[Playlist of the Week] 5 Songs About Dinosaurs
Oddly enough, there are more songs about dinosaurs than you’d expect (we expected zero). In preparation for the upcoming blockbuster hit of the summer, Jurassic World, we’ve compiled a short list of five songs related to dinosaurs. We definitely ran the spectrum of genres to compile our list. Of course, we definitely left some off. If you have a favorite dinosaur-related song we missed, let us know!
Why "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket" is blink-182's Best Album
I was 10 when blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket came out. Back then, my mother was still buying me Spice Girls and Aaron Carter CDs. Ready to take the plunge into pop-punk/punk (because what was cooler to a pre-teen girl than rebellion), I borrowed the CD from a neighborhood kid and never gave it back. TOYPAJ has without a doubt molded me into the person I am today and hopefully will be forever. I never put the album down, even now. To this day, they’re still one of my favorite bands, and if it wasn’t for them, I could very well be a total lame who listens to country music or worse (reggae). This album is not only my favorite blink-182 album, it’s their best album.
From start the finish, the record is an ode to adolescence life and rebellion. If you’re anything like me, you were a rebellious young punk too. This era is where the modern day scene started to develop into what it is today. This certified double platinum album set the standard of pop-punk and most importantly, made the genre accessible for anyone who wanted to be "different." I strive to critique music for a living, the alternative scene especially, and this record is the crème de la crème, the pièce de résistance; TOYPAJ is the Great Bambino of blink-182.
The songs “First Date,” “The Rock Show” and “Stay Together For The Kids” were all huge hits. While they weren’t as big as their previous record, Enema of the State, they were more refined and more mature (though, the first two not by much) than their predecessor. With catchier bridges and bolder, cleaner guitars than their previous albums, the trio still bring in hints of this record to some of their newer material.
Join us next week when Geoff shares his reasons on why Dude Ranch is blink-182's best album.
Mad Max: Fury Road - Fear of a Feminist Action Movie
Mad Max: Fury Road is many things. It's an action movie masterpiece with the look and feel of a European comic book (think Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius). It's a post-apocalyptic descendent of Buster Keaton's The General and the cartoons of Chuck Jones, with careful attention to spatial relationships, cause and effect, and the art of set-ups and punchlines. It's a reminder of the power that visual language can command over mere words. It's a celebration of practical effects, daring stuntwork, and visceral filmmaking that we haven't seen in blockbusters for many years.
Mad Max: Fury Road is also a feminist movie. Or at least it's been hailed a feminist film, and that's made a lot of people uncomfortable.
I'm not just talking about tantrum-prone Men's Rights Activists, who've called for a boycott of the film because it's really feminist propaganda masquerading as a masculine ass-kicker. As is the nature of our weekly thinkpiece-culture calendar, what was lauded (or decried) as "x" a few days ago is now criticized for not really being "x."
Earlier in the week, politically conservative commentators began to throw cold water on the feminist credentials of Mad Max: Fury Road. Just yesterday, Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency tweeted that she didn't think Mad Max: Fury Road was a feminist film at all.
The word "feminist" is loaded, its associations so varied, and its ideological identity so personal. The mere idea of a "feminist" action movie is the source of scrutiny and anxiety, and it opens up a larger conversation of what feminism is and isn't, and also what people think it can be and should be, and even what is and isn't off limits when it comes to gender, genre, and the application of feminist ideas.
It's like ideological Thunderdome, but way more crowded, not as brutal, and without the bungee cords.
(spoilers ahead)
Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" Video is All Kinds of Good
There are very few subjects I can say I'm well versed in, but when I get the opportunity to gush about them you can be sure I'm going to tell you all about it. The venn diagrams of my interests rarely cross over, but now that we've got a Taylor Swift music video featuing all sorts of science fiction nods, I'm not sure what to do with myself. Although the country community felt the sting of when Taylor Swift decided her latest album, 1989, was going to be an all-pop production, and many more felt the loss when she removed her music from Spotify, it's hard to fault her when she's having so much fun in all of her music videos.
