allie

Here's some exciting news from one of Vulture's own: Dave Holmes, TV personality and our “Somewhere in Time” columnist, has signed a deal to write a comic memoir. Set to publish in the spring of 2016, the book is tentatively titled Party of One. Read the full synopsis below. Mazel tov, Dave!

Charting Holmes’ painfully hilarious trip through a life lived on the outside, desperately trying to get in — from his youth as the artsy kid in a sportsy family to his time as a closeted gay kid in a conservative Catholic school, through his experience losing the first “Wanna Be A VJ” contest on live television and subsequent career as a big fat grown man at MTV in the eye of the teen pop hurricane, up to his life as a man in his 40s who has finally learned to accept himself, simply because he’s tried everything else — Party of One will detail every wrong turn that’s led him to the right place, and will take the reader on a nostalgic ride through the music and pop culture of the '80s, '90s, and '00s that shaped his journey.

Read more posts by Jesse David Fox

Filed Under: dave holmes ,books ,book deals ,vulture

If you found yourself subconsciously humming or trying to sing the words to "Too Many Cooks" this weekend, we don't blame you. There's no escaping the subliminal, hypnotic powers of the Adult Swim parody, which veteran scribe and producer Casper Kelly (Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell) unleashed on innocent TV watchers last Friday. Kelly penned the lyrics to the repetitive, cornball-but-catchy song featured in the video, and Shawn Coleman and Michael Kohler scored it. We've written out the lyrics below in full so you can succumb to their dark powers and properly sing along. (If you want to overachieve, we've also included the few instances of actual character dialogue.) There are a few voices on the track, but we figured you'd want to do it as a duet, so click play, grab a friend, and have at it.

Man: It takes a lot to make a stew
Woman: A pinch of salt and laughter, too
M: A scoop of kids to add the spice
W: A dash of love to make it nice, and you’ve got
Both: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many
W: It takes a lot to make a stew
M: When it comes to me and you
W: And him and her and the baby, too
B: Too many Cooks, it’s true
M: The saying goes, it’ll spoil the broth
W: Honey, I think that’s not true
M: Well, maybe too many Cooks will spoil the broth, but they’ll fill our hearts with
B: So much, so much lo-o-ove
Too many Cooks
M: A family is like a soup
W: Everyone adds an extra scoop
M: Mix an ounce of smile so sweet
W: A dash of cool to add the heat, and you’ve got
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many
It takes a lot to make a stew
W: Especially when it’s me and you
M: And him and Steve from corporate, too
B: Too many Cooks, it’s true
M: The saying goes it’ll spoil the broth
W: Honey, I think that’s not true
M: Well, maybe too many Cooks will spoil the broth, but they’ll fill our hearts with so much, so much lo-o-ove
W: So much lo-o-ove
M: They’ll fill our hearts with lo-o-ove
W: Fill our hearts with lo-o-ove
B: Too many Co-o-oks
Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Takes a lot to make a stew, I couldn’t face these streets without you
W: A dash of crime to add some spice
M: This city’s like a pressure cooker turned up to high
[Hushed] Too many Cooks, too many Co-o-oks
Some people say it’ll spoil the broth, but that’s not the American way
Too many Cooks
Too many Cooks will serve a helping of freedom and resist the forces of evil
W: [Operatic] Too many Cooks
M: It takes a lot to make a stew
W: A pinch of salt and laughter too
M: A scoop of kids to add the spice
W: A dash of love to make it nice, and you’ve got
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many—
M: Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many
M: It takes a lot to make a stew, especially when it’s me and you
W: And him and her and the baby, too
B: Too many Cooks, it’s true
Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks

[Woman screams]

M: Too many
It takes a lot to make a stew, a pinch of salt and laughter, too. [Man screams] A scoop of kids to add the spice, a dash of love to make it nice, and you’ve got
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many
It takes a lot to make a stew, when it’s made of me and you, and him and her and the baby, too, too many Cooks, it’s true

Narrator: This is the story of COOKS — Cybernetic Operational Optimized Knights of Science — defending humanity against Beast Rebels of the Hellscape. When it comes to the future, you can never have too many COOKS.

M: [Robotic] Too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks

Patient: You can’t talk that way. That’s your sister. That’s a fine how-do-you-do. Laugh track. Oh, look at the neighbors. They’re not gonna fit in here. Ha. Ha.

