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Nanny-Nanny-Boo-Boo, Fuckers: A Conversation With Kathleen Hanna

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Nanny-Nanny-Boo-Boo, Fuckers: A Conversation With Kathleen Hanna

On Friday, IFC will release to select theaters and via On-Demand, Sini Anderson's 80-minute documentary on the life and career of Kathleen Hanna, The Punk Singer. The film traces Hanna's early days at Olympia, Washington's Evergreen State College through her tenure leading iconic riot grrrl group Bikini Kill, her post as the lead singer of Le Tigre, and her current band the Julie Ruin. Feminist rock icons like Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, Joan Jett, and Kim Gordon are part of the film's venerating chorus, and Hanna's personal life (including father-based trauma, her marriage to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, and her debilitating bout of Lyme disease) is explored in greater detail than ever. Throughout The Punk Singer, its subject remains as outspoken as we've come to expect.

That outspokenness only extended when I met Hanna in her film publicist's office a few weeks ago to discuss all of the above. While she is still clearly coping with all of the blowback she received as a female when punk seemed closed off to women, she also said this about the loving portrait that The Punk Singer ultimately is: "I wish there would've been more criticism and [The Punk Singer] would've been less glowing, because I feel like, for my buck, I want that." I couldn't have expected a more Hanna-esque review. Despite the rabid puppy-eater man intimidated journalists or fellow musicians have made her out to be, her politics have been marked by more reason than we expect from someone who's so firm in her beliefs.

Below, Hanna and I discuss her evolving relationship with the press (her Bikini Kill years were marked by a media blackout, in part), her beauty, sexual trauma, and why she thinks it's "kind of great" that Miley Cyrus recently labeled herself a feminist. What appears below is an edited version of our conversation.

Gawker: It's kind of a rite of passage, as a singer, to be immortalized in a documentary. Does it feel that way? Is there a certain honor in this kind of a portrait?

Kathleen Hanna: Totally. I mean, there's a poster of a really cute picture of me. [Laughs] I just feel really lucky that people give a shit and that they care about my work. I always said in my head when people were throwing chains at my head that I would be on the right side of history. And I was. I just feel like going, "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo," in everybody's face. I'm like, "Guess what, fuckers who said I sucked? I have a movie made about me!"

Are you still affected by the shit that you got, especially early on in your career?

I think I am when people ask me that very question. Or, "How do you feel that your work is archived at NYU and now you're a part of the canon?" Or a part of academia, or whatever. I think because of taking all that shit, I'm like, "It's great!" People are like, "The '90s are back. And do you think people are just getting into you because of nostalgia?" And I'm like, "I don't care. All I know is they're coming up to me, they have smiles on their faces, they don't want to punch me in the face, they're totally excited to meet me, and I am happy." There's a lot of baggage with being in Bikini Kill. Even in Le Tigre, it wasn't always easy. I'm just soaking it in, like, "This is what I waited 25 years for."

Not being you, I had no sense of the shit that you've gotten over the years, before I saw The Punk Singer. To me, you were just, like, always the coolest. It still blows my mind to think that anybody would fuck with you, because you've always been so reasonable within your messaging. I don't know what kind of opinion you have about it, but I think the internet has a way of making people sort of cry wolf. There's a lot of outrage in the name of feminism that seems to me to undo the entire goal. You have to pick your battles, you know?

Yeah.

For you to have been up there 25 years ago, to already be so much more enlightened than most of the current discourse—and I don't mean to blow smoke up your ass at all…

But you are, and it's totally enjoyable.

Well, good. I'm glad it's enjoyable.

But people didn't think it was reasonable.

Really?

I actually did an interview with Sarah Marcus, who wrote Girls to the Front, about riot grrrl, and she's younger than me by, I don't know, 10 or 15 years. She was interviewing me and I was like, "You know, I got pulled off the stage by my ankles at a show, and I had beer spat in my face." In interviews it has come up occasionally that it was a lot of guys in the punk scene, and men in general, journalists who would write stuff like, "She's a fat-ass." In either Melody Maker or N.M.E., underneath a picture of me and one of my bandmates, the caption was: "Don't hate me 'cause I'm fat and retarded." It's kinda funny. I kept it.

