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"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."--   Friedrich Nietzsche At least 12 people are dead and dozens are wounded in the aftermath of a one-man shooting rampage in the city of Aurora, Colorado .  According to a police officer on the scene,  James Holmes , 24, identified himself as "the Joker" when confronted by authorities after Holmes entered a packed movie theater showing the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises and started shooting at the audience. http://tinyurl.com/733xbsd   Subsequently, Holmes reportedly surrendered to police without a fight, and is currently in custody.  Despite his declaration of affiliation with the iconic Batman arch-villain, Holmes had entered the theater in costuming more closely resembling the current antagonist in the Rises film, the terrorist leader Bane . In recent months, Holmes was a graduate student studying medicine at a local Colorado university.  In keeping with "super villain" modus...

BLOOD AND LORE:  CABIN IN THE WOODS REVIEW “…nobody wants to see vampire killers… or vampires… Apparently all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” Peter Vincent (Roddy MacDowall), Fright Night (1985) If someone unexposed to horror films from the past 35 years or so were to watch a marathon of several of these films back to back (and let’s say none of them were sequels), how many would it take before he or she began to predict what’s going to happen next? For an American film audience culture that has by now endured the irony-heavy Scream franchise and the gloomily unironic spate of “torture porn” from auteurs like Eli Roth and others, can there truly be any genuine shocks in horror anymore? Cabin in the Woods film attempts to answer that question with a wink and a nod. The new film features five college-aged protagonists, each fitting a certain stock cliché to be found in assorted horror films: the jock/de fact...

GWYN AND BEAR IT This author is a week or so behind in tackling this particular hip-hop related scandal, but unlike the average shelf-life of a Twitter post, it still bears further discussion.  Indeed, Twitter is at the center of this particular celebrity faux-pas. It seems that Gwyneth Paltrow -- A-list movie actress, wife of Coldplay bandleader Chris Martin , and mother to quaintly-named children Apple and Moses, found herself in a foot-in-mouth social networking fuss when she typed a tweet "Niggas in Paris for real" while at a Jay-Z/Kanye West concert (Paltrow and her husband are apparently godparents to Jay-Z and Beyonce 's baby Blue Ivy.)  http://tinyurl.com/7tg2txr For the uninitiated, "Ni**as in Paris" is a Jay/Kanye song, though on radio and in the music-video it is officially referred to simply as "Paris"-- go figure, right? In interviews, such as with Tanning of America author/hip-hop manager Steve Stoute , Paltrow is upfron...

UNIVERSITY PROPOSES GREEN ACRES IN DETROIT In a recent Detroit News article, representatives from Michigan State University have made a formal proposal to Detroit city officials regarding an urban agriculture research project. As conceived, the project would take over blighted, vacant land in the city and convert it into farmland. Among the objectives of the initiative are to explore the prospects of contemporary urban cities growing their own fresh food supplies, seeking to meet the needs of indigenous populations who have challenges in accessing healthy food. More here: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120414/METRO/204140342 City leadership and some local activists have long been rigidly skeptical about urban farming. Among the concerns are prospects for locals to be hired for any jobs developed. Still yet, there are cultural and political challenges, as a segment of vocal Detroiters tend to openly equate any sort of urban-directed agriculture developments with sharecropping and...

DETROIT NEEDS TO LOOK TO THE PAST TO SEE ITS FUTURE There has been a lot of well-meaning but empty rhetoric about “job creation” in the city and state. When people speak of “jobs” in Detroit, I think it has to be parsed out exactly what type of jobs jobseekers are looking for, and from there just what type of jobs are jobseekers qualified for? The parts of Detroit’s economy which are not working mostly involve manufacturing. This cannot be over-stressed. Historically, Detroit has placed an inordinate amount of resources into assuming that the heavy-industrial manufacturing industry would be here forever. There was a time in which various factory and heavy-industry-related jobs were plentiful for local residents, whether they were simply a high school graduate, or even a dropout. At the risk of understatement, that era is over. From the 1960s forward, there has been both drastic and gradual disinvestment, by both larger corporations and smaller businesses, which has economically cripple...

DODGING THE DRAFT A writer for TheRoot.com offers the opinion that recent talks in NBA management are looking at the possibility of requiring college players to stay at the amateur level until 20 years old: http://www.theroot.com/buzz/nba-draft-age-limit-high-enough-already This is ridiculous. The writer, Deron Snyder, skirts dangerously close to making a "college is annoying, so why bother?" argument. Long-term NBA "stardom" isn't remotely guaranteed for anyone. The writer seems to still be fascinated with the narrative of working class black American boys becoming millionaires before the age of 21 based on their ability to drive the lane, and how restrictions on joining the draft straight out of high school amount to "player hating" or even racial bias. Has the writer produced any stats on people who have finished at least an undergraduate degree since leaving college early to join the draft? The American major-league baseball system has had a long...

