Many have asked why there are no black emoji characters. Apple said Tuesday the company is working to update the keyboard to be more multicultural.

The emoji keyboard was first introduced in Japan, but only features two emojis that appear to be Asian: a "man with a turban" and a "man with Gua Pi Mao," a type of Chinese hat. But the emoji keyboard features more than a dozen faces that look white.

Via Apple iOS 7

Via Apple iOS7

Emoji characters have been standardized by Unicode Consortium since 2010, so as to appear on all computers and mobile devices the same. Other apps offer emojis, but users risk their friends not being able to see them if they haven't installed the same software.

Via Apple App Store

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Be free, non-sentient animal.

The Charging Bull of Wall Street was released from its barriers on Tuesday, according to the New York Post. Barricades have surrounded the bronze beast since September of 2011, during the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“The bull is an iconic destination,” Jessica Lappin, Downtown Alliance president, told the Observer. ”The barricades were making it physically challenging for people to visit.”

The bull’s caretakers chose to favor discretion before tourist attraction after Occupy protesters chanted, “Take the bull!.”

“It means a lot,” Arthur Piccolo, chairman of the Bowling Green Alliance and uncomfortably close monitor of the bull, told the Post. “The bull is free. The barricades have been up for 920 days. It’s the way it should be, open to the public.”

Police say they will monitor the bull’s safety on a day-to-day basis, and if a threat is to ever return it will once again be locked away.

Until that day, we are glad the status-quo has returned and tourists can once again climb all over the statue and remark just how large its testicles are.

Lush, tropical and green, FNQ is paradise on Earth. Ain’t that so?

This is the only way to get around.

Facebook: YourWorldMyLensCairns

These guys are your constant companions.

Instagram: @simoncrerar

You never know who you'll see down the beach.

Jenny Dean / Via redbubble.com

Cassowaries should be avoided at all costs.

Instagram: @simoncrerar

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What it feels like asking for blurbs.

You wrote a book? Congratulations!

Via gifatron.com

Annnd you found a publisher? No way!

media.giphy.com

Guess it's all champagne and royalty checks from here on out, huh?

Via tumblr.com

Guess again.

Via tumblr.com

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Spooky.

As Ommegang's hard-to-find Game of Thrones beers prove, a brewery partnering with a hit television series qualifies as a no-brainer — unless brains are going into the beer, of course. Dock Street Brewing in Philadelphia has released an American pale stout in honor of Sunday's season finale of Walking Dead, and it's made of wheat, oats, organic cranberry, barley, and smoked goat brains. Seriously.

According to the company's website, the beer has a "sinister, bloody hue" and the brains "provide the beer with intriguing, subtle smoke notes." Dock Street might be onto something: Right Brain Brewing in Michigan has a pig-head porter, and it took home a Great American Beer Fest gold medal in 2011.

The beer will be released on March 30, with to-go growlers available for those who want to sip brains in solitude at home.

Walking Dead Beer: Dock Street Brewery Makes Beer with Goat Brains for the AMC Show's Finale [Thrillist]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: news you can booze, beer, dock street brewing, philadelphia, walking dead

* NYTimes.com

In addition to being the cleanest subway line, the L train is also the fastest-growing and arguably the most improved. According to new MTA data for 2013, "Ridership increased at every station on the line, including an 8.1 percent increase at the Bedford Av station. Weekday ridership has increased at Bedford Avenue by more than 50 percent since 2007." As a result, the trains are new and more frequent than ever, with another increase coming in June, and yet a certain subset of young people continue to gripe. 

"It's a line that likes to complain a lot on social media," says MTA spokesperson Adam Lisberg in today's New York Times. "It went from zero to hero in the last couple years," adds a rep for the Straphangers Campaign. "The L, I think, has become chic." According to the Times, "the reality has shifted, even if perception has been slow to catch up."

