Thursday, September 15, 2011

Crushable

Crushable


NY Ink Is Desperate for Clients, But Will Still Make You Pay for Your Tattoo

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 11:11 AM PDT

TLC’s NY Ink must be hurting for customers, because we received a fairly desperate-sounding casting call for the show. Star Ami James‘ Wooster St. Social Club tattoo parlor and the promise of camera men within must not be enough to lure new people in off the street; now they’ve set up a website and e-mail for applicants.

One tip: Maybe if you want more business, you’d offer to pay for your potential customers’ body art?

Not to be that guy, but LA Ink‘s series finale is airing tonight. Not the best time for the reality TV/tattoo industry, apparently.

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The Daily WTF: This Woman Has The World’s Longest Nails

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 10:38 AM PDT

I’m sorry, were you eating? Well, now you’re nauseous forever. A woman named Chris Walton, aka “The Duchess,” has been given the Guinness record for having the world’s longest nails. I’m actually very happy to hear this news — not just because Chris clearly deserves the title (look those well-maintained things), but because it means there’s no one in the world with nails even longer than these. That, I don’t believe I could handle.

Chris is an aspiring singer and a mother who claims her nails don’t get in the way of her day-to-day activities. I find that absolutely impossible to believe, however. How does she sleep, even? Oh the lengths people will go to (pun! pun alert!) to win awards for stuff. And now, something sad:

“The previous record holder for longest nails was Lee Redmond of Salt Lake City. Her nails measured a total of 28 feet in 2008, but the following year, she lost her nails in a car crash.”

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Christina Hendricks Is Tired Of Being Asked If She’s Tired Of Being Asked About Her Boobs

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 10:21 AM PDT

TMZ posted an item today that’s more amusing for its defensive tone than anything a celebrity said or did. You see, the good people at TMZ were just doing their job, staking out the restaurant where Christina Hendricks was having dinner/drinks with friends, when she emerged wearing a modest black jacket. “Christina, I have a question,” the paparazzo began, prompting her to look over and listen to what it was. “Do you ever get tired of people talking about the twins?” At which point she visibly smiled a little before turning around and going back to saying goodbye to the people she’d been hanging out with.

This seems like a fairly reasonable reaction to me; who’d want to interrupt friend time to answer a question they’d been asked a million times before? We know she’s not just being a snobby celebrity, because the camera actually catches her posing for a picture with a fan before the TMZ guy makes his move. But this question annoyed her, so without being nasty about it, she declined to give them a sound bite of any kind. This made TMZ indignant:

One day after she wore a top that shoved her boobs into her chin … “Mad Men” actress Christina Hendricks SHUT US DOWN when we asked a TOTALLY FAIR question about ‘em.

Hendricks was out in L.A. Tuesday night when we asked if she ever gets tired about people talking about her gals … when she refused to answer and walked away from our camera.

Of course, Christina hasn’t always been so shy about her chest … and if you’re not a blind person, you can see the proof below.

So basically, their reasoning goes, if an actress with boobs wears a low-cut dress on the red carpet, she must entertain infinite “TOTALLY FAIR” questions about “‘em” or she’s a hypocritical bitch. How many questions can you even ask about boobs? (A lot, apparently.) And who refers to boobs as “the twins”? Does every skinny actress have to answer a million questions about her skinniness?? All in all, I think she handled this little interaction pretty well. We see her being nice to a fan, being nice to her friends, and even being pretty nice about declining to answer TMZ’s dumb question. Joan Harris 1, paparazzi 0.

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Hollywood Jobs: Lesley Wolff, Casting Director

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 10:12 AM PDT

Lesley Wolff is a casting director based out of Los Angeles, where she also runs the “Fresh Faces” comedy workshop at The World Famous Hollywood Improv. Lesley dished about her triple-threat background as a writer, actress, and comedienne—and how her experiences influenced her decision to get into casting.

What is your favorite part about being on this side of the business?

