Google Analytics made me cry

Should I be insulted that according to Google Analytics, the #1 Keyword redirecting people to my blog is “Rasputia?”

Yes, THAT Rasputia.

A few years ago I did a post about an encounter I had with an audience member who called me Rasputia as an insult, but nearly 3 years later I’m a little worried that so many people are finding me via that keyword. My hope is that these folks were just looking for photos or video clips of that character… But what if they couldn’t remember my name and they Googled “that comedian that looks like Rasputia” and my name came up.

Wait. Hold on while I Google that to see what it yields…

OK. My name didn’t come up. But I’m still feeling some kind of way that ‘Erin Jackson’ is only 4th in the list of names that brings people to my site. Exhale. I guess I should be happy with the site traffic no matter where it comes from.

I need ice cream. :(

Ain’t this a bleep??!?

This morning a girlfriend of mine posted a message on my Facebook wall telling me she saw a photo of me in a Facebook ad for preschool teachers. I was like “Whaaaaaa?”. She tried to send it to me but eventually I found it on my own. As you can see, it’s a photo of me and Nia Long from Black Girls Rock! Not sure what that has to do with teaching, and more importantly I can’t believe they just ganked one of my pics and used it for their ad.

But then I started thinking: There have been times where I’ve seen very familiar faces in some of those dating ads, but I just figured the person just looked a LOT like someone I know. Now I’m wondering if my friends weren’t really in those ads. A friend said she saw her married best friend in a single’s ad once… In any other situation using my likeness or especially Nia’s likeness to advertise a product or service would be a prosecutable offense but I’m pretty sure I agreed to it in all the FB small print in the terms and conditions.

The Internet can really be a scary place. I love how I can find just about anything online, but for everyone who uses the Web for good, there’s a person (or 10) who uses it for evil. So glad I’ve never posted any inappropriate photos online anywhere. This particular ad is harmless, but I can only imagine how many unauthorized images of me might have been manipulated and posted around the Web. No one has the right to misrepresent me or make money off my likeness. But if I find out I’m a big star in Japan or something, maybe I wouldn’t be too mad at that.

Sweating and Sweaters… oh and also I hate your flipping banjo

I did a holiday party last nite in southern Maryland and I was/am sick. **pouty lip** So I decided to have a drink of bourbon before I hit the stage. Haha, I say that as if I need to give you guys an excuse for why I was drinking bourbon. Bourbon is my friend… Well, after my drink I was still feeling yuck, so I asked for a cup of tea. But the bartender said what I needed was a hot toddy. I’d never had one before, but after she told me it was just hot tea, whiskey and honey I could not argue with her.

It sounded like exactly what I needed.

“You’ll break out into a sweat halfway thru,” she said. And man was she right. Plus I had on a turtleneck sweater. I felt like I was erupting, and imagined what I was experiencing was — in a Dickensian sorta way — the ‘ghost of hot flashes future.’ The show went really well although they didn’t have a microphone and I had a porcapine in my froat. But I was sweating so much I think my skin actually looks better today. Whiskey facials — try one.

Well after I was done the organizer asked me to hang around in order to judge their Ugliest Christmas Sweater contest. When they made the call for contestants, the woman in the photos below immediately came forward. And upon seeing her, everyone else promptly turned back around and headed for their seats…

Front

Back

The undisputed champ, right? Unification title and urrything…

Well, some of the other women were kinda disappointed that there wasn’t even a vote. And I felt for them. I too was disappointed… that I didn’t get to make fun of people’s clothes to their face. And I mean, sure the champ worked super hard to make whatever garment is underneath all those baubles look that bad (she sewed synthetic hair and tinsel to the damn thing). But there were several women there wearing some genuinely atrocious sweaters. Without all the arts and crafts.

It was kinda like being in a comedy contest where all the comics onstage before me used props, or juggled, or played some dumb ass catchy song on their banjo to get cheap, easy laughs. And I just showed up with a bunch of clever, well-written jokes…

Or maybe it’s nothing like that. Maybe I just really hate all those things and I wanted to sh*t on people who do them because this is my blog and I can.

Either way… congrats to the winner.

