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Good Music – But why a Commercial

The billboard top 100 list is a system record companies and retailers use to determine how successful, an album is, how well it will/has sold and why. The result of this system has led to major record labels like all industries taking few risks when it comes to signing producing and marketing a new act.

This however leads to a majority of the public (their market) listening to bland music with little to no innovation, creativity and at times talent. Occasionally however foreign and independent musicians peek through the fabric of American commercialism in the form of small 30 second commercial blips, often using music that may have been released years ago. Often they have the watcher going “hmmmm I wonder what song that was” and those who have known about it for years have mixed feelings of disgust, happiness, and pride.

In 2008 an extreme form of this appeared in the Pineapple Express trailer that featured M.I.A’s Paper Planes single. A song that was released years prior, but never the less sparked a resurgence of her career as mainstream hip-hop acts like Jay-Z and Kanye West suddenly began to pay attention.

Recently a wave of Electrasol commercials used Gotan Projects single Epoca. Though like many before them it might just blow over without the public’s notice, but was it really necessary to sell the rights to use the song for such a tacky commercial despite the hopeful but most likely negligible publicity. Only history can decide.

Back from College Hiatus

College can be tough which is why I’ve been a ghost for clearly over a month. Good news is that I’m back to actively thinking about whatever might suit my fancy.

Lenny Kravitz on the DL?

Today, seems to be a particularly gay day for me filled with news that just seems to good to be true. On a website where people confess their secrets or activities they keep on the “downlow” a Bahamian offical made a post about Kravitz coming into his office in which you register/process personnel yachts with two very effeminate boys!

“I work as a customs agent in the Bahamas and one aspect of my job description is clearing documents for private yachts.I often see celebrities who have to come through my office,in fact is has become quite the norm.

One day two very effeminate young boys…..teens to early twenties…..walked into the office and asked if this was the place where boat documents were processed to which i replied yes.They then told me that they were coming right back.About 15 minutes later they showed up with LENNY KRAVITZ who had all of the passports and etc.

When i asked him how many people were on his boat,he showed 8 passports,all of which belonged to young men.during the time i was processing his paper work,he was giggling and chatting and acting very EFFEMINATE with the boys.After that ,i did a routine search on his yacht and could not believe my eyes.THERE on on the yacht were 6 other latino looking guys in little g-string speedos.Lenny didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered.Lenny is half Bahamian,and there were always rumors from the natives about his dl lifestyle on the island here in the Bahamas where he has his home”.

confession origin

Is his statement to be believed. Well Lenny’s nipple piercings are definitely helping his case. However keep in mind he has been married and fathered a child. This however is not out of the norm for men on the DL and if anything is expected in order to keep up the facade.

Binary Shade – continuing to bring you random news every day I feel like it.

Republicans for Hate?

In the days leading up to the passing of the federal hate crime bill by the senate their was a national hoopla within the conservative pit. Republicans around the country questioned why GLBT individuals would need added protections in what I believe will become an embarrassment that will be yet another scar on American history.

A young man was beaten to death in 1998. With dirty blond hair, a bright smile, and an even brighter future, the University of Wyoming student had the whole world ahead of him. Though his life was cut short, the image of a young man so bloodied and disfigured that he was mistaken for a scarecrow by a passing bicyclist has been burned into the minds of millions of Americans. As a result of his death, the Matthew Shepard Bill has taken his name. It expands federal hate crime legislation to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals, as well as those with disabilities.

More than a decade later, it has yet to be signed into law, though new hope has been placed in the Democratic congressional majority. President Obama has stated his determination to support the act, which has been thrown out by Congress several times. Opposition has reached new levels of absurdity as conservatives attempt to justify not protecting gays and lesbians under federal hate crime law.

[It’s likely Obama will sign the bill with my paragraph above being written before the senate vote. This inevitability however hasn’t stopped conservatives from wriggling to the very end.]

Republicans have made statements against the bill that have consistently made headlines and left people awe-struck. Representative Virginia Foxx is a prime example. She said, “The Matthew Shepard Bill is named after a very unfortunate incident in which a young man was killed, but we know that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery, it wasn’t because he was gay. The bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax.” She said this while Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother, was sitting in the audience, listening to the congresswoman insult her life’s work and her son’s sacrifice. Statements like this one don’t change the fact that every year there are hundreds of hate crimes committed against members of the GLBT community.

The main argument against the act is based on fears that it would provide special protections to gays and lesbians, and would allow the prosecution of priests and rabbis who preach against homosexuality. The reasoning is that they would be fingered as the cause of the actions of those who commit violent crimes. However, a case against them would not hold up in a court of law, because of their first amendment rights—the same amendment that has often protected leaders of Aryan superiority groups.

Claims that GLBT citizens would have special protections are muddied by the fact that they would only receive the same protection as other minority groups under federal law. Some argue that they are already protected by existing laws against violent crime, making an added severity in punishment based on the sexual orientation of the victim unconstitutional. What conservative law makers have forgotten is that hate crimes are not just violent acts; they serve to strike terror into a group of people. This nation prides itself on taking a strong stand against terror, but fails to prevent it at home.

Shoop Da Woop

Millions of people use the internet everyday. Many check their e-mails, facebook, myspaces and twitters while others feign intelligence by reading the New York Times, and CNN.

The true internet however is known by those brave enough to visit the underbelly known as 4chan. From this cesspool of a message-board has risen great internet fads like LOLcats, O’Really and of course the notorious Shoop Da Woop.

