Miners are helped by rescue workers and friends from a coal mine on Wednesday in Soma, Turkey, more than 19 hours after an explosion and fire killed at least 238 miners and trapped hundreds more. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said 787 workers had been in the mine when the blast occurred. Image via Ozgu Ozdemir/Getty.
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is stepping down, Politico reports. Dean Baquet, the paper’s managing editor, has been chosen to replace her. Abramson, a 17-year Times staffer, succeeded Bill Keller as executive editor in September 2011, becoming the first woman to do so. Her successor, Baquet, will be the first African American executive editor of the Times.
In an email to Gawker, Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said: “We’re not commenting beyond noting that Arthur made the decision because he believed that new leadership would improve some aspects of the management of the newsroom.”
Times media reporter Ravi Somaiya confirmed Abramson’s departure shortly after Politico’s report:
Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The New York Times, is unexpectedly leaving the position and will be replaced by Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the newspaper, the company said Wednesday. ...
[Times Publisher] Mr. Sulzberger made the announcement to senior editors in a gathering at a conference room Wednesday afternoon, and addressed the full newsroom around 2:30 p.m. ...
The reasons for the switch were not immediately clear.
On Twitter, Somaiya described the sudden move in rather cryptic terms:
His colleague, culture reporter Patricia Cohen, offered a slightly more pointed take:
Hmm. If you have any more details, send them along.
Ken Auletta of The New Yorker reports that, “several weeks ago,” “Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor, were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs.”
To contact the author of this post, email trotter@gawker.com
[Photo credit: Getty Images]
Three days after Ross Douthat denounced the "corrupt" brand-driven corporatist ideology poisoning higher education, Thomas Friedman writes that the elite "Davos Man" must "[m]ove over" and bow to the masses who are mobilizing all over the world. Revolution now! On the center-right of the Times op-ed page!
Mark
Ever since one gangly white boy dropped out of Harvard to eventually run a company with a market cap of over $150 billion, venture capitalists have assumed The Next Mark Zuckerberg was just waiting inside a similar awkward, very young, caucasian child.
This is partially because Zuck told them to. From a VentureBeat story on a speech Zuckerberg gave at Stanford in 2007:
"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)
"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."
But now Mark Zuckerberg has a family, a complicated life, a car, and thirty years under his belt. He now ceases to be, by his own calculus, "just smarter" than everyone else.
Photo: Mark Zuckerberg's earliest tagged photo, October 12, 2005
Welcome back to Midweek Madness! Every Wednesday, Callie Beusman and I "read" the celebrity weeklies so that you don't "have" to. Guess what? Not one single magazine had Beyoncé/Jay Z/Solange as the main cover story today. Instead? Unsolicited Uterus Updates for Angelina Jolie and Selena Gomez and cult activity from the Smiths and Jenners. Tabloids avoided the black people. Interesting.
Ok!
MY LIFE WITHOUT TOM
Katie Holmes divorced Tom Cruise two years ago, and now she's doing great. That's it. That's the whole story. In other news, Will and Jada Smith are "under fire" as parents because of that photo of Willow lounging on a bed beside a shirtless 20-year-old who used to be in Hannah Montana. The mag points out that one time Willow wore socks with pot leaves on them, which means that this is part of a Dangerous Pattern (of the media scrutinizing a 13-year-old and making a bunch of big deals out of nothing). Elsewhere in the mag, Angelina Jolie told Elle that she never thought she'd fall in love or have children, which has been labeled a "shocking confession," because every woman is supposed to obsess over her inevitable fairy tale ending, I guess. Whatever. Moving on: Taylor Swift won't stop copying her friends. She calls Lorde all the time for advice on being alt, and she STOLE Karlie Kloss' (very standard) haircut. It's creepy, says a source, adding, "If she doesn't stop, she'll have no one left to copy." Um. There are like 7 billion people on the planet. Don't see her running out any time soon, if that's what she's doing. And, in the most stunningly made-up rumor in the entire issue: Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon and Chelsea Handler — all of whom are around 40 years old — have formed a clique of mean girls bent on excluding Jennifer Garner. LOL OK. Each has their role in the Mean Squad (Fig. 1), and they victimize her because "they just think she's so lame." Sure.
