ZACHARY LITTLE

SKINS RECAP: "Tony" (S1E1)

2012-02-02T14:35:00.000-08:00

Skins! British kids! Drugs! Near constant usage of the word "twat"! Punctuation outside of quotation marks! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Skins in whom I sit lonely! Skins in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Skins! Cocksucker in Skins! Lacklove and manless in Skins!

So yeah, Skins is a show about scrappy British kids doing drugs and fucking each other. Beast from X-Men is here! This episode is named after his character, Tony, but it mostly concerns Tony's plan to get his friend Sid laid. It ends up being more Sid's story than Tony's. Maybe this episode should be called "Sid"! Whoa, I am bringing so much insight already. This episode is enjoyable, and quite funny, and rather British, yeah? But also there isn't much to it! It's 45 minutes long, and I feel like it could have been FIVE minutes and would have been about the same.

Twats! You get it. Anyway I was worried that I wouldn't be able to understand the British accents, but I mostly could. There were some exceptions, but I think I wasn't supposed to understand those parts?

PLOT SUMMARY: Tony auditions for the choir at a private, all-girls' school near his technical school. He's a good singer, and the rich, sheltered-seeming chicks over there invite him and his friends to a party. Tony's idea of a party doesn't quite align with theirs, at first.

But whatever, Tony needs a party in order to get Sid's V-card punched. It's pretty clearly established right away that Tony and his sister and all of his friends are a bunch of sluts though, so it's kind of weird that getting Sid laid would even be that hard? Look around you, Sid! But apparently Sid is just so thoroughly unfuckable that Tony makes him go buy a bunch of weed--they're going to date rape someone, basically (with weed I guess!), and Tony and his girlfriend (Michelle) and Sid all have no problem with this. But Tony eventually finds out that there is currently a bumper crop of weed out there, though, and so Sid doesn't really even need to buy it. But he gets guilted into buying A LOT, in a scene that is only funny if you REALLY find mustaches amusing.

So then Tony and his douchebag friends go to the party, and you learn why you should like them: They are like, pure beams of entropy and they totally destroy the dumb rich kids. I readily admit to buying wholesale into this kind of class-welfare porn. FUCK THOSE RICH KIDS UP, SKINS GANG! YEAH!

At the party, the best thing happens: WE MEET CASSIE, a friend of Tony's girlfriend, WHO IS GREAT ALREADY.

EAT YOUR FUCKING HEART OUT, ALASKA YOUNG. Sid almost gets to fuck Cassie, but she seemingly ODs and dies. WHOOPS! But then she comes back to life like it was no big deal. The blasé attitude they takes toward this kind of thing is weirdly infectious, I mean this episode ends with the suggestion that one of their friends and a random Polish girl might have drowned to death and it's hilarious! SKINS!

After fleeing the party, Tony accidentally drives a stolen car into the river. Everybody is fine (except for the two people who might be dead LOL) but Sid's huge weed stash goes down with the ship. Which means that mustache is going to be mad at him! OK, I am basically on board with this show.

The Fabian Lesbian Strategy

2012-02-01T15:28:00.001-08:00

BREAKING DEJA VU: So Ashley Greene is in Lucky Magazine this month and the article should probably sound familiar to you, because it's essentially the same one that various magazines have been publishing for the last three years. It's an American tradition at this point: Every February 1st, we finally throw away the wreath on our front door (which we kept after ditching the tree because even fully dead it looked cool and dry and Januarian) and then walk down to the news stand, wondering absentmindedly if the groundhog will see his shadow tomorrow (and then trying to remember if seeing the shadow is a bad thing or not and then actually even fearing for a second that the whole thing is maybe REAL, and then dismissing that and feeling terrible about your gullible self for a second). Once we arrive at our destination we see Ashley Greene smiling coyly at us from a few magazine covers, and we flip the pages and read her familiar promises that Butter and The Apparition will be released this year. Sure. Like Greene herself, these movies have been threatening to come out for so long that I'm almost certain they never will. Fool me once, etc.

Butter is an interesting case though, because it seemed for a second there like they had an OK movie on their hands. But they've delayed and delayed for various strategic reasons for so long that they've missed all possible boats. My understanding is that it was originally conceived such that Jennifer Garner's character would evoke Hillary Clinton. Either before or after the movie was even finished, they'd already started saying Sarah Palin instead. Last fall we heard stirrings that Butter would be out for award season--there was even a premiere, right?--and the watchword was suddenly Michele Bachmann. It's a little troubling that one character could apparently be read as a parody of all three of those women ("Well, she wants to do a job that doesn't directly involve her boobs or vagina!"-Writers) but it doesn't matter now anyway. The backers of this film have missed about five moments in time (one for Hillary, two each for Palin and Bachmann) to release this film in a zeitgeisty way, but the political landscape is going to be Romney/Obama and nothing else for a long while now. (Plus Game Change will be upon us soon, and the only thing it will change about movies is that it will be so Uncanny Valleyan and terrifying that no one will want to make political movies for a few years.)

And they even missed their chance to be Ashley Greene's first same-sex kiss (on camera)! Yeah, some of us knew a while ago that AG's character in Butter ALSO turns out to be a surprise lesbian, but I'd only cryptically hinted at it because I considered it a spoiler. But they mention it in Lucky, and also this movie will never be released, so whatever, there you are. She makes out with Olivia Wilde. Two surprise lesbian kisses!? (The angels are smiling down on this blog, I guess.) It's not really a pattern when you realize that Butter was filmed in like, 1996, but now it's (allegedly) to be released within weeks of Pan Am. Is that the zeitgeisty moment they're trying to capture now? Trying to cement Ashley Greene as "America's Favorite Lesbian"*?

(*If you count Alice Cullen, and why wouldn't you, this is AG's THIRD gay character. GAY HAT TRICK!)

Of corse I'm fine with that, if that really IS the plan.

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 6: Vancouver! Vancouver!

2012-01-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

Last time, I mean, not much happened. What do you want from me? This book is about feelings and shit. I’ve got the previous entries in the sidebar now, if you’re still playing catch up.

“110 Days Before”

Y’all are noting that we’re counting down to something, right? Sorry for not pointing that out before. But you got it right? You get it.

In the Old Man’s class, Miles half-listens to a lecture about the Buddhist notion of interconnectedness and half-allows his attention to wander out the window. He looks at the distant trees “clothing the hill” and sorta gets what Siddhartha was talking about. “I couldn’t see the trees for the forest,” he says. Oh. Sometimes I feel like this guy is just setting up bowling pins to knock them down for no other reason than to show us he can. DO YOU WANT A MEDAL, MILES?

But the Old Man catches him zoning out and immediately boots him from class. Yeah, for some people their connection to Those Teachers is inextricably linked to the way Those Teachers brutally punished them. Fucking sadists, man. (My father is an English teacher--I had him in the 8th grade. The former students who talk the most frequently and fondly about him for years afterward are inevitably the ones he gives the most shit to. Usually because they’re fairly smart troublemakers who appreciate, in a way, being steered in the proper direction. As for me, I was the Good Kid who was so mortified to ever be disciplined that I still resent the teachers who dared do so over a decade ago. Different strokes!) And Miles is probably about to go have some meaningful bummer time but Alaska stands up, tells the Old Man that his policies are “bullshit,” and follows Miles out. Rock.

She tells Miles they’re going to look for four leaf clovers until class is over. MPDG, emphasis on the P. But while Alaska examines a clover patch, our narrator just examines her tits. Oh, and occasionally her “long, dirty fingernails.” I get that it’s supposed to be like another adorable fact about her, but how long and dirty are we talking?

And Alaska notes where Miles is looking, and doesn’t seem totally repulsed by his leering eyes (MPDG, emphasis on the SLUT). Class ends and The Colonel and Takumi show up and they all decide to go to “the smoking hole.” No, it’s not a gay bar, it’s a place where everyone goes to smoke. On page 41, Green describes the area, and I wrote something in the margins apparently indicating that this was a pretty good description of a natural setting. Now, I can’t figure out what I liked.* He just talks about trees. And then they smoke some cigarettes.

(*But here's a great description of a place, from DFW's "Up, Simba.")

I keep wanting to say something more about the smoking, but I guess I just like how willfully transgressive it seems to be? There’s never a particular REASON for anyone to smoke--for Alaska it becomes indicative of her self-destructive impulses, but that symbolism doesn’t really extend to Chip and Miles (And Takumi doesn’t smoke. In a way that indicates his status as only like, a nominal member of the quickly-forming Alaska-Miles-Chip gang. His status is also indicated by the fact that he’s not written about very much!)--but it’s mentioned all the time. I’d like to think it’s less the nostalgia-tripping y’all have complained about in the past and more of a “fuck you” to prudish PTA types who freak out over the smoking or sex or swearing (or anti-Christian magic or whatever) being exposed to children instead of A. extending the benefit of the doubt to their own damned children and B. concerning themselves with more than the surface-level content of any given book or movie.

(I recently watched both the American and Swedish film adaptations of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Not only is the American version superior in terms of basic storytelling, it’s also superior in that it’s almost totally unflinching about smoking, nudity, and both consensual and non-consensual sex. Moreso than the Swedes, even. MORESO THAN THE SWEDES! That so rarely happens that you have to appreciate whenever it does. Whether you liked the movie or not, it did not give A SINGLE FUCK about upsetting people with delicate sensibilities (and that unflinching attitude just got the movie banned in India). And what is ironic is that a lot of those prudish, easily offended types we’re talking about just LOVE procedural shows like CSI and NCIS and Criminal Minds and however many dozens of others, which all give the impression of being transgressive, or are just transgressive in very strategic callow ways. Sorry, I hate procedural shows so much!)

Takumi starts talking about the girl who got expelled, and Alaska silences him with a pretty good one-liner. “You gotta stop stealing other people’s problems and get some of your own,” she says. BOOM. See how that is just a good line and not a clever inversion of a stock phrase that gives the illusion of depth through wordplay*? I like this one. But now I’m picturing Alaska as Tom Waits, sort of.

(*Not that I’m not guilty of the same shit, but whatever this is a BLOG.)

And then she makes another pass at Miles, telling him he’s “adorable” and then quickly mentioning her boyfriend again. Almost as if she’s waiting for someone to give her verbal permission to cheat. Go ahead, Alaska! And then Takumi raps. Go away, Takumi!

“Right here, by the river, you want me to kick it? / If you smoke was a Popsicle, I’d surely lick it / My rhymin’ is old school, sort of like the ancient Romans / The Colonel’s beats is sad like Arther Miller’s Willy Loman”

OK, as a teenager I did a lot of lame shit, including rapping. And yeah, there’s a mortifying realism to reading the wack rhymes that John Green lays down here (and props to him for including the slashes to indicate line breaks) but still, OY GEVALT. I read this part (and a future, extended rap battle that goes on much, much longer) while straining my neck away from the page, trying to get away from it, somehow. I love me some Death of a Salesman references, though.

(I once wrote like ten pages of a sitcom about a family of Scientologists--L. Ron Hubbard comes back from the dead to visit his ex-girlfriend, finds out he fathered her first son and decides to move into the basement. Also they have a maid who is a ghost. And there was a running joke about everyone earnestly asking a Church employee named Bill Loman if he was related to Willy Loman from the play. Yeah, that sitcom would never have made it to air.)

And then Alaska reaches the apex of Manic Pixie Dreaminess. Only 44 pages in! That must be a record (Holy shit, we’re only 44 pages in? Don’t worry, we’ll speed up when we get to the middle of the book. There will not be any deep analysis of the pranks, I can tell you right now.)

Alaska finished her cigarette and flicked it into the river.

“Why do you smoke so damn fast?” I asked.

She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”

I rest my manic, pixie case.

CATCHING UP: Spheres Of Influence Edition

2012-01-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

I was reading the new Esquire today--Bill Clinton's on the cover--and in the back there's a section (formatted in that trademark Esquire ADHD style, boxes and charts and shit everywhere) about things men can agree on. Number 43: "Ashley Greene can go any way she wants to. It's all up to her." That line is accompanied by an old photo of her--the one where she's wearing that American Apparel-style fuck-me-leotard?--and that line is all there is. No additional copy to speak of. Huh?

I mean, I get what they're saying. Hollywood is not a meritocracy, but for Ashley Greene, and also maybe Taylor Lautner, it kind of is now. When I started to expand the scope of this blog I noted how interesting it would be to see what moves these young actors took in the aftermath of The Twilight Saga. What would they do with their fame, or in AG's case more like potential fame (in a "potential energy" kind of sense)? We haven't really answered that question yet, because it's taking fucking FOREVER to gather a decent body of evidence. But I guess we're sort of still trying. I am NOT going to see LOL in theaters, though. ANYWAY, if Ashley Greene's career falls apart, it IS going to be her fault. It will be the result of her choices as an actress and little else (and if Taylor fails it will be his dad's fault hahaha). But that is MY thesis. What is it doing in Esquire?

You know, I've stopped writing Ask Nick Sullivan, which was the main instrument with which I lovingly prodded Esquire in the past, in part because I mean how many can you even do but also in part because that column has become FAR less ridiculous in recent months. It's not about which $10,000 watch to buy, it's about how to fold your suits in a suitcase. A few of you have noted, in the comments and elsewhere, that my Ask Nick Sullivan responses are one of the top results when you search for the real column. That has less to do with my popularity (though someone at Green Mountain Coffee recently learned what kind of Internet power I wield) and more to do with Esquire's TERRIBLE web presence (for a magazine that brags about their apps and their "augmented reality" bullshit you'd think their ARTICLES would be easier to find. But still. Makes you think!

OK, it's actually probably because 1. there's a recession out there and 2. I wear more than like, band t-shirts and jeans now because I sort of have an ADULT job so I'm more conscious about the difficulties of like, managing these fucking clothes all the time (seriously, why do I have to tuck my shirt in? What is the point of that, really?) and less inclined to beat up on sartorially inquisitive men. So Nick's changed a little and I have too, and we're closer to the middle than we once were. I do not have that significant an impact on the universe. Though I was thinking the other day: if I'd been reading/using The Secret when Ashley Greene's lesbian subplot started on Pan Am, I'd have been like HOLY SHIT.

ANYWAY. The more likely theory of that mysterious Ashley Greene mention in this month's Esquire is that it's the first two sentences of her long-since-jettisoned cover story. Were they going to reach a thesis like my own, or was it the beginning on an anecdote about meeting Ashley Greene at an intersection in New York? Or was it a joke about the gay vibe that rolls off of her like radiation? I guess we'll never know, but now is as good a time as any to direct you to the predictive AG profile I once wrote (in case you are not clear on how or why Esquire is so ridiculous most of time).

And also to direct you to some blog posts that happened recently, in case you missed them:

Pan Am Recap: Ashley Greene Is Newt Gingrich

2012-01-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

I actually watched the Ashley Greene scenes of Pan Am this week! So I know what actually happened! And... it's really no different than it would have been if I'd just made all of this up. TO WIT:

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 5: Do You Hear The Rain?

2012-01-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

So I forgot to mention earlier that the first time I heard about this book (and, I think, John Green) was when I made a video about (mostly fake) last words.

When I posted it, the huge number of “John Green did this already” comments poured in, and actually kind of pissed me off? Because first of all, no he didn’t! Well, I guess if by “this” they meant “vlogging,” then well, that part is true. Also he did this. WHATEVER, dude doesn't have a monopoly on famous last words. Except he sort of does.

Anyway last time, Miles survived an assassination attempt. You guys thought this was going to be a realistic coming-of-age-story, right? Well, it is, except for that part. Seriously, that’s an outlier. And in the comments last time some of you went after the level of realism (or lack thereof) we’ve encountered so far. TO WIT:

“Since John basically wrote down everything that happened to him, a lot of the book feels anachronistic. No one would tolerate this level of very-public and easily-caught hazing, nor would there be this much smoking (although maybe my high school was just too suburban). There's just some things which happen in the book that feel very 80s high school-ish, not very early 2000s.”-Katie Of Pluto

“In fact almost the whole book seems to be a nostalgia-trip, with a very passive acceptance of events- I mean seriously, the reason Miles gave for transferring was pretty pathetic, and the characteristics required to transfer on such weak reasons never really show through during the book. But whatever!!!”-Xocolatl

First of all: I think you guys are maybe buying in a little too much to the idea that this book is WORD FOR WORD John Green’s life. From what I have read, that is more myth than reality. I mean, for one thing Miles seems to be an only child, and it kind of feels like Green’s brother is a big part of his life am I right? (Also high school in the 80s, Katie? I think you’re aging the man a little too much.)

Second of all: I agree with you all about the modernity-dissonance,* but I also remind you: shit takes place in ALABAMA. Now, I have never BEEN to Alabama, but still I guarantee you they’re maxing out at '96 down there right now.

(*I feel like most forms of narrative media took a few years to catch up to the growth of technology in the aughts. Like, 2005-2010 was the era in which movies mostly hoped you would forget that smart phones existed. They were still producing scripts that had been written ten years ago, you know? I remember Jason Reitman saying that they deliberately set Juno in a world without cell phones, basically because it was just easier. OK, haha. And now movies/TV have caught up, but they’re almost a little too proud of it. Or the product-placement money from Apple is just TOO GOOD to turn down.)

SO. In the following pages Chip and Alaska discover what happened (they thought it was going to be an innocent, non-duct-taped dunk in the lake) and are outraged, but their solution is to play a prank. Maybe my (intense) fear of water is coloring my reaction here, but that does not seem like a proportional response. If I were Chip, I would ask Miles to ID one of the guys and then I would shoot him in the kneecaps. Incidentally if there’s ever a movie version of LFA I’d want Chip to be played by Jeremy Renner’s character from The Town, somehow. Anyway, our narrator resolves to sleep fully clothed from now on (but not with like, a life vest?) which is one of those things that you think will pay off later but just doesn’t. It’s just emotional scar window-dressing.

“126 Days Before”

The next morning, The Colonel discovers that the guys who nabbed Miles also urinated in his (The Colonel’s) shoes. “Well, now it’s war,” he says. It wasn’t war before? With the attempted murdering? Anyway, Miles goes blithely to class and recalls the school’s handbook, which defined the dress code as “casual modesty,” which is obviously my new band-name. He notes with seeming disdain the way girls interpret this to mean “half asleep in cotton pajama shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops.” Uh, that's fucking hot! (Also, the half-asleep critique is rich coming from a guy who set his alarm for 8 minutes before class started.)

Alaska is in his French class (in France, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is called Le Royal With Manic Pixie Cheese) but she doesn’t even look at him. Not that that stops our hero from obsessing over her half-smirk, as if she’d “mastered the right half of the Mona Lisa’s inimitable smile.” So like, Mona Lisa after a stroke. Sorry. Miles’s first few classes are pretty hard, so he’s relieved to head to a World Religion class, which he assumes will be a walk in the park, or church I guess. TWIST: It’s A DIFFICULT CLASS AS WELL!

We meet “The Old Man,” who is an old man, who teaches the class. And he is one of Those Teachers. We have all had Those Teachers, the ones who impact your life and education in a truly captial-s Significant sort of way; I’ve had lots of those teachers. I’ve had so many of Those Teachers, at this point, that Miles’s discovery that school can be interesting is actually sort of insulting! But anyway. The Old Man says things like “You may be smart, but I have been smart longer,” and also stuff like this:

“What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”

Miles thinks of the labyrinth, duh, and then the Old Man becomes a vessel through which John Green can drop various FACTZ on us. Like so:

I’d never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not WE believed in one, in the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.

Well, THAT’s tenuous. And then Miles tells us about how much he hates discussion classes and other activities, and how much he prefers just being LECTURED AT. I don’t always disagree, but still it’s like one step forward, two steps back in terms of creating a positive attitude about education over here, eh? ANYWAY Miles goes home and takes a nap, and is woken up by Alaska, who disses our new favorite teacher and then tells him that he needs to toughen up (and this is after she’s learned about how attempted murder-y the attack on Miles was). Talk about one step forward and two (or like four or five at this point) steps back!

"122 Days Before"

Miles comes home from classes and finds The Colonel hunched over and ironing board, freaking out because he has a date with his girlfriend and her parents (fun date!) and his only dress shirt is badly wrinkled. The Colonel relates asking Alaska for help and being told “you’re not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me!” It’s unclear why exactly the the iron doesn’t do any good--Miles asks if you’re just supposed to press it against the shirt and yeah, you are--but it doesn’t, so the two of them smoke in the bathroom with the shower on, hoping to smoke/steam the shirt into shape instead. That fails too, and we meet the Colonel’s girlfriend, who is pretty and is wearing a blue sundress and looks like a “bitchy” movie star. I like a book that can mention the patriarchal paradigm on one page and call someone a bitch on the next. Seriously, I’m not being sarcastic here! I want to stand up for the word “bitch.” It’s a great word! And a good magazine. And a decent song.

Sara gets angry about The Colonel’s wrinkled shirt and he tells her he doesn’t want to go anywhere with her, and she storms out and he screams. Real talk: this is not an unfamiliar high school experience for me. And a few minutes later, when Sara calls the pay phone outside and Chip is ready for the phone call, like it has happened before, I was like I FEEL U BRO. But I am also at this point/age where I am like enjoy that drama, kid! Remember when everything was so heightened and like, you FELT things? Yeah, me neither.

And then The Colonel comes back into the dorm and pulls a gallon of milk from the minifridge, which he explains is actually “five parts milk and one part vodka.”

“I call it ambrosia. Drink of the gods. You can barely smell the vodka in the milk, so the Eagle can’t catch me unless he actually takes a sip.”

Hahaha worth it? That sounds like the most disgusting thing ever, and this is coming from a guy who mixed ginger brandy with PBR a few weeks ago. Anyway a litte ways into his phlegmy ambrosia haze, Chip explains that Sara and the other rich kids think he (the Colonel) is the one who ratted out Alaska’s roommate last year. Hence the pissing in the shoes and the attempted murdering (and the date with her parents?). God, am I the only one worried that someone's going to slip piano wire around Miles’s neck in the next chapter? What the fuck is this place?

Charles Bukowski Writes A Poem

2012-01-21T17:54:00.000-08:00

I'm still working on the impression. He's got this drawl thing I can't quite nail. I think I need to drink more.

Sexes Be Battlin'!

2012-01-19T18:53:00.000-08:00

Two days ago the author Jennifer Weiner (more like Jennifer WHINER am I right JUST KIDDING she has a valid point maybe hang on there) published a blog post in which she alleged that The New York Times is SEXIST. In that they review more books by men than women. GASP wait I mean, yeah, that's probably true. Well, it's probably reflective of systematic sexism in the publishing industry (nay, the world!), which sees dude authors as like, either Intellectual Titans or Fuck Champions or both and which sees female authors as the lady from Sex and The City or Stephenie Meyer or Jodi Picoult or all three (HOLY SHIT let's write a book about VAMPIRES WITH CANCER) but ANYWAY. You can read her post here (on her blog which, like, is there a such thing as Asperger's Syndrome for web design? If so, her blog has that) but she's got some hard data, which is where I sort of took issue with her argument.

Because she alleges that only 41 percent of the books reviewed by the NYT were written by women. Only 41 percent! Well, is 41 percent really a percentage to which we should assign "only"? And then there's the fact that she's talking about an N size of 254 books. That's not many books!

And yesterday, Salon's Teddy Wayne (he sounds like a Pan Am character) published a rebuttal to Weiner, which sadly did not take issue with her N size but instead mounted one of those ugly defenses of the poor white male in American Culture. Well, actually, he mostly just seems to agree with her and then, in the last paragraph, makes the aforementioned ugly defense. And what he does there, more than anything, is compare male authors to male porn stars. I mean, why should Jonathan Franzen shave his balls and then cum all over Jennifer Egan if SHE'S going to get the Pulitzer Prize, right? Huh? Okay, maybe I need to read the article again. Salon really throws me off, man. They always throw in that twist in the last paragraph, like M. Night Shyamalan is their publisher or something. FRANZEN WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME.

(And the comments on Teddy Wayne's post (I can't find the comments, if they exist, on Weiner's sub-Drudge Report monstrosity of a site) all read like they were written by the ghosts of Norman Mailer and Charles Bukowski. "I am a middle-aged man writing working-class fiction," one of them says, "and that is an even harder gig." I can't tell if we are joking or not, guys. Are we joking? What is happening here?)

