plus 4, Coyotes' Bissonnette doubles as club DJ - AZCentral.com |
- Coyotes' Bissonnette doubles as club DJ - AZCentral.com
- Meet Lolita... and dig on New People's Tokyo trends - San Francisco Bay Guardian
- Lambert, other reality TV stars highlight 2009's top pop culture ... - North County Times
- The mission of news is still a noble one - LoHud.com
- 50 things that changed our lives in the '00s - North County Times
| Coyotes' Bissonnette doubles as club DJ - AZCentral.com Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:47 PM PST
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| Meet Lolita... and dig on New People's Tokyo trends - San Francisco Bay Guardian Posted: 03 Jan 2010 12:08 AM PST Text and photos by Caitlin Donohue
It is rare that you see live baby dolls perusing the racks at an American mall. Abercrombie & Fitch just isn't cornering the bonnet and bloomer market these days. But- not to sound redundant- the Japanese do things differently. Case in point: New People, the newest import shopping center to open up in Japantown. It's here that a subculture from the Empire of the Sun based on dressing like Strawberry Shortcake is finding new visibility in San Francisco. New People is a vast complex of urban Japanese culture, housing five floors of various wonders and accoutrements. One story is devoted to art, a gallery showing sleekly interesting works in a variety of mediums from stuffed animal chandeliers to leaves rendered in ceramic. One floor's all about film, now featuring a full month of movies about music in the basement theater. They've got a small café offering Blue Bottle coffee and bento boxes that encourages leisurely manga perusal and a vast selection of Japanese tchotchkes- smoke machines, psychedelic origami paper and brave vegetable action figures. But it's their floor devoted to hard-to-find Japanese clothing labels that makes New People a truly unique place. The mall is the home of Kyoto-based Sou Sou shoes- tabi footwear in stylee patterns reminiscent of children's bedding with unusual, toe-cleaving designs. It is also the only west coast retailer of clothing brands Black Peace Now and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright- two O.G. names in the lolita/goth scene from Tokyo. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Lambert, other reality TV stars highlight 2009's top pop culture ... - North County Times Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:54 PM PST Little Falcon Heene of "Balloon Boy" fame surely had no idea he was encapsulating an entire year of popular culture when he told his parents on national TV: "You guys said that we did this for the show." Seeking fame is nothing new for Americans ---- after all, it was back in 1968 that Andy Warhol first postulated that everyone would get 15 minutes. What distinguished Heene's parents, or famous party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi, was how they were seeking it: They wanted a reality show. (Fifteen minutes plus commercials, give or take.) Reality TV has been around for a decade, but this year the genre seemed to seep into our popular culture in occasionally uncomfortable ways. It also gave birth to some of the year's biggest stars: golden-voiced Susan Boyle, who warmed middle-aged hearts everywhere, and Adam Lambert, who warmed some of them. And then there were the people who earned fame, or infamy, the old-fashioned way in 2009: Gov. Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods, Kanye West, Rep. Joe Wilson. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Without further ado, our chronological journey through some of the top pop culture moments of 2009: JANUARY: Yes, a new president is inaugurated in Washington, ensuring at least four years of hipper guests in the White House and cultural ramifications too profound to contemplate. But seven days later in California, one of the year's truly peculiar stories is born, literally: Nadya Suleman, bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Angelina Jolie, gives birth to octuplets, which expand the single mom's brood to 14 and earn her the moniker Octomom. By year's end she is denying reports that she's planning ---- what else? ---- a reality show, with ---- who else? ---- newly single reality dad Jon Gosselin. More on him later... On a happier note, 57-year-old U.S. Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger saves a planeful of passengers when he glides his disabled aircraft into the Hudson River, a feat that will garner him rock-star status (and, he'll say later, rock-star sex. With his wife). FEBRUARY: Star Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is caught in a tabloid photo smoking from a marijuana pipe. Sponsor Kellogg Co. drops him, but he largely survives ---- and in the summer, after a three-month competition ban, he's the new face of the Subway sandwich chain. Tiger Woods should be so lucky. More on him later ... MARCH: Surprise! Bristol Palin confirms she's done with Levi Johnston, and experts, who note that most teen pregnancies end in broken relationships, hope it can be a teachable moment. Pop singer Rihanna is shockingly beaten by her boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, and initially returns to him, prompting dismay from everyone from Ellen DeGeneres to Oprah Winfrey. Later Rihanna leaves Brown and becomes a voice against domestic violence. APRIL Americans feed their longtime fascination with pirates when a real-life pirate saga unfolds in the seas off Somalia. A Washington magazine puts a shirtless President Barack Obama on its cover ---- a long-lens paparazzi shot from a Hawaii vacation ---- and people ask whether the presidential pecs, however buff, are appropriate fodder for a magazine cover. But the real star of the month is Susan Boyle, a plain-looking woman of 48 from Scotland who stuns the world with her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" on "Britain's Got Talent." She's an instant icon for anyone who has ever, well, dreamed a dream. More on her later ... MAY In a new book, Elizabeth Edwards relives the pain of her discovery that her husband cheated. An excruciating interview with Oprah Winfrey ---- especially John Edwards' uncomfortably smiling face ---- is unwatchable and addictive all at once. Adam Lambert, who grew up in Rancho Penasquitos, takes "American Idol" by storm (the actual winner is Kris ... who?) The glam rock singer with the banshee wail, guyliner and black nail polish comes out as gay after the show is over, surprising none. And the Bravo network announces they're planning a Washington, D.C., version of the popular "Real Housewives" franchise. More on that later ... JUNE Michael Jackson's stunning, premature death at 50 becomes one of those "Where were you when?" moments, and leads to a frenzied renewal of interest in his life, music and dance moves, even for little kids. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina puts his bizarre and indelible stamp on the common tale of the straying politician, going AWOL for five days as he trysts with a lover in Argentina. His flowery declarations of love and endless self-analysis fascinate the nation ---- almost as much as Jon and Kate Gosselin do when they announce they're splitting. The reality duo appear on so many magazine covers that one celeb mag offers a "Gosselin-free" issue ---- a clear sign that reality stars have displaced former tabloid fixtures like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton (who?). JULY Sarah Palin, long a crossover star between the worlds of politics and pop culture, resigns as governor of Alaska, a move that baffles many but frees her to spend time on her upcoming book, "Going Rogue." And there is a rare and fascinating sighting at Jackson's star-studded memorial service in Los Angeles: 11-year-old Paris Michael Jackson, previously only seen in paparazzi shots, her face covered by a veil. "Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine," she says into the microphone. A child who had seemed, with her siblings, a mere oddity is revealed to be a lovely, self-possessed young girl. AUGUST Chilling news for reality television: Ryan Jenkins, known as a sweet-talking contestant on VH1's "Megan Wants a Millionaire," hangs himself days after his ex-model wife's body is discovered mutilated and stuffed into a suitcase. The case of Jenkins, who had been charged in the death, leads to calls for stricter background screenings of reality show contestants. SEPTEMBER What do a South Carolina congressman, a bad-boy rap singer and the world's top women's tennis player have in common? They are all really rude in September. For Serena Williams, it's a profane outburst at a lineswoman ---- unfortunate but much more common than, say, heckling a sitting president as he addresses Congress. Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst ---- "You lie!" ---- has historians scratching their heads for comparisons. As for Kanye West, his ill-received dissing of Taylor Swift at the VMA awards leads to some emotional self-analysis on the couch ---- Jay Leno's couch. OCTOBER Andre Agassi had so cleaned up his bad-boy image over the years that it's a shock to hear him admit, in a new book, that he used crystal meth, lied to wriggle out of a failed drug test, and even hated tennis. But this is really the month of Richard Heene's brazen and misguided attempt to use his 6-year-old son as a means to a reality show gig. The nation is unified and transfixed as it watches the silver balloon, perhaps carrying Falcon, float across Colorado. Then it's disgusted. NOVEMBER What a month in pop culture. Ordinarily we'd give it to Palin for the enormousness of the crowds at her book tour. Or to Winfrey, who announces she's leaving her talk-show perch ---- well, in 2011 ---- for unspecified ventures in cable. Or to Lambert again, whose over-the-top sexual gestures at the American Music Awards anger ABC and many fans. But no, this month belongs to a socialite couple from Virginia, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who