Male doctor: This is the worst case of intronitis I’ve ever seen. You can even hear the theme music.

Female doctor: And the thing is, we have no idea how contagious this strain is. Now, look …

W: A pinch of salt and laughter, too.

MD: No.

M: A scoop of kids to add the spice.

W: A dash of love to make it nice.

MD: Kill me.

W: And you’ve got
B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks

MD: KILL ME!

B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
W: To make a stew
M: Especially when it’s me and you
W: Fill our hearts with so much love
B: Too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks

[Woman screams]

M: It takes a lot to make a stew
B: Too many Cooks
M: Especially when it’s me and you

[More screaming.]

B: Too many Cooks
W: Him and her and the baby, too
Too many Cooks, it’s—
M: [Subdued] It takes a lot to make a stew, especially when it’s me and you.

[More screaming in the background]

M: Too many Cooks, too many Cooks, too many Cooks
Too many Cooks will spoil the broth, but they’ll fill our hearts with so much, so much lo-o-ove
W: So much lo-o-ove
M: Fill our hearts with lo-o-ove
B: Too many Cooks
Too many Cooks
Too many Cooks
M: Fill our hearts with lo-o-ove

[Laughter]

Dad: Honey, I’m h—

B: Too many Cooks
W: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: Too many Cooks
B: Too many Cooks
M: It takes a—

Read more posts by Sean Fitz-Gerald

Filed Under: too many cooks ,adult swim ,cartoon network ,sing along! ,tv

The Alterations & Repairs Lady who has been a “fixing shit” mascot for years and years and years! 

Dlisted reader Liska dropped the Alterations & Repairs Lady into my inbox yesterday and took the words right out of my finger tips when listing the reasons why she’s a HSOTD all day, every day.

I would like to nominate the ubiquitous Alterations and Repairs Woman! This is the hardest working bitch in the business because homegirl is everywhere! She has been altering and repairing for so long she hasn’t had time to even change her blouse or hair since the early 1980′s! We should pay homage to this hardworking woman whose familiar face we know and love and never gets the recognition she deserves!

It’s rare when I walk into a dry cleaning place and don’t see this frazzled, overworked tailor throwing me a look that says, “It’s you again. I hope you don’t want me to sew another easy access zipper into the ass part of another pair of pants.” We see her all the time yet know almost nothing about her. She is as mysterious as she is hard working. That picture pulls out so many questions from my brain. For why is she wearing black lipstick? Is she a goth and is trying to finish her work so she can change into her latex catsuit and go to the club? Is that why she’s always throwing a “Bitch, stop bothering me so I can get back to work” look? Why do her hands look so enormous? Are they swollen from doing alterations and repairs all day? Does she use a Sharpie or a regular black brow pencil to achieve that immaculate eyebrow situation? Why isn’t she on Project Runway? Shit, why isn’t she the mentor on Project Runway? Does she hate Tim Gunn?

So many questions!

Hopefully Aaron Sorkin does SOMETHING RIGHT for once and answers all these questions in the greatest project of his career: The Alterations & Repairs Lady biopic starring Kathleen Turner.

The strawberry hard candy that everybody’s grandma, auntie and teacher seem to always have a stash of!

I don’t know the history of these shiny-wrapped drops of strawberry deliciousness and I have no idea how they just magically appear at the bottom of your memaw’s pocketbook. It feels like these have been around since before the beginning of time and I bet Methuselah’s nana kept these in her purse and gave them to him when he needed to be entertained by something shiny and sugary. The question, “What came first: the actual strawberry or the strawberry hard candy with the soft center?”, is not a question that can ever be answered.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen these for sale at any store, but yet they’re everywhere. When a teacher becomes a teacher, they get a packet of magic strawberry candy seeds so they can grow these in their apartment or backyard. When a memaw or pepaw turns 65, AARP send them a map to the hidden aisle in the Dollar Tree that sells these child taming candies.

But I do know where my abuelita got her stash of strawberry hard candies. Nearly every Chinese restaurant we went to had a bowl of these candies on the host table and eventually everything in that bowl would find its way into my abuelita’s pocketbook. There could be 10 hosts guarding that bowl of strawberry hard candies and an abuelita will still find a way to empty it into her purse without any of them knowing shit. Every abuelita is a strawberry hard candy ninja.