SOPA is bad, duh

2012-01-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

So today the Internet staged a mass demonstration in opposition to SOPA and PIPA, two bills from which Congress is beating a hasty retreat as we speak. So hey, good for the Internet. Was it entirely necessary? Gawker has a very level-headed post arguing that no, it wasn't really. But the Atlantic has a slightly sunnier view. Both of those reads are worth your time even if you feel like you have a pretty good grasp of what SOPA/PIPA are all about. And this blog remains firmly against censorship of any kind, especially the censorship of nipples through shirts. Anyway.

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 4: Get My Swan Costume Ready

2012-01-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hey gang, how's this going for you, so far? What do you want to hear more about? Less about? Let me know! Also let other people know about this series. New voices are always welcome in the comments. Previously: The Same Amount Of Ice

“128 Days Before”

Pudge and Alaska sit on a swing by the lake and smoke and talk. He notes her “electric-blue-painted toes,” and I wrote “MPDG” in the margins for the first of many times. Manic Pixie Dream Girl, for the unititiated, is a term coined by AV Club writer Nathan Rabin (the fact that Rabin coined the term is a big point of pride for the AV Club. Rightly so, I suppose, but they never let a reference to the term pass by without noting its origin) in response to Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown; MPDGs are “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” We definitely have the makings for that, but we’ll see where it goes; Alaska could end up a meta-MPDG, or MMPDG,* like Clementine from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind--Wikipedia’s (far too short) entry on MPDGs notes her rejoinder to Joel that “Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive.” Of course, one of the major complaints about MPDGs is that they are essentially static characters, and ESOTSM makes a kind of argument that everybody is static, including Clementine. And ultimately I’ll make the argument that Miles ends up being his own MPDG, if someone reminds me to.

(*Another notable coinage: The “Manic Trixie Nightmare Girl,” coined by Dan Kois w/r/t Kristen Stewart in the great little flick Welcome To The Rileys, which is on Netflix Instant now, FY Information.)

But as it stands, Alaska is very MPDG, emphasis on the P and G right now. She’s just referenced Simon Bolivar’s last words: “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” And Pudge asks the clear question: “What’s the labyrinth?” Or wait, did Simon Bolivar die in a literal maze? Was it a Tri-Wizard cup kinda deal?

Her mouth close enough to me that I could feel her breath warmer than the air, she said, “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying?”

Life’s infinite mysteries? CHECK. And then for a dose of quirk, we learn about Alaska’s “life library.” In her dorm are these stacks of books--it’s extreme enough that Miles thinks they might all fall on her and kill her (crushed by books! That would be a great way to go in a novel full of literary references)--and she tells him she’s read about a third of them so far, and wants to read them all before she dies (doing life-math here...she only plans to live to be 48 or so? Pending interesting new releases, I suppose. Pending Interesting New Releases would be a great memoir title if you were a slutty librarian, by the way). “But there is so much to do,” she says. “Cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on.”

(Alaska is not unlike the revisionist version of Alice Cullen I inserted into the Twilight books. Naturally, I like her a lot.)

Alaska tells Miles that he reminds her of The Colonel/Chip when they started school together, that back then he was smart but hadn’t “done much living.” You seem to have our narrator’s (and Nathan Rabin’s number, Al.) She and Chip became a kind of prank team, I guess, like Improv Everywhere but less annoying, as Miles relates to us thusly:

So Chip became the Colonel--the military-style planner of their pranks, and Alaska was ever Alaska, the larger-than-life creative force behind them.

Haven’t you ever heard of SHOW DON’T TELL, Pudge? I guess he wouldn’t have heard of that unless they were someone’s last words. Holy shit, those would be such baller last words! “Show, don’t tell.” And then you just die. I might have to use that.

And then Alaska is even vaguely flirty with our man, mentioning that he’s cuter than Chip. “But I didn’t even just say that, because I love my boyfriend.” Aw, hell. I like Pudge, and I can see where this is going already, and so I want to tell him to stay away, but I also know that if I were in his place I wouldn’t, so I can’t. Also, it’s a book and he’s a fictional character so there’s really no way for me to communicate with him.

Alaska and Miles start heading back to the dorms, and then she asks him he ever gets “creeped out” when walking alone at night, “and even though it’s silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?” Oh man, Alaska is Tumblr in human form! That shit would have like 60,000 notes.

“127 days before”

The next morning, Miles interrogates Chip about Alaska. She’s from a place called Vine Station, which sounds like a level from Donkey Kong Country, and her boyfriend plays bass, which means Pudge is definitely fucked. Bassists get all the crazypussy (see Vicious, Sid). Chip tells him that Alaska is a whackjob anyway, and that he should aim for one of the other girls. And then we learn about the bufriedos. A bufriedo is not an ethnic slur, which was my first thought, but rather a deep fried burrito. Taco Bell must have something like that, right? Because now I want one. Pudge describes having a “culinary orgasm” upon his first bite (that was kind of a premature culinary orgasm, kid. Work on your stamina) and shares his opinion that EVERYTHING is better fried (and with bacon probably, right? Alaska is Tumblr and Pudge is Reddit. Chip is 4Chan).

Pudge then meets one of our only other significant characters, Takumi. What does Takumi look like, you ask? He’s “Japanese” and “thin.” Got it? Good. Hahaha. And then we learn about Alaska’s absent roommate, who got kicked out of school in a blaze of glory, violating three of the school’s expellable offenses at once: genital touching (ha!), drinking, and doing drugs. It’s what The Colonel calls “The Trifecta” and what I call Monday, but the issue seems to be that no one can figure out how she got caught. Takumi is worried there’s a rat. I’m kind of impressed that there’s a social continuity between years of school at this place, by the way; when I came back from summer vacation I could usually barely remember my friends’ names.

Anyway, the guys at the lunch table can barely muster any sympathy for Alaska’s roommate and even less for her boyfriend, the other half of that genital-touching equation. He was a “Weekday Warrior,” you see, and there’s that unbreachable class divide we (sort of) heard about earlier. Now, generally this is something I agree with--eat the rich, etc.--but my and the Colonel’s class prejudices are tested when it is mentioned that Chip’s girlfriend is ALSO a Weekday Warrior. So what’s the deal, guy? You hate them, but not enough to not fuck them? Actually I guess that makes sense.

So we haven’t met the rest of the student body, really, or developed much of a picture of what life is like at Culver Creek, yet. We don’t even KNOW these Weekend Warriors we are supposed to hate, you know? And then we we do meet them, and they are, as it turns out, murderers. Seriously: That night, a couple of goons burst into our narrator’s room, and The Colonel just sort of passively lets them pull Miles out of bed and walk him outside in his underwear. They bring him down to the lake, duct-tape his arms, legs, and mouth, and then hurl him into the water before he can speak a word of protest or even really understand what is happening.

Uh, what? I am not much of a fighter, but I can tell you that I would never let something like this happen to me. I would find within me the strength of ten men, and I would END those motherfuckers right there by the lake. That (alleged) douchebag swan who hangs out by the lake would have a hell of a meal; it would be very final-scene-of-Let-The-Right-One-In out there.

But if SOMEHOW they overpowered me (again, there’s no way that would happen, even out of shape as I am right now) the point where I was submerged and duct-taped would be the point at which I gave up and just DIED. I can barely swim with my appendages free! But Miles somehow relaxes enough to float to the surface (this is usually where I go wrong) and gradually wriggles himself to shore. In the YA books I’m used to, this would be the part where Miles wonders if maybe there’s something DIFFERENT about him. But instead he goes to Alaska’s room and she’s a total bitch for some reason and he goes to bed angry and confused and feeling like everyone hates him. Remember how we said Bella wasn’t relatable? Well, there’s such a thing as too relatable, maybe.

A Frame By Frame Recap Of Last Night's Pan Am (The Important Part, Anyway)

2012-01-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

Have you guys ever watched Pan Am? I've now seen about seven or eight cumulative minutes of it (which makes me an expert, essentially) and I feel OK in saying that show is BAD. I don't remember if I called it "Mad Men for retards" here or just in casual conversation, but it's basically Mad Men for retards. The four minute clip I watched today (in order to get some context for the lesbian kiss we're about to examine) had enough stilted acting (Ashley Greene is kind of channeling Naomi Watts in the first (deliberately stilted) act of Mulholland Drive here, which I am going to pretend is on purpose because lesbians) and heavy-handed "important historical political event" dialogue (it's also The West Wing for retards) to choke the horse that kicked Papa Whitman in the face. But whatever, every show has a right to fight for its own survival, and you at least gotta hand it to the ratings-strapped Pan Am for going nuclear as soon as the going got tough. How period appropriate! But of course, they ran this episode against The Golden Globes so who knows if it will even work? Poor Ashley Greene, my god.

OK to set this up a little more, here is what happens right before. Christina Ricci's character gets in an argument at a party with a conservative guy. It goes like this: "Goldwater! Commies!" "Village Voice! Journalism!" and then Christina Ricci's BF, who I gather is a conservative politician, pulls her aside and yells at her. Meanwhile Ashley Greene is watching the political argument with this little gleam in her eye like, "Yeah, punish that lefty bitch! Get her good and weak for me." And then a few seconds later Ashley Greene's BF decides to propose to her. "I've been wanting to do this since the beginning of your episode arc two weeks ago," he says. "And after watching a goofy political argument and arguing with you about whether or not I should take my jacket off I decided now would be a good time." Ashley Greene says, "Yes, if you'll make me series regular!" And Christina Ricci watches and makes a sad face. COMMERCIAL BREAK! AND THEN...ACTION:

FUN FACT: in the 1960s it was assumed that if you were throwing a party you'd make at least one office available to the womenfolk for sulking/making out purposes. They are, after all, the fairer sex! Huh?

TARGET: ACQUIRED (Yo, is it homophobic to suggest that maybe Ashley Greene plays so many gay characters (two, but three if you count Alice Cullen) because she is actually gay and therefore seeks out those parts? Or maybe that casting directors pick up the vibe from her? I kind of want her to be, because if it turns out that she is like, deeply closeted, that would make SO MUCH SENSE. The excessive number of stories about her sexual conquests in the tabloids (she may or may not be banging a married NFL player, is a new rumor), the weirdly shifting stories about her education (she really went to an all-girls de-lesbification school, which you KNOW they have in Jacksonville), the crazy amount of time she spends at the gym! Also the fact that she's been romantically linked to Joe Jonas and Reeve Carney? Oh man, this theory is AIRTIGHT.)

"Hey are you OK?" (There have also been persistent rumors that the Pan Am cast loathes Ashley Greene because she's been an entitled asshole since her first day on set. I really hope this is true. I think it would be so great if she's a huge bitch! I have no idea why, but the idea just delights me!)

"Um, obviously! Don't I seem fine and not at all hysterical?"

"No."

"Yeah, well... this show is about to get cancelled, and I was like two months away from finally escaping Wednesday Addams as my defining role. I mean, Christ, do you know how many people have stopped me on the street and shouted 'Hey! Elizabeth Wurtzel!'? ZERO, Ashley. The answer is zero."

"Listen, I know your show is in trouble, but I have a way to boost the ratings. It's going to sound crazy at first. We should kiss."

"I know, it seems desperate, and cheap, but what choice do you have? And besides, I am extremely willing."

"You'd really do that for me?"

"That's literally what I am here for. I'm a ringer! I know that now. I'm fine with it. I'm owning it."

"I'm sorry that I told US Weekly you were a cunt."

"Let's do this before people turn back to the Golden Globes."

"This would be a serious, Mad Men-esque silent beat if I didn't look so cartoonish. Can you do a Don Draper blank face?"

"Hey, that's pretty good, Ashley!"

And I guess that's where the episode ends? I mean, that's where the YouTube clip stops, and I am not going to like, research this further. I mean, if we cut from there to scissoring I'm sure there will be a gif on Tumblr pretty soon. And if this show is taking their cues from Mad Men, the next episode will only allow this moment to simmer beneath the surface of a return to the status quo. And if they're taking the WRONG cues from Mad Men, they'll drop this plot entirely! Pan Am has at least until the end of February until the ax falls, so we'll have more on this story as it develops.

Some Possible New Twilight Films

2012-01-15T13:42:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, Lionsgate purchased Summit Entertainment for something like 400 million fucking dollars. The sale has been in the works for a while, and apparently Summit was trying to ram it through before the Twilight Gravy Train arrived at the station for the last time this November. BUT! Lionsgate apparently has no intention of hanging up the conductor's cap, so to speak--in fact they are laying down brand new track! Sorry, sometimes I cling to metaphors that I shouldn't really have pursued in the first place. But the point is, there could be more Twilight movies! Or a TV show! But the likeliest scenario, as many have predicted, is a bunch of spinoffs and direct-to-DVD bullshit, somehow branded as a Twilight (think National Lampoon) product. Here, therefore, are some suggestions for potential new Twilight movies, with casting and distribution strategies suggested where appropriate.

TWILIGHT PRESENTS: Alpha Beta Omega House

Rosalie Hale's little sister Jenny (Amber Heard) and the rest of the girls from the all-vampire sorority Alpha Beta Omega get into some raunchy hijinks while trying to organize the annual blood drive. Featuring cameo appearances by Eugene Levy and Ashley Greene. Straight-to-DVD, No Rating, 28 minutes. Directed by Shia Lebeouf.

TWILIGHT PRESENTS: Jasper Goes West

Set in a tumultuous border town in the mid-nineteenth century (NOTE: this is an alternate, JJ Abramsesque timeline), this story follows cowboy/vampire Jasper Whitlock (Taylor Kitsch) who breaks away from the Cullen Gang, a ruthless group of murderers and thieves who all but run the dusty streets of Fork City. But when his former best friend Edward (Guy Pearce) murders a local woman (Michelle Williams), he agrees to join forces with her scrappy daughter Renesmee (Hailee Steinfeld) to extract bloody revenge. Directed (with marked restraint) by Kelly Reichhardt. Limited theatrical release, rated PG-13, 90 minutes.

TWILIGHT PRESENTS: Where The Heart Was

Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli) learns that "being undead doesn't mean you can't live" from the unlikeliest of sources: a domestic abuse survivor who is dying from cancer (Valerie Bertinelli). Lifetime Original film, Rated M for mature themes, 2 hours (with commercials). Directed by Martin Sheen.

TWILIGHT PRESENTS: The Dark Night Rises

100 years after the events of Breaking Dawn pt. 2, Bella Swan (Jena Malone) has ascended to Queen of the Vampires and rules Volterra with an iron fist. With the help, of course, of her right-hand woman Alice Cullen (Janet Montgomery) and consigliere Stringer Bell (Idris Elba). Forbidden to see her boyfriend, Bella's daughter Renesmee (Elle Fanning) plots against her mother. But when their position of power brings Bella, Alice and Stringer up against a coven of vampires that reminds Bella of her own former vampire family, she has a crisis of confidence. Ultimately she embraces her dark side and has Jacob Black murdered (the final scenes of this film are a direct homage to Godfather part 2). 190 minutes, rated NC-17 for excessive sexual content. Unreleased due to lawsuits from Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and Idris Elba. Directed by Zachary Little.

TWILIGHT PRESENTS: Alice Does Dallas

After realizing that human semen contains trace amounts of blood, Alice Cullen (Sasha Grey) discovers that she can survive off of it as long as she performs oral sex on a man every two hours. Also starring Jason Statham as himself. Released as a series of web shorts on the Revision 3 Network in association with AVN. 50 episodes between three and twenty minutes long. Directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

I am ready to take meet with Lionsgate execs whenever is best for them. Y'all got any suggestions or general thoughts on this development?

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 3: The Same Amount Of Ice

2012-01-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

Last time we met The Colonel. Today, we meet The Eagle, The Swan, and Alaska. I assume sooner or later we will meet someone with like, a normal human name? Otherwise in my head I fear I’m going to start seeing this story acted out by puppets, like Avenue Q or some shit.

“One Hundred Twenty-Eight Days Before”

After Miles and the Colonel/have their meet-nude-cute, the Colonel walks out the dorm door and leaves it open. We learn after a while that this is his gruff way of inviting Miles along on his errands. And when he closes a door, well, figure out the metaphor yourself.

Miles helps him pull his stuff from storage--you can store your stuff at this bitch?--and continues, natch, to complain about the heat. Ugh. So, I guess we should talk about the furniture, right? Because there’s a lot of detail regarding Chip and Miles’s decorating choices, which in theory makes it easier to picture the place. But does that like, matter? Is that a priority for you when you read things?

I’ve been thinking about why I personally get so bored when novels launch into physical descriptions of places, especially nature (oy, nature), and my theory right now is that when I read a novel, I put the characters into buildings and places that I already have a mental map for. It’s the Inception thing, basically: you construct your imagination around the hard data in your head. So I don’t need to read three paragraphs laying everything out for me--I already know. Miles’s dorm and bathroom is my old dorm and bathroom. His parents’ house, for some reason, was a combination of my childhood frenemy Billy’s house (I think it was the description of snacks his mother had laid out) and my uncle’s house in Florida (the bookshelf). The lake he will soon walk to is a pond at St. Anselm College, where my friend Brian’s dad works (we threw a folding chair into the middle of it one time). And so on.

John Green, as it turns out, went to a boarding school not unlike this one,* and so he’s doing more or less the same thing I am doing--projecting his imagination into the architecture of his memory or whatever (I would have none of those phrases at the ready were it not for C. Nolan. Remember when we all knew nothing about Inception except that it was a thriller “Set within the architecture of the mind”? And we were all just like “Put the bong down, buddy”) but from the other end. If I were just leisure reading Looking For Alaska, the truth is I would probably mentally skim over his physical descriptions, subbing mine for his. But now that I am recapping, I’m thinking about these passages more than usual, and I’m forced to mix his vision with my own. So this really IS some Inception shit.**

(*Okay, EXACTLY like this one (minor spoilers) thanks for the tip, Yaara!)

(**And it’s also kind of just the way reading is for most people, I guess, but I’ve never put it into words, you know? It feels more significant than it probably is. Reading is so magical, you guys!)

Chip’s got a couch that he found on the street (from the Allston furniture store, as we said in Boston)--Miles describes it as “30 percent baby blue faux leather and 70 percent exposed foam.” Yeah, I can picture that (INCEPTIONNNN*). He then takes Miles’s trunk, positions it in front of the couch and spells out COFFEE TABLE on it with tape. At first I was like, “huh?” but then I realized that was exactly the kind of incomprehensible, whimsical thing I’d have done in high school. (One time my brother stabbed a knife into our bedroom wall like 200 times and then glued a skateboard deck over it. Nobody knows why.)

(*I am writing right now in a papasan chair, which means essentially that I’m in a stress position out of the Army Field Manual. And now I can’t get that damn couch out of my head. I need a couch!)

And then Chip sets up a class consciousness theme that kind of hangs (somewhat haphazardly) over the whole book. He tells our narrator that the student body is divided in two. The “weekday warriors” who board during the week and then go home to their wealthy families on the weekends, and the regular poor folk like himself. Chip is the 99%, in other words. He then unceremoniously bestows Miles with his own nickname (Sadly, not “The Lieutenant”): Pudge.

“Pudge,” the Colonel said. “Because you’re skinny. It’s called irony, Pudge. Heard of it?”

Oy. Okay, so he’s Pudge now. And then Chip says it’s time to go buy cigarettes from Alaska. OK! Our heroes go LOOKING FOR ALASKA and find her down the hall (that was easy), where she has a solo dorm. The girl who was supposed to live with her got kicked out, and that seems like it warrants a story but Miles doesn’t really care/hear words anymore because suddenly he’s staring at “the hottest girl in all of human history” in cutoff jeans and a peach tank top. Yeah, I can picture that.

Alaska rambles through a story about a boy who grabbed her boob over the summer while Miles surveys her landscape. Look her in the eyes, bro! Then she mentions having a boyfriend. GUHHH I hate this guy already! I’m in your corner, Miles (I’m a great wingman, you guys). Anyway, Alaska: she’s “petite (but God, curvy)” (again bro, look in her eyes!) and she sells cigarettes and she says things like “Who’s the guy not laughing at my very funny story?” I’m getting the Manic Pixie Dream Girl vibe SO HARD already; this is exciting! I like my women like I like my coffee: fucked up and dangerous.

Alaska tells them she’ll meet them at the lake in a few minutes, so Miles and Chip walk there and smoke. Our nonsmoker narrator’s attitude is to do as the Romans do, so to speak, and even though I don’t necessarily condone smoking I very much do condone the corruption of innocents. So I think I’m on board with this. Go ahead and smoke, kids! It’s very cool, especially when girls do it. And soon Alaska shows up and starts magnificently doing just that, but in the meantime Chip introduces Miles to two potential adversaries: The Eagle and The Swan. Birds are not your friend in Culver Creek, it seems, but only one of those is a literal bird. The Eagle is The Colonel’s nickname for the school’s Principal (it’s important to note that “Alaska” is not, in fact, a nickname) and he is apparently not one of those cool educators who is OK with smoking and drinking (and who likes Arcade Fire and fucks students). Pudge learns, and raises concern about, the fact that they’re smoking within sight of said Eagle’s house, who presumably has Eagle-like vision, but the Colonel says the rules don’t really kick in until classes start. And that even then, he shouldn’t worry too much:

“The school doesn’t want your parents to think you became a fuckup here any more than YOU want your parents to think you’re a fuckup.” He blew a thin stream of smoke forcefully toward the lake. I had to admit: He looked cool doing it.

Let us note the fact that people swear in this book, as people do, and that is great. They even smoke and swear simultaneously, with no apparent regard for the precious virginal sensibilities of teens. Yay!

Chip also stresses the importance of never ratting anyone out, no matter what. Omerta keeps the aforementioned discipline ecosystem going, I guess. Fun fact: Tony Sirico, who played Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos, took the role under the condition that his character never become a rat, ever. Another fun fact: Sirico was reportedly a member of the Columbo crime family in the sixties and seventies and was arrested twenty-eight times. A third fun fact: he has played both mobsters and police officers in different commercials for Denny’s! A less fun fact: he donated $1,200 to Giuliani’s presidential campaign in 2008. Anyway, the Swan is a literal swan, who hangs out in the lake and is apparently an asshole. So.

And then Chip wanders off and Alaska shows up. She and Pudge start talking last words, as that is clearly a better icebreaker than “how 'bout this heat?”, and she asks him if he knows Simon Bolivar’s. He doesn’t, and she pulls a book out of her backpack.

And then she lit a cigarette and sucked on it so hard for so long that I thought the entire thing might burn off in one drag. She exhaled and read to me:

“‘He’--that’s Simon Bolivar--’was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. “Damn it,” he sighed. “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”’”

First of all: PUNCTUATIONCEPTION. Second of all: awesome. Third of all: I’m kind of too distracted thinking about sucking hard and long on something to fully process all that labyrinth shit. Miles’s brain is working in a similar way. He pauses the action to tell us about how foxy Alaska is, how the “burning cherry of the cigarette washed her face in pale red light.” How her eyes, even in the dark, are “fierce emeralds.” OK, but that is not how men talk. And then he notes her “breasts straining against her tight tank top” yearning to be free. We’re getting closer to how men talk. How’s her face, incidentally? Not that that’s a dealbreaker.

Ashley Greene News Roundup!

2012-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

I know I said I wasn't going to do this shit anymore, but I kind of fell down the Ashley Greene rabbithole just now. I haven't been hearing about this stuff because 247Greene has been AWOL (more on that in a sec) but apparently there is some shit to report.

According to my new AG news feed, Greene has dropped out of that movie called The Boom Boom Room. Good. Except wasn't she going to be opposite Hal Holbrook or some shit? Oh well.
AG is the new face/boobs/crotch for DKNY, and she's got a billboard up in Times Square. Pretty cool! Almost as cool as being in a movie! And here's are some behind the scenes videos of the DKNY photoshoots, which are very slick. Don't you kind of feel like AG finally looks like a vampire? At first I was like "cool" and then I was like "maybe she should check in somewhere?"
I'm obviously burying the lede though. I haven't been following AG's arc on Pan Am because UGH and also WHY but apparently I am going to have to tune in now, because on January 22nd she's going to straight up LESBIAN SEDUCE Christina Ricci, which I think is a dream we all didn't even know we had. But there it is. THERE IT IS. Emily and I were discussing recently the literary device of the SURPRISE LESBIANS and we concluded that it's a pretty great device. And this is AG's second at-bat on the SL front (can we get away with SIKE DYKE?) so good for her, I guess (and also there is no way Olivia Twisted is not going to be a big lesbian fantasy too, I mean we're gender-bending right out the gate! HAT TRICK). I do have to take away a few points from Pan Am for using the most TEXTBOOK LESBIAN PORN lines ever said (assuming that gif is accurate, which is a huge assumption) But whatever, Emily's first reaction to this news was "and there was much rejoicing" and that sums it up, I think.
On a sad note, that aforementioned new AG news source says that 247Greene has been hospitalized for the last few weeks following an accident. That's a major bummer, and I hope you will all join me in sending good vibes in his or her direction. Get well soon, 247! If that really IS your first name...