manage to breach vaunted White House security with no weapons other than very nice clothes and a heavy dose of social ambition. Michaele had been in the running to be a "real housewife" on Bravo. Something tells us she doesn't need the publicity now. Four days after the state dinner debacle, a strange accident happens in an upscale Florida gated community. Golfer Tiger Woods drives into a fire hydrant and a tree ... DECEMBER And the fallout seems to know no bounds, as tabloids come out with new reports daily of women claiming to have had sex with the golfer, including at least one former reality cast member. Weeks after the accident, Woods remains out of sight, trying to salvage his marriage and image. But things are sure looking good for Boyle, whose album, "I Dreamed a Dream," debuts at No. 1. And that's not all ---- her YouTube videos from the show are the most-watched all year, with more than 120 million views. Coming in second: that little boy who's just left the dentist and is feeling a bit woozy. The 7-year-old star of David After Dentist then asks his dad a rather prescient question for the age of reality TV: "Is this real life?" Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| The mission of news is still a noble one - LoHud.com Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:33 PM PST My father once told me he was inspired to join the Marines after seeing "Wake Island," a flag-waving, 1942 movie that was purposely designed to raise the national spirit and get young men to enlist. There was a war going on then. A line between the world's good guys and bad guys was clearly and unambiguously drawn in blood. When "Wake Island" was released to theaters, things were going badly in the Pacific, but the point of the picture, which may seem corny to sophisticated audiences today, was that we were the good guys and we would triumph over despotism even if our backs were against the wall. For actor Robert Preston, the experience of playing a leatherneck private in the film was so exciting that he, too, eagerly ran out to join the Marines — or at least that's what he supposedly told my father when the two men met many years later. Now, bear with me because I'm going to abruptly shift gears to the subject of newspapers and a different sort of cinematic call to arms. After all these years, I thought I had caught just about every movie that had to do with newspapers, from "Front Page" to "All the President's Men." Somehow, incredibly, I had never seen "Deadline U.S.A.," a 1952 noir-ish film that starred Humphrey Bogart as Ed Hutchinson, a bow-tie wearing, hard-drinking, crusading managing editor for a metropolitan daily. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I finally saw it one night last week. Damn thing nearly made me cry. The newspaper industry is on life support — that's no secret. Those that aren't dying outright continue to shrink like a candy bar that used to be three times bigger when it cost a nickel. Despite my daily confrontation with the grim reality of a changing economy that equates printing presses with blacksmith forges, "Deadline U.S.A." came as a welcome and admittedly odd source of inspiration. It's "Wake Island" for the ink-stained wretches among us who may be staggering in the digital woods but still have a shred of idealism after a decade of Britney Spears and her many soul-eating tabloid-zombie equivalents. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| 50 things that changed our lives in the '00s - North County Times Posted: 02 Jan 2010 11:54 PM PST Was it only a decade ago that a blackberry was a mere summer fruit? That green was, well, a color, and reality TV was that one show sandwiched between music videos on MTV? There were, of course, huge political and social upheavals that roiled our world in the past decade. But there were also the gradual lifestyle changes that you don't always notice when they're happening ---- kind of like watching a child grow older. Here's an alphabetical look at 50 things that changed our lives since the beginning of the millennium: AIRPORTS: Remember when you didn't have to take your shoes off before getting on a plane? Remember when you could bring a bottled drink on board? Terrorism changed all that. ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: From acupuncture to herbal supplements to alternative ways of treating cancer, alternative medicine became more mainstream than ever. APPS: There's an app for that! The phrase comes from Apple iPhone advertising, but could apply to the entire decade's gadget explosion, from laptops to GPS systems (want your car to give you directions to Mom's house in Chinese, or by a Frenchwoman named Virginie? There was an app for that.) AARP cards ---- for boomers! Some prominent Americans turned 50 this decade: Madonna. Prince. Ellen DeGeneres. The Smurfs. Michael Jackson ---- who also died at 50. And some prominent "early boomers" turned 60: Bruce Springsteen and Meryl Streep, for example. AGING: Nobody