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Here’s an audio/video mixtape from some of the best MJ mixes I’ve heard recently. How many times can we say “RIP Michael?!”

SIDE A : The MJ Warm Up

Track 1. Come On Come On Come On/Lemme Show You What It’s All About: Love the five-part Minding Michael podcast series from Qool DJ Marv Aural Memoirs & da Buttamilk Archives. Featuring the MJ hits I had forgotten along with those beloved pop standards, this podcast is not to be missed. My favorites are Part One, “A Good Time,” for its melancholy, and Part Three, “Grab Your Belt Buckle/Music’s Taking Over” for the disco hits that make you move even when you’re sitting down. “Roughly 75 percent of these songs, I’ve never played in public,” Qool DJ Marv wrote about Minding Michael. “This is my translation of Michael as a fan and DJ, as a boy who grew up with stronger together black family vibes and Black is Beautiful all up in my head, and as a man who still embraces that exuberant idealism by perpetuating it and sustaining it through the magic of the music in the mix.” (Ranging from 47 mins. to over an hour long)

Track 2. Shake It, Shake It, Baby: Eclectic Method’s The Michael Jackson Video: Don’t be deterred by the Peter Jennings intro to this MJ memory lane video mix. For my money, the highlight comes midway through the video when London-based Eclectic Method mashes up “Blame It On the Boogie” with “Black or White,” and then moves seamlessly into “Rock With You” on top of “The Way You Make Me Feel.” Favorite parts of this video show not one, but TWO Michael Jackson videos that stream simultaneously. Shows just what a versatile dancer and performer Michael really was! (4:51 mins)

Track 3. You Can’t Run Away From/This Love I Got: Can’t even remember hearing Jackson Five do “Ready or Not Here I Come,” but you can groove to it here on Norwegian DJ and Producer Teddy Touch’s Memories MJ Tribute mix. Love mixing freestyling and beats with MJ’s classics. (40:04 mins)

SIDE B (The Flip Side)

Track 4. And Don’t Go Around Breaking Young Girls’ Hearts: If you like it when Michael Jackson goes all electronic on you, check out this Billie Jean remix from Philadelphia’s DJ Apt One. Guaranteed to make you move! (6:06 mins)

Track 5. Let Us Realize that a Change Can Only Come/When We Stand Together As One: Believe it or not, there are a handful of viral music videos out there that feature performances by inmates from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, a maximum security prison in the central Philippines. (The prison management has inmates do choreographed dances there for exercise.) The CPDRC did a Thriller video remake in July of 2007, and a “We Are The World” Michael Jackson Tribute just days after Michael passed away. Neither performance needs any introduction. (4:26 and 3:39 mins)

Track 6. Never Can Say Goodbye: DJ Ayres did this Michael Jackson Mix for The Rub, a party that creates long lines around the block of Brooklyn’s Southpaw the first Saturday of every month. The mix is a great chronological history of Michael’s music from “Maybe Tomorrow” (the ’70s) to  “Butterflies” (2001). (53:47 mins) –AFS

Abbie Fentress Swanson is a freelance radio radio reporter (and music addict) based in Brooklyn, New York.

New York-based writer, publicist, and activist April Silver says she continues to get feedback about a piece she wrote in response to this performance by Lil’ Wayne and Drake at the BET Awards 2009. Director Byron Hurt also responded, and wrote the following to BET’s Debra Lee on June 29:

“Sunday night’s BET Awards show was a disgrace. It’s sad and unfortunate that your network, owned by Viacom, continues to crank out mediocrity and perpetuate negative stereotypes of black men, women, and children. Although you likely received high ratings for the awards show, there is no honor in reinforcing the status quo’s opinion of black people. Your tribute to Michael Jackson and the overall show had its great moments, however, BET failed to deliver a solid, quality show. Rather than “raising the bar” and presenting African-Americans as a creative, proud, dignified people, BET lowered the bar for the entire world to see. The BET Awards drew a huge audience to watch a tribute to Michael Jackson, but left millions of viewers feeling disappointed, embarrassed, and reduced to classic stereotypes.

“During the most blatantly sexist performances of the night, the executives at BET failed to act and display intelligence, courage, and leadership. Show executives watched, approved, and applauded as artists Lil’ Wayne, Drake, and Cash Money brought young, under-aged girls onto the stage to dance and serve as window dressing while they performed ‘Every Girl,’ a song that reduces girls and women to sex objects. In a culture where one out of four girls and women are either raped or sexually assaulted – and where manipulative men routinely traffic vulnerable women into the sex industry – it is not okay that BET allowed this to happen. BET owes its entire audience – particularly girls and women around the world – an apology for its failure to intervene. BET should also take immediate steps to ensure that this kind of sexist performance does not happen again. Sunday night’s show epitomizes why so many black people worldwide are fed up with BET and feel strongly that your network inaccurately represents black men and women.”

# # #

“Last night, live at the BET Awards in Los Angeles, a room full of head-bobbing, consenting adults bounced to Drake and Lil Wayne’s back-to-back performances of the hit songs “Best I Ever Had” and “Every Girl.” I watched, underwhelmed. I wanted more “Michael” in what was supposed to be this award-show-turned-Michael-Jackson-tribute. I watched, ever puzzled by the Lil Wayne phenomena that has captivated the music industry. I watched, wondering when the set was going to end.

“Then the little girls came onstage…literally the little girls. “Are those children?” I asked out loud, in disbelief. Then the camera panned the audience. Everyone was still head-bobbing as the little Black girls huddled around these superstars.

“‘Are those little girls on stage…for this song?!?!‘ I, still in disbelief, lost breath and forced myself to exhale. ‘Why are these little girls featured on this performance? Is somebody going to stop this?’ Again, the show was live, though for a nano-second, I was hoping that a hunched-over stage manager would bust through from back stage to scoop up the children, rescuing them from harm’s way…from being associated from this song. But instead, what those girls witnessed from the stage was hundreds and hundreds of adults (mostly Black people) staring back at them, co-signing the performance. These girls, who all appeared to be pre-teens, were having their 15 minutes of glam on one of the biggest nights in televised Black entertainment history, with two of pop culture’s biggest stars at the moment, with millions of people watching. They must have been bubbling with girlish excitement, shimmering like princesses all night. Pure irony: one of them wore a red ballerina tutu for the special occasion. And we applauded them.

“But did no one care that Lil Wayne’s song Every Girl is about grown men and their sexual escapades with women? Did the meaning and intent of the song matter to anyone, this song whose hook and other lyrics required a re-write in order to get air play? ‘I wish I could love every girl in the world.‘ That’s the radio-friendly version of ‘I wish I could f–k every girl in the world.‘ But Lil Wayne’s BET performance was the clean edit of the song. Perhaps he (and the show producers) thought that there was nothing wrong in featuring the children in the clean version. Perhaps we were supposed to see the whole bit as cute and innocent. Absolutely not. There’s no other way to cut it: in presenting little girls in a performance of a song that is about sex, group sex, and more sex, BET and Lil Wayne set the stage for child pornography. It doesn’t matter what version of the song was played, much like a man who batters women is still an abusive man, even if uses flowery phrases while battering.

“In the song, Lil Wayne mentions superstar Miley Cyrus, but Cyrus gets a pass on this lyrical sex escapade because, as he acknowledges, she is a minor. Huh? Why, then, is he comfortable with featuring four minors, these four little Black girls, in the show? How deep exactly is this inability of some men to respect women, and how deep is Lil Wayne’s disregard for the safety of little girls?

