Rex Reed, critic seemingly created for the sole purpose of blog posts, recently saw and reviewed David Wain's new rom-com parody They Came Together. He did not like it! Or, it seems, understand what it was! Though he asserts the fact that the movie is a spoof at the top of his review, he appears to then...forget?

He begins his 0/4 star review by explaining the film's conceit:

The entire movie is told over a boring dinner as they attempt to recreate their interminable, cliché-riddled story for another couple (TV veterans Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper).

"They" are Molly and Joel, played by Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd. Joel is non-threatening, handsome, and vaguely Jewish. Molly, he explains, quoting Joel, is "the kind of cute, klutzy girl that can drive you a little bit crazy." Reed continues:

To prove his point, there's a madly contrived flashback to one of their earliest dates for coffee. "I'll have a low-fat sugar-free banana yogurt muffin," she says, "but if they don't have that, I'll have half a poppy seed muffin. They can take out the poppy seeds and heat it up. If they can't heat it up, then leave half the poppy seeds in and sprinkle the other half of the poppy seeds on half of a blueberry muffin and then cut both halves in half and throw them both away. In either scenario, I want a lemon chocolate loaf, but it must be shrink-wrapped and more importantly, it must smell more like lemon than chocolate."

Instead of doing what most sane people would do and run for the exit, Joel craves more self-abuse.

Later, Reed describes another plot point he found a bit hack:

Molly owns a small, whimsical candy shop, unaware that Joel is a corporate raider assigned to close her down to make room for a big super store across the street that will run her out of business. But the beat goes on in a frantic attempt to stretch a 60-second idea hatched in a routine Monday morning Hollywood conference-room barnstorming session into an 83-minute movie that goes nowhere.

And another:

They slog their way through the typical New York falling-in-love montage—rolling in the autumn leaves, juggling oranges, playing touch football in Central Park.

Finally throwing his hands in the air:

Joel goes back to his ex-girlfriend (Cobie Smulders, from The L Word and the abominable How I Met Your Mother), then when he dumps her, she humiliates him by confessing that she faked all of her own orgasms. "You and I are like rain-proofing on a wooden deck—finished!" Say that again? "I'm not who you think I am," she taunts, and then turns into—are you ready?—Judge Judy! I mean, are these people from another planet? Nobody says anything like real people actually talk.

In closing, Reed says They Came Together—again, a rom-com parody from the director and writing team behind Wet Hot American Summer, which boasts on its poster, "PLEASE NOTE: NEW YORK CITY PLAYS SUCH A CENTRAL ROLE IN THIS STORY, IT IS ALMOST LIKE ANOTHER CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE"—compiles "every cliché you've ever seen in every stale TV sitcom since the invention of sound" and is as "fresh, witty and clever as a Howdy Doody monologue."

Ugh, fine, Mr. Reed. Will the movie at least be shown on airplanes?

This movie will never be shown on airplanes.

[h/t MattPatches]

By process of elimination, we now know that the Supreme Court will deliver its decision in the Hobby Lobby reproductive-health coverage case on Monday. It's hard not to look at today's decision in McCullen v. Coakley, overturning buffer zones around clinics, for a gauge of the Court's temperature on the reality of abortion rights in America. The answer appears to be: warm on the good intentions of anti-abortion activists.

The Massachusetts law in McCullen is (or rather, was) pretty simple: It forbade people from entering or remaining "on a public way or sidewalk" within a 35-foot radius around an abortion clinic. There were exceptions tailored for people entering or leaving the facility, its employees, law enforcement, and people who were passing through the zone to get somewhere else. But the law barred people from entering the zone for other purposes. Violating the statute brought a $500 fine or up to 3 months in prison.

The Court held today that the law was unconstitutional as a restriction under the First Amendment. They did so unanimously, though there were three opinions issued: Chief Justice John Roberts, writing on behalf of the majority of the court, and then two additional opinions which concurred in the result but not the reasoning, one by Antonin Scalia (joined by Anthony Kennedy and, as ever, Clarence Thomas the Mute) and and one by Samuel Alito.

There are, in these three opinions, slightly differing reasons for declaring the law unconstitutional. The majority thinks the problem is that the law wasn't narrowly tailored enough, so that it excluded a much broader range of behavior than harassment. Scalia's small band of brothers and Alito, meanwhile, argue that the law isn't "content-neutral" enough to survive the First Amendment—that despite the ostensibly neutral text of the law, its effect was to discriminate against one viewpoint.

