Okayplayer's Black Friday Must-Not-Buy Holiday Blacklist
Repent! And hide your faces, all ye sinners, for Black Friday is upon us. For real, though--while we were turning over every single pixelated rock on the internet to see if there was any cool holiday gift ideas underneath for our Black Friday Holiday Wishlist, we also found a pandora's boxfull a' nasty looking grubs, weevils and scorpions, metaphorically speaking. Which serves us right, really. That's what you should expect to find if you go turning over rocks--especially on the internet, the social institution which brought the world revenge porn and black twitter. But maybe we just didn't expect to find so many weevils so close to our own backdoor, enough that we felt compelled to compile a special Holiday edition of our Not Okay, Player column, a shoppers guide of (bad) gift ideas for stuff you should never, ever spend your hard-earned (or even ill-begotten) money on. Without further ado we present our official Black Friday blacklist of the most must-not-have items available this Christmas shopping season. Black Friday...meet Black Twitter.
#1. Kanye West's confederate flag-emblazoned Yeezus tour jacket.You may have noticed we actually fux with Kanye pretty consistently on a musical level, and pretty consistently S our Hs at his non-musical activities and pronouncements. But this Yeezus tour jacket with a Confederate Flag on it smushed the whole damn layer cake of beats, rhymes and art-imitating-life, making it #1 on our must-not-have list this Christmas. Not even gonna wade into the whole history of slavery in these United States but suffice to say: We highly recommend you do not buy this jacket. And if you're unclear as to why, we highly recommend you read a book. Any book. Or to make it even simpler, I point at Q-Tip and he states:
"I love Kanye no shots but my people continue to suffer psychologically from hardships that happened under that banner."
Nuff said. While you're not-shopping for this jacket, you may want to not-pair it with a $120.00 plain white t-shirt with Kanye West's name stitched in the neck and/or an official Yeezus tour trucker-snapback, also with a confederate flag on it (making it an official redneck trucker hat?). In fact, for our money, probably don't ever buy anything with a confederate flag on it.
DO: buy a regular-ass green bomber from Schott or another reputable brand at any army surplus store, and then sew a black power flag patch on the right sleeve. And then DO send Kanye a selfie of you and a friend modeling it (see below for styling tips). Please do that.
2. Jay Z Holiday Collection Crocodile Skin Jacket, Designed by Rick Owens, US$58,000 at Barneys. In this list as in many things, Jay and Kanye were gunning for the #1 slot but Jay was nosed out by the fact that only very few people have enough money that they would need our shopping tips about not spending it on this jacket. First of all, this thing is hideous. It looks like the outfit the bad guy in a low-budget Sci fi movie would wear, and it costs about as much as a low-budget Sci fi movie. More importantly, you may want consider not-buying the entire Jay Z holiday collection at Barneys, which has been in the news lately for multiple incidents of racial profiling. Or, hell, consider not buying anything at Barney's--at least until they figure out a way to run their business without the shop & frisk gestapo tactics. We mean an actual change, not the smoke-bomb Jay threw down with his "open letter." If you do shop at Barneys we recommend you roll with Rick Rubin and a cadre of Panthers (see previous page) and when the off-duty NYPD rent-a-cop asks "sir do you know why I'm stopping you for?" we recommend you reply: "Because I'm young & I'm black and my hat's real low? Do I look like a mind-reader, sir...?"
3. Ja Rule's Prison-inspired Microwave Cookbook. This one was such a headsmack that we actually considered putting on the must-buy list. I mean Ja Rule is clearly in a whole different category from the other campy music icons who have cashed in with celebrity cookbooks (2 Chainz, Liberace, Coolio and Boy George--looking at all of you). We were saved from facing down that existential crisis, however, because it turns out that there actually is no Ja Rule prison-inspired microwave cookbook. In spite of the fact that it was reported in real newspapers like the L.A. Times, it was all a joke/rumor, possibly initiated by Perez Hilton. So this hot not-shopping tip is mostly to save you from trooping through the November rain, going to bookstore after bookstore, repeatedly playing yourself by asking for Ja Rule's microwave cookbook in a desperate attempt to get the perfect gift for your friend who ironically collects bits of ratchet pop culture (yeah, we got one of those friends, too). Get them a pair of bamboo earrings that say "Ratchet" instead.
4. American Apparel's "Period Power" Washed T-shirt.
We actually became aware of this item when we got a call from the ghost of reggae icon Peter Tosh, who reached out to pitch us on an OKP Style review of this "Period Power" tee from the apparently-not-controversial-enough fashion outlet American Apparel.
This is his review:
"BUMMMMMBOCLAAT."
(Tosh's ghost was very bloodclot upset when he called).
Anyway, that's it. Happy Holidays! And be safe out there.