In the waiting room of Little Vinnie’s Tattoos, bikers and punks sit side by side with church-going grandmas and soccer moms. Customers fly in from as far away as Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Brazil, to an unassuming strip mall just outside of Baltimore complete with tanning salon, liquor store, and adult DVDs. Anxiously, they enter Vinnie Myers's shop, the final destination for many breast-cancer survivors attempting to recover what mastectomies have stolen.
Breast-cancer rates have risen in recent decades, and that increase has been especially pronounced in the United States. Currently, one in eight American women will confront the disease in their lifetime. Over the same period of time mortality rates from the disease have declined. For many, treatment will necessitate breast and areola removal. Patients survive the mauling with flat chests bound in dark scars. Most opt for reconstructive surgery. Breast implants can provide the shape of what was lost, but making a realistic-looking areola is a greater challenge.
For all of medicine’s advances, the best option for areola reconstruction is tattooing, and in the field of cosmetic tattooing, Vinnie’s trompe-l’oeil “areola portraits,” as he calls them, are widely regarded as the best that money can buy.
“We’ve tricked doctors,” Vinnie’s jocose assistant Richie chimed in. “There’s been ladies that have called us all giddy and giggly, ‘You’ll never believe what happened!’ they say. ‘I went to my follow-up appointment with my surgeon and I disrobe and he’s looking through my chart and he’s looking at me real confused and he finally says, ‘I think we made a mistake. This chart says you were operated on.’"
“What’s your secret?” I asked.
“It’s just Art 101,” Vinnie replied, leaning up against the parlor’s pool table. “Light and shadow. It’s hard for me to believe that nobody else ever thought about this before. You know a lot of the other cosmetic tattoo artists, they just hold up a circle template and color it in. They’ve got three colors. They’ve got chocolate brown, bubble gum pink, and salmon. Whichever one you’re closest to, that’s what you get. Most of the white women get salmon.”
“So they don’t draw in the Montgomery glands?” I asked referring to the little bumps of the areola.
“They don’t even draw in the nipple most of the time,” Vinnie exclaimed. “They’ll do a circle and then they’ll maybe do a darker colored circle. Maybe. You’ll get a chocolate-colored circle inside of a salmon circle.”
“And most of the time they can’t even get the nipples in the right spot,” Richie lamented. “You almost wonder if they just close their eyes and point…”
Another aspect that Vinnie finds criminal is the typical doctor’s fee for cosmetic tattoo work. “It’s easily a couple thousand bucks,” he notes, “and insurance doesn’t cover it. Here, we charge the same amount for an areola as we charge for any other tattoo of the same size. Why should we charge more just because it’s a nipple?” At Little Vinnie’s, the price is $400 for one breast or $600 for both.
I sat in on several of Vinnie’s sessions that day. With his quiet confidence, his medical terminology, his clipboard, and his collared shirt, it was easy to see why so many of his clients called him doctor. He took such thorough medical histories that I half expected him to pull out a stethoscope. If he had, I doubt anybody would have even raised an eyebrow.
The last client of the day was a woman in her early 50s—a former head cheerleader, her husband proudly boasted. Her battle with cancer had lasted two years and had left her with a thick purple line where her left breast used to be.
She was nervous. Vinnie offered to fetch her a beer. “It’s OK,” he joked, “we’re all drunk over here!”
“What does it mean to you to have this procedure?” I asked the woman.
She thought for a moment, composing her words. “I’m hoping it will eliminate the constant reminder. For a while you’re just in survival mode. You just take it one procedure at a time, one diagnosis at time. And then after it’s all over, you have the sense that everything’s great—until you’re by yourself, and that’s the hardest part. Sometimes I’m great, and then when I get out of the shower, it all comes back—kinda like a kick in the gut. Hopefully this’ll just help erase some of the memories.”
“The good thing,” said Vinnie gesturing towards the surgical site, “is that when you look at this now, you only see the scars. There’s no other features to look at. But when you have the nipple there, you don’t notice the scars as much. You focus your attention on the nipple itself.”
“The way you describe it,” I posed to the woman, “It seems almost like a spiritual procedure—changing the body to change the mind…”
“You feel like it takes your feminine side away,” the woman elaborated, “And it’s odd because all the time women try to hide their nipples, and then when it disappears, you think, Why did I hide it? Why did I work so hard to hide it?"
“It’s strange,” began Vinnie as he mixed the pigments, “how almost every woman I’ve talked to has that same feeling of not being complete, not really being whole. You felt whole before and now you’re not. What I’ve heard more than anything else when I finish this procedure is ‘I feel whole again.’”
Vinnie donned his black latex gloves.
“Like a biker man!” the woman laughed.
“We gotta be edgy!” Vinnie riffed.
The tattoo machine buzzed and shook in his hand like something alive and spiteful. The woman winced and her lips disappeared as the needle bit in.
When it was over, 20 minutes later, Vinnie slowly spun the woman in her chair to face a full-length mirror.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Her face tightened and she dabbed at her eye. The answer took a moment to work its way out. “I don’t see the scar anymore,” she stammered. “It really just disappeared.”
Never underestimate the enthusiasm of Arrested Development's fanbase. It's only been a week since Netflix released the show's new season, which took an unusual unchronological story structure, but two different fans have already begun editing the season's events into sequence for those of you who are curious what that looks like. Reddit user morphinapg has created 12 episodes covering the entire season that you can download here, while user Clawtrocity has, working a little slower, uploaded three edited episodes and is working on more. Given creator Mitch Hurwitz's aburdly precise attention to detail, he was probably counting on fans editing the season into order and there are probably several hundred new sight gags that wouldn't appear in the show's normal version.
