i’m looking at you, girl dressed up as a slutty nurse/fairy tale character/librarian/truck driver/cancer patient.  you thought u were being cute?  you were actually opening the portal to hell.  hope you’re happy.

sooooooooo.  went to check out MJ’s ‘This is It’ last night.  i guess i don’t have to worry about spoiling the film because we all know how it ends

there’s actually not too much to say about the actual film footage.  it was what it was: a nicely edited collection of video recorded rehearsals of what was to be his sold out 50 performance show.  it is edited in such a way that you feel like you feel like you’re being taken through the show, starting at the first song michael wanted to do and ending with the song he chose to close.  mike says that he’s not really singing because he has to save his voice, and it looks like he’s putting forth little effort when it actually comes to singing.  but light singing for mike is normal singing for anyone else, and i didn’t realize that he wasn’t really giving it his all til he said so.  we get to see what the set design would have looked like and the vignettes that would have been shown throughout the show.  it was neat.  and it was sad, because u do know how the story ends.  its sort of like watching captured video of the first 8 months of a woman’s pregnancy, all the excitement and preparation, all the while knowing that that baby would never ever take its first breath.

there were some funny observations i made while watching, one being that michael jackson looked really, really weird in normal clothes.  by normal i mean the regular, plain old every day black jacket (it looked kind of like a knock-off starter jacket).  most of the footage shows him in something michael jackson-esque, be it a pair of sparkly gold lounge pants, or a shiny red military jacket.  probably/possibly just for the effect while rehearsing; it wasn’t a dress rehearsal, and maybe he wanted to give everyone a better feel of what things would look like.  or maybe he just wore that shit in his everyday life.  i think the latter is true.  and that’s fine!  but i was really thrown off to see him in layman’s clothing.  probably just because the most popular, frequent images of jackson we see don’t feature him in normal clothes.  at one point he wore a jacket with big pointy shoulder pads that i think contained Larry King’s actual shoulders.  he looked like a cross between Larry King and Jack Skellington from ‘the nightmare before christmas.’

i also noticed, and this is something that wasn’t new, i don’t think, but very prevalent in the way he communicated with people, that michael was definitely a visionary.  he

im putting this picture here simply because i find it hilarious.

saw, thought, experienced, and envisioned things in a very special way.  when trying to describe something that he could see but others couldnt, he did it with such confidence that you knew that he was sure in what he saw, and that when he finally got it out of his brain it would be awesome.  that happens with me a lot in my daily life too (ie – ‘i just feel so…okay, so like imagine you’re at a bowling alley, right, and instead of bowling pins, you’re aiming at a bunch of prosthetic legs, right, and instead of a bowling ball, you’ve got a head of lettuce.  know what im talkin about?  does that make sense?  no??  FUCK!’)  the problem with that is that when you try to explain those things to people, things that make perfect sense to you, it can sometimes just sound weird, for lack of a better word.  at one point michael was telling the sound guys that it sounded like there was a fist inside his ear.  ….what do you do with that?  lol. it’s funny to think about, but there’s real tragedy in it, i think.  just one more thing for people to point to when talking about how weird and not right he was (mike tyson knows all about this).

anyway, we also get to see a small bit of the auditioning and selection of the dancers that were going to do the show with MJ.  it was actually very moving to see so many young people, probably in their late teens/early 20s, so overcome with emotion when talking about mike, his brilliance, and the impact that he’s had over their lives and careers.  its the same feeling i get when i watch my 6 year old niece singing and dancing while listening to his music on my ipod (‘billeh jean is NAT my luuuh-vuuhh.. she wisha giirrl who said that iiiiii have a gun!’).  its a great example of his talent and legacy.

we also get to see what a perfectionist mike was.  he was definitely captain of his ship, and was very straightforward and plain about what he did and did not want.  still, he was kind in his corrections and criticisms, saying ‘that’s okay; this is why we rehearse’ while correcting, and, genuinely, ‘god bless you’ when someone finally got it right.  he was very gracious.  very, very gracious, always, and seeing that made me feel a little guilty.

