Nikole Beckwith: Valentines Comic #2
For Valentines day I will post a new heart comic daily until the 14th. Enjoy.

All text and images copyright Nikole Beckwith
For Valentines day I will post a new heart comic daily until the 14th. Enjoy.

All text and images copyright Nikole Beckwith

Richard Engel
Egyptian protester holding sign that read: 'Thank you, Facebook'
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1. For the past three years, every Thursday night or Saturday afternoon I’ve played pick-up basketball at a local high school with a group of the same 15-25 guys. We gather up, try to split teams evenly, play for a couple of hours, and drink beer in the coaches’ office when we’re done. It’s basically a basketball version of everything that happens in a Brett Farve Wrangler commercial.
Now, out of those 15-25 regulars, I’m one of maybe five black guys — 5½ if you count one of my biracial buddies. As you can imagine, there are many opportunities for good-natured racial humor, and most of this can be categorized as just typical male-on-male locker room banter. (For instance: A few months ago, I got stuck in traffic and I ended up being 15 or so minutes late. When I finally got to the gym, one of the guys joked “You know we’re not on CP time, right?” Hardy har f*cking har.)
But, one of the regulars occasionally — and intentionally — pushes the appropriate banter envelope. Not a hateful guy by any stretch of the imagination, his jokes are more a product of his social awkwardness than any type of venom. He says off-color things because, well, he’s expected to say off-color things and he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t. In this sense, he’s merely filling his expected role, and we all deem him to be pretty harmless.
Still, one of his particularly off-color (and particularly flat) jokes about watermelon or chicken or black booty or something a few months ago prompted me to pull him aside later and advise him of the importance of humor. Basically, I reminded him that off-color and borderline offensive jokes about any subject are cool…as long as the joke is actually funny.
This brings me to “The Bride of Blackenstein,” a skit/parody of blaxploitation horror films that ran on Saturday Night Live last weekend. The six minute long short — which featured the increasingly ubiquitous Nicki Minaj in a parody of “The Bride of Frankenstein”– has been racked across the internet coals in the days since it first aired; accused of everything from racism to blatant misogyny. (In an especially biting, especially funny, and typically hyperbolic critique, Gina Mccauley of What About Our Daughters remarked “Nicki Minaj’s goal is to make sure she’s at the top of the bottom of the totem pole.”)
But, after finally getting a chance to sit down and watch it yesterday morning, it seems like the only thing this skit was guilty of was making an uninspired attempt at humor. Seriously, I’ve seen tree limbs and air conditioners with more wit than this skit. This matters because borderline offensive comedic material becomes just plain ole’ offensive sh*t when it’s completely devoid of comedy.
“The Bride of Blackenstein” offends and insults me, not because it’s racist or sexist or anything but because it’s offensive and insulting to think about how much better that skit could have been — especially when considering the outstanding comedic writing chops of the people on the SNL staff.
2. Thing is — and this is probably going to contradict everything I just said in #1 — the only way to tell if a joke works or not is to actually try it. To make edgy humor you need to step on the edge, and sometimes you risk offending people. But, as long as you’re an equal opportunity offender, I don’t see a problem with taking a couple jabs at black women or black men or homosexuals or Aboriginal midgets or whoever. No one is above occasional ridicule, and while there’s a time and a place for safe humor, 12:30 am isn’t that time, and SNL isn’t that place.
In my opinion, “The Bride of Blackenstein” skit was a bad effort at humor, but that’s just my opinion. Humor’s inherent subjectivity makes it so that there’s no inherent wrong in the actual effort, though.
3. A term coined by uber-popular ESPN columnist Bill Simmons, “The Tyson Zone” describes what happens when a person becomes so known for their outrageous behavior that nothing they do can surprise you. I bring this up because between her outrageous outfits, equally outrageous body, and surprisingly lucid verbal schizophrenia, Nicki Minaj has officially reached Tyson Zone territory.
Seriously, you could tell me that Nicki Minaj’s ass cured cancer yesterday and the most you’d get out of me would be “Word? Cool.” My Minaj surprise quota has been completely exhausted. Sh*t, she could be sitting in my bathtub while rocking a dolphin suit and reading “The Things They Carried” right now and it still wouldn’t shock me.
With that being said, I think she’s extremely intelligent (Yes. Extremely intelligent. She has us all thinking she’s Pinocchio when she’s really Geppetto.), extremely shrewd, and extremely self-aware, and I still think the music industry is a much, much better place with her in it.
