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How Woody Allen Still Gets Away With Writing Sexist Movies

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Some things never change. The sequel will always pander sadly to the potency of the original (sorry, “Toy Story 3”), Meryl Streep will always be an untouchable glamour queen who can do no wrong, and Woody Allen movies will invariably begin with blithe narration and serif-font credits.


His latest, “Café Society” – which is a fun summer watch, by the way – is no different. An almost surreal, highly saturated scene introduces Steve Carell, canoodling with some of Los Angeles’ brightest starlets while Allen narrates. Carell plays Phil Stern, a high-power agent during Hollywood’s Golden Age, bringing his wife along to pool parties in Beverly Hills. His socializing is regularly interrupted by phone calls, and the plot kicks off with one from his sister, whose son, Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg doing his best Woody impression) is planning to move to LA from New York, and is looking for work.


After weeks of silence, Bobby is invited to do menial errands for Phil, working alongside his secretary, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). Bobby develops a crush, but learns that Vonnie’s not single; she’s involved with a married man. A typically Allenian love triangle – one that later morphs into a square before morphing again into another many-sided geometric shape – emerges, recognizable to fans of “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Manhattan,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” and his other films that have since become classics. The tension between characters arises from their constant, stifling emotional proximity; friends become lovers become friends again, and partners turn into ex-partners before reuniting. The effect is an anxious feeling on the part of the viewer, one that matches the racing thoughts of unhealthy love affairs. “Get out!” you want to yell at his hopeless couples. “Leave the room! Take a walk! Get some air!”


Usually, Woody Allen plays one of the spurned characters, left alone to contemplate the absurdity of romance. In “Café Society,” Eisenberg serves as his stand-in, an outsider enjoying the thrumming pulse of New York City, a place where he feels superficially connected, but emotionally isolated. If this sounds like “Annie Hall” or “Insert Pretty Much Any Other Woody Allen Title Here,” that’s because the sentiment is the same; the West Coast sun coaxes you into a comfortable lull, while the East is uncomfortable but lively. Kristen Stewart’s bluntness and naivete match Diane Keaton’s, and the endearing, fumbling male protagonist stays the same while the world around him shifts and quakes.


When the movie ends, he’s left pontificating just as he was at the start, but we, the viewers, are able to leave with a sense of closure that’s often lacking in real-world breakups. The movie’s over! The serif-font credits are rolling! We can throw out our empty, greasy popcorn bags and step out into the daylight.


This is the allure of Woody Allen’s timeless template: he manages to make the examined life worth watching. But how can movie lovers reconcile what he’s serving with what a complete scumbag he is IRL?


Of course, to put it that way is to undermine the seriousness of his alleged crimes. It would be futile to argue here the evidence that’s been presented against him, but the views about women espoused in his movies alone are enough to raise questions about how he treats – and thinks about – women. The much-older man pursuing the much-younger woman has become a trope so prevalent that it’d be easier to compile a list of Allen movies that don’t adhere to it (“Blue Jasmine,” a recent example, is his most critically acclaimed film in recent years).


With “Café Society” he returned to his stalwart plot device, and audiences laughed along with it. When Bobby laments that his wife is a different person after having a baby – everything’s about the baby now, he sighs, without lifting a finger to help out with child care himself – he begins to stray, reconnecting with his earlier, childless fling.


It’s the kind of plot setup that would make viewers cringe at the smarmy hero, who would need scenes’ worth of context, explanation, and redemptive apologies, if it were set in the present-day. Twenty years ago, Allen could get away with it. Today, audiences would be reluctant to embrace a hero – or a director – whose only redemptive qualities are his self-deprecating jokes and his charming bluntness.


But, “Café Society” is set in the late ‘30s, and such a retrograde view on relationships is acceptable – even funny – in that context. We can suspend our judgment, and enjoy it guilt-free.


In recent years, Allen has had success with similar historical love stories. 2011’s “Midnight in Paris,” a time-traveling exploration of love and nostalgia, was set amid the Lost Generation’s time in the city. “Magic in the Moonlight,” a 2014 film set in France in the ‘20s, has a similar vibe.


Allen is far from the only director guilty of casting young women love interests opposite older male protagonists; ageism in Hollywood, specifically concerning women, is rampant. But he confronts the theme directly, with narrators mulling over their own behaviors, which actively objectify young women. Should he continue to explore that theme in his art, here’s hoping he does so in a way that’s plausible – by rooting his stories in decades past.


You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Sign up to receive it in your inbox weekly.


Follow Maddie Crum on Twitter: @maddiecrum

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Artist Photographs Diverse American 'Neighbors' Around The Country

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A woman shellfish farmer from Shelton, Washington. A tatted up Latino man from Chicano Park, California. An older white man living at a Texas religious compound. A fabulous bearded drag queen in New Orleans.


These are just some of the many diverse subjects that make up photographer John Raymond Mireles’ timely photography series “Neighbors.” Although they may not live next door or across the street, these are the individuals who make up our national community. And it’s our duty, like any good neighbor, to help each other feel welcome, safe and recognized. 


Mireles, who is white, began the series after moving to a predominately black and Latino neighborhood in San Diego, California. Moved by the warmth and friendliness his neighborhood exhibited, he decided to document his new community in the best way he knew how.



He photographed them in close proximity and hung the images, large five-feet tall prints, on the fence outside his home. “By photographing so closely and enlarging so dramatically, viewers were able to witness the character of the individuals,” Mireles wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.


“Because I didn’t remove the photos to some far off exhibition space, their placement within the community has, in some measure, uplifted and honored the people exhibited and, by extension, the entire neighborhood.”


After his initial photography shoot, Mireles was far from finished. He resolved to continue his journey to all 50 states, plus Washington D.C. and Tijuana, to show just how much beauty and power resides in difference. Most often, he recruits subjects on the fly, asking strangers outside gas stations and diners if they’d like to pose for a portrait. So far, he’s 23 states down. 



Mireles captures each subject in the same way, using identical lighting against a neutral, light backdrop. “By removing extraneous details,” he wrote, “the subject remains the sole focus and then the viewer is able to see the character traits of the individual. It’s a sort of photographic meditation to me: by focusing on one thing, that one thing becomes more significant and we’re free to experience the richness of the subject along with their similarities and differences.”


In a time when American ideals are in danger of becoming bound up with base feelings of fear and hatred, Mireles’ “Neighbors” offers a clear vision that difference is not what holds our country back, but what makes it great.


As Mireles put it: “The goal with this work is to create empathic connections between the viewers and the subjects ― who often come from different backgrounds and geographic regions ― so as to create an understanding that ultimately we’re all neighbors who share an underlying humanity and culture.”


Help fund Mireles’ project on GoFundMe.


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Why Books Are The Perfect Way To Spread Art To The Masses

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Sometimes the simplest of ideas are the most revolutionary. Art is expensive, often ludicrously so. Even with lesser-known emerging artists, an original artwork will set you back hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. But an art book? Not so much. For many of us art-loving plebs, books are the most viable means of supporting artists and beginning an art collection of our own. 


Carolyn Schoerner is the mind behind Books For All Press (BFA), a non-profit publisher working with artists living with mental illness and developmental disabilities. Prior to BFA, Schoerner worked at Printed Matter, a non-profit bookstore and artist space, as well as White Columns, New York’s oldest alternative art space. The amalgamation of both made sense. 


“I just fell in love with the work at White Columns,” Schoerner explained in an interview with The Huffington Post. “It just seemed so pure and natural to me. I wanted to continue working with organizations like it, but I wasn’t sure quite how.” 



Through White Columns’ director Matthew Higgs, Schoerner got involved with studios like Creative Growth and NIAD Art Center, which work with artists with developmental disabilities as a joint studio space art gallery. “It’s not art therapy,” Schoerner clarified. “They are artists. Artists who happen to have these disabilities.” 


Oakland-based Creative Growth is home to artists like John Hiltunen, who collages fashion editorials and natural history magazines, topping them off with the surreal additions of animal heads. In this chopped and screwed reality, a woman in a trendy empire waist dress and the head of a grey cat struts confidently through a field of bougainvilleas. Aside from making stand-alone collages, Hiltunen makes collaged books as part of his practice. 


Hiltunen is one of the first artists, along with Creativity Explored’s Antonio Benjamin and NIAD’s Karen May, whose work will be compiled into a BFA-published art book. Benjamin’s work often features nude portraits designated as vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. May colors atop ArtForum ads, adorning blue chip works at Paula Cooper and Matthew Marks galleries with colorful shapes, squiggles, and various adornments.



The goal, Schoerner explained, is to fold the artists’ work into the contemporary art dialogue without special categorization or marginalization. The book formats will follow the design model of many contemporary art books ― no text, just art. This, however, is especially revelatory for a field in which the artist’s work is so often overshadowed by the details of his or her personal narrative. 


BFA aims to do away with the layer of separation that sometimes keeps non-mainstream artists from earning their rightful spots in the artistic canon. What’s more, the press expands upon the already accessible, affordable and inclusive nature of the alternative art world to ensure that anyone who loves Hiltunen’s collages or Benjamin’s paintings can get their hands on them for a reasonable price. 


The first round of books, all designed by David Schoerner, Carolyn’s husband, will be published in editions of 500. They will be premiered at the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 on Sept. 15, 2016. Visit their website to donate and help BFA thrive.


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14 Photos Of Plus-Size Women Feeling Damn Good About Their Bodies

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Simone Mariposa was sick and tired of hearing constant negative comments about her plus-size bod. So she decided to do something about it. 


On July 23, the 23-year-old model and blogger created the hashtag #WeWearWhatWeWant to highlight plus-size women wearing outfits that society often deems “unacceptable” for bigger women.  


“#WeWearWhatWeWant symbolizes women building their confidence, and loving themselves enough to break the mold and challenge the societal norms of what’s ‘acceptable’ for big women to do,” Mariposa told The Huffington Post. 


Mariposa was inspired to create the hashtag after reading a story of a plus-size woman who was judged by strangers because of her outfit. “I find it important to highlight plus women being free and fabulous with their wardrobes because we live in a society that constantly polices our bodies,” she said. “Plus-size women are constantly told to cover up, not because we look bad in revealing clothing, but because of people’s personal lack of comfort.” 










“Showing skin isn’t exclusive to smaller girls. It’s okay for a plus size women to let her body breath in her clothing,” Mariposa tweeted. “Stop making it ‘unacceptable’ for plus women to wear clothes that show skin.”














The hashtag quickly took off with hundreds of women responding to Mariposa’s image with their own photos of them in their favorite outfits. 


Mariposa told HuffPost that she hopes the hashtag gives plus-size women a safe space to talk about their experiences. “The story of the plus-size woman isn’t commonly addressed because we are often made to feel subhuman,” she said. “But with powerful hashtags like this, we are given a voice that no one can ignore.” 


Way to do you, Simone. Scroll below to see more of the tweets from women who used the hashtag.



















































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The Prince, Madonna And Michael Jackson Slam Book

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Hit Backspace for a regular dose of pop culture nostalgia.


If we can thank/blame anyone for the state of modern pop fame, it’s Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince. In the early 1980s, as MTV fused a new form of music consumption with a heightened awareness of celebrity culture, they emerged as America’s holy trinity.


