It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we’re joined by Luna Malbroux, a diversity consultant for schools and workplaces by day, a hilarious comedian by night, an app creator sometime in between, and also potentially the love child of Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey. 

We talk to Luna about EquiTable, her app that uses comedy to raise awareness around the wage gap:

We then switch gears to get the lowdown on why it’s complicated for some black people to explore BDSM:

Why It’s Hard To Be Black And Also Into BDSM

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have fantasies about being dominated. I would imagine someone gripping my hair tightly or a stinging slap on my ass-all very exciting. But every time I would let my thoughts run wild, they would get rudely interrupted, like an angry grandmother unplugging the cord while you’re sneakily watching TV after 2 a.m., yelling “Turn this OFF!”

We pay homage to the still-relevant Samantha Jones:

And we cap things off with a song of Luna’s choice: FKA Twigs’ “Two Weeks”:

Until next week!

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Chances are you’re saying this right now or making this face. I’m not crazy about pranks either, but I am a fan of looking to history to find out why every April 1, we all trick and lie to each other. Here’s what I found:

The origins of the tradition are hard to pin down. Some believe that it stems from when Pope Gregory XIII ditched the Julian calendar for the Gregorian in the 1500s, making the New Year begin in January instead of the beginning of spring. This was before Twitter so news travelled pretty slowly across Europe, leaving a lot of rural folk in the dark about the change. There were also people who disagreed with the change. Anyone who still celebrated the New Year on the first of April was branded an “April fool” and was subject to pranks.

Other historians see origins of the holiday in Sizdah Bedar, a Persian holiday celebrated since 536 BC. On this day, Iranians trade city life for the mountains, the woods, or even a park of garden, where they picnic and, you guessed it, play pranks.

Or maybe we can blame Chaucer for all of this: In his Canterbury Tales (1392), the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” which tells the story of a rooster being tricked by a fox, is set Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two. Readers took this to mean March 32 a.k.a. April 1. Scholars believe that this line resulted from a copying error and should have read Syn March was gon…, which would have meant 32 days after April a.k.a. May 2, the anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England. Typos: ruining lives since the 1300s!

However this day found its beginnings, it’s here to stay so let’s use every time one of our friends makes us look stupid today as a reminder to not take life too seriously. And it could be worse; Scotland celebrates the holiday over two days, with the second being dedicated to children pulling pranks that involve the “backside.” Um, so yeah let’s be thankful that this will be over in a few hours and that kids won’t be plotting against our butts tomorrow.

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we talk about how the reaction to Kehlani’s supposed cheating revealed a familiar double standard:

Kehlani’s suicide attempt and the double standard of how female celebrities get criticized

For days, a segment of the Internet has been consumed with R&B singer Kehlani’s love life, harshly criticizing her amid speculation that she cheated on Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving with her ex-boyfriend. Back in February, Kehlani had posted on Instagram that she was dating Irving.

We dig into the tragic history of one of the most famous families in American history:

Carly talks about why she finds superhero movies super annoying:

And we cap things off with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”:

Until next week!

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Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity or has spent more than four minutes with me knows that I love Gilmore Girls to an unhealthy degree. The kind of love that inspired me to travel nearly two thousand miles to witness the cast reunion at the ATX festival, the kind of passion that led me to craft a shrinky-dink necklace of Lorelai and Rory’s faces, rank the top 10 episodes, make a pilgrimage to the set in LA, and empathically declare what should and shouldn’t happen in the revival. So that primal scream you heard an hour ago was me reacting to Entertainment Weekly unveiling the first official photos from said revival. It’s my duty to overanalyze them. Let me find my magnifying glass.

Found it! Let’s give these pics a look.

Aww! Our girls haven’t changed one bit! They still love coffee and each other. And I’m assuming they still do all their scenes without actual coffee in their cups, much like in this photo.

Now we’re talking! Real coffee! Did Lorelai reupholster the lumpy living room couch? Emily is going to hate this even more than the last one.

OMG. Chez Gilmore got a fresh coat of paint! Maybe Kirk created a house painting business for a day before moving on to yet another profession? Would Luke Danes deign (see what I did there?) to live in a robin’s egg-colored house? Does this mean they never really got back together?!?

PHEW!!! Look at that sexual hand-holding! In the words of Beyonce, god is real. Luke’s wardrobe is unchanged, as we knew it would be. Lorelai seems more stylish. Maybe she’s finally raking in enough cash money from the Dragonfly to chuck the bedazzled-butt sweats and spring for more cute, flirty print dresses. Good things happen to good people. She deserves all the nice things in the world because she raised Rory all on her own (thanks for nothing, Christopher!) and is such a loyal friend and…*voice cracks* *cries quietly for a long time while Googling pictures of Lauren Graham*

Okay, there is a lot to unpack here.

