An Ampersand to Die for

"Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997. It was derived from miniature wargames with a variation of the Chainmail game serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is widely regarded as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry." (Source: Wikipedia)

Design by: Glitschka Studios (Salem, OR)

Opinion/Notes: Talk about flare! Every letterform has some extra flare or spike or tail or other menacing accessory to make the logo look more dungeon-y and dragon-y. The new ampersand is epic — kitschy epic, but epic nonetheless. If D&D ever launched a luxury car this would look so good on the grill. I am certain that true nerdcore D&D fans will hate this, as it does away with the medieval-ness of the previous logo.

Update: Glitschka Studios designed the ampersand; the team at Wizards of the Coast designed the rest of the wordmark and added the chrome effect.

Related Links: CNN story on the 40th year of D&D
D&D Facebook album

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Jimmy Kimmel Live

Jimmy Kimmel aired the latest edition of his always entertaining and ever-popular “Mean Tweets” segment — in which celebrities read the awful things people are saying about them on Twitter — during last night’s show. Seemingly every corner of Hollywood, from the uber talented, up-and-coming female sect (Emma Stone, Mindy Kaling) to longtime stars with Oceans franchise credits (Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia), was represented — and mercilessly lambasted.

Watch as David Blaine is forced to read a spot-on description of his face, Matthew McConaughey receives a confusingly juvenile burn that nearly stops the McConaissance dead in its tracks, and Sofia Vergara counters the vulgar assessment in the screenshot above with a spicy hot comeback.

Jimmy Kimmel Live

Via CTV Toronto

While his story might sound like a crazy one for any person to experience, it was just another typical night in Ontario* for Stephane Desgroseillers, who was driving home and spotted a very scared baby moose on the side of the road. Desgroseillers told this bizarre story to CTV News in Toronto, but only after people found out about it in a more modern kind of way. Videos were posted to YouTube almost as soon as Desgroseillers arrived at his local Tim Hortons with his new baby moose companion the next morning, and you’re probably wondering why this guy was still driving around with a moose that clearly needed some attention from veterinary and wildlife experts.

Well, when Desgroseillers was trying to figure out what to do with the moose, he first tried to send it back into the woods, because it’s like they always say, “See no lost, terrified baby animal, hear no lost, terrified baby animal.” But the man knew better than to leave the poor thing to be roadkill, so he tried to contact the local wildlife refuge. Except he accidentally called the local animal hospital, which was closed, so his only option at the time was to take the baby moose home. The results, I’m sure, we’re absolutely cute but smelly.

That’s how he ended up with the moose at Tim Hortons the next morning, because he needed to grab some coffee after the crying baby kept him up all night. You can watch Desgroseillers talk all about it on the CTV News broadcast, and here’s some footage captured by a local woman. Long story short, LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE BABY MOOSE YOU GUYS!

*I just assume that baby moose are running all over Canada at all times. Also, everyone carries a harpoon everywhere.

Before I commence arbitrarily rating the minutiae of Coldplay’s career using totally subjective and occasionally silly criteria, I want to briefly address how people talk about Coldplay. Because this is a band whose narrative has been framed almost entirely as a defense against those who hate Coldplay. For instance, when Rolling Stone published a lengthy interview with Chris Martin in 2008, the headline was “The Jesus of Uncool,” which seems vaguely insulting to Chris Martin and vaguely complimentary to Nick Lowe. Even people who like Coldplay concede many of the criticisms, that this is a hopelessly white bread, fatally wussy-ish band.

I’ll concede this as well. However, “white bread” and “wussy-ish” doesn’t necessarily preclude a band being “good” in my book, particularly if the band in question happens to be skilled at making songs that are commercially popular and critically unfashionable. The fact is that Coldplay is usually attacked for what it is rather than how it performs the tasks it has set out to achieve. Yes, Coldplay songs tend to be softly played dirges that pad along with the kinetic urgency of slippers sliding across a vinyl-covered kitchen floor on a lazy Sunday morning. Coldplay songs are often soppy and occasionally soporific. They will not make you feel as if you can run a marathon, bench-press 300 pounds, or sleep with the person you’ve been dying to sleep with. Coldplay songs might indeed make you feel less awesome than you really are, not more, which is a pretty big flaw for a band that plays ostensible “rock” music.

However, if you like softly played dirges sometimes (because softly played dirges, like any kind of song, are not inherently evil and can be executed well in the right hands), Coldplay does them about as well as anybody.

So, a week ahead of the release of Coldplay’s sixth studio album, Ghost Stories,²⁷ let’s begin the very important process of determining whether this band is overrated, underrated, or properly rated.

