RHoAtl, s2e5: this is for my homies

You're a Taurus? OMG me too!

CONTAINS SPOILERS - I swear, this show is about as fake as Kim’s hair or Kandi’s “happy family.” Still, it’s another week, another episode and I’m sitting right here with laptop at the ready to take down all the shenanigans for you!

The saddest thing to me is the state of R&B music as evidenced by Ms. Kandi Burrus. No doubt that Kandi was singing her butt off with Xscape and I’ve heard her getting down since then. Blame it on old age or a dated sense of music but Kandi just doesn’t sound as good to me anymore. Plus she’s doing this tacky music I feel is beneath vocalists with real talent (see Mariah Carey).”I fly above all the haters?” How old are you? Oh, and if you didn’t catch it, that song was inspired by Kim. Aw Kandi, how sweet of you! :/

How strange that Kandi and Kim are best buds now. They were all in the studio bonding and Kim kept bringing up her own recording. Um, that wig must be clouding her judgment because we know Kim cannot sing. She couldn’t even sing to Kandi on the couch! Nene still blasts her out of the water with “Don’t be tardy for the party.” LOL

greening it up one step at a time

I’m not an environmentalist green freak but I do care about the environment. I realize that it will be difficult for the world’s citizens to scale back and make changes to their lives to the degree necessary to effect REAL change in our environment but that doesn’t mean all efforts are futile.

Side story, my uncle made me SO upset last week when he littered out of the passenger seat window when I was driving. We were in a parking lot, so it didn’t disturb traffic for me to get out of the car and pick up his trash. See, he refused to pick it up himself. He said he didn’t care about the environment and I was on some liberal bullshit. Hmph, and people wonder why their communities look so crappy. I don’t tolerate people litteriing around me and it’s even more enraging when there’s a trashcan in plain sight (as was the case with my uncle). He’s a lost cause though. He thinks processed foods are better than vegetables because they’re processed and that sunscreen is a ploy by manufacturers to get us to buy stuff we don’t need. *le sigh*

Anyway, it makes me feel better to know that I am doing my little itty bitty part to reduce the impact my life has on the earth. I should also confess that bringing my own reusable bags to the grocery store makes me feel slightly superior to you plastic bag packers and double baggers. LOL, I don’t know why. That’s not the main impetus for “going green,” however. I want to be healthy so I want the air, water, earth, and atmosphere to be healthy as well.  I care about what goes on because I don’t want to be a destroyer of worlds (literally)! So I take the time to educate myself about environmental issues by reading books, articles and studies. I also like getting little tips from helpful sites and blogs like the now defunct Make-It-Green Girl and her podcasts. Before going off the air last year, MIGG put together 10 easy steps to take toward living a greener life. She looked at it as a New Year’s resolution kind of list but we can undertake these steps at any time.

The Zoloft Defense?

Ever heard of the “Zoloft Defense?” It’s an argument a defendant might employ that basically boils down to “the drugs made me do it.” The Zoloft Defense usually makes an appearance when a defendant is charged with some sort of violent crime like battery or murder. Before I get into what I think about this defense strategy, let’s be sure we understand the drug itself.

Zoloft is an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety manufactured by Pfizer. It belongs to a class of anti-depressants called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which, among other things, may cause suicidal feelings. According to Drugs.com, you might also have to be on the lookout for mood or behavior changes, anxiety, panic attacks, feeling impulsive, irritable, agitated, hostile, aggressive, restless, hyperactive (mentally or physically),  and more depressed. Sheesh. FYI, other SSRIs include Paxil and Prozac.

In 2001, 12 year old Christopher Pittman tried to use the Zoloft Defense when he was tried for killing his grandparents in the most horrible way: he walked into their bedroom, shot them while they were asleep and then burned down their Chester, SC house with their bodies still inside. [As an aside, Pittman left with the car, the dog and some money. He was found by some hunters the next day, wandering the woods, and said he'd been kidnapped by a black man who had slain his parents and set their house ablaze, but that he had been able to escape. Ain't that about a bitch?]
The jury was believed that Pittman’s mental state was affected by the drugs but not enough to compel him to kill and in 2005 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Attempts at appeal by his attorneys, as recent as 2008, have failed.

We might not remember the name Seung-Hui Cho but we all remember the tragedy at Virginia Tech in 2007. Cho never made it to trial for killing 32 people and wounding 25 others because he committed suicide before the police could reach him. Cho was not on Zoloft, but he was prescribed Prozac, a similar medication. There is no proof that he ever filled a prescription or took the medication, though. Had he made it to trial, his attorneys might have presented the Zoloft Defense (or a form thereof) as an option.

RHoATL, s2e4: such a happy family

Lisa's gym face

Last week left me wanting for some serious wig snatching and not that tease of a tug Sheree gave Kim. Thankfully, the episode was saved by Dwight’s fabulous party and boob inspections. Bravo, don’t fail me now!

Question: Is it necessary for Lisa to work out in a full face of makeup and that hair all down her back? I know when I’m up in the gym (or when I WAS up in the gym), I didn’t have time for all of that. Mascara all sweating down into my eyes and that hair is like having a heater on the back of your neck. Hmph. Yeah, it’s television but I thought Lisa went hard on her workouts.

