I'm going to still have this page, but I wanna see how myspace works for me. All articles that I do will be here and on the other page at myspace.
Just now, I was complaining to myself that there was no variety in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. You either have franchise restaurants or hole-in-the-wall joints that are interesting when they open, but become bland after a time and attract fewer customers as a result. I am not the only one who voices this issue with this community. However, I’m not sure if it’s worth speaking on anymore.
Over the weekend, a woman who managed a KFC on South Chicago was killed during a robbery. You hear about these things so much in the Chi, but some of them strike people as bizarre. For me the part that was bothersome was the amount the robber got away with -- $50 dollars.
I imagine it had occurred to the guy who robbed the store that the amount of money taken wouldn’t have been much. Even if he didn’t get a lot, he could have simply left the store and came out with no bodies and tried again somewhere else. Being as impatient as he was during the whole ordeal, I suppose shooting her was a way of making her pay for being late with the money. No matter which way you cut the mustard on this, the whole thing is stupid.
Being current unemployed at the moment, I contemplated working at a restraint or a retail store. The current economy, as well as these news reports of crime in this city, has made me think twice about going in that direction. I’d rather be broke and alive, than with a pocket full of money and dead.
I really feel sorry for the family that lost someone who was trying to earn a living, especially if the family she comes from is black. Being African-American myself, it grates on the nerves to constantly see ourselves showcased as dead or engaging a life of crime on the 7 O’Clock evening news. There are many fingers and situations you can point to as the source of such robberies, but there are never are real solutions given. On the corporate end for KFC, they opted to close the store due to the incident – possibly even for good.
I’d hate for places to start closing for fear of being robbed or losing employees to murder. On the south side, especially in Hyde Park, places to go to for a simple meal are grow smaller and smaller as the robberies that push them out grow bigger and bigger. I think it’s stupid to close down a store because of them – no individual or group of individuals has ownership of a business through the abusive practice of thieving. On the other hand, considering neighborhoods don’t really turn people in these days, a business will simply close its doors.
When all of them suddenly leave the south side, where will people go to do anything? It’s almost as if the companies are telling us that unless we get rid of the crime, we won’t bother to come back at all.
Something can be done about this, but what?
I didn't bother watching "Love and Monsters" the week before. I had given up on writing Doctor Who reviews and was very nearly going to quit the show itself. More so than last year, Series 2 has proven that the team behind the scenes has yet to gain a firm handle on the quality of the scripts they film. With Russell T. Davies behind the wheel, you can see some of his own episodes possibly don't even go through a script reading.
I was going to skip Matthew Graham's "Fear Her," the last stand-alone episode before the two-part finale of Series 2. I went ahead anyway, and came away feeling at peace. It's not a great episode, but its a nice little segue for the big revelations to come.
The Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) landed in London in the year 2012 for the Olympics. In a nearby neighborhood, children began to disappear from within plain sight. The only clue to solving the mystery was a little girl named Chloe (Abisola Agbaje) who spent most of her time drawing pictures in her bedroom — some of which, strangely enough, were of the missing children. The Doctor found out that Chloe was possessed by an alien whose secret plan could wreck havoc on the Olympic games.
This was standard-issue X-Files, but it was a nice calm before the storm of the two-parter we will get starting next week. That being said, there are a few old issues that have bothered me throughout this season. The first of which is the vocalization of the language from David Tennant's Doctor.
In the original series (1963-1989), you got a sense of every word spoken regardless of the quality of that particular episode. For the new series (at least this current season) the show had suffered from a lack of clarity from David Tennant, who by choice of the production team or not, has been unable to get a script (except for "The Girl In The Fireplace") that allows his Doctor to be clear in his diction at every point in the plot. The ADD-like personality of the Doctor can be done to enrich the story, but not if it ultimately detracts from it. For this episode, the script had a bit of that near the beginning, but picked back up once the mystery deepened.
The second problem lies with the writers and how they are able to tap into the abilites of the actor who plays the Doctor. Christopher Eccelston's time last year forced him to engage in episodes that would be more fitting for David Tennant's Doctor, whereas David Tennant's stories this year could have been fitting for Christopher Eccelston. "Fear Her" I believe was more destined to be in the hands of Ecceslton's Doctor than Tennant's — although they would have to write out some of the comic bits in the first few minutes about the TARDIS having to be reparked.
