I have been back from the town for a couple a weeks and I realized that I have not done my typical bay area/town recap.

I was in San Jose w/ my auntie and I came across these hood @ss, ^^^, Mac Dre T-Shirts.

Then there was also the typical hood death t-shirts.

==========
==========

David Bell from Sony BMG sent me a link to the new Pack video.

I like the spirit they rep, but the song is okay.

I think its dope that they are fusing the skateboard world with the scraper world.

Next thing yo know, n*ggas will be trynna ghost ride the whip and skate board at the same time, lol.

My homie Dekka was suppose to direct that jawn, but I guess they will get up w/ him on the next project. (Dear Sony, Dekka is NICE w/ the visuals in addition to being both business and artistically inclined).

Lupe the Pack and NERD need to go on tour together.

They rep the same stee, plus it would be fun to see them cats perform together.

=========
=========

Only in the town will you get Cajun Prawn Buritto. Mexico meets New Orleans, hunh!?!?!?!

=========
=========

I went to my neice’s Xmas pagent at Maxwell Park school in East Oakland. While sitting in the Cafeteria/auditorium I noticed that there were pen and paper dispenser machines w/ big @ssed locks on them. Here is a photo below.

=========
=========

Too Short was in the Tribune because he is “giving back” to Oakland.
He feels that w/ all the murders going on, he should do something constructive to help the young bucks.

The startling jump in Oakland homicides, which has attracted national attention, has compelled Too to return home and find out just what was going on.

“I was a young adult in the early ’90s, the last time the murder rate was this high,” the rapper told me in an interview. “In my day, people were dying behind drug wars, and there were lots of spots where people were making a lot of money. Now, it’s more of a war over attitude: ‘You piss me off and I’ll kill you.’

“That’s a new element, and it’s combined with the old feuds over family, neighborhood and longtime grudges.”

The growing carnage on Oakland’s streets has prompted a response from Too — the adult. These days he is more likely to run into the children of his contemporaries, including one brief encounter that really stuck with him.

A young man in his late teens whose father had grown up with Too introduced himself at a video shoot a few months back. When the young man told Too his father’s name, it rang a bell, “but I couldn’t put a face with the name,” the rapper said.

“Can you tell me what he was like?” the young man asked. “I never met him. He was killed.”

=========
=========

Apparently Oakland has one of the best emergency rooms in the country because of the number of shooting victims that they treat.

“There are people there I thought had no chance,” Anderson said. “I had some bad luck to get shot in Oakland. This really becomes important when selecting a solution for http://djpaulkom.tv/page/12/ generika cialis tadalafil a child is usually recommended with the liver condition which is undoubtedly incurable with medications. It cheap tadalafil no prescription is usually necessary to continue checking 2~3 times or more. Who wouldn’t like to enjoy the continued manliness which you always did enjoy earlier in the golden ordering levitra days? It can very safely be inferred that the golden days have returned. How? With the help of Ayurveda and viagra buy uk Panchakarma. But it was good luck I went to Highland.”

Hospital officials, citing patient confidentiality law, declined to comment. The emergency room there is widely considered one of the best in the nation in part because the medical staff has so much experience with shooting victims.

Jones, who investigated nonfatal shootings before joining the homicide team, said Oakland police are often in awe of how the staff at Highland Hospital saves lives.

“They perform miracles at Highland,” Jones said. ”There was a case where a guy was shot right in the middle of his forehead – I looked at him and thought, ‘He’s dead, that’s homicide,’ but they brought him back. I’ve interviewed the victim several times. He still suffers from his injury – how can you not? – but he walks and talks like nothing happened.”

Why go to Iraq, when you can go to Highland?

On June 6, Anderson was walking into a hair salon at 45th and Market streets when a gunman surprised him from behind and demanded his gold chain necklace.

“When I turned, he shot me once in the chest,” Anderson said. “He stood over me and tried to shoot me again, but the gun jammed. He grabbed my necklace and ran away.”

Anderson couldn’t move his legs or stand. But he didn’t wait for an ambulance – a friend drove him to Highland Hospital in Oakland. The bullet cut an artery and damaged nerves along his spine, he said.

“I flatlined – I was dead for five minutes, but the doctors brought me back,” Anderson said. “The bullet went through my stomach, tore up my liver, went through the main artery that pumps blood to my heart, and then it got my spine. I was unconscious for eight days.”