“I’m told that one of the girls is Lil Wayne’s daughter. That doesn’t matter. In fact that makes it worse. Last night we were reminded that there are few safe spaces for our little girls to be children; that some of us are willing to trade their innocence for a good head nod. BET and Lil Wayne are beneath low because, in effect, they have given premium assurance to these and other little girls that their best value, their shining moment, their gifts to display to the world, all lie within a context that says they are fuckable.

“The programming at BET has been heavily criticized by artists, concerned citizens, college students, parent groups, social justice organizations, media reform activists, and many others for over a decade now. Their programming seems hell bent on broadcasting the worst pathologies in the Black community. Some have joined the anti-BET movement by simply tuning out. Others have been more pro-active. National letter-writing campaigns and other activities designed to shame and/or pressure the network into improving its programming have been in play for some time now. Boycotts have been called as well. Two years ago, for example, the network found itself in the line of fire as it planned to air the very controversial series “Hot Ghetto Mess.” Advertisers, such as State Farm Insurance and Home Depot, responded to pressure and requested that their ads be disassociated with the series (though, their ads could be placed in other programming slots). None of this has made a difference. In fact, it seems to have emboldened the network, for it is now expanding. In the fall, BET is due to launch another channel.

“As a social entrepreneur and activist, my entire life/work has been dedicated to standing up for what’s right, especially within the culture of hip hop. When identifying what cancerous elements exist within the Black community, many fellow activists agree with Chuck D (of Public Enemy), and even Aaron McGruder (of The Boondocks), when they targeted BET as one of those elements. That said, I didn’t think that we would ever have to take the network to task for what amounts to child pornography.

“But millions of Black people are not offended by the network and welcome anything BET has to offer, no matter how much it continues to unravel the fabric of our community. Imagine, if you will, BET as a human being and the viewers as the community. You would have to imagine BET as a drug dealer, with his swag on…perhaps outside standing atop a truck, the community crowded beneath him. Imagine him throwing nicely wrapped gifts into the crowed, or giving away turkeys at Thanksgiving. Or maybe it’s Mother’s Day and he buys dinner and teddy bears to all the single moms and grandmothers around the way. Despite his best efforts and despite the approval of his fans, he is still a drug dealer, pimping death to the masses.

“Proverbs is full of sacred text that teaches us that there will always be fools amongst us. Some of them will be highly paid, protected, and given world-wide platforms to show off what they do best. And these fools (be they performers, corporate executives, or others), will have fans and loyal supporters, and a place to call home, like a BET.

“But as long as there will be fools amongst us, there will also be wise ones – a small group of people concerned about the long term health and well being of the community. This small group will often go unheard and they will be outmatched. They will struggle over which problem to address first: the child pornographer, the batterer, the pimp, the prostitute, the thief, the slumlord, or the system that enables it all. They will get tired and their defense will pale in comparison to the almost crushing offense. And they will be betrayed from within. Historically and universally, this is what happens in the struggle for what is right. But eventually, with continued pressure, something will shift. A radical new thinking will emerge, and the fools will lose their stronghold.

“The sure expectation of victory, however, can not be understated. It is a concrete ingredient in the struggle against the death that is being paraded in our community…as necessary as letter writing campaigns, economic boycotts, symbolic and actual protests, and other pressure-oriented activities. It is indeed possible to bring more life into our community.

Copyright 2009, by April R. Silver. Silver is a social entrepreneur, activist and writer/editor. She is also founder of the communications agency AKILA WORKSONGS, Inc. Her first book is the critically acclaimed anthology “BE A FATHER TO YOUR CHILD: REAL TALK FROM BLACK MEN ON FAMILY, LOVE AND FATHERHOOD.” Contact Info: silver@aprilsilver.com or www.aprilsilver.com.

###

BET responded July 3 in a statement to AllHipHop.com:

“BET Networks deeply regrets the performance by Young Money at the BET AWARDS ‘09 (featuring Lil Wayne, Drake, Gudda Gudda and Mack Maine). Elements of the performance were unplanned and should not have happened.”

BET also said it found viewers’ opinions, like Hurt’s and Silver’s, useful. “We have edited Young Money’s performance for all BET Awards ‘09 encore presentations,” a representative said.

BET Awards 2009

I recently released Kiss the Sky, a novel about a black rock musician. Then I did an event with an actual black rock musician who read my book and said that the part about Michael Jackson was so eerie. I had forgotten all about it. But I found it…written years ago… and yes, eerie.

Tell me what you think about MJ and your memories… I am getting creeped out watching all the old footage, especially the ones of Diana calling Michael “sexy” while they are are both wearing those dark spangly shirts…

I wish he’d been happy. I find it hard to believe he was.

Peace,
F

____________________________________________________

Excerpt, Kiss the Sky, Atria Books, 2009
(Written from the P.O.V. of the main character.)

Drifted into a drowse and thought about the way music was my whole life.

My great grandfather sold Billie Holiday reefers, back when she was a bad little girl and he was a dirty old man. A withered up little yellow man. Always looking at the girls of school-age. A sailor, in and out of port. In town just long enough every time to get great-grandma pregnant. And wasn’t it just like me to love Billie, all of her, even her vices.

Then there was my first musical love, Michael Jackson. I was six, and to my child’s eyes he seemed just enough older to know a lot of things I wanted to learn. He was pure music, shimmering, shimmying, shaking, grooving, moving, liquid hipbones and fluid bell-bottomed pantlegs, denim, slouchy caps, a sexy choirboy backed up by his older brothers; plus television, dancing lions and tin-men, a too-old Diana as Dorothy. But wait, that last part was later.

Still, the Michael and “The Wiz” were always linked in my mind. When I was six, my Daddy and I went to see “The Wiz,” way before the movie with Michael and Diana, before the nose jobs and the skin lighteners and the hair straighteners and out-of-court settlements. Strange third-person memory: I see myself and my father walk towards the exit, along a half-lit aisle, with the play unfolding (bright reds and golds) behind us.

But: Michael. His was the music of longing, in a man-child’s voice that a little girl could understand before she truly knew desire. I liked Michael the same time Daddy liked to play the Isley Brothers. I didn’t understand the Isley’s lyrics (thank God), but their guitar licks and keyboards made it hard for me not to dance; their whispers tickled my ears.

Older still: When my girl scout troop had a party I brought Stevie Wonder and my friend Ronnice brought Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” which was everything you needed to know about the difference between uncool and cool. Stevie was uplifting and parent-approved; the teenaged Michael was your best friend’s older brother, a boy who you had a crush on so bad you thought you might melt every time you saw him. Ronnice was in fifth grade and I was in third, which might have been part of my problem, but not all of it. She was what my mother called “fast”–loose with the boys, hard and unforgiving with the girls.

I loved Michael, don’t get me wrong. How could I not? He was my first. But I mounted a defense of Stevie, which all the girls took as a weak-assed move.

When I was in eighth grade, Ronnice had an abortion. Like most of my fast girlfriends, she loved house music, the kind you heard in the clubs she’d sneak into. She was underaged but built like a brick shithouse and nobody checked her I.D. When she got into LL Cool J, I was loving Prince.

Later I worked my way through alternative rock, romantic R&B, gay disco, Public Enemy, Madonna and Grace Jones. Music ecstatic and anthemic, smoke drifting through laser lights, tranny boys in platform heels and lip liner, parties on the subway platform, lots of drugs but not down my throat or up my nose, the music simply lifting me, carrying me like the wind under the cape of a superhero or a pigeon caught in an updraft from a subway grate.

