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“Fecal Matter” mocked luxury fashion. Then luxury fashion bought it
A fashion label called Fecal Matter is having a moment. Matières Fécales — literally French for “fecal matter” — has gone from an intentionally provocative outsider project to dressing some of the world’s biggest celebrities, including Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Demi…
Hong Kong street food moved indoors
The smell hits first, garlic and char on skewered meat, chiles brushed over buns, oyster sauce mingling with the syrupy edge of black vinegar on sizzling noodles. Then comes the sound, clams tossed in hot pans, cleavers pounding roast pork,…
Cornell has a new dorm rule: Don’t butcher bears
Cornell University has clarified that its dorm kitchens are for cooking food — not butchering bears. The upstate New York university has now banned students from processing wild animals in shared residential kitchens after two students brought a legally hunted…
Ariana Grande fans need to see “Maddie’s Secret”
In the music video for Ariana Grande’s latest single, “Petal” — the title track off her eighth album, released last week — viewer discretion is advised. A parental advisory opens the clip, warning of the video’s explicit content and depictions…
HBO’s “Watchmen” takes on white supremacy — Damon Lindelof promises to “troll the white savior”
Those anticipating HBO’s series adaptation of “Watchmen,” the classic comic book series co-created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, may have divided opinions of the 2019 version conceived by Damon Lindelof, co-creator of “Lost” and “The Leftovers.” The first episode, the…
What the Ted Lasso Way doesn’t get about women in sports
Six years ago, “Ted Lasso” reminded us that many winning TV shows are the result of the right sentiment landing at the right time — or, in this case, a terrible time. In 2020, the weight of pandemic lockdowns and…
Fauci is an easy scapegoat for pandemic revisionists
Dr. Anthony Fauci is under congressional scrutiny following an appearance before a Senate committee last week, in which the former National Institutes of Health immunologist was grilled by elected officials over his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Thursday, the…
“Watchmen” is a brutally provocative reckoning of alternate history
On May 31, 1921, an armed white mob poured into Tulsa, Oklahoma’s majority African-American Greenwood district and began setting it ablaze. Families were driven out of their homes at gunpoint as their neighbors looted their belongings and burned their property…
Power, respect and conscience: How the women of “Fargo” manage (up) in a man’s world
“This is not a story about a woman who made the best of traditional skills . . . This is the ‘woman’s pluck’ story, the dust-bowl story, the burying-your-child-on-the-trail story, the I-will-never-go-hungry-again story, the Mildred Pierce story, the story about…
“The Shards” is oozing with Bret Easton Ellis vibes
White drugs. Underage drinking. Absentee parents. Nonstop parties. Oh, to be a rich teenager in the 1980s, says “The Shards” in so many words. Too many, I’d say, but slapping droning voiceovers atop expository visuals isn’t for me. Piling too…