Diary Of A Mad Filmmaker

The N word

2011-05-26T04:05:00.002-04:00

nigger |ˈnigər|
noun offensive
a contemptuous term for a black or dark-skinned person.
ORIGIN late 17th cent. (as an adjective): from earlier neger, from French nègre, from Spanish negro ‘black’ (see Negro ).
USAGE The word nigger was used as an adjective denoting a black person as early as the 17th century and has long had strong offensive connotations. Today it remains one of the most racially offensive words in the language. Also referred to as 'the n-word,' nigger is sometimes used by black people in reference to other black people in a jocular or disparaging manner, or some variant in between (in somewhat the same way that queer has been adopted by some gay and lesbian people as a term of self-reference, acceptable only when used by those within the community).

This uneducated kid kept calling me the N word. He wanted to fight me, I spat in his face! I know, I should have walked away but sometimes, you anger takes over your common sense and I should have known better.

until next time

M

My Birthday..... May 18th

2011-05-26T03:56:00.003-04:00

I had a great birthday.
I hung out at Disneyland and ate dinner at House of Blues.
I had a good time.....
I hope to be around another 365 days to celebrate my date of birth again next year.

till next time

M

wow

2011-05-17T19:12:00.004-04:00

LAWD HAVE MERCY.....
Stacy Dash is so f*********** fine!!!!
I like me some Kat Dennings but Stacy Dash is ummm Stacy Dash.
She posed nude in Playboy. I wonder if she would be nude in a feature I direct?

It doesn't hurt to ask.

till next time

M

WTF

2011-05-16T12:42:00.003-04:00

OK, SO I WAS SEARCHING FOR FOOTAGE ON THIS HARD DRIVE BY THE PREVIOUS EDITOR WHO DID NOT LABEL ANY FUCKING THING. SO, I FOUND THIS FOOTAGE HE HAD MADE WITH THE DIRECTOR'S CAMERA.

WTF!!!!!!!

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO SCRATCH YA HEAD AT FOLKS.

ENOUGH SAID

Variety Reviews - The Tree of Life - Film Reviews - Cannes - Review by Justin Chang

2011-05-16T12:34:00.000-04:00

Variety Reviews - The Tree of Life - Film Reviews - Cannes - Review by Justin Chang

2011-05-16T12:27:00.002-04:00

Awww Monday morning..... Another week of editing, writing, re-editing and re-writing. How does one fit all of this in their schedule and try to play hoops too? I don't know but I enjoy life and I somehow will get all of things accomplished in my schedule.

Have a great weekend everyone.

I rewrote the first 51 pages of my Noir script this weekend and it flows much better.

Till next time.... stay creative.

M

Kat Dennings Part Deux

2011-05-14T02:02:00.003-04:00

Seriously, I don't know what it is about this woman but she is beautiful to me. Not as fine as Monica Belluci but Kat is fine!

Kat Dennings

2011-05-13T18:01:00.002-04:00

I have a major crush on this chick.

Priest Screening

2011-05-13T17:09:00.003-04:00

Okay, last night in Hollywood, I saw Priest in 3-D. What a fucking rip off! Dear Sony, seriously this film did not have enough effects to be in 3-D. What a fucking rip off! But you wanna read something funny? I saw the film for free. I cannot get back my 90 minutes of my life but if I could, I would be first in line for a refund.

Bad Film.....

BTW

Maggie Q is Fine!!!!!

Trailer

2011-05-05T03:19:00.003-04:00

I saw this trailer for this film. I was so impressed... I know there black filmmakers like myself who want to create different visuals stories but Hollywood keeps telling us it cannot be done. That's bullshyt!!!!

It can be done..... we just have to market films ourselves.

Who is with me?!?

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/submarine/

Script Frenzy

2011-04-14T15:09:00.002-04:00

30 days, 100 pages.
I am writing a crime drama for my entry in this contest. So far, I am on page 42. I am few pages back from scheduled pace, but I am not going to write a half ass script just to say I wrote 100 pages in 30 days.

I want this story to be sold.

Nuff said....

I love it

2011-03-29T19:02:00.002-04:00

Even though I am now in my mid 40's and not supposed to play against men half my age. I still play and still outplay them most of the time. Sometimes, I am a step slow or someone scores, I know I'm human but I still outplay people half my age and will not stop playing ball until my body says "enough!"

Till next time....

Damn... I need to post more

2011-02-10T16:37:00.003-05:00

I am proud of my childhood friend, Andre Seewood. This brother grew up in a tough neighborhood and always strived to educate himself. He now speaks fluent French and is an author. Yeah, we might have a few disagreements every now and then but he is my friend and I appreciate that continues to work hard to make himself better. That's what life is all about. I have a meeting at five pm today. Meeting with a producer to help me make a new short.

I miss directing and I am grateful to have another opportunity to do so.

Till next time

Creative Freedom

2010-11-23T19:54:00.003-05:00

I wanted to post a sequence of the documentary I am editing but the file is too big. I do know the first five minutes will sink it's hooks into you and as the viewer, you will want to know more about Tiffany Persons and her mission in Sierra Leone.

So, I have the first six minutes done.

Now, I have 98 more to go.

It will get done.

Till next time

HOW I BECAME THE EDITOR FOR A STORY OF A VILLAGE

2010-11-04T14:56:00.003-04:00

A few months ago in Los Angeles, I ran into a mutual friend. We talked about show business and life. I asked him about the footage he shot for a documentary in 2007. He told me, "the editor never put any of the footage together. He made a trailer and used the computer we got him for his own personal gain." That's too bad.... I replied and then offered my services to edit the documentary.

Yes, I have edited my short films and became an efficient self taught editor but I am always looking for opportunities to grow in the craft. This is a huge challenge, but I did not back away from the offer. "I'll edit this film."

So, after two months of organizing footage on my computer. (yeah, I bought a used G5 off ebay.... so far so good) I am back to being creative. It feels good and I just put together the first minute of the film.

Hollywood is about who you know but it is also about making your own opportunities. I am making mine.

I have a long ways to go..... but I am on that path..... moving forward.

till next time

Welcome Back Marlon

2010-09-21T13:12:00.003-04:00

Okay, it's been awhile. A long time since I have expressed myself in blogs. Yes, I know... many of you felt I fell off the planet since the theft. In all actuality..... I did. People all of the time tell me that I have to move on but how do you move ahead after dealing with such a loss?

Yeah, I know material items come and go. Of course you can rebuild but how do you do it when are your resources are take away?

You can pray.... or you can do something about.

So for the past three years, I have been doing something about it. Slowly but surely, I have worked on several television shows and put money to the side to restart my foundation.

I am close and I will no longer complain about the items, memories and work that was stolen from me. I will just move forward.... In the pictures above, you can see that rebuilding has started and I have a long ways to go but I am moving in the right direction.

peace

New Decade, New Journeys

2010-01-19T15:40:00.004-05:00

It's been awhile and I am sorry that I have been away so long. Sometimes, you have to take a break and do some soul searching. That's what I have been doing since January 11, 2007. The day I lost everything to theft. All of those years of hard work down the drain. Yes, I still anger but finally it's time to move on.

RAISING MONEY FOR A INDEPENDENT FILM

2009-04-15T13:58:00.003-04:00

Hello,

It's been awhile since I have posted a blog. I have been busy rebuilding my life. After losing all of my items to theft, I just really did not have the creative spirit to write anything. I have done my soul searching and I cannot allow a group of thieves robbed me of my dream, making films.

I want to movies. I beleive this is my God's given talent. To create stories, that will makes display emotions. This is important to me and I need your help. If you can send a donation to my pay pal account: marlon@marlonreid.com.

I will keep everyone posted.

THE FILM I AM PLANNING TO SHOOT:

ESPIRT DE LE'SCALIER (THE MOMENT YOU KNOW) is a collection of ten short stories that chronicle a pivotal moment in the lives OF ten people who have contracted the HIV virus and how they and their loved ones respond to the devastating news.

The seemingly disconnectedness of each character's story emerges into one socially relevant, thought provoking and emotionally breathtaking film.

ROMEO, a sexually active playboy tries to find religion while awaiting his results during a 20 minute rapid HIV test.

SWEETIE, A distraught single mother receives a letter from the Center Disease Control notifying her she is HIV positive and she drives off to CONFRONT the person responsible.

TALK RADIO, A vengeful Asian woman calls a conservative radio host KNOWN for his condemnation views of HIV positive people and homosexuals. His views are challenged when he finds out the woman has contracted the disease after being raped and is purposely infecting unknowing partners.

HARAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT, A 15 minute segment deals with a young, African-American male and his family's reactions to his announcement over dinner.

THE SCARLET LETTER, Richard Wilson goes to Sao Paulo, Brazil and meets a Brazilian woman during a festival. After having unprotected sex, the next morning he awakes to having something written in Portuguese on his chest, "I have given you Aids." Now, he searches around the village where they met to find her.

SUNSHINE, A 13 year old Hispanic girl born with HIV, raised by her God parents, reaches puberty without the knowledge of her status. She is pursued by the neighborhood high school playboy, who has his own plans for her.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY PART 1, Olivia Stovall is organizing a surprise birthday party for her husband of 32 years. Those plans are derailed by a letter from the Center of Disease control.

THE BAR: DON'T TOUCH THAT PHONE
A dejected Romeo decides to drink his problems away. Those plans are halted by the arrival of a mysterious woman and a cell phone that keeps on ringing.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY PART 2, Oliva Confronts her husband Hubert Stovall about the letter from the CDC and both parents are surprised by the announcement from their son, Hubert Jr.

THE VIRGIN
Danya, 21, is vibrant, funny, intelligent girl who is uncomfortable with her sexuality. Barry, 45, has been pursuing her since she was underage and after submitting to his sexual advances, Danya is shocked to find out that he is HIV positive.

Each segment will be shot in a different film/video formats:RED CAMERA, SUPER 16MM, 35MM, MINI DV and FLASH ANIMATION.

So, if you want to send a donation.... PLEASE DO!
ANYTHING WILL HELP.....
PAYPAL ACCT: MARLON@MARLONREID.COM

M

THE WHITE LIE

2008-10-25T00:04:00.001-04:00

THE WHITE LIE AKA THE BULLSHIT OF BLAMING BLACK PEOPLE!!!!
See, this has happened all of the time during this country's history.
Blame the black man and get the masses riled up!
when it's you (white person: male or female) who did the FUCKING crime.

REMEMBER: BOSTON

Charles Stuart????
This low life killed his pregnant wife. He told police three black thugs mugged him and shot his wife after she did not give up any ass or money.

Boston almost had a riot on it's hands.

Well, I cannot recall the trashy bitch from North Carolina, who was a WELFARE MOTHER (Yes, white people are on welfare too) who drove her four kids into the lake. They drowned and she cried on television saying she was carjacked by a black teen.

Now, I am not saying because I am a black male that people of color do commit crime, but some shyt is wrong and this story goes along with the above samples of the WHITE LIE OF BULLSHIT!

AP
Police: McCain volunteer made up robbery story
By JOE MANDAK, Associated Press Writer Joe Mandak, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 23 mins ago
Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, right, AP – Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, right, is buckled into a police …

PITTSBURGH – A McCain campaign volunteer made up a story of being robbed, pinned to the ground and having the letter "B" scratched on her face in what she had said was a politically inspired attack, police said Friday.

Ashley Todd, 20-year-old college student from College Station, Texas, admitted Friday that the story was false, said Maurita Bryant, the assistant chief of the police department's investigations division. Todd was charged with making a false report to police, and Bryant said police doubted her story from the start.

Dressed in an orange hooded sweat shirt, Todd left police headquarters in handcuffs late Friday and did not respond to questions from reporters. The mark on her face was faded and her left eye was slightly blackened when she arrived in district court.

Todd was awaiting arraignment Friday on the misdemeanor false-report charge, which is punishable by up to two years in prison. She will be housed in a mental health unit at the county jail for her safety and because of "her not insignificant mental health issues," prosecutor Mark Tranquilli said.

Todd initially told investigators she was attempting to use a bank branch ATM on Wednesday night when a 6-foot-4 black man approached her from behind, put a knife blade to her throat and demanded money. She told police she handed the assailant $60 and walked away.

Todd, who is white, told investigators she suspected the man then noticed a John McCain sticker on her car. She said the man punched her in the back of the head, knocked her to the ground and scratched a backward letter "B" into her face with a dull knife.

Police said Todd claimed the man told her that he was going to "teach her a lesson" for supporting the Republican presidential candidate, and that she was going to become a supporter of Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Todd told police she didn't seek medical attention, but instead went to a friend's apartment nearby and called police about 45 minutes later.

Todd could provide no explanation for why she invented the story, police said. The woman told investigators she believes she cut the "B" onto her own cheek, but did not provide an explanation of how or why and said she doesn't remember doing so, police said.

Police said the woman reported suffering from "mental problems" in the past, and that they do not believe anyone put her up to the act.

Tranquilli said Todd will remain jailed over the weekend pending a psychiatric evaluation, which won't happen until Monday at the earliest.

The Associated Press could not immediately locate Todd's family.

Bryant said somebody charged with making a false report would typically be cited and sent a summons. But because police have concerns about Todd's mental health, they are consulting with the Allegheny County District Attorney.

Todd worked in New York for the College Republican National Committee before moving two weeks ago to Pennsylvania, where her duties included recruiting college students, the committee's executive director, Ethan Eilon, has said.

"We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit, Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions," College Republican National Committee spokeswoman Ashley Barbera said in a statement. (UH HUH... SURE YOU ARE)

Police reported Todd's claims Thursday, as a photo of her injuries made it onto numerous blogs and news sites. By Friday, police said they had found inconsistencies in Todd's story. They gave her a lie-detector test, but wouldn't release the polygraph results.

Police interviewed Todd after she contacted police Wednesday night and again on Thursday, Bryant said. They asked her to come back Friday, ostensibly to help police put together a sketch of the man. Instead, detectives began interviewing her.

"They just started talking to her and she just opened up and said she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant said.

Police suspected all along that Todd might not be telling the truth, starting with the fact that the "B" was backward, Bryant said.

"We have robbers here in Pittsburgh, but they don't generally mutilate someone's face like that," Bryant said. "They just take the money and run."

If you have not seen my short film....

2008-09-29T14:55:00.005-04:00

Now is the time to view it.....
here's the trailer.

Check it out and let me know if you are interested in seeing the short film.

'Not Surprising' That HIV/AIDS in U.S. Is 'Worse Than Officials Had Expected

2008-09-29T14:55:00.001-04:00

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. "from the beginning" has been "wrongly filtered through shifting public and political views that tried to focus blame or susceptibility on populations of people defined by social and demographic factors," physician and columnist Kate Scannell writes in a Contra Costa Times opinion piece. CDC last month "reported that it had significantly underestimated" annual new HIV infections in the U.S., Scannell writes, adding, "In that new infections are occurring disproportionately in our communities of color, the CDC's upwardly revised estimates" of new HIV infections "sound an alarming note." According to Scannell, what is "just as clear is that resources currently dedicated to changing that reality are woefully inadequate and not targeted at the heart of the problem." It is "not surprising" that the country's epidemic is "worse than officials had expected," Scannell writes, adding that the U.S. has become "grimly aware" that the virus "knows no racial boundaries."

The focus on social and demographic factors in the fight against HIV/AIDS "ostracized some communities and it made others feel safe," Scannell writes, adding that the virus "always transcended those overly-convenient stratifications because it was always about the exchange of drug needles, semen, blood, vaginal fluids and breast milk." According to Scannell, "All the while we devised prevention strategies, we should have been crossing demographic divides and focusing on these universal risk factors." She adds, "Behaviors and universal risks ... ought to be the focus so that people can understand and legitimately assess their risk." Scannell concludes that she wonders "how many people might have been spared their HIV infections had they not been under some false impression of safety, swayed by some public message that sacrificed information to politics or ideology" (Scannell, Contra Costa Times, 9/28).

03.06.09

2008-07-18T16:17:00.003-04:00

This trailer is so fuckin dope!
I look forward to seeing this film!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/watchmen/high.html

Hello

2008-07-14T20:10:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile and I know what I want to do. I want to direct three short films this summer and fall. I would like to write two more screenplays and sell one. I have decided that I cannot dwell on the past of me losing everything to theft. Yes, it stings because now that I live in Hollywood. I run into actors all of the freaking time but I do not have anything to show them or shoot with.

Maybe, I should fundraise again?

Yes, I will raise 2,000 and shoot a new short.

I still have my Arri lights.... (thanks to the thieves for not wanting to carry the heavy case)

Now, I just need a camera and editing system.

I can raise 2,000.

I know I can.

WAKE UP!

2008-07-10T16:54:00.002-04:00

I have been alseep for too long.
Wake up!
I have been asleep for too long.
Wake up, Mr. Reid!
I have been asleep for two long.
Wake up, Marlon Royal Reid!

I have been feeling sorry for myself. I have lost EVERYTHING! I thought I could recover from my losses but it has been very hard. I just finished writing an outline for a new short film and somehow. I will shoot it in August. All I need is one day and night with a group of talented actors and I will do the rest myself.

WAKE UP AND STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF, MR. REID.

IT'S TIME TO CREATE!

LA Times apologizes for Tupac article

2008-03-27T04:18:00.001-04:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles Times has apologized for an article on the 1994 assault on rapper Tupac Shakur that was based on apparently phony documents.

The newspaper's editor and the writer apologized in a story on the paper's Web site late Wednesday for the article that implicates associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs in the attack.

The apologies followed an investigation by Editor Russ Stanton after The Smoking Gun Web site reported that the newspaper had been conned by a prisoner who doctored the documents.

The subjects of the article claimed they had been defamed by the article.

Stanton says the paper will continue its investigation into the documents and the report.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

My Friend Joey

2008-03-27T03:41:00.002-04:00

I met this guy, Joey Evans, online a few years ago on www.triggerstreet.com. We gave reviews to each other short films and we kept in contact, talking shop,reaching our goals and dreams. I am very proud of Joey because he went through nasty shyt with his ex wife and other drama but he kept plugging away. This summer his first feature length will be done and ready for the big screen. I am so proud of him. Way to rep Texas my light skin brother!

Way to keep striving.

I am on my grind to make things happen also.

Till next time

Goodbye 2007

2007-12-31T00:32:00.000-05:00

Goodbye 2007.... You piece of shyt of a year!

Goodbye 2007.... You piece of shyt of a year! magnify

Hello all,

Yes, I know I know it has been quite sometime since I have expressed myself in my blog. Yes, I have been quite busy at times this year. I have lost alot this year and I have gained some in this year but the fact remains that 2007 was not a good year for me.

I lost my equipment to thieves.

I lost friends online and personal.

I have met liars and cheats .... who has never set soil on the state called California.

What I have to do is let go.

I am letting go. Goodbye 2007.

Goodbye.

Goodbye bad experiences.

Goodbye.

Goodbye to people who supposed to have sent donations but yet enjoy my short film, NIGHT.

Goodbye to the anger.

Goodbye.

No equipment to create. (anger .... must go!)

Again.... goodbye to anger!

I have slept in cars, on couches and air mattresses.

I have swallowed my pride and worked shitty jobs like a stock person for the corporation called, TARGET.

But with all of that said and done.....

I have made progress.

I have appeared in a music video (amy winehouse's Tears Dry On Their Own)

I have seen at least 30 films for free. (lol)

Ps. Tickets cost $15.00 person out here. So ladies, if we go to the movies and dinner.... somebody has to put out! (lol)

I have been on beautiful beaches and seen beautiful landscapes.

I worked for a major television network for the three months. (CBS)

I have met good people in Cali.

Flaky people.

Freaky people who attend swinger parties and who invited me to come. (nope, I am not going. Tempted but not that tempted.)

I am playing basketball again and I am actually laughing again.

So, I guess I have handled what the Heavenly Father who put on my shoulders and I keep on striving.

It's called progress and I must move forward. Not look back anymore.

Goodbye 2007.

You fucked up year.

I move forward and will not look back.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Handsome Filmmaker who used to be mad as hell and I will not take it anymore!

Hello and I'm sorry I have not been in touch

2007-03-07T11:51:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I have not been in touch. My home was robbed and I lost everything. Everything, I have spent the past six years building myself to become. I have been hurt to the core and it has taken sometime for me to finally allow the wounds of my pain to heal. I had a bad feeling about things because three days before the burglary, Five teenagers saw me walking from the store and decided to try and attack me. The bruises I received was from icy pavement. They did not touch me. I am sure someone knew that I was a filmmaker and decided. "Hey. He is trying to be too positive in this community. Let's strip him down to nothing!"

Well, Mr. Thug or thugs. You have tried to accomplish that motion and you almost succeeded. I had to fight the urges of being a person of the street and looking for the thieves. I know the police hands are full and I do not have the pull of a city official to have the manpower to search door to door to find my items.

I am sure all of my precious pictures of my four year nephew, two year old niece, friends, family and even women who sent me pics of themselves looking sexy (LOL) are gone.

The four scripts I was rewriting

the short films, the demo reel and 66 songs I composed on soundtrack.

So, I will rebuild.
I took my $80.00, stuffed my 138 DVD's one suitcase and my one pair of good jeans, two pair of bad jeans and I packed them all in my wilson's duffel bag. I am going to Los Angeles for a few months to clear my head, sleep on my cousin's couch and regroup. Rebuild. Stronger and faster.

I do not know where to start but I do know I want to be at the finish line in first place.

I will come back to Detroit and I will make my first feature film there working with my friends but until then I have to make myself a better filmmaker and person.

I am off on my journey to do so....

till then

11:08 AM October 28, 1995 (13 years ago)

2006-10-28T17:31:00.001-04:00

11:08 AM October 28, 1995 (11 years ago)

I woke up that morning watching cartoons with my great aunt, Verna M. Deason. (flashback) I was raised by my great aunt not my mother or father. My mother had me when she was young and was not ready to be a parent. My father was an arrogant young body building cat that was fucking six other women at the time my mother found out she was pregnant. So, he took the punk route. He robbed liquor stores and got caught with dope. Needless to say, he wasn't around much.

My mother was not ready for this. Motherhood is a motherfucker for a single parent. It's a real motherfucker when you despise your first born because he resembles the man who bust a nut up in you and now he is somewhere fucking one of your friends.

My mother wanted to hang out with her cousins and friends. So, I was dropped off alot on the weekends to my two great aunts and uncle. Other family members was not happy about this but my Aunt Verna ignored it.

My mother was in and out of prison also. Doing dumb shit. So, here was a five year old crying about where is his parents. My great uncle was not happy. He was retired from working Ford Motor Company. One of the first black men to ever work for the automotive industry and be a part of the automotive union.

He wanted peace and quiet. Not a young child.

They never had children and I was one of the reason why they did not want children. I began to be disruptive. I was angry. Elementary school, I was known for kicking everybody's ass or trying to. If I did lose a fight, I fought you till I could not fight no more.

Anger
No parents.
Two elderly people raising me.

MEANWHILE, the sperm donor dies of a cocaine overdose. I'm age 10 and I have only seen him once in my life. I was seven years old. He picked me up and told his neighbors, "this is my oldest son, Marlon. He looks good just like his father." My father was 27 years of age when he died. I was asked did I want to go to the funeral? I said, "No, I do not know the man."

Moms gets out of prison.

I am not too happy about going home to her. She tells me, "she wished she would have aborted me!" "Because I told her I wanted to school and she kept me home for no reason. It was not like I was a good student but school was an escape from home.

Too many men were trying to get in between my mom's legs, trying to play the role of step dad but not really giving a fuck as long as they are able to get a taste of my mother's nectar.

I go back to my aunt and uncle's home.
I am still angry and rebellion is still flowing in my veins.
I go back home again with my mother. Shit's thick. The new motherfucker thinks he's the one. He can play basketball and feels good when he beats a 5'7 skinny 13 year old. Two years later, I am 6'0 and the motherfucker is scared to give me a rematch.

I get cut from JV basketball because I am too hardheaded and will not go to class.
My uncle called me wasted potential.
My aunt asked me, "what did I wanted to do with my life?"
My response, "make movies."
Aunt Verna: "You said that when you was four years old."
Me: "I know."
Aunt Verna: "Then do something with you life!"

Age 16:
moms gets on my nerves.
I called my Aunt Verna and asked if I come back and I promise to be good this time. She accepts. I packed all of my belongings and called a taxi. I moved out at the age of 16. I left my mother crying at the front door. I was tired of being verbally abused about me looking like my father. I was tired of being told, "I was funny looking." I was tired of being blamed for all her wrong doings!

So, I get to cracking on my books.
Still no sports.
baseball coach on my dick. Saw me play during the summer tourneys.
My aunt told me, "no grades, no sports."
I get my grades together but still have to go to summer school because
of my failure to make up the science class from my freshman year.
My uncle is disappointed but my aunt is pleased.

I go to Jr. College and I am enjoying college life. I have a hooptie and I am hanging with my friends.