The best thing about being a pepaw or memaw (besides the fact that you get a free pass to yell at brats) is that when you reach into your pocket, a strawberry hard candy with the soft center magically fills your hand.

Hot Takes Board 11/13/14

Perhaps, you're the kind of person who thinks all food ultimately ends up in the same place, so there's little point in separating your dinner and your dessert.

In that case, we have some great news for you. PepsiCo is now testing the monstrous mashup of Doritos-flavored Mountain Dew, fittingly dubbed Dewitos.

MMORPG gamers of the world, rejoice.

In case you were wondering if PepsiCo's test kitchens had been momentarily invaded by the kind of hormonally motivated pregnant women who find themselves desperately craving maple fudge and horseradish at dawn, PepsiCo confirmed that its flavor scientists are constantly working on new ways to do the Dew.

"We are always testing out new flavors of Mountain Dew, and giving our fans a voice in helping decide on the next new product has always been important to us," PepsiCo's reps said in a statement to Quartz. "We opened up the DEW flavor vault, and gave students a chance to try this Doritos-inspired flavor as part of a small program at colleges and universities."

A Reddit user named joes_nipples was the first person to reveal Dewitos to the world, writing that PepsiCo had offered several different varieties of Mountain Dew in the course of a product-testing event. "I think the flavors were lemon ginger, mango habanero (also weird), and rainbow sherbet, which tasted like medicine," the user wrote.

Of the Dewitos itself, which was served at room temperature, the user said: "It honestly wasn't that disgusting. It tasted like orange, with a Doritos aftertaste. It tasted like straight Doritos afterwards, though. Weirdest thing I've ever drunken." The user added that the flavor was "like if you shoved a handful of Doritos in your mouth and chugged some Dew at the same time."

"Someone at the Mountain Dew design department was getting really high," joes_nipples added. (Mashable)

Like what you see?How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

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Despite having zero Hollywood clout, no major awards, and little risk of ever being described as a household name, Natasha Allegri recently made filmmaking history. She raised $872,133 for her surreal animated web series, Bee and PuppyCat. Not only does that make her the sixth-most successful filmmaker on Kickstarter (bested only by Spike Lee, Zach Braff, the Veronica Mars movie, and other big names), it also makes her its most successful woman filmmaker. It’s safe to say Allegri and her series are cult phenomena.

Bee and PuppyCat is difficult to describe, which is part of its charm. It debuted in July of 2013 on Cartoon Hangover, a YouTube network of animated series run by a company called Frederator. Allegri, who was at the time working on the hit cartoon Adventure Time, crafted a two-part saga about an unemployed woman named Bee (voiced by actress Allyn Rachel) and a strange half-dog/half-cat creature she finds, thereafter known as “PuppyCat.” PuppyCat speaks in a strange, electronic lilt created not through voice recording but rather through a computer algorithm called a "Vocaloid." PuppyCat and Bee end up going on cosmic temp jobs such as babysitting a planet-size fish named Wallace. But the pilot episodes’ true charm came in the odd dialogue, especially that of Bee, who mumbles a lot to herself and involuntarily slips into weird voices. Again, it’s hard to describe, but it’s oddly compelling.

And now, after more than a year of waiting, fans are finally getting what they paid for. Cartoon Hangover will debut the first episode of the first full season of Bee and PuppyCat tonight, and Vulture caught up with Allegri to talk about dogs, turtles, and holographic Japanese pop stars.

The dialogue in Bee and PuppyCat is unusually, almost unsettlingly naturalistic. Which of Bee’s lines have you said in real life?
Oh yeah, there’s a lot, actually. She says “hello” like a parrot. That’s basically me and my roommate. When I used to live with her, we would just walk into each other’s rooms and say that. I think what’s really important to me is people talking like how they talk, so when someone is stumbling through a word, that’s really, like, a special moment! A lot stuff comes from how people talk in anime.

I don’t follow. How is the dialogue like anime?
At least in the anime that I watch, people talk and their conversation goes in a natural flow. They can talk about one topic and then maybe steer it to a different direction. People get easily excited and then become very — I don’t know what the word is, but they’re like, “[dour voice] I’m going to do that, and [excited voice] I’m going to try to look good!” They’re not preachy, but they will treat their emotion changes very naturally.

