Some of you need a refresher on the issue of "consent."

This should go without saying, but if you haven’t watched the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory, this article contains spoilers. Read at your own risk. But, seriously, you should’ve been able to figure that out from the title.   The Big Bang Theory has been one of my favorite shows since it first aired. Dr. […]

Two of the things I'm totally addicted to now, the iFontMaker app for iPad and Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. So I've decided to marry them.

For those who don't know, iFontMaker is an app that allows you to draw your own fonts. The website says you can draw a font in 5 minutes. This is probably true for some people, but I'm Type A and complicated when it comes to anything creative, so for me, it's often the equivalent of five days. The font that appears on the web version of this site is my handwriting. This font was probably redone, oh, six or seven times. I have various fonts I've created for the purpose of one-key shortcuts (for example, a private signature font I use at work to sign PDFs), fonts of cartoons of my family just because I ran out of ideas, chalkboard fonts, fonts to make diecuts for my Cricut (also in the top five on my current addictions list) and of characters my kids love. That's where Inside Out comes in.

Inside Out is easily one of the best family movies I've seen in a long time. It has unseated Frozen as far as the Pop Culture Girls' obsession meter goes. You heard me, Disgust is more popular than Elsa. Seriously.

So after we saw Inside Out the first time, I started working on a font. I'm not exactly sure what we'll do with it other than using it in the Cricut and basically just randomly inserting it in documents just because we can [fan art made easy!], but my kids were super excited when I finally finished it today.

I'm not selfish, so I'm sharing it with you all. All I ask is that you let people know where you got it. So Inside-ish Out-like is all yours for the low cost of attribution.* Just click here. I hope you experience lots of Joy and make Core Memories using it! 

* And it should go without saying, but DUH! no commercial use! Personal use only. 

All morning, my social media feeds have been filled with people upset that they saw spoilers on Facebook and Twitter about last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy. Everywhere I look today there are a lot of "Thanks a lot!"s and "You guys suck"s and "Whatever happened to warning 'SPOILER ALERT!!!' first???"s. Sorry, my beloved friends and family members. I can't believe I still have to explain this to adults in 2015, but...

Is anyone else as excited about the new Annie movie as I am we are? The Pop Culture Fam won't be able to see the movie on opening night, but we are going to see it Christmas week.

To get ready, I made the Pop Culture Girls dresses inspired by both the traditional Annie dress and the new one!

Yes, I'm still mad about the How I Met Your Mother series finale a week later. I spent nine years investing in this show. It's going to take me more than a day to get over the disappointment. It would be like if Pop Culture Dad (who, BTW, I've been with less years than I was Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and even Robin) came home tomorrow and dumped me in an ugly and unceremonious way. Okay... It's not actually that dramatic. But the finale did. really. suck. y'all!

But you know what's the worst part of that horrible finale? We HIMYM die-hard fans have been defending our loyalty to this show for the last couple of years, and these bastards (Thomas, Bays, and the rest of the HIMYM writers) just punched us in the gut and left us lying in the dirt. It's been hard being a HIMYM fan, and now it was all for nothing.

Pop Culture Dad and I actually met towards the end of the first season of HIMYM. I was a fan. He was not. I quickly caught him up to speed and got him in the HIMYM fan club also. Our relationship grew and blossomed with these characters for five years. And then he dropped out. PCD just couldn't do it anymore. The writing wasn't as good as it had been in the earlier seasons. Ted was becoming increasingly more annoying (particularly his on-again, off-again obsessions with Robin). PCD got tired of them not just jumping to how Ted met the mother and getting over it already. Pop Culture Dad would occasionally watch an episode with me here and there, but many times, he would spend the episodes peppering scenes with an interjection of, "This is so stupid!", "Has this show been cancelled yet?", "I swear the only thing good about this show is Marshall and Lily!", "I swear... Ted is the WORST father ever! Why would you tell your kids this story??", and "WHY ARE YOU STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW??". There were a few episodes that proved the exception to Pop Culture Dad's I-Only-Watch-This-Show-When-You-Make-Me rule in the latter seasons: the Robin Sparkles episodes, the Slap Bet, and Barney's proposal to Robin. Pop Culture Dad isn't the only one who expressed these feelings; many people--all former fans--said similar things when they realized I was still watching HIMYM. Only a few of my friends loyally stuck around as I did. We were all disappointed with the ending.

