Jun 27, 2009

BlackCanseco Isn't Dead, He's Just...

PassedOutDrunk


I know, know... It's been like 2 weeks since I've posted. I've been sick... busy... and tweeting way too much for my own good.

Point is, I think i just needed a break; among other things. meanwhile...

Gimme a few days. I'll get some fresh (or at least recent) thoughts up. We'll get this thing back on track before you know it.

BTW: If anyone's offended by this pic, my apologies. (Perez Hilton made me do it.)

Be back soon.

Jun 15, 2009

Hey Japhia, where's Heartsville?!

Okay, I know a little something about having release dates pushed back and delays which is why I’m bummed about my man Japhia Life.

Okay, he’s not “my man” in the sense that I know him or anything, because I don’t; but I think he’s a really dope emcee and he’s one of the few cats out there whose entire catalogue I’ve actually supported (as in paid for each and every release w/o fail).

Unfortunately, he’s been promising new music for a bunch of months now including his Heartsville mixtape which was supposed to drop back on Valentine’s Day.

Oh well, at least I’ve got a cover right here:

Japhialife_cd_260_heartsvillemixtape


Anyway, if you want some dope, uplifting lyricism in the vein of Nas but in the spirit of Christ, check out Japhia Life. Visit him on iTunes or Myspace or Amazon/Japhia


Jun 12, 2009

Succeeding in Tough Times: PowerNetworking

Not sure what you're doing this month, but if you want inspiration, critical information, and innovative connections, you need to get on SouthWest Airlines and fly down to Atlanta for George Fraser's annual Powernetworking Convention.

FraserConference

Coming June 25-27, 2009 in Atlanta, GA, Power Networking might be the top gathering of diverse corporate movers and shakers in the entire country. i go there just about every year and I've met some major players in the arenas of finance, faith, marketing, manufacturing, media you name it!

Visit www.frasernet.com or scroll down and download the conference schedule.

Jun 11, 2009

Chillax Homseskillet! Racism + Liquor go good together

In the category of YouCan'tBeSeriousOhButYouAre

The following campaign is a series of outdoor ads for Chicago-Lake Liquors, a liquor store in Minneapolis. (It’s on the corner of Lake and Chicago streets, hence the name.) The store is located in a "ghetto-fabolous" (as one blogger put it) area of Minneapolis. In other words, CL Liquors is in a lower-economic class black neighborhood.

So you've got a liquor store in a black neighborhood looking to up its profile in harsh economic times. What do you do to break thru and get the people talking and drinking? *Cue stereotypical racist liquor ads*:

Chicago_LakeLiquors

I swear these are real ads. Not even St. Ides' work was this bad. I guess I'd be mad except I've been in the ad world for 17 years and once again, i tell you that this is nothing new. What passes for cultural insights, humor and irony is largely bottom of the barrel laziness and middle class white boy arrogance disguised as "creative" and "strategy". Agencies produce this crap, media outlets take money for running it, clients fund it and all consumers can do is like it or not.

But I gotta give 'em credit for one thing—carrying the concept thru from print to TV (not always an easy task.). Here's the TV blight on the community I mean, "spot":
 

Priceless. Just watching that makes me wanna drown my sorrows and brain cells in a few pints of Guiness.
Now while I couldn't find the agency responsible for any of this trash (maybe it was done in-house/freelanced out), I did manage to find this guy:

3390581469_ecfc926b84


This is John Wolf—owner of Chicago-Lake Liquors. No by what few accounts I've found thru research, John's a nice guy, tries to give back to the community, etc. No evidence of him being a bigot or even sharing the beliefs portrayed in the ads of the company he's touted as owning.

But this kind of stupidity at least needs to be questioned. In fact I tried doing that on other blogs and it's amazing the number of self-identified whites and ad industry folks who found this work to be "no big deal".

You can reach John at:
Chicago-Lake Liquor Store
825 E Lake St
Minneapolis, MN 55407-1588
612.340.1110 or 612.825.4401

Give John a call. pay him a visit on your next beer run and ask him or the customers what they think of this sorta work.

Megan Fox Hates Middle America

One more reminder that latent cultural bigotry is beautiful (provided it's attached to a pretty white face with great set of taught creamy white knockers):

Megan-fox-mtv

"I'd barter with him," she muses to the July issue Total Film UK, "and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?"

—Megan Fox, Transformers' star
when asked how she’d stop the evil MegaTron
from destroying earth [June' 09]


So just to recap: poor white people, Christians, anti-gay marriage folks, and everyone living between oh... Nevada and New Jersey can all save your Transformers and skin mag cash, because Ms. Fox don't want your stinkin' patronage. In fact, she doesn't want you breathin' on American soil.

