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Pop Culture

When Blogs Cry

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April 22, 2016
America, Hip-Hip, Jazz, Music, Politics, Pop, Pop Culture, Religion, Rock
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AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian

Unlike His Royal Badness himself, it came suddenly. A text message, then two, a tweet here, a trending Facebook post there, and then it was clear: As TMZ first reported, Prince Rogers Nelson, the ageless king, and queen, of your favorite musical style, had passed away suddenly at the age of 57. As the man himself once sang, everybody wants salvation, but we here at Tuesdays With Horry can’t (knowingly) give you that, so we’ve pieced together a few memories and thoughts on this diminutive genius who was larger than us all. Dig, if you will, our picture.

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Seoul Searching: McLuck in 2016

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January 6, 2016
America, Food, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion
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Courtesy businesskorea.co.kr

In 1953, North and South Korea signed an armistice.

In 1961, South Korea had an income per capita of just $80 per year.

In 1988, the Seoul Olympic Games prompted South Korea to import its first bottled water.

In 2006, Foreign Minister Ban-Ki Moon was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations.

In 2010, South Korea ranked 15th-highest on the Human Development Index.

And then, in 2013, South Korea had its first McRib season.

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The 2016 TwH Prediction Megathread

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January 1, 2016
America, Politics, Pop Culture, Sports
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Saturday Night Live/NBCUniversal

For some of us, 2015 was a year of fulfillment, consistency and hope. For the rest, it served unpredictable dishes with sides of indifferent mediocrity, crushing despair and lukewarm-bordering-on-cold broccoli. That’s not to say that lukewarm-bordering-on-cold broccoli is necessarily bad, but it definitely could’ve been better.

No matter the feeling of leaving 2015 in the cracked rear view, a new calendar is upon us. With it comes so many more opportunities for change, inspiring moments in sports, reasons to believe, heartbreaking losses and chances to leave your friends hanging by staying in on a weekend night because you don’t want to deal with it. We at TwH get that. In that spirit, we gathered around our digital campfire and threw darts into our brains trying to pinpoint some of what we think may come to fruition in the coming year. Don’t quote us on this.

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Star Wars: A New Homage

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December 30, 2015
Movies, Pop Culture
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(Via StarWars.com)

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]

Despite what Resistance members think, the Millennium Falcon was the symbol of screeching rebellion in the Star Wars universe. It sped through different solar systems with reckless abandon as its wise ass star commander, Han Solo, threw another crushed beer can over his shoulder and howled alongside his trusty pet Chewie as if he were the Kenny Stabler of outer space. The Falcon and its crew were dripping with the same kind of blustering machismo that Bert Reynolds possessed with his Pontiac Trans-Am in 1977.

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Christmas With a Vengeance

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December 24, 2015
America, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion
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Twentieth Century Fox

While searching for the pickle in the tree and refusing to acknowledge any Clintons that aren’t George, Sanders that aren’t Barry and Trumps that aren’t playing cards, spare a thought to a film still struggling to validate its identity. In a recent poll, the greatest Christmas movie ever was deemed to not be a Christmas movie at all. The tragedy here is clear: it’s time to recognize the holiday overtones of the robbery at Nakatomi Plaza because Die Hard is a Christmas movieº.

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Cupid Live

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December 12, 2015
Hip-Hip, Music, Pop Culture, R&B
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Tonight, Devonté Hynes will lead his project, Blood Orange, in the second show of a stand at Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater with several guests, in charitable performances for Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. Along with the matinee performance this afternoon, Hynes’ two shows at the Apollo were highly anticipated and, as such, sold out almost as quickly as a Bruce Springsteen concert. For the latter, timelessness is an accepted standard; for the former, critical acclaim has become his typical accompaniment, and the Apollo shows should stand to be something of a turning point for Hynes in terms of popular recognition, even in the face of his highly-touted collaboration with Carly Rae Jepsen earlier this year, “All That,” which he co-wrote, and the Saturday Night Live appearance which followed.

Before you go jettisoning yourself into superstardom at the Apollo, however, you must prepare yourself for the endeavor. On Thursday night, in a secret show at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, Hynes did just that, with an exclamation point.

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Mondays With Grantland

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November 25, 2015
America, Basketball, College Football, Movies, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Sports, Television
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“Grantland East” – Rembert Browne

“Happy Thanksgiving!”

Decked out in a red flannel shirt, the kind that suggests a casual work environment, Juliet Litman enthusiastically welcomed her congregation, a throng of young dudes, mostly white, with a few willing and able women scattered about. These parishioners had come to Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, site of the Madden lectures a little over a month prior, to pay final respects to the most important sports blog ever, the recently-deceased standard for longform pop journalism and the sort of offbeat topics you concoct in your dorm lounge late one night after several too many adult beverages. This was the Grantland wake.

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You’re Not Vain

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November 19, 2015
America, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, Rock
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Getty Images

In case you haven’t heard – or are willfully ignoring it, like the group of people who attempt to avoid discovering the victor of the Super Bowl every year – one of the great mysteries of pop music has finally come undone, albeit partially. In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, singer-songwriter and proto-Taylor Swift Carly Simon has revealed that the second verse, at the very least, of her seminal hit “You’re So Vain” is, as many suspected, about Warren Beatty. With a great sigh of relief, I’m certain, James Taylor can rock himself to sleep, and Mick Jagger has finally achieved some level of satisfaction, depending on the geography of his egotism in 2015.

What Simon also did in revealing Beatty as her muse, however, was take some of the intimacy out of listening to music. To be frank, I’d really rather she wouldn’t have done that. It isn’t so much that she’s ruined “You’re So Vain” – the classic rock stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, that seem to think Simon only ever released one song already achieved that in my youth – but she did manage to remind us that, as much as we want to feel closer to the musicians we love, they are eternally out of reach, mingling with people more famous than we in parties on yachts, dressed in white clothing after Labor Day like the bourgeois bottles on the top shelf that they are.

To be clear, I’m only half-serious, but that half is deadly serious.

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When Food Goes Viral

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June 12, 2015
Food, Television
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Courtesy of Pizza Hut

Earlier this week, Pizza Hut trotted out a pie with hot dog bites baked into the crust. “Pizza Hut has created the perfect combination for American tastebuds,” they exclaimed in a press release. This Frankenfood is a ploy to drum up new business as Americans move from the convenience of fast food to more healthy options. Pizza Hut is not the only culprit of these gonzo kitchen experiments; Hardee’s and Dunkin Donuts have rolled out their own crackpot foods that seem like a self-aware joke about a certain American ideal: this foodstuff is so crass that it’s American as fuck.

If you pair these abominations with the otherworldly portions of food that are being sold at an unbelievable discount – KFC’s $5 Fill-Up, Taco Bell’s 5 Buck Box, etc. – you’d think that these brands have eaten their own tail in order to get customers. Most Americans who actively exclude fast food from their diets are not likely to be enticed by a pizza that’s the spiritual cousin of the big rig in Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s surely not frequent patrons that need a marketing campaign to get through the door. Who, then, are these unique customers whose dollars are being chased?

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