New Trends In Hip-Hop: Two Blunts At Once
Kids today. I remember when people thought it was crazy when Kriss Kross wore their jeans backwards. Currently there seems to be a new trend sweeping the hip-hop nation. As evidenced in a number of recent popular rap music videos, the new thing seems to be smoking two blunts at the same time. Or two joints. Two marijuana cigarettes. This would not be so remarkable [Ed.: it is actually not that remarkable], were it not for the fact that it flies in face of age-old conventional wisdom about pot smoking. I don’t even remember any of the guys from Cypress Hill ever smoking two blunts at once. The old rule, stated unambiguously at the end of Ghostface Killah’s classic “One,” when the question is posed, “How many Ls we smoke?” used to be, “One… at a time.”
But that was twelve years ago now, and technology changes things. Whether or not it has anything to do Creamcrop77’s amazing invention, it seems that today’s weed-enthusiast rappers have indeed decided to throw caution, and Ghostface’s advice, to the wind.
It’s not for everybody. While Detroit’s Danny Brown, who certainly seems to enjoy smoking as much as anybody, sticks to an orderly single-file procession of “Blunt After Blunt,” his friend and colleague Quelle Chris can be seen in the video for his “Another Blunt” greedily smoking two-at-a-time. At the one-minute mark, he even has both in his mouth at once.
That practice, which I hereby dub “walrus-tusking,” was hinted at by the trio Flatbush Zombies (who seem to be Brooklyn’s answer to Odd Future) in the lyrics to their charmingly-named, Lana-Del-Ray endorsed hit “Thug Waffle,” as they rap, “Blunts siamese/Two of these/You’ll be me, yo…” And then, depicted, once again, in the video for their latest, “S.C.O.S.A.”
The talented Queens up-n-comer Action Bronson, perhaps in effort to further distinguish himself from Ghostface, to whom him he is often compared, keeps two large tusks in his mouth as he takes an early-morning stroll around LA with the interesting “From Gs to Gents” survivor Riff Raff in the video for “Bird on a Wire.”
That song is good. Though it’s a little disappointing that it doesn’t sample Leonard Cohen.
I wonder if Leonard ever smoked two joints at a time? I kinda doubt it. Doesn’t seem like his style. But I bet he put his pants on backwards once. (Probably by mistake, though.)
How To See Venus
“Go out around 4 p.m. local time on Monday, and position yourself so that the sun is behind a chimney or rooftop to your right. Blocking the sun is always essential if you’re looking anywhere close to the sun. WARNING: Never look directly at the sun with your unaided eye or through binoculars or telescopes without special light filters. Severe eye damage can result. Then face due south, and look two-thirds of the way up the sky towards overhead. If the sky is clear, you should be able to clearly see the crescent moon. Look just above the moon, and you should be able to see Venus as a tiny brilliant pinpoint of light.”
'The Hunger Games': Bloodless, Sexless and Not Very Hungry
by Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Mary HK Choi

Mary HK Choi: Let us make discussion! First Q: did you read the books?
Natasha Vargas-Cooper: I did not! On principle! I was like, “Make it work for me, Lionsgate.”
Mary: RIGHT. Interesting. I did read the books! Second Q: did you read any reviews?
Natasha: NO. Mary, I wanted to love this, love it with my whole big heart I wanted to join a team, a district, pick a teen-lit boyfriend. I DID NONE OF THOSE THINGS. Q for you! Have you seen Battle Royale?
Mary: Of course! Racist.
Mary: Have you read The Lottery?
Natasha: Of course! Racist.
Mary: See, I liked it but that logline thing is a problem — the whole The Lottery meets Battle Royale meets Piggy’s glasses smashed on the floor meets The Running Man.
Natasha: This movie was a total UNDERACHIEVEMENT.
Mary: Right. We kinda can’t go back. We’ve seen Twilight. We’ve seen Potter. We’ve seen Battle Royale. We’ve seen Running Man. What does this add?
Natasha: There were no risks, no daring, and most importantly NO STYLE. Why did this movie look like shit? Why did it look like some failed designer’s portfolio from 1998?
Mary: The costumes are one of my BIGGEST BEEFS!