“Norma-Jean was my first sidekick. We did everything together.” – Bo Diddley, 2005
One of the first female rock ‘n’ roll guitarists was a tall, stunning black woman with a towering bouffant hairdo, a skintight gold lame dress (or black leather pants), high heels, and a custom Gretsch electric guitar, designed by the man usually standing next to her onstage, Bo Diddley.
Technically Norma-Jean Wofford, nicknamed “The Duchess” by Bo, was the second female guitarist in Diddley’s backing band. She replaced “Lady Bo” (Peggy Jones) in 1962, with Bo hiring her first and then teaching her how to play rhythm guitar. Lady Bo had been Bo’s lead guitar player from 1957 to 1961, leaving to form her own group The Jewel, later called Lady Bo and The Family Jewels, and work as a session musician. Bo’s audiences’ disappointment in not seeing Lady Bo with the band prompted him to hire Norma-Jean.
Having a woman in a rock ‘n’ roll/R&B band who was not simply a back-up singer was unheard of at the time. The Duchess, originally from Pittsburgh, was said to be Bo’s sister or half-sister, a rumor he started himself, partly because he considered her close enough to qualify as family but also because he didn’t want the other band members to make a move on her. He told his biographer, “Part of the reason I decided to go with that little lie was that it put me in a better position to protect her when we were on the road.”.
The Duchess recorded and toured with Bo for four years and was the band member he entrusted with his money. She sang back-up with the Bo-dettes (then comprised of Gloria Morgan and Lily Jamieson, a.k.a. “Bee Bee”), managing simultaneously to sing with them, play rhythm guitar, and not miss a single dance move. The Duchess appeared on several of Bo’s albums, recorded for Leonard Chess’s Checkers label, such as Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley and Company, Bo Diddley’s Beach Party (a live album recorded at the Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina), Hey! Good Lookin’, 500% More Man, and The Originator.
Wofford was on Diddley’s first tour of England that featured the Everly Brothers, Rolling Stones, and Little Richard in 1963. Audiences went wild for The Duchess’s curve-hugging stage clothes. When a British journalist asked her how she managed to get into her tight dress, the Duchess held up a large shoe horn.
Eric Burdon paid tribute to The Duchess in the Animals’ song, “The Story of Bo Diddley” in 1964.
“We were playing at the Club A Go-Go in Newcastle, our home town
And the doors opened one night and to our surprise
Walked in the man himself, Bo Diddley
Along with him was Jerome Green, his maraca man,
And the Duchess, his gorgeous sister…
He turned around the Duchess
And he said, “Hey Duchess,
what do you think of these young guys
Doin’ our material?”
She said, “I don’t know. I only came across here
To see the changin’ of the guards and all that jazz.”
The Duchess left Bo Diddley’s band in 1966 to get married and raise a family in Florida. She was replaced by Cornelia “Cookie” Redmond and later Debby Hastings, who remained in Bo’s band from 1982 to 2007. Lady Bo returned to Bo’s band to play several concerts in 1993 and the Duchess showed up at a Bo Diddley concert to say hello to her old friend in July 2004 in California, where she was then living. She died the following year in Fontana, California. Bo Diddley passed away in 2008.
Bo and The Duchess played identical Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbirds, Cadillacs, and Cigar Boxes, which he had helped design. All three models had unusual rectangular shapes, which he said made them easier to play. Decades later Bo gave one of his Jupiter Thunderbirds to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, who helped Gretsch recreate the model, renamed the G6199 Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird.
Below, even while overshadowed by Bo and his energetic guitar playing, The Duchess was still pretty hard to miss during their appearances on television shows like Shindig! and the concert film The Big T.N.T. Show /T.A.M.I.-T.N.T. Show (1966).
The best albums are all compilations, anyway. Why? Because they're made up of SINGLES, duh," Mick Collins writes in his liner notes to the If You Don't Already Have a Look collection of various 7" sides, compilation tracks, and unreleased items, and you've got to admit that Collins walks it like he talks it. The Dirtbombs have released three albums and about twenty 7"ers (by themselves or as splits) during their first decade of doing the rock thing, and while the 2001 album Ultraglide in Black still stands as their most impressive sustained effort, if you're only going to own one Dirtbombs item during the course of your lifetime, If You Don't Already Have a Look may well be the way to go. Disc one features 29 Dirtbombs originals, disc two offers up 23 inspired covers, and if you want to hear Collins and his partners in crime letting loose with the full range of their sonic possibilities and influences, this set boasts a little bit of everything they do. You want punk rock? Cue up "Words That Hurt." You wanna hear some cool neo-Britpop? Try "Encrypted." Need a deliciously sleazy ode to the joys of summer, teenage style? "Cedar Point '76" fills the bill. How about some straight-up noise? "Brucia I Cavi" merits your attention. Gotta have a kick-ass car song? You need "High Octane Salvation." In the market for a glorious non-electronic Rolling Stones mash-up? The cover of "No Expectations" will make you smile. Solid '60s-style R&B your thing? "The Sharpest Claws" should be on your list. Wanna hear the greatest Lou Rawls cover ever? "A Natural Man" is track nine on disc two. Mick Collins has ruffled the feathers of a few fanzine writers here and there for loudly insisting the Dirtbombs are not a garage band, but while there's plenty of loud, fuzzy, sweat-soaked rock on If You Don't Already Have a Look, this set captures the group's almost schizophrenic eclecticism in grand style, and proves he's got a point -- this is band that can head out in five directions at once while still maintaining their sonic identity and rocking the house, and you can hear that on each track of If You Don't Already Have a Look. Points added for a derisive Tori Spelling reference.
Mark Deming, Rovi
Fry your brain with this supercool HITS collection by your favorite "Bombs". Dig!