Why call the animal “PuppyCat”? Is there a real-life puppy or cat you based it on?
I want to keep talking about anime.

Okay! Talk as much about anime as you like.
So, when they come up with new Pokémon, they try to think of syllables that sound cute. So there are a lot of pa sounds or po sounds that have cute and short little sounds. You usually avoid a guttural sound. You don’t want to put a na or a guh in there. So "PuppyCat" is, like, pretty cute sounds put together. I wanted the word itself to sound cute and make you happy when you hear it.

So the word PuppyCat came before the idea of having something that is part puppy and part cat?
Yeah! Yes.

But you then had to come up with visuals for PuppyCat, of course, and for Bee. What was your first doodle for the series, and when did it happen?
The first doodle was right after [Frederator] contacted me to pitch. I just sat down and I — I think they came out right away! Bee got chubbier as time went on, because my style changed and I think chubby things are really cute. PuppyCat kind of stayed the same. I had to make him look like a dog with dog markings, but I think I got those backward.

Wait, what does it mean to have dog markings “backward”?
So you know the Shiba Inu? The one with the curly tail and little eyebrows over its head?

Of course.
I didn’t even bother to google it. I was just like, Oh, I’ll just draw it how I remember it, and I remembered it wrong. So the fur colors are reversed and the eyebrows are wrong.

Speaking of eyebrows: PuppyCat always looks so disapproving. Is he actually mad all the time?
No, that’s just his eyebrows. He’s, like, very stern, but no, he’s not mad. But that means everyone thinks he’s mad, so maybe that’s why he’s so stern all the time.

The most distinctive part of PuppyCat, though, is his voice, which is very singsongy and synthesizer-y. How did you create that?
It’s a Vocaloid, and a Vocaloid is like a sound string of computer-generated syllables that make sound. You Auto-Tune them, lengthen them, and shorten them to make sound. There’s a Vocaloid named Hatsune Miku —

Oh! The Japanese pop star who’s just a computer-generated hologram?
Yeah! Whenever I talk about Vocaloids, if I don’t hear anything [from the person I’m talking to], as soon as I mention Hatsune Miku everyone is like, “Oh yeah!” [Laughs.] Around the time she had started, I was really into J-Pop and then she started doing concerts and me and my friend Patrick would google the concerts and watch them on YouTube. Then there’s always related videos on YouTube after you watch it and you just start clicking and going down the hole of Vocaloids on YouTube. And then based on that, oh there are so many different kinds! I picked a favorite and I was like, If I ever make anything, I will use my favorite Vocaloid in the thing. And I did.

What’s the name of the Vocaloid you use?
OLIVER.

How much control over the Vocaloid do you have? Do you, like, type in speech for it to say?
If you type in a word, it breaks it up by syllables. You can change its pitch, but not too much. The way he says each syllable, that’s kind of how you get it. You can put breaths in; they recorded them like inhaling, which is really cool. You can time it as much as you want. You can try and get them to say words; you could pitch up the syllable to modify the word you want them to say, and you can have pretty good control.

[Editor’s note: Vocaloid construction and manipulation is, as you might guess from Allegri’s description, extremely difficult for a layperson to understand. Here’s a tutorial video, in case you’re interested in learning more.]

How long did it take you to make the two Bee and PuppyCat shorts that debuted on Cartoon Hangover?
The first two shorts, I think, took a year. I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember. I was still working on Adventure Time at the same time.

When it first went up, what surprised you most about people’s response to it?
How many girls were like, “Oh, that’s me.” I was super stoked that people could identify with [Bee] so much or even a little bit. That was the best part.

Where were you and what were you doing when you found out the Kickstarter had reached its initial funding goal?
[Long pause.] Shit.

You’d think this would be embedded in your brain.
I don’t know where I was! I used to live in this guest house and I think it was really cold around that time. I want to say it was still winterish and I had just bought these boots that were really soft and warm, and that is the thing I remember about that time most, these amazing boots.

So the main thing you remember about your Kickstarter victory is that you were wearing your special boots?
Yeah! [Laughs.] They never came off. Like, I was still wearing them when it was inappropriate to be warm, and I was like, No they are really soft, it is okay. But they were making me sweat. Like crazy, crazy sweaty.

