Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:15:01 EDT
Get Out of Town [Pic Of The Day]
You guys, it's very important that we honor this country's unsung heroes: television stars. Here's what they bravely wore. Here's what they bravely won. (Why did these wonderful people not win anything?)
Speaking of heroes in Hollywood: Bigtime movie director Michael Bay offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could provide information that led to the arrest of the terrible puppy-throwing Bosnian girl. Thanks to 4chan, she was caught. 4chan? Are they using their powers for good now? Maybe they can track down these Russian skinheads next.
Someone not using his powers for good is Calvin Klein, who is dating a lad 47 years his junior. Oh, and — not that it matters, we're not prudes or anything — but the kid used to do prons.
The Week in Deaths: An American Apparel employee passed away at work, which is sad. Paste Magazine died, which we're trying to be sad about but can't really get there. And Boob was maybe murdered by Butts, which is definitely sad up close, but from faraway it's kind of funny. Butts and Boobs! We're horrible. But at least not this horrible. Or this horrible. Or this horrible. Or, jeez louise, THIS horrible. No, we're not that bad.
Hey look: Doesn't New York look nice? Doesn't Lady Gaga look ridiculous at the airport? Doesn't Peggy Olson look good in her underwear? Doesn't this guy look like a complete asshole?
Facebook Newz Corner™: What is Marky Zuckerberg trying to hide? Is it his mysterious ex-girlfriend? Is he secretly responsible for Google's most annoying bug of all time? Did he bite a model's ear off? Zuckerberg's secret is one the world wants to know. Let's get the Wikileaks guy on the case. Or, better yet, let's get WikiLeakiLeaks on it!
All told, what was the best day of the week? No, it wasn't Paris Hilton Arrest Day. It was 9/02/10, of course!
OK, that's it. Enjoy your weekends. If Hurricane Earl comes a'knockin', don't open the door! No, stay inside and read a book. Just don't buy said book at Wal-Mart.
(Seriously, be safe East Coasters. No hot-doggin' on those surfboards, ya hear?)
[Image via Shutterstock.com]
A reader who lives near William DeJean, the nutty Chicago dentist who's randomly running "Hillary 2012" ads on TV in New Orleans, sent in a photo of DeJean's office window, showcasing a Hillary Clinton cut-out and Bill Clinton rubber mask.
What a stalker! Click the photo below to enlarge.
Now we know why Miami's airport evacuated last night: Something suspicious was found in the suitcase of a man previously jailed for smuggling the plague. Meet Dr. Thomas Butler, a white guy from Texas who works in Saudi Arabia.
Butler—who was making pit stop in Miami on his way from Saudi Arabia to Texas—is currently being questioned after authorities thought a "suspicious canister" in his suitcase was a pipe bomb. The canister has since tested negative for explosives, but is still being examined.
But Butler has an unusual past. Once a renowned scientist, he worked at Texas Tech until 2003 when he was convicted of stealing research money and exporting 30 vials of the bubonic plague. At the time of his arrest, Butler claimed that he'd been working on a plague antidote that would save the world in the event of bio-terrorist attack. But he ultimately served two years in prison, although his case was pretty controversial: 60 Minutes, for instance, did a segment portraying Butler as a respectable scientist and victim of post-9/11 hysteria.
After his conviction, Butler lost his job and decamped to Saudi Arabia's Alfaisal University. So it's no surprise that his bags get pretty thorough searches at the airport these days.
Butler, who is still in Miami, is "cooperative," according to investigators, although they have not announced whether they currently believe him to be on the side of good or evil. [NBC Miami, NYDN]
Steve Buscemi Blames Paul Reiser For Ruining His Stand Up Comedy Career
Once upon a time, a young man named Steve Buscemi aspired to the nobles career of stand-up comic. However, that didn't work out so well because one person squashed little Steve's dreams—Paul Reiser. Steve's sad tale, inside.
Will Arnett Shares Delivery Room Details on the Late Show
Yes, we'd all love to be Will Arnett and Amy Poehler's adopted child/servant/slave. Let this clip help out your fantasies with stories of the birth of their youngest son Abel. Will and Dave getting all fatherly looks great on them.
Delocated's Jon Glaser Hams it Up on Late Night
Jon Glaser made an entrance last night in a Delocated-branded motorcycle jacket on Late Night and then proceeded to serenade the audience all decked out as his character on the show. Video inside.
Please, Please, Please Let Running Wilde Be Just As Funny As Arrested Development Was
At the end of Will Arnett's interview on the Late Show, he played a clip from Running Wilde—the show he co-produced with Arrested Development mastermind Mitch Hurwitz. Inside, check out a clip that features band leader Paul Shaffer.
Futurama Celebrates 100 with a Disgusting Mutant Uprising
Like all great things meant for nerds, Futurama, especially this season, has dealt with a lot of issues of equality and acceptance. On last night's 100th episode, mutants finally gained theirs (Leela included) with an old fashioned sewer march.
A 7.2-magnitude earthquake has hit New Zealand's second-largest town, with aftershocks ongoing.
There is something inherently awful about all bridesmaid dresses, but they make for amazingly good TV. And with all the contestants hating one "bride" in particular, it made for an exceptionally fraught reception.
Of course I'm talking about Michael C, who all the designers, good and bad, have decided totally sucks. It must be hard for them that the judges love him and he's won just as many challenges as the evil ogre Gretchen. God she's horrible.