GRADE: F (sitting through 48 hours of Scientology sermons)
In Touch
PREGNANT AND ALONE!
Selena Gomez has received the highest tabloid honor: that of the erroneous "pregnant and alone" cover story. How false is this story? Let us count the ways: first of all, the claim is that she was pregnant with Justin Bieber's child in 2012, while they were dating, and suffered a miscarriage — so she wasn't ever simultaneously "pregnant and alone." Also, she wasn't pregnant in the first place: her rep calls the story "completely false." Oh well! In other news, Miley Cyrus was very drunk at a nightclub in London (Fig. 2), so the editors contacted a doctor who never treated the singer, who says that she should be resting. Ok, mom. Elsewhere in the mag, we're treated to some Bachelorette predictions, as well as this fun lil tidbit: Bachelorette Andi Dorfman and whomever she chooses to wed after 4 weeks of dating are contractually obligated to profess their love to one another to placate the teeming masses. Romantic! Moving on: Kim and Kanye are going to make $21 million off their wedding and they're getting tons of wedding-related stuff for free. I think we're supposed to be outraged? (This story is literally filed under a section entitled "Greed News.") But, like, this is Kim's entire deal, so... Next, the magazine shamingly dubs Hilaria Baldwin "Social Media's Biggest Show-Off" because she posts photos of herself doing yoga. SHE'S A YOGA INSTRUCTOR. LEAVE HER ALONE. (Fig. 3) And, finally, Bruce Jenner and Cher are maybe starting a hot romance. They're "texting and talking nonstop," says a source. This is the best rumor of the year, guys.
GRADE: F ("sitting" through a 24 hour rectal exam)
Life & Style
PLASTIC SURGERY SECRETS OF THE STARS
Here is a 6-page long spread of "plastic surgery secrets of the stars," a feature in which plastic surgeons guess which stars have had work done. Their guesses are as good as yours! Here are some of them: Lindsay Lohan has had her lips and nose done; Kim Kardashian has as well; Simon Cowell gets Botox; oh my god this is so boring. Moving on: Taylor Swift is encouraging Selena Gomez to write songs about Justin for profit and revenge. This is something I'd like to hear and zealously over-analyze (they're allegedly "slow, sad breakup songs"). In other news, Kim and Kanye are having a "war" over their prenup even though their wedding is like tomorrow. The reason this is taking so long is because they have SO MUCH MONEY and that's a lot of math, I think. Anyway, elsewhere in the mag, Brad and Angelina's relationship is "in trouble" because they went to a concert in Hollywood and didn't fornicate on the floor: "They were not affectionate at all," says a fellow concertgoer. "There was no PDA the entire evening." Maybe because a concertgoer was staring at them eagerly??? Just spitballing here. Next: the Kardashian family hates Khloe's new boyfriend French Montana because he raps about drugs and has been arrested, so they're working in secret to tear their love apart while acting friendly (i.e., including him in selfies) on the surface. He and Khloe like to go to parties a lot, which is something we're supposed to be worried about. Also, we guess the magazine closed before the Solange-Jay Z fight video footage came out? Because Life & Style examines Bey and Jay's body language at two basketball games — one in November 2012 and one last week — and finds that they're "much happier now." (This is the same game at which some tabloids noticed that Beyoncé may have had her Jay Z tattoo removed. Oops!). Two pages later, there's an article about how Beyoncé is taking style notes from Solange which states that the two are "best friends" and "more alike than ever before." Double oops.
GRADE: F (sitting through 12 hours of dental surgery)
Star
PREGNANT AGAIN!
