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Last week, Drake Bennett wrote in Slate about college courses on The Wire. Drake's article focused on the courses offered at Harvard, Duke, Middlebury, and U.C.—Berkeley. Since the article was posted last Wednesday, he's heard from a handful of professors at other schools who also teach The Wire. Drake writes:
I've heard from three more academics who have taught the show: Boyd Blundell at Loyola University New Orleans, Todd Sodano, who taught a class at Syracuse in the spring of 2008, and David Brody at Washington State University Spokane. Interestingly, these classes expand the range of academic disciplines in which the show has been studied: Blundell's is an ethics class, Sodano's a communication course, and Brody's a criminal justice class.
All three professors were kind enough to send along their syllabi:
Click here to read Blundell's syllabus.
Click here to read Brody's syllabus.
Click here to read Sodano's syllabus.
I'm still waiting for a sociolinguistics course on the series. First assignment: this scene. Teaching a course on The Wire? Currently enrolled in one? Post your thoughts, syllabi, and problem sets in the comments.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
March 29, 2010, "Brazil"
These Are Their Stories
When Oscar Silva, a Brazilian climate-change denier, is poisoned at a scientific conference, the police search his computer. They discover a file that contains e-mails between two researchers that mention adjusting the climate data they have collected. Silva used the compromising e-mails to blackmail one of the scientists.
This Is the Real Story
In November 2009, private e-mails attributed to British and American climate researchers were made public. According to the New York Times, the messages included "discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released. ... In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical ‘trick' in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend."
These Are Their Stories
The detectives learn that Oscar Silva's American-born wife, Dana, was once married to Phillip Shoemaker, an American scientist who snuck into the breakfast meeting where Oscar Silva was poisoned. After their divorce, she had taken their daughter, Nicole, to Brazil in violation of the custody agreement. Over a period of years, Shoemaker filed numerous lawsuits in Brazil to gain access to Nicole. The police speculate that he had a motive to poison Oscar Silva, knowing that if he died, Dana and Nicole would likely return to the United States.
This Is the Real Story
In 2004, Bruna Bianchi took her son, Sean Goldman, to her native Brazil, leaving her American-born husband, David Goldman, in New Jersey. She later filed for divorce and remarried a Brazilian. David Goldman sued for custody in U.S. and Brazilian courts, to no avail. Bianchi died in 2008, but her widower sued for custody of Sean and refused to return the boy to the United States. In December 2009, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered that Sean be returned to his father.
These Are Their Stories
Finding neither parent fit for custody, a family court judge gives temporary custody of Nicole to the Lehmans, Dana's parents. Soon after Dana and Nicole move in with them, Nicole goes missing; her doll is found next to the boat dock where an inflatable boat has floated out to sea. Cable news crews follow the craft, which is eventually shown to be empty, but Nicole is found sleeping behind the boathouse. Nicole's grandfather admits that the incident was staged: He was trying to present Dana as an unfit mother so that they would get custody.
This Is the Real Story
In October 2009, Colorado authorities chased a homemade helium balloon in which 6-year-old Falcon Heene was thought to be hiding. Cable news networks covered the pursuit live, including the craft's dramatic landing and subsequent revelation that Falcon was not onboard. The Heenes later admitted that the incident was an elaborate hoax intended to snag the family a reality-TV show deal.
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In How To Train Your Dragon, which opened on Friday, a Viking named Hiccup befriends a cold-blooded creature called Toothless. By the end of the movie, Hiccup can cruise around on Toothless' winged back with ease. It seems as though it's pretty simple to train a dragon, but what about real-life reptiles? Could you teach a crocodile to beg?
Zookeepers can and do train their scaly charges to move around their cages, to stand still, and to open their mouths on demand. To impart these behaviors, keepers use a method called "target training," in which they teach an animal to associate a "target" (usually a colored disc attached to a stick or a long pole) with an edible treat. Once trainers have achieved association, they can get the animal to move around his exhibit by presenting the target in different locations. They can also train him to stop moving by using a vocal cue—saying "sit," for example. Training a reptile, then, is not too different from training a dog—at least methodologically.
Zoo employees train their animals in order to facilitate care-giving. Teaching a lizard to hold its mouth open makes it easier to administer medicine, while coaching him to stand still makes it possible to draw his blood for medical tests. Animals that can move on demand are easier to transport. Interacting with trained reptiles is also safer for the keepers.
Although it's possible to teach reptiles more complicated behaviors—crocodiles can learn how to swim through hoops, for example, and at least one turtle knows how to shake hands and roll over—they're more difficult to train than mammals or birds. That's partly because reptile brains are less complex. Also, since big reptiles eat much less often than mammals and birds, training them to respond to edible rewards is a lengthier process. It's hard to motivate herbivorous reptiles like tortoises as well, since they're not used to the concept of working hard to find food. (Grass is readily accessible.)
Thanks to Jim Murphy of the National Zoo, Patrick Thomas of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo, and Crystal Crimbchin of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium for passing on their reptilian knowledge.
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This is a guest post from Slate's Timothy Noah.
A staffer for the Republican National Committee named Allison Meyers was fired after the Daily Caller (Tucker Carlson's Web site) reported that the RNC approved a $1,946.25 reimbursement to a direct-mail consultant named Erik Brown for a visit by young GOP donors to an S&M club in Los Angeles. The club is called Voyeur. "We cater to a high-end, A-list clientele with live art installations with a voyeuristic theme," Sarah Waldman, the club's director of special events, explained to the New York Times.
The Times was playing catch-up to the Daily Caller, but its reporter failed to mention that in a way it got there first. I quote from Voyeur's Web site:
Upon arrival, guests will immediately feel as if they've entered an underground sanctuary, with a noir backdrop and an understated atmosphere. Once through the exposed brick entrance hallway they will encounter massive metal sphere chandeliers with spiked lighting, black leather drapery with brass rings, green leather chesterfield sofas and reupholstered antique chairs with brass and bronze accents. Lining the inner walls are 1920's glass casement windows from the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street, photography filmstrips from an erotic photo shoot are exposed as wallpaper in one room, while an old-fashioned photo booth allows uninhibited guests to create their own stills. [Italics mine.]
To those who say newspapers have no future, I submit the foregoing as evidence that the New York Times offers an enduring erotic appeal to the GOP. If you're a Republican, apparently, you crave that which is most forbidden: sharp spikes, black leather, simulated girl-on-girl cunnilingus, and glass panes that may once have been touched by Flora Lewis. What a naughty, naughty bunch!
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How To Train Your Dragon* comes out today, and my husband and I are considering taking the kids (6 and 3) to see it-a convenient way to kill some time on what promises to be a rainy Sunday afternoon. Like many other kiddie movies that have come out recently (Monsters vs. Aliens, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Alice in Wonderland), it will be in 3-D. And I suspect that every kid-friendly movie that comes out in the future will be in 3-D, too. This is highly annoying, because our local multiplex does not offer child rates for 3-D movie tickets. And my informal survey-of co-workers and Facebook friends (all in different cities) and various theater-chain Web sites-shows either that 3-D ticket prices nationwide are the same for adults and kids or that both have been inflated. Either way, it's not a cheap afternoon, especially when you factor in the snacks.
When my husband and I go to a movie by ourselves, we buy our $10 tickets and maybe split a Coke. If we go to a regular 2-D movie with the kids, we buy our $10 tickets, the kids' $7 tickets, and then lay out another $20 on popcorn, lemonade, and whatever else we need to keep them in their seats. In other words, the theater more than recoups the discount it offers on tickets. But taking a family of four to see a movie in 3-D quickly becomes a $75 outing, not counting any lunch or dinner out. And even excluding concessions, you stand to lose $50. (Random thought: Could the kiddie-ticket hike help explain the rather astonishing success of Alice in Wonderland, which broke Avatar's record for a 3-D premiere?)
Is it worth it? That depends on the movie, of course. Monsters vs. Aliens was a treat in 3-D (although it's pretty good simply in hi-def). When Pixar re-released Toy Story and Toy Story 2 for a limited 3-D run last fall to promote Toy Story 3, it was a mediocre experience since the movies hadn't been filmed with 3-D in mind. For the most part, though, parents today are lucky in that kids movies are at least watchable for adults, if not downright enjoyable. So, yes, I'll probably be among the first in line for Toy Story 3.
*Correction, March 29: The post originally identified the movie as How To Train a Dragon.
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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week, the designers had to design their own textiles and then create original looks using those textiles. Emilio Sosa was the winner; Anthony Williams was sent home.
David Plotz: Those PR producers certainly know how to suck the joy out of the show, killing off Amy and Anthony in consecutive weeks. Anthony's Southern Queen act had grown on me, and though he certainly wasn't getting anywhere near Bryant Park with his closetful of cocktail dresses, I don't see why we have to endure another week of doleful Jonathan or Mila the Underminer instead of his joyous self.