Last night the challenge was to take a bridesmaid dress and reconfigure it into a new outfit that would be modeled by the woman who wore the dress in the first place. This is the "real woman" challenge, but strangely only one of the girls was "real woman" sized. Maybe producers got sick of listening to the designers bitch and found "real women" who are still pretty damn skinny. Speaking of that, here are some other
Things We Hated:
Things We Loved:
In the end, Peach went home for making something that looked like the ugliest quilt that your grandmother hung over the windows in her double wide in the winter to keep the drafts out. She definitely deserved to be in the bottom along with Michael D and Valerie, who put tit parenthesis on her dress that made her model look like a fat blank in the middle of a sentence. Like this ( ). That's disgusting.
Michael C won, for his black dress that a woman who wears a veil to a private detective's office would love. It was alright, but I wasn't that into it. I liked Mondo's Art Deco black and pink construction better. What I do love is that Michael C is the bane of all the other designer's existence. I don't understand exactly why they hate him. Is it because he's abrasive? He may not know how to sew or make patterns, like they say, but the judges really seem to love him, so he must be doing something right. Even last week when everyone said he should have gone home, the only compliment the judges gave out to the losing team were to things he made. Maybe they should figure out what he's doing right and replicate it instead of demonizing him for being wrong. Still, watching the contentious relationship between him and everyone else is really invigorating this season for me.
As for Christopher, I didn't think he deserved to be in the top at all. I thought Ivy's pleated saffron number with the white pants was gorgeous, as was Aprils short black cocktail dress with the napkin coming out of the boobs. Guess they're going to have to be stuck being bridesmaids and not brides.
A New York Times article this morning examines the latest iteration of an age-old problem for the Democratic party: getting young voters to give a shit about politics between presidential elections. Are these kids already bored with the "Democrat" fad?
Barack Obama won an extraordinary two-thirds of the "youth vote" in 2008. College students nationwide spent all of that year looking forward to that special moment on the first Tuesday in November, when they could all pat themselves on the back outside the polling stations where they'd just voted for a self-aware literary black person.
But then, after Barack Obama became a fairly conventional president, many young people reverted to their traditional apathy. Democrats are worried about a big drop-off this November in first-time young voters from 2008, a group whose turnout they'll need to counteract the Republicans' army of paranoid old white people.
The kids just aren't feeling the Democratic "vibe," though, as this Colorado weight-lifting bro explains:
Philip Stricker, 21, a biology major who voted for Mr. Obama but says he has not been paying much attention to politics lately, uses a nontechnical term to describe the phenomenon.
"There's a vibe," he said on a recent afternoon, while pumping weights at the gym. "Right now it seems like Republicans just care a lot more than Democrats."
[Image via AP]
We like our humor dark, but this is dark: In Iraq, a reality show puts fake bombs in celebrities' cars, then tricks them into believing they're going to prison for terrorism once they're "discovered" at security checkpoints.
The show, "Put Him in Camp Bucca," has been on the air since the start of Ramadan, according to the New York Times' At War blog, and has since generated lots of criticism from Iraqi newspapers, mainly because it hits so close to home and is also a horrible idea.
But "Camp Bucca" keeps rolling on, because who doesn't love the terrified look of a man who thinks he's going to spend a long while in an American-built maximum security prison? One of the guests pleads to the soldier at the checkpoint:
"I am a family man. I have two kids. How could I do this to my family? I am telling you the truth, it's not me who planted the bomb."
The show has the official approval of Baghdad's security forces, and judging from clips, American soldiers are in on the joke as well. If this surprises you, remember that in this country we had that terrible Sheriff Joe Arapio reality show in which fugitives were tricked into turning themselves in. Which, if you think about it, is probably more cruel than "Camp Bucca," because at least these Iraqi celebrities get to go home at the end of the show.
Now, if we could have a show here where they stuffed a fake IED in Heidi Montag's purse.
The Way We Live Now: short. And sweet? Well, one out of two ain't bad. Who wants to dwell on economic troubles longer than necessary when it's time to leave work and wish you had the money for a vacation?
We don't want to keep you from your troubles any longer than necessary. The Afghan banking crisis grows worse. Ben Bernanke's taken responsibility for his incompetence. If you're young from a blue collar family, you'll never move up in this country. Even the unemployed who got re-employed are underemployed and unsatisfactorily employed.
But America is slightly less unemployed than expected this month!
May you find satisfaction in your employment, or lack thereof, this "Labor Day" weekend. Amen. [Pic via]
For the guidos of Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time, the women stick with the women and the men stick with the men. That has changed as the ladies fight and claw with unrestrained viciousness.
Right now, all we can say is, "Wow," in reaction to the footage we saw of our test subjects last night. The dispatches we've been receiving about our eight precious guidos have been a little lackluster ever since their great migration to Miami, but the footage we have to analyze from last night is sure up to the caliber of our previous observations. There were hookups, fights, trannies, cooking, and the return of Snooki's poof. There hasn't been a night like this since late September back in '63.
