A SONG A DAY

By the way, I'm starting to do posts for NPR's new Song of the Day column. It's a cool feature, even if WWW only. My most recent post was on King Floyd's "Groove Me," and before that, it was Darondo's "Didn't I."

--O.W.

24 WITH BOBBY LEE

24 with Bobby Lee featuring John Cho.

Hilarious. Give these two guys their own sitcom.

--Junichi

HOW TO FLY SOLO IN THE CARPOOL LANE

Carpooling for Dummies

As a solo commuter, I often brainstorm creative ways of justifying getting into the carpool lane.

Some of my earlier carpool schemes have been tranquilized after I learned in traffic school that neither dead bodies nor fetuses count as "passengers."

(Note to my insurance company: I did not go to traffic school because I got a speeding ticket going 80 mph on I-5; I simply wanted to further my legal education.)

Sometimes, I consider just risking getting in the carpool lane while driving lone-bone. If I ever get pulled over, I'll just argue that, as a schizophrenic, my car was filled with multiple persons. And if that fails, there's the good ol' "Jesus is my co-pilot" defense.

Since cops just use their eyes to ID violators, a dummy seems like the best bet. This idea may not always work, as Kevin Morgan from Petaluma found out when he tried dressing up a legless mannequin in a Miami Dolphins jacket. Greg Pringle, from Denver, Colorado, attempted this gimmick and failed, too. But on the bright side, he ended up selling his failed dummy on eBay for $15,000.

I'm not going to say whether I've actually pursued this idea and whether it's worked.

But I will say that Modern Mannequins sells very lifelike mannequins and they are currently having a sale.

--Junichi

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #50

Indiana Jones and the Japanese Temple of Beer

This Week's Question:

If you were famous, what product would you be happy to pitch?

--Junichi

HYPHY TAKES OVER NEW YORK

like father like son
On Friday, Soundcheck on WNYC invited Jeff Chang to speak on "hyphy" (though, on the WWW page, they mistakenly say that Jeff is speaking on "Snap." C'mon WYNC, get your regional rap styles right!)

Then, on Sunday, Jon Caramanica came out with this profile of E-40 and Droop-E in the New York Times. (We liked it, even if Jon did describe DJ Shadow as an "electronic music pioneer.")

--O.W.

WIRETAP

boo boo
I admit, I'm biting this off of Hua's blog where he'll quote short snippets of conversations both had or overheard.

#1: Alhambra Park playground, several moms gathered around, comparing notes on children's ages and developmental milestones (this is all parents really have to talk about, seriously). Mostly white moms except for this one Asian mom (who I thought was Pinay based on heraccent but she turned out to be Indonesian), sporting an unfortunate t-shirt that read:
Craig's Wife
Mark's Mom
She turns to the gathered gaggle and asks, "so, did anyone see the Gonzaga-UCLA game last night?"

#2: Random conversation with friend.
Friend: Moving/packing and looking behind shelves, things shaking
loose, etc. It's taught me something.
Me: Yeah?
F: All those times in my life when I'm like, "I don't have any condoms!" I actually do, I'm just not looking hard enough.
M: Dude, that has to be one of the strangest analogies I've heard you make.
F: It's not an analogy, I'm being literal.
M: Uh, so you're finding random condoms?
F: WRAPPED.
M: No, no, I assumed as much.
F: Yeah, I moved around all my dictionaries and literary reference books and I'm like, "Why would there be a stash here?"
M: Freud would have a field day.
F: Yeah man.

--O.W.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE FROM A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY

Mr. Fett Transforms into a Slave 4 U

If the nerks (my term for a nerd-geek hybrid) around you seem unusually giddy, it's not because they finally got to first base, but because the two most popular toys from my childhood just merged: Star Wars action figures and Transformers.

Two decades later, Hasbro is releasing a line of Star Wars Transformers, fulfilling the chatroom fantasies of everyone who works in your local IT Department.

This is a much better idea than Darth Tater (the Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head) and less repulsive than this disturbing Transformers clip.

Although I am hesitant to admit it, not since the union of peanut butter and jelly has there been something so delicious. After all, who hasn't wished that their Advanced TIE Fighter vehicle would transform to the dark Sith Lord and back?


