Revisiting a sad and infuriating statistic

Hannah Upp. If you watch television, own a computer and especially if you live in NYC, there is no escaping this woman's name, face, story. She's missing! She's a school teacher! OMG, she lives in Harlem! The media who claim to be so compassionate about stories of missing people did all but print a story about her body being found somewhere. Notices went up on all the social networking sites, email vigils were forwarded to people's inboxes and then days later, Upp is spotted and then positively identified by her parents in the Apple store on fifth avenue.

Now, stories are surfacing that maybe she wanted to disappear from the face of the Earth, overlooking the small fact that her friends and family would be worried sick looking for her. I don't want to sound angry but bias is bias and when it's so blatant and no one takes accountability for it, it's hard to sympathize for one young woman going through a personal crisis, when there are families of hundreds of women of color who will never see their daughters again. I sincerely hope that Upp is okay and that she deals with whatever she is going through. Just like I sincerely wish the media would fairly cover all missing person's cases with the same fervor and round the clock coverage of a pretty white girl with a flower in her hair.

Passionate and informative video on the subject via Brave New Films after the jump:



Links via ABC news
Wikipedia

???????

Just curious....who is my one subscriber? It's not any of my friends and family as I have sadly discovered. Who are you, let's rap a taste. Heaven knows I appreciate you, you've brought me into extreme obscurity rather than complete oblivion. Thanks!

(smooches)

K.

small observation...

Ashanti is back. If you read that fragmented sentence with the same level of enthusiasm I had when I typed it, that just about says it all. Don't get me wrong, her songs were cute, catchy, heavily reliant on expensive production beats. There was just almost something I found a tad bit annoying about her, I don't know. Of course she has been replaced by the queen of annoying catchy music, Beyonce and this is my reason for posting. Isn't this video just basically a Beyonce video but with someone else singing it? Same art direction, very similar costume choices, same cheesy, pointless melodrama. Originality, where art thou?

link via Spike TV

Cloverfield makes a good point about gentrification.

Cloverfield was sort of good in a very "well it didn't suck" kind of way. Even though I was close to getting very nauseous, (it could have been the raisinet laced popcorn though) the shaky camera work meshed well with the special effects without ever being too obvious or cheesy. What bothered me about the film were a number of things regarding what would really happen in NYC in the event (even though there was a scene reminiscent of 9/11) a gigantic slimy monster thingy attacked the city.

For instance, what was with the automatic decision to run over the Brooklyn bridge to safety? Any New Yorker would know that, just like during 9/11, all was calm and peaceful uptown. Assuming that I didn't know the army was going to (spoiler alert) blow up Manhattan, my ass would have been on the first available train, bus, bike, Segway, or I would of hoofed it straight to Harlem and the Bronx. I mean really. And what was up with the subway scene? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that production meeting. Not only did the Spring St. Station look like someone just basically said "F**K it" and guessed what a NYC subway should look like, but getting from the village to 59th st in what seemed like less than an hr? Once that scene happened it kind of distracted me from the rest of the movie. And funny how no one was concerned about the third rail. Did we not see Beat Street? Forgive me for being such a NY snob but it drives me nuts when movies get it all wrong. Like when they stick the Empire state building, or the Chrysler building right in the middle of an intersection instead of in the avenue where they really belong, just so they can blow them up.

Which brings me to my clever title about the rampant and depressing surge of gentrification that is taking over the best parts of NYC. If those kids were real New Yorkers, they probably would have been in the Cloverfield sequel. But like all other twenty- something up and coming young professionals, the whole party scene reeked of the scourge of fair weather New Yorkers who come to party, live in cramped, over priced apartments, (that are overpriced because they will pay for it) pretend to be a part of the city when they won't go past 86th street and then leave, to spend their disposable incomes in the suburbs.

Which leads me to another point, as I increasingly stray from the original point about this movie which, the more I think of it was just aiight. Why do I always feel like I just asked something extremely personal when I inquire about whether someone is a Native New Yorker or not? If one says that they are from new York, it implies that they are born there, no? I've had more than a few uncomfortable conversations with people (mostly women) who seem almost ashamed to admit that they are not Native New Yorkers, who quickly inform me that they have lived in NY for at least five years and then are real quick to rattle off a bunch of trendy wine bars in Brooklyn that I must go to. What gives? I call it city envy.

Even though it's painfully obvious nowadays, (hint: despite a certain myth about New Yorkers being rude, it's actually the other way around!) I don't particularly care who is from New York and who isn't. What I do care about is the soul slowly being sucked out of the city I grew up in because the rich and affected want to use it as their playground and then bail when it becomes too real. It saddens me, makes me contemplate running to the suburbs my damn self. OK, I take that back. No WAY am I moving to Queens! (haha) But I am losing faith. Especially after watching Cloverfield. Now, the more that I think about it, it kind of sucked, just a little. Oh well.

link via Stuff White People Like (hilarious)
image via IWatchStuff

Corporate Excess at its Finest.

Like so many of my generation, I will be an eternal child, I eat candy much more than I should, I get extremely excited when I hear the music from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" in some commercial that's been airing alot lately, I refuse to dress up for work, and I was raised on Disney movies. Disney movies, Disney characters, the whole hypnotic, wide-eyed, fairy dust shtick. For better or worse, it's a part of me. I can either beat it out of my subconscious with mind-numbing cynicism, or I can be aware that even though yes technically Disney is attempting to create a fascist Utopia by actually creating their own towns, the "magic" of the brand (and the thousands of no doubt underpaid employees working to create that magic) is what makes them so damn fascinating. I mean, just look at this Annie Liebovitz portrait of Roger Federer for the latest Disney campaign. The whole series is breathtaking, just like the allure of Disney. For better or worse. Here are the rest of them. I especially love Julie Andrews as the Blue Fairy. Here is also a list of what exactly Disney owns.
That's a whole lot of fairy dust.

images via (Disney of course) & Super Punch
links via Wikipedia & Focused Rant