Photos from the Ghost City Series.

Weeds is an American satirical comedy television series. Marie-Louise Parker plays a widowed housewife named Nancy Botwin from an affluent California suburb who becomes an upper-middle-class marijuana dealer to make ends meet.

Things started slowly, with Nancy just dealing a bit of weed on the side. It rapidly became more serious. She went from being a simple dealer, to a grower, to a distributor. In the last season, she hooked up with Guillermo, a serious Narco trafficker in charge of a part of LA for a Mexican drug cartel.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

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Nancy is trying to organize a new network of sellers in Ren Mar. Guillermo promised her loads of cash, but she's not seeing enough of it. In the end, she has to go above Guillermo's head in order to secure some weed.

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Nancy tells Doug that it's time the he moves out of his house. He's farting in her lounge. Silas can't handle Shane wanking off all of the time. Nancy says that there will be some remodeling. She needs another bathroom.

Quinique and Sanjay show up with their son. Sanjay says that he can handle 100lbs a week. Her old cleaning lady is going to sell pot for her as well. She wanted to sell coke or X, but Nancy doesn't do hard drugs. Fat Marvin also shows up.

Celia and Isabelle are in Mexico buying some drugs. Normal drugs. It doesn't take long for Isabelle to figure out that the maternity store is a drug front.

Nancy tries to get some pot from Guillermo, but he's in no mood to giver her some. She's the cover for the drug tunnel, that's it.

Silas pops in to see Lisa at the cheese store. Silas starts to make out with her. They have sex.

Nancy drops in to see Cesar. She wants to talk with Esteban. She threatens to go to city hall.

Doug and Andy are doing market research about the Coyote business. They learn that if the cross the border within 2 minutes, they are fine. The problem is the Minutemen, the civilian militia that watches the border.

Cesar does some direct translating for Nancy during Esteban Reyes' speech.

Celia goes to see Captain Till. She is released from all charges.

Just like Reyes knew everything about her, she discovered a few things about him. Reyes gives her a spanking. She comes home and finds Claudio, Isabelle and Shane in her room. Claudio threw some books on her bed, and photos of Nancy modeling naked drop out. Isabelle is impressed, Shane is mortified and hides them.

Doug enlists in the Minutemen.

Lisa is getting eaten out by Silas. Shane looks at the naked pics of his mom. Nancy admires the welts on her bum and gets a delivery of weed from Guillermo. He doesn't look happy. It must have been pretty bad. He doesn't say a word. Nancy says that she came to him first.

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Relevant Links

"Yes I Can"

July 28th, 2008

The title of "Yes I Can" refers to both Sammy Davis Jr. famous autobiography and the drive of Nancy Botwin to remain independent within the existing operation. This storyline drives most of the episode, and while it suffers from some stretches of logic (including the entire purpose of a "front," but never mind that) it does give Mary-Louise Parker plenty to do and has some potential.

But, really, this episode is about the moments when Silas and Shane Botwin, officially speaking, stopped being the characters they once were. In the beginning, Silas was a teenager of innocence, certainly sexually promiscuous but certainly still finding his footing so to speak. Shane, literally, was a child, someone whose naive world view was tempered with an intense knowledge of its inner workings - he was always smart, but he was still removed from the reality of it all.

This week, though, it's officially over: these two are not kids anymore, not in the way they once were anyways. Silas' conquest of Mrs. Rad, Lisa, is forceful and mature: his newfound confidence is almost beyond belief, but the show seems intent on turning him into a sexual animal even weeks before the character's eighteenth birthday (nudity and all). And Shane, who has had his bouts with insanity in the past, has officially transcended to a whole new realm with his choice of jerk-off material.

Both transitions aren't beyond the stretch of the imagination, but I'm not quite sure I'm on board enough to trot out Sammy's answer to the question of "Can you tolerate this?"