Previously: the MUST SEE trailer for LOL, which I actually think might be a kind of remake of Minority Report?

Ashley Greene's Ass Makes Notable Appearance In Trailer For Miley Cyrus Movie

2012-01-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

So the trailer for LOL, one of Ashley Greene's many "lost projects," finally hit the web (I know that's a common phrase but for whatever reason right now I am picturing this trailer caught in a spiderweb, struggling to break free, black spidery death approaching) today, and obviously it looks terrible. I mean, we didn't even have to worry about that (someday we're all going to get together and do a double-feature of this and A Warrior's Heart and then we'll all commit suicide together). But we did have to worry about how much the filmmakers were going to make use of AG in Cruella DeVille 2K11 mode, and it appears that they have made use of her! Sort of! Because while this trailer is notable for it's lack of AG's face (she pops in at the margins every now and then), it is even more notable for the presence of her underwear-clad ASS, in center-framed closeup, at the end of the trailer.* Hello! That is how you end a trailer, my friends. I mean, it would also be a great way to start a trailer, or to just show throughout a trailer, but anyway. Butt, anyway.

(*I haven't seen any articles that yet confirm the semi-nude person we see at the end is AG, but I feel qualified to state that it is definitely her, as evidenced by the hair and information we have about her character. (Her character in the movie, not her like, moral fiber.) ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON)

Screencaps for the lazy (and for the traffic boost, DUHHH) after the jump. NSFWish.

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 2: Bring Me The Sun

2012-01-08T13:52:00.001-08:00

So I forgot last time to thank MagentaBitch, who actually sent me a BRAND NEW copy of Looking For Alaska when I asked on Tumblr if I could borrow someone's old copy. MB: I have since scribbled all over the book you bought me and will return it to you when we're finished here. Thank you. Also: I like your screen name.

Last time, we met our narrator, who was leaving for boarding school. Today: boarding school. I know it doesn't seem like there's a lot of plot here, but learn to appreciate it. Remember Hunger Games? Oy. (Part 1: Carajo, Un Balazo.)

“One hundred twenty-eight day before”

Miles’s parents bring him to Culver Creek Preparatory School (“preparatory” is a vaguely unsettling adjective, to me) in Alabama, and his first reaction to the place is that it’s fucking hot. In fact, that is more or less his first dozen reactions. The sun burns him in a way that makes him “genuinely fear hellfire” (is that why Alabamans are so nutty Right wing?) and he discovers, to his horror, that his new dorm has no air conditioning.

When I first toured the campus of La Salle University, the college I attended for a year before transferring to Boston, the dorms I saw were wood-paneled, poorly equipped hell-holes. It was mid-July and they literally looked and felt like saunas. But I accepted my fate, as a series of financial aid fuckups and other admissions-related disasters had left me with no other choice. Luckily for me, a few weeks later I was recruited into La Salle’s Honors program (I kind of applied under-the-radar so it took them a while to realize I was a genius) which got me access to their posh, brand-new honors dorms. And that was great until I showed off my new digs to my friend Chris, who was relegated to the sauna-dorms. He brought another friend, who was also named Chris, and for the record they were both black. “So this is how white people live,” Other Chris observed, when I turned on the AC. Anyway.

Miles’s dorm is the regular, barren kind, and his parents help him unpack and then leave and he feels like he should feel more sadness at their departure (I totally get that, but the good news is my parents and his parents understand it, too). And he begins the awkward process of assimilating himself into a new culture. He’s starting at this school junior year, which is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I made exactly ONE new friend during my junior year of high school, and while he’s been my friend ever since it was a thousand times more awkward than any other friendship cultivation I’d ever experienced. I felt like I had to ask him out on a date or something, you know? Miles takes a chair outside and looks at girls’ butts (probably) and hopes someone will talk to him so he can make a witty joke (about how hot it is. Jeez Miles, punch up your act a little. I bet this guy has five minutes on airline food, you know what I mean?).

Later he meets his roommate. The kid rolls in while Miles is getting out of the shower (another thing they have at this place is a bathroom/shower in every dorm, which is another thing we had, sorry Other Chris), which is less vaguely homoerotic and more intended to evoke the awkward forced-intimacy of dorm living. My old roommate and I didn’t have much of an issue with accidental nudity and the like but it’s definitely an anxiety that you have going into such a situation. And you figure, John Green’s intended audience only knows the anxiety and not the reality. (Caveat: I had a girlfriend with an apartment off-campus, so I spent most of my accidentally and deliberately naked times there, so maybe I can’t speak from experience. Feel free to share stories in the comments!) His name is Chip, which I always thought of as a nickname, but apparently that is his real name because his nickname is "The Colonel." Pretty good nickname.

And we immediately start to build a mental picture of this kid, who is short and stocky and swaggers around the room and breezily blows off the fact that his parents aren’t helping him move in. Huh.

And there’s a bunch of rapid historocultural references peppered in for more or less no reason; atmospherics, I suppose: Before Chip shows up, Miles thinks of John F. Kennedy’s boarding school experiences, and then upon seeing his (Miles's) lousy new shower (picture basically that scene from Lost In Translation) concludes that JFK’s facilities were probably better, and that maybe they had air conditioning. Later, when Chip hears our narrator’s name is “Miles” he asks, “As in, ‘to go before I sleep?’” No Chip, as in Miles the fucking name. But perhaps the Robert Frost/Kennedy semiconnection is deliberate. And even if it isn’t, let’s pretend it is; the former was the latter’s favorite poet, after all, and he spoke at Kennedy’s inauguration.

Funny story: Frost intended to read a new poem he’d written specifically for the occasion, titled “Dedication,” but the glare on the podium was such that he could not read the pages in front of him. So he pulled a poem out of his ass, basically, and “Dedication” only recently came to light.

I don’t know why it took so long, but perhaps everybody forgot about Frost even BEING THERE because of the other thing that happened at the inauguration: Kennedy’s speech. You know the one. It had a lot of killer lines:

"Let every nation know... that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
The world is very very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life."
"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

And then of course, the big one: Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. What’s funny is that we generally think of Second Inaugurals as the famous ones. FDR’s “fear itself,” Lincoln’s “With malice toward none.” Kennedy never got a chance, but I’m sure his would have been a doozy. His last words, by the way? “No, you certainly can’t.” It was in response to the Governor of Texas noting that you couldn’t say the people of Dallas didn’t love their President. And then Lee Harvey Oswald begged to differ.

I like Bobby Kennedy’s last words better: “Is everyone else all right?” Wow, huh? Doesn’t that just fill you with, I don’t know, happysadness? There’s probably a word in German for the feeling.

A New Yorker piece* from a few years ago notes how weird it is that Kennedy and Frost were alive at the same time. Kennedy, after all, is symbolic of everything modern about America, and Robert Frost wrote poems about kids accidentally chopping their hands off on farms. Frost is Dick Whitman, and Kennedy is Don Draper. And Kennedy outlived Frost, but just barely. He spoke at Amherst College at a ceremony honoring the recently-dead poet in October 1963, and you can hear or read the transcript of his speech here. If you’ve never heard JFK talk about art, you really ought to.

(*That piece on Kennedy’s inauguration mentions a few pieces of writing on the subject of Presidential Inaugurations in general. There’s apparently a Franzen essay on GWB in from 2001 that I’ll have to check out. But I also dug this quote, from Robert Lowell’s poem about Dwight Eisenhower’s rise to power in 1953:

Ice, ice. Our wheels no longer move.
Look, the fixed stars, all just alike
as lack-land atoms, split apart,
and the Republic summons Ike,
the mausoleum in her heart.)

Anyway, The Colonel. He sees a map Miles hung on the wall and then starts rattling off the names of every country, nonchalantly mentioning after a few dozen that he’s memorized them all. And you gotta figure you rarely have the change to showcase a party trick like that one, so we’ll forgive him for this (kinda douche-y) outburst. And I get it, I mean, when you meet new people it’s hard to resist the urge to forcibly define yourself. LOOK AT ME/ LOOK AT THESE THREE IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT ME AND FILTER ALL OTHER IMPRESSIONS ABOUT ME THROUGH THEM PLEASE, you want to scream. The first few weeks of college are emphatically like that (don’t think for a second that I didn’t LOVE the fact that, as noted earlier, I had two black friends*) but it goes on forever. I remember at my last job, a guy told me on his third day “I’m the office asshole.” Oh, you are? He clearly wanted that reputation, for whatever reason, and I guess he succeeded because I don’t think he made it to day five. Anyway, The Colonel wants to be a guy who is called The Colonel and who memorizes stuff and who also wants to be all of these things:

A guy who wants to read long books
A guy whose father used to beat him with books, which forced him to only own like, Goosebumps volumes or something lest padre do more damage
A guy who smokes, perhaps understandably
A guy who is poor, and who attends “the Creek” on a full scholarship
A guy who throws all of his clothes, socks and all, unsorted into his drawers

That last one is less something he is deliberately projecting and more something that Miles obsesses over as he watches him unpack. And then The Colonel asks him what his gimmick is, what his Twitter tagline is, essentially, and Miles tells him about Henrik Ibsen’s last words. Ibsen is a rad guy, and if you don’t know him stop reading this blog and go read “A Doll’s House” and “Ghosts” right now. I’ll wait. That advice should really extend to Miles, who knows nothing of Ibsen except that as he lay dying, he overheard his nurse tell a guest that he was feeling better. “On the contrary,” he said, and then died. That’s fine, but the last lines of “Ghosts” are wayyy better.

(*With whom I lost touch basically less than a week later. I mean, I was in the Honors dorm. Do you really think I’d associate with a non-Honors students? Ha!)

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Politics

2012-01-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

On the weekends I wash dishes at my uncle Jeremy's breakfast restaurant, Colbys, downtown. It's a great way to make a little extra money. I walk there and I'm back by the early afternoon. Also, I mean, not to brag but, I'm good at it. I'm like a champion dishwasher. It's about getting a rhythm going. But anyway.

The New Hampshire Primary is on Tuesday, and in all likelihood it will be the last interesting day in the GOP campaign. Mitt Romney will crush it (they love him here) and then Rick Santorum will fall off the map again and Newt Gingrich will find some kind of self-important excuse to abandon the shell of his campaign for the good of the country.

And everyone will forget about New Hampshire and the rest of the GOP field simultaneously. For most of the country it will feel like this all only took a few minutes. But here, on the ground in New Hampshire, we've been enduring the gladhanding and the campaign events for MONTHS. By Monday you'll be saying you're over it, but we've BEEN over it.

On Monday Buddy "Also Ran" Roemer walked into my uncle's restaurant, which is tiny little place, and announced who he was and his intentions. He left in short order (GET IT? SHORT ORDER?) but it was the last straw for my uncle. Jess, one of the long-time servers there, made up a sign in crayon and hung put it on the door: NO POLITICIANS, NO EXCEPTIONS. It should be noted that this isn't the first time this policy was spelled out. In August Rick Perry came to call on Colby's patrons and Jeremy added a note to the special board (next to the standard rule of "No Cell Calls In The Dining Room"): "And No Politicians." But this time the rule caught the attention of the Seacoast Online.

“I find it incredibly rude,” said Colby, who said his political views are as liberal as they come. “I also find it amusing that they talk about how the economy and small business is so important, yet they are OK with creating a disturbance that impacts my small business.”

Having owned the small downtown restaurant since 2003, Colby said, his business model is only successful if he is able to turn over its 28 seats in an orderly fashion. He said that is hard to do when a politician barges in and interrupts customers as they dine.“I don’t appreciate Joe Blow coming in here and whoring around the dining room for votes,” he said.

In my family we're all particularly proud of that last quote (which ended up in the headline when every Fox Affiliate picked it up). And the story should have ended there, but it was picked up by The Portsmouth Herald, and then the local TV station, WMUR. And then FOX 25 news out of Boston. And then the AP. My uncle just got off the phone with the Washington Post. I want to note three things.

1. To some extent you can probably blame a slow post-Iowa news cycle for the exponential growth of this story (I've counted 31 stories on Google News so far, up from 25 earlier this afternoon). But I also think people are latching onto it, almost subconsciously, because they're frustrated with the endless hysteria that has characterized the media coverage of the campaign so far. We've seen Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich and now Santorum launched into the stratosphere for almost totally abstract reasons, then shot down again like clay pigeons. It was Romney all along; this has been a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing but a need for ratings. And people are sick of it! By carrying this story, media outlets are fueling a fire that mostly burns for them (I would say they are doing this unwittingly, but nobody self-loathes like the media).

2. Matt Taibbi wrote a great book called The Great Derangement, which is about the way modern culture allows us to only hear what we want to hear. If I'm a liberal I can watch liberal TV shows and read liberal blogs and pat myself on the back all day long without ever having to deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes with a dissenting opinion. That trend is absolutely real, and it used to be our fault as consumers, but it isn't anymore. There was a time when we could have done something about it. But that desire--the desire for the news media to do nothing but affirm your beliefs--has changed the other end of the equation. The CNN notion of objectivity now is to say "Some people are saying the earth is round. But others say the earth is flat. We'll tell you each argument and LET YOU DECIDE." That's no coincidence. If CNN came right out and SAID the earth is round, and that two plus two does not equal five, they would lose ratings. So they don't say it. It's HYSTERICAL that rumors about Obama's birth certificate still abound, and I mean hysterical in the most denotative sense of the word. Thinking about it makes me feel like I am LITERALLY going crazy.

Anyway, all of that is a very long introduction to the simple fact that a lot of people have latched on to a single phrase in that original Seacoast story: "as liberal as they come." Look at the comments on that article, and at the ones on Eater National, who also picked up this story. People are finding a way to see this not as apolitical frustration, but as a dastardly liberal way to "dismiss the First Amendment." First of all, anonymous commenters: I think you'll find that First Amendment law gets pretty muddy when it comes to privately owned businesses. Second of all: this kind of reminds me of that Stephen Colbert joke that reality has "a well-known liberal bias." Only Republicans are running right now, and therefore being apolitical is a liberal value. UGH. On the Colby's Facebook page this morning, my uncle noted a woman who called to say she was offended and never coming in again. "Please reconsider!" he wrote. "I would LOVE the opportunity to offend u in real life." Again, I am very proud. But the point is: people are ridiculous. Someone on Mediaite (in the comments) is even trying to accuse them/us of racism, I think!

3 . Perhaps my favorite (and by favorite I guess I mean LEAST FAVORITE) thing about this whole story is getting to watch the factual errors multiply across the various news outlets that pick up the story. These people get PAID to write, and they can't be bothered to fact check a goddamned thing. Even the simple attribution of the story got botched almost immediately. Seacoast Online did the initial reporting, which was then mirrored by the Portsmouth Herald. But by the time the AP picked up the story, Seacoast had been cut out of picture altogether, with the Herald getting all the credit (also kind of funny: one of the Herald's reporters has been turning up on the Colby's Facebook page, responding directly to fans of the restaurant making fun of them for sucking. Oy). Jess, the server who made the sign, has been given all sorts of bizarre job titles in different articles--even odds says by Saturday Jess and Jeremy will have been merged into one person.

It's fun to watch this story grow, but being so close to it also allows you to see, in stark relief, a lot of the problems with both the local and national media today. And the 2012 campaign has really only just started. God help us.

Previously: Carajo, Un Balazo!

BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 1: Carajo, Un Balazo!

2012-01-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

I think we need to calibrate our expectations here. Looking For Alaska is not a high-concept thriller. It does not take place in the future; no one is murdered for sport. Also: there are no werewolves, vampires, or half-human half-vampire hybrids. It is not a "paranormal romance," unless you think Manic Pixie Dream Girls qualify as paranormal creatures.

Looking For Alaska* is a story about like, people. And love, and loss, and grief. And smoking. It’s mostly about smoking.

(*Ways in which this series of blog posts will be different from the others:

Before writing a word of this, I read Looking For Alaska from beginning to end (it was one of those thing that started involuntarily but became by design). Truth be told, I can probably write better on this subject if I know it well--Blogging The Hunger Games being a case against doing it the other way. That said, I am going to be mindful of spoilers--just the one, really--and would ask you to do the same in the comments. For now.
John Green is a very different sort of author than our old friend Stephenie Meyer. He has an, I would say, extreme Internet presence (as I write this he has literally been streaming himself live on the Internet for something like five hours) and is therefore much more of a knowable entity. We do not know how (or maybe why) Stephenie Meyer’s brain works (sure, there are interviews, but interviews are bullshit), but Green is someone we can hear from (we can like, see him work in real time). And most of you probably know and understand him better than I do; though I am increasingly a fan of his work, I have literally seen less than a dozen of his videos and have only read one article about him (about his Thoughts From Places series). That will change, though! I am going to periodically watch Vlog Brothers videos (for those who don’t know, John Green’s primary YouTube channel rolls 900 fucking videos deep) and burrow a little deeper into Nerdfighterdom (Nerdfighters being the name for fans of the Vlog Brothers--and being a fan is more of a spiritual thing than you’d think). If there are VlogBrothers videos out there that pertain to specific sections of Looking For Alaska, shoot me an email or give me a heads-up in the comments, yeah? Thanks.
Despite my lack of serious knowledge about John Green, he is not very separated from me like, as a human. My long-time friend and current neighbor Jory Caron is friendly with Green. Several other people that I sort of know know him, sort of. And once I made a video gently parodying his particular, peculiar delivery style and either he or his brother Hank watched said video, as evidenced by this comment (I was proud at the time and am now kind of mortified). In other words, as Jory put it, on the Kevin Bacon-like scale I am one or less than one degree from John Green. I don’t know exactly what that disclosure has to do with anything, exactly, but reading this book FEELS different, in an authorial intent sort of way, than does reading any other book. The author is a real, vivid person, which is something I have not really experienced unless you count the experience of reading my grandmother’s self-published memoir, How To Be Hot At Sixty.
Also, maybe most importantly: I really, truly liked this book. My enthusiasm for Twilight was heavily, morbidly qualified and my enthusiasm for The Hunger Games was nonexistent, so the tone of these blog posts will probably be different.)

OK. Let’s do this. Clear eyes, full packs of cigarettes, can’t lose!

“136 Days Before”

Here we meet our narrator, Miles Standoffish. Just kidding, his last name is Halter, but anyway he is in the middle of a doomed going-away party for himself, which his parents have thrown, as he is soon to be off to boarding school. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, he explains, unless you count he “ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks” (...is he talking about us?) he sits with “by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria” of his school. And he knows they won’t come.

Miles clearly ate his Narration Wheaties this morning, right? Cavernous cafeteria! And this is pretty much the pace at which we proceed from here on out. Miles is a clever kid, and one of the first things I wrote in the margins of this book was "Maybe too clever by half?" because much as I appreciate the lively writing there are times when you just want him to RELAX. I mean, two guests finally arrive, and Miles notes that while he was never one for small talk his mother "could talk small for hours." So far so fun. A line or two later this happens when one of Miles's "guests" is talking about the relative success of a play she was in that summer.

"I guess it was," Marie said. "A lot of people came, I guess." Marie was the sort of person to guess a lot.

SIT DOWN, Miles. No, it's fine, but I worry he is going to strain himself, you know? Marie et al filter out, and Miles sits with his parents on the couch and feels pity for them that he has no friends. "I wasn't disappointed," he says. "My expectations were met."

So we have a sense of what kind of guy Miles is all ready: He's a loser but in kind of a noble way. I mean, clearly he'd like to have friends, but that desire is neither particularly pathetic nor spelled out too clearly by Green (two facts which are related. This book is welcoming me into its loving arms, is it doing the same for you? I've been lost in the desert for so long! Spitting teeth into my hand!).

Anyway, his mother asks if his lack of social success is why he wants to leave (Florida, by the way). Surely that is part of it (we also learn that his father attended the same boarding school Miles is headed to)(also, I mean, Florida! Why wouldn’t you want to leave?) but our narrator gets up and grabs a book from his father's office, a biography of Francois Rabelais, and reads them a quote. Rabelais's dying words were, "I go to seek a Great Perhaps," and while I wonder how he indicated the way those last words should be capitalized, there's no arguing that they’re pretty good last words, and Miles finds them inspiring.

I looked up Rabelais on Wikipedia, as one is wont to do, and learned that he was a humorist whose work is still shocking to many today because of his double-entendres. Being a person very interested in the double-entendre (both the literary term and the sex position) I found a few translations of his work. Here's a quote from "Gargantua and Pantagruel" (available here). It turns out his double-entendres are more like 1.5 entendres (I've emphasized a few things):

This little lecher was always groping his nurses and governesses... handling them very rudely in jumbling and tumbling them to keep them going; for he had already begun to exercise the tools, and put his codpiece in practice. Which codpiece, or braguette, his governesses did every day deck up and adorn with fair nosegays, curious rubies, sweet flowers, and fine silken tufts, and very pleasantly would pass their time in taking you know what between their fingers, and dandling it, till it did revive and creep up to the bulk and stiffness of a suppository...Then did they burst out in laughing, when they saw it lift up its ears, as if the sport had liked them. One of them would call it her little dille, her staff of love...Another, her peen, her jolly kyle, her bableret...another again, her branch of coral, her female adamant...her jewel for ladies. And some of the other women would give it these names,—my bunguetee, my stopple too, my bush-rusher, my gallant wimble, my pretty borer...my little piercer...my pusher...my honey pipe...my lusty andouille...my pretty rogue, and so forth. It belongs to me, said one. It is mine, said the other. What, quoth a third, shall I have no share in it? By my faith, I will cut it then. Ha, to cut it, said the other, would hurt him. Madam, do you cut little children's things?

HOLY SHIT, right? So what I am getting at is when Rabelais said he was going to seek a great perhaps, he was probably referring to shoving something up his butt. But Miles is seeking something a little more noble, and that is fine too.

Settle Amongst Yourselves: The Tri-Force Versus The Deathly Hallows

2012-01-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

And now a new segment on this blog, in which I make you guys decide which thing (of two or three things) is better. That's probably unclear. OK, think "would you rather" but even more abstract. You know what? Let's just get into it.

Something has been at the back of my mind for a few weeks now: Which symbol is cooler, the Tri-Force or the Deathly Hallows? (Yes, this is the kind of thing I think about a lot.)

There are a lot of similarities. Both are triangles with a kind of pleasing aesthetic simplicity. Both have rich, symbolic backstories (The Deathly Hallows represent, among other things, the folly of man's desire, and the corruption and evil that comes with great power; the Tri-Force represents, I think, Zelda's vagina? I forget actually). Both are technically three independent parts that can be united,* which for whatever reason is a big thing in the Western Hemisphere (think The Father The Son and The Holy Ghost, think tri-cornered hats, think threesomes).

(*Zelda's boobs and butt make up the other segments, right? I haven't played Ocarina Of Time in like ten years.)

And then there are the differences. The Deathly Hallows have a circle, the Tri-Force doesn't. Okay, so that's basically the biggest difference. But that's a huge difference!

And we've already covered the pros, but what of the cons? The Tri-Force is much nerdier, and its cultural zenith was 20 years ago (but if there's ever a Zelda movie, it could come back in a big way). The Deathly Hallows are so much hotter right now, but they also sort of look like a penis with one huge ball, or like a diagram of a breech baby that also has a giant head (turn the triangle upside down).

But anyway, I'm not going to decide on this. YOU ARE. Make your case in the comments (your case can be as simple as "x is cooler.") and we shall reach a verdict AS A COMMUNITY.

No Church In The Wild: The Lightning Round

2011-12-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Zac, What do you do when a hardcore vegetarian starts guilt tripping you for eating meat?

Just start salivating and then try to bite them. That's what they think of us anyway!

Hey Zac I'm a 17 year old guy from England, I'm not very popular at school; I'm kind of a clinger on. Not many people like me much and I barely go out at all. I will be going to university next year and I've never had a girlfriend or even kissed a girl. I worried that I'm gonna be socially awkward and have little friends for the rest of my life. Any Advice?

You're from England? COME TO AMERICA. Girls will literally line up and bend over when they hear your accent. And since our nation was founded by people who were unpopular in your country, it will be a nice thematic fit, too.

