Chris Brown Continuously Villified Because He Hasn’t Earned Any Other Response

Chris Brown has been in the news pretty much nonstop since the Grammy award telecast on Sunday night. He performed twice during the live show and was awarded a Grammy for Best R&B album — but the backlash in the aftermath has been swift. Not only for what many perceive as an award for domestic violence against then-girlfriend Rihanna by his return to the Grammy stage less than five years after the incident, but also for a series of tweets from his fans that extolled the virtues of being beaten by the singer, and now for an idiotic tweet Brown regaled the public with in some sort of “I have a Grammy Now, Eff Off” bit of a self-mutilating PR nightmare. Continue reading →

The 2012 Television Pilot Season: ABC to Save Mandy Moore

What will you be watching this fall? Perhaps you’ll tune into the network that made Sofia Vergara a household name, and by household name we mean in every commercial released within the last year, or so it seems. Modern Family and its continued reign in comedy aside, with the release of the potential 2012-2013 pilot season, ABC is hoping to cash in on fish out of water themes, families, the 99%, and stories that take place in hotels and apartment buildings. Did Donald Trump make a move that we don’t know about? ABC has also undoubtedly decided that they’re more than a network full of irascible families and BFF’s, they’ve got Mandy Moore. Continue reading →

Super Squats: The Perfect Machine

“The body is a perfect machine, only limited by the head,” my old high school weightlifting coach used to say. I laugh at it now, but when I was younger I would imagine myself as a Terminator T-800. )Shout out to the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of my first big influences in weight training.)

The deeper I got into lifting, and the more I started seeing results, the more I begin to understand that saying. There are similarities between man and machine. Like most machines the body is made to work, perform and complete tasks — and requires just as much maintenance.  Continue reading →

Black History Month: Nancy Hicks Maynard

Nancy Hicks Maynard (1946-2008) was the first black woman reporter for the New York Times, to cover hard news. Together with her husband Robert Maynard they were the first and only black publishers of a daily metropolitan newspaper, the Oakland Tribune. Along with seven other journalists, they also founded the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, currently based in Oakland.

Maynard, born and raised in Harlem, paid her dues at the New York Post before she was hired by the Times at the age of 21. While not the first black woman reporter at the Times (that honor goes to society reporter Bernadette Carey), she did up the ante by covering some of the most important news  stories of the day. Continue reading →