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Theme Songs and Title Sequences: True Blood
I break down the #TrueBlood title sequence by @digitalkitchen
True Bloodhas devolved from a delicious, mystery-driven, Southern Gothic evisceration of societal mores to a lukewarm pool of bloody literalism. When you ditch the metaphorical drugs, religious persecution, and prejudice (obvious though they may have…
Behind the Issue: Women in Music 2013
Go to 1:29 to see HAIMDear @ellemagazine I love this #BTS #WomeninMusic video @aliciakeys @haimtheband @jessieware @angelhaze
“I don’t want to date Robert Plant, I want to be Robert Plant.”
“Shit. *laughs* I don’t know how to rhyme ’concrete’ with anything. “
Yeah it’s eleven-and-almost-a-half minutes, but watch the whole damn thing. Consider also, why they choose - in such an obviously perfectly lit setting, with a track and tripods and professional ops - to use so many shots which show the C-stands and the monitors past the background, and why they use steadycam and rack focused shots. Why they use video of the photo shoots, instead of the shots from the photo shoots. Why the slating, and people messing up. If the medium is the message, are they succeeding in getting across that real, gritty, beautiful essence that is these women? Is the edit the most flawless thing ever?
(And relatedly, why the hell people hashtag their own shows/videos instead of letting the fans do it.)
Michael Deacon, “Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown” (The Telegraph)
The comment section isn’t bad, either, and maybe that tells you more about the quality of the article than my putting a quote here. (Also, I couldn’t pick just one quote. Read the freaking article, yo.)
Here is the great video for Pistol Annies’ “Hush Hush,” which has been lodged in my brain for more than week now. And here is something I have written for Slate about the seemingly unlikely but increasingly cozy relationship between weed and country music. And now I would like some green bean casserole please.
This video is fascinating to me because I wonder how many of the cringe spots are lost on the broader audience it’s probably going to get (though my only evidence is music critics / a general sense of critical milieu, and the YouTube comments getting all suddenly foodie.)
(Also fascinating: where are all the teenagers? Well, yes, also getting high in the house or in the woods, but not on camera. It’s like the anti-millennial video.)
This video is my teenage years, except with weed. If they’d had the weed, perhaps the rest would have turned out differently?
But seriously, the dresses, the potluck, the cadence of the preacher holding the audience who can smell the damn pot roast and just wishes to be let free, the petty gossip and double standards, it’s spot-on.
And the article:
“Or maybe, like the fed-up narrator of “Hush Hush,” it has just become too exhausting—for country music and for America itself—to maintain the charade of sanctimony at the big dinner table of public life, to keep tamping down the truth that everyone knows everyone else knows but doesn’t want to let on that they know they know.”
That’s why I left the Baptist church, ya’ll.
#PartyDown episode 5 review: ‘Sin Say Shun Awards Afterparty’ and the ethics of sex business
#LostGirl review 01.04, Faetal Attraction Now with more flying skulls!
Things Neighbors Say
A minute ago I thought I heard my upstairs neighbor loudly proclaiming (jokingly, I think?) into the phone that “I’m going to shove her dildo up your ass.”
And that seemed normal enough.
But then about 30 seconds later she repeated it, thrice, and I realized she said “steel toe.”
“I’m going to shove her steel-toe up your ass.”
Which just leads me to so many questions.
Which would really be better?
Was the joking, presumed playfully sexual connotation of the first sentence now a joking threat?
What is the significance of them being “her” steel-toe boots?
How much do I love a person who doesn’t just say ‘I’m going to shove a boot up your ass’ but really takes the time to specifize it, personalize it, add those important touches?
Almost everything wrong with society is summed up in this article, especially the following:
“if he had figured out a way to gently push the girl off him immediately without looking like he was smacking her in the face, he’s faced with attacks on his masculinity by every douchebro in the building. Yo dude, you don’t want your dick sucked, bro? Are you gay? Haha you’re gay you don’t want girls to suck your dick haha gay dude bro man swag!”
1) the fact men can’t defend themselves without accusations of brutality/’gayness’
2) the fact ‘gayness’ is a pejorative at all
3) The general feeling ;he wanted it because rappers just create cesspools of immorality everywhere they go.’ Male-slut shame!
4) a black guy putting his hands on a white girl, even in self defense (TKAM is actually an awful support for the girl not being punished, but a great support for why Danny Brown couldn’t defend himself) would be instantly shunned.
5) there’s a warped sense of what masculinity/femininity mean at all.
6) there’s an assault double standard. Aside from the obvious, there’s a more subtle idea women can’t be physical perpetrators, because they must still be powerless and without agency.
Let’s see, racism, sexism, homophobia as shame, a ‘culture of manhood,’ and a complete misunderstanding of assault and consent. Could the whole situation get any worse.
Oh yes, one last pet peeve, that Kitty Pryde (the author) has to defend her friendship with a man at all, let alone in several paragraphs, to have her opinion taken even halfway seriously.
UGH.
