After yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling in the matter of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., wherein the highest court in the land decided 5-4 that “closely held” for-profit corporations have a right to religiously object to government regulations (because Corporations Are People Too) with regard to the “contraceptive mandate” of the Affordable Care Act, it all really came down to conception and the process of. Continue reading
Lauren
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Unasked for television behind-the-scenes stories are unnerving; Channing Tatum to hit big with new gig; swimming with the fishes just required barbells; Vin Diesel needs a day off; Matt Lauer gets his own Iron Throne; Mel Gibson has a “Not Without My Daughter” moment; what’s a wedding without a little anticipation of the bursting consummation variety; Gordon Ramsay no longer cares about the state of your fridge; and American Idol laughs in your face and says, “Fourteen years, Beeotch!” Continue reading
Apparently, we live in a time when fixing the nation’s ills are now up to the tech developers. Forget about the legislators of our country. We’re going to have to blanket ourselves in war tech, literally. Enter the Bodyguard Blanket™. Continue reading
The challenge for network television to gain more eyeballs is even more daunting than ever. Pay-TV, Netflix, Hulu, and other live-streaming vehicles have upped the ante when it comes to television programming. There are just so many places other than the big five to see good tv. So what’s a network to do when the competition is steep and there’s everything to lose with shows like Game of Thrones, The Americans, American Horror Story, Orange is the New Black, and Fargo taking over the game — release a new fall season full of shows that they hope will finally find resonance with audiences who are looking for audacious, risk-taking programming. Can the networks deliver?
Well, they can certainly try. Below we’ve listed a few of the shows that seem worth checking out. Note: We’re only discussing shows that are totally new here. That means, “We’re not talking about NCIS: Let’s Wear Our Leisure Suits to the Park to Feed the Pigeons or CSI: Cyber Crime in 2014 or Wow, the Internet.” You can look at those things on your own time. Continue reading
Monica Lewinsky, she of the infamous blue stained dress, has penned what some may label an explosive essay for Vanity Fair of which critics and other scandal-rubberneckers are mining for scurrilous admissions of guilt, guile, or other verifiable sins, and maybe, just maybe, a little vinegar thrown onto the honeyed path of one Hillary Rodham Clinton. After all, what could this would-be homewrecker have to say after fifteen years of self-appointed media exile that could be worth more than the briefest of romps through the pages of glorified tabloid fodder? Continue reading
Ahead of next week’s Upfronts presentations where all will be revealed with regard to next season’s television programming, here’s a little list of what’s already been canceled, renewed, and “on the bubble” as we and trusty TV By the Numbers see it. We’re not going to worry with all those silly Summer shows that may not make it onto the real Fall season roster. So all you fans of Mistresses, you’ll just have to wait for whatever it is the networks do with summer shows. Which seems to be quietly put them out to pasture right before everyone wonders where they store Alyssa Milano for the rest of the year. Continue reading
Snack-Shaming. It’s now a thing. How would you feel if whenever you went to your company vending machine and made a purchase the vending machine, yes, the vending machine, launched a tweet from its own Twitter account to all your co-workers that said, “Todd just bought a Snickers from the vending machine.”
Would you be angry? Continue reading
There’s really no way to stop the evolution of technology. The more we desire access to things at the touch of a button, or hell, through our eyeballs, the more a means to supply what we demand will materialize. With Google Glass that day has arrived. Yet, as many are finding out, the world around the Google Glass wearer isn’t so open or appreciative of having its midst invaded by a walking cyborg-person wearing a face-computer gawping at the world and everyone in it as if monkeys in a zoo cage. In short: “Hey! You! Your robo-face is making me feel uncomfortable, jerk!” Continue reading
Ben Affleck’s chin isn’t lying about murdering his wife.
The bestseller turned motion picture is one of the most highly anticipated films of the fall season. That may be because Gone Girl, the book, was the kind of smartly written thriller that gave us complex characters with personalities that were equal parts deplorable and beguiling. There were no saints here. Everyone showcased their fair share of human stain and it was riveting. What it all boiled down to was a matter of figuring out which person was capable of the more heinous acts, and which was merely a victim of circumstance. And what, in the case of Gone Girl, that really meant.
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Could the art of George W. Bush wherein he depicts world leaders in sophomoric renderings that read more “quaint cute” as in the eagerly water colored masterpieces a child shoves at a parent for admiration on their office wall, rather than a trove of Picasso’s best, be more about politics than hobby-making?
Now that we are several years away from the Bush era of rule in this country, much has been made in the last few to “paint” Dubya not as a war-mongering cowboy, and epic failure of a world leader, but as a soft-spoken man who may have been misunderstood in his political assertions. Not about his convictions per se, but about the amount of caring for his fellow man that went sorely unnoticed. Continue reading