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Are they seriously making another of those huge ensemble cast movies about pregnancy? JLo? Cameron Diaz? SERIOUSLY? Why, Anna Kendrick, why? I thought you were better than this!
This is a very interesting piece at Jezebel speculating about why…. ahem, jizzing in a woman’s face is considered so chic in pornography and beyond.
There’s a chance that several major food companies are using aborted fetuses in their food, or Oklahoma Senator Ralph Shortey is an idiot. At Gawker.
Here’s a breakdown of what black people watch on TV.
Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre is working on a experimental performance piece about ICP. Yup, read that sentence again.
I dunno, maybe I’m over sensitive, and too PC, and all the other things that ignorant folk sometimes say when they’re being assholes, but I think that a movie poster like this kinda encourages fear.
Seriously? NO ONE IS SAFE with a picture of a black man’s face, even a face as beloved as Denzel’s? It just seems like it’s encouraging some deep down fears. By the way, if the movie is Denzel being a bad guy, I’m totally in.
Rewatchability.
My friend Erin has been tweeting about the movies of 1990- how she felt about them then, how she feels about them now. It’s a fun exercise. Erin’s a genius in many ways, and her dissections of pop culture are fantastic.
Her tweets reminded me of a phenomenon that I experienced as a kid but never as an adult, which is watching movies over and over and over again, usually every day, for an extended period of time. Did you guys do this too? Why? Were we that bored? Were we that lacking in new movies to watch? Was there something about our developing brains that required constant repetition? Would we have done this had the Internet been a thing? I have more questions than answers, but here are the four movies I remember watching over and over and over.
Back to the Future- This was the first movie I ever watched on a VCR. I watched it over and over and over, annoyed with how long it took to rewind back to the beginning so I could watch it again. And the scene where Michael J Fox plays the modified guitar and gets blasted across the room? I rewound, replayed, and paused that scene at least 60 times. I had to know how it worked.
Heathers- This was my first “favorite” movie, and god bless my parents for realizing that the R rating was like the buzzing of flies to me. I was obsessed with Heathers, in a way I’ve not been obsessed with anything else. It was just so cool to look at, and even at a young age, I realized that it was smart- smarter than me, in fact. I watched it until I could recite the dialogue along with it, and until I had memorized everyone’s outfits in every scene. I loved studying slightly older females at this age, planning my semi-adulthood, and this movie gave me a lot to look at.
Real Genius- Real Genius does not get enough credit for being one of the first nerd-positive movies to make being a nerd look cool, without being called “Revenge of the Nerds”. It helped that Val Kilmer was the hippest nerd on the planet, and a fox. I watched this movie almost every day for about 8 months. I loved the intrigue, I loved the humor, and I loved that it made kid Emily feel smart.
Young Guns II- I have no explanation for this one. It was not a fantastic movie, but I think I had a Balthazar Getty crush. For one summer during middle school, it was my routine to wake up, do nothing, go into the basement, watch Young Guns II, do more nothing, eat, and then sleep.
I’m sure there are tons more movies I’ve rewatched a thousand times but have forgotten about- like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example. But you get the point. Maybe it was a necessary part of development… it was a necessary part of my development, at least. When you’re young and your hormones and your body are changing so fast you cannot keep up, perhaps you need a bit of repetition and comfort to keep you grounded. Perhaps I was working on finding my own personality in these movies, trying to figure out who I was by examining the things that kept me the most engaged. I see bits of myself in each of these movies now, and bits of these movies so deeply in my emotional DNA that I cannot figure out what came first.
Or more likely, it was boredom.
Gynomite’s Reading Room!
I know what I’m going to be using for valentines this year!!! Game of Thrones valentines!
McDonalds thought it might be fun to have people on Twitter tell their McDStories. They thought wrong.
Next time you can’t sleep, remember: New Mexico is growing.
A new post from me at xoJane about my love/hate relationship with party girls.
No. No, Mickey.
I watched Drew Peterson: Untouchable, and though it did a great job of being a campy Lifetime movie and really taking the piss out of Drew Peterson, who seems like the world’s douchiest dickbag, I also feel a bit creepy that to me, watching at home, Drew never once seemed menacing. He seemed like a joke. I don’t know if I wanted him to seem menacing, but I don’t love the idea of turning this murderer, and the two women he murdered, into a campy joke. There are still four kids who are parentless because their dad is a douchebag murderer. MURDERER. I thought I’d be at least a bit creeped out by the movie, but instead I just giggled and then felt weird about giggling. And not to be a downer on what was obviously a silly movie, but domestic violence is something that can happen to anyone, and perhaps we shouldn’t make the perpetrators so cartoonish. Or maybe my reaction is weird… I can’t tell anymore.
