Deconstructing Hip Hop

For a critical insight into hip hop culture take a look at Byron Hurt's PBS documentary "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes". This movie is showing today at the Little Art Theatre for African-American History month. It explores issues of homophobia and exploitation of women in the entertainment industry, while at the same time analyzing why Hip Hop has grown to be one of the most influential creative forces of our time. Great for promoting class discussions.

The Last Poets coming to Antioch College

Weird. Not so many people want to discuss the presidential election, yet they seem to have strong opinions. Here is a group of poets unafraid to speak out: The Last Poets. This spoken word group has reached critical mass by being rediscovered by the Hip Hop artist Common. The Last Poets perform tonight at Kelly Hall, Antioch College, as part of African-American History month. The '60s are the new '80s!

Jasmine Guy in Raisin' Cane

Jasmine Guy brought down the house at the Victoria Theatre Friday morning for a performance of Raisin' Cane attended by students from Central State University. Imagine a lecture on the Harlem Renaissance, but in the form of improv with dance, music, song, and spoken-word interpreted by Jasmine Guy. Guy is not just performing on stage she is teaching.

Help me learn my Blackberry Pearl 8120

So, this is my first smartphone purchase, a BlackBerry Pearl 8120 with WiFi. Let's me surf the Internet and the push e-mail means I get messages quicker than on my laptop - (when the RIM network isn't down!) I haven't figured out how to use all of the functions like GPS, and I don't as of yet have a memory card to store videos and music.

Speaker phone is outstanding as is voice recognition for easy dialing, although I wish the controls for both the speaker phone and the camera were not located on the sides of the phone where it's too easy to accidentally activate the controls.

An intuitive calendar keeps my appointments in order. The alarm system shuts off during weekends - if I want it to.

If anyone has any good tips on how to make the most out of all of the fine features on the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, please be so kind as to reply.