Last night, Tina Fey opened Saturday Night Live's 39th season with musical guest Arcade Fire. One of the episode's highlights was this Girls-spoofing digital short that doesn't fall into the easy trap of unnecessary meanness, but rather handily skewers the major characters' self-absorption with the simple introduction of a new Girl, Albanian refugee Blerta. Highly recommended.
Can someone tell me whether we're supposed to be offended by Johnny Depp's portrayal of Tonto or not? Must know for dinner parties/twitter.
Christopher Abbott, better (and forever) known as Charlie on Girls, has just announced his abrupt departure from the HBO series, which follows a group of youths with undiagnosed personality disorders as they careen wildly around New York's Brooklyn borough.
If only someone died. I don't mean this as a condemnation of last night's season 2 finale because it was a wonderful episode if you like resolutions and damaged romance and crazy people the way I do. But this season has been so fraught with insidious darkness stalking the series' major characters that a death seemed inevitable. Like a cool Brooklyn death off a fire escape during a roof party, a real consequence for the foolishness of youth. But, no one, died, thankfully, and instead Shoshanna gains her independence; Jessa's off to find a better universe beyond Brooklyn; and Hannah and Marnie are rewarded for their awfulness with true love.
Bernard Baruch's famous quote-turned-cliché, "Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter," becomes quainter and more obsolete by the day. Technology has made the public-communicating elite more accessible, and as a consequence, more vulnerable to critique. Feedback lurks in every corner – your inbox, your @replies on Twitter, Facebook, comment sections. If you choose to ignore the criticism, people will inform you of it nonetheless ("Don't let ‘em get you down," they will say.) If you are sensitive enough to be sourcing your emotions for content, you are probably sensitive enough to be affected by these words, especially when they are negative. You may even end up exploring them, sorting them out or just plain responding to them in your further work, which will then be up for public dissection, which could get under your skin some more, causing you to react again, etc. Modern discourse is full of noise, thanks in no small part to these feedback loops.
Three years ago, New York Times media reporter and occult career-bender David Carr was taking a tour through South by Southwest and asked the festival's film person what movie he should see. She tipped him off to a movie called Tiny Furniture and he fell in love. He gave the movie and its creator/star, a 23-year-old woman named Lena Dunham, 1,000 words in the Times.
Caye Caulker, Belize—
Memories of past love are tough to contemplate at young ages, but it happens to most of us because we are all made of guts and mush that liquefy like meat left out in the sun if they go unused. In your 20's you drink too much or ingest too much of something or overthink yourself into catatonia. But it sometimes starts even earlier: your loss, your heart's wonder, regret. When I was 11, the first baby I ever held hands with was a peppy blonde girl with knee socks and pink Keds who lived up the street. Her name was Christie. She moved too fast for me at the time, but once I turned 12, I was ready. I hit puberty, so did she, but she'd already moved on. So I was too late for the first time and in order to sublimate my small pain, I wrote her a love song.
This episode of Girls is called "Video Games" but don't get too excited, geekboys, because it's actually about Jessa's relationship with her estranged father. Jessa, fetishized by most as the wisest of all the Girls, takes an impromptu road trip to Manitou to visit her father after receiving a mysterious text from him that, after Hannah's deduction, was probably a butt-text. "That's really mean," Jessa says to Hannah. They're cooped at the train station for hours, because Jessa's father is always late. Hannah has to piss, but the Manitou train station has no toilet. We also learn that Hannah has a UTI. Hannah is skittish about pissing in public but oh the burn.
The title of this week's episode is "Boys," and focuses on sad-sack Ray, still ill-equipped for love and life, but with major supporting roles chipped in by Adam and Booth Jonathan. This is "Boys" and these boys are animals disguised as humans, remember, so either bring your daughters to the slaughter or stay far away.
This week's episode of Girls features only one major character, Hannah, who's basically snapped at this point in her young life. There's a brief snippet of Ray, crabby as ever, perhaps even more so now that he's decided the only way to save himself from the quicksand of life is using 21-year-old Shoshanna as a vine, which means that romance is nothing short of doomed. Other recurring characters featured in the episode "One Man's Trash" include Hannah's left breast (Lenny) and her right breast (Squiggy) who both get more airtime than usual. This week's special guest star is Patrick Wilson, cast as a handsome 42-year-old doctor named Joshua who lives in a perfect brownstone just around the corner from Cafe Grumpy. You may remember Wilson from his role as the Prom King in the film version of Tom Perotta's Little Children but I'm sure the reason he was cast in Girls this season is because he's the only son of Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson and 28th president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Not a fact.
Allison Williams, co-star of the HBO hit Girls, is the daughter of NBC News anchor Brian Williams, a man who makes his living by asking the tough questions. A cynic might even allege that Allison Williams would not be a famous TV star now were it not for her famous newsman dad. It would seem ironic, then, for Allison Williams to be instructing her PR soldiers to CENSOR even the gentlest of puff interviews.
When you cohabitate with a boyfriend/girlfriend/manfriend, especially in New York City or any of its lesser boroughs, the best day you share with that special someone is Sunday. This is the only day of the week where a shared living space does not feel like a hostile takeover. "This is why we do this," you'll say to yourself, gazing at your significant roommate-lover, momentarily forgetting about all the excess hair caught in the drain and that the ice cube trays are always half-frozen or empty. Because it's Sunday. "To Sundays, to our Sundays" then you clink glasses of Bloody Marys and find the right page of the Times' magazine to dry-hump on top of until it's time to watch BreakingLandMenBlood. The rest of the week is spent trying to remember how to breath without screaming. Cohabitation is the centerpiece of this week's episode, titled "It's a Shame About Ray," a nod to the Lemonheads song. [The episode was directed by Jesse Peretz, former bass player for the Lemonheads and son of former New Republic owner and wealthy man-about-Tel Aviv Martin Peretz ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.—Ed.] You may remember that last week featured a Duncan Sheik song. This means that Lena Dunham is only one Cranberries reference away from becoming a bona fide 90's bitch.
The King of the Groundhogs "Punxsutawney Phil" was awoken at the ungodly hour of 7:28 this morning, groggily emerging from his harem filled with lady-groundhogs ("Who are the lady groundhogs, anyway? Us? Are we the lady-groundhogs?"), and did not see his shadow, signaling to the absurdly-dressed array of Pennsylvanians that spring was well on its way.
Good news for the entirety of the internet, which it turns out is an entity solely supported by people arguing about "Girls": HBO has picked up another show to be helmed by Lena Dunham hired Dunham to write a new pilot. It's called "Harlem," and will see Dunham profiling the lives of those in New York City's worst projects in a show that insiders are likening to "The Wire." Just kidding.
This week's episode of Girls is one of the most enjoyable television episodes ever, especially if you're a cokehead. The writers of this television program about young girls in Brooklyn decided to treat cocaine usage in a very adult-type way. The drug is just portrayed as a devilish, incoherent muse. There are no concerns about unstoppable nosebleeds, flukey heart attacks, or its illegality. Disregard the plot point to how Hannah goes about procuring coke (from her downstairs neighbor, Laird, beanie-wearing junkie) and coke's downsides are minimal. Instead, it focuses mainly on the yayo's ability to consummate relationships with truth.
In last week's episode of Girls,one of the most groundbreaking boundary-pushing moments of uncomfortable realness occurred during a couch-sex scene between Elijah, Hannah's new gay roommate and ex-boyfriend, and Marnie, the ex-roommate and best friend, whose mesmerizing prettiness can no longer be taken for granted this season. This week's episode is primarily a metaphorical inspection of the couch for the cum/come stains left behind even though nobody came at all.
