You may think that a burnt out bulb needs to change just because the room is too dark for you to see anything, so it must be changed, but I don't care, it's beautiful, you should respect its right to be burnt out and learn to be more accepting of darker rooms, check your filament privileges you ableist scum. Anyone who disagrees with this is a burnt-out-bulbophobe and a darknessphobe. Thanks for being so understanding.
A man strides into a bar, grinning from ear to ear. He sets down at the bar and orders a beer. "In fact, make that a round on the house."
The bar cheers, and the bartender brings him his drink, he asks, "So, why the celebration?"
"I am reinventing myself! A new man! Just a month ago, I was miserable. But then..." He laughs. "Then my life changed! I had to put it all behind me. I always wanted to live in California, so I sold everything I had, broke my lease, and moved here. I got an apartment right over there across from the bar, and just today I landed my dream job." He drains half his beer, "Life is GREAT!"
The bartender stands back and beams, hands on his hips, sharing the man's joy, "That's great man...y'know, most guys would not have the balls to pack up and leave like that."
At that, the man lets out a peal of laughter, spilling his beer and nearly falling off his stool. "And that's the kicker! I don't have ANY balls! None at all!" As you might expect, the bartender looked confused. The man leans over the bar. "You see, starting about 10 years ago, I started getting terrible headaches. I mean they were crippling, man. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat, Couldn't work...hell, sometimes I could barely walk. And they just kept getting worse. I finally found a doc that found the problem....turns out it was something with my balls, pressing into the base of my spine. The pressure was causing the headaches. I mean...it was a hard decision...but the headaches were ruining my life. I was damn near suicidal. So...well...off they came. And now I'm completely reinventing myself. Next step, get a new wardrobe." He holds up his glass in a toast and drains it, waggling for another as he swallows.
The bartender's jaw has dropped. "That...that's incredible." He turns to fill the glass and looks up as the beer pours in. "Hey...y'know... I think I can set you up." he looks up over the bar and scans around. He quickly sees who he's looking for. "Barry! Hey Barry, get over here...this man needs a new suit." He looks back to the new customer. "This guy's amazing, totally old school. Can size a guy just by looking at him. Makes all of his suits himself, and I'll get him to cut you a deal."
Up walks a thin, bespectacled, immaculately dressed elderly man. He approaches the bar, "Yes?", he says in a clipped voice.
"Got a customer for ya, Barry. Treat him nice, he's been through a lot."
"Ah! You are wanting a new suit?" He looks the man up and down. He pulls his spectacles down on his nose. "A...reinvention of yourself?"
Then man beams, "Yes! Exactly! new job, new city, new friends...and now I need a new suit."
"Hmmm...collar is 15, yes?"
"Yes! Exactly!"
"42 long jacket feels to long, 42 feels too short, yes?"
"Yes! Exactly!"
"I will cut it custom for you. Tall and slender...waist 32..inseam 34..."
"Ah...you got the waist right, but I'm a 32 inseam. Always have been."
Barry waves his hand dismissively and continues his examination. "No...no..you are are a 34 inseam. 32 is too short. A 32 would push your balls right up into your spine. Give you one hell of a headache."
YouTube user svantana remixed the track to just repeat the most important line in the song – "You were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar" – over and over again.
The remix was uploaded at the weekend, with svantana saying: "Sometimes less is more. Here I bring you a classic tune reduced to its bare minimum, lyrically that is. Enjoy!"
It was one of the more ambitious items on my maiden to-do list of 2015. I’d been trying to write a freelance profile of the singer off and on for two years, pursuing different contacts who knew Gore with slight success. As open as she had been about her sexuality in decade-old interviews, few journalists had lately bothered to ask her more about her life as a gay woman.
I’d almost lucked out once in 2013, when the Lesley Gore International Fan Club’s president, Jack, forwarded my contact information to her. LGIFC is one of those romantic setups — members receive autographed 8×10s and membership cards by post. Now in its 50th year, the club has survived the transition from snail mail to HTML, its vintage membership perks intact; batches of high-gloss photos and customized cards are still mailed out. The club inadvertently gives new meaning to being a “card-carrying lesbian.” I like to imagine a happier world in which queer women could effortlessly Bat Signal one another by flashing our Lesley Fan Club credentials — that is, if more queer women actually knew that Lesley was gay. Many didn’t, and still don’t.