Basketball, Burgers & Bammas

I went to a Wizards game a few weeks ago and saw one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen. Admittedly, I’m grossed out pretty easily, but I think some of y’all will agree with me. And if that glowing promo didn’t do it for you — watch for my involuntary use of the word ‘lunchin.’ In my 14 years living in DC I’ve managed to keep that word out of my vocabulary. Well, it seeped in somehow, and now I’m worried that it’s here to stay… Also the wild turkeys from a few blogs back make an appearance. And my friend Alicia — who is going to kill me for this video since the only two clips of her in it are of her screaming at the top of her lungs… I think maybe I’m just not gonna tell her about it.

Don’t you tell her either.

Split Peeve Soup

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

What an awful title for a blog…

Moving on, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people buy coats, jackets or skirts with splits but don’t cut the string that holds the split together before they wear it out. I was standing next to this lady waiting for the Bolt Bus on Tuesday and I just wanted to rip open the bottom of her coat… I just don’t understand how you get to be an adult without realizing this little cross stitch is made to be broken.

My friend Shayla told me she had a wool winter coat for 3 years and didn’t know it had pockets because she never cut the string. She was finally schooled by a co-worker while she was complaining about her coat with the faux pockets. She said she thought it was her penance for buying a coat on über clearance at Burlington…

Exhale.

What do they think that one little “X” stitch is for? If it breaks on its own, do they take it to the cleaners to have it repaired? Aren’t they even curious about why the coat or skirt has a closed split in the first place? I swear I wonder if these folks gloves are still attached to the matching scarf — just dangling around their necks…

I think if I were a superhero, my skill would be to swoop in on people undetected and cut the binding thread on their clothing garments. Maybe it wouldn’t make the world a better place, but it’d sure cut down on the number of times per day I wanted to shout at strangers… Which would be super.

#CutTheDamnString
#LetsStartAMovement
#OCD
#FeelFreeToJudgeMe

P.S. I will be headlining the DC Improv December 29-31. Come on down and ring in the New Year with me!!!

Ticket Info:
12/29 & 12/30: http://tinyurl.com/2et7aam

12/31 (NYE): http://tinyurl.com/27x59at

Bad Movies and Bullsh*t Morality

This movie is so bad Vivica Fox decided to use an alias.

Which says a lot considering she was in Juwanna Man, Booty Call, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood — I could go on but do I really need to? I wish I had taken a photo of the first screen of the description of this movie. It said something to the effect of “Combining the best aspects of Beauty Shop and Barbershop, this film…” Exhale. Not only does it fall short of honoring these — what in comparison to this movie seem like — cinematic masterpieces, it tries way too hard to tackle way too many societal issues. I didn’t watch from the beginning, but in the time I was watching the characters addressed:

  • Corruption within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  • Why it took being demeaned by Billy Bob Thornton for a Black woman to win an Oscar
  • The unfairness of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
  • Gay bashing
  • Domestic and emotional abuse
  • Women who “use their bodies as commodities” in order to get expensive gifts
  • A history lesson on the contributions of Black inventors to American society.

Oh, and there were pimps and ho’s too.

It was 10x preachier than any Tyler perry movie or sitcom episode — if that’s even possible. I kept expecting Keenan Ivory Wayans to pop out of nowhere and scream “Message” in the middle of the scenes like he did here:

And if all that contrived morality weren’t bad enough, there were White women getting their hair cornrowed in the salon.

Nooooooooo…

In conclusion, this mess of a movie was 92 minutes too long.

That is all.

I’m wit cha, Miss Sophia a.k.a. Why Terrance Howard should just quit

On Monday, Oprah (Winfrey — in case you were wondering which Oprah I was talking about) had the entire cast of The Color Purple on her show. As a person who looks for ways to incorporate quotes from this classic into everyday conversation as often as possible, I was in heaven! Oprah is just showing off this last season — I can’t take it.

But I digress.

There are tons of great quotables in this film, but I think the scene below is one of — if not THE — most memorable scene from TCP:



OooohWeeee!!! Her emotion is palpable.