All three singers were born to complicated childhoods in the spring/summer of 1958, and each became preeminent visual artists who reinvented themselves as the years progressed. Jackson, of course, had a built-in audience thanks to his already lengthy career, but 1979’s “Off the Wall” and 1983’s “Thriller” redrafted his legacy as a dazzling solo artist. Prince and Madonna, arriving to grown-up stardom in 1978 and 1982, respectively, built reputations as iconoclasts challenging standard notions of gender and sexuality. 


As these things go, the media loved to adjudicate the trio’s stature, seizing opportunities to report on their interactions. They were often portrayed, somewhat inflatedly, as archrivals. At times, they were friends. Elsewhere, they seemed like resentful competitors hell-bent on outpacing one another.


I spent weeks combing through news stories that mention two or more of them, and you can’t imagine the number of times the press questioned how long their careers would last. Madonna, willing to give ample interviews and use the media to mold her image, was the most vocal of the three. So much so that, at times, she repeated herself. Jackson seemed the most starved for affection, regularly pitching collaborations that Prince declined. Prince himself was, unsurprisingly, the most enigmatic ― an androgynous prodigy whose fierce independence may have sometimes gotten the best of him. Where Madonna is one of the savviest self-marketers that popular culture has ever seen, Prince leaned into his aloof stylings as The Purple One and Jackson became a virtuoso haunted by a Peter Pan persona. Most importantly, each understood that pop music is both an art and a business.


As a case study in contemporary celebrity, below is a comprehensive list of all the times Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson interacted, teamed up, sparred or spoke of one another publicly, along with a few interesting points that writers raised about their cultural impact along the way. All your favorite rumors are here, as long as they stem from reputable publications or unauthorized biographies. Settle in for 33 years of romances, catfights, collaborations, tributes and complicated kindredness. It’s all flown by faster than a ray of light. 



1983:
James Brown invites Jackson onstage with him. After Jackson dazzles with his dance moves, he whispers in Brown’s ear and then Brown invites Prince, who shares a tour manager, to join. Prince and his entourage are convinced that Jackson intended to humiliate Prince, whose guitar malfunctions during the performance.





1983: Seeking a manager, Madonna enlists Freddy DeMann because he also manages Jackson, whom Madonna deems the “most successful person in the music industry.” DeMann attends a show Madonna performs at Studio 54. “I was so nervous because Michael Jackson’s so incredible live and I thought, ‘If he thinks Prince is terrible ― which he did ― what can I do?’” she later said. “Then he liked the show.”


Feb. 28, 1984: At the first Grammy Awards where Jackson and Prince compete for the same accolades, Jackson’s “Billie Jean” tops Prince’s “International Lover” for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. Jackson’s “Thriller” beats Prince’s “1999” for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.


July 1984: Wanting to assess his competition, Prince and his crew attend a Dallas stop on The Jacksons’ Victory Tour. “There was a feeling in our camp that, while what they were doing was a very solid stadium production, there was nothing really cutting edge about the technology,” Alan Leeds, Prince’s tour manager, told Vibe in 2010. “Prince had a lot of respect for Michael, but he was mildly impressed with the show.”



September 1984: Teen magazine Right On! puts Jackson and Prince on the same cover with the headline “Who Rules The Music Kingdom? Prince Or Michael?” “Michael and Prince were not actually battling each other on a serious level,” then-editor Cynthia Horner said in 2010. “But because I knew that was something the public found fascinating and everybody always talked about it, I wanted to have both of them on the cover together to project that element of Prince vs. Michael.”



Sept. 2, 1984: A New York Times essay contrasts Jackson and Prince’s top-tier superstardom in detail, noting their androgyny and race-bending success: “If Mr. Jackson’s message is ‘all you need is love,’ Prince’s amounts to ‘all you need is sex.’”  


Dec. 2, 1984: “Sure, I can relate to him because he has a chip on his shoulder,” Madonna says of Prince in a Los Angeles Times interview. “He’s competitive, from the Midwest ... a screwed-up home and he has something to prove. I can relate to that ― totally.” 


Late 1984 and early 1985: Jackson attends multiple stops on Prince’s Purple Rain Tour.



Jan. 28, 1985 (part 1): Prince spots Madonna backstage at the American Music Awards, reportedly asking his manager to collect her phone number. She later presents him with the prize for Favorite Black Album (yes, that was a thing). The next day, according to Christopher Andersen’s unauthorized Madonna biography, Prince calls Madonna to ask her out on a date. She attends a night of his Purple Rain Tour, shortly before her inaugural Virgin Tour is set to launch. They carouse on and off for a few months whenever Madonna is in Los Angeles, but along the way, Madonna meets future husband Sean Penn and the rumors of her Prince liaison are put to bed.


Years later, Prince’s friend T.L. Ross tells Madonna: An Intimate Biography scribe J. Randy Taraborrelli that Madonna saw sex as a “physical experience” and Prince saw it as a “cosmic” one. In keeping, Prince found Madonna too aggressive. “Madonna also thought he “reek[ed]” of lavender, but it turned her on. After he stopped acting interested in her, that’s when the phone calls started,” Ross said. “Madonna pestered him for weeks. He said later that she screamed at him, ‘How dare you dump me? Don’t you know who I am?’ She was definitely not used to getting dumped.” Freddy DeMann’s assistant told Taraborrelli that Penn punched a hole in Madonna’s wall after discovering she had dated Prince. She phoned Prince to repair it: “You’re responsible for it, after all,” she told him.


Jan. 28, 1985 (part 2): Prince’s “Purple Rain” beats Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for Favorite Pop/Rock Album and Favorite Black Album at the American Music Awards. Later that night, a horde of A-list musicians record the famous “We Are the World” charity single, which Jackson has overseen with Lionel Ritchie and Quincy Jones. Prince and Jackson are supposed to have a verse that they sing to each other (the two had met for lunch, as organized by Jones), but Prince is a no-show. He wants to contribute a different song to the charity endeavor, send Sheila E. in his place and/or play guitar on “We Are the World,” which Jones vetoes.


At least one report indicates Prince did not want to record with the other musicians, while another says he was upset because Bob Geldof had called him a “creep.” Either way, Prince is spotted at a Hollywood club later that night, against his manager’s advisement. In the 2014 book Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of “Purple Rain,” the singer’s backing guitarist Wendy Melvoin says, “I wasn’t allowed to say the real reason: Because he thinks he’s a badass and he wanted to look cool, and he felt like the song for ‘We Are the World’ was horrible and he didn’t want to be around ‘all those muthafuckas.’”





April 10, 1985 – June 11, 1985: During her Virgin Tour, Madonna incorporates a bit of Jackson’s “Billie Jean” into her performance of “Like a Virgin,” highlighting their similar bass lines.





April 23, 1985: That song Prince said he’d donate to the “We Are the World” album? It’s there, and it’s called “4 the Tears in Your Eyes.” 


May 13, 1985: A People article denies rumors that Madonna and Prince were ever romantically involved, reporting that she once called him a “midget” as she arrived at a date in San Francisco. “He usually wants to be treated the exact opposite of the way he is dressed,” Madonna says. “His outfits say touch me, lick me, love me, lust me, but then he pretends he’s wearing a monk’s outfit. He needs to step back, look at his clothing and laugh at it.”


July 1985: Riding the success of “Desperately Seeking Susan,” Madonna bags her next movie role, the Warner Bros. musical “Street Smart.” Michael Grais, the film’s writer, says he also has his eye on a role for Prince protégée Vanity. The movie never comes to fruition.


July 10, 1985: Prince releases a B-side called “Hello,” on which he tells his side of the “We Are the World” incident. The first verse says “I tried to tell them that I didn’t want to sing / But I’d gladly write a song instead / They said OK and everything was cool / Till a camera tried to get in my bed.” 


Sept. 19, 1985: The Parents Music Resource Center, formed the previous year by Tipper Gore and three other politicians’ wives, testifies about foul lyrics in a Senate hearing. Susan Baker co-founded the organization after her 7-year-old daughter heard Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and asked what “virgin” meant. Earlier in 1985, the PMRC had released the “Filthy Fifteen,” a list of objectionable songs they hoped to ban from radio airwaves. The list included Madonna’s “Dress You Up” and Prince’s “Darling Nikki.” By the time the hearings are over, the PMRC has established the “parental advisory” label. 



Circa 1986: Prince is working on “Under the Cherry Moon,” his ill-fated follow-up to the movie “Purple Rain,” when Jackson pays him a visit. Prince challenges his competitor to ping-pong. Jackson doesn’t know how to play, and amid taunts from Prince to step up his game, Prince slams the ball into Jackson’s crotch. After Jackson leaves, Prince says Jackson played like Helen Keller.


1986: Jackson writes “Bad,” and producer Quincy Jones sees it as a potential duet with Prince, who is supposedly on board until realizing it would require him to sing the lyric “Your butt is mine” to Jackson. “Don’t worry, this record will be a big hit even if I’m not on it,” Prince says at the time, according to producer Bruce Swedien. In a 1997 VH1 interview with Chris Rock, Prince confirms these rumors but states that he sees no rivalry with Jackson. It is later revealed that Prince gifted him with a box of voodoo artifacts, and Jackson was convinced that Prince was trying to cast a spell on him.





Feb. 25, 1987: Madonna releases “La Isla Bonita,” which becomes a Top 10 hit. Composed by Patrick Leonard, who served as the musical director on The Jacksons’ Victory Tour and Madonna’s first two tours, the musical track of “La Isla Bonita” was first pitched to Jackson. He passed on it.


December 1987: Jackson is rumored to be “infatuated” with backup singer Siedah Garrett, who contributed vocals to Madonna’s “True Blue” album and recorded “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” with Jackson as a duet on his “Bad” album.


December 1987: Railing against criticisms of her sexualized image, Madonna tells Smash Hits magazine, “I think, ‘Why aren’t they letting this stand in the way of appreciating Prince’s music?’” She reasons that some women don’t like her because “they’re taught that to be strong and respected they had to behave like men or not be sexy or feminine and it pissed them off that I was being that.”


1988: In audio that surfaced in 2016, Jackson allegedly says he doesn’t like to be compared to Prince, calling him “rude” and “nasty.” “I have proven myself since I was real little,” Jackson is heard saying. “It’s not fair. He feels like I’m his opponent. I hope he changes because, boy, he’s gonna get hurt. He’s the type that might commit suicide or something.”


May 1988: Movie producer Dodi Fayed, who later died in a car accident with Princess Diana, says he turned down interest from both Jackson and Madonna to play Peter Pan in a live-action movie. “When I was told Madonna wanted to be Peter Pan, I laughed,” Fayed tells the Los Angeles Times. “I just doubted whether anyone would know her in a few years. I wouldn’t use Michael Jackson now either because I think there’s a real danger he won’t be popular in a few years.”


Oct. 9, 1988: The week that Prince and Jackson are slated to perform individually at the same venue in Maryland, The Washington Post prints an essay comparing their fame, labeling Prince the critical darling and Jackson the populist champ.


