theCLog

As the Baltimore Ravens scored to time the game at versus Minnesota Vikings with 3 minutes 37 seconds left in the fourth quarter, a tune — familiar and fierce — began to rise above the cheers and whistles … until, before long, the entire stadium was engulfed in a hearty rendition of legendary rock band Journey’s signature song, “Don’t Stop Believin’.” From Broadway to cable to sports, the nearly 30-year-old hit just keeps on swinging.

The 1981 power balled is a soaring, hard rockin’ anthem for those who refuse to let a little thing like doubt keep them from what they want. The song reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

That was back then. Now, the tune has taken on a life of its own due to repeated appearances on some of TV’s hottest shows.

In 2008, it was the 72nd most downloaded song in the iTunes store and is its “most downloaded song not released in the 21st century” of all time. Arguably, the most recognizable and most referenced song in popular culture right now, but it received a jolt of new life by the finale of HBO’s addictive series The Sopranos in 2007. In fact, sales of the song on iTunes rose 482 percent over following days. It has shown up on Family Guy, Scrubs, and MTV’s Laguna Beach.

Earlier this year, contestants from American Idol sang “Don’t Stop Believin’” as a group at the beginning of the results show, and if you caught them when they rolled through Time Warner Cable Arena in August, the song was used as the closing group song for the Season 8 tour. It was ranked as the 11th greatest song on VH-1’s Greatest Songs of the 80’s countdown. Most recently, the cast from one of my favorite new shows Glee performed a cover of the song.

So, what is it about the song that seems to transcend generations and genres? Sure, much of its resiliency is due to its own purely musical kick-ass nature. But it’s one of those rare creations with a message that speaks to a feeling to which most anyone can relate. “Don’t Stop Believin’” brings us to a place we have all been at least once — a point where with a dream in our hearts, we throw caution to the wind and, even when the odds seemed stacked against us, we soldier on and … well, at the risk of stringing together any more motivational clichés, it’s a damn good song from the lyrics to the instrumentation to frontman Steve Perry’s powerful delivery and is, thankfully, not at all like much of the unintelligible and incomprehensible “music” in heavy rotation on the radio today.

If you are currently living under a rock and have no idea what this song is, the band is perpetually in tour mode, albeit without the golden-piped Perry.

Bookmark It

A few months ago, the popular Atlanta-based nightclub event Sol-Fusion popped into Charlotte in an attempt to bring the party to North Cack. Well, it was so successful — with a packed house full of great music and dancing ladies and guys — the promoters behind the first event (Charlotte’s Mike Kitchen and Atlanta’s J. Carter) have decided to bring it back for a sequel.

It all goes down tonight as Sol-Fusion sets up shop at the night-spot KISS for an extravaganza that’s titled “NY vs. the South.” It’s a music/cultural war that’s free before 11:30 p.m.

For more info, click right here.

Bookmark It

Eight hours.

Not the span of a typical workday and not the driving distance from here to Cleveland — eight long hours is the longest amount of time I have spent in a salon to get my hair done. It was a maddening experience all in the name of beauty.

From Tyra revealing her real hair on the season premiere of her show a few weeks ago to Oprah coaxing Chris Rock to run his fingers through her hair to prove, much to my amazement — and probably that of most of her viewing audience, that her current hairstyle is comprised entirely of her natural locks, the topic of hair, particularly black women’s hair, seems to be floating around quite a bit these days … not that the topic ever actually went away.

For generations, women have been obsessing over their hair. Many black women, in particular, have struggled with trying to turn what, for many, is naturally kinky hair into long, flowing strands. On an episode of Oprah that aired this week Rock revealed that his daughter was admiring the hair of her white friend a little too much for his comfort. He said that although he tells both of his daughters every day that they are beautiful, they still seemed dissatisfied with their natural hair texture. The proverbial light bulb went off in his head, and his new documentary called Good Hair was the end result.

Good Hair focuses a lot on the plight of black women and hair, but it also opens up the discussion for women of all races to be able to ask each other questions, get answers and swap stories about the extreme lengths they have gone to obtain just the right look from chemical relaxers, Brazilian straighteners, texturizers, weaves, hair pieces, and the umpteen hours spent on a regular basis to get the hair trimmed, touched-up, and just plain tampered with in general by a professional.

My eight-hour salon experience sounds ridiculous I know, but it is also not entirely unusual in the black community. The $9 billion dollar industry that is black hair care has made many an otherwise sensible woman an absolute slave, both financially and time wise, and to her hair. It can become an ordeal. If you have ever found yourself planning things around your hair such as when to exercise so you do not “sweat your perm out” or staying conspicuously far away from the pool at a pool party so you won’t get pushed into the water and have to cut somebody or giving the evil side eye to someone who looks like they are about to touch your hair out of curiosity or having to “sleep cute” at night to avoid messing up a fresh ’do, then you know what I mean.