One of the more important things that we learned might just save your life. We knew that the guido—or any twentysomething, for that matter—is prone to getting debilitatingly wasted, but we didn't know how they dispose of the bodies, as it were. When a guido gets so shitfaced that his hair gets messy and he makes out with Trash Bags in the back of the cab, he must be immediately escorted to bed. If he is allowed to stay upright, he might vomit, and if he vomits then he will have puke breath, a condition that is as dangerous to a guido as sunlight is to a vampire. To prevent this from happening, they are laid down, but there is a very specific posture in which they must be situated.
The guido is to be placed, face down, on the bed and, most importantly, one leg must be hanging off the bed at all times? Why is this? Well, there was a spell placed on The Original Guido (whose name is so sacred it can not be written down on paper or anything that might be mistaken for paper) by an evil witch. This spell says that if the Original Guido or any of his subsequent heirs gets so inebriated that he falls over, the effects of the liquor will be lifted off his body and he will be completely sober again. But how does that translate to one leg being left off the bed? Well, if a drunk person lying in bed has one foot hanging off the mattress and tries to roll over in the middle of the night, he will naturally roll toward the dangling appendage, sending him falling off the bed. Once he hits the ground, he will be immediately sober and free from the terrors of puke breath.
There is nothing a guido hates more than losing a good buzz, so they don't allow each other to fall over and lose their hard-won state of drunkenness unless it is a life or death circumstance. Now, if a person is so drunk that he must be put down and his leg weren't hanging off the bed, he might roll over onto his back and then, if he vomits in his sleep, he will choke on the vomit and die. But even worse than death, he will die with puke breath. This means that his eternal soul will go to the worst hell imaginable. In it everyone is pale with flat hair, saggy skin, and no muscles. All the clothing covers them from head to toe, there is no music or dancing allowed, there is no alcohol to be found and fighting, hooking up, and cursing are banned. Yes, this is the eternal torture that awaits a guido who dies with puke breath.
Now that we have learned the maneuver that not only saves a guido's life but also his eternal soul, let us learn two new words that will help us understand their internal conflicts
Now that we have addressed that, let's say "shalom" to the central conflict at hand: JWOWW versus Sammi. It seems that Sammi is still upset about The Letter she got about Ronnie hooking up with other girls and then coming home to share her bed. Because she's "done" with Ronnie she is taking her frustrations out on the other girls in the house. JWOWW and Snooki take Trash Bags to the beach (after hours and hours of searching for it, because they have never even bothered to travel the two blocks to go there in all their time in Miami) and tell her that she better not tell anyone that they wrote the note and try to convince her that she is as involved as they are. The plan always seemed to be to rope her in and then blame it on her when all the shit went down. Trash Bags keeps going along with it because she doesn't want to be ostracized by the rest of the ladies.
They're still discussing this when they get back to the house and Snooki decides that she's going to do the honorable thing and tell Sammi that she wrote the note, so she sends her newest minion, Trash Bags, in to get Sammi. Before this can happen, The Situation tells Sammi that the girls are talking about her. Because Sammi doesn't like to move all that often and due to the intelligence (ha!) The Situation just gave her, she refuses to get off the couch. This annoys Snooki and she forgets her plan altogether, but it is enough to awaken the evil creature that lives inside of JWOWW.
Now, it's not like JWOWW has a split personality, but when she had her breast augmentation the saline implants were made with water that was taken from a well that was dug on an old Indian burial ground. There was a vicious spirit in that water and once it was placed into JWOWW's body, it started to take over. Whenever there is confrontation or alcohol involved, the spirit awakens and the benevolent, loyal, and fun-loving girl we know as JWOWW loses control to this malevolence. That is why, when Sammi confronts her, she wants to fight for no apparent reason.
And they do have a great verbal altercation and once that dark beast is working JWOWW's body like a sinister puppeteer, it tells Sammi everything. It says that everyone knew about Ronnie and that no one told her that he was cheating on her. Then Ronnie gets involved and says it wasn't even cheating because he was single. Shut up, Ronnie, the girls are fighting right now. Be smart like the other guys and stay out of it. But he can't! Then he accuses the girls of being bad friends because they knew about him cheating and didn't tell Sammi for so long. OK, this is sort of a brilliant strategy, to deflect blame from himself by putting it on Snooki and JWOWW. Brilliant move, Ron Ron.
But Sammi walks away from this fight, pissed that whoever wrote the note won't fess up. Sammi does what is natural for her, she returns to bed to read The Letter for the 6,592,385th time. Nothing on it has changed, Sammi, and it is all true because it is down on paper.
After things calm down a bit and the dark force returns to JWOWW's left breast implant, everyone has a calm discussion about The Letter. Sometimes you just need a flare-up in order to clear the air, and it's nice to see Sammi and Ronnie have the first calm, mature discussion about their circumstance since—well, ever! But Sammi can't forget The Letter, because it is written down on paper, and she can't figure out who did it. She knows, deep down inside that it was Snooki and JWOWW but she wants them to confess. Either that or she is so dim that she can't figure out it was the two of them and is wondering around life completely blind, like Velma from Scooby Doo without her glasses. She can't see anything without her glasses!
When the girls cook dinner—Penne a la Vodka, what else—Sammi refuses to help JWOWW, and even passive aggressively won't touch her food, sticking to the simple iceberg-and-Italian-dressing salad she made herself. Later, at work Sammi tries to convince Trash Bags that they're friends now. See, this puts Trash Bags in a very interesting position. Sammi has no friends, so she has to be friends with Trash Bags. Also, Snooki and JWOWW need her to keep her big trap shut about The Letter, so she's basically in control of the whole dynamic. But she is tired of being SnookWOWW's little bitch and decides she's going to get Sammi wise about the letter.
