Blue Tile Skate

Warner Bros. is letting the Warner brothers and Warner sister out of the water tower. 

That’s right: “Animaniacs” is the latest show from your childhood getting the reboot treatment. Clearly this is part of The Brain’s plan to take over the world, right? 

According to IndieWire, Steven Spielberg (who directed the original series) is on board to help develop the reboot along with Amblin Television and Warner Bros. 

As of now, the project hasn’t found a network to call home, though in today’s age of the reboots and revivals, the show probably won’t have an issue. There’s always Netflix ― the ‘90s cartoon joined the streaming service’s lineup last year. 

“Animaniacs,” which consisted of multiple segments (such as “Pinky and the Brain,” which got a spinoff) aired from 1993 to 1995 on Fox Kids and from 1995 to 1998 on Kids’ WB, with a total of 99 episodes. The animated series won eight Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

The series officially ended in 1999 with the straight-to-video release of “Animaniacs: Wakko’s Wish.” 

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A seventh grade student named Olivia recently presented a spoken word poem for a writing class. Her passionate performance impressed not only her class, but the internet as well. 

On May 25, Arizona’s 12 News station published a video on Facebook of Olivia performing the poem in her Queen Creek Middle School writing class. Olivia wrote the poem as part of an assignment to create a slam poem about a topic she felt strongly about, according to 12 News. 

As of Tuesday morning, the video had over 320,000 Facebook shares, 185,000 likes and 20 million views. 

Olivia’s beautiful performance gives a peek inside the mind of a young teenage girl and the struggles she faces every day. Throughout the poem she breaks these struggles down into 12 different points such as body image and the intense pressures to fit in.

“You take each comment, each judgement, each assumption, each opinion, each strange look, each remark, each criticism, each review, each report, each assessment and with it your self esteem plummets like a sinking ship,” Olivia says at the beginning of her performance.

Olivia says that middle school is a time to find yourself, but it takes time. 

“Going through your middle school years, you are on your own journey to find yourself, on a small jet,” she says. “And sometimes you cannot control what happens to you. The turbulence will throw you off course.”

In the Facebook comments section of the video, the teacher who assigned the slam poem to Olivia, Brett Cornelius, wrote that the class was “moved to tears” by her performance. 

“She’s brilliant beyond words…” Cornelius wrote on Facebook. “What’s even more incredible is that she worked on this for over a month, truly digging into the raw depths of teenage hood and expressing her feelings of the good, the bad, and the ugly of walking the halls of the school as a young woman. She’s humble and honest, that’s for sure. I’m proud to have met this little lady!”

Olivia sums up the poem by delivering a powerful rallying cry for young girls to love themselves ― just the way they are. 

“You are loved. You are precious. You are beautiful. You are talented. You are capable. You are deserving of respect. You can eat that meal. You are one in 7 billion,” she says. “Most of all, you are good enough.” 

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Television is like a time capsule. Inevitably an era’s anxieties and priorities are reflected through entertainment. If we want to pinpoint what was going on socially, culturally and politically at any given moment looking to the kinds of shows that appear on television isn’t the worst way to do it. 

That’s why the new series that networks announced earlier this month as part of their 2017–2018 schedules can offer some insight into how Donald Trump’s presidency is affecting both what viewers are watching and the kinds of shows networks are programming.

Back in December, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey told audiences at the Content London media summit that the network was questioning its programming philosophy in the aftermath of Trump’s victory.

“With our dramas, we have a lot of shows that feature very well-to-do, well-educated people, who are driving very nice cars and living in extremely nice places,” she said. “There is definitely still room for that, and we absolutely want to continue to tell those stories because wish-fulfillment is a critical part of what we do as entertainers. But in recent history we haven’t paid enough attention to some of the true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans in our dramas.”

Ratings might have prompted that kind of self-reflection as much as Trump’s win. Nearly every politically driven show on both network and cable TV ― “Scandal,” “The Americans,” “Homeland,” “Madam Secretary,” “Designated Survivor” and “Quantico” ― saw a decline in viewership numbers through the election season and dropped further after Trump won. 

