This from the guy who starred in Anaconda

(Throwing my hands up to the heavens) God Bless free speech:

" Sen. Barack Obama has grown up with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers and Rev. Michael Pfleger. We cannot say we are not affected by teachers who are militant and angry. We know too well that we become like them, and Mr. Obama will run this country in their mindset . . .

If Mr. Obama had his way, he would have pulled our troops from Iraq years ago and initiated an unprecedented bloodbath, turning over that country to the barbarianism of our enemies. With what he has openly stated about his plans for our military, and his lack of understanding about the true nature of our enemies, there’s not a cell in my body that can accept the idea that Mr. Obama can keep us safe from the terrorists around the world, and from Iran, which is making great strides toward getting the atomic bomb. And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend."

- As told by Jon Voight. I like Midnight Cowboy just as much as anyone, but really, shut the hell up.

Thanks to Crunk & Disorderly

The More Things Change....

Here we go again....I honestly don't know what to say or do anymore without becoming the enraged Black person everyone wants me to be, thinks I am, wishes I was, blah blah blah...this incredibly confusing, "it's cool to be un-PC, but still PC at the same time" era we live in is getting out of control. Did it ever occur to the snarky, (clever in their own heads) people at the New Yorker that they are giving way too many IQ points to a vast majority of Americans and so-called media savvy New Yorkers for that matter? That all the nutbag extremists who still think that the Obamas are closet terrorists won't take this magazine cover and run with it? What makes this so-called liberal magazine any different from the crazy assholes at Fox News? (see, they got me cussin')Or maybe that was the plan from the beginning. Perhaps all the "liberals" who come up with these gems are really hard-core republicans who are so frightened at the prospect of a Black president that they will go these extremes. Whatever the rationale behind this disgraceful "artwork", (Sorry, I'm not buying the satire angle) I am exhausted trying to wrap my head around why people are so resistant to change. It makes me very sad for this country and ALL the people who live in it.

Scattered thoughts, Morning angriness

For the last time...it's a POUND! A DAP if you will...if I hear or read "fist bump"one more time I will (attempt) to scream for 12 hrs straight while simultaneously smacking someone, anyone within handshot upside the head. Why must the media make everything so damn cheesy? I mourn the loss of all the cool and funny things I used to say but now, sadly cannot because it has been adapted by "mainstream" America.

Let's start with the obvious...the Dap. Because it will inevitably turn into this:














The term ghetto:
While many people, Black, white, what have you, find this word offensive, I myself actually enjoyed using it quite a bit back in the day to fondly describe growing up in the projects and making ends meet in the most creative of ways. It's personal nostalgia for me because if you weren't well off growing up and your parents knew what they were doing, you had absolutely no idea that you were in an undesirable situation. (Doesn't everybody use a washcloth and baking soda to brush their teeth when there is no toothpaste or brush around? Hmmm...) I had to put a stop to my affection for the word when ghetto became synonymous with ignorant and when I heard some blonde girl on campus with a sorority shirt on using it completely out of context. "Oh My God! Jello Shots are so freakin' ghetto!" (sigh)

Hot mess:
The beginning of the end started with that God-awful BET show, which I hope is off the air by now. (I only watch the reruns of Different World and Different Strokes) Then along with "fierce", the gays began to use it in full force, which is actually okay because unlike most, when they say it, they mean it. But the term has been used and overused so much, that it's simply time for me to retire it, even though, growing up around Black women all my life, the term is permanently etched into my brain. Maybe I'll just use it on the inside.

On a completely different note, can I just say that Gore Vidal makes me smile? He's old, bitter, sassy, completely and ridiculously intelligent and he doesn't seem to outwardly like anybody or anything. What's not to love? I even liked him when he was being a complete ass in With Honors (Sort of good, very watchable early nineties film). Turns out, he was just being himself. Genius!

link via Gawker

I'm still going to see it

Approaching my twilight years, I am not as much of a Sex and the City fanatic as I used to be. Like so many other New Yorkers, I have always been strangely entranced, delighted and absolutely pissed that Sex & The City exists. No one runs through midtown in four inch heels. Sorry, it just doesn't happen. Just like NO ONE can live on 73rd and 3rd and be perpetually broke as Carrie always was. Rent stabilized Brownstones in Manhattan? They don't exist. Neither do obscenely handsome, intelligent straight guys, or fabulous fleet week parties in some random location in Times Square. What I really feel sorry for are the all the out- of -towners who watch the show and then come to NYC and discover that (gasp) people of color actually live in New York. But I digress.

