Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/20/2012
Support Women Artists Sunday: El Perro del Mar
El Perro del Mar is the musical work of Swedish songstress Sarah Assbring. Drawing influence from ’60s girl-group music, church hymns, buddhist mantras, and twee pop, Assbring makes slow, sad, achingly beautiful pop-songs that favor simple repetition over overblown ostentation.
Assbring (born in 1977) was raised in Gothenburg, and was exposed to music at an early age via the record collection of her jazz-loving father. From her childhood, Assbring wanted to “first and foremost” be a singer. “I remember being amazed by Annie Lennox and Kate Bush as a kid,” Assbring has recalled, to Identity Theory. “I was totally into their way of going in and out of different personalities, almost as a form of acting when singing.”
Assbring abandoned early piano lessons because of their “restrictive” nature, and took …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/19/2012
Saturday Vids: Republicans, Get In My Vagina
Funny Or Die does it again. Please enjoy, “Republicans, Get In My Vagina.”
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Feminism, Pop-Culture | Posted by Talia on 05/17/2012
Women In The Kitchen: The Surprising Reality
Over the past several months, I’ve begun to watch competitive cooking shows obsessively. I mean, I don’t really know how to turn on my own oven and have never cooked anything in my life, but watching food shows has given me a desire to learn how to cook something simple…someday in the far future. But while these competitive food shows are certainly good for cooking tips, I couldn’t help but notice that women are largely underrepresented.
One of my favorite shows is Chopped, where four professional chefs are given a very short amount of time to make a dish composed of three or four random ingredients. There is usually only one female competitor on each episode. Every once in a while, you’ll see two women, but it’s unusual. There …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/13/2012
Support Women Artists Sunday: April Smith and the Great Picture Show
“I was the surprise,” says April Smith, the bonus baby her parents won late and whose moxie and dash astounded everyone she met. Today, she remains a welcome bolt: a loose-lipped, cocked-hip gal whose music and mien could buoy the Titanic.
As she took her place in the family, April developed a muscular, mellifluous voice and high-flying showmanship. Her mom adored Queen (”If you didn’t know a Brian May solo in the first few notes, you weren’t her child”) and her dad gave her his old 8-track tape player, letting her buy Elvis and Led Zeppelin tapes at yard sales. During summer vacations with Aunt Cricket and Uncle Fred, April discovered songwriters like Tom Waits and Kinky Friedman, stealing Fred’s cassettes and absorbing observational story-songs in a backyard tent. Waits …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/12/2012
Saturday Vids: The Truth with Hasan Minhaj
The best take on Ashton Kutcher’s racist Popchips commercial I’ve seen yet.
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/11/2012
The Problem with “Hot Problems”
I would be lying if I said that while watching the recent viral video “Hot Problems” (or, to be accurate, about 45 seconds of “Hot Problems” before I gave up), I didn’t blankly stare in disbelief, then roll my eyes and feel more than a little bit disheartened. And yet, despite comments made by YouTube viewers as well as the mainstream media, the depression I felt after watching the musical attempts of 17-year-olds Drew Garrett and Lauren Willey was not based on the concept of this video representing a generation of conceited, vapid young women. As a teen myself, it’s blatantly apparent that there’s a much more concerning problem at the heart of this video, and, more specifically, the vitriolic response to it.
We live in a society that relentlessly …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Mareike S on 05/7/2012
Why Does Exceptionally Smart = Crazy On TV?
Now, before launching into this, let me make one thing clear: I love the TV show Bones and have for a long time. I also kind of like Rizzoli & Isles, but there’s one thing that’s been irking me about these two series, even though they feature women in the leading roles and (especially in the case of Bones) have diverse casts. My problem is the fact that while both Temperance Brennan of Bones and Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles are portrayed as unusually smart and gifted females, they are also portrayed as socially awkward to a point that borders on a psychological disorder.
As anyone who has read The Yellow Wallpaper might know, there’s been a long standing tradition of portraying women as crazy and in need of psychiatric …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 05/5/2012
Saturday Vids: Clinton Foundation – Celebrity Division
Kristen Wiig is in this video. That’s really enough.
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