Tyler Coates

Earlier this year I finally saw the video for what I thought was...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:27:00 -0400

Earlier this year I finally saw the video for what I thought was another bad MGMT song, and I thought, “Man, those dudes bought a lot of makeup and have really let themselves go,” and I was shocked that no one was talking about it. Imagine how confused I was this morning when I went to the Pitchfork Media dot net to read the news about the Jésus album and discovered that Empire of the Sun is a completely different band and that song has been around for five years.

Last weekend, Andrew ran into Patricia Clarkson in the West...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:44:06 -0400

Last weekend, Andrew ran into Patricia Clarkson in the West Village. He stopped her and said, “Patricia Clarkson! You are one of the best there ever was.” And then they stood in the street and talked for about fifteen minutes. He told her that he had High Art waiting at home for him from Netflix because I had never seen it, and she told him to give me a stiff drink first.

We watched it yesterday, and it / she is amazing. Also, I bet if we screened it for the entire Buzzfeed office we could probably stop the whole ’90s nostalgia thing once and for all.

This makes me SO SAD.

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:31:49 -0400

This makes me SO SAD.

Here’s a collection of Cats fan-fiction to make your...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:35:00 -0400

Here’s a collection of Cats fan-fiction to make your Friday afternoon extra weird.

Here’s a picture of Corey Feldman with the cast of Cats,...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:16:22 -0400

Here’s a picture of Corey Feldman with the cast of Cats, just ‘cause.

flavorpill: To boil it down, being gay [on TV] has become the...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:52:22 -0400

flavorpill:

To boil it down, being gay [on TV] has become the latest excuse for being unabashedly racist.

Two Liberal Gay Couples With A Side Of White Supremacy, Please

Last week, "dueling" theater critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman sat down with station manager Torey Malatia, executive producer Justin Kaufmann, and managing editor Sally Eisele and were told their services were no longer required, though it would be nice if they'd occasionally donate them. Other contributors were told the same thing. "They said, 'It's because we have so much respect for your work that we're doing this face-to-face,'" says Kleiman. "'Everybody else is getting e-mail or a phone call.'" The tone of the meeting, Abarbanel tells me, was simple and poignant: "We hate to do this, but times are really tough." Says Kleiman: "There was quite a bit of that. But in fact—and Justin was the one charged with saying this—the station is going in a different direction. They want listener-generated content. They want audience participation. They want call-ins. Given that, they don't have any use for experts. Justin said, 'If we want an expert on theater we can call [the Tribune's] Chris Jones to come in for free.' "The traditional WBEZ format is that lots of highly educated people talked about their specialties. That's over. That was my understanding of the meeting."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:55:41 -0400

Last week, "dueling" theater critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman sat down with station manager Torey Malatia, executive producer Justin Kaufmann, and managing editor Sally Eisele and were told their services were no longer required, though it would be nice if they'd occasionally donate them. Other contributors were told the same thing. "They said, 'It's because we have so much respect for your work that we're doing this face-to-face,'" says Kleiman. "'Everybody else is getting e-mail or a phone call.'" The tone of the meeting, Abarbanel tells me, was simple and poignant: "We hate to do this, but times are really tough." Says Kleiman: "There was quite a bit of that. But in fact—and Justin was the one charged with saying this—the station is going in a different direction. They want listener-generated content. They want audience participation. They want call-ins. Given that, they don't have any use for experts. Justin said, 'If we want an expert on theater we can call [the Tribune's] Chris Jones to come in for free.' "The traditional WBEZ format is that lots of highly educated people talked about their specialties. That's over. That was my understanding of the meeting."

bg5000: J mascis reacts to that dumb ass Buzzfeed post. A+

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:02:03 -0400

bg5000:

J mascis reacts to that dumb ass Buzzfeed post.

A+

Maxine gets me.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:48:45 -0400

Maxine gets me.

I spent so much time yesterday looking at pictures of Prince....

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:32:03 -0400

I spent so much time yesterday looking at pictures of Prince. I’m not really mad about it.

