For some reason he reminds me of Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. I can't figure out why though.
I feel proud and honoured to be the one to have introduced you to this garner. I'm Rick James, bitch!
i very nearly shat myself at the 'they never shoulda gave you ____ money!' line. i mean, i was positively howling with laughter. when grace got home later on, and i showed it to her, she didn't get it. hell, she had a hard enough time understanding chappelle's lines - or james' for that matter. at one point she commented that she wished she'd grown up in america so she could get the jokes. i said no... then she'd be a product of that sort of racist indoctrination that produces the jokes in the first place.
*sigh* i'm really not sure how to even go about explaining why it's funny to an american... i mean, its funny for different reasons, but almost all of them revolve around, pertain to, or stem from the utterly fucked up situation with race and ethnicity in america. i mean, i suppose a lot of it boils down to two elements: 1) a lot of black folks in america aint got much cash. the status quo tends to keep them poor and ignorant and disenfranchised. 2) james' lamentation suggests that now that eddie and charlie have money, they feel they can get away with treating james so violently. of course, at teh same time, it was james' wealth and status (the two often seem to be the same in american ghetto culture) that lead to him behaving in such a way as to precipitate the beating he received... i dunno man, it made me nearly soil myself with laughter. but i guess you have to be an american to get it. grace did point out that it seems like a lot of the american response to this sort of thing, at least from the white side, is nearly a hysterical reaction 'oh my god, you can't make that joke!!' which, i had to agree, was definately a part of it on some level.
I'm Rick James, bitch! I liked the way Om said it better than the way Rick James said it. I'm Rick James, bitch!
Adding to Garner: I think part of it was that James called them Darkness, inferring that he himself was a whitey. Therefore he wished that the black populace had never been allowed to make money. Of course, if his wish had been granted he wouldn't have had any money either. That's what I got from it anyway. It made me laugh as well.
nah, Murphy explains it fairly well. the Darkness nickname stems simply from the fact that the murphy brothers were blacker than the likes of james. something i think a lot of europeans might not grasp about the american situation... most black folk ya'll have seen are from africa. for americans, most black folk we see aint that black anymore due to what can be diplomatically refered to as 'yet another insult from life on the plantation' i remember the first time i saw someone who had genuine ebony dark skin. it was actually quite startling to me, since prior to that the blackest person i'd ever seen was 'brown'
[quote:9805ec35fb="Garner"]something i think a lot of europeans might not grasp about the american situation... most black folk ya'll have seen are from africa. for americans, most black folk we see aint that black anymore due to what[/quote:9805ec35fb] You're not including Brits in with Europeans, are you? Or have you forgotten about the Caribbean?
Of the black people I've known growing up, many more of them have been Africans than West Indians - that probably changes depending upon which part of the UK you're in. I don't think it's true for most Brits that most of the black people we'll have seen will have been African - but I have found some American notions of what constitutes dark skin to be out of line with my expectations. The Murphy brothers, for example, are not notably dark-skinned for black men. Rick James should meet the Congolese people I've known.
