2007 July | BlackGayBlogger.com

Liveblogging "Hot Ghetto Mess" / "We Got To Do Better"

Posted on 07/25/07 @ 11:31 pm

10:30 - Intro by Charlie Murphy still calling the show "Hot Ghetto Mess". Show's setting is this Masterpiece Theatre-esque type study.

10:30 - the "Why Must I Cry" video - just a snippet. It's terrible, naturally.

10:31 - Some guy singing his interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner. Is this in a church? At a conference? I can't really tell.

10:32 - A Ms Peachez video called "From 'Da Country"

10:33 - A video of "America's Vote" with Armstrong Williams cracking up like a damn fool. The singing is pretty bad, though.

10:33 - Some guy jacking up the Star Spangled Banner. Do-rag, missing teeth, and big gold earring. Not sure if this guy is supposed to be a homeless person or not since he says "I'm broke" at the end. Nice.

10:34 - A man on the street type segment called "Street Walkin'". Question 1: "Who's richer, Jay-Z or Bill Gates?"

10:35 - Question 2: "Who is Barack Obama?" Surprise BET…most people know him!

10:36 - Random white lady on the street: "Barack Obama is HOTTTTTT."

10:36 - Question 3: "What came first, Blacks joining the military or Blacks being able to vote?"

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK BEGINS ***

10:37 - Promo for BET's "Baldwin Hills".

10:37 - Extremely long ass promo for for The Wire, Season Three. I guess they needed something to fill the gap after other sponsors pulled their ads.

10:39 - Movie trailer #1 for Tracey Edmonds' Our Stories/Dimension Films "Who's Your Caddy" film.

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK ENDS ***

10:40 - "Stupid Is As Stupid Does" segment - first up, white guy putting a condom on his head and inflating it; he calls himself "The Condom Kid".

10:41 - Black dude on a BMX bike tries to jump 2 bikes stacked on themselves…and wipes out. Lies motionless on the concrete for an uncomfortable seven seconds…and that's it.

10:41 - The "Redneck Games". One redneck says "you don't care what offends anybody because it's not responsible for what offends you". Irony much?

10:42 - People doing donuts in a hatchback; guy on the passenger side falls out. Hm.

10:42 - Crazy white dudes talking about voting and smoking purple haze. What is this, Girls Gone Wild?

10:43 - More "Street Walkin'"; Question 4: "How many African-Americans are on the Supreme Court?" Most people say one…Thurgood Marshall. The correct answer…none! Take that, Clarence!

10:44 - Question 5: "What is the unemployment rate of African-Americans in the US?" Seriously, who knows that offhand? Correct answer: 8.2%. Black folks be working, y'all!

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK BEGINS ***

10:45 - "Want to make Oprah mad? Tell her what to do with her money." Promo for BET's "Meet the Faith".

10:46 - Promo for BET's "Hell Date".

10:47 - Promo for BET's "Baldwin Hills". Staci loves "chocolate". And by chocolate, she means men.

10:48 - Movie trailer #2 for Tracey Edmonds' Our Stories/Dimension Films "Who's Your Caddy" film. Honestly, I'm a little surprised after her interview on Black Enterprise's "Our World" and then producing a movie like this during a show like this. UPDATE: On the other hand, I'm not surprised. Our Stories Films is a Bob Johnson company, and ol' Bob owns BET. Surprise surprise!

10:49 - Promo for BET's "In My Hood With Remy Ma".

10:49 - Commercial for Chrysler. The last sponsor standing!

10:50 - Local commercial here in ATL for Heritage Atlanta.

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK ENDS ***

10:50 - Lofty montage of Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Shirley Chisholm and Nelson Mandela. Message!

10:51 - "And Now…A Word From Our Sponsers". Yes, it was spelled that way.

10:51 - Auto commercial where a White guy falls from a tractor trailer, bounces off a stack of mattresses, then hits the pavement. Why does this feel like I'm watching SpikeTV?

