Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fug Report! Each week our fashion blogger friends Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the sartorial geniuses behind Go Fug Yourself, will feature some of their favorite looks of the week in this space. We hope you enjoy it!
In an office like ours, pop culture references come up pretty frequently, and it’s always to surprising to see what a difference even a few years in age can make between someone knowing exactly what you’re talking about, and giving you a blank, slightly pitying stare. The chasm is even greater between kids who were born 18 years ago and those of us who are old enough to have been their babysitters. The latest installment of “The Mindset List,” an annual compilation of the cultural touchstones of incoming freshmen at Wisconsin’s Beloit College, really drives this point home. We’ve pulled out some of the most interesting bits from this year’s findings after the jump.
Music is an ever-changing field. To keep up with the times, you must adapt to them, or be left behind. Musicians in particular suffer under the yoke of modernity, since something new is happening literally every moment — not to mention that they tend to be creative types with a million different ideas up their sleeves. Whether temporary or permanent, out of necessity or on a whim, these musicians have changed their sounds, styles, and minds in huge ways that have affected their music, their fans and in many cases, their world. Click through to check out our list, and let us know which of your favorite musical transformations we’ve missed in the comments!
Today at Flavorpill, we decided that architecture tattoos are only lame in certain cases. We were excited by reports that Jane Lynch might be hosting this year’s Emmys. We watched President Obama play a round of ping-pong with British Prime Minister David Cameron. We wanted to get our hands on this wooden pinhole camera from Kurt Mottweiller Studios. We watched Chris Crocker turn on Britney Spears. We loved Terence Chang’s long exposure photos of the air traffic above San Francisco International Airport. We were impressed by a portrait of dearly departed designer Tobias Wong that’s made out of over 13,000 dice. We read an interview with Apple’s first CEO whose name is — we kid you not — Michael Scott. And finally, we couldn’t believe this before and after picture of a neighborhood in Joplin, Missouri, snapped by photographer Aaron Fuhrman. It’s almost impossible to believe you’re looking at the same place.
Celebrities are always coming up with side projects and trying to explore new creative genres. It’s certainly not a new phenomenon — think the Rat Pack — although we do think in the modern era there’s probably some building pressure to “expand the brand” across industries. However, some celebs, though often beloved in one area, can branch out a little to quickly or a little too far, and well, embarrass themselves. Hey, it happens to the best of us (obviously, because James Franco is on this list), but that doesn’t mean we can’t judge. Click through for our roundup of the most embarrassing celebrity side projects — and let us know if you have any famous fails to add to the list.
Today at Flavorpilll, we looked at snowflakes under an electron microscope. We were happy to hear that Yoko Ono approves of Lady Gaga’s bottom. We were surprised by the similarities between Usher’s 2010 hit “OMG” and Homer Simpson’s Christmas carol from the season 14 episode “Dude, Where’s My Ranch?” We liked these new artist-designed bike racks in San Francisco. We enjoyed watching this timelapse video of Snowpacalypse 2010, which condenses a 20-hour span of blizzard into about 40 seconds. We took a field trip back in time to 1940s London. We perused Forbes’ list of Hollywood’s 20 highest-earning men and women of 2010, and found it funny that Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, and Madonna were at numbers 13, 14 and 15, respectively. We were sad to see that Kenny Scharf’s Bowery mural has already been tagged. And finally, we wondered if Natalie Portman’s pregnancy announcement will help boost her chances of taking home a Best Actress Oscar. The fact that the father is Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied does make for a good story…
“I make art about the world we live in,” says New York-based artist Michael Anderson. The renegade appropriation-artist makes massive paper collages from street advertisements, maps, stickers, and magazine images that are full of pop culture content and urban angst. Populated by a diverse mix of characters — including Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, John Lennon, Spider-Man, and Derek Jeter — Anderson’s mosaic-like collages become lively, abstract realms for celebrities and heroes to surrealistically inhabit.
The flurry of band reunions reached amazing(ly terrifying) new heights when the recently reformed Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block announced a boy band supergroup tour at last week’s American Music Awards, much to the delight of every teenybopper between the ages of 20 and 40. Justin Timberlake and Mark Wahlberg must be feeling pretty smug right about now, but we think this is a great opportunity to relive the heyday of ’90s pop stars. Since their strangest and funniest moments often came not on MTV but on the talk shows where they connected with the stay-at-home moms of Middle America, we’ve compiled 10 of our favorite moments from when Oprah and Ricki met TLC and Britney.
Whether you like her or not, we can all agree that Britney Spears has been a pop culture fixture for the past decade — which is why Glee is devoting an entire episode to her this coming Tuesday night. To help build up the excitement (or to school the non-believers among us), we’ve put together a visual primer of Britney highs and lows that spans her entire 28 years. Even longtime fans might find a few pieces of info that we’ve found (can you say, “Hair Zone Mall Tour”?) rather surprising.
