RANDOM THOUGHT ALERTS!!! (Vol. 1, No. 14)

No...you cannot avoid one of these posts without me either talking about D.C. Metro, food or Baby Boy Scribbler's favorite cartoons.  Deal with it, slugger.  Anyway, on perhaps his favorite show, Sprout's Ruff-Ruff, Tweet and Dave, I find it interesting how the red beagle and the yellow chick's names are onomatopoeias.  (Y'all don't know how long I've been waiting to use that word in a blog post...hype!)  I'm sure it goes a long way in helping developing young viewers make the connection between these animals and their associate sounds, but what about Dave the Blue Panda?  Granted, his name is simple to remember and pandas don't make a distinct sound, but why Dave?  Was something like Rodney a little too "urban"?  (Then again, the name Rodney always makes me think of Sommore's set from The Queens of Comedy and some brother coming on a woman's porch uninvited, climbing through her window and trying to choke her.  Hilarious in a comedy routine, but given that info, probably a good call not choosing Rodney.)  Furthermore, why is Dave always the first one to fall asleep after every adventure?  Does he tire himself out with all of his "Blue Panda Ideas" and/or get the itis after eating all of those bananas?  Memo to Tony Collingwood: I need answers, bruh...I need answers.  Now that y'all have been treated to another spiel about a cartoon you probably hadn't heard of until today, let's get to the main attractions...

WHEN YOU SHADE THE SISTAS, YOU BECOME THE CAT LADY.  As a longtime Grey's Anatomy fan, I frankly didn't start paying much attention to Katherine Heigl until she starred in Knocked Up, The Ugly Truth and Life As We Know It.  I even understood why AskMen.com listed her as the Most Desirable Woman of 2008; granted, she could never beat out Meagan Good or Jill Scott, but she was bookable nonetheless.  However, it was shady enough referring to the Knocked Up plot as "a little sexist", especially since she could've easily turned down the script instead of taking that check.  On top of frequent contract disputes and throwing shade at the writers and producers of Grey's Anatomy for a "ratings ploy", she declined to be nominated for an Emmy in 2008 for her role as Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens and stated this: "I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention."  Two years gone, she was gone and couldn't have left soon enough for Shonda Rhimes, who bluntly expressed her displeasure in an interview to The Hollywood Reporter when contrasting her experience with the Scandal cast: "There are no Heigls in this situation...I don't put up with bullsh-- or nasty people.  I don't have time for it."

Now let's look at Heigl's career trajectory since leaving Grey's in 2010.  Between films like New Year's Eve, One for the Money, The Big Wedding, The Nut Job, Home Sweet Hell and Jenny's Wedding, she has been in a series of commercial and/or critical failures--although nothing on her resume performed as miserably as 2006's Zyzzyx Road, which had a budget of $1.2 million but only grossed $30.  (Your eyes do not deceive you, my friends...not $30 million...not $30,000...six old, wrinkled, small-faced Abe Lincolns.)  When NBC ran the initial promos for State of Affairs in 2014, I was well aware of her aforementioned shade by this point and thought, "They're moving The Blacklist to Thursday for this?!?!  And Katherine Heigl is the lead?!?!  This show won't last one season."  Thirteen episodes later, Heigl's character was written off as "unsympathetic" while the "mediocre" and "overly serious" show was canned as predicted, despite Alfre Woodard receiving praise for her role.  If that's not insulting enough, perhaps the new low point of her career have been her spots as a cat psychiatrist telling a human to switch to Cat's Pride Fresh & Light Ultimate Care.  Yup...she's the plug for kitty litter, ladies and gents.  While I have no proof Rhimes got her blackballed in Hollywood after the Grey's situation, the morals of this story are twofold: 1) don't bite the hand which feeds you and 2) don't mess with a sister in power.

"I'LL BE IN THE GRAY CADILLAC!"  First and foremost, let's get the useless information out of the way--although many of y'all are probably thinking, "Isn't everything in these posts useless information???"  (Fair point, but don't be a jerk about it.)  When ensuring I had the exact title of T-Pain's hit single "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')" correct being the accuracy fanatic I am, Wikipedia had me thinking my memory isn't as good as it is because they list the release date of this single as "December 28, 2008".  Immediately, I'm like, "Nahhhhhhh sonnnnnnn!"  I specifically remember taking a trip up to the Baltimore Inner Harbor in the spring of 2007, hearing this on the radio and making one last hurrah with the woman who inspired the title of this blog before our unceremonious split six months later.  To ensure the integrity of my mental music almanac, I checked the release date by the title of the album, Epiphany, which was released on June 5, 2007 and listed the smash single with a release date of February 20, 2007.  Relieved that I wasn't getting that "advanced" in life--because I don't claim "old" and that's what you have to tell yourself when you know you're getting old--I said to myself, "Welp, that's why you can't get all of your reliable information from Wikipedia!" 