There's so much archival footage in The Punk Singer. You putting the zine together, for example. Was it always part of your ethos to document as much as possible?

Nonononono.

No? You didn't really care about that?

I always thought I'd be a visual artist. I kept every flyer I ever made. I made flyers for so many punk shows in Olympia. And I kept all the art I made, I kept a bunch of writing I made, just talking about how bad things got. And during that time, I wrote about the frustration of living within that, and I kind of refuted a bunch of the claims against riot grrl itself and did all this writing. But I was too scared to put it out. But I kept it. And so it's all in the archive. But I wasn't a big one for being filmed. And I wasn't—there weren't very many interviews of me talking on camera, those are really hard to find.

How much involved were you with actually assembling this movie?

I wasn't.

Were you taken aback by anything that people said about you? It seems like you have a lot of good friends.

I know.

It must have been touching.

I wish there would've been more criticism and [The Punk Singer] would've been less glowing, because I feel like, for my buck, I want that. But it wasn't my movie, so it wasn't my call. I had a bit to do with the graphics because it was really important, just to me, that it looked like my fan—there was elements of fanzine, kind of aesthetic in it, and that the film retained my aesthetic throughout it. The only thing that shocked me was my bandmate now, Kathy [Wilcox], who was also in Bikini Kill, at the beginning when she said, "You couldn't ask for a better frontperson." I didn't know she felt that way. I was just like, "Oh my God, she thinks that?" And then I was like, "Of course she thinks that." She was in a band with me for seven or eight years and now she's in a band with me again! But at the same time it just means so much more when it comes from a friend and you hear it from their mouth. I was really… I was shocked. And I was shocked they picked that first spoken-word piece at the very beginning. 'Cause I hate that. I'm so embarrassed by it. It's like, Spoken word, oh my God, how '90s. You know what I mean? And it's really intense, and if you look in the background, if you're a music fan you can see that Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto from Fugazi are stuck in that coffee shop. And I know where the door is, and I know that they couldn't leave. And so I started doing this thing, and I'm rocking back and forth, and it's so, you know, tapestries weaving. But it's about incest.

The content of your work has made you vulnerable in many ways throughout the years. But this was the first, in my recollection, time that I've seen you actually be so overtly sensitive. Was it hard to let that through, given your history and what you've put up with? Or do you even think about it?

I don't really think about it. As you can tell, I'm a pretty sensitive person. That's just how I am. And being sick [with Lyme disease] really pushed the honesty button in me, where I was just like, "I'm not lying any more. I don't want to toe the party line and just say the same shit over and over." Obviously I'm doing press so I'm going to repeat myself sometimes, but I'm trying to be in the moment and really say what I feel even if it's not the best thing I could possibly say. The one time I watched it I watched as if I was watching a character in a movie, and not myself. It's just too creepy if I think about it as myself. I guess the other shocking thing for me in the movie was there was a lot of still beauty shots of me. I saw it on a big screen and I was just like, "There's a lot of pictures of my fuckin' face!" And that's weird. But they didn't have a lot of interviews and stuff, so they used a lot of still images 'cause that's what I had.

I don't mean to seem condescending or to compartmentalize your beauty, but do you think that being cute worked for or against you? It confounds the idea of the puppy-eating radical. It seemed like you were playing off of it. Not in an arrogant way, but cute is cute.

Cute is cute. I was, I think it's pretty obvious that because everyone in all my bands has been, in my mind, been incredibly good-looking and dynamic and charismatic, has led to the fact that I'm the one on the poster. You know what I mean? My band got more attention than certain people in other bands because we had a look, we had a style. White. Attractive, by traditional standards. I've never seen it as hurting my message. I've seen it as giving me a platform because people want to put my picture in their magazine, or pictures of my band in their magazine because we're good-looking and that's what's…I'm not bragging about myself…

No, I brought it up…

…but I'm hot. I am hot. That has given me power. I don't want to lie about that or be like I don't know that that's true. But on the same token, I was born like this. I don't want to try to change how I look with how I fit in with some stereotype or try to diminish my power over something that has made me lucky. It's given me privilege and I acknowledge and it's not fair. It's not fair. It's something that I've taken advantage of.