First off, let's discuss what has been ongoing all season: once Conrad was out the window, it was natural that Hunter Parrish was likely going to take up his role as the "leading male." What I didn't realize, though, is that it would more or less happen in a single episode. Last week, Silas was still a teenager: sure, he's spent more time without a shirt on than ever before (It's like they went to the beach just for the excuse), but he was still the considerate but passive participant as far as we saw even if he did instigate their walk.

But this week he waltzes into the Cheese Shop, waxes poetic about his pending birthday, locks the door, puts down the blinds, and then offers to let Lisa hold onto him as they have a torrid sexual tryst. That we later get to see him providing oral pleasue while completely naked is just one more step in this transformation, one that I should have seen coming but still felt really off. I still remember fondly his more innocent moments, like after he discovered sex with deaf girlfriend Megan and so giddily kept going at it for hours on end.

That Silas, however, is dead: at this point, there's no going back with the character, as they have more or less accepted that his teenage years are over. I do have to wonder whether there's a storyline for him outside of his sexual encounters, but something tells me that the female viewership of the series likely has few concerns about the context. Whether we'll actually see him get an apartment of his own, and literally splinter away from his family, is still up in the air, but the fact remains that the character has certainly grown up.

I'm willing to accept that this is the case, even if I felt the show rushed it a little, mainly because of how disturbing our other Botwin child revelation is. Sure, Shane has always been a bit on the weird side, but masturbating to naked photos of his own mother is going in a direction I didn't think the show was heading for. I know that Shane has to lose his innocence at some point, but did it have to be this Fruedian mind fuck? I get the point here: that as he steps up to take on more responsibility for the family, he returns to infantile desires as his lack of maturity in many areas of life crashes against his forced maturity in others. But that doesn't make it any less disturbing.

But ignoring "The Kids Ain't Alright" for a moment, Nancy gets the real forward moving storyline with its own sexual kinks and the like. She wants money to get her own bathroom, and Silas wants his own room (So no place of his own?), but she doesn't have it so much: as a result, she sends feelers out to Marvin, her former housekeeper and Sanjay in order to see whether she could get back into the Weed game. Guillermo, of course, refuses to give her the weed, citing chain of command and all of those things.

Of course, the real reason he does so is that it would complicate Nancy: she's supposed to be his clean front, so why exactly is he even entertaining the idea of her dealing? If The Wire's first season taught me anything, it's that you need someone clean to run your fronts or else you're leaving yourself vulnerable. Guillermo's reason, as far as the show givews it, is the usual "I am possessive over Nancy" that everyone seems to succumb to: he just wants to be able to control her, ignoring any of the show's already established logic.

It's really just an excuse for Nancy to go to Esteban, who we learn is personally financing projects to secure his role as mayor (citing private benefactors), so at least we know that the drug money isn't just funding, well, drugs. Nancy's encounter with him in the limousine literally boils down to exposition and a spanking, so really Nancy just gets off and eventually gets her pot much to Guillermo's chagrin (Mainly because, as noted, he no longer has control of Nancy as she jumps the chain of command).

And that's the thing: maybe I'm just used to the strict chain of command of The Wire, but this one is kind of all screwed up and manipulated for Nancy's sake. The episode as a whole seems to be about creating new and in some cases twisted versions of these characters, new trajectories that seem dangerous and in some instances totally off kilter. I'm willing to follow the show there, but I have to wonder whether their own self-statement of ability is more futile than Sammy's.

Cultural Observations

• In our first useless and slow-moving plot point of the week, at least one that provided some comedy, Doug and Andy have made progress on their Coyote business: they found some people to pump for intel (And handle the renovations), and then Doug got himself a job as one of the patolling Minutemen to work both sides of the fence if you will. It didn't go anywhere, but there was some cute lines here and there (even if I could have gone without the Minuteman's cell phone image).
• And, in the second one that was almost entirely humorless, Celia goes to Mexico for some drugs, gets  the charges dropped officially, and then is rejected by Roy Till who, apparently, is gay? I'm not quite sure where the show is going with that, to be honest: is this something they plan on following through with, or just a throwaway? It is confusing that there was so much sexual tension with Celia, but I guess that works.

