June 29, 2006
Since this Britney image popped out like a three-toed baby on a Appalachian kitchen floor this morning, everyone has been focusing on comparisons with the old VF Demi cover. There is no comparison, as the stylist and photo assistant actually delivered Demi's baby 5 minutes after this photo was taken. But more importantly, by focusing on just these two, we'd be ignoring some of the great pregnant covers of the past. Here's trip down memory lane. (And there's no way in fuckin hell we were going to say "Mammary Lane" or "Engorged Mammry Lane," or anything childish like that. So can it. This is a family website. OK, now on with the baby mommas.
June 28, 2006
Apparently "torturing people with weird phobias" is a regular
segment on his show, alongside the paternity test thing. We feel bad
for this girl, but at the same time...
June 26, 2006
The "in threes" concept is always a fascinating study. While nothing can top 1997's trio of Mother Teresa (September 5), Mobutu Sese Seko (September 7), and Burgess Meredith (September 9), this weekend we were met with three monumental pop culture deaths in short order. First Aaron Spelling, who some might argue is responsible for Slop Culture, as Huggy Bear is the whole reason why we do this thing. Then the guy who was fighting Anna Nicole Smith's $1.6 billion blow job, and finally Patsy Ramsey, the mother of Jon Benet Ramsey, who while not launching the nation's preoccupation with true crime (that was OJ), certainly became one of the first female villains (for better or for worse). The three have an appointment in an hour in St. Peter's office for a round of Mr. Mouth to determine who gets the best cloud (our money's on Spelling).
Also, is it just us, or did Nicole Kidman borrow Anna Nicole's eyebrow for her wedding?
June 23, 2006
Pretty much speaks for itself - how long until the turtles are
synched up with other famous "dudes sitting around and talking" scenes?
Note how Donnie is now Donatello. I thought that was a nice touch, even if it wasn't intentional.
(UPDATE: here's the people who did it, and there's more where that came from)
June 23, 2006
According to
several news outlets, Matt Groening's
Futurama
will get a test run in 2008 on Comedy Central. The voices of Fry,
Bender, and Leela will be back. We're guessing Phil LaMarr will be back
to play Hermes.
So that's cool and everything, but... is it necessarily good news?
The Critic was resurrected briefly on Comedy Central, you'll recall. Didn't really last.
Family Guy is back on Fox now, but it's not as good as it used to be.
So there's your topic for today: is a canceled show's resurrection necessarily a good thing?
Futurama'll never do an episode like this again, we'd wager:
June 22, 2006
OK, the game is over. Wow, does Landon Donovan suck...But we're also talking about our 20th hijacker vs. German soccer hiney experiment (otherwise known as 'the excuse to run a picture of a German soccer hiney under the guise of social commentary' experiment.). The 20th hijacker, penis hat and all, never quite bubbled to the top. Oddly enough, both the hijacker AND the German Bundesliga Behind are nowhere to be found, but the bikini shot of the German soccer fan is still in the top three! Begging the question: Do Yahoo users carve best from the breast than the rump? Slop Culture was about to send out the poll when we noticed the beer in the bikini girl's hand, which threw the control all out of whack. Doesn't matter, since today's Yahoo cleavage girl is getting some major play. Model Brittany Brower (shown here posing with a Sidekick 3 in Los Angeles), is more important than some failed terrorist (and, in the grand scheme of things, she probably is). AP Photog Lucas Jackson has just relaunched your career after that America's Top Model fiasco.
Another note: Check out the highest rated shots on Yahoo compared to the most viewed and most emailed. Weird.
June 21, 2006
The "most viewed photo" feature on Yahoo.com is an odd beast. One of the better sports on the interweb, watching it ebb and flow throughout the day, as each time zone logs on and decides which pics they will look at instead of dealing with work. "Ohh, look at the adorable turtle balanced on a guy's fingertip," is replaced an hour later by "man, Britney went to shit." Then (after you've emailed the Britney photo to your closest friends for an impromptu poll of whether the train wreck could ever be salvaged), you pop back on Yahoo and find yourself declaring "man, German soccer fans really love ass." The most viewed picture as of 11am eastern is this shot by AP Photog Markus Schreiber. Nice composition, good use of color. The horizontal stripes on the wrist bands, thigh band and socks are juxtaposed by the German flag between her legs, creating a vertical landing strip to candy land. The second most viewed pic is by AP Photog Frank Augstein, this time from the other side of the kraut meat.
We're going to wait and see how long these Bundesliga babes stays at the top today. They will have to battle it out, however, with a picture of the 20th hijacker.
This is the guy we were waiting for? Fawaz al-Nashimi, also known as Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry, has been confirmed by Al-Qaida as the man who missed 
Flight 93. He was killed in Saudi in 2004. People will all click on the link, and want to see the man who would have fought Beamer. What they will find is a guy in a penis-shaped hat, sitting on futon surrounded by machine guns and apparently looking for a place to wipe the nose candy he just irrigated.
