'Sweet Valley High,' the Great Retweening and Why Boys Won't Read
"Has there ever been a better moment for tween girls?" asked Ada Calhoun in the L.A. Times last week, pointing to the cultural ascendancy of Disney and Nickelodeon robots Hannah Montana, Taylor Swift, iCarly and Selena Gomez. Then fans of American Idol watched as an army of twexters voted for dreamy over Didi. ("America is a teenage girl," lamented TV blogger Richard Lawson.) So strong is the spirit of this young generation that even the women of my own just-older cohort have sought its approval, offering up recycled heirlooms from our own childhoods like so many olive branches. Just hitting bookstores is The Summer Before, [...]
Iced Out: The End is Near–the Medal Count, Less So
South Korean darling Kim Yu-na was an absolute stunner last night in the ladies free skate, shattering her own world record score and twirling her way to the gold. Aerial ski jumper Jeret Peterson-known assonantly as "Speedy"-landed a "Cirque du Soleil on skis" move called the Hurricane that he had not successfully stuck in competition since 2007; he won a silver. The Canadian women's hockey team boozily Owned The Podium (and almost Drove The Zamboni) after winning their third Olympic gold. And still, all I could think about as I lounged on the couch and let the NBC broadcast team play cat's cradle with my heartstrings [...]
Iced Out: These Olympics Are Totally Awesome!
"These Olympics have just been a complete disaster," said a coworker the other day with the sort of learned gravitas that can only be acquired via a force-fed nightly diet of Chris Collinsworth's zip-up-necked sweaters (stitched, per the suddenly saucy Wall Street Journal, "entirely out of Phil Simms's hair.")
Iced Out: Hey, Did You See Lindsey Vonn's Butt? Plus: Speedskaters!
At first I was fairly heated up about the Sports Illustrated cover shot of shredding sensation Lindsey Vonn. Absurd from every angle-and boy, are there ever angles-it's got her all glammed up in a pretty power princess kind of way, all glossy hair and painted lips. You have to squint your eyes toward the base of her Red Bull-endorsed headthing to see, but I'm pretty sure she's wearing diamond hoop earrings. All that aside, there's other bait: consider, as someone pointed out, the unfortunate juxtaposition of a certain set of letters.
But now I'm pretty much over it. For the real crime, as it turns out, is the blandest [...]
On Preemptive Irritation, by Katie Baker
I don't want to put a damper on anyone's weekend, but I feel like I should give you unsuspecting folks a warning that an aggregate span of 22 minutes this Sunday is going to have a potentially painful and fairly unavoidable influence on your lives for the following two weeks-which is the length of time that the media has to drunk-drive you down the Road to the Super Bowl.
Iced Out: Ski Cross My Heart!
"In the United States," begins something that reads like a high school essay, "the 1960s were a time of revolution, of young people challenging authority and demanding change." It was during that decade, the writer goes on to note, that "social change and freedom of expression led to new and exciting…
………skiing techniques."
(Cripes, is there anything the Boomers aren't taking credit for?)
That illuminating glimpse into modern history is part of the official Olympics website's description of freestyle skiing, the umbrella category that comprises aerials, moguls and the Games' newest "medal discipline": ski cross.
Iced Out, with Katie Baker: Hockey Meat, the Disaster of Whistler Blackcomb and Next Year in Vancouver
Why is nobody excited for the Olympics? The Winter Games are less than three months away, but I haven't heard a single elevator wisecrack about curling yet. This worries me. I suspect that many Americans are still reeling from the spectacle of watching over 15,000 Chinese nationals bang drums in perfect sync during the 2008 Opening Ceremonies in Beijing. As threatening geo-military shows of force go, that was far more terrifying than anything Kim Jong-Il has ever done. Each of those drums will be an American head if you don't fix the dollar stat is what these stone-faced proletariats were saying to me that night. Also: we will see your [...]
Most Popular
Most Commented