P.S. You still have a few months to send both O-Dub and me some wedding presents.

--Junichi

TELLING YOU WHEN TO GO

thizz face?

Because of Jay Dee's untimely death, for March, my monthly column in the Oakland Tribune became biweekly instead. Here's my latest piece, a consideration on the Bay Area's burgeoning hyphy movement and its chances for national success. The short story is this: there hasn't been a more exciting time for local hip-hop around the Bay...but that doesn't mean that everyone else around the country is going to hop aboard with it. To put it succinctly, it's a question if the Yay's scene is just too weird for other cats to roll with - the yellow bus isn't for everybody.

(That said, two words: "Four Freaks." Get hep to it.)

--O.W.

COP MY CD

Soul Sides Vol. 1 is finally here.

This is a compilation of rare soul/funk songs I put together with the help of NY's Zealous Records. If you're not familiar with it, the CD has its own site, complete with liner notes and sound samples in case you need added incentive. Ordering info is there as well.

A portion of sales goes to the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. Good music. A good cause.

--O.W.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: 2006 EDITION

This NY Times story, "Plight Deepens For Black Men, Studies Warn" is today's most widely emailed article so I'm sure quite a few places are covering. That said, here's the basic recap just in case you've had a lazy Monday:

The news is bad. Very, very, very bad. What these new studies (largely done by Ivy League researchers for whatever that is worth) find is that the outlook for progress for Black men has never been bleaker:

"Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined."

The thing is...this isn't new to a lot of people; the stats have been out there for years. The problem/challenge is figuring out why this is happening and of course, when it comes down to causal explanations, nothing is at all certain. The article summarizes:

"Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed."

Even then however, you'll have much disagreement over what is at the root cause of those "terrible schools," "absent parents," and the "subculture that glorifies swagger." Sure, start with White Supremacy but from there, it ceases to be that simple (or maybe it is).

One study offers up two leading theories, one of which may not surprise many, the other might:

"First, the high rate of incarceration and attendant flood of former offenders into neighborhoods have become major impediments. Men with criminal records tend to be shunned by employers, and young blacks with clean records suffer by association, studies have found.

The second special factor is related to an otherwise successful policy: the stricter enforcement of child support. Improved collection of money from absent fathers has been a pillar of welfare overhaul. But the system can leave young men feeling overwhelmed with debt and deter them from seeking legal work, since a large share of any earnings could be seized."

What both of these factors illuminate is the circular nature of the problem. Employment discrimination against ex-cons is more likely to lead people back into criminal enterprises. Likewise, if child support costs are also forcing people to hustle outside of the W2 world, it's also setting up the potential where fathers are more likely to be incarcerated and thus, both physically and financially removed from their families.

I have no real analysis here to add: I'm curious what the peanut gallery has to add however.

---

Update: Kerry, in the comments, noted that NPR ran a piece dealing with the same studies (and one that he considered a lot better than the Times piece. You can hear it here.

--O.W.

ON TILT

I saw this on boingboing.net. It's about tilt-shift photography: a technique by which real people and landscapes are made to look like toy models. Apparently, to do this for real, it takes a fair amount of cost and effort, but this tutorial shows you how to fake it in Photoshop CS. I tried playing around and so far, I've found it fascinating. Here's my best result thus far:

THE OG:


TILT-SHIFTED


There's a flickr group for fake tilt-shifts. Some amazing stuff there, especially when you compare the results to real tilt-shifted photos created through lens or camera effects.

--O.W.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #49

Together Forever

This Week's Question:

What 80s celebrity/entertainer is long overdue for a huge comeback?


(On a related note, I'm still amazed that Patrick Dempsey is a huge star again, Rick Springfield is back on General Hospital, and Rihanna is sampling "Tainted Love".)

--Junichi

SUCK ON MY CHOCOLATE SCIENTOLOGIST BALLS

Chef shafts the kids.

Normally, I applaud any person who takes a stand against intolerance.

But Isaac Hayes' recent decision to quit voicing Chef on South Park because of the show's religious bigotry? Weaksauce and ridonculous.

Isaac Hayes has been a cast member of South Park since its first episode on Comedy Central in 1997. For almost ten years now, Parker, Stone, and Hayes have consistently crucified Christians (especially Mormons and Catholics), Jews, Hindus, Shintoists, Muslims, and nearly every race and ethnicity on the planet, without mercy.

