President Barack Obama has had a rough couple of weeks, but he’s still right in the thick of the 2012 race thanks to millions of his loyal devotees. Not the least of which: Obama Boy. The track is a follow-up to the ubiquitous “Obama Girl” video from the 2008 election (although the creators have no connection to Amber Lee Ettinger ). This boy has a crush on Obama, no doubt: Obama Boy – Crush on Obama The tune is one and the same, but the lyrics have been updated to a reflect the 2012 landscape, notably President Obama’s support of gay marriage . “I put down my Prop 8 sign, now I’m going to make you mine,” is a notable lyric, as is “You support me unlike the right. You’re my rainbow colored knight.” Follow this link for EW’s interview with the writer and director John Duarte, 29, and Obama Boy himself, Justin Brown, 28, for more on the video. Then check out the Obama Girl classic below, just because. She’s smokin’. These two viral videos definitely show the President’s broad appeal … Obama Girl – Crush on Obama
Call them handsome? Totally! We’re excited to present another Carly Rae Jepsen lip dub and – with no offense to the Harvard baseball team or even these Miss USA contestants – this video is likely the hottest one yet! It features Abercrombie & Fitch models. Shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch models, that is. Yeah. It’s a must-watch. Abercrombie & Fitch Models Cover “Call Me Maybe” Partly thanks to the never-ending covers of her addictive track, Jepsen moved to number-one on the Billboard 100 this week. Call her, all single guys. Definitely.
It looks like last night’s wild fight between Chris Brown and Drake was, in fact, about the former’s ex and the latter’s rumored hookup, Rihanna. Imagine that. Sources also indicate that while Drake’s telling the truth when he says he wasn’t involved physically in the epic melee that ensued, he definitely stirred the pot. Drake gave Brown the middle finger, engaged in some serious trash talk, and recruited several other rappers to join his posse before the brawl, witnesses say. Tension started escalating, supposedly, when Drake gave the middle finger to one of Chris’ bodyguards and shouted, “I’m about to go whoop that ass!” Chris’ entourage responded with a few hand gestures of their own. Witnesses very close to the action say Drake felt disrespected … even though he started the exchange. At that point the rapper went to get backup. His boys Juelz Santana, Trav B and Meek Mill – the one who sources say hit Brown with a bottle and gashed his chin – then stepped into the beef. At this point, the latest report says that Drake got loud and shouted at Chris something to the effect of “You be on that ho s**t on Twitter n***a!”
San Francisco Giants pitcher, the 22nd man to toss a perfect game, got us thinking about musical perfectos. By James Montgomery The San Fransisco Giants’ Matt Cain Photo: On Wednesday night, San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain made baseball history — and totally helped my fantasy team — by tossing a perfect game against the Houston Astros. For those who have no idea what that means, Cain faced the minimum of batters — 27 — and didn’t allow a single base-runner. That means no walks, no hits, no anything over nine innings (with 14 strikeouts to boot). If that sounds impressive, well, it is : Only 22 pitchers have ever thrown a perfect game in the 143-year history of Major League Baseball, and somewhat surprisingly, the list of those who’ve accomplished the feat reads less like a who’s who of MLB greats as it does a who’s that ? For every Hall of Famer (Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, Catfish Hunter) to reach perfection, there are just as many pitchers who made history and then were history. I’m talking about the likes of Len Barker, Mike Witt and Charlie Robertson, each of whom were perfect for one glorious game and never again came close to matching that perfection. And yet, that’s what makes the perfect game so special. On any day, anyone can throw one; all it takes is the right mixture of luck, skill and, well, more luck. And yet, of the thousands of men who’ve toed the rubber in the majors over the past century-plus, fewer than 2 dozen have actually done it. The perfect game is the ultimate mythologizer: Pulling it off automatically earns you a permanent place in baseball lore — and for most, it will be the unquestionable highlight of their professional career. So, in honor of Cain’s feat, I’ve spent the majority of the day trying to figure out what the musical equivalent of a perfect game might be. Certainly, it has to be historic: an album or song that came out of nowhere to define a time or an era to such a degree that it has become the stuff of music legend. Secondly, it has to be the crowning achievement of an artist’s career, especially since the overwhelming number of pitchers who have tossed perfectos are basically the MLB equivalent of one-hit-wonders (I’m looking at you, Philip Humber). Sure, the Beatles, Radiohead and Jay-Z have probably all been perfect, but, like Young or Koufax or Hunter, what’s one more accolade to any of them? And finally, well, it has to be perfect : the perfect album for the time, the perfect song for the moment, the perfectly recognizable riff or sample — we’re talking history here, people. Anyway, here are my picks for music’s 10 perfect games — and if there’s an album or song I’ve missed, let me know in the comments below. The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols Lean and mean, sneering and snotty, it’s not only one of the most perfect albums of all time, it may very well be the most perfect debut in history. When it was released in 1977, it shocked pretty much everybody, and its historical status was only secured when the Pistols would implode following a disastrous U.S. tour in ’78. In the years since, it’s become a touchstone of punk, not to mention a lesson to any band that dares to fly too close to the sun. Hope you’re paying attention, Dallas Braden. The Knack, “My Sharona” Released as a single from the band’s Get the Knack debut, “Sharona” quickly surged to the top of the Billboard charts, where it would remain for six weeks (and be named the #1 song on the publication’s year-end pop chart). The song’s iconic guitar line (dunna-nunna-nuh-nuh!) has since become a thing of rock lore, the soundtrack to a million bar mitzvahs and just as many stadium rally chants, and though the Knack could never replicate its success, for one brief, shining moment, they were perfect. The Sugarhill Gang, “Rapper’s Delight” It’s the song that brought hip-hop out of the rec rooms and into the masses, crossing over to both the pop and R&B charts when it was released in 1979. Chances are, in the years since, you’ve heard its iconic bass line (sampled from Chic’s “Good Times”) and can probably recite its lyrics verbatim (“I said a hip hop, a hippie, a hippie to the hip hip hop … “). Not too bad for three dudes from Englewood, New Jersey. Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock, “It Takes Two” One of the most sampled (and revered) hip-hop tracks of the pre-breakout era (like 1988), merely reading the “It Takes Two” title is probably enough to conjure up the sound of the wailing diva belting out the hook (or those “Woo- Yeah s”). It swept the streets and crossed over to the clubs, and has since become a staple at weddings and dance parties — and no, the dynamic duo could never match its success. But they don’t have to; they’re in the perfecto club. Young MC, “Bust a Move” The biggest hit from Young’s breakout Stone Cold Rhymin’ album, it not only won a Grammy for Best Rap Performance, but made the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and paved the way for the rap takeover that would follow in the ’90s. Oh, and Flea plays bass on it. One of the greatest hip-hop tracks of all time and probably one of the first ones you ever saw a video for on MTV. Don’t just stand there, bust a move! Alanis Morrissette, Jagged Little Pill Buoyed by the Dave Coulier-baiting “You Oughta Know” (or any of the five smash singles that followed), Morrissette’s debut sold a staggering 33 million copies worldwide and basically brought the roiling, riot-grrl spirit to the mainstream. Not surprisingly, Morrissette never again reached the heights she did here, but if you’re making a list of albums that unquestionably defined the 1990s, well, this had better be on it. Craig Mack, “Flava in Ya Ear” The song that basically put Bad Boy on the map, it featured a cameo by a then up-and-coming Notorious B.I.G., not to mention Puff Daddy. It’s stark, black-and-white video is equally iconic, though the song is perhaps best known for the fact that Mack all but disappeared following its release. Still, “Flava” is so of a time and a moment in hip hop that it’s subsequently earned classic status, meaning that somewhere, Mack can rest easy. The Verve, “Bittersweet Symphony” Breakout, genre-defining smash from Brit-rock lifers the Verve, “Bittersweet” — and its accompanying music video — were smashes on both sides of the pond. Too bad the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Mick Jagger caught wind of it and sued the band for royalties, effectively ending their run just as it was beginning. But legality aside, you cannot deny the song’s thrilling, chilling rush, which, 15 years after it debuted, still raises goose bumps — kind of like watching a perfect game, really. Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea When it was first released in 1998, its sparse production and spine-tingling emoting confused many — though, in the decade since, it’s become a touchstone of American indie, a harrowing, haunting rumination on life, death and reincarnation (and Anne Frank) that mastermind Jeff Mangum has yet to follow up. And who knows if he ever will; pitching a second perfecto has proven impossible to date. The Postal Service, Give Up One of the most unlikely success stories in recent memory, it started as a project between Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard and electronic musician Jimmy Tamborello, and thanks to gently bubbling hits like “Such Great Heights,” it went on to become the best-selling album released on Sub Pop since Bleach, the debut from some band called Nirvana. Since then, neither man seems willing to embrace the idea of recording a follow-up, and really, why would they? Perfection usually only comes around once. Cee Lo Green, “F— You” A song so huge it not only managed to make Green into a solo star, but helped launch the career of Bruno Mars too. It went from Internet sensation to the Billboard Hot 100 and has since become Green’s signature song — which, given his time in the Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley, is certainly saying something. He’ll probably never be this perfect again, but you can never take this smash away from him. What are you musical perfect games in your book? Let us know in the comments!
