Pop Chart

5 minute read

LOVE IT

• Paula Abdul recorded a music video encouraging women to check themselves for breast cancer–and the song is supercatchy.

• Netflix announced it’s adding the full series of Friends.

• A superfan of Magic: The Gathering found the game’s beloved Alpha Black Lotus card, a copy of which went for $27,302 on eBay last year, in a previously unopened pack of cards.

• Neil Patrick Harris was tapped to host the 2015 Oscars, meaning he’s one Grammys away from completing his hosting EGOT.

VERBATIM

‘He was … as beloved by Queens and First Ladies as by seamstresses and gardeners.’

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG, on friend and fellow fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who died Oct. 20 at 82

KISS OFF

Quite a few of Tom Wesselmann’s most famous works can’t be printed in this magazine, as the Pop-art-movement pioneer is best known for his Great American Nude series. But many are on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Wesselmann retrospective, which runs from Oct. 31 to Jan. 18 and includes 1967’s Smoker, 1 (Mouth, 12), above.

THE DIGITS

$3.60

Amount Grammy Award–winning R&B singer Erykah Badu made while briefly busking (in a nondescript outfit) in New York City’s Times Square on a Friday night

QUICK TALK

Lucy Liu

The story of Sherlock Holmes has been adapted countless times, but he’s never had a sidekick like Dr. Joan Watson on CBS’s Elementary (returning Oct. 30 for a third season), played by 45-year-old Liu.

–NOLAN FEENEY

There are a lot of murders on Elementary. Are you surprised by how much you can show on TV?

Absolutely. I always think, How is an 11-year-old going to watch this?

Is it weird working around so many fake dead bodies?

You become a little jaded. We had someone posing as a dead person we find in a dumpster. She’s got all the prosthetics on her face to make her look dehydrated, like she’s been there for a while. She’d been in makeup for three hours, but she’s in there eating a breakfast burrito!

That sounds like a great job–playing dead and sometimes eating burritos.

It’s probably not the most fun thing. We’ll have you lying in the baking sun on the beach, buried in the sand. We actually started using stunt people because it’s more intense than most people would have liked.

Beyoncé once gave you a shout-out in the Destiny’s Child song “Independent Women, Pt. 1.” Do you still listen to that song?

It’s wonderful. I don’t listen to it very often unless it’s on for some reason in some store. But it comes on every now and then, and it’s still a great song.

Was it ever your ringtone?

No! That would be embarrassing.

If I had audio of Beyoncé saying my name …

You would just want it on all the time?

I would never stop playing it.

I don’t think I’m as consumed with myself in that manner, so no!

“ON MY RADAR

• The Honorable Woman

“I thought it was nail-biting. There was so much mystery to it.”

THE CAT’S MEOW

What is folk art, exactly? A new exhibit aims to define just that with more than 800 masks, figurines and other objects created mostly in the past decade, including Manuel Jiménez Ramírez’s sculpture Feline (2001). “Grandes Maestros: Great Masters of Iberoamerican Folk Art, Collection of Fomento Cultural Banamex” features work by roughly 600 artists; it runs from Nov. 9 through Sept. 13 at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

ROUNDUP

America’s Strangest Drive-Throughs

A Michigan funeral home recently made waves by offering drive-through casket viewings for mourners who can’t make it to a full service (because of a disability or time constraints). And it’s not the only business that has tried–surprisingly–to launch a drive-through component.

[This article consists of an illustration. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

VOTER REGISTRATION

To increase voter turnout for this summer’s primary election, Hawaii launched drive-through registration events. “You can leave your engine running,” one volunteer said.

LIQUOR STORE

Drinking and driving may be illegal, but that hasn’t stopped states like Arizona from hosting drive-through liquor stores. Texas even had a drive-through liquor and gun store (though it’s now closed).

WEDDING CHAPEL

Las Vegas’ Little White Wedding Chapel has a variety of drive-through packages, including the Cherubs’ Chariot (get married in a limo) and Biker’s Special Lover’s Lane (for motorcycles).

LAW FIRM

In 2010 a Connecticut law firm specializing in personal injury and malpractice decided to take advantage of its new office–a former drive-through restaurant–by offering window service.

LEAVE IT

• A U.S. man has been diagnosed with a form of Google Glass addiction. Among his symptoms: dreaming that he’s wearing the technology.

• Will.i.am said his new smart watch–described by one design blog as “so laughably absurd it sounds like a Funny or Die sketch”–will revolutionize the way we communicate.

• A Pittsburgh designer created a Comic Sans typewriter.

• Iggy Azalea insisted she doesn’t hate paparazzi, even after telling one, “I hope you have Ebola. I hope you die.”

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