Jennifer Lawrence may hate singing in front of people, but there’s at least one singer’s work for which she’ll make an exception.

She stopped by to talk to Conan O’Brien with Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth after the Mockingjay panel at Comic-Con (which O’Brien moderated). He brought up the commercial success of “The Hanging Tree,” though Lawrence said she hates singing in public. Despite her fear, she happily belted out Cher’s “Believe” when prompted by her co-stars.

Not only does she pull of a decent Cher impression, Hutcherson and Hemsworth make for great backup singers, showing that teaming up is always better than a movie love triangle.

Ariana Grande is appealing straight to her fans in her latest apology after footage emerged of her licking a doughnut and saying that she hates America at Wolfee Donuts in Lake Elsinore, California.

She already released a statement on Twitter after TMZ posted the security footage, in which she discussed child obesity in America and the need to “educate ourselves” and stressed that she’s proud to be an American. The apology ended with “I apologize if I offended anyone with my poor choice of words,” which some may have taken as a non-apology.

She posted the video late to Twitter Thursday night prefaced with the words, “sorry babes.”

“Seeing a video of yourself behaving poorly is such a rude awakening—it’s like, you don’t know what to do,” she said. “I was so disgusted with myself. I wanted to shove my face into a pillow and disappear.”

Photo via Disney | ABC Television Group/Flickr (CC BY ND 2.0)

When’s the last time you watched a full episode of The Daily Show live? No, really.

Mine was probably the night he first spoke about the Charleston shooting and interviewed Malala Yousafzai a few weeks ago, but I watched it anticipating that I may have to write about it the next morning—which I did. The last time I watched Jon Stewart of my own accord? I couldn’t tell you.

But people are obviously watching, or else none of these late-night hosts would still be on TV, including Stewart. They’re playing the traditional media game, but the late-night war for content just as easily plays out online as it does on TV. Every variety-show game or punchy quote in today’s soundbite culture was made for a potential viral YouTube or Facebook clip that could trend on social media: Twitter hashtag games can trend in conversations worldwide, or a Stewart or Larry Wilmore rant could make its way back to Fox News, where the anchors might criticize them the next day, let the pundits respond that night, only for it to go viral again. It’s profitable, and Comedy Central is playing the game just like everyone else.

Content is a flat circle, more or less.

Instead of making a play for TV, like The Simpsons did when it aired every episode ever last year, Comedy Central went straight to its audience and announced last week it would stream every single episode of The Daily Show on Comedy Central’s website and the Comedy Central app. Instead of a moment of zen, we’d get around six weeks of it. After the initial news went around, however, nothing. Comedy Central’s “Month of Zen” started with minimal fanfare, and there hasn’t been much chatter on it since.

But I was curious, both as a fan and as essentially the Daily Dot’s late-night beat writer. When Stewart’s run on The Daily Show started on Jan. 11, 1999, I was 9. My biggest worry wasn’t a political scandal or who would be the next president after Bill Clinton left office; it was passing the third grade. The Internet was still a fairly new thing for me, one I accessed with dial-up and an AOL account. I didn’t have a TV in my room, wouldn’t have been allowed to watch anyway, and I’m not even sure if my family had Comedy Central at the time.

By the time I started occasionally watching, roughly around Indecision 2008, Stewart had pretty much perfected his schtick, but what was he like before then? Going through Stewart’s archives led to entirely too many possibilities, but by tuning into the Month of Zen I left the choice to chance; I’d watch whatever the stream showed for a few hours.

I ended up starting at the end of the Nov. 13, 2002 episode with Kiefer Sutherland explaining to Stewart how he paid someone to explain TiVo, and over the next several hours, I sat through six complete Daily Show episodes—enough to get me through a full week of coverage and then some. And once I finished, I couldn’t really tell you much about the politics, but I learned plenty about how the show—and we as viewers—have changed in the intervening years.

1) I couldn’t pause the stream, and that bothered me

Splitting up late-night video clips into shorter clips makes it easier for those with a shorter attention span to watch, and in many cases the longer the clip is, the more likely your audience will tune out. The fact that John Oliver can captivate an audience with a 15-minute clip is astounding—and exceedingly rare.

