We stumbled onto a January 1959 edition of Playboy, which was mighty racy for the time but by today’s standards reads and looks like a copy of Vanity Fair - only tamer.
Anyhow, one service article clues readers in to the hottest “party games” of the moment. Not to scare you, but apparently this is what your Mom and Grandmom were doing after you nibbled on blue-tinted cream cheese in celery, port cheese logs on a Ritz and sneaked a hit of your drunk uncle’s Johnny Walker Red. We’ve got a new game: Try these out at your next shindig and test the reaction of your guests. First one to call you a douche to your face wins.
From Playboy January 1959:
“Under the Sheet” is a fine stunt to play on the life of the party. A guest is placed under a sheet and told to take off something he or she has on. Guest must continue to take things off under the sheet until he realizes that the “something” to be removed is the sheet itself.”
“Ha-Ha” is really a relaxing ice-breaker. Everybody stretches out on the floor with his head on someone else’s stomach. At a signal from the host, everyone laughs out loud. Heads bob happily on the shaking tummies, the forced laughter becomes genuine and your party is on its way.
In “Fumble” guests are blindfolded, after which they must try to find their dates. The catch is that talking is not allowed, so identification must be done by groping. Once dates find each other, they can remove their blindfolds and watch the others searching. The last couple to complete the game must pay a forfeit.
I did this a few posts ago and it turned out to be fun, so here’s the test again. Your challenge: Without the trailer and without the starrting actors named, which of these movies would you see if all you had to go were these real fairly poorly constructed summaries of movies coming out this summer?
There are many many reasons to not trust trust the pharmaceutical companies, but here just one that I just irks me to no end.
Consider, if you will, the case of Red Grapefruit.
According to a 2006 study by Israeli scientists (and other subsequent studies) testers who ate red grapefruit for a 30 day period saw reductions of anywhere from 15 to 30% in their “bad” cholesterol levels. Wonderful to hear for people with high and borderline cholesterol, right?
Well, here’s the thing that’s confusing. Those who have been prescribed cholesterol lowering statins like Lipitor are warned not to consume grapefruit while taking the medication because of an adverse “grapefruit interaction” that may harmfully increase the effectiveness of the drugs. Say what? Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been getting a huge number of e-mails from people wondering what ever happened to Micki Free, the lead singer from the retread version of Shalamar.
Uh, OK. I’m lying. I’ve gotten no e-mail at all about Micki Free, but I stumbled on his website recently, Mickifree.com.
Did we know Micki Free was Native American? Did we ask? Did we care? Seems Micki’s doing plenty well now as the Promotions and Special Events Director of the Florida Seminole tribe’s casino operations.
Grudgingly, I watched the HBO documentary Hard Times at Douglass High last night.
Grudgingly because I knew what I would see, and was afraid the filmmakers would turn it into a screed on the failure of the public school system and leave it at that. To their credit, the documentarians let the situation speak for itself for the most part. The lack of overwhelming commentary was a smart move in this instance.
But it was still tough to watch, mostly because I’m from Baltimore and am intimately familiar with Frederick Douglass High, as is nearly every African American in Baltimore. That’s because for well into 1950s, Douglass was one of only two high schools that Blacks could attend (the other being the basketball powerhouse Dunbar). If you’re 35 or over, your Mama or Daddy went to Douglass, just like every lawyer, doctor, judge, elected official, businessman, government worker and successful middle and upper middle class striver.
I remember as a kid flipping through my Mom’s Class of 1945 Yearbook and seeing the young faces of what eventually became the creme of the crop of Baltimore’s Black professional class. Later, I have fond memories of walking by Douglass after school and seeing my oldest brother practicing in his sparkling orange and blue baseball uniform and bragging to my friends about him being the team hero. That was about 1968, 60 or so.
And then…just a few years later, it was my tutn to pick a high school (circa 1975) and Douglass wasn’t an afterthought. It was in fact, a deal-breaker. The idea that I would go to Douglass as the closest neighborhood was the single reason I decided to test for a magnet school. Douglass just as not an option for me, my parents or any of the parents we knew. Only after 7, 8 years tops.
