Back in 1973 as my brother and I, and later my sisters watched Saturday morning cartoons on ABC, some of the advertising breaks were taken up by the Emmy Award winning educational cartoons that later became known as Schoolhouse Rock.
It ran on ABC from 1973-1985, and then was revived for a second run from 1993-1999.
Those musical education cartoons that dropped knowledge on math, science, grammar and history have become so beloved that I and a lot of peeps own them on DVD.
Of course, as you probably guessed, the political junkie in me loves 'I'm Just A Bill' which explains the legislative process an has been parodied by Saturday Night Live to lampoon 45..
But I was also in love with the 'Verb; That's What's Happening' one as well because it was one of the few in the original series of School House Rock videos in which the main protagonist looked like me.
So happy 45th Anniversary School House Rock!. Those videos helped a lot of kids get to math, science, grammar and history tests.
It's still hard to believe that my fellow Texan Selena Quintanilla-Perez has been gone now 21 years. I still remember the shock and horror I felt the March 31, 1995 day I head she'd been murdered by her assistant and head of her fan club Yolanda Saldivar in Corpus Christi, just two weeks shy of her 24th birthday.
It was even more tragic because at the time the undisputed Queen of Tejano music had just recently broken the Houston Rodeo attendance record she set two years previously, was about to release a crossover album Dreaming of You that debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 after her death, and was already talking to Hollywood about doing movies.
Despite being on the planet for only 23 years, her influence on pop culture is massive. The 1997 Selena biopic was Jennifer Lopez's breakout movie role. Selena brought Tejano music into mainstream attention. She was nominated for three Grammy's, won one and probably would have won more based on her dominance in other awards she was nominated for and won.
Latina pop star and Disney alum Selena Gomez is named for the Queen of Tejano. Here parents were huge fans of Selena.
She will be posthumously getting her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year as part of the Class of 2017 that includes Eva Longoria.
Next month MAC Cosmetic will release a makeup line
I've even argued the point with friends that if Selena was still around, been able to do more crossover English language albums and movies in addition to maintaining her fan base in the Latinx community, she would be as huge a pop culture icon as another favorite Texan of mine in Beyonce
Two decades level she is still a beloved figure in the Latinx community. The reason the new Madame Tussaud's wax figure of her exists is because Selena fans put together a petition that 10,000 people signed to request it happen.
Madame Tussaud's traveled to The Selena Museum in Corpus Christi to ensure that everything about the wax figure of her that recreates her look from a 1993 Corpus Christi concert was on point
Many of those devoted Selena fans have flown to her hometown of Corpus Christi to visit the museum, the statue of her overlooking Corpus Christi Bay, her resting place, the home she lived in with her husband Chris Perez, and her fashion boutiques.
They also started lining up at sundown Tuesday to get the $30 wristbands to see the reveal of the long awaited wax figure at Madame Tussaud's yesterday.
They weren't disappointed. It's another fitting tribute to a music legend that was taken away from all of us far too soon.
Last Saturday after watching my Cougars win their game against Alabama-Birmingham and Oklahoma run over Texas, I was college footballed out. I'd already compiled my post for Sunday morning and decided to step away from the Net for a few hours and indulge my other passion.
I'm an admitted romantic and love reading romance novels. While flipping through the cable channels for something to watch other than the news or a sporting event I stumbled across the tail end of a romance movie on the Hallmark Channel that intrigued me called 'How To Fall In Love' starring Ugly Betty's Eric Mabius, Brooke D'Orsay and Kathy Najimy.
Mabius plays a shy photographer who enlists the aid of a dating coach to help him get over his wallflower approach to dating that has plagued him since his youth. The dating coach (Brooke D'orsay) turns out to be a popular girl he had a crush on in high school that he hadn't quite gotten over a decade later.
While I liked the movie, which actually premiered on the network back on July 21 (and I won't tell y'all how it ends) the next two movies including the one I watched that evening had the same glaring issue in terms of being overwhelmingly vanillacentric.
Hallmark Channel, far from being as diverse as it claims, definitely isn't. The next two made for the channel romance movies also featured white peeps falling in love in various scenarios.
Hello Hallmark Channel, non-white people fall in love too. Ever see the movie Hitch? Ever read the books of one of my fave award winning romance authors in Kayla Perrin?
Maybe y'all should give Kayla a call and turn one of her novels into a movie.
Yes, Black people fall in love, get married, buy romance novels, and like watching romance movies, too. It would be nice to see ourselves occasionally represented in your made for TV romances especially since we persons of colors are part of the 87 million homes that have Hallmark Channel as part of their cable package.
So can a sister at least occasionally get to see a romance movie that features characters that look like them and share their ethnic heritage?
One of the commercials I was wide awake for during Sunday's Super Bowl was the M&M's commercial featuring their new character Ms. Brown
Brown is one of the original colors for M&M and they finally got around to introducing a computer generated spokescandy character for it.
Ms Brown has been behind the scenes the 'chief chocolate officer' and is now stepping out from behind the corporate shadows. Ms. Brown joins Ms. Green as the other female spokescandy.
During the commercial I thought I detected the voice of one of my fave triple threat performers in Vanessa L. Williams. While listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show this morning she happily confirmed for me during the interview that she indeed is the voice of Ms Brown.
BTW, in case you're wondering, the voice for Ms Green is Cree Summer of A Different World fame.
In case you didn't see it, here's the new commercial.
