Charles Gasparino, the surly bull market bruiser of Fox Business News, managed to get kicked out of this summer's dullest event. But he doesn't care: the whole thing "wasn't worth going to" anyway.

In the above interview with Fox's Melissa Francis, Gasparino today said he got kicked out of the billionaire bonding session because he "inadvertently" walked into a private party, and then defended the honor of his diminutive female producer against marauding security.

i was so "seemingly tipsy" i did that exact workout after the incident in 90 degree heat @PaulCaf @jktrotter @samfbiddle @MelissaAFrancis

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) July 14, 2014

Far-fetched, maybe, but this is a man who earlier this afternoon bragged about doing a pull-up routine immediately following his Sun Valley ejection. Charles Gasparino is a human can of Brut spray.

Hey, casual soccer fan! You're likely going to remember Mario Götze as the guy who won the 2014 World Cup for Germany, but you should know that he was famous long before he scored last night's deciding goal. That's because he once got a big ol' boner while hanging out on a boat with a lady.

It's true. That's him in the picture above, sporting his boner in front of his lady, God, and the world. We don't even need Boner Rower to tell us if that's a real boner. That's definitely a boner.

Two human beings found themselves stripped of everything but their sense for drama on Saturday night's Naked And Afraid, the Discovery Channel series that answers the question, "Will people watch a no-stakes version of Survivor if there are enough bare butts onscreen?"

Tom, an army vet and Carrie, a marine, were set down in Cambodia. At first they managed an adequate partnership despite the full-time presence of butts, balls, nips and unfiltered body smells stewing in the deep sultry heat of the jungle. But when the temperature dropped, tempers started to flare.

Was Tom being a little prim in refusing Carrie access to his 98 degrees of body heat? Was he at fault for sexualizing their interaction by refusing to adopt basic survival skills and cuddle with Carrie?

It's his body, still ...you signed up for a show where the premise is one naked man and one naked woman teaming up against the elements. Did it really never occur to you that would mean physical contact? Aren't you cold? Isn't it hurting both of you that just touching this other human being makes you feel guilty?

What we do know is this incident introduced an alienation between Carrie and Tom that escalated into the kind of focused, spiteful hostility I haven't seen since Real World Seattle.

Was Tom well within his rights? Was Carrie stung or just exasperated? Would you consider it cheating if your partner went on Naked and Afraid and cuddled with a cutie for warmth?

Whatever your thoughts, we have to all give Carrie props on that woven-bamboo hair tie.

[ Images via Discovery Channel]

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

It's Bastille Day today, which means that the French are given one (and only one) day to bogart our red, white, and blue colors to celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison. Celebrate at your leisure with France's great cheeses, fine wines, and mediocre rap music. But if you're looking for something more—some bigger way to identify with French culture outside of really loving that one Juliette Binoche movie you slept through on an airplane—might I suggest an imagined trip to the newly opened Little Prince Theme Park?

Parc du Petit Prince opened on July 1 in Ungersheim, in the Alsace region of France, making it easily accessible for the Swiss, Germans, and French all looking to live out the 1943 Antoine de Saint-Exupery book. As the Associated Press reports, this place "is more about slowing down and taking stock of the small things that delight." Got it. Just as a theme park should be.

I read The Little Prince in the original French in my advanced placement French class in high school, so I am an expert on the book and the language. As a service to those who can't afford a vacation, I have read through the entire park map to learn what one could do at this theme park of dreams. Or, should I say, parc du rêves? Still got it.

• Entrée. Enter. Off to a good start!
• Dessine-moi un mouton. Draw me a sheep. Who is the omnipotent "me" here? In the book it's the little prince who demands this of the pilot. But who is asking us to draw them a sheep? Anyway, you can put your shitty drawings on a wall that they built at this park.
• Be soft to each other. As the Associated Press shared, the key statute of the Parc du Petit Prince is to eschew the painful fright of rollercoasters and theme park thrills in favor of a more gentle theme park experience. Sounds exciting.
• Rencontrer. If I'm remembering correctly, this means to meet up with one another? Like you might say "Recontrez avec moi pour un croque-monsieur," which forces me to ask—will there be croque-monsieurs at Parc du Petit Prince? The one thing I learned in middle school French class is that croque-monsieurs are the only food in France.
• Sandwichs régionaux. That answers my question. There will be croque-monsieurs.
• Aviation of all shapes and sizes. From the illustrations it looks like you can fly on a plane and two kinds of hot air balloons. To the stars!
• Ask questions—big ones that are probably about space. How big are your questions? If they are astronomically big, you can ask some at what looks like a big balloon on a platform. I don't know if they have to be about space, but make them astronomique.
• "Attractions include two tethered passenger balloons, a film about deep-sea mysteries watched from the perspective of a water scooter, and visits with real fox cubs or a flock of sheep with their sheepdog." The only amusement park in the entire world where you can see a flock of sheep with their sheepdog, which is an amusement I didn't even know I wanted until now.
• You can mail a package. A good service.

The Parc du Petit Prince looks simultaneously like the inside of Michel Gondry's child heart and whatever Asterix is. Make sure you buy your billets en advance. You can get them at the billetterie, which is a ticket provider. Thanks for stopping by.