The music, just the music, used to be enough for me. Everything else came later.

I wanted to get back to those days again.

____________________________________________

This is an excerpt from Kiss the Sky (Atria Books 2009) by Farai Chideya. Chideya is a multimedia journalist, author, and the founder of PopandPolitics.com

Eighties nostalgia, young love, and the horrors of summer jobs describe the cinematic ride of Adventureland .

Although written and directed by Greg Mottola, best known for the comedic hit Superbad (2007), this film can only be loosely called a comedy. (And if you are expecting a laugh-filled movie experience like his last film, then Adventureland is not for you.) Instead, Mottola delivers a coming of age story set in Pittsburgh in the 1980s.

Adventureland is the story of college graduate, James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) who has big plans to move to New York City and attend Columbia University’s graduate school. He wants to become a travel essayist and thinks a master’s degree in journalism will help him because the field is “still an old boys’ network.”

However, James’s big plans and lifelong dreams fall flat when he finds out that his parents are broke. Not only is his college graduation gift of traveling through Europe with his buddy canceled, but his parents also tell him he needs to get a summer job to save money.

After rounds of applications to every menial and entry-level job in town, Brennan finds he isn’t qualified for anything, except a “games” job at the local amusement park, “Adventureland.” So, tucking his highly educated tail between his legs, he attempts to make the best of the situation.

James soon finds there are some upsides to his rather brainless job. He develops friendships with people who are crazier and more socially awkward than he is. In some of his summer circles, James becomes the “almost-cool kid.” He also meets a girl, Em (Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame) who is the sad, often depressed, and girl-next-door plain. Yet, she is sexy enough to tug at his heart strings.

And, perhaps one of the best parts of the summer for James Brennan is his weed stash—thanks to his friend who is off in Europe. He had enough weed to make the whole summer bearable and even dim it’s memory. (And having a couple of blunts may have nabbed him a couple of friends and the interest of a hot chick.)

Adventureland is a rather predictable love story with characters that most people can relate to. Almost everyone has experienced a crappy summer job. And most of us, remember the struggles, awkwardness and pain of falling in love for the very first time.

“So, you are a virgin,” said sexually experienced Em on one of their impromptu dates. To which James said, “There were circumstances.”

The relationship between James and Em is realistic, endearing and at times even uncomfortable. The two cover a lot of ground in the movie—from sexual experiences to coping with grief to their hopes and dreams.

This script came rather easy to writer and director Mottola because it is partly autobiographical. He used his own summer job at an amusement park in New York’s Long Island in the 1980’s as the basis for Adventureland.

“I decided this is going to be a personal film and, for better or worse, base it on my recollection,” said Mottola in a recent interview. “Perhaps it is indulgent, but I wanted to draw on my own memories of the time and place. It’s just fun. I could use the music I loved and dress [the cast] in those crazy costumes and stuff like that; but I didn’t want it to be a big ‘kitch’-fest.”

And the blast-from-the-past music was notably one of the best aspects of the movie. Just when the plot slowed down or a laugh was needed, Falco’s 1986 Billboard hit “Rock Me Amadeus” came on to lighten the mood—and hell, just to make you feel good. And to punctuate the tragic nature of young love and stupid decisions, The Velvet Underground’s 1969 “Pale Blue Eyes” song with the lyrics: “Sometimes I feel so sad, but most of the times you just make me mad” were just pure genius to underscore the film’s heartbreak and pain.

Adventureland also scored points for casting characters that fit the part. As Stewart said in an interview about working with Jesse Einsenberg (who played James), “they didn’t hire someone a little more obvious — like a young Brad Pitt.” Instead, they chose ordinary but likeable Eisenberg, who has been acting for 10 years in mostly indie films like Roger Dodger and The Squid and the Whale seraphim falls download . He’s completely believable as the wannabe cool guy, who remains his well-read self but still falls for a kick in the groin from his jokester elementary school friend.

And even Stewart fit the Em character who, like her role in Twilight, has an appreciation for the morose, dark side of life.

Although the movie gets down right juvenile at times with lines like “you’ve got a boner,” you may find yourself laughing in spite of yourself.

So, if you are looking for a fun movie to relive your early twenties, first love and your crappiest summer job while listening to some great tunes – then Adventureland is the ride you’ve been looking for.

Bruises are long gone, but we won’t forget … Rihanna is reportedly performing in Dubai on May 28, her first show after her alleged physical fiasco with Chris Brown last February. A spokeswoman for the Dubai Department of Tourism announced the news, and added that the tickets will be one sale in two weeks. The announcement for the concert that is slated to attract 25,000 audience members comes two days after a spokesperson for Chris Brown denied that he is dating Girlicious singer Natalie Mejia or his hometown ex-gf. Really…

Face it, Cudi can’t get enough of the limelight … Empty threat alert: Kid Cudi’s not retiring. Within months after his solo debut “Day ‘N’ Nite,” Rapper Kid Cudi blogged that he was quitting the rap game due to the horrendous pressure around him (boo hoo). But after a trip to SXSW and now signing with Universal Motown, it looks like Cudi is retracting any emotional weep trip he had when writing his entry. Shoulda’ known…

Pearl Jam, Shmearl Jam …

The alternative grunge band is back with tour dates, an upcoming album, and, wait for it, a film too?!? Guitarist Mike McCready said in a radio interview last month that they are halfway done with the new album, and have a film in the works with direction Cameron Crowe. “We’re building up to our big 20th anniversary,” McCready said. “We’re trying to have a little campaign of building rereleases with new mixes and new outtakes up until that time.”  Not another weak sauce comeback, I hope.

Radiohead’s “Pay-What-You-Want” sets trend … Toronto based hip-hop emcee K-os is following Radiohead’s footsteps by allowing his fans to name their price for his upcoming tour dates. For each show, K-os will not ask his audience members to pay a standard ticket price — rather, the rapper will ask for what they should pay after watching the show. The idea, which was backed by his manager, was not an easy decision to make, but was something he wanted to try. “I love risk,” K-os says. “If I wanted no risk, I’d work some other job. I’m excited to see what will happen.” We’re excited too.

I’m sitting in my sedan in front of Sopranos Pizza on Washington Ave. on South Beach watching a group of pigeons pulverize a slice of pizza on the sidewalk. It’s Sunday morning, in late March and the sun is rising on South Beach. It’s the final day of Miami’s Winter Music Conference.

I’m having déjà vu. Most likely cause I’ve attended this annual dance music marathon, where DJs, producers, artists and their hangers-on come to break new records, network and party, for the past five years. So here I am again to “house music all night long” as the old classic goes. I pick up my ever-present iPod Touch to read a twitter update:

i murdered the living shit out of the winter music conference.

It’s Questlove’s feed. Questlove, the drummer for Def Jam recording artists the Roots, DJ’d a showcase sponsored by Giant Step with MC Yahmeen and DJ Keen One in the Delano Hotel’s Florida Room a few hours ago. I was there. But, already @questlove is tweeting from the Miami airport.

i gotta say. this is the most fun i’ve had at WMC next to my grand debut back in 2000. only difference I took the most risks of my professional career last night.

I’m hungover. Not from alcohol. I didn’t even get a buzz from the $13 vodka and cranberry juice cocktail, more watered down than the pool beside the Delano’s bar. I should have ordered a Corona—only eight bucks and I would have been straight.

lol @ 9 people in this airport following me as i tweet.