How do you inform a friend that they're a bitch?

This is one of those times when "a friend" means "you" right?

Hey Zac, I am 18 and I've only had 1 girlfriend and I think she didn't know what to say so she just said yes any advice on how to get a girlfriend?

MOST girls only say yes because they don't know what else to say. No shame in that game! It's what you do AFTER you've guilted them in to dating you that counts. So keep that pathetic act going! It has worked very well for me.

My boyfriend and I have nothing in common. When I told him that the world has come between us he reminded me that one time we watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" I recall that we both kinda liked it, but Zac do you think that's enough of a reason to stay in relationship with him?

You know, the philosopher MC Skat Kat once said that opposites attract. And while that is true in some cases, usually you need some kind of foothold to sustain a relationship. My wife and I go mountain climbing. GET IT? FOOTHOLD?

But seriously, you just got that song stuck in my head. So fuck you.

SEASON 2 of NO CHURCH IN THE WILD: the video series starts next week. Happy New Year, everybody!

I Enjoyed Breaking Dawn More Than Harry Potter And Other Movie Revelations From 2011

2011-12-29T18:33:00.000-08:00

This was sort of a rebuilding year for movies, right? Most of the stuff we got excited about hasn't come out yet (The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, The Avengers, etc) and some of the stuff that it seemed like we were excited about turned out to be stuff we weren't very excited about after all (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo*). Movies that were hits came seemingly out of nowhere (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Mission Impossible). And a lot of movies that looked rad were in limited release, meaning most of us haven't had a chance to see them yet (Take Shelter, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Drive, Beginners, Win Win, Sleeping Beauty, Cedar Rapids**).

(*Or maybe not yet? Give Dragon Tattoo another weekend. America didn't want to see a collection of loosely-strung together rape scenes--basically the 9 Songs of rape, I take it--over Christmas weekend, but maybe New Year's?)

(**I'm starting to realize I might have to rent movies from iTunes from now on? Is that how it's going to be? Christ.)

The other sign, for me, was that I didn't go to the movies very much this year. And I'm a big "going to the movies" guy, for lack of a better term (cinephile is not the right word for someone who saw Transformers 3). But I saw some movies that I liked, and here is basically my top ten:

10. The Other Guys

This movie came out in 2010, but I only got to it this year because nobody told me how fucking funny it is. Two words: Michael Keaton. That should be all you need to know. But if that doesn't work: Michael Keaton working at Bed, Bath and Beyond. But also: you know when you laugh half because it's funny and half because you were not expecting there to be a joke there? Imagine doing that for two hours. Gosh, when I write it like that it sounds so unpleasant! But it's not. Michael Keaton working at Bed, Bath and Beyond, okay?

9. Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

Give Michael Bay a little credit. His learning curve is a long one, but it exists. After complaints about the incomprehensibility of the action in Transformers 2, he clearly made an effort to clean up the camera work and give us a few more wide angles. I could follow what was going on about 75% of the time. And I thoroughly enjoyed about 25% of that 75%. Which doesn't sound like much, but then you remember that it's about nine hours long. But seriously folks, the last 45 minutes of this movie is an action sequence that was totally bonkers-fantastic in the theater. I mean, there's a visual reference to Oldboy in there for fuck's sake! Of course we have to wait for Transformers 4 for Michael Bay to fix his other mistake: Shia LeBeouf. Oy, the Shia. I heard Jason Statham is the choice to topline the franchise from here on out, and I hope he will bring a new (British, charming) sense of humor to the proceedings. Because as we left the theater my friend Josh noted, "That was the douchiest movie ever." And in a way, that is sort of a compliment, but not really.

By the way, I'm not entirely sure this is worth seeing unless you're watching it on a huge, 3-D screen (in a theater that smells like Axe Body Spray), so don't rush out to the Red Box or whatever you kids do these days. I see a DVD of this movie every day in the checkout line at the grocery store for like twenty-seven fucking dollars. Has anyone ever purchased a movie at a grocery store? The fuck? Anyway.

8. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows pt. 2

This movie was GREAT, So great. I was moved by it, I was thrilled by it. But I've been thinking about watching it again, and I kind of don't want to? Because HP 7 and 8 are fucking ordeals, you know? It's like climbing a mountain. When you get to the top, it's beautiful and you're so happy, but you're also kind of like, OK let's not do this again for a while. This was a feeling I once reserved only for the LOTR movies, which I have seen once and will probably never watch again (I saw them in the theaters, and own the DVDs, but I have never opened them). Apparently the Harry Potter movies have joined their ranks. One doesn't simply walk into the Battle of Hogwarts, Luke.

7. Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol

GHOST PROTOCOLLLLLL! This movie was ridiculous and I loved it so much. The action sequences are gorgeous, and there's a real wit to the proceedings that you don't really think about until later. And yes, Tom Cruise is a crazy person, but it turns out that can be an asset in the movie business (see the Burj Hotel sequence, for which Tom Cruise apparently did some of his own stunts. Being suspended a mile and a half in the air is apparently less scary when you're OT level 8 and could just levitate if you wanted to, I guess). WHO WOULDA THUNK!?!?!?

6. Breaking Dawn pt. 1

How on earth is this movie ahead of Harry Potter, you say? I can feel you angrily warming up your Tumblr dashboards. But hold up! I'm not saying BD is objectively BETTER than HP, I'm just saying the experience of watching it was way more fun. Yes, I hate everything these movies (especially this movie) stand(s) for. Does that mean they're not a fucking blast? No! I can compartmentalize the moral outrage. I'm very good at that. I would make a great sociopath.

The wedding scene was great (especially because it provided detail where the book lazily copped out), the honeymoon was actually sexy (I still want to see the original take that had to be cut because K. Stew was humping too hard, though), the body horror was sufficiently gross, and the birth scene was about as good as it could have been (except for the part where SPOILER ALERT Edward has pulled Renesmee out of Bella and Bella is fucking dying and Edward and Jacob are just kind of calmly strolling around the room for a few beats, what was that). And, again, the closing credits were killer.

I know I kind of broke up with Twilight earlier this year, but I still have some fond feelings for it along with the bitterness. This is our breakup sex. And I'm sure we'll have another drunken hookup in a year's time. It's called closure, okay?

5. Our Idiot Brother

I saw Mission: Impossible at a Regal Theater where they have that RPX sound-system shit. Are you familiar? It's super expensive and you basically pay two dollars extra to have your ears blown out, and I entertained myself while the deafening previews were happening with the thought of seeing like, a quiet indie comedy at a fucking RPX theater.

Anyway, Our Idiot Brother was great! It was assured and unassuming (and moderately funny), and it made no big deal out of the fact that like, EVERYBODY was in the damn thing. (Janet Montgomery was in it, so technically Ashley Greene sort of was too.) It was this year's Please Give (Have you seen Please Give? Please do), which is faint praise but in the very best way. Because not every movie has to be like, a big thing. Some movies can just be about a guy with a dog who has a family, you know? This will turn up on Netflix Instant sooner or later, at which point it will entertain you very thoroughly on a rainy day. And that's an underrated trait in movies! Okay, now back to the movies with explosions.

4. X-Men: First Class

Forget Weekend. The best subtle depiction of a realistic gay relationship was THIS MOVIE. I mean, just kidding, but not really? I wrote at further length about this a while ago, but the X-Men movies have struggled to integrate (ha!) the gay rights symbology with the civil rights symbology in the past, and this movie did, for the most part, a better job than the others (except for one ridiculously clunky, racist moment) symbology-wise. And also, Magneto was so badass! He's the top and Xavier is the bottom for sure, right? I'd let Magneto fuck me.

3. Bridesmaids

Cut the scene where everybody shits themselves and this would be my favorite movie of the year. Because unlike, say, The Hangover, it was a comedy about recognizable humans. A lot of them. Everybody did a great job, especially Melissa McCarthy (duh) and Rose Byrne and that dude from the IT Crowd. And Kristen Wiig! She contains multitudes, and it turns out it’s not just “multitudes of annoying one-note SNL characters.” The dress-shitting scene kinda throw a wrench into all that (though there are bright spots within it, that sounds gross but it’s not). It was grafted on by Judd Apatow, and he and everyone else involved made sure to mention that fact a lot during interviews because it FELT grafted on, and I think they were sort of heading us off at the pass. But even with all that shit, this was such a good movie. For a bunch of girls.

2. The Tree Of Life

When the credits rolled after I saw this thing, a few people scoffed and chuckled bitterly on the way out of the theater. Others were openly weeping. So, uh, that’s the range of possible experiences one could take away from this film (which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes this year). Yeah, Tree of Life gets a lot deserved credit for being basically the most beautiful series of images you will ever see on a screen, but I don’t understand the other half of the consensus, which is that there is no story. Guys, this story is so big that you technically have to say “spoiler alert” before you say “The earth forms.” Check it out if you haven’t yet.

1. Friday Night Lights season 1/Parks and Recreation seasons 3/4

One reason I didn't go to the movies much this year is because there was so much good TV at home. I know that Friday Night Lights is oldish but if you have been putting it off because UGH FOOTBALL you need to cut that shit out right now and watch. Season 1 is PERFECT. And Parks and Rec has been killing it at such a velocity that it almost makes me angry? Like, how is every episode somehow better than the last? What the fuck? It's great, please watch both of these shows, I have gained so much enjoyment from them this year, they were literally better than every movie.

So there. Eight 2011 movies and some other stuff. What were your favorite movies this year? Get at me.

(Your) Favorite Videos Of 2011

2011-12-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to do a post about my favorite video work from 2011, but I kind of don't have the energy? I put out 115 videos this year, ok? I'm tired. So I asked YOU, the reader, on Tumblr and Twitter, about what you liked. Here is what some of you said.

My friend Jory picked this one, as did his uncle Bob. When I finished I thought for sure someone would probably try to beat me up for making it, which is the way I like to feel when I finish something. I'm indebted to the cartoonist David Rees, who made it a habit of exploring one news item in successive issues of Get Your War On, allowing himself to build to different punchlines each time. The "Abortion Gap pt. 1" is here.

WabashAvenue picked this one, which I had kicking around in my head for weeks before I finally sat down and talked to a camera. That's like torture for me, does anyone else feel the same way? It's like not getting laid for a few days. I love the B-roll in this video, that was the view of Boston we had down the street from our old apartment in Eastie. I miss that place. Except not really.

Smithzette says she likes this one, despite her "gut instinct that dudes with signs don't listen. Ever."

I almost didn't post this video. I still kind of wish I hadn't, because I really didn't take a lot of time to collect my thoughts. And even if it doesn't seem like it I usually do that! But Kizzel and RosieGarcia both picked this one, the former noting that it "solidified my admiration for you." Well, thanks Kizzel. I'm not even going to make a boner joke, that's how much I appreciate your sentiments.

You guys seem to like my serious videos, eh? WHAT ABOUT THE DICK JOKES? This video is a bummer, and I keep apologizing for it, but I guess I shouldn't. HeyMolli calls it my "most moving video." Thanks, Molli! The only way I ever meant to move you guys was "gradually toward the bedroom," but whatever, this is good too.

After seeing Tree of Life this year I kind of became obsessed with developing my visual skill. I mean, I could point a camera at a pretty thing but that was about as far as it went. So I want to thank the White Mountains for giving me a lot of opportunity to practice. A few people I've already mentioned also picked this video, thanks for digging it, guys.

I loved shooting this video, and it came out fucking GORGEOUS, and I hope you like it as much as I do. This is my pick, I guess?

Watching this video reminds me that I need a haircut. Thanks to GarrettSucks for picking it.

This was fun to shoot, and even more fun to edit. I feel like I say that a lot, but it's really true in this case. Both Mastershrub and Everyday Panic picked this one, and said some very nice things about it/me. Thanks, you two.

I spent a day and a half after the SlutWalk talking into my iPod, trying to find the right words. I probably looked insane. It was a challenge that really excited me though, and I'm glad people responded to this video. I also sort of wish there'd never been a reason to make it, though! Thanks Molli and a few others who singled out this video.

Similarly, I love this video but hate the fact that it was able to exist. DeathToSwagger picked this one. Thanks, DTS! You have good bad taste.

Lastly, here are a few videos that don't necessarily represent my BEST work, but that will be important to me in years to come. MEMORIES! The last one features friend of the blog Kira! Hey Kira!

So yeah! Thanks for watching! Jenjibear also wrote in, and mostly picked videos that were in the 10 most popular from post from last week. Good choices, Jenjibear! And shoutout to Mrniggle, who liked "Teenage Drunks," a video I did for my brother that everybody hated. You and me against the world, Mr. Niggle.

If I mentioned you or your blog in this post, shoot me your mailing address on my Tumblr. I will send you something (If you live in the US! If you don't, I will send positive vibes to you).

A Very Cullen Christmas

2011-12-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

Edward Cullen carefully pulled his red Christmas sweater over his head and breathed a long breath through his nose. It was 8:25am.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” Bella said, leaning against her knees on their bed.
He turned sharply and stared through the cottage wall in the direction of his family's home.
“Relax,” she said. “It's a holiday.”
“Put some clothes on, Bella. This is the Lord's day.” Edward turned the corner to wake Renesmee.
Bella groaned, leaned back, and rolled onto her stomach.
“Are you coming?” Edward asked her impatiently upon returning.
“I'll follow.”
“Why do you always insist on having twenty minutes alone? What are you doing in here?”
“Just collecting my thoughts,” Bella said. “I'm still getting used to this vampire-brain. I need a little alone time."
“Speaking of your thoughts,” Edward said, softly now. “I think you should let me in there again.”
Bella giggled. “That's what your mom said to me in the shower this morning.”
Edward huffed, then stared into her eyes. “Let me hear you,” he implored.
Bella's face tightened in apparent concentration. “I can't do it, honey,” she said after a moment.
“I don't understand. You were so good at it for a few weeks there.”
“Well, you know, I really needed my powers when we were threatened by the Volturi,” she said quickly. “Maybe now the lack of danger...my powers are receding.”
“Hmmm,” Edward said. “Interesting. Perhaps I'll discuss that theory with Carlisle.”
“Yes, do,” Bella said, kissing him on the cheek. “I'll see you in a bit.”
Edward headed for the door and scooped up Renesmee, who was waiting patiently in the doorway.
“Come quickly, mommy,” Renesmee squeaked.
Bella chuckled. “I plan on it,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?” Edward turned.
“I said Merry Christmas,” Bella said.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, and left.

“What are you all doing?” Edward put Renesmee down and glared at his siblings. “I thought we were going to church!”
They were sprawled in various states of undress all over couches and on the floor in the living room.
“Happy holidays, Edward!” Alice said cheerily from the couch, where a Santa hat was the most significant article of clothing on her person.
“Seasons greetings!” Emmett coughed, wearing even less.
“MERRY CHRISTMAS,” Edward corrected. “Would you have the decency to hide your bodies in front of my daughter? Especially on this, the day of our Lord's blessed birth?”
“Would you have the decency to respect others' religious beliefs?” Rosalie, asked. “Especially on this, the December 25th Day Of General Holiday Celebration?”
“Our religion dictates that we lounge around naked,” Emmett said. “In fact, going to church is specifically prohibited.”
“Literally,” Jasper added, half-buried in beer cans on a reclining chair.
“You're trying to upset me,” Edward said. “This is a Christian family.”
“Not me,” Alice said, rising and wrapping a blanket around herself. “I'm Shinto.”
“You are not,” he said, crossing his arms.
“Sure I am,” she said. “See? Shin, toe!” And then she kicked him sharply in the leg.
Renesmee giggled.
“That's very insensitive. Are you coming or not?” Edward said haughtily. “I hope you understand what a sin it would be to do otherwise.”
“Bella's coming right now,” Alice grinned.
“I don't hear her footsteps,” Edward said.
“Well give her a minute to clean up!”
“Clean up what!?”
Emmett, Rosalie and Alice laughed hysterically. The beer cans on top of Jasper shook.
“I'm leaving,” Edward said, turning to the door. “Enjoy hell, losers.”
“Enjoy church, faggot.” Emmett responded.
“Whoa,” Alice said. “Not cool, bro.”

That evening, the Cullens exchanged gifts. Edward sat moodily in the corner, trying not to have any fun.
“Ron Paul's newsletters!” Jasper exclaimed, opening his gift. “This is literally the best present I've ever gotten!”
Rosalie opened her box and stared in curiously. “What is this?” she asked. She produced a blank notebook with the words 'You're Doing It Wrong' written in black.
“It's the title of your book about parenting,” Bella said. “I pulled some strings at Little Brown. You have to turn in a draft by February.”
“Bella, this is so thoughtful!”
Bella opened hers next. It was a remote control. “I don't understand,” she said.
“It controls my vibrating panties,” Alice whispered. “You're welcome.”
Emmett opened a new set of Lincoln Logs and Carlisle a new office chair and Esme opened nothing because everyone forgot she existed, even herself. And then it was Edward's turn.
Alice and Rosalie approached him, heads bowed. Rosalie thrust the package into his arms.
“Edward,” Alice said. “We realize that Christmas is important to you, and though we may be on different sides of the culture war I'd really hate to think I'd ruined this day for you. You are my brother and I love you.”
Edward smiled slightly. “So what's the book?” he asked bemusedly. “The Kama Sutra? Some other filthy piece of entertainment?”
“Just open it,” Rosalie urged.
So he did. It was a fragile thing, a very old Bible from Spain.
“It's gorgeous,” Edward said, turning it over in his hands. “Thank you.”
“Feliz navidad,” Alice said, making a 'jerking off' hand gesture for some reason.
“Whoa,” Jasper said. “I just realized that Christmas is LITERALLY Spanish for 'More Christ.'”
“Holy shit bro,” Emmett said. “You just blew my mind.”
“So, will you read us the story of Jesus's birth?” Alice asked, dancing in place. “Wouldn't that be a fun new tradition to start?”
“That's a wonderful idea, Alice,” Edward said, smiling.
“Is that story even in the Bible, though?” Rosalie asked.
“Um, I'm not sure actually,” Edward said.

My Favorite Posts Of The Year

2011-12-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

I started this blog because I wanted to make myself write a lot. And I have succeeded! We nearly cleared 400 posts this year. And sure, some of those were just screen caps of Harry Potter movies with dumb captions, but those were still written, sort of! Unfortunately there is a bit of a gap between what I like and what is "popular." It has been ever thus, so in lieu of pity please take a minute to read one of two of these posts. I was more or less happy with the way they came out.

Consider The Lobster Ravioli (Mostly because I feel like I explained academic modeling in a way that helped ME understand it? That happens sometimes)

As Wind In Dry Grass (Because HOLY SHIT.)

Happy Valentine's Day From The Cast Of Twilight

The Devil And Demi Lovato (I tried to tie all of my Twilight- and Disney- and Political-hellscape coverage together a few times at the beginning of this year. And sometimes I got close to figuring out What It All Meant. It's still one of those Marlow-in-Heart-Of-Darkness inconclusive experiences, mostly.)

Wolfe & Shorty (I honestly would expand this into a novella if I felt like there was an audience for it. I love it so.)

Proshai Jashlushka (I dedicated so much of my life to Jashley that when they broke up, it almost felt like one of my friends died. But like, a friend I sort of hated.)

Movies Are Hard: Titantic II (So much of this still makes me laugh. SINKING IMMINENT!)

Who Said It: Ashley Greene Or David Foster Wallace? (My favorite headline ever)

Here, Read This Infuriating Fucking Thing (My second favorite headline)

What To Expect When You're Expecting The Rapture

"Culture War"/"Speaking In Tongues" (T.S. Eliot's poetry is the basis of all indie rock. DEAL WITH IT.)

Writing Breaking Dawn: A Perfect Day For Vampirefish (My literary mashup in the vein of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which is called Nine Stories About Vampires, will be published as soon as someone agrees to publish it. We'll also probably have to kill all of JD Salinger's relatives. Real talk: "Uncle Wiggily In Connecticut" is the basis for every piece of fanfic I've ever written. Totally serious.)

Shut The Fuck Up, James Franco (Enough fucking said)

Five Ways To Fix The Ending Of Breaking Dawn (It's still not too late! #5 is money! Call me, Bill Condon!)

The Predictive Ashley Greene Profile (I'm still so bummed AG's Esquire profile got spiked. But maybe it's for the best that this is all we have.)

Puking Into Computers With Ivana XL (Speaking of Esquire: I totally bit their style here. But Ivana is really cool and this "interview" which we did on Facebook was so fun!)

23 Costume Ideas (OK so it doesn't really play now, but this got a real laugh out of lots of people I know IRL who are notoriously stingy with laughter)

Slow Down, Dilettante (My wife read this and said, "I really like your 'complaining about The World" posts.' So.)

The Most Popular Videos Of The Year

2011-12-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

I released something like 116 videos this year. What? Huh? No, for real, I did. And to my consistent delight, people kept coming back and watching them. A few certainly didn't seem to resonate with people (I could blame some of that on the vicissitudes of YouTube's publishing system but I won't because I AM A GENTLEMAN), and only a few of them took off beyond my standard audience of 2,000 or so freaks (luv u guyz!), but the lowest-viewed video on this list has 4,334 views right now. That feels good! 4,000+ people are willing to watch me jerk off on my apartment. Metaphorically, I mean.

1. Sex And Young People

There's a lot of trafficking in nostalgia on the Internet--it's one of Tumblr's main fuel lines (the others being Doctor Who and hipstamatic tit shots)--and I was a little uneasy about (sort of) doing that. But I figured the jokes about blue balls would offset the guilt I felt, and I was right.

2. What Is Dubstep?

Mentioning dubstep on YouTube is like mentioning Kristen Stewart's tits on the rest of the Internet. People come in droves for all the wrong reasons. But I don't care because everybody also said I looked hot in this video.

3. Gorilla Attack!

IT HAPPENED TO ME: A gorilla threw his body at me and all I thought about was whether or not I'd captured it on camera. Vlogging is going to kill me some day.

4. RSR: Osama Bin Laden

Rock and Sock and Robot takes forever to make, and when it seemed to be getting less love and attention than the videos in which I was just sitting there and talking I put it on the back burner. But I love doing an episode every now and then. And the great thing about a video series in which three puppets talk shit to each other is that occasionally you can sneak a really serious point in there. That's what she said.

5. Oscar Porno/God

I had a very specific vlog style for a while, and as soon as people started to notice that style I got a little uncomfortable. This is apparently a problem for me, as everyone tells me the name of the game for YouTube success is REPETITION. But I'm not interested in catchphrases on t-shirts, I'm sorry. Maybe some day I will be able to bite the bullet and tell you all to buy a #NCITW shirt, but for now I just can't. Anyway, I remember this being one of the first vlogs in which I tried to slow things down.

6. The Morning After Vidcon

Speaking of not selling out! Listen, I get that Vidcon is fun and I know that the Green brothers are principally involved in it, but what I don't like is people who see YouTube not as a means to an end but as just an END. You should not aspire to be famous or funny or relevant ON YOUTUBE, you should just aspire to be those things, you know?

7. Ask Three Assholes

In high school when I started doing sketch comedy I was such a DICK about not improvising anything. Stick to the script, guys, I would say. I had a lot of faith in the written word. I was wrong about that. Sometimes you should just turn a camera on and let some shit fall out of your mouth! Not that this video is the best example, I can't even really remember what's in it. But OTHER videos like this work very well sometimes.

8. Harry Potter And The Over-Represented White Population

The comments on this video provide ample evidence to the Twi-Hards out there that Potterheads really DON'T have the moral high ground. Holy shit.

9. The Tragedy Of Mitt Romney

This is probably the video I am happiest with on this list, even though I look like I just rolled out of bed. I in fact had just rolled out of bed! But anyway it's hard to make a plea for measured, reasonable discourse without sounding somehow ridiculous and boring at the same time. Just ask Jon Stewart! But I was somehow successful here, and I know because even one my ex-girlfriends told me so.

10. Inception Valentines/Conservation Hearts

I can't really explain or defend this video at all. Hahahaha.

Most Popular Posts Of The Year

2011-12-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

2011 is almost over, and for once I am not sitting here going "Wow, where does the time go?" 2011 was a LONG ASS YEAR. Don't get me wrong, it's been kind of a great one for me, but it was like one of those good long movies that still feels long, you know? Like Magnolia! This year was some Magnolia-type ish. I was really enjoying it, the whole time, but I was also like "you can go ahead and wrap up now, buddy."