But the one difference between any of those (or even other livestreams) and the Month of Zen stream? It never stopped. I couldn’t go and watch something else, I couldn’t pause it, and I sure couldn’t go rewind to get a particular quote just right. If I had to do something else, I had to mute the stream.

In fact, I gladly welcomed the commercials and break times. It gave me a short breather.

By the time I got through my Daily Show viewing, I pretty much wanted to do anything else but keep on watching. It wasn’t because the episodes were boring or didn’t age well—some of them didn’t, to be sure—but because I wasn’t able to multitask like I normally would, which in hindsight is a very minor problem to have.

2) There’s a whole bunch of white dudes

Stewart’s list of correspondents and contributors has diversified greatly since the show started, always for the better. These days Jordan Klepper, Al Madrigal, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minhaj, and Jessica Williams often steal the show from him, and Lewis Black, future Daily Show host Trevor Noah, and Kristen Schaal appear less often but still command the screen.

But in the six episodes I watched, I only saw a female correspondent once—Rachel Harris, and she teamed up with Ed Helms (who appeared on-air the most of any correspondent in that time) on a segment about Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s recent engagement.

Back in 2002, the show featured more pre-recorded segments, something we’ll only occasionally see from the correspondents. Out all of those I saw, they all featured Helms, Rob Corddry, and even a pre-Colbert ReportStephen Colbert.

Curious, I went to see what the writing staff, which won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program in 2003, looked like.

And going to the IMDb pages of the episodes I watched, they were pretty much written by white men, too (episodes featuring Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Arnold, Ja Rule, Harold Ford, Catherine Crier, Kevin James, and Andy Richter).

Since then, The Daily Show has added more diversity to the writing staff, and while it hasn’t won the Emmy in a couple years (having lost to Colbert), the show has undoubtedly gotten better, even if it’s still not ideal.

3) Jon Stewart and his guests wouldn’t be able to get away with some of the things he said back then today

Today’s backlash cycle on social media is fierce, but before Twitter, an iffy comment might just have gone unnoticed. Take, for instance, Stewart’s initial reaction to when Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to become the House Minority Leader on the Nov. 19 episode.

“She is so adorable!” Stewart said before diving into how she reacted to a hug from a fellow Congressman. “And she smells good too!”

But now we know Stewart as a champion for lampooning sexist comments; Stewart would probably focus more on the creepiness of Pelosi’s fellow congressmen. But it’s an encouraging glimpse of what we hope will happen in the case of Noah, who’s been criticized for jokes he posted to Twitter: He might not be all there now, but he can be one day.

4) But even back then, he gave marginalized voices a platform

Thirteen years before the Washington Redskins lost the trademark to the team’s racist name (and 12 before Jason Jones did a segment on it) Stephen Colbert was ready to bring a marginalized voice to light: that some Native Americans see Thanksgiving, one of the most gluttonous days of the year for the U.S., as a day of mourning.

And he was calling out the ludicracy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell well before it was repealed and marriage equality became the law of the land.

5) Stephen Colbert is wonderful—and corrupting your children

This should’ve been a given, but of course.

6) Stewart didn’t bash Fox News (or the cable news) once

Nowadays Stewart bashes Fox News, CNN, or one of the other major news outlets at least three times a week—and that’s probably a low estimate. But here? Nothing.

(To be fair, he did involve the media once: He showed the Los Angeles Times, but only because of the juxtaposition of a Michael Jackson photo with that of a judge’s face.)

He hit the Bush administration, a Democratic Congressman, the situation in Iraq, a cruise ship with a virus outbreak, and Thanksgiving, but it was more about the policies than how the media covered it, which was kind of refreshing. Media bashing is great, but so is the other stuff he makes fun of on a daily basis.

And sometimes, we learn something.

Photo via David Boyle/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0) | Remix by Jason Reed

Is Bryan Cranston heading for Amazon? 

