Lauren Mayberry is always a rebel with a cause. Whether in her own solo work or as a member of Chvrches, when she picks up a microphone, you need to listen. Mayberry’s latest single, “Change Shapes,” is no different. On the agenda for this record is inequitable gendered labor in romantic relationships.
Yes, that’s a mouthful, but it is nowhere near as exhausting as walking the emotional tightrope that is the male ego. “It’s exhausting trying so hard all the time / Performative hypocrisy took over my mind / I’m a doll inside a box / With a ball and a chain / I bend over backwards, tiptoe along every wire / Guess I’m quite the actress, no one knows I’m a liar / I’m preaching to the choir / I’m a body for hire / And I think you should know / I change shapes ’til I get what I want from you / It’s your game, now you’re mad that I learned the rules,” sings Mayberry.
What started off as a stress-induced rant, thanks to Mayberry’s spunky vocals and Matthew Koma’s charismatic production, “Change Shapes,” is the ultimate “no thanks” to traditional heteronormative expectations of women. Given that today is International Women’s Day, it could not have been timed better.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a lot of things. It’s a colorful, slightly subversive comedy. It’s a fun introduction to Feminism 101. It’s a two-hour toy commercial. But more than all of these things, it’s an incredible display of top-notch production design. Though portions of the movie take place in “the real world,” it’s purely a fantasy with large swathes of time spent in a beautifully crafted Barbie Land. There are also big musical numbers with their own unique spaces and a surreal kitchen out of time where Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets the original creator of the doll, played by Rhea Perlman, along with the bizarre brutalist cubicles and hot pink heart-shaped head table of Mattel’s corporate offices. There is a great amount of love and attention paid to every detail, right down to the exact shades of pink in Barbie’s house.
In a behind-the-scenes tour of the Barbie Land set for Architectural Digest, Gerwig said that she and the creative team sat with “all of these different kinds of pinks” to try and find the right shades for Barbie Land. It was important that the pinks had the same gaudy quality as their toy counterparts. Gerwig said, “When I was a little girl, I liked the pinkest, brightest things,” and that sensibility permeates all of the colors in the fantastical elements of Barbie. Barbie Land rides the line between being gorgeous and garish, making it perfect for younger audiences without totally alienating adults. The kitchen in the past where Barbie meets her creator is suitably sepia-toned and faded, like an old photo, while the cubicles in the Mattel building are all varying shades of gray. That level of attention is extended to every aspect of the production design, from the incredible matte paintings that serve as backgrounds to the giant sticker on the inside of Barbie’s refrigerator. Barbie doesn’t eat, drink, or need to bathe, plus she ascends and descends from the different levels of her house as if a magical, invisible child’s hand is moving her, and her house reflects that.
The Barbie houses are pretty perfect re-creations of their pint-sized counterparts. They’re just slightly too small for their inhabitants, with showers that don’t actually have running water and a fireplace that’s just a flame-shaped light. In fact, according to an interview in Vogue, production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer established a rule that there was no fire or water in Barbie Land. They also wanted to make everything look tactile, because toys are meant to be played with, which led to another rule about limiting computer-generated imagery (CGI) as much as possible. Spencer told Vogue: “To my mind, we were creating a toy. A toy is tactile, A toy is real. Everybody knows what’s CGI. Your sixth sense will tell you—even children will know. So with the painted backdrops, it just gave everybody the belief that you are in the toy box, you are in there, you are a toy.”
Warner Bros
The relative lack of CGI also works well with the movie’s biggest influences: classic movie musicals. After all, Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen didn’t have computer-generated visual magic when they made Singin’ in the Rain and it’s a gorgeous Technicolor dream. Barbie draws on that same visual language, as Gerwig was inspired by its “dream within a dream” sequence, which viewers can see traces of in the “I’m Just Ken” musical number. Other influences include Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Gerwig spoofs in the opening sequence, and Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, which she credits as having an “artificial authenticity” that she strove for on Barbie.
The faux water of Barbie Land is one of the more fascinating fakeries of Barbie. Barbie’s pool was painted and then covered in resin to give it a watery look a bit more convincing than the basic shiny stickers of real-world Dream Houses, but it’s still just the right level of artificial. Likewise, the ocean where Ken (Ryan Gosling) does his job (which is “beach”) is blue and plastic, which makes surfing on it a rather tricky proposition. Background waves are giant colored cardboard pieces, harkening back to some of the earliest films and giving yet another layer of cinematic and toy-like fakery. Even the sand on the beach is pale pink because nothing in Barbie Land escapes the color, not even the palm trees, which have big chunks of pink in their bark.
