Entries from June 2009 ↓

From MEDIA ASSASSIN, December 23, 2008.—HA

I may like nothing less than any film or video where Black people teach white people how to dance, or to otherwise be cool.

That said, I can kind of bear the otherwise talented Vicki Lawrence (Mama’s Family) in this clip from The Carol Burnett Show, above, because there’s just not a lot of high-quality footage around of the Jackson 5 performing their hot, often-less-heralded semi-single, “Body Language (Do the Love Dance).”

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While we’re waiting for Eddie Murphy’s insights on Michael Jackson’s passing, this will have to do: The comedian riffing on the King, from 1983’s Delirious. High point: His spot-on impersonation of Jackson singing “She’s Out of My Life,” added calls for sympathy from the vocalist’s brothers. A quarter-century later…still amazing.

Today, on NONFICTION, I’ll be talking about the life and music of the late, great Michael Jackson, who died yesterday, with ethnomusicologist Dr. Kyra Gaunt and music writer Michael Gonzales, author of “Remembering The Times: Memories of Mike.”

You can hear their ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

“And when the groove is dead and gone
You know that love survives
So we can rock forever on….”

We’ve covered fellatio-inspired ads before, here, on MEDIA ASSASSIN. However, this print piece, above, offering to “blow” Burger King’s “Super Seven Incher” into the wide-open mouth of a customer is so perfectly awful that, as I post it, I’m actually still wondering if it’s real. (This other picture of it seems to suggest its veracity, however.)

As the amazing copyranter.com clarifies,

this ad via Singapore for the BK Super Seven Incher is the new leading “most overtly blow-jobby ad” I’ve ever seen, surpassing this one, this one, and even this one. Nice misogynistic touch making the woman look like a f%#@ing blow-up doll.

Meanwhile, a word to Gaviscon: Selling your white, thick, creamy, heartburn medicine on the promise that it will cool your insides “like a fireman came in your mouth” is going to really narrow your audience.

[via BuzzFeed.com]

Here’s my prediction: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will do huge first-week numbers, based on awe-inspiring trailer footage, then rapidly descend in flames from orbit, as people share with friends that the film is a stinking, heaving pile of constipated rhinoceros feces.

Transformers: ROTF, which opens today, is a narrative and conceptual mess. But this is neither surprising nor the greatest of its blames. It is, at critical moments, visually incomprehensible—and this from someone who considered the faceted clatter of the first film’s shifting multiplanes, at moments, symphonic. But this is the least of its faults.

What offends is how gleefully the film endorses crude racism, serving up, not one, but two near-buckdancing, shiftless Black stereotypes—the sambots, as one reviewer adeptly punned, Skids, top and above right, and his twin (get this), Mudflap. Their insertion reveals how clearly insulated the white people who work at Paramount and for director Michael Bay appear to be in their racial supremacy. This also shows how out of touch they must be with developing, changing American and world tastes in entertainment. (That, without even getting into what will surely be Afrocentric outrage at key scenes of desecration.)

Let me put it this way: Continue reading →

Canadian artist Jeff de Boer fashions ultra-finely crafted fantasy cat-and-mouse battle gear as a form of art, like this 2008 piece, Tournament Cat, above, created from nickel, aluminum, leather, brass, and wood.

In essence, the works seem to re-imagine the conflicts enjoined by knights and samurai as played out, instead, between felines and rodents. Like, if Tom had worn this one, above, against Jerry, or Scratchy against Itchy. History could have been different.

[via jim rossignol]

An anonymous collector has decided to part with his certainly much-beloved, actual-size B-9, as the Lost In Space robot’s model number is well known to aficionados of the 1960s sci-fi series. He’s selling it on Ebay, and the retailer managing the sale describes the toy this way:

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The over 400,000 women, ages 18-24, in the U.S. and Canada who practice Islam have been dutifully represented, bimonthly since 2007, by Muslim Girl magazine, the only beauty and lifestyle publication that targets young females of the faith.

Unfortunately, the mag has not published an issue since this one, above, in the spring of 2008. As Ausma Khan, editor-in-chief, noted in a letter to readers on the Girl‘s web site, the causes are “the current state of the economy and the overall decline in the print industry,” but, also, uniquely, “an advertising industry that is risk-averse to our name and audience.”

I’m personally hoping that Muslim Girl will revive and thrive. Though neither a Muslim nor a girl, I found it an exciting, thought-provoking, and colorful read. Normally, this is the part where most would also probably say something about hoping we can one day live in a country where all people are respected, no matter what their religion, skin color, etc. However, I’m Black.

Magazine or no magazine, Ausma Khan is a smart and analytical thinker on many issues, and especially on ones muslim girls face. That’s why she’s a guest today on this repeat edition of my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 19, 2 pm ET.

As well, I’ll be speaking with astrophysicist Dr. Janna Levin, right. (You may recall me mentioning her, last week, in my post on whether or not the universe is conscious and alive.)

She’s giving a lecture here in New York, next week, Tuesday, June 23, 2009, 8:00 PM, at Columbia University’s Lerner Hall, as part of the 8th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves. Janna’s talk, Songs from Space: Black Holes and the Big Bang in Audio, will show how physicists are using audio, animation, and other aids to make the wonders of the cosmos more real to regular people. (Check out her cool poster.) Plus, we’ll be playing one or two weird-sounding samples from her talk, in advance, during the broadcast!

You can hear Ausma Khan’s and Janna Levin’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state area, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, fly over to our archives for up to 90 days after the broadcast.

You’ve gotta be giving somebody massively hot, amazing sex to make them even think about wanting to pick up your underwear. Yet, if they look like these numbers here, right, I’m guessing even your lovin’ ain’t that good, bud.

Shomer-Tec, long-time retailers of tools for law enforcement, probably agrees. That’s why they decided that a pair of untidy whiteys might be the world’s best place to stash some cash.

Introducing the Brief Safe,

an innovative diversion safe that can secure your cash, documents, and other small valuables from inquisitive eyes and thieving hands, both at home and when you’re traveling. Items can be hidden right under their noses with these specially-designed briefs which contain a fly-accessed 4″ x 10″ secret compartment with Velcro closure and “special markings” on the lower rear portion. Leave the “Brief Safe” in plain view in your laundry basket or washing machine at home, or in your suitcase in a hotel room – even the most hardened burgler or most curious snoop will “skid” to a screeching halt as soon as they see them. (Wouldn’t you?) Made in USA. One size. Color: white (and brown).

Get the Brief Safe, and take a load off your mind. $11.

[via walyou.com]