The very genesis of South Park was the religion-skewering short film "The Spirit of Christmas," in which Kyle is mocked for being Jewish and Santa is the victim of retribution by Jesus Christ, who later admits he's been a bastard.

In 1999, Hayes himself contributed the song "What The Hell Child Is This?" on the South Park Christmas album, in which he (hilariously) claims that the baby Jesus, left at his doorstep, can't be his since the baby is white, and then proceeds to twist traditional Christmas carols into nonstop sexual innuendoes. That album also includes "The Most Offensive Song Ever," sung from the perspective of the Angel Gabriel and featuring the chorus "you can suck all the &!@% you want and still be a virgin, Mary!"

Yet, it was only this last week in which Hayes quit to protest the show's intolerance, saying, "Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored. ... As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

Why the sudden stand? Although Hayes refuses to admit it, he's clearly upset -- and only upset -- about the show's recent roast of the Church of Scientology, of which Hayes is a devout follower.

(This season featured a ruthless episode in which Scientologist leaders proclaimed Stan the reincarnation of prophet L. Ron Hubbard while R. Kelly sang about how Tom Cruise was trapped in the closet and refused to come out. Comedy Central has since pulled that episode; rumour has it that Tom Cruise is responsible.)

Needless to say, if Hayes fashions himself a principled activist who opposes the skewering of religious beliefs, he shouldn't have ever signed on to the show. It's hardly in the spirit of the civil rights movement to speak up only when your group gets mocked.

I'd give him props, however, if he returned all the hundreds of thousands of dollars he's made from ten seasons on Comedy Central (along with DVD sales, syndication rights, album sales, etc.)

(I realize this news is a few days old, but, hey, I've got two weeks of stuff to catch up on!)

--Junichi

PAYING RESPECT

--O.W.

IN TODAY'S NEWS

hasidim-ton?
Random trio of stories to share:

1) I like a good critical beatdown as much as the next guy so thank Jehovah for Matisyahu, the born-again Hasidic reggae artist who's become the favorite punching bag for New York music critics. The NY Times' Kelefa Sanneh threw the first set of blows though you had to read a bit between the lines to suss out what he was really trying to say:

"...he is also a white reggae singer with an all-white band, playing (on Monday night, anyway) to an almost all-white crowd. Yet he has mainly avoided thorny questions about cultural appropriation. He looks like an anomaly, but if you think of him as a white pop star drawing from a black musical tradition, then he may seem like a more familiar figure."

Sanneh leaves this "figure" unnamed but we know who he's talking about. The coup de grace though comes a few lines later:

"Perhaps Matisyahu's fans aren't familiar with a little-known group of performers who still make great reggae records: Jamaicans."

(This would be the "oh snap!" moment.)

Of course, now Sanneh's review looks like a love poem compared to Jody Rosen's evisceration of Matisyahu on Slate.com. Perhaps it's best for a Black critic to subtly hint at a white/Jewish person's racial/cultural transgressions but perhaps being Jewish himself (though not, like Matisyahu, Hasidic) empowers Rosen to pull the kid gloves off and just state it plainly:

"The truth is, Matisyahu isn't really a novelty—his is the oldest act in the show-business book. Minstrelsy dates back to the very beginnings of American popular music, and Jews have been particularly zealous and successful practitioners of the art. From Irving Berlin's blackface ragtime numbers to Al Jolson's mammy songs—from jazz clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow, who passed as black, to Bob Dylan, who channeled the cadences of black bluesmen, to the Beastie Boys—successive generations of Jewish musicians have used the blackface mask to negotiate Jewish identity and have made some great art in the process.

Matisyahu is the latest in this line, and while his music is at best pedestrian, his minstrel routine may be the cleverest and most subtle yet. Matisyahu is like a thousand other white guys from the suburbs who've smoked a lot of dope, listened to some Burning Spear records, and decided to become reggae singers. But as a Hasid, he has a genuinely exotic look—that great big beard and the tzitzit fringes flying—and the spiritual bona fides to pull off songs steeped in Old Testament imagery. It's an ingenious variation on the archetypal Jewish blackface routine, immortalized in The Jazz Singer (1927), when the immigrant striver Jolson put on blackface to cast off his Jewish patrimony and become American. In 2006, Matisyahu wears Old World "Jewface," and in so doing, becomes "black."

