F

Flavorwire

Sesame Street

Politics

‘Sesame Street’ Not Cool With Obama’s Big Bird Campaign Ad

By Emily Temple on

Sesame Workshop has asked the Obama campaign to take down a new campaign video that features a character that’s been getting a lot of attention recently: Big Bird. The video mocks Mitt Romney’s vow to end the federal subsidy to PBS by cheekily painting Big Bird as a nefarious “evil genius” and menace to our economy, with Romney as the only man brave enough to go up against him. But friendly as he seems, the big yellow bird’s not having it. The folks behind Sesame Street posted this statement on their blog: “Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.” Watch the offending video after the jump (while it lasts), and let us know what you think in the comments. … Read More

  • 0

Books

The Pop Cultural Landscape (According to Books)

By Emily Temple on

Earlier this week, we spotted a great list of the most mentioned songs in literature over at PWxyz. They’d gotten their info from Small Demons, a fantastic website devoted to connecting books to each other and to the world in interesting ways. Inspired, we did some exploring of our own, and came up with a snapshot of the pop cultural landscape — at least if our books can be believed. Though all of these lists are of necessity always changing as new works get added to the database (and the world), we still think they give a pretty good picture — click through to see the artists, musicians, songs, films and even clothing brands that get most mentioned in literature printed in English, and let us know if you think the book world reflects our culture accurately in the comments. … Read More

  • 0

Television

Watch Sesame Street’s Hilarious ‘Boardwalk Empire’ Parody

By Caroline Stanley on

Sesame Street’s parodies of popular TV series are pretty hard to resist. Remember Sad Men? Or True Mud? How about when Liz Lemon was played by a lemon in 30 Rocks or that spot-on send-up of Glee from last fall? If you love these spoofs as much as we do, then you’ll be happy to hear there’s a new skit that takes its inspiration from one of the most ridiculous sources to-date: HBO’s violence- and sex-packed gangster drama, Boardwalk Empire. Click through to watch Nucky Ducky Thompson face-off against Clucky Luciano and Agent van Cuckoo on the “Birdwalk,” and let us know in
the comments what totally inappropriate TV show you’d like to see Sesame Street tackle next. Any takers for Breaking Bad? … Read More

  • 0

Art

Upsetting Knit Sculptures of Childhood Heroes Fallen on Hard Times

By Emily Temple on

If you have a strong connection to your stuffed Pooh bear, you’d better look away now. In knitwork artist Patricia Waller’s Broken Heroes series, now up at Berlin’s Galerie Deschler, which we recently spotted over at We Heart, your childhood heroes have fallen on some hard times — Bert is scruff-faced on the street and Ernie-less, Superman has made a serious miscalculation in his navigation, and we’re not even sure how Spider-Man got into that position. Waller’s witty pieces range from lighthearted to incredibly dark, but they’re all imbued with a twisted commentary on the one-dimensional personas of pop culture standbys. Click through to be shocked by how far cartoons can really fall, and then if you haven’t had enough, head over to Waller’s website to see more of her work. … Read More

  • 0

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Four slightly different teasers for Pixar’s Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters, Inc. which focuses on Mike and Scully’s college years, have arrived online. Watch them all here.

2. Can we all agree that there’s no way that the new Sesame Street movie that’s in the works will be able to compete… Read More

  • 0

Pop Culture

The Fictional 99%: 10 of Pop Culture's Poorest Characters

By Emily Temple on

Earlier this week, Forbes released its annual list of the 15 richest fictional characters, topped by Tolkien’s legendary dragon Smaug and featuring other one percenters like Tywin Lannister, Tony Stark and Robert Crawley. Well, that’s all very well and good, but the list got us to thinking about the other end of the stick — the poorest fictional characters across pop culture, from street urchins to hobos to a very special monster who lives in a trash can. Click through to check out our list, and since we obviously couldn’t hit them all, let us know if we’ve missed your favorite impoverished fictional figure in the comments. … Read More

  • 0

Pop Culture

Watch an Amazing ‘Sesame Street’/N.W.A. Mash-Up from 1994

By Judy Berman on

If its YouTube description is to be believed, the clip below hails from a time before “mash-up” was a buzzword and everyone with a computer could be a video editor: “This VCR-made remix was created by an unnamed student at Florida State University in 1994 by combining footage from Sesame Street with the protest rap song ‘Fuck the [sic] Police’ from N.W.A’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton.” The video (which apparently isn’t exactly new to the Internet, although we hadn’t seen it before) is just about as simple as that, but the syncing is spot-on and the editing witty. And of course, who could deny the thrill of watching the Muppets get radical? Watch it after the jump, and consider the possibilities of bringing the revolution to preschool. … Read More

  • 0

Film

Flavorpill’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorpill’s streaming movie guide, a new feature in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, we’ve got some newly streaming indies, recent favorites soon to be remade and sequelized, and a couple of classics that have been on our minds as of late. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

  • 0

Pop Culture

A Collection of Incredibly Weird Pop Culture Bras

By Jennifer Lewis on

Once upon a time, we were Google image searching “Pokémon” (why yes, it’s 1998 and we’re a bunch of nerdy 12-year-olds) and a wild Pokébra appeared. That’s right, a bra that makes breasts look like Poké Balls. The discovery piqued our curiosity and a little bit of research yielded the realization that there are a lot of unusual pop-culture bras out there, folks, and it’s our civic duty to round some up and present them to you in one handy collection. If the Pokébra isn’t quite your style, we’ve got everything from Where the Wild Things Are to Vincent van Gogh-themed undergarments. Catch ‘em all after the jump. … Read More

  • 0

Pop Culture

The Best Pop-Culture 'Mad Men' Mash-Ups

By Victoria McNally on

Are you as excited for the return of AMC’s Mad Men as we are? Probably not, because we’re pretty pumped over here, so much so that we’re constantly tempted to insert Mad Men references in completely unrelated posts. Luckily, there are some fantastic crossovers out there to keep you entertained until the premiere on March 25th, and we’ve put together a list of the best ones for your perusal, featuring everything from Mad Libs to Muppets. If you can think of any we didn’t catch, let us know! … Read More

  • 0