it made me feel guilty because it made me think of what his life could have been like if people, particularly the public and the media, were a little more gracious to him, if more people had said ‘god bless you’ instead of laughing and pointing and making jokes.  while mike was on stage performing alone, his dancers were in the audience spot, watching and having fits, completely hyped and excited at being able to watch mike do his thing and really appreciate it.  i felt so jealous of them, not only because they got to witness what so many people have not, but also (and mostly) because they could see that then, before all the post-mortem adoration, and really enjoy it.  they were among the group who could see past all the rumors and the allegations and pictures of him dangling children off of balconies at a time when the rest of us were too distracted by it.  they were free enough of the harsh judgement to appreciate the genius while it was still alive and in front of them.  i envy those people because i was one of the distracted.  i was among those who said more about his weirdness  than his talent when he was around.  and though i guess it makes sense to be derailed when it comes to someone so supremely engulfed in controversy and otherness (being afraid of the unknown and things that look different is an evolutionary trait; its what keeps us from walking up to what we may not recognize as a hungry mountain lion and going ‘LOOK, THIS BIG FUZZY THING IS SMILIN AT ME SO BIG I CAN SEE ITS TEETH!  IM GONNA GO HUG IT!’), i realize that i cheated myself.

maybe we have a little blood on our hands, and maybe that’s what we get for using these hands to point and laugh and ridicule so much.  since he died, ive often wondered what things would have been like for him if we had the ability to say, ‘you want a different nose?  fine, whatever makes you happy!’ or ‘you like to sleep with children?  wait, i think i know what you mean by that.  it came out really weird, but i get it.’ or ‘you have a monkey named bubbles?  is he well taken care of?  are u safe with him around?  awesome.’  in other words,   what if we didn’t have this appetite for the flawed and bizzare in our celebrities, the people that we build up to tear down?  and more importantly, what if we were just more tolerant and accepting of those who are different?  not just concerning michael jackson, but everyone?  how many teen suicides could have been prevented if kids didn’t have to worry about being picked on and tormented? if we would have just left mike the fuck alone, maybe he’d still be around, and a lot happier than he was when he was here?

when mike died, a friend and i were talking about it all, and he said to me, ‘if you believe in fate and destiny, you have to believe that he did what he came here to do.’  i think that’s very true.  he gave us an amazing body of music that will probably be blasting from our great grandchildren’s iPod Intras (featuring tiny ipod speakers and a storage card that you can have implanted in your ear drums and turn on and off with the neurons fired in your brain), and maybe, hopefully, he taught us a lesson in tolerance and appreciation.

maybe that was it.

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okay, some background to this video.  obviously lizards can’t talk.  and obviously this is not a real lizard.  the audio is real though; it’s apparently somebody trippin all over himself on acid and just talking completely crazy.  i find this to be excruciatingly hilarious.

this guy thinks he’s Captain Knots.  thinks he’s Captain Tyin-Knots.

who’s this guy, Mr. Balloons.  Mr. Balloon Hands, over here.

HILARIOUS!

i can’t freakin believe this show is still on.  how awesome is that.  a lot has changed since i was a kid.  they done had muppets with HIV and everything, and now they’re prolly teachin kids how to not get molested on the interwebs.  amazing.  anyway, in tribute, i wanted to do a short list of 5 of my favorite songs that i remember from the show.  i was going to do my top 10 faves, but the pressure was just too great

my affinity for funk, r&b & 80s music has clearly dominated the top 3/5s of the list.  it starts two traditional faves though:

5.  ‘Rubber Ducky’ – Ernie - adulthood taints everything.  in listening to this as a 27 year old, i felt some kinda way hearin Ernie sing about findin somethin ’short and yellow and chubby’ in the tub.  :-/

4.  ‘C is for Cookie’ – Cookie Monster

and then… THE PARTY STARTS!!

