About Marcus Michalik
Marcus is back in his hometown of Roseville and on a really amazing journey of self-discovery called unemployment. He enjoys waving at animals on computer screens, beginning sentences with “You guys,” and dancing to songs released by Real Housewives.
Website
http://marcusandyou.tumblr.com
There’s a moment in Sparkle where Whitney Houston’s stern matriarch character looks directly at her fame-seeking daughters over Sunday lunch and asks with her trademark rasp, “Is my life not enough of a cautionary tale for you?” It’s impossible not to think of the real life Whitney when hearing that line, and it’s with rather depressing benefit to Sparkle that nearly every word spoken by Houston throughout the film carries the extra weight of us knowing just how right her character actually is about the...
Outstanding Drama Series Game of Thrones (HBO) The Good Wife (CBS) Homeland (SHO) Justified (FX) Luck (HBO) Mad Men (AMC) WINNER: Mad Men One of the chief complaints about the Emmys is how often they get stuck in repetitive holding patterns and reward the same thing year after year. Normally I’d find it boring that a show has won four years in a row, but here I am hoping that Mad Men manages to extend its streak to become the most winning drama series in...
She flirted with it all season, but I really have to give props to Tyra for taking until the finale to directly compare the season’s Brits vs. Yanks theme to the Revolutionary War. As Sophie and Lauren stood before the Great and Powerful T with their hands politely folded and legs firmly planted in front of flag paintings done by the Mexican non-union equivalent of Jasper Johns, published author Tyra Banks told the two young women that just like their forefathers, they started out enemies...
First off, let me apologize for missing last week’s recap. I didn’t see the episode until the weekend, and by that point it seemed a little pointless. Pity too, because last week, with its action movie stunts, hysterical heights-induced crying and shocking double elimination, might have been the most fun episode of the year, barring the obvious music video episode. It was certainly a lot more entertaining than this episode, which found the models going on their umpteenth go-see and awkwardly trying to convince the...
The last two episodes of Top Model have been so low-key and normal that I’m starting to get flashbacks to seasons 2 & 3. While we’ll never be so lucky to have the show bring back the long-forgotten in-panel challenges (remember when Yaya correctly called out Tyra’s ethnocentrism during one of these by refusing to wear a kente cloth hat and Tyra instead chose to dig her heels in by having a skin color-altering photo shoot the next cycle? Memories), there’s been so few histrionic...
-You got to grow up wearing Lip Smackers. I was always secretly hoping men would try to get in on this because they smelled delicious and didn’t even really leave a tint on your lips. Plus, I guarantee you that whatever woman is currently kissing Clive Owen or Daniel Craig is secretly wishing that his lips tasted like cake batter. -Have you ever gone shopping for clothes with a man before? There’s barely anywhere to go unless you want to buy a whole bunch of...
By this point I’m so used to covering my face in horror and shame at Tyra’s attention-grabbing antics (don’t ever change, Ty) that I’m never quite sure what to do with myself when Top Model somehow manages to pull off an episode that’s almost entirely free of made-up words and our beautiful host’s foam-at-the-mouth self-delusions. For so long the faithful watchers among us have complained that the show has long lost its way, that it quit being about fashion roughly around the time that CariDee...
I’m guessing Tyra can’t even remember whether or not Top Model has centered a challenge around anti-bullying ever since Glee and Lady Gaga made it into last year’s important zeitgeist-y social issue, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to take any chances and let the opportunity to deeply inspire pass her by completely. You can always see the gears turning in Tyra’s head beneath the smize, and while this season that look has fixated almost completely on making “booty tooch” into a marketable brand...
Top Model may already be a handful of eliminations into its current Americans versus Brits season, and while editor Becky Lang and I have been secretly keeping an eye out on the show to make sure Bankable Studios isn’t in the process of covertly trying to reignite the Revolutionary War (now sponsored by Cover Girl!), we can’t in good faith keep mum on the subject any longer when Miss Tyra is out there teaching master classes on the art of the “booty tooch.” And just...
My family got cable TV in the fall of 1995. As a second grader, my initial reaction of complete and utter joy had pretty much everything to do with the promise of not having to watch episodes of Doug and Clarissa Explains It All at my friends’ houses any longer, but it was only a week or two until I made my way a bit further north than usual on our channel list and eventually ended up setting up camp at VH1 and Mtv for...
At what point is it fair to criticize a television show for it not being exactly what you want it to be? I asked myself this question earlier today reading editor Becky Lang’s article The Problem With Community, which basically, and rather bizarrely, takes NBC’s wildly inventive cult comedy to task for not adhering to some strict code of conduct for community college believability. Regardless of the fact that comedy as a entire genre often has to stretch the realm of what’s normally accepted to...
Beanie Babies I spent every Saturday morning in 1997 and 1998 digging though a crib full of freshly shipped beanbag animals alongside a bunch of middle-aged housewives. I had to get there early or else the only choice you’d have would be Gracie the swan, and I’d already bought that one weeks prior when I was really really jonesing for a PVC pellet hit. I remember thinking I was extra cool because I had a relative that had the royal blue version of Peanut the...
My Dream Date with Benedict Cumberbatch
May 24, 2013
Linguistic Reasons Why Pronouncing GIF with a Hard G is Just Fine
May 23, 2013
The Worst Harry Potter Book Covers From Around the World
May 22, 2013
Ten Easy Ways to Make Your Life More Like a Movie Trailer
May 21, 2013
Ten Kinds of Book People It’s Impossible to Have a Conversation With
May 20, 2013
