Monday, May 17, 2010

Feelin like The Bay....

without the long flight. So Yesterday I jumped in the whip and drove to New York to check out the infamous SFNY party that my man King Most from San Francisco does in New York, hence the name SFNY. Its basically a party where all the Bay Area heads fly in or actually reside in New York and for one afternoon / evening party. This year Monk One joined King Most on the decks so you know the music was amazing. Monk dropped so many classic dance records on vinyl while most killed the party anthems of old and new. The other thing that made this party specials was its location which was on the rooftop penthouse over looking the city, amazing. While there I got to catch up with alot of peeps that I haven't seen in a minute like Amir, Andre & Mike(Wax Poetics), Geology and a bunch more. This was like a Sex and the City party but for real people!

Rooftop View


Penthouse View w/ King Most on the decks






After that went to dinner with my peeps.


Only in New York on a warm spring day.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Works of Art

There's something about owning a fine piece of art, no matter if its classic film posters, sculptures, or a painting. A few years ago when the economy took a shit a lot of people started to off some of their works to assure that they kept some money in their pockets, well the economy seems to have taken a turn because in the last two weeks three pieces have sold for record breaking amounts. I guess its time to auction off some of those Hot Peas and Butta original works by The 22nd Pupil.

Picasso sold for $106 Million


Michael Chricton's Jasper Johns Flag $28.6 Million


Warhol $32.6 Million


Rare Bullies & Brothels on Canvas. Starting bid $59.99

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Hot Peas and Butta Sunday BBQ's!

The Hot Peas and Butta gang are doing a little something different from our usual outings, we're doing Sunday BBQ's in Brooklyn for your afternoon pleasure! Join myself, DJ Amir and special guest DJ's spin 45's of Funk, Soul, 80's Hip Hop, Latin, and Boogie while the grill smokes up with some tasty treats. What better way to enjoy the Summer?

Monday, May 10, 2010

Agente 007

Getting a few new pieces framed up so that I can rotate the work on my walls. Here's the first which is an Italian Agente 007 aka James Bond 007 Thunderball poster. The picture doesn't do the beauty of this piece justice, you have to really see the detail that the artist put into it.

Frank Frazetta - The Legend

There seems to be so many great people passing away left and right. I just found out that one of my favorite artists Frank Frazetta has passed away today. I always loved Franks work growing up and see and all of the artists he influenced in the comic books such as King Conan and even the artwork that blessed the sides of Vans back in the 70's.


Friday, May 7, 2010

She's still Hot as ever!

You know I love that Hot Peas and Butta shit and Pam Grier is the first lady of the club! She's on a tour to promote her new book "Foxy".

Pam Griers' Collection of Lessons Learned



In her new memoir, “Foxy: My Life in Three Acts” (Hachette Book Group), Ms. Grier, 60, revisits a career that took off in the early 1970s when she became blaxploitation cinema’s first female action hero. She sprang to prominence again in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film, “Jackie Brown,” and she popped up in the 21st century in the groundbreaking Showtime television series “The L Word,” about the lives of lesbians.

“Foxy,” however, reveals a darker personal life, including, for the first time, the details of her sexual assault at 6. It also recounts the diagnosis of cervical cancer Ms. Grier received in her late 30s and the untimely deaths and suicides of family members and friends. There is space, too, for her romances with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who wanted her to convert to Islam), Freddie Prinze (who battled drugs and wanted her to have his baby) and Richard Pryor (who thought she could help save him from drugs).

Why tell her story now? “I’ve had mentors who know of my legacy and family history, along with my career in surviving and falling, crawling and learning, and being very, very open and curious,” she explained. “I said, ‘If I do it, I want it to be a work of lessons learned that I can share with others.’ You seek help. You seek friendship.”

Ms. Grier, who wrote “Foxy” with Andrea Cagan, was sitting in an Upper East Side hotel suite, far from the little Colorado ranch she shares with three dogs and four horses. Her face was unlined, her body curvy rather than Hollywood thin. She laughed easily and often, despite sharing sometimes harrowing details of her life.