Studio Albums

Parachutes (2000)

I was under the mistaken impression that Coldplay was briefly considered hip immediately after the release of its debut album, Parachutes. I swear I remember them having that “trendy British band” shine for maybe a half-minute, back when there was such a thing as a “trendy British band” shine, right before “Yellow” infiltrated the sexual fantasies of cool moms everywhere. I know for a fact that “Trouble” was utilized in an early episode of The Shield, so at least Coldplay wasn’t considered macho antimatter quite yet. Alas, my memory was totally wrong. Pitchfork’s review of Parachutes begins thusly: “Pretty, lovely, fine, fair, comely, pleasant, agreeable, acceptable, adequate, satisfactory, nice, benign, harmless, innocuous, innocent, largely unobjectionable, safe, forgettable.” Like that, a career’s worth of backhanded compliments and damningly vanilla insults was set in tapioca-colored granite. By the way, out of all those words, only the first, second, third, fifth, and seventh truly apply to Parachutes. Because, fuck it, this is my favorite Coldplay record. If I were to make a list of the top 10 Coldplay songs, half would come from this album.²⁸ Parachutes established Coldplay as the new century’s foremost creator of oversize anthems imbued with oversize melancholy for (soon-to-be) oversize audiences. It declared the band’s intentions to be a (mostly) unapologetic middle-of-the-road act — hardly glamorous but undeniably utilitarian in its commitment to making melodic, sentimental, and instantly accessible music that fits cleanly in the lives of a wide swath of regular people around the world straining majestically against the mundane emotional parameters of their regular lives. UNDERRATED

A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)

Critics were kinder to this record, I guess, because they believed it was better. But there are other (possible) mitigating factors: Parachutes was a big hit, Radiohead wasn’t making pop-rock records this grand (or popular) anymore, and it suddenly seemed like similarly mopey British bands like Travis had jumped on Coldplay’s bandwagon, when in fact Travis was around for three years before the first Coldplay record.²⁹ Coldplay seemed like a big deal but enough of an underdog that hating them (for now) seemed gratuitous. Rush holds up in retrospect: “Clocks” and “The Scientist” are by far the decade’s most convincing examples of piano-y arena-rock pomp and circumstance, and overall the album is basically Honky Chateau for the Lion King generation. The question is, does A Rush of Blood to the Head deserve its reputation as Coldplay’s best album? I’m going to say no. The first half (which has all of the hits plus the great “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face”) is undeniable, but I usually check out after “Green Eyes.” Also, if any Coldplay record is going to take the hit for James Blunt, the Fray, Snow Patrol, and other less notable practitioners of simpering Grey’s Anatomy balladry, it might as well be this one. OVERRATED

X&Y (2005)

This is where Coldplay officially attempted to U2-ify itself and succeeded in the worst possible way by making its own Rattle and Hum. Not in the “we’ve taken to wearing black vests over our naked torsos in the company of B.B. King” sense, but rather in the “we’ve placed our accumulated goodwill in a Dumpster and set it on fire” sense. To be fair, X&Y could’ve been the second coming of The Joshua Tree and still triggered a wicked backlash. Coldplay had simply reached that level of stardom, where people who might otherwise not feel inclined to have an opinion about you start to resent how you’re suddenly fucking everywhere. It’s less about who you are than you signifying what’s generally annoying about media overexposure. I’ve long theorized that the part in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (released just two months after X&Y) where Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and Seth Rogen’s horrifying goatee laff it up about how liking Coldplay makes you gay was the tipping point for public declarations of hatred for Coldplay. Like that, “Coldplay sucks” became a default position for “interesting” people to adopt; observing that this band was “boring” became a way for boring people to prove that they weren’t really that boring.³⁰ There was also a caustic review in the New York Times by Jon Pareles where he declared Coldplay the decade’s most insufferable band, paying an unwitting compliment to other, arguably more deserving parties. And, yes, Chris Martin marrying Gwyneth Paltrow and naming his first kid Apple was like sending the world a personalized invitation to a “Please Kick My Ass” party. All of this means that I really, really want to argue that X&Y is underrated. But I can’t. I admire the hubris of quoting “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” at the start of “Square One,” nodding to 2001 and (perhaps unknowingly) Elvis Presley’s “fat Elvis” period. And “Low” is a quality deep cut I never hear anybody talk about. But overall, X&Y was precisely the inarguably bloated, pompous misstep that the band’s critics were waiting for. PROPERLY RATED

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008)