3.  ‘The Word is No’ – Maria and Gina – lol.  remember this??  i mostly remember the chorus.  id sing it everytime my mom would tell me no for something.  i totally didn’t know how 80s this joint is though!  i love it!

also in retrospect, Maria was kinda Claire Huxtableish, wasn’t she?

2.  ‘Down Below the Street’ -Take 6 – vintage Take 6!!!  i dare you to find somethin about this that kicks ass.  dare you.  you can’t do it.  don’t even try.

i still think of this song when i’m out and about and i see a manhole or sewer drain.

**bonus:  The Number 6 and the Alphabet Song, also by Take 6.

1.  The Pinball Number Count Song – The Pointer Sisters – im sure nobody is surprised by this takin the #1 spot. this joint is TOUGH.

40 years.  Jesus, we’re OLD.

hi, all!

sorry for the lag in updates lately   im not being a wishy-washy jerk this time, i promise.  updates will be scarce this month because i’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which is really, really cool.  if you’ve never heard of it before, or have heard of it and just didn’t know what it is, it’s a program/organization/what have you that helps you write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in 30 days, over the entire month of november.  that involves writing at LEAST 1,667 words each and every day.  after doing that, the last thing i want to do most times is hop on the interwebs and write about weaves and bad mullets and shit.  nothing personal though :/

i did NaNoWriMo in 2005 (i think?) too, so in approx. 24 days, i will have not one, but two shitty novels catching dust in my bedroom.  joy!  THEN i’ll be able to stop being grossly negligent here.  there will be sporadic entries, probably, but bigguns like ridiculous moments in r&b pt. 2 prolly won’t come til december

as a peace offering, i offer you this:  i short youtube video entitled “NFL Booty Poppin.”  i don’t know about you but this made me extremely happy somehow.

forgive me??  k thanks!!

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so i was up late for video surfing at youtube for no real reason at all last night.  while searching for Boyz II Men’s acapella version of ‘can you stand the rain‘ i came across some pretty cool stuff!  these are essentiallyglee club-style renditions of some good classics. warning: the audiences are annoying and the sound aint so great.

here’s a nintendo acapella, complete with interpretive dance:

a Nickelodeon medley(whatchall know about The Beets??):

‘thriller,’ also with interpretive dance:

outkast’s ‘the way you move.’ i will admit to doing my own interpretive dance to this:

& this is my fave of the day, largely because of the singer’s fro and because whoever did this arrangement knows enough abt music to be able to link curtis mayfield’s ‘move on up‘ and kanye’s ‘ touch the sky:’

shout out to ‘glee‘ for makin this shit cool again.

try as you may, yours will not be this cool.

via threadbombing

so after finishing up my ridiculous moments in new jack swing post however many years ago, i seem to have become sensitive to all ridiculous moments in music.  i noticed very recently that my subconscious has been compiling a working list of ridiculous moments in r&b, all of r&b, not just the 90s, so i sat down intending to do a quick purging.  turns out this quick purging is too long for just one post, so i think it’s gonna be a 3-parter as of now.  so!  without further achoo and in no particular order, let’s get part one started right!

1.  chante moore clearly hates her friends. ladies, close your eyes and imagine this.  well, read this first, and then close your eyes cause it’d be kind of hard to do the other way around.  okay.  it’s a friday night.  you and some of your girlfriends gather together to have a glass of wine or 4 and do some theraputic venting about your man problems.  love is a battlefield, and sometimes even the mightiest of warriors get weary, and tonight, all you wanna do is find some strength in your girls and forget that men even exist for awhile.