1. Get it, Miss Patty! Love the hair.

2. Hi, Babette! I hope Maury still plays piano for you and carries you around.

3. Stars Hollow is staging a musical because it was only a matter of time. Is it beach themed or did Lorelai and Rory move to Venice Beach to hang out with Jess’ deadbeat dad?

4. Look! One of Lane’s twins! He’s holding a beach chair, so I guess the beach theme is real. OR! All the disappointments in Lane’s life (her mentally abusive mother, her absent father, her layabout baby daddy, Dave Rygalski just leaving for The OC in the midst of their hot and heavy love affair, the fact that she only had sex once and hated it and got knocked up in the process, the fact that her “best friend” only hangs out with her when she has something to complain about, etc. etc. etc.) catch up with her, sending her into a deep spiral that leaves her unable to care for both twins so she gives one to Rory and he joins her and Lorelai in their move to Venice Beach.

What? I have a vivid imagination and stranger things have happened on this show (*cough*Luke’s secret daughter*cough*).

What. A. Boss. Still suffers zero fools. Still lives in the same mansion, if that staircase is any indication. In light of the passing of Edward Herrmann, we know Emily will be single and mingling. I hope the D.A.R. holds a Bachelorette-themed event, where Emily judges and scorns 20 eligible men, only to keep the final rose for herself. I’d also be open to her running for the Senate and eviscerating crooked politicos. Oh, who am I kidding, she could literally just sit in that chair for all four mini-movies and I would be like yaaaassss.

So Rory didn’t morph into Christiane Amanpour, like she had hoped, but teaching or guest lecturing at her high school alma mater, Chilton, works too. Based on the irregular handwriting on the chalkboard (which is odd because we all know Rory’s handwriting is immaculate), she’s schooling these kids on Jane Eyre. Here’s hoping she finds a way to incorporate an anecdote about how, one time, this really hot guy stole her book and wrote in the margins and charmed her into dumping her nice, but kind of dumb and super controlling boyfriend for a whirlwind year of dating that left her with a fractured wrist and a broken heart.

That’s when Jess will show up really frantic, like he did at her dorm that one time, and profess his love again, but, unlike last time, Rory is down and they reclaim their title as the hottest couple in modern history. Make it so, Amy Sherman-Palladino! Also, I hope Paris poisoned the headmaster and has assumed his position at Chilton. And I hope that Madeline and Louise are the Sex-Ed teachers.

Alright, this magnifying glass is starting to hurt my eye so that’s all for now. There’s unfortunately no official word on when we’ll get to actually watch Gilmore Girls: Seasons, but that just leaves us with plenty of time to trade predictions in the comments below! Have at it!

Emojis were supposed to be the great equalizer: a language all its own capable of transcending borders and cultural differences.

Not so fast, say a group of researchers who found that different people had vastly different interpretations of some popular emojis. The researchers published their findings for GroupLens, a research lab based out of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

“I think some people thought that they could use [emojis] with little risk and what we found is that it actually is at high risk of miscommunication,” Hannah Miller, a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota and one of the authors of the study, said in a phone interview.

For example, the researchers found that when people receive the “face with tears of joy” emoji — which Oxford Dictionaries declared its word of the year — some interpret it positively, while others will interpret it negatively.

“We find that only 4.5 percent of emoji symbols we examined have consistently low variance in their sentiment interpretations,” the researchers write. “Conversely, in 25 percent of the cases where participants rated the same rendering, they did not agree on whether the sentiment was positive, neutral, or negative.”

This, the researchers found, only gets more complicated when you’re texting across platforms, because the same emojis are rendered differently on an iPhone than they are on a Samsung Galaxy, for example.

Via Miller, here’s how “grinning face with smiling eyes” would look on each platform and how the study’s subjects interpreted it:

And here is an example of how that may work out in a real-life conversation:

Jacob Thebault-Spieker, a PhD student at the University of Minnesota and another of the study’s authors, said maybe part of the confusion comes from the newness of the language.

“The understanding that we have from theory suggests that people build shared meaning of communication and interaction over time,” he said. “These are new. People are building up their new norms within a group of friends or within a geographic region or perhaps even within a culture and those things may start to even out over time.”

One thing that could help, said Miller, is a dictionary or in this case emojipedia.com, the authority on the meaning of emojis.

If that doesn’t work, you can stick to old fashioned emoticons

Those are less likely to be misconstrued.