Just to make a quick aside: the video for "Youth" is pretty amazing to watch in terms of the sheer number of code-switching Matisyahu tries to pull off, both visually and musically. Rosen also had it right: it's like an Adam Samberg SNL digital short except that it's not being played for laughs (not intentionally at least).

Somewhere, Snow is having a good cry.

2) A federal appeals court has upheld that Mississippi has the right, as a state, to bar the sale of adult sex toys. As BoingBoing notes: "it remains a crime for responsible adults to sell vibrators to other adults there, but a gun? No prob!"

3) The XXL blogs have launched - I didn't realize it was multiple blogs; interesting approach. Some familiar faces: Bol, Kris Ex, Tara Henley. So far, Bol's been the only to make a big run at it (I learned that it's not Tall Israelis but 6 Ft. Chinese who be running this rap sh--); we'll be curious to see how the other folks, especially Kris and Elliot Wilson fare with it. I've been waiting to see how other folks have responded to it but there's not much there yet except for a short piece on Prohiphop.com.

--O.W.

TIME KILLERS

it was all a dream
It's like a 1,000 flowers blooming over at my man Hua's blog (To Here Knows When). Normally, the site lays a bit fallow except for momentary bursts of activity (all quality) but lately, he's been bloggin' up a storm. Two things I saw there that you might want to peep, just for the hell of it.

1) A typographical "representation" of Biggie's "Juicy" (pour a little out for Big Poppa today).

2) Music video for some German pop/R&B trio. More proof that A) YouTube.com is godly and B) European men trying to seem grown and sexy (but missing the target by a country mile) is a sure-fire cure to depression.

--O.W.

THREE 6 UNLEASH HELL STORM

you can hate them now
Perhaps I was naive but I am surprised by the intense response Three 6 Mafia's Oscar win on Sunday has brought out of people. Personally, I thought it was a great moment in the show - the group's surprise and joy at winning was palatable and gave an otherwise dull night a nice shot in the arm.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...


Did I have reservations about the song they were singing and its content? Certainly. For starters...the song is wack. This isn't an anti-Three 6 sentiment: I know diehard fans of the group who think the song is terrible too. It's just really generic and boring (compare with "Stay Fly"). Second of all, like many, I'm wary of how pimping has become mainstream without a bat of an eye. I saw a baby onesie the other day that read - I swear to God, no joke - "Pimpin' Ain't Easy." It's enough to make you want to pimp-slap what idiot parent would actually buy that for their baby. Pimping, lest we forget, is about exploiting women for sexual labor. There's nothing particularly upstanding or worth celebrating about that: they're vultures by trade (well-dressed, charismatic perhaps, but still bottom-feeding parasites nonetheless).

On that level, I have sympathies with people who think the Three 6 performance was a bad look though I personally find calling it "a coon show" (as I've seen the term thrown around) is rather excessive. Let's just put this in perspective: on the grand scale of "objectionable content," "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" is kind of banal. You see far, far, far worse on BET every single day. The only difference, I suppose, is that many of the people who have their knickers in a twist are folks who don't ordinarily watch, say, "Rap City" but do happen to watch the Oscars and for them, Three 6 did something shocking and new which, to the rest of us, doesn't seem that outrageous. Hell, it was even mildly interesting given the interpretive dance number that went along with the song (hey, it was better than that song from Crash).

What this debate helps bring to the surface is the tension within the Black community (and others too, to be fair) over the power and politics of "positive vs. negative" images and believe me, this is an eternal debate within Asian American circles too. Personally, I think it's an important debate to have even if it does feel like the argument just goes in circles after a while. The current furor is merely an extension of what people like Spike Lee, Bill Cosby and Aaron McGruder have already put out into public consumption and conversation: they (and many more) are all sick over what they see as the moral paucity of today's hip-hop culture. You may not agree with their stance but I do think it's important to discuss the issue since I think both sides of this debate could stand to learn from the other.