Yo, if Angelina is knocked up, it really would be a "miracle" — because Star is so rarely correct. FYI, this mag has used "Angelina pregnant again" several times. In 2009 it was a "world exclusive"; in 2012, she was "98 lbs, pregnant and headed to rehab
GRADE: D- (sitting through one hour of a cult leader's rant)
Us
"THEIR UNTOLD LOVE STORY"
Ok, here's something you might not know: When Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis met on the set of That 70s Show in 1998, he was 20 and she was 15. Even thought they kissed on the show, kept the relationship "strictly professional" until 2002, when they had a one-night fling. Then they decided they should just be friends. Six years after the show ended, in 2012, they ran into each other at a reunion taping at IT WAS ON. Adorable and romcommie. Let's move on. Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson will get married Fourth of July weekend, and — hang on to your pearls — she will NOT wear white. (Insert head explosion gif here.) While in Memphis earlier this month, Prince Harry hooked up with a woman from a "wealthy family in Tennessee." Attention Callie Khouri: Please turn this into a Nashville plotline ASAP, thank you very much. Finally, according to a source in a piece about Angelina and Brad, the couple recently left the kids at home at their Los Feliz estate and checked into the Hotel Bel-Air, 12 miles away, and didn't come out of the room all day. These two are, in the immortal words of LL Cool J, doin' it, and doin' it, and doin' it well.
GRADE: D (sitting through a Two and a Half Men marathon)
Fig. 1, from Ok!
Fig. 2, from In Touch
Fig. 3, from In Touch
Fig. 4: vintage issues of Star — 2009, 2012, 2013
Fig. 5, from Star
Would you rather watch Stephen Colbert or Neil Patrick Harris? It could have happened: on Wednesday, Harris confirmed rumors that he'd been asked to take David Letterman's spot after the Late Show host stepped down.
On the Howard Stern Show, Harris said that speculation about a possible late-night show wasn't totally out of left field. He went as far as in-person meetings with CBS executives Les Moonves and Nina Tassler. "Well, not in conversation like, about to make a deal," Harris said. "But they called me in and sat me down and asked if that would be something that I would be interested in doing." The conversation apparently happened before Letterman's formal announcement, when Moonves knew Letterman probably would not renew his two-year contract.
But despite the fact that CBS wooed him with a sushi spread, Harris turned them down for both Letterman's spot and the 12:30 a.m.
As it turns out, he'd rather do a weekly variety show. And Moonves might still be interested.
[H/T Vulture, image via AP]
A 16-year-old Baltimore girl thought she had found the perfect outfit for her school's Hollywood-themed prom last week, inspired by her idol Rihanna. She had a blast at the dance, but then the photos hit the Internet.
When Alexis Carter tweeted a photo of her low-cut green dress with wings, it quickly spawned the hashtag #PromBat, and Twitter united to Photoshop the hell out of her original post.
And then Rihanna herself made fun of the dress.
Ri-Ri took some time out of her busy schedule to tweet the above Instagram photo, with a frowny-face emoticon for extra rub-ins. She also posted this side-by-side of the #PromBat and the Wu-Tang logo:
The wealthy international celebrity spent the evening hanging out on the #PromBat hashtag, retweeting her favorite jokes about her teenage fan. (For the record, "The Dark Thot Rises" probably won.)
"I was very offended," Carter told Fox Baltimore. "Why throw shade on it when you had on the exact same thing. The poses was different but the outfit wasn't."
"She don't love her fans like she says she does."
Alexis is still being mocked on Twitter 5 days later, but she seems happy to get some Twitter and Instagram followers out of the deal.
She says her outfit got a great reception at the dance—"Everybody was saying, 'Oh my god, I love it, it looks nice your body looks good it's different'"—and she'll probably wear something "different" again next year.
She's not going to forgive Rihanna any time soon, though. Her Twitter background is a photo of a grinning Chris Brown.
[Photo: Rihanna/Twitter]
The death toll from Tuesday's explosion at a Turkish coal mine
Americans have a long, rich tradition of ascribing otherworldly explanations to things we don't understand, so when people see a rare cloud formation, they come up with the two most obvious explanations: the government did it, or UFOs.
We've discussed in detail the people
Thankfully for the internet, some folks in Stockton, California thought that they saw a UFO last Friday
It's perfectly natural.
Or, you know...aliens.
[Image via CBS Sacramento]
We begin in the past, when Lester went shopping for irregular socks and was offered a deal: If he paid $55 for the socks, said the store proprietor, he'd get a 12-gauge shotgun for free. Am I wrong to think that this is the kind of thing that happens all the time in Minnesota? And that, given the unmarked packages, Lester had a strong likelihood of ending up with ladies' socks?
