Today’s Daydream: Tokyo

Posted on August 19, 2008
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I’m thinking about learning Japanese just so I can go visit Tokyo. I dunno. I think Tokyo Drift has been seeping into my mind. Also I want to steal one of their cell phones that are like four years ahead of what we’re jazzed about here in the U.S. (I’m sure they’re laughing at the iPhone…)

Life Lessons Learned By Watching Oxygen All Day Sunday

Posted on August 19, 2008
Filed Under What I Learned From Watching TV | Leave a Comment

So I decided, sort of on the spur of the moment, to braid my hair, so I needed something to watch for the entire span of time it would take. I decided on Oxygen so I could catch up on the last few episodes of “Tori and Dean” and because I saw there was a seven hour marathon of “Snapped!” coming up.

So from 10 am to 10 pm, here’s what I learned from watching Oxygen:

Fellas, if you suspect your wife might be having an affair (even if you don’t), make sure your life insurance policy isn’t worth much or that she isn’t the beneficiary or you might find yourself on the other side of the dirt.
According to Snapped, White women kill because they are having affairs and are over their husbands. But they don’t do it themselves, they find lovesick and/or greedy muthafuggas to do it for them. Black women kill because they’re angry (just been pushed that millimeter too far…)
If you’re going to call 911 and report that your husband or boyfriend has been shot/stabbed/poisoned/whatever, don’t go into an explanation because apparently that raises suspicions with the cops. Also, if you’re on trial, make sure to look sad.
I’ma need Linda Wagner to stop being so damn smug that she has a SleepNumber bed while I’m stuck with my spring coil mattress.
Xian is gonna start trouble on “The Janice Dickinson Model Agency” (umm, I really don’t know who she is and I really don’t care…)
Anne Hathaway stepped up and reclaimed that top girl crush spot in my heart with her Magnifique commercial.
Whoever programmed the commercials was either very smart or very dumb to put a commercial for Bowflex talking smack about how diet plans ain’t s#!t right after a commercial for Nutrisystem.

It was all worth it though. Here’s the end result:

Tributes

Posted on August 10, 2008
Filed Under Gone Too Soon | 1 Comment

So, most have heard the news about the passing of Bernard “Bernie Mac” McCullough (October 5, 1957 – August 9, 2008) and Isaac Hayes (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008).

It’s so sad to have two greats in the Black entertainment community pass so suddenly and so close to each other. I just wanted to highlight a couple of clips of my favorites from these guys.

The first was the “Milk and Cookies” (milk and cookays) routine from Kings of Comedy. I think that this movie was one of the catalysts for Bernie to get to mainstream success and I’ve heard many people claim that Bernie Mac was the best of the four comedians from this movie. Watching this video again made me laugh so hard even though I’ve seen it countless times. Bernie Mac, you will be missed.

Isaac Hayes, best known (I think) for singing the theme song for “Shaft” and for voicing Chef on South Park. I chose Walk On By because I fell in love with the song the first time I heard it. I’ll admit that I wasn’t the biggest Isaac Hayes fan, but I do appreciate the legacy he left for soul/funk/disco music. Isaac Hayes, you will be missed.

What do you guys most remember about these entertainers?

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Old School Friday - Lenny Kravitz

Posted on August 8, 2008
Filed Under , Old School Fridays | 7 Comments

Ah, this week’s Old School Friday is “rock music” (thanks Mrs. Grapevine).
At first, I was gonna choose Jimi Hendrix and “Hey Joe” but that brought back too many memories of an old boyfriend (he was my first love, his name was Joe, this was one of his favorite songs, yadda yadda), so I decided to avoid it.

Instead, I decided to go with the always delectable Lenny Kravitz. I’m pushing the definition of old school b/c I know that Mrs. G defined it as anything before 1999 and “Fly Away” is right at 1998.

I think that this was the first time that Lenny Kravitz really stuck in my head. I knew some of his older (early 90’s) songs but they never caused me to pay too much attention to him. This song always gets me going though and it’s a great intro into Friday and the weekend. Have a happy day folks!