March 21, 1989: Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” album is released, featuring a sultry duet with Prince, “Love Song.” The collaboration comes to be after Prince presents demos of songs they’d recorded together via phone to Madonna backstage during her 1988 Broadway debut in David Mamet’s “Speed-the-Plow.” “We were friends and talked about working together, so I went to Minneapolis to write some stuff with him, but the only thing I really dug was ‘Love Song,’” she later said. “We ended up writing it long-distance, because I had to be in LA and he couldn’t leave Minneapolis, and quite frankly I couldn’t stand Minneapolis. When I went there, it was like 20 degrees below zero, and it was really desolate. I was miserable and I couldn’t write or work under those circumstances.” The New York Times’ review of the album calls “Love Song” “smoldering.” Prince also plays guitar, uncredited, on three other tracks: “Like a Prayer,” “Keep It Together” and “Act of Contrition.”





Sept. 6, 1989: Madonna’s “Express Yourself” tops Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone” for the Viewer’s Choice prize at the MTV Video Music Awards. Both lose to Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You” for Video of the Year.


Oct. 2, 1989: Jackson’s $125 million net worth tops Forbes’ annual list of the richest entertainers, while Madonna sits at No. 15 with $43 million and Prince places at No. 20 with $36 million.


Oct. 13, 1989: The Los Angeles Times prints a list of the celebrity clientele at the Ritz-Carlton. Jackson and Madonna are both on it.



Early 1990s: While giving producers L.A. Reid and Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds a tour of Neverland Ranch, Jackson stops in his screening room to show the producers footage of Prince’s guitar malfunctioning during their 1983 performance with James Brown. He then plays a scene from Prince’s “Under the Cherry Moon,” mocking both clips.


Nov. 2, 1990: “Graffiti Bridge,” a critically derided sequel to “Purple Rain,” opens in theaters. According to Matt Thorne’s Prince: The Man and His Music, published in 2016, Prince wanted Madonna to play his love interest in the movie, but she “didn’t consider the script worthy of her talents.”


January 1991: Madonna and Jackson reportedly join an all-star cover of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” organized by Yoko Ono in response to the Gulf War. Neither winds up appearing on the track, which instead features the likes of Cyndi Lauper, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Lenny Kravitz and MC Hammer.  


March 16, 1991: Madonna and Jackson dine together at Los Angeles hotspot Ivy. The restaurant’s employees spend the night warding off paparazzi.



March 25, 1991: Madonna and Jackson attend the Oscars together, where Madonna ― who arrived dressed like Marilyn Monroe ― performs “Sooner or Later” from the movie “Dick Tracy.” They sit in the front row and attend talent agent Swifty Lazar’s after-party together, where they reportedly carouse with Michael Douglas, Warren Beatty, Anjelica Huston, Robert Graham and Diana Ross. The following year, Madonna says she had tried to get Jackson to cut his long hair before the event.



April 1991: Madonna tells The Advocate that she’d like to “completely redo” Jackson’s image. “I also want to get him out of those buckly boots and stuff,” she said. She wants Jackson to spend time with the House of Xtravaganza, a queer New York ball group that helped to inspire her 1990 hit “Vogue.”


May 1991: “She just isn’t that good,”Jackson says of Madonna in the unauthorized biography Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness. “Let’s face it, she can’t sing and she’s just an OK dancer. What does she do best? She knows how to market herself. That’s it.” The book also claims Jackson envied Madonna’s fame, especially after MTV named her its Artist of the Decade. (He arranged for MTV to present him with an award called the Video Vanguard Artist of the Decade.) “That’ll teach the heifer,” he reportedly says.


Oct. 17, 1991: In a USA Today article, Sister 2 Sister owner Jamie Foster Brown describes a birthday party that Jackson and Madonna had attended at a restaurant. “Michael pushed the birthday candles away from his face when they sat down,” she says. “Madonna came up and snatched the glasses off his face and threw them across the room. ‘Tonight, you’re going to be normal like the rest of us,’ she shouted. Madonna said that when they first met, Michael would stare at her breasts so hard that she took his hands and put them on her. He said, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do that.’”


Nov. 19, 1991: In a TV Guide Magazine interview, Madonna says she likes Prince’s music, but his videos are “silly and cheap and below his ability.”


Dec. 14, 1991: “They are fans of each other,” Liz Rosenberg, Madonna’s publicist, tells the Los Angeles Daily News, referring to the singer’s relationship with Jackson. “She is an entity unto herself. There is room for two big stars.”


April 8, 1992: Jackson releases “In the Closet,” which was originally intended as a collaboration with Madonna. In an interview with Jonathan Ross, Madonna says the two singers had a meeting where Jackson played a demo of the song. She asked whether he knew what the phrase “in the closet” implied, and when Jackson said yes, she offered some lyrical suggestions. “I presented them to him and he didn’t like them,” she tells Ross. “I think all he wanted was a provocative title and ultimately he didn’t want the contents of the song to live up to the title.” For the potential video, Madonna reportedly wanted to dress in male drag, with Jackson sporting female drag, but Jackson refused. Jackson instead records “In the Closet” with Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, whose vocals are initially mistaken for Madonna’s. 





Sept. 4, 1992: Reports indicate that Prince’s $100 million contract with Warner Bros. ― which makes him one of company’s vice presidents ― is the biggest for a recording star in history. Newsday points out that it tops $60 million deals recently signed by Madonna and Jackson. Industry insiders express skepticism at the price of Prince’s contract.


Sept. 9, 1992: Jackson signs on to perform at the Super Bowl XXVII halftime show on CBS. Fox attempts to recruit Madonna to perform in the same time slot, but she does not want to compete against Jackson.



March 1993: While shooting the video for Jackson’s collaboration with Eddie Murphy, “Whatzupwitu,” Murphy is seen saying he would love to collaborate with Prince, as well. “Yes, he’s a natural genius,” Jackson replies. “But I can beat him.”


March 24, 1993: Madonna is spotted chatting with Whitney Houston during a Prince concert at Radio City Music Hall. 


October 1994: In an interview with London’s Evening Standard, Madonna says this of Prince and Jackson, who are growing ever more elusive in the media: “Prince’s demure behavior and Michael Jackson’s running away from the truth is much more revealing about them than any of the things I’ve told. I could talk to you for hours and you could read all my interviews, but you’d never feel you completely knew me. If they would just come outside and mingle with humanity, everything would benefit ― their art, and whatever relationships they may have. I’ve spent a good deal of time with both of them. They have these manners and they’re just so careful about what they eat and what they say. It’s never too late to start being a human being. Forget salvation in the public eye. I’m just talking about being happy in your private life.”


October 1994: In an interview with the BBC, Madonna says, “I’m being punished for being a single female, for having power and being rich and saying the things I say, being a sexual creature ― actually, not being any different from anyone else, but just talking about it. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have had any of these problems. Nobody talks about Prince’s sex life, and all the women he’s slept with.”


October 1994: In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Madonna says, “I could never say that either of them were friends. I’ve spent a good deal of time with both of them. They’re very different people, but I felt the same with both. I felt like a peasant next to them, like this big clumsy farm girl. Like, when I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it. And they have these manners and they’re just so careful about what they eat and what they say. I had dinner with Prince once, and he was just sipping tea, very daintily. I was stuffing food down my face and I was like, ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I have this theory about people who don’t eat. They annoy me. It’s something about being in control.” Here, she starts to repeat herself. “It’s never too late to start being a human being. If they could just try being something close to that, then that would be the way to ... I mean, [forget] salvation in the public eye ― I’m just talking about being happy in your private life. Just being able to go to a basketball game or for a bike ride. I can’t imagine either of those guys putting on sweat pants and sneakers and going for a run, playing outside with a dog or just being silly and hanging out with your friends without your makeup on. You know what I mean? I don’t think they do that.”



Feb. 13, 1995: “Michael Jackson and Madonna are the torchbearers of American society; their cultural and social values are destroying humanity,” says Nematullah Khan, a divisional chief of the Party of Islam group, which wants the singers to be tried as terrorists in Pakistan.


July 10, 1995: A report in the Daily Mirror says that Elizabeth Taylor, a close friend of Jackson’s, invited Prince to dinner, much to Jackson’s disdain. Taylor was displeased when Prince arrived with security detail. After Prince refused to leave his bodyguards behind, Taylor went to bed instead of dining with the singer, leaving him to socialize with her husband. “Liz sent the doves Prince gave her back, and never heard from him again,” a source tells the paper.



Fall 1996: As both artists deal with the aftermath of personal blows (Jackson’s child-molestation accusations and Prince’s heated dispute with his record label), Jackson instructs his handlers to contact Prince about a potential collaboration. “I think it would be just great,” Jackson reportedly tells Prince over the phone. The joint effort never materializes.


Feb. 16, 1997: Jackson sings a song he wrote for Elizabeth Taylor during a Hollywood birthday bash that doubles as an AIDS benefit. Madonna is also on hand, toasting Taylor with a speech and escorting her to the stage. (The event is televised on ABC the following month.) 





Sometime in 1998: “I respect any artist who has talent, and Michael Jackson and Prince are extremely talented artists,” Madonna tells The Sunday Mail, as printed in an April 11, 1999, article about J. Randy Taraborrelli’s yet-to-be-released Madonna: An Intimate Biography, which reasserts that Prince and Madonna had a two-month affair in 1985. “I do not care what they do out of the spotlight ― that’s their business ― but I do hope they continue to do good work. I am a fan.”


May 21, 1998: After several years of public imbroglio regarding Prince’s Warner Bros. contract (WB terminated Paisley Park Records in 1993 and he became The Artist Formerly Known as Prince), Liz Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm is published. The book says Madonna, wanting to help, proposed that Prince’s NPG Records merge with her Maverick Records. Nothing comes of the offer.  


July 1998: Madonna cites Prince’s “When Doves Cry” as a song she would “escape into” as an emerging recording artist. “By then I did have a record contract, and I had moved to a nice loft on Broome and West Broadway,” she tells Rolling Stone in a cover story. “But there was still no elevator, so I had to walk up six flights of steps to get to my loft. I rode my bike everywhere, with a Walkman and headphones on, and one hot summer day I came in and I just couldn’t carry my bike up those stairs one more time. I was hating my family and my life at the time, and I just collapsed in the stairwell with that song playing in my headphones, crying my heart out and feeling incredibly sorry for myself.”


Nov. 24, 1998: As Prince’s 1982 hit “1999” gets remixed for the impending year, a New York Post story indicates Jackson offered to record the song with him as a duet.


Jan. 19, 1999: In an open letter to Madonna on his website, Prince says he had a dream in which he asked her to speak out against Warner Bros., which still will not relinquish the rights to Prince’s back catalog. 


September 1999: After the 1997 remix album “Blood on the Dance Floor” sees weak sales, Jackson re-signs with Freddy DeMann, who had managed him throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. DeMann had split with Madonna earlier that year.


November 1999: In a ranking released by MTV and TV Guide, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is named the best music video since the launch of MTV in 1981. Madonna’s “Vogue” is No. 2. Both have two other clips on the list: Madonna’s “Express Yourself” (No. 10) and “Lucky Star” (No. 50), and Jackson’s “Beat It” (No. 12) and “Billie Jean” (No. 35).


