Thứ Ba, 31 tháng 3, 2015

Can We Guess Your Age Based On Your Taste In TV?

What Bat Channel did you watch? And at which Bat Time?

The Historical Feminist Roundtable, Bucket List Edition

Justine Zwiebel/BuzzFeed

HYPATIA: Hi, everyone and welcome to The Feminist Round Table, where I welcome some of history’s most notable feminists to discuss an important and timely topic. I’m very excited to welcome an amazing panel of women to our show today. Everyone, please give a big round of applause to Saint Joan of Arc, Abigail Adams, Louisa May Alcott, and Alanis Morissette. So, today, we’ll be talking about what should be on a woman’s Bucket List. Ladies, what do you think?

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT: Living free of men.

HYPATIA: You mean, before marriage?

LOUISA MAY: Always.

SAINT JOAN OF ARC: Oui. I agree with Mademoiselle Alcott. Men, they are… needy.

ABIGAIL ADAMS: Oh, but we love their foolishness so!

LOUISA MAY: Eh.

HYPATIA: Ok, what else should be on the list? Alanis?

ALANIS MORISSETTE: I think all women should learn how to come.

(Abigail Adams and Louisa May Alcott titter.)

SAINT JOAN: What is this?

HYPATIA: She means, you know, to orgasm.

SAINT JOAN: What is this?

HYPATIA: Let’s move on. What else should be on a woman’s bucket list?

SAINT JOAN: All women should know what it’s like to lead an army!

ABIGAIL: Or form a new country!

ALANIS: Or kiss Dave Coulier!

HYPATIA: Well…

ALANIS: Oh, sorry, wrong ex. I mean: Kiss Ryan Reynolds!

ALL EXCEPT SAINT JOAN: Ooooh, yessss….

SAINT JOAN: Who is this?

HYPATIA: What about seeing the Grand Canyon? Or climbing the Eiffel Tower?

LOUISA MAY: Eh.

ABIGAIL: Paris is very pretty! Or so my husband told me. After he came back from a trip to Paris. By himself. While I stayed home. Fomenting rebellion. Ha ha ha!

ALANIS: I think all women should learn to bake something delicious! Not something for a man, but something we love to eat!

LOUISA MAY: Hear, hear!

HYPATIA: Like what?

ALANIS: Brownies!

LOUISA MAY: Roasted potatoes!

ABIGAIL: A Thanksgiving turkey!

SAINT JOAN: Those little cakes of ambrosia the Virgin Mary fed me when I was in prison!

(Silence.)

HYPATIA: Thank you, ladies. Any final thoughts on what women should put on their bucket lists?

ABIGAIL: I once beat my husband at whist, and although he was peeved, I was very pleased.

SAINT JOAN: I wanted to die nobly, in sacrifice to a purpose larger than myself. And oui, I did! How about putting that on the list?

HYPATIA: Um, I think these are supposed to be more, you know, happy.

SAINT JOAN: Oh. Well, the potatoes thing then.

LOUISA MAY: It’s a kind of fun to be the sole financial support of your entire family, if by “fun” you mean “utterly terrifying and ultimately forcing you into an early grave.”

HYPATIA: Great.

ALANIS: Kissing Ryan Reynolds is still on the list, right?

HYPATIA: Sure.

ALANIS: Also, writing a song about your ex’s many flaws that goes to Number 1 on the charts.

HYPATIA: It occurs to me that both of those things might be out of many women’s grasp.

ABIGAIL: A nice up of tea, a warm fire when you’re cold, someone to love…

HYPATIA: Those are lovely.

ABIGAIL: And being played by Laura Linney in the miniseries of your husband’s life.

SAINT JOAN: Oh, oui, she is merveilleuse.

ALANIS: Mmhmmmm.

LOUISA MAY: Yes.

ABIGAIL: Bae is hawt.

HYPATIA: There you have it, ladies! The ultimate bucket list item is to have your life enacted by Laura Linney. That’s all we have time for today!

LOUISA MAY: Next time, could we talk about work-life balance?

ALANIS: Or fragile balance of male power and female wiles upon which we’ve all built our careers?

SAINT JOAN: Or how the divine feminine cries out from our souls?

HYPATIA: Sure! That or the new hairstyles for spring! See you back here soon for another Feminist Roundtable!

Black Television Actors Never Stop Auditioning

From left to right: the cast of Empire; its creators, writers, and executive producers.

