I suppose we should be grateful that she’s finally not talking about Madonna. Diana and Rihanna began as sensitive, wounded, but appealingly bubbly and good-natured provincial girls who slowly discovered their own photogenic virtuosity and began to conceptualize themselves as living sculpture for the lens. Both developed a false intimacy with photographers and the public… Read More Rhianna is Diana, or Camille Paglia Grasps for Relevance
I tweeted about this earlier today, but it bears shouting from the rooftops. How heinous do you have to be before someone besides Breitbart notices the assured ease with which you throw racial slurs at people? A credentialed reporter for one of the oldest American newspapers asks a public figure a question on a public… Read More Holy Crap, is Alec Baldwin Racist
While strong in reality, appear to be weak; while brave in reality, appear to be cowardly. -Sun-Tzu I mentioned this the Twit-spat that Justin Bieber started with Black Keys Drummer Patrick Carney the other day. I only marginally cared because I’m a Black Keys fan, and I never intended to pay it further mind. But… Read More Patrick Carney Trolls the Beliebers, Emerges Triumphant.
If you are Catholic, and like me, you ended yesterday, shall we say, gastronomically unsatisfied. Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, is a day both of abstinence and fasting. Abstinence means refraining from something, and Lenten Abstinence is the “no meat Fridays” rule that Catholics routinely remember to forget to remember. But fasting? That brings… Read More Happy Meat Thursday!
So Matt Damon seems to have just found out that not everyone in the world has access to a flush toilet. His response, well then he won’t use one either, then. Apparently until johns are provided for the 2.5 billion people who lack them. “Does anybody have any idea what invention has saved more lives than… Read More In Other News, Matt Damon Wants Us to Know About his Bowel Movements, and Justin Bieber is Kind of a Punk.
Politics is the ultimate entertainment. Over at The Atlantic, a sober estimation of why TV is outperforming movies as quality entertainment: Networks love the cable bundle for the same reason that viewers hate it: It’s a relentless (i.e. dependable) transfer of money from households to networks, regardless of what television or how much television we… Read More Why Netflix is Still the King…
Thank goodness we’ve got all the important problems dealt with, so we can focus on the miasmic “rapiness” of car ads. As part of a discussion on the elements of a story (protagonist, conflict, theme, etc), I showed my students — all of whom are girls — this ad. They all saw it during the… Read More How You Know There’s Nothing “Rapey” About the Audi Super Bowl Ad
[The following post will be of no interest to people who are not fans of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.] This is me, calling it. (h/t: Finish the Book, George) When the HBO series started, I knew this wouldn’t work. I knew that the series would go faster than the books,… Read More George Will Not Finish the Book(s)
Over at Protein Wisdom, a former Marine and gun store owner speaks a few truths. Writes Jeff: Unfortunately, we’ve become expert, as a popular and political culture, at pretending we haven’t encountered those very truths we continue to molest — all in an effort to will new truths into being out of something so gossamer… Read More The Irrelevance of Conservative Despair
Every week I get at least a few hits from the phrase “how I met your mother jumped the shark.” This occurs because a year ago I penned a post entitled “I Met Your Mother While Jumping a Shark.” and while it doesn’t bring in quite as much traffic as “Why Family Guy Sucks at… Read More HIMYM, Shark-Jumping, and the Lonely End of All Sitcoms
Content Blues 