My aunt has a stroke.
My life is changed.
I was trying to get into San Diego State to play baseball. My aunt speech is slurred. I cannot leave her. She took a risk on me. I cannot go.
My uncle is unhappy.
His soulmate is ill.
My aunt goes to rehab.
They give her a weekend visit and she refuses to go back.
My uncle allows her to stay.
I am taking care of my aunt.
18 years old taking care of someone in their late 70's.
I washed her, fed her and washed clothes.
Hospital bed in the living room.
My uncle leaned on me and I did not let him down. He was always tough on me but loved me and told me, "to be a man. Be a smart man. Be responsible. have many women!"

It was too much.
I dropped all of my classes.
That hurt them both.
January
still too much.
Uncle realizes that my aunt should have stayed in rehab.
My aunt's mind is going.
My uncle puts her in a nursing home.
I cannot stand it.
I regress.
I kicked so much ass that summer.
I fracture four knuckles beating the shyt out of a mutual friend who said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
My aunt is out of the nursing home.
The state finally gives us a nurse.
She is greedy.
Always asking for more money after she saw my uncle had a hidden stash.
He fired her.
She reported to the state that he had extra money.
Had to hire his own nurse.
She is really no better a chain smoker.
I was feeling helpless cause I could not voice my views.
I get accepted to Morgan State.
I leave home and go to Baltimore.
I am miserable everyday.
I called home five times a day and begged my mother to watch my aunt.
They did sometimes.
I came home every break we had.
My uncle pays for my education.
I get my degree.
The first male in the immediate family to obtain a degree.
CNN is hiring.
My uncle asks me to stay home.
I stay home.
My uncle health is going and I feel so bad about leaving to go to Morgan State. He said, enjoy life, have plenty of women, always be smart & use common sense and be a man."
My uncle, Gus Deason veteran of world war I was 102 when he passed away in my arms. For the next six years, I did not work. I took care of my aunt day and night. I cleaned, fed and did everything else what a nurse would do. Social services refused to pay me and I had to deal with other family members.

My aunt was taken away from me by the court of law and I was told not to interfere. I could not afford an attorney but went to court and became my aunt's guardian and conservator.
I picked up my aunt in my ex's FORD Probe from the nursing home and we drove all over town. The nurses at the nursing home cried because they never saw a young man who loved his aunt so much and was willing to take care. Her memory came and went but she would always call me daddy and whenever we would sing songs together, she would know the lyrics.

She had a temper and cussed out everyone but my friends loved her. Before the stroke, the was an outspoken community leader and fought our rights during the civil right movement. Many women I tried to date told me to live my life and leave her, but I took care of my aunt and I was alone. Some friends question my judegment, Some friends accused me of living off my aunt. Yes, it was frustrating but yet I did. I sometimes regret it but I am wrong to do so?

Just because I am not rich does not mean I am not rich in life.

We laughed whenever the Three Stooges were on television. We laughed whenever Sanford and Son was on the air. Matter of Fact, my aunt took me to go see Redd Foxx and the following week I was kicked out of school because I was cussing and redoing all of his jokes.

10- 28 - 95

I washed my aunt up.
She is dressed and we are watching X-Men.
I feed her some oatmeal and suddenly she looks at me.
She looks great and every is fine.

I am not done washing her face and she always hated that. Verna looks at me and then her eyes suddenly rolls to back to her head and her body goes limp.

Frantic,
I lay my aunt on the floor and perform CPR.
Her heart is weak. I am dialing 911. I get an operator on the phone.
"Help is on the way."
The technician opens my door. I explain what has happened.
CPR continues.
I am dressed in sweats and we bolt out of the door. I tell my neighbor to close my door.
I am scared.
I am asked to ride in the front.
I have seen this scene so many times in my head.
We jump out of the ambulance and they bolt through the emergency doors. I am stopped by security. I am told to sit down. I pace, scream, cuss and holler.

Five minutes later

"I'm sorry."
My heart is crushed. I lost my aunt and my only mother in my eyes.
Heart failure.
I am allowed to view the body.
Tears streaming from my eyes. I sang our song and I kissed her forehead.

I was there when her lower right leg was removed. I would never leave her side and till this day and I still feel I could have done more.

Rest in peace
Aunt Verna
your son loves you.

AIDS & Black People

2006-06-21T11:19:00.000-04:00

AIDS especially deadly to black people

By KAI WRIGHT
Published on: 06/19/06
Twenty-five years after the first reported cases of AIDS, the epidemic's face is becoming blacker and poorer. And it is long past time that our public health system addresses these realities.

More than half of the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections clocked each year are among blacks. Nearly half of all people living with HIV today are black. Yet, blacks are just 13 percent of the U.S. population.

Meanwhile, blacks who contract HIV are eight times more likely to die of it than their white counterparts. As a result of this blackening of America's AIDS epidemic, the virus has also migrated from urban centers such as San Francisco to rural Southern towns.

Today, 41 percent of all people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS reside in the Southeast. Seven of the 10 states with the most intense epidemics are in the South.

There, teetering public health systems that never served poor blacks well in the first place are collapsing under the weight of AIDS. Uninsured people with AIDS linger on hundreds-deep waiting lists for access to affordable treatment and care — not in Africa, but right here in places like Alabama and North Carolina.

And the Medicaid and Medicare systems that pay for two-thirds of blacks receiving AIDS treatment today are in disarray and facing financial collapse.

Meanwhile, the crippling bigotry, stigma and fear that have always provided HIV with a cover for its travels from body to body remain strong throughout the South and in black communities around the country.

AIDS clinic workers in Montgomery recently told me stories of having to hand medications out of the back door and conduct HIV tests in fast-food parking lots because patients fear being seen near the clinic.

Even among urban gay men, where some successes have been found, the epidemic's fracturing is clear. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that a stunning 46 percent of black gay and bisexual men tested in five major cities were HIV positive, compared to 21 percent of white gay and bisexual men.

Last year in Illinois, the legislative black caucus shepherded into law a statewide plan to address its black epidemic. It included funds for targeted prevention and treatment, and for studying the relationship between incarceration and the black epidemic.

Other states around the country should wake up to this crisis and develop similar action plans, and Congress should support them with new money.

We may not know how to beat AIDS yet, but we know how to slow it down with powerfully effective treatments.

We must get these treatments to everyone who is afflicted.

AIDS doesn't discriminate. Neither should our treatment of it.

I had an interesting day today......

2006-06-13T01:55:00.000-04:00

I went to the library to make some copies of a recent newspaper article and this older woman who worked at the library noticed the picture on the newspaper and then looked up at me. "Is that you?" Yes, I replied. "So, you are a filmmaker? Wow, you look better in person than in your pictures. Can I have you autograph?" I was kind of embarrassed cause other people crowded around me and began to read the article, Minutes Later, the others all asked if they could have a copy of the article. So, I signed about six copies of the article and then I went home to work on a new script.

My friend Psy said, "get used to it."

To be honest.... it felt weird. I do not think I could or would ever be the asshole celeb who is not approachable. I have seen those kind of people and I would want to treat people like that.'

It was weird but it also cool to be recognized as the person in the article.

To be continued....

Uncle Marlon

2006-06-12T01:45:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend with my youngest nephew and niece. Kyle Jr. and Kyla, they are such a funny pair. When they arrive to my home the two act anti-social and do not want to play with uncle Marlon and five minutes later, I cannot escape from neither one of em. In the picture, Kyle started pouting and Kyla came over and asked him, "are you ok?" My niece is something else. She's a 32 year old woman trapped in a baby's body.

25 YEARS LATER....

2006-06-05T13:27:00.000-04:00

How, 25 years later, AIDS shapes us all
BY JORDAN LITE
Sunday, June 4th, 2006

I was 6 years old when a foreboding virus began killing gay men in New York City. Twenty-five years later, AIDS is the fourth-leading cause of death in the world, a disease that is increasingly affecting women, minorities and, even more disturbingly, a new generation of people too young to remember what the epidemic looked like in those darkest first years.

I don't know why that early era lives vividly in my imagination; certainly I should have been too young for the initial hysteria to have registered. But my grandparents survived the Holocaust, and I think there was something about the skeletons who walked the paranoid streets of New York in the 1980s that reminded me of that earlier war - and of the pervasive discrimination that allowed it to happen.

With AIDS now a trendy cause to market everything from clothing to cosmetics, it's easy to take for granted the extent to which the disease has revolutionized society. But just as AIDS is a useful prism through which to view social inequalities - did President Ronald Reagan's silence about AIDS during his tenure imply that gay men counted less than others? Do our mores around drug addiction trump the need to protect the broader public health by distributing clean needles? - it is those very injustices that the disease forced America to start to rectify.

The early AIDS activists who insisted that dying patients be allowed to try unproven medicines altered the system so that Americans can now access experimental drugs for a host of diseases. Their public and sometimes graphic agitating made it okay to talk about other illnesses, such as breast cancer, once believed to be too personal to discuss out loud. And their fund-raising strategies, particularly AIDS walks, are now the model for other activists hoping to raise similarly high levels of awareness and to find the same generous donors.

AIDS gave sympathy to gay men, a community that had been marginalized. Later, that sympathy graduated to respect, making it possible for America to begin talking about the participation of gays and lesbians in the armed forces and the prospect of gay marriage and civil unions. Musicians such as Prince and programs like MTV's "The Real World" that early on spoke frankly about AIDS gave us the vocabulary to confront phobias made worse by the disease.

"We are the last generation to really know what a life and a world without AIDS is like," says Dr. James Curran, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's investigation into the mysterious illness that became a household name.

Twenty-five million victims later worldwide, the epidemic's catastrophic effects are undeniable, and he is right to lament that new generations may never know a world without the sickness.

But this disease, which became so much more than a random viral mutation, forced national conversations about uncomfortable subjects. It made it acceptable - even desirable - for women to stock their own supply of condoms and to take stock of the power they wielded in the bedroom. And if the attention to last summer's Live 8 concert is any indication, it made AIDS a subject about which Americans are reluctant to stay isolationist.

For all the inequality AIDS still embodies, it has, in ways large and small, brought us all a little closer together.

Lite is a reporter for the Daily News.

HOW AIDS CHANGED US

2006-06-05T13:22:00.000-04:00

HOW AIDS CHANGED US
- Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006

When AIDS began devastating San Francisco's gay community, it silenced what had been a giddy, almost boundless celebration of sexual freedom.

Thousands of men had come from across the country to the vibrant community growing along Polk Street and in the Castro. South of Market bathhouses and gay bars across the city were thriving. And in state after state, legislatures were affirming gay rights by decriminalizing sodomy after mental health groups declared that same-sex attraction was not a disorder.

But the news that a strange disease was killing gay men threatened to erase gay political progress symbolized by the 1977 election of Harvey Milk to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.

"It was a very confusing time," said Joseph Lovett, 61, who covered AIDS for ABC News and whose 2005 film "Gay Sex in the '70s" chronicles the sexual culture of New York City. "You just started finding sex and normalizing sex in your life. And then you realize your friend is dying, the guy up the street looks really thin, that bodybuilder you know is really emaciated."

After 18,000 deaths in San Francisco, most of them gay men, medical advances and human intervention have transformed AIDS here from a largely terminal illness into a generally chronic one. Now the disease is a secondary issue for most gay men in the United States.

Twenty-five years after the first report of a mysterious outbreak among gay men in California and New York, gay activists have moved on to issues such as same-sex marriage. The community had already begun maturing when gay men turned all their energy from sexual liberation to the disease that was killing friends and lovers with frightening speed and no explanation. But the gay community's youngest members are now so comfortable with life "after" AIDS that leaders say they must find new ways to address prevention so the disease doesn't resurge.

In the darkest days during the first decade of the epidemic, more than half of San Francisco's gay community was HIV-positive. Obituaries filled gay newspapers week after week.

"It was like 'The Wizard of Oz,' " said Eric Rofes, a San Francisco AIDS activist and scholar who has written extensively on the disease. "Then the house fell on us."

The huge bathhouses were outlawed in 1984, and gay men crowded into meeting rooms to hear the latest on how to survive.

Bert Bloom, who was HIV-positive when he met his partner, Gwynn Goodner, in 1989 in Los Angeles, laid out a grim picture back then of their future.

"Just before he decided to move up here, I really tried to paint the darkest scenario I could. I asked him if he'd ever seen anyone die of AIDS," said Bloom, 59. "I thought if we fell in love at that time, what did I have to offer him besides this bleak future?"

For the first few years, they planned only year to year. When they bought a wirehaired fox terrier in 1992, Bloom emphasized that the dog, whom they named Rocky, would be Goodner's. Both men were sure the dog would outlive Bloom. In 1994, with Bloom's health consistent, they cautiously bought a condo together in San Francisco.

"But we bought it thinking it would also help me to be secure when (he was) gone," said Goodner, 42.

Bloom never came down with opportunistic diseases -- the standard of an AIDS diagnosis -- but he experiences significant side effects from anti-viral medicine.

When Rocky died in December, they got a giant schnauzer they named Ira. There was no discussion of Bloom's death.

"He lived," Goodner said. "That's what happened."

But living with AIDS has happened on a large scale only since 1996, when researchers announced that new medicines showed real promise. The number of people dying of AIDS dropped right away -- to 337 in 1997 from 1,335 in 1995 -- and the numbers of deaths and people living with the disease have diverged sharply since then in San Francisco. By 2004, there were 7,366 people living with AIDS in San Francisco, and only 151 died.

For much of the rest of the country, it took the deaths of celebrities Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury and advocate Pedro Zamora for many Americans to appreciate the personal toll of AIDS.

"We brought out the best in America by pushing and screaming and prodding," said Hank Wilson, 59, who started or helped start many organizations in San Francisco's modern gay community. "When I look today about how people responded, I look with gratitude and calmness."

AIDS activism has calmed, too.

The AIDS Coalition Silicon Valley, along with others like ACT UP, took bold steps in the early days such as shutting the Golden Gate Bridge and disrupting staid civic events such as opening night at the San Francisco Opera. They pushed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for faster approval of medicines to combat HIV.

Early AIDS activists didn't have health backgrounds, said Daniel Bao, 39, who founded a student activist group at Stanford in January 1986 and has worked at several AIDS-prevention organizations.

"That was good and bad," Bao said. "We didn't know what we 'shouldn't do,' like protesting FDA decisions."

From their most basic survival instinct, gay men in San Francisco created a world-renowned model for responding to the virus. They started community organizations, fed and housed the sick and demanded government action.

Lesbians gave crucial -- and overwhelming -- support, creating a lasting bond between two communities that had diverged as lesbians increasingly identified with the feminist movement.

"The gay community was forced to be so much more than we ever thought we could be," said Paul Boneberg, who in 1984 started Mobilization Against AIDS, one of the first organizations focused on the disease.

"We know we withstood, stayed together and took care of the sick," said Boneberg, now executive director of AIDS Coalition Silicon Valley.

"AIDS was the No. 1 issue in the gay community for a long time," said David Binder, 51, a prominent political consultant in San Francisco who has watched the community's power grow.

"When HIV no longer necessarily resulted in death, that's when it changed," said Binder, who believes AIDS showed the community the necessity of political power.

The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association found in a 2005 survey that the most important issues to members were same-sex marriage and the Roman Catholic Church's stance on gay priests. AIDS came in third, just ahead of methamphetamine use and the film "Brokeback Mountain." A recent marketing survey of gays and lesbians in the United States also showed civil rights and legal issues had moved to the top of the agenda, while finding a cure for AIDS fell to seventh place.

National gay rights organizations too are occupied with issues such as marriage. The most prominent young activists are fighting to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on openly gay service members and campaigning for tolerance among conservative Christians.

The arrival of effective drug therapies enabled this branching out. But it has caused a potentially dangerous complacency, some leaders said. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, AIDS-prevention experts focused on a use-a-condom-every-time mantra. But the message lost traction after 1996.

"Simply giving someone a condom and saying to use it doesn't work anymore," said Jorge Vieto, 28, an intervention coordinator at the Stop AIDS Project, a city-funded prevention organization focusing on gay men.

Gay men view HIV and AIDS as less frightening than before the advent of effective medicines, UCSF researchers have found in focus groups. Gay men have learned that medication lowers the viral levels in an HIV-positive person's body, and they know now that there is a difference in risk whether they are receptive or insertive in anal intercourse.

Rates of unprotected sex are rising, and San Francisco has seen big jumps in rates of gonorrhea and syphilis among gay men in recent years, according to the city health department. Both phenomena typically happen concurrently with a rise in HIV infections.

But San Francisco officials recently decreased their estimate of new HIV infections per year from 1,084 to 976, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found San Francisco had the lowest rate of new HIV infections and the highest level of testing among five major U.S. cities. AIDS researchers in the city theorize that the practice of having sex only with people of the same HIV status, known as serosorting, is probably responsible for San Francisco's numbers. Gay men are having more unprotected sex, but they increasingly are doing it with men who they believe are of the same HIV status.

At one South of Market disco, gay men regularly dance, laugh and cruise for sex without worrying about HIV and AIDS; the "Club Life" party is for men who are HIV-positive.

"It's taken out of the picture," said 32-year-old Michael Cooley, who became HIV-positive 13 years ago and organizes the occasional event for a city AIDS-prevention organization. "That guy eyeing you across the way should know what's going on here."

The federal study found a rate of HIV infection of about 1.2 percent per year, much smaller than the 8 percent at the height of the epidemic, but still significant.

Steve Morin at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF explains the rate this way: Take a group of 100 HIV-negative 20-year-old gay men in San Francisco today. When they turn 45, one-quarter will be HIV-positive.

"Is this acceptable? That question -- 'Does the community define this as a problem?' -- has to be brought to the community," Morin said. He believes that incidence of infection can be lowered even more with prevention efforts that refocus on behavior.

Cleve Jones, the creator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and once a City Hall aide to Milk, takes a hard line.

"I see young gay men who believe HIV is part of being gay," said Jones, 51, who believes he was infected in 1979. "I hate that. I don't want anyone to accept that as a permanent part of our experience."

"The reality is kids are choosing to get infected; you can't get around that. They've been hearing about this their whole lives. I think people are making a conscious and deliberate choice to get infected and to infect."

Vieto at the Stop AIDS Project said he recently spoke with a 19-year-old gay man who told him he thought he would become infected no matter what he did and therefore did not practice safer sex.

"He compared it to diabetes," Vieto said. "He was so comfortable with his level of risk and if he did get it, he didn't care."

That certainly is not true of all young people.

"If there is no protection, nothing is going to happen except hugging or kissing," Danny Alvarado, 22, who is gay, said of his own sexual activity.

Vaughnjareya J. Faulker, a 19-year-old who was born biologically female but identifies as male, said his sexual activity puts him at low risk for transmitting or contracting HIV.

"Amongst a lot of youth, they think, 'It will never happen to me. I don't need a condom because I can't get it,' " he said.

Part of the problem, Jones and others said, is a generation gap. This community doesn't pass along its mores and history as others do because gay men often struggle alone to find community and learn history. Terence Kissack, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco, said the AIDS epidemic exacerbated gay men's disconnection with their history.

"What happens when all that creative energy is drained away and all that vitality is channeled into survival and mourning rather than continued creative expansion?" Kissack asked rhetorically.

"The loss from AIDS is most commonly thought of in bodies and corpses and people who died," Rofes said. "But what we lost from that era involved values and symbols and icons and a kind of hopefulness that may be coming back today."

Reteaching the lessons of gay rights is a major part of a rock opera musical about Jones and Milk called "Harvey and Cleve," which writer Dustin Lance Black hopes will serve as a call for the resurgence of a '70s-style gay rights movement. Damon Intrabartolo is the show's the composer and producer.

"I think now there is a general sense of, 'We'd like to have these rights, but please don't let it affect your campaign.' " Black said. "It's being deferential to the Democratic Party, which was going on in the early 1970s, and that's what Cleve and Harvey reacted against, sometimes aggressively. (The musical) depicts a new way of moving the community forward."

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

Debbie Maples: Her Story

2006-05-09T07:58:00.000-04:00

I met this former street walker last Wednesday. Her name is Debbie Maples, a former heroin addict and crack user. She used to walk up down Michigan Avenue selling her body for the opportunity to get high. I met her through a social worker and for two days I videotaped her and followed her around her former stomping grounds. That was the most mouth dropping two days of my life. So many stories to tell. She showed us at least five dope houses on one block in the southwest area of Detroit.

I saw male johns aka tricks aka dates looking for these streetwalkers. Some of the women looked like they have not washed up in months, but I saw first hand married men trying to get their freak on with them anyways.

I saw ex heroin addicts go inside a dingy building to get their methodone treatments to cure them from their addiction to heroin. Sometimes, we vent about not being financially able to do things or how some person has done wrong. What those two days did to me was realize that these people have lives too.

Some of their choices are wrong but these people are human beings and who am I or anyone else to judge them?

I am going to make a short documentary of my day with her. She wanted to share stories about her life after her sister died of a crack cocaine and heroin overdose five days earlier.

Some people lives are a whole lot harder than others.....

till next time

U.S. Black Community Should Discuss Behavioral Factors Involved in HIV Transmission, Target Black Men,

2006-05-03T14:15:00.000-04:00

HIV/AIDS "remains an unspoken taboo" among black U.S. residents, despite "the litany of grim health statistics that define the high mortality rates of black Americans," Amy Alexander, an author and media critic, said in a commentary on NPR's "News & Notes with Ed Gordon" on Tuesday. According to Alexander, black officials, clergy and community activists are not discussing the behavioral factors involved in HIV transmission in a "manner that is helpful, rational, and likely to educate [blacks] about the dreadfully high stakes involved" because of the "usual combination of lack of funding, political will and the shame and stigma." Alexander says that because black men are "historically averse to seeking medical care," especially for mental or emotional issues, those struggling with drug addiction or questioning their sexual identity would "rather suffer in silence than seek the help of clinical professionals," and black men engaging in behaviors that put them at risk of contracting HIV "simply carry on unattended, untouched by the public service messages and educational campaigns designed to reinforce healthy behavior." Alexander adds, "The denial, shame and stigma that continue to surround blacks and HIV must be vanquished" before the black community is (Alexander, "News & Notes with Ed Gordon," NPR, 5/2).
The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.

Wall Street Journal Examines So-Called 'Salvage Therapy' for People With AIDS Whose Illness Is Not Responding To Treatment Options

2006-05-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday examined "salvage therapy," a "last-ditch effort" HIV/AIDS treatment that an estimated 40,000 drug-resistant people living with the disease in the U.S. are taking after other antiretroviral regimens have failed. According to the Journal, many people with AIDS using salvage therapy have lived with HIV/AIDS for more than 20 years and began treatment in the late 1980s and early 1990s using monotherapy, a single-drug treatment (Chase, Wall Street Journal, 5/3). Monotherapy -- which was used before combination therapy was initiated in 1996 -- gave HIV only one challenge to mutate past and has created a virtually impossible obstacle for researchers to develop effective HIV/AIDS-related therapies for those who have developed drug resistance (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 1/20). According to the Journal, there is no "single recipe" for salvage therapy, and some physicians use older antiretroviral drugs to attempt to control the virus or try to gain access to experimental treatments. Because of salvage therapy, most of the 40,000 people in the U.S. with drug-resistant HIV strains are "for now, hanging on," the Journal reports. However, Nelson Vergel, an HIV/AIDS treatment advocate in Houston, estimates that about "20,000 are in dire need" of a new treatment. Steven Deeks, an associate professor at San Francisco General Hospital who is currently studying 300 people taking salvage therapy, said rapidly switching from one drug regimen to another, a practice that was common in the early 1990s, spurred the development of drug-resistance. "We need to stop switching [drug therapies] so aggressively," Deeks said, adding, "We need to hold still until we have a number of new families of drugs." According to the Journal, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Schering-Plough are leading the development of new experimental antiretroviral regimens. According to Vergel, new drugs may be available as early as this summer and spring 2007 (Wall Street Journal, 5/3).

New York Times Examines Vatican's Stance on Condom Use To Prevent HIV Transmission Within Marriage

2006-05-02T11:36:00.000-04:00

The New York Times on Tuesday examined the debate surrounding the Vatican's stance on condom use within marriage to prevent HIV transmission (Fisher, New York Times, 5/2). Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, in an interview published last month in Rome's La Repubblica said Pope Benedict XVI had asked the council and other scientists and theologians to study condom use as a means of HIV prevention among married couples in which one partner is HIV-positive and the other is not. He also said that the Vatican would release a document on the subject soon. However, Vatican officials recently denied reports that the Vatican plans to release a document, and Barragan over the weekend said the council only is drafting an internal study of the issue (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 5/1). Although news reports surrounding the announcement of the study have been "contradictory," the issue of condom use in marriage to prevent the transmission of HIV is "one of the most complicated and delicate facing the church," according to the Times. Among the factors complicating and driving the debate is that the Catholic Church is becoming more influential in Africa, the continent hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. "There is a deep vein of feeling against any change" on the church's stance on condoms, the Times reports. Vatican approval of condom use for HIV prevention in marriage could be interpreted as the church condoning condom use in general, "and that would seem to undermine the whole church teaching on sexuality and marriage," the Rev. Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at the Accademia Alphonsian in Rome, said. However, supporters of a change in condom policy say the practice could be interpreted as self-defense and also could be seen as a medical intervention instead of contraception, the Times reports. If the pope does ease the ban on condoms, "it will have a huge influence," Rebecca Schleifer, a researcher on HIV/AIDS-related issues for Human Rights Watch, said. She and other experts say a policy change would make it easier to reduce resistance to condom use in places where the Catholic Church has a stronghold, such as the Philippines and parts of Africa (New York Times, 5/2).

www.why myspace.com

2006-04-26T11:04:00.000-04:00

Why is the mother of my niece and nephew has a page on www.mysapce.com proclaiming herself to be the freak of myspace? Why is telling everyone she loves sex and is looking for a good man and why is there pictures of my nephew and niece on her picture gallery along the suggestive ones?