The best thing about making a bad record is that when you make your next record, you receive immediate bonus points in the press for acknowledging that your last record was kind of stinky (which carries the implicit promise that the new one is not at all stinky). So when Chris Martin met with reporters to promote Viva la Vida, he admitted to Spin that during its X&Y period Coldplay had “[turned] over too many of the decisions to the wrong people” and confessed to Rolling Stone that “we were bigger than we were good,” which (consciously or not) parroted the magazine’s own criticisms in its review of X&Y. The self-deprecation routine worked: Viva was much better received by critics after it was sold as a “reinvention” of Coldplay’s monochromatic sound, which no doubt showed signs of exhaustion during X&Y’s sleepiest passages. But in retrospect, Viva la Vida sounds like what it is — “just” another Coldplay record, for better or for worse. How you feel about this album is likely tied up in your feelings about Brian Eno, Viva’s producer, later described by Martin as Coldplay’s “teacher.”³¹ If you’re inclined to view Eno as some kind of oracle for the rock vanguard, Viva by association might appear “risky” or “experimental.” If you’re inclined to view Eno more cynically, as a Jiminy Cricket figure for superstar rock bands pretending to be avant-pop groups, Viva might subsequently appear to be a minor deviation at best from the status quo. The truth is somewhere in the middle — “Strawberry Swing” and the title track wouldn’t have fit on Coldplay’s previous records, but they’re still big, dumb, emotional, and ultimately pleasurable ballads that provoke strangers to wrap their arms around one another at big, dumb, emotional, and ultimately pleasurable gatherings. PROPERLY RATED

Mylo Xyloto (2011)

Easily Coldplay’s most ridiculous LP, though to the band’s credit at least 40 percent of that ridiculousness seems to be intentional. For starters, Mylo is kind of sort of a rock opera. Now, I never pay attention to Coldplay lyrics, because being a Coldplay fan can be embarrassing enough sometimes. But from what I gather after many listens to this record (it’s probably my most-played Coldplay album at this point), the plot involves a gang of “lost boys” with names like Charlie Brown and Major Minus who wander a dystopian hellscape in search of euphoric, synth-heavy intercourse with Rihanna. Don’t quote me on that, though. I’m probably way off.³² What I do know is this: (1) This is the only Coldplay album that can be accurately described as “fun”; (2) the Rihanna song is better than it gets credit for; (3) Coldplay is better at integrating pop and dance music into its aesthetic than U2 or Radiohead, and this should be acknowledged more than it is; (4) by writing a song called “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,” Chris Martin proved he was better at making fun of Coldplay than Seth Rogen ever will be. UNDERRATED

The Live Show

I’ve never seen Coldplay live. So my judgment here is based strictly on video evidence. Please apply grain of salt accordingly.

“Everything’s Not Lost” (2003)

So, it’s not that I don’t want to see Coldplay live. Coldplay just never seemed like a band I had to see live. And this clip confirms why. This is one of my favorite Coldplay songs, but seeing it bashed out in front of an audience does nothing to enhance my enjoyment. It just sounds like a louder version of the record. C’mon, Coldplay, can I at least get one talk box solo to liven things up a little? OVERRATED

“In My Place” at Live 8 (2005)

The drums sound great. Otherwise, I’m not interested. Have I ever mentioned that I hate seeing babies at rock shows? It makes my paternal instincts kick in immediately. I don’t care if it’s your dad up there. Get Apple and her stupid headphones out of there, Gwyneth. OVERRATED

“Yellow” at the Steve Jobs Memorial (2011)

Sorry to go on another digression, but: The cult of Steve Jobs creeps me out. I predict that people will be wearing Apple computers around their necks like good Jobbites in 2,000 years. And these followers will declare the day that Coldplay played the ancient hymn “Yellow” at our Father’s funeral a holiday, and share the parable about how Jobs declared the song “shit” before waving his hand and turning it into gold. Anyway, this is just OK. PROPERLY RATED

Chris Martin and Michael J. Fox, “Johnny B. Goode” (2013)

Is this good? I can’t tell. Back to the Future nostalgia is blinding me. Just to be safe, let’s not call Marvin Berry about this one. PROPERLY RATED

EPs, B Sides, and Outtakes

With the possible exception of mixtape rappers, nobody works harder than British rock bands when it comes to generating a steady stream of nonalbum material. Coldplay is hardly the Smiths or Oasis in that regard, but there are enough gems tucked inside EPs and import singles to warrant a cursory Internet search. (A Rush of B-Sides to Your Head is among the easier fan-made compilations to track down.) “Bigger Stronger” (from the pre-Parachutes EP, The Blue Room) is the closest Coldplay ever came to directly ripping off The Bends. (This is not a criticism.) “1.36” (a B side of the Rush of Blood to the Head–era single “In My Place”) might be the single hardest-rocking song in Coldplay’s canon. (This is not sarcasm.) And there are plenty of perfectly fine low-key strummers like “See You Soon” for fans to cobble together a decent “bonus” Coldplay LP. UNDERRATED

Music Videos

Two things are immediately apparent about Coldplay videos — there’s usually some sort of visual “trick,” and there are usually lots of close-ups of Chris Martin’s face. Therefore, we must judge Coldplay’s videos based on visual trickiness and proximity to Chris Martin’s grill.