Then after that, the Kickstarter went on to make nearly $900,000, which made it the most-funded web series in Kickstarter history. How did you feel when you hit that milestone?
I’m not sure. I just remember someone saying, like, you beat Video Game High School, and I remember being really depressed because I really like Video Game High School!

The initial episodes ended on this cliffhanger about PuppyCat’s true identity and whether he was a fairy-tale prince who went through some serious love-story trauma. Are we going to get resolution on that this season?
I think that’s such a large story that it is something that can be told over time. You want to see how it has affected PuppyCat more than you want a resolution to that fairy tale. At least I do, because I feel like what it does to someone is more interesting than the actual story. What it is for someone to live with something like that. But I mean the short answer is [you’ll learn] a little bit, but not too much.

But I’m sure you’ve had fans accost you and demand that you tell them how the cliffhanger plays out, right?
Yeah, and I don’t know how to answer it! All I can say is that if I told you everything, that’s not fair. But I understand and I want to put more.

Your animation style is very obviously influenced by Hayao Miyazaki. What’s your favorite Miyazaki movie of —
Oh my God, Kiki’s Delivery Service. Like, that is super easy because I watch it once a month.

I wasn’t expecting such a swift answer.
I love them all, but my favorite, my absolute favorite is Kiki’s Delivery Service. There’s something about how slow it is and how quiet and beautiful [it is] that is really special to me. Yeah, I think I’ve watched it once a month for the past seven years.

A final thing we have to talk about: One of the best parts of the pilot episode is the weird posters at the temp agency Bee goes to. No one acknowledges them, but they all have turtles on them and they have confusing slogans like “WHAT EVER” and “When life gives you lemons, crawl in your shell.”
I struggled to come up with what to leave with those stupid posters; I had so many, and then my favorite one didn’t get put in! [Laughs.]

Wait, what was the one that didn’t get put in?
I did one that was, “Burn In Shell.” Kind of like “burn in hell,” and it was a turtle with its shell on fire and it was, like, riding a motorcycle, I think.

Read more posts by Abraham Riesman

Filed Under: bee and puppycat ,kickstarter ,natasha allegri ,animation ,crowdfunding ,interviews ,cartoon hangover ,hatsune miku ,vocaloids ,cosmic temp workers of the world unite

I’m a huge fan of artist Lena Wolff, so I was excited to hear from her about a new collaboration she produced along with Bay Area designer, Erica Tanov. Together they designed and produced a full fall collection of bedding, tabletop and clothing using Lena’s collages and drawings. I love the way her quilt-inspired patterns came to life in the form of pillows, fabric and bedding. It’s always interesting to see traditional textile techniques and designs turned back into modern clothing and fabrics. This limited edition collaboration will be available at Erica Tanov stores in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York and at two upcoming pop-ups: one at Barrow Salon in San Francisco on Saturday, November 15th and in New York City for the entire month of November at Michele Varian. Prices range from $72 for a set of pillowcases, up to $450 for king-sized quilts, so if you’re looking to bring some gorgeous new textiles into your life, be sure to check out this beautiful collaboration. xo, grace

Photographs by Terri Lowenthal

Click through for more photos of Lena and Erica’s collaboration after the jump!

(more…)

Six photographs, all have the "George B. Evans" stamp on the reverse. Photo of man and woman walking on the street has the International News Photos stamp, it looks like the set was part of a press packet.

That same street photo has "Mary Healy and P.J.H." written in pen, referring to the actress Mary Healy and her husband Peter Lind Hayes.

Based on the poster advertising "The Stranger" with Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles, I would put these photos around 1946 or so.

Found in "The Cross on the Drum" by Hugh B. Cave. Published by Doubleday, 1959.

-Click to enlarge photos-

INT. THE MURRY'S home. NIGHT.