VOTE OBAMA! YES I CAN!...(Votate Obama!Si io posso!)...

La mia speranza e' che vinca Obama altrimenti ci sara' la continuazione della dittatura velata di Bush.

Speriamo vinca Obama,speriamo vinca la pace.

FORZA OBAMA!

How do we become so good at convincing ourselves that we can’t do something? We seem to be able to tell ourselves we can’t do something, or we are not good enough or smart enough, the list of put downs and hold backs can go on for ever. But it seems we have few word of encouragement to offer ourselves.

It’s a learnt trait; society teaches us that if we talk ourselves up, we are big headed, to full of ourselves and just plain not fun to be around.

 To some extent that is true, there is a fine line between confidence and being conceded. I am not talking about the extremes; I am talking about a healthy relationship with your inner self.

We all have ambitions in life, we all want to achieve something great, but very few of us do so. What makes the achievers different then the non-achievers? In a word, outlook, there out look on life makes all the difference.

If out outlook on life is positive, we will believe in ourselves, our inner space will be content and feel as if it can accomplish anything. The words of the outside world mean very little to a person who is content with the inner self.

The ability to filter through the negative world is an innate ability, one that we have seemed to have lost over the years. Children have this ability, which is why we say children are resilient; they have the ability to “bounce” back, the ability to filter out negative input.

Case and point, most children, if left to their own devices, will work through any negative environment, such as a funeral. Sit and watch them, if you ever get the chance, and see them smiling and playing, enjoying life. They have created a reality of happiness, of positiveness  . Yes they feel sorrow, but they also know life goes on, they have an inner knowledge that they still exists. They can filter through the negative inputs and process them as positiveness  ; an ability that we as adults seem to have lost.

The outlook of a child, for the most part, is positive, even in the worst environments. Studies have been preformed and the outcome of each study is consistent, children in poverty find, and or create an internment of contentment, one of positiveness. They work there environment to there advantage.

Please do not miss understand me, I am not suggesting that the environment has no effect on them in a negative way, because we know it does, and we have studies that also prove that point. What I am trying to establish is that we, as humans have an innate ability to deal with and process negative environments in to positive outlooks. That the human race was created to survive, and to prosper, but somewhere along they way, as we have grown up as a human race, we have lost it.

It is by no mistake that Jesus tells us to be as children if we wish to enter in to the kingdom, Jesus knows that the heart mind and soul of a child is still pure, able to process and see the good in all, including the good in self.

If I was to venture a guess as to why or how we have lost this innate ability, I would have to say it is because as the human race has grown, and life has become easier, we have grown softer.

Many articles have been written about this very topic, in the UK they have even gone as far as to create a government task force to look in to how we have “soften” or kids, how we are creating a generation of youth that will not be able to deal with stress or negative forces in life. The over protecting of our youth has gone to extremes of sheltering them.

Some examples of this are:

•  In some US schools kick ball has been band, because some kids will lose, and they are afraid of damaging the child’s psyche
• In Australia Santa can no longer say “HoHoHo” because it is a negative term for woman, he must now say “HaHaHa”
• In the UK hanging plants are no longer allowed in some towns, for fear they might fall and hit someone, or someone may run in to them

The list can be endless, but the UK has not formed a government office to look in to the hundreds of laws create to protect there children. They have, based on research, and discovered that they are creating whole generations of “scared” children. Non risk takers, and for a society, and the human race as a whole, this is a very dangerous and scary prospect.  

Risk taking is an important part of growing up, and an important part of creating that positive outlook on life that we as adults seem to lack.

We need to relearn how to look inside of ourselves, to find the magic spot in our being, that one spot that tells us “YES YOU CAN”. We need to rediscover out youthful positive outlook, and tap back in to it.