All of this dedication to details big and small makes Barbie feel like something truly grand, elevating it beyond its witty script and great performances to make it feel more like a timeless classic than just another bubblegum blockbuster. There’s a good reason that Barbie has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Production Design, and it stands a decent chance at winning. The 90s band Aqua might have told us “life in plastic, it’s fantastic,” but the production design team behind the Barbie movie finally helped us all understand exactly what they meant.
If I was Billy Crystal, this is where I’d introduce my predictions for the Oscars through timely song parodies about the nominated films. Something like turning “oppa Gangnam Style” into “Oppenheimer Gangnam Style.” Or making Barbie ballad “I’m Just Ken” about power couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez: “I’m just Ben / Where I see love, Jen sees Dun-ken.” But I’m not Billy Crystal (god willing, I will be some day), so I’ll just get to my picks for the 96th Academy Awards, which air this Sunday, March 10, at 7 p.m. EST on ABC.
Let’s begin with some quick hitters.
Best Visual Effects: Godzilla Minus One Best Film Editing: Oppenheimer Best Costume Design: Barbie Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Maestro Best Cinematography: Oppenheimer Best Production Design: Barbie Best Sound: Oppenheimer Best Original Song: “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie Best Original Score: Oppenheimer Best Animated Short Film: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko Best Live Action Short Film: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar Best Documentary Short Subject: The Last Repair Shop Best Documentary Feature: 20 Days in Mariupol
Best Animated Feature Film
The Boy and the Heron
Elemental
Nimona
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Will Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Should Win: The Boy and the Heron
Only twice in the 2010s did Best Animated Feature Film not go to a Disney project (which includes Pixar). The trend continued into the 2020s with Soul and Encanto, but last year, the Oscar went to Guillermo del Toro’s magnificent Pinocchio; now, for the first time since Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Happy Feet in the mid-2000s, Disney won’t win two years in a row. It’s a toss-up between The Boy and the Heron, the possibly final masterwork from Hayao Miyazaki, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the sequel to previous winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Expect a repeat.
Best International Feature Film
Io capitano (Italy) Perfect Days (Japan) Society of the Snow (Spain) The Teachers’ Lounge (Germany) The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom)
Will Win: The Zone of Interest Should Win: Perfect Days
For four out of the past five years, Best International Feature Film (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) has gone to a movie that was also nominated for Best Picture. It happened for Roma, Parasite (which won), Drive My Car (which should have won), and last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and it will happen for The Zone of Interest. I slightly prefer Perfect Days, a lovely day-in-the-life drama from German director Wim Wenders about a man who cleans toilets in Japan (it’s more poignant than it sounds, I swear), but The Zone of Interest is a lock. Now, if France had submitted Anatomy of a Fall…
Best Adapted Screenplay
American Fiction
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Will Win: American Fiction Should Win: Poor Things
This one is for the bloggers. Cord Jefferson wrote for Gawker (RIP) before transitioning to television (including Watchmen, Master of None, and The Good Place) and film. American Fiction is his feature-length debut, and after winning Best Adapted Screenplay at the British Academy Film Awards and Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards, he’s poised to take home Best Adapted Screenplay as well. The script never totally coalesces for me (the satire is dampened by the relationship drama), and Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Barbie could surprise, but American Fiction has math on its side.
Best Original Screenplay
Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December
Past Lives
Will Win: Anatomy of a Fall Should Win: Past Lives
My siding with Past Lives isn’t a slight against Anatomy of a Fall. Past Lives was my favorite film of 2023, a nuanced love story about life’s what ifs (and a reminder of when social media was good). But even I won’t be dissapointed when Anatomy wins. Justine Triet and Arthur Harari’s screenplay for the courtroom thriller is absorbing, well crafted, and at times, funny, with a centerpiece argument that’s as compelling as any scene among the nominees. Did she do it? If the “she” is Triet and the “it” is win an Oscar, yes, she did it.
Best Supporting Actress
Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)
Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple)
America Ferrera (Barbie)
Jodie Foster (Nyad)
Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Da’Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting (or its equivalent) at the Golden Globes, Critics’ Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, BAFTA Awards, and basically every other awards show this season. After years of doing knockout work on High Fidelity, People of Earth, and short-lived favorite Selfie, she’ll take home the Oscar, too.
