I don’t want to post any spoilers for those of you catching up (or just now starting) Enlightened, but suffice to say the final paragraph of this article almost brought me to tears.
I will, however, leave you with this:
9. Enlightened thinks we ultimately deserve to see good people win.
10. We don’t ultimately feel like we deserve to see good people win.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Samuels of the Washington Post voiced the most common complaint against the fad — it reappropriates the name of an actual dance with a storied history rooted in our nation’s most iconic predominantly black neighborhood. The people in the “Harlem Shake” videos aren’t doing the real Harlem Shake; essentially, they’re dry-humping empty space like a pack of hyperactive poodles lost in a sea of fetching pant legs.2 ”I’m nowhere as peeved as some who live in Harlem,” Samuels writes, “who view the dance as the latest thing to be mangled and robbed from the country’s cultural black mecca.” He’s referring to this video of Harlem residents reacting — some with good-natured befuddlement, others with pronounced “not again” dismay — to a compilation of “Harlem Shake” videos. “The Harlem Shake meme should not die until groups of committed dancers reclaim it from the jowls of foolish oblivion,” Samuels concludes.
Grantland goes on to discuss the offensive appropriation involved in Macklemore’s hit “Thrift Shop” and “Gangnam Style,” pictured above. You should all be reading Grantland.
The creation of Lost defies nearly everything we know about how successful television shows — or great ones — are made. The idea for Lost came not from a writer, but a network executive. The first writer on the project got fired. The replacement creative team had a fraction of the usual time to write, cast, and produce a pilot episode. The executive who had championed the show was himself fired before it ever aired. One of the two creators all but quit the moment the pilot was finished. Nearly every creative decision at the start of the show was made under the assumption that it would never succeed. Everyone believed it was too weird, too dense, too unusual to work. And it may have been. But it worked, anyway.
It really worked. So well.
Grantland continues to slay with their fake but honest logos for the NFL.
Years from now, if the Williams sisters appear to have changed tennis at all, I am almost sure that Serena will seem to have been more central to that change than Venus.8 That racist, anti-racist Tony Hoagland poem from 2003 ends after “the black girl” has beaten her opponent, “then kicked her ass good / then thumped her once more for good measure,” as the speaker ambiguously mourns the end of the 20th century. I love that Serena is still out there kicking the 20th century’s ass — just incidentally, not even meaning to do it, not making a point of it, just kicking its ass over and over again.
I actually got into an argument about this last year when Serena was vivisected for “blowing up” at the US Open but everyone conveniently overlooked Mardy Fish’s behavior during his bout with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. I argued then that a lot of the negative attention directed at Serena is coded in racist and sexist beliefs, and I think this article addresses that perfectly.
Rembert Browne’s attempt at figuring out just what happened with the Jackson family lately.
This current, public display of the Jacksons’ meltdown seems to involve three things: Michael Jackson’s will, Michael Jackson’s estate, and family privacy. Within all that, however, Katherine Jackson may or may not have been kidnapped by her own children, Janet and two of her brothers may or may not have driven their car through the gate of the estate with the hopes of confiscating the children’s cell phones, and Janet and Paris (Michael’s lone daughter) may or may not have had an expletive-filled screaming matchthat ended with Janet slapping her niece.
Following is a list of gems located in Grantland’s TREND ALERT discussion that mocks the Boston Globe’s “style piece” on lax bros. Basically, Jay Kang, Rembert Browne, and Katie Baker totally shred the nets on this pathetic article, and their jokes are wicked tight, brah:
- Browne: I should probably get this out the way now and say I love the lax bros I know and irrationally despise the ones I don’t. OK, go Kang.
- Baker: I’m upset that “lacrosstitute” didn’t get one of these earnest definitions. “They are cheered, whether on the field or at the keg, by girls in sundresses known as ‘lacrosstitutes’ — a portmanteau of ‘lacrosse’ and ‘prostitutes,’ though it’s unclear how they are compensated.”
- Kang: As far as I could tell, the compensation for lacrosstitutes was mostly Boone’s Farm.
- Baker: The jam band lax bro is always a long stick middie and his bedroom is always on the third floor of the lax haus.
- Kang: Isn’t that a city law in Brookline? To live in Brookline, you have to be “all for inclusion,” even if you name your kids Zander, Cameron, and Beau? The history of suburban Boston and the METCO busing program lies somewhere in that paragraph.