Take a stack of soul platters from the 1960s and 1970s from the likes of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Sly & the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder; mix generously with a propulsive mix of two bass guitars, two drummers, and the vocals of a Detroit rock legend; and you have an underrated gem in the Motor City music scene. Ultraglide in Black puts a rock spin on recognizable nuggets of soul and funk while retaining the original version's integrity and message. Most of the tunes covered here are spirited party tracks, including a sparkling version of Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" that features a strident breakdown. Vocalist Mick Collins, of the Gories fame, paints each track with a flavorful delivery which at times will have the listener literally transported to AM radio's yesteryear. The Dirtbombs have created a record that is akin to stumbling across a box of cool records in your parent's attic, and is suitable for continuous play at any house party. [Douglas Siwek]
This is pretty much a 21. century modern garage cornerstone, a real hit record that even appealed to a non garage rock crowd. Why this isn't popular as White Stripes or The Hives is beyond me. Anyway... Dig!
Over the weekend, Fred Armisen an a bunch of his SNL and musician friends recorded a studio version of "It's a Lovely Day," the song that he said goodbye with in his final episode of SNL earlier this month as his punk rock character Ian Rubbish. The song, which was a poignant and fitting way for Armisen to leave the show, is available at IanRubbish.com, along with an album cover, lyrics, and some previously-released Ian Rubbish songs. Armisen recorded the track at the studio Serious Business Music in NYC and was joined by Bill Hader on bass, Jason Sudeikis on drums, and Taran Killam on guitar with Carrie Brownstein, Aimee Mann, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis, and the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones also playing with them. Hopefully, Armisen keeps using the Ian Rubbish website to drop new songs whenever he feels like it forever and ever.
On March 22, these three Jaguar cubs were born at the Woodland Park Zoo to parents Junior and Nayla. First-time mother Nayla demonstrated natural maternal care and instincts, protecting the cubs so much that keepers couldn’t get their hands on the cubs for their first vet check until late last week! Once they did, it was determined that the triplets are healthy and that there are two girls and one boy, all exhibiting very different personalities.
The first born was a girl, the smallest of the cubs - but that does not stop her from being the most independent of the three. She also tends to lead her siblings in their mischief and play. The second born was a male who is also the largest cub. He is the shyest around keepers and a mama's boy, sticking close to mom's side, and yet he's the most vocal of the three.
Jaguar births are rare, and as a “Near Threatened” species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, the jaguar triplets are a major milestone for Woodland Park Zoo’s jaguar conservation efforts. Third born is the other female, who regularly follows her older sister and playfully roughhouses with her big brother.
Photo Credits: Photo 1: Jamie Delk/Woodland Park Zoo, Photos 2-5: Ryan Hawk/Woodland Park Zoo
The Woodland Park Zoo's blog, which you can read HERE, states, "Keep in mind, habitat loss and fragmentation of wild areas, hunting by ranchers, and loss of wild prey due to overhunting by humans are major threats facing jaguars in the wild. Each year, Woodland Park Zoo’s Jaguar Conservation Fund supports field conservation projects dedicated to preserving wild jaguars and their habitat. The fund has given awards to 19 projects in 12 North, Central and South American countries for a total investment of $113,806. Currently, the zoo supports three projects in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua that all aim to find ways for both people and predators to share Earth’s ecosystems."
Look for more pictures of the cubs after the fold. Before that, watch this series of three videos from the zoo's closed circuit cameras, which allow Mom the privacy to nurture and bond with her cubs. The first is the video announces the cubs' birth:
The cubs at three days old:
The most recent video of mom nursing and playing with her babies.
Santiago de Compostela la segunda ciudad de Europa en que más llueve
Para algunos es un encanto propio de la ciudad Para otros es demasiado
Vivir en Compostela asegura lluvia muchos días al año. Para muchos turistas el tiempo es además un añadido a su visita y al turismo en Santiago de Compostela. A la hora de elegir un destino para las vacaciones es prácticamente imposible encontrar un lugar en el continente en el que las probabilidades de lluvia estén al nivel de las de aquí.
La campeona de España en litros por metro cuadrado recogidos en un año.
Santiago de Compostela sólo se ve superada a nivel europeo por Bergen, en Noruega, y puede presumir de una media de precipitaciones por encima de los 1.900 litros por metro cuadrado de Compostela, con un promedio anual que supera los 2.200 litros
Espinete se estrenó en el Barrio Sésamo de TVE en 1983.
Ya se han cumplido tres décadas desde que un erizo gigante se instalara en TVE para convertirse en el alma de Barrio Sésamo. No importaba que no llevara ropa y que no tuviera sexo definido. Era, simplemente, Espinete.
Aunque, eso sí, Espinete llegó de casualidad. Y es que, tras el fracaso de la Gallina Caponata en las predecesoras versiones de Barrio Sésamo, TVE solicitó, al prestigioso diseñador de teleñecos Kermit Love, la creación de una animal más a acorde con nuestra ‘patria’. Una águila fue el bicho elegido.
Pero, por suerte, Kermit estaba hasta arriba de trabajo y, en vez de realizar un fascinante rapaz, cameló a la dirección de TVE con este personaje rosa que había imaginado, en realidad, para el Barrio Sésamo de Israel.
Y Espinete nos marcó. Por sus canciones, por sus aventuras y, sobre todo, por su personalidad, impregnada de la característica interpretación de Chelo Vivares. En total, Espi protagonizó 146 episodios entre 1983 y 1988, que después se repitieron hasta casi desgastar la cinta. El primer capítulo fue La Bicicleta, que se estrenó el 6 de abril de 1983.