The third problem was the lack of a KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) method. If you were going to write a script about the Cybermen, write a script about the Cybermen. Don't get into Rose Tyler's family, and Mickey's family all in the same episode. With "Fear Her," the story's distractions never strayed away from the original plot. Even when The Doctor ended up carrying the torch to light the Olympic Fire, it still stayed on course. In saying that, there's nothing wrong with dropping bits of character development here and there. What I am saying is that to do it, you have to be able to do one or the other — not all at once.
Speaking of the KISS method, I'm certain that won't be the case when "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" starts. Overall, "Fear Her" was nothing great, but not as irritatingly terrible as the last few episodes were for me.
This is a rather long and complicated story, but I'll give you the short of it.
A man named Evan put up a website in order to get assistance in searching for the people who lifted a Sidekick that was lost by a friend of his in a taxi. After many threats and lawsuits from the people who had it, the police managed to finally return the Sidekick (or will soon) return it to it's original owner (You can see the posting of June 15th, 10:05pm for confirmation).
It's a good thing I don't really have one, not that I would have many numbers on it anyhow.
To this day, I'm still getting comments on my Girlfriends article which alleged that Jill Marie Jones was leaving the UPN series and wouldn't be back as a regular cast member. So far, everyone that has come up Googled has been alleging with no real hardcore facts. I thought I caught something of a break when I saw this comment:
Received the article below by email. Is this true?
Can CBS Put 'The Girlfriends' Back Together Again?
By Aubrey Helbrect, entertainment writer for The Daily News .
June 15, 2006
The CBS Corporation announced today that, in response to the outrage viewers expressed upon learning of Jill Marie Jones' possible departure from Girlfriends, the show will be moved to the CBS television network.
Reportedly, the Girlfriends cast members were informed earlier this year that the show's budget would have to be cut in order for the show to be picked up by rookie network The CW in the fall. The CW is a new television network set to debut in the fall of 2006, which will feature programming from both UPN and the WB.
The four stars of the show, Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Persia White, and Jones, alledgedly agreed that they would stand together and refuse the network's lowball offer. A report from mediatakeout.com claims that the other three actresses cracked under pressure from the network, but Jones held firm, eventually declining to return for the show's seventh season.
A spokesperson for the CBS corporation says, "The fans of the show [Girlfriends] have rallied in support of the show and shown great admiration for the actresses who portray the girlfriends." In response to an outpouring of criticism from fans across the nation, the CBS corporation will attempt to secure more advertising dollars per thirty-second ad in hopes of maintaining current salaries for the actresses, and possibly raising their salaries in the future.
Girlfriends will be one of few African-American programs to air on a major television network since the establishment of UPN and The WB in 1995.
____
I'm not sure that this letter is true for several reasons. The first being that the author of the article doesn't appear to exist anywhere on the Google searches I've done. Secondly, the Daily News is a large collection of various papers of which this individual could be with. Third, there is a misspelling (alledgedly) in the article.
I've emailed this article to a writer at the LA Daily News to get further confirmation that this is a fake. I personally find it distrubing that there isn't that much news that confirms any of this. About the only clues one has to go on is the lack of a photo in the group cast shot that's on the CW website and the lack of mention about Jill Marie Jones in the press release for the next season.
In addition, I don't think CBS is willing to take another show that has been on it's last legs creatively. It's also a show from a bastard network such as UPN, which is really used to getting shows dumped on them by larger networks. It wouldn't be so bad if they did as they would attract an African-American audience that probably never watches CBS. It worked for UPN when they took In The House, which was one of more minor hits that they got from NBC.
Even with the original cast back, does it really make sense for the show to go on? If this next season gives that indication, then it will definetely be the last.
The American Medical Association is going to make you stop drinking soda by sending the government a proposal for an estimated one cent tax on your soft drink purchases. Doctors here in the United States are getting tired of apparently seeing so many fat Americans. Perhaps the fat people of America would be more than willing to do what this country asks of them if they weren’t forced to and were given better tools of management.
