Random Thoughts, Shooting the ish, feel free to add on Options

[GoodieGoddess]

Sorry. I just don't like fake stuff. Fake boobs, fake butts, fake hair, Sammy Sosa Fake ass skin color... none of it. Call me crazy, I guess.

You said Sammy Sosa. LMAO.

Frogs I don't want a man in body magic, but when I have my next child my hubby( whereever he is) will call me Elasta girl. Fake

[Froglips]

You said Sammy Sosa. LMAO.

Frogs I don't want a man in body magic, but when I have my next child my hubby( whereever he is) will call me Elasta girl. Fake

... to each their own. Some dudes like that. I've had two dudes admit to me some stupid stuff. One said he only likes light skinned women. and one said that he doesn't like chicks with naturals. Both of those dudes got this from me

So just don't say that a brother (me) never said that y'all are beautiful without it.

When I was dating, I dated all shades of sistas with all different hair styles. I just like good hygiene. Sometimes sistas your hair be stinkin'. I'ma just come right out and say it. If you got locks or a doobie or whatever, DON'T LET IT AIR DRY. Some of y'all smell like my towels when I forget them in the wash machine for a week. And that ain't good!

[?uestion]

... to each their own. Some dudes like that. I've had two dudes admit to me some stupid stuff. One said he only likes light skinned women. and one said that he doesn't like chicks with naturals. Both of those dudes got this from me

So just don't say that a brother (me) never said that y'all are beautiful without it.

When I was dating, I dated all shades of sistas with all different hair styles. I just like good hygiene. Sometimes sistas your hair be stinkin'. I'ma just come right out and say it. If you got locks or a doobie or whatever, DON'T LET IT AIR DRY. Some of y'all smell like my towels when I forget them in the wash machine for a week. And that ain't good!

[HoneyBee]

wow! my main nucca 50...they dont want beef!!!!

balls in your court now Rick!
this should get interesting on wax...now all thats missing is 50 c /s Gucci, its the perfect way to get at jezzy and J

[Hollywood Cole]

Back when Mugger owned NYPress I was a faithful reader, it was a great rag (Ben Katchors comics for ex Adam Heimlich's literate hip hop reviews, and its where the real Jonathan Ames - "bored to death" - got his freaky start writing about transsexuals and boxing). Armond Whites movie reviews were the cherry on top and appealed to my contrarian streak. Good to see he's still there mucking shit up. Peep his devastating take down of Precious (and oprahs insufferable fat ass AND tyler perry he of gay mouth syndrome), a view I've heard echoed by a few people. Haven't seen it, most likely never will this kind of shit is just not my cup of tea.


Pride & Precious
You can thank media titans Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry for much of the hype surrounding Lee Daniels’ film Precious. ARMOND WHITE calls it the ‘Con Job of the Year.’
By Armond White . . . . . . .


Gabourey Sidibe (left) and Mo'Nique in 'Precious'

SHAME ON TYLER PERRY and Oprah Winfrey for signing on as air-quote executive producers of Precious. After this post-hip-hop freak show wowed Sundance last January, it now slouches toward Oscar ratification thanks to its powerful friends.Winfrey and Perry had no hand in the actual production of Precious, yet the movie must have touched some sore spot in their demagogue psyches. They’ve piggybacked their reps as black success stories hoping to camouflage Precious’ con job—even though it’s more scandalous than their own upliftment trade. Perry and Winfrey naively treat Precious’ exhibition of ghetto tragedy and female disempowerment as if it were raw truth. It helps contrast and highlight their achievements as black American paradigms—self-respect be damned.

Let’s scrutinize their endorsement: Precious isn’t simply a strivers’ message movie; Perry and Winfrey recognize its propaganda value. The story of an overweight black teenage girl who is repeatedly raped and impregnated by her father, molested and beaten by her mother comes from a 1990s identity-politics novel by a poet named Sapphire. It piles on self pity and recrimination consistent with the air-quotes’ own oft-recounted backstories. Promoting this movie isn’t just a way for Perry and Winfrey to aggrandize themselves, it helps convert their private agendas into heavily hyped social preoccupation.
...
Winfrey, Perry and Daniels make an unholy triumvirate.They come together at some intersection of race exploitation and opportunism. These two media titans—plus one shrewd pathology pimp—use Precious to rework Booker T. Washington’s early 20th-century manifesto Up From Slavery into extreme drama for the new millennium: Up From Incest, Child Abuse,Teenage Pregnancy, Poverty and AIDS. Regardless of its narrative details about class and gender, Precious is an orgy of prurience. All the terrible, depressing (not uplifting) things that happen to 16year-old Precious recall that memorable All About Eve line, “Everything but the bloodhounds nipping at her rear-end.”