[Image via Parc du Petit Prince]

On Friday, the BBC radio station 1Xtra, which bills itself as "the UK's leading black music station," released its list of the "Top 20 Most Important UK Artists In The Scene." At the top was Ed Sheeran, an acoustic guitar-toting folk-rocker who looks like Ron Weasley.

Fellow white guys Sam Smith (#4) and Guy and Howard Lawrence of Disclosure (#2) filled out the top four, with Tinie Tempah at the third spot.

Some, understandably, were well cheesed off by the news. Among them was sixteenth-place grime artist Wiley, who argued lucidly against the rankings on Twitter:

I've never been influenced by a white artist to make black music . #Never.

— Wiley (@WileyUpdates) July 14, 2014

It's nothing to do with a race card it's to do with "Don't lie and pretend who influences who"

— Wiley (@WileyUpdates) July 14, 2014

A man wrote for one direction so let him me be the most influential artist to people like them but not us .

— Wiley (@WileyUpdates) July 14, 2014

1Extra music manager Austin Deboh defended the list, arguing that discussing it in terms of race is "misguided":

"Every single day of the week, every single hour of the day we support black artists and other races that make black music sounds.

"I think that anyone who wants to bring race into the discussion is probably a little bit misguided."

If we set aside for a moment the generations of whitewashing that have been carried out on black pop music and accept Deboh's race-agnostic argument at face value, Disclosure and Sam Smith's inclusions are reasonable: both have made big, international waves with traditionally black sounds like house, garage, and R&B. But what is Sheeran even doing here? If actual race doesn't matter, shouldn't the music at least sound black? Sure, a few of the singer-songwriter's tunes have tinny hip-hop drumbeats, but most of his output skews closer to breezy lite-FM than anything like the music 1Xtra built its name on.

Black music is alive and well in the UK — just look at the continued world domination of dubstep and its descendants for evidence of that — but looking at this list, you'd never know it.

(Things are just as bad here in the U.S., of course.)

[Image via AP]

Congressman Michael Grimm is perhaps best known for threatening to throw a NY1 reporter off a balcony. He is also the bae at Staten Island sweet sixteen parties, according to teen girls' tweets, which don't lie.

Colin Campbell at Business Insider reports that Grimm was invited to a girl's sweet sixteen party this weekend by her (cool) parents. In a series of now-deleted tweets, her friends discussed Grimm's (bae's) appearance at the party. They are the best tweets I have ever read:

fucking michael grimm is going to [redacted] s16. I'm gonna dance with him all night and make him fall in love with me

"Michael Grimm is coming" "Oh shit now I have to wear nice underwear"

Action shot of [redacted] meeting Michael Grimm aka action shot of the best moment of her ~life~

He told me he's taking me to prom I was like you fricking better

You fricking better. It's worth pointing out that Grimm (bae) is one of the sexiest bachelors in Congress, a devotee of "Arnold Schwarzenegger-style weight lifting," and single.

These teen girls (whoever they are — BI redacted identifying info from the tweets) are the luckiest girls on Staten Island. I want Michael Grimm at MY sweet sixteen party.

[Images via AP, Business Insider]

Dear Lifehacker,
I know a lot of online reviews can be fake, and others are just written by angry people. How can I separate useful reviews from crappy ones? I don't want to avoid something good because someone lied, but I don't want to throw my money away either.

Sincerely,
Concerned Consumer

Dear Concerned Consumer,
You're right, online reviews can be tricky to navigate. However, there's a lot you can learn from the general tone of online reviews. Scanning for commonalities across time or complaints is key. There are some places where reviews are useful, and other places you should expect to find fake reviews by the dozen. Let's break it all down, and bring your salt with you—you'll need several grains of it for everything you read.

Learn to Quickly Spot Fake Reviews

Whether they're bad reviews from angry people (or competitors), or glowing reviews from a company's management, fake reviews skew the truth. If you're going to derive any use from the online reviews you read, the first thing to learn is how to spot the fake ones. We've offered some detailed tips before to help, but the big tells are the same as ever:

• No review history, or newly created, anonymous accounts
• An all-negative or all-positive review with no caveats
• A review full of empty adjectives and either pure glowing praise or seemingly unsubstantiated anger
• Exact, to the letter, details and proper names of products and services (to the point where only someone affiliated with the company would use specific nouns and trademarks)
• A review history that consists entirely of overly negative or overly positive reviews—in indicator of a troll account, someone who only reviews to vent, or conversely employees or PR for a company or companies.

Fake reviews can be more complicated and there's no foolproof way to detect them, but the important thing is to turn your BS detector to high while you read. You usually have dozens to read through, so if any particular one seems fishy, toss it out. One thing to remember: Ignore outliers. If a review is overly glowing with nothing but great things to say, or overly negative with nothing but hate and vitriol, ignore both. You're better off reading more metered and even-handed replies.

Be Careful With Reviews on Specialty Sites

Whether you're looking for a doctor, a rental apartment, or a great college class, there's a review site that caters to you. Sites that offer reviews on specific categories or products can be helpful, but they suffer from self-selection bias. In other words, the only people who submit reviews are often people there solely to complain, because they feel like it's the only place to air their grievances.