May 2, 2001: VH1 ranks the 100 greatest music videos of all time. Madonna, whose “Like a Prayer” is No. 2, boasts six items on the list, more than any other artist. Jackson, whose “Thriller” is No. 1, has five. Prince has two.


November 2001: An unauthorized Madonna biography says Madonna tried to seduce Jackson after the 1991 Oscars but “nothing happened because he was giggling so much.”


April 2003: In a Q Magazine interview, Madonna slams “Living with Michael Jackson,” the documentary that chronicles the King of Pop’s odd parenting behavior and changing appearance. “It sounds disgusting, like [journalist Martin Bashir] exploited a friendship,” she says. “Publicly humiliating someone for your own gain will only come and haunt you. I can assure you, all these people will be sorry. God’s going to have his revenge.” In a “Dateline NBC” interview with Matt Lauer that same month, Madonna says she hasn’t talked to Jackson “in ages,” but she calls the documentary “exploitive.”


Oct. 17, 2005: Madonna’s “Hung Up” is released, borrowing a hook (and the lyric “Time goes by so slowly for those who wait / And those who run seem to have all the fun”) that she and Prince used on “Love Song.” 





Late 2006: Will.i.am arranges for Jackson to attend a show during Prince’s Las Vegas residency. Prince knows where Jackson will be seated, and he emerges into the crowd and aggressively plays bass in Jackson’s face. Jackson is outraged, reportedly telling will.i.am the next day, “Prince has always been a meanie. He’s just a big meanie. He’s always been not nice to me. Everybody says Prince is this great legendary Renaissance man and I’m just a song-and-dance man, but I wrote ‘Billie Jean’ and I wrote ‘We Are the World,’ and I’m a songwriter too.”


May 31, 2007: Already committed to perform 21 shows at London’s O2 Arena, Prince turns down an invitation to join Jackson on a planned comeback tour. “Michael seemed pretty disappointed about it,” a source reportedly tells Britain’s The Sun.


Aug. 1, 2007: “I got so many hits, y’all can’t handle me. I got more hits than Madonna’s got kids,” Prince quips during a London concert. Rumors of a feud swirl.


June 25, 2009: Jackson dies at age 50. Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary, reveals Madonna was planning to join Jackson onstage on one night of his 50-show residency at London’s O2 Arena.






June 25, 2009: Speaking to the Star Tribune in Minneapolis following Jackson’s death, drummer Michael Bland says Prince and Jackson’s rivalry was overstated. “They’d shoot hoops at Paisley Park,” he tells the newspaper.


June 26, 2009: Madonna releases a statement about Jackson’s death: “I can’t stop crying over the sad news. I have always admired Michael Jackson. The world has lost one of the greats, but his music will live on forever! My heart goes out to his three children and other members of his family. God bless.”


July 4, 2009: Days before Jackson was supposed to start his O2 Arena residency, Madonna and the backup dancers on her Sticky & Sweet Tour perform a medley of “Billie Jean” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” “Let’s give it up for one of the greatest artists the world has ever known, Michael Jackson,” Madonna tells the crowd.





July 7, 2009: Oseary says Madonna, who just kicked off the European leg of her Sticky & Sweet World Tour after a lengthy hiatus, has been dedicating her shows to Jackson. 






Sept. 13, 2009: Madonna opens the MTV Video Music Awards with a tearful tribute speech about Jackson, worrying network president Van Toffler that her speech would be too serious. “I can’t say we were great friends, but in 1991 I decided I wanted to get to know him better,” she said. “I asked him out to dinner: I said, ‘My treat, I’ll drive, just you and me.’ He agreed and showed up to my house without any bodyguards. We drove to the restaurant in my car. It was dark out, but he was still wearing sunglasses. I said, ’Michael, I feel like I’m talking to a limousine, do you think you could take off those glasses so I could see your eyes?’ He paused for a moment, then he tossed the glasses out the window, looked at me with a wink and a smile and said, ’Can you see me now, is that better?’ In that moment, I could see both his vulnerability and his charm. The rest of the dinner, I was hell-bent on getting him to eat french fries, drink wine, have dessert and say bad words, things he never seemed to allow himself to do. Later, we went back to my house to watch a movie and we sat on the couch like two kids, and somewhere in the middle of the film, his hand snuck over and held mine. It felt like he was looking for a friend more than a romance and I was happy to oblige him. And in that moment he didn’t feel like a superstar, he felt like a human being. ... Yes, Michael Jackson was a human being, but he was a king. Long live the king.”





Sept. 25, 2009: The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Intimate Conversation ― a book that Shmuley Boteach, Jackson’s spiritual adviser, publishes after Jackson’s death ― includes Jackson reportedly saying he thought Madonna was jealous of his success and “sincerely” in love with him. “She hasn’t been kind,” he says. The book also recounts Madonna not wanting to go to Disneyland, Jackson not wanting to go to a strip club, and Madonna waving away a young fan who approached the two of them while they were dining: “We were at the table eating, and some little [kid] came up, [saying] ‘Oh, my God, Michael Jackson and Madonna!’ She goes, ‘Get out of here. Leave us alone.’ I said, ‘Don’t you ever talk to children like this.’ She said, ‘Shut up.’ I said, ‘You shut up.’ Yes, that’s what I said. Then we went out again and went to the Academy Awards and she is not a nice person.”


July 2010: While photographing Prince for the cover of Ebony magazine, Dudley Brooks talks to the singer about being a Jehovah’s Witness ― a religion that Jackson also once subscribed to. Prince tells Brooks that he and Jackson discussed the difficulties of balancing religion and fame, and that he wishes he’d spoken to Jackson about the struggles before he’d died.


October 2010: “When I saw Prince a few years back, he was giving my uncle props and saying how much he loved his voice,” Rebbie Jackson, Michael’s nephew, says in an interview. “So I don’t know how true it is that they didn’t get along because that’s not what I saw.”


Jan. 18, 2011: Madonna attends a Prince concert at Madison Square Garden, where she is spotted singing and clapping along to the performance. “Prince and Madonna End Decades-Long Feud,” Rolling Stone trumpets, reporting that Prince gave Madonna a “friendly call-out by name” during the show.



October 2011: In I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, a wide-ranging oral history of the network’s first decade, director John Landis says he asked Jackson to stop grabbing his crotch while making the video for “Black or White.” “Madonna does it, Prince does it,” Jackson apparently told him, to which Landis responded, “You’re not Madonna or Prince. You’re Mickey Mouse.”


January 2013: “It was also about Madonna,” Prince tells Billboard magazine in a cover story, referring to the origins of his dispute with Warner Bros. in the ‘90s. “She was getting paid, but at the time we were selling more records and selling out concerts on multiple nights.” He clarifies that it wasn’t Madonna’s fault: “It wasn’t about her. This was about business.”


April 2013: Prince — along with Diana Ross and Spike Lee — appear on the list of celebrities who could be called to testify in Jackson’s wrongful-death trial. (He is not called.)


March 6, 2015: Madonna releases “Rebel Heart.” The album features the song “Iconic,” on which Chance the Rapper raps, “Madonna said I remind her of Michael.” 





Oct. 8, 2015: After a Minnesota stop on her Rebel Heart Tour, Madonna and her touring crew attend an intimate jam session at Prince’s Paisley Park studios. They arrive at 1:30 a.m., and Prince — accompanied by Madonna — emerges at 2:15. She sits in a roped-off VIP section to watch him perform. Around 3 a.m., the singers whisper something to each other and Madonna and her crew take off. A local radio station says Prince appeared “awestruck” by Madonna.


April 21, 2016: Prince dies at age 57. Jackson’s Twitter account posts a memorial for the singer.






April 21, 2016: Madonna posts a memorial for Prince on Instagram.



He Changed The World!! A True Visionary. What a loss. I'm Devastated. This is Not A Love Song.

A photo posted by Madonna (@madonna) on




April 22, 2016: Guy Oseary, Madonna’s manager, reveals in an Instagram post that he pitched Prince and Madonna on doing a joint tour “a few years back.” Madonna agreed instantly, suggesting they call it the Royalty Tour. Prince, on the other hand, said, “The world isn’t ready for this. It’s too big.”



I met Prince when I was 12 years old. I asked for his autograph. He wrote "Love God"... My walls were covered with prince posters.. I lived in a two bedroom apartment with my dad and you could see my Prince posters from the street.. Many many years later I connected back with Prince.. And we have remained friends.. I called him a few years back with the idea of @Madonna and Prince going on tour together. I pitched it to Madonna and within a second she said "I like it, we can call it the Royalty Tour... The Queen and The Prince".... I love the way she thinks... When I told Prince the idea he said: "the world isn't ready for this, it's too big".. I always felt like one day I would pull it off.. @Madonna performed in #stpaul last year and Prince was generous enough to host us and perform for us after that show at his home #paisleypark .. He didn't go on stage until 3am, and per usual the show performance was mindblowing.. He joined me this last New Years in St Bart's and performed for my friends party at what will now be the last time I saw him.. It's the one and only time I was able to actually work with him directly.. I won't forget that electrifying performance.. Or the smile on his face that night.. And the love that he gave me.. He always treated me with kindness.. We didn't always agree.. We would argue for hours... But he understood that I respected him dearly and cared for him.. I tried my best to help him on record business matters.. And even in his passing I'm here to help.. I would have done anything I could and wish I achieved more for him on his very clear issues.. The man had the strongest of opinions on contracts and on artists rights.. This photo was taken summer of 1999.. Yes.. "1999".. You can see from the photo that I'm focused on one thing... Prince!!.. I have the original lyrics to "purple rain" on my wall and I was always too embarrassed to tell him.. Maybe he would think I was crazy for paying so much years back for those lyrics or maybe he would just take it off my wall and say "thank you, I was looking for this".. Who would stop him?.. Not me.. Today not only will doves cry, we all cry.. You will be missed.. I love you.. Rest in peace..

A photo posted by Guy Oseary (@guyoseary) on




April 26, 2016: “Nobody better understands that merging of video and music than he did,” Alan Leeds, a longtime Prince confidante, tells Rolling Stone. “Well, I shouldn’t say nobody: obviously Madonna did and Michael [Jackson] did and so on. But he was amongst the first.”


May 4, 2016: Madonna posts another Prince tribute to Instagram.




May 22, 2016: Madonna performs “Nothing Compares 2 U” and “Purple Rain” at the Billboard Music Awards. Some fans are upset that she is the one selected to tribute Prince. Madonna responds on Instagram.



The Sneaky Feminism Of Bill Clinton's First Gentleman Speech

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On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton made history, cracking that highest glass ceiling to officially become the first female presidential nominee for a major political party in the United States. And thus Bill Clinton became the first man (and potential First Gentleman) to give a speech at a major party convention pitching his wife as our next president. 


For 43 minutes, Bill told the story of how he met and has loved and worked alongside Hillary over the last 45 years. “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl,” he began, going on to talk about Hillary’s life as a student, daughter, organizer, attorney, wife, first lady, mother, senator, secretary of state and presidential nominee. And what was so fantastic about it is that he framed these roles as seamless, all significant parts of Hillary’s life story. All significant parts of what make her her.