Well. This morning I was subjected treated to the trailer for the new movie “Winnie” based on the life of Winnie Mandela and starring Jennifer Hudson as the lead. And… Terrance Howard as Nelson Mandela? Word? For reals? I’m saying — I’m all for equal opportunity employment, but motion picture casting probably isn’t the ideal field for the visually and aurally impaired.

Please watch this trailer. PLEASE??!??? And we’ll discuss on the other side.

OK… So. OK… OK.

First off, have the people who made this film ever laid eyes on Nelson Mandela??!?? And secondly, was his South African accent not the absolute worst you’ve heard like EVER? Geez Louise, I’m baffled by the way actors and musicians from other countries can lock down the American accent to the point where you can’t even believe they’re not American when you hear them speak — Toni Colette, Idris Elba, Chiwitel Ejiofor, etc. But when American actors try to do any other accent it sounds utterly ridiculous.

Seriously, after the first day of shooting I can’t understand why they continued making this movie. I guess Jenny has enough Oscars already — so why not… But if I were directing or financing this film I’d have watched Terrance Howard’s first set of dailies and thrown in the towel. And then I would have beat the crap out of him with it like Joe Jackson did in “The Jacksons: An American Dream” for wasting my time and my money. I could go on and on about how bad this is gonna be, but I will simply leave you with this:

“I loves Jennifer Hudson, God knows I do. But you’d have to kill me dead ‘fore I go to the theatre to see this mess.”

Post Script: I have already vowed that I will not watch a single episode of “Law & Order LA” unless or until Terrance grows a mustache. It’s just unnatural for a grown ass Black man.

Amen.

F the Police indeed…

So last nite I had to drive from DC to Orange County, New York to do a show at SUNY Orange. About 10 miles out from the hotel I got an e-mail that I needed to read. So I pulled over to the side of the road like Oprah told me to. I put my hazards on because it was a dark stretch but there were lots of trucks out so I wanted to make sure anyone who might need to pull off the highway could see me sitting there.

As I was reading a car pulled up behind me. Turns out it was a state trooper patrol car. But they never put on their red and blues, and they just started shining the flood light on me so I couldn’t see who/what they were. So being a single woman on a deserted highway and there being nothing to indicate they were police, I shifted the car into drive and get ready to pull off. I didn’t know if it was a trucker coming to kill me or what. But as I start to try to pull away, I hear someone banging on my passenger side door and I floor it. Still can’t see its a cop cuz I’m blinded and they haven’t said anything (don’t they have speakers in those cars?). But then the one in the car moved the flood light and I can now see there’s a cop standing outside my passenger side window with his gun drawn. He yells for me to roll down the window and then yells, “What are you doing? You could have run me over!” And I said, “Well I couldn’t see you because of the light and I’m by myself…” Showed him I was just reading an email while NOT driving — per the law. But the reality is: to him it looked like I was fleeing. To me it felt like I was being attacked… It could have all ended terribly. I know someone who lost their life to a cop in this very same way 10 years ago. Exhale.

When I got to my hotel I called the NY State police to complain. I watch enough TV to know that there had to be a lapse in protocol here. I mean, no lights… no identifying themselves as cops before they approached the car… The officer I spoke with on the phone gave me a lot of party line crap about how the officers are worried about their safety too and how their job is to assists motorists in trouble… Fine. I get all that. But they did nothing that would indicate they were law enforcement officers. She ASSURED me that I just didn’t see their siren lights. And I ASSURED HER BACK that she wasn’t f–ing there and that those lights were the first thing I looked for. Why would I want to unnecessarily be scared out of my mind?

Bottom line is this could all have been avoided if they had on their red and blues… I am beyond thankful it played out the way it did. But I do feel as if I’ve become a member of a new club — the “F” the police club. Like far too many people I know, I now know what if feels like to be looking at the ‘business end’ of a policeman’s gun. I was way too young to identify with this song when this song came out, but now I kinda do:

Pardon the language… but surprisingly there’s no radio edit available for “F*** Tha Police.”

Moving on… In honor of my new member status I was thinking maybe I should bring back my Jheri Curl…

Or at least buy some 40’s and learn how to play dominoes.

Have any of you ever had any really bad/scary encounters with the police? Exhale.