Sites like ZocDoc for doctors, ApartmentRatings for apartments, and Rate My Professors are all valuable and offer great services to their visitors. However, wading through their reviews can be a challenge. Often the only reason anyone has to "review" their doctor or apartment complex is if they have a complaint they want others to hear. Happy people often don't take to the internet to write paragraphs about their experience—even if they should to balance the scales a bit. Again, none of that is to say the reviews there aren't useful or worth reading. You should just go in with both eyes open.

Read The General Tone, and Note Common Complaints

If you're going to pick up anything useful from online reviews, you'll need to learn to read their general tone and pick up on common threads across reviews quickly. A single review is less valuable than hundreds that all seem to trend positive, or a dozen that all note the same complaint. A quick scan the user reviews and getting a feeling for their overall tone will give you tons of useful information.

Once you get a feel for what the general experiences of customers or buyers looked like, you can make good call for yourself. Too often we perceive a four-or-five star review as "okay," and anything less as unacceptable, but some of my favorite restaurants average 2.5 or 3 stars on Yelp. If I'd focused on star reviews only, I may have avoided them, but a scan of their reviews reveals that no one thought there was anything wrong, they just weren't blown away either.

Similarly, if you do see common complaints crop up in multiple reviews, make a note. If everyone reviewing an apartment complex complains about being able to hear their neighbors, you can safely bet that the place has thin walls. You can also use those common complaints to inform your experience and buck the trend. For example, if everyone reviews a pair of headphones poorly for being "too bassy," but everything you listen to is bassy and you like your headphones that way, they may be the cans for you, no matter what the reviews say. Keep an open mind, and remember, online reviews almsot never tell the whole story.

Check for Updated Reviews or Feedback from Management

Some of the most interesting and enlightening reviews I've seen are on sites where companies are allowed to respond to reviews left on their businesses. Newegg is a good example of this. Comparing motherboards feature-by-feature is great, but there's something great about seeing a company rep responding to reviews and offering to help people who have had issues. One of my favorite neighborhood liquor stores has a manager who's well known for taking customers to task in Yelp reviews who reviewed them poorly for a problem of their own making, or outright lied. That honesty and passion for their business is one reason I love the place.

In both cases, you can learn a lot from the responses, and the subsequently updated reviews. Whether they reach out and offer to help, go the extra mile for their customer, or just clear the air, sometimes you find someone you want to do business with, regardless of what the actual customer reviews say.

Stay Skeptical, and Contribute Your Own Reviews

It should go without saying, but it's important to take whatever you read with a grain of salt, positive or negative. Every review you see will come filtered through the lens of the internet. In some cases that means reviewers forget that a real person, a lot like you, is on the other side of the screen. Similarly, anonymity does strange things to otherwise normal, honest people. With luck, you'll have enough reviews for whatever you buy or wherever you plan to go that you can pick and choose what's useful. Even if you can't, sentiment is what's really important. Worst case, give up on user reviews and look for third party, hands-on, qualified reviews written by experts.

Many people say they just read the negatives and look for commonalities, or just read the positives and look for balanced experiences. You can go that route, but doing either blinds you to the validity of the others. A smart reading (or smart speed reading) or everything will serve you better on most sites.

Finally, when you do visit that restaurant, or buy that product, make sure to come back and leave your own honest, legitimate review. The only way to make online reviews legitimate and useful is to contribute the good ones that you and other people actually want to read. Remember, the internet is what we make it.

Sincerely,
Lifehacker

Title photo made using jesadaphorn (Shutterstock). Additional photos by Linda Tanner and Yi Chen.

A Seattle couple returned to their condo Wednesday night to find it completely torn apart. Clothes and electronics were strewn all over the bed, their junk mail had been all been opened, and a can of paint had been poured over the toilet. "It was just trashed," Bridget O'Neill told Vocativ.

The doorknobs were slathered with lotion and several pairs of O'Neill's shoes had been separated from their heels, but nothing seemed to be missing. When O'Neill and her husband Brian called the cops, they couldn't find fingerprints or evidence of any theft.

They did find a purse with a 27-year-old woman's ID in it, though.

Satisfied that the homeowners weren't in danger, the cops left. But not for long, because that's when the noises started.

"It sounded like a dying possum or raccoon. I had only heard wounded animals make that kind of noise before," Brian O'Neill told Vocativ.

"Now facing the possibility of having to figure out how to arrest a poltergeist, officers dutifully sped back to the University District condo," wrote Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, who runs SPD's brilliant police blotter.

Officers pulled the owner of the purse from the narrow space underneath the bed, where she'd been hiding for at least two hours.

She told the cops she'd been on a days-long "meth rampage." They believe she climbed a tree, opened the window, and hid under the bed in a bout of intense paranoia. At roughly 5'7" and 90 pounds, she was able to squeeze into a space normally only used by the O'Neills' two cats.

While she was under there, she had been cutting apart the boxspring with a kitchen knife, and she also left behind a needle (in the bed) and her hair (all over the house).

Meth: Not even once, for days at time, with a knife, under a strange family's bed.

[Before and after photo via Vocativ]

America laughed when Professor Isao Echizen unveiled his goofy-looking "privacy goggles" last year. But Isao did not get discouraged — and now allies within Japan's top eyewear firms have joined forces with Isao to develop glamorous frames that can beat facial recognition software. Google Glass, a challenger appears!