She decides it's time to play every seventh grade gossip's favorite game, "I"m not going to tell you, but if you guess, I'll say yes." Here is how the conversation went:
"Was it Vinny?" Sammi asks.
"No."
"Was in The Situation?"
"No."
"Was it Enzo, our boss?"
"No."
"Was it you?"
"No. Duh."
"Was it the Duck Phone?"
"Hmm, maybe. But no."
"Was it Vice President Joe Biden?"
"God, no!"
"Was it Guglielmo Marconi, founder of the radio telegraph system?"
"No!"
"Gosh, I don't know."
"Jesus, Sammi! It was Snooki and JWOWW!"
"Really? Huh."
Sammi is pissed that she knows the truth, even though it wasn't written down. So when everyone comes back from the club drunk, she is looking for a brawl. JWOWW was talking to her boyfriend on the phone and said DJ Paulie Drunk was wasted and Trash Bags started talking shit about JWOWW to her new bestie, Sammi. Vinny went and told JWOWW who (despite wearing the uniform she got when she worked for a week as a cocktail waitress at an Indian-themed reservation casino in Oklahoma) decided to confront Trash Bags. Sammi took the opportunity to get involved and make the fight about, what else, The Letter.
Can that evil beast inside of JWOWW fight or what? She clearly wins this fight, even though Sammi connects with a Snooki-caliber punch at the end. We knew Sammi loves to fight with her mouth, but we never thought could actually scrap. This was all we've seen of the fight so far, so we'll have to wait for the aftermath next week.
At least the girls weren't fighting over a boy, but did you notice that, in both cases, they were fighting because of the boys? First, The Situation told Sammi the girls were talking shit, then Vinny told JWOWW that Trash Bags was talking shit—still the capital offense against the Guido Code. It's like the men need the women to be at odds with each other so that they're so preoccupied with their petty squabbles and silly arguments that they stay out of the guys' way when they go out creepin' and hoin' and gettin' wasted.
Speaking of creeping, The Situation caught the eye of a blonde girl at the club—that seems to be his favorite flavor—and convinced her to go home with him. We thought we recognized this girl. Had we seen her dark tan, stingy hair, and flattened rictus before? Had we. Yes! It was Lizzie Grubman. The Situation hooked up with famed PR lady and SUV marauder Lizzie Grubman. He brings her home and puts her in the "smash room," but before that, he has to go eat and smoke a cigarette before hooking up with her. There are so many things in guido culture that are the opposite of ours, and this is one of them. Most men, after successfully completing the act of coitus (premature or otherwise) just want to smoke a cigarette and eat a sandwich. But not our Situation. He gets these things out of the way so that he can fully enjoy his time with (someone who isn't really) Lizzie Grubman.
What a horrible way to treat a lady, especially noted PR executive Lizzie Grubman! He leaves her alone for 20 minutes, gives her a few quick pumps, and then gets her dressed and sends her on her way. And even worse, he makes it seem like he's being sweet for calling her a cab and then celebrates the fact that he got her out of the house so quickly. Wow, it's like he wants a prize for being the most misogynistic or something.
We're sure once Lizzie got to the cab and shook off the post-sex fuzz from her brain that she was really pissed. She tried to overpower the driver and take control of the cab. She wanted to crash it through the front gates of the hotel complex, but she was too week from the exertion of lying underneath The Situation for 48 seconds. But Lizzie had a plan.
Lizzie is great at throwing parties and connecting people, that's why she's in PR. So she threw a great big party and she invited all of our sociological subjects to be there. She also invited her friend Stefani, because she wanted to connect her with The Situation. Stefani has a square jaw, stringy blonde hair, and a deep voice, just like our Lizzie. She was just Sitch's type! But once Sitch took Stefani home, he was in for a, ahem, big surprise.
Yes, Lizzie hired a tranny to seduce The Situation. The whole time they were together, he kept asking Lizzie, "Are you straight? Are you straight?" and that made her think he wasn't. Now, if she can only get a tranny close to him, then he would have sex with the tranny. Once he had sex with the tranny, he would probably end up being gay. The Situation would make a horrible gay-do because, as we have learned, the gay guido is a very confrontational creature who must fight with his mate before he beds him. The Situation is a horrible fighter and, once he realizes he's gay with the help of a tranny, he'll either never get laid again or have to move to Chelsea, stock up on bland polo shirts and khaki cargo shorts and become just another normal, boring gay. No more blinged out clothes, tanning, or eyebrow waxing. No, the gays have dubbed those passe. He'd get to keep the obsession with the gym and the shitty house music though. Regular gays love those.
But The Situation didn't fall for the trap. No, and the guidos have instituted a new rule: If you think there's even a chance the girl is a tranny, then she probably is. This is a very bad policy for the women of the house. Look at them, they have fake body parts, wear trashy clothes, are often in wigs or other hair extensions, plaster on the makeup, are obsessed with self-tanning, and have the aggression of their male counterparts. They're practically trannies! Is this just one more way to torture the guidette, by making her untouchable for any guy who wants to fuck them or is this just a painful double standard? The guidos need to learn to love trannies, because they could learn a lot from each other. They should exist in harmony!