Un erizo gigante y, encima, rosa iba a ser uno de los personajes más queridos y recordados de la historia de la televisión en España. Porque Espinete sí existe, se esconde en un baúl en la sede de TVE en Prado del Rey. Ahí está guardado, cerca de Don Pimpón, como símbolo de una cadena pública que invertía en esmerada producción propia infantil.
Formatos como Barrio Sésamo educaron (y entretuvieron) a varias generaciones, a través de guiones que no tenían miedo a jugar con los más pequeños, al ritmo de amenos teatrillos constructivos e impredecibles canciones como éstas:
By Winston Rowntree Published: May 31st, 2013
So you've set up your online dating profile, answered 66,000 of those ancillary compatibility questions, and received exactly zero messages from others -- so what's the deal?! Why is no one attracted to you? Well, it's because you're not attractive.
Nathan Fielder, star of Comedy Central's Nathan For You, gained a lot of media attention last month when he asked his Twitter followers to "mistakenly" send a text about a drug deal to their parents. He's at it again with a new Twitter "experiment" aimed to ruin people's romantic relationships instead this time around. Yesterday, Fielder tweeted, "Experiment: text the person ur dating "I haven't been fully honest with you" then dont reply to them for 1 hr (& tweet pic of thr response)," and he already has dozens of followers who listened to what he said. This and the other Twitter prank are going to make for one fun episode of Nathan For You next season, if this turns out to be for the show and not just how Nathan Fielder kills time.
Check out a collection of the best responses to this experiment, which skew closer to heartbreaking than funny, below (via Uproxx):
After their rollicking tribute to soul music on 2001's excellent Ultraglide in Black, Detroit's Dirtbombs have gone back to thee garage. Dangerous Magical Noise is an exciting, sweaty, loud, and dirty record, their best yet. Best songs, best production (by the always reliable Jim Diamond), best everything. Mick Collins and his gang of thugs are on top of the heap of over-hyped rock coming out of Detroit quicker than the Tigers' and Lions' annual collapses. Like their compatriots the White Stripes, they never stoop to mere re-creation but rather slap their inspirations around a little, steal their lunch money, and leave them sucking dust. From the beginning breathless rush of "Start the Party" on, the bandmembers rarely take their feet off the gas. Pounding tracks like "Get It While You Can," "Earthquake Heart," and "Stupid" will keep the party going at a fever pitch, and tracks like the anthemic "F.I.D.O." and "21st Century Fox" will have you singing along in the car on your way back home at 3:00 a.m. When they do dial the rock back a little, like on the slow-groove garage-soul of "Sun Is Shining," it gives Collins a chance to show off his always great vocals. A few of the songs come off as generic garage filler ("Don't Break My Heart," "Stuck in Thee Garage"), but even these are saved by Collins' wailing vocals and the devotion to rock action that the band exhibits. They also exhibit some newfound glam rock influences on the super-cool "Motor City Baby" and the hilarious "I'm Through With White Girls." The Dirtbombs are a rock & roll band pure and simple, and if you like pure and simple rock & roll with a dash of soul, you will flip over Dangerous Magical Noise. [AMG]
Well, look-a-here folks, Mick Collins and The DIRTBOMBS are responsible for two of THE BEST [and I really mean B-E-S-T] Garage Rock slabs in 21st century, "Ultraglide In Black" and this little killer. So, if there's any fuckin' chance that You Don't Already Have A Look, Get It While You Can!
Arrested Development's long-awaited fourth season debuted all at once on Netflix's streaming service this past weekend. Given the show's penchant for in-jokes and subtle callbacks, I expected this to be something that they kept up in the new season, but what I didn't expect is for Season 4 to be even denser with running jokes and references than the previous seasons. Going through this new crop of 15 episodes, it becomes clear that, because they were all produced at the same time, they're more interwoven and callback/foreshadowing-heavy than Arrested Development's ever been. Here's an obsessive guide to the new season's best sneaky jokes, including the real George Maharis, the unforeseen consequences of Buster's drone mishap in Spain, and all the many, many ostrich references.
Running Jokes Throughout the Season:
-George Michael mentions not wanting to be called "George Michael" or "Boy George" because of the singer George Michael's bathroom sex arrest and Boy George's arrest for sexual assault. The name he chooses instead is George Maharis, a popular actor from the '60s and '70s who, unbeknownst to him, was also arrested for committing a sex act in a men's room.
-Newsman John Beard, who was the actual Fox news anchor in Orange County and LA during Arrested Development's original run, was fired by his local station in 2007 for wanting to do hard news instead of celebrity fluff. Throughout the season, we see him bounce between several different TV jobs, all of which he quits on air. At the start, he's still a Fox 6 anchor but quits after the housing bubble bursts (because of the big house Ed Helms's James Carr had sold him). He hosts a tacky morning show called Good News O.C. with John, Jackie, and Joan (based on Fox's local morning show Good Day L.A.) (Episode 2), a local version of Chris Hansen's To Catch a Predator called John Beard's To Entrap a Local Predator: Supercreeps (Episode 5), an airport news show, Outwest InLounge, for Outwest Airlines (Episode 7), a news show on gas station TV screens (Episode 8), and finally, Imagine News, the news channel playing in Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's movie company Imagine's offices (Episode 13).
-A list of Arrested Development's new episodes was uploaded to a Fox press site by mistake in December, with a tentative release date of May 4th, 2013, meaning that the original plan was to release all the episodes on Cinco de Cuatro.
-Synonyms for "Arrested Development" are used onscreen throughout the season. "Halted Development" is the name of John Beard's news story and Michael's story on the in flight magazine is "Discontinued Development" (Episode 1). In Maeby's office at Imagine, there's a pile of scripts called "Active Development" and "Not Going Forward Development" (Episode 4). The narrator says, "George Michael's development was about to be forestalled (Episode 13).