As reported in the June issue of your go-to high-end gadget bible, National Institute of Informatics Today, Japanese eyewear manufactures from Sabae City in Fukui Prefecture have teamed up with Isao Echizen's Content Security Lab and are "seeking launch of a prototype by year's end."

Sabae City produces over 90 percent of Japan's eyewear. It's sort of a company town devoted to making eyeglasses and sunglasses, nestled between Japan's western mountains and the coastline. In the 1980s, Sabae designers were the first to develop titanium frames, resolving a serious, longstanding allergy issue with nickel-alloy frames. Their titanium spectacles could reasonably be described as the last non-stupid technical advancement in the world of prescription glasses.

What else you got? Transitions® Lenses? Ha, ha. Very funny. Warby Parker's "Netflix of Hipster Frames"? No. Anti-reflective coatings were a German military secret perfected in the early days of WWII.

So there's a sense of poetic justice in Sabae manufacturers coming to rescue the human race from that, recently finalized, deeply unholy alliance between Google — with its volunteer surveillance state of Glassholes — and Luxottica — Milan's happily monopolistic global eyewear cartel.

Overweened, perhaps, by the shock and awe of Apple's WWDC product launches, you'd think some sectors of the tech press had never been to a lab before, from the way they reacted in 2013 to Dr. Isao Echizen's first two prototype "privacy goggles." Even the normally reserved voice of the BBC made a point of saying that "the glasses are not necessarily high fashion." Still, they were technical innovations, worth serious attention.

The first made use of the fact that many digital cameras pick up near-infrared light just out of our visible spectrum. The frames strategically placed near-infrared LEDs, projecting invisible light from key points around the eyes and the bridge of the nose: the areas that facial recognition software uses to identify people. The fact that the light was outside of the visible range ensured that it wouldn't obstruct communication, by being just incredibly annoying. It wasn't a completely original idea, but there was something admirable about Dr. Echizen's dedication to seeing a cost-effective consumer solution to this privacy issue.

The second version hoped to be more disposable, and less energy intensive, by obscuring those key regions of the face with a reflective mesh. It's this second iteration that Echizen and his partners in Sabae hope to put on the market against Google's luxury-grade, Google Glass frames — produced by Luxottica, but with more glitzy, disctracting names like Diane von Furstenberg attached.

That's the thing about Luxottica. The Italian multinational enjoys an ironclad control of design and retail for about 80 percent of the global market; they manufacture just about every fashionable brand of frames you can think of, Ray Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Prada, Disney, Burberry, Tom Ford.

If you have not already, make time to watch their CEO, Andrea Guerra, smugly shrug off any qualms about Luxottica's business model to 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl. It is a delightful black comedy. They took Ray Bans off the market for a whole year just to jack up the price!

That's who Professor Isao Echizen and his Sabae confederates are up against: a near-monopoly advertising agency masquerading as an internet search company in a "strategic partnership" with a near-monopoly in eyeglass frames, that doesn't even do prescription lenses, and yet topped 1.2 billion Euros in gross profit last year. If you were left wondering why your local LensCrafters or Pearle suddenly became stocked with noxiously overpriced frames adorned with the brand iconography of all the major haute couture clothing labels, the answer is Luxottica. Vaffanculo, Luxottica! stronzi ricchi stupidi Luxottica!

As Professor Isao Echizen told his university's magazine, NII Today, in that June issue:

I want people to think about what they can do to protect their privacy against the fact that their own information will spread in the cyberspace [sic, but also cute] and could be used for a commercial purpose. For example, when Carnegie Mellon University experimented on whether those who agreed to have their picture taken anonymously could be identified based on their head shot by checking with Facebook, one-third of the test subjects were identified, and even the personal interests and social security number of some test subjects were revealed. Times when privacy is exposed only by a head shot have already arrived. [emphasis mine]

It's that simple.

All the old differences, between eyeglass-wearers and contact lens-wearers, circular existential vagaries about authenticity and vintage frames, none of it matters anymore. There is only one fault line of consequence, today, in the world of prescription eyewear.

It's between us and the machines.

[animated GIF pulled from DigInfo TV via Limor Fried; that's Dr. Echizen, by the way at left, in the animated GIF; Sabae billboard via Nippon]

Email matthew.phelan@gawker.com, pgp public key, to contact the author of this post.

Today, MediaTakeOut—the internet's foremost source of beyond absurd celebrity gossip with dadaist headlines—posted a story titled "GROUPIE TALES: Popular INSTAGRAM THOTTIE Spills The Tea . . . On What Makes Rapper Drake GO WILD IN BED!!! (Warning – VERY Graphic Content)." The post, and its subsequent comments, raise a number of pressing questions.

Here is a taste of the story—which is probably false—supposedly written by a groupie Drake took back to his Calabasas mansion:

He then laid on his back and was like "My Turn." MTO I was ready to suck the OXYGEN outta him and I did. After a few minutes he started pushing my head down, towards his b*lls. I sucked on them for a while and he pushed me down FURTHER to his butt hole. I never did that before, but it was Drake do I'm not gonna lie I did it.

