Tagged: beyonce

ICYMI: April Roundup

April generally sucks because its rainy and shit, and lets be honest, most people aren’t that forward thinking to see the bright side and wait for May flowers. But it’s a wrap for April, so let’s talk about it.

[via TheNewYorker]

[via TheNewYorker]

Mad Love For Boston: Tragedy has a weird way of bringing a nation together. What happened in Boston was terrible. I’m not an emotional person. Rarely do I express my emotions, have emotions, or tell people about my emotions. I’ve been likened to a robot and have commonly been called an ice queen because of my nature. But when tragedies like what happened at the Boston Marathon happen, I start to feel. However, what really gets me super emotional is my love of sports. I’ve expressed a plethora of emotions in my relationship with sports – I’ve cried, laughed, cried of happiness, cried of sadness, been angry, been unreasonably angry… you get the picture. To see sports teams show love for Boston was too much for me. The Yankees giving Boston love, “Sweet Caroline” played at Yankee stadium and Fenway thanks to Neil Diamond, the national anthem at the Bruins game… I was a mess.

Spring Has Sprung: A lot of you ladies get way too ahead of yourselves and come out hard in those summer dresses. Chill. Out. Same with you bros out there in your bro tanks and flip flops and Chubbies shorts. Calling you out. Nah, but I get it! Spring is here, the weathers great… time to spend some time in the park and catch some Vitamin D (which so many of us New Yorkers are deprived of). Get excited, you have permission to bare arms.

The Great Gatsby Music Soundtrack: My jaw dropped when The Great Gatsby released their tracklisting. How in the world do you put The xx, Beyonce, Lana Del Rey, Florence + the Machine, and Jack White (AKA my favorites ever) all together for a soundtrack? Only in a Baz Luhrmann movie, that is. Check this baby out:

  • “100$ Bill” – Jay-Z
  • “Back To Black” – Beyoncé x Andre 3000
  • “Bang Bang” – will.i.am
  • “A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” – Fergie + Q Tip + GoonRock
  • “Young And Beautiful” – Lana Del Rey
  • “Love Is The Drug” – Bryan Ferry with The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
  • “Over The Love” – Florence + The Machine
  • “Where The Wind Blows” – Coco O. of Quadron
  • “Crazy in Love” – Emeli Sande and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
  • “Together” – The xx
  • “Hearts A Mess” – Gotye
  • “Love Is Blindness” – Jack White
  • “Into the Past” – Nero
  • “Kill and Run” – Sia

Psycho Sorority Chick?: Everyone had a field day with this (you definitely need to read it if you haven’t yet). It’s pretty unclassy and of poor taste – but it doesn’t mean that all sorority girls are psycho and crazy or deranged. In fact, I think this chick is neither of these. First of all, I think this chick has valid points in her rant. While I’m no sorority girl, I understand her frustration with her friends / sisters who cannot hold a conversation, have to be drunk to talk to males, etc. I get it girl! Sometimes people need to be called out. The most important part of this is that she is an excellent writer. I’m not even joking and completely defend her writing skills and eloquence. Something must be said for the perfectly put cuss words, and the very detailed ass kicking that will follow if x doesn’t happen. The girl has an amazing way with words. You have to give her credit for that. Props to you girlfriend. You may not be a sister at DG at University of Maryland, but we can possibly be soul sisters.

Jason Collins: If you remotely know who I am, you know I’m a pretty avid sports fan. This week Jason Collins of the Washington Wizards came out and became the  first professional athlete playing a major American team sport, to come out as gay. This is incredible and I think it’ll open the doors to many other pro athletes and celebrities in the spotlight. The outpour of support that Collins has received ranging from NBA players like Kobe, LeBron, Jason Kidd to President Obama is very telling that our society is finally making progress in giving gays and lesbians the full equality that everyone deserves. We’re getting there ‘Merica.

Top Search Engine Terms For YOUCANKISSMYSASS.COM:

  1. “kids annoy the shit out of me blog” – So someone searched this, and my website was a result? Is that the vibe I’m giving off? Good. 
  2. “san francisco giants bandwagon fans” – … are the worst. Am I right?
  3. “turn tights into turban” - Refer to this post, or learn from the one who taught me and watch this YouTube video by the lovely JasonSimone. You won’t regret it. 
  4. “neck pillow” - Are they actually comfortable? You tell me. I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one. 
  5. “maria spinning sound of music” – Yeah… I like that scene too. Julie Andrews is so effervescent I cannot.
  6. “what does #wearscrocs mean” -IT MEANS HE WEARS CROCS! AKA IT MEANS RUN… RUN FAR AWAY!
  7. “unclassy women” - Oh God. Someone searched unclassy women, and my website popped up. #HELP
  8. “can you get drunk off of skinny girl cosmo” - The answer is yes. Trust me. 
  9. “babysat kids with taped mouth” -Wait, what? Did you tape their mouths? I’m really curious here. Please email me the story behind this. 
  10. “men in baseball pants fuck” - I know, right? I die. 