But it is pretty remarkable, considering how all the talk is about how divided the court is, and how contentious abortion issues are, that the justices all agree that buffer zones just don't work under the First Amendment.

That free speech is such an easy trump card here is almost the problem. The constitutional legalities of the situation may be relatively clear, minus quibbles over the doctrinal issue. But for the human being who has to run a gauntlet of protestors to get to the medical help she requires, the situation outside an abortion clinic isn't quite the affirmation of her country's values the Court seems to imagine it to be.

It can't be an accident that so much of the opinion seems to rely on an alternate-reality version of the pro-life protestor. Quoth Chief Justice Roberts, for example:

Some of the individuals who stand outside Massachu­setts abortion clinics are fairly described as protestors, who express their moral or religious opposition to abortion through signs and chants or, in some cases, more aggres­sive methods such as face-to-face confrontation. Petition­ers take a different tack. They attempt to engage women approaching the clinics in what they call "sidewalk coun­seling," which involves offering information about alternatives to abortion and help pursuing those options. Petitioner Eleanor McCullen, for instance, will typically initiate a conversation this way: "Good morning, may I give you my literature? Is there anything I can do for you? I'm available if you have any questions."

That does sound awfully grandma-ish and nice, doesn't it? I don't know that I really want to be offered "literature" on my way to an invasive medical procedure as a rule, even if it's say having my appendix out. But she only wants to help, he says! Later on he reaffirms this, continuing:

Petitioners are not protestors. They seek not merely to express their opposition to abortion, but to inform women of various alternatives and to provide help in pursuing them. Petitioners believe that they can accomplish this objective only through personal, caring, consensual conversations.

There are a few problems here. One is "caring" is kind of in the eye of the beholder, but the court seems to think the only thing that matters is whether these counselors intend to be caring. Another is that even if these are indeed "personal, caring, consensual conversations," they are fairly obviously a form of protest. These counselors are seeking to coerce women into reconsidering their decision to abort. Passive aggression is still aggression.

Then there is the fact that if the buffer zone is open even to the nicest of nice pro-life grandmas, it's also open to the screamers and the harassers. Not just the nice grandmas are going to get by now that buffer zones have been declared unconstitutional; it'll be everyone with something to say right up to and including your Westboro Baptist Church types. Roberts suggests that laws forbidding the harassment of clinic clients should be enough to protect everyone. But harassment's in the eye of the beholder too, and you know that these people will push every boundary they can to its limit to try and terrify the people entering the clinic.

Against that, Roberts posits the notion that public sidewalks are he calls, "venues for the exchange of ideas." Which sounds beautifully civic-minded on a first read, yes. It's classic First Amendment talk to pretend that public conversations on highly emotional topics proceed calmly and cautiously. It's also not at all what happens in the real world, as the comments section of just about any website will tell you. Not to mention that there have always been exceptions, including the Court's own buffer against the display of protest signs.

But then we have a Supreme Court filled with the likes of Justice Alito, who believes the following is an "entirely realistic situation":

A woman enters a buffer zone and heads haltingly toward the en­trance. A sidewalk counselor, such as petitioners, enters the buffer zone, approaches the woman and says, "If you have doubts about an abortion, let me try to answer any questions you may have. The clinic will not give you good information." At the same time, a clinic employee, as instructed by the management, approaches the same woman and says, "Come inside and we will give you hon­est answers to all your questions."

Alito offers that example to demonstrate what he feels is the law's discrimination between the clinic worker's perspective, and the sidewalk counselor's. But all it shows is that he has no idea what actually happens outside a clinic. And that he's never even so much as watched YouTube videos, which suggest something much more complicated is going on.

[Photo via AP.]

In the third episode of PLL's fifth season, the show finds itself wearing its noir influences more proudly than ever, and it's working. This week's installment gave us a series of flashbacks that reframed a lot of the show's subtler psychosexual subtext that left at least one character reeling.

Back in the day, Ashley Benson's Hanna Marin was sort of a useless person. She shoplifted, she obsessed, and most of all she did not realize that she was amazing. But as we've already learned this season, her transmorphification into the wonderful character we've grown to love had some pretty sick shit going on underneath.