CONSENT DISCONTENT Regarding the recently accepted consent agreement between the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan, I want results. No more well-meaning but empty rhetoric from any of the principals involved: Mayor Bing, Governor Snyder, or the City Council. I want working streetlights: many neighborhoods have no working streetlights. On major thoroughfares it's bad enough, but in the broader neighborhoods, sometimes streetlights are the only ambient illumination (no businesses keeping lights on after dusk) and when they are gone, entire blocks are shunt into 'complete' darkness. I want a regular police presence: I mean police cars patrolling the neighborhoods, officers on bicycles, and even beat-walking officers. Currently, people can wait for hours and longer after calling for police help-- and of course, sometimes police don't show up at all. I want a responsive fire department, ambulances and emergency medical service: seconds literally count in emergency me...

A COLD DRAFT An article in black culture website TheRoot.com deals with the phenomenon of college basketball athletes leaving school as early as their freshman years to attempt to join the National Basketball Association through the annual draft: http://www.theroot.com/buzz/freshmen-exodus-nba-only-natural#comments I'm really not sure about the point of this article. What happened to supporting education for its own sake, and not just as a grudging stepping-stone move to theoretical long-term riches from athletics fame and endorsements? I think it would help if there were some published statistics that explain how many ex-college players ended up getting their undergraduate degree after leaving school to join the NBA or other professional teams. I suspect that it is far from 100%, or even 50%. Sure enough, higher education can't be "forced" on anybody. But hey, America has become a place that is more invested in people having formal credentials-- and in most ...

JAY-Z'S EX-BOSS HAS 99 (OR 100) PROBLEMS... Kareem "Biggs" Burke , a former executive at Roc-A-Fella Recordings , has pled guilty to charges relating to a 2010 arrest in a wide-reaching anti-drug sting (which reportedly netted as many as 50 arrests.) In particular, Burke was charged with possession (with intent to distribute) over 100 kilograms of marijuana. http://tinyurl.com/7brtuhp With Burke and Damon "Dame" Dash at the helm, Roc-A-Fella Recordings launched the career of Jay-Z and several late-90s/early-00s artists like Memphis Bleek , Beanie Sigel and Kanye West . Leaving aside what this author feels about legalizing (or at least decriminalizing) much of today's pharmaceutical contraband: This is just so damned stupid and illustrates what is wrong with today's hip-hop and urban culture. Wasn't this guy getting checks on all the Roc-A-Fella albums for years? If he was on tour with Jay-Z , Memphis Bleek and the rest he was probably gettin...

WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU? Black culture website The Root has published a blog editorial about the woes of frequently embattled R&B singers Chris Brown and Bobby Brown . Bobby Brown claims that he was pushed away from the funeral of his recently deceased ex-wife, Whitney Houston . Chris Brown has reportedly been recording songs with ex-girlfriend Rihanna , whom he was convicted of battering in 2009. http://tinyurl.com/7n6974a You know what? Stop it ! Neither Bobby Brown nor Chris Brown are revolutionaries! They are not human rights activists! They are not Afrocentric academics! They're not! Just because they can sing and dance does not mean they are particularly wise, ethical or moral. Talent does not indicate that they are open to advancing their knowledge, formally or informally. They are both celebrities who have (especially in the case of Bobby) squandered much of their goodwill with self-indulgent, petulant behavior over the years. Just because they are singers with an ...

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IN MEMORIAM: Dwight “Heavy D” Myers, 1967 – 2011. Hip-Hop performer and actor Heavy D died on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, in Los Angeles, California. Another Hip-Hop icon passes away that I never got to see perform live in person. I’m not sure when I first heard his music. Circa 1986 – 87, when his first singles and debut album, Living Large , came out, I was in the eighth grade. I remember a classmate making a passing mention of somebody with a record out called “Mr. Big Stuff”. I didn’t have cable at home, so BET (and, whenever it premiered, Yo! MTV Raps ) was out. When it comes to the Chicago radio stations that were my frame of reference for new music, I’m not sure if they were playing the records. I’m thinking that I finally caught on to 'Hev' with the second LP, Big Tyme . A classmate sold me his cassette of it, and it was one of the first rap albums I managed to pick up in my school years (mainly, I settled for taping songs of the radio with blank cassettes.) By the sum...

