Big Boi Gets 'Girly', Bruce Willis Gets 'Funky'

By A. Scott Walton
What's the true price of celebrity?
Having to make marketing moves that cast you in a foolish light. That's what.
Take the supreme Dirty South rapper Antwon "Big Boi" Patton, of the duo OutKast, for instance. Dude's been so desperate to get his much delayed solo CD launched that he's reached beyond all the respected critics who rave about "Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty", and submitted himself to sideshow acts like the one in Paste magazine.
What a bummer: being teased into thinking you'd be reading intimate secrets about a hip-hop star who prefers to wear bow ties, only to realize the feature consisted of Big looking at a short sampling of product photos and having his description of them cropped to a clipped few sentences.
And (pardon the expression) WTF?? Why does big keep saying in the article that he likes, 'whatever girls like'?
Isn't he married with kids? Can we trace the saggy pants trend back, therefore, to females' approval?
Just askin'...

SMELL GOOD, OR DIE TRYING: Running low on your supply of "eau de action movie hero", fellas? Well, never fear. Bruce Willis is here to spritz you down with a signature scent that must have seemed like as good an idea, at the time, as greenlighting "Lucky Number Slevin".
No doubt, this fragrance launch will provide classic comedic fodder for the next Willis appearance on the Letterman show. But the funniest thing is: if the action hero's name wasn't etched on the sturdy square glass bottle with a cedar wood stopper, we might have considered buying it.


TIME - Cheating: Celebrity Rite of Passage?

CNN - When nail polish goes rogue

Boston Globe - Is it 'Mad Men' or 'Men in Black'?

AP - Are Europe's couture shows 'fur real'?

Is "Freaknik: The Musical" Atlanta's Finest Hour?

By A. Scott Walton
Wasn't it Don Quixote who said, "Comedy is tragedy, plus time"?
If so, "Man of La Mancha" meet T-Pain.
Some years back, according to lore, some Cartoon Network producers decided to make an animated ode to Freaknik; the loud, lewd and congestive street parties that hordes of (predominantly) black youth engaged in annually under the guise of a "Black Spring Break".
A decade after city officials sagely shut such gatherings down for good, some idiots still lament Freaknik's demise.
For them, the impossible dream's resurrected in the form of a 60-minute, animated re-enactment of the objectifying spectacle. It's "Freaknik: The Musical", airing late Sunday night.
T-Pain, the Grammy-winning Atlanta hip-hop producer takes a leading role.
Reportedly, he Auto-Tunes the character of the 'spook' of Freakniks past.
How's this for an image to savor? He looks like a blinged-out, gold-toothed Magnum condo with a pimp cup in his hand.
But it's all in good taste, of course. Otherwise, the locally-based cable network and a slew of Dirty South rappers and R&b dinosaurs wouldn't have shackled their names to this most tragic reflection of when "keepin' it real" goes wrong.
Right?
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