Adair Lion’s video for “Ben” is an intriguing call for hip-hop to mobilize against homophobia, more polemic than banger:

I don’t necessarily think that Kanye is going to feel called to account here. But I think there’s something smart about Lion’s reminder that ““To all the little dudes learnin’ to mack / The hottest girls got a gay in their clique, remember that.” It’s obviously a cliche, but it does send the message that homophobia is not actually going to make you look like a big man, that the people who you want to impressive (mostly girls) are so over your cringing and unfounded cowardice. More of that, please, from people with louder mics.

I’ve eased up on the book club because I think it’s hard for a critical mass of folks to keep up—we all have a lot on our pop culture agendas. But some people have been asking me what I’m reading or what I’m looking forward to this summer. So here are five books that are either coming out, or are relatively new releases that I think are worth making time for if you’re escaping to the beach somewhere.

-Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson, Out on July 3: Alif The Unseen may not be the first major fictional take on the Arab Spring, but it’s definitely the first to examine what would happen to a censorious oil state if a talented young hacker of Indian-Arab origin, after having his heart shattered by the upper-class girl he’s in love with, goes on the run with his veiled neighbor and best real-life friend and a djinn. It’s a terrifically fun novel about the connections between literature and coding, magic and Islam, and the identities we create for ourselves.

-Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo, Out on June 5: For all my YA readers of all ages in the house, Bardugo’s fantasy set in a Russia where the tsar’s advised by both a Rasputin-like holy man and a powerful wizard is the first part of a trilogy, and by the end of Shadow and Bone, you’ll be glad that’s the case. Fictional authoritarians don’t always pack the punch or capture the rot of unstable regimes, but Bardugo’s does. Plus magic and smooching and some super-scary demons.

-Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel, Out on May 8: Wolf Hall, the first book in Mantel’s trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, is one of my favorite books of recent years, a rich, strange volume that actually captures what it feels like to be inside a non-modern mindset. I’m excited for the HBO adaptation, if it ever comes to fruition. But I’m even more excited for this sequel.

-The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson: Johnson’s novel of life in North Korea has been out for a while, and at first blush, it might not seem like beach reading. But it’s gorgeously written, and a propulsive adventure, a reminder that life as we know it can be so strange as to approach magical realism. If you want a reckoning with American inability to comprehend the world beyond ourselves, this is one of the most innovative ways to have that conversation with yourself and a piece of literature.

-Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel: I feel like I shouldn’t even have to make the case for this graphic novel memoir, given how wonderful Bechdel’s meditation on her father, Fun Home, is. But for those of you who are unfamiliar, Alison Bechdel is a genius, and Dykes to Watch Out For, her long-running syndicated comic strip about a lesbian community, was fantastic, no matter what your sexual orientation.

This post contains spoilers for the May 3 episode of Parks & Recreation.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Pawnee is its slight crackedness, part English small town wacky, part All-American grievance factory. I like that one of Leslie’s stump speech promises can be “to expel the violent gangs of geese in Detwiler Square.” And I like that Pawnee contains a the Newports’ gloriously ludicrous mansion, which in keeping with Bobby’s status as an overgrown child contains both a rich-dude’s game room with a bowling alley, and an elegant crystal bowl fully of gummy bears.

It also contains its very particular villains, in this case, a van rental dude played by Glee’s Mike O’Malley who, having initially agreed to rent Leslie’s campaign his fleet for election day for $900, sells out to the Newports for $10,000. He proves immune to all sorts of inducements, including a promise of free publicity, and Tom’s offer to let him in on his latest business idea: alcoholic frozen Yogurt Platinum (which I would totally eat). He’s even resistant to Ron Swanson’s Code of Manliness. When Ron tells him “Where I come from, a man’s word is sacred,” Van Guy spits back “Okay, what’s your stance on pinky swears, George Washington?”

So it’s up to Donna and her beloved ride to save the day. I always appreciate when she and Jerry get a chance to be heroes, and while Jerry’s expression as he gets hit in the face with a pie for science and FBI Agent Bert Macklin is priceless, this time, it’s Donna’s turn. She’s been along for the ride more than anything else on the campaign, fascinated by Jerry’s love of menial campaign work, but with the same clear line she always has between work and the rest of her life. So it’s nice to see her commit all the way, even on the last day of the campaign, when it matters most. In a Towanda the Avenger move, she crushes Van Guy’s fender, has Tom and Ron act as her witnesses, and informs him “We can settle this right now. I will accept payment in van rentals.”

