Birthday Spotlight: Tonya Pinkins

May 30th, Tonya Pinkins celebrates her birthday. This Tony Award winning actress was the star of Tony Kushner’s (”Angels in America”) critically acclaimed, hit Broadway musical “Caroline, or Change.” For her portrayal of “Caroline,” Pinkins was nominated for the “Best Actress in a Musical” Tony. A single mother of four who also plays “‘Livia Frye Cudahy” on the ABC daytime drama, “All My Children,” Pinkins made her mark on stage as “Sweet Anita” in “Jelly’s Last Jam,” for which she received a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle and Clarence Derwent Award and starred in “Play On!” and “The Wild Party.”

Talk Show Tyra Takes on NY Times…

Tyra Banks covers The New York Times Magazine with a tiny waist, a big bouffant and not so coy cover line references to whether she may be the next talk show great. In an era where daytime talk either sizzles (”The Tyra Banks Show”, “Rachel Ray Show”) quickly or fizzles (”The Megan Mullally Show”, “The Greg Behrendt Show”) even faster, Tyra is doing something totally correct, whether you like it or not.

Apparently, this cover story, written by Lynn Hirschberg, examines Tyra’s day to day as well as her rise from supermodel to TYRA TV brand beauty. It’s slated to be released Sunday, June 1st.

Birthday Spotlight: Betty Shabazz

American civil rights activist, Dr. Betty Shabazz was born on May 28^th in Detroit, Michigan. In her early adult life she became a nurse in New York City before meeting her husband, Malcolm X in 1956 at a Nation of Islam lecture in Harlem. By 1958 Betty had married Malcolm and converted to Islam. She later gave birth to six daughters. Following Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, Betty went on to earn her Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Massachusetts and continued raising her girls. Later, she joined the staff at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York. She died in 1997 after her 12-year-old grandson set fire to their home.

“Sex” and New York City: The Premiere

“Only time we don’t speak is durin’ ‘Sex and the City’.
She gets Carrie fever, but soon as the show’s over.
She’s right back to being my soldier…”

-Jay-Z “’03 Bonnie and Clyde”

New York City’s legendary Radio City Music Hall was filled to capacity last night for the premiere to end all premieres - Sex and the City. More than a thousand fans showed up in midtown Manhattan to catch a glimpse of Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Chris Noth, Jennifer Hudson and all the stars, which included Mary J. Blige and hubby Kendu, Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child, Lil’ Kim, Gayle King, and many, many more in attendance.

Unfortunately there was a lot of bogus business going on. According to the New York Post, a woman had purchased a $19,000.00 premier pass package that was to include tickets to the movie, a five day stay at Plaza Athenee, shopping sprees at Jimmy Choo and Patricia Fields and a donation to Kim Cattrall’s charity through Ebay. However, when she got to the theatre, like many other fans who had tickets, she was shut out. The woman soon found out that the package was a scam and not at all attached to New Line Cinema, the movie house behind Sex and the City.

And if that were not enough, just yesterday Patricia Fields, the fashion master mind behind Sex and the City had to send out this bulletin via her myspace account:

“It has come to our attention that there is a seller on Ebay offering “authentic” Sex and the City merchandise that comes with a “certificate of authority” signed by Patricia herself.

Patricia has NEVER signed such a document, and would NEVER hawk SATC or any other show’s used items on ebay.
This is just not done! We do carry certain items on the website, Patricia Field, made by the manufacturers who supplied items to the show/movie but these are new items and not anything claimed to have been used directly by SJP or the other stars during filming.”

Sex and the City officially opens on May 30^th. Finally! Get Carried Away!

Bellinis & Baby Showers?

Hi Ladies! Pepper Hot Pants here. Remember me?? I know I’ve been gone for a while, but I’m back! Anyways, I’m still recovering from an alcohol induced weekend that was never even planned to pan out that way. And how did I get so filthy punch drunk, you ask? From the rum punch at the… baby shower, of all places. Ugh. I know. It’s the God awful truth, and I shakily stand by it!!

The scene was a roof top setting in downtown Los Angeles overlooking the entire city on a fuzzy weather weekend. Vibrant oranges, yellows, browns and greens covered the fenced in area as we partook in the traditional baby welcoming affair.

Prior to getting my butt over to this shower, I couldn’t help but think of the “Sex & the City” episode (“A Woman’s Right To Shoes” – the internet is amazing) where Carrie, who is fed up with all the wedding and baby festivities in her life at that particular time, reluctantly attends a baby shower and then on top of it all, loses her designer shoes when it was time to leave. Her married/childbearing friends then attempt to chastise her for not having a life and spending all her money on shoes… hence the title of this episode. Like Carrie, I’m single and have thrown enough baby showers, attended enough wedding parties and been a bridesmaid far too many times so I totally understood the SPOV (Single POV). But my afternoon was different from Carrie’s experience because I found the right baby shower!

Unlike other super-adult (i.e.: I’m where I “should” be at 30/35-years-old) events I’d been to, I actually wanted to hang around for this one. The hostesses were absolutely wonderful with their constant ebb and flow of liquor. The food was culturally specific to the Mr. and Mrs. and the music was pumping while the vibe was just right. The games, especially after a few cocktails, became all the more fun! And thankfully, the hostesses did not resort to the uber typical pink or blue theme for the baby shower nor did they cross men off the list. Hold on to your seats, I actually may have met someone!!! (Will update later, should there be anything to update)

So all in all, after recovering the following day from a hangover that rivaled a night at Goa, I arrived back to my normal state of being. I guess happiness rained on my head at the baby shower this time around…

Drama in the Laker’s Locker Room…

No I’m not talking about the playoffs. This one involves Vanessa Bryant, the wife of MVP Kobe Bryant, and an ESPN writer by the name of Laura Lane. Apparently Laura Lane wrote an online piece for the magazine and she had a few quotes from Vanessa. Now, given the following exchange which was lifted from Lane’s personal blog (which has now, coincidently and mysteriously disappeared) Vanessa seems to not have expected what she said to Laura to be published. Indulge if you will:

Last night, I got cussed out by Vanessa Bryant. Seriously. At the Lakers game. In front of her kids. In front of the Lakers locker room. It was awesome. She is mad about an article I wrote where I mentioned her. That means one of two things - she either reads the ESPN blog or she has herself on Google alerts. Both are fantastic.

So as I’m walking out of the Lakers locker room after some post-game interviews with the players, I pass Vanessa, who is sitting outside the locker room as usual with her two girls.

“Laura!” she screams (yes, she apparently knows my name). “Fuck you! You fucking bitch!”

“Excuse me?” I say, completely baffled as I look around me to see if there is someone else named Laura. No, there’s not.

Her daughters – ages 5 and 2 – are sitting next to her on the bench looking at their mom as she screams.

“Fuck you! How dare you write about me and my daughters and their schedule! You didn’t say you were writing an article! Fuck you! You fucking bitch. You have no journalism ethics! Fuck you! You bitch - ”

I just stare at her. I’ve heard many stories about her from reporters, but this was unbelievable. Two of my friends from the LA Times told me how she cussed out one of them last season, because he said hi to her daughter. “Join the club, this means you’ve arrived,” said one reporter when word spread of my run-in with Vanessa. “She’s insane,” said another. “Everyone knows it.”

Kobe Bryant walks out of the locker room and one of the girls runs over to him, while Vanessa continues to scream and cuss at me.

There’s no way I am going to sit here with Kobe Bryant while his wife screams at me so I look at her, shrug, and walk away.

Perhaps she’s angry at the world because there were rumors today that came out that Kobe Bryant slept with a Lakers cheerleader – a hotter version of his wife who is also named Vanessa - and she got fired. While I am completely against cheating, can you honestly blame Kobe if he didn’t want to sleep with that???

I asked a couple of the Lakers cheerleaders if it was true one of the girls got fired. They looked at each other not knowing what to say. “Uh, well, um she moved on,” stuttered one of them. “Um, yeah, she moved on to do other things.”

Sure. The Lakers are in the playoffs and she suddenly decided to pursue other things. She’s 18 years-old and it was her first year! You’re telling me she got sick of being a Lakers girl already and didn’t want to finish the rest of the PLAYOFFS!

The sad part is before all of this I kind of liked Vanessa and I thought we hit it off. She doesn’t give a fuck about anything. She wears these insane outfits, struts around Staples Center like a queen, shows off her daughters and lets them run around the hall way playing tag while reporters are trying to get by.

The article Vanessa was apparently upset about is one I wrote a couple weeks ago when she wore some crazy outfit when Kobe got his MVP. I really thought the outfit was awesome; very Sarah Jessica Parker. She wore a purple tutu. It was an outfit I would have made with my friends in high school for fun.

That game, before I went in the Lakers locker room for interviews I went to talk to her and ask her about her outfit. I had a notebook in my hand, a recorder in my hand and I asked her about her outfit and we talked about the kids and how they didn’t want to wear a tutu and how they’re doing dance and some other stuff.

As a journalist I am going to piss people off. That’s just the nature of the business. I never want to or intend to piss people off, but if you’re not pissing people off occasionally, then you are constantly kissing ass. First of all, this wasn’t a case of journalistic ethics. I don’t think she knows what the term means. Either way, I hold myself to high standards of journalistic ethics. Not everything in journalism is black and white and I’ll admit that but if I question something, I just don’t do it. I was trained in journalism and I’ve taken journalism ethics classes. I went to journalism school at one of the top Universities in the nation. Vanessa Bryant didn’t go to college. And for her to talk to me about ethics …

Considering there are a lot of rumors going around, I’m sure she’s upset. So she took it out on me and now I have an awesome story.

About three different reporters at the game and one of my editors told me I should write about her cussing me out. That’s the beauty of journalism. You don’t fight, you write.

This is what Vanessa got mad at:
Staples Center is playing quite the eclectic mix tonight as well. Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”, Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”, Bob Marley’s “Stir it Up”, and the Jackson 5’s “Abc” are just a few songs that fans are dancing to. Oh, and tonight everyone gets a free yellow t-shirt that says ‘Our team, Our time, Our MVP.’

Kobe’s wife, Vanessa, has opted to make her own fashion statement. Vanessa, who is usually prim and proper in all black has decided to have fun tonight with her outfit. She’s wearing a white tube dress, a purple tutu, black leggings, high heeled short boots and a rhinestone incrusted white leather jacket with the number 8 on the back, Kobe’s old number. Bryant’s daughters, Natalia and Gianna both have shirts that say “Got MVP?”

“When he changed his number I didn’t have anything with a 24 on it so I had them make this dress,” Vanessa says. “I don’t know how to sew that well so I just told them what to do.”

The girls, however, prefer their soccer uniform over ballerina tutus.

“I have stuff like this for them but they don’t want to wear it,” Vanessa says. “She’s like, ‘I don’t want to wear it. It itches.’” Bryant’s kids have recently started playing soccer in addition to gymnastics, ballet and hip-hop.

“I’m like a total soccer mom,” Vanessa says.

How My Mother’s Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart.

That is the title of the story that was sent into us by a faithful Martini Pink reader. Who would have thought that the daughter of an icon such as Alice Walker would be at odds with one of the most prominent social change agents of our time? Her mother, no less. In a very telling piece, Rebecca Walker (journalist and author of “Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self”) breaks down her relationship with her mother exposing what she learned about men early on (“I was raised to believe that women need men like a fish needs a bicycle.”) the disowning, and the hurt she felt when Alice did not respond positively to her pregnancy. This article is proof that even the most respective and highly held leaders are flawed. Read the entire piece here.

Hip-Hop, Women, Activism & Academia

For the last ten years at least, hip-hop has found a spot in higher education whether integrated into linguistics, history or literature seminars or stealing the spotlight as its very own Hip-Hop 101. Well known and highly respected professors like Tricia Rose and Michael Eric Dyson have been at the fore of this movement to explore discourse around the cultural phenomena that is hip-hop. And now, these school heads can add a new body of work to their syllabus: “Conscious Women Rock the Page: Using Hip Hop Fiction to Incite Social Change” compiled by Jennifer “JLOVE” Calderón, author of “That White Girl”; Elisha “E-Fierce” Miranda, author of “The Sista Hood”; Sofía “Black Artemis” Quintero, author of “Picture Me Rollin’”; and Marcella Runell Hall, co-editor of “The Hip Hop Education Guidebook”. “CWRP” is basically a curriculum that enables hip-hop to be present in the classroom in various ways. This prospectus contains over 30 lessons which are appropriated for use in middle school classrooms all the way up to university campuses. Disciplines covered include English, social studies, ethnic studies, race relations, women’s studies, criminal justice and health and sexuality. The text is available now at LuLu.

Birthday Spotlight: Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes

Today would have been the 37^th birthday of stand-out rapper/singer Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes. Born in Philadelphia, Lisa was one third of the flamboyant pop/R&B girl group TLC which also consisted of members T-Boz and Chili. Throughout the 90’s and into the early 2000s, TLC experienced severe ups and downs. From Left-Eye’s arson of then boyfriend Andre Rison’s home, to the group filing bankruptcy to ultimately returning to the top of the charts, the girls had more than a dozen hits from their multi-platinum albums Oooooooh On the TLC Tip (1992), Crazy, Sexy, Cool (1994), Fanmail (1999), 3D (2002). Sadly, on April 25th, 2002, Left-Eye was killed in a car accident while on a retreat in Honduras.

Ashanti’s “Get Right for the Summer Workout Plan”

We get a lot of requests for health and wellness information and while we try to oblige, we’re still a growing website. But this week, we have the goods. VH1 posted Ashanti’s summer workout tips via their blog and we grabbed them quick, fast and in a hurry.

Now before you judge and think, ‘oh that’s just some celebrity to-do,’ note that Ashanti has some realistic, sensible and accessible tips here. From what foods to stay away from to how to up the ante at the gym, I’m sure at least one or two of the tips Ashanti offers will be worth your while.

Plus, she’s rocking another shade of that bright matte lipstick she’s making her signature in this video clip… Let us know what you think about that trend ladies…

Ashanti’s album The Declaration arrives in stores next week, June 3^rd to be exact.

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