Speaking of living in harmony, Vinny is having a great life these days. He was asleep in his bed when Snooki just leaped in it to join him. He doesn't even need to go out to score pussy anymore, it just comes right to him! We didn't see much of their hookup, but it's the revelations afterward that are, um, impressive.
Way to go Vinny! This is the best endorsement you can get on national television. It seems to be something the women in his immediate circle can sense though. The guidette, if you couldn't tell, is obsessed with size. She wants her hair big, her nails long, and her drinks enormous. She also prefers men who are unnaturally large and muscular. The problem with this is that most juiceheads suffer from penile shrinkage, an unfortunate side effect of steroids. That's why the guidette has developed a sort of sixth sense about men with large endowments. It's not that they can necessarily sniff them out, but they feel a sort of disturbance in their aura when one is nearby and it makes them horny and definitely DTF. That is why Snooki, who climbed into the bed of each of her male roommates, settled on Vinny. Without even touching him below the belt, she knew that he would have the, er, most most meat for sausage and peppers night.
It seems that Trash Bags knows this too, because she is going to be after Vinny in the near future. If only Vinny knew about this power, because then he wouldn't have to try to tempt The Situation's sister, Extenuating Circumstances, with his spray tan, fitted hat, and fake $100,000 blinged out rosary. He would just go and stand by her and say, "Hey!" and she would lose her panties and jump on his jock. Such is the gift of being a guido with a huge dick.
But it does not come without its negative side effects. It seems like the trait of having a huge dick is on the same strand of DNA that creates busy eyebrows and, as DJ Paulie Diagnosis will tell you, that means a propensity for pink eye. Between the attraction of all women—including fat women, from whose vaginas (or vaginae if you're a stickler for Latin) the pink eye virus springs—and the bushy eyebrows, there is a propensity for ocular infection. Thankfully this can be cured by very sexy eye doctors. And once they discover Vinny is Italian, the doctors will first make fun of him for being pale and then throw themselves at him and his enormous schlong. See, even with the disease come the benefits.
Alright, folks, until next week! I'm done.
Everyone knows that natural selection has made men genetically disinclined to ask for directions when they're lost. (Prehistoric men who stopped to ask for directions were often eaten by sabre-toothed tigers.) Turns out their stubbornness costs them $3,000.
At least that's what came out of a highly reliable survey conducted by a British insurance company. According to the study, men drive an extra 276 miles per year by wandering around aimlessly because they refuse to ask for directions. This comes out to around $3,000 in wasted gas over a lifetime. Alright, well, if that's a study, then someone has to do a study into how much money women waste by constantly yapping on the phone to their girlfriends.
[Image via Shutterstock]
In your pre-vacation Friday media column: the AP warns reporters on war propaganda, another Newsweek departure, China's "future of journalism" candidate, and ABC pulls a story, while standing by it.
Politico, the Beltway's go-to sociopath news outlet, has weighed all of Barack Obama's "options" for 9/11 this year and finds "few" good ones. There are apparently some grave political risks for Obama on 9/11 if he doesn't mourn properly.
Choosing an appropriate forum to remember 9/11 is "especially awkward" for the president this year, Politico notes, because of the president's recent very controversial decision to not go fucking insane over a proposed Islamic community center in New York City's Lower Manhattan neighborhood. How offensive would that be for Barack Obama to visit Ground Zero on 9/11, only weeks after he didn't go fucking insane over a proposed Muslim building several blocks away?
Politico breaks it down, in the usual sociopath manner.
No matter where he goes, the president's critics will likely speak out. If he doesn't go to New York , Obama could be accused of dodging ground zero because of the Islamic center. If he does, he risks facing the anger of some Sept. 11 families and New York officials offended by his position.
Why it's a brewing political calamity!
Barack Obama simply cannot win. He could spend 9/11 sitting atop the Statue of Liberty resurrecting bald eagles all day and suddenly we'd be hearing "critics" shouting about how bald eagles are covertly funded by fellow Holocaust deniers in Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah.
[Image via AP]
Hurricane Earl is weakening. The storm's been downgraded to a Category 1 and may not even be a hurricane at all when it reaches New England late tonight. And the tropical storm warning for NYC has been lifted. Hooray!
Clyde Haberman states the obvious: male life expectancy in NYC is six years less than female life expectancy, and it's due to the fact that 18-34 year olds can't seem to restrain themselves from dropping dead every time one of them gets shot, which happens a lot.
Say a young man of 18 is gunned down. Statistically, he has died 58 years too soon. To compensate and maintain the overall average age of 76 for male life expectancy, six other men would have to live to 85 or 86. That is easier said than done.
Think of the rest of us for once, gunshot victims! How long do you expect Clyde Haberman to cling onto life just to make up for your untimely demise?
[Ha, we're not blaming old Clyde here. But seriously fellas, it would be great if we could all stop shooting each other so much. Fellas? Fellas. Let's get it together, fellas. Pic via]
No More Deaths, an aid organization that tries to prevent border-crossers from dying in the desert, as they do in droves, is celebrating a Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that leaving water bottles in the desert isn't littering.
Yes, the court overturned the littering conviction of a volunteer who left bottles of water out in the Arizona desert, intended for illegal immigrants making the dangerous passage. The volunteer had been arrested, charged, and convicted for leaving garbage in a national wildlife refuge. The 9th ruled, 2-1, that leaving water meant for human consumption does not constitute littering. Arrests of volunteers for organizations like No More Deaths began under the Bush Administration.