[Hollywood Cole]

part II:


It starts with the opening scene of Precious’ Cinderella fantasy. Tarted up in a boa and gown, walking a red carpet light years away from her tenement reality, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) sighs, “I wish I had a light-skinned boyfriend with nice hair.” Her ideal smacks of selfhatred—the colorism issue that Daniels exacerbates without exploring. He casts light-skinned actors as kind (schoolteacher Paula Patton, social worker Mariah Carey, nurse Lenny Kravitz and an actual Down syndrome child as Precious’ first-born) and dark-skinned actors as terrors. Sidibe herself is presented as an animal-like stereotype—she’s so obese her face seems bloated into a permanent pout.This is not the breakthrough Todd Solondz achieved in Palindromes where plus-size black actress Sharon Wilkins artfully represented the immensity of an outcast’s misunderstood humanity. Instead, Sidibe’s fancy-dressed daydream looks laughable; poorly photographed, its primary effect is pathetic.

Perry and Winfrey may think Precious is serious, but Daniels is hoisting his freak flag. He gets off on degradation. Flashbacks to Precious’ rape contain a curious montage of grease, sweat, bacon and Vaseline. Later, he intercuts a shot of pig’s feet cooking on a stove with Precious being humped while her mother watches from a corner. Another misjudged scene recreates De Sica’s B&W Two Women—a half-camp trashing of motherhood that compounds the problem of cultural alienation. So does the film’s Ebonics credit sequence and the scene of Precious rotating amidst a bombardment of success icons—Martina Arroyo, MLK, Shirley Chisholm—to which she either relates or is ignorant.This incoherence should not pass for sociology.

Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious. Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show. Offering racist hysteria masquerading as social sensitivity, it’s been acclaimed on the international festival circuit that usually disdains movies about black Americans as somehow inartistic and unworthy.

.....

Precious’ plot is so outrageous (although the New York Times Magazine touts it as “The Audacity of Precious,” a telling link to Obama’s memoir The Audacity of Hope) that its acclaim suggests an aftershock of all that Hurricane Katrina weeping and lamentation about America’s Others. This movie finally puts the deprivations of Katrina on the big screen—not as smug, political fingerpointing, nor the inconsequential way superliberals Brad Pitt and David Fincher shoehorned Katrina into Benjamin Button, but as sheer melodramatic terror. (Poor Precious endures the most brutal home life since Lillian Gish in the 1918 Broken Blossoms.)

Precious raises ghosts of ethnic fear and exoticism just like Birth of a Nation. Precious and her mother (Mo’Nique) share a Harlem hovel so stereotypical it could be a Klansman’s fantasy. It also suggests an outsider’s romantic view of the political wretchedness and despair associated with the blues. Critics willingly infer there’s black life essence in Precious’ anti-life tale. And the same high-dudgeon tsk-tsking of Hurricane Katrina commentators is also apparent in the movie’s praise. Pundits who bemoan the awful conditions that have not improved for America’s unfortunate are reminded that they are still on top.

This misreading of blues sensibility probably has something to do with the disconnect caused by hip-hop, where thuggishness and criminality romanticize black ghetto life. Director Daniels’ rotgut images of aggressive cruelty and low-life illiteracy aren’t far from gangster rap clichés.The spectacle warps how people perceive black American life— perhaps even replacing their instincts for compassion with fear and loathing.
......
Worse than Precious itself was the ordeal of watching it with an audience full of patronizing white folk at the New York Film Festival, then enduring its media hoodwink as a credible depiction of black American life. A scene such as the hippopotamus-like teenager climbing a K-2 incline of tenement stairs to present her newborn, incest-bred baby to her unhinged virago matriarch, might have been met howls of skeptical laughter at Harlem’s Magic Johnson theater. Black audiences would surely have seen the comedy in this ludicrous, overloaded situation, whereas too many white film habitués casually enjoy it for the sense of superiority—and relief—it allows them to feel. Some people like being conned.


full review here

[GoodieGoddess]

... to each their own. Some dudes like that. I've had two dudes admit to me some stupid stuff. One said he only likes light skinned women. and one said that he doesn't like chicks with naturals. Both of those dudes got this from me

So just don't say that a brother (me) never said that y'all are beautiful without it.