Cable news networks enjoyed huge ratings increases ahead of the election and continue to see impressive numbers as news of White House scandals break nearly every week. But a network like ABC, which airs “Scandal,” “Quantico,” and “Designated Survivor,” is definitely feeling the effects of political fatigue.

“Scandal,” in particular, feels like victim of the Trump era. Though the show’s ratings had been declining since 2015, it wasn’t in danger of being canceled. After the election, creator Shonda Rhimes would often say in interviews that she no longer knew what to do with the series now that Trump was president — the on-screen scandals handled by Olivia Pope and her Gladiators were still far more dramatic than anything on the nightly news, but the latest season’s first few episodes, which aired right after Trump’s inauguration, forced viewers to endure yet another election narrative and relive the loss felt on election night all over again. 

Even after the runaway success of the show’s early seasons, the announcement that “Scandal” would end after its seventh season didn’t come as a surprise. 

“I used to know how it ended, and then Donald Trump was elected. We had a destination, and I don’t know if that’s our destination anymore,” Rhimes told The Hollywood Reporter in April.

Similarly, she told The New York Times, “Our show is basically a horror story. Really. We say the people in Washington are monsters and if anybody ever knew what was really going on under the covers they would freak out. So they can do anything, they can murder people, they kill people and they get away with everything all the time.”

She added, “But that was based on a world in which Obama was president and our audience was happy about what was going on in Washington and they felt optimistic. You can always tell any horror story you want to when the light is on. But now the lights are off, and now I think people don’t want to watch horror stories, they want you to light a candle somewhere.”  

As for “Designated Survivor,” ABC’s freshman drama starring Kiefer Sutherland, the series premiered to strong ratings in September and then began hemorrhaging millions of viewers each week as the election drew closer and Trump won. Though the network wouldn’t flat-out blame ratings on Trump, Dungey came as close as she could.

“I think some of that has to do with White House politics fatigue … It’s challenging right now in terms of making political shows just in general because there are big changes afoot in the world we live in, ” she told Entertainment Weekly in January, adding that the network planned on delving into the characters and their relationships. Which is another way of saying, they’re going to focus less on hard political storylines and rev up the romantic ones. 

After all of this, it seems that ABC didn’t rethink its programing philosophy after all. Rather than focus on series that show the reality of life for “everyday Americans” ― code for Trump voters ― when the new crop of shows were announced, Vanity Fair wondered if the network, which canceled its conservative-leaning hit “Last Man Standing,” was actually “quietly trolling” Trump?  

Counted among ABC’s new shows is “The Crossing,” in which “refugees from a war-torn country seek asylum in a small American fishing town, only the country these people are from is America ― and the way they are fleeing hasn’t happened yet.” There’s also “The Mayor,” which follows a rapper who runs for mayor as a publicity stunt and ends up winning. Both shows feel pretty pointed ― Dungey even called “The Mayor” “a timely riff on current events” ― but what might be even more telling are the pilots that ABC passed on.

The network declined to pick up the comedy “Libby & Malcolm” from “Blackish” creator Kenya Barris. Felicity Huffman and Courtney B. Vance were set to star as “two polar opposite political pundits, who fall in love despite all odds and form an insta-family as well as a work partnership.” ABC also passed on “Red Blooded,” a new drama from showrunner Marc Cherry, which was set to star Reba McEntire as the sheriff of a small town in Kentucky, “who finds her red state outlook challenged when a young FBI agent of Middle Eastern descent is sent to help her solve a horrific crime.”

Not having seen either show, it’s hard to say anything about either one, but both shows sound a little too on the nose when it comes to the let’s-put-our-differences-behind-us rhetoric. Given that political dramas (and even political comedies, in the case of “Veep”) are faltering in the Trump era, it’s not shocking that ABC would pass on these series.

That’s not to say audiences aren’t still thrilled by politics ― they just made MSNBC No. 1 in weekly primtime viewers for the first time in history ― but viewers are understandably exhausted and want to keep politics out of their entertainment. Plus, if anyone wanted to watch “two polar opposite political pundits” who fall in love, they could just watch recently engaged co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski  bicker on “Morning Joe.”

