I’ve loved Nancy Drew since I was a kid, and I had a cool shirt with Pamela Sue Martin’s face on in when I was in elementary school. I always wished I had one with the silhouette on it, so I made one for myself. And you, if you want to buy one. They’re for sale on Redbubble.com.
Nancy Drew T-shirt
I also put the design on a iPad case, if you’d like to carry your Girl Detective around that way instead.
The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2012 – Time.com
“TIME’s social media editor Allie Townsend & social media associate Amy Lombard pick the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the online conversation in 2012.”
10 Best Books of 2012 – New York Times
Wow – women actually have 3 of 10 spots on the list! Way to go, NYT, you guys are making progress. Maybe next year, we’ll even get 4 spots, given that women write 70% of all the books published.
Favorite Book Cover Designs of 2012 – NYTimes.com
“We asked people in and around the world of graphic design to name one of their favorite book covers from 2012 and briefly describe its appeal.”
The Best Games of 2012 Awards – Gamespot
“There was a noticeable change of direction for the gaming industry in 2012. As many developers shifted their gaze toward the next generation, the big-budget games that would normally fill our time were in much shorter supply.”
Speaking of chaos, if you’re a casual Glee fan, you might have missed out on exactly how directly last night’s episode knocked down the fourth wall between it and the show’s more vocal fan base. It all starts when Sam leaves a trail of Cheerios for Brittany, which she eats off the floor as she makes his way to him. This is a rare moment of character-related continuity for Glee, since last season Brittany ate a candy bar right out of an actual cat’s actual litter box. Sam tells her that he likes her and they do a surprisingly nice rendition of “Something Stupid.” But when Sam leans in for a kiss, Brittany backs off, and when he asks what’s wrong, Brittany says, “It’s like all lesbians of the nation — I don’t know how they found out about Santana and I dating, but once they did, they started sending me tweets and Facebook messages on Lord Tubbington’s wall. I think it means a lot to them to see two super-hot, popular girls in love, and I worry if they find out about you and I dating, that they’ll turn on you and get really violent and hurt your beautiful face and mouth.”
Angry, violent lesbian stereotype aside, the problem with Brittany’s explanation is how transparent of a reference it is to the Twitter kerfuffle that’s been brewing lately between Ryan Murphy and some of the more ardent Brittany-Santana fans (a group that obviously isn’t comprised exclusively of angry lesbians). Essentially, it really is just that: a spat between fans who are mad at the creator of their favorite TV couple and the creator who’s mad at them for being mad. (The dispute gets more complicated when looked at against Murphy’s track record with lesbian characters on his shows.) Frankly, if I were Ryan Murphy, know what I’d do instead of getting into Twitter spats? I would float on a raft of rubies in a swimming pool full of melted-down gold while negotiating the purchase of the Boston Celtics.
If you don’t want me to watch your show, Ryan, that’s fine – just say so. No need to be a hateful jerk about it. I have better stuff to do anyway, like writing more fully-crafted thoughtful lesbian story lines of my own. I honestly would be perfectly happy with a Brittany/Sam storyline except that:
Glee has done wonders for gay male visibility on television with Kurt and Blaine’s story lines. They’ve been pretty shitty when it comes to lesbian story lines, however. Santana’s coming out storyline was a pretty sexist slap in the face to lesbian fans, and Murphy has been cranky about the backlash to that episode ever since.
All of our regular television programs have been languishing on our DVR since I’ve spent so much time writing lately, and we’ve been particularly neglectful of Glee given my ambivalence about it over the last year. Not even listening to Lea Michele singing can get me to turn on the show anymore. I haven’t quite deleted them, but I may be fast-forwarding through most of the episodes for the Rachel Berry scenes going forward. It feels weird to take that approach to a show that has actual gay characters, as opposed to mere heavy lesbian subtext like Rizzoli & Isles and Once Upon a Time. But being openly hostile to legitimate criticism about lesbian visibility is really problematic.
jPanelMenu is a jQuery plugin that creates a paneled-style menu (like the type seen in the mobile versions of Facebook and Google, as well as in many native iPhone applications).
Just click on the menu button (the top left of this page) to see it in action.
Posting in case Stephanie hasn’t seen this awesomesauce yet… Kristen Chenoweth and Anna Kendrick singing “for Good” at the Trevor Projects‘ Trevor Live benefit.
Not only is the song really good, the reactions of the women filming the song are pretty adorable, too.
(Stephanie has a crush on Anna Kendrick. Kirsten Chenoweth is on my short list.)
This special exhibit at the National Gallery was enlightening. I benefited from seeing a collection of Lichtenstein’s work in person; context is quite meaningful in the case of his work – it is, in fact, the point of his work.
It’s one thing to see digital representations of his comic-inspired works and to compare the to some of the comic originals, (a number of critiques complain that the comic originals are “better” than his reproductions – “Lichtenstein made amateurish renditions of art made by better people and better artists than him.”) but the physical size of many of his pieces is impressive and means something in the comparison; Lichtenstein is not just reproducing comic panels, but is also enlarging them to outsized proportions and divorcing them from the rest of their comic story to make commentary on social issues.
The size of his works emphasize the messages and alter their meanings beyond the intent of the comic panels, and the impact of that commentary is not something as easily dismissed when you’re standing in front of a collection of his works. Looking at his works in person, it becomes clear that comparing a 2-inch comic panel and a 10-foot-tall painting that is grouped with other paintings of the same subject matter is a silly and willfully obtuse exercise.
And though Lichtenstein was often influenced by comics, he also took inspiration from MANY other sources and, and his execution of those works is superb; he wasn’t just a painter but produced bold and interesting works in other mediums as well.
In viewing his work, I came away with a dozen creative ideas of my own and a new found respect for an artist I hadn’t understood previously, and for that I’m very glad.