It’s been brought to our attention that Joan Didion ― keeper of notebooks, chronicler of cities, defender of emotional, humanistic prose ― has a book coming out in March 2017.
It’s called South and West: From a Notebook, and, according to the publisher, Penguin Random House, it’s made up of personal musings jotted down while on a road trip across the American South with her husband.
In typical Didionion (yep, we’re coining the adjective) fashion, the entries weld interviews with personal reflections. Even if the essays are unfinished, they’re in keeping with her belief that notebooks ― even if plumb with incomplete thoughts ― are valuable.
In her essay from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Didion writes:
I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
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The outlet recently apologized after receiving backlash for a gif it has since removed from social media. The post showed team members pulling their eyes back in a slanted formation, while others are shown bowing. The group took the offensive photo below in celebration of a trip they were taking to Japan.
Glamour Brasil issued the apology “to the Asian community and every follower who has been offended by the publication in our Instagram account,” in addition to removing the post.
“Glamour Brazil’s team regrets the incident,” the statement sent to The Huffington Post read. “It does not match the magazine’s position or opinions.”
However, several members of the Asian community, including Hudson Yang of sitcom “Fresh Off The Boat” and popular blogger Ranier Maningding, clapped back on social media, accusing Glamour Brasil of racism.
Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, but this isn’t the first time casual racism has cropped up there. The Brazilian soccer team Santos FC came under fire years ago for posing with “slit-eyes” while promoting the 2011 FIFA Club World Cup in Japan.
Asian culture is often caricatured in Brazil, with insensitive Fu Manchu-like depictions still deemed as acceptable, The Associated Press points out. And Japanese-Brazilians can be made to feel like they’re not really part of Brazilian culture, Jeffrey Lesser, an Emory University historian, told the AP.
“A black person in Brazil is called a black Brazilian but a Japanese-Brazilian is called a Japones,” he said. “There is always a separation, the assumption that they like sushi, not feijoada.”
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In the space of 11 minutes, the comedians ― joined by Javier Munoz of “Hamilton” and one adorable little street urchin ― managed to sort through all the conflicted feelings of the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Do we have to vote even if we don’t like the choice? Can we sit this one out?
Not this time ― not with Trump running for president.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites
political violence and is a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326">
style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar,
href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">
style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe, racist,
style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57e31b1be4b0e80b1ba04348?7i5ir4bn4b1emi">
>birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.
-- 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.
This election may feel like a crisis our country is merely getting through. We’ve endured falsehood-riddled debates, petty name-calling, and genuinely damaging rhetoric that has unearthed a once-buried propensity for hatred hidden among our country’s citizens.
It makes sense, then, that election countdowns populate personal Twitter feeds, and The New Yorker’s cover this week is a playful riff on the possibility of an unprecedentedly scary outcome, with a man hiding behind a newspaper with a bold, bombastic headline that reads “OH, SWEET JESUS, PLEASE GOD, NO”.
There’s so much ado about avoiding apocalypse that it’s easy to lose sight of the history that could be made tonight: Hillary Clinton is predicted to become America’s first woman president. And that’s something to celebrate.
In an exclusive poem and interview with Vice’s i-D, poet Eileen Myles eloquently voiced support for Clinton. Myles doesn’t write about Clinton as merely a better choice than the blatantly unfit Trump. Instead, Clinton’s “female campaign” and “focus” are praised.
In an interview, Myles told i-D that if they met HRC, they’d say, “I think you’re incredible. I have complete confidence in your leadership,” which is a refreshing alternative to the rhetoric that a vote for Clinton is a weak-willed decision to pick “the lesser of two evils.”
Myles isn’t the only writer to come out in unabashed support of HRC in the past week. In a short op-ed in The New York Times, Roxane Gay, the author of Bad Feminist, wrote, “I like, admire, and respect so many things about Mrs. Clinton. She is fiercely ambitious, intelligent, funny, interesting and complex.” She waited until Nov.6 to voice this opinion, because she hasn’t “had the energy to deal with the inevitable harassment that rises out of demonstrating any kind of support for Mrs. Clinton.”