This one for her latest single "Bad Blood" (featuring a remix from Kendrick Lamar) tops all of her other craziness so far. Directed by Joseph Kahn (from Detention and that Power/Rangers fan video from a few weeks back) We've got numerous shout outs to sci-fi films like The Fifth Element, Sucker Punch, Mad Max, and awesome cameos from Selena Gomez, Lena Dunham, Hailee Steinfeld, Ellie Goulding, Zendaya, Karlie Kloss, Cara Delevingne, Ellen Pompeo, Mariska Hargitay, and f**king Cindy Crawford.
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I've been a big advocate for wacky music videos all my life. In fact, I think wackier music videos actually saved music artists in the digital age thanks to how much sharing through social media accounts for notoriety now. Taylor Swift just gets that.
Take the video for "Blank Space" (which was one of my Top 10 Pop Songs of 2014) for instance. Such a goofy video for an admittedly generic song helped launch her into several blogs like this one. Although she really doesn't need more attention, she gets it by taking risks. Swift plays around with the visual landscape in order to get your attention (and thus, your all important clicks) because she's got enough pull to do so. She's at the point in her career where she can't really make a bad decision, and can experiment with her brand. It's sort of like how Nicki Minaj gets crazy sexual in each of her videos, yet never quite goes over the line of decency in order to further get her name out there. Nothing the two artists do actually hurt their brand, and if an experiment fails (like Minaj's unfortunate "Nazi" video or Swift's slightly racist "Shake It Off" video) they bounce back.
Where Swift ultimately succeeds is her "pop princess" persona. It sort of brings down the fun in the "Bad Blood" video (it'd be much better if she didn't perform it and just let it all play out), but her "happy go lucky" style really works wonders for how weird she's taking 1989. I can't wait to see what she does next.
Damsel in Distress: The Lack of Female Superheroes in Hollywood
In the '90s, my parents encouraged my tomboy ways and let me play with the boys toys, as if back then letting girls play with boys toys was taboo. They’re just toys, right? Almost 20 years later, I went to Target to grab some superhero merchandise for the opening night of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. To my dismay, all of the merch was located in the boy's toy section; including the female superhero items, which wasn't more than a pen-sized action figure or two. As I picked up the last Captain America mask, I passed the bright pink aisles where all of the "female-friendly" toys were. There wasn’t a superhero Barbie, plush toy or action figure in sight. What gives, Hollywood?
After seeing the film, I walked out disappointed. Scarlett Johansson played Black Widow in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, a former USSR assassin trained from a young age who uses her skills for her own gain and later on for the good of mankind. As a big Marvel fan, I was excited to see the return of the strong, female superhero in a Hollywood blockbuster (besides the X-Men). Unfortunately, her backstory was watered down as her relationship with Bruce Banner (e.g. Hulk) in the film grew into a sappy "woe is me" superhero complex as she revealed she was unable to bear children. As if in the year 2015 this was the number one, sure-fire way to humanize a former Soviet-bred killing machine to American women. Why does her mystery have to be washed over by pointless sentiments of humanity? They’re superhuman. Then, in the end, it’s Banner who ends up leaving her behind, despite their plans to run away together. Whether or not this was an accuracy issue from the comics to the big screen, why couldn’t Black Widow be the one to leave? Left at the altar, even in fantasy, the woman is still portrayed to be more vulnerable than her male counterpart.
I’ll admit, there’s the occasional female powerhouse (e.g. Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, the ladies of the X-Men and Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises), but the damsel in distress routine is getting blase to say the least. These are the women who know they’re needed for a team to function and most importantly, vital in saving the planet if not the universe. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, without the women of the X-Men, the people of Earth would live forever in chains and the mutants of Earth left to be brutally murdered by robots. Without Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy, Star-Lord wouldn’t have been able to save the planet. In the comic book world, there are plenty of women superheroes, but until those books come to life in a way that empowers us mere mortals on Earth, it’s a man’s universe; real or fantasy.
When comics started in the '20s, it was a man’s world. While the comic book universe is booming with female leaders, it's Hollywood who pass over these women like they're minor characters. But, in 2015, something has to change. The question is: what is Hollywood going to do about it?