Best Supporting Actor
Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction)
Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)
Will Win: Robert Downey Jr. Should Win: Robert De Niro
Robert Downey Jr. survived drug addiction and the Marvel machine. The Academy loves a comeback story, and this story ends with RDJ holding an Oscar (shout out to Robert De Niro giving one of his best performances ever, which is saying something, and Ruffalo as the world’s poutiest f*ck boy, though).
Best Actress
Annette Bening (Nyad)
Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Will Win: Lily Gladstone Should Win: Lily Gladstone
Lily Gladstone gets the Oscar, both for her towering performance in Killers of the Flower Moon (she’s an even more commanding screen presence than Leonardo DiCaprio in the film), and because I can’t wait to hear her acceptance speech. Must-see TV.
Best Actor
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)
Will Win: Cillian Murphy Should Win: Paul Giamatti
Bradley Cooper has the chance to do the funniest thing (get so mad about losing that he personally attacks the Oscars music director and plays off the winner, which he spent six years learning to do). I would love for Giamatti to win Best Actor; this category almost never goes to a comedic performance, and he is hilarious (and heartbreaking) in The Holdovers. The Oscars needs more farting and poor football-throwing representation. Think of the In-N-Out photo! But there’s nothing underwhelming about Cillian Murphy’s performance, either. The defining image of Oppenheimer isn’t the nuclear explosion or the parade of character actors or even Florence Pugh’s CGI dress. It’s Murphy’s haunted face. The Irish actor doesn’t know what a meme is, but he’ll soon know what it’s like to be an Oscar winer.
Best Director
Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest)
Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things)
Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall)
Will Win: Christopher Nolan Should Win: Jonathan Glazer
The Directors Guild of America Awards has been around since 1948. In all that time, there have been only been eight instances where the winner of Outstanding Directing – Feature Film hasn’t also been named Best Director at the Oscars. This year’s winner at the DGAs? Christopher Nolan, who was up to the task of depicting “the most important f*cking thing to happen in the history of the world.” The big night for Oppenheimer continues. Speaking of…
Best Picture
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest
Will Win: Oppenheimer Should Win: Oppenheimer (I’m a realist)
There are three tiers of Best Picture nominees:
Tier 1: it’s nice to just be invited (American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Maestro, Past Lives)
Tier 2: there’s a chance, but it would be a shocking upset (Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon)
Tier 3: the frontrunners (Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest).
Aw, who am I kidding? I’m trying to build up suspense, but there isn’t any: Best Picture is going to Oppenheimer.
As noted by Vanity Fair, Oppenheimer, a well-deserved critical and commercial hit, won the top prize at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, Directors Guild Awards, Producers Guild Awards, and the British Academy Film Awards The last time that happened? Argo, which said go f*ck yourself to the competition. Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s third film to be nominated for Best Picture — it will be the first to win.
Kyle Kinane is a comedian. Sure, he’s also a podcaster (teaming with Shane Torres for the No Accounting For Taste pod wherein the co-hosts joke about and celebrate things others drag). He also has more than 50 credits as an actor and voice actor, but stand-up comedy is the job. It’s the one that sends him all over the country (and the world) on an everlong tour, building up jokes night after night before moving onto the next one; the next challenge.
Kinane is talking with me because he’s got a new special out, Dirt Nap (which you can and should download now for $10). There are no nine-foot neon letters that spell out KYLE. The smoke machine went unrented, no fireworks or 5-minute dance routine played to applause at the start. It’s a comedy special, filmed at a comedy club (Acme in Minneapolis). It’s really fucking funny, leading off with an extended riff on the dumb brilliance of the Fast And Furious franchise before driving along to Kinane’s transition to suburban life (he left LA for Portland during the pandemic), dealing with his parents, and jerking off in front of ghosts.
Everything about Kinane’s relatable material, his approach (which avoids pot-stirring verbal clickbait, faux edginess, and punch-down meanness), and the presentation of his specials inspires people in my job to hang labels like “comedy craftsman” and “people’s comedy champion” on him. You know, because we can be a little hacky. But really, it’s that we want to convey to people the idea that in a world of comics with a gimmick, egos, and world-beating ambitions that view comedy as a stepping stone to some kind of cross between rock god, famous actor, thought leader, and style stars, Kinane is delightfully low bullshit and happy to be just a comedian. But as with all things, it has been an evolution.
In the following conversation, we track that evolution, discuss past failures, and relationship challenges that come from a life on the road. We also dive into the new special and brainstorm wonderful places for Dominic Toretto to go next.
Grantland called you a cult hero. When I wrote about the last special I said that you had a grab a beer after a show vibe. I’m trying to stop saying vibes in 2024. But do you ever feel limited by the notion of you being the “regular guy comedian” and man of the people? Limited by the idea that this is who you are and you can only speak to this audience?
