Tag Archives: New York City

TV: Glee Season 2 Final in Pictures.

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In last night’s Glee final, New Directions make it to New York! (New York! I love New York!)

They eat designer sandwiches on the steps of some landmark that escapes me at the present moment, reminiscent of Blair, Jenny et al. having lunch on the steps in Gossip Girl.

From here, they sing a mash-up of “I Love New York” and “New York, New York” in Central Park while Santana gets her flirt on with a cop.

Finn is inspired by the group’s songwriting efforts (that they’ve come to the Big Apple with nary a song to sing at Nationals only days before the competition speaks volumes about the laissez-faire attitude of both the New Directions and their leader, Mr. Shuester), and asks Rachel out on a date now that he and Quinn are toast. He takes her to Sardi’s, where they run into Patti LuPone, who Rachel accosts, telling Patty she’s one of her idols. Patty tells Rachel to never give up (or something), and that Finn is cute. Sage advice there!

Meanwhile, the other man in Rachel’s life (no, not Jesse St. James Douche), Kurt, wakes Rachel up to go have Breakfast at Tiffany’s, followed by a Wicked duet at the musical’s home theatre, the Gershwin, of “For Good”, harkening back to their season one sing-off of “Defying Gravity”. It was a teary rendition for me!

Mr. Shue also has his Broadway moment, singing a song from April Rhodes’ musical, CrossRhodes, which can conveniently be found on Matthew Morrison’s debut album! He later chooses to shun his New York dreams in favour of staying on at McKinley.

Cut to Nationals, where the New Directions perform their two hastily composed original songs, “Pretending” and “Light Up the World”. During the former, Rachel and Finn share an impromptu kiss in the heat of the moment, which the whole club berates and blames them for losing the competition.

Oh, Sunshine also makes an appearance. No doubt to segue into a cameo or recurring role in season three.

Back in Lima, Kurt and Blaine are having coffee when they encounter Mercedes and Sam, who claim they “ran into each other in the parking lot”. When they think Kurt and Blaine are out of ear- and eyeshot, they hold hands whilst waiting to be served. New couple alert!

In the hallway of McKinley High, Will and Emma marvel at the banner erected to congratulate them on their twelfth placing in the competition, and Mr. Shue presents the class with a trophy for their (dismal) efforts. Until next year’s Nationals…

Related: Glee Gets Down on Friday at the Prom.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Born This Way” Episode.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Original Song” Episode.

Gwyneth Paltrow Addresses Tabloid Culture & Her Haters.

Glee “Sexy” Review.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Blame it on the Alcohol” Episode.

How to Make a Woman Fall in Love With You, Glee Style.

Glee “Silly Love Songs” Review.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Furt” Episode.

The (Belated) Underlying Message in Glee’s “Never Been Kissed” Episode.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “The Rocky Horror Glee Show” Episode.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Duets” Episode.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Grilled Cheesus” Episode.

The Underlying Message in Glee’s “Britney/Brittany” Episode.

Elsewhere: [Jezebel] Glee: Can’t Make it There, Can’t Make it Anywhere.

Images via MegaVideo.

Magazine Review: Time: The End of bin Laden, May 20, 2011.

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I love a good Time cover, as the picture I used to have up in my loungeroom of Time’s 2008 Person of the Year, Barack Obama, would attest.

Needless to say, Time’s latest cover—of Osama bin Laden with a big red cross over his face—is a contender for cover of the year. (Stay tuned later on this week for another bin Laden-inspired contender.)

But this isn’t the only time in Time’s history that a dictator or human face of terror has been crossed out by the magazine. In managing editor Richard Stengel’s “Editor’s Desk” letter, he notes that the same was done for Adolf Hitler after his death in May, 1945, Saddam Hussein in April 2003, and Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, “the scourge of Iraq,” in June 2006.

The issue is a September 11-heavy one, with interviews with Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York City when that fateful day in 2001 occurred (p. 11) and CIA director Leon Panetta (p. 48–53).

In addition, there’s “Death Comes for the Terrorist” by David von Drehle, a detailed account of what went down the night of bin Laden’s death, and how his actions on 9/11 have affected the U.S.—and the world—between then and now (p. 12–25).