I repeat the freak of myspace. SMH...
Take the pics of my niece and nephew off the damn page...
Then be the freak you want to be.... but leave the kids off your page.

To quote Florida Evans.... "Damn, damn, damn..."

CROSSOVER: The Movie

2006-04-26T11:00:00.000-04:00

I worked on this film last summer as an production assistant. I hope this time my name stay in the credits. last summer I went to go see Four Brothers and when I did not see my name in the credits. I was fucking hurt. Good thing I did not bring a date when I saw it. She would have thought I was a liar trying to impress her for some sex.

'Crossover' is a gripping urban drama set against the thrilling world of streetball. The story follows two young hopefuls, Tech (Anthony Mackie) and Cruise (Wesley Jonathan), who must bring every move they have to the floor to unseat the reigning champions from the throne they have held for far too long.

Crossover :Trailer No. 1

Washington Post Profiles HIV-Positive South African Woman Featured in AIDS Diary Project

2006-04-26T10:42:00.000-04:00

Washington Post Profiles HIV-Positive South African Woman Featured in AIDS Diary Project

The Washington Post on Wednesday profiled Thembi Ngubane, an HIV-positive resident of the township of Khayelitsha, South Africa, who recorded an audio diary of her life for the past year. Ngubane, whose diary aired last week on NPR, "has become a voice for a disease that is numbing and overwhelming in its power and reach," the Post reports. Her experience has gained her recognition and brought her to the U.S. for a tour during which she has met with members of Congress and spoken at a church. On Friday she plans to record a segment with former President Bill Clinton for a CNN segment on HIV/AIDS. Ngubane said every time she gives a talk she knows someone will bring up the "difficult question" of death. "I do know AIDS is a fatal disease," Ngubane said, adding, "But you can't say, 'I'm going to get sick and die.' You have to do something while you're still alive; you have to keep on living" (Pressley Montes, Washington Post, 4/26). Ngubane's reporting project was sponsored by a Kaiser Family Foundation journalism fellowship award (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 4/19).

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Tuesday included a discussion with Ngubane; Joe Richman, executive producer of Radio Diaries Productions; and Brenda Wilson, science correspondent for NPR (Conan, "Talk of the Nation," NPR, 4/26). The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.

Movie Trailer

2006-04-23T21:31:00.000-04:00

The film I worked on last summer as an production assistant, CROSSOVER. The trailer is now up and available to check out. I just hope my name is in the credits this time.

'Crossover' is a gripping urban drama set against the thrilling world of streetball. The story follows two young hopefuls, Tech (Anthony Mackie) and Cruise (Wesley Jonathan), who must bring every move they have to the floor to unseat the reigning champions from the throne they have held for far too long.

Crossover :Trailer No. 1

About 91% of HIV-Positive Male Inmates in Georgia Infected Before Imprisonment

2006-04-21T11:02:00.000-04:00

About 91% of HIV-Positive Male Inmates in Georgia Infected Before Imprisonment, CDC Report Says

About 91% of HIV-positive men incarcerated in Georgia's prisons last fall were living with the virus before they were imprisoned, according to the April 21 issue of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Washington Post reports (Brown, Washington Post, 4/21). The Georgia Department of Corrections in October 2005 housed 44,900 male prisoners at 73 facilities. A total of 856 of those male prisoners, or about 1.9%, were known to be HIV-positive and 780 of them tested positive upon entering prison (MMWR, 4/21). Georgia in 1988 began testing inmates upon their arrival to prison. CDC and state epidemiologists identified 88 men who tested HIV-negative upon entry but later tested HIV-positive while in prison. Researchers attempted to interview the 88 men, but some had been released, died or did not cooperate. Sixty-eight were interviewed by computer or in person. Their interviews were compared with those of HIV-negative inmates.

Survey Results
The HIV-positive participants were about 13 times as likely as the HIV-negative participants to have been tattooed in jail and about 10 times as likely to have had sex with another man in prison, according to the MMWR report. Of the 68 HIV-positive men, 45 reported having sex with another man, and 22 of those men said they had sex with male prison staff members, the Post reports. Fifteen of the HIV-positive inmates interviewed and six of the HIV-negative inmates reported having sex with female prison staff members, researchers found. According to the Post, prison staff members are not required to be tested for HIV, and sex between prisoners and staff is considered a felony in the state. Nearly three-quarters of the interviewed inmates who had sex in prison said it was consensual, the Post reports. Nearly one-third of those who said they had consensual sex said that even though condoms in prisons are considered contraband by the state they used one or used a spontaneous method for protection, such as a rubber glove or plastic wrap, the Post reports (Washington Post, 4/21). About 10% of the HIV-positive interviewees said they had used injection drugs in prison and 59% said they had received tattoos, according to the MMWR (Stobbe, AP/Macon Telegraph, 4/20). The inmates suggested condom distribution and the provision of HIV/AIDS education and safe tattooing methods as ways to reduce the spread of the virus in prison, Reuters Health reports (Reuters Health, 4/20).

Reaction
"Both inmates and society as a whole have long held the belief that [HIV] transmission is common among prison inmates," Richard Tewksbury, a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville, said, adding, "The interesting thing about this study is that it directly contradicts that" (Washington Post, 4/21). CDC officials said they suggested that prisons distribute condoms and needle-cleaning bleach to inmates. However, Brian Owens, assistant commissioner for the Georgia corrections department, said neither policy is being considered by the state. He added that the state will use data from the study to help decide whether to house HIV-positive inmates at separate facilities (AP/Macon Telegraph, 4/20). "We can now begin the policy discussion about ways to prevent [new HIV cases] in the prison population," Owens said (Washington Post, 4/21). Patrick Sullivan, a CDC epidemiologist who oversaw the study, said there is no good data showing whether separating HIV-positive inmates reduces transmission of the virus (AP/Macon Telegraph, 4/20).

NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Thursday included a discussion of the study. Guests on the program included Sullivan and Barry Zack, executive director of Centerforce, a nongovernmental organization working with prisoners at San Quentin Prison in California (Martin, "Talk of the Nation," NPR, 4/20). The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.

JL KING FINALLY WATCHES NIGHT

2006-04-17T11:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, it has been three months since I sent the author JL King a copy of my short film. Yes, I did realize that I was not the only filmmaker or writer submitting my work to him. Well, I did not just wait for an answer. I kept bugging him.

So, after months of being a pest. Here's an insert from the email I got from him.

Marlon,

I sat down last night and watched your short film...and I LOVED IT!

Due to all of the stress in my life, it felt good to hear someone who lived the lifestyle that was portrayed in the short film enjoy the film. Yes, I have been in magazines and newspaper articles but being an independent filmmaker is hard work.

Hopefully, I can gain some exposure for the project and gain money to feature length version.

till next time

Bush Admin. $15B AIDS Plan Questioned

2006-04-04T21:20:00.000-04:00

By RITA BEAMISH Tue Apr 4, 6:18 PM ET
The Bush administration's $15 billion global AIDS initiative is emphasizing sexual abstinence and fidelity more than Congress intended, and that focus is undermining prevention efforts in poor countries, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

U.S. teams on the ground in Africa and other poor areas told Congress' Government Accountability Office that the requirement that they spend a specific percentage of their money on abstinence is hurting some efforts to tailor prevention programs to countries' needs.

The directives are creating confusion and forcing reduction in some programs deemed necessary for pregnant women, high-risk groups like truck drivers and sex workers, married couples and sexually active youths, the GAO said.

President Bush's five-year plan touts a three-pronged approach to AIDS prevention — commonly called "ABC" — that combines abstinence, fidelity ("being faithful") and condoms in target countries.

The GAO reported there was "general consensus" among public health experts internationally that the three-pronged prevention approach "can have a positive impact in combating HIV/AIDS."

But it recommended Congress evaluate the effectiveness of the abstinence spending formulas, and the administration consider changing how it implements the law. "Lack of clarity in the ABC guidance has created challenges for a majority of focus country teams," the GAO reported.

"For example, although the guidance restricts activities promoting condom use, it does not clearly delineate the difference between condom education and condom promotion, causing uncertainty over whether certain condom-related activities are permissible," the report said.

The State Department told the GAO it will work to change the regulations to make them clearer.

The GAO also said the administration has gone beyond the abstinence requirement for a major new account Congress created to fight AIDS, mostly in 15 target countries with high rates of the disease. Congress said a third of those prevention funds must go to abstinence and fidelity programs.

The administration, however, extended the same spending formulas to other U.S. funds that fight HIV/AIDS in countries around the world, drawing sharp criticism from some Congress members and activists.

Mark Dybul, the State Department's deputy global AIDS coordinator, said the Bush administration believes all three components need to be emphasized in all 120 countries that get U.S. money for HIV/AIDS, not just the target countries.

"It's important to have guidance that shifted us from where we were, which was not a good situation," he said. "It was too much 'C' (condoms)" prior to Bush's three-year-old program, he added.

As to the GAO's finding that the approach is undermining some anti-AIDS efforts, Dybul said, "There are always challenges when you are changing things." He said U.S. teams in some countries exceeded the minimum required spending for abstinence because they found it was the most effective strategy.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that the administration has handed out nearly one-quarter of its AIDS grants to religious groups, and has been aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condoms.

Dybul said Congress, which increased Bush's overall AIDS money requests, allocated 12 percent less than Bush asked for the 15 target countries. That extra money could have beefed up all prevention strategies instead of forcing teams on the ground to make tradeoffs, he said.

The report re-ignited debate over how best to fight HIV/AIDS. Rep. Barbara Lee (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said it "demonstrates the Bush administration's willingness to make AIDS prevention policy a political plaything in their ongoing effort to appease the radical right."

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., defended the administration's approach, saying the report was "politically biased."

"One of the most underreported international stories is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the ABC approach are working," Smith said.

GAO report author David Gootnick said the nonpartisan agency used standards that were "methodologically rigorous, vetted extensively," including a standard set of questions and evaluations for U.S. field workers.

The GAO surveyed the 15 target countries, plus five others that receive more than $10 million in U.S. help to fight the epidemic.

U.S. teams in 17 countries told the GAO that meeting the spending requirements for abstinence and fidelity "challenges their ability to develop interventions that are responsive to local epidemiology and social norms."

While Bush's AIDS program also includes unprecedented spending for treatment and care, the GAO report focused on prevention.

The administration follows a congressional recommendation that 20 percent of the overall AIDS money be reserved for preventing HIV/AIDS, and mandates a third of prevention money emphasize abstinence until marriage and faithfulness to one partner. The rest goes to condoms and efforts to reduce mother-to-child transmission and intravenous transmission.

The Bush administration refined the mandate to require that half of all prevention money be reserved for programs against sexual transmission of HIV, with two-thirds of that amount for abstinence and fidelity.

Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., in a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said those abstinence messages don't always work in countries with high rates of sexual transmission.

"The effect may well be to misallocate funds in countries with fast-growing HIV epidemics driven primarily by intravenous drug use or commercial sex, such as Russia and India," Waxman said.

Awww Hell 2 the Naw!

2006-04-04T11:27:00.000-04:00

See, I did a short film about a man who has HIV and sleeps with men and women. I also am writing a full length script and doing more research on the subject by reading as many HIV publications as possible. I have been exchanging emails with JL King the author of the Down Low books and if you follow my blog. You know that I am an AIDS ACTIVIST and trying to overcome my homophobic behavior. Yes, my best friend was a gay male who died from complications of the AIDS virus. Did my best friend know I was homophobic? Yes, he did. Did he hold that against me? No, he did not. He gave me his script and told me to read it. Then he turned on the TV and told me to watch the NIGHTLINE speacial about black men with HIV sleeping with men and women.

I was then educated about something I had no clue about. I thank Haran for the opportunity to be his friend even though I have flaws. I was a good friend. I did not crack gay bashing jokes and even learned to curb my use of the F***** word.

So, until GOD calls me home. I will educate, enlighten and entertain with my film projects that deals with HIV/AIDS and men on DL. Haran died because of a married man who wasn't honest with himself and spiteful to others cause he had the AIDS virus and wanted others to suffer.

People are a trip aren't they?

Now....
Terri McMillian you are a damn fool. You got your groove back with a GAY MAN. You thought he was a little soft? That dude is straight butter. Because this dude gave you dyck for four and half years of marriage. Man, she looked like an old high school principal with her lips poked out throughout the entire show. Oprah was trying to help her girl out with some hard questions but it was no haps. Terri, you have been burned. I guess the real men had done you so wrong, that you found yourself sume butter and though you was make him into some masculine stud muffin. Ha ha (I crack myself up sometimes) This dude is what we call a Hot Johnny. He is not metrosexual. He is homosexual and there is nothing worng with him being gay and at least he did came out of the closet. But the signs were there the entire time and Ms. McMillian did not want to believe them. She was stubborn and she thought she could change this dude. It doesn't matter how much ass you give a man, if he wants to chase other men he is going to chase other men.

This guy is GAY! Ladies, please do ask your partner about his sexuality and past parteners. Ask you r man to go get tested with you. If he is not real, then step and get with someone who will be REAL with you.

All of you women who prefer these dudes to be thugged out and repeat jail offenders. you better ask some questions because why is dude repeating jail time. Ramone is not sucking on straws on the yard.

Aids is real. I watched my best friend die from this disease!

by the way, I am not gay and never been with a man. I have been tested and I have the paperwork to prove it. If I am going to talk about it, I am going to be about it!

Till next time.....

Hell Naw!

2006-04-03T13:47:00.000-04:00

Ha, Ha
Okay, I saw this on one of my friend's blog. I had to check this website for myself. I am not a saint but one thing I can say is, "I have never cheated on any woman I have dated." Why? Because whomever I dated I got what I wanted. Yes, I had a stalker and yes, I had a woman throw her kitten at me cause I did not want to spend the entire week with her, but I never cheated. I have turned down a few women, lost a few phone numbers (not on purpose, I am still mad at myself for losing the number of the woman with the big hips & big ole booty number who was driving the Grey Benz, who tried to hit me on purpose to get my attention) (scary huh?)

Well, this website... Http://dontdatehimgirl.com/ is something else. I had to see if I had my pic plastered on it. Mind you, I have not done wrong to anyone but I have had my share ex girlfriends who held grudges. Especially, the one who slept with my college roommate after I left Morgan State. She called me and told me so. I fault him and her but you know what? I think I should create a website for the male perspective of this situation.

Then again.... awwww hell naw!

Ps.
after searching the site, I did not find any postings....

maybe that's why my ex keeps calling. Always trying to see what I am up to?

till next time

Racial Discrimination for Excluding Blacks From Hepatitis C Trial

2006-04-03T11:57:00.000-04:00

Two advocacy groups last week said Schering-Plough is discriminating against black people by excluding them from the Phase II clinical trial of its new hepatitis C therapy, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. The trial includes 300 patients around the world and is seeking to establish dosage ranges for the company's new protease inhibitor. According to the company, the new treatment is for patients who are nonresponders to traditional combination therapy of interferon and ribavirin. A "statistically significant" percentage of black people do not respond to traditional hepatitis C treatments, the Star-Ledger reports. According to the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project and the Hepatitis C Action and Advocacy Coalition, the drug company is barring black patients -- whom Schering-Plough classifies as "hard to treat" because they may not respond well to traditional hepatitis drugs -- from participating in the trial in order to have a more positive outcome. Brian Klein of HAAC in a statement said that during a March 16 conference call with Schering-Plough officials, the company "offered no valid safety reason for the exclusion," adding, "It is clear to us that Schering-Plough chose to exclude an entire racial group from the study to achieve the best efficacy results possible on the road to marketing the drug." Judith Dillard of CHAMP said, "The bottom line is that African Americans have been left out of this study to make the drug look good." However, Bob Consalvo, a Schering-Plough spokesperson, said the advocacy groups' criticism "doesn't make sense." He added that black people were left out of the Phase II trial for scientific reasons and would be involved in another part of the Phase II trial, which will study increased dosages. Consalvo also said that public perception was among the company's initial concerns about excluding black patients from the trial, but said that after discussing the move with peer review boards and other researchers, the company decided it was "more prudent and scientific[ally] valid" to restrict the group's involvement until the efficacy of the range of dosages established in the Phase II trial can be tested (Jordan, Newark Star-Ledger, 3/30).

AIDS drugs promise prevention in a bottle

2006-03-28T11:13:00.000-05:00

Pricey pill combo could keep at-risk populations from catching the virus

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:51 p.m. ET March 27, 2006

ATLANTA - Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, scientists think they soon may have a pill that people could take to keep from getting the virus that causes the global killer.

Two drugs already used to treat HIV infection have shown such promise at preventing it in monkeys that officials last week said they would expand early tests in healthy high-risk men and women around the world.

"This is the first thing I've seen at this point that I think really could have a prevention impact," said Thomas Folks, a federal scientist since the earliest days of AIDS. "If it works, it could be distributed quickly and could blunt the epidemic."

Condoms and counseling alone have not been enough — HIV spreads to 10 people every minute, 5 million every year. A vaccine remains the best hope but none is in sight.

If larger tests show the drugs work, they could be given to people at highest risk of HIV — from gay men in American cities to women in Africa who catch the virus from their partners.

Promise of a parachute
People like Matthew Bell, a 32-year-old hotel manager in San Francisco who volunteered for a safety study of one of the drugs.

"As much as I want to make the right choices all of the time, that's not the reality of it," he said of practicing safe sex. "If I thought there was a fallback parachute, a preventative, I would definitely want to add that."

Some fear that this could make things worse.

"I've had people make comments to me, 'Aren't you just making the world safer for unsafe sex?'" said Dr. Lynn Paxton, team leader for the project at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The drugs would only be given to people along with counseling and condoms, and regular testing to make sure they haven't become infected. Health officials also think the strategy has potential for more people than just gay men, though they don't intend to give it "to housewives in Peoria," as Paxton puts it.

Some uninfected gay men already are getting the drugs from friends with AIDS or doctors willing to prescribe them to patients who admit not using condoms. This kind of use could lead to drug resistance and is one reason officials are rushing to expand studies.

"We need information about whether this approach is safe and effective" before recommending it, said Dr. Susan Buchbinder, who leads one study in San Francisco.

The drugs are tenofovir (Viread) and emtricitabine, or FTC (Emtriva), sold in combination as Truvada by Gilead Sciences Inc., a California company best known for inventing Tamiflu, a drug showing promise against bird flu.

Unlike vaccines, which work through the immune system — the very thing HIV destroys — AIDS drugs simply keep the virus from reproducing. They already are used to prevent infection in health care workers accidentally exposed to HIV, and in babies whose pregnant mothers receive them.

Taking them daily or weekly before exposure to the virus — the time frame isn't known yet — may keep it from taking hold, just as taking malaria drugs in advance can prevent that disease when someone is bitten by an infected mosquito, scientists believe.

Monkeys suggest they are right.

Specifically, six macaques were given the drugs and then challenged with a deadly combination of monkey and human AIDS viruses, administered in rectal doses to imitate how the germ spreads in gay men.

Monkeys fully protected
Despite 14 weekly blasts of the virus, none of the monkeys became infected. All but one of another group of monkeys that didn't get the drugs did, typically after two exposures.

"Seeing complete protection is very promising," and something never before achieved in HIV prevention experiments, said Walid Heneine, a CDC scientist working on the study.

What happened next, when scientists quit giving the drugs, was equally exciting.

"We wanted to see, was the drug holding the virus down so we didn't detect it," or was it truly preventing infection, said Folks, head of the CDC's HIV research lab. It turned out to be the latter. "We're now four months following the animals with no drug, no virus. They're uninfected and healthy."

Years of previous monkey studies using tenofovir alone had shown partial protection. The scientists thought to add the second drug, FTC, when Gilead's combination pill, Truvada, came on the market last year.

The results, announced at a scientific meeting last month in Denver, so electrified the field that private and government funders alike have been looking at ways to expand human testing.

"This is an approach we've considered for a long, long time," but didn't try sooner because AIDS drugs had side effects and risks unacceptable for uninfected people, said Dr. Mary Fanning, director of prevention research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Tenofovir changed that when it came on the market in 2001. It is potent, safe, stays in the bloodstream long enough that it can be taken just once a day, doesn't interact with other medicines or birth control pills, and spurs less drug resistance than other AIDS medications.

The CDC last year launched $19 million worth of studies of it in drug users in Thailand, heterosexual men and women in Botswana, and gay men in Atlanta and San Francisco. A third U.S. city, not yet identified, will be added, CDC announced last week.

Because of the exciting new monkey results, the Botswana study now will be switched to the drug combination; the others are well under way with tenofovir alone.

Farthest along is a study of 400 heterosexual women in Ghana by Family Health Initiative. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded it and others in Cambodia, Nigeria, Cameroon and Malawi, but the rest were doomed by rumors, including fears that scientists wanted to deliberately expose people to HIV or that study participants who got infected might not have access to treatment. In other cases, activists demanded better health care or clean needles for drug users as a condition for allowing the studies to proceed.

Such problems are "part of the HIV prevention landscape" in many foreign countries, said Dr. Helene Gayle, who formerly oversaw AIDS research for the Gates Foundation.

Drug combo costs $650 a month
Expense also could limit use of the drugs. Gilead donated them for the studies and sells them in poor countries at cost — 57 cents a pill for tenofovir and 87 cents for Truvada, the combination drug. That's more than the cost of condoms, available for pennies and donated by the truckload in Africa, but often unused.

In the United States, wholesale costs are $417 for a month of tenofovir and $650 for Truvada.

Still, health officials are hopeful the drugs could fill an important gap.

The National Institutes of Health is starting a tenofovir study in 1,400 gay men in Peru. Private and government funders are considering others. Tenofovir also is being tested in microbicide gels that women could use vaginally to try to prevent catching HIV.

"If you're in an area where there's a really high HIV incidence, something that's even 40 percent effective could have a huge impact," Paxton said.

And in the Atlanta labs where Heneine, Folks and others are still minding the monkeys, "the level of enthusiasm is pretty high," Heneine said. "This is very promising. For us to be involved in a potential solution to the big HIV crisis and pandemic is very exciting."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

shooting a music video for free...

2006-03-19T16:33:00.000-05:00

Alright, last night I shoot some footage for one of long time friend's rap music video. The song is called 'RIDE'. It was a three man crew and we shot outside in the fucking cold cause the chicken hawk was out and she was not playing. So, we are all out here doing our thing in the middle of the street with traffic going both ways as our friend did his lyrics. Now, I do not shoot videos for free but I know my friend's situation and it also a way to be creative outside of my house.

This mofo showed no emotion until the very end when he tried to touch my $3,000 camera. Oh no, motherfucker. I don't care how many of our friends were out there with their heat (guns) i was about to put a size 13 shoe in ya ass. After an apology and a long talk that if he wants to see his daughter again, he will never do that shyt again. We shot the remaining scenes....

people are a trip....

Plus mofos were suppose to look hard in the video but they were too busy laughing and smoking weed.

smh

never again

2006-03-16T16:56:00.000-05:00

Neighborhood genocide survivor associations in Rwanda are providing psychosocial support to HIV-positive women who contracted the virus through rape during the country's 1994 genocide, NPR's "Morning Edition" reports (Baron, "Morning Edition," NPR, 3/14). During the genocide, Hutu militia raped Tutsi women in a deliberate plan to use HIV/AIDS as a weapon. Many of the women remain hesitant to seek HIV testing and treatment (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 9/9/05). The NPR segment profiles an HIV-positive woman who lives in a suburb of Kigali, the country's capital, and is overcoming the stigma of rape and HIV/AIDS with the help of the Association of Widows and Orphans and Those Affected Or Infected by HIV/AIDS. The organization, which was started in 2002 by a family that returned to Rwanda after the genocide, provides counseling, skills training and a link to other support agencies that provide health care and income support to nearly 1,000 members, according to NPR. The NPR segment includes comments from a trauma specialist ("Morning Edition," NPR, 3/14).