So now what? We stuck around for nine years--the last few of them spotty and challenging--and we got nothing for the effort. All of the justifications we had made for this show have melted away. All of the naysayers have completely valid reasons for saying, "We told you so," and they were right (dammit!). I never thought I would be that chick who stayed in a bad relationship for years and years after all of my friends and family members kept telling me, "He's no good for you!" and I never listened, because I was clinging to the memories of happier days. But there you have it. I was. And I'm pissed that Bays and Thomas made that kind of fool of me!!

Sigh... But the relationship is over. It's dead (much like Tracy McConnell, RIP. Girl, R. I. P...). It's time to move on.

But first, maybe I need some more closure.

Despite our differences in the end, there are some things that I will always appreciate about How I Met Your Mother.

1.  I love that in a post-Buffy, post-Angel, post-Veronica Mars world, I got nine more years of Alyson Hannigan gracing my screen [and, from time to time, even got a glimpse of her lovely husband. Oh Sandy Rivers/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, how I adore you, too!]. But, let's face it. Even without HIMYM, Willow wasn't going to be absent from the small screen for too long, because Alyson Hannigan is a National. Fucking. Treasure, goddammit!

Aly, I know we're almost the same age and all, but you can totally be my mom, too!

I know, hon. I feel the same way about Thomas & Bays!

Though, if I'm being totally honest, this is how I prefer to picture NPH. And this has NOTHING to do with HIMYM.

3. Jason Muthafucking Segel.
Look, I know he was doing shit before HIMYM. But I never watched Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared until after HIMYM and every Jason Segel role in a movie since then threw me in the Jason Segel fan club. Seriously, the man can do no wrong... Er, scratch that. I watched This Is the End. And that shit was horrible. But Knocked Up; Forgetting Sarah Marshall; I Love You, Man; Despicable Me; Bad Teacher; Friends with Benefits; The Muppets; Five-Year Engagement; This is 40... OMG. He was golden in ALL of it. Every last drop!

In addition to the fact that I am such a huge Marshmallow/Lily Pad fan (and they're only part of the entire series Pop Culture Dad still liked), I love, love, love that fictitious Marshall and I [and my #4] have the same alma mater, even though we would not have graced the halls at the same time [yes, people, I realize that this is fake!! After all, we're talking about a universe in which New York City has all of four minorities. Dahell...].


4. Brad Morris.
Hey, True Blood only airs during the summertime. So any time I can have an extra bit of Joe Manganiello on my television in various states of undress is a good thing.

5. Robin Sparkles. I would go to the mall with her today and any other day.


So... One would think with all these fond memories, the season finale wouldn't have stung so much. But one would be WRONG. Oh so very wrong.

These fond memories are exactly why the series finale felt like one huge, never-ending Slap Bet to the face. There was so much good about this show before it started sucking. And I could have even let the sucky parts go if the season finale had been worthy of even the mediocre parts of this show. But it was sooo very bad. It felt slapped together and rushed. We spent an entire goddamn season on Robin and Barney's wedding, only for the HIMYM writers to slap together 16 years of twists and turns into 44 minutes. It was so poorly done, you would think they were making it up as they were going along. It was a complete disservice to how they've built these characters over the years and how they've grown. Ted going back to Robin makes NO sense to anyone who believes in having healthy, adult relationships [OMG, they were SO toxic together. At least it was true to previous seasons in that Robin wanted Ted only when someone else had him and that Ted was completely Robin's puppy dog for some inexplicable reason. But did these people seriously not grow at all over two and a half decades of knowing each other??]. While I'm less broken up about The Mother (aka Tracy) being dead, since we all pretty much expected that even before the hints thrown out this season, the way her death was treated was so shoddy that I almost feel like they could have forgotten to write in the part where Ted meets her, and the net result might have been the same. Barney spent all these years growing as a man, only to turn back into a major douchebag (in his 40s, no less) the second that callous bitch Robin dumps him, only to then magically reform again the second he has a daughter [P.S. I am willing to bet money right now that the "Dad" in the new "How I Met Your Dad" ends up being Barney. But I refuse to watch another Thomas/Bays production, so one of you will have to let me know in a few years if that prediction was true]. You all already know how I feel about the children's reactions. And we never found out the meaning behind that fucking pineapple.