I loved this challenge, which did a nearly perfect job in separating the four excellent remaining designers from the three crummy ones. Maya, Seth Aaron, Jay, and horrid Emilio all designed spectacular prints and, except for Jay, extremely interesting outfits. Any one of the three finalists could have won. It is a testament to Emilio's skill that his dress overcame the wretched egomania of his autographed print. But I would have given the crown to Maya, whose dress was, as one of the judges said, like electricity. It was a summer lightning storm in a dress.
Jessica Grose: David, I, too, miss the Magical Elves, the production team they had for PR when it was on Bravo. It was never more apparent than during the first scene with guest judge Vivienne Tam, when they had this one awful voice-over from her shilling for Hewlett Packard and then a harsh cut back to her smiling idiotically.
Hanna Rosin: The HP shilling was OUT OF CONTROL this time. I thought maybe Tim Gunn was going to have HP tattooed on his eyelids by the end.
D: The product placement has gotten so out of hand that I am actually going to tout rival products, just to punish Lifetime. I love the way they designed those dresses on their amazing iPads, powered by AMD chips, and I thought that the Maybelline lipstick worn by Emilio's model was stunning!
H: I actually want to praise the editing of this particular episode. They did a good job of planting confusing hints about who was going to get kicked off, thus creating a little suspense. When we saw Seth Aaron call his (surprisingly normal-looking) family, I was suddenly worried about him. And then Jonathan was sweating and panicky throughout, while Emilio was getting all that bad feedback. I really wasn’t sure whom the gun was pointing at throughout.
D: The Seth Aaron phone call home was a neat bait-and-switch, but I knew it was going nowhere when they made it clear that it was his birthday, and thus deserving of a special phone call, and when Seth Aaron said something to the effect that he would drown his own children in Garnier Fructis conditioner if they interfered with him winning the show.
J: Back to the fashion: I also loved Maya's design, particularly the detailing at the neck. And while Seth Aaron's design was not to my taste, it was incredibly well-made and had a strong point of view.
H: Oh come on, Jess, I saw you sporting a yellow tie just the other day.
D: What did you guys think of Tim's rather cruel takedown of Emilio's print, especially his insinuation that it encoded Seth Aaron's initials? It was the rare moment when Tim looked like a jerk. For all his viciousness, Emilio didn't deserve the derision.
H: I thought the reaction to Emilio's dress was quite interesting. The dress itself was a great juxtaposition of graffiti and vintage cut. But I don't think it's just the garment that they were reacting to. I think they suddenly saw Emilio as a professional who knew how to market himself. Like suddenly they had a vision of ESOSA ripoff handbags being sold on 47th Street 10 years down the road
J: I completely agree that darling Anthony should NOT have gone home. Nina said Jonathan’s outfit looked like a "dirty tablecloth"!
D: Nina's reaction to Jonathan's dress was so striking because it was the only genuine emotion I think we have ever seen from her. You get the sense that Michael Kors and Heidi could be hacked to pieces in front of her and she would merely sigh. But she seemed genuinely heartsick at the fashion crime committed by Jonathan.
H: Let's just re-create the dialogue, because it was so painful and dada:
Nina: "I feel sad"
Jonathan: "Is sad not an emotion?"
J: I liked the 1950s horror movie tableau Michael Kors painted in reference to Jonathan’s disaster: "Your husband helps you back into your straight jacket."
H: Mila has gotten strangely lazy and self-satisfied, but now I bet she is starting to panic. I dread the next episode, because she was already in high evil mode this episode. Next week she will be stealing people's scissors.
D: Which one of the top four won't get to Bryant Park? Seth Aaron is a mortal lock. I think Maya will sneak in too, because they will want to keep a woman. Then it comes down to Emilio versus Jay, and that's tough. I suspect Emilio gets that third spot.
J: I choose Jay over Emilio for Bryant Park—Jay never completely misses, but remember Emilio's pink bikini/washer monstrosity?
H: I bet they let all four of them go.
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Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, at MoMA through May 31, is a retrospective featuring photographs, videos, multimedia installations, and performance pieces by the Serbian artist, some of them created in collaboration with Ulay, formerly her partner in two senses. Abramović only knows one big thing—faut souffrir pour être belle—but she knows it well. Her best pieces provoke tense meditations on masochism and the will to power and thrill with voluptuous danger. It helps that she has a talent for shooting muscular photographs, a knack for ripping off Joseph Beuys in an interesting way, and—useful to her sort of body art—both an Olympian figure and a profile like a bird of prey. Less than 25 percent of her work is bullshit—a remarkable rate of nonfailure for a contemporary conceptual artist. She easily sinks more shots than Bill Viola.
Much of the discussion around the exhibit—or at least much of the nattering about it—concerns reperformances of Abramović's works involving nudity, sometimes also known as nekkidness. (I don't think that the links I provide here lead to anything unsafe to watch at work, the pieces being no more pornographic than "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)," but maybe your cubicle neighbor is a Philistine, in which case I extend my condolences.) In "Luminosity," one of Abramović's female models/collaborators hangs on a wall in a room by her lonesome, mounted by way of bicycle seat. Arms extended, face impassive, she forces the viewer to squirm through some fresh thoughts and charged feelings about concentration and consideration. Elsewhere, "Imponderabilia" invites patrons to squeeze between two nude humans facing each other at a distance of, oh, about a foot and a half, nipple to nipple. As a comment on thresholds, "Imponderabilia" is above average; in context, it seems worthwhile just for an amusing curator's note on the wall: "Current requirements necessitate more distance between the performers than in the original 1977 performance."
But amusement is somewhat scarce in The Artist Is Present, especially down in the museum's second-floor atrium, where Abramović, fully clothed, is reviving a participatory number titled "Night Sea Crossing." This one involves her wearing an invariably dour expression while sitting very still at a table. Signage invites museumgoers to sit across from her in order to exchange vibes and create a space "where nothing—or possibly everything—happens." As highbrow endurance tests go, it is intriguing—but also ridiculously solemn.
Thus, I intend this blog post to incite a riot of fun. Given the tradition that Abramović is working in—that of Dada jokers and wise Fluxus fools—it seems totally legit to grin at the artist/models and even to be silly for them in a Buckingham Palace way or at the very least to say pardon me or hey, how's it going when passing between the "Imponderablia" people. Further, since "Night Sea Crossing" streams online, MoMA patrons ought to be seating themselves at the edge of the performance space proper and making funny faces in a photo-bomb fashion and holding up "John 3:16" signs and such. What? You're worried that the guards are going to scold you? If you buy into Abramović's ideas about "the transmission of pure energy," then it would be intellectually consistent to make funny faces at them, too. Is there not more to beauty than somber contemplation? Can we get some sweetness and light up in this piece? Forget about "what is art?" The question is, "Why so serious?"
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Just when the Shame Index thought he was out, How I Met Your Mother pulls him back in. Last week's attempt to retroactively complicate Robin and Barney's relationship left the Index in high dudgeon. This week's episode, by contrast, was completely disarming. A clever central conceit, a series of amusing gags, a modicum of drama, and a heartwarming but not too saccharine conclusion. This is the way it should be.
Awesome:
—Lily's birthday tiara.
—Marshall's theme for for this year's celebration of Lily's birthday ("Spanish interlude"); the birthday games he devised ("Lilial Pursuit," "Gilding the Lily"); the birthday song he wrote ("Happy Happy Lily Day"); pretty much all of Marshall's elaborate birthday plans.
—"You're just saying camera words."
—The run of skanks that Ted has insinuated into important group moments. (The Shame Index thought the word skank was perhaps poorly chosen—how many skanks have we seen Ted bring home? Not usually his style—but maybe it's exactly the word we'd expect from an enraged Lily.) Of particular note were the strident Strawberry and the girl who managed to obscure Slash in the photo at MacClaren's. And the Index always welcomes another glimpse of Ted's tumultuous relationship with Laura Prepon's Karen.
—"Fun fact: Each year my mother has Easter tea with her friend Bunny." That was a fun fact, Robin—don't let the others tell you otherwise!
—Ted's inability to remember Leilani's name.
—Barney always takes a good picture; Marshall always takes a bad one.
—"Does this hot piece of ass look like she's 42 to you?"
—All of the flashbacks to the college days, but especially the final one, in which Ted invited Lily to join the roommate photo. It was a sweet moment but not a cloying one, felt true to Ted's character, and provided a clever resolution to the standoff between Ted and Lily. An excellent piece of plotting.
—Barney's cilantro allergy, and the final group photo. It had been too long since the kicker to an episode had really worked, but last night the writers expertly applied the icing to the cake. Happy 42nd, Lori.
Shameful:
—"I put a bow on it." (This was actually kinda funny, but the Index needed something to be ashamed of, and generally speaking, Marshall is funnier when he's not working bleu.)
The Index has strong feelings about the importance of keeping birthday celebrations intimate, and thus could commiserate with Lily. Is the Index being too easy on this episode? Was there shame here the Index didn't register? Share your impressions in the comments, and bring a friend.
Update, 8:49am: Be sure to check out James Poniewozik's latest HIMYM Watch post, in which he discusses how last night's episode addressed an essential question: Why are these five people friends?