Jack told me Lesley would be in touch. She never was.
When I didn’t get my interview, the alternative became a eulogy.
After experiencing back pain following an extensive tour, Lesley Gore went in for an MRI. She discovered that the pain meant a tumor, and the tumor meant terminal lung cancer brought on by years of smoking. She died soon after, a couple days after Valentine’s this past February; she was 68.
Born in Brooklyn in 1946 and raised in New Jersey, her father earned his keep making children’s swimwear. Survivors included her partner of 33 years (a jewelry maker), her brother and co-composer, and a cocker spaniel named Little Billie, named after one of her favorite singers.
With the release of "It's My Party", Lesley as we knew her happened overnight. She was just another 16-year-old American girl singing into her hairbrush until she became a guest on Sam Riddle’s Hollywood A Go-Go and Dick Clark’s American Bandstand — a high school junior dreamily poring over Seventeen magazine until she suddenly found herself within its pages. Her death came with a similar, overnight rapidity. The public didn’t know Lesley Gore was ill until she was gone. Her fan club would continue to send out autographed photographs, but they would be photocopies.
Lesley had been working on a memoir and an autobiographical musical before she died. Her final curtain had been called all too soon: first by mortality, and later by the obituary authors who mentioned so little about her apart from her Billboard success with “It’s My Party” and “You Don’t Own Me.” Along with those two songs, she was memorialized with a seriesof physical descriptors: bouncy blonde hair, blue eyes, Motown sound, as well as the "Queen of Teen Angst" (an arbitrary title that begged a few questions: At exactly what age do people age out of angst? Is the A-word simply replaced with another one, anxiety, when one reaches womanhood?).
The Advocate managed to come up with 235 words about Gore, not mentioning her close friendship with feminist leader Bella Abzug, her soft spot for rural queers (“there are probably two gay people in the whole damn town,” she sympathized when meeting Midwestern queers during her tour), her surprising apathy toward the institution of marriage (“for me, it isn't important to get married”), or the great extent to which she lent her voice to reproductive and queer justice campaigns, including Joan Jett’s recent feminist PSA and the LGBT docuseries In the Life.
Last winter, we’d already lost another sixtysomething Jewish dyke from New York named Lesley: the author and activist Leslie Feinberg. Her obituary in The Advocate was 1,300 words in length — deservedly so. And perhaps pop will always pale in comparison to literature, just as angst will always be for teens. But as Susan Sontag once wrote: "If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then — of course — I’d choose Dostoyevsky. But do I have to choose?"
I wanted my Doors. Lesley deserved better. As do all the rest. History, even that of the LGBT community, is notorious for abandoning queer women — relegating our sort to the footnotes. Historical documentation so often fails to mention our roles in fine art, in science, in royalty, in renaissance, in presidencies, and — yes — even on American Bandstand. While we have an ever increasing number of lesbian role models to take after in 2015, we continue to be denied the privilege of looking back in time and seeing women like us everywhere. We don’t know nearly enough about the queer women who came before us. Lesley was one of them.
Ben King for BuzzFeed News
When I was still hoping to get my interview, I had planned to talk to Lesley about her recent tour, ask how she felt about performing her classics after all these years, and hopefully renew contemporary interest in her live performances.
Thanks to TheFirst Wives Club — which was fast becoming a feminist cult classic — and an unfuckwithable scene from American Horror Story: Asylum, young women were rocking out to “You Don’t Own Me” like it was 1963 all over again. So it seemed absurd to me that soon before her death, Lesley was performing at puny convention centers in New Jersey. I wanted her to become an unquestionable lesbian icon — to elbow her way into our temperamental canon somewhere between Bessie Smith and Melissa Etheridge.
She could have used the hype. In a frank interview at the age of 59, she voiced concern over her finances. “I don’t really have the money to retire yet,” she said. “I haven’t really taken care of myself financially and that’s one of the things I regret most.” After her passing, Page Six revealed that Lesley’s estate was worth $50,000. By celebrity icon standards, she died appallingly broke.
But what I wanted us to talk about most, which made me feel slightly guilty, was her sexuality. I initially thought it would be both prying and superficial to focus on her personal life — but I reminded myself that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith–era affair made the New York Times a decade prior. Even the most esteemed of news outlets aren’t above reporting on the intimate aspects of celebrated heterosexual relationships.