I know this is not the nicest thing to say, but Kim’s children are terribly boring. I don’t want to see them ever again on this show. Especially when I’m subjected to scenes where two adults and two children cannot come together and figure out whether “sightseeing” is an adjective or a verb (FYI, it’s a verb). After acting like dictionaries don’t exist, the nanny tells Kim’s daughter that she’s going to hell for rapping her prayer (you can’t make this stuff up). Nanny’s job wasn’t in too much jeopardy at that point, though, because we know Kim is the queen of empty threats. Just like she says one tihng to Nene and Sheree and never follows up on it. Kim could’ve axed the nanny right then and there and she probably should have because a little later, Kim got the heads up that the nanny had left the kids home alone to make a tampon run. Damn.
Question: why does Kim need a nanny? She doesn’t work, right? How come she can’t raise her kids?

Kandi attempted to get her family together for a photo shoot, a la the Sears Portrait Studio. You know, the ones where everyone is dressed alike? Wheretheydothatat? That’s still in style? No, it’s not. Kandi is just bass ackwards but we knew that when she signed up to marry some dude with 6 kids and 4 different mothers (and you’ve only known him for 8 months)? Who is she trying to convince with her “we are a happy family” spiel? I think she might say it 3 times an episode, every episode. We don’t believe you, boo. I know her momma doesn’t believe one single bit of it the way she removed herself from the “family” picture.

PSAs to grow on

Sometimes I think kids must be dumb as rocks or the folks who put together public service announcements thought we were. After having a good laugh at Topless Robot’s The 20 Best Public Service Announcements of the Last 30 Years, I couldn’t help but think of how ridiculous those things seem! Were they that bad when we were young? Do young people not possess the ability to notice ridiculous crap? Did we miss most of these PSAs because we were busy fighting our siblings for the remote? There must be some reason these things got on the air. They don’t just put stuff on television all willy nilly without some thought or research (although the travesty that is VH1′s Daisy of Love might beg to differ).

Maybe I’m just no longer in the demographic and it’s easy to look back on these things and clown. Who knows, as a latchkey kid home alone with the television to raise me a lot of the time, I probably internalized some of the positive messages from PSAs. Except the drug ones, I knew they were bogus. I believed that drugs were bad but I couldn’t BELIEVE the PSAs. I knew real drug dealers, thank you very much, and they didn’t walk up to you at your locker with three rolled joints in their fists. Nope. Thank goodness for DVR and no longer having to sit through those things anymore! Check out the link above for the full list. I’ll only pick out a few faves to share after the jump.

do you take this man (and his name)?

After a heads up from Feministing, I learned that the American Sociological Association put out the results of a recent study showing that about 70% of Americans believe that women should take their husband’s last names when they get married and 50% think it should be a legal requirement. Wow. Although I am not one to put too much stock into polls (I, nor anyone close to me has ever been polled about anything remotely significant so I have no idea where they get these people and their opinions), that’s a large percentage for something so traditional and antiquated. And BY LAW? Why?

I am at that age where more and more of my friends are getting married. I’ve noticed a trend among the women to keep their own last names to the complete exclusion of their husband’s or to take their spouse’s name name in addition to theirs (with and without hyphens). That’s not to say that the majority of women in America don’t take their husband’s names, but maybe it’s a generational thing that not too many of my peers feel obligated to take their husband’s name.

One common characteristic of the women who haven’t totally forsaken their own names is that they are extremely ambitious. Maybe they’ve already accomplished a significant amount in their lives and certainly plan to continue doing so. In my opinion, it’s just not fair to assume (or in the case of any legislation, mandate) I will change my name and erase this identity that has existed for 27 or more years. An identity that has been through a lot and accomplished much more. I agree with Jessica at Feministing when she says

What’s really distressing about this news – Laura Hamilton, the study’s lead author says that when respondents were asked why they thought women should change their last names, “they told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family.”

Making His Band: i’m over it

Sorry yall. If you were looking for this week’s recap/commentary of Making His Band you’re out of luck. I watched Monday’s ep and I had started to blog about it. Mid-way through, I lost interest. The show is simply not that interesting anymore. I don’t know if it ever was. Not even Jaila’s fabulosity can save it. I’m completely uninspired to force myself to watch every Monday and even more uninspired to write about it. No worries, plenty of other places on the web to get your Diddy fix. In related news, Diddy’s new MTV show, Starmaker is not work watching. It’s safe to say that all of these reality talent shows (American Idol, America’s Got Talent, and Diddy’s own shows like Making The Band) have already run through America’s wannabe singers. Who else is out there that hasn’t already been to a casting and summarily rejected? Those rejects are on Starmaker. Will not be tuning in anymore.

When Diddy brings back Da Band and Dylan (hot fiyah), THEN there will be something to blog about!

straight natural

I just realized that I never did a natural hair post on here. Could be because everyone and their momma has a natural hair post or a whole blog dedicated to natural hair transitions, hairstyles, products, personal stories, how-to vids, etc. It’s really too much yet, here I am, adding my 10cents.