MRS WHATSIT: hello
is anybody home
MRS. MURRY: excuse me?
MRS WHATSIT: i'm coming in for sandwiches and to take some of your sheets
also your children, i will be taking them
MRS. MURRY: you're what?
MRS WHATSIT: oh by the way your husband is in space
and your science is terrible
just terrible
you have barely any science and your husband is trapped in space
i'll just take these two children and those sheets over there
bye

 

MEG: where are we going
MRS WHATSIT: shut up and just enjoy the ride, baby
MEG: i was just wondering if--
MRS WHATSIT: well don't
MEG: don't...wonder?
MRS WHATSIT: don't ask me stupid questions
I used to be a goddamn star, Meg
like in the SKY
what did you used to be
a seventh-grader?
lets compare those two things okay
MEG: i'm sorry, i didn't--
MRS WHATSIT: everyone here who used to be an actual fucking star in the sky raise your hand
thats what i thought

Read more A Wrinkle In Time: Dirtbag Mrs. Whatsit at The Toast.

Taylor Swift just broke up with Spotify, and the streaming service is not taking it well. Like many of Swift's breakups, this one resulted from an unattractive spat of passive aggression: Spotify put public pressure on Taylor to release 1989 on streaming, essentially telling her to abandon a strategy that makes her money in favor of a strategy that would make Spotify money. To express her disapproval of this idea, Swift decided to remove all of her albums from the streaming service. (You can still listen to "Safe and Sound" from the Hunger Games soundtrack as many times as your heart desires.) Spotify is not hiding its heartbreak with this very desperate statement:

We love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even more – nearly 16 million of them have played her songs in the last 30 days, and she’s on over 19 million playlists.

We hope she’ll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone. We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community.

PS – Taylor, we were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It’s a love story, baby, just say, Yes.

The begging doesn't stop there. Spotify has released two playlists for the occasion: The first, "Come Back, Taylor!," is full of pleading love songs; the second, "What to Play While Taylor's Away," is an unconvincing attempt to show Spotify's friends and family that it's doing just fine without her. If only the streaming service had more indie records — we hear they're a great way to hide away and find your peace of mind after a breakup.

Read more posts by Nate Jones

Filed Under: taylor swift ,spotify ,1989 ,music ,streaming

A photograph circulated yesterday of what looks like the "release confirmation" of another super-secret Beyoncé album drop, Beyoncé Volume 2, an addendum to the eponymous fifth album that broke everyone's brains last December. Of course, the big question is "Is this real?" Without any comment from Beyoncé's camp, all we can do is speculate: Did some hapless intern Snapchat this to a friend and tell them "OMG Don't share pls!"? Are heads rolling over at Bey's entertainment company, Parkwood Entertainment, as we speak? Or is this actually just a ploy to fuel more of a buildup than another surprise album drop because Beyoncé is like, "Nah, that was so last year"?!

Come, take a journey with us into our rampant speculation. First off, here's the photo:

Confusing! Intriguing! There is one immediately fishy aspect to this, which is the date. As you can see, the digital release date on iTunes is Friday, November 14, and the physical album — a four-disc set — is set to drop on Monday, November 25. However, it turns out that November 25 is a Tuesday, so either this is an egregious typo (embarrassing!), or some faker is not very good at their calendar.

But there are some aspects that make this seem totally possible, like the letterhead with the accurate-looking Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records logos. (On the other hand, anyone with Photoshop could put that in.)

The track list suggests that if someone faked this, they are part of the Beyhive: One of the tracks, "DONK," featuring Nicki Minaj, was actually registered by Beyoncé with ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) a couple of weeks ago. It also seems very Beyoncé to assert her dominance over the booty hoopla.

Another track listing "Cherry" (also registered on ASCAP) also lists Rihanna, which plays into long-standing rumors that the two are supposed to be collaborating on a track together. Is this it?

Here are the possible tracks on volume two:

Sweet Illusion
DONK, featuring Nicki Minaj
Good in Good Bye
Loyal
Renouncement, featuring Justin Timberlake
Sensation of Pain
Fashion
KO
True
Cherry, featuring Rihanna
Flawless (Remix), featuring Nicki Minaj

The box set looks like it will include 28 music videos, the On the Run live show from Paris and her Mrs. Carter world tour. Is this ultimate fan wish fulfillment, or a sadistic joke?