It was weird eating a man's butt like that, but I'm a freak, and it was Drake LOL. He was laying there on the bed with his leg spread open and my face in his butt and his legs shaking.

You should really read the entire thing, though. Once you do that, let's talk about some of the issues raised by the author and the MTO commentariat.

Does Drake like to have his ass eaten?

Well let's just get this one out of the way first. Is the central claim of the post true? One commenter asks "So the trend is eating butt now?" which was a question pondered by Maureen O'Connor in New York in April. Drake has never rapped about being on the receiving end of butt play but he does keep his eye on internet memes, so perhaps he's trying it out?

Does Drake have a weird dick?

The author of the piece describes Drake's... piece this way:

His d*ck is not really big, but it's THICK.

But another commenter, who asks that you check out her "52 INCH BOOTY" on Instagram at @QueenMother305, disputes this characterization:

BTW Drake's dikk is not thick, I've seen it, It kinda comes to a point. He has a weird dikk. Maybe it's cuz of how he was circumcised since he's jewish. He's still sexy tho.

So we have some direct contradictions here, including an on-the-record claim that Drake's dick (well, dikk) is "weird." Drake, for his part, notes in his "We Made It" freestyle from earlier this year that he has "good dick." Which is the truth?

Which Drake songs does Drake play while having sex?

One commenter named Sasha Thompson pushed this anonymous tale even deeper into fan fiction territory by imagining some details of the scene:

Lmfaoooo@ his legs bein up in the air n shakin like a b!t(h!!!!! Lmfaoooo bet one his songs was playin in background too lol cornballs

Now, ignoring everything else, this brings up a legitimate question: which of his own songs does Drake play while having sex? Maybe one of his duets, like "From Time" featuring rumored flame Jhene Aiko or "Take Care" with on/off girlfriend Rihanna? Or maybe he plays one of his Sensual Slow Songs like "Shut It Down," which includes the line "put those fucking heels on and work it girl." Or maybe he just plays a bunch of Nicki Minaj songs.

Is Cash Money, the label Drake is signed to, a gay cabal?

Commenter DiscoverDior asks the following question:

No one is surprised at this, isn't this the same Drake guy that love to go into the NBA's lockeroom? Everyone from the YMCMB camp seem to have some kind of homosexual freak stuff going on. Nicki Minaj loves kissing girls, Wayne and Baby love kissing each other so I am sure Drake is familiar with another man's body as well.

Now, Drake does have a history of trying to force his way into NBA locker rooms, though if that made you gay there wouldn't be a single straight sportswriter. Nicki Minaj does rap frequently about bisexuality, though she has never spoken on-the-record about her off-mic preferences. And gay jokes have been thrown Lil Wayne's way ever since the aforementioned photo of him kissing Birdman surfaced. But Wayne has always confronted these homophobic rumblings head-on—in 2007 he rapped "Damn right, I kissed my daddy, I think they pissed at how rich my daddy is."

So, it's unlikely that Cash Money is a house of gay MCs, though it is possible that some of the label's artists are into "homosexual freak stuff" (same).

This is where you come in: if you have any info regarding any of the questions posed here, please email MediaTakeOut with your crazy story but then email me at jordan@gawker.com.

[image via Getty]

A man at a Burning Man facsimile festival in Utah died after running into the ceremonial fire at the closing ceremonies on Saturday. Police are investigating the case as a suicide.

The man, Salt Lake City resident Christopher Wallace, ran into the fire that was built to burn down an effigy of a character from Where the Wild Things Are. The festival, Element 11, is Utah's answer to Burning Man.

According to the Associated Press, Wallace seemed deliberate in his actions.

Grantsville police Lt. Steve Barrett said the man had told some of the estimated 1,200 attendees in advance about his plans to run into the fire. The three-story-tall effigy, modeled on a character from the classic picture book "Where The Wild Things Are," had been burning for about 30 minutes and was fully engulfed when the man crossed a safety perimeter about 50 feet from the structure and jumped in, officials said.

A spokesperson for Element 11 told Deseret News that they didn't believe Wallace's death was an accident.

"He was very fast; he was very motivated," J.P. Bernier, a spokesman for Element 11, told the Deseret News. "It wasn't an accident or any act of negligence on anybody's part. He had a very deliberate objective to get past our volunteers, past our safety perimeter."

The fire had previously been measured at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Image via AP]

A Nevada judge has issued an arrest warrant for the adult son of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy in case stemming from a 2012 felony conviction for burglary and weapons charges.

The warrant for 34-year-old Cliven Lance Bundy—who clearly didn't pick enough cotton as a child, most likely because of his freeloading dad—was issued after he failed to appear before a Clark County District Court judge on July 8th for a drug diversion program hearing.

Lance Bundy told the Associated Press that he had surgery for a nerve condition the day he was scheduled to appear in court, and has been recuperating at his parent's ranch in Bunkerville, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

He told the AP that he's trying to get his drug counselor to help him with the arrest warrant.

This fall is seeing a huge crop of comic-book TV shows, and one of the most promising is Constantine. The trench-coated antihero who copes with the unsavory side of magic is getting a more faithful portrayal. Except he won't smoke. And now we're hearing his sexuality will be toned down too. Does it matter?

