I've never read any of the '50 Shades of Grey' books because the Internet pre-educated me about the 'my inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves' material.
If there is one thing for which the 'Real Housewives' franchise deserves artistic recognition, it is the patient and immaculate building of a villain.
I was 11 years old when I saw the first season of 'The Real World.' Initially, I was drawn to the show because it was what I imagined the adult version of my life should be.
As evidenced during my failed audition, I'm a thorough introvert who would completely hate living in a 'Real World' house. I would have taken my Ikea comforter to the confessional room and never come out.
My feeling for reality TV isn't ironic, guilty, or apologetic. Reality TV is one of the few remaining modes of popular entertainment in which characterization is permitted as plot.
Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.
Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.
'Real Housewives of New Jersey' has taught me more about the nature of a vacuum in space than any of the demonstrations in my high school AP physics textbook.
What 'Survivor' is really about is the inescapability of your being yourself, even when you have told yourself you can be someone different for 30 days.
I understand how hard it is to force yourself to be someone different. By the end of high school, I had taken to doing my math homework up against a concealed wall during lunch because I was tired of socializing.
When I left for college, I told myself that this was a chance for reinvention. No one on the other side of the country knew that I was an introvert, so maybe if I tried not acting like an introvert, I wouldn't be one.
I advise all my novel students to write in the company of 'Veronica Mars.'
TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.
I have next to no interest in makeup as a thing in and of itself, and nothing stresses me out like Sephora's salespeople.
From the first Lauren Luke tutorial I watched, I was completely taken with her.