Dungey previously told reporters that the current political climate was something ABC took into consideration when they crafted the fall schedule.

“There’s a lot of news, and I think people are definitely looking to television as a place where they want to feel — they want to laugh, they want to cry, they want to enjoy,” Dungey said during the network’s conference call before their presentation to advertisers earlier this month. “What the mood of the country has told us is that television is a little bit of an escape … That did frame a lot of our development thinking this season.”

If people are looking for an escape, that helps to explain why there are no less than eight superhero shows scheduled to premiere in the 2017–2018 season. “The Big Bang Theory” currently reigns supreme as TV’s  No. 1 show, suggesting audiences want to laugh more than they want to see political intrigue. “This Is Us” topped the charts among dramas, suggesting a yearning for stories focused on interpersonal relationships. Networks are doing their best in this new TV season to literally recreate the kind of programing that seems to be working ― see “Young Sheldon.”

The desire for some TV catharsis in the current political climate also explains why “Saturday Night Live” just wrapped its highest-rated season in years and why Stephen Colbert was just officially crowned the king of late-night for the 2016–2017 season. Audiences might be tired of watching what they perceive as a heavy-handed lecture on current events disguised as a soapy drama, but they are hungry for satire.

“It’s been harder in the past couple of years at ‘SNL’ because the culture is so fragmented. If you do a parody even of a huge show like ‘Game of Thrones,’ it doesn’t have the full cultural resonance of a ‘Cheers’ or ‘Friends,’” “SNL” writer and “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost told The Hollywood Reporter of the show’s increased popularity. “Whereas politics right now is probably the closest we’ve come to a full-blown national phenomenon as anything in a long time, and anytime people are paying more attention to politics, it’s good for our show. But you almost feel like a war profiteer at times because we’ve benefited from a situation that’s so tough.”

If politics feels all-consuming, then what becomes of the political drama? Shows like “House of Cards,” whose fifth season premieres on Netflix on May 30, are routinely being written off as “irrelevant,” with critics claiming writers couldn’t possibly come up with anything more outlandish than what’s actually happening in the IRL White House. Even Robin Wright, who plays Claire Underwood, recently joked that Trump stole all the show’s ideas for Season 6. Trump has yet to actually match “House of Cards” in its full absurdity, but there’s still time. 

With themes of nepotism, populism, voter suppression, constitutional crises, the possibility of impeachment and a growing body count, the fifth season of “House of Cards” is by no means boring, but it’s just not as binge-able in this current administration.

Netflix doesn’t release viewership data, so it’s impossible to know how many people have ever watched “House of Cards,” but its subscribers are probably feeling the same political fatigue that network and cable the viewers are experiencing ― something showrunners Melissa Gibson and Frank Pugliese acknowledge.

“Politics surrounding the presidency, in particular, has become more like a TV show than our TV show has become like politics, in a way,” Pugliese told HuffPost in a recent phone interview.  “So yeah, sometimes I feel like we are competing with a show that is on every day ― it’s the Trump Show. It’s 24 hours a day. But there is nothing we can do about that.”

The plot of “House of Cards” Season 5 isn’t ripped from the headlines — the show was already filming some of its last episodes on election day. But many of the show’s themes and plot points again parallel what’s actually happening in our government today and it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. If anything, viewing the show in the wake of Trump’s seemingly numerous scandals adds a layer of realism. It’s increasingly difficult to convince yourself the entire show isn’t a commentary on the current president.

Of course, Francis Underwood wormed his way into the White House long before Trump did.

“I think we are uniquely positioned to be in dialogue with the real world,” Gibson told HuffPost when asked if she thought it was inevitable that viewers would try to connect the show to Trump. “But of course, our world is distinct and a really fundamental difference is that Francis Underwood came up through the system. He’s a through and through politician, who is of the system. He’s trying to explode it, but he’s trying to explode it from within. Whereas Donald Trump is a proud outsider trying to blow things up from the outside.”

There are many more differences between Francis Underwood and Trump ― one is one of the most articulate characters on TV, while the other has a vocabulary of about 67 words ― but this is part of Trump’s effect on TV. Suddenly everything is about him, even when it’s not.