“Obama 1, Osama 0” (p. 26–31) is more about how Obama’s classy presidency brought down bin Laden instead of George W. Bush’s, which focused more on him making an ass(y?) out of himself. In the article, reporter Joe Klein calls Obama “discreet, precise, patient and willing to be lethal”, and wonders “whether Bush would have had the patience or subtlety to conduct this operation with the same thoroughness…”. He also addresses the President’s ability to laugh at himself (and his apparent 2012 presidential competition, Donald Trump), at the White House’s correspondents’ dinner 24 hours before the bin Laden announcement came, when he said deciding who to fire on The Apprentice is something that would keep him up at night. “… Two nights earlier Obama had been kept up trying to decide whether to launch the Seal team against bin Laden or take the stealth-bomber route,” Klein writes. That whole birther thing seems pretty trivial now, doesn’t it, Trump?

In Peter Bergen’s article, “A Long Time Going” (p. 38–41), he asserts that 9/11 was the beginning of the end for bin Laden’s “poisonous ideology”, and Aryn Baker asks “How Can We Trust Them?” (p. 54–57) of Pakistan, “the most dangerous country in the world”.

On a more lighthearted note, James Poniewozik compares “bin Laden’s bloody end” to “life imitating 24”:

“The Twitter trending-topics list… filled up with references to OBL’s demise: ‘Navy Seals’, ‘Abbottabad’, ‘God Bless America’. And one more: ‘Jack Bauer’.”

I read an article on MamaMia the week the news of bin Laden’s death broke, where Mia Freedman recounted her life at the time of September 11, and recalls trying to protect her young son from the horrific images of the Twin Towers coming down. Fast forward almost ten years, and he’s studying it in history:

“I was jolted when he told me that. Partly, because I had tried so hard to shield him from the horror of 9/11 when it happened. But also by the fact he was studying it in ‘history’. In some ways, it seems so recent.”

But just how do you protect your kids from something like that?

Nancy Gibbs tells of this conversation between her 4- and 7-year-olds:

“‘They should have been more careful… They should have watched where they were going, the men flying the planes—they shouldn’t have knocked those buildings down.’

“‘… That wasn’t an accident. They meant to knock the buildings down.’

“Silence. Stubborn. ‘No, they didn’t.’

“‘Yes. They did. They wanted to kill those people. They were bad men.’”

But, Gibbs argues, children who grew up in the age of terror, “reached for their flags—the kids whose childhoods bin Laden had twisted, kids whose parents woke them up in the middle of the night to hear the President’s speech, kids who painted stars and striped on their cheeks as they danced off to school in the morning, kids who are more global, more diverse, more tolerant, more curious and more hopeful than ever before… Our kids learned early about evil. But they grew up learning how it is fought.”

Related: Osama bin Laden & Racism.

The Royal Wedding: The OtherEvent of the Decade?

Elsewhere: [Time] The Story of X.

[Time] 10 Questions for Rudy Giuliani.

[Time] A Revival in Langley.

[Time] Death Comes for the Terrorist: How the U.S. Finally Got Its Man.

[Time] Obama 1, Osama 0.

[Time] A Long Time Going.

[Time] How Can We Trust Them?

[Time] The 25th Hour.

[Time] Where Victory Lies.

[MamaMia] Osama bin Laden is Dead.

Movie Review: Scream 4.

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Of the reviews I’d read of Scream 4, I wasn’t expecting a good movie. If, by good, I mean critically acclaimed. But since when is the fourth sequel of a horror movie ever critically acclaimed?

I like my movies unrealistic, fluffy and so-bad-they’re-good. (Think Burlesque, not Sucker Punch.) Usually those are the ones with the poor ratings. And usually they’re my favourite.

Scream 4 certainly lived up to its bad review=good movie hypothesis. Dare I say it trumped the first one, even?

In essence, that’s what Scream 4 was trying to do. It was a “meta-text”, as my friend Eddie pointed out to me.

Like, in the first film, when central scream queen Sidney Prescott is unknowingly talking to Ghostface on the phone, and she says horror movies are insulting because “the girl is always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door” (even though Sidney does exactly that only moments later!) This occurs in the third part of the first scene of Scream 4, which sees the “blonde haired, big boobed” victim, who has a very high GPA, FYI, running up the stairs when she can’t get the front door unlocked.

The precursors to that scene feature 90210’s Shenae Grimes and Pretty Little Liars’ Lucy Hale in the opening scene, which is actually the opening scene of Stab 6, followed by Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell watching that scene, which then feeds into the opening scene of Stab 7! Phew! It makes much more sense when you’re actually watching it!

Eddie also highlighted the meta-text in Scream 1, when Randy is watching Halloween and is warning Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, the original final girl, to look behind her, when his very own psycho killer is standing right behind him!

