What's most frightening is that she's pretty and so has a higher chance of reproducing...

Things I Dislike Intensely #1: Diamonds

There's nothing I hate more than being played for a sucker. If I ever shell out an obscene amount of money for a piece of diamond-encrusted jewelry, I'll be doing just that. For years, I've told anybody who'd listen what a rip-off the artificially inflated diamond market has always been. If you can read this article (written in 1982) and still be willingly fleeced by those admittedly ingenious snake-oil salesmen, then I'm really at a loss. To sum up Edward Epstein's enlightening and infuriating article: De Beers controls the supply of diamonds which are by no means rare and actually quite abundant; they employ one of the longest running and effective global marketing campaigns of all-time which dates back many decades; diamonds have no intrinsic value as demonstrated by their severe depreciation in the after-market. It's a long article, but it's very much worth reading. There is never a reason to do things simply for the fact that it's always how they've been done.

Now the hard part is convincing an American woman that buying a diamond engagement ring is completely unecessary. Good thing I still have that catalog from the Phiippines.

China, the Reckless Abandon of Your Citizens Endears You To My Heart Even More!

"Just rinse that $#!t off! Tell people they're flavored-chopsticks!"

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest in a string of Chinese food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.

Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.

The owner, identified only by his surname Wu, said he had sold the recycled chopsticks for 0.04 yuan a pair and made an average of about 1,000 yuan ($130) a day.

Talk about a hustler.

"Where the plan was to get funds/And skate off the set/To achieve this goal quicker/Sold all my weight wet"- Jay-Z, Where I'm From

"Hey, U R A Q T!" M.I.A. is Back - Music Pick of the Week

If you're not familiar with Arular, then you should go pick up a copy or download it. It's the debut album of a talented young artist named M.I.A. who hails from the U.K. Her sound is a spectacular mash-up of hip-hop, dancehall, baile funk, Miami bass, and whatever other stuff that makes you just dance involuntarily. I was quite enamored with her whole style for a good portion of '05 and '06.



I'm glad her sophomore debut wasn't some 'neutered-for-U.S.-audiences' shiny coaster of an album like Lady Sovereign's. For LP #2, it seems M.I.A. spent quite a bit of time traveling the world from the dark continent to down under. The song, "Boyz"(above video), sounds like a plugged-in tribal celebration. The rest of the album is full of the same eclectic ingenuity that made me dig the first one so much. Listening to an album like this is an oasis in the desert.

The older I get, the harder it is to find new music. Though I gotta admit, I'm kinda feeling like Crankin' Dat Soulja Boy:



"Then Supaman that 'o..." Wow.

P.S. - Though I can't vouch for the entire album, Int'l Players Anthem - U.G.K. feat. Outkast is the best rap song of the year. Hands-down, dunny.

Oh No She Di'int!!!

Talk about a low blow. Here is Michelle Obama speaking at a fundraiser and clearly taking a really cheap shot at Hillary Clinton. That's minus two cool points for you, missy. Rhetoric like that does a disservice not only to the candidates, but to women period. Imagine if Paul Tsongas had said about Bill Clinton, "How can you lead the country when you can't even take care of your drunk @$$ brother?" Oh snap.

"One of the things, the important aspects of this race is role modeling what good families should look like," Michelle Obama said at a Women for Obama event. "And my view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."

For shame, Mrs. O! Besides, don't you know words like that have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you right in the bum? Just ask Lauryn Hill. Oh snap!

Cautionary Tale #3,436,548

What an ignominious end to the phenomenon that was Michael Vick. Despite a career that always seemed more about the promise of something special than anything else, it's disappointing to see what is essentially his prime end this way. Of course, Vick deserves everything he's got coming, but it's just frustrating to watch someone throw it all away like that.

When all is said and done, this could rank up there with Mike Tyson as the biggest fall from grace of an athlete. On a slightly more positive note, I bet Vick just saved the careers of countless other troglodytes who've been (and would obviously be crazy to still be) involved with dog-fighting. I hope he gets himself right. Man, this seems like just yesterday...

