Like many people, I am unhealthily fascinated by the advertising of American Apparel, the hip clothing chain best known for its desiccated-looking models and the frenzied, constantly, vaguely simian masturbation of founder/charismatic Dov Charney.

It’s hard not to be moved by the print ad’s haunting images of desperation and sadness. Who were these emaciated young people with their gaunt flesh squeezed into gold lamé leggings, their dead eyes pleading for mercy and compassion? Why did a major chain choose advertising redolent of child pornography from the '70s? Were these runaways all right? Had Charney forced them into lives of prostitution, drug dealing, and pornography? Should I purchase American Apparel clothing, or report its owners and advertisers to the proper authorities?

So when I saw a flier for an open casting call for American Apparel models yesterday on the way home, I seized upon an opportunity to learn firsthand about these sordid, hopeless creatures. My plan was simple: I would ingratiate myself into the American Apparel universe; learn where these poor, malnourished, and, it should be noted, very sexy children were being held against their will; and free them myself. I would become a one-man Underground Railroad, only ...

You’ve seen it trumpeted in newspaper and magazine headlines, analyzed by new psychological studies, embodied in recent news stories, and even reflected in our very own comment threads: “Anger” dominates the national mood, and especially here in the dog’s-ass end of summer, people seem to be more pissed off than ever. What the savage beast needs is a little soothing music—and who better to provide it than the child who shall lead them, that Botticelli-with-bangs who paints with all the colors of the wind known as Justin Bieber?

And while we normally resort to mordant sarcasm when we talk about Bieber (another side effect of our abiding anger!), this time we actually sort of mean it: Someone figured out how to turn his “U Smile”—a tune that normally only contributes to those feelings of rage—into a soothing, ambient, 35-minute epic by borrowing a trick from Hans Zimmer and slowing it down 800 percent. Suddenly the otherwise innocuous piano ballad becomes a soaring, Sigur Rós-meets-Brian Eno-meets-Vangelis bliss-out. Download the MP3 here, get some headphones, and calm the fuck down as you’re bathed in the Bieber light. [HT to Gawker]

Here’s the original song ...

The question from the ground in desolate Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, home of the Insane Clown Posse’s annual Gathering Of The Juggalos (Juggalos being ICP fans), was not whether guest performer Tila Tequila would get abused during her set but rather how bad the abuse would be.

In my brief time at the festival, I had come to think, incorrectly as it turns out, of the Juggalos as an essentially harmless tribe, a group of misunderstood, heavily tattooed young people from what my girlfriend calls under-resourced neighborhoods who get together every year to smoke weed, drink cheap beer and cocktails of Faygo and grain alcohol, and live for four days and nights in an upside-down universe where Insane Clown Posse is the most popular band in the world. Cries of the Juggalo greeting “Whoop Whoop!” can be heard everywhere. A security guard called out a drug dealer on what colloquially came to be known as “Drug Bridge” for charging too much for what a crude cardboard sign advertised as Pure Boston Yayo. “Damn, girl,” fumed the faux-apoplectic security guard. “I paid half as much for that. Don’t you be trying to rob a Juggalo!”

In the world of the Gathering ...

Say you're an assistant to the office jackass Spencer. You've stuck it out for two years because one day you want to be a broker, and (presumably) your boss has led you to believe such a fact. Say, now, that you learn not only was your boss probably bullshitting you, but he never thought more of you than something to (presumably) masturbate to. It's time to quit. And if you're Jenny [no last name known], it's time to quit via a series of 33 whiteboard photos revealing embarrassing things about your cock of a boss—emailed to the entire staff of your company. Wow. Just…amazing.

At the end Jenny writes, "Something tells me I'll be just fine." It's more than intuition, Jenny: It's irrefutable fact.

Check out the whole exchange, which includes Spencer's taste in websites—only the finest for this guy.

(hat tip: Geekologie)

[[EDIT: So apparently this has been proven fake. Gah. I've lost all faith in the world, Steve Slater excepted.]]

The serialized dramas of the last decade were positively littered with father issues. Jack Bauer's dad on 24 turned out to be evil. Dr. Gregory House's just never saw eye to eye with his father. The Fishers on Six Feet Under were dealing with the loss of a father none of them really knew. And you couldn't open a new DHARMA hatch on Lost's Island without running into someone who was trying to put the memory of a father who treated them like shit and/or pushed them out of a window behind them. The list of shows where characters had anything like pronounced mother issues was fairly short and headed by one title: The Sopranos.

But The Sopranos had more than enough mother issues for the rest of TV combined. Livia Soprano, the mother of central character Tony Soprano, exacted such a hold over his psyche that even after she died early in the show's third season, he kept finding himself drawn to women who acted like her and blaming his problems on her. In some ways, she was even more powerful in death, as though she were a ghost that had cold hands ...