At the Television Critics Association Q&A over the weekend, executive producer David Cerone was asked if Constantine would be bisexual, the way he is in the comics. In response, Cerone broke down all the different versions of the character who've appeared over the years, to prove bisexuality wasn't a major part of the character. And then, according to EW, he added:

In those comic books, John Constantine aged in real time. Within this tome of three decades [of comics] there might have been one or two issues where he's seen getting out of bed with a man. So [maybe] 20 years from now? But there are no immediate plans.

The producers also said that it wasn't as if Constantine would be a non-smoker — we might see him stubbing something out from time to time.

For the record, I've read dozens of Hellblazer comics over the years, and I can't remember seeing much indication that John Constantine was bisexual or pansexual. But he's a character who's appeared in hundreds and hundreds of comics over the years, so who knows? But it's fair to say that smoking is more integral to the character than sexuality is. At the same time, we don't have nearly enough queer characters on television — especially not heroic ones.

[Edited to add: I didn't mean to skate over this issue quite so glibly — blame deadlines and pre-Comic-Con phone calls. I do think erasing queer people from pop culture is a shitty thing to do, and we desperately need more pop culture that represents the whole range of human sexuality. And it really wouldn't have cost much for them to include an aside about ex-boyfriends along with ex-girlfriends. At the same time, to me the most important aspect of John Constantine is not who he fucks, but who he fucks over. ]

At the same time, it looks as though Constantine is taking over the Friday night slot previously occupied by Dracula, a show in which it appeared as though every single character was A) bisexual and B) into some pretty weird edgeplay. So you would expect this show to have a bit of leeway. Plus isn't that also the Hannibal timeslot?

In any case, it's way too early to tell how this will wind up affecting the show — we'll know more when we've watched a half season of it. I'm more worried by the reports that they're reshooting a scene in the pilot to make Liv, the show's original lead, less of a badass and more of a "damsel in distress" — because they want to make it easier to write her out of the show after a few episodes.

But the larger question — and the one we won't know the answer to until the show's been on for a while — is how much are they toning down the character of John Constantine, in an attempt to make this a show that will appeal to the wider audiences that watched Grimm but not Dracula? And can a Constantine show work if he's not kind of an asshole?

I definitely think the "asshole" thing is integral to the character, and if there's one thing standing in the way of networks that want to reach the critical acclaim (and ratings) of cable shows like Game of Thrones or True Detective, it's the unwillingness to let characters have rough edges. We've all learned that television characters don't have to be admirable, or lovable, to be fascinating — but to make a severely flawed character fascinate audiences requires really great acting, and enough space to let it shine. Something network TV has a hard time providing.

That's why, for example, a show like Under The Dome starts out looking like a character study of people who go to some pretty dark places — Junior chaining up his ex-girlfriend, Barbie sleeping with the woman whose husband he murdered — but then veers into an endless series of plot devices and mysteries. What do the butterflies mean? How about the glowing egg? Why is the dome changing colors? Etc. etc.

To some extent, I blame the idea of "watercooler television" — the notion that the best way to get people to watch a network show live instead of a week or a month later is by making sure everybody's talking about it the next day. And somehow, this turns into having lots of emphasis on surprising turns of events, or plot twists, instead of striking character moments.

I don't have much more to say about this, but luckily Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles creator Josh Friedman had some comments last night on Twitter about why it's so hard to make room for small character moments on network TV shows, and I'm just going to cherry pick some of the best bits below, because it's all such great stuff:

One of things I am most proud of in tscc is how much fun there is in scenes. Not just information exchanged. To networks chagrin.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

One of the many downsides to network hours getting shorter is the lack of real estate for joyful, whimsical scene work.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

That's why writing terminators was always fun. They're random, weird, curious, obtuse. They're aliens. Or super smart deadly toddlers.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

There's nothing worse than cutting a joke or a character line to make room for info or exposition. But nets require so much explaining.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Especially shows with world building. Just setting rules and defining terms can eat up your show. I try to ignore all that bullshit...

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

...but it's a necessary evil. Even in the writers' room. Hours and days sucked up. I'd rather drop audience in deep end and let them swim.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

One of the things networks don't take into account is how much visual storytelling their auds have metabolized. How fluent they are.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Also, episodic skeds so tight as to make that level of execution really hard. Hannibal is most successful. @BryanFuller is a beast.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

They must be conceived in writers' rooms to work in story. Many rooms not visually oriented. Hard to pitch images, easy to pitch dialogue.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

The fact that @BryanFuller is stuck in canada for length of shoot is huge part of Hannibal's visual success. Pretty sure post is there too.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Obviously Mad Men another great example. But for network, can't think of one besides Hannibal. Great design but also great filmic language.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

The other problem is execs who don't value visual storytelling in scripts because it's hard to read after 5 other scripts that day.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

A powerful image in a script might be two lines of description. And most execs still read up to down, not across.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Ie I love low light, fast lenses and shooting wide open. But the tiny dof is brutal for a focus puller on a network tv schedule.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

The new hd cameras are so sharp u have to work hard to make sure your sets and props are tonally controlled. Cuz it's all gonna be in focus.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

And networks want a lot if light tones. God forbid your show is dark. So it's a battle to tell a color/light story if people are afraid.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

On Locke/key, @markromanek insisted there wasn't a single black item in entire pilot except for hair and dress of Dodge. Not 1 other thing.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Granted these are niche concerns re net tv. I know very successful show runners who couldn't care less. W/o great characters you're dead.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

I think I started this binge by saying: it's important to find room in network tv for idiosyncrasy, detail, whimsy, and joy in the words.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

If the marketing says your show is one thing and it's something else entirely, your going to get pressure to change the show.

