Another edition of the Throwback Christmas series...got to love the chimpmunks...almost as great is Justin Timberlake's performance on SNL along with his great Christmas Gift in a Box...
In honor of the impending Advent season, I bring to you my favorite song off of Boyz II Men Christmas Album. I formerly thought the name of the song was White Christmas, making me a jaded child who believed that all the white children were having a better Christmas, and I also thought the play on "white Christmas" was genius. This week I came to sad realization that the song is "Why Christmas." I think part of my childhood just died.
If anyone ruins the Kirk Franklin and the Family Christmas Album or the A Motown Christmas Album, it's going to be on. Let's preserve my childhood ...please.
HAUL,
The Queen
I miss when learning was easy and Saturday morning songs explained life. Anyone have a song for stats? I thought I'd do something different from Conjunction junction to illuminate the wonders of your favorite house schoolhouse schoolhouse rock! Schoolhouse Rock- How a Bill Becomes a Law
Around the same time I heard about U-N-I and one of my new favorite songs K.R.E.A.M., I also heard about this group called The Cool Kids. There is some buzz going out about them at the moment, and from what I've read around the net their performance at CMJ music festival was pretty ill. They're music is out on the indy scene, but their core is hip hop...Smurf ...Whop ..they bringing 88 back (a nice lil NASty shout out). Someone needs to talk about the flyness that was 86 tho. I'm just saying...
props to beats and rants and Sasha Frere Jones of the New Yorker for putting me on...
HAUL,
The Queen
I peeped this on Beats and Rants and had to share. First, the "Do the Right Thing"..Giancarlo Esposito reference is hilarious. Of course there is the obvious reference to Wu Tang Clan's C.R.E.A.M. and the Lupe Fiasco reference. It also bigs up one of my favorite sneaker brands of the moment, Creative Recs. In the tradition of Nelly's "Air Force 1s" and Kanye, Nas,Rakim and KRS One's Classic(Nike Remix)...this is one for the times of any sneakerhead. Like Run DMC in some Stan Smiths....hmm.
Sorry Cosby, you're going to have to sit out on this one...but I will hit you up when we celebrate Coogi sweaters.
Another Fox News Host with Another Racist Tirade
This time it's John Gibson on his radio show talking about how he knew the school shooting in Ohio was done by a black kid who listened to hip hop music! Except it was a white kid. Oooops.
Then he was certain that the kid at least listened to hip-hop music (which, by the way, is not the same as gangster rap, in case Gibson is interested in knowing anything before he speaks; it's also not jazz, I know it comes as surprise to Fox News hosts when all black entertainers do not immediately break out in rap). Except the kid was a Marilyn Manson fan. Oooops.
So, Gibson desperately tried to pin this shooting on blacks or black culture, ignoring the fact that almost all school shootings in America are committed by young, white males (which also doesn't prove anything), including this one. Then, at the end, he unbelievably turns it around and tries to make the shooting seem more classy because the kid shot himself at the end. According to John Gibson, "hip-hoppers" are so cold blooded they they walk away from a shooting and do it again. Is his implication that white murderers have the decency to kill themselves afterward? Does that make it better?
It seems hard to believe he'd say these things, right? Listen for yourself:
I am not for seeing racism everywhere (I even defended Don Imus), but for those of you who refuse to see it anywhere, please tell me why Gibson went into this rant against black folks before he knew any of the facts of the case and kept it up even when it turned out it was a white kid who listened to "white" music who did the shooting?
IN the days of blithe racial assumptions, flesh crayons were the color of white people. “Invisible” makeup and nude pantyhose were colored in the hues of Caucasian skin. The decision by manufacturers to ignore whole segments of humanity went unchallenged for decades before the civil rights movement came along and nonwhite consumers started demanding their place on the color wheel.
THE LINEUP At recent spring shows, black models were scarce or nonexistent, including at the Chloé show in Paris, above.
FRESH FACE Honorine Uwera was hired for five New York shows, too few to justify a trip to Europe.
Nowadays the cultural landscape is well populated with actors, musicians, media moguls and candidates for the American presidency drawn from the 30 percent of the American population that is not white. Yet, if there is one area where the lessons of chromatic and racial diversity have gone largely unheeded, it is fashion. This reality was never plainer than during the recent showings of the women’s spring 2008 collections in New York and Europe.
Although black women in the United States spend more than $20 billion on apparel each year, according to estimates by TargetMarketNews.com, it was hard to discern an awareness of this fact on the part of designers showing in New York, where black faces were more absent from runways than they have been in years.
Of the 101 shows and presentations posted on Style.com during the New York runway season, which ended a month ago, more than a third employed no black models, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Most of the others used just one or two. When the fashion caravan moved to London, Paris and Milan, the most influential shows — from Prada to Jil Sander to Balenciaga to Chloé and Chanel — made it appear as if someone had hung out a sign reading: No Blacks Need Apply.