PLL takes place in a universe so suffused with sexual violence and danger that everyone you meet—gay boys, blind girls, men, women, even little psychic children—will probably turn out to be a predator. When the show's central antagonist was revealed at the end of Season Two (not for the last time), the tragedy of it all hinged on the fact that Hanna's mentor in beauty, Mona Vanderwaal, was actually an omniscient supergenius who existed in a hyperreality of her own creation... And that in part, her machinations over the past two seasons arose over a twisted obsession with at least one of the Liars.

(Pictured: Some Liars, just standing around dressed insane on their first day back to school after being abducted and reviving their friend from the dead during a gunfight.)

This week, we learned that even this reveal was only part of the problem: In fact, Mona had organized Alison's "death" (the prime mover event that set the show in motion) to get her out of town, but then her obsession caused her to seek out and create a shadow double of her old enemy that she could control. Hanna thought she was becoming more herself, a caterpillar becoming a beautiful butterfly, but has finally realized she was only being forced into a butterfly suit by the cunning Mona, who could then act out her Alison fantasies in a safer space, with the real woman gone.

A show centered visually on the spare eternal sunsets of Edward "Nighthawks" Hopper's lonely paintings, and on the retro aesthetics of Hawks, Huston and Hitchcock, PLL never ignores the chance to bring those things into the narrative. (One episode saw another character, Spencer Hastings, abuse "study drugs" to the point that she slipped sideways into a black-and-white version of the show itself.) There is a certain drive to educate here, as evidenced by the somewhat didactic sexual politics as well as the show's creators' rich basis in film and fashion history.

But this particular movement into the past is one of the show's cleverest, because it brings outside issues to the fore: The return of Sasha Pieterse's Alison DiLaurentis to the land of the living means confronting the visual similarity between the two actresses, which has only grown (by leaps!) as the former actress matures.

(Pictured: Alison on the left, Hanna on the right. Or so it seems.)

What do you do when your show—which makes constant hash of visual similarities, twinning, doubling, mask imagery, and so on—finds itself with two visually identical lead actresses? You turn that shit into quasi-lesbian Vertigo is what you do.

Which would be brilliant and also offensive, if the show itself hadn't always hewed close to the real-life organic nature of teenage sexuality and romance: Mona and Hanna, to at least a slightly greater degree (the show being 100 percent about people being up in each other's uncomfortable business on every possible level at all times; at one point two characters were described, accurately, to be in the habit of trading both clothes and personalities), have always had a deep and abiding love for each other, and it's crossed or touched intimate limits before.

(Pictured: Hanna's first amazing day as an unknowing embodiment of Mona's intense fantasy life.)

There is a history here, deep and almost impenetrable, but also recognizable to any of us who have ever been teenagers: I remember a friend once describing her high school best friendship as "one of those Jane Austen or Anne of Green Gables things where you write long passionate love letters to each other every day for years and years, and now we don't talk much." I never thought I'd see that common thing portrayed on TV, and especially not in such detail.

And then too, you have the fact that we are living in 2014 and there's a real live lesbian presence on the show, which led to a great scene in which Hanna—realizing she'd been turned into a Kim Novak double by her former bestie, and thus has no idea who she is now—consults her friend Emily on what the coming out process was like, subjectively.

While Emily (left) gives her friend some side-eye at first—we gay folks are not metaphors for your straight people problems—she quickly understands the gravity of the situation and tenderly walks Hanna through the differences between being a gay teen and finding oneself in the middle of a Hitchcock movie. (Emily is pretty much constantly called upon to figure out the differences, since she is at all times both.)

Making a YA show about real-life stuff—sex, love, identity, danger—is a double-edged sword. You are feeding something very important, while also at the same time appealing to a fanbase that is going to fucking freak out on you no matter what you do. (See Tumblr in its entirety; "queerbaiting" as an increasingly flexible accusation; fan outcry about everything from Supernatural to Reign. We get what we want and we immediately find a way to shit on it.)

(Pictured: Emily's sometime girlfriend, the polarizing and increasingly flawless Paige.)

But in this case, as historically has been true, I think the show threaded this needle spectacularly well. The Hanna/Mona emotional axis has always been one of the more compelling parts of the story, and to see it return at such a heightened level bodes well for the future of the season.

(Pictured just because: Two more very necessary pictures of Alison making crazy faces at Ezra, the English teacher and occasional boyfriend of multiple Liars.)

[Images via ABC Family]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow @GawkerMA and read more about it here.

President Obama asked Congress on Thursday for $500 million to train and equip "appropriately vetted" rebel groups in Syria. The funding, if approved, would mark the United States' first substantial involvement in the three year-long Syrian civil war, which has now spilled into Iraq.

