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Read This Dad's Perfect Response To An Ironic School Permission Slip

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When a school required parents to sign permission slips for their kids to read Fahrenheit 451, the irony was not lost on this dad.


On Monday, Daniel Radosh tweeted his brilliantly snarky response to the permission slip, which notes that some people get “angry” about the book’s references to Bible-burning and profanity.






“I love this letter!” wrote the dad. “What a wonderful way to introduce students to the theme of Fahrenheit 451 that books are so dangerous that the institutions of society ― schools and parents ― might be willing to team up against children to prevent them from reading one.”


Radosh, who is a senior writer for “The Daily Show,” used his characteristic humor and a solid dose of sarcasm in his response. 


“It’s easy enough to read the book and say, ‘This is crazy. It could never really happen,’ but pretending to present students at the start with what seems like a totally reasonable ‘first step’ is a really immersive way to teach them how insidious censorship can be,” he continued.


Radosh noted on Twitter that his son, Milo, is in the eighth grade, so he figured the permission slip couldn’t possibly be real.  


“I’m sure that when the book club is over and the students realize the true intent of this letter they’ll be shocked at how many of them accepted it as an actual permission slip,” he wrote in his now-viral response.


“In addition, Milo’s concern that allowing me to add this note will make him stand out as a troublemaker really brings home why most of the characters find it easier to accept the world they live in rather than challenge it,” he concluded. “I assured him that his teacher would have his back.”


Radosh’s tweet received nearly 15,000 likes and 9,000 retweets.


#NailedIt.

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The ‘Bachelor’ Franchise Needs To Stop Giving Chad A Platform For His BS

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Like a particularly pernicious hangover, “Bachelor” bad dude Chad Johnson just won’t fade away. After his time on JoJo Fletcher’s season of “The Bachelorette,” a sad appearance on “After the Final Rose,” and an even more shocking stay on “Bachelor in Paradise,” he still keeps cropping up ― on an aftershow for “Bachelorette Canada” and now on Freeform’s “Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After?


On Tuesday night’s episode of “Ben & Lauren,” the tepidly happy couple decide to go camping with some franchise friends ― Chris Soules, Emily and Haley Ferguson, Lace Morris and Grant Kemp, and (oops!) Chad Johnson. Yep, thinking Lace and Grant can’t make the weekend, Lauren and Ben invited their friends’ sworn enemy. After meeting him at “After the Final Rose,” Lauren felt convinced Chad was a good guy deep down, and wanted to reach out to the poor friendless dude. 


The final campfire of the weekend ended up being a group therapy session. Lace sobbed, Lauren insisted that she didn’t really think Chad was a bully, and Chad severely undercut her case by smirking and whipping out lines like, “I meant to upset you! I meant to piss y’all off, and it worked! ... It entertained me.” When Grant asked what his late mother would think of his actions on the show, Chad stiffened and ground out, “I think, stop bringing my mom up ... I don’t bring up my mom. There’s no unhurtful way to keep bringing up my mom.” (While this is an understandable defensiveness, he has brought her death up, repeatedly, to garner sympathy and burnish his actions on the show.)


Finally, he mouthed an apology and left before anything worse could happen ― what amounts to a triumphant act of generosity from Chad given the low bar he’s been given to clear in the “Bachelor” world of late.



Presumably, this camping trip was filmed some time ago, but based on the context of the show, it’s clear that it took place after his appearances on both “Bachelorette” and “Paradise,” as well as an appearance on “After Paradise” with Lace. By this point, his ongoing pattern of inappropriate behavior toward cast members was eminently apparent ― yet he was shoehorned into an episode of a “Bachelor” star’s reality show nonetheless. 


Freeform declined to comment on Chad’s appearance on the show, and as of press time, contacts at Warner Horizon and ABC had not responded to requests for comment. 


As someone who watches and writes about “The Bachelor” franchise, I’d been troubled by Chad’s comportment on the show since early on, especially as it became more aggressive and openly hateful toward women on the show such as Lace and Sarah Herron. I’d commented on it when I found his behavior toward other contestants inappropriate. I’d also revealed on Twitter and on my podcast that my own mother had died when I was very young, and that the grieving process had been very prolonged and difficult. Based on my experience, I empathized, but I didn’t believe his mother’s death should be used as an excuse for harmful actions.


But, full disclosure, I’m not just an observer here. 


That’s because Chad didn’t like me “bringing up his mom” by commenting that a grief I so deeply sympathized with shouldn’t be used to justify abusive behaviors. He didn’t like me doing this so much that on Aug. 10, he began to harass me on Twitter, first tweeting at my employer:



He continued by tweeting what he either believed or claimed to believe was my address. (I had never resided at the apartment in question.)



I reported the attempted doxing to Twitter. After many hours, his account was suspended until the tweets were removed. In the meantime, the tweet hung in the ether, receiving plenty of unsettling responses. (I just hoped that was all it would lead to.) 



My editors and I also brought the tweets to the attention of ABC and Warner Horizon, the studio. Given that this occurred the day after Chad’s appearance with Lace on “After Paradise,” it seems likely that the camping trip filmed for “Ben & Lauren” took place just a few days later.


Chad presents himself as someone who thinks his own purposefully harmful actions can be erased with a glib apology, while others are lucky if a comment that rubs him the wrong way isn’t met with physical violence. Lauren asked him during the campfire chat if it made him sad to hurt other people; he almost scoffed as he replied, “No!” If others hit on a sore spot for him ― his mother, though it’s one that he’s made part of his reality TV narrative — he finds their hurtfulness appalling and unforgivable. There’s no one standard of kindness; everyone must behave with gentle deference to Chad, while he can gaily stomp on them in return and expect forgiveness on demand.


That is what it is. Whether a calculated ploy or a manifestation of deeper issues, by now, we know what we’re getting with Chad. He has, in the past, excoriated fellow contestants for playing nice to get endorsement deals and fame, but on “Ben & Lauren” he basically admitted what was always clear: that he’s been acting horrendously both on and off the show to stay in the spotlight, to “make people laugh.” 


Why ― why ― are ABC and Freeform giving him a platform to play this hurtful game at the expense of the rest of their talent, himself, and even others who may be caught in the crossfire? 


The episode, “Chad to the Bone,” ends with Ben toasting to “more hope, more love, and more acceptance of the people in our life that have hurt us.” 


“That was a great toast,” says Lace, raising her glass to staying vulnerable to someone who just admitted to intentionally harming her for his own amusement. What an inspiring message. 

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Evan Rachel Wood Says 'Westworld' Season 1 Finale Will Blow Your Mind

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HBO has once again stepped up the TV game with their latest hit, “Westworld,” which follows the creators, AI hosts and guests of a futuristic Western theme park. But, although we’ve already seen some serious twists and turns, things are about to get very “dark and sinister,” according to star Evan Rachel Wood.