I love working with actors. Love it, love it, love it. I love finding new talent… it's like a workout—giving them a chance to get better at their craft. And I have always been fascinated [with casting]. I love re-casting major movies in my head with the cast I would have liked to see.

Ha! What would have been your dream casting gig? Who would you have swapped out?

I just saw The Help—I was thinking a younger Gwyneth Paltrow would have been great in the Bryce Dallas Howard role.

I can totally see that! So, how did you get your start? Were you on some sort of fantasy casting team?

I started off at the University of Pennsylvania in a female comedy group; we wrote all of our own sketch comedy. I majored in comedy in college—or, as about as close as you could get to that. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was actually a TV writer—but then I started doing stand-up as a way to express myself in a different way. I found that I was really good at producing shows, so I would produce and book stand-up shows. I was one of the first outside producers at The Improv, on the cusp of knowing unknown talent. I would scout and develop, and people would always come to me to ask who the hot new person on the scene was.

How did you make the switch from booking to casting?

I helped create a show with Peter Cohen on BET—he came to me with an idea for a show and asked me to cast it, so I cast it. It was called Hell Date: A dating show where one person thinks it's a real show, and one person is an actor pulling an elaborate prank. I got to use emerging comic talent, all unknowns. It was highly improvised and hidden camera, so I got really good at helping people improvise. It was the #1 show on BET and really popular and funny. That was my first big gig; it was so much fun.

What is a typical day like for you? Typical week?

When I am casting, there are “prep” days and audition days. In prep, I'm scheduling actors to come in, and then in casting days, I'm holding auditions all day. I try to keep things very fun and casual and usually err on [the side of] bringing in too many people [rather] than not enough… When I see someone who has really worked on their material or is really prepared, I am more apt to really push for them. Sometimes the best people for the part don’t fit the description, and that can be frustrating.

I bet. Would you say that's the hardest part of your job?

The hardest part is not being able to give everyone that comes in an opportunity. Sometimes I see someone who's so great and I want to give them a chance, but the network will go with a big name or a cliché. It's the casting director's job to have creative ideas and choices, but, at the end of the day, you're just a facilitator to get the talent in front of the producers or network.

That's a bummer. So, you don't get final say?

It's not the casting director making the final decision. Of course, I've heard stories about someone finding talent and fighting for them to get on a show, but in-network there are so many actors they have to make offers to before they go out to unknowns. A lot of times, movies and TV shows are packaged—meaning, if they want Reese Witherspoon in something and she's repped at CAA, they're going to use all actors who are also repped at CAA—so whether or not you have a great person, they're going to go with all CAA [repped talent].

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Intellectual Art That’s Also Funny: Craig Damrauer’s New Math Series

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 09:29 AM PDT

We’re kinda mesmerized by New Math, an art series that creator Craig Damrauer describes as “a quixotic attempt to quantify the world”: Quirky equations for life’s minutiae, ranging from stupid injuries to secrets to ponies. Craig’s been working on the project since 2008, both as a book and in digital form. Here are our ten favorites (plus the one we picked randomly for the main photo). There are hundreds more after these, so be sure to check out the official site.

[New Math via Flavorwire]

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Ladies Be Filmin’: Free Agents

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 09:15 AM PDT

The fall TV season is underway and, despite the ever-lower numbers of women in the writers' rooms, it's being hailed as the year of the women: 17 out of the 25 new scripted shows on the Big Five networks are female-centered and many were created by women. In this series, comedian Leila Cohan-Miccio watches the new female-centered shows and evaluates how realistic their portrayals of women actually are. And now, Free Agents.

You know what's hilarious? When dudes act like ladies, am I right? Like, if a guy cries, that is super funny, because men don't cry. More funny truths: single people are sad (LOL) and married dudes just want to be single again (sort of contradicts the first truth, but funny nonetheless!).