— josh friedman (@Josh_Friedman) July 14, 2014

Americans are fiercely protective of the imaginary wealth they don't have yet, and John Oliver believes that the idea that we're a nation of "haves and soon-to-haves," as Marco Rubio actually put it, explains why we perpetuate policies that have led us to near-Great-Depression levels of inequality.

Sure, the top 1% rake now in 20% of annual income in the U.S., but we keep cutting their taxes because we could be them one day. Optimism!

So we end up with popular calls to abolish the estate tax, which applies to less than a quarter of a percent of estates.

"Basically, if you're not comfortable calling your accumulation of shit an 'estate,' the estate tax probably doesn't fucking apply to you," as Oliver eloquently puts it.

But why ruin our dreams with things like "numbers" and "economics" when Powerball still exists? There's always a chance!

[H/T Last Week Tonight]

Now that former Facebook president Sean Parker has his billions from Silicon Valley, he's tackling DC next, funneling cash to politicians that specialize in "compromise." And in Parker's mind, those who compromise happen to be Republicans.

After historically donating to Democratic candidates, Parker's contributions have shifted to the right for the 2014 election cycle. According to Politico, Parker recently gave $350,000 to a super PAC supporting conservative Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran—money that ultimately help Cochran survive a Tea Party primary challenge. He has also traveled to Washington to meet with Republicans, particularly those with "moderate conservative" economic views.

Politico says Parker is supporting "middle-of-the-road candidates" that are interested in "deal-making." But those candidates are remarkably right-wing.

In addition to supporting the Mississippi Conservatives super PAC, Parker cut checks to the campaigns of Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden, who faced primary challengers on the right. He donated to both the campaigns and leadership PACs of Illinois Rep. Peter Roskam and Ohio Rep. Pat Tiberi.

Parker also gave a six-figure sum to an outside group supporting South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's reelection campaign, according to a Parker adviser, who declined to identify the group.

He's not just donating to Republican candidates and allied super PACs. Parker has also been the chief financier of an automobile rights initiative in San Francisco, which is backed by the Republican Party.

The ballot measure, which will be voted on in November, seeks to "restore balance to San Francisco's transportation policies." However, the initiative is premised on the belief that bicycling and other green forms of transit are unfairly prioritized by the city. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

The measure calls for a ban on paid street parking nights and Sundays, more money for parking garages, a ban on new meters in neighborhoods without residents' and merchants' say-so, and equal enforcement of traffic laws for bicyclists and drivers.

Howard Chabner, a spokesman for the campaign, said, "There is a feeling that for the last several years the city has had ... a campaign against cars and in favor of bicycles."

Parker's embrace of the GOP and its causes is politics as usual in Silicon Valley. Tech moguls often start out backing Democrats, but slowly begin giving to Republicans. FWD.us, Mark Zuckerberg's lobbying group (which Parker is also a member of), doles out support to conservative lawmakers in exchange for their support on immigration reform. Even Google, which is famously supportive of Barack Obama, finances many Republican politicians.

There's nothing disruptive about old school political favor trading.

[Photo: Getty]

Chugging an entire gallon of honey is tough enough under optimal circumstances—that's about 2 weeks worth of calories—but it's absolutely terrifying when you have 2,000 bees hanging out all over your face.

But competitive eater L.A. Beast, the man who once tried to drink a gallon of Tabasco and downed a bottle of 20-year-old Crystal Pepsi, isn't one to back down from a stupid idea. So, with the queen bee strapped to his chin and the rest of the swarm following, he ignored a professional beekeeper's advice and went for it.

"I don't recommend to do that," the beekeeper said worriedly. "Don't open your mouth!"

Too late.

[H/T Digg]

The pending Silicon Valley wage-fixing settlement is a dud, but the upshot is a trove of private executive emails put into the public record. New court documents show the leadership at Google in a fit over a very new rival.

Facebook in 2007 was still mostly a college kid phenomenon, but as a cool new startup, managed to lure talent away from Google. Rather than letting Google employees weigh a job offer from the upstart social network against tenure at the established search firm, the company instituted a drastic policy: employees approached by Facebook would receive "significantly" increased salary offers within one hour. The policy is confirmed in the above email from Eric Schmidt, where the incensed exec says he's "disgusted" that the existence of this counter-offer strategy has been leaked so quickly.

Deposition transcripts from Google co-founder Sergey Brin illuminate why Google was so quick to throw cash at poaching targets:

Brin speaks of the seductive power of startups, the "promise of quick riches," as if it ever went away.

Tonight we've got teens, wolves, teen wolves, Salvador Dali, Jack Bauer dies, and everybody else is still stuck under a dang dome.

At 8/7c., we're nearing the end of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta's third outing on VH1, Masterchef is down to the Top 14, Switched At Birth's eponymous painting this week is Dali's "The Image Disappears," so I'm guessing a deaf lady turns into a giant face on tonight's episode of the very excellent Switched At Birth.

