Candice Swanepoel is pretty fucking substantial….as much as I try to make fun of her being HIV positive, despite being white South African, and thus rich South African and not HIV positive South African, even though she was exported from South Africa like a blood diamond she is, all valuable and cut….I just always fail….because she always wins….and makes me a weak man….I am just mesmorized by her everything….photography tricks or not…. If the Muse pics bore you – I don’t see how they can – but You Know All Fashion High Fashion and thus homo – here’s a video of her on the beach – I love her.
Searching For Sugar Man , which tells the improbable story of how a singer-songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez rose, fell, and found superstardom in what amounts to a parallel universe, is an elegy in several keys. One is clear and familiar: Upon his excited discovery by a noted producer, the music business circa 1969 ate Rodriguez for breakfast, and a talent still acknowledged by his peers went to waste. The second is more personal, and although Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul leaves a distinct and ultimately frustrating berth around the man at the center of his documentary, it becomes poignantly clear that an abbreviated resume and a family to feed didn’t keep Rodriguez from living an artist’s life. And then, perhaps most resonant and abstract, there is the film’s charting of the confluence of circumstances that can create a legend and shape lives – a confluence whose particularities are less and less possible in an information-glutted age. Sugar Man opens with much but fleeting stylistic fanfare. Over a blend of vivid landscapes, a steady-cam tour of bleak and snowy Detroit, moody recreations of key scenes and a neat effect that moves from image to illustration and back, various players (beginning with a Cape Town record-store owner called “Sugar”) recount the film’s heavily fragmented story of a mysterious musician out of Detroit who, South African legend has it, staged “probably the most grotesque suicide in rock history.” Why “South African legend,” you might ask, and the answer is what takes Sugar Man ’s story from sad but common to extraordinary. In many ways that story belongs to the men who stand in for what was apparently a solid chunk of the South African populace in the 1970s, when apartheid was in full swing and the country was under totalitarian rule. A hilarious origin story has an American girl bringing a single Rodriguez album into the country, patient zero-style, with bootlegs and label requests proliferating from there. With sizable cuts from Rodriguez’s two studio albums of Dylan-esque folk rock accompanying them, those men (musicians and music fans) describe how songs like “I Wonder” and “Anti-establishment Blues” sparked something – a glimmer of rebellion, the comfort of fellow feeling – in them. Elsewhere referred to as an “inner city poet,” if Rodriguez’s lyrics lack a certain prosody they are written squarely and straightforwardly in the protest tradition of the time. A grassroots process that had to sidestep censors and a heavily restricted media helped foment a folk hero in the public’s imagination. Rodriguez, we are told, is bigger than Elvis in South Africa, and certainly bigger than the Rolling Stones. His sonorous tenor is sweet but strong and pleasingly clear – somewhere between Cat Stevens and Neil Diamond. Even so, the truth is that, though skilled and even singular, of the songs we hear nothing astonishes or even comes close; a couple sound too dated to be great. But then we’re not supposed to be evaluating his music for signs of greatness, not really. Perhaps under different circumstances, like the ones in South Africa, he might sound different; he would be different. Much discussed is the lack of personal details that fueled the Rodriguez enigma; his mystery was part of what made him great. Bendjelloul upholds that idea, whether he likes it or not, after a rambling exposition of how a couple of amateur Cape Town sleuths finally tracked the very much alive Rodriguez down. Mexican by birth and extremely reticent by nature, Rodriguez is an uneasy interview; we learn more about him just watching his delicate form move down a snow-laden sidewalk like an exotic but flightless, black-coated bird trapped in a crummily ordinary world. Interviews with his three daughters are sweet but a little unsatisfying, and in its final third – which details his triumphant arrival in South Africa and introduction to an adoring audience of twenty thousand – Sugar Man falters. Various threads of the story (including the rather major question of how an estimated half a million records sold resulted in zero royalties) are left to fray. It isn’t clear that the director recognized the most prominent among them: Bendjelloul is enamored not with the deeply organic nature but the novelty of this “instant” success story. And yet Sugar Man is most interesting when it touches on the conditions that combined to draw a cult hero out of some decent music and a generously enabled, imagination-firing mystique. I imagine even the wise and thoughtful Rodriguez himself would insist that more than one man’s third act justice, this is a story about time and a swiftly vanishing context. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
So South African’s don’t appreciate my love for Candice Swanepoels hot fit body, especially when I express that love at the expense of South Africa….focusing on their AIDS rate….cuz I got this email: Love your site but as a South African I have to ask you to stop disrespecting Candice. Every second post is about her which is fine but then we have to hear the same old shit again and again, HIV this HIV that, its getting old bro. Everyone knows you’re an obese American fuck chowing on his McD’s and masturbating on his keyboard, now that’s generalization for you. Go read a fucking encyclopedia before you open your fat lips again. Now, I realize that there are rich people in South Africa, that it is a developed nation, with a strong Diamond and Coal industry. I know that South Africa is filled with hot women who are all capable of being the next Candice Swanepoel, I know there is rich tourism, that Richard Branson has his hand in it, that there are Jews running shit….But that’s not as fun as focusing on the High AIDS rate that I’d love to lick of Candice Swanepoel’s inner thigh while one of her slaves wipes the sweat off my brow before being chased by fucking lions into a tribal hut made of feces….where cannibals try to attack us and rape her…because that’s the South Africa in my head and I like it better than real South Africa….