When I was a kid, I was so addicted to television that I’d watch farm reports, daytime talk shows, commercials… everything, really, except soap operas. I made one stab at becoming a soap-watcher, in the summer of ‘84, when I was 13 years old and NBC debuted Santa Barbara. I figured that if I started watching from the beginning, I wouldn’t have any trouble keeping up, but I think I only lasted about three weeks. The slow pace and dryly “adult” tone of the storytelling killed my interest.

Then recently, when James Franco joined the cast of General Hospital for two one-month stints, I decided to venture back into soapville, in part because I’ve enjoyed Franco’s work dating back to his Freaks & Geeks days, and in part because the whole endeavor promised to be bewitchingly weird. I also wanted to see what it was like to watch a soap opera, and see what the genre has become some 25 years after I last tried. If you’re a regular soap-watcher, none of this will seem revelatory, but if not… consider this a field report. (And please note that these observations apply only to GH. I have ...

Kanye West may have only been on Twitter for a week, but already his random and out of context tweets are some of the most mind-blowing things on the net. From his goblet fetish to rants about how hard it is to order a cherub-themed Persian rug, it's clear West's operating on a whole separate plane of reality. Even Aziz Ansari chimed in, starting a #predictingkanyetweets meme that West found eerily accurate. 

Now, in another turn of highbrow other-worldness, a new trend: "#kanyenewyorkertweets," combining the classic aloofness of New Yorker cartoons with the insane megalomania of West's tweets. The world was always asking for that sardonic line drawing about replacing all of your bottom teeth with diamonds.

It's easy to find no end of products sporting The Who's iconic "Maximum R&B" poster design, and difficult to find a good collection of them playing R&B. While researching my Gateways To Geekery entry on The Who running today, I realized I couldn't name one compilation that helpfully pulls together all of the band's versions of soul and early-rock-'n'-roll classics and obscurities. These covers were often used as live staples, or got swept up in a blur of radio sessions and B-sides. They weren't a priority in the studio. Luckily, they remain scattered across various compilations and expanded reissues of proper albums, and by extension YouTube. For those of you who like your soul with about 100 times more cymbal crashes, here's a listen to The Who's raw and sometimes messianic take.

"Heat Wave" (available on A Quick One)

The only track on this list that's actually part of a proper studio LP, this cheerful, swinging version of "Heat Wave" perversely followed John Entwistle's sick-humored tale of alcoholic madness, "Whiskey Man," on 1966's A Quick One.

"Roadrunner" (available on double-disc Who's Next reissue)

The Who ...

As with most of Christopher Nolan's more personal movies, Inception has movie buffs everywhere debating its meaning and its merit. Well, one of those fans has uncovered another clue. Check out the YouTube clip below:

Significance? Well, in the movie, we learn that the further the heroes dive into a person's subconscious--into a dream within a dream within a dream, and so on--the more slowed-down time becomes. So if composer Hans Zimmer is playing us a super-slowed-down version of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," then the implication is that we're still submerged deep within the dream, far from the kick that will wake us up. Neat, huh?

Bonus Inception Thought: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't get to see the movie until a couple of days ago and I'd been avoiding spoilers before then, so if this thought has been well-picked-over, I apologize. But during that astonishing last hour of Inception, when three layers of story (or perhaps four) are happening all at once, and we're getting some payoff for the near-oppressive mounds of exposition in the first half of the movie, I started thinking about how Nolan often structures his stories ...

On my way to watch a movie at Chicago's screening room yesterday I spotted this sign, evidence that Transformers 3 filming was still in progress on Michigan Ave.:

When I posted it to my Twitter feed last night, Oklahoma-based film programmer @ian_okc had a brilliant idea of customizing the sign to suit other directors and offered this suggestion: "Filming ahead involving Johnny Depp, shoe-horned goth make up and Danny Elfman score. Do Not Be Alarmed." (Pretty obvious who that one's about, right?)

Others followed:

@BafflingBeerman: "Filming ahead involving a shoehorned cameo and lame twist. Do Not Be Alarmed." (M. Night Shyamalan)

@mm_young: "Filming Ahead Involving Tax Evasion. Do Not be Alarmed." (Uwe Boll)

@leonardpierce: "Filming Involving Wistful Nostalgia, Unfulfilled Sexual Longing, Exquisite Costumes Ahead. Do Not Be Alarmed." (Wong Kar-Wai)

@mattsinger: "Filming Ahead Involving Densely Plotted Narratives, Misdirection, and Dead Wives. Do Not Be Alarmed." (Christopher Nolan)

And so on. It seemed like too much fun to confine to Twitter so, A.V. Club readers, I throw it out to you. Extra points for Photoshopping the original image.