Extensions, braids, locks, relaxers — they all require some level of maintenance; however, as one stylist interviewed for Good Hair said, “Weaves are where the money is.” Apparently, you can put a weave on layaway like any other big-ticket item, and weaves have become so popular in America that hair has translated into a big-time trade in India. In Indian culture, removing the hair is considered an act of sacrifice in exchange for the gods’ blessings. Much of this hair is then shipped off to the States. This “black market hair market” has made hair one of India’s largest exports.

For some women, it’s “have weave, will travel.” One lady traveled clear across the country to get just the right weave. In that same vein, I have known several female acquaintances who moved to Charlotte from other places and would commute often lengthy distances on a regular basis back to their hometowns just to get their hair done by the same person.

So why the obsession? Surprisingly, Rock found that it had more to do with a woman’s esteem rather than the mere common assumption that women do it for the attention of men. And the phenomenon wasn’t just among black women. According to the show anyway, hair coloring is to white women what weaves are to black women. Caucasian comedienne Ali Wentworth admitted to Oprah’s audience that with her hair dyed blond, she feels more “striking” versus how she felt when she wore her natural “dishwater brown” color. One white woman interviewed in a salon said she had colored her hair so much that she didn’t even remember exactly what her natural color is. And both Wentworth and Oprah mentioned that they couldn’t recall one white friend who still wore her natural hair shade.

To sort of bring the discussion full circle, Solange Knowles, younger to sister Beyoncé, came on the show last and displayed her newly cropped all-natural coif. She claims she wanted to be free from the addiction of weaves and spending $40,000-$50,000 a year on hair and half of her life in salons. She even disclosed the shocking fact that she received her first perm when she was just four years old, a practice Rock said he’s strongly against.

I have to admit that I agree with Rock when he said that Solange was more noticeable now because of her look than she ever as before — when her weave made her look like any girl walking down the street. The beauty of her face was much more pronounced without the distraction, if you will, of a big head of fake hair. Thankfully, Afros, locks, cornrows and other natural styles are becoming popular again and, perhaps more importantly, more acceptable by today’s mainstream society. Women have often been told that our hair is our crowning glory. So, in a world where long, silky dyed strands still dominate most images of standard beauty, it’s nice to see women confident and self-aware enough to do something considered as drastic as (gasp!) flaunting their natural hair.

So, whether you want to be “unbe-weave-able” or live “nappily ever after”, all hair can be “good hair” as long as it’s just another extension (pun intended) of the beauty within.

Bookmark It

In the mood for a road trip this weekend? If so, I’d suggest hopping in your car and making the short drive (at the most, 4 hours away) to Atlanta to witness the historic reunion of Goodie Mob.

For the uninitiated, Goodie Mob is one of the South’s most influential hip-hop groups. Born and bred in the ATL, the group consists of members Khujo (Willie Knighton, Jr.), T-Mo Goodie (Robert Barnett), Big Gipp (Cameron Gipp) and Cee-Lo (Thomas Callaway) — who many may know as one half of the acclaimed band Gnarls Barkley (see members in above photo by Joeff Davis).

But before Cee-Lo hit the mainstream with Gnarls, he was down with Goodie Mob, cranking out conscious tunes with a Southern twist like “Soul Food,” “Cell Therapy” and “Black Ice,” among many other classics.

The group hasn’t officially been back together since 2002 — although they did a few surprise, one-off shows here and there over the years — so the show in Atlanta this weekend is a rare treat. Also, this is the “A” we’re talking about, where many celebs dwell, so expect to see some surprise guests.

For more on the show and the reunion, check out a big feature on the Atlanta edition of Creative Loafing’s site.

Details: $40. 7 p.m. Sat., Sept. 19. Masquerade Music Park, 695 North Ave. Atlanta, Ga. 404-577-8178. masq.com.

Bookmark It

A lot of people hate Nik Richie.

Of course, some of you may be wondering, “Who the hell is Nik Richie?” — especially if you’re not a person who surfs the Internet on a regular basis.

Well, for the Nik-ignorant folks out there, Richie (whose real name is Hooman Karamian) is the creator/founder/ringleader of an ultra-popular Web site known as TheDirty.com.

OK, that said, now you’re probably wondering, “What’s TheDirty?”

If you visit the site — which started in Arizona but quickly grew to reportedly garner more than 3 million pageviews per month and host localized versions in dozens of cities across the country, including one here in Charlotte — and scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen you’ll see this description: “TheDirty.com, The world’s first ever reality blogger™ is all about gossip and satire. The content that is published contains rumors, speculation, assumptions, opinions, and factual information.”
From my perspective, however, TheDirty is an Internet destination dedicated to posting user-submitted photos of real people (usually women) so that Richie — and his loyal audience (aka The Dirty Army) — can ruthlessly criticize the people in the images.