Both writers imply that it’s time to reframe the conversation about Clinton’s accomplishments. Yes, she might successfully stop a bigoted candidate from getting elected. But she’s also made it further than any woman candidate ever has in America.
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It’s hard to believe that just eight years ago, America was waiting with similarly bated breath to find out whether or not a certain senator from Illinois would become the next president of the United States. And, of course, whether or not we would be blessed with Michelle Obama as our FLOTUS.
Over the course of her time in office, Michelle has been depicted in all her beauty, strength and fierceness by artists including Elizabeth Peyton and J.Muse. However, it’s perfectly fitting that the first individual portrait of the First Lady was created by none other than Mickalene Thomas, who has long celebrated the magic of black women in her work.
Her 2008 screen print “Michelle O” features a graphic image of FLOTUS’ face in black and white. In its simplicity and visceral power, the print captures not just the image of a person, but the spirit of an icon.
“When I was first approached to work on the portrait of Michelle Obama, it was at the height of Obama’s inauguration, and I could already see that Michelle was quickly becoming a major figure of both and power,” Thomas explained in an interview with Broadly.
“I started to think of her as the Jackie O of our generation, and began pulling images from my research with Andy Warhol’s portrait of Jackie Onassis in mind,” Thomas said. “I wanted to recreate this iconic portrait that could serve as a symbol of the time, and as a great reminder for people of the excitement that was happening around Obama’s inauguration as the first African-American President.”
“It was such a powerful moment in our history,” Thomas added, “bringing people together for change and awareness, and I’m so proud to have taken part in the celebration.”
Thomas, inspired by Warhol’s 1960s screen prints of celebrities, superstars and other revered idols, used a similarly piercing style between figuration and abstraction to depict Michelle. She also punctuated the pop art reference with subtle nods to blaxploitation.
The stunning artwork is heading to auction as part of Paddle8’s “Prints and Multiples” sale, which runs online until Nov.17. “Michelle O” is expected to sell for between $5,000 and $7,000. We’re not telling you what to do here, but in the off chance that Michelle does one day run for office, her first-ever portrait will be worth far more.
That’s a future worth investing in, right?
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Bette Midler, Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Kristin Chenoweth, Cyndi Lauper, Andrew Rannells, Telly Leung, Danny Burstein, Laura Benanti, Nick Kroll, Jonathon Groff, Sutton Foster, Harvey Fierstein.
All of Broadway, Jujamcyn Theaters president Jordan Roth claims on Facebook, wants you to get out and vote today.
In a video created by Roth, the cast and creators of every current Broadway show implore Americans to head to their polling stations and help choose our country’s next president. “It’s our time tonight to get loud,” Gavin Creel and Robbie Roth sing as images of the theater community holding “Vote” signs flash before viewers.
The song, titled “Noise,” was originally released in 2011. It’s now the soundtrack for Roth’s video, which was released on Monday ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
Let this be the anthem that gets you through an eventful day. If you need another one, check out the cast of “Hamilton” urging fans to #Ham4Vote.
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Before his run for president, before his reality TV series, Donald Trump was known chiefly for slapping his name in large letters on large buildings.
Trump Tower. Trump World Tower. Trump Place. Trump Plaza. Trump Taj Mahal. Some of these projects failed; some of them are still around today. Many of them are known for sharing a style of architecture that, at best, could be considered “glitzy,” and, at worst, might have you wondering whether you’ve stepped into the penthouse where a Russian oil tycoon keeps his secret family.
Over the past four decades, the newspaper architecture critics of New York and Chicago have regarded him with curious bemusement, tired resentment or straight-up indignation. As with all members of the media, Trump has been known to have a testy relationship with his critics, pestering them over the phone or going so far as to sue them for less-than-enthusiastic reviews, which are often expressed through wonderfully creative turns of phrase.
For your reading pleasure ― in this anxious time before we learn the results of the 2016 election ― here are five fantastic shots fired at the Trumpian aesthetic.