We’ll leave you with a graphic from the paper that ranks how misconstrued emojis are across platforms. From left to right, it shows most misconstrued to least misconstrued:

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we’re joined by Nancy Jo Sales, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a prolific writer on the subjects of pop culture icons and youth culture, and the author of a new book called American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers. 

We talked to Nancy Jo about scary corners of social media like “slut pages”:

We reminisced with Nancy Jo about how she used to be friends with Donald Trump in the ’90s:

And I just had to ask about the infamous Alexis Neiers voicemail:

Until next week!

Subscribe and rate us in iTunes! And find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Last year, I wrote about Women On 20s, an organization whose mission is to put a woman’s face on paper currency by 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. After a public vote that selected Harriet Tubman as the ideal nominee and a year of petitioning the Treasury Department to make history by better representing history, it looks like it’s all really happening!

This afternoon, the Treasury is set to announce that slave-freer Harriet Tubman will replace slave-holder Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. And that’s not all: civil right leaders will grace the $5 bill and multiple suffragettes will appear on the back of the $10 bill (Alexander Hamilton was spared because of his newfound popularity, thanks to Broadway and Lin-Manuel Miranda).

On top of all the obvious reasons why this news is wonderful, an anecdote from Tubman’s life makes the symbolism even more poignant. When her father was on trial for helping slaves escape, Tubman was desperate to raise $20 to free him. She marched into the office of abolitionist Oliver Johnson, declared “I’m not gwine till I git my twenty dollars,” and sat and slept there until she got what she came for (before you congratulate the rich white dude, don’t; the funds came from ex-slaves who raised money on Harriet’s behalf). Not in her wildest dreams did she probably imagine that her face would one day end up gracing the very bill she had to beg and plead for. Go on and bend, arc of the moral universe, bend!

Update (5:15pm): Ugh, we should have sensed that some white nonsense was just around the corner:

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we provide a crash course in all things Kate Bush, for those who have yet to become disciples. If you want to know the level of bad-assery we’re dealing with, watch this iconic music video:

And then watch Kate give a flawless performance, despite a wardrobe malfunction that tried to ruin her flow:

We gush over American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson and talk about what’s next for ’90s true crime television:

We’re feeling better about not being able to get tickets to Hamilton by revisiting Beyoncé’s 2001 “hip hopera” Carmen:

And we cap things off with The Seshen’s “Oblivion”:

Until next week!

Subscribe and rate us in iTunes! And find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called 2016. Many music fans were still getting used to living in a world without David Bowie. And now another artist, who redefined music, style, gender expression and sexuality, is snatched away too soon. Since stars are just like us, everyone from Obama to Oprah are ugly crying all day too. Here are some of their reactions to the sad news:

It’s too soon to formulate words into coherent sentences that can truly capture what Prince means to me, so here is a collection of the best animated gifs featuring our beloved Purple One. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a bunch of animated gifs must be worth a thousand thinkpieces, right?

Prince invented “feeling myself.”

And he knows it.

He also invented a seduction style that’s both coy and take-no-prisoners.

He can also execute said seduction, while enjoying a Blow Pop.

A full song’s worth of choreo in the span of nine casual seconds.

An outtake from Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” music video.

Same.

Umm….yeah…

When you suddenly remember you’re mother-F-ing Prince!

He knows he owns everything (expect maybe an earring for his left side).

You don’t have to ask me twice.

Bath time means taking off your shirt in a totally normal way.

Cleanliness is next to godliness (god being Prince obvi).

The only person who can pop his collar and not be douchey.

Prince GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY

Discover & Share this Prince GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Taylor’s squad wishes.

Fun fact: Prince is not here for bats.

Now onto the shady part of Prince. Unleash the sideeye!

So much shade it can’t help breaking the fourth wall.

Medusa learned how to turn people to stone with a single look from Prince.

Boom! Stone.

Prince really wishes you wouldn’t.

He literally can’t with you right now.

Prince doesn’t have time for your nonsense, even if you’re a Muppet.

Nope, absolutely zero time for nonsense.

If “Bye, girl” was a body movement.

Okay, this was a fun distraction, but I have to get back to looking at pictures of Prince and crying.

Prince thanks you for your time.

GIPHY Originals GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY

Discover & Share this GIPHY Originals GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

GIPHY Originals GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY

Discover & Share this GIPHY Originals GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

On a recent trip back East to visit my family, I made them buy a huge recycling bin and educated them on the importance of not throwing styrofoam containers out of the car window on the highway (no, really) and instead treating our planet with respect. Sure, living in San Francisco for nearly ten years has definitely turned me into more of a hippie than I was upon arrival (I chant in yoga and have been known to keep browning banana skins and other organic detritus in my bag until I can deposit them in my compost bin at home), but the foundation of my Mother Earth-loving self was not born here, but in front of Nickelodeon in the early ’90s.

