Posts tagged as Problems
Understudies! A Carnival Named Desire: 'Carousel'
Carousel's main character Billy Bigelow has much in common with Mad Men's Don Draper besides a fondness for alliteration. He is a cocky, beautiful, ego-driven ball of macho dynamite. The carnival barker thing also makes you realize how much of Bruce Springsteen's early style came straight off the Jersey piers. Bigelow is the kind of man who can't help but talk down to everyone, supposedly because he hates himself, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of regard for most other people either. "Emotion work" is defined as the act of putting on a front that differs from one's own actual feelings. Traditional masculinity requires nonstop emotional work, monitoring that one does not reveal one's own actual insecurities and worries, which must get exhausting. READ MORE
"Glee": Sometimes Writers Slam Keyboards with Ham Fists
This was the first episode in which I felt the darkness of real life butted up against the cartoon land of "Glee," and, honestly, I don't know how the show is going to hold up. Well, okay. Before I get into that eternal sadness, let's talk about the adorable plot line of Tina the Goth vs. Principal "Actually Believes in Vampires" Figgins. After a band of Hot Fat Teen Vampires, aka Glee Spin Off Show #407, takes down a hapless nerd in the hallway, Figgins cracks down on all Goths school-wide. (I'm really hoping those vamps actually did rip open that dweeb's throat out and gorged themselves on his blood. All I'm saying is, I buy the DVDs for the extras!) Schue intervenes in the heated argument between Figgins and Tina's fabulous tiny top hat, reminding the principal that he once idealized Elvis so much that he started dressing like him. "But he was a Christian!" Figgins protests, "And he didn't have the ability to transform into a bat!" Like manna from Heaven, these spin-off ideas spill unceasingly from Figgins' mouth. Anyway, Tina thereby is forced to attend school bare-faced and be-sweatshirted with hair of a normal color. "I feel like an Asian Branch Davidian!" she laments. A Waco reference 17 years after the fact? O my! Tina must have heard about that when her mother put the radio too close to her WOMB. READ MORE
Baby Monitor Punished for Being too Awesome
So this guy Wes Denkov is filing a class action lawsuit against this baby monitor company because the microphone was so sensitive it could pick up conversations from rooms outside of the nursery and cross streams and grab footage from the monitor NEXT DOOR. I get the whole, "I don't want other people tuning in on my baby's channel like he's some kiddie pool of husky puppies," but let's face it, a solo non-famous baby, sans a unicorn horn shaped like the virgin Mary crying blood tears or a tiny charming mermaid tail, is not that spesh, right? No offense DAD but you're the one who was too lazy to stand guard over your baby 24/7/365 with a tiny mirror affixed to its pie hole and holding a poultice on its fontanelle LIKE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO so don't blame the radiation portal that YOU bought to put by baby's face for your problems.
Online Shoe Retail MONSTER's Newfangled Personalization Software is Janktastic
Everyone knows that Zappos sold to Amazon for $900 million human 2009 dollars which makes the schadenfreude super spicy and causes pancreatic cancer. So it was extra eye-rolly that this site that doesn't even carry Nicholas Kirkwood is so special now and can be "helpful" to where it suggests other things you'd be interested in based on your selections. You know, that annoyingly aggressive thing that Amazon does where it insists that EVERY Tamilee Webb thing EVER is up your alley because ONE TIME you bought a Bowflex. So you can imagine how thrilling it was to find that this pump-slinging zapateria's shiny new function was BROKE. Shit is incorrect! It's SHODDY. READ MORE
Skank Boot Evokes Rage
I can't deal. It's fall 2009 and what they've predicted has all come true. I've seen 'em. They've officially descended upon us like the vinyl-clad seat of a dominatrix who mistakenly thinks we want our faces suffocated. They're everywhere. On the street. On public transportation. The sticky, deplorable, throbbing, bastard mass sprung from the loins of FASHION like so much Strangé perfume from Grace Jones' womb: the over-the-knee-boot. READ MORE