Rwandan Women Who Contracted HIV Through Rape

2006-03-16T00:11:00.001-05:00

Rwandan Women Who Contracted HIV Through Rape

2006-03-16T00:11:00.000-05:00

Nine California Bathhouses, Sex Clubs Oppose New Health Regulations

2006-03-14T11:04:00.000-05:00

Nine California bathhouses and sex clubs in Los Angeles County on March 3 filed a lawsuit in the county's Superior Court seeking exemption from new county regulations on commercial sex venues, the Los Angeles Times reports (Lin, Los Angeles Times, 3/12). Commercial sex venues are defined in the regulations as "any establishment that charges patrons or members a fee for admission or membership and which as one of its primary purposes allows, facilitates and/or provides facilities for its patrons or members to engage in any high-risk sexual contact while on the premises." The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in September 2004 approved an ordinance requiring commercial sex venues to obtain health permits from the county and adhere to health regulations in order to operate. In January, the board of supervisors voted to approve regulations requiring sex venues to pay an annual fee and follow health rules, including providing on-site HIV testing and counseling. The regulations also require such venues to obtain a health permit from the county and pay an annual fee of $1,088, as well as submit to quarterly inspections. By establishing a fee under the new regulations, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services will conduct inspections and issue permits to the venues. The regulations also require venue owners to post signs prohibiting unprotected sex and to deny entry to customers under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 1/11). The regulations took effect earlier this month, according to the Times. The nine bathhouses and sex clubs in the lawsuit claim that they "are not commercial sex venues" because they have "always sought to prevent high-risk sex." The suit asks the Superior Court judge to void the regulations or exempt the nine businesses. John Schunhoff, county chief of operations for public health, said a commercial sex venue "doesn't mean that they are promoting high-risk sex; it just means it does occur" (Los Angeles Times, 3/12).

D.C., Maryland Could Lose Ryan White Funding Under Names-Based HIV Reporting Requirement

2006-03-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

The District of Columbia and Maryland could lose millions of dollars in Ryan White CARE Act funding if they do not implement names-based reporting of new HIV cases, the Washington Post reports. Currently, the district and Maryland encode patients' information when collecting HIV statistics (Brown, Washington Post, 3/13). CDC does not consider code-based HIV reporting to be accurate, and federal officials have said they will withhold funds from states that use code-based reporting rather than confidential names-based reporting (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 2/2). According to the Post, implementing a names-based reporting system by fiscal year 2007 could decide how $2.2 billion nationwide in funding would be distributed annually. Switching from code-based to names-based reporting could take approximately three years, the Post reports (Washington Post, 3/13). A subcommittee of the Maryland House Budget Committee on Monday approved a provision that would switch the state to names-based reporting only if Congress passes a bill tying CARE Act funding to the number of new HIV cases reported under a names-based system, the Baltimore Sun reports. The subcommittee's provision now goes to the full state House budget committee for consideration (Bor, Baltimore Sun, 3/14). The district's City Council currently is not considering a proposal to convert to the names-based reporting system.

Potential Losses, Reaction
The amount of funding Maryland and the district risk losing depends on the language adopted in the CARE Act reauthorization bill (SB 2339) pending in Congress, the Post reports (Washington Post, 3/13). Naomi Tomoyasu, acting director of the Maryland AIDS Administration, said the state could lose up to $26 million -- or about 55% -- of the annual federal funding it receives for HIV/AIDS testing, counseling, treatment and other services. "We cannot afford to lose $26 million," Michelle Gourdine, deputy state health secretary for public health services, said, adding, "If the federal government passes the requirement, we will clearly do what is needed to be done" (Baltimore Sun, 3/14). Marsha Martin, director of the district's HIV/AIDS Administration, said, "The district follows the CDC guidelines, and consistent with that is currently exploring the transition to name-based reporting for HIV infection," adding that any new reporting method "must ensure full protection and absolute confidentiality" (Washington Post, 3/13).

2006-03-14T04:25:00.000-05:00

HIV/AIDS Advocates Criticize Harper's Article Profiling Doctor Who Believes HIV Does Not Cause AIDS

Some HIV/AIDS advocates are criticizing an article in Harper's Magazine titled, "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science," which profiles Peter Duesberg, a doctor and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeleywho believes HIV does not cause AIDS, the New York Times reports. The 15-page article, which was published in the March issue of Harper's, examines criticism of aclinical trial that studied the use of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine among HIV-positive pregnant women in Uganda to prevent vertical HIV transmission. The article also focuses on Duesberg and his "strained relationship" with NIH, which funded the trial, according to the Times. According Roger Hodge, who edited the article and who will succeed Lewis Lapham as Harper's editor next month, Lapham had originally assigned contributing writer Celia Farber to cover cancer research conducted by Duesberg, but when the Uganda story broke, the assignment was changed. After the article's publication, criticism of Duesberg's views and the article appeared on Web sites such as nation.com and poz.com, the Times reports. John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology atWeill Medical College at Cornell University, said he was surprised at Harper's willingness to "teach the controversy" of Duesberg's theories, adding that the controversy had been "resolved long ago" and that the magazine's credibility has "taken an irreparable hit." Moore, along with seven other prominent AIDS researchers, posted a 37-page rebuttal on Treatment Action Campaign's Web site. In response to the criticism, Farber said neither she nor Harper's endorse the theory that HIV does not cause AIDS, adding, "People can't distinguish, it seems, between describing dissent and being dissent" (Miller, New York Times, 3/13).

National HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

2006-03-11T02:33:00.000-05:00

National HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Focuses on Increasing Number of New HIV/AIDS Cases Among Girls, Women

The first National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, which takes place today, will focus on the increasing number of new HIV/AIDS cases among girls and women, according to a statement by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Reuters reports. According to Reuters, 46% of HIV-positive adults worldwide in 2005 were women, and in the U.S. black, Latino and younger women were disproportionately affected by the pandemic (Reuters, 3/9). "To stop the disturbing trend of an increasingly female HIV/AIDS pandemic, we need new ways of thinking," Fauci said (NIAID release, 3/8). Fauci suggested an increase in gender-based HIV/AIDS education, adding that more women should participate in clinical trials aimed at understanding how gender affects the transmission of and complications related to the virus (Reuters, 3/9). Julie Scofield, executive director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, said, "We have an obligation to respond to the growing needs for HIV/AIDS prevention services and education among women and girls in this country, particularly women of color" (NASTAD release, 3/9).
Kaiser Family Foundation last week released an updated fact sheet, Women and HIV/AIDS in the U.S. Fact Sheet, which provides the latest data and trends over time of the HIV/AIDS epidemic's impact on women in the U.S.

Prison Time Among Black Males Might Account for Rise in Number of HIV/AIDS Cases Among Blacks

2006-03-10T04:57:00.000-05:00

The recent increase in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among blacks coincides with an increase in the proportion of black men who are incarcerated, according to a study released last year, the Washington Post reports. Rucker Johnson and Steven Raphael from the University of California-Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy examined U.S. census information and a federal database containing detailed information about 850,000 HIV-positive men and women who contracted the disease between 1982 and 1996. According to government data, in 1982 about 40% of prisoners were black, and in 1996 more than 50% were black. The researchers found that the increase of HIV/AIDS cases among blacks since the 1980s, most notably among women, corresponds with the increase in the proportion of black men in prison (Morin, Washington Post, 3/9). The researchers write that the "higher incarceration rates among black males over this period explain a substantial share of the racial disparity in AIDS infection" (Johnson/Raphael, "The Effects of Male Incarceration Dynamics on AIDS Infection Rates Among African-American Women and Men," July 2005). "So powerful is the relationship between race, prison and [HIV/]AIDS that it almost completely explains why half of all new AIDS patients in 2002 were [blacks] even though only 12% of the population is black," according to the Post. The Post reports that other studies show about half of all inmates have sexual relations with members of the same sex, and programs needed to help control the spread of HIV/AIDS in prisons are not allowed in many prisons. "[I]t's illegal to distribute condoms in prisons in all but one state," Johnson said, adding that lawmakers fear it would encourage same-sex relations (Washington Post, 3/9).

Best Picture? Not BrokeBack Mountain.....

2006-03-06T12:16:00.000-05:00

The BrokeBack Mountain Best Picture Snub?

Well, hopefully one year real soon. I can walk on stage and accept an Oscar for best editor, best original screenplay and director. Until then I will continue to practice my interview techniques and speech in the bathroom mirror, to my three year old nephew & one year old niece and to my cat, lyric. Honestly, I was not surprised that CRASH beat out BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for Best picture. C'mon now, We still live in a bias society and too many of us are still HOMOPHOBIC. So, if you think that a tragic love story between to cowboys who are on the DL is going to win BEST PICTURE. Try again! I have heard people complain about the film ever since it was released and the question I always ask is, "did you see it?" The reply is always the same. "No, I do not see it."

I am not gay. I do not have any intentions to become bi-sexual or a DL bruh. My film partner was gay and he died from the AIDS virus. A married man gave him the disease! He was a great friend. I never had to worry about him hitting on me because it was never about that. We both share a love for filmmaking and he always gave me advice to help me try to keep my ex girlfriend. People, you can have friends who are gay. They are not aliens from another planet. My favorite film school instructor is gay. He dressed up like one of the Village People on a daily basis but he was the best film instructor I had. He pushed me and made really work hard on my directing and storytelling craft. He did look at me and say, dmanit that Marley is very creative guy but he is straight heterosexual and I cannot work with him."

So, in closing. I am not saying get in line and see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN but if you do not want to see it, keep your fucking opinions to yourself and shut the fuck up!

Till next time

PS.

I have not seen the film yet.
I still do not have a comment for 3 6 Mafia acceptance speech yet.

LionsGate films

2006-03-05T23:09:00.000-05:00

NEWS ANALYSIS
Is Little Lionsgate Set To Roar?
An Oscar upset for Crash could make a powerhouse out of the independent film studio

Sitting in Toronto's faded Elgin Theater in 2004, Tom Ortenberg felt the heat. The president of tiny Lionsgate's (LGF ) film studio, Ortenberg was among the Hollywood heavies taking in the racially charged film Crash at the Toronto film festival -- and bid $3.3 million on the spot for its U.S. rights. "No one else seemed to want it," he recalls.
Advertisement

Too bad for them. Crash went on to become a bargain-basement hit, generating an estimated $65 million in revenues and $30 million in earnings for Lionsgate. On Mar. 5, Lionsgate may get its Miramax Moment, that magic time when a smaller, artier house gets to strut at the expense of the big studios before the Academy Awards' global TV audience. Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Crash is drawing some last-minute attention as a challenger to gay cowboy flick Brokeback Mountain. A Crash upset could vault Lionsgate beyond its status as king of the niches into a powerhouse independent studio.

Even if it doesn't grab the Oscar, Lionsgate still will have plenty to roar about. Last week, it opened the flick Medea's Family Reunion, an comedy starring Tyler Perry that grossed $30 million in its first weekend, making it the top flick of the weekend. Made for $10 million, it will likely be a huge hit for Lionsgate, which financed half the costs. It's a follow up for Perry's first flick, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which ended up grossing $50.4 million.

Together with Lionsgate's rich library -- which includesDirty Dancing, Reservoir Dogs, and Terminator 2 -- a big Oscar night could also make the studio an acquisition target for media companies beefing up content in a world of downloads and movies-on-demand. So says analyst Robert Routh of Jefferies & Co. (JEF ), who follows the stock and owns shares. He figures everyone from Comcast (CMCSA ) to Walt Disney (DIS ), which recently lost the services of Miramax's brothers Weinstein, could use a studio whose lower-budget films cut through the clutter.

Lionsgate says it is not considering a sale. But top execs Michael Burns and Jon Feltheimer spent $4 million on the Oscar campaign, sending Crash DVDs to all 130,000 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) members, even though only about 1,400 are Academy members. That won a surprise best-picture award from SAG, and pre-Oscar momentum. Who knows? Maybe Lionsgate will grab gold beyond that 8 1/2-lb. statue.

African-American and AIDS in America

2006-03-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

African Americans have been disproportionately affected by
HIV/AIDS since the epidemic’s beginning, and that disparity has
deepened over time.1,2,3 African Americans account for more
AIDS diagnoses, people estimated to be living with AIDS, and
HIV-related deaths than any other racial/ethnic group in the
U.S.1,4 The epidemic has also had a disproportionate impact on
subgroups of African Americans including women, youth, and men
who have sex with men, and its impact varies across the country.
Moreover, African Americans with HIV/AIDS may face greater
barriers to accessing care than their white counterparts.5,6,7 The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that
between 488,000–557,000 African Americans were living with HIV
or AIDS in the United Stated in 2003, a figure which has likely
grown since that time.8
Key Trends and Current Cases
• African Americans account for a growing share of AIDS diagnoses
over time, rising from 25% of cases diagnosed in 1985 to 49% in
2004.1,2
• A recent analysis of 1999–2002 data from a national household
survey found that 2.2% of African Americans in the U.S. were HIV
positive, higher than other groups and the only group for which
prevalence increased significantly over time.3
• Estimated AIDS prevalence among African Americans increased
by 35% between 2000 and 2004, compared to a 22% increase
among whites.1
• Deaths among African Americans with AIDS declined by 7%
between 2000 and 2004, compared to a 19% decline among
whites over this period.1
Women and Young People
• African American women account for the far majority of new AIDS
cases among women (67% in 2004); white women account for
17% and Latinas 15%.1,11
• Among African Americans, African American women represent
more than a third (36%) of AIDS cases diagnosed in 2004; by
comparison, white women represented 16% of AIDS cases
diagnosed among whites in 2004.1,11
• Although African American teens (ages 13–19) represent only
15% of U.S. teenagers, they accounted for 66% of new AIDS
cases reported among teens in 2003.13 A similar impact can be
seen among African American children.1
Transmission
• HIV transmission patterns among African American men vary from
those of white men. Although both groups are most likely to have
been infected through sex with other men, white men are almost
twice as likely to have been infected this way. Heterosexual
transmission and injection drug use account for a greater share of
infections among African American men than white men.1
African Americans and HIV/AIDS
Snapshot of the Epidemic
• Although African Americans represent only 13% of the U.S.
population,10 they account for 40% of the 944,306 AIDS cases
diagnosed since the start of the epidemic and approximately half
(49%) of the 42,514 cases diagnosed in 2004 alone (Figure 1).1
They also account for half of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the 35
states/areas with confidential name-based reporting.1
• The AIDS case rate per 100,000 population among African
American adults/adolescents was nearly 10.2 times that of whites
in 2004 (Figure 2).1,11
• African-Americans accounted for 55% of deaths due to HIV in
20024 and their survival time after an AIDS diagnosis is lower on
average than it is for other racial/ethnic groups.1
• HIV was the 3rd leading cause of death for African Americans,
ages 25–34, in 2002 compared to the 6th leading cause of death
for whites and Latinos in this age group. It ranks higher for some
subpopulations—HIV was the #1 cause of death for African
American women ages 25–34 in 2002.12
AIDS Cases
42,514 U.S. Population293,655,404
49%
14%
28%
69%
20%
13%
White, non-Hispanic
African American
Latino
1% 4%
American Indian/
<1% 1%Alaska Native
Asian/Pacific Islander
Figure 1
Estimated AIDS Diagnoses & U.S. Population by
Race/Ethnicity, 20041,9,10
Figure 2
AIDS Case Rate per 100,000 Population by Race/Ethnicity
for Adults/Adolescents, 20041,11
• Similar proportions of African American and white women are likely
to have been infected through heterosexual transmission, the most
common transmission route for both groups and for women overall.
White women are somewhat more likely to have been infected
through injection drug use than African American women.1
• Among men who have sex with men (MSM), African Americans
have been particularly hard hit. A recent study in 5 major U.S. cities
found that 46% of African American MSM in the study were infected
with HIV, compared to 21% of white MSM and 17% of Latino MSM.
Knowledge of HIV status among those already infected was also
very low.14,15
• A recent analysis of data from 2000–2002 in 11 HIV primary and
specialty care sites in the U.S. found higher rates of hospitalization
among African Americans with HIV/AIDS, but differences in
outpatient utilization were not significant.7
• CDC data indicate that over a third of African Americans with HIV
diagnoses (39%) were tested for HIV late in their illness—that is,
diagnosed with AIDS within one year of testing positive—in the 35
areas with HIV reporting; a similar proportion of whites (38%) were
tested late.1
• Among the U.S. population overall, African Americans are more
likely than whites to report ever having been tested for HIV (67%
compared to 44%). However, these self-reported testing rates may
be overestimates, since 21% of African Americans assumed that the
test was a routine part of an exam.19
• African Americans are more likely to report that they have talked
to both their doctor and their partners about HIV than whites
and Latinos. They are also more likely to say they need more
information about HIV testing.19
Concern About HIV/AIDS20
African Americans are concerned about HIV/AIDS, and are the only
racial/ethnic group to name it as the number one health problem
in the U.S. Most (56%) African Americans say the U.S. is “losing
ground” on the domestic AIDS epidemic. Personal concern about
becoming infected with HIV is also highest among African Americans,
as is concern among African American parents about their children
becoming infected. However, the proportion of African Americans
saying they are personally concerned about becoming infected has
declined since the mid 1990’s.
Conclusion
African Americans have been hard hit by HIV/AIDS and face the
brunt of the epidemic’s impact today in the U.S., as reflected in
incidence, prevalence, and mortality trends over time. These trends
present tremendous challenges to all of those involved in addressing
the epidemic in the U.S., including policymakers, community leaders,
and public health practitioners.
Geography
Although AIDS cases among African Americans have been reported
throughout the country, the impact of the epidemic on African
Americans is not uniformly distributed:
• AIDS case rates per 100,000 population for African Americans
are highest in the eastern part of the U.S., particularly in the
Northeast.11,16
• Over half (51%) of African Americans estimated to be living with
AIDS and 55% of newly reported AIDS cases among African
Americans in 2004 occurred in the South.16,17
• Estimated AIDS prevalence among African Americans is clustered
in a handful of states, with 10 states accounting for 72% of African
Americans estimated to be living with AIDS in 2004. New York,
Florida, and California top the list (Figure 3).16,17 Ten states also
account for a majority of newly reported AIDS cases among
African Americans (71% in 2004).16,17
Access to and Use of the Health Care System
• The HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), the only
nationally representative study of people with HIV/AIDS receiving
regular or ongoing medical care for HIV infection, found that African
Americans fared more poorly on several important measures of
access and quality than whites; these differences diminished over
time but were not completely eliminated.5 HCSUS also found that
African Americans were more likely to report postponing medical
care because they lacked transportation, were too sick to go to
the doctor, or had other competing needs.6
• According to HCSUS, African Americans with HIV/AIDS were
more likely to be publicly insured or uninsured than their white
counterparts, with over half (59%) relying on Medicaid compared
to 32% of whites. About one fifth of African Americans with
HIV/AIDS (22%) were uninsured compared to 17% of whites.
African Americans were also much less likely to be privately
insured than whites (14% compared to 44%).18
Prepared by Jennifer Kates and Alicia Carbaugh of the Kaiser Family Foundation. The
Kaiser Family Foundation is a non-profit, private operating foundation dedicated to
providing information and analysis on health care issues to policymakers, the media, the
health care community, and the general public. The Foundation is not associated with
Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.
Additional copies of this publication (#6089-03) are available on the Kaiser Family
Foundation’s website at www.kff.org.
References
1 CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, Vol. 16, 2005.
2 CDC, Data Request, January 2006.
3 McQuillan G et al., “The Prevalence of HIV in the United States Household Population: The
National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1988 to 2002,” Abstract #166, 12th
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, February 2005. Note, among those
ages 18–49.
4 NCHS, “Deaths: Final Data for 2002,” NVSR, Vol. 53, No. 5, October 2004.
5 Shapiro MF et al., “Variations in the Care of HIV-Infected Adults in the United States,” JAMA, Vol.
281, No.24, 1999.
6 Cunningham WE et al., “The Impact of Competing Subsistence Needs and Barriers to Access
to Medical Care for Persons with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Receiving Care in the United
States,” Medical Care, Vol.37, No.12, 1999.
7 Fleishman JA et al., “Hospital and Outpatient Health Services Utilization Among HIV-Infected
Adults in Care 2000–2002,” Medical Care, Vol. 43, No. 9 suppl, 2005.
8 Glynn MK, Rhodes P., “Estimated HIV Prevalence in the United States at the End of 2003,” 2005
National HIV Prevention Conference, June 2005.
9 Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding. Total AIDS diagnoses in 2004 include persons
of unknown race or multiple races.
10 U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, 2004 Population Estimates. Population
estimates do not include U.S. dependencies, possessions, and associated nations. May not
total 100% due to rounding; persons who reported more than one race were included in multiple
categories.
11 Includes estimated cases among those 13 years of age and older. Estimates do not include U.S.
dependencies, possessions, and associated nations, and cases of unknown residence.
12 NCHS, “Deaths: Leading Causes for 2002,” NVSR, Vol. 53, No. 17, March 2005.
13 CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance in Adolescents, L265 Slide Series (Through 2003).
14 CDC, Fact Sheet: HIV/AIDS Among Men Who Have Sex with Men, July 2005.
15 CDC, “HIV Prevalence, Unrecognized Infection, and HIV Testing Among Men Who Have Sex with
Men – Five U.S. Cities, June 2004–April 2005,” MMWR Weekly, 54(24), June 24, 2005.
16 The Kaiser Family Foundation, www.statehealthfacts.org. Data Source: Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention-Surveillance and Epidemiology, Special
Data Request, November 2005.
17 Estimates include U.S. dependencies, possessions, and associated nations, and cases of
unknown residence.
18 Fleishman JA. Personal Communication, Analysis of HCSUS Data, January 2002.
19 KFF, “Survey of Americans on HIV/AIDS: Part Two – HIV Testing,” June 2004.
20
KFF, “Survey of Americans on HIV/AIDS: Part Three – Experiences and Opinions by
Race/Ethnicity and Age,” August 2004.
7,393
7,953
8,135
9,518
9,993
10,405
10,497
10,765
22,186
32,026
District of Columbia
Illinois
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
Georgia
Maryland
Texas
California
Florida
New York
Figure 3
Number of African Americans Estimated to be Living with
AIDS: Top 10 States/Areas, 200416

President Bush is failing and fucking up again!

2006-03-01T11:08:00.000-05:00

AIDS Flatlines Again in Bush Budget Plan

By Kai Wright
First Published: 2/27/2006 Page 1 of 2 Go To: 1 2
[Email This Article To a Friend]
A host of domestic AIDS programs would be cut or kept at level funding for the sixth year in a row under a fiscal year 2007 budget proposal that the White House submitted to Congress earlier this month.

President Bush’s Feb. 6 budget plan would increase overall domestic AIDS spending by $188 million, but it would leave at current funding levels almost all programs under the Ryan White CARE Act, which is the primary federal vehicle for funding AIDS services. If passed by Congress in the fall, those programs would enter 2007 operating at 2002 funding levels. The National Institutes of Health’s AIDS research budget would be chopped by $15 million.

The proposal comes at a time when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that more Americans are living with HIV and AIDS than at any previous time, with an estimated 40,000 new infections occurring each year.

Bush’s budget plan would also draw down federal Medicaid spending by $14 billion over the next five years and nearly $35 billion over a decade. Medicare spending would be cut by almost $36 billion over five years and $105 billion over a decade.

Those cuts would come on top of reductions already scheduled for this fiscal year. On Feb. 8, Bush signed into law a budget for the current fiscal year that will cut Medicaid spending by $4.9 billion over five years and $26.5 billion over 10 years, largely by clearing states to charge far greater co-pays than previously allowed.

Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for AIDS treatment, and two-thirds of African Americans getting treated for HIV/AIDS pay for it with Medicaid or Medicare.

In all, Bush’s $2.77 trillion budget would eliminate or cut 141 government programs, while spending a record-high $439 billion on defense. That defense budget, however, does not include costs for conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq, which the administration funds through bills submitted to Congress outside of the normal budgeting process.

“My administration has focused the nation's resources on our highest priority,” President Bush said in a statement releasing the budget plan, “protecting our citizens and our homeland."

Political Winds

Meanwhile, the 2007 budget proposal would make permanent a suite of tax cuts the White House shepherded through Congress during the Bush administration’s first term. That move would cost government $1.4 trillion in revenues over the next 10 years. When originally passed, the tax rebates were discussed as temporary cash-infusions to stimulate a sluggish economy.

The budget plan puts Republican lawmakers in a difficult position, forcing them to choose between approving deep cuts to popular domestic programs in an election year and bucking a President they have staunchly supported.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the GOP chair of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, called the suggested healthcare cuts “scandalous” in Congressional hearings that have already turned contentious. Specter is among the most outspoken of a group of Republican moderates who are expected to be uneasy with the cuts, and he has said the Bush plan will “require substantial modifications by Congress.”

But the White House and its backers on Capitol Hill have vowed to push their budget priorities through despite the election-year complications.

Medicaid Maneuvers

The President’s proposed healthcare cuts are likely to draw the most sustained controversy.

Both state and federal budgets have been straining under Medicaid’s costs for several years, and policymakers on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government are searching for ways to control its growth. The Bush administration has pushed a plan that would turn the program into a “block grant,” giving states a fixed sum of money to spend each year and leaving them to cover whatever costs go above that mark. In return, the administration would drastically loosen rules that govern how states provide benefits and structure their programs.

Governors and legislators alike have balked at that idea, saying it would stick the states with the bill for America’s healthcare safety net. But the administration has still managed to advance its vision by degrees through annual reductions in the federal contribution to Medicaid.