“Yellow”

The video starts dark and grows lighter as the sun rises over a beach, which is nice enough but not very tricky. The most alarming part of “Yellow” is the first 19 seconds, when we don’t see Chris Martin. Where is Chris Martin? Has he drowned? Have the authorities been notified? Nope, there he is! What a relief. Now, let’s stare at him walking and lip-synching for the next four minutes and 11 seconds.  PROPERLY RATED

“The Scientist”

You want Chris Martin’s mug? How about a bird’s-eye view of his nostrils? “The Scientist” starts out extremely face-y and then becomes extremely tricky, with that forward-backward visual device that the Beatles used in their videos when they were eating LSD for breakfast. But we almost never don’t see Chris Martin, making “The Scientist” the ideal balance of trickiness and faceiness. PROPERLY RATED

“Strawberry Swing”

On one hand, this is maybe the trickiest video Coldplay has ever made. On the other hand, it has a serious lack of face. The trickiness-faceiness equilibrium is way off. OVERRATED

“Magic”

This video begins promisingly, with a medium close-up on Chris Martin. But the face time at first appears to be inconsistent — the plot about the girl and her abusive husband takes us away from Chris Martin’s telegenic features far too often. And the literal magic tricks³³ threaten to overtake the whole enterprise. What’s that? Chris Martin also plays the husband? We were looking at him the whole time? That’s a very tricky way of delivering Chris Martin face time! Well done, “Magic.” UNDERRATED

The People in Coldplay Who Aren’t Chris Martin

Contrary to popular belief, there are members of Coldplay who aren’t Chris Martin. Even if you don’t count Gwyneth Paltrow (who surprisingly isn’t a member of Coldplay), there are three other people in the band. I’ve listened to Coldplay for 14 years and it’s my job to memorize music trivia, and even I couldn’t name all the band members until I started researching this column. Below, I ranked the non–Chris Martin members of Coldplay based on whether I had to look them up on the Internet to confirm their first, last, or full name.

1. Will Champion

I must admit to feeling some pride that the one non–Chris Martin member of Coldplay I didn’t have to look up at all was the drummer. In the immortal words of James Brown, I’m always in favor of giving the drummer some.³⁴ In spite of Coldplay’s non-funky, non-rocking reputation, Champion is a pretty good timekeeper. He was actually fired before the release of Parachutes because of his supposed lack of technical proficiency, and then rehired when Coldplay remembered that it was Coldplay and not Tarkus-era Emerson, Lake & Palmer. A 2005 Rolling Stone profile includes a rep-building anecdote about Dave Grohl approaching Champion at a music festival and complimenting his drumming. It’s not clear whether Grohl realized Champion was in Coldplay or thought he was being nice to a contest winner backstage. But the compliment stands. UNDERRATED

2. Jonny Buckland

I knew Coldplay’s guitarist was named “Buckland,” but Google had to help me on the “Jonny” part.³⁵ I doubt Buckland would be offended by this. By all accounts, he’s a very unassuming person. In a 2008 Rolling Stone interview, Martin talks about how he and Buckland lived in the same building in college, and Martin didn’t realize Buckland played guitar until he came across him strumming away one night at 3 a.m. “I was like, ‘I didn’t know you played guitar.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t really tell anybody.’” Buckland carries that same un-flashy style to Coldplay’s records. Whatever Eddie Van Halen had at the start of “Hot for Teacher,” Jonny Buckland’s playing has the exact opposite amount of dynamism. UNDERRATED

3. Guy Berryman

He seems like a nice guy. I’ve learned that he likes to drink and collect 45s. I also learned that his name is “Guy Berryman,” because I had no clue who the fuck Coldplay’s bassist was until I wrote this. OVERRATED³⁶

Chris Martin’s Marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow

Again, Gwyneth Paltrow is not and never has been a member of Coldplay. But the Martin-Paltrow union is the one bit of Coldplay-related knowledge that everybody seems to have. Now that the marriage is apparently over, Martin will likely be less famous, which won’t affect Coldplay’s popularity but will probably keep him out of the tabloids. This seems like a win if you regard Martin or Paltrow merely as pop-culture abstractions and not as human beings — otherwise, it’s devastating. When Martin and Paltrow were together, it was fashionable to disparage the couple as the epitome of so-called “limousine liberalism,” which naturally rankles a proletariat resistant to rich people telling them not to eat cheeseburgers. Call me a sap,³⁷ but I actually thought their relationship was kind of sweet. In interviews Martin claimed that Paltrow was his first serious significant other; he got married just four years after having sex for the first time. I don’t care if you’re a rock star or some anonymous schlub; if you wait until your early twenties to have sex and then marry the first person you ever spent serious time with, that relationship is going to be intense. Chris and Gwyneth really seemed to be strongly into one another for a while. He wrote “Fix You” for her after her father died, and as corny as that song is, 99.9 percent of husbands will never present a gift like that to their wives in their entire lives. In terms of how much prominence this relationship has in Coldplay’s image, it’s OVERRATED. But as an actual marriage between two actual people, I say UNDERRATED.