What I think has been problematic though is this intense need to somehow hold Three 6 Mafia accountable. Personally, you may not like their music but unless you've actually bothered to listen to more than "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp," it seems presumptuous for anyone to pass judgment on the group as a whole. (Of course, if you do review their catalog, you'll find plenty of things far, far, far more objectionable than "It's Hard Out Here," assuming you find the latter objectionable to begin with.)

People want to blame Three 6 for doing something bad and from where I'm sitting: they were accorded an "honor" (feel free to debate whether that's actually true or not but hear me out) and they chose to perform their song to a national audience. Now, this is what's called in the music industry as a "no-brainer." You take the gig.

For those who think Three 6 shouldn't have, I have to ask: should Denzel Washington not have taken the role in Training Day that won him the Oscar? Should Halle have passed on the Monster's Ball role that she won an Oscar for? I've heard people criticize the Academy for only giving Awards to Black actors when they play "problematic" characters (which is an interesting argument but actually doesn't explain any of wins/nominatoins that have gone to Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman - "Driving Miss Daisy" excepted I suppose - Cuba Gooding Jr., Don Cheadle, or Sophie Okonedo). However, I've yet to hear a chorus of voices criticizing Denzel or Halle for taking the roles they did. It doesn't make sense to me then that Three 6 are suddenly the bad guys in this arrangement because they chose to write a song for a movie then perform it, even if the song in question rankles people. To me, this just smacks of an anti-hip-hop attitude; something not uncommon amongst both an older generation as well as holier-than-thou youngsters who think the only rap artists who should be allowed to record albums are Mos Def and Common.

Point two: I can't see why anyone cares if the Oscars is choosing to validate the song or not since caring actually gives the Oscars power as a cultural institution when it comes to hip-hop. I care about the Academy's taste in hip-hop as much as I care for the Grammies, which is to say: not at all. People are mad at the Oscars for not recognizing "real hip-hop" (which begs the question of "what's real?") as if we're supposed to EXPECT them to know good music. I can understand that people don't respect the institution yet respect its power but if you're expecting the Oscars to validate what is "good" hip-hop - to Middle America or anyone else - you're affording them far more power than they deserve.

Point three: Along the same lines, people are arguing, "why this Three 6 song? Why not 'Fight the Power?" On NPR the other day, someone was complaining that none of Diana Reeves songs from Good Night and Good Luck were nominated. Well, guess what? Her songs weren't eligible because none of them were original compositions. I don't know if Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" (which appeared in Do the Right Thing) was written expressly for that soundtrack which would have made it ineligible too. People need to get their facts right before making complaints. (This all said, I do have to agree: I can't believe they couldn't have found better songs to nominate. You mean there wasn't a Randy Newman/Disney joint up for consideration?)

Lastly, I thought this Washington Post article (thanks to the person who hepped me to it in the comments) makes an excellent argument, one that I'm much more sympathetic to:

"And so "It's hard out here for a pimp" enters white culture, as so many black memes do, with a wink and a nod. Of course your great aunt sitting down the table complaining in an impeccably white way that it's not easy for a pimp isn't thinking about real pimps. She may not even know what real pimps do. But that doesn't matter. Black memes in "white culture" are vaguely scandalous, used with a wink and nod that say, "I know this is transgressive, but I'm not going to learn anything more about it."

What I think this article does well is separate accountability, moving it from the group - who I think are taking far more flak than is warranted - and instead, puts the onus of racial concern onto, basically, dumb ass non-Black people (actually, and some Black folk too) who just want to ape whatever the new street slang is going around the block.

There was actually a brilliant dissection of this trend in South Park episode a few years back where Chef (Isaac Hayes) complained that more outlandish the phrase, the more white people want to use it in order to display their ironic sense of hipness. No doubt, this can only mean that "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" will end up in an Adam Samberg/SNL skit soon.

I called it first.

---

UPDATE: Good god...this was sent in my Poplicks reader KH: Republican congressman, Jack Kingston tries to play off "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp" to tout - I cannot believe this - Republican welfare reform.

It's not even clever. The song title, let us remind people is, "It's hard out here for a pimp" but Kingston is trying to flip on it by saying, "It ain't hard out there to find a job." The insertion of "ain't" is particularly galling since it's Kingston's attempt to "ebonicize" his press release and make himself sound hipper. What a jackass.

--O.W.