Yes, it can be crowded and weekend service changes are the worst, but it also has the convenient countdown clocks and all those stylish people, the same ones who overuse the internet to whine. "The website isthelrunning.com has attracted a small following," the Times reports, "though it has been dwarfed by another site with an unprintable name and an identical premise." That would be "Is the L Train Fucked?" and the answer, most of the time, is only existentially.

Read more posts by Joe Coscarelli

Filed Under: stand clear of the closing doors ,williamsburg ,l train ,mta ,oh brooklyn

Life is so, so hard.

WHY?! WHY!!!???

Flickr: binusarina / Creative Commons

Is it that hard Coles!? LEMONS! LEMONS!

Flickr: worldofoddy / Creative Commons

SHE'LL DO IT!

Flickr: ceekay / Creative Commons

The mass eviction BEGINS.

Flickr: emrank / Creative Commons

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I like the lizard idea, but you should probably figure out what eats those first

Milk + bacteria x time = wondrous variety.

Cottage cheese.

"Just stick some pineapple in it and sell it to dieters. No one will notice that it tastes like slightly sour air." - The cottage cheese marketing board.

Flickr: freeloosedirt / Creative Commons

Ricotta.

"Hey, you know what the world needs? A nothingy cheese that's full of lumps and tastes a bit like yoghurt" - No one, ever.

Flickr: illuminato / Creative Commons

Emmental.

Delicious in a sandwich with ham, mustard and gherkins, or in a fondue with other cheeses. On its own, though, a little bland and rubbery. Sorry, Emmental.

Flickr: chez_loulou / Creative Commons

Feta.

The saltiest cheese of them all! Sometimes the benchmark for cheese is whether you can gnaw it straight from the block while gazing blearily into your fridge. Feta does not meet this benchmark, but luckily it's perfect with black olives in a Greek salad, or even with cubed watermelon (seriously).

Flickr: lexnger / Creative Commons

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With studies suggesting babies do better when exposed to grown-up things like adult speech, foreign languages and Shia Labeouf's genitalia, there's no reason not to take an infant to see Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, Lars Von Trier's explicit love-letter to sex addiction and the unglamorous spewing of bodily fluids. Sadly, most theatergoers would prefer not to spend two hours sitting next to a screaming baby, but thankfully Landmark Sunshine Cinema knows what's up: they say they're holding a screening of Nymphomaniac's first installment next week just for caregivers and their baby friends. [ more › ]

BONUS COMIC AT THE NIB TODAY!

“So many battles waged over the years,” the old-school, Patrick Stewart version of Professor X tells us as a camera swoops through a Bat Signal–ish hole in a Dark Knight–looking building. “And yet, none of them like this.” It’s the future, and things appear Quite Bad.

X-Men: Days of Future Past, though, looks the opposite. Starting with the shots merging Stewart’s face with James McAvoy’s and Ian McKellen’s with Michael Fassbender’s, this new trailer is nothing but pure, gigantified awesome. The X-Men — all zillion celebrity members from the present and classic iterations, except Frasier — have been nearly wiped out by the big bad Sentinels. It’s gotten so rough that Xavier and Magneto have put aside their differences, and after doing a quick theatrical two-hander in New York, tapped Wolverine to Marty McFly this bleak reality back to order. Only instead of introducing the world to rock and roll and narrowly dodging sexual encounters with his mom, Logan will motivate the 1980s mutants to wrangle Magneto and All Work Together.™

Glass will shatter. Sentinels will loom and terrify and squash. Stadiums, civilians, and national landmarks will be throttled. Jennifer Lawrence will enjoy an appropriately expanded role, and she’ll shed blue tears. Motivational, high-stakes quotes will be hollered. And — thank our superpowered stars — Peter Dinklage will be there.

It was like The Price Is Right meets Jeopardy meets Extreme Couponers . Are you ready to go shopping?

Supermarket Sweep was the best game show ever to be on TV.

Via youtube.com

It was like The Price Is Right meets Jeopardy meets Extreme Couponers.