It has been said that the original Scream is for horror film lovers, like Randy, Scream 2 is for horror film makers, and Scream 3 is for those in the business (obviously, because it was set on the Hollywood back lot, but it didn’t pack the punch the other Scream’s did). You really have to be a Scream devotee to unravel all the “underlying meaning” in the fourth installment, which is designed to either be the first instalment of a new trilogy, or a re-do of the first film, depending on box-office success. As a pillow-lipped Gail notes at a police press conference, the killer is mirroring the original spate of killings. But it is so well done, movie-goers could commit to it without having a prior knowledge of the Scream franchise.

Scream 4 centres around Sidney’s return to Woodsboro on the final stop of her book tour, to promote her debut publication, Out of Darkness. Ghostface number four and/or five sees this as the perfect opportunity to seek revenge on Sidney for deserting Woodsboro in the aftermath of the first wave of killings, and leaving its residents to clean up her mess. Or so the killer says in a phone call to the main character, leading the audience to believe the killer is either Sidney’s aunt—Emma Roberts’ character’s, Jill, mum—or Deputy Judy (a throwback to Dewey’s derogatory nickname in the first film), who has a massive crush on Dewey, whom she bakes lemon squares that “taste like ass”, according to jealous wife Gail. When Deputy Judy approaches Sidney in the stairwell of Jill’s house after a neighbour is murdered, asking if Sidney remembers her from high school, it seems very likely that the killer could be her. But we know well enough by now that it’s never that obvious…

Eddie noted that Scream 3 was meant to have two killers, one of which being an old classmate of Sidney’s who felt she left her and Woodsboro behind. Maybe Judy’s not so unlikely after all…

The killer takes to filming their conquests after a suggestion from Gail, who totally kicks butt in this version, gravity-defying forehead and all. What am I talking about? Gail kicks butt in every film, almost always getting in the last shot (Billy in Scream 1 and Mickey in Scream 2. Who will it be in Scream 4?) Except for the fact that she seeks advice from high school kids when “going rogue”, and hunting for the killer herself when Dewey brushes her off. Didn’t she live through four killers herself? I’m sure she knows more than a bunch of 16-year-olds.

If New York City is the fifth character in Sex & the City, then technology certainly plays a major role in Scream 4. So the inclusion of said bunch of 16-year-olds lends itself to this notion, with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, text, GPS and a whole host of other teen techno gadgets playing a role in the killer’s quest to become famous.

In this day and age, you don’t even have to do anything to become famous. Just ask Snooki and the cast of Jersey Shore. And, as the killer says, “everyone loves a victim”. But none better than the original…

Related: Burlesque Review.

Sucker Punch Review.

Elsewhere: [Wikipedia] Final Girl.

Images via IMDb. And a special thanks to Eddie, for helping me with this post.

The Bystander Effect.

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From “The Bystander Problem” by the MamaMia Team on, you guessed it!, MamaMia:

“Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point talks about the ‘bystander problem’. He writes:

“‘One of the most infamous incidents in New York City history … was the 1964 stabbing death of a young Queens woman by the name of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was chased by her assailant and attacked three times on the street, over the course of half an hour, as thirty-eight of her neighbours watched from their windows. During that time, however, none of the thirty-eight witnesses called the police.’

“At first this horrific case was explained away as being the result of the dehumanising effect of urban life, the fact that the anonymity and alienation of city life makes people hard and unfeeling.  But two New York City psychologists subsequently conducted a series of studies to undrestand what they called the ‘bystander problem’. Gladwell writes:

“‘When people are in a group… responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume because no one else is acting, the apparent problem… isn’t really a problem.

“‘In the case of Kitty Genovese, then… the lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it’s that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream.  Ironically had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.’”

I think this relates to “pack mentality”, as in the scene below from Scream 2, as well as “the bystander effect”. What do you think?

Elsewhere: [MamaMia] The Bystander Problem.

Images via the Film Chronicles, 411 Mania, EW.

Guest Post: Leaving on a Jet Plane.

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My first memory of the airport is fragmented: seeing my cousin off to Berlin a couple of years after the fall of the wall, all I remember is a green glow emanating from Tullamarine airport (which is more than likely a figment of my imagination), playing with a plastic toy set of some kind bought for me by my grandparents at the gift shop, and the smell of The Body Shop’s cocoa butter moisturiser.

Almost fifteen years later I made my return to the terminal, my first ever flight being en route to San Francisco via Sydney as part of a US exchange program. It was scary, and a lonely trip overall, but it instilled in me the travel bug.