seemed to look their age anymore: Clothes for 50-year-old women started looking more like clothes for 18-year-olds, tweens looked more like teens, long hair was popular for all ages, and in many ways women's fashion seemed to morph into one single age group. BLOG: I blog, you blog, he blogs ---- how did we spend our time before blogging? There are more than 100 million of these Web logs out there in cyberspace. BLACKBERRIES: Considered essential by corporate CEOs and moms planning playdates. Introduced in 2002, the smartphone version is now used by more than 28 million people, according to its maker, Research In Motion Ltd. BOOK CLUBS: Thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey, the decade saw not only a profusion of book discussion clubs but a growing reliance on them by publishers. CABLE: Cable 24-hour news made the evening network news seem quaint, cable dramas reaped Emmys ---- and at decade's end, even Oprah was making the move to cable. CAMERAS: Remember those trips to get film developed? Nope? Even your grandmother has a digital camera, and she's probably e-mailing you photos right now or uploading them to a photo-sharing site. CELEBRITY CULTURE: Celebrity magazines fed a growing obsession with celebrities and the everyday minutiae of their lives. By decade's end, we were still obsessed, though Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie had ceded many covers to reality stars like Jon and Kate Gosselin. Celebrity Web sites like TMZ took hold mid-decade. CELL PHONES: Cell phones are now used by more than 85 percent of the U.S. population and for some have replaced land lines entirely. On the downside, they've made cheating on a spouse more difficult ---- just ask Tiger Woods. CHEFS: Chefs are hot! The Food Network, whose viewership tripled this decade, reeled in viewers with high-voltage personalities like Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay, Emeril Lagasse and Giada De Laurentis. Meryl Streep starred in a cinematic paean to the late Julia Child. CONNECTIVITY: As in, we're all expected to be connected, wirelessly, all the time. Boss e-mails you on a Sunday? Better answer, unless you're off in Antarctica ---- you have no excuse. COUGARS: A new TV series called "Cougar Town" focuses on a phenomenon that gained its name this decade: women dating younger men. CROCS: Those ubiquitous plastic clogs debuted in 2002 and became the shoes you loved to hate. Kids love 'em, but there are Web groups dedicated to their destruction. Not to be deterred: first lady Michelle Obama, who wore them on vacation in 2009. DANCING: Dancing never went out of style, but this decade saw the huge popularity of dancing contests like "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Dancing With the Stars." DATING: Dating was transformed like everything else by Internet sites, rendering other ways of meeting people obsolete. And it wasn't just the territory of the relatively young: Seniors found love online, too. DVRs: Suddenly, DVR-ing is a verb, and what it means is this: There's no reason to know anymore what channel your program is on, and what time. EMBARRASSMENT ENTERTAINMENT: Embarrassment has always been part of comedy ---- you need only think of Don Rickles ---- but this is the decade of cringe-worthy Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Ricky Gervais, and of course Sacha Baron Cohen, who as Borat and Bruno shamed perhaps the entire country. FACEBOOK: Can you believe this social networking site was once limited only to Harvard students? Now it's a time-sucking obsession for more than 300 million users globally and a whole new form of social etiquette: Who to friend on Facebook? FAT: This was the decade that fat became the enemy of the state. New York City banned trans fats, and Alabama ---- second in national obesity rankings ---- introduced a tax on overweight state workers. FOODIE: It's not just that guy in the White House who liked arugula ---- this was the decade of the foodie, when we all developed gourmet palates. Even a burger became a gourmet item ---- as in Daniel Bouloud's truffle burger, stuffed with foie gras and short ribs. GOING GREEN: From the kind of light bulbs we use to the kind of shopping bags we carry to the cars we drive, "going green" took hold this decade. Now, it's not strange to hear a schoolkid tell a parent to use a cloth grocery bag. GOOGLE: This was the decade that Google became a part of our brain function. You know that guy who was in that movie ---- when was it? Just Google it. GPS: We can't get lost anymore ---- or at least it's pretty hard, with the ubiquitous GPS systems. But you'd better type in your location carefully: One couple made a 400-mile mistake this year by typing "Carpi" rather than "Capri." HELICOPTER PARENTING: Translation: helicopters hover, and so do many parents. After years of obsessive attention to safety and achievement of the youngest children, some said a backlash was under way. INFORMATION OVERLOAD: An explosion in Internet use led to an overload