Here at Amoeba, customers know to look for the red tag. Red tags = bargain. It looks like red was also used to tag deals at the Bargain Circus, Jive Time and Licorice Pizza, as well as many more retail outlets. Anyone out there know what "the Dalles" was? I know that it's a place in Oregon, but was there a chain named that as well?

Love him or hate him, Lil Wayne (aka Weezy) is the man of the moment with his anticipated new album, Tha Carter III (Cash Money/Universal) released earlier this week which broke sales records - selling close to half a million units on the day of its release. And with an approximated million copies sold within the first week - it is guaranteed to be the number one Billboard pop chart  topper. Undoubtedly the album will also go on to become one of the top selling releases of 2008. 

"It's doing really well here. It got a whole bunch of hype of course. But what is interesting to me is the diversity of Lil Wayne fans," reports Marques Newson from the hip-hop department at the Amoeba Music Hollywood store. "I was on the register Tuesday, the release date of the new CD, and there was literally every type of person buying it, every race and age you can think of.  Not just young guys like you might think...but like 40 or 50 year old white women or 60 year old black women."  

Speaking of age, what is most significant about Lil Wayne, a long established rap star  who just recently scored his first pop hit with "Lollipop," is that he is only 25 years old but has been putting it down in the rap game since he hooked up with the Cash Money Records crew when just a teenager.  Besides Lil Wayne's regular full length releases (it's three years since his last official album Tha Carter II) and the countless cameos he makes on other projects, there are a ton of mix CDs featuring his music, including DJ EFX (not to be confused with Raul "DJ EFX" Recinos -- veteran Bay Area hip-hop/house/ tribal/electronic DJ/producer), who recently dropped the popular Before The Carter Vol. 2.  The mixtape only helped fuel interest in the artist's official June 10th release that is clearly geared for crossover pop success with such high-profile collaborators as Jay-Z.

On top of all this, Lil Wayne recently wrapped up filming a part as a student-athlete in the forthcoming movie The Patriots with Forest Whitaker. So Dwayne Michael Carter (his real name) looks set to be a huge, huge star. Of course, the far-from-humble Dwayne has been calling himself "the best rapper alive" for quite a while already which, note, is one of the reasons he causes so much ire in others. Another reason he gets hated on in hip-hop circles is that the often clearly buzzed Weezy (cough syrup is one of his favorite poisons, as well as weed and E) will utter, or rather slur, some of the dumbest, most unprofessional things at the most inappropriate times (i.e, in recorded interviews), like when he recently told Foundation magazine that mix-tape DJs suck ("Fuck you if you are a mix tape DJ" and "I created the mix tape game" were two of his quotes).

In a Beirut beauty salon, the lives of five women from different backgrounds interweave as they share, support, confide in and bicker with each other. The “caramel” of the title refers to the candy, which they use as a depilatory. My guess is that it's supposed to be some kind of metaphor for tearing away secrets or something.

Labaki's video for Nancy Ajram's "Akhasmak, Ah"

First, Rima (the spittin’ image of Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy) is a secret Sapphist, which is primarily conveyed through her enjoyment of washing a woman’s long tresses. Nisrine, a bride-to-be, isn’t a virgin but is marrying a traditional Muslim who expects her to be, so she goes to the doctor to get surgery. Jamale is an aging former television actress whose attempts to seem young (from taping her eyes up to staining maxi pads with red nail polish) come across as so shrilly hysterical that she earns unintentional laughs instead of sympathy as she competes, in vain, against younger, prettier women. Layale (played by the writer/director) is bitchy and snobbish and she stubbornly pursues an affair with a married man, going to amazing lengths to please him, even though he continually blows her off except for their brief romps in her car. Rose is a seamstress who gains the attractions of an dapper, older American whose suits she tailors. He asks her out but she chooses to devote all of her energy and time to her senile sister -- who was a voice to which nails-on-chalkboard is preferable. The message seems to be that women have to turn to each other, not men, no matter how stupidly they behave.  And, girl, men have no idea what they go through.

When you think about, it all holidays are basically the same -- days of celebration, all similar,  just with different names.

Father's Day, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, Memorial Day, BIrthdays and the million other "days" that we celebrate are all pretty much one and the same thing: days where we stop to celebrate life, sometimes past, but usually present. 

It's about the love...for life: a time to sing out on the positives and to vow to live each day to the fullest.

Hence I think it appropriate on this "day" (or any) to re-watch that celebratory scene from Hal Ashby's 1971 film Harold and Maude (avail on DVD @ Amoeba) in which Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort's characters sing Cat Stevens' "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out."  Immediately below that clip is Cat Stevens performing "Father and Son."  Another appropriate Father's Day song is the 1991 hip-hop single from Ed O.G. & da Bulldogs "Be A Father To Your Child."  The third video below is "Father and Daughter" which is "animacion con acuarela por Michael Dudok de Wit," and below that  is "Father's Day Poem: to Dad" -- a stop motion animation by YouTuber indiestopmotion.