In this year’s budget proposal, the White House has broadened that strategy, according to an analysis conducted by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Congress rejected a number of the administration’s suggestions during last year’s heated Medicaid reform debate. So this year, the CBPP analysis notes, Bush’s budget plan introduces many of those same ideas as regulatory changes that do not require Congressional approval.

According to CBPP, $30.4 billion of the $35.5 billion in 10-year cuts Bush proposes would be accomplished through regulatory changes not requiring Congress’ sign-off; 98% of the savings achieved would come from directly shifting those costs to the states.

But CBPP and other observers warn that as states become ever-more burdened by Medicaid’s costs, they’ll be left with no choice but to make drastic cuts to services, such as limiting what drugs are available, restricting who qualifies for coverage, and increasing costs to beneficiaries.

Ryan White Details

The President’s budget does propose $188 million in new money for all domestic HIV/AIDS programs.

Of that money, $93 million would be directed to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for new efforts at getting people tested for HIV, particularly in high-risk populations and working through faith-based organizations.

The rest of the new money, $95 million, would go into Ryan White, which would be budgeted at $2.1 billion altogether. The vast majority of the new Ryan White money, $70 million, would go to reducing existing waiting lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP.

ADAP is a joint state-federal program that subsidizes AIDS medications for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance. For years, ADAPs around the country have been plagued by annual budget troubles. Those in the South have had a particularly hard time meeting the demand.

As a result of these financial troubles, a number of states have developed waiting lists for people to get medication. As of Jan. 18, 954 people in 10 states were on such lists. Another 16 states had either set up other cost containment measures or expected to do so by the end of March.

Kai Wright is publications editor for the Black AIDS Institute.

Filmmaker busted in prostitution sting

2006-02-27T23:18:00.000-05:00

Film-maker Tamahori's prostitution charge dropped
New Zealand-born film-maker Lee Tamahori, arrested last month on a sex charge while wearing a woman's dress and wig, has been placed on probation after pleading guilty to a lesser offence of criminal trespass.

Tamahori, 55, best known for directing the James Bond hit Die Another Day, was also ordered to attend an AIDS education course, according to Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office.

The film director was arrested on January 8 in a police sting operation and charged with prostitution and loitering in a public place.

He was accused of offering to perform oral sex on an undercover police officer in exchange for money.

The no-contest plea, equivalent in California to pleading guilty, was entered on the trespassing charge by Tamahori's lawyer in exchange for prosecutors dropping the more serious charge of prostitution.

The loitering count also was dismissed.

Tamahori, who was not at the court proceedings, was placed on three years' probation and ordered to perform 15 days of community service for the Hollywood Beautification Project, Mr Mateljan said.

Tamahori gained notice as a director for the 1994 drama Once Were Warriors, a film set in New Zealand about a family of native Maori whose lives have been plagued by alcohol, drugs and violence. Tamahori's father is Maori.

He followed that film with the 1950s-era crime drama Mulholland Falls and The Edge, a thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

Tamahori made a splash with 2002's Die Another Day, which starred Pierce Brosnan as British secret agent 007 and Halle Berry as an American agent named Jinx.

His action film xXx: State of the Union, starring rapper Ice Cube, bombed at the box office last year.

My nephew did something dumb and stupid tonight....

2006-02-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

Aaron James Smith, Age 11
My nephew.....
On his way home today from school this afternoon. A stranger approached him. Now, I have talked to my nephew thousands of times explaining to him that if a stranger approaches him, he should run away and yell for help. To tell school authorities that a stranger approached him. What did Aaron James Smith do? He went with the stranger. The stranger caught a bus and without second thought, Aaron got on the bus with the stranger. I do not know why? I have no answers. Like I have stated before, I have spent countless hours telling all of my nieces and nephews the same thing. If a stranger approaches you, run away screaming at the top of your lungs. If someone you know touches you in an uncomfortable body area, tell someone.

My nephew was missing for five hours.
he said, nothing happened.
I am shocked, stunned and angry.....
I try to be the best uncle a person can be. A close friend of mine told me, "no matter what happens. You cannot save them all." It hurts right now because I know he is right but yet my heart disgarees.
Right now, Aaron James Smith (my nephew) is at children's hospital being examined to see if he was sexually assaulted.

if this man has harmed my nephew.
GOD help me, please do not allow my anger and temperment cloud my judgement.

to be continued.....

New York City Health Department Developing Own Brand of Condom

2006-02-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

New York City Health Department Developing Own Brand of Condom

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in a statement released on Monday announced plans to introduce its own brand of condoms, the New York Times reports. Sandra Mullin, a spokesperson for the department, said the project -- which will promote the condoms using "noticeable and memorable" packaging -- is an attempt to measure the effectiveness of a condom-distribution campaign that began last year. The health department has increased condom distribution during Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration. The department in June 2005 introduced the "Free Condom Initiative" as part of an effort to reduce the prevalence rate of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, in the city, the Times reports. The Web-based program distributes condoms at no cost to community and social service organizations (Santora, New York Times, 2/14). "A condom can save your life. An estimated 20,000 New Yorkers living with HIV are unaware that they are infected, and many thousands are at risk for getting or spreading HIV through unprotected sex," Tom Frieden, New York City's health commissioner, said (Edozien, New York Post, 2/14). According to officials, more than one million condoms a month are distributed through the program. "We wanted to develop condom ... so that we can later track the effectiveness of our distribution," Mullin said of the proposed New York condom, adding, "We also aim to use the packaging to promote condom use and awareness." While health officials said the city does not intend to raise funds by selling the branded condoms, other details remain unclear. "This project is in the very early stages of development," Jordan Barowitz, a spokesperson for Bloomberg, said. There has been opposition to the "aggressive" promotion of condoms by government agencies, with some social conservatives and religious groups saying that it encourages promiscuity, according to the Times (New York Times, 2/14). The New York brand condoms are expected be available in four to six months, the Post reports (New York Post, 2/14).

I found this online

2006-02-13T13:58:00.000-05:00

U.S. Support for Abstinence-Only HIV Prevention Programs Undermines Evidence Based Efforts to Prevent HIV, Letter to the Editor Says

The U.S. policy of providing global HIV prevention funding to many "abstinence-only" sex education programs that do not promote condom use is "seriously undermining evidence-based efforts to prevent the spread of HIV" and has "left those who are already sexually active without the information and support to protect themselves" from the virus, Joseph O'Reilly of the Global Working Group on U.S. AIDS Policy writes in a letter to the editor in London's Guardian in response to a Feb. 7 Guardian editorial (O'Reilly, Guardian, 2/10). The Feb. 7 editorial says the U.S. policy implemented by President Bush in 2001 not to provide funding to any organization that provides abortion services or counseling in other countries has caused "scores of clinics, many primarily providing contraception ... to close" (Guardian, 2/7). O'Reilly in response writes that the U.S. policy is "one of a number of ideological funding conditions which are putting the health of the world's poor at risk," adding, "Condoms, like abortion, are part of the Bush administration's assault on sexual health and rights." Up to 69% of U.S. funding to prevent HIV/AIDS is channeled to abstinence-only programs in some of the "hardest-hit" African countries, O'Reilly says, concluding, "The [United Kingdom] and other European donors must agree as a matter of urgency [on] a way of countering these aspects of U.S. global AIDS policy" (Guardian, 2/10).

Arson in Alabama

2006-02-12T17:36:00.000-05:00

10th Alabama church fire is arson
Feds set up phone number, post office box, e-mail for arsonists

Sunday, February 12, 2006; Posted: 3:24 p.m. EST (20:24 GMT)

BEAVERTON, Alabama (CNN) -- Investigators said on Sunday that a fire at a northwest Alabama church was deliberately set and they are trying to determine if it is linked to nine other blazes in the same area of the state.

The fire that heavily damaged Beaverton Freewill Baptist Church on Saturday afternoon is the sixth blaze determined to be intentionally set since February 3. Another four fires are suspected arsons.

One of the lead investigators said there were witnesses to Saturday's fire and officials have solid leads from other crime scenes. (Map of suspicious fires)

"We're going to solve this case," said Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Nashville division, which includes Alabama.

Police say they believe the arsons were committed by two men in their 20s or early 30s. "We think they're buddies, partners, an inseparable team," he said.

Cavanaugh said investigators are looking for a dark-colored SUV, possibly a Nissan Pathfinder.

Authorities have set up a phone number, an e-mail address and a post office box specifically for the arsonists, he said, and were advertising them locally, since they are believed to be in the area.

"We do think they have a message," Cavanaugh said. "We want them to call us. We want to listen."

The arsonists could be acting out of anger, a desire for revenge or excitement, or against churches or religion, he said, but also their motive could be other frustrations in their life.

"I think there's probably some stressors in their life: Family, relationships, work, the economy," he said. "The region's been devastated by a hurricane, there's a war in Iraq, there's a lot of terrible things going on," he said.

Cavanaugh said he instinctually felt the latest fire -- which began near the church's front door -- is connected to nine other fires, though there is not concrete proof.

All of the churches are Baptist. Five have predominantly black congregations and five, including Beaverton Freewill, have predominantly white members.

Although the Beaverton fire apparently was set during the day, Cavanaugh noted the church was in a remote location.

Beaverton is about 80 miles northwest of Birmingham, Alabama, in Lamar County. It is just north of Pickens County, he noted, where Dancy First Baptist Church, south of Aliceville, was burned last week.

In the Dancy fire, evidence showed the arsonists may have briefly become trapped, he said, and possibly could have been injured. A handprint was also recovered from the scene.

Although tests show some accelerants were used in the fires, Cavanaugh said it was not a large amount. "These guys aren't going in with gas cans. This is down and dirty, fast and furious, quick and mean, in and out. These guys are not lingering in there."

CDC MMWR Examines Racial, Ethnic Disparities in HIV/AIDS Diagnoses

2006-02-10T12:02:00.000-05:00

CDC MMWR Examines Racial, Ethnic Disparities in HIV/AIDS Diagnoses

"Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Diagnoses of HIV/AIDS," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: The report examines racial and ethnic disparities in diagnoses of HIV/AIDS from 2001 to 2004, using cases reported to CDC by 33 states via a confidential names-based reporting system. According to the report, of the estimated 157,252 HIV cases diagnosed during that period, the number of cases and rate of diagnoses were higher among blacks than all other racial or ethnic groups combined. The report calls for a comprehensive national program to address the "substantial" racial disparities in HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the U.S. and says that partnerships must be improved among governmental agencies, community- and faith-based organizations and the public to reduce such disparities (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2/10).

Children Affected By HIV/AIDS Neglected

2006-02-10T11:53:00.000-05:00

Children affected by HIV/AIDS do not receive enough care and support, UNAIDS said Thursday ahead of the third Global Partners' Forum in London, Reuters reports. The forum, hosted by UNICEF and the U.K. Department for International Development, is bringing together advocates from 50 countries and 90 international organizations to address ways to improve policies that support children affected by HIV/AIDS. According to UNAIDS, less than 10% of children who have lost a parent to AIDS-related causes receive support (Reuters, 2/9). In addition, pediatric antiretroviral drugs can cost six times as much as antiretrovirals for adults, UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot said. Peter McDermott, head of UNICEF's HIV/AIDS department, said drug companies have ignored pediatric antiretrovirals because the market for them is too small and because it is difficult to predict how much will be needed. Also, drug companies know that if programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission are successful, the demand for pediatric HIV drugs will dwindle, McDermott said (Batha, Reuters AlertNet, 2/9). The forum will focus on ways to strengthen the capacity of families of children orphaned by or made vulnerable to HIV/AIDS; mobilize community-based efforts to support families affected by the disease; ensure equal and universal access to education; and push for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care (UNAIDS release, 2/9). DFID said it plans to meet with pharmaceutical companies to examine ways to accelerate the development of low-cost and effective pediatric antiretroviral drugs (Reuters AlertNet, 2/9).

Homophobia causes a rise in the Aids

2006-02-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

By Colin Robinson

First Published: 12/19/2005

When we talk about the complexities of African American homophobia, we’ve grown used to commenting about how Gay men’s participation in key roles in the Black church is such a public secret, notwithstanding the Bible-thumping sermon about sex and Sodom that remains a Sunday morning staple. But those of us who work in the AIDS industrial complex have got another public secret, something we all know is true, but that our programs and organizations and policy work don’t really address – that homophobia causes AIDS. I’ll say it again: Homophobia causes AIDS.

I’m tired of having to always qualify this statement when I make it, of having to respond to blinkered arguments that: It’s unsafe sexual behavior regardless of sexual orientation, that’s responsible for HIV infection. That it's not who you are but what you do. I'm tired of sticking to our one-size-fits-all-across-the-board-public-health messages about unprotected sex.

What’s even more tiring are the "Says who?" and "Prove it" schools -- those who seem to require a randomized, double-blind, peer-reviewed study as evidence. Yeah, I know there are better research methods, but go Google “HIV,” “homophobia,” and “Black.” No, seriously: stop reading now and go do it.

If you do it, you’ll find USA Today quoting Coretta Scott King saying homophobia’s one of the most formidable obstacles to AIDS education; former Surgeon General David Satcher apologizing for the inexcusable ways in which homophobia has marginalized gay men and lesbians within the US healthcare system; folks founding a New York City organization to deal with heterosexual Black and Latino folks attributing the rise of HIV among straight folks to homophobia.

All of this was there long before Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor Cynthia Tucker’s widely discussed but problematic 2005 column, "Homophobia among Blacks fuels HIV/AIDS crisis." All before the Rev. Al Sharpton’s August announcement to a room of politicians and white and Latino gay folks that he was launching a campaign against Black homophobia, especially among Black clergy, in part because of its role in fueling HIV. So go ask Mrs. King, Dr. Satcher and Rev. Al for a study.

I’m tired of having to justify what I mean, of folks staring at me like I have two heads, like I’m some sort of Thabo Mbeki figure -- the South African president who, while trying to make the case that poverty causes AIDS, was cavorting with HIV denialists and withholding anti-retroviral treatment from pregnant women.

I’m not advocating that we must dismantle everything we’re currently doing in HIV prevention in order to work on homophobia, as others have begun to argue more loudly in the wake of the 46% study. (Though on a good day, it does cross my mind.) I do, however, want the idea that homophobia causes AIDS to move to the center of how we think about and respond to HIV and HIV risk in the US and in Black communities – in how we set government policy for funding and services, in how we run our organizations, in what we do in our families and communities, in how we live our own lives.

I’m tired, especially, of folks responding to me saying that homophobia causes AIDS with a "Yeah, so?" shrug. So there’s a big pink elephant in the middle of the floor, they seem to say, tell me something I don’t know. I do understand this reaction. It appears homophobia, not unlike racism, has simply grown acceptable, normative, one of those not-something-that-will-end-in-my-lifetime kind of things. But I’m troubled when young men I talk to suggest that -- just like people doing drugs on the corner, public schools that won’t improve, and George Bush being reelected -- that maybe we should just get used to HIV infection as one of those things that’s going to happen. That we should just normalize it, instead of doing this Chicken Little thing every time a new study comes out saying the sky is falling -- again.

I’ve seen the idea that poverty does cause – or, more politely, fuel – AIDS move more and more to the center of thinking in the international development field. And I’ve seen Hurricane Katrina make the leader of one of the most ideological and partisan conservative administrations in years utter the words "persistent poverty" in a primetime speech. So I’m hopeful that the renewed attention to HIV infection among Black men who have sex with men resulting from the 46% statistic will open up a new dialogue about persistent homophobia and make the idea that homophobia causes AIDS not just a foregone conclusion, but a point of departure for our work.

Blocking Progress

Ever since I went to work for Gay Men of African Descent as its first director 10 years ago, my notion of what we need to do to stop HIV has been to promote homosexuality -- our own culturally specific experiences and expressions of it -- and to battle homophobia. We need to change the conditions under which Black men who have sex with men make decisions about sex and risk. But, equally important, we need to change the ways in which we are imagined by and incorporated into community and society and, therefore, the ways we imagine ourselves, our worth and our options.

There are three key ways in which homophobia undermines everything we are trying to do in HIV prevention. First is safety. How can we ask folks to have safer sex when they don’t feel safe in the rest of their lives? When the intimacy and vibrancy that sex provides is often the only place they feel alive? In New York, we read in the papers every few weeks of another Gay victim of violence. And I know some folks who never made the paper.

Second is value. As Joe Beam put it back in the ’80s, long before I could grasp the largeness of what he meant, we must know that “we are worth wanting.” What is the meaning of HIV prevention, of telling someone to use a condom in order to live, when as Black gay folks our worth is challenged daily in school, in the media, on the street, from the pulpit, and by our families? HIV prevention doesn’t work when the social value of the lives of the people we are trying to keep alive is in question.

Lastly, there is the thorny question of identity -- and the horribly muddled and wrongheaded public debate about the “down low” and the role, if any, that Black men who have sex with men play in HIV transmission to Black women. What’s missing from the DL debate is an understanding that homophobia limits the choices that Black men can make about their same-sex desire, constrains their expressions of that desire, and ultimately exacts a price for whatever choices and expressions are made. As Kanye West illustrated so poignantly, even Black men who aren’t gay find their choices about masculinity limiting, and a price attached.

But homophobia is also entailed in how we as out Gay men engage in the down-low debate. On the one hand, we are complicit in the demonization of the DL brother as bogeyman – though I have no idea why we think this does us any good. On the other hand, we repeatedly refuse to acknowledge the real pain and experiences of women infected or deceived by DL men, because the inequality homophobia imposes on all gay-straight relationships makes us prudently ask each time: What do we get in exchange? And so we lose powerful opportunities to build relationships with women that help challenge homophobia. Ultimately, I’m not sure any HIV prevention work in Black communities advances until we take the risks necessary to dismantle the DL hoax and unmask its profiteers. Only then can we confront the double standard that normalizes Black teenage pregnancy but holds Gay men morally responsible for their HIV infection.

Needless Distractions

There’s a tiresome twosome of resistance to the idea that homophobia causes AIDS. First is the false contest between this idea and the fact that race also plays a powerful role in fueling the HIV epidemic. Half of the folks with HIV in the U.S. are Black. But half of the Black men getting HIV have sex with men. This is not a question of either/or, but both.

And, of course, next there’s the tired debate over terminology -- and the acknowledged reality that homophobia is, well, not a phobia. As someone who grew up in the “West Indies,” I know all too well that (no less than our endless debates over the terms Black and gay themselves) homophobia is as inexact, problematic and Eurocentric a word as any other. And it often distorts the meaning of the very thing we are trying to name. But it is shorthand for something we know we are naming, even as we misname it. I certainly pack into homophobia the bigger bag of Black masculinity that I believe is at the core of the DL and of heterosexual HIV transmission. I don’t have a more resonant word to make myself understood, but I hope that increasing public discourse about this thing will help us better name it. So please do a global search-and-replace with whatever more nuanced expression(s) may better articulate the point.

I want to propel us from the shrugging acceptance of saying “Homophobia causes AIDS. So what?” to the shocked realization of “Homophobia causes 46% of us to have HIV? What?!” Let’s move this idea to the front and center of what we’re doing in HIV prevention and community organizing. There are many, many ways for this work to happen. It can unfold both within the AIDS industrial complex and outside of it. Bringing funding, professionalism and the lessons of social science and evaluation to such work is critical if it is to succeed, and if we are to make the best use of resources that will always be scarce. But I do come down on the side of the HIV-prevention-has-failed critics when I see how, in too many places, HIV prevention has given up its earlier grassroots mission for a newer legitimacy, and become accountable not to our community’s welfare but to other interests.

If Black homophobia is at the root of the alarming disparities in HIV infection between Black men who have sex with men and Black men who don’t, and of similar disparities between Black men who have sex with men and all other MSM, and if on some level we know this in our hearts, why aren’t all of us doing as much about it as we can? If indeed anywhere close to 46% of Black gay men in some major cities is likely to be infected, shouldn’t that make the case -- more compellingly than the murders and suicides and violence and depression and denied opportunity and everything else bad we know homophobia does to us -- that homophobia is one of our most important battlegrounds? Shouldn’t it prompt us to reinvent how we do HIV prevention for many (and, I’ll admit, maybe not all) Black men who have sex with men, in a way that tackles head-on the big pink elephant in the room? And shouldn’t some of us be willing to say over and over again, Homophobia causes AIDS -- even if we risk sounding like Thabo Mbeki, or paying a similar political price? Psst!! Do I still have your attention? Help me pass it on: Homophobia causes AIDS.

HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC IN DC

2006-02-09T10:52:00.000-05:00

Across The Nation | NPR's 'All Things Considered' Examines HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Washington, D.C.
[Feb 08, 2006]
NPR's "All Things Considered" on Tuesday examined the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Washington, D.C. According to NPR, the rate of new AIDS cases reported each year in the district is 10 times the national average. Of the district's more than 500,000 residents, an estimated one in 50 is living with AIDS and one in 20 is HIV-positive, NPR reports. Cornelius Baker, former executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in the district, said several factors contribute to the high HIV-prevalence rate in the city. Baker said, "We have a smaller population, but we also have a large gay community. ... We also have a majority black population, and the black community is being ravished by this epidemic." Baker said a poor health care infrastructure, inadequate primary care and high rates of drug addiction also are factors. The city's high rate of incarceration also contributes to the number of HIV/AIDS cases in the city, he said. "When you look at what is the single most common factor that is present when a black woman is infected with HIV by her partner, [it is that] he was incarcerated," Baker said, adding that jails are a "breeding ground" for HIV transmission. According to Baker, black political and religious leaders in the district have been slow to acknowledge the epidemic in the city.

Action
According to NPR, district and federal funding for HIV/AIDS programs has increased over the last five years, "but it has not grown in proportion to the steady rise in AIDS and HIV cases." Marsha Martin, who become senior deputy director of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration in September 2005, said HIV/AIDS has fallen "off the radar screen" in the city. As a result, less public and private funding is being devoted to HIV/AIDS programs, she said. Martin said D.C. currently does not have an HIV/AIDS public awareness campaign but has a "task force that the mayor's office is in the final stages of vetting that will be including some of the significant individuals that can help us with that campaign." Martin has said she would like to make condoms available in all public places that serve alcohol, expand the city's needle-exchange program, target prevention messages at sexually active teenagers and college students, offer HIV testing in more physicians' offices and emergency departments and require mandatory HIV-testing of inmates during the prison intake and discharge process. In addition, Martin said she would like the city to begin a universal testing campaign and "have everybody know their status" within the next five years. The segment also includes comments from a 54-year-old man receiving an HIV test and from two outreach workers with the Women's Collective, a not-for-profit group that supports people with HIV and works to slow the spread of the disease. The segment also examines a free HIV testing program run by the Women's Collective (Norris, "All Things Considered," NPR, 2/7).

The President's Mocking Call for 'Hope'

2006-02-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

President Bush once again pledged bold action last night to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, citing the disproportionate impact among African Americans in particular. The Institute applauds that pledge. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve heard it -- and we’re sadly still waiting for the administration to act in a way that is congruent with its words.

Since the debacle of the 2004 vice presidential debates – in which Vice President Cheney acknowledged ignorance of the epidemic’s intensity among Black women – the White House has become adept at mouthing the rhetoric of the struggle against AIDS. But the gap between those words and its actions has grown so large that what once sounded “hopeful” now carries the sting of mockery.

Last night, President Bush declared, “A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented and treated and defeated.” These words echoed those he delivered in his 2005 State of the Union and that he repeated on World AIDS Day in December. But the administration continues to advocate policies that will produce just the opposite result.

The White House’s budget proposal last year – which shaped the budget now awaiting final congressional approval – cut funding for the HIV prevention work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $4.5 million. And it flat-lined almost every aspect of the Ryan White CARE Act for a third-straight year.

Meanwhile, the administration spent the last congressional session shoving its proposal to gut Medicaid through Congress. The budget Congress is now poised to approve would shift the program’s growing cost onto the backs of the poor families it was designed to help in the first place.

At the White House’s insistence, the bill will allow states to charge co-pays that may reach as high as hundreds of dollars for some. The Congressional Budget Office has said this cynical step would not save money through people actually paying the co-pays but rather by discouraging them from using Medicaid at all. Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for AIDS treatment, and two-thirds of Blacks getting AIDS care pay for it with public health insurance.

In the coming days, the White House will submit its next budget proposal. Perhaps it will reflect the ideals of the “hopeful society” the President described. But given the goals outlined in the rest of his speech, we won’t hold our breath.

Even as President Bush called for renewed efforts to stop new infections, he championed unproven abstinence education as a strategy for promoting sexual health. The President was correct to note the steady improvements we have seen in sexual health among young people; but he was either uninformed or deliberately misleading when he attributed those advancements to abstinence promotion.

The CDC has clearly stated that research suggests the improving trends found in its national surveys on youth risk-behavior are an outgrowth of comprehensive sex education. No credible research exists showing abstinence-only sex education to work – indeed, some suggests that it makes matters worse, because those young people who do eventually have sex don’t know how to do so safely. Parents overwhelmingly agree with this commonsense: Nearly half of those surveyed in a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/NPR poll said they wanted kids to learn about both delaying sex and protecting themselves.