INSPIR-ASIANS

more designers, less cheerleaders
1) Chloe Dao won Project Runway (yes!). Seriously, Sharon and I were pulling for her but we never thought she had a chance. Luckily for her, Daniel V. and Santino came out with surprisingly safe and weak collections while Chloe's at least took some real chances and had a point of view. As Sharon said, "some of her dresses look like they're from a bad '80s prom" but at least they made a statement.

Plus, Chloe winning is on some definite immigrant American dream tip: she's one of EIGHT sisters (you think they were trying for a boy? My guess) from a Laotian Vietnamese family that had to flee Laos at the end of the Vietnam War. Like many Southeast Asians, her family settled in Houston where she owns the boutique, Lot 8.

2) On the flipside, if any of you saw that footage from the other day of the cheerleader who fell, broke her neck and sustained a concussion...but STILL performed her routine, even prone and in a neck brace...as it turns out (sigh), she's Asian too: Kristi Yamaoka. As you might tell, I'm not a big cheerleader fan to start with and the fact that someone would have sustained head and spinal injuries but still perform, on a stretcher no less just strikes me as the crazy act of someone who, for example, has just been dropped on their head.

But good god, everyone's calling her "an inspiration." This piece is so over-the-top that I can only assume it's satire but I'm kind of scared it's not. I mean, how can anyone take stuff like this seriously?:

"There are certain iconic images, like the solitary man who stood before a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, that exemplify the best of humankind: Courage and the willing to sacrifice one's self for a noble cause.

The injured cheerleader, who kept on leading cheers with her arms, while strapped to a gurney, now joins those images that will be indelibly marked in our memories.

...Kristi didn't move her arms while strapped to a gurney to call attention to herself, she's no Terrell Owens who will do anything for publicity.

...I can't wait for Kristi's heroics to be reenacted on the big screen, or at least on the small screen. If dubious personalities like the Runaway Bride receive so much publicity, a genuine heroine like Kristi certainly deserves her 15 minutes of fame.

--O.W.

REMEMBERING JAY DEE

My most recent Oakland Tribune column came out last Friday (to be honest, in my cold-induced haze, I forgot). It's a remembrance of the recently passed producer J-Dilla, aka Jay Dee.
Update: There are now tribute t-shirts to JD available. 100% of proceeds go to Mrs. Yancey to help pay off Dilla's medical bills.

By the way, Three 6 Mafia winning the Oscar? Awesome. That's the short story. Long story later (maybe).

--O.W.

IRONIC WHITENESS = THAT HOTNESS

don't battle natalie
Any minute now, one of your friends will likely send you an email or IM message, directing you to check out Natalie Portman's fake rap skit on SNL last night (that is, until NBC serves youtube.com with another cease and desist). It's produced by the same folks (namely, Andy Samberg, aka Dan Savage's wanna-be love toy) who brought us the now-infamous "Lazy Sunday."

Given that I stopped watching SNL with any regularity years ago, I don't know how many times Samberg and company have recycled their own successful formula from "Lazy Sunday" but this Portman skit pretty much relies on the exact same elements, namely that it's funny to see innocuous white people rapping like Ice Cube circa 1990 (though Portman perhaps channels more of Heather B's flow, combined with B.O.S.S.'s lyrical content).

I'll admit: like "Lazy Sunday," this has some very funny moments (but it'd be much funnier if "Lazy Sunday" never existed). However, I'm ambivalent as to how these skits use hip-hop as the go-to trope for white people to parody themselves since, even though it's their whiteness that's the butt of the joke, they're using a flattened caricature of black masculinity to achieve it. Mind you, the whole mock-gangsta pose has a tradition in hip-hop though not as a means of self-ridicule, but rather, cultural criticism against gangsterism to begin with.

It's not like I find the Portman skit offensive but it's not doing hip-hop any favors. Then again, if someone wants to retort, "yeah, but 'Laffy Taffy's' not a great look either," I got no defense for that either.

Let's just hope Samberg doesn't rely on rap parodies (or lettuce-eating) as his surefire humor strategy.

--O.W.