So, a small victory. You know, a very small allowance for people to go leave small amounts of water out in a vast desert in the hopes that a few people don't die of thirst. It was that vs. environmental purity, a cause very dear to the hearts of many anti-immigration conservatives.
This is the second win for humanitarian organizations, says the San Francisco Chronicle:
In the earlier case, said attorney William Walker, a judge dismissed felony charges of transporting illegal immigrants several years ago against two volunteers who found three seriously ill immigrants in the desert and drove them to a medical clinic.
Yes. Someone tried to press felony charges for that. For that.
If you want a real treat, read the comments on the Chronicle article. Happy Labor Day.
[SFGate, via DogsOfWar. Image: Shutterstock]
Last year, secret-sharing website Wikileaks released 573,000 pager intercepts from 9/11. A group of German psychology students used this data to create an "emotional timeline" of the day, tracing the ebb and flow of sadness, anxiety and anger.
Click photo to enlarge
It turns out that in addition to enraging the Pentagon, the breadth of Wikileaks' leaks are a boon to researchers. The psychology students at Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University parsed the pager messages, which encompass a 24-hour period surrounding 9/11, for words related to sadness (like "crying" or "grief"), anxiety and anger. Then they traced changes in the relative prevalence of each emotion-laden word throughout the day. You'll see that anger quickly outpaces fear and anxiety. Flip the chart upside down for a rough idea of where we're at today. [Psychology Today]
We enter the scene at the moment after impact: Lindsay Lohan's shiny black Maserati drives away as a baby begins to cry. A paparazzo says this shaky video depicts Lindsay Lohan hitting a stroller, then fleeing. But does it really?
Freelance paparazzo Brayan Jaime tells Radar he was stalking Lohan with a colleague when "Lindsay took the red light and hit the stroller. It wasn't super hard, but she made impact and hit them. Lindsay pulled to the right, stopped for two seconds, and then just kept going." His video shows the aftermath: Lindsay's car drives one way and the stroller goes another.
You'd think paparazzi would have better quality video cameras. Anyway, the "not super hard" hit escalated when Brayan retold the harrowing tale to TMZ: "It was a major hit... knocking 3 of the 4 wheels in the air."
Radar's video includes a zoom-in on the Maserati's license plate, and it does appear to be LiLo's. Here's Lindsay driving and parking the car this week.
Click to enlarge.
The lady pushing the stroller said "we're fine," but Brayan Jaime suspects otherwise: "She was in shock and Hispanic so she was scared." Next thing you know, he'll be saying Lindsay Lohan lynched a family of Mexicans with her seatbelt.
Verdict: Inconclusive, but kinda funny. Lindsay Lohan is cursed. [Radar, TMZ, images L to R: Pacific Coast News, INF]
Billboards that can see you are here. I guess that's about it, for humans.
Bosnian police say they've identified the teen filmed throwing puppies in a river. (She now faces a $6,400 fine for animal cruelty.) The girl lives in a town called Bugojno, which means 4chan was probably correct in its identification.
Here in the Greatest Country On Earth, our "abstinence plan" consists of your friends telling you not to go home with that dude when you're drunk. But in China, they're lucky enough to be harangued by America's own evangelical loons!
The Washington Post reports that groups of wheedling, superstitious, sexually repressed do-gooders like Focus on the Family are actually being allowed to train Chinese teachers in their awful "sex education curriculum," which consists of no sex and no education. The Communist Party is clearly losing its touch.
At an early demonstration of the abstinence curriculum two years ago - given to the Communist Youth League of China in Hangzhou - teens were supposed to end the seminar by making a virginity pledge, the hallmark of the Christian group's abstinence program. But government officials quickly stepped in, insisting that the kids pledge to no one but the Communist Party.
Sample getaway line that Focus on the Family is teaching Chinese girls: "Do you want to bet my future on that condom?"
"Sure, why not? Or I'll just take it off, more babies for Commnism, huzzah!" is what the Chinese boys will reply, in all likelihood. Check and mate.
[WP. Awesome pic by Shutterstock!]
Though he's gained on him overall, Leno's lost 23% of Conan O'Brien's share of the coveted 18-49 y.o. demographic. All told, these are the worst ratings Tonight has had since it premiered, in the late 1850s. Still beating Letterman, though.
Peter Orszag, the possibly-bald former White House Budget Director with an attractive woman or two at his side, is the newest Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times. But only once or twice a month. Lazy bum. [NYT]
The Pampers™ division of the mighty Procter & Gamble corporation has spent this entire year engaged in a harsh battle with angry diaper fundamentalists over its Drymax™ diapers. Now, Pampers has been vindicated! Will the war end peacefully?
To recap: angry parents took to the internet to charge that Drymax diapers gave their babies rashes; P&G's PR experts were no match for angry poopmeisters; finally, the company tried to reach out and co-opt its angry, poopy opponents. It seems to be a moot point now, because the US government itself has declared the Pampers to be safe: the Consumer Product Safety Commission said it found no link between Drymax diapers and rashes on baby bottoms. Then, in their most polite language, they were like "try not to be so crazy, people."
