Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Top Ten Reasons to Hella Love Oakland in 2009

[by Aimee Allison, Executive Producer OaklandSeen]

By now, you've likely seen the whining from a certain columnist calling 2009 one of Oakland's worst years ever. Um, no. The OaklandSeen team compiled our own list and we're happy to report that good news abounds.

Here are OaklandSeen's top ten reasons to Hella Love Oakland in 2009.

1. Schools Comin' Up: East Oakland's Urban Promise Middle School and Fruitvale's International High School were nationally recognized. The School of the Arts gets a new home at the Fox Theatre and a waiting list around the block.

2. Better Democracy: Oakland finally gets instant runoff voting – now, you'll get to rank your choices in the November election, saving the city 800k, bringing in more candidates and making incumbents play nice or be #2.

3. Good Times ahead for BART: The Bart Police Chief Gary Gee is gone. He should've been fired for his mismanagement of the department, and mishandling after the shooting of Oscar Grant. Instead, he retires silently into the night. Good riddens and we welcome to the opportunity to pick a new and better head of this troubled department. This goes double for the Oakland Police Department.

4. How We Roll: Town Park opens in West Oakland, the city's first skate park. Kiddie skaters all over Oakland are aglow. Just look at what committed community and generous donors can do; thanks to K-Dub and other amazing community organizers.

5. Finally, Oakland is a Destination with big “D”: Uptown is hot: Somar, The Ave (2022), Mimosa, New Parrish, Mua all give us something to do after dark. The new nightlife in Oakland does us proud. Incidentally, a recent visit to the Mission in SF was a stark contrast. The neighborhood was dead, ChaChaCha empty by 10pm on a Thursday. Where are they? Yeah, across the bridge.

6. Government Sometimes Works: It's mostly a secret, but the city economic development team successfully attracted green business First Solar(www.firstsolar.com).
We also got the good news that food manufacturers are making a comeback - manufacturing that's lifeblood in our city. Plus, the first crop of green jobs training graduates complete their innovative course. We gotta put our hands together for Oakland taking a national lead on the new economy. Good use of our tax dollars.

7. We Eat Good: Despite suggestions to the contrary, Oakland has eaten well many years. Now we have even more good restaurants to add to the mix: Camino, Pican, Ozumo, Commis, Adesso, Sidebar, Marzano on Park, Barlata, Burma Superstar, Cafe Trieste. For those “discovering” Oakland – welcome and enjoy the food coma.

8. Festivals are Back, Big Time: The Eat Real Festival found a new home in Oakland (relocated from windy Fort Mason, SF). It went from a pricey fete to a free festival infused with the Oakland vibe. Oakland at it's very best.

OaklandSeen is a compelling mix of radio broadcasts Friday 8am on KPFA-FM 94.1, social networks on Facebook (www.facebook.com/oaklandseen) and Twitter(www.twitter.com/oaklandseen), and a group blog rolling out in February 2010.

Tiger Woods, Brittany Murphy autopsy photo in high demand

Being Tiger Woods neighbor can make you rich. Being a physician working on the Brittany Murphy autopsy can score you a lot of money. Welcome to New Media, where a Tiger Woods and a Brittany Murphy autopsy photo is in such high demand you could earn $300,000. That's the current going rate for a photo of The World's Greatest Golfer; a rate so high it could turn close friends into enemies.

It almost sounds like a George Romero movie - Invasion of the Image Snatchers - but in this case if your Tiger Woods, the blood suckers could be your friends, taking a photo to score big bucks. Again, Tiger Woods' seclusion and silence is fueling a market for his image and allowing others to frame who he is. All for money.


Tiger Woods friends want something...

 If Tiger Woods wants this bad movie to stop, there's only one answer: he has to talk and to show himself. But that does not explain the late Brittany Murphy.

For some of the same reasons, there's a massive demand for even one Brittany Murphy autopsy photo. That image would gain about the same money as that given for Tiger Woods, but I've got to ask who want to see such a thing? I don't. Do you?

Who would show it? Why?

The New Media


I'm frequently surprised that people in media don't understand that the industry has changed from artistic to technical. The future of media is demand-driven and sometimes that window of demand is only a moment - an hour - long. Who captures it consistently is king of New Media.

But more than that, the persons that do that can be black, white, Asian, Latino, young or old. The problem of lack of minorities or women in the newsroom is a thing of the past. A person who knows how to make an online media platform, develop a coordinated content strategy, and gather a group of like-minded folks to work with wins. Job title is meaningless; technical knowledge rules above all.

But I digress, sort of.