Gotta love Hollywood. Pound for pound, no area produces a higher quotient of  over-hyped, overly-narcissistic, under-talented and under-educated intellects. [Washington DC, might be "1a" in that race]

While I'm totally indifferent to Megan Fox—tho not to the extent of negotiating her life with crappy-toy-turn-space-villians—I'm concerned that she just told her largest group of paying customers and supporters to go screw themselves. [Didn't the RIAA take this approach when they began suing downloaders.]

I mean, who fantasizes about Megan Fox more than folks living east of Hollywood and west of Manhattan? She covered everyone but GLBTers and blind midgets. Can you imagine if  for example, Eminem said he'd sacrifice the lives of every 12-34 year old white person nationwide to Darth Vader if it meant saving 8 mile?

Megan-fox_0811_1ea The really sad part about Megan Fox is you're not totally sure if she's aware that Megatron is just make-believe.  I mean I wouldn't ask this question except for the fact she has the exact same blank facial expressions in daily life as she does onscreen, so you kinda hafta wonder.

But just to be on the safe side, if you ever happen to see Megan walking down the street in a string bikini as she's been so apt to do, just tell her you're a Gay Atheist New-Cali-York-ifornian with a top floor condo  overlooking Central Park; that way you're golden once the next intergalactic war breaks out.




Jun 10, 2009

Junior (Bridgeman) Mama Used To Say...

And momma used to say:
(momma used to say)take your time young man
(momma used to say) don't you rush to get old
(momma used to say) take it in your stride
(momma used to say) live your life!
—Junior, 1982

One of my dad's favorite players coming up was one Ulysses Junior Bridgeman. He wasn't a superstar per se, but he was a top 10 pick in the early 1970s who helped usher in the era of the "big guard"—swingmen that that could post up, shoot, defend multiple positions—Junior Bridgemen was 6'5 and could defend PG, SG, and some small forwards...
Junior was also one of the first "super subs—guys that were good enough to start, but often came off the bench to score and make crucial plays. As a supersub, Bridgemen averaged 13.6 pg , 3.5 boards and 2/4 assists over the course of his 14-year career.

The main reason my dad liked Bridgemen was because he was quiet—he just played ball. he was like an assassin. He'd go out and


JuniorBridgemanBaller

But the reason i'm blogging about Bridgemen today is because I recently read the annual list of wealthiest Black americans. And Junior's on it! SEE HERE

It seems that when Ulysses Bridgemen got done balling in the NBA in the late 80s, he got into the fastfood business and currently owns 163 Wendy's Restaurants in 5 states, plus 26 Chili's eateries. He's also got a piece of Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. Bridgemen runs a holding companies named Manna, Inc.


All that and he's only 55 years old.
JuniorBridgemanExec

(What is it about fastfood execs that makes them all look the same no matter what?)

Anyway, I'm proud of Mr. Bridgemen, not just for becoming one of the wealthiest cats in America, but because he was able to do more than just play ball and hope for a shoe deal to live on. Nope, he's actually built an empire that's helping his community his family and the economy of several states.

If Junior ever drops a line of wing tips or loafers, i might scoop up a size 12.

So In honor of Ulysses (Junior) Bridgeman becoming a legend in two games, I offer up—what else—but a little Junior:

KNOCK THE HUSTLE IS NOW ON KINDLE!!!!

Good news!

KNOCK THE HUSTLE is available as an e-book for KINDLE, iPod (like the pic?) and Blackberry. Just CLICK THIS AMAZON LINK HERE.

Kthiphonead



If you want to read cool reviews, synopsis, etc. check out THIS LINK HERE.

Jun 09, 2009

Study Links Teacher Movement to Influx of Black Students

You're gonna love this one...

=====


Study Links Teacher Movement to Influx of Black Students
EducationWeek.com

The best teachers tend to leave when their schools experience an influx of African-American students, according to a study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district published today.

C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., studied patterns of teacher movement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools between 2002 and 2003, which was when the 137,000-student district ended its long-running policy of busing students to keep schools racially integrated. His results, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, show that, at all levels of schooling, high-quality teachers—both black and white—were more likely to switch schools as the policy change began to take effect and student populations shifted.

“I’m not showing that teachers don’t like black students,” Mr. Jackson said. “I’m showing that, when you substantially change the makeup of the student population, teachers react in this way.”

A growing body of research has found that students in schools with high concentrations of poor students and students from minority groups tend to have teachers who are considered, on average, to be of lower quality than teachers in better-off suburban schools. And a handful of studies also suggests that, in states such as New York and Texas, teachers have tended to move from those disadvantaged schools to more affluent ones.