"Most babies exhibit diaper rash at least once in their lifetime. If parents or caregivers believe that their child is suffering from a rash that they believe to be related to a diaper, CPSC staff suggests that they discontinue use of the diaper and contact their pediatrician."
Are you going to be dissuaded by mere scientific evidence, angry keyboard-pounding parents? It's gonna be a hot time on the Pampers message boards tonight!
[Ad Age. Pic: Shutterstock]
Her married lover convinced her she was too young to be a mother. This aging rocker hits on his granddaughter's friends and a fantastic item about cast members of 90210 and Saved by the Bell. Everyone's living in the past!
1. "You probably won't watch this show if you are over the age of thirty, but you would know the name of the girl involved. She is just so sweet and innocent looking, it's hard to believe that she is pregnant. Or, rather, was pregnant. The father of the baby—who is a person of responsibility in the actress' world—had to beg and plead with her to give up the thought of becoming a mother at such a young age. Oh, and if his wife had known about this, she probably would have agreed." [Blind Gossip]
2. "This aging, near elderly male musician/rock legend is still picking up women much younger than himself. At first he met girls through his daughter, who would bring friends home. Now he's hitting on the friends of his granddaughter, who he lets throw lavish parties at his home for this purpose. As far as we know, the girls are legal, but barely." [BuzzFoto]
3. "In honor of 90210 day, I bring to you one of my favorite blind items from the past. This one I wrote in January of 2008, so that will hopefully explain The Time references. Now I want to hear The Bird. I can't even type their name without singing that song. Anyway, this blind is all about 90210.
January 24, 2008—So a little change of pace. After I saw that The Time was going to play the Grammy Awards it got me thinking about a time when I was just starting out. I used to promote concerts to get through school. This was when little guys still could do it and corporations had not swallowed up every possible venue. I had promoted The Time two or three times and made some money. I had got to know some of the group and once we happened to be in Las Vegas at the same time. They invited me to their show and to a party they were having after. I want to say they were playing at the Riviera, but I can't remember. I think it was because this was when Frank Sinatra was still alive and I remember thinking I had seen him play in the same room a week earlier and how crazy Vegas is that two totally different acts can both pack in a crowd. Of course Sinatra tickets were three times the price of The Time tickets.
Anyway, after the show, we went to a club or two, but this was still the older Vegas. Excalibur was the only big new hotel. Everything else was still to come. The clubs were still very rough around the edges. Very rough. So, after seeing a possible stabbing death at the second club we went to, we decided to head back to the hotel and one of their suites. I don't remember anyone calling anyone but all of a sudden the place was absolutely packed. Packed like it took you five full minutes to make your way across the room from one side to the other.
There was one clear area though and it was this big glass table. It was probably seven feet long and three feet wide. Sitting around the table were people basically two deep. The top of the table was covered in coke. I had seen people do coke before and thought I had seen a lot on a table before, but this was the most ever. None of the guys from The Time were touching it. I do remember that. BUT, I do remember that there were two people from this brand new television show called Beverly Hills 90210 who were sucking coke down like someone was trying to steal it from them. Most people were being very patient and chatting in between lines. Not these two. One female and one male were all over it. They were outdone in their zest for the drug only by this actress from Saved By The Bell. I honestly thought they were going to fight for it. Later, after the crowd had thinned I saw the male from 90210 and the actress from Saved By The Bell getting it on in a corner. She was pretty hot, I have to tell you. The guy I remember was very sweaty. The actress from 90210 never left the coke. Ever. Not until it was all gone. Then she got up, and left. Didn't say goodbye or anything. Just walked out and left. Hell of a night." [CDaN]
The Hollywood scion and Law & Order: SVU star recently purchased a $7.3M, 7,000 sq.ft, 11 bedroom vacation home in East Hampton. It was built in 1890, has "6.6" bathrooms (!), and hopefully no horrible sex felonies.
Presumably, many if not most of the cottage/mansion's 11 bedrooms are situated on the second floor. Also on the second floor is a huge deck, part of which is covered, that overlooks the back yard. Another long deck runs along one side of the main floor at the back of the house and steps down the in ground heated swimming pool that too is surrounded by decking.
The New York Post narrates the exciting action at the U.S. Open last night:
The fisticuffs began just after 9 p.m., when a female fan complained to a man in his early 20s about his repeated use of the f-word during the first set, a source said.
"He said, 'You've got a problem? Go ahead and hit me,' and she slapped him across the face" the source said.
Haha, wonderful! And quite a slap it appears to be, judging by this action photo. The man reportedly struck back, then another man jumped in, and then, like a brief dream, it was over, and the people returned to their drowsy semiconscious state, watching the ball being hit back, and forth, back, and forth, over and over, seemingly without end. [Pic: AP]
Update: Here's the video, courtesy of commenter powerpuffgirl. There certainly are some jerks involved.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei wants a Twitter fight with Israel. (via)
Thankfully, another loudmouth has thrown himself into the Not At Ground Zero Park51 Community Center mix: Ex-convict Bill Keller of Live Prayer. He hates Muslims, and even Glenn Beck! And he's trying to open a "9/11 Christian Center" in Manhattan.
This bizzaro Bill Keller, who allegedly has no relation to this Bill Keller, spoke to the Daily News yesterday, and had this to say about his new plan:
It's not designed to be a place where we preach against Islam, although we will preach against Islam and Mormonism and any other false religion."
