MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Woot!

If you're going to do something Grinchy, I suggest you tape it, and send it to us here. Because I'm sure it'll be hilarious. Anyways, enjoy! :P

a thought

i'm feeling both guilty about not having blogged in about a millenium, and too lazy to write a post, but i did have a thought today that i thought i'd share with you all...

when i first read about spain's new laws protecting the rights of apes, i was all for it. but then today it dawned on me that technically, when i'm doing the kind of office work i like to call "monkey work," it might actually now be illegal in spain to subject a monkey to my job. aka yes a monkey could do this, but a monkey would never have to stoop so low.

ouch.

Just in time for Father's Day!

Click here to go to an ebay charity auction for Bill Cosby's sweaters from the great days of Cliff Huxtable. Proceeds benefit Cosby's N.A.S. charity, fixing the hood one ungrateful youth at a time.

If you guessed what N.A.S. stands for +10 points.
If you guessed/said it and aren't Black -2,000,000,000 points.
Sorry, sometimes it beez like that.

for your listening (and viewing) pleasure.

I like this song and video. It has nothing to do with politics or society or any of the stuff this blog is about, I just wanted to post it. Huzzah!

movie review: be kind rewind

So before I really get into writing all of this, I'll preface my post by admitting that this is probably my first review, at least on here, and that I'm going to be decidedly unapologetic about my opinions.   Moral of the story?  If you disagree with me, I guess you can say something about it, but your time might be better served going somewhere else.  Anyway..

I'll start right off by saying I loved this movie.  Loved it.  I'd pay to see it twice- in fact, I actually did (Kaya don't say I never did nothing fo' yo' ass).  It was an excellent mix of funny, sweet, genuine, down to earth and sombre, all things that make a movie go from good to great.  For those of you not familiar with the general concept of the film, I'll go ahead break it down for you:

Be Kind Rewind is a story following a lovably awkward group of misfit characters caught in the monotony of their everyday lives in the unbearably static yet ominously evolving community of Passaic, New Jersey.  Mike (Mos Def) is a young man living with and working for his adoptive father figure Mr. Fletcher in 'Be Kind Rewind,' a slightly archaic (their only medium is the already obsolete video cassette) video store and community mainstay whose claim to fame is "1 day 1 dollar" rentals.  When Mike's best friend, a neurotic mechanic named Jerry (Jack Black), hatches a plan to foil "the power plant" that is secretly "controlling" everyone in their community, he accidently creates an intense magnetic field around himself, and, in so doing, erases all of the tapes in 'Be Kind Rewind' on his next visit.  After this a bunch of hilarity ensues as Mike and Jerry try to cover their asses by re-filming hobo'd, 20-minute versions of the films in the store, which surprisingly become a hit in the community.

What you won't see in the previews for Be Kind is the elephant-in-the-room issue of gentrification and the racial segmentation of communities.  What you quickly learn as the film takes off, is that 'Be Kind Rewind' is in very real danger- the Housing and Zoning department of Passaic wants to demolish the building to make way for new condominiums, "improving the life of the people in this community."  So, what once began as an attempt to stay out of trouble becomes a desperate and hurried mission to save the store from demolition and its inhabitants from having to relocate to the projects.

Normally for a movie like this I'd be all moved by the messages and have the humor as an added bonus, but Gondry doesn't do that.  The film carries like a billion different messages (just read the reviews out there that discuss pop-culture consumption, the creation and ownership of art, race relations and creating community) but is able to refrain from really preaching any one of them.  He doesn't make anyone the clear "bad guy" (lol, well, maybe nobody but Sigourney Weaver, who also has a cameo toward the end of the film) and won't give the audience a corny, cookie-cutter set-up or ending.  It seems like it would be annoying, but what it really ends up being is very open and honest- you are let into these people's lives, and while your moment of voyeurism might be during a particularly comedic and turbulent time for them, there is no move made on their part to make you comfortable or pleased, they just exist, and I personally think that they, and the film, are better for it.

So yeah, this was kind of rambly, and didn't' say everything I felt (I don't want to give anything away) but suffice it to say that this was one of the best moviegoing experiences I've had in a long while.  Gondry, Black, Glover and Mos Def managed to make me feel a melange of emotions: joy, rage, excitement, sympathy, outrage, nostalgia, and most of all- enjoyment.

[EDIT] And just because he's great, here is a Mos Def video.  Mos, if you're reading this, I love you.  Even if you do have like 8 baby-mommas... lol.

ho ho ho

Merry Christmas! For those of you celebrating, I hope you're with people you love. For those of you not- enjoy the day off! Hellz yeah!

in lighter news...

queen latifah is engaged to her "secret" girlfriend, jeanette jenkins. awww. i mean who was she ever trying to fool, but still. i'm happy not to have to read about it in O.K. magazine anymore. because i'm trying to quit that shit. its unhealthy.

point is, thats fun. power to the people. although the comments sections on some of these gossip blogs might make you a little sad, so be warned.

Furnisklagen.

Okay so first of all, if you couldn't tell, I'm at work, which means that this point will be short and probably not that juicy. But you know, I felt compelled to make a little entry. And p.s. this won't be like about politics or gender or race or society, but just about the crazy culture that is post-grad living in the city.