In the film, when you discuss the quote about your dad raping you being fabricated, you clarified by saying that he was, in fact, sexually inappropriate. You didn't go beyond that to explain it, though. Why?

'Cause my dad's still alive. It's really personal. The specific things that he did to me will be in my book after he dies. That's the one thing I still can't touch with a 10-foot pole with anybody but my husband and my closest friends. And even then, when does it come up?

When did you come back around on the press? What ended your media blackout?

When I moved to New York and I just put out the Julie Ruin solo record. I was dating someone with a publicist and a manager and I was like, "Oh, those are real jobs?" I wondered what it would feel like to do press. And so I did it, and I had a lovely time at it. I was able to say, "I don't like that question, let's go to another question." I got to have the review in the Village voice, which was absolutely hilarious. My husband's in the Beastie Boys, and they got a review of their latest. He's two years older than I am. It said about Julie Ruin, "Oh, Katheleen Hanna, why don't you just give it up? You're too old to make this kind of music." I was 30. And then Mr. 32-year-old had the review next to mine. I got like a C-, and he got like an A, and it said, "Oh! A breath of fresh air!"

What do you think about feminism in pop music? Miley Cyrus recently called herself a feminist.

I feel bad that I don't pay that good of attention. I was just talking about that Lady Gaga quote: "I'm not a feminist…I hail men, I love men..." That depresses me. I don't give a shit if you want to call yourself "Martha Washington." If you're out there in the world and doing a non-traditional job or if you're expanding the definition of what it means to be saying it's OK that I have traits that are traditionally masculine and it doesn't make me any less of a person. You can be doing feminism out in the world and not call yourself that. I don't care. What bothers me is when people refute it using a stereotype. Lady Gaga didn't say, "Feminists hate men," but that's what she means. To me, feminism is also about liberating men from the stereotypes that they have to be the breadwinners, that they have to be a certain way, and they can't explore their feminine sides. That's crippling men. That's crippling how fully men can experience their emotional lives and everything. They have to bond with each other by putting women down? That's sad. What about having real friendships? Wouldn't that be great?

I feel like feminism is something that can change the world. It's not just white women climbing the corporate ladder. It's about challenging all the binaries, ending racism, ending classism. It's not about hating men! That's not even part of the conversation in my mind. But that's kind of great to hear a little freak like Miley Cyrus say that she's a feminist. She's such a weirdo. I think that anything that opens a discussion is positive, but I want to find a way that we can go beyond talking about twerking to actually working on change.


Man Uses Iconic Artist's Work to Apply to Art School, Gets Rejected

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It's a question as old as art itself: If a famous artist tried to apply to art school using his own iconic artwork, would he or she get in?

Kazimir Malevich was an art pioneer and the father of an entire art movement whose abstract paintings regularly sell at auction for millions of dollars.

But even he was rejected by art schools not once, but twice.

Granted, that was before he became somebody, but the question remains: If Malevich tried his luck again today, would his talents be recognized?

In an effort to answer that question, Michael Mikrivaz went around to art schools armed with a folder full of Malevich's "million dollar pieces" hoping to set right a historic wrong.

[H/T: The Daily Dot]

Mom Fined $140 Every Day Until She Circumcises Her Child

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Mom Fined $140 Every Day Until She Circumcises Her Child

A woman has been ordered to pay a fine of $140 per day as a penalty for keeping her baby boy uncircumcised.

The ruling was handed down late last month by an Israeli rabbinical court, which has jurisdiction in the country over matters concerning religion.

"The baby was born with a medical problem, so we couldn’t circumcise him on the eighth day as is customary," the mother, identified as Elinor, told Haaretz. "As time went on, I started reading about what actually happens in circumcision, and I realized that I couldn’t do that to my son. He’s perfect just as he is."

The court's fine of 500 shekels a day every day the child — now a year old — remains uncircumcised, was upheld this week by a higher rabbinical court in Jerusalem.