I went natural in 2001 over Thanksgiving break during my junior year of college. After thinking about it for about a year and one prior attempt to abandon my relaxed strands (I grew my hair out then succumbed to a perm last minute) I found myself alone in my apartment with nothing to do… nothing to do except cut off my hair. I hopped in the car and headed to the salon. Closed. I had the option of waiting a couple of days for them to open but I knew that I had to get my hair cut right then or I wouldn’t do it at all. I drove around and found a new salon, walked in and asked to get my hair cut. The stylist asked if I was sure. At the time, my hair was pretty good looking and just grazed my shoulders. Black women don’t go around cutting off hair like that,  so this stylist just wanted to make sure I didn’t wild out on her later. “Yes, cut it off,” I told her. She did. She cut my hair down to about two inches. When it was all said and done, I liked it. It was new and my head felt so light. I was a little bit nervous about how people would take it but there was no turning back.

Good or bad, everyone had an opinion about my hair. One guy friend stopped me on campus and asked me why I didn’t tell him first so that he could have stopped me. He said guys didn’t like women with hair that short and he could’ve saved me from that mistake. Ugh. He was halfway right. Some people were obviously turned off by my short, kinky ‘do but others who wouldn’t have looked twice were now attracted to me. One guy I met at a party told me he came to talk to me because of my haircut. He figured that I had to be quite a confident person to do it, plus it showed off my features. Sweet. While I haven’t relaxed my hair since ’01, I have gone through quite a few styling changes and constantly fight the urge to just slop some of that creamy white goo on my head.

a thought on mike vick

Let me start by saying before Michael Vick’s legal troubles, I could probably count on my hands how many times I heard his name. Clearly, I am not an NFL fan or a big sports fanatic. My point is, I don’t really care about Michael Vick and am not invested in whether he plays or does not play football.

I went from barely noticing Michael Vick was alive to hearing about him constantly when he was brought up on charges and subsequently convicted of felony dogfighting charges. I had to witness the outrage from people who wondered how a man could go to jail for some dogs. Over and over people went on about how it was just some dogs and therefore it was ridiculous for Vick to be in jail. Okay. I’m not an animal activist and I’m not even really a dog person (I like cats). Still, it was very annoying to me that people were making a bigger deal of the perceived low value of a dog’s life than the fact that Vick just plain broke the law. There are lots of laws that people find ridiculous, but until you get the legislation changed, the law stands and going against it is a violation with consequences. Plain and simple, Vick broke the law (and in a shitty way, I might add) and therefore must pay the consequences. If the length of the sentence bothered people, well that was also written into law via statute and aggravated by the fact that Vick lied to the judge. Judges don’t like that. Remember that when judges have sentencing discretion, you might not want to lie to them or otherwise piss them off. Just a note.

RHoATL, S2E3: Hair we go again!

Last week, Bravo hoodwinked us into watching as we anticipated a wig snatch-off of epic proportions. Who am I kidding, we would’ve been watching anyway!

This week picked up right where we left off… with Sheree, Nene and Kim arguing in a nice restaurant, causing a scene. After proclaiming “I’m gonna whoop her ass,” Sheree went after Kim. They shouted, got all up in each others’ faces and Sheree just TUGGED Kim’s wig. A tug?! Ugh, I’m so utterly disappointed! While Sheree tried to make a distinction between weave and wigs “I can’t take mine off like you can”), Kim called her out as a lazy gold digger trying to live off of her ex’s money. http://www.truthhurts.com. Real talk though… what kind of grown woman with class, status and self-respect gets into a shouting argument on the street? To deal, Kim called her friend (of 11 years), Jody, who drove from Alabama. I get the impression that Jody doesn’t want to be dragged into Kim’s madness and was focused on the free meal courtesy of Bravo (you know they’re treating!). How odd, though, because as far as we know, Kim has no friends outside of the Housewives.

I like Nene and all but I think she’s wrong in all of this. She’s trying to play all sides. Friends with Kim and then kee-keeing behind her back with Lisa and Sheree. She invited Kim out to talk and clear the air. Yet when Kim and Sheree were violating each others’ personal space, she made a lame attempt at breaking it up. To me it looked as if she was enjoying it, especially because she laughed about it with Lisa afterward. Anyway you slice it, it’s shady biz.

Always adding some much needed levity to the show, Dwight popped on screen planning a fabulous 50th birthday party with animals coming from the ceiling and half naked men and women painted like wildlife. In all seriousness, Dwight seems about his business when it comes to party planning. He wants his shrimp cold and crisp, his hot food steaming and the breasts pushed up! Sheree shouldn’t have been messing with that temper tantrum throwing planner she had and called Dwight! I love him so much!

Kandi (and that dreadful haircolor not found in nature) shows up at Dwight’s extravaganza, meeting him for the first time. He gives her the once over, felt up her boobs and inspected her feet. She passed. Kandi was making a first impression on Sheree as well who, for now, sees Kandi as a kindred spirit. I have a feeling that might change in the future.