A line forms in front of a Cuban grocer, men waiting in front of a service window for coladas, scrambled eggs and sausage. A sidewalk cleaner wrangles a noisy vacuum next to my car disturbing a nearby street bum, who rises in a fog and meanders away. I just realized that I haven’t made it home yet. It’s going to be a really hot day.

oversoldflight delayed 3 hours, overcrowded airport, kids cryin, bumped to coach middle seat: this is all u got for me flight gods? BRING IT

Yesterday evening on the way to the Giant Step party, I was walking up Washington towards Lincoln, made a right turn and headed to Collins and I spotted rapper Fat Joe driving a white Benz. The sun was about to set. The rooms at the Delano are all-white. You’ll know the Delano from the whitewashed building and towering green ivy shrubs hiding the entrance. Giant Step has been doing WMC parties at the Delano for 13 years.

The Delano lobby is legendary, with striking wide-open airy corridors, soaring ceilings, flowing white drapes and cherry-wood floors, weird misshapen disproportioned decorations from days of yore.. I headed straight for the back orchard, with its tall palm trees, hammocks, extremely large white beds, ensconced bungalows, and shiny blue infinity pool. The canopied lemongrass cabanas with wall-mounted plasma TVs gleamed like the sparkling tents on some Polynesian isle. The ivory sand beach was steps away. Nothing like the bungalow hotel LaFlora further south on Collins, which I’d been in a few days before. The only memorable lobby décor there was a lonely bird of paradise in a cylindrical glass vase.

Philadelphia DJ Vikter Duplaix was on poolside, playing reggae, a Supercat tune “Dolly my Baby,” but eventually K’Naan a reedishly thin singer and rapper who wore a very cool black fedora with feather arrived to sing tunes from his recently released Troubadou r. He was so skilled he managed to get the audience to sing along and sound good. He’s often been compared to Wyclef Jean. Dude knows how to write a song. He ran through “Take a Minute,” “Fatima,” and “Wavin Flag” playing a hand drum onstage along with another guy playing djembe. A guitarist and a backup singer were the only other instrumentation onstage, though he brought up Matisyahu, the Jewish reggae singer, later. The two did a tour together in December so they sounded rehearsed. K’naan is going on tour with Damien Marley and Nas soon, and Snoop Dogg.

Questlove played after K’naan, long after dark, around 10, in the Delano’s underground bar The Florida Room, a 1950’s Havana- meets- Harlem speakeasy and piano lounge designed by Lenny Kravitz, with sparkling crystal chandeliers and bronze mirrored ceilings. Long lines to get in endured all night, and I considered myself lucky to get in.

first 50 songs went from dilla to elvis to wayne to johnny mathis to gang starr

Of course there’s a lot of stuff Questlove’s not mentioning. The “123456789101112” song from Sesame Street, the rare Bill Withers, and all the friggin go-go music. Seriously, he unloaded like 45 minutes of Chuck Brown; this was like, early on.

to the pointer sisters to marley to ray charles to cash to zep to tribe to Al to MJ to the dead to elton to NERD to rare dangelo to rare EWF

The only “house” music track he played was Osulande’s “Don’t Change” and that was right off top which he quickly segued into Slick Rick’s “Lodi Dodi.” Halfway through the night he dropped on Eddie Kendricks’s “Girl you need a change of mind” but technically that’s not house music, techno or whatever you wanna call it. It was mostly R & B, reggae, rock, early funk, hip-hop, dancehall and jazz. And I’d agree that his entire set was pretty risky, especially for Winter Music Conference. At one point he tried to segue from a funk track to Thelonius Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” and dancing on the jam-packed floor was on pause. There were a lot of moments like that, where the musical choices were not geared toward keeping people dancing, but, keeping them on their toes. Few people danced during his 15 minutes of obscure Bill Withers, but they were standing, anticipating what track this Philadelphia DJ with the wild afro and ever-present afro pick in his mane was gonna play next. Fun fact: the only track REEEEWIIIIIIINDed was Damian Marley’s “Welcome to Jamrock”.  Six hour non-stop set. And Questlove never sat down. Not once.

the name of the game was VARIETY (dj’s take note) take more creative risks.—ok class done.

Leaning over his keyboard, author Andrew Keen typed the word “Why?” into the search bar. Keen, who believes that the internet is “cannibalizing culture,” is also fascinated by the secrets of our online universe. He plays with a keyword research tool—a website feature that ranks the frequency of billions of questions inputted into search engines—and the results of his one-word query are sorted into a tidy graph.

“Oh my,” says Keen as he reads down the list. “This is interesting.”

At the top of the graph, with almost 4,000 searches per day: “Sigmund Freud: Why do we dream?” For Keen, this is an uncanny result. Only moments before, he was comparing Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams to what he sees as its modern equivalent: the interpretation of search trends. Freud delved into the human psyche through the analysis of dreams, but the internet is providing a window to the subconscious on a massive scale.

“Freud had to come up with a whole theory of guessing what people were thinking through dreams,” said Keen. “Marx had his theory of thoughts being driven by the reality of economics. Religious people of course have their theory. But in a sense, the people of Google know more than anyone.”

In the U.S. alone, 250 million internet users seek answers from search engines every day.

Keen has been actively raging against what he believes to be the culturally destructive force of the internet since his 2007 book, The Cult of the Amateur. This self-labeled polemic accuses internet users of feeding themselves willfully into Google and creating a monster. The search engine, Keen says, is the “Big Brother” of the modern world. “We pour our innermost secrets into the all-powerful search engine through the tens of millions of questions we enter daily,” Keen writes. “Search engines like Google know more about our habits, our interests, our desires than our friends, our loved ones and our shrink combined.”

Our ignorance is Google’s power, according to Keen, as all our freely given information is manipulated for massive commercial gain. Websites competing for traffic use search engine optimization—the art of catering to search engine rules in order to grab a top spot in their page rankings—and try to interpret search trends so that they can create pages depending on recurring terms or hot topics. The relationship between search engines and websites is financially interdependent. The more information search engines accumulate from users, the more advertising they can sell. The more traffic websites catch, the more advertising revenue they earn. Everyone is vying for clicks, and that means knowing as much as possible about web users.

“Never before have we given out so much information so publicly,” said Keen. “That’s the thing about search that is so shocking, and that most people don’t know—Google is keeping information. Every time we search we’re adding to the intelligence of Google and not being paid for it.”

And what is it that the “people of Google” know about us? Aside from the numerical data that makes up our governmental and financial identity, search engines know the questions we are seeking to answer through the internet. More than 2.5 million people every year search for “How to talk dirty to my boyfriend.” Almost 1.5 million want to know “What does a hymen look like?” and approximately 800,000 people are asking “Where can I buy guns online?” In one of the most popular search categories—the “How to” query term—more than 2.1 million people annually want to know “How to give head” and 1.6 million people want to know “How to have sex”. It is impossible to gauge whether or not these terms are being dictated by bored, uninformed teenagers, but certain results imply something more sinister than curiosity. The 13th most popular term, with 2,500 people a day and 900,000 annually seeking its content, is “How to kill a fetus at home.”

“I think it reveals how pathetic a lot of people are, that they would ask these kinds of questions,” said Keen. “It’s a mystery to me.”

Keen has been widely criticized for his pessimistic view of the internet’s social value, notably by his nemesis Lawrence Lessig, who described The Cult of the Amateur as “shot through with sloppiness, error and ignorance.”  He has been called an “elitist” by bloggers who disagree with his view that the internet is killing our long-established cultural gate-keeping system by democratizing information to the level of lowest common denominator. Bloggers are also quick to point out that for someone who thinks blogs are the amateurish evil of the internet, Keen updates his own–a blog called “The Great Seduction” – daily.