Twenty plane rides later, I’m hoping my next trip will be to New York for my 25th birthday in 2012. It’s been nearly two years since I’ve travelled anywhere interesting, unless you count the two hour train journey from Melbourne to my country Victorian hometown, which I don’t!

Personally, my favourite thing about travelling is the interrupted reading time; up to 20 hours on some flights! The atmosphere of the airport, with all its luxury stores, newsagents and overpriced food bars, comes in a close second, so after reading Chris Guillebeau’s “For the Love of Airports” piece on The Art of Non-Conformity, I solicited my high-school best friend, Natalie, who I remember being obsessed with aerospace travel, to write a post on her love of airports.

Airports have always been a favourite place of mine; having grown up travelling overseas every couple of years since I was an infant I have fond and happy memories of the terminals. Although it’s so large, there is somehow an atmosphere of warmth amongst the hustle and bustle at the airport. I love that you can be there any time of the day—morning, noon or night—and see so many people heading in all directions to catch flights. Just watching them, wondering where are they off to…

My favourite memory of going to an airport was probably the most disastrous start to a family holiday. It was the day before Christmas Eve and my family and I were headed to New Zealand for the holidays. We had many delays and ended up getting a free overnight stay at Tullamarine’s Travelodge Hotel in the interim. Although it was stressful and annoying for my parents, I really enjoyed all the excitement of having to shuttle our way to the hotel and knowing we would be returning to the vibrancy of the airport the next morning; anything to prolong my time there!

To me, airports symbolise many things. Often the happiness of reunions between families and friends, the enjoyment of embarking on a holiday, and the sadness of seeing someone off [Scarlett Woman note: I will be seeing my good friend April off indefinitely to Canada in a couple of weeks. I will be packing tissues]. At times, airports can be stressful, scary and unpredictable but they’re also mesmerising and intriguing to me. I could sit in a cosy departure lounge all day with my face pressed against the warm glass, marvelling at just how those big airbuses get off the ground. Sometimes the airport is more thrilling than the journey, because there’s always so much to look forward to: café food, duty free shopping and my favourite of all, the smell of aeroplane fuel! Strange, I know, but it always sends those airport memories flooding back…

Elsewhere: [The Art of Non-Conformity] For the Love of Airports.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

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The difference between truly Mean Girls and the just plain Clueless:

“In the end, Cher’s altruism may be what saves her reign, for unlike Regina, Cher tries to live up to her end of the social contract. If Regina can’t rule, she decides that no one can. She hurts her society by pulling a wiki-leaks and releasing the contents of the Burn Book, thereby causing complete anarchy…

“In essence, the reason Regina was overthrown is the same reason any dictator is eventually overthrown: the monarch breaks the social contract with his or her people and those people have been prepped by cultural illuminati with new ideas about government rule.”

“Fashion’s Fascists.”

And, in the same vein:

“Fashion people everywhere rushed to check their hair before joining the chorus of dismay, almost as if racism and sexism were not the stock-in-trade of their industry. In fact, it is an open secret in high fashion that black and minority ethnic faces… are not welcome.”

When having “a great personality” is code for “fat” and/or “ugly”.

It’s taken me a little while to get around to reading this, but check out Girl with a Satchel’s Erica Bartle in “JC & the Cool Gang”.

“How Rachel Zoe Became Hollywood’s Most Powerful Fashion Player.”

Glee’s Lauren Zizes: badass or fat bitch?

The myth of Bart Simpson’s birthday.

Jihad Cosmo:

“We had been thinking that what Cosmo was really missing was a healthy dose of religious fanaticism and a few passionate exhortations to violence, so we can’t wait to read the article ‘that urges readers to give their lives for the Islamist cause.’”

UK sculptor Jamie McCartney’s “Great Wall of Vagina” (semi-NSFW).

How to be a mermaid.

Elective C-section or vaginal birth?

How to move to New York City, according to Gala Darling.

Images via Overthinking It, The Hollywood Reporter, YouTube.

TV: Come Together Right Now… Over Gossip Girl—“Gaslit” Review.

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Gossip Girl’s Thanksgiving episodes are always ones to remember.

Season one hosted the first instalment without a voiceover from Gossip Girl herself, Kristen Bell. And last year’s episode dealt with the fallout from Dan, Vanessa and Hilary Duff’s threesome and Lily’s whereabouts the past summer.

However, this year’s holiday chapter fell short of expectations, with it’s surrounding episodes being much juicier. Last week, the vixen Juliet drugged Serena and turned all her friends against her, while Juliet’s beef with the Manhattan socialite is finally revealed.

