In this piece , I will be using the word nigger very liberally, not “the n-word.” On this matter, I agree with comedian Louis CK, who once said: When you say ‘the n-word’ you put the word ‘nigger’ in the listeners’ head. That’s what saying a word is. You say ‘the n-word’ and I go, ‘oh, she means…

The tastemaking label celebrates seven years with a series of genre-defying events I’m blown, I’m zooted / Can’t believe that I’m even moving Off a half a gram of molly, we about to go party And I don’t know what I’m doing, step! ► These unfiltered words come tumbling out of the mouth of oddball…

My modeling headshot as a 19-year-old aspiring actress in 1987, a couple of years after I met Bill Cosby. (Nicholas deScoise) In 2004, when Andrea Constand filed a lawsuit against Bill Cosby for sexual assault, her lawyers asked me to testify. Cosby had drugged and raped me, too, I told them. The…

“I don’t want to give spoilers, but there will be more female characters and more female stuff.” That’s Lego Movie co-director Chris Miller talking to the BBC last week, along with creative partner Phil Lord, about their plans for the upcoming sequel to their 2014 film. And while on the surface,…

Marc Raishbrook was showing off video of a bear when the news came. A public-transit accident. Exposition Line. Woman possibly trapped on the tracks. "Time to work," Raishbrook said from the back seat of his Dodge Charger. Advertisement "Probably near Vermont," his brother, Austin Raishbrook, said…

Correction, Nov. 9, 2014: The basic assumptions I made about black holes in this movie were incorrect, so the conclusions I drew below were incorrect. This needs some explaining, so please read my follow-up post that hashes out my errors. I generally enjoy writing movie reviews; they’re a fun way to…

Spoiler warning: This essay digs deeply into Christopher Nolan’s films, including end details for Interstellar , The Prestige , and others. Proceed with due caution. Informed by Boswell that Bishop George Berkeley had proposed a theory stating that matter doesn’t actually exist—that so-called…

Official music video for 'The Stampede' by Biting Elbows Album out now! iTunes http://goo.gl/gFZXr facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bitingelbows Directed and Edited by Ilya Naishuller Shot by Sergei Valyaev Created by Ilya Naishuller and Sergei Valyaev Cast & Crew: Andrei Dementiev Ilya Kondratiev…

Getty Images When a small-time Tennessee restaurateur named Khaled Abdel Fattah was running short of cash he went to an ATM. Actually, according to federal prosecutors, he went to a lot of them. Over 18 months, he visited a slew of small kiosk ATMs around Nashville and withdrew a total of more than…

From the curators: The AK-47 (Avtomat Kalashnikova) was designed by Soviet military engineer Mikhail Kalashnikov and debuted in 1947. Building on previous assault rifle technologies, he developed it to be lightweight, easy to handle, durable, and cheap to produce. The AK-47 became standard issue for…

FULL DISCLOSURE: I never worked directly for Chris Boyce at the CBC, but during my 2nd stint he was my boss’ boss. Background Last Tuesday at the CBC’s Toronto headquarters, senior executives Chris Boyce and Chuck Thompson paid the beleaguered Q staff an unexpected visit. Boyce, who runs CBC Radio,…

The odds aren’t bad that you are (or soon will be) one of the more than 40 million people who’ve viewed the 2013 music video for “Bad Motherfucker,” a song by Russian band Biting Elbows. If so, you were probably too transfixed by the film’s first-person footage and convincing violence to pay…

Imagine attempting to write a nuanced, emotionally rich story about a protagonist who kills, like, several hundred people over the course of his or her hero’s journey. That gives you an idea of how hard it is to write for the first-person shooter genre of video games. Effective storytelling requires…

Boob Tube: UHF (1989) Posted by R. Emmet Sweeney on November 11, 2014 UHF was released to apoplectic critics and an apathetic public on July 21st, 1989. Its opening weekend box office put it in eleventh place, behind the nearly month-old run of Weekend at Bernie’s . It would disappear from theaters…

You know John Thorn. Official historian for Major League Baseball. Mustachioed guy in the Ken Burns documentary. I went to his big house upstate last week because Thorn wanted to show me something. It was evidence of a “lively corpse,” Thorn called it, “or fabulous invalid.” Let me explain. As you…

The box office failures of Catwoman (2004) and Elektra (2005) gave studios an excuse for not making superhero movies featuring anyone but white men. But it seemed like more of a convenient justification than a good one, since the failure of both The Green Hornet and Green Lantern in 2011 didn’t lead…

How a viral rap song with no chorus topped the Billboard charts and made everyone Shmoney Dance T he top ten on Billboard ’s Hot 100 Chart is a lot like the student body of an elite prep school. It’s dominated by the kids with heritage, their status is preordained, their popularity genetically…

This weekend, an animated lyric video for Nicki Minaj’s new single “Only” did the improbable: it eclipsed Nicki’s lyrics themselves — and this on a song in which Nicki, Drake, and Lil Wayne talk repeatedly and at length about how, why, and when they may engage in sexual intercourse! Lyric videos are…