As a mini bonus I’m including a couple more Lenny videos:
1994’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way”

and 2000’s “Again” - especially for a certain flash of anatomy around the 1′30″ mark - oh and because of his spectacular guitar playing…

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Always a Bridesmaid…

Posted on August 6, 2008
Filed Under | 3 Comments

Some of you might have seen me mention something about being a bridesmaid in my best friend’s wedding. I just wanted to show off my progress thus far. I’ve been procrastinating on getting it altered (not for any specific reason, just because I keep forgetting to bring my shoes with me).

Here’s what we have:
The Dress

The Front of the Dress

The Back of The Dress

Me. In the Dress.
Read more

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Blogging While Brown Conference And ATL, Part 2

Posted on August 5, 2008
Filed Under | 4 Comments

Click here if you missed Part 1.

After getting only four hours of sleep, I headed out to the Blogging While Brown Conference which was held in the Georgia World Congress Center. It was around 8:45 am Saturday morning and registration closed at 9:30. That should be enough time, I told myself. That, I realize now, was small town thinking. First problem, I started driving down the wrong highway for ten miles before realizing that the exit I was looking for didn’t match up with the upcoming exits on the sign. Turned around and drove ten miles back and then an additional ten to actually get to the place. And who would have thought that there would be traffic on a Saturday morning? Eventually I got there, parked and walked 5 miles to get to the conference rooms (seriously felt like that with my heavy @$$ laptop weighing me down). Got registered and in there. Blam. Wonderful.

Our first session was from Jordan Berg of FreePress who showed us a video about how broadcast/cable companies are working to become gatekeepers of the internet and tried to convince us to take all the material he’d brought.

Next up was “The Ultimate Blog Experience” by Angela Conyers-Benton and Markus Robinson from Black Web 2.0. Very informative presentation. Here’s what I took away from them: 1) Ways to build traffic and SEO tips to get your blog to come up higher in Google (search engine) searches, 2) make sure you are in control of your own content (looking at you blogspot folks), 3) Blogging frequency and how to manage your content (I had no idea you could schedule posts in Wordpress, guess what’s gonna be my new best friend?) Their presentation had blogger folks scrambling to get their own domains because of Blogger’s questionable content ownership policies. Go here if you want to get more on their presentation.

Up next was a Town Hall Session with Jason Pye of the Libertarian party and Michael McKay Murphy of the Republican party who spoke with us about their backgrounds and explained to us how they (and their party) related to us (Black bloggers). Members of the Democratic and Green Party were invited but were not able to make it (in the Green Party’s case, I think that they didn’t make it onto the Georgia ballot).

We took a break for lunch (yummy sandwiches and such) and I got the chance to talk with Villager (Wayne Hicks) of Electronic Village, Theo Johnson of Theo Talks, Laquita Jones of Terrell Tax and Planning and Ananda Leeke.

Then there was the post lunch session called “Bridges: Build, Cross or Burn? Can New Media Work With the Old Guard and Old Media?” All I can say is that I’m glad that we had lunch before this session. The panel consisted of Tamara Reynolds (Glam Media), Clarissa Goodlife (Color of Change) and Necole Bitchie (NecoleBitchie.com) and was moderated by Kevin Ross (3BandaS).

The discussion ended up being about the balance between monetizing your blog and selling out. It got so heated that Gina McCauley (What About Our Daughters?) jumped in to add in her two cents. The biggest issue was about the difference between how entertainment-type blogs and activist-type blogs use monetization (that is, entertainment blogs are more likely to do so). Also a topic of contention was the use of ad networks, ad exchanges and affiliate programs. For the full discussion, visit the recorded archive provided by TheoTalks.net at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/586451. Interesting discussion, but waaaay longer than we were all ready for.

Freddy O (photographer, painter, all around artiste) took the group picture and here it is (after 30 some odd clicks):

(Click the pic for a larger view. The red star is me!)

Next up were the breakout sessions:

Secret of a Media Insider (Carmen Dixon, All About Race)
Podcasting 101 (Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow, Mixed Chicks Chat)
Umoja from a Black Blogger’s Perspective (Wayne Hicks, Electronic Village)
Blogger Rights (Kristal Lauren High, Esq. and Shwana Ruth-Bridges, Esq.)

I checked out the Podcasting 101 and Umoja sessions.

Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow headed up the podcasting session. They’re so cute together and have such chemistry. It was fun learning from them. They got me inspired to try out podcasting. One day, I hope I’ll be able to have my own online radio show or something like that (and fulfill my dreams of a broadcast journalism career).