While Amazon hasn’t officially announced this yet, Vulture is reporting that a reworked version of the show will debut on Amazon in some form in August. Variety reported last month that negotiations had started between Amazon and Sony Pictures TV. The Breaking Bad star tweeted this bit of native marketing from San Diego Comic-Con yesterday: 

H/T Vulture | Photo via titi-/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)

BY TODD LONGWELL

At Comic-Con International: San Diego on Thursday, Vimeo announced that it will premiere the series Con Man on Vimeo On Demand on Sept. 30. Three new episodes will debut every Wednesday for four weeks. It will be available to rent for $14.99.

The series was fully funded via an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign that raised $3,156,179 from some 46,000 contributors. It marks the third all-time highest funded film or TV campaign on any crowdfunding platform.

Con Man focuses on Wray Nerely (Alan Tudyk), the co-star of Spectrum, a sci-fi series canceled before its time that went on to become a cult classic. Wray’s good friend Jack Moore (Nathan Fillion), who starred as the series captain, went on to become a major celebrity, while Wray (Tudyk) has subsisted on paid appearances at sci-fi conventions and comic book stores.

The fictional scenario bears more than a passing resemblance to reality: Fillion and Tudyk played the captain and the spaceship pilot, respectively, on the 2003 sci-fi series Firefly. It was canceled after only 13 episodes, and Tudyk soon found himself appearing at cons.

The Firefly experience is one of the reasons Tudyk and Fillion decided to crowdfund instead of looking for traditional network backing.

“If you partner with somebody who doesn’t like… the world that [the series is] set in, they cancel it too soon,” explained Tudyk in his video pitch on the Con Man Indiegogo page.

Exective produced by Tudyk, Fillion, and P.J. Haarsma, Con Man also features appearances by Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Amy Acker (Person of Interest), Gina Torres (Firefly, Suits), Sean Maher (Firefly, Eastsiders), Felicia Day (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Seth Green (Family Guy, Austin Powers), Mindy Sterling (Austin Powers), Jewel Staite (Firefly), Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings), James Gunn, and Joss Whedon. 

Screengrab via Con Man Web Series/Vimeo 

The Walking Dead fans know that the Walkers are nowhere near the scariest thing about the zombie apocalypse.

And if it’s any indication from the new trailer, the worst of them all could have been right in front of us the entire time. Rick Grimes is in charge once again, this time of Alexandria, but with new threats always looming it’s only a matter of time before everything blows up in his face.

But will it be from the outside, or within?

And in case that wasn't sufficient terror, the trailer for the Dead-spinoff Fear the Walking Dead hit the Web Friday as well following its Comic-Con premiere.

Damn Interesting, a long-running website devoted to unusual history and science stories, has accused The Dollop, a popular comedy podcast, of wholesale plagiarism in five of its episodes.

In an open letter published Thursday on the Damn Interesting website, founder and editor Alan Bellows comments that the podcast has borrowed substantial material from his site and that although this is not the first time it has happened, he believes it is the most egregious.

“(Y)ou are the first I am aware of,” he writes, “who allows your audience to believe that you wrote the material yourself, elevating mere copyright infringement to plagiarism. Then you go one step further and ask for (and receive) thousands of dollars in recurring monthly donations to support your allegedly ‘endless research.’”

The Dollop is co-hosted by comics Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. Each episode consists of Anthony reading a story of (usually) American history and Reynolds reacting, with both of them riffing on the usually outlandish or horrible actions and statements of those involved in the stories.

Past stories have included frontiersman Hugh Glass, prohibitionist Carry A. Nation, baseball player Rube Waddell, and surgeon John R. Brinkley.

Bellows published parallel columns of scripts from five Dollop episodes and five articles published on Damn Interesting, highlighting sentences and entire paragraphs that seem to be identical.

Bellows made the letter public and apprised Anthony and Reynolds of his accusations in a tweet. Anthony made a rather vague mention of an issue that he would be addressing in a post on the Dollop’s Facebook page.

“You'll probably see some trolling posts from a website today,” he wrote. “Don't respond. We don't attack as a pack. It's not how things should be done. Just hang and we'll post our official response later.”

That did not stop partisans of both the Dollop and Damn Interesting from being surprisingly unpleasant across social media, despite both Anthony and Bellows making obvious efforts to address the issue with as much respect as each could muster for the other.

