Beauty in the iPhone of the Beholder
I don’t like to brag, but there’s a chance I might be a “10.” On the iPhone’s new “Ugly Meter” app, that is. The app—already downloaded 20,000 times—encourages users to take photos of themselves with their handy iPhone cameras, have the app check out the pic and evaluate how attractive, or ugly, it considers you. […]
Movie Monday: Jacka– 3D
Score one for the icky. Jacka– 3D, a cinematic collection of bizarre, dangerous and often really, really disgusting stunts, catapulted to the top of the box office like a Porta Potty slingshot this weekend, cresting at an estimated $50 million and becoming the highest-grossing October film in history. And we don’t use the word “gross,” […]
A Crying Shame
Toy Story 3 is coming out on DVD next month, and I, for one, am not looking forward to it. Oh, I’ve heard it’s a fantastic film. Some folks are saying it might not just get nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, but perhaps win the thing. I’m sure that, once I sit down […]
Movie Monday: Secretariat as We Know It
If Secretariat, the horse, was still alive today, and if the thoroughbred received a visitor who happened to have boxofficemojo.com bookmarked on his laptop, the visitor might well turn to the horse and say, “Why the long Facebook?” To which Secretariat might well bite the visitor on the nose and go back to munching his […]
Shore-ing Up Reality TV
With the success of MTV’s Jersey Shore, it was only a matter of time before reality show makers scoped out the other 49 states to determine what sort of regionally stereotypic, debauched twentysomethings might be exploited for a reality show. Alas, it seems they’ve had to cross Alabama off the list—at least temporarily. Jodi Redmond […]
Trading Tweets for Sweet Art
Singer/songwriter/Twitterer extraordinaire John Mayer stopped tweeting back in February, leaving his 3 million-plus followers adrift and leaderless in a great digital wasteland. He never returned to the medium that helped make him one of pop culture’s most colorful, controversial stars. At the time, we thought Mayer left because the whole electronic media circus had gotten […]
Movie Monday: The Social Network
Sony “likes” The Social Network—and a whole lot of other folks do, too. The movies most folks are calling “the Facebook film” topped the box office this week, snagging $23 million. The bevy of holdovers that followed weren’t within shouting distance of the Jesse Eisenberg-helmed vehicle. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole came […]
Underground Entertainment
For nearly two months now, 33 Chilean miners have been living a half-mile underground, waiting for rescue. Experts say these miners will see the sun again—eventually. Until then, the miners are cobbling together a new reality down under—and that reality, I think, says something pretty interesting about entertainment: What it’s good for, and what it’s […]
Movie Monday: Money Never Sleeps
Money really doesn’t sleep. Sometimes at 2 a.m., I think I hear the sound of laughter and music from my billfold, as my tiny collection of George Washingtons boogies down until dawn. If my money is lonely—as it often is—I’ll sometimes find it sitting on the couch watching television, working the remote with its dog-eared […]
Circumstantial Evidence
I don’t think jury duty would’ve ever made my bucket list. But if it did, for some reason, I can cross it off now. I spent the day at the local courthouse yesterday, one member of a six-person jury deciding whether a man was guilty of assault or not. The experience, for me, was a […]
