No that’s not a MacBook Pro sitting on a desk…its a cake! That shit is sweet as hell! Lol i wouldn’t even know where to start cutting. Hell, I wouldn’t even want to eat it. This was made by some real pros at Bcake NY. Shots out to them!
It’s got everything: MacBook with on-screen message window and Super Friends, a Mighty Mouse, an iPhone and various desktop office supplies…all edible!
Dope.
Now i watch a lot of crime drama on tv. Law & Orders, The Practice, Raising the Bar, First 48, Crime 360, etc…you name it i watch. I even watch court TV. Now i know for a fact this isn’t the first or last time this has happened and Cops will continue do this. What makes this so special is that this time it just so happened not to be a young African Amercian kid that accused the cop of lying. Usually in the before mentioned crime dramas, the young kids is asked “why would this officer lie on you?” “Why would this officer risk his pension for you on something so simple?” “you mean to tell me 4 officers are all lying just to get you?” Well…yes. Yes they are. It happens all the time.
You can hear them in the video speaking and laughing about what they were going to do. They sounded pretty confident and like this wasn’t something new they just thought of. I got the impression it was pretty standard. There are countless people who have been convicted, locked up, or took pleas because its the cops word against theirs. I’m heated because this has happened to a family member of mine. Different set of circumstances but the same result. Crooked cop lied and fabricated “evidence”.
Damn Shame…
Janita Patrick is a FICTIONAL character. Article by Zettler Clay
Dear Debra Lee,
I’m Janita Patrick, a 15-year-old African-American female from Cincinnati. Recently, I watched the 2009 BET Awards and felt the strongest urge to reach out to the program. My family is of the typical middle-class variety; both parents and four brothers. See, I’m a junior in high school (got skipped), so naturally EVERYBODY in my age group watches BET. I’m used to seeing the sagging pants, tattoos, lack of emphasis on reading and respecting women that makes up your videos. People in my class live this out everyday, while teachers tell us that we’re acting just like the people in your shows.
In your shows. That struck me as odd, because I would think that with your show being the primary outlet for black entertainers and musicians, and considering the context of blacks in this country, there’s a social responsibility factor to consider. I would never blame BET alone for the way a great deal of my classmates act and talk and dress. Everybody makes their own choices. However, if anybody is aware of the power of television on impressionable minds, it’s the people running the television operations. If you are not aware, then perhaps you shouldn’t be running the operations.
Guess who watches your network the most? Not those who are intelligent enough to discern foolishness from substance, but those who are barely teenagers, impressionable and believing. It’s awfully cruel to plant seeds of ignorance in fertile minds. You know it’s really bad when the co-founder of BET, Sheila Johnson, said that she “really doesn’t watch it” anymore.
I am constantly fighting against the images and messages put forth on your program. What made you think that it’s okay to bring my classmates on stage to dance behind Lil Wayne and Drake to a song talking about boffing “every girl in the world”? Why does reality train wrecks have to be thrown in our faces? Are you aware of the achievement gap going in inner-city African-American communities? A report from America’s Promise Alliance, a non-profit group started by Colin Powell, recently stated that 47 percent of high school students in the nation’s top 50 cities don’t graduate. This isn’t because of BET per se, but I don’t see any episodes on your show doing anything to counteract this disturbing trend. In fact, your show is a part of this cycle of media depicting us at our worst.
My older brother told me something about profit being the number one goal for every business. I’m not sure I understand what that means, but I do know that your shows have to be entertaining enough to generate viewers, which is how you make your money. But surely our culture is rich enough to entertain without anything extra to “boost” ratings; why the over-the-top foolery? I listen to classmates talk about Baldwin Hills like it’s the Manhattan Project. It doesn’t take much effort to produce a throng of degenerative reality shows, nor does it take much to eliminate socially conscious shows off the air. MTV isn’t much better, but since when does two wrongs ever make a right? It’s one thing for white television shows to depict us in a particular way, but for black television shows to do it is just baffling.
WHY DO YOU HATE US ?
All of the values that my parents seek to instill in me and my brothers seems to be contradicted by a more powerful force from the media, and your show is at the forefront. Your network is the only network that features rap videos and shows exclusively to children of my color. I know that you have no control over the music that the artists put out, but you do have influence as to how you air these videos. I’m sure if a stand was taken to use the talent in your organization to actually crank out thought-provoking entertaining shows and videos, then artists will follow suit. Being that they need you as much as you need them.