Podcasting continues to get more and more popular. A large part of that is the doing of comics and other entertainers turning to the medium to directly reach their fans and potential audiences without the meddling of middlemen. Podcasts are popular enough that President Obama’s people approached Marc Maron to arrange an appearance by the most powerful man in the world on Maron’s WTF podcast, recorded in the comic’s modest garage.

Anthony is a prominent personality in the podcasting community. He is a writer and co-star on IFC’s Maron, the co-founder of the Los Angeles Podcast Festival, and the former co-host with Greg Behrendt of the Walking the Room podcast. The Dollop is very popular, not just among American listeners, but in Australia, where he and Reynolds have performed, and where they are planning a podcasting tour.

Between the increasing importance of podcasts and Anthony’s prominence, not to mention Damn Interesting’s venerability—it’s been publishing since 2003—this disagreement is weightier than a fight over proper attribution between unknowns.

Anthony responded to Bellows’ letter with one of his own today on the Dollop’s Facebook page.

“I will admit to making a mistake here that has led to this situation.” Anthony wrote. “And it’s a Dollop worthy mistake. While every story is sourced, I have not posted them because we have had no official website. I now have one and am putting up all the sources and creating links of the episodes. I apologize for this.”

But the Dollop, Anthony said, though guilty of not taking care to make proper attribution, is not guilty of plagiarism or copyright infringement, for one simple reason.

Fair use.

“When a teacher discusses a news article in their classroom, that’s fair use. When Jon Stewart uses Fox News clips on the Daily Show, that’s fair use. When a documentary shows part of a copyrighted film or shows some copyrighted text, that’s fair use. Fair use doesn’t require seeking permission in advance. Fair use allows for criticism, commentary, parody, and satire, which is The Dollop.”

Furthermore, Anthony makes the case that, given the way the information is delivered on the podcast, there is no attempt made to represent the information as his own.

“It’s clear that I’m reading the words of other people, through my tone of voice, my constant referring to reading something, and my endless mispronunciations. Plagiarism would be me representing those words as my own, and I’ve never done that.”

Nonetheless, Anthony apologized again and committed to being more conscientious about attribution beginning with the publication of a Dollop Sources page. What seemed to rub Anthony the wrong way was not the objection itself but how and where it was registered.

“I've been speaking to Alan,” Anthony told the Daily Dot. “We have an understanding, I like him, and this is all being worked out between us the way it always should have been—in private. The Internet can find another battle and lives to destroy. But maybe everyone should go read So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson first and think about what we're doing to each other.”

This incident provides a lesson in how different the expectation are between different parties on the Web, even those like writers and comedians that consumers might expect to react the same way, as well as how complex issues of attribution and copyright are online, where things move fast and little is static.

It also shows how quickly we arrive at conclusions and take sides online, sometimes to the detriment of an otherwise mutually beneficial agreement.

Expect additional clashes of this sort as satire, criticism, social commentary, and humor intersect journalism, essay writing, original reporting and research, and lyric exposition—all played out in the dynamic, immediate, and emotionally charged environment of social media.

Correction: The Dollop has been accused of plagiarism in five of its episodes.

Photo via Philippe Put/Flickr (CC BY ND 2.0)

Well, OK: The discussion around the movie has been an utter shitstorm since the day it was announced, but now we have an image that we can all look at to determine the Big Question: Have Feig and company gotten the tone right? Today, Feig tweeted the first official look at the new cast, standing in front of the car and appearing to be posing in-character:

Let's do a rundown: The uniforms are solid—beige, understated jumpsuits—the car is a Cadillac hearse that appears to have been modified with a very tight budget, the proton packs are a steampunk joy that look like something you'd want a replica of hanging on your wall, and, most importantly: The jumpsuits are indeed tucked into the team members' boots (yup—that's been a major concern of fans looking at the leaked set pics).

The controversy and knee-jerk, nostalgia-triggered anger aside, will this be a good movie? It'll be a year until we get that answer, but it's tough to argue that, at the very least, this is pretty damn cool photo, and a great look for the team.

If the movie is half as cool as its aesthetics have been proving, there will be a lot of sighs of relief (and recanting of opinions) when the film is released next year on July 22.

