Curtis Wants Whiskey

But then I am reminded that I never bothered to answer the question of whether or not it is socially acceptable to have a tumblr in the first place, and I am comforted by my own space in this vast empire of awkward. 

Anonymous asked: Lol half of your followers are on tumblrdatinggame(.)com

Dear Internet-Ad-Bot,

Da fuck?

First of all, Internet-Ad-Bot, I don’t want to be on a dating site with my tumblr followers.  I want to awkardly view their blogs in silence and look at their inner-most personal thoughts in the form of .gifs while hoping half-heartedly that they put up a self-taken picture of themselves so I can know who the fuck they are and what the fuck they look like.

Second of all, how successful could this marketing technique possible be?  This is a place for sad teenagers, adults with an affinity for fan fiction, submissive porn posters, alcoholics, and pot heads.  None of us should be eligible for any legitimate dating site.  It would become an awkward mesh of terrible self loathing and sexual fetishes that in no way can mix.  If you can find a legitimate, arousing way to combine Doctor Who with BDSM knife play, they you know what, Internet-Ad-Bot, I commend you.

Third of all, why am I referring to Tumblr like it’s a community I am a part of?  OH YEAH, BECAUSE I AM TORN AND BROKEN INSIDE.  hopefully I can find a picture of a tree with song lyrics from a band I’ve never heard of to re-blog in the next ten to fifteen minutes.

And if you ever send me a message that starts with “Lol” ever again, I swear to god on high I will burn everything you love.  In addition to being a fucking terrible abbreviation, there is no reason you should be flaunting the fact that that you laughed out loud at the beginning of your unprompted, impersonal statement.

So thank you, Internet-Ad-Bot.  Thank you for offering me a casual distraction from studying for the Sociology final I have in an hour.  I wish you the best in all your future endeavors, and I hope a whole ton of people sign up for your dating website.  Because, as everyone knows, no one needs to be a part of a group of lonely, internet bound group of sexually frustrated, single people like the ones ALREADY ON FUCKING TUMBLR.

Sincerely,

Curtis

I’ve been feeling super Black lately, so I started watching Black films.  Most of them are about sad, Black men in the inner city who watch all their friends die from gunshots before escaping the hood through either sports or music. Others are about fat, sixteen-year-old Black girls who are still in middle school, pregnant for the second time, raped, abused, have a child with downs syndrome, and are HIV positive.
Akeelah and The Bee, though is, to date, the only happy Black movie known to man.  Unless you count Good Burger. Then there are two.

Akeelah and The Bee is about a young, Black girl growing up in a bad neighborhood somewhere in LA near and/or around where Ice Cube’s brother Ricky was shot in front of Cuba Gooding Jr. She goes to a shit school with no budget and a ton of bullies. Two bullies pick on Akeelah specifically because they, like most people, hate smart children. They hate Akeelah so much that they go out of their way to go to her special events and make fun of her. Say what you will about bullies, but they have a dedication that the kids they convince to kill themselves are obviously lacking.

No H8.

It gets better.

Aside from school life, Akeelah has an interesting family dynamic (and that was the worst transitional sentence ever written). She has four siblings. Her sister is never really seen but has what seems to be an illegitimate baby. Her mildly older brother is in a gang. Her way older brother is in the military in hopes of getting a college degree; he is also Malcolm in the Middle’s older brother’s Black friend in military school and the alien genius from the short lived but utterly brilliant Nickelodeon show Allen Strange.  Akeelah’s mom works long hours at the hospital to provide for her family and her father died during a shooting in the hood; because no Black child in cinema ever has both parents.  Not even in Goodburger.

Right off the bat the film starts building Akeelah’s character through scene. She gets A’s on her spelling tests, she plays scrabble for fun, and she’s excited about learning.  This, of course, get’s her bullied because the urban community hates education almost as much as they hate college (this, of course, is not their fault and reflects the internalized socialization forced on to them by a continually oppressive system, but because the foundlings of said system are in the past and we do not have a delorean, I have no choice but to move forward and insult it—Besides, you probably don’t care).
Akeelah gets offered to do the spelling bee and decides she doesn’t want to.  But then someone tells her to do it for her dead father, which is exactly what you say to a child at a key developmental milestone.  You say to them, “Hey, do this thing you don’t want to do for your dead parent.”  There’s no way that kind of a thing could have dire consequences on a child’s mental health.