“Skyscraper in a 1980’s gold lame party dress.”
In 1995, critic Herbert Muschamp wrote about Trump’s plan for the Trump International Hotel and Tower. He called the plans an improvement over the aging skyscraper that had been a Columbus Circle eyesore, but noted that architect Philip Johnson’s vision “introduced considerable refinement to an essentially crass idea.” His best line, however is this gem:
A 1950’s International Style glass skyscraper in a 1980’s gold lame party dress: that’s one way to describe the look of the Trump International Hotel and Tower, Mr. Trump’s latest Manhattan real estate venture.
In another piece, Muschamp reflected on the reactions he’d heard from people who didn’t think he went far enough in his criticism: “It’s garish.” “It looks cheap.” “It’s Miami Beach.” “It’s really awful.” “Why didn’t you warn us?”
“Refinement was never this building’s point anyway,” Muschamp wrote.
“One of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city.”
In 1984, Trump sued Chicago Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp for $500 million after Gapp wrote a negative piece on Trump’s plan to build the world’s tallest building, which was still in conceptualization stages. Although he spent a large part of the article just pondering what the tower might look like ― without knowing for sure ― Gapp wasn’t too optimistic.
He described Trump as a real-estate developer best known for producing Trump Tower, a “Midtown Manhattan skyscraper offering condos, office space and a kitschy shopping atrium of blinding flamboyance” and that the proposed project, the world’s tallest building at the time, would be “one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city.” It was never completed.
“Quick and smooth, but ultimately glib and shallow.”
In 1988, critic Paul Goldberger wrote about Trump’s real-estate legacy after his memoir and business guidebook, The Art of the Deal, had become a best-seller. Calling Trump “not, as real-estate developers go, all that significant,” he describes the book as “to literature what Mr. Trump’s buildings are to architecture ― quick and smooth, but ultimately glib and shallow.” While Goldberger considered the peach-and-gold interior of Trump Tower to have a “pleasing sensuality,” that’s about all the praise he could muster for the majority of Trump’s work. He sums it up nicely:
It is not merely the materialism of the 1980’s that Donald Trump embodies, it is the impatience, the insistence on having everything right now, all of it, the willingness to settle for appearance over substance. This is why it is hard not to sense, for all Mr. Trump has been identified with New York, that he is more at home in Atlantic City, where surface glitter is really all there is.
“More like a beached whale than a giraffe sticking its long neck above the treetops.”
Chicago Tribune critic Blair Kamin became a target of angry Trump tweets after a couple bad reviews of his buildings. When Trump put up one of his towers along the Chicago skyline in the early 2000s, Kamin wrote that architecture lovers reacted “as if Godzilla were about to wade ashore from Lake Michigan and breathe fire on the skyline.” In 2009, he described the completed building’s aesthetics as “chunky,” explaining:
[T]he tower is done in by a lethal combination: the geometry of its site and the density piled onto it. ... With nothing to hide them, the long and short sides of the skyscraper come into view and they make the tower seem more like a beached whale than a giraffe sticking its long neck above the treetops.
In a 2014 review, Kamin trashed the “grotesquely overscaled letters” in the giant T-R-U-M-P sign that the real-estate developer was then installing in Chicago.
“Monumentally undistinguished.”
Critic Ada Louise Huxtable was sure to clarify in the Times that she was quoted out of context in a story. She did not mean to praise Trump Tower; she merely commented on the plan for the building, which had yet to be constructed (and Trumpified) at the time of her comment in 1979. The completed structure, she explained in 1984, was vastly different than its plans.
The “care lavished on its design” at that time, by the architect, Der Scutt (then of Swanke, Hayden & Connell), has, alas, been betrayed in execution by a glass “skin” of such dull and ordinary appearance that what could have been ‘a dramatically handsome structure’ has turned out to be a monumentally undistinguished one.
When I wrote, the atrium was not yet available for review. Even with all of its pricey superglitz, it is [uncomfortably] proportioned in its narrow verticality, unredeemed by the posh ladies’ powder-room decor that totally lacks the cosmopolitan style to which it so aggressively aspires.