-The season is full of references to Modern Family, possibly because Mitch Hurwitz feels the show is a more mainstream (and successful) version of Arrested Development. Maeby's movie script about the Bluths is titled 21st Century Family (Episode 4). The narrator says a member of the entourage Gob is in, Jonathan Tyler Taylor, had his part cut from the Modern Family pilot (Episode 7). When Gob says he's dating a famous person, Michael asks if it's Modern Family's Julie Bowen (Episode 11). At the Opie Awards, Maeby exclaims, "It's the kids from Modern Family!… Rico!" (Episode 12).
-Lucille's inmate number throughout the season is 07734, which is "hello" when you write it on a calculator and turn it upside down. It's a reference to Annyong (whose real name is "Hel-loh"), who turned Lucille in and had her sent to jail. "07734" is an upside-down translation of "hello" and "Annyong" is a Korean translation of "hello."
-Characters throughout the season say the words "get this" before referring to Beverly Hills. Reporter Trisha Thoon (Stacey Grenrock-Woods) does it during a Fox news story about singer George Michael being arrested (Episode 1), Barry says it when telling Michael where to meet Ron Howard (Episode 4), and the narrator does so when referencing the location of Imagine Entertainment (Episode 4), and the Herbert Love rally (Episode 8).
-Tobias, Gob, and Lindsay all eat the same snack, a combo of mustard and parmesan cheese. It's a reference to Martin Mull, who plays Gene Parmesan on the show and played Colonel Mustard in the 1985 movie Clue.
Episode 1: "Flight of the Phoenix" (Michael #1)
-When Young Lucille (Kristen Wiig) gives her Grinch speech about Cinco de Mayo, she's wearing green face cream which makes her skin look green.
-The majors listed on the University of Phoenix website are Criminal Justice, High Technology, Education, Criminal Justice [sic], Nursing, Real Estate, Movie Producing. Most of these careers come into play in the show, particularly Michael's career in movie producing, which isn't what he studied at Phoenix.
-When reporting on the Queen Mary story, newsman John Beard calls Lucille a "seaward matriarch," a callback to the boat "The C-Word."
-Two of the stories on the cover of the gay British magazine Attitude are "Boy George, George Michael, More than a Name in Common" and "Magic Man: Tony Wonder's Biggest Secret."
-The whiteboard on George Michael's dorm room door reads, "You missed me! Leave a note!" which recalls the Bluth family's J. Walter Weatherman-inspired fears of not leaving notes.
-When Michael and George Michael are walking around outside at UCI, a TV crew is filming The Real The Graduate behind them, which ties in with the recurring use of Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" (from The Graduate) in the season.
-Michael has the idea for his voting scheme in a broken chair that reclines too much in UCI's computer lab. In the episode "It Gets Better," George Michael has an idea to get Michael to lose the roommate election while sitting in the same faulty, reclining computer chair, which also convinces him that his bad idea is good.
-Michael losing the election so badly recalls him coming in last place when he ran for class president in high school, which is referenced in Season 2's "The Immaculate Election."
-Michael passes a mural at the end of the episode featuring a ton of locations/vehicles from the first three seasons (the model home, the staircar with Michael and George Michael sitting at the top, the banana stand, the lighthouse from the pier, Gob's yacht, Gob on a Segway, a Mexican church, the family's log cabin on a truck, the rickshaw from Iraq, a street sign and double-decker bus from Wee Britain, the Queen Mary, and a seal with a yellow bowtie.
-Michael says "Gentlemen, start your engines" when he passes Lindsay in the hall wearing a red wig, foreshadowing his fondness for redheads that's brought up a few episodes later.
Episode 2: "Borderline Personalties" (George Sr. #1) -Young Barry Zuckerkorn is played by actor Henry Winkler's real son, writer/director Max Winkler.
-Young George Sr. (Seth Rogen) says, "We have the best fucking attorneys," mirroring his line later in life, "I have the worst fucking attorneys."
-Heartfire (Mary Lynn-Rajskub) buys the cave from Gob's magic trick from "Colony Collapse" for George Sr.'s retreat. Ann tells Gob in that episode that she sold it online. Here's the ad Heartfire is looking at, from Craigslist's "christian/prehistoric/fairytale" section:
"Mud Cave, LARGE – biblical era – ONLY USED ONCE
USED FOR TELEVISED VEAL SHOW, Crumbling, muddy, dilapidated, dirt cave EXCELLENT CONDITION
Hole in top perfect for ventilation, dangling of bodies, rolling "wailing" stone available as well to seal in occupants.
Hidden compartments for keys, belongings
Can be put on a platform and approached by additional boulder-stairway a trapdoor – but odor problem with boulder, contact Church of Holy Enlightened Rapture for more
-The news story on Lucille 2 adopting Perfecto appears on The Orange County Ledger. The website is listed as orangecountyledger.com, just leads to Reddit's Arrested Development forum.
-For The Orange County Ledger photo, Lucille 2 has Perfecto wearing fake freckles and a red wig, just like Spanish TV characters in the show, particularly in the Season 1 episode "Key Decisisons" where Marta gets nominated for a Desi Award. It also foreshadows Maeby thinking Perfecto is an adult pretending to be a kid because freckles and wigs are what adult actors use to play kids on Spanish language TV on the show.
-Oscar's middle name is revealed to be "George," making the family's reused names all the more confusing.
-The first class In-flight magazine we-12 has a cover story called "The Best of Altitude (what they're reading behind you)," with a small picture of Michael from his story in the In-flight magazine Altitude.
-In the end credits, actor Rich Chrisandanost is credited as playing "Divine Spirit," although it's later revealed that Marky Bark (Chris Diamantopoulos) is actually pretending to be the character Divine Spirit. The fake actor's name takes the same format, "Rich (Actor's Real First Name)andanost," as the character Maeby pretends to be in Episode 3.
