Earl Best

Not to take anything away from the 2017 winner, Dr Hollis “Chalkdust” Liverpool, the now record nine-time champion, the results of last night’s Calypso Monarch competition simply do not add up. And as the dissatisfaction with the organisers and complaints about the quality of the show multiply—as they are almost …

I can see it still in my mind’s eye. “Life is a stage / and we are the actors; / Everybody have a part to play. / Like a never-ending movie / with all different characters, / each of us have a role to portray.” It is the mid-to-late 1970’s. …

It is 2016. Do you know where Jean and Dinah are? And why? It says a lot for the Mighty Sparrow that sexagenarians and teenagers alike—and all the age-groups in between—often answer that question in the affirmative. Round de corner posing; bet yuh life is something dey selling… In Calypso …

“Not a woman ever complain yet with me. Ah eh boastin’ but ah know ah got true ability/durability. And if a woman ever say that I ever leave her dissatisfy, she lie, she lie, she lie, she blasted lie.” And there is a fairly long list of women who may …

Many games are played most intensely by disturbed people. Generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play. That’s not coming from me. It comes from Dr Eric Berne, in a late chapter of Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, which he titles “The Players.” Here’s some …

Politics, they say, is the art of the possible; politicians, however, are frequently impossible, particularly when, like the plus-size and minus-size costumed men and women who play themselves on the Big Stage at the Queen’s Park Savannah on Carnival Monday and Tuesday, they are acutely aware that the camera is …

“Education kills,” some wit with spare time and a can of spray paint inscribed on the walls of the London Underground years ago, “… by degrees.” How right! The move from ABC to BA, MSc or PhD is very often not a journey about acquiring the life skills comfortable survival …

As a minister of education, Tim Gopeesingh can’t touch Anthony Garcia with a ten-foot pole. As a conscientious educator with over three decades of dedicated service in the formal education system, I confidently so affirm. Photo: Former Minister of Education Dr Tim Gopeesingh And I go further. If you gave …

Above a headline proclaiming “Forged from the love of liberty” on page 25 of the edition of Tuesday August 6, we are told by the Trinidad Express that language matters. But on Page One of the edition of Sunday September 4, the caption says that “Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley address the …

“Oh gorm,” David Rudder bawl out like Sprangalang. “Shot call!” The feckless, gutless, witless lot who are not “in charge” waited, it seemed, for an edict from the top. It never came. True to form, Culture Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly passed the buck. She had heard, said one report, that …

Javelin thrower Keshorn Walcott, writes Kwame Lawrence in the Trinidad Express of Monday August 22, “is threatening to become an all-time great in the event.” So whether or not you think it is a celebration of “mediocrity,” no one can reasonably find fault with the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs’ …

In Trinidad and Tobago, my late brother Lloyd Best used to say repeatedly to the handful of brave souls who read his columns regularly, people walk about with their heads empty. Given that he left us more than eight years before the Rowley Government came to power in September of …