There's a New Meme in Town
For this transition of months:
Even though *NSYNC (Wikipedia says it’s also styled as ‘N SYNC, which seems like madness to me I can’t recall ever having seen it broken up into two words like that) went and added the May pronunciation to their song, Lou Bega’s been named the official representative of the April-May switchover. This was decided both because of the hardship he experienced when people confused him for Lou Reed and sent a bunch of condolence messages, and also because Lou Bega did not release the album Man of the Woods (considered around here to be grounds for immediate disqualification from all the highest honors).
Best case, *NSYNC gets the 30th and Bega gets the 1st, it’s the only reasonable solution here.
Watch This: MOULIN ROUGE! - available via HBO GO
It’s hard to imagine someone feeling indifferent to the style of Baz Luhrmann (ROMEO + JULIET, THE GREAT GATSBY): within the first five minutes of any of his films, you’ll either be all the way onboard or completely over his frenetic style. This film, a tale of love in turn-of-the-20th-century Paris between hopelessly romantic writer Christian (Ewan MacGregor) and the club’s premier courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman), is no exception, careening around the iconic theater, introducing characters at a breakneck pace that leaves you checking to make sure you didn’t accidentally hit a 2x playback button somewhere.
Between the Thousand Hand Slap style and Luhrmann’s use of contemporary music for all of the numbers in the film (many of which have been updated for the Broadway adaptation of the film), the film has a very immediate feel to it, whisking you into the show before you’ve even had a chance to get your bearings while somehow still remaining easy to follow. All that, and John Leguizamo! How can you go wrong?
First of two PSAs, in case you read this early in the morning, today workers from various companies including Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target and others are planning walk-outs and sick-outs to push for better working conditions and (in some cases any) protective equipment from their employers. If you have the ability to avoid the companies above, it’d be a good way to support the worker’s efforts for adequate protection.
And second PSA, I’m not sure about the “fill a single leg of your pants with pee” method on display here (too much precision), but this is a good simplification of why the use of facemasks is vital to bettering our current situation.
Another item from the Company Giveaways department, IKEA has released the recipe for their meatballs, though I think it’s sadly the v2 iteration of them and not the original ones I remember that were probably made of gym mats like the old McNuggets. Still, it’s better than zero meatball recipes, and now all that remains between me and meatball hell is that damned metric conversion.
While the connection between the Jason Bourne films and the Bond franchise becoming more Serious and Gritty was always pretty apparent, I’d never stopped to consider how the Bond franchise was parodied out of its “campy fun” lane by the Austin Powers franchise, explored further in this article from The Ringer.
When reading the headline originally, I had a much different interpretation of “throwing a cat” live on cam and thought this Californian planning commissioner had to resign for much sexier reasons than possible animal abuse. Makes sense that it was less “obscure euphemism” and more “extremely literal”.
I consider myself a skeptic about these sorts of things, but the timeline does fit.
Finally, another case where I had no idea where this was going, only to be delighted by the end:
This meme structure is going to be the only positive thing that comes out of this year.