=========
=========

Someone needs to do an economic analysis of the impact of the number of murders has on Oakland’s budget for public spending.

Perhaps the murders can be framed as a public finance issue.

For example, I wonder if the argument can be made that the murders in Oakland are sufficient to constitute a fiscal crisis because of the amount of money that tax payers spend on subsidizing the costs of having bullets removed from n*ggas backs.

Hear Toni Cook, Keith Williams and Olis Simmons talk about violence in Oakland.

Here is a CSI style map of all the murders in the town in 2006.

Even more interesting. Peep the overlap of the murders and the likker stores.

Which leads me to wonder if the people of Oakland can sue the City in a class action for allowing these stores to operate and create and sustain an environment that is conducive to crack and murder.
Peace to Gus D’Angelo for an amazing piece of graphic work.

This is one of the most powerful images that I have seen in a while.

Other than this one below from the SF ZOO.

============
============

Wow. I just feel like I left a piece of my soul on the page.

How yall doing?

============
============

The latest installment in White Man/Lady saves the day flicks has arrived to theaters.
I have long had a proll’em w/ this genre for obvious reasons, the main one being the fact that hood ‘kids allways gotta get bailed out of their horrible lives by some negro loving white teacher. The kids in the school in Freedom Writers apparently have a problem w/ how they are being portrayed. Say Word!?!?!

Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach is one of the school district’s jewels. Situated near million-dollar homes, it’s considered a “learning academy” where uniformed students study classics and others vie to make its waiting list.

But in the new Hilary Swank film “Freedom Writers,” that same school is portrayed as a beaten-down inner-city nightmare, run by bitter burned-out teachers and populated with well-armed students.

“Anybody who knows Long Beach knows the high school is nothing like that,” said Long Beach Unified School District Supt. Chris Steinhauser.

Despite that, Steinhauser considered the film uplifting. cialis tabs 20mg First, the main symptoms of prostatitis include: Pain. After intake it works inside the body to hinder and stop the continue release of an enzyme PDE 5 thereby increasing the required cGMP in the particular zone so that the penis becomes relaxed. frankkrauseautomotive.com discount levitra On taking X-ray viagra free pill if gastritis is still doubtful then we will go for endoscopy. Teenagers who have just reached the levitra without rx age of 18 only. But other Long Beach residents ? like the subjects of other true-life stories ? are appalled at the Hollywood version. They aren’t happy with its portrayal of the true story of Long Beach teacher Erin Gruwell and her at-risk students, saying it offers an oversimplified, insulting narrative about the community: poor racial minorities triumph over lazy, jealous teachers and The Man.

Freedom Writers
Hillary Swank (who I adore, btw, saves the day).

Dangerous Minds
Michelle Pfiffer Saves the Day.

Hard Ball
Keanu Reeves saves the Day.
Sunset Park
Rhea Perlmen saves the Day

Coach Carter **
Sam Jackson, w/ a f*cked up baldie, saves the Day.

Lean on Me.**
Ok. So a Black man saves the day. But he is a mean old crankety Black man w/ a baseball bat.
** Apparently, Black teachers can save the ‘hood too!

============
============

One day it will all make sense. -Common

============
============

I have some homies that think that if you work hard enough you can achieve anything. I agree.

However, I also know that having a Montessori Elementary education gives a student an unparalled advantage in our modern world.

I often think about what it means to be a model minority who is interested in education. I think about what it would take for the rural folks, the urban folks and the folks in between to care about how ALL CHILDREN WERE EDUCATED, not just their own.

Sunday Times has an education life article on the number of Asian Americans @ Cal.

You see. I love the fact that there are so many Asian folks at Cal, because it forces people to talk about quotas, model minorities and affirmative action w/o Black people being @ the center of the debate.

The oft-cited goal of a public university is to be a microcosm ? in this case, of the nation?s most populous, most demographically dynamic state ? and to enrich the educational experience with a variety of cultures, economic backgrounds and viewpoints.

But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it ? specifically, for bypassing highly credentialed Asian applicants in favor of students of color with less stellar test scores and grades.

While the article states that Affirmative Action has a neutral effect on White applicants. I would like to see the statistics that support this statement. There is a distinction b/w being a minority and and underrepresented minority.