Photo via Paul Feig/Twitter

“This song goes out to anybody with a pussy. And I’m not talking about a vagina. I’m talking about a pussy.”

With that intro, Bridget Everett dives into “What I Gotta Do,” the chorus of which passionately wonders, “What I gotta do to get that dick in my mouth?” This introduces us to Everett’s new Comedy Central special, Gynecological Wonder, filmed by Lance Bangs at NYC venue Joe’s Pub. The special opens with a shot of Everett as she’s dreaming in bed, clad in a “Manilow” jersey. Stars like Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Schumer stop by to testify to Everett’s raw power and mythical breasts.

Tits are a big part of Everett’s live show. During Gynecological Wonder, we see a blurry orb appear over Everett’s nipples several times, as her pendulous breasts threaten to swing too far. Everett wields her body like a Swiss Army Knife: She’s going to motorboat you, she’s going to sit on your face, she’s going to lick you, she’s going to spit Chardonnay on you. Her voice will blow the bangs off your forehead. When she prowls the audience, that’s when the show’s energy pivots—every show is different, fused to the chemistry of the crowd.

“I like that people have a strong reaction, one way or another,” Everett said. “I want them to feel something down somewhere.”

Down in her somewhere, Everett’s a true storyteller: “It’s not just like a full-on, aggressive, in-your-face cabaret fuckfest,” she said. “There’s also the tender moments, which are important to me.”

At the beginning of the special, she tells a story about her breasts developing as a young girl, and only having nipples. (“Little nippy titty,” the kids called her.) This leads into readymade anthem “Titties,” which recounts all the different types there are, as we’re urged to “put ’em in the air”: beavertail, tube sock, ding-dong, mousetrap, rubber ducky. She does costume changes on stage, audibly out of breath, which only lends to the kinetic energy of her performances. 

Everett says she’s been performing since college, when she would sing in karaoke bars,“have a couple drinks, and just go apeshit. And then I just didn’t realize you could do that professionally, and it’s taken me a long time to figure that out, but it turns out you can. I have a job where you can drink lot of Chardonnay and whip your titties out.”

Everett’s go-to karaoke songs were anything “female and anthemic,” like Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” “Female and anthemic” is a fair approximation of her songs, too. However, Barry Manilow might be her true kindred spirit. 

Her mother, a music teacher, cultivated a Manilow education when she was growing up in Manhattan, Kansas. Everett says her mom would listen to Manilow, maybe “cry a bit,” and Everett would brush her hair as they sang together. Her brothers and sisters all played piano and sang, and as the youngest of six kids, Everett was absorbing the music coming out of each bedroom: Queen, REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Bread. Last month, Everett got to meet Manilow. 

“I didn’t shit my pants, but it was a very magical moment all the same,” she said.

While Everett’s been performing in NYC for more than a decade, her live show took a different shape when she hooked up with her band the Tender Moments. Adam Horovitz (the Beastie Boys’ Ad-Rock) plays bass, and Everett explains he’s the one who encouraged her to go home and write “Titties,” after she started singing it during a softball game and thought it was ridiculous.  

She also found an ally in Schumer. The two became friends after Just for Laughs Montreal about five years ago, and Schumer asked if she wanted to go on the road with her, which helped Everett tweak her routine for comedy clubs. Everett closed out the third season of Inside Amy Schumer on Tuesday in the most on-brand way possible, after wrapping the last two seasons as well. She sings new song “Put Your Dick Away,” prefacing it with this: “Don’t touch my pussy unless I say you can touch my pussy, Mr. Cosby!”

It’s evident her approach to performance translates from club to TV, but the real experiment with Gynecological Wonder is seeing if it pulls in fans unfamiliar with Everett’s revues—if it can draw a new audience to her bosom.  

Gynecological Wonder presents the woman and the myth, but she admits there’s a fine line between Bridget the performer and Bridget the human. 

“The onstage Bridget is lawless and always has a bottle of Chardonnay,” she said. “The offstage Bridget can be found in her apartment, on her couch, with her new dog Poppy. ...In order to be that person onstage, I have to store up all the energy. The Bridget on stage is somebody I wish I could always be, but you gotta have gas in the tank all the time. 