That’s where I met Z.Z. Ziff of Salute Your Shorts, a short-lived show about various trouble-making teens and their obnoxious counselor “Ug” at a summer camp called Camp Anawanna. There was the ginger bully and his dim sidekick, the All-American boy, the geek, the prima donna, the sporty girl, a Rilo Kiley member, and, last but certainly not least, the animal-loving, tree-hugging environmentalist. While the other kids were giving into greed or jealousy or whatever other silly thing middle schoolers are into, Z.Z., with her Earth earrings and naive idealism was always the voice of reason.

And never moreso than in the season one finale, “Environmental Party,” in which she attempts to educate her peers about the irreparable damage humans are doing to our fragile planet. At first, she goes the enraged activist route, shutting off the power and water to send a message to her blow-drying, long-shower-taking room mates. She also turns their room into a recycling center. This does not go over well and she is asked: “Are you out of your granola-munching, whole-wheat, tie-dyed save-the-planet mind?!” Um, rude!

Z.Z.’s second approach is better: a catchy song about environmentalism! Sample lyric: “If we don’t change the way we live, we’ll be covered in PUKE AND ROTTING GARBAGE! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!” Despite being the best thing ever written (sorry, Marcel Proust), the kids think she’s insane and end up food-fighting and moshing ’cause why the hell not?

Eventually, with the help of a Greek trash collector so stereotypical that his last name is Spanakopita and he randomly exclaims Opa! for no reason (Tourette’s?), Z.Z. gets through to her friends by informing them that they can actually make money from recycling! Being Americans, they respond well to this and, after some soul-searching, come to realize that Z.Z. is not crazy just because she cares about something.

So, in honor of Earth Day, consider shedding your litter bug ways and being more like Z.Z. Ziff. If you happen to write an enraged compost-related song, please send it to me so it can keep “Puke and Rotting Garbage” company on my Love Me Some Gaia playlist. Oh, and you can watch this entire life-defining episode here!

This story was originally published in 2013.

Beyoncé just caused innumerable heart palpitations, tears and hysterics with the release of her new visual album, LEMONADE, which is basically an hour-long diss track against her no-good, cheating husband Jay Z. But don’t worry; she takes him back…again. So what did Twitter have to say about it all?

Things started off with anticipation tinged with purple-tinted grief:

Immediately, we all got a loud-and-clear message about the state of Beyoncé and Jay Z’s union:

Beyoncé is not playing around:

But concern for their marriage couldn’t top the feeling that we were all witnessing some miraculous sh*t:

A breakup has never looked so beautiful or been more intense:

Beyoncé’s resilient kiss-off tracks inspired some:

All of this airing of dirty laundry makes one wonder what the situation has been like over at chez Yoncé:

The cultural  implications of all of this could not be denied:

Then, out of nowhere, Beyoncé delivers a country song because she can:

As if the country song, the visual album’s very existence and all these divorce vibes weren’t surprising enough, Jay Z makes a redemptive cameo in the very project that is all about how no good he is:

They get back together because love conquers all or maybe because:

Looks like they’re going to be alright, but that doesn’t mean things will ever be the same:

So what did everyone think and feel when it was all over?

So, in summary:

So by now, you’ve either seen LEMONADE, heard it or just read all about it on Twitter. In addition to being a bold feminist exploration and celebration of what it means to be a black woman in America, the visual album is also a raw look at distrust, infidelity, and the limits of love. Two-thirds of the album deal with grief and anger over being cheated on, and the specter of divorce looms large. While watching, one expected Beyoncé to surprise drop divorce papers right afterward.

If all of this feels familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before with these two. The year was 2014. The couple were in the midst of their joint On the Run tour. And Beyonce was not happy (or so she wanted us to believe).

Every night, she would appear on stage wearing a wedding gown and would tearfully sing a song called “Resentment,” which featured lyrics like “I’ll always remember feeling like I was no good / Like I couldn’t do it for you like that wack bitch could” and “Been ridin’ with you for 12 years / I gotta look at her in her eyes and see she’s had half of me. She ain’t even half of me. That bitch will never be.”  She also covered Lauryn Hill’s “Ex Factor”, mournfully singing its mantra of  “It ain’t workin, it ain’t workin.” And Jay Z got in the action too with a line from “Song Cry”: “I can understand why you want a divorce now.”