I mean, I know it’s a simple thing. That’s why I shave the beard because this is, “Oh, well, you’re this.” “Well, watch. I’m not.” It’s what subject matter do I want to talk about. I think Chad Daniels is one of the best guys right now at taking expectations of who the audience thinks he is and twisting it.
God forbid you actually try to appeal to both sides of anything right now by pointing out similarities rather than differences. I think divisiveness, like that angle of comedy, it’s so easy because you have a built-in audience for your viewpoint if you’re, “I’m this.” And so the comedy doesn’t even have to be that good. You can just get your side riled up to laugh at the other side, and that’s not interesting. I’d rather get the side that I happen to agree with to laugh at themselves by going, “Oh yeah, maybe we’re a little tightly wound about this. I mean the other side still has their problems.”
I would also like, if there are people that have opposing viewpoints to go like, “Wow, that joke was so funny.” I would rather be funny enough for somebody to be like, “I don’t agree but, boy, that was fun to watch.” My buddy, John Roy, made that point. He’s like, “Really great comedy is when I’m laughing at somebody I disagree with.” I would like to be that.
What’s the mindset behind constantly generating new material?
Well, I can’t sit with something. I mean, I don’t have short jokes. I’ll say an idea and then an idea goes longer and longer. I work a lot. I’m lucky enough that I work whenever I want to. I’m doing hours. You’re doing an hour so you do a little three-minute idea. By the end of a weekend, you’re at a comedy club where you’ve done five shows and five hours, a three-minute idea could be a 10 or 12-minute idea by the end of that week. By the end of the next week, it could be a 15, 20-minute idea. And that’s the writing process for me, it’s seeing how much meat I can get off the bone.
Once I realize, “Oh, this works,” that’s the reward — getting it to work. The reward isn’t repeating it to get accolades. The reward is like, “Okay, that thing works. Now I have to write another one.”
So, it’s more about when you get tired of it rather than worrying an audience is going to get tired of it?
Yeah, I mean an artist doesn’t paint a painting and then just hang it in a museum and go look at it every day. They paint another painting. [Laughs] I get bored hearing myself and I lose the ability to deliver it. My acting isn’t that good. I can’t act enthused knowing I’m telling a story for the fifth year in a row. When I recorded Shocks and Struts, I had two hours that I was going to record. So Shocks and Struts was the one hour, and then the long story that’s in this new one was the other hour that I was working on. So it was kind of on deck for a year already even when the other one came out.
And now the new tour, I’m guessing this is all new material?
Yeah. Yeah, this will be new material from that. If you come see me live, it’s not going to be something on a recording.
So I believe in the special and I think in one of the previous specials, you’ve said things along the lines of letting people like what they like. That very much seems like a philosophy of yours. You don’t want to be divisive for the sake of being divisive. I’m curious about why that’s a root part of your act and where that came from.
I mean, I’ll be divisive if it’s about something I believe in, but I’m not going to just be living clickbait. I don’t know. It’s looking at comedy that I don’t like. I don’t like when comedians are like, “Let me tell you how the world works.” You know how the world works for you. You don’t know how the world works for me. I can sit there and say, “Well, this is how things work for me.” I’m not going to say what’s good for me is good for you.
I guess anytime I’m like, “You know what? I hate this thing,” instead of feeling like I’m automatically correct about why I hate it and writing jokes from there, I’d be like, “Well, wait, why do I hate it? Do I not understand it in my lack of knowledge about it?” And also, that’s more fun to write. I’d rather write from a place of curiosity than a place of like, “Boy, I know how stuff works,” because I don’t. That’s a lie. [Laughs]
Anytime I start doing comedy that’s a little bit righteous, I’m like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about right now.” [Laughs] So it’s easier for me to write from a place of curiosity because there’s so much more available material when you’re like, “Am I the problem? Do I not understand it? Let me try to understand it.” Maybe that’s just a more fun way to mess around on stage.
In the announcement for the special you said, “I’m not doing this to level up into a different career. Performing standup is what I do.” Has that always been the mindset for you and I guess what does it take to get to a place like that where you’re comfortable in your place in the world?
Yeah. I know that I’m beyond like I wanted to do standup. That was the goal. It wasn’t a stepping stone to get into other facets of show business. Stuff has happened. I lived in LA and I get to do voiceover stuff here. I got to act and that stuff. That was fun and it builds awareness of who you are, but it draws people back, hopefully, to the standup.