And I wanted to talk to Lesley about her gayness for more than just superficial reasons.
People of all sexual orientations inherit a useful first-aid kit of platitudes from their mother figures: don’t swim immediately after meals; never go to bed with a wet head; don’t talk to old men driving vans older than they are. But when you’re gay, a straight mother can only teach you so much about navigating the messy world of your own desires. This is one of the minor tragedies of lesbianism: We often have to seek out advice about how to figure out our identities elsewhere. This "seeking out" is why lesbians still watch The L Word years after its finale; why so many young queers talk about the internet like it’s a favorite aunt; why lives like Lesley’s are worth the space in our public and personal archives. We should be able to consult with and see ourselves in our gay grandmothers — witness how they survived.
David Redfern
I crate-picked my very first Lesley Gore record in the land of alternative rock — The B-52’s, Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal. Cornered between a sorority boutique and a parking deck in downtown Athens, Georgia, Wuxtry Records has resisted Starbucksification for nearly 40 years. It owes its longevity to another alt ensemble from the town, R.E.M. Two of the band’s members, Michael Stipe and Peter Buck, spent hours at the Wuxtry poring over musty stacks in the '80s while attending college in Athens.
People pay the Wuxtry a visit for two reasons: to trail Stipe’s swishy teen aura around the shop and see what new finds it leads them to, or to buy a certain record. Both are equally satiating, and on that inescapably muggy Sunday morning in August 2013, I was of the latter camp.
I thumbed through box after box of L’s until The Golden Hits appeared somewhere between Lenny Kravitz and Lynyrd Skynyrd. And there she was, a woman depicted in watercolor with unmistakable, omega-shaped hair. She sat wide-legged in a red chair near the cover’s bottom-left corner, a forearm lazily resting on its back: Even by today’s ungirdled standards, her posture, her jeans, and her button-down were anything but ladylike. A list boasting her 10 most popular tunes fell to her left, stylized in a red handwritten font far from the expected calligraphy of her old home ec courses.
I sought out Lesley because I was sad about love and tired of listening to Lana Del Rey. I was attempting to date in a rural place while feeling as though I — multiracial, working-class trash, gay yet very apathetic to HRC bumper stickers — was too much. I was not simply a date, but one that came with baggage rivaling Mary Poppins’. Remembering that Lesley was also gay, I romanticized her narrative, conflating being a lesbian in the New South in 2013 with being one in a big city in 1963.
I imagined that we held our tongues in similar ways. “I never found it was necessary,” she once told an AfterEllen interviewer of the soft-spokenness with which she’d approached coming out. “I really never kept my life private. Those who knew me, those who worked with me, were well aware.” Despite it being widely reported that Lesley only recently came out in 2005, she’d never hid; folks just never thought to ask.
Like her fellow 1960s songbirds Millie Small, Julie London, and Doris Day, the subjects of Lesley’s sweetest bubblegum pop tunes were men: Bobbys and other wholesomely named fellas; cheaters; gents she wished were hers; and boys who tried to tell her what to do (and what to say). But unlike her Technicolor contemporaries, Lesley had been a Sarah Lawrence–attending, gingham oxford–wearing gay girl who was singing songs about men in whom she would come to have no interest. It’s amusing to think that Lesley was not only capable of making the boy-crazy lyrics that music producer Quincy Jones stuffed into her mouth come alive — she did so in a way that was entirely convincing.
Like so many girls before and after her, Lesley sorted it all out in college. “I didn’t really know I was gay until I was in my twenties. I just experimented with boys and girls and had reason to adore them both. I think my first really serious relationship was a gay one, so that began to tell me things about myself,” she told Lesbian News in July 2006.
Was there a moment in university where she was bowled over by her own desire, where the songs about Johnny took on a whole new meaning? Or was performance just that: performance? How did she manage to meet other gay women in the hush-hush world of her youth? Where did she go on her first date with a woman? And fuck asking when she knew she was gay — when did she know she was in love? These were some of the questions I’d hoped to ask her. Aside from a couple of interviews conducted with the LGBT media in the mid-aughts and a conversation with k.d. lang curated by Ms. magazine in 1990, her history remained far from documented and far from appreciated.