Everyone was convinced a divorce was imminent and fans clamored to buy tickets to the tour to witness the most prominent marriage in the world crumble before their eyes. We had been there to see them strut their young love back in 2003 in the music video for Bey’s debut single “Crazy In Love,” we were there when they revealed the Blue Ivy pregnancy at a live awards show, we watched them love up on each other on yachts every time they went on vacation. So it was only natural, in a twisted, parasitic way, to also be there for their undoing.

But it all ended up being a marketing scheme. They’re still together two years later. And they’re still together, despite the insane breakup rollercoaster that is LEMONADE. While manipulating us with this same narrative twice seemed cheap to me at first, ultimately, there is crafty artistic brilliance underneath it all.

Back in 2014, I wrote the following and it still stands:

This entire divorce thing is part publicity stunt, part performance art. Messing with the idea of their marriage and family for profit [is] a cynical move, but perhaps there are two marriages at work here, the one they live at home and the one they live for us on stage. Maybe they feel fine messing with our conception of them because, at the end of the day, we don’t know them; it’s all fiction. And what makes better fiction than a plot twist or a heartbreaking betrayal? As much as we are obsessed with happily ever after, we sure do get bored of it pretty quickly.

Maybe the fantasy they package and present to us holds no real value in their day-to-day reality; maybe they are just playing characters in a modern day opera, putting on the show they know we want to see.

And LEMONADE definitely delivered in that regard, putting on an operatic spectacle that’ll be remembered as a defining moment in music history.

So is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?  Who knows and who cares, when it’s this genius.

The main takeaway from Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is that black girls rock really hard and Bey is the most interesting artist in the music industry right now. Another thing the visual album made abundantly clear: Jay Z should research witness protection programs because, after hearing all about his cheating ways, the BeyHive is abuzz and poised to sting him dead like Macaulay in My Girl.

Here are some of the damning lyrics that got everyone riled up and proved that you should never ever…no, really, never…cheat on Beyoncé:

1. How did it come down to this?
Going through your call list.
I don’t wanna lose my pride, but I’ma f*ck me up a b*tch.

2. Who the f*ck do you think I is?
You ain’t married to no average b*tch, boy.
You can watch my fat ass twist, boy.
As I bounce to the next d*ck, boy.

3. And keep your money, I got my own.
Get a bigger smile on my face, being alone.

4. I smell that fragrance on your Louie V, boy.
Just give my fat ass a big kiss, boy.
Tonight I’m f*cking up all your shit, boy.

5. This is your final warning.
You know I give you life.
If you try this sh*t again,
You gon’ lose your wife.

6. Headed to the club, I ain’t thinking ’bout you.
Me and my ladies sip my D’USSÉ cup.
I don’t give a f*ck, chucking my deuces up.
Suck on my balls, pause, I had enough.
I ain’t thinking ’bout you.

7. Middle fingers up, put them hands high.
Wave it in his face, tell him, “Boy, bye!”

8. Looking at my watch, he shoulda been home.
Today I regret the night I put that ring on.

9. My daddy warned me about men like you.
He said, “Baby girl, he’s playing you.
He’s playing you.
Cause when trouble comes in town
And men like me come around,”
Oh, my daddy said, “Shoot.”

10. Pictures snatched out the frame.
B*tch, I scratched out your name and your face.

11. He only want me when I’m not there.
He better call Becky with the good hair.

Thirtsy for more LEMONADE? Read up:

Beyoncé’s LEMONADE Isn’t the First Time She’s Used Divorce to Play with Our Emotions

So by now, you’ve either seen LEMONADE, heard it or just read all about it on Twitter. In addition to being a bold feminist exploration and celebration of what it means to be a black woman in America, the visual album is also a raw look at distrust, infidelity, and the limits of love.

The Best Twitter Reactions to Beyoncé’s Visual Album “LEMONADE”

Beyoncé just caused innumerable heart palpitations, tears and hysterics with the release of her new visual album, LEMONADE, which is basically an hour-long diss track against her no-good, cheating husband Jay Z. But don’t worry; she takes him back… again. So what did Twitter have to say about it all?

Beyonce is a big fan of shine theory, the if-you-shine-I-shine ideology that involves propping up other women, instead of seeing them as competition. In 2013, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Achicie experienced a stratospheric rise to fame, thanks to a portion of her TED talk on feminism being sampled in Beyoncé’s “Flawless.” Adichie was already well-known in many lit circles, but, almost overnight, millions of people were chanting her words and carrying around copies of Americanah.

