Undercover feminism on New Girl? It's possible.

Last Tuesday marked the return of New Girl on Fox and I couldn't have been more excited.

Starting off the new year, Jess plans a surprise birthday party for Schmidt after his reservation for a party bus gets canceled in favor of Frankie Muniz.

Needless to say not everything goes according to plan. The party bus is a school bus, Jess accidentally hires a male stripper, and her boss manages to bully an invite. Nick is embarrassed of his friends around a potential new flame Julia, a lawyer with serious anger management problems, played by Lizzie Caplan. Winston messes with him by contradicting everything he says in front of Julia, ya know regular friend behavior.

Schmidt's bronemy (bro frenemy) Benjamin makes a play for Jess much to the dismay of Schmidt. We even see a very cute flashback of Schmidt's past. I say cute because it is interesting to see the different side of Schmidt when he was a good-natured chubby dude. Sadly, Cece wasn't in this episode. It's probably for the better since Benjamin was there. That dude is a serious jerk. But the big mystery of the episode is what did Schmidt do to warrant $50 in the douche bag jar? Well you'll just have to watch it to find out.

It's becoming apparent that the guys on the show have way more weird issues than Jess. Nick dropped out of law school and works at a bar. Winston is a failed athlete with a huge competitive streak, and I don't even know where to begin on Schmidt. But their flaws make them endearing and likable. On the flip side though, it seems like women aren't allowed to be a little weird.

Played by actress Zooey Deschanel, Jess comes off as more quirky than odd. In the beginning of the show Jess started off with great moments of off the wall antics and nerd references but has slowly faded into a display of offbeat humor and nearly overbearing twee optimism. While she isn't allowed to make references to Lord of the Rings, it is perfectly acceptable for Nick to use Superman to explain Jess's relationship issues. That is a major double-standard but who are we kidding? Double-standards run rampant in pop culture. At least Jess is confident enough to let her freak flag fly and not to be ashamed of being herself. This appears to be the message of the show and maybe even the catalyst of Jess's male roomies recent actions.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, New Girl is a great new comedy that is as funny as it is cute.

The post about Lana Del Rey: Pretty Girls Make Graves

You all knew it would come to this, didn't you? The inevitable post about Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey maybe the most brilliant enigma of 2012 so far and I will tell you why:

First off, if you catched her performance on Saturday Night Live (hosted by Daniel Radcliffe) you may have thought it was bearable or you may have thought it was terrible. Juliette Lewis did.

The rest of twitter did and so did every music blog ready to sink it's teeth into Lizzy Grant (AKA Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey is a creation, yeah, I said it. She's a music mogul's wet dream, an embodiment of assisted self-creation in an overzealous hype machine. Google Lana Del Rey controversy and you will be met with so much material of why she is to be hated from her bad lip injections (her lips are immobile y'all) to the maybe true maybe not fact that her dad is like the inventor of toaster streudel (that last one was a stretch but no he's more like a domain investor or some crap). Lana's biggest crime with the indie community is that she's way pretty, aware that she's way pretty and a little too self-aware of herself. She calls herself a "gangster nancy sinatra," and "lolita lost in the hood." I don't know about THAT.

With all her hype and hate, let's get to the real deal: the music. Lana's music is not especially remarkable. She's got a husky voice like Fiona Apple but unlike Fiona Apple, Lana's a one note, two if she's feeling like a 'bad girl.' Her music is more like sweeping soundscapes with nods to everything retro and American from Elvis to hip hop. She's a hipster projection and that's what unfortunate.I can't imagine her following up after the release of her "Born to Die," album just because it's so much hype and that it seems nearly impossible. Implosion straight ahead.


Her music is not bad, but it's not great and it's definitely not going to be substantial for all the hype. "Born to Die," and "Blue Jeans," "National Anthem" are particularly good for their wearied sound but the rest of her singles seem to float in inoffensively. No blood, sweat and tears here. Her lyrics are decent but nothing pushing for incisive, at most she embodies the one liner cliches that come from...you guessed it...old classic movies that somehow ended up in a song.

Her pouty face and Americana fetish are interesting, she looks as if she walked out of a Mad Men episode. She looks like she belongs in a dusty Ford commercial. Honestly it's the best personification of a dying vision of the American Dream. Lana Del Rey, hmmm, she's good, terrible and likely to produce more analysis than warranted (like I just did here). I want to appreciate Lana Del Rey because a "pretty" (critiques of how good her music is focus primarily on how attractive she is---irk) girl singing about Death is really my kind of party, but, it's not a party because I think, poor Lana is just too sedated with dreams of fame to really get loose.

In case you missed it....

Soooooo apparently, Mariah Carey is either a. releasing a new album b. fed up with HSN shennantics c.really into commercials d. all of the above

The* Diva, appeared in 2-3 commercials that have just begun rotation on television. One is for Jenny Craig. The advert shows Carey busting through a glitter and sequin, sparkly lycra cocoon to emerge as a svelte, bombshell, whip-your-hair-back-and-forth epic diva of new and better proportions. Of course, Carey just gave birth to twins not too long ago and her body has always been up for public debate. Aside from that, I found the commercial to be well, rather, ridiculous. It's too long and with all the hair tossing, I really did think I was watching a music video. Mariah Carey is too epic for Jenny Craig.

But she does look amazing and that's all that matters.

Happy New Year's!

Happy New Years, we hope you had a year full of shennantics and anticipate that 2012 will be full of them...I mean, c'mon 2012 is the year the world will end. And it will end with the 3D re-release of "Titanic."

Honestly, a boat sinking in 3-D, Hollywood you kill me. Not to mention Leonardo DiCaprio's frozen dead body in 3-D, this just seems to macabre and absurd to actually work but we will see.

In more movie news, fans of Rose McGowan should be totally excited this year. According to IMDB, McGowan will be in a couple films this year. Now, which films you ask?

The film version of Sylvia Plath's only novel, "The Bell Jar" and what seems to be Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." I, for one, am very stoked. I read "The Bell Jar" in high school and it was a solid book, it's more or less a classic. It seems like McGowan is backing away from the high campy films (Grindhouse, Conan the Barbarian, The Black Dahlia) and going back to doing some interesting pieces. Maybe we will see some more of McGowan's acting ability. I maintain that she is a very good actress and with the news of these two films I hope I will not be disappointed. Go Rose!