Natasha: Like, you have the money, find a “Project Runway” winner and get FIERCE.
Mary: TOTALLY. I’m sorry, is like Austin Scarlett x Johnny Weir x The Inhabitants of Fantasia (Neverending Story) the mood board here?!
Natasha: PEETA’S MICHAEL DOUGLAS SUIT AT THE END, A LA WHAM! What was the aesthetic?
Mary: IDK! And why in the first scene where they meet Haymitch in the train cart are they all wearing linen? And SO MUCH Eileen Fisher later! So fucking weird.
Natasha: Woody Harrelson was so dope though.
Mary: Yes. Great hair.
Natasha: I knew the movie was in trouble when we saw the Tribute parade and they showed us NOTHING. No outfits, no personalities of anyone, etc. I don’t need to necessarily care about the children who are murdering children but I would at least like to know what they look like and who they are wearing to the red carpet.
Mary: RIGHT. That is where the movie is far too reliant on the book, the first person perspective and narrative.
Natasha: AND AND AND there’s all this hype about sponsors. “YOU GOTTA GET YOUR SEXY RIGHT FOR THE SPONSORS, KATNISS.” That’s the whole dramatic build and impetus for her special hug with Lenny Krav. But bbbiiissshh, the sponsors had, like, zero to do with the movie! They popped up like twice and it was a bunny fart.
Mary: Here’s the thing: I think it is impossible to like this movie without having read the books.
Natasha: OK, so that’s a problem and a shitty prerequiste. BOO 2 YOU, HUNGER GAME FRANCHISE.
Mary: It’s a HUGE problem.
Natasha: Also, probs the biggest issue is I never got the sense that any one was ever, like… HUNGRY!!!??!!?
Mary: Not feeling the urgency of hunger is another problem.
Natasha: And, sorry, Twilight felt urgent, for no reason, but you were like, YES, YOU TWO SHOULD FUCK BEFORE THE WORLD ENDS!
Mary: Right! YOU BITE HER; YOU BE QUIET.
Mary: I didn’t LOVE this movie. I’ve read the entire trilogy so there are points where I couldn’t remember where this book ended and the next one began but I knew that this shit would be TOO GODDAMNED LONG. It got tired. It’s basically being on the treadmill and not having the towel on top of how much further you have to go.
Natasha: Truth!
Mary: More Q: did you know the second she volunteered she would win?
Natasha: Of course!
Mary: That’s another thing that seems jacked to me, if someone who hadn’t read the book knew also (which, it is fairly obvi) then, what are the stakes?
Natasha: See, it’s like, I knew but I was still down to look at hot boys and sexy girls kill each other and feel the intensity of the game — NONE OF WHICH HAPPENED.
Mary: We spent way too much time watching her sleep.
Natasha: SLEEPING IN TREES WITHOUT BOYS — THE KATNISS STORY.
Mary: CAPTAIN SAVE A HOE-ING WEAKLING GIRLS — THE KATNISS STORY.
Natasha: We need to talk about J. Law. I was bored with her half-frozen face 🙁
Mary: Well, here’s the thing, shorty has a weird face and I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated her in the X-Men movie.
Natasha: Why don’t parts of her face move? I don’t think she’s very fun to watch or that interesting? MISS U, FANNING SISTERS.
Mary: There IS a weirdly gummy but dead aspect to her face.
Natasha: Like, I needed a bitch to EMOTE and pretend like her tummy was a little rumbly.
Mary: MO HUNGRY. You know I didn’t get the impression that anyone in that movie was A STAH.
Natasha: PRECISELY. OK, FACE-OFF: Katniss vs. Bella.
Mary: Bella is such a nothing but she does bird shit which becomes interesting. And there are moments of Bella, where K. Stew is putting in work where that neck vein comes through. She has a weird integrity, even though she’s 100% a spaz and doesn’t know what her face is doing.
Natasha: I know that Bella is plain and mad ordinary but with Kattynay it wasn’t even the cool, stoic steez of Winter’s Bone, it’s like insufferably Girl Scout noble and I mean that in the sleeps in trees way.
Mary: Stoic isn’t the way to describe Winter’s Bone exactly to me. She’s fucking pissed off the entire time, she gets that shit is unfair, that everyone is weak and selfish and arbitrarily holding power over her.