The Chris Martin–Jay Z Friendship

Are they really friends or is this more dastardly Illuminati propaganda? I have no idea. Jay Z did invite Martin to sing on a song called “Beach Chair” on his worst album. And Martin invited Jay to rap on a remix of “Lost!” from the Prospekt’s March EP. Chris called Jay a “super cool guy” in Rolling Stone in 2011, and Jay probably thinks Chris is at least “decently” cool. And they’ve played shows together and even rode the subway together once. That the idea of these guys being pals is inevitably described as “unlikely” or “weird” or “huh?” seems somewhat racist. By virtue of being ginormous pop superstars, Chris and Jay have more in common with each other than they do with all but 100 or so people in the entire world, no matter their backgrounds. OVERRATED

Chris Martin on Extras

Chris Martin’s nonfiction persona doesn’t seem realistic in a fictional context — he bends over backward in media appearances to appear humble and deferential. But when Martin played himself on Extras, he finally had an opportunity to play the smug, d-bag persona more commonly associated with famous rock singers. He’s funny in the episode, but in no way does it seem like a satirical version of Martin. A more accurate self-parody would’ve been to have Martin beg to fetch Ricky Gervais’s coffee. OVERRATED

“Fix You” on The Newsroom

Think of the most obvious way for a TV show to use a Coldplay song. Now triple that obviousness. Dip it in cheese sauce. Triple it again. Cringe until you curl into a fetal position. Feel the “Fix You”–Sorkin singularity until your arteries completely corrode. Queue up “Fix You” for your own funeral. PROPERLY RATED

That Equal Sign on Chris Martin’s Hand

Are trade practices among nations and multinational corporations now completely fair? I thought so. OVERRATED 

Think of any inspirational music quote you’ve ever heard and this impromptu jam session video will affirm it. There’s very little detail to be had at the moment about the parties involved, but the basics are a musician sitting in front of Kroger is playing his heart out to the point a person walking by decides he should film the session, only for another guy walking by to decide things are so good he should provide some soul to the jam, only for ANOTHER dude about to walk into the store to take notice and volunteer his freestyle talents.

The original video has passed through a personal Facebook page to a YouTube page and made it to Reddit, but the description from the original Facebook video copied into the YouTube channel (got that?) provides all origin info you need:

“I was walking to kroger and saw this guy playing a song. It sounded good so I decided to record it. By the end of the song three guys started jamming. This truly is music in its simplest form. It really reminds of the Austin days. Enjoy.”

I’m usually the first one to scream FAKE because life on the internet is just easier that way, but the whole thing feels so organic that it’s melted away my cynicism for the moment. So yeah, this is nice, and deserving of everyone on the internet giving it a watch.

Chris Cooper YouTube via r/Videos

Getty Image

Did you flip your sh*t when Morrissey joined Twitter this week? So did I! For about 2 seconds, and then I remembered who Morrissey is, and then my internet persona belted a falsetto, “Faaaaaaaaake!”

It all started with a tweet.

OMG, you guys, it’s him! (*looks at follow-up tweets*) Yeah, that’s not him. Nope. Morrissey even released this very Morrissey statement.

I would like to stress that I do not have either a Twitter or a Facebook account. I gather that a Twitter account has been opened in my name – as ‘It’s Morrissey’ – but it is NOT Morrissey. I do not know who has opened this recent Twitter account, but please be aware that it is bogus. That’s, of course, if you should remotely care.

Untwitterably yours,
MORRISSEY
Salt Lake City
15 May 2014. (Via)

Yeesh. I imagine him in a cold bathtub staring at a guitar with only 4 strings on it when he wrote that.

(Via AV Club)

There are many things about Carlos Gomez that are delightful , and this week's issue of Sports Illustrated contains an anecdote about Gomez that will make you want to be best friends with him.

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CW

I’ve gone on record as having a bit of a cold relationship with DC Comics in the past. Aside from Batman, I’ve never really fell in line behind many of their heroes. Superman is kinda boring to me, Wonder Woman is the same, and Green Lantern seems to lose all of his interesting qualities with each new creative team. But I’ve always liked The Flash and this trailer installs a bit of hope in me that this new Arrow spin-off isn’t going to be terrible. From the description:

After a particle accelerator causes a freak storm, CSI Investigator Barry Allen is struck by lightning and falls into a coma. Months later he awakens with the power of super speed, granting him the ability to move through Central City like an unseen guardian angel. Though initially excited by his newfound powers, Barry is shocked to discover he is not the only “meta-human” who was created in the wake of the accelerator explosion — and not everyone is using their new powers for good. Barry partners with S.T.A.R. Labs and dedicates his life to protect the innocent. For now, only a few close friends and associates know that Barry is literally the fastest man alive, but it won’t be long before the world learns what Barry Allen has become…The Flash.