then the one heffa in the room with a man stands up and yells, ‘LATER FOR YOU LONELY BITCHES, I GOTTA GO HOME AND WATCH LEROY GET BUTT NEKKID AND COOK ME SOME BREAKFAST.  BYE!’  that’s pretty much what ‘chante’s got a man’ amounts to for me.  like serious, she’s just like ‘yeah, it sucks that you don’t have a man.  your man is cheatin on you, girl.  mmph, what a pity.  welp!  my life is awesome!  sorry your man blacked your eye last week!  my man’s on the phone gotta go bye!’  she hid a positive ‘you deserve better than this’ message in there, sure but you literally have to look for it between her sounding not too sorry about one of her girlfriends gettin beat up by her man and singing out a laundry list of the good shit her man does for her.  fuck that, if i was her friends, id lock her in a bathroom and snatch her bald, see how her man likes that.  watch the video here.  im not putting it up myself out of respect for chante’s manless battered abused friends (brokey cares if dont nobody else care).

2.  lenny williams watches tv forever.  literally. this is arguably one of my most favorite ridiculous moments in all of music history, not just r&b.  yall all know the classic Lenny Williams song ‘Because I Love You,’ right?  ‘girl you know i i i i love yooooou!  OOH OH OH OH OH OH OH ooooh oh ooooh oh oh oh oh oh oh’ etc etc.  right?  right.  everybody knows that song.  the odd staccato repetition thing is enough to make this ridiculous but the real gem lies within the spoken breakdown towards the end of the song.  our lovesick narrator walks us through his night of failed attempts trying to get in touch with the woman he loves.  he calls her on the phone and he just can’t get her to answer.  he goes to her house, saw her car parked in the drive way, knocked on the door and still his knocks went unanswered.  dejected, he goes home and watches tv until television goes off.  really, that’s what he says.  until television GOES OFF??  holy shit!  it NEVER goes off!  even when television programming stops, it’s still on.  something is on.  paid programs, that video of the american flag, somethin. until tv goes off.  that’s a long ass time.  i am willing to bet that right now, ladies and gentlemen, right very now, lenny williams is sitting in front of his tv butt nekkid in a bathrobe watchin a snuggie commercial.  poor guy.  listen here.

3. ashanti & j.lo attempt to ruin my musical memory. let me set a scene for you. it’s a saturday afternoon.  i’m in my apartment.  it’s a beautiful late spring day, warm out, windows are open, and im dancin around while cleanin my place and listening to the radio (i actually dont have a radio, but this is all for effect.  follow me).  i hear the beat to biggie’s ‘one more chance’ playing and i do the mandatory ‘woooooooo!’ to signify that this is my jam, and then i do the customary 90s bad boy hands in the air head bob, known also as the gallop that pam did into martin’s apartment when biggie was there.  i fix my mouth and get my F-sound ready to say ‘first things first,’ but instead what comes out is: ‘…fuck, is that ashanti?‘  rage ensues.

maybe its just me, but i feel like there was a good solid period of like a year and a half when this happened way too often, and the perpetrators were *always* ashanti and jennifer lopez.  like, i would really get irate.  since i dont have a radio, id usually hear my favorite beats come on, get excited, hear those two broads attempting to carry a tune in bucket, and then say ’see??  this is why i dont have a radio!!’  as a matter of principle, i refuse to link any of those songs here, but the perpetrators are: by ashanti, ‘unfoolish’ (biggie; wtf kinda word is ‘unfoolish’ anyway?!) and ‘baby’ (scarface’s ‘mary jane‘ ); and by j.lo the list is way longer:  ‘aint it funny’ (craig mack), i’m gonna be alright (luniz), jenny from the block (the beatnuts).  i cant remember the others.  they made my life hard for a good little while tho.  jerks.

4.  h-town’s crazy dancin is makin my penis soft. (c) dave chapelle.  yall remember h-town, right?  remember their song ‘they like it slow?’  remember the ridiculous dance that they did through the entire video while wearing unneccessarily leather pants?  no?  here’s a memory jogger.  it starts at about 1:13 and last for the entire damn video.