The actress, who plays robot Dolores Abernathy on the series, sat down with The Huffington Post during a recent Build Series interview and revealed that the end of Season 1 will shock fans. 


“We’ve set everything up really beautifully and the payoffs are going to start hitting you one by one,” Wood teased, saying that Episode 5 really kicks it into high gear.


On the show, Dolores is currently off her programming, doing things she normally wouldn’t be able to do, like firing weapons and leaving her town of Sweetwater. She’s on a bounty hunt with human guest William (Jimmi Simpson), who’s discovering she’s not like others of her kind. Being the oldest AI in the park, the dream update Ford (Anthony Hopkins) initiated is truly messing with Dolores’ mind and making her question everything


“We’ve established that the farther out you go, the more intense the game gets, and man, were they not kidding because when we started getting the scripts after episodes it was like, ‘Whoa! OK!’” Wood said. “Not only are they dropping bombs left and right, but some of the days on set, I would be like, ‘Look, I’ve seen some stuff, and this is WILD.’”


“It will only continue to get more and more intense and more relentless.” 



Wood totally understands why the show has gained such an immediate following on message boards and Reddit, considering there are too many theories to count that could actually turn out to be correct. Still, according to the actress, she had 100 theories “and only three were right.”


“The anticipation is killing me. I thought when the show aired, it would relieve some of that, but now the anticipation of wanting everyone to know the secrets so I can stop having to bear them by myself is what I’m also looking forward to,” Wood said, admitting that, of course, she can’t spoil anything. 


“I can tell you that the surprises will floor you. Certainly prepare for [Episodes] 9 and 10 to have your heart broken and your mind blown. And that’s really all I can say. I’m just over the moon about it.” 


“Westworld” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. 


Watch our full interview with Evan Rachel Wood on Build Series below: 




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A Real-Life School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry Is Opening Next Year

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For many Harry Potter fans, our 11th birthdays were inexpressibly sad. We had hoped against hope that our Hogwarts acceptance letters might arrive, so we could join our magical friends at the school of our dreams. Of course, our hopes were dashed. As everyone knows, Voldemort wiped out the Ministry of Magic’s records of muggle-born witches and wizards born from 1985 to 1998.


Luckily, a new school of witchcraft and wizardry is stepping up to educate the untrained masses. Next year, the fans behind the Mimbulus Mimbletonia Association are opening a wizarding school for muggles at Château de Jolibert in Bourgougnague, France





The school will offer classes over four days, from May 25 to May 28, 2017. Only 100 lucky students can attend. Students must be 16 or older, and students under 18 will need a permission slip from their parents. 


The four-day experience is modeled after the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s StoneStudents will take part in a sorting ceremony, learn to play Quidditch, and take classes in Botany, Potions and Charms.  


There is a catch. The Mimbulus Mimbletonia Association is the brainchild of two French Harry Potter fans, so all lessons and activities will be conducted in French. Only fluent French speakers will be able to participate. Better start brushing up on your high school French now!





The 100 tickets for the event go on sale at the end of this year. There’s no word yet on how much the tickets will cost, but the price will include four days of activities, three nights’ lodging in the dorms and all meals. Here’s hoping you discover a stockpile of Galleons before December.


Check out the event’s Facebook page and website for further details. Fingers crossed you finally learn how to pronounce “wingardium leviosa” correctly.





H/T Design Taxi

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Delightful Vintage Photos Of Women In Trees Are What You Need Right Now

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It all started with a peculiar little discovery. At a market in Frankfurt 25 years ago, Jochen Raiss, whose found photos have since been anthologized in art books, stumbled on a picture that caught his attention ― a woman standing nonchalantly in a tree.


“The woman had a dress and dancing shoes, not necessarily dressed to climb on a tree!” Raiss wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. The image fit neatly into his already growing collection of vintage finds, which he says are united by the fact that they’re all of “people in unusual situations.”


As unusual as the situation was ― in this first found photo and dozens of others that followed, women were pristinely dressed while posing uncomfortably amid the natural world ― it apparently wasn’t so uncommon.



Raiss’ collection of women posing in trees grew over the years, but in his decades’ worth of scavenging, he very rarely found similar photos of men posing in trees.


“Now and again I also see pictures of men in trees, but [they are] very, very rare,” he said. He reasons that at the beginning of amateur photography “the camera was fixed in the man’s hand.” So, women were left to model for the budding photo enthusiasts.


Raiss says these details fascinate him, because they reveal a side of history not recorded by more “professional” or studied images.


“It is actually the amateur photos which interest me,” he said. “The imperfect, the ‘normal,’ the everyday, the more ‘real’ life is what fascinates me. Pictures of people who have actually lived and are now no longer there.”


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What Becomes Of Chiron After 'Moonlight' Ends, According To The Film's Cast

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As the headline indicates, this post contains spoilers about “Moonlight.”


Moonlight” ends with a flicker of hope. After coursing through three disillusioned chapters in the life of our young main character, Chiron, the movie poses a question: Will he embrace the truth of his sexuality, or will the homophobia that taunts him continue to dictate his well-being?


Given the stellar box-office performance that Barry Jenkins’ masterful coming-of-age drama saw last weekend, many people have also probably debated this quandary over the past several days. What societal ills led to the schoolyard bullying that Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert) endured in the film’s first division? As a teenager (Ashton Sanders), should he have fought back? Did his mother’s (Naomie Harris) drug habits rob his resilience? And when a grown, hardened Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) reunites with Kevin (André Holland), the only guy who ever touched him affectionately, will he drop his guard? Will he live authentically in a world that rejects untraditional notions of black masculinity


Any answers to the last two questions are merely speculative, as the film ends on an open-ended note of potential solace. A few weeks ago, I asked Jenkins and some of the cast where they see Chiron a decade after “Moonlight” draws to a close. The specifics of their answers varied, but the temperament was universal: They have infinite faith in his future. 


Barry Jenkins (writer/director):



I don’t believe in tidy resolutions. I do think he’s more himself than he ever is in the film we see ― that, I’m absolutely, 1,000 percent sure of. Whether that’s married to Kevin, I can’t say. He’s a person who had a very difficult childhood and doesn’t have a lot of experience in relationships, so imagine trying to come home to that person seven days a week. What a fucking mess. But I do think, at heart, he’s a good dude, and I think this reconciliation with [Paula, his mother] and Kevin and their story is going to set him on the path toward being the good dude that he is.



Mahershala Ali (Juan, the neighborhood drug dealer who becomes a surrogate father to Chiron):



I see him having softened. He’s had to put on a lot of armor to make it through the crucible of adolescence, but the world, in some ways, is a lot safer as an adult. Being lonely as a child turns into you having the capacity to choose moments of being alone. It shifts as an adult. Once you mature and come to terms with who you are in a different way, you are empowered. As a young person, you really need a lot of help. You need people to usher you through and tell you that you’re OK. If you can make it through that time, as an adult you can begin to understand and have the capacity to take personal responsibility. You can still be victimized as an adult, no doubt ― it’s just a little easier, and I think Kevin has the last relationship or element or piece of information that he needs to finally open up to become who he actually needs to be. I think he will have softened and relaxed and lightened and come to terms with who he is, and for the first time know who he is. I have a lot of hope for him.