If you were caught up in the SATC haze as I was, you'll know that the show is a very hard habit to kick, especially now that it's in syndication. If you are not familiar with the haze, it's that 2-3 year period after the final episode aired on HBO where you actually felt sorry for yourself because you were torn between watching something really good, informative or entertaining or pressing play on your remote and watching another season of SATC on demand for literally the 400th time while simultaneously contemplating shelling out $200 for the DVD set. Ask anyone that knows me. It was bad. But again, I digress.

Thank the stars for this TONY article on why the show has been a huge reason for NYC's general downfall into suckage and oblivion. God knows I loves me some NY1 but when that stupid Carmel car commercial comes on, I want to gouge my eyes out with the nearest blunt object. Unlike most local NYC commercials that are so bad they're good, this one is god awfully horrendous and I really wish NY1 would renege on their pact with the devil and stop airing it. That being said, I will still pay 12 bucks and leave the theater two hours later feeling simultaneously dead & fabulous inside.

Link Via Time Out New York

Damn America?

I find myself in a sort of conundrum today...
The thing is, by posting this link to what I consider one of the most reprehensible and vile things about New York, I feel as if I'm only giving in to Internet hype instead of merely backing away. On the other hand, by ignoring the problem, I am potentially giving up on what should be a city-wide boycott of The Post, which is pretty much, unreadable. (My one loyal subscriber, if you're still out there, get to work!) Since I don't read the paper, I wonder if this "writer" reported Russell Crowe's phone throwing antics with the same self-entitled zeal. Or on Lilo Brancato for that matter, who is waiting to stand trial for murder. I'm not excusing stupid acts of violence by rappers but last time I checked a newspaper is supposed to report, not condemn. Not call a human being a "thing". Thanks to Gawker for noting this sad and ridiculous woman who calls herself a reporter. I have no idea why I chose the title for this post, it was the first thing that popped into my head. This was the second thing, quoted from some guy in a documentary some friends of mine are making: "America needs a nation-wide ass whuppin'." Amen.

Pauly shore is a severely unrecognized talent

Let me first preface this by saying, shut the F**K up Pauly Shore. Obviously Barack's ( yes, we are now on a first name basis) speech was lost on some, but hopefully not many. So Pauly Shore is just as funny if not funnier than Katt Williams? Really? I take back what I said about Spitzer needing some of what Bush is smoking. He needs to call this guy's dealer, quick.

Some keen observations from the genius behind Bio Dome:

• White people will be picking cotton very soon.
• The hierarchy of race is Persians (wtf), some Polish people, maybe some Jews and Black people at the top.
• He's a natural born comedian because he happened to be the offspring of a guy who owned a comedy club.

We'll see if I ever watch Son-In-Law at 3 in the morning on the CW anymore.
People have been saying this is some kind of joke but isn't that the thing about being Pauly Shore? He's not funny.
Let me end this by saying Shut the f**k up Pauly Shore.

2008 is going by too slow....

Both of my best friends/ roommates in college were economics majors. They used to talk about "the market" and business trends and patterns and when I was listening, it was always like: heh? I am chronically right-brained and have never really thought about this elusive thing called the economy mostly because it involves numbers and those things make my head hurt. Anyway, all of a sudden, the economy is everywhere, you can't turn on the TV or open a paper or turn to NY1 without it being the top story when they do NY minute. (Love that!)

So I suspected something was fishy when some guy who apparently controls ALL the money started changing interest rates and the banks were just starting to feel the sub-prime mortgage disaster (for the record, I was aware of that because most of the people losing their houses on the East Coast were Black & Latino) and now, Bear Stearns is going extinct and we are on the verge or are already in a recession. If things get any worse, I might have to dust off my K1000 and shoot for the WPA. OK my bad, that wasn't funny.