Episode 3: "Indian Takers" (Lindsay #1)
-During the scene in the police station, John Beard is on Fox 6 news in the background and he says, "Finally, the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony tonight drew one of the highest ratings in history. I wouldn't want to be their competition." Arrested Development's final four episodes were aired by Fox against the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony in February of 2006. The ceremony easily beat its competition in the ratings.
-The house that (James Carr) Ed Helms sells to John Beard is the one he uses for the pedophile sting on Tobias. On his news broadcast, Beard says, "Good luck getting the raccoon smell out of the gate house." In Tobias's episode, "A New Start," John Beard tells him there's a raccoon out on the patio to get him to leave the sting house when he won't do so.
-A flier on the wall of the methadone (or "method one") clinic reads "Feeling blue?" It's a callback to the blue/blue double-entendres in Season 2 and the last time Tobias confused a health program for an acting opportunity.
-The actress Tobias meets at the methadone clinic Debrie Bardeaux (Maria Bamford) played the Invisible Woman in The Fantastic Four. The guy she's dating when she's first introduced is Andy Bark (Chris Diamantopolous), who has face blindness. So, the Invisible Woman's boyfriend can't see her.
-Lindsay says, "I have the worst fucking shaman," a spin on George Sr.'s frequent line from the original series, "I have the worst fucking attorneys."
-Debrie Bardeaux's (Maria Bamford) Fantastic Four movie is based on a real early '90s Fantastic Four film that was produced haphazardly so that someone could retain the right to the characters, but the movie was made by Roger Corman and not Ron Howard. Here's the trailer:
-The shaman that later ends up being Maeby is called "Shaman Sheman" in the end credits, foreshadowing the character turning out to be a woman. Like with the character Divine Spirit in Episode 2, the character is credited under a fake actor's name, Rich Aliaändanost. The pseudonym format is the same as the one for Divine Spirit in previous episode (the first name Rich plus the actor's first name combined with the suffix "andanost").
Episode 4: "The B. Team" (Michael #2)
-The Google people call the Google car drivers "ostriches," another of the season's frequent ostrich references.
-The billboards for Imagine Entertainment and Jerry Bruckheimer Films recall the gag about them taking their logos literally. Imagine's says, "Where dreams drop into make-believe as surely as a drop of water falls into a bigger thing of water in slow motion." Bruckheimer's is "Driving action toward love through a storm until lightning hits a tree."
-In discusssing his movie producer job, Michael says it's tough to get down to Orange County, a callback to a line spoken by Ron Howard (as the narrator) in the Season 3 episode "Exit Strategy," in which George Michael invites a bunch of Maeby's Hollywood contacts from her address book (including Ron Howard) to her surprise party. In that episode, the narrator explains why he skipped the party: "And some of us just couldn't be bothered to drive down to Orange County."
-The gag with the sheep wandering into the photo booth that Michael and Rebel are in is a callback to a sheep doing the same thing to Buster in the Season 1 episode "Bringing Up Buster."
Episode 5: "A New Start" (Tobias #1)
-Tobias says, "in this case, paper beats rock," a callback to the Season 2 opener "The One Where Michael Builds a House," which featured Gob and Michael fighting with a giant rock and scissors and a lot of rock/paper/scissors wordplay.
-The opening to John Beard's predator show is an homage to the opening of Arrested Development: "And now the story of the awful who are about to lose everything, and the one newsman who had no choice but to entrap them all together. It's John Beard's To Entrap a Local Predator: Supercreeps."
-The Fünkes fly to Shuturmurg, India. "Shuturmurg" in Hindi means "ostrich."
-Tobias's Outwest Airlines movie choices are under the section "Tantamount Spotlight," and they are The Fantastic Four, the Tom Jane movie Junk, the Tom Jane movie Homeless Dad, and British rom-com Love, Indubitably.
-There's a sign twirler at the funeral of the Tobias's agent/real estate agent James Carr (Ed Helms). The sign says, "Now burying."
-At James Carr's (Ed Helms) funeral, there's a procession of mailman trucks in the background for the funeral of Michael's mailman Pete.
-At one point, there's a poster for Gangie 4: Facelift, the sequel to a horror movie Maeby worked on at Tantamount Studios in Season 3's "Making a Stand." Thie villain was based on Lucille. The title, Gangie 4: Facelift also appears on a check Maeby receives, which is how Lindsay thinks her mother (nicknamed Gangie) gave the money so Maeby could get a facelift.
-When the ostrich on Lucille 2's balcony attacks her, she says "Stop it, chicken." Like the Bluth family, she doesn't know what a chicken looks like either.
-A police officer character is named "Officer Threé" in the credits, a play on the way insignificant movie/TV characters are named (like previous parts Tobias auditioned for, Frightened Inmated #2 and Confidence Man #2).
Episode 6: "Double Crossers" (George Sr. #2)
-Oscar calls sweat lodge a "sweaty old hotbox," a joke about his marijuana habit.
-At George Sr.'s spiritual retreat, a woman pushes a "Mr. Mister" cart through, which carries water misters to keep people cool. The name of the cart is a reference to George Michael's "Mr. Manager" thing from "Top Banana" in Season 1.
-Gob is seen going into a Mexican drug store to buy roofies in this episode. There'e a bilingual sign on the wall outside that foreshadows his roofie circle before his episode airs. It says:
"Are You in a Roofie Circle?
HOW TO TELL:
-The shame feels like it won't go away.
-People are surprised when you're surprised to see them.