Janelle Monáe (Teresa, who becomes a surrogate mother to Chiron):



“Hopefully he and Kevin, hopefully they’re together. Hopefully they don’t have to hide their love for each other and they’re comfortable enough in their own skin that everyone who is also trying to deal with their own sexuality and whether or not to embrace it, especially if they’re gay, will look to them as examples of a positive union.”



Trevante Rhodes (adult Chiron):



I think about love on a scale from 1 to 10. Most of us find a 6 or a 7, and that’s why we have divorce. It’s the truth. We settle for that 6 or 7. But I like to think Kevin is Chiron’s 10. He’s found that and he realizes that there’s no reason to settle for a 6 or a 7 because, “I know this person is my 10. Whether or not this person believes I’m his 10, I’m going to devote my life to this person entirely.” That’s why the line where he says, “You’re the only man that’s ever touched me,” for me, was the most amazing, most beautiful thing I’ve seen in cinema, period. Because that’s what we strive for as people, to find that one person because they’re there. If Kevin doesn’t feel that they should be together, Chiron is just going to die a miserable person because that’s his person and he won’t settle for anything else. But I like to think they’re together, walking in Central Park hand-in-hand when they’re 90 years old.



André Holland (adult Kevin):



In my mind, I don’t know whether they’re going to end up as a couple, but they’re going to live authentic lives. I have this image of them walking along with Kevin’s son and teaching him, either overtly or experientially, about what masculinity is and what it means to be a man, in all the variations that are possible. That, to me, is the magic of it, that there’s a young boy in the world who will grow up with a different idea of masculinity than either of them had.



“Moonlight” is now open in select theaters. It expands to wide release on Nov. 4.

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Pregnant Zookeeper Documents Baby's Growth With Adorable Animals

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A lot of pregnant women document the growth of their unborn babies with size comparisons to fruits and vegetables. But zookeeper Jennifer Dew had an even cuter idea.


Dew, who works as an animal programs specialist at the Columbus Zoo, has been posing for weekly maternity photos with animals in her care. 


22 Weeks




Dew told The Huffington Post she plans to name her baby daughter Gwendolyn “Winnie” Dew after her grandmother, who passed away last December. 


“Nana was a huge support to me throughout my life and followed my career very closely,” she said. “She knew my favorite animals’ birthdays and would always come to my zoo programs.”


The zookeeper added, “I think some of my love for animals came from her. The bushbaby was one of her favorites!” 



Dew said she decided to document her unborn baby’s growth with animals because she had trouble visualizing the fetus size comparisons with fruits. “So many fruits vary in size as individuals,” she said. “I’ve seen small pomegranates and big pomegranates.” 


The mom-to-be, who is due in December, eventually found an app that compares the size of unborn babies to “weird but cute animals.” The app claimed that at one week, her baby daughter was the size of a hedgehog. 


19 Weeks




This bit of trivia gave Dew the idea to feature the animals in her care in weekly pregnancy photos. Because animals vary in size as well, she decided to focus on animal weight as the main metric for each photo.


Dew said she also drew inspiration from an expectant mother who posted similar photos with animals throughout her pregnancy on ZooKreepers, a Facebook group for zookeepers.


23 Weeks




24 Weeks




Dew has worked at the Columbus Zoo for over eight years. As an animal programs specialist, she takes animals to schools and nursing homes and arranges shows and experiences as the zoo’s “Animal Encounters Village.” She is also responsible for taking care of the animals, which can involve raising them as babies. 


Taking maternity photos with the animals has occasionally proven to be challenging. “Po the Bushbaby is very busy,” Dew explained. “She’s very active and on to the next thing fast.”


She added, “Because of this my friend had to smear baby food (one of her favorite treats) on my stomach so we could get her to sit still long enough for the picture. It was one of the more elaborate photo shoots.”


26 Weeks




The mom-to-be said her animal-themed pregnancy photos have been “a fun conversation starter.” Instead of just asking her how she’s feeling ― which she says can be a “loaded question” for a pregnant woman ― friends and family are now inquiring about what the next animal will be. 


“Not only do I get excited to share details about our baby, I also get the opportunity to share some of the animals I love and care about,” Dew added.


“Our department’s motto is ‘Touch the heart to teach the mind.’ It is more difficult to encourage people to care about something if they don’t have a connection with it,” she explained. “This has been another cool way to form a connection between people and wildlife.”


Keep scrolling and visit Dew’s Instagram for more of her animal-filled pregnancy photos.


27 Weeks




28 Weeks




29 Weeks




30 Weeks




31 Weeks




H/T Babble

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The Pro-Hillary 'Hamilton' Parody Video You Always Knew Was Coming

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After presidential candidate Hillary Clinton referenced “Hamilton” in her Democratic National Convention speech, we began patiently waitin’ for the inevitable pro-Hill parody that would follow.


Today, that parody arrived.


We have the comedians at The Key of Awesome to thank for the musical homage (and a truly painful impression of Donald Trump). You had us at the “Hamilton” logo transformed into what should be the emblem on Clinton’s future oval office door, guys.


Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renée Elise Goldsberry performed their own “Hamilton” parody earlier this month during the “Broadway for Hillary” event. While nothing beats the line “Anybody here wanna shatter a glass ceiling?” ― particularly when it’s rapped by two of theater’s greatest ― we might pay the lottery discount to see “Clinton: An American Musical,” too.

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These Illustrations Of Disney Villains Look So Real They’re Scary

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These are criminally cool.


Finnish artist Jirka Väätäinen, who has enchanted the internet in the past with his hyper realistic renderings of Disney princesses and princes, is at it again. His latest spellbinding offerings include five Disney villains that are sure to put the bippity-boppity-BOO into your Halloween.


Each illustration has been digitally painted by hand in Photoshop and modeled after many muses.


“I usually have a certain vision in my head of the character, and I start by thinking of and looking for people or real-life pictures that somehow remind me of the character I am working on,” Väätäinen told The Huffington Post. “I combine, manipulate and blend together elements, textures and features from dozens and dozens of real-life photos to come up with this vision of mine.”


Check out Väätäinen’s new fierce five below. Let’s just say evil never looked so good:


 


Cruella de Vil from “101 Dalmatians”



Prince Hans from “Frozen”



Jafar from “Aladdin”



Judge Claude Frollo from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”



 Mother Gothel from “Tangled” 



To see more of Jirka Väätäinen’s work, go to his website, or his Instagram page


To see more of his villains, check them out here.