“It’s the worst it’s ever been,” said Bethann Hardison, a former model who went on to start a successful model agency in the 1980s that promoted racial diversity.
AMONG the people she represented were Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford, the chiseled hunk who broke barriers in the 1990s by becoming the unexpected symbol of the country-club fantasia that is a Ralph Lauren Polo campaign.
“It’s heartbreaking for me now because the agents send the girls out there to castings and nobody wants to see them,” said Ms. Hardison, referring to black models. “And if they do, they’ll call afterward and say, ‘Well, you know, black girls do much better in Europe, or else black girls do much better in New York, or we already have our black girl.’”
Last month in New York, Ms. Hardison convened a panel of fashion experts at the Bryant Park Hotel to discuss “The Lack of the Black Image in Fashion Today,” an event she will reprise Monday at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. “Modeling is probably the one industry where you have the freedom to refer to people by their color and reject them in their work,” she said.
The exclusion is rarely subtle. An agent for the modeling firm Marilyn once told Time magazine of receiving requests from fashion clients that baldly specified “Caucasians only.”
The message is not always so blatant these days, but it is no less clear. Take for example the case of two young models, one white, one black, both captivating beauties at the start of their careers. Irina Kulikova, a feline 17-year-old Russian, appeared on no fewer than 24 runways in New York last month, a success she went on to repeat in Milan with 14 shows, and in Paris with 24 more. Honorine Uwera, a young Canadian of Rwandan heritage, was hired during the New York season for just five runway shows.
While Ms. Uwera’s showing was respectable, it was not enough to justify the cost to her agency of sending her to Europe, where most modeling careers are solidified.
“We represent a lot of ethnic girls,” said Ivan Bart, the senior vice president of IMG Models, which represents a roster of the commercially successful models of the moment, among them black superstars like Alek Wek, Ms. Campbell and Liya Kebede.
“We have new girls, too,” Mr. Bart added, young comers like Ms. Uwera, Quiana Grant and Mimi Roche. “We include them in our show package, give them the same promotion as any other girl, and get the same responses: ‘She’s lovely, but she’s not right for the show.’”
Although, in fact, Ms. Roche and Ms. Grant, both black, were seen on runways in the last five weeks, the reality was that only one black model worked at anything like the frequency of her white counterparts: Chanel Iman Robinson, 17, who is African-American and Korean. Particularly in Milan and Paris, Ms. Robinson’s was often the only nonwhite face amid a blizzard of Eastern European blondes.
It is not just a handful of genetically gifted young women who are hurt by this exclusion. Vast numbers of consumers draw their information about fashion and identity from runways, along with cues about what, at any given moment, the culture decrees are the new contours of beauty and style.
“Years ago, runways were almost dominated by black girls,” said J. Alexander, a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” referring to the gorgeous mosaic runway shows staged by Hubert de Givenchy or Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s. “Now some people are not interested in the vision of the black girl unless they’re doing a jungle theme and they can put her in a grass skirt and diamonds and hand her a spear.”
And some people, said Diane Von Furstenberg, the designer and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, “just don’t think about it at all.” Ms. Von Furstenberg herself has always employed models of all ethnicities on her runways. (This September, she hired seven black women, more perhaps than any single label except Baby Phat and Heatherette.) Yet she is increasingly the exception to an unspoken industry rule.
“I always want to do that,” she said, referring to the casting of women of color. “I can make a difference. We all can. But so much is about education and to talk about this is an important beginning.”
But isn’t it strange, she was asked, that she would have to invoke the rhetoric of racial inclusiveness at a time when Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in media, and Barack Obama is running for president?
“Why did we go backward?” Ms. Von Furstenberg asked.
Agents blame designers for the current state of affairs. Designers insist agents send them nothing but skinny blondes. Magazine editors bemoan the lack of black women with the ineffable attributes necessary to put across the looks of a given season.
The current taste in models is for blank-featured “androids,” whose looks don’t offer much competition to the clothes, pointed out James Scully, a seasoned agent who made his mark casting the richly diverse Gucci shows in the heyday of Tom Ford. In today’s climate, it is far more difficult to promote a black woman than her white counterpart.
“You want to sell the model on the basis of her beauty, not her race,” said Kyle Hagler, an agent at IMG. Yet when he sends models out on casting calls based on what he terms a “beauty perspective,” omitting any mention to potential clients of race, “You always get a call back saying, ‘You didn’t tell me she was black.’”
THE reasons for this may seem obvious, and yet the unconscious bigotry is tricky to pin down.
“I’m not pointing a finger and saying people are racist,” said Ms. Hardison, who nevertheless recounted a recent exchange with the creative director of a major fashion label: “She said to me, ‘I have to be honest with you, when a girl walks in, I just don’t see color.’ Meanwhile, they have one girl, or more likely, none in their show.”