- Browne: I call “shenanigans” on Andrea. There’s no way you sign your kid up for lax because baseball bores you, the mother. You sign your kid up for lax because you want your kid to be a lax bro. My mom didn’t take me out of gymnastics at age 5 and immediately drive me to a basketball gym because she was annoyed with the repetition of the pommel horse. She did it because she’s a G and wanted me to have a fun childhood where I didn’t get beat up and ultimately be a “hooper.” A “hooper” and a “lax bro” are like third cousins. Beau and I are third cousins. There, I said it.
- Kang: Also, Andrea’s three kids are 12, 11, and 9 years old. How about taking a fucking break, Andrea? You were pregnant for like 40 of 48 months. No wonder baseball bores you.
- Mother: Where are you going?
Lax Bro: To Beau’s house.
Mother: Why are you bringing your “spoon”? Are you guys going to play lax?
Lax Bro: No, mom. This is clearly my “hanging spoon,” not my “game spoon” or “practice spoon.” Why are you so stupid?
Mother: If Andrea has gained any weight, can you take a picture with your camera phone and send it to me?
Lax Bro: Who is Andrea?
Mother: Beau’s mom.
Lax Bro: Oh, I think she’s pregnant again. -
It is “someone who plays a lot of lacrosse, enjoys hanging out, being sort of lackadaisical,” MacKay said. ‘Everyone has their own opinion of a lax bro. That is mine.’
Baker: That should obviously be “laxadaisical.” Somewhere in Laxington, Laxachusetts, a new company is being trademarked right now.
But as a vocal, unashamed fan of ‘Ye’s “Runaway” movie, I actually can’t wait to see this, Kid-Cudi-leading-blind-girl-around-by-strings and everything. Will it be released online? In movie theaters? Or will there be a travelling seven-screen beach pyramid that you and I can one day immerse ourselves in? Dare to dream. Dare to dream.
I’m there - no matter what the venue. This is gonna be fucking BANK.
The Grammys are a perennial source of confusion, disbelief, and righteous, mighty anger … and this year’s nominations, announced last night, are no exception! … But here’s the one thing we should all focus our collective anger toward this morning: the painful snubbing of Kanye West.
At first glance, Kanye should have nothing to be upset about. He actually leads the field in Grammy nominations with seven (Adele, Bruno Mars, and the Foo Fighters are next, with six apiece). But not one of those nominations is for Album of the Year. That’s right: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was shut out in favor of Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans. This is, primarily, about Kanye totally, definitively deserving an Album of the Year spot. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way makes sense, and Adele’s 21 would have probably beaten him for the title anyway. But how did the Foo Fighters’ Wasting Light and Rihanna’s Loud — both fine, very visible 2011 albums that in no way touch the scope and cultural permeation of MBDTF — slip in ahead of ‘Ye? And, again: Bruno fucking Mars?! Are you serious right now?
Could not agree more. The fact that ‘Yesus was overlooked in favor of people like Bruno Mars is just fucking ridiculous. Their obvious play for ratings is both transparent and reprehensible.
Something like that has happened over the last 20 or 30 years in regard to college athletics. Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn’t that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work…Now, though, the indications are that the reckoning is finally here.
Well there goes part of my anticipated career as an academic.
That said, per usual, Grantland provides a nuanced and astutely written piece on the utterly doomed hypocrisy that is the NCAA. Down with the machine, friends.
Source: Grantland
To me, the film that has come out of the last few weeks looking most like a contender is one that nobody in the Oscarverse is talking about. If I told you that a movie made by an Academy Award-winning director starring eight previous acting nominees (four of them winners) opened in first place at the box office and received extremely positive reviews, you’d be thinking it’s in the mix, right? So why aren’t more people — okay, why isn’t anyone — high on the awards chances of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion?
Holy shit, y’all, I love it when we get to start arguing about Oscar races and chances. Grantland has an incredible piece on why Contagion shouldn’t be forgotten in the prognostication that overtakes Hollywood around this time each year. For the record, I also love Mark Harris’s reading of the actresses from The Help and their ultimate chances regarding Oscar recognition come next year.
I gotta testify, come up in the spot lookin' extra fly...