GOIN' TO THE CHAPEL...*

crazy in love

When Junichi and I started Poplicks, it was implicitly understood that we weren't trying to turn it into a space to discuss the endless minutiae of our personal lives - that is, of course, what Xanga.com is for (not that I'm hating. If not for Xanga, I wouldn't know half the things my sister's been up to). I mean, you don't come to Poplicks to be bored by pictures of my kid or learn more about Junichi's mix-CD. However, occasionally, the circumstances merit an exception.

Case in point, as I briefly alluded to on Friday, Junichi married the love o' his life on Saturday, Dima. I won't bog you down in (too many) details, but suffice to say, it was one of the loveliest weddings I've been to (outside, you know, my own).

To address some of the speculation one might have as to what a Semitsu/Hilal Nuptial™ might be like, there was no drum line or b-boy squad or skydiving team or, I'm most sad to say, noh performers. There were however shamadan dancers (Dima's family is Lebanese) and one of the funniest officiants I've seen lead a ceremony (you wouldn't necessarily expect a Dick Cheney joke to go over that well in the middle of officiating, but it was rather golden).

Most of all though, as you might expect from the pairing between two people who met through Poetry For the People, bride and groom were both wonderfully expressive but even more surprising, their families, including Junichi's mom and brother and Dima's sister and father, were just as effusive. Seriously, if you've ever been to a wedding where people make stiff, perfunctory speeches, you'll appreciate how genuinely refreshing it is to have folks be funny and entertaining and heartfelt, all at once. I mean...there were five toasts, none shorter than five minutes, and it never felt taxing. (And believe me, I've been some weddings where I wanted to reach for a gong during the best man's speech, for example).

In summation, it was a beautiful, awesome event. J and D are about to leave on honeymoon, a 10 day tour of Chinese coal mines (*canaries not included) and I'll try to pick up the slack in the meantime. It helps that I'm not feeling like I'm dying any more after a 10 day bout of a wicked winter cold combined with the coxsackie virus my dear daughter passed along (note: blisters on your tongue? So not a good look. Or feel). And with that, I'll try to get Poplicks back to what it's best at (uh...), that is, anything besides news about us.

*Actually, it wasn't a chapel. It was this swanky art gallery/event space. I apologize for the fabrication.

--O.W.

WHEN WRITERS $*)@-UP

Normally, I like Gawker's sense of biting irreverence but their non-stop ravaging of disgraced New York writer Nick Sylvester feels cruel, even for them. Here's the background:

Sylvester, a rising star at the Village Voice and Pitchfork admitted to fabricating part of a cover story he did for the Voice. The story was a look into how people are trying to play out the seduction advice in Neil Strauss' The Game (which is surely seeing its sales get a jump this week). Sylvester invented a scene where he meets with three men at a bar in New York. As it turns out, while the anecdote had some truthful basis, the actual meeting never existed and Sylvester got his hoax busted when one of the men wrote to say, "uh, I was never there."

So far, Gawker has had a field day with this, calling Sylvester the Voice's "very own hipster-Blair," and in general, reporting on the affair with a gleeful rubbing of hands (complete with diabolic laughter).

Keep in mind, I enjoy seeing the Icarus-like downfall of high-risers too but the thing is: the punishment has to fit the crime. Jayson Blair wrote for the NY Times and fabricated dozens of stories, many of them of national import. Likewise, Stephen Glass was pulling off similar deceptions over at The New Republic. Sylvester...was caught making up a meeting in a bar between supposed wanna-be players. I mean, no offense to the Voice but it was a fluff piece, probably reflective of a post New Times buy-out. Sure, from an issue of principle, it's not a good look, regardless of the specifics...but the specifics do matter.

I'm not defending Sylvester - I think he just dealt his career as a writer a death blow (or at least, he might have to start over writing for some rinky-dink paper until he can show his face again). But, if anything, Sylvester deserves the most ridicule for what my friend (who actually knows and likes Nick as a person) calls a mistake of "epic dumbness." I mean, who fabricates a meeting involving a real person. Didn't this guy watch Shattered Glass? You make up everything, including the people involved!

This all said: Sylvester = the new Blair? Gimme a break. Some perspective here, people.

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By the way, I know postings have slowed down a bit but that's at least partially due to the fact that: 1) I've been laid out with the worst cold I've had in years and 2) Junichi is getting married tomorrow. Congrats J and D! (See you in Laguna tomorrow)

--O.W.