According to the leading two paragraphs in today's New York Times feature on gender relations at colleges, here are the things that girls like: bars, beer, jokes and Taylor Swift. That's "everything" - "except guys." Here, let a college girl explain: “This is so typical, like all nights, 10 out of 10... because there are no guys." When we weren't looking men went extinct? Even "tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup" can't lure them out. And grandma said you'd catch flies with honey! Tight-fitting, sticky, sweet honey. Well, sweetie, grandma didn't snag her husband in 2010, when colleges like the University of North Carolina count female enrollment around 60% leaving it feeling "eerily like women’s colleges." You know those times when about 11,000 men feel like zero -- what's a girl to do? (more...)

The 2010 Grammy Awards blew the doors off the Staples Center tonight, with winners from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift to the Zac Brown Band to Kings of Leon, The Black Eyed Peas, Jason Mraz, Lady Gaga, Michael Bublé and more. From Pink's glittering ascent into the air to Beyoncé's feisty, militaristic performance to Green Day's 21 Gun Salute to Elton John and Lady Gaga's sharing a double-sided piano to the Zac Brown Band's rousing Americana, to the pairing of Ke$ha with Justin Bieber (!), to Sn00ki in the Glamostrator, to people like Stevie Nicks and Alice Cooper, Lionel Richie and Smokey Robinson taking the stage, to Paris and Prince Jackson honoring their father, it was a pretty memorable night. (more...)

It's always been my understanding that the Grammys are Hollywood's Halloween of sorts. For one night, all bets are off. You can stray from safe, bring the hem line up, and add an inch (or 5) on your heel. Alas, this year's Grammy's seemed to pull a page from the always safe Oscars, consisting of a lot of white (Marisa Miller, Carrie Underwood, Rihanna), a bunch of yawns, and too many huge misses. Here's a look at the best (and worst!) of what the red carpet had to offer tonight. (more...)

This has been making the rounds, and for good reason — it's a catchy, boppy new yet familiar song that sums up the last year not only in mashing up some of the biggest hits of 2009 but in doing so in auto-tune, which was one of the distinctive, hallmark sounds of the year. (It even got its own parody, "Blame It On The Auto-Tune.") (more...)

poll So it's that time of year. Everyone is trying to figure out who the most important person of the year is. Time will be releasing their pick shortly (though they have been known to apply the term "person" loosely). So: Who is the most important person of the year? If one were to judge the merits based solely on the amount of words the media has devoted to a particular person in the last twelve months than likely we'd be looking at a horse race between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Of course, there are perhaps larger things to consider like, say, landing a plane on the Hudson river in the middle of January with no fatalities! (more...)

Strong return by SNL last night after two weeks off, with a surprisingly strong host in the unselfconscious and rather adorable Taylor Swift. Swift had a heavier load to carry in this ep than most hosts, since she was the musical guest as well, but you could barely tell (I only noticed the cue-card eye-wander in one sketch) and the writers used her well. Great ensemble show, too — tonight was one of those nights when SNL felt like a team and not like a showcase for a few stars. Some great hair & makeup work (Twilight, Kate Gosselin) but some weak stuff too (Barbara Walters, Joe Trippi). You're not supposed to notice the discrepancy — just as you're not supposed to notice that Shep Smith is being lampooned for something he doesn't do. Glenn Beck on the other hand? So is. Extra points for getting a health care vote joke in "Weekend Update," too — the bill passed at 11:15 pm and they went to air at 11:30 pm. (more...)

So it's Halloween, and you don't have a costume. You were going to be Kanye West, but the friend you were counting on to be your Taylor Swift got swine flu at the last minute. Then, it was going to be Sarah Palin, until you remembered that that's what you were last year. Then, you were going to dress up as Balloon Boy, but you realized that all of your friends, neighbors, and extended family members were planning to as well. What to do?

