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*Cuss Words
*R.I.P.’s
*Gang Related
*Neighborhoods
*Block Numbers
*Street Names
*Alcohol References
*Drug/Tobacco References
*Sexual References
*Bandanna Patterns
*Nicknames
*Relative/Friends/Boo Names
*Initials

There better be some ugly feminists in this.

I am going to spend this entire documentary imagining the genders being reversed.

I remember thinking Gene Simmons was not disgusting and ignorant.

OOH, ok, dexedrine.

Mike Wallace equating Hugh Hefner with Obama, that’s the money shot!

Lenny Bruce is hot

New career direction: Contemporary Hugh Hefner, Front Street: After Dark.

Why are there no pics of Dr. Martin Luther King in the Playboy mansion?

Hugh Hefner has an award from the NAACP on his mantle next to an old, dirty, plastic playboy bunny

I have hated Dick Cavett since I was 9.

Hugh Hefner absolutely should be forced to wear a bunny tail.

you can ALWAYS rely on creepy, white hippies to get the dance party started

A few days ago, as I was purusing my twitter feed, I was really excited to find an artist from Braddock, Pennsylvania, Latoya Ruby Frazier, being profiled by Art21 http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup/films/latoya-ruby-frazier-takes-on-levis/. Braddock is a town a few miles from where I grew up in Pittsburgh and whose mayor, John Fetterman, is making national news in his attempts to revitalize the area. After watching the Art 21 video I was inspired by Ms. Frazier’s accomplishments and excited about her work, even though my aversion to performance art made me wish she would go into documentary making instead of performance.

This morning, while I was looking at studio spaces available in Braddock, I remembered from interviews with Mayor Fetterman he had mentioned that Levi’s was donating over a million dollars to Braddock and hired locals to be in the ads, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/business/media/24adco.html.

I don’t know how much money Braddock has actually received and if Levi’s paid local individuals actual professional union scale, but from everything I have read and interviews with the Mayor it seems like Levi’s is working with the town to revitalize the area. Living in Chicago, I have learned not to trust what political officials say, but this does bring up the way political issues or “causes” get re-articulated in the “art world.” Making me feel disillusioned that its possible for the “very informed” art world to get a cause totally wrong. I am not the only one asking these questions, this dialogue is happening to some extent in the comments on the Art21 video and hopefully this conversation might happen at her talk in a few weeks in Chicago. http://hosted-p0.vresp.com/364473/96a421f0ca/ARCHIVE

I absolutely do not “get” performance art and most art for that matter, but with our country going in the same direction as Braddock, IS there supposed to be a quantifying “role” that political art plays? What are the strategic directions of political art when the only one that has any cash to spare are “immoral” multi-national companies? When many artists have to routinely decide between surviving and making work?

i was wrong to hate on kreayshawn just cause i wasnt into her music, you do yer thing ladee. but this, this has filled the void of hate

why do we want v-nasty to be “real”?

when i first saw kreayshawn’s “gucci” video, i have to be honest, my own prejudices/self loathing immediately turned me off, tiny white girls, over the top hipster glasses, rhymes about blunts and adderall…this was definitely for someone much younger than me.
when i watched some of it again i thought “amanda blank with less skills and more costume design.”

When i first saw the v-nasty n-word video, i thought “rapping about ak-47s while holding a mac laptop? better set design needed!” in my own ignorance i thought white people saying the n-word actually was not a “big deal” anymore, surely i have heard white male rappers drop this term in the past(kid rock?). I know it’s a big deal. I guess what I am trying to say is I didn’t think “entertainers” trying to get clicks on the internet where “above it.”

When I heard that V-Nasty wasn’t white, I thought wow what an amazing conceptual art piece, get people to make judgements on your identity, tell you what you can and cannot do based on what they assume your identify is and then bam: haters you are assholes cause that’s not even who I “am” and your own racism assumed that’s who I was. While at the same time “blowing me up on the internet.” Nice.

I went back and looked at some videos of V-Nasty and was like, how did i/anyone think she was white? Oh yeah that “White Girl Mob” thing.
Then I went to her twitter page and she was shouting about “white pride.”
She’s really doing it, man!
She’s not a white girl trying to be black, she’s a black girl trying to be white. Much better.

i was talking with my friend the other day who is highly critical of rick ross, his criticism comes from feeling like why do we want to celebrate people that rhyme about pretending to do unhealthy and illegal things versus someone who went to college and has a stable government job (as rick ross apparently did).
To me it’s obvious, we don’t want to hear about just being a normal whoever at a government job in our entertainment we love al capone, scarface, the sopranos, we absolutely want what is bad for us in entertainment precisely because it is not real. When we start thinking comedy or entertainment is real or is responsible for creating laws or community resources then we are in trouble. Rick Ross and V-Nasty’s “real” identities shouldn’t matter. They are not journalists, they are not politicians, they are entertainment personas.

What concerns me, is that in everything that I have read Kreayshawn throws out V-Nasty being in jail, having kids young, living in public housing as excuses as to why it’s ok for her to use the n-word at the same time calling her, her “sister.” Why does this “make things ok.” It isn’t ok, I am EMBARRASSED of my family that lives in public housing, never worked, and has tons of kids and no husbands. Granted they are fatter and not as cool as V-Nasty. Is this what we want? We want people to be REAL messes to be able to enjoy their talents?

I hope everything about V-Nasty is completely “fake” and we can simply judge her on what she is trying to become famous for: her rhyming and music.