But “Gaslit” did serve two main purposes, both of which are very promising:

1. Vanessa comes undone and her involvement in Operation Takedown Serena comes out, forcing her out of the city. Ding dong, Vanessa’s dead!

and

2. Blair and Dan join forced to find out what Juliet really wants with Serena. Whilst the two have never been shy about their hatred for one another, as winter passes, perhaps a new-found “appreciation” for each other will blossom along with spring…

xoxo

Related: Let Them Eat Cake… And Wear Headbands.

Gossip Girl Proves There’s No Such Thing As Wonder Woman.

Sexual Healing: Gossip Girl Takes a Page Out of John Irving’s Book.

Pretty But Dumb: Serena’s Tertiary Education Predicament.

Surfing the Third Wave: Second Wave VS. Third Wave Feminism on Gossip Girl.

The Last Tango… For the Season. Gossip Girl Season 3 Final.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

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Rachel Hills discusses Naomi Wolf’s response to WikiGate here, whilst also doing a fine job of unpacking the fun for twenty-somethings = lots of casual sex myth.

On that, “How to Be A 20-Something”:

“Be really attractive. Your acne is gone, your face has matured without having wrinkles and everything on your body is lifted naturally. Eat bagels seven days a week, binge-drink and do drugs: you’ll still look like a babe. When you turn thirty, it’ll become a different story but that’s, like, not for a really long time.

“Reestablish a relationship with your parents. You don’t live with them anymore (hopefully) so start to appreciate them as human beings with thoughts, flaws and feelings rather than soulless life ruiners who won’t let you borrow their car.”

What Would Phoebe Do? on the pretentiousness of Francophilia:

“Gratuitously adding French words to conversation is a time-honoured way of signalling pretentiousness.”

Next year’s Halloween costume sorted!

“How to Be A Complete Douche” has a certain Patrick Bateman feel to it.

Hugh Hefner defends his May-December engagement to Crystal Harris to The Daily Beast.

“How to Live in New York City”:

“Certain moments of living in the city will always stick out to you. Buying plums from a fruit vendor on 34th street and eating three of them on a long walk, the day you spent in bed with your best friend watching Tyra Banks, the amazing rooftop party you attended on a sweltering hot day in July. These memories might seem insignificant but they were all moments when you looked around the city and felt like you were a part of it all.”

Sarah at Feministe recalls “How I Learned to Stop Caring and Admit I Love Pop”.

Jezebel chronicles “The Evolution of Moms” from Soccer Mom (Mater Adidas) to a future robot-mom who encompasses all the admirable features of stage and helicopter mothers alike, with a special focus on the parent Sarah Palin made famous, the Mama Grizzly.

Memo to Lady Gaga: leggings are not pants. Nor, more to the point, are leotards.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

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(Sorry, only one picture this week as I wrote this quite late at night—hey, 9pm is late for me, okay! I live the lifestyle of a grandma. In fact, I think my grandma stays up later than I do!—and just wasn’t inspired.)

There’s a lot of content worth reading on MamaMia at the moment:

“Would you wear Nicole Richie’s wedding dress?” Yes, if it were a little less poofy and a little more ivory. In fact, it is somewhat similar to the wedding dress I have created in my mind for my own wedding. Now, to find that pesky groom…

By the same guy who brought you the brilliant “17 Arguments Against Gay Marriage & Why They’re Bollocks” comes the equally as brilliant “10 Things You Need to Understand About Asylum Seekers”.

This is worth taking a look at if you care at all about where your supermarket eggs come from.

And finally, is Shane Warne punching above his weight? He sure is, but really, who cares? While I can’t stand Warney and think he is the king of the douches, good on him for bagging someone as hot as Liz Hurley. But shame on her for allowing herself to be seduced by said king of the douches.

Rachel Hills on what’s in and what’s out for 2011:

“Fool: Binge drinking.

“Cool: Binge thinking.

“… Fool: Staying out til 3am because it’s a Friday night and that’s what you’re supposed to do.

“Cool: Staying in on weekends if that’s what you feel like doing, going out on weeknights if there’s something cool on…

“Fool: Internet fameballs and feigning a glamorous life in the hope of inspiring envy in others. Lifecasting.

“Cool: Mindcasting. Reading other people’s blogs instead of just trying to get them to read yours.”