OCCUPY DETROIT 2011 On Friday, October 14, 2011, protesters from various parts of Metropolitan Detroit and beyond gathered in Downtown Detroit, Michigan for the "Occupy Detroit" event. Speakers began the march at the Spirit of Detroit statue in front of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit. The event was a parallel of the recent "Occupy Wall Street" events in New York City and similar public demonstrations in cities across America and now even foreign countries like Italy (where demonstrations turned violent.) The march went up Woodward Avenue to stop at the nearby Grand Circus Park. Some of those camped out in the area (with permits) plan to live there for up to 60 days. With the Detroit Tigers' Comerica Park and the Detroit Lions' Ford Field in the background, activists held up signs expressing their displeasure with the events of recent years. Speakers spoke out against bank bailouts, home foreclosures, foreign war, lack of jobs for the p...

RICK'S HEALTH SCARE SHOULD GIVE PAUSE Miami-based rapper Rick Ross was recently hospitalized twice in the past 24 hours, relating to unreleased health issues. In both cases, Ross suffered from a seizure, which left him temporarily unconscious. http://www.freep.com/article/20111015/ENT07/111015008/Rapper-Rick-Ross-reportedly-hospitalized-2nd-time?odyssey=navhead ...as much as I have a problem with his overall image and themes, I wish him the best during this crisis. I also hope it prompts him to take whatever his health situation is more seriously, and take steps to address it. It's definitely missing the point to just write this off as nothing, or just an isolated episode of "exhaustion" or whatever. Who knows whether he has a health insurance plan. He definitely should have the money to afford one. If he can blow "a million" on strip bars, high-end cars, clothes and jewelry, I really hope he's got some comprehensive coverage.. Medicaid information - ht...

REMEMBER FOR ALWAYS On this, the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks , many people have been pondering the meaning of the attacks and the legacy that they have left the country. This author has many conflicted feelings about the events of that fateful (and fatal) day. Waking up like any other day, this author saw the spectacle unfold on national television (mostly Good Morning America ) before heading to work. Work was at an office building (converted from a defunct small hospital) near downtown Detroit. Everyone in the office was abuzz about what the events meant: the unpredictability, the "prophecy", and whether there would be a local analog to the chaos that was expanding in New York City , Washington, D.C. , and rural Pennsylvania. This author's college classes were canceled for that day. This author felt deep anger at those responsible, a coiling frustration at trying to comprehend the depth of depravity that could compel someone to concieve of, ...

MARCH OF THE FUNKATEERS On Monday, September 5, 2011, funk music grandmaster George Clinton brought the latest incarnation of Parliament-Funkadelic to the stage of the 14th Annual Arts, Beats and Eats festival. The festival showcases local and national artisans of various kinds, in conjunction with hip restaurant booths and both local and nationally prominent musicians. Clinton and his original collaborators are rightfully considered godfathers of hip-hop, as many of their records have directly or indirectly influenced the legions of hip-hop MCs and producers in the years following the funk ensemble's heyday. Several of the band's seminal albums were recorded forDetroit-based indie label Westbound Records , and so Detroit usually shows up en masse to see Uncle Jam and company when they perform locally. The crowd gathered in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak was shoulder-to-shoulder as far as the eye could see by the time the concert got going. The eclectically-dressed multi-p...

VALLEY GIRL THUGS Gucci Gucci, Louis louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada The basic bi*ches wear that sh*t, So I dont even bother I put that on my partner, I put that on my family Oakland city representer, address me as your majesty http://www.youtube.com/user/kreayshawn Kreayshawn, "Gucci Gucci" Over the 30+ years of its wax-based recorded history, hip-hop has birthed a number of artists with unusual motifs. Afrika Bambaataa , Digital Underground , and Cee-Lo Green/Gnarls Barkley , come to mind. One of the genre's current stars is Nicki Minaj , whose performance-art/cartoon-inspired outfits and antics easily make her a hip-hop analog to Lady Gaga . Where it concerns racial and gender diversity, the white female rapper has, surprisingly, been starkly rare stateside. Over the years, several mainstream pop and rock artists have dipped their toes into hip-hop based rhythm tracks for singles ( Debbie Harry, Madonna, Paula Cole, Christina Aguilera ) and others ...

FOOD FIGHT http://tinyurl.com/3lzenmo http://tinyurl.com/3apv6wz Currently, Detroit Public Schools are under the control of a governor-appointed Emergency Financial Manager, former General Motors executive Roy Roberts . Plans are underway to merge the lowest performing 5% of statewide schools into a single district, targeting reform until academic standards/graduation rates are raised. Roberts has only been in office since approximately May of 2011, but his tenure has been controversial. Among the complaints against him are a recent announcement of an across-the-board 10% wage cut for teachers in the system, as well as a recent voiding of all contractual based services pending a re-evaluation. Labor interests such as the Detroit Federation of Teachers are promising to fight Roberts' reform efforts in court. This week, controversy struck again, but from a different corridor. Just the other day, a new federally funded pilot program has been announced for this fall. All ...