How The BET Awards Changed My Life

"In 2011, every road eventually leads to that face."

Hilarious.

This is the moment that Jay Smooth is referring too, the snafu heard round the Internets. But the face does say it all for a lot of things. Well done Jay. Ha! #TiffanyGreenFace

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When She Speaks, You Listen: The Lady Blogga "Something Stinks… Oh, It’s Just the Jersey Shore"

(Photo courtesy of MTV)
Driving across the bridge and into New Jersey yields a horrid smell. Well I was nowhere near there last night and managed to get the same effect. All from a TV show. For the first time, I sat down and watched the MTV masterpiece “The Jersey Shore”.. I have to say, I watched in awe…

Never in my life have I ever been proud to NOT see minorities on a TV show. Actually that is a lie. There is an African American on the show and he is the cast members’ boss, the irony, and they have to report to him. LMAO, sorry...

Anyway. Let me just start by saying that if I was Italian, I would be hella pissed. The Jersey Shore is nothing but an hour long stereotypical depiction of Italian Americans. I am trying to figure out why MTV would even air such a thing in the first place. The characters alone are annoying as hell. They are 8 Italian American strangers put in a house with a big giant Italian flag on the garage and a 'gynormous' Scarface poster on the wall. Let’s not forget the tacky leopard thing on the wall too.

So we have Angelina, J-Woww, Mike, Snooki, Pauly D, Ronnie, Sammi and Vinni. Staten Island, Frankiln Square and the Bronx are where some of these people reside and if you’ve been there, you already know what it is. These folks play into all of the stereotypes… “Affliction” glitter shirts, gelled up hair, pumped-up bodies (I actually appreciated that part...don’t judge me), long acrylic nails, fake tans, obnoxious tones, the whole bit. It’s amazing because while everyone else thinks the show sucks, those who live this kind of lifestyle probably thinks it’s the best thing since candy.

The women on this show are super-de-duper obnoxious. Snooki needs a muzzle. She doesn’t shut up for a second. Angelina is an attention whore who leaves the house because of her married boyfriend. J-Woww and her tattered blond streaks is a dirty party girl who cheats on her boyfriend (and I can call her dirty because she was wearing the T-Shirt). Sammi is a closet freak, or so it appears. The fellas are surprisingly not so bad. The only real male irritation is Mike...he uses the word “situation’ more than he blinks his eyes. I can list their vocabulary on a gum wrapper citing the words “Yo”, “Situation”, “ova here” multiple times.

Now although I swore not to watch this garbage ever again, next week, a NYC gym teacher commits an assault on one of the characters. Snooki gets man-punched in the face something terrible. It was not a punch, she gets SNUFFED!!! Now I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that a teacher created such a crime or that MTV aired it after the fact. I am slowly but surely thinking that MTV is becoming the white counterpart of BET. The crap that they have been putting on the air is not even quality. It is hot garbage! They should have just stuck to music.

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Aaliyah ... 8 Years Later

Man, I remember exactly where I was when I got the news that Aaliyah died. I was laying on the couch in my mother’s house and my two way pager (yes, the Motorola two-way, which I guess was the original text messaging) went off. I was getting a news alert about Aaliyah. The message said that the young singer was involved in a plane crash. I was shocked. I immediately turned to MTV (back when MTV actually talked about music more regularly) and surely they were reporting her tragic death. I flipped over to BET and watched AJ and Free (yep, back when 106 & Park was decent) talk about Aaliyah, with different people calling in to talk about how they felt. It was sad. She has another young artist cut down during a rise. At the time I was publishing a small entertainment newsletter, so I started working on a piece, as my phone and pager went off for the next few hours with people calling to ask me if I had heard the news.

I still can’t believe it eight years later. We’ll never really know her full potential as an artist or what her overall contribution to music would have been. Over the last few weeks I’ve discussed with folks online what things would be like in music had Aaliyah not died in that plane crash. I don’t necessarily think that the landscape of female artists would have changed much, but perhaps Aaliyah would have just been a dominating force on the scene. What do you think?

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TELL 'EM WHY YOU MAD: Tha Lady Blogga on Black Embarrassment Television

I am not a watcher of BET for various reasons. But due to the untimely passing of Michael Jackson, the BET Awards were supposed to be a celebration of Michael Jackson. So I decided to put those reasons to the left and watch in his honor.

Well…

Let me start with the Red Carpet Pre-Show. During the Red Carpet Show, it was just a debauchery of performances for the no talent artists we rip-apart daily. Let’s start with the grammar and overall hosting presentation of Rocsi a.k.a. Wrecksi, Terrance and Toccara. I think that if you are going to host a show, there should be mandatory protocol that needs to be followed. First of all, you need to speak proper English. Tocarra was a total embarrassment when speaking to the guests on the red carpet. So was Terrance. He referred to Illinois as “Illinoise” and did it with such confidence. Wrecksi was her usual ghetto self and she was “shouting out” and “hollering” at people every chance she got. All of which would be acceptable if they were on the set of 106 and Park (aka 106 & Playground). But as the nation was tuning in, CNN was covering and just the fact that it was supposed to be an awards show, these red carpet hosts should have stepped their game up.

