Zut Suit Riot
I've had several productions through NYU; check out my resumé and photos/video of my plays above.
I'm the Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Comics, YA, Romance, and Children's Editor at Bookish. Previously, my writing has appeared on Crushable, Tor.com, BlackBook, Ology, and AFK On Air.
I'm also the co-creator of the webcomic Leftovers, about a ragtag food truck helping survivors of the zombie apocalypse.
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A Completely Subjective Do's and Don'ts Guide to Freelancing
On October 15, 2011, I moved back to my adolescent bedroom with $300 to my name; on...
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The Comic Book Podcast is the KoPoint program closest to my heart. It’s one of the few Season One programs to really evolve and become something...
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Blaming Women For The Behavior of Others via Forbes.
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When I hear someone else call my best friend their best friend
So much to talk about in the new Catching Fire trailer! District 11 riots, Plutarch Heavensbee sounding like he’s playing both Katniss and President Snow, the Katniss/Gale kiss…! Check out my shot-by-shot analysis and join me in flailing.
Two weeks until my buddy Dylan Marron’s awesome looking show Ridgefield Middle School Talent Nite! Co-ed dance to follow. Spread the word and bring your inhalers.
April 1st
Glasslands
$10 general admission
21+
(via bookish)
Jennifer Lawrence, Disney princess
But she got right back up again, like the others, with a little help from Wolverine.
Whoa! Love it.
(via seananmcguire)
Watch me analyze the shit out of these two new Catching Fire posters on Tor.com. Because my favorite part of the second book (pre-Games, at least) is Katniss and Peeta totally playing Panem with their star-crossed reality TV engagement.
Inks for the first 2 pages of “The Distorted Mirror” — coming along slowly but surely.
OH HEY LOOK HOW AWESOME MY COMIC LOOKS
I <3 everything Alena does.
![Pop culture has passed into an incredibly self-reflective and meta phase. We can’t watch a TV show or political debate without immediately reacting through GIF form and then scrutinizing our reaction. We’re compelled to interrogate the highbrow and especially the lowbrow works that capture our attention. But it gets boring and one-dimensional to use the same medium that we’re discussing in our analysis. We’re constantly turning our opinions over and over, seeking out the smart new angle that someone hasn’t thought of. Enter this new breed of musical.
We’re lucky that many of these productions have tested the waters in New York City, where you can stage an outrageous parody for even just a weekend. In the past year, I’ve taken in four shows that probe the boundaries of good taste and challenge the books, actors, and even religious institutions they mock. Last Christmas, I joined the throngs of theatergoers laughing so hard they were crying at Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s The Book of Mormon. Since the, I’ve also giggled my way through song-and-dance parodies of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, its offspring Fifty Shades of Grey, and the ‘90s thriller The Silence of the Lambs.
Whether each show’s attack is sweet or snarky, there is indeed that sense of tribute that Yankovic mentioned—cheeky nods to the genre of musical theater itself, or a hat tip to the impact Clarice Starling or Anastasia Steele has had on pop culture. In fact, 50 Shades! The Musical pokes fun less at Ana’s whirlwind romance with Christian Grey, and more at the way Americans have gobbled up E.L. James’ erotic fanfiction.
“I think anything that is so popular that everyone knows about it, you can start to home in on certain details,” said Emily Dorezas, one of the 50 Shades co-writers. “That’s why, as soon as the presidential election starts, everybody can laugh at the same things about the different candidates. Fifty Shades of Grey is just this brand that doesn’t go away. Even if you know nothing about it, you know everything about it. Part of what we’re doing is making fun of the phenomenon of it. [Audiences] can laugh at that because they’ve seen it in their house, with their wives and girlfriends.”
Pop-Culture Parody Musicals Are as Meta as We Get
Photo: Carol Rosegg](http://24.media.tumblr.com/25e3d4f0a6a8da0c6006ef2e203b4d57/tumblr_mijedsNy9g1r0ryyxo1_500.jpg)
Pop culture has passed into an incredibly self-reflective and meta phase. We can’t watch a TV show or political debate without immediately reacting through GIF form and then scrutinizing our reaction. We’re compelled to interrogate the highbrow and especially the lowbrow works that capture our attention. But it gets boring and one-dimensional to use the same medium that we’re discussing in our analysis. We’re constantly turning our opinions over and over, seeking out the smart new angle that someone hasn’t thought of. Enter this new breed of musical.
We’re lucky that many of these productions have tested the waters in New York City, where you can stage an outrageous parody for even just a weekend. In the past year, I’ve taken in four shows that probe the boundaries of good taste and challenge the books, actors, and even religious institutions they mock. Last Christmas, I joined the throngs of theatergoers laughing so hard they were crying at Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s The Book of Mormon. Since the, I’ve also giggled my way through song-and-dance parodies of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, its offspring Fifty Shades of Grey, and the ‘90s thriller The Silence of the Lambs.
Whether each show’s attack is sweet or snarky, there is indeed that sense of tribute that Yankovic mentioned—cheeky nods to the genre of musical theater itself, or a hat tip to the impact Clarice Starling or Anastasia Steele has had on pop culture. In fact, 50 Shades! The Musical pokes fun less at Ana’s whirlwind romance with Christian Grey, and more at the way Americans have gobbled up E.L. James’ erotic fanfiction.
“I think anything that is so popular that everyone knows about it, you can start to home in on certain details,” said Emily Dorezas, one of the 50 Shades co-writers. “That’s why, as soon as the presidential election starts, everybody can laugh at the same things about the different candidates. Fifty Shades of Grey is just this brand that doesn’t go away. Even if you know nothing about it, you know everything about it. Part of what we’re doing is making fun of the phenomenon of it. [Audiences] can laugh at that because they’ve seen it in their house, with their wives and girlfriends.”
Pop-Culture Parody Musicals Are as Meta as We Get
Photo: Carol Rosegg
Garrett Hedlund and the five other guys I can see playing young Han Solo in the newly-announced Star Wars standalone film.
The Sparrow is 400 pages and spans nearly fifty years. On trial in Rome, disgraced priest Emilio Sandoz narrates in flashback the events that led up to the Stella Maris crew assembling, reaching Rakhat, and making contact with the alien species (plural) there. We the audience have to learn about the Runa and Jana’ata as quickly and exhaustively as the crew does; on Earth, there’s the Jesuits and the mafia to contend with.
To try and cram this into a two-hour movie—even stretching it to three hours—would necessarily cut key developments. Since The Sparrow is headed for television, however, each episode could be bookended by the frail Sandoz trying to make his peers understand why he made the decisions he did. Each season could be the standard twelve episodes with a year in-between.
The Runa and Jana’ata wouldn’t suffer, either, since there could be entire episodes devoted to characters like the merchant Supaari VaGayjur. Consider the Battlestar Galactica season 2 episode “Downloaded,” where for the first time we see what happens to Cylons after they die. Suddenly, Number Six went from a sex symbol and saboteur to almost human. Most importantly, parsing out Sandoz’s story over the course of a season or two would preserve the horror of the novel’s emotional payoff.