-Loss of Month
-Weight gain"
-In the video of Herbert Love's campaign ad, there's another video in the corner of the screen entitled, "Herbert Love Gets a Big Hand From Vet," which foreshadows Buster getting a giant fake hand several episodes later.
-The narrator says Rebel Alley's shoplifting PSA was "inspired by a photograph" (her mugshot) in reference to her father, Ron Howard, making only movies inspired by photographs.
Episode 7: "Colony Callapse" (Gob #1)
-Jeremy Piven's nightclub "and" is the same as his credit shot from the theme song to Entourage. Jeremy Piven beat out Will Arnett for the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy in 2006 for his performance in Entourage. The show referencing an actor who beat one of its actors for an Emmy is a callback to the Season 3 episode "For British Eyes Only," in which Michael tells George Sr., "You're a regular Brad Garrett" in reference to Garrett beating Tambor for an Emmy that year.
-Also, Jeremy Piven was not part of the entourage in Entourage, just like Gob isn't part of Mark Cherry's entourage.
-The pop singer whose entourage Gob is trying to get into, Mark Cherry (Daniel Amerman) is named after the creator of Desperate Housewives, Marc Cherry. Gob asks John Beard Jr., "Mark Cherry, the baby-faced singer or Marc Cherry, the baby-faced show runner?" Cherry and Mitch Hurwitz got their starts together on the writing staffs of The Golden Girls and its spin-off Golden Palace, and Cherry appeared as himself in a previous episode of Arrested Development in which Ann picketed Desperate Housewives at his home.
-A member of Mark Cherry's entourage, John Beard Jr. has a lot in common with Gob. He goes by three letters (JBJ), is the son of a well-known public figure (John Beard), and he is said by the narrator to be "a huge disappointment to his father."
-The crawl on the airport TV newscast reads, "Outwest Magazines available only to ticketed passengers (while in flight!) except for bulkhead seats."
-Tobias's response to Gob's magic trick is "How'd he do that?," a reference to what Tony Wonder and other magicians call non-magicians ("How dey do dats?") in Season 2.
-When Gob announces his magic trick during the appearance on the Christian TV show with Ann, it's the second time he's tried to hog the spotlight by announcing a magic trick on a TV show with his girlfriend. In the Season 1 episode "Key Decisions," he was on a Spanish talk show with then-girlfriend Marta Estrella when he announced he's gonna lock himself in prison and escape.
-In Gob's wedding magic trick, Tobias is playing the part of Roman Centurion #2, a reference to his past auditions for parts like Frightened Inmate #2 and Confidence Man #2.
-The narrator says Gob had "nothing in his system but two weeks of candy vines," calling them that instead of licorice as a callback to a running gag in the original seasons in which the Bluths called jelly beans "candy beans" and gumballs "candy balls."
-Steve Holt's company is called "Steve Holt! Pest Control," with an exclamation point for his frequently-exclaimed name in the title.
-Gob is seen entering the Mexican market to buy roofies, but unlike when this scene is included in previous episodes, the wall doesn't feature the "Roofie Circle" warning sign. Instead, the wall has a sign that reads, "Vendemos olvidame-ahorita," which is Spanish for "We sell Forget-Me-Now."
-Gob tells Ann, "Way to plant, Ann" after he runs into her while she's standing in place, an exact line used by Michael in the Season 2 episode "¡Amigos!" after they find her in Mexico, standing in one place.
Episode 8: "Red Hairing" (Lindsay #2)
-Lindsay's "I'm for Lucille 2 for Congres [sic]" banner is on the back of the "You're Killing Me, Buster" banner from Season 2's "¡Amigos!," and it's another in a long-line of typoed banners in the show.
-Sally Sitwell compliments Lindsay's strong hair, meaning that she probably has inherited her father's alopecia.
Episode 9: "Smashed" (Tobias #2)
-In the footage of Tobias's audition for the show House, he's talking about GVH, graft-versus-host disease, which he struggled with in Season 3
-When Ron Howard is getting his hat haircut, he says, "I call all my barbers 'Floyd'," a reference to the Andy Griffith Show character Floyd the Barber.
-The judge character is named "Judge Kornzucker" in the credits, lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn's last name rearranged.
-Gene Parmesan works at the restaurant "Chicken Dan's," which sounds just like "chicken dance," something the Bluths have done a lot in the past.
Episode 10: "Queen B." (Lucille)
-Lucille's name on Real Asian Prison Housewives of the Orange County White Collar Prison System appears onscreen as "Lu," making it sound Asian like the names of the rest of the prisoners.
-When Lucille finds out that everyone in prison has claimed her belongings, one of them is marked for "Guard #2," which is part of the running joke about characters named "x #2."
-When Tobias is trying to get Lucille to talk in Lucille 2's rehab clinic, he makes the same pose as Bob Fosse in the poster behind him. It's also a callback to a gag in the previous season in which he made the same pose as a picture of George Michael behind him.
-Lucille says, "Bad things happen when brother collude," and we see quick shots of the Menendez brothers, Andy Richter's siblings Rocky and Donny, and the actors Cole and Dylan Sprouse. The inclusion of those two Richter brothers foreshadows that they're working an undercover operation together at Maeby's school.
Episode 11: "A New Attitude" (Gob #2)
-The shot of Gob and Tony Wonder in shopping carts on a date is the same shot as Gob and his wife (Amy Poehler) in Season 1 on a date.
-The store that Gob and Michael fight at and Gene Parmesan works at, Thin Wally's Knife Store, has a knife mascot that looks like Gob's character Mr. Bananagrabber.
Episode 12: "Señoritis" (Maeby)
-On Thanksgiving, the Fünkes watch a turkey cartoon that features one of the turkeys driving a Google car.
-Tobias's agent/real estate agent calls herself "the widow Carr," meaning that she was James Carr's (Ed Helms) wife before he died.