Anyway, last week, after waiting for a bus that never came and then stuck in traffic in a cab on the West Side Highway for thirty minutes I realized that Bush was in town and then realizing that I hardly ever think about him anymore gave me a bit of hope until 1010 Wins gave the details of his speech. Apparently, nothing is wrong with the economy and people need to lighten up. Thanks for that, George W. Between the war that's going so well, and American tax dollars having to help fix a trillion-dollar deficit, everything is roses and I needed him to come all the way to NYC, screw up traffic all afternoon to tell me that. The worst part is I can't help but feeling his giddy optimism isn't a Nero fiddling while Rome burns type of thing but more of a: whew, whoever has to clean up this mess is really up shit's creek type of thing. This guy needs a smack, seriously. Eliot Spitzer could use some of what he's smoking right about now.

links via: NY Times, Huffington Post, AP

Labeling people is the new Black

Stuff white people like is a funny and entertaining blog. I fully admit that and I also admit that even though it can be taken literally (I love the comments: "OMG! I'm White and that is so me! This blog rocks!") I prefer to take it with a grain of salt because as someone who is not white, even I squirmed a bit at some of the generalizations made about my Caucasoid brethren.

I knew it was only a matter of time before labeling specific kinds of people with dead-pan sarcastic, anthropological commentary would catch on. When I found the Stuff Educated Black People Like blog, my first instinct was not to take it seriously and then I thought, "Am I offended?" and then I remembered how hard I was trying not to laugh at this link to a link courtesy of Dlisted (I'm sorry. And damn you/love you Micheal K...) and then I remembered how much does not surprise or offend me anymore.

The thing is, loathe and amused as I am to admit it, both blogs speak to me quite a bit. If my collective experiences didn't lead me to be so damn self- aware all the time, I'd be more confused than Tiger Woods, Jessica Alba, Mariah Carey, Rob Schneider and Jennifer Tilly at a family reunion. (I'm just saying.) The thing also is, Black identity is not so cut and dry as this blog makes it out to be and just a thought : does stating that the blog was created to separate educated Black people from uneducated Black people help things much? I think not. I know alot of "educated" Black people that I'd like to smack repeatedly, the main reason being this constant need to divide a people, their own people, people who are notoriously struggling with the idea of "unity".

And for the record, I'm 50% educated Black person, 30% ghetto (in the fried Bologna/ mayo ketchup salad dressing sense of the word) 15% cornball, 65% romantic daydreamer, 25%bitch, 33%goody- two shoes, and 14%weirdo. Where's the blog about my kind?

links via: Dlisted, Stuff White people Like, Stuff Educated Black People Like

Lying is the new black

Oprah, come get these two! Misha Defonseca and Margaret Seltzer were two people who up until a week ago, I had never heard of and probably didn't care much about what with Obama and trying to get my freakin' Master's burning streams of random, paranoid and hopeful thought into my brain. I'd like to think of myself as a truly literary person but I read books usually two at a time and then nothing for months. After Harry Potter, what else is there? (kidding, a little.)

Anyway, who are these broads and who do I need to hook up with to publish a fake memoir? Compared to most other professions, it seems like easy money. Anyway, one of them lied about her experiences during the Holocaust (shame). Turns out she is not Jewish and incredibly enough, was not raised by wolves in the forests of Europe while single handedly fighting Nazis with her bare hands. There was even a film made about her life, which is a no-brainer because the producers probably read it and thought it was another Rambo sequel.

The other, which is my favorite, claimed to be half White, half Native- American, grew up a foster child in South Central LA and became a gang-banger or close confidante of said gang- bangers, the details don't really matter do they? The reality is that she's a suburban kid who apparently couldn't deal with the hardships of growing up upper middle class. She's been making the media rounds just as much as James Frey lately and I smell a fictional book coming, even though technically she already wrote it. Has writing fake accounts of one's life become the new 15 minutes? This should be a reality show...."America's Next Top Delusional Writer who's Publishers won't be bothered with silly things like fact- checking." What's especially hilarious and disheartening about what is really considered newsworthy is this piece by the Times before she was caught. A white girl who says "homies" and can use the term ghetto in conversation without it being ironic seemed to have them salivating. The whole article is written with inspired awe, a homage to cooking soul food and raising pit bulls, cause you know, that's all Black people do. (sigh)

links via The New York Times & Gawker

heh?