Yet, the administration continues to ignore the urgings of both scientists and parents in its reckless effort to make schools bend to its unfounded beliefs. So while the White House has pushed cuts to the CDC’s proven prevention work with one hand, with the other it has more than doubled the annual budget for abstinence-only education since 2001.

Similarly, while President Bush said last night that AIDS can be “treated and defeated,” in the same speech he repeatedly vowed to continue taking apart the same safety-net programs that poor people with HIV/AIDS depend upon to get and stay healthy. He also urged Congress to entrench the reckless tax cuts that have left government unable to adequately fund these long-standing, crucial initiatives.

“Tonight, the state of our Union is strong,” the President insisted. But whether it be AIDS in particular or our well-being more broadly, many Americans are left wondering which Union the President is talking about. His administration’s actions have consistently betrayed the callousness hiding behind its professed compassion. Merely asserting otherwise with “hopeful” words doesn’t alter that reality.

I am puting JL King on blast!

2006-01-31T10:21:00.000-05:00

This is a true story and Tuesday is vent day for me!

So, I mailed this short film about men on the DL. Way back in fucking August 2005. I sent to an email to the author of 'ON THE DOWN LOW' J.L. King. I tell him about my short film and what I am trying to do to spread the word and what not. A day later, I receive an email saying, "I would like to view your film." Cool, I send the him a dvd and have not heard anything back. I am already having a shitty day. I get an email from his new website promoting him and his endeavors. Motherfucker I have not heard a word from your camp since August 2005. Now, you sending me an email about your website. I was fucking livid! Maybe too livid but still the point is where is the professionalism? That's the only thing I am asking. If you asked to see my short, then let me know what you think? Did you receive the dvd? Just simple questions to answer, I wouldn't mind if you did not see because of your busy schedule or if you viewed it and did not the short film. But That's some bullshyt! I would never do anyone like that!

So J.L. King I am putting your *&^%$#@! ass on blast today!

This has been an angry filmmaker moment!
Now back to your regular programming.....

2006-01-27T23:14:00.000-05:00

What a month!
It's been crazy.
I finally received my money from Reuters.
I gave it all to my co-op because I was madd behind in rent and they had every right to put my punk ass out on the streets, but there's this thing called karma and if you treat people right. Often times, they will do right by you. Since I grew up with a lot of my neighbor's kids I have been given some room to pay on the late fees and what not.

My cousin and his wife are going to get a divorce. I am not insensitive to overweight women, there are a few I have crushes on. But these mofos made me go down the isle with the bride's sister who is close to 280 pounds and she bitched about her feet killing her the entire time we walked down the isle and now these fuckers are getting a divorce? Fuck that shit!

They better work that shit out for my sakes!

I finished editing this South Africa video and submitted my invoice and now these people are complaining about the amount I am asking for. I have worked over 60 hours on this video and have done countless changes..... Why am I so unlucky with finding paying clients?

I have been chatting with this beautiful woman and she makes me smile whenever we talk on the phone. I have known her for awhile now but she lives out of state. I look forward to seeing her in person soon. That's all I am going to say about that topic.

I have been celibate for six and half months now. That is some hard shit to do....

I have started packing for my move to Los Angeles. Am I nervous? Yes. I am scared to death!
But I know I have to make this next step in my life.

I have submitted NIGHT to a few more film festivals and I was rejected tonight because of the length of the short. I was hurt and angry but it's not the end of the world and I will just keep on plugging away.

Big Momma House 2? Who thought of that fucking brilliant idea? The first one was bullshit and now they release this shit?!? Watch black folks run out this weekend and view that bullshit at the movies or buy if from the dude on the street corner who already has a copy with Alexis' weave in the way and you can hear people talking in the background of the bootleg copy you just purchased.

Anyways, I am done with my venting.

till next time

Finally, a film that exposes the film rating board

2006-01-24T12:21:00.000-05:00

Filmmaker Lifts Lid on Secretive Ratings System
By Gregg Goldstein and Anne Thompson, Reuters

PARK CITY, Utah (Jan. 23) - Director Kirby Dick is taking on what he charges is one of the most powerful, secretive organizations in the country: the film ratings board.

And the group representing Hollywood's major studios is none too happy about it.

In "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," a documentary receiving its world premiere Wednesday at the Sundance Film Festival, Dick uses private investigators to unmask the identities of members of the Certification and Rating Administration, which the Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA) operates with the National Association of Theatre Owners.

The film also presents side-by-side scene comparisons that Kirby contends show how the board's decisions favor studio releases over independent films while also revealing sexist and homophobic attitudes. The film includes interviews with several filmmakers who have gone through the appeals process to avoid an NC-17, a restrictive rating that limits many films' distribution and advertising.

"There's a great antipathy toward the MPAA, even by many people at the studios," Dick said. Yet while the film includes comments from a series of directors and former board members, he was unable to convince any studio executives to appear onscreen.

"Many filmmakers expressed support," he said -- among them cult director John Waters, who noted, tongue firmly planted in cheek, "It may end my career."

Yet Dick claimed he was "so surprised by many who declined. They were afraid it would impact the board's view of their films in the future, even some who've publicly criticized their practices in the past. This fear works in the MPAA's favor."

MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman rejects that suggestion. "Do I agree with his facts and assumptions? No, but I haven't seen the final cut," said Glickman, who took over the MPAA from ratings architect Jack Valenti, who is a target of much of the film's criticism. Glickman, who spoke during a visit to Sundance, said he saw the film before its release because of the detective work exposing board members.

"I was worried about their personal safety and security," he said. "They were nervous about it. In this era of NSA eavesdropping, personal privacy is very important. If our employees were harassed or outed by this movie, if (Dick) cased their homes in their environment, that's why I saw the film. One man got an e-mail that referred to his child. It was not threatening, but it was disconcerting for him. One man had his trash ruffled through."

The producers of the film said they worked stringently to stay within the laws of California, and consulted with attorneys every step of the way.

"So many filmmakers have had their films censored in one way or another," Dick said. His answer: "To 'out' (ratings board members) and their decision-making processes so the charade will be over."
Hard 'R' Ratings

Dick is no stranger to taking on powerful organizations: In his most recent documentary, "Twist of Faith," he faced the wrath of the Catholic Church by chronicling one man's claims of sexual abuse by a priest. He was nervous about possible legal repercussions from 'Rated' but ultimately felt that "the MPAA is a business like any other business, and it has to be scrutinized."

Evan Shapiro, an executive producer and general manager at the Independent Film Channel, which financed the film, said he spoke with Glickman about the issues raised in the film. "His argument was that board members are private citizens," Shapiro said, "but the FCC does the same thing, and the MPAA has no less of a public function."

Ultimately, the director is amused by the irony of his film's own ratings process -- it was given an NC-17 in November. "I would like to have been in that room," he laughed.

The results of his recent ratings appeal will be disclosed this week.

INTERESTING COMMENTARY

2006-01-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

I found this online and I have to agree with a majority of it.

Callin Out Names
Monday - January 16, 2006
A-Plus

Now that I have your attention… yes I said it. I don’t wanna be Black anymore. In a time where it’s cool and fashionable to be an African American, I’m hanging it up, throwing in the towel, folding.

The Machine has forced us into a state of moral bankruptcy.

Okay, okay… before you begin your chants of “hang that nigga now, I got the rope right here” (shout out to Aaron McGruder), let me plead my case.

Black folk have undergone seemingly insurmountable odds for the last four centuries (and counting) and continue to persevere. One could even argue that in 2006, there is no better time to be Black. But as we all know, all that glitters isn’t gold and everything that shines ain’t a diamond (matter of fact, it’s a lot of cubic zirconia’s walking around in our community now).

Michael Eric Dyson asked the question and I feel obligated to answer him. YES, Bill Cosby was right. In this day and age, everything of, related to and about blackness, black culture or being black in any positive light has been reduced to a pile of ash and rubble.

Who is to blame you ask? The niggas, yes ladies and gentleman, the black race is dead and the niggas have run amuck. BET looks like a scene from Dawn of the Dead and the black faces might as well be wearing black faces (if that went over your head, do a Google search for “minstrel shows”).

For every yin, there’s supposed to be a yang, but somehow, the niggas (with some help from unnamed sources) have found a way to bring about the worst in us… 100 percent of the time. I must say that I am forced to applaud their tactics, as even some of the harshest critics of nigga culture have been reduced to saying, “it’s not that bad.”

Sorry to burst your bubble of comfort and euphoria, but it IS that bad. The niggas are driving the bus and the black folks are tied up in the trunk.

Back in the Motown era, GROWN musicians made grown folks music. These days, grown niggas make music in hopes of turning young kids into mini nigga zombies. Let’s be real for a minute. Being grown is no longer the thing to be, but when you’re grown, you’re expected to know better. You’re expected to pull your pants up off your ass, expected to act like you have some got damn sense and expected to do things that uplift your community (instead of tearing it down).

So fresh for the ’06, I present for your viewing pleasure: The Nigga Hit List. That’s right, I’m going DROP Squad on y’all (once again, Google it if you don’t know).

Young Jeezy: The new jack comes in at the top of the list for single handedly taking the term “crack music” to new heights, unrivaled by anyone in hip hop history. In an era where even the whackest of rappers claim to have songs about “everything”, Jeezy made an album SOLELY dedicated to the life of a crack dealer (with the occasional reference to bitches, clothing or jewelry) and it became a smash. When did drugs become the fashionable thing? Last I checked, even Whitney said crack is whack but we put Jeezy on a pedestal. Must be the ad libs…

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah, gotta be the ad libs.

50 Cent: What can I say about Curtis Jackson that hasn’t already been said? If Jeezy didn’t hook America with drug rap, 50 would, without a doubt top the list (for a number of infractions). While Fif isn’t solely responsible for the rise of nigga culture, it’s safe to say that he’s led (and is still leading) the charge. Get Rich or Die Tryin is disastrous on so many levels. The very concept is counterproductive and to dissect all the reasons would take more column space than I’m allowed.

The Ying Yang Twins: Hip hop’s version of Stepin Fetchit. If 50 helped usher in an era of violence, Caine and D Roc (along with a supporting cast that included Lil Jon and the East Side Boys) took cooning to new heights in recent years. The Twins have single-handedly epitomized the word “sambo.” But here’s the kicker… they want to be taken seriously now, after recording several tracks not fit for strip club consumption, but guess what? Nobody cares!!! When you dedicate your life’s work to showing your gold grill and your signature phrase isn’t a word, but rather a sound (HAAAAAH), is there any surprise that no one takes you seriously when you speak of saving the trees and the whales?

Flava Flav: From Public Enemy to Flavors of Love. I can picture Chuck D now, at home, ice grilling the TV with a vein popping out of his neck every time his hype man graces the small screen. The new show is so ridiculously bad, that it’s somewhat entertaining. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the same man who told us that ”911 is a joke” and to ”fight the power” is participating in this type of foolishness.

The Source: It’d have been entirely too easy to put Benzino’s name here and the blame doesn’t fall squarely on his shoulders. Hip hop’s “bible” has been reduced to the Black version of the National Enquirer, and there is a long list of people to blame (I just haven’t thumbed through the magazine to type a list of names).

BET: No further commentary is necessary

I could go on and on with the Nigga Hit List, but I won’t. There just isn’t enough column space (or space on DX for that matter) to call out the cooning and buffoonery in hip hop. If the handful of cats on TV represents the authority on hip hop culture or young black culture, I’m turning in my Black Card (effective immediately).

This isn’t what I signed on for. Blackness never involved self degradation. I’d be wrong to blame this all on the “rappers”, believe me… names will be called out in 2006. The Drop Squad’s return is long overdue.

Until then, I’m hanging it up… I don’t wanna be Black anymore.

Swat shoots an 8th grader

2006-01-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

SWAT Team Shoots 'Armed' Fla. 8th-Grader
By KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer 36 minutes ago

LONGWOOD, Fla. - An eighth-grader was shot and wounded by a SWAT team officer in a school bathroom Friday after he pulled out a pellet gun that resembled a real weapon and later raised it at a deputy, authorities said.

Sheriff Don Eslinger said the 15-year-old boy brought the gun to Milwee Middle School in his backpack. Eslinger said two students saw it and one persuaded the other to report it, causing a scuffle.

The alleged gunman ordered one of the students into a closet, dimmed the lights and ran from the classroom. He then went around the campus carrying the weapon, Eslinger said. Deputies eventually isolated him in a restroom, and the school was evacuated.

Eslinger said negotiators tried unsuccessfully to start a dialogue with the boy, identified as Christopher David Penley.

"He did not respond," Eslinger said. "He refused to even comment. All he said was his first name. He did not drop the firearm."

When the boy raised the gun at a deputy, he shot the youth, the sheriff said.

Penley was taken to a hospital, where he was on "advanced life support," the sheriff said.

"He was suicidal," Eslinger said. "During this standoff, and during the chase, the student said he was going to kill himself or die." At one point, the boy held the gun to his own neck.

No one else was injured. The sheriff's office confirmed later that the weapon was a pellet gun fashioned to look like a 9mm handgun. The tip of the gun had been painted black, covering brightly colored markings that would have indicated it was nonlethal.

Investigators did not know why Penley brought the weapon to school. "We are looking into his past, and all kinds of different issues possibly." Eslinger said.

Classes were canceled for the rest of the day, and frantic parents arrived to pick up their children from the 1,100-student public school in suburban Orlando.

"When I saw the news, I just couldn't believe this was my daughter's school. I came right away," said Anil Santos, whose daughter, Aleister, is in eighth grade.

Sarah Tivy, 12, said some students were frightened, but she appeared calm.

"I just figured that if someone is going to bring a gun to school, then they need to be taken out of school," she said.

Kelly Swofford, a neighbor whose 11-year-old son is close friends with Penley, said he visited their home Thursday night and complained that "people were picking on him at school. I told him he needed to talk to his guidance counselor."

Her son Jeffery said Penley talked about wanting to die when the two had breakfast Friday morning. He said Penley had been fighting with another boy, allegedly over a girl.

"Everybody knew they were going to fight," Jeffery said. "I heard a rumor that he had a BB gun, but I didn't think he really had one."

Phone calls to Penley's home were not answered Friday, and a person who answered the door declined to comment.

As dusk fell, Marie Hargis stood in front of the school with a sign that read "Stop the violence." Her 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter attend Milwee.

"My youngest daughter is just very emotionally messed up. She started crying and said, `Mommy, I don't want to go back.' They should not fear having to go to school."

I finally received my check

2006-01-06T10:23:00.000-05:00

Finally,

After three months of fucking of emails and long distance phone calls. I finally received my check from REUTERS! Got Damn! It's about time. It arrived at 9:30 am via FED EX. Yeah, no time to celebrate. I have to cash this mug and pay my rent late fees from December. Yeah, Freelance work sometimes sucks but when there is nothing else is available. You have to do something to make money and survive. Ya know what I mean? I am a hustler in certain aspects but my hustle is not to exploit others to achieve success.

By the way, Happy New Year to all who read my random thoughts on my life and etc. I do have a better outlook for 2006, because last year went to the toilet quick, fast and in a hurry.

Alright, I am off to the bank.

TTYL

It's getting harder for us no budget filmmakers

2006-01-03T15:21:00.000-05:00

Updated: 11:24 AM EST
Big Names Required for Small Movies
By Gregg Goldstein, Reuters

NEW YORK (Jan. 3) - During the height of the studios' golden age, MGM used to boast that its movies featured "more stars than are in the heavens." But today that chant has been taken up by independent films.

Traditionally, indie features provided opportunities for emerging artists to work with low budgets for next to nothing. But in the mid-1990s, an influx of bankable actors invaded the scene, willing to work for scale wages on labors of love to prove their credibility or revive sagging careers. Many filmmakers now contend that getting an indie film made or seen today without stars is harder than ever before.

"It's gotten out of control," said five-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close, who has starred in three indies: "The Chumscrubber," "Heights" and "Nine Lives" -- this year alone. "It's taking bigger and bigger names to make smaller and smaller films. I worry that important films without a big name attached won't get made at all."

Industry estimates vary, but "Chuck & Buck" producer Matthew Greenfield said during an industry panel in November, "It's very hard to get more than $500,000-$700,000 (in funding) without a name actor."

Other indie filmmakers say raising a $1 million-$2 million budget requires at least one star. And because many agents are reluctant to take 10% of wages when their clients are bent on making a small-scale pet project, the bottom line is that many talented, first-time filmmakers without connections are simply priced out of the marketplace. As a result, homegrown successes like Miranda July's offbeat "Me and You and Everyone We Know" are more of an anomaly.

Part of the problem, some producers and directors say, is that private financiers who once were willing to put money into any project amid the '90s independent film boom are becoming more gun-shy. "Most of my experience was from independent investors," said Chris Terrio, a first-time feature director with "Heights." "It seems now that they're a lot more savvy about what names equal at the box office."

Terrio had a more fortunate situation than most: He had backing from diplomatic but tough producers James Ivory and the late Ismael Merchant to raise his $2 million "Heights" budget. "They fought to cast Emma Thompson instead of Meryl Streep in 'The Remains of the Day' under some immense pressure. I mean, it wasn't Emma versus Carmen Electra," he said. "That's what they encouraged in me."

Casting Close in "Heights" worked, he said, because she played a larger-than-life actress. But his next project is a gritty New York-based drama adapted from a best-selling nonfiction book with a well-known indie producer, and he is grappling with the dilemma of keeping the film authentic despite a star in a lead role along with a higher-than-"Heights" budget. "Will casting a star mean having more shooting days, or what you're able to show onscreen?" he said. "If it doubles your budget, it's a question."

John Cameron Mitchell, writer, actor and first-time director of the cult hit "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," decided to avoid the star route. His next film, "Shortbus," features actors performing unsimulated hardcore sex. "Unconsciously, it may have been a prophylactic against having to use stars," Mitchell said. "It was a way to avoid waiting four to five months for them to read or not read the script. Their agents are not saying 'Read it.' I didn't have to run through the street finding the star. . . . To me it's not worth it. I'd rather not do the movie."

Mitchell knows both sides of the camera, having had roles in several indies during the late '80s and early '90s. "Stars wouldn't really do them unless they were producing or directing," Mitchell said. "They were more like plays. Today it seems like the attitude is not just getting one star, but how many can we get in?"

It's not just upcoming filmmakers who risk losing their big breaks under the new star-driven rules, either.

As actress Edie Falco noted, "I know too many actors who would be right for films, and a lot of producers won't hire them. It's a very frustrating situation." She said that director Eric Mendelsohn took a chance casting her in the title role of the drama "Judy Berlin" in 1999, just before she landed HBO's "The Sopranos."

"I spent a long time doing independent films, and I'd like to think I'm not getting cast because of the show, but because I'm right for the role," Falco said.

The lust for name actors can be traced to a combination of factors: The tidal wave caused by Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," which grossed more than $105 million on an estimated $8 million budget in 1994, and the willingness of stars who can command $20 million, like Julia Roberts, to do comparatively experimental films, such as Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal" or George Clooney's "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." Many argue that such precedents have made investors, indie film companies and studios' prestige specialty divisions more inclined to hold out for big names.

Stars have arguably become a double-edged sword. On one hand, a name actor like Close can attract cast members and additional financing to independent projects like Robert Altman's comedy "Cookie's Fortune," and Roberts can help put a small film into a suburban multiplex. But as more producers and financiers realize that, their determination to cast stars can hold a project up for months or years.

"Heights" casting agent James Calleri described a low-budget indie he has worked on for a year where most of the cast is in place. "They have some money, but not as much as they want," he said, "and that's not going to happen until they get the right person."

While waiting to secure big stars, independent films often fall apart entirely. Speaking from experience -- having seen situations where key cast members, financing or other filmmakers' commitments failed to come together at the right time --- Close said, "I've been in the trenches two or three times now, and lost windows of opportunity."

Some indie studio heads acknowledge the problem. "In truth, we're nervous about acquiring a movie without a well-known cast," Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen said. "We're considering a movie now that we love, but it has no stars. We've agonized about it for an entire year.

"The movie has to be amazing if there's no one in it," he added. "'Junebug' (starring Embeth Davidtz and Amy Adams) is a good example of a successful narrative film without stars, but those successes are few and further between. The current marketplace doesn't give you enough time to keep films in theaters and develop word-of-mouth on them, and that's where stars help."

Other executives are less willing to admit that there is an issue with top-billed talent. Recalling the development of Jim Jarmusch's comedy "Broken Flowers," Focus Features co-president David Linde said, "We didn't say, 'Oh, we love your project. Put Bill Murray in it.' (Jim) came to us with the film without any stars attached. Every one of those actors came on board after we agreed to make the film."

Sony Pictures Classics senior vp acquisitions and productions Dylan Leiner cited this month's Sundance Film Festival opener, Nicole Holofcener's "Friends With Money," as a film his company financed from the script stage before Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack or Catherine Keener came onboard. And his boss, Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker, said: "At our company, the directors are the stars."

But Focus and Sony Classics, unlike Roadside or other smaller companies, are studio divisions armed with a much larger war chest. Even Linde acknowledges stars do play a role in how a film is financed and ultimately plays. "It's a juggling act," he said. "You have to make an economic argument for the amount of money you spend on a film. The filmmakers and talent obviously adds to helping us distribute a movie. Stars add awareness, but ultimately the movie has to stand on its own merits."

01/03/06 01:46 ET

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Goodbye 2005

2005-12-31T23:05:00.000-05:00

Goodbye 2005

You was a bittersweet year for me.
I was not able to find a consistent employment and this was a financially frustrating year for me and many others.

I lost my best friend to dreaded man mad disease AIDS, rest in peace Haran Robinson. You are my creative brother in arms and I miss your friendship.

Fuck you 2005

I can also thank you 2005
because I got work as an office production assistant for Paramount film's FOUR BROTHERS. I also got work as an set production assistant for the film, CROSSOVER. This film will be released in 2006.

So, I have gained film experience in 2005.

I appeared in a National magazine in back to back months! (that was a first!)
I also appeared in the Detroit News for the first time since 2001.

I have gained new friends, reconnected with others but did not find love in 2005.
I flirted and tried to date but none met to my expectations or I did not meet theirs.

This year was the loneliest year of my existence.

So, as I count down the minutes before you leave me and everyone else. I just want to say, "Fuck you 2005! I hope that your sister 2006 treats me a whole better!"

AIDS Prevention in Venezuela

2005-12-29T00:37:00.000-05:00

Venezuela Boosts AIDS Prevention
Caracas, Dec 28 (Prensa Latina) The Venezuelan Health and Social Security Minister (MSDS) assigned $465,000 to financially help 47 Non Governmental Organizations (NGO) that are carrying out AIDS prevention programs.

The contribution is included in the current government policy to fight the syndrome, Minister Francisco Armada reported during the ceremony held to make the allocation official.

The MSDS and those organizations have been developing joint projects for a three-year period to prevent and report population groups at risk, as street children, homosexuals, drug addicts, and others.

Armada highlighted that over 500 Integral Diagnostic Centers (IDC) are currently under construction, to complete the 600 planned, which will use cutting-edge technology and specialized staffs.

According to the minister, the health centers will also be equipped to offer laboratory services for free to detect the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which causes AIDS.

He explained that while the IDC construction is in progress, there is a significant group of public health institutions in which research on HIV is being developed under the National Hygiene Institute rectorate.

MSDS Sexual Transmitted Infection Program Coordinator Deisy Matos reported that medical assistance and antiretroviral therapy are guaranteed free of charge by the Venezuelan State.

Matos highlighted that the department she is in charge of uses over 80 percent of its budget to buy high quality medicines and equipment to improve life quality and expectancy of those infected with HIV.

MSDS statistics show that 15,000 of 50,000 people with AIDS in Venezuela, receive medical assistance due to their infection level.

Cell phones in the movie complex... I hate that shyt!

2005-12-27T22:24:00.000-05:00

Movie Theaters Consider Cell Phone Crackdowns
By JONATHAN SILVERSTEIN, ABCNews.com

(Dec. 27) -- One of the great things about cell phones is their ability to allow us to be in constant contact with friends, colleagues and loved ones. But it's also one of their drawbacks -- especially in movie theaters.

Jay LaPrete / AP
In regard to cell phone use, movie theaters are trying to walk the line between respecting the individual and pleasing the crowd.

Cell phone gabbers who don't stop or don't hesitate to start when the lights go down in a crowded movie theater can be frustrating for moviegoers and for theater owners who often walk a tightrope between respecting the individual and pleasing the crowd.

"We don't want to be Draconian or mess up people's personal decisions about communications," said G. Kendrick Macdowell, general counsel for the National Association of Theatre Owners. "But we do want to try proactively to enforce better behavior so that all of our patrons can have a good moviegoing experience."

One idea that's been floated around is installing cell phone jammers to keep calls out or filters to make sure only the most important calls disrupt patrons.

But is such an elaborate scheme necessary? Or is it simply the responsibility of the theater owners to police the crowd for cell phone junkies?

It Costs More, and the Audience Is Rude

When Christopher Steenbock goes to the movies these days, the 31-year-old New York City headhunter says he not only sees a marked difference in film quality and ticket prices, but in rude behavior as well.