When Pearl saw Lester at home with the gun, she told him to be careful not to blow his own face off, since if anyone was going to shoot himself in the face with an unloaded firearm, it would be Lester. And then he dropped the gun on the floor with a loud clatter. Pearl may have been kind of a nag, but she was right about many things. Lester put the gun on top of a bookcase, with bullets nearby.
And then we're in the more recent past, where Lester removes the gun from the bookcase and hears his desperate, post-Pearl-murder call to Lorne play in his head. He leaves the gun in the bathroom when police chief Vern Thurman comes over, and as they talk Lorne calmly takes the gun from the bathroom, walks downstairs, and shoots Vern. Little pellet shards fly through the air, and we see one land in Lester's hand…which is now, in the current day, completely disgusting and infected. Apply Neosporin early and often, folks!
So now Lester and his crunk hand are sweating in jail, right between Adam Goldberg and the Deaf Guy. Lester tries to say that this has all been a misunderstanding and that he's just an insurance salesman, while the Deaf Guy ominously takes off his shoe and sock. Adam Goldberg notes that, on the ice, Lester referred to "him" as the murderer of Sam Hess. They want to know who "him" is. And so they stuff the sock in Lester's mouth and press hard on his hand. It doesn't take long before Lester identifies "him" as Lorne ("like the fella from Bonanza") Malvo. This has all been so much fun that Adam Goldberg and the Deaf Guy want to stay in jail even after their bail has been paid! On their way out, they tell Lester that he might want to have a doctor look at his hand. When even the hitmen who are trying to off you are concerned about your crunk hand, you lead a very complicated life.
Molly, meanwhile, can't concentrate on folding her laundry. She heads to the station to tell Chief Oswalt about the developments in the case. He tears himself away from the weather report to hear that a) Lester had an outgoing call to the Motor Inn; b) Lorraine, the manager of the Motor Inn, identified the man in the photo related to the "naked fella kidnapping" as Lorne Malvo, who was staying at the motel on the night that Lester called; c) Lorne Malvo left behind tokens from the Lucky Penny, where Sam Hess was murdered; d) the dancer who was with Hess said that just before he died he was laughing about a fella whom he bullied, who ended up with a broken nose; e) Lester had a broken nose the day that Hess died. Basically, Molly has figured this whole thing out. She thinks it might be a murder for hire gone sour, which is a bit off, but Chief Oswalt finally agrees that they should talk to Lester about it.
Meanwhile, Gus Grimly has his daughter, Greta Grimly, help him to use the Internets. Upon his request, he searches for photos of Pastor Frank Peterson. There's one article with a photo, and it's Billy Bob in full, cardigan-clad glory. SWOON. Then she searches for Lorne Malvo. There's nothing, and in his head Gus replays his history with Lorne, with no light bulbs going off. He's really trying hard to figure out why he found Lorne on the street, on foot.
Happily, Lorne is paying another visit to his Adderall dealer, who also apparently peddles electronics from his big, giant van. Lorne wants a police scanner, and remains uninterested in the dealer's remote control helicopters, even though they're on special. He also very much does not want a pink police scanner. He is, however, interested in a walkie-talkie. When the dealer tries to insist that he buy a pair of them and suggests that he give one to a friend, Lorne asks if the dealer would like to have it himself, so he can listen to Lorne shit on people late at night. And, as improbably hot as I find Billy Bob Thornton in this role, I am fairly certain at this point in the season that I would not very much like to meet this guy in person.
Lorne then pays bronzer trainer Chumpf a visit, to use his phone to call Stavros. (It should be noted that Lorne is recording all of his calls, likely because he is a criminal mastermind but also because he's a creeper.) Starvos is freaking out about the ten plagues that are coming his way, and notes that the last plague is the death of the first-born son. He's planning to pay off his blackmailer, and take Dmitri somewhere safe. Chumpf is stoked that they're going to get a million dollars, until Lorne locks him in a closet with no specific instructions on where and how he is to go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Molly and Chief Oswalt find Lester in terrible shape, and shuttle him into an ambulance. When Molly asks what happened to his hand, he deliriously mumbles about socks and shotguns. She also asks if he paid Lorne Malvo to kill Sam Hess, and Lester says he never paid. The EMTs take him out before she can probe further. Meanwhile, Adam Goldberg and the Deaf Guy get the surveillance picture of Lorne (from the naked fella incident) from a cop.