If Tiger Woods had people around him who understood media in the way I discuss, this story would have been old news. But he doesn't and so it goes on. Want to score $300,000? Friend of Tiger? Get out your cellphone camera, and hurry before someone else does!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Brittany Murphy remembered by celebs on Twitter

The outpouring of emotion and thoughts on Brittany Murphy's death is still coming at a heavy pace on Twitter. CelebrityTweet has broken down the tweets devoted to Brittany Murphy's death and life.




 Here's a selection of tweets:

Alyssa Milano
http://twitpic.com/ujz4v @dustinpjones just sent me this pic of me & Brittany Murphy on the USO tour. RIP, sweet lady.
Updated 1 day ago via Permalink

Russell Simmons
my man @iambenlyons just wrote an amazing story about his first time meeting Brittany Murphy http://bit.ly/4ZgHyC
Updated 1 day ago via Permalink

Aisha Tyler
Woke up this am to hear about Brittany Murphy. Hung with her several times; she was a sweet, sweet girl. I hope she's found peace.
Updated 1 day ago via Permalink

Ben Lyons
I don't want 2 believe the news about Brittany Murphy. Life is too short & doesn't make sense. Watch one of her movies today & say a prayer
Updated 1 day ago via Permalink

For the rest, visit CelebrityTweet.com

Taylor Swift everywhere: TV, blogs, and People Magazine

Terrific Country Music singer Taylor Swift has had a fairy-tale year. She became the first Country Music singer to win the MTV Best Female Video awards, earned a slew of other awards including "Country Music Entertainer of The Year", hosted Saturday Night Live, and has been romantically linked to Twilight: New Moon star Taylor Lautner.

Taylor Swift is everywhere, and she's now is on the cover of People Magazine, available in airports everywhere. How do I know? Because I bought a copy at the United Airlines' Terminal at O'Hare Airport. I wanted to read their interview with America's newest pop-culture sensation.

I all, I was really disappointed with the People Magazine talk. First, I totally love Taylor Swift's voice and music. Moreover, she's a wholesome, Timbalind-dancing 20-year old breath of fresh air. But the media gives her a big pass way too much of the time.




Taylor Swift and A.J. English

The People Magazine interview was very lightweight, and didn't even touch on her Swastika-gate photo problem with A.J. English at Katie Perry's birthday party. It would be nice if Swift said something to show she really got the gravity of that symbol. But it didn't happen and People Magazine was an enabler in this behavior.

I hold out hope that she "got it". Only Taylor Swift really knows.

Still, she's got a massively bright future and I look forward to her work in 2010. I'd especially like to see her do more cross-over work with Rap and Hip-Hop artists.

Stay tuned.

Blackberry outage December 22 due to air travel delays?

The blogs and newsites like The Globe and Mail UK are reporting a nationwide Blackberry outage. While I have a Blackberry and haven't experienced a phone or text message outage, I have had an email update delay of several hours to this point in time.

This has to be related to several developments: 1) the large use of Blackberry service during this Christmas week, 2) Research In Motion's obvious capacity-handling problems, and 3) a lack of planning to deal with this problem which has reportedly happened twice in December, the last time being the 17th of the month.

NBC Los Angeles reports that RIM has explained they're aware of the outage and are working to fix it, but did not give a timetable. The front page of the Blackberry website has no message about the problem.

I personally noticed a lot of dropped calls this afternoon while I was connecting flights at a crowded Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Another possible reason for this is the number of people using their Blackberry phones while traveling in this terrible winter weather blanketing the East Coast and causing air travel delays.

Stay tuned.

Las Vegas Bowl - BYU 30, Oregon State 7, 3rd Quarter

The 2009 MAACO Las Vegas Bowl has a surprise: BYU 30, Oregon State 7 in the 3rd Quarter. For an Oregon State team that was one victory-against-Oregon away from being Pac-10 Champion, this is an embarrassing, head-scratching game.







Oregon State is clearly confused in determining how to stop the BYU Cougars' passing game. And the Beavers can't get anything going on offense due to simple poor execution: poor throws, dropped passes, and missed blocks.

To BYU's credit, their defensive game plan of not allowing deep throws, intimidating their receivers on crossing routes, and forcing Oregon State to be patient has worked. The fact that Oregon State's Senior Quarterback Sean Canfield's been constantly hit as he threw the ball doesn't help either.

As I write this, Oregon State's mounting their best drive of the day, and are at the BYU 30. Let's see if they can turn things around; there's just 3 minutes to go before the start of the 4th Quarter.

They failed. Oregon State turned the ball over on downs after an other dropped pass. BYU ran out the clock; the 3rd Quarter is over.

I just hope this doesn't spell a doomed future for the Pac-10's 2009 Bowl Season.