I mean, just look at the topics covered on this blog. We discussed nearly the entirety of Breaking Dawn (the first few posts were in 2010). We documented the fall of Jashley. We blogged The Hunger Games. And we touched on other various topics, like X-Men and rimjobs and Harry Potter. I started an advice column which then became a video series. We were all over the fucking place this year.

Expect 2012 to be similar. We're starting with Looking For Alaska, but who knows where we will go next? Exciting, no?

Anyway, here are the ten most popular posts of 2011:

1. On Movie Nudity In General And Kristen Stewart Specifically

Well sure, when you tag a post "Kristen Stewart's tits" you're going to get some pageviews. But I stand by my sentiments about nudity and modern cinema, and I hope that at least a few thousand people read what I had to say while they were masturbating to the blurry still from On The Road I posted along with said sentiments. And On The Road is supposedly coming out next year, so we'll probably be discussing Kristen Stewart's tits (in a civilized manner) again in the near future. (Plus we'll get a less blurry photo! Yes!)

2. We're Still A Little Behind/Kristen Stewart's Ass Appreciation Gallery

OK, this one is a little less defensible. What can I say, girl can wear a pair of jeans! But I think it may be culturally significant that so many people were so much more interested in Stewart's body parts this year than they were Ashley Greene's. A similarly gratuitous posts about AG didn't get nearly the same numbers as these two. If I were Ashley Greene's tits, I'd be worried.

3. On The Occasion Of Jacob Black Imprinting On A Newborn Child

I was thrilled when this post took off and got tweeted a bunch and linked to and all that. Partially just because (duh) I like attention, but also because MY GOD, why don't more people freak out about this? I still haven't figured out if Bill Condon's duck-and-cover technique in the movie is more or less unconscionable than S. Meyer's original work, but I still know for sure that this part of Breaking Dawn made me angrier than anything else I read this year. And I got angry at a lot of stuff I read!

4. Blogging Breaking Dawn: The Honeymooners

This post may have been assisted by the hilarious fact that Entertainment Weekly used the same title I did, apparently sans even the original layer or irony, for a gallery of stills from the Breaking Dawn movie. But this is also the post that discusses Bella's bruises and her bizarre post-coital conversation with Edward.

5. Crazy-Ass Fan Art Gallery Weekend

Fans be artin'! And you know, I saw a bunch of the stuff you guys dug up on bigger blogs MONTHS after this post. So good job! You're the real heroes.

6. Cat Marnell On A Hot Tin Roof

Lightning-rod XOJane editor Cat Marnell set several Internet fires this year, and I was happy to bask in the warmth from them on several occasions. Shine on, you crazy crack rock! It makes a lovely light, etc.

7. Blogging Breaking Dawn: Mama, I'm Swollen

Several people told me this was their favorite installment of Blogging Breaking Dawn (it's the one in which I pointed out the ways Meyer was stacking the deck of her own abortion parable) which was really great to hear. A lot of the reviews of BD pt. 1 mentioned these sorts of accusations and said people were reaching, trying to make a political story where there wasn't one. Of course, those reviewers readily admit to not being familiar with the source material. I should have written a lot of angry emails, but I exercised restraint.

8. No Church In The Wild #1

I never thought NCITW would sprout the kind of legs it eventually did. I thought I'd solve the world's problems in 5-7 posts. But a dozen text columns and as many videos later the questions keep pouring in. Thank you for that. That sounds weird to say. Thanks for having problems, guys!

9. Edward Cullen Asks His Family About Sex

There are a lot of people who discovered Blogging Twilight late (about 20 of them are going through the old posts right now, even). And I worry that those folks missed the Fan Fiction. It's probably some of my best work, and I miss doing it. I miss writing as Alice Cullen! This one was one of my very favorites, so I am gratified it was one of the most read pieces this year.

10. Blogging The Hunger Games: Papa Was A Rodeo

Oh right, we talked about The Hunger Games, too! I'm sorry I didn't like it, you guys. I feel a tremendous amount of guilt over it, but it doesn't change the fact that I really hated it. The good news is, Looking For Alaska is a great book!

If you think this is the last year-end post you're CRAZY, but let me take this opportunity anyway to sincerely thank you for reading. I don't reply in the comments as much as I should, but I love hearing from you. Y'all are the best. I hope you had a good year. -Z

No More Movie Trailers Are Needed

2011-12-17T15:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I have found it. The world's most PERFET movie trailer. Forget the masterpiece that is the Where The Wild Things Are trailer, forget the weirdly moving clip for I'm Not There, forget that really gnarly, tit-filledv red-band teaser trailer for The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which I can't find anywhere anymore). FUCK WHAT YOU HEARD because this trailer has EVERYTHING. Clumsy explanation for why almost none of the previous cast is returning? CHECK. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson* spouting campy one-liners? CHECK YOUR MOM. Tyra Collette from Friday Night Lights vamping it up? CHECK. Ninja fights** on the sides of mountains? chhhhhhhhhhhhhECkkkk (that's a heavily speed-ramped check, known by the Associated Press as a "Zack Snyder check"). AND THEN there is the thing that happens at the end, which I can't even spoil for you. You just have to SEE IT. It had to HAPPEN TO YOU. No more movie trailers are needed, the art form has been perfected, thanks for your time.

*Honestly, it bugs me a little that The Rock is not a bigger star. In a world that made sense, he'd be the biggest movie star on earth. He's charismatic, he's good-looking, and he has the same voice as Barack Obama (plus a little of the natural modulation caused by human growth hormone but anyway) which is timely and zeitgeisty. WHAT GIVES? I guess me and The Rock can take some consolation in the fact that he almost certainly killed Osama Bin Laden. Which is perfect. I mean, if I were president, I would utilize pro-wrestlers and celebrities to leverage foreign policy as much as possible. How much would it have fucked with Osama's head if his door had been kicked down and in stormed The Rock, Liam Neeson, and Captain America? Al-Qaeda would have disbanded THE NEXT DAY. "We really can't fuck with these guys anymore," they would have said.
**A conversation that happened when I first saw this trailer. Friend: "Why wouldn't they just go a little further up the cliff and cut all of the ropes?" Me: "That would be against the Ninja Code." Friend: "That is not a real thing."

No Church In The Wild, The Week In Review

2011-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

More videos after the jump. Have a good weekend, y'all.

BONUS (NON ADVICE) VIDEO

The Ten Best Comments On The Video For Next's "Too Close"

2011-12-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

Video via Vevo here.

10. “I remember when I was younger watching "Sister Sister" reruns on the Disney Channel and Next was on an episode, and singing this song! Now that I'm older, and realize what this song is about, I can't believe they put this on Disney!” -avataranime101

9. “OMG I'm 21 and just learned what this song was about! Thanks Cosmo!!”-bamafencer12

8. “THIS IS GOOD RB MUSIC . I LIKE THIS KIND OF MUSIC.” -DENNISBURTON50

7. “Hey who still bumpin this classic in 2011!” -SanYel09 (3 thumbs up)

6. “thumbs up if ur listing to this in 2012” -Tyagirl100 (5 thumbs up)

5. “just three dudes singing together about their boners. nothing unusual here” -sadie233

4. “@sadie233 Hey its called R&B !!!!!!!!” -DrBiggiePacNHarmony

3. “I mainly was able to find this song because I used to think they were saying "King Triton" when they said "I can't fight it." so that made me need to find the song after so many years.. lol :D”-Kandyluvs

2. “@Kandyluvsu Don't even trip. When I was younger I used to think they were saying "rigalo" when they said "Real close" and that's not even a word. So I think mine was worst. Lol.” –netuber12

1. “This song still goes hard!”-myenmoni

Important Discussions About Pubic Hair

2011-12-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

So, I am indifferent about female pubic hair. That’s the wrong word, but I have no preference. I am so enthusiastic about the whole region that it’s all good, is I guess what I am saying. But here is an article at The Atlantic that I think warrants discussion.

The gist of it is: “Hey, did you know lots of women don’t have pubic hair?” And it’s written in that weird way some trend pieces are these days, where the implication is that EVERYONE does it but the author is still telling you like you don’t know. Who is this article for then, aliens?

But there are a few minor points that irritated me, like the fact that the author too closely associates waxing with hair-removal in general, so that after five or six paragraphs they’re considered one in the same. That’s just lazy writing! Ever heard of shaving? Ever heard of biting/burning it off?

There’s also the more major contention that to remove pubic hair is to “turn back the clock on puberty.” Lots of people make this argument, Rob Delaney especially. He even goes so far as to accuse people who prefer it of pedophilia. RELAX, ROB DELANEY. There are lots of things that separate adult women from children, okay? It’s not just, or not even, the bush. But “pre-pubescent” and other adjectives are irritatingly all over the place in this article. The idea that pubic hair is what makes you an adult and that to remove it is to undo that adulthood is silly, right? It’s false and it’s too easy and I feel like it’s sort of like quoting the Bible in a political debate, but I’m too tired to connect that dot right now.

I love that waxers see a spike in business before Halloween. That’s so awesome

The Other End Of The Bell Curve

2011-12-13T16:10:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the middle of the morass that was Book 3 of Breaking Dawn, I felt the wave finally break and roll back. My enthusiasm, morbidly qualified though it was, had been curbed. But for a few minutes there, in the days before and after having seen Breaking Dawn pt. 1, I thought maybe the franchise had won me back over. I've enjoyed discussing the movie with poor souls like myself, after all (and may god have mercy on us).

Yet, today, I saw a headline about James Franco reviewing the latest film for The Paris Review. Ordinarily this would be something I'd relish sinking my teeth into, if you'll pardon the expression. But instead I just thought Nah, fuck that. Fuck James Franco, and fuck that. It feels good.

I'm going to gradually start unfollowing the Twilight-related Twitters and Tumblrs I follow (except 247Greene, natch). It's time. The important work of discussing the primary texts has been done, and I am proud of the work we all did. And there are a few Biterion Collection films I still want to check out (Skateland, I will wring your heart yet!) and we will all surely reconvene in a year's time to bitch about BD part 2. But this is me signing off from any kind of day-to-day coverage of the Twilight Saga. Y'all will let me know if anything really important happens, yeah?

I finished my first read-through of Looking For Alaska today, and I'm excited about where we can go from here. But where we're going, we don't need Kellan Lutzes.

Zac, Kira and Rosanne Discuss Breaking Dawn pt. 3

2011-12-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

Sorry, I just never found a good place to use this photo

[7:06 PM] kirabira: how does carlisle get all that blood? i mean, i know he's a doctor.

[7:06 PM] kirabira: but what excuse could he give?
[7:07 PM] kirabira: "oh, i run a little abortion clinic out of my house on the side."
[7:07 PM] pir8munky: Well that’s what I don't understand, why they can't drink human blood via blood bank
[7:07 PM] pir8munky: Angel kept a stash in his fridge. Most other vampires seem to do that, too
[7:08 PM] pir8munky: Carlisle would never steal blood, though, so I don't know what he does
[7:08 PM] kirabira: you'd think he'd have ethical issues with that.
[7:08 PM] kirabira: what about the people in need who won't have that blood available?
[7:09 PM] pir8munky: they would have bad lives anyway
[7:09 PM] pir8munky: OH so speaking about bad lives
[7:09 PM] pir8munky: I wanted the "Bad Edward" flashback to be much more dramatic
[7:09 PM] kirabira: yeah, that entire story line was pretty flat.
[7:09 PM] pir8munky: As in, we get to see an actual kill for once
[7:10 PM] pir8munky: he didn't try very hard to get her to see the downside, for all his protesting
[7:10 PM] zacharylittle: It reminded me of that Coen brothers movie about hula hoops
[7:10 PM] pir8munky: Hudsucker Proxy?
[7:10 PM] zacharylittle: Yes
[7:10 PM] zacharylittle: It was Hudsucker Proxian. You know, for kids

[7:11 PM] zacharylittle: REAL TALK This movie was the first time I bought Bella and Edward's love
[7:11 PM] zacharylittle: They seemed to like each other
[7:11 PM] kirabira: truth.
[7:11 PM] pir8munky: Well, I always did, but I am a sucker
[7:11 PM] zacharylittle: And there is that scene when she's pregnant and they reconnect?
[7:11 PM] pir8munky: Aw, so cute!
[7:11 PM] kirabira: when they're giggling over him hearing the baby? pretty great.
[7:11 PM] pir8munky: That really got to me
[7:11 PM] zacharylittle: Like, "we've kind of not been on the same page"
[7:12 PM] guest-11235 entered the room.
[7:12 PM] zacharylittle: It reminded me of my own relationship
[7:12 PM] pir8munky: thank god he apologized for being such a dick
[7:12 PM] guest-11235 changed nickname to nonsense
[7:12 PM] kirabira: except he was also not being a dick because it would've been cool if she'd have
[7:12 PM] nonsense left the room.
[7:12 PM] kirabira: talked to him about how she felt about the baby.
[7:12 PM] kirabira: she didn't include him in the decision.
[7:12 PM] kirabira: and the stakes were hella high.
[7:12 PM] zacharylittle: And he brings that up, right?
[7:13 PM] pir8munky: they were both wrong in this case
[7:13 PM] zacharylittle: He has a line where he mentions that, and I was like WHOA
[7:13 PM] pir8munky: yeah that was impressive
[7:13 PM] zacharylittle: This movie was written by someone who has talked with humans
[7:13 PM] pir8munky: she is bad, but you know, she's only 18
[7:13 PM] zacharylittle: SHE'S AN OLD SOUL
[7:13 PM] kirabira: she’s such bad communicator
[7:13 PM] kirabira: like when she's trying to explain how she was happy with their sexing.
[7:14 PM] kirabira: and she just says kind of unhelpful fragments.
[7:14 PM] zacharylittle: That scene though, Kira, is UNFIXABLE
[7:14 PM] zacharylittle: S. Meyer is trying to do so much at once
[7:14 PM] zacharylittle: I felt like R Pattz did as good as was possible acting his way out of that shit
[7:14 PM] zacharylittle: He has to hate sex and love sex
[7:14 PM] zacharylittle: He has to be happy and sad
[7:15 PM] zacharylittle: It's emotionally incoherent on the page

[7:15 PM] pir8munky: I can't wait till part two when they have vampire sex
[7:15 PM] pir8munky: I mean, I realize it will probably be a letdown
[7:15 PM] zacharylittle: I got the impression that there is like a vampire sex montage
[7:15 PM] kirabira: yeah.
[7:15 PM] zacharylittle: Like, here's each pair banging
[7:15 PM] pir8munky: yeah, oh all of them?
[7:15 PM] pir8munky: gross
[7:15 PM] kirabira: they'll need to show bella remembering all the times they were having sex, but she
[7:15 PM] kirabira: didn't realize it at the time.
[7:15 PM] kirabira: like a little flashback.
[7:16 PM] pir8munky: she didn't realize they were having sex?
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: Yeah, huh?
[7:16 PM] kirabira: they, meaning the other vampires.
[7:16 PM] kirabira: sorry.
[7:16 PM] pir8munky: OH!
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: AHH
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: Yes!
[7:16 PM] kirabira: sorry. hahaha
[7:16 PM] pir8munky: haha
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: At first I thought
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: you mean like Bella is still so unused to vampire speed and stuff
[7:16 PM] pir8munky: OH!
[7:16 PM] zacharylittle: that Edward just runs up behind her
[7:17 PM] kirabira: hahahaha
[7:17 PM] zacharylittle: And runs away, and then she's like
[7:17 PM] zacharylittle: whoa, I just felt a stiff breeze

[7:17 PM] pir8munky: You know when they jump off the waterfall?
[7:17 PM] pir8munky: Is Edward supposed to fall to earth faster than just like earth things?
[7:17 PM] kirabira: i don't know.
[7:17 PM] pir8munky: because I am not a scientist, but I don't think that's how gravity works
[7:18 PM] zacharylittle: I was distracted by K Stew's wet, white bathing suit
[7:18 PM] pir8munky: But like he jumped in the water with super speed
[7:18 PM] kirabira: but he should've held onto her the entire time. they have them slash down separately and
[7:18 PM] kirabira: i felt like that was dangerous.
[7:18 PM] pir8munky: they did? I thought she was on him the whole time
[7:18 PM] zacharylittle: indeed.

Turn Off The Dark [Insert Sex Joke]

2011-12-10T15:22:00.001-08:00

Ashley Greene is dating Reeve Carney, who plays Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. So:

Do you think he asks her to call him Spider-Man in bed? Or maybe Spidey? Or maybe Tiger?
Do you think sometimes he falls out of bed and hurts himself?
Do you think he has an understudy?
What is sex like when directed by Julie Taymor? Weird, I bet.
Like Peter Parker, does Reeve set up his own camera somewhere to capture the action?
If AG had a threesome with this guy and Chris Evans, does that technically count as a crossover or does it not because they're both Marvel superheroes?
If RC screws up during sex do you think he asks AG if they can ret-con it?
Something something cleaning webs out of her hair.
Something something Spidey sense is tingling.
Something something "LOOK OUT, HERE CUMS THE SPIDER-MAN!!!"

Zac, Rosanne & Kira Discuss Breaking Dawn (Pt. 2)

2011-12-09T15:46:00.001-08:00

[6:49 PM] kirabira: did the movie have the snow white preview before it for you guys?
[6:49 PM] pir8munky: yeah that preview looks sick!
[6:50 PM] kirabira: that shit looks sooooo good
[6:50 PM] pir8munky: I am excited
[6:50 PM] zacharylittle: For real.
[6:50 PM] kirabira: but it's weird that they had it all narrated by charlize, whose british accent is shaky
[6:50 PM] kirabira: at best.
[6:50 PM] zacharylittle: MR F
[6:50 PM] kirabira: and that kstew didn't have any lines it it.
[6:50 PM] pir8munky: They haven't even finished principal shooting, though
[6:50 PM] kirabira: do you think they made kstew do the accent, too?
[6:50 PM] zacharylittle: I know for a fact that they did. Look out.

***

[6:53 PM] kirabira: did you guys notice the weird dog painting in the scene where bella's sleeping in her
[6:53 PM] kirabira: bed at charlie's for the last time?
[6:53 PM] pir8munky: yes, that's always been there
[6:53 PM] pir8munky: I was like, I love that painting I would have totally taken that
[6:53 PM] pir8munky: and put it in the bathroom or something
[6:53 PM] kirabira: really??
[6:53 PM] zacharylittle: Bella having any art, or like, inner life, is jarring to me.
[6:53 PM] kirabira: i never noticed it and i couldn't stop laughing about it the first time i saw the movie
[6:54 PM] kirabira: like, embarrassing my friend, laughing into my purse.
[6:54 PM] pir8munky: haha, laughing into your purse?
[6:54 PM] kirabira: to smother the sound!
[6:54 PM] zacharylittle: Storing the laughs for later?
[6:54 PM] pir8munky: I like that, unzipping your purse and a hundred little laughs sing out.
[6:55 PM] kirabira: aw, like butterflies! or bubbles!

***

[6:57 PM] kirabira: i was thinking about how selfish it was of him to just not touch her again.
[6:57 PM] kirabira: does he know nothing about sex?
[6:57 PM] kirabira: go down on her or something, you dick.
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: Can I also say that the part where she was touching herself
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: hahah but really
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: and remembering the night
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: was actually really touching?
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: GET IT TOUCHING
[6:57 PM] kirabira: totally!
[6:57 PM] pir8munky: yeah
[6:57 PM] zacharylittle: But I mean, I was like, moved.
[6:58 PM] zacharylittle: And then I was like NIPPLE
[6:58 PM] zacharylittle: and then I was moved again. So sweet! So loving!
[6:58 PM] pir8munky: and also how nervous she was
[6:58 PM] kirabira: yeah, her freaking out beforehand was fucking cute.
[6:58 PM] pir8munky: like she set it up and had been building it up in her mind SO MUCH
[6:58 PM] pir8munky: that was from the book, but also really good
[6:58 PM] zacharylittle: And cue punk rock music
[6:58 PM] zacharylittle: GET ER DONE, BELLA

***

[6:58 PM] kirabira: i don't see how brushing your teeth is a human thing. don't vampires do that?
[6:59 PM] pir8munky: They probably don't have decay or something
[6:59 PM] zacharylittle: Venom is self-cleaning
[6:59 PM] pir8munky: sign me up
[6:59 PM] kirabira: i was just thinking about breath.
[6:59 PM] zacharylittle: You just close your mouth and swallow
[6:59 PM] kirabira: blood breath is probably awful.
[6:59 PM] zacharylittle: and you're back to minty fresh

***

[6:59 PM] zacharylittle: I liked the grossness so much!
[7:00 PM] kirabira: dude.
[7:00 PM] zacharylittle: I wanted it to go FULL Black Swan
[7:00 PM] zacharylittle: but they went 1/2 and that was fine
[7:00 PM] kirabira: edward's arms covered in birth matter? gnarly.
[7:00 PM] pir8munky: when, at the end?
[7:00 PM] zacharylittle: No, when he got covered in birth matter at the wedding.

***

[7:01 PM] pir8munky: I did not like it when they showed her throwing up though
[7:01 PM] pir8munky: but that's my own deal
[7:01 PM] kirabira: and edward coming to talk closely to her immediately post vomit.
[7:01 PM] pir8munky: With his super sensitive smelling power
[7:01 PM] pir8munky: gross
[7:01 PM] kirabira: gross, bro. give me a sec to at least rinse my mouth.
[7:02 PM] zacharylittle: I think all human smells are cool for Edward
[7:02 PM] zacharylittle: he's over it. Like a garbage man.
[7:02 PM] pir8munky: they have to vom up the food they eat, right? maybe he forgot how gross it is
[7:02 PM] kirabira: sweet for bella.
[7:02 PM] kirabira: do they vom up the food?
[7:02 PM] zacharylittle: Yeah Edward mentions that in Book 1
[7:02 PM] pir8munky: yeah when they eat people food they have to bring it back up
[7:03 PM] kirabira: for some reason i didn't remember him saying they barfed it up. gross.
[7:03 PM] zacharylittle: Which made me laugh
[7:03 PM] zacharylittle: thinking of the Cullens like, years ago
[7:03 PM] zacharylittle: getting roped into a dinner party and then all stopping to barf in the woods
[7:03 PM] pir8munky: hahahaha
[7:03 PM] zacharylittle: Like, the 90s must have been good to the Cullens
[7:03 PM] zacharylittle: They would be watching Seinfeld and watching social niceties erode with glee
[7:03 PM] pir8munky: But if you're fat when you get turned, you're fat forever
[7:04 PM] kirabira: really? so they just don't know any fat vampires?
[7:04 PM] pir8munky: Siobhan is fat, isn't she?
[7:04 PM] kirabira: oh, is she?
[7:04 PM] kirabira: hahaha they have the picture of a single fat person in their wallets
[7:04 PM] zacharylittle: Siobhan is like, alluded to being a little heavy
[7:05 PM] zacharylittle: But might also just be weird-shaped
[7:05 PM] pir8munky: One of the other ones is. I feel iike they talk about her being santa claus fat
[7:05 PM] zacharylittle: I feel like Bella mentions her voice even being fat.
[7:05 PM] zacharylittle: Bella is such a cunt.
[7:05 PM] kirabira: hahaha

***

[7:05 PM] pir8munky: I can imagine the Cullens are THE BEST at thinking up good excuses why they can't do things
[7:05 PM] kirabira: you'd have to be.
[7:05 PM] kirabira: "oh, all the girls' cycles have synced and they're ALL on the rag! sorry!"
[7:05 PM] zacharylittle: Like that scene on The Office where Ryan gets out of lunch with Michael by using up ALL TH
[7:05 PM] zacharylittle: E EXCUSES
[7:05 PM] pir8munky: Haha
[7:06 PM] pir8munky: I haven't seen that one, Z. It sounds good though
[7:06 PM] zacharylittle: And then Jim can't say anything because all of them are used.
[7:06 PM] pir8munky: Oh maybe I have

Previously: "like, in your swimsuit area?"