Ms. Hardison explained: “‘I don’t see color?’ Does that mean, you don’t want to see?”
There is something illustrative of the entire issue, and the state of the industry, to be found in this September’s Italian Vogue.
Just one image of a black model appears in the issue, midway through a 17-page article photographed by Miles Aldridge and titled the “Vagaries of Fashion.” In it, the glacial blond Anja Rubik portrays an indolent, overdressed Park Avenue princess with a gilded apartment, a couture wardrobe, two towhead children and a collection of heavy rocks. The sole black model in the pictorial is more modestly attired, in an aproned pinafore.
She plays the maid.
Can't even really call this a battle, tho' that's what Perez chooses to title it. I'm a big Ye fan, but Mos Def killed it. If you haven't yet, peep their joins together on Graduation, Kanye West's latest album. They're called Drunk and Hot Girls and Good Night.
p.s. Am i the only one dying of laughter from Shar Jackson's rap on Celebrity Rap Superstar? She's been pretty decent on the show spitting other people's raps, but the Britney line in this piece takes the cake:
You'll end up famous like this girl...or well at least get to do free reviews: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-impulse-group7,0,5960583.photogallery
Has Sly Stone taken to hanging out with Young Joc? Is he doing the motorcycle? lol...Oh Carolina, Shaggy...taking it back to 1993...i remember singing this in the backyard of my elementary school and none of us knew the words beyond "Oh Carolina" ..it was probably a good thing too..
You got to love the respect paid through the insertion of ska dancing in the middle of the video. Classic
Remember Immature..before identity confusion and changing their name to IMX...before Roger on Sister Sister...before B2K. Batman, Romeo and Little Drummer Boy were something. Remember the actual video with the much older woman...just another one in the trends of really young boys and old women in videos.
lie e yi e yi lie e yi e yi...
HAUL,
The Queen
I don't really watch BET and haven't for a long minute(blame it on the lack of cable while at school and other factors). The programming continuously fails to engage me, although I still give Reggie and Deb props for putting on some sitcoms during the day..next step will be uplifting ones (bring back Frank's Place). Still, something inside of me shed a tear when I learned that Rap City is moving to the 1 AM timeslot. It's like I lost something from my youth... and the show is dying.To whom it may concern:
I am not certain how old Nickelodeon is, but it is definitely old enough to exist as a point of nostalgia for several people. I'm only twenty one, but even in conversations with those ten years older than me, I hear people fondly reminiscing of shows they watched as a child on Nick. From "You Can't Do That on Television" to "Legends of the Hidden Temple" to more recent shows like "My Cousin Skeeter," Nickelodeon has a long representation of shows made for kids that click. Although I am not sure that viewer services is the place I should direct my email, I would like to propose to the programming department that Nickelodeon has an "Old School" night..perhaps on Nick @Nite or Noggin, or even a day of programming. I know several people my age would love to watch some old "Keenan and Kel," "The Secret World of Alex Mack" or "My Brother and Me." Perhaps a countdown special of greatest Nick episodes of all time would be good. Really, the Viacom partnership that has Nick paired with MTV networks and other networks like BET Networks, should allow the information to be spread pretty quickly. Its not like many young adults and college kids my age don't already get their "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" fix through Nickelodeon anyway.
Thanks for taking the time to read this email. I truly hope that someone considers the idea..especially since Viacom does a pretty good job of pulling clips of shows off-line anyway, and the Nick Classics website selling DVDs does not seem to be the most legit. If for any reason you could like to contact me, you can email me at {redacted} or call the number you see above. Enjoy your day.
Nickelodeon Clutches Heartstrings of Suffering Quarterlifers
While conducting research for our last post, it came to our attention that there are a lot of bummed-out twenty-somethings sitting around making Nickelodeon tributes to shows they grew up with. (See more here.)
Why is no one -- least of all Nickelodeon -- exploiting this wellspring of self-obsessed nostalgia? If we saw Gumby or Inside-Out Boy pushing product at us, we'd be all over that in an irrational second.
And we'd possibly (though not probably) kill to see a marathon of Salute Your Shorts or something SNICK-like. We'd even revisit Hey Arnold! if we had to. Man. Remember when TV was good? Remember TGIF? WTF happened to TGIF?!
New Wyclef joint...nice to know that everyone from the Fugees didn't have their weed laced with quack.
HAUL,
The Queen
This is hilarious, especially since its in Spanish, but it's deserving of a post because this is at the start of UPN really trying to come into its own. Malcolm Jamal Warner found something to work after The Cosby Show that actually featured his face (although we all love Magic School Bus). It was an entertaining show, and many more were introduced to the quackhead that is Eddie Griffin. I had the pleasure of seeing him at a Jimmy Kimmel taping earlier this year and will assure you that he is still a quackhead. At least someone put him in his place about the N word. Amen, Jesus saves.
HAUL,
The Queen