So as most of you know or have probably surmised from all of these posts and the things I tend to write about, I am a newly graduated young woman living in the Big Ole' City for the first time. What you may not have known is that apartment living is rough and I have been living on an air mattress and out of a suitcase for the past month. But no more, I say! Well, at least to the suitcase (the air mattress is here until I get together those thousands of dollars that places charge for decent mattresses!) because this past weekend I made a trip to- da da da daaaa-

IKEA!!!

Yes yes, cheers, jeers and deers, everyone

Okay so if you're post-20 years old and don't know what Ikea is, then please crawl from under that rock, wipe the crap out of your eyes and clean your ears. I mean really, it's time to catch up with the times. Ikea is a wonderland for all new graduates and starting-anews, an emporium of well designed furniture at highly competitive prices.

Translation? A warehouse of trendy particle board in boxes that you have to assemble yourself.

So making it to Ikea was one story (word of advice: if your directions say to take the Upper Level of the GW Bridge- do not take the Lower Level- this would be classified as a bad choice and can lead you to frantically screaming "WHERE ARE WE" while driving somewhere in Jersey with shallow pools of dank water and ominous crowds of geese flying everywhere) but once we got there it was all gravy.

I mean, the people at Ikea know what they're doing. Do a little glitz and glam with the blue and yellow thing (and you probably thought that our designing skills at afropologë had no rhyme or reason. Yeah suckas, showed you, didn't we??), make re-creations of amazing rooms furnished entirely with their crap so that you "ooh" and "ahh!" and try all of the features (okay so I swirled a couple lazy suzans and lifted up the secret-storage bed, don't judge me!) and you can reel in the masses.

What you don't realize until later- when you're hauling that 60 pounds of wood "finish" and pressed wood chips up to your fifth floor walk-up, stopping every floor to break for air with tiny dogs barking at you through doors and bachata coming loudly from somewhere- is that you have to put this crap together, and that even though they say that it's easy unless you have power tools it's a ridiculous task to undertake.

So I finally get the crap up to the apartment, get it out to put it together, open the instructions and.. THOSE CRAPS WEREN'T IN ENGLISH.

Not only were they not in English, but they weren't in any other language, either! Just pictures of an oddly-shaped smiley-faced dude putting together things, with arrows and angles and pictures that left way more to the imagination than I would have liked. It's like okay I get it- you're an international company with branches all over the globe, printing out a billion different instructions with languages suited to a particular country could be a pain. But I'll be damned if figuring out how to put that crap together wasn't like reading hieroglyphs.

The moral of the story? When within the realm of my affordability, buy quality furniture. Additonally, pay someone else to move it in and set it up.

P.S. Doesn't Lazy Suzan sound like something dirty? Like the town ho who brings a little chair to her corner so the bottoms of her feet don't get sore? Yeah, I thought so, too.

we got quotes, son!

Random little spec of a post, but I was bored and googled "afropologe" and saw that a few people referred to/linked/quoted us in some places. That is cool. Thanks y'all, I got a warm fuzzy feeling inside! To celebrate I think I'mma see Morris Chestnutt's movie Hey Baby, Let's Get Married. Haha.

But really though I'd go see that.

like the such as and south africans in the iraq

Sigh.

This is sad on so, so so so many levels. Number 1: That question wasn't really a great question to have to answer in like 60 seconds, plus it's such a ridiculous statement that part of me can't even blame this poor girl for stumbling around in the dark recesses of her vacant brain searching for an equally incoherent answer (a quest which she clearly over-delivered for). Number 2: The Iraq? South Africa? Asian countries? Word? You couldn't pick one country in Asia? This is just.. ugh, blah...
And here I am sounding equally incoherent. Want to know why? Because Miss Teen South Carolina just coughed up a big ball of ignorance and hurled it at the face of every single person unfortunate enough to have seen/heard her answer (which includes you now, thanks to me :D). Stuff like this makes my head hurt because of the fact that it puts you face to face with thick ignorance that blankets so much of America. So maybe some Americans can't locate us on a map, yes, that is a severe problem probably more attributable to the fact that we have a shameful lack of focus on geography in public school education- but what I find slightly more troubling is that, while we are at war, in an age of incredibly tense international relations, this girl can't even pick a few countries out east other than the ones she's heard buzz words about.

Let's hope our government is a little better at picking out countries on a map. We're good with Iraq and I think we've almost located North Korea, now we just gotta find North Africa and we'll be fine.

...oh, Kaya has informed me that Africa has more than two countries. I guess further investigation is necessary.



And for pure enjoyment...

Wasn't that hilarious? I thought so. :D

i'm frazzled

Ok y'all, so I'm really super sorry that it's taken me forever and a freaking day to have something to write in here- and yes, that is going to have to continue (for now). I finally finished my finals and as I look back on my college career and start to realize that yes, it's over and no, I don't have to take anymore finals or write anymore papers I'm also realizing that yes- my brain is a bit fried and it's getting a little more difficult for me to write.
Since it's 4am (and I really need to start focusing on doing this whole "adult" schedule thing) I'm not going to write much (I'll save that for tomorrow) but I will say that today I spent a good chunk of the day watching 90's videos on youtube with Tiff (don't judge, please) and wanted to share some that I thought were particularly "meta."
So.. here goes!

Madonna - Don't Tell Me


Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly
(p.s. I just noticed that the little cheesy elevator-esque music in the beginning is totally "Everlong.." hilarious. I freaking love the Foo Fighters)


And just for fun..


K, that's it for now. I'll be back tomorrow. ;)