But better and with more product placement.

Via youtube.com

It was hosted by David Ruprecht who was totally like the Ryan Seacrest of the grocery game shows.

But taller and always cold.

Via youtube.com

Watching the show never failed to put you in a better mood because literally everyone in the audience was ALWAYS HAPPY.

Via youtube.com

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In 2012, I traveled to Bamako to research “Balani Shows,” sound system block parties with a dancehall vibe that feature Malian electronic music. A frequent occurrence throughout residential neighborhoods (particularly during school vacations) I had stumbled across them over the years, but had never paid much attention. Internet research was a dead end, besides a few Youtube videos (though one documentary trailer seems promising). Over a few weeks in Bamako, I met with DJs, scoured the mp3 market for remixes, photographed, filmed, and even threw a few Balani Shows of my own (vimeo link).

A Balani Show is a public street party organized for a myriad of reasons: a birthday, a wedding, a baptism. The mobility means that it often happens right in front of the house. DJs install massive speakers and hundreds of chairs to encircle the “show.” Music begins in the early evening as the block fills up with hordes of seemingly parent-less children wandering about. After a pause for evening prayer, the real Balani Show begins – the little ones pushed aside to make way for the adolescents and teenagers. Dressed in loud combinations of neon hats, dark sunglasses, and colorful sneakers, they come for the spectacle and participation: dance battles, performances, comedians, party games, fashion contests, and some acrobatic, limb twisting, hyper stylized choreography. The MCs direct the action, bouncing about the improvised stage with wireless mics while the DJ cues up tracks with a laptop and Virtual DJ. Balani Shows play danceable, high energy music – Coupé Décalé, Kuduro, and Hip Hop. But most of the music is Malian. Samples of Balafons cut up over pounding electronic beats, recognizable Malian hits remixed as unofficial bootlegs, and fast paced Bambara rapping over insane djembe rhythms. For some reason, there are lots of samples of bells and whistles.

In fact, the music of the Balani Show – colloquially known as “Balani Show” or “Ambience” – hints at the origin of the party. While many individuals lay claim to the creation, the Balani Show as music style seems to have emerged around the late 90s/early 2000s. Balanis (literally “little Bala” or “little Balafon”) had long been organized in the villages, particularly in Southern Mali. These village parties were much the same in style, but instead of DJs, featured electrified Balafons. But Balafons and Balafon players were expensive. The same DJs who rented out sound systems began to offer a cheaper alternative, Balani Show sans Balafon at a fraction of the cost, playing prerecorded Balafon music from cassettes. The phenomena caught on, and soon someone introduced a pair of CD turntables. With this latest innovation, DJs had a new ability – to remix and compose their own tracks, updating Malian music and overdubbing it with the signature Coupé Décalé rhythm (check this amazing digital compilation of Balani Show remixes) Using rhythm boxes and samplers, these “Balani Show” creations began to circulate – informing a new style of electronic music, a sort of “Malian Coupé Decalé” founded in the origins of traditional Malian Balafon.

Today the “Balani Show” continues to evolve and mutate into something new. While in Bamako, I saw many CDJs gathering dust and it appeared that many if not all DJs have switched to laptops, the preferred tool for performances. The task of remixing has been handed off to an army of anonymous bedroom DJs and producers, songs loaded and distributed by cellphone and PC. Any number of these “megamixes” can be found at cellphone markets, or playing on the radio. But most interestingly, the Balani Show phenomena has spawned innumerable new musics by a generation that grew up under the sound system. These homegrown productions sample Balafons and have that distinct sound of the remix – but they are original creations, not remixes. Songs are sung in Bambara and are based on traditional rhythms. While this new music is undoubtedly modern, like the Balani Show parties it too pays homage to an ancient tradition. It reveals a different narrative of the old vs new – and suggests that maybe the best way to preserve culture is by reinventing it, keeping it modern and relevant in a faster world.