Elinor said the matter of her son's circumcision — or lack thereof — came to light after the boy's father brought it up during divorce proceedings.

She says the father initially agreed to leave the boy uncircumcised, but abruptly changed his mind.

The court, meanwhile, claimed Elinor was holding her son's circumcision hostage in an effort to get her husband back and warned against the precedent that might be set if she is allowed to leave her child uncircumcised.

For her part, Elinor is refusing to pay the fine and plans to keep fighting the ruling, vowing to bring the matter before Israel's secular Supreme Court.

[photo via Shutterstock]

"I'm very proud if Grindr has forced us to up up our game.

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"I'm very proud if Grindr has forced us to up up our game. To brush our teeth. Comb our hair. Eat right. Go to the gym. Be a healthy person. Cut back on the smoking. Cut back on the bad things and look your best. We're men. We visualize." - Grindr CEO, Joel Simkhai

School Board Member: Trans Kids Get Bathrooms When They're "Castrated"

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Katherine Svenson seems like a nice lady. She's old, and on the school board of Delta County, Colorado, between Grand Junction and Aspen. But she's concerned, see, about these transgender kids, whatever they are.

At an October school board meeting, Svenson sought to reassure... somebody, apparently... that the great Delta County would not go all coastal liberal when it comes to defining who gets to use the school potties:

Massachusetts and California have passed laws relating to calling a student, irrespective of his biological gender, letting him perform as the gender he thinks he is, or she is. I just want to emphasize: not in this district. Not until the plumbing's changed. There would have to be castration in order to pass something like that around here.

Now, it may just be that Katherine was thinking aloud about implementation problems with Colorado's recent ruling against transgender discrimination in the schools Maybe she just wasn't thinking clearly about the mechanics of sexual identification, or of sex reassignment surgery, which are two separate things. (How does one castrate a woman, pray tell?)

It may also be that she was grasping for a word to articulate her complicated feelings, and off the cuff, the best she could do was refer to a practice generally associated with animals, criminals, Renaissance-era contraltos, and Medieval guards for concubines.

It may be any and all of those things. While an inability to grasp a concept or elucidate one's thoughts don't portend well for a policy maker, they're better than just being an old-fashioned gender essentialist who's afraid of the rapey girly men.

Oh, wait, that would explain this, though:

When questioned about her controversial comments by KREX, Svenson was unapologetic.

"I don't have a problem if some boys think they are girls, I'm just saying as long as they can impregnate a woman, they're not going to go in the girls' locker-room," she said.

Yep, let's not take that obvious risk of sexual violence and physical victimization. Let's just cut the boys' balls off.

Supreme Court Will Hear Obamacare Contraception Mandate Challenge

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Supreme Court Will Hear Obamacare Contraception Mandate Challenge

The U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider whether certain for-profit companies must follow the Affordable Care Act's mandate requiring health insurance policies that provide free contraception coverage. This is the first legal challenge to Obamacare since the Supreme Court upheld the law almost 18 months ago.

USA Today reports that, regardless of how the justices vote, the court's ruling won't strike down the entire healthcare law. The larger question at hand, however, is whether the religious rights granted by the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause extend to for-profit businesses.

The corporations whose lawsuits were chosen over some 40 others say, in essence, that they do pray. The cases were filed by Hobby Lobby, a chain of more than 500 arts-and-crafts stores with about 13,000 full-time employees, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a Lancaster, Pa., woodworking business run by a Mennonite family.

Hobby Lobby closes on Sundays and funnels millions of dollars in profits to ministries. Its website proclaims its commitment to "honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles."

Currently the law states that companies that offer health insurance and have 50 or more employees must provide contraception coverage as preventative care for female workers. Churches and other religious institutions have been excluded from the mandate, but so far no for-profit companies have been able to follow suit. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which states that "Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion," includes for-profit corporations under the definition of "person."