GFI + GFII = GFOAT Pt. II

The final shot of Godfather II, Michael Corleone sitting on a bench, alone and pensive, is one of my favorite closing scenes of any film. We’ve watched Michael commit more than a couple of unforgivable crimes and in essence lose his soul. At the end of GFI, I felt a bit of sympathy for Michael. Although he willingly chose his path, a confluence of unfortunate events pushed him towards it. In contrast, at the end of Godfather II, the feeling was complete ambivalence. His choices made sense, but only in a moral vacuum. And that’s what the film seemed to be getting at: the most powerful men (in America anyways) don’t play by the same rules. But we also see the price of playing this way. Michael is one of the great tragic figures in American cinema.

The Godfather series makes for great commentary on American ascendancy and hegemony. Vito Corleone seems to be universally beloved and at least respected by his enemies. Michael on the other hand, is respected only out of fear and as the final shot shows, completely alone. Yet, Michael is no more a criminal than his father was. They both murder, bribe, extort, etc. But Vito is sort of this romanticized figure, similar to how Americans romanticize the history that allowed this country to accumulate such wealth in such a short period of time. Thus Michael comes to embody the growing disillusionment the American people had with figures of power (the movie was released during the Nixon years after all). End half-@$$ pseudo-thesis.

Man, these films are so much more than just bad-@$$ gangster movies (granted they are that as well). Taken together, the Godfather I and II deserve a spot at the head of the table. My appreciation grows with every viewing. Best movie(s) of all time. I think this needs to be ratified into the Constitution. 28th amendment. I’ll get started on a letter to Charles Rangel. Get the ball rolling. Yessir.

Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow and his band of merry men pretty much own comedy at this point. If you’ve laughed at a movie in the past three years, odds are pretty good he had a hand in it. His production credits include: Anchorman, 40-Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up and now Superbad.

It’s gotten to the point where the studios are attaching trailers to his films that use the new film to promote the even newer film. The trailer for Walk Hard, another Apatow production due out at the end of the year, promotes itself as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up (which just came out a few months ago) and Superbad, the movie you’re paying to see. Nice. I don’t begrudge the guy his success either. As coach Larry Brown might say, he’s doing it “the right way.” All his movies have a healthy dose of humanity in them. This goes back to his television work on the under-seen “Freaks and Geeks” and almost not-seen-at-all “Undeclared.”

Apatow’s comedies are not very elaborate. They don’t rely on set-ups that are too preposterous or contrived ala the Farrelly or Zucker brothers. Not knocking those guys—they’ve made some of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. His films don’t really contain “homerun”-moments. There are no “hair gel” moments like in There’s Something About Mary; no “double premature ejaculation shown on the internet” like in American Pie. His movies are just consistently funny, mining humor out of the mundane situations we all find ourselves in on occasion (actually the Will Ferrell movies are an exception to that, but Will Ferrell is…well, Will Ferrell). But Apatow’s movies stick. It’s like the difference between being told a funny story and being told a hilarious joke. The joke might make you laugh harder the first time, but the story is something you can hear again and again because you identify with it somehow.

I can definitely identify with Superbad. The premise is familiar: high school is ending; last chance to score; figuring out how to say goodbye to old friends. Almost ten years ago, this movie was called American Pie and nearly twenty years before that it was called Porky’s. But that’s irrelevant. High school is an inexhaustible source of comedic material, because 1.) it’s an almost universal experience and 2.) it is the most awkward time in most of our lives. Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play a trio of friends who are getting ready to graduate and move on to the next phase of their lives. Seth and Evan (played by Hill and Cera respectively) are best friends who are on two different paths: the sincere and intelligent Evan headed for Dartmouth, the obnoxious but loyal Seth headed to some state university. Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell (aka McLovin) rounds out the group, but he's mainly a (hilarious) comedic device like Stifler (honestly, if Mintz-Plasse goes on to make other movies, I see his career taking the same arc as Seann William Scott's or Jon Heder-welcome to typecasting purgatory).