So let the games begin.
June 19, 2006
Gamespot polled its readers and compiled a list of the ten best NES games of all time.
Super Mario 3 was #1,
Legend of Zelda was #2, and
Mike Tyson's Punch Out! was #6.
Fine, fine, fine. Don't disagree with the top 8 (although the first
Super Mario Bros. maybe was a little high.) But #9 was
Duck Hunt.
Seriously? No, really.
This game? Shoot ducks while a dog makes
fun of you? Sure, it's mild entertainment . . . for, like, fifteen
minutes. Then let's start some sidescrolling action.
This:
Was deemed better than this?
Or this?
This?
We could really sit here all day and come up with dozens of NES games that are better than
Duck Hunt in every conceivable way. Sorry Gamespot readers, but you blew it.
June 15, 2006
After some quick+dirty googling, the answer is - just like it was with the show's predecessor, Laguna Beach - a resounding "sorta." (one of the biggest questions ever recorded on google searches during the show's run was "Is Laguna Beach real?").
Okay, so yes, Lauren Conrad, our protagonist, is a real girl, with real ambitions. The show is kind of all about how she's trying to make it in the 'real world,' with, you know, an actual job, which she seems to be willing to do, as opposed to certain people who appear on MTV reality shows and then take the rest of their lives off (ahem, Tonya from The Real World: Chicago.)
But at the same time, let's apply the smell test, here. It seems unlikely that a magazine like Teen Vogue would hand a high-profile internship to a 19-year-old with no actual experience unless there was some other force greasing the wheels. And she probably wouldn't have been able to pull the shit from last Tuesday's episode and stick around (although it wasn't really her fault.) It's almost as though they're giving her some sort of special treatment, like, say, keeping her around because she's an MTV reality star and Teen Vogue smartly recognizes that they're getting crazy publicity out of the deal. Hey, whatever works.
So now that you fell into this google trap, all of you who wound up here looking for the definitive answer to your question get this answer: Who cares if it's real or not? It's one of the most watchable MTV shows to come around in a while. It's superior to Laguna Beach, for sure - less teen drama, more early adulthood drama. And the juxtaposition of Lauren with her friend Heidi - who does take the attitude of "who needs school?, who needs to work their way up a ladder?; I'm on MTV" - is fun to watch play out.
June 12, 2006
We're close to the halfway point of the 2006, and before VH1 does its Best Half-Year Ever show, Slop Culture would like to officially announce the best new feature on television this year. We're talking, of course, about Dateline 
NBC's "Pedophile Reveal," or as it's known in the joint "I came here to bang a 13 year old girl I was talking to on the internet, and instead I'm getting interviewed by Chris Hansen. D'Oh!"
The Reveal is not new to reality TV. Trading Spaces popularized it and many shows employ it. But the look on the faces of the sick schmucks carrying wine coolers and condoms who walk into the house set up by Dateline (complete with hidden cameras and cops waiting outside to arrest the men on charges like using the internet to transmit obscene material to a person under 16) only to find out they are on Candid Perverts, has taken the Reveal to a whole 'nother level. The Reveal is then followed by the Face of Shame, then the Walk of Doom.
Whatever you feel about vigilante justice - and it's hard to argue that the guy who took off all his clothes once he got into the house shouldn't have been caught in the sting - Chris Hansen's new cottage industry (he's even blogging) is really a science experiment conducted to catch 
rapid changes in nature. You'll never see a man's emotions change so quickly (quicker than doing coke, quicker than Game 6), then when a guy who thinks he's going to have sex with a 15-year-old suddenly comes to the realization that he's actually not going to have sex, but he's going to be on television. And he's going to get arrested. And he's going to go to jail. Where everyone is watching the show right now. But there's also the effect it has on you, the viewer. You get great pleasure from this car crash, but you still feel it in your gut. You don't want to tell these bastards "it's a trap," but you do feel a tinge of regret when they start to cry. Just for a second. A split second (mostly when you learn the guy Ft. Myers actually brought his child along with him). But then you realize it's all good. Entrapment? Save it for 21 Jump Street. They've done 
four of these shows, and show no sign of stopping now.
WHOOP, THERE IT IS The sick schmucks meet their doom
(and doom's name is Chris Hansen)
June 07, 2006
This
Simpsons clip is all the more prophetic now that Mexico and Portugal will actually meet in their World Cup group. And check the
Phoenix tomorrow for our boy Krpata's
advice on how to spend your World Cup.
June 05, 2006
The author of the new children's book on marijuana
It's Just a Plant appeared on
The O'Reilly Factor recently. We're skeptical of O'Reilly's answer to the wine question.
June 02, 2006
The winner: U-R-S-P-R-A-C-H-E
Ursprache:
n. A language that is the recorded or hypothetical ancestor of another language or group of languages.
Those Germans have a word for everything . . .