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Sex-Positive Artist Marilyn Minter Celebrates Glam, Glitter And Gunk

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Miley Cyrus gazes out from behind a wall of glass, drops of dew festooning her features: her platinum bangs, her sculpted brows, her glossy, made-up lips. The foggy vision makes her look like a dream, inaccessible to mere fans.


The portrait was taken by Marilyn Minter, an artist whose photorealistic paintings center on glamour, fashion and femininity. Since the 1980s, Minter’s work has depicted both the allure of magazine-touted beauty and the grimy realities that lie beneath it. She captures polished toenails and muddy feet, glittery lips and slurping mouths.


Decades’ worth of her work is on display at The Brooklyn Museum starting Nov. 4 in an exhibition called “Pretty/Dirty.” There you’ll find portraits she took of her mother ― a glamorous addict who embodied the paradoxes that Minter has come to represent. You’ll find videos of tongues brushing against some kind of goopy green product, commentary on consumption in all its forms.


But you won’t find her most recent work ― the portrait she took of Cyrus looking misty and contemplative, taken for a project to help raise funds for Planned Parenthood.


“[Miley] is one of the few celebrities to back Planned Parenthood. Most of them won’t touch it, because they don’t want this very small but vocal minority to troll them,” Minter said. “I don’t care. You know, what are they going to do? Not buy my art? Artists are pretty fearless when it comes to that. But people can boycott a celebrity. They can make life uncomfortable.”


Minter’s admiration for Cyrus is clear. “She’s an activist. She’s an animal rights person. And these are all things I am, too,” she said, adding that millennial feminists are “totally aware” of the importance of reproductive rights and sex-positivity.


The latter point is an important one for Minter, whose work wasn’t embraced by feminists in the ‘80s. She was rejected by the art world as unserious, rejected by the fashion world as too grotesque, and rejected by feminists for her portrayal of pleasures that might be considered oppressive or unsavory.



In 1989, Minter began her “100 Food Porn” series, consisting of over 100 paintings of hands working to prepare drippy, buttery meals. She wanted an artistic endeavor that had some financial promise. “I needed something to bargain with, because I didn’t have any money,” she said. Eventually, she purchased 30-second ad spots during commercial breaks for “Late Night with David Letterman,” “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” to promote the paintings.


But what began as a bid for commercial work resulted in a project that subtly worked to promote equality.


“I went through cookbooks and most of them were male hands, and I turned half of them into female hands by putting long, red fingernails on them,” Minter said. “No one’s ever noticed that. It’s all female hands tearing food apart.”


This idea of inserting feminine pleasure into popular imagery is common throughout Minter’s work, including a 1992 painting of a woman touching herself through lace underwear, and another from the same year of a woman taking a disembodied penis into her mouth. They’re undoubtedly scenes drawn or directly culled from porn, a medium of sexual expression dismissed wholesale by feminists at the time. 


Minter says her aim with these paintings was to ask whether it was possible for women to “recapture images from an abusive history, and claim them and make images for their own amusement and pleasure,” adding that, “nobody had politically correct fantasies.”


Minter says her work better reaches contemporary viewers, because the internet has de-stigmatized pornography, revealing it to be a complicated medium that can both oppress and empower.



“Feminists were pretty isolated when it came to sexuality. And there was such an abusive history, they had such an adamant anti-sex point of view. And I wasn’t that kind of feminist,” Minter said. “Of course, my side won, so it doesn’t really matter. But I was ostracized at the time. It was really painful. Everyone wants to think that they’re communicating, and here I was making people run out of a room.” 


Now that explicit portrayals of feminine sexuality aren’t automatically considered derogatory, Minter’s work confronts another stigmatized medium of expression: the worlds of fashion and glamour. A series of paintings from the aughts picture close-ups of women’s eyes and lips, doused in paint, glitter, and imperfections.


A woman with a dusting of red freckles and imperfectly plucked eyebrows wears aqueous-looking eye shadow, a blue-green sea twinkling across her lids. The juxtaposition of excessive beauty and human flaws paints a rich portrait of femininity.


“Fashion and glamour is this billion-jillion dollar industry. It’s one of the only places where women have been able to create power structures in the world,” Minter said. “These are giant engines for the culture. And we have such contempt for them. It just never made sense to me.”


So, Minter’s paintings and photographs, while highlighting bodily realities like pores and pimples, aren’t critiques of our product-fueled attempts to cover up blemishes, either. Ropes of pearls are shoved uncomfortably into mouths full of bleach-white teeth. Metallic paint drips from parted lips. In a photo of Tom Ford for New York Magazine, she captures the back of the designer’s neck, wet with unidentified moisture. Is it dew, or something more repellent, like sweat? The ambiguity, Minter explains, is part of the point.



“Everything I do, I’m hoping that there are multiple reads. I’m never trying to tell you what to think as much as making a picture of that paradox,” she said. “I think what I do is just take what’s already there and push it to the extreme. Like with Tom Ford, he had $16,000 alligator shoes, and I just had him splashing in mud, because that’s real life. Even with very expensive shoes, you’re going to get them dirty on a rainy night. Everyone gets rained on.” 


Minter says the dueling imagery of glamour and gunk is captured by contemporary artists she admires, too. She cites K8 Hardy and Petra Collins as women whose aesthetic works with the same paradox.


“It’s a backlash to this robotic, Photoshop bullshit. I love Alicia Keys not wearing any makeup on ‘The Voice.’ I love that there’s a backlash. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to make yourself look as good as you can, but this constant grooming is just so time-consuming,” Minter said. “The models now, it’s so sad. They’re all anorexic. Or 15. Just these gawky, adolescent little babies. That kind of imposition, it’s so unhealthy. No pores. You can’t have any pores. Everyone has pores!”


Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty” will be on view in the Brooklyn Museum’s Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing from Nov. 4, 2016, through April 2, 2017. 

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Where Are All The Women Guests On ‘Westworld’?

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mid


You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture.


On “Westworld,” viewers have yet to see how “these violent delights have violent ends,” as some of the futuristic park’s androids are fond of saying. But we have seen those delights enjoyed, primarily, by violent men.


Where are all the female guests in Westworld? Only a handful have cropped up so far in the frontier adventureland based on an admittedly white male-centric period of American history: A woman with her husband, who poses with an outlaw host he’d just shot dead for a photo memory of their vacation. A woman in pants (accompanied by Teddy, who has been killed hundreds of times) is led upstairs by one of the Mariposa saloon’s employees. A woman with her small family who happen upon Dolores (who has been raped hundreds of times) painting horses in a field.


Most guests have been straight men getting their kicks from killing and having sex with lifelike robots. But Westworld certainly seems like a land of equal opportunity, its narratives blind to gender, race and background. In the town saloon, a madam named Maeve is shown drinking and speaking Japanese with guests. The family that bumps into Dolores is black and presumably free to take part in any storyline they please. So what gives? Surely more than a few women would also pay for the thrill of playing the hero of a Sweetwater town shootout or for the freedom to disregard the law without real-life consequences. Surely some would go white-hat, some black-hat. (And surely the park could scrounge up some more male prostitutes for its straight female guests, too.) 