If you agree with that last paragraph, you should definitely watch Free Agents. If not, it is probably not the show for you. Free Agents follows Alex (Hank Azaria) and Helen (Kathleen Hahn), two corporate PR executives. Alex is newly divorced. Helen's fiance died a year ago. They sleep together. Complications ensue!

I want to root for Free Agents based on the cast alone. Besides Azaria and Hahn, there are so many comedians I love: Joe Lo Truglio! Natasha Leggero! Al Madrigal! But unfortunately, the show doesn't really work. Besides the trite premises already mentioned, there's an issue of chemistry, namely that Azaria and Hahn don't have it, despite both being very charming and funny people. I don't believe they would ever sleep together and I extra don't believe they wouldn't be able to stop doing it. There's also a likability problem: it's hard to root for Alex and Helen when we see them trying to spin a company's responsibility for a salmonella outbreak and the life-size blow-ups of Helen's engagement photos all over her apartment (that is not a thing people do, dead fiances or not) don't exactly engender empathy.

At the end of the day, it's hard to tell who, exactly, Free Agents is for. Is it comedy nerds who like single-camera sitcoms and indie stars like Leggero or is it people who think that a single woman getting angry at the checkout clerk for judging her is a laugh riot? You can't have it both ways. Get smart or embrace the stupidity. I hope Free Agents chooses the latter, but I won't be watching to find out.

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Video: Watch A Twilight Fan Totally Lose Her Shit Over The ‘Breaking Dawn’ Trailer

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 09:07 AM PDT

A Youtube user named Nutty Madam is vying to take first prize in the “who can get the most worked up over the shortest glimpse of K-Stew and R-Patz’s wooden acting?” contest. She’s got stiff competition from teenage girls all over the world, but the fact that she’s a bit older than them really ups her points in the category of “freestyle crazy.” Within the first ten seconds of watching the trailer, she’s already making high pitched squealing sounds in reaction to the “sparkly thing” on K-Stew’s head. And it only gets better from there.

The ironic part of all this is that Nutty Madam’s reaction video is a million times more animated than anything you will ever see in any of the Twilight movies. I think she might even shed a real tear or two, maybe? She’s also incredibly prolific, with some 161 uploads to her name, each more excited about Twilight than the last. And don’t forget, she’s reacting to this trailer, the contents of which are hardly interesting enough for most fully grown humans to watch all the way through, let alone hyperventilate over. For all these reasons, Nutty Madam is a master of emotional histrionics. A true artist can do a lot with a little.

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Natalie Portman’s Baby, Aleph Millepied, Looks Like A Baby

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 09:05 AM PDT

Hey, it’s a photo of Natalie Portman‘s four-month old son, Aleph Millepied. The picture was taken at a restaurant in Geneva, where Aleph’s pop, Benjamin Millepied, is doing some choreography work for the Geneva National Theater.

Surprise! This baby looks like… a baby! And now, here is a photo of what Aleph Millepied does not look like:

The happy family was also spotted strolling around Geneva, all romantically entwined and stuff. Unfortunately, Aleph is hidden behind the backside of a Baby Bjorn.

Would you guys be into a gallery of hot dads with Baby Bjorns? Probably I should make that, right?

(via US)

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Am I Right Ladies? Girls Are Stupid, They Should Throw Rocks at Themselves

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 08:57 AM PDT

I don't need retail therapy; I need therapy because of retail, amirightladies? Judging by how their clothes fit me—or don't fit me, if we're parsing words here—I think I'm allergic to Forever 21. In the latest of a string of bad decisions that make up their business model, Forever Twenty One, Incorporated released a T-shirt with the words "Allergic to Algebra" screen-printed on it, presumably by the hands of female factory workers in China. Not exactly the "for us, by us" our sisters were fighting for.

Look, I get it. Men are afraid of women who are good with numbers. I've been overdrawing my bank account every month for the past year to show how vulnerable my stupidity makes me. I've drastically over-tipped every hot waiter I've ever had just to publicly prove how bad I am with money. At the laundromat, I make a big deal about pouring out twice the amount of recommended detergent and just to be safe, I pour it in the wrong slot. I haven't worn a clean pair of underwear in months. But I just know that one of these days it will all pay off in the form of one man in front of me, down on one knee, holding up a pint of Ben & Jerry's Karamel Sutra ice cream.