News networks are always pounding health reports about what’s good and bad for you. Sometimes they even manage to change what’s good for you into what’s bad for you and vice versa almost every other night. The helpfulness they provide becomes a mute point when there isn’t any real consistency. By all accounts, the networks don’t really do their research on these facts and seemingly neglect to give full details on the research conducted to come to this conclusion. I say, make it simple for people to lose weight — all you have to do is be more aware of your everyday choices.
For instance, lots of people sucked up that a single guy named Jared lost weight by eating Subway sandwiches. This may have been true as he did lose a lot of weight. What people didn’t know is that in order for his plan to work, you’d have to cut a lot of the extra out of the particular sandwich you purchase in order for you to lose weight. You also would have to eat a smaller portion — this rule also applies to soft drinks.
If you drink a lot of pops, you will take on a lot of calories. This means that when you purchase a 12-pack of pop, you should attempt to drink fewer than three a day. Even before you drink one, you should check the calorie count for each can you drink to see if that brand is even worth putting in your mouth.
Health Education makes a bit more sense than taxing people. But even then, life is unpredictable enough that we really can’t be sure that we will live long. The human body knows when it’s time is up — no amount of diet, exercise, or change in eating habits is going to completely prevent that.
If people still die in the world after people have done these very simple things, then at least they can say they died happy living their life the way they wanted — not the way organizations want them to.
Okay. I just finished watching “The Satan Pit,” the conclusion of the Matt Jones two-parter that began with “The Impossible Planet.” I reviewed it last week, stating that hopefully the quality in part two would be better. Instead of pulling a bad part one into a good part two (“Bad Wolf”/”Parting Of The Ways”), this was a case of a bad part one leading into a really bad part two. The saddest part is that while Christopher Eccelston struggled with his part as the Doctor last season, I believe this episode (along with a few episodes this season) would have been a great showcase for his ability given its dark tone. Of course the script had a bit too much cheese for his taste and was probably one of the reasons he left in the first place.
The plot continues with Rose (Billie Piper) and the remaining members of the base crew retaining control of the base from the Ood. Meanwhile, The Doctor (David Tennant) and Ida (Clarie Rushbrook) are deep inside the planet of where the base sits – with a rather huge pit which had just opened its doors last week. Of course Rose and company got to play Scooby Doo and run around corridors until they found a solution; The Doctor, on the other hand, wants to know what’s in the pit. After using the now-cut elevator cable that would lead them to the surface to go down the pit via Ida, The Doctor disables the cable so that he can fall the rest of the way down. The rest of it is pretty simple – he meets the devil, Rose and company escape, Toby inhabits the soul of Satan again and gets killed, and The Doctor retrieves the TARDIS, which he happened to discover in the hole just in time to save the crew and Rose from being pulled into the black hole.
In addition to feeling cheesy, the episode felt too “alright,” as if things were going to be fine already. That’s how I especially felt when The Doctor encountered Satan, who was chained up and merely grunting. Considering this was going to be a one-sided argument, the Doc began to think out loud determining the mystery of the two vases and why the devil was chained up. Of course he smashes the vases and kills the body of the devil while finding the TARDIS – in other words, things went “alright.”
It didn’t help that besides Toby (Will Throp), none of the supporting characters had any real chemistry with each other or the Doctor and Rose. This made me all the more willing to have them all knocked off aside from Toby, which would have made a more depressing ending for Rose if she found that he was going to have to die still being possessed by the devil himself.
The Ood also served no purpose but to chase everyone on the base and say as few words as possible. The producers would have been better sticking the Daleks or Cybermen in this adventure as they can do just a bit more than shoot strobe lights at people. Perhaps in the next series, we can work on monsters that have no legs and that aren’t human, and maybe force the Doctor to learn a different language.
This two-parter felt like the 1996 TV movie in quality, which Fox would have been fine with. Having said that, I would much prefer that the series try to stay away from the plots of Matt Jones and steer towards the brilliance of writers like Steven Moffat, who wrote “The Girl In The Fireplace.” I would hate to see the reaction of the Sci-Fi Channel viewers when they end up with Series Two and almost every single episode gives them a reason to turn it off.