The sheer novelty of being in a park filled with robots who only exist for guests’ fun makes Westworld’s hefty pricetag seem worthwhile ― even if guests aren’t taking advantage of the more masculine storylines. Perhaps there are more women than we’ve seen in the park enjoying more conventionally feminine activities ― partaking in the ferry-boat narrative mentioned in passing, riding horses somewhere, or sleeping on more plushy beds than the outdoor ones frenemy duo William and Logan have been using. Maybe, like the original 1973 film, there are other theme parks, Rome and Medieval, that attract more women.



But the lack of female guests shown enjoying Westworld feels intentional. The park’s violent Wild West narratives are amalgams torn from every Wild West film and TV show from decades past. Guests (a bunch of “rich assholes,” according to the park’s narrative director) step into the park to giddily murder and often rape clueless hosts, experiencing a rush of adrenaline unfettered by the guilt or anxiety they’d feel out in the real world. 


It’s been argued that “Westworld” is just another HBO series that treats female characters poorly. But Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Dolores, has cautioned viewers against making such judgments before they can see the full “context.” As we’ve seen, the reality of living those narratives in Westworld, day in and day out, is cartoonish. “Westworld,” the show, criticizes the entertainment value of violent masculinity through its outrageous theme park, rooted in violently masculine pleasures. Watching mostly men enjoy its thrills onscreen, becoming “heroes” or “villains” in their own minds, simply amplifies the image. And the question: Why are stories of murder and rape the most entertaining?


Female guests may be fewer and further between. But female hosts are plentiful. While male hosts around them grotesquely malfunction ― one smashed its head with a rocks and another poured milk over dead hosts’ bodies ― Dolores and madam Maeve are quietly awakening to their realities as perpetual victims and managing to stay in the game. 


“Can you imagine if these poor bastards knew what the guests do to them?” asks one of the park’s analysts behind the scenes. 


As an android awakening seems more and more imminent, it looks like the women hosts will be the ones to lead it. The last story that Westworld tells may be what happens to male aggressors when women are empowered to fight back.

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Sweet Flower Grandpa Surprises Wedding Guests And Steals The Show

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You might expect a bride to include her beloved grandpa at her wedding by having him walk her down the aisle or make a toast. But Jennifer Briskin had other plans for her fun-loving “papa.”


The 29-year-old bride asked her grandpa to play a somewhat unconventional part at her October 1 wedding: flower grandpa. 


“It started out as a joke, telling him he’d be great as a flower girl, and he laughed about it every week,” Briskin told FOX 5 Atlanta. “We kept talking about it and talking about it and then I said ‘Why can’t I do this?’” 


Seven months before the wedding, she popped the question to grandpa and being the good sport he is, he was more than happy to oblige. In fact, Papa Stanley was so eager and nervous, he often practiced his “walk down the aisle” by walking down the driveway with a basket full of leaves.


And by the time the big day came around, Stanley was ready to steal the show. As he walked down the aisle ― accompanied by piano music ― guests were shocked to see the 85-year-old tossing petals. Amused, they greeted him with chuckles. Videographer Mary Daneman caught the entire walk on camera. 


“We had guests come up to us the rest of the night, telling us how memorable it was,” Briskin said. 


So sweet. 

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New Children's Book By Stephen King Will Haunt Your Waking Dreams

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The cover of the picture book Charlie the Choo-Choo by Beryl Evans, illustrated by Ned Dameron, is splayed with a glowing blurb from horror great Stephen King: “If I were ever to write a children’s book, it would be just like this!”


Normally, we’d do well to take book blurbs with a grain of salt, but this one couldn’t be more true. That’s because King did write Charlie the Choo-Choo, under the pen name Beryl Evans. In fact, both the book and Evans appear in the third installment of King’s Dark Tower series, The Waste Lands, published in 1991.



In true King fashion, the anthropomorphized train, Charlie, ranges from spooky to dolorous throughout the book. Even cheery Charlie, hard at work as a locomotive and besties with his engineer Bob, seems a bit, well, off. For one thing, he has so many pointy teeth that Little Red Riding Hood would feel compelled to comment on them.


In The Waste Lands, Jake Chambers buys the book at a bookstore called the Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind and reads it. Despite the positive depiction of Charlie, he reacts with suspicion: “Jake found that he did not trust the smile on Charlie the Choo-Choo’s face. You look happy, but I think that’s just the mask you wear, he thought.”


Poor Charlie, however, comes up against the same obstacle as so many anthropomorphized steam-powered machines in children’s entertainment: He’s made obsolete. Just like Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel, Charlie is deemed outdated by the brass, and he’s left to rust away.


Here’s where the book, based on sample pages from Amazon, gets really dark:



Unless you want to teach your small children a particularly jolting lesson about the grimness of mortality, this might not be a book to bring home for your 2-year-old. But, for fans, it’s a brilliant tie-in to King’s expansive Dark Tower universe.


The books first turned up in a special promotion batch at San Diego Comic-Con this summer, whereupon they immediately became red-hot commodities among King buffs. But now, months later, they’re listed for pre-order on Amazon with a release date of Nov. 22, 2016. If you couldn’t rustle up the cash for a secondhand Comic-Con copy this July, you may now breathe easy.


Next up: Waiting patiently for “The Dark Tower” film adaptation to hit theaters next February.

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32 Illustrators Who Nail What It's Like To Be A Woman Today

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LIFE

A photo posted by POLLY NOR (@pollynor) on




What we know as October, some illustrators consider Inktober ― a 31-day charge to celebrate the benefits of drawing on a regular basis. For the entire month, budding and established artists alike have been posting their work alongside the hashtag #Inktober, motivating themselves and others to relish the beauty of setting pen ― or brush or charcoal! ― to paper. 


In honor of Inktober, we rounded up the illustrators we follow on Instagram, hoping to provide fans with a varying list of artists that could inspire even the least dextrous among us. We soon realized there was a theme to their work: many of the illustrators we chose (loosely defined) are women and gender non-binary individuals who explore the daily ups and downs of being a woman ― whatever that means to them ― today.


From simple pleasures to harsh realities, these artists explore self-care, friendship, motherhood, dating, queer identity, body image, mental illness and more. While some illustrators choose to adorn their images with text that speaks straight to their audience, others communicate the quietest of messages without a single word. A naked woman crying over a cup of hot liquid is abstract (courtesy of Maria-Ines Gul), while a visual diary entry featuring the words “They don’t treat or see me as human here” is more direct (courtesy of Ebin Lee, who uses the pronouns they/them).