The new Balani Show Super Hits compilation includes music from over a decade of Balani Show – from early musicians like DJ Bamanan and DJ Balani to the contemporary stars like Kaba Blon and Supreme Talent Show (both whose tracks were produced by the Sidiki Diabate, son of the legendary Toumani Diabate). The vinyl available at the shop, as well as through bandcamp. It doesn’t come with liner notes or photos, but with a glossy digital low-fi jacket that lies closer to what I imagine it would look like if it were released in Bamako. If you want to play it for that distinctly Malian feel, a very loud volume is recommended.

*For more info see my “Global Ear: Bamako” piece in Wire Magazine #342

The post balani show takeover appeared first on sahelsounds.

Game of Thrones dad jokes are your new favorite thing.

HBO / Via giphy.com

HBO / Via giphy.com

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The hottest spot in New York City is…night court! [insert "SNL's" Stefon voice here].

A staggering number of tourists are adding night court to their bucket list, sometimes before the Empire State Building and Times Square, according to the Associated Press.

This “attraction” has grown so popular that clerk Robert Smith has found himself playing tour guide to multiple school groups, some who have traveled as far away as Denmark. ”I try to make it informative,” the veteran told The New York Post.

“It’s very interesting to hear real cases,” Jenny Baumann, a 26-year-old from Munich, told The Post. Ms. Baumann watched in wonder in the bustling court room, where each case takes short minutes and is filled with chattering defendants and lawyers, clerks shuffling stacks of paperwork, incomprehensible jargon and we assume, disgruntled judges who deal with countless arraignments nightly.

Established in 1907, the court handles approximately 70 to 90 cases during the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. night session and proves as one of busiest courts in Manhattan. Tourists follow a long line of night court spectators, including the likes of John D. Rockefeller and then-Duke of Manchester, and the court has even been included in tour books like Lonely Planet. 

But not everybody finds the gawkers amusing.

“From the judge’s perspective and all of the attorneys’ who work so hard, there’s nothing amusing about it,” said acting State Supreme Court Justice Melissa Jackson, who was the Criminal Court’s supervising judge from 2008 through 2012. “And the stakes are very high.”

It’s been over twenty years since NBC’s Night Court went off the air. So we’re going to blame this trend on its cousin, Law & Order. Or Stefon…we’re definitely blaming Stefon.

"It is time for us to start making the news a little nerdier," Nate Silver announced in an essay, written in a Red Bull—aided last-minute cram session, which aimed to explain the philosophy behind his new ESPN-housed data journalism venture, FiveThirtyEight, which launched this week. There has been a lot of big talk about what data journalism in Silver's hands might do, from the stats maven himself and from others. "Science, government, academia and the private sector also have struggled to find the signal in the noise," Silver wrote. FiveThirtyEight, he suggested, was the beginning of a correction. The site published his essay under the label "Manifestos." And yet FiveThirtyEight, as it launched, had a bloggy, familiar feel — there was a great deal of talk about numbers and the mainstream media's discomfort with them, and significantly less actual deployment of data to resolve matters of public interest. The New Republic questioned his central metaphor, which is more or less the judgment that once exiled Rick Moody. "I have long been a fan of Nate Silver, but so far I don't think this is working," the influential economist and blogger Tyler Cowen wrote yesterday afternoon.

That judgment — made just hours after Silver's site launched — was ludicrously quick. Content-wise, it wasn't really even a bad first day. Nevertheless, I had some more modest form of the same feeling. In the endless talk that preceded FiveThirtyEight, and the slightly slapdash quality it had upon its arrival, there is the suggestion that perhaps the revolutionary potential of FiveThirtyEight loomed a bit larger to the rest of the journalism world than it did to its founder himself — that we expected something grander than what Silver will deliver. The articles, after all, are pretty good — lucid and nicely eclectic. But the theme running through many of those pieces — pieces, presumably, carefully chosen to put FiveThirtyEight's best foot forward — was that the right data simply didn't exist to answer the questions its own journalists had raised.