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
March 22, 2010, "Four Cops Shot"
These Are Their Stories
A man shoots and kills four cops—three men and a woman—who are eating lunch in a pizza shop.
This Is the Real Story
On Nov. 29, 2009, Maurice Clemmons entered a coffee shop in Lakewood, Wash., and killed four police officers—three men and a woman—who were eating breakfast and working on their laptops. After a two-day manhunt, Clemmons was shot and killed by a police officer.
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Most U.S. reviews of Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl compare it with Sex and the City. Like that old HBO mainstay, the British show concerns a young woman with a killer wardrobe, a penchant for voice-over narration, and a tendency to talk directly to the camera. Both have their origins in unconventional literary sources—Sex and the City grew out of Candace Bushnell's relationship column in the New York Observer, and Secret Diary of a Call Girl is adapted from an anonymous blog that spawned a hugely popular series of books. Both feature skylines, shoes, and shagging. What's more, Sex and the City's Carrie and Secret Diary of a Call Girl's Belle are both published authors. But the similarities end there.
While Carrie is merely whorish, Belle is literally a whore. (OK, a high-end "call girl.") And while Carrie was a terrible writer—didn't you always cringe when she intoned a topic sentence?—Belle's a good one. Viewers don't hear a lot of Belle's prose read aloud, but we know it's great because other characters read it, smile, and beam, "This is great!"
Of course, it makes sense that a prostitute would be a great writer, given how much the two professions have in common.
Many practitioners use pseudonyms: "Belle" is a cover identity, a device to keep Hannah's life separate from her work.
They do it for the money: In the age of unpaid blogging, writers are constantly being reminded that they shouldn't give the goods away for free.
They work with middlemen: What are publishers other than pimps? "You're on [her publisher's] books to make money." Hannah's jealous best friend reminds her. "That's what you are to him: a cash cow."
In the just-completed third season, Belle proves herself a peerless dispenser of practical writing tips. She's the Natalie Goldberg of whoring because she understands that pleasing her editor is no different from pleasing her clients. This leads to such dual-purpose gems as: "If you're going to do role-play, you have to do it completely. You have to get every detail right. You have to work out how he wants to feel, get inside his head, find the spark of fantasy, fan it until it's on fire." It's something that every writing teacher could learn from: The best writing tips also work as sex advice.
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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week, the designers worked in pairs to create a look inspired by a New York City neighborhood. Emilio Sosa and Seth Aaron Henderson were the winners; Amy Sarabi was sent home.
Hanna Rosin: Theme for today's show: How hard do we have to push on the "Mila is awful" theme before the viewers actually start to feel sorry for her? Suddenly, we were all transported to fourth-grade kickball, where our deepest anxieties are realized when no one wants us on their team—and they are all talking to each other about it. And then they let Mila describe her aesthetic as punk rock and made her model do the embarrassing "I'm at an Ozzy Osbourne show" hand gesture. And, sorry, that jacket may have been nice and well-cut and all, but it was not punk rock. My mom would comfortably wear it.
June Thomas: It wasn't punk rock, but I have to say, I liked it. It did use her usual black-and-white lines, but instead of my usual response—"Oh, Mila, more color blocking?"—I just thought, "What a cool-looking jacket."
David Plotz: Even I wouldn't have saved Amy tonight. But she's still a gloriously decent person and a better designer than some of the remaining contestants. Because her work is so time-heavy, she always falls behind.
HR: "Time heavy"? "She falls behind"? I'll tell your writers to use that as an excuse next time they miss their deadlines. She made a belted pumpkin dress—good to go with those clown pants, maybe. The judges had it right: She gets lost in her method and fails to envision the final result.
JT: Ooh, you're right, Hanna, they'd make a great ensemble! Perfect for the Crazy Town Carnival. It always speaks well of an auf'd designer when several of the survivors are reaching for the tissues when she departs. Heck, even Tim seemed positively bereft to see her go.
I could see the elimination coming when Amy laid out her pleats. It was a neat idea, reflecting the blocky architecture of the Upper East Side, but it was the clown pants fish scales all over again. Still, I'll miss her.
HR: This was a night for fabulous slivers. My two favorite details were those whiskers on Seth Aaron's jacket and then those red slits on Maya's skirt. Very classy. And I would wear Maya's jacket. That was lovely: the belt, the sleeves.
DP: Did you notice my favorite moment of the night? It came when Tim was instructing the contestants to use the Bluefly.com wall. He said, in a tone that seemed half-bored, half-aggrieved, "You know the drill on the Bluefly wall." At that moment, I felt how strongly Tim stands in for the audience. He is just as sick of the egregious, intrusive product shilling as we are! I wanted to take Collier Strong's fashionably bald head and rub it with sandpaper—and then tickle him to death with L'Oreal Paris mascara brushes.
HR: But David, it's not just L'Oreal Paris. It's Studio Secret. And without it, how will I get professional results at home?
DP: If it's such a secret, should they really be talking about it on national television? Now everyone will know about it!
I am still convinced that Emilio is a smug fraud. The great work on those winning designs belonged to Seth Aaron. Emilio made a very long and boring gown and handed Seth Aaron's model a yellow purse.
HR: I go back and forth on Emilio. I think he's no good under pressure and threat of failure—he turns into a smug jerk. But he may be basically OK. And that dress had some things going for it—the zipper, the lining. It did not move quite as nicely as it should have, and it seemed to have a little too much material around the hips, but it was interesting. I have to say, though, it's getting harder and harder to judge in detail, because, as June pointed out last week, they barely show the clothes anymore. I wonder why that is.
JT: Tonight I was struck by Seth Aaron's dynamism. There was a certain usefulness in Emilio being there to apply the brakes to the creative freight train, but, yikes, he whipped up an amazingly well-fitting denim suit in the time it would've taken me to sharpen my pencil. As the judges pointed out, there was too much going on in the suit, but individually, all those little touches were genius. And it was the touches—the golden thread, the zippers—that brought the two outfits together so well. That's what won it for them tonight.
HR: Yes, fussy was out, speed was in. What we learned about Seth Aaron tonight is that he's fast and impatient as a designer, which turned out to be good.
DP: You know who deserves serious props? Jay and Mila. They hate each other. They have radically different design sensibilities. But they worked together like adults, without the drama Emilio wished on them. All of us, at some point in our lives, have to work with people we can't stand. We should all behave so responsibly. They, much more than Emilio and Seth Aaron, deserve the cooperation prize.
JT: It was only when Anthony pointed it out that I realized how little Maya speaks. I wasn't crazy about the red panels in her skirt, but the top was lovely. I also loved Anthony's paper-lantern effect. It was evocative and astonishingly subtle for him. I think that they might have won if there had been any cohesion between the two looks.
DP: I loved the origami dragon, too. But Anthony has already won for doing a cool, three-dimensional shoulder detail. I don't think they could have given him a second victory for the same trick.
JT: True, but it's not the first time Seth Aaron has made a tight suit with a bunch of details—though he didn't win for it before, which may be the difference.
HR: I must admit, I am utterly baffled by the idea of three-dimensional origami draped randomly over a black dress. I would never wear such a thing. It seems so art project to me.
As current and former New Yorkers, what did we think of the neighborhood stereotypes: glazed duck and dragons for Chinatown, posh bitch for upper East Side, weirdo in top hat for downtown, and then fried chicken and kooky old lady for Harlem. Were those acceptable? Why didn't they go to Brooklyn, damn it!
JT: Eh, the stereotypes are useful for when they sell the show to Mongolian state television. I was relieved and impressed that the designers didn't really use them in their designs, for the most part at least. I'm glad they didn't come to Park Slope, my Brooklyn neighborhood. The mind boggles to think how Amy would've incorporated a stroller into her look.
HR: A Bugaboo? No problem. They come in orange, and the hood billows out.
JT: You know what I loved best? Seth Aaron's oversized tartan tam o'shanter-meets-African-headwrap hat. Now that I'd wear.
HR: Would you wear it with only one chandelier earring, June?
JT: Yes, but only because I still can't find the one I lost in Amy's wig bag last week.
Previous chats: Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
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America's Next Top Model is shameless, ridiculous, and consistently more entertaining than it has any right to be, especially considering that the series is currently slogging through its 14th cycle. (ANTM doesn't call its installments "seasons" because the show searches in vain for top models twice every year.) One thing the show has never been, though, is remotely relevant to the fashion industry. None of Top Model's 13 winners has gone on to have a notable mainstream modeling career, although Cycle 1's second runner-up, Elyse Sewell, has had some success in Asia.
But this year, Tyra Banks is attempting to give her juggernaut genuine fashion cred by adding a new judge to her lineup: André Leon Talley, the Vogue editor-at-large best known for his signature graduation robe get-ups and his quips. (Christina Hendricks' Golden Globes gown made the Mad Men star look like "roadside-diner peach melba," he wrote in January.) Compare Tyra's endorsement of Talley as "one of the most influential, one of the most powerful people in the entire fashion world," with her claim that fellow panelist Nigel Barker is a "noted fashion photographer."