of information about practically everything. It's at our fingertips, but is it accurate? Some call it part of a larger phenomenon, namely: INSTANT GRATIFICATION: Otherwise known as being able to get anything you want within an instant. Often referred to as a theme of the decade. IPODS: An icon of the digital age, it's hard to believe this portable media player was first launched in 2001. Six years later, the 100 millionth iPod was sold. LIFE COACHES: In the aughts, there's a coach for everything! So why not life itself? Some say life coaches are merely therapists without the license or regulations. MUSICALS: They've been around forever, but this decade musicals came back to film, starting with "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago." But for kids, it was Disney's extremely successful "High School Musical" franchise ---- three movies and counting ---- that brought back the musical magic. NETFLIX: The DVD by mail service, established in 1997, announced its two-billionth DVD delivery this year. For many, those discs on top of the TV are just one more thing to procrastinate over. ORGANIC: Americans rushed to fill their grocery carts with organic food, making it big business ---- now a $21 billion industry, up from $3.6 billion in 1997. At decade's end, Michelle Obama planted the first White House organic vegetable garden. PREGNANCY CHIC: If you've got it, flaunt it: That was the new ethos of the pregnancy experience, with chic clothes that emphasized the bulging belly, personal pregnancy photos, and endless coverage of celebrity pregnancies. REALITY TV: As a nation, we became addicted to reality TV, from the feuding Gosselins of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" to "American Idol" to "Project Runway." At decade's end, the Heenes of Balloon Boy fame and the Salahis of gatecrashing fame give reality TV some unwanted attention. RECESSION CHIC: Fashion skewed to more severe styles ---- and much black ---- as so-called "recession chic" took hold in the latter part of the decade. RETO CHIC: Once you forget the smoking, the racism, the sexism and the homophobia, the early '60s depicted by the AMC series "Mad Men" sure looked good. The swinging Madison Avenue ad men make neckties cool again. SEXTING: Combine texting with a cell phone's camera function and you get this parental nightmare. A survey from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 15 percent of teens ages 12-17 with a cell phone had received sexually suggestive images or videos. STARBUCKS: It's a cliche that there's one on every block, but sometimes it seemed like it ---- and millions now consider it normal to spend $4 or so on a coffee drink in the morning, perhaps a venti half-caf half-decaf vanilla latte with an extra shot. TATTOOS: It started innocently enough ---- maybe a butterfly on the shoulder or a tribal symbol on the bicep. A few characters from the Chinese alphabet later it seemed any hipster who really meant it had a full sleeve of tattoos. The trend extended to middle-aged moms and even tween idol Miley Cyrus. TEXTING: R u still rding this sty? Hope u r. This is the decade we start communicating in the shorthand of text messages. Get used to it: E-mail is so '00s. TV SCREENS: Television screens became bigger and flatter, making some ordinary living rooms and dens the equivalent of big-studio screening rooms. At the same time, though, people were watching movies and videos on the tiniest screens imaginable ---- on their iPods other mobile devices. TWEEN CULTURE: Tweens, especially girls, became an economic force to be reckoned with, buying everything from clothes to electronic devices to music to concert tickets. TWITTER: The new social network introduced tweets, retweets, follows and trending topics ---- as long as it fit in 140 characters. UGGS: Not since the Croc (see above) has functional footwear created such a frenzy. The fur-lined snowboots were everywhere, no matter the climate. Los Angelenos insisted on wearing them with shorts. WII: In a sea of ever-more-sophisticated video games, this simple console became the decade's breakout hit by appealing to the non-gaming masses. Wiis became a center of family gaming, home fitness and even senior socializing. WIKIPEDIA: A boon to lazy students everywhere, the open-source encyclopedia used the masses to police its entries and keep them (mostly) (sometimes) accurate. YOGA: Madonna, Gwyneth and other bendy celebrities brought the eastern practice mainstream. By the end of the decade, even Grandma could do downward-facing dogs on her Wii Fit. YOUTUBE: Let's end this list and go kill some time by watching ---- YouTube videos! The video-sharing site was born in 2005. Political candidates in 2008 even had their on YouTube channels. The most popular video yet: "Charlie Bit My Finger," in which baby Charlie bites the finger of his brother Harry. GOT MORE? Tweet them to us at AP--Lifestyles. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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