The film's plot is fairly threadbare: guys need to score booze to score with a few girls. The introduction of two cop characters played by (co-writer of the film) Seth Rogen and Bill Hader give the film a bit more meat (for better or worse). The strength of the film is its dialogue which is often laugh-out-loud funny and its subtle observations of interactions between pubescent boys and girls. The film is also fairly poignant as we watch Seth and Evan come to grips with the fact that their lifelong friendship could likely be coming to a close. The McLovin storyline will either make you laugh or roll your eyes (or likely both). It does wear a little thin after a while, but I never looked at my watch or anything. The movie starts strong, coasts a bit and then finishes strong. I enjoyed the characters so much (especially Cera's Evan) that I didn't really care though. Time will tell if the film goes into the Pantheon of Great Teen Comedies (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Buy Me Love, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Breakfast Club, etc.). In the meantime, congrats Mr. Apatow, you've done it again.

It's Like a Jungle Sometimes, It Makes Me Wonder How I Keep From Going Under

6,783 black men were murdered in 2005. 6,783. That breaks down to nearly 19 murders per day for the entire year. 13% of the population and we account for 49% of the homicides. It’s hard to make sense of numbers like that. At that point the numbers become mere statistics like reading how many people die of hunger per day worldwide. You look at it, shake your head a bit and then go back to doing your Sudoku. This is not meant as a negative comment about our society. It’s just a fact that in the face of such bleakness, the human mind disassociates. It’s how we survive.

The thing is I look at the neighborhood I live in and its social-economic dynamics and I feel like I can understand those numbers. The area of Crown Heights that I currently call home is a microcosm of the black working and underclass nationwide.

I leave for work between 8 and 8:30 each morning. I see only a handful of guys who appear dressed for work waiting in the train station. When I return home in the early evening, large groups of working age black men are convened on the corners and in front of buildings. During the summer, the front of my building becomes a social club of sorts. Teens and twenty-somethings hang out playing dominoes, drinking and shooting the $#!t. They are sometimes loud (as people that age tend to be) and make sleeping at a reasonable hour at times impossible. But what’s really striking is that the group will be outside hanging out until 1 or 2, sometimes 3 in the morning every day of the week. I understand it’s summer, but not all of them are school age. Many are of working age and yet as I said, I see none of them during my morning commute. This reinforces for me the reality of the current statistics that say 48% of working age black men in NYC are unemployed.

This leaves many pairs of idle hands. And you know what they say about idle hands.

I don’t know how anybody who has experienced life in neighborhoods like the ones I have lived in could ever be anything but the staunchest of gun control advocates. Gunshots in the near distance puncture the night silence at least a couple of times a month. (Though they do seem to increase with the heat.) It is an environment where when two men (or boys) argue outside, adrenaline begins to flow because the real possibility of deadly escalation exists. Just the other day I heard such a verbal altercation. Two boys no older than 16 maybe, one threatening to shoot the other, the other daring him to make good on his word. A few female voices pleaded with both boys to stop their posturing. Luckily that’s all it turned out to be. But as the numbers show, it’s not always posturing.

“If you ain’t been to jail, I don’t respect you.”

I overheard this from a conversation taking place below my window. Its intent neither irony nor humor. Although I know the history, I still can’t help but ask myself: “How did we get here?” It feels as if a large segment of my people have lost their self-determination. Children with no guidance, fathers gone, mothers giving Herculean efforts trying to do the work of two parents…why have we been singing the same refrain for so long?

Sometimes I wish I could be a father/big brother/mentor to every lost kid I see on the block. But then I just go back to my Sudoku.

"I'll take 1,000 copies of the new Kanye album please."

So Fifty promises to end his solo career if Kanye's first day sales beat his, eh? Yo, Ja Rule? If you have an extra 5-6 milion lying around, you should just buy 500K copies of young 'ye's new disc, no? Have you no pride!? I know I don't.