With the release of LEMONADE, Beyoncé continued this theme of spotlighting emerging artists by reciting poetry by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire as connective tissue between her songs throughout the visual album. Shire’s name might be new to you, but she’s been making waves within the poetry scene and all over social media for quite some time. At the age of 27, she’s already been awarded the U.K.’s Brunel University prize for African Poetry and become London’s first Young Poet Laureate and Queensland, Australia’s poet-in-residence. A full-length collection is in the works, but, until then, there are two chapbooks available, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth and Her Blue Body. You can buy them here and here.

A poem called “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love” is quoted heavily within LEMONADE. Watch a short film Shire produced around the poem:

And this New Yorker profile, which explains how Shire manages to “write movingly about African migration to Europe and also tweet humorously about the VH1 reality show Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta,” is a must-read:

The Writing Life of a Young, Prolific Poet – The New Yorker

It’s a rare poet who can write movingly about African migration to Europe and also tweet humorously about the VH1 reality show “Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta.” Every generation of writers and readers has mourned the shrinking place of poetry in our lives, and they may not be wrong.

And they say poetry is dead.

The first time I saw Beach House was at the Swedish American Music Hall, in 2008. The space was cozy and intimate. There were folding chairs. I was able to snag a seat front-row center, where Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally brought their dreamy, otherworldly sound to life, and me to tears (albeit, with the help of a generous helping of whiskey). I’ve seen them five times since, and there’s a reason behind this devotion; few other musicians inspire such a full-body fever dream response. A few songs in and I transform into that weirdo who’s alone in a crowd, swaying and smiling with his eyes closed.

These days, word has gotten out about Beach House and their powerful live shows. The venues are bigger and the magic is spread more thinly. So it was exciting to hear the band announce their latest experiment: six “installation” shows to take place in art galleries, community centers and other alternative venues, featuring no backup band, a mysterious “design,” and songs mostly culled from their first two albums (which don’t get much play on their traditional tours) and their latest.

But there are conditions: Only 200 people will witness each show. Those lucky enough to snag a ticket are advised to bring a pillow, because everyone sits on the floor. Once you’re inside the space, you’re there for the duration. No applause. No photos.

So what’s the point of all this? According to the band, the project’s purpose is to recapture the “pure, embryonic state of mind” that comes with the initial spark of inspiration, but that gets lost somewhere between pre-studio conception and the stage.

Most people who showed up at the Mission District’s Gray Area Theater to see what all this fuss is about were down for whatever might be coming, actual pillows from their beds in tow. We were led into a former, gutted theater, the only illumination coming from a multi-colored horizontal bar of light at the bottom of the stage. People stepped over each other in the dark to find a spot to sit. We all huddled together and waited.

When showtime finally came, the smoke machines did their work and Legrand and Scally took the stage, although it was easy to miss them in the dark. Eventually, it became clear that a screen separated the duo from the audience. They began to project images of a variety of flowers and live footage onto themselves. Two display cabinets on either side lit up with rows of fiber-optic flowers. The distress over not being able to Instagram any of it was palpable. The entire spectacle made me regret giving up weed years ago.

As for the music, the band relied heavily on their first and last albums. The night began with “Saltwater,” the first track on their debut, and ended with “Somewhere Tonight,” the last track on their most recent release, as if the point of the whole evening was to find their way back to their origins and remind themselves why they’re in this band in the first place. The cramped space and smaller number of fans underscored this trip back in time, back to that Swedish American Hall show in 2008, before Beach House songs found themselves in flashy car commercials.

The sense is that, when you reach a certain level of fame, you lose control. The band no longer belongs to themselves, but to the masses who’ve latched onto their music. This project felt like their way of pressing the reset button and taking back what’s rightfully theirs. No backing band, no sea of iPhones Snapchatting away, no audience participation — just the two of them making the music they love, as if they were back in their mid-aughts bedrooms, with no one on the other side of the screen.

After they left the stage, the 200 fans clapped and hollered for several minutes, in an attempt to prove that we deserved an encore. “Just one song, please!” begged one dude. A man working the event eventually came on the mic to say, “We appreciate your enthusiasm, but the show is over.” More evidence that this “installation” show was less about Beach House giving something to the fans, and more about taking something back.

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we mourn Prince and share some facts about his life you might not know:

GIPHY Originals GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY

Discover & Share this GIPHY Originals GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Then we make ourselves feel better by celebrating and analyzing Beyoncé’s LEMONADE:

Beyoncé’s LEMONADE Isn’t the First Time She’s Used Divorce to Play with Our Emotions

So by now, you’ve either seen LEMONADE, heard it or just read all about it on Twitter. In addition to being a bold feminist exploration and celebration of what it means to be a black woman in America, the visual album is also a raw look at distrust, infidelity, and the limits of love.