Other notable things that happened in April:

-THIS HAPPENED. Frank Ocean fixed Jimmy Fallon’s bow tie while Justin Timberlake watched at the Time 100 gala. Amazing.

[via Vulture.com]

[via Vulture.com]

- Beyonce’s ad for H&M Summer 2013 came out, and we all swooned… and bowed down too, of course. There’s a lot of Bey rolling in the sand, and its nothing short of amazing.

What we can look forward to in May:

-The Met Gala is May 6 and is co hosted this year by Rooney Mara (girlcrush), Lauren Santo Domingo, Riccardo Tisci and Anna Wintour. The theme of the night will be punk… Anna and celebs like BEYONCE in PUNK wear?! I’m dying of excitement and anticipation. Expecting Sid Vicious realness from the men and I cannot wait.

-The Great Gatsby comes out May 10th. Leo, Carrie and Toby better give it to me straight.

-ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT SEASON 4 COMES OUT ON NETFLIX May 26th! That’s all that needs to be said about that.

The AD promo posters are beautiful. [via eonline]

 

Anyways…

[via tumblr]

ICYMI: February Roundup

single-women-who-live-nearby-and-who-are

A lot happened in February. But I guess a lot happens every month. In case you missed it, I’ve gathered, what I think are, the notable happenings of this past month.

Facebook Graph Search:

Sure, this was announced in January, but I’m just starting to wrap my head around this. It can be A) really cool, or B) really creepy. Let’s start with the really cool part. You can use this to network, or research your friends. As a writer, I could definitely see myself using this to research friends/friends of friends with certain qualifications, in a specific location, working at a specific company, with interests a, b, and c. Say I wanted to write an article about startups in San Francisco and wanted to interview an employee of a startup who is a straight, heterosexual, male who likes surfing, mexican food and likes to listen to Allen Stone. Voila – Facebook Graph search has that covered (well that and there’s most of San Francisco’s population anyways). Now lets discuss the creepiness. This is the stalkers tool. You can streamline your search to be as specific as possible. More importantly, this is some serious data mining and getting into your bizness. More and more we’re starting to realize how much of our personal information is out there from our social media accounts. Remember those pictures from your freshman year of high school, or that really bad night you had in Vegas (yeah, THAT night)? Sadly, what we put onto Facebook and on the interwebz is most likely going to stick forever (I mean, at least until youre dead probably). Luckily, there are a crap load of great companies like McAfee who have apps, just for Facebook that prevents people from seeing, downloading, sharing, and printing unwanted photos of yours (WHAT NOW CATFISHERS?! TRY TO PRETEND TO BE ME ON MYSPACE I DARE YOU!). Check it out, totally useful and totally free! But in all seriousness, that one page you Liked a year ago, will probably come back and bite you in the ass. So there’s that. I guess you could also use Facebook Graph Search for your own personal dating service as well – which borders on the line of either really cool and/or really creepy. Search: male, 24-30, NYC, employed, TV Shows: Law and Order, Law and Order SVU.. can I specify ‘attractive’? Questions. Anyways Facebook, I’m waiting for my access here. 

House of Cards:

David Fincher directed The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” music video (did you watch it? You should), and this gem Netflix produced called House of Cards. You might not have heard of it, but it is, in my humble opinion, an amazing show, worthy of HBO/Showtime. Why its noteworthy: what Netflix did with this show is freaking out the big media companies. They released the whole season (13 episodes) all at once. If other companies follow suit, this may change TV viewer practices as we know it. Media corporations got their panties in a bunch for a bit, but realized, at the end of the day, viewers will always tune in for programmed television. I don’t know. I think we should keep an eye out for this format Netflix has going on… Also, the cast of this show is kickass – Corey Stoll (the dude who played Ernest Hemmingway in Midnight in Paris), Kate Mara, and Kevin fucking Spacey. For politics junkies, like me, this is a dream. For people with addictive personalities and have nothing else better to do than watch 13 straight episodes in one sitting – this is your jam. Watch it. You won’t be sorry either way.