“But the spirit of her is what I really love.”

Gynecological Wonder debuted July 11 at 12:30am ET. 

Photo by Ali Goldstein/Comedy Central 

It's difficult to pick a favorite here, and Carice van Houten's mid-scene character break will likely elicit a giggle or two, but it's impossible to deny the grace with which Kristofer Hivju, auditioning for the part of Tormund, spews that carrot out of his mouth. Has a part in a major TV series ever been cast without the performer uttering a single word? If not, Hivju could have been the first. 

The only thing missing here is Kristian Nairn's audition clip, though you can probably guess why that wasn't included. 

Screengrab via Game of Thrones/HBO

What do you do in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when you're not selling meth?

Bryan Cranston, the former star of Breaking Bad, let a curious fan at his SuperMansion Comic-Con panel know that the answer has a lot to do with "your mother."

Screengrab via goggo980/YouTube

We've known Ash and his boomstick were coming back for another round of undead mayhem thanks to last year's announcement of Ash vs. Evil Dead, an original series set to debut on Starz. The reveal was made at San Diego Comic-Con, and now that we've had a full year to dream about the possibilities, Starz is back at the annual celebration of all things geek to show off the first official trailer for the show. 

Not shying away from the fact that Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, is a good bit older than he was in the original films, there's plenty of age-related humor sprinkled throughout the brief sneak peek. There's some heavy breathing, a pair of dentures, and even a leather girdle—or should we just called it an Ash Sash?

Oh, and there's blood. Lots and lots of blood. 

Screengrab via Starz/YouTube

The video for "Energy" finds Drake trying on quite a few different masks: Oprah, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, a Ken doll, President Obama, LeBron James, and many more. 

It's available on Apple Music, if you want to direct connect. In the meantime, you can gaze at Drake's face superimposed over Oprah's and try to find the meaning. 

This depressing fact is handily illustrated by a YouTube supercut of "every single word spoken (or sung) by a person of color in Into the Woods." Seven seconds long, it plays a clip of music from the movie before fading to black, birds tweeting awkwardly in the background. Every character in the film is white.

"I’ve been an avid moviegoer since I was a young kid," he said, "and it’s hard because you really rarely see reflections of yourself if you are really anything other than a straight white person.

"I would be told that I’ll never play the romantic male lead.

"When you’re younger and you don’t really have the tools to unpack it, you just internalize that and accept it as truth. I think as I got older I started to question it, especially as I became a working actor. I would be told that I’ll never play the romantic male lead and there weren’t many parts out there for my quote-unquote 'type.' That’s a really hard thing to hear, and you can only hear it so much before you can no longer accept it as a reasonable answer. What’s so frustrating is it has nothing to do with talent. I’m just being told what work there is out there for me."

In many cases, Marron picked films that he personally enjoyed. Her and Frances Ha were both critically acclaimed for their originality and depth, yet both fall foul of the "Every single word spoken..." test. Frances Ha's video clocks in at 30 seconds with four characters who have no name outside their roles: Computer Guy, Security Guard, Theater Manager.

Between 2007 and 2013, 74 percent of characters in major Hollywood movies were white, compared to only 49 percent of moviegoers. Latinos make up 32 percent of the audience and 4.9 percent of the characters onscreen. To make matters worse, Hollywood filmmakers frequently cast white people as characters of color, such as Emma Stone in Aloha or the main cast in the Last Airbender movie. But while these stats are obviously grim, they don't have the immediacy of a video like this: 

When choosing which movies to sample, Marron selected films that received mainstream attention and have "entered the cultural lexicon."

With the exception of Noah, which was criticized for focusing exclusively on white characters in a quasi-Biblical setting, none of the films on Marron's YouTube channel have been at the center of a public conversation about race. Basically, they're typical. They represent a wide range of genres, from indie drama to broad comedy to big-budget Oscar bait, although Marron says that he finds Hollywood's race problem "especially troubling in the fantasy genre, which is not rooted in any historical accuracy, nor is it beholden to any kind of reality."