Hyperbole (and graduation robes) aside, it's true that Talley is a legitimately important figure in the world of high fashion. And his presence has already made the show more plugged in—last night's episode featured a guest appearance by Rachel Roy, a bona fide hot designer. But a question remains: Can Talley help transform ANTM into a show that actually prioritizes fashion over trashy, manufactured drama? After all, we're talking about a program whose greatest contribution to pop culture is introducing the phrase "Bitch poured beer on my weave!" into the vernacular. Could anybody, even a Vogue editor, bring some class to a series like Top Model?
After tonight's 90-minute episode, which contained two judging ceremonies, the answer is still unclear. It does seem as though ALT is trying to add some refinement to the proceedings, mostly by peppering his critiques with words like salon, derrière, and étonné. (Clearly, the man is putting his master's in French Literature from Brown to good use.) Not to be outdone, Tyra has also added some Gallic inflection to her everyday speech; on last night's episode, she pronounced chameleon and advertisement in a ludicrous Pepé Le Pew accent.
Even so, like a gawky teen who's been given a blowout and an expensive new dress, ANTM's genetic makeup remains unchanged. A good portion of yesterday's installment was devoted to documenting a screaming match between Alasia, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks—"I'm not gonna say I grew up in the hood, but I grew up in the hood," she told us in last week's premier—-and Ren, whose androgynous haircut and tattoos indicate that she's supposed to be this season's "edgy" contestant. One of the models eliminated last night, Naduah, grew up in a religious cult. Another one, Angelea, describes her personal style as "classy ghetto."
ALT undoubtedly will be one of the most entertaining aspects of the show in Cycle 14. He's already proven himself to be more of a Janice than a Twiggy, thank God: His judging style is lively and combative, and he isn't afraid to shout over the rest of the panel. But all the fancy fashion editors in the world couldn't change ANTM from the lowbrow train wreck it's always been into something more ... chic. And maybe it's better this way; I'd take catfights and melodrama over a respectable but boring reality competition any day.
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This is a guest post from The Big Money Editor Jim Ledbetter
Fox's That '70s Show featured a version of Big Star's "In The Street" as its theme song. In a classic bit of postmodern alchemy, this means that Alex Chilton's perfect song about teenage boredom is now far better known than it was in the 1970s—but only a small percentage of that larger fan base even realizes that he wrote it.
To the purist, the sitcom's bowdlerized rendition (it's performed by Todd Griffin in Season 1, and Cheap Trick in Seasons 2 through 8) is offensive. It omits the sloppier sides of adolescent angst, particularly the line "Wish we had/ A joint so bad." Yet thinking about Chilton since his death last night at the age of 59, it seems sadly apt that it's his legacy to be mostly edited out of a popular sitcom. A teenage byproduct of extended bubblegum culture, he spent the rest of his life trying to match his oversized melodic talent to some other genre and not only failed but much of the time didn't even appear to try. It is common for rock critics to say that a guitar riff or song is "tossed off"; for Chilton, entire decades were tossed off.
I can't imagine what it would be like to achieve international rock 'n' roll fame at the age of 16, which is how old Chilton was when, as the lead singer for the hastily assembled Box Tops, he belted "The Letter" into a megahit in 1967. Even then, his artistic identity was obscured; it was Wayne Carson Thompson's song, and if radio listeners thought they were hearing the gravelly voice of a 60-year-old black singer, well, that was partly the point.
That experience taught Chilton everything he needed to know about the rock and roll business: It was sleazy, it was mass-produced, and the relationship between money and art was as arbitrary as it needed to be. Big Star, Chilton's band that put out three albums in the early '70s that are still well worth repeated listening, was a reasonably sincere effort to bring art and commerce into some clearer harmony. These records contain the biggest legacy Chilton offered rock music: lush power pop with minimal but effective lyrics. At the time, a few bands—such as Badfinger—were succeeding with similar sounds, but their influence could really be heard a generation later in Teenage Fan Club and Matthew Sweet.
But Big Star records didn't sell, and Chilton slid into a long period of what can charitably be called experimentation. Modern music is overflowing with examples of artists who pursue new sounds, with or without the support of their fans, sometimes yielding great artistic success (Miles Davis), sometimes unlistenable self-indulgence (Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music). With Chilton, the goal seemed less to innovate than simply to retreat. He couldn't succeed with his own music, and couldn't stand to reproduce others' songs in a straight way, so in 1979 he released Like Flies on Sherbert, a deliberately mutilated compilation of half-assed songs. This was followed by Bach's Bottom, which not only rhymed with the place he found himself—rock bottom—but was a depressed pun about the band that made him famous.
With so many rock artists manqué, we look reflexively, almost hopefully, for the bottle or the needle. With Chilton, it was hard to tell, and seemed beside the point; his more fundamental problem was that he couldn't find a musical role that was genuinely satisfying.
The New York punk scene revived him to a degree, mostly as a producer, and a modest Chilton cult and legend began to grow. Everyone cites this lyric from the Replacements song "Alex Chilton": "Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round," but dozens would be closer to the truth. And if the public was indifferent to him, Chilton, who supported himself with dishwashing jobs, seemed to feel the same way. Who else would put out a collection of jazz standards like "Let's Get Lost" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me," as Chilton did in 1994, and undermine it by calling it "Clichés"?
I saw him live in the mid-'90s at the old Knitting Factory, and one verse into a requested Big Star song—I think it was "In the Street"—he stopped and said: "I can't sing this song. What was I, 19 when I wrote it? And for complex musical reasons we're not going to go into, we can't play it in a different key." Which is kind of funny, but few were laughing. He also went through a stage where he would only play covers of cheesy Italian pop songs, which is exactly as rewarding as it sounds.
Yet he continued to tour, sometimes driving himself around in an old station wagon. One hears that the royalties from That '70s Show are what kept him going in recent years, and, Lord knows, he earned it. It's hard not to sympathize with someone who can't or doesn't want to go back to a phony commercial success. And that's the way I will think about Chilton: like Danny Bonaduce or the kids from Facts of Life, caught between the trappings of fame but unable to grow up in public.
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Hardcore enthusiasts of The Wire can be forgiven for skipping (or, more likely, not having heard of) The Avon Barksdale Story: Legends of the Unwired, released last week on DVD. The unrated "docudrama" purports to tell the true story of the "real" Avon Barksdale. What more: The duo behind the project, Nathan Avon Barksdale and his associate Kenny Jackson, have accused David Simon of exploiting their life stories. But this allegation isn't terribly convincing. The Unwired, with its poor production values, reeks of an opportunistic effort to make a quick buck off Simon's success. The pair's credibility is also in serious question. It seems that "Avon" is not actually Nathan Barksdale's middle name but one that he appropriated for the purpose of making this movie.
Barksdale is not completely without charm. The descriptions of his childhood, spent hustling drug dealers, taking brutal beatings from the same criminals, and "consolidating power" on his paper route, help humanize an otherwise garish thug. But his interviewer, the actor Wood Harris, stifles his charisma. Harris, who was brilliant in his portrayal of Avon in The Wire, is completely inept as a journalist—asking softball questions with clumsy follow-ups. The dull segments on various other Baltimore characters, like police officer Oscar "Bunk" Requere, fail to offer any counterbalance to the fetishized view of gangster life presented by Barksdale and his ex-cronies. They contain none of the poignant realism that made The Wire such an important piece of social commentary.
All that being said, The Unwired contains some hilariously shoddy dramatic re-enactments—which in and of themselves are worth watching. In the cheesiest one, a young Avon beats up a rival gang member, who pitifully tumbles over a two-foot brick wall and slumps to the ground in a sad heap before plotting his revenge:
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Barack Obama is a front-running, risk-averse elitist. These are the obvious conclusions to draw from the president's NCAA bracket, which was revealed by ESPN on Wednesday. Just as he picked prohibitive favorites Florida in 2007 and North Carolina last year, Obama has gone with the chalk in 2010, picking Kansas to win the title. Joining the Jayhawks in the presidential Final Four: No. 1 seed Kentucky and No. 2 seeds Kansas State and Villanova.
Just like in 2008 and 2009, when Obama proved unwilling to make any outré selections, he's gone this year with conventional first-round upsets: Siena over Purdue, Murray State over Vanderbilt, and Cornell over Temple. The Ivy Leaguers "gave Kansas a run for its money" in an early-season game, Obama told ESPN's Andy Katz. (Perhaps the president, a Harvard Law grad, was influenced by Cornell's newfound position as the "Lady Gaga of the law-school world.")
According to ESPN.com's Bracket Analyzer, Obama's first-round picks merit a "C," meaning the president did an average job of "identifying potential sleeper picks and favorites with tough matchups." More telling, his picks throughout the entire tournament have a consistently microscopic "Daredevil Rating." If he wants to win his office pool, ESPN.com suggests, the commander-in-chief should "consider taking more risk and picking more upsets." (Perhaps he should read Chris Wilson's article on how to win an NCAA pool.)