Mary: Katniss never really gets mad, she’s STANK, and annoyed and she’s throwing shade and she cries but she’s never FUCKING MAD BEYOND EVERYTHING in a way that is sustained. It’s not the through-line and I fucking expected and needed that.
Natasha: Is it J. Law’s sturdy control over her face or script fault?
Mary: I don’t think the director made the correct decision about who this movie was for. KABLAM!!!
Natasha: BLAM!! Can we talk about the love triangle? SO NOT HOT in comparison to Twi. WHAT A SHITSHOW!
Mary: It’s SUCH a waste of Liam who you just want to climb.
Natasha: Also, TEAM CATO.
Mary: Yo, that’s what Imma start calling scary white kids who rule at life: CAREERS.
Natasha: I wanted to spend more time with him and his gang of piggies.
Mary: YES. Living. Me too, that’s was kinda nuts that he gamed the girl in his own district and that scary chick from Orphan in district 2. That was some lion pride shit. That could’ve been hot.
Natasha: That bro had marketable skills which I would have like revealed to me, shirtless.
Mary: We needed to see Cato’s D’Angelo muscles.
Natasha: In terms of Peeta, not enough smoldering.
Mary: Major Easter Island face. OH AND I CANNOT with that stone-face makeup camouflage scene. SO FUNNY.
Natasha: AND ALSO BOY BAND HAIR?! LIKE AARON CARTER ’97 MTV AWARDS??
Mary: Yoooo! Boy band CIRCA I WANT IT THAT WAY. LOLOLOL you didn’t just Aaron Carter me right now.
Natasha: GURL I AM TAKING U THERE.
Mary: Remember when Aaron Carter dated all the women and by women I mean children?
Natasha: Peeta is AC 2.0, in his cave with his hugs and pouting.
Mary: Peeta was not it. And I feel bad because I get it. I actually liked the character in the book, not to take it back to “Sex and the City,” which I always do, but, like, whatever.
Natasha: ALWAYS bring it back to SATC. That is TEXT.
Mary: But yes: he is some Aiden shit.
Mary: And that’s cool but, like, COME ON, I’m not really tryna murder with Aiden on my team you know?
Mary: You know what tho, I will not lie to your face.
Natasha: Give it to me.
Mary: When Rue dies and then her dad in District 11 (apparently the district that is predominately African-American) goes NUTS I was really into it but I wanted to STAY THERE IN 11.
Natasha: Church. And that scene also made it so clear how much the pressure of those watching in the districts was lacking.
Mary: Yes, I wanted to see them instead of watching someone build a fucking animal on their desktop, like THAT was cool but the tree, the fire, AND that zzzzzzzz.
Natasha: And not to get too meta about it BUUUUUT… I DO NOT TRUST these Hunger Gamers. I DO NOT TRUST THEM AT ALL.
Mary: I don’t even care where this is going because: ❤. Natasha: There was no cheering, no giddy joy, no sex, no fun, just, like this nerdish devotion to BLAH. Even the Harry Potter kids get WIIIIILLLDDD, like WHAT’S UNDER SNAPE’S CAPE and so on. Are there fucking mope instructions in the book?
Mary: I think you’re right, all the missed opportunities to FLEX were squandered, especially since we’re talking YA, which also means some keen-ass world building. The level of how stylized things were, it was VERY Taco Bell in Demolition Man. Surface and nothing we hadn’t seen before.
Natasha: Like, you got your STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER who everyone is always wah-wahing about, you have insanely dark material, you have Woody Harrelson, give me the Fifth Element at LEAST.
Mary: We can’t talk Fifth Element, that shit was GAULTIER, that’s next levs.
Natasha: I know but….
Mary: DON’T BE CRAZY.
Natasha: It was all less.
Mary: One thing though is that I was like, OK FINE BULLY FOR YOU SIR, is that the lack of violence made this a legit YA movie. Like if you were fucking with the books and you are 10-years-old you could watch this and be like, I FEEL SATISFACTION THIS IS CLOSE ENOUGH AND I GET TO SEE IT WITHOUT HAVING TO USE MY IMAGINATION AND THAT IS COOL SOMETIMES.