When I was dating, I dated all shades of sistas with all different hair styles. I just like good hygiene. Sometimes sistas your hair be stinkin'. I'ma just come right out and say it. If you got locks or a doobie or whatever, DON'T LET IT AIR DRY. Some of y'all smell like my towels when I forget them in the wash machine for a week. And that ain't good!

You don't mean some of yall (us), you mean some women. That said, if one washes their hair and it air dries, it should not still smell bad. *Jessie Jackson intermission*Hair is not cotten and should not smell rotten. If your boys (not you because your wife looks like she smells like the prettiest rose in the garden) are dealing with smelly hair'd women, refer them to the prettiest rose in the garden for instruction. I AM JUST SAYING.

[BKLYNScribe]

i've been dying to blog about Precious. waiting until it opens nationwide on the 20th.

that said, i think this reviewer misses the mark. It's a tragic film. completely. it has no redemptive Hollywood in a bow ending, but that's life sometimes. the movie totally beats you up, but there's still some hope in it. is she great at the end? of course not, but she's a long, long way from where she was.

what i got from the movie was hope, a little light that shines from within and motivates you in the face of adversity. Precious goes through an incredible arc in the film, largely based on the idea she states way at the beginning, that she wakes up every morning hoping today something will be different. and she keeps trying something new everyday, hoping that something will give and her life will get better. she takes a first step toward it and eventually it gets better. she asks for help in her own way, and it comes.

i don't think anyone who watched that and didn't think all black people were ghetto dwelling psychopaths thought "oh, i thought black people were normal. i guess they all do live in squalor now that I've seen this film."

the fried chicken steal is a result of her having no money and needing food. there weren't any wholefoods on her block. the chicken thing is more an indictment of her neighborhood- which plays a main character in the film-- and its lack of resources than some negro-stealing-chicken stereotype.

her being fat and dark is part of the movie's point. it's about exactly the disgust that often comes for folks who fit that description, the disgust that the author of the review feels watching her. he's confirming exactly why she was cast.

it's an art flick. it goes deeper than the surface, which is where the author skimmed on this review.

the light-skinned BF thing has a point, so does her crazy imagination of fame and beauty. she's bought into society ideals society of what will make her— marginalized in every way—  more acceptable to the "center" or mainstream.

see the film. it's worth it.

[BKLYNScribe]

... to each their own. Some dudes like that. I've had two dudes admit to me some stupid stuff. One said he only likes light skinned women. and one said that he doesn't like chicks with naturals. Both of those dudes got this from me

So just don't say that a brother (me) never said that y'all are beautiful without it.

When I was dating, I dated all shades of sistas with all different hair styles. I just like good hygiene. Sometimes sistas your hair be stinkin'. I'ma just come right out and say it. If you got locks or a doobie or whatever, DON'T LET IT AIR DRY. Some of y'all smell like my towels when I forget them in the wash machine for a week. And that ain't good!

this is nonsense. it's a blanket statement that doesn't allow for hair lengths, textures, season, scarf material, type of hair etc.

let's not act like men don't have hair that smells too. just cause ya'll tend to have it short, doesn't mean it doesn't need to be washed and often.

[Hollywood Cole]

on that note since I started running I wash my hur 4 times a week (after every run) now, is that too much? Is there a light shampoo you use when you work out? I don't have much hair left I want to treat whats left with compassion and dignity and I think I read that too much washing is no good but I cannot get insanely sweaty and then not wash it.

[sneeks]

part II:

Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious. Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show. .....

DAMN!!! Thats one hell of a statement!!!! lol. Damn!!!!! lol.

[Froglips]

this is nonsense. it's a blanket statement that doesn't allow for hair lengths, textures, season, scarf material, type of hair etc.

let's not act like men don't have hair that smells too. just cause ya'll tend to have it short, doesn't mean it doesn't need to be washed and often.

How the heck is that a blanket statement? Listen, I know the smell and where it comes from. It happened to me once... thing is, I went home and stayed in the shower for a year until that smell was looooong gone! I can't understand how somebody would sport that smell. I saw somebody I know in a public place smelling up the whole area with that hair, I was so embarrassed for her.

I wasn't trynna be all specific, but I know the smell and it tends to come along with a scarf, long hair and/or locks. Tend to doubt it would be associated with short hair (because it dries so fast). Not sure about guys, but I was talking about women. Now I know some peeps that have lovely smelling hair and locks, so don't come down on me. but each of us on this board knows EXACTLY what I am talking about!

