Entries Tagged 'Entertainment' ↓

The sole issue more amazing than the blatancy of VOGUE’s having mined crude racist imagery for their April 2008 LeBron James/Giselle Bündchen cover has been the whiteout of surrounding media on the issue.

Here, in New York, neither The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The New York Sun, or The Village Voice have cracked a word on this subject, online or off. Newsday wrote something, before the direct pairing of the cover and H.R. Hopps’s 1917 Destroy This Mad Brute—Enlist poster, right, was widely known. As for television, local and network, zero.

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You’ve gotta wade past 1:50 of what looks like late ’60s, public access-level Dutch TV sitcomedy. But if you live through that, in sight is a glorious YouTube of Carl Douglas lip-syncing his signature 1974 track, “Kung-Fu Fighting.” [Insert Bruce Lee wild cat sound here.]

Forgive me: I don’t mean to put a sister’s business out in the street, but I have never been as shocked to find out a person’s age as I was during a recent chance lookup of actor Rachel True (Half & Half), right, on Wikipedia.

According to Wiki, True was born on November 15, 1966. This makes her 41 years old.

I’m sorry, but I find this absolutely mind-boggling. My wife and I became real fans of True’s gentle little farce, which ran from September 2002 to May 2006 on the now defunct UPN network. True, with Essence Atkins, played one of two San Francisco-based stepsisters, navigating missteps in careers, relationships, with their mothers, and each other. True, who I’d argue looked no older than 25 in the role—if that—played her character, Mona, with genuine pluck; the one relatively normal human being in a cast of kooks.

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The news this week that Barack Obama is distantly related to, among others, Brad Pitt, and that Hillary Clinton is, albeit at a distance, connected by family to Angelina Jolie, led to Pretty On the Outside blog fashioning these grotesque morphs of the Democratic candidates with their respective kinfolk.

Exactly one week ago, I ran a photo of the current LeBron James/Gisele Bündchen VOGUE cover, right, and noted, upon seeing it, “my first raw thought was that James looked bestial. They look like King Kong and Fay Wray.” (This, in the context of my reporting on a recent study that found many Americans subconsciously associate Black people with apes.)

I then asked, “Is it just me? Am I just imagining this?”

Apparently not. According to this Associated Press piece (thanks, Ray Winbush) titled, “Vogue cover starring LeBron James is called racially insensitive by some”:

the image is stirring up controversy, with some commentators decrying the photo as perpetuating racial stereotypes. James strikes what some see as a gorilla-like pose, baring his teeth, with one hand dribbling a ball and the other around Bundchen’s tiny waist.

It’s an image some have likened to “King Kong” and Fay Wray.

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If you thought Angelina Jolie should’ve gotten an Oscar for the face she made, above, in the first trailer for Wanted—her June 27 super assassin, super-actioner with Morgan Freeman, James McAvoy, and Common, directed by Timur Bekmambetov—you’ll be thrilled that the hot, new trailer is out.

Though almost nothing is cooler than the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video that Samuel Bayer directed for Nirvana, if you can believe it, nearly two decades ago, in 1991—not Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody or Paul Anka’s big band-styled tribute—this $44.99, 18-inch figure of Kurt Cobain from the classic vid comes close. (Thanks to super-blogger and fellow New Zealand-phile Hanan Levin at Grow-A-Brain for the tip.)

It not only talks, nor solely comes in a 7-inch, $16.99 version but, revelation!, also makes obvious that Cobain’s competition model 1969 Fender Mustang was finished in “Lake Placid Blue.” Somehow, I’d never noticed this. Perhaps I was distracted by all the marbles in his mouth.

Like mazes? Think you’re good at them? Then try these downloadable goodies on for size, tough guy.

Overdue congratulations to The Queen, Angela Bassett, for receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this past Thursday.

Somebody’s selling their entire music collection—3 million records, 300,000 CDs—on Ebay. (Those are just some of the 1,500,000 45s, above.)

Says the page

Organized and cataloged, the collection is meticulously maintained and housed in a climate-controlled warehouse. Every recording in this amazing collection has been personally acquired by the collection’s owner over the past fifty years and represents a lifetime of work and his desire to see the music preserved for future generations. Deteriorating health and related financial concerns are forcing the owner to sell the collection at far less than its true value. The estimated value of the collection, on a per-item basis, is in excess of $50 million.

Opening bid: $3 million. You’ve got 5 days.