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C. Hannibal cultural history

Election Day Hustle-Mode

I go to one of the greatest journalism schools on the planet, son. The best I could muster was a few flicks on election day. It was a great experience. Midterms are the boring side of elections in most cases. Too bad I didn’t get into school two years ago. Would’ve loved to do some Obama stories. This photo I took is mad yellow. Blame it on the gym floor. Or blame it on my novice skills. One day I’ll look at it and laugh. Actually, I was laughing when my professor saw it and was like: “Why is it so yellow?”

Actually, mediocrity isn’t that funny.

There goes my travel fellowship. Wait, I think I nixed those chances way back in September. Still, we keeps pushing.

Below is a bit of raw reporting I handed in to a colleague who was putting in extra-fly work on the election coverage tip. **Shouts to Beth Mo!

When I look over these notes, I see 1,000,000 things missing. Sloppy! Just gotta learn. The original idea was for me to do some type exit poll interview. These are the results:

11/02/2010

Snapshots of Voters in Park Slope.

Camp Friendship 8th Ave and 6th Street.

Voter  1, Black Male, mid to late 30s.

Party Affiliation: Independent, but raised Democrat

Voted for: Cuomo and Gillibrand. Chose one Republican (didn´t catch who)

Why:  ¨People shouldn´t ride the partisan lines.¨

Voter 2, Black Woman, early 30s

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted for: Charles Barron, stuck with Dems in other races.

Why: ¨I knew more about [Charles Barron] from reading about him in the Amsterdam News¨ Didn´t vote for Cuomo, ¨because it was more about his father.¨

Voter 3, young  white male, 23

Affiliation: Libertarian

Voted: Libertarian candidate for governor and Working Families in other races

Why: It would be nice to have a Libertarian governor to go along with all the Democrats

(voter was raised in a democratic family)

Voter 4, male, 23, latino

Affilation: Dem.

Voted: Cuomo for governor

Why: Because that was the best choice.

Voter 5, female, white, with kid

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted: ¨Working families all the way¨

Why: ¨I don´t vote republican¨

Voter 6, female, black

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted: ¨Democrat all the way.¨

Why: ¨Do we have a choice?¨

Voter 7, female, black

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted: ¨Cuomo, no doubt.¨

Why: ¨You have to have some sympathy for him, because in his case, his wife cheated on him¨

Voter 7, woman, Black

Affiliation: Dem

Voted: Democrat down the line

Why: I could never vote for Carl Paladino. The Republican Agenda does not fall in line with mine.

¨There will be Republican sweeps in other states, so I thought  about that in part.

Voter 8, male, white

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted: Cuomo.

Why: Best option I felt comfortable with. At this time they need to have some resistance to what everyone thinks is going to happen.

Voter 9, woman, Asian? White? (she looked biracial)

Affiliation: Democrat

Voted: Cuomo. Voted all Democrat

Why: ¨They´ve been my reps for years and years. The kneejerk reaction is to take them out to affect change.

Voter 10, male , Latino

Affiliation: For voting purposes, I say Democrat (he seemed like a reluctant Dem)

Voted: Cuomo, voted Democrat in all the major races.

Why: I don´t like the way Paladino talks.  For all intents and purposes I vote Democrat.  I vote for the people who are going to give the people the most power, and that´s usually not the republicans.

C. Hannibal cultural history

Billy Clint In BK

 

Man, Bill Clinton is just a live dude. Everyone wanted to shake his hand after the Cuomo rally I attended for an RW1 assignment early last week. It’s obvious he’s popular with the ladies, but man…dudes young and old, black, white, Asian, Latino?

Everyone wanted to say they touched this man’s hand. I of course just needed a clean shot, which I didn’t really get. He grabbed a few hands that reached out above my head. I ducked.

I don’t wanna touch you, Billy Clint. He is something like a stone cold pimp, however. For that I will always give you respect.

