“There are no words in any language, no gesture in any culture that can explain or describe what I have been through,” said Banks. “I hope my story brings light to a major flaw in the judicial system.”

Banks was once a football star with dreams of playing in the NFL.  He was only 16 when a woman accused him of kidnapping and raping her at school.   The woman, Wanetta Gibson, added him as a friend on Facebook and in a message said she wanted to “let bygones be bygones.” 

Banks’ attorney, Justin Brooks, said that Gibson and Banks met and she was caught on video admitting that no rape every took place, and that she would help him to clear his record.  She was then brought before prosecutors and is now obligated to repay the $1.5 million that her mother was paid by the school for what allegedly happened.

Banks went to jail in 2002 for the crime, when he was just 16 years old.  At the time, he was being heavily recruited by USC and other colleges. He was on his way to fill out college applications when he met up with Gibson and went to a stairwell to make out. He apparently said something she didn’t like, which led to the allegations of kidnapping and rape.

Investigators found no physical evidence of rape. Due to the pressure from his attorney and prosecutors, Banks pleaded no contest to the kidnap and rape charge, after being told that he would get 41 years in prison if he fought the charge and was convicted.

Banks thought he would get just 18 months based on his attorney’s advice, and instead ended up in prison for six years. While in prison, his case was taken on by the California Innocence Project.

“Brian’s story is so compelling, and his case for innocence so clear, we knew we had to take this on,” said Justin Brooks of the Innocence Project. “Brian lost a huge part of his life when he was unjustly sent to prison.”

Banks has had to remain on probation under electronic monitoring and could not get a job after being registered as a sex offender.

“This is a kid who was a superstar,” Brooks added. “He would be playing the NFL now if this hadn’t happened.”

By: Adam McInturf

To sum up Carver in two words, call him “Hemingway meets.” Not Hemingway meets a social conscience or feminine sensitivity, but just other beings. Carver’s stories still, for the most part, center male protagonists, who remain haunted by unseen scars. But his stories are about what happens when these men collide with other people, with friends, with women, even the occasional dog. While the style is even sparer than Hemingway’s, this new addition of other people makes them infinitely more rich and complex.

In the blurbs on the backs of his books, people often talk about how dark and gloomy Carver’s stories are. They’re half right, but they’re also blind to the real core of the stories, because they miss the overwhelmingly humane and sensitive way that he depicts that darkness. Here, people who are far more ordinary than real life are portrayed in the midst of their monotonous lives, never exotic safaris and wars. Carver manages to construct entirely believable scenarios in which these ordinary people become real to each other in new ways, cease to be furniture. Even in the most bizarre scenarios, like marijuana induced dual tracing of a place of worship for a blind man who calls him “bub” in “Cathedral,” the events are always believable, always crafted from nothing other than the raw materials readily available in our stupid daily lives.

Carver’s stories are incomparably uplifting because of their insistence on never depending on the foreign or exotic to bestow self-actualization. Or maybe I should put that differently and say that these stories redefine the foreign and exotic: rather than Africa and Cuba, the exotic is now Walla-Walla, Eureka, Felony Flats, and Yakima. Right in the midst of our alcoholism, our failed attempts at adultery, or any other of our failed attempts to escape who we are – right there Carver shows us the resources for newness and love. And it only takes a little twist, a little rearrangement of the furniture on the lawn and an extension cord run out to the lamp and record player, for us to start dancing to the music that was there all along in the magical presence of other people.

There is less experimentation than there used to be. In part it’s because designers who used to do a lot of experimenting on their personal sites are busier these days – busy with client work, or creating products, or branching into areas such as publishing and conferences. Ten or 15 years ago, maybe you were single, with not much work and no family. You had loads of time to play with the design of your website. Now, not so much.

As for younger designers, there are so many brilliant ones now. I’m constantly impressed and inspired by them. But many younger designers are more into social media than blogging – “social media killed the blog star,” as my friend Jeff Croft put it in a comment on my site. So they’re less likely to have a personal site that needs redesigning and experimentation.

Also, it’s a different time. Companies such as Twitter and Google and Facebook are snatching up young web designers. They don’t have time to experiment on their blogs – they’re too busy helping Mark Zuckerberg get rich. Then, too, a lot of younger web folks are more into UX than designy-design, or more into coding than design, and so if they have a blog they may be satisfied using a default Tumblr or WordPress template.

Finally, the web is no longer ‘underground’, no longer ‘the wild west’. It isn’t the province of a few crazy rebels. It’s filled with professionally professional professionals who follow widely endorsed best practices and standards. That’s very good in a lot of ways, but it tends to create an environment where there is less experimentation.

ymfy:

+ How to disappear for weeks and worry your mother sick
+ Asian Loneliness
+ #bloglife
+ Moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air
+ Quack Medicine: The Pros and Cons
+ Easy mnemonics for remembering all the various grudges you hold
+ How to get priced out of a neighborhood you thought you…

They asked me to teach a Skillshare class. I’m not sure what I’ll be teaching yet, but it will be fun and hopefully helpful. If you haven’t signed up for it, you should.