It was by no means a perfect speech. There were parts that dragged or felt a little too primed for some sort of sexualized joke about his past, and Bill went off-teleprompter with a particularly misguided line that seemed to imply that black Americans were responsible for making police officers feel safe. (Say what?) But the parts of the speech that resonated most were the parts that encouraged Americans to confront the sheer breadth of Hillary Clinton’s resume ― and the human woman behind that list of accomplishments.






He spoke about a young, politically engaged Hillary who would hardly give him the time of day ― a Hillary that he “found magnetic” from the first moments he met her. And part of that magnetism was her drive to get shit done.


Bill touched on Hillary’s internship going into migrant camps for then Sen. Walter Mondale’s subcommittee, how she “started the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas,” her work on reforming the Arkansas education system, her work trying to reform health care, her seminal speech declaring “women’s rights are human rights” in Beijing, her time serving on the Armed Services Committee, the time she spent as secretary of state on negotiations with China and India to get them to officially commit to reduce their emissions... the list goes on.



It was Hillary's professional achievements that got to take center stage -- framed as a major part of what makes her appealing, both as a partner and as a future president.



And he effectively communicated that all of these things were done by a human woman, not a Hillarybot. This is a woman who was in the Situation Room with Obama during the mission to take out Osama bin Laden and moved her daughter into a dorm room at Stanford. A woman who “built a new global counterterrorism effort” and “calls you when you’re sick or when your kid’s in trouble.”


Women ― especially women in the public eye ― have long been painted with broad strokes. Political wives are expected to stand by their men, look pretty, be unobjectionable and unconditionally supportive, a role Hillary always struggled to fill (likely because it’s kind of a bullshit one). She was criticized for keeping her last name, for saying she didn’t want to “stay home and bake cookies,” for wearing scrunchies, for her husband’s sexual indiscretions and for her changing hairstyles. But last night, it was Hillary’s professional achievements that got to take center stage ― framed as a major part of what makes her appealing, both as a partner and as a future president. 


Bill’s speech was long ― mostly because Hillary’s done a lot. Regardless of whether you like her or not, there is no denying that she has done a hell of a lot of work for this country. She’s a doer, a “change maker,” someone who opened the 42nd President of the United States’ eyes “to a whole new world of public service by private citizens.”


And that’s the pitch Bill made, calling out that Hillary “has done more positive change-making before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime in office.” 






The beauty of Bill weaving together schmaltzy personal anecdotes with Hillary’s resume bullet points is that one of her weaknesses has been her reticence to speak about herself. (As New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister put it in a May profile: “The dichotomy between [Hillary’s] public and private presentation has a lot to do with the fact that she has built such a wall between the two.”)


Hillary is notoriously cautious about telling her story. She just doesn’t love talking about herself, a trait Donald Trump certainly does not share. But last night, Hillary’s partner in life and politics did the talking about her for her, and did so effectively.






“If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people’s lives are better, you know it’s hard, and some people think it’s boring,” said Bill. “Speeches like this are fun. Actually doing the work is hard.”


The implication is that as president Hillary is more prepared than anyone to do that hard work. Bill may be charming, and he may know how to give those “fun” speeches, but last night he showed that he’s prepared to use that charm in the role of supporter, to step to the side and let his wife show off her hard-earned chops. For a man who was once a beloved President of the United States, it’s a poignant role reversal. 


It’s finally, at long last, Hillary’s turn in the spotlight, and #HesWithHer. 






Watch the full speech below:




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Aaron Rodgers Finally Breaks His Silence On 'Bachelorette' Brother

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Throughout Season 12 of “The Bachelorette,” Aaron Rodgers’ little brother, otherwise known as Jordan the finalist, has discussed Aaron’s apparently strained relationship with his family. 


The Green Bay Packers quarterback, however, has taken the high road, avoiding discussing Jordan during the offseason. Most notably, noted “Bachelor” fan Bill Simmons didn’t even ask him a single question about it when Rodgers appeared on his show “Any Given Wednesday” this month. In general, Rodgers has kept a relatively low profile this offseason outside of attending award shows with girlfriend Olivia Munn.


But he was back at Green Bay Packers training camp on Tuesday, where he was finally was asked the question by ABC affiliate WISN 12: What’s up with your bro? His answer:



I haven’t seen the show, to be honest with you, so it hasn’t really affected me a whole lot. As far as those kinds of things go, I’ve always found that it’s a little inappropriate to talk publicly about some family matters, so I’m just — I’m not going to speak on those things, but I wish him well in the competition.



Aaron’s response reads as an easy, diplomatic non-response. Aaron even wished him well in the competition — key word “competition” — perhaps knowing that Jordan’s past as an NFL quarterback himself gives his brother an athlete’s drive to “win” the “Bachelorette.” 


But moreover, Aaron hasn’t even seen the show, probably because he’s busy leading a charmed, well-deserved life in reality. He achieved fame by becoming the NFL’s No. 1 quarterback and a Super Bowl winner, not because he went on orchestrated dates for ABC.


Here’s where the ideological chasm, and, as inferred from Aaron’s interview, the beef between the two brothers emerges: Jordan is digging up family dirt — which again, may or may not be substantiated — to garner strategic pity while chasing D-list fame on a reality television competition. 


Aaron, on the other hand, doesn’t give a shit. He’s got another Super Bowl and MVP award to win this year. That’s better than getting the final rose. 





Love “The Bachelorette” and its related shows, or love to hate it? Either way, hosts Claire Fallon and Emma Gray break down each delicious moment on HuffPost’s “Here To Make Friends” podcast, available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

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This Artist’s Barbie Mosaic Decries Violence Against Women

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In her project “Beaten Barbie — Stop Domestic Violence,” Rome-based artist Lady Be made a harrowing mosaic of a beaten, bruised Barbie doll to draw attention to gender-based abuse. 


The mosaic, which appeared from June 9 to 12 at the Triennial for Contemporary Art in Verona, Italy, is made up of fragments of hundreds of dolls and toys, as well as other repurposed objects.


“Many people consider women to be dolls ― they think they can be treated as toys and thrown away or abused,” the artist told HuffPost Italy. Lady Be says she chose the Barbie doll because it’s a popular symbol that a wide audience can identify with.


“To convey a universal message — that of [ending] violence — I have chosen a figure to symbolize all women and all ages,” Lady Be explained. “Something negative happens to women every day. With my ‘Beaten Barbie,’ I want to raise awareness and send a strong message that can reach everyone.”


Scroll down for more photos of “Beaten Barbie.”  



This post originally appeared on HuffPost Italy and has been translated into English.

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The 'World's First Underground Park' Is One Step Closer To Becoming Real

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This article originally appeared on ArchDaily.



Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen and NYCEDC President Maria Torres-Springer have announced New York City’s first official approval of the Lowline project in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.


As the first major step in making the project a reality, the approval will help to create the world’s first underground park, a community-oriented public and cultural space that will become both a local resource and an attraction for worldwide visitors.


Although the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) did express interest in the space last fall, the Lowline team was awarded conditional use due to its high community potential. Conceptualized in 2011, the Lowline seeks to utilize cutting edge solar technology to transform the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal located under Delancey Street into a one-acre underground public park. Here, sunlight is delivered underground, activating photosynthesis to create a lush garden space year-round.



In addition to creating much-needed public space, the Lowline team hopes to set a model for adaptive reuse and cultivation of abandoned underground spaces, as well as “to shape the future of the City through innovation, deep community engagement, education, and youth development.”




"New York City is the place where visionary ideas get turned into tangible realities," said NYCEDC President Maria Torres-Springer. "Today we move one step closer to making the Lowline a reality, which will serve as a cultural and educational hub for this vibrant community and pioneer cutting-edge technology."




Since October 2015, the Lowline has been showcased in the experimental Lowline Lab, which tests the project’s solar technology and subterranean horticulture, and has attracted nearly 70,000 visitors and hosted youth education visits for nearly 2,000 children across New York City.


The Lowline Lab will remain open through March 2017, and is free and open to the public on weekends.



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Watch This Dude Pour Molten Copper Over M&Ms In The Name Of Art

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We’re down with making houses out of waffles or putting together gumdrop pyramids, but pouring molten copper on our food was never something we thought to do.


Until now.


Youtube user Tito4re seems to be making a name for himself as the Michelangelo of pouring melting copper on things. His latest venture was sending a bag of M&Ms up in metallic flames.





In the caption for the video, Tito4re says he will gift the “copper art piece” he’s created here to one of his subscribers, so long as they go to his Instagram and leave a comment on the M&M’s video there. He said he will “randomly pick a winner this Friday.”


The final product looks like this:



His Instagram account features several other items, mostly food, being covered in molten metal. 



Molten Copper vs Big Mac

A video posted by Molten Copper (@tito4re) on




Our favorite video is this one featuring a cake that inexplicably says, “Happy New Year 2016!” It was posted July 23. 



Molten Copper vs 2016 Cake

A video posted by Molten Copper (@tito4re) on




Tito4re says in his “About” section that he casts things in both aluminum and copper, indicating the melting points of each: Aluminum’s melting point is 1,221°F (660.3°C) and Copper’s is 1,984°F (1,085° C).


He warns viewers that it’s very dangerous to play with molten metal and urges all to not attempt to recreate anything he does.


What a time to be alive.

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Apparently 'Pokemon Go' Is Influencing Baby Names

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Move over, Khaleesi and Arya. There’s a new pop culture baby name trend in town.


According to a press release from BabyCenter, parents are turning to “Pokemon Go” for name inspiration. New data from the parenting network shows a spike in popularity for Pokemon names among BabyCenter users. For example, the name Roselia has risen 5,859 spots over the past year. Onyx is up 2,184 spots and Eevee jumped up 1,377 spots.


“Parents are always looking to pop culture for baby name inspiration and, right now, it doesn’t get hotter than Pokémon Go,” said Linda Murray, BabyCenter Global Editor in Chief. “It’s possible that parents’ enthusiasm for the game will reignite their love for the brand and spark a full-fledged naming trend,” she added.


BabyCenter’s report also notes that Pokemon like Starmie, Ivysaur and Shayman may be influencing baby name trends, as Star has risen 2,040 spots for girls, Ivy is up 1,287 spots for boys and Shay jumped up 369 spots for girls and 64 for boys since last year.


According to a recent BabyCenter poll, almost 50 percent of mom users play “Pokemon Go.” Thus, the notion that the game is impacting baby name choices “might not be that far-fetched,” the press release states.


A BabyCenter representative told The Huffington Post that these baby name popularity rankings stem from site users. When parents register on BabyCenter, they indicate their child’s name and birthday or due date. The popularity of specific names may fluctuate slightly day to day, as the data updates in real time, and the press release figures reflect the rankings on July 26.


So, will preschools of the future be filled with little Mewtwos and Jigglypuffs? Only time will tell.

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Watch A Saints Player With ALS Record A Sweet Video Message For His Unborn Son

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When star New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason was diagnosed with the debilitating disease ALS in 2011, he began recording a video diary for his unborn son. That footage, showcasing the slow decline of the athlete’s motor skills, forms the emotional core of the new documentary “Gleason,” which opens in select theaters on Friday.  


