Hollywoodistas

I believe the measure of a leader is in their ability to inspire their supporters creatively.

Will.I.Am said of his remix of Obama's New Hampshire speech :

"It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me to be sitting here on ABCNews and making a song from Obama's speech," will.i.am said.

"The speech was inspiring about making change in America and I believe what it says and I hope everybody votes," Dylan said.

I believe the measure of a leader is in their choice to engage supporters as collaborators in the building of a social and political future. The difference between a campaign and a movement is in how people take the political moment as a call to action, regardless of whether the powers that be are there to reward them :

So my writing about All Along The Watchtower is taking me down Bonoville. Prepare yourselves for some fangirling.

I don't remember when I fell in love with U2. All I know is that by the time I hooked up with the father of my children, I already was a rabid fan of the quartet.

The 1980s were not just about corporate greed and yuppies. The height of the war of independence was happening in Ireland with bombings everywhere by the IRA. In Spain ETA was not to be left behind. Central America was covered in the blood of the Iran-Contra war. And in Puerto Rico we had the FALN.

I came to take as "normal" a bombing or two of federal buildings or army equipment at least every 3 months. And there was the molotov coktailing of the paramilitary forces of the island whenever there was a political demonstration. By the time I had made the decision to come to the United States, I ironically made it because I felt that being in the belly of the beast would spare me of the violence and craziness. I really wanted to be as far away of all things political as possible.

Of course, if you are a fan of U2, that's absolutely impossible.

My head is going to explode.

I am actually older than this song.

Urgh.

Goes to tell you how much I don't know about American culture : Even though Jimmy Hendrix immortalized this song, it was actually written by Bob Dylan.

And I just reckoned U2 also did a wonderful cover of it for "Rattle and Hum". OMFG! Do you remember when The Edge had hair!

GACK! I'm officially old.

I actually lay awake, nights on end, disquieting over the possibility that R. Kelly may indeed be the music, film and poetry genius he wants us to believe he is.

Oh shit ... pregnant by a midget ... oh shit.

While I was hanging out in NYU's CLACS department with economists working at the UN Cuban Mission, advisors to the Sandinists, and your run-of-the-mill academia babes and nerds, Puerto Rico was starting to see the bounty that came out of the assimilation wars of the 1980s.

As a teenager growing up in Puerto Rico during the 1980s you had to make a choice between the rockeros or cocolos.

As a rockera, I would have had to hold myself up as an English-only, gringo loving, boricua denying, wanna-be whitey. As a cocola, I would be reaffirming my negritude, paying homage to my family and my country's salsa roots and more importantly, upholding my country's cultural heritage as a Spanish-only creation.

I was one of those, just like the founders of Puya, who didn't see it as an either/or proposition.

Yet this cultural tension was very real and it happened for a very specific historical reason.

This video comes fresh from not South Central but from the hardcore hinterlands of the East Village. The 40 year-old krumper is actually a neighbor of mine. We hang out at the playground while our kids play and shoot the shit for hours talking about everything and anything.

I could not for a million years believe him when he told me he told me he was doing this series of videos where he's teaching himself how to krump. I looked at him and we had a "Wayne's World" moment filled with "ways" and "noways"

I told him I'd check it out but swamped with so much work complete forgot about it. And the, after much thinking about the current congressional session, I needed something to amuse my self with. Instead of Britney, I asked him to send me the URL.

And I saw this ...

Who knew!

So, I'm sitting here checking my email and I am reading one sent by a spokesperson for a couple of First People's tribes and all that pops into my head is "whatever happened to A Tribe Called Quest.

There's a Wikipedia page up for them. That you get their page first instead of MTV, show's how cluless they've been about capitalizing on their importance as an archive of Hip Hop history.

I guess MTV has left it up to VH1 to the heavy historical lifting.

Here's Google's compilation of their discography.

And you can find their MySpace page here.

Why can't hip hop be more like them?

Liberal cry-babies whined about Sally Fields' censored rambling at last the Emmy Awards but somehow completely overlooked the fact that hers was not the only bleeped or blacked out speech at the awards. Kathryn Hagel and Ray Romano come to mind.

Then there's Kathy Griffins' HI-lariously profane speech.

Kathy rocked the house at the 'technical' Emmys award ceremony which happened a week before last Sunday's primetime show. Did she whine about? Hell to the no.

Here she is on Larry King Live loving every moment of it :

Kathy Griffins, FTFingW!

Sally Fields won an Emmy Award last night. Unfortunately, she also won another opportunity to make an ass of herself by making "the statement of the night" at another awards show broadcasted to millions of households across the globe.

I hate it when Sally Fields gets all manic and twitchy, ready for her emotionally retarded speeches. Sally Fields making "a statement" is like listening to a banshee all decked out in felt scratch his nails on a blackboard while chewing styrofoam. Dogs weep when she gets on a podium and starts soap-boxing.

Which is no wonder why people at Fox Networks decided to rather aggressively bleep her ass, blackout the TV screen and force her off the stage. Take a look at how they violently do away with her dignity :

Here's the thing : Sally should have bowed out at 1:28 in this film clip. Had she stopped at that first round of applause, she would have left with a succint speech about the importance of acknowledging the selfless work of all mothers, especially the mothers of those "left in harm's way by war". Had she taken the cue from her peers, she would have walked away with the most profound speech of not just the evening but any awards show in recent memory.