Stefan Hayden

One of the things that really gets me about racism is when people complain about the the stuff that doesn’t matter. Here’s two version of a poster for “Couples Retreat”. Your supposed to supposed to be offended by the UK version that has edited out the black couple.

Guess what? If you want to be angry at racism then you should be pissed at the US poster as well as the whole movie. I agree with the movie Studio. They edited out the more minor characters and put the more famous people up front. I’m supposed to feel better about the US poster with the tiny black couple in the background? I’m supposed to feel better about a movie industry that does not give leading roles to blacks unless it’s a film for blacks?

This is just an instance where people see their own biases and become uncomfortable. I’m not singling this movie out. I’ve not seen it and I hear it’s fairly good. But in an industry where blacks are marginalized don’t get pissed if the poster reflects that reality. Instead of adding more black people to posters why not just go see more movies with black people?

Vista was a pain. When I got my new computer with it I had trouble getting the network card to work. Also an attempt to install it on a family member’s “vista ready” totally borked their system and I was up till 4am trying to restore xp. They never upgraded to vista.

But so far Windows 7 is coming up roses. The $50 upgrade I got was a pretty sweat deal and the upgrade was easy. Granted vista and 7 are similar enough that there are no huge architecture changes but the upgrade was super smooth. It asked all the questions in the first 15 minutes and then the upgrade ran with out any hand holding. It took 2 hours. It still did that thing where the progress bar stalls for long periods of time and then races forward. It would have been nice if 7 was more clear that I didn’t need to watch it install, but that might just be the tech geek in me.

I’ve literally only used the OS for 10 minutes but it seems snappy. It also seems to only take about 6-700mb of ram instead of the 8-900mb that vista took up. The task bar seems super slick. I like the idea of pining applications in place in theory but the open programs seem hard to distinguish from the programs that have yet to launch.

I’ll try and keep more notes as I have more first impressions.

Good Hair was a great movie but the critic inside of me just has to point out what kept it from being an instant classic. The movie had a lot of rough edges.

Too much of it seem to be shot by some one who had seen documentaries like Spellbound or Wordplay and though they could do the same thing. The story editing was a little rough and too many of the on location shots seemed poorly planed out. I really think Chris Rock should have hired someone who had more experience in this genera of film.

But it was easy to see past those rough edges and see a wonderfully enjoyable film. Chis Rock was more then charming and funny as ever. Being opening night I really wished there was more then 30 people in the theater. With my group being the only white people. While clearly black people have an interest in the movie I feel like non-backs would have even more interest since it’s a world that’s all around us and yet we know so little about it.

It was more the laughable after the film when it was raining and all the black women with relaxed hair handed the car keys off to the men while the natural hair black ladies were free to run to the car.

I don’t really have much to say about Obama. Some are angry and some are happy. The things I find interesting is the disconnect that seems to exist between what people seem to think the Nobel Peace Prize is and what they say they are.

It seem most people think of the sciences when it comes to the prize. Einstein figured out how the universe worked and then got a prize. He did something big and got an award. But that’s not how the the Nobel Prizes say they work. they say that they have always given prizes to people who have done good work or to people who are in a position to do good work and show promise. Until now I don’t think anyone has cared enough about the piece prize. But currently people are acutely aware of what Obama has done in his under a year in office.

Either way I think Obama handled it well. He’s humbled and hopes to do great work. I couldn’t agree more.