U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verilli wrote in court papers [PDF] that the government believes for-profit companies should not be protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that there will be serious consequences if they are. "The court of appeals decision [in support of Hobby Lobby] is incorrect," Verilli wrote, "and would transform RFRA from a shield for individuals and religious institutions into a sword used to deny employees of for-profit commercial enterprises the benefits and protections of generally applicable laws."

[Image via AP]

Los Angeles may follow the lead of Philadelphia, Seattle, and Orlando and "ban the feeding of homele

How To Build a Shotgun Using Items Found After Airport Security

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"If we're trying stop a terrorist threat at the airport, it's already too late," amateur "security researcher" Evan Booth tells FastCompany.

He would know: Booth, a programmer by trade, has been dedicating his free time to designing and demonstrating a variety of homemade weapons constructed out of items commonly found in airports.

That's not so bad until you realize that be "in airports" Booth means after the security checkpoint.

Take one of his latest security-busting devices: The BLUNDERBUSSness Class.

With just a few items easily purchased at post-security shops, Booth was able to construct a fully-functional break-action shotgun.

"It just seemed so invasive, really expensive," Booth says, referring to the TSA's security theater. "And if you’re going to go through all that trouble getting into the terminal, why is all this stuff available in the terminal?"

Despite his disdain for the current state of airport security, Booth says his main goal is ultimately to improve it.

He regularly sends the FBI and the TSA reports of his experiments, but so far the TSA has shown little interest in following up with him.

He was paid a visit by the FBI, though they were more concerned with whether he had actually constructed any weapons at airports than with making sure no one else could.

"What if the terrorists see this?!" reads a disclaimer on Booth's site. "That’s a great question. An even better question is: What if they already know all this?" He continues to encourage the Department of Homeland Security to ask themselves that question as well.

[H/T: Consumerist]


This is the grossest fucking thing I've ever seen and I can't stop watching it.

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This is the grossest fucking thing I've ever seen and I can't stop watching it.

How To Make Thanksgiving For One When You're Stranded by the Storm

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How To Make Thanksgiving For One When You're Stranded by the Storm

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and the U.S. is barreling down on it like a salt-stained maroon Subaru Forester hydroplaning uncontrollably toward a utility pole on one of our nation's many fine turnpikes. That's because the country is currently being savagely walloped by what one can only assume are Storms of Thankfulness, born when citizens' prayers and glad tidings collided on their way to heaven with a low pressure system moving north off the Gulf and crystallized, thundering back down to earth in the form of deadly winter precipitation.

The storm, which is already being blamed for several deaths in the West and Midwest, will lurch up the East Coast Tuesday through Wednesday, at which point it will finally become real instead of being politely dismissed as some "L.A. craze." Across the region, local newscasters, the Weather Channel, and town lunatics are all in a panic, warning travelers of delays, cancellations, and traffic as far as the eye can see. Adding to the alarm is the strongly held cultural belief that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. The fact that this is untrue—according to AAA, the busiest travel days of the year are spread out over a smattering of summer weekends—does not make it feel any less true.

Of course, even if Wednesday is not the end all, be all, busiest day to set off in your apple cart for Chattanooga, travel that day will be messy and complicated. Given the numbers, a few of you reading this will almost certainly be in car accidents while traveling for Thanksgiving, though hopefully not you specifically. Many more of you will find yourselves locked in cramped cars for hours on end, passing the time by playing the beloved travel guessing game "What Are You Sighing About?" wherein one passenger in the car sighs and the vehicle's driver must try to deduce why by angrily repeating "What are you sighing about?" over and over again.

But maybe some of you, by necessity or by choice, will abandon your plans for Thanksgiving travel altogether and find yourself home alone at the last minute.

Here's how to handle a Thanksgiving in solitude.

Don't Watch the Parade

  • The first thing you should do is skip the first thing you were going to do, which is watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Since 1924, Macy's, a popular television commercial manufacturer, has annually orchestrated a gay parade of giant rubber (today: polyurethane fabric) balloons, which float over Manhattan, menacing yet inert (as if stupefied) in order to frighten away the old, dark gods. This event takes place at the vacation equivalent of dawn, which is 9 a.m. If you get up to watch it, all you are doing is providing yourself with more empty, lonely hours that you will have to fill with something other than suicide. Instead, you should remain unconscious for as long as possible. (Also, there's a chance the balloons won't even get to fly this year due to wind.)

