Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Movie Review: Beauty Shop

Name: Beauty Shop
Actors: Queen Latifah, Alicia Silverstone, Andie McDowell, Mena Suvari
Awards/Nominations: BET Comedy Award (Nominated), Black Movie Award (Nominated), Teen Choice Award (Nominated)
Plot: A wonderful comedy about a woman (Queen Latifah), who buys a barber shop in the Atlanta "ghetto" from a local hairdresser, after she is fired from a posh hair studio. Queen Latifah battles with the startup costs of a small business and the mistrust from patrons of the previous owner. After her one of her old clients (Mena Suvari) shows Queen Latifah's "secret" conditioner to the corporate heads of Covergirl in New York, the world is at her fingertips.


Review: I thought this movie was a very inspirational comedy for the person curious about small business. The black stereotypes in this film were oh so very on-point. Birdman plays the local thug, who rolls on 22's and calls all the women "shawdy," while a woman rolls her friend chicken cart into Latifah's hair studio selling to the patrons. Like most other Queen Latifah movies, she plays the large woman in charge influencing everyone and their mother. I watched this movie on BET which completed my cultural experience with commercial breaks featuring Wendy Williams, and Monique pushing their horrible talk shows. Overall this movie made my night, maybe even month. Oh and Alicia Silverstone plays a black woman.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Well You Need a Cell Phone, Right?

You want a new cell phone right? I mean the new technology of cell phones these days can almost compare to that of a computer. Cell phone manufacturers are incorporating wifi, higher megapixel cameras, and fast processors. This new technology can help you when you are away from computer to stay connected. Anyway here my top 5 favorite cell phones that are currently out, not including the iPhone.


Name: HTC Droid Eris
Provider: Verizon
Price: $99.99 New Customer/$99.99 Qualified Upgrade
Change to Plan: Requires $29.99 Smartphone plan feature
Features: This phone has the new Google Android software, an open source operating system with a non apple app store! The Eris has a 5 megapixel camera, that is nothing to write home about, but still allows the user to put filters on the photos for added effect. The browser has html capabilities and can support everything except flash. The phone can function in two ways, touch screen or by the track ball. The touch screen can operate the entire phone, including menu selections, and virtual keyboard. The trackball will only navigate through menu options and selecting things. Google maps, one thing that is amazing on this phone. The GPS locator can find you anywhere you have service, and direct you to your location. This phone can also sync to your google contacts, google calendar, and facebook. It extracts your contacts from both google and facebook into your address book. The android market place I mentioned earlier is the best feature about all of the droid phones. You can download apps that expand the functions of your phone for a small price or for free. The droid phones run applications in the background of the phone, and this can slow your phone down a lot if you don't close them. Advanced Task Killer is a free app on the android marketplace that allows you to close all open applications.

Name: Motorola Droid
Provider: Verizon
Price: $199.99 for new customer/$199.99 Qualified Upgrade
Change To Plan: Requires a $29.99 add on like the Eris
Features: This phone runs the Android 2.0 software and is the only android phone to have this software. The Droid has the highest processor speed of all the android phones also. The phone also features a slick slideout keyboard, for the user that doesn't like touch screens. However, if you want to use the touch keyboard, you can! 5mp camera, wifi, and muchhhhhhh more!!






Name: Palm Pixi
Provider: Sprint
Price: $99.99 for both new customer and qualified upgrade
Change To Plan: The sprint customer must be on the everything data plan, family or single line
Features: Palm has completely re worked their os. The new palm os features their "card" system for browsing. Whenever you open up an application on the phone it becomes a "card," where you can minimize it into the background or simply close it, by sliding your finger over it. The pixi is the second palm phone with this new os, and the first being the Palm Pre. The Pre's slider was very broken and they took back most of them as defects. The Pixi has wifi, touch screen, html browser, and a small app store.




Name: RIM Blackberry Curve 8520
Provider: AT&T or Verizon (Sprint soon)
Price: $49.99 for both new customer and qualified upgrade
Change to Plan: Requires a Smartphone addon for $29.99.
Features: This blackberry is very interesting. It came out about a month ago, and it's only 50 bucks! This new curve still has the old curve keyboard, so if you have the old curve you won't have to adjust to anything new. Research In Motion has pioneered the touch pad on their new blackberrys to replace the trackball. The touch pad works exactly like the touch pad on a laptop. The only drawback to this phone is it runs on the EDGE network on AT&T. Why RIM didn't make this phone 3G capable confuses me. If you can bare the slower internet on this phone, it's amazing for the price. Other features include html browser, wifi, and the Blackberry App World



Name: Samsung Moment
Provider: Sprint
Price: $99.99 for new customers and $179.99 for Qualified Upgrade
Change to Plan: The Sprint customer must also be on the everything data plan like the Palm Pixi
Features: This phone is probably my favorite. It features an OLED screen from samsung with the same HD technology Samsung uses in their light weight high quality televisions. Aside from the screen quality the phone has a slide out keyboard like the Motorola Droid. This phone also runs the Google android software (do you kinda see the trend here?). Like the blackberry this phone has the track pad for laptop-like navigation. Other features include wifi, 3G speeds, facebook and google sync.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

It's That Time of the Year Again


Christmas.

My childhood appreciation for this wonderful holiday has been jaded by working retail. I see first hand how much this holiday has been tainted by consumerism. People just looking for that good buy.

The Best Buy where I work, made a million dollars in one day. One million dollars.

Oregon is in the top 10 for unemployment rates at 11.3 percent, yet people apply for credit they can't pay back. I check peoples credit everyday when activating cell phones and deposits for a cell phone plan can get as high as 1,200 dollars. This means their credit score can be as low as 300. That is scary, I would probably kill myself if my credit was that low.

Best Buy doesn't let its employees request time off from November 20th to Jan 20th. I am flying home for Christmas on Christmas at 10am, and returning on December 26th at 10am. What the fuck.

It almost doesn't seem worth it to me. When I asked my boss for 5 days off during the week of Christmas he asked me, "What do you think the busiest day of the year is?" I said, "Black Friday." Then he asked me, "What do you think the second busiest day of the year is?" I said, "Christmas Eve." He asked, "What do you think the third busiest day of the year is?" I replied, "Day after Christmas." Boss says, "So then no, you can't."

What a dick! He couldn't be sympathetic to the fact I haven't seen my parents during the holidays for 2 years? He had to ask me a series of sarcastic questions. I'm fucking pissed.

Anyway I'm done ranting. I've kept it inside for awhile. This time of year just always puts me in a bad mood. Thanks for listening.

-Rahb

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Breasts

I like you,
The only thing is you vary too much
Everything can be so great when you're amazing
But really
Why are you so sought after
It's skin and fat
But, I like that

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Steven Seagal is Actually a Cop

Imagine getting pulled over by Seagal... apparently he's had a "secret career" as a police officer in a small town in Louisiana for the last 20 years. Soooo when he made a lot of those sick movies he was actually taking a break from his secret job in Real Law Enforcement.

The mind boggles.

http://blog.nola.com/davewalker/2008/11/steven_seagals_secret_life_as.html