Keen believes he is separated from most of the blogosphere by being a “pre-existing professional artist” for whom the internet is an “exciting vehicle”–a medium that works as a supplement to the real world, not as a replacement. The internet, Keen believes, is nothing more than a pool in which to view our own reflection.

“This technology is a mirror,” said Keen. “The theological and deeply philosophical nature of the internet is such that now we can know what people are really thinking. We didn’t know before. We could only guess.”

Just like Freud’s dreamland – where our anti-social thoughts and repressed behaviors come out to play – something about the internet brings out the primitive, desirous and socially forbidden in us. Whether revealed in a list of search trends or through dream psychoanalysis, desires such as sex and aggression are a deep-rooted part of humanity’s instinctual nature. But in Freud’s theories, the dark side of human behavior was usually kept locked up inside the walls of the subconscious. Dreams were the only place it could flail around unleashed, unguarded by Freud’s super-ego, the moral conscience, the ten-commandments, the inner watchdog who cages wrong from right and polite from perverse. Seventy years later, we have a new playground: an entire virtual world that we can live in real time. And there is no Super-ego here to guard us.

The pleasure of anonymity, according to Cyber-psychologist John Suler, encourages people to “deliberately create a specific online personality for themselves.” Suler writes in his online text The Psychology of Cyberspace that the freedom of the internet allows people to “have some conscious control over the same kind of wish fulfillment that fuels dreams.” Like dreams, virtual online space encourages people to act “out of unconscious fantasies and impulses, which may explain some of the sexuality, aggression, and imaginative role playing we see on the internet.”

In chat rooms such as www.4chan.org, users are given unedited freedom to be as sexually explicit and aggressive as they like. Pornographic pictures are posted into the adult chat rooms every second, and all it takes to access the content is one click on the “I agree” button. One anonymous user describes in chronological detail how he meets women in clubs and drugs them before taking them home, raping and torturing them. “I go out in clubs and spike drinks, get ‘em drunk and take ‘em home,” he writes. Another anonymous user offers “human meat” for fellow cannibals. “I’m not a serial killer,” he writes, “but I have a connection to buy human meat. I am a cannibal. Does that work for you?” In the “random” chat room, a user posts pictures “to piss Christians off” – anonymously, of course. The image shows a figure kneeling, with another figure holding a gun to its head. Underneath, the text reads: “The cure for Christianity.” Another anonymous post follows a thread about the best knives for causing bodily harm. “Blade goes in, twist, twist back, remove,” the user describes. “The bleeding most likely won’t stop without cauterization within the first few minutes. By then he’ll either have been stabbed again or be dead depending on where you got him.”

On average, more than 35,000 users post to 4chan.com every second, with hundreds of posts feeding the site continuously. Although much of the traffic may be driven out of harmless curiosity, sexual and aggressive internet behavior–displayed in public forums or through search trends – can also indicate a more formidable threat. Hans Christian Jasch, who works for the Justice, Freedom and Security department of the European Union – one of the largest and most prominent world organisations tackling global terrorism – believes that the internet has become a breeding ground for extremist ideology and an almost infallible communication device for terrorists. “There is basically no control,” said Jasch. “It is impossible to control the internet.”

Cases of anti-social behaviour encouraged by the internet happen every few seconds. “Because of the nature of the Internet, people are anonymous,” said search engine optimization consultant Michael Gray. “They can go and act like a jerk online and nobody is really going to care – a lot of people do that.”

In the industry, these people are known as “trolls.” Trolls lurk in public forums, waiting for the moment to attack anonymously. Their comments splash individual blogs and respected news outlets alike with vulgar criticisms and personal assaults designed to cause disruption and outrage. “The Internet is so big, so powerful and so pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life,” says Andrew Brown, a journalist and blogger for the British newspaper The Guardian.

Of course, the internet isn’t just a breeding ground for uninhibited alter-egos. A major shift has occurred in recent months, as social networking websites have officially become more popular than pornography. Facebook, the master of the social networking universe, more than doubled its user base last year by targeting the global market. In Europe alone, the site’s user base increased from under 9 million members in June 2007 to more than 35 million in June 2008. Globally, the site grew by 153 percent. Approximately 14 percent of all Americans have a Facebook account, and more than 580 million people – making up 7 percent of the world’s population – belong to a social networking site.

But Facebook and similar sites are still dwarfed by search engine use. Google has consistently remained the number one website in the world, with 75 percent of the market share. The exponential growth of the internet has meant a guaranteed increase in search engine use and created the perfect environment for big business.

“Websites and publishers who are able to figure out what people are searching for are going to do a much better job of capturing the traffic,” said Gray.

Figuring out what people want has become a vital skill in the online world. More websites are gearing themselves toward the most popular search terms in the hope of attracting the 250 million daily visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Every taboo, embarrassing or perverse question – along with many innocent ones – typed into the search bar creates a virtual model of the human mind that SEO experts use as a basis for the mass psychoanalysis of internet users. Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes the search engine as “a giant supercomputer” with dozens of data centers around the world. They keep logs of every website visited and every corresponding IP address – meaning that each word typed into the search bar can be easily traced back to the user. Schmidt says that Google is “reasonably satisfied” with their privacy controls and that the company works hard to ensure that private information cannot be accessed and used for harm. “Although you can never say never,” he added.

Right now, a tool called “Google Trends” allows anyone to view the world’s top search queries down to a specific day and year, country and province. Most websites that offer information—such as news sites and guide pages—regularly check Google trends and create pages specifically to catch search traffic. For example, one of the top “How to” search trends – “How to have sex” – has accumulated 36 million pages in Google. There are more than 28 million pages for the next most popular term – “How to give head.” The question, “Why do we dream?” corresponds to more than 25 million pages. Bringing eyeballs to pages means advertising revenue, so web pages are constantly being created to match consistent search terms – such as “How to have sex.” With topical search terms – such as “Smallville, final episode” or “Sarah Palin SAT scores” – it’s a fast-fleeting competition to catch searchers before their interest in the subject matter wanes.

“It’s sort of an arms race,” said Gray.

Search engines and SEO teams compete to analyse and understand inputted information. For search engines, the more specific model of the human mind they can create, the better targeted advertising can be. For SEO experts, paying close attention to search trends is essential for building websites that will drive traffic. Search engines want to produce the most specific and accurate results they can filter, while SEO experts want to create pages that will rank highly in search engines and get clicks. The relationship is fraught with competition.

“Google is doing everything they possibly can to prevent us from manipulating the search engines,” said Gray. “Because if it’s completely manipulatable, then they’re not in control and we are. That’s a bad spot for them to be in.”

The information that Google accumulates about how and why people search is kept a tight secret. These “algorithms”, which determine how Google ranks pages, are the secret recipe that every internet entrepreneur wishes he could get his hands on. Google is constantly adjusting its methods depending on the terms being typed into search bars every day.

“Google says that every six months, 50 percent of their search terms are new,” said Gray. “But people are always going to searching for the same problems that human beings have been trying to solve forever.”