Is there any vote-grubbing hidden in Obama's bracket? While a nod to Butler could be interpreted as a play to voters in the Hoosier state—home of an open Senate seat previously held by Evan Bayh—Obama advanced the Bulldogs only to the Sweet 16. If there's any broader strategy here, it seems more personal than electoral. Obama explained to ESPN's Katz that he picked Duke to advance to the Elite Eight because he's been "brainwashed" by his special assistant Reggie Love, who played as a reserve for the national champion 2001 Blue Devils.
Obama, who shows a Clintonian familiarity with college basketball—he correctly notes that "New Mexico's got a good record but not a real good schedule" and that Kansas State coach Frank Martin is "a scary dude"—did make one gaffe in filling out his bracket. Syracuse is not, as the president scrawled it out before being corrected, spelled "SYCACUSE."
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Italy's undersecretary for health has declared war on chemical additives. Last month, the Italian food blog Caput Mundi Cibus reported on a new set of regulations, in effect Feb. 18, that ban restaurant chefs from cooking with (or even owning) chemical additives like aspartame, nitrites, and MSG.
At first glance, the health ministry's decree may seem prudent. The new law is supposed to protect customers from being misled, and to protect those "with special dietary needs." Sounds pretty reasonable—American foodies have been warned over and over again to avoid any foods that aren't natural. (That's why we're making red-velvet cakes with beets and cherry juice, instead of FD&C red No. 40.)
But the ban on additives doesn't apply to industrial manufacturers. (Eateries are free to serve as much packaged, processed food as they want.) Why have individual chefs been singled out while mass-producers are off the hook? The real purpose of the law is not to protect health but to preserve traditional cooking methods from decadent innovation. The health ministry is trying to prohibit molecular gastronomy—the high-tech cooking style made popular by Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, and Wylie Dufresne. There's even been an attempt to prohibit the use of liquid nitrogen, used by avant-garde chefs to flash-freeze vegetables and ice cream.
Yes, liquid nitrogen can be dangerous, but food scientists contacted by Nature magazine called the law "completely irrational." One pointed out that MSG, now prohibited from Italian restaurants in its pure form, occurs naturally in Parmesan cheese and tomatoes. As for the molecular gastronomists, they weren't really using any of the banned additives in the first place. Even the local chapter of the Slow Food movement has spoken out against the rules.
The whole business reminds me of another peculiar moment in Italian politics. In 2004, maverick art critic and government minister Vittorio Sgarbi formed Il Partito della Bellezza, or the "Beauty Party"—a group dedicated to preserving the country's art, civilization, and natural vistas. At first it seemed as if the party's candidates, so devoted to protecting the landscape, would fall in line with mainstream environmentalism. As with last month's food regulations, though, cultural conservatism won the day. Sgarbi hated the idea of blighting the Italian countryside with anything at all—even clean-energy projects. "Any Italian citizen who sees the legitimacy of windmills should be arrested," he said.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
March 15, 2010, "Innocence"
These Are Their Stories
After Cedric Stuber is found guilty of murdering a gay man in a hate crime, the Hudson University Innocence Coalition challenges the conviction. The coalition has found a new witness, drug dealer Ricardo Diaz, who claims the victim's husband asked about finding a hit man to kill him. When ADA Cutter and the rest of the team investigate, they discover that Diaz only agreed to testify after a student from the coalition gave him booze, $100 in cash, and offered to help find him a lawyer. When Cutter notices that students who helped to secure exonerations for coalition clients received better grades, he subpoenas their academic records and e-mail archives.
This Is the Real Story
In October 2009, according to the New York Times, prosecutors subpoenaed "the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages" of journalism students involved in Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project." Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better ... is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they nterviewed provided evidence to exonerate [Anthony] McKinney." The Chicago Tribune reported that prosecutors "questioned the quality of the students' investigation, saying some witnesses either recanted what they told the Medill Innocence Project or said they were improperly influenced for their statements to students investigating the crime." Last week, a judge agreed to dismiss evidence uncovered by the Medill students.
A hat tip to the Chicago Tribune, which ran its own "ripped from the headlines" story before Brow Beat had digested its breakfast.
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The National Book Critics Circle announced their annual literary awards last night. You can find essays on some of the winners in the Slate archives—but to save you the trouble of using our search engine, we've included links to the relevant articles below.
Nathan Heller called Blake Bailey's winning biography of John Cheever "masterful," noting that it successfully captured the author's "sweet" and "sour" sides. (You can also read Bailey's own pieces for Slate—including one on Cheever—here.)
Of Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Adam Kirsch said, it "places more faith in science's 'beauty' than its 'terror.' "
David Plotz dubbed Hilary Mantel's novel about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, "pure pleasure to read; a 560-page man crush." Troy Patterson, John Swansburg, and Jacob Weisberg will be discussing the novel in next Monday's Audio Book Club—so stay tuned.
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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week the "Garnier challenge" was to design a look inspired by one of the elements. Jonathan Peters was the winner; Ben Chmura was sent home.
Hanna Rosin: I suddenly have a strong urge to rush out to the CVS and buy some Garnier Fructis. Anyone else feeling that?
June Thomas: For some reason, I want to go to Paris on a blue fly.
David Plotz: Ben made many mistakes tonight, but none more serious than his phone call to his husband. It's an automatic death sentence. It's like being the coed in the horror movie. The phone call signals weakness, an unwillingness to sacrifice everything—loved ones, children, the outside world—to fashion. Did Laura Bennett, the redhead with five kids, ever call home? I don't think so.
JT: We know Ben is big on comic-book heroes, and panties over pants work for Superman, but on his model, that jock-strap look was, as Heidi said, bizarre.
I was hyperventilating, worrying that Amy might be sent home. Sad to say, it would've been deserved. That horror of an outfit said absolutely nothing about fire. (In a challenge where all the designers seemed to resist an obvious interpretation of "their" element, Amy's was the least connected.)
HR: David was feeling that same panic. But jeez, you two. The clown pants. This totally bizarre wig bag. How many lives does a cat get?
JT: I know, I know. The judges were right: Amy gets too attached to a concept and she loses sight of beauty and elegance. I can't even try to excuse this week's weird effort. Well, let me try one thing: Why are we still having one-day challenges so far into the competition? With a little more time, she could've started over. Tight time constraints reward safe choices.
DP: If they had booted Amy, I would have withdrawn from this conversation in protest.
But even setting aside my crush on her, which grows stronger every week, I didn't think it was such an awful dress. It had a crazy, weird ambition. It certainly outpointed Anthony's tedious interpretation of charcoal, or Mila's Benetton outfit, or Emilio's literal-minded jungle.
HR: Well, to be fair, I feel that this challenge was Brüno-bait. Ask them to design based on the elements, and you will get back lots of strained fashion nonsense, such as "uncontrollable laughter" and "inside an explosion." Of course, this can wind up being sublime, but in this case, it didn't. This was definitely the worst crop on the runway so far. The ones that were interesting were really, really interesting, but the rest were a total mess. What did you guys think of Seth Aaron's leather manga wear?
DP: Leather manga—great phrase! I am not a big leather guy myself (nor do I like tickling), but Seth Aaron's leather thrilled me. He took a hard material and made it swoop and swing with energy. The swooshy shoulder details won the night.
JT: I wasn't knocked out by Seth Aaron's piece. A black leather suit with a monster bum flap to represent air—excuse me, midnight air? If you say so, man. It felt too hard to me, but I can't in good conscience put any of the other entries above it.
HR: I'm with David. I loved the way the light bounced off the leather in Seth's jacket, and the fabric moved in little waves. I was not so enamored of that shelf in the back; it seemed a little like carrying a toilet seat with you. But I forgive the high concept because the challenge was so high-concept.
JT: I would have sent Mila home this week. The stretched-out turtleneck and yoga pants were beyond boring, and the vest was just self-consciously off-kilter. I found her look unforgivably bland. Surely that's a worse sin than excessive conceptual ambition?
DP: Wasn't it odd the way they accused Maya of plagiarism? That ensures she won't win the whole competition and probably won't make it to Bryant Park. I don't know enough about fashion to know if it was a fair cop, but fair or not, it's devastating. That will stick to her. I bet that within three weeks they accuse her of making another too-derivative garment and bounce her. Which would be too bad, because she makes lovely clothes.
HR: I don't think they were implying a knockoff, the way Kenley stole that feather wedding dress concept from Alexander McQueen a few seasons back, although I'm not sure about that. I think they just meant an aesthetic similar to Nina Ricci's—structured dresses with airy ruffles.
JT: They should at least have shown us some of the Nina Ricci garments they thought had influenced Maya. It's bad television not to.
What did you think of Jonathan's win? He definitely had the best narrative. The romance of laughter is a lovely idea, and he did some great phrase-making—"laughter is transparent, and laughter envelops you"—but I wasn't that sold on the dress. Cerri looked washed-out to me.
DP: Both Hanna and I have nattered on about our mystification with one-sleeved dresses, so I won't revisit that. But even besides the one-sleevedness of Jonathan's dress, I just didn't see much to like (or dislike). On television—even in hi-def—it was very indistinct. Whatever magical details it had were not legible at 1,280 pixels.
