HIP-ATHLETICZ DOCUMENTARY

Today, Youth Hip-Hop Dancing in the Entertainment Industry has grown exponentially and remains relatively constant based on the creativity that evolves out of the streets, thus creating a demand for Youth Entertainment. Physical Activity and the awareness of the Health Disparities is lacking attention and affecting today’s youth Nationwide. Having Hip-Hop Dance Sporting Competitions will motivate youth to empower themselves to be healthy non-violent leaders in our communities. To support this cause:

TOP 10 REASONS TO HELP US RAISE MONEY FOR HEALTHY LIFESTYLES FOR YOUTH: 10. Because being healthy is not always how we feel physically, Mental Disease is just as contagious in youth, looking at negative images in the communities growing up. 9. Because Health education is best early in life 8. Because Body, Mind and Spirit means knowing how to take on small lifestyle changes an evolve. For some, it will mean the end of their habits, for others energy for everyday tasks such as walking; making dinner or doing homework. 7. Because being healthy doesn’t have to be boring, there are entertaining and athletic ways to promote healthy lifestyles. 6. Because it teaches you discipline. 5. Because the earlier you know about health the longer you live. 4. Because health is your wealth. 3. Because ALL donations (large and small) make a difference. 2. Because a sense of our state is our first duty, but knowing we have your support will help us meet this challenge.

1. Because Obesity is one of the #1 killers in youth in America.

You can DONATE to Assist us with Hip-Athleticz at: Turfdancing.com. Thank you, in advance, for your support.

Sincerely,

Jeriel Bey

The Architeckz

TheArchiteckz@yahoo.com

TurfDancing.com

JERIEL BEY BIO:

Featured Video Performances

Rich & Tone Productions MashCast.com-Sillywalk/Flashmob Universal Studios City Walk Hollywood (Assistant Choreographer).
Fergie Fergalicious/Assistant Choreographer.
E-40 Tell Me When To Go/ Choreographer.
E-40 U and Dat Featuring, Kandi, T-Pain/ Choreographer.
The Pack Vans.
Too Short Blow The Whistle/ Choreographer.
Snoop Dogg Candy/ Choreographer.
Federation 18 dummy.
Keak Da Sneak Superhyphy/ Choreographer.

Live Performances:
Billboard Music Awards: 2006 Fergie Performance/ Assistant Choreographer.
Anaheim Pond: Power House E-40 stage tour/Choreographer.
Chris Brown: Up Close And Personal Tour/Assistant Choreographer.
BET: 106 &PARK E-40 1st 106 & Park Performance/ Choreographer.
Nick Cannon: Wild’n Out E-40 performance/Choreographer.
AND1: Mix Tape Tour Halftime Featured Artist (25 cities)/ Head Choreographer.
Pepsi: Smash the Mic/Bay Area edition/E-40/Choreographer.
House of Blues: TI & Friends 2006 BET Awards Pre-party/E-40/ Choreographer.
KBLX: Latoya London/ Dancer
MTV: Jamie Kennedy Show/My super sweet 16 show/ Choreographer

Whatever the details, it was a big chunk of change, which, amazingly, wasn’t enough.

That’s right, during the last several months, the once multi-millionaire athlete has been pursued by multiple financial institutions for unpaid debts.

In fact, according to Shira Springer of The Boston Globe, “Employee No. 8″ owes more than $4 million to his creditors and is facing felony check fraud charges in Las Vegas. All of this at the age of 33. Wild.

Now I know what you’re thinking: How in the world does somebody — not named Montgomery Brewster — even begin to blow through that amount of money?

The answer: fairly easily.

“[Walker] liked to move in an outsized entourage; his mother estimates that, during his playing days, he was supporting 70 friends and family members in one way or another. And speaking of his mother, he built her a mansion in the Chicago suburbs, complete with an indoor pool, 10 bathrooms, and a full-size basketball court. [...]

Living at the Bishops Forest condominium complex in Waltham during the Celtics season, Walker turned the pavement surrounding his home into a virtual luxury car lot — two Bentleys, two Mercedes, a Range Rover, a Cadillac Escalade, a bright red Hummer. Often, the vehicles were tricked out with custom paint jobs, rims, and sound systems at considerable added expense. He also collected top-line watches — Rolexes and diamond-encrusted Cartiers.”