“Weird Al” Yankovic is a parodist, not a satirist. When he turns Michael Jackson’s “Bad” into “Fat,” or Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” into “Handy,” he isn’t critiquing or exposing anything about those songs. He’s taking something popular and making it sillier—the way lots of people do, when they’re kidding…

Sharp stencil: Rocket Launcher by Banksy. Photo: Steve Lazarides B anksy is due any minute. The only trouble is I don't know what he looks like. Nobody here seems to know what he looks like. But they all know him. That is, they know of him. That is, if he is a he. The barman in the pub in…

Andrew Winning/Reuters Kriston Capps Nov 4, 2014 The world's foremost street artist is a social justice warrior and a viral media master. She could be anyone. Banksy Does New York , a new documentary airing on HBO on Nov. 17, opens on a bunch of scofflaws trying to jack an inflatable word balloon…

While reporting my recent Rolling Stone feature on Bill Murray, I spent a weekend in Toronto, attending the world premiere of St. Vincent, going to a screening of Ghostbusters at the official “ Bill Murray Day,” talking to his friends and collaborators, partying with the star at a Toronto nightclub,…

Deep breaths. That's usually what it takes to stay sane while watching somebody search for their neck pillow while standing in the aisle with 100 other passenger waiting to get to their seats. Loading an airplane quickly and efficiently isn’t an easy task. It should be, and could be, but the humans…

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Video: Vicky Wasik] If you haven't noticed, I'm a big fan of the cast iron . When I packed up my apartment last spring and had to live for a full month with only two pans in my kitchen, you can bet your butt that the first one I grabbed was my trusty cast iron…

The extent to which virtual reality technology is going to change the way we consume entertainment hasn’t yet been determined. But as the hardware that it takes to make these things starts getting cheaper and more common, we’re going to get our first glimpse at the answers. Even while Oculus Rift…

Self-help with the "Wolf of Wall Street" It’s 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and I’m nearly an hour into a sales pitch called “The Truth Behind His Success.” A couple hundred other people sit in stiff plastic chairs in the Los Angeles Convention Center, seeking transformation. "My dad f—ing hated…

Game Info Platform 360, PS3, Win, PS4, Xbox One Publisher Activision Developer Sledgehammer Games Release Date Nov 4, 2014 Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare developer Sledgehammer Games has the unappealing responsibility of cleaning up someone else's mess. Last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts was a low…

As 3-D printed guns have evolved over the past 18 months from a science-fictional experiment into a subculture , they’ve faced a fundamental limitation: Cheap plastic isn’t the best material to contain an explosive blast. Now an amateur gunsmith has instead found a way to transfer that stress to a…

Courtesy Aloe Blacc I am many things: a singer, a musician, a businessman, and a philanthropist. But above all, I am a songwriter. At our core, songwriters are creators . We challenge ourselves and others to reflect on the world around us. And the work we produce has power—power to capture people’s…

Alexis Madrigal I want to show you something. First, below, you'll see real seventh grade math homework, which I acquired from my father, who works at my old middle school. You probably recognize this sort of sheet from before "math" became algebra, geometry, and the calculus. And then, the video…

IT’S GOING TO BE A BUMPY RIDE Travis Kalanick, C.E.O. and co-founder of Uber, in San Francisco. Every now and then, when he’s spoiling for a fight, Travis Kalanick has a face like a fist. At these times, his eyes crinkle, his nose flares, and his mouth purses just like a clenched hand readying a…

Hola chicas y chicos! I'm writing this from the gorgeous flat in the 19ieme arrondissement where Mom and I are staying for a few days. It's a far cry from my student chambre, - the bathroom has proper lighting for one thing, and I have yet to notice any ants in the kitchen. You might wonder why the…

In a New York Times review of The Incredibles, A.O. Scott made a curious observation: “[the film] suggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand.” He wasn’t alone in this belief. When The Incredibles came out 10 years ago, it…

Sal DiVita, the lead artist and game designer at video game maker Midway, was suplexing his co-worker. A big pro wrestling fan, he was having a bit of fun in the motion capture room after miming tackles for the animations of the company's upcoming video game, NFL Blitz . He'd mix in elbow drops, leg…

Despite the current centrality of comic-book movies in American culture, I’m not much of a comic-book reader. For me, they’re still just funny-animal stories for children, and until I read an article proclaiming that comic books aren’t just for kids anymore, I can only assume they appeal exclusively…

Snopes.com creator David Mikkelson has been calling out bullshit on the Internet for two decades. (There's no antifreeze in Fireball , people ... merely the makings of a very regrettable hangover.) We caught up with Mikkelson to find out where Snopes came from, and what's next for the site. Above,…

Boxed E.T. Game on Ebay My friend, colleague, and fellow Punk Archaeologist Prof. Bill Caraher introduced me to what he calls the “archaeology of late capitalism”, and he wrote yesterday (Nov. 3, 2014 for those of you in the future) on his blog about Alamogordo’s Ebay auctions of Atari games…