I was just having frustrations in Hollywood because show business has a great way of making you depressed because it convinces you you want things you don’t want. And then when you don’t get the things you didn’t want in the first place, you’re sad about it. Like shows that you pitch and they don’t take or something. You’re like, “I wasn’t even here to do that! I was here to do standup.” And so I kind of had to look at myself and be like, “Yeah, but you have the thing. Hold dear the thing that you wanted in the first place, which was standup.”
And so that’s it. If somebody wants to come in and be like, “Hey, we wrote a part for you. You’re in this movie,” great. But I’m not going to live in LA and drive around to auditions all day or what have you. This is the thing and I have it. And so I’m being very precious about it and making sure I get to keep it, whatever level it’s at. So the level I’m at now, shit, man, my lights are on, my bills are paid because of jokes. Awesome. That’s great. People come to shows. Phenomenal.
Not to dredge up something. Hopefully, it’s not painful. But I watched the pilot this morning for Going Nowhere, and I’m just curious what happened with that? Because it seemed such a brilliant premise [Kinane on the road, checking out different scenes and meeting interesting people]. It was really well executed.
Yeah. You don’t really get answers sometimes. You just find out that they didn’t want it, which is the heartbreak that yeah, they didn’t want it. I have a difficult time going into the public as source material. These people are going to let me come into their shop, and then I got to make jokes. There’s certain people that are just inherently, they’re comedically benevolent. They’re always the target of the jokes. They’re funny and the people around them, it’s a little weird. And then I feel like they’re like, “You’ve got to make more jokes.” And that’s where I revert into this, “Look at this thing and look, this is stupid,” and I make a joke. I’m being a smart ass about the stuff around me, and I didn’t feel good doing that, knowing that somebody’s letting me be there with a camera crew. And then I’m like, “Oh, what they’re into is weird. What they’re doing is silly.”
Just kind of like what the premise for the podcast that I do with Shane Torres, No Accounting for Taste is like, let’s celebrate things that everybody makes fun of, almost maybe a little bit as a penance for the years of mocking stuff that’s different. We’re like, “All right, let’s take all the things that people make fun of and try and lift them up.” But it was just sometimes that just doesn’t click. And that’s the thing, you spent months and months getting it ready and shooting it and editing it, and then just one person just gives you the emperor thumb down with no rhyme or reason. You’re like, “Ah.” And I’m too sensitive for that. At least with comedy, I know if a joke works right away. I don’t have to write it and wait six months.
You’re in a long-term relationship, right? How is that impacted with you on the road that much? What have been some of the lessons about making that work?
She’s probably happy about it, I think. Yeah, we each have a lot of space. [Laughs] I mean, we met when I was already working on the road. There’s a massive level of trust that you have to both have in each other. Like, “All right, I’ll see you in a few weeks,” and be okay with that. But we talk all the time, really working on communicating and being open with people about feelings or what’s going on with each other which is… like, [I’m] Midwestern, it’s not always the easiest thing for me to be like, “Oh, there’s my feelings right now.” You bottle them up. You bottle them up and you push them down.
Under the bed, in the closet, wherever you can throw those bottles of feelings. Absolutely.
What’s that, an emotion? Get it out of here. So being better with that stuff or attempting to be more mature with your own feelings and expressing yourself. But some people are in relationships where somebody’s emotionally gone five days a week.
That’s true.
Getting up to drive an hour into a city, then drive an hour home, and when they’re home, they’re vacant and want to empty their brain, and they don’t want to engage in anything emotional or conversational because that’s what they’ve done all day. And the weekend comes and you want to check out because it’s like, “Oh shit, well, Friday night’s blasted because I had to drive home, I’m tired.” Saturday is the one day you have, and then Sunday you’re just thinking about how you got to go back to the job you don’t like. So that’s also its own form of turmoil in my opinion. [Laughs]
Yeah. I mean I know in my own relationship, my wife and I both work from home, so we’re around each other all the time, and that’s its own challenges too. Every relationship has its own challenges. “This is my best friend. This is the person I love the most in the world. They’re always, always here.” So in anything like that, there’s a challenge to try to be present in all the moments that you’re actually together. So I get what you’re saying.
We’re always looking at some ideal representation of a family or a career or how something should work. Ideal to who? Why can’t these ideals be different career path choices, be unique to the individual as opposed to like, oh, we’re still trying to look at a … I don’t know. It’s like how many weddings have I been to where there are two sets of parents on each side of the aisle because both people are getting married, their parents are divorced and on their third relationship. But I’m like, “Here’s the air fryer. We got hope for you.”