Ben King for BuzzFeed News
In her performances, Lesley smiles through tears in an upbeat way that could be described as many things — deranged by today’s standards; normative by rigid 1960s ideals of gender performance. This is evident in the titles of her earlier tunes, many of which are now considered golden hits: “She’s a Fool,” “I Don’t Wanna Be a Loser,” “Wedding Bell Blues.” She was the daughter of the housewife in a 1950s kitchen appliance commercial, appearing thrilled over new technology while actually thinking I hate this fucking microwave oven and fantasizing about rereading The Feminine Mystique.
Gore showed physical restraint in live performances, softening enormously tragic lyrics with a beaming smile that refused to flicker until the final note. Female agony, when externalized, is understood to be ugly. Lesley’s smile was a way of viscerally denying hurt despite singing about it. She was able to send a message without ever looking like its expected messenger.
In her essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain,” another Lesley — Leslie Jamison — pinpoints a shiny new breed of maimed woman: the post-wounded girl. “They’re over it. I am not a melodramatic person. God help the woman who is,” she writes. “Post-wounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much. The post-wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: Don’t cry too loud; don’t play victim.”
Fifty years before the advent of the PWG, there was a type of girl in post-McCarthy-era America who articulated the pain of Lady Macbeth while possessing the carefree demeanor of the futuristic post-wounded girl. Lesley was among them. At a point in time, I too wanted to be this kind of woman, who could have her sorrow and look good, too. Her sadness felt like an exaggeration of mine. I stewed myself in the dated lingo of that era: I was a ditz, a dipstick, a dork, a drag; a skag, a skuzz.
But Lesley — even at her worst — would keep on trucking, beaming through the breakup that’s ripping her heart to shreds. Hey, she says, he’s a trifling idiot and doesn’t really love me, but in the meantime, I’m going to keep on trying because something good might come of it. After all, for every “It’s My Party” (wherein Lesley gets dumped by Johnny for Judy), there’s a lesser-known follow-up hit called “Judy’s Turn to Cry” (in which Leslie steals her boy Johnny back).
The true beauty in the Lesley Gore songbook isn’t that a handful of her songs are pre–second wave feminist anthems: It's that her songs are simultaneously upbeat and sad. If you listen to them, you just might forget why you were sad to begin with. So when my stabs at dating went as well as they do for those who are grossly out of practice, I turned to Lesley like boys in Athens, Georgia, still do to Michael Stipe. I laid needle to vinyl and “I Don’t Wanna Be a Loser” comforted me, just like “Everybody Hurts” does them. I’d found my heroine, the woman who could articulate those gross little emotions that I’d never vocalize myself.
I always get a funny feeling when I listen to oldies, particularly songs about romantic interests. Would Earth, Wind & Fire be OK with me associating “September” with a woman? What about Bobby Darin, or Doris Day? But there was never a doubt about Lesley — if anything, she’d encourage it.
You wish you could wake up like this every day. #Flawless
The Huffington Post put together this magical compilation of pups waking up to the smell of their favorite treats, and now it's the only way you will ever want to be roused from your sweet slumber.
A US marine walked the entire length of the train, looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a poodle, owned by a well dressed, middle-aged, French Woman.
The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may i have that seat ?'
The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular, 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.'
The Marine walked the length of the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down ? i'm very tired.'
She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'
This time the Marine didnt say a word; he just picked up the little dog. threw it out of the train window, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honor! This American should be put in his place.'
An Englishman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong things, you live on the wrong side of the Ocean. You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out the window.'
The student comes up to the professor, "What is this, why did you grade me an 80?"
The professor looks at the exam again, "Yep, an 80 is what you deserve"
The student takes the exam back, and asks "If I'll bite my own eye, will you give me an 85?" The professor is surprised, but still he agrees, at which point the student then takes out his glass eye - and bites it.
The shocked professor then takes the exam back, and marks it 85. The student then says "If I'll bite my nose, will you give me a 90?" The professor is once again shocked, "He can't pull out his nose" he thinks to himself. He finally agrees, at which point the student takes out his dentures, and bites his own nose.
The professor then once again takes the exam, and marks the grade 90.
The student then makes another offer: "If I'll get up on this table, and pee the perfume Coco Chanel on you, will you give me a 100?"