Over at Jazzymodels (which I reviewed on this site), a current discussion is brewing over a photo which has stirred quite a bit of controversy. An African-American female model with the stage name Aye Provide posted this photo on Model Mayhem (a modeling site that allows models to put up their resume and photos for free on their own page). A few members of the site took notice of the photo and began a discussion of it on their forum. The thread has since been closed by the moderators. A discussion based on that thread on Model Mayhem has begun on the Jazzyville forum since some of the members belong to Model Mayhem and have taken part in the discussion.
The concern that I and many people of any race would have is that the photo represents the worst stereotype of the African-American culture. In the past, white entertainers would put on makeup to give the apperance of being black. To add insult to the whole performance, the same performers would pretend to be what this nation thought of blacks — lazy, passive, and forever happy (with smiles and all) to remain that way.
Many years after its original release, The Birth of a Nation is considered something of a cult classic because of its controversial imagery of African-Americans as idiot savants in a largely white-dominated world. Although time has passed since the inital furor, the movie sells well on Amazon with several selections available. In film schools, the movie is also discussed and broken down despite its racial overtones.
The impact of this photo might not even be the content itself, but that the person doing it gleefully copies the expressions of the two blackface statues below her face. The only thing that would make this photo even worse would be if a chicken was in the mouths of both of the statues since that was another stereotype that was created for blacks. Offensive racist images of the past, while considered art to some, are still ugly reminders of the past. To ask for complete acceptance in the name of creativity is too much to ask for anyone of color – or any ethnic group for that matter, myself included.
Perhaps the biggest reason people don't pay these images any mind is a matter of the times. Whites and blacks marry each other and even have kids together. Network television, largely owned by whites, accept blacks into largely white shows and even allow them to make shows for a black audience. Hell, we even now get houses and apartments that were not available to us. "Why get upset over a single image?" is the answer that some would give. Not I.
Does anyone remember this image of Ted Danson wearing blackface makeup? This took place at a Friar's Club roast for Whoopi Goldberg on October 8, 1993, which apparently was allegedly suggested by Whoopi herself. I'm sure that if anyone thought this would make a fun joke at a largely black audience, the individual would up come missing for awhile.
But history forgave Danson, which must be how he wound up with Becker.
As for the model who took the photo, she was probably having the hardest time trying to explain why she took it. Some have commented on her page that she took a bold step in pushing the envelope and being creative while doing it. I’m sure that’s what Dave Chappelle thought he was doing with Chappelle's Show, until he later allegedly admitted that some of his content was a bit too stereotypical. Will that same thought occur to this person as well? I highly doubt it, and that’s okay because it’s her mind and her right to think there isn’t anything wrong.
I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of 'net users everywhere on what this photo means to you and if it’s offensive (whether you are black or not). I certainly think it will arouse various opinions on what is considered racist and what isn’t.
I happened to be browsing the web the other day when I came across this link to a web page. In it, a person known as Evan was trying to track down the people who acquired a friend's Sidekick II after she lost it in a cab. Apparently, the folks in question have been found, but they don't want to give it back.
It would have been easy to just simply give up, but Evan didn't. The webspace that was created follows this persons journey attempts are made to convince the persons invovled to return the Sidekick in question. Some of Evan's friends have managed to track down myspace pages that the individuals have.
Perhaps if I did this with the cell phones I lost, I would have gotten them back. Here's to hoping that Evan gets his or her friend's cellphone back.
A few weeks ago, I was debating with my mother on returning back to college. She believes it's pointless and would cause more debt to follow me. Considering the fact I spend the majority of my time in a small apartment looking after my dad, I need someplace to go to lead me in some kind of direction. School may not be the best choice, but it is my choice.
That was the puzzling issue people seemed to have with Lt. Ehren Watada, an Army Soldier from Honolulu who refused to go to Iraq when his unit deploys later on in the month.
Obviously there were lots of people searching for a real reason for his action. The WizBangBlog attempts to degrade his position as being nothing more than a toy for the left-wing. If he is, so the hell what?