A Dirty Army “soldier,” for example, recently posted a picture of a local woman along with the headline “Mouth to Mouth” and asked Richie the frequently opined question, “Would you?” (as in have sex) with her. In response, Richie wrote: “no. Her head is wierd [sic], and she looks like a bug.”

Another Dirty Army member submitted a “Would you?” request along with a photo and the caption: “I’m so glad somebody put this whore on this site because she totally deserves it! Shes [sic] a golddigging, stuck on herself b*tch. She thinks she is some kind of model when in reality she looks like a man. Nik would you?” To which, Richie responded, “No, her legs look like sausages and her face is even worse.”

And here’s one more: A woman apparently submitted a photo herself and asked, in reference to the prospect of getting breast implants, “how big should i [sic] go?” Richie fired back: “I think you should get a head transplant and lose about 45 lbs first.”

(more…)

Bookmark It

Say it isn’t so. A legendary childhood TV fave of mine recently met its demise. After 26 years — nearly my whole life — of convincing kids that reading is cool (and I have the library to prove it), the scholastic staple Reading Rainbow was pulled off the air two Fridays ago.

Sooo … no weekday morning before school Electric Company. No Schoolhouse Rock interspersed with Saturday morning cartoons. Now, no hypnotically cheerful LeVar Burton. No wonder some kids don’t think learning is fun. Poor children of the future. Just how will they learn anything? Internet, schminternet. It’s creepy out there. But Reading Rainbow — now that was a wholesome, good ol’ fashioned learning machine.

The program earned more than two-dozen Emmy awards and was the third-longest running children’s show in PBS history behind Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. According to NPR, John Grant, who is responsible for content at WNED Buffalo, RR’s home station, said no one, including the station, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, would put up the several hundred thousand dollars that would have renewed the show’s broadcast rights.

NPR reports that changes in educational initiatives are to blame as well. That is, whereas RR “operated on the assumption that kids already had basic reading skills and instead focused on fostering a love of books”, research is now directed at the basic tools of reading such as phonics, spelling, and reading fundamentals. Blah, blah, blah … I get it.

OK, so maybe I don’t remember the title of any book that was ever on that show. However, I do remember being excited about the wonderful world of imagination and how all you had to do to get lost in a different daydream everyday was turn a page. I don’t think I even realized I was learning, expanding my thought processes, developing my creative juices. And how could anyone forget that theme song — Butterfly in the sky/I can go twice as high/take a look/it’s in a book . . . I would go on, but I think I feel a tear forming.

So I was a book nerd. But RR got me where I am today. You see, RR made me love reading. Reading made me a better writer. Being a better writer got me A’s in English. A’s in English got me everywhere. The rest is history.

Thank goodness for companies who are salvaging the life of this wonderful program by selling it on DVD. At least this way, future generations will benefit from the educational value that this program, cleverly cloaked in 30-minute increments of fun, fancy and fantasy, had to offer.

And they won’t have to take my word for it.

Bookmark It

I recently moved back to the Queen City after 10 years back in Milwaukee. I’m so glad to be back in Charlotte, I think it’s a great city. But at the moment, here are the top three things that are making me say WTF Charlotte?!

1. Why are many Charlotte neighborhoods sans sidewalks?

2. Is everyone in Charlotte in love with the Epicenter? Newsflash: It’s just not that great. I feel like my favorite store, Revolution, is trapped in that horrible place. I am not an urban planner, but it seems that they should have put some of the retail shops on the ground level where they could be accessed from the street.

3. When are people in Charlotte going to wake up and realize that we have a pivotal mayoral race on the horizon. Wake up people!

Now that I’ve gotten that off of my chest, we can move on … Ahem …

Another Homeless Housewife?
Lynn from Real Housewives of Orange County is being evicted from the home she rents in the OC. If I were her I’d just have a rent party!

Brett Favre is a Football Whore
Brett Favre is the devil. Yes, I said it! I’m from Wisconsin so I can say that. This man is officially addicted to the game of football and will play for any team that will have him. Word on the street is that he already retired from the Minnesota Vikings to go and play for the Snoop Dogg’s Youth Football League. WTF Brett? LOL

Contestant on VH1’s Megan Wants a Millionaire Connected to Murder Case?
This show is painful to watch, but, to make matters worse, one of the finalists is a person of interest in the murder of Jasmine Fiore.