Trump’s architecture: a symbol of his campaign platform? We’ll leave that up to you.
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Warning: This post contains NSFW imagery and may not be suitable for work.
Donald Trump was participating in March’s GOP debate when he alluded to his penis size. He was in the midst of responding to a question that was, well, not about his penis. “He referred to my hands,” Trump said, referencing insults lodged by Senator Marco Rubio. “If they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”
Trump’s not-so-subtle nod at genitalia in such a professional ― even presidential ― forum shocked the entire nation. But perhaps no one was more surprised than 24-year-old artist Illma Gore.
Just a month earlier, Gore had posted a drawing to Facebook titled “Make America Great Again,” depicting the former reality TV star completely nude. His penis, as rendered in the drawing, is quite petite. “No matter what is in your pants, you can still be a big prick,” Gore wrote alongside the NSFW piece.
Gore intended to challenge preconceptions about gender and sexuality through her drawing, illuminating the problems with a culture that equates a small penis with weakness. “It’s about this pseudo-masculinity that this man, I feel, just exudes,” Gore explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. “If I had drawn him with a big penis, you’d associate that with the qualities of a powerful leader. A small penis, you think, ‘Oh, that’s an excuse for why this person is the way he is.’ But that’s wrong.”
In a statement on Instagram, Gore expanded upon the idea motivating the work: “Society treats effeminacy like it is bad in comparison to the idea of a ‘real man.’” The piece was therefore meant to attack these ingrained preconceptions, not affirm them.
The body depicted in Gore’s drawing belongs, in real life, to one of her friends, who served as her model. “Someone I believe to be masculine and beautiful,” she explained. “All the sudden, with Trump’s head, everything changed.”
Gore uploaded the image to Facebook with absolutely no idea how much it would blow up. “I never expected it to go as far as it did,” she said. “I lost my voice in there.” The image gained traction on Reddit and various websites around the web, while Gore’s own social media accounts were disabled as a result of the nudity. The original message of the work became overshadowed by the country’s brewing Trump hate. What was initially an attempt to praise unconventional bodies ended up resembling body-shaming.
And so, when Trump appeared to address the very controversy Gore’s drawing planted a month previous, it felt very surreal. “My friend texted me: Holy shit, did a drawing just influence the election?”
Not long after her artwork went viral, Gore began receiving phone calls from people claiming to work for Trump’s legal team. She was slapped with a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice demanding she remove the image from her accounts. And then, the death threats started rolling in. Hysteria surrounding Gore’s artwork reached a bizarre peak one day in Los Angeles when the artist was walking through a neighborhood close to a Trump rally.
Having recently appeared in a few televised interviews regarding the piece, she was more recognizable than your average well-known artist. While walking by herself down a side street, a car slowed down alongside Gore and a group of young men started yelling at her, calling her a bitch and cheering for Trump. She allegedly ignored them and kept walking. Eventually one of the men jumped out of the car and punched Gore in the face. The men then, laughing, reportedly sped off screaming, “Trump 2016!”
“Is it weird to say I’m kind of proud that someone punched me in the face because of one of my drawings?” Gore laughed, clearly overwhelmed by the weirdness of it all. Yet when asked if the experience deterred her from lambasting Trump in future works, she was suddenly quite serious. “I would do it over and over again. When I make something, I mean it.”
Gore is holding true to her word. She’s already created one other glaringly anti-Trump artwork, an image of Trump getting pummeled by a giant vagina in a boxing ring. And she’s far from finished. On Election Day, the artist will create a live, participatory virtual reality artwork titled “Creating a Political Monster LIVE w/ Illma Gore.” Gore will use Google’s Tilt Brush, a new technology that uses VR to allow artists to paint in a 3D digital space. The goal: to show us what a political monster looks like.
What exactly that means is up to the participants, who will suggest objects, qualities and attributes to Gore on Facebook. This might include, Gore muses, a pantsuit, or a toupee, or, yes, a small penis. She’s also willing to illustrate more abstract suggestions, so feel free to get creative.