Condos, luxury cars, watches … I guess that’ll eventually force you into bankruptcy. Especially when you’re not investing any money or collecting $200 with every fifth or sixth roll of the die.

But Walker’s lavish lifestyle wasn’t all “me-me-me.” He was also a generous friend and teammate who had custom suits made for coaches, routinely picked up giant team dinner tabs and, when there were funds to spare, gave to underprivileged youngsters. He was basically spending money like it was going out of style.

And it did.

I guess Biggie was right after all: mo’ money, mo’ problems.

As the culminating event to the first ever I WILL GRADUATE DAY for New York City the Stay in School Pep Rally & Concert will combine music, education, and celebrity appearances designed to spotlight the importance of education, personal advancement, and social commitment to youth from public figures they relate to and admire. Students will hear words of wisdom from high profile individuals who will discuss their keys to success. The event will also feature college information tables, mentoring, recruitment stations and a host of resources designed to assist the students in their plights towards academic and personal excellence.

The Coca-Cola company is proud to be a sponsor of the 2009 Stay in School Pep Rally and applaud all that the Entertainers 4 Education Alliance is doing to promote the value of education and helping students be successful,” said Steven Boyd, Regional Vice President for the Coca-Cola Company. “We understand that young Americans are realizing the importance of living a balanced, healthy lifestyle and we are dedicated to making it easier for people to achieve their goals through more physical activity and informed choices about what they eat and drink.”

While the spotlight will be on the message, celebrity appearances and performances E4EA’s organization is excited about receiving a proclamation from Mayor Michael R Bloomberg, declaring October 27th as “I WILL GRADUATE DAY” for New York City, and recognize the efforts of Entertainers 4 Education Alliance.

NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Vick is back with Nike two years after the company severed ties over the quarterback’s involvement in a dogfighting ring.

“Mike has a long-standing, great relationship with Nike, and he looks forward to continuing that relationship,” his agent, Joel Segal, said Wednesday.

Segal would not reveal terms of the agreement. Nike declined a request for comment.

The deal was announced during a panel discussion at the Sports Sponsorship Symposium by Michael Principe, the managing director of BEST, the agency that represents Vick.

The endorsement is the latest step forward for Vick as he seeks to rehabilitate his career and his image after serving 18 months in federal prison. On Sunday, Vick played his first regular-season game since December 2006.

“It is quite evident that athletes that run afoul of the law are by no means relegated to obscurity when it comes to pitching products,” said David Carter, a professor of sports marketing at the University of Southern California.

Vick signed with the Philadelphia Eagles on Aug. 13. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell gave him his full reinstatement Sept. 3, saying he could return to the field in Week 3.

Vick participated in 11 plays, accounting for 30 total yards, in the Eagles’ 34-14 win over the Kansas City Chiefs, as Philadelphia tries to use him in a variety of ways as a backup.

Nike, which signed Vick as a rookie in 2001, terminated his contract in August 2007 after the Atlanta Falcons star filed a plea agreement admitting his involvement in the dogfighting ring. At the time, Nike called cruelty to animals “inhumane, abhorrent and unacceptable” and halted release of his fifth signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick V.

Back when Vick first signed with the Eagles, Carter had said he was “too toxic for most companies to even consider taking a chance on him.” What’s changed? As Carter noted Wednesday, there has been little backlash to the quarterback’s return to the NFL.

Protests have been limited, and the Eagles’ sponsors have stood by them. That experience could make companies less wary about adding Vick as an endorser, though the biggest determinant might be no different from any other athlete: how well he performs on the field.

Retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods said earlier this month that it wasn’t carrying Vick’s Eagles jersey in any of its 300 stores as a business decision.

But Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at University of Oregon, isn’t surprised that Nike re-established its relationship with Vick.

“Nike has a history of supporting athletes. I think they are supporting an athlete who still garners attention,” Swangard said. “This is about Michael Vick as the athlete not Michael Vick the prisoner. … When he is inside the lines of the field he is an exciting football player and that’s what a brand like Nike can tap into.”