In internet terms, that means sex and communication – pornography and social networking. In Freudian terms, it represents the fundamental struggle between primitive instincts and social behavior. Freud believed that it is “impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built on a renunciation of instinct.” According to Freud, the animal in us all lies dormant in the recesses of the subconscious. It might be the case that our dream playground has become virtual reality through the internet and the ravaging animals within us are tearing down the walls of polite society. The unfiltered information we provide to search engines may be posing a threat to personal privacy and national security, as well as building mass corporations with God-like omniscience. Or it might just be the case, as Keen suggests, that the internet is nothing more than a shimmering pool of information allowing us to drown in our own reflection.download serial mom

Everyone loves a good love story. How about adding some twists and turns as well as some tricks and tests between two star-crossed spies? That’s the recipe for Duplicity, the sophisticated, cleverly written romantic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen that doesn’t disappoint.

Like most Hollywood love stories, the secret affair between Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and Ray Koval (Clive Owen) begins with the guy spewing some clever pick-up lines – to which Stenwick denies at first. However, after a bit of back and forth between the two, they end up doing the horizontal tango in the most beautiful and luxurious of places, a decadent hotel room in Dubai on Independence Day in 2003.

This chance encounter develops into a clandestine love affair that spans five to six years on screen – although it’s not told chronologically. Rather, it simply sets the stage and tempo for the espionage story that unravels. Duplicity takes the viewer on a seductive path to figure out who is going to win in a knockdown, drag out “corporate death match” between two battling pharmaceutical companies to develop a one-of-a-kind product first. Their longstanding competition and race to win requires teams of spies, double agents and former CIA operatives. And that’s where Claire Stenwick, Ex-CIA, and Ray Koval, Ex-MI6, get a piece of the action. The two are hired to spy on each other’s company but are secretly in cohorts. Because after all says Stenwick, “All we have to do is find the product. If we get there first, we make a fortune.” Their scheming and maneuvering takes the audience on a thrilling ride.

Written and directed by Tony Gilroy who worked his same magic in Michael Clayton and The Bourne Identity series, Duplicity delivers sophisticated, action-packed and perfectly paced scenes as well as sharp writing and well-timed comebacks.

In addition to the artful writing which leaves you on the edge of your seat attempting to solve the mystery (which you can’t), Duplicity characters are flawlessly cast. The hilarious, ultra-competitive CEO, Richard Garsik, is played perfectly by the Sideways (2004) star, Paul Giamatti. And British actor; Tom Wilkinson (most recently seen in Valkyrie with Tom Cruise) carries off the calm, collected and scheming role of Garsik’s arch nemesis. The opening scene with two characters locked in a physical, slow motion, middle-aged men fight is hilarious, unexpected, and a pleasure to watch.

And the pairing of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, seen together before in Closer (2004), is pure genius. The two light up the screen with genuine chemistry that is both exciting, enticing and sexy. Roberts, who’s unbelievably forty-one years old, proves that she’s still a knockout and a box office hit.

Although the relationship between Stenwick and Koval is full of sparks and lustful encounters, it’s not for the lighthearted. The basic components of a good relationship – love and trust – are continuously tested on a personal and business basis for them. From worries about the other cheating while undercover to wondering if they are each keeping their part of the bargain, the mere concept of trust is never taken for granted. “Admit it. You don’t trust me either,” said by Stenwick to Koval, which just about sums up their liaison.

And if your eyes get tired of watching two of the hottest stars on the screen – Roberts and Owen (which would be hard to believe) – the beautiful Condé Nast Traveler

-like locales are a feast to behold. Duplicity takes the viewer on a visual smorgasbord and broke travelers dream with scenes in Dubai, Rome, Miami, Zurich and London. The cobblestone streets, Roman architecture, and clear blue seas are just a few of the treats.

Suspenseful, sexy and full of espionage – Duplicity keeps you guessing right until the very end. The guy gets the girl but do they pass go, reach the goal and collect their reward? Who gets gamed? You will definitely want to know. And besides, it’s a lot of fun to watch.

I am a graduate student at the University of Southern California. I am of Latin American descent; I  grew up, and live in East Los Angeles. From what I knew of white people when growing up is that they lived far, and my mom cleaned their homes.

As I got older, I came to understand the circumstances of my presence in the United States. There was a war back home in El Salvador, my mother, who held a Bachelors degree in Business Administration fled to this country, and was reduced to this work. It was fine work—honest, decent, but at the expense of so much more.

For the most part, I have lived my life in safe zones, interacting with white people from a distance. Not because they were scary to me, but because most just didn’t “get it.”

Now that I am at USC, at the Annenberg School of Journalism, I hear a fair amount of talk on the role of journalists who covers stories that are nitty gritty, the stories of marginalized, low income, communities of color. A community that surrounds USC, yet is absent from the campus. The school—at $18,000 a semester—definitely draws an upper-class student body, earning it the nickname, University of Spoiled Children.

In a recent roundtable discussion, a few professors noted that student journalists need to be comfortable in going into the community and talking to folks. To this I ask, which journalists?

The students in this mid-city academic institution who grew up in the surrounding neighborhood—South Central, ground zero for the Rodney King riots—aren’t uncomfortable. The problem is that their (our) voices aren’t as loud.

While white students feel uncomfortable around people of color what about the students of color who are surrounded by white people?

A tall bald white male student spoke about his experience in South LA, and how he, for the first time, felt like a minority.

The issue of cultural and ethnic sensitivity comes to mind. The stories of economic plight, the stories of people overcoming, the story of the former gang member who got his/her life together, these are not stories where white journalists become “white saviors” because they were able to put some ink to it.

These are stories of real people, that occur every single day, and it takes journalists, who regardless of race or ethnicity have an innate ability to understand the complexity of the human condition.

As one of a few Latinas at Annenberg who comes from an urban setting with a mix of street and academic knowledge, I always find myself contemplating these thoughts. All the time.

I love USC and my program and I have wanted to be a Trojan all my life. But, it’s moments like these that really solidify my presence, my viewpoint, and my understanding towards how stories should be covered, and the importance of community journalism.

We are not all blessed with having grown up in beautiful East or South LA. We are not all blessed with understanding concepts like intersectionality or outsider looking in perspectives, but I hope, that we can at least try to share our stories, without feeling like we just saved someone.

SXSW Music underway … Eager music fans and performers alike have begun their invasion of the SXSW music festival in Wednesday, and the overwhelming abudance of music has been accompanied by none other than tweets. Since 2007, Twitter and Austin festival have become an unlikely (yet powerful) match of community and interaction, helping those solo loners make friends quickly while helping the SXSW vets find the most crackin’ parties. To view some of the diverse crowds from this year’s fest so far, check here.

Kanye West charged not once, not twice … But three times for misdemeanors stemming from the LAX incident in September 2008 where he went buck wild on TMZ paparazzi. Kanye will be arraigned April 14 on the counts of battery, vandalism, and grand theft charged by the Los Angeles City Attorney. If convicted for all three charges, the 808s and Heartbreak rapper could face up to two-and-a-half years in prison. That just might make him as hard as T.I.

Incu-who? … Four years after their latest release Light Grenades, alt-rock band Incubus is back and has announced a greatest hits set and an accompanying tour for the summer. The two-disc release, Moments and Melodies, is slated to drop on June 16 and will include memorable songs like “Megalomaniac,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “Nice To Know You,” while also featuring news songs “Black Heart Inertia” and “Midnight Swim.” The tour, which lasts seven weeks, kicks off July 9 in San Diego.

Fiddy and FOB-by… Fall Out Boy and 50 Cent are embarking on a tag-team tour this summer — enough to make any hipster, indie rocker, or plain ol’ pop hater gouge their eyes out. The rapper and pop-punk group will link up for the first time on April 14 for their “Believers Never Die” stint. But, like most of us “snooty” music appreciators, their own fans aren’t happy about the unlikely affair. One Fall Out Boy fan wrote, “I would rather eat my own crap literally than listen to 50 Cent.” You’re not the only one, dude.