There’s a gift receipt in the box, just in case. Um, I really enjoy the long story about the Fast and Furious franchise in the special. Do you want to see Fast and Furious go to space?
They did, so obviously you’re not a fan of the films.
No, I am a fan of the films, but which one did they go to space?
Well, Ludacris went to space, I believe it was in F9.
He touched space. I mean full on, we’re going to the moon. I don’t mean just getting through the atmosphere.
It still needs to be a car. If it’s like moon runners and stuff, then yeah, it just needs to be car-based. That’s why Hobbs & Shaw, as much as I’m a Statham fan, it was more fighting than it was cars and it bummed me out. Fast and Furious has proved that they’re going to do whatever they want, and they got at least one ticket sold with your boy here. So go to space? Well, they already went there and a submarine. I mean, they’ve done a lot.
I enjoy the films. I’m not hardcore. Most of them I’ve only seen once. I’ll be honest. And I was late to it.
As was I. As was I. They’re dumb. But that’s part of the bit. Like that’s why I’m watching them.
Yeah. Camaros on the moon would work. I think time travel could work. I think maybe going subterranean, drill into the earth, little Jules Verne action.
Camaros on the Moon sounds like a band that would open for Tame Impala or something. It sounds like a lo-fi Chillwave band. [Laughs]
Being transgender is not an easy thing. No one wakes up one day and decides they want to try on the opposite gender and by the next week they’ve completely transitioned. Trans people often explain that they realized they were assigned the wrong gender in early childhood but didn’t have the language for what was happening until they were older.
Once they’ve come to terms with who they are and share it with others, they can lose friends, become isolated from family members, and sometimes lose their livelihood. Coming out as transgender even in today’s more culturally aware world is not for the weak because it may suddenly feel like the weight of the world is upon you while you simultaneously have dwindling support.
In one man’s story, he explains that one of his biggest fears was losing his mom’s love, but instead she turned into his most supportive advocate.
Tiq Milan recently shared the beautiful story of his late mother’s evolving and unwavering support with Moth Stories on Instagram. He opens the video by explaining that he was his mother’s fourth daughter.
“When I was 15, I sat my mother down and I said, ‘Mommy, I got something to tell you,’ and she said, ‘Aww sh*t.’ And I said, ‘Ma, I’m gay,” Milan reveals.
He says his mom quickly became his fiercest ally but wanted to know why he dressed so “mannish,” inquiring why Milan, (who still hadn’t come out as trans at the time) couldn’t be softer like Ellen DeGeneres.
“Now as a transgender person, what we know is that we may lose everybody that we thought loved us and I was scared that I was going to lose her,” Milan says before revealing that he eventually told his mom he was a man.
The day of his top surgery his mom showed up. There was no anger or disappointment in her child, just love and grief. Milan explains that his mother felt as if her daughter died in that moment, acknowledging that he wasn’t the only one experiencing a transition. The story continues to unfold with deep joy and gratitude that causes commenters to cry.
Milan’s story will be featured in Moth Stories anthology “A Point of Beauty,” which can be pre-ordered here. But you can watch Milan’s heartwarming video below (brief profanity heads-up):
A father from Syracuse, New York, is getting a lot of cheers (and a few jeers) for a letter he wrote on behalf of the Tooth Fairy that he gave to his 10-year-old daughter. The message? Your room needs to be cleaner for us to give you any money.
The situation started after the girl’s parents forgot to help the Tooth Fairy out.
“We had forgotten to play the part of the tooth fairy, and when she woke up in the morning, she was disappointed,” the father, who wanted to remain anonymous, told Newsweek. “Since we had been trying to get her to clean her room for a long time, it provided an opportunity to learn a light-hearted lesson.”
So, the dad left the young girl a note from the Tooth Fairy on her official letterhead that claimed that her agents couldn’t “retrieve” her tooth on two separate occasions because her room was too messy.
The letter was on official letterhead with the address 100 Castle Lane in Fairyland.
“The state of your room prevented us from performing a midnight retrieval,” the letter read. “The first attempt almost resulted in tragedy as one of our agents’ shoes got stuck to something icky on the floor. While attempting to free herself, a pile of socks tipped over and nearly suffocated her.”
Given the two previous failures, the Tooth Fairy was forced to have a rare “daytime retrieval” and a “grumpy” fairy named Greta to do the dirty work. Greta was successful and left the young girl some change.
The Tooth Fairy finished the letter with a warm thank you. “We also know that you have a choice when it comes to tooth disposal, and we appreciate the opportunity to meet this need. Kind regards, The Tooth Fairy.”
