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Una LaMarche

By Una LaMarche 5/23 12:07pm

Mothers Superior

ZinaSaunders_BreastFeeding

What About Boob?: It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Breastfeeds a 3-Year-Old

I was breastfed until I was 4 years old. Or 5, maybe. My mother has always been fuzzy on the exact math. I choose to go with 4, because as it is, people tend to look so shocked that I’m afraid their lower jaws might actually fracture were I to add a full year to my tenure suckling on what I reportedly liked to call “nippy.”

As you might imagine, this information became humiliating to me right around the time I sprouted my own breasts (sixth grade or seventh grade, depending on which breast you want to date from—they were Irish twins). Read More

By Una LaMarche 5/01 9:30am

Mothers Superior

Web_-IceCream_David_Saracino2

Ice Cream Anti-Social: Slope Parents Fear Playground Popsicle Pusherman

I was shocked—shocked—to hear about the backlash that erupted a few weeks ago after a mom on the Park Slope Parents message board complained about ice cream vendors infiltrating our local playgrounds, in a craven attempt to force their obesity-promoting, lactose-intolerant intolerant products on innocent children.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was eating a pint of ice cream—well, gelato—when I received my weekly PSP digest, which was otherwise a lovely and harmless collection of stories about people getting help spying on their nannies using iPhone apps, or choosing the right Jewish day school, that read like an ever-so-slightly ethnic Nicholas Sparks novel. But when I got to the blast about the the ice cream incident, I pushed back my stracciatella in shame. Read More

By Una LaMarche 8/24/11 9:02am

movies

A clown.

Killer Carneys Battle for Love in the Lush, Grotesque The Last Circus

A word of warning: if you are frightened by clowns, do not—I repeat, do not—see The Last Circus, a madcap, macabre fable from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia, who has been compared to Guillermo del Toro but who, in this film at least, seems to be channeling some horror fanboy hybrid of Fellini and Almodóvar. Highly stylized and brutally dramatic, The Last Circus, which premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival, can be stunning, captivating and frightening—that is, until it loses its mind halfway through Read More

By Una LaMarche 8/24/11 8:53am

movies

Rudd.

Paul Rudd Charms as an Ingenuous Drifter in Our Idiot Brother

Ever since he broke out in the 1995 Jane Austen-goes-to-the-Valley romp Clueless, earning teen idol status for the somewhat questionable act of kissing his underage onscreen step-sister, Paul Rudd has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as the go-to hapless everyman. Most of his roles fall into two categories: the hapless, disarming romantic lead (I Love You, Man, How Do You Know), and the hapless, hammy sidekick (Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wet Hot American Summer). But in Our Idiot Brother, a warm and witty comedy from brother-sister team Jesse and Evgenia Peretz, Mr. Rudd has found a perfect role that showcases his considerable charm and comic talent without robbing him of his hap. Read More

By Una LaMarche 8/24/11 8:49am

movies

Flypaper.

Heist Comedy Flypaper Throws Out the Tired Movie Tropes, But Nothing Sticks

Every once in a while a movie comes along that is so bad it makes you feel terrible for everyone involved. Flypaper, a new indie that’s little more than a haphazard assemblage of clichés, clunky camera tricks and cringe-worthy dialogue, is just such a film. Directed by Rob Minkoff (best known for Disney’s The Lion King and the Stuart Little movies, but out of his depth in live-action adult fare) and written, presumably on a bender, by The Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, Flypaper tries extremely hard to be a zany bank heist farce-slash-mystery, a kind of whimsical cross between Ocean’s Eleven and Clue. And while it may succeed in theory, it fails—spectacularly—in practice. Read More

By The Editors 8/16/11 7:11pm

Opening Shot

Perry.

Soros is Thrown a Lawsuit While Pawlenty Throws in the Towel

The riots in London seem finally to have subsided, but strange things are afoot stateside this week, so much so that we’re starting to wonder if Mercury, which went retrograde Aug. 3, is currently doing to the entire planet what it once did so publicly to Jeremy Piven. (Also, when does the statute of limitations Read More

By Una LaMarche 8/03/11 11:28am

Meme Studies

bronies

Pony Up Haters: How 4chan Gave Birth to the Bronies

On a recent sweltering Saturday afternoon, a group of young men gathered in a dance studio in midtown overlooking Eighth Avenue. The room, oddly but appropriately, smelled faintly of hay.

A grand piano had been pushed to the wall to accommodate a series of folding tables, and a fan was rotating lazily, attempting to combat the 98-degree heat. At the door, a volunteer handed out raffle tickets and solicited pizza preferences for lunch. The guests—mostly in their 20s and overwhelmingly in favor of facial hair and cargo shorts—milled around, but no one strayed far from a table at the front of the room, which was covered end-to-end with My Little Pony merchandise. Lording over the spread of glittering pastel wares was a stocky man with graying hair and glasses who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a pink pony and the words “HATERS GONNA HATE.” Hello, his name tag read, My name is Cupcakes.

Welcome to the world of the Bronies. Read More

By Una LaMarche 7/05/11 8:09pm

Opening Shot

Strauss-Kahn.

Strauss-Kahn Bids Adieu and Beck Does So Too

The fireworks have died down (hope you enjoyed the show, Jersey … better luck next year, Brooklyn and Queens) and all that’s left of this year’s patriotic festivities are the tiny flags littering the West Side Highway, the distended abdomens of the contestants in Nathan’s annual hot dog-eating contest and the sobering knowledge that, according to Read More