Taylor Swift is terrorizing the LGBTQ community

By Olivia Craighead

A growing community of "Gaylors" thinks so

To be a die-hard Taylor Swift fan, a Swiftie, is to become an expert in the field of symbology — the fake academic field made up by Dan Brown for The Da Vinci Code. Ever since Swift acknowledged that she loves to hide easter eggs about upcoming announcements in her work, her most devoted followers have become ravenous. The number of emojis in a tweet becomes a clue as to when the next single is coming out, a sparkly dress worn on the red carpet means that Reputation (Taylor’s Version) is imminent, and the way she smeared her hand through a wedding cake in a music video means… well, no one could agree on that one.

These theories are usually outlandish and often wrong. Swift’s easter eggs are hardly ever well hidden, like when the album title “Lover” appeared in the music video for “ME!” But there is a subsection of the Swiftie community that have committed themselves to what they believe is Swift’s most obvious easter egg. They call themselves Gaylors and they think, as you might have guessed, that Taylor Swift is gay.

Or bisexual, or more broadly queer. There is some disagreement within the Gaylor community as to what the singer’s actual sexual identity might be. Continue reading

By Adam Nayman

At least that part of Cameron Crowe's ode to grunge-era Seattle is relatable

Cameron Crowe’s Seattle-set romantic comedy Singles premiered on September 18, 1992, almost exactly one year after the release of Nevermind and two months before a writer for The New York Timeswas gulled by a sarcastic Sub Pop intern into publishing a comprehensive “lexicon of grunge speak” combining suspiciously old-timey expressions (“dish;” “kickers”) with dubious new slang (“swinging on the flippety-flop”) — a sort of flannel-clad nadsat in need of a thorough decoding.

The list was, of course, a complete fabrication: a fun, mean-spirited media prank yielding a perfectly absurdist public comeuppance. "When The Newspaper of Record goes searching for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing piddles on its leg, we think that's funny,” snarked essayist Thomas Frank; in bravely attempting to let the proverbial Mr. Joneses of America know what was happening here — “here” being a Seattle not yet fully synonymous with Fraisier or Starbucks, and teeming with potential voices-of-their-generation candidates — The Times and its fact checkers ended up looking like total cob nobblers. But the ambient embarrassment of “Grunge: A Success Story” barely concealed a deeper truth: that the city’s burgeoning alt-rock scene did have its own set of rules and rituals, and its ruling class was, at that very moment, teetering on the verge of self-parody and mainstream co-option. If writer Rick Marin’s description of “greasy Caucasian youths in ripped jeans, untucked flannel and stomping boots” skirted slacker-ethnographic cliche, it also hinted at the eternal paradox of all successfully non-conformist pop-cultural movements: what happens when it’s suddenly square to be hip? Continue reading

By Claire Carusillo

They've been demoted to Prince Andrew level on the Crown’s official web page

That symbolically resonant mountain lion stalking Montecito is now child’s play compared to the computer-based horror show that Meghan and Harry Markle must confront today: they’re the victims of a cybercrime engineered by a coterie of web designers, newly instated Welsh potentates, and at least one known associate of late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. There’s no way around it: They’ve been bumped on the royal family’s website.

Specifically, as of this weekend the Fabulous Markle Twins have been moved from a plum featured spot all the way to the bitter end of scrollable content on the website’s “The Royal Family” section. And Prince Andrew, who once spent two days straight jerking it in 1992, is right there next to the demotees, sandwiched between the two media moguls in the flop section. Continue reading

By Olivia Craighead

The adorkable star is also the first female peanut M&M

In the world of M&M’s, everyone has their thing. Red is an asshole, Yellow is stupid, and Green used to be sexy but then she had to tamp it down to enter the workforce or something (sexist). Now there’s a new bitch on the block, Purple, and her thing is that she studied musical theater at the University of Michigan and she will not let you forget it.

Not only is she a triple threat — singing, dancing, tasty — but Purple is a pioneer in women’s rights. Purple is somehow the first ever female peanut M&M, despite the fact that being filled with nut was a woman’s primary job for most of history (again, sexist).

Like all good women who stand beside powerful men, she has a social cause. Per M&M’s, Purple is working to “help more people feel they belong." To relay that message to the masses, Purple released a music video for her hot new track, “I’m Just Gonna Be Me.”Continue reading

By Fran Hoepfner

David O. Russell's star-studded crime caper is already dead in the water

Next week, David O. Russell’s Amsterdam opens wide all across America, a rollicking crime caper starring three of cinema’s most compelling stars — Christian Bale doing a quirky little bit, Margot Robbie (brunette), and Tenet’s John David Washington — alongside the likes of Taylor Swift, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Robert De Niro. The film is loosely based on a real event in American history known as the “Business Plot,” in which World War I veterans tried to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a dictator. All of which is to say, this is a star-studded, non-IP, R-rated feature from a previously award-winning director. I unknowingly walked past the premiere of the movie en route to see Moonage Daydream a week or so ago, and despite a poster-dense Lincoln Center and the inexplicable attendance of Drake, the mood was oddly muted. So why does no one give a shit? Let’s try to figure it out.

Is Amsterdam good?

As it hovers around 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s safe to say: Amsterdam is not good. Continue reading