Even though Leslie’s attempts to apologize to Bobby after insulting his father only to learn that he’s died was ostensibly the A story tonight, I was actually most intrigued by something she said in the open. “If we win,” she said of the campaign bus, “hopefully it will be the home that Ben and I share forever.” Ben’s sacrifice of his job solved the problem of whether the two of them can stay together during her campaign. But now that we’re close to knowing whether Leslie will win or lose, it’ll be interesting to see if they can build a long-term relationship, especially when Ben has to find a job that doesn’t involved the advancement of Leslie’s life goals.

And I also want to know what’s going to happen to April Ludgate-Dwyer when she finds something she’s interested enough to stretch for beyond Andy. We’re still at a point in the show where seeing her be kind to someone is novel, even if being kind means saying things like: “First of all, dark places are awesome. Second, Ann is kind of lame so way to dodge a bullet. And Millicent is Jerry’s daughter. So two bullets. And you’re not alone. You’ve got lots of friends. Somewhere. I assume. You’re going to be just fine.” But at some point, that juxtaposition will cease to be striking. I can’t wait to see how April’s going to grow once she figures out what she’s going to grow into, and I do hope the show makes some strides towards helping her find that soon.

The bridge is yours.

-Demian Bichir is headed to Machete Kills.

-Pretty excited to see Brad Bird staying in live action movies.

-I’m excited for a Mary Pickford biopic, but someone should really do Barbara Stanwyck.

-Is America capable of quitting football?

-I think going back to Spider-Man’s parents is smart, but somehow, I just can’t get that excited about this movie:

Apparently, the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick thought it was clever to write, in reference to Jay-Z’s work as part owner of the New York Nets:

As long as the Nets are allowing Jay-Z to call their marketing shots — what a shock that he chose black and white as the new team colors to stress, as the Nets explained, their new “urban” home — why not have him apply the full Jay-Z treatment? Why the Brooklyn Nets when they can be the New York N——s? The cheerleaders could be the Brooklyn B—-hes or Hoes. Team logo? A 9 mm with hollow-tip shell casings strewn beneath. Wanna be Jay-Z hip? Then go all the way!

“I guess I won’t need my color TV anymore now that the Nets will be wearing black and white,’’ writes reader John Lynch. And reader David Distefano now wonders what’s left for the Nets to choose as “their alternate third-uniform to sell during nationally televised games.”

And his editors saw fit to let this get into print, which perhaps says more about their failings. If you can’t see Jay-Z — the guy who made it possible to be viably middle aged in hip-hop, a long-established businessman, a guy with a wife and kid — as anything other than an ignorant thug, you’re willfully blind in the same way as people who look at President Obama and insist on seeing a radical. No one who sees the world through lenses that distorted should be trusted to interpret it for the public. And it’s contemptible to make money off that kind of willful blindness and the pleasure people get out of casual racism. This column may be the consequence of Mushnick’s views being taken to their logical extension. But someone let him off the leash.

It begins with Sunnydale. Joss Whedon will probably never escape the legacy of his genre-subverting feminist masterpiece Buffy the Vampire Slayer, about a Valley Girl who fights the forces of darkness, and as writer and director of The Avengers, the movie that ties together the threads begun in a series of other superhero movies, that’s an excellent thing. A grand, funny action picture, The Avengers is also fundamentally if subtly about our reaction to superheroes: it manufactures joy (sometimes to slight excess—it clocks in at almost two and a half hours) even as it argues for the importance of that reaction and that belief in great power and great responsibility. And fittingly for a movie that’s a continuation of the project he began in Buffy, Whedon’s The Avengers begins as Buffy ended: with a group of wildly talented people escaping from a town that’s collapsing into the ground.

It helps to have seen the previous movies Marvel’s released to enjoy The Avengers—each entry in the franchise builds on the other in terms of plot development and characterization—but it’s not strictly necessary. The town that’s collapsing in this case turns out to be a massive government research facility run by an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s dedicated to studying a mysterious artifact: the tesseract. In previous films we’ve learned that the U.S. came into possession of that object, which it sees as a source of cheap renewable energy (and maybe other things as well) after they defrost Captain America, who stole it from the Nazis and crash landed the tesseract and himself in the Arctic. It turns out, however, that the Nazis pinched it from Asgard, the celestial kingdom of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (a terrific Tom Hiddleston), demi-gods and brothers who have had a significant falling out, leaving Thor with a human sweetheart and a fondness for earth, and Loki with a hankering for revenge. The Avengers kicks off when Loki shows up, pinches the tesseract along with several government workers, and in the process, collapses the facility. After he gets away, S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), his assistant Maria Hill (a largely wasted Cobie Smulders), and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) regroup on a carrier ship and proceed to recruit the help they need to get it back.