…motherfucker, why?? (c) steve harvey

5.  glenn lewis really needs some help. ah, glenn lewis.  it makes me so sad that you’re probably doing gigs at Mall of America or somewhere similar right now.  o, s-curled wonder with a voice reminiscent of stevie wonder and a face reminiscent of a soft woodland creature, what happened?!  you were so awesome!  i liked glenn because glenn cld pretty much sing anything and make it sound like a love song, and he usually had really beautiful instrumentals to sing over.  his song ‘take me‘ is no different.  the first couple of minutes, it sounds like a bittersweet story of a lost woman who doesn’t want to be alone and has an extreme case of escapism, asking a man she just met to take her anywhere.  but then… things get weird.  kind of like ‘superheroes‘ by esthero.. you’re groovin to it, thinkin abt how sexy it is (and it is sexy), then you notice that she’s also singing about being old and used and shit.  in ‘take me,’ there comes a point where you begin to pick up on alarming portions of the lyrics. like, say, when glenn starts repeating: take me any/where but here/she’s crazy/she’s crazy.

…WOAH!!  how did we get here, glenn lewis??!  just a few seconds ago, you had the cape on ready to save this poor child.  that shit went awry fast.

6.  james brown really, really likes drugs. i think this video pretty much speaks for itself.

i don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s another great moment featuring james brown later on in the series.  stay tuned!

7. k-ci also really likes drugs a lot too as well. sometimes i can’t believe this guy was a sex symbol.  to keep it all the way real, i couldn’t even believe this guy was a sex symbol even when he was a sex symbol.  he was the hot shit when he was in jodeci tho, right?  not much to look at in the least (devante swing was more my speed.  it was during my s-curl phase, gimmie a break). but at least back then, he had whole ‘im on crack but i dont readily look like it’ thing goin on.  these days?  ha!  fuckin forget it.  k-ci looks like his address is Third Crack House on the Left and his phone number is 555-I-Can’t-Pay-This-Damn-Bill-Cause-I-Smoke-Up-All-My-Money.  not only is he lookin mad Tyrone Biggumsish but he’s actin like he sold his last bits of common sense for an 8-ball.  i keep seein these crazy videos of him ridin into his concerts ridin on his bodyguard’s shoulders and just bein all around weird.  oh how the mighty have become gross.

vid via mediatakeout

8. bobby brown + whitney houston + reality show = delicious failure. oh man.  this is one of the greatest guilty pleasures of my life.  bobby and whitney’s reality show ‘being bobby brown‘ shouldn’t be funny, when you think about it, especially in light of whitney’s recent stints in rehab and their divorce.  this show pretty much captured the life and times of a couple in love in the throes of addiction.  or two addicts in the throes of love, whichever you prefer.  it was like a season long episode of a&e’s ‘intervention,’ only without the actual intervention.  but man alive… this was some GOOD TV.

this show puts my soul and spirit in a difficult position.  like, i know crack is wrong, but as far as my personal entertainment is concerned, it worked for them the way it did for mary j. blige.  mary did some of her best work when she was strung out!!  that’s terrible to say, but TRUE!  i got some gems from her dark days, and similarly, the White Girl worked hard with bobby and whitney to give me some of the most golden tv moments ever.  we got to hear one talk about diggin a ‘doody bubble’ out of the other’s butt.  we saw a drunk bobby brown walking around a hotel room with his timberland somehow stuck to his foot while bobby beseeches it by saying : ’stop followin me, shoe.  stop followin me, shoe!’  we got to see bobbi christina in her weird awkward funny lookin stage.  now unfortunately, there aren’t any quality clips of the show on the youtubes, but here’s a few:

here’s a 3 minute compilation of other random moments, but the quality is really bad.  watch at your own risk.