Frank Micoletta / FOX

My black actor friends and I sometimes joke that it would be easier to become the first black woman on the Supreme Court than a successful black actor. At least the career path to becoming a Supreme Court justice is a little bit more cut-and-dried. The path to success as an actor is nonlinear and nonsensical, shrouded in secrecy and marked by well-meaning friends and family who love to offer career advice. Why can’t you be on Love and Hip Hop? That’s my show! Don’t you know Tyler Perry?

There is no such thing as a lifetime appointment for any actor. But for black actors, the obstacles we face in auditions don’t magically disappear on set.

I’ve been a professional actor since 2001. I don’t pay the bills by waitressing or bartending, but I’m not wildly successful, rich, and famous either. Most people don’t see those of us in the middle, who look forward to episodic season every fall, who do the Master Cleanse to get ready for pilot season, who go on auditions, and who live their lives as regular people who happen to be actors. Add being a black woman to that mix and you have a whole other dimension of insanity.

I can’t tell you how many auditions I have been on where the character is so obviously written for a white woman. One referred to her blonde hair and lack of a tan, no lie. I called my agents like, Really? The onus is on me, the actor, to go into the audition rooms and make them see the character another way — black. And keep in mind that actors are perhaps the least powerful part of the television production process. But like an anti-racism acting Care Bear, I’m supposed to act so amazingly well, be so pretty, so dazzlingly, so indisputably wonderful, that stars and rainbows and sunshine issue forth from my magical being and make them see a black woman in this role.

So let’s say that my little rainbow trick works and the producers and writers and casting directors all look at each other and go, “She’s not what we envisioned but DID YOU SEE HOW DAZZLING SHE WAS?!?” It’s a wonderful feeling, for everyone. Agents and managers are happy. The powers that be are happy. And as the actor, I’m simply ecstatic.

But then I get on set and I’m the only black face to be seen. No other black actors, no black producers, and no black writers. The onus is still on me to show how the character in their imaginations would be as a black woman.

About five years ago, I was hired to be a play a bartender in a comedy series. Even though it was a supporting role, the producers had wonderful ideas and storylines for the character — including a romance — and everyone seemed to think I was perfect for it.

So when we started filming, I looked forward to each script, whipping open my laptop, devouring every line. But every time, I was disappointed, as it became clear I was the taciturn type of bartender. Here’s your drink; exit stage left. Somebody on set asked me how long I’d been an extra.

When I was growing up in the New York City suburbs, a radio ad for the stage play The Diary of Black Men would come on almost every day. In it, a deep-voiced, dramatic black male intoned “How…do you love…a black woman?” over and over, like a mantra.

That’s kind of how I imagine TV writers (and, let's be real, most of whom are white and male) trying to write my lines. How…do you write…for a black woman? Most white male writers don’t have a bunch of black women in their lives. Maybe a black guy friend. But a black woman whom they know kinda well? A real one? Just like a normal, everyday black woman who cracks jokes and has a personality, but isn’t just a stereotype of some black woman they saw on TV?

I can understand the challenge before them, really. Let’s say they write a particularly salty one-liner for a black woman. Is that gonna come out racist, the stereotypical “sassy black friend”? And, more important, who do they ask if it is racist? Their one black friend? Isn’t asking him extra racist?

All actors know that as soon as you’re on the show, your next job is to get to know the writers. You talk, you bond, and then one day you tell them a story about your life and discover they’ve put it in the script. I remember trying in vain to connect with the writers. During table reads, I would go up and talk to some of the writers, but they gave me the cold shoulder.

Since they don’t know me — or, I figured, anybody like me — I wondered how invested they would be in writing for my character.

Most of the time I would get a script the night before a table read with a few lines. Sometimes I actually had a part of the story line, but after the table read it was always cut. Naturally, I assumed it was cut because of my poor performance. I asked what I could do better. But I was always given the excuse of “real estate.” There were so many characters and only so much time, and they needed to focus on the other main, regular characters. Of course, real estate wasn’t a problem when they needed to write for a white guest star.

And then, one week, the writers forgot to put me in the first draft of the script altogether. It was part of my contract to be in every episode, so I was added in after the fact, when they realized my character literally didn’t have a single line. I think I ended up delivering somebody a beer.

My character’s utter lack of personality all season long didn’t stop the showrunner from feeding me the line, “What did you say, mothafucka?” while shooting footage for outtakes. “You know, really give it to him,” he directed. Oh, now you want me to be the extra-sassy black girl? That was just about too much to bear. I was not surprised when I was not asked back for Season 2.