And now, this documentary and the sad facts: 1 out 1100 students passed Algebra. 158 out of 500 freshmen graduated four years later. 105 parents (guardians/aunts/whatever) out of 1100 or more on PTA night showed up.
Though we’re all in something of a national mourning period for Tim Russert (as we should be), that hasn’t stopped the speculation about who will take the reins of the powerful show in a critical election year. Thankfully at least the talk that’s been in the open has been tasteful.
Given the importance of that show to the nation’s political mood, it’s a very important question, and there’s no reason why people shouldn’t be having the conversation.
According to the New York Times, names like Keith Olbermann, David Gregory, Brian Williams, Katie Couric (Yikes!), Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell have been mentioned within the NBC and, in the case of Couric, former NBC ranks. Outside of NBC the choices get better with the mention of Gwen Ifill.
A real, longer article and review to come, but I checked Les Nubians at the House of Blues in Chicago last Friday and got to hang out with them a bit during and after sound check (shout to AngelaBailey).
As usual they were in great voice and put on an incredible and energetic show, though the venue was just on this side of too big. Last year they were in Chicago at Hot House, a now defunct joint that was by contrast way too small, but the intimacy provided an energy that may have been missing this time around. They hit a good mix of tunes from the first and second albums as well as one or two small teases from a planned third LP that drops in February 2009, including an innovative version of U2’s With or Without You. The highlight was their cover of Fela signature tune “Upside Down”, already one of my favorites with his version. Their relatively stripped down instrumentation actually gives it a lot more power.
One of the interesting things we talked a lot about was the candidacy of Barack Obama and what it meant to people who consider themselves citizens of the world. Their feelings about Obama as the symbol of a new post-racial day mirrors that of today’s New York Times story on Afro-Parisians and the hope they see in a possible Obama presidency. That became the theme of many of the between song riffs once the show started.
Anyhow, check your local venues for the tour. This one just popped up on the HOB schedule unexpectedly. Right now there doesn’t seem to be any bookings on the tour in the US until Chicago again in August at the African Arts Festival. If you’re in France, you’re in luck, however.
Two interesting things happened after the R. Kelly verdict came down. First, I got several calls from women in Chicago who were not upset, really but I would describe their attitude as more “baffled” than anything else. In each case, they mentioned that their personal experiences with R. Kelly while they were underage - while not sexual- could only be described as questionable and inappropriate. They portrayed Kelly essential as a functional illiterate lacking the skill to conduct adult relationships with women.
I don’t know the man, never met him. So I cannot corroborate those stories with any independent evidence. But the calls were nonetheless striking.
The second incident was two days later at my barber shop, Timeout at Shannon’s , a famous local hang where, of course, every customer was greeted with “Hey man, whatchu think about that R. Kelly?”
There I got the same stories, but this time from men of Kelly’s generation who treated what they considered to be the singer’s proclivities as something of an open and widely known secret. But amidst the laughs, head shakes and conspiracy theories about family payoffs, we were all silenced by the reaction of a 15 year old boy who came in later. The kid walked in holding a copy of the Chicago Sun Times and the headline “R. Kelly Not Guilty” and simply stood in the doorway, almost in tears. He didn’t say word. He just looked at us with an expression that seemed to ask “How you can older people let this happen and not protect my generation from this?”
It was devastating. That look has been haunting me ever since.
Somehow R. Kelly’s lawyers convinced a jury that the person they saw on the videotape - yeah, the guy with the mole - was not indeed R. Kelly who just happens to have an identical mole. Astounding.
Oh well. Lucky dude.
But just like in the OJ trial, the jury wasn’t being asked to find him guilty or innocent but to rule on whether the prosecution proved him guilty - quite another standard of measure. And I guess if the girl in the video says it wasn’t her then it didn;t quite make a difference if it was R. Kelly or not. Especially since he wouldn’t admit it was him either (naturally). Still following? No matter, it’s all done/