Pictures of Prince Doing Normal Stuff

"Perhaps I’m asking too much from comedians, as well as comedy audiences. Sure, not everyone wants to hear a stand-up comedian say something thoughtful, because thinking is not for the comedy clubs. So that’s why there are the Daniel Toshes of the world, because there are people who legitimately think that dude is funny. That’s totally fine, too — but it’s still a bummer that the people getting laughed at are not those who are doing something terrible, but rather the people who are the victims of terrible crimes."

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:48:05 -0400

"Perhaps I’m asking too much from comedians, as well as comedy audiences. Sure, not everyone wants to hear a stand-up comedian say something thoughtful, because thinking is not for the comedy clubs. So that’s why there are the Daniel Toshes of the world, because there are people who legitimately think that dude is funny. That’s totally fine, too — but it’s still a bummer that the people getting laughed at are not those who are doing something terrible, but rather the people who are the victims of terrible crimes."

I’m in the process of moving out of my apartment. The bed...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:56:40 -0400

I’m in the process of moving out of my apartment. The bed bugs have come back, and we’re breaking our lease. It’s a shame because I really loved my apartment, but it also means that I’m moving into Andrew’s place while we save money for a larger space. (Two giant humans in one Brooklyn studio is going to be a challenge.) While I won’t be completely out for another couple of weeks — the exterminator still has to spray one more time, and I’ll start moving stuff into storage and giving rid of furniture — I already feel a little displaced, especially being disconnected from all of my stuff. It’s a little like when I first moved to New York nearly three years ago and slept on a couch for five months while my stuff sat in my mom’s house in Virginia. It’s not necessary to have it, but it’s still a bit uncomfy not to have it all in one place.

One thing that’s still sort of hitting me in a slow way is that I’ll never see that dumb cat again. I miss that cat. My roommate took him to her sister’s place a few weeks before the first spraying, and I didn’t really process it. I didn’t think about it at all! But I’ve shared space with this animal for two years, and I kind of secretly loved him. And now he is gone, and that’s a bummer.

While we were in Atlanta over the weekend, we listened to...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:40:37 -0400

While we were in Atlanta over the weekend, we listened to whatever pop radio station they have down there (“all the hits without the rap!”) and I was forced to hear every fucking fun. song about 18 times each, and then that one song about how he should have bought her flowers, and also a lot of P!nk, and that damn “Trouble” song by Taylor Swift, but of all of the 10 songs we heard on a 48-hour loop, I can honestly say that this is the one that I would willingly listen to every hour for the rest of my life because it’s the greatest song of all time.

I got the AMAZING opportunity to talk with the legendary...

Fri, 31 May 2013 13:29:10 -0400

I got the AMAZING opportunity to talk with the legendary director William Friedkin about two of his provocative and controversial films The Boys in the Band and Cruising. Seriously, I’ve been wanting to have this conversation for years and am so stoked I made it happen.

De Rossi, who has been very honest about her struggles with...

Thu, 30 May 2013 11:11:00 -0400

De Rossi, who has been very honest about her struggles with eating disorders early in her career, now must deal with a new kind of pressure from critics and audiences: staying youthful and beautiful while also “aging gracefully.” That her appearance has been cited as a reason why the fourth season of Arrested Development isn’t as good as the previous three, suggesting her face is so distracting that it’s impossible for anyone to laugh at Mitch Hurwitz’s jokes, is more disheartening than the notion that she’s succumbed to pressure and had any sort of plastic surgery.

I wrote about the sexist and stupid conversation people are having about Portia de Rossi’s appearance on the new Arrested Development.

Yesterday, CNN and BuzzFeed announced a partnership, and...

Wed, 29 May 2013 12:54:39 -0400

Yesterday, CNN and BuzzFeed announced a partnership, and immediately began publishing listicles on the cable news outlet’s website. One of the first to pop up, timed to the HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra, was a list of 20 straight actors who have played gay characters both on film and television. While the intro suggested that the pair of actors in the Liberace biopic, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, was the impetus for the list (“Here are 20 other actors that successfully pulled off playing a different sexuality on screen,” the author wrote), the list still included them, meaning the author only managed to come up with 18 straight actors who have played gay roles sometime in the last 20 years. (The earliest film on the list was Philadelphia.) That’s not the only issue with the list: it’s indicative of not just the mindset that straight actors who play gay characters should be heralded for their bravery, but also of the poor and limited cinematic depictions of the gay experience.

