Sunday, July 12, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of Revisionists



AND WE'RE BACK... Our good friend, Da Lightskinn'd Assassin, decided he would rant about the completely awesome Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Without further ado...

I am not the type to proclaim superfluous Pan-African stories of early Egypt and how the great minds of Greece and Rome all learn knowledge from Timbuktu. However, I am tired of the racist revisionist’s tone of Hollywood: check Stargate, then The Mummy, and now Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Yet another science fiction movie that spews/spins the rouse about how all the Egyptian marvels and feats were alien-conceived and designed, those men of ‘woolly hair and bronze skin’ [sic] simply provided the physical labor. Bullshit! Why don’t these screenwriters re-imagine ancient Greece or even early Germany (I thought all Americans think that terrorism is ingrained in Islamic history)? Oh no, those civilizations remain untouched... but I digress.

I know some of you bastards thought I would have a whole diatribe about the Sambots in the movie. Ha! Yes, I was upset and ALMOST walked out the theater (“where is my phone?”, “dude I got your phone, we leaving”) then I did some research. Apparently, all the Autobots (except Bumblebee) learned to speak from watching television. Optimus Prime, I assume, watched PBS (shout out to Charlie Rose). So it is safe to assume the Sambots watched the Blacks Embarrassing Themselves network (106 & Park anyone?). Had they include this backstory, I think the Sambots would have been a social critique of the network ala Boondocks episode where the main character continuously watches the aforementioned network for weeks.

the boondocks - the hunger strike


Transformers had a horrible premise, no storyline and a dark hero who declares in the final battle scene, “I rise and you fall” [Didn’t Jay-Z say that to Dame Dash at some point?]. Overall, I liken this movie to Vanilla Ice’s Hard To Swallow... check the album reviews.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Who You Gonna Call? Maury, of course.



Hm...file this nugget under the (super loosely-based) term "creative."

I never cut school for a really good reason. If it was to see a movie, I'm sure I could've waited until the more proper time of 8:00pm. If it was to go to a friend's house, all I remember doing is talking at a kitchen table, in the same way that could've been done at, say, a table in the cafeteria. (I do recall us signing onto AOL a lot, but it was new! We could've had mail!) And if it was to go to the mall, I know I never had enough money to buy anything remotely memorable. I did steal from Claire's a lot often, again, useless pastime.

When I did stay home (for no other reason than to be bored and wish I was with my friends), I watched a lot of talk shows - never a soap opera cuz I'm not that type of girl (whatever that means) - namely though, The Maury Povich Show. The Anti-Springer, if you will. Or so it seemed at the time. All trickery, I've learned!

Please, someone, correct the 13-year-old me if I'm wrong, but was the show always about 400-lb toddlers, animal tricks, and baby daddy's? Or has it progressed, I mean digressed, into this?

Anyway, Detroit's own Judge Wade McCree (above) thinks Maury is the perfect candidate for some Scared Straight-type shit. He's begun sentencing fathers charged with failing to pay child support to the viewing of one Maury show a month. Like a dose of medicine for deadbeats. The men then have to report back to their probation officers with a summary. Like what children do with teachers. It's all very convoluted and forensic and you have to have a degree to understand why measures like this ever need to be taken. Hurts my head just thinking about it, but damnit, I'm gonna watch episode after episode until I understand this method and am near fit to be a judge myself.







Classy.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

This Gives "Sandwhich" A Whole New Meaning


I am back, bitches. And apparently I should be headed back out to Quizno's.

Damn you, Quizno's. First you had Scott and that insanely awkward funny commercial ("Put it in me, Scott!") and now this (NSFW):













Smut + Viral Marketing = Genius

Friday, May 1, 2009

Ashanti Is Trying To Take My Black Card



I don't claim to have endured the "tragic mulatto" childhood that Mariah Carey so pathetically cries about (while drying her tears with diamonds), but I will say that being of mixed race gave my parents an awful lot of excuses to go above and beyond in explaining cultural differences. But only in really odd shallow ways. My father was ecstatic once my sister and I learned to exclaim "Dad!" with fervor, so as to disprove all the New York passersby's assumptions (inferred with evil stares) that his dark-skinned self was not, in fact, kidnapping us, as we were of a considerably lighter shade. Our color came in increments, and once he felt we had acquired enough tan, he began with the pseudo-schooling. First, the only song he encouraged us to learn on our brand new Christmas-gift Casio keyboards was Bill Withers' "Lean on Me," because, you know, it was about brotherhood and stuff. And he did his very best to remember to light candles for Kwanzaa, but my sister and I successfully trivialized that holiday into being one about saying "Kujichagulia" a lot and giggling afterwards. And who needs Cornflower-, Thistle-, and Periwinkle-colored crayons when all you've got are Color Me Brown books? Not I. But, if nothing else, I can say with conviction that out of this bombardment of blackness came my exposure to one of the best damn movies of all time: The Wiz. Because, no - as taught - the original was not iconic enough!