Now I still haven’t watched Arrow, but I do plan to jump on it this summer because I like Ollie Queen and I hear great things. Also I think I owe it to myself to watch it in order to get ready for this in a way. Oliver Queen is featured prominently in the trailer, taking aim at a target and missing thanks to the intervention of the new version of the scarlet speedster.

And while I know it’s lame to use the damn nicknames given to these characters, I remember to tell myself that I’m writing about comic books and I shouldn’t take it so seriously. Besides, where else am I going to get the chance to sound like an old timey TV announcer? Inter-office email chains?

(Via CW)

Getty Image

People have been Tweeting this photo like crazy today, and I’m pretty sure they’ll Tweet it plenty tomorrow and Saturday as well. Hell, I can remember it being Tweeted like crazy last year and the year before, too. The bottom line is that this photo of Brett Favre getting the NFL Draft call from the Atlanta Falcons in his bedroom in Fenton, Mississippi back on April 21, 1991 is one of the greatest sports photos ever taken. Hell, it’s one of the greatest photos ever taken, period. If aliens come across this planet several thousand years from now and all they find is an apocalyptic wasteland with no signs of life, I pray that they at least find this photo in a capsule so they understand how boss the 90s were.

Between the white t-shirt tucked into the jean shorts with the tight roll and his friends hanging out with their airbrushed tees and rolled up sleeves, I’m pretty sure that my rat tail just started growing back. In fact, let’s go ahead and break out the only appropriate GIFs I can think of.

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Well, it's not so secret anymore! Appearing on Today this morning, Dolly Parton was asked about the tattoos that were rumored to cover her breasts and arms and she came clean, saying, "I have a few, but they're mostly for my husband."

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Tristar Pictures

Dust off those high heels, ladies. It's time for Shirley Temples.

Between Heaven is for Real, Son of God, and about ten million Christian Mingle vids in my Facebook feed (take a hint marketers: I look like Shylock), 2014 was a big year for Bible-based movies I accidentally saw sober. Not all of these films were completely bad (There was Noah and, you know, the other one!), but most just felt like brochures proselytizers hand out in bus stations: colorless apocalyptic clip art. Mom’s Night Out, released just this past weekend to the tune of $4.2 million dollars, is very much a part of this unfortunate cultural trend. It’s the story of four rogue moms who go out for a wild night on the town (think soda! think Groupons! think Cosmic f#$(*n bowling!), then discover that God and family is way better than any hilarious fantasies of “freedom” they might have had. While not as explicitly messianic as other films in its genre, Mom’s Night Out looks back nostalgically to a time when both gender roles and women’s vaginas remained effortlessly tight. Light on its surface, crazy at its heart, Mom’s Night Out hides a B.C.-era cultural agenda behind its easy-reader-kill-me-now khaki momcore façade.

At the center of Mom’s Night Out is Allyson (Sarah Drew), an anxious stay-at-home mom who’s struggling to find a balance between her family and her mommy blog (Actual premise, no sarcasm added). While her husband Sean (Sean Astin) is off at work, Allyson spends Mother’s Day playing with her kids (the horror!), racing to Church (the terror!), and watching an eagle prance around on a webcam (the symbolism!). I wanted to empathize with Allyson – parenting is indeed a hard job – before details emerged and common sense kicked in. Upper crust Allyson never leaves her kids – she refuses to hire a babysitter and actually homeschools the whole family. Growing up, my parents sent me to school and let me watch 80 hrs/wk of TV because I – like all children – was unbearable. The less family time we shared, the happier we were, and I think that’s both normal and fine. But Mom’s Night Out is part of a culture that glorifies mothers-who-martyr and sees children not as talkative fart machines but as bite-size messengers of God. So when Allyson reaches out to the fellow moms in her Bible study group to plan one lonely mom’s night out, you can’t help but feel little bits of pity and chunks of (self-righteous) sad.

All three moms – Izzy (Logan White), Sondra (Patricia Heaton), and later Bridget (Abbie Cobb) – decide to join Allyson for a Saturday night out, leaving the children in the hands of their “charmingly incompetent” husbands. Isn’t it cute when fathers fail their children?? Allyson, who is chatty and neurotic and therefore her-larious (think: a born-again Diane Keaton), worries about what’ll happen when she leaves her kids for one night only. Will Sean let them stay up all night and play violent video games? The consequences are too pathetic for me to type. Despite their fears, Allyson and her friends bravely forge ahead and purchase a Groupon for their favorite Caesar Salad restaurant. Upon arriving, Allyson discovers that they’ve made a reservation for the wrong week, leaving them no choice but to gather up all their things, put away their credit cards, and then – when will the insanity stop – Go. To. Another. Restaurant. The night is young, and the wackiness – just beginning.