Lt. Watada volunteered to be in the Army - that same right to choose should be given to him to leave it. People in the civil rights movement chose to fight, despite the fact that their lives would be in danger. If nothing else was to be gained from it, it's a lesson to people - if you believe in an issue, stand for it. Lt. Watada at that point showed that he more legs to stand on in his own soul than most of us do in our daily lives.
We spoke of how this damages the morale of the soldiers and of our president. The trouble was we damaged the morale of our troops by allowing the slaughter of innocent people in order to catch Bin Laden, a man who we haven't been able to catch since this thing began. If we are the baddest country in the world, we should be that using the top head - not the clunky one in our pants.
Regardless of the outcome for Lt. Watada, more will follow in his footsteps - at least I hope. After enough do it, the conservatives will have no choice but to take a good hard look at themselves. When they do unfortunately, it may be already too late for them to repair their own damages.
A rumor was reported on Fox News a couple of days ago. Lohan, who recently starred in A Praire Home Companion, has reportedly walked away from the movie Bill due to the inexperience of the first-time directors. The movie was to star her alongside Amanda Peet and Aaron Eckhart.
All I can say is that I wish her luck, but I don’t think a director’s fame is equal to his quality.
Big-time directors are human too, and can run a production into the ground regardless of their fame. You can’t really blame Lohan considering that, like Hilary Duff, she’s been getting a boatload of movies with only some margin of success. What keeps her and Duff in the spotlight is their fame, and not necessarily the quality of their music or movies.
Perhaps Lohan should pull a Ron Howard and switch careers and disappear behind the camera. There’s actually much more worth in being the director than the actor, simply because the director can control some portion of the product he or she is shooting. As an actor, your worth is only as good as the movie you were in and the money you get from that movie. For directors or any behind the scenes folks, they can make the money and forgo the worry as to whether it made the critics happy or not.
What kills me about this rumor — while it may not be true — is the stupidity of the notion. Every movie is a crap shoot, and none are made with the idea of being a hit. Flashdance, which was crappy as all get out, made it because it had an idea and a musical soul to it that surpassed the rather syrupy plot. The same with Footloose. Both movies were directed by people who were big-time but if they weren’t offered the money, would probably never touch the films in the first place.
Years from now, I bet she will be begging Disney for a Parent Trap 2.
After a long battle with malignant hypertension and chronic kidney failure, keyboardist Billy Preston died today at Shea Scottsdale Hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona. He had been in a coma since November, but there had been some signs of recovery. He was 59 years old. Preston received a kidney transplant in 2002, but the kidney failed and he has been on dialysis ever since.
Known as the "Fifth Beatle," he worked intimately with the Fab Four as keyboardist on The White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road. The versatile Preston also worked with The Rolling Stones on Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Some Girls, and Bridges to Babylon; and toured with the band in 1975. He played on solo records by George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon, often played with Eric Clapton, and played on other classics including Aretha Franklin's Young, Gifted and Black, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, and Sly and Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On.
The piano and organ virtuoso with the big smile and bigger Afro also had a quite successful solo career in the '70s, which included the funky instrumental hits "Outa-Space" and "Space Race," as well as vocal hits "Will It Go Round In Circles," "Nothing From Nothing," and the ballad duet with Syreeta Wright, "With You I'm Born Again." Preston also wrote and first recorded the Joe Cocker smash "You Are So Beautiful."
A-list talent such as Ray Charles, Little Richard, Mahalia Jackson and James Cleveland mentored the child prodigy, and Richard made the original Beatles connection for Preston when he opened for them in Hamburg in the early-'60s. Preston's job: making sure the Beatles were fed.
From there and throughout the '60s, Billy maintained a relationship with them. This led to eventually to him recording and performing with them, and his signing to the Beatles' own Apple Records. Such fortune inspired the title of the album, That's the Way God Planned It
The last anyone saw of Preston in public was at a reunion for the '05 DVD release of The Concert of Bangladesh - a concert of which he was an integral part in in 1971. In attendance at the reunion was Ringo Starr and the late George Harrison's son, Dhani.