"[O]f course, most elites didn't go to state schools," writes Matt Phillips on Quartz. His subject is the debate over college debt and whether or not it's a big deal—in his estimation, the complaints about heavy individual educational debt demonstrate the narcissism of "a vocal, college-educated group" that "dominates the mediascape."

It may be the case that people working in the media are personally disposed to worry about college debt—although Phillips is forced to concede that the main writer he is complaining about, the Awl's (and formerly Gawker's) Choire Sicha, "didn't go to college."

But Phillips is indulging in a broader fallacy: the conflation of people who publish opinions on the internet with an actual elite ruling class. It's useful self-branding (who doesn't want to argue against those darned elitists?) but it doesn't do a very good job of describing the relationship between education and power in this country.

The big national political story this week, after all, was the question of whether Senator Thad Cochran (B.A., University of Mississippi; J.D., University of Mississippi School of Law) could defeat his primary challenger, Chris McDaniel (Jones County Junior College; B.A. William Carey University; J.D., University of Mississippi School of Law). A minor noisy sideshow to the story was whether a Princeton-educated reporting intern for the New York Times had too many Democratic political internships on his resume to fairly write about the Republican clash.

A quick Google/Wikipedia check suggests that of the 18 currently listed members of the House and Senate leadership, for the majority and minority parties, 11 have degrees from at least one state institution. If you count William and Mary, a public school that predates its state and its state university, it's 12. Harry Reid has a degree from Utah State. Mitch McConnell has degrees from Louisville and Kentucky.

Do politicians really count as the ruling class? Take CEOs then. Of the 10 highest-paid CEOs in the country last year, five attended state schools, with Larry Ellison, a dropout of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, topping the list. Only two had Ivy degrees. Ellison's overall wealth is enough to make him No. 2 on the Forbes 400—behind only Warren Buffett, who transferred from Wharton to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to get his bachelor's degree.

If you want to talk about who runs things in America, you should go to an expensive private university. If you want to run things, consider a state school.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]

Deadspin The USMNT Died So That They Could Live | Gizmodo The Internet's Own Boy: Why Aaron Swartz's Story Matters More Than Ever | Jalopnik Matt Lauer: I'd Have Asked A Man If He Can Be A Dad And A CEO, Okay? | Lifehacker Five Career Mistakes That Might Be Holding You Back | Kinja Popular Posts

Uber is celebrating its progressive values by growth hacking their way into your heart. During Pride weekend in San Francisco, the sharing economy startup will offer UberWEDDINGS: a quick and shameless way to share your life with your loved one.

Uber writes:

We're thankful to be based in San Francisco, a city that recognizes love doesn't have to look any certain way. In honor of Pride week, we're celebrating the inclusive idea that love is love with something that lasts a lifetime.

Want to ensure your wedding is completely forgettable? Just open the Uber app between noon and six on Saturday, drop a pin wherever you want to get hitched, and Uber will rush over a clown car of props to get your happily ever after going.

Didn't have time to write your own vows? No problem! Uber "can provide them for you."

In case getting married by Uber wasn't tacky enough, they've managed to rope seven other companies into the nightmare offer:

When your UberWEDDING arrives, we'll get started right away. You'll first work with our on-site notary to obtain your marriage license. Once the license is official, the violinist will begin to play and the ceremony will commence!

You'll walk down an aisle surrounded by flowers from Bloom That and candles from bella j. After you both say "I Do," we'll celebrate with dessert from SusieCakes, cheers with champagne from Iron Horse and you'll receive a gift bag from L.

In the weeks after your nuptials, our friends at HotelTonight and Alaska Airlines are providing flights and accommodations for your honeymoon. They're proud to help you celebrate your marriage with the person you're sharing your new life with.

At least this promotion isn't being run by Lyft. Nothing could be worse than reading your vows before a pink mustached notary and sealing the deal with a fist bump.

Jeffrey Coley, 50, a former employee of Chick-fil-A, is accused of holding up a KFC drive-thru in Rock Hill, S.C. and speeding away with the cash register drawer containing $516.02. A day later and after a bit of a car chase, Coley was arrested by police in his Plymouth Neon, where the cash drawer was sitting on the seat with a little less than a gram of methamphetamine.

Coley, married with one child, told the judge in his hearing that he is his family's sole breadwinner, making $8.50 an hour at Chick-fil-A. But Mark Baldwin, a Chick-fil-A corporate spokesman, told the Rock Hill Herald that Coley was fired from his job earlier this month because he didn't show up to work two days in a row.