“I love being involved in pieces that involve lots of people,” Gore said. “Especially since we’ve been so separated this election. And I love integrating social media and new technology, art is something that should evolve with technology and everything else, I think.”
Gore will draw for two hours, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST, and the entire process will be streamed live on Machinima’s Facebook Page. “You’ll be able to see it live while I’m drawing,” Gore said. “You’ll see what I’m painting while I’m painting it.”
So for anyone looking to participate in a collaborative, political art project while waiting for the big election news, head to Facebook to watch Gore’s process as it unfolds. But first, obviously, make sure to vote. As Gore said: “Voting is easier than moving to Canada.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites
political violence and is a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326">
style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar,
href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">
style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe, racist,
style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57e31b1be4b0e80b1ba04348?7i5ir4bn4b1emi">
>birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.
-- 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.
This Election Day, don’t spend your scrolling through stress-inducing headlines while you wait in those super long voting lines. Instead, give yourself a mental break with some really cool videos from the latest viral challenge (trending thanks to some really creative black kids) the #MannequinChallenge.
The mannequin challenge involves a group of people being completely still in mid-action poses often while playing a song (like “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmud). It’s taken the internet by storm as celebrities, athletes, students and even politicians have joined in on this viral craze.
To ease some election-anxiety and make your wait at the polls a bit more enjoyable, we’ve rounded up 14 of the dopest and most hilarious mannequin challenges on the web right now. Enjoy!
Save a friend from election-related stress and share!
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The image above shows two men. One is the well-known real estate magnate, reality television star and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Next to him is a lesser known face: that of performance artist David Henry Nobody Jr.
In 1999, Nobody began a performance piece for which he stalked Trump for an entire year, going undercover as what he described as a “conservative, run-of-the-mill white guy.” Obsessed with Donald and the excessively macho power he embodied, Nobody studied the behavior and actions of Trump and his intimate inner circle, attempting to ingratiate himself as much as possible.
“The magnetism of a figure like Trump I attribute to ― humans are inherently in awe of people that have power over them,” Nobody explained in a recent video interview with The Creators Project. “I feel that magnetic pull on myself too.”
In October 1999, in the midst of Nobody’s performance, the artist was shocked to learn that Trump had decided to run for president with the Reform Party. (Oprah Winfrey, apparently, was his ideal running mate.) For Nobody, who was attracted and repulsed by Trump’s potent persona, this was basically a bizarre dream come true.
Nobody made signs and started campaigning right away. “If you’re tired of the bullshit, you should think about voting for Trump,” he yelled to passersby. Although Trump backed out of the race in February of 2000, the strange stint now seems like an uncanny premonition.
In the video below, Nobody recounts his surreal experience living in the world of Trump. While he is pretty certain Trump has no place in the White House (Nobody is voting for Clinton), he does think The Donald would make a pretty first-rate artist.
“At the time I saw that Trump had all the attributes of performance art and conceptual art, albeit, morally skewed,” Nobody said. “He is a performance artist, there is no doubt. He is loaded. He is like action art. I just thought it was totally Dada, society turned inside out. You could see into the heart of America through Donald Trump.”
Trump may act as outlandish as a performance artist, but it’s hard to imagine that he has any knowledge of the field. Just last week his supporters accused Clinton’s campaign manager of participating in satanic occult magic after his brother had dinner with the Grandmother of Performance Art herself, Marina Abramovic. Even as a performance artist, Trump has some work to do.
See the entire interview, courtesy of The Creators Project, below:
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites
political violence and is a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326">
style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar,
href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">
style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe, racist,
style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57e31b1be4b0e80b1ba04348?7i5ir4bn4b1emi">
>birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.
-- 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.
If you’re still obsessing over the outcome of the 2016 election, give your anxious mind a moment of reprieve, as you continue hoping for One Hundred Years of Pantsuits.
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Artist, professional provocateur and lunchbox enthusiast Marilyn Manson shared a music video clip for his new song “SAY10” that may just Trump your nightmares tonight.
