSB related activities. He and Damon have spent more time on the telephone talking to people about VSB’s future than you can shake a stick at. When he’s not writing, he’s editing and posting pieces from other writers and sought out new writers between diaper changes and handing the new baby off to mommy and saying, “I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m going to Taco Bell.” He also managed to get in an appearance on a podcast hosted by the one and only, Obsidian. The entire 2.5 hours that I was on the show can be found here. And no, you didn’t read that wrong. I was on for almost 3 hours. Believe it or not, it's not because Obsidian was talking the whole time. He was probably the least talkative person on the show, at least on this particular show.
And he's been planning the VSB Podcast series: "VSB + Friends" and "Conversate With P", which will be coming soon to your earbuds and computer speakers. So as you can see, he's not been totally shiftless.
Okay, okay. So he’s not totally full of shit. At least he’s been doing something. Anything else worthy of note? All we know around here is that he’s left Damon with all of the heavy lifting. Truth be told, we thought Damon kicked him out of the group but still let him stay around on the official stationary and shit to be nice.
I’m sure Damon was annoyed with the absence but he’s aware of what’s happening and when he’s not throwing an errant curse word into a post, he’s a pretty understanding fellow. Luckily he and Damon were able to have a drink together to commemorate Panama’s aint-shit-ness during his birthday shenanigans this past weekend. Panama turned 37 (!!!!) on June 3rd and had a big ass happy hour on the 4th in DC that ended with Panama literally going to sleep in the venue because of too much Bulleit bourbon consumption. They took a few pictures and it was pointed out that they always take the same picture in the same poses no matter where they go. They need a new schtick.
Well, this was all well and good and shit, but is Panama back from his bullshit baby hiatus?
He thinks so. He’s finally started going to back to work at his day job where he does all of his writing because his home is full of babies who love him and require all of his time and attention.
He should do better.
He will try.