At this point Laurence Fishburne shows up as a positive Black role model (as seen in his roles in Boyz n’ The Hood and kind of a little bit in The Matrix) and is way to harsh on an 11 year-old girl. He almost makes her cry. But, he also lends a tender moment to the film by showing Akeelah the most bad ass Nelson Mandela quote of all time.
Akeelah wins the spelling bee shit and becomes friends with a nice Latino/Hispanic kid named Javier with really supportive parents (and a huge eleven-year-old crush on Akeelah) and a nice Asian boy, Dylan, with a father who hates him (and is also a little racist). That could be seen as a stereotypical comment on Asians, but it’s my understanding that all fathers hate their children, so I think it’s less racial and more completely and unfortunately true. 

Her new friendships, though, strain her old ones because it’s hard to manage wealthy friends who play Scrabble  and poor friends who like to actually do fun things. Shit’s rough, man. Social mobility is a bitch.

On top of that, her mom also hates that she wants to do the bee, which sounds cruel and unfair; but if you work full time, have four kids, your husband dies from gang violence, your oldest daughter has a bastard baby and lives at home, your older son joins the army, and your younger son is in a gang, then I think you’ve earned the right to be overprotective of your youngest child; especially when she is in summer school for cutting classes. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Mom was in the right on that one.

As the conflict rises you discover Laurence Fishburne has had to bury his daughter and be left by his wife. Through coaching her, Akeelah brings back a lot of feelings of fatherhood, and the relationship between the two strains. By the end of it, Akeelah teaches him he can move on and be there for others as he would be there for his daughter.

It’s touching in a way only children’s movies can be. 

The sentence seems problematic.

For a time, however, Laurence Fishburne’s character excuses himself from coaching her in an attempt to stay professional. No worries, though. Shit start’s looking up for Akeelah.  Her bee moves the community. Her mom coaches her, her brothers coach her, her teachers coach her, the gang leader (as played by the guy who does Crab Man on My Name is Earl or The Rubber Band Man in the Office Max commercials depending on how dated you want your references to be) coaches her, the Korean shop owner coaches her. Even the local wino helps her.

You know how many other Black movies show communal love towards the education of children?  Approximately none.

Exactly none.

Fuck.

By the end, Javier loses but is okay with that. He knows he’ll have a chance to win the next year. Akeelah and Dylan Bonnie-and-Clyde their way to a co-victory, thus overcoming their differences in a most triumphant victory. Everyone wins and Akeelah’s bee singlehandedly saves the ghetto.

Is it ridiculous?  Yes.

Is it heart warming as fuck?  You bet your ass.

I’ll be honest with you, tumblr: I was high when I watched this movie.  I was high and incredibly emotional.  I cried several different times; twice out of sorrow and twice out of how fucking happy I was for Akeelah.  Then I called my mom and made her validate my existence.  Then I wrote this post.

Technical Stuff:

Cinematically the film makes great use of montage (particularly when showing Akeelah study). The use of POV shots work out well too, adding to the emotional resonance of the film. It’s a kid’s movie, though, so it can be heavy-handed or overly expositional at times; but you have to do that because kids are stupid (as, oddly enough, are most adults). Because of that, the movie is directed in a way that can, to an adult, seem tired or cliché, but to a child makes the emotional flow of the film clear and easy to follow.  Certain actions or segments of dialogue seem overemphasized to show their importance. 

That being said, Akeelah and The Bee does a good enough job of being something any age can enjoy; and while it stoops to a child’s level, thus allowing them a chance to understand, it does not pander to a child audience or force itself to be terribly over simplistic.  It’s also, in part, the fact that this is a children’s movie that allows it to be so unrealistic.  In some kid’s movies, a child is accidently left at home for Christmas and fights off burglars with gadgets and gizmos.  In others, children walk along a set of railroad tracks, discovering themselves as they look for a dead body.  Most plots are stupid; it’s the journey that matters.

I mean, look at Up for Christ’s sake. If someone walked up to you and said, “Hey, I want to make a movie about an old man, a boy, and some animals flying in a house filled with balloons,” you would say, “You are an idiot.” But then it happens and you and everyone else in the theater cries after the first five minutes. Five god-damned minutes!

Fuck you, Pixar. You broke my fucking heart.

Also, for a film targeting a younger demographic, Akeela and The Bee has a sick soundtrack.  Bootsy Collins? Fuck yeah.

Quotes:
    •    “What do you want to be when you grow up?  A doctor?  A lawyer?  A stand up comic?” –Laurence Fishburne (upon meeting Akeelah)
    •    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” –Nelson Mandela (reoccurring theme of the film)

Anonymous asked: Hot Dogs make good content. They nicely fill the niche markets of in a bun, in your stomach, and dick-shaped food. Eat More Hot DOGS

Anonymous asked: Content Idea: online dating for people who dont like presenting themselves

Please.  I almost forgot to say please.