Norman Dobson, a KFC area manager, also told the Rock Hill Herald that Coley has been banned from all KFC stores and from speaking to any of its employees.

"Neither one of these young ladies has worked since the incident," Dobson told the Herald. "They're terrified; they're not getting a good night's sleep. He's turned their lives upside down. They're out there trying to make an honest living and this is what they got."

According to the Associated Press, Coley was charged by police with armed robbery, possession of a gun during a violent crime, failure to stop for police, and possession of methamphetamine.

[Image via Rock Hill Herald]

Silicon Valley insiders like Ron Conway fought hard for the Jobs Act, lobbing hashtag after hashtag at Washington's paper belt. Now, thanks to the magic of deregulation, venture capitalist already benefitting from low interest rates and irrational exuberance in tech stocks can have an easier time raising funds.

Today, 500 Startups became the most high-profile investment firm to date to take advantage of new rules by raising $100 million for its third fund from the public, reports the Wall Street Journal:

500 Startups, founded in 2010, is using new Securities and Exchange Commission rules that allow firms to engage in "general solicitation," or public fundraising activities. Fund partners taking advantage of the rules are permitted to speak at public events, tweet about and advertise the fact that their firms are raising a fund [...]

The firm will use white-label SeedInvest technology to run a website, 500.co.seedinvest, where interested accredited investors can review the firm's public statements, make their interest known, get their accredited status verified, and put their money into 500 Startups' newest fund without a lot of paperwork and snail mail.

Stupid paper. Now investing in startups is practically as easy as buying a gun! This helps disadvantaged firms like Dave McClure's 500 Startups, which was only able to raise a measly $30 million and $44 million for its two previous funds.

Mr. McClure said traditional investors, or firms and funds that have been around for at least five years, already have processes they are comfortable with and often raise capital "exclusively from larger institutional [partners] who they need to go talk to privately anyway."

However, doesn't seem like McClure will be using the Jobs Act to open up the potential of profit to the proletariat:

While the firm is doing some portion of fundraising online, Mr. McClure said, a majority of the capital it plans to raise will come in $1 million to $10 million "chunks" from people familiar with the 500 Startups funds, portfolio and community offline.

So if you still have to be in-the-know, what's the benefit? More public about solicitation, less public about pertinent information.

@nitashatiku checking whether ok to do so publicly, but we hope to do that soon (if ok with SEC)

— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) June 26, 2014

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

Dozens have been reported injured after the floor of a second-story garage apartment collapsed during a Jainist celebration in a Houston suburb. According to reports, at least 100 people had gathered for the party with a religious leader visiting from India and that people on the first floor were trapped after the ceiling above them caved in.

KHOU reports that one person is being treated for a serious head injury and that at least 30 people were being seen at area hospitals for varying injuries. Among the injured was an eight-year-old boy.

According to USA Today, the floor collapsed for exactly the reason you thought: there were too many people.

The second floor was designed to hold six people and there were as many as 40 people upstairs when the floor collapsed onto the lower section. The collapse trapped people underneath and injured those who were above.

Additionally, in aerial views of the garage you can see "signs of rippling or buckling."

[Top image via Houston Chronicle // Garage image via KHOU]

Welcome to your guide to Thursday! Tonight we've got yet more Big Brother, some Kate Gosselin and her unknown number of children, and Mark Ruffalo putting up with both Andy Cohen and Keira Knightley at the same time.

At 8/7c. your choices are pretty varied. For the more fantastically-minded among us, there are new episodes of Defiance on Syfy and American Bible Challenge on GSN. Otherwise, Fox's Hell's Kitchen is back down to seven chefs, and Black Box is still going at it for whatever summer-programming reason.

9/8c. brings us the second half of CBS's Big Brother premiere (and cast). What will the thrilling twist be that caused this to be a two-night introductory event? I think there will be two separate houses, with the people informing on each other and speaking only through keyholes and two-way mirrors. That's my current guess. Otherwise it's Syfy's second episode of the satisfactorily weird Dominion, beloved stalwart Rectify, and a double-shot (aka burn-off) of Undateable with the unbelievably on-the-nose episode titles of "Low Hanging Fruit" and "Daddy Issues." (If you can for some specific reason handle one but not two episodes of that show, there's always Honey Boo Boo at 9:30.)