4. I don’t think I’ve ever been on the fence with a comedian more than I am with Keenan Thompson. Yes, his comedy tends to be wrapped in a not so subtle tinge of, for lack of a better term, “coonism,” and yes, he’s probably rocked more dresses and pumps in the past year than each of the Mean Girls of Morehouse combined. But, he does occasionally crack me the hell up, and I’ve been known to sing “What’s up with that?” to myself at random times during the day. I really can’t call it with Keenan.
Speaking of black comics…
5. I’ve had my cup of “Jay Pharoah is the next black comedy superstar” lemonade sitting on my dining room table for four months now. Hopefully I’ll be able to drink it some time soon. I really, really, really want him to be the next Eddie Murphy, but I’m not sure if SNL is the right place for that to happen.
6. The funniest part of this skit occurs at the 5:10 mark of the video, when a song starts playing in the background and Jesse “I’m going to tell you one last time. I am NOT Michael Cera!!!” Eisenberg claps so offbeat that it looks like he’s trying to kill a gnat. He’s either the best young actor on the planet, or concrete proof that “the average white man” and “rhythm” goes together like “Cromartie” and “condoms.” No in-between.
7. I guess this is where I’m supposed to end this piece with 150 or so words about the many virtues of Nicki Minaj’s gravity, sense, and nature defying ass. In fact, I’m sure those who remember my Anchorman-influenced ode to Erykah Badu’s ass are expecting it. Surprisingly, though, I’m completely unmoved by her hindparts, and I can’t exactly figure out why. I mean, I’ve let the whole “artificial or not?” thing slide before when appreciating certain magnificent booties, so I know it’s not that. I’ve also gone gaga for the backside assets of women who weren’t nearly as blessed as the black barbie, so I know it’s not that either.
I think my problem with Minaj’s ass is that it just seems like an excessively ostentatious and useless accessory, like an Olympic diving board attached to the trunk of a Bentley. Sure, it’s amazing, but it doesn’t really entice because it doesn’t seem to serve any practical purpose other than amazement.
While Badu has “the perfect three baby booty,” Minaj’s can best be described as “the perfect 3-D booty.” Great to look at while at the theater, but disorientating and distracting if you tried to watch at home. (Champ’s Note: She’d still get it, though)
Remember, if you haven’t done so already, you can purchase Your Degrees Wont Keep You Warm at Night: The Very Smart Brothas Guide to Dating, Mating, and Fighting Crime at Amazon.com for $14.99.
—The Champ
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I’ve held off on posting about YouPorn’s foray into 3D red-cyan glasses porn (Anaglyph – or amber-blue for purists) – only because YouPorn a) did not have enough videos for me to send you there for a decent post, and b) they violate my sensibilities by not allowing me to embed a video player in the spirit of sharing/common currency of media transference of the modern internet.
But hey, it’s worth a look if you have the glasses. I have high hopes that they will develop this category, especially to facilitate user-uploaded submissions, and of course, to enable embeds of explicit 3D porn videos. Also that the porn will be hot. At least the nice thing about glasses is that we are always “hands-free”.
Rihanna just became one of my fetish pop heroes with this new video for her song S&M. There is so much to love about this one – she’s not only giving Lady Gaga a run for the money, but Rihanna’s doing it all her own way. It’s fun, it’s sexy, it’s all kinds of dirty and playful… Watch it – even if you don’t like this kind of music you will really enjoy the rubber fetish fashion, bondage, edginess and more. This is totally what Xtina wanted to do but didn’t have the balls or the interest to explore.
Love: Perez Hilton as Rihanna’s bad puppy, while she’s in see-through pink rubber. Ball-gagged journalists at a press conference. Big sexy mama getting vinyl bondage taped and kissed by Rihanna. Ri-Ri tying men up and whipping them. Banana fellatio. I could go on… I am such a fangirl.
Brian Williams writes: The two discoveries happened concurrently, just after I boarded Amtrak from New York to Washington on Monday night: The blood drained from my head when I realized I'd left my iPod headphones in my office in New York—and then, in an instant, the man in front of me and the man behind me both embarked a string of cell phone calls, at loud volume, in the otherwise-quiet car. The following has to do with the era of over-sharing, the era of personal electronics...and subsequent death of discretion. While I could not believe what I heard, I was mostly stunned that either man would chose to conduct their business inside the close confines of a train car, and for everyone around them to hear. It was as if they were all alone, on a private train car—and yet I was not the only passenger who could hear every word spoken by both men for the entire trip.