If that isn’t a good looking cast, then I don’t know what is. [img via abcnews.com]

Vine:

As my Digital Literacy professor said, “if people want a social network where they can film their dick for hours on end, then have at it”. Vine is a great concept. Essentially, its Instagram for videoclips. I like the idea of it, the app is very user friendly and intuitive. But pretty sure the creators of Vine didn’t see their app being used as a porn channel. I seriously question our species sometimes. But its actually a good app. For those of you who are done with Instagram and already onto the next, then youre already taking short video clips and looping them like a GIF on Vine and waiting for Likes to come your way. During NYFW Vine was particularly useful in that I could watch short loops of the runway – over and over again – incase I missed something. If you really want to be quirky, you can post your Vine made resume and see where that goes. Watch it here. Ugh. I loathe the fact that I didn’t think of this first.

JLaw, my self-deprecating sistah, IS THAT YOU?! [img via fashionmagazine.com]

Beyonce:

February was a big month for the Royal Family. And by Royal Family I don’t mean the monarchy of the United Kingdom… I mean the Royal Family as in Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Blue Ivy. Beyonce straight up killed it at the Superbowl – it even eased the pain when the Niners lost. Her HBO documentary aired, and she’s on top of the fucking world, thanks to the Illuminati. As for Jay-Z, a Grammy award, a legitimate collaboration with Justin Timberlake, and his Nets are doing okay. 2013 is the Royal Family’s year. Calling it now.

Jennifer Lawerence:

She had her Miss Dior campaign in which she looked ah-mazing in.  She starred alongside Bradley Cooper. Hugh Jackman swooped down to help her when she fell at the Oscars. She had cute, casual balter with Jack Nicholson. She won an Oscar. She beat Meryl. All of that, and at the end of the day all she wants to do is ”sit on my couch and drink and not change my pants for days at a time”. How is J Law NOT winning?

 

 

 

Top Search Engine Terms For YOUCANKISSMYSASS.COM:

  1. “valentines day? who cares” Right? I’m right there with you.
  2. “postfeminist television”
  3. “brian wilson beard”
  4. “great analogies for classy people versus unclassy” Serious question: Did this person find any great analogies? I want to know.
  5. “les miserables”
  6. “the real angelica from rugrats” Is she based off of a real person? If so she’d be like 27 years old right now.
  7. “fainting after drinking ballerina tea” Wow. Ummm… no that is not an after-effect.
  8. “sexy frida kahlo” IS THIS A THING?! SOMEONE TELL ME!
  9. “my birkenstock” No. MYY Birkenstock! Sidenote: I miss wearing my Birkenstocks with socks all the time.
  10. “quvenzhane wallis too sassy for her age mouthy” For real. Girl’s got a mouth on her. I like it. 

Other notable things that happened in February:-
-Harlem Shook. And no one cared. I mean, we pretended it was cool and relevant for 5 minutes. And then we didn’t. I don’t want to see your dog do the Harlem Shake.
-Huffington Post said that kitten heels are in. NO! Don’t listen to them, you women who get your fashion advice from HuffPo.

What we can look forward to in March:
GAME OF THRONES. Anyone want to have a GOT marathon until March 31st?

Faking It

“You’re a fraud and you know it, but it’s too good to throw it all away. Anyone would do the same. You’ve got them going and you’re careful not to show it. Sometimes you even fool yourself. It’s like magic but it’s always been a smoke and mirrors game, anyone would do the same”.

-Smoke and Mirrors by Gotye(not as popular as Somebody That I Used To Know, but equally as good)

image via Catfish the TV Show Facebook Page

Gotye hit’s the nail on the head here. The popularity of MTV’s new hit show, Catfish, is a true testament to our proclivities towards hiding behind smoke and mirrors as well as being absolutely paranoid by it. Why do we find ourselves hopelessly engrossed every Monday night as Nev (and co.) finds a hopeless romantic who wants to meet the love of their life only to find that said love of their life is 20+ years older than expected, or 100lbs heavier than they appeared online, or the opposite sex, or sexually confused? Well, for starters, it makes great television. You can’t help but make a drinking game out of it (1 shot if revealed person is an unexpected gender, 2 shots if the episode ends with a happy ending, 3 shots if you guess the whole scenario correctly – She’s in love with a man who’s actually a woman, with two kids). But honestly, we’re drawn to it because as a culture we are obsessed with fakes. Fake boobs, fake television, fake celebrities, fake orgasms, fake stories, fake this, fake that. Obsessed.