"NEW YORK (AP) - 50 Cent believes his new album will outsell Kanye West's upcoming disc, and he's betting his solo career on it. Both 50 Cent and West have albums due out Sept. 11. 50 Cent, who has sold better than West, has been riled by forecasts that sales of West's "Graduation" could rival those for his "Curtis" CD.
"Let's raise the stakes," the 31-year-old rapper told hip-hop Web site SOHH.com in an interview posted Friday. "If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer write music. I'll write music and work with my other artists, but I won't put out anymore solo albums."
An e-mail sent to West's publicist wasn't immediately returned Friday.
50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson, has been publicly disparaging of West before. In 2005, he suggested the 29-year-old rapper's popularity was only possible because of 50's own success.
But they recently collaborated in the studio. Their work, though, isn't scheduled to appear on either new album.
50 Cent's last full-length solo album, "The Massacre," was the best-selling disc of 2005 and sold more than 1.14 million copies in its first week of release. The same year, West's "Late Registration" opened by selling more than 860,000 copies in its first week."

God, I can't wait for this clown's "career" to be over. I love Eminem, but giving the world 50 Cent was the worst crime since Kraft began mass-marketing Velveeta.

Hey, Fellas? You Missed a Spot!

I don't know what's worse: that somewhere some kid's thinkin' "That's cool as hell" or the fact that I own (multiple) albums made by both of these knuckleheads. Damn you, Lil Wayne! If loving your music is wrong...

You Know Chuck and Larry Will Be On DVD in a Few Months, So Why Not Try This?

Once is the type of movie that sounds really iffy on paper, but by the time the credits roll, you're thinking "Wow, they really pulled that off." Once is the story of an aspiring singer who spends his days playing his guitar on the street, singing cover songs for spare change. At night he sings his own compositions, one of which captivates a cute little naif who happens to walk by. They get to talking and pretty soon find themselves in each other's company day and night.

The narrative plays out literally like an album with both characters intermittently breaking out into song. It's a musical, but not in the typical way. The characters don't talk to each other and then begin spouting exposition in song. The songs just naturally happen within the space of the story. It wouldn't work if the songs weren't good and thankfully all of them are quite catchy. The guy (who along with everyone else is oddly never named) has a good voice that breaks into the occasional falsetto (spurring some critics to compare him to Chris Martin of Coldplay, but it's not like Chris Martin has exclusive use of falsetto or was even the first to popularize it--hello, Thom Yorke?). The girl is also a good singer and musician in her own right. Neither are professional actors, but they do a great job and I never once felt the chemistry between them was feigned or exaggerated.

Seeing this movie is like stumbling upon a great little restaurant that nobody knows about. You want all your friends to know about it and support it, but you don't want to over-hype it for fear that people will raise their expectations too high. So I'm not saying it's the best movie I've ever seen, but it's the kind of movie that makes you feel like the world is a pretty decent place for at least an hour and a half. And who can ask for more than that from a flick?

Also, "Okay, f@ck this." might be my favorite line in a movie this year.

Aren't There Laws Against This?

We all have guilty pleasures. Mine is the occasional peek at TMZ.com, the nexus of celebrity tabloid gossip. Yeah I'm the hypocrite who shakes his head disapprovingly at the girl picking up US Weekly at the checkout counter and then goes home and loads up Defamer. Each time, I respect myself just a little less though to be sure.

Anyways, I saw this article about Jermaine Jackson and all I could think was how effed up it was that he named one of his kids 'Jermajesty'. Seriously, WTF?!? That was so screwed up that I didn't have any disbelief left when I got to the part about how his ex-wife is also his brother Randy's ex-wife. Oh you crazy Jacksons! How long until they get all of you together for what would be the highest-rated reality show in history? With Michael's spending habits and Janet's career choices, odds are 2:1 that this happens within 5 years.

Simple Math: GFI+GFII=GFOAT

Citizen Kane keeps topping that AFI Best Movies List, but they're wrong. How can an opinion be wrong? Because I say so! Certain things just aren't subjective. The following universal axioms support this:

Batman > Superman
Prince > Michael Jackson
Red gummi bears > all other gummi bears
Brooklyn > Manhattan
Bill Gates > The Pope

Another fact to add to that list is the fact that taken together, The Godfather and The Godfather II are the pinnacle of American filmmaking to date. The story of Michael Corleone is not just a Mafioso tale; it’s a uniquely American story of moral corruption.

