If you poke your head out the door, don’t worry about whether you see your shadow. There are still weeks of winter ahead. Here are some diversions for while you’re hunkered down.
Rolling Stone does the Grammy season up right with a cover story of edgy teen singer-songwriter Ella Maria Yelich O’Connor, aka Lorde. The 17-year-old is a favorite for a music industry award on Jan. 26 for her hit song “Royals” and her new album “Pure Heroine.”
But that’s not what makes her a fun read. She’s not a bubble-gum pop singer, or worse yet, a pop singer who pretends to be naughty to attract attention. Lorde, who made her last album available free online after her label refused to sell it, tells the mag about the time she had to do a photo shoot in NYC. “The photographer kept saying, “Pop your hip out. Try to look cute. Big smiles, now.” The singer, who dons a black cape for Rolling Stone, gave the photog the verbal version of the middle finger.
Despite mentioning Lorde on its cover, Entertainment Weekly offers nothing more inside than a poll of who readers think will win at the music awards this year. Thankfully, the mag offers a feature of “Sherlock” star Benedict Cumberbatch.
The second season of the brilliant PBS series kicked off Sunday and if the first season is anything to go on, it’s going to be a bigger hit than Cumberbatch’s recent flop “The Fifth Estate,” in which he played WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But Cumberbatch has also had recent work in “12 Years a Slave” and his co-star Martin Freeman, who plays Watson, is the start of “The Hobbit” series.
As such, fans of “Sherlock” are asking whether the show will go on given the stars’ busy schedule.
EW gets the stars to say they have no plans to quit PBS for Hollywood. “We’re not beholden to do this. It’s because we enjoy it,” Cumberbatch tells the mag. That’s small comfort in a world where money talks but at least now it’s on the record.
Even though this month’s issue of Vanity Fair is far less exciting than Rolling Stone, we must take this opportunity to thank Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter for resisting the urge to place some dead actress from the 1950s (i.e. Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn) on the cover.
We understand Vanity Fair’s Central Park West newsstand sales will sag this month as a result, but other zip codes have come to terms with the fact that John F. Kennedy is no longer president.
Instead, VF takes on funny man Jimmy Fallon, whom the mag applauds as the next big thing in late night. There’s also something for the Grammy season, too, with a short piece on punk rock icon Debbie Harry and the upcoming anniversary tour of her ’70s band, Blondie.
Time Out New York decides to skip Grammy fever in favor of its decidedly more underground picks for must-hear music in 2014. They include obscure bands like indie group Ex Hex and London’s FKA Twigs. TONY does try to work its entertainment advice into the next big TV event of the season: the Super Bowl.
Its cover story on beer is a must-read, including its piece on beers for the big game, such as Tampa Bay’s Jai Alai.
In the New Yorker’s 22-page story on President Obama’s legacy, we learn some interesting things about Obama, and some interesting things about New Yorker Editor David Remnick. Obama tells Remnick he’ll judge his own legacy “in large part by whether I began the process of rebuilding the middle class … and reversing the trend toward economic bifurcation in this society.”
Yet in a heap of verbiage that picks apart the president’s reticence over Syria, his views on racism, his hatred of fund-raisers, his basketball injuries and the 5-inch-thick windows on his limo, Remnick fails to challenge Obama with a single question on the charge that his handling of the financial crisis further entrenched this bifurcation, or what he plans to do about Wall Street.
We, of course, find this highly amusing, coming from a publication that supposedly has a bone to pick on this supposedly important subject.
For those who wonder why the supposedly liberal press has remained asleep at the wheel while history unspools, it’s nice to have it confirmed that the dozing is going on at the top, with no apologies.
Time likewise displays a penchant this week for ignoring elephants in the room — this time actual GOP elephants. “Can anyone stop Hillary?” the magazine asks on its cover, with a speculative story inside on a 2016 presidential bid by Clinton.
As it toys tiresomely with the tedious (and dumb) question of whether she will run, the article focuses on the equally dull point that she faces no foreseeable competition in a Democratic primary from the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Cuomo or Deval Patrick.
Meanwhile, the only putative Republican challengers who even get a mention in this article are Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
No mention, in other words, of Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul or Bobby Jindal. Of course, this piece of analysis comes less than a year after Time anointed Florida Senator Marco Rubio as “The Republican Savior.” (No, Rubio doesn’t rate a mention this time, either.)