Breasts. Women love them, men love them, children love them, best of all, producers love them. Perky breasts are synonymous with television in the 90s and Portable has compiled the eight best — although not in order — breasts of the pre-noughties.

When Ma$e rapped, “Harlem on the rise”, he may have been on to something. Slowly, the once severely impoverished neighborhood is morphing into a new Williamsburg, of sorts, just with — at present — fewer liberal/fine arts grads on fixed-gear bikes. Still, the new crop of Harlem-based rappers (and unlikely fashion darlings) are perhaps an indication that, for as much as things may have changed, Harlem hip-hop hasn’t strayed too much from its roots.

A$AP Rocky is an anomaly. With his gold fronts, hazy instrumentals, and “purp” references, there are elements of his sound and persona that are decidedly more Houston than New York. But while his affinity for Raf and Rick Owens may put him in better stead with the fashion set than your average MC, initial reactions by many in “his own backyard”, so to speak, have been mixed.

I grew up in Harlem during pretty much the same time as Azealia Banks and the A$AP crew. We were all children of the nineties, when nobody applauded you for being different, or marveled over your nonconformist sartorial choices. No one appreciated my fondness of bindis, and pink mascara, or my love of the Chili Peppers and Daria, though I doubt most even knew what those things were (whereas at school, on the Upper East Side, my Buffalo Boot-wearing, Manic Panic-tinted-hair having, elementary school classmates didn’t seem to notice or care).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Even during the early days of the Bad Boy dynasty, with all of its glitz, the dress code was more flashy than flamboyant. Yeah, Diddy wore that epic, shiny, red suit in the “Mo Money Mo Problems” video, but that wouldn’t have even happened had stylist June Ambrose not twisted his arm. Even still, that was just TV. In the streets, it was all about labels, and (highly visible) logos. Nike “swooshes”, and Jordan “Jumpmans”, LVs, and interlocking Gs, and Cs, Tommy Hilfiger anything, and other designer goods of questionable authenticity.

Ryan Gosling notwithstanding, sensitive guys have not been riding high in pop culture this year. Lena Dunham‘s supposedly moment-defining HBO series Girls has Dunham’s character Hannah unable to resist the charms of her unapologetically noncommittal acquaintance-with-benefits, Adam, while her roommate Marnie cruelly abuses a love-wracked boyfriend. The show has been widely criticized for its lack of diversity — but as if on cue, in rolls the convertible convoy of Houston rapper Kirko Bangz, who gives Adam a virtual high-five. Whatever the extent to which Girls does or does not speak to the contemporary African-American experience, a good ol’ no-strings-attached shag knows no color.

It may be going too far to read “Drank In My Cup” as an anti-drinking song (would Kirko be “hard as a rock” if that drank hadn’t stayed in his cup?), but it’s certainly fair to call the eponymous drank a red herring: the song is basically about saying fuck you (figuratively) to those insecure wimps who want actual relationships while also saying fuck you (literally) to the exasperated objects of their adoration.

Really, “Drank In My Cup” is about empowering women. Specifically, it’s about empowering them to drag the not-unwilling Kirko up their palatial staircases and to relieve him of his pants — which, given how tenaciously the pants cling to the playboy’s legs at mid-thigh for the entire ascent to the boudoir, might require a crowbar. Fortunately, Kirko has a crowbar, if you know what I’m saying!

“I don’t want a boyfriend,” Hannah explains in one episode of Girls. “I just want someone who hangs out with me all the time and thinks I’m the best person in the world and doesn’t have sex with anyone else.” Enter Kirko Bangz, drank in his cup, to be exactly what Hannah needs — for exactly three minutes and 39 seconds.

Words by Jay Gabler, a co-founder and co-editor of The Tangential.

[Gif via royalflushspade.tumblr.com]

I started this article with every intention of giving Lana Del Rey the benefit of the doubt. Fuck da haters. Lana or Lizzy or whatever she wants to be called is an incredibly talented, hot babe doin’ her thang, and that is just fine by me. However, when trying to source the video of Del Rey (pre fame, post pseudonym) being adorable and not emo promoting Keds sneakers that has recently surfaced from the deep dark depths of the interwebs, I found that every single link had been blocked on by UMG based on “copyright grounds”. It took me a solid 30 minutes, employing my very best cyber stalking team (spoiler: it’s just me) to find a watchable copy of the short film, featuring an almost unrecognizable Lana Del Rey with shoulder length, bleach blonde hair and (as much as I hate to be part of this pointless discussion), notably thinner lips (you can watch the video here).

My problem is not with Del Rey’s physical appearance. Considering the video was first uploaded in 2009, it’s not at all surprising that her look has somewhat changed in the last 3 years (I was working the fake tan and padded bras pretty hard back then… Eek). My greatest concern lies in the fact that despite the bullshit about “copyright grounds” (which I can only assume officially relates to an unreleased song used as the soundtrack) the only reason I can come up with for UMG’s black list on the Keds video is a conflict with del Rey’s current image.