American Student Doing Research At Jane Goodall Institute In Critical Condition After Chimpanzee Attack This man just learned a horrible lesson about wild animals : Chimpanzees at a sanctuary for the animals in eastern South Africa pulled an American working there into their enclosure, bit him severely and dragged him nearly a half mile (kilometer), according to a paramedic official and local media reports. The man was leading a tour group at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden near Nelspruit, some 180 miles (300 kilometers) from Johannesburg, Thursday when two chimpanzees grabbed his feet and pulled him under a fence into their enclosure, Jeffrey Wicks of the Netcare911 medical emergency services company said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press on Friday. Mediclinic Nelspruit, the hospital where he was taken, said Friday he was in intensive care in critical condition after undergoing surgery Thursday. The man had “multiple and severe bite wounds” and was dragged nearly a kilometer by the chimpanzees, Wicks said. Beeld, a South African newspaper, reported Friday that the man was an American researcher who was giving tourists a lecture at the time of the attack. The tourists were escorted to safety by staff members as the chimpanzees dragged the man out of their enclosure, Beeld reported. The sanctuary’s director fired into the air to scare the chimps away from the man, and then chased the animals back into their enclosure. Beeld reported the man lost part of an ear and parts of his fingers. The international institute founded by renowned primatologist Jane Goodall opened the sanctuary in 2006. It is a home to chimpanzees, which are not native to South Africa, rescued from further north in Africa. Some of the chimpanzees at the sanctuary lost their parents to poachers in countries where they are hunted for their meat, and others were held in captivity in cruel conditions as little more than roadside attractions. In the United States this week, lawyers for Charla Nash, a Connecticut woman who was attacked in 2009 by a friend’s 200-pound chimpanzee, filed papers accusing state officials of failing to seize the animal before the mauling despite a staff member’s warning that it was dangerous. The chimpanzee ripped off Nash’s nose, lips, eyelids and hands before being killed by police. Nash was left blinded, and received life-changing face transplant in 2010. She is still waiting for a successful hand transplant. There’s no getting his ear and fingers back, but we hope this guy is able to make a full recovery otherwise. Hit the flip for graphic photos of Charla Nash before and after the chimp attack and face transplant. WARNING, it’s not a pretty sight.