Watching Mom’s Night Out, you might think it’s all good clean mom-edy. But humor is rooted in anxiety, and Mom’s Night Out is deeply nervous about the modern era. Men like Allyson’s husband flail at babysitting because they’re men – meant to work and throw big rocks and bone from the top. Women like Allyson and her friends can’t go out because they’re moms – meant to care and clean and fake full-body orgasms. Directed by Andrew and Jon Erwin (the team behind October Baby, an anti-abortion momodrama), Mom’s Night Out is terrified of everything: from tattoos (poor people), to rap (black people), to sex (finally, an anxiety I can understand). We don’t sympathize with the heroes because we don’t believe in their plight; we don’t laugh at the jokes because we can’t identify their paranoia (except this one guy in the back row. He was drunk and having a tough old time).

Tonight, there will be no bumpers.

About halfway through the movie, fellow mom Bridget realizes that her ex-boyfriend Joey has left her baby in the hands of a (gulp!) tattoo artist for the night. The moms go into a collective panic – cause you know, tattoos=death – and then spend the remainder of the movie trying to find said baby in the darkest recesses of their lovingly segregated climate-controlled Cheesecake Factory of an exurb. It should come as no surprise that Bridget – the movie’s one unmarried mom/unspoken whore – is the one directors have chosen to undergo this trauma. But all women pay the price for their token night out – from broken DSW heels to tasered synthetic faces to full-on county jail incarceration. None of these things would’ve happened, Mom’s Night Out argues, had the women simply stayed home, cooked dinner, proffered handjobs.

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing I fantasize about more than a evening/weekend/lifetime spent at home. I’d much rather watch my children throw loose feces on the wall than ever have to show up to work again. Call it maternalism, call it a mood disorder, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be a stay-at-home parent/professional invalid. There is something concerning, however, when movies like Mom’s Night Out offer that as the only choice. You can judge Mom’s Night Out by the lure of its cinematography or the persuasiveness of its actors (Grade here =  Indifference +), but ultimately we score movies on the perspicacity of their storytelling and the quality of their cleavage shots. In the case of Mom’s Night Out, the story is trite, the message vacuous, and the boobs obscured by infinite folds of Lands End mock turtleneck. Story of my life.

At the end of Mom’s Night Out, Allyson realizes that it’s not enough to be a mommy – to be fulfilled in life, she need become a professional mommy blogger. See, the reason Allyson’s been anxious all along has nothing to do with the fact she has no career/social life and that she never NOT ONCE uses tongue to kiss her husband (seriously, I’ve had hotter middle school dry humping sessions). It’s that she just hasn’t learned how to accept God’s plan for her, which apparently includes: family bowling, diet sodas, child dumps. You can’t change your life, Mom’s Night Out seems to say, but you can blog about it. Modern day advice for a premodern story, and I’m here to unsubscribe.

Grade: Don’t do this to yourself.

Heather Dockray is a comedian and storyteller living in Brooklyn, NY. You can see more of Heather’s work at www.heatherdockray.com, follow her on twitter @Wear_a_helmet, and email her at dockrayheather@gmail.com if you aren’t from Moveon.org.

I wrote a comic about my Tesla Model S.

You may recall back in February that a Dallas sports anchor (Dallas? Wow!) completely shamed all those opposed to Michael Sam in an NFL locker room, saying that it was ridiculous that the NFL would accept wife beaters, drunk drivers, and murderers into the locker room but “not a man who loves another man.” In that earlier speech, Hansen also took issue with predictions that Michael Samm would be drafted in the third to fifth round. “The best defensive player in college’s best football conference only a third to fifth round NFL pick? That is shocking!”

Sam, of course, went in the sixth round and celebrated by kissing his boyfriend on ESPN much to the dismay of certain homophobes. Hansen was also dismayed, not that Sam was drafted, but that he was drafted 249th. “248 [players] better than the SEC’s defensive player of the year? There’s just no way.”

I f**king love Dale Hansen.

via Hypervocal

Yo, Ladies™! Huddle up. Grab a backwards chair. (Now turn it around and sit on it RIGHT, YOU SHAMELESS HUSSIES. Ladies™ don't straddle.) It's time for some serious LadyTalk™. If you're a Lady™, like me, you've definitely run into this problem: It's dinnertime. You're starving. You haven't eaten since your morning cup of spinach run-off, you're exhausted from changing tampons all day, your duodenum is chafing from riding sidesaddle all the way to Labial Zumba, and you're feeling fat because all your Diet Spanx were in the wash so you had to wear Spanx Classic. Gross. All you want to do is find a nice restaurant where you can exchange currency for sustenance, lady-style. Is that so much to Lady™-ask?

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YOUTUBE

Inspired by John Cage’s 4′33″, and wanting to pull one over on Spotify, Los Angeles-based band Vulfpeck recently released Sleepify, an entirely silent album. No music, no lyrics, all nothing (if only Imagine Dragons had such foresight). The group asked their fans to leave the album on overnight, so that with each go-around, they’d earn a tiny slice of Spotify royalties (about $.007 per play).

