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Rent a White Guy? RentANegro(.com) Why Not hire an Oreo?

Major credit cards will be accepted

I read this article today in the Atlantic about a white guy hired by a Chinese business to be one of its in public faces. The company knew that you have to have the right look to get ahead. Apparently, it’s pretty big business over there.

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here.

And while an Oreo face might not give your company the international oomph it wants, there are some times when hiring an Oreo could come in handy!

  • It’s your diversity photo shoot day at college and the football team is at an away game.
  • You want to keep your Tea Party event safe from media scrutiny.
  • It’s Halloween and you want to do a fun two-person costume. If you’re a white guy, hire an Oreo and go as George Lucas, Sting or Thomas Jefferson. If you’re an anglo tastic gal, you can be Heidi Klum, Idina Menzel or Elin Nordegren.
  • You want people to flip through your facebook photos and think that you went somewhere exciting for the long weekend like New Orleans or a Raiders game…when really, you took a staycation in your jammies on the couch.

I am happy to send over a rate sheet if you’re interested. Reference are available upon request.

Any other Oreo stand in jobs I’m missing?

Oreo rentals are not to be confused with Rent-A-Negro, which offers slightly different services.

Can’t Tell Which Hurts So Good-er

If you want to look good, sometimes it has to hurt.

This weekend, as I sat in my salon chair for my regular soul flagellating ritual of a relaxer, I was convinced to try

pressing instead. The results, are thankfully the same–my hair is straight and the little curls of God’s practical joke are gone…and both methods come with pain, discomfort and a credit card bill near or in the three digits…But I’m not sure which is the best way to go.

For those of you who are already blessed with hair that responds to a comb and that your beloveds can easily run their fingers through, here’s a quick primer on what we do to keep our locks in line.

Relaxer: Imagine spreading a slice of sandwich bread with a thick layer of mayo.

Getting a relaxer is like only the sandwich bread slice is your scalp and the “new growth”–tightly curled natural hair that has yet to be tamed. And the mayo is lye a relaxer cream that in about 10 minutes of it landing on your skin begins to cause second degree burns. Luckily, it takes about 20 minutes for a relaxer to do it’s thing, so you’ve got plenty of time to sweat, squirm and stew about how lucky you’d be if you didn’t have to do this.

Pressing: No chemicals, so it’s healthier. But it’s also painful. Imagine raking your lawn. See how pulling the rake through the grass makes the lawn look all pretty?

Now imagine the lawn is your hair and the rake is a metal comb that’s been heated up to about 400 degrees. Also imagine that in order to make the rake work, you have to smooth just a bit of oil on the grass first so that when the 400 degree metal comb touches the oil, some vaporizes, but what doesn’t, melts on to your scalp and causes a quickly cooling, but mild first to second degree burn.

The pain of the relaxer is more intense, but sustained, so you can build resistance and is over in about 20 minutes.

The pain of a press and curl is more sporadic, so you’re not sure when to stop tensing and lasts longer as the oil-then-rake process must occur a couple hundred times (using very small chunks of hair each time) before you’re done.

Relaxers also last longer so you don’t have to endure them as often; but the scars they leave behind tend to last longer than the welts brought up by a relaxer.

Hmmm. Definitely want to make sure that my hair process reinforces the self loathing…there’s beauty in pain after all. Not sure which is the better way to go. What do you think?

Spidey as an RBP?

I can only hope that one day, people get behind me playing Audrey Hepburn in a film with the strength and fervor the internets are giving to getting Donald Glover, the Community and Derrick Comedy cast member! With an upcoming new installment of Spiderman, lots of folks are hoping that the role which was vacated by Tobey Macguire goes to Donny. There’s a facebook group and a Twitter meme and video of Stan Lee saying that we might very well have had enough race-blind casting in comic movies.

The jury’s still out over here at TOE as to where on the Oreo spectrum Donald falls. He certainly wouldn’t make it as an extra on The Wire, but I don’t know that I’m going to see him at the Grease sing a long at the end of the month, either. He did write for 30 Rock, a show which boasts an Oreo of its own (and also Tracey Morgan, so maybe that’s a draw) and he makes us laugh when he says the n-word very matter of factly. (video in a moment). But he also sports a small fro and sometimes goes a little sassy and he plays football and once rapped a bit on Community.

What do you think? Is the world ready for an of color Peter Parker?Has a race crossover ever gone wrong? What about gender? Happens in theater? Could it happen in superhero world?

And, comic book folks, does he ever get over Mary Jane? Nothing against Kirsten, but man is MJ boring. Now Rachel Dawes…there’s a lady worth getting bent out of shape for.

Below is video of Donald in two of my favorite sketches ever. The second one is NSFW for language.

Good Steak: rbst- hormone- and minority-free!

Hard work ethic, check.

Solid business plan with proven track record, check.

Popular franchise with more than 400 locations in 16 countries, check.

Getting rid of minority face, check!

