Flavor Flav

With essays ranging in topic from the films of Neil LaBute to the sexual politics of Major League Baseball, this diverse collection of essays examines the multi-faceted media images of contemporary masculinity from a variety of perspectives and academic disciplines. The book's first half focuses on the issue of racialized masculinity and its various manifestations, with essays covering, among other topics, the re-imagining of Asian American masculinity in Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow and the ever-present image of black male buffoonery in the neo-minstrel performances of VH1's Flavor of Love. The book's second half explores the issue of contemporary mediated performance and the cultural politics of masculinity, with essays focusing on popular media representations of men in a variety of gendered roles, from homemakers and househusbands to valorous war heroes and athletic demigods.

Rocky still resonates with people around the world. These are their stories.

The way rhythm is taught in Western classrooms and music lessons is rooted in a centuries-old European approach that favors metric levels within a grand symmetrical grid. Swinglines encourages readers to experience rhythms, even gridded ones, as freewheeling affairs irrespective of the metric hierarchy. It shows that rhythms traditionally framed as "deviations" and "non-isochronous" have their own identities. They are coherent products of precise musical thought and action. Rather than situating them in the neither-here-nor-there, author Fernando Benadon takes a more inclusive view, one where isochrony and metric grids are shown as particular cases within the universe of musical time.

From the antics of Flavor Flav on Flavor of Love to the brazen behavior of the women on Love & Hip Hop, so-called negative images of African Americans are a recurrent mainstay of contemporary American media representations. In Double Negative Racquel J. Gates examines the generative potential of such images, showing how some of the most disreputable representations of black people in popular media can strategically pose questions about blackness, black culture, and American society in ways that more respectable ones cannot. Rather than falling back on claims that negative portrayals hinder black progress, Gates demonstrates how reality shows such as Basketball Wives, comedians like Katt Williams, and movies like Coming to America play on "negative" images to take up questions of assimilation and upward mobility, provide a respite from the demands of respectability, and explore subversive ideas. By using negativity as a framework to illustrate these texts' social and political work as they reverberate across black culture, Gates opens up new lines of inquiry for black cultural studies.

A Brooklyn native, Joseph Belcastro joined the New York City Police Department in July, 1983. He spent four years on uniform patrol, then another four years in the precincts plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit, before being transferred to the NYPDs infamous Street Crime Unit on Randalls Island. In his tell-all memoir, Joe describes his earliest encounters as a rookie cop in uniform, how he developed his unique crime-fighting strategies, and the partners he had along the way. Joes uncanny ability to follow his gut instincts, along with his determination and perseverance, led him to personally make over a thousand arrests, and to assist his partners in at least a thousand more. Ride along with Joe on his vehicle pursuits, sit in the back seat of his car stops, and in the process share the triumphs and disappointments in the life of a street cop. Its a ride you wont want to miss!

From his twenty-five years as a member of one of the most influential hip hop groups of all time, to his career as a television personality, the word that best describes Flavor Flav is 'iconic.' Clock-wearing, colorful and sometimes controversial, William Drayton—known affectionately all around the world as simply 'Flav'—finally tells all. In this compelling memoir, Flavor Flav takes the reader in vivid detail behind the scenes of his multi-faceted career. He spares no one, revealing the tensions within Public Enemy and with Def Jam records, his struggles with addiction, his multiple visits to both rehab and to jail before re-inventing himself in reality television as VH1's most eligible—and most watched—bachelor. Taking readers on a journey into the truth behind his bigger-than-life image, Flavor Flav's presents his unique perspective on music and reality TV-- how he survived the pressures of both to become one of the most-sampled and recognized figures in media.Told with the gritty, compassionate and often-hilarious style that has made the man a legend, this memoir is a thrill ride from the heights of celebrity to the depths of despair and back again to tell the tale.

Ross, one of the meanest men in comedy, offers anecdotes and deconstructs themakings of a great roast.