This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day, so when it does we need to take the time to soak it up and enjoy it. Here’s Miley Cyrus hanging out by the pool in her sexy little bikini. Is everyone alright? It looks like all her hard work at pilates classes and jogging with her dog to get that nineteen year old body tight has really paid off. She looks awesome. I’m not sure I’d want to be poolside with this hottie walking around, my bathing suit probably wouldn’t be able to handle the incredible erection. I’d have to wear a couple of speedos under my actual bathing suit and even then I’m pretty sure it would find a way through. That’s how hot she looks.
A word of warning: if you’re already feeling kind of grumpy, this is really going to piss you off. So the topless scene that Jennifer Aniston had removed from Wanderlust (2011) wasn’t completely left on the cutting room floor. It does appear on a Blu-ray special feature, the ” bizarro cut ” of the film, which producer-writers David Wain and Ken Marino describe as ” alternate lines, jokes, deleted scenes, outtakes… stuff that was too silly, too absurd ” (or too nude, as the case may be) to make it into the final film. But even if you hold your nose and get the Blu-ray, you’re still not going to get to see JenAn’s jugs. As the scene begins, we get full frontal from a pair of hippie extras (above), but when the big moment finally arrives and Jen steps forward to reveal her topless glory, a big black head pops up and covers her boobs as an off-screen voice yells, “Down in front!” By the time the “head” moves out of the way, the boobs are gone. Ha ha, guys. Very funny. See stills of the crime against boob-manity that is Wanderlust (2011) after the jump!
“After the show I have to really put some more attention to sex in my life,” Marina Abramovic vows near the beginning of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present , an elegantly observed, sleekly packaged look at an artist whose career-long balance of enigma and self-exposure culminated in a 2010 retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. “Semi-intellectual artist at the top of her career,” goes Abramovic’s self-drafted personal ad, “looking for single male.” My head completed a few full rotations taking in what all’s going on in that sentence, but let’s begin with the part about being on top. That Abramovic seems to have willed her own peak into being — the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (AKA “Ulay”) teases his former partner about whether she now prefers to be addressed as “the grandmother of performance art” or “the diva of performance art” — is deftly interlayered with director and cinematographer Matthew Akers’s presentation of a life and career united by the stubborn pursuit of meaning. The picture gives a sense of life’s fragments aligning, finally, to form a coherent story. What that story is depends on who’s doing the telling, of course. At the outset of her three-month MoMA performance — where the artist sat like a Buddha in a red (or blue, or white) dress, receiving an intrigued, then entranced, then near-hysterical public, one at a time, for a bout of eye contact across a wooden table — Abramovic outlines the three different versions of herself, her favorite being the pure, unshackled sensibility watching over the two other, more mortal selves. Hers is a very physical feat, as is made clear; there’s a bedpan built into her chair, and Ulay describes being wrecked by a similar performance during their partnership. As she did then, Marina carries on, outlasting her lover and smiting her doubters, a martyr to an indeterminate and therefore capacious cause — to “create a charismatic space” that will slow down time, return us to the present, absorb our ills, reflect us to ourselves, and/or furnish an insatiable attention-seeker with patiently queued reams of admirers. There is a careful reverence to these kinds of commissioned artist studies, and the earnest styling of the subject as a kind of time-bending sensei — a destination and a journey — might feel more poncy if it hadn’t played out pretty much exactly that way over three months in midtown Manhattan. Walking into the atrium the first day of the exhibition, Abramovic jokes about feeling like Marie Antoinette being led to her fate. But if the crossover success of “The Artist Is Present” came as a surprise, The Artist Is Present suggests a woman very consciously stepping forward to collect her due. “Excuse me,” Abramovic says in her smoky Balkan accent, “I’m 63 — I don’t want to be alternative anymore.” But the HBO treatment (it will air on that channel after a brief theatrical run) makes a strange and occasionally unsatisfying match for its subject. Entire corollary documentaries are glimpsed in a scene or a comment: Ambramovic’s ambition is alluded to in somewhat dark tones; the footage of striking and often disturbing previous performances barely outlines a complex and sometimes confounding sensibility; gallerist Sean Kelly speaks of his team’s invention of a market for her work, a model that has become a standard in the performance-art world; Ulay’s reappearance and the couple’s awkward, poignant reunion suggests untold romantic galaxies. And then there is curator Klaus Biesenbach, who in word and manner reveals a critical, under-investigated side of Abramovic. “Klaus, I love you,” Abramovic murmurs to him in the moments before her performance begins. “Is this okay?” Biesenbach acquires a curiously steely look when he describes the way “Marina