HR: I quite liked Jonathan's dress. It did not translate well on television, but I think it was interesting to take pale and run with it, adding shades of rose and pink, rather than work against it. Having just seen The September Issue, I'm sold on Grace Coddington's romantic view of the world, and his dress would have fit perfectly into one of her shoots.
JT: I don't mean to whine about another timeless Project Runway trope, but when we're down to nine designers, surely there should be a little more time to linger on the garments on the runway. Do we need all those waking up at Atlas moments or worried looks in the workroom? I had to hit replay several times just to see the outfits.
HR: I agree, the setup for this show was particularly lame and unnecessary. Here are buildings! But you will be making the opposite of buildings! Plus, they gave hair guy way too much airtime, enough to get out the whole phrase "infused with the latest in beauty technology."
A question for you both: How do you think this Mila-Maya friendship will work out? Do you believe evil Mila when she says she'd be happy if Maya won?
DP: I believe nothing that Mila says, not even the and a.
JT: It is beyond pointless to complain about manipulation on reality TV, but that rivalry—or is it a friendship?—seems particularly manufactured. They look alike—and although the producers are kind enough to leave it unsaid, surely we're all thinking, "Wow, Mila could be Maya's mom!"—but their design aesthetics are totally different. Would Mila be happy if Maya won? I doubt she'd be happy if anyone else took the prize. But all this is just a distraction from the big event: Amy's elevation to design superstardom.
HR: You Amy snobs! Just because she's ethnic and nice. I'm switching to Jay's team.
JT: He's ethnic and nice, too!
HR: Maybe it's All About Eve, and Maya will have the last laugh.
Previous chats: Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
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Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland shattered Avatar's record for a 3-D premiere this past weekend—raking in $116 million to Avatar's $77 million. Alice also set a record for the "biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel." How did Alice slay the blue cats?
As Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray explains, Alice opened on more 3-D screens than any movie ever before; 2,251 to Avatar's 2,038. Alice opened on more IMAX screens as well: 188 to Avatar's 178. Gray estimates that inflated ticket prices at IMAX and 3-D showings added around $22 million to Alice's total opening gross.
Alice's PG rating also makes it accessible to more people than Avatar, rated PG-13. Relatedly, Burton's film seems to have a wider demographic appeal. During Avatar's opening weekend, exit polls indicated that 57 percent of the movie's audience was male, and that 62 percent was 25 or older. Alice, though, did well among a number of different groups. According to Disney exit polls (cited by Gray), 55 percent of the film's audience was female and 54 percent was under the age of 25. Parents with children made up 39 percent of Alice's audience, while couples accounted for 36 percent. And crucially, Alice managed to draw in different audiences at different points throughout the weekend. As Disney distribution president Chuck Viane told the Los Angeles Times: Young adults attended midnight showings on Thursday, couples on dates saw the movie on Friday night, and families flocked to Saturday matinees.
Despite these remarkable numbers, it's unlikely that Alice will continue to outpace Avatar, especially since Burton's film will be moved off of most 3-D screens on March 26—to make room for Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon. The film's critical reception has also been less than enthusiastic: It currently has a middling 52 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Slate's own Dana Stevens says that Alice "represents the confluence of a number of depressing cinematic trends: the need to ransack classic children's literature for ideas, the unimaginative layering of 3-D technology onto a visual universe that would look just fine without it, and the belief that slathering familiar storylines with a superficial gloss of Gothic ‘darkness' constitutes a substantial reinterpretation." Ouch—maybe Tim Burton should wipe that Cheshire grin off his face.
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It's a bleak day for the Lisa Simpsons of the world: Corey Haim, '80s teen idol, died today at 38, possibly of an overdose.
It's a sad, old Hollywood story, of course—the bright young thing who flames out, thanks to some unholy combination of the pressure, the temptation, the changing celebrity marketplace, or a desire to escape a squeaky-clean image. Gawker just posted a field guide to child stars gone bad, featuring some of the most blatant cases, like Jodie Sweetin of Full House (who became a crystal-meth addict; insert "How rude!" joke here) and Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes.
But, clearly, some child stars go on to lead relatively normal, stable lives, at least by Hollywood standards. Some have to spin out of control first: The poster child for this pathway is Drew Barrymore, who landed in rehab at 13 but is now the epitome of sunshine-y good feelings and atta-girl can-do-ism. Some turn out OK because they develop safer, nonshowbiz sideline careers. Science, for instance, seems to be a good way to avoid the demons: See Mayim Bialik from Blossom and Danica McKellar of The Wonder Years. Some celebri-tots just manage to age gracefully into adult stars (Jodie Foster, Reese Witherspoon, Justin Timberlake, to name a few). Still others wait for the roles to catch up with their new, not-so-cute faces (Jackie Earle Haley).
For every cautionary tale, then, you can come up with a counterexample. But is there a way to predict which child stars will flame out and which will turn out OK? Is it the age at which they start performing? The kinds of roles they play? The amount of fame they achieve right off the bat? "There is nothing natural about the making of child stars," notes critic Margo Jefferson in her 2006 book on Michael Jackson. But would it be possible to engineer one that would turn out sane, happy, and healthy? Help us come up with a unified theory: Add your thoughts and best hypotheses in the comment thread.
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We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
March 8, 2010, "Brilliant Disguise"
These Are Their Stories
When a young out-of-towner is murdered in a hotel room, the police suspect Robbie Vickery, a man she ate brunch with shortly after arriving in New York. He works at a university lab and is angry with graduate students who, he believes, treat the lab rats with insufficient respect.
This Is the Real Story
In September 2009, Yale graduate student Annie Le was killed in a research lab on campus, allegedly by Raymond Clark, a lab technician who worked in the building. According to the New York Times, "Some co-workers have said Mr. Clark antagonized colleagues and research students he believed were cavalier about rodent-handling regulations." The New York Post quoted a source who claimed that "Clark was ‘a control freak' who insisted on lab cleanliness and ‘had issues' with the way Le kept her lab and her research mice."
These Are Their Stories
The police eventually become suspicious of Alex Conway, a graduate student who conducts experiments in Vickery's lab. They discover that Conway has been arranging hotel-room meetings with prostitutes, whom he robs to cover his gambling debts. When the police arrest Conway, he is carrying the same kind of plastic zip ties used in the attacks.
This Is the Real Story
In April 2009, Boston University medical student Philip Markoff was arrested en route to Foxwoods Casino and charged with the murder of a woman he met through Craigslist, as well as six other counts, including armed robbery. According to the New York Times, "A search of Mr. Markoff's home ... produced a 9-mm semiautomatic handgun, ammunition and zip ties like those used in the attacks." A timeline produced by the Boston Globe notes, "Authorities say gambling may have been behind the attacks."
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Earlier this season, the Shame Index complained until he was blue in the face about how poorly How I Met Your Mother handled the relationship between Barney and Robin. The Index was especially irritated that the series expected viewers to accept that after the breakup Robin would sit idly by and listen to Barney boast of his conquests just like old times. This week, HIMYM tried to address this issue with a day-late, dollar-short episode that has the Index in a lather all over again.
Shameful:
—Jennifer Lopez. The Shame Index has a rather large soft spot for Lopez, dating back to her work opposite George Clooney in the trunk of a car. Like last week's special guest star, Carrie Underwood, Lopez was perfectly fine in her limited role, but the Index's complaint stands: Too many cameos. They're a crutch.
—Ted's super date musical number. Too soon.
—Also: A carriage ride, ice skating, dinner, and a show—this is Ted Mosby's idea of a superdate? Why not throw in a ride on the Ferris wheel in the Toys "R" Us in Times Square.
—Robin's mourning period. So much wrong here, the Index hardly knows where to begin. First off, the whole set-up doesn't really make much sense. Why is Robin so sad that Barney is taking Anita on a superdate? Robin asked Anita to crush Barney's spirit; she's worried that Anita's vaunted system of saying no will be overcome by a carriage ride, a pair of rented skates, and rear orchestra seats at The Lion King? This is what brings things to a head? Not Barney's attempt to sleep with seven women in seven days? Not Barney's playbook of scams, cons, hustles, hoodwinks, gambits, stratagems, and bamboozles? The writers tried to address the "why now?" question by showing us a flimsy montage of Robin crying after being exposed to Barney's jerkiness over the last few months. But the Index wasn't buying that Sixth Sense-ish trick.
—The Index gets, of course, that Robin was upset last night because Barney never treated her to a superdate. But, again, the set-up doesn't make sense. The super date isn't romantic. It's just a means to an end—the latest Barney stratagem for nailing the latest woman to present a challenge. And this is what bothers her? That she never got the royal treatment from Barney? She's not troubled by the fact that Barney returned to his promiscuous ways after their breakup without so much as a pang for her?
