Tracy L. Bell, Author/Host
Clarice Taylor, who played Bill Cosby’s mother on The Cosby Show, died on Monday at age 93 of heart failure. The Emmy nominated actress was surrounded by friends and family.
A performer on stage, radio, TV and film for over five decades, the actress was a member of the New York stage group, the Negro Ensemble Company, and helped to pave the way for African-American actors in the early 1960s.
Taylor is survived by her two sons, William and James, and her five grandchildren.
At a Prince concert in L.A. last Friday night.
Now some of you are going to swear the two are high and when you view the video, you’ll notice the attention they are drawing to themselves. Their enthusiasm was simply infectious!
Word is, they stole the show.
Yes it’s a war of words between the two directors as Tyler Perry expressed his frustration regarding Spike Lee’s constant talk and criticism of his films. Spike said that Perry’s films “harken back to ‘Amos n’ Andy’.”
Mr. Perry in the meantime defended his films saying they are both spiritually uplifting and fun, but his words for Spike Lee were blunt and harsh in a press conference to promote “Madea’s Big Happy Family”.
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said during the press conference. “Spike can go straight to hell! And you can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘you vote by what you see,’ as if black people don’t know what they want to see.”
Tyler Perry’s films are consistent high performance at the box office; all independently financed, they’ve taken in over $520 million in ticket sales over the past six years. He recently extended his deal with distributor Lionsgate, with whom he has worked with since 2005. Spike Lee is still critical of Tyler Perry in spite of that success.
Spike said: “Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors, but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery,” he said. “I know it’s making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. … I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s ‘Meet the Browns’ and ‘House of Payne’), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”
Is Spike a little jealous maybe of Tyler Perry’s success? I say both men hook up and produce a film together, now that would be interesting.
The FBI is now revealing, that rapper Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace was killed with “very rare” metal-piercing, German ammunition that could help unlock his 1997 murder, which is still unsolved.
And according to the feds, the same ammunition was later found in the home of rogue Los Angeles Police officer David Mack, along with a “shrine” he had erected to Tupac Shakur. Mack was later busted for bank robbery shortly after Wallace’s death.
Investigators wrote they were unaware of any tests conducted to connect the bullets, and never matched the ammunition found during the search of Mack’s home after the bank robbery, with the bullets used to kill Biggie.
But a retired LAPD cop testified about Mack’s Tupac Shakur shrine in 2005 and his theory that Mack used his police expertise to help hip-hop mogul Marion “Suge” Knight order Wallace’s hit, as payback for Shakur’s unsolved murder six months earlier.
Both Mack and Knight have denied any involvement in the hail of gunfire that killed Wallace, 24, as he sat in a vehicle on a Los Angeles street.
LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment as their probe is continuing.
According to the NY Daily News, police have made an arrest for the murder of DJ Megatron, a popular New York DJ who worked for BET’s 106 & Park.
Police charged William Williams, 21, and Richard Cromwell, 20, with murder, robbery and criminal possession of a handgun. They were awaiting arraignment Wednesday night.
Police say Megatron, real name Corey McGriff, 32, was on the hunt for marijuana around 2 a.m. March 27 when the two men approached him on Osgood Avenue, about a block from his Staten Island brownstone.
McGriff’s 4-year-old son, who was left home alone, may have watched from the doorway of the family residence as one of the suspects shot his father once in the chest.
Williams and Cromwell, who both have lengthy criminal records, rifled through McGriff’s pockets, robbing him of a wad of cash and an inexpensive wristwatch that his 11-year-old daughter had given him as a gift.
The watch held sentimental value for McGriff, according to his grieving mother, Louvenia McGriff, 60. “He loved it because she gave it to him,” she told the NY Daily News from her Georgia home.
Police recovered the watch after it was discarded by McGriff’s heartless murderers. “They threw it away probably because they realized it wasn’t valuable,” she said.
An anonymous caller gave police the tip they needed to apprehend the suspects. “That is a risky thing to do,” McGriff’s mother said of the anonymous caller.
“They’re sacrificing themselves for justice. That speaks volumes about my son. I’m so grateful to everybody for what they’ve done.”
She said the family is preparing to see the alleged killers in court.
“I want to look in their eyes and I want to know why they had to kill him,” she said. “Why kill him?”
“It’s a hard thing to swallow,” said her husband, Leo McGriff. “We’ll be doing a lot of crying.”
Conversations Of A Sistah 