The last session of the day (that I attended) was Umoja from Wayne Hicks of Electronic Village. I think attending this session was the last kick in the butt for me. What I mainly took from the session was to have a goal for my blog and to remain committed. He also listed out some of the reasons (Black) blogs fail including boring topics or boring writing, lack of motivation, personal issues and poor blog design. Also he outlined the difference between the afrosphere (community of Black bloggers) and the AfroSpear (big “A” – community of progressive Black bloggers who focus on making positive changes in the African Diaspora)

This session was the last remaining boost I needed. In the last four months or so, I’d been sporadic in my posting and was on the verge of ignoring AllTayo.com.

Coming to this conference refueled me with motivation and gave me new ideas and inspiration for what to do with my blog. Keep watching…

All in all, great conference and I look forward to the next one ( I feel like I’ve said that before, but it bears repeating).

Shout-out time! You can check out a more complete listing of the conference attendees at http://bloggingwhilebrown.blogspot.com.

My own private shout-outs (folks I spoke with directly and/or got B-cards from, sorry if I left someone out!):

Sincere,
Villager,
ATLien (Straight From the A),
Ananda Leeke,
LoveBabz,
Terrell Tax and Planning (Laquitta Jones),
Wayne Dixon,
Bruce Dixon (uh, no relation, I think?) and
Tiffany Duhart of Nokturnal Escape Entertainment (from J-Ville, sorry, I never got your business website!)

Phew! That was so long! Hope you’ll join me for part 3 of my trip (and no, I won’t keep you hanging like I did with the gallbladder story ;))

4 Comments

Old School Friday: Boyz II Men

Posted on August 1, 2008
Filed Under Old School Fridays | 3 Comments

At the BWB Conference, Villager spoke about his Old School Friday meme. He saw me nodding and teased me by saying I wasn’t old enough to know old school music. So I decided to join in with the meme for today, at least, with my Motown Old School selection: Boyz II Men - Motown Philly

Pretty Ricky has nothing on them!

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Michael Jackson Totally Looks Like…

Posted on July 31, 2008
Filed Under , again | 6 Comments

…an Egyptian statue. The similarity is really unnerving, actually.

see famous look-a-like faces

6 Comments

Blogging While Brown Conference And ATL, Part 1

Posted on July 30, 2008
Filed Under , fly away, it ain't over | 4 Comments

Oh snap, she done started blogging again.

Ha, I’m back ya’ll. First post up is about the Blogging While Brown Conference that I attended this past weekend in Atlanta. I’d known about it for about six months and was going back and forth about whether or not to attend and basically at the last minute (like a month before), I decided to go. And I’m so glad I did. First up, thanks to Gina McCauley at What About Our Daughters for spearheading this conference. It was much needed and I can only see it getting bigger and bigger as the years go by.

Since I live about five hours away, I decided to drive up to ATL and stay with my aunt and cousin for the free. The first BWB event was the pre-conference Meet and Greet. Cuzzo and I showed up, but ended up leaving early. Why? Simply because I have shy tendencies and they were in full effect that night. We ended up getting drinks from the Fox Atlantic Grill. She was full and wasn’t able to finish hers so there was a plan put into play to sneak the drink out in a to-go cup. Let’s just say that plan ended with the bartender walking by and tell us that we were on camera and that if we tried to leave the restaurant with the drink, we would be in trouble. She was heated, I found the situation funny as hell.

That night we ended up going to Studio 72 (she’s a VIP hostess there) but ended up leaving because she wasn’t feeling the crowd that night. So she suggested we go bowling. Mind you, I’m in a cute T-shirt dress (similar to these) and some cute black stilettos. And she’s in jeans. Talkinbout, “let’s go bowling”, lol. Anyway, we ended up at the Midtown Bowl where I bowled my best game ever (88, stank you very much), but no one was around to see it! Got back to the house at 4 in the morning. And I had to be up by 8:00 am to make sure I made it to the conference on time.

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Catch Me If You Can…

Posted on July 24, 2008
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Yeah, so I’ve taken an unofficial extended leave of absense as you can see. Need to take some time to get less busy, more organized and whatnot. And I just haven’t felt like sitting down to complete a whole blog post… but if you’re missing me, I mean, really missing me, you can catch my updates on Twitter.

Love you all.

Peace-ski.

Tayo