According to Mr. Jackson, though, it’s been hard to home in on the reasons for those teacher-migration patterns. For instance, were teachers moving to schools out of convenience, so that they could be closer to their own suburban homes, or for higher salaries, or because they were drawn to certain types of students, such as high achievers or students from white or wealthy families?

Mr. Jackson said his study offers a better handle on those questions because he was able to track the changes that occurred before and after the busing policy ended and correlate teachers’ movement to changes in student demographics. When the policy changed, the racial makeup of some schools changed suddenly, yet the neighborhoods surrounding those schools essentially remained the same.

The researcher measured teacher quality in three ways: years of experience, scores on licensure exams, and teachers’ “value added” scores, showing how much their students’ achievement scores improved over the course of a school year.
Patterns More Nuanced

His findings don’t suggest that Charlotte-Mecklenburg teachers were flocking, across the board, to the whiter schools. Even though the best of them were leaving, African-American teachers, overall, were more likely to stay in the schools experiencing a large inflow of black students. Likewise, the average white teacher in those schools was no more or less likely to leave as black students migrated in.

“It’s just a difference in the type of teacher leaving,” Mr. Jackson said. “There are teachers who have preferences for low-income, ethnic-minority students and others who do not. They are simply kind of re-sorting themselves.”

He calculated that, for the average school with a student population that is 60 percent black, a 15 percent increase in the number of African-American students translates to a .3 standard-deviation drop in teacher quality. That effect is about the same size, he said, as the boost in achievement that students might get from reducing a class of 23 students by two to three students, or from having a more experienced teacher vs. a novice. He said it could also explain between 3.3 percent and 7.5 percent of the achievement gap between black students and their higher-performing white peers in the district.

“An important implication of these findings is that policymakers should be cautious when advocating policies such as vouchers, school choice, district consolidation, or school busing that require the reshuffling of students across schools,” the study concludes, because the resulting shifts in student population might also lead to shifts in the quality of teachers.

Whether the teacher-movement patterns in Charlotte-Mecklenburg would be typical of other large, urban school systems is unclear.

In a series of studies looking at teacher mobility in Texas, Eric Hanushek, a senior education fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, found that teachers tended to move to whiter, higher-achieving schools as their careers progressed, but that the teachers who moved were not necessarily the best in their schools, as measured by their value-added scores.

“How much is due to circumstances in one district or another is an open question right now,” Mr. Hanushek said. “We’re just starting to build the right kind of evidence now about what’s behind teacher labor markets, and that’s really important.”


Jun 08, 2009

Hovi's home...

You may have heard it already; but if you haven't yet, here's Jay-Z going after the autotuned emcees. It's D.O.A. aka (Death Of Autotune). And it's kinda mean.

Tho truthfully, I gotta say, Jay-Z made so much money off the autotune crowd as an exec who's artists helped ride this trend into the ground, that his venom comes off as a little phony.

I don't think Jay's is giving any of his Kanye/Wayne/Rhianna money back, is he?

Whatever it's still a hot song.

By the way, here's the rumored cover of Blueprint 3.

-1

Put on the Hammer and you will be rewarded...

There are certain acts in hiphop lore for whom the culture owes a collective, "my bad" to. Hammer is one of 'em.

When it's all said and done, Stanley Burrell was realer from Day One to Day Forever than 99% of the cats who've ever repped hiphop culture. Seriously. And we owe him a major apology.

Hammer was dope.

I said, MC Hammer was dope. Not just good for an older guy, or dope for a dancer, but was just straight up dope.


He never claimed to be anything other than a dope dancer who knew how to rhyme—think about all the dumbass dances we got now; and as bad as all these dances are, can't none of these cats flip bars on par with grampa burrell. Hammer claimed to be a showman—and promptly put on better shows than most live rock bands. He claimed his community—then hired damn near everybody.

Hammer claimed to be universal—and promptly sold tens of millions of albums worldwide with the same sound he was slinging out of trunks in Oakland parking lots after rippin' clubs apart on the dance floor.

Dude was 3 times dope.

And now, thanks to the best cutmen in the game today, Mick Boogie, you can download this truly dope high-end mix of some of MCH's classic hits, hosted by Mr. Burrell himself:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Hammertime01-400x400

Here's the back cover:

Back-cover-400

What's crazy is as nice as this tape is, it's just a primer for Hammer's career. Then again, it's hard to capture everything Hammer was and is on a few tracks. Still this is fun stuff. Give it a listen.


AMAZON DIGITAL PRESENTS: KNOCK THE HUSTLE!

Happy Monday, all!

Just a friendly reminder that KNOCK THE HUSTLE is now available as an e-book for KINDLE, iPod (like the pic?) and Blackberry. Just CLICK THIS AMAZON LINK HERE.