seduces everyone she ever meets.” They are great friends now, he says, repeating it twice, “but we’re divorced .” Groupies and pranksters abound, as do would-be artists who see themselves as part of the show; all shenanigans are quickly shut down as Abramovic lowers her head like a mournful deity. In fact, Biesenbach says, the exhibition is ultimately a self-portrait, and just as he mistakenly believed Abramovic to be in love with him, so the same misunderstanding is repeated “with every single person in the atrium.” The better part of Abramovic’s personality slips out in asides and interactions, rather than in the rehearsed bits about her trinity of selves. Eerily untouched by age, her imposing physicality is softened by girlish accents. A shadow storyline trails Akers’s art show procedural, and it involves, of all plainly human things, Marina Abramovic getting laid. And yet the sideways frequency with which the issue comes up feels telling. As so often seems to be the case with successful women, for Abramovic being at the top of her career means forever looking past that next big project for her “other” life to begin, the one where she falls in love and has heaps of sex and looks up the hot Asian guy from day X and hour Y of her MoMA residency. At the outset Abramovic says she wanted to show the world, one time, the unglamorous underside of art’s creation; in fact the result has a slickness some might find disconcerting. Seeing her pinned down and packaged as an art star or even just a documentary “personality” might feel antithetical to a body of work committed to its own transience. And yet The Artist Is Present is ultimately an Abramovic production, whether the purists care to acknowledge her love of designer clothes and way with a one-liner or not. Why shouldn’t this be the woman who made an entire city confront the tyranny of time’s passage? Because I wasn’t seeking anything so grand from this clean-lined documentary, I came away moved most of all by the perseverance of an artist who, having put the time in, was rewarded with a moment that set a life lived largely through performance into meaningful relief. There’s also something to be said for having your ex come and pay homage to you, on your turf, at a MoMA restrospective of your career. As Ulay himself demurs: Only respect. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“After the show I have to really put some more attention to sex in my life,” Marina Abramovic vows near the beginning of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present , an elegantly observed, sleekly packaged look at an artist whose career-long balance of enigma and self-exposure culminated in a 2010 retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. “Semi-intellectual artist at the top of her career,” goes Abramovic’s self-drafted personal ad, “looking for single male.” My head completed a few full rotations taking in what all’s going on in that sentence, but let’s begin with the part about being on top. That Abramovic seems to have willed her own peak into being — the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (AKA “Ulay”) teases his former partner about whether she now prefers to be addressed as “the grandmother of performance art” or “the diva of performance art” — is deftly interlayered with director and cinematographer Matthew Akers’s presentation of a life and career united by the stubborn pursuit of meaning. The picture gives a sense of life’s fragments aligning, finally, to form a coherent story. What that story is depends on who’s doing the telling, of course. At the outset of her three-month MoMA performance — where the artist sat like a Buddha in a red (or blue, or white) dress, receiving an intrigued, then entranced, then near-hysterical public, one at a time, for a bout of eye contact across a wooden table — Abramovic outlines the three different versions of herself, her favorite being the pure, unshackled sensibility watching over the two other, more mortal selves. Hers is a very physical feat, as is made clear; there’s a bedpan built into her chair, and Ulay describes being wrecked by a similar performance during their partnership. As she did then, Marina carries on, outlasting her lover and smiting her doubters, a martyr to an indeterminate and therefore capacious cause — to “create a charismatic space” that will slow down time, return us to the present, absorb our ills, reflect us to ourselves, and/or furnish an insatiable attention-seeker with patiently queued reams of admirers. There is a careful reverence to these kinds of commissioned artist studies, and the earnest styling of the subject as a kind of time-bending sensei — a destination and a journey — might feel more poncy if it hadn’t played out pretty much exactly that way over three months in midtown Manhattan. Walking into the atrium the first day of the exhibition, Abramovic jokes about feeling like Marie Antoinette being led to her fate. But if the crossover success of “The Artist Is Present” came as a surprise, The Artist Is Present suggests a woman very consciously stepping forward to collect her due. “Excuse me,” Abramovic says in her smoky Balkan accent, “I’m 63 — I don’t want to be alternative anymore.” But the HBO treatment (it will air on that channel after a brief theatrical run) makes a strange and occasionally unsatisfying match for its subject. Entire corollary documentaries are glimpsed in a scene or a comment: Ambramovic’s ambition is alluded to in somewhat dark tones; the footage of striking and often disturbing