The graphic, NSFW clip features Manson ripping pages out of the Bible, holding a bloody knife, and during a lightning-fast montage, beheading a man who resembles Donald Trump:
The man who is decapitated wears a suit, a red tie and has a blonde hair similar to the Republican presidential candidate’s hue.
Manson, who told The Daily Beast earlier this year that he will not vote in this year’s election because he refuses to choose between “cat shit and dog shit,” is equally elusive about whether or not the man in the video is indeed intended to represent Trump.
It seems like a time for me as an artist, and as an American artist, to make something that causes a new set of questions to arise that aren’t simply statements. Marilyn Manson
“Right now we’re in such a state of confusion when it comes to religion, politics, sexuality, and how they all tie together, and it’s being turned into a circus and a sideshow — and that’s something that I’ve been described as a ringleader of,” Manson told the outlet. “It seems like a time for me as an artist, and as an American artist, to make something that causes a new set of questions to arise that aren’t simply statements.”
Manson is no stranger to political controversy. In early 1999, he filmed the video for the song “Coma White,” which featured a reenactment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
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Instead of giving some boring old speech, Matt blew everyone away with a surprise performance inspired by the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” at his sister Jenna’s wedding to Ross Drucker at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Saturday.
He re-wrote the words to “Alexander Hamilton,” the opening song from the show, tailoring them to fit the details of the bride and groom’s love story.
According to Matt, the Rotner family shares a love of Broadway shows and saw “Hamilton” together in October 2015 ― just a few weeks after Ross and Jenna got engaged. After watching the opening number, Matt knew he had found the inspiration for his speech.
“I turned to my mom and said, ‘Well, I know exactly what I’m doing for the wedding,’” he told The Huffington Post. “I thought, ‘Hey, I might not be able to sing well anymore, but I know I can write these rhymes and put on one hell of a show.’”
Below, a sample of the well-crafted lyrics Matt penned for the occasion:
How does a Met fan, golfer, Long Island boy, an accountant, dropped right in the meltin’ pot. Yes, New York City, ain’t it pretty, the fancy lights and shows. Go meet this Jew from California ― you know where this story goes?
Yes, Jenna Rotner, the oldest daughter of my father. Moved to The Big Apple with some pressure from her mother said time to be a wife. Said this year you start your life. Israeli mothers, a sharper edge than any knife.
Matt first spent time gathering the information he needed to write the lyrics, namely the particulars of the bride and groom’s “how we met” story, which began on JDate in New York City. In July, Matt started writing the rhymes on the train while commuting to and from work.
Throughout the process, Matt made sure to keep his plans a secret from the bride and groom.
“I told Jenna I had something very special planned and I have been hyping it up to her and Ross for the last year, but I never gave her an inkling of what it could be,” he told HuffPost.
All of Matt’s dedication paid off when he saw the look on his sister’s face during the performance.
“When the first first few notes of the track hit after my intro, I saw her face and she was in shock,” he said. “I’ll never forget her reaction and I’m so happy it was caught on camera.”
Growing up, Matt, Jenna and their little sister Maddison would perform musical numbers together at family parties, weddings, birthdays ― you name it.
“It was my first time I really ever did something like that without my sisters by my side, so everyone was kind of dumbfounded when it was all said and done that I did that alone,” he said.
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Happy election, readers! It’s hard to believe we are finally reaching that glorious finish line. As we do, artists and illustrators all over the country are making our turning stomachs a little less jittery by sharing their optimistic and super sassy election-centric drawings on Instagram.
Take a break from refreshing the polls or scrolling Twitter or replaying results in your head to check out some of the illustrations created and shared on this most apocalyptic of voting times.
While Donald Trump’s supporters are no doubt feeling vindicated after their candidate was severely underestimated by polls across the media landscape, fans of Hillary Clinton are reeling as they watch the possibility of our first female president disappear before their very eyes.
One such fan is “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote earlier tonight, “This year, I’m trying to wrap my head around both outcomes. Scared as y’all. But we’ll get through it. Grateful for friends. For you.”