He later posted the letter on Reddit, where it brought a smile to many people’s faces because of the formal way that it was written. “It is silly to have this image of a fairy in your head that deals with young children and communicates like an adult,” the father told Newsweek.
“This is gorgeous. She will remember receiving this letter her entire life,” SuggestionIll2192 wrote in the comments. “This is fantastic! I have a messy kid who I straight up forgot to get the last tooth from. She had to remind me to remind the tooth fairy….Going to use my own version of this with the next one, thank you for the idea!” Seatthetruthadded.
However, some people on the online forum aren’t too happy with the letter, claiming that the parents were manipulating their daughter. “Really surprised people are rooting for turning the Tooth Fairy into a guilt trip for a child,” Yadayadabisuqe wrote. “Nothing like shaming your child into cleaning her room. There have to be better way to do that than this,” VintageTimex added.
In the end, the girl gets her reward from the Tooth Fairy, but do her parents see any changes in her cleanliness after the letter? “
A lot of people have asked, and the answer is no, the note did not have any lasting cleanliness effects,” the father said.
Ancient sage Obi-Wan Kenobi once remarked, “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.” Well, he’s right, kinda.
Our eyes bring in information and it’s our brain’s job to decipher the image and determine what we’re seeing. But our brains aren’t always correct. In fact, sometimes they can be so wrong we wonder if we are accurately interpreting reality at all.
After all, our brain can only label things if it knows that they are. If you lived on a deserted island your whole life and a cow showed up on the beach, you’d have no idea what to label it.
The latest baffling image that’s making people across the internet doubt their senses is a picture tweeted out by Twitter user nayem. “If you can see a beach, ocean sky, rocks and stars then you are an artist,” the comment reads.
But some people who see it also think it looks like a car door. What do you see?
If your brain told you the picture is of a lovely evening laying on the beach then you’re definitely an optimist. But, according to the person who posted it, the photo is of the bottom of a rusted out car door. Not very romantic, is it?
Here’s what Twitter users thought about the illusion.
Imagine you’re working at a school and one of the kids is starting to act up. What do you do?
Traditionally, the answer would be to give the unruly kid detention or suspension.
But in my memory, detention tended to involve staring at walls, bored out of my mind, trying to either surreptitiously talk to the kids around me without getting caught or trying to read a book. If it was designed to make me think about my actions, it didn’t really work. It just made everything feel stupid and unfair.
But Robert W. Coleman Elementary School has been doing something different when students act out: offering meditation.
Instead of punishing disruptive kids or sending them to the principal’s office, the Baltimore school has something called the Mindful Moment Room instead.
The room looks nothing like your standard windowless detention room. Instead, it’s filled with lamps, decorations, and plush purple pillows. Misbehaving kids are encouraged to sit in the room and go through practices like breathing or meditation, helping them calm down and re-center. They are also asked to talk through what happened.
Meditation and mindfulness are pretty interesting, scientifically.
Mindful meditation has been around in some form or another for thousands of years. Recently, though, science has started looking at its effects on our minds and bodies, and it’s finding some interesting effects.
One study, for example, suggested that mindful meditation could give practicing soldiers a kind of mental armor against disruptive emotions, and it can improve memory too. Another suggested mindful meditation could improve a person’s attention span and focus.
Individual studies should be taken with a grain of salt (results don’t always carry in every single situation), but overall, science is starting to build up a really interesting picture of how awesome meditation can be. Mindfulness in particular has even become part of certain fairly successful psychotherapies.
Back at the school, the Mindful Moment Room isn’t the only way Robert W. Coleman Elementary has been encouraging its kids.
The meditation room was created as a partnership with the Holistic Life Foundation, a local nonprofit that runs other programs as well. For more than 10 years the foundation has been offering the after-school program Holistic Me, where kids from pre-K through the fifth grade practice mindfulness exercises and yoga.
“It’s amazing,” said Kirk Philips, the Holistic Me coordinator at Robert W. Coleman. “You wouldn’t think that little kids would meditate in silence. And they do.”
There was a Christmas party, for example, where the kids knew they were going to get presents but were still expected to do meditation first.”As a little kid, that’s got to be hard to sit down and meditate when you know you’re about to get a bag of gifts, and they did it! It was beautiful, we were all smiling at each other watching them,” said Philips.
The kids may even be bringing that mindfulness back home with them. In the August 2016 issue of Oprah Magazine, Holistic Life Foundation co-founder Andres Gonzalez said: “We’ve had parents tell us, ‘I came home the other day stressed out, and my daughter said, “Hey, Mom, you need to sit down. I need to teach you how to breathe.'”