Taken as a whole, these artists show just how vast and expansive a woman’s or genderqueer person’s experiences are. They also highlight how powerful a few splotches of color and carefully placed lines can be. Happy Inktober, everyone.


1. Frances Cannon



My illustration for my collaboration with @refinery29

A photo posted by Frances Cannon (@frances_cannon) on




2. Ayqa Khan



ruff draft

A photo posted by @ayqakhan on




3. Bianca Xunise 




4. Akujixxv




5. Megan Schaller



@skyferreira DOWN WITH MUSIC INDUSTRY SEXISM! quotation from her twitter.

A photo posted by MEGAN SCHALLER (@megandoods) on




6. Amber McCall



munchin' down the street

A photo posted by Amber McCall (@thunderpuss) on




7. Yumi Sakugawa



FASHION FORECASTS #CrossLines

A photo posted by Yumi Sakugawa (@yumisakugawa) on




8. Gemma Correll




9. Cynthia Merhej



protect

A photo posted by @cynthiamerhej on




10. Maria-Ines Gul



Back in the Dollhouse

A photo posted by Maria-Ines Gul (@mariainesgul) on




11. Ambivalently Yours



"I wanted to control it But love, I couldn’t hold it" - Camera obscura, French Navy #pink #drawing #ambivalence

A photo posted by Ambivalently Yours (@ambivalentlyyours) on




12. Hailee Va



just made a very chill playlist to low key bone to even tho I just listened to the whole thing by myself

A photo posted by hailee va (@slimesistren) on




13. Novoduce



More than Less #doodle #drawing

A photo posted by Novoduce (@novoduce) on




14. Polly Nor



Too good for u

A photo posted by POLLY NOR (@pollynor) on




15. Mari Andrew



Bonus Mari illustration today (and every Friday) on cupofjo.com :)

A photo posted by Mari Andrew (@bymariandrew) on




16. Kaye Blegvad



you made an impression

A photo posted by Kaye Blegvad (@kayeblegvad) on




17. Ebin Lee




18. Elsa Chang



Day 20: Squeeze #inktober #inktober2016 #suzuki #scrambler

A photo posted by Elsa Chang (@elsasketch) on




19. Celeste Mountjoy




20. Alexis Winter



Personal growth takes time.

A photo posted by Alexis Winter (@alexiswinter) on




21. Leah Goren




22. Yelena Bryksenkova



i started going to an aquacise class twice a week and i love it so much i had to paint it

A photo posted by yelena bryksenkova (@ybryksenkova) on




23. Yas Imamura



Mondays

A video posted by Yas Imamura (@quillandfox) on




24. Wriply M. Bennet



The Devine trinity.

A photo posted by Wriply M. Bennet (@wriply) on




25. Kate Pugsley



A photo posted by kate pugsley (@katepugsley) on




26. Esther Olsson



A photo posted by Esther Olsson (@estherolsson) on




27. Phoebe Wahl



Would you wear a Warrior Woman tee, tote, pin or patch?

A photo posted by Phoebe Wahl (@phoebewahl) on




28. Dinara Mirtalipova




29. Jordan Sondler



When you're having a bad day, just remember that you're awesome!

A photo posted by Jordan Sondler (@jordansondler) on




30. Julia Rothman



For His Latest Act, Werner Herzog Goes 'Into The Inferno' Of Mystical Volcanoes

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Fifty-four years into his career, Werner Herzog’s voice precedes him. To hear it in person is to encounter the distinct cadence that recently lent “Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “Encounters at the End of the World” and “Into the Abyss” ― among many other films ― their charming philosophical sobriety. Herzog has a more expressive smile than most photos imply, and a warmer energy than the contents of his films suggest.


Herzog is in the mood for volcanoes this year. The German director had two lava-drenched movies at the Toronto Film Festival last month: “Into the Inferno,” a documentary that explores various cultures’ spiritual ties to these destructive hearths, and “Salt and Fire,” a thriller about two ecologists (Gael García Bernal and Veronica Ferres) who are kidnapped by a malicious businessman (Michael Shannon) and left to contend with a volcano on the brink of eruption. (Herzog’s other film this year, the documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World,” treats the internet as another explosive volcano.) 


“Into the Inferno” has just debuted on Netflix ― a surprising move in retrospect, considering one of the film’s publicists told me in Toronto that Herzog was very particular about the pulsing sound quality at the screenings. When I sat down with Herzog toward the end of the festival, I couldn’t help but sink into the surreality of hearing his famous lilt, the very one that has its own audio file embedded on his Wikipedia page. We discussed his travels to North Korea, where part of “Into the Inferno” is set, his love for Michael Shannon and the mystical properties of volcanoes. But you have to imagine Herzog’s answers in his voice ― it makes all the difference.


I heard you were very particular about the sound during “Into the Inferno” screenings, so I’m curious how that will translate to a Netflix release.


Well, when you are downloading it through Netflix, normally you watch it on your, let’s say, plasma screen at home. But what I see emerging is much better sound systems in your home, so it’s already happening. In two or three years, we’ll be much further advanced. But of course, in a big theater, what is important is that you feel the rumble physically under you and your seat is shivering. You know there’s something under you, and of course, inevitably, you will see an eruption. But that’s a privilege so far of real theater audiences’ experiences. Although you may download the film onto your smartphone, you will connect your smartphone to your plasma screen at home.


One hopes.


No one’s going to watch it on their smartphone, let’s face it ― and in particular a film like that. Although some films ― for example, “Grizzly Man” ― have such an intense drama in them, and it doesn’t really matter that much whether you see them in a gigantic theater or your screen at home. But this is a film which has extraordinary visual qualities, but at the same time, I keep saying, “Watch out for good sound.”



In thinking about the two documentaries you released this year, I wonder if volcanoes, for the subjects of “Into the Inferno,” have a similar spiritual and geological necessity that the internet does for a so-called developed country?


It’s an interesting connection you’re making. The internet film, “Lo and Behold,” is a deep anthropological look at what is going on and what creates these enormous and massive changes. I think that was somehow understood and actually wanted by the financiers, NetScout, a technological company that somehow keeps gigantic flows of data moving and looking out for anomalies. Probably by approaching me, they knew I was going into something that was not just technological. It’s the human impact of it. And in a way, the volcano film has a very humanistic view. How do people live and think and pray under the volcano? What sort of new gods and demons do they create? How do they form new mythologies?


Did you know going into it that the outcome would be various threads connecting the idea that spiritual properties are in some ways more vital than the scientific properties?


Well, it goes hand in hand because, of course, you can never figure out where the belief systems are going to lead you. North Korea is very enigmatic and we got very deep into it. But at the same time, you should not forget the central character in the film is Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist, and he has to combine the technical, measurable expertise with belief systems of people who ― for example, in Indonesia ― believe in demons and whatever. He is into crisis management, evacuating 500,000 people, and if you do not understand their belief systems, if you do not speak in the right tone and in the right metaphors to them, they would not evacuate. Having done a particular evacuation a few years ago saved easily 20,000 lives, so there’s a very serious side that has to do with science, but in finding also the right tone to convince people to get out fast. That means understanding the way they are thinking and having a vision of the volcano as the seat of a demon.



