Hello everyone. It’s been a while.I sort of accidentally took July off. I’ve been a little busy with this thing and that.I hope you will forgive me.I’m sure you’ve all been on the edge of your seats, so I’ll just get started…

My friend Rob and I were chatting over Instant Message the other day talking about the cartoons that we used to watch when we were kids. Most of these were the after school cartoons of the 1980’s like GI Joe and Transformers. There is a disturbing pattern that you see in most all of these cartoons.Many of them had a black character, which of course is not disturbing, but the depiction of the character usually was.It borders on hilarious how stereotypical these characters were developed.I probably could go on forever here listing all of the various and obscure examples, but I’ll keep with the more obvious ones.

Roadblock was one of the main characters from the great GI Joe cartoons of the mid 1980’s.He had a shaved head and usually wore some sort of tank top.He was probably the main black character when the cartoon was in it’s hey day.Read this description of him from Wikipedia, He frequently talks in rhymes and has a talent for cooking”.Excuse me?The main black character from this major cartoon is best known for jive talking and cooking?I looked for some good examples from the original show but apparently YouTube doesn’t have rights to show these particular cartoons; I did however find this late 80’s clip just to give you an idea. I found these quotes off of IMDB.com as well. Play it straight, or there’s no doubt, I’ll turn your eyeballs inside out.” Also, “Hey I don’t like that sound. Tell me dude what’s going down?” Was their a conspiracy going down back in the 1980’s where someone or some people were trying to subliminally teach young African American children to speak in rhyme?If this is true, my question would be why? I’m not sure that I have a theory.

There are so many examples of this; but one that always gets me is how it was applied to robots too. There were two apparently black Transformers in Jazz and Blaster. I say this, because they both would talk in the same type of voice as Roadblock. Jazz, given the name of a type of music that is most commonly associated with black America, and Blaster taking the form of a ghetto blaster very similar to the one Radio Raheem carried around in Do the Right Thing. Take a look at this clip for examples. Check the 0:57 and 1:35 time stamps.

In fairness I should give an example of a cartoon that stereotypes more than just black America. The Super Friends was a Hanna-Barbara cartoon that starred the superheroes from the DC Comics such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and so on. In the late 70’s Hannah-Barbara figured they needed to add some minorities to the Super Friends. This in theory was a good thing. It is only right that kids from different ethnic backgrounds have heroes that look like them. The problem was the four heroes Hanna-Barbara created were Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, El Dorado and Samurai. Why was the only black super friend named Black Vulcan? Why couldn’t his name just be Vulcan? Why wasn’t Superman named Super White Man or Flash named the White Flash? Also, why couldn’t they create a Japanese, Native American or Mexican super hero that didn’t fit a stereotype? Instead of Apache Chief, couldn’t they create a Native American hero that got caught in some meteoric accident that gave him powers to shoot lasers from his eyes and throw comets out of his hands instead of superhuman tracking ability? Aside from Black Vulcan, the three “ethnic” Super Friends all spoke with broken English. It’s curious to me how these 3 super heroes have all kinds of powers, but still can’t speak a proper sentence? It could be worse I suppose. El Dorado’s special power could be blasting a fiery hot sauce out of his ass that gives his enemies diarrhea, but I guess that would be racist.

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I love summer as much as everyone else. Baseball, warm weather, BBQs and so on; but one thing that irritates me about the sunny season are lemonade stands. I understand that this may make me sound like a grump, but hear me out. For one there is inflation. A cup of lemonade from one of these little brats is no longer a quarter, at least not in my neighborhood. These kids are now asking for at least 50 cents and often times a dollar. If I jump in a cab and get to my destination finding that I am a dollar short because I bought watered down lemonade from a loud mouth 6 year old, I am going to be pissed. Also, there is too much pressure. If the parents or any other adult loitering around the stand sees you walk by and say no thanks to the kid, you get the dirtiest looks. They don’t know your circumstance. Citrus may give you heartburn or gas. You may have just lost your job. Or maybe and this reason may sound completely selfish, but just maybe you don’t feel like lemonade. I mean heaven forbid you don’t buy something that you don’t want. Why should I feel obligated to give some kid whose parents make at least six figures a dollar for lemonade while I shouldn’t feel obligated to give a homeless guy a dollar for a Street Sheet (local homeless newspaper)? You may say because that homeless guy is going to put that dollar towards booze or drugs. Big deal. The kid is going to put their dollar towards candy and soda which will contribute to our already way overweight youth. A dollar goes a lot further in the candy store than it does in the liquor store. So here is a strategy that I employ. When walking down the street put on a set of headphones. When you see a lemonade stand ahead, just look up like you don’t see the kids. You have headphones on so you obviously can’t hear them. You can just walk on by. They’ll be better for it.

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Rumblings…

I just want to fill you in on one of my least favorite people in my neighborhood. I actually have never seen this person, at least that I know of. I only know three things about her. Her name is Meg, she drives a powder blue BMW SUV and she lives right around the corner from me. The reason I have such a strong dislike for is her is because of her license plate. It reads, So MEG. As if a powder blue BMW SUV isn’t obnoxious enough. Oh this car is soooooooo you, Meg. If that car is so someone, whoever that person is, is sooooooo lame. Can’t you just imagine Meg being one of those people who compares her friends and herself to the characters from the show Friends? “I’m totally like the Rachel of our group, oh and Chris is totally Ross… oh my god totally!” I really hope this license plate was a gift. Can you imagine how terrible of a person someone must be to get this plate made for them self? Can you imagine how shameless someone must be to drive around with this plate? Meg, whoever you are, I think you are just the worst. Being a dumb, spoiled, arrogant, preppy snot is soooooooo Meg.

If someone is walking down the street on the day I put my garbage out and drops a coke bottle in my recycler or some candy wrapper in my garbage can, I say go for it. It’s a garbage can, so put garbage in it. I’d rather you do that than litter. One condition to this is that you are not dumping a ton of stuff in my can. Last Monday after my garbage was emptied in the morning I got home from work and went to put my cans back in the garage. The lid on the recycle can was half open. There was a huge unbroken down cardboard box sticking out. Again, I don’t mind someone using the can, but leave room in there for everything I am going to need to put in there at the end of the week. This was a big box! At least have the decency to break it down. I looked inside the box and there was a bunch of Styrofoam (which should not be in the recycle been anyway), packing papers and… a shipping label. So if any of you know a Beth Johnson who lives at 2275 Broadway, let her know she can come pick up her box at my place or I will have it and a whole lot of other boxes to drop off at hers.

One last thing. I have noticed a lot more men are wearing tight pants these days. I’m not sure how this got started up again. I thought everyone agreed that we are all better off with men wearing a more loose fitting style of pant. Can we all just come to our senses?

Ok, seriously this really is the last thing. This just popped in to my head. Can producers stop putting
Brendan Fraser in movies? Is there a goofier looking guy getting cast as the lead in big time movies? I guess I should rephrase big time movies in to B level big budget movies, but still. I don’t hear about all the chicks swooning over Brendan Fraser. This summer he is all over the place starring in some new Mummy movie and Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. Weren’t we over 3D after Captain EO? Anyway, he was put in the new live action G.I. Joe movie
coming up which totally bums me out. I surprised they didn’t cast LL Cool J as Roadblock.

I’m out of here. Until next time…