A piece about whether paper toilet-seat covers actually do anything for public health (great question!) ended by throwing up its hands, as did another that hoped to judge how many rats live in New York City. A contrarian political essay meant to tamp down media enthusiasm for Scott Brown's Senate candidacy merely pointed to his approval ratings, which is exactly the kind of superficial stat that the Beltway pundits whom Silver loves to mock have been citing for decades. An economics article that suggested the hysteria over corporate cash-hoarding was overblown delivered on that promise, but only by pointing out that the media generally had paid too much attention to an initial 2011 Federal Reserve report and too little to the report's public 2012 revision. These were mostly useful articles, but they have tended to amount to a careful reading of existing academic studies, of the kind that many reporters already do. If the academics hadn't already solved a problem, then, often, neither could the journalists.

Is it unfair to think that Silver — or Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias of the forthcoming Vox.com, or Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi at the slowly rolling out First Look Media — might do something more than this? Of course! Putting together an interesting website is really hard and really worthy, and Silver, early on, looks like he's on his way to doing that, which is great. I think the more interesting question is why — even accounting for the hype needed to launch a for-profit product — hopes for these projects, internally and externally, have been so high, why their announcements have to take the form of manifestos.

Silver has often been grouped with Klein and Greenwald, young and lauded journalists who have left mainstream media organizations to build websites that articulate slightly different ideas of what journalism might be. Because each of these projects is an independent start-up, and because each of the founders has expressed some exasperation (and in Greenwald's case, a hearty contemptuousness) towards the ways that journalists often operate, they have generally been seen as gonzo raids on the Establishment. I think there may be a more interesting way to see them, as trial balloons to see whether reported journalism might soon take a significantly different form, experiments the Establishment is interested in rather than attacks on it. Each is a response, in a different way, to the central anxiety of journalism, one that has been elevated by the internet — the anxiety that comes from our own inexpertise.

This anxiety is a permanent aspect of the gig — no reporter is really credentialed to define what is at stake in a given conflict, and yet every reporter does exactly that, every day. The old response was that a journalist's legitimacy came from his ability to get information no one else could. But now people can get more information on their own, and the journalists are doing less getting and more punditry.

There are moments when you feel the narrowing acutely. I thought the acerbic media critic Michael Wolff was on to something when he wrote yesterday about the "anti-journalism" that has characterized the coverage of the Malaysia Airlines crash: "It is, of course, an ideal story for the current journalism era because it costs nothing. Nobody has to go anywhere. Nobody has to cover the wreckage and the recovery. Not only is the story pretty much all just theories – but theories are cheap."

What Greenwald, Klein, and Silver have come to represent are a few possible ideas about how reporting might be rearranged to reacquire some of that authority, and the drift towards punditry (in which the basic anxiety of journalism is fulfilled and even star writers become indistinguishable from the general background noise of the internet) might be halted. Greenwald suggests a model in which reporting is a weapon in the essentially adversarial relationship between the public and the state, through which pugnacious journalists might reacquire a role as a tribune for public interests. Klein suggests a model in which reporting supplies a deep well of contextual background that can calm our tendencies to overreaction and hysteria and nudge the public towards a political debate that is less raw and more informed and agreeable. Silver suggests a model in which reporters can leverage new analytic tools to make sense of events. For all of the talk of a break from the mainstream media, each of these models is an amplification of something good journalists have always done. It is at least a little telling that the New York Times has in its own cautious way moved already moved at least a little in each of these directions.

