SALON

Monday, Aug 15, 2011 10:45 PM UTC

Five pop culture items we missed

Today's catch: End of "Breaking Bad," "Real Housewives" hit the road, and Tina Fey welcomes normal-named baby

By

Topics: Pop five, Breaking Bad, Fashion, Kate Gosselin, The Real Housewives, Tina Fey, Television,

Five pop culture items we missedBreaking Bad - Bryan Cranston as Walter White, Anna Gunn as Skyler, RJ Mitte as Walt Jr. - Doug Hyun/AMC

1. Unnecessary tour of the day: “The Real Housewives” Live Tour will feature women from all of the different manifestations of Bravo’s reality show as they perform … what exactly? Do any of them have actual talents? I had hoped this was to be a musical production of some sort, with costumes by Shereé Whitfield and wigs by Kim Zolciak, but apparently it’s just going to involve the women taking their reunion episodes on the road.

2. Cancellation of the day: Sorry, Kate Gosselin, your money train is at an end, as TLC has just canceled ” Kate Plus 8.”  Don’t worry, I’m sure you will find other ways to exploit your children for cash … maybe have the younger ones try out for “Toddlers & Tiaras”?

3. Preemptive grieving of the day: We knew this moment would come, but we still don’t feel prepared to hear that next season will be the finale of “Breaking Bad.” I’m thinking there’s a spinoff in the works with Kate Gosselin as Bryan Cranston’s quirky new love interest.

4. Birth of the day: Tina Fey’s second daughter, Penelope Athena. Oh come on, Tina! You aren’t even going to try to make things interesting by naming your kid after a piece of machinery or your favorite food?

5. Hot androgyny of the day: To get everyone pumped up for Fashion Week, New York magazine profiled the beatific Andrej Pejic, who models both male and female lines on the runway, and who claims to have “left (his) gender open to artistic interpretation.”

Continue Reading Close

Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 4 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations