Meet Laura Hall, feminist pioneer. Ms. Hall, from Britain’s Birmingham area, has become the very first person on Knifecrime Island to receive a total ban on alcohol consumption throughout that blighted country. While Hall stands on the shoulders of such locally-barred Brits like Ryan Kane, the fact that she upped her game to a level where she could take it nationwide is really a testament to the fact that in today’s world women can do anything men can do, oftentimes better. Laura Hall, we salute you! Also, you look like a fun person to hang out with. Give us a call in a couple years when you’re able to go back on the sauce.

Oh, why not, it’s Friday: Have a look at this auction of Victorian freak items that took place in London yesterday. It was pretty much MADE for the Internet. Also contains unicorns.

by Charlie

If you’re white and/or Jewish like Hollywood, I’m sure you’ve been scratching your head recently thinking: “Jeepers! If the smarty blacks don’t like Tyler Perry eeeeither, how have his movies managed to gross hundreds of millions of dollars? I daresay IIIIIII haven’t seen one of them.” Well crackers, The Tyler Perry Effect is REAL. Oprah, get to steppin’! There’s another full-size black media mogul with big titties ready to take your place.

That’s right people. It is time to talk Tyler Perry. The man who somehow jacked RuPaul’s “Most Famous Black Drag Queen in America” tiara, who is pissed at Spike Lee for being so goddamn smart and black. The man who comforted Janet Jackson after her bro took that last Propofol cocktail, the man determined to enter the American zeitgeist even if the uppity blacks and the regular whites don’t want him there.

Hollywood’s been feeling peckish about the success of this black individual and his attempt to alter the American film and television landscape. His formula, well documented by now, is simple: take one of the most underrepresented populations in the country, make them suffer, offer redemption, stir in a healthy dose of Christian dogma, star and include your full name followed by the word “Presents” in the title of each of your movies and upset the hoity-toity, cantankerous (read: “educated”) blacks of the north by using trusted racial stereotypes that may still harbor fraught historical implications, but doggone it! they make us laugh. Oh, and yes, lest I forget-as often as possible, do it in DRAG.

Perry has a lot of haters. Indeed, when he went to California to get studio backing for his first film, he was met with rejection. It went like this:

Tyler Perry’s Midnight Train From Georgia

TYLER PERRY: [rather naïvely and with a faint southern accent] My loyal fan base consists of an unprecedented number of black, churchgoing females!!!!

HOLLYWOOD: [lamenting the golden era of Quaaludes] Black people who go to church don’t go to movies.

Fin.

I agree with Hollywood. Since when are God-fearing, Christian Negresses fans of movies with cross-dressing, gun packing, weed smoking, crack peddling, wife beating, pussy selling black folks? “He realized that there is a segment of the black community that would define itself as churchgoing, and that simply has no interest in what Hollywood, the stage, and, to a certain extent, the music industry was offering,” is what Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University said for a feature on Perry in the New York Times. Well, I define myself as a woman responsible enough to treat others with respect but I’ll be damned if I let some crazy bitch step into my house without knowing the rules. In other words, like “high holiday” Jews that bang the goy (and, LOL, schvartzes too!) there are “high holiday” blacks that define themselves as “churchgoing” even though they only show up at church on Easter and Christmas.

Perry bankrolled his first film with his own money. Now he is entirely made of money, because he owns it all. And since then, Perry’s original fan base has evolved, unlike his films. Those primitive, feel-good, sanctified productions filled with the Holy Ghost now appeal to black women who want to watch movies about other black women (or black men in drag). These are women who, when not scrounging around trying to make ends meet while their baby daddy is in jail, get bored and want to watch movies in which a black man prances around in a wig and fake boobies, waving a gun and carrying an assortment of belts in his purse in case he needs to open up a can of whoopass. Genius. Duh!

And then there’s Oprah. “Do not play him small because he is not just some lucky rich Negro-turned-black man” she said of Perry in an interview with 60 Minutes. Perry has been compared to Oprah because of his Midas touch; his fan base is so loyal, so driven and committed to his films that they’ll likely come out even if he starts adding quality to his work. The recent success of the indie favorite Precious, a film Perry produced with Oprah, suggests Oprah may be grooming Perry as she carefully shapes the final act of her legacy. His success is only growing.

Now, I know people love them some Oprah, but if you’re like me (raised by a single black man), you were taught to think of Oprah as a man-hating devil woman with lots of money and a big mouth. In short: every black man’s nightmare. So, when Oprah makes a laudatory comment about a black man, you know shit is going to go DOWN. When Perry was broke and thinking about how his father used to beat him like Kunta Kinte, it was Oprah who said, let there be light, influencing Perry to pick up a pen and create his cash cow Madea. Since then, Perry is one of the highest earners in the industry that won’t even have him.

Is all the flack Perry’s received justified? Can’t a man wear drag and make movies in peace? Riddle me this: If Barack and Michele Obama are the paragons of black culture, why are the characters in Perry’s resoundingly successful “black” films so different from our first, first black family? If the themes in “Tyler Perry Presents…” are universal, than why would his movies only appeal to churchgoing black women? There are so many questions about this man it makes my weave turn. I think this means that Tyler Perry is just another extremely astute businessman-a perfect foil (as well as body double) for Oprah.

Let’s wrap this up with chitlins. Ever had ‘em? They are an acquired taste-you either love to love them, love to hate them or learn to enjoy them in spite of their bad smell. This is much like Tyler Perry’s movies. “Yeah. Superstar of the Chitlin’ Circuit, I’ll take that,” Perry said in his 60 Minutes interview. It will be interesting to see, if Perry ever distributes his films overseas, how they are received in other parts of the world. Here in the U.S., the summer flick Death at a Funeral clearly rips some of Perry’s formula and the brothas at Mo Money Taxes knew a good thing when they saw it, too. They turned Perry’s fat black cash cow into a much funnier, albeit derivative, fat white parody.

I cannot at heart be a hater. I’m always glad to see a black man making money, but I hope Perry is smart enough to use his new-found fame and fortune to diversify his oeuvre because all black women don’t go to church. That diversification is way overdue. I want a movie about black women that speaks to me too, thank you very much. I can see it now: “Charlie Presents: Charlie’s Charlie.” It’s a blockbuster waiting to HAPPEN.

Charlie is the pen name of a young woman in New York City who is merely hungry to see something that represents her experience (however confusing and slutty it may be).

The clip above depicts various camera angles of an unidentified “fiery ball of light” that made its way across the Midwest last night shortly after 10 p.m. local time. The consensus is that the object was merely a meteor getting a little too close to the Earth for comfort, but that didn’t stop every crank with an Internet connection from projecting their issues onto its blinding surface Thankfully, there is at least one person out there who still can keep their heads in times of crisis! This guy smartly chose to see past the conspiracy theorizers and offended rapture-believers: “I wish I was somewhere where it landed saw on tv that even a small piece of a meteorite is worth bucks.” Eyes on the prize! Just think of the next time something from space almost hits the earth as a make-money-fast opportunity!

Awesome! Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame goes back to the glory days of the old Pen-and-Pixel designs for the cover to his new mixtape, Lebron Flocka James Pt. 2. Here is Flocka, headband in place, superimposed upon the NBA superstar’s body, dribbling a basketball out of a fiery explosion in space (a microquasar, perhaps?), between a packaged brick of illicit-looking product and a large mound of cocaine, which seem to have been left, rather cavalierly, at center court of a basketball arena. There’s nothing left to say, really, except thank you. Thank you, Waka Flocka Flame. Thank you. Here, to better appreciate the details:

The “Tina Fey backlash” sparked by Tiger Beatdown’s Sady Doyle in a recent essay about which you all had a lot to say is apparently over. Or at least that’s the verdict of New York, which cites an essay in Salon for the cessation of hostilities. (Follow all that?) I think the entire discussion was a rather interesting one, bringing up as it did the uncertainty that still surrounds elements of feminism and our as yet unresolved idea of a woman’s role in this modern world. That said, my own issue with Tiny Fey is of a different variety: I have a problem with the way she pretends not to want it.

It, of course, is fame, and all the trappings with which that is accompanied. I should say at the outset that I think Tina Fey is quite funny, I believe that she puts together a remarkable show, and I’m pretty sure that if you want to have a smart, literate woman as an example that comedy is not simply something men do better you could do far worse in looking for a role model. (Cough* Chelsea Handler *Cough).

Still, watching her on “Saturday Night Live” last week and having read her interview in Esquire, it’s completely clear that this is a woman who wants to be famous. You do not glam yourself up-or allow yourself to be glammed up-for “SNL” or “Letterman” or some magazine that has a running feature where an attractive model relays a funny joke without being completely complicit in a process whose goal is to increase your fame and advance whatever merchandise your are attempting to dispense.