The Keds promo sees Del Rey flitting about Coney Island in a pair of heart shaped sunglasses, chowing down on cotton candy, working the camera as she rides a ferris wheel, cheekily crooning her soulful melodies and basically being really freaking cute. Also she smiles a lot. I thought she was too damaged to smile?? While there are certainly aspects of the Lana we know evident here (her ongoing fascination with film and romanticism is clear when she quotes Francis Ford Coppola, “If you sit down to write at the same time every day, then the muse always knows where you are”), there is hardly anything left of this lively, charming version of Del Rey, instead replaced by the new pouty, expressionless persona we have been told to embrace.

When Del Rey first popped up on the radar of People-Who-Spend-More-Time-Online-Than-Off (me), I loved her. I blogged about her. I used a lot of hearts and smiley faces when I wrote about her. I started wearing liquid eyeliner again. But as whispers began to surface about Del Rey’s whole “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” thing actually being carefully crafted by a publicity team, I kind of wished that I had kept my feelings to myself and was free to listen to “Video Games” on repeat in the dark for 6 hours without feeling like a gullible schmuck.

I understand that almost every entertainer is pressured to conform to a character at some point in order to achieve mainstream success. I even kind of get that to fill a gap or tap into a niche audience, they need to be marketed accordingly. What I don’t get and refuse to understand is the unique qualities and personality of an individual being completely flattened out for the sake of an image. Isn’t it the “real life” human aspects of celebrities that endear them to us and make them relatable? As hard as it was to watch her incredibly awkward, cringe-worthy performance on Saturday Night Live earlier this year, at least then we were rooting for her, because she came across as a real, flawed person; and real people fuck up sometimes. If the strings of the Lana puppet are in fact being pulled by a team of image-makers, dulling the charisma that Del Rey exudes so naturally in this Keds commercial has been a crucial error. Despite (or perhaps in spite of) her rapid mainstream success, she has lost a lot of her original audience because of it.

It’s not Lana Del Rey’s past as Lizzie Grant that we should be scrutinizing. Whether or not this included thinner lips and bleached out hair, even superstars and mega-babes are allowed to try out as many different versions of themselves as they like before they find the one that fits; we’ve all been through some pretty weird shit. But as much as we might want to run from the problems and mistakes and heartbreaks of our past to become better versions of ourselves, there really is no way to erase the people we used to be, especially with the ever-growing prevalence of our Internet presence. Perhaps the mystery surrounding Lana Del Rey’s past is all part of her schtick, but from what I can tell, I think I liked the old one better. I really tried to love you Lana, but I think you might have lost me.

We’re all obsessive fans of one TV show or another — just check out the array of recaps on Portable.tv. But where is the next Game of Thrones going to come from? And who will the next Don Draper be?

Over the past week, television networks in the US have been releasing trailers and information for new shows debuting in the fall. It’s a big week for TV — some of these shows will eventually warrant their own recap columns, and some will be cancelled in disgrace after one and a half episodes.

My mother always told me not to judge books by their covers. She didn’t mention anything about television shows or trailers, however. We’ve evaluated some of the more notable prospects in the Portable Guide To The New Season Of Television.

One might expect this week’s Game of Thrones episode title, “The Lord of Winterfell,” to somehow refer to Winterfell and also to its lord. Unless you’ve read previous reviews here, that is, in which case you’d be expecting a thoughtless iTunes party shuffle deciding titles instead. But this one gets nice and specific.

“The Lord of Winterfell”: does it mean Theon (Alfie Allen), in his quest for legitimacy and legacy? Does it mean Robb (Richard Madden) and the kind of king he wants to be? Does it mean the kind of lord his father Eddard (Sean Bean) was? Or does it mean young Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), revealed in the final scene to be alive and well with his brother in Winterfell’s ancestral crypts? Its title refers to all these things at once, and no surprise this thematic unity accompanies an emphasis on values and stakes — and thus, motivations — in most every scene this week.

First and foremost, last week I acknowledged my neglect of Daenerys’ (Emilia Clarke) plotline in Essos for several episodes, and promised redress this week. I was waiting for the other foot to drop, regarding its dramatic departures from the source material, namely the theft of her dragons, and killing off of major characters still alive in the books. In a strange way, the show demonstrates its recommitment to values, stakes and motivations by all but excluding Essos from the episode. There’s a tiny scene in which Ser Jorah (Iain Glen) unbelievably implores Dany to abandon her dragons, after last week when half a dozen blue-lipped Pyat Prees (Ian Hanmore) made it clear she needed to get to the House of the Undying, stat! Seriously, it was like a cheap car yard commecial: “HERE at the house of the unDYING we’re FREAKishly overstocked on ALL dragon models and PASSing the SAVings onto YOOOUUUU!!”

Creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have no idea what to do with Dany’s storyline from the books, and their solutions so far have been to kill off likeable characters and imperil the key to Dany’s claim — her dragons. This comes close to fundamentally changing Dany as a character, weakening her considerably. She can’t protect those most devoted to her — anyone with a speaking role seems ripe for the axe, and without the sizzle of her mewling beasts around her, she is a lost, strident, even pathetic and beggared royal, no more deserving of a crown than her late brother. Surviving the fire ritual in season one’s finale was meant to signify her rebirth, so like… Oops *Cringe*.

