By Una LaMarche 4/30 6:30pm

Mothers Superior

Illo: David Saracino

Beware of Potty Crashers: Today’s Baby Shaming is Tomorrow’s Therapy Bill

Over the weekend, my friend told me about her 2-year-old son’s anal fissure. We were strolling through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, admiring the cherry blossoms as our kids scampered Frogger-style through three lanes of Bugaboos, when she confessed that he couldn’t poop without crying.

“Poor guy,” she sighed. “He won’t take baths, either.” Then she proceeded to describe the wound in detail, before adding, “It’s the kind of thing some people would put on Facebook.” I didn’t need to scroll through my news feed to prove her right. In the past week alone, I have seen photos of a grotesquely infected eye, a placental encapsulation and a “potty” full of urine.  Read More

By Drew Grant 4/03 2:02pm

girls

hqdefault

Why Did Girls Downsize, Relocate Writers’ Room?

HBO’s critically acclaimed show Girls is mixing it up for Season 3 … and leaving a few names behind. Don’t start crying yet: it’s not any of the cast members. In an article last month by Joe Pompeo, a source spilled the beans that three of the show’s L.A. writers will not be returning to the already-small writers’ room. But why?

Well, relocation, to start. The eternal struggle between L.A. lifers and chronic New Yorkers: the oldest story in the book. But also, more things! Read More

By Drew Grant 4:13pm

Viral Video

Video

Spring Break forever...until you stick a Q-tip in your ear. (THR)

The Girls of Spring Breakers: The Best Mashup of the Season?

You see, we put a question mark in the title because that way you will click through to find out whether The Hollywood Reporter‘s video combining scenes from Spring Breakers and HBO’s GIRLS is as great as we question it to be. But the truth is, you already know the answer. You’ve known it all along, deep down. This is obviously the best mashup you will be seeing for awhile. Honestly, they had us at “Spring Breakers meets Girls.” Enjoy. Read More

By Drew Grant and Alex Bedder 3/11 8:00am

girls

b

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×09: ‘On All Fours’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Please welcome The New York Observer’s recap illustrator Alex Bedder as tonight’s visiting scholar-in-residence of Girls studies. Alex Bedder comes to us as an associate professor of pop culture from Paper magazine university, and is the author of a New York Times best-selling Tumblr. Catch his Grammy-winning* podcast, “Let’s Talk About It Pod.” Read More

By Drew Grant, Noam Cohen and Alex Bedder 3/04 9:16am

Girls recaps

Illustration via Alex Bedder.

Five Essay Prompts for Girls 2×8: ‘It’s Back’

These questions regard last night’s episode of HBO’s Girls. Please answer the prompts with specific examples from LAST NIGHT’S EPISODE, though supplementary material will be accepted as a secondary source. Please write legibly. No. 2 pencils only. You have an hour to finish this test. See below for questions and sample responses.

1. Even though the episode seems to insist that Hannah’s OCD has been brought on by the stress of writing the book, the first time we see her exhibiting this behavior is when Adam calls her and she instinctively looks behind her–paranoid (but really, not that paranoid) that he might be following her–and then looks seven more times. And she mentions the book to the therapist only after she mentions Adam. Being that at least part of her OCD involves her persisting in behaviors that she originally does accidentally or without thinking (looking behind her, bumping into the guy at the show), how might we read her disorder as a response not to work-related stress but to Adam-related stress? And what does this say about their ongoing, if unacknowledged, relationship?
 Read More

By Drew Grant 2/27 6:24pm

Lena Dunham

Video

This is perfect. (YouTube)

A Truly Great Lena Dunham Impersonator Auditions for Zero Dark Thirty (Video)

This is Chelsea Davison.She does a creepily good impression of Lena Dunham auditioning for Zero Dark Thirty. She is very talented. Definitely the parody voice of this generation, even though in general people who “do voices” for a living are one step above mimes, in our book. But there were some great mimes, like Marcel Marceau, and this is a great impersonation. Just watch. Read More

By Drew Grant 2/27 9:30am

Boys of Girls

65th Annual Writers Guild East Coast Awards - Arrivals

About a Boy: Alex Karpovsky Doesn’t Just Think About Girls

Out of all the actors on Girls, that HBO show that has attracted the same kind of specific, rabid New Yorker-type fan base as Sex and the City [ed. note: see our front-page story], Alex Karpovsky is the most visible. That’s not to say he’s more famous than Lena Dunham. But unlike the show’s creator, he gets around quite a bit. The National Book Awards, N+1 parties, Cinema Society premieres–the man who plays the caustic, anti-social Ray on premium cable is in real life quite the butterfly of the New York literary and film scene.

And his fans aren’t always those you might expect. Read More