I'm not inclined to call anyone ugly, but when you're a 30-something year old second-grade teacher and you start preying on/going for dates with 15-16 year olds, and your name is Gina, and you take a picture like this for the Daily News:
Well, what else can you say?
Also, can someone explain to this kid why one becomes a model? I mean, I'm not a model so I don't know, but am I mistaken to suspect that no one does it for the old ugly white women in Queens? Though from the looks of this photo methinks there will be plenty of drugs and alcohol in his life (they have a child!) down the road.
I like the kid though, he's sassy. This quote he gives is awesome:
'I'm tapping that a-- and there's nothing you can do about it,'"
Ha. It's almost like a dare for him. He's making his life into an episode of Punk'd! Only he doesn't know it yet. Sad.
Anyummm, for those thinking teachers and white women are thought of too highly in our society (used to be you'd see a Taye Diggs in this pic and not blink an eye), here's your countermeasure: Ugly Gina.
The Cavs beat the Knicks down Tuesday night, like a boyfriend tired of fools flirting with his girl.
When you think about it, Cleveland had to do something. The New York media hard-on for James was such that I was afraid to touch a newspaper for fear of getting LeBron-gunk on my hand. It crossed the line into rudeness; you can admire some guy's girlfriend from afar, but you can't just start licking her the way everyone has lapped LeBron's booty the last couple media cycles.
in final edit I got to say hard-on, but no gunk! baby steps....
Yo, McDonald's and their black-people marketing project is straight out of control! At this point it's like they're satirizing themselves... but I don't think it's intentional.
Also, can they start putting some fat people in these videos? If you're waking up in the middle of the night, in the rain, to steal away for a ten-piece, you do not have a hot body. Period.
There's limited space blogging sports for NBC, and in this recent musing about Marbury and Obama and reevaluating values, I couldn't include the point that makes Marbury such a paradox. That is, despite being vastly overpaid, and fairly dysfunctional, he's also one of the most giving philanthropic-oriented players in the NBA.
I wrote a "Free Forté" post a couple years ago (mostly to share his great blog). We were in prep for prep together, and since then lived a similar Miseducation of the Assimilated Negro path. He went to Exeter, I went to Choate. He started rapping, I started rapping. He canoodled with Lauryn Hill, I couldn't believe it and hated. He got locked up, I started a blog. The symmetry is remarkable!
I do think on the occasion of his freedom, it's worth noting that John will give many of us prep/assimilateds something we didn't have: a homey who got locked up.
You'll often find TANs are easily perturbed by those who would challenge their "Realness" just because they went to prep school. In one of my Ghetto Passes for Gawker, one of the commenters questioned my authenticity, and I threatened to put on brass knuckles and beat her face in.
I've since learned to take my meds when I write something for public consumption, but it gets to my point about sensitivity and defensiveness. Just because we took that assimilated road, doesn't mean we've forgotten where we came from. That's what special about this up-and-coming generation of TANs. The respect for the past, coupled with the unprecedented hope for tomorrow. Good times.
Anyways, I'll prob be less sensitive cause one of my old homeys just got his bid commuted. Now when I see him and we listen to "One Love" together (obviously), we can sing along to the lyrics with conviction, err, gusto.
Honestly, that's what every emcee should be trying to do right now. Make that inaugural song. The inaugural jam is the new club joint, or somesuch. If hip hop gets skipped in the soundtracking of the Obama presidency, they will have lost a great -- possibly necessary -- opportunity.
As for Common's submission, it's not bad: happy groove, peaceful lyrics, solid performance. I wonder if the lyrics themselves are presidential enough. That said, with Common being from the Chi, and his whole brand being something along the lines of the hip hop version of hope, there's a lot of synergy potential there.
The lil kid at the end is a nice little underrated hip hop effect. If you add a cute-sounding child to the end of your hip hop song, you really can't lose. Also, whistling. Whistling on the track is another no-brainer. I'm surprised the market for good non-profit hip hop isn't a little larger. That's probably telling about something or other. Here's a youtube of Common's song:
You know, even better than the solo song would be to get one of these "We Are The World" records popping. They do them before, why not do it for the actual inaugural song. Everyone would want to be down. Prob get Kanye to engineer the whole thing. Him, JD (yes, respect JD please.), Dre, Andre, Em, Hov, Nas, GZA, Slick Rick, Chuck D, Common, a couple others ... obviously Black Thought and The Roots as the players. Oh, we need some women. Lil Kim doesn't seem right, though you know she'd drop the perfect PG-13 saccharin verse for the occasion. Maybe some Jean Grae. Oh I guess the songstresses can rhyme, so get those male emcees plus some Alicia Keys, Badu, Estelle, Mary J,etc. L Boogie if she's available. Beyonce and Sean can have a section to go back-and-forth on...
That song would be hot fire; the Black Music All Stars (pardon, hip hop all stars) making the Obama inaugural record. It's really the only way to do it.