She grew up in Colorado, the daughter of an Air Force mechanic and a nurse. It was an era of racial segregation; the family (including two siblings) lived abroad for extended stays, but Ms. Grier considers her “rural sensibility” important to who she is. She said she was taught by her family to “sleep in a tent at night in the rain and go fish for your food in the morning.”

Life was forever altered when, left unsupervised at an aunt’s home, she was raped by two boys. After that she describes a lonely, traumatized childhood.

“I was very quiet,” Ms. Grier recalled, and she stuttered when she did talk. As a young woman, she was the victim of a date rape, she wrote, which led to years in which she tried to play down her prettiness.

“My life is probably more interesting and dangerous than some of the movies I’ve done,” she said.

She came by her steel the hard way, Ms. Grier said. And she referred to some of her biggest 1970s hits to explain how. “My aunt was Foxy Brown, and my mom was Coffy, and we were constantly struggling against disrespect,” she said.

In “Coffy” (1973) she played a nurse who turned to vigilante justice to avenge her little sister’s drug addiction. In “Foxy Brown” (1974) she fought against drugs and other ills.

Once derided as formulaic urban morality tales aimed at black audiences and featuring big helpings of white villainy, several of Ms. Grier’s blaxploitation films are now considered groundbreaking for their depictions of powerful black women.

And it took Ms. Grier’s winning combination of sex, sass and talent to pull it off, said Warrington Hudlin, a producer and the president of the Black Filmmaker Foundation. “She exists in the American imagination in a way that is permanent,” Mr. Hudlin said. “She represents a self-reliant, dynamic female figure that doesn’t have to forgo femininity for potency, for militant power.”

While the story lines were outlandish, Ms. Grier said some of her early films had their roots in the truth of urban life in that era.

“We had won so many aspects of civil rights, but we didn’t have a large enough community to lose people to gun battles and drugs,” she said. “We had to show we had a positive community, too, which was something that didn’t get on the news.”

When it comes to more personal topics, like men, Ms. Grier also aims to convey a lesson: a woman needs to love herself more than she loves a relationship.

“At some point you have to realize you will be walking away from someone you do love,” she said, describing her failed relationships. “But out of love for yourself, O.K.?” While she has never married or had children, Ms. Grier said she still fantasized about her dream wedding.

After years with few big roles, her fortunes were revived by Mr. Tarantino, an avowed fan of blaxploitation and other less-than-exalted movie genres. He took her talent global with “Jackie Brown,” an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel that was tailored for Ms. Grier and includes references to her earlier work.

The film showcased her acting chops and cast her in a more serious light in the film industry. “I owe him at least one child,” she said of her gratitude to Mr. Tarantino.

This year Ms. Grier joined the cast of “Smallville,” the CW science-fiction series, where she plays the brilliant covert agent Amanda Waller.

So now her fans are tweens as well as their grandparents, Ms. Grier said, and they pay attention to what she does. When she played the straight musician and club owner Kit Porter (half-sister of Bette, a lesbian) on “The L Word,” people stopped her in the street to say she helped them connect to gay family members and friends.

Now in the midst of a book tour, Ms. Grier said she felt good, and grateful. Her cancer is in remission. She is shooting a film with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

Staying the course goes back to the book she calls her bible in “Foxy”: “An Actor Prepares” by Constantin Stanislavski.

“He said there’s no such thing as a small role, there’s no such thing as a small heart,” Ms. Grier said. “He said I should approach any role as if it’s my life, and that’s what I did.”

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Today was a good day!

Even after a heavy night of heavy drinking and spinning at my weekly residency at The Walnut Room I still woke up this morning bright and early ready for action. Got some things around the house done including painting the dining room which I've been trying to get around to for a while. And also figuring out which pieces are coming off the walls the make way for something new to hang. While in the middle of painting I get a call from my man Junior to come thru to the Record Breakin offices to grab a copy of the test press for the new Hot Peas and Butta 45! Say no more, let me clean this paint off me and I'll be there in a Grand Master Flash! After giving it a few spins I'm satisfied with the sound quality so I guess its off to be immortalized in all that lovely black vinyl. Cant wait for the release, July 2010 so be on the lookout!