Also the CW begins what seems like a pretty weird night: First, Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Scary Spice (happy 18th birthday, "Wannabe"!), then two fairly obnoxious-seeming new comedies, Backpackers and Seed, premiere. If you're looking for some high-budget bromedies to ruin your Monday, there you go: Eurotrip-open relationships-gay panic BS on the one hand, and semen all over the other.

At 9/8c., Fox wraps up Day Nine of Jack Bauer's fascinating adventures, by cramming together the hours of 10:00 P.M. (Greenwich Mean) to 11:00 A.M. (where we started), turning this 24 into more of a 12. (Or maybe it will just be: A bunch of mean kids lock up Jack Bauer on Venus to keep him from seeing the sun.) American Ninja Warriors heads to Dallas for Finals, The Fosters follows up last week's weirdly advertised, low-key episode with I'm guessing some grim fallout from both Jude's mute turn and Wyatt's sexual patience, and Real Housewives of Orange County has titled its episode "Point Break," which is very promising I think. (Especially since Tamra's heading to WWHL afterward, which means the break is probably literal as well as figurative.)

At 10/9c. there will be available a variety of people under various domes: The usual stupid Dome people, Longmire which may well take place under a dome for all I know, and subsisting under their own kind of domes—their Luftwaffe, their gobbledygoo—you have the ladies of Mistresses and the ladies of Ladies of London. However, you will be watching Teen Wolf, because you are the kind of person who makes solid decisions. Escape the dome!

Then you should go to bed. But if you don't, at 11/10c. Andy will be bringing it on home with two thin-lipped, beautiful harpies: Angela Kinsey from The Office, and Tamra Judge from straight out Whiskey Tango Hell. Watch What Happens as the humorless and abject wine-tosser extraordinaire Tamra tries to explain her robot baby to a couple of tiny jokesters! And then Angela can explain what it was like being pretend-married to a gay man on TV, a subject Tamra knows nothing about whatsoever.

[Image by Bravo]

Morning After is a new home for television discussion online, brought to you by Gawker. What are you watching tonight? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Seattle police have cleared an Uber driver of rape charges, but have kept the investigation into sexual assault "active and ongoing." Komo News, which had access to the police report, said the victim had been visiting Seattle from Texas and was on her way to her fiancé's home.

The incident occurred around 2AM in the morning when the driver pulled over near an unknown park:

The victim said she was then raped and told officers she was afraid her attacker would kill her if she didn't go along with it.

According to the report, the victim got back into the car following the assault and begged the driver to drop her off anywhere. She was dropped off in the 300 block of 15th Avenue East, according to Seattle police.

The victim knocked on the door of a nearby home and asked for help, saying she had been raped. The resident refused to let her in and called police.

Officers arrived to find the victim crying on the home's porch; both her knees were scraped and it appeared her blouse had been ripped, according to the police report.

Although Seattle police used the victim's Uber receipt to get the name of the driver, SPD spokesperson Drew Fowler told Komo News that there was "no known connection" to Uber, which was recently valued at $18.2 billion and has been criticized both lack of standards when it comes to vetting drivers who use the app, as well as the company's unwillingness to take responsibility when its customers are put in harm's way.

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

[Image via Getty]

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has proposed a ceasefire to the deadly attacks raged between Israel and Hamas, calling for a halt to further offensives until a truce can be negotiated. The Israeli government and leaders of Hamas have reportedly said they will consider the offer.

Details of the plan, as reported by the New York Times:

Israeli officials said the country's security cabinet would meet early on Tuesday to study the Egyptian proposal, which calls for a swift halt to attacks by both sides, followed by a 48-hour cooling-off period and then talks aimed at a more lasting truce. The Egyptian government, which is not friendly to Hamas, presented the plan to Arab League foreign ministers at a meeting Monday evening.

The proposed ceasefire follows an apparent drone attack launched by militants in Palestine that was intercepted by Israel. From Reuters:

Earlier, the Israeli military said it had shot down a drone from Gaza, which is sandwiched between Israeli and Egyptian territory. This marked the first reported deployment of an unmanned aircraft by Palestinian militants and a possible step up in the sophistication of their arsenal, although it was not clear whether it was armed.

The death toll in Palestine continues to climb—last week, nearly 100 Palestinians, largely women and children, were killed in attacks. Pierre Krähenbühl, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, told the New York Times today that the number of killed in Palestine has risen to 180, and that at least 1,100 have been wounded.

Reuters reports that previous calls for peace, including by the UN Security Council, have seemingly been dismissed by the warring groups, but that Egypt's plan appears possible:

So far the international calls for a ceasefire have had little effect and there were no immediate signs that the initiative by Egypt - which struck a peace treaty with Israel more than 30 years ago - would necessarily succeed.

However, the Israeli official seemed to put a positive face on the proposed truce, saying that Israel's week-old offensive in Gaza had weakened the Islamist Hamas group militarily.

The service also reports that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be in Cairo Tuesday for potential talks, but the U.S. has yet to confirm his trip. Haaretz is reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to convene a meeting of his security council to vote on Egypt's proposal.

[Image via AP]