This post has been edited by Froglips: Yesterday, 06:20 PM

[hnic357]

Fried chicken, stinky hair and precious....Not a good day to be on the crusade. I'm logging off.

[Alfredo_fedicini]

Lil man has a lil flow..The Simmons might have something on their hands!...nice production, very well put together!

[MsBrg722]

i've been dying to blog about Precious. waiting until it opens nationwide on the 20th.

that said, i think this reviewer misses the mark. It's a tragic film. completely. it has no redemptive Hollywood in a bow ending, but that's life sometimes. the movie totally beats you up, but there's still some hope in it. is she great at the end? of course not, but she's a long, long way from where she was.

what i got from the movie was hope, a little light that shines from within and motivates you in the face of adversity. Precious goes through an incredible arc in the film, largely based on the idea she states way at the beginning, that she wakes up every morning hoping today something will be different. and she keeps trying something new everyday, hoping that something will give and her life will get better. she takes a first step toward it and eventually it gets better. she asks for help in her own way, and it comes.

i don't think anyone who watched that and didn't think all black people were ghetto dwelling psychopaths thought "oh, i thought black people were normal. i guess they all do live in squalor now that I've seen this film."

the fried chicken steal is a result of her having no money and needing food. there weren't any wholefoods on her block. the chicken thing is more an indictment of her neighborhood- which plays a main character in the film-- and its lack of resources than some negro-stealing-chicken stereotype.

her being fat and dark is part of the movie's point. it's about exactly the disgust that often comes for folks who fit that description, the disgust that the author of the review feels watching her. he's confirming exactly why she was cast.

it's an art flick. it goes deeper than the surface, which is where the author skimmed on this review.

the light-skinned BF thing has a point, so does her crazy imagination of fame and beauty. she's bought into society ideals society of what will make her— marginalized in every way—  more acceptable to the "center" or mainstream.

see the film. it's worth it.

Sooooo many people are missing the point of Precious that I am even more concerned about American's cultural awareness and empathy than I was before -- which is saying something. The chicken stealing scene upset me - not because I felt it was typical Black stereotyping, but because the audience around me found the scene so got damned funny. There is nothing funny about a pregnant teen, raped by her father, carrying her sibling, starving times two, having to steal food because her abusive egg donor parental unit is too damaged and incompetent to see that the child has sustenance.

Soooo many people are missing the point. Laughter from the audience when the child woke up after being thrown on her pregnant belly by a stray cat. Laughter at teenagers so lost, unfocused, and uneducated that they are learning their ABCs after puberty, fornication and fathering children.

Soooo many people are missing the point. The movie exists on many levels - the socioeconomic, aesthetic, and racial implications are just the most overt. The movie seeks to make bring awareness that these type of situations not only exists, but are able to prevail because no one gets involved. It subtly depicts the circular nature of circumstance - how ignorance breeds ignorance. In our society, circumstance is so often dismissed. We look to the few that rise above their circumstances as the "if he can do it, so can you" model, when the statistics say otherwise. Yet so many people see the story through a fishbowl. Not seeing that the story of Precious, sans the abuse, happens everyday.

Precious is sad. but the missing of the point is sadder.

Oh and eff that reviewer...for a number of reasons...but specifically for missing the point.


On to the next. I'm too old for the Diggy track but I dig his personality. Nice to see him about his business.

[MsBrg722]

... to each their own. Some dudes like that. I've had two dudes admit to me some stupid stuff. One said he only likes light skinned women. and one said that he doesn't like chicks with naturals. Both of those dudes got this from me

So just don't say that a brother (me) never said that y'all are beautiful without it.

When I was dating, I dated all shades of sistas with all different hair styles. I just like good hygiene. Sometimes sistas your hair be stinkin'. I'ma just come right out and say it. If you got locks or a doobie or whatever, DON'T LET IT AIR DRY. Some of y'all smell like my towels when I forget them in the wash machine for a week. And that ain't good!

Musty. That's the name for the smell. It's not about the type of hair white women get the smell too if they put their hair up and the middle of their hair doesn't dry through. Women who bun their hair while wet and don't allow air to get to the wet center (pause) will experience that musty smell. You have to let your hair dry down, and remember to let air get to all of it.

I do worry about your sense of tact sometimes though my friend.