The program also helps mentor and tutor the kids, as well as teach them about the environment.
They help clean up local parks, build gardens, and visit nearby farms. Philips said they even teach kids to be co-teachers, letting them run the yoga sessions.
This isn’t just happening at one school, either. Lots of schools are trying this kind of holistic thinking, and it’s producing incredible results.
In the U.K., for example, the Mindfulness in Schools Project is teaching adults how to set up programs. Mindful Schools, another nonprofit, is helping to set up similar programs in the United States.
Oh, and by the way, the schools are seeing a tangible benefit from this program, too.
Philips said that at Robert W. Coleman Elementary, there have been exactly zero suspensions last year and so far this year. Meanwhile, nearby Patterson Park High School, which also uses the mindfulness programs, said suspension rates dropped and attendance increased as well.
Is that wholly from the mindfulness practices? It’s impossible to say, but those are pretty remarkable numbers, all the same.
I know Van Gogh was a genius. If the point of this were “Van Gogh was a mad genius,” I would not be sharing this with you.
But I found this and I thought, “Oh, what a vaguely interesting thing.” And then I got to the part about the Hubble Space Telescope, and, let me tell you: Mind. Blown.
We’ve got the set up here, but you have to watch the video for the full effect. It’s all the way at the bottom.
Get this: Van Gogh was a pretty cool artist (duh), but as it turns out…
…he was also A SCIENTIST!*
*Pretty much.
Here’s the story.
While Van Gogh was in an asylum in France, after he mutilated his ear during a psychotic episode*…
(*Or, and I’d like to thank the entire Internet for pointing this out, there’s a theory that his friend Paul Gauguin actually cut off his ear, in a drunken sword fight, in the dark. The more you know!)
…he was able to capture one of science’s most elusive concepts:
~~~TURBULENCE~~~
Although it’s hard to understand with math (like, REALLY HARD), it turns out that art makes it easy to depict how it LOOKS.
So what is turbulence?
Turbulence, or turbulent flow, is a concept of fluid dynamics where fluid movements are “self-similar” when there’s an energy cascade — so basically, big eddies make smaller eddies, and those make even smaller ones … and so on and so forth.
It looks like this:
See? It’s easier to look at pictures to understand it.
Thing is, scientists are pretty much *just* starting to figure this stuff out.
Then you’ve got Van Gogh, 100 years earlier, in his asylum, with a mutilated ear, who totally nailed it!
The folks who noticed Van Gogh’s ability to capture turbulence checked to see whether other artists did the same. Most impressionists achieved ” luminance” with their art (which is the sort-of *pulsing* you see when you look at their paintings that really shows what light looks like).
But did other artists depict turbulence the way Van Gogh did?
NOPE.
Not even “The Scream” could hold a candle to Van Gogh!
Even in his darkest time, Van Gogh was able to capture — eerily accurately — one of nature’s most complex and confusing concepts … 100 years before scientists had the technology to observe actual star turbulence and realize its similarity to fluid turbulence mathematics as well as Van Gogh’s swirling sky. Cool, huh?
Prior to its release, Ariana Grande’s new album Eternal Sunshine was shrouded in mystery. Outside of the project’s lead single “Yes, And?” or the teaser posts about the tracklist, Grande wanted to keep everything close to the vest. Now that the 13-track body of work has hit streaming platforms, it is up to the fans to dissect its content.
Well, we can answer a few of those inquiries. Continue below for more details.
Is Ariana Grande’s “True Story” An Actual True Story?
So, what is the Max Martin-produced record “True Story” about? Based on the lyrics, a nasty breakup.
“I’ll play the villain if you need me to / I know how this goes, yeah / I’ll be the one you pay to see play thе scene / Roll the camеras, please / Turnin’ like a dime, wastin’ all their time / Sneakin’ like a creep in the night / But I’ll play whatever part you need me to / This is a true story about all the lies,” sings Grande.
But is it actually based on an actual story (or Grande’s alleged love triangle)? According to Grande’s interview with Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe, no. “True Story” is inspired by “an untrue story based on all untrue events.”
During the conversation, Grande went on to expand on that statement.
“You can pull from your truth,” she said. “You can pull from a concept, you can pull from a film, from a story you’re telling. From a story about a relationship that a friend told you. Art is really, it can come from anywhere.”
So much for that conspiracy theory. Watch the full interview below.
Eternal Sunshine is out now via Republic. Find more information here.
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