Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘pop culture’

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Verb your authors

by Celeste Ng

Click on over to Urban Dictionary and you’ll soon be Faulknering.  At least, according to one of that dictionary’s definitions of “Faulkner,” which is “To go from being a nerd to getting all the hot girls.” Apparently, kids these days are giving authors’ names new meanings, and Urban Dictionary—the mass-edited compendium of language as it’s popularly used—is capturing them.  The New York Daily News has a roundup (via): Keats: One who has much intelligence, yet is reclusive and worryingly geeky. Enjoys exercising excessive control over friends and family. Wears leggings. Eats pizza only. Bronte: A girl of her own sexiness, […]


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"Jersey Shore" Gone Wilde!

by Celeste Ng

That’s the title of a hilarious video series by the cast of “The Importance of Being Earnest” on Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company. They ask an important question: What if the characters of Broadway’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” traveled through a time warp and woke up on the beach with Snooki, The Situation and the rest of the gang of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”? In an exclusive video series created for Playbill by “Earnest” stars Santino Fontana and David Furr, the Roundabout Theatre Company cast puts “Jersey” in the mouths of Oscar Wilde’s famed Britons. Think of it as a […]


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Lisa Simpson's Book Club, Hamlet's iPod

by Celeste Ng

So they’re not real—but they appreciate pop culture. As a Simpsons geek, I was delighted to discover the Tumblr site Lisa Simpson’s Book Club, which is documenting all the works of literature referenced by the surprisingly literate second-grader on The Simpsons. The site features screengrabs of Lisa reading, along with quotes and comments about her reading material of choice—including both real books like Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, and On the Road as well as spoofs like the How, Why, and Huh? Book of Weather and The Babysitter Twins. But then, The Simpsons has always […]



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