Bethany Larson

Like the rest of the internet, we love Second City’s Sassy Gay Friend video series. The idea of reenacting pivotal scenes from literature that involve a female making bad decisions only to have her gay friend intervene is inspired — and communicates what we’ve all been thinking while reading these scenes. To bide our time until the next video surfaces (they’ve only posted two so far), we’ve rounded up a list of the literary ladies most in need of a sassy gay. Peep the list including Emma Bovary, Desdemona, and Becky Sharp after the jump.
For the full article, visit Flavorwire. 

Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies proved that he could spice up a classic without completely changing the original story — an impressive and difficult task. In his newest novel, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the mash-up author re-imagines American history by adding vampires (think True Blood meets a Ken Burns documentary), allowing him to create explanations for almost every unsolved American mystery while taking some rather hefty creative license. For example: A young Lincoln befriends a young Edgar Allan Poe. They run into a pre-Confederate Jefferson Davis.

It’s a clever idea and the finished product is a little bit campy, a little bit gory, and a lot of fun to delve into. After the jump, check out our interview with Seth Grahame-Smith, where we talk vampires, history, and golf swings.

For the full article, visit Flavorwire.

Every week I commute to that shiny, overpopulated island that is New York City to intern for Flavorwire, a culture and entertainment website.
Having visited NYC on several occasions prior to my commute there every week, I’m pretty familiar with the subway system, and I can honestly say that I love it. Sure, it’s dirty and there’s a lot of people, but for the most part it’s reliable, cheap, and convenient AND it gives me ample time to read. It’s fantastic.

 However, last week I had some very interesting experiences blunders with the subway. Read on for my account.

Subway Blunder #1
After seeing Swedish band Frederik  at Union Hall in Brooklyn, my friends and I left the venue around 11:30 pm to start our journey back to Manhattan. We needed to take the R train. The stop is five blocks from Union Hall.

So we walked there, went underground, swiped our Metrocards, and waited. After a train that was not the R came and went, the attendent let us know that the R train wouldn’t be running into Manhattan because of track maintenance. Great. He then told us to go across the street to the downtrain bound train, take it to 30-something street and catch a Manhattan bound train there. Okay, cool, whatever.

So we did that. We went 30 blocks in the wrong direction to catch a train to take us back to Manhattan. But, because of the lovely track maintenance, these were the slowest trains known to existence. And the car we were in smelled strongly of piss.

At the next stop we switched cars to one that did not offend our olfactory glands, and then proceeded to take an hour long train ride into Manhattan. Unfortunately, that was not the end of our journey because once we got to Manhattan we had to transfer to another train that took another 30 minutes to get us to our hostel on the Upper West Side.

We left Union Hall at 11:30 pm. We arrived at our hostel at 1:30 am.

Subway Blunder #2
Leaving Flavorwire’s office in SoHo and heading to Penn Station requires a very speedy transfer. I take the B or D train to W 4th and have about 30 seconds to make the transfer to the C train that takes me to Penn Station. Of course, I can wait for the A train, but it’s more fun to rush right? This week proved that theory very wrong.

You see, I travel with a back pack. And on Fridays I take that back pack to work, which means that I have to take it on the subway. It’s a very large back pack. And this past week, while making my quick transfer to the C, the subway doors closed on my back pack.

So I’m standing there, lodged in the C train doors, and two very kind men pried the doors open so that I could get inside the train. Once inside, I spied a seat and headed toward it. As I was about to sit, the train heaved forward, throwing me off-balance and backward, so that I landed on top of a toddler.

Yep. I squashed a toddler.

Lesson: wait for the next trian.

And then this morning my Google Reader informed me that Solange performed with the Dirty Projectors at a Fashion Week after-party. Awesome right?

http://www.youtube.com/v/PpvFjnHhjsg&hl=en_US&fs=1&

So, taking into consideration that Solange likes Grizzly Bear enough to talk both big sis Beyonce and brother-in-law Jay-Z into seeing them AND that she performs with the Dirty Projectors, I decided to Google her because I obviously needed to know more about her.

This is when I discovered that she is recording with Of Montreal on their next album and that she performed a cover of Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” with them back in January.

http://www.youtube.com/v/aqdrnUROtnI&hl=en_US&fs=1&

All of these things combined makes it clear that Solange is pretty much awesome. But my question is, did anyone else know that she was this cool? Or is this a new thing that accompanies her new lack of hair?