There was one awkward segment in the BET Awards when Jamie Foxx singled out three black doctors-turned-authors, but the introduction was so powerless that many of the viewers had no idea who they were. Had they been introduced as Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins, three brothers who overcame major obstacles to become a success without the use of lyrics that berate women, the sell of substance that destroy communities or through raps about loose gunplay, then maybe my classmates would have come to school talking about more than Beyonce, T-Pain’s BIG ASS CHAIN and Soulja Boy Tell Em’s hopping out the bed. But they weren’t introduced like that. It seemed like a throwaway obligatory tribute to appease some irritated fans. It missed the mark. Big time. Ask Michelle Obama if she watches BET or encourages Sasha and Malia to do so. Ask President Obama. It’s a reason he is the leader of the free world, and it isn’t because of Buffoonery Exists Today.
You’d be surprised how smart young black children can be with the absence of Blacks Embarrassing Themselves. If your goal is to deter engaged, forward-thinking articulate black minds, then consider your goal fulfilled. It’s hard-pressed to think that your shows are working to promote cultural betterment. However, it’s quite easy to conclude that the destruction of black children through the glorification of immoral behavior and rushed production is by design. Poison is being swallowed by every viewer who adores your network, and the worse thing is, these viewers – my classmates – are not even aware what they’re swallowing.
There is nothing edifying for black women on your show. I don’t judge people who do throng to your programs though; I mean, if a jet crashes in right in front of me, I’ll watch it too. That’s why I don’t flip by your channel…I don’t even want to be sucked in.
I have aspirations of acquiring a law degree and possibly entering the public sphere, so I can counteract conditions in my community perpetuated by the images on your channel. So I should thank you, because in a weird sense, your shoddy programming is the wind behind my back. And it is my hope that I can accomplish my dreams despite BET’s pictorial messages, because Lord knows it won’t be because of them.
Sincerely,
Janita Patrick
Janita Patrick is a fictional character.
Luckily for Janita, her heartfelt and articulate letter is a result from a lack of BET.
Too many others aren’t as lucky.
A Florida man Mercedes Antwan Faggett was arrested on Sunday and charged with raping his 7 year old male cousin.
According to police reports, the 7 year old victim told relatives that Faggett took him to a living room area of a home during the early morning hours and forced him to have sexual intercourse.
Faggett is being charged with Capital Sexual Battery.
Verizon Math Fail
Wow…i mean with all those people in your “network” nobody can count LOL.
Fail! Fail! Fail!
D.O.A.A.: DIE OLD ASS ARTISTS (YOUR CAREERS, THAT IS)
Older rap artist’s careers are already dead. They’re just carrying them along, like Larry and Richard did Bernie in Weekend At Bernie’s. It doesn’t have to be like this, though. If older artists catered to the people who actually grew up listening to their music and started making music that people at their age could actually relate to, their rap careers could still prosper.
Take LL Cool J, for example. James Todd Smith is 41 years old. He’s married with four kids. On his last single “Baby” featuring Dream, he talks about banging out a chick at a truck stop and banging out a chick in the back of a pickup truck. He even says in the record that the girl he’s with doesn’t care if he’s married or single.
But the reality of the situation is this: LL, you are married! Act like it! That record could’ve been so much harder if you as a married 41-year-old man made a record about your wife. Imagine husbands all over the country coming in the house singing to their wives, “You’re my baby, my baby, my baby, my baby.” That’s some G shit; G for Grown. That’s the problem with old artists in Hip Hop. They don’t want to grow up.
Radio is partly to blame for this also. Your favorite Hip Hop and R&B station caters to the 18-34 demographic. So when these old artists are making records, they’re targeting that audience. People my age – 29 – and up are still in that demo, but truthfully, outside of my career in radio, I don’t listen to the radio too much because the playlists are way too redundant. I like Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On,” but one station is playing it a hundred times a week. That’s insane.
Some radio stations are called Urban AC stations, which cater to the 25-54 demographic. They play a lot of older music, but when you listen to these stations, you have to ask where the Hip Hop is. Most of these Urban AC stations ignore the fact that Hip Hop has been the most dominant form of urban music for the past 20 years. They’ll play old school R&B but won’t play old school Hip Hop. Why not? The people that are in the 25-54 demo grew up on Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J, Outkast, and Scarface.
Since these Urban AC stations ignore these older records and don’t include them in their playlists, a lot of artists have nowhere to go. Imagine if there was a Hip Hop Urban AC station that played the best Hip Hop from the 80s and 90s. That would bring revenue to so many older artists. People would start buying Hip Hop catalogues again, more older artists could tour, and most importantly, when these older artists still want to record and put out albums, the people who grew up listening to them probably would still go out and purchase them.
