HBO is developing a drama series from rapper-actor Snoop Dogg and director-producer Allen Hughes (Broken City, Gang Related). Written by Rodney Barnes (The Boondocks, Everybody Hates Chris) and directed by Hughes, the untitled drama is set in early 1980s Los Angeles and centers on a family whose seemingly idyllic life is turned upside down by the collision of their community and American politics. Snoop Dogg (real name Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr.)was born in Long Beach and grew up in the port city just south of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. He executive produces the potential series with his longtime manager, Ted Chung of Stampede Management, Hughes and Barnes. Snoop Dogg and Barnes previously worked together on the animated family comedy The Boondocks, which Barnes executive produced and on which Snoop Dogg voiced a recurring character.
Cordell Broadus
Years of hard work and a reality show later, Cordell Broadus has officially announced that he’ll be playing football for the UCLA Bruins.
Ranked as the #14 Wide Receiver prospect in the country, the son of superstar rapper Snoop Dogg will join a UCLA program that made him an offer since he was just a ninth grader. He chose the Bruins over LSU, Arizona State and his father’s favorite school, USC.
The Long Beach native moved his son to Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, to give Cordell the best opportunity to grow athletically and academically. And with NFL regulations stating that a student-athlete must be at least three years removed from high school, fans will have the delight of watching the standout recruit make plays for several years to come. article by @TheKidSkoob via theurbandaily.com
Seventeen years ago, her doctor’s words shook her like an earthquake: “If you don’t lose weight, you won’t get to your 60th birthday.” Vivian Stancil, a retired Long Beach school teacher, was 50. She stood 5 feet tall and weighed 319 pounds.
“A bowling ball wouldn’t even describe what I was,” Stancil says. “I could barely walk. But I wanted to live, so I instantly knew what I had to do: change my diet and start exercising.”
That would not be easy. Stancil’s social life revolved around going out to eat every day with her friends. As for exercise, Stancil hadn’t done it in 40 years — ever, really. She not only didn’t know how to swim but was so afraid of water that she couldn’t dunk her head in past her eyes.
On top of that, she was legally blind.
Nearly two decades later, at 67, Stancil not only lived but became one of the country’s most honored age-group Senior Olympics swimmers, with 176 medals. In June, 1976 Olympic gold-medal swimmer John Naber presented her with the prestigious Personal Best Award, given once a year to the senior athlete who best helps to spread the word about health and wellness.
Circumstances made Stancil an unlikely role model. Stancil and her three siblings were separated and placed in foster homes when both parents had died by the time she was 7. At 16, pressured into a marriage by her cash-strapped foster parents, Stancil had two children and began slowly losing her sight because of an inherited condition called retinitis pigmentosa. Divorced at 20 and raising the kids alone on welfare, she survived a self-described “two-year pity party,” got married and divorced again, and started working as a Head Start preschool teacher in her late 20s. That would prove to be her salvation.
She earned a two-year degree in early education, married for the third and final time, to an usher at her church named Turner Stancil, and went on to get a bachelor’s degree from La Verne College. For the next decade, as her eyesight deteriorated, she was the first and only blind teacher in the Riverside and Long Beach school districts. She retired early in her late 40s.
“I did not lose weight with that,” she says with a laugh. “I’d carry pliers to loosen the wires or just drink protein shakes — lots of them.” Stancil did not laugh, however, several days after she turned 50, when her doctor told her the party was over. “The next day, I broke the news to the Eating Club: ‘I love you all, but you’re killing me. ‘So this is goodbye. But before I go, I need your help: What sport should I do?'” The Eating Club pondered. “‘You’re too fat to run or ride a bike,’ they said,” recalls Stancil. “‘What about swimming? After all, fat floats.'”
But, determined to live, she eventually found her way to Bob Hirschhorn, an instructor at Silverado Park Pool who was well-versed in training middle-aged adults petrified of the water. Her sight wasn’t a problem, save for her inability to see lane lines painted on the pool bottom, Hirschhorn says.
HBO is developing a drama series from rapper-actor Snoop Dogg and director-producer Allen Hughes (Broken City, Gang Related). Written by Rodney Barnes (The Boondocks, Everybody Hates Chris) and directed by Hughes, the untitled drama is set in early 1980s Los Angeles and centers on a family whose seemingly idyllic life is turned upside down by the collision of their community and American politics. Snoop Dogg (real name Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr.) was born in Long Beach and grew up in the port city just south of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. He executive produces the potential series with his longtime manager, Ted Chung of Stampede Management, Hughes and Barnes. Snoop Dogg and Barnes previously worked together on the animated family comedy The Boondocks, which Barnes executive produced and on which Snoop Dogg voiced a recurring character.