MetaFilter posts tagged with Rookie

Ira Glass Makes Balloon Animals, Discusses Blow Jobs

knile — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 01:16:16 -0800

At the request of Tavi (wiki) and his wife Anaheed, This American Life host and MetaFilter favorite Ira Glass has contributed an Ask A Grown Man segment (NSFW audio) (AAGM previously) to Rookie. As an added bonus, he instructs viewers on how to make balloon animals, based on a pamphlet he used as a young man entertaining at parties. When not dispensing balloon advice in this clip, he discusses Buffy & Angel's age discrepancy and blow jobs. (via)

Jon Hamm says, Slow Your Roll

ThePinkSuperhero — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:11:00 -0800

Are you a teen girl tired of looking for advice in fluffy magazines? Perhaps you should Ask A Grown Man! Watch Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Hannibal Buress, and other gents dole out advice on love, sex, and who farts (spoiler alert: everyone).

"To be a young woman in our culture means that you exist, from an alarmingly young age, for the appreciation of others. Therefore, your every feature is fair game for public appraisal."

flex — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:14:43 -0800

Finslippy: On being an object, and then not being an object. This starts young. But "...girls are being nice to one another. They're complimenting each other. They are telling each other something important about the world and their place in it." Sometimes, compliments aren't really compliments and "flattering" can be body policing.

First Aid Kit: Some strange music draws me in

filthy light thief — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:01:36 -0800

"Lots of people write storytelling songs about trains and set it to acoustic music and do pretty harmonies, but First Aid Kit transcends that cliché. Their songs sound like they’ve gone away and seen too much and come back tired but still alive. Their music kind of has its own way of breathing: filled with tension for a little while until it goes over the edge and exhales while the instrumental parts just seem to grow. This part of every few songs of theirs is most thrilling in concert, when Klara plays guitar so intensely you’d think it’s her only way of communicating, while Johanna stands perfectly still and lets her voice carry out so that it seems kind of infinite, or like it’s been waiting to come out for forever, and I kind of can’t help imagining that it comes from under the ground up through her mouth, or that a little part of the sky exists in her diaphragm or something. They can sound like freaking angels, or like women demanding life’s answers and who can make Patti Smith cry." Tavi interviews First Aid Kit on Rookie First Aid Kit is a Swedish folk duo composed of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, born in 1990 and 1993, respectively. Their father, Benkt Söderberg (formerly Svensson), was in the 1980s Swedish rock group Lolita Pop (Swedish Wikipedia page through Google translation; fan-made discography in English). The sisters grew up listening to The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Television and David Bowie being played by their parents, and they say their vocals are "inspired by Björk, Billie Holiday and Judy Garland" (print view of an interview with The Sun). Singing together since they were girls, they covered a song by Fleet Foxes in 2008 (compare with the original version), which got them lots of attention on the internet. That same year, they released an EP called Drunken Trees (sample track with a fan-made video). The EP got expanded into a mini-LP and was re-released by UK-based Wichita Recordings, home to Bright Eyes, a favorite of the sisters. The sisters recorded their first album, The Big Black & Blue in 2010 (sample video), and the next year toured with Bright Eyes. First Aid Kit's dream of working with producer Mike Mogis, a Saddle Creek staple. That album is The Lion's Roar (title track video). But this is skipping over why Patti Smith was crying during First Aid Kit's performance of Patti's own song. First Aid Kit were invited to perform at the 2011 Polar Music Prize ceremony, where Patti Smith was an award recipient for "[demonstrating] how much rock’n'roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock’n'roll". Bonus: 51 First Aid Kit videos, including interviews and live performances, uploaded by YouTube account Drunken Trees, a First Aid Kit fan channel.

Slumber parties and sisterhood

naoko — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:55:25 -0800

Jezebel. The Hairpin. xoJane. Rookie. The ladyblog isn't quite the same as a feminist blog, but what is it? n+1 says, The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—'sisterhood,' let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship." Salon counters, "On the ladyblogs, adult womanhood is a given, and within our shared womanhood we carve out a comfortable space we can all inhabit."

“Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion”

The Whelk — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:02:25 -0800

How To Dress Like Edward Gorey (And everyone he ever drew)