—Are we meant, now, to feel as though Barney is absolved? Giving Robin his super date and throwing himself in the Hudson were magnanimous acts, sure. But Barney's contrite moment at the shooting range rang hollow after weeks of watching him bed woman after woman as Robin looked on. HIMYM tried to show us a more complicated, thoughtful, emotion-having Barney when he and Robin got together, but the series quickly backed away from that Barney in favor of the sex hungry caricature. You can't have it both ways.
—Don. The Index has expressed skepticism about Don from the moment he first appeared, but he has also held out hope that HIMYM would eventually make some effort to show us why Don is a worthy match for Robin. Unless the Index missed an episode, however, Don's lone act of gentlemanliness to date consists of agreeing to wear pants when he's on set. Marshall seems to think Don is a great guy (and even claimed last night that Don is smart, which came as a surprise). But the series has given us very little reason to share Marshall's estimation. Did any viewer out there pump a fist when Robin and Don kissed against the romantic backdrop of a poorly green-screened fireworks display? What a waste of a courtship.
Awesome:
—Robin's recent story: "Which rodents to avoid on the subway—the answer may surprise you."
—The bang-bang song. The Index, in a bad mood after this upsetting episode, was ready to put the bang-bang song in the Shameful ledger. Then he caught himself singing it in the shower this morning. It is catchy.
—Barney and Anita's hot and heavy discussion of small, flaccid fibers. "You're in luck because mine's the tiniest."
—Of Course You're Still Single, Take a Look at Yourself You Dumb Slut.
—"But um"
—"And frankly I'm still angry at the empire."
Bang, bang, bangety-bang. Bang, bang, bang bangety-bang ... Sing along in the comments.
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
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Last week, The New Yorker and The Oxford American each ran stories about the enigmatic, vagabond Szechuan chef Peter Chang—an award-winning cook who has, over the years, set up shop in a string of unassuming, strip-mall-type restaurants from Virginia to Georgia to Tennessee. Chang has a tantalizing m.o.: After a while—often no more than a matter of months—he will ditch a restaurant, leaving his growing camp of devotees to groan in dismay, speculate about his motives on message boards, and, in some cases, hunt him down at his newest gig. In his delightful Oxford American piece, the food writer Todd Kliman recalls with a mixture of awe and shame the day he drove a full six hours to gorge himself on Chang's ma la wizardry, and Calvin Trillin's New Yorker story features a similar, if less epic, pilgrimage.
The stories got me hungry. But they also got me thinking: Is it possible "authenticity" is overrated in the cult of Chinese cooking? Both stories have in common an implicit privileging of real-deal Chinese cuisine over its Americanized, beef-and-broccoli incarnation. In Kliman's story, he steps into one of Chang's restaurants and momentarily fears he has the wrong place when a man "in running shorts" picks up his order: "chicken and green beans, orange beef, General Tso's chicken."
Kliman isn't snobbish about this (although his decision to mention the running shorts suggests, perhaps, some low-level irritation at this patron's lack of reverence in the temple). But his piece (and Trillin's) invokes some received foodie wisdom about Chinese cooking: That the stuff they make for themselves is better than the stuff they make for us. Chowhound types often fill message boards with their scorn for the ignorant diners who think "Chinese food" means General Tso and his sham, mongrel army.
Interestingly, this isn't really a question of high versus low cuisine, nor is it a question of native versus non-native chefs. The foodie line on the supremacy of authentic Chinese cooking pits one perceived "folk" consensus (everyday Chinese food, cooked by Chinese people, as Chinese people like it) against another (everyday Chinese food, cooked by Chinese people, as Americans like it). But it's important to note that what we understand as authentic Chinese cooking is often itself a hybridized beast to begin with: Dishes from Qingdao, for instance, feature pine nuts, creamed corn, and, according to the critic Robert Sietsema, a pervasive German influence. Qingdao-based Chinese food has an impure bloodline, in other words-and it can still be fantastic. Are we participating in a sort of knee-jerk exoticism if we decide that impure, American-based Chinese food is of a lesser order, by definition?
Of course, if you only ever order General Tso's Chicken at your local take-out spot, your experience of Chinese food is a narrow one, mediated by the desires and preferences of the "mainstream" American palate. But isn't it possible, say, that Peter Chang's General Tso's is a divine dish in its own right? Would a chef this stellar really send out a sub-par plate just because it falls on his restaurant's "American," rather than Chinese, menu? If I order orange beef at a Chang restaurant—or, say, one of its Flushing, Queens, brethren—am I necessarily getting the weak stuff and squandering an opportunity? Sure, it won't be as nuclear-fallout hot as the chengdu spicy aromatic fish broth, but does that mean it won't be as delicious—a taste worth savoring and knowing about?
The answers to these questions may be simply: "Nope," "Yep," "Yep," and "Nope!" I'm ready to accept that there's an intrinsic limit to the complexity of Americanized Chinese food—or that otherwise virtuoso chefs phone it in for that half of their menu. But don't we owe it to our stomachs to at least interrogate the prejudice a bit?
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After each episode of Project Runway's seventh season, a gaggle of Slatesters gather to dish about the show. This week the challenge was to create an unconventional look from hardware materials, along with an accessory to complement and enhance the look. Jay Nicolas Sario was the winner; Jesse LeNoir was sent home.
June Thomas: Well, we got the challenge we had been wanting, something with unconventional materials that really pushed the designers to be creative ... but I can't say that I enjoyed it. Perhaps because I feel cheated about the elimination.
David Plotz: That was a travesty. I don't see how they could possibly allow Emilio to continue after that obscenity of a bikini. Nina obviously saved him, but why?
Hanna Rosin: Well unfortunately you can't kick people out for mild dishonesty or unpleasantness. If Emilio had only said: Well, I had this idea, and it didn't quite come together, so I rigged up this Valley of the Dolls slutsuit—in other words, if Emilio had been Anthony—we would have forgiven him. But instead he pretended that he had planned it that way all along.
What I found most unappealing about him is that he is one of those fashion snobs who insists on "sophistication."
DP: I was so moved by Anthony's corny, but totally apt, remark about Emilio's horror: "One thing that never goes out of style is making a woman look like a lady." This is why Anthony will be going home in the next two weeks, but it is a wonderfully humane sentiment, and it did capture the fundamental vileness of Emilio's look, which is that it was prurient trickery, trying to disguise its incompetence and lack of innovation with pure sluttiness. And that's why he should have gone.
HR: David, one nice thing about this season is how Anthony always comes through (as a personality, not as a designer). He walks that edge of being a gay mama's boy front-pew Georgia cliché, but then he always tips back into the genuine.
JT: I didn't feel like the judges were playing fair this week. Although I never expected Jesse to get very far, he has surprised me in the last few weeks by turning out some genuinely creative looks. Jesse's outfit had an interesting shape and a couple of nice touches. Emilio's ensemble was indecent. I couldn't bring myself to examine it too closely for fear of seeing the model's lady bits. Jesse was sent home because the judges didn't like that his clothes looked like hardware, but Emilio's washers and bolts? What were they but hardware? (And what was Emilio's accessory? As far as I could tell, other than a bolt on a string around her wrist, there was nothing to Emilio's look but a skimpy swimsuit.)
HR: But, June, other than that belted lady noir look from the kid challenge, what memorable thing has Jesse produced? He was one of the buzzed-about contestants before this season started, the Thurston Howell of the bunch. And he pretty much faded into the background. I do have the sense that Emilio—despite this hardware breakdown—is the more evolved designer.
JT: I've not been a fan of Jesse's—he was often unlikable. His pre-series buzz was that he didn't really belong—he was someone who wanted to be on a reality show rather than someone who wanted to be in fashion. Other than the Madeleine dress for the kids challenge and a couple of things that you saw only if you slowed down the super-fast runway shows, he was definitely middle of the pack. You're right that Emilio has a much better chance of being a real designer. All that said, I still think that Emilio should not be on the show after what he sent down the runway tonight. We know that contestants get booted from Project Runway for one bad garment. And that was a very bad garment.
DP: As always, the unusual materials challenge brought out the best in the best designers. Amy could easily have been a fourth finalist with her dignified sandpaper dress. (If Mila's skill is color blocking, whatever that is, Amy's is clearly building texture with layering—sedimentary dresses.) Jay's trash bags were gorgeous. Maya's necklace was the coolest thing I've ever seen. And even Jonathan and Ben made their copper beautiful.
JT: Jay's garbage-bags-to-leather trick was all the more miraculous because, as Heidi said, we've seen it tried before. In Season 5, Stella almost went home early because she couldn't work magic on trash bags. Jay did, though, and I loved seeing him make the fit work. (And what a sound bite his model provided when she told him, "If you need me to Crisco, I will.") Tonight, Jay solved a problem, and Emilio most certainly did not.
HR: Fashion-wise, I thought this was the highlight for this season. Jay's faux-leather outfit was amazing. Mila's kicky skirt was awesome. And I'll eat my hat if they don't start selling key necklaces on the streets of midtown Manhattan this summer.