-The letters "GO OSTR–" appear on Maeby's high school wall and are cut off. Her high school mascot is the ostrich.
-Maeby's acceptance speech at the Opie Awards borrows several lines from that infamous sorority letter that was leaked online earlier this year. The lines "Tie yourself to your chair because this is gonna be a rough fucking ride," "double fucking newsflash," and "I will fucking cunt punt the next goddamn [bleep] who tells me I'm finished" are all taken straight from the letter or modified versions of lines from the letter. These lines were presumably dubbed in later given that the sorority letter leaked online very recently.
Episode 13: "It Gets Better" (George Michael #1) -The band George Michael plays the wood block for at the top of the episode is playing the song "Balls in the Air" from the Season 3 episode "Notapusy."
-Maeby's boyfriend "Perfecto T." is listed on the UCI student tutoring list.
-The tutor list is called the "Student Tutoring & Couching Exchange," a reference to the exchange between Michael and Kitty in "The B. Team" in which he asks for a list of actresses and he thinks she's talking about a casting couch. (Or it could just be the word "coaching" misspelled.
-In reference to Maeby, the tutoring lady tells George Michael, "Stay on top of her. You may need to ride her pretty hard." It's pretty much the same line Michael says to Maeby in Season 1's "Top Banana" ("You stay on top of her, buddy. Do not be afraid to ride her. Hard.")
-When George Michael is watching TV in Spain, he's watching Sit Down, Shut Up, Mitch Hurwitz's short-lived animated follow-up to Arrested Development. He's watching a scene in which the two characters are voiced by Will Arnett and Jason Bateman.
-The dispute between George Michael and P. Hound over FakeBlock is a reference to Michael Cera looking like (and frequently being mistaken for) Jesse Eisenberg, star of The Social Network. Cera told The NY Times last week:
More than anything people recognize me from The Social Network, which I was not in ... You wouldn’t believe it — people insist. I was in a bar, and this woman said to me, "You’re an actor, right?" I said yeah. She said, “You’re from The Social Network." And I said, “No, I’m from other things." And she goes, "O.K., O.K., I know who you are.” And I went to leave the bar and she grabbed me by the arm and she said, “Look, I know you’re trying to be discreet and low-key, but I know you’re from Facebook."
Episode 14: "Off the Hook" (Buster) -The drone crash that Buster causes is in Madrid is what causes the Spanish woman George Michael is babysitting for to panic and have sex with him in the previous episode.
-A man in a "Blendin Maintenance" uniform is outside of Lucille's apartment, suggesting that she's being watched by the feds. "Blendin" is frequently the name of a fake company the government uses to spy on the Bluths throughout the show.
Episode 15: "Blockheads" (George Michael #2)
-The Literal Doctor (Ian Roberts) peels off mustache and says, "This doesn't make me look sexy. Throw it out," a callback to George Michael shaving his mustache off.
-Buster tells Lucille 2 that Herbert Love's "gotten himself in some pretty hot ham water this time," a reference the recipe Linday made in Season 3's "SOBs," which is something that Michael recalls in conversation with Andy Richter in "The B. Team."
-Somebody votes for "Bender from Futurama," during George Michael's roommate dispute vote, calling back his campaign for high school president (which he also loses) in Season 2's "The Immaculate Election," in which he tied with "School Sucks" and "Bart Simpson."
-George Michael tells Rebel Alley he's getting furniture for his home from "Homefill," the company that made all the fake stuff in the model house.
-The housing site Zillow lists the address as "154 Tracey Lane." Michael named the street after his dead wife (the street also is a ghost town, a possible reference to Tracy being dead).
-When Lucille tells George Sr. they're getting a divorce, she says, "You're out of the marriage," which echoes Michael's frequent line "You're out of the movie."
-The Imagine News crawl is just a list of reminders for Ron Howard, including one about wishing his daughter, actress Bryce Dallas Howard, a happy birthday. The crawl reads, "Happy Birthday to Bryce, and Ron don't forget you have that dermatologist appointment at two, IMPORTANT..."
-The number "2" is whited out after Lucille's name on her campaign flier.
-Buster being arrested at the end of the season means he'll be put on trail in future episodes, which is a callback to Michael's school play, The Trial of Captain Hook.
Have you spotted any subtle jokes we missed? If so, leave a comment, and we'll keep this thing updated.
Never underestimate the enthusiasm of Arrested Development's fanbase. It's only been a week since Netflix released 
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Over the weekend, Fred Armisen an a bunch of his SNL and musician friends recorded a studio version of "It's a Lovely Day," the song that he 
Nathan Fielder, star of Comedy Central's Nathan For You, gained a lot of media attention last month when he 
Arrested Development's long-awaited fourth season debuted all at once on Netflix's streaming service this past weekend. Given the show's penchant for in-jokes and subtle callbacks, I expected this to be something that they kept up in the new season, but what I didn't expect is for Season 4 to be even denser with running jokes and references than the previous seasons. Going through this new crop of 15 episodes, it becomes clear that, because they were all produced at the same time, they're more interwoven and callback/foreshadowing-heavy than Arrested Development's ever been. Here's an obsessive guide to the new season's best sneaky jokes, including the real George Maharis, the unforeseen consequences of Buster's drone mishap in Spain, and all the many, many ostrich references.
-Young Barry Zuckerkorn is played by actor Henry Winkler's real son, writer/director Max Winkler.
-The band George Michael plays the wood block for at the top of the episode is playing the song "Balls in the Air" from the Season 3 episode "Notapusy."
-The drone crash that Buster causes is in Madrid is what causes the Spanish woman George Michael is babysitting for to panic and have sex with him in the previous episode.