At 10/9c., TLC offers up another "upd8" in its seemingly random stream of Kate Plus 8 episodes appearing out of nowhere all the time this summer. Last Comic Standing has moved to the "challenge" portion of the show, and there's a new Real World/Road Rules Challenge as well. Or, before Tony Hawk appears on Comedy Bang! Bang!, you can really dig in and enjoy the hilarity of an episode of Maron entitled "Mouth Cancer Gig."

Otherwise you're screwed until 11/10c., when Keira Knightley pretends to happen live on Watch What Happens: Live, near Mark Ruffalo who will be pretending to watch it happen.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to Big Brother giving us the other half of what we were supposed to get last night? Do you have any thoughts on why this is happening? Are you so super sick of Big Brother already even though it's only been one episode? Because I kind of feel that way every summer. I just learned to let it ride.

[Image via TLC]

Faith-based dating kn0w-it-all and "motivational speaker" Justin Lookadoo, who famously told a bunch of Texas high school students that "dateable girls shut up" last year (and spawned #lookadouche), was arrested by police in Indiana after they found him inside his puke-stained car on the side of the road.

According to WFIE, Lookadoo failed a field sobriety test and had a BAC of .07. Ironically, as Raw Story points out, Lookadoo had uploaded a video to YouTube last year titled "Is Alcohol Consumption Okay?" in which he tells teens that it isn't a question of whether drinking is "good" or "bad," but rather a question of, "Is it holy?"

"Is it holy" is the official tagline for Lookadoo's brand, one he apparently does not actually believe enough to renew the domain to his website devoted to it, but enough to charge you $20 for a bracelet that says, "Is it holy?"

[H/T Dallas Observer// Image via Lookadoo.com]

Why should our pensions and mutual funds be the only ones lucky enough to gamble on Silicon Valley's most inflated startups? Thanks to multiple changes in the University of California system, taxpayers now can invest in emerging tech companies too.

University of California President Janet Napolitano announced today the repeal of a 25-year-old policy that "barred the university from investing directly in companies that commercialize technology that has emerged through UC research."

Having universities invest taxpayer money into startups may sound risky, but Napolitano has a plan. The UC president also announced the creation of the"UC Innovation Council" to help ensure that the university doesn't pump funds into any bad investment. The outside council will be made up of innovators ranging from "investment and business executives, venture capitalists and technology experts."

According to a UC press release, the university is also getting into the tech incubator racket:

In tandem with the rescission, Napolitano also approved a pilot project that allows campuses to accept equity in startup companies, rather than charge them fees, for accessing university services.

Several campuses have, or are creating, "incubators" in UC-owned or leased space where fledgling UC-associated companies can start commercial ventures that promote the practical application of university research. Accepting equity helps the start-ups by avoiding draining them of cash and also allows the university to participate in financial returns. The university currently does not have a formal policy regarding accepting equity when companies take advantage of incubators or other university services, and the pilot project will provide an operational framework consistent with UC governance and risk management strategies that allows campuses to do so.

Given the drastic budget cuts the UC system faced during the Great Recession, Napolitano is jumping at the chance to cash in on Silicon Valley's success. However, she is clearly not convinced the Valley's ventures are good businesses.

In a pair of emails sent this week from Napolitano's office, all faculty were warned that use of "sharing businesses" like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb was under review. Her office's legal counsel is concerned with issues "revolving around the safety and security of our employees when they use such services."

But who cares if they're safe as long as they're safe investments?

To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.

[Photo: Getty]

Broadway World is reporting that Shia LaBeouf was hauled out of a production of Cabaret during intermission by police in handcuffs. He was reportedly "being disruptive" during the first act.

Cast member Danny Burstein apparently posted to his Facebook, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your places call for Act II. Also, to let you know, Shia LaBeouf has just been escorted from the building in handcuffs."

Just saw Shia LaBeouf in handcuffs in tears surrounded by 6 police officers outside of CABARET the musical. Oh New York, u is a crazy bitch

— Benj Pasek (@benjpasek) June 27, 2014

NOW: CONFIRMED: Shia LaBeouf is in NYPD custody after being escorted out of CABARET the musical. He is being questioned, police tell me

— Ryan Parker (@TheRyanParker) June 27, 2014

Update: Apparently, he was smoking inside the theater.