We sit in front of our computers most of the day, connected to our friends and co-workers by the series of pipes, strings, and nimbostratus zackets called the Internet. Many times per day, things flash before our eyes—videos, photos, songs, sites—that are funny or strange enough to warrant sharing with other people. We salute them with a hearty "Great job, Internet!"

Want to have an idea what the outlay of a musician’s career is like but find The A.V. Club’s Primers or Gateways to Geekery a little taxing on your attention span? Some anonymous wag on Twitter (it’s always some anonymous wag on Twitter) has your solution. Discographies began two weeks ago but is just now beginning to pick up speed, offering bite-sized, surprisingly apt capsule reviews of the entire studio output of such legends as The Doors—“1st, 2nd) mostly tolerable; 3rd) adequate, poppy; 4th) appalling; 5th) unmemorable; 6th) overpraised; 7th, 8th) unforced errors”—and Bob Dylan: “1 Woody; 2, 3 ambition; 4 pot; 5-7 speed; 8-9 pot; 10-11 AJ Weberman; 12-16 booze; 17-19 Jesus; 20-27 pot; 28 death; 29-32 pot.” Eat your heart out, Entertainment Weekly.

Via Gizmodo: The latest alleged teen craze involves getting totally fucked up, man, by listening to noise via headphones. It's called I-dosing, and it has parents and teachers freaking out about the noise's potential as a gateway drug. Cue clueless local newscast...now:

Clearly, this is the greatest menace since parents were alerted to their children possibly being an "emo." But everyone can calm down, because—of course—it doesn't work. I just attempted to I-dose and it was an epic failure. Here I thought I would get to be high at the office and I’m as sober as a stone. Maybe a little dizzy because I just listened to white noise for nearly 10 minutes, but no euphoria. It’s actually so harmless it has been used as therapy. Looks like we're stuck with regular analog drugs, everyone.

The way our inboxes lit up the other day, you would've thought some celebrity went on a racist rant that was then made readily available on the Internet. ("STOP BEING THAT!")

But no, this rush of e-mails and Tweets had to do with an article at eater.com about a product called the Candwich. As the name suggests, it's a sandwich in a can--an unusual conveyance for a sandwich, we can all agree. The article even mentioned The A.V. Club's Taste Test of the cheeseburger in a can, which is a day we'd actually just as soon forget. Part of the Candwich fuss had to do with a New York Times article about alleged fraud in the Candwich business, having to do with an investor who was supposed to be putting people's money into real estate, but instead, umm, used it to develop canned sandwiches.

ANYWAY, what these articles either fail to convey completely or just sorta gloss over is that Candwich is not yet available. Thus we cannot Taste Test its marvelous flavors--strawberry PB&J, grape PB&J, and BBQ Chicken. (Apparently promised in the future: Pepperoni Pizza and French Toast varieties.) But ...

For those who have long harbored literary pretensions but somehow missed out on the halfhearted encouragement of a self-absorbed creative writing professor or undermining writers’ workshop, I Write Like is the ego-inflating yet slightly dismissive mentor you’ve never had. Simply plug in a block of text (the longer the better) and, through the magic of some sort of undefined analytical algorithm, you’ll soon find out which famous author’s prose style most resembles your own ramblings. Here’s a rundown of which authors various members of The A.V. Club staff supposedly write like, according to the stories we plugged in. As you can see, it’s kinda complete horseshit—and it only seems to have about a dozen or so authors in its arsenal—but it’s sort-of fun nonetheless. [HT to Vulture]

Keith Phipps: Chuck Palahniuk

Josh Modell: Stephen King

Tasha Robinson: Dan Brown

Scott Tobias: H.P. Lovecraft

Noel Murray: James Joyce

Nathan Rabin: Raymond Chandler

Genevieve Koski: Mario Puzo

Kyle Ryan: Ian Fleming

Sean O’Neal: Kurt Vonnegut

We sit in front of our computers most of the day, connected to our friends and co-workers by the series of pipes, strings, and nimbostratus zackets called the Internet. Many times per day, things flash before our eyes—videos, photos, songs, sites—that are funny or strange enough to warrant sharing with other people. We salute them with a hearty "Great job, Internet!"

There are two things the Internet loves above all others: kittens and celebrity breakdowns. (Well, and porn, but hey, this is a family site!) This Buzzfeed page of totesOMGcute kittehs spouting choice Mel Gibson rants combines the two, bringing the whole of the Internet to its logical and inevitable zenith. It's all downhill from here, people.