Sometimes irony is not a good thing. Say for instance, when you're writing a humor column and you compare two photographs of two black men who look nothing alike and one of them is wearing sunglasses. Maybe it's ironic because it's not funny but then that actually makes it funny for like a second...wait, no, it's not funny and now my head hurts. (sigh) If the media is trying so hard to prove that things are getting better in this country, they might want to start by not saying all Black people look alike. Just a thought....then again something tells me thought was not a factor when this NY Times "piece" (that term is being used sooooo loosely right now) was written. (sigh again)

Ridiculousness courtesy of The New York Times

What is happening to the World? Oh yeah...for a minute I thought things were getting better.

I am not particularly surprised just annoyed, that in less than a week, we have had two "insightful" viewpoints (and by insightful, I mean completely ridiculous, racist and unnecessary) from two of the foremost experts on race, Bill O' Reilly aka "Douche" and Adrienne Curry aka, "The girl who won the first Top Model, who married the least cute one from the Brady Bunch, who talks like she had way too many Jello shots at that party."

Oh, and let's not forget that wack-a doo Amenanjalalabad or whatever his name is....spouting all sorts of dangerous crazy blocks from where I work. Scary.

So O'Reilly is amazed (and you can hear it in his voice) that dining in a Black restaurant like Sylvia's is no different from dining in a white establishment. Well, this must be the most newsworthy story he has come out with since he started attacking rappers a while ago. He also goes on to marvel at all the "respectable, well- dressed" Black people at an Anita Baker concert. Blacks entertaining in tuxedos...just like the good old days. Get a clue, Bill. The more you open your bigoted mouth, the more you add to the problem. Does this guy have children? God, I hope not...imagine growing up in the O'Reilly household:

"Bill Jr., are you listening to that negro music again?"
"But dad, all the affluent, sheltered white kids at my school are listening to Ludacris!"
"Son, don't you know that rap music is the downfall of human civilization? Now let's go, we have reservations at Sylvia's...great place, I'm just puzzled as to why they don't have watermelon and malt liquor on the menu..."

What's even funnier (and not in a good way) is that he is actually mad that websites have him spewing this garbage on tape... he claims that it was taken out of context...of course! Silly me! Um, hello, it is your voice, on tape. You would think that this guy would learn about people recording his voice based on past indiscretions...oh well. Lesson to Bill that he is probably too old and out of touch to care about learning: It is not what you say, but how you say it. And who you say it to, like thousands of people on the radio. (idiot)

Now, in Adrienne Curry's defense, she is probably not that bright....seriously, what is up with the slurred speech? Head trauma as a child? A little too much huffing in high school? Whatever the reason, I actually got her intentions in posting this blog on myspace, but wonder of wonders, amidst all the uninformed, racist remarks her intentions like her modeling career, got lost. Yes model, we all get that in an ideal world, race should not be an issue and Black History is American history and blabbity blabbity blah....now once again, let's step into a little something I like to call reality. People of color way back when were basically robbed of any choice, any true freedoms so to hold on to what little identity we had left, to regain our pride, we had to find ways to show that yes, we are here and yes, it is a truly f***ed up situation but we have to do something to rise above it. Hence, BET (which should really be boycotted because it is garbage now...where is Donnie Simpson when you need him?) and Black History Month, AND Telemundo AND the Country Music Channel....everyone needs to identify with something, honey. Curry clearly does not understand that when you go off on rants like this and then say you are not racist, it makes you look (lean in closer) LIKE AN ASS. And of course days after, she issues the mandatory: "white guilt, half assed apology" (which she can pretty much keep) and continues to play the "I grew up like the family on Roseanne, I dated a Black guy so I understand" card. Give me a Break. Or better yet, read a book. I recommend The Invisible Man, The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Bluest Eye. Then maybe she can really say that she is beginning to understand instead of claiming to already know.

As for this guy Ahmadinejad (yes, I really do know how to spell his name), what is there to say? He came to New York, he was predictably loony and our reaction to it might have made things even worse as far as American/ Middle East relations go, not that we didn't have the right to react. There's the conundrum of being an American. Can't we all just get along? I keep imagining all the Iranian gays in the audience when he spoke at Columbia after that ridiculous statement he made...how do you say "Oh no he didn't!!!" in Iranian?

This will most likely be the first and last biblical quote i put on here but isn't it so appropriate?

"Out of the Abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh."

-Matthew 12:34

image via Tim's Wine
links via Media Matters, Wikipedia, Myspace, Ifilm, NPR