But now I hear Ashanti is reprising the role of Dorothy. On stage, nonetheless. A role previously owned by Stephanie Mills and Diana Ross (seen above). This bothers me. Pops would be so proud to see how worldly I've become per his instruction. And I feel Ashanti is trying to revoke me of my well-deserved certificate of culture by maybepossiblydefinitely ruining a truly significant sliver of my childhood. After all, something tells me she won't be able to pull it off.

Until then, a completely unrelated scene (YouTube is slacking):

Friday, April 24, 2009

All Hail King Henry...


Like most, I have been a longtime OutKast fan. HOWEVER, while I know most of you all worship at the altar of Andre 3000, you can more often than not find me down the street praising at Big Boi Baptist. Yes, I DID like Speakerboxxx better than The Love Below... There, I said it. I even liked Got Purp?, Vol. 2. So, it goes without saying that I am looking forward to Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty.

As a teaser, Big Boi teamed with the folks at Funny Or Die (my favorite comedy site) for this little jewel. Enjoy!

FHM's Sexiest Women in the World 2009*


*debatable.

I don’t read FHM, but in an attempt to understand the logic behind this joke of a list…I ventured onto their website, saw this – along with the headline “Should Miley Do a Sex Tape?” – and then remembered, "I’m not a beerchugging frat boy from the Midwest," thus X’ing the window out and returning to my study.

First, who the hell is (#1) Cheryl Cole (seen below)?



Answer: She’s part of the UK singing group Girls Aloud. I assume they sound like the Spice Girls because I’m closeminded, but after a single YouTube search, I discover they sound worse. (Don’t bother.)

Second, I've got no qualms with the #2 choice of Megan Fox (seen below)... Unless of course, they’re referring to her judgment, because she’s in some sort of on-again/off-again relationship with a dude from the original 90210 and that confuses me. Seriously, is the has-been really worth the stress, Megan? It ages you. Six months from now, you won’t even be considered for a spot in the Top 50. Think about it.)



Nor do I have a problem with (#3) Jessica Alba, because I recognize her value would plummet had this list been based on talent. But congrats to (#4) Britney Spears for Biggest Turnaround, because this time last year, she looked like this and nobody bothered to glance twice at her unless she was taking really wide panty-less steps out of a car. And even then, we all cringed. Even boys. And they like free anything.

Adriana Lima (#6) is cool, but Anna Friel (#9) (seen below)? Who? I understand FHM is a British mag, but if fitting the criteria of Sexiest Woman means having the accent, that's just not enough. How her face (seen below) ended up anywhere in the Top 10 before a Scarlett or a Halle or even that Reality TV Russian Svetlana is beyond me.



Thankfully, they rounded the list out with the non-negotiable beauty that is Freida Pinto or else I would have boycotted their sales at all the Wawa’s across the country claiming it was run by “blind” men who made all their cover girls strip for “charity" (see: perverts).

Friday, April 17, 2009

Peek-a-Boo Used to be Fun

So, I'm not a mom or anything, but I'm pretty sure this:



is not what they ("society") mean by closeness.

There has to be another way to establish a relationship with your child - you know, just in case DNA and umbilical cords and placenta aren't enough. Like forcing him or her to do the Macarena with you in front of a crowd full of strangers at the Marriott's "Midnight Social!!!" in Aruba. (Here's lookin' at you, mom). Or pulling your child out of class whilst in his or her favorite school (full of psuedo-BFF's and future heartbreakers) to - surprise surprise - interview for another school for "smarter kids." (Yes, pops, I sabotaged that entire Q & A, thus I was not their "ideal candidate.")

Parents: if you just have some patience, there'll be TONS of reasons for your kids to hate you. It just shouldn't start this early. There's, like, steps to this thing and they involve zippers and measurements and ... kids do unpredicatable shit, people. Like piss without warning. And unless you wear raincoats on a daily basis, it tends to permeate through cotton and silk and possibly polyester. And definitely fleece. And there doesn't seem to be an immediate release pull on this thing that parachutes the child out the bottom and onto land. So, I'm not a fan of this product. And I wouldn't get it for any moms I know either, because I'm pretty sure they spend enough time scrubbing Crayon and Kool-Aid stains out of regular things like carpets and couches - not things with made-up names like "Peekaru," made by folks who didn't use the phone until the age of 6.

Do you want to see how really ridiculous this is? Then watch these videos below: