MOVIE/WEEKEND REVIEW

This has turned out to be a pretty great weekend for me all around filled with fun and friends!

I just got back from church and it was awesome as usual. Pastor John and the Unity Choir held it down at First AME Church today!! The choir sang one of my favorite gospel songs right now Back II Eden by Donald Lawrence. LOVE IT!



Last night I went to see "The Hangover" a Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen who lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures. They then had to retrace their steps in order to find him. Let me just say it was HILARIOUS!!! I laughed so hard at times, my head and stomach hurt, lol!! Those of you who recommended it to me, thank you. I am yet to hear a bad review so if any of you are in the need for a good laugh then do yourself a favor and go check it out. I think the funniest part might have been when the credits were going up.

Here's a classic pic from the movie when the guys were on an elevator headed out to try to find out where their boy was.


The guy on the left of this picture, "fat Jesus" lol, pretty much stole the show! If ever there was a movie that exemplified the saying "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", then this would be it!!! Again, two thumbs way up!

Shout out to my girl Kelli White who came in town for the weekend. We've been friends for a long time now, and seen each other through a lot of ups and downs. Although we keep in touch, I hadn't seen her for quite some time.



We hit up The Comedy Union (thanks Chris), had lunch at Rush in Culver City, went shoe shopping (I actually didn't but anything - yeah, surprising I know), went to The Grove, The Beverly Center, and then breakfast this morning at this cute spot in Marina Del Ray. She was college roommates with Erica and so the three of us had a great time catching up!

Shout out to my girl Grace Usphaw, fellow long jumper, but she competes for the US and is several time US champion. She's getting ready for the upcoming US Nationals in Eugene (which I'm now pretty sure I'm going to) but she was in town for a couple days so I managed to catch up with her too on Friday morning.


This is a picture of us in Beijing last year in the Olympic Village.

Shout out to my new business partners-to-be. I would have never met these guy had I not gotten injured. I swear the Lord blesses you when you least expect it and everything happens for a reason! A lot of things are falling in place and I am very excited about what the future has in store for us. Sky's the limit! I spent the morning on Saturday day down in Newport Beach with them. More on that later though.

And last but not least, shout out to D.O., for kicking the weekend off to such a great start! I'm still smiling:-)

How did I manage to fit so much into these few days??? I think I need a rest but alas, that's not gonna happen cause I'm gearing up for my LAKERS to end this series TONIGHT!!! It's not gonna be easy and I concede we may end up back here in LA but sorry, Magic we don't wanna drag out the inevitable! Might as well make it Lakers in 5 baby!!! Woohoo!!

PAN-AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL

Last night, my boy Chris Spencer gave me a last minute call to attend a movie screening at the 17th Annual Pan-African Film and Arts Festival that is being held here in Los Angeles. Lucky for me, the theater where the screenings are is right down the road here from where I live at the Culver Plaza Theaters.



The Pan-African Film Festival is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the advancement of cultural diversity and education through the exhibition of positive and realistic media images. They basically screen numerous independent and recently released or re-released films that don't have the backing of the bigger studios. Sometimes small films like Slumdog Millionaire, which I recently saw by the way - awesome!!, get screened at these types of festivals and then some big company sees them, word spreads and they become huge big-screen successes.

The movie we saw was called Killer of Sheep and it was actually filmed in 1977 and in black and white but it was never released for the cinema because the producers could not afford to pay for the rights of some of the music. I think they said a couple years ago Steven Soderbergh paid something like $100,000 to buy the music rights and so the film was finally released. The director was Charles Burnett, a UCLA film-school alum.

It was an interesting movie to say the least - somewhat of a "Blacksploitation" feature. To be honest, I'm not sure I totally understood what was going on, lol but nevertheless I enjoyed myself. The star of the movie was there and so there was a Q & A after which helped me to figure out a few things:)

The Festival goes until the 16th and hopefully I'll get a chance to go check out a couple more films.

MOVIE REVIEW

This past Saturday night, I went to the movies. At first, the plan was to see Ironman. I've heard so much about how great this movie was and so I was looking forward to seeing it. At the last minute, plans changed and I ended up watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.


Perhaps it's because I don't remember what the other previous Indiana Jones movies were about or maybe I didn't even see them, who knows although I vaguely remember something about seeing Sean Connery in one of them. Or perhaps it's because I'm not a big fan of Sci Fi movies to begin with. Lord of The Rings, no thank you, Harry Potter, nope, Star Wars, I'll pass. Give me a good action flick, or suspense movie, or romantic comedy any day. Suffice to say this movie gets one thumb down and one thumb sideways from me. It was entertaining I guess, but for the most part, I don't think I knew exactly what was going on. I probably wasn't really paying enough attention anyway.

My friends are always trying to convince me to go see these types of movies and every once in a while I relent and then it usually only reaffirms for me, that I was right to begin with. You know the movie is not too believable when you're sitting there with your lip turned up with that "no they didn't" look on your face, you know what look I'm talking about. That look when Harrison Ford and friends goes over the 500ft waterfall in a boat and they all survive.....C'mon now....give me a break!!!! LOL!

Anyway, it's all good. I had a good time anyway. Sometimes it's just nice to get out of the house...

MOVIE NIGHT

In about an hour, I am going with a friend of mine to the movies. There are quite a few to choose from - 27 Dresses, The Bucket List, PS- I Love You, Atonement, Juno, Mad Money and a few others that I haven't seen yet. They all seem pretty interesting however, we are going to see First Sunday! Now for those of you don't know which movie this is, it's the one with with Ice Cube, Katt Williams and Tracy Morgan where they set out to rob a church. How sacreligious!!

Sometimes it's easy to pick what movie to see - you know the must-sees; for me something like The Great Debaters or American Gangster. But there are other times when there are quite a few decent enough movies showing that I feel warrant me spending $12.50, yes it's $12.50 out here in LA - and so then you have to go to the secondary reasons like what mood am I in, what does the other person want to see, who's in it, etc.

I apologize in advance for saying this, but I have never been one for going to see movies with black characters in them just because they are black. I don't go to see movies with white characters in it just because they are white either for that matter. I want to support black enterprise too but it still needs to be something of value. However, tonight I feel like laughing and based on the characters in this movie and based on the trailers that I have seen, this one seems to fit the bill. Yes, I know it's going to be silly and yes I know it won't be the most intriguing plot ever but that's exactly what I'm looking for. All I have to do is look at Katt Williams with that perm in his hair and I want to bust out laughing :) LOL!!!

Now if he was coming out in a psychological thriller of some sort, I'd have to guess that I would have to pass. Tonight though, I am putting on my loose pair of jeans 'cause I know that I am going to be laughing really hard and coming on the heels of my outing on Tuesday night, I'm definitely ready for that!

Saturday afternoon....
So I went to the movie and I ended up paying $15.50 because the showing that we went to was in the Director's Hall where they have assigned seating...overrated!!! The movie was funny...but ahhh, not worth that much....wait for the DVD! Actually Tracy Morgan's character stole the show!