Taylor Swift Makes Us Want to Take a Country-Travel Tour

No better place to start than Nashville, home to the Country Music Association, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The latter houses a collection of hundreds of thousands of country-music artifacts for fans to pore over, from Carrie Underwood's Grammy dress (though not all of the other  night's CMA outfits—yet) to countless photos, recordings, movies, and interviews. A current exhibition about Hank Williams and his kin, featuring rare and never-before-seen items donated by his family, closes December 31.

Click through to read the rest of the item at the Condé Nast Traveler website.

Photo by Tim Hursley

 

Quiz: Match the Country to Its Motto

This week, the House of Representatives voted to reaffirm "In God We Trust" as the national motto of the United States. This follows a 2002 vote that accomplished the exact same thing. We're not convinced our national slogan is really worth all of that congressional time and effort (does anyone pay attention to these things outside of their own countries, or even in them?) But with the idea that it might actually tell you something about the place you're visiting, we've looked into some other countries' mottos. See if you can match these ten adages to their countries.

Click through to read the rest at the Condé Nast Traveler.

Johnny Depp and Puerto Rico Star in The Rum Diary

Johnny Depp’s latest, The Rum Diary, opens tonight—an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's semi-autobiographical novel about working at an ailing newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s. Filming was done on location on the island (which was recently top-rated in our annual Readers’ Choice Awards, along with several snazzy hotels and resorts). Johnny Depp, no stranger to working in the Caribbean, speaks fondly the two months he spent in Puerto Rico. "It's very vivid; there's a real celebration of life there," he told Entertainment Tonight. "The people there are very warm and welcoming—in truth, the sweetest people on Earth."

 

'Allen Gregory': A Little Egghead With a Temper

 

Similarly, the show leans on angry-Allen too much. Yes, it’s funny to see the little egghead blow his lid and be downright rude to people. The problem is, he’s belligerent to too many people, especially within his family structure. It’s realistic that a kid would be hostile to either his father’s partner or a new adopted sibling, and Allen Gregory has both. But scenes at the De Longpre home devolve into across-the-board shouting. The writers need to differentiate how Allen Gregory relates to Jeremy from how he relates to Julie. If the show had Allen Gregory treat Jeremy and Julie differently, there’d be more opportunity for a wider variety of jokes, including some that don’t involve yelling. 

 

At least Allen Gregory doesn’t try to emulate Family Guy‘s ugly aesthetic. Allen Gregory looks much nicer. Character designs come from Andy Bialk and James McDermott, whose combined credits include King of the Hill, The Ricky Gervais Show, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack. As on those shows, the characters of Allen Gregory look flat and the backgrounds are mostly static. But rather than the ultra-spare designs of those shows, the artwork feels full and sophisticated, with a muted color palette. Maybe the humor can become as refined.

 

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

Visit These Sights Before Tourists Descend

The Rink at Rockefeller Center
Ice-skating before winter officially arrives may seem silly, but there is a benefit to heading out early: This iconic rink offers lower prices until November 3, and the ice—which accommodates only 150 people at a time—is slightly less crowded. Thus, you’ll have a wider berth while attempting your best shoot-the-duck spin. 30 Rockefeller Plaza between 49th and 50th Sts (therinkatrockcenter.com). Times vary; visit website for details. Through Nov 3: $10–$14, seniors and children under 11 $8–$8.50; skate rental $8. Nov 4–17 $15.50–$19, seniors and children under 11 $9.50–$10.50. Nov 18–Jan 6: $15.50–$21, seniors and children under11 $9.50–$12.50; skate rental $10.

Click through to read the rest of the article at Time Out New York. 

 

Photograph: Courtesy the Holiday Shops at Bryant Park

'Dirty Girl': The Edgy Misfit

“'No one likes a dirty girl,' a high school principal tells Danielle (Juno Temple), the firecracker at the center of Dirty Girl. He’s wrong, of course. Plenty of people love a dirty girl, this film’s writer and director Abe Sylvia first and foremost. Danielle, growing up in Norman, Oklahoma in 1987, is the very picture of fun feistiness. She wears high espadrilles, piles on the makeup, smokes cigarettes, goes too far with boys in her Mustang convertible, and mouths off to people in an adorable Southern drawl. She sounds like a cliché, but Temple’s performance makes this dirty girl is a formidable heroine in high-waisted short shorts."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

Fall Foliage Tip 
A good rule of thumb is that the leaves change later the more south you go and the closer you stick to the coast. “This is because these areas are lower in elevation and tend to stay a bit warmer than inland,” says Marek D. Rzonca of the Foliage Network. If the weather cooperates, leaf season in southeast New Jersey—near Wildwood and Cape May, for example—can continue through early November.

