Andrew.frampton

Cartoonist Matt Bors is fed up with writers piling on the younger generation like it's their fault they can't find jobs and move out of their parents' homes. This is just the beginning of an illustrated refutation at CNN. Link -via Metafilter

Walmart fought hard to persuade DC residents to let it open stores in the district. But now the retail giant is threatening to walk away from three planned sites if the DC City Council passes a “living wage” bill that would require all major employers to pay workers a minimum of $12.50 an hour.

Walmart claims that the bill, which applies to retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and stores that are 75,000 square feet or larger, is “arbitrary and discriminatory.” In a Washington Post editorial, general manager Alex Barron issued an ultimatum to Mayor Vincent Gray: veto the bill, or Walmart will halt construction on stores at Skyland, Capitol Gateway, and New York Avenue.

In less than 24 hours, the corporation is already seeing results: Some council members who voted for the living wage bill are now balking. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie said he is “going to give this some thought” because he voted yes “without knowing Walmart was going to pull out.”

Walmart is accustomed to singlehandedly taking down worker rights legislation. Seven years ago, Walmart threatened to scrap its plans to open stores in Chicago after the city passed a similar living wage law. The mayor promptly vetoed the bill. In March, New York raised its minimum wage but gave tax subsidies to Walmart and other firms that hire seasonal workers. Unions claimed at the time that Walmart had influenced the deal behind the scenes.

Other large stores like Costco, Home Depot, Target, and Macy’s would also have to abide by the DC proposal. But the new $12.50 minimum would be an especially dramatic change for Walmart, which currently pays workers 28 percent less on average than other large retailers, even as it reaps profits of nearly $450 billion a year. In contrast, Costco will have no problem meeting DC’s requirement if it passes — the average Costco worker currently makes $21.96 an hour.

Walmart’s refusal to pay their employees a livable wage translates into a bigger burden for taxpayers. A Congressional report found that the workforce of a single Walmart store consume roughly a million dollars in public benefits every year, relying on “safety net” programs like Medicaid, food stamps, school lunch, and housing assistance to survive. Since Walmart is the largest private retailer in the nation, the full taxpayer cost of the store’s labor practices is exponentially higher.

Protests erupted in June and last November over Walmart’s worker abuses. Besides paying poverty level wages, Walmart has a strict policy against overtime pay, and workers allege that managers deny them bathroom breaks or basic medical accommodations. The company also fired, suspended, and disciplined workers after the strikes last month, likely in retaliation.

Walmart was only allowed to start building in the nation’s capital after agreeing to a voluntary Community Partnership Initiative, in which the chain vowed to contribute $21 million to local charities, stock local products, allow space for local retailers, fund transportation measures, and create a citywide job training program for low-income and at-risk residents, among other conditions.

The DC Council will hold a final vote on the bill Wednesday.

Cruel wake up pranks are nothing new — but this one may be the cruelest of them all.

Just for the Hell of it, prankster James Williams says he wanted to see what would happen if he convinced his girlfriend that the creepy little girl from The Ring was crawling out of their television set.

Normal boyfriend stuff, right?

So Williams spent weeks designing and constructing a believable puppet replica of Samara which had working arms that could be manipulated from afar.

He then waited for his much better half to fall asleep in front of the TV, and attached his masterpiece to the screen.

"I didn't expect her to react like that," Williams later said. "I thought she's (sic) scream, then realize it was me joking around. I felt quite bad after. I also had my mother ring me, early Saturday morning worried about her and told me she wanted to punch my fucking face in."

Warning: The video, not surprisingly, gets loud.

[H/T: SayOMG via about:blank]

As the summer heat continues to climb and we pack up the land yacht for a July 4 road trip, we’re reminded of our cinematic predecessors and gay guardian angels: Miss Noxeema Jackson, Miss Vida Boheme, and Miss Chi-Chi Rodriguez. It’s been nearly 20 years since these career girls went forth and scandalized the nation and perhaps it’s time we re-examine the cinematic masterpiece: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

Masterpiece is perhaps a stretch since under all that pancake makeup is a treacly film with sickeningly sweet characters. Still, that treacly film holds up as an interesting and shockingly human adventure story starring John Leguizamo, Patrick Swayze, and Wesley Snipes as three gregarious drag queens trekking across the country and inspiring a small backwoods town to change for the better. Even (or especially) in 2013, it does not disappoint; think of a queer On the Road, but with less existential torpor.

Oh yeah, and did we mention there’s a cameo by motherfucking RuPaul as the queen of queens, Rachel Tensions (in a stunning confederate flag dress that Sharon Needles would, less successfully, attempt to pull off so many years later).

What To Wong Foo lacks in the transgressive zeal of Rocky Horror Picture Show or, well, anything by John Waters, it makes up for in charm. The three main actors, despite being straight men off camera, portray the heroic homosexuals with a tenderness that is not often, if ever, seen in Hollywood. While of course, retroactively, we can complain that Hollywood had done nothing but deprive actual drag queens of work in a cartoonish portrayal of queer people, this facile criticism overlooks the amount of warmth, sensitivity, and comedic acumen that Snipes, Leguizamo, and Swayze brought to their roles.

