Happy Face / Frowny Face – Nov. Edition

If I’m talking about everything from the intellectual musings of Jermaine Dupri to bloated bouncers being examples of why they’re so disliked it must be Happy Face / Frowny Face, my monthly cheers and jeers column. Enjoy!


Happy Face
Jermaine Dupri - The music mogul recently wrote a fantastic article for The Huffington Post saying something I’ve been writing about for quite a while now, that an album is more than just a collection of singles and that iTunes has become a damaging force in the music industry. He backs everything he says up with a well thought out argument and even includes examples from his own career. Some folks dismiss JD as someone who cultivates kid rappers and singers, but the fact of the matter is some of those kids are still recording today as full grown adults, and one of those kids happens to be one of best R&B artists on the planet. Yep, people tend to forget JD found Usher. Don’t let preconceived notions about the man cloud the message he puts forth, the article is a can’t-miss for all musicians and fans of music.

Timing - After The Makeout Party show on the November 17th a friend and I had quite the mad dash to catch a train. It was just about ten of 1am and we were all parting ways. Two of the friends I met up with at the show lived in New York, while the friend I came with was, like me, a CT resident that needed to catch the train. Seeing the time and knowing we probably would just miss the 1:12am train unless the 6 uptown was sitting right there waiting for us (Lit Lounge is at 2nd Ave and 5th Street) we decided to head into Ray’s to grab a slice. We left with what seemed like plenty of time to spare to catch the 1:49am, and final, train home, a good 25 minutes to go all of five stops on a local. For some reason, though, we couldn’t find the uptown 6, just the downtown. We did, however, find an uptown N train, which could take us to 42nd and then we could grab the 7 to Grand Central. The N Train took its sweet time arriving and we started to get a bit panicked. Once on it I realized the first stop was Union Square and we could catch a 6 train uptown there. Again, there was a wait. The clock read 1:40 when we the 6 finally arrived. The subway pulled in at Grand Central at 1:46am. We ran Carl Lewis style through the station, found the track we needed to be at and rocketed towards our train. The first two cars were closed, but the third was open and we collapsed on the floor. Less than a minute later the train left. The adrenaline rush was fantastic.


Frowny Face
Television Bigwigs - Pay your writers! I don’t blame the television writers for going on strike. They were told they weren’t going to get paid for their work when it hit the internet because a value couldn’t be determined on such things while at the same time those same higher ups were also saying they expected revenues of around half a billion dollars from having said work online. Either it’s worthless and nobody makes any money, or it’s worth half a billion and the writers deserve a nice chunk of it, too. It can’t go both ways. I think Jimmy Kimmel and Ellen DeGeneres, two people I know can be funny, have proved how vital television writers are with their attempts to have the show “go on” sans the scribes; Kimmel at the AMA’s and DeGeneres with her talk show. As a writer I know how often we get underpaid for our craft, so despite wanting new episodes of my favorite shows I completely understand the strike.

Jerky Bouncers – A few weeks ago I went to see my friends Domer and Kats perform at a spot called Club Midway. I’ve been to Midway a bunch of times and it’s usually a dope spot to see a show. I’m cool with the manager there and thanks to my friends being performers I’m usually on the list. Well, on this particular night the show went well, it even ended at a reasonable hour (for us) at around midnight. We all ushered our way out of the club and as we were waiting for one more of our friends to get out the bouncer starts giving us a hard time about where we were standing. He starts yelling at us to move away from the door and stop blocking the sidewalk. Bear in mind nobody was on this street except us. As we moved I jokingly said to a friend “yeah, so many people are trying to get by.” Jerky bouncer guy then walks up to me and says “you! You’re out of here.” And I replied, “yeah, I know, we all are, it’s called leaving.” One of my female friends then proceeded to make fun of the bouncer, as well. I know they don’t make very much money and can be incredibly power hungry, but some bouncers really need to trade in a little bit of their false machismo for a sense of humor.