Jenny Slate: "Fuck"

On last night's Saturday Night Live, one of the new people who replaced one of the less-new people dropped the f-bomb in a sketch. Let's watch:

While this is the sort of thing that tends to make Lorne Michaels unhappy (along with improv and Elvis Costello), it is also the kind of thing that reminds that Saturday Night Live is a live show, and there are actual exciting things that can happen in a live show (not just Jimmy Fallon cracking up Horatio Sanz -- also: guess when I last watched SNL!). There should be a reason to watch the show other than the digital shorts, because we all have the internet and we don't have to stay home Saturday night to watch it.
Lorne Michaels should do the smart thing, and promote Jenny Slate to Star of the Show, a la Will Ferrell. She should at the very least definitely play Obama.

Birth of a Nation (Podcast Ep. 1)

On this inaugural Standard Review podcast, Alice and Muffin finally confront their feelings on the VMAs, the best condoms to use for sex with a vampire, and how awkward it is when your dad and your crush hang out onscreen.

Music by Things That Don't Work in Space

Download the podcast (right-click-save)

Dan Brown Transgenders Us All

So according to a person who has read Dan Brown's new book (if I were him, AND I AM NOT, I would really just keep rewriting The Da Vinci Code [Tom Hanks investigates Mona Lisa's cross tattoo on her left boob or something], but apparently he has come out with an incredibly successful new thing), he just straight-up invents the term "transgendering" in the following passage:

The act of tattooing one’s skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices …. . . cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids . . . even bulimia and transgendering. [Quoted by The Sexist]

I have to admit that I, like everyone else, find the idea that being transgender, a legitimate identity, is akin to having the disease of bulimia or an addiction to cosmetic surgery. So I have to wonder: Is this what it feels like to be a conservative Christian/art appreciator? Just angry as hell at Dan Brown all the dang old time? Because I don't really have the time for those feelings, you know? I have so many other things that need my anger.
But I must admit to being intrigued by Brown's theory that changing one's sex to better fit one's gender is addictive -- does he think people go back and forth with the same single-minded repetition as a bodybuilder? Because that idea is totally awesome. And actually, more relatable for me as a newly-made Conservative Christian Full of Rage at Dan Brown. As soon as I allow my feelings of anger to overtake me (clogging CafePress's servers with my orders for more "Angels & Demons & Shitty Novels" t-shirts), I must rush back to my former state of complete apathy toward the guy (this does not involve t-shirts). I am as flighty as Brown's imagined transgenderers. Why can't I just decide whether or not I want a penis permanently? (Here, the penis is a metaphor for my hammer.) (No but seriously it's a metaphor for anti-Dan Brown t-shirts)
And I don't think I'm alone in these feelings. Meaning Dan Brown has transgendered us, every one.