“We’re just reacting to a moment in time both culturally and politically. The same moment in time that sort of created Trump and in a sense has created Francis,” Pugliese added. “So the similarities are there just because they came out of something that’s been going on for the last few years. In a way, Francis is talking about nationalism and populism seasons ago. So there has just been stuff in the air that we tapped into.”

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With their heads covered with Islamic headscarves, the three members of the Indonesian band VoB (”Voice of Baceprot” or “Noisy Voice”) do not look like your typical heavy metal group.

Formed in 2014, the band of teenagers met at school in Indonesia’s most populous province of West Java, and use their music to combat the stereotype of Muslim women as submissive or voiceless.

Wearing a hijab, or Islamic head scarf, should not be a barrier to the group’s pursuit of its dream of being heavy metal stars, said Firdda Kurnia, 16, who plays guitar and sings.

“I think gender equality should be supported, because I feel I am still exploring my creativity, while at the same time, not diminishing my obligations as a Muslim woman,” she added. 

Invited to perform at a recent graduation ceremony at another school, the trio quickly had fans dancing and head-banging at the front of the stage.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said one fan who attended, Teti Putriwulandari Sari. “There’s no law that bars hijab-wearing women from playing hardcore music.

“This also relates to human rights. If a Muslim girl has a talent to play the drums or a guitar, should she not be allowed?”

Besides covering classics by groups such as Metallica and Slipknot, the band perform their own songs on issues such as the state of education in Indonesia.

Muslims make up nearly 90 percent of a population of 250 million, the vast majority practising a moderate form of Islam, although there are some conservative strongholds.

Not everyone in the town of Garut, where the band was formed, and which is home to several Islamic schools, feels the community is ready for them, or that their music is appropriate for performance by young Muslim women.

“It is unusual to see a group of hijab-wearing girls playing metal music or even women shouting,” said Muhammad Sholeh, a teacher at the town’s Cipari Islamic boarding school, adding that religious pop music was popular with many young Muslims.

“But we’re talking about metal here, which is loud.”

Maudya Mulyawati, a student at the school, felt the band should focus on singing “Salawat”, an invocation to the religion’s founder, Prophet Mohammad.

An official of a top clerical body said although the group might trigger a culture clash in a conservative area, he did not feel it broke with Islamic values.

“I see this as part of the creativity of teenagers,” added Nur Khamim Djuremi, secretary general of the Islamic Art and Culture Division of Indonesia’s Ulema Council.

 

(Writing by Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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For more on “The Bachelorette,” check out HuffPost’s Here To Make Friends podcast below: 

Do people love “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” or do they love to hate these shows? It’s unclear. But here at “Here to Make Friends,” we both love and love to hate them — and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg.

Want more “Bachelor” stories in your life? Sign up for HuffPost’s Entertainment email for extra hot goss about The Bachelor, his 30 bachelorettes, and the most dramatic rose ceremonies ever. The newsletter will also serve you up some juicy celeb news, hilarious late-night bits, awards coverage and more. Sign up for the newsletter here.

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“The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” aren’t exactly known for pushing positive mental health habits. (In fact, it’s usually quite the opposite.) But on Monday night’s episode of Rachel Lindsay’s season of “The Bachelorette,” a routine exchange during a date turned into a refreshing endorsement for therapy.

Rachel goes on her first one-on-one date of the season with 31-year-old business owner, Peter Kraus. They have an idyllic time as they play with dogs at “Bark Fest,” hang out in a ball pit, bond over their gap teeth and generally become “smitten” with each other. During the second half of the date ― traditionally the time when contestants are encouraged to “open up” and “be vulnerable” ― Rachel asks Peter why he’s still single. Peter explains that he’s been brokenhearted a few times, specifically citing a relationship he jumped into after moving from L.A. back to Wisconsin, which didn’t work out and left him “really confused.”

“So, I decided to go see someone for it,” he continued. “I saw a relationship therapist, and it actually helped me a lot, and I think it’s helping me a lot now to be more calm in my thoughts.”