This past weekend, The Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) landed on a planet destined for doom – the evil in question? A black hole. Not so bad actually, just pop in the TARDIS and go, right? Well, not really. The TARDIS, The Doctor’s only other friend, was gone. Did I mention that there was a satanic evil waiting deep in the earth’s surface?
All of this danger should have made for a great start to this two-parter from Matt Jones, but instead gets weighed down by erratic tones in the script and too many supporting characters.
The start of the episode, like some of them this season, began with a bad attempt at humor by Rose (“If you think there’s gonna be trouble, we could just go back in and go somewhere else”), followed by The Doctor babbling about “Space Base, Moonbase.” Of course they discover ancient writing with the heading overstating the obvious (“Welcome to Hell”), which is followed up by the introduction to the Ood, a race of people who communicate through small strobe-lights that could have been stolen from Studio 54. The Ood also carry the same dialogue as the Daleks (“Exterminate!”) and The Cybermen (“Delete!”). In their case it’s “We Must Feed” which suggests that by the end of the opening sequence credits, they will be running from cannibals. Instead, they are shown as slaves who wanted to “feed” The Doctor and Rose. WTF?
After that misfire of tension, we meet the crew who run the base that sat on top of the planet. Of course as a cliché, they are explorers who mine various planets so that they can claim their resources (ala “The Pirate Planet”). Most of the members of the crew seemed one-dimensional given the dumb-founded “people” dialogue (“I can’t believe they are real people.” “Wow! Real people!”). One word of the title of the episode also got a mention at ad nasuem (“Impossible”), which by the end of the episode really took all the mystery out of it.
And then there’s the satanic evil lurking around.
Toby (played with great slyness by Will Throp) wasn’t given a lot of character development and was mostly used to discover the meaning behind the writings. He does however get one of the greatest “Don’t look back” scenes in TV history; it also did the right thing of not showing whatever was there behind him at the last moment. When he became taken over, he inhabited the very writings he was researching on his skin, which could have been exploited more. Instead, the Ood are given the same job of carrying out the plan of the spirit inside the planet which seems the easy way of carrying suspense in sci-fi. If John Carpenter could pull that off with The Thing, they could have easily pulled that off in Doctor Who.
Having lost the TARDIS to space, The Doctor and Rose make small talk about their future without his time machine. They speak of living together and possibly being a couple; a yucky idea indeed. I believe that “School Reunion” earlier this year already established that it wouldn’t make sense for the Doctor to be in a relationship. Yet here, the romance cliché is in full effect. This was especially true as Rose pined for the Doctor to return from the bottom of the Earth (which he goes to investigate). To be honest, this would have been a great last hurrah for Elizabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith — the smack in the face situation that would have reminded her how dangerous life was for her with the Doctor (she originally was on the show in the 70’s with Jon Pertwee, and then later with Tom Baker).
Despite my issues with the supporting characters and the increased cheese factor, one cannot deny the scenery of this episode. The civilization within the planet actually looks like it could fit, especially when they go down into the center of the planet (which is something they couldn’t completely do with “The Pirate Planet” in the 70s). The base also looked good; even though it looked like it had been borrowed from the set of another movie. One thing I couldn’t quite get into was the shaking style during the quakes; they didn’t seem to shake as violently. The Enterprise on Star Trek felt more real in that instance when they got hit.
This episode may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the writing is what ultimately spoke for itself in this case. Several Doctor Who fans tend not to be fans of the “base under siege” genre of Sci-Fi, especially since a lot of early Doctor Who tended to rely on this. I can say I understand their issues with that format, but perhaps it’s a matter of which episode they are watching. From my own memory, “The Robots Of Death” was about the same, but kept the interest by making it a mystery. “Planet of Evil” was helped because the monster in question never had a real physical form. Again, it’s more in how you write the episode.
There is a man lurking in the background of your television screen -- or at least when you watch the opening minutes of Masters of Horror. I won't tell you who it is, but he's a very famous character for a rather popular horror franchise. For those of you who don't own copies on your computer or DVD's of the series, there is no need to worry.
With the help of fellow BC writer Daniel Woolstencroft, I present to you an image of the man.
Can you guess who it is?