9.  gerald levert may have an obsessive compulsion. remember LSG?  the group that gerald levert, keith sweat, and johnny gill formed?  wasn’t that a dumbass idea from jump?  stupidity aside, the group did pretty well.  their song ‘my body’ was probably their biggest hit, and it even spent some time at number one when it was released in 1997. other than its overwhelming suckiness, the things that sticks out in this song for me is the annoying repetition!  they say the word ‘body’ 105 times in this song.  I COUNTED.  id say u could make a drinking game of it and do a shot each time they say it, but i can’t have the deaths of your livers on my conscience like that.  it’s bizarre though.  were they just lazy?  or unimaginative?  or could a certain someone in the group just not help himself??

a year later, gerald released ‘thinkin about it,’ a fairly mediocre song where he does a lot of needless repeating of the phrase ‘thinkin about it,’  namely in the chorus and especially at the end.  i can connect the dots people!!  gerald levert was a secret Rainman!!

10.  alexander o’neal’s ‘come hither’ fail. and now, today’s crowning glory. let me be the first to say that alexander o’neal’s ‘if you were here tonight’ is a truly, truly beautiful song.  he had a lot of talent and potential.  shame he got hooked on that White Girl and snorted it all away.  anyway, this song is awesome, but the video?  not so much.  to be fair, let’s put it into context; it was made in 1985, and all videos were corny and cheesy then.  ridiculous fashion, crappy sets.  that’s not his fault.  what is his fault though, those terrible, TERRIBLE sexy faces he’s makin all up in the camera! lol why didn’t the director pick up on that?  i’d point you to a particular point in the video, but really, just pick a spot.  you’ll see it in due time.  as a bonus bit of ridiculousness, though, head to the 3:17 minute mark.  you should see him tossing and turning in the bed, unable to sleep because his boo isn’t there.  keep watching and wait for him to start awake, singing, then attempt to be both sexy and confused at the same time.  then come back and explain to me why the fuck he felt it necessary to act up like that.  thanks.

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i dont think ive laughed this hard at a random snl skit since the pizzeria uno’s pepper joint with bobby moynihan.  this is HILARIOUS.  jason sudeikis poplockin in the background?  the host’s inability to not sing while the biologist is talkin?  jason slowin the poplockin down at the end for the sexicutioner?  peekaboo street??!!  I CANT TAKE IT!!!  lol!

here’s the vid that’s on youtube but itll be taken down soon so here’s the hulu link, too.

bravo, keenan.  you are a weird motherfucker, and i appreciate that.

ive been meaning to do some hair talk around here for the last, like, month and a half.  i’m still transitioning and trying to get used to home life again, and sometimes it drains all my creative juices and motivations.  i just got outta the shower though and i am COMPLETELY motivated by this awesome hair day i’m havin to share some stuff that ive discovered.  ive got a great pre-shampoo suggestion and a quick review of oyin’s sample pack.

firstly, my hair is natural & curly and i’m not good with the grading stuff, but i think/guess i’m a 3c.  i have a lot of hair, but its relatively fine and as such can be tempramental when dealing with heavier products, especially while wet.  co-washing pretty much doesnt work for me.  it just leaves my hair feelin crazy and lookin crazier.  and dull.  co-washing makes it very dull.  my curl pattern is coily.  i have one main problem area, being the front part of the upper left quadrant of my head.  i dunno what happened or when it happened but the curl pattern there is on life support.  my usual routine is:  sulfate wash once a week, no-poo when needed in the inbetween time; slap in a leave in, moisturizer & finisher (sometimes.. i dont always).  air dry. i wish i had taken some before and after pics, but i didnt

okay so.  when i went natural i bought a jar of cantu shea butter leave-in conditioner.  i was still trying to get the hang of things and just tryin stuff out while reading up on maintenance and care and what products to use and what not to use.  shortly after i bought the cantu, i decided to stay away from products that have silicons in them, which included the cantu.  so its been pretty much sitting on my shelf for a year and a half.  i did discover, though, that it’s great to use when detangling; the slip is phenomenal and it makes combin out my difficult tangles relatively easy.  even so, i eventually phased it out of my routine as i got better with caring for my hair.