The hope invested in these projects is that as the industry shrank, perhaps, at the very least, what was left might become smarter. The profession has retreated, but maybe it has retreated to higher ground. Which explains, I think, some of the big talk that has accompanied their introduction. And it may explain too the very slight sense of letdown that accompanied the launch of FiveThirtyEight this week. Another good site that amplifies and explains ideas from academia is useful to have; a new approach or set of tools would have been better. That is probably too much to ask of projects staffed by a handful of young reporters, however talented they are. But high expectations are the flip side, maybe, of the loud praise that has greeted Greenwald, Klein, and Silver all along — they are being watched, from within the industry, with hopeful, needy eyes.

Read more posts by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

The Box Elder News Journal in Brigham City, Utah, has run about a dozen of 61-year-old Don Dunbar’s letters in the past year, but he wants more of them published. He’s stopped at the homes of newspaper staffers to lobby for publication of his opinions “that alternately decry creeping socialism, President Obama and United Nations agendas.”

Earlier this month, Dunbar went to the newspaper offices and threatened to sue if his latest letter wasn’t published. The piece of paper was tossed back and forth during Dunbar’s March 3 argument with associate editor Mike Nelson. Five days later, the News Journal sent Dunbar a certified letter informing him that police will be called if he stops by the office or staffers’ homes again. A stalking injunction is pending before a judge.

“Enough’s enough,” says Nelson, who tells me he hasn’t heard from Dunbar since their March 3 fight.

The News Journal is a 12,000-circulation weekly.

* Box Elder News Journal seeks injunction against letter-writer (standard.net)
* Another matter: Utah vs. Don W. Dunbar – available on iTunes (apple.com)

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his annexation of Crimea official, signing bills into law that make the (former) Ukrainian peninsula formally part of Russia. Putin called the rapid territorial expansion a “remarkable event,” and what better way to mark than occasion than a massive victory party?

The AP reports that while Putin was flexing his bill-singing muscles, “He also ordered fireworks in Moscow and Crimea,” while IBT adds that the night’s celebration will include “ten sites in the capital, including Victory Park, the Russian Exhibition Centre and the Nagatinsky backwater area at 10 p.m. local time.”

Ukraine’s acting president said the country “will never accept the seizure of its territory. We are ready for talks with Russia in any kind of format, but their troops must leave Ukraine,” but no one could hear him over the fireworks.

Read more posts by Joe Coscarelli

Filed Under: international intrigue ,vladimir putin ,russia ,ukraine ,crimea

Though the United States and the European Union refuse to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin now firmly directs facts on the ground in the Black Sea peninsula. Crimeans are already receiving shiny new passports and using the Russian ruble as their new official currency. But for Putin, the cherry on top may come not from the streets of Simferopol and Sevastopol, but instead from the headquarters of the Associated Press in New York. The AP, in a semantic victory for the Russian strongman,  announced Wednesday that they would be changing their style to reflect the new reality in Crimea.

"Previously, we wrote ‘SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (AP).' But Ukraine no longer controls Crimea, and AP datelines should reflect the facts on the ground. Therefore, effective this week, we are using the city name and "Crimea": "SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (AP)," Tom Kent, the deputy managing editor and standards editor for the AP, wrote on their blog. The AP, a non-profit wire service whose articles run in hundreds of publications in the United States and abroad, is an authoritative voice on style for most English-language publications.  

But the organization is not going quite so far as to indicate that Sevastopol is an unquestioned part of Russia with a "SEVASTOPOL, Russia" dateline. "The reason is that Crimea is geographically distinct from Russia; they have no land border. Saying just the city name and ‘Crimea' in the dateline, even in the event of full annexation, would be consistent with how we handle geographically separate parts of other countries," Kent wrote, comparing Crimea's situation with the Italian city of Palermo -- "PALERMO, Sicily (AP)" -- where the second part of the dateline is occupied by the island of Sicily, not the country of Italy.  

The New York Times has also changed its style regarding the disputed region, going from "Ukraine" to simply "Crimea" in its Simferopol datelines.

Crimea's geopolitical situation is a conundrum for international cartographers as well. Google Maps has the region in a red outline -- but as still belonging to Ukraine. Competitors Bing and MapQuest also still list the peninsula as Ukrainian.