"I'd say on average your multiplex theater typically attracts the worst sorts of crowds," he said. "You know, more cell phone users are in there either answering their phones or letting their phones ring throughout the performance."

Anyone who's paid for a movie ticket and had to endure the constant chatter of someone on their cell phone knows what Steenbock is talking about.

As annoying as he said the behavior is, he doesn't want to make matters worse, so he usually stays seated -- though maybe a little steamed.

"Usually I don't say anything," he said. "I think about throwing my soda or popcorn and lobbing it in that general direction, but typically I just sort of tolerate it."

But like a growing number of moviegoers, Steenbock thinks something has to be done about the rule breakers and he doesn't think it should be his responsibility to do it.

"At one point, theaters had ushers you might see perusing the aisles looking for underage kids in R-rated movies or something," he said. "I don't know if it's feasible, but in the past they used to have people that kind of intervened on the audience's behalf."

An increase in ushers to police movie theaters is one approach some in the industry are trying, according to Macdowell.

In fact, he said, people have suggested much more dramatic action.

"A lot of people think we ought to have bouncers -- big, burly guys who literally bodily drag people out who are rude," he said. "A lot of people feel very strong about that."

This dilemma may not require more employees but newer technology like cell phone jammers and filters to keep patrons' attention on the screen where it belongs.

Cell Phone Jamming a Safety Risk?

"Nearly everybody gets annoyed when someone's cell phone rings and somebody actually takes it and has a conversation," Macdowell said. "That's just ridiculous."

He said that a categorical cell phone jamming system was unlikely to be implemented, but that as the technology advanced, it was possible movie theaters could be outfitted with some kind of filter to keep all but the most important calls out.

"Technology that lets you filter through emergency calls or automatically send a message to a caller saying: 'Hi, I'm inside a movie theater. If it's an emergency, press 9,'" he explained. "Those are the kinds of things I think we would be looking at very closely, because some people feel very fondly about having that communication link with them."

But Joe Farren, director of public affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, said any technology that could threaten the ability for someone to make or receive an emergency call, was bad for the public.

"There are more than 220,000 calls made to 911 from wireless phones every day in America," Farren said. "To put irreversible technology in place that prevents those calls from being made in the tens of thousands of movie theaters across America makes no sense at all."

CTIA calls itself "the voice of the wireless industry." The nonprofit group represents "service providers, manufacturers, wireless data and Internet companies, and other contributors to the wireless universe," according to its Web site.

Farren said he and CTIA were not unsympathetic to the industry's dilemma, but, perhaps not surprisingly, were opposed to installing any technology that could keep someone from using his cell phone.

"We understand what they're trying to accomplish and we're not opposed to a policy where you turn off your phone and if it goes off you get kicked out," he said. "But don't take away the power of this incredible lifesaving tool."

Accommodating the Masses

Steenbock admitted that he had forgotten to turn off his cell phone on occasion, so he's somewhat understanding of the absentminded.

"I actually try to muffle the phone and turn it off," he said. "I know people screw up and accept that it's just part of the moviegoing experience."

But he doesn't see the need to have cell phone access at all inside a theater and has no problem with theater owners using jammers for that purpose.

"You know there was a time before cell phones," he pointed out. "So if you have a baby sitter or you have a loved one who is under medical care, you likely have a social network that can help out."

Macdowell said that while theater owners would continue to work on ways to limit rude behavior like cell phone chatter in theaters, there was a limit to what they could do.

"We have got to adopt an accommodating posture to the extent that it's practical," he explained. "We can't accommodate every idiosyncratic personality out there who wants to watch a movie in the particular way in which they want to watch a movie."

Dec. 27, 2005

Copyright 2005 ABCNEWS.com

AIDS expert has theory on vaccine's delay

2005-12-25T18:58:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 25, 2005; Posted: 2:31 p.m. EST (19:31 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In an unusually candid admission, the federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for the HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one.

That means the government has had to spend more time focusing on the processes that drug companies ordinarily follow in developing new medicines and bringing them to market.

"We had to spend some time and energy paying attention to those aspects of development because the private side isn't picking it up," Dr. Edmund Tramont testified in a deposition in a recent employment lawsuit obtained by The Associated Press.

Tramont is head of the AIDS research division of the National Institutes of Health, and he predicted in his testimony that the government will eventually create a vaccine. He testified in July in the whistleblower case of Dr. Jonathan Fishbein.

"If we look at the vaccine, HIV vaccine, we're going to have an HIV vaccine. It's not going to be made by a company," Tramont said. "They're dropping out like flies because there's no real incentive for them to do it. We have to do it."

"They will eventually -- if it works, they won't have to make that big investment. And they can make it and sell it and make a profit," he said.

Struggles for vaccines

An official of the group representing the country's major drug companies took sharp exception to Tramont's comments.

"That is simply not true. America's pharmaceutical research companies are firmly committed to HIV/AIDS vaccine research and development with 15 potential vaccines in development today," said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of PhRMA, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

"Vaccine research is crucial to controlling the AIDS pandemic and our companies are well aware of the need to succeed in this vital area of science," Johnson said.

In an e-mail response for comment, Tramont said the HIV vaccine mirrors the history of other vaccines. "It is not just a HIV vaccine - it's all vaccines - that is why there was/is a shortage of flu vaccines," Tramont wrote.

Holiday Blahs

2005-12-23T14:40:00.000-05:00

I could bitch and moan because I have not received paychecks for jobs I did in September and last month. I could scream to the top of my lungs for being alone and how the isolation irks me or how I do not have any money in pocket and things look bleak but I will not gripe.

I am thankful for another day of life.

I am grateful that my few friends mailed me Christmas cards.

Tomorrow is another day, so I will shrug off my holiday blahs.....

till next time

Stabbing @ Record Party

2005-12-21T18:23:00.000-05:00

3 Stabbed at Notorious B.I.G. Record Party

2 hours, 15 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Three people were stabbed early Wednesday at a Manhattan club that was hosting a record-release party for a new collection of duets featuring slain rapper Notorious B.I.G.

Detectives also were investigating a shooting near the club, named Exit, that occurred around the same time. It was unclear if the two incidents were related.

Authorities could not confirm reports that the party was attended by Sean "Diddy" Combs and Notorious B.I.G.'s mother, Voletta Wallace. The two co-produced the new "Duets" record, which pairs the rapper's vocals with Eminem, Jay-Z and other artists.

Police said that at 3:10 a.m. patrol officers heard gunfire at a parking garage near the club. Inside, they found three men with gunshot wounds; all were taken to the hospital in stable condition.

Moments later, police received a 911 call reporting a stabbing at the club. Officers found three victims — two men who were slashed in the face and one who was stabbed in the stomach; all were hospitalized.

There were no arrests. Detectives were questioning the occupants of a car spotted fleeing the scene shortly after the shooting.

Calif. prisons to end race-based policy

2005-12-21T01:52:00.000-05:00

Calif. prisons to end race-based policy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's prison system will no longer divide inmates by race, a practice in effect for more than 20 years and intended to limit gang violence, a spokeswoman for the system said on Tuesday.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had routinely segregated inmates by race on their arrival at prison, a practice challenged by a prisoner in a federal discrimination lawsuit.

The department has settled the challenge and has agreed to no longer use race as the sole factor in deciding how to house inmates, said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton.

"Prisons have always been desegregated, but had we made housing decisions based on a person's race? Yes," Thornton said. "It's no secret that many instances of gang violence in prison are racially motivated."

California's prison population of nearly 167,000 is 28 percent white, 29 percent black and 37 percent Hispanic. Its gangs include the Aryan Brotherhood and Mexican Mafia, which recruit inmates based on race, Thornton said.

The prison system's change of practice brings it in line with a February
U.S. Supreme Court decision banning racial segregation in prisons with the exception of extraordinary conditions.

McNabb: The Black Quarterback

2005-12-15T02:31:00.000-05:00

McNabb answers critical column from NAACP leader
ESPN.com news services

Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb has expressed surprise and disappointment after hearing of racially-charged criticism made by Philadelphia NAACP president J. Whyatt Mondesire in a Nov. 27 column in the Philadelphia Sun.

Donovan McNabb
ImageQuarterback
Philadelphia Eagles

Profile
2005 SEASON STATISTICS
Att Comp Yds TD Int Rat
357 211 2395 16 9 85.0

Mondesire, the Sun's publisher and editor, wrote that McNabb is a "mediocre talent" who tries to disguise his ineffectiveness behind "some concocted reasoning" that African-American quarterbacks who scramble are somehow lesser "field generals."

McNabb, who endured Rush Limbaugh's comments just a few years earlier, was baffled by Mondesire remarks.

"Especially being the same color I am," McNabb told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Obviously if it's someone else who is not African-American, it's racism. But when someone of the same race talks about you because you're selling out because you're not running the ball, it goes back to what are we really talking about here?

"If you talk about my play, that's one thing. When you talk about my race, now we've got problems. If you're trying to make a name off my name, again, I hope your closet is clean because something is going to come out about you ... I always thought the NAACP supported African-Americans and didn't talk bad about them. Now you learn a little bit more."

Mondesire also claimed that McNabb's "failure as a team leader off the field" led to the Terrell Owens situation. If McNabb "had the courage to offer only a tiny fraction" of his bonus to Owens and running back Brian Westbrook, Mondesire wrote, the "media circus" could have been avoided.

"When you go deep into that, or say I didn't stick up for someone, or why didn't I give a little bit of my money to someone else who is making money, you try to find an answer for that," McNabb told the Phialdelphia Daily News. "There's no answer that I've found."

McNabb plans to move on from Mondesire's column, but for the first time in his Eagles' tenure, McNabb has to answer questions about locker room leadership.

"This season was a tough season from the beginning," McNabb told the Inquirer. "People may blame it on just one particular person, but ... it's something that kind of spread in the locker room.

"There's never been a question of me losing the locker room until this year. If I've lost the locker room, then the question goes up why. Is it because now people are starting to look at me sideways for what I've been doing, or what I make, or whatever he had a problem with? That's the question I'm trying to get answered: If I've lost the locker room or not? No answer has come my way.

"But I do know the main reason we're not a good team is because we don't play as a team. Everybody has to realize that in order for us to get back to the Super Bowl and win it, we all have to play well together. You never heard anything like this coming from the Indianapolis Colts. You never heard anything like this coming from the New England Patriots. Baltimore, when they won the Super Bowl, they never had anything like this."

The plight of the black quaterback part 2

2005-12-15T02:01:00.000-05:00

So now Donovan McNabb is answering questions from the peanut gallery about some of the same things Terrell Owens side-elbowed him on during Owens' many me-first rants over recent months -- the difference being, McNabb this time is dealing with an exclaimed racial element.

Note to self: That's no racial element. That, right there, is a bandwagon element.

What we have on our hands, let's face it, is a big fat 5-8. That is where the Eagles squat today, not even a calendar year removed from one of their finest runs to glory in franchise history. McNabb led that run with a confidence and a presence that went all the way to the Super Bowl before petering out in the face of the Patriots.

Of course, that was then. This year, with Owens suspended and McNabb struggling with his hernia injury, the bottom fell out of the bandwagon. McNabb was at 4-5, and sinking, when the injury finally ended his year. It hurts like hell when the whole unhappy crew hits the ground.

The publisher of the Philadelphia Sun, J. Whyatt "Jerry" Mondesire, has thus gone on the offensive, decrying McNabb's transition from a scrambling-type quarterback to one who spends more time in the pocket looking for downfield receivers. To Mondesire -- civil rights advocate, head of the Philadelphia NAACP, potential Congressional candidate -- the McNabb makeover amounts to the QB playing "the race card," purposely moving away from the mobile style in an effort to offset the stereotype that black quarterbacks are by nature scramblers. In support of that thesis, Mondesire offers his spin on old McNabb interviews in which the player decries blacks being referred to as "running quarterbacks."

Why McNabb would eliminate scrambling in response to that situation remains unclear, along with the question of why McNabb would do anything that he thought would actively decrease his own chance of success. Is someone seriously trying to argue that McNabb would rather be known as a pocket QB than a winning one?

But there we go again, trying to inject reason into a good old-fashioned sports/race debate. Note to self: Couldn't be more futile if we tried.

McNabb finally answered Mondesire's rant, saying he "always thought the NAACP supported African-Americans and didn't talk bad about them." With all due respect, Donovan, you missed the point entirely. The point is this: 5-8.

The point is that no one is safe when a team goes in the toilet, for whatever reason it may actually do so. Race can come into play, sure, but that's just one check mark on the laundry list. In fairness to Mr. Mondesire, after all, he also lampooned McNabb's fat salary, his completion percentage over his final five games of this season, his general leadership of the team, and the Super Bowl loss to New England ("You choked, brother.")

Now that we get down to it, that doesn't sound entirely like a racially tinged series of put-downs. That's good old-fashioned bitter-fan syndrome -- and there is plenty of it to go around, in virtually every city in which a former winner starts losing.

This is a weird one, no doubt. It isn't every day that the local NAACP leader tries to take down the quarterback of the football team by writing things like, "You played the race card and all of us fell for your hustle." At least Mondesire was self-transparent enough to acknowledge that he rarely writes about sports, and good thing. If he had looked up McNabb's statistics, he'd have learned that McNabb's rushing totals have decreased steadily from the year he became the Eagles' starter in 2000 -- in other words, that this is no sudden change. McNabb ran less in 2004 than he had in any other season as the QB, and the Eagles apparently still somehow failed themselves all the way to the NFC title.

Oh: Mondesire also compared McNabb unfavorably with Doug Williams, the former Redskins quarterback whom Mondesire remembered as having led Washington to "35 points in the fourth quarter alone" during its 1988 Super Bowl trashing of Denver. Williams and the Redskins scored 35 points not in the fourth quarter but in the second, all of them after spotting the Broncos a 10-0 lead -- but let's not get too carried away in the minutiae. The larger issue is this: The Philadelphia Eagles, in the Super Bowl not even a year ago, are a lousy, gag-inducing 5-8. Somebody is going to have to pay.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. Reach him at mkreidler@sacbee.com.

Death Row Stats

2005-12-14T14:35:00.001-05:00

Current U.S. Death Row Population By Race:
Black 41.7%
Hispanic 10.4%
White 45.5%
Other 2.3%

Persons Executed for Interracial Murders in The U.S. Since 1976
White Defendent/Black Victim - 12
Black Defendent/White Victim - 208

According to Amnesty International (April, 2003), African Americans
make up 12 per cent of the population but they account for more than 40
per cent of the country's current death row inmates, and one in three
executed since 1977. At least one in five of African Americans executed
since 1977 had been convicted by all white jurors.

If you are up to reading the article, it presents some very
enlightening stats and useful information.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510462003

Death Row Stats

2005-12-14T14:35:00.000-05:00

all work and no play....

2005-12-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

Let's see here
I have not done one ounce of Christmas shopping as of yet. I have spent the last two and half weeks chopping down 4 hours of video footage from South Africa into a 30 minute short. Man, I am exhausted Image. I stayed up all day and night on Saturday scanning pictures for the project and then I helped my cousin on her first shoot as a director for a short film starting 7am the next morning. My barber has cussed me out several times for missing appointments and some of my friends truly believe I have become a hermit aka Howard Hughes without the dough of course.

I kinda miss dating....... wow I can't fucking believe I just had an Oprah moment.
What I need to do is take a vacation and have some great sex with a woman with a nice set of legs and juicy booty..... with condoms of course!

Dream on marls
Anyways, I am off back to work.

(singing) HI HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, hi ho hi ho, it's off to work I go (whistling) Hi ho, hi ho

At least I am getting paid for it......
This working for free shyt is for the birds........
and my name is not Robin, Sparrow or Rooster.

This did not happen when I was in High School

2005-12-13T14:21:00.000-05:00

Wife: Child groom is 'no victim'
Pregnant woman says she prefers older men

Lisa Clark is shown in a photo released by the Hall County Sheriff's Office.

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- A 37-year-old woman who is seven months pregnant by her 15-year-old groom says she prefers older men, but the teenager aggressively wooed her.

Lisa Clark, who is charged with child molestation, statutory rape and enticing a child for indecent purposes, said in television interviews Monday that she still hopes to make a life with him and their baby.

She said the morality of their relationship was open to debate, noting that in the past it was common for 13-year-old girls to be given in marriage.

"They're making a big deal out of a 15-year-old," she told WAGA-TV in Atlanta. "And I can assure you that he was no victim.

"It's not like they are making it out to be. Actually, I'd told him 'no' several times because I prefer someone older, but he was just so nice and so sweet," she said.

The boy, who had been on probation on an unrelated burglary charge, was ordered Monday to return to juvenile detention after relatives he was living with said they could not handle him.

Clark was arrested last month after the couple's November 8 wedding. Georgia law allows children of any age to marry -- without parental consent -- if the bride-to-be is pregnant. The law dates to the early 1960s and was written to discourage out-of-wedlock births.

Clark denied marrying the teen to try to avoid prosecution.

"I told the detective that I got married because I wanted the baby to have his name. I wanted to be married when the baby came," she said.

Clark said the baby is a boy and would have the middle name of her new husband, who has not been identified by authorities because of his age.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

R Kelly

2005-12-07T00:57:00.000-05:00

Only in America …

When Michael Buffer said his name before the fight, the room I was in grew quiet. Then it immediately got loud. Most times national anthems don't generate this type of reaction -- the fights or sporting events that follow them do. But in the words of the lil' great Huey Freeman: "Never underestimate how much n----s love R. Kelly."

R. Kelly
R. Kelly certainly caused some controversy with his national anthem performance.
Then the beat came in. Then the the panic set in. Then the camera panned out. Then … the phones started ringing.

OK, so my man Kells took the opportunity before the second act of Hopkins/Taylor, the second-biggest fight of the year, to Marvin Gaye the national anthem.

Give it some flavor, show it some love. Cool.

Wrong.

When the cameras showed that he was not in the ring alone -- when it showed that he had "steppers" (classically trained urban dancers) in the ring with him, "steppin'" in the name of patriotism with all the finesse of Herb Kent at the 50 Yard Line steppin' lounge -- it was enough to make Jeff Kent turn black.

Or John Chaney turn white.

But that wasn't it. The Pied Piper didn't stop there.

As he JB Monorailed himself through the lyrics, he then paused. Rode the break in the track, and sang out to the stunned folks in the crowd: "Put your hands together …"

OK, this negro has turned the anthem into a concert.

So when Robert Kelly took it upon himself to, as Stu would say, "straight freak" the national anthem, did he do the same thing? Did he simply keep it true to his people, or did he go overboard? Did he bastardize it, or beautify it?

The phones started ringing again!

When it was all over, a sea of boos could be heard following him out of the ring.

In my basement -- silence, once again. Then … daps, pounds, hugs and screams. Freedom.

Phones finally stopped ringing, because calls finally got answered.

Can you believe it? R. Kelly just stepped-out the anthem! He turned the banner into a steppin' cut! He took it to the hood! He brought it back to Chi-town! Unbelievable! That was incredible! America don't know nothin' 'bout that! Bet it's going to be on the radio tomorrow. Turn the radio on now, I bet they already playing it! Dude's a genius. I gotta call you back, my other phone is ringing.

All of this was being said simultaneously, all at the same time, but not just in my basement. In other black basements, living rooms, clubs, holes in walls, sports bars … anywhere in America where we could get PPV.

In a word: unreal.

But at the same time, to ourselves and to each other, every one of us who experienced R.'s Boondocks moment could all only say one thing, because really there was only one thing to say. As it was so eloquently stated on "Tom Joyner's Morning Show" on Monday: "R. Kelly has finally lost his mind."

Or did he do nothin' wrong?

*****

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?
-- Francis Scott Key

Oh say … can you see where this is going?

Since 1931, when Congress enacted into legislation "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem of America, thousands of people have offered their renditions of what has been called by many "the most important song in American history."

Most have been performed at sporting events. Most have developed lives of their own.

Roseanne Barr
We don't really miss Roseanne ... do you?
From Roseanne Barr's crotch-grabbing, spit-driven version at a Padres game in 1990, to Barry Manilow's silky smooveness at the 1984 Super Bowl, to Jimi Hendrix's purple haze-induced version (originally performed at Woodstock) that was last heard nationally in Latrell Sprewell's And1 commercial, to Steve Tyler and Aerosmith's "home of the 500" version sung at the 2001 Indy 500, the nation's anthem has been the introduction to almost every major sporting event in this country since WWII.

But in 1968, before Game 5 of the World Series, it was Jose Feliciano who changed the way "the poem was recited." Because his connection to America was different than most Americans (Feliciano was a native of Puerto Rico, but raised in NYC), his interpretation of the anthem was unlike anything people in this country had heard before.

He kept it true to his people. But the rest of the country wasn't ready.

It never is.

So when Robert Kelly took it upon himself to, as Stu would say, "straight freak" the national anthem, did he do the same thing? Did he simply keep it true to his people, or did he go overboard? Did he bastardize it, or beautify it?

Catch the Fight ...
... and the anthem, Saturday on HBO at 10 p.m. ET.

And even if he did take it beyond the limits of standard patriotism, doesn't he have that right as an American? Even as one that has "African" before his name, just like Feliciano has "Latin" in front of his?

Kelly's (and his people's) blood is on that anthem just like everyone else's -- his skin color just isn't.

So when the boos rained down from the $300 seats inside the Mandalay Bay, I wished I could see who was booing, and find them, and ask them, "Why?"

Ask them, isn't the national anthem, just like sports, supposed to be open to creativity and the performer's interpretation of it?

Ask them -- just like sports -- is there a "right way" to perform it? A "fundamental" way?

Or can a brotha still freestyle it, "And1 it"?

And if you think the national anthem in sports is not significant, ask Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf why he disappeared from the NBA. Better yet, ask Carlos Delgado what he had to agree to when he joined the Mets.

And deeper still, because of sports, hasn't it -- the poem Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814 trying to find a counter to Britain's "To Anacreon In Heaven" -- become nothing more than a promotional tool for whoever is performing, or the company that is either airing or hosting the event the anthem precedes? Making the sporting event almost secondary to the performer and/or performance?

I mean, at heart, hasn't sports done more to damage the importance of the national anthem than it has done to solidify it?

Isn't that the American way?

Yet (again: simultaneously, at the same time) what makes the national anthem so compelling is that over the years its singular significance of patriotism has come through a singular outlet: sports.

The anthem is not heard to begin days of business, to begin days of health care, to begin days of law and law enforcement, to begin days of politics and partying.

Somehow, someway, black people have been able to feel pride whenever one of us steps up to the mic and puts some of us into a song that didn't have us in mind when it was written.

It's sole purpose -- to a certain degree -- has become to provide the country with a sense of pride prior to any sporting activity that is about to jump off.

But through those sports venues, the existence of the national anthem, the fact that it is always going to be performed, opens the door to things often much deeper than sports itself -- like the battle between celebration and patriotism.

Two great points were made in conversations I had with two friends when discussing this topic. One pointed to the hypocrisy of the anthem's existence in sports, the other to the realism and accuracy of R. Kelly's rendition.

One: While at baseball games that include Canadian teams, the Canadian national anthem is always played before the American national anthem. Yet half of the players on the field may be Dominican. If the anthem really stood for a nation's pride in sports, they'd play the Dominican national anthem at those games, too.

Two: "The Star-Spangled Banner," if you listen to the words, is about waking up in the morning and finding out the flag is still there. It's about a moment of joy, a celebration. Black folks, when we celebrate, we dance. R. Kelly gave tribute to that song the best way he knows how. "Oh we can see? The flag is still there? Banners yet wave? Let's step."

What was funny about the R.'s performance though was not how he went so over-the-top with it, but how it forced many blacks to feel something we haven't been forced to feel in a long time: patriotic.

It made many of us feel -- especially if any of us were around white folks watching it, waiting for the fight -- like we had to un-defend his actions. Like it was our "can't-we-all-get-along" song that he just disrespected.

Every national anthem played or performed in the United States is supposed to make us all -- black, white, red, yellow, brown, purple, green, fuchsia, plaid, etc. -- feel that way.

But it doesn't.

To many of us, it's just another song.

[Note 1: Our patriotism comes in the form of a James Weldon Johnson anthem, or anything by James Brown.]

[Note 2: See "Living In America" or "The Payback," both by James Brown.]

Except for when one of us gets up and does his or her own thing.

Beyonce Knowles
Beyonce is one of our favorite national anthem performers.
Like when Beyonce blew it beautiful at the 2004 Super Bowl, or when Stevie Wonder blessed it at Game 3 of last year's NBA Finals.

Or when Alicia Keys and Angie Stone rearranged it at the NBA All-Star Game while singing "God Bless America." Or when Whitney Houston was able to make the world hear it differently before the 1991 Super Bowl.

Or when the Grambling State marching band did it in '68 and '75, making them the only performers to ever twice play the anthem at the Super Bowl.

Or when then-Blazers coach Mo Cheeks helped that little girl, Natalie Gilbert, before that playoff game in 2003.

Or when Marvin did it.

Somehow, someway, black people have been able to feel pride whenever one of us steps up to the mic and puts some of us into a song that didn't have us in mind when it was written.