The Huffington Post and its parent company, AOL, have a joint exclusive clip from the film in which Gleason records a hopeful diary entry. It’s a snapshot of this powerful movie, which traces Gleason’s resilience in the face of his heartbreaking condition. 




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These 6 ‘Moving’ Images Remind Us Of What We Miss Out On When We’re On Our Phones

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We all have a screen addict in our lives. He’s that friend who keeps his mobile phone at pinky’s reach while you’re catching up over coffee; she’s that sibling who insists on taking a picture of every single dish you order while you’re out to dinner. (Here’s hoping you’re not the screen addict in your social group).


Let’s face it, we’re addicted to our phones. According to 2014 data, Americans spend an absurd 4.7 hours on their smartphones in a day. Add in the rest of our glowing devices  ― including computers, tablets and more ― and we spend 11 hours eyeballs-to-screens, every single day. That’s a whole lot of time spent neither looking at, nor living in, the real world around us.


There’s so much more to life than the roughly 9 square inches of it we see through our phone screens. After all, life is measured in the little moments that can pass by in the blink of an eye. That’s why we’ve partnered with Chevrolet Malibu to highlight just how much we overlook when we’re plugged into our smartphones.


1. When The Portrait Is Not So Picture-Perfect



2. When Multitasking Gets In The Way Of A Truly Impressive Juggling Act



3. When Buffering Comes Before The Big Play



4. When Your Selfies Land You With The Sniffles



5. When Instagram Wins Over Free Ice Cream 



6. When All That Swiping For A Meet-Cute Actually Misses You A Match



In between the milestones that we proudly celebrate are so many little moments that often slip by. The All-New 2016 Chevrolet Malibu is committed to helping you celebrate all the moments ― big and small. Learn more about how the All-New 2016 Chevrolet Malibu can help you strive for the personal and professional moments you deserve.

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9 ‘The Bachelorette’ Secrets, Courtesy Of Your Imaginary BF Wells Adams

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No contestant on this season of “The Bachelorette” has managed to capture the hearts and Twitter feeds of snarky lady nerds quite like Wells Adams.


The radio host didn’t manage to win Jojo’s love, but he did bless the world with his on-point commentary and drunk Snapchat recaps, so for that, we will forever be grateful. He also popped back up on our TV screens on Tuesday night for the “Men Tell All” episode, where all of the rejected dudes gathered to join Chris Harrison in the hot seat and poke the Chad Bear


After we low-key badgered him on Twitter for weeks, Wells agreed to join HuffPost’s “Here To Make Friends” podcast to recap “Men Tell All,” and share his insights on the insanity that is dating on a reality show. He was just as charming as one might assume, and he gave us some pretty great tidbits about how things go down behind the scenes.





Here are nine things about this season of “The Bachelorette” that viewers missed, courtesy of Wells:


1. Some of the dudes filled out their initial questionnaires drunk ― including Wells and Evan.


So, maybe that explains why Evan listed chipped nail polish and food allergies as two of his dating dealbreakers, and Wells made the fatal mistake of shit-talking pizza?


2. Wells made cocktails and cooked for the bros in the mansion. 


Now that’s a good roommate.


3. Chad brought a scale with him on the show in order to weigh his meat.


“It was very scientific,” said Wells. “He was very regimented, and then he’d have a couple drinks, and once he had a couple drinks, all of his inhibitions would kind of fall away.” Addressing THAT rose ceremony ― ya know, the one where Chad could not stop eating meat, Wells explained:



So that rose ceremony, he had a couple of drinks and his body was like, “FEED ME!”... He kept going and putting his hands into the charcuterie tray and at some point someone was like, “Dude, get your grubby hands out of the tray. Just get a plate and put the meat on the plate and then just carry that around.”... This was not some producer being like, “You know what would be funny? If this meathead ate a bunch of meat.” He just did it naturally.






4. There was a clique of frontrunners who always got roses who roomed together ― Robby, Jordan, Alex and Chase ― and they called themselves “The Garden.” (James F. was also in the room but does not seem to have been included in the horticultural clique.)


“They called [their] room [in the mansion] ‘The Garden,’ because they always got roses,” said Wells. “And then it started to spiral into more douchebaggery where they named each other different flowers. Robby was Sunflower, Jordan was Tulips and Alex was Wildflower. But that was ridiculous because wildflowers cannot be in a garden.”


Wells said it was all of the garden talk that motivated Derek to confront Chase, Alex, Jordan and Robby at a rose ceremony ― but that confrontation was the only part of that storyline viewers actually got to see.  


5. Nick B. (a.k.a. Santa Nick) and Wells went to college together ― and they were rugby bros.


Also, Nick is apparently a “phenomenal boxer.”


6. On night one of filming, Vinny got very drunk and combative with everyone, but as the show progressed he turned out to be “one of the most rad dudes” Wells had ever come across.


 Also, he’s not just a barber ― he’s a DJ! Who knew? Guess we’ll look forward to seeing Vinny in “Paradise.” 



7. Wells was in the hot seat during the Men Tell All, but it got cut! (Though all Chris Harrison wanted to talk about was why Wells didn’t kiss Jojo right away.)


“I thought it was funny when Chris called me up to do it. I was like, why the hell do you want me to come up here? I have no controversy with anybody in the house, I’m the one guy who barely even kissed Jojo. What could you possibly wanna talk to me about? So it makes total sense that they cut it out… I think I just laughed and tried not to be nervous and be like ‘I just wanted to wait for the perfect opportunity to kiss her.’ He wanted to know about why I waited so long to kiss her, so I had to kind of tell that story.”


8. Chad smokes an e-cigarette, which he pulled out during the “Men Tell All” taping.


According to Wells, it was “very villainesque.” 


9. Luke mostly kept to himself in the house.


“Luke is a great, awesome dude, but he would very much keep to himself and was doing his own thing,” said Wells. “By the end of it, Luke was very much engaged and part of the club, but in the beginning he was kind of stand-offish.”


For more on Wells — and “The Bachelorette” — listen to HuffPost’s Here To Make Friends podcast!







Do people love “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” or do they love to hate these shows? It’s unclear. But here at “Here to Make Friends,” we both love and love to hate them — and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg

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A Helicopter Crashed This Bride's Photo Shoot And The Pic Is Insane

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 This bridal portrait will surely make the album:



The pic, taken by photographer CM Leung in Iceland, depicts an Icelandic Coast Guard helicopter flying dangerously close to a bride posing for portraits.


According to PetaPixel, the chopper wasn’t a planned part of the shoot; it flew overhead on a mission to rescue a man who had fallen down a cliff. An eye witness told PetaPixel the helicopter was actually a “relatively safe distance away.”




In the end, CM Leung ended up with a pretty dramatic shot ― and right in the nick of time, as the helicopter’s downdraft knocked the bride off-balance (and sent her veil flying!) seconds later. Check out the crazy moment and more from the shoot in the behind-the-scenes video below.




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Betty Who Just Put A Sizzling Spin On A '90s Song Of The Summer

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Australian singer-songwriter Betty Who put a fresh spin on a beloved song of the summer from the 1990s, and The Huffington Post has an exclusive first listen to a sizzling remix. 


Who released her cover of Donna Lewis’s 1996 classic, “I Love You Always Forever,” in June as a treat for fans anxious for a new album. The 24-year-old pop star, who is currently at work on follow-up to her 2014 debut, “Take Me When You Go,” said she’d been aching to record the tune for quite some time. 


“I’ve always loved this song,” she told The Huffington Post. “I am having so much fun performing it live and getting to sing along with my fans who also loved the original. It’s one of my favorite songs and felt like the perfect thing to share before I put out my next album.”


DJ duo Instant Karma leant a new whine to Who’s crystalline vocals with their remix of “I Love You Always Forever,” which can be heard above. That remix will be released as part of an EP featuring four versions of the song on July 29. 


If that isn’t enough to put you in the perfect summer mood, we don’t know what will. Happy listening! 



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Giant Flower That Smells Like Death Will Bloom For First Time In A Decade

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A former reality television star is running for president in the U.S. The Russian government is (allegedly) hacking emails like it’s Cold War II. People across the globe are seriously injuring themselves playing Pokèmon Go. And now, a massive flower that smells like death is about to bloom in New York City.


What a time to be alive.


The corpse flower is one of the largest flowers in the world and only blooms about once every decade. While the sight of the massive and strange looking plant is a spectacle in and of itself (its leaves can stretch up to 12 feet tall in its natural environment), the visual aftermath of the bloom isn’t the most noteworthy part. It’s actually the stench.





UPDATE: It’s blooming! Check it out in the live cam above.


As its name suggests, the corpse flower smells like rotting meat when its petal-like leaves fold back to reveal dark burgundy insides. This week, a specimen at the New York Botanical Garden is expected to flower, releasing what’s been politely described as a “strong, distinctive odor.” Its peak bloom will last for about 24 to 36 hours, all of which will be captured on a live cam.


Sadly, YouTube technology is unable to transmit the reek. Thankfully, a floriculturist outlined the component parts of the corpse fetor, including notes of Limburger cheese, decaying fish, sweaty socks, mothballs, Chloraseptic throat spray, and ... jasmine. So there’s that.


“When it blooms, the corpse flower will release a scent that’s been compared to the odor of rotting flesh,” Marc Hachadourian, manager of the NYBG’s Nolen Greenhouses, explained to The Huffington Post. “It’s foul and nasty, but the plant does this to attract pollinators that are attracted to dead animals.”



The NYBG accessioned its corpse flower in 2007 and has been nurturing it ever since. Hachadourian says his team is patiently waiting for the plant to flower “like expectant parents,” working hard, in this particularly hot summer weather, to provide it with the best conditions possible. “It’s unpredictable, but we have it on display in our Enid A. Haupt Conservatory so visitors can witness this horticultural curiosity for themselves when it happens.”


It has been almost 80 years since a corpse flower bloomed at the NYBG, which is currently celebrating its 125th anniversary. On June 8, 1937, a specimen bloomed at the Bronx location for the first time in the Western Hemisphere. Because of that event, the corpse flower was the official flower of the Bronx from 1939 until 2000, when the city replaced it with the day lily.


Good call, Bronx. Good call.


After the current corpse bloom is complete, it will be several more years before this plant is ready to spew miasma again. So, get thee to the garden if you’re into that kind of thing.


For more on the NYBG’s 125th anniversary, head here.

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'Stranger Things' Creators Mourn Barb, Geek Out Over The Millennium Falcon And Tease Season 2

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One of summer’s runaway hits is “Stranger Things,” the new Netflix series about a 12-year-old boy whose sci-fi infatuation becomes all too real when a monster pulls him into an underground world called the Upside Down. “Stranger Things” is an elaborate homage to Steven Spielberg, Stephen King and a host of other storytellers who defined the creators’ childhoods. Matt and Ross Duffer, 32-year-old twins who wrote for “Wayward Pines,” crafted the series with the genre trappings of science fiction and horror, but imbued it with a dense character study about four outcast boys and their families in small-town 1983 Indiana. It’s also the only place you might cry while Winona Ryder, in a much-deserved comeback, talks to blinking Christmas lights. 