Read more posts by E. Alex Jung

Filed Under: beyonce ,beyoncegate ,surprise! ,albums ,music

Hot off the Preserve.us press:
“As we harken back blissfully to ephemeral harvest seasons of yore, let us remember fashionable belles of the day who were known to indulge in desirability maintenance regimes like seedless squash body wraps and organic pumpkin face masks. These treatments, when applied and removed by properly trained servants, left a lady’s skin as luxuriously silken as the glow from a waxing autumnal moon that would emanate, richly, over seemingly endless hallowed plantation fields…” – Shadeball

Upvote winner:

I wish I’d never signed up on Ancestry.com. - M from Toronto

Pic: VT

Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly attend the 20th Annual Artwalk NY at Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. Jennifer Connely is wearing a Louis Vuitton look from the Spring 2015 collection.

Louis Vuitton Spring 2015 Collection

 

[Photo Credit: Getty Images, IMAXTree]

Just a creepy, hair raising editorial by the ever so talented and imaginative Tim Walker to wish you all a happy Halloween! ...

“You’re all dicks!” —God

I’ve watched all of Todd Solondz’s fucked-up, weird movies (Happiness, Storytelling, Palindromes, Dark Horse, etc…) several times, but the one that speaks to my soul the most is 1995′s Welcome to the Dollhouse, because it perfectly sums up how awful, awkward and shitty junior high school is. In that ode to 90s preteen awkwardness, Heather Matarazzo played Dawn Wiener, a fashion forward, nerdy 7th grader who’s constantly bullied at school and has a home life that is just as crappy. In Palindromes (SPOILER ALERT), we learn that Dawn Wiener offed herself in college. IMDB says that Todd Solondz wanted Heather Matarazzo to play Dawn again in Palindromes, but she told him, “Drop dead, lesbo.” No, but she didn’t want to play Wiener-Dog anymore for some reason, which makes no sense to me, because why wouldn’t she want to put on that white nutsack hair ponytail again?

The Hollywood Reporter says that Todd is working on another Welcome to the Dollhouse follow-up called Wiener-Dog and indie actress Greta Gerwig, who was in Frances Ha and To Rome With Love, is in talks to play grown up Dawn Wiener. Todd is also talking to Julie Delpy about taking a role. THR explains Wiener-Dog’s plot like this:

The script tells several stories featuring people who find their life inspired or changed by one particular dachshund, who seems to be spreading comfort and joy.

What I’m getting from that HIGHLY detailed plot line is that after Dawn Wiener killed herself, she was reincarnated into an actual wiener dog. They better cast a wiener dog who can work the hell out of a ruffled clown blouse and who will keep the Special People’s Club alive.

What I really want to know is, who in the hell is going to play Dawn’s only friend Ralphie?

Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs kind of looks like Ralphie, so my vote for the grown up Ralphie is Glenn Close in her Albert Nobbs drag.

Pics: Wenn.com, MNPP

I’ve been reading Halloween books to my four-year-old son before bed and all the same kinds of spooky things are mentioned: bats, mummies, skeletons, owls (are they really spooky?), witches. I realized I would use this project to paint something that really spooks me: snakes! Snakes totally freak me out, but if you forget the whole poisonous venom thing, the body of the snake and the patterns on their skin are actually quite beautiful. I really liked that contrast, so I decided I’d make a “spooky” but beautiful pumpkin. I hope this will inspire you to try some metallic painting on your pumpkins this year! -Liz Libre of Linda & Harriett

Click through for tips on replicating this look after the jump!

(more…)

by Monica Heisey

It is always hard to know what to wear to meet an icon.

I imagine this is what Cameron Diaz is thinking as she heads to our meeting in a dirt hole behind a Chinese restaurant somewhere near the Lower East Side. I love this hole; it is dark and and wet and fecund, like…well. Wet holes, I write in my notebook, oooh. The actress enters the gaping chasm—like a mouth, like the void, like… well—and seems perturbed, a propitious beginning.

“Does it bother you that I’m high right now on four kinds of Vicodin and a drug used to treat alopecia in animals?” I ask. “Does it?”

“I just…thought we were meeting in a restaurant,” she says, her blonde hair coruscating blondily in the dank.

“I’m not really about that,” I explain. “As you can tell from these.”

She takes in my finger tattoos carefully. My knuckles read DELEUZE. The remaining three fingers are exclamation marks. “Okay.” She gets it. Her blood red lips evoke a menstruating vagina, and I am not scared about that because I am a modern man. “I love to eat pussy,” I tell her, though I know the fact is axiomatic. “I love women.” She gets it.