Ever the optimist, the Broadway icon remained positive on Twitter ― even in the face of followers assuming he would consider moving to Canada after a potential Clinton loss.
Let his response to this election be the response every responsible American strives for. If Trump does indeed win, like he said, there’s more work to do than ever.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites
political violence and is a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-911_565b1950e4b08e945feb7326">
style="font-weight: 400;">serial liar,
href="http://www.huffingtonpost
.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">
style="font-weight: 400;">rampant xenophobe, racist,
style="font-weight: 400;">misogynist and
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57e31b1be4b0e80b1ba04348?7i5ir4bn4b1emi">
>birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.
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It then flashes back to his childhood, with his father calling him a “bigly loser” for his sporting failure.
With Trump determined to have his revenge on everyone who’s ever doubted him, the animation then cuts back to 2016 and him announcing his presidential bid on a ticket of “no more Mexicans, no more Muslims, no more losers.”
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French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo nailed the fear that many people across the United States are likely feeling after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election early Wednesday.
Its latest cover features a sweating and red-eyed President Barack Obama running away from two white police officers who are shooting at him.
“Obama, once again a regular citizen, like the rest of us,” the cover reads.
The image speaks to the ongoing problem with police brutality in the U.S. and a widespread belief that white police officers systematically target black civilians. More than 800 people have been shot and killed by police so far in 2016, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.
The fear is more pronounced than ever given that Trump sowed the seed of divisiveness throughout his campaign and offered white nationalists a massive platform. He has blamed the Black Lives Matter movement for instigating police killings and demonized people of color, women, Muslims and Mexicans.
The magazine releases a new issue every Wednesday.
Charlie Hebdo, which has not tweeted since the day militants attacked its offices last January, killing 12, made the Obama drawing its profile and cover photo Wednesday.
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From added sky-high towers to a giant wall, the historic home underwent a range of dramatic changes in a Photoshop battle that soared to the front page of Reddit just hours after news of Trump’s election.
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J.K. Rowling ― along with other established writers who are vocal on social media ― seemed to have trouble processing the results of Tuesday’s presidential election.
The author took to Twitter, making jokes about America’s nominated president-elect, Donald Trump. “He has the deepest thoughts,” she wrote. “So deep you’ll need a big shovel to get at ‘em. Bigly deep.”
But, perhaps detecting that her readers needed not humor but hope ― or at least license to grieve ― she added a few sincere tweets to her election night commentary. “The easy thing is to be silenced because you don’t want the insults,” she tweeted. “The easy thing is to look the other way when it’s happening to others.”
These aren’t platitudes, but calls to action in response to the election of Donald Trump. Rowling embedded and responded to tweets from her harassers, demonstrating her belief in the power of speech. “We challenge bigots,” she tweeted. “We don’t let hate speech become normalised.”
I've been called bitch, 'libtard' and plenty more tonight. Quite proud really; who'd want these people's approval? #DegenerateArmyhttps://t.co/f1i73HrrnG
Ramon, I know you mean well, but tonight of all nights I'm going to say it. Ignoring spite, and hate, and bullying, doesn't work. https://t.co/VF6NePPySm
The easy thing is to be silenced because you don't want the insults. The easy thing is to look the other way when it's happening to others. https://t.co/VF6NePPySm
I don't give a damn what trolls feel. Speaking up is about letting the people who are being intimidated know they're not alone. https://t.co/aPcd2gzAdg
Hey, I know I can't compare to the president elect. He has the deepest thoughts. So deep you'll need a big shovel to get at 'em. Bigly deep. pic.twitter.com/Ie074mCspR
We stand together. We stick up for the vulnerable. We challenge bigots. We don't let hate speech become normalised. We hold the line. https://t.co/ro9AkRSc9Q
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As we’ve seen in maddening case after maddening case, institutionalized responses to sexual violence can fail to bring those who commit it to justice or make survivors feel that the crime against them has been acknowledged.