Natasha: There were too many moments, aesthetically and spiritually, that felt like I was watch a 90s kid action movie.
Mary: Also, you know what? Some of the movie reminded me of being in production for an awards show. It reminded me of being stuck in some control room…
Natasha: Remember the opening of Black Swan? How it’s all shot from the stage and you hear her pattering little swan toes and you can’t see the audience because of the lights?
Mary: Yes and the whole time you think bitch is going to have an aneurism it’s so intense.
Natasha: So intense, and me: and that bitch was JUST DANCIN’. So, why not here? I wish this movie was THE CATO GAMES.
Mary: I did not hate this movie and I actually had few expectations by the end because the marketing was so slick that eventually I got a little bit of side eye but it will make 2034729837492837492374 dollars. And, for the record, each subsequent book is MUCH LESS GOODS, so we’ll see.
Natasha: Do one of the sponsors bring condoms or lube to the island so they ffuuuuuuck?
Mary: Oh, honey. Someone should write a fan-fic movie.
Natasha: Hunger Games 2: SEX ISLAND.
Mary HK Choi and Natasha Vargas-Cooper will see you on November 16, 2012, when vampire Bella apparently eats a deer.
'The Sugar Frosted Nutsack': A Novel
by Awl Sponsors

It’s been fifteen years since we’ve heard from bestselling novelist and quirk collector Mark Leyner. Now he’s back with The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, a romp through the excesses and exploits of gods and mortals. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter.
1.
What subculture is evinced by Ike’s clothes and his shtick, by the non-Semitic contours of his nose and his dick, by the feral fatalism of all his loony tics — like the petit-mal fluttering of his long-lashed lids and the Mussolini torticollis of his Schick-nicked neck, and the staring and the glaring and the daring and the hectoring, and the tapping on the table with his aluminum wedding ring, as he hums those tunes from his childhood albums and, after a spasm of Keith Moon air-drums, returns to his lewd mandala of Italian breadcrumbs?
So begins the story of Ike Karton, a story variously called throughout history Ike’s Agony, T.G.I.F. (Ten Gods I’d Fuck), and The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. This is a story that’s been told, how many times? — over and over and over again, essentially verbatim, with the same insistent, mesmerizing cadences, and the same voodoo tapping of a big clunky ring against some table.
Every new improvisational flourish, every editorial interpolation and aside, every ex post facto declaration, exegetical commentary and meta-commentary, every cough, sniffle, and hiccough on the part of the rhapsode is officially subsumed into the story, and is then required in each subsequent performance. So, for instance, the next time The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is recited, the audience will expect that the sentence “Every new improvisational flourish, every editorial interpolation and aside, every ex post facto declaration, exegetical commentary and meta-commentary, every cough, sniffle, and hiccough on the part of the rhapsode is officially subsumed into the story, and is then required in each subsequent performance” be included in the recitation, and if it’s not, they’ll feel — and justifiably so — that something vital and integral has been left out.
The audience will, in fact, demand that the sentence “So, for instance, the next time The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is recited, the audience will expect that the sentence ‘Every new improvisational flourish, every editorial interpolation and aside, every ex post facto declaration, exegetical commentary and meta-commentary, every cough, sniffle, and hiccough on the part of the rhapsode is officially subsumed into the story, and is then required in each subsequent performance’ be included in the recitation, and if it’s not, they’ll feel — and justifiably so — that something vital and integral has been left out” also be included in the recitation. And also the sentence that begins “The audience will, in fact, demand that the sentence ‘So, for instance, the next time The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is recited, the audience will expect that the sentence “Every new improvisational flourish . . . ,”’ ” etc. And also the sentence that begins “And also the sentence that begins . . .” And also the sentence that begins “And also the sentence that begins ‘And also the sentence that begins . . . ’ ” Et cetera, et cetera.
To a critical degree, this infinite recursion of bracketed redundancies is what gives The Sugar Frosted Nutsack its peculiarly numinous and incantatory quality. Everything about it becomes it.