Zac, Rosanne & Kira Discuss BREAKING DAWN (pt. 1)

2011-12-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

[6:27 PM] kirabira: alright.
[6:27 PM] kirabira: so.
[6:27 PM] zacharylittle: BREAKING DAWN
[6:28 PM] pir8munky: yeah, I watched it again.
[6:28 PM] zacharylittle: I'm the only one who saw it once?
[6:28 PM] zacharylittle: For whom once was ENOUGH?
[6:28 PM] zacharylittle: Just playin, I loved it.
[6:28 PM] kirabira: how did all the werewolves suddenly have hella clothes money?
[6:29 PM] kirabira: they made such a big point of how that worked in the books.
[6:29 PM] kirabira: and that was why they were all wearing basically nothing in the other movies. but suddenly they just wear clothes all the time?
[6:29 PM] zacharylittle: Well, two guesses:
[6:29 PM] zacharylittle: 1: they had a bunch of money for this movie and literally nothing, no action scenes to spend it on
[6:29 PM] zacharylittle: and 2:
[6:29 PM] pir8munky: Also, it was cold and they were out of shape!
[6:29 PM] zacharylittle: Bill Condon thought, as a gay director, it was probably not a good idea to keep the level
[6:30 PM] zacharylittle: of gayness at standard
[6:30 PM] kirabira: he was mistaken.
[6:30 PM] zacharylittle: Because THEN
[6:30 PM] zacharylittle: everybody would suddenly notice how GAY these movies are.
[6:30 PM] kirabira: i mean, we agree that all the other werewolves' bodies weren't amazing.
[6:30 PM] zacharylittle: Sam "pot belly" Uley
[6:30 PM] zacharylittle: He's my boy.
[6:31 PM] zacharylittle: I have a Uleyan physique.
[6:31 PM] kirabira: poor sam. good old Sack Of Suet Uley!
[6:31 PM] pir8munky: I heard CS say something about how the director ASKED them if they wanted to wear shirts
[6:31 PM] pir8munky: or not and they all said shirts.
[6:31 PM] zacharylittle: That was so considerate.
[6:31 PM] zacharylittle: No one had ever asked before, I bet.
[6:31 PM] zacharylittle: "Kind sir, you'll let us wear shirts?"
[6:31 PM] kirabira: dude. i'd have been like, "hell no. personal train me to have taylaut's butt!"

***

[6:32 PM] kirabira: important question: was kstew wearing a wig?
[6:33 PM] kirabira: i feel like she was wearing serious extensions. but also her real hair.
[6:33 PM] pir8munky: I don't know! If so, it was good.
[6:33 PM] zacharylittle: I never know if that bitch is in a wig anymore.
[6:33 PM] zacharylittle: OKAY, let's go in order here. THE WEDDING.
[6:33 PM] kirabira: the boob area of bella's dress was problematic.
[6:33 PM] zacharylittle: How so?
[6:33 PM] pir8munky: I liked her dream dress better than the real one
[6:34 PM] kirabira: the darts were kind of to the side and below her boobs. i like those panels on the side
[6:34 PM] kirabira: but the diamond business on her boobs messed everything up.
[6:34 PM] zacharylittle: I felt like the X's on her boobs were like, X marks the spot
[6:34 PM] kirabira: but it made her boobs look wall-eyed!

***

[6:36 PM] pir8munky: But she really could have looked happier when she saw Edward. People say it's really
[6:36 PM] pir8munky: nerve-wracking
[6:36 PM] pir8munky: why do they cut off my flow in this chatroom?
[6:36 PM] zacharylittle: I think it's so
[6:36 PM] zacharylittle: you can do the cadence thing
[6:36 PM] zacharylittle: with the line breaks
[6:36 PM] kirabira: i would've LOVED it if she broke into a huge smile at some point.
[6:36 PM] kirabira: instead of looking super barfy the entire time.
[6:37 PM] zacharylittle: Yes.
[6:37 PM] zacharylittle: I agree.
[6:37 PM] kirabira: like barf face barf face barf face OH YAAAAAAAY
[6:37 PM] pir8munky: Right? Like when she was looking at him or when she was right in front of him, or even
[6:37 PM] zacharylittle: And Edward kind of looked puffy
[6:37 PM] pir8munky: while they were doing their vows
[6:37 PM] zacharylittle: like Chaz Bono
[6:37 PM] kirabira: hahahaha
[6:37 PM] pir8munky: And terrible hair!
[6:37 PM] kirabira: totally.
[6:37 PM] kirabira: having anna kendrick call rpattz The Hair only highlighted how weird his hair looked.
[6:37 PM] pir8munky: Like, his hair is always great, this time, they comb it like Mr Monopoly?
[6:38 PM] zacharylittle: Anna Kendrick must have enjoyed the chance to like, meta-lash out at the movie
[6:38 PM] pir8munky: Jessica was great when Alice said "you don't think it's too much?"
[6:38 PM] pir8munky: I bet they will write those guy into the second part somehow
[6:38 PM] kirabira: anna kendrick was flawless as usual
[6:38 PM] pir8munky: Yes, both of her lines were perfect

***

[6:39 PM] kirabira: does vampire hair grow?
[6:39 PM] zacharylittle: No, it only gets shorter.
[6:39 PM] kirabira: it's annoying that their hair looks totally different in every movie.
[6:39 PM] kirabira: so someday alice will have a flat top.
[6:39 PM] zacharylittle: Alice has been working up the nerve to do this 'do since 1940
[6:39 PM] pir8munky: Hmm, well in Anne Rice world, it is always the length as when you were sired
[6:39 PM] pir8munky: You can cut it every day, but it will grow as long as original when you sleep, so you wake
[6:40 PM] kirabira: i like that idea.
[6:40 PM] pir8munky: up and it's long again.
[6:40 PM] kirabira: except for having to get your hair done everything fucking day would suck.
[6:40 PM] pir8munky: Like I would try out so many hairstyles
[6:40 PM] kirabira: but if you liked a hairstyle, you'd have to learn to cut your own hair.
[6:40 PM] pir8munky: no, vampires are always rich, you'd have a live-in stylist
[6:40 PM] zacharylittle: My hair grows weird. It's all variations on the same thing. Kellan Lutz knows.
[6:41 PM] pir8munky: Oh KLutz looked SO BAD in this one
[6:41 PM] kirabira: maybe that's what the volturi started keeping humans around for. to handle their hair.
[6:41 PM] zacharylittle: KLutz! Why have I never seen that abbreviation before?
[6:41 PM] zacharylittle: Didn't it seem like he had a lot of dialogue?
[6:42 PM] kirabira: in that he had A line?
[6:42 PM] zacharylittle: He had like seven!
[6:42 PM] kirabira: esme was quite the chatty cathy this movie, too.
[6:42 PM] zacharylittle: JRath had TWO
[6:42 PM] zacharylittle: One of which was ONE FUCKING WORD.
[6:42 PM] kirabira: hahaha jrath
[6:42 PM] pir8munky: Ugh, the window scene
[6:42 PM] kirabira: every time he's on camera i laugh.
[6:42 PM] pir8munky: I know, me too!
[6:42 PM] zacharylittle: Hahaha, I thought of whack-a-mole
[6:42 PM] pir8munky: Haha, I thought of "go the hell away"

***

[6:42 PM] kirabira: can you imagine having to spend eternity with those doorknobs?
[6:43 PM] pir8munky: Bella should say "hey, Edward, can we have some time just for us--at least at first"

***

[6:43 PM] kirabira: i was impressed that emmet managed a double entendre in his wedding speech.
[6:44 PM] kirabira: pretty complex stuff for emmett.
[6:44 PM] zacharylittle: It was more like a single entendre.

***

[6:44 PM] pir8munky: ha, oh and renee's song?
[6:44 PM] pir8munky: Charlie was great at the wedding, of course
[6:45 PM] kirabira: yeah. i got teary eyed again, when he said he'd never let her fall.
[6:45 PM] pir8munky: Aw, sap.
[6:45 PM] zacharylittle: That was sweet, but Renee at the wedding made me FEEL THINGS
[6:45 PM] pir8munky: like MILF things?
[6:45 PM] pir8munky: Oh, Zac.
[6:45 PM] kirabira: like, in your swimsuit area?
[6:45 PM] zacharylittle: No, like
[6:45 PM] zacharylittle: That is how a lot of people I know would react
[6:46 PM] pir8munky: The best T at the convention was a rather large lady wearing a black V-neck T that said
[6:46 PM] zacharylittle: Embarassing emotional oversharing shit
[6:46 PM] pir8munky: "Edward is a VILF"
[6:46 PM] zacharylittle: The only MILF in that movie was Bella
[6:46 PM] zacharylittle: On the honeymoon
[6:46 PM] zacharylittle: LINGERIE MONTAGE
[6:46 PM] pir8munky: Oh, totally
[6:46 PM] zacharylittle: ASS BOUNCITUDE
[6:47 PM] kirabira: when she's trying to entice edward? yowza.
[6:47 PM] pir8munky: Edward needed to do more face-acting to show us how much it was killing him
[6:47 PM] kirabira: edward's such a fucking tool.
[6:47 PM] zacharylittle: Like, she falls on the bed
[6:47 PM] zacharylittle: in the center of the frame: panty-clad ass
[6:47 PM] zacharylittle: quivering
[6:47 PM] pir8munky: I think he copped a feel when he covered her with the sheet.
[6:47 PM] kirabira: seriously? your wife has a butt like that and you're still being a prude about it?
[6:47 PM] kirabira: SHE LIKES ROUGH TRADE, MAN. HIT THAT SHIT.

***

[6:48 PM] kirabira: oh, i saw the nipple shot this time.
[6:48 PM] zacharylittle: RIGHT
[6:48 PM] kirabira: but i think it's not her nipple.
[6:48 PM] zacharylittle: It's like, a rose petal
[6:48 PM] kirabira: it's one of those adhesive nipple things.
[6:48 PM] kirabira: yeah, rosanne.
[6:48 PM] pir8munky: A "modesty" petal
[6:49 PM] zacharylittle: Well, I kinda didn't think K Stew was the "silver dollar sized nipple" type
[6:49 PM] zacharylittle: But whatever, that'd work.

Twilight In And For The Atlantic Or: Slow Down, Dilettante

2011-12-06T18:29:00.001-08:00

My idea of The Atlantic Monthly as a wise and stately pillar of intellectual society stems, I suppose, from my 12th grade English teacher, who loved the magazine and subscribed her students to it for the year and required us to read a few articles and write about them each month (that class, which stressed writing and reacting honestly over formal polish, is essentially the precursor to this blog). To me, at the time, there was something to be admired about the defiantly old-school ways of The Atlantic--after a few pages that shit was wall-to-wall text, the stories were long as fuck, and the covers seemed even older and less hip than The New Yorker's--and that perception was probably inextricably wrapped up in my admiration for the defiantly old-school, high-culture-worshipping ways of my teacher.

["How Twilight Lost Me" by Eleanor Barkhorn]

And so the redesign that started a few years after I graduated and that has recently culminated with the proliferation of Atlantic-branded blogs (and a Tumblr?) was vaguely upsetting to me. The Atlantic I once knew was (sort of) gone, and it was hard not to imagine a future in which a big-titted, air-brushed blonde would replace the typography that replaced the drawings and watercolors I once knew so well. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. She'll probably be a redhead.

["The Greatest Movie Franchises Of All Time" by Kevin Fallon"]

A few months ago I remarked at how strange it was that The Atlantic was writing about Twilight, and how stranger still (though not necessarily bad) that they were fans of Alice and Jasper. I suppose a part of me wanted The Atlantic to snootily condemn This Thing Of Ours, to confirm for me what was up and what was down, as it were. It ought to be below such a lofty radar. But their writings on the subject--as it turns out there are several articles (presented, often, in irritating slide-show format for your reading inconvenience!)--were not much different than what you'd find on any other pop culture blog.

["The Many Attacks On Twilight" by Eleanor Barkhorn]

People give Chuck Klosterman a lot of shit, (and I've argued that he's now been more or less left behind by Internet culture) but he published Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs with the thesis that low culture pop trivia was as worthy of intellectual dissection as much as, if not more than high-culture art artifacts. That our better angels were nice and all, but that you could learn a lot more about people by talking to the demons on TV. That has since become the unspoken thesis of the Internet, really. I don't think it's a direct cause-and-effect, I think it is just easier to write intelligently and quickly about something dumb than it is to write intelligently about something complex. And the Internet favors being smart quickly more than it does much anything else. Chuck Klosterman figured that out before it became as true as it eventually did.

["A Condemnation Of Sparkly Vampires" by Alyssa Rosenberg]

We're in a kind of fucked-up critical mass phase of Internet Content, huh? I mean, for my part: I have around 40,000 YouTube subscribers, a fraction of which actually turn up to watch a video I make. And the percentage of that fraction varies crazily, depending partly on various SEO variables I am sure but depending mostly on the vicissitudes of the YouTube software, which sometimes "publishes" my work to subscribers and sometimes just doesn't. I'm a YouTube partner, which means I get a little money from advertising on my videos. When they work. And plenty of times, they don't. It has ever been thus in my case, but YouTube's recent redesign has caused similar headaches for many people much more successful at YouTubing than I am (which also means that they depend on the money a lot more than I do).

["Dilettante" by St. Vincent]

The economic incentive both economically and egomaniacally (those videos that don't clear 2,000 views hurt like hell, guys), then, is to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Why work hard on a video only to see it randomly aborted by YouTube? Why not just crank out five of them a week? This is kind of what I have been doing, mostly unconsciously, for the last few weeks. Luckily I now have a job, and that will slow me down a little, but I'm only a small part of the problem! Throwing everything against the wall and seeing what works is not an economic model that works anywhere else (which is why most people don't have 20 kids) but it's EVERYWHERE on the Internet.

[Related posts: Popular Magazines pt. 1, Vanity Fair Is Unfair, In Soviet Russia Magazine Covers You]

Everybody is doing everything all the time, and instead of pondering something for a good long while, The Atlantic is writing entry-level posts about Twilight. Across the board, people seem to be spending less time working on their content, including me, and it shows, and makes me sad.

Incredulous Ashley Greene

2011-12-05T18:30:00.001-08:00

This is going to be very useful. MAKE YOUR OWN! Via 247Greene.

Some Cool Stuff From Last Week!

2011-12-05T14:48:00.001-08:00

Last week The Awl brought us the sometimes funny, mostly sad true story behind an old Seinfeld episode which was inspired by Larry David's encounter with Revolutionary Road author Richard Yates. The details here are BONKERS, especially the stuff about the actor Lawrence Tierney. Now, when I am writing I actually have difficulty pulling from personal experience most of the time. It's not that I'm like, too private or something, it's that I literally can't remember my childhood, or even teen years. I have a bad memory (I don't keep a journal or anything, but I really should). But whenever I manage to remember something, it works out well for me. Writers: is this something you do? All the time, sometimes, or never? Do you keep a journal?

Remember when SunChips released those biodegradable bags (they set a goal for Spring 2010 and met that goal--I was so proud of them! Honestly, irrationally proud) and then promptly pulled them from the shelves amid customer complaints that said bags were too loud? Remember that fucking shit? POUR THEM INTO A BOWL, FUCKHEADS! If I were the CEO of SunChips and I was getting letters bitching about BAG VOLUME, I'd have replied to every single one of them with a handwritten note: "NEVER BUY SUNCHIPS AGAIN. I DO NOT WANT THEM BRINGING YOU PLEASURE. ENCLOSED IS YOUR FINAL BAG. I SINCERELY HOPE ONE OF THESE CHIPS WILL CHOKE YOU TO DEATH. IF NOT: FUCK YOU." Which is probably why I am not the CEO of SunChips. But anyway, more or less the same thing just happened with Coke's white cans, which were supposed to benefit the environment. OH WELL. "Yeah, we like mother earth and all, so long as she doesn't disrupt our chip-and-soda habits in minor ways."-us

Did you hear about the OCCUPY BAT SIGNAL? It's a cool story, and luckily it is not viral marketing for The Dark Knight Rises. Speaking of Occupy: "One of [their] biggest problems has been figuring out how best to reach out to the rest of that mythical 99%—the ones so pumped to get deep discounts on electronics that they camp out for days and mace each other in the face." That's my favorite sentence from last week, and it's from this.

Lastly: before Herman Cain imploded, we as a nation spent a disconcerting amount of time addressing, with varying degrees of irony, whether or not Mitt Romney was lying when he said "Mitt" was his first name. It's apparently his middle name, but I remember hearing once that it was actually Milton? And Mitt was short for Milton? I don't care that much, but some people care A LOT. But the whole first name debate was very strange and silly to me. Maybe the media just needed a break from the nonstop ickyness of Herman Cain. Like, last week was one of those weeks in college where you get pizza three nights in a row, and it feels great while it's happening, but afterward you feel inescapably greasy, you know? Sex scandals are the media's pizza; Herman Cain's life is a series of circular pizza metaphors.

Anyway, James Fallows at The Atlantic wrote a piece about nonnormal named people, and the kind of intellectual bargaining one does with oneself to mentally escape being saddled by one's parents with a name like Willard, or Pilot, or Spider, or Kreyshawn or Solyndra. It's here, but anyway it got me thinking about my name.Because hahaha: Little. I probably should have been mocked for it a lot, or at least refrerred to as Stewart, but it very rarely happened.

It's probably because as a kid I was always pubertorally (it's a word!) ahead of my classmates, and so I was tall before they were and my voice changed before theirs did. I actually got screwed out of a bigger part in my elementary school rendition of Annie because my teacher was worried my voice would crack while I was singing. Probably not an unfounded fear, I mean, it still fucking happens. And by the time my classmates caught up with me, and then surpassed me, the idea of making fun of someone's last name was way too immature. Also my football career was pretty much over.

But anyway, I have no problem with my name. And I think people with nonnormal names should cool out. Because this is the Internet era, and weird names are about to proliferate. Imagine when Tumblr starts having kids! (Lots of kids named Tyrone, probably a "Y U NO NAME ME Smith"...) Shit, any time you feel bad that your name is weird, remember that there's a kid in Egypt named FACEBOOK.

And Mitt, just own it! WILLARD MITT/MILTON ROMNEY. That's not even a weird name. That's a presidential name! A 19th century presidential name, but still.

GUEST POST: Behind The Behind The Scenes Of A Warrior's Heart, by Emily

2011-12-03T14:28:00.001-08:00

A Warrior's Heart came out this weekend! Sort of! I think you can get it On Demand. That probably doesn't help the "made-for-TV-movie" feel, but whatever! Friend of the blog Emily has written about a behind the scenes featurette that was released as part of the rushed, lets-put-this-movie-out-before-people-forget-about-Kellan-Lutz media blitz we experienced this week. Check out Emily's new blog here. Thanks for writing, Emily!

Oy, that first scene. There’s a moment in the Twilight Rifftrax where Edward and Bella are sort of stammering blandly at each other, and one of the guys (Mike Nelson, I think) declares “The Silver Screen cannot contain the heated passion of Twilight!” That’s exactly the vibe I got here. PLEASE, BE MORE NONDESCRIPT. I love the dude standing in between them. He looks so uncomfortable, and/or lost. Does he know there’s a movie happening? Maybe he just wants to play some lacrosse. Which brings me to my next point, which is LACROSSE?? I’m not much for sports movies but I know of plenty of them, at least. I can’t really think of a heartwarming lacrosse movie off the top of my head. So at least they’ve got that market cornered.

Following the skin-crawlingly bad acting of that first segment, Kellan Lutz shows up, and basically everything he says is awesome. The very first thing out of his mouth is “This movie has everything in it!” For those of us who’ve seen the trailer, yes, yes it really does. It takes the insipid touchy-feelyness of any Nicholas Sparks abortion and mashes it together with a sports movie, but also like… the Iraq War and Native Americans? What is happening. Yes, Kellan, it does have everything. That is not always a good thing.

Kellan then rambles onward, and rapidly seems to lose track of what he is talking about. He goes from listing off the cluster of genres into talking about how great it is that he is getting all bruised and scraped up from doing his own stunts. Which is fine, like, I know from experience that actors like getting dirty and/or slightly injured during whatever, but it’s such a quick deterioration of thought process! And it immediately diverges into William Mapother yelling a nondescript but Dramatic “CONOR, NO!” as if to frantically stop Kellan from taking his tangent any further.

SIDEBAR. William Mapother is a pretty talented actor! He’s only been in a couple things—everyone who watched Lost knows him from Lost, but let’s not go there. More recently he was in Another Earth! And he did a pretty bang-up job! I was all happy for him, like, oh good he’s distancing himself from the television franchise and getting into crazy indie flicks! AND THEN THIS HAPPENED. William, you poor soul.

Anyway, the upshot so far is Kellan “Conor” Lutz is an unstable player of sport and likes to punch people in the chest with his lacrosse stick. So he’s a hunky teenage athlete with a Dark Side. Quelle surprise!

Cut immediately to Ashley “Brooklyn” Greene demanding “What is WRONG with you?” in the cattiest way possible. So we’ve gone from flirty and wearing of pigtails and cheerleader uniform to bitchy and wearing of chic coat and hat. Character Development!

This however segues into Ashley Greene sharing her thoughts about the character, particularly what makes the character “strong.” We go from Brooklyn aggressively asserting her attitude, to this. There’s a statement to be made there, but I’m pretty sure I just made it, so moving on:

Unsurprisingly, the first thing we hear from AG is that she liked her character Brooklyn Milligan (WHAT) because “she’s actually a strong female character, and… yes she does fall in love with, you know, the hero of the film, but it’s kind of this… this battle, and Brooklyn kind of helps Conor through his… his problems… She’s uh, she’s a strong character, which I really really was drawn to, and I liked—”

You can tell the editor actually cut her off mid-sentence there. Meaning she probably reiterated her point a few more times before it finally deteriorated. Holy crap. Okay, so obviously her floundering inability to paint this character into a falsely feminist pigeonhole is pretty entertaining, as is her tone—somewhere between stoned and excruciatingly bored, like she is already so over explaining this shit. And I mean, she completely fails to back up her thesis. Does she know what “strong female character” even means? Does ANYONE anymore? Because let me tell you, my first thought was this: http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311

Anyway, so far it seems to me that Brooklyn’s role is to fall in love with the man, and to passively (and sometimes bitchily) help him through his multitude of man issues. The jury’s still out on the strong female character part. Sorry AG. You tried.

All this is followed by Brooklyn sort of nervously delivering a critique to Conor, who, for the second time in this video, responds to her criticism with a sharp, defensive stare. Is it just me or does Kellan Lutz really look like the kind of guy who would make kind of a scary boyfriend? Yeesh.

Then we have a bit of an interview with Gabrielle Anwar, who is apparently playing Kellan’s mother despite looking pretty close to his age. Uh-huh. She seems to be having even more difficulty than Ashley making her role sound interesting; we also don’t get to see her actually acting at all. She’s on the couch looking like she’s going for the kind of traumatized blankness that characterized Allison Janney’s performance in American Beauty, except it’s not like that at all. Then we have this truly awesome moment where Kellan stops with his back to her and all the police, face in the camera, the tried and true SOAP OPERA ANGLE, and he mutters “I’m goin’ to bed” and she retorts “You’re not going anywhere, Conor Sullivan!”

OH SNAP! Crackling drama you guys. Even the police officers look bored and/or confused. Do ANY of the extras know where they are?

Back to Kellan, who is a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD BOY. He is the only person showing genuine excitement over this movie, and his excitement is so adorably ridiculous. “Yeah, it’s just great to go from one extreme to the next, from the emotional ones to the kissin’ on the lacrosse field to bein’ the star lacrosse guy who’s just cocky and knows he can win at everything.” Sarah Palin called. Seriously, this kid is barely staying on task here. Second of all, I am pretty sure I am not imagining the creepy grin sound I’m hearing when he talks about making out with Ashley Greene. EW EW EW.

Then we have the male jibes exchanged in the locker room, which is in the trailer and definitely only gets worse every time. The dialogue is so utterly mediocre and yet THIS is the clever snipe they’re using to make Conor look witty or like he has any personality at all? That other actor is something else. “Damn straight.” You told him, bucko. Also: what is wrong with Kellan’s face??? He looks like a cartoon of a bro. Which is basically what he is, so, okay.

Then Ashley talks about being already-comfortable-enough that the romance element of the movie is great. Gross! She goes on to say she’s never seen Kellan Lutz cry before, and how it actually affects her and she was really startled by this? She talks about getting moved by her co-actor’s emotions and thinking to herself “this isn’t my scene!” Yes, Ashley, that’s called acting. Again, I know from experience that it can be weird being in the presence of an actor pretending to have an emotional breakdown! But like, I was behind the camera. That was definitely not my scene. You are in the scene. What would have happened if she had let herself cry? Would the director have been like “stop, Ashley, you shouldn’t be crying here”? I mean, maybe, but acting is about impulses and taking risks, right? Jeez, woman! If you’re feeling something from your co-actor, RECIPROCATE! That’s what makes chemistry!