Nor do I think that this is necessarily a bad thing. Or, at least, I don’t think so anymore. Part of the disgust I believe that so many people felt at the dawn of the reality TV era came out of the blatant ambition of its participants to become famous, regardless of its origin or cause. And back then it probably was a little shocking to see that sheer desire displayed so nakedly, on such a grand scale, by so many people. But we don’t live in that world anymore.

The desire for fame is, at root, a deeply adolescent desire, but in this world where “40 is the new 30” and every other age is adjusted backwards accordingly, we are pretty much all adolescents now. Is it really shocking that we continue to exhibit adolescent attitudes? Most of us, on some level, want to be famous. We can pretend that this isn’t the case, and for some people that may even be true, but I’m pretty sure there’s a little part of everyone, deep down, that craves the attention and adoration of others. Hell, I’m probably a little guilty of it myself; you think I’m writing lengthy, unfocused rants on the Internet for the excellent pay and health benefits?

I’m not going to judge anyone for wanting to be famous. I will, however, judge people for pretending that they don’t. If you do the interviews, if you pose for the pictures, if you show up at the openings and sit in the green rooms and try to get yourself booked on the best programs, you are working for it. You want it. You can go on about how you aren’t necessarily the best looking or the funniest and it’s such a surprise when things go well, but you’ve been busting your ass to get there every day for years. This is no longer specifically about Tina Fey, but she is someone in particular-maybe I hold her to a higher standard-who seems to want to be famous but also wants the credit for seeming not to want to be famous. There’s something about trying to have it both ways that seems a little galling. (There may also be some component to this where it is judged more harshly in women, but I have a penis so I’m not going to think too deeply about that.)

Anyway, Tina Fey is great. Tina Fey is famous, and she should be. She’s worked hard for it. She shouldn’t have to pretend she hasn’t. There are worse things in life than losing your Cool Card. One of them is probably not having anyone ask to see it in the first place.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Today: two short new poems by Alex Dimitrov, including “Self Portrait as Brigitte Bardot in Contempt.”

Self Portrait as Brigitte Bardot in Contempt

In the theater of bitters
where we sharpen,

I am your favorite actress.

The curtains sway, safe in their red light;
the props, once used, still gleam-

because even our own end loves us.

And here, stage left
I bow over you and listen

to the hot, uneven rhythm of your pulse.

It tells me you are deserving-
you accept this gift, this black collar

I tighten around your neck, this final kindness.

All Souls Day

Before I leave here, I want
to hear my name change in the mouth

of another animal.
Let it take long.

He’ll want what I wanted from you-
blood at its richest,

most luminous, in that first moment
it touches the air.

Like the hunted
I need the day’s sharpness-

deeper water,
something alive to sift

through me and kill.

Alex Dimitrov is the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City. His poems have appeared in the Yale Review, Best New Poets 2009, the Southwest Review, and other journals. He works at the Academy of American Poets, frequently writes for Poets & Writers magazine, and has been the recipient of a Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan.

The Poetry Section can be reached at poems@theawl.com.

A woman in England ordered a glass of water in a restaurant; she was refused by the management, fortunately, and she returned to her customary intake of alcohol. Everyone was briefly startled but then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

by John Murray

The AP ran quite a story the other day, capped with the blockbuster headline “Sinaloa cartel wins Juarez turf war.” After 3 years of brutal assassinations, countless kidnappings and the shuttering of roughly 10,000 local businesses, the article claims the battle between the local Juarez cartel and the Sinaloans (who began to try to take over in 2007) has essentially been won. The proclamation is largely based on an FBI memo and cited confidential sources, as well as the fact that recent drug seizures indicate that between 60% and 80% of the drugs currently being trafficked through Juarez now come from the Sinaloa cartel, to draw the same conclusion.

This appears, if true-and the DEA and the chief of Mexico’s federal police do not necessarily agree it is a done deal-to be huge development in the drug war, albeit one that many may have seen coming. So now we see a larger shifting of cartel and gang alliances in a battle for power.

The Juarez cartel has been in trouble ever since its founder, the inimitable Amado Carrillo, died in 1997, while undergoing plastic surgery to change his appearance. One of the most feared and successful Mexican drug traffickers to ever live, Carrillo’s cartel was also one of the most powerful, generating roughly $200 million a week in earnings at the height of its power. From the early 90s up until the time of his death, Amado simply owned Juarez. He had what experts estimate to be about 90% of the local police on his payroll, as well as the protection of the state governor and several high-ranking federal officials.

