Wednesday, April 30, 2008

I hate the **AA

The wild cards here stands for RI and MP, two media industry powerhouses bent on suing their way back to more a favorable business model. For all those that say "Don't you believe people should be paid for the work they do?" my answer would be: Yes, if 1) These ridiculous lawsuits meant anything to the artists, songwriters and other creative persons who produced the work and not the CEO and shareholders of SONY who did nothing to influence the music/movies they are trying to protect and maybe never even heard of it and 2) If at the same time the industry was taking steps to give the buying public what it wants (GOOD digital distribution) and not sue it's on fan base.

This is an awesome article outlining the struggles of the people that these groups are actually suing. Of course it's all the college kids and single mothers that are bankrupting the music and movie industry and not lack of forward thinking business strategies and resistance to change in a world where they are pretty much useless.

From the article:
As Andersen and the attorney prepared their defense in 2006, his
conviction grew. Yes, Andersen had installed on her computer a software
program, KaZaA, for sharing music over the Net—one reason the RIAA
suspected her. But Andersen deleted the program after a few months and
didn't appear ever to have used it. Plus, some of the music Andersen
had supposedly shared online just didn't fit her taste. The songs
included rap tunes with titles like "I Stab People" and "Dope Nose". (Quote marks added for clarity)

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Is that A Sweat Dress?!



A phenomenon noticed by a friend at about 3am at a Chinese restaurant, on some girl who looked like she was about to pass out in it (imagine a really drunk, skinny Chinese girl who might have actually sweat in this thing, not nearly as debonnaire as the model above). It was seriously one of the most ridiculous pieces of clothing I have ever seen, unless your from the future and then of course it's called a tunic.

Also found this, pretty funny.

ZOMG!

http://www.gosperats.com/

This shit is hilarious. I mean, if you know me you know I like Japanese culture, but these people sometimes get a little ahead of themselves in their attempts to live in the future, apparently a future where blackface is cool. These guys above basically believe you can't be in a soul band without being black, apparently it's fine if your speaking Japanese or english with thick Japanese accents, but you gotta be black. The funny thing is the group seems to be doing this as some type of tribute action to soul music and its African American roots, is this ok then?

The Radar piece I posted below (scanned from the mag; sorry Radar but I looked on your site and couldn't find this anywhere to link to it) has...I don't know what going on in it, but that girl in the lower left corner looks like Jughead from the old archie comics. The thing is backface wouldn't be so offensive if the actions that invariably follow it were not idiotic and ridiculous. Actors use make-up to portray themselves differently in order to create a mood for the audience. In that movie Soul Man from the 80's the make-up was used to set a situation and was not seen as terrible because the character was not using it to degrade the entire African American race. Just the same I can't automatically say that these Gyaru girls are guilty of anything really (although the whole contrast between the bronze and white is kind of weird and ghostly), but why even go there?