I sit on the ground with the star of There’s Something About Mary and think about ships. Big, old, colonial ships on dark, moody, masculine seas. Cameron, blonde and shining, at the front, carved in wood. There’s something in there, I’m sure of it. A truth-meaning swimming just below the surface like a shark. Maybe a binary. I live to point out binaries. The ship thing is an important and worthwhile tangent and I indulge it for paragraphs, with an emphasis on shark-as-phallus.

The conversation moves to her long-ago tryst with Justin Timberlake, and the fact that she purportedly believes in sexual fluidity: “What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?” I ask. “That’s Lacan. I gave a guy a blow job one time, it’s no big deal.”

The 42 year-old nullipara—swathed in a gauzy white fabric like the waves cresting on a trade vessel doomed never to reach India—seems intimidated. She sits silently in this noisome cavern, looking sexy but upset. I light five cigarettes and pass her two. She declines.

She starts to talk about something but it is impossible to make out the words over how sexy she is. Her sexiness is a presence, a third in this conversation. I realize we are in the middle of a verbal menage.

My notebook is a list, now, of all the things Cameron is: a ship, a wave, a sex organ—two, a light, a beacon, a metaphor, a minx. She is feline, a kitten with a pussy. She’s a baby and an image of the earth viewed from space. It’s crazy how many things she is, she’s so many things she’s not even human.

I try to explain this to her and she starts to get up, seeming angry, perhaps premenstrual. “This is offensive and weird and a waste of my time,” her beautiful mouth says, beautifully. “I’m sorry if you were offended,” I say. “But, as we all know, ‘Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.’ Freud.” She leaves, not appreciating the compliment.

As I watch the actress walk away, I know she is really running. She is running from the truth (me) but she cannot out-run time. She is a 42 year-old woman. Soon she will be dead.

I pack up my things—cigarettes, a pair of underwear I stole from my ex’s house while she was in Florida, a comb—and walk home with the insouciant air of a man thinking about ships.

Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian in Toronto. She is on Twitter: @monicaheisey.

6 Comments

High Tech Heretic
Stoll
1999

Submitter: We found this book in our high school library collection this week. The irony is that we have just started the year in a brand new, high tech building and with an eighth – twelth grade 1:1 laptop initiative. Loads of wonderful teaching and learning happens in our school both with and without computers. This book focuses on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is filled with anecdotes of horrible teaching.

“To turn learning into fun is the denigrate the two most important things we can do as humans: to teach, To learn.”

Funny that this author also wrote a book in which he predicted the failure of eCommerce.

Wrong twice.

Holly: I’d LOVE to hear this author’s take on Common Core!

 

More High Tech Fun:

HTML for the 90s

Old School Computer Crime

Technology FAIL!

Books about the Interwebz

Nicholas Brendon, the 43-year-old actor best known as average guy Xander Harris on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was arrested on two misdemeanor counts for destruction of property and resisting officers in Boise, Idaho, this weekend. Brendon was in town for Tree City Comic Con when he reportedly caused a drunken disturbance in the hotel lobby, getting into a dispute with the hotel staff and breaking a "decorative dish." 

According to the Boise Police Department's news release, the hotel wishes to press charges. Brendon has since been released on bond. Someone with access to his Twitter account gave a little update, saying, "Nick is doing well. He sends thanks and appreciates all of you for your love, support and positive vibes." Where's the Scooby gang when you need it?

Read more posts by E. Alex Jung

Filed Under: nicholas brendon ,buffy the vampire slayer ,the law ,disorderly conduct ,drunk and disorderly

Cinderella
Wegman
1993

Submitter: I can’t believe this book. I literally did a double-take when I saw the cover, and as I flipped through it, I began to wonder what made the library purchase this book in the first place. The dog/people combos are a bit freaky and probably would have frightened me as a child. I could see a Cinderella story with the characters all as cartoon dogs, but not this weird dog/person combo photograph.

Holly: This is definitely odd. Dog people, are you horrified by this or do you think it’s cute? They have dog faces and people hands, which I find disturbing. If it circulates, I’d keep it, but I might not put it out on display!

More Odd Illustrations and Humiliated Animals:

Beyond Awful…the “Great Beyond”

Bike Tripping

Teeth Are Fun

Men, Dogs and Knitting

On the Catwalk