Chris Rock’s new film Top Five gets its name from the ancient tradition of sitting around in a crowded room, shooting the shit, and picking your top five favorite rappers of all time are. Complex will do you one better. They took a venture from 1979 to the present day to determine the best rapper alive for every year, which funnily enough is the kind of self-aggrandizing statement most rappers do and should make. I still vote Ma$e every day in my heart, though.
The best kind of folks are outlawed — including little-known artist Eugene Bilbrew, who drew smutty comics in the sexual underground of Manhattan during the buttoned-up Eisenhower years. His odd, lurid, fetishistic work still has some vintage shock value.
Everyone uses Twitter and everyone uses Facebook. Those are safe assumptions. But how many people run a gender-segregated alt Twitter account?
Jezebel sits down for a chat with Alexandra Billings, trans activist and star of Transparent. She talks about the joy of playing a regular trans woman on TV instead of an overly dramatic caricature:
“It wasn’t until I got to Hollywood that I played consistently in transgender roles. But this one in particular I really love. I’m not dying of any disease, I’m not in the hospital, I’m not a prostitute, I’m not getting murdered. I’m really one of the few characters in the show that’s not in great peril! Davina is very grounded and very spiritual and kind and compassionate and funny and acerbic. She isn’t in any great turmoil, and that’s really what excites me.”
This week’s WTF podcast is very, very worth it. Marc Maron cozies up to Paul Thomas Anderson to talk nearly all of his films and spill some on-set gossip and know-how. Who doesn’t love gossip and know-how from someone whose films you will need to take 5 bathroom breaks during?
What would happen if you 3-D printed your dreams? A new crop of speculative fiction from Mark Von Shlegell.
Pitchfork serves it hot and fresh to the Nice Guys and the terrible songs they write:
The archetypical Nice Guy Song tends to go something like this: I am a wonderful, sensitive snowflake, noble and pure, but you do not see this, as you have been tricked by this shallow, shallow world and by what’s his name with the pecs. I am nice and special, and I deserve to have you, and by have you I mean have glorious, glorious sex with you, because, again, I am nice and special, and one day you will see what a dumb bitch you are being, and until then I’ll be waiting right here. Patiently. Oh, so patiently.
