The Randomness of Me

A friend of mine - hair stylist extraordinaire - Terri “HairHunt” Hunt is one of hairdressers on this new show that starts next week on We TV. Terri’s been around the LA scene for a while styling on set and off. You’ve seen his work on shows like One on One where he styled Kyla Pratt’s doo and a few others. A laugh riot, with Terri on set you will yuck it up…WATCH!  

Throwback Thursday is back with an oldie but goodie sure to get you singing… 

Come on and Zoom Zoom Zooma Zoom…

Every week my cousins, brother and I would gather aroundthe one-eyed monster and fall into the whacky world of seven kids on a mission to make learning fun. They did. We spoke UbiDubbi and tried all the tricks - human airplane, bottle rocket…you name it we did it…we even sent in a letter to Ooooh Twooo Onnne Threee Fooouuurrr…

Zoom embraced multi-culturality and provided a space to let kids be kids…the first cast was one of my favorites. As seasons changed so did the faces of the Zoom gang, but we always knew that no matter who was on that year, they’s bring fun right in to our living room…remember…

Throwback Thursday!

I’m a little late but ya know I couldn’t forget ya throwback!

So, in honor of teachers and kids heading back to school, and the fact that I just got back from my magical mystery tour of my home town - New Haven - which is but a skip away from NYC, and because NYC, where this show take place, got rocked yesterday…Welcome Back!

Throwback Thursday!

Today’s throwback actually took place on a Thursday…back in the 70s, every Thursday at 8, Fred and Lamont filled the screen with their Archie and Edith for Black folking that gave the rest of America a taste of what Black Americans thought and felt about life in a post Jim Crow country.

Fred never let us down with his quick wit, political breakdown, and real talk about being a junk dealer, single parent, widower, veteran - with one foot perpetually in the grave (I’m coming to join ya ‘Lizabeth) and the other squarely up the white man’s (and Lamont’s) azzz.

My dad kept a stash of “blue” comedy albums hidden in his music crate and my brother and I risked life an limb many an afternoon to listen to Redd Foxx get raunchy and real…Richard Pryor and a slew of others owe much to his groundbreaking comedic work. 

Here’s Freddy G doing his incomparable version of…If I Didn’t Care….and I think that’s Roxie Roker - Lenny’s mom - in the back ground…

Hey, Hey, Hey…that’s right - it’s Throwback Thursday and Doon Doon Doon…it’s Faaat Albert!

Yup.

You know you ran to the TV when you heard that music. I myself loved Rudy and his suave-bolla, ghetto-cool self, and could never figure out wth Mushmouf was babbling about…

Can someone tell me why Russell always wore that coat and sported those boots even in the summer? 

Last night I was flipping channels, as I do most nights, trying to find something to watch amongst what passes for entertainment on TV today.  I stopped on a relatively new show called Fairly Legal on the USA Network. I’d seen the pilot episode and was underwhelmed but decided to give it another shot. The premise here is that a young woman mediator living in SF is trying to adjust to her father’s death while working for her “evil stepmother” who is now in control of the family law firm. Our girl’s job is to mediate disputes before they reach the courtroom. She has an assistant, a young black guy, who is her straight man and, what my old pal Shakespeare would call the Falstaff of the piece.

Well about half way into the show, it’s an hour long comedy-drama, Kate, the mediator needs her assistant, the Falstaff character, to gather some info or do some other task, which he has not quite completed. During their what is supposed to be their witty repartee, Kate treats her assistant much as the stereotypical male boss would have back in the dark ages – say the 50s - 70s - or like a mother would a child mischievous child. She was condescending and insulting to him.

I could see the role reversal the writers were going for As I watched the scene unfolded but, I must say, found myself offended by the whole exchange.

Perhaps if Kate’d been talking to one of her superiors (a white male) in that way it would have been funnier to me. The fact that she was speaking to a black male is what really got me. Part of the problem is that we have two marginalized demographic representations that are typically on the short end of the stick in office dynamics and politics going at each other here.

As a black woman, I want to see more roles where both black men are portrayed not as flat, subservient, straight men but as fully rounded and developed characters. I might also have been less offended if Kate had used that parental tone when talking to  one of the other people with whom she had issues – like her step mother (well may not because we have enough in-fighting with women on TV today).

It felt like our girl was taking on the persona of the stereotypic male boss, which is not what we were striving for with the whole equality in the workplace movement. I realize that a part of my pisstiviedness lies in the fact that a white woman was speaking to a black male in that way but it also stems from my frustration with how we as women tend to regurgitate the behaviors of the males who made the workplace unbearable for us. So, to the producers and writers of Fairly Legal, try harder…