Make a Craft, Specifically: Pom poms

  • Because none but the dead can sleep forever, eventually you will have to wake up and leave your bedroom, lest it start to acquire that gamey "human" smell. Use this bleak grey window between the darknesses to make a craft, specifically: pom poms.

    Making a craft, or "crafting," is a fun way (or, anyway, one way) to eat up a lot of your day. When you make a craft, essentially what you are doing is taking a couple things and turning them into less things through judicious combining. A popular craft on the popular craft website Pinterest is pom poms (that is: circular whatsits of various sizes and textures), which people make out of all manner of materials for no apparent reason other than to have them. A simple search will turn up DIY instructions for pom poms, for itty bitty pom poms, for pom poms, for nursery pom poms, and for pom poms. Spend a couple hours making pom poms. Put them anywhere.

Eat Like a Starving Pilgrim

  • It's important to remember that the Plymouth colonists didn't eat the specific set of weird foods they ate at that first harvest celebration because those were the foods you're supposed to eat on Thanksgiving. They made a feast out of whatever they had around (Clams! Onions! A great big bird!) because that was what they already had around. Apply the same principle to your Thanksgiving for in solitude. If the pilgrims ate turkey, mussels, and Indian corn, maybe you eat jerky, a freezer-burned Popsicle, and leftover Indian takeout. Maybe you have "breakfast for dinner," a lighthearted treat sure to inject a little whimsy into even the blackest of times.

Celebrate Hanukkah

  • Maybe you're Jewish. It's not illegal! This year, Thanksgiving falls on the second night of the Festival of Lights; the "Kujichagulia" night of Hanukkah, if you will. Celebrate with a small light festival in your bathroom.

Get Started on Christmas

  • Because this year's observance falls so late, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas will run six days shorter than usual, leaving Americans with only 27 shopping days till Xmas instead of the usual 99. By the time many families have sat down to tuck into their meals, Christmas will already be over. Take advantage of your unexpected free time and complete lack of ties (legal, emotional, etc.) to any other human to make moves on your shopping list for next year's Christmas on Black Friday. This year Black Friday falls on Thursday at shoppes like Target, Old Navy, and Dollar General. The craft store Michael's will also be open on Thursday from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., which is great news for you since you are giving everyone a stocking full of pom poms for Christmas. Use this time to purchase supplies (yarn, tissue paper, coffee filters) to make more pom poms.

Above all, remember that no matter how sad and bad your lonely Thanksgiving is, it will almost certainly be happier and easier than the first one, which was celebrated by a bunch of freezing people, many of whose friends and family members had recently died. Forget iPads. They didn't event have iPod Touches. (Only second generation iPod classics with 10 GB of storage space.) Any suffering will only make your holiday more authentic, and probably still more bearable than being stuck in traffic with your family in sight of the Valley Forge exit but not within walking distance of the rest stop.

[Image by Jim Cooke]

Watch Kanye West Repeatedly Get His Ass Handed to Him

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Kanye West has been so present in the media lately, between promotional appearances and his regular mid-concert "visionary streams of consciousness" (as he calls them), that any interview warranting a mention must be pretty damn special. His showing earlier today on New York's Power 105 is one such interview. For over 40 minutes, the hosts (especially Wendy Williams' former sidekick, Charlamagne the God), pummeled Ye with questions, frequently pointing out his contradictions. These included:

- "To me it seems like you're such a walking contradiction because you'll denounce the corporations, but then you'll get on stage and say you need Nike and Adidas to back you. That makes no sense to me."

- "Why do you talk so much about money nowadays, man? I used to look at you as, like, a real revolutionary. You know real revolutionaries didn't need money to change the world?"

- "You do realize that [sneakers] are not why we love you? We love you 'cause of the music, bruh."

- "If you're a genius, why do you feel the need to tell everybody? Why you just don't show and prove with actions and deeds, and not words and lip-service?"