Now for the original point of this segment...one of the biggest reasons why I've always fooled with the Tallahassee "Rappa Ternt Sanga" outside of being a master at harmonies and vocal arrangements is he's always given off a vibe as if he could be one of the homies in lieu of a superstar recording artist.  I say this because I didn't give much thought about his descriptiveness in this song until recently when this song was on the radio.  When I heard him say "I'll be in the gray Cadillac", I thought, "Of all the colors he could've chosen, why a gray Cadillac?"  My pensiveness and personal interpretation led me to three conclusions that aren't irrefutably conclusive at all, but work with me.  First, Aretha Franklin already referred to a pink Cadillac in her 1985 hit "Freeway of Love" and I don't know too many men sans Cam'ron and DipSet circa 2004 who would refer to their momma's Mary Kay car in an R&B or hip hop song; hence, although "pink" rhymes with "think", "gray" is one of the closest color alternatives in the sonic flow of a song.  Second, and to the opening point of this paragraph, black would've been a choice many people would've made.  However, I've known and seen a lot of brothers riding around in gray Cadillacs and that's part of the genius of T-Pain's writing: despite the "money in the bank" element, he still gives you more of "the brother you know" vibe.  Third, knowing how much I love the color of my 2014 Honda Accord, he could simply like gray.  That's always a possibility... 

WHY BLACK PEOPLE CAN'T BE ON GAME SHOWS, PART 1: DON'T LET STEVE HARVEY FOOL YOU.  Before we begin this segment, let's first address how hype Jaleel White was in this clip from Season 2 Episode 7 of Celebrity Family Feud.  When Steve Harvey asked "name something that could ruin a kiss", White got so excited about his answer that much of his opening was undecipherable until he responded with "chapped lips".  I was dying laughing and rewound my DVR recording several times to see and hear him enthusiastically applaud his own answer like, "YEAH!  YEAH!  YEAH!  YEAH!  YEAH STEVE!  YEAH!  YEAH!"  On cue, Steve Harvey gave him one of his infamous looks and said, "See, you need the support of your family," and when White said, "But I want your support right now," Harvey responded, "Nah nah nah, man, you can't get none of that from me.  I ain't here for support; I'm just here for jokes!  I'm here to take what you said and feed it back to you.  'Chapped...lips!'"  Translation: "Unless you're Picabo Street advertising for Chap Stick, chapped lips are full-lipped people problems.  Think less Black, bruh."

White should take comfort in the fact he hasn't been the first brother on Celebrity Family Feud who gave more of an "urban" answer.  On another episode during the Fast Money round, Steve Harvey asked former WBO heavyweight champion Lamon Brewster, "Fill in the blank: Black and _________."  Without flinching, Brewster responded, "Beautiful!"  Now while he won 200 points with Black folk on GP alone, I unfortunately knew that answer would earn him a big fat donut.  On the same episode with White, Harvey asked, "Name something inappropriate that parents wear when they drop off their kids at school."  The former child star tried his hand with "a robe", at which Steve Harvey and Rico Rodriguez from ABC's Modern Family laughed and which turned out to be the No. 1 answer as "PAJAMAS/ROBE".  His mother Gail gave the answer "house shoes", which was the No. 5 answer as "SLIPPERS" and to which Harvey hilariously responded:

See, the hesitation, folks, was a cultural difference.  Black people call 'em "house shoes"...Macy's call 'em "slippers"!  So they was all in there, she said "house shoes", they were going, "What the hell?  House shoes?  What the hell is a house shoe?"  But we have a Black person in the back go, "Dem slippers!" "Oh...BING!"

If the White family wasn't testing the waters enough, his aunt Deirdre followed up with "rollers", which got another laugh out of Harvey and was the No. 3 answer as "CURLERS".  However, the good fortune ran out with his cousin Brandon when he answered with "du-rag", at which Harvey walked away heartily laughing, allowed the crowd to catch up and said, "It's still people going, [with confused face] 'Yeah!'"  Once the family got to two strikes, Jaleel said, "You know what, I see a theme here, so I'ma keep it all the way 'hood...shower caps."  As Harvey had the "doggone Black folk" face, his cousin was heard off camera saying, "There you go!  There you go!  There you go!"  If only Celebrity Family Feud surveyed predominantly Black people, then the White family would've cleared the board.  (I hope someone else realized the irony in that last statement like I did...)


WHY BLACK PEOPLE CAN'T BE ON GAME SHOWS, PART 2: DO LET "THE WHITE STEVE HARVEY" FOOL YOU.  Although I normally guess at least one or two of the most popular answers in the Super Match round of ABC's reboot of Match Game, I grew too comfortable with the presence of such celebrity panelists like Niecy Nash, JB Smoove, Sherri Shepherd and David Alan Grier as well as the super-smooth stylings of host Alec Baldwin--who joked and said he's "also known as 'the White Steve Harvey'".  While watching the Season 1 finale, the woman in the picture needed an answer to "______ BEANS" in the Super Match round.  Instead of thinking like 64 percent of America, my mind went back to the summer of 1987 when Big Little Brother and I spent significant time at home with Big Dadi Scribbler.  Outside of his German chocolate cake, one of my favorite things he used to make for us was when he cut up hot dogs and stirred them into bowls of pork and beans.  Hence, "pork and beans" was my reflex answer...unfortunately, the answers were "GREEN", "BAKED" and "JELLY".  Ironically, JB Smoove gave "JELLY" as an answer, which was my third reflex answer behind "MAGIC".  Morals of the story: 1) don't be a prisoner to nostalgia when $25,000 are on the line and 2) definitely don't reminisce about 'hood cuisine while doing so.