I told you about some of these parties Monday, but somehow I forgot to list Mariah Carey's bash at Tao in Las Vegas. Nas and Kelis, despite being committed to hosting a party in LA, were there, along with Da Brat and others. Check out more pics from Mariah's party and the rest of Monday night's big '08 bashes after the jump.

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Since Prince is so litigious, making embeddable versions of his New Year's Eve anthem, "1999," quite hard to come by, I'm hitting you with Ice Cube's "Today Was A Good Day." Use your imagination and change "day" to "year" and it fits perfectly. This year was a bittersweet one for me — there were ups and downs, but everyone I care about is safe and healthy and gainfully employed, including myself, so I definitely can't complain much. Plus, I didn't have to use my AK. Not once. 2007 was a good year.

I predict even bigger and better things for all of us in 2008!

• Remy Ma is penniless and forbidden from going on a European tour. And at Christmastime, too! [E!]

• The judge's Christmas present to R. Kelly was a May '08 court date. He's had more than enough time to prepare a strong case, right? [SOHH]

• New Orleans cops were not in the Christmas spirit yesterday. And now the plan to bulldoze the city's projects is going full speed ahead. [AP]

• Christmas came early for the newest Real World cast, which is shockingly, primarily black. [CL]

• Vogue named Venus Williams one of the best-dressed celebrities of 2007. Serena just threw away her Christmas gift and vowed to whip her ass at Wimbledon next year. [C&D]

If it hasn't been apparent up until now, I love Christmas. This love for Christmas also applies to Christmas songs, even ones called "Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto." But my favorite Christmas album would have to be Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas. Listen to it just for her rendition of "O Holy Night." Anyway, here she is being typically Mariah-ish in her "All I Want For Christmas" video. This is the last holiday-themed rewound of the year. Shed a tear.

Awww! Even Hillary Clinton would admit this is pretty cute.

First things first — do you remember the California Raisins? I used to have a collection of them with bendy arms and legs. They were the least fun toys in existence. Secondly, do you remember the California Raisins performing the Temptations' version of "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" in an 80s Claymation Christmas special (talk about product placement!)? If not, here's a refresher.

• Attending holiday toy giveaways sponsored by black organizations = not racist. [AP]

• Is I Am Legend just a bunch of Barack Obama propaganda disguised as a blockbuster? [FN]

• Wal-Mart's supporting more minority- and women-owned businesses. [BE]

• There's not much I can say about the new show Clash of the Choirs except that I'm thankful Kelly Rowland's getting some work. [MG]

• And today's VPT (very poor taste) Award goes to Extra TV, TMZ, and many others.

Happy Monday-before-the-Monday-before-Christmas (if you don't celebrate it, then happy Monday!) — from Run DMC and me.

I'm generally not ready to feel Christmasy until after Thanksgiving, due to the fact that I like to take things one holiday at a time. But the big, commercial Christmas push comes so early these days that its sort of unavoidable.

Here's Chris Brown's take on a Christmas classic from the soundtrack of his new movie, This Christmas. He does a pretty good job, even with the silly, out-of-place choreography, but why would anyone really listen to C.B.'s version when Donny Hathaway's is available? Or am I just being resistant to change?

Common and Chris Brown, two of my favorites, bonded at yesterday's LA premiere of Chris Brown's family holiday movie, This Christmas. A large portion of black Hollywood was also there — maybe because a large portion of black Hollywood is in the movie. More pics after the jump.

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• As long as there's no sex in the champagne room… [PS]

• Dissecting a public figure's classic "apology" for saying something racist. [RR]

• Birdman thinks Lil Wayne is greater than Tupac, Biggie and Jay-Z. [MNT]

• White supremacists plan a rally in Jena on Martin Luther King day. How innovative! [SPLC]

• Mekhi Phifer spawns. [E!]

Halloween is supposed to be a holiday for the kids, who get to dress up like their favorite Disney characters and troll the neighborhood for sweets. But a lot of adults consider Halloween as a chance to expose the side of you that you keep hidden the other 364 days of the year. Most women use Halloween as an excuse to dress like a total slut and get away with it. But for the completely ignorant and/or racist, Halloween is blackface time. Every year, in the days following Halloween, some frat boy at some college gets in trouble for impersonating a black person. And they never learn!

So I put together a little poll to see what you guys think will be the most popular costume among the blackface set. O.J. Simpson's an old favorite that I'm sure will be resurrected after his recent legal snafu. The Michael Vick craze has already begun. Jay-Z and Beyonce are the perfect costumes for the most popular couple in school. Plus, if the girl is blond, she doesn't even have to wear a wig. And the Jena Six and Rutgers basketball team? Those two are only for the truly daring. But I'm sure America's privileged college boys are up for the challenge.

Minorities will be less likely to trick or treat this year, according to a new survey.

The survey found that 73 percent of whites versus 56 percent of minorities said their children will trick-or-treat on Wednesday.

That disparity in the survey is similar to the difference in how people view the safety of their neighborhoods, according to the poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Lower-income people and minorities are more likely to worry that it might not be safe to send their children out on Halloween night.

Although it seems like mostly the white kids will be getting candy, I know that a lot of schools and community centers hold Halloween parties to provide a safe environment (and candy) for kids. Plus, it's my understanding that even parents who live in the safest of neighborhoods aren't really into the traditional trick-or-treat thing anymore because of safety concerns. Is it slowly becoming obsolete?

This holiday season, the theaters will be showing not one, but two Christmas movies with all-black casts. No, they're not Tyler Perry productions. No, they don't look particularly wonderful, but they are nice family films filled with brown faces. An alternative to American Gangster for the kiddies, if you will.

Check out the trailer for The Perfect Holiday, starring Gabrielle Union opposite Morris Chestnut (an age-appropriate love-interest), above.

The Chris Brown, Regina King, and Idris Elba (!) movie This Christmas will also be in theaters next month.

This post has put me in a very premature Christmas-y mood. Great, now I'll be humming Donny Hathaway for the rest of the day.

[BV]

The annual West Indian American Day Parade is a huge event in Brooklyn, where I live, and, looking at the photos of all the colorful revelry, I'm sad I missed it. Instead I spent some time with my dear friend in Atlanta, where, at Opera on Sunday night, I had the distinctly interesting experience of standing in close proximity to the (not very tall) person I had written my weekly open letter to the day before. Had I been in a normal state of mind (i.e. had the Grey Goose not had your girl feeling a little too loose for a serious conversation about gender/racial politics), I might have introduced myself and sent Polow here. As it was, he was surrounded by a bevy of women, black ones, believe it or not, who had apparently been deemed submissive enough to share his company.

Also seen (by me) at Opera: A bunch of ATL regulars, Ludacris, and Ne-Yo, who developed an undeniably sour expression on his face when the DJ played a Bobby Valentino song right after his. Could he still be annoyed about this?

After the jump check out more pretty pictures from Labor Day in Brooklyn, since I didn't have a camera to record my Labor Day in ATL. Hope you had a great three-day weekend, too!

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