Louis C.K.’s brand new hour long stand-up special is available for streaming or download on louisck.net, for five measly internet dollars, which everyone knows is equal to fewer than zero real life dollars. I’m pretty sure paying five dollars through Pay Pal is the equivalent of being handed a free candy bar or something, so it’s hardly a price to pay for a joyous 62 minutes.  What I’m saying is just do it.  Just get it and watch it.  It will make your life better.

Louis C.K., who’s finally starting to become widely recognized as the most brilliant man alive, starts the special with a two minute stroll from the streets of NYC into the Beacon Theatre, through the crowd waiting outside to get into the show.  It’s basically the opening credits of Louie, but he walks up into the Beacon instead of down into the Comedy Cellar.  Because what Louis C.K. presents, in this special and in his show, is Louis, getting to places and performing comedy.  That’s all he needs to do, and we gladly follow him there, because there is simply no place else we’d rather be.

Read more

These 9 TV Movies. This December. On Every Television. All the time.

The Real Rudolph (Animal Planet)  - An inspiring true story. A blind, albino, red-nosed Alaskan Malamute sled dog, once shunned by his mush mates, leads his team to become Iditarod champions! This Christmas miracle of a story comes to a tragic end when, in a vicious snow storm, this blind and albino wonder dog…gets lost.

The Year Christmas was Cancelled by Crazy, Childhood Hating Adults (Nickelodeon) – In an evil twist, the grouchy grown ups of Greenville cancel the best holiday ever! A band of coincidentally racially diverse children won’t let their imaginations be stifled, and they wage a campaign to Save Christmas! They gather all the kids in the town center, several made-for-TV boy bands play songs, and Miranda Cosgrove makes a speech. The mayor still won’t give in, claiming Christmas fosters too much unrealistic happiness. With only 5 minutes til midnight, the real Santa Claus arrives and magically reveals that he knows the lame and unjustified reasons each adult hates Christmas. The skeptical grown ups realize they’ve just been unnecessarily bitter. Plus, Santa is real! Everyone hugs and Christmas is allowed. It ends with a really awful song.

The Christmas Immacu-Pact (Lifetime) – A trio of teen carolers take part in a pregnancy pact one Christmas and claim that they were each immaculately impregnated. The PTA is furious and the church pastor has to move to Denver.

Read more

First, the regular concert review-y stuff: The Childish Gambino show at Club Nokia in LA on Saturday, Nov. 12th was fantastic. However, the crowd was younger than I anticipated and exactly as plaid-clad as expected. The venue was sleek and clubbish. The place is brand new; it felt and looked untouched, which was okay. I usually find myself at venues with history: cracks in the walls, stories in the curtains, seats you probably shouldn’t sit on because they’ll break. So Club Nokia wasn’t much of a character, but it felt right in a way because Childish Gambino needs and deserves a freshly unwrapped space — what Donald Glover brings to the table is something totally brand new and complex, and he brought to the night all the personality it needed.

Now, as a real white girl, (I don’t mean real as in actual. I mean real as in the grammatically erroneous version of “very very very.”), I feel like sort of a poser, if that’s a term that people still use. I’m not usually a fan of rap, and I know nothing about “sick beats” (A tidbit of perspective: in the car on the way to the Childish Gambino concert, I got super excited and belted all the words to Carole King’s, “I Feel the Earth Move” when it came on the radio. I wish I was making that up.). I can’t tell you anything about DJ SoSuperSam, who played for about an hour before Childish Gambino took the stage. I don’t know “how she spins” or if she was good or bad or what. None of that is in my vocabulary. All I know is that I am an appreciator of great writing and clever pop culture references, and that is Childish Gambino. The music works for me because Glover’s words are witty and true and serious and nonsense and beautiful. In his raps he mentions Tina Fey and half the cast of Parks and Recreation and 400 Blows. And there was a violin, a guitar and a choir on stage with him, so I even hesitate to limit the genre to rap. The music is inventive; the wordplay is sharp and nonstop and eloquent. If you took every line Abed says in Community and mixed it with the tone and punniness of The Phantom Tollbooth, you’d get Childish Gambino. But it’s not just punny pop culture references. He consistently addresses several topics in his songs, most notably (get it? music!) life growing up as a nerdy kid who wasn’t ever “black” enough, his meta struggle to prove himself as a rapper, girls, and most importantly, whiskey.

Read more

TO: The Nation

FROM: The National Committee for Sensitivity During Halloween (NCSDH): a faction made up of moms people of all creeds and colors, run out of the rec room at First Baptist Church of Piddlewood, Arkansas

DATE: October 28th, 2011

SUBJECT: Socially Acceptable Halloween Costumes

Each year, the NCSDH updates our list of Acceptable Halloween Costumes — get-ups that have until now, been deemed indecent, inappropriate, and/or offensive, but due to a number of factors (including the amount of time passed since the incident or tragic event and the universal standards of taste and decency*), have been lifted from the Restricted List for Halloween this year, 2011.

*We will no longer list those criteria here due to the volume of complaints we receive in responses each year from radical, leftist youths some people.

This list is intended to provide strict guidelines for those who can’t bring themselves to use their Halloween costume for anything other than an excuse to make a crude social statement. This is our way of saying, “Here, you can have THESE. Just don’t dress up as a pregnant nun.”

Read more

A Michigan woman is suing FilmDistrict, the distributor of the movie, Drive, for falsely advertising the film, claiming that they promoted it as similar to the “Fast and Furious” series, when in actuality, it bore no resemblance to those chase/action masterpieces and there was very little driving.  She is also saying that the movie promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith. Just like that other horribly anti-semitic piece of schlock, Schindler’s List.

I for one, think she has a point.  Not only that, but I believe this astute and admirably forthcoming member of society has opened a can of worms in Hollywood the size of, well, Michigan, the great state and home of our laudable media savior.