[Froglips]

Musty. That's the name for the smell. It's not about the type of hair white women get the smell too if they put their hair up and the middle of their hair doesn't dry through. Women who bun their hair while wet and don't allow air to get to the wet center (pause) will experience that musty smell. You have to let your hair dry down, and remember to let air get to all of it.

I do worry about your sense of tact sometimes though my friend.

Duly noted. And I appreciate your tact in your response. REALLY. I re-read and I can see what y'all are talking about. It was not my intention to single out black women or to be offensive. I also said it happened to me before. But I do believe in tough love and my sense of smell is very keen. And hygiene is very important to me. It actually offends me. LMAO!!!

But you on the other hand, I heard that you NEVER have that problem. As GG put 'Rosey fresh'! Kudos 4 that!

[GoodieGoddess]

Musty. That's the name for the smell. It's not about the type of hair white women get the smell too if they put their hair up and the middle of their hair doesn't dry through. Women who bun their hair while wet and don't allow air to get to the wet center (pause) will experience that musty smell. You have to let your hair dry down, and remember to let air get to all of it.

I do worry about your sense of tact sometimes though my friend.

Wow I have heard pple say that thier hair smelled, but musty cuh dear that is a tough word.
I live under hooded dryers.

[dreadedcutiepie]

lol i learned the hard way about hair getting musty...a few years ago, i had to travel to miami with a co-worker who had waist length locs...we both hit the beach, but i blow dried my hair while she left hers to airdry in a bun...the plane ride home was torture but ummm....that's the only experience i've had with anybody, male or female, with smelly hair

[Froglips]

lol i learned the hard way about hair getting musty...a few years ago, i had to travel to miami with a co-worker who had waist length locs...we both hit the beach, but i blow dried my hair while she left hers to airdry in a bun...the plane ride home was torture but ummm....that's the only experience i've had with anybody, male or female, with smelly hair

Werd, like I said HYGIENE. Sometimes it's an honest mistake, but it cannot happen more than once or twice. You just can't NOT smell that! It's torturous!

Back in the days in the house clubs... WHAT!?!?! Dudes would be swinging around nasty smelly hair, OMG! Props to the "people" who (white or black, men or women) take care of their hygiene. Is that better Berg?

[MsBrg722]

Werd, like I said HYGIENE. Sometimes it's an honest mistake, but it cannot happen more than once or twice. You just can't NOT smell that! It's torturous!

Back in the days in the house clubs... WHAT!?!?! Dudes would be swinging around nasty smelly hair, OMG! Props to the "people" who (white or black, men or women) take care of their hygiene. Is that better Berg?

Better it is.

[Hollywood Cole]

I went to uhmm Shelter I think it was for one of those saturday night to sunday morning house workouts back then and when you walked in it smelled like a jhs gym locker room. When they got off the dance floor and stepped outside people would actually steam sweat. Carrying a towel was de riguer. Same night I saw this gorgeous girl completely oblivous to everyone around her dancing on a banquette or something eyes closed completely transported. two or three hours of BUMP TSS BUMP TSS BUMP TSS + some good drugs would do that.

[Hollywood Cole]

Don't get me wrong though, gross as it is thats the sign of a good party. I did a basement party one time early 80's me and my potna, 4 turntables, a drum machine and an MC (and we were beat juggling before it was called beat juggling) that shit was a wall of thick ass funk. By the time the party was over a window was blown out, and there were used condoms on the floor, my proudest moment as a DJ.

This post has been edited by Hollywood Cole: Today, 11:12 AM

[MsBrg722]

Visual map of MJ's musical influence. I thought it was pretty dope.

[Hollywood Cole]

^ cool

[Hollywood Cole]

an observation on park ave. the kind of women I like:

tall
short
skinny
thick
asian
latina
white - they taste like chicken
black
middle eastern
new jersean
20's
30's
40's
bourgie
bohemian
corporate
submissive
dominant
conservatives
liberals (I hold my nose but this is ny no choice here)
the one I'm married too (HI MAMMA!)

[shadesnyc]

an observation on park ave. the kind of women I like:

tall
short
skinny
thick
asian
latina
white - they taste like chicken
black
middle eastern
new jersean
20's
30's
40's
bourgie
bohemian
corporate
submissive
dominant
conservatives
liberals (I hold my nose but this is ny no choice here)
the one I'm married too (HI MAMMA!)

ur an idiot.

This post has been edited by shadesnyc: Today, 04:26 PM