Of Blacks & Blues

Of Blacks & Blues

By Michael-Louis Ingram-Associate Editor-Football Reporters Online/BASN Contributing Writer

 
PHILADELPHIA (BASN/FRO): It is an incontrovertible truth; there are two songs that arguably every female on Planet Earth know the opening lyrics to…
 
The first would be Gloria Gaynor singing “I Will Survive” (first I was afraid; I was petrified…); but the best, in my humble opinion, is Aretha Franklin singing “Respect…”
 
Interesting in that while everyone knows the Queen of Soul is singing it, many don’t know who wrote it. The late, great Otis Redding gets the credit (“Otis Blue” is among my favorite albums/CDs – and greatest blues efforts of all time), but Aretha gets the fame.
 
In this fishbowl world of sports journalism, that parable fits the script. Fame, or better said, infamy and credit for same are served up on a nightly basis on that bastion of bullshit, ESPIN - aka the Muthafuckin’ Mouse; whose idea of pest control is to trash Black athletes as animalistic circus performers, one step away from prison.
 
As they segue into their somnambulistic soliloquies, simpering over soup-cooling stereotypes, the straight faces belie a seething resentment between the stale jokes and attempts to fuse popular culture within who beat whom at what…
 
But without a doubt, the cruelest turn is when these totalitarian turds wipe away their fake tears in a moment of contrition - the latest being the death of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry.
 
Within hours, the daily assault on darkies subsides briefly for the stern face and measured speech; but even in death there is no peace from the six o’clock “suspect is a Black male” sensibilities of these scumbags.
 
While it was clear Ole Man Trouble had been around young Henry for a spell, in The Mouse’s attempts to chronicle Henry’s run-ins with the law, one would-be reporter recalled Henry being a “one-man crime wave.”
 
Never mind that the man did more damage to himself than anyone else; it just had to be said (for accuracy purposes, I’m sure); and these rancid rapscallions ramble on as if they need to scratch their jock itch by landing a last jibe or two over a dead man’s body.
 
And as more details as to how he died come out, the efforts to bury and loved ones to grieve are further compromised by manipulative maggots bent on muff-diving into a young Black man’s misery…
 
It’s real easy for these Bastards to jump into someone’s shit; but what I wouldn’t give if an athlete who ESPIN wanted to pimp off of would flip the script. You know, something like:
 
Hey Dana Jacobson - are you still down with “Fuck Notre Dame, fuck Touchdown Jesus – and fuck Jesus?”  How would you like to be reminded for that crap every other night, you twit? Like when you Bastards constantly scream on someone like Terrell Owens being a diva and criminal in spite of the fact he has never committed a crime, and, unlike you, excels at what he does?
 
Or, Bonnie Bernstein, why are you still working at The Mouse after that bullshit you offered regarding land Niggers and sand Niggers:
 
“It’s sort of like, you know, and this isn’t — I’m prefacing this by saying this is in no way an analogy to sports because I know we live in a hypersensitive society — but I remember a while ago I was reading an article in the New York Times about Palestinian suicide bombers and I just remember being struck by the notion that from the point of birth, people in Palestine are taught to think that dying in the name of God is a good thing.
They grow up wanting to be suicide bombers. So bringing it back to sports — and again, I’m not making the comparison or the analogy — if a young talented basketball player is being told at an early age that they are destined, it is a good thing to focus on basketball and not worry about what’s going on in the classroom, why are any kids going to be worried about what’s going on in the classroom?”
 
Or be worried about what sports reporters say about those young talents; no need wondering where this mindset comes from…
 
Hypersensitive? You vainglorious cow - if something like that had been said about Jews, you would be front and center trying to call whomever on it; you have a lot of fucking nerve here!
 
While we’re at it, let’s constantly remind everyone about Jemele Hill’s Hitler statement; and the fact Lou Holtz said essentially the same thing, but wasn’t suspended like Hill was; yet Hill will still make the silly-ass asides to be one with The Mouse…
 
So even in the midst of The Mouse, certain mice aren’t treated as nice.
 
But whether you are lab rat or hood rat, the formula is the same, and it ain’t rocket science: defame, decry, dehumanize – and make insignificant whatever positives the Black athlete brings to their respective sport.
 
Unless, of course The Mouse is sucking the dick of the current Negro du jour; and as they spit, swallow and gargle their way to accommodate him, their crumbling cerebellums hope a skeleton or two will soon be rattling in his or her closet very soon…
 
Well, with hope after Chris Henry has been laid to rest, some of the athletes observing the Mouse mess will think twice before indulging these talking idiots; and insist on being respected -  like Otis did.
 
Because once Chris Henry was no longer a story, it was on to the next Nigger – and that Nigger (based on the day’s highlights) could well be you.
 
Rest in peace, Mr. Henry – you deserved better than this, regardless of circumstances.
 
michaelingram@blackahtlete.com
mike@footballreportersonline.com