The 1997 Cinderella movie looms large in his memory, a cult favorite with a diverse cast including Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, and Filipino-American actor Paolo Montalban as the Prince. "I was really young when I saw it, and when I saw it I was like, 'Wow, everything’s gonna change now.' And unfortunately it’s just become exceptional, and not the rule." 

Overall, the response to Marron's videos has been positive: "I think one of my favorite reactions is from people of all races, like, 'Wow, I never noticed that.'" 

"In the series I’m really just exposing this issue," he added. "I’m not really adding commentary to it. I think that’s what’s so interesting. You get YouTube commenters who just vehemently disagree with you, and the way that I’m editing these videos is... there’s no embellishment and there’s no comment. And to see the anger this incites is interesting.

"People take such offense to being called racists, and they get so defensive. The interesting thing is, I don’t intend to call any one person racist. We have such a difficult time as a society, on a global conversation level, of talking about a system of racism. We’re so intent upon blaming individual people and pinning racism to one person, when it’s a systemic problem. This isn’t a fault of these individual directors, but the whole structure they are part of."

Photo via The Fault In Our Stars

This article contains sexually explicit material. 

It’s not unusual for a comedian to bare it all on stage. But in her new webseries, Comic Strips, New York comedian Jaime Alyse Andrews exposes more than her inner musings. 

Andrews’ series draws on her real-life experience as both a comedian and a stripper, to give viewers a uniquely humorous and honest look at the very vulnerable worlds of stripping and standup comedy.

Andrews co-created the series with her writing partner Angelica Pasquini, and the duo recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund season 1 of the series. The promising, NSFW first episode is available on Vimeo.

“I’ve always been interested in the things that are outside of what’s considered normal, or what society considers more wrong,” explained Andrews. “I’ve always loved, like, David Lynch ever since I was about 15 and began to get exposed to real movies... because he looks at [what’s considered deviant]... and it’s like, is being a stripper worse than being a finance guy?”

The series went from Lynchian fantasy to tangible reality last fall, when Andrews ditched her bartending gig and began stripping in a New York City club.

“I was so tired of sitting in the same dive bar with the same regulars year after year and it was getting really depressing,” Andrews said.

She quickly found that stripping—though more profitable than bartending—was not without its own challenges. “You have to hustle, you have to put on an act, and it’s emotionally and physically exhausting," she said. "Everyone thinks stripping is easy money but it’s really a lot of work.”

Andrews would come home from stripping, call Pasquini, and share all the gritty details of her tumultuous new work world. Together, the duo crafted the stories that would make the first season of the series.

Comic Strips juxtaposes the highs and lows of stripping with the unlikely parallel struggle of trying to make it as a standup comedian in New York City. The main character, based on Andrews, is a comedian who strips to pay the bills. But Andrews and Pasquini aren’t making light of strippers or their clientele.

“These women are people and their stories need to be told too," she said. "And our show isn’t about making fun of the men, either. The most important thing to me is that this will be told in a sensitive, genuine, and respectful way. We’re not mocking anyone."

While Andrews is aware that she may receive a fair share of criticism for tackling this subject, and for choosing to go nude in her series, she’s not about to let that stop her from taking big risks.

“I’ve been preparing myself for what people will say because I know people will assume things about why I’m doing it or be critical of [onscreen nudity]," she explained. "But I want to do it. I really want to do full-frontal, and I’ve talked about this with Angelica, because it’s like, I loved Forgetting Sarah Marshall but it’s like, how many times have we seen Jason Segel’s dick for comedy? If that can be funny, why can’t my pussy be funny?”

Hey, why not?

The Kickstarter for Comic Strips ends July 22. 

Screengrab via House of Nod/Vimeo 

In a recent Instagram post, Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the Kardashian family, shared a selfie of her wearing cornrows. In response, 16-year-old Amandla Stenberg, known for her role as Rue in TheHunger Games, took her to task, accusing Jenner of cultural appropriation.

when u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism #whitegirlsdoitbetter

Stenberg ironically hashtagged her comment with #whitegirlsdoitbetter, as the racially insensitive term was trending on Twitter throughout the day—she wanted to draw attention to Jenner appropriating black culture as a white woman. Jenner was also called out for an alleged blackface photo back in April.  