Eventually, the figures began to add up, and Vulfpeck garnered $20,000, money that was going to be spent toward making tickets for their next tour totally free. It almost worked.

The streaming giant did admit the ploy was “clever and funny,” according to band member Jack Stratton, but ultimately they asked the group to remove the album, claiming it violates Spotify’s terms of content. The band has not had all of their music removed, however, though some earlier reports suggested that. In fact, fans were made aware of Spotify’s request by a new album posted by the band titled Official Statement, in which Stratton confirms the news via a spoken word track, followed aptly by a 31 second “song” of complete silence. (Via)

Except to hear more about Sleepify later this year, when Pitchfork calls it 2014′s best album.

Via Paste

CBC Music put together this two-and-a-half minute supercut of the vocal hooks that defined an entire generation of ’90s alternative rock music, featuring music from The Lemonheads, Pavement, Weezer, Alanis, Paul Westerberg and The Cardigans — just to crack the surface.

On one hand, it’s kind of depressing to see the music of my formative years reduced to a bunch of woo woo’s, hey yeah yeahs, whoa-ohs, na-na-nas, and ooh-oohs. On the other hand, right now I have such a nostalgia boner that at karaoke tonight I’m going to sing ALL of the ’90s songs. Yeah I know, that 4 Non Blondes thing didn’t work out so great for me last time I tried it, but f*ck it, time for a re-do.

We like pool dunks. This one, orchestrated by the Euroleague, may not be the most complicated one we've ever seen, but it is certainly the most polished. It also incorporates a water jet pack, so it's got that going for it.

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National Poetry Month is now in the books. You probably didn't even celebrate. That's okay: Take a minute now to bask in the laconic rhythmic brilliance of this six-year-old kid who wrote some beautiful zen shit that you can't even fathom penning.

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Everybody told me that New Yorkers were a bit harsh but I didn't really believe it, because I can't believe people really vary that much from place to place, that the differences between us are ever going to be as dramatic as the similarities. And of course, everybody was wrong. New Yorkers are great. In Texas we're nice because we don't know any better. But in New York, I found people everywhere who were kind, and helpful, and all the things everyone says they're not.

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McDonald's

By now we should already know that McDonald’s is terrible. But everyone’s still excited when the McRib makes a comeback, and personally I think the McRib tastes like a flip flop covered in equally appetizing barbecue sauce, so it’s a futile endeavor to try and protest every time they come up with a new line of stupidly gendered toys for their Happy Meals. I mean, just this year already they thought cutting all the female characters out of Adventure Time was a great idea.

So now that McDonald’s Amazing Spider-Man 2 line of promotional tat has been rolled out for Happy Meals everywhere, it’s obvious that the amount they care about how sexist they look is negligible.

McDonald's

Okay, the “boy” toys are action figures and a light up car and a mask. Look, we’ve all been eight year olds and we’ve all had Happy Meals — unless you have lived an incredibly sheltered life and then I don’t know how to talk to you so stop reading this. Those kids meal action figures are kind of crappy now, anyway. This is not the 80s and we’re no longer able to collect anthropomorphized versions of our food while we’re eating the food they’ve given a face to.

So, hooray, a Spidey spinning top! Do you have any idea how fun a top is? ASK A JEWISH KID ABOUT DREIDELS VERSUS ANY OTHER TOY EVER, THEY WILL TELL YOU.

Meanwhile the “girl” toys include a watch ring and a journal, so you can note at exactly what time you told someone to go F themselves when it was implied that owning pink accessories means you’re less capable of kicking someone’s ass. Because I’ll be honest, I want that headband. It probably won’t fit me and it will be uncomfortable as hell but I want that headband. I’m willing to eat many chicken nuggets to get it. That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

If I find out that that pink Spidey “clutch” — which is actually a hard-sided container — is big enough to hold an HTC One phone, I’m going to just walk up to the counter and ask to buy one outright, because it’s impossible to find fun cases for the HTC One, I don’t care how much Gary Oldman tells you to buy one.

I realize I should be more outraged about this, being female and geeky, but I’m choosing my battles. Like the Lego “girl” toy set literally being a pink kitchen. McDonald’s has a history of being stupid. Let’s take the fight somewhere else. Maybe we can challenge Taco Bell to produce toys for their breakfast meals. Buy a waffle taco, get a mini trebuchet. Siege engines are genderless!

via Comics Alliance

In the lax-crazy scholastic sports scene of the high-end Washington D.C. market, a game between Landon School and Georgetown Prep is essentially 'Skins vs. Cowboys, except with more people named Topper. They're two of the fancy-pantsiest all-boys secondary schools in the area, and their athletic rivalry offers a good bellwether for the rest of the sports-playing local gentry. Which is why it was interesting to see how both the Washington Post and the Montgomery Gazette framed this year's matchup —as a birthday party for a Prep star. He had just turned 19.

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