Beyoncé: 11 LEMONADE Lyrics That Have Jay Z Researching Witness Protection Programs

The main takeaway from Beyoncé’s LEMONADE is that black girls rock really hard and Bey is the most interesting artist in the music industry right now. Another thing the visual album made abundantly clear: Jay Z should research witness protection programs because, after hearing all about his cheating ways, the BeyHive is abuzz and poised to sting him dead like Macaulay in My Girl.

And we cap things off with a musical bridge between these two legends — their joint Grammys performance from 2004:

Until next week!

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It’s been a week since Prince left this world, but I still find myself gazing adoringly at animated gifs of him, listening to his music, watching videos of him, and reading about his life. In the course of all of this, I’ve learned a lot about Prince and his career that I didn’t know before. Here are some things you might not know about the Purple One:

1. Prince’s childhood nickname was “Skipper.”

2. He wrote his first song at the age of seven. It was called “Funk Machine.”

3. When he was 10, Prince danced on stage with James Brown.

4. Before he hit the big time, Prince used to stand outside of his local McDonald’s and smell the food because he couldn’t afford to eat.

5. Despite being 5’2″, he was known to be an incredible basketball player.

6. He played every single instrument on his debut album.

7. Prince could play 27 different musical instruments.

8. He played electric guitar on Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.”

And synths on Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back.”

9. We all know that Prince is responsible for Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but did you know that he also wrote “Manic Monday” by the Bangles?

10. One of his favorite meals during the Purple Rain era was spaghetti paired with orange juice.

11. Prince originally wanted Vanity 6 to be called The Hookers and Vanity to be called Vagina (pronounced Va-geena).

12. Smoke machines were allegedly used so heavily on the sets of his music videos for “1999” and “Little Red Corvette” that a bunch of people got diarrhea from breathing in all the mineral oil in the air.

13. Michael Jackson’s “Bad” was almost a duet with Prince, until Prince objected to the first four words: “Your butt is mine.”

14. Prince almost released an entire album as Camille, his female alter ego.

15. He produced an album called A Hollywood Affair with Kim Basinger, but the project was scrapped because she wasn’t the best singer. That doesn’t mean you can’t still listen to it though:

16. A week before its release, Prince yanked all copies of The Black Album because he came to believe that “the dark side of him” created “something evil.”

17. Prince hated swearing so much that he beckoned Sinead O’Connor to his mansion to tell her to stop using bad language in her interviews. She promptly told him to “F*ck off.” They proceeded to get into a crazy fist fight, which involved chasing each other around a car and spitting and punching at each other.

Sinead O’Connor talks about punch up with Prince | Daily Mail Online

Singer Sinead O’Connor talking about the time she got into a fight with diminutive singer Prince

18. Back in 1994, kids were playing a CD-ROM game titled “Prince Interactive,” which included two unreleased songs, interview clips and the opportunity to explore his recording studio.

19. Prince was a Jehovah’s Witnesses and went door to door to discuss his religion.

20. His faith dictated that he could never discuss his charitable work. Now that he has passed, stories of his involvement with YesWeCode, a movement to get underprivileged kids involved in the tech world, and Green For All, a project that supplies solar panels in Oakland and beyond.

21. After turning down Kevin Smith’s request to feature a Prince song in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Prince convinced Smith to film a movie of Prince and his band performing music from The Rainbow Children. It soon became clear that Prince intended the project to be a Jehovah’s Witness recruitment film, filled with messages like “Jesus Christ is the son of God.” Kevin Smith decided to duck out.

22. Prince didn’t take himself too seriously. After David Chappelle famously dressed up as him on his show, Prince, in turn, used Chappelle’s image as the cover of his 2013 single Breakfast Can Wait. 

23. In recent years, Prince only watched two things on television: the news and Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl. He emailed Zooey to tell her this and eventually starred in an episode and recorded a single with her called “FALLINLOVE2NITE”:

Want even more little-known facts about Prince? Check out this episode of The Cooler:

Let’s Go Crazy Over Beyoncé’s LEMONADE

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler! Don’t miss an episode of The Cooler! Also available via RSS. This week, we mourn Prince and share some facts about his life you might not know: Discover & Share this GIPHY Originals GIF with everyone you know.

Most people are familiar with the idea of Cinco de Mayo, but the knowledge often ends there.