Keep in mind that the original story (what we’ve gleaned from cave walls, cuneiform on clay tablets, and papyrus fragments) was only one paragraph long, consisting in its entirety of: What subculture is evinced by Ike’s clothes and his shtick, by the non-Semitic contours of his nose and his dick, by the feral fatalism of all his loony tics — like the petit-mal fluttering of his long-lashed lids and the Mussolini torticollis of his Schick-nicked neck, and the staring and the glaring and the daring and the hectoring, and the tapping on the table with his aluminum wedding ring, as he hums those tunes from his childhood albums and, after a spasm of Keith Moon air-drums, returns to his lewd mandala of Italian breadcrumbs?
For hundreds, even thousands, of years, this was all there was to the “epic” story of Ike, the 5’7″ unemployed butcher, incorrigible heretic, and feral dandy who slicked his jet-black hair back with perfumed pomade and dyed his armpit hair a light chestnut color and who was dear to the Gods (themselves ageless, deathless).
Then, sometime circa 700 B.C., the subhead Ike Always Keeps It Simple and Sexy was added. And over the ensuing centuries, as this was told and retold, and with the accretion of new material with each successive iteration, the complete story that we all know today as The Sugar Frosted Nutsack came into being.
Don’t expect soaring “epic” rhetoric from the 5’7″ forty-eight-year-old Ike Karton. Ike’s first extended speech wholly concerns itself with the mundanity of breakfast. (“I can’t decide what to have for breakfast today. I don’t want something breakfasty — that’s the problem. You know what I’d really like? A shawarma and a malt. But you can’t find good shawarma in this fuckin’ town now that it’s full of Jews and Freemasons. . . . I’m serious! So I’m either gonna have a pastrami and sliced beef tongue with cole slaw and Russian dressing on rye and a Sunkist orange soda, or maybe just a big bowl of Beefaroni and some chocolate milk or something.”) He’s an unassuming, plain-spoken (albeit delusional and anti-Semitic) man. He speaks with the air of a hero accustomed to — even weary of — fame (even though he’s completely unknown outside the small Jersey City neighborhood of attached and identical two-story brick homes where he’s considered an unstable and occasionally menacing presence — although it must be added that women overwhelmingly find him extremely charming and sexy, and many suspect that Ike playacts his indefensible anti-Semitism only to make himself a more loathsome pariah on his block, i.e., to make himself even more charming and sexy).
As you hear this or read it, the God XOXO is indelibly inscribing it into your brain. But XOXO is a puzzling figure. It’s not possible to characterize him as “good” or “bad” — these terms are meaningless when applied to the Gods. He’s mischievous — a trickster. Though frequently innocuous or merely “naughty,” his meddling can cause enormous inconvenience and suffering, i.e., it can be wicked in its consequences. And it certainly seems as if he often acts under the compulsion of his own ancient grievances — primarily the humiliation he suffered when the Goddess Shanice criticized his poem about the businessman who became so terribly aroused when he was flogged in the woods by some of his colleagues. Like some disturbed stenographer, interjecting his own thoughts into the court record, XOXO will constantly try to insinuate his own lurid “poetry” into this story. For instance, you will soon come upon the unfortunate passage “Pumping her shiksa ass full of hot Jew jizz.” Now that may be an appropriate phrase for some Philip Roth novel, but it has no place in The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. This is a perfect example of a gratuitous interpolation on the part of XOXO. This is XOXO — the embittered poet manqué — trying to ruin the book, trying to give the book Tourette’s, trying to kidnap the soul of the book and ply it with drugged sherbet. And make no mistake about it — he will try to kidnap the soul of the book and ply it with drugged sherbet.
You can actually help preserve the integrity of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. You can help wrest control of the story back from XOXO. When you come upon a patently adventitious phrase, one that can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, be attributed to XOXO, like “Pumping her shiksa ass full of hot Jew jizz,” you can ward off the meddlesome mind-fucking God with the rapid staccato chant of “Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike!” It should sound like Popeye laughing, or like Billy Joel in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” — “But working too hard can give you / A heart attack, ack, ack, ack, ack, ack.” It’s similar to that moment when, after Captain Hook has poisoned Tinkerbell, Peter Pan asks the audience to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, or when, in The Tempest, Prospero beseeches the audience, in the play’s epilogue, to “Release me from my bands / With the help of your good hands. . . . As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free.” But remember, when you chant “Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike!” to fend off the spiteful interpolations of XOXO, it absolutely has to sound like Popeye laughing or like Billy Joel in “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” or it won’t work.