Unable to sleep, Gus Grimly drinks milk. He sees a guy in the window across from his, also drinking milk. This isn't quite as exciting as Gus's last window encounter (presumably with this guy's wife), but the neighbor comes to pay a visit. Gus shares the very basic parameters of his current Lorne dilemma, asking if he should put himself (and Greta) in danger by trying to find proof to nail Lorne, or just let it go.
The neighbor shares a parable about a rich guy named Jeffrey Hoffstead who, wanting to alleviate the suffering in the world, first gave away all of his money, and then a kidney, and then killed himself so he could donate all his organs. Gus asks if it stopped the suffering, and the neighbor reveals the lesson: "Only a fool thinks he can solve the world's problems." Gus is very Gus-like as he responds, "Yeah, but you gotta try, don't you?" Later, he lies awake in bed for a while but, unable to sleep, eventually gets into his car and drives.
Gus passes a car on the dark road, and it happens to be Lorne, who is driving Stavros to Phoenix Farms. While Lorne stays in the car, Stavros goes inside to get money from the safe. Dmitri pops in with some legit knowledge — he says that the crickets that infested Phoenix Farms aren't local — they're the kind you get in a pet store. Stavros cuts him off to say that God sent them. But Dmitri is wise, and called around to pet stores, and wouldn't you know…well, we know what he's about to say. But Stavros cuts him off, saying that he doesn't have time for this and also Dmitri should pack up his shit since he's going to the cabin. Poor Dmitri, ever so parable-worthy himself, looks absolutely dejected. He should have kept one of those crickets for a pet, at least!
Molly talks to the ER doctor, who says that this is Lester's third time in the hospital, and that he's having a bad week. I'll say! Though Lester came close to losing his hand, the doctor was able to remove the foreign object…which is a shotgun pellet with fabric attached to it. It passed through something (or someone) before it got to Lester's hand. Molly wants to talk to Lester, but he's sedated. She then looks even more troubled when she learns that Vern's widow, Ida, has just given birth to a baby named Bernadette. And, I mean, Bernadette isn't that bad of a name.
Molly then goes to Lester's house, and technically I think is breaking and entering when she finds a key under the mat and lets herself in. Using her seriously killer cop instincts, she heads down to the basement and looks right at the washer. She pulls it away from the wall, takes off the back, and digs her hand around in there. I can't quite figure out if she does or doesn't find the murder weapon, though.
Meanwhile, Lorne is driving Stavros and giving him a history lesson about the Romans — the greatest empire in human history, which was founded by wolves. He talks a LOT about wolves — how they hunt, and kill, and make The Jungle Book a very improbable tale. Because Stavros isn't sweating enough, Lorne then launches into a lovely tale of a 110-pound Rottweiler who basically almost raped a lady. In fairness, it was kind of her fault since she thought it would be cute to let the dog hump her a little. But really…what does this guy talk about during a nice dinner at Chili's? Can someone make a reality show that's all about his eHarmony first dates? Also, the dog was killed at the end of the story, which I guess is good for the lady but WHY does Lorne need to go around everywhere being a canine killer?
Anyway, Lorne continues that the Romans, since they were raised by wolves, will see a guy turning water into wine and eat him. There are no saints in the animal kingdom — only breakfast and dinner. And if I were Stavros, I would be really fucking nervous right now. They pass Gus on the side of the road near Stavros's house, and when they arrive Stavros gives Lorne the money he owes him and says they're done — Lorne can stay the night, but has to leave come dawn. And, like, try to have ONE instinct and not let that man sleep in your house.
Molly, still in Lester's basement, calls Gus, who is still trying to figure out why Lorne was standing on the roadside. He might do better to notice that Lorne is staking out his home at this very moment! Molly is going to check out Lester's car on the following day, and wonders if Gus would like to get together after and compare notes. And is "compare notes" the new "come to my room and listen to records"?