Bookmark It

Our resident Listings Editor, Anita Overcash, loves animals. No. I mean, looooovvvveesss animals. And she seems to have encounters with critters all the time — like, way more than the average human. As a result, we thought it only made sense to have her start blogging about her meetings with creatures (both great and small) in a news series of blog posts titled: “Anita’s Animal Adventures.”

I have a tendency to stay up much longer than I should during the week (concerts, movies, TV, socializing, exercising, and browsing Facebook, all contribute to keeping me occupied and not sleeping). This leads to the usual downfall of me being rather sleepy and of course, wondering sometimes whether or not I’m losing my mind. So, it should come as no surprise that when I was awakened early in the wee hours of the morning by strange scratching type sounds outside my bedroom window, I was confused and alarmed, as I hurriedly stumbled out of bed and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

Looking out the window, without my contacts in I didn’t see very much. I was, as the ol’ saying goes, “Blind as a bat.” I did see the shape of a small creature fly past by window and then to my astonishment hit my window head on. “OK, that kind of freaked me out.” So, I decided to hop back into bed for some ZZZZs and to ignore whatever was capturing my attention. One thing was for sure: It was still dark, and I wasn’t going outside to check it out until daylight.

So what was it? Well, the next morning I saw nothing as I stood outside of the house and stared up at my bedroom window, located underneath the gable vent of the attic, which my room sits under. Later, however I would learn from a large amount of poop (yuck!) in the driveway below (and a family member’s exploration of the attic), that what I had heard and kind of seen was a bat. But, there wasn’t just one “hanging out” near my room. More than 50 of the small creatures were taking refuge in the gable vent I had stared at earlier and thought was “way too small for any creature to fit.”

From research I have done since this animal adventure, I have learned that bats love small, hard-to-get-into spaces. It makes them feel safe from predators while they are sleeping. Ahhh … isn’t that what we all want?

Bookmark It

One of the biggest complaints I heard while living in L.A., and even while mingling among film types around Charlotte, is that quality roles in movies have too often gone to those who, shall we say, are lesser-talented actors.

Singers and rappers and even supermodels have crossed over into film and are landing blockbuster movie roles generally reserved only for those actors who have proven their acting chops through stints on stage, in TV commercials and TV shows, or throughout an potentially embarrassing duration on the B, C, or D movie circuit. But, given the popularity and profit-generating potential that current entertainers possess, they are essentially depleting the crop of quality roles available to passionate, professionally trained actors, particularly black actors.

Actress Nia Long recently said in an interview with UK magazine Pride, “If you’re a singer not an actress, you should sing. If you’re a rapper, you should rap.” When asked about Beyonce’s performance in the movie Obsessed, she went on to say, “I didn’t see Obsessed, so I can’t comment, but it’s just not about how talented you are anymore. It’s about, ‘How much box-office revenue will this person generate?’ When you see certain people — we won’t name names — they just don’t have the skill, and no one in their team has said, ‘You need acting classes.’”

Now, I am a straight-up capitalist. Hey, generate as much of your own revenue as you see fit, I say. So, I certainly understand that movie studios need to make money. For many people, the argument stops here. But I do think Long actually has a point. I realize this seems contradictory, and perhaps I am too close to the topic; however, those of us who truly love the arts hate to see it fooled around with, and I can understand why Long is bent out of shape by non-actors essentially taking away these opportunities.

It’s unfortunate that those actors who have worked for so long to perfect their craft are having huge opportunities snatched right out from under them by Johnny-Come-Latelys who have primarily pursued other careers and whose dream it likely never was to grace the silver screen — that is, until the opportunity too easily presented itself.

I don’t think that Nia Long is being a hater in this situation. She’s probably just frustrated, and rightfully so. No one wants to see the new guy get a promotion when you have dedicated yourself to toiling away in an industry for years.

Having said that, there are, as in most things, exceptions. Jaime Fox and Jennifer Hudson were both talented singers first who apparently worked hard enough honing their acting kills to score Oscar gold. I think Long appreciates their showing such dedication to and respect for her profession. Too bad not everyone does.

Bookmark It

Blind People Enjoy Porn Too
This morning on 96.1 The Beat, Brother Fred was talking about this website called Porn for the Blind.  Yup, www.pornfortheblind.org to be exact.   It’s a pornography site targeting blind and visually impaired people.  I found this story that BBC recently wrote about it.  My only questions is: why didn’t YOU think of it first???

Lil Wayne’s New Song “Whip It Like A Slave”
I just really don’t know what to say.  Oh, yes I do.  Hip hop is SO dead.  Chicago rapper Common provides his thoughts on this song here.
Here’s the audio for the song.  Warning, this is Not safe for work!

New Sport Alert: Running In Stilettos
Now this is my type of sport!  I do this every day on my way to the office. Apparently running in 3-inch heels is becoming pretty popular.

Bookmark It