We got some good soul music for you this Saturday! Nominated for Best International Act at the 2012 BET Awards and named by Essence as Five Unique Artists Set to Change Music in 2012, Lira is releasing her album Rise Again on June 26th. In July 2012, Lira will release her second live in-concert DVD Lira: The Captured Tour – filmed during her sold out 2011 tour in South Africa. The release is expected to be an even larger success than her 2009 telecast Lira; Live a Celebration which was tuned in by nine million South Africans, subsequently the DVD and Africa’s first Blu-Ray went on to secure 4x multi-platinum certification becoming the country’s fastest and highest selling music videodisc, supplanting international diva Celine Dion’s reign at the top: Live in Las Vegas; A New Day. Also in July, Lira makes her cinematic debut as the support lead in the Antonio Falduto directed drama, The Italian Consul, a film centered around the trafficking of girls in Europe. The film will premiere at the Isola del Cinema Festival in Rome, where Lira became only the second African vocalist to grace the Teatro Del Greco stage since Miriam Makeba. In August, Lira’s poignant track “Change it All” will appear as the theme music in Oprah’s Winfrey forthcoming documentary – OWLAG -surrounding her Leadership Academy for Girls based in South Africa which will air on her OWN Network. As part of a new cadre of African artists making waves stateside such as K’Naan, Nneka, and D’Banj, LIRA sees herself as an ambassador of the new Africa: a land where, despite a recent history filled with obstacles, a future brimming with infinite possibilities lies. LIRA feels that this pressure to thrive outside of convention has bred a unique brand of ingenuity that will propel her and her fellow artists to the world stage. “We’re proud of being African, but there’s also a desire to be a part of the world. Part of the way we can raise the consciousness back home is when people see us rise on the world stage. We don’t do it for the individual, we do it for the entire group.” Lira’s newest album drops Tuesday, June 26 and in the meantime you can pick up her latest EP HERE
Not to discredit Genvieve Morton’s title of South Africa’s hottest woman according to FHM South Africa…..but the truth is she’s the only South African who isn’t HIV positive. As a fan of South African woman, because they are some melting pot of fucking hot, for some reason I don’t quite understand, but assume it has to do with rich white European people exploiting poor black natives, making them work their farms and mine their blood diamonds, I mean doesn’t all hot pussy stem from extreme racism in exotic places??? It is nice to see Candice Swanepoel knocked off her ego train by this bustier, hotter according to FHM, Genvieve Morton bitch, cuz I am sure she’s at that point of fucking annoying in her career where she just thinks she is bigger than South Africa…. Especially since Genvieve Morton posts nipple pics on twitter…. but then again so does Swanepoel…I guess it’s part of their culture….nipples, diamonds and HIV….
With the return of Love and Hip-Hop last night on VH1, it’s getting harder and harder to believe how a show without much love or Hip-Hop has this much staying power. Regardless of how you may feel about the monster that Mona Scott-Young has created, the show has generated a cultural impact for better or worse… Continue
Alice Walker, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Color Purple,” says she is refusing to allow an Israeli publisher to release her book in Hebrew , because she believes Israel is an “apartheid” state. In a letter she wrote to the Israeli publisher, Walker characterized Israel’s policies as being “far worse” than the U.S. before civil rights . She wrote: As you may know, last Fall in South Africa the Russell Tribunal on Palestine met and determined that Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories. The testimony we heard, both from Israelis and Palestinians (I was a jurist) was devastating. I grew up under American apartheid and this was far worse. Indeed, many South Africans who attended, including Desmond Tutu, felt the Israeli version of these crimes is worse even than what they suffered under the white supremacist regimes that dominated South Africa for so long. It is my hope that the non-violent BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, of which I am part, will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation. In the past, Walker has voiced even stronger criticism of Israel. Asked last year by Foreign Policy if Hamas was a terrorist group, she answered, “I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves.” We don’t know about this one. Is Walker’s translation boycott creating a group of second-class readers, millions of Israelis plus Jewish Hebrew speakers overseas apparently not worthy of accessing her award-winning book? Is this a sort of apartheid in and of itself? Was this move anti-Semitic or just merely anti-Israel? Or is Walker just making a statement to help bring attention to the problems in Israel/Palestine? Source
Wow! After months of investigations, the City Council of Bastrop, Texas, has decided to let a homeless man named Timothy Yost keep the $77,000 worth of cash and collectible gold coins that he found by the Colorado River earlier this year, Fox 7 News reports. “It means everything to him. He has a whole future ahead of him. He has the opportunity to make plans and have a real future,” Aleta Peacock, Yost’s attorney said after the City Council’s announcement. Yost was washing his feet in the river this January when he spotted the bag full of $100 bills and Kruggerand coins (gold collector coins from South Africa worth more than $1000 each) in a Bastrop park. The homeless man had brought the cash — which was wet — to a bank to trade them in for dry bills. But the bank teller, thinking that a crime might have been committed, called 911. The loot was quickly seized and a lengthy investigation began. According to KVUE.com, Yost has been fighting to reclaim his find from the city ever since. This week, after a long period of uncertainty, Yost will finally be reunited with the money. Bastrop police, with the help of the FBI, have determined that the bag is not linked to a crime and the rightful owner has not been found. Reminiscing over the challenges he’s faced as a homeless man, including having to eat out of a garbage can, Yost told Fox 7 News that he is keen to start a new chapter in his life — complete, of course, with a few new purchases. “I’ve been walking for so long, the first thing I want is a vehicle,” he said. This is such an inspiring story!