I love all these pictures from Sundance, but this one especially.
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I am genuinely upset with Chris Neary for sending me this skinned animatronic baby. It’s the Internet equivalent of picking a scab.
The first ever live episode of The Indoor Kids is up today! Kumail couldn’t make it, so I hosted with Matt Mira, and it was a lot of fun and a little bit scary for the non-performer that I am! Hooray!
I don’t know what is weirder- that Wayne Coyne is working with Ke$ha, or that she has so much cocaine just lying around.
2 Live Crew is reuniting! Who says gangsta rap can’t have nostalgia tours?
The racially coded language of the presidential candidates, over at Sociological Images.
A new amazing video from Nathan Barnatt, featuring lots of fun people! Watch!
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I’m not sure if this is actually a “thing”, as NY Times is maybe not an expert on teen culture, but nevertheless, they found a bunch of teenagers that express their devotion to each other by sharing passwords. Email, Facebook, phone- if you love someone, it means giving them access to everything you do… right?
A new Parks and Rec recap from me over at Vulture! I loved pausing the episode to read all the things Leslie Knope is “pro”!
An advice columnist decides that women are slick bitches made for cheating and that men are hapless ignorant idiots who never know when their ladies are stepping out.
Please do not click on this link to see what Beavis and Butthead would look like if they were real. Please. Please don’t.
We get it Chloe, you’re challenging the notion of beauty. Wait, you know what? I don’t get it. I’ve never gotten Chloe Sevigny. (Note: this is not an issue of her being gender-bendy- I love that shit. I’m just not a fan of the smug look on her face, and the tone of the whole photo shoot.)
Kids aren’t good at everything.
I was a therapist for children for a few years, and because of this, how self-esteem develops in kids has always kinda fascinated me. Research has a hard time getting at the subject, but overall, it seems that the source of self-esteem shifts as you get older (it goes from how your parents feel about you, to how your friends feel about you, to how you feel about you), and that there are some variations by ethnicity- in cultures where parental acceptance is valued more, parents have more influence on a kid’s self-esteem. Some kids get knocked down their whole lives and still feel good about themselves, while other kids succeed and still can’t seem to accept their success- that catch-all term “resilience” being the most common explanation.
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Celebrities are really saying some shit that sounds terrible later when you read it online, huh?
What the hell is going on with the girls in upstate NY?
Ezra Miller, star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, has had “many gay moments”. Myyyyyy myyyyyy myyyyyyyyy…..
The guy who left roses and cognac on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave for years hasn’t shown up in two years, so he’s been symbolically declared dead. Somehow, this really bums me out.
I’ve never seen The Biggest Loser (no judgement, just hadn’t crossed my DVR), but this study reinforces my concerns about the show- that it reinforces the idea that we’re only okay with fat people when they are trying REALLY HARD not to be fat. Is this show the reason that some of my thicker friends won’t eat in public, hoping that people will silently approve if they see that they’re working towards being more palatable by not eating?
Game of Thrones megapost! Come for the pic of Martin and his wife, stay for everything else!
Apparently, chicken mcnuggets look like the ooze that was in the tub in Ghostbusters 2. “IT TRIED TO EAT OSCAR!!” In other news, I’m never eating another chicken mcnugget.
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Michael Fassbender’s penis. Hey, I’m just a messenger.
Brand new Indoor Kids episode with Chris “Nerdist” Hardwick as our guest! Bonus- here are pics from our first ever live show, where Matt Mira filled in for Kumail, who was stuck filming until 10pm.
Please enjoy CatGifs. I know I do.
Nerd rapper Adam WarRock dropped Kumail’s name in a song! Listen up, third verse!
Letterman booker Eddie Brill removed from his position after giving an interview in which he says some questionable things about lady comics and then getting into a flame war in the comment section. No comment.
I really liked this post I saw about one audience member’s experience of Harmontown, a monthly show at NerdMelt. That’s all.
Lord of the Rings nail art. Dig it.