So he doesn't hate Muslims, but he does, and he'll even contradict himself in the same breath! But who is Bill Keller and what the hell does he want? According to the Daily News, he graduated from Liberty University, which was founded by fellow xenophobic prick Jerry Falwell, and once served three years in prison for insider trading. Upon his release, Keller became a preaching sensation and now runs Live Prayer in Florida and begs for money on the internet.
Yesterday, Keller posted on his blog about how the end is near, it's time to harvest the Lord's crop or something, and oh yeah, won't you please donate more money?
As our Lord told us, we must work while it is yet light, since the darkness is approaching. Jesus spoke in Matthew 24, Paul in 2 Timothy Chapter 3 about the signs of the last days. Only God knows the exact time and moment, but the signs clearly point to the fact that the hour is near. I want to encourage you today.
THE TIME IS NOW, THE HARVEST IS READY, AND GOD IS CALLING YOU TO HELP BRING IN THE HARVEST!!!
He also hates Glenn Beck, who he describes as a "Mormon cult member." Keller likes to talk shit about Beck on his blog, and he even accepts Gold for Souls!
What you donate to Gold for Souls will not only get you a tax deductible
donation receipt for what you send in, but it will pay you eternal
dividends since the funds will be used to help lead this nation back to
God and Biblical Truth and the souls of men to faith in Jesus Christ!Bill Keller
Founder of Liveprayer Church and Liveprayer.com
Keller told the Daily News that he'll continue holding prayer services at the Marriott hotel across from Ground Zero until he can beg, borrow and probably steal enough money to open a "9/11 Christian Center" near Park51. Great.
Watch Bill Keller ponder life and death and Jesus. "What happens when you die?"
A Malaysian man, Keng Liang Wong, was arrested this week after his luggage burst open on a conveyor belt at the Kuala Lumpur airport, exposing 95 endangered boa constrictors. Wong has previously served time in the US for smuggling animals.
While transiting from Malaysia to Indonesia, Wong's bag, which also included a turtle, broke open. He was arrested and has pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling. All of this is nothing new to Wong, who, in 2001 was sentenced to 71 months in federal prison for smuggling endangered reptiles. Before that he served two years in a Mexican jail where he unsuccessfully fought extradition to the US. From the Department of Justice in 2001:
Between 1996 and 1998, Wong spearheaded an international smuggling ring that illegally imported and sold more than 300 protected reptiles native to Asia and Africa. An undercover federal investigation successfully infiltrated this reptile trade, revealing that Wong illegally imported the reptiles by concealing them in express delivery packages, airline baggage, and large commercial shipments of legally declared animals.
You would think that a guy like Wong, who ran an international smuggling ring and has served time in prison for smuggling animals before, would be a little more discreet when moving nearly 100 snakes by plane. The BBC said he ran the biggest global animal smuggling ring that has ever been broken. At least he could have been a little more creative.
If convicted, Wong could serve up to seven years in a Malaysian prison.
While still drilling a relief well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has been adding up the total cost of its environmental catastrophe this summer. Of the $8 billion BP has spent so far, $399 million went to claims.
You have probably been thinking to yourself lately: "What are the best practices for selling Jell-O shots to drunk young men at bars?" What a coincidence! Because The Wall Street Journal can tell you exactly that.
Today's edition of my favorite newspaper topic, "Stuff That Makes Me Depressed," covers the delightful phenomenon of "shot girls," who—in the words of esteemed banking pamphlet Ye Olde Wall Ftreet Journale—"peddle novelty drinks in Manhattan bars like Turtle Bay." (Fun Friday Brain Teaser: Which phrase from that quote made you throw up the hardest: "Novelty drinks" or "Turtle Bay"?)
Like any group of good salespeople, the young women—most of whom have advanced degrees and hold day jobs—have a list of best practices, distributed by their employer, including such gems as:
Just like blogging! That list comes from Bryan Auld, who, with Dominic D'Aleo, founded Auld D'Leo Inc., the city's finest outsourcer of shot girls. (They are "former J.P. Morgan and Bear Stearns analysts," because, of course they would be.) Auld and D'Aleo, pioneers in the field, created their company in 2007 after "observing the disorganization and mistreatment of the women."
Auld D'Leo's waitresses sell their "Jell-O shots and watered-down tequila in a plastic test tube," which cost around 15 cents apiece, for $3 or $4 each. (Though, as we are reminded, they are actually "selling flirtation.") The women take home 25 cents per shot sold, plus their tips (the total is usually between $300-$600 a night); the remainder is split evenly between whichever bar they work and Auld D'Leo Inc.
The real question is "What kind of client base can a shot girl hope to work with?" The answer, of course, is guys like this:
"We'll hit an ATM later," a 23-year-old guy wearing a button-down and a backpack told her, curiously free of the requisite sheepishness that tipping an attractive woman with a [fruit roll-up] should conjure....
In her wake, Backpack slurred to his buddy: "I'm gonna marry that girl." The buddy nodded; it was $1 beer night at Turtle Bay, a bar on East 52nd Street....
Backpack later bought four rounds of shots from Ms. Coluccio. He tipped her $30 in cash....
"For a lot of guys this could be the only time all night a girl comes up and talks to them," Ms. Coluccio said.
(Or you could look at photo number three in the accompanying slideshow, and then maybe turn your computer off and think quietly for a while.)
[WSJ]