As I type this, bellas I’m in a moving car in the front seat, laptop on my lap, North Carolina zooming past me outside. But I’m bearing glad tidings of fabulous makeup tips, thanks to the gorgeous and wonderful Patrece Williams!

We met and clicked right away at the Macy’s Women of Color event, and it’s rare that I meet someone who I can instantly say, someday I’m gonna be like “I met her when.” I say this because I know Patrece is a star on the rise. Someday I want to click on Bravo or the Style Network and watch her dispensing makeup tips on her own show – she’s THAT sweet, warm, funny, and has presence and personality for days. And her attitude was both refreshing and inspirational. “A humble person is a successful person,” she believes, and let me tell you – from interviewing so many people, that is rare to hear, and even rarer to experience. I can’t say enough nice things about her.

Patrece is the makeup artist of choice for Laila Ali, Colin Cowie, and Debbie Turner Bell. And you can see her hard work every morning bright and early — Patrece is holding down the fort on the CBS Early Show, doing makeup for Julie Chen and all of the celebrities and dignitaries who come through the green room before their interviews. And it all began when she moved from Fort Wayne, Indiana to NYC, and worked at the MAC makeup counter.

“I am living my dream,” she declared during her presentation, and I know she inspired many of the aspiring artists and cosmetics employees at Macy’s that day. I managed to put together a little video of highlights from her demonstration. Click below to watch, but be forewarned – I’m the worst videographer ever. What are you in for here? Terrible, terrible camera angles, misguided attempts at zooming in, continuous shaking, not-so-great audio, occasional applause with the camera-in-hand, and cackling laughter from myself and the loud, loud lady right next to me. Oh, and amazing makeup tips!

Mark my words, one day Afrobella will have a video person down to produce some slick content. One day it won’t be up to me and my complete inability to film.

On this day, she admitted she wasn’t feeling well and her mom (who is her rock and her guiding light), had to stay behind to care for a sick relative. And very sadly, that relative has since passed. Please join me in sending positive thoughts and prayers to Patrece and the Williams family.

Despite the personal burdens in her own life, Patrece pulled it together and taught me and the audience so much about makeup, and about grace under pressure. I’m happy to share some of her top makeup tips!

— Patrece uses many different makeup brands, but MAC ranks high as her favorite. “I love MAC’s foundations. I think they’ve done the research and taken the time to really cater for women of color. I worked for them for 5 years, so I can attest they take it seriously.” Patrece loves Studio Fix liquid foundation, which dries to a powder. This probably explains why I look so frickin shiny in my photo next to her! Note to self, tone down the shine before posing for photos with famous people with flawless makeup.

– In Patrece’s professional opinion, the best way to put on foundation is to start in the T-zone area. Use a dime size amount, stipple on under your eyes, and on your nose and forehead. Then feather it down and out to make sure the coverage is even and looks natural. Patrece focuses foundation on the center circle of the face. “Foundation should just enhance your skin and give it a glow.”

– Patrece (and most makeup artists in general!) loves and recommends lipliner. But she doesn’t use the pointy part. “Lay the pencil flat and point the tip to the bow of your lip. Use the flat edge to give a smudging effect on your lips, rather than a sharp line. That way you can use lipstick or gloss to blend the color and it lasts all day,” she says. Patrece LOVES a plum colored lipliner on women of color. And she specifically recommended a brand and color of lipgloss – I’ll blog about that soon, promise! She used a lighter color of gloss at the center of the lip to highlight or contour her model’s lips. Note to self, try that at home!

– Patrece loves and highly recommends using powder eyeshadow as eyeliner. “If you have oily skin, liquid or cream eyeliner or eyeshadow is going to crease. With powder eyeshadow, you save money and get two uses out of one product.” She uses and recommends MAC brush #266 for applying eyeliner, or for filling in eyebrows. She used an indigo purple shadow and started applying it right in the lash line. “Eyeshadow looks matte, whereas pencil can look shiny. And you don’t always have to use black or brown shadow as your liner. Sometimes I like to use gold eyeshadow and smudge over it with brown to bring that iridescence out. I also love a plum or indigo shadow,” says Patrece. She used the very tip of the #266 brush to just place the color, not to brush it on the lashline. And she used shadow both on the lid and under the eye!

– DON’T pump air into your mascara! Open it to where you can see just the stem of the wand, then turn it and pull it out. That way the product remains creamy and good to use while it adheres to the brush. Patrece prefers to put on mascara on the bottom lashes first, very lightly. She starts on the outer corner by the ear and moves to the center, using the wand to pull the lashes down as she applies mascara. “What we’re trying to do is create an illusion of thicker, fuller lashes. Push the mascara from the base of the lash, pull all the way down, then push them up,” she says.

– Patrece doesn’t always use an eyelash curler – bellas with long lashes don’t necessarily need one, she says. But she loves strip lashes, and reuses them four or five times a piece, just by removing the glue and reapplying them.

For now I just have to say thank you again to Patrece for the opportunity, and to my amigas at Macy’s. Of course you know normally I link to the people I interview, but Patrece doesn’t even have a website! She hasn’t needed to have one yet – her success has come from word of mouth recommendations. I plan to (and hope to) keep in touch with her, so if you’re in need of makeup advice or have a specific question, I’ll ask her for ya!

More to come from Patrece soon —I’m interviewing her on her drugstore product recommendations next!

This post originally appeared on Afrobella.

When the same company responsible for the beanie baby craze in the early ’90s released the “Marvelous Malia” and “Sweet Sasha” dolls earlier this year, it created a firestorm. The beanies hit toy shelves in January. Shortly thereafter, the White House issued a statement denouncing the concept of the dolls, which were promptly renamed.

The two dolls—part of the Ty Girlz collection, which includes an assortment of pleasing pop tarts, including “Bubbly Britney” and “Precious Paris”—were notable for another reason. The $10 beanies happened to be the first non-white girlies in the line.

No one really bought Ty’s excuses (the company claimed the dolls weren’t exact replicas of the real-life Sasha and Malia), but many people did express interest in buying the beanies.

“I ordered them because customers called in and asked for them, before they even saw the dolls on the news,” said the owner of Emily’s Hallmark in Danville, CA. “I have daughters and don’t think it’s fair, but hey, what sells, sells.”

She ordered a batch of the dolls and expected to get them on the shelves in February, but those plans were cut short when she received a letter from Ty, saying that—in deference to the Obama family—the dolls had been renamed “Marvelous Mariah” and “Sweet Sydney.”

All names aside, some argue the dolls would have done more good than harm.

“For me personally, the issue is much bigger than exploitation,” Denise Gary-Robertson, the president of Dolls Like Me, an online toy retailer specializing in multicultural dolls, said. “Here we have a manufacturer that has not formerly produced black dolls and now they have two black dolls named after two gorgeous black girls. What does that say to black girls around the world? That says, ‘I now matter. I’m more important.’”

“This is an issue of self-esteem and one of reflection,” she continued. “Around 30 to 40 percent of all children in America are children of color. There should be no manufacturer producing a line of dolls that doesn’t include dolls of color.”

Robertson, who describes her business as “a toy retailer with a conscience,” said she was not exploiting the Obama girls by selling the Ty dolls.

“We were celebrating the fact that Ty is now producing black dolls,” Robertson stressed. “It was secondary that those dolls were named Sasha and Malia.”