Before I get into the going abouts of the Girls world of season 1, episode 6, I have a little bone to pick with show creator and star Lena Dunham. Let me preface by reminding that my long-lived lady crush on Miss D is still fully intact, and I reach out only with the intentions of voicing my disappointment to an audience. Because I like attention. So… Here I go: LENA! On Friday, while strolling back to my apartment after a delicious and extremely satisfying brunch at local haunt Brooklyn Label, my gal pal and I stumbled upon the set of Girls, filming in an apartment on India St., a mere two blocks from my own humble abode. In an effort to welcome you into the neighborhood, I tweeted the following statement:

“Lena! I live around the corner and I have whiskey! Invite us over!”

You know what I got back? NOTHING! Not an RT, not a reply, NOTHING. Thanks Lena. Way to show me you care.

Anyway, on to the episode. What the fuck????

Episode Six was a complete separation from anything we’ve seen so far in the season. Not only does it take us outside of New York, but it centers around Hannah and her family, excluding for the most part, any of the other recurring characters in the season.

This week on Mad Men, there were themes of control, power and… Sorry I just can’t do this because HAHAHA HOLY SHIT PAUL KINSEY IS BACK AND HE’S A HARE KRISHNA NOW AND HE LOOKS LIKE THE FAT TRADER FROM QARTH ON GAME OF THRONES HAHAHAHAHA… Erm, sorry about that.

But c’mon, really Mad Men? Kinsey’s a sad Hare Krishna now? Oh, how the pretentious have fallen. In all seriousness though, Kinsey was always one of my favorite characters on this show; I always did enjoy his pretention and proto-hipsterism — No matter what era you grew up in, everyone knows a Kinsey type (I actually knew a kid in college who smoked a pipe and had a typewriter but I went to NYU so it probably doesn’t count as much), and there was, sadly, just something so relatable about how desperate he was underneath the surface of trying really hard to show that he didn’t care if you liked him or not, even though it was really all he craved, but wow, I was not expecting to see this.

Here’s a thought: why is it that every character who is written off this show and is revisited ends up in a position so much worse than when they were actually on the show? Midge turned into a prostitute/heroin addict, Rachel Menken is in a boring loveless marriage, Paul is now a sad sack who even the Hare Krishna’s don’t like… If this show makes it into the 80s so help me God if Sal ends up being a drag queen AIDS victim; I really don’t think I can handle that.

ANYWAY, aside from Kinsey showing up and writing a Star Trek (!) script (more on this in a minute), the rest of the episode seemed… Inconsequential, for lack of a better word. Not that this show has ever been particularly plot-driven (I don’t mind this, by the way), but this episode seemed a bit like filler, and it seemed like an odd detour considering that there are only three episodes left in the season.

A long time ago, music videos were promotional tools for songs, tacked on as an afterthought to capture lucrative airtime. Obviously, times have changed. There are entire channels dedicated to these clips, and directors who specialize in them. The Internet awaits Lady Gaga video releases like Hollywood premieres, and sites like Portable.tv devote an entire section to the artform.

Music videos are no longer an ad for a product as much as they are part of the product, a complementary part of an aesthetic ‘world’ contained but not constrained within the music. My favourite example of this is the video for the Usher/R. Kelly duet, “Same Girl“ (bear with me for a second here). The lyrics are a conversation between the apparent best friends, as they slowly work out that they are dating the same girl — same tattoo, same license plate, same love for Waffle House. The video, however, adds a punchline absent from the song. When the guys turn up to a date together to catch this cheating jezebel in the act, we see that it’s not the same girl but identical twins (which raises further questions but try and suspend your disbelief). This is a sigfnificant addition to the song’s ‘narrative’, not found in the song itself, that casts it in a whole new light. For a more recent example, try the subversive twist at the end of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe“ clip.

It’s big leap from Usher and Kellz to avant-garde Australian musician Kirin J Callinan, but not an entirely inappropriate one. “W II W” is the lead single from Callinan’s forthcoming debut solo album, and like “Same Girl”, the accompanying video is an essential part of the overall aesthetic package (although that’s probably the only similarity between the two songs). Directed by Kris Moyes, the video uses the gothic blues of “W II W” as a soundtrack to a series of creepy looped images, a nightmare version of a GIF Guide. The song is oddly harrowing in itself, but becomes something else with the video accompaniment — like the strings in Psycho became so much more dramatic when they were underscoring Janet Leigh being stabbed in the shower.

Describing the clip in words makes it sound silly. There’s nothing explicit or NSFW, nothing even particularly logical. Just a series of images, hinting at ideas of unforgiving nature and a primitive physicality, looping in shuddering rhythm, monochrome occassionally rupturing with a burst of colour. It does what every contemporary music video should do — complement the song’s aesthetic in a striking and inventive way. You may not see anything more fucked up this year.

So Cannes is happening, and yeah you guessed it, attractive famous people are wearing clothes, and we, in turn, are judging them. Kat George and Amy Smith had so much fun tearing apart the gowns of the MET Ball they’ve decided to rip into Cannes too. Click through for some fan girling, snide commenting and general pow-powing over the gowns of Cannes…