MamaPop™

Three Kids Shows that are Fun for the Whole Family (Videos Galore)

 Just say it - if you have to watch Dora the Explorer find the chocolate tree one more time you are going to completely lose your mind.

Breaking Bad: Episode 302 - "Caballo Sin Nombre": Stacy and Palinode Put a [Re]cap in Someone's Arse

Wherein Stacy and Palinode shoot the shit about Breaking Bad.  Shoot the meth would be a better pun, but our moms read this. And I don't want her knowing about my meth problem.

This week: Walt attempts to leave the drug business behind and reunite his family.  Jesse leaves rehab and totally p3wns his parents.  Hank is totally clueless. Skyler faces perfidy and corruption at home and work.  The silent guys from Mexico with skull-capped boots arrive in Albuquerque.  They have an axe.

Tim And Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Season Cinco

I have decided to take a break from my usual American Idol Recap this week. Partly because the show has sucked since Ellen arrived but more importantly, so I can bring you a special announcement. The best show in the history of television is back for its fifth season and this makes me very happy.

Snarky Amber's Top Whatever of 2009

 And I do mean "whatever," because I give a big middle finger to this year, with the exception of these few things:

Best of 2009: Next Year Better Kick Way More Ass

So, 2009. It was OK. Not the worst year ever, no, but definitely not as awesome as 2010 will be (I have a feeling). My best of the year list, which has no cohesive theme except it's 1) a list, whoo! and 2) each item has best in the title.

Grey's Anatomy Is STILL Not On, But I Got Some Of Dr. Shepherd's New Cologne And It's Liquid Sex

Patrick Dempsey has his own Avon fragrance called Unscripted and I never smelled it because I never got a free bottle. But Avon sent me his second fragrance, Patrick Dempsey 2, and it smells really good. Talk about a lazy name, though. I would've called it McEau de Toilette. I bet Patrick Dempsey was having a bad day and Avon was bugging him about a name and he just barked "PATRICK DEMPSEY 2!"

Five Reasons You Should Watch "V" Tonight

Tonight, ABC will air the first episode of the long-awaited reimagining of the 1984-1985 series, V. And if you for some ludicrous reason haven't already pencilled it into your Day Runner, set a reminder in your iCal or programmed your Tivo to record it, I'm here to demonstrate why you bitches crazy if you're not planning to watch this show.

The Death of Bunny Munro: a Novel by Nick Cave - A MamaPop Review

Do you know Nick Cave? And if not... what the hell is wrong with you? The man is a prophet and I think you oughta listen. For more than six fifteen twenty-five years, Cave has been a wild-eyed prophet of truth, rage, damnation and love — by and large as a musician of ill-repute and worldwide critical adoration, first with the late and much-lamented Aussie boy band gloom junkies The Birthday Party and then via a long and terrifyingly effective solo career with his own band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

If you've ever seen a photo of Cave, it gives you something of an inkling of who he is as an artist: a collision of dapper and decrepit, where broad lapels and oddly formal suits hint at the crooner's heart that lies - as often as not - buried deep beneath layers of Old Testament-quality torment and torrential waves of darkness, each deeper and more profound than the one that came before. If and when you read articles about him, he's often seen as something akin to an evangelist of the Gothic South fallen to sin and infamy -- a sensibility that flows through his work as strongly as anything you'll find in the intricacies of Faulkner.

Top Five TV Series Everyone Should Own On DVD, According to Snarky Amber

For the first time since I was 16, I have had the whole summer off. While I meant to accomplish a whole lot of totally important and enriching things, I've mostly been re-exploring my favorite television shows in the comfort of my living room and bathrobe, usually with a bowl of Lucky Charms in my lap. While the summer is quickly winding down with new shows soon to be fed directly to your cable box and/or Tivo, it's not too late to catch a show you missed when it aired or one you watched and simply want to revisit. Under the fold, I present my picks for must-have television series on DVD.

MamaPop Exclusive Doc Jensen Interview!

Friends, Lost Fans, Geeks, the day we have long dreaded and anticipated in equal measure is now upon us. Yes, today is Lost Season Finale Day. And I don't know about you, but my excitement for tonight's culminating two-hour episode is definitely tempered by some very serious anxiety about what the hell I'm going to do on Wednesday nights starting next week. Should I pick up knitting? Portrait painting? cough Ship-in-a-bottle making cough? Sigh. Each time a season of Lost ends I'm reminded of how barren the televisual landscape is without the show, and just how awful it will be to see it end after next season. Oh the woe and the weeping, the tearing of clothes and wailing and gnashing of teeth... Let's hope there's a support group or something I can join, as I expect the Lost withdrawals to be formidable.