Much of the band they pull together’s in fine, previously-established fettle. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) may be in the clean energy business and faithful to Pepper Potts these days, but he’s still an arrogant quip machine. “What’s your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Great big bag of weed?” Tony snarks at Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), eager first to figure out how the brilliant scientist maintains his hard-won calm, and second to convince Banner that he might enjoy taking the Hulk out for a spin. Captain America (Chris Evans), now that he’s thawed out, seems awfully depressed and displaced. “When I went to sleep, we were at war,” he tells Fury glumly, taking a break from obliterating punching bags as a form of therapy. “I wake up, they say we’ve won. They didn’t say what we’ve lost.” Thor’s still speaking in Shakespearean text—something Tony doesn’t heistate to ding him for—and getting huffy over family honor, though when Black Widow points out that his brother Loki, on a quest to conquer the world, has killed 80 people in a mere 48 hours, Thor notes quickly “He’s adopted.”

The two characters least-well served by their previous incarnations in Marvel movies, the Hulk and Black Widow, are the ones best served by Whedon’s greatest gifts and strongest tendencies. Previous incarnations have tended to reduce Bruce Banner to something of a victim—his movie depictions haven’t bothered to make the case that the good doctor is worthwhile company in and of himself, interesting not merely because of his struggle to contain what Ruffalo’s Banner ominously refers to as “the other guy.” Whedon’s gifted Banner with a mordant wit and the obligation to point out the downside to situations his more optimistically superheroic colleagues regard as alternately awesome or a piece of cake (to a certain extent, he’s Xander Harris before he gets his hands on a wrecking ball). “Last time I was in New York, I kind of broke Harlem,” he warns them in one moment. When he makes his belated arrival at a battle that’s going poorly, Banner tells his beseiged allies “So, this all seems horrible.” We have a sense of the self Banner loses when he transforms into the Hulk, an understanding that he is valuable, and in peril of losing not just his reason temporarily but his soul permanently.
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This post contains spoilers through the May 3 episode of Community.

One of the reasons I tend to prefer Community’s rarer emotionally precise episodes to its high-concept episodes is that while I trust that the show cares deeply about the characters, when it takes on cultural forms, the show usually has more to say about the forms themselves than the ideas that animate and give life to them. Last week’s Law & Order episode, for example, touched on the power that we give the cops, but it’s more about replicating the fact that pop culture cops hit things in interrogation rooms than in exploring what it means that they do. In addition to feeling weirdly rushed and formless, this week’s episode had elements of that same issue when it came to Chang’s takeover.

When Dean Pelton’s initially running through Chang’s list of requests for the security squad, it’s a quick runthrough of the War on Terror: “Cool new uniforms, like that. Power to enact martial law, not so much Indefinite detention. pepper spray. Involuntary cavity searches. No soft serve?…I’m sorry, Chang, this stuff is too extreme. This is a community college, not an inner city high school.” It’s kind of funny, but it’s mostly the same old flip joke about Dean Pelton missing what’s important and Chang being self-important. Same with Jeff’s declaration at Starburns’ funeral that he’s achieved “Acceptance that this place, this Fallujah of higher learning, is a prison from which none of us will ever escape.” It’s the same sort of overreaching statement he always makes (though this one is an unattractive comparison), only this time the conclusion is bitter rather than superficially uplifting.

The thing is, there is an interesting story to be told about small men who amass great power in secret, like the ones who actually implemented some of the things Chang wants Dean Pelton to give him power to do. Hopefully this rushed setup will give later episodes some time to deal with Chang’s psyche in particular and how what these power grabs mean in a real way. Chang’s not wrong when he complains that “That’s the problem with you civilian suits. You want results, but you don’t want to see how the sausage gets made.” And Dean Pelton’s not the only man to sign papers wile saying “Just promise me you’ll use restraint.” Better get that part of things in writing.