Tell me about your time in North Korea. At what point did you know you would film there?


Clive Oppenheimer, with whom I’ve been talking for quite a while about doing this film, and in a way it was triggered more seriously by his book, Eruptions that Shook the World, we started to talk very seriously, and at that time he had already started the combined scientific work between Cambridge University and North Korean volcanologists, studying a gigantic volcano at the Chinese border. I immediately thought, “If I could ever film in North Korea, that would be wonderful.” As the organization of the volcanologists was already established, it was not so hard to add to that a film crew. And of course the experience was unique. Everything was different from what we experience.


What surprised you the most?


Everything. You just walk around, and the country is so somehow isolated because of sanctions, but also because of the North Korean ideology of self-reliance, culturally, politically, militarily, economically. The country is in a unique isolation, in a way. Maybe “isolation” is not the right word, but it’s very, very fascinating. Whatever you do there is wonderful, and of course we knew about restrictions that we had. We had a clear idea of what was allowed to us and whatnot.


What was your reception as an outsider?


Very respectful. Really respectful. In a way, the North Koreans apparently knew about my films. The previous leader, Kim Jong-il, was a great movie fan. He wrote screenplays. So there was a cordial invitation and respect, and from my side I respected what out limitations were, although I had a way of talking them into wildly expanding what we were allowed.


What was your way?


I’m good at talking people into something. One of the main reasons for trust with them ― I didn’t understand it right away, but I sensed there was a very deep longing for reunification of Korea. I told them I come from a similar background, a divided country, and when politics gave up on reunification, Willy Brandt, whom I liked as a chancellor, declared in the Bundestag that the book of reunification was closed now. And I said, “Politics cannot do that. It’s more important than politics. It’s a deep, deep, deep historical longing and quest. Now it’s only the poets who can hold it together.” And I traveled on foot all the German border, with its neighboring countries, but all sinuations of the very line of the border ― Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark ― and I said, “I have to hold it together like with a belt, or like with my arms.” And only four years later, the wall came down, to everyone’s surprise, even my surprise. The North Koreans were very, very deeply moved by that, and all of a sudden, I was allowed things that were not in our written directives. 


“Into the Inferno” and “Salt and Fire” are interesting encapsulations of your career because I think you’ve always been drawn to the conflict and harmony between man and nature, between human society and the world beyond our immediate control. Do you think you’re reaching a point in your career where certain things are all-encompassing that way?


Maybe in a way, yes. Well, I’ve tried it all my life as a filmmaker, let’s face it. But “Salt and Fire,” of course, is as much about perception and understanding from which angle we are looking at something, like a famous mural in a cloister in Rome where you see a saint looking along a corridor, and when you move closer, all of a sudden the image changes and morphs into a landscape with boats and has been identified as the Strait of Messina. All of a sudden, there’s no saint anymore. And of course, in being exposed to the very strange, beautiful, hostile environments of salt flats in “Salt and Fire,” actually filmed in Bolivia, where the leading character is deliberately stranded with two blind local boys, it has this kind of confrontation with various beautiful but hostile environments. And how do you perceive? How do you look back at your life so far? The films were basically made back to back. There’s a cross-pollination about a volcano that might erupt.



You cast Michael Shannon in “Salt and Fire,” and you’ve spoken very fondly of him lately.


I think I’m the first one who put a leading part on his shoulders, in “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” I do this because, in my eyes, he’s the best of his generation. You can only think if there’s any other it would be Joaquin Pheonix, but we haven’t seen much of Joaquin unfortunately. I think he’s more active now. But Michael has an authority and a presence onscreen that is formidable, and a charisma which you cannot really grasp and describe. But, you see, you have to have a cast that creates chemistry, and that is Veronica Ferres, the German star, and Gael García Bernal, and another German actor, Lawrence Krauss, whose day job is actually a cosmologist. He’s a scientist who plays a villain. So it’s texture. It’s not just Michael Shannon ― he has to be embedded so that there is chemistry all of a sudden created. 


Do you think the nature of the types of actors we cast in movies has changed?


No, not really, I think I have always made very fine discoveries. Let’s face it. Michael Shannon is not my discovery, but I saw very, very early on that there’s a very great one emerging.


Have you felt that way about other people before him?


Klaus Kinski, for example, who had done a lot of films, but lousy B-pictures, and only in very short appearances, because nobody could take him more than a day or two on a set. He was the ultimate pestilence. He would raise and throw tantrums. He was the most difficult ever walking this earth. Or, for example, Bruno S., in “The Enigma of Kasper Hauser” and “Stroszek,” a man who had never been in front of a camera before, and yet I saw there was something extraordinary about him. Or Nicolas Cage in “Bad Lieutenant.” I think they always have been at their best in my films.


Do you think you bring that out in them? What’s the collaboration that makes you feel that way?


Well, I think, in a way, I have it in me, and if I didn’t have it in my I shouldn’t make films.


That’s fair. Do you think there are a lot of directors working who are not as adept at bringing that out?


Well, sometimes what you see in the film industry is very often opportunistic. Put the best-selling or the most-wanted female actress together with the male actor who is more in vogue, and all of a sudden you end up with a film that has no chemistry between them. There are films that are dead on arrival because it has the greatest stars in the world in it and no chemistry between them. It happens.


Does it make you disenfranchised with the state of filmmaking and how financing works?


No, no, no, no. That’s part of what we do, and that’s part of the business. But sometimes business does not function. You can see it very clearly with Nicolas Cage. In “Bad Lieutenant,” I firmly believe he’s never been better. By the way, he’s publicly said it recently. That’s his all-time favorite film. That’s where he believes he was at his best. And my conviction is the same. In Kinski, an over-the-top B-actor in small roles, all of a sudden he becomes big doing “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo” and some other films I did with him.


“Into the Inferno” is now available on Netflix. “Salt and Fire” is eyeing a spring 2017 release.

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This Gory Halloween Makeup Is Not For The Faint Of Heart

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Why settle for cutesy Halloween costumes when you could carve a bloody Converse high top into your foot instead?


Raniratt, a 16-year-old Instagram sensation from Australia, told HuffPost that she first experimented with special effects makeup for a school costume day three years ago. Since then, she’s become a self-taught master of gore who says it’s easy for anyone to follow in her bloody footsteps:



A photo posted by Rani (@raniratt) on




A photo posted by Rani (@raniratt) on




A photo posted by Rani (@raniratt) on




A photo posted by Rani (@raniratt) on




A photo posted by Rani (@raniratt) on



Rani’s looks are stomach-churning, to say the least. To create them, she first rolls and shapes scar wax to make fake gashes, then fills them in with fake blood and uses a special effects makeup palette to add depth. Her tools include a thin makeup brush for detail and spatulas to scoop and remove wax from the fake skin.


