So I’m not, what you would call, a Beyonce fan. I’m rather indifferent to most musical acts that are popular right now. I have in the past compared musical eras and groups. In a discussion about some of the female groups of the last few years I realized that some special ladies have been left off of the list and I’m her to remedy this. The Pointer Sisters. Yes that’s right. See one of the things about musical acts today is all the “help” they can get. Milli Vanilli probably made people recognize it and C&C Music Factory pushed it further. You could grab a big girl with a great voice while showing people a model chick. You’d have a hit until someone realized that the girl in the video wasn’t singing. From that to the era of auto-tune that lets Kanye sing as well as T-Pain and you start to wonder who can ACTUALLY sing. Well the pointer sisters were coming from a time where singers could sing. Plus in the 80’s people had weird styles so you could just make someone cool. You just threw stuff out there and hoped it stuck normally if you had a good sound it would work. Well the Pointer Sisters had a good sound. Enjoy:

Q: Bishop, you’re crazy!
Bishop: You know what? Last time you said that, I was kinda trippin’, right? But now, you’re right. I am crazy. And you know what else? I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t give a fuck about Steel. I don’t give a *fuck* about Raheem, either. I don’t give a fuck about myself. Look, I ain’t shit. And you less of a man than me, so as soon as I figure you ain’t gon be shit, *pow*! So be it. You remember that, motherfucker. ‘Cause I’m the one you need to be looking out for… *partner*!

The other night Juice was on the telly and I stopped for a few because my lady had never seen it (I was shocked). Mind you, I’ve seen Juice plenty of times. It’s the movie that showed me you could really live it up when you cut school (note to self..make sure my kids never read that line). As with all things, seeing it at 30 I saw some things I hadn’t noticed before. One of them being that Tupac played one of the greatest roles in a film ever (yes, ever). Bishop was a perfect character…you see who he can be early on, you see him moving from fear into power into all out crazy. I was able to point out the exact moment after he killed Rahiem that he transitioned. Watching him at the house after the funeral is a chilling scene. Beyond the new revelations there are somethings I have always thought about when I watch Juice. You can tell alot by who people really look to in those movies. I identified with GQ…being caught up in a situation and looking for a way out. It always amazed how many people looked at Bishop like a he was the man (notice how popular Tupac got after that role?). As I came to realize, he was just one of many cautionary tales that people would instead use as a guide on how to live.

Here are my two picks for the most innappropriate “heroes” and their counterparts.

Bishop (Juice) -Crazy is the first term that comes to mind. A better description is the embodiment of “I Gave You Power” by Nas. He starts out as kind of scrappy dude with problems, but once he gets his hands on a gun he (self-admittedly) goes all the way crazy and just doesn’t care. He schemed, plotted and basically went on a spree of murders (accomplished and attempted). Any redeeming quality he had was gone within the first 15 minutes of the movie. To top it all off, without a gun he had to be saved from daily beatdowns by the person he ended up killing.

The Alternate:

GQ (Juice) – Dude really just wanted to kick it with his crew, his older woman and DJ. By going along with his friends in something he wanted no part of he basically ends up having his whole world fall apart around him. He wasn’t tough until he was put into a position to get tough or die.

Tony Montana (Scarface) - You had to see this coming right? So I understand the whole “worked his way up – hardbody – kingpin angle”, but look at what happened. Dude got a lousy woman, was a coked out psycho and eventually got killed. There really wasn’t a “hero” aspect to him. He wasn’t Robin Hood or anything. He sold drugs, took over operations and died with an M-16 as his only friend. Whisky Tango Foxtrot!?!?

The Alternate:

Carlito Brigante (Carlito’s Way) – While he started out in life as a criminal, the entire movie is about him trying to get away from that life. Unlike Scarface he reasons his way through just about everything. He’s telling you before hand what effect everyones action is going to have. Even when he makes a mistake he explains it and regrets it. More than anything this line always stood out to me: “If you can’t see the angles no more, you’re in trouble.” That’s rare in a movie to have the main dude admitting he’s losing his edge. Despite going out at the end, dude spends most of the movie getting laughed at for wanting to go join a car rental business.