Read more

Welcome to fall, everyone!  Now that we’re a little deeper into the school year, and pajamas consist of socks and sweats instead of shorts and a t-shirt, it’s time to look a little more closely into what people are wearing this season, before they go to bed.

Though I spend most of my time in a high school, an environment clearly separate from real world fashion, I do a lot of research.  And as I walk through New York City as often as I can and flip through magazines such as InStyle, Elle, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar, I pick up on real world fashion trends and news — as one should when walking around the real world and reading real world fashion magazines.  This season, I’ve seen various trends in silhouette or fabric, but what has really caught my eye is color.  One, in particular, has become a major trend: purple.

I know some of you may cringe at the thought that purple is in style right now, envisioning some neon, bright-as-the-sun color, but when I say purple, I’m covering a huge ground of color.  Purple can range from, yes, the neon, bright-as-the-sun color, to the deep, rich shade of red wine, and then to a vintage-inspired dusty gray with just a hint of purply blue.  So please don’t cringe.

It’s happening.

Today at The New Yorker Fest (strike 57 for Los Angeles living), there was a panel of greatness.  And at that panel of greatness, the most magical thing occurred.

The panel of greatness included these people:

Will Arnett. Jason Bateman. Michael Cera. David Cross. Portia de Rossi. Tony Hale. Mitch Hurwitz. Alia Shawkat. Jeffrey Tambor. Jessica Walter.

If you don’t know what these fine people make up, you can stop reading here.  Because that is the Bluth family. Of Arrested Development, only one of, if not the finest show ever to be put on television. The news of the last minute scheduled panel would have been magical in and of itself, if not for the even more wondrous announcement that sprung from the lips of the show’s curly-haired creator, Mitch Hurwitz (who I have a picture with, because I met him once. Not bragging or anything. It’s just…I met him.).

THEY’RE MAKING MORE ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. Yup. The show is coming back. To television. According to Hurwitz, they are producing a “limited” season, of 9-10 “where are they now” episodes, and this will lead into the movie. I KNOW.

The show has gained such an audience since it went off the air — this is the best thing they could do for it….and me.

Here are the tweets to prove it - So rejoice world! Life is grand. Everything will be okay.

Ups, middles, and downs no one can deny the fact that in their lives, they’ve came across each fragment whether it has lasted a while or not. Creativity comes to play when at the stage we might be on, we try to look up and express ourselves in different ways looking to be inspired by ourselves or by others . It’s the release of expression something that all human kind posses. Creativity is expression of our likes and our motivation to assert that and grow with it to the point it makes you embrace yourself. As people sometimes we tend to lose contact with the creativity that is inside us. That is why this world is modern because we have so many different resources where we can latch our selves onto and easy enough come to prove ourselves as determined people.

Spirituality is something we have only once. Live. Love. Learn. And be capable to do all three just like confronting being up, middle, and down. Spirituality can come with different factors and say so much about each and every one of us. It says a lot of how we are, who we are, and our past. It’s a critical factor when it comes to progression and how or who we might become. Spirituality is creativity niche, its where our desire to express ourselves resides, is nurtured and molded by our everyday experiences. Try embracing it, actively by dancing, sports, running , or emotional reading, drawing, singing. It shouldn’t be hard we are capable as humans to find our passion and apply it.

This summer I was taking Spanish courses and a question poped up that I would never forget that is : What is art ? Now what is art there so many different forms of it I didn’t know where to start. In my paper I wrote upon an idea  that has stuck with me ever since then art is a label. Is a label to the expression of what we do as people which distinguishes us from any other organism on this planet. Without art we would be a race lost in a mix of uninspiring, thoughts. But our thoughts are labeled and thoughts, actions, movements it’s all art brought about by our creativity.

An Explanation and Some Reflections on “An Explanation and Some Reflections” -By Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

Dear You,

I messed up…again.  I, Reed Hastings, the Co-founder and CEO of Netflix, owe you an…other explanation.

It is clear from the incredible amount of backlash from my price hikes and my first letter to all you (until now) loyal Netflix customers that I have made a huge mistake.  I thought it’d be humbling and personal to address the letter to each Netflix subscriber by first name and then begin with the words, “I messed up” before I proceeded to explain how Netflix is splitting into two separate services.  Much to my chagrin, about a million people misread this as a break-up letter and dropped Netflix like Alec Baldwin drops Emmy appearances.

At first, it was my biggest fear that Netflix wouldn’t be able to be successful at mailing DVDs and streaming video online.  But now, my biggest fear is that I will use my credit card at the grocery store and the cashier will say, “Have a nice evening, Mr. Hastings,” and the person behind me in line will say, “Are you Mr. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix?” and I will hesitate a half a second too long and in that half a second I will be swarmed by crazy-eyed psychotic former Netflix customers wielding shards of DVDs and I will cower and whimper in fear but not before they engulf me and stab me to death with their pointy, broken Sex and the City Season Three Disc Twos, ruining my livelihood and my goatee.

Read more

This year, I will keep all of my school stuff organized.  It’s gonna happen.  I’m going to color-code everything and keep a daily planner in which I write all my assignments, for each class, as I get them.  And this organization WILL last more than a week.

I’ll stay in that class, even though I know literally no one in it.  So what if none of my friends want to take an entire class on Silent Films from 1895-1896?  I do.  Really.  And I’m not going to stop myself from learning what I want to just because it’ll be awkward sitting by myself on the first day.  Maybe I’ll even strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to me, about backpacks or socks, and we’ll become friends, and then this whole idea of taking classes alone will dissolve before my incredibly socially adept eyes.  Or I’ll cover my face with my hair, nibble on carrots in the corner, and never look at anyone.  Either way.

Read more