Click through to read the rest of the item on the Condé Nast Traveler Tumblr. They have a great photo up on the site, too.

'Love, Wedding, Marriage': We Recommend Therapy

"Yet it’s not the premise to Love, Wedding, Marriage—and its strict romantic view that equates divorce with failure—that is the movie’s biggest flaw. Instead, it’s the way the film uses its premise to indulge the worst romantic-comedy tropes, scenes featuring zany speed-dating, bad karaoke, soap-opera-style revelations, a fake suicide attempt, schmaltzy third-act toasts, multiple uses of the phrase 'once upon a time', dramatic revelations, and wacky marriage therapies, plural. Did I mention that Ava has a three-week deadline to save her parents marriage before their big, surprise 30th anniversary party that she refuses to cancel?

Love, Wedding, Marriage goes for broad, just-shy-of-slapstick humor. Only Mulroney doesn’t have a feel for the right tone, rhythm, or look of a romantic comedy. In one scene, the marriage therapist that Ava sends her parents to—played by Christopher Lloyd in the most disappointing cameo of his ever put to film—has them run through some pre-therapy exercises that includes them hopping around and snorting air through their noses. Surely, this was supposed to be played for comedy.

In reality, there’s nothing really all that funny about watching Jane Seymour and James Brolin flopping around on screen. It’s almost more sad than funny. When Mulroney tries for some more directorial flourishes, he favors the more dramatic series of extreme close-ups, lingering ponderously on Mandy Moore’s face.

Then again, there isn’t much in the material to elevate with better direction. Much of the dialogue, written by Anouska Chydzik and Caprice Crane of the recent 90210 and Melrose Place reboots, is therapy-speak. People often say exactly what they feel. They talk about fulfillment, prioritizing, and validation. If there is a single least-funny word in the English language, it just might be 'prioritizing'."

 

Click through to read the full review at PopMatters.

 

I've always been a huge fan of Jane magazine (sadly, I missed out on Sassy), so I'm so happy to be on xoJane!

It Happened to Me:  My Birth Control Was Recalled

Knowing that my birth control was possibly defective was frightening. Finding out from a city-centric blog was just galling. The last time there was a recall for cars, I'm pretty sure I heard about it on a popular morning news show as I was getting dressed. My TV was mum about this birth-control deal. Yet the last big BMW recall in late-September affected only 190 cars; Qualitest Pharmaceuticals' shipped out 1.4 million packages of possibly defective product.

"There are no immediate health issues," associated with the recall, Qualitest spokesman Kevin Wiggins was quoted as saying on CNN.com. "The unintended consequence of pregnancy is really the issue."

How that doesn't fall under the heading of "health issue" is foggy, but the message is clear. There wasn't a real chance of unintended death; unintended life, maybe.

Click through to read the rest of the essay on xoJane.

Give Me Liberty
The Liberty Hotel, Boston, MA

A trendy Beacon Hill crowd starts to arrive at the Liberty Hotel lobby. You grab a drink from the lobby bar—perhaps a Juniper Blossom, made of Tanqueray, St. Germain, and grapefruit—and look out onto the soaring four-story atrium. The grand space is marked with towering arched windows, wrought-iron chandeliers, and mahogany furniture. If you didn’t know, you might never guess that the place was once a jail.

Yes, until the 1990s, the hotel was the old Charles Street Jail, which housed inmates such as Sacco and Vanzetti and James Michael Curley (who was imprisoned there for fraud but ran a successful campaign for alderman while he was interred). Developer Carpenter and Company and architect Cambridge Seven Associates teamed up to repurpose the property. The old cellblocks are now stylish catwalks with sitting areas for guests, the original “drunk tank” has (fittingly) been turned into a bar, and some of the original jail cells are now dining nooks at the on-site restaurants. Eighteen of the 298 guest rooms also are set up within the landmark jail building (with the rest in a newly constructed 16-story tower).

While there are many nods to the Liberty Hotel’s history, thankfully, there’s nothing prison-like about the guest accommodations. Spa-like is more apt, with luxurious bathrooms with separate deep bathtubs and rainfall showerheads. And, with a spot right at the foot of the Longfellow Bridge, many of these rooms look out over the Charles River.

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