In co-creator Craig Thomas's infamous fuck you tweet to fans of the show, he says:

We did a finale about life's twists and turns and that is not always what happens...but THANKS!
— Craig Thomas (@HimymCraig) April 1, 2014

Of course, the irony here is that in a finale allegedly about life's twist and turns, it never occurred to the HIMYM writers that when your show goes on longer than anyone ever planned, the characters have developed in different ways from what you originally plotted, and the fans have fallen in love with different expectations (by your design, no less), maybe instead of rolling with an ending you taped nine years prior, you need to roll with the "twists and turns" and give your show an ending that makes sense in light of everything else that has happened over the last decade!

OBLIGATORY SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers. If you haven't watched the show yet (and for some reason still want to) and have somehow successfully managed to avoid all the spoilers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ just to end up here, you can't say I didn't warn you. But why are you clicking on articles about the season finale of a show you haven't watched yet??

Watching Matthew McConaughey's possibly drunken and definitely weird, messed up, and slightly-disrespectful-to-two-of-his-fellow-nominees acceptance speech evoked a lot of reaction in my household. But I have to say, Pop Culture Dad's was the best.

In response to this:


He quoted (in part) this:

Stewie: You know Matthew, I may never get another chance to say this so I just want to get this off my chest.
You are just awful, you're one of the worst actors in the history of film and I think you need to just go away
Matthew Mcconaughey: Oh thanks man, the truth is I spend at least 90% of my year going away, exploring exotic places, having sex with my beautiful girlfriend, just doing sit-ups, I mean that really... and then counting money.
The money that I made off my terrible films I put out into the American populous because they just love to see me doing what it is that I do.
Stewie: Yes but you're not hearing me... 'Dazed and Confused' was the one thing that was passable after that...
Matthew Mcconaughey: Oh thanks man that actually launched my career
Stewie: After that, everything else was awful, 'Contact' They didn't even need you in that movie, they could have done the whole movie without you
Matthew Mcconaughey: I know, I know I said the same thing, but they were just like - Oh we need a good looking guy with a great ass and some tight abs to provide some down home enthusiasm to this picture. Something to counter balance Jodie Foster, they took her to be slightly cold, uh unapproachable so they put me in there.
I said it didn't make any sense. Said the same thing about that Bill Murray elephant movie but they said well the audience needs you.
Stewie: You make me physically sick to my stomach and I wish you that would get a heart attack.
Matthew Mcconaughey: I totally feel you man, the truth of the matter is I don't like my movies either but man they keep offering me money and I do it and I get to around the world, I mean did you see 'Sahara'. I'll tell you what that movie gave me, was the opportunity to take an Airstream all across the country and sell that picture one person at a time.
Stewie: You suck donkey ass
Matthew Mcconaughey: Hey you can't prove that

(Family Guy, "The Former Life of Brian")

And wished this had happened at the end:



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

He's... He's...

I was watching 'Suits' this morning and actually paying close attention for a change. There was a close up of Rachel (played by Meghan Markle) taking the LSATs. I saw her freckles and hair and immediately and excitedly blurted (out loud, sadly), "OMG! She's biracial!" For some reason, I always had assumed she was Hispanic, even though "Zane" (her character's last name) isn't a particularly Latino name. But there wasn't any mistaking the HD closeup. I Googled "Meghan Markle biracial," and BOOM, there it was. Just like my kids, her mom is black, and her father is white of Irish descent. 

When it was announced over the weekend that Ben Affleck would play Batman, people immediately lost their damn minds. All of the sudden, it was like they had been personally betrayed or something. I don't get the outrage. What's wrong with Ben Affleck?

As you have probably heard, yesterday Wentworth Miller told the St. Petersburg International Film Festival [I'm paraphrasing here]: "Thanks but no thanks for your invitation to appear at your festival, but as long as your country is oppressing gay people like me, you can go f*** yourselves." And people, gay and straight alike, lost their damn minds.