The professor now has to see what this kid can do, so he agrees. The student goes on the table, and pees all over the professor, the professor's shirt is soaking wet, as he goes to to sniff it. "What the hell?! This isn't Coco Chanel! This is piss!"
The student then goes "Fine, we'll leave it at 90".
They all look worn out so the bartender asks them why they look so beat.
The Cowardly Lion goes first and says, "Man, you have no idea what I went through just to get courage."
Aslan then chimes in quickly after that and says, "Nonsense, you have no idea what I went through just to get Narnia united."
There's a pause so they all look at Cecil. He raises his eyes from his drink and quietly says, "Oh yeah? You have no idea what I went through just to get a cavity filled."
A little boy walks in on his parents having sex. The dad, all flustered, tries to explain to him what was going on. -Well, you know how you've always wanted a little brother?....that's what I was doing with mommy. I was putting your little brother inside mommy. The little guy seems content with the explanation, and the dad is quite proud of himself for having thought of it. A couple of weeks later, the dad comes home from work to find the little boy crying on the front steps. -What's wrong buddy...why're you crying? -My baby brother. -What about him? -The mailman came by today....AND ATE HIIIIMM!!
The 'Top Gear' Hosts Are All Returning... To Amazon
The former hosts of global TV hit "Top Gear" — Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May — have signed up to present a new car show on Amazon.
July 30, 2015 at 07:31PM
via Digg http://ift.tt/1U8Pr8T
An eleven year old boy comes home from school and tells his Dad, "Dad, I keep hearing the boys at school use the bad words Pussy and Cunt but I don't know what the difference is."
Dad: "Go get that Penthouse magazine in my nightstand and I'll show you."
The boy runs off to get the magazine and returns breathless.
Dad: Opens the magazine to a picture of a nude woman lying on a bed and draws a circle around the Pussy with his pen. "Son, you see that circle? Everything inside that circle is the Pussy."
Son: "So what is a Cunt then?"
Dad: "Everything outside the circle."
The doctors save his life, but he loses one eye. Before a nice glass one can be fitted, he is temporarily given a wooden eye.
The man becomes very depressed because of his eye loss and sits at home, moping around. Eventually his friends come over and drag him out to a bar to try and cheer him up. While at the bar, he's still just sitting there looking depressed, not really talking. One of his friends suggests he tries to talk to a cute girl who seems alone at the bar.
"No, she'll never go for a man with a wooden eye," the man says.
"Okay, how about that girl over there?" His friend responds. "She has a really big nose".
The man walks over to the girl and asks, "Would you like to dance?"
Very excited, and shocked, to be asked to dance by such an attractive man, the woman responses "Would, I?! Would I?!"
To which the man quickly responds "Big nose! Big nose!"
“Thanks to ‘Adultz Bop,’ my commute to work has become a commute to twerk!”
Soooo, we've all heard of the highly successful "Kidz Bop," where they take popular songs and turn them into kid-friendly versions... like, for instance, here's "Chicken Noodle Soup":
But what if there was "Adultz Bop"? Yes, you read that right! This group of parents banded together and created "Adultz Bop," safe hip-hop for parents by parents!
It will make your commute to work – a commute to TWERK!
You can see all of these stunning images in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
Carine Roitfeld, editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar, is incorporating fairies, notable history makers, and legendary performers in the September issue of the fashion magazine.
Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images
The photos featured, taken by Jean-Paul Goude, show your favorite celebrities as their own personal icons. Here's Katy Perry as Elizabeth Taylor:
Jean-Paul Goude / Harper's Bazaar
And Mariah Carey as Marie Antoinette.
Jean-Paul Goude / Harper's Bazaar
Willow Smith, daughter of Jada Pinkett and Will Smith, as the Hindu goddess Kali.
In the song Pablo rattles off a long list of freaky ladies.
Fun fact: Lil' Jon produced the track but it was originally meant for Usher. When he couldn't get the track back he was forced to produce a new one, which later became Usher's "Yeah!".
In an effort to get Dave Grohl's attention, 1,000 musicians including vocalists, drummers, guitarists, and bassists banded together to stunningly sing The Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly."
After a few months of crowdfunding, the Rockin' 1000 was born, and the dream for the Foo Fighters to play in the Italian city of Cesena could become a reality.