I want to say people just cherry picked these movies. I mean how do you make a hero out of the person who goes down in flames? Carlito does get killed, but he also gives his girl the money to get away with their child. Q doesn’t want the rep he earns by the end of the movie. Nobody gives props to Q. More people will cite Scarface then Carltio’s Way. Yet, Bishop and Tony both really had no place to go but down. Bishop actually summed up the situation the best. He felt like he wasn’t anything and now he had the power to make anyone else into nothing. From one standpoint I understand people identifying with Bishop as he starts out, but it doesn’t make sense to walk the path he chose if you’ve seen his example. Yet, many people have and continue to do so. There was a study completed recently here in Baltimore. One of the main points they hit was that 99% of youth victims and perpetrators of violence had some kind of record that indicated they needed intervention before they were ever involved in violence. Not only are we faced with a bunch of Bishops who want to be Tony Montana…but we know who they are beforehand. Despite all those killed or incarcerated over drugs people will still see that as a way to come up in the world…even when all evidence points to the contrary. What makes it worse is that despite being emaulated, Bishop had no real moment of glory. He was still poor, still in the same hood and judging by what Sweets had in the fridge…he didn’t even have the best gun. I guess it’s like Kurosawa said, in a mad world only the mad are sane.

gives up on football for the rest of the week.

Dear Michael Steele,

Damn you. Damn you straight to the darkest and hottest pit of Hades. Honestly, I can’t say I didn’t know this is why you were made Chairman of the RNC. The country gets a black guy, they go get a black guy I get it. However, your response to Jimmy Carter has officially determined who you are. There are some things I take on faith. If the state of Texas says a man shouldn’t be executed, I’ll go with that. When an 80-something year old white man who was raised in the south suggests people are being racist against a black man…I tend to believe him (especially when there was already proof). I watched your response and every signal I’ve seen since your election coalesced until before me was the result of 5 versions of Uncle Ruckus forming a House Negro Voltron. Your election was suspect from the start. Then I cringed internally as Michelle Bachmann “praised” you with a shout of “You be da man!”. Even worse than thinking of every time personally or in the periphery I’ve witnessed some white person make an awkward attempt at relating by regurgitating not just slang…but ebonics, I had to deal with but the embarrassment of you throwing out slang left and right. It became clear that even after only a month your own party was uncomfortable with you in a leadership position. Something I attributed to racism…because hell, it had only been a month. Then you…The Chairman backed down from Rush Limbaugh. When you said what Limbaugh does is “incendiary and ugly” I thought that maybe you at least had a spine. You proved me wrong quite quickly. You know what? You are the Leader of the Party…they elected you. Limbaugh is an entertainer and what he does is incendiary and ugly. So I watched you respond to Jimmy Carter. The more you spoke the less I heard. My head started resounding with with quotes from old movies. “They’s good white folks!” Mind you, it’s already bad enough when one person tries to speak and cover for the venom of others. In light of everything I’ve seen thrown at President Obama, to watch you declare how wrong Jimmy Carter is (meanwhile Limbaugh called him America’s Hemorrhoid) – it broke a dam that was inside of me. Now I have to say it, “There is no word to describe you, Uncle Tom (Uncle Ruckus), House Slave…none of them are good enough”. I hope to not even hear you speak anymore. I don’t know how you can even look at yourself in the mirror. You are worse then any black person they trotted out to speak against Malcolm X and you aren’t even opposing someone as radical. You are worse then a token. You have become the icon of self-hatred and denial in my mind. Worse then calling you a race traitor…you have betrayed your humanity in the name of politics. You are worse then a Remora Fish to everything black. I could keep on describing things that are low, but it would do no good. There is no appropriate word to describe you. From this point out when I need a horribly insulting description I will just use your name.

If you’re reading this you can see I’m in the midst of a do-over. I didn’t make up my mind to stop blogging. I just acted really lazy. However, I should have known, there are too many stupid people doing stupid things in the world for me to stop pointing them out. Hang tight. I have a rant coming later.