Netflix hasn’t formally renewed “Stranger Things” for a second season, but the Duffer brothers have been gabbing like it’s pretty much a done deal. The Huffington Post hopped on the phone with the duo earlier this week to discuss the show. Spoilers abound in this interview, so proceed with caution if you haven’t finished all eight episodes. (But what are you waiting for?)


Were this made five or six years ago, it would have been a movie. Now, it’s obvious fodder for a TV show. Given how many films you pay homage to, did you always conceptualize it as a series?


Ross Duffer: We are obviously, from watching this show, movie guys. That was our first love, and that’s what we’ve wanted to do with our lives. But I think it was a couple of things. It was being so discouraged by what was going on in the film world, in terms of getting original movies made. The stuff that we fell in love with [wasn’t] getting made by the studios unless you’re Chris Nolan. But then, at the same time, we were seeing a lot of filmmakers like Cary Fukunaga and David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh move into television. We were starting to get more and more excited about watching these TV shows than we were going to the movies. That’s when we started talking about, “OK, if we can see any TV show, what would it be?” We started going back to the movies and the books that made us want to do this in the first place. Why did we fall in love with those things, and can we capture that again? It was always conceived as a series, but it wasn’t conceived specifically for Netflix. We honestly didn’t think it was a realistic possibility.


Matt Duffer: The other thing that was exciting to us was we love horror films. It’s really difficult if you’re making a horror movie right now. They’re kind of more like haunted-house rides. They’re fun, but it really is about a jump-scare every seven minutes, which is not why we fell in love with it. It’s hard to do. We’ve said the show is kind of genreless. I like that because we’re able to tell very character-driven stories that do not rely on jump-scares, but there’s also a monster in it. You cannot do that in film right now. There’s not a place for that type of story.



Only in the indie market, where you’ll never get the budget to make a “Stranger Things.”


Matt: Exactly. That’s the other way to go. But in terms of mainstream studio films, they just don’t do it. It’s all this crap that you have to deal with. And the other thing is, a lot of the TV we watch that we love, hardly any of it is actually genre. It’s “Freaks and Geeks” and “Friday Night Lights” and “My So-Called Life.” We’re watching all of that, but then we’re also kind of still 12 years old, so we’re going, “But what if there’s a monster in it? That would be even cooler, right?” The idea was, “Can you fall in love with a character the same way we have in those TV shows, but also appease our more childlike sensibilities?”


One reason “Stranger Things” is effective is because the monster is revealed slowly. At first, it’s only glimpses. That out-of-sight, fear-of-the-unknown quality feels very “Jaws.”


Ross: “Jaws” was a big one. It’s a classic. The shark not working while making that movie made it much better. Also, we looked a lot at Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” On YouTube, there’s a cut of all the instances where you see the alien in that first movie, and it’s a couple minutes long. And that’s a two-hour movie. I think the reason it’s so scary is that, when it does appear, it has a certain amount of impact. So we thought, OK, we’re going to see the shadow in Episode 1, because we knew we had eight episodes. We were trying to slowly reveal it, until you finally saw the full thing. We don’t really deal with it until Episode 8. It’s a dude in a suit, and I remember reading old interviews with Ridley Scott about “Alien.” The studio was upset with him for it because it’s an amazing alien suit and you’re not shooting it. But the reason is because so much of it will look like a guy in a suit, and so much of it is that what you don’t see is much scarier. We tried to go back to that old-school style of filmmaking.



How did you conceptualize the monster’s aesthetics? It has a crazy head. 


Matt: We worked with this really brilliant concept artist who we’ve worked with once before, Aaron Sims. We were working with him when we were still writing the script. We played around with a lot of different designs. We talked about Guillermo del Toro’s creatures ― he’s such a genius. We talked about Clive Barker’s stuff and “Silent Hill.” We had all these different references, and we wanted to come up with something that was humanlike. It’s a humanoid in a way that’s really, really bizarre.


Ross: But we also didn’t want it to be too complicated. There’s so much art out there, and I’m happy to see people who are drawing monsters that are very simple designs.


I want to pose a logistical plot question: Why did Will survive the Upside Down but Barb didn’t?


Matt: Right, I guess we think of it as ― and this is continuing with the “Jaws” references ― it’s the other dimension, the Upside Down, where the shark lives, and every once in a while it comes out of that ocean into our world on the surface and then it grabs a victim and pulls them down to the Upside Down. You saw Barb at the top of Episode 3 in the Upside Down. Just imagine that’s a world, and Barb tried to escape and failed to escape, but Will was sneakier, so he was able to escape. He was able to hide. He goes, initially, to that cubby in Episode 3 inside the Byers’ house, which is why Joyce is able to communicate with him. We had this whole backstory for what Will is doing, but we don’t see it all. 


Ross: It’s more like the monster bringing him back to the net, which is why Hopper and Joyce are able to distract Will into being held in this net like a spider caught in its web. He’s brought there by the monster for eating later. Is he there for other reasons? We don’t know. We have ideas.


Have you seen the internet fodder about how much of a favorite character Barb is?


Ross: Oh my God, yes. It makes us so happy. Shannon Purser is amazing. This is her first role. We’re so happy for her. She deserves this. 



I have to mourn Barb for a second. Nancy, the preppy girl, survives, while Barb, her frumpier friend, dies. It’s a sad tease on the death-by-sex horror trope, since Barb is snatched by the monster while Nancy and Steve go upstairs to get it on.


Ross: We did like playing with those tropes ― or even with [Steve Harrington, Nancy’s boyfriend], who is such a douche bag for most of the show. We like the idea of trying to turn that on its head a little bit. In not having him get eaten by the monster, we hoped we could find a place where he would be heroic in the end. And sometimes we didn’t invert the tropes; we just had fun with it. Like, when Nancy goes through the tree, the hope is that people are screaming at her, “Don’t go in there!”


Matt: Specifically with Barbara, my thing is, we had horrible high school experiences. I think that’s why people relate to Barb, because they felt like she did. We certainly did. And oftentimes, in movies, that character ends up with the popular boy and it’s a happy ending for everybody, but that’s just not true. At least in our case, you’re kind of stuck in the Upside Down all through high school. It’s not a happy ending for most people like that, I don’t think. So I think it’s fair.


It’s interesting that Joyce and Jonathan are living in a broken home, yet they are willing to believe anything that will lead them to Will. Whereas Mike comes from this idealized nuclear family and his parents are the most clueless and skeptical of anyone. They have no idea that a girl is living in their basement.


Matt: It’s true, they are. And I like playing with that idea, too. Yes, they seem like they’re the perfect family, but they’re certainly not. Ted is far from the best dad ever, and Karen is very overwhelmed. It’s almost like there’s this façade of a perfect life and a perfect stable family, and I think that’s kind of what Jonathan tries to drive home for Nancy.


Ross: If you look back at a lot of these Spielberg movies and Stephen King books, even though there’s a lot of fun and a lot of camaraderie, there’s also a bit of sadness there, whether it’s “E.T.” with the divorce or in Stephen King’s “It,” where there’s racism. There’s always some sort of evil ― there’s sadness and people aren’t happy. It was important to us that that was there, even if it wasn’t the main storyline.



The way the season ends, there are enough questions answered for it to almost stand as a complete series. But the many unresolved mysteries set up an obvious next chapter. How much of the backstory regarding Dr. Brenner’s experiments and Eleven’s history did you have in place from the get-go?


Matt: We had ideas that we were sort of feeling out. We have a lot more backstory built in for Brenner and Eleven. Every time that we were writing scenes in the Hawkins Lab, we wanted to stop writing them, just because it seemed like we wanted to experience as much of it as possible in the present day and through the eyes of our ordinary characters. We just wanted to leave that as mysterious as possible. I hope that, with the mystery, people are responding to it and it’s not frustrating. But to us, the sci-fi elements are so much more fun if we’re understanding it via our characters. I like that basically everything we understand about what is going on is pretty much through the boys. And they’re only able to understand it through Dungeons and Dragons terminology and by talking to their science teacher, Mr. Clark. It’s all sort of hypothetical. I never wanted any scenes in the laboratory where you have Brenner and the scientists sitting around discussing what’s going on. And Eleven even doesn’t fully understand how she wound up where she wound up and what their plans for her are, so there are very few scenes with Brenner without one of our other main characters. The scenes that are with Brenner and not our main characters have almost no dialogue in them.


Ross: Moving forward, we’re going to get more into detail about the monster and where it came from and what the Upside Down really is. But with this season, we talked a lot about “Poltergeist.” At the end of the day, what really matters in “Poltergeist” is that Carol Anne is missing and they have to go through a portal in the closet to get her back. That matters more than the backstory. People want explanations for all that, so while we have answers for all this, what we really wanted to get from this first season is that this gate opens to this other dimension. What it really boils down to is, Will is in there and we have to get him back. The hope was that, because we resolved that, the first season will be satisfying to people and work as a stand-alone. Hopefully we get to go back and explore more of this stuff.


I adore the scene where the boys give Eleven a makeover, mostly because you see the pleasure they take in doing so. A lot of young, seemingly heterosexual boys in pop culture are not allowed to have fun playing dress-up. As someone who enjoyed fiction and playing dress-up as a young boy, it’s remarkable to see that. 


Ross: When we were in high school, we were just going around making movies. We were in the drama club. We had fun playing make-believe. For us, that was an important thing with the kids. It was about them doing what they want to do. That’s one of the reasons we fell in love with “Freaks and Geeks.”


Matt: When we were kids, the type of friends we hung out with were more creative types. We were running around in the woods telling stories and putting on costumes. We’re terrible actors, but we acted in everything that we did, and it was fun. For us, it was just being as truthful as we can about our experiences growing up and the kind of things that we did. What’s exciting is then you realize, when the show comes out, that a lot of other people had those experiences, too. It’s awesome to see that it connects with other people.



What was the pop-culture reference you were proudest or most excited to include from your own childhoods?


Ross: A couple big ones: I was happy to get He-Man in there. Growing up, that was such a huge thing for us. And another one was the floating Millennium Falcon thing, which was not easy to get because they’re very protective, understandably, at Lucasfilm about [the rights to “Star Wars” entities]. At the time, this was right when “The Force Awakens” was about to come out. Luckily, Shawn Levy, who directed two episodes and was our producer, has friends in high-up places. He was able to get that done.


Matt: It’s funny, if you’ll notice in Episode 3, the Falcon is actually hidden under a blanket because you can’t be showing it in every scene. We were really excited that we got to put in some “Star Wars” toys, like Yoda. When we were able to use the Millennium Falcon and Yoda, it was like the coolest thing ever. Lucasfilm was super cool to let us do that. We didn’t get all the posters that we wanted in the show ― some of them wouldn’t let us, but the people who did were great. I love that we got the “Thing” poster in Mike’s bedroom. We are such big John Carpenter fans. And I’m glad we got the “Evil Dead” poster in Jonathan’s room. That stuff was fun to do. And the people who cooperated with us, we’re so thankful for.


Have you heard from anyone who you pay homage to? I know Stephen King tweeted about the show.