But none of us had any idea that Kells would take it there. Not with Pookie 'n them in the ring, gators sliding across the canvas; not with adding a break in the track to improvise crowd involvement before the "home of the brave."

But he did. And honestly, even this deep into this column, I don't know what to say.

W.E.B. Dubois wrote in his "The Souls of Black Folks" that the most difficult hurdle black people would face in the 20th and 21st centuries in America is dealing with the duality of being black in America.

Last Saturday night, before the fight, R. Kelly put that theory to the test. Can we love what he did, or do we have to hate it? I'm not sure.

Accept it, reject it? Embrace it, erase it? What's a negro to do?

Still don't know.

But when HBO replays that joint this Saturday night, guess who's going to be in front of a Samsung flat screen, with the volume on blast, creased and cuffed, steppin' in the name of love? Steppin' to the rockets' red glare?

And guess who won't be alone?

*****

Only in America …

It's amazing that only through sports am I able to write this column. Only through sports will people have this conversation.

Why? Because only in sports does America's national anthem get heard on a regular basis.

And here's the bigger picture …

Only in America can someone who's standing trial for child pornography be asked to sing the country's national anthem.

In a sport that Don King once ruled.

Only in America.

Scoop Jackson is an award-winning journalist who has covered sports and culture for more than 15 years. He is a former editor of Slam, XXL, Hoop and Inside Stuff magazines and the author of "Battlegrounds: America's Street Poets Called Ballers" and "LeBron James: the Chambers of Fear." He resides in Chicago with his wife and two kids. You can e-mail Scoop here.

Only in America …

2005-12-06T19:16:00.000-05:00

Only in America …

When Michael Buffer said his name before the fight, the room I was in grew quiet. Then it immediately got loud. Most times national anthems don't generate this type of reaction -- the fights or sporting events that follow them do. But in the words of the lil' great Huey Freeman: "Never underestimate how much n----s love R. Kelly."

R. Kelly certainly caused some controversy with his national anthem performance.
Then the beat came in. Then the the panic set in. Then the camera panned out. Then … the phones started ringing.

OK, so my man Kells took the opportunity before the second act of Hopkins/Taylor, the second-biggest fight of the year, to Marvin Gaye the national anthem.

Give it some flavor, show it some love. Cool.

Wrong.

When the cameras showed that he was not in the ring alone -- when it showed that he had "steppers" (classically trained urban dancers) in the ring with him, "steppin'" in the name of patriotism with all the finesse of Herb Kent at the 50 Yard Line steppin' lounge -- it was enough to make Jeff Kent turn black.

Or John Chaney turn white.

But that wasn't it. The Pied Piper didn't stop there.

As he JB Monorailed himself through the lyrics, he then paused. Rode the break in the track, and sang out to the stunned folks in the crowd: "Put your hands together …"

OK, this negro has turned the anthem into a concert.

So when Robert Kelly took it upon himself to, as Stu would say, "straight freak" the national anthem, did he do the same thing? Did he simply keep it true to his people, or did he go overboard? Did he bastardize it, or beautify it?

The phones started ringing again!

When it was all over, a sea of boos could be heard following him out of the ring.

In my basement -- silence, once again. Then … daps, pounds, hugs and screams. Freedom.

Phones finally stopped ringing, because calls finally got answered.

Can you believe it? R. Kelly just stepped-out the anthem! He turned the banner into a steppin' cut! He took it to the hood! He brought it back to Chi-town! Unbelievable! That was incredible! America don't know nothin' 'bout that! Bet it's going to be on the radio tomorrow. Turn the radio on now, I bet they already playing it! Dude's a genius. I gotta call you back, my other phone is ringing.

All of this was being said simultaneously, all at the same time, but not just in my basement. In other black basements, living rooms, clubs, holes in walls, sports bars … anywhere in America where we could get PPV.

In a word: unreal.

But at the same time, to ourselves and to each other, every one of us who experienced R.'s Boondocks moment could all only say one thing, because really there was only one thing to say. As it was so eloquently stated on "Tom Joyner's Morning Show" on Monday: "R. Kelly has finally lost his mind."

Or did he do nothin' wrong?

*****

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?
-- Francis Scott Key

Oh say … can you see where this is going?

Since 1931, when Congress enacted into legislation "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem of America, thousands of people have offered their renditions of what has been called by many "the most important song in American history."

Most have been performed at sporting events. Most have developed lives of their own.

Roseanne Barr
We don't really miss Roseanne ... do you?
From Roseanne Barr's crotch-grabbing, spit-driven version at a Padres game in 1990, to Barry Manilow's silky smooveness at the 1984 Super Bowl, to Jimi Hendrix's purple haze-induced version (originally performed at Woodstock) that was last heard nationally in Latrell Sprewell's And1 commercial, to Steve Tyler and Aerosmith's "home of the 500" version sung at the 2001 Indy 500, the nation's anthem has been the introduction to almost every major sporting event in this country since WWII.

But in 1968, before Game 5 of the World Series, it was Jose Feliciano who changed the way "the poem was recited." Because his connection to America was different than most Americans (Feliciano was a native of Puerto Rico, but raised in NYC), his interpretation of the anthem was unlike anything people in this country had heard before.

He kept it true to his people. But the rest of the country wasn't ready.

It never is.

So when Robert Kelly took it upon himself to, as Stu would say, "straight freak" the national anthem, did he do the same thing? Did he simply keep it true to his people, or did he go overboard? Did he bastardize it, or beautify it?

Catch the Fight ...
... and the anthem, Saturday on HBO at 10 p.m. ET.

And even if he did take it beyond the limits of standard patriotism, doesn't he have that right as an American? Even as one that has "African" before his name, just like Feliciano has "Latin" in front of his?

Kelly's (and his people's) blood is on that anthem just like everyone else's -- his skin color just isn't.

So when the boos rained down from the $300 seats inside the Mandalay Bay, I wished I could see who was booing, and find them, and ask them, "Why?"

Ask them, isn't the national anthem, just like sports, supposed to be open to creativity and the performer's interpretation of it?

Ask them -- just like sports -- is there a "right way" to perform it? A "fundamental" way?

Or can a brotha still freestyle it, "And1 it"?

And if you think the national anthem in sports is not significant, ask Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf why he disappeared from the NBA. Better yet, ask Carlos Delgado what he had to agree to when he joined the Mets.

And deeper still, because of sports, hasn't it -- the poem Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814 trying to find a counter to Britain's "To Anacreon In Heaven" -- become nothing more than a promotional tool for whoever is performing, or the company that is either airing or hosting the event the anthem precedes? Making the sporting event almost secondary to the performer and/or performance?

I mean, at heart, hasn't sports done more to damage the importance of the national anthem than it has done to solidify it?

Isn't that the American way?

Yet (again: simultaneously, at the same time) what makes the national anthem so compelling is that over the years its singular significance of patriotism has come through a singular outlet: sports.

The anthem is not heard to begin days of business, to begin days of health care, to begin days of law and law enforcement, to begin days of politics and partying.

Somehow, someway, black people have been able to feel pride whenever one of us steps up to the mic and puts some of us into a song that didn't have us in mind when it was written.

It's sole purpose -- to a certain degree -- has become to provide the country with a sense of pride prior to any sporting activity that is about to jump off.

But through those sports venues, the existence of the national anthem, the fact that it is always going to be performed, opens the door to things often much deeper than sports itself -- like the battle between celebration and patriotism.

Two great points were made in conversations I had with two friends when discussing this topic. One pointed to the hypocrisy of the anthem's existence in sports, the other to the realism and accuracy of R. Kelly's rendition.

One: While at baseball games that include Canadian teams, the Canadian national anthem is always played before the American national anthem. Yet half of the players on the field may be Dominican. If the anthem really stood for a nation's pride in sports, they'd play the Dominican national anthem at those games, too.

Two: "The Star-Spangled Banner," if you listen to the words, is about waking up in the morning and finding out the flag is still there. It's about a moment of joy, a celebration. Black folks, when we celebrate, we dance. R. Kelly gave tribute to that song the best way he knows how. "Oh we can see? The flag is still there? Banners yet wave? Let's step."

What was funny about the R.'s performance though was not how he went so over-the-top with it, but how it forced many blacks to feel something we haven't been forced to feel in a long time: patriotic.

It made many of us feel -- especially if any of us were around white folks watching it, waiting for the fight -- like we had to un-defend his actions. Like it was our "can't-we-all-get-along" song that he just disrespected.

Every national anthem played or performed in the United States is supposed to make us all -- black, white, red, yellow, brown, purple, green, fuchsia, plaid, etc. -- feel that way.

But it doesn't.

To many of us, it's just another song.

[Note 1: Our patriotism comes in the form of a James Weldon Johnson anthem, or anything by James Brown.]

[Note 2: See "Living In America" or "The Payback," both by James Brown.]

Except for when one of us gets up and does his or her own thing.

Beyonce is one of our favorite national anthem performers.
Like when Beyonce blew it beautiful at the 2004 Super Bowl, or when Stevie Wonder blessed it at Game 3 of last year's NBA Finals.

Or when Alicia Keys and Angie Stone rearranged it at the NBA All-Star Game while singing "God Bless America." Or when Whitney Houston was able to make the world hear it differently before the 1991 Super Bowl.

Or when the Grambling State marching band did it in '68 and '75, making them the only performers to ever twice play the anthem at the Super Bowl.

Or when then-Blazers coach Mo Cheeks helped that little girl, Natalie Gilbert, before that playoff game in 2003.

Or when Marvin did it.

Somehow, someway, black people have been able to feel pride whenever one of us steps up to the mic and puts some of us into a song that didn't have us in mind when it was written.

But none of us had any idea that Kells would take it there. Not with Pookie 'n them in the ring, gators sliding across the canvas; not with adding a break in the track to improvise crowd involvement before the "home of the brave."

But he did. And honestly, even this deep into this column, I don't know what to say.

W.E.B. Dubois wrote in his "The Souls of Black Folks" that the most difficult hurdle black people would face in the 20th and 21st centuries in America is dealing with the duality of being black in America.

Last Saturday night, before the fight, R. Kelly put that theory to the test. Can we love what he did, or do we have to hate it? I'm not sure.

Accept it, reject it? Embrace it, erase it? What's a negro to do?

Still don't know.

But when HBO replays that joint this Saturday night, guess who's going to be in front of a Samsung flat screen, with the volume on blast, creased and cuffed, steppin' in the name of love? Steppin' to the rockets' red glare?

And guess who won't be alone?

Only in America …

It's amazing that only through sports am I able to write this column. Only through sports will people have this conversation.

Why? Because only in sports does America's national anthem get heard on a regular basis.

And here's the bigger picture …

Only in America can someone who's standing trial for child pornography be asked to sing the country's national anthem.

In a sport that Don King once ruled.

Only in America.

Scoop Jackson is an award-winning journalist who has covered sports and culture for more than 15 years. He is a former editor of Slam, XXL, Hoop and Inside Stuff magazines and the author of "Battlegrounds: America's Street Poets Called Ballers" and "LeBron James: the Chambers of Fear." He resides in Chicago with his wife and two kids. You can e-mail Scoop here.

Drug testing for the WWE... it's about time

2005-12-05T10:42:00.000-05:00

Drug Testing Coming to TV Wrestling
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, AP

STAMFORD, Conn. (Dec. 5) - Following the death of one of pro wrestling's biggest stars, World Wrestling Entertainment says it is starting random drug testing to detect illicit drugs, steroids and prescription drug abuse among its performers.

Eddie Guerrero, 38, had struggled with drug abuse for years before he was found dead last month in a Minneapolis hotel shortly before a show.

The medical examiner has yet to rule on the cause of death, but Guerrero's widow has said she was told an autopsy showed signs of heart disease, which she blamed on his past alcohol and drug abuse combined with an aggressive workout regimen.

"This is the first time a superstar of this magnitude has passed away on a national promotion," Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer, said. "I'm sure they are going to have to do a lot of thinking."

WWE, whose wrestling programming is among the highest-rated on cable television, said it will announce details of the new testing procedure in the coming weeks. Chairman Vince McMahon told wrestlers last week that the new policy would involve frequent, random tests conducted by an independent agency.

"The policy is going to be very fair. No special consideration for any one," McMahon said.

The issue isn't new to McMahon or pro wrestling.

In 1994, McMahon was acquitted of charges alleging he pressured his athletes to bulk up on steroids. Jesse Ventura, a flamboyant pro wrestler before he was elected governor of Minnesota, has admitted using steroids. Another pro wrestler, Curt "Mr. Perfect" Hennig, died in 2003 of a cocaine overdose. When Brian Pillman, a wrestler and former NFL player, died in 1997 of heart disease, empty bottles of prescription painkillers were found in his hotel room.

Bruno Sammartino, who held the World Wrestling Federation title for 11 years in the 1960s and '70s, refused to be inducted into a wrestling hall of fame this year because he believes today's wrestling is vulgar and bad for children. He said he was sickened to hear young wrestlers were hooked on drugs, pain killers and steroids.

"We believe that this new policy is appropriate and important to ensure the health and well-being of our talent," WWE spokesman Gary Davis said in explaining the change. Previously, WWE tested for drugs only when it saw a need.

Davis also cited the current focus on drug and steroid use in sports; Major League Baseball recently strengthened its steroids policy under pressure from Congress.

Although wrestling is entertainment, some experts say a grueling number of matches, high acrobatics and expectations placed on wrestlers contributes to the use of steroids and painkillers.

The pressure to perform is even greater on smaller and older wrestlers, Meltzer said.

"You're expected to look a certain way," Meltzer said. "The public expectation for these guys is very difficult to live up to. To do it 200 times per year, it's very hard on the body what they do."

12/04/05 19:09 EST

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Baby got back?

2005-12-03T13:12:00.000-05:00

Want a booty like J. Lo's?
With buttock-boosting surgery, it can be yours

Images of Lynne, a patient in St. Louis, taken before and after her buttock-implant surgery.

She was browsing through the racks at a local mall several weeks ago when a young man who looked to be in his 20s approached her. “I just wanted to tell you, you look beautiful,” he said.

While a comment like that might lift the spirits of many women, for Lynne, a 44-year-old from St. Louis who asked that her last name not be used, it was proof-positive she’d made the right decision in joining the growing number of American women seeking out gluteal, or buttock, implants.

“I think it makes a bigger difference in a woman’s figure than a breast implant,” she says.

Story continues below ↓
advertisement

While statistics on the number of gluteal-implant surgeries are only beginning to be collected, officials at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons say 614 of the procedures were performed in the United States in 2002, although the actual number could now be much higher. Doctors are reporting a rising demand for the surgery.

Lynne’s surgeon, Dr. Robert F. Centeno, who has a private practice in St. Louis, credits much of the surge in the procedure’s popularity on the famous fanny of one celebrity in particular -– Jennifer Lopez. “As many people that you might have that criticize her buttocks as being too big, she has impacted on what is perceived to be an attractive buttock,” he says.

The influence of other "bootylicious" pop stars like Beyonce Knowles as well as fashion trends also are transforming the bottom into a top priority for those considering plastic surgery, Centeno says.

“If you have low-rise pants and you don’t have a butt," he says, "it doesn’t look very good.”

What's ideal?
The exact dimensions of the "ideal" backside are still being debated, but Lynne knew she wasn’t quite hankering for something J-Lovely.

"I think she has some curves and there’s some shape there that looks good," she says. "I just think there’s a little too much of it.” She opted instead for a smaller, but still pert and well-rounded, derriere.

Meanwhile, Centeno and his partner, Dr. V. Leroy Young, have been hard at work investigating the precise geometry of the perfect bottom. To this end, they plan a study where a group of objective observers rate the aesthetics of 500 adult heinies.

They’ve already come up with some preliminary conclusions. For women, “maximum projection” -– the point at which the buns stick out farthest from the body –- should be about level with the pubic mound, according to Young. For men, maximum projection would be a bit higher, closer to the navel.

Furthermore, Young says, “the gluteal crease, where your buttocks join your thighs, should not go past two-thirds of the way across the thigh.” Finally, every perfect backside should have that pert "dimple" at the top, where the upper curve of the buns meet at the base of the spine.

Better-booty business booming
Whatever the ideal turns out to be, U.S. demand for more fabulous fannies is currently outstripping supply.

While the trend started on the two coasts, plastic surgeons in nearly every state are now being inundated with requests from patients, according to Young, who is also director of the Emerging Trends Task Force at the ASPS.

"It's become much more mainstream," he says.

However, Young estimates that across the country, there are probably only about a hundred surgeons trained to perform gluteal implants. He and Centeno have already passed on their expertise to others. But, says Young, “there’s hardly a week that goes by that someone doesn’t call us and say, ‘Can we come watch you do this?'”

About 90 percent of the people shelling out an average of $6,000 to $10,000 for gluteal implants are women, although surgeons are beginning to see more male patients.

And Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Adrien Aiache says celebrities are wasting no time in getting their buns in line for implants, either.

“More ‘beautiful people’ are doing it than anyone else,” he says. “If you have a pretty girl who’s been pretty all her life and all of a sudden she’s seeing the big 4-0 coming on, she gets scared and she wants everything to look better. And that’s what we’re seeing a lot of now. They don’t want to lose what they have.”

Complications can occur
Surgeons agree that attempts to maximize one’s gluteus do not come without risk. Studies examining the rate of complications for the procedure are at an early stage, but Centeno estimates that around 10 percent of patients can develop serious, long-term problems.

During the most common type of gluteal implant, the patient is put under general anesthetic while surgeons place anatomically designed, solid silicone implants within the gluteus maximus. Ideally, the hollow into which the implant is positioned should create a snug fit, but in some cases implant rotation can occur, creating what surgeons call the "double-bubble" effect.

Other potential problems include infection of the implant site, capsular contracture (the formation of a hard fibrous shell around the implant) and the ability of the patient to feel the implant over the long-term. In one study, about 6 percent of patients receiving the most common type of gluteal-implant procedure experienced one of these complications.

Post-op, patients are asked to refrain from sitting for about seven to 10 days because pressure can re-open the surgical incision, hidden in the cleft of the buttocks.

Still, compared to the breast augmentation she underwent a few years ago, Lynne described her buttock-implant procedure as “a piece of cake.” Aside from having to lie down for the week after surgery, she says she felt little discomfort and ended up taking none of the painkillers Centeno handed out.

And the lift she received from buttock augmentation was psychological as well as physical. After a lifetime of having a “flat butt,” Lynne says, the full impact of her transformation really hit home when she attended an office party at her husband’s firm. At 44, she was one of the oldest women in a room populated with twentysomethings. Back home after the party, her husband mentioned that “every guy in the room” had something flattering to say about her appearance, including, “Your wife is hot!”

Nevertheless, Lynne says she underwent the surgery for herself, not others. “I did not have expectations that someone was going to love me more or that my life would change,” she says.

She also plays down the impact of pop stars like Lopez and Knowles on her decision to have surgery. Instead, it was the realization that she could actually do something about a drooping, middle-aged posterior that moved her to action.

“Women have been unhappy with their backsides for years,” she says. Now, “they’re realizing that there’s something you can do about it.”

E.J. Mundell is a freelance journalist based in New York City.

My Pistons keep on trucking... we want our crown back!

2005-12-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

By design, Dumars a quiet success
Wojnarowski
By Adrian Wojnarowski
Special to ESPN.com
Archive

The visionary for this Detroit Pistons championship renaissance stays in the shadows, satisfied with letting everyone else take the bows for a run that has never sufficiently saluted his genius. Joe Dumars runs a franchise upstairs, the way that he played downstairs. So unassuming, so good, sometimes it's easy to mistake his greatness for good fortune.

Joe Dumars
Joe Dumars had a plan and executed it well.

The Pistons could stand losing Larry Brown, but never Dumars. Once the glue of a Pistons championship glory, always.

"It's incredible what Joe has done in Detroit," Nets president Rod Thorn says. "And he's always going to do it in a low-key manner, never wanting to draw any attention to himself."

Dumars had always been the silent sidekick to Isiah Thomas, an All-Star guard remembered most fondly for maybe the greatest NBA honor that didn't come with a trophy and a luxury car: The defender whom Michael Jordan most hated to have covering him.

As Brown returns to Auburn Hills as the Knicks' coach Friday night, there begins a fresh round of myth-making with Brown, the falsehood that he was the most indispensable mind of the Pistons' championship. If Dumars had the slightest ego, the Pistons' run to Game 7 of the NBA Finals could've been long before imploded with the self-destructive, self-absorbed games that Brown played with his future. Dumars stayed out of the fray, eyes on the ball when his coach's had wandered to Cleveland and New York.

Yes, Brown did his finest work in those two seasons, but this was Joe Dumars' creation, as much as any title team ever belonged to a general manager. As much as any GM has ever done, Dumars has created a franchise in his own selfless, team-first way. They're a reflection of him, and that's hard to do in this climate. Almost impossible, really.

These Pistons ought to be the model for every general manager without that No. 1 pick to draft a franchise star. They weren't built to win simply for Brown's short attention span, but the long run. Richard Hamilton. Chauncey Billups. Tayshaun Prince. All young enough, and all signed for years to come. And Ben Wallace isn't leaving there.

Along the way, revisionist history has him taking a team that couldn't get out of the Eastern Conference playoffs and winning a title.

Well, it never would've happened unless Dumars had so deftly maneuvered his roster to make that deadline trade for Rasheed Wallace in 2004.

"Wallace put them over the top," Thorn said.

Everyone knows the story about how Dumars so shrewdly constructed these Pistons. He picked Jordan's pocket one last time, getting Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse. When Grant Hill wanted to leave Detroit for Orlando, the sign-and-trade with the Magic brought back Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins. Prince had been of those four-year college players who scare general managers because they fear that there must be something wrong if they hadn't come out of school early. Maybe Darko Milicic won't work out, but Dumars had the eye to draft 6-foot-11 Mehmet Okur, now a star for Utah, whom Dumars simply couldn't afford to keep under the cap.

This Pistons' machinery has moved on without Brown. Truth be told, they've lost little with him leaving, staying stingy on defense but gaining a far more accommodating offensive system under Flip Saunders.

Just because his players love the freedom of his offense doesn't mean it's better, but so far it's impossible to argue with the results. For a relentlessly professional locker room, the mere absence of the Brown soap opera is perhaps the most welcome reprieve. With him gone, it's no longer all about the coach's genius, but back to what it should be: The Pistons' players as stars in a player's league.

The measure of Saunders' system will come in the playoffs, when they start chasing the Eastern Conference championship. Right now, they're the best team in the East -- with Indiana and Miami a distant second. If it's Detroit-San Antonio in the spring again, everyone will just be reminded again: Larry Brown was great, but Joe Dumars is the MVP of this championship chase. He built the Pistons for the long run, well beyond Travelin' Larry's staying power.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a sports columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj10@aol.com. His book, "The Miracle of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley and Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty," can be purchased on Amazon.com at this link: The Miracle Of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley And Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty.

Spam Responses

2005-12-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

I don't mind people who leave true, heartfelt responses to my blog. But lately I have been swarmed with spam blog responses. Come on people, do you have no shame?

Enough with the spam blog responses.

RWANDA

2005-11-28T23:00:00.000-05:00

The new Rwanda
The New York Times
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2005

Who says George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have nothing in common? Just as Clinton did on Rwanda, Bush is doing precious little to try to stop a genocide in Darfur. Indeed, this entire generation of world leaders has a dismal record at intervening in this kind of wholesale murder, and now they are failing to stop the elimination of entire African tribes in the Sudanese countryside.
Obviously, most of the blame here can be laid squarely at the door of Sudan's government. Sudan has armed and supplied the militia groups who have been going from village to village, hut to hut, and systematically raping and murdering women, men and even children.
The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reports that last month, members of the janjaweed militia attacked the village of Tama in southern Darfur, killing 37 people, with another 12 still missing.
In one particularly gruesome case, the marauders yanked 2-year-old Zahra Abdullah from the back of her mother, Fatima Omar Adam, as Fatima tried to escape with her children. They bludgeoned the little girl on the ground in front of her screaming mother and sister. Fatima eventually escaped with two of her children, but was forced to leave Zahra to die at the hands of the janjaweed.
In another column, Kristof wrote that Arab men in military uniforms gang-raped Noura Moussa, saying, "We cannot let black people live in this land." Noura said the men called her a slave and added, "We can kill any members of African tribes."
The shocking fact is, apparently they can. The Sudanese government is enabling them, and the rest of the world isn't doing much to stop it. It's the same old Rwanda story, with the same indifference from the world's governments.

My friend.... My guilt..... My prayer

2005-11-28T12:14:00.000-05:00

My friend throat was slashed night.
he and his wife were arguing.
he kept telling things were going sour
but this time it turned violent in front of their three kids.
seeing their father laying in a pool of his own blood.
man oh man
the bad news I sometimes receive
I am praying for you bro
get well
I wanted to you to stay and work things out for the kids sake
but I do not think like that anymore
the nurse said one inch closer
your life would have been over
man... I have lost too many friends in my life to tragic violence
I know I am being selfish but I cannot afford to lose another
hang in there bro
I don't pray enough, but I am praying for you now

your friend

Marlon