This is the story of Charley’s Grilled Subs. As the list above suggests, they’re doing just fine for themselves. So when the company decided to tell its history, it did what any self loather would do: changed the face of the owner from this:

To this guy:

Click on the link to the Charley’s website above and you’ll see that in the history section of the site, they tell the story of Charley’s rise to success though the hazely and rounded eyes of the green shirted gent above.  Nevermind Charley Shin’s actual story, which you can find here.

Charley has obviously seen great success, but now, he’s found the greatest success of all: shedding that exterior and letting the creme of his Twinkieness shine through.

Finally realizing the final part of the American dream, check!

Mood: Disco-tastic!

Shiny! Sexy! Soothing!

I came home late last night to the glorious sounds of the Bee Gees BLASTING from my across the street neighbor’s house. Sure it was 1 a.m. and the fact that  the music was loud to me as I unlocked my front door 30 yards away from the source of the sound, but it was the Bee Gees! And you must rock that shit!

What a great way to end my long day, with the sweet sounds of tight, three part Manchesterian harmony!

Also: What to do when the music isn’t this good! Learn to sing a favorite Oreo song!

My Head’s All Spinny

I don’t know what it is about spin class that makes me clearly delusional.

I start off feeling all frumpy and gross in my sweats…as I think one is meant to feel in front of an ever-peppy instructor with thighs that don’t touch and happy faces on her bike shoes. I’m less than plussed about biking in front of this mirror because I can see all the wrong, wobbly bits.

But then, something happens.

I don’t know if it’s hearing Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger on the warm up, Helena on the uphill or heck, Mickey on the cool down downhill, but by the end, with the endorphins racing, I look in the mirror and think that I should be rocking a runway without even showering. 

Does this happen to anyone else? This weird sense of I can do anything post workout? Am I not breathing from my diaphragm, so it’s just the asphyxiation setting in? Whatever it is, I wish I could bottle it. Anyone know how?

Int. WhitePal’s Apartment – Day

WhitePal: (singing, soflty) …there’s blood all over my toaster..

OreoWriter: Well, you are making English muffins all wrong, then.

WP: What?

OW: I’m sorry,  was it that pumpernickel? It was pretty dry.

WP: Was what what?

OW: Why are you bleeding on your toaster?

WP: It’s from a song, it’s not a toaster…it’s a “toaster.” C’mon, I bet even you can get this. What do you think a toaster is slang for?

OW: Well, if it follows the logic of cockney rhyming slang–

WP: Of course it doesn’t.

OW: Okay…toaster…I don’t…

WP: C’mon, stay with me. Something powerful….intimidating….strong…

OW: The climax of Spring Awakening!

WP: That doesn’t even make sense. How could you even get blood on that?

OW: You’ve obviously never seen the climax of Spring Awakening. Now that, is a toaster!

Want more WP/OW banter? See them misunderstood because of the cell phone law , enjoying contemporary music or dancing at a mis-pitched engagement party.

And in case you want to hear the horrible, horrible song on which this conversation was predicated.  You can let your ears bleed out by clicking here.

Left, Right and Children – Everyone helps to make more Oreos!

You know how worried I am that in post-racial America, I don’t have to spend nearly $200 a pop to get my hair straight or to not let anyone see me watching Waiting to Exhale on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

But thanks to Bill, Bill and dreamy dreamy Anderson, I know that I am on the right track and that distancing myself from RBP.

Here’s Bill O’Reilly telling a guest he looks like a drug dealer. And Oreo points to the dealer professor for a) going on The O’Reilly factor in the first place b) not being upset and c) adding a terrific punchline

Here’s Bill Maher explaining how the President should handle the oil spill.

And here’s some young Oreos in the making.

(in the spirit of fair and balanced coverage…I did start my career as a reporter, after all…if you click around the CNN page there, there are a handful of varied results…but they’re not all that varied)

Not Racist? You Might Have a Cognitive Disorder.

It’s an interesting day in science when people who are naturally and easily friendly are considered to be deficient.

Everyone getting along? Better get to a doctor!

People with Williams Syndrome are these people.

Williams Syndrome sufferers(?) do not experience social fears that ‘normal’ people do and they make friends much faster than the ‘healthy.’

They’re also not racist. So says researcher Andreia Santos from the University of Heidelberg.

Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three. Groups of people from all over the globe and all sorts of cultures show these biases. Even autistic children, who can have severe difficulties with social relationships, show signs of racial stereotypes. But Santos says that the Williams syndrome kids are the first group of humans devoid of such racial bias, although, as we’ll see, not everyone agrees.

Her experiments consisted of showing children with Williams Syndrome pictures of black people and white people and recording their reactions.

The typical children showed a strong tendency to view light-skinned people well and dark-skinned people poorly. Out of their responses, 83% were consistent with a pro-white bias. In contrast, the children with Williams syndrome only showed such responses 64% of the time, which wasn’t significantly different from chance.

So, if you find yourself totally comfortable with new hires Dwayne and Lakeshia, check yourself. You might be nice…and sick.