Kthiphonead



If you want to read cool reviews, synopsis, etc. check out THIS LINK HERE.

Jun 07, 2009

Welcome to the Ghetto Show...

T-pains-big-ass-chain

Yes, that's really auto-tune crooner extraordinaire, T-Pain.

Yes, that's a real chain.

No, it's not a joke.

No word on whether or not the apocalypse has officially begun.



AOL pays dumbass Ad Guy $3 million for 10 weeks work

So ad exec Gregory Coleman gets hired by AOL to run their advertising network division, aka "Platform A". The CEO who hires him gets canned about 3 months later. Coleman gets fired.

His compensation for 10 weeks of work?

$3 million. Cash. Plus health benefits. Swear to God. In fact here's a picture of Mr. Coleman telling COBRA to suck his AOL:

F

Couldn't make this crap up if i tried. Check the link for more. (click here)

Now keep in mind AOL is run by the same geniuses who co-orchestrated the worst merger in corporate history in AOL+TW back in 2000. Tho like Coleman, everyone's gone and walking off with fat severances for their pain and suffering.

In honor of more AOL incompetence, and the absolute balls of G. Money Coleman to take money he knows that he couldn't have possibly deserve to earn not even during the 10 most product weeks of his life, I leave you with the mighty, mighty O'Jays.

Meanwhile, AOL/TW customers are still stuck with crappy dial-up, overpriced cable service, dull content and irrelevant homepages.

Nike just does diversity... kinda.

I'm working on an open letter to W+K founder, Dan Weiden on his ingenious solutions  to solving diversity in Corporate America, specifically the ad industry in the age of Obama. (see here for DW's luvly speech: Dan Weiden of Weiden talks culture at 4A's)

Until my missive is goes up, I offer you this timely diversity spoof, which comes courtesy of HighJive @ MCC.

Nike_Tagged

In case you're having problems accessing the speech's audio file, here's a synopsis, courtesy of Adweek.com:

Dan Wieden Makes Impassioned Diversity Pitch at 4A's [Adman challenges industry to finally face the issue head on]

-By Andrew McMains


adweek/photos/stylus/81375-DanWeiden.jpg

Dan Wieden

SAN FRANCISCO Speaking plainly, directly and at times profanely, Wieden + Kennedy's Dan Wieden today used the platform of the American Association of Advertising Agencies to urge agencies to finally address the relative lack of diversity in the industry.

Wieden pointed to an outdoor camp for at-risk youth he helped create in Oregon as a concrete example of what he has done to introduce minorities to the art of filmmaking and the possibility of working in advertising. At the same time, he acknowledged that his agency is still predominantly white, though its percentages of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians have increased in the past six years.

The issue of diversity "continues to gnaw at me because, like it or not, in this business I essentially hire a bunch of white, middle-class kids, pay them enormous, enormous sums of money to do what? To create messages to the inner-city kids who create the culture the white kids are trying like hell to emulate," said Wieden, one of the featured speakers on the last day of this year's 4A's Leadership Conference. "But if you go into the inner city, odds are these kids aren't even going to see advertising as a possibility, as an opportunity for them. Now that's fucked up," he said.

Wieden added: "Don't get me wrong. I'm not bringing this up today because I think Wieden + Kennedy is doing this phenomenal goddam job at rectifying the situation. I think we've made some progress. But we've got miles and miles to go before we sleep."

African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics today represent nearly 18 percent of Wieden's Portland, Ore., office and about 24 percent of its New York office, up from about 6 percent and 10 percent, respectively, since 2003, Wieden said. To achieve those increases, the independent agency has utilized Howard University's Center for Excellence, the Minority Advertising Training program and outreach specialists like Partners in Diversity.

"I repeat, though, I'm not bringing that up just to brag. If I had any common sense, I would avoid this topic like the plague," Wieden said. "But I thought, maybe, just maybe it might be more inspirational to hear from someone as screwed up as you are. And you are screwed up, aren't you? I mean, look at this room: how many black faces do you see here?" Roughly a half-dozen of the 150 or so attendees remaining in the audience in the waning hours of the conference could be described as people of color.

Wieden pointed to his camp, Caldera, as a manifestation of his own soul-searching on the issue of diversity. The sleepover camp, which opened in 1996, offers arts and environmental activities to adolescents in the hope that they will "find their voice," Wieden said.

She says she’s 5'11—I’m like “pounds, baby!”


I’m sorry, but  this stuff will be funny to me for years to come… especially as long as I keep screwing up every online trade I make. So happy Sunday to you and yours. Take your broken wings and learn to fly...

1) E-Trade baby outtakes

2) Broken wings baby!


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