Transporting the other SHOLAY poster
We had two framed Sholay posters; this one was my favorite but C thought the picture of Amitabh had been added from another, later, film. Our daughter has a new apartment so we took the poster down to her on the bus. Sholay (1975) remains one of the best Bollywood films ever made.
El Cid: Hispanic Society Museum and Library
Ottoman, Manhattan
Heather Garden at dusk, Fort Tryon Park (composite)
Sunglasses
Remember that law
When you have to put your shades on to feel cool?
Well it's still a law,
you gotta put your shades on so you can feel cool
You know what I'm sayin'?
The above from Schooly D's Signifying Rapper,
found on the LP Smoke Some Kill from 1988. I first heard it at the movies during the end credits of Able Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant when I turned to C and
said Who the fuck is that?!
Later when I rented a VHS hoping to hear it again the track was gone! It was an early case of a hip-hop copyright problem, as the track is set on top of the main riff from Led Zeppelin's
Kashmir.
Like Disney, Zeppelin always sued. It's not even a sample, it's just some guys in a studio somewhere playing the riff, years after the album had been released. In what way did it diminish the value of the original
copyright? They not only had to withdraw the original version of the VHS, they had to destroy any existing copies.
The lyrics are tough and street-wise, arguably homophobic, misogynistic, and racist, but mostly anti-pimp. It is a retelling of a much older African-American folk tale about a signifying monkey.
Schooly probably heard it in on a
Dolemite LP.