JT: Tonight I was glad I didn't have to choose a winner: I loved all the top three designs, and I agree that Amy's sandpaper-and-grommets creation was gorgeous. She has a gift for finding subtly beautiful color combinations. (She does seem incapable of designing a garment with an even hem, however.) I also liked Maya's look—and I hate that she didn't get any perceptible reward for her fabulous accessory, a part of the challenge that was important enough that they put a jewelry designer on the judging panel ... until it didn't suit the storyline, and they forget all about it. Mila's dress felt costumey to me—at least in the bodice—and it was obvious that it was made of hardware store materials, but the skirt had fabulous movement. Her accessory was a joke, though. That wasn't a cuff. That was a tag stuck around her model's wrist.
HR: So disagree about the cuff. What a witty idea, to turn a mini metal sign into a bracelet. The key necklace was more beautiful, but the cuff showed a rare flash of humor.
JT: I admit that the color scheme was right. I guess I'm feeling a bit burned by the whole accessory challenge. We didn't even see most of the designers' accessories. What was Jay's? His braided belt?
DP: I have been watching American Idol for the past couple of weeks, and one striking difference between the two shows—which are in some ways very similar in their respect for virtuosity and hard work—is how obviously intelligent (in a verbal, smarty-pants way) the Project Runway contestants are. We heard so much witty cross talk this week—Anthony's quip, Emilio and Jonathan's riff on everyone being in the bottom 10, Jonathan and Amy joking about copper. PR contestants would make great dinner party guests, in part, I suppose, because so much of fashion is being able to tell a story about fashion.
HR: That's a great observation, David. I think it also has to do with the kinds of people who go into fashion and the kinds who become singers. Fashion people tend to have spent their adolescence as outsiders and oddballs—gay boy in an oversized family hiding in the closet sketching; girl who spends too much time alone in her room making collages. Singers, meanwhile, are the opposite types—showy, center of attention, popular, or at least desperate-to-be-popular types.
DP: You guys have not taken my question! Why did Nina save Emilio? What did she see there?
JT: I think Hanna is right that Emilio has done more in previous weeks (though not in the last two or three) to show that he has what it takes to make it in fashion. It cannot have been anything in tonight's design. Yes, the styling was bold, but that's because it was a smoke screen.
DP: If by "have what it takes to make it in fashion" you mean saying vicious things about fellow competitors, bragging unjustifiably about his own talent, and brazenly lying, I guess you're right.
HR: I also think Nina was seeing something there. Jesse pulled the oldest trick in the Project Runway book—throw out the word futuristic to explain away the Tin Man. Emilio's was indecent—and he was indecently humorless and dishonest about it—but it does take some kind of eye to combine aluminum washers with hot pink string.
But before I come close to defending Emilio, I want to remind us all that he described that look as "strong and sexy." That was really his final crime. Barbie and the Valley of the Dolls are many things, but strong and sexy are not among them.
Previous chats: Weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
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In their Lost TV Club discussions, Slate's Jack Shafer, Seth Stevenson, and Chadwick Matlin have found plenty to take issue with in the show's final season. My biggest gripe with the series this year, though, might be the drastically reduced screen time for Ben Linus. How could this fascinatingly inscrutable mind-gamer—adored by fans, loathed by Jack Shephard—transform so rapidly into such a sniveling has-been? Among my hopes for the show is that Linus's raditude will be restored. In the meantime, however, I have this recently unearthed YouTube clip to help me along:
Yes, that's a much younger Linus himself—or, in the alternate universe we call "real life," the actor Michael Emerson—portraying a prison counselor in a 1992 Department of Corrections training video. This video is, for the most part, a happy curiosity, but there's also something uncanny about it. At first, Emerson's Counselor Andrews isn't given much room to flex: A voice-over steps on his lines something nasty up top. But when he tries to calm down a tantrum-throwing prisoner, it's pure Linus: the disarmingly bugged eyeballs, the hyper-articulated speech, the eerily calm affect giving way to agitated twitching, the smug grin that telegraphs levels of menace, the weird hair.
When Andrews says, "How you doing, Higgins? Hear we got a little bit of a misunderstanding here," a little shiver runs down my spine. That's Ben Linus, Higgins! He will call down a smoke monster on your unruly ass! Or, you know, the prison psychologist.
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We all know that Law
& Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every
week, Brow Beat matches L&O's
plot points to the events that inspired them.
March 1, 2010, "Steel-Eyed Death"
These Are Their
Stories
Four members of the Morgan family are found stabbed to death
in their apartment—the father with a knife in his neck. After some dogged
gumshoe work, Detectives Lupo and Bernard track down a horror-core band that
uses a knife in the neck as its logo. They also find a Web site for horror-core
fans, or "Juggalos," with photos of the Morgan crime scene taken before the
police arrived. Justin Sachs, a Juggalo who always carries a hatchet in his
backpack and sometimes wears clown makeup, is convicted of the murders.
This Is the Real
Story
As a story in the Phoenix
New Times explained
in November 2008, "Juggalos are fans of [Insane Clown Posse], a Detroit-bred
rap duo with KISS-like face-paint and ludicrously profane lyrics. The band has
a massive underground following, particularly in their native Midwest, as well
as Colorado, Utah,
and Arizona."
The logo of Psychopathic Records,
ICP's label, features a man carrying a hatchet.
March 1, 2010 "Boy on Fire"
These Are Their
Stories
Cesar Ramirez, a charter-school student, is set on fire and
killed on his way home from school. Several students at a nearby public school
are found to have footage of the murder on their cell phones. It turns out that
the killers, also students at the public school, had stolen Cesar's phone before
lighting him on fire to record the attack.
This Is the Real
Story
In September 2009, 16-year-old Chicago honor student Derrion Albert was
beaten to death on his way home from school. A passer-by made a cell-phone
video of the beating, which was later distributed
by police and made available by broadcast and online media outlets.
Readers, did I miss any
headlines? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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CBS put its comedies into reruns out of
deference to NBC's Olympics juggernaut, so it had been a couple of weeks since the last installment of How I Met Your Mother. The Shame
Index, an aspiring Nordic skier and adamant supporter of Julia Mancuso's tiara,
thoroughly enjoyed the XXI Winter Games, but had one issue he'd like to take up
with the planners in Vancouver: No Robin Sparkles. The Index would have slotted
a performance of "Let's Go
to the Mall" in the closing ceremonies, somewhere between Inward Eye's "Day
After Day" and Neil Young's "Long May You Run."
Awesome:
—Barney's catalog of failed "bait." Slot machine: too fun.
Trampoline: too dangerous.
—Teacup
pig: just right.
—The revelation that a Wu-Tang poster played a key role in
Marshall and Lily's courtship. The Index wonders if Marshall set the mood by
playing one of the more romantic numbers in the Wu Tang catalog. "Ice Cream," perhaps, or "Camay."
—"On the hook": The Shame Index has complained this season
when HIMYM has constructed episodes
around strained concepts—the
sexless innkeeper, for example, which failed to elicit laughs or describe
romance in 21st century New York. (It was like a bad riff on the New
York of The Apartment.) The hook,
by contrast, was a sharply observed phenomenon, one the Index suspects most HIMYM fans have experienced, either as hookee or
hooker.
—"No money changed hands."
—Marshall's complexion circa 1994. (Also: What hip hop
artist do we suppose was featured on the poster 1994 Marshall was so eager to
show off? The Index's educated
guess.)
—What it took to get girls in 1994 St. Cloud: A LeBaron
convertible and an in at the roller rink.
—Ted's inadvertent proposal to Henrietta. A little
telegraphed, but still an amusing set-up. Though poor Henrietta. The Index
admired her work with ice sculpture, and hopes she finds a man who appreciates
her talents.
Shameful:
—Carrie Underwood. The Index actually thought she was fine
in the part; the Index is just getting tired of all the cameos this season.
[Ed. note: The Shame Index, a longtime admirer of Jennifer Lopez's work,
reserves the right to praise her forthcoming
cameo.]
—Hot female professions down the ages. What might have been
a funny bit was tainted by the lameness of Barney's laugh lines. The Index
gets it, they were supposed to be corny,
to go with Barney's wink, but a homo erectus joke? Not even 1994 Marshall would
laugh at that. And are the HIMYM writers, who earlier this season showed us a different side of Barney during his short-lived romance with Robin, now only going to use him in high-concept set pieces about sex? That would be disappointing. (The Index confesses that he enjoyed the specificity of
Barney's prediction that soon, Pharma girls will start looking like "the crew
on a Southwest flight from Albuquerque to Little Rock." There's nothing
becoming about those chinos Southwest forces on its flight attendants.)
—Marshall's professed belief that the Lunch Lady Scooter was
a scooter for lunch ladies. Come on. That's just silly.
—The entire Scooter subplot, actually. The teacup pig was
undeniably adorable, but this storyline didn't really go anywhere.
—Barney's psychotropically altered behavior in the kicker.
As with the Scooter plot, not terrible, just not particularly inventive or
funny. A wasted opportunity. Would have liked to see Henrietta walk into McClaren's with some hunkier-than-Ted dude on her arm.
Index readers, what did you make of the episode? Share your
thoughts in the comments. And happy Tijuana Tuesday.
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15