previous performances barely outlines a complex and sometimes confounding sensibility; gallerist Sean Kelly speaks of his team’s invention of a market for her work, a model that has become a standard in the performance-art world; Ulay’s reappearance and the couple’s awkward, poignant reunion suggests untold romantic galaxies. And then there is curator Klaus Biesenbach, who in word and manner reveals a critical, under-investigated side of Abramovic. “Klaus, I love you,” Abramovic murmurs to him in the moments before her performance begins. “Is this okay?” Biesenbach acquires a curiously steely look when he describes the way “Marina seduces everyone she ever meets.” They are great friends now, he says, repeating it twice, “but we’re divorced .” Groupies and pranksters abound, as do would-be artists who see themselves as part of the show; all shenanigans are quickly shut down as Abramovic lowers her head like a mournful deity. In fact, Biesenbach says, the exhibition is ultimately a self-portrait, and just as he mistakenly believed Abramovic to be in love with him, so the same misunderstanding is repeated “with every single person in the atrium.” The better part of Abramovic’s personality slips out in asides and interactions, rather than in the rehearsed bits about her trinity of selves. Eerily untouched by age, her imposing physicality is softened by girlish accents. A shadow storyline trails Akers’s art show procedural, and it involves, of all plainly human things, Marina Abramovic getting laid. And yet the sideways frequency with which the issue comes up feels telling. As so often seems to be the case with successful women, for Abramovic being at the top of her career means forever looking past that next big project for her “other” life to begin, the one where she falls in love and has heaps of sex and looks up the hot Asian guy from day X and hour Y of her MoMA residency. At the outset Abramovic says she wanted to show the world, one time, the unglamorous underside of art’s creation; in fact the result has a slickness some might find disconcerting. Seeing her pinned down and packaged as an art star or even just a documentary “personality” might feel antithetical to a body of work committed to its own transience. And yet The Artist Is Present is ultimately an Abramovic production, whether the purists care to acknowledge her love of designer clothes and way with a one-liner or not. Why shouldn’t this be the woman who made an entire city confront the tyranny of time’s passage? Because I wasn’t seeking anything so grand from this clean-lined documentary, I came away moved most of all by the perseverance of an artist who, having put the time in, was rewarded with a moment that set a life lived largely through performance into meaningful relief. There’s also something to be said for having your ex come and pay homage to you, on your turf, at a MoMA restrospective of your career. As Ulay himself demurs: Only respect. Follow Michelle Orange on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
He hasn’t gone all Charlize Theron on us, but Matthew Morrison will be sporting a new look this summer. The Glee star – who is working on his second solo album – Tweeted a photo of himself yesterday with a buzz cut, a startling change for an actor well known for his curly hair. What do you think of the move? Are you still watching Glee ? Or do you think it’s become a painful weekly PSA wrapped in a number of iTunes-friendly singles that totally ignores the concepts of character development and logic? Sorry. We got carried away there. But vote now on Matthew’s new hair!
Drake is adamant that he did not beat up Chris Brown last night, claiming he was in the process of leaving the nightclub when the stars’ entourages threw down. Chris Brown’s fight with Drake and his posse at a New York club left him with a gash on his chin (he posted a pic of it on Twitter that he later took down). He says he was leaving when $h!t went down though. His rep said: “[Drake] did not engage in any activity which resulted in injury to person or damage to property.” “Drake did not participate in any wrongdoing of any kind last night at W.i.P. He was on his way out of the club when the altercation began.” Earlier reports indicated, contrarily, that Brown and Drake had been hanging out in the VIP section when Drake began pointing and yelling at Brown. Brown began yelling back, witnesses say, and that’s when members of both entourages rushed in and began shoving each other repeatedly. With tensions escalating, someone threw a bottle, causing an all-out melee. It’s unclear who threw it, but bedlam erupted and security called the police. Now, a new witness claims it was a rapper hanging out with Drake, Meek Mill (pictured below), who was screaming at Chris and vice versa, not Drake personally. One of Chris’ “lieutenants” was also involved in the screaming match. The informant won’t say what specifically the music stars’ camps were arguing about, “for fear that someone will get hurt.” You can use your imagination there. Another source says Chris was hurt when Meek Mill hit him with a bottle. What’s clear is that Brown and Drake left the scene by the time the cops showed up, but several members of their entourages remained at the club. Multiple members of both crews required medical assistance and the club suffered some serious damage in the fight, including many busted tables, broken mirrors, shattered lighting and glass scratches all over the floors. Take a look: Whose side are you on? [Photos: WENN.com, TMZ, Twitter]