Although he was quickly succeeded by his brother Vicente, his death created a power vacuum in the Mexican drug trafficking world. The growing Tijuana and Gulf cartels became more influential and more powerful. In 2002, Ramon and Benjamin Arellano-Felix, the leaders of the extremely aggressive Tijuana cartel, were, respectively, killed and arrested. The following year, Osiel Cardenas, leader of the Gulf cartel operating in the south Texas region, was arrested and extradited to the U.S.

With these developments, the balances of power keeping the drug trafficking world in relative peace and stability came undone. Plagued by infighting and power struggles, the Gulf and Tijuana cartels became weakened. Soon after, the Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, began to make forays into the territories of weakened cartels, most notably the Gulf-controlled city of Nuevo Laredo. In 2007, they began their campaign to wrest control of Juarez from Vicente Carrillo, and sparked the bloody turf war we’re dealing with today.

So is it over? The answer seems to be yes and no. The Sinaloa cartel is the oldest cartel in Mexico, and Chapo and Mayo are no fools. At 53 and 64, they have been in the drug business a long time. They are extremely powerful, and managed to avoid the high profiles that ultimately have led to the demise of other cartel leaders during the past two decades. They are more organized, have been around longer, and are seemingly smarter than any other group out there. Many believe, on both sides of the border, that the Sinaloa cartel has the tacit approval of the government, pointing to statistics showing that arrests of Juarez cartel members and their associated street gang, the Aztecas, have been exponentially higher than that of Sinaloa cartel members.

That’s a very important point to note. Looking at the history of the drug trade as a whole, periods of violence are always marked by a struggle for control between rival trafficking organizations. When territories or leadership aren’t in dispute, the business simply chugs along without much need for violence, save the internal judicial murders that rule a trade ungoverned by conventional law. It’s pretty much been commonly accepted that no number of federal policemen, soldiers or public awareness was going to end the violence in Juarez. It only ends when one cartel wins. And from the outset, that was probably going to be the Sinaloans.

This is where the government has to deal with the industry realistically. Felipe Calderon and his entire administration know that the drug trade isn’t going away. U.S. officials know it too. As long as there is a market for drugs in the U.S., there will be an industry to support the demand in Mexico. And when that industry funnels tens of billions of dollars into the Mexican economy every year, through investments in business, the greasing of political palms and good old-fashioned trickle-down economics, it’s hardly in Mexico’s best interest to try to stamp it out.

However, there is the issue of public unrest. 22,743 dead in Mexico since December 2006 and 5000 people murdered in two years in Juarez, the city that was supposed to be the poster child for free trade, international cooperation and Mexico’s new future in the North American economy isn’t good for business either. Worse still, the rest of the country is now being ravaged by drug violence, the situation seems to be devolving. Why wouldn’t it be in the government’s best interest to go back to the days of Amado Carrillo? Why not help the situation along to its inevitable conclusion instead of dragging it out for everyone? The sooner the most powerful cartel establishes their dominance, the sooner the murders end, and the sooner everything can get back to normal. But as the force of protection for the people, you have to look like you’re doing something about all this violence, you have to go after somebody. So why not selectively pursue the weaker cartel?

It might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s called realpolitik, and it seems to be what’s happening. Many have posited the eventuality of a Mexican megacartel [PDF], based on the supposition of these forces in Mexican politics, and while it’s certainly not yet a reality, these events do seem to be laying the groundwork for it.

But before that happens, the Juarez cartel is going to fight tooth and nail, to the death, in fact, as they reportedly stated several times. In an extraordinary turn of events, a member of the Azteca street gang who was arrested for involvement in the 3 murders of US embassy even told interrogators that the attacks were a deliberate attempt by gang and cartel leaders to get the U.S. to step in and intervene in Juarez-because they believe the army and police are on the side of the Sinaloans.

This certainly is not the end of violence in Juarez, but it’s a reminder of the past, and a taste of what’s to come. While this particular hellish outbreak of violence in Juarez may be beginning to draw to a close, it’s certainly not because its cause was rooted out. The seed of violence will still be lying dormant.

Previously: Eduardo Ravel is as Wanted as bin Laden

John Murray is a lover of obscurity. He lives and writes in Arizona.

That Deadspin live chat with Sam Lipsyte which we suggested you attend yesterday? It is actually happening now! Go there and chat. And read The Ask, if you haven’t already.