While Lorne watches Gus enter his apartment, and is able to somehow creepily listen to Greta on the walkie-talkie, the neighbor from earlier—who has the grave misfortune of being on Neighborhood Watch—raps on his car window. He says that Lorne is not supposed to be there. But Lorne thinks he's right where he's supposed to be. The guy threatens to call the cops, noting that Lorne has black eyes, and is trouble. And THEN Lorne asks if the guy's building is the one with the "Jew Bus" outside. He is referring to the "Mitzvah Tank" that we also saw earlier in the episode. Does this somehow relate to wolves and Romans?
Lorne, intent on being the creepiest creepster that ever creeped, adds that some people don't think you need alarms on second story windows. Or they don't hook up the alarm to the phone line, so the bell rings but the cops don't come. In a tight community such as this one, he says, the calls of neighbors might just be quick enough to save his life, or his children's lives. The neighbor says something in Hebrew, and Lorne wishes him a nice night and drives off. So that…was interesting. I have to say, I enjoy Lorne way more when he's occasionally droll.
Finally, Molly goes to see Ida in the hospital, taking a whiff of baby Bernadette and saying, "That's what a new one smells like." Molly tells Ida that she's trying to take care of it. Presumably, this means bringing Vern's killer to justice. She looks uncomfortable, and eventually goes into Lester's room. His eyes are open when she enters, but he shuts them and she leaves. They then open again, and we're out.
Still to come: Water aerobics, madness.
[Image via FX]
Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA on Twitter, and read more here.
Let's see if this makes it into the third season of Girls: according to a tipster, Lena Dunham was at the Brooklyn Heights cafe Siggy's Good Food on Sunday, where she fed her dog Lamby, pictured above, a plate of restaurant-prepared salmon and salad. The salad, per our tipster, was dressed.
The tipster writes:
I was eating dinner [on Sunday night] in DUMBO at an outdoor cafe. Next to me was Lena Dunham and her boyfriend from FUN and their dog. Lena orders a salmon fillet and when the waiter brings it she places it on the ground for the dog! Side salad and all. The dog is sitting there chowing down on this lovely fillet eats the side salad and I could't help but think: now that is some straight Paris Hilton shit there.
When I asked whether the dog was eating plain greens or a salad with some sort of dressing on it, the tipster replied:
Yes, there was a light vinaigrette and the pup totally ate the side salad. Say what you want but at least the pup got his vegetables.
A Siggy's employee who answered the phone this afternoon could not confirm if Dunham fed her dog a salmon filet (menu price: $22) on Sunday night, but Dunham is a frequent customer—she, for instance, did an interview with Salon at Siggy's late last year. In another interview, she called it her favorite restaurant in New York.
The Siggy's employee was also unable to confirm whether their salad dressings are safe for canine consumption.
[image via Instagram]
Earlier today, CNN included Nextdoor in an article about "Hyperlocal apps [that] help residents fight crime." Later today, NBC Bay Area reports the CEO of one of those apps is now facing serious allegations of criminal negligence, accused of fleeing the scene of a highway accident he caused.
According to court documents, Nirav Tolia (left)—whose company recently locked down $60 million in venture
He then fled the scene.
The above is from a civil suit filed by the victim of the crash, which Tolia now faces in addition to charges by the San Mateo County DA. He'll head to court on May 28th.
Read the civil complaint in its entirety below.
Photo via Nextdoor
A gust of wind blows Pope Francis's mantle as he arrives in St. Peter's Square for the weekly general audience on Wednesday. Image via Gregorio Borgia/AP.
What is it about a quick puke that's so suited for comedy? In some ways, it's like laughter: a sudden, violent, convulsive hijacking of your body, accompanied by a dollop of involuntary oral ejaculation. Like laughter, it's a kind of possession; it can strike anyone, anywhere, any time, heedless of the protective barriers of wealth, status, or dignity, only instead of a creepy raspy voice coming out of their mouth, it's a torrent of hot duke. And then you have to pause whatever you're doing and deal with that. Puke blasts through abstraction. It doesn't care about consequence. It's the great egalitarian killswitch.