NEW: Actor Shia LaBeouf escorted in handcuffs by police from a NYC theater for allegedly smoking inside, being disruptive - @AaronKatersky

— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 27, 2014

If you were at the show and saw LaBeouf getting taken away, leave a comment below or email aleks.chan@gawker.com

[Image via Getty]

Everybody knows we're currently experiencing a golden age of television; this is no longer in dispute or interesting to talk about. Just ask all of the celebrities, who over the past few years have been flipping the double-bird to movies and applying for jobs in TV. Never has this been more true than in the current Summer TV lineup, which is so filthy with very famous actors we have to wear BluBlockers to protect our eyes from all the star power coming out of our TVs and bleaching out our living rooms. That is because Summer TV stars are more famous than ever!

And here is what they look like with ponytails:

Kiefer Sutherland, 24

Justin Theroux, The Leftovers

Anthony Stewart Head, Dominion

John Malkovich, Crossbones

Terry O'Quinn, Gang Related

Ben Savage, Girl Meets World

Cam Gigandet, Reckless

Clive Owen, The Knick

Eric Dane, The Last Ship

Halle Berry, Extant

This guy, The Strain

[Images via CBS, Fox, HBO, Syfy, NBC, Fox, Disney Channel, CBS, Cinemax, TNT, CBS, FX]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. Follow us at @GawkerMA and read more here.

Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber and Ayn Rand superfan, thinks regulation is for suckers, and his company has been slow to expand background checks and tighten the screening process as it ravenously expands. Surprise: people are beating Uber's weak rules.

The above message was posted to Whisper, the anonymous messaging and confessional app, by an Uber driver who has worked for the transit firm's Los Angeles branch. The source's subsequent conversations with Valleywag and Whisper, which put us in touch with the driver, speak to a corporate culture of laissez-faire gone wrong:

[Uber's] background check is done through a third party called Hirease. It consists of filling out your name, address, DL & SSN online. That's it. Every taxi company I worked for required drug screening and livescan fingerprinting at the local police department before being issued a taxi driver permit.

Signing up online sounds lax enough, but it's the account-swapping that's truly worrying here:

One person could fill out all the info and hand off the approved account to another person. You can't do that in the taxi world. That's what this limo company did that I used to lease from. Without anyone knowing.

I know of a few guys that "share" an account. One was approved by Uber, totally legit, and the other just drives.

Then there's what the limo company I used to lease from is doing. That's even more underhanded. They asked me to help two new drivers a few months ago. When to work, where to go, etc. I consistently generated over $2000 a week in revenue so I suppose that's why.

When these drivers told me they had interviewed only a few days prior to starting, I became suspicious. Uber is slow to get new drivers onboard - it took me a little over two weeks. It turns out that the limo company took two active driver accounts - guys that were in good standing but no longer driving - and changed the name and the photo on the account to that of these new guys.

They already had extra Uber phones in the office so the new guys were on the road in a few days, completely circumventing the "rigorous background check" or the driving check. I'm pretty sure they have valid driver's licenses because I doubt the limo company would forego insurance coverage. They also own one of the major cab companies in LA, I just don't think they'd risk that.

But this means Uber didn't check the driving record for these guys. It's harder to find drivers than you'd imagine. The company just wants someone in that car paying the lease. I had to train these guys on how to use a smartphone. They had no clue. No clue that they were not going through the normal channels

Even if you're not falsifying or swapping your driver bio, our source says the screening process itself falls short:

Uber's claim that their screening process is " often more rigorous" than what it takes to become a taxi driver is an outright lie. I've been a taxi driver in MA, FL and CA. You have to provide a 10 year driving history from the DMV dated within 30 days, pass a drug and alcohol test, go to the police department and get fingerprinted, and in some cases pass a test that shows you can at least read a Thomas Guide. Uber requires none of this. Your UberX driver could be shooting speedballs before he goes online and starts accepting rides.

Ultimately, our driver source says it was a mix of limo company scheming and Uber indifference that turned him off from the job: "I never want to go back to generating revenue for a company like Uber, that in my eyes doesn't give a fuck about its drivers. It's a great idea. I just wish it was in different hands."

I've asked Uber, Travis Kalanick, and Hirease for comment—if I hear back, I'll update.

To contact the author of this post, write to biddle@gawker.com

Liberia's top governmental medical officer is pleading with the country's pastors to stop keeping people infected with ebola in churches. Many there believe they "can be healed through prayer."

As we all know, George Clooney recently got engaged to Amal Alamuddin. What we don't know is: why? Is it because he wants to be a senator, but knows he has to shed his bachelor image first, and also become a governor at some point? Sources say: yes!