University administrators and teachers use anguished words to describe what has happened since. The most important factors that make VigRx Plus the product contains common natural male enhancers like pill sildenafil Asian red ginseng, ginkgo leaf, damiana, epimedium leaf extract, hawthorn berry, catuaba bark extract, saw palmetto and muirapauma bark extract. viagra cheap india Eat the right foods: Studies have shown that men who used lubrication along with condoms lasted longer than males who didn’t used them. Various such as spinal cord damage or injury in penile organ also cause ED. on line cialis In such case samples of levitra from trusted online medical store can be mush expensive but, online stores nowadays offer various discounts to the buyer.

?I?ve heard from Latinos and blacks that Asians should not be considered a minority at all,? says Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at Berkeley. ?What happened after they got rid of affirmative action has been a disaster ? for blacks and Latinos. And for Asians it?s been a disaster because some people think the campus has become all-Asian.?

What? Quotas @ Cal. Seems to me like, Affirmative Action.

I wonder what White Parents of college bound age kids think about the Asian presence at Cal? Do they think that the number of Asian students should be limited? I would imagine that some feel that those slots awarded to the approximate 100 matriculated Black and Latino freshman students whose test scores and g.p.a are far below “Cal’s Standards” shouldn’t be admitted.

What I find interesting is the lack of attention paid to legacy students.

But back to the equal opportunity. Of course Cal is a pure meritocracy. So what if some people don’t have access to AP tests and SAT tutors. Everyone has same opportunity right? Thats what my friend thinks.

?I really challenge this idea of a pure meritocracy,? says Mr. Liu, who runs mentoring programs that grew out of his book ?Guiding Lights: How to Mentor and Find Life?s Purpose.? Until all students ? from rural outposts to impoverished urban settings ? are given equal access to the Advanced Placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is bunk, he says. ?They?re measuring in a fair way the results of an unfair system.?

===============
===============

Go Model Minorities!

===============
===============

Hip Hop is Dead. But Rap is Alive. By now we have all marinated on the new Nasir.

My favorite song is the new single Can’t Forget About You.

When I first heard it, I gasped and said, this fool done mixed the Boom Bap w/ Nat King Cole. This album is Nas’s love letter to black music. “Tell me you don’t agree w/ me that HH is DEAD”.

WHAT! I don’t like that song w/ the Game. Its just sounds forced. Any black man that says,

“I pray my daughter grows up and don’t wile out like the Hilton sisters” is aii’ight in my book. If in the life the coup are lack of generic sample viagra common requirements, mutual understanding and respect, coupled with a good understanding of knowledge, harmonious married life can be happier. Generally, you can electronically pay, by using a landline phone. buy cheap viagra davidfraymusic.com By taking the course and studying the Colorado driver handbook, you will become well-prepared for anything that shows sildenafil online india up on the permit test or the driving test. Don’t reduce or viagra ordering on line increase the dosage of generic Apcalis.

(remind me to tell you’all about my theory on black men with daughters and how they are different from ones who don’t have them). Im tired of n*ggas complaining that Nas ain’t freakin’ Illmatic type jawns. Can he live?

Isn’t Crisette Michelles voice sultry and good?

I would love to hear her over some Just Blaze jawns, some Jay D, some more Ye ye.

But back to n*ggas still wanting Illmatic, my pov, after Outkast dropped Idlewilde, was that ARTIST EVOLVE as do HUMANS.

GET OVER IT.

Roots ain’t gonna be the same.

J ain’t gonna be the same.

Sh*t my momma ain’t gonna be the same.

Thats life. Accept it.

=============
=============

Did I ever tell you that I hate janky a$$ed wireless service.

Talk about having an incentive not to post.

============
============

Everytime I visit the town, it never ceases to amaze me how many people ask if Im gonna move back.

Im like dude.

The food is hot. The land is blaze. But the hip hop night life.
Sh*t is janky.

Last night was confirmed for me when Bobitto played, at APT this SONG.
I HAVE HAD THIS F*CKING SONG IN MY HEAD ALL WEEK.

When he thru that sh*t on, I took my coat off and started grooving in the little a$$ APT walk way and two things came to mind.

Im a big a$$ed b-girl.

I can go home now because I heard a song that has been floating in my head all week.

This moment can only happen in NYC.

============
============

Speaking of the town.
I enjoyed my fam.

I got together w/ my brother and a COUPLE of his daughters and one of my high school homies.

We went to this spot called Arts Crab shack.
We had to pay for our food before it came to to the table.

I kid you not.

A few weeks ago we discussed the Video Vixens, Hip Hop and D’boys.
I learned a few things about what you all think about women, hip hop and sex.