Short of that, Common's song is fine; if everyone's going for dolo, Common is as good a choice as any.
Only caveat is if he comes in looking like the pic above right. With the background all fuzzy, and he's staring directly in your eyes and stuff....that means he's feeling the love too much. Abort the mission if that happens and wait for another day, that's not the Common we want.
Been doing some sports blogging for NBC recently, they have new localized sites, and I'm playing the role of B.A. Baracus for the New York A-Team. I'll probably figure out some widget or link to keep the posts streaming over here at some point before the reign of Emperor Obama is over, but for now, since I didn't post anything else today, I'll just link some of the recent hits from the sports-crack pipe.
Jewcy asked me to do a quick blog on one of these post-racial articles that are in mass abundance. In responding I discovered Post-Racial Fight Club. Here's a tease:
... I think the biggest ingredient missing from these stews of post-racial analysis are white people; this Post-Racial Identity crisis is not so much about Black identity as much as it is about White identity being scaled back down to size, thereby allowing everyone else to look a little more important. Perhaps even more than the Obama t-shirts we see everywhere, the book/blog Stuff White People Like is the prominent post-racial avatar that signals change is underway.
After all, we're somewhat versed in Black identity politics, hence Obama putting on his du-rag for a campaign speech. But White people have long been able to lump their particular sensibilities under the broad label of "mainstream" or "american". This was always best represnted by the position of President, leader of the free world, and presumably white bred, white educated, etc. etc. Now it's different. Now we know the first family doles out dap, and quotes hip hop lyrics. Good times.
So, not wanting to be passive and redundant, it seems the only step in further understanding what matters in the world now is to start a Post-Racial Fight Club. So here we go:
Welcome to Post-Racial Fight Club.
The first rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is you must talk about Post-Racial Club, A LOT!
The second rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is you must talk about Post-Racial Fight club some more!
See, when you use the term "post-racial" you can't help but seem smart and aware and progressive. Go ahead, say it to someone who went to college.... doesn't it feel good? Don't you feel better about yourself? I know I do. So next party, make sure you bring it up, especially if any members of the Multi-Culti are in attendance.
The third rule of Post-Racial Fight Club is if someone says "stop, you don't understand their people's struggle" and points to an historical tragedy where you can see the legacy of it still in effect today, the fight is over ... continued...
Amanda Fortini at NY Mag raises some valid points. While there has been much trumpeting about the progress for females in the wake of the campaigns by Hillary Clinton and VP nominee Sarah Palin, the end rewards have been muted at best.
Granted, in the realm of American politics, there's a measure of progress simply by seeing a couple women so prominently in the spotlight; it's not an unmitigated blessing. Amanda writes:
"In the grand Passion play that was this election, both Clinton and Palin came to represent—and, at times, reinforce—two of the most pernicious stereotypes that are applied to women: the bitch and the ditz.
What I don't think she satisfactorily conveys, however, is how those archetypal female stereotype boxes may simply add up as part of the cost of losing. Which is to say, if Obama lost he'd be a lot more like an Inaccessible Elitist Bougie Negro stereotype than he is now.
But because he won, because he was an individual who brazenly defied those characterizations, such an assessment sounds as silly as it should.
So while Fortini's closing sentiment, "Many will say we’ve come a long way this year. The truth is we have a long way to go." -- is true, it's also shortsighted. It doesn't accomodate a perspective that appreciates how much ground one perfect political candidate can cover.
This is part of the largesse of Obama's legacy. We may have wondered how much a Black president mattered, and then we saw it mattered so much more than we could imagine, and not just in our nation's borders, but around the globe.
We couldn't exactly predict the overwhelming magnitude of The Big O's appeal. His perfectness. Sure you can speculate and rationally deconstruct a perfect multi-racial presidential candidate, and it would be Obama. But he's special because he played the game perfect. Every misstep was anticipated, every major mistake avoided. He threw a perfect game, against a substandard opponent and it resulted in a landslide.
So yeah, Hillary and Palin proved to be flawed, and maybe the media will transform those flaws into caricature. But all women need to find is their Super Woman to show how long distances can be leaped in a single bound.
I don't know, maybe make it a government funded non-profit. That would maximize its potential, yet keep it relevant. (you hear that, media. non-profs are relevant too!). Everyone loves the spectacle of the Idol, but we all hate the nasty side of ourselves it taps into (even if we don't know it).
And now -- the dark side of the four-week-long Bad Auditions portion of "American Idol" that traditionally kicks off each season of the country's No. 1 television show.
A woman found dead of an apparent drug overdose in a car near "Idol" judge Paula Abdul's Los Angeles home on Tuesday night was an Abdul obsessive who had twice auditioned for the Fox singing competition. She was handpicked in the fifth season to become one of those wannabes the show's three judges would savage on national TV during the early weeks of that season.
The Daily Beast put me on to the story, and they have a clip of Paula Goodspeed's audition. If you watch it, you can actually see the thin line between comedy and tragedy right before your very eyes!