The red carpet performances were like one big amateur night at the Apollo. Actually, I would have appreciated the talent of the folks at the Apollo much better. On the Red Carpet stage were the talentless acts Pleasure P, Jeremih, Beyonce clone Latoya Locket, New Boys (Whoop?), Day 26 (Whaaaaat?) and another group of instructional dance singers/rappers that I don’t even remember. Once Day 26 won the “Best Group” award over “The Roots”, my capacity for remembering any of this nonsense was out the window.

The show was supposed to be a tribute to Michael Jackson (at least that’s the hype BET went into it with). Jamie Foxx was on his usual BS. He cracked his usual jokes and changes into a new Michael Jackson outfit between acts. I can’t say that I liked it but given the situation, people needed to laugh. While listening to some people sing his MJ songs, I only hoped that he would walk out on the stage and tear it up. But he wasn’t going to. It was awful. Listening to their performances only saddened me and made me miss him more. I know they only had three days to prepare but they could’ve done a better job. I mean, I didn’t expect anything more. This is BET for goodness sake.

The whole beginning of the show was about Michael Jackson. The opening act was all about New Edition. While they had all the Jackson 5 dance moves down, their singing was washed up completely. Bobby Brown even played the role as Tito, he gained like an extra 150lbs and looked awful on stage. He went as far as to do the lip licking thing in the camera… TACKY!! Ne-Yo (who came to the show with an extra from “Candy Girls” and claimed her as his girlfriend…*side eye*) came out and sang “Lady in My Life” and THANK GOD!!! Finally some quality sound. Ciara sang “Heal the World”. And she really shouldn’t have. She did the song no justice. I can’t understand why they didn’t let these artists stay within their range and sing up-tempo songs. The ballads they tried to accomplish were just… Uggghhh.

As the show progressed, we forgot about Michael and had to endure other stuff. I guess because this was such a closely watched event, Jay-Z felt it necessary to make an appearance singing “Death of Auto-Tune”. I am almost positive he wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. While the song is beginning to strike me as lame, his stage performance was not the usual. He finally got a haircut and he was actually unusually energetic. I’ve seen Jay in concert a few times so I am used to his usual dead stick performance.

I mean, I wasn’t surprised at the sloppiness and unprofessional put together show. I especially loved the bad timing of the censor button pusher, who censored the “bad word” after it was already said… And I think he just gave up after awhile because Eddie LeVert managed to say “shit” with no problem. Speaking of LeVert, it was great to hear the O’Jay’s. Real music sounds good and I hope the new breed of whiners and crooners had their notepads out.

There were many things just wrong with this awards show. I could have listed many other singers to have put together meaningful tributes to Michael. I am annoyed that Chris Brown was not a part of the show. Rumor has it that he was not included because of his recent rift with Rihanna. Well there were plenty of alleged woman beaters on the stage last night so that can’t be the reason. Aaron Hall, Bobby Brown, Don Cornelius… And these are all respectable men??

Let’s not forget the ridiculous run of the advertisements for the “Frankie and Neffe” and “Tiny and Toya” shows that made me want to vomit. Who is going to watch that garbage?! Who cares about washed up celebrity relatives? I know I don’t.

The BET Awards show just confirmed what I already knew. That channel needs to be canceled from my cable package immediately. I thought they would have stepped up and actually made themselves look good. Instead, it was a mockery of our culture and music and I am thoroughly embarrassed. I have never known Michael Jackson to be a “friend” to BET. I guess because he’s black and they are a black network, it only seemed right. If Michael Jackson were alive, guaranteed, he would not have been watching that bullshit last night.

TELL 'EM WHY YOU MAD: The Way it Shouldn't Be...

Word has it that Keyshia Cole's BET reality series "The Way It Is" won't be back for another season, yet her mom Frankie and sister Neffe may be coming back for a spin off series on the network. Apparently the show will focus on the growth and independence of the ridiculous mother-sister duo. Shoot me. Black Entertainment Television fails to put positive networking on television time and time again. While Frankie and Neffe are hilarious and their antics ridiculous to watch, they set black women back decades with their ignorance. 

Memo to BET ... make better programming decisions. Seems like the only DVDs they own are Color Purple, Lean on Me and Soul Plane and then they offer crap like Hell Date and College Hill as their original programming. Damn, remember the days of Video Soul and Teen Summit? 

Decline ... sad.

 

 

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