See exhibit A:

Right after this photo was taken, Donald probably explained Cinco de Mayo’s significance: It represents Mexico’s Independence Day, duh! Yeah, no. That momentous event is celebrated on September 16. And, despite what the inside of most bars on May 5 might lead one to believe, Cinco de Mayo isn’t a holiday in honor of the margarita. They’re delicious and probably deserve their own day; this just happens to not be the one. Another thing Cinco de Mayo is not: an excuse for non-Mexicans to don ill-advised sombreros or ponchos. Keep it cute, people.

So now that we know what the holiday isn’t, let’s talk about what it really signifies:

Before we get to May 5, 1862, we should lay down some foundational knowledge because everything is connected and historical events don’t occur in a vacuum.

After Mexico declared its independence from bugaboo Spain in 1821, there was a lot of instability. Now that the colonial presence was gone, what should replace it? A Catholic monarchy or a republic? It took some time to figure this all out.

Then in 1836, some Americans and Mexicans revolted against the Mexican government in what is now called the Texas Revolution and created a separate republic because they felt like it. This did not go over well.

To assuage the Mexican government, U.S. President Polk was like, Ok, guys, calm down. We’ll buy this territory from you. Mexico was like Um, you don’t even go here. F*ck off. Polk, who was famous for banning booze, card playing and dancing from the White House, continued his streak of being the worst and ordered troops into Mexican territory, against the protestations of people like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Henry David Thoreau. This resulted in what our textbooks call the Mexican-American War and what the Mexicans call Primera intervención estadounidense en México (First Intervention of the United States in Mexico). Did you catch that “first”? Mexico, telling it like it is!

After that fiasco, which resulted in Mexico losing two-thirds of its territory, including land we now call Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, there was something called the Reform War, which was a civil dispute over how involved the church should be in government. All of these wars left Mexico bankrupt. They didn’t have the money to pay their foreign debts so France, Britain and Spain sent naval forces to proclaim, loud and clear, in person: Bitch better have my money!

Britain and Spain eventually negotiated and went home, but France, under the leadership of Napoleon III (the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) saw an opportunity to establish an empire in Latin America that would benefit French interests. And because that wasn’t enough of a buttinsky move, he also wanted to meddle in the U.S. Civil War in support of the Confederacy.

So the French attacked, confident that they would handily conquer because they hadn’t been defeated in the past 50 years and the Mexican forces were outnumbered and undersupplied. Initially, the Mexican government retreated and Napoleon III’s plan was going swimmingly…until the two sides met near a town called Puebla.

Despite being the premiere army in the world, the French were crushed by the poorly equipped group of Mexicans. David and Goliath realness! The war didn’t end for another 6 years, but the victory at Puebla came to symbolize Mexican unity and patriotism.

Since the Battle of Puebla, no country in the Americas has been invaded by a European military force. And if Mexico hadn’t won, France would have supported the Confederates and our own history could have turned out a lot differently.

The battle’s anniversary has been celebrated in California since 1863, while — plot twist — the day is “virtually ignored” in Mexico. The holiday gained more prominence in California during the Chicano movement in the 1960s and crossed over to the rest of the country in the 1980s, when beer companies used the holiday as a way to market their products.

If you didn’t know, now you know.

This educational moment is brought to you by the More You Know star, in conjunction with Human Beings Against Donald Trump Ruining Taco Bowls. Spread the word!

Listen to The Cooler hosts talk about Cinco de Mayo, as well as the best and worst celebrity apologies and the sad implications for Lil Kim’s facial transformation.

It’s time for another episode of your new favorite podcast, The Cooler!

This week, we’re getting into the true meaning behind Cinco de Mayo.

Think You Know What Cinco de Mayo Means? You’re Probably Wrong

Most people are familiar with the idea of Cinco de Mayo, but the knowledge often ends there. See exhibit A: Right after this photo was taken, Donald probably explained Cinco de Mayo’s significance: It represents Mexico’s Independence Day, duh! Yeah, no. That momentous event is celebrated on September 16th.

Inspired by Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s bizarre apology for smuggling their dogs into Australia, we look back at some of the most memorable celebrity apologies.

We discuss the sad implications of Lil Kim’s facial transformation.

Lil’ Kim shouldn’t be blamed for her new, whiter, look | Patience Zalanga

Amid all the black girl love emanating from Beyoncé’s brilliant video album Lemonade, Black Twitter blew up on Sunday in response to rapper Lil’ Kim revealing a new look on Instagram. After what looks like extensive cosmetic surgery to her facial features, lighter skin, and a straight blonde weave, she barely resembles the only woman to ever outrap Biggie on a track.

And we cap things off with a little respek:

Until next week!

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