[Tribeca] Bodyslam: Revenge of the Banana! Shows Why Some Wrestling Gimmicks Succeed and Others Fail
In the documentary Bodyslam: Revenge of the Banana, directors Ryan Harvie and John Paul Horstmann follow the bizarre story of Seattle Semi-Pro (SSP), an independent wrestling promotion whose existence is put in danger by an outsider who becomes part of their roster.
SSP is different from other indie wrestling promotions. There's no ring, for one, just a stage and some mats. Gone is the illusion of athletic competition. SSP is also a comedy wrestling promotion, but it's not a witty meta-wrestling cartoon like Chikara Pro. In Chikara, wrestlers will lob invisible hand grenades at one another, or sometimes wrestlers (and the crowd and the commentary team) will spontaneously perform in slow motion. At SSP, one of the headliners is a drunken clown named Ronald McFondle, and another is a guy in a banana costume who dances to The Buckwheat Boyz's "Peanut Butter Jelly Time," recreating a 13-year-old internet meme.
Even though SSP is not my taste in terms of wrestling, it's an irreverent family and there's nothing wrong people coming together and building that sort of kinship.
A lot of drama in Bodyslam: Revenge of the Banana hinges on the clash of personalities both inside and outside the ring (or, in this case, on and off the stage at a dive bar). What the film illustrates in an oblique way is why some wrestling characters succeed and fail, and what makes a good hero (babyface) and a good villain (heel).
10 Badass Superheroines and Supervillains in Comics
Recently, there has been tension in the superhero world over the lack of strong women in comics. While there is a huge gap between the number of men versus women in the comic book world, there are powerhouse superheroines fans seem to phase over. Don’t be fooled, some of the names that you might recognize are bigger in the comic book world than their blockbuster film roles have lead you to think. Regardless of your gender, here are 10 female comic book characters that kick ass harder than their male counterparts.
Chicago's "Historic" Torture Reparations Package
Post written by special guest contributor, Freddy Martinez.
Chicago has become the first U.S. city to formally acknowledge torture by its police department. Community activists, victims and lawyers first pushed to expose widespread torture under police commander Jon Burge over twenty-seven years ago. The work began when People's Law Office represented Andrew Wilson's civil lawsuit against Chicago Police and Burge in the early 1980s. Human Rights Watch notes that Wilson was burned by cigarettes and electrocuted by a “black box” for over seventeen hours.
In 1990, John Conroy reported that a different person, Roy Wade Brown, was interrogated by police and his finger was placed in a bolt cutter with threats to cut it off. Furthermore, “he was taken to the roof of the police station and was told he would be thrown off." In another instance, while under police custody, Burge and another officer beat a victim named Will Porch "with a .44 Magnum pistol… emptied the revolver of all but one bullet, and then forced him to play a one-sided game of Russian Roulette." Other abuses included electric shocks to the genitals, beatings, suffocation with plastic bags, and coercions into false confessions. The torture was so endemic that in 2009, Illinois established the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission Act to review and investigate hundreds of cases of alleged abuse. The Commission was defunded in 2012, essentially destroying their ability to investigate further.
The torture committed by the Chicago Police Department occurred long before the much-publicized torture of Iraqis by US troops in Abu Ghraib. Indeed as the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UN CAN) notes “However, it [UN CAN] remains concerned that, despite the fact that [Jon] Burge was convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, no Chicago police officer has been convicted for these acts of torture for reasons including the statute of limitations expiring. While noting that several victims were ultimately exonerated of the underlying crimes, the vast majority of those tortured most (sic) of them African-Americans, have received no compensation for the extensive injuries suffered”. Of course, Chicago did not unilaterally adopt UN CAN's recommendations. The People's Law Office who worked alongside the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project, alongside other groups, to lobby for this reparations package. After decades of struggle, the Chicago's City Council has finally created a formal reparations package funded with more five million dollars of compensation to victims among other concessions. The concession package includes a formal apology from the City Council, a public memorial to torture survivors, free enrollment at City Colleges, psychological counseling services and more. Of particular importance is that Chicago Public Schools will create a curriculum that teaches the history of police torture.
To understand the history of torture further Ruby Hornet spoke with Shubra Ohri, staff attorney at the People's Law Office, about the package.