Tiger Beatdown’s fun facts about straight people:

  • “Most of them are not dangerous!
  • “Some of them are actually quite lovely people.
  • “Straight people are not as violent as they are portrayed in action movies.
  • “Straight people are your neighbors, your friends, members of your community. You may be related to a straight person, or even share a room with one in the hospital.
  • “I mean it TAKES ALL KINDS, amirite?
  • “Tomorrow, while you are attending the daily Straight Pride Parades that form the totality of public life in America, take a moment to tell a straight person you support their life decisions.
  • “Tell them you know many fine straight people.
  • “Then put your hand near their ear, and pretend to find a silver dollar there. They love that shit.

“Straight people will NOT:

  • “Try to make you straight.
  • “(Not that it would work, amirite?)
  • “Make it impossible for you to appreciate Ani DiFranco on rainy days.
  • “Make you want to move to Florida.
  • “Inject a lot of brown into your wardrobe.
  • “Drag you on a cruise and then spend two weeks complaining about how few deck chairs there are.”

Just one of the reasons SJP and SATC ruined NYC:

“Cheated on your boyfriend? Threw a public hissy fit? OMG, it’s just like that one episode of ‘SATC’! So don’t sweat your own stupid, overly dramatic behaviour… everything will be okay when the credits roll in 20 minutes. Or, you know, not.”

Sady Doyle on the Julian Assange rape allegations:

“.. You know who doesn’t stand to profit? Like, at all? The women pressing the charges. Because (a) rape victims almost never profit from taking their cases through the legal system, which is why so few do, and (b) they’re already facing substantive personal smearing and stereotyping and in some cases having Keith fucking Olbermann insist they have ‘ties’ to the ‘CIA’ (oh for FUCK’s sake), and (c) they’re not pressing some airtight case here. Because, as we all know, the only AIRTIGHT rape case is one where Julian Assange jumps out of the bushes with a chainsaw and an assault rifle and you try to fight him back with your bare hands but ultimately he cuts off both your arms with the chainsaw thus ‘proving’ that you ‘resisted’ him, and oh also, he’s not Julian Assange, he’s a homeless man of colour named Stabs McMurderson, and you’re not an average woman, you’re a fourteen-year-old blonde white virgin who’s walking home from the Jesus School of Sewing and Homemakery. I would add that the whole thing would have to be captured on tape, but there have been ACTUAL RAPES that were ACTUALLY CAUGHT ON TAPE and they didn’t get through, because the defence alleged that the girl was ‘faking’ unconsciousness because she wanted to ‘make porn’.”

My friend said I wasn’t unique in having a blog as every sixteen-year-old and their dog has one. Some friend, right? (Love you, April!) I’ll pay that, but according to Gawker, blogging is an old person thing now.

Mick Foley is Good.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

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Yet another reason to “really dislike Katy Perry”.

On the other hand, yet another reason to “Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City”:

“We are, as a group, anti-fanny-pack as much as we are pro-gay-marriage. Hetero marriage… we can pretty much take or leave.”

Dr. Katrina Warren on “The Grief of Losing a Pet”. Be warned: this is a tear jerker. I was bawling by the third paragraph, possibly because this story is close to my heart. I lost my dog Ben (above), who’d been with us for seven years, last year, and I still miss him like crazy.

While it may be summer here in the Southern Hemisphere, Gawker lists the “10 Things I Love About Winter”, one being winter movies (which we see here in summer):

“So while Pirates of the Caribbean 18: The Scullery’s Scourage, Transformers 8: This Time It’s Impersonal, and Men in Black 3: Will Smith’s Kids Can’t Make All the Money may make your July 4th jam, I’d rather pass the popcorn in December.”

Satah from This Ain’t Living mourns the loss of “the fun, campy, musical romp of high school TV shows”, Glee.

From “Harry Potter and the Incredibly Conservative Aristocratic Children’s Club”:

“Maybe, incidentally, the reason no other woman as smart as Hermione appears in the books is that J.K. Rowling, like the Turk, can bear no sister near the throne. Her volcanic ego burns down everything in its path. Where the Twilight books are works produced from and for a state of sexual yearning and frustration, Rowling’s ‘wizarding world’ is a fantasy place created for the benefit of Hermione Granger, for her infinite sagacity, foresightedness and teacher’s-pet-hood to be rewarded at every turn.”

I wish Dolly Parton was my fairy godmother.

Elizabeth Wurtzel on the sex appeal of Sarah Palin. Sure, she may be a “kind of sexy librarian, kind of a MILF” but “unfortunately, Sarah Palin is not very bright, not very thoughtful and not very qualified to run a country”. Well said.

“This is a post about judgement”, by Mia Freedman.