So in hindsight, the basic summary here -- a woman who was an obsessive fan of Paula Abdul, one of the celebrity be-pedestaled judges of American Idol, commits suicide after being ridiculed by her, uh, idol -- strikes as sort of inevitable. The show in its current incarnation had to eventually lead to this sort of unnecessarily tragic end.
Of course, we can't blame Paula or the show for the psychological issues of others. This suicide occurs three years after the point of impact, and that's more than enough plausible deniability for the courtroom of public consensus to let American Idol off the hook. There's little point in trying to assign a dollar amount for damages due to a particular crime.
But at the same time, there's an obvious misappropriation of value here. It feels like a karmic sin to see a show that so brazenly resonates with our spirit of love, companionship, communion (talent, after all, is nothing more than a connection between two people) but then use that power for EVIL.
Which is to say, it's not inherently bad to laugh at people who sing horribly. Or are clearly a few posts short of a blog. But you don't lie to them, prop them up, tell them they're amazing, only so the fall can be more entertaining to us normals.
In my head this current cycle, this business of laughing at those who are unawares, will always be pinned to William Hung; he was the gateway drug. But from Punk'd, to Borat, to Idol ... it's a cheap laugh, that comes at the expense of a Real Life Human Being. And we all eventually realize it (there won't be a Borat 2) and feel bad. Or worse than bad if you're Paula Abdul right now.
So anyidol, my question is: Can Obama fix this? I know he's got a lot on his plate, but in some sense it feels like we voted for Obama specifically to help realign our fundamental values. He was the one who showed a willingness to make the sacrifice.
Leadership isn't about having the tools; it's about having the heart, the balls. We all have a sense of the greater good -- hence, bloggers and writers abound! -- but our leaders are the ones who take action.
We all know how to be healthy and get in shape, but sometimes we need a trainer. And it feels like the real mandate for Obama is to be our moral trainer. Sympathetic, yet demanding; showing us how to indulge and have fun with talent showcases, but not take it too far lest someone end up killing themselves.
I haven't felt so patriotic in ages. Maybe since 9/11. That feels like a lifetime ago.
For me, that's one drop in the infinite reservoir of amazing takeaways ... America is so incredibly important to so many people. But, why?
Why are we the Apple to the rest of the world's PC? How is this land of Bush, and Enron, and Cheney, and Spitzer, and Flavor Flav, and TMZ and Fashion Police etc. etc. ad nauseam, also the symbol for that inscrutably-human sense of independent spirit?
Look at these pictures, taken from around the globe. How can one man, one job, one country's chosen leader mean so much?
Barack's step-grandmother Sarah Obama in Kogelo , Kenya
At Obama's former school in Jakarta , Indonesia
Manila , Philippines (my favorite)
SHANGHAI
I don't understand; it's so difficult to wrap my aluminum-body macbook around the idea that when the world is spinning its wheels in the, uh, ditch of life or whathaveyou, we're the folks everyone looks to for a plan? What are we, Hancock? The Alcoholic Superpower?
If you were to ask me about America-as-Guiding-Light when I'm drunk and fantasizing about Sarah Palin, in my apartment, telling Katie Couric that she knows how to save Africa because she can see my balls from where she's sitting; I would be like, "How can you talk about some broad 'America the beautiful' stuff with a scene like this in front of you? THAT'S UNAMERICAN! But I do appreciate the conversation, so hold on a second, I'm just busy at the moment." Then in five minutes I would return and tell you that such a thought (America-as-example-for-the-world) is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
But yet, it's true. The throngs of people, the wide-eyed faces, the streaming tears... none of them lie. This country, my country, your country is the worlds guiding light. The world's Encyclopedia Brown. The forger of black steel in the hour of chaos. The nationalized avatar of Nietzsche's will to power? Or maybe you prefer, Manifest Destiny. Just Do It. Yes We Can.
This mandate, this refusal to suck, where does it come from? In the last couple years we have bottomed out and taken it for granted, putting up the most pathetic effort we could in the form of George Bush. Seemingly testing our own karma, only so we could feel the rush of the Tao coming back harder and stronger with Barack, the Anti-Bush.
We started this country with no money, only ideals. Then we sacrificed our ideals to build capital. And now, when capital is no longer worth much, we go back to ideals. Willing ourselves to power, by any means necessary.
But where does it come from? Nietzsche wasn't even our dude. Germany should be the world superpower, but obviously they fell in love with the dark side of the force.
And here we are.
And, it's not like we haven't had our fair share of "bad" people.
But here we are. In our bleakest hour, the force provides us our Luke Skywalker to save the day and seemingly inspire the universe. (and he's even better because he doesn't have the sketchy side storyline with the incestuous sister-loving.)
Pretty amazing.
Disclaim: (I just received these pics from family over email, they are presumably of the people, by the people, for the people. if you are/know the source please contact me and I'll properly attribute, or take down... but if you make me take them down, I'm telling Obama on you.)
JAKARTA
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL
INDIA