Earlier this year, a case involving Stanford swimmer Brock Turner unleashed backlash when he was sentenced to just six months in a county jail after being convicted of three felony sexual assault charges. (He ended up serving only half of that sentence.) Turner testified that he hoped, in the future, to “speak out against the college campus drinking culture and the sexual promiscuity that goes along with that.” This could squarely be classified as a straw man, and an inappropriate response to sexual violence. What, then, is an appropriate response, when consent is difficult to prove or disprove?
In her short film “Consommé,” which will air at Nitehawk Cinema’s Shorts Festival in New York City this weekend, and will be added to the horror streaming network Shudder on November 14, Catherine Fordham offers a tongue-in-cheek retort. “The epidemic of violence against women is real, awful, unending and enraging,” Fordham said in an email with The Huffington Post. “I’m angry about that. This film is an expression of that anger.”
I wanted to make a film that wasn’t about a superhero, or a physically powerful woman, but just an ordinary woman with a fire inside her. What strength is possible if we can tap into that power? Catherine Fordham
In a six-minute thriller culminating in a riotous rock score, we see a woman transform from victim to attacker. “Consommé” begins quietly, with a scene of a woman in bed, looking beat-up and tired. As she rises to face the day, she’s startled by flash backs from the night before; after a fight with a boyfriend, she walks home and is assaulted by a man on the street.
“The original idea came when a girlfriend of mine was angry at an ex-boyfriend and about to walk home late at night. Another friend said, ‘be careful getting home.’ I saw a flash of fire cross her eyes, almost like, ‘TRY to mess with me tonight, when I have this fire burning!’” Fordham said. “I wanted to make a film that wasn’t about a superhero, or a physically powerful woman, but just an ordinary woman with a fire inside her. What strength is possible if we can tap into that power? What fierceness is there when we fight for our lives as if we deserved it?”
Watching “Consommé,” viewers observe a literal power struggle take place between a woman and her attacker, and when the scales finally tip, her pent-up rage overtakes her.
“I wanted to play with the usual female victim narrative and lead the audience into a trap. They think they know what they are about to see ― a rape, the usual terrible story. Then the subversion of that typical role ― that Kali becomes the attacker ― is surprising and upending. Or that is the hope!” Fordham said. She noted that she wanted the role reversal to be surprising, funny and over-the-top. “I hope people leave feeling that wonderful feeling you get from punk rock ― RAH RAH RAH. Don’t F with me,” she added.
In crime fiction, women are not beaten to death by their husbands and in their bedrooms. Most often, they simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the fact is that in real-world Sweden, as in many countries, most murder victims who are victims of incidental rather than premeditated murder are young men, not young women.
[…]
Stories of crime fiction serve as modern day parables — a secular or agnostic answer to the didactic stories told from the pulpit in Church on Sundays. These stories ask similar questions of ourselves and our communities; who are we, what are our sins? How do we do evil, and how do we do justice? How are things, and how should they be?
If there’s a surplus of stories signaling to women that going for walks late at night results in physical harm, what sort of narrative can be used to offset that? Fordham hopes she can provide just one alternative, while working within the surreal context of horror.
She’s a fan of other women-lead projects that are getting it right: “Jessica Jones,” with a forthcoming season directed entirely by women; Japanese samurai movies starring women, like “Onibaba” and “Lady Snowblood.”
“‘Ghostbusters’ was a big deal for me this year, because kid-me in the 80s had NOTHING like that ― no female heroes we could play in the playground. Except Princess Leia,” Fordham said.
“Consommé” will be featured at the Nitehawk Shorts Festival’s Midnite Program along with a similarly spooky slate. In “Venefica,” a witch undergoes a sorting hat-like ritual to determine whether she’s a member of the Pagan dark side; in “You Will Never Find My Body” a woman willingly enters a dark forest.
These aren’t your usual slasher flicks. There’s something subversive lurking alongside the sinister.
TheNitehawk Shorts Festival will take place Nov. 9-13 at the cinema’s location in Brooklyn, New York. Huffington Post Arts & Culture is the Media Sponsor for the festival and will provide the inaugural Huffington Post Impact Award.
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