10:51 - Poorly done cell phone commercial. Yawn.

10:51 - Another poorly done local cell phone commercial. G-Mobile. UPDATE: Youtube link.

10:52 - Dumb jewelry commercial with generic rap beat. Not funny at all.

10:52 - Final "Street Walkin'" segment; Question 6: "What does NAACP stand for?" Most people don't know. The correct answer is: press conferences! These segments seem to be the most mocking of the entire show.

10:53 - Question 7: "When did slavery end?" People are giving ranges from 1864-1971. The correct answer: 1865.

10:55 - Animated segment called "Bid 'Em In", based on Oscar Brown Jr.'s poem. It documents the middle passage and slavery in the US.

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK BEGINS ***

10:56 - Promo for BET's "Baldwin Hills".

10:57 - Promo for BET's "Hell Date".

10:57 - Movie trailer #3 for Tracey Edmonds' Our Stories/Dimension Films "Who's Your Caddy" film. These are all different trailers. Does Big Boi have dentures? Real talk: he could do an Efferdent commercial with those chompers.

*** COMMERCIAL BREAK ENDS ***

10:58 - "That's about all the mess we have for today". Listening to Charlie Murphy trying to pontificate on how Black folks need to uplift themselves. All in all, the show still needs to be taken off the air…because it really, really, really, really sucks.

*** END ***

Yet Another 'Mess'

Posted on 07/23/07 @ 2:05 pm

End 'Hot Ghetto Mess'

You’d have to been under a rock for the past two weeks to not have heard about the brouhaha swirling around BET’s latest television offering "Hot Ghetto Mess". The show, according to executive producer and hotghettomess.com creator Jam Donaldson, calls for a "new era of self-examination". BET entertainment head Reginald Hudlin is fiercely behind the show, saying, "It’s unfortunate that people are making an erroneous presumption based on absolutely zero information". (Full disclosure: I have blogged about my like of the site before as a guilty pleasure. However, that has since changed. And if they take my t-shirt idea, it’s on!)

Perhaps this would be true if there weren’t about three years of material on the HGM website the show is based from.

"The show is so much more than the name," Donaldson purports, but if that’s the case, why haven’t there been any pre-launch viewings of the show to the TCA or even on BET’s website? In this Internet age, it’s pretty much considered old hat to not at least offer up a smidge of what’s to come for a media offering, be it movie, sitcom or drama. That’s not saying that BET has something to hide from not showing it — apparently, staff writers at the Washington Post have seen enough to write fluff pieces about the show. But it does seem really peculiar that the show which is causing the biggest amount of controversy for the network since they cancelled their nightly news broadcast two years ago isn’t getting at least a little bit of exposure from the talking heads themselves. According to BET president and COO Debra Lee, "…with 24-hour news networks and everyone getting news off the Internet, our audience doesn’t want to wait until 11 p.m. to find out what the news is."

Similarly, opponents of the show aren’t going to wait until July 25 to clean up the "Mess".

Gina McCauley, lawyer, blogger at "What About Our Daughters" and host of the Internet radio show "Black Women’s Roundtable" has perhaps been the most vocal advocate for getting the show off the airwaves. With just a few phone calls and a lot of tenacity, McCauley’s efforts have not only caused sponsors to pull their advertisements from the show, but also to get the show’s name changed to "We Got To Do Better" (scroll down to the 10:30pm time slot). If actions like these don’t speak truth to the power of social media, I don’t what does.

But perhaps the biggest "mess" resulting from this is the one-sided and cavalier approach that the mainstream media has taken to talking about the show. The aforementioned pieces from the Washington Post are just one example. What surprised me the most was listening to both "News and Notes" and "Tell Me More", two NPR broadcasts with largely Black audiences, both give little to no lipservice to both sides of the "Hot Ghetto Mess" debacle. Last Friday’s "Tell Me More" segment called "Barbershop" pretty much drove the point home, with host Jimi Izrael saying "it must be a slow week at the country club canteen" in regard to the protests building against the show. Granted, neither of these two NPR shows are exactly endorsing the show (nor should anyone expect them to), but letting these sort of divergent opinions air on two shows which are supposed to celebrate the African-American experience without any sort of equal opposition gives the impression that this show and what it represents, doesn’t matter to African-Americans.