ANYWAY.

(Oh also I like how when she’s talking about that they show a shot of her looking really uncomfortable while Kellan Lutz cries. GREAT JOB EDITORS. Way to find her making a face that perfectly matches what she’s talking about. Oh man.)

Finally we get a few words from Adam Beach, who I guess plays the Native American/Iraq soldier dovetail character, and HE TOO is very interested by all the Emotions that Kellan’s character is apparently going through. Wow, guys! This movie is just FULL of emotions!!

In the midst of all this, THERE IS A SHOT OF KELLAN LUTZ CURLING UP UNDER A TREE IN THE RAIN. KELLAN, DO YOU THINK YOU ARE IN THE MOVIE BABE? BECAUSE IT IMMEDIATELY REMINDED ME OF THE MOVIE BABE.

Adam Beach asserts that “everybody experiences this loss.” Uh, what? What loss, exactly? Death of a parent, maybe? Not for a lot of the kids this movie is aimed at! Death of a war vet?? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Adam Beach.

We are treated to a brief scene between the ever rebellious Conor and Adam Beach’s war vet character, in which Adam Beach delivers the Motif Line, securing his role as Ethnic Wiseman: “A warrior doesn’t run from pain.”

And to wrap things up we cut back to Kellan talking about how he really feels like he’s really matured. As an actor. And it forced him to learn how to draw from his past and be in the moment and react, and it’s such a great story! Awww! My heart almost grew three sizes! I’m being really hard on Kellan and everybody, but I’m glad he’s having fun doing what he perceives as a real movie. Good for you, buddy. Seriously, I want to just pat him on the head and be like “you go ahead and believe in Santa Claus, little Kellan!” He’s just so wide-eyed about all this. On the one hand, it must be great to be this non-actor nobody and then, after doing almost no work, to suddenly be in a position to get a lead role. That must be awesome. Of course my heart shrinks again when I remember how filthy rich he is, how he really doesn’t have to work for parts like this, and oh yeah how he has no talent? Whoops.

Normal Things Seem Crazy, Crazy Things Seem Sane

2011-12-01T15:34:00.001-08:00

John Hinckley Jr., the Man Who Shot Reagan, might be released from the hospital. Doctors say his mental illness is in remission, which I guess I believe. It hadn't really occurred to me before that mental illness could work like cancer or an STD, but why wouldn't it? Plus, you know--and this sounds awful but anyway--dude shot Reagan and barely even hurt him. Say what you will about the Gipper (I have, and plenty of other people have) but you can't say the guy was a pussy about bullets. And say what you will about John Hinckley, but you can't say he killed a guy!

Two things occured to me, though.

A. Is it that John Hinckley Jr is less crazy now, or is it that the rest of the country has gotten so crazy in the last 30 years that he now seems on the level by comparison? Did the water level of our public discourse rise up to meet him? Look at the GOP Primary so far. Look at reality TV. Consider the fact that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the craziest album yet by a guy who is almost definitely crazy, just got nominated for Best Rap Album at the Grammys (Congrats, Ye!). Consider the fact that the Grammys are still a thing! It's nutty!

(REAL TALK: Kanye is one of th mainstream artists cheifly responsible for breaking down musical barriers--integrating rap with melody in more organic and exciting ways than ever before. It's kind of funny that MBDTF is nominated for "Best Rap Album" because someday it will be credited with helping to erase the distinction between genres. And why is rap kept apart (it was hard not to use charged terminology right there. Segregated? Ghettoized?) from the "album of the year" nominees, in 2011? Seems crazy, right? Someday, baby.)

B. Given the state of the world out there, is Hinckley sure he wants to come visit? Reagan is currently enjoying a Jesus-like post-death buzz (an eight year buzz! Reagan would hate that, on principle) which is probably not the most habitable environment for His attempted killer. It's changed out here, John. The last time you saw America, Taxi Driver was controversial. That shit is a Saturday morning cartoon now, basically. And Jodie Foster is a lesbian. Sorry, bro.

Speaking of A.D. Reagan Amerikkka, some people are up in arms (this figure of speech will pay off in a second) over a gun club (boom) in Arizona that posed families with Santa Claus. And guns.

Maybe this is another sign of how crazybad things have gotten, but this doesn't really bug me? I'm not sure what people are mad about. The guns? They do worse things with guns than pose with them. The way the gun-worship is being imparted on the children? They impart worse things on children than gun-worship. So the only think we're left with is like, the sanctity of Santa Claus. And when we start worrying about that, well, we really need to shut the fuck up, as a nation.

REMINDER: Keep feeding me ideas to blog about!

ANNOUNCING: Blogging Looking To Alaska

2011-11-30T15:38:00.001-08:00

John Green's first novel, Looking For Alaska, will be the next work to be examined in this never-ending book-club of ours. And that series will begin soon...ish! I started a new job this week, and also I'm working on some bigger picture stuff. But anyway, in the meantime, I want to keep posting about stuff. SO: What do you want to talk about? Any movies (preferably on Netflix Instant) that were really great or really horrible or just that you've been meaning to watch? Any short stories worth discussing? Articles worth arguing with? The floor is yours.

Ashley Greene Is Fucking CURSED

2011-11-29T15:50:00.001-08:00

First there was Skateland. Then LOL. Then The Apparition. Then there was her spread in Esquire which was downgraded to her spread in Esquire Mexico. And now Ashley Greene has killed Pan Am. Probably. AG was spotted in NYC the other day, looking all Elizabeth Cady Stanton and shit, taping a guest arc on ABC's attempt at Mad Men. Then, today, we got word that though Pan Am is not exactly cancelled (yet), it's pretty much dead. (There can only be one Don Draper, and he rides first class; he doesn't pilot like a chump. How are you supposed to grab vaginas if your hands are busy trying to land a fucking plane?) AG's episodes will probably air, but is it really a gig she'll want to stick in her hat now? Isn't it sort of like getting the call that they want you for the Titantic house band, but AFTER the iceberg?

Anyway, is there nothing Ashley Greene can't destroy? I hope there's a Jonas fan out there who really loves Pan Am. HA! "First Joe's hymen, now this!"-you

BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 27: Watch The Throne

2011-11-28T16:00:00.001-08:00

So the last chapter ended with "And right now, the most important part of the Hunger Games is about to begin." And of course, it's right before the very end of the book. Guhhh. I gave up hope of a pat resolution a long time ago, but are we even going to get ANY resolution?

Spoiler alert: NOPE! Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 27 (Last chapter)

We're in an era of franchises. I get that. New ideas don't sell like prepackaged old ideas; people like to know what to expect! That's why Michael Bay will be making Transformers movies forever (and now that Shia LeBeuouaf is out, I support that decision completely). The economic push for multipart book-and-or-film series is a powerful one, but like all economic pushes it's (probably*) cyclical. Stephenie Meyer wasn't sure if there'd be a demand for more than one Twilight book. She had an idea for what later became Breaking Dawn but came up with New Moon and Eclipse when the opportunity presented itself. But The Hunger Games came later in that cycle. Collins obviously sold this book as part of a series, and that sort of thing was conceivably made easier due to Twilight. So while that's great for Collins like, in terms of stuff she wants to buy, it's not ideal for the reader. Because here, we're expecting something major to happen between Katniss and Peeta and it just... doesn't. To be continued!

(*Conceivably someday we'll circle back around again, and people will get so sick of franchises they'll want a few one-and-done stories. But feature films have been stuck in this part of the cycle for like, ten fucking years.)

Katniss comes up on the stage and Peeta is standing there looking all suave and she throws herself into his arms and they make out for literally ten minutes. Caesar Flickman finally gets them to settle down--the standard HG champion's throne has been replaced with a "plush red velvet" love seat (from the Rathbone collection)--and they watch a three hour (three hour!) highlight reel from the games. Katniss kind of numbs herself to the violence on the screen but notices that the editors have shaped the narrative of the reel around her and Peeta's romance. She re-lives their courtship, and you think that this will be the moment when she realizes her feelings for him were real.

And thematically, it would be perfect, right? The Hunger Games are a TV show after all, and even though the general theme has been that televised entertainment is brutal and crass, it would be interesting to double-cross that theme a little and show how the mass media can clarify things for us in a positive way, too. Wouldn't it be ironic if watching the Hunger Games helped Katniss bring it all back home? Oh well!

The broadcast ends and Katniss is escorted back to her room. She tries to go find Peeta but no one is on the roof, and when she goes back to her room someone locks her in. She says she feels like she's a prisoner awaiting sentencing. (I can't help but feel like this is another Volturi-like psyche out. It's funny, after seeing Breaking Dawn pt. 1 I have lots of positive feelings toward Twilight, but there's still a lot of negativity and jadedness too. It's confusing. I'd characterize my emotions as Everdeenian.)

The next day Cinna puts Katniss in another innocence-enhancing "gauzy" white dress and she and Peeta sit down for a televised interview with Flickman, the Ryan Seacrest of Panem. Katniss leans on Peeta's shoulder and mumbles through it, and at some point realizes that Peeta's leg has been replaced with a metal-and-plastic prosthetic. The sight of the thing freaks her out so much that Peeta answers most of the following questions. This is interesting, because while it's so far underdeveloped you could see why Katniss would be buggin'. Peeta was afraid the Capitol would change him, and they very literally did, altering his physical form.

But she scores a few strategic victories. Flickman asks when she fell for Peeta, and when Katniss is at a loss he suggests the moment she shouted his name in the tree. Katniss says that was the first time she thought there was a chance she could "keep him," and Haymitch breathes a sigh of relief off-camera. So, is that it then? Is the Volturi threat--I mean the Capitol threat--done with?

They board a train back to District 12, and Katniss starts to feel a disconnect between her televised, Peeta-loving self and the girl she used to be. Changing back into her regular clothes and removing her makeup while the train moves along is a montage-worthy transition, and when Peeta puts his arm around her, his touch feels "alien." This is fine, but it would sort of make more sense if Katniss had ever fully committed to the "I actually love Peeta" column. But she never did, she hung out in the middle of the Venn Diagram Collins put her in at more or less the start of this thing. We're getting the illusion of an arc right now, but there never really was one.

And they stop to gas up or something and Kat & Peet go for a walk along the train tracks. Haymitch catches up to them and tells Katniss they're probably in the clear, and then of course the jig is up. Peeta is like, "huh?" and then more or less figures out the whole thing without another word from Katniss.

"But you knew what he wanted you to do, didn't you?" says Peeta. I bite my lip. "Katniss?" He drops my hand and I take a step, as if to catch my balance.
"It was all for the Games," Peeta says. "How you acted."
"Not all of it, I say.

Peeta walks away, and then Katniss drops an exposition bomb on us.

I want to tell him that he's not being fair. That we were strangers. That I did what it took to stay alive, to keep us both alive in the arena. That I can't explain how things are with Gale because I don't know myself. That it's no good loving me because I'm never going to get married anyway and he'd just end up hating me later instead of sooner. That if I do I have feelings for him, it doesn't matter because I'll never be able to afford the kind of love that leads to a family, to children. And how can he? How can he after what we've just been through?

Holy shit! Tell us how you really feel! And maybe, you know, start telling us 300 pages ago? And who the fuck is Gale, I mean really. ARGH. And then you turn the page, expecting some of this to go somewhere, and the novel is fucking over. They pull in to D12 and Peeta holds her hand for the cameras and she says she can feel him slipping away, and then there's "End of book 1" like a middle finger in your face.

I could say more, but I think it fits better if this blog post just abruptly cuts off, too. Boo!

Every Thought I Had While Watching The Trailer For A Warrior's Heart

2011-11-26T14:08:00.001-08:00

When did they make this movie? 1995? The opening shot and the opening music strongly evoke 1995. If I'm ever at a wine tasting I think I'll taste some and say it strongly evokes 1995. Ashley Greene is narrating and she sounds like she has too much saliva in her mouth. I am OK with this. Ashley Greene is in a school girl's uniform. I don't know how to feel about that. I saw a few interviews with AG on various Breaking Dawn carpets in which she coquettishly mentioned how nice it was to have male fans in attendance this time. She's a sociopath. Kellan Lutz's facial expressions are inscrutable. HER NAME IS BROOKLYN!? "To really understand why" Ashley's character fell for Kellan's character: "You have to know a little about the game he loves." Wait, why do you have to know about lacrosse to know why she fell for him? CUT TO NATIVE AMERICANS. WHAT IS HAPPENING. Also the Iraq War is up in this bitch? Hold on. Think about how far we've gotten from where we started. In less than a minute! Where else will this movie go? Post-funeral necking! Mental instability! Aaaand now the Iraq War and the Native American tradition are united in the form of one person. Holy shit. And did we ever find out why we needed to understand lacrosse in order to see why she fell for him? I like that AG spells out the film's thesis. "You know, like, I guess SOME HEROES ARE MADE BY CIRCUMSTANCES." And then she says it again, in case you didn't get it or maybe couldn't understand her because of all the spit in her warm, wet mouth. Cue Regina Spektor and uplifting camera angles! Chord Overstreet is someone's name? Ashley Greene's mouth has been open a lot in this trailer. How does she keep it so moist if it's open all the time? Kellan Lutz has been shirtless a lot in this trailer. OH I GET IT: this is a movie for fathers to watch with their daughters, so they can both get horny. Perfect. I can't wait for (selected theaters and Video On Demand) December 2nd! Thanks for the tip, Emily. And again: holy shit.

ASK NICK SULLIVAN: Letters To Esquire's Fashion Director, Answered by Zac Little

2011-11-25T08:39:00.001-08:00

I am getting ready to jump into the business world. What is your opinion on wearing a three-piece suit to a job interview? If not, can I wear a three-piece suit without the vest?

CJ Zeilenga, Columbia MO

As it happens, I am also joining the business world, and in most of my job interviews what I did was I wore a zoot suit with a fedora and spoke in the cadences of a 1930's gangster. IT WAS SO FUN! Nobody called me back though, except for that improv troupe. But I only interviewed with them for practice.

There's something to be said for dressing formally so as to convey how seriously you're taking the prospect of employment, but there's also something to be said for not looking like a fucking goober. And on the serious/goober continuum, I'm not really sure where you're at. To be honest, it really depends on what you look like. Would you say you're closer to Jon Hamm or Christopher Mintz-Plasse? James Caan or Ed Begley Jr.? Hamm/Caan-types can pull off almost anything. Three-piece? Sure! Eight-piece? Even better! Those on the Mintz-Plasse/Begley Jr. end of the matrix have to be a little more restrained so as not to look like either a boy playing dress up in his father's closet or a crazy guy who blew his scratch ticket earnings at the Salvation Army. Or both! Plain dress shirts and unadventurous blazers are the way to go. Hamm/Begley Jrs are wildcards, but usually look best in a sweatervest for some reason. Caan/Mintz-Plasses have never been spotted in the wild, but many experts contest that they do exist. But only in Iceland.

Will someone design a Hamm/Caan/Mintz-Plasse/Begley Jr. style matrix for me? I feel like there's money in that banana stand, so to speak.

I will be visiting Thailand soon, and I plan to get a few custom shirts while I'm there. I have never ordered a custom shirt before. Any advice you can give me?

Steven Ford, San Diego CA

I think I see what's happening here. So you want to order a "custom shirt," but you're worried about doing it for the first time in a foreign culture. Well, the good news, Steven Ford of San Diego California, is that "custom shirts" work the same way in Thailand that they do over here. Handjobs are the cheapest, blowjobs run the price gamut depending on quality/mouth condition, and some "custom shirts" won't even do anything else. But that's probably a good thing. When the customs agent asks if you have anything to declare, you don't want to have to tell him about the herpes. Don't think that counts? Re-read the latest Foreign Aid bill, asshole.

And sure, if you accidentally harm or murder your custom shirt, you'll probably hear from the tailor. But with those California good looks and those American Dollars you'll be on your way in no time. Have fun with those prostitutes, Steven Ford of San Diego!

How much wear should show on the heels of shoes before they might be accused of being "down-at-the-heels"?

George Crews, Mary Esther FL

Oh dearest heavens! A gentleman such as yourself surely shant ever be accused of being "down at the heel"! I doff my monocle at the very thought! Shant! A pox on the house of a knave who'd ever speak forth with such a vulgar utterance! As for the care of one's shoes, surely you have servant boys to do your walking for you?

Previously: "Disproportional Hand Disorder is no joke, and literally tens of people every year suffer from its weirdness."

Twilight Hate-Hate Is The New Twilight Hate

2011-11-22T13:43:00.001-08:00

I was happy to have correctly predicted the wave of backlash that would hit Twilight after the release of Breaking Dawn pt. 1. But I did NOT anticipate the backlash to the backlash! Look where we are already!

Earlier today the author Maureen Johnson tweeted a link to an article defending Twilight from the sort of accusations this blog has been leveling at it for years. Twilight is female fantasy, the article argues, and the attacks come from, dare they say it, a sexist place. GASP.

Why is it that female fantasies are such a source of derision and fear? The male species is allowed all manner of violent, creepy, ludicrous and degrading movie tropes, and while we may not embrace them as high art, no one questions them seriously as entertainment, even when sometimes we probably should. (Violent imagery is, after all, associated with violent behavior.) You want to saw someone in half or put their head in a vise? Showcase naked strippers as a fake plot device? Pair a beautiful and successful career woman with a slovenly, unemployed man? Pretend you are Wolverine? Go right ahead. We know you can’t really be serious. But watch a tender wedding night between a virginal, undead superhero and his teenage, human bride, and the scolds come out in force.

I've been called a lot of things, but it's rare that I am even indirectly accused of sexism. I carry around a picture of a woman in my wallet, okay? But seriously: this article gave me pause. I in fact considered the merits of this (however muddled, in the original article) argument ( even though I feel like, since most of y'all are lacking y-chromosomes, you'd have called me on it if I were being sexist at any point). And on her Twitter feed Maureen Johnson has been elaborating: "[A]re the same hammers coming down on books written by men? In the same way? Are we saying, "But! Role models!" in the same way?" Her thru lines are basically A. the amount of criticism Twilight gets is in part due to the fact that the author is a woman and it covers girly concerns, and B. people shouldn't be moralizing about Twilight, expecting morals from book is a dangerous path.

WELL. Twilight is an INCREDIBLY POPULAR book series, so the attention it gets is more due to that than anything else. Also due to that popularity: it's hard to find a male analog to see if the accusation holds water. In fact, the only analog I can really think of, in terms of popularity, is Harry Potter. And J.K. doesn't stand for JACK KEVIN, you know?

(Then there's the fact that people who accuse Meyer of being a bad writer are like, objectively correct, but anyway.)

Item B: I agree with the assertions from Johnson and her followers that expecting books to be moral leads to book burning. But when I complain about Meyer's cracked moral compass, that's not exactly what I am doing. Twilight is the one who is moralizing, see? In Breaking Dawn, abortion = killing beautiful, magical, full-of-potential Renesmee. Abstinence = control, clarity, and goodness, and giving in to even SOME of your desires = evil and/or death. We are not saying "Twilight should be banned because it erodes morals," we are saying "Twilight is bad because it tries to subtly replace NORMAL morals with CRAZY ones." Meyer is closer to the book burners, on the moral spectrum, is what I am saying.

That said, hey, this is a fun discussion to try and wrap my head around. Go piece together what Johnson et al are saying on her Twitter feed before it gets buried by strange banter with John Green!

Evening Links!

2011-11-21T16:20:00.001-08:00

Vulture's interview with Melissa Rosenberg is ARGUABLE, to say the least. The bruises are OK because Bella asked for it? Hmmmmm.

Oh, and the Mary HK Choi and Natasha Vargas-Cooper convo about BD you have been waiting all weekend for is finally up! I'm all over the comments in that shit, guys.

Got any BD-related articles to recommend? Hit me with it!

Also, dudes: two K. Stew movies are on Netflix Instant now: Welcome To The Rileys and The Yellow Handkerchief. I've seen the former, and will check out the latter soon. Yay K. Stew!

BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 26: I Wanna Be Sedated

2011-11-21T14:07:00.001-08:00

Last time, Katniss and Peeta won the Hunger Games. And itwas a fucking bummer. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

(We’re almost done, by the way, so I feel comfortableannouncing that our next project, after our usual bullshit interlude, will beBLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, by John Green. At some point soon I will probablybe reading Catching Fire and writing briefly about it, too. Maybe.)

Chapter 26

A hovercraft shows up overhead and brings Katniss and Peetaaboard. Peeta’s in pretty bad shape, and once they’re on he’s rushed by agroup of paramedics. Katniss isinstinctively terrified of them and freaks out; they shove her into anotherroom and she’s forced to watch through a glass door while they operate. There’sa running suggestion in this chapter that Katniss isn’t quite ready forcivilization again—she’s too animalistic, too raw. That’s fine, but I sort offeel like the preceding text doesn’t do much to back that up. Sure, living intrees and killing people is not exactly normal behavior, but there was never asuggestion that Katniss was even BEGINNING to lose her grasp on her ownhumanity.

Peeta’s heart stops twice while they work on him andKatniss thinks of the doomed mine victims her mother used to try and save. Shesees her “rabid, feral, mad” reflection in the glass just as they start to movePeeta somewhere else and really lets loose, slamming herself against theglass (I’d say good luck, Jennifer Lawrence, but I bet she can handle thatshit) until someone jabs her with a tranquilizer.

So you’re expecting Katniss to be brought to some kind of throneor something, right? She’s the victor, where the fuck are the spoils? Insteadthe Capitol begins a careful re-assimilation process—and the degree of sinisterintent is sort of hard to gauge. Kantiss wakes up naked (hot) in a bed, tieddown around her waist (HOT). She realizes that her skin has been cleaned andher nails have got did, and when she’s inspecting her hair she discovers thathearing has been restored in her left ear. Cool, right? That redheaded Avoxchick brings her food, but it's only a small portion of some clear broth. And when she tries towriggle out of her restraints (still hot) she is drugged and immediately passes outagain.

Oy, the drugging. This is like, the most standard sci-fi thing ever, right? Imean, I used the random-drugging and resultant loss of passage of time in asci-fi story I wrote in the eighth grade. Go figure. But it works well enough.Katniss wakes up, sees that her scars are fading, hears a man yelling, passesout. And so on.

A couple days or hours later, Katniss wakes unrestrained,finds her clothes, and is released into a hallway that leads her to EffieTrinket, Haymitch and Cinna. Hey guys! Katniss surprises herself by runninginto Haymitch’s arms first—one of the more interesting things Collins hasaccomplished in this book is making Haymitch a major character despite thelimited amount of time he’s actually around. He’s sort of the most identifiableand understandable character in here. Or is that just my alcoholic, jaded selfconnecting that dot?

Apprently they don’t talk about anything very interestingthough—I mean, Katniss hears that she’s to be reunited with Peeta on live TVbut that’s about it—because next she’s whisked away to be dressed for theceremony. Cinna’s latestconcoction is a subtle number, a yellow dress that is reminiscent of candlelight. Katniss starts to sense that something is up, because rather than make her look like a hot mamacita this dress emphasizes her girlishness.

Next, Katniss waits on a platform to the stage where she'll meet up with Peeta and have a kind of exit interview. Haymitch shows up and gives her a hug, and when he does he begins quietly and quickly warning her in a whisper. The Capitol is pissed that Katniss showed them up--they're "the joke of Panem" now. He tells her that her defense has to be that she was "madly in love" and not responsible for her actions.

On the one hand, this is kind of a fun idea. Collins is showing how love can be crassly exploited and used to hide all kinds of behavior. On the other hand: ENOUGH ALREADY. Katniss asks if Peeta knows and Haymitch says he's "already there." Katniss wonders if that means truly in love or strategic enough to know without being told. ENOUGH ALREADY!

(The Hunger Games trailer was in front of Breaking Dawn pt. 1, a movie from which large portions of mental intrigue were cut due to unfilmability. Will that be the case for the Is He Or Isn't He aspect of the Will They Or Won't They in THG? Or will they just show two characters watching the games on TV going "She doesn't know how much he really loves her!")

The Reviews Are In!

2011-11-21T08:50:00.001-08:00

One reason to see this shit in the theaters: that nipple will almost certainly be removed on the DVD. But it was SO THERE, you guys.

No Church In The Wild Episodes 3-5

2011-11-19T17:51:00.001-08:00

The absence of a proper NCITW column this week is mostly because I posted so many times earlier in the week. Breaking Dawn week, ahhh! And to be honest, I could have written 3x as much. But it's also because I released three episodes of the VIDEO edition, and how much advice can y'all really take in a week-long period? Anyway, here are the episodes! Use it to come down from the high (or up from the low) of Breaking Dawn part 1. (Open thread for that is here.)