 

C. Hannibal music, visually speaking

N.Y. Streets *Still* Love This

I’m not sure how many blogs have talked about this joint, I mean I’ve been too busy with life to really keep up any more, but I’d like to take a moment to consider “Banned From TV”.  I heard it several times pumping out of cars when I returned to the East Coast. I heard it blasting out of ear buds on the subway (at least 4 times).

It’s one of those songs where the artist whose album it’s on gets buried by greater talents, namely Jada, Styles and Pun. ¨Been sonin n***as for so long I think I got a grandson¨

The video will give you a headache, so look for the Mp3 instead.

C. Hannibal cultural history, mexican culture

Muy Macho

 

 

This will all make more sense in a like 8 months, when I finish my Master’s project. Trust me, I’m not going freak-show on you for no reason. This type of stuff is fairly standard in the world of lucha libre. You can’t really have an authentic Mexican wrestling show without crossing this line. What does it really mean anyway? Muy macho?

C. Hannibal cultural history, mexican culture

Amazon Woman In the Murder Capital

 

Judith Torrea cuts a striking and elegant figure. She’s at around 6 feet tall, model-like beauty. She’s got a nervous, thick Spanish accent when she speaks English. And she’s not really scared of any narcos. Tough lady.

She’s a former entertainment writer who says that she saw too many people putting the Bolivian Marching Powder up their noses at ritzy NYC events, and decided to spend some time reporting about the consequences of supporting the drug trade from the great passageway to U.S. drug decadence: la frontera.

She’s been in Ciudad Juarez writing about crime and the life and death interplay between the people, the p0lice, the government and the drug game.

 

 

C. Hannibal cultural history, music

R.I.P Squeeze Radio

 

89.9 Rap Show Thursday Night 2010 Final Broadcast

Believe it or not, hip-hop’s Golden Age happened right next to Lerner Hall, at Columbia’s radio station WKCR. When I walked by the entrance this past Thursday, on a rainy night, I saw a sign that read “R.I.P Squeeze Radio.” There was a bouquet of flowers and several candles. I thought it was a joke, but the security guard at the door definitely had me thinking otherwise. Overwhelmed with deadlines and a bunch of reading to do for my law class, I paid little attention to it and kept it pushing to the late night pizza shop.

On Friday, I checked the Webs. Damn. It was true. I should’ve taken a pic. WKCR wasn’t going to have a rap show on Thursdays night any more.

As I told Bobitto in an email a couple years ago, I lost lots of sleep listening to WKCR when I was in high school. It was my rap food and my first musical infatuation. I stayed up until 4 am to call in many times. I got through twice. Gotta find that tape.

All those slick rap blogs couldn’t save KCRW or Fat Beats. Underground hip-hop, like the rest of the media business is getting pushed out of the analog world and into the digital. I wonder if that’s a good thing.

Photo via B.A.P Blog.

C. Hannibal cultural history

How’d You Find That?

(Click on photo to read the story)

You know you did a good job in your RW1 class when classmates ask you “How’d you find that” story?

Why, Google. Of course.

Here’s what went down:

I was assigned day reporter. Professor say to me “find some Chileans watching the mining rescue on tv. Maybe a bar somewhere in Brooklyn.”

See, we write for a site called The Brooklyn Ink, so we needs that angle to make sense. Normally, just a request from the editor gets the job done. But, he had to add “Show me your stuff,” at the end of the email. A challenge? What? To me that meant it had to be done. Didn’t matter that a majority of the Chileans in NY live and work in Manhattan or Queens. I Googled:

“Chile  Brooklyn ” without the quotes and got this:

——————————————————————————————————————————————————

Not what I needed. But my Google senses were telling me I just needed to dig a little deeper.

——-At this point I was really smelling myself. Now if you look closely, you see some patterns start to emerge.  Name, locations, “lives in”. I continued this until I got to the nice young Chilena in the picture that ran with my story.

I’m learning more and more, journalism couldn’t exist without Google. It couldn’t. But that’s another debate and another post. I’m just glad I could contribute a little local connection for a story that caught the world attention, if only for a couple dozen hours.