The movie was made during a time when the American consciousness was going through a real awakening. People were no longer just accepting things they were told. Cynicism and anger towards the government, the economy, our social norms and values was on the rise. The Godfather stands as a perfect metaphor about how many had begun to see America and the much hallowed American Dream.

One of my favorite bits of dialogue from The Godfather is this:

Michael: My father is no different from any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or a senator.
Kay: Do you know how naïve you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed!
Michael: Oh. Who’s being naïve, Kay?

More later…

If You're Not Reading Y: The Last Man, F*@% You!

Seriously, this is a great little comic. Current Lost scribe, Brian K. Vaughan’s series envisions a post-testosterone world where a population of 3+ billion women, one man and his monkey try to make sense of and adjust to what has happened. The book is at turns hilarious, poignant and thrilling. The dialogue is sharp and the characters have depth. It's interesting to see a guy write a predominately female cast without making the characters just seem like guys with female names. All his women are developed as women which I imagine is tough to do. Then again, I'm a guy, so maybe a female reading the book would say he has the feminine voice all wrong. But what would she know? She's just a chick. Wow. Kidding!

Anyways, the series is basically a road trip where the reader follows the eponymous Yorick, his monkey Ampersand (also male), his bodyguard Agent 355 and Doctor Mann. Yorick is searching for his girlfriend Beth who he proposed to right before the event that wiped out the males happened. She was in the Australian outback at the time while Yorick was in Brooklyn. Agent 355 is a secret agent from the government sent to keep Yorick who overnight becomes the most valuable resource on the planet from getting himself killed. And Doctor Mann is the scientist who hopes ot figure out what saved Yorick and his monkey so that she might help recreate the man part of mankind. On the way they run into one-boobed Amazon women, ninjas, assassins, pirates, pop stars...you name it. It's consistently entertaining and at times thought-provoking as Vaughan touches on many aspects of human existence and how it would look without men from domestic life to spritiual matters. Highly recommended.

Movie Non-Pick of the Week

Danny Boyle, you really piss me off sometimes. This is the second movie I’ve watched from you that completely falls off the rails in the third act. The first was 28 Days Later, a good little film that could have been a great little film if the third act hadn’t descended into cliché hell. Now, the same thing happens in your new sci-fi thriller, Sunshine. For about ¾ of the film’s runtime, I was completely enthralled. The visuals were stunning; the characters were interesting and it seemed to be avoiding the usual plot devices in the “group of people stuck in space” genre. The acting was great; even Chris Evans of Fantastic Four infamy showed that he can act. The movie tries very hard to bring new things to the table--and that’s where I think it goes sour. I figure the film’s writer, Alex Garland had this running through his mind: “Well, I can’t have an alien, because obviously that’s been done. I can’t have the ship’s computer go crazy, because that’s been done too. I can’t even have a crew member go crazy because that’s been done as well…hmm, I’ve got it!” And so he pretty much ruins the film with one of the dumbest contrivances I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing. If you have no plans on seeing the movie now or on DVD, then highlight for a synopsis w/ spoilers:
The crew of Icarus II are on their way to re-ignite the sun when they pick up a distress signal from the original presumed-to-have-perished-7-years-ago Icarus I. After some debate, they (of course) decide to go investigate. They find the ship and discover most of its crew immolated from direct sun exposure. After an incident that leaves two of the ‘away’ team members dead, Cillian Murphy’s character discovers there is a stowaway on Icarus II. The stowaway turns out to be the captain of the Icarus I who has somehow survived on the ship for 7 years, parked at the Sun's doorstep. He walks around naked and looks like Freddy Krueger, because he apparently enjoys tanning more than George Hamilton. Oh and he’s also superhumanly strong and homicidal. So he proceeds to try and kill the remaining crew with some degree of success, but Murphy manages to get the device to the sun and save the world.
As I stated earlier, I was riveted to the screen for much of the film, but when they introduced that element of the story, I literally couldn’t wait for the movie to end. It just turned the movie into something else completely. All the intelligence and suspense just drained away from the film. Oh well, Boyle is obviously a gifted director. Everyone’s entitled to a misfire here and there.