Vick signed a $1.6 million deal with the Eagles, with a team option for the second year at $5.2 million. He was once a corporate star - holding multimillion dollar deals to market everything from sneakers to sports drinks. But those millions are long gone.

In July, Vick filed for bankruptcy protection while serving his sentence, saying he owed between $10 million and $50 million to creditors.

To Carter, Nike likely made a calculated business decision that the benefit of sales tied to Vick outweighed any potential public outrage.

Vick must still have some selling power if the company is getting behind him, he said. “Nobody understands their consumer and has their finger on the pulse of their consumer like Nike does.”

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AP Retail Writer Sarah Skidmore in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.

The vaccine cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world’s largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

Even though the benefit is modest, “it’s the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine,” Col. Jerome Kim said in a telephone interview. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The institute’s director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is “not the end of the road,” but said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

“It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result” and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said in a telephone interview. “This is something that we can do.”

Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, the U.N. agency UNAIDS estimates.

“Today marks an historic milestone,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine.

“It will take time and resources to fully analyze and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field,” he said in a statement.

The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study, which used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.

“This is a scientific breakthrough,” Thai Health Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai told a news conference in Bangkok. “For the first time ever there is evidence that HIV vaccine has preventative efficacy.”

The study actually tested a two-vaccine combo in a “prime-boost” approach, where the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.

They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.

ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can’t cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV’s surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and cannot cause HIV.

Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003.

“I really didn’t have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result,” Fauci confessed.

The results proved the skeptics wrong.

“The combination is stronger than each of the individual members,” said the Army’s Kim, a physician who manages the Army’s HIV vaccine program.

The study tested the combo in HIV-negative Thai men and women ages 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four “priming” doses of ALVAC and two “boost” doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots. No one knew who got what until the study ended.

All were given condoms, counseling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines.

Participants were followed for three years after vaccination ended.

Results: New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group.

The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood of those who did become infected. That had been another goal of the study — seeing whether the vaccine could limit damage to the immune system and help keep infected people from developing full-blown AIDS.

That result is “one of the most important and intriguing findings of this trial,” Fauci said. It suggests that the signs scientists have been using to gauge whether a vaccine was actually giving protection may not be valid.

“It is conceivable that we haven’t even identified yet” what really shows immunity, which is both “important and humbling” after decades of vaccine research, Fauci said.

Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October.

This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself did not cause infection.

In 2003, AIDSVAX flunked two large trials — the first late-stage tests of any AIDS vaccine at the time.

It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combo in Thailand. Before the trial began, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for U.S. licensing.

Also unclear is whether Thai volunteers who received dummy shots will now be offered the vaccine. Researchers had said they would do so if the vaccine showed clear benefit — defined as reducing the risk of infection by at least 50 percent.

Those issues, plus how to proceed with future studies, will be discussed among the governments, study sponsors and companies involved in the trial, Kim said. Scientists want to know how long will protection last, whether booster shots will be needed, and whether the vaccine helps prevent infection in gay men and injection drug users, since it was tested mostly in heterosexuals in the Thai trial.

The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study.

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Associated Press Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione reported from Minneapolis.

Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”

“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”

“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”

Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.

“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”

What he needs is segregation from pork chops and illegal pain medication. That is all.

Tell us what you think?

Wi

Alicia Keys appeared on the Today show and of course she was asked about Lil Mama jumping on stage during her performance with Jay-Z. At first, Keys tried to avoid the question saying “I rather not speak about it ’cause the performance was so phenomenal that it really doesn’t matter about anything else.”

The hosts, Kathy Lee & Hoda, immediately replied “But we love Lil Mama,” to which Alicia Keys simply said “That’s nice!” Later in the interview, Keys couldn’t avoid it any more and finally stated how she feels about the whole situation. “We can appreciate her being overwhelmed and inspired but we would’ve preferred she did it from her seat.” Alicia went on to finish by stating “Jay-Z and I are both native New Yorkers. It’s kind of a classic New York song almost like new Frank Sinatra, Liza Minelli, I don’t know. Just a beautiful New York record, I love it.”