I learned the full names of both men, and where they both live. The man in front of me was planning to sell his company today, to a well-known, immediately recognizable media firm...which he named several times. I learned his approximate compensation, and the fact that deferred compensation was a sticking point in the talks. I learned the names of all those who would likely be fired in the event of a merger, and I heard him disparage his own legal team. Here was a particularly rich quote: "You know how in our business you have big dogs...or you have puppies? I have...modified puppies. They're so naive." The man behind me was coming from a ski outing. I got to hear about his drive through the Hudson River Valley, and his time in the home of a loved one. The good news? He had inspected the shower valve as requested, and it wasn't broken. It was installed upside down! There's your problem! On a different call, he used the name of a prominent Member of Congress, and told a graphic and off-color story about the Congressman, who had missed a press conference because he was "tied up"—literally, with a flight attendant he'd met on a business trip. He then turned to Rahm Emanuel's efforts to get on the ballot in Chicago—speculating about the appointment history of the Supreme Court Justices in Illinois, and making what I can only hope and assume was an uncomfortable attempt at a joke: "Rahm's walking around with $10 million (in donations)—he could spend half of that, $5 million, to bribe the members of the court, and still have $5 million to spend on the campaign." That was a head-turner.
At several times during our journey, I made a kind of commiserating eye contact with my fellow travelers, one of whom was lucky enough to have remembered his headphones. Early on in the three-hour ride, the conductor asked the man in front of me (who was selling his company, apparently by cell-phone) to "keep it down, please." He lowered his volume to a conversational level, while still entirely audible. I considered changing seats but stayed put, just to witness it all. I have chosen to use no proper names or monetary amounts, though there were plenty to choose from. There was nothing extraordinary about the journey—and as loud-talkers go, these guys were just about average—but the ride was a lesson in volume, privacy and discretion.
Let’s be honest, Saturday Night Live hasn’t been on it’s A game in quite some time.
Every so often they’ll knock one out the park with a classic skit like this one, but for the most part, their comical shortcomings ain’t nothing to laugh at. It’s pretty upsetting.
However, the one area where they routinely deliver the goods is via their musical skits, in particular rap skits. Lonely Island featuring Nicki Minaj provided this past weekend’s musical gem “Do The Creep.” The infectious digital short was more proof that SNL producers would be best served to infuse a little more hip-hop into the weekly program. Don’t think so? We’ve got the visual evidence to prove it.
Check the repertoire.
The Lonely Island “I’m On A Boat”
A new season of Comedy Central's "Friday Night Stand Up" has begun, and HuffPost Comedy has your weekly sneak peek right here. Check back every week for exclusive segments courtesy of Comedy Central's Jokes.com of all the latest episodes of "Comedy Central Presents" before they air.
This week Taiwanese-American Texan comedian Sheng Wang takes the stage and talks about a subject many Americans are familiar with: smoking pot. When Wang partakes, he likes to give himself small tasks to achieve, like going grocery shopping:
"Suddenly it's a lot more challenging than usual, and you're wandering around this now-unfamiliar territory. You cant help but feel like a hunter-gatherer... that's having the best day of his life! Jackpot!"
Watch the exclusive clip below and catch Wang's half-hour stand-up special this Friday Jan. 28 at
11:30 p.m. EST on Comedy Central, right after Chelsea Peretti.
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Tracy Morgan is in hot water again for a controversial joke, this time due to some salacious remarks about former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin.
During "Inside The NBA" on TNT before the Heat-Knicks game, Kenny Smith announced that Morgan was the only person who could settle an argument he and Charles Barkley have "all the time." Tina Fey or Sarah Palin?
After a few laughs and the observation that Morgan "can't get fired," Charles Barkley encouraged Morgan, saying, "Sarah Palin's good looking isn't she?"
Morgan quickly put the discussion to bed with the following comment:
"Now let me tell you something about Sarah Palin man, she's good masturbation material. The glasses and all that? Great masturbation material."
Ernie Johnson quickly tried to change the subject, but the deed was done. Soon thereafter, TNT responded with an apology for Morgan's comments. From USA Today:
"It's unfortunate Mr. Morgan showed a lack of judgment on our air with his inappropriate comments," said Turner spokesman Jeff Pomeroy in a statement.TNT shot off the apology within minutes of phone calls and e-mails about Morgan's comments from Game On!
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