And that is simply not true.

UPDATE: Jam Donaldson's one-sided chat with the Washington Post is now online.

Filed under: News
Comments: 1 Comment

Asides #40

Posted on 07/17/07 @ 12:47 pm

Four of my photos have made it into this year’s Schmap’s guides. Three of them for Atlanta, and one for New York City. I’m not a photographer…really. But maybe I should look into getting a better camera.

Is anyone using 8apps.com anymore? That site’s been stagnant since March. It’s a great concept, but I just don’t see any real work being accomplished there. Then again, it could be another symptom of YASP overload.

Speaking of YASPs…check me out over at My Anime List and iLike.

I have to say, one of my favorite blogs to check in on these days is What About Our Daughters. Right now, this blog is campaigning very heavily against BET’s new series "Hot Ghetto Mess" and serves pretty much as a clarion call to action through the Black blogosphere. Surf on over and help out, would ya?

On a similar note, I’m also working with the author of the aforementioned blog on an upcoming "Blogging While Brown" conference for bloggers of color, kicking off in the Summer of 2008. There’s still a lot of work to be done, so if you’d like to help out, please, please, PLEASE learn more over at the Blogging While Brown website.

The Blackface Tinkerbell strikes again! This time, it’s 80-year-old chairman of the Roger Williams University Board Ralph Papitto, who mistakenly lets the n-word fly during a board meeting. Says Ralph, "The first time I heard it was on television and then rap music or something". O rly? What racial utopia do you live in where in your 80 years in the United States, through the Civil Rights Movement, you’ve never heard of the word nigger? I guess when all else fails, blame the rappers, right? My God, Rhode Island controlled between 60% and 90% of the African slave trade after the American Revolution, for cripes sake. Aye yi yi….

Working America is holding their 2nd Annual "My Bad Boss" contest. In case you remember, I placed 5th last year after describing Micro-Manager’s rampant buffoonery. Surely some of y’all have a crazy boss out there too. The contest starts on July 24th.

You know, I try to give Marvel Comics a pass when it comes to their characters of color. They handled the Storm/T’Challa wedding well, and the two are even in the current roster of the Fantastic Four. Marvel’s better than DC, at least in terms of quantity of CoC, but this latest Marvel character takes the cake:

Roxy Washington was born into hip-hop "royalty" as the daughter of Roy "Daddy Libido" Washington and Angel "Sexy Mutha" Depres. Having appeared in her parents’ rap videos from a young age, Washington was often targeted by would-be kidnappers and assassins.

Oh, and her power? She shoots diamonds out of her fingertips. Codename? Bling! With the exclamation point. Shoot me now.

This past weekend, there was a relationship conference here for gay couples called 2 Days 2 Men 2 Grow. The event is dubbed as "a supportive, relaxed place for couples to learn skills and ideas from experts and other couples to enhance their shared lives" (link). From their pictures, I didn’t see any gay couples of color, but I sincerely hope they were some there representing. (Really, I do.)

The Food Network goes Latin with their new show Simply Delicioso with Colombian-born Ingrid Hoffmann. Dubbed as the Latina Rachael Ray (I think I hate her already if that’s true), Hoffman’s show will focus on quick meals, not all of them traditional. I guess that’s like going to the Olive Garden and getting a Parmesan hot dog.