Matt: We heard from Stephen King, which was the best thing ever. That just blew our minds. Our minds are still kind of melting from that. We had known Guillermo del Toro a little bit before, but he reached out and said some nice things. That meant a lot to us. These are people we’ve idolized. We’ve been following their work since seventh grade or whatever, so it means the absolute world to us. That was very emotional for us.



Finally, I want to talk about Winona Ryder and the blinking Christmas lights. Winona is great casting since her career started not long after this show is set. And that was such a nice “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” allusion, communicating with another world via colorful flashing lights.


Ross: We directed six of the eight episodes, but we got slammed with writing the show, so Shawn Levy, our amazing producer, came in and directed Episodes 3 and 4. He was directing that scene. We weren’t even on set for that scene. The minute I saw the dailies, I couldn’t believe it. I think Shawn was controlling the lights ― you’d have to talk to him about it. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the show. Winona killed it. She’s acting opposite small Christmas lights! That’s the thing about Winona, though ― she just goes in all the way and commits. That’s why she’s a movie star. We’re like you ― we grew up huge fans of hers. So many of her movies were staple parts of our prized VHS collection. To be able to work with her is an actual dream.


Matt: And, actually, casting her was not the meta-casting thing. I get it now, of course. But our casting director, Carmen Cuba, her first idea was Winona. A lot of it was, “Who’s a big actress who we miss? Someone we haven’t seen enough of on screen?” That’s what TV allows for. It gives us platforms for these actresses you haven’t seen in a while. Winona has kind of dropped off the radar, purposely, I think, on her part, for about 10 years. When you get even a little bit of her, when she shows [up] in “Star Trek” or “Black Swan,” you’re like, “Fuck yes.” As fans of hers, we just wanted to see her in something, so it got me excited about the idea. I think we hit her at just the right time. I think if we’d asked her two years ago, she wouldn’t have done it. I think with the McConaissance, as they call it, the damage is done. A lot of these movie stars are discouraged by the stuff that Hollywood is doing right now, and a lot of them are looking at TV for more interesting roles. When Winona was big in the ‘90s, television would have been a really big step down for a movie star. That’s completely changed now, so that’s exciting. And I think she had a lot of fun doing it.


This interview has been edited and condensed.

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The Problem With Standardized Tests Is Exposed In Playful New Book

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This is not a test.


In fact, Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice is a critique of test-taking, and the reductive practice of choosing a single answer to an interpretable or multi-faceted question.


The book, appropriately, is tough to categorize. It’s formatted in the style of the Chilean national exam, a test all students take to determine college placement, and which Zambra took himself in 1993. Publishers and critics have called it a novel, a poetry collection, a work of criticism. But Zambra clearly aims to avoid classification. He abandoned another, more traditionally told story he’d been working on in favor of beginning Multiple Choice.


The book begins with a prompt: The reader is to determine which word, in a series of 24 questions, doesn’t fit with the others that it’s grouped with. From the first question, it’s apparent that none of the answers will be clear-cut; “bear” is matched with “endure,” “tolerate,” “abide,” “panda” and “kangaroo,” highlighting the tenuous connection that exists between so many words, and the absurdity of drawing distinct lines between them, rather than embracing their playful fluidity.


Distinct lines are just what Zambra is waging against. In one question, the narrator writes that he is Manuel Contreras, and he is also Manuel Contreras’ son. He finds a page in the phonebook with 22 listings for Manuel Contreras, looking for solidarity, but he sticks the page in a paper shredder, claiming that sharing a first and last name ― mere words ― with another individual has never done him any good. What’s ostensibly similar can be deeply and complicatedly different, in ways that can’t be whittled down into lettered options.



You can’t talk about Zambra without talking about Chile, the country he is from, and the country he’s disillusioned with. He lived through the aftermath of Augusto Pinochet’s corrupt, overbearing rule, which began in the early 1970s and lasted through the late ‘80s. It makes sense, then, that Zambra’s past books ― My Documents, The Private Lives of Trees, Ways of Going Home and Bonsai ― are short and intentionally disjointed, leaving room for the power of what’s left unsaid. The same mood reigns over Multiple Choice, which unites a series of personal stories under one theme: attempting to limit human experience to the confines of tasks and rules can stifle and distort.


The second portion of the book, “Sentence Order,” prompts the reader to place a series of events in chronological order ― but events as ethereal as quarrels and loving memories aren’t usually recalled so straightforwardly, with an accurate calendar in mind.


The fourth section, “Sentence Elimination,” asks the reader to select the sentences that should be removed because they “do not add information” to the text. The idea is that each sentence should follow after the other in a cohesive, declarative fashion ― dates and facts take precedent over emotional observations. In one question, the narrator defines what a curfew is and states that there was a curfew in place in Santiago, Chile, from 1973 to 1987. But these historical tidbits are interrupted by a less palatable detail: The narrator was born as a result of that curfew because his father stayed over at a friend’s house when it was too late for him to walk home. Of the five multiple-choice options, two imply that this anecdote should be removed from the story. Zambra-as-literary-critic shows himself here, commenting on which elements of a story ― namely, the mysterious and the interpretable ― are vital to its liveliness and emotional import.


The final section, “Reading Comprehension,” asks the reader a series of questions about a preceding text. Here, the book’s clever structure falls away and poignant vignettes emerge. Zambra crafts three touching works of flash fiction, one about a student who learns of twins who traded places to succeed on their exams, another about a marriage that later gets annulled before divorce is legal in Chile. Both are subtle and ripe with meaning. Both are stripped of nuance in the multiple-choice questions that follow.


In a question about a bitter former high school teacher who later runs into his students, the reader is asked which of his sentiments about education is true. If you were to write a book report on Zambra, the options that follow would be highlighted as its thesis statement:


A) You weren’t educated, you were trained.


B) You weren’t educated, you were trained.


C) You weren’t educated, you were trained.


D) You weren’t educated, you were trained.


E) You weren’t educated, you were trained.


What we think:


Alejandro Zambra’s Multiple Choice is small book packed with meaning and space for interpretation. By structuring it as a test, the author comments on the rigidity of Chile’s former fascist leader. By allowing the reader to meditate on how to make sense of each puzzling question, he offers an alternative to enforced structure.


What other reviewers think:


Kirkus“Though the overall effect is fragmentary, Zambra’s fragments are consistently witty and provocative.”


NPR: “Throughout Multiple Choice, Zambra traffics in a depth of imagination and playfulness that is akin to a guessing game. As with many of his earlier works, he is content to play with, prod, and shake up the reader, confirming once again that the questions we ask about the world and about ourselves are oftentimes far more telling than the answers.”


Who wrote it:


Zambra is a Chilean novelist who’s been described as “Latin America’s new literary star.” This is his fifth book.


Who will read it:


Fans of Borges and other playful, experimental writers. Those interested in a book about that explores the limits of formal education.


Opening lines:


“In exercises 1 through 24, mark the answer that corresponds to the word whose meaning has no relation to either the heading or the other words listed.”


Notable passage:


“The bride ― of course I remember her name, though I think eventually I’ll forget it, someday I will even forget her name ― looked lovely, but my parents just couldn’t understand why she would wear a black dress.”

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Artist Imagines A Healthcare System That Doesn't Fail Women Of Color

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Esmin Elizabeth Green spent much of her life attending to others. She worked as a caregiver for the elderly, as well as at a children’s day care. She sent the money she earned to her six children living in her home country of Jamaica. When in 2008, at 49 years old, Green sought medical assistance herself at Brooklyn’s Kings County hospital, she was asked to wait. 


After 24 hours in the hospital waiting room, having yet to be seen, Green collapsed. A blood clot in her leg had spread to her lungs. Surveillance footage shows a security guard leaning over Green briefly before walking away. Later, another hospital worker taps her body with her foot. Green died on the waiting room floor. It was still 30 minutes until a nurse finally checked her pulse. 


She was disregarded, disrespected and discarded,” Representative Yvette D. Clarke told The New York Times, following Green’s death. 



In “The Waiting Room,” now on view at the New Museum, artist Simone Leigh pays tribute to Green, whose story is emblematic of the way black women’s pain is historically underestimated and overlooked. “There’s this expectation of black women to be behind or come last,” Leigh said in an interview with Artsy. 


The joint exhibition and artist residency imagines and realizes an alternative model of healthcare, one organized around principles of disobedience, determination and radical self-care, and founded upon the kinds of knowledge shared between black women, often privately or even subconsciously. It contains, for example, a meditation room, a movement studio, and an apothecary lined with herbs culled from around the world.



I wanted to expand the idea of medicine to include other self-defense and care mechanisms like strategy, or even desire, as alternatives to the stamina and obedience that is expected as normative behavior,” Leigh explained to The Guardian. “Herbalism and dance would fall into the category of knowledge that resists the market and capitalization.”


Leigh’s clinic also includes a variety of “Care Sessions” offered for free on a first-come, first-served basis. Such sessions range from herbalism workshops to community acupuncture, “Afrocentering” to a guided meditation for Black Lives Matter. The sessions, all led by women, evoke the words of writer and activist Audre Lorde when she wrote: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”



Dr. Shanesha Brooks-Tatum echoed Lorde’s sentiment in a piece called “Subversive Self Care,” published on The Feminist Wire. “It’s subversive to take care of ourselves because for centuries black women worldwide have been taking care of others,” she wrote. “When sisters unite in self-care, regularly indulging in what they love such as dancing, painting, laughing — soul and sanity food — we’re engaged in a soulful insurrection that disrupts the very forces that seek to sacrifice our beings. And, quite matter-of-factly, if we don’t take care of ourselves, who will?”


Six lectures ― again, all led by women ― round out the program. In a June lesson titled “On Disobedience,” artist Chitra Ganesh explored the aesthetics and performance of protest enacted outside the United States, specifically the way text and image can incite actual change and challenge systemic power. On Aug. 4, artist Lorraine O’Grady will lead a talk titled “Ask Me Anything About Aging,” using intimate conversation and word-of-mouth as a means of spreading valuable knowledge and insight about the aging process. 



Finally, “The Waiting Room” offers a series of underground partnerships, classes held outside of public view, with no photography or video recording allowed. The confidential classes take inspiration from The United Order of Tents, an underground secret society of black female nurses that dates back to the Underground Railroad. The classes include self-defense, critical thinking and taiko drumming for LGBTQ youth. 


While the mainstream public healthcare system in our country continues to fail its American citizens, particularly the lower class and people of color, Leigh mines parallel histories to uncover productive modes of healing and survival. She does away with the common hospital etiquette of compliance, patience and stamina, imagining instead a posture of desire and disobedience, stances that, hopefully, will help keep black women living and healthy. 


Although housed within a museum’s walls, Leigh’s alternative clinic expands beyond the realm of art into the fields of history, activism, feminism, healthcare and civil rights. “The Waiting Room” offers a glimpse into a parallel world, where black women’s pain is acknowledged as unacceptable, and healing is a radical act of warfare. If only Leigh’s ideas could spread beyond the realm of socially conscious artwork and into the real world.


I’m looking forward to the whole project evolving,” Leigh told Artsy. “It’s really a project for me, not an art installation.”


“The Waiting Room” is on view until Sept. 18, 2016 at the New Museum in New York. See a schedule of upcoming workshops and lectures here.  


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