In a YouTube video called “Don't Cash Crop On My Cornrows,” Stenberg discusses the problematic ways the hairstyle is culturally appropriated, and how racist stereotypes have led to cornrows meaning something different for different races—black people may be considered unprofessional wearing them, while white women might be considered avant-garde: 

Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves. Appropriation occurs when the appropriate is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they’re partaking in.

Jenner didn’t seem particularly concerned with Stenberg’s diss, however. She responded by saying, “Mad if I don’t, Mad if I do… Go hang w Jaden [Smith] or something.”

Photo via Disney ABC/Flickr (CC BY ND 2.0)

Sports teams regularly demand that new stadiums be built using taxpayer money, even when the team itself is making billions of dollars. This, coupled with the fact that college teams don't have to pay their players, is just one of the many problems caused by giving lucrative sports teams nonprofit status.

By drumming up local support from panicked fans, they manage to make this look like a grassroots campaign rather than what it actually is: holding a city hostage in exchange for a stadium upgrade.

Screengrab via Last Week Tonight/YouTube

The easiest comparison is not always the correct one, and this new webseries just learned that the hard way.

According to the press release for Gemma & the Bear, the webseries is a “modern, humorous twist on Jekyll and Hyde.” Now this is quite possibly a throwaway line by a person who needed something snappier than “dissociative identity disorder,” but here’s a refresher on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella: Jekyll, troubled by undefined “irregularities” of character and the threat they pose to his respectable, public persona creates a separate, confined vessel for these desires. This alternate personality, Hyde, is murderous, psychopathic, and possessed of such evil that it physically manifests itself in his deformity and decay.

So when you find that in Gemma & the Bear Gemma (Eevin Hartsough) is a nervous but amiable white women who regularly sees a psychiatrist, and her creation, Bear (Kevin R. Free), is a burly, black, gay man, there is the possibility—with Dr. Jekyll and his horrifying black mirror fresh in our minds—of seeing the relationship as problematic. Bear perhaps isn’t just the coping mechanism that appears when she falls asleep to sort out her problems, but he is something that she has consciously expelled from her own body because she thinks that it will make her regimented, conservative life easier.

It doesn't have to be like this. The two characters could easily exist simultaneously, and the humorous, incongruity would remain—but a conscious choice has been made to have a central character who is in therapy and has a history of personality dissociation. And it is a shame for such a perky-looking series; the morning ritual sequence which opens the first episode is a brisk, effective character introduction. But it is all stymied by a ham-fisted approximation, played for laughs, of a complex and misunderstood condition of the mind. 

It’s not as if Gemma & the Bear is made for the wrong reasons, to lampoon the bear community or make cheap gay jokes. But those they claim the series is made for—“The Questioning, the folks who are not easily defined by gender, sexual, or binary labels”—are done a disservice. These are the people that may have a Bear inside of them and are uncertain of how to proceed. These are folks who will watch this series and keep their true self repressed.

Screengrab via Gemma and the Bear!/YouTube

David Letterman, who’s been lying pretty low since leaving The Late Show, returned to the stage to make fun of Donald Trump in spectacular fashion.

The former late-night host surprised the audience attending A Very Stupid Conversation with Steve Martin and Martin Short in San Antonio Friday night. In addition to sharing stories, Letterman told the crowd that he had absolutely no regrets about retiring—until Trump announced his candidacy for president. Letterman was prepared for the occasion, though, and he pulled out one of his famous Top Ten lists to read.

Comedians have been waiting for the Trump trainwreck for years, and Letterman wasn't about to miss out on the fun.

A Foo Fighters fan got the birthday present of a lifetime straight from the band’s frontman himself.

Anthony Bifolchi attended the Foo Fighters’ show in Toronto Friday night where he held a sign that read “It’s my birthday, can I play drums?” At some point during the concert Dave Grohl took notice and called him up onstage from his new throne.

“If you suck on the drums, I will personally tar and feather your ass backstage,” Grohl told Bifolchi. “Get up there right now!”

Although he didn’t get to play his dream song, he did take over the drums for “Big Me” in a performance even Grohl had to admit was good.

Screengrab via Anthony Bifolchi/YouTube