The opening sketch of "Slow Your Roll" ends with Amy Schumer fully doused in her realtor's vomit. After aggressively selling Amy on remodeling her bathroom, which she refuses to refer to as anything more sanitary than "the shitter" (the room where we allegedly spend 80 percent of our days), the realtor reacts violently to an offhand mention of pee and blasts Amy with her stomach soup. It's a gross-out capper to a gross-out sketch, and one of the more gut-roiling vomit moments I've seen on TV, but Amy's meek "I'll still take it..." sells the whole package. You don't just throw away your dream house over a few blown chunks.
A lot of "Slow Your Roll" deals with what comes out of and goes into women's bodies, and doubles down on the blend of scrutiny, revulsion, and fascination that cling to that. One sketch sees Amy visiting Janeane Garofalo as Cheryl Oberwood, nutritionist to the stars, who offers a barrage no-calorie dietary options like the Instagram diet (tweet it, don't eat it), the Get Motivated (you're arrested without due process), and the Beyoncé diet (find out what Beyoncé eats, tell me about it). Nothing sticks until one of Garofolo's literally skeletal clients shows up and shares her secret: she just smokes. "Tight," says Amy, "I'll do that."
In another, Amy has a stand-off with her boyfriend (of three weeks), played by Mike Birbiglia, when she finds a pile of Rorschach blots with his psychology textbook that she refuses to believe aren't pictures of her mother's vagina. "Here's my mom's vagina when I came home drunk from college," she cries, "I got in a fight with her and accused her of stealing my style!" Neither of these are particularly high concept, but they fold their subject matter in so cleanly that it's hard to knock them. In particular, they highlight how well Amy Schumer plays off a variety of energies, letting herself be cowed by Garofalo's outbursts ("I'm going to ask you a question: have you always been a fucking trashheap?") and milking Birbiglia's sanity to fuel her frantic accusations.
That Amy does salt as well as caramel makes for wonderfully easygoing woman-on-the-street segments. Maybe I'm [what's the positive version of nitpicking?], but I was caught off-guard by her use of "we" in one segment, after "Mom Computer Therapy," a beautifully rendered portrait of the deep rage that comes of teaching technology to your parents ("Don't talk to me in that tone, honey, I didn't grow up with these things"). Amy brings her interviewees into her jokes, spiking their set-ups and laughing alongside them; she brings the same evenhanded rapport that she has in a conversation with Jim Norton about his inexplicable love of golden showers to every one of her on-the-street interviews. There's no ironic distance here. Though her name's on the show, she's a remarkably egoless performer.
In the show's final stand-up segment, Amy pulls a question about her favorite sexual position. "But before she lets me answer, she wants me to know, 'Mine is doggy style!'" "This is what happens when you're a pretty girl," she ad libs, "Everyone tells you everything you say is interesting and important and you get really confused." A lot of Amy's characters are heartbreakingly dedicated to attaining that "pretty girl" status, having spent their lives staring at it through one fence or another, Pollyannaishly unaware that getting there will leave them just as fenced in. "No one ever did that to me," she adds. If that played a role in molding her into a scene partner extraordinaire, then thank God for that. After all, even the prettiest girls puke, but Amy Schumer will take it on her blouse to remind them of it.
[Image via Comedy Central]
Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more here.
Ken Auletta of The New Yorker reports that, “several weeks ago,” fired
“She confronted the top brass,” an associate of Abramson told Auletta, which “may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was ‘pushy.’”
If you know more, get in touch.
Rihanna may have no problem breaking a teenage fan's heart
The singer dropped L.A. Police Commission President Steve Soboroff's phone while posing for a selfie at Friday night's Clippers game, cracking the screen. When Rihanna saw Soboroff at the next game Sunday night, he asked her to sign the busted phone so it could be auctioned for a Los Angeles Police Foundation fundraiser. It's now on eBay, with a top bid of more than $55,000. (Hey, it comes with a charger.)
Rihanna also tweeted an apology Monday for dropping the phone, and then made a $25,000 donation of her own to the foundation.
She still hasn't apologized to the #PromBat.
[Photo via eBay]
Flappy Bird, the popular, excruciatingly difficult iOS game that became a cultural phenomenon earlier this year before it was pulled from the iOS App Store in February, is coming back this August.
Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen told CNBC's Kelly Evans about the game's return today, promising that the new version will have multiplayer, and that it "will be less addictive." In March, he told reporters that he had removed the game because it was too addictive, though he was making upwards of $50,000 a day in ad revenue.
(via TechCrunch)
The most surprising part of this terrifying clown video is that there weren't more heart attacks involved.
Clowns are inherently creepy, but they look like benign teddy bears next to this whistle-while-you-murder monster created by the Italian comedy group DM Pranks.
The pranks were filmed in the Italian city of Perugia and progress from a homicidal garage bludgeoning to a tense, hair-raising gas station scene that ended when the terrified potential victim pulled a out knife to protect himself.
The cameraman told the Daily News they came clean to all but one of the victims—the man pictured in the Metro station scene apparently took off running so fast the crew wasn't able to catch up with him.
Which is a valuable lesson when it comes to clowns—when you see them don't walk, RUN.
[h/t Daily Dot]
It's Wednesday, nobody's in the mood for a mojito. We just wanna get home and take these shoes off and try to find something in the food desert that is Wednesday network programming. Let's get real here.
In the 8/7c hour: Final Three performances on American Idol, a show that continues stubbornly to exist; the series finale of Suburgatory, which after tonight does not; and the finale of Arrow, which we'll be discussing tomorrow.
Set for 9/8c: Have you ever seen Criminal Minds? I saw it once and it gave me nightmares. That little gay fella that always looks so sick on the commercials will be in danger in tonight's finale, but I think he's gonna be okay. He seems like a fighter. The SVU episode tonight is called "Thought Criminal," so hopefully that will be about computers or something. There's also The 100, Million Dollar Listing NY, and the first half of the Modern Family gay wedding, which might not end up being an offensive bloodbath? Anything is possible when you are modern.
And then right before bed at 10/9c you've got more Catfish, the one-hour Legit finale, and then The Americans and the Nashville finale, which are going to be awesome and we'll talk about tomorrow.
(And if you can't sleep, MTV has you covered up through midnight with the hour-long True Life: I Want A Threesome, which I bet you five whole dollars is not going to turn out great for anybody involved. True Life: Turns Out I Actually Just Wanted Attention & Now I Am All Alone. True Life: My Power-Tripping Sex Scenario Made Me A Pathetic Bystander To My Girlfriend's Coming-Out Process. True Life: I Want A Redo On Some Or All Of My More Recent Choices.)
So let's talk about it. What are you planning to watch? Are you still freaked out by the finales from previous in the week? I thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was very good, in particular, and About A Boy made me cry just as predicted. For me, tonight mostly I'm all about Nashville. For I am obsessed with Luke Wheeler! Things are not going to go well for him this evening I bet!
So that's what's up tonight: Consider this an open thread to talk about whatever you're watching. Check for a subthread before starting one, just to keep it tight, if you would.
[Image via ABC]
Incest is pretty integral to the plot of Game of Thrones, but the brother-sister relations have always been fictional—a fact that's apparently a big disappointment for the producers of the show.
Lily Allen, whose brother Alfie plays Theon on the show, was doing an AMA today on Reddit when the topic of Game of Thrones came up.
Without spoiling too much, Alfie's character—like many an unfortunate Game Of Thrones sibling—ends up fondling his sister in one of the episodes.
But the awkward scene, it turns out, could have been exponentially more uncomfortable had the show's producers had their way.
Per Allen's AMA:
How did you feel when you told Alfie to get a job and he immediately went and got a job on the coolest show on tv??
Well, that was about a 5 year disparity between the two! But I've been asked to do a Game of Thrones cameo, they asked me if I'd be interested in playing Theon's sister, and I felt uncomfortable because I would have had to go on a horse and he would have touched me up and sh*t. Once they told me what was entailed, I said no thanks. I would be open to doing a musical cameo like Sigur Ros, though.
[h/t Uproxx, image via HBO]