Rick Perry Almost Killed Me This Weekend

Among the many awful, tasteless, grotesque and sometimes actually funny things that were said at the Gridiron Club Dinner this weekend in D.C., one of those dress-up events where the press and politicians cozy up, this thing was said by Texas Governor Rick Perry: “I like Mitt Romney as much as one really good-looking man can like another really good-looking man — without breaking the law in Texas.”
Have you ever been innocently reading a news article on the Internet and had the experience where your vision slowly becomes obscured, as if a red velvet curtain is being lowered in front of your eyes, and little black sparkles with white outlines dance in the foreground, and every muscle in your body suddenly contracts, and then a bit later you come to, slumped in your chair, blood mixed with drool running down your chin, your socks soaked with sweat, covered in gooseflesh head to toe? That is a rage blackout, and that is what Rick Perry did to me by saying this. I hope that he is leisurely eaten alive by a pack of rabid gay kittens.
'Mail' Maily
“Bonking headmaster, Lonely heart, Dirty vicar, Street stars split, Miss World bonks sailor, Dodgy landlord, Judge affair, Royal maid, Witchdoctor, Footballer, TV love child.”
— Here’s everything you need to know about the Daily Mail.
Bargain-Loving Lady Will Run New York City Soon

Enjoy the optics of your next mayor, Christine Quinn. (The New Yorker, subscription-only.)
Footnotes of "Mad Men": Season Five, The Remaddening

It’s so exceedingly brave of Jon Hamm to play younger, isn’t it? It’s a testament to his range as an actor that the 41-year-old is really gnawing away at the role of 40-and-a-half-year-old Don Draper. Magic like that just keeps me glued to this mild workplace drama. Aaaaanyway, the excellent website Mad Men Unbuttoned continues its agglomeration of important related cultural detritus this season! Play along at home! Or you could go read recaps at literally every publication in the world, if you had nothing else to do with your life today.
Lone Great Features of Six Otherwise Terrible Movies
by Mindy Hung

1. Music and Lyrics (2007)
The first 2 minutes and 31 seconds of Music and Lyrics contain some fine filmmaking. A caption tells us that we’re watching a music video from 1984 called “Pop! Goes My Heart” by Pop. Everything about it is spot on: the black and white set, Scott Porter’s big hair and loping dance moves (Jason Street from “Friday Night Lights”!), and Hugh Grant, bless him, mime-sings his little heart out.
And let’s talk about the song. From the keyboard flourishes, the falsetto of the “Gold and silv-ah-hah!” leading into the bright harmonies of the chorus, the handclap punctuating the “Pop!” (and the sweet countering “Pop goes my heart”), the Casio synthesizer bridge and closing — it’s just perfect, a perfect pop song, quintessentially 80s, and very catchy.
But then the plot cranks into gear. And pretty soon, it’s clear that Music and Lyrics will never live up to the promise of its opening.
There are plenty of bad movies that have one brilliant sequence, one great performance, one raft of goodness in a sea of terrible. Somewhere, someone had an inkling of how to do something well, which makes it mystifying why the rest of the film is such a clunker. The jewels don’t redeem the crud they’re plucked from. Mostly, these isolated moments make us ask why, why can’t the rest of the picture be as good? And in some cases, they can make already-bad cinema seem even worse.
And so in Music and Lyrics, Hugh Grant, playing the washed up half of a Wham!-like pop duo, shows more chemistry in his 2 minutes and 31 seconds with Scott Porter than he does in the hour and change he spends with Drew Barrymore, the substitute plant-waterer-turned-lyricist-turned-woman-of-Hugh’s-dreams.
Sure, Music and Lyrics tries to send up other genres and singers with some frantic dancing and busy music. No dice. The filmmakers wisely choose to reprise Pop! Goes My Heart at the end (pop-up video style). It’s the only thing that comes close to washing the taste of desperation and mediocrity from one’s mouth.