While there’s little subtext to the list itself — it is merely a quick collection of actors who have gone gay on film, with no particularly surprising choices and little variety — it’s representative of the larger issue in Hollywood: the lack of gay roles on film. There are 20 roles included on the list, but they represent only 12 movies (and two television shows). Multiple actors from the same films are listed, reminding us that roles for LGBT characters tend to be grouped together.

Here is my response to an unsurprisingly lazy listicle from a straight dude about other straight people who have played gay people on film (and one transgender character, because, you know, we’re all the same, etc). It really pissed me off!

The presence of Taylor Swift looms over Westerly, Rhode Island...

Sun, 26 May 2013 18:10:15 -0400

The presence of Taylor Swift looms over Westerly, Rhode Island this weekend, and she’s practically unavoidable. Yesterday we had lunch in Watch Hill, just a ten-minute drive from Shelter Harbor (where we are staying and are planning to get married next June). Right before we drove back to the house, we stopped into one of those beachside stores for women of a certain class — there was a wall of Vera Bradley bags and a selection of tea towels with cute, sassy little sayings on them, as well as the anchor-themed bags and packages of sea biscuits and starfish that caught my eye. As soon as we walked in, I nearly doubled over when I heard they were playing Taylor Swift on the stereo; we were just steps away from the home she bought, which also sits right on the street and is two doors down from a 300-room hotel. (Some local guys were over last night drinking cocktails, and one told me that the proprietors of Ocean House are not thrilled that Swift moved in next door. He also told me he had worked an event at the home, and it doesn’t have heat. It’s cold this weekend, and I bet she is freezing.) It’s a bit odd that someone of her fame-level wouldn’t purchase a more secluded home, but, you know, she’s a 23-year-old.

Today we drove over to Charlestown and stopped in an antique store on the way back. While I was waiting to pay for my purchases, the antique dealer told us, unsolicited, that we had just missed Taylor Swift. “I felt really bad for her,” she said. “She didn’t say a word, and was followed around the store by some girls who wouldn’t leave her alone. Her bodyguards paid for her while she went back into the car, and I penned a note telling her that if she ever wanted to come back, I’d close to the store for a couple of hours for her.” (She also commented that she was too thin.) I’m fascinated by celebrity like this: we revile them, we are sympathetic. I don’t care much about Taylor Swift, but it is a bummer that she can’t be left alone. Of course, she chose this profession, this status, so I guess I can’t feel too bad? But on the other hand, there’s someone like Amanda Bynes, who also willingly puts herself in front of an audience and is unable to control how she is depicted, and we use her for our own entertainment: she’s pathetic and sad and we pop-psychologize her, and it’s all a bit of a bummer. Not to be sanctimonious, but it grosses me out whenever I see someone I know tweeting at her, egging her on in some anonymous way, as if you’d walk up to a stranger on the street and tell her how disgusting she was for having whatever mental issue you’d recently diagnosed her with.

Basically, I think it must be really shitty to be famous.

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 is as good as...

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:20:00 -0400

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 is as good as everyone says, completely worth the ticket price, and the best show in town. You’d be a fool to miss this. Seriously.

I guess The Knife will release a song every ten years that I...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:18:11 -0400

I guess The Knife will release a song every ten years that I really love and then a whole lot of other stuff I find pretty much unlistenable. Anyway, this falls under the former category.

LITERALLY ALL I EVER WANT TO DO IS TALK ABOUT CATS! Luckily, the...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:08:00 -0400

LITERALLY ALL I EVER WANT TO DO IS TALK ABOUT CATS! Luckily, the ladies at The Gloss asked me to play Wed/Bed/Dead (their version of Fuck/Marry/Kill, naturally) with characters from Cats. THAT IS MY DREAM. Obviously, I would fuck Rum Tum Tugger.