fast forward to this morning.  my hair’s a dry, stressed, weighed down mess.  i havent deep conditioned in weeks (terrible!!).  i need to do something to get the buildup out of my hair, but im all of my no-poo and there’s not a drop of ACV to be found in the house.  co-washing doesn’t work, as previously established, so that pretty much leaves me with regular old sulfate-laden shampoo.  problem is, it’s not time for a sulfate wash yet, and i’m scared that washing with shampoo right now will stress it out even more.  my options at this point are: A) keep runnin round lookin like Boo Boo the Fool, or B) get to shampooing.  i got nothin against Boo Boo the Fool, but his style doesn’t really work that well for me, so shampoo it was.

i decided that i’d pre-poo before to sort of protect my hair some… its something i typically don’t do because…. well, i dunno why i don’t.  i’ve done it before, and it was cool or whatever, but.  you know.  just didn’t feel like something i needed to work into my regular routine.  but i knew the shampoo was gonna take out a bunch of important moisture, so it made sense to put some extra moisturizers in first to protect it all and kind of replenish the good stuff before the shampoo even had a chance to take it out.  but what to use?  i really wanted to use my oyin whipped pudding to see how it would do–it’s creamy (after emulsifying with a bit of water) and penetrates well.  but i only had precious little left, and im still tryin to see how i like it as a moisturizer (i bought an oyin sample pack a few weeks ago and i’m still givin it a trial run).  then i remembered my big ol jar of cantu!  plenty in there, and i could use a detangle anyway, so why not?  i threw in some coconut oil too.. i rinsed with water, worked the coconut oil in first, followed with the cantu, and got to brushing/combing out with my imitation denman style brush (omg i cant find one ANYWHERE.. ive been using this cheap little 99 cent deal that i found at Walgreens which, surprisingly, gets the job done!).  i covered with a plastic grocery bag because either my head or my hair is too big for the shower caps i have, let it sit for about 30-45 minutes, then rinsed and washed it out in the shower.

when i took the bag off i was already gettin tingly with excitement bc my hair was WAY curlier than it has previously been.  i saw similar results, though perhaps better ones, with oyin’s honey hemp conditioner.  i looooooooooooooooooove this stuff.  its SO moisturizing and nourishing and it smells like a dreamsicle.. i was hesitant to use it (i’ll explain why later), but after deep conditioning with it overnight a couple weeks ago, i was sold.  i would have used it today but im all out   anyway, the cantu leave-in gave me similar results in a fraction of the time.  in the shower, i lathered twice with the last of my nexxus theratin extreme moisture shampoo (i then shed a few tears.. i love that shampoo but its so freakin expensive!) and by the second wash my hair was STILL full of curls.. i figured that they would relax as the cantu and coconut oil was washed out, but nope!  still poppin!  and continued to pop after i got out and put my products in!

my favorite leave-in in the world is giovanni direct leave-in conditioner.  its made of wonderful things, none of which are silicons or mineral oils, and a little bit goes a long way.  then i moisturized with oyin’s whipped pudding, and finished with some of oyin’s shine and define serum.  the result was fabulous.. its fuzzy and frizzy and a bit dull looking in some spots in the front, but that’s likely because my curl pattern is spotty there, and i always do the front last when applying products and by that time my arms and hands are tired and i just wanna get it over with so i kinda half-ass the job.  but on the whole, my hair is MUCH curlier, even in the problem areas.. its a bit more weighed down, which i don’t mind, and it’s really soft.  at least softer than usual.