The fervor to own the Sasha and Malia dolls is arguably a reflection of the Obama Effect. Blackness is now more desirable than ever, and the rise of the Obamas has unveiled a market that has always been around, but was previously ignored.

Jezebel recently reported a six percent increase from last year in the use of black models on the runways of this year’s fall fashion shows in New York. In an industry previously criticized for its gross lack of diversity, 18 percent of all models this year were women of color, and according to Jezebel, black models were the second-largest ethnic group on the runways.

In the case of the Sasha and Malia doll controversy, Dolls Like Me has been in business for three years and has never carried a Ty beanie in its inventory of 300-plus dolls—because the Ty dolls were always white. Robertson argued that the lack of multicultural inventory on the U.S. market is damaging to the self-esteem of children of color, which is why she’s in business—and business is good.

Robertson said the well-known Clark doll experiments of the 1940s—when most black children tested preferred to play with “pretty,” white dolls because they considered black dolls “ugly” and “bad”—were recently repeated and yielded the same disturbing results.

“I feel that, as a mother, Michelle Obama was well within her rights to do what she did,” Robertson said. “But her role and my role are are very different. She only had to look out for two black girls. I’m looking out for all black girls—that’s where I am.”

Synolve Craft, a freelance writer with a degree in African studies and a contributor to the Deep South Moms Blog, couldn’t disagree more.

“As a parent of two children, I think this is crazy,” Craft said. “You can’t say you’re going to do something for all black children and exploit two black children in the process.”

Craft argued that positive community role models, not dolls, nurture self-esteem in young people, and folks making a profit at the expense of two high-profile children do not embody the values she’d want to instill in her children.

The Obamas, who are indeed the impetus for the rising profile of blackness in America, represent a success—but also a problem. The fact that little Sasha and Malia were so swiftly singled out to be role models for the young black community, simply because they are a first in this country’s long history, hints at the gaping need for black representation in popular culture.

Robertson and Craft take different routes, but ultimately arrive at the same point: There should be more Sashas and Malias to choose from—we shouldn’t have to single those children out to be positive black role models—-and there are, we just haven’t taken the blindfold off to notice. Until now.

“As for Michelle Obama, I think her anger is misplaced,” Robertson argued. “She should be calling out all the manufacturers who aren’t making dolls that reflect children of color. Up until this point, I’ve been the only voice going to manufacturers saying, ‘Wait a minute. When are you going to make some dolls of color? When are we going to recognize that not all of the children in America are white? When are we going to get that?’”

The artist formerly known as who? … Well, it’s Prince. The Purple Rain singer will be performing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno for three nights in a row on March 25-27 in effort to garner support for the March 29 release of not one, but two albums. The albums, LOtUSFLOW3R and MPLSoUND, will be available for purchase with a third album from artist Bria Valente exlusively at Target for $11.98.  And if you can’t get enough of the guy, catch Prince for a fourth night on March 28 for Leno’s Tonight Show retirement.

What about the real King of Pop? … Michael Jackson has announced 26 new dates for his comeback “This Is It” tour, all of which take place in London alone. The concert series, which includes 10 shows in July and an additional 18 in September,  is speculated to be part of a bigger world tour that has yet to be revealed. Tickets have been priced between 50 and 75 pounds ($70 and $105), a seemingly decent price range compared to today’s pop stars (ahem, Jo Bros). This will be Michael Jackson’s first tour in 12 years.

And the other Jack? … Jack White shows no sign of exhaustion as the White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman has developed a third band along with a new album. The new group, The Dead Weather, will be debuting their first album Horehound in June on White’s label, Third Man. The band also includes Alison Mosshart of The Kills, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age, and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes. White reportedly says that the band will go on tour this year.

Speakin’ of new bands … Ben Harper and his new bluesy band Relentless7 have released the music video for their new single “Shimmer and Shine.” The track comes from their upcoming release White Lies For Dark Times, which is scheduled to drop later this year. Check out the video below.

It’s really bad when the state of humanity hinges on a bunch of pseudo-sadomasochists parading around as costumed heroes who haphazardly decide to save the world for mere kicks and giggles. This is the twisted sense of humor and entire point of the mystery adventure Watchman.

This 2009 American superhero film is based on DC Comics’ award-winning, limited series graphic novel (1986-1987) illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Zack Snyder, who is famous for the adaptation of the 300 graphic novel, directed the movie. And Lawrence Gordon (Die Hard), Lloyd Levin (United 93) and Deborah Snyder (300) had a hand in producing it.  However, viewers should not expect the same level of cinematic beauty or the type of compelling storytelling in Watchmen that Snyder showed us was possible in 300. Instead, the long and needlessly drawn out film, which lasts a restless two hours and 43 minutes, has the audience wishing for their own superhero powers to teleport themselves out of the theater.

Watchmen begins in the year of 1985, and tells the tale of a group of former vigilantes who used to dress up as superheroes. Although the somewhat-counterfeit crime fighters have “retired,” a couple of them decide to pay attention to the nuclear threat (read: end of world scenario) and tension between the United States and Russia.

The stakes are high but the audience’s investment in the protagonists or their success is relatively low. This weak story drags on for a full hour and forty minutes and consists of confession after confession from weary and depressed individuals who must decide if they are really going to solve the weak mystery, which is somehow connected to the complete obliteration of mankind (for the remaining hour).

And here is where this artificial set of superheroes is exposed. Aren’t most superheroes like Superman concerned with unnecessary violence and killing people? Don’t most champions of justice risk their lives to save others and humanity? And don’t all superheroes have a special power or two that us mere mortals could only dream of?

On these accounts, viewers could legitimately question whether the movie had any bonafide superheroes at all. The protagonists, with the exception of the neon blue Dr. Manhattan, actually lacked any “real” or perceived super powers. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) can see into the future and teleport himself all over the universe after a science lab mistake. Next to him, the other hero hopefuls are pretty laughable. Heck, all they want to do is fight for fun and stave off boredom.

And speaking of characters, there were only a few that are truly memorable. There is the demented and bloodthirsty Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), whose street name was Walter Kovacs. Although his journal accounts provide the framework for the story, the inkblot masked Rorschach’s killing scenes will make the audience wonder if the film was written or produced by Quentin Tarantino.

And then there’s Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), whose action hero’s name is Silk Spectre II. She had only one power—her drop dead gorgeous looks that captured the attention of her fellow superheroes. Other than a decent left hook and a swift kick, she disappointed the audience who expected a more Wonder Woman-like performance due to their close resemblance achieved through casting, makeup and wardrobe.

The rest of the major quasi-vigilantes—The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) known for his “Life is a joke” attitude, peace at all deadly costs Oxymandias (Matthew Goode), and pushover turned wannabe Superman, Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson)—leave the role of hero as a lot to be desired.

And for the parents and children expecting a Batman or Spiderman type film, please be aware—this movie is not for anyone under seventeen. In addition to the constant nudity of Dr. Manhattan, there are gratuitous sex scenes that weren’t worth actress Malin Akerman even baring her breast. And more importantly, the violence depicted in scene after scene was extremely bloody, gross and overdone—enough to make a grown man cover his eyes.

And as you may have guessed, the movie begins and ends with violence and death depicted in a realistic manner unlike its comic book beginnings. This is a film that could easily create nightmares for children and adults alike.

Thus, the only characteristic Watchmen smiley face this movie deserves is one that is turned completely upside-down and covered with the blood of its own fake super heroes. Like the main theme of the Watchmen: “Life’s a joke,” clearly this movie was too.