Part of me welcomes Food Network for trying to expand their cooking shows to more than just European-influenced trends, but another part of me is thinking, this show will not last long. Other food network shows featuring prominent minorities (Calorie Commando with Juan-Carlos Cruz and Sugar Rush with Warren Brown) have damn near disappeared from the network’s listings. Hell, you don’t even see Sandra Pinckney or Al Roker anymore, and they don’t cook a damn thing! Good luck, Ingrid. (Personally, they should’ve gotten my girl Daisy Martinez if they really wanted some Latin flavor, but I digress.)

And finally…this is just damn disturbing:

Filed under: Asides
Comments: 6 Comments

Beware of the Catburger

Posted on 07/05/07 @ 11:55 pm

The restaurant business back home is pretty stiff. On top of trying to lure people away from fast food establishments, restaurants also have to deal with a pretty strict de facto segregation policy. Growing up, I quickly saw that there Black restaurants and White restaurants, and patrons of one didn’t dare frequent the other because there’s no telling what may happen. I didn’t take much stock in that until Sperm Donor decided to take the family out to this British hunting lodge themed restaurant called Fox and Hound, and I saw the waiter toss our plates of food onto the table, talk down to my mother and father and heard someone at an adjacent table ask the waiter what those niggers were doing here.

I think I was fifteen at the time.

The fortunate thing is that most of those restaurants eventually closed down and moved shop…again as part of de facto segregation. The long time segregationist White mayor of the town was unseated by a Black incumbent, and a lot of businesses and people moved about 5 miles up the highway and founded a new town. Sounds like some shit out of a Simpsons episode, doesn’t it? But it happened.

Back to the restaurant business.

So while you had some restaurants blocking people of an entire race (I still have to roll my eyes at that notion happening outside of the 50s and 60s), some other niche restaurants tried to open up and grab those other hungry consumers. Including the city’s first Asian restaurant - China Cook.

China Cook served the standard Asian restaurant fares: moo goo gai pan, lo mein, and various chicken dishes. But a lot of the population was skeptical about it since the restaurant was owned by the only Asian family in town. A few good reviews in the local paper had people going there all the time, driving business away from other restaurants. China Cook, seeing that people were only ordering about three or four things off of their menu (chicken teriyaki, fried shrimp, sweet and sour chicken and chicken wings), they decided to offer up a mix of different foods, including the standard American grill fare.

And that’s when the catburger rumor started.

You see, China Cook was two blocks away from the local Humane Society, and all it took was one caterng job to send China Cook out of business. The local band boosters asked the restaurant to cater a football homecoming party. Now, China Cook was a small restaurant, and really not equipped to handle a catering job with more than maybe 30 people. Hell, their restaurant only sat 45! Something should be pretty suspect when they bring in hot food in thermal coolers, and don’t have any sterno or metal pans set up for serving. The food, from what I remember, was actually pretty good. The hamburgers were certainly the hit of the event, and they managed to run out of food in a little under an hour.

The next day, everyone was sick with a stomach virus. Some overzealous parent claimed that the restaurant served her cat, and the media ran with it. Within a month, China Cook was out of business on account of health code violations. The city hasn’t had an Asian restaurant since.

On a somewhat unrelated note, the neanderthals in my home town also ran a vegetarian restaurant that served soy burgers out of business on the claims that "soy meat ain't real meat" and that it's "poisoning out children".

sigh

And in case the whole catburger thing ain't some bullshit on a bun, why just ask Burger and Fries here.

Him not cheezburger.

Filed under: Past Tense
Comments: 7 Comments

And So, Another Fourth…

Posted on 07/04/07 @ 7:51 pm

I made some spaghetti, grilled some burgers, and cooked some homemade steak fries. I also unplugged for most of the day and caught up on TiVo and sleep. Since when did All My Children start getting good again?

(Yes, I watch soap operas. But this is the only one. Unless you count most reality shows.)

How'd you spend the Independence Day?

Bonus: Keith Olbermann rips Bush and Cheney a new one after our fearless leader pardons Lewis "Scooter" Libby. I guess friends don't let friends serve time.

Filed under: Miscellaneous
Comments: 2 Comments