It’s not that older rappers shouldn’t record anymore. They just need to rap about what they’re going through now in life and stop trying to relive their youth. I don’t want to see Fat Joe ice grilling the camera and rapping about shooting people anymore. I don’t want to see him laid up in the project hallways; he looks ridiculous at 40 years old. I like what artists like Ghostface, Nas, and Andre 3000 do. They rap about life as it is for them now; they don’t make records catering to the youth. They’re not stressing whether or not they get radio play, or if the young kids will embrace them at Summer Jam. They’re just painting their pictures from a grown man’s perspective.
Ghostface spoke on his new album recently saying, “You gotta tell the fans that you’re not gettin’ no younger here. We’re gettin’ older and everybody doesn’t sell crack no more, man. I don’t sell crack, you. I ain’t movin’ no bricks or none of that other shit. I ain’t shoot nobody in like since the early 90s, man. How long you gonna be 40 years old and actin’ like you still sellin’ crack and you on the block and you doin’ this and you doin’ that when times is more serious, man. It’s time to talk about grown-man situations.”
This leads me to the one artist who just won’t grow up: Jay-Z. He tried on Kingdom Come, but when that album wasn’t critically acclaimed, he resorted back to the same drug-dealing street talk he’s been doing his whole career on American Gangsta. He said he was influenced to record the album by watching the movie American Gangsta; he said it took him back to that era of his life when he was running the streets. That’s bullshit, Hov. You just wanted to rap about trapping again because you want to be relevant to the young crowd. His latest attempt at reliving his youth is “D.O.A. (Death Of Autotune).” I find it humorous that of all the things he could declare Death on in the rap game, he chose Autotune. That’s pretty weak, Jay.
How about Death to celebrating the drug culture? If you really lived it, fine, tell your story. But if you didn’t, stop using the trap as a gimmick. Trap music is not crunk music. Everybody can’t make a trap record just because that’s what’s “in.” Why didn’t Jay-Z declare Death to gangbanging on records? This is Hip Hop and all these rappers become gang members after they get deals. What part of the game is that? Why didn’t Jay-Z declare Death to bling? It’s a recession, stop spending money on Big Ass Chains (T-Pain, this means you) and invest in something that doesn’t depreciate with value. Why didn’t Jay-Z declare Death to older artists not acting their age? Why didn’t he co-sign what Ghostface said? Because he would’ve ethered himself.
Autotune never heard anybody. It’s amazing that the same guy who said “what you eat don’t make me shit” is now declaring Death to the way others are eating. What if back in the day someone like 2Pac declared Death to Big Money Talk while Jay was on the come-up? How would that have affected him? Why is Jay getting points for making a song about what the internet has been saying for the longest? I personally don’t believe Jay feels strongly about the “D.O.A.” thing. He just needs a quick gimmick to jumpstart hype for the Blueprint 3.
Do I find Autotune annoying? Yes. Is it necessary on every record? No. Does it sound good on some records? Yes. Did Jay-Z have to declare death to it? No. Will it have an affect on people using Autotune, or fans embracing Autotune records? Not at all. Jay-Z doesn’t have the same influence he had when he declared “I don’t wear jerseys I’m 30+ / Go get a button-up.” If he does, how come nobody is dressing like him now? Where’s your nappy Afro and glasses like Roger from the old TV show “What’s Happening”?
Jay-Z, if you want the culture of Hip Hop to move forward, you need to step back. We need people like you in the board room. You did all you could do as a player. If you’re the Michael Jordan of rap like you say you are, sit down and own your tea. Groom the next generation of artists.
All of you who are saying Hip Hop is dead or the rap game is whack must be listening to the radio way too much. Hip Hop is in the best space it’s been in a long time, but you won’t realize that if you keep trying to bring that old feeling back. Life is about forward motion; it’s not about bringing back what was. It’s about embracing what it is and what it’s going to be. What it is: T.I., Young Jeezy, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, and Plies. What it’s going to be: Glasses Malone, Nipsey Hussle, and Strong Arm Steady from the West Coast; Maino and Red Café from New York; Drake from Canada; Killer Mike from Atlanta; and the whole Stupid Dope Moves regime from South Carolina which includes Trapstar, A Rizzla, and Marly Marl.
Respect the past, but embrace the future. That’s my motto, and for all older artists who don’t feel that way, D.O.A.A.: Die Old Ass Artist (your careers, that is).
Streetfully Yours, Sincerely Gangsta, Gutter Always,
Charlamagne Tha God
By Adam Frucci, 11:20 AM on Mon Jul 27 2009,
This “Rubix Cubewich” is made from cubes of pastrami, kielbasa, pork fat, salami and two types of cheddar. While the original puzzle will give you a headache, this one will just give you the farts. [Insanewiches via SeriousEats, Daily What]