- "I'm from Columbia, South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies over the state house. I seen people protesting to take that flag down for years. It's just like the word nigga: you can't make that into a postive." (Re: Kanye's Yeezus tour merch.)

Ah, catharsis. This crew is way bolder than so many others who wilt in the face of Kanye, like Jimmy Kimmel who, like a coward, let Kanye control his show for eight almost uninterrupted minutes when he visited last month.

For his part this time around, Kanye was up for the challenge (he predicted the notoriously brutal hosts wouldn't be kind to him). And while he didn't always make sense of his own nonsense, he sometimes came close to it and never blamed it on "containing multitudes." He even confessed to being, gasp, fallible.

On the other side of that, he called himself "the 2Pac of product," predicted his clothing brand will be nicer than Ralph Lauren and bigger than Louis Vuitton and H&M, and claimed that Yeezus was his Nebraska while his next album will be his Born in the USA. He even offered an explanation for the atrocious "Bound 2" video, which he referred to as the realization of his wish to take "white trash t-shirts and make it into a video":

I wanted it to look as phony as possible….I wanna show you that this is the Hunger Games. I wanna show you that this is the type of imagery that's being presented to all of us, and the only difference is that a black dude is in the middle of it...I'm like Marina Marina Abramović this is performance art. I don't have a problem looking stupid.

His Abramović is more convincing than Gaga's, that's for damn sure.

Highlights of the interview are atop this post, but if you have the 40 or so minutes, you should watch the whole thing below.

UPS Driver Has Sex with Hooker in Truck, Hooker Posts Photos Online

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UPS Driver Has Sex with Hooker in Truck, Hooker Posts Photos Online

A UPS driver who decided to spend his lunch break having sex with a prostitute in the back of his delivery truck will probably regret his decision — once the company tracks him down, that is.

Photos of the afternoon delight surfaced online this week after they were uploaded to the Escort Client Community Information Exchange by the hooker herself as part of a promotion for her members-only website.

"Look at my naughty time from yesterday," wrote the woman, who identified herself as "happiness consultant" Mary Ann.

JohnTV.com, a website devoted to "exposing prostitution" in Oklahoma City, says it believes it has identified the woman behind the special delivery as one Tiffany Fay Hawkins, a local prostitute better known by her stage name, Tiffany Cums.

"She was touting much more explicit photos of this encounter on a version of her web site that is locked away and it's only for members," JohnTV founder Brian Bates (real name) told News On 6.

A UPS rep who spoke with the news station said the incident would be "fully investigated" and the driver will likely be terminated.

Incidentally, in her online profile, Cums says she's a "sweet & sassy Okie MILF" who is "very easy going" and "discreet."

UPS Driver Has Sex with Hooker in Truck, Hooker Posts Photos Online

UPS Driver Has Sex with Hooker in Truck, Hooker Posts Photos Online

[screengrabs via JohnTV]

Two Women Twerk on Subway Tracks Because #YOLO

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In the spirit of living once and dying young, two female subway patrons decided to pass the time by jumping onto the track bed and twerking their improvident hearts out.

Despite Darwin's best efforts, the two somehow managed to avoid stepping on the third rail, which is unfortunate. It could really have upped their twerking game.

[H/T: Gothamist, video via YouTube]

Police Bust ​Drone Dropping Contraband Into Georgia Prison Yard

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Police Bust ​Drone Dropping Contraband Into Georgia Prison Yard

We're always hearing of new creative uses for drones, but this has got to be one of the better ones: Four people in Calhoun County, Georgia have been accused of using a mini helicopter to smuggle contraband tobacco into a prison.

Police Bust ​Drone Dropping Contraband Into Georgia Prison Yard

Georgia's WALB News 10 reports that the team was busted allegedly piloting a mini helicopter from the woods nearby Calhoun State prison. They had already made two drops of rolling tobacco into the prison yard before a guard noticed the drone hovering above the gate. A search led police to a suspicious car nearby. They searched it, and found the copter and "one or two pounds of tobacco rolled up" for delivery.

The foursome faces up to 20 years in prison for crossing prison lines with contraband, which seems pretty harsh. It's not like they Hellfired anyone.

