Now Playing

Loading streams...

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

Linda HolmesRSS
All ContentRSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

Linda Holmes

Credit Chris Hartlove
for NPR

Linda Holmes writes and edits NPR's entertainment and pop-culture blog, Monkey See. She has several elaborate theories involving pop culture and monkeys, all of which are available on request.

Holmes began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living-room space to DVD sets of The Wire and never looked back.

Holmes was a writer and editor at Television Without Pity, where she recapped several hundred hours of programming — including both High School Musical movies, for which she did not receive hazard pay. Since 2003, she has been a contributor to MSNBC.com, where she has written about books, movies, television and pop-culture miscellany.

Holmes' work has also appeared on Vulture (New York magazine's entertainment blog), in TV Guide and in many, many legal documents.

Pages

Monkey See
10:25 am
Thu May 9, 2013

PBS Continues The March Into Streaming Programming

Credit PBS
Antiques Roadshow is one of the programs available from PBS's new Roku channel.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Let's start with a brief tour of streaming television online.

For quite a while, streaming television meant sitting and watching it on your computer. It wasn't ideal, for obvious reasons. Then, it got easier to sit and watch it on your phone. That wasn't ideal, either, if you liked the living-room experience. Tablets do a better job than phones of delivering a portable but less tiny experience.

Read more
Monkey See
12:12 pm
Wed May 8, 2013

Yippee-Kai-Yay, Mr. President: 'White House Down' Looks Very Familiar

Credit Reiner Bajo / Sony Pictures
Channing Tatum stars in White House Down.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Read more
Monkey See
11:04 am
Wed May 8, 2013

If Jeff Probst Were President

Credit Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
Jeff Probst, seen here in the summer of 2012, is a TV host, and is not actually the president.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Originally published on Wed May 8, 2013 12:38 pm

Note: It is 100 percent true and 51 percent relevant that this entire story was written inside my brain while I was in the dentist's chair under the influence of anesthesia. I began to think, "Jeff Probst [the host of Survivor] will not be happy until he is more important than tribal council. Until he is king of CBS. Until he is President of the United States. President Jeff Probst." So the entire thing is numbness-induced in so many ways. Make of that what you will.

President Jeff Probst's State Of The Union Address, delivered Feb. 2 [xxx]

Read more
Monkey See
1:15 pm
Tue May 7, 2013

At The Met Ball, Those Are Some Crazy Dresses

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images
Beyonce, complete with thigh-high boots to match.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Ginnifer Goodwin.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
And this is what you wear to the Met Ball if you happen to be Anna Wintour.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Miley Cyrus. Hey, she couldn't look like Hannah Montana indefinitely.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
It's Katie Holmes! She's still ... tall.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Kim Kardashian (with Kanye West) is real, real pregnant.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
An Olsen twin! Specifically, the Ashley Olsen one.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Madonna is not impressed with any of these other people's efforts at punk, I suspect.
Credit Timothy A. Clary / AFP/Getty Images
Beyonce, complete with thigh-high boots to match.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Cameron Diaz.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Taylor Swift will later write a song about this dress.
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
Sarah Jessica Parker committed to the theme.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Jessica Pare, who has come a long way from "Zou Bisou Bisou."
Credit Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
And finally ... January Jones.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
I felt like I had to include Sandra Lee, because if a lady who makes terrible Kwanzaa cakes on the Food Network can make it to the Met Ball, we can all do great things.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Solange Knowles looks pretty great without the boots.
Credit Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Anne Hathaway.
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Monday night was the big night for unusual dresses (you may remember a previous post about Madonna's bunny ears): the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as the "Met Ball." It had a loose punk theme (because the costume exhibit it's celebrating is punk-centric), but everyone got up to quite a bit of her own thing.

Read more
Monkey See
11:54 am
Tue May 7, 2013

These Dogs, Cats And Robots Have A Few 'Tiny Confessions'

Next imagePrevious image
Credit Penguin
Credit Penguin
Credit Penguin
Share
E-mail
Comments
By

Let me tell you a quick story from NPR's move from our old headquarters to our new one.

When I was emptying out my old desk and workspace, in addition to all the shoes under my desk and an alarming number of vessels designed to keep coffee warm, I had quite a lot of books lying around. Some were upcoming books, most were old books, and a few were books I neither had any use for nor could bear to get rid of. One of the tests I applied was that if I picked up a book and the first page I opened to made me laugh, it survived.

Tiny Confessions survived.

Read more

Pages