Fortunately, Mediaite has come up with some costume suggestions for you. Pulled straight from the headlines, these are guaranteed to be hits:

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TMZ has posted the audio of President Obama referring to Kanye West as a "jackass" yesterday. It's an interesting listen for a number of reasons. One, Obama is responding to a reporter asking him whether his girls were as "ticked off" as the reporter's were about Taylor Swift's treatment at the VMA's. "I thought that was really inappropriate," says Obama. "Does that count as the first question?" the reporter asks, suggesting they were already on the record? Obama certainly doesn't explicitly ask to be taken off the record even after he's made the remark, though he does allude to not wanting the remark to be blown out of proportion. So much for that. Here's the rest of the exchange: (more...)

After reading Steve Krakauer's account of Kanye West's outburst at last night's MTV Video Music Awards, along with some priceless celebrity reactions, I was on Twitter when this tweet caught my eye. Hip-hop writer and "Media Assassin" Harry Allen, re-tweeting another tweep named Lemekh, had this to say:

No, White People: Tell Us What You Really Think Of Kanye West. http://twurl.nl/c5em6g about 8 hours ago from TweetDeck

The link is to a Twitter search of the words "Kanye" and "N***er." By the time I saw this, the search was dominated by re-tweets of people condemning the use of the word, so I paged all the way back to the first instance, and worked my way forward. There were lots of vile tweets from obvious racists, the most rewteeted one being this particularly disgusting one, but also from white people who claimed not to be racist, who seem to feel they've been granted permission by Chris Rock, or something, to use that word to describe "one of the bad ones." Rock has since clarified the rules on this, which are not all that different from my own. There were also lots of tweets from black people, mainly to express the feeling that West was making all black people look bad. While it hasn't hit the top of today's trending topics, the search has been widely re-tweeted. There's absolutely nothing wrong with calling out racists. It should probably be done more often. I'm sure, however, that any reasonable person would agree that calling this trend what "White people really think of Kanye" is overly broad, to say the least. While any vile, hateful, and even violent tweets are wholly unacceptable, ascribing them to all white people is obviously unfair. I emailed Harry for a comment on this article, and I'm awaiting his response. What I also found interesting was the fact that Lemekh, the man who originated Allen's tweet, and who cataloged many examples on his twitter feed, seems to have no problem using anti-gay slurs. The takeaway here is that, when it comes to bigotry, we always have a little farther to go than we think we do. Update: In response to my tweeted query, "Harry, you're a writer, are we that type?" Harry Allen responds:

@djkoolchris @TommyXtopher D.B.T.H.about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

That's "Don't believe the hype." So, either Harry was answering that question the way he responds to every Public Enemy fan who asks that, or he read my story and I made my point. Update 2: Harry Allen blogs at length on this issue.

video President Obama just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to holding the nation's attention with details of his health care plan. Perhaps the President should embrace a 'if you can't beat'em, join'em' mentality and stage his own outburst. It may be a good last resort before all is lost. Consider this. (more...)

VIDEO This week was full of shout-outs, mostly of the incongruous, impolite variety. First Joe Wilson at the Obama's joint-session health care talk. Then Kanye West at last night's Video Music Awards. And somewhere in the middle, Serena Williams did a little shouting-out of her own. (more...)

video It makes sense that everyone is talking about last night's MTV Video Music Awards for reasons other than the actual videos. This is MTV in 2009, and videos are low on the priority list. Instead, people are talking about the performances - Janet Jackson tribute to her brother, Lady Gaga's bloody fantasy sequence. But mainly, it's how Kanye West was even more of an ass than usual. (more...)

Women's fashion magazine covers typically fall somewhere between sexy and sophisticated. But finding a spot on that continuum for your cover girl is a little bit trickier when she is still counting the days until her 20th birthday. This month, women's fashion mags across the globe dipped into the young, supple crop of up-and-comers. Will putting tarted-up teens on the cover help attract younger readers? (Any readers at all?) Or will this month's covers just fall flat and lose their way? (more...)