When I was in 4th or 5th or 6th grade, we had a reading buddy in the 2nd grade (I think). Today I saw a bunch of weiner kids on bicycles and wondered about the fate of my reading buddy. Things do not look good. He is into Bob Marley (that is the non-coded code for "I smoke a lot of jazz cigarettes"), "camping", Megan Fox and Dane Cook. It is too depressing to keep looking.
Good photo essay about Las Vegas. The pawn shop with the motorized wheelchairs in front is achingly profound.
Mopery - either "walking down the street with no clear destination or purpose" or "exposing oneself in front of a blind man."
An awful lot of movies released lately have used pop culture references as a key plot point or as a short-cut to adding texture/depth to characters (Be Kind Rewind/Fats Waller, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People/La dole vita, Juno/all of the stuff they referenced). I don't think I like this. The movies are often kind of bad (500 Days of Summer has the Manic Pixie Dream Girl problem).
One movie that I think used this stuff well: The Wackness (I'm not terribly objective about this movie, as I rather liked it and have liked it more since I first saw it - it is a kind of latter-day "The Graduate"). The pop culture stuff is an invitation - it is presented as a superficial part of the characterization (white guy who listens to hip hop) and depth is added with more actual stuff - actions, motives, wishes, etc. In a lot of movies, it is the opposite. The pop culture stuff is added later for texture, to tell you "this person is not what you think."
Anyway, 500 Days of Summer, which spawned this spleen. This movie seemed a lot longer than the 90 minutes it was. Almost from the start, you hate each character who passes in front of the camera and there doesn't seem to be a reason for the back/forth narrative. Also, when the audience can tell what jokes are going to be told a minute or two before they appear - that's a problem. If you watch the movie using a little trick I've learned that helps understand a lot of romantic comedies, then it makes a lot more sense. The trick is to assume that all of the characters are morons. In this movie, it helps you understand why the guy goes to the little girl for advice.
Ex Girl Collection. Amazing lyrics. "Where�s Ann been?/ She pours herself a don�t-ask gin/ No ice and light on the bitters/
I�m done with quitters... She cursed, "This sounds so rehearesed"/ As Ann, hand on hip, accusing me to the rafters/ The words turn and spit and scratch right through to the plaster/ I�m called ten kinds of a bastard/ Curses come faster"