2. Gangs of New York (2002)
There’s a fine line between epic and ridiculous. Guess which side Martin Scorsese ends up on? Everything about Gangs of New York is way too much: the emotions are overwrought, the colors are garish, the run time is 52 minutes too long and Cameron Diaz is alarmingly and unappetizingly rangy. The film depicts bloody mob wars in the Five Points section of Manhattan. Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) infiltrates the gang of Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in order to avenge the death of his father. Cameron Diaz, looking like she wandered in from an Oliver!-themed Vogue shoot, plays love interest Jenny Everdeane.
There one glory of this movie is Daniel Day-Lewis’ accent. What in heaven’s name am I tawking about?
No one knows what variety of accents New Yorkers had in the 1800s, but while DiCaprio and Diaz sound like they’re going to offer you a bowl of frosted Lucky Charms, Day-Lewis took an Irish lilt, gave it a modern Big Apple Squawk and ended up with a deeply bizarre missing-link accent that is both glorious and unsettling. Once you hear the hoofbeats of Day-Lewis’s little Eohippus, you can’t un-hear them, and maybe you don’t want to.
3. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991)
Kevin Costner, as Robin of Locksley, robs from the rich and gives to the poor, or something like that. Kevin Costner seems confused. He speaks haltingly and sounds like he’s from California. When he’s supposed to be thinking, he creases his forehead.
There is one good thing about this movie, and that’s Alan Rickman, who plays the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.
Yes, the line about “call[ing] off Christmas,” is cartoonish — Rickman sputters and flaps his way through his villainy, essentially playing the Sheriff of Notthingham as Daffy Duck. But combine Loony Tunes with Shakespearean training, and you get, basically, the best thing ever. Mel Blanc would be jealous.
4. The Stepford Wives (1975)
Ira Levin, man, why don’t we talk about him much anymore? Novelist Levin gave us Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, two stories that underscored the uneasy relationship between the sexes against the backdrop of the women’s movement.
But the original film version of The Stepford Wives (let’s not even mention the remake) lacks the nimble humor and creepiness of Rosemary’s Baby, despite a screenplay by William Goldman of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride fame. Is this story of a New York family’s move to Connecticut town filled with vacuous housewives trying to be a domestic drama about the frustrations women and men experience within marriage?
Walter Eberhart, played by Peter Masterson (father of Mary Stewart Masterson, who plays the daughter in this movie) seems mildly frustrated by his messy house, but not enough to have his wife, Joanna (Katharine Ross) replaced by a (SPOILER) robotic (and significantly larger-breasted) version of herself.
So, is it a science fiction thriller? Maybe a satire? In one moment, it is. Frustrated by the passivity of the women of Stepford, New York transplants Joanna and Bobbie (Paula Prentiss) form a women’s lib-style consciousness-raising group.
In this moment, the sharing of feelings goes completely awry. (Also, GINGER!) Would that the rest of the film had followed suit, but Joanna spends most of the movie wondering if there’s something in the water. Maybe there was, Joanna, maybe there was.
5. Ski Party (1965)
Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello cornered the summer cinema with their beach movies. But what to do about winter? The answer was Ski Party, starring Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman as a couple of hapless collegians who disguise themselves as frumpy Englishwomen in order to learn how to be successful with the ladies.
This movie doesn’t pretend to be brilliant, but there is one insanely wonderful segment in Ski Party, and that moment comes courtesy of a young James Brown.
This clip also gives you a good idea of the quality acting and dialogue — and the lily-whiteness of the movie (I’m looking at you, headband girl). But really, the only thing better than James Brown’s singing and dancing is his Alpine cardigan.
6. Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Europeans swan around looking confused, uneasy. No one seems certain about what happened when. It’s what I expect it must be like to await trial at the Hague. The best feature?
At least you learn to play Nim.
Mindy Hung is a master of… suspense (see what I did there?). Her novel, Trip, will be released by Outpost19 in 2012.
Gayest Fashion Sentence Ever

“David Foxley started the prep company Jack Foxley to service all men whose well-worn sweaters and jackets are in need of some love.”
— Well. There you have it. But in all seriousness, these sew-’em-yourself elbow patches look great! They even have them in neon ultrasuede… girlfriend!