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Coconuts – Pick Verizon for Coverage in Spainexico

Here’s an ad that Coconuts should enjoy. Nevermind that Mariachi and Sombreros are distinctly Mexican in origin, according to Verizon, they come from Spain. Also never mind that there are gorgeous landmarks, bustling city centers and lush natural areas with which to illustrate the country Spain, much better to boil a country down to stereotypes that keep the Coconut population booming.

Wouldn't you rather go here, to Verizon's Spain than....

...here "actual" Spain?

That second “Spain” doesn’t even look like they could make a decent taco!

Now That’s Hip Hop I Can Get Into!

Thanks, Swagger Wagon, for taking music that is usually scary and making it adorable!

Spitting about nuclear families and carpooling? Awesome! Ciphers about tea parties? I love it!

Me loving a parody of what started as a legitimate artistic protest against powers that be actually keeping people down, but now does damage to many of those same people? Oreo-tastic!

Non Colors: You Can Help Make More Oreos!

Hey non colors. Ever wonder how you can give The Oreo Experience to more people? You may already be without even knowing it!

But here’s a handy reference list to help you help your of color friends help themselves though alienation. Simply use the guide below and we Oreos will see our numbers grow!

1. Ask us about our hair. Apart from skin tone, nothing sets blacks and white apart like hair. While non colors can get up, run a comb through their locks and be on their merry way, prepping black hair for the day is a 20-60 minute process. During this time, with our arms in the air, salve under our fingernails and more and more curling iron burns on our necks, we have time to think about just what bum luck we got cursed with. It would be wonderful to take a shower, jump in the pool or stand in the rain without worrying that our $100+ hair treatment is about to get ruined.

So to keep our self loathing in check, ask us about our hair. Ask to touch it. Ask if something is…”different” about it (this is especially useful after an Oreo has a relaxer) or how often we wash it.

Variations on that theme include saying things about how you “would love black hair” because it’s so “different,” “cool” or because “it doesn’t move once you get it how you want it.”

If an of color has braids or locks, get right up close. Much closer than you do when Jennifer at the office dyes her hair a lighter blonde. Reach for the roots and ponder aloud how exactly that works.

That sad, awkward feeling that will well up in your of color colleague will probably be just what that person needs to ditch the natural styles and go straight for the relaxer.

For more research: Check out the joys of chemical hair processing and learn what black things Oreos can’t help but do.

2. Discuss how the word nigger is offensive, but the word nigga isn’t. This is a conversation you will only have around the least threatening of of colors. So it’s a sign to that person that they’re nearly an Oreo anyway, so they may as well commit.

The discussion around the n-word is old and boring now, but that doesn’t mean that with the right planning, you can’t make it work. Maybe describe how that time you lived in that very ethnic neighborhood–you know, when you first moved to LA or NYC and were just staring out. And the people in the fast food joint/gang/church found you so cool, that you got to say the a version of the n word and no one was upset.

You can always also throw it into your facebook wall post to an of color like this friend did: “nigga boo, I need ur Euro number  again.” Double Oreo points go to this of color recipient for a) living abroad and b) writing back.

For the record, any variation of the n word is perfectly fucking horrible**. But throw it into a quasi intellectual conversation and watch the Oreo population rise.

You can also make someone crawl inside their Oreo skin with variations like “what’s my ninjas!”

3. Tell us about that time you went to a black church and how fantastic it was. I was raised in a black Southern Baptist gospel church and I absolutely credit it for my turning into an Oreo. In that environment, I was treated to 4-hour long services with preachers singing call and response sermons. Church members got happy and fell out. And on a good day, we got a prophecy or two. And then after church, we were all treated to massive Sunday dinners of fried foods, sweet potatoes and hollerin’.

It was a culmination of every scene from every movie about black churches ever. And surprise, surprise, I didn’t fit in.

What’s Oreo-spiring to hear, however, are stories where non colors talk about the one time they went to a black church,  usually for a school project or because mapquest did something horribly incorrect. Sure, one day of all of the above is just fine. But every Sunday for 52 weeks a year for 17 years, makes me long for my quiet Episcopalian chapels.

***There are times when the n word isn’t so fucking horrible. Like in the right jokes (more on those later).  But not the wrong ones. (yes, if you click that link, you’ll find some off color of color jokes! C’mon.  You know you want to).

House Name Fail = Self loathing win? What do You Think?

Architect says he didn’t know what porch monkey meant.

a) Do you believe him?

b) The fact that a super offensive term is now just used–is that a sign of progress or regression?

To be fair, it is difficult to be up on all the mean memes out there. I, in fact, sang a version of Jingle Bells to my mom once that went like this:

“Jingle Bells, Batman smells, granny got a gun

Pull the trigger shot a _____”

I was 8 or so and had no idea what I was saying…or why Mom started crying.

When did you first learn that something you said was off color…pun definitely intended? Let us know!

What’s the Oreo equivalent for this guy? Suggestions Please!

We’ve talked about it briefly before, but is there a term for a gay person who hopes to be seen as straight?

Hmm, charming, attractive and talented? Yeah, I definitely don't want this guy pretending to be after me!

The inspiration for discovering this term comes to us courtesy of Newsweek’s Ramin Setoodeh, an openly gay man in the media who writes that gay actors shouldn’t play straight people. He criticizes Sean Hayes and his current performance on Broadway in Promises, Promises and Jonathan Groff who plays a straight guy on Glee.

He says that neither of these guys’ performances are believable because they are, irl, gay dudes.

Thank you for the head’s up, Ramin. And thanks for sending more would-be’s to the self loathing fold!

Nothing’s going to freak out some up and coming young actors more than hearing that because of who they are, they should be prohibited from accepting the vast majority of roles in film and television. I can almost hear the collective cry from kids who haven’t come out yet (and thanks to you, sir, might never get around to breathing that sigh of relief) in theater arts departments all over the country.

Picture it with me! Scores of young men are now criticizing every syllable they utter–was that a near lisp, they’ll think, or did I just stutter? They will watch their feet as they walk to make sure there’s no hint of a super gay sashay…but what if they’re just side stepping to avoid their own tears? Oh well, better man up!  Otherwise, there will be a critic like Ramin to remind them that as gay folk, they’re just not good enough.

It’s a good thing that Ramin hasn’t noticed how  highly trained and experienced actors go through years and years of practice and preparation to erase biases they may bring to a character. Or that he overlooked the fact that straight actors play gay, that back in the day men played women. And no one tell him that Idina Menzel is not really a green witch, that David Hasslehoff is not really a mad scientist capable of creating a serum that can split a person’s personality into two distinct halves, that Josh Brolin is not George W. Bush and that Cate Blanchette is not John Lennon.

And why leave out the lesbians? Ramin cites a couple of guys in his piece, but doesn’t seem to think that

Sometimes masks fit so well, why bother taking them off, huh Ramin?

Lesbians playing not-lesbians is a apparently not a problem. Poor ladies, why let them get away with being okay with themselves. C’mon, Ramin, without adding the gals to the you-should-self-hate list, it’s like some sort of weird affirmative action program. And we all know how horrible those are.

So what is the Oreo version of the straight gay? If an Oreo is someone who is black on the outside, but white on the inside, what’s the word for someone who’s actually gay, but presents as a socially acceptable breeder? Spaghetti squash? Testicle? (c’mon, the latter–they’re basically smoothish on the outside and inside filled with, well, lots of not straight biological tubing)

And what do you think? Should actors have to put height, weight, training and sexual preference on their head shots?