Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

Thinking broadly: George Washington Carver, 1906

What are the possible uses of hip-hop, all of them?

How many kinds of tasks can it do? It what kinds of ways might it be used, in order to help people better understand themselves and/or each other?

This question is, to me, the most important, yet least-addressed, as it pertains to hip-hop and its future. It’s also the one on which I’m focusing, assisted by a talented rapper and educator, during my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 20, 2 pm ET.

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Having turned eighteen in April, actor Emma Watson is now getting access to more than just bigger digital boobs, or her $20 million Harry Potter/”Hermione Granger” fortune: She’s getting grown-up-style endorsements: A reported $5.8 million, 2-year deal to replace Keira Knightley as the new face of Chanel fragrance, just like BWE.tv proudly noted.

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Hopefully, you saw it here first: An ear-mountable “oral sex light,” so that, when engaged in said delicate act, you can do so with utter clarity and attention to detail.

Look at the happy people on the package. Check out the tag line: “Don’t Go Down Without It!”

Available for $7.05 from sextoy.com and other e-tailers.

There: I think I just solved all of our problems.

In the 1953 Vincente Minnelli musical, The Band Wagon, there’s a fantastic sequence called “The Girl Hunt,” in which dance great Fred Astaire, as gumshoe Rod Riley, searches for a mysterious ingenue. Numerous close calls and clues lead him to a gangster nightspot, Dem Bones Cafe, where upon entering, he suddenly catches sight of a woman, her hair coal-black, leaning ravenously against the bar in a dark green full-length coat.

For a second, there is no movement in the shot whatsoever. Watching it on video, one initially has the confusing impression that they’re looking at a still frame, until they notice the woman’s slow, deep breathing.

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While most mainstream media size up Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign as a boost for feminism, University of Maryland School of Law professor and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn A. Ifill takes an opposing position: That New York State Senator’s rise to power has been, in fact, “very traditional.”

“In some ways,” says Ifill, “Mrs. Clinton, contrary to her public image, is a kind of throwback to the 1950s.”

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Say hello to my little friend: James McAvoy in Wanted

The Angelina Jolie-starring, Timur Bekmambetov-directed assassin thriller, Wanted (“Curve the bullet!”), has a restricted, or “red,” trailer, available for iTunes download and viewing in all three standard sizes and all three HD sizes.

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“I give you my journalistic integrity.”: David Gregory, NBC News

Salon.com‘s Glenn Greenwald recently covered a confession by Oregon sports columnist Dwight Jaynes, who writes for The Portland Tribune.

In the piece, Greenwald talks about a June 5th column by Jaynes, in which he revealed the way

bloggers “led [him] to alter [his] approach to the way [he] do[es] [his] job as a columnist, pushing [him] away from a philosophy [he] held dear for decades in this business.”

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Now you don’t, now you see ’em: The Potter posters

Marketing is an immensely subtle practice today, exerting its influence over narrower and narrower realms of sensory focus, but this is absurd: Apparently, Warner Bros. marketing execs for 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix decided that, for the movie’s IMAX version poster, Emma Watson needed something witchcraft couldn’t give her 14-year-old character, Hermione Granger: Bigger boobs. Continue reading →

Unusual sighting: Monty (Idris Elba), a mechanic, fathers his brood

It’s a story told so rarely—as it is, for example, in Tyler Perry’s 2007 film, Daddy’s Little Girls, above—that it’s, for the most part, nonexistent: What are the travails, challenges, joys, and rewards of bringing up children, alone, as a Black male?

In his new book, Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single Fatherhood, suave literatus Trey Ellis grapples with the transformative experience of raising his daughter, Ava, 10, and son, Chet, 7, as a solo dad.

We’ll talk with him about his book on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 13, 2 pm ET.

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With Father’s Day on Sunday, this much-beloved gem-of-an-ad for Hallmark’s “Cards with Sound” line will, no doubt, disappear into the vaults by Monday. Thankfully, on YouTube, these joints live forever.

My favorite part? As with you, every single moment of the dancing, and the actor’s perfect sync of the M.C.’s closing, “Stop! Hammer Time!” line, above.

But running a really close second? That glare his wife gives him at the 0:21 mark, right, after their youngest calls him out of reverie.

What’s the problem, Mom? Can’t Dad do a little dancin’ on his Very Special Day?