Rachel responded enthusiastically, talking about the end of her own long-term relationship, and how therapy helped her work on herself after it ended. 

“I went to a therapist,” she said, “and it was the best decision that I made that entire year and again it prepared me to realize what I really want for myself and what wasn’t working for me.”

(Watch the exchange above, beginning around to 50-second mark.)

The scene is a sweet and romantic one, in which therapy is presented as a dating plus! Rachel is totally taken with Peter’s anecdote, especially because she relates to it. She even jumps right from discussing mental health care to giving him the rose ― any “Bachelorette” one-on-one date’s ultimate prize.

Viewers reacted enthusiastically to the therapy talk, noting how unusual it is to hear mental health spoken about candidly: 

In an ideal world, this wouldn’t even be notable. After all, mental health struggles are incredibly common in this country. Anxiety disorders alone impact 40 million adults in the U.S. ― that’s about 18 percent of the population. However, only about one-third of those people get treatment.

This gap exists for a few reasons: a lack of comprehensive coverage for quality mental health care, the persistent idea that mental health isn’t “real” health, and the stigma that still follows admitting that you might need mental health care in the first place. (Incidentally, there are still few worse labels in “The Bachelor(ette)” dating world ― and the real dating world ― than “crazy.”)  

Because of the persistence of this stigma and the tangible impact it has on people seeking help, it’s notable that a show like “The Bachelorette,” which brings in millions of viewers from across the country each week, is normalizing therapy ― even making it something romantic. And truly, why shouldn’t it be? Recognizing that sometimes you need help, and having the wherewithal to seek that help out when needed, can only be a positive in a new relationship. 

If even “The Bachelorette” gets that mental health care is both necessary and pretty damn sexy, maybe the rest of America can get on board. 

For more on “The Bachelorette,” check out HuffPost’s Here To Make Friends podcast.

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A bee for Manchester. 

Hundreds of people across the U.K. are getting bee tattoos in honor of the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing that claimed 22 victims during an Ariana Grande concert.

U.K. tattoo artist Sam Barber started a fundraiser, dubbed the Manchester Tattoo Appeal, which took place Sunday and Monday with the goal of raising £50,000 for victims of the attack and their families. 

“We’ve actually got a lot of family members of some of the victims coming forward who want it as a memorial tattoo now,” Barber told the BBC late last week. “Paramedics and health workers who were on the scene, who were there in the aftermath, who also want to come together and get that tattoo done.” 

The bee, she explained, is a “symbol of strength.”

The worker bee is also the symbol of Manchester, meant to represent the city’s “hard-working past” during the Industrial Revolution, when textile mills were described as “hives of activity,” according to the Manchester Evening News.

Those looking to show their permanent love and support for the city lined up for their worker bee tattoos at participating tattoo parlors across Manchester. 

An employee Blue Cardinal Tattoo felt “overwhelmed by the support everyone has given,” telling HuffPost the response had been “incredible.” The shop, located in Rochdale, helped raise £5,725 over the weekend. “It’s been amazing.”

Beau Redman, who also works at Blue Cardinal, told Vice News that the line outside the shop was “over a mile long.” 

“It’s just nice people coming together and getting it not just for charity but to show that they’re also committed to Manchester,” she said. “We’re a good city, aren’t we?”

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Movies are defined by their music ― particularly horror movies, where a score can convince us that any given scene contains more terrors than it actually does.

Take, for example, Janet Leigh’s murder in “Psycho.” The famous shower scene is fairly elusive; you hardly see any violence, but the score is terrifying enough to suggest its grisliness.

HuffPost has an exclusive clip from “Score: A Film Music Documentary” that demonstrates the effectiveness of the famous Hitchcock moment. Remove the screeching melody, and the impact is lost.

Opening in limited release on June 16, “Score” explores the art of movie music and how Hollywood composers bring stories to life. 

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You’d think that being the voice of Elsa from “Frozen” might help you reach parenting perfection. But Idina Menzel says she still deals with ups and downs as a divorced working mom dealing with guilt and double standards. 