Here’s a time lapse of one such creation...



A video posted by Rani (@raniratt) on



...and a removal.



A video posted by Rani (@raniratt) on



Rani says anyone can recreate her looks for themselves. It just takes practice.


“If you spend a bit of time planning and working on makeup, it should turn out great,” she told HuffPost.


She also recommends a handful of helpful YouTube channels for step-by-step instructions on how to make your skin look like it’s been slashed by the teeth of a thousand werewolves. 


Yeah, maybe we’ll stick to face paint instead.

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Why Are Black People Expected To Support Every Black Filmmaker?

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Last week, Tyler Perry’s latest Madea installment, “Boo! A Madea Halloween,” swept the box office, even beating out Tom Cruise’s latest action flick, “Jack Reacher.” The film made $27.6 million its opening weekend, and remains at the no. 1 spot in the box office as of Friday.


But the success of “Boo! A Madea Halloween” had some people questioning the moviegoing habits of black audiences, leading to a debate about whether or not black people have an obligation to support black filmmakers and creators. Are you a bad black person if you think Madea is funny? What does it mean if you refuse to watch Madea because you think she’s a bad representation of blackness? 


On Tuesday, comedian Lil Duval posted a tweet that instantly went viral, where he called out what he perceived to be a double standard in black support of filmmakers:




But really, what does this actually say about black moviegoers? Duval seemed to imply that black people would rather support the “coonery and buffoonery” (as Spike Lee once described Perry’s films) of Madea than support an important story about Nat Turner’s revolt. But Duval, and those who agree with him, are comparing apples to oranges. It’s like comparing the box office success of a James Cameron movie to the success of the latest Olivier Assayas film. The films attract two very different audiences, and each exists in two very different contexts. 


The conspiracy theories about some sort of campaign by black women or racist Hollywood to sabotage Parker’s film have been ridiculous. The success of Perry’s film stood largely because it’s part of a well-established franchise that has made nearly $400 million in America alone. Over the last decade, Perry has built a media empire that includes plays, TV shows and movies that have consistently done well thanks to a loyal, enthusiastic and under-served core fanbase of black churchgoers


There has to be a more holistic way of viewing black art, culture and consumption. The comparisons between what is important, valid and worthy of praise and what isn’t does nothing but cause further division within the black community, playing on old stereotypes and respectability politics.


The idea that the people who made “Madea” a hit are the same people who failed to do the same for “Birth of a Nation” simply perpetuates the false idea that black people are a monolith. Indeed, 40 percent of the people who saw Perry’s film were Caucasian, Asian and Latino. It is absolutely important for black people as a community to support black filmmakers. The movie “Moonlight,” by Barry Jenkins, stands as a powerful example of what word of mouth can do for a black film. But it’s equally important that we recognize that diversity in entertainment is vital because it offers people of color variety and the ability to make choices based on their tastes, not simply their race. 

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Lady Gaga Megafan Honors The Pop Diva With This Incredible Mashup

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Scottish performer and YouTuber Duncan Carter celebrated the release of Lady Gaga’s latest album, “Joanne,” by covering 16 of the Mother Monster’s hit songs in an amazing video mashup. 


In the clip, which can be viewed above, Carter re-creates a number of Lady Gaga’s signature looks while performing an acapella medley that includes “Poker Face,” “Born This Way” and “Applause,” as well as the new single, “Perfect Illusion.”  


“For any of us who’ve ever felt like an outcast or a weirdo, her songs make us feel like it’s OK, and that we should be proud of who we are,” Carter told The Huffington Post. “I’m sure lots of people would think it’s strange that I want to spend my time dressing up in bizarre costumes, painting my face and singing to a camera in my living room ― but that’s part of who I am, so the video is for anyone who wants to join in the party.”  


In 2014, Carter created a similar mashup medley with the hits of Britney Spears. But he praised Lady Gaga in particular for putting “a kind of freakiness out there in her music, outfits and videos.” 


He went on to note, “I think we need to show more love in this world, and I couldn’t say it any better than the lyrics from ‘Born This Way’ ― ‘just love yourself, and you’re set!’ It’s a pretty good mantra.” 


Be sure to check out Carter’s full YouTube page here, and on Facebook

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Picture Book Spells Out Exactly Why Voting This Year Is Essential

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As of today, there are 11 days until Nov. 8, but who’s counting?


The increasing absurdity of 2016 election-centered news is enough to make a politically active citizen feel powerless. Soon, hopefully, those feelings will fizzle out along with the bombastic slander-slinging. Until then, there’s one thing that’s still under our control: voting.


To encourage apathetic Americans to cast their ballots ― for his preferred candidate, and the candidate preferred by news outlets nationwide, including a few who’ve never before endorsed a Democrat  ― game designer Mike Selinker put together a collection of political cartoon-like illustrations in the form of an ABC book called The Ghastlytrump Tinies.


Each letter addresses one of Trump’s stances ― official or unofficially inferred from Twitter rants. “A” is for “Arctic,” alluding to environmentally unfriendly drilling; “B” is for “Border,” a reference to Trump’s thoughts on “bad hombres” running amok.







The collection is inspired by the macabre illustration style of Edward Gorey, whose book The Gashlycrumb Tinies uses the ABCs to tell the stories of 26 children’s morbid deaths.


“[It’s] so shocking that it’s uncomfortably funny. Mr. Trump is also shocking, but maybe not in a good way. So I thought people would be shocked into awareness of why they need to vote,” Selinker explained in an email to The Huffington Post. “It’s kinda creepy, kinda frightening, kinda silly. You might wince, you might laugh, you might hide under your bed. Both mostly, you will breathe a sigh of relief when this nightmare doesn’t come to pass on November 8.”


Selinker got the idea for the book when a friend shared a Facebook post asking that friends offer one reason why he should vote for Hillary Clinton.


“And I said ‘OK, here are 50,’ and listed all the things I could think of for voting for Clinton: protection of abortion and LGBT rights, family leave, and so on. I thought, ‘Why don’t people know of all the things we will lose if Trump is elected?’ Maybe it was because they didn’t have a catchy way to remember it,” Selinker said.


“It’s more fun to read a cartoony book than be lectured.”


Check out The Ghastlytrump Tinies on Kickstarter.


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41 Creative Halloween Costumes For Pregnant Women

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Pregnancy can be somewhat limiting when it comes to mobility and wardrobe choices. But that doesn’t mean you can’t dress up for Halloween.


Expectant mamas incorporate their pregnant bellies into creative costumes every October. We’ve compiled a list of options for inspiration.


Without further ado, here are 41 funny, creative and downright kooky Halloween costumes for pregnant women.


-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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