Taylor Swift/Prince William Sing-Along Video Ruins Thanksgiving

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Prince of England Prince William and Princess of Snails Taylor Swift joined Jon Bon Jovi on stage for a quick sing-along at a charity gala Tuesday night and, if you expected the resulting performance of "Livin' on a Prayer" to be the most awkward thing that has ever transpired between three humans, what occurred was even more awkward than what you were expecting, as several different artistic styles battling for dominance.

Prince William, standing ramrod straight and nodding solemnly, rendered the song as a kind of dirge for all those who have lived and died on a prayer.

Taylor Swift—a cross between a junior accountant four margs deep at karaoke, a vaudeville ingenue funny off amphetamines, and Anne Hathaway doing an impression of Anne Hathaway—did everything else. She acted out literal interpretations of the lyrics. She cupped her hands over her mouth and screamed into the mic. She performed the hula. She muggingly appraised Jon Bon Jovi's guitar playing. She threw up double "#1!" signs and yipped. She instigated a two-handed high five with Prince William, who adjusted his bow-tie in response. She jerked her hips. She snapped. She clapped. She swayed.

And all the while, Jon Bon Jovi strummed and sang and silently berated himself for inviting these two turkeys to join him on stage.

Kate Middleton stayed home.

[via YouTube]


Snapchat CEO: The Friend I Screwed Should Be Grateful

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Snapchat's 23-year-old founder continues his goodwill campaign: in a video deposition clip obtained by Business Insider, Evan Spiegel says his only regrets about forcing out his partner is "the generosity" of letting him work for free.

The video shows just how much contempt Spiegel, who has already pocketed millions in cash from Snapchat's investors, has for his former friend and partner—the privilege of working alongside him for room and board was its own reward.

When asked if he has any regrets, Spiegel did not provide the correct answer ("Yes, I regret imperially fucking over a close friend"), but instead stated, under oath, "I regret giving him so many chances ... He exploited my attempts at generosity." So there's your takeaway. Soak it in. Maybe he'll let you ride in the Ferrari someday.

Asked about Lara Logan's suspension from 60 Minutes for fudging her thoroughly discredited report on

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Asked about Lara Logan's suspension from 60 Minutes for fudging her thoroughly discredited report on the Benghazi attack, Fox News maven Mike Huckabee today called her "a hero journalist to at least attempt to get the story out."

I Can't Stop Watching Actors Reenacting a YouTube Comment War

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It's not often that I post two videos from the same series, but, then again, it's not often that not posting a video could be considered a crime against humanity.

That's how good Dead Parrot's YouTube Comment Reconstruction series is.

You already know how this works: Magnificent bastards Grahame Edwards and Eryl Lloyd Parry sit in gloomy chairs like a Lynchian Statler and Waldorf and reenact some of YouTube's most infamous comment wars.

In the second installment, Latinsha Duke and MIKEFUCKINGWINS23 engage in a battle of sexual semantics underneath a video about a fireman rescuing a kitten.

Let's watch.

[video via Dead Parrot]

Got Thanksgiving Cooking Questions? Come Chat With Some Food Types

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Got Thanksgiving Cooking Questions? Come Chat With Some Food Types

We're pleased to be joined by Sarah Sprague of KSK, Spilly of SB Nation, and Amanda Hesser, former food editor of The New York Times Magazine and founder of Food52. Jolie Kerr, Will Gordon, and I are here, too. We're all hanging out down below in the discussion, awaiting your Thanksgiving food and drink questions. Fire away!

[Update: That's a wrap. Thanks to the gang for stopping by, and thanks to everyone who submitted questions.]

Dad Teaches Son Important Lesson by Letting Him Crash Bike Into Tree

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An important part of being a father is knowing when to teach your child a lesson and when to let him learn that lesson on his own.

You could stand in the same spot all day warning your son that he's about to crash into a tree, but, at some point, you just have to let him crash into it.

For one thing, it's a great way to introduce him to the perils of target fixation.

For another, it makes one hell of a funny video.

[H/T: Reddit]

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