This month alone we’ve seen national news stories revolving around fakers. Beyonce lip-synched her presidential inauguration performance of the Star Spangled Banner. Gasp! Were you really that surprised when you found out? Even Obama was skeptical. WHO CARES? Why are we fascinated by people (even ourselves) getting duped? Personally, I think we like to play martyrs. We can’t help but to feel so betrayed by these fakers. Look at us! We’re victims! Don’t you feel bad for us? But really, the question is- would we rather live in ignorance? While I was in bed watching the Inauguration I had nothing but praise for Queen B. So did the rest of the Twittersphere (at least on my timeline). Not even before the inauguration ended, news broke that she had, in fact lip-synched and everyone became a critic. Seriously? Yo, haters – about a millisecond ago you were worshipping the ground she walks on. Did it make a difference that she lip-synched? No. Do we care? We really shouldn’t.

Now enter Manti Te’o. Thanks to deadspin.com’s investigative journalism, the whole world learned how Te’o got hoodwinked by some rando pretending to be his longtime, seriously in love girlfriend who supposedly passed away. What resulted was a football player who was emotionally prompted to become a leader, a great player, in the face of adversity. He went on to lead his Notre Dame team to and undefeated regular season – but we won’t talk about the Rosebowl. So yeah, it sucks that Te’o got legitimately PUNK’d (and not the cute Ashton Kutcher way), but when all is said in done, it’s over. What can you do? Why are we making a big deal of it?

Now from Beyonce to Notre Dame football, lets talk MLB. For a long ass time now, the world of pro baseball  has been marred by PEDs (for you dummies, thats Performance Enhancing Drugs to you – not the tiny socks you wear). For San Franciscans, it’s been a pretty difficult relationship with our accused players. We have Barry Bonds (arguably, but in my humble opinion, should be HOF’er) who admitted to using steroids. Some fans dropped off of the Bonds bandwagon, some held on tightly – long enough to see him revamp himself, lose some lbs, and turn into a better man. That Barry. Last year the SF Giants also had a few other PED scandals, including All Star MVP, Melky Cabrera. San Franciscans fell in love with him for his bat, the whole MELK MEN/MAN thang, and the fact that he couldn’t speak english pretty good (When he was interviewed after accepting his MVP trophy whilst sitting in his sparkly new car with his mom and grandma, the announcer asked him, “Who are these two women with you Melky?” To which Melky responds, “THANK YOU FANS”…awkward. Yeah, Cabrera English, no good.) Despite the fact that he put up the numbers for the SF Giants and was a fan favorite, he quickly became invisible once he was charged with using PEDs. Fans threw away their Melky shirts, their Melk Maid and Melk Man costumes. Obviously we didn’t like him that much anyways. In my house Melky Cabrera became “He who must not be named”, in fear that it would bring up bad feelings (and by bad, I mean real bad. I’ve cried for Barry Zito during his low points and have screamed at my TV and cursed out Santiago Casillas while he warmed up in the bullpen). To say I get emotional over baseball is truly an understatement. **UPDATE: Add A-Rod to the list of PED’ers***

As a culture, why are we so fascinated by fakers? I go back to my previous question: Would we rather live in ignorance? Was Kid Cudi onto something when he said, “ignorance is bliss?”. What if the people on Catfish were better off thinking they fell in love with a 25 year old male model who has a heart of gold? Maybe it would be better if we didn’t know Beyonce lip synched, or Lance Armstrong did steroids, or baseball players in general do steroids. If we turn a blind eye long enough maybe  the world would be a better place and we wouldn’t have to deal with the heart break, the scandal, the betrayal etc.

Why the process of unveiling fakers and uncovering fraud in our culture is important:

We should reevaluate who we put up on a pedestal. Are the athletes, business people, artists we admire really GOOD people? Or do we just like them because everyone else seems to?

Likewise, we need to make our own opinions. Rather than following popular opinion, or going with the majority, we need to stray from the homogenized body and decide for ourselves… is this person really MY idol? What do I, personally, think of this?

Investigative journalism rules. We are submersed in the Internet, social media, etc. This is the first time in history that we see breaking stories unfolding in front of us through the use of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and live feeds.

We like to be victims. As I said before, some of us love being martyrs. Let’s play the blame game?

We’re all faking it. In one way or another we’re all frauds (even if its just a little bit – like, that little white lie on your resume?) Thus, we want to see others get faked out or how they do it. We just laugh because it isn’t us in that situation. And WHOOMP! There it is.