The actress and singer and her ex-husband, Taye Diggs, have a 7-year-old son named Walker. Following their 2014 divorce, she and Diggs have committed themselves to amicable co-parenting as they balance their careers as performers with giving Walker a childhood filled with love and support.

In honor of Menzel’s 46th birthday today, we’ve compiled some of her standout parenting quotes ― from her thoughts on mom guilt and the messy reality of motherhood to her son’s relationship with “Frozen.” 

On co-parenting:

“Your child comes first, that’s all. It’s all about that. He comes first and you have to get past your own egos and you never talk bad about each other.”

On the double standards moms face:

“The guilt is the thing we as women all feel, whether we stay at home or we work. There are a lot of double standards with the way the men in our lives see how we make those choices. I think there’s an accounting for how much time I spend with my son, and men don’t have to account for how much time they spend with their child. It hurts to feel that’s a judgment being made. Because we’re already judging ourselves.”

On the messy reality of motherhood:

“I’m a mom ― I’m lucky if I get to shower in the morning. Luckily, nail polish stays on my toes. I’ve been so bad on the upkeep, though.”

On parenting as a performer:

“I’m pretty disciplined. I really take care of my voice. But what do you do when you have a show and your kid wakes up with a fever in the middle of the night before? You go on stage, you think you’re never going to get through this, and that’s when you say to yourself, ‘Well, you weren’t going to not sleep next to your sick son, were you?’ Are you going to be mad at yourself because your voice is scratchy? No. You’re just going to change the melody a little and people will care because you’ve made them feel something, not because you’ve hit a certain note.”

On “Let It Go”:

“I just feel bad that some parents may be sick of me because of it.”

On dating as a single mom:

“It all sucks. I don’t want to keep introducing [my son] to people and having him form bonds and then take ‘em away, you know. It’s bad enough his mom and dad are getting divorced.”

On parenting guilt and divorce:

“You have a lot of regret with a child, and feeling like you’re failing them in some way. Not giving them the idealistic scenario.”

On singing for her son:

“He doesn’t like to hear Mommy sing! The few times I’ve tried — I’d say, ‘Want to hear what Mommy did in the studio today?’ — the first song on the album is called ‘Small World’ and he started cry! He said, ‘Mommy, it makes me miss you.’ I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m here!’ He said, ‘It just makes me think about when you go onstage and I miss you!’”

On telling her son about current events:

“It’s hard to know what’s age-appropriate as far as educating your child and how much to teach him about what’s out there, and that there are bad people out there and there are people who don’t like other people. You want to keep him insulated and safe and not ruin his perspective of the world.”

On work-life balance:

“I’ve struggled with putting off having a child, worried that it would distract me from my ambition and my career. And then I realized once I had a child how that enriched my life, and me as an artist and as a woman. It’s constant, the balancing motherhood now with my performing and my career and the guilt that I’m constantly slaying myself with. But it’s wonderful to have a show that I can at least go and assess those things and work through them on stage.”

On her son’s relationship with ‘Frozen’:

“The only time he really likes it is when I was volunteering in this kindergarten class last year and doing arts and crafts and he started talking to one of the little girls. The girl is looking at me and he says, ‘Do you want my mom’s autograph? She’s Elsa!’ That’s like his game, he’s got game.”

On raising a son:

“I want to do the right thing by my son, and that means balancing my work and my quality time with him. I know he needs to grow up seeing a really happy, confident mother, then he’ll be drawn to those kinds of women.”

On reliving childhood through parenting:

“You get to relive your childhood when you have a baby and you see these toys and these books you read when you were little — the innocence that you are able to maintain … to connect with your child keeps you in a special state of mind.”

On how parenthood changes you:

“Motherhood has helped me to stop overanalyzing things. It’s been liberating because I used to be somewhat neurotic. I attribute that to having something bigger than myself.”

On living in the moment:

“[I] better about myself because I like who I am as a mother … Between changing diapers and touring preschools, I’m still getting some other stuff done. I think that’s why being a mommy keeps you in the moment more. You can’t really think much about other stuff because you have life happening right in front of you — you have to feed him, and change his diapers, and play with him, and read to him.”

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