During my season on the show, only one writer tried to initiate a conversation with me, about Antoine Dodson, the brother of a the alleged victim of a home intruder rape whose local news interview went viral in 2010. I looked to my right and my left and pointed to myself. Cliché, I know. I started cackling, summoning all my dazzle and thinking, This is it! They actually see me!

The writer awkwardly brought up that he had seen my audition tape, and how good he thought it was. He told me he was just a stand-up from Chicago trying to do the best job he could, and that he wished he could do more for my character. Then he mumbled something about Wanda Sykes and shuffled off. I was left singing “You can run and tell dat, run and tell dat” to no one in particular.

He was just one guy trying to make a difference in a room where nobody was on the same page. But the truth is, if you are a white writer who is tasked with the job of “writing for a black woman,” your first attempts will be clumsy at best. They might be — dare I say — racist.

The difference is that writers can afford to get it wrong, and try again. As an actor of color, I’m stuck doing my Care Bear song and dance. (Hence why I’m writing this anonymously.)

Lots of people are making a concerted effort to make television more diverse — and a handful of them are succeeding brilliantly. My only hope is that writers don’t fail their actors of color out of fear of failing. To that end, I want to let you in on a little secret: A surefire way to prove to yourself you’re not a racist is to stop being afraid of sounding racist. Instead, listen to feedback and be open to change. Too many writers don’t know where to start and so never do.

10 Amazing Photos Show The Eiffel Tower Rising Above Paris

This was the view as the iconic tower slowly climbed above Paris and straight into history.

Breaking News

Thứ Ba, 31 tháng 3, 2015

Tuesday marks the 20th anniversary of singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez's death.

After all, no one rocked red lipstick quite like Selena!

Whether you pair your red with awesomely bold brows...

Michael Jackson was and, basically, still is the king of pop. But some kings never grow up.

In an interview with The Guardian , Russell Crowe revealed that Jackson regularly pranked called him for a couple of years.

Childish? Sure, but it's Michael Jackson prank calling Russell Crowe! It's kind of funny.

Remember the song "One Week"? The mostly harmless and catchy Barenaked Ladies song from 1998?

Gladiator

Center Stage

Road Trip

Big Momma's House

Discovering your sexuality can be a really weird time.

ESPECIALLY if you find yourself falling for a cartoon character...

Perhaps Hercules got you all hot and bothered?

Rocko's Modern Life would have involved less speaking...at least in human sounds.

Arthur could have been very confusing.

I mean, really.

The "I Haven't Been Out In A While, Is Tequila Always Like This?" Drunk.

The "It's Time To Confess, I'm Totally Not Over My Ex" Drunk.

The "Balls She Just Walked Into The Bar, Act Totally Calm and Natural" Drunk.

The "Really Not Amused This Bouncer Is Refusing To Let Me In" Drunk.

Every now and again you'll stumble across a headline asking "Are bootcut jeans back?"

The answer to this question should be NO.

Always No.

Do you really want to bring back the dark days of the early '00s?

The cast of One Tree Hill reunited this weekend at the first ever EyeCon One Tree Hill convention in Wilmington, North Carolina, three years after the show ended. LOOK at all of them!

And Bevin remembering her Spice Girls dance routines.

Reddit user Schiavello recently commented on a thread discussing the origins of the Krabby Patty secret recipe. Their theory was intense, and also quite possible.

Schiavello's hypothesis is that the secret ingredient in the krabby patty recipe is, well... fish.

They then go on to make some pretty good points; Where are they gonna get ground beef on the bottom of the ocean? Why would Mr Krabs be so insistent on no one knowing the secret recipe? Simple: the burgers are made with fish.

Some countered Schiavello's theory, contesting it by bringing to mind the episode Friend or Foe in which Krabs and Plankton work together to make the Krabby Patty recipe.

Thứ Hai, 30 tháng 3, 2015

KRISTY IN A DRESS.

Mary-Anne's second day of camp outfit.

For years, one thing in particular has troubled fans of Beauty and the Beast: how old was the Beast when he was cursed?

You're always in the market for a good Gibson Girl beauty tutorial.

... And you're all about the "New Woman."

You look back on your bicycle bloomers and wonder what you were thinking!

Of course, you're well aware that, if you're NOT a wealthy, educated white woman in the '90s, life is not great, to put it mildly.