What's troubling to me about the messaging on this T-shirt is that Forever 21 is a brand geared towards young, impressionable girls. Girls are so easily convinced to believe anything advertisers tell them—like the fact that we could always lose five more pounds. Just because that happens to be true—or in my case five pounds, six times over—doesn't distract from the danger posed by products like these "Allergic to Algebra" shirts. Girl doesn't do math, girl doesn't get a good score on her math SAT, girl doesn't get into college. And college is really important. Especially for women, because we all know it's the best place for any self-respecting girl to get her MRS. And take it from someone who learned the hard way, girls, your future marriage certificate is not waiting for you in line at the make-your-own-waffle station.

Hopefully, Never-ending Nightmare One and Twenty will go the JCPenney route and pull these harmful shirts from the shelves. I'm certain they have a well-stocked inventory of more tasteful choices like pleather booty shorts or fluorescent mesh bras to fill the vacated shelves. These items will still look terrible on my body, but at least they won't be directly hurting our young women. Give them a chance to experience the blissful ignorance of childhood before the sea of Urban Outfitters graphic tees swallows them up whole. Or in my case, barely reach my mid-section.

Let's just go ahead and put a moratorium on any sassy T-shirts that immediately equate intelligence with undesirability in a female. Being dumb doesn't make you attractive to men, being attractive makes you attractive to men. Turns out you can be dumb and also ugly. Maybe I should put that on a T-shirt and sell it. Or, I would if I had any business know-how. Numbahs izzz hawd, amiwightwadiez?

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Ladies Be Filmin’: Up All Night

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 08:33 AM PDT

The fall TV season is underway and, despite the ever-lower numbers of women in the writers' rooms, it's being hailed as the year of the women: 17 out of the 25 new scripted shows on the Big Five networks are female-centered and many were created by women. In this series, comedian Leila Cohan-Miccio watches the new female-centered shows and evaluates how realistic their portrayals of women actually are. And now, Up All Night.

Up All Night, former Saturday Night Live writer Emily Spivey's sitcom about new parents, opens beautifully: Reagan (the delightful-as-always Christina Applegate) and her husband Chris (Will Arnett, shedding his GOB persona for the first time since Arrested Development) have just found out Reagan's pregnant and they're terrified. Reagan calmly posits that this might be a good thing: that way, when Chris dies, she'll have someone to love her. The short scene captures so much: two married people who seem well-matched and like each other (a rarity on TV), the insane, tangential thoughts you have right after you find out life changing news, and the weird contradiction between wanting a baby and being absolutely terrified by the possibility.

The show stays strong from there. Up All Night follows Reagan and Chris as they adjust to their new world as parents. Chris stays home with adorable baby Amy (who is so cute, I want to eat her little face) and Reagan goes back to her job as the producer for a talk show starring demanding Ava (Maya Rudolph, unabashedly dusting off her Oprah impression). The show manages to skirt the cliches of the work/life balance mini-genre: it's blessedly free of scenes where, say, Reagan has to give an important presentation but her boobs are leaking (LOL, because she's a mom!) or Chris can't figure out how to change Amy's diapers (LOL because he's a man! Men don't change diapers!). Reagan and Chris struggle more with not being able to go out all night, which is a really fun, unexpected angle. Top it off with solid jokes about everything from the placement of fancy vs. normal cheeses in grocery stores to Ian Ziering, and this is definitely one to add to the DVR.

Sure, I have my quibbles: I want to know more about the relationship between Reagan and Ava – are they just coworkers or were they friends first? I don't love a running joke about how Ava eats her feelings, which seems a little cliche for an otherwise smart show. But those quibbles are just that: I'm excited to see how this one develops.

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