If we desire to leave our children and our grandchildren in a world full of possibilities, we need to see them for ourselves. We can not leave behind that which we do not have. We can not see the world as negative, nor see ourselves as such, and expect our children to learn any different.

The human race has the ability to create an environment that fosters positiveness, one that allows risk, and even encourages them. We are resilient people, created from goodness, and created for goodness; we just seem to have forgotten that.

So the next time you tell yourself “I can’t do this” remember you are not just telling yourself that, but you are tell the future generations that they can not do it either.

We leave behind our legacy by what we do and what we don’t do. So choose wisely, and consider the ramifications of your actions and your inactions. Choose to leave behind positive and uplifting energy rather then negative and putdown energy.

It starts with you! So make today the first day of “Yes I Can” and “Yes I will”

Paul

Les quelques semaines qui viennent de s'écouler, j'ai passé un certains nombres de nuitées dans des hôtels parisiens et de région parisienne. Des hôtels qui sont censés être tous des 3 ou 4 étoiles. La notion de service semble être complètement dépassée dans certains de ses hôtels qui ont pourtant pour leit motive : "Yes, I can", ou pas...<

Donc, il faut savoir que dans un hôtel 4 étoiles :

- On pourrait vous réveiller à 1h30 du matin pour vous faire signer votre note du restaurant, alors que vous êtes encore là pour 4 jours...

- Vous faire livrer votre pressing à 23h30 alors que vous vous apprêtiez à dormir et que vous étiez censé le retrouver dans votre chambre à 18h

- On pourrait vous interdire de manger le hamburger commandé au bar de l'hôtel au restaurant avec vos quatre autres collègues qui dinent...

- On pourrait vous livrer votre room service après 2 heures d'attente et oublier la moitié de la commande... Bein oui, faut bien tuer la vache!

- On pourrait vous offrir une glace... pour 3 personnes... Faut savoir partager ou être galant...

- On pourrait vous reprocher d'être compliqué parce que vous avez commandé un plat et/ou un apéritif différent de celui commandé par vos amis!

- On pourrait ne pas débarrasser le pot de yaourt que vous avez entamé il y a trois jours de votre chambre sous prétexte que vous auriez peut être envie de le finir...

- Moi : "Un jus s'il vous plaît ",

Serveur : "Un jus de pomme ou un jus de fruit?"

Moi (étonnée) : 'Un jus de fruit" (sur le ton de l'humour)

Le serveur part chercher mon jus de fruit, il le cherche toujours en ce moment... Il doit être entrain d'hésiter sur lequel des jus de fruit m'apporter!

Enfin, c'est juste un petit aperçu, j'essaie de tuer le temps dans la salle d'attente de l'aéroport. Je m'envole dans 2 heures à Vienne (Autriche).

This is how Hip-Hop was used by cultural founders such as Afrika Bambatta and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and should be used by future geniuses following in will.i.am's footsteps. Hip-Hop forever.

Volume Records is thrilled to announce it's debut release of the phenomenal Gail Moore!  Ms. Moore hails from Baton Rouge, LA. and stands in a league of her own.  Gail began her music career in the secular genre but as she progressed both in her musical and spiritual journey's, she realized her true calling was ministry.  She sacrificed her "glory" in the secular world as she sang with the likes of Michael and Janet Jackson to present her musical talents to God only.  She began singing back-up for Christian Contemporary legends such as Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. 

Gail and husband, Art Moore, are founders of the prominent ministry "Yes I Can!" which caters to women of all ages and ethnic backgrounds.  Please visit their website at www.yesican.us  to learn more about this outstanding ministry and the lives it's changing. 

You can purchase and listen to Gail's mesmerizing melodies and Christ filled lyrics by logging onto Volume's website at www.volumerecords.biz. 

To book or learn more you can email mickeyvv@earthlink.net.

We would love to hear your thoughts or reviews on this album!

-Volume-