One Whoop enthusiast named Dom Fera has taken the Shoop to the next level by creating “The Lazer Collection”. A flash movie animated, written, and voiced by him with music of his own composition. The end result is a true internet gem of epic proportions that has warranted two sequels that instantly raked in millions of hits on youtube.

Jump Trump Rump Bump Indie animation at its best

Although when it come to the latest generations of urban dwellers jazz has fallen off the radar in terms of musical supremacy. This small animation short Jump Trump Rump Bump makes the genre lively, cute, and fun with its experimental animation, and unique art style that is sure to bring a warm, fuzzy feeling to even the shadiest of hearts, and uses jazz in a new way although along with blues it has been a cornerstone of music almost a century. Here at Bleu Magazine we are breaking the mold of what’s expected from a urban magazine, and like to direct our content towards a demographic that is often overlooked, and so kindred spirits like artists/animators Hevi Won Jeong, and Justin Murphy who both collaborated together to complete this masterpiece are quite a pleasant sight to behold.

Click more for the video

JumpTrumpRumpBump from Molasses Murphy on Vimeo.

post courtesy of myself in my bleublog days

New Direction

Binary Shade was originally supposed to be a outlet for me to conduct essentially video game/pop culture journalism. Those non-existent readers holding their breath waiting for more content related to this theme can now suffocate cause I’ve decided I’ll just write about whatever happens to cross my mind or inspire me from now on.

Blogging after all is not a job unless someones underpaying you to do it. Then your officially allowed to spit on someones keyboard out of angst. The internet isn’t exactly a cup of coffee or a delicious lugi sandwich after all.

SWAT needed at base of 40,000 trained soldiers!!!!

The Fort hood “Tragedy” has shocked Americans who can’t believe that soldiers trained to kill humans in a myriad of ways and then placed under extreme mental stress that alter their psyches permanently can occasionally snap and go on a killing sprees. Apparently we haven’t learned from the Howard Unruh’s of the past or the Vietnam war.

However whats a far more interesting issue is why SWAT needs to be sent into a base of 40,000 trained killers to take down one man. This is either a joke, a silly precaution or the multi-million dollar Homeland Security budget went towards satellites armed with lasers that can scratch the Presidents ass within a .5 mm margin of error

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Underground NYC Scene hidden in plain sight

Photo By Angelo Ferrer

During the day, on the cleanly paved and cemented streets of the financial district—so oddly devoid of trash, doggie remains, and even cockroaches—you see the men and women of Wall street, with their six figure salaries and business suits. As trains, cabs, and ferries get filled to capacity by these rush hour commuters, a change takes place; cleaning crews and tipsy Staten Island girls begin to shuffle in for their evening affairs. Another group also makes its way in; slowly but surely, attracted by the pristine marble decor of the office buildings and the authentic grime of the Brooklyn Banks and Chinatown skate parks, the inline skaters emerge.

Although many people have never seen it, an underground scene of inline skating comes to life every night in the Wall Street area with a language of fist bumps, handshakes, and fist-bump-handshake-hugs. They have an aura of mutual respect that cuts across lines of race, gender, class and religion. These inline skaters come from all five boroughs to participate in an underground community held together by nothing else but rollerblading. This is not the skating of the early 1990s, with its Disneyesque, squeaky-clean reputation, dominated by young professionals and children. This is a new culture of inline skating, most commonly known as rollin’, that takes pride in its underground status, style, and attitude. It has a more urban appeal than earlier rollerblading did, having more in common with the skateboarder community of the 1970s than the short-shorts-and-matching-headbands rollerblading yuppies of the early 1990s.

The earliest roots of inline skating share some of the rebellious qualities of today’s rollin’ movement, but it soon caught the attention of big companies looking to cash in on a new fad. Companies like Salomon, Oxygen, and Rollerblade helped make it a $725 million-a-year industry by the mid 1990s. Extreme Games, an alternative sport competition later renamed the X Games by ESPN, started in 1995 and featured rollerblading prominently. As skateboarding became increasingly popular, however, interest in rollerblading plummeted. By 2006, rollerblading was removed from the games. Of Salomon, Oxygen, and Rollerblade—the three biggest manufacturers of skates—Rollerblade is the only one left producing skates in the aggressive category.

Victor Callendar, 34, has been there from the beginning. “I would go out with my friends in the morning and skate all around the city, sometimes sleeping in Union Square, to wake up and do it all over again,” Callender said. Today, he is one of the legends of the sport, producing, funding, and hosting events like Last Man Standing, a free-for-all skating competition for pros, amateurs, and “groms” (those new to the sport) at the Brooklyn Banks skate park. He also organizes Let’s Roll NY, a weekly skate meet where the rollin’ community gets together and skates a predefined route, like from Brooklyn Banks to the marble ledges of Water and Wall Streets, and on to Battery Park.

Callendar, today a marketing director, was also in the movie Rollerball, and performed on skates for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, earning $1,000-a-week for two-minute performances.

When asked if things were better in the early 1990s or now, he said he was struck by the intermingling of skaters from different boroughs. In the early days, he said, skaters tended to stick in groups dominated by what borough they were from. He also said—though the subject is controversial among skaters—that rollin’ needed to become mainstream once again if it is to survive.

At a Lets Roll NY event, Callender was teaching a kid how to grind handrails, hyping him up for the stunt at hand. “He landed it, and the next week I pulled a police barricade over some steps, [and the younger skaters] said, ‘Vic, you’re too old for that,’ and I said, ‘What are you talking about? You think I started yesterday? I’m gonna do this.’ And the same little kid from earlier came and said, ‘Are you really gonna do that?'” He went for it.