That said, tonight's ending thankfully foreshadows next season's beginning, and we still have a great big chunk of Lost ahead of us to look forward to [wipes sweat from brow]. And who better to help us navigate through the show's narrative and its complex machinations than Entertainment Weekly's Delphic-Oracle-Like Expert On All Things Lost, Jeff "Doc" Jensen? That's right, NO ONE. Which is why I'm beyond excited -- thrilled, quite honestly -- that Doc took time during what must be an incredibly busy week for him to answer our questions about tonight's finale, how he thinks the show will end, who he thinks that Jacob dude is, and more.

Full interview with Doc after the jump!

Kindle App for My iPhone: Best Thing Ever

Ever since they came out almost two years ago I have coveted my neighbor's Kindle.

Books and electronic handheld technology combined? It makes me all warm on the insides.

Since we can all agree that the best thing in the whole world is the iPhone, (Don't even try to deny it. The only people who disagree are people who don't have one. *she sings* I'd like to buy the world an iPhone and keep it company.) what is the one thing that would make Sarah the happiest in the whole world?

(Not including the ability to lose weight while eating bacon and drinking beer and watching Tampa Bay winning the Super Bowl whilst receiving oral sex, because clearly that would be better than what I am about to tell you about, but not by much.)

Behold: The Kindle App for the iPhone:

Help Team MamaPop Speak at BlogHer '09!

So, look. We've gone and submitted a conference session proposal to the folks at BlogHer to talk about pop culture writing (and reading) on the web, and whether we're all just gossipy harpies who should be ashamed of ourselves...or if we're all changing the very face of pop culture one Botox-laden post at a time. Or. Something. Catherine wrote it, and made it all smart. I'm just here to pimp it.

GO HERE to check out our pitch and please to click on the little link under the post title that says "I would be interested in attending this session." (You'll need a BlogHer.com login to do so, but you don't actually have to be registered for the conference or anything -- this is all a vague, squooshy process that just requires us to prove that people are interested in our idea. AND OF COURSE YOU ARE INTERESTED IN OUR IDEA. Our ideas are magic. Like unicorns. Magic, sparkly unicorns. With butterfly tramp stamps.)

Catherine, Tracey and I would be leading the discussion, but gobs of other MamaPop writers will be there and present and participating. GOBS! I guess maybe I should learn their names.

Meanwhile, furious behind-the-scenes discussion about our team uniform for the session will continue. Some of the options we're currently kicking around, after the jump:

How Procrastination Gave me the Final Word on 2008

While my fellow Mamapoppers were regaling you all week with their top picks of 2008 I sat at my computer paralyzed. I mean, coming up with a list conveys that in some way my opinion matters. Knowing that hundreds of thousands of people are going to be logging on and reading what rocked my world this year was just too daunting. So I procrastinated. And then I realized that you’re just here trying to get the latest scoop on Speidi and couldn’t give a monkey’s butt what I think. Then it became really easy to write.

So without further ado or numbers--

Britney’s Big Comeback
Britney has come a long way since January when she was getting regular rides from ambulance drivers and barred from seeing her children to finishing out the year with liberal visitation rights, snapping her body back into enviable shape and releasing her latest album “Circus.” Dare I say this Pop Princess deserves the title of Comeback Queen?

7 Things That Made Me Nothing But Happy In 2008

Yeah, I know it's not my normal "beat" but hey, everyone else around here is doing it.

And I may be a lawyer but I'm also as much as pop culture junkie as the next MamaPop writer.  So, after the jump, my picks for the things I loved in 2008.  And I will warn you, quite a few of these are very puffy pink heart girlie fluffy.  I work in child abuse, and sometimes, I just need some things in my life that do nothing but make me smile.

Snarky Amber's Top Ten of 2008

How do we measure a year? Here at MamaPop, our approach is to provide you with easily digested "Top n" list of things we liked best throughout the year. Due to widespread economic woe, what felt like the longest presidential race of all time, and my usual misanthropy, it was easy enough for me to narrow a year like 2008 down to a small handful of highlights.

Here they are, in two easy to swallow caplets of five items each: Five Things I Stumbled Across On My Own and Five Things I Was Peer Pressured Into.