San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano bravely introduced reasoned, serious legislation about confronting, revising, and ultimately turning California’s oppressive marijuana laws to our benefit. In these trying economic times, it just makes sense. Its budget meltdown has California taking a look at legalizing marijuana as a means to revive its depleted treasury. But common sense, not economic need, should persuade Americans it’s past time for a sober look at our mad “reefer madness” laws.
The Golden State legislator pushing the idea, Tom Ammiano of — plug in the appropriate joke — San Francisco, says licensing and taxing legal marijuana production and sales would earn California $1.3 billion a year. His bill would legalize marijuana possession and use for adults 21 or older, license commercial farming of it and tax it at $50 an ounce.
A big problem: California can’t do this on its own. The federal prohibition law would have to be changed for Sacramento to impose and collect the licensing fees and taxes. Given all the controversial financial and social engineering bills on its plate, Congress likely isn’t eager to take on this contentious issue. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll found only 41 percent of Americans favor legalization. That’s an improvement over the 34 percent in a 2002 CNN/Time poll, but still 52 percent are against it.
It would be best if Washington could leave this matter in the hands of states. Thirteen states have to some extent decriminalized marijuana. Massachusetts is the latest. Its voters last month eliminated criminal penalties for possession of small amounts.
American Apparel needs you for their new ads, catalogs, and web site. If your look fits their image, head on over to their open call on Wednesday, October 29th, from 12pm to 3pm. If u want to check an article we did on some of their sexier ads go here
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Throughout his 71 years of life, Rudy Ray Moore, who passed away last night, wore a lot of hats. He started his show business career as an R & B singer, but after a stint in the US Army, he got interested in stand up comedy. Throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, he put out a string of incredibly funny, incredibly profane comedy records that combined his humor with his showmanship, which caused him to refer to himself as the ‘king of the party records’ and later ‘the godfather of rap.’ However, the character he’s best known for is the articulate pimp named Dolemite.
Dolemite was the cornerstone of Rudy’s comedy career, spawning three movies (Dolemite, The Human Tornado, and The Return of Dolemite) and a litany of comedy albums and guest appearances. The only character who has inspired more rappers is Scarface. Snoop Dogg has been pretending to be Dolemite since 2000, and rapper ODB put out a Dolemite-inspired video in 1999. That’s not even including Rudy’s work in other classic non-parody Blaxploitation movies. He had a full filmography.
According to reports the 72 year old sleezy video show host was arrested this morning after cops were called to his L.A. home. It’s been long rumored that Cornelius plays for the other team and his bimbo beard wife is all for show. It’s unkown now who the victim was. He was eventually released from the LAPD jail in Van Nuys where he posted a $50,000 bail.
As many of you have seen by now, Eddie Murphy’s latest offering Meet Dave caught a stinky at the box office this weekend. It made only 5 million dollars on 3,011 screens. In stark contrast, the #1 movie, Hellboy 2 made 35 million, on 3,200 screens. Now many of you may laugh, but being a urban filmmaker myself I consider this no laughing matter (okay I snickered a little). But the truth of the matter is when a urban film bombs it affects everyone in the urban filmmaking community, as we all get tried by fire in Hollywood. When an urban movie with a star of Eddie Murphy’s caliber doesn’t perform, it gives studios a reason to not greenilight other urban films. I know this for a fact and am already fully expecting to hear “We’re not really doing urban comedies right now. They just don’t performâ€. Read the rest of this entry
