Westward Ho!

I am officially old. Girlfriend out of town and I spent a good chunk of my leisure time, yesterday, watching westerns on Encore's western channel. Watched episodes of Wagon Train with a young and virile Clint Eastwood; watched John Wayne and William Holden in The Horse Soldiers; set my DVR to capture The Ballad of Cable Hogue (in my opinion, one of Sam Peckinpah's best movies - not to mention Stella Stevens' and Jason Robards' - although I like him better in How the West Was Won)and the Sabata trilogy (starring Lee Van Cleef and Yul Brenner).

But i had the most fun watching something called 4 for Texas starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. This movie has many charms, prominent among them the decolletage of Anita Ekberg and the legs and everything else of Ursula Andress, but the thing that resonated with me was the performance of Edric Conner, a black man, co-starring as "Prince George," Dean Martin's coach driver and enforcer. The strapping Conner embodies his Prince with a screen dignity that is as rare as it is compelling. Prince George owns his coach and refuses to sell it to Martin - he is agreeable to renting it and his services, however, as he retains ownership of his rig and himself. It is forebear of the innate, self-contained nobility and virility Sidney Poitier will bring to the screen five years hence in movies like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night - except there is mischievous glint in Conner's eye that we will not witness on screen again until the heyday of Eddie Murphy. I am not a fan of what Sinatra became, but in the early to middle sixties he was on the side of the angels when it came to showcasing black actors on screen.

 ~rave!

Cross My Heart

I am in full NBA playoff mode (two games EVERY night!) but after the games on TNT I have had the pleasure of catching reruns of some of TNTs welcome characters (the night before I saw my first ever episode of Franklin and Bash and I gotta know, is there some new trend where every television law firm is run by an Afro-American MILF - Garcelle Beauvais on Bash and Gina Torres on Suits?).

Late last night I saw the best episode of Leverage I have ever seen.  I am up and down with this series.  Some episodes wow me while others leave me indifferent but last night's "Cross My Heart" episode from season four was great.  Everything from the cold start during a layover at the Cincinnati Airport to the two lives hanging in the balance drama - with several Sting-like twists in between - left me unable to go to bed (although it was already one am and I had to go to work in the morning)and showed Leverage's tight ensemble group at their best.

~rave!

Crowne Me

Has anybody seen Larry Crowne with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts?  Like most of the movie going public I avoided it like the plague when it was in the theaters.  Caught it on DirecTV and I found it quite engaging (and not just for the awesomely fetching Gugu Mbatha-Raw).  The movie prominently features Pam Grier (still fetching), Cedric the Entertainer, Taraji P. Henson and a slyly wicked turn by George Takei as Dr. Matsutani. In addition to Mr. Takei, there is a nice bit where one of Hank's speech classmates gives a two-minute dissertation on why Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek series while dressed in full star fleet uniform.  This movie even makes me like Wilmer Valderrama and I HATE Wilmer Valderrama.

~rave!

Hulk Like Me

It turns out the problem with the two Hulk movies wasn't the CGI Hulks - because the one in the new Avengers movie is not significantly better than the one in the second Hulk movie - but the actors playing Dr. Bruce Banner. Mark Ruffalo wears the tortured soul of the good doctor as he brings a vulnerability, a fragile, bruised humanity to the character that has been missing since Bill Bixby played David Bruce Banner. He so inhabits the character that when Banner and Stark are going I.Q. to I.Q. on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, you believe in his prodigious intellect and his overweening humanity, in way you wouldn't if the character had been played by one Eric Bana or one Edward Norton.

Wild Things

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Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak dead at 83. I used to read Where the Wild Things Are to my daughter (who is now 20) every night. She'd giggle every time I told her in my monster voice, "I could eat you up I love you so!" and every night we would conclude the book with me asking softly, "and who loved him most of all?" "His mommy," she would say before kissing me on my forehead and falling off to sleep. ~rave!

Ballin' too hard

So I ball so hard muhfuckas wanna fine me 
But first niggas gotta find me

What's 50 grand to a muhfuka like me

Can you please remind me?

Ball so hard This shit crazy

~Kanye West, "Niggas in Paris"

Okay, Kanye, you win.  I recant everything I have ever suggested
about your being gay ("not that there's anything wrong with that").
Just please, please, PLEASE!!!! stop this Kim Kardashian nonsense.


I don't believe this relationship is any more real than your "relationship" with Shay the UK Bombshell

Or your "relationship" with Amber Rose

(why does Kanye always look like he was photo-shopped into these pictures)

But those publicity stunts were relatively harmless.  Ms. Rose went on to play wifey with Wiz Khalifa and the Bombshell carried on being ridiculously endowed.


This Kardashian business, however, is toxic (holler at your boy, Lamar; give Kris Humphries a jingle).  Nothing good will come out of it.  Nothing good CAN come out of it.  I mean, have you SEEN her sex video (with Ray J)?  I have.  So believe me when I tell you that even if I am willing to concede your non-gayness (and I AM, truly I am) not even the sex will be good.

Nothing good has ever come from putting three Ks together.  

If, like noted cockhound Tom Cruise, you must persist in trawling for talent, trawl for TALENT.  

I hear Rihanna likes to play.

Or how about actress Lauren London 

(oh, no, wait...Weezy has already been there - done that)

Duane Wade has locked up Gabrielle Union...

 but it is my understanding that Meagan Good is still available.

And Tyra Banks is still Tyra Banks (fool!). 

'cept publicly dating Tyra Banks is damn near like ADMITTING YOU ARE GAY ("not that anything is wrong with that").

This shit crazy.

Black like Me

I am often amused by the comedy stylings of conservative apologist Jonah Goldberg (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/27/opinion/la-oe-goldberg-trayvon-martin-race-20120327),
but his ham-fisted attack on the phrase "white hispanic" borders on willful cluelessness.

Back in the last millennium a white supervisor asked me what was the difference between a white Hispanic and a black Hispanic and I replied: What is the difference between a white American and a black American?

It is that simple and nobody needs a score card to figure it out. Anybody that has seen a telenovela on Univision or Sophia Vergara on "Modern Family" knows what a white Hispanic looks like.  Anybody who has watched Major League baseball and has rooted for Mariano Rivera or Alfonso Soriano knows what a black Hispanic looks like.

If you can move into a predominantly white neighborhood and nobody moves out, you are a white Hispanic.  If baseball has been "berry, berry good to you" you are a black Hispanic.

First of all, Mr. Goldberg, it has nothing to do with whether or not one of your parents is white.  So, no, President Obama is NOT a white African-American.  If Mr. Obama was, in fact, a white African-American and looked like your brother-from-another-mother instead of "the other," he would be currently hailed as the new Ronald Reagan for his moderate Republican policies and not vilified as a wild-eyed radical.

~rave!