The standoff over Ukraine has also played out in the virtual world, where the editors of Wikipedia are at each others' throats. After the the Russian map was repeatedly altered in a heated debate over whether Crimea should be denoted as a Russian territory, the online encyclopedia's administrators locked the page. For now, Crimea has been left a light-green to Russia's darker shade of the green. The lighter shade is supposed to represent a "claimed territory," according to the page's discussion board.

Meanwhile, RT, the pro-Kremlin news outlet, gleefully declared that National Geographic, the world's authoritative map-maker, is firmly on Moscow's side. "We map the world as it is: National Geographic maps Crimea as part of Russia," their headline screamed.

But that isn't quite true. National Geographic has in fact not yet decided how to depict the region on their maps. "We are waiting to see the results of Friday's [Russian] parliamentary vote," Juan Valdes, the geographer of the National Geographic Society told the organization's news outlet. "If it is formally annexed, our policy will dictate that we shade the area gray, signifying that it is a disputed territory." Other disputed areas in the region -- including the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- are gray on National Geographic maps.

"National Geographic Society's cartographic policy is to portray to the best of our ability current reality. Most political boundaries depicted in our maps and atlases are stable and uncontested. Those that are disputed receive special treatment and are shaded gray as 'Areas of Special Status,' with accompanying explanatory text," the organization said in a statement.

Rand McNally, an American publisher of maps and atlases used in classrooms all around the United States will not be changing their materials. "We take our direction from the State Department," company spokeswoman Amy Krouse told US News.

Not that it really matters: Those maps don't seem to be getting much use. Some Americans just think of Ukraine as "the place where Borat is from."

Celebrity ( noun ): A regular person with lots of money and lots of attention.

Oprah:

Robin Marchant/Contributor / Getty Images

Usher:

NBC NewsWire/Contributor / Getty Images

Sean Combs:

Richard Bord/Contributor / Getty Images

Michael Moore:

Kevin Winter/Staff / Getty Images

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Taken on synopsis alone, Veronica Mars — the cultish mid-aughts teen detective series starring Kristen Bell — can sound a little, well … girly. Any show about a plucky teenage heroine is a tough sell to male viewers, especially one entirely devoid of science fiction. Yet anybody still thinking that Veronica Mars is just for women is seriously underestimating its appeal. A few months back, we made the case for men watching Scandal, arguing that the ABC drama shares some DNA with certain guy-friendly shows, but that’s even more true of Veronica Mars. With the 2004–2007 series’ long-awaited big-screen sequel arriving tomorrow in theaters and on VOD, Vulture offers up seven reasons male hold-outs should finally commit to binge-watching Veronica Mars.

1. Its creator is Party Down’s Rob Thomas.
Just as Veronica Mars should be required viewing, so should Rob Thomas’ follow-up co-creation: Party Down, a legitimately brilliant short-lived Starz comedy about a catering crew in Los Angeles. Those who have seen all twenty Party Down episodes will notice a lot of similarities in style and humor, as well as many familiar faces (besides Kristen Bell, obviously): Not only do Ken Marino and Ryan Hansen have majorly funny recurring roles on Veronica Mars, but Adam “Are we having fun yet?” Scott and Jane Lynch pop up in episodes, and many other actors cross between the two series as well. (Plus, Martin Starr has a big role in the film.) If nothing else, three seasons of Veronica Mars should be a nice tonic to tide fans over until they finally give Party Down the Kickstarter movie it deserves. It’s time.

2. It’s basically Buffy without the vampires.
Buffy Summers, the definitive kickass TV heroine with crossover appeal, is the spiritual godmother of Veronica Mars, who is just as witty, determined and charismatic as the Slayer. A similar comparison can be made of Joss Whedon and Rob Thomas, whose signature shows both began on the WB did hard time on UPN, crammed in pop-cultural references and allusions galore, and embraced goofiness along some heavy drama. While Veronica Mars forgoes Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s supernatural villains for real-world baddies, the heroines’ respective quests are structured similarly, with season-long mysteries being juggled along with episodic cases. As is often the case with Veronica Mars, the proof is in the guest stars: Buffy alums who turn up on the show include Alyson Hannigan, Charisma Carpenter, and even Joss Whedon himself.