Noxeema Jackson summarizes both ludicrously and perhaps astutely: “When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man’s body and has a little operation he is a transsexual […] When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender he is a drag queen.”

Complicated identity politics be damned, perhaps this was simply the exact kind of pithy summary a mainstream (read: straight) audience needed to understand these characters. (Of course, no drag queen is permanently in drag in real life, but let’s leave that minor detail aside.) The strategy worked: Swayze and Leguizamo were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances.

While still maintaining a light-heartedness and genuinely silly mood, the film dared explore the day to day violences and threats that queer people — and biological women! (poor Stockard Channing) — faced.  In fact, the aggression our queens face is the subtle driving force of the narrative. This makes the conclusion, in which the entire town (including straight men) proclaims that they are all drag queens, that much more outrageous and that much more rewarding.

So as we pack our bags for whatever destination we may be heading, let us remember the eternal advice of American Hero, Miss Noxeema Jackson: “Larger than life is just the right size.”

The 4th Of July holiday is nearly upon us, and, really, what’s more all-American than Cher, fellow patriots? The enduring pop queen is currently riding the comeback wave with new single “Woman’s World,” which she recently premiered live on the Season 4 finale of The Voice. Today, however, we’re pushing the diva dial up a notch.

Club maestro Jason Nevins, who has remixed everyone from Michael Jackson to Run-D.M.C. to Justin Timberlake, has reworked “Woman’s World” into even more of a commanding floor-filler, if you can believe it. Here, Cher’s sultry vocals slide across the squiggly, whomping bed of beats that Nevins whipped up.

Get in touch with your feminine side below with Jason’s extended mix of Cher’s “Woman’s World.”

Cher’s 26th (!!) studio album Closer To The Truth is due out on September 26th.

The coming animated feature from Laika Studios mentions a two-dad family. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

In the new trailer for The Boxtrolls, the latest 3D animated feature from Portland-based Laika Studios, a sweet-faced toddler stands alone on a street as various combinations of parents in Victorian garb appear and disappear beside him. "Sometimes there's a mother," the narrator intones. "Sometimes there's a father. Sometimes there's a father and a father. Sometimes both fathers are mothers." Eventually, the little boy is spirited down a sewer by a friendly crew of crated monsters. "Families come in all shapes and sizes," says the narrator. "Even rectangles."

The movie isn't about a gay family, but the mere mention of one in an animated film is sure to set you-know-who on yet another tiresome rampage. The studio's straight CEO (above) says, "We’re not in any way trying to be activists. We’re just trying to be who we are." Laika's last animated feature, ParaNorman, included a character who casually outed himself.

Universal has spent the last day scrubbing copies of the film's trailer from YouTube, but Hollywood Gossip has a mirrored copy. The Boxtrolls is due for release in the fall of 2014. (Tipped by JMG reader Jim)

We adored Coraline, and fell in love with the janky world of ParaNorman. Now feast your eyes on the latest wonder from stop-motion powerhouse studio Laika — The BoxTrolls!

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Everyone, of course! It's going to be awesome. There's going to be hors d’oeuvres and an open bar! Billy Ocean will be there!

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Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wasted no time on Saturday explaining to his Fox News audience why the Supreme Court’s historic decisions last week on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 set the United States down the road towards legal polygamy and bigamy.

“I’m neither a homophobe nor a hater,” he told his audience, before comparing same-sex marriage to polygamy and painting the Supreme Court justices “extremists.”

The Huffington Post flagged Huckabee’s comments, made during his eponymous Fox News show on Saturday night:

“If we’re determined to change the definition of marriage to accommodate how people feel and what they wish to do because of their mutual consent, then we should immediately release those incarcerated for practicing polygamy or bigamy,” Huckabee said. “And, frankly, let’s make all consensual adult behaviors legal, whether prostitution, assisted suicide, or even drinking 16 ounce sodas in New York City.”

Huckabee said he was on the “right side of history,” arguing that gay marriage is “newer than Google or the iPod … and the first nation to even codify it into law didn’t do so until the year 2000.” He also said that the issue “is not equality, but sameness.”

There is nothing new about same-sex marriage, with some historians tracing it back as far as the ancient Greeks. And even using Huckabee’s own timeline, the iPod launched in 2001, a year after the Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage.

In March, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus told the National Review that the party should take its cues on social issues from Huckabee.

(HT: The Raw Story)

via worthwhilesmile

I've grown accustomed to True Blood. Its smiles, its frowns, its ups, its downs are second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in. So even a not-so-great episode, such as last night's, is still entertaining. So let's get to the Pros/Cons. Spoilers ahead!

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"Take the fifty most murderous, duplicitous, treacherous, and violent people in the world...Now, put them in a room with one seat and make them play musical chairs to the death." Scott Meyer has perfectly summarized the concept behind Game of Thrones.

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