now ive been meaning to do a quick review of the oyin stuff for awhile, but im still evaluating it, i think.  i was hesitant to use it because my hair typically HATES glycerin, and all their products, so far as i’ve noticed, are glycerin based.  i dunno what it is, but it usually makes my hair just look stressed out and dull and stringy but waxy and jheri curlish at the same time and who wants that?  i decided to bite the bullet and give it a go though, and i ordered the sample pack, which includes the honey hemp conditioner, greg juice leave-in, whipped pudding, and shine and define serum.  a few quick words on each product:

honey hemp conditioner: LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!  i think i said everything above already.  smells great, moisturizes like a dream, good as a wash-out conditioner or leave in.  as a deep conditioner it gave me craaaazy curlage.  and it’s also good for detangling.  i am unemployed and going broke, but i will sacrifice the few dollars i have to buy more.  unless someone volunteers to get it for me  (PLEASE VOLUNTEER.  EMAIL ME FOR MORE INFORMATION).

greg juice leave-in conditioner: actually, i didnt get the greg juice.. i got juices and berries.  again, smells great.  kinda tropical.  i felt a slight urge to mix some rum in it and serve it on the rocks.  i don’t know how effect if was though.. i didn’t really feel either way about it.  i didn’t particularly feel any benefits from it, but i didn’t feel like it did anything horrible to my hair.  after using it as a leave-in initially, i began using the honey hemp conditioner as a leave in and just using the juice to spritz my hair to make it smell good.  not mad at it, but won’t be buying it.  but if somebody wants to volunteer to buy it for me, that’d be cool (PLEASE VOLUNTEER. EMAIL ME FOR MORE INFO).

whipped pudding: i fully expected to hate this.  it smells chocolatey, which is cool.  but i was worried about the texture.. it’s sort of like a whipped shea butter, which is lighter than regular shea butter but still pretty heavy, and a bit more oily feeling.  you can use the whipped pudding on ur body as well as your hair, and that worried me because my hair, though thick in volume, is kind of fine.  it doesnt handly heavy products well beyond the first day, and i get build up quickly.  so im like, anything that gets the ash off my knees and the heels of my feet this well (it worked wonders for that!) will absolutely kill my hair and make it heavy and gross.  how wrong i was!  i actually really like it as a hair moisturizer!  it makes it feel like its really well moisturized, and my heavier curls shine and recoil nicely when pulled.  feels healthy.  looks healthy.  for me, it helped to emulsify with a bit of water to make it spread a little easier.  it doesnt shine up ALL my hair though.. some parts can still look kind of dull.  but on the whole, i like it, and as of now would buy it.  unless… (PLEASE VOLUNTEER ETC ETC)

shine and define serum: im guessing this is supposed to supply the shine that the whipped pudding may not give.  to be honest i don’t really know what this does to my hair.  i really like the idea of it, and i WANT to like it–smells tasty, just like everything else, and feels really good.. light and slightly creamy and feels like any hold it gives your curls won’t be be waxy and crunchy at all–but it just doesn’t do anything, good or bad.  i could live without it, i and probably will.  but won’t turn it away if given as a gift.  at all.

now when i first used the oyin stuff, i used all products in the order above.  i was really scared and nervous because of my past experiences with glycerin products, and after i finished putting it all in my hair i was worried.  it looked very jheri curlish but dry at the same time (that’s what glycerin usually does to my hair) and i was none to pleased.  but as it dried, it totally transformed.  it looked healthy, felt healthy, smelled great.  the shrinkage was MAJOR though, and i usually dont mind it, but it was a loooot of shrinkage.  i first noticed it after i took the bag off my head after deep conditioning with the honey hemp conditioner.  you know what though?  i became cool with it because i was so impressed with the amount of curl it gave me.  i can learn to live with shrunken hair. it’s worth it to note that with the combination of products i used today (ie – no honey hemp conditioner), i didnt have half the shrinkage, but still got some good curlage goin on.

overall im REALLY pleased with oyin’s products.  it takes forever and a day for them to ship your products to you because each order is custom filled or something, so the next time i buy oyin, i’ll be buying from curlmart.com, only because they have a quicker turnaround.  the oyin folks seems like genuinely  good people though; i asked them a question and got a handwritten note in my package, complete with a smiley face   i approve!

anybody else out there love these products?  hate them?  have questions about them?  WANNA BUY ME SOME OF THEM??!!