BREAKING DAWN part 1 OPEN THREAD

2011-11-18T06:09:00.001-08:00

DID YOU SEE IT? DIDDDD YOUUUU SEEEEE ITTTTT? I haven't yet, I will maybe go on Monday? Or Sunday, who knows? But anyway if you have thoughts to share, share them! Don't worry about spoilers in the comments, because A. we already read the book and B. I will just read them later.

A few links from this week:

A few notable reviews (i.e. the ones I have read)

Alison Willmore at the AV Club: "Where Twilight started as a “true love waits” metaphor, it makes in this segment a grotesquely unconvincing argument for maternal martyrdom, in the form of taking a baby to term even if it kills the mother. But that’s overthinking things..."
Andrew O'Hehir at Salon: "Rarely have the metaphorical transformations of horror fiction been carried to such rococo extremes. Is this a story about a young woman coming of age or a deviant, heretical Christ legend with a female hero?"
Dana Stevens at Slate: "In the book, I gather, Breaking Dawn’s unplanned-vampire-pregnancy plotline is something of a Trojan horse for a conservative, pro-life agenda: Apparently immortal mutant vampire life also begins at conception. Here, I wouldn’t say that’s a major factor (or if it is, there’s so much other allegorical weirdness in the air it’s hard to separate it out.)"
Linda Holmes at NPR: "But when a saga popular with pre-adolescent girls peaks romantically on a night that leaves the heroine to wake up covered with bruises in the shape of her husband's hands — and when that heroine then spends the morning explaining to her husband that she's incredibly happy even though he injured her, and that it's not his fault because she understands he couldn't help it in light of the depth of his passion — that's profoundly irresponsible."
Dan Kois at The Village Voice: "Expect much to be written about this, and for op-ed hacks on either side of the debate to squeeze Breaking Dawn for all it’s worth; the film’s actual politics are muddy. Bella, who’s willing to have the baby even though it’ll certainly kill her, could best be described as anti–life, while the vampires trying to strong-arm her might be pro–abortion, but they’re pretty determinedly anti–choice."

One More Thing

2011-11-17T13:15:00.001-08:00

What the hell, you guys are probably in line at the theater reading this on your phone anyway, right? So when I was in college I surprised myself by once coming to the defense of John Yoo, the scholar and former Bush administration official who was the architect of many controversial policies including but not limited to what we refer to somewhat ironically now as "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Yoo wrote a book on Presidential war powers, which is a major source of contention among political scientists. Who has the power to Make War? The President or Congress? The constitution empowers the President to be "commander in chief," and the Federalist papers elaborate on the importance of "secrecy and dispatch" (Federalist Papers #70, I think, but I'm not going to check) that only an Executive, lone actor could accomplish. Whereas Congress is assigned the power to "declare war." Some argue that this was tantamount to Congress simply signing off on a war the President wanted to wage, others believed Congress was meant to be more involved in the process (and in fact, the Founding Fathers use "make war" and "declare war" interchangeably in the Federalist papers). Regardless of what scholars think, though, Presidents have seized more and more war powers over the years, and Congressional attempts to rein them in (like the 1973 War Powers resolution) have failed or backfired.

Anyway, on a midterm we were given a piece by John Yoo arguing in favor of Presidential supremacy, and another article favoring Congress, and were asked to explain who made the most compelling argument. Much as I didn't like the power-grabs of the Bush era, I had to hand it to Yoo: he was describing the world as it was, and saying that it was meant to be this way. The other scholars were in a dream world, imagining an alternative US in which Congress was capable of being assertive.

Over at The Hairpin, Sarah Blackwood has made a similar defense of Breaking Dawn, only John Yoo is Bella Swan. Give it a read.

COUNTDOWN TO BREAKING DAWN: Honor Amongst Louts, Rapists & Thieves

2011-11-17T12:57:00.001-08:00

Breaking Dawn part 1 will be released at midnight this evening ("Tonight's the night!"-Dexter). Shit, so I guess this movie is really happening, huh? I'm republishing some MOBFD stuff over on my Tumblr, and here I'd like to discuss the last three things I find really terrible about the first half of Meyer's magnum opus.

1. Rosalie's Baby

Breaking Dawn transitions from a romance about abstinence (which Robert Pattinson himself said on David Letterman last week) to an anti-abortion parable. As much is telegraphed early on, when Bella starts dreaming about having to defend beautiful children from various murderers. But it's thrown into stark relief when Bella gets pregnant and the Cullens and their hangers-on take sides. Edward and Alice, it is revealed, are very firmly pro-abortion. Rosalie and Bella are fiercely pro-life, and the rest fall somewhere in the middle. But Stephenie Meyer stacks the deck against a Woman's Right To Choose every step of the way. In a lot of ways, it's perfect. Those of us on the left of this issue (and all issues, really) tend to meet our opponents half-way, anticipate their arguments and bring them up ourselves. And the Other Side ignores all of that and bolsters their arguments with magic.

Bella's baby is established right away to be a miracle conception, if not quite on the order of Jesus than at least a high-ranking senior Heaven official. Earlier in the book we've established female vampires' inability to conceive (and the heartbreak that results--vampire women are, as a people, so baby-crazy that they've attempted vamping human children just to have a cute little thing to hold for eternity) and Bella smugly recalls that fact minutes after realizing she's with-child or with-whatever. Bella loves being a mother immediately, by the way. The narrator we've had for three books, the one who is ambivalent about marriage and even uneasy about the love she feels for Edward, is immediately born again. Thematically speaking, it would have made more sense for that motherly conversion to come during Bella's later transition to vampiredom. But again, this is a heavy-handed abortion parable, and the desire to abort the child has to come from external sources. But the mother of all political cheap shots comes when Bella realizes she already has a baby bump. Life very literally, graphically starts at conception here. No question about that! The fucking thing is already kicking before Edward gets up off the ground.

Bella goes on to nobly forsake her own health for the sake of the chill (and even though she didn't need a slate of Republican legislation to make the decision for her obviously other women can't be trusted, right?). The bloody, bewildering birth scene that functions as the climax for the whole series is basically a GOP wet dream: [spoiler alert] a healthy child and a dead, torn-open mother.

Further reading: "Mama I'm Swollen"

2. A Gentleman's Agreement

This is the most vaguely appalling part of the first half of Breaking Dawn. After the honeymoon and before the birth, Stephenie Meyer seems sort of at a loss to fill the space. So she gets weird with it. The wandering plot digressions that lead essentially nowhere creates the hard-to-shake feeling that you're reading particularly strange fanfiction. Anyway, what happens is, Bella's pregnancy drives Edward a little crazy, which is maybe supposed to be symbolic of the way dudes get squirrely once you fuck them? But anyway he misinterprets Bella's love for her baby to be love for like, any baby. The good news is he doesn't go steal an infant. He pulls Jacob aside and asks him to be a surrogate. And he doesn't plan on doing it test-tube style. Dude is like, "Hey, want to fuck my wife?"

Again, it's hard to suss out where this came from. It happens in the middle of Meyer's struggle to establish Leah Clearwater as a "feminist" character--which is either an attack on feminism or well-intentioned mega-gaffe. Even Bella practically calls Leah Clearwater a shrew. (For more on that: "Stare Decisis") But assuming the latter, maybe Edward and Jacob's plan is supposed to show how stupid and patriarchal dudes can be? Anyway, Jacob thinks the plan is stupid but asks Bella anyway. And she weirdly scoffs at "artificial insemination." ("Edward and I actually had other plans..."-Jacob)

What I wrote back in February about this is coherent enough, so if you'll pardon me I'm about to quote myself at length.

I thought Bella was a modern woman. She's anti-artificial insemination now? I'll give Bella this much: she is being more ideologically coherent than most pro-lifers. I've long complained, when debating issues like stem cell research, that those who oppose abortion should also oppose in vitro fertilization. That's the argument put forth by Sam Harris in his great, short book, Letter To A Christian Nation. He points out that the process of in vitro actually creates and destroys several embryos; if you believe that life begins at conception, several "babies" die in order for one to be born. Of course, Harris's point is that pro-lifers DON'T oppose artificial insemination. He is trying to rhetorically box them in. And yet, this is the second time in two days I have encountered a conservative who is actively against artificial insemination (Bella and some random asshole on Facebook). (The counterargument to those rare folks is, first, a number of Bible passages that support the life of the mother over a child and/or imply that life does not begin at conception, and second, the fact that about 50% of all pregnancies terminate spontaneously. Which, to paraphrase Harris, makes God the most prolific abortionist in town.)

And yet conservatives who oppose artificial insemination don't do so out of ideological coherence. Make no mistake, it comes from an anti-feminist place. Artificial insemination leads to single mothers of the worst kind: the empowered ones. Nothing erodes the sanctity of the family more than an empowered woman, you know?

Once again we must invoke the bizarre fact that S. Meyer claims to have studied feminism. Her writing flies in the face of this, but there you are. Of course, she studied feminism at Brigham Young University, which is like studying evolutionary biology at Trinity Bible College. Or studying child-labor law in a Chinese sneaker factory. If they even offer classes.

So I guess my point is: What the fuck is with this part? I hope it makes it into the movie.

3. Beach Party

If you had to pick a single-worst moment in Breaking Dawn, it would come right at the start of Book II, after Jacob has assumed the reins as a narrator. He wanders down to the beach and encounters his friend Quil, who has imprinted on a toddler (foreshadowing the fact that Jacob will soon fall in love with Bella's child literally before it is even born) named Claire (If you think about the Lolita allusion in their names for too long your brain will break). They're playing in the water without even a single member of Child Protective Services watching, and Jacob and Quil both lament their sorry lots. Jacob is still in love with a newly married woman, and Quil has to wait fifteen years before he can fuck his girlfriend.

The good news for Quil is that as a werewolf he can linger in his physical prime for as many years as he wants--wolves don't start aging until they've learned to control their transformations completely enough to stop. And Jacob gets an even better deal: Bella's daughter Renesmee ages rapidly, so he won't have to wait very long to fuck her at all! But anyway.

Jacob and Quil trade homophobic jokes, Claire prattles on in adowowbul baby talk, and overall it feels like Meyer is giving us a very strong warning to stop reading now, before it's too late. Why I didn't follow that instinct is a question that will probably haunt me forever.

More: "Jacob The Obscure"

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN: A Directory

BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 25: Killing Yourself To Live

2011-11-17T06:54:00.001-08:00

Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 25

Funny thing about this final deus ex gamemaker: at first I was like: “WEREWOLVES!? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” But then I was like, “Oh, maybe they're not werewolves...” And then I was like “HOLY SHIT THIS IS FUCKED UP AND AWESOME.”

Because at first, yeah, it seems like Cato is being chased by giant wolves. He runs, Katniss and Peeta run (it's interesting to note that Katniss seems to keep forgetting Peeta is even there, obsessed as she is with her own survival) and Katniss doesn't get a good look at them. But she signals for the outraged YA fans to wait up a second—this isn't another damn werewolf book, Katniss promises!

Up close, I'm sure their more menacing attributes will be revealed.

Cato climbs the cornucopia, and Katniss follows while Peeta limps along trying to catch up. At the top (the shape and look of this thing is kind of hard to imagine. I mean I guess it's like your standard Thanksgiving centerpiece, but gold and enormous and flat enough for three people to stand/lie down on?) Cato is lying down, catching his breath. Katniss is about to kill him when she remembers Peeta (“Oh right, Peeta exists!”-Katniss) and sees him struggling to climb up, wolves on his tail.

Two things happen before our heroes and villains get their acts together and fight. Peeta gets bitten on the leg but subdues his attacker with a knife. Then Katniss looks one of them in the eyes (don't look them in the eyes, idiot!) and has a horrifying realization.

“It's them. It's all of them. The others. Rue and Foxface and...all of the other tributes,” I choke out.

She recognizes their human-like eyes and sees collars with identifying district numbers (classy touch, Gamemakers). YIKES. I mean, we knew that the government of Panem didn't care much for the lives of these kids, but to create monstrous creatures in their images is some next-level shit. I don't even want to think about the actual mechanics of doing such a thing, because any way you slice it (cutting out eyeballs, reanimating and genetically enhancing corpses) shit is DARK. Recall Peeta and his vow to make sure the capitol knew they didn't own him—that certainly wouldn't have been the case if he'd been killed in the games. Overall it's such a grisly and horrifying moment that I tried not to fixate on Katniss's further descriptions of the creatures, because them shits is still werewolves. But anyway.

Katniss eventually recovers her wits enough to remember to kill Cato, but by then motherfucker has Peeta in a headlock. Katniss takes aim and he points out that if she kills him, Peeta will fall and die too. They have a brief standoff before Peeta draws an X on Cato's hand. He figures out what it means a split-second after Katniss's arrow pierces his hand, and he falls backward to the beasts below.

And here's another fucked up part. Peeta and Katniss wait on top of the cornucopia for the cannon to signal Cato's death, but it doesn't come. The beasts are killing him slowly, dragging it out. Hours pass, night falls, and poor Cato is still getting torn up on the ground.

Peeta's leg wound turns out to be pretty bad, so as they wait out the clock on Cato's life and the games Katniss makes a tourniquet (out of her shirt! HUBBA HUBBA) to try and save Peeta's leg. More time passes, and Katniss is filled with pity for Cato, being tossed around below her. At some point he lands close enough to them, and Katniss decides to use her last arrow to put him out of his misery. She looks at the “raw hunk of meat that used to be my enemy” and thinks she can hear him say “please.” So she kills him.

We've certainly had periodic glimpses into the capital-e Evil of Panem before, but never has it been thrown into such stark relief. The end of the Hunger Games proper is a stone fucking bummer. Suzanne Collins makes sure any kind of thrill we might have gotten from the violence before now is long gone. I thought I was signing up for George Orwell-lite, but this is more like Michael Haneke-lite. And Haneke-lite is still HEAVY AS FUCK.

The cannon sounds, the wolves run into a trap door, but nothing happens to signal the end of the games. No fireworks, no dancers. Katniss and Peeta limp down to the lake, and an announcement blares: they're taking back the rule change; there can only be one Hungerlander again. O cruel!

Peeta stands up, and Katniss immediately points her bow at his heart. And then he throws his knife into the lake. WHOOPS. I hate it when that happens! He offers to kill himself—which would have been easier with the knife—and unties his tourniquet.

“You're not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I'll never go home, not really. I'll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out.

Peeta mentions that “they have to have a victor,” which gives Katniss an idea. If they both kill themselves at the same time, there will be no winner. So she pulls out the berries that killed Foxface and holds them out for the world to see ("If there are poison berries at the start of Act III, they'll come back before the end of Act III"-Chekov). They agree to do it on the count of three, and when they reach it Katniss wonders if her gambit won't work. But at the very last second the Gamemakers announce that they've changed the rules back, and Peeta and Katniss are the winners of the Hunger Games. Huh!

Turning And Turning In The Widening Gyre

2011-11-16T09:00:00.001-08:00

Thanks Kim, for linking on Twitter yesterday to this i09 interview with Breaking Dawn director Bill Condon, the pull-quote of which is that he called BD a "uniquely female horror story." He avoids directly characterizing it as "feminist" of course, and also even ducks the question of whether or not Bella is a "role model." Another interesting moment comes when the writer of the article subtly impugn's Stephenie Meyer's intelligence:

And we've written about the fact that Melissa Rosenberg brings a layer of knowingness to the screenplays that isn't there in quite the same way in the books.

I think that's true, yeah, and I also think there's just a completely different kind of political perspective, and just a sense of the world. I do think she's such a major collaborator, as well as Kristen Stewart. There's a lot of [Stewart] in this movie version of the character, that somehow exists between the Bella in the novels and what Kristen Stewart brought to it.

That layer of knowingness is there, for sure, but to me that's why the movies always seem so incoherent. Like Ron Paul, Meyer is at least absolute and consistent with her craziness. The Twilight movies are a hodgepodge of sensibilities, which is why so much of it falls flat.

And then the subject of imprinting comes up. The writer throws Condon a rope along with her question, but that doesn't make his answer any more comforting.

Speaking of Jacob, can we talk about the imprinting scene, where he imprints on Bella's baby? That seems like a weird thing to have to externalize. Did you struggle with how to make that something a mainstream audience can understand?

Absolutely. It is so... it is absolutely one of the most controversial ideas in the book. There is a very reductive take on this as just "falling in love with the baby," which it isn't. I have to say, we just saw it for the first time with the audience, of four thousand people. There was... Oh my god, it was the biggest thrill for me was that moment, where people embraced it entirely. There was just a complete warmth that was felt. I think it was about visualizing in a way, a spiritual connection to the soul of that other person. So it's not a baby, it's the entire expanse of what her life is, that hits him in an instant. And it's such a powerful, magical feeling that is impossible to resist.

SO. I mean from the get go we're off to the races, with Charlie Jane Anders implying that our reading of the text is unsophisticated. Condon keeps that thread going, obviously, calling it "reductive" to say that Jacob falls in love with a baby. I think we should be conservative with the sort of things we call reductive. Writing an anti-abortion parable in which the choice is whether or not to abort a magic baby is reductive. Implying that domestic abuse could drive two people closer together is reductive. The character of Leah Clearwater is reductive. Saying that Jacob falls in love with a baby is stating a fact. And the anecdote about 4,000 people in a theater warmly embracing their union sounds FUCKING HORRIFYING.

Anyway, I think it's notable that every day we have another principle member of the Twilight Industrial Complex being confronted about the questionable ideas in Meyer's book. Strain is showing. (Weirdly, Kristen Stewart seems to have doubled-down on her defense of Bella and Twilight in general, whereas Robert Pattinson's loathing of the series is becoming increasingly obvious. Have you seen any of his recent late-night appearances?) The whole enterprise is becoming too self-aware to sustain itself, the falcon can't hear the falconer, and I eagerly await the fast-approaching day when someone finally sits Stephenie Meyer down and makes her explain her damn self.

Nobody Imprints Baby In A Corner

2011-11-15T13:19:00.001-08:00

Hey gang, I wrote something about Imprinting and Breaking Dawn, but since it was sort of written for the uninitiated I posted it on Tumblr instead of here. But go check it out, and share it with people you think might benefit from knowing about it. Thanks.

Does The Black Carpet Match The Drapes?

2011-11-15T10:17:00.001-08:00

Hey it was the Breaking Dawn premiere last night! Also, the Raid of Zuccotti Park! But let's focus on the positive(ish) okay? Thanks, Rosanne, for linking me to these outfits! LET'S MAKE FUN OF THEM!

Taytay looks dapper as fuck, okay? The guy knows how to rock the Brooks Brothers boys collection, Tommy Fresh-style. And that rape-stache he's been rocking looks a little better than normal. Robert Pattinson looks the same as he always does. Dude has been more consistent in his red (or black in this case) carpet looks for the last four years than any of the Cullens, movie-to-movie. And Legsten Stewart looks very Kristeny!

Here's AG, looking like a pornographic candy cane. She keeps doing that middle part thing that makes me feel like she's Anne Hathaway's sister. DISLIKE. But other than that, not bad!

"In solidarity with the economically ravaged nation of Greece, I've decided to dress as the god of curtains." I heard a rumor that Nikki Reed is with-child, by the way. I can't tell if there's a motherly glow about her or if someone's trying to light her evenly enough to chroma-key her out of the shot.

I love the twinkle in Kellan Lutz's eye. It says, "I'm about to get my dick wet with one of the fly girls from In Living Color!" I also love that suit. I heard it was made custom for him and that the tie-clip is made of recycled Axe cans.

BEHOLD DOCTOR CULLEN, PIONEER OF THE SCARFSHIRT. "Is it a scarf? Is it a shirt? It's neither! Fuck you!"-future scarfshirt ad campaign. "This isn't a scarf, it's a time machine. It takes you to a special place, where you know you're going to feel weird in the morning."-Don Draper

OH GOD. WHAT THE FUUUUCK? DID MASE HAVE AN ESTATE SALE? DID JRATH WALK INTO HIS TRAILER AND GO "GIVE ME THE 'DRAG KING SANTA CLAUS'"? DID HE ASK FOR THE "BUSINESS CASUAL...AT HOT TOPIC"? HOLY SHIT DUDE. WE HAVE A WINNER.

COUNTDOWN TO BREAKING DAWN: Kellan Lutz Likes Having A Gay Around

2011-11-15T06:57:00.001-08:00

Can you spot the gay sensibility in this photo?

So Kellan Lutz talked to The Advocate (LOL at whoever at The Advocate thought that would be a good/ funny idea) and praised the "gay sensibility" that Bill Condon brought to Breaking Dawn. Oy. Condon himself reacted to the original quote (I'm imagining he mumbled a lot of it) thusly (via The Frisky):

“What is a ‘gay sensibility’? It’s just a sensibility, but part of who you are is that you’re gay. So in a way, yes and no — you know? Now I’ve got to read it and hear what he said. But you know, I think what’s legitimate about it is that the thing that’s really remarkable about ‘Twilight,’ to me, is that it’s not necessarily about teenage boys’ concerns. Certainly that’s an aspect of it with Jacob and the wolves and all that, but it really puts things that are more explicitly female center-stage in a tent pole that a ton of people go to see. I think probably that stuff interests me more than another comic book action movie might, or blowing up trains and things. So in a way, I can see that that makes some sense.”

Female-centered and not "feminist" is a distinction I'm glad he (even accidentally) made. But Kellan Lutz AND Bill Condon are crazy if they think the Twilight films didn't have a gay sensibility before. The books, to be sure, are a homophobic nightmare, but the camp-infused movies are a big gay party. Ashley Greene's haircut knows what I'm talking about (do you feel like when AG keep saying "modern" re: that wig she's referencing ambiguous sexuality? I hope so). The tent also would know what I'm talking about if it could understand human speech and culture.

Either way, are you seeing a pattern here? Ashley Greene confronted about domestic abuse. Kellan Lutz starting a conversation (however meatheadedly) about gay sensibility in Twilight. I was worried, in the run up to Breaking Dawn's release, that this stuff wouldn't be discussed on the national stage. I'm happy to be wrong!

RELATED POSTS: "What We Agree About When We Talk About Twilight: No Homo" "On Robert Pattinson & Self-Awareness"

Viva La Ashley Greene

2011-11-14T11:47:00.001-08:00

Thanks to 247Greene we have a glimpse of Ashley Greene's Esquire Mexico cover. WAIT, Esquire MEXICO? MIERDA! If this means we're going to miss out on a bizarro Tom Chiarella profile of AG I am going to cancel my subscription. What is the point of reading Esquire if not to read a thousand (mostly ridiculous) words about the way Ashley Greene eats sweet potato fries and how it's a metaphor for her career? 247Greene says she'll be on the December US cover, but Esquire just filed their December articles and it looks like Mark Kelly is on the cover instead. LAME. I mean, dude only went to outer space and weathered his wife's attempted assassination. BFD am I right? Anyway. (Related: The Predictive Ashley Greene Profile)

In other AG news, girl got some work! Word is she's doing a 2-3 episode arc on Pan-Am, which as I understand it is the poor man's Mad Men. Well, hey! Good enough! There's lots of other news regarding AG and everybody else all over the Internet at the moment, and if you want to hear Jackson Rathbone explain how "all art is subjective" go here. Hahahaha.

But the super-notable AG interview of the day comes from Karen Nicoletti at Movieline. Nicoletti just earned a lifetime pass with me, because she asked Ashley Greene what she thinks of all the creepy domestic abuse imagery in Breaking Dawn. AG mostly ducks the question (and starts talking about the damage the baby inflicts on Bella as quickly as possible) but still, people are talking about this! FINALLY! (Related: La Isla Indescrita)

There But For The Grace Of God Go Die

2011-11-14T09:16:00.001-08:00

Via Bryan, here's Grantland's photo essay about the men currently camping out at the tent city that was erected by fans in advance of tonight's Breaking Dawn premiere. SHUT IT ALL DOWN AND KILL IT WITH FIRE. Also, how much do you hate the fact that Twilight Tent City is a thing? OCCUPY FORKS LOL RIGHT? Shut up, everyone.

Also: The Hunger Games trailer came out today! It look fine! Lenny Kravitz looks scruffier than I'd have thought? Peeta looks goofier than I'd have thought? The Reaping looks more holocaust-y than I'd have thought? But otherwise, hey!