3. It has guest stars to rival Arrested Development.
Looking back at the roster of now famous actors who guest-starred on Veronica Mars over the course of the show’s run, it’s surprising how many turned up before they became household names. Not counting the Party Down and Buffy folks mentioned above, the show has memorable scenes and episodes featuring, among many others, a young Leighton Meester, a pre–Zero Dark Thirty Jessica Chastain, and a pre-“yeah, bitch!”-catchphrase Aaron Paul. Other notable cameos and appearances include Kevin Smith as a convenience store clerk, Paris Hilton as a particularly irksome classmate, and Paul Rudd as a disillusioned ’90s alt-rocker. All this, plus Arrested Development’s own Alia Shawkat and Michael Cera appear in a season-two episode that aired a mere month after AD’s cancellation. Underdogs gotta stick together.

4. It’s an addictive murder noir, like Twin Peaks.
Like the iconic David Lynch series, Veronica Mars initially centers on the murder of a high-school girl — in this case, Veronica’s best friend, played by Big Love’s Amanda Seyfried — and explores a world in which everyone is a potential suspect. The show lacks the mystical elements and outright quirkiness that made Twin Peaks so unique, but as Veronica’s quest to solve the mystery sends her further down the rabbit hole, its puzzlelike narrative slowly unfolds in a way that Agent Cooper would approve of.

5. It’s a high-school show that deals with real issues, à la Freaks and Geeks.
Like the great '90s teen show created by Paul Feig and Judd Apatow, Veronica Mars features high-school-age characters who are relatable and fully-formed, with conversations and concerns that extend far beyond which lunch table they’re doomed to sit at. Like Freaks and Geeks a few years before it, Veronica Mars’ dialogue is grounded in sarcasm and off-beat humor, but doesn’t shy away from or sugarcoat serious issues that young people can face, such as parental abuse, date rape, drug use, and inequality. Did we mention that the second season starts with, like, tons of kids dying in a school bus crash? As we said: dark.

6. Like The Wire, it actively addresses class politics.
Okay, so Veronica Mars isn’t really that much like The Wire (sorry to get your hopes up). That said, unlike shows like Gossip Girl and The O.C., which focus largely on the lives of the rich and glamorous, with a token Dan or Ryan thrown in for contrast, Veronica Mars is a show that actively calls attention to class difference and the divide between the haves and have nots. (As our heroine says in the pilot: “This is my school. If you go here, your parents are either millionaires or your parents work for millionaires. Neptune, California, a town without a middle class.”) Mars herself is a lower middle-class daughter of a disgraced private investigator father, and the world of the show is ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, paying just as much attention to characters like Weevil, the head of a Latino biker gang, as it does the rich, popular set that Veronica used to run with.

7. It’s way better to geek out about than True Detective.
Veronica Mars seasons are built around a sprawling, season-long mystery, and with 20-plus 40-minute episodes per season, it gives viewers a lot to work with. This is a show that rewards attention to detail and lends itself to obsessive dissection, and the number of fake-outs, cliff-hangers, callbacks, and red herrings built into each season are enough to overflow a subreddit. Plus, unlike True Detective, the clues actually lead somewhere and the mystery is actually mysterious. Sorry but not sorry, green-eared spaghetti monster.

Read more posts by Anna Silman

Filed Under: hey dude ,tv ,veronica mars ,rob thomas

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(Monday’s comic)

It’s really stupid and weird and great.

This is the hot new Vine meme called #Whaling.

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The idea is you get behind something and then you kind of breach like a whale.

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