Multiple sources spoke to Us Weekly about Clooney's supposed political ambitions:

"George has been talking to politicians about running for office for years," says a DC insider, noting that Clooney is "close" with Pres. Obama.

"President Obama, how do I run for office?"

Adds the insider, "George has said his ultimate goal is to become a US senator but he knows he would have to hold a position like governor first."

One pal predicts the actor will take that first step in 2018 with a run for California's governorship. Says the friend: "He has the good ideas that he wants to implement."

And now he's got the perfect first lady. One source says his fast-track romance with Amal Alamuddin is a strategic move. Clooney aims to shed his bachelor image, says the source: "He wants to be taken seriously… he's ready for a change, so a 2018 run is very plausible."

Well, now that we know he has "the good ideas that he wants to implement" and a perfect first lady, I'm not sure what could stop him on his apparent journey to US senatorship.

I guess my only question is: when can we start voting for him for President? Now? I know that there's still a president right now or whatever and he doesn't need to leave, necessarily, but can we secure Clooney the next spot? Trying to get this nailed down before lunch.

Thanks!

[image via Getty]

When a Ferrari Enzo was crashed by two dealership mechanics earlier this week, it could've been caused by a number of things. A mechanical issue. An evasive maneuver. A pelican. Not so, according to the man who pulled them from the wreck. It was just regular old terrible driving.

Saying that John Michael Hoda witnessed the crash is a bit of a misnomer, as he was practically a participant. When the Enzo hit the Jersey barrier on Interstate-95 in Stamford, Connecticut, a carbon fiber spray tore across his Lexus, scratching up his hood. The Enzo, one of only 399 ever made, dragged ass-backwards along the barrier, leaving its traditional Rossa Corsa paint all across the concrete.

Hoda says he pulled over immediately, ran across the highway, and grabbed Miller Motorcars technicians Leonardo Garcia and Daniel Palchik out of the smoking hulk.

And, coincidentally enough, Hoda's work with Davis Investigations gives him familiarity with this sort of thing. So he knows what he's looking at.

"Oh shit, we're fucked," Garcia reportedly said as he pulled him out of the Ferrari, owned by bedding magnate Michael Fux.

As Hoda was heading in the opposite direction on I-95, he describes hearing a loud "WHOOM" from the Enzo's V12 as it soared up the rev range and attempted an overtaking maneuver. The car completely spun out, travelled across the entire roadway, and slammed, backwards, into the barrier.

At one point, the rear tires actually left the ground from the impact.

"It wasn't just a possibility that they weren't driving at normal speeds," Hoda said. "I had a clear view of what happened."

Traffic was moving at approximately 60 MPH, Hoda added, and based on what he saw and the skid marks the car left behind, he estimated that it had to be going at least double that.

Which isn't hard to achieve in a Ferrari Enzo, which can top 218 MPH. It's probably safe to say, however, that it's not exactly prudent to be driving at those speeds on the local Interstate.

Incredibly, Garcia was only issued a ticket for "failing to drive in an established lane" by the Connecticut State Police, and no one would say on the record whether or not they had permission to be driving the Ferrari that morning in the first place.

Despite multiple calls to Miller Motorcars, they declined to comment on the matter, refusing even to confirm whether or not Garcia and Palchik are still employed by the dealership and hanging up on us when we called.

As of this writing, both men are still listed as employees on the company website.

Photos credit: John Michael Hoda

Above, we see someone attempting to parallel park their mid-sized sedan in a very big-sized spot.

"How many times has she tried this already, Ray?", the narrator asks at the beginning of the video. "Uh, this is like her second time," replies a timid off-mic voice.

Two times? Why are we even filming, at this point? It's a big spot, to be sure, but who among us hasn't struggled, at some point, to fit a small object inside a much larger hole? Don't be a prick, camera guy.

Then, the Sisyphean drama begins. The car lurches forward, then backward, then forward, then backward. When the nose inches right, the tail creeps left; when the rear flirts with ecstasy, the front end demurs. Never does the curb come closer.

At one point, from our perspective across the lot, it looks like the driver may have finally found success. The narrator rudely interjects: "She's like three feet away from the curb." She continues